Qatar was hit by heavy flooding today causing gridlock on the desert country’s roads as well as closures of schools and the US embassy. Overnight rain made many roads near impassable for commuters amid reports on social media that even Doha’s Hamad International Airport was affected, due to leaks at the estimated USD 17 billion…

A twisting skyscraper that towers over the Basra province in Iraq could become the world’s tallest building, if the plans come to fruition. AMBS Architects, which was founded by Iraqi architect Ali Mousawi, have designed a 230-storey building as part of a new masterplan for the city. The overarching plan, commissioned by the Basra Governorate, aims to maximise the…

ANTARCTIC temperatures have cooled over the past six years, according to US space agency NASA. An intensive scientific study of both Earth’s poles has found that from 2009 to 2016 overall temperature has dropped in the southern polar region. NASA’s Operation IceBridge is an airborne survey of polar ice and has finalised two overlapping research…

New Delhi: Hand-written passports of Indian citizens are no longer valid from Wednesday as per government’s directive. The government had asked those having hand-written passports to get machine-readable ones having bar codes by 24 November. The government had decided to discontinue hand-written passports in accordance with recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to…

New Delhi: With an aim of promoting interests of 5.77 crore small businesses, an online portal ‘e-lala’ was launched to promote business-to-business and trader-to-customer transactions and reduce costs. Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated ‘e-lala’, an e-commerce portal of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). Naidu complimented CAIT for e-lala initiative which is aimed…

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 26:   India Met Department has forecast four days of heavy to very rains for Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and coastal Andhra Pradesh from tomorrow (Friday). Satellite pictures this morning showed an advance batch of clouds having penetrated the North Tamil Nadu coast after travelling hundreds of km from South Andaman Sea. ‘Low’ brewing It…

Just about every major tech company, like Apple and Microsoft, has some sort of wearable computer. Caeden, a wearable tech start-up, thinks that with most of these smartwatches and fitness accessories, an important first step was skipped: They don’t look like something you would want to wear. On Tuesday, the one-year-old company is opening orders for Sona, its…

NEW DELHI: Instant messaging app like Whatsapp and social networks are the first things that most consumers check on their smartphones in the morning, a study by professional services firm Deloitte said. According to Deloitte’s Mobile Consumer Survey 2015, about 78% of respondents owning smartphones said they checked their phones within 15 minutes of waking…