Hewlett-Packard offered up a slew of new laptops on Friday, including the Pavilion x2 tablet-notebook hybrid that features a magnetic hinge so it can easily transform from notebook to tent mode to stand mode. The Envy notebooks, meanwhile, promise longer battery life and a new curved profile. “Customers want devices that are portable without sacrificing battery life or power,” said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, […]
UAE. Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been ranked as the 23rd and 33rd most expensive cities to live in (respectively) according to Mercer’s 2015 Cost of Living Survey. The two cities have experienced a significant jump compared to 2014, with Dubai soaring 44 places from last year’s position at 67 and Abu Dhabi going up 35 places 68th in 2014. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the most […]
LEBANON. Economena Analytics, a specialized economic information provider, released its Lebanese Economic Outlook (LEO) for the second quarter of 2015. Key forecast findings show heightened levels of pessimism in recent months, with growth forecasts for 2015 falling to 1.5% in the Q2 survey from 2% at the start of the year. The findings are based on the views of 17 leading Lebanese economists. None of the surveyed […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Islamic State fighters are preventing fuel shipments from reaching rebel-held parts of northern Syria, causing severe shortages that are paralyzing ambulances, stopping medical centers from providing care and shutting down bakeries, according to antigovernment activists and aid workers. Adding to the misery, international aid groups said, the forces of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, are targeting medical centers in opposition areas, killing some workers and […]
Toylander makes kid-size electric car kits for dads who pretend they’re buying the true-to-life mini trucks for Junior. Choose from a Land Rover Series 1 & 2, Scout, Mayfair, or TL3 Army Jeep. These kits include every part from tires to tailpipe & take up to 60 hours to build. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading […]
By RICK GLADSTONE June 17, 2015 The monitoring group overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arms stockpile said Wednesday that almost all effluent from the neutralized weapons had been eliminated, portraying the progress as a great success in the nearly two years since Syria agreed to relinquish its arsenal. But the news from the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was partly overshadowed by outrage over […]
Visitors at the exhibit “A Brief History of Humankind” at the Israel Museum. The museum is Israel’s largest cultural institution, presiding over Jerusalem from a hilltop site alongside the Knesset and the Supreme Court. By ISABEL KERSHNER June 17, 2015 JERUSALEM — A softly lit case displays a small, gnarled implement that is said to be the world’s oldest known complete sickle, dating back 9,000 years. On a wall […]
|TAP Special| The airlines muddle involving Gulf and Western airlines got murkier, with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, representing more than 25,000 active flight attendants at American Airlines getting the International Labour Organization to issue a report calling on Qatar Airways to remove a clause from its flight attendant contracts that allows the company to terminate members of the flight crew upon becoming pregnant. “It is […]
LOS ANGELES Virtual reality gaming, once a distant concept, became the new battleground at this year’s E3 industry convention, with developers seeking to win over fans with their immersive headsets and accessories. Microsoft, Sony and virtual reality company Oculus are squaring off at the June 16-18 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, promoting their virtual reality accessories. Dan Ackerman, a senior editor at online technology and […]
UAE. Private wealth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) showed solid growth in 2014 (8.4 percent), according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Global Wealth 2015: Winning the Growth Game, being released today. In the UAE, the growth of private wealth was driven mainly by equities. After all, between 2013 and 2014, the amount of wealth held in equities rose by 13.8 percent […]
Columbia flipped the formula in rainjacket design with the creation of OutDry Extreme, a new fabric technology that uses a waterproof membrane on the outside of the jacket (rather than inside) for permanent water repellency and durability while also remaining breathable. 19 styles of jackets and pants will be available Spring 2016. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and […]
The theme so far this week at the three-day Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center has been video-gaming, with Sony claiming the keynote address slot. Here are nine announcements from the conference so far: New “Doom” on the Way Bethesda got E3 under way by showing off the latest installments of first-person shooter “Doom” and post-apocalyptic role-playing saga “Fallout 4.” The latter game will […]
