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ESPN on Wednesday went through with a long-awaited round of layoffs that will trim about 100 commentators from the sports network’s payroll as cord-cutters and digital media upstarts continue to disrupt the broadcaster’s business model. Among those laid off are on-camera personalities that have become familiar faces on the network’s coverage of hockey, football and baseball and writers for ESPN’s digital platforms. ESPN President John Skipper announced […]

Google’s internal startup incubator, Area 120, unveiled last year, has to date led to the creation of a number of projects, including a personal stylist app Tailor, a voice messenger Supersonic, and most recently, an app for watching YouTube videos together called Uptime. We’ve now spotted another app in development over there called Appointments, a salon booking tool. Appointments has not yet been publicly released to the app stores […]

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is set to make its first dive through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017. (via WSJ)

ROME The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, already Italy’s most popular party, is stealing a march on its divided rivals by drawing up its policy programme a year ahead of elections. With the ruling centre-left Democratic Party embroiled in a bruising leadership battle and centre-right parties unable to agree on a leader, opinion polls give 5-Star a growing lead, which one pollster last week put as high as 8 […]

Oil prices reversed early losses on reports of the third weekly drawdown of crude stocks in the US, although analysts cautioned on waiting for further signs that Opec’s production cuts are finally tightening the market. Inventories of US crude fell by a larger than expected 3.6m barrels in the week ended April 21, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, compared with expectations for a draw of […]

By Michael Shields | ZURICH ZURICH Swiss voters look set to decide for a second time whether to impose curbs on immigration from the European Union after the cabinet proposed on Wednesday allowing a straight yes-or-no referendum on an issue that still bedevils ties with the EU. In a 2014 referendum, voters narrowly backed upper limits and quotas to reduce immigration from the EU, amid concerns that […]

By Amanda Becker and Ginger Gibson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will release a tax plan on Wednesday that proposes to sharply slash rates on businesses and overseas corporate profits returned to the United States, officials said. The Trump administration is touting the blueprint, which also calls for higher standard deductions for individuals, as a landmark tax cut just days before the Republican president marks his […]

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A new study found a link between climate change and physical activity, suggesting that rising temperatures may inspire people to get off the couch. The research explores how human activity evolves in an increasingly warmer environment and sheds new light into how climate change impacts human health. Study lead author Nick Obradovich, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, first got the idea to investigate how […]

ABU DHABI // Labourers working on high-rise buildings in the capital are putting their lives at risk by not using proper safety harnesses. During site visits, inspectors from Abu Dhabi Municipality found men working at height on unfinished floors, temporary platforms, on scaffolding or in cradles used for cleaning windows at towers under construction without safety equipment to prevent them from falling. According to the municipality, 52 […]

Saudi Arabia’s Iyad Al Hakami was crowned ‘Ameer Al Shu’ara’, The Prince of Poets in the seventh season of the highly popular talent quest. In what was a night of celebration for the kingdom, the second position was also taken by a Saudi national, Tariq Al Sumayli. Al Hakam’s win was the second consecutive season a Saudi national has won the title with last season’s winner being […]

French presidential frontrunner Emmanuel Macron was ambushed on the campaign trail on Wednesday by far-right rival Marine Le Pen, with the rivals for the Elysée Palace clashing over globalisation and compounding a shaky start for Mr Macron in the final two weeks of the election race. The rivals’ visits to a factory in Amiens in northern France came on what was the first day of vigorous campaigning […]

Microsoft began rolling out the Windows 10 Mobile version of its Creators Update release at the end of the day Pacific Time on April 25. The RTM (“release to mainstream,” if you’re not a fan of “release to manufacturing”) version of the OS for Windows Phones is 15063.251. (The RTM for Windows 10 Creators Update for PCs also was 15063.) As Microsoft acknowledged recently, only about a […]

ERBIL, Iraq Islamic State militants have developed an improvised explosive device (IED) that can be launched from rifles or dropped from an aerial drone, an arms monitoring group said on Wednesday. Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said the Sunni militant group was “promoting the development of ‘own-brand’ weapons” to provide its insurgents with otherwise unavailable armaments. “The (IED) can be thrown, launched from an improvised rifle attachment, or […]

