The already crowded malls around the UAE were even busier this weekend with Christmas shoppers scurrying to find last-minute presents, ranging from Santa costumes to appliances for cooking traditional dishes involving ox tongue. In the crowded aisles of Yas Mall’s Geant Supermaket, Leonanda Stegemann, a 44-year-old expat from South Africa, was examining cookers at the market’s Christmas corner. “I’m looking for a cooker because mine broke and […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin has written to Donald Trump to express his hope that Moscow and Washington improve relations after the US president-elect is inaugurated on January 20. “I hope . . . we will be able — by acting in a constructive and pragmatic manner — to take real steps to restore the framework of bilateral co-operation in different areas as well as bring our level of collaboration on the […]
Each year at the Ira Sohn conference a group of the world’s best known hedge fund managers present their top ideas for what to buy in the stock market. The event is so closely followed by investors that it is not unknown for shares in companies that are picked to start rising before presenters have even left the stage. More recently, however, some of these celebrity investors […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Saudi Arabia unveiled a $237 billion budget for 2017, an 8 percent increase from 2016, with projections of a record 33 percent decrease in the Kingdom’s national deficit. “Our economy is firm and it has sufficient strength to cope with the current economic and financial challenges,” said King Salman bin Abdulaziz.. “We have sought through this budget and its programs to improve the […]
By Lisa Barrington and Angus McDowall | BEIRUT BEIRUT Syrian rebels shelled Aleppo and air strikes resumed around the city on Friday as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies said the insurgents’ withdrawal from the city could pave the way towards a political solution for the country. A day after the last rebels left their remaining pocket of territory in the city, the Syrian Observatory for […]
It isn’t magic but close. The Prisma app helps turn mere smartphone photographs into high-resolution artistic images with the use of its AI-based neural network servers. To enhance and tweak images on the app, Prisma performs precalculated algorithms. To keep its users, Prisma promises to deliver a continuous flood of new filters, features, and effects. Recently, the app also doubled the photo resolution to deliver high-quality output. […]
If any global sound is on the verge of blowing up in 2017, it’s the pan-African mélange known as afrobeats. Or, depending on who you ask, afropop, afrofusion or afropolitan – but not to be confused with political Fela Kuti-style afrobeat (singular), nor with any of the traditional music that has tended to find its way into the “world music” section of western music shops. Rather, this […]
What a difference a year makes. Having ended 2015 as the worst performing sector on the S&P 500, energy stocks are on track to become this year’s biggest winners as this month’s rally in crude prices further extended the sector’s gains. Despite falling 0.1 per cent on Friday, the S&P 500 energy index is still up more than 25 per cent this year, making it the top […]
Just over six years ago, in December of 2010, we wrote “Charting America’s Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society“, in which we predicted – and showed – that in light of the underlying changes resulting from the second great depression, whose full impacts remain masked by trillions in monetary stimulus and soon, perhaps fiscal, America is shifting from a traditional work force, one where the majority of […]
Wall Street treaded water in light pre-holiday trading on Friday, with the three major indexes on track to post weekly gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which came within spitting distance of the historic 20,000 mark earlier this week, looked set to record its seventh straight weekly gains. “There’s really nothing to move the market one way or another,” said Mohannad Aama, managing director at Beam Capital […]
The man suspected of attacking a Berlin Christmas market has been shot dead by police near Milan in Italy, closing a chapter on one of Germany’s worst terrorist incidents. Anis Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian with links to Italy, died after being confronted by police near the Italian city early yesterday. Isis later released a video of Amri pledging allegiance to the militant group and promising to “slaughter” […]
Photo Passengers leaving the hijacked Afriqiyah Airways plane at Malta International Airport on Friday. Credit Matthew Mirabelli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images CAIRO — All 109 passengers and crew members on board a hijacked Libyan airliner en route to the capital, Tripoli, were released on Friday, hours after two men claiming to be carrying explosives forced the plane to divert to Malta, Malta’s prime minister said. The hijackers, […]
