The New York Times on Friday joined The Associated Press and other news organizations in branding the alt-right as a movement with clear racist motives. In a memo to newsroom staffers, New York Times Standards Editor Phil Corbett ruled that the alt-right is a “racist, far-right fringe movement” that should be described in those terms when it appears in an article: Let’s avoid using ‘alt-right’ in isolation, […]
Researchers have developed a new method for producing hydrogen, which is fast, irreversible, and takes place at much lower temperature using less energy. This innovation is expected to contribute to the spread of fuel cell systems for automobiles and homes. (via WSJ)
Businesses operating in GCC countries should brace themselves for further government action to raise non-oil revenues, according to a new ICAEW report. The accountancy and finance body said that given the weak outlook for oil prices, imposing tax measures, along with subsidy reforms, spending cuts, and a freeze on public sector recruitment and pay, will help to close the fiscal gap. Its Economic Insight: Middle East Q4 […]
Authored by William Blum, originally posted at Strategic-Culture.org, On November 16, at a State Department press briefing, department spokesperson John Kirby was having one of his frequent adversarial dialogues with Gayane Chichakyan, a reporter for RT (Russia Today); this time concerning U.S. charges of Russia bombing hospitals in Syria and blocking the U.N. from delivering aid to the trapped population. When Chichakyan asked for some detail about […]
Frequent tornadoes and thunderstorms that kill people and destroy property have become a matter of grave concern. In the United States alone, the insured losses caused by severe thunderstorms have been put at $8.5 billion from the period between January to June 2016. A new study has tried a linkage between climate change and the increasing incidents of tornadoes. Calling for a deeper study on some meteorological factors, […]
All of a sudden, it’s executive pay time. Here is The Purposeful Company, the product of a steering group of seven grandees, a task force of nine more, plus a dozen contributors, together demonstrating that those getting today’s executive pay have nothing useful to say on the subject, as Neil Austin forcefully pointed out on our letters page this week. This followed an earlier suggestion that incoming […]
Photo Residents whose home was destroyed by a fire in the Jewish settlement of Halamish in the West Bank. Credit Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images NATAF, Israel — When Rama’s Kitchen, an earthy and much-loved restaurant in the small Israeli village of Nataf, was burned last week by one of the wildfires that raged in the area, the last civilians who stayed to fight the blaze […]
First, write out the numbers one to 100 in 10 rows. Cross out the one. Then circle the two, and cross out all of the multiples of two. Circle the three, and do likewise. Follow those instructions, and you’ve just completed the first three steps of an algorithm, and an incredibly ancient one. Twenty-three centuries ago, Eratosthenes was sat in the great library of Alexandria, using this […]
DirecTV Now reestablishes the channel paradigm in a system built for apps Graduations are often accompanied by proclamations. Such was the case for Apple TV when Apple’s former hobby became a full-fledged OS vessel as Tim Cook proclaimed, “the future of TV is apps.” The prediction invited skepticism for many reasons. A year earlier, Google had made its own run at app TV with Android TV, which […]
Spending more time in the great outdoors early in life offers some form of protection against visual problems later in adulthood. Findings of a new study have revealed that additional exposure to sunlight can help ward off nearsightedness later in life. For the new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association – Opthalmology, Katie Williams, from King’s College London, and colleagues involved 371 individuals with […]
Europe’s financial markets are bracing for Italy to reject the government’s constitutional reforms in Sunday’s referendum, with investors warning that an emphatic No vote risks a sharp sell-off in Italian assets. Although there has not been panic ahead of the vote, there are signs of some nerves among money managers and traders whose attention in recent weeks has been dominated by the reflation trade unleashed by Donald […]
SANA, Yemen — The Houthi movement and its allies formed a new government in Yemen on Monday, a surprise that angered their Saudi-backed rivals and complicated United Nations efforts to end a conflict that has ravaged the Arab world’s poorest country for much of the past two years. The announcement of the new government, reported by the Houthi-run state television and Saba news agency, said it was […]
