Iraqi fighter jets struck Isis positions in neighbouring Syria on Friday, in what officials said was retaliation for a spate of car bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad. The air strikes coincided with Iraq’s ground forces pushing deeper into the western half of Mosul and reaching the first residential districts. Iraq’s second city, a critical Isis stronghold split by the Tigris river, is divided between government forces […]
By Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The longest-serving U.S. diplomat warned against isolationism, protectionism and Russian aggression on Friday in a retirement speech implicitly criticizing some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies even as he urged officials to serve the White House loyally. Ambassador Dan Fried argued that since becoming a world power over a century ago, the United States had largely pursued an open, rules-based world, […]
About a month ago, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz decided to ‘take a stand’ in defiance of Trump’s immigration executive order and penned a message to the world vowing, among other things, to hire 10,000 refugees over the next 5 years and “build bridges, not walls, with Mexico”. Here are some excerpts from the politically charged message drafted by Schultz with “deep concern and a heavy heart”: I […]
European equity funds attracted their largest weekly inflows in more than a year as institutional investors bet on a recovery taking hold across the continent. Investors added $1.1bn to funds investing in European stocks in the seven days to February 22, a haul that nearly matched the inflows of the preceding four weeks combined, according to data from EPFR. This was despite outflows from dedicated French stock […]
By Marty Graham | SAN DIEGO SAN DIEGO Family members of an illegal immigrant who died in 2010 following a brutal encounter with federal border agents that was captured on videotape have agreed to settle their lawsuit against the U.S. government for $1 million, court documents show. Video footage of a U.S. Customs officer tasering Anastacio Rojas Hernandez at least four times while he lay on the […]
In this photo taken Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, Yvonne Felix wears eSight electronic glasses and looks around Union Square during a visit to San Francisco. The glasses enable the legally blind to see. Felix was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease after being hit by a car at the age of seven. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg) Jeff Regan was born with underdeveloped optic nerves and had spent most of his […]
PARIS French prosecutors on Friday appointed a magistrate to investigate allegations concerning presidential candidate Francois Fillon and his wife, over charges that his wife got large sums of money for work she may not have done. The prosecutor’s decision to open up a new stage in the case marks a blow for Fillon, whose status as favourite to win the presidency has faded since a newspaper broke […]
By Mica Rosenberg | NEW YORK NEW YORK A U.S. Department of Homeland Security plan to add more than 5,000 border enforcement agents will present logistical challenges and might be unnecessary, according to former government officials familiar with earlier pushes to accelerate border hiring. Three former top officials at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) told Reuters in interviews that ramping up hiring at the agency, as […]
Primary dealers have warned of obstacles to the US Treasury introducing very long-dated bonds, despite some early support for the plans. This week Steven Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, said his staff had begun to look into issuing US government debt with maturities of as long as 50 or 100 years. Such a move would be a historic shift in policy for the $14tn Treasury market, which has resisted […]
Ford has spent the last few years transforming itself from a car company into a technology and transportation company. Ford still wants to sell cars, but increasingly the company focuses on how those vehicles interact with city infrastructure, other vehicles, and the passengers themselves. One of the executives leading that imitative is Don Butler, Director of Connected Vehicles and Services at Ford. I spoke with […]
If you’ve read the latest headlines about Britain’s tech industry, you’d think the country hadn’t be rocked by the greatest political and economic uncertainty since the Second World War. Not only are UK startups raising record amounts of funding year on year, but tech giants like Amazon are investing and doubling down on the UK economy, as if the mood music was taken straight from a dance scene […]
By SOPHENG CHEANG, Associated Press PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia needs more than $400 million in aid to remove by 2025 all of the land mines that are a legacy of years of civil war, the country’s prime minister said Friday. Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a statement marking his nation’s Mine Awareness Day that the mines remain a threat and kill or maim nearly 100 […]
