News related to
First

Faisal Al Nuaimi is passionate about cycling. From hills to flats, this two-wheeled warrior loves pedalling the streets of Ajman City, his hometown and a growing sports-tourism hub. Cycling five times a week, mostly after work, Al Nuaimi covers up to 70 kilometres in a regular workout, interspersed with two days’ running. It has changed his body dramatically, trimming off 19 kilograms of fat in one year […]

Donald Trump suffered a big blow as Republican leaders postponed a vote on the party’s healthcare bill following their failure to unite conservatives around the effort to replace the Obamacare law that they had spent years vowing to repeal. Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, abandoned the vote on Thursday afternoon after a final effort by the White House to convince conservative rebels to support […]

On April 15, 2002, STS-110 Mission Specialist Ellen Ochoa works at the Remote Manipulator System controls on the aft flight deck of space shuttle Atlantis. Dr. Ochoa, a veteran astronaut, is currently the 11th director of Johnson Space Center. She became the first Hispanic woman to go to space when she served on the STS-56 mission. Source link

CAIRO — Ten Egyptian soldiers and 15 militants were killed during a raid on an Islamist insurgent base in the restive Sinai Peninsula, a military spokesman said Thursday. The deaths underscored the strength of the Sinai insurgency, led by an Islamic State affiliate, despite almost four years of concerted Egyptian counterterrorism operations. In recent months Sinai militants have expanded their area of operations, targeted Christian civilians and […]

Investors rushed to participate in Volkswagen’s return to European bond markets on Thursday, with the German carmaker’s first benchmark issue following the emissions scandal attracting huge demand. The €8bn euro-denominated bond attracted €24bn of orders by late afternoon, when books were closed ahead of final pricing. Bankers said the deal was launched with a spread 15 basis points tighter than initial indications. “There was a lot of […]

Most website visits these days entail a database query — to look up airline flights, for example, or to find the fastest driving route between two addresses. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Most website visits these days entail a database query—to look up airline flights, for example, or to find the fastest driving route between two addresses. But online database queries can reveal a surprising amount of […]

The irony of revelations from the Global Laundromat scandal landing almost exactly a year on from the Panama Paper leaks is not lost on many readers. Clearly the lip-service to greater transparency that followed the financial leak has come to nought. The Laundromat scandal has exposed billions of dollars being moved out of Russia through anonymously owned UK companies and Britain’s high street banks. Anonymous companies – the […]

Advertisements

ROME Five migrants were found dead in the sea off Libya on Thursday after the boats they were travelling in sank, likely carrying hundreds more to their deaths, an aid organisation said. Proactiva Open Arms, one of several groups operating in the area, said it was notified that an inflatable boat was sinking early on Thursday and found another going down shortly afterwards. “We brought on board […]

LONDON All eight people arrested after a lone assailant attacked the British parliament killing three people are suspected of preparing terrorist acts, London police said on Thursday. They were still searching properties in Wales, the central city of Birmingham and east London. Hundred of detectives are involved in the investigation, police said in a statement. (Reporting by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison) ‘); $(‘.second-article-divide’).append($(‘.slider.slider-module’)); $(‘.third-article-divide’).append(”); var […]

One of the brightest lights in local journalism suffered a setback late last year when Raleigh Agenda, the sister site of Charlotte Agenda, closed its doors after failing to find a sustainable business model. But the closure of the site didn’t prevent the parent company from banking a comfortable profit in 2016, said Ted Williams, Charlotte Agenda’s cofounder and publisher. The company brought in about $875,000 in […]

By Robin Emmott and Alissa de Carbonnel | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS Hours before Wednesday’s attack in London, the head of the European Union police agency Europol warned that a large group of radicalised individuals posed a constant threat to Britain and Europe. “Some of these are likely to succeed in the future,” Rob Wainwright, who is British, wrote in a blog to commemorate the attacks in Brussels that […]

By Lisa Richwine | LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) said on Thursday its board extended Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger’s term by a year to July 2, 2019 and said he would serve as a consultant to the media giant for three years after that. This is the third time Iger’s contract has been extended. Iger first said he would retire in […]

The lungs play an important role in producing blood. Until this discovery, lungs were only associated with breathing, and the bone marrow was thought to be the one responsible for blood production. New research carried out at the University of California San Francisco has found that most of the platelets are actually produced in the lungs, and not in the bone marrow. The study was conducted on […]

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan. “I’ve seen the influence of Russia of late – increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to […]

In 1932, at the age of 52, Pablo Picasso had his first museum exhibition. It was at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, and it contained 460 pieces of art – mostly paintings and drawings. It is, perhaps, telling of Picasso’s character that he was his own curator for this seminal show. Even during his own lifetime, he was filled with enormous self-confidence and made great efforts to promote […]

When Flavio Evers Cassou, an employee of the world’s biggest meatpacker, JBS, dropped off a large cooler of meat at a friend’s home last year in southern Brazil, he could not have foreseen the crisis of confidence it would cause in the industry and the country’s wider corporate sector. The friend in question happened to be Maria do Rocio Nascimento, the chief inspector of products of animal […]

“Nowruz means ‘new day’ in Persian,” the president said in the statement. “It is an occasion to celebrate new beginnings, a sentiment that is particularly meaningful for so many Iranians who have come to our country in recent decades to make a new start in a free land.” Continue reading the main story Among the sections deleted were one that said America looked forward to engaging someday […]

BlackRock and Pimco are refusing to take part in the first bond sale by a Portuguese bank in more than a year, because of a legal battle with the country’s central bank over losses sustained in 2015. Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the state-owned Portuguese bank, is this week courting investors in London and Paris, as it seeks to sell a €500m subordinated bond, in what would be […]

Predicting and acting upon financial fraud is one of the prime areas of application of advanced big data techniques like machine learning (ML). Earlier this week, a case of money laundering known as the Laundromat was uncovered by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) involving a number of global banks active in the UK. Could ML help prevent such incidents? What progress is there on […]

ANKARA Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called British Prime Minister Theresa May to express condolences for the attack in London and stressed that the two countries were partners in the fight against terrorism, sources in Erdogan’s office said on Thursday. Erdogan told May that Turkey was in full solidarity with the United Kingdom against terrorism that threatened international peace and security, the sources said. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; […]

In this March 21, 2017 photo engineer Volkmar Dohmen stands in front of xenon short-arc lamps in the DLR German national aeronautics and space research center in Juelich, western Germany. The lights are part of an artificial sun that will be used for research purposes. (Caroline Seidel/dpa via AP) Scientists in Germany are flipping the switch on what’s being described as “the world’s largest artificial sun,” hoping […]

By Pavel Polityuk and Alexei Kalmykov | KIEV KIEV Ukraine accused Russia of “state terrorism” after a former Russian lawmaker and key witness in a treason case against former leader Viktor Yanukovich was shot dead in broad daylight outside a hotel in central Kiev on Thursday. Russia called the allegation “absurd”. Former MP Denis Voronenkov was killed by an assailant who was armed with a pistol and […]

To vote, or not to vote, that is the only question on the minds of Trump’s White House and House Republicans this morning.  If everything proceeds as planned, the Obamacare vote is currently scheduled for 7pm tonight.  That said, the further we press into today without confirmation that Republicans have narrowed the opposition votes from their own party down to 22 or less (as of last night […]

Researchers have developed the next step in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) with the first micro-scale self-sustaining cell, which generated power for 13 straight days through symbiotic interactions of two types of bacteria. (via WSJ)

VISHNU RAJA
RYO YAMADA
HITORI GOTOH
IKUYO KITA