Bloomberg As Britain’s retailers reported on what for most was a successful holiday season, one of the biggest and most storied of all warned that it expects a particularly difficult year ahead. Employee-owned John Lewis Partnership said that Brexit-induced inflation and a rise in online competitors are increasingly pressuring earnings. Such is its concern that the owner of John ...

  Bloomberg Air France-KLM Group Chief Executive Officer Jean-Marc Janaillac delivered a downbeat assessment of the carrier’s prospects for 2017, saying it faces ‘difficult’ times in the year ahead amid rising oil prices and an ongoing struggle to rein in expenses. Weak margins combined with high debt remain the greatest challenges to Europe’s biggest airline, Janaillac said in an address ...

  Bloomberg The next frontier in digital advertising may be your car’s windshield. Automakers, technology companies and glass manufacturers are teaming up to turn the display that graces the front of an iPhone into the windshield of a car — one that can show ads, directions and vehicle information to the person behind the wheel. The advent of connected cars ...

  WASHINGTON / AP A next step for smart watches and fitness trackers? Wearable gadgets gave a Stanford University professor an early warning that he was getting sick before he ever felt any symptoms of Lyme disease. Geneticist Michael Snyder never had Lyme’s characteristic bulls-eye rash. But a smart watch and other sensors charted changes in Snyder’s heart rate and ...

  JAKARTA / AP The waste from discarded electronic gadgets and electrical appliances has reached severe levels in East Asia, posing a growing threat to health and the environment unless safe disposal becomes the norm. China was the biggest culprit with its electronic waste more than doubling, according to a new study by the United Nations University. But nearly every ...

  Wellington / DPA New Zealand’s alpine parrots live life at full throttle, perching on car roofs as they surf down mountain highways, hanging out at ski-field cafes and vandalizing cars just for fun. But the same keen intelligence that has enabled the kea to survive in the extreme environment of the Southern Alps is placing them in danger. Many ...

  Jungingen / DPA Low-stress cattle consultant Phillip Wenz doesn’t care for the label “cow whisperer.” “That would imply that I whisper,” he says. In fact, Wenz, 47, communicates with cows by entirely silent means, walking beside them very calmly, his mouth shut, hands in his pockets. “Fidgeting around makes the animals nervous,” he says. Wenz is an expert in ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces congratulated Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir on the lifting of some of the economic sanctions, imposed by the United States on his country. In a telephone call made last night with president ...

  DUBAI / WAM ArabPlast 2017, an international plastics, petrochemicals and rubber industry trade fair, concluded, underlining a great future for the industry, both locally and regionally. The event saw its participants reiterate their determination to adopt innovative strategies to develop their production capacity in a sustainable and effective way. “In ArabPlast 2017, participants were able to find out about ...

  DUBAI / WAM Total amount of real estate transactions recorded in the Emirate last year exceeded AED259 billion, revealed Dubai Land Department’s (DLD) annual report. Commenting on DLD’s annual report, Sultan Butti bin Merjen, Director-General of DLD, said the findings in the report confirm that the real estate market in Dubai has reached a new phase of maturity and ...