March, 2017

• 5 March

  Robot that would ease your tax pain

  

    Bloomberg H&R Block is out to wrest back market share from its online tax-prep rivals with such aggressive measures as free services and interest-free advances on refunds—oh, and plunking a supercomputing Jeopardy star down on the desks of its 70,000 tax preparers. For this tax season, H&R Block has put an additional computer screen on each preparer’s desk, facing ...

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• 5 March

  A hotel with the worst view!

  

    AP A Palestinian guesthouse packed with artwork of the elusive British graffiti artist Banksy unveiled itself in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, with a sneak peek of what the owner sarcastically called the ‘hotel with the worst view in the world.’ Wisam Salsaa, 42, said the nine-room establishment named ‘The Walled Off Hotel’ will officially open on March ...

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• 5 March

  Museum to host exhibit of civil rights photography

  

    ALBUQUERQUE, NM / AP Mexican-American photographer Maria Varela was present at some of the most dramatic moments of the Civil Rights Movement, capturing images of voting rights demonstrations in Alabama and efforts to create Head Start programs in poor, rural areas. As one of the few Latinas involved in the black Civil Rights Movement, historians say, her work has ...

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• 4 March

  MoF discusses developments on fiscal policies

    DUBAI / WAM The Ministry of Finance (MoF) held the first meeting of the Government Financial Policy Coordination Council for 2017 in its premises in Dubai. The meeting was headed by Younis Haji Al Khoori, Under-Secretary of MoF and Chairman of the Government Financial Policy Coordination Council; in the presence of Saeed Rashid Al Yateem, Assistant Under-Secretary of Resources ...

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• 4 March

  Mohammed bin Rashid releases new book

    DUBAI / WAM Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has announced the release of his new book, titled ‘Ta’mulat fi Asa’adah Wl Ejabia’ (Reflections on Happiness and Positivity). Making the announcement, he said, “The book includes lessons, examples and stories based on a different life philosophy: ...

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• 4 March

  Dubai Exports gears up to venture into new markets

    DUBAI / Emirates Business Dubai Exports, the export promotion agency of the Department of Economic Development (DED), is all set to take major strides in connecting Dubai trade to new markets across Africa, Central Asia, Europe and South America in 2017 after achieving outstanding success in its market outreach and capability building programmes in 2016. In 2016, Dubai Exports ...

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• 4 March

  GMIS, Spanish confederation form alliance on innovation

    MADRID / WAM The Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) and the Spanish Confederation of Employers’ Organisations (CEOE) signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a high-level meeting at CEOE’s headquarters in the Spanish capital, Madrid. The agreement will see the two partners collaborate on promoting environments that are more conducive and supportive of innovation and disruption, in ...

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• 4 March

  DEWA wins Gulf Sustainability and CSR awards

    DUBAI / WAM Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) won four awards at Gulf Sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Awards. This new achievement demonstrates that DEWA is socially-responsible and uses world-class methods to preserve natural resources, to achieve sustainable devel- opment. DEWA got awards in the categories of Best sustainability and Education programme for its Asher initiative, Best ...

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• 4 March

  A wry squint into our grim future

  

    Although America’s political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature. Dystopian novels are selling briskly — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1935), George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and ...

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• 4 March

  Can’t stream Netflix? The cloud may be to blame

  

    When a cloud-storage malfunction at Amazon Inc. temporarily knocked out services including Netflix, Slack, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website, “smart” thermostats and my email server, it demonstrated how much we’ve all come to depend on one company’s infrastructure. It also shows how the centralization of data has made the internet — at least the part that most of ...

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