By Karolina Tagaris and Renee Maltezou | ATHENS ATHENS Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras seems determined to go down in history as a leader who tried to save Greece’s most vulnerable from austerity. But the crowd of pensioners in Athens on Thursday night was cynical about his promise to placate them with a one-off Christmas bonus. “We are living in misery and we won’t tolerate being fooled […]
Lately, there has been discussion of a “blurring” of Agile methodologies with design thinking. These are two philosophies with different terminologies, practiced by different groups of people, that have the same goal — to provide elegant and continuously improving technology solutions that serve users and customers. This blurring may be necessary with software release cycles now going into the hours, or even minutes for some businesses. Photo: […]
Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne A drone has been equipped with feathers to increase its precision during flight. The bio-inspired device can spread or close its wings while flying, making it easier to maneuver and more resistant in high winds. When they need to change direction, increase their speed or counter headwinds, birds alter the configuration of their wings. To steer, for example, they spread one […]
South Korea’s IT export for November rose 3.3 percent compared to a year ago thanks to semiconductors and displays, the country’s trade ministry has said. The rise ends 14 straight months of decline caused by the rise of Chinese competitors and the global economic downturn. Total IT export for the month was $14.8 billion, a rise of 3.3 percent from a year ago, while import was $8.08 […]
Photo A member of the Syrian government forces watched the evacuation operation of rebel fighters and civilians from Aleppo on Friday. Credit George Ourfalian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — The process of evacuating residents from the last rebel-held section of Aleppo broke down on Friday, a day after Syrian government buses and ambulances began taking residents out of the besieged area. The reason for halting […]
China has ceded its status as America’s largest creditor nation to Japan after spending a large portion of its foreign exchange reserves to defend the renminbi. Beijing’s ownership of US Treasuries fell by $41.3bn to $1.12tn in October, according to data from the US Treasury released on Thursday — the sixth straight month of decline. Japan’s holdings fell by $4.5bn to $1.13tn for the same period. Thomas […]
Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan has announced an independent review into the “unprecedented failure” of the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) storage hardware that took its online services offline earlier this week. The ATO’s website, tax agent, and business portals initially crashed on Monday, as a result of a “world first” hardware issue. The outage continued through Tuesday, which is when the ATO called in Hewlett Packard Enterprise […]
Credit: George Hodan/Public Domain Computers may be able to group consumers into marketing segments in real time just by observing how they respond to online videos and other social media data, according to a team of researchers. In a study, computers used information from social media accounts to automatically build marketing personas, said James Jansen, professor of information sciences and technology, Penn State. Marketing research professionals typically […]
India is set to get more Trump-branded projects as local developers seek to capitalize on the brand. A story from The Wall Street Journal Friday took a look at the many projects around the world connected to the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, including those in India. Unimark Group, a developer based in Kolkata, has tied up to rebrand a previously planned residential apartment building in the eastern […]
Allergic reactions to peanuts cause around 500 hospitalizations and even some deaths in the United States each year. Food that contains trace amounts, because it was produced with factory equipment or kitchen tools that came into contact with peanuts, can prove fatal for allergic individuals who consume it unsuspectingly. Accidentally ingesting as little as a third of a single peanut — about 70 milligrams — can send […]
Chinese government bond yields retreated slightly after the central bank eased a credit squeeze that has been exacerbated by the US Federal Reserve’s rate increase. On Friday morning the People’s Bank of China injected a net Rmb45bn ($6.5bn) into the interbank market through reverse repos, bringing total net injections for the week to Rmb250bn. This marked a reversal from last week when the central bank drained more than […]
The National Australia Bank (NAB) has taken “full responsibility” and apologised for the sending of personal data of 60,000 customers to an “incorrect email address”. The email contained each customer’s name, address, email address, branch and account number, as well as an NAB identification number for some customers. Those impacted were customers who had their accounts created by the bank’s migrant banking team while they were overseas. […]
