Apple Says Several Billion Dollars Set Aside for U.S. Taxes Apple’s chief executive says the company has put aside “several billion dollars” to pay tax liabilities in the United States as it repatriates some of its huge overseas earnings. Tim Cook told Irish state network RTE in an interview broadcast Thursday that the money, part of profits from 2014, should be brought back to the U.S. next […]
DUBLIN The European Union’s imposition of a 13 billion euro ($14.5 billion) back tax bill on Apple (AAPL.O) is “total political crap”, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a newspaper interview on Thursday, and anti-U.S. bias may have played a role. But in a separate radio interview he vowed to boost Apple’s tax payments by repatriating billions of dollars in global profits to the United States next […]
By Charlotte Greenfield | WELLINGTON WELLINGTON An appeal by flamboyant German tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom over a decision to extradite him to the United States began in New Zealand on Monday, with the Megaupload founder’s legal team arguing the hearing should be livestreamed on YouTube. The High Court hearing opened in Auckland nine months after a lower court ruled Dotcom could be sent to the United States […]
In a paper presented today at the Association for Computing Machinery’s special interest group on data communication (SIGCOMM) conference in Florianópolis, Brazil, a team of computer science researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by professor Deepak Ganesan introduced a new radio technology that allows small mobile devices to take advantage of battery power in larger devices nearby for communication. Ganesan and his graduate students in […]
Just months after its public launch, the self-driving truck startup Otto has been purchased by the ride-hailing giant Uber for an undisclosed amount. According to a Bloomberg estimate, the deal could be valued at about $680 million. Uber, whose “anyone-can-be-a-cabbie” business model has already shaken up the taxi industry, is also looking to provide autonomous car services in cities. Later this month, the company plans to begin […]
Researchers at the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, using the liquid crystal elastomer technology, originally developed in the LENS Institute in Florence, demonstrated a bioinspired micro-robot capable of mimicking caterpillar gaits in natural scale. The 15-millimeter long soft robot harvests energy from green light and is controlled by spatially modulated laser beam. Apart from travelling on flat surfaces, it can also climb slopes, squeeze […]
At some point in their lives, 15 percent of people with diabetes will develop a painful and hard-to-treat foot ulcer. Twenty-four percent of those affected will require a lower-leg amputation because of it. And, in some instances, what seems like a harmless sore might even lead to death. A Northwestern University team has developed a new treatment for this severe and potentially deadly complication of diabetes. Called […]
While it already offers several ways for users to make video calls over various platforms, Google today launched a new phone-based app called Duo that’s designed for simplicity. Available for both Android and iOS smartphones, Google Duo doesn’t require anything more than a phone number to launch once the app is downloaded. Unlike Google’s Hangouts messaging, voice and video calling tool, people don’t even need Google accounts […]
UAE. Based on a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) titled Self-Driving Vehicles, Robo-Taxis, and the Urban Mobility Revolution—and prepared in collaboration with the World Economic Forum—consumers around the world are surprisingly knowledgeable about Self-Driving Vehicles (SDVs) and their potential benefits, and, by and large, they are more than willing to give them a try. In fact, the study shows that 70% of consumers in […]
INTERNATIONAL. What would your ideal robot be like? One that can change nappies and tell bedtime stories to your child? Perhaps you’d prefer a butler that can polish silver and mix the perfect cocktail? Or maybe you’d prefer a companion that just happened to be a robot? Certainly, some see robots as a hypothetical future replacement for human carers. But a question roboticists are asking is: how […]
By Krishna N. Das and Karen Lema | MANILA MANILA Bangladesh’s central bank has said it is withholding findings of investigations into the cyber theft of $81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to avoid tipping off the “foreign perpetrators” of the hack. Bangladesh Bank lawyer Ajmalul Hossain was responding to comments by Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines […]
|Arabian Post Special| Sale of gold jewellery for cash is emerging as one of the major sources of gold supply and is accounting for almost a third of total supplies to the market this year. According to the World Gold Council, the high price level of gold in recent times has taken its toll on the jewellery sector and conversely recycling has sparked into life. Jewellery consumers […]
Humans have evolved a disproportionately large brain as a result of sizing each other up in large cooperative social groups, researchers have proposed. A team led by computer scientists at Cardiff University suggest that the challenge of judging a person’s relative standing and deciding whether or not to cooperate with them has promoted the rapid expansion of human brain size over the last 2 million years. In […]
INTERNATIONAL. The future for many young people across the Middle East and North Africa looks bleak. The World Bank records that 54% of the working age population in the Middle East and North Africa is unemployed with little prospect of any positive immediate change. An average of 28.7% of 15 to 24-year-olds in the Middle East and 30.6% of those in North Africa are unemployed according to […]
BAGHDAD — If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside. But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. And then, in another Iraqi tragedy in a horrifying […]
A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force’s budding efforts to monitor the sun’s activity, a new study finds. On May 23, 1967, the Air Force prepared aircraft for war, thinking the nation’s surveillance radars in polar regions were being jammed by the Soviet […]
A man uses a mobile phone in front of an advertisement board bearing the image of Pokemon Go at an electronic shop in Tokyo, Japan, July 27, 2016. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO Top video game companies, caught off-guard by the runaway success of Pokemon Go, are wrestling with how to play catch-up to the augmented reality app that has become a worldwide phenomenon. Nearly a dozen […]
UAE. The limited stock of affordable options in Dubai has caused for the neighboring emirates to act like satellite cities. Around 1.1 million people who work in Dubai are residents of another emirate (30% of the active population), as they try to take advantage of the cheaper rates. Rates in other emirates such as Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, and Ajman are 30-40% cheaper than the affordable options […]
A general view of a Wal-Mart store in Mexico City, April 24, 2012. Reuters/Edgard Garrido/Files Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), vying to better challenge Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), will pay about $3 billion for internet retailer Jet.com and its innovative pricing software in the largest-ever deal for an e-commerce startup. The deal disclosed on Monday follows a five-year e-commerce acquisition spree in which Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest traditional retailer, […]
ABU DHABI // A pilot scheme to allow Filipinos working overseas to apply for an exit clearance each time they return home on holiday is to begin next month, officials announced on Monday. Those returning to the same employer and job site and listed on the electronic data base of the Philippine overseas employment administration (Poea) will no longer be required to secure an overseas employment certificate, […]
YANGJU, South Korea — Surrounded by salvaged used-cars parts bound for Syria, Ahmad Khalifa has worked 12 hours a day for three years in one country that does not really want him while longing for another that war has destroyed. In junkyards in South Korean towns like Yangju, north of Seoul, there are hundreds of young Syrian men like Mr. Khalifa, who often worked, ate and slept […]
A security guard stands guard outside a branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in Paranaque city, Metro Manila, Philippines August 2, 2016. Reuters/Erik De Castro MANILA A Bangladesh central bank team visiting Manila to recover $81 million stolen from its account in New York said it was close to getting back $15 million of the loot frozen by the Philippines, but first has to prove ownership […]
The Chicago Beach Hotel, Hard Rock Café and Jumeirah TV Tower are famous Dubai landmarks that disappeared years ago. Next to be added to the list: the Ramada Dubai. The hotel is another link to an old Dubai receding into memory at a rapid rate. When the four-star Ramada opened in Bur Dubai in 1983, it was mostly surrounded by desert. Today, more than three decades on, […]
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan suggested that oil prices have probably bottomed out at about $40 per barrel after tumbling more than 20 percent in the past two months into a bear market. “It’s hard for me to imagine it going very much lower, but it could,” he said Wednesday, according to the transcript of a conference call organized by Rock Creek Group, an investment advisory […]
