A joint venture between Dubai developer Nakheel and Spanish hospitality group RIU Hotels & Resorts has released a construction tender for an 800-room, beachfront resort and water park at Deira Islands. With an investment value of AED670 million ($182.4 million), the resort – RIU’s first in the Middle East and one of the biggest in Dubai in terms of hotel rooms – is set for delivery in […]
BEIRUT Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday that any attempts to disrupt the presidential election on May 19 would be dealt with harshly. The vote has shaped up to be primarily a contest between incumbent president Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who has campaigned on a platform of opening up the country to the West and easing social restrictions, and hardline rival Ebrahim Raisi, who […]
ABU DHABI // Experts have called for more police presence, the use of new technologies and effective publicity campaigns to reduce speed-related crashes on the country’s roads. The Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week, which will run until May 14 and has the theme Save Lives #SlowDown, focuses on managing speed and what can be done to address this key risk factor in road traffic deaths and […]
Time Inc cut its dividend and announced a board shake-up as the magazine publisher reported a steeper than expected first-quarter net loss and decline in revenue. The owner of Time, People and Sports Illustrated is in the midst of a strategic reorganisation aimed at shifting its business from print to digital, following its decision last month not to sell itself. Its net loss widened to $28m, or […]
MOSCOW Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has undergone an eye operation in Spain after an attack in Moscow that left him almost blind in one eye, the opposition politician said late on Tuesday on social media. Navalny hopes to run for president next year against Vladimir Putin, who is expected to run for what would be his fourth term, and organised the biggest anti-government protests in years in […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Sean Hannity, the eight-figure archetype of selective moral outrage, last night charged the press with going “completely insane” over the James Comey firing. Hannity accused it of “selective moral outrage,” proving it takes one to know one amid wall-to-wall Comey […]
MANNHEIM, Germany SAP (SAPG.DE) said on Wednesday its executive pay system was reasonable, defending management bonuses against the criticism of some shareholders. “Our executive payment must be seen in comparison with other software companies and must be competitive,” SAP’s co-founder and supervisory board Chairman Hasso Plattner told the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting. “We think we have a reasonable system,” he added. Leading shareholder advisors have called on […]
A new report indicates that life expectancy in the United States varies by as high as 20 years depending on one’s county of birth. Researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at Washington University undertook the study and revealed the existing disparity in life expectancy from county to county. Life Expectancy Disparity The lead author of the study Christopher Murray and team examined death records of […]
According to a new U.S.-based study, overall environmental pollution — water, air, and land — can greatly increase the risk of Americans developing cancer. The study asserts that poor air quality — coupled with other man-made factors that impact the environment, such as construction of major roads and highways, housing, and public transport — are responsible for elevating cancer risk in both men and women. On the […]
Arm fatigue accumulates during a prolonged use of mid-air interfaces such as Oculus Rift. Credit: Purdue University Photo/Brian Huchel Researchers at Purdue University’s C Design Lab are studying arm and muscle fatigue connected to advancements in the use of hand gestures for mid-air computer interaction. Computer interaction improvements have included the expanding use of natural motions and gestures to control floating graphical user interfaces. As a result, […]
By Sue-Lin Wong | HUNCHUN, China HUNCHUN, China In August, 2014, planners in the northeastern Chinese city of Hunchun argued in state media that it should be included in the “One Belt, One Road” project, Beijing’s vision laid out the previous year of a new Silk Road across Asia to Europe. In 2015, the official Xinhua news agency ran stories about how Hunchun was accelerating its “OBOR” […]
By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey in the fallout over Comey’s probe of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails last year, saying Comey was no longer able to effectively lead the law enforcement agency. Comey had been leading an FBI investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible […]
By Timothy Gardner | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Eight Democratic senators asked U.S. regulators on Tuesday to launch an investigation into billionaire Carl Icahn’s activities in the U.S. biofuels blending credit market, saying the activist investor may have violated trading laws since becoming an adviser to President Donald Trump. “We are writing to request that your agencies investigate whether Carl Icahn violated insider trading laws, anti-market manipulation laws, or […]
Expired EpiPens may still be usable more than four years after their expiry date. Findings of a new study that looked at the potency of auto-injectors after their expiry date suggest it may be worth using one that is past the expiration if it is all you have got. The new study shows that long after their supposed expiration dates, the injectors still have the concentration of epinephrine […]
By Se Young Lee and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL South Korea’s liberal leader Moon Jae-in will take the oath of office as president on Wednesday, tasked with navigating the country out of rising geopolitical tensions over North Korea’s nuclear programme and the risk of a rift with the United States. Moon, 64, is expected to announce major cabinet and presidential staff appointments as early as Wednesday […]
The question might not just be how, but why? Why would you even attempt to adapt a graphic novel about robots in love into a puppet-show/real-time movie, soundtracked by a live string quartet and turntables? In Kid Koala’s case, the answer could perhaps be summed up as happenstance, circumstance and a smidgen of blind ambition. The genesis of Nufonia Must Fall – the multidisciplinary performance, which will […]
Moon Jae-in has triumphed in the South Korean presidential election with over 40 percent of the vote, according to exit polls. But the liberal leader’s solid victory can’t patch over deeper political wounds. Just as the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union left British society divided and Donald Trump’s election polarized Americans, the impeachment of Park Geun-hye has split South Korea. While more than 75 […]
Minnesota is currently dealing with the worst measles outbreak the state has seen in the past three decades. According to the state health department, there have been 44 confirmed cases since the outbreak was first identified in April. This is particularly worrisome given the high transmission rate of the virus — one person with measles can infect between 12 and up to 18 other people in the unimmunized […]
Members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet have a new catchphrase for how they see the future role of the US: not just “energy-independent”, but “energy-dominant”. As Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, put it at an industry conference in Houston last week: “Dominance is what America needs.” It would be tempting to dismiss that talk as hype, except that every week the US energy sector is coming up […]
The news has been abuzz lately with a forex (foreign exchange market) investment company based in Penang. The company has around 400,000 investors/members, and they have all not received their promised dividends recently. Worse still, they were all denied access when they tried to log into their accounts on the website. Even when they tried going to the offices, they could not get answers because the offices were CLOSED!!! […]
By Douglas Busvine | DHARAMSALA, India DHARAMSALA, India A U.S. Congressional delegation visited the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in India on Tuesday, seeking to draw world attention to human rights in Tibet as President Donald Trump eyes warmer ties with China. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi flew with a bipartisan delegation to the Himalayan hill town where the 81-year-old Buddhist leader is based, on a trip […]
Malta’s embattled prime minister, Joseph Muscat, is facing a growing rebellion in Brussels, where MEPs are openly calling for his departure amid a growing corruption scandal involving his wife, a Panamanian shell company and alleged payments from the president of Azerbaijan’s daughter. The Mediterranean island state’s presidency of the EU, which began in January, has been rocked by allegations of money laundering and kickbacks. Malta’s spell at […]
Sign up to receive FirstFT by email here Days after Donald Trump was elected, President Barack Obama warned his successor against hiring former general Michael Flynn as his security adviser. Mr Trump ignored the advice and Mr Flynn resigned after 17 days on the job amid the growing investigation of the Trump team’s ties to Russia. This is just one of the revelations to emerge following a Senate […]
By Elisabeth O’Leary | GALASHIELS, Scotland GALASHIELS, Scotland – Calum Kerr, a parliamentarian from the Scottish National Party (SNP), is having to work hard to get his message across. As he defends a wafer-thin majority in Britain’s June 8 election, he wants to focus on issues directly affecting his farming constituency bordering England, with its struggling economy that may suffer further when Britain leaves the European Union. […]
