WASHINGTON — An exhausted and ill-equipped Iraqi Army faces daunting obstacles on the battlefield that will most likely delay for months a long-planned major offensive on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, American and allied officials say. The delay is expected despite American efforts to keep Iraq’s creaky war machine on track. Although President Obama vowed to end the United States’ role in the war in Iraq, […]
Introduced with the release of Google’s Android Marshmallow operating system last year, the Now on Tap feature has just been made a bit smarter. A one-touch tool for accessing information about what’s displayed on a device’s screen, Now on Tap has just been updated to provide users with even more specific details they might find helpful. While reading an article, for example, a user can now select […]
PARIS — With the Obama administration having effectively given up on negotiating a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, France tried its hand on Friday at making Middle East peace but ended the day with little to show for its efforts. Even before President François Hollande convened diplomats from 29 countries for the session — including Secretary of State John Kerry but no representatives of either […]
The tiny Core pocket computer from Pebble Technology will have a very big friend on its side once it reaches the marketplace: Amazon. Pebble announced this week that Pebble Core will be the first standalone wearable device to integrate Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant technology. Alexa is currently used in only a handful of Amazon’s own products, including the Amazon Echo voice-enabled wireless speaker. So far, developers have […]
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new suite of applications and services yesterday to help businesses comprehensively manage, govern and extract actionable insights from enterprise information. The new suite, called HPE Verity, aims to offer companies a set of tools that are both integrated and modular. The objective of HPE Verity is to address the problem enterprises have trying to manage a wide variety of data types, […]
Fish that are bred to be bolder or more shy show corresponding changes to their body shape and locomotion, suggesting that personality changes affect other seemingly unrelated traits. The findings could be useful in animal breeding, pest management and studies of complex human behaviors. In a study performed by North Carolina State University researchers, zebrafish that were bred to be more bold — quantified by the shorter […]
It has been known for years that personality traits of animals, such as aggressiveness, risk-taking, curiosity or sociality, may have far-reaching consequences for reproduction and survival. However, separating the effect of personality from other factors, such as environmental conditions, is not easy. If the natural environment of the animals is subjected to strong fluctuations, the different personalities may have different consequences depending on the prevailing situation. For […]
1. What is Ramadan? Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic (Hijri) calendar. It is the most holy month in the calendar for Muslims as it is believed the Quran was revealed to Prophet Mohammed during Ramadan. During this month, Muslims do not consume any food or liquid between fajr and maghrib prayers (at dawn and sunset), not even water. You can check the exact prayer […]
Let’s see… “The third time is a charm,” or is it “Strike 3, you’re out!“? The final installment of this trilogy is Nissan’s competition to their own Sentra SE-R. That’s because there were basically two of these… the NX1600, which had 110 horsepower, and the NX2000, with the engine found in the SE-R. The SE-R, of course, had a trunk. Gone is the “Pulsar” name. The NX2000 gets a […]
More than 18 months after Apple Pay took the United States by storm, the smartphone giant has made only a small dent in the global payments market, snagged by technical challenges, low consumer take-up and resistance from banks. The service is available in six countries and among a limited range of banks, though in recent weeks Apple has added four banks to its sole Singapore partner American Express; […]
The company logo is shown at the headquarters of Oracle Corporation in Redwood City, California, February 2, 2010. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files Oracle Corp was sued on Wednesday by a former senior finance manager who claimed she was terminated in retaliation for complaining about improper accounting practices in Oracle’s cloud services business. Shares of Oracle fell about 2.6 percent to $39.23 in after-hours trading. In a complaint filed in […]
Experts say they found more than 400 wooden tablets during excavations Image Credit: AFP Archaeologist Luisa Duarte poses for a picture holding a Roman waxed writing tablet containing the earliest written reference to London, dated AD 65/70-80, which translated reads ‘Londinio Mogontio’ (in London, to Mogontius…), at Bloomberg’s offices in central London. The tablets were found during excavation for financial news agency […]
