By Norihiko Shirouzu and Natalie Thomas | BEIJING BEIJING Authorities in Tianjin grounded dozens of flights and closed most highways on Sunday after severe smog blanketed the city, one of more than more than 40 in China’s northeast to issue pollution warnings in the past 48 hours. Air quality index (AQI) readings at some monitoring stations in Tianjin, a port and industrial city southeast of Beijing, peaked […]
BEIRUT Buses and Red Crescent vehicles arrived at the entrance to the besieged Syrian villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, Lebanese group Hezbollah’s al-Manar television said on Sunday. An evacuation of rebel-held eastern Aleppo stalled this week because of demands from pro-government forces that a group of people needing medical treatment also be allowed to leave al-Foua and Kefraya, which are besieged by insurgents. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; […]
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER An opposition-backed bill in Pakistan seeking to establish a commission to inquire into the revelations made by the controversial Panama Papers, which suggest financial wrongdoings by Prime Minister Sharif and his family, prompted an exchange of harsh words in the Islamabad-based parliament this week. The bill, officially known as the “Panama Papers Inquiries Act, 2016,” has already cleared the Senate. SIGN UP […]
By Lisa Barrington and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hopes to resume the evacuation of civilians and wounded from the Syrian enclave of east Aleppo on Sunday, a spokeswoman said. Thousands of people are left in Aleppo, some sleeping on the streets in freezing temperatures, after the evacuation of the rebel-held areas ground to a halt on Friday following […]
By Stanley White and Izumi Nakagawa | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese workers put up with long hours and unpaid overtime under pressure from cost-saving companies, and figures from government, which wants more money in workers’ pockets to boost consumer spending, appear to underestimate the problem. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to enact labor reforms as part of his “Abenomics” plan to end decades of stagnant growth and […]
A new concept in energy harvesting could capture energy that is currently mostly wasted due to its characteristic low frequency and use it to power next-generation electronic devices. In a project funded by electronics giant Samsung, a team of Penn State materials scientists and electrical engineers has designed a mechanical energy transducer based on flexible organic ionic diodes that points toward a new direction in scalable energy […]
UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council will vote Sunday on a French proposal to send observers to the flashpoint Syrian city of Aleppo to monitor evacuations and report on the protection of civilians, diplomats said.The council will meet at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT) to decide on the draft resolution, despite resistance from Russia, Syria’s ally and a veto-wielding Security Council member.France circulated a draft text late Friday […]
Settling into an interview with Marwan Bin Jassim Al Sarkal, the man in charge of luring foreign investors to Sharjah, it becomes evident that both tensions and ties bond the emirate with neighbouring Dubai. On the one hand Sharjah is cast into the shadows, often overlooked by businesses and visitors. On the other hand, the bigger brother’s international standing is helping the emirate of 1.5 million people […]
A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria’s east Aleppo which ground to a halt on Friday over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels. Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on Saturday, said the deal comprised an evacuation from the two Shi’ite […]
The number of passenger cars in use in the GCC region is expected to grow at 5 percent annually from an estimated 10.3 million in 2015 to 13.2 million in 2020, according to Alpen Capital. Its report said new passenger car sales are projected at 1.4 million in 2020, compared to 1.2 million in 2015. Although new sales declined in 2016 and will be under pressure in […]
There have been many paths to the White House over the centuries, but few as diverse or demanding as the one taken by Barack Obama. Now a new Netflix movie, Barry, explores the college days that raised his consciousness and shaped him into presidential material. Obama’s childhood was unusual, to say the least. He grew up in Hawaii, Jakarta and California, the son of a black Kenyan […]
Christmas is coming: an event as exciting for the toymakers hoping to fill stockings with this year’s hottest new playthings as it is for the children who will open them on December 25. Expectations of a bumper festive period have brought early Christmas presents for investors in companies such as Spin Master, Hasbro and Nintendo — manufacturers behind some of the biggest hits — that have all […]
The smart home is gaining ground, but it’s still a muddle of confusing standards, competing platforms, and gadgets that don’t do what you might expect. But the promise of products that can make your life a little easier is hard to resist, so I’m here to answer the inevitable questions that arise. Whether it’s figuring out the best connected door lock to assembling the right […]
By Laila Bassam and Lisa Barrington | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria’s east Aleppo which ground to a halt on Friday over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels. Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on […]
BEIRUT A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo which stalled over demands from pro-government forces that two villages besieged by rebels must also be evacuated, a Syrian rebel told news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on Saturday. Rebel official Al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo, said the deal comprised an evacuation from the two Shi’ite villages besieged by insurgents, the […]
When it emerged from stealth in 2011, MapR was an outlier in the Hadoop community. At the time, Hadoop was defined largely by two projects adapted from Google research: MapReduce, which introduced highly linear, massively parallel processing to big data, and the HDFS file system, which could accommodate data by the petabyte. And at the time, Hadoop was defined as an Apache open source platform. MapR’s message, […]
Capitalism as we know it is irrevocably in its death throes, argues German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, which on its own is not a novel thesis. In our age of regular financial crashes and bursting bubbles, illiberal movements and borderless wars, even Nobel Prize winners and mainstream thinkers – I think of Joseph Stiglitz, among others – say that the post-war free market regime is broken, and that […]
The biggest surprise in meeting the entrepreneur behind Gulf meat eateries such as B+F Burger Boutique and Slider Station is learning that he is a recent adopter of veganism. Basil Al Salem — king of the juicy steak shawarmas on offer at Nomad Kitchen and the Coca-Cola-braised short ribs served up at Slider Station — went vegan earlier this year. But this does not mean that he […]
By Pawel Sobczak and Karol Witenberg | WARSAW WARSAW Protesters blocked all exits from the Polish parliament on Friday after the opposition said ruling party lawmakers illegally passed the budget for next year by moving the vote outside of the main chamber of parliament. The protest marked the biggest political standoff in years in European Union member Poland and the sharpest escalation of the conflict between the […]
Toronto worker Kristy Milland looks for data jobs that she can pick up to make ends meet. Image: Sam Santos/George Pimentel Photography This article originally appeared on TechRepublic. Each morning when she wakes up, Kristy Milland powers up her home computer in Toronto, logs into Amazon Mechanical Turk, and waits for her computer to ding. Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), which has been around for over a decade, […]
Kuwait’s foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to demand the release of four Kuwaiti nationals detained in the western Ahvaz region of Iran, it said in a statement published by state news agency KUNA on Friday. The ministry was coordinating with Iranian security authorities to press for visits to the men and to facilitate their release, the statement said. It did not elaborate on who the men […]
Low-frequency mechanical energy harvesting could provide as much as 40 percent of the power requirements for next generation smartphones and tablets. Credit: Wang Lab/Penn State A new concept in energy harvesting could capture energy that is currently mostly wasted due to its characteristic low frequency and use it to power next-generation electronic devices. In a project funded by electronics giant Samsung, a team of Penn State materials […]
President Barack Obama’s vow to retaliate against Russia’s alleged interference in the American election raises the prospect that he will impose new sanctions or conduct some form of cyber operations against Russia before he leaves office on January 20. Under pressure from many Democrats for not having done more to push back and deter Russia during the election campaign, the White House is now preparing a new […]
One of U.K.’s top law firms is joining forces with Atlanta-based Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, the latest and largest law firm merger of the year at a time of hyper-competition and sluggish demand across the legal industry. The merger of London-based Eversheds LLP and Sutherland, formally approved Friday, creates a firm with 2,300 lawyers and […] (via WSJ)
