More and more places in Hong Kong now accept Chinese yuan Photo: ALAMY Lord Patten was the last governor of Hong Kong, and still, it seems, has a keen interest in its affairs. He has written a piece for The Financial Times, extolling his views on Britain’s “moral and political obligation” to its former colony. But his words, like his actions as governor, reveal that he never understood […]
Google is bringing its two operating systems — Android and Chrome — closer together with the release of its first four Android apps for Chromebooks. Announced last Thursday, the new Android apps for Chrome OS include the language education app Duolingo; Sight Words, a vocabulary learning app for children; the workplace productivity tool Evernote; and the video creation and sharing app Vine. “These first apps are the […]
Customers pre-ordered more than four million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets in just the first 24 hours, according to Apple, around double the number the company saw for the iPhone 5s and 5c a year ago. Apple is on track to top 10 million units sold over the entire launch weekend, if the tech giant can keep up with the level of demand. The smartphones first […]
INTERNATIONAL. With momentum building for international military action against Islamist extremists in Syria, the United States reiterated Friday it will not coordinate with strongman Bashar al-Assad in the effort. “The answer to the security challenges is not the Assad regime,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters. “They have created this security vacuum. We are not going to be working with them in this fight,” she […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “extremely encouraged” by pledges of military assistance against Islamic State militants by countries inside and outside the Middle East and that some nations had offered ground troops. Kerry has been touring the Middle East to try to secure backing for U.S. efforts to build a coalition to fight the Islamic State militants who have grabbed territory in Syria […]
Secretary of State John Kerry and Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, in Cairo. By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK September 13, 2014 CAIRO — Secretary of State John Kerry received broad assurances but no public commitments from Egypt on Saturday as he continued his tour of the Middle East to try to assemble a coalition behind an American campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq […]
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA September 13, 2014 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released a video Saturday of the third beheading of a foreign hostage, a British aid worker. The execution was a clear message to Britain, a vital ally of the United States as it builds an international coalition to target the militant group, which has made stunning advances across Syria and northern Iraq in recent months. […]
President Obama on Wednesday in Washington. Mr. Obama says he is aware of the “political price” he pays for being deliberate. By PETER BAKER September 13, 2014 WASHINGTON — Just hours before announcing an escalated campaign against Islamic extremists last week, President Obama privately reflected on another time when a president weighed military action in the Middle East — the frenzied weeks leading up to the American invasion of […]
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden Photo: AP Were it any other US president in recent memory, delivering a rousing White House address promising to “vanquish” the bloodthirsty militants of the Islamic State from the face of the earth would be dismissed as the “easy part”. Recall Joe Biden, the vice president with half an eye on a run for the top job in 2016, […]
SanDisk is laying claim to offering the world’s highest-capacity SD card, 512 gigabytes of flash storage — but at $800, it’s not cheap. The new SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I aims at photography and video professionals that absolutely must have the most advanced equipment available to shoot 4K Ultra High Definition (3840x2160p) video, Full HD video (1920×1080) and high-speed burst mode photography. Dinesh Bahal, vice president of […]
Google has kicked off yet another program aimed at helping to develop the next big thing in tech: Google Cloud Platform for Startups. The program offers early-stage tech companies $100,000 in credit for Google’s Cloud Platform services, along with 24/7 support and technical architecture review help from Google’s engineers. The new offering was announced Friday by Urs Hölzle, Google Fellow and senior vice president of technical infrastructure, […]
There was a muted response across the Gulf region early Thursday to a decision by President Barack Obama to begin U.S. airstrikes in Syria and expand the campaign in Iraq to destroy Islamic State. Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council have previously expressed skepticism of U.S. rhetoric for further intervention against Islamic State, without knowing the full details of U.S. participation or the role expected of […]