VALLETTA All passengers were freed from a hijacked plane in Malta on Friday, but some crew remained on board with hijackers believed to be loyalists of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The aircraft was on an internal flight in Libya on Friday morning when it was diverted to Malta, 500 km (300 miles) north of the Libyan coast, after a man told crew he had a hand […]
Filipino beauty pageant winners Parul Shah and Maggie Wilson have emerged victorious on the fifth season of reality-TV programme The Amazing Race Asia. They beat fellow beauty queens Yvonne Lee and Chloe Chen from Malaysia, as well as married couple Eric Tai and Rona Samson, who are also from the Philippines, in the grand finale this week. It was the culmination of 10 legs of competition that […]
America’s biggest defence contractors cannot decide whether to be thrilled or terrified by Donald Trump. The titans of the US defence establishment beat a path to Mr Trump’s Florida resort on Wednesday to hear the president-elect warn that the US government is spending too much money on wasteful, over-budget, out-of-control defence programmes. At the same time, however, Mr Trump has consistently promised a build-up in America’s military — including his […]
Good morning. A media A-list’s favorite books of 2016 Jake Tapper, the CNN reporter-show host, needed far less time than even a hyperactive wire service rewrite guy to answer a question about his favorite book this year: “‘Moonglow’ by Michael Chabon.” Bam, that didn’t take long. But it’s why amid a Trump- and-terrorism-centric moment, I asked busy and smart journalists to go high when so many others […]
How long ago it seems — that post-referendum panic in the UK stock market. The pound plunged and the crowd ran into “safe havens” in the form of government debt, ditching those risky, tricky shares. On July 13, this column pointed out the folly of this strategy. At that moment, buying and holding the UK government’s 10-year bond guaranteed an annual return of just 0.9 per cent. […]
BERLIN/MILAN The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a shoot-out in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, Italy’s interior minister said. Marco Minniti told a news conference that “without any shadow of a doubt” the man was 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, wanted for the attack in Berlin. A police source said earlier Amri was identified by fingerprints. […]
By Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA The United States provided the Philippines with $127 million in security assistance in the 12 months ended in September, the biggest sum in about 15 years, overlapping with a stream of angry threats from President Rodrigo Duterte to sever their defence alliance. The U.S. embassy in Manila on Friday confirmed its longtime Asian ally had received a 154 percent increase in […]
Lately, cybersecurity has been the place where IT’s optimism goes to die. It’s been a tough road for companies and organizations the past few years as their network defenses have been bent and broken on a consistent, and often dramatic, basis. Hacks that topple over a billion user accounts are shocking and make a solution seem impossible. But IT is resilient despite on-going challenges in staffing, budgeting, […]
The same researchers who pioneered the use of a quantum mechanical effect to convert heat into electricity have figured out how to make their technique work in a form more suitable to industry. In Nature Communications, engineers from The Ohio State University describe how they used magnetism on a composite of nickel and platinum to amplify the voltage output 10 times or more — not in a […]
By Tom Westbrook | SYDNEY SYDNEY Australian police said on Friday they had foiled a plot to attack prominent sites in the city of Melbourne with a series of bombs on Christmas Day that authorities described as “an imminent terrorist event” inspired by Islamic State. Police laid terrorism charges against one man, and were expected to charge at least three others, after authorities conducted overnight raids on […]
By Michael Shields and Arno Schuetze | ZURICH/FRANKFURT ZURICH/FRANKFURT Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank have been hit with a combined penalty of more than $12 billion over the sale of U.S. toxic debt, further hampering two of Europe’s leading investment banks as they grapple with falling profits. The penalty puts them at a further disadvantage to larger U.S. rivals. Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) agreed in principle to pay […]
DUBAI // While the cool weather makes this time of year perfect for enjoying the outdoors, residents of a Dubai community have spent the past two weeks locked indoors with their windows shut. The Remraam community in Jebel Ali has been plagued by a foul odour of sewage, which residents said was making them ill. Louise Woods, who has been living in Remraam Community since July, said […]
