Ailing Canadian handset maker BlackBerry Ltd. is working to reinvent itself and spending a pretty penny to do it. The company has agreed to buy Good Technology for $425 million in an all-cash deal. The Good acquisition certainly fits into BlackBerry’s strategy to offer customers stronger mobile security. Good is recognized as a leader in security mobility with solutions that cover all stages of the lifecycle for […]
News Analysis By DAVID E. SANGER August 21, 2015 To the most strident opponents of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the suspicious behavior at a military base about 12 miles southeast of Tehran has become a rallying call to defeat the accord, especially as it now appears that Iranian officials may be allowed to take their own environmental samples at the site and turn them over to inspectors. It […]
Amnesty International issued a scathing report Tuesday on the Yemen conflict, accusing all armed antagonists there of complicity in war crimes, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians. The report, “Nowhere Safe for Civilians,” called on the United Nations to establish a panel of inquiry to “independently and impartially investigate alleged war crimes committed during the conflict.” Donatella Rovera, a senior researcher for Amnesty who has worked in many […]
Tech giant Oracle just rolled out new functions to its Service Cloud and Social Cloud. The new bells and whistles aim to help organizations serve up better customer experiences and make data-based business decisions. Specifically, the new social features promise to help brands increase social engagement and mine business insights through a new community self-service solution, as well as beefed up social service and incident routing. Oracle […]
Chip company Rambus, known mostly for its memory technology and propensity to sue competitors, said it is taking a greater role in the manufacture of its chips. To mark the occasion, the company introduced its R+ DDR4 server memory chipset, RB26. The company said the chipset, for RDIMMs and LRDIMMs, is aimed at the enterprise and data center server markets. Rambus, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., develops DRAM […]
A Brooklyn man accused this year of trying to join the Islamic State pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization. Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, 25, who appeared in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, will face a maximum possible term of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced. The date for the sentencing has not been set. Mr. Juraboev is the […]
SANA, Yemen — After five months of war in which more than 4,000 people have been killed, Yemen’s government, exiled in Saudi Arabia, faces a fateful decision: leverage recent battlefield gains to negotiate a cease-fire with a weakened Houthi rebel movement, or try to rout the rebels once and for all. Backed by air support and ground troops from Persian Gulf nations, fighters allied with the government […]
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted. He bound her hands and gagged […]
DUBAI // Businesses failing to comply with the Dubai Health Authority’s mandatory health-insurance plan face hefty fines, and new visas will not be granted for employees until they fall in line. Phase two of the plan, which includes about 3,000 companies with between 100 and 999 employees, began on August 1, ensuring that another 600,000 people now have health insurance. It has also emerged that the national […]
UAE. In response to a plethora of exogenous (dollar strength, oil price declines, etc.) as well as endogenous (numerous real estate launches, doubling of transaction fees, Central Bank caps on mortgage etc.) factors, prices and transactional activity have fallen across the freehold markets. In response, Developers in Dubai have offered a variety of incentives to galvanize sales in the form of payment plans that have often stretched […]
The developer Meydan has announced the launch of a new scheme known as Meydan One featuring a 711m-high tower, a huge new mall, the world’s largest indoor ski slope, a 25,000 sq metres indoor sports facility, the biggest dancing fountains in the world, a beach and a civic plaza capable of hosting up to 60,000 people. It is also to contain a 100-berth marina. And, a retractable […]
INTERNATIONAL. New research from PwC projects that traditional assets under management (AuM) in 12 markets across Africa will rise to around $1,098 billion by 2020, from a 2008 total of $293 billion. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 9.6%. Traditional asset management, in particular the mutual fund industry, is expanding aggressively across Africa. This will largely be driven by a number of factors: […]
DUMA, West Bank — Residents of this Palestinian hamlet still awake on a hot summer night heard the screams and rushed to the Dawabsheh home. Outside, Saad, 32, lay writhing on the ground. Nearby, his wife Riham was still on fire. Their 4-year-old son was could be heard cyring inside the burning house and his brother, 18-month-old Ali, was already dead. Witnesses and officials attributed the attack […]
