In this photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, an Uber driverless car heads out for a test drive in San Francisco. Uber is bringing a small number of self-driving cars to its ride-hailing service in San Francisco – a move likely to both excite the city’s tech-savvy population and spark a conflict with California regulators. The Wednesday, Dec. 14, launch in Uber’s hometown expands a public pilot […]
Re: Investigation fallout felt around the world, Dec. 11 Investigation fallout felt around the world, Dec. 11 Kudos to the Star for their continuing coverage of “The Panama Papers “ investigation. With every new revelation, it never fails to amaze me, the extent of devious manipulations employed by obscenely wealthy individuals to avoid contributing their fair share of taxes. There is a growing resentment among the rest […]
Thursday’s exciting launch of eight microsatellites carried by Pegasus XL rocket under the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System mission, or CYGNSS, was special in many ways. Prime among the pull factors was the live coverage accorded by NASA’s F-18 support aircraft while chasing Orbital’s L-1011 carrier aircraft. The launch at a predetermined drop point, 39,000 feet high above the Atlantic Ocean had winged Pegasus XL rocket getting dropped […]
To do otherwise, he said, would have required the United States to be “all in and willing to take over Syria.” Continue reading the main story The recent developments in the Syrian conflict send a message to autocratic leaders in the region and elsewhere that force works — and brings few consequences, said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. The lesson […]
The arctic air that has chilled large swaths of the northern United States for days will culminate this weekend with dangerous cold in Montana and North Dakota as heavy snow falls in other parts of the country, officials said. People in North Dakota face “life threatening cold” and the risk of frostbite with exposure of 10 minutes or less, the National Weather Service (NWS) said in an […]
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 […]
Wells Fargo has said the number of customers opening accounts has dropped sharply for a third consecutive month — underlining the scale of the fallout from the recent scandal over its sales tactics. Customers opened 41 per cent fewer Wells Fargo current accounts in November than they did a year ago and made 45 per cent fewer credit card applications. These figures cap another difficult week for […]
Shock is a matter of perspective and expectation. Imagine a time traveller stepped through the door a year ago and said the UK would vote to leave the European Union, a presidential candidate who advocated debt renegotiation would be headed for the White House, and Italy would reject the reforms of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Who would have predicted a worldwide bull market for stocks and bonds? […]
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, […]
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 […]
There’s a great scene in The Big Short, the movie of Michael Lewis’ book about the mortgage crisis, where two shiny-suited brokers brag about how many loans they’ve been producing — for big commissions — to unsuitable borrowers. “We call those loans ‘Dorothys’ ‘cause they’re magic,” grins the one in black. “No credit, no income, no problem: just tap your shoes together three times and say ‘There’s […]
Wells Fargo & Co reported another decline in monthly consumer account openings, indicating that the bank is having trouble rebuilding its reputation after a sales scandal. The bank agreed in September to pay regulators $185 million to settle charges that its staff opened as many as 2 million accounts without customers’ knowledge. Wells Fargo said on Friday consumer checking account openings fell 9 percent in November from […]
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: […]
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 […]
ABU DHABI // Forecasters warned the public not to venture into the sea until Monday owing to rough weather and strong winds. According to the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology, strong north-westerly winds will blow through the country from early Friday morning until Monday. Strong winds may pick up blowing dust and sand, reducing visibility on motorways. A significant fall in temperatures across most areas of […]
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 […]
By Henning Gloystein | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Oil prices were stable on Friday as evidence increased that producers in the Middle East were informing customers of upcoming supply cuts as part of a coordinated effort to drain a global glut. But since any production cuts will only hit markets early next year and Iraq is still raising sales to Asia, analysts at Goldman Sachs said that the price […]
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 […]
Submitted by Finian Cunningham via Strategic-Culture.org, The US and its terrorist-sponsoring partners are seeing their criminal regime-change project in ruins, as the Syrian army and its allies win a spectacular victory to retake the strategically important city of Aleppo. Western governments and their flunkies at the UN are cynically, perversely decrying a «meltdown of humanity». Closer to the truth is their own «meltdown of sanity». This is […]
It has been touted as one of the most exciting Dubai mega-projects of recent years and has now come to fruition. The $735m Dubai Water Canal — carved out of land between Business Bay and Jumeirah — opened to the public last month, creating a water-bound ‘mini-Manhattan’ that flows from Downtown Dubai to the ocean. The 3.2km-long canal is the final segment of the Dubai Creek extension, […]
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 […]
November 30, 2016 by: Joe Leahy in São Paulo Brazil’s economy recorded its seventh straight quarterly contraction between July and September, disappointing hopes the new government of president Michel Temer could engineer a quick turnround in the fortunes of Latin America’s biggest economy. The news on the economy, with gross domestic product contracting at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent during the third quarter, came after […]
A one-two punch of a surging US dollar and rising interest rates sent the price of gold tumbling to its lowest level since February on Thursday, hurting the shares of miners and spurring hefty liquidations of exchange traded funds that track the metal. The price of gold in New York fell as much as 1.8 per cent to $1,122 an ounce, as the dollar rose across the […]
