The Federal Reserve appears to believe that the size of its balance sheet matters, but not that bigger is better. The question is, why not? As the Fed pushes ahead with plans to shrink its stock of about $2.5tn of Treasuries and $1.8tn of mortgage-backed securities to “normal”, it is puzzling that officials haven’t provided a compelling case for why the move is either necessary or desirable. […]
Good morning. Program changes are same old The swashbuckling Murdochs now look as milquetoast as old media rivals whom they upended and disdain. With the belated firing of Bill O’Reilly, the monarchical lords of 21st Century Fox turned 1990s with their initial programming decisions. Yes, you can easily make dumb decisions when you’re king of any media hill and a financial juggernaut. But the initial post-O’Reilly programming […]
ABU DHABI // A talk next week in Abu Dhabi will explore the history of archaeology in the UAE. The event on Wednesday, held by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, is the second event in the Multaqa Zayed National Museum lecture series. Archaeology in the UAE began in the 1950s with the excavation of Bronze Age tombs on Umm Al Nar Island. The Danish excavating […]
Samsung Electronics will commence a software update for the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus following consumer complaints that their handsets have red-tinted displays. Earlier this week, in South Korea, consumers posted pictures of their phones with red tinted screens. Samsung said it was not a quality issue and something that could be fixed manually via settings. The South Korean tech giant said the software update will supplement […]
Most applications of deep learning use “convolutional” neural networks, in which the nodes of each layer are clustered, the clusters overlap, and each cluster feeds data to multiple nodes (orange and green) of the next layer. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT In the past 10 years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems—such as the speech recognizers on smartphones or Google’s latest automatic translator—have resulted from a technique called “deep learning.” Deep […]
By Kate Holton and William Schomberg | NEWTON FERRERS, England/LONDON NEWTON FERRERS, England/LONDON Before last year’s Brexit vote, Scott McCready was struggling to fill his holiday cabins on the coast of southwest England. Now the site is fully booked with British tourists avoiding more expensive foreign trips following a plunge in the pound. This turnaround in the 10 months since Britons decided to leave the European Union […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for April 21, 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 Kids’ fun Take […]
Booking a trip can feel like navigating through a maze, with hundreds of thousands of hotels, flight options and combinations to choose from. Which is where online travel agencies come into play. Filtering results as per your selection offers a convenient way to book flight deals and hotel stays that match your budget, date and time requests, as well as your personal preference when it comes to […]
The construction of Asia-Pacific fibre infrastructure company Superloop’s Indigo subsea cable system has reached a contractually binding status following Alcatel Submarine Networks entering a system supply agreement. The agreement makes the submarine cable system supply and construction binding for all parties, as well as the process of bringing it into operation. The contract was executed between Alcatel Submarine Networks and the Indigo consortium parties including Superloop and […]
MELBOURNE Chevron Corp lost an appeal on Friday against the Australian tax office in a landmark case in which the U.S. energy giant contested a tax bill of A$340 million ($260 million), including penalties and interest. The full bench of the Federal Court dismissed the appeal against an earlier ruling that Chevron underpaid taxes by setting up a A$2.5 billion intercompany credit facility with an abnormally high […]
Photo An image from a video, released on Thursday through a Muslim Brotherhood channel, appears to show Egyptian soldiers summarily executing unarmed detainees in the Sinai Peninsula. Credit Mekameleen TV, via Youtube A video has emerged that appears to show members of the Egyptian military shooting unarmed detainees to death at point-blank range in the Sinai Peninsula and staging the killings to look as if they had […]
Credit: George Hodan/public domain Your partner comes in and slams a door. What was that about? Something you did? What if you knew to anticipate it because you were notified in advance from an automated text message that he/she didn’t have a great day at work? Might that change the dynamic of your interactions? You had a bad day. The last thing you need is to get […]
The narrative of shiny Silicon Valley topping decrepit Detroit in the race to develop self-driving cars has become a recurring theme in recent years. Just as tech companies have reinvented (dare we say, disrupted?) everything from telephones to how we consume music, the thinking goes, so too will they leave traditional automakers in the dust when it comes to autonomous cars. While it’s true that […]
The pound was last worth $1.30 on September 30, a day when lawyers were lining up to derail Brexit in the courts, a resilient consumer was challenging economists’ dire post-referendum predictions and carmaker Nissan was demanding compensation for staying in the UK. Investors have become familiar with such Brexit unpredictability. Yet few of them could have guessed how sterling, tweeted by Nordea analyst Martin Enlund as “the […]
President Donald Trump has tried to ban people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. and has begun deportation raids, following through on his campaign promise to creating a more cautious, less open America. Recent migrants to the country are starting to worry how far the measures will go and some Indians are worried that the skilled-worker visas they use to enter the country could become […]
TEHRAN — A council that vets Iran’s political candidates disqualified former two-term president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday — along with hundreds of others — from the presidential election next month. No official reason was given for the disqualifications in the May 19 election, which were announced on state television Thursday night by an election official, Ali Asghar Ahmadi. While Mr. Ahmadinejad’s disqualification was not unexpected, the timing […]
The biggest risk, critics say, is that Mr. Trump will talk himself into a war. Only slightly less dangerously, he could weaken the nation’s standing by backing off from a threat to use force. Continue reading the main story “In Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, they are recalibrating their strategies — you can’t deny it — because they don’t have any idea of how Trump will respond,” said Senator […]
At Creative Strategies, we have been researching millennial tech habits and demands for about five years. We recently did a survey with millennials, which challenged some notions you might have about this generation. In an essay that first ran on our blog, my son Ben shared what he found. – Tim Bajarin A core thesis we have about the future of technology here at Creative […]
BERLIN Ivanka Trump will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde in Berlin next Tuesday at a summit of women from leading world economies, the organisers said. Trump, who is an informal advisor to her father, United States President Donald Trump, will join Merkel and Lagarde for a podium discussion on global support for women entrepreneurs at a two-day G20 women’s summit. […]
(Image: Mastercard) Swipe-to-pay, then chip-and-PIN. What next, credit cards with fingerprint sensors? Turns out that’s Mastercard’s latest invention, a new credit card with an integrated fingerprint sensor, which aims to fight in-store fraud. The card, currently under trial in South Africa, includes sensor is embedded in plastic of the credit card, allowing customers to authorize a payment with a fingerprint, rather than a PIN code or a […]
The exciting discovery of a giant nearby exoplanet has researchers wondering about the possibility of finding the first trace of extraterrestrial life. The massive super-Earth is located 40 light-years away from our home planet, in the Cetus (“Sea Monster”) constellation, and has been dubbed the “best place to look for signs of life beyond the solar system.” Telescopes around the world, including the HARPS instrument at La Silla […]
A few months ago, staff at The Minneapolis Star Tribune did something journalists don’t always have the time to do: think way ahead. One year in advance, staff photographers shot images of the Minnesota winter for next winter’s StarTribune Magazine. The quarterly magazine debuted Sunday, marking a new product for a newsroom that’s worked hard over the last year to become more digital. But that new product […]
MOSCOW Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that only the Russian people will choose who succeeds him as president, through the electoral process. Russia will hold a presidential election in March next year. Putin has not said whether he will run or not, but is widely expected to go for what would be his fourth term. “The president’s successor will be decided by the Russian people only during […]
It’s springtime. Flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, and love is in the air. That can only mean one thing: It’s time to send pictures of your bits and pieces! If you’ve ever used your phone to send someone special a picture of your thing(s), you’re not alone. Data shows that sexting is a highly popular pastime enjoyed by men and women alike. As you […]
