Petrochemicals companies led Gulf stock markets higher on Thursday in response to OPEC’s first agreement on output cuts to prop up oil prices since 2008 – a deal that could allow governments to ease austerity policies slightly. Expectations for the deal had already boosted oil and Gulf bourses on Wednesday, but the agreement included bigger production cuts than many analysts had expected, lifting oil prices higher on […]
Hello Bill, I’ve followed GATA and LeMetropoleCafe since 1999. Following the work of you, Chris and GATA contributors has been most interesting. I follow a lot of media, including many sites not under the control of the Russian government, such as the Wall Street Journal. For an American who is not an insider GATA is the single best source news and analysis of the economy and financial […]
Tomaso Poggio, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and director of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, has long thought that the brain must produce “invariant” representations of faces and other objects, meaning representations that are indifferent to objects’ orientation in space, their distance from the viewer, or their location in the visual field. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT researchers and their […]
Tax compliance gets easier for companies, but new data highlights post-filing challenges across the world JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, December 1, 2016/ Economies around the world continue to make progress in simplifying and reducing the burden of tax compliance on business, according to the latest edition of Paying Taxes 2017, a report by the World Bank Group and PwC (www.PWC.com ). Released today, the report finds that the Total […]
There is no association between a mother having flu anytime during her pregnancy and an increased risk of giving birth to a child with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This was the finding of a recent study that analyzed more than 196,000 children born between 2000 and 2010. The research, published in the online journal JAMA Pediatrics, Nov. 28, was conducted by Ousseny Zerbo, Ph.D., of Kaiser Permanente […]
When it comes to very large numbers, it can be hard to get the right perspective. If you had to count it, a €40bn pile of cash would be somewhat daunting. Place it next to to the Italian national debt, however, and the pile becomes a pimple. The number matters because it was the amount the government proposed using to assist troubled financial institutions earlier this year. […]
By James Pearson | SEOUL SEOUL Impoverished North Korea is not known for a bustling manufacturing industry but has earned a reputation in some African states for a highly visible export – its huge socialist-style statues. On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council imposed new sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea’s annual export revenue by a quarter in response to its fifth and largest nuclear test in September. […]
Saudi Arabia’s aviation agency was attacked last month by an aggressive computer virus intended to disrupt high-profile government targets, officials and experts said on Thursday. The attack, which experts say emanated from outside the country, used a version of Shamoon, malware used to target the Saudi energy sector four years ago. Similar kinds of data-clearing software were used in 2014 against the Las Vegas Sands and Sony. […]
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Neural networks, machine-learning systems, predictive analytics, speech recognition, natural-language understanding and other components of what’s broadly defined as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) are currently undergoing a boom: research is progressing apace, media attention is at an all-time high, and organisations are increasingly implementing AI solutions in pursuit of automation-driven efficiencies. The first thing to establish is what we’re not talking about, which is human-level AI […]
By Kristina Cooke | MENLO PARK, Calif. MENLO PARK, Calif. Facebook Inc (FB.O) is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company’s director of applied machine learning. The social media company has been embroiled in a number of content moderation controversies this year, from facing international outcry after […]
It’s one thing reaching an age when your friends and contemporaries start dying and you begin to wonder when it will be your turn. It’s quite another to find yourself pronounced the world’s oldest person. In May, that honour fell to Emma Morano, an Italian woman born in 1899, when the former holder of the title passed away. On May 12, Susannah Mushatt Jones, born in Alabama […]
In this Feb. 25, 2014 file photo, theSamsung Galaxy S5 is displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2014. Leading tech companies are increasingly nudging consumers to use their own fingers, faces and eyes as digital key to unlock phones and other gadgets. But there are downsides: Hackers could still steal your fingerprint, or its digital representation. And police may have broader […]
Gold has suffered its worst month since mid-2013, as the election of Donald Trump, the rising dollar and increased expectations of a US rate rise combined to send prices down 8.1 per cent in November. The fall to $1,173.20 per troy ounce marked the steepest monthly sell-off since June 2013, when the precious metal lost 11 per cent in the wake of the so-called taper tantrum. November’s […]
Pursglove would soon learn, however, that navigating this offshore archipelago is not easy. In any given year, trillions of dollars sit safely in the offshore financial world, effectively stateless, protected by legions of well-compensated defenders and a tangle of laws deliberately designed to impede creditors and tax collectors. Even the United States government finds it challenging: A special Internal Revenue Service division known as the “wealth squad,” […]
Pluto’s “icy heart” is a bright, two-lobed feature on its surface that has attracted researchers ever since its discovery by the NASA New Horizons team in 2015. Of particular interest is the heart’s western lobe, informally named Sputnik Planitia, a deep basin containing three kinds of ices–frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide–and appearing opposite Charon, Pluto’s tidally locked moon. Sputnik Planitia’s unique attributes have spurred a number […]
Expect deep, moody, saturated shades to dominate in 2017 – paint brand Benjamin Moore has named Shadow, a rich shade of amethyst, as its colour of the year. “Allusive and enigmatic, Shadow is a master of ambience. It is a colour that calls to mind a past, yet it can also make a contemporary, colour-confident statement,” says Helen Mullett, international marketing director of Benjamin Moore Paints. “Shadow […]
Saudi Arabia is boosting the firepower of its sovereign wealth fund to accelerate deal-making and lessen the country’s dependence on oil. The Public Investment Fund is receiving a 100 billion-riyal ($27 billion) transfer from official reserves, according to a statement Wednesday on the SPA official news agency, increasing its existing assets by about 17 percent. The injection will help the fund diversify investments and revenues, it said. The […]
A Cellebrite engineer explains the technology used to unlock smartphones and pull data It only takes a few seconds for an employee of one of the world’s leading hacking companies to take a locked smartphone and pull the data from it. Israeli firm Cellebrite’s technology provides a glimpse of a world of possibilities accessible to security agencies globally that worry privacy advocates. The company has contracts […]
Researchers have combined quantum physics and photosynthesis to make discovery that could lead to highly efficient, green solar cells, outlines a new report. (via WSJ)
A research team has characterized the smallest known asteroid using Earth-based telescopes: Asteroid 2015 TC25 measures just 6 feet across, they report. (via WSJ)
Credit: University of Manchester An enterprising researcher from The University of Manchester has developed a prototype tool that could help transform the lives of the blind and visually impaired. Vasileios Tsormpatzoudis has upgraded the white cane – which has been used as a mobility tool for centuries – by adding a low-cost embedded computer that functions in a similar way to a car parking sensor. PhD […]
30 November 2016 As Saudi Arabia looks to diversify its economy to retain global competitiveness, the 5th Annual Human Asset Management conference 2017 will bring together global HR leaders to address issues pertaining to local talent management and development. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia approved its National Transformation Program and Saudi Vision 2030, making great headway in enhancing the Kingdom’s global competitiveness. Over the past four decades, […]
Nestlé said it had found a process to naturally reduce sugar content by as much as 40 per cent in what the maker of Kit Kats claims is a first for the industry, as pressure to produce healthier drinks and snacks ratchets up amid an obesity epidemic. The world’s largest food and drinks company said on Wednesday that it was securing a patent for its innovation and […]
Malware dubbed Gooligan targets devices running Android 4.0 and 5.0, which represent nearly 74 percent of mobile devices using the Google-powered operating system Malicious software designed to attack Android smartphones has breached the accounts of more than a million Google users, security researchers said Wednesday. The report by Check Point Software Technologies said the malware dubbed Gooligan targets devices running Android 4.0 and 5.0, which represent nearly […]
