President-elect Donald Trump has spoken with more than 40 foreign leaders since he won the Nov. 8 election, but his transition team has provided few details about what is discussed in those conversations. That has left plenty of room for the foreign leaders to offer their interpretations of these phonecalls, ranging from the discreet to the effusive. The latest example came Wednesday, with the Pakistani government issued […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL Impoverished North Korea is not known for a bustling manufacturing industry but has earned a reputation in some African states for a highly visible export – its huge socialist-style statues. On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea’s annual export revenue by a quarter in response to its fifth and largest nuclear test in September. […]
Saudi Arabia’s aviation agency was attacked last month by an aggressive computer virus intended to disrupt high-profile government targets, officials and experts said on Thursday. The attack, which experts say emanated from outside the country, used a version of Shamoon, malware used to target the Saudi energy sector four years ago. Similar kinds of data-clearing software were used in 2014 against the Las Vegas Sands and Sony. […]
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Neural networks, machine-learning systems, predictive analytics, speech recognition, natural-language understanding and other components of what’s broadly defined as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) are currently undergoing a boom: research is progressing apace, media attention is at an all-time high, and organisations are increasingly implementing AI solutions in pursuit of automation-driven efficiencies. The first thing to establish is what we’re not talking about, which is human-level AI […]
By Cheikh Sadibou Mane | BANJUL BANJUL Gambians voted on Thursday in the first serious electoral challenge to President Yahya Jammeh, who has said only Allah can remove him from office and once claimed he would rule the tiny riverside West African nation for “a billion years”. Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup, has made headlines by claiming to have a herbal cure for AIDS […]
ANKARA: Israel’s new ambassador to Turkey arrived in the capital Ankara on Thursday, an Israeli embassy official said, to serve as the first official envoy since a six-year spat put diplomatic relations on ice.Eitan Naeh arrived in the morning, the official, who did not wish to be named, told AFP. Naeh is due to present his letter of credence to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the […]
A new survey revealed that Apple’s iPhone maintains its place at the top of holiday lists as the most wanted gift. With the holidays fast approaching, it’s time to update you on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus availability and wait times at Apple online and at retail stores. Almost immediately after Apple opened up presales of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at 12:01 a.m. […]
The month that stunned investors with Donald Trump’s US election victory was a record-breaker in markets. The prospect of big tax cuts and fiscal spending from the incoming administration has stirred the market’s animal spirits, driving Wall Street into record territory, while bond prices have been hit hard by expectations of higher inflation. Here is how November played out in numbers: 13 — The dollar index — […]
In a wide-ranging interview, Steve Ballmer this week was asked to explain what went wrong with Microsoft’s smartphone business. He pointed to skepticism over iPhone carrier subsidies, but I have another idea. As someone who was burned by the iPhone, I know why Microsoft screwed up. Since I was unable to secure any hands-on time with the iPhone prior to its release, I based the […]
By Crispian Balmer | ROME ROME A ‘No’ vote in Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reform would be a slap in the face to Europe, said the head of the rightist Northern League, pledging to pull Italy from the euro if he wins the next national elections. Matteo Salvini, who has said he would run for prime minister, has helped lead the campaign against the government’s planned overhaul […]
In a sign that investor enthusiasm about the Apple “rebound” may have been premature, Digitimes reports that Apple has begun to reduce orders for iPhone 7s as initial “sales momentum has started fading”, according to sources from Taiwan’s handset supply chain. The Digitimes sources said that initial shipment momentum of the iPhone 7 was in part driven by strong demand for the jet black iPhone 7 models […]
By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen | COPENHAGEN COPENHAGEN Maersk Line, the world’s biggest shipping company, is to buy smaller rival Hamburg Süd, joining a wave of M&A in the industry just over two months after the Danish company revealed plans to bolster its transport operations. The deal, announced by parent A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) on Thursday, is the group’s first full takeover in more than a decade and highlights a […]
