Many artists have drawn inspiration from Abu Dhabi’s sweeping sand dunes. But when Anna Kurkova contemplated the desert, she saw an opportunity to make a statement about recycling and humanity’s duty of care for the environment. The reward for her vision was the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award, a coveted art prize named after the renowned husband-and-wife artist team who helped to redefine the boundaries of contemporary art […]
‘Burdensome new regulatory regime’ During the most recent fiscal year, the government entered into or modified contracts with nearly 70,000 companies or their subsidiaries to deliver hundreds of thousands of distinct goods and services. To figure out which companies to hire, agencies begin by posting solicitations, usually on FedBizOpps.gov, where registered contractors can sift through opportunities. When an agency puts out a solicitation, dozens of companies might […]
LIBYA: Libya has seized two foreign-flagged oil tankers and detained their crews for allegedly smuggling fuel after an hours-long gunbattle off the west coast, authorities said.Oil is Libya’s main natural resource, with reserves estimated at 48 billion barrels, the largest in Africa.Libya had an output capacity of about 1.6 million barrels per day before the 2011 armed uprising, but production has since slumped as rival forces battle […]
Authored by Bethany Bell Rome has been struggling to cope with a rubbish crisis and Austria has spare capacity at a waste-to-energy plant near Vienna. So a deal has been struck. The Italians are paying Austrian company EVN to dispose of up to 70,000 tonnes of Roman household refuse this year. The waste is transported by train through northern Italy, over the Alps and ends up at […]
A union representing 1,200 U.S. air maintenance workers at United Parcel Service Inc (UPS.N) turned up pressure on the company on Sunday to settle a three-year contract dispute, saying it would seek clearance to strike. The union is taking its grievances directly to UPS shareholders, running as an advertisement an open letter to David Abney, the company’s chief executive, ahead of a Thursday shareholders meeting. The letter, which has […]
Many discussions of digital transformation focus on marketing metrics such as page views, clicks, and even mentions in the press. Although marketing is important, this limited and unsophisticated view ignores underlying issues such as improving business speed, agility, and responsiveness to customers. Only by rethinking business models can we meaningfully gain benefit from digital transformation in departments across the company including operations, supply chain, manufacturing, and customer […]
Hedge funds have slashed their bets against the British pound to the lowest level since the Brexit vote in June last year, after the currency enjoyed its best month against the dollar in two years. The pared-back “short” bets, which would profit on a drop in the pound, followed Theresa May’s decision to call snap elections in June, a move that investors said would allow the ruling […]
By Ahmed Rasheed | BAGHDAD BAGHDAD A top Iraqi commander expects to dislodge Islamic State from Mosul in May despite resistance from militants in the densely populated Old City district. The battle should be completed “in a maximum of three weeks”, the Iraqi army’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, was quoted as saying by state-run newspaper al-Sabah on Sunday. A U.S.-led international coalition is providing […]
BEIRUT U.S.-backed militias said on Sunday they had made a big advance in Tabqa, a strategically vital town controlling Syria’s largest dam, in their campaign to drive Islamic State from its stronghold of Raqqa, 40km (25 miles) downstream. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias, will wait to assault Raqqa until it seizes Tabqa, its military officials have previously said, but it […]
By Sue-Lin Wong and Kevin Yao | BEIJING BEIJING Growth in China’s manufacturing sector slowed faster than expected in April, an official survey showed on Sunday, as producer price inflation cooled and policymakers’ efforts to reduce financial risks in the economy weighed on demand. The National Bureau of Statistics’ official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to a six-month low of 51.2 in April from March’s near five-year […]
Even before the first details of Nintendo’s Switch games console were unveiled to the world in early January, the industry knew it would be a cross between a home console and a handheld gaming machine and could sense an all-in bet coming. On Friday, behind the hoopla of the company’s latest game launch, analysts spotted the same tell: a giveaway sign of a company that desperately wants […]
By Ju-min Park and James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL South Korea said Washington had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the THAAD anti-missile system, days after U.S. President Donald Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1-billion system designed to defend against nuclear-armed North Korea. In a telephone call on Sunday, Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that […]
DUBAI // Experts want compulsory training for all pool attendants and lifesaving aids to be accessible at all community and hotel swimming pools. British swimming teacher Chris Kelly, a consultant working in schools across Dubai, said first-aid training and lifesaving skills for nannies would also improve safety. “In most pools, the doors are not often locked and they can be accessed easily. That in itself is a […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for April 28, 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 [email protected] newslide Abu Dhabi Craft market Attend […]
A new theoretical framework has been developed to identify computations that occupy the ‘quantum frontier’ – the boundary at which problems become impossible for today’s computers and can only be solved by a quantum computer. The team demonstrates that these computations can be performed with near-term, intermediate, quantum computers. (via WSJ)
In an important step toward endoscopic diagnosis of cancer, researchers have developed a handheld fiber optic probe that can be used to perform multiple nonlinear imaging techniques without the need for tissue staining. (via WSJ)
The police are investigating threatening letters sent to four Cabinet ministers under the name of the chairman of the Sungei Road flea market’s association, The Sunday Times understands. They include Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam. “The police confirm that reports have been lodged. “We are unable to comment further as investigations are ongoing,” the Singapore Police Force said in response to […]
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Friday, April 28 extending offshore oil and gas drilling to areas that had been off-limits. The move aims to increase domestic production, but it might not prove to be the best idea considering that industry demand for acreage has been rather low. The new executive order could expand offshore drilling to parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic oceans, […]
The news these days continues to be filled with reports that traditional stores are at last being sustainably displaced by fast growing online competitors. Startups in online shopping, media, travel, financial services, sharing economy, and finally even healthcare, have either invented popular new high-growth digital categories or are in the midst of successfully re-imagining the old ones in digital native terms. In the 2000s, the digital disruption […]
Combining digital and analog components in nonlinear, chaos-based integrated circuits can improve their computational power by enabling processing of a larger number of inputs, new research shows. (via WSJ)
ISTANBUL: A convoy of Turkish military vehicles has relocated to a base near the Syrian border as tensions with US-backed Kurdish militants escalate.Footage shot Friday night shows armored vehicles and personnel carriers on the road. Private Ihlas news agency reports they were moved to Sanliurfa province from Kilis in the west with the completion of Turkey’s cross-border operation in Syria and may be used against Syrian Kurdish […]
MOSCOW A U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defence systems in Romania and plans to place more defence systems in Poland violate an existing arms treaty, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania nearly a year ago and was planning to create another site in Poland, seeing it as vital to defend itself and […]
Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners, Back on March 10, the New York Fed’s attempt at real-time GDP forecasting predicted that the Q1 2017 estimate would be 3.2%. That would have qualified as another decent quarter, the second out of the past three and somewhat in keeping with “reflation.” As we know today, the advance figure calculated by the Commerce Department amounted to just 0.69% […]
It has a granite fountain and a bosque of shade trees. And to some rightwing Americans, the new headquarters of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a monument to all that went wrong under eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. The budget for the refurbishment of the Washington DC building, at about $363 a square foot, makes it more expensive than the Venetian hotel in Macau or […]
