Uber’s US rival Lyft is seeking $500m in a new fundraising round to provide fresh ammunition as the transportation company takes its fight with Uber to a growing number of US cities, according to two people close to the process. The fundraising comes at a time when Uber has been struggling with a series of public relations crises, including allegations of sexual harassment and a video of […]
She was arrested and charged with supporting terrorism, not because of her novels but as a result of her affiliation, as an adviser, with a newspaper linked to the Kurdish movement that has since been shut down. She still faces a trial that could land her back in prison, and with that hanging over her, she has been living with her mother, sleeping late, not writing much […]
ABU DHABI // Students from United Arab Emirates University have designed an environmentally-friendly car to compete in an eco-marathon in Singapore this month. The vehicle – made from synthetic materials, plastic and carbon fibre – will be raced against 100 teams from March 16 to 19. The students, who are competing in the marathon for the first time this year, took 4 months to design, build and […]
Pre-orders, the video game industry’s nasty push to coax you into exchanging money for products before they’re released, are awful offerings. Busted launches, abusive DRM, and general industry shenanigans have made it a foolish endeavor to give publishers money before hardware or software is thoroughly analyzed by journalists, influencers, or hardcore fan communities. Yet, I pre-ordered a Nintendo Switch without hesitation. I recognize my hypocrisy […]
March 2, 2017 by: Nic Fildes, Telecoms Correspondent Deutsche Telekom has taken a €2.2bn charge on its investment in BT, pushing the German group to a fourth-quarter loss in 2016. Europe’s largest telecoms company blamed the Brexit vote, a decline in the value of sterling and the collapse in BT’s share price for the write-off. It holds a 12 per cent stake in BT which has been […]
CK Chow struck a cautious note at the start of the week when revealing the Hong Kong Exchange’s annual results. With average daily turnover down 37 per cent, the exchange chairman’s wariness was understandable as he talked of a “challenging” outlook and volatile markets. Yet such caution is out of step with the mood in the market. Hong Kong’s blue-chip Hang Seng index and the Hang Seng […]
The Bank of Japan published detailed schedules of planned asset purchases for the first time on Tuesday as it seeks to prove its commitment to a zero per cent cap on 10-year government bond yields. Japan’s central bank said it will buy a minimum of ¥1.375tn and a maximum of ¥2.175tn of government bonds during March, giving a series of dates and estimated sizes for its planned […]
Cheung Kong Infrastructure and Fosun International are among several Asian groups that have submitted bids for Q-Park, one of Europe’s largest parking lot operators, in a deal that could fetch more than $2.4bn. China Oceanwide, a Beijing-based conglomerate owned by a billionaire banking magnate, and Shougang Group, a state-owned Chinese steel company, also joined the first round of bidding on the Netherlands-based parking group, two people familiar […]
In 2011, the Kabul foreign press corps numbered 85, by the reckoning of Dominic Medley, who has worked here for many years as a press officer for NATO, the American military and the United Nations. The American military was surging, reaching more than 100,000 troops by 2012. The press surged as well, with regular visitors in addition to the resident press corps, plus dozens of reporters going […]
T Rowe Price’s flagship small companies fund has revealed annualised returns of nearly 35 per cent from its private investments, rebutting critics who argue that mutual funds should eschew riskier, unlisted companies. With more companies delaying stock exchange listings due to the abundance of venture capital and onerous requirements of being a public company, asset managers have begun to invest more aggressively in private groups such as Uber and […]
By Lisa Fernandez | OAKLAND, Calif. OAKLAND, Calif. A judge cleared the way on Wednesday for the widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, to be released from jail and also appeared to throw doubt on the strength of the government’s case against her. Noor Salman, 30, was arrested in California in January on federal charges she knew before […]
The Trump administration is preparing to ignore any rulings by the World Trade Organisation that it sees as an affront to US sovereignty, according to a leaked report prepared by officials. The move would be a departure from US practice and a blow to the international watchdog’s credibility. The hard-hitting report, which was sent to Congress on Wednesday and obtained by the Financial Times, marks the first time the […]
