|TAP Special| Sections of public opinion in the Arab Gulf see anti-Arab bias and the grudge in losing the bid for hosting World Cup as the main motivation for the campaign against Qatar in the award of 2022 tournament. As it becomes increasingly clear that the corruption scandal can have very negative implications for the hosting of the tournament, the Arab public opinion is also becoming more […]
Video | Syria: Brides of Peace The sisters Kinda and Lubna Zaour walked through the main souk in Damascus dressed as brides, a symbol of love and peace. They were arrested almost immediately. By ANNE BARNARD June 7, 2015 BEIRUT — The blurry pictures circulating on social media showed several women in white, dressed as brides, standing shoulder to shoulder in a covered market in the old city of […]
An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code on a man holding a laptop computer, in an office in Warsaw June 24, 2013. Reuters/Kacper Pempel/Files WASHINGTON The chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee said on Sunday the Chinese government was likely to have been behind the recent breach of U.S. government computers, which may have compromised the personal data of 4 million current and […]
|TAP Special| The release of a new book, titled The Ugly Game, which claims to contain damning evidence of malpractices within FIFA, is ominously coinciding with a forthcoming debate by European lawmakers on the controversial decision awarding Qatar the right to host 2022 World Cup. The members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) have been very critical of the voting process for the award of […]
ABU DHABI // Want to save the environment? Start by cleaning your plate. That’s the message dozens of youngsters heard yesterday as part of United Nations World Environment Day activities hosted by Tadweer at Yas Mall. The theme set by the UN for this year’s edition of the annual international campaign, which was commemorated around the world on Friday and aimed at raising awareness and action towards […]
|By Rashidul Bari|One may expect the title “Grameen and Muhammad Yunus” to reflect Yunus’ founding of the Grameen Bank (which won the Nobel Prize in 2006) in 1983 to provide miniature loans to the poor—especially women who were trapped in an endless cycle of poverty. Why then does the title involve John Nash, a math genius who won the Nobel Prize in 1994, instead of Yunus? Does […]
Continuing its efforts to increase its appeal to enterprise users, Dropbox announced this week that it is expanding its business-level service with new features in administration, security, and integration. Dropbox has made several moves in recent months to boost Dropbox for Business, including certification with ISO 27018, a new standard for data security and privacy that mandates strict requirements for data handling and employee access control. In […]
U.S. Government Suffers Massive Cyberattack The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is reporting a cybersecurity incident that affects its systems and data. The breach may have compromised the personal information of 4 million current and former federal workers. “Within the last year, OPM has undertaken an aggressive effort to update its cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to its networks,” according to a statement on […]
By ISABEL KERSHNER June 4, 2015 JERUSALEM — A growing global pro-Palestinian movement to boycott Israel instantly created a national furor on Thursday after the top executive of Orange, a leading French telecommunications company, said he would withdraw from the Israeli market if he could. The Facebook page of an Israeli company, Partner Communications, which has a license to use the Orange brand, was filled with customer complaints demanding […]
ABU DHABI // Hamda Al Mansoori will always remember Monday – it was the day she met Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Hamda, 33, a student at the Abu Dhabi Centre for Special Needs, and seven friends were received by Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. He asked them what they wish-ed for and when it came to her […]
DUBAI // A poorly maintained car refuelling at an Enoc petrol station in Al Twar was likely to blame for a fire that broke out last Saturday, an initial review of closed-circuit television footage revealed. The footage shows Dubai Civil Defence using dry chemical powder to put out the blaze, containing the damage to the pump, the car and the side of the petrol station. Health, safety […]
By MERNA THOMAS and ALISON SMALE June 3, 2015 CAIRO — In an unusual daytime attack near Egypt’s most visible tourist attraction, gunmen shot and killed two police officers on Wednesday, a few hundred yards from the pyramids of Giza, security officials said. Tourism is a vital source of foreign currency for the government, and a pillar of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s plan to revive Egypt’s battered economy. The years of […]
UAE. According to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the UAE outperforms the GCC and the rest of the world in most dimensions – including income, employment, health, education, infrastructure, income equality, civil society, governance, and environment – when it comes to its current-level Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (SEDA) scores. Across these dimensions, the UAE topped the average scores of both the GCC and […]
UAE. On managing the work/life complexity Richard Jolly, Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School comments: “The demands from work and personal life have never been greater in the GCC. I see two reasons senior managers should take a closer look at the way the complexities of work and personal life are handled in their companies. “It’s what we call the ‘Double Crunch’ a stage where […]
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR June 2, 2015 WASHINGTON — A senior State Department official held talks last week with the Houthi rebels of Yemen, opening a new round of diplomacy aimed at persuading the warring factions in that country to participate in a peace conference in Geneva, American officials said Tuesday. The meetings came just before the release on Monday of Casey L. Coombs, an American freelance journalist who had […]
Men stood on a building damaged during Hamas’s last war with Israel. Gaza’s unemployment rate has risen to 44 percent, the highest in the world. By DIAA HADID and MAJD AL WAHEIDI June 1, 2015 GAZA CITY — On a street here crammed with glittery clothing and electronic shops, Mahmoud Matar flipped through the receipt book for his appliance store, much of it blank: His lone sale that day was a $7 […]
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, on Sunday took part in the graduation ceremony of the second intake of National Defence College students. The event in the capital was attended by other officials including Sheikh Saif bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, and Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development. Sheikh Mohammed congratulated the graduates for […]
FUJAIRAH // Devastated shop owners are counting the cost of a fire that tore through Masafi’s Friday Market at the weekend. The blaze, which destroyed 13 carpet and furniture shops and 16 fruit and vegetable outlets, broke out about 5pm on Saturday. No injuries were reported. But business owners say they face ruin because insurers do not recognise them as shops Carpet shop owner Bustan Jalil, 68, […]
The word ‘password’ is pictured on a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski/Files WASHINGTON At 3:59 p.m. EDT on Sunday, the National Security Agency and telecommunications companies will begin mothballing a once-secret system that collected Americans’ bulk telephone records, shutting down computers and sealing off warehouses of digital data. If the U.S. Congress fails to act, key provisions of […]
Diane Foley in August after ISIS beheaded her son, James. She has taken part in a review of government policy on hostages. By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS May 29, 2015 WASHINGTON — When President Obama met recently with the mother of James Foley, the American hostage beheaded last August by the Islamic State, she said, he told her that freeing her son and the other American hostages held with him had […]
The site of an explosion near a Shiite mosque in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, on Friday. By BEN HUBBARD May 29, 2015 BEIRUT, Lebanon — A suicide bomber dressed in women’s clothing detonated his explosive belt near the entrance to a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia on Friday, killing three other people, according to Saudi state media. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility, as it did just a […]
Given the lukewarm response received so far to wearable technology, it makes sense that Google would want to expand the definition of the term. So the company has introduced Project Soli, an attempt by its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division to harness the power of hand and finger manipulation to make it easier to interact with ever-smaller devices and screens. The idea behind the technology, introduced […]
My wedding day was the first best day of my life. I could not have ordered a more perfect day if I had had a menu of choices in front of me. The marriage to my best friend was what I was really looking forward to. I wanted to settle down and start a family and that’s what we did. Our ideal world was lost on Sept. […]
