California has long been a breeding ground for innovation and has fostered pioneering tech companies ranging from Disney to Apple. But in terms of self-driving cars—and based on several recent developments—a much more conservative Michigan is taking the pole position in nurturing the technology. Michigan and particularly the Detroit area is an ideal incubator for autonomous technology since it’s the center of the automotive universe […]
Newspapers reach nearly seven in 10 Americans in any given month, according to a new report from the ratings agency Nielsen. The report, drawn from a Nielsen Scarborough study, found that “more than 169 million adults in the U.S. read a newspaper in a month — whether it be in print, on a website or via mobile app.” Notably, more than half of monthly newspaper readers are reading […]
PARIS French telecoms boss Stephane Richard was sharply criticized by one of the judges and by a witness during the negligence trial of IMF chief Christine Lagarde in Paris this week. Richard, the chief executive of Orange (ORAN.PA), is a target of investigators in a related inquiry which has yet to conclude. He was Lagarde’s chief of staff when, as French finance minister, she approved a payout […]
2016 is definitely a memorable year for various reasons, but Google’s latest compilation of “Year in Search” reveals that much of the things that made the year memorable were because of huge losses. Not only for those in the United States but for everyone around the globe. The year marked losses due to disease, politics, and terrorism, and issues being searched about often divided the world as […]
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 […]
Memories of Home Two weeks later, Mrs. Mohammad and her two daughters were propelled into a local Walmart by Bayan’s sheer force of will. She longed for a pair of sparkly purple sneakers, and begged, nagged and nearly cried until her mother agreed. As they navigated the aisles, mother and daughters looked like members of two different families. Mrs. Mohammad wore her head scarf, neck-to-toe gown and […]
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 […]
By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. homebuilding fell more than expected in November, tumbling from a nine-year high as construction activity declined broadly, the latest sign of slower economic growth in the fourth quarter. But the housing market remains on solid ground, with Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showing permits for the future construction of single-family homes, the biggest segment of the market, rising to […]
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 […]
CAIRO Osama bin Laden’s son Omar was refused entry to Egypt on Saturday, airport sources said, giving no reason why his name was on a list of people banned from the country. Omar, 34, Osama bin Laden’s fourth-eldest son, was travelling with his British wife Zaina al Sabah from Doha, and they asked to be sent to Turkey, the sources said. The couple, who lived in Egypt […]
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 […]
Ghost sharks, officially called chimaeras, have been living in the deep sea swimming at great depths of about a mile and half below the ocean long before the time of the dinosaurs. These prehistoric marine creatures, however, are rarely seen and scientists know little about them. Now, the world has a chance to see this rare deep-sea shark as a video of this creature has finally been […]
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 […]
Where there was discord, Donald Trump has remarkably brought harmony. He has brought peace between the markets and Janet Yellen, as traders at last appear to believe her forecast for interest rates over the next year. The Federal Reserve says it intends to raise rates three times next year, and the market implicitly, through Fed Funds futures, puts the chance of this happening at almost exactly 50 […]
CAIRO: Growing up in Egypt, Mina and other Copts remember all too well the anti-Christian slurs they used to hear at school and on the street.Once, while playing football, a Muslim youth snatched Mina’s necklace and crucifix and stomped on it.“I won’t forget that day,” said Mina, now in his 30s.Egypt is now trying to come to terms with the kind of religious bigotry behind a December […]
Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog, On Thursday, December 1st, Yasmin Seweid was allegedly assaulted by Trump supporters in NYC. According to BuzzFeed and the NY Daily News, the attack took place at the uptown 6 train stop at 23rd Street in midtown Manhattan. The assaliants allegedly called Seweid a terrorist, broke her bag strap, followed her when she tried to get away from them, […]
Artificial intelligence and neuroscience experts have taken inspiration from the human brain in creating a new ‘deep learning’ method that enables computers to learn about the visual world largely on their own, much as human babies do. (via WSJ)
On April 6, 2009, an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale hit the Italian city of L’Aquila. It killed more than 300 people, injured 1,500 and wreaked enough destruction to force 65,000 to abandon their homes, “politics and corruption” having led to the “poor enforcement” of essential laws of what could have been life- and home-saving anti-earthquake construction in many buildings. This real-life […]
Earlier in the day, Kaler said in a statement that the suspensions were the result of an “Athletics Department decision based on values” — and not a direct consequence of the 10 players’ violation of the university’s code of conduct. Continue reading the main story “A bowl game is a wonderful reward for an excellent football season,” Kaler said. “It is my hope that our eligible football […]
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, […]
By James Oliphant and Emily Stephenson | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON With more than 20 nominees now selected, Donald Trump’s cabinet appears much like the president-elect himself: mostly older, white males, many of them wealthy, who see themselves as risk-takers and deal-makers and prize action over deliberation. Trump, who says Washington is “broken” and controlled by special interests, has largely eschewed technocrats with long government experience. Instead, he has […]
