AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, […]
INTERNATIONAL. As companies move to catch up with the digital future, they are taking a close look at what kind of executive they need to lead the way. In a new report, “The Right CDO for Your Company’s Future”, Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting business, defines five Chief Digital Officer (CDO) “archetypes” – descriptions of typical roles CDOs might play within an organisation. The Five Archetypes of a […]
Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, but he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts Ali faces the media at the US federal court in June 1967, while on trial for refusing to be inducted into the armed forces. New York: Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic […]
DUBAI // Creating a safe place for children is the cornerstone of the UAE’s new Child Protection Law, so educators and a paediatrician have asked for a clear chain of command to enable an immediate response to cases flagged by schools and hospitals. Informally referred to as Wadeema’s Law, in memory of an eight-year-old Emirati girl tortured to death by her father, it will take effect on […]
WASHINGTON — An exhausted and ill-equipped Iraqi Army faces daunting obstacles on the battlefield that will most likely delay for months a long-planned major offensive on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, American and allied officials say. The delay is expected despite American efforts to keep Iraq’s creaky war machine on track. Although President Obama vowed to end the United States’ role in the war in Iraq, […]
The tiny Core pocket computer from Pebble Technology will have a very big friend on its side once it reaches the marketplace: Amazon. Pebble announced this week that Pebble Core will be the first standalone wearable device to integrate Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant technology. Alexa is currently used in only a handful of Amazon’s own products, including the Amazon Echo voice-enabled wireless speaker. So far, developers have […]
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new suite of applications and services yesterday to help businesses comprehensively manage, govern and extract actionable insights from enterprise information. The new suite, called HPE Verity, aims to offer companies a set of tools that are both integrated and modular. The objective of HPE Verity is to address the problem enterprises have trying to manage a wide variety of data types, […]
INTERNATIONAL. –(BUSINESS WIRE)–Shifting power relationships in the Middle East are reordering regional geopolitics, entrenching a stalemate of conflict that threatens to further destabilize the region. Wars in Syria and Yemen and against the Islamic State, combined with the balancing of supply and demand in oil markets later this year, will likely return a risk premium to oil prices in 2017, says a new special report by IHS […]
Let’s see… “The third time is a charm,” or is it “Strike 3, you’re out!“? The final installment of this trilogy is Nissan’s competition to their own Sentra SE-R. That’s because there were basically two of these… the NX1600, which had 110 horsepower, and the NX2000, with the engine found in the SE-R. The SE-R, of course, had a trunk. Gone is the “Pulsar” name. The NX2000 gets a […]
In all my long days as an automotive writer, not one single car manufacturer has asked me to attend their display at an international motor show, and drape myself alluringly across the hood of one of their vehicles. Sex Sells When people (in truth, men) discovered sex sells, car makers jumped on the band wagon. They found that a seductive model adjacent to the product seemed to […]
It’s amusing that yoghurt, which originated as a way to make milk last longer before the days of refrigeration, now makes grocery shopping last longer as we try to make sense of the dizzying selection in the refrigerator case. I regularly get questions from people confused about which yoghurt to buy. Here are a few of the most commonly asked with answers to help you choose more […]
The Chevrolet Spark is designed for city dwellers who are looking for a small car that packs all the connectivity features of the big cars, but don’t require the horsepower or the proportions of a bigger vehicle. For 2016, the all-new Spark packs 17% more power than the first-generation model, so the power output increases from a measly 84 horsepower to a more acceptable 98 horsepower. What’s […]
Minivans have gotten a bad rap for a long time, but if you haven’t looked at one recently you are in for a surprise. Toyota builds the Sienna minivan which is attractive on the outside and roomy on the inside. Did we really say attractive? The new Sienna isn’t your typical box on wheels that distinguished the model for so long. It has sleek styling that sets […]
A Bitcoin (virtual currency) paper wallet with QR codes and a coin are seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, May 27, 2015. Reuters/Benoit Tessier/File Photo LONDON The price of the web-based digital currency bitcoin soared to its highest in almost two years on Tuesday, rising to more than $500 per unit, as worries about a further weakening of the […]
A new line of chips from Qualcomm aim to be the go-to hardware to power the growing wearables market. Over the weekend, the chipmaker announced a new line of processors called the Snapdragon Wear 1100, containing numerous functions and complex usage capabilities. The new chipsets will be integrated into smart watches, smart headsets and various accessories. The new chips, which are meant to complement Qualcomm’s recently introduced […]
A new 10-core processor from Intel debuted at Computex yesterday, one of four new CPUs the company unveiled. While ostensibly designed for the desktop market, the chips might have more in common with their server-level cousins, both in terms of price and computing power. The 10-core model alone will set you back a cool $1,723, more than enough to buy your own system. The company is promoting […]
The application icons of Facebook, Twitter and Google are displayed on an iPhone next to an earphone set in this illustration photo taken in Berlin, June 17, 2013. Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski/Files BRUSSELS – Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe. EU governments have been trying in recent months to get […]
By THOMAS ERDBRINK May 31, 2016 TEHRAN — A leading conservative was re-elected speaker of Iran’s Parliament on Tuesday, denying reformists a post they thought they had earned with a big win in February elections. In a mild surprise, an overwhelming majority of Iran’s lawmakers chose a conservative candidate, Ali Larijani, who has held the position since 2008. Mr. Larijani, 57, scion of a powerful Iranian family, is not […]
Basma Abdel Aziz was walking in downtown Cairo one morning when she saw a long line of people standing in front of a closed government building. Returning hours later, Ms. Abdel Aziz, a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, passed the same people still waiting listlessly — a young woman and an elderly man, a mother holding her baby. The building remained closed. When she got home, she […]
By TIM ARANGO May 28, 2016 BAGHDAD — American commandos are on the front lines in Syria in a new push toward the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Raqqa, but in Iraq it is an entirely different story: Iran, not the United States, has become the face of an operation to retake the jihadist stronghold of Falluja from the militant group. On the outskirts of Falluja, tens of […]
By NICOLA CLARK May 27, 2016 PARIS — A French naval vessel fitted with sophisticated underwater sensors raced on Friday toward the eastern Mediterranean Sea, as the window for locating the so-called black boxes of a downed Egyptian airliner rapidly closed. The ship is expected to arrive in the search zone early next week to help locate and recover the EgyptAir jet’s cockpit voice and data recorders. The recorders, […]
Big Blue is teaming up with cloud communication platform Twilio to introduce two new offerings, IBM Watson Message Sentiment and IBM Watson Message Insights. Twilio, which functions as a communication tool for developers and businesses, will make both offerings available as add-ons through its recently announced marketplace, according to IBM. Developers who currently access Watson technology via Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform, can also use the two new […]
The latest acquisition by Intel could give it a big leg up in the race to develop Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous driving technology. The chipmaker signed an agreement yesterday to acquire computer vision software company Itseez Inc. The 11-year-old San Francisco-based firm will become part of Intel’s IoT Group (IOTG). “Intel is focused on delivering end-to-end IoT solutions addressing devices, wired and wireless networks and […]
In the world of Harry Potter the young wizard undergoes two magical biological transformations: eating Gillyweed to grow gills in order to breathe underwater and drinking Skele-Gro to repair broken bones. Natural Sciences students from the University of Leicester have put these arcane medical practices to the test — and have concluded that a little magic might indeed be required in both situations to make them scientifically […]