Transition effort led by nonprofit group For the transition, candidates set up separate nonprofit entities under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Those entities are permitted to accept contributions in increments of $5,000 or less, but because they also accept public money for transition expenses, must disclose the names of contributors to the public. That report, filed with the General Services Administration, was due Feb. 19. The […]
The outage highlighted a problem with OnHub and Wifi’s reliance on Google cloud services for network connectivity. Image: Josh Miller/CNET Google has apologized for annoying Google Wifi and OnHub customers after accidentally triggering a mass factory reset on the routers. A bunch of Wifi and OnHub owners panicked yesterday after discovering the devices were returned to a factory state, leaving owners offline despite the absence of any […]
The fact that we infer other people’s emotions based on their facial expressions isn’t entirely new. With that in mind, however, a pair of researchers from New York and Colorado have set out to investigate how exactly these expressions communicate so many complex mental and emotional states. How We Read Emotions Daniel H. Lee and Adam K. Anderson used photos of faces taken from databases and created average […]
The onset of the Trump era forced economists to confront their doubts about their usefulness to the public. They shared this ordeal with political forecasters, Democrats, logicians and journalists. Maybe we all deserved the anguish. Those economists who remain in a funk should nonetheless snap themselves out of it. One reason is that the sappy self-loathing economist is now embarrassingly cliché. Take it from a sappy self-loathing […]
By Balazs Koranyi | FRANKFURT FRANKFURT Devastated by the collapse of its iconic wine industry over a century ago, France may have inadvertently discovered the ideal way for central banks to aid an economy in crisis – open up the purse strings. The Great French Wine Blight, caused by an infestation of phylloxera aphids, laid waste to much of the French countryside in the second half of […]
Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV), a developer of large-scale solar power plants and part of Saudi-based Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, has signed a power purchase agreement for the Lilyvale Solar Farm in Queensland, Australia. The deal with Ergon Energy, the Queensland Government-owned electricity retailer, will see Ergon Energy purchase 100 percent of the electricity and all large scale renewable energy certificates (LRECs) generated by FRV’s 100MW Lilyvale Solar […]
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has confirmed that its new payments platform rollout is on schedule to begin before the end of the year. Addressing the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics on Friday, RBA Governor Philip Lowe said his organisation’s work on building the infrastructure behind the new payments platform is on schedule and currently undergoing industry testing. “Developments look on track to allow […]
Women with genital herpes infection early in pregnancy are twice as likely to bear a child with autism compared with other women. Autism Spectrum Disorder Findings of a new research released on Wednesday show that pregnant women with herpes simplex 2, the virus responsible for most cases of genital herpes infections had higher risk of giving birth to kids with autism spectrum disorder, a development condition marked […]
If you’ve been to Social by Heinz Beck at Waldorf Astoria Palm Jumeirah, then you’ll understand the value of the offer during Dubai Restaurant Week of a three-course meal here for Dh199. Beck, who’s at the helm of La Pergola — the only three Michelin-starred restaurant in Rome — has put his name and his signature dishes on Social’s menu in Dubai and it’s well worth a […]
Hotels in the UAE saw revenue and room rates drop during January but occupancy levels were boosted by strong performance in the smaller emirates of Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah, according to latest data from analysts STR. Average daily rates (ADR) across the UAE hospitality market fell by 8 percent last month to AED711.80 while revenue per available room (RevPAR) decreased by 7.5 percent to AED577.09, […]
Seniors taking over nine hours of sleep each night may be facing a higher risk of dementia in later years, a new study has warned. Boston University researchers found that the risk increased by nearly 2.5 times for those who saw themselves needing extra sleep per night, and the chances actually ballooned six times for those without a high school degree who, fairly recently, needed a shut-eye […]
That leaves many governments invested in vague hopes that such a settlement, however rickety or superficial, will somehow stop the metastasis of the Syrian crisis and ease fears of Islamic State terrorism — often conflated with concerns about ordinary Syrian refugees — that have fueled the rise of right-wing politicians. Photo Syrian refugees live in makeshift tent settlements in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Credit Diego Ibarra Sanchez for […]
