Facebook announced today that it is taking several steps to reduce the reach of fake news. One of the initiatives announced by the social network, third-party fact-checking, will allow verified fact-checkers in the United States to review stories to determine if they are true or false. If enough fact checkers mark a story as fake, the post will be marked as such in users’ News Feeds. The […]
16 December 2016 MARC has affirmed its rating of AA-IS on Jimah East Power Sdn Bhd’s (JEP) outstanding RM8.98 billion Sukuk Murabahah with a stable outlook. JEP was established to develop, design, construct and operate a 2×1,000-megawatt (MW) ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Jimah, Negeri Sembilan under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). As at August 31, 2016, the power plant project […]
ANKARA A camp to host people evacuated from Syria’s Aleppo will be set up inside Syria near the border, senior Turkish officials told Reuters on Friday, and Turkey will continue to accept sick and wounded coming from the city. Two potential sites, around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) inside Syria, have been identified to set up a camp, which will have the capacity to host up to 80,000 […]
By J.R. Wu | TAIPEI TAIPEI Before getting too carried away with Taiwan’s elevated status under a Donald Trump presidency, President Tsai Ing-wen might want to check her bank balance. Trump’s suggestion that the “one China” principle – that Taiwan is a part of China – was up for negotiation has already prompted sabre-rattling from Chinese state media and some in the military establishment. Taipei’s ability to […]
DUBAI // The RTA has prepared a traffic plan for New Year’s Eve – a night usually plagued by heavy congestion, particularly in the area surrounding the Burj Khalifa. Burj Khalifa Metro Station will be closed from 10pm until the end of celebrations while services to main metro stations in the area (including DIFC Station and Danube Station) will be uninterrupted. Col Mohammed Al Bastaki, director of […]
CAIRO — Egypt said Thursday that explosive traces had been detected on the bodies of passengers retrieved from EgyptAir Flight 804, which plunged into the Mediterranean Sea in May and killed all 66 people on board. The announcement by the Civil Aviation Ministry offers the strongest suggestion yet that a bomb might have felled the airliner as it flew to Cairo from Paris. Previously, officials had focused […]
By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Katya Golubkova | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a second day of talks on Friday after Abe made little headway a day earlier in his quest to resolve a territorial row that has festered since World War Two. Putin looked set to come away with a slew of economic deals and achieve what experts said […]
Submitted by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org, Was the Cold War against communism, or against Russia? Russia was our ally in World War II, and we’d have a Nazi world today if 26 million Russians hadn’t died from Hitler’s bombs and attacks while Russia fought on with courage amidst desperation, finally to crush his regime. But Russia was communist, so the Cold War developed after that alliance (the Allies in […]
By Joseph Menn The U.S. agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections, according to a security firm working with law enforcement on the matter. The security firm, Recorded Future, was monitoring underground electronic markets where hackers buy and sell wares and discovered someone offering log-on credentials for access to computers at the U.S. Election […]
By Alex Whiting ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Curbing poverty and hunger in rural areas is crucial to building lasting peace in Colombia and in turn will help the nation become a breadbasket for the world, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday. Rural reforms to address unequal land distribution and boost development are key to the peace agreement signed last month by the Revolutionary Armed Forces […]
Photo On the campus of New York University Abu Dhabi. The failure of Georgetown and N.Y.U. to call out the suppression of critical speech suggests the complicity that gulf money buys. Credit Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis WASHINGTON — Cyberespionage may be the new normal, but you wouldn’t think that an American graduate student would be a target for state-level spyware and surveillance. Apparently, though, I am. On May 19, […]
US intelligence officials have acknowledged that Russia worked to influence the outcome of the US election, and the New York Times has an excellent rundown of what occurred. It’s a fascinating look at what might be a blueprint for future electoral meddling. But perhaps the most startling fact is that something as large, complex, and arcane as an American election was attacked without touching a single voting […]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced Thursday that he will step down on January 20 — inauguration day for incoming US President Donald Trump. Wheeler was appointed to the top position at the FCC more three years ago by President Barack Obama. The FCC issued the following statement from Wheeler regarding his resignation: Serving as F.C.C. Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been […]
