Scientists unveiled a lightweight, robotic, outer “skeleton” Thursday that can detect when someone loses their balance, correct their gait, and prevent their fall. Designed to limit stumbles among the elderly, the device has sensors that can discern in real time when a limb starts to buckle or flail, and lightweight motors which exert instant force on both legs to restore balance. “Wearable machines that enhance your […]
Pets at Home hit a record low on Thursday amid fears of a profit warning with its full-year results this month. Morgan Stanley slashed earnings forecasts for Pets at Home’s 2018 financial year to reflect margin pressure, continued weak sales and rising costs. So-called “category killer” specialist retailers need high gross margins to be economically viable because they suffer from low sales densities and slow stock turn, […]
On the morning of August 4, 1892, husband and wife Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in their home in the small town of Fall River, Massachusetts. Their 32-year-old daughter Lizzie was the prime suspect. A cause célèbre of that period in America – spoiler alert: Lizzie, the O J Simpson of her day, was tried and acquitted – yet more than a century on, […]
Adjustments to closely tracked corporate bond indices have “clear” trading and pricing impacts, a new study from credit rating agency Fitch showed on Thursday. The US rating agency found that changes to the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate Index earlier this year resulted in “dramatic increases” in trading volumes for bonds set to be dropped from the index and that prices for those bonds underperformed larger credits. Bloomberg […]
Uber should be regulated as a transport company and be subject to the same rules as normal taxis, according to a non-binding opinion by the Advocate General at the EU’s top court. The opinion, stating that the US ride-hailing app “must be classified as a ‘service in the field of transport’”, would deal a major blow to Uber if followed with a final judgment by the European […]
Uber should be regulated as a transport company rather than a technology provider, according to a non-binding opinion by the Advocate General at the EU’s top court. The US ride hailing app “must be classified as a ‘service in the field of transport’”, which would leave the US group open to tighter regulation in Europe if the opinion were to be followed in the final judgment at […]
By James Pearson and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL Like many other Americans who came to teach at the foreign-funded Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), Kim Hak Song was a Christian missionary who raised money from a church to come to North Korea. Kim had been running PUST’s experimental farm before he was detained on Saturday, travelling by train from Pyongyang to China’s border town […]
A consortium led by Macquarie Group is buying a controlling stake in one of Australia’s biggest public energy companies in a deal that will deliver a A$7.6bn windfall to the New South Wales government. The sale of a 50.4 per cent stake in Endeavour Energy to the Advance Energy consortium completes a trio of energy sales in NSW under an “asset recycling” policy, which the US administration […]
Stock markets in the Asia Pacific region were mixed on Thursday as energy stocks enjoyed a boost from improved crude prices. In Sydney the S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.7 per cent as energy stocks climbed 1.1 per cent. Shares in major banks were recovering from a drop brought on by a new levy announced on Tuesday night, with National Australia Bank up 1.1 per cent. Tokyo’s Topix […]
By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The anger behind Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday had been building for months, but a turning point came when Comey refused to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony to a Senate panel, White House officials said. Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had wanted a heads-up […]
With passive investing passing the $4tn mark in April, things aren’t exactly looking up for active asset managers. New product launches and investor inflows mean there are now almost 7,000 exchange-traded products managed by 313 providers and total assets of $4.002tn at the end of April, according to fresh figures from ETFGI, an industry data provider. The relentless flood of money into passive investment vehicles is a […]
Snap fell short of Wall Street’s expectations in its first quarterly results as a public company, sending its shares tumbling by almost a quarter in value in after-hours trading to hit a new low. The maker of the Snapchat app reported revenue growth of 286 per cent to $149.6m but analysts had been expecting almost $10m more than that. Losses were also wider than forecasts. Daily active […]
