SANA, Yemen — A pharmacist, Sadam al-Othari, had a firsthand look at the results of the collapse in peace talks in Yemen between the Saudi-led military coalition and Yemeni militias over the weekend when a bomb exploded outside his drugstore, killing a customer and his young son and wounding Mr. Othari. The customer and his son were among 18 Yemeni civilians killed when coalition warplanes bombed Al […]
BREMEN, Germany — Believing he was answering a holy call, Harry Sarfo left his home in the working-class city of Bremen last year and drove for four straight days to reach the territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria. He barely had time to settle in before members of the Islamic State’s secret service, wearing masks over their faces, came to inform him and his German […]
For the past few years, scientists around the world have been studying ways to use miniature robots to better treat a variety of diseases. The robots are designed to enter the human body, where they can deliver drugs at specific locations or perform precise operations like clearing clogged-up arteries. By replacing invasive, often complicated surgery, they could optimize medicine. EPFL scientist Selman Sakar teamed up with Hen-Wei […]
AJMAN // Othman Mohammed’s wife was treating her daughter and grandson to a McDonald’s meal when the unthinkable happened. A man suffered an epileptic fit at the wheel of his pick-up truck and crashed it through the front window of the restaurant at an Eppco petrol station. Mrs Mohammed, who had only been in the country for a visit since Thursday, was killed instantly, as was a […]
Efforts to upgrade U.S. communications infrastructure to 5G technology got a big boost from the federal government today. The Obama Administration just announced the launch of a $400 million Advanced Wireless Research Initiative, led by the National Science Foundation (NSF), designed to accelerate the deployment of next-generation wireless technology. The program will invest in efforts by researchers experimenting with and testing novel technologies, applications and services capable […]
During its Shape Tech Expo in San Francisco this weekend, AT&T plans to demonstrate how it is using drones to inspect its cell towers from the air. The company is also looking at other future applications that could include using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to provide improved LTE coverage during crowded events or disasters. AT&T has been testing various uses for drones over the past year, and […]
A researcher at Arizona State University has discovered how to control multiple robotic drones using the human brain. A controller wears a skull cap outfitted with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The device records electrical brain activity. If the controller moves a hand or thinks of something, certain areas light up. “I can see that activity from outside,” said Panagiotis Artemiadis (pictured above), director of the […]
KEFLAVIK, Iceland Marco Streng is a miner, though he does not carry a pick around his base in south-western Iceland. Instead, he keeps tens of thousands of computers running 24 hours a day in fierce competition with others across the globe to earn bitcoins. In the world of the web-based digital currency, it is not central banks that add new money to the system, but rather computers […]
DUBAI // An electrical short circuit is to blame for a fire that broke out on the roof of the Address Hotel at Dubai Mall on Thursday night. The fire, which started in an apartment on the 26th floor, was “brought under control in record time” by the Civil Defence teams, according to the state news agency Wam. Lt Col Ali Al Mutawa, director of operations at […]
Three people, including a 15-year-old Emirati and two Asians, died in two separate crashes in Ras Al Khaimah on Thursday, police said. The Emirati died after the vehicle he was driving swerved and crashed into a lamppost, then caught fire, at 2.45pm, RAK Police said. In another crash, two people from unspecified Asian countries died after their vehicle swerved and crashed into a wadi. They were found […]
BAGHDAD — As celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan stretched past midnight into Sunday in central Baghdad, where Iraqis had gathered to eat, shop and just be together, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 143 people — the third mass slaughter across three countries in less than a week. The attack was the deadliest in Baghdad in years — at […]
SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc on Wednesday offered a rare glimpse into how it ranks and shows content in its News Feed, part of an effort to provide more transparency about its operations as the social network’s cultural and political influence continue to grow. The disclosures, though lacking in detail, are notable in part because they come in the wake of a May news report alleging liberal political […]
Two days after reporting that 655,000 healthcare records were found for sale on the dark web, the site DeepDotWeb said today that another insurance database with at least 9.3 million patient records is being shopped around by an anonymous hacker. Over the weekend, a hacker using the name “thedarkoverlord” was offering for sale records taken from databases managed by three healthcare organizations in Missouri, Georgia and the […]
TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader, in an unexpected move, replaced the general in charge of the Iranian armed forces on Tuesday with the general’s deputy, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The replaced general, Hassan Firouzabadi, had held the position of chief of staff since 1989 and is known to have been a confidant of both the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan […]
It may seem like the number of hacking attempts increases every year, but the number of attacks originating from within the borders of at least one country have declined in the past year, according to a new study by network security firm FireEye. In its “Red Line Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage,” report, FireEye said that the number of hacks coming from the Chinese […]
After relishing a cocktail of cheap crude mixed with profits from fuel sales, Asia’s oil processors are facing their reckoning over a lack of restraint. Profits from turning crude into fuel in Asia since the beginning of April have averaged almost a third lower than levels over the previous six months, and are down 40 percent from the same period a year earlier. That’s already prompted some […]
Iran has reached an agreement with the Boeing Company for the acquisition of new passenger planes to help modernize its outdated fleet, state-run Iranian news media reported on Tuesday. Such an agreement, if completed, would potentially be worth many billions of dollars to Boeing and amount to the most prominent commercial transaction between an American company and Iran since sanctions linked to Iran’s nuclear program were lifted […]
A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility on Friday for a car bombing this week that killed 11 people and wounded dozens near a central tourist district in Istanbul. The group — Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, or T.A.K. — said the attack on Tuesday had been carried out in retaliation for Turkish Army operations in the Kurdish-dominated region of southeastern Turkey, and it warned tourists to stay away from […]
AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, […]
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, […]
Living cells are capable of performing complex computations on the environmental signals they encounter. These computations can be continuous, or analogue, in nature — the way eyes adjust to gradual changes in the light levels. They can also be digital, involving simple on or off processes, such as a cell’s initiation of its own death. Synthetic biological systems, in contrast, have tended to focus on either analogue […]
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund made its highest-profile deal, investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-share company Uber Technologies Inc. as the country seeks to diversify its assets with more overseas acquisitions. Yasir Alrumayyan, managing director of the Public Investment Fund, will take a board seat at the San Francisco-based company after the deal, which values Uber at $62.5 billion, the company said in a statement. It’s the biggest […]
WASHINGTON — American Special Operations forces and the Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters they are advising this week pushed closer to Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in northern Syria. Defense Department officials confirmed that photographs taken by an Agence-France Presse photographer in the village of Fatisah that were released on Thursday showed American commandos, dressed in camouflage, assisting fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces during […]
The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo DHAKA Bangladesh police are reviewing a nearly forgotten 2013 cyber heist at the nation’s largest commercial bank for connections to February’s $81 million heist at the country’s central bank, a senior law enforcement official said on Wednesday. The unsolved theft of $250,000 at Sonali Bank involved fraudulent transfer requests sent over […]