Almost a quarter of Americans acknowledged sharing fake news political news online, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The report, which is based on a telephone survey of more than 1,000 people, showed that 23 percent of respondents shared fabricated stories. In that group, 14 percent said they knew the story was fake at the time they shared it. Nearly a quarter of […]
A schematic shows a smartphone and the diagnostic attachment for antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Credit: Aydogan Ozcan/UCLA A team of UCLA researchers has developed an automated diagnostic test reader for antimicrobial resistance using a smartphone. The technology could lead to routine testing for antimicrobial susceptibility in areas with limited resources. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are posing a severe threat to global public health. In particular, they are becoming more common […]
The Food and Drug Administration warned, Dec. 14, that repeated or long term use of general anesthesia or sedation drugs for children, who are younger than three years old or pregnant women, who are in their third trimester could affect the child’s developing brain. The warning is the result of a comprehensive analysis of the most recent research in the field, according to the agency. Anesthesia And Brain […]
Investors have piled into Russian equity and bond funds over the past week as oil prices have rallied and President-elect Donald Trump named an oil executive with close ties to Vladimir Putin as US secretary of state. Russian stock funds recorded inflows of $451m in the week to December 14, the biggest weekly haul since the first quarter of 2011, according to EPFR. Mutual funds and exchange […]
CAIRO — Egypt said Thursday that explosive traces had been detected on the bodies of passengers retrieved from EgyptAir Flight 804, which plunged into the Mediterranean Sea in May and killed all 66 people on board. The announcement by the Civil Aviation Ministry offers the strongest suggestion yet that a bomb might have felled the airliner as it flew to Cairo from Paris. Previously, officials had focused […]
(Image: file photo) Evernote is walking back proposed changes to its privacy policy, which would have allowed its employees to read users’ private notes. The company said in a blog post late Thursday that it will not implement the changes, calling the proposed new policy a “misstep.” “We messed up,” said Greg Chiemingo, who runs communications at Evernote. Instead, the company “will be revising our existing privacy […]
Friday 02:10 GMT Overview The US dollar has climbed to a 14-year high in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s decision this week to lift interest rates, putting pressure on Asian currencies and prompting caution among traders of regional stocks. Hot topic The dollar has been one of the biggest stories of the December quarter thanks to a more robust outlook for US inflation and growth. That […]
The Australian government has tweaked its digital transformation agenda in a new digital roadmap for 2017, which will see the enhancement of services such as myGov, reforms to health and aged care, improvements to its service delivery, and a whole-of-government approach to IT. According to the government’s roadmap, its vision for digital transformation starts with user needs. It explained this will see a layer of user-geared services […]
By Joseph Menn The U.S. agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections, according to a security firm working with law enforcement on the matter. The security firm, Recorded Future, was monitoring underground electronic markets where hackers buy and sell wares and discovered someone offering log-on credentials for access to computers at the U.S. Election […]
Women who regularly take painkillers may place themselves at increased risk of damaging their hearing. Findings of a new study have revealed that taking just two ibuprofen or paracetamol pills weekly for more than six years would be enough to cause hearing loss. Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen And Risk Of Hearing Loss For the new study, researchers looked at the data of more than 54,000 women who were between 48 […]
LONDON // Doctors have declared that infertility caused by treatment for inherited blood disorders affecting thousands of Gulf Arabs may at last be wiped out. In a medical breakthrough, Emirati Moaza Al Matrooshi, a 24-year-old from Dubai who was born with the fatal blood condition thalassaemia, this week became the first patient to give birth to a healthy baby after herself being cured of the disease. Thanks […]
Wellington High, Iraan’s opponent in the semifinals, contributed $3,000 toward a scholarship fund in memory of Liz Pope, 52, the president of Iraan’s booster club and the sponsor of its junior high cheerleaders. The Wellington band also stood before Iraan’s supporters and played “Amazing Grace.” Such generosity left Iraan’s cheerleaders, players, teachers and administrators enormously grateful, some overwhelmed to the point of tears. Jim Baum, Iraan’s principal, […]
