This is the age of the disgruntled — in domestic politics and foreign affairs alike. Anti-establishment sentiment within countries is somehow echoed by the way the rule book of international relations is being torn up. These dynamics feed on each other. They are at play in America (the rise of Donald Trump), Europe (growing populism) and Asia (nationalism and an arms race). Finding a way to […]
By DECLAN WALSH May 22, 2016 CAIRO — Egypt has deployed a submersible to help find the wreckage of EgyptAir Flight 804 in the deep Mediterranean waters where it crashed, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said Sunday, as he warned that it might take a “long time” before the cause of the crash was determined. An international flotilla of search ships, aided by surveillance planes, was scouring a section of […]
By HELENE COOPER May 21, 2016 WASHINGTON — An American drone strike targeted the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, United States officials said on Saturday, in the most significant American incursion inside Pakistan since Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader, in 2011. In a statement issued on Saturday, Peter Cook, the Pentagon press secretary, said the […]
By DECLAN WALSH, NOUR YOUSSEF and KAREEM FAHIM May 21, 2016 CAIRO — In an eerie coincidence, the EgyptAir jetliner that plunged into the Mediterranean on Thursday was once the target of political vandals who wrote in Arabic on its underside, “We will bring this plane down.” Three EgyptAir security officials said the threatening graffiti, which appeared about two years ago, had been the work of aviation workers at Cairo Airport. Playing […]
Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Al Nahda was able to survive in Tunisia despite initial conflict with secularists Tunisian President Beji Qaid Al Sebsi (right) and Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Al Nahda wave to the audience during an Al Nahda congress in Tunis on May 20. Tunis: Tunisia’s Islamist party Al Nahda will separate its political and religious work, its chief said on Friday, moving […]
The BACtrack Skyn wearable alcohol biosensor is seen in an undated handout artist’s rendering courtesy of BACtrack. BACtrack/Handout via Reuters SAN FRANCISCO A San Francisco-based company has won a U.S. government-sponsored competition with an alcohol monitoring devices that can be worn on the wrist, the latest milestone in the development of wearable technologies that monitor and diagnose medical conditions. BACtrack, a privately held medical device maker, took […]
At its I/O Developers Conference this week, Google announced a new product that had been an open secret for several months. The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is named after the TensorFlow software it uses for its machine learning programs. In announcing the chip, Google referred to the TPU as an accelerator chip, able to speed up a given task, like data analysis or voice translation. When he […]
Despite the plethora of graphic design tools available to organizations, creating good visual content is often a labor-intensive process requiring many hours of work by highly trained professionals. A new suite of software by Adobe, however, is hoping to change that. The platform, called Adobe Spark, is designed to help non-professional designers create their own visual content. Besides being a fun tool for students and individuals, the […]
|By Matein Khalid| If ever there was a year to win or lose money big time in emerging markets, 2016 was it. As an investor in the world’s dark alleys (the Third World rebranded as EM!), I am forced to dissect geopolitical, government/monetary policy, foreign exchange, flows, positioning and current account, volatility and credit cycle trends across emerging markets to develop money making strategies. It helps that I […]
Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma attends the opening ceremony of the second annual World Internet Conference in Wuzhen town of Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, December 16, 2015. Reuters/Aly Song/Files SHANGHAI Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s chief Jack Ma has cancelled a speech at an anti-counterfeiting conference in the United States after the trade group behind it suspended the e-commerce giant’s recently gained membership. Alibaba has been dogged for […]
Reuters/Jim Urquhart/Files SAN FRANCISCO Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that a dangerous financial bubble has formed in the technology industry – and Silicon Valley responded with a collective eye roll. In a Reuters interview, the New York billionaire said technology start-ups that had never earned a profit were able to sell shares at very high prices, likening the situation to the overheated […]
PARIS Three French anti-racism associations said on Sunday they would file legal complaints against social networks Facebook (FB.O), Twitter (TWTR.N) and Google’s Youtube (GOOGL.O) for failing to remove “hateful” content posted on their platforms. French law requires websites to take down racist, homophobic or anti-semitic material and tell authorities about it. But French Jewish students union UEJF and anti-racism and anti-homophobia campaigners SOS Racisme […]
