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MUMBAI India’s oldest and most distinguished IT firms are doing what would have been almost sacrilegious a few years ago – holding coding marathons to develop innovative fixes and deploying “commando” units to resolve clients’ IT woes within hours. Infosys (INFY.NS), Wipro (WIPR.NS) and other Indian IT giants, which rose to prominence during the outsourcing boom in the 1990s and 2000s, have struggled to keep pace with […]

By RICK GLADSTONE June 17, 2015 The monitoring group overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arms stockpile said Wednesday that almost all effluent from the neutralized weapons had been eliminated, portraying the progress as a great success in the nearly two years since Syria agreed to relinquish its arsenal. But the news from the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was partly overshadowed by outrage over […]

Trevor Tasin with three of his sons: John, 11; Ben, 13; and Dominic, 2. Mr. Tasin, a pilot who retired as a major in 2014 after flying Predator drones and training new pilots. By CHRISTOPHER DREW and DAVE PHILIPPS June 16, 2015 CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — After a decade of waging long-distance war through their video screens, America’s drone operators are burning out, and the Air Force is being […]

Visitors at the exhibit “A Brief History of Humankind” at the Israel Museum. The museum is Israel’s largest cultural institution, presiding over Jerusalem from a hilltop site alongside the Knesset and the Supreme Court. By ISABEL KERSHNER June 17, 2015 JERUSALEM — A softly lit case displays a small, gnarled implement that is said to be the world’s oldest known complete sickle, dating back 9,000 years. On a wall […]

LOS ANGELES Virtual reality gaming, once a distant concept, became the new battleground at this year’s E3 industry convention, with developers seeking to win over fans with their immersive headsets and accessories. Microsoft, Sony and virtual reality company Oculus are squaring off at the June 16-18 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, promoting their virtual reality accessories. Dan Ackerman, a senior editor at online technology and […]

UAE.  EY’s Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) Fraud Survey, Fraud and corruption – the easy option for growth?, has found that many businesses still do not have the basic building blocks in place for effective compliance. Only 52% of MENA respondents stated they had an anti-bribery or anti-corruption (ABAC) policy and code of conduct in place. The survey, which polled 3,800 employees of large businesses  […]

INTERNATIONAL.  Oil production from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) totaled 31.11 million barrels per day (b/d) in May, up 180,000 b/d from April and the group’s highest monthly volume since October 2012, according to the latest Platts survey of OPEC and oil industry officials and analysts. “OPEC’s communique after the June 5 meeting mentioned that members had been urged to adhere to its production […]

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By KAREEM FAHIM June 16, 2015 BAGHDAD — Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen released a video statement on Tuesday confirming the death of its leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, in an American missile strike last week. His death was also confirmed by the Obama administration on Tuesday. Mr. Wuhayshi, 38, who had led Qaeda operations in Yemen since 2002 and was also the global extremist network’s second-ranking leader, was killed along […]

The black flag of the Islamic State, left, flew over Tal Abyad, Syria, on Tuesday. After Kurdish and rebel fighters took over the town later Tuesday, they hoisted a Kurdish militia flag. By BEN HUBBARD June 16, 2015 ISTANBUL — Kurdish militias and rebel fighters on Tuesday took full control of the strategic Syrian town of Tal Abyad on Turkey’s border, striking a blow against the Islamic State and expanding […]

Video | Morsi Death Sentence Confirmed by Judge A judge in Egypt announced the confirmation of last month’s sentence of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK June 16, 2015 CAIRO — An Egyptian judge slammed the rule of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi as “a black night that lasted a whole year” and confirmed a death sentence against […]

ISTANBUL — A coalition of Kurdish militias and Arab rebels stormed into a strategic Syrian town on the Turkey border on Monday, seizing most of it from Islamic State fighters who had long used the area to smuggle supplies and fighters into their self-declared caliphate, according to Kurdish militia leaders and activists. The complete loss of the town, Tal Abyad, would deal a major blow to the […]

