Jerusalem / AFP A leading minister called Mahmud Abbas Israel’s top ideological enemy on Thursday after the Palestinian president suggested he could withdraw recognition if progress was not made towards peace. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, seen as close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called the Palestinian leader’s remarks at a Fatah party congress in Ramallah on Wednesday “a sad joke.” ...

  Beijing / AFP Beijing will “seriously” implement new United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes, it said on Thursday, with the measures set to hit Pyongyang’s lucrative Chinese coal exports hard. UN Security Council resolution 2321, passed on Wednesday, caps the North’s annual coal exports at little more than four months of current ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. introduced an image recognition program, a speech-to-text service dubbed Polly, and tools for building conversational apps, highlighting its push to add artificial intelligence to its cloud-computer offerings. Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of the Amazon Web Services unit, unveiled the new products at the company’s fifth annual re:Invent conference, which drew 32,000 people from diverse industries ...

  DUBLIN / AP As Gov. John Kasich announced a $15 million investment in advanced self-driving highway technology, he urged Ohioans to push back against old ideas about the state. “Who would ever want to be called the Rust Belt?” he said. “The Rust Belt’s some deteriorating, eroding, old, tired and worn out place. You ever hear that term, do ...

  Bloomberg Users of the WeChat instant-messaging platform can have their content censored even if they leave China or switch to an overseas phone number, according to a research group. WeChat accounts registered with a mainland China-based phone number have keywords filtered out or messages blocked anywhere in the world as long they keep the same user name, according to ...

  Relaxnews Soft-launched as a June 2015 computer game, the very well-received “Lego Worlds” is now heading to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for February 2017, as Warner Bros challenges the era-defining success of Microsoft-owned “Minecraft.” When you’re making a game that takes on “Minecraft,” recognizable branding isn’t enough. Fortunately, the studio charged with developing “Lego Worlds” has a long ...

  Washington / AFP Malicious software designed to attack Android smartphones has breached the accounts of more than a million Google users, security researchers said. The report by Check Point Software Technologies said the malware dubbed Gooligan targets devices running Android 4.0 and 5.0, which represent nearly 74 percent of mobile devices using the Google-powered operating system. The attacks can ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and Their Highnesses the Supreme Council Members, on Wednesday, attended the UAE Commemoration Day ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan sent a cable to Brazilian President Michel Temer extending condolences over the plane crash which involved the players of the Brazilian Chapecoense football club. In the cable, HH Sheikh Khalifa expressed sincere sympathies to President Temer and the families of the victims. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed ...

  Abu Dhabi / EMIRATES BUSINESS The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, an independent, research-driven graduate-level university focused on advanced energy and sustainable technologies, on Wednesday announced that a new fault ride through (FRT) transient management system, which can support the electric power grid during grid faults, developed by a team of its researchers has been issued a patent ...