Retailers were among Wednesday’s biggest gainers, with Next and AB Foods both in demand on broker upgrades. Next climbed 1.7 per cent to £44.01 on the back of an Investec upgrade to “buy”. Investors have been too preoccupied by Next’s short-term trading and have missed its active estate management, Investec said. Rather than focus on refurbishments, Next has been opening and closing stores to adapt to the […]
IBM on Wednesday is announcing significant updates to PowerAI, its deep learning software distribution package, making it faster for data scientists to deploy deep learning models and easier for developers to integrate computer vision into their applications. Analysts say that artificial intelligence has reached a tipping point where it’s being integrated into just about every service, product or integration, but there are still major challenges for the […]
Greg Malouf was down but not out. After the relative misfire of his UAE venture – Clé Dubai, which closed its doors in April last year – the celebrated Australian-Lebanese chef returns to the emirate to head Zahira, a classy Middle Eastern restaurant that opens next week at the H Hotel. “I’ve spent years working on the evolution of Lebanese cuisine, and while the dishes need to […]
The Microsoft Cortana-powered Harman Kardon Invoke has its benefits, but Amazon’s Echo lineup might be too big to topple. Redmond has no one to blame but itself. Imagine an Amazon Echo with stellar sound quality that wasn’t primarily intended to sell you stuff you don’t need. Or a Google Home that wasn’t tied to your frighteningly detailed online dossier on the gargantuan […]
Oil prices extended their gains after a report showed US crude stockpiles fell by the biggest margin since December and were down for the fifth straight week. Inventories of US crude fell by 5.25m barrels in the week ended May 5, according to the Energy Information Administration. That topped forecasts for a draw of 1.9m barrels. This was the largest streak of back-to-back declines in US oil […]
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Interactive Computing have come up with a novel computational approach that could provide a more cost- and resource-effective way for internet communities to moderate abusive content. They call it the Bag of Communities (BoC), a technique that leverages large-scale, preexisting data from other internet communities to train an algorithm to identify abusive behavior within a separate target community. […]
Time Inc cut its dividend and announced a board shake-up as the magazine publisher reported a steeper than expected first-quarter net loss and decline in revenue. The owner of Time, People and Sports Illustrated is in the midst of a strategic reorganisation aimed at shifting its business from print to digital, following its decision last month not to sell itself. Its net loss widened to $28m, or […]
Flock’s Bhavin Turakhia: “Good software should follow the principle of, ‘don’t make the user think’.” Image: Flock Helping teams communicate and share information better has been a challenge that many different enterprise messaging apps have tried to solve, from Slack and Microsoft’s Yammer, to Cisco’s Spark and Facebook’s Workplace. Another new entrant to this space is Flock, which boasts customers Whirlpool, Tim Hortons, and Victorinox. ZDNet recently […]
ISTANBUL Every weapon obtained by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia constitutes a threat to Turkey, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday, emphasising Ankara’s opposition to a U.S. deal to arm the fighters against Islamic State. Cavusoglu, who was speaking to reporters while on a visit to Montenegro, said the YPG was a terrorist organisation, the same as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and that […]
Bridgepoint, the UK-based private equity firm, is working with bankers to prepare a US listing of the Pret a Manger, the fast-growing food-and-coffee-shop chain beloved by office workers. JP Morgan and Jefferies have recently been appointed to lead an initial public offering that could take place in New York before the end of the year, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Credit Suisse, Barclays […]
Purdue University graduate student Yifeng Zhou, at left, and assistant professor Meng Cui review data from a new adaptive-optics technology for brain research. The method, called multi-pupil adaptive optics, is aiding research into brain function. Credit: Purdue University image/Erin Easterling A specialized type of adaptive-optics technology that has been demonstrated by taking high-resolution time-lapse images of functioning brain cells might be used to better understand how the […]
BERLIN Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives could form a three-way coalition with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the pro-environment Greens after a September parliamentary election, a poll released by the Forsa Institute on Wednesday showed. Such a “Jamaica coalition” – a reference to the black, yellow and green colours of the Jamaican national flag – is already under discussion in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein after Merkel’s […]
