This piece originally appeared in Local Edition, our newsletter following the digital transformation of local news. Want to be part of the conversation? You can sign up here. What do you need to unlearn to stay in journalism? This week, two journalists named almost exactly the same thing. That’s not rare, but it struck me as interesting because they’re at such different points in their career. Here’s what they […]
A Boston Dynamics Spot robot—speakers at the TED conference believe in the future intelligent machines will help humans look after the elderly Intelligent machines of the future will help restore memory, mind your children, fetch your coffee and even care for aging parents. It will all be part of a brave new world of the not-so-distant future, in which innovative smart machines, rather than being the undoing […]
The boss of Etihad Airways, which owns 49 percent of troubled Italian airline Alitalia, said he deeply regretted a decision by Alitalia staff to reject a last-ditch restructuring deal, blocking a recapitalisation and sparking fears that the carrier may be grounded for good. The future of Alitalia was in doubt on Tuesday, with James Hogan, president and CEO of the Etihad Aviation Group and vice chairman of […]
By Manuel Mogato | MANILA MANILA Southeast Asian nations would adopt a softer than usual tone about South China Sea disputes at a leaders’ summit on Saturday in Manila, and exclude references to militarisation or island-building, according to a draft of the chairman’s statement. Although some Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders will express “serious concern” over the “escalation of activities” in the disputed sea, […]
Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog, “We don’t want a unified Korean peninsula … We [also] don’t want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb.” —Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs Our policy toward North Korea is not what most people think it is. We don’t want the North Koreans to go away. In fact, we like them […]
BEIJING The Chinese government said on Wednesday that a Taiwan rights activist detained on suspicion of endangering national security was in good health, and had reassured his family in a letter. The detention has put a strain on ties between Taiwan and China, which have cooled since Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took power last year, because she refuses to concede that the self-ruled island is part of […]
It was one of the most memorable book reviews of last year. As our critic pondered the English translation of Mohammad Rabie’s award-winning tale of a futuristic Egyptian dystopia, she concluded by saying that “reading Otared is, by and large, like having a hand grasping the back of your head, forcing you to look through photos from hell”. Seven months later, Rabie is not only familiar with […]
Government incentive programs — such as the investment tax credit (ITC) and California Solar Initiative (CSI — increased the number of commercial solar PV adoptions. Credit: Wang, Yu and Johnson One key goal for renewable energy in the United States is to promote the continued adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a clean energy workforce. Federal and state governments are […]
Archaeological finds made on an island near the capital in 1959 proved pivotal in defining and promoting the UAE’s relics and antiquities. Sheikh Zayed, the nation’s Founding Father, was one of the first to spot their importance. In the spring of 1959, the Ruler of Abu Dhabi at the time, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan, made one of several visits to an island 20 kilometres from his ancestral […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for April 26, 2017, including performances, festivals, art exhibitions, film screenings, health and fitness events, talks, classes, workshops and family fun. Ellen Fortini rounds up 10 things to do today in the UAE. Want to see your event listed here? Email us with the details and contact information at listings@thenational.ae newslide Dubai Performance Get tickets now […]
The public should be able to freely access the names of the people behind the ownership of assets and bank accounts in order to boost transparency and stop secret shell companies being used for criminal activity. This is the key contention of a host of submissions to Treasury as part of the federal government’s plans to increase transparency of the beneficial ownership of companies following the Panama Papers revelations. Play […]
Scientists have developed a workflow management system that addresses irreproducibility when analyzing large genomics datasets with computers. Nextflow contributes to establishing good scientific practices and provides an important framework for those research projects where the analysis of large datasets are used to take decisions, for example, in precision medicine. (via WSJ)
There is no love lost between French luxury house LVMH and its smaller rival Hermès despite the financial ties between them. In 2011, then-Hermès chief executive Patrick Thomas reacted with absolute fury when he learnt that LVMH had used derivatives to build up a stake in the company. In a notoriously crude statement, he said: “If you want to seduce a beautiful woman, you don’t start by […]
A demo booth at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, Tuesday, April 18, 2017. CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed recent violence on Facebook at the conference.(Photo: AP Photo/Noah Berger) SAN FRANCISCO — A distraught father in Thailand killed his 11-month-old child on Facebook Live, the latest in a string of disturbing incidents including suicide, torture and sexual assault that have reached millions on the live-streaming service, raising questions about Facebook’s […]
Spotify, the music streaming service that reached 50 million premium subscribers last month, is apparently looking to get into the hardware business. The company’s ambition to get into hardware, possibly through a wearable or a smart home device, was shown through a posted job listing that was spotted by blogger Dave Zatz. Job Listing Shows Spotify’s Hardware Ambitions According to Zatz, a trusted source indicated that Spotify will soon […]
As any good storyteller will tell you, the devil is in the details. Rose Balston, an art historian and lecturer who began a series of lectures this week covering the cultural connections between the Middle East and Europe in art across centuries, trains her audience eyes to hone in on aspects of artworks they might otherwise not notice. During the first part of her lecture she showed […]
SYDNEY Thousands of people in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Turkey and Britain attended dawn services on Tuesday to commemorate ANZAC Day, the Gallipoli landings during World War One and the Thai-Burma “death railway” of World War Two. The day marks the landing of thousands of troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey on April 25, 1915. The ill-fated […]
More than half of businesses in Singapore, Japan, and South Korea are among the least prepared for the upcoming European Union’s data privacy laws, with a quarter of their counterparts in Australia and the US fearing a shutdown as a result. With a year to go before the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would take effect on May 25, 2018, some 56 percent of Singapore-based companies had […]
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has had its last flyby of the moon Titan and is now on the course for its last set of 22 orbits around Saturn before it will make a deadly plummet into the ringed planet’s atmosphere. Last Close Encounter With Titan The spacecraft made its 127th close brush with Titan on April 21 just a little past 11:00 p.m. PDT when it passed at 608 […]
It took Frenchman Manuel Rocheman 10 albums and three decades of music-making before he was ready to unveil his first complete set of original tunes, on last year’s misTeRIO. It is the music of this 11th release that will form the basis of the jazz pianist’s concert at Sofitel Dubai Jumeirah Beach on Wednesday. “I always thought I needed a mix of my compositions and jazz standards, […]
It was kind of an accident. When Lisa Tobin arrived at The New York Times nearly seven months ago, she had a broad mission: Figure out what the newspaper was supposed to sound like. “I expected that we would come in and spend several months figuring that out and then starting to finalize strategy and figure out what our first-round programming would be,” said Tobin. That’s pretty […]
Earlier this month, a Tor node operator in Russia was arrested in a potential misunderstanding about the nature of the decentralized network. Dmitry Bogatov, a lecturer at the Moscow Finance and Law University, was taken into custody on April 6 and charged with organizing mass unrest, which was later appended with the more serious charge of incitement to terrorist activity. He remains in custody at this time. […]
DUBAI // A top celebrity cardiologist has urged people to ditch “white death” diets of bread, pasta, sugar and salt if the UAE is to tackle its rampant levels of diabetes. Bestselling Australian author Ross Walker, credited with changing attitudes to eating with his no-nonsense advice, on Monday told of the key health messages that could improve the lives of millions in the UAE. Health can be […]
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The Senate’s main investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is equipped with a much smaller staff than previous high-profile intelligence and scandal probes in Congress, which could potentially affect its progress, according to sources and a Reuters review of public records. With only seven staff members initially assigned to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-month-old investigation, […]
