Ortolans are trapped and put, alive, into a vat of Armagnac before they are cooked Photo: MaxPPP The customary way of eating ortolan, a delicate songbird, involves the diner covering his or her head with a large napkin. Tradition dictates that this is to shield – from God’s eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act. But if a clutch of leading French chefs have […]
Chinese-backed hackers infiltrated the computer networks of airline, shipping and information technology companies responsible for transporting personnel and weapons for the U.S. military, a Senate investigation found. There were 20 such breaches from June 2012 to May 2013, giving the hackers insight into military logistics and a foothold that could be used to disrupt operations, according to a report today by the Senate Armed Services Committee. While […]
A rush by Dubai’s retail investors to take part in the initial public offer of Emaar Properties’ malls unit put pressure on the emirate’s stock market on Tuesday, while successful fund-raising for the Suez Canal expansion lifted stocks in Egypt. Emaar said late on Monday that institutional investors had committed to buying all the shares offered to them in the flotation of its shopping malls business, only […]
A new solid state drive (SSD) from Micron Technology promises to be the company’s highest performing drive to date. The M600 SATA SSD, shown here, will boast improved power efficiency, better performance, and increased durability and lifespan. The drive also comes with 256-bit hardware encryption and will be available with capacities ranging from 128 GB to 1 TB. The new drive is being positioned on the high-end […]
While it’s only a year-and-a-half old, Docker appears poised for big things in the world of distributed applications, and the company just scored $40 million in new funding to prove it. The San Francisco-based startup raised the series C funding with the help of Sequoia Capital, just nine months after it closed $15 million in funding led by Greylock Partners. Since launching in March 2013, Docker has […]
ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group. After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto […]
Edinburgh in the sunshine Photo: AP In bright sunshine this past week, the cobbled pedestrian streets of Edinburgh and the bustling byways in and around the Royal Mile have been thronged with students getting to know Scotland’s historic capital. Students like me, eager to start this new chapter in our lives while enjoying the cheap alcohol and easy socialising that comes with Fresher’s Week. However, behind the carnival […]
By Elzio Barreto, Fiona Lau and Liana B. Baker HONG KONG/NEW YORK Tue Sep 16, 2014 11:06am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd raised the price range on its initial public offering to $66 to $68 on Monday, reflecting strong demand from investors for the year’s […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said the IPO of its shopping malls business unit has been sold out to institutional investors on the first day itself. The leading developer aiming to raise as much as AED 5.8 billion ($1.58 billion) from the offer of shares in Emaar Malls Group (EMG), which is expected to be the Gulf’s biggest stock sale since 2008. On offer are 2 billion […]
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 […]
[embedded content] ‘The most advanced wireless speaker system ever developed.” The creators of the Core didn’t just say it, they believe it. And since their Indiegogo campaign is 5X overfunded in less than a week, others are convinced, too. The compact speaker achieves life-like, better than stereo sound by “leveraging a combination of wave field synthesis and beam forming, to create an acoustic bubble in the room.” […]
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 […]
Mojang, the small Swedish firm behind the wildly popular video game Minecraft, is being acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. The sale is set to be closed late this year, with the acquisition expected to be break-even in fiscal year 2015. One of Mojang’s founders, Markus Persson — known as “Notch” — said in a post on his personal blog on Monday that he would be leaving […]
Boom and bust – two words that are regularly heard when the property market in the United Arab Emirates, especially Dubai, is discussed. But that theme appears to be changing. At least that’s what some industry experts are indicating. The property market, after rebounding sharply since early 2013 from the global financial crisis-induced crash, is now showing signs of stabilising – with the pace of growth in […]
KKR ‘s Samie says the key challenges in the region are valuations, regulations and issues with minority ownership. Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal KKR & Co. has been in the Middle East and North Africa since 2008. In what could be one of the largest buyout deals ever in the region, the New York-based private equity giant is jointly bidding for Kuwait’s Americana. The Wall […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said it’s seeking to raise as much as $1.58 billion from the initial public offering of its malls unit in the UAE’s biggest IPO since 2007. Emaar Malls Group PJSC plans to sell 2 billion of its founders’ shares, or about 15 percent of its equity, in a price range of 2.5 dirhams to 2.9 dirhams apiece, according to a company statement […]
|TAP Special| A lower oil price has now become both an economic and political necessity. This is in view of the complications introduced by the disruption of Middle East politics brought about by recent advances by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Bank of America Merrill Lynch notes in a review of the regional political and economic situation that the threat of a radical Islamic Sunni […]
UAE. Two-thirds (66 percent) of millennial high-frequency travellers rate “unique rewards” as an important factor when choosing a hotel loyalty program, compared with just 43 percent of their older counterparts, according to a new Deloitte study, “Winning the Race for Guest Loyalty”. “Our study indicates that customers are waiting to see which program will provide them with the greatest relevant rewards before they commit to a brand, […]
On the face of it, Jordan must be a tough sell to international investors: there is the ubiquitous threat of instability and violence lurking from neighboring Syria and Iraq while the kingdom’s small economy, which is reliant on foreign aid, is strained by high unemployment and budget deficits. Nonetheless, some foreign private equity groups are willing to take the risk. Buyout giant Carlyle Group last year bought […]
|By TAP Staff|The rising popularity of Islamic finance in the West is prompting analysts to conclude that the world is finally recognizing the fact Islamic finance is not just for Muslims and it ready to go mainstream. Islamic finance received a shot in the arm recently with the move by US investment bank Goldman Sachs to revive plans to issue its first sukuk. In June when the […]
Rashidul Bari was born in Bangladesh in 1979 and has been studying in the United States since 2000. He considers himself one-half servant of education and one-half writer. He has earned five bachelor’s degrees, BA in political science, BA in economics, BA in mathematics, BA in computer science and BA in physics respectively, from three different CUNY institutions: York College, City College of New York and Lehman […]
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, […]
When Saudi Arabia lowered its oil prices last week, analysts declared that the No. 1 oil producer was more focused on maintaining its share of a well-supplied global market than on keeping prices at $100 a barrel or higher. AFP/Getty Images “It is fair to say that the kingdom is not in a rush to cut production soon,” said London consulting firm Energy Aspects in a note […]
