BAGHDAD — As celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan stretched past midnight into Sunday in central Baghdad, where Iraqis had gathered to eat, shop and just be together, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 143 people — the third mass slaughter across three countries in less than a week. The attack was the deadliest in Baghdad in years — at […]
The Interpreter By MAX FISHER When three suicide bombers attacked Istanbul’s main airport on Tuesday, killing at least 41 people, Turkey began a ritual that it has refined with so many recent bombings: looking for hints as to which of the country’s two major terror threats was responsible. Over the past year, Turkey has endured at least 14 major terrorist attacks, killing more than 200 people. The […]
A mobile phone shows a Facebook page promoting Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, in this photo illustration taken April 13, 2015. Reuters/Mike Segar As the U.S. presidential campaign heats up, Facebook Inc is going out of its way to show its neutrality – an increasingly urgent matter for the social network as evidence of its power continues to emerge. Recent studies have shown the site has […]
ABU DHABI // Shoppers have complained of high parking fees at Al Wahda Mall as customers shop during Ramadan and ahead of Eid. One shopper, Sanober Shah, said she was “shocked” to have to pay Dh100 after spending seven hours at the mall, where she has shopped for years. “As far as I knew, the first three hours of your cark parked there are free, then you […]
UAE. Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) practices highlight the increasing trends for connectivity and mobile phone usage across the board in Deloitte’s latest report entitled: Global Mobile Consumer Trends. Both intensity in usage and ownership rates are increasing―in some categories more than doubling―pointing to dramatically changing consumer behaviors, and a shift towards non-voice communications such as text and instant messaging (IM). Deloitte conducted a survey designed […]
A journalist’s account of the conflict in Afghanistan details the cascading failures of the West Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World By Christina Lamb, William Collins, 640 pages, $25 There is a certain subspecies of journalist who comes to feel more at home in a foreign war zone than in her native land, who gets so plugged in with power brokers and average people […]
Backed by the wide-scale social influence of Facebook, WhatsApp appears poised to have an even greater impact on the global communications market, including voice calling as well as text messaging services. Yesterday, the Facebook-owned mobile messaging service announced it is now supporting more than 100 million voice calls every day, a service it began offering just 18 months ago. WhatsApp also rolled out a desktop version of […]
Government has been informed and security of the strategically important facility beefed up, committee says Jammu: Terrorists are hiding in villages close to the “vulnerable” Pathankot airbase, which can come under fresh attack from them, the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Home Affairs said on Tuesday. It said the government has been informed about it and security of the strategically important facility beefed up. The committee was […]
BAGHDAD — Long before Falluja was known the world over for deadly jihadists, it was known all over Iraq for its kebab — fatty lamb, ground and mixed with onion, grilled on a skewer over an open fire and served with a pinch of sumac — at a joint called Haji Hussein. Everyone, it seemed, ate at Haji Hussein: locals, soldiers, tourists and businessmen traveling the Baghdad-to-Amman […]
By ISABEL KERSHNER and IRIT PAZNER GARSHOWITZ June 21, 2016 JERUSALEM — Israeli forces opened fire at a Palestinian car in the occupied West Bank early Tuesday, killing one Palestinian teenager and wounding four others, according to relatives and Palestinian officials. The teenagers appeared to be innocent bystanders who were hit while the military tried to halt Palestinians who were throwing stones and firebombs. The military said its soldiers had been pursuing […]
By RANA F. SWEIS June 21, 2016 AMMAN, Jordan — Four Jordanian soldiers, a police officer and a civil defense officer were killed on Tuesday after a car bomb exploded on the Jordanian border with Syria, according to a statement by the Jordanian Armed Forces. The attack took place around 5:30 a.m. on the sand berm across from a camp for Syrian refugees in Rukban with more than 55,000 people […]
During its annual SugarCon conference last week, customer relationship management (CRM) firm SugarCRM unveiled a new machine learning-based offering that’s currently in development: Sugar Intelligence Service. The service, which will be delivered through a Siri- or Cortana-like artificial intelligence (AI) agent called “Candace,” will combine companies’ in-house data with other outside sources to provide predictive analytics and a more 360-degree view of customers. No release date or […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s national census takers made something of a stark discovery earlier this year when they found that nearly a third of the country’s 9.5 million residents are not, technically speaking, Jordanians. For decades, the country has absorbed successive waves of people fleeing war and chaos. Lately it has been the Syrians, but before them came Iraqis, Sudanese and Palestinians, not to mention those from […]
Light and matter are typically viewed as distinct entities that follow their own, unique rules. Matter has mass and typically exhibits interactions with other matter, while light is massless and does not interact with itself. Yet, wave-particle duality tells us that matter and light both act sometimes like particles, and sometimes like waves. Harnessing the shared wave nature of light and matter, researchers at the University of […]
Trilobites By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Archaeologists have been combing the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan for at least two centuries. Now, with drones and satellite imagery, they have discovered new features, including a monumental platform of nearly 30,000 square feet, or roughly half a football field. Interactive Feature | More Reporting on Archaeology Pottery shards nearby date from the second century B.C. through the sixth century […]
A 22-year-old Dutch woman detained for three months in Qatar on suspicion of adultery after she reported being drugged and raped was given a one-year suspended sentence on Monday and will be allowed to return home, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said. The woman, identified only as Laura and described as being from the Dutch city of Utrecht, was held and prosecuted on charges of adultery and alcohol […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Relief trucks delivered food aid for the first time in four years to Daraya, the rebel-held Syrian town just outside of Damascus that has come to symbolize civilian suffering in the war, the United Nations said Friday. But even as the relief convoy’s success was announced by the World Food Program, the United Nations anti-hunger agency, residents of Daraya were reporting that Syrian military […]
Los Angeles: A California man was found guilty on Thursday of murdering a Saudi engineering student after responding to the victim’s ad to sell his car. A jury in San Fernando deliberated just 15 minutes before convicting Agustin Rosendo Fernandez, 29, of first-degree murder in the 2014 stabbing death of Abdullah Abdul Latif Al Kadi, a third-year electrical engineering student at […]
DUBAI // A love of art and striking up friendships with others who have special needs has led to a more independent life for a group of UAE residents. Students at Mawaheb from Beautiful People – an art studio in Al Bastakiya, Dubai, for adults with special needs – are learning painting, sculpture, mosaic and more. But it is their changing vision of self that is perhaps […]
Global IP traffic is expected to triple over the next five years, as a result of more than 1 billion new Internet users coming online before 2020, according to Cisco. As many as 10 billion new devices may join the Internet in that time, bringing the total number of connected devices up to 26.3 billion from the 16.3 billion that were connected in 2015. The study is […]
Last bastion of financial system pays salaries on both sides of civil war as governor maintains ‘economic traduce’ Yemeni locals and secruity guards are pictured outside the Central Bank of Yemen in the capital Sana’a. Dubai: As civil war engulfs Yemen, the central bank is so committed to staying neutral that it pays salaries of soldiers on both sides. The bank […]
|By Matein Khalid|Dr. Mervyn King broke with tradition by publishing his book “The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy”. After all, retired governors of the Bank of England do not, as a rule, do not write/publish books, let alone write books that lambast the City of London’s culture of greed and hubris. It is no coincidence that Dr. King quotes T.S. […]
A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility on Friday for a car bombing this week that killed 11 people and wounded dozens near a central tourist district in Istanbul. The group — Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, or T.A.K. — said the attack on Tuesday had been carried out in retaliation for Turkish Army operations in the Kurdish-dominated region of southeastern Turkey, and it warned tourists to stay away from […]