By Francesco Guarascio and Alastair Macdonald | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS European Union leaders have been told to be ready for a Brexit summit at the end of the first week of April, EU sources said on Wednesday, although the final date will depend on British Prime Minister Theresa May. A summit of the other 27 national leaders to respond to May’s formal notification of Britain’s departure appears in […]
By Will Dunham | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Microfossils up to almost 4.3 billion years old found in Canada of microbes are similar to the bacteria that thrive today around sea floor hydrothermal vents and may represent the oldest-known evidence of life on Earth, scientists said on Wednesday. The fossils from the Hudson Bay shoreline in northern Quebec near the Nastapoka Islands lend credence to the hypothesis that hydrothermal […]
The next big Windows 10 release includes welcome changes to Windows Update. [Updated March 1, 2017] The single most common complaint I’ve heard about Windows 10 is its lack of control over update timing. That’s annoying enough for monthly security updates, which typically take just a few minutes to install. But when a feature update (the new name for major version upgrades that now arrive twice a […]
Wednesday 16:30 GMT Overview Wall Street surged to another record as comments from Federal Reserve officials caused traders to boost their bets for an increase in US interest rates this month and investors celebrated a more upbeat tone from Donald Trump in his first address to Congress. In keeping with he risk-on mood that washed across financial markets around the globe, the dollar also rose and gold […]
When you’re deep in a video game, the last thing you want to do is leave home. If only you could take the game with you for your commute to work or your bus ride to school, or to liven up your lunch hour. Nintendo’s new Switch console tries to address that by letting you play it anywhere. You simply yank the Switch out of its docking […]
Big reforms to rules for UK initial public offerings have been proposed by the market regulator to give investors better and earlier information, as the watchdog seeks to keep Britain “open for business” after Brexit. The Financial Conduct Authority said on Wednesday that information about a company planning an IPO should be made available sooner, and to a wider range of analysts and investors. The FCA warned that […]
The US dollar and global bond yields rose on Wednesday as investors focused on expectations that the Federal Reserve wants to raise interest rates this month, in the absence of specific policy details from Donald Trump’s first speech to Congress. The dollar index — a measure of the reserve currency against its main peers — rose 0.5 per cent to its highest level in more than a […]
The Gemini PDA is an Android-Linux clamshell with a physical QWERTY keyboard. Image: Planet Computers There may still be a market for the PDAs, or personal digital assistants, which were largely made extinct by the iPhone’s arrival in 2007. But UK mobile startup Planet Computers will be testing just how big that market is with the Gemini PDA, an Android-Linux clamshell smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard. […]
Embedded in a sweatband, a network of sensors devised by Ali Javey can monitor moment-by-moment changes in electrolytes and metabolites, a potential boon to weekend athletes, diabetics and people exposed to heavy metal concentrations. Credit: Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally Sweating it out on a treadmill, or racing to finish a half marathon, a runner might risk a potentially dangerous buildup of electrolytes in her blood. In […]
This was originally published in our weekly newsletter, Local Edition, which is a product of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative. Subscribe here. Have you ever had a party and looked around the room at some point and thought, Wow, there are a lot of cool people here? Well, that’s how my inbox felt this week. Thanks to everyone who contributed last week by answering our first question in […]
By Sijia Jiang | HONG KONG HONG KONG Taiwan’s Foxconn (2317.TW), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, is “definitely bidding” for the chip business of Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) and is “very confident” it can buy into it, company founder Terry Gou said on Wednesday. Gou was speaking as Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, broke ground for a 61 billion yuan ($8.87 […]
A critic once described Yasmina Khadra as “a writer who can understand man wherever he is.” This came after it had become public knowledge, in 2011, that Yasmina Khadra is actually the pen name of Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul. Speaking to The National from his home in France, Moulessehoul said the revelation about his true identity – a former career military man and counterterrorism officer in the […]