By Elias Biryabarema | BIDI BIDI, Uganda BIDI BIDI, Uganda Besides bags, blankets and tales of horror, some of the thousands of refugees fleeing South Sudan’s civil war each day carry something else – the ethnic hatred the United Nations says is “fertile ground” for genocide. That hatred, fuelled by continuing reports of ethnic-based killings inside the country, is turning refugee camps on its borders into tinder-boxes […]
Everyone is gaga over the idea of frictionless grocery shopping: tap your phone on a turnstile device upon entry, retrieve food from the shelves, and walk out; your bill is charged to the credit card connected to your device. No waiting in line; no chit chat as your groceries are rung up. In other words, say hello to Amazon Go, which will be tested in […]
Thousands of people had gathered outside a hospital in the Mashhad neighborhood, which is still controlled by rebels, hoping that an evacuation deal announced on Tuesday by Turkey, Russia and Syrian rebels would hold. But the constant threat from snipers, bombs and shelling was unsettling. Video Aleppo Activists Say Final Goodbyes as Assad Closes In Syrian government forces had reclaimed most of rebel-held eastern Aleppo by Tuesday, […]
This Tuesday, July 19, 2016 photo shows a Yahoo sign at the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. On Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016, Yahoo said it believes hackers stole data from more than one billion user accounts in August 2013. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Yahoo said Wednesday more than a billion users may have had data stolen in a hack dating back to 2013—separate from its previously disclosed […]
The EU’s border agency has accused charities operating in the Mediterranean of colluding with people smugglers, according to confidential reports seen by the Financial Times. The accusations from Frontex bring to the fore a long-simmering dispute between EU officials and non-governmental organisations over how to resolve a migration crisis that has caused the deaths of 4,700 people this year alone. Frontex put its concerns in a confidential […]
Steve Garey, who retired from the Anacortes refinery in 2015 after almost 25 years and served as president of the United Steelworkers local, said that while some positive changes were made after the 2010 accident, upper management at Tesoro remains “contemptuous” of its work force and is “hiding behind incredibly permissive process safety regulations.” Those regulations grew out of a string of catastrophic events in the 1980s, […]
The AWS cloud now has 42 Availability Zones in 16 regions but the two empty circles in France and China represent the location of two more regions coming online next year. Image: AWS Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform is now available from UK-based datacenters. The launch of the AWS Europe (London) Region means that AWS’s suite of cloud services is now available out of 16 regions […]
Telstra is addressing the skills shortage in the technology sector through the launch of their Business Technology Services (BTS) academy, which will see a handful of new recruits trained as security or network specialists by the telco. With 29 participants six weeks into their three-year academy course, Telstra BTS executive director Christopher Smith told ZDNet the initiative has so far seen the recruits undergo intensive training and […]
Syrians were still trapped inside the last rebel foothold in eastern Aleppo on Wednesday, hours after an evacuation was set to begin. The reason for the delay was unclear but residents inside the besieged city said they heard several explosions and gunfire, indicating that the shaky deal between the Syrian opposition and Russia is already strained. After weeks of fierce fighting, President Bashar al-Assad looks set to […]
Smash-hit smartphone game “Pokémon Go” has finally officially arrived in South Asia – but people in the region have been playing the game for months using a hack. Gamers in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will now be able to download the game from app stores, California-based Niantic Inc., the game’s developer and distributor said Tuesday. The augmented reality game stayed at the top […]
We’ve all been warned that it is coming, but as SHTFPlan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, what is disturbing is that while technology surrounds us and *some* have concerns about privacy, most shrug at the massive amounts of data they are collecting about our lives, and the incredible level of control the system now has over each individual. This bill passed, clinging to the broadest base of “good intentions” […]