Reuters/Denis Balibouse/File photo SAN FRANCISCO Warren Buffett struck media gold with a 2012 investment in debt-laden Media General Inc. Now the famed investor may try to reprise that success by supporting a bid for Yahoo Inc’s Internet assets. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc chairman is backing a consortium that includes Quicken Loans Inc founder Dan Gilbert, that is seeking to buy Yahoo’s online portfolio, Reuters reported […]
The SWIFT logo is pictured in this photo illustration taken April 26, 2016. Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo After an $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said there was no problem with its procedures for approving fund transfers, according to a letter released on Friday by a U.S. lawmaker who had questioned those methods. U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney had […]
A new study from Microsoft has found that organizations now rely more on digital infrastructures than they do on physical infrastructures. The findings indicate that cloud deployment models have now overtaken any other type of deployment in the technology sector, according to the company, which asked tech research firm 451 Research to conduct the study. “As organizations prepare for major business and technology changes, they will depend […]
The sun rises behind the entrance sign to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park before the company’s IPO launch, May 18, 2012. Reuters/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo Facebook (FB.O) on Thursday emphasized that it does not permit its employees to block news stories from its “Trending Topics” list based on political bias, amid a controversy over how the social media superpower selects what news it displays. Technology news website Gizmodo […]
German tech giant SAP said that it will be expanding the enterprise offerings available on its HANA Cloud Platform for Internet of Things (IoT). Making the announcement at the IoT World 2016 conference being held in Santa Clara, Calif., this week, SAP said the new offerings will be focused on helping enterprises provide new customer outcomes. “SAP is helping customers map their journeys through digital transformation, and […]
INTERNATIONAL. /PRNewswire/ — The CFO has never been held more accountable for the company’s success, and the ability of finance teams to extract value from company data is the key to delivering on the chief executive’s expectations. Oracle’s study, Modern Finance: Driving Transformation from Within, found that closer alignment between the CFO and CIO is crucial if finance leaders are to effectively help the business achieve its […]
|By Matein Khalid| The April payrolls data demonstrated that US economic growth has hit a soft patch. The US economy only added 160 jobs in April, less than the expected 203,000 average in the first three months of 2016. One disappointing data point does not imply a macroeconomic trend reversal since the US economy added 2.8 million jobs between March 2015 and March 2016. Statistical and measurement errors […]
Microsoft unveiled a new insider preview build for Windows 10 yesterday. The new version, titled Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14342, includes the much-anticipated updates for extensions support for the Edge browser, along with real-time Web notifications and the ability to navigate using swipe gestures. The new build also contains a slew of fixes for known issues such as problems with DRM-protected content, bugs causing audio content […]
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California April 12, 2016. Reuters/Stephen Lam A U.S. Senate committee launched an inquiry on Tuesday into how social media website Facebook selects its news stories after a report that company employees blocked news about conservative issues from its “trending” list. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation asked Facebook […]
Separate investigations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have been launched into how smartphone makers and wireless service providers handle device security updates for their customers. Following a resolution adopted by FTC commissioners Friday, the agency is ordering eight mobile device companies to submit information about how and when they decide to issue security patches for vulnerabilities. The companies that must […]
In its ongoing effort to pursue enterprise markets, Apple announced yesterday that it is teaming up with SAP to develop iPhone and iPad apps for business users. As part of that partnership, the companies also plan to release a new software development kit (SDK) and launch a training academy to promote the building of native iOS apps for enterprises. Apple launched a similar partnership with IBM in […]
|By Matein Khalid| Habib Bank Ltd is one of the Pakistan’s oldest, biggest retail/corporate banks, privatized last year with a 51% controlling stake held by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. Its recent price fall from 240 to 172 rupees (PKR, not INR!) is a compelling opportunity to own an undervalued, well managed proxy for consumption and credit offtake in a 190 million population country now […]
