PARIS Turnout figures for the first round of the French presidential election showed a 28.54 percentage participation rate by midday local time, (1000 GMT) the Interior Ministry said on Sunday, slightly above the corresponding rate in the 2012 vote. The 28.54 percent compared to 28.29 percent in 2012 at the same hour, and compared to midday turnout rates of 31.21 percent in 2007 and 21.40 percent in […]
23 April 2017 Ras Al Khaimah, UAE – Novel international group, a leading highly diversified investment company from China, has signed an agreement with Al Marjan Island (AMI) Company to acquire 720.000 sq. Ft. of landon the man-made island in RasAl Khaimah. Alan Feng, Director, Novel company said that: “Our Group aims at enlarging its presence overseas via high standing partnerships, joint venture and other projects. The […]
BEIRUT An Israeli attack against a military base for the Syrian pro-government National Defence Forces in southern Syria killed three NDF members on Sunday, the NDF militia and a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said it remained unclear if the source of the bombardment in Quneitra province was an air strike or shelling. Israel has carried out air […]
Microsoft has launched IoT Central, a fully managed “IoT-as-a-service” offering to assist enterprises with the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications without the need for in-house expertise. IoT Central aims to lower the barrier of entry to deploying IoT solutions in the enterprise, with a spokesperson from Microsoft telling ZDNet that the company “has a history of simplifying complicated technologies and bringing [them] to the masses”, […]
By James Pearson and Ju-min Park | SEOUL SEOUL North Korea said on Sunday it was ready to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier to demonstrate its military might, as two Japanese navy ships joined a U.S. carrier group for exercises in the western Pacific. U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to sail to waters off the Korean peninsula in response to […]
SEOUL North Korea detained a U.S. citizen on Friday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, bringing the total number of Americans held by the isolated country to three. The man, a Korean-American in his fifties identified only by his surname Kim, had been in North Korea for a month to discuss relief activities, Yonhap said on Sunday. He was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport on his way […]
When North Korean traders give Li Jian long lists of the goods they want to buy, he checks the items against a 236-page Chinese translation of the UN sanctions imposed after Kim Jong Un’s regime conducted a sixth nuclear weapons test in September. “If it’s on the sanctions list, we can’t provide it,” Mr Li said from his office in downtown Dandong, the Chinese border city through which […]
MANILA Philippine soldiers have killed three more Islamic State-linked militants on a resort island where they were hiding after a failed attempt to kidnap tourists, a military spokesman said on Sunday. The Islamist militants from the Abu Sayyaf group were killed in a clash on Saturday on Bohol island, a considerable distance to the north of their strongholds in the far south of the predominantly Christian country. […]
Is open source technology a disruptive innovation force in the Clayton Christensen sense of the term — meaning it starts out serving the underserved or unserved, and works its way up to eventually chase the market leaders upstream? Photo: Joe McKendrick It certainly meets that definition, in that it has made powerful solutions available to the smallest and budget-tight players, and, yes, many open source solutions have […]
Julien Pain was tired of preaching to the choir. After spending several years debunking viral fakes for France 24’s Les Observateurs, Pain was on the lookout for a format that would expand the reach of his fact-checking. “I realized I was only reaching people who agreed with me,” says Pain. “And people who didn’t check their information wouldn’t be reading my fact-checking.” Since September, he has taken […]
Dubai’s apparel and footwear market, valued at $11.5 billion in 2016, accounted for the largest share of the emirate’s retail sector, according to new analysis. The report, released by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry during the 11th World Retail Congress, found that apparel leads the category with 73 percent market share. This was followed by footwear (18 percent) and sportswear (9 percent). The report said […]
By Roberta Rampton | SYDNEY SYDNEY U.S. Vice President Mike Pence crouched down in the shade of a eucalyptus tree on Sunday at Sydney’s Tarango Zoo where Penny, a red kangaroo, dozed in the midday heat, scratching her behind the ears before she lazily rolled onto her back. “That’s my usual position on a Sunday afternoon,” Pence said as a bank of cameras clicked, capturing yet another […]
