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 […]
Mr. Mater is now publishing these photos, and more than 600 others, in a book that aims to showcase often-hidden aspects of the holy city. Continue reading the main story The book, “Desert of Pharan: Unofficial Histories Behind the Mass Expansion of Mecca,” provides an unvarnished photographic catalog of the city: labor camps for foreign workers; slums where undocumented residents live; aerial views of scores of construction […]
By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. employers boosted hiring in November and the unemployment rate dropped to a more than nine-year low of 4.6 percent, making it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 178,000 jobs last month after increasing by 142,000 in October, the Labor Department said on Friday. The solid employment gains likely reflect […]
December 2, 2016 by: Maggie Fick, West Africa correspondent Voters in the tiny nation of Gambia appear to have unseated their president of more than two decades, who had pledged to rule for “a billion years”, an unexpected result after a year of elections that have cast doubt on the state of democracy in Africa. The Gambian electoral commission on Friday declared that Adama Barrow, the main […]
By Ahmed Elumami | TRIPOLI TRIPOLI Rival armed factions battled overnight and into Friday in the worst outbreak of fighting in the Libyan capital Tripoli for more than a year. Black smoke rose into the sky and explosions reverberated around the Abu Salim and Hadba districts, and an eyewitness said a major road nearby had been blocked off with shipping containers. Gunfire echoed across several other neighbourhoods. […]
While one can say that Motorola’s MotoMods feature is yet to take off, the fact remains that it is one of the most compelling reasons to buy a Moto Z, the company’s flagship device. The Lenovo-owned company has been trying to aggressively push it of late and its latest move involves the announcement of two new modules. These include Incipio’s Car Dock and Mophie‘s Juice Pack mods. […]
By Terray Sylvester and Alicia Underlee Nelson | CANNON BALL/WEST FARGO, N.D. CANNON BALL/WEST FARGO, N.D. More than 2,000 U.S. military veterans are expected to join a protest at a camp in North Dakota on Friday where thousands of activists, braving frigid conditions, are demonstrating against a pipeline project near a Native American reservation. Veterans Stand for Standing Rock will spend the day building a barracks at […]
Photo The fully-restored 3,800-year-old jug with a human statue that resembles Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker,” which was found in Yehud, Israel. Credit Israel Antiquities Authority/Clara Amit European Pressphoto Agency Reading this article right now, you might resemble this 3,800-year old statue resting its cheek upon its hand. It’s a common pose for computer browsing, but a rare sight in Bronze Age pottery. A group of high […]
The Cohort is Poynter’s bi-monthly newsletter about women kicking ass in digital media. Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I caught up on several post-election podcasts. Nearly all of the conversations veered towards self-care. From Another Round’s Heben Nigatu and Bim Adewunmi to Call Your Girlfriend’s Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, the women I listened to checked in with each other and offered up their go-tos for feeling good. […]
By Anshuman Daga and Marius Zaharia | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Singapore’s central bank imposed penalties on the local units of U.K.-based Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and private bank Coutts for money laundering breaches related to Malaysia’s scandal-tainted 1MDB fund and said it was nearing the end of its probes. The penalties – of S$5.2 million ($3.65 million) and S$2.4 million, respectively – were the latest punitive measures taken by […]
ABU DHABI // When John Schneider-Merck landed in the UAE in 1976, he immediately saw it as a country of opportunity. Mr Schneider-Merk was 35 years old when he arrived from Germany to oversee a family business. The business would later shut down, but instead of heading home, he decided to stay and start his own business. “I didn’t know Dubai at all. I looked at the […]
MANILA China’s coastguard rescued two Filipino fishermen from a capsized boat near a disputed South China Sea shoal on Friday, underlining the fast thawing of ties between two countries long at odds over sovereignty. A Philippine coastguard vessel navigated choppy waters to collect the two fishermen from the Chinese ship, in what would be the first time in four years both countries’ coastguards were in close proximity […]
In late July, Moussa Aksar, the director of Niger’s L’Évènement newspaper, answered his phone and heard a familiar voice warning him that he was, once again, in danger. “Be careful,” a friendly source told Aksar. “Look out for yourself and be careful what you say on the phone.” Aksar had just published Niger’s first exposé from the Panama Papers, the investigation based on a leak of documents […]
There aren’t very many tourists on my flight from New York to Kingston – it’s mostly Jamaicans going home. The tourists usually favour the trip to Montego Bay, from where they’re immediately shuttled into carefully cloistered resorts and served a jolly medley of reggae and other clichés of island life along with the necessary TVs, ATMs, fast-food chains, souvenir shops and multiple pools. Many travellers who visit […]
A terrorist cell formed by a group seeking recognition from the ISIS terror network is already operating and planning a big attack in Manila. This comes as the Philippine capital was placed on its highest terror alert for the first time in 16 years following the arrest of two alleged militants over a makeshift bomb planted near the US Embassy on Monday. A senior police officer, who […]
It can be argued that one of the most anticipated Nintendo titles for 2017 is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ahead of the game’s somewhat vague 2017 release, a new trailer which hinted at a beloved character was shown during the preshow of the 2016 Game Awards, which kicked off Thursday night. A Brief Appearance From Zelda The new trailer showed off a lot of […]
Three weeks after India invalidated its largest bank notes overnight, cash shortages are choking the world’s fastest-growing large economy. While it is too soon for much of the pain to be read from broad economic indicators—in India, even monthly ones, such as industrial output, are released with considerable lag—early signs are coming in. Some of them imply the disruption might not be as deep, or as long-lasting, […]
Photo Poulet à la Normande Credit Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Jerrie-Joy. “Ah, they are not rising!” Marianne Tober cried, in a near panic over her gougères. They weren’t just cheese puffs; they were her Burgundian birthright, well-salted dairy fat given airy form, and her mother’s recipe had never failed her before. But it was true: The gougères […]
Fully operational since July, Electrochaea’s one-megawatt BioCat facility near Copenhagen converts excess electrical power from wind turbines and waste CO2 from the neighboring water treatment plant into methane for the natural-gas grid. Credit: Ronnie Ranch Hedegaard, courtesy of Electrochaea One of the biggest challenges to wider adoption of wind and solar power is how to store the excess energy they often produce. A technology developed at the […]
|By Arabian Post Staff| Reporters have faced consequences both in nations where media crackdowns are common and also in nations with reputations for high levels of press freedom In late July, Moussa Aksar, the director of Niger’s L’Évènement newspaper, answered his phone and heard a familiar voice warning him that he was, once again, in danger. “Be careful,” a friendly source told Aksar. “Look out for yourself and be careful […]
Egypt’s largest listed lender CIB sold a near-72 percent stake in its investment banking arm CI Capital to Egyptian and Gulf investors on Thursday, as part of a move to shed subsidiaries and focus on core actives. Commercial International Bank’s announcement of the deal came a day after it confirmed it was in talks to sell a majority stake in CI Capital, which banking sources say is […]
Probability matrices in MMSBM. Credit: Antonia Godoy-Lorite et al. PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.1606316113 The internet is rife with recommendation systems, suggesting movies you should watch or people you should date. These systems are tuned to match people with items, based on the assumption that similar people buy similar things and have similar preferences. In other words, an algorithm predicts which items you will like based only on your, and […]