The Indian Parliament’s canteen–where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was photographed digging into a vegetarian lunch last year–now boasts a card machine to help lawmakers pay for their meals in the midst of a cash crunch. The move comes after parliamentarians said they faced problems settling their bills in the canteen following the government’s action last month to replace large currency bills to curb corruption. The canteen serves […]
It’s one thing reaching an age when your friends and contemporaries start dying and you begin to wonder when it will be your turn. It’s quite another to find yourself pronounced the world’s oldest person. In May, that honour fell to Emma Morano, an Italian woman born in 1899, when the former holder of the title passed away. On May 12, Susannah Mushatt Jones, born in Alabama […]
In this Feb. 25, 2014 file photo, theSamsung Galaxy S5 is displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014. Leading tech companies are increasingly nudging consumers to use their own fingers, faces and eyes as digital key to unlock phones and other gadgets. But there are downsides: Hackers could still steal your fingerprint, or its digital representation. And police may have broader […]
Link to Fitch Ratings’ Report: 2017 Outlook: Middle East and North Africa Sovereigns 01 December 2016 Fitch Ratings-Hong Kong-30 November 2016: Persistent low oil prices will maintain economic pressure on the oil exporters of MENA, which together with limited fiscal reform and political risk, lead to a Negative Outlook for the region in 2017, Fitch Ratings says in a new report. With three of the 12 MENA […]
Australia would have a far healthier parliament if there were more engineers in it, NSW Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Victor Dominello MP said on Thursday. Speaking at the Reimagination Thought Leaders Summit 2016, Dominello pointed out that the government is predominantly comprised of lawyers, who are trained to think a certain way. That particular thought process is slowing down progress, he said. “Lawyers don’t think […]
Gold has suffered its worst month since mid-2013, as the election of Donald Trump, the rising dollar and increased expectations of a US rate rise combined to send prices down 8.1 per cent in November. The fall to $1,173.20 per troy ounce marked the steepest monthly sell-off since June 2013, when the precious metal lost 11 per cent in the wake of the so-called taper tantrum. November’s […]
Pursglove would soon learn, however, that navigating this offshore archipelago is not easy. In any given year, trillions of dollars sit safely in the offshore financial world, effectively stateless, protected by legions of well-compensated defenders and a tangle of laws deliberately designed to impede creditors and tax collectors. Even the United States government finds it challenging: A special Internal Revenue Service division known as the “wealth squad,” […]
By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG China’s factories notched their strongest growth in activity in two years and Japanese firms’ order books rose in November, masking concern about the protectionist leanings of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and an OPEC-induced oil price rally. Factory surveys produced stronger purchasing manager index (PMI) numbers in China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and while activity in Japan’s factories was still growing […]
Pluto’s “icy heart” is a bright, two-lobed feature on its surface that has attracted researchers ever since its discovery by the NASA New Horizons team in 2015. Of particular interest is the heart’s western lobe, informally named Sputnik Planitia, a deep basin containing three kinds of ices–frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide–and appearing opposite Charon, Pluto’s tidally locked moon. Sputnik Planitia’s unique attributes have spurred a number […]
Saudi Arabia is boosting the firepower of its sovereign wealth fund to accelerate deal-making and lessen the country’s dependence on oil. The Public Investment Fund is receiving a 100 billion-riyal ($27 billion) transfer from official reserves, according to a statement Wednesday on the SPA official news agency, increasing its existing assets by about 17 percent. The injection will help the fund diversify investments and revenues, it said. The […]
By Michelle Nichols | UNITED NATIONS UNITED NATIONS The U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday aimed at cutting the Asian country’s annual export revenue by a quarter in response to Pyongyang’s fifth and largest nuclear test in September. The 15-member council unanimously adopted a resolution to slash North Korea’s biggest export, coal, by about 60 percent with an annual sales cap of […]
A Cellebrite engineer explains the technology used to unlock smartphones and pull data It only takes a few seconds for an employee of one of the world’s leading hacking companies to take a locked smartphone and pull the data from it. Israeli firm Cellebrite’s technology provides a glimpse of a world of possibilities accessible to security agencies globally that worry privacy advocates. The company has contracts […]