FRANKFURT/SAN FRANCISCO BMW (BMWG.DE) and Apple (AAPL.O) may rekindle a courtship put on hold after an exploratory visit by executives of the world’s top maker of electronic gadgets to the headquarters of the word’s biggest seller of premium cars. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook went to BMW’s headquarters last year and senior Apple executives toured the carmaker’s Leipzig factory to learn how it manufactures the i3 electric […]
An employee works inside the office of U.S. online cab-hailing company Uber, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, April 24, 2015. Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee REUTERS – Uber Technologies Inc will invest $1 billion in India in the next nine months, as the online taxi-hailing company looks to expand its services in its biggest market outside the United States. Uber said it would use the additional investment to […]
|TAP Special by K Raveendran| The Dubai residential market continues to face downward pressure as rents and sale prices decline. It’s perhaps indicative of a systemic shift that the current phase’s first bankruptcy has just been filed. According to a JLL report citing the REIDIN indexes, the sales index dropped by 8% for the one-year period ending June 2015, with declines in apartment sale prices exceeding that […]
INTERNATIONAL. The undisputed king of oil and gas is making some moves that could change the face of the global refining sector. In June 2015, Saudi Arabia pumped a record 10.564 million barrels a day, a record level. As if being the world’s biggest exporter of oil was not enough, the desert kingdom is now looking to conquer the refining sector as it has quickly become the […]
Beirut Journal A restaurant worker took two bags of trash to add to a giant pile of garbage left uncollected for a week outside a bar named Floyd the Dog in Beirut. By BEN HUBBARD July 27, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — On a normal weekend night, the revelers at Floyd the Dog, a bar in one of this city’s rowdiest party neighborhoods, spill onto the sidewalk, drinks in hand, […]
ISTANBUL — As Turkish fighter jets pounded Kurdish militia targets in northern Iraq late Friday, the implications of the attack weighed heavily on Turks and Kurds across the border in Turkey, as they faced the prospect of being drawn back into a bloody civil conflict after years of relative peace. In 2013, Turkey brokered a historic settlement with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., vowing to […]
JERUSALEM — The two issues with perhaps the broadest consensus and resonance in Israeli politics are opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and support for the release of Jonathan J. Pollard, the convicted Israeli spy, from a North Carolina prison. Now the two could be tied together, as some in Washington appear to be highlighting Mr. Pollard’s likely parole in November in hopes of quieting the vigorous […]
INTERNATIONAL. On the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Kenya for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, GeoPoll, the Global Entrepreneurship Network and the U.S. State Department released a survey of 1,000 business owners throughout sub-Saharan Africa on entrepreneurship in their countries. GeoPoll surveyed 200 entrepreneurs per country in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, asking them what resources are most needed […]
An AT&T Logo is pictured on the side of a building in Pasadena, California, January 26, 2015. Reuters/Mario Anzuoni WASHINGTON The No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier AT&T Inc (T.N) and the biggest satellite-TV provider DirecTV (DTV.O) became the country’s largest pay-TV company on Friday, completing their $48.5 billion merger after receiving final regulatory approval. The newly expanded AT&T leapfrogs the biggest U.S. cable company Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O). […]
Video | Kerry Defends Nuclear Deal to Senate Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Iran nuclear deal on Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meeting resistance from Republican members of the group. By JONATHAN WEISMAN and MICHAEL R. GORDON July 23, 2015 WASHINGTON — After four and a half hours of contentious questioning, three cabinet secretaries deployed Thursday by President Obama to the Senate to defend his nuclear deal with […]
INTERNATIONAL. In my “Net Assessment of the World,” I argued that four major segments of the European and Asian landmass were in crisis: Europe, Russia, the Middle East (from the Levant to Iran) and China. Each crisis was different; each was at a different stage of development. Collectively the crises threatened to destabilize the Eurasian landmass, the Eastern Hemisphere, and potentially generate a global crisis. They do […]