Disaffected Hillary snowflakes at colleges and universities all around the country, many of whom surely cried themselves to sleep last night, woke up this morning to some of the best news they’ve received in weeks. According to a new study by the University of New Hampshire Carsey School of Public Policy, white people are dying off faster than ever in the U.S. Moreover, the biggest declines are […]
SHARJAH // Hundreds of residents decorated their cars and played traditional Emirati songs while roaming the streets of Sharjah to celebrate National Day. Naser Hammad, 39, from Al Dhaid, said that many people, Emiratis and residents alike, wait for this day to come together and celebrate the union. “It’s a day to celebrate the progress of this great nation, which is home to hundreds of nationalities all […]
This week was full of Big Data news, including new releases, a brand new product, a new acquisition and an update to one of the major Hadoop distros. Let’s get a survey of what was announced and then see if we can’t draw a conclusion or two. A big driver for much of the news was this week’s Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference, providing an opportunity for […]
At a conference on investing in non-performing loans in Milan last week, attendees were asked to vote on whether an Italian government scheme to help sell the debt was the “best way forward”. Just 3 per cent agreed. The response follows a year of wrangling over proposals to tackle the €360bn of problematic loans plaguing the balance sheets of Italian banks, which have lost half their stock […]
Everyone wants to know when fully self-driving cars will be ready for the road. The companies developing the technology usually give a timeline of several years to decades away. Automotive parts manufacturer Delphi and Mobileye are no different, and during a media roundtable this week in San Francisco, Delphi’s VP of services, Glen DeVos, envisioned a long-term timeframe for the widespread use of the technology. […]
Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz’s decision to step down is unlikely to hamper growth at the world’s biggest coffee chain as his successor Kevin Johnson is well suited to take the helm, analysts said. Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Thursday that Schultz would step down as CEO on April 3 to focus on new high-end coffee shops, handing the top job to Chief Operating Officer Johnson, a […]
The notion of machine-powered facial recognition is one that predates today’s actual technology for it by many years, thanks to robot POV shots from sci-fi films such as The Terminator and Robocop. But while many advances have been made, facial recognition software is far from infallible, as researchers from Carnegie Mellon University recently found. Here are the details from a report in Quartz: Researchers showed they could […]
Credit: Yale University On the wall of Aaron Dollar’s office is a poster for R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play that gave us the word “robot.” The story ends with the nominal robots seizing control of the factory of their origin and then wiping out nearly all of humanity. Dollar, fortunately, has something more cheerful in mind for the future of human-robot relations. He sees […]
By Alastair Macdonald | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS Islamic State will attack Europe again, security chiefs warned on Friday, and may add car bombs, cyber and chemical warfare to its local arsenal as European militants drift home after reverses in Syria and Iraq. Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, said it was impossible to know for sure how many militants were already in Europe plotting. A report […]
Fitch Ratings-Moscow/London-01 December 2016 OPEC’s agreement to cut production by 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, and the potential agreement to cut with non-OPEC countries, should help accelerate market re-balancing and increases the chances of more rapid oil price recovery than previously expected, says Fitch Ratings. But implementation risks remain, including OPEC’s adherence to the agreement and the willingness of other participants, notably Russia, to co-operate […]
ABU DHABI // “Building nations is not complete without safeguarding heritage,” Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed told the Safeguarding Cultural Heritage Conference in the capital on Friday. The deputy chairman of Abu Dhabi Executive Council was addressing the first day of the conference, where attendees heard reports of past atrocities as a prompt to forging meaningful outcomes for the future. The conference concludes Saturday, with the adoption of […]
When Dala Farouki Kakos was a child, her parents invested in three Syrian chests, with matching mirrors, in the traditional sadaf style – on the understanding that they would be passed on to Kakos and her two siblings once they were grown up and had homes of their own. Beautifully embellished with mother of pearl, Kakos’s set has accompanied her on her travels around the world, and […]
