DUBAI Iran has requested a meeting of a commission overseeing the implementation of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iranian state media reported on Saturday, in response to what Tehran calls a U.S. violation of the agreement. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif asked for the meeting in a letter to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Iran’s official news agency IRNA said. The White […]
By Aaron Ross | KINSHASA KINSHASA Talks in Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday between the ruling coalition and the opposition failed to reach a compromise on the political future of President Joseph Kabila, who is set to stay in power when his mandate ends on Monday. Delegates said the talks will resume on Wednesday once the Catholic bishops mediating the negotiations have returned from a trip […]
2016 is definitely a memorable year for various reasons, but Google’s latest compilation of “Year in Search” reveals that much of the things that made the year memorable were because of huge losses. Not only for those in the United States but for everyone around the globe. The year marked losses due to disease, politics, and terrorism, and issues being searched about often divided the world as […]
When the first commercial solar photovoltaic panel was unveiled in 1954, it was only capable of converting into electricity six per cent of the Sun’s light. Efficiency has increased since then, making solar a viable option for homes and power plants alike. The gains started plateauing in the 1990s and today’s panels, which convert about a quarter of the sunlight they capture into electricity, are only slightly […]
Following yesterday’s biggest, market-moving geopolitical event, in which a US oceanographic vessel had its underwater drone “stolen” by a Chinese warship “literally right in front of the eyes of the American crew”, we predicted that everyone would be eagerly waiting for Trump to chime in on the topic, and further escalating the diplomatic spat between the two nations which now involves China confiscating US marine drones, the […]
The smart home is gaining ground, but it’s still a muddle of confusing standards, competing platforms, and gadgets that don’t do what you might expect. But the promise of products that can make your life a little easier is hard to resist, so I’m here to answer the inevitable questions that arise. Whether it’s figuring out the best connected door lock to assembling the right […]
Wherever she travels, Christine Lagarde receives head of state treatment. But back home in Paris this week, in the chamber where Marie-Antoinette was sentenced to death by guillotine during the French Revolution, the chief of the International Monetary Fund faced unimpressed judges and uncompromising former colleagues. For five days in the small, wood-panelled room, she gave evidence and listened to damning testimonies that pointed to her alleged […]
To do otherwise, he said, would have required the United States to be “all in and willing to take over Syria.” Continue reading the main story The recent developments in the Syrian conflict send a message to autocratic leaders in the region and elsewhere that force works — and brings few consequences, said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. The lesson […]
By Laila Bassam and Lisa Barrington | ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT A new deal has been reached to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria’s east Aleppo which ground to a halt on Friday over demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by rebels. Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath on […]
Credit: American Chemical Society Electronic-skin prototypes are stretchy, thin films that can sense temperature, pressure and even monitor blood oxygen or alcohol levels. But most of these devices are missing a key feature of real skin that allows us to feel a wider range of conditions: hair. Now researchers have combined hair-like wires with electronic skin to make a more versatile sensor for robots, prosthetics and other […]
The New York Times will vacate eight floors of its midtown headquarters in a bid to make some money and improve its efficiency. “The current way we have configured our office makes us slower and less collaborative,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a memo to staff Friday. “It is also, frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when […]
When it emerged from stealth in 2011, MapR was an outlier in the Hadoop community. At the time, Hadoop was defined largely by two projects adapted from Google research: MapReduce, which introduced highly linear, massively parallel processing to big data, and the HDFS file system, which could accommodate data by the petabyte. And at the time, Hadoop was defined as an Apache open source platform. MapR’s message, […]
Capitalism as we know it is irrevocably in its death throes, argues German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, which on its own is not a novel thesis. In our age of regular financial crashes and bursting bubbles, illiberal movements and borderless wars, even Nobel Prize winners and mainstream thinkers – I think of Joseph Stiglitz, among others – say that the post-war free market regime is broken, and that […]
CAIRO: Growing up in Egypt, Mina and other Copts remember all too well the anti-Christian slurs they used to hear at school and on the street.Once, while playing football, a Muslim youth snatched Mina’s necklace and crucifix and stomped on it.“I won’t forget that day,” said Mina, now in his 30s.Egypt is now trying to come to terms with the kind of religious bigotry behind a December […]
Image: ZDNet [This article has been updated several times since its initial publication to incorporate changes in Windows 10. Last updated: December 16, 2016] Over the past year, I’ve read countless “privacy guides” for Windows 10. Most are well-intentioned, but they invariably take a simplistic approach to privacy: Just turn off every switch in the Privacy section of the Settings app. If you do that, you’re not […]
Dubai, 15 December 2016 At the end of October the new cryptocurrency Zcash was launched. It is positioned by its creators as a more secure alternative to Bitcoin. Soon after the launch, the price of Zcash coins skyrocketed, followed by a spike in the installation of the application used to generate Zcash on personal computers. In many of these cases, the app was disguised as something else […]
The biggest surprise in meeting the entrepreneur behind Gulf meat eateries such as B+F Burger Boutique and Slider Station is learning that he is a recent adopter of veganism. Basil Al Salem — king of the juicy steak shawarmas on offer at Nomad Kitchen and the Coca-Cola-braised short ribs served up at Slider Station — went vegan earlier this year. But this does not mean that he […]
Earlier in the day, Kaler said in a statement that the suspensions were the result of an “Athletics Department decision based on values” — and not a direct consequence of the 10 players’ violation of the university’s code of conduct. Continue reading the main story “A bowl game is a wonderful reward for an excellent football season,” Kaler said. “It is my hope that our eligible football […]
By Pawel Sobczak and Karol Witenberg | WARSAW WARSAW Protesters blocked all exits from the Polish parliament on Friday after the opposition said ruling party lawmakers illegally passed the budget for next year by moving the vote outside of the main chamber of parliament. The protest marked the biggest political standoff in years in European Union member Poland and the sharpest escalation of the conflict between the […]
Toronto worker Kristy Milland looks for data jobs that she can pick up to make ends meet. Image: Sam Santos/George Pimentel Photography This article originally appeared on TechRepublic. Each morning when she wakes up, Kristy Milland powers up her home computer in Toronto, logs into Amazon Mechanical Turk, and waits for her computer to ding. Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), which has been around for over a decade, […]
When President-elect Donald Trump moves into The White House, he’s going to have a lot of company. In the last week, several major news organizations — including The New York Times, Politico and The Washington Post — outlined their plans to dispatch reporters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In what is perhaps a nod to the hyper-competitive nature of Washington, D.C. political reporting, each newsroom is devoting more reporters than […]
Kuwait’s foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador to demand the release of four Kuwaiti nationals detained in the western Ahvaz region of Iran, it said in a statement published by state news agency KUNA on Friday. The ministry was coordinating with Iranian security authorities to press for visits to the men and to facilitate their release, the statement said. It did not elaborate on who the men […]
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts, The claims that the Russian government hacked US voting machines are absurd. Voting machines are not connected to the Internet. To hack a voting machine you have to be physically in proximity to the machine and use a hand held device. The machines can be programmed to throw the vote count to one candidate or the other, and there are other […]
Low-frequency mechanical energy harvesting could provide as much as 40 percent of the power requirements for next generation smartphones and tablets. Credit: Wang Lab/Penn State A new concept in energy harvesting could capture energy that is currently mostly wasted due to its characteristic low frequency and use it to power next-generation electronic devices. In a project funded by electronics giant Samsung, a team of Penn State materials […]