One of Widad Majid’s brothers had to stay in Turkey for treatment of leukaemia, and her marrow could be the only hope for his survival Along with more than a dozen members of her extended family, Widad Majid spent last summer sleeping in sweltering refugee camps, open fields, train stations and a jail cell as she traversed Europe en route from Syria to Sweden, one small girl […]
It’s amusing that yoghurt, which originated as a way to make milk last longer before the days of refrigeration, now makes grocery shopping last longer as we try to make sense of the dizzying selection in the refrigerator case. I regularly get questions from people confused about which yoghurt to buy. Here are a few of the most commonly asked with answers to help you choose more […]
The Chevrolet Spark is designed for city dwellers who are looking for a small car that packs all the connectivity features of the big cars, but don’t require the horsepower or the proportions of a bigger vehicle. For 2016, the all-new Spark packs 17% more power than the first-generation model, so the power output increases from a measly 84 horsepower to a more acceptable 98 horsepower. What’s […]
DUBAI // Two Asian men have been arrested in possession of 4.6kg of heroin. The anti-narcotics department at Dubai Police said on Wednesday that the men were arrested in mid-May for possession, trafficking and abuse of the drug. Police said the first suspect was looking for someone to smuggle the heroin to a neighbouring country, according to Aletihad, the English-language sister newspaper of The National. Major General […]
ABU DHABI // Two men who shot police officers during a drug-dealing ambush in Baniyas have each been handed 50-year sentences. The Court of Cassation on Tuesday issued one life sentence each to Yemeni Fahad Abdullah and Emirati Mohammed Khamis for using force against on-duty policemen, and one to each for drug dealing. In February 2012, Abdullah and Khamis were about to sell 20 kilograms of hashish […]
A Bitcoin (virtual currency) paper wallet with QR codes and a coin are seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, May 27, 2015. Reuters/Benoit Tessier/File Photo LONDON The price of the web-based digital currency bitcoin soared to its highest in almost two years on Tuesday, rising to more than $500 per unit, as worries about a further weakening of the […]
A new 10-core processor from Intel debuted at Computex yesterday, one of four new CPUs the company unveiled. While ostensibly designed for the desktop market, the chips might have more in common with their server-level cousins, both in terms of price and computing power. The 10-core model alone will set you back a cool $1,723, more than enough to buy your own system. The company is promoting […]
An ultrathin high-end laptop, a new line of smartphones and a “home robot” named Zenbo helped Taiwan-based Asus grab numerous headlines ahead of today’s launch of the Computex 2016 ICT expo and conference in Taipei. During a preview “Zenvolution” press event at Computex yesterday, Asus introduced a new family of ZenFone 3 smartphones, as well as a number of new devices developed in collaboration with Intel. It […]
By DIAA HADID May 31, 2016 JERUSALEM — Three Palestinians convicted of murder were executed in the Hamas-controlled coastal territory of Gaza on Tuesday, less than a week after Hamas lawmakers called for the resumption of capital punishment. The three men had exhausted their appeals, and the families of the victims refused a last-minute request to spare the men, who were executed at police headquarters in Gaza City, according […]
Through a computer-simulated study, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden show that it is highly likely that the so-called Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This would make it the first exoplanet to be discovered inside our own solar system. The theory is that our sun, in its youth some 4.5 billion years ago, stole Planet 9 from its original star. An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is by […]
By THOMAS ERDBRINK May 31, 2016 TEHRAN — A leading conservative was re-elected speaker of Iran’s Parliament on Tuesday, denying reformists a post they thought they had earned with a big win in February elections. In a mild surprise, an overwhelming majority of Iran’s lawmakers chose a conservative candidate, Ali Larijani, who has held the position since 2008. Mr. Larijani, 57, scion of a powerful Iranian family, is not […]
Basma Abdel Aziz was walking in downtown Cairo one morning when she saw a long line of people standing in front of a closed government building. Returning hours later, Ms. Abdel Aziz, a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, passed the same people still waiting listlessly — a young woman and an elderly man, a mother holding her baby. The building remained closed. When she got home, she […]