By Syed Raza Hassan | KARACHI, Pakistan KARACHI, Pakistan Afghan and Indian intelligence agencies gave funds and other assistance to Pakistani Taliban militants to fight Islamabad, the group’s former spokesman, who surrendered last week, said in a video released by Pakistan’s military on Wednesday. Afghanistan strongly refuted the claim, while India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it was not yet able to comment on the video. Both […]

Dr Eyad Arabi, Research Associate in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Credit: University of Bristol Wireless communications is a technology that is used every day. Across society, there is a move away from using the internet on desktop computers and towards smartphones, tablets and laptops. Engineers at the University of Bristol have developed a novel radio frequency (RF) design tool that will speed up the […]

‘Dubai Expert’ announced a first-of-its-kind destination travel trade training programme that will be rolled out to travel agents from around the world 26 April 2017 Dubai, UAE – Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism), has announced the launch of “Dubai Expert”, an innovative online educational game that has been created exclusively for travel agents. The announcement was made to travel professionals attending this year’s […]

PARIS Far-right leader Marine Le Pen sought to steal presidential rival Emmanuel Macron’s thunder on Wednesday with a surprise visit to striking workers in northern France, aiming to wrong-foot him while he was campaigning in the same town. Visiting the site of a strike at the tumble-drier Whirlpool factory, which is due to close next year, Le Pen pushed her anti-globalisation agenda and attacked Macron who she […]

No president likes being judged on his first hundred days in office, not least Donald Trump. It is, he tweeted last week, a “ridiculous standard” by which to be measured, even though he also claimed to have accomplished “a lot”. With his 100th day in the White House falling on Saturday, investors have more nuanced ideas. For much of 2017 financial markets have doubted the global “Trump […]

By Marton Dunai | BUDAPEST BUDAPEST Anti-government protesters have filled Budapest’s streets in recent weeks, but divisions within the opposition and weak support outside the capital mean they are unlikely to herald a serious threat to Prime Minister Viktor Orban in next year’s election. Triggered by a law targeting an international school founded by liberal U.S. financier George Soros, the rallies have galvanised broader public anger against […]

PepsiCo Inc reported higher-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit as the company benefited from demand for its healthier drinks and snacks and kept a tight leash on costs. The company’s shares, which had risen 9.1 percent this year, were off 1 percent in premarket trading on Wednesday. PepsiCo and other processed-food makers are investing heavily to meet consumers’ increasing preference for healthier snacks such as unsweetened tea and […]

Twitter on Thursday rallied more than 11 per cent in pre-market activity, after it announced better than expected earnings and revenues, and significantly increased its active userbase on the platform. The social media company posted first quarter revenues of $548m, down 8 per cent year over year, marking the first fall in sales on record, but still exceeding estimates. It recorded a net loss of $62m, significantly […]

With little macro data overnight (aside from a modestly disappointing Australian CPI print), offset by an ongoing of corporate profits (this is the single busiest week for corporate earnings in more than 10 years), today everyone’s attention will be focused on three things to come out of Washington: taxes, healthcare, spending. And while we did our best to summarize what is known and unknown last night, this […]

SOFIA Bulgaria has decided to start talks with Sweden to acquire eight new Gripen combat jets made by SAAB, interim deputy prime minister Stefan Yanev said on Wednesday. The Balkan country has picked the Swedish offer ahead of offers to buy secondhand U.S. F-16s from Portugal, equipped with U.S. weaponry, and secondhand Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from Italy. A deal is estimated to be worth about 1.5 billion […]

This piece originally appeared in Local Edition, our newsletter following the digital transformation of local news. Want to be part of the conversation? You can sign up here. What do you need to unlearn to stay in journalism? This week, two journalists named almost exactly the same thing. That’s not rare, but it struck me as interesting because they’re at such different points in their career. Here’s what they […]

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