Month: May 2017

The real impact of Google’s RankBrain on search traffic

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The rise and advances of new automation and artificial intelligence software algorithms, including those that learn predictive models from historical data, are making increasingly consequential predictive decisions. Such decisions are having an impact on the lives of people in domains as diverse as digital media, advertising,finance, credit, employment, education and criminal sentencing. Marketers and companies need to understand that we are entering into a new generation of optimizing websites for search engines. While many principles and tactics stay the same in search engine optimization, we cannot deny the current path…

The Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement : From Nascent Activism to Influential Power-broking

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Tunisian women have received significant attention for their active participation in preserving and extending women’s rights since 2011. However, their activism and latest achievements should be considered not a recent phenomenon but rather part and parcel of a distinctive local history that has included women as agents of change. This book examines Tunisian women’s lived experiences, as individuals and as a group, within a sociohistorical framework that uncovers the enduring feminine footprint over centuries and eventually underpins and defines their most recent fight for gender equality in postrevolutionary Tunisia. The…

Francophone immigrants face greater challenges outside Quebec

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Ottawa and Ontario are way behind their targets for this demographic of workers. Cheikh Diagne thought he would have an advantage in Canada’s job market by having one of Canada’s official languages as his mother tongue. Instead, the francophone newcomer from Senegal was disappointed few Canadian employers recognize his skills and expertise as a banker and economist, and most see him only fit for jobs in call centres and customer service. “French is not a real official language in Canada, definitely not outside of Quebec. Although it is my first…

Tunisia: New Frontier for African Startups

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Tunisia is emerging as the next eHealth hub and may just give Kenya and South Africa a run for its mone It’s the age of the startup and the business savvy are identifying local solutions to global problems. The next big thing may be lurking in a small Kenyan back office or a Tunisian coffee shop – ready to join Africa’s extensive startup ecosystem with a healthy investment. Western solutions have long been used for African problems but with vastly different infrastructure and diverse populations, these approaches haven’t been successful.…

Tunisia detains six IS suspects

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Tunisia has been under a state of emergency since November 2015, when a suicide bombing in Tunis claimed by IS killed 12 presidential guards Tunisia has detained six people in the central region of Kasserine suspected of belonging to a group linked to the Islamic State group, authorities said Tuesday. The announcement comes after a jihadist leader was killed in a National Guard operation on Sunday night in Kasserine’s Mount Salloum area near the border with Algeria. Judiciary spokesman Sofiene Sliti said the six suspects were detained on Monday as…

Tunisia: Fitch affirms ratings at ‘B+’; Outlook Stable

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Fitch Ratings has affirmed Tunisia’s Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at ‘B+’. The Outlook is Stable, the ratings agency said. The issue ratings on Tunisia’s senior unsecured bonds have also been affirmed at ‘B+’. Fitch has affirmed the Short-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency IDRs at ‘B’ and the Country Ceiling at ‘BB-‘. Tunisia’s ‘B+’ IDRs with Stable Outlook reflect the following key rating drivers: Tunisia has a high and growing government debt burden and external sector imbalances, relatively high contingent liabilities stemming from weak state-owned enterprises and banks,…

Gulfsands Petroleum says Syrian assets still in good shape

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The production does appear to demonstrate the reservoir quality and that the field continues to be operable, company said. Gulfsands Petroleum plc (LON:GPX) says its assets in Syria still appear to be in good shape even with the chaos in the country. The company is the operator and holds a 50% working interest in the Block 26 Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Block 26 is located in North East Syria, an area it says is relatively stable though due to European Union sanctions it is not currently involved in the operations. Production…

Tunisian public health sector struggles to heal itself

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Tunis – Overcrowded hospitals, exhausted staff and disgruntled patients… Tunisia’s public health sector is struggling to heal its many maladies.Hours of waiting for treatment, angry patients and broken equipment have become chronic problems. “Our hospitals are ruins,” Amel Belhaj said as she visited her bedridden father in a Tunis hospital ward with mould-tainted walls and rusty radiators. “On top of our illnesses, we have to cope with the misery of these places, the dirt, the behaviour of the staff,” she said. The nearby toilets smelled strongly of urine and rubbish…

Trump Declares Victory, Heads Home To Face More Russia Scandal

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President Donald Trump couldn’t return home from his first foreign trip without taking a quick victory lap. Despite the media’s efforts to paint a strained or even no-existent relationship between President Donald Trump and his wife, the couple’s affection for one another was noted in the Mail article. POTUS addressed troops at the Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily before returning home, noting the recent attacks in Manchester, England and Egypt as a way to emphasize the need to defeat terrorism. “The single greatest strength to our armed forces is…

Plastic bag bans in Africa: Reality or fantasy?

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Tunisia and Kenya recently joined the ranks of African countries banning the use of plastic bags – but poor waste management and a mentality of littering make the prospect of a plastic waste-free society unrealistic. Plastic bags are used daily across Africa – the bans are hoped to tackle the pervasive problem of waste. In both Tunisia and Kenya, the ban applies to vendors, companies and producers of plastic bags. Kenya has vowed to be successful in this, its third ban. David Ongare, Kenya’s director of environment compliance, told DW…