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 […]
Transport company National Express, stung this week over its CEO’s bonus, said today that currency shifts have helped it produce a near 16 per cent rise in revenues. The bus, coach and rail company, with operations in the UK, Europe and the US, said today that revenues so far this year are up by 5.4 per cent on a constant currency basis, but that translates to a […]
Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org, Only one lawyer who prosecuted the Nuremberg trials is still alive today, and he has an important message for the world: war is not the answer. 60 Minutes recently interviewed Ben Ferencz, a son of Romanian Jewish immigrants who found refuge in the United States. His father worked as a janitor, and Ben was the first person in his family to […]
The British perfumer founded Jo Malone London in 1988, moving from home-made creams to best-selling fragrances in a short span. She stayed on as creative director when she sold the company to the Estée Lauder group in 1999, but then quit the industry altogether in 2006 because she temporarily lost her sense of smell following a battle with breast cancer. Malone launched her second business, Jo Loves, […]
Saudis often liken Aramco, the kingdom’s state oil company, to a fat cow or productive hen. The company has for decades been the bedrock of the economy and the enabler of the government largesse to which Saudis have grown accustomed. Now its future has become a source of concern as disquiet grows over plans by Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy crown prince, to sell a 5 per […]
Two Sigma Securities said on Tuesday that it plans to buy Interactive Brokers’s options market-making unit. After completion of the deal, Two Sigma Securities’s market-making offering will “span over 7,000 U.S. equity securities and options on 1,300 underlying securities, executing over 300 million shares and one million options contracts per day,” the company said. “Through this transaction, TSS will integrate Timber Hill’s highly complementary platform to form […]
Since its publication in 2009, Dutch author Herman Koch’s novel The Dinner has become an international bestseller, published in more than 50 countries. The Amsterdam-set story has spawned three film adaptations in the past four years: a Dutch offering by Menno Meyjes (2013), an Italian version by Ivano de Matteo (2014), and now director Oren Moverman has shifted the setting to the United States. “It poses an […]
It took Richard Nixon five months to fire the man investigating him. It took Donald Trump less than four. The difference is that Mr Nixon did little to conceal his motive — to save his presidency. Mr Trump, on the other hand, says he fired James Comey for having mishandled last year’s email investigation into Hillary Clinton. Even by Mr Trump’s standards, this stretches credulity. Mr Trump […]
Gains in technology stocks on Tuesday allowed the Nasdaq Composite to add 0.3 per cent to another all-time closing high, while the S&P 500 inched off its most recent record set on Monday. In a listless day of trading, the Nasdaq Composite added 17.9 points to 6,120.59 by market’s close, while the S&P 500 fell 2.5 points to 2,396.91 after breaching the 2,400 intraday level for the […]
On a cold, rainy day at the end of April, more than 30 people gathered at a co-working space in Charlotte, North Carolina for a public conversation about the future of news in the state. Five days later, more than 50 people got together for a similar conversation at a jazz club in downtown Durham. At both events, attendees — which included local journalists and community activists […]
A group of US senators has urged a government investigation into billionaire Carl Icahn’s involvement in an obscure market for US biofuel credits, arguing he profited by influencing prices through his role as informal counsel to President Donald Trump. Mr Icahn controls CVR Energy, an oil refiner which trades credits used to meet a federal mandate for mixing ethanol and biodiesel with petroleum products. In December, the […]
US stocks hit fresh intraday highs on Wednesday, with Apple’s market value breaking through $800bn for the first time, as an earnings trade replaces the so-called Trump trade. The best US earnings season in five years has powered Wall Street to new heights even as the pro-business tax, regulation and infrastructure policies of Donald Trump are taking longer to translate into action than investors had hoped. The […]
ABU DHABI // Qatar topped a poll of young people who believe non-Muslims should have the same rights as Muslims when in their country. But many states were split and half the respondents in some countries thought they should not be treated the same. The findings came in a survey of almost 7,000 young Arabs by the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi. The findings raise concerns about […]
A schism appears to exist at the heart of The Lightning Seeds, a disconnect between joyous 1990s pop hits such as Pure, Perfect, Marvellous and Lucky You and the dour-faced man who wrote them. Ian Broudie is often photographed in moody black and white, wearing sunglasses and looking absently off into the distance. “I’ve always written by melody, and I think the melodies are very uplifting – […]
Donald Trump’s promise of the biggest tax reforms since the Reagan era has cast minds back to the go-go years of postwar Manhattan, when cocktail glasses brimmed, steaks bulged and meal bills soared. The generous treatment of business meal expenses fuelled a phenomenon called the “three martini lunch”. As good for networking as it was bad for afternoon acuity, the more money diners spent on liquor, the […]
Back to normal, for now… South African stocks hit an 11-month high on Tuesday, as markets calm a month after the surprise ousting of the country’s finance minister, but analysts warned that political worries could rear their heads again soon. The FTSE/JSE All-Share index climbed 1 per cent today, hitting a high of 54,255, its highest level since June 2016. Bank stocks, which were particularly badly hit […]
