DUBAI // The lowest ranked schools will “wither on the vine” until they raise more money for the good of their pupils, educators say. Ten schools, catering for about 15,500 pupils, have been rated “weak” and altogether 94,000 attend schools that are acceptable or below, Dubai’s education regulator said this week. The bottom 10 can only raise fees by 2.4 per cent, about the level of inflation, […]
One minute I’m in an office in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers; the next, I have been transported to the grounds of a villa in the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme. I scan the garden – there’s a ball by my feet, so I pick it up and toss it out of the way. Next, I teleport myself just inside the front door. I take a wander around the […]
President Trump asked former FBI Director Jim Comey to lock up journalists for publishing classified information during a February Oval Office meeting, according to a memo written by Comey shortly after the meeting summarized Tuesday by The New York Times. Trump urged Comey to imprison journalists at the beginning of an exchange during which he also asked the former FBI chief to back off an investigation into […]
The timing, intensity and public announcement of the accusations suggested that the Trump administration was signaling a tougher political line on Syria, as well as seeking to embarrass Russia and Iran, all in an effort to put pressure on Damascus at the Geneva talks. Continue reading the main story Five previous rounds of negotiations in Geneva have yielded little progress. The war is now in its seventh […]
BuzzFeed News announced on Monday the addition of Forbes staff writer Ryan Mac to its expanding team of reporters in San Francisco who cover Silicon Valley. Mac, who’s already based in San Francisco, joins a BuzzFeed News tech team of 20. He’ll be covering “the intersection of wealth, tech and power” under BuzzFeed San Francisco Bureau Chief Mat Honan and technology editor John Paczkowski. Rather than focus […]
As the UAE Pavilion was readied for the opening of the Venice Biennale, paper aeroplanes were strewn across a brick floor with yellow markings. To the untrained eye, they might have looked like the result of some celebratory fun and games from the young members of staff who had just finished the week-long installation work at the Sale d’Armi (Weapons Room) in the Italian city’s old fort, […]
DUBAI // Schools need to strike a better balance between preparing pupils to pass exams and providing a holistic education, a new report by Dubai’s education regulator says. The Future of Education report published by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority said the best schools prepared pupils for the future, not just tests. The research was conducted in partnership with the Education Development Trust, a non-profit education […]
The cyberattack crippled IT systems and forced doctors and nurses to work with pen and paper notes. Image: iStock NHS hospitals are still struggling in the fight against a global ransomware attack, with computer systems in several hospitals locked three days after the initial outbreak and previously unaffected hospitals revealed to have fallen to WannaCrypt ransomware. During the weekend more than 200,000 victims in over 150 countries […]
Abu Dhabi // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed will hold talks at the White House with Donald Trump on Monday to discuss enhancing cooperation on counterterrorism, confronting Iran and other core issues in the increasingly close relationship. Over the course of what is expected to be a two-day visit to Washington, Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, is also […]
Oman Air, the country’s national carrier, has announced a new initiative to support its employees during hard times. Wings of Support is an employee fund which offers and maintains financial support to staff, the airline said in a statement. It added that staff who fall under financial crisis due to various reasons can now be aided after becoming a member of Wings of Support. The fund will […]
An exterior view shows the main entrance of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, in London, one of the hospitals whose computer systems were affected by a cyberattack, Friday, May 12, 2017. A large cyberattack crippled computer systems at hospitals across England on Friday, with appointments canceled, phone lines down and patients turned away. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Teams of technicians worked “round the clock” Saturday to restore hospital computer systems […]
2017: The year of the Linux desktop on the Windows desktop. Yes, Microsoft is making it much easier to run the Bash shell, based on Ubuntu, and soon SUSE or Fedora, on Windows 10. No, hell hasn’t frozen over. True, Carmen Crincoli, Microsoft’s Storage independent hardware vendor partner manager, tweeted: “2017 is finally the year of Linux on the Desktop. It’s just that the Desktop is Windows.” […]
In a mini-tweetstorm Friday that combined references to alleged unfair treatment of his spokespeople and the firing of FBI Director James Comey, President Trump raised the possibility of canceling regular briefings with the White House press corps. The Fake Media is working overtime today! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017 …Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future “press briefings” and […]
Police in Dubai have recovered AED3 million ($810,000) in cash robbed from a security vehicle by six staff working for company that operates the vehicle, a senior police official has said. The gang of six Asian employees was caught by police before they could smuggle the money out of the country, said Major General Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, assistant Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police for Criminal Investigation in […]
The welcome I arrive using the minivan shuttle service that runs between the Monte Carlo SBM’s four hotels every 20 minutes. Travelling from the five-star Hermitage, with its old-world beauty dating from 1900, to the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel & Resort, a four-star, 10-storey structure opened in 2005, is less jarring than expected – the newer hotel is both inviting and more laid-back. Check-in is done quickly […]
The Minneapolis Star Tribune turns 150 later this month. In honor of that milestone, a Minneapolis brewery made a pale ale in the newsroom’s honor. In a press release, Fulton Brewing Company’s head brewer, Mike Salo, explains how the beer was made. (And he just might have a future in writing if the whole beer thing falls through.) Extra! Extra! Pale Ale is an American pale ale […]
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 […]
A Human Rights Watch staffer said Wednesday he was barred from entering Bahrain for the annual FIFA congress in the Gulf state, which restricts access to foreign activists and journalists. HRW director for Israel and Palestine, Omar Shakir, said he spent 18 hours in the airport before being obliged to change his return ticket and board an outbound flight. The US citizen told AFP by telephone that […]
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 […]
Last Friday, The Denver Post reported it was considering relocating the newsroom from its downtown Denver home to one in nearby Adams County, where the Post’s printing facility is located. On Tuesday, Michael Roberts reported for Westword that the decision has already been made. Publisher Mac Tully confirmed the news in a statement, noting that they plan to keep some kind of office space downtown: I can […]
Jonathan Hunt, Vox Media’s former vice president of international operations, has left the digital news publisher for a job leading National Geographic’s audience development and digital strategy. Hunt’s hire is part of an expansion of National Geographic’s digital team. Also new at National Geographic will be Marcus East, formerly the digital director at retail company Marks and Spencer, who will be executive vice president of product and […]
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 […]
As we reported last night, pretty much no one within the FBI had the slightest idea that Comey’s firing was coming. Even Comey himself, according to the New York Times, learned of his dismissal on the news and thought it was just a prank. Not surprisingly, this sudden and shocking ouster of an FBI director that has led an agency of 56 U.S. field offices and 30,000 […]