Phoenix Power $146m IPO heavily oversubscribed MUSCAT, 10 hours, 58 minutes ago The flotation of Phoenix Power Co, owner of Oman’s largest power plant, has been heavily oversubscribed, attracting over RO1 billion ($2.6 billion) of bids from investors, the state-run Oman News Agency (ONA) reported on Sunday. The company sought to raise RO56.3 million ($146.3 million) by offering a 35 per cent stake in an offer open […]

BAHRAIN. On June 12, 2015, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed its long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on the Kingdom of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. We also affirmed our long- and short-term foreign and local currency credit ratings on the Central Bank of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. The outlooks on both Bahrain and its central bank remain negative. RATIONALE We expect that Bahrain’s fiscal […]

“I don’t discriminate with music,” says Mannan Alawar with a laugh, “as long as it’s good.” Whether he is reinventing the UAE national anthem on electric guitar for a YouTube audience or leaping into a crowd mid-solo, Alawar is hardly the average Emirati banker. The 24-year-old is a musician at heart, dividing his time between his day job, several bands and finishing a business degree. When he […]

Actors preparing for “1945,” a play produced by Al-Midan Theater after one inspired by the case of a convicted murderer generated protests. By DIAA HADID June 13, 2015 HAIFA, Israel — The play had been staged many times for Arabic-speaking audiences in Israel without controversy. But a performance with Hebrew subtitles for a wider audience was all it took to touch off a major furor. The play, “Parallel Time,” […]

After a federal court rejected attempts by cable and phone companies to stop net neutrality on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission’s plan for new Internet rules went into effect. Under the new rules, the FCC can assert extra authority over the Internet to establish equal access to Internet speeds and Web sites. Companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have claimed that the rules are beyond the FCC’s […]

By CHARLIE SAVAGE June 13, 2015 WASHINGTON — The United States has transferred six lower-level detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where each had been held for more than 13 years, the military announced early Saturday. The departures, to Oman, were the first from the prison in six months and reduced the inmate population there to 116 prisoners. The six men are all Yemenis and have each […]

INTERNATIONAL. This year Ipsos celebrates 20 years of the European Media and Marketing Survey (EMS) or as it is called now, The Ipsos Affluent Survey Europe. The Affluent European whom the survey tracks comes in all shapes and sizes, with a myriad of different wants and needs, yet, these individuals (the Top 13% of income earners) have one thing in common: they have significant disposable income and […]

A logo is pictured at Google’s European Engineering Center in Zurich April16, 2015. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann   Google Inc (GOOGL.O) said on Friday that it is launching a live streaming gaming service called “YouTube Gaming”, creating a rival to Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Twitch service.   The service, to be available in the form of an app as well as a website, will focus exclusively on gamers and gaming. […]

ABU DHABI // The first flight carrying humanitarian aid from the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation to the people of Yemen left Abu Dhabi yesterday. The foundation said the flight would be the first of many before Ramadan begins next week, the state news agency Wam reported. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, ordered that […]

Some things can’t be summed up in 140 characters. Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) announcement that Dick Costolo would exit as CEO on July 1 was long on plaudits but offered few clues on how the company will tackle its biggest problem: user growth. Twitter’ shares were down 0.6 percent in early afternoon trading on Friday, after rising much as 3.9 percent just after the opening, as investors assessed […]

Businesses that need to handle workloads with a range of different demands have a selection of new cloud-based, general-purpose instances to choose from through Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS on Thursday announced the availability of M4 instances, a next-generation Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering. Powered by custom 2.4-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 Haswell processors, M4 instances are designed to support a variety of applications, including relational and […]

A broker laughs while speaking to a colleague, as they trade on their computer terminals at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, March 4, 2015. Reuters/Shailesh Andrade/Files MUMBAI Regulators hope plans for a new bourse with less stringent listing requirements will lure a stream of startups in the country’s burgeoning technology industry, looking for a platform to raise capital for expansion. The eased rules, marking a change […]

Contributing Op-Ed Writer June 11, 2015 Shmuel Rosner TEL AVIV — Reuven Rivlin was elected president of Israel a year ago. Since then, this Likud Party member and former speaker of the Knesset has become Israel’s voice of moderation and reason on many issues. He has denounced racism, defended the autonomy of Israel’s judiciary and argued for better relations between Jews and Arabs. Mr. Rivlin is the […]

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