On opening day of the 2015 Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday, company CEO Brian Krzanich (pictured) gave attendees a look at a prototype smartphone integrated with an Intel RealSense 3D camera. The camera would be contained in a Google Project Tango smartphone. Holding up the prototype phone, about the size of an average Android smartphone, Krzanich said the device would “breaks the limits of what […]
Amnesty International issued a scathing report Tuesday on the Yemen conflict, accusing all armed antagonists there of complicity in war crimes, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians. The report, “Nowhere Safe for Civilians,” called on the United Nations to establish a panel of inquiry to “independently and impartially investigate alleged war crimes committed during the conflict.” Donatella Rovera, a senior researcher for Amnesty who has worked in many […]
WASHINGTON — Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said on Tuesday that he would vote against the nuclear accord with Iran. “At the end of the day, what we appear to have is a rollback of sanctions and Iran only limiting its capability, but not dismantling it or rolling it back,” Mr. Menendez said, according to prepared remarks of a speech he delivered at Seton Hall […]
Listening to music before, during and after surgery reduces patients’ pain, eases anxiety and lessens the need for painkillers, British scientists said on Thursday. After reviewing evidence from around 7,000 patients, the scientists said people going for surgery should be allowed to choose the music they’d like to hear to maximise the benefit. But they also warned that the music should not interfere with the medical team’s […]
Tech giant Oracle just rolled out new functions to its Service Cloud and Social Cloud. The new bells and whistles aim to help organizations serve up better customer experiences and make data-based business decisions. Specifically, the new social features promise to help brands increase social engagement and mine business insights through a new community self-service solution, as well as beefed up social service and incident routing. Oracle […]
KUWAIT. On Aug. 14, 2015, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services affirmed its ‘AA/A-1+’ long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Kuwait. The outlook is stable. RATIONALEPrices for crude oil have fallen by around 50% in the last year. We now forecast an average Brent oil price of $55/bbl in 2015 and $67.5/bbl in 2015-2018. The sharp fall in oil prices over the past […]
ABU DHABI // Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit was documented across social media, including a selfie, reflecting a sign of the times. Mr Modi posted a selfie on Twitter posing with Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, and Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in the capital. Dr Gargash retweeted the prime […]
SANA, Yemen — After five months of war in which more than 4,000 people have been killed, Yemen’s government, exiled in Saudi Arabia, faces a fateful decision: leverage recent battlefield gains to negotiate a cease-fire with a weakened Houthi rebel movement, or try to rout the rebels once and for all. Backed by air support and ground troops from Persian Gulf nations, fighters allied with the government […]
ABU DHABI // For Ahlam Al Qasim and Fatema Al Khouri the sky isn’t the limit – they have big plans to go farther. The Emiratis have returned from a two-week internship with the Italian Space Agency (ISA) and now hope to forge a career in the industry and play a part in the UAE’s Mars mission. “I’ve been interested in space science ever since I was […]
An employee works near screens in the virus lab at the headquarters of Russian cyber security company Kaspersky Labs in Moscow July 29, 2013. RUSSIA-CYBERCRIME/ Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin/Files SAN FRANCISCO Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according […]
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted. He bound her hands and gagged […]
Mascots dressed as characters from the mobile video game ”Candy Crush Saga” pose outside the New York Stock Exchange March 26, 2014. Reuters/Brendan McDermid King Digital Entertainment Plc (KING.N), the creator of Candy Crush Saga, reported a 28 percent drop in quarterly profit as monthly unique users fell slightly and a strong dollar dented sales from outside the United States. The company’s shares slipped 8.2 percent in […]
UAE. After delivering strong results in 2014, Islamic banks in the Gulf region face a gradually weakening operating outlook in 2015-2016, largely due to declining oil revenues, says a report published today by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. But as the report, titled “Gulf-Based Islamic Banks Grapple With Weakening Regional Economies,” also points out, we believe investor demand for Sharia-compliant products and supportive government actions will enable […]
The lowest crude prices since 2009 might still not be enough to end the U.S. energy renaissance. Some parts of North Dakota’s Bakken shale play are profitable at less than $30 a barrel as companies tap bigger wells and benefit from lower drilling costs, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. That’s less than half the level of some estimates when the oil rout began last year. The […]
SAN FRANCISCO Google Inc (GOOGL.O) announced a surprise overhaul of its operating structure on Monday, creating a holding company called Alphabet to pool its many subsidiaries and separate the core web advertising business from newer ventures like driverless cars. The move appeared to be an attempt by the search engine giant to focus on its more creative and ambitious projects, while investors cheered the potential for more […]
By WILLIAM J. BROAD August 8, 2015 Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent. The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying […]
People are silhouetted as they pose with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Samsung logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014. Reuters/Dado Ruvic LAS VEGAS Google Inc (GOOGL.O) and Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS) will release monthly security fixes for Android phones, a growing target for hackers, after the disclosure of a bug designed to attack the world’s most popular […]
Big Blue just spent $1 billion to give Watson the ability to see. IBM’s supercomputer is getting an upgrade with technology acquired from Merge Healthcare, which will add data and images to Watson’s advanced image analytics and cognitive abilities. Merge Healthcare has made a name for itself providing medical image handling and processing, interoperability and clinical systems that work to advance healthcare quality and efficiency. The company’s […]
Government overreach is the primary culprit that keeps the Internet from being the free and open source of information and ideas that it could be, according to a leading computer crime defense attorney. Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, addressed the subject of Internet freedom yesterday in her keynote address at the annual Black Hat computer security conference in […]
DUBAI // Innovation is the driver of progress, and governments and businesses that fail to innovate will go backwards, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid warned on Wednesday. The Vice President and Ruler of Dubai was launching National Innovation Week, which will take place from November 22 to 28. Sheikh Mohammed urged all public, private and academic entities to participate and called on the public to get involved through […]
CHAUMUHANI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A fisherman’s son and now a fisherman himself, Kulamani Tarai knows all too well that while the sea has provided sustenance to his family for generations, it can also be a cruel and deadly place. Every morning, when he leaves his mud-and-thatch home on India’s east coast to venture out on his wooden boat into the Bay of Bengal, he knows there […]
RAS LAFFAN, Qatar — The temperature hovered around 100 degrees on the jetty here, where a set of pipes were connected to a giant red-hulled ship. But the moisture in the air froze on the pipes and flaked off, creating snowlike flurries on the early summer evening. The incongruous sight is common on the Qatari ship, the Al Rekayyat, which carries a frigid fuel known as liquefied […]
ISTANBUL — Confronted with widespread protests two summers ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered a harsh police crackdown and tarnished the demonstrators as traitors and spies. Faced with a corruption inquiry focused on his inner circle, he responded by purging the police and judiciary. So when Mr. Erdogan, now president, suffered a stinging electoral defeat in June that left his party without a majority in Parliament […]
JERUSALEM — He has the pedigree: Meir Ettinger is the grandson and namesake of Meir Kahane, the slain American-Israeli rabbi considered the father of far-right Jewish militancy. He has the record: For years, Mr. Ettinger has joined the radical group of Israeli settlers known as the hilltop youth in clashes with Palestinians and Israeli forces, leading to a ban on his entering Jerusalem or the occupied West […]
