Corporate speeches usually avoid talk of a “difficult and dark” past. But this month Mark Cutifani, head of Anglo American, defended the South African mining industry’s record on opening up ownership to the country’s black majority. With the government planning to shore up black participation in mining, the next few months are the most critical in the sector’s 150-year history, Mr Cutifani said. Many “still don’t understand” […]
Akamai has published its Q4 2016 State of the Internet/Security report As always, an interesting read and an opportunity to look at trends in attacks. Not all trends are up and to the right. As the report states, Q4 2016 was “the third consecutive quarter where we noticed a decrease in the number of attack triggers”. Still, “the overall 2016 attack count was up 4% as compared […]
Should we try to time the market? And has the boom in passive investments brought any problems in its wake? The problems are linked and urgent. The move from traditional actively managed funds to passive indexed funds, which aim merely to track and index and reduce costs, continues to intensify. Meanwhile, if ever there was a point when it might seem right to time the market, and […]
By Alexandra Alper and Noe Torres | MEXICO CITY MEXICO CITY Mexico on Thursday expressed “worry and irritation” about U.S. policies to two of President Donald Trump’s top envoys, giving a chilly reply to the new administration’s hard line on immigration, trade and security. Comments by Trump about a “military operation” to deport criminals added to the tense atmosphere, and prompted a clarification from Homeland Security chief […]
A HoloLens display visualization Microsoft “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland before you,” assert modernized lyrics of The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond. The 176 year-old song is a metaphor for the state of virtual reality. Scotland represents a promised land of market leadership, Oculus and HTC, with their pricey high-end products, are taking the high road, […]
How can animals that feed mostly on sugar embark on migrations spanning continents? What looked like flawed scientific data led to an unexpected discovery, thanks to the tenacity of a group of biologists. Source
Many fear electronic voting machines can be hacked and tampered with. Image: iStock The hacking campaign around the US presidential election, cyberattacks against Ukrain’s power grid, and even the internet crippling Mirai botnet DDoS attack all demonstrate how cyberattacks have grown to threaten the very fabric of society itself, NATO has warned. Citing the impact of high profile incidents like these, Jamie Shea, deputy assistant secretary general […]
By Stephanie Nebehay | GENEVA GENEVA The trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of the ousted Libyan leader sentenced to death in absentia, did not meet international standards and he should face murder charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations said on Tuesday. Since his father’s toppling in 2011, Saif has been held in Zintan, a mountainous western region, by one of the […]
For President Trump, the designation debate is an election promise made good. He has made no bones about taking an approach to the Middle East that is narrowly focused on counterterrorism, and that plays to domestic supporters who view all Islamist movements — or even all Muslims — as potentially hostile. Continue reading the main story In much of the Middle East, though, the rapid pace and […]
Photo The Iranian city of Ahvaz during a sandstorm on Saturday. Rain has turned the dust there into mud, which caused power stations to stop working. Credit Morteza Jaberian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images TEHRAN — Days of protests against dust storms, power outages and government mismanagement in one of Iran’s most oil-rich cities subsided on Sunday after security forces declared all demonstrations illegal. Residents of Ahvaz, a […]
Here are the questions the FT Markets team will be pondering this week: What do retail flows mean? Money flows are widely watched but, like anything in markets, there is signal and then there is noise. Investors poured money into global stock funds last week, one when US stock markets set fresh records, and US long-only equity funds received the first net inflow of cash ($0.5bn) in […]
Deleted your Yahoo account? Think again. Several Yahoo users, who last year decided to leave the service, told us that their accounts remained open for weeks or months after the company said they would be closed. News broke in September of a massive state-sponsored cyberattack that led to the theft of 500 million records — then thought to be the largest theft of records in history. That […]
Estimated failure rates from single event upsets at the transistor, integrated circuit and device level for the last three semiconductor architectures. Credit: Bharat Bhuva, Vanderbilt University You may not realize it but alien subatomic particles raining down from outer space are wreaking low-grade havoc on your smartphones, computers and other personal electronic devices. When your computer crashes and you get the dreaded blue screen or your smartphone […]
The Xen Project has requested feedback from the community in thrashing out new disclosure guidelines which may only reveal the most serious vulnerabilities affecting the hypervisor. The Xen Project is a group which brings together developers from the open-source community for the purpose of the Xen Project hypervisor, microkernel-based software which allows users to utilize vitualization technologies. As with any software, bugs and vulnerabilities will emerge during […]
Fences Director: Denzel Washington Stars: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Stephen Henderson Three stars Denzel Washington stars in and directs this adaptation of August Wilson’s award-winning play, the sixth in his acclaimed 10-part Pittsburgh Cycle, each of which deals with a different decade of the 20th century from the black American perspective. Fences takes place in the 1950s. Washington starred as 50-something binman Troy in a 2010 New […]
Call me old-fashioned, but I always prefer phone calls over texts. They somehow have a different level of connection when it comes to communication. You can actually tell if the person you’re talking to is excited, happy, sad or even bored with what you’re saying. And yet this may be the exact reason why people dislike phone calls these days – the fear of people’s reactions. There’s […]
A few days before the retreat, I met up with the man who, perhaps more than any other figure in the conservative movement, had maneuvered the party toward complete and unbending opposition to Obamacare: Michael Needham of the Heritage Foundation. Needham, 35, is the chief executive of Heritage Action for America, a feral cur of a lobbying organization established by the venerable conservative think tank in 2010 […]
Jeb Hensarling did not hold back last week, when asked on CNBC about the flaws of Dodd-Frank. “It clogs the arteries of capitalism in our system. It hurts working people. It hurts consumers. It needs to go,” said the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, about the signature piece of financial regulation of the Obama era. “You can’t get a healthy economy as long as you […]
Researchers from North Carolina State University, Boston University and George Mason University have developed a Bitcoin-compatible system that could make it significantly more difficult for observers to identify or track the parties involved in any given Bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin was initially conceived as a way for people to exchange money anonymously. But then it was discovered that anyone could track all Bitcoin transactions and often identify the […]
Wikimedia Commons The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been called a “toothless dragon” in the past when it comes to medical device security, but one security expert believes the FDA is only one of many impotent agencies that need to get their act together. The security of our medical devices, including pacemakers, embedded cardiac devices, and insulin pumps have come under scrutiny as of late. […]
Microsoft is continuing to beef up its security offerings across Windows 10, SQL Server, Office, and Azure and is using next week’s RSA conference to highlight its latest incremental updates. Windows Hello, Microsoft’s authentication service meant to replace passwords, already works with Azure Active Directory and Azure Active Directory Connect. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, users also will be able to use Windows Hello in on-premises […]
WASHINGTON/ANKARA Instead of tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, the Trump administration is exploring how to tighten its enforcement and renegotiate key terms, but it may prove impossible to get other major powers and Iran to consider revising the agreement. Under the 2015 accord between Tehran and six world powers, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from some U.S., European and U.N. […]
Researchers recently worked with The Boeing Company to establish a new nondestructive evaluation laboratory that uses millimeter wave technology to improve the detection of potential flaws in coatings, surfaces and materials. (via WSJ)
Why haven’t more golfers breezed through the door that Geiberger cracked open? Why does there remain, as Phil Mickelson described it, “a Berlin Wall barrier” between a 60 and a 59? Geoff Ogilvy of Australia, a former United States Open champion, said: “Running is constant. A mile is always a mile, but every golf course is different, and the same golf course is different every day.” Ogilvy, […]
