As an ardent Brexiter, Simon Boyd did not support Theresa May to be prime minister. After all, she not only sat out the UK’s EU referendum contest last June but quietly voiced support for key arguments to remain in the bloc. But now Mr Boyd, the managing director of a specialty steelmaker in south-west England and regional head of a pro-Brexit business group, has the zeal of […]
CARACAS A man was killed in a protest in the Venezuelan capital on Thursday night, an official said on Friday, marking the ninth death in a wave of sometimes violent demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro’s government. Melvin Guaitan died of a bullet wound in the slum of Petare, municipal mayor Carlos Ocariz said via Twitter. Local media reported looting and street clashes with security forces in poor […]
ANKARA Turks approved by a narrow margin an April 16 referendum to change the constitution and hand President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers. The opposition and overseas observers say the vote was riddled with irregularities, including the electoral board’s decision to accept ballots that had not been officially stamped by authorities at polling stations. The following is a timeline of events on the day of the vote. 6:01 […]
Credit: Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications Everyone experiences stiff muscles from time to time, whether after a rigorous workout, in cold weather, or after falling asleep in an unusual position. People with cerebral palsy, stroke and multiple sclerosis, however, live with stiff muscles every single day, making everyday tasks such as extending an arm extremely difficult and painful for them. And since there isn’t a foolproof way […]
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 […]
© Seb Jarnot I arrive at La Méditerranée, a traditional fish restaurant in a literary quarter of the Left Bank, Paris, at 7pm to find its blue doors firmly bolted. Charlotte Rampling has just confirmed our reservation, but our dining slot appears to have fallen foul of that particularly French timetable that decrees that no civilised person would ever want to eat before 8pm. In a panic, […]
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 […]
PANAMA CITY — The co-founder of the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal says the fallout has set off a “thriving” boom in the creation of tax shelters in the United States. Juergen Mossack, who partnered with Ramon Fonseca to create the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, said in a document obtained Thursday by AFP that after the Panama Papers leak a year ago, […]
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 […]
Oddball duo Rick and Morty, amid their frenzied travails moving from one bizarre realm to another, have now entered virtual reality, under the aptly named Virtual Rick-ality app. There’s no surprise too that the titular characters’ entry in the VR space is just as weird, childishly enchanting, and ridiculous as its TV adventures. It’s no secret that Rick and Morty is one of the funniest and critically acclaimed […]
ABU DHABI // Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, held bilateral talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday to discuss efforts to bring about an end to conflicts in the region as well as increasing security cooperation and economic ties. The UAE is Russia’s closest partner in the GCC, and Moscow has […]
It was money that kept Bill O’Reilly in his bulletproof bully’s pulpit at Fox News despite sordid sex harassment claims dating back 13 years. And in the end, it was money — not morals — that catapulted him out. For two decades, O’Reilly has been the acid-tongued, anti-political correctness muse and megaphone of the populist right and scolder of the mainstream media — a role that crowned […]
A first of its kind continent-wide survey of Antarctica revealed that the ice-capped continent has a surprisingly vast network of rivers and lakes, which make their way through the ice shelves of the landmass. These rivers flow with melting water over many parts of Antarctica during the continent’s brief summer season. The discovery of lakes and river streams is not new for the researchers. However, scientists earlier assumed that […]
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 […]
By Mark Hosenball and Joseph Menn French voters are being deluged with false stories on social media ahead of the country’s presidential election, though the onslaught of “junk news” is not as severe as that during last year’s U.S. presidential campaign, according to a study by Oxford University researchers. The study to be published Friday and another published on Wednesday add evidence to complaints by officials in […]
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 […]
DUBAI // The UAE’s youth have the will, knowledge and culture to carry the vision of the country’s leadership into the future, said Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Addressing Emirati youth at an open dialogue session to encourage political participation, held at Etihad Museum, Dr Gargash answered questions on the challenges facing the country and the running of the Federal National Council. “Young […]
US mortgage group Ocwen has lost more than half its market value after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued it over “systemic” misconduct, a reminder of the power wielded by the Washington regulator that Republicans have vowed to rein in. Several states are also taking action as they prepare to revoke operating licenses for the New York-listed company, which was founded in 1988 and employs more than […]
BEIRUT Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and hardline rival Ebrahim Raisi were both approved to run in May’s presidential election by a government vetting body, while former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was disqualified, state media reported on Thursday. The approval of Rouhani, a moderate, and Raisi, a political hardliner thought to have the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sets up a showdown between rival political camps. Four […]
Emirates will shift aircraft to destinations in Malaysia, Oceania and Africa as the airline scrambles for alternatives after eliminating 25 weekly flights to the US in the fallout from President Donald Trump’s travel restrictions. Planes on US routes usually fly more than 80 percent full in the summer season but are now “percentage points” less than that, hurting the flights’ profitability, Emirates President Tim Clark said in […]
By Ulf Laessing | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq If you want to hear the resentment people of Mosul feel now that Iraqi forces have driven Islamic State out of most of the city, you should talk to Saddam Hussein. Not the dictator, but the Mosul schoolteacher, who proudly shows off an identity card bearing the name which his parents gave him in the ruler’s honour 45 years […]
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. […]
Jose Vicente Salazar, ERC chairman and CEO (File photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer) The chair of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), Jose Vicente Salazar, may have to face his battles alone after the four commissioners of the agency tasked with regulating the power industry on Thursday brought a complaint against him to the Civil Service Commission (CSC). In a joint affidavit, ERC Commissioners Alfredo Non, Gloria Victoria […]
By Madeline Chambers | BERLIN BERLIN Germany’s Central Council of Muslims said on Thursday that the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) was on a path to becoming a more radical, anti-Islamic party without co-chief Frauke Petry leading it into September’s national election. Petry had become the face of the anti-immigration party, which hurt Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives during the migrant crisis but has leaked support this year. […]
