Companies hoping to go public are often accused of over-promising would-be investors — especially those that listed in and around the dotcom bubble — but the pledge of one that listed 20 years ago on Monday seems almost positively euphemistic. “Amazon.com intends to use technology to deliver an outstanding service offering and to achieve the significant economies inherent in the online store model,” the company said in […]
VMware said Monday that it plans to acquire Apteligent, makers of application performance software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to VMware, the Apteligent platform lets mobile app developers and IT admins analyze mobile application performance in real time, providing converged visibility and contextual analytics to improve application uptime. The company said it plans to use Apteligent’s capabilities to bolster its digital workspace platform and […]
MEXICO CITY An award-winning Mexican journalist was gunned down on Monday in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, the fifth reporter killed in the past three months as the country struggles to contain resurgent bloodshed among warring drug cartels. Journalist Javier Valdez was shot and killed when an unknown number of assailants opened fire on his car, according to the website of online media outlet RioDoce, which he […]
By Aidan Lewis and Steve Scherer | TRIPOLI/AQUARIUS RESCUE SHIP TRIPOLI/AQUARIUS RESCUE SHIP Italy gave the Libyan coast guard four repaired patrol boats on Monday to beef up Libya’s efforts to stop people smuggling, but the support worries humanitarian groups operating rescue ships near the Libyan coast. Italy and the European Union promised in February to spend millions of euros to help the Tripoli government upgrade its […]
Dubai, 15 May, 2017 SAMENA Telecommunications Council today announced global technology leader Nokia as the newest addition to its membership. Nokia, the leading provider of state-of-the-art end-to-end telecom infrastructure solutions, has unparalleled credentials in enabling infrastructure for next generation mobile as well as fixed broadband networks including 5G and the Internet of Things. Nokia is focused on developing solutions that expands the human possibilities of the connected […]
By Guy Faulconbridge and Dustin Volz | LONDON/WASHINGTON LONDON/WASHINGTON The global WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack spread more slowly on Monday with no major infections reported, as attention shifted to investment and government policy implications of lax cyber security. There were 213,000 infected machines in 112 countries as of 1000 GMT on Monday, according to Czech security firm Avast, making it one of the largest coordinated attacks to […]
Authored by Gwynne Dyer via BangorDailyNews.com, “I am no Mussolini,” Venezuela’s beleaguered President Nicolas Maduro insisted on television early this month. But if things go on this way, he could end up like Mussolini. That would be very unfortunate for him and also for Venezuela. The daily street protests against Maduro’s rule are in their second month, and around 40 people have already been killed, most of […]
GENEVA: UN agencies increased their 2017 appeal for South Sudan’s refugees on Monday, saying they needed at least $1.4 billion to help alleviate “unimaginable” levels of suffering.The UN refugee agency and the World Food Programme had earlier asked for $1.2 billion to support more than 1.8 million people fleeing fighting. But even that was only 14 percent funded, the agencies said in a joint statement.“The suffering of […]
Arthur Gregg Sulzberger will take responsibility for the opinion pages of The New York Times from his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., according to an internal announcement circulated at the company this afternoon, the latest in a series of moves intended to prepare the younger Sulzberger for eventual leadership of The New York Times. At The New York Times, the editorial page editor reports to the publisher […]
As the UAE Pavilion was readied for the opening of the Venice Biennale, paper aeroplanes were strewn across a brick floor with yellow markings. To the untrained eye, they might have looked like the result of some celebratory fun and games from the young members of staff who had just finished the week-long installation work at the Sale d’Armi (Weapons Room) in the Italian city’s old fort, […]
Criminal hacking groups have repurposed a second classified cyber weapon stolen from US spies and have made it available on the so-called dark web after the success of the WannaCry attack that swept across the globe on Friday. The hacking tool, developed by the US National Security Agency and codenamed EsteemAudit, has been adapted and is now available for criminal use, according to security analysts. As with […]
By Angus McDowall and Ayat Basma | BEIRUT BEIRUT The Middle East’s protracted conflicts have caused a region-wide health crisis that goes beyond war wounds to heightened resistance to antibiotics and a collapse in vaccination drives, leading to a resurgence of diseases tamed in peacetime. Health threats are so varied that one of the Middle East’s main teaching hospitals, the American University of Beirut Medical Center, has […]
