Scientists have specified how many deaths can be attributed to human-made climate change during an extreme heatwave in two European cities in 2003. They calculate that in Paris, the hottest city in Europe during the heatwave in summer 2003, 506 out of 735 summer deaths recorded in the French capital were due to a heatwave made worse by human-made climate change. The impact of climate change was […]
In celebration of the upcoming Olympic Summer Games in Rio, Victorinox has created a limited edition, 24-karat gold plated version of their iconic Climber Pocket Knife. There’s a matching neck strap for added bling plus the 14 functions that have made the Climber one of the most popular Swiss Army knives of all time. Let’s block ads! (Why?) -Werd
Despite some setbacks with an earlier program aimed at getting more people online, Facebook is pushing ahead with a new effort to provide wireless Internet access to remote parts of the world: the OpenCellular wireless access platform. Designed to support a variety of connection options from 2G to LTE, the OpenCellular system will be open sourced so telecom operators and other organizations can more easily build locally […]
BAGHDAD — As celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan stretched past midnight into Sunday in central Baghdad, where Iraqis had gathered to eat, shop and just be together, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed at least 143 people — the third mass slaughter across three countries in less than a week. The attack was the deadliest in Baghdad in years — at […]
FUJAIRAH-sharjah // Parents are concerned about the lack of summer camps and sports activities for children in Fujairah over the school holidays. With few centres offering indoor activities such as swimming, football and basketball, residents are at a loss over what to do with their children for the two months. Finding an affordable camp is also a problem. Jordanian mother Seham Al Shoulh, has been looking for […]
Backed by the wide-scale social influence of Facebook, WhatsApp appears poised to have an even greater impact on the global communications market, including voice calling as well as text messaging services. Yesterday, the Facebook-owned mobile messaging service announced it is now supporting more than 100 million voice calls every day, a service it began offering just 18 months ago. WhatsApp also rolled out a desktop version of […]
|By Matein Khalid| Sterling sell off in the world currency markets and the sheer populist appeal of Boris Johnson suggests the world should not rule out a geopolitical shock that will unnerve financial markets and lead to the mother of all rate cuts at the Bank of England. If Britain votes to leave the EU, the only currency I want to own is the Swiss franc and gold, […]
Reuters/Kacper Pempel/files SAN FRANCISCO Amazon.com Inc is preparing to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple Inc and Spotify, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The service will be offered at $9.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Amazon […]
|By Matein Khalid|Dr. Mervyn King broke with tradition by publishing his book “The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy”. After all, retired governors of the Bank of England do not, as a rule, do not write/publish books, let alone write books that lambast the City of London’s culture of greed and hubris. It is no coincidence that Dr. King quotes T.S. […]
A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility on Friday for a car bombing this week that killed 11 people and wounded dozens near a central tourist district in Istanbul. The group — Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, or T.A.K. — said the attack on Tuesday had been carried out in retaliation for Turkish Army operations in the Kurdish-dominated region of southeastern Turkey, and it warned tourists to stay away from […]
FILE PHOTO — A woman looks at her phone as she passes by a Lending Club banner on the facade of the the New York Stock Exchange December 11, 2014. Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File Photo SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters/IFR) – Many online lenders have failed to detect the “stacking” of multiple loans by borrowers who slip through their automated underwriting systems, lending company executives and investors told Reuters. […]
AMIRIYAT FALLUJA, Iraq — One of the Iraqi civilians who risked an escape from the sprawling battle for Falluja made it as far as the Euphrates River. He was there for all to see on Sunday morning: His body, tied to the side of a boat, bobbed in the muddy waters next to a rickety bridge that separates Baghdad from the violence of Anbar Province. “Sheikh, sheikh, […]
