A lead-alloy pilgrim badge found in the mud near London Bridge in 1982 shows John Schorne grasping the bat-winged Devil Mudlarks and enthusiasts with metal‑detectors sometimes turn up little scraps of lead, fretted and bent at the edges, perhaps with a face recognisable and not much else. These can end up in the scrap bucket, but with luck they add to the growing scholarly knowledge of pilgrims’ […]
The next generation of Google’s Android operating system will have data encryption turned on by default, according to The Washington Post. This move puts Google in the same company as Apple, which this week unveiled a new privacy strategy that makes it harder for anyone but an iPhone’s owner to access content on such devices. Default encryption for Android and iOS essentially takes Google and Apple out […]
The e-borders system, which is supposed to stop a person coming to the UK if they have previously been deported or excluded from the country, has failed to intercept a single individual despite a £500 million IT project Photo: Reuters The disclosure that the chief suspect in the case of the missing schoolgirl Alice Gross is a convicted Latvian killer who should not have been in the country […]
City skyscrapers stand on the waterfront seen from a construction site of residential apartments on Palm Jumeirah artificial island in Dubai. Bloomberg News A rebounding Dubai property market has caught everyone’s attention again. Following a colossal crash in property prices in the wake of the financial crisis, not many had expected a recovery so soon afterwards, or so swiftly. The total amount invested in the emirate’s property […]
Ortolans are trapped and put, alive, into a vat of Armagnac before they are cooked Photo: MaxPPP The customary way of eating ortolan, a delicate songbird, involves the diner covering his or her head with a large napkin. Tradition dictates that this is to shield – from God’s eyes – the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act. But if a clutch of leading French chefs have […]
The start of the United Arab Emirates’ first consumer credit-rating bureau last week will help banks better deal with bad loans six years after one of the world’s worst property crashes. “Banks will intensify their analysis of their existing portfolios,” Marwan Ahmad Lutfi, chief executive officer of the Al Etihad Credit Bureau said in an interview in Dubai today. The reports will allow banks to decide how […]
As PayPal girds up to go after a big new rival in the online payment arena, it’s doing so by taking shots at that competitor’s security track record. Not long after Apple unveiled Apple Pay, its new contactless payment system, PayPal took out a newspaper advertisement slamming the new service. Apple Pay, suggests the ad, is no more safe than a selfie in the iCloud, making reference […]
Finance Minister Hani Dimian at the the Euromoney Conference in Cairo. Reuters Such is the level of confidence of Egypt’s finance minister in his country’s economic turnaround that he advises prospective investors to move quickly because they will be treated on a “first come, first served” basis. Some of Hany Kadry Dimian’s optimism is certainly warranted: Egypt’s GDP growth is gradually picking up and the economy is […]
‘Yes’ supporters demonstrate outside BBC Scotland’s headquarters in Glasgow, calling for the sacking of the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson Photo: Rex Features The significance of tomorrow’s referendum on Scottish independence is impossible to exaggerate. Scots will be faced with a choice whose consequences will echo down the ages – namely, whether to break apart a Union that has stood for more than 300 years, and instead become […]
A rush by Dubai’s retail investors to take part in the initial public offer of Emaar Properties’ malls unit put pressure on the emirate’s stock market on Tuesday, while successful fund-raising for the Suez Canal expansion lifted stocks in Egypt. Emaar said late on Monday that institutional investors had committed to buying all the shares offered to them in the flotation of its shopping malls business, only […]
A new solid state drive (SSD) from Micron Technology promises to be the company’s highest performing drive to date. The M600 SATA SSD, shown here, will boast improved power efficiency, better performance, and increased durability and lifespan. The drive also comes with 256-bit hardware encryption and will be available with capacities ranging from 128 GB to 1 TB. The new drive is being positioned on the high-end […]
ANKARA, Turkey — Having spent most of his youth as a drug addict in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Turkey’s capital, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group. After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto […]
By Elzio Barreto, Fiona Lau and Liana B. Baker HONG KONG/NEW YORK Tue Sep 16, 2014 11:06am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files HONG KONG/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd raised the price range on its initial public offering to $66 to $68 on Monday, reflecting strong demand from investors for the year’s […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said the IPO of its shopping malls business unit has been sold out to institutional investors on the first day itself. The leading developer aiming to raise as much as AED 5.8 billion ($1.58 billion) from the offer of shares in Emaar Malls Group (EMG), which is expected to be the Gulf’s biggest stock sale since 2008. On offer are 2 billion […]
The National Security Agency (NSA) is hacking into corporate servers and attacking global ISPs as part of its effort to map off the entire Internet according to a report Sunday in Der Spiegel, a German daily, citing new documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agency is also placing under surveillance the CEOs and other employees at telecom companies it considers vital to the infrastructure […]
|By TAP Staff| Dubai added to its financial market profile when Bank of America-Merrill Lynch announced on Monday it was moving its head of frontier markets research to the city. The move reflects the bank’s plan to take advantage of growing investor interest in the Gulf and surrounding region. Global firms have been strengthening their presence in the wake of surging stock markets, index upgrades and most […]
Mojang, the small Swedish firm behind the wildly popular video game Minecraft, is being acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. The sale is set to be closed late this year, with the acquisition expected to be break-even in fiscal year 2015. One of Mojang’s founders, Markus Persson — known as “Notch” — said in a post on his personal blog on Monday that he would be leaving […]
By Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Tommy Wilkes NEW DELHI/MUMBAI Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:12pm IST 1 of 4. Visitors look at Android One Based mobiles after its launch in New Delhi September 15, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – Google Inc(GOOGL.O) launched in India on Monday a $105 smartphone, the first device from its “Android One” initiative which is aimed at boosting sales in key emerging […]
KKR ‘s Samie says the key challenges in the region are valuations, regulations and issues with minority ownership. Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal KKR & Co. has been in the Middle East and North Africa since 2008. In what could be one of the largest buyout deals ever in the region, the New York-based private equity giant is jointly bidding for Kuwait’s Americana. The Wall […]
|By TAP Staff| Emaar Properties said it’s seeking to raise as much as $1.58 billion from the initial public offering of its malls unit in the UAE’s biggest IPO since 2007. Emaar Malls Group PJSC plans to sell 2 billion of its founders’ shares, or about 15 percent of its equity, in a price range of 2.5 dirhams to 2.9 dirhams apiece, according to a company statement […]
|By TAP Staff| Just over a year ago, China’s Xiaomi was little more than a mid-sized smartphone-maker with an odd name (Xiaomi means “millet”), trailing household brands such as Samsung, Lenovo, Coolpad and others. During the first six months of 2014, however, this four-year old company sold 26m smartphones, propelling it to pole position in the Chinese market. Next year, Lei Jun, its founder and CEO, expects […]
Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers Photo: AP In the wake of David Haines’ beheading, we have republished this piece explaining why Isil carry out their atrocities As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see […]
Jeremy Paxman, who is a quarter Scot, would have like a say in the future of the Union Photo: PA/BBC On Thursday, the English will discover what the Scots really think of them. Like the final row in a troubled marriage, it could be the event that serves to separate those we were once told God had joined together. The decision is not for those of us who […]
President Obama on Wednesday in Washington. Mr. Obama says he is aware of the “political price” he pays for being deliberate. By PETER BAKER September 13, 2014 WASHINGTON — Just hours before announcing an escalated campaign against Islamic extremists last week, President Obama privately reflected on another time when a president weighed military action in the Middle East — the frenzied weeks leading up to the American invasion of […]