President Barack Obama told Americans on Wednesday he had authorized U.S. airstrikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the Islamic State militant group. Obama’s decision to launch attacks inside Syria, which is embroiled in a three-year civil war, marked a turnabout for the president, who shied away a year ago from airstrikes to punish […]
It’s not called the iWatch, but it’s an Apple watch all the same. In fact, it’s called the Apple Watch and the tech giant is billing it as its most personal device ever — chock full of “revolutionary” technologies with a “pioneering” user interface featuring a “Digital Crown” that lets you scroll, zoom and navigate. But what does this device look like beyond all the buzzwords? Well, […]
Saudi Arabia will hold talks about militant violence in the region on Thursday with the United States and Muslim allies, the kingdom announced on Tuesday, in an apparent attempt to support international efforts to tackle crises in Iraq and Syria. The world’s No. 1 oil exporter is unnerved by the rapid advance of Islamic State — a militant group that has overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria […]
By Paul Carsten BEIJING Mon Sep 8, 2014 11:12am IST A picture illustration shows a WeChat app icon in Beijing, December 5, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Petar Kujundzic/Files BEIJING (Reuters) – Apple Inc has a lot for which to thank people like Deng. A Beijing-based quality analyst, she gave only her surname as she’s embarrassed by how much money she spends playing mobile games on WeChat, a hugely popular […]
|By TAP Staff|President Obama is planning a speech Wednesday to outline a broader offensive against Islamic militants in the Middle East, a move welcomed by a number of key congressional leaders who have come to view the insurgent group as an increasingly menacing threat to the U.S, Los Angeles Times reported. Foreshadowing his remarks to the nation, Obama said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet […]
Valérie Trierweiler, the high-heeled hellcat whose memoir of their time together has plunged the surreally unpopular president into the biggest crisis anyone at the Elysée Palace can recall Photo: REX FEATURES Beneath the twinkling chandeliers of Cardiff Castle’s banqueting hall last week, François Hollande wore the pale, sweaty look of a man in big trouble. Back home, the economy was collapsing, the public was in revolt, the government […]
By Christina Farr SAN FRANCISCO Sat Sep 6, 2014 6:41pm IST The leaf on the Apple symbol is tinted green at the Apple flagship store on 5th Ave in New York April 22, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid/Files SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc has invited top fashion editors and bloggers in unprecedented numbers to its Tuesday launch gala, further evidence that the iPhone maker is preparing to […]
As political unrest continues to grip the Middle East, it is hardly a surprise that many international investors are wary about the region’s business prospects. Whether that is warranted or not, the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank Group subsidiary that promotes the private sector in developing markets, is trying to change that perception by stepping up its investments in the financial and power sectors. “We have […]
Sharjah is offering investors an enticement that fellow emirate Dubai doesn’t as the sheikhdom gears up for its first Shariah-compliant bond sale this month: a credit rating. The emirate, which is more than twice the size of New York City, may price the debt to yield 2.5 percent to 3 percent if it’s a five-year issue, according to three fixed-income analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That compares with […]
By Christina Farr and Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO Wed Sep 3, 2014 7:44am IST The Apple logo is pictured at a retail store in the Marina neighborhood in San Francisco, California April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has often displayed uncanny timing, with its well-orchestrated end-of-year iPhone releases. But the leak of racy celebrity photos in the past few days […]
Islamic debt could become a source of funding for U.K. infrastructure projects from wind turbines to high-speed trains and airports as Britain cements its position as the first sukuk market in a non-Muslim nation. Investors including Bank of London and the Middle East see scope for the U.K. to issue Shariah-compliant bonds with varying maturities after the Debt Management Office attracted bids for more than 10 times […]
Iran’s possible response to new U.S. sanctions could “not be pleasant”, its foreign minister said on Sunday, raising the prospect of tit-for-tat retribution against the Islamic Republic’s old adversary weeks ahead of fresh nuclear talks. Iranian leaders reacted with dismay to Friday’s announcement that Washington was going to penalize a number of Iranian and other foreign companies, banks and airlines for violating sanctions against Tehran, most of […]