WASHINGTON — An exhausted and ill-equipped Iraqi Army faces daunting obstacles on the battlefield that will most likely delay for months a long-planned major offensive on the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, American and allied officials say. The delay is expected despite American efforts to keep Iraq’s creaky war machine on track. Although President Obama vowed to end the United States’ role in the war in Iraq, […]
One of Widad Majid’s brothers had to stay in Turkey for treatment of leukaemia, and her marrow could be the only hope for his survival Along with more than a dozen members of her extended family, Widad Majid spent last summer sleeping in sweltering refugee camps, open fields, train stations and a jail cell as she traversed Europe en route from Syria to Sweden, one small girl […]
Minivans have gotten a bad rap for a long time, but if you haven’t looked at one recently you are in for a surprise. Toyota builds the Sienna minivan which is attractive on the outside and roomy on the inside. Did we really say attractive? The new Sienna isn’t your typical box on wheels that distinguished the model for so long. It has sleek styling that sets […]
By THOMAS ERDBRINK May 31, 2016 TEHRAN — A leading conservative was re-elected speaker of Iran’s Parliament on Tuesday, denying reformists a post they thought they had earned with a big win in February elections. In a mild surprise, an overwhelming majority of Iran’s lawmakers chose a conservative candidate, Ali Larijani, who has held the position since 2008. Mr. Larijani, 57, scion of a powerful Iranian family, is not […]
Basma Abdel Aziz was walking in downtown Cairo one morning when she saw a long line of people standing in front of a closed government building. Returning hours later, Ms. Abdel Aziz, a psychiatrist who counsels torture victims, passed the same people still waiting listlessly — a young woman and an elderly man, a mother holding her baby. The building remained closed. When she got home, she […]
This summer, Acer will begin releasing a number of new devices aimed at different types of users, including a new series of notebooks for business users and two new 2-in-1s for students and budget-conscious buyers. Taiwan-based Acer plans to showcase its latest releases at next week’s Computex expo in Taipei. It also plans to unveil its BeingWare vision for smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. […]
|By Matein Khalid| In retrospect, 2016 will go down in German political and economic history as a significant game changer, on the scale of 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (reunification) and 1999 (the Euro), even 1945 (launch of Deutschemark), 1945 (Third Reich surrenders), 1943 (Stalingrad) and 1933 (Hitler elected). Chancellor Merkel, renamed Mutti Multi kulti, allowed a million migrants to settle in Germany. The far right […]
Books of The Times By MICHIKO KAKUTANI The title of Janine di Giovanni’s devastating new book, “The Morning They Came for Us,” refers to those terrible moments in ordinary Syrians’ lives when the war in their country becomes personal. Those moments when there is a knock on the door and the police or intelligence services take a family member away. Those moments when a government-delivered barrel bomb […]
YISHUV HADAAT, West Bank — With shoulder-length hair tumbling from beneath his knit skullcap, Hanamel Dorfman, a radical young Israeli settler, explains matter-of-factly on camera how hilltop settlement outposts like his own will continue to proliferate across the West Bank. From there, he says bluntly, Israelis will cross the Jordan River and start building on the other side. Reminded that beyond the river there is another sovereign […]
Researchers at IBM say they’ve achieved a “significant milestone” in an emerging type of memory technology called phase-change memory (PCM). Because it doesn’t lose data when power is turned off and can endure millions of read-write cycles, PCM could eventually enable new levels of performance in a wide range of devices. During a demonstration today at the International Memory Workshop in Paris, IBM researchers showed how they […]
Among the apps and other innovations Google expects to highlight during its I/O 2016 developer conference in Mountain View, Calif., this week is Project Tango, its technology for bringing “a new kind of spatial perception” to the Android device platform. Google is planning “a big expansion” of the project it first unveiled in 2014, according to a report by Bloomberg last week. Much like Google Maps enables […]
DUBAI // A group of five cyclists are laying claim to being the first riders to bike through all seven emirates in less than 24 hours. Team leader Roisin Thomas said the group completed the feat in about 21 hours. Starting at 5.30am in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, the Irish national said the group finished at 2.30am on Thursday morning – about 15 minutes ahead of schedule […]