The black flag of the Islamic State, left, flew over Tal Abyad, Syria, on Tuesday. After Kurdish and rebel fighters took over the town later Tuesday, they hoisted a Kurdish militia flag. By BEN HUBBARD June 16, 2015 ISTANBUL — Kurdish militias and rebel fighters on Tuesday took full control of the strategic Syrian town of Tal Abyad on Turkey’s border, striking a blow against the Islamic State and expanding […]
Video | Morsi Death Sentence Confirmed by Judge A judge in Egypt announced the confirmation of last month’s sentence of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK June 16, 2015 CAIRO — An Egyptian judge slammed the rule of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi as “a black night that lasted a whole year” and confirmed a death sentence against […]
The Twitter logo is shown at its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California April 28, 2015. Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) next chief executive officer faces a crucial challenge as the company seeks to appease Wall Street after this week’s management shakeup – helping disaffected advertisers connect with users. And many advertisers, analysts and investors say Twitter already has the right person for the job: […]
BRASILIA/SAO PAULO The United States and Russia are competing for a strategic role in Brazil’s plan to launch commercial satellites from its base near the equator, opening up a new theater in their rivalry for allies and influence. Brazil’s government expects to choose a partner to help provide technology in the coming months, three sources with knowledge of the deliberations told Reuters. Brazil partnered with Ukraine over […]
Reliance eyes Dec start for 4G phone service MUMBAI, 13 hours, 47 minutes ago After five years and more than $15 billion of investments, Mukesh Ambani said his Reliance Industries could be ready to begin 4G phone services in December. Reliance, India’s second-largest company by market value and led by India’s richest man, derives most of its revenue from its sprawling energy empire, but has over the […]
BAHRAIN. On June 12, 2015, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed its long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on the Kingdom of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. We also affirmed our long- and short-term foreign and local currency credit ratings on the Central Bank of Bahrain at ‘BBB-/A-3’. The outlooks on both Bahrain and its central bank remain negative. RATIONALE We expect that Bahrain’s fiscal […]
“I don’t discriminate with music,” says Mannan Alawar with a laugh, “as long as it’s good.” Whether he is reinventing the UAE national anthem on electric guitar for a YouTube audience or leaping into a crowd mid-solo, Alawar is hardly the average Emirati banker. The 24-year-old is a musician at heart, dividing his time between his day job, several bands and finishing a business degree. When he […]
After a federal court rejected attempts by cable and phone companies to stop net neutrality on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission’s plan for new Internet rules went into effect. Under the new rules, the FCC can assert extra authority over the Internet to establish equal access to Internet speeds and Web sites. Companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have claimed that the rules are beyond the FCC’s […]
TUNISIA. There has been robust growth in Internet access and usage over the past few years and Africa is now primed to take advantage of the social and economic opportunities that the Internet can bring to people across the continent. This was the focus of an address delivered to delegates at the Africa Internet Summit (AIS) recently held in Tunisia by Kathy Brown, President & CEO of […]
ABU DHABI // The first flight carrying humanitarian aid from the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation to the people of Yemen left Abu Dhabi yesterday. The foundation said the flight would be the first of many before Ramadan begins next week, the state news agency Wam reported. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, ordered that […]
Some things can’t be summed up in 140 characters. Twitter Inc’s (TWTR.N) announcement that Dick Costolo would exit as CEO on July 1 was long on plaudits but offered few clues on how the company will tackle its biggest problem: user growth. Twitter’ shares were down 0.6 percent in early afternoon trading on Friday, after rising much as 3.9 percent just after the opening, as investors assessed […]
Businesses that need to handle workloads with a range of different demands have a selection of new cloud-based, general-purpose instances to choose from through Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS on Thursday announced the availability of M4 instances, a next-generation Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering. Powered by custom 2.4-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 Haswell processors, M4 instances are designed to support a variety of applications, including relational and […]