When you look at the popular, artificially intelligent “assistants” on the market today, they’re really just voice-recognition engines, coupled with pattern- and image-recognition and search engines. But those capabilities, when allowed to ‘learn’ over time, start to form the basis of cognition, inference, and then reasoning. Add attitude, subjective opinion, and feelings, and we get close to the human-brain benchmarks that all machine-learning scientists are pursuing. 25 […]
DAKAR Armed groups have agreed to allow for the evacuation of some civilians from a mosque in Central African Republic’s southeastern town of Bangassou after two days of fighting, a senior U.N. official said on Monday. Around 1000 people in the town had sought refuge from attacks inside and then found themselves trapped there by the militias, said U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Central African Republic Najat Rochdi. […]
U.S. stocks opened higher on Monday as a rise in oil prices boosted energy stocks, soothing some nerves following a massive cyber attack that locked up 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries. Oil hit a three-week high after top exporters Saudi Arabia and Russia said supply cuts needed to last into 2018, a step toward extending an OPEC-led deal to support prices for longer than originally […]
Tesla has started taking orders for its innovative new solar roof, tile-sized solar panels that the company unveiled back in October last year. Coming from the makers of supercar-speed electric vehicles and reusable rockets, they’re not your ordinary solar panel: they’re aesthetically pleasing and won’t require ripping off existing tiles inside the home for installation. The Solar Roof, Tesla’s first post-SolarCity acquisition offering, is expected to sell […]
DUBAI // Schools need to strike a better balance between preparing pupils to pass exams and providing a holistic education, a new report by Dubai’s education regulator says. The Future of Education report published by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority said the best schools prepared pupils for the future, not just tests. The research was conducted in partnership with the Education Development Trust, a non-profit education […]
Nawal Al Zoghbi has announced she will star a new reality series to launch in the second half of the year. The 44-year-old Lebanese singer, known for hits Min Habibi Ana and Alf Wa Miye, made the comments before her Sunday performance in Morocco as part of the Mawazine Festival. Al Zoghbi said the weekly series will appear online and more details will be revealed soon. “We […]
French president Emmanuel Macron has appointed Edouard Philippe, a little-known centre-right politician, as his prime minister in an attempt to build a majority in parliament for his year-old centrist party. Mr Macron’s poaching of Mr Philippe to lead his government was announced on the new president’s first full day in office. Less than a month before legislative elections, it is a new blow to the conservative Republican […]
Hours before Germany formally declared war on France in WWI, Marcel Proust penned a letter to his financial advisor that anticipated the horrors to come. “In the terrible days we are going through, you have other things to do besides writing letters and bothering with my petty interests, which I assure you seem wholly unimportant when I think that millions of men are going to be massacred […]
Having surged to its highest since Oct 2014 early in the year on the back of Trumptopian exuberance, Empire Fed’s manufacturing survey crashed back to -1.0 in May 4 standard deviations below expectations. This is the worst (and first) contractionary print since October 2016 as New Orders crash from 7-year highs to 7-month lows. Prices paid and received both fell (deflationary threat from China), inventories […]
BEIJING Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that intelligence services should beware of creating software that can later be used for malicious means – a reference to global ‘ransomware’ attacks that researchers say exploited a hacking tool built by the U.S. National Security Agency. Speaking to reporters in Beijing, where he is taking part in a conference, Putin said that there was no significant damage to […]
From the founding fathers through John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, American politicians have indulged in extramarital affairs with slaves, movie stars, sisters-in-law and interns. But, in large part because of the press, the American public still reacts to political sex scandals as if they were completely unheard of. Americans remain shocked by these events, I believe, in large part because our perception has been shaped more […]
The cyberattack crippled IT systems and forced doctors and nurses to work with pen and paper notes. Image: iStock NHS hospitals are still struggling in the fight against a global ransomware attack, with computer systems in several hospitals locked three days after the initial outbreak and previously unaffected hospitals revealed to have fallen to WannaCrypt ransomware. During the weekend more than 200,000 victims in over 150 countries […]