22 April 2017 In line with its core values of supporting the community in the Sultanate and developing employment opportunities for Omani youth, Sohar Islamic, Bank Sohar’s Islamic Banking Window, recently participated in the 3rd Intercollegiate Career Fair. The event was organised by Waljat College of Applied Sciences (WCAS) in association with number of colleges in the country and held under the auspices of Dr. Younis Bin […]
LONDON Britain’s Theresa May appeared on course to win a crushing election victory in June after opinion polls put support for her ruling Conservative party at around 50 percent, double that of the opposition Labour party. May’s decision to call a June 8 election stunned her political rivals this week and a string of polls released late on Saturday suggested the gamble had paid off, with one […]
By Ingrid Melander | PARIS PARIS France goes to the polls on Sunday for the first round of a bitterly fought presidential election, crucial to the future of Europe and a closely-watched test of voters’ anger with the political establishment. Nearly 47 million voters will decide, under tight security, whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a […]
The open call for the exit of United States from the Paris climate deal by none other than the head of the Environmental Protection Agency has shocked environmentalists. This is the first time a high-ranking Trump administration official such as EPA Chief Scott Pruitt has gone public with a call to scrap the historic agreement, which has been endorsed by more than 200 countries. Paris deal aims to […]
Long before “Einstein” became an adjective to denote genius, it was simply the name of a scientist whose vision upended our view of the universe and matter itself. But a shroud of mystery continues to surround the man, especially regarding his volatile, passionate and complex personal relationships. Starting today, Genius, National Geographic Channel’s first scripted series, pulls back the curtain to reveal how Albert the man became […]
Finance ministers and central bankers from around the world have dropped a pledge to resist protectionism, in a further sign that the new US administration’s stance on trade is shifting the global debate. The group from International Monetary Fund member countries issued a statement on Saturday saying they would “promote a level playing field in international trade” but did not reiterate a previous commitment to “resist all […]
In this photograph taken on Monday, April 10, 2017, Luminar CEO Austin Russell gestures while looking at a 3D lidar map on a demonstration drive in San Francisco. Russell, now 22, was barely old enough to drive when he set out to create a safer navigation system for robot-controlled cars. His ambitions are about to be tested five years after he co-founded Luminar Technologies, a Silicon Valley […]
By Abdul Matin | MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan Afghan soldier Zabihullah was chatting with an army comrade at their military base in northern Afghanistan when gunfire interrupted their quiet Friday afternoon. “I asked my friend what was happening, and he said, relax, it must be one of us.” It wasn’t. It was the Taliban. Dressed in army uniforms, at least 10 Taliban attackers had breached the military […]
By Leika Kihara and Francesco Canepa | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON International Monetary Fund members on Saturday dropped a pledge to fight protectionism amid a split over trade policy and turned their attention to another looming threat to global economic integration: the first round of France’s presidential election. Concerns that far-right leader Marine Le Pen and far-left rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, both critics of the European Union, could top the […]
Many Starbucks lovers are crazy over trying out secret menu items that allow them to experience new ways to enjoy their caffeinated and sweet beverages, and the company knows it. That is why it comes as no surprise when Starbucks’ latest craze – the Unicorn Frappuccino – is such a hit with its patrons who love to post picture-perfect photos on Instagram. Of course, not everyone shares the excitement […]
There are few things more difficult for parents than finding out that their child has a serious illness or disability with a genetic cause. Sadly, it is a scenario that Arab parents have often faced because many congenital conditions are more common in the Middle East than in other parts of the world. Recent work by the Centre for Arab Genomic Studies in Dubai, a division of […]
We apparently now live in an era of “alternative facts”, so it is perhaps not surprising that the alternative-history genre has been making something of a comeback in film and on television in recent years. Ben Wheatley’s film adaptation of J G Ballard’s High-Rise was a surprise indie box-office hit last year, while in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine travelled back in time […]
