Australian grocery chain giant Coles currently gains valuable data on its customers’ purchasing habits, but only if they use the company’s loyalty card upon checkout either online or on in-store. While the data aggregated at those touch points is beneficial to the company, Melissa Ross, head of digital experience at Coles Group, said it tends to result in the organisation making assumptions on customers it has less […]
Why Zadar? On the northern half of Croatia’s sunny Adriatic Coast, Zadar’s old town centre is crammed with rich, multilayered history – Roman, Romanesque, medieval, Venetian – enhanced by art installations and a vibrant cafe scene. For many years, Zadar remained off the main Croatian tourist trail, in favour of Dubrovnik and Split, which is a shame because it’s as beautiful as either of these and its […]
Beijing is enjoying an unusually long run of clear blue skies thanks to widespread industrial closures ahead of the most important international event hosted by President Xi Jinping. The “New Silk Road” summit has attracted 29 national leaders from four continents and also prompted a nationwide security clampdown, as authorities try to ensure that it proceeds without a hitch. More than 80 other countries, including North and […]
Investors poured $6bn of new capital into European stock funds in the past week, underlining the voracious appetite for assets across the continent as growth accelerates, earnings recover and several of the bloc’s largest countries move past critical elections. The amount of flow in the five days to May 10 is the first time the weekly amount has passed $6bn since at least 2000 when EPFR began […]
This image shows the stage of the Microsoft Build developers conference in Seattle, Washington on May 11, 2017, where the tech giant unveiled new hardware for “mixed reality” computing Microsoft on Thursday debuted hardware for reaching into virtual worlds powered by its technology as it looked to “mixed reality” as the next big computing platform. An update coming to Windows 10 operating system later this year will […]
Female professionals in Singapore are calling it quits, as 77% of them set their sights on better job opportunities in the next 12 months, according to findings from a new study by Monster.com. The study, which surveyed over 2,000 respondents across Southeast Asia, sheds light on the challenges women and mothers face in the workplace. Through the study, Monster.com wants to help employers understand how to bridge […]
MADRID Dozens of protesters against Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro massed outside a cultural centre in Madrid on Thursday evening as the country’s ambassador to Spain, who was stuck inside, decried what he called a “kidnapping” by demonstrators. Several hundred people gathered outside the extension of the Venezuelan embassy at around 1630 GMT. By 2100 GMT, dozens of protesters were still chanting “Venezuela, freedom!” at the site […]
For IT executives and professionals, adoption of Agile and DevOps approaches is a no-brainer — encouraging collaboration on software projects at all stages helps get projects out the door faster, with the blessings of the business. Everybody feels better about the deliverable. Photo: HubSpot However, it’s not clear how much value businesses are actually seeing out of such efforts. It’s not that DevOps and Agile are not […]
By Brad Brooks and Anthony Boadle | SAO PAULO/BRASILIA SAO PAULO/BRASILIA Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s combative testimony before a federal judge this week did little to dismantle the graft case against him and improve his chances of securing a new term in office. Lula, a founder of the leftist Workers Party (PT) that controlled Brazil’s presidency from 2003 until last year, can only […]
Verizon had a bidding war with AT&T over Straight Path Communications and it just sealed the deal, acquiring the company for more than $3 billion. More specifically, Verizon outbid AT&T and agreed to pay $184 per share in an all-stock transaction, amounting to $3.1 billion in total. The bidding war started when AT&T offered $95.63 per share, but Verizon raised and AT&T folded. Verizon Outbid AT&T “[T]he […]
Local journalism has been hit hard in the last decade. That hasn’t stopped. But in a survey of more than 400 journalists at newspapers with a circulation of under 50,000, the majority of journalists surveyed expressed optimism about the future. The study, by Christopher Ali and Damian Radcliffe, fellows at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, was published today in Columbia Journalism Review. Ali and Radcliffe also […]
In this Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, file photo, a self-driving Uber car stops at a red light on Liberty Avenue through the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In just a few years, well-mannered self-driving robotaxis will share the roads with reckless, law-breaking human drivers. The prospect is causing migraines for the people developing the robocars and is slowing their development. But experts say eventually the cars will coexist […]
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 […]
The developer of an easy-to-use form of customisable ransomware has massively expanded their activities, expanding their arsenal of cybercriminal tools and making it even easier for would-be cyber crooks to set up operations. First spotted in September last year, Philadelphia ransomware is simple to deploy and at $400, is a relatively low-cost investment for entry-level cybercriminals, who also get support and updates as part of a ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ […]
SEOUL North Korea demanded on Thursday the handover of “terror suspects” who plotted to kill leader Kim Jong Un with a biochemical substance, repeating accusations it made last week that U.S. and South Korean spies were behind the plan. The North’s KCNA news agency last week accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service of a plot to assassinate its “supreme leadership” with […]
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 Tom Perry and Laila Bassam | BEIRUT BEIRUT Lebanon is on the brink of crisis again with its politicians at odds over an election law at the heart of the nation’s sectarian system, threatening to leave the country without a parliament for the first time. Parliament’s term expires on June 20 and without a compromise Lebanon faces what one minister has called the most serious political […]
Facebook announced on Wednesday that it’s penalizing websites that contain little substantive content and junky advertising, the social network’s latest step to police its platform for content that users find objectionable or irrelevant. “We hear from our community that they’re disappointed when they click on a link that leads to a web page containing little substantive content and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads,” […]
Ericsson has launched its “dynamic orchestration” solution, which the networking giant said will allow mobile telecommunications carriers to migrate to 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) applications by virtualising their networks. Ericsson’s self-professed “ambition to lead IT transformation services” led it to develop the solution, which delivers cloud-based software and professional services on demand and in real time, with the solution working across hybrid networks and multiple […]
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 […]
By Ben Blanchard | BEIJING BEIJING When leaders of 28 nations gather in Beijing next week for a summit to map out China’s ambitious new Silk Road project, one question is likely to be on attendees’ minds – what exactly is the Belt and Road Initiative? Proposed in 2013 by President Xi Jinping to promote a vision of expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe underpinned by […]
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$7.6bn windfall to the New South Wales government. The sale of a 50.4 per cent stake in Endeavour Energy to the Advance Energy consortium completes a trio of energy sales in NSW under an “asset recycling” policy, which the US administration […]
A shake-up of the overarching Israel Broadcasting Authority — widely considered an outdated and wasteful enterprise — has been decades in the making. At one point it was said to have had up to 18 unions for about 1,800 employees. Israeli officials and experts across the political spectrum said that reform was essential. Continue reading the main story But the way it is unfolding appears chaotic and […]
11 May 2017 The Bahrain based leading Islamic banking group, Al Baraka Banking Group B.S.C (ABG) announced that it achieved a total operating income of US$ 249 million during the first quarter of 2017 and the total financing and investments recorded slight increases at the end of March 2017 compared to end of December 2016. Al Baraka Banking Group has continued during the first quarter of 2017, […]
