Google Ireland unit waived the repayment and interest from a £1.1bn loan it gave to DeepMind AI. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Google Ireland unit waived the repayment and interest from a £1.1bn loan it gave to DeepMind AI. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Google Ireland unit waived the repayment and interest from a £1.1bn loan it gave to DeepMind AI. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Google Ireland unit waived the repayment and interest from a £1.1bn loan it gave to DeepMind AI. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Google's AI unit says revenue jumped 158% in 2019


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Alphabet-owned Google waived a 1.1 billion-pound ($1.5bn) loan to DeepMind Technologies in 2019, after the UK-based artificial intelligence lab continued to ramp up the scale of its research and development.

Revenue jumped 158 per cent in 2019, DeepMind said in a financial filing this week. Sales were £265.5 million, up from £102.8m a year earlier. Its losses also widened, increasing 1.4 per cent to £476.6m.

DeepMind’s parent has agreed to continue funding the company for at least a year after the report’s approval. Alphabet’s Google Ireland unit waived the repayment and interest from a 1.1bn-pound loan, the majority issued in early 2018, an amount big enough to cover DeepMind’s losses.

Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 in a £400m acquisition that gave the Silicon Valley search giant access to cutting edge AI research. DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis’s goal is to produce general-purpose intelligence that can solve an array of problems. It develops products used by its parent company – like its system for making data centres more energy efficient and a program to improve the accuracy of travel times on Google Maps – as well as AI with broader applications.

The company’s technology for predicting the shape of proteins, which has potential uses for everything from drug research to designing enzymes that can break down pollutants, came first in a scientific competition devoted to the topic in November. DeepMind’s CASP victory may open the way for it to make its tool, called AlphaFold, more broadly available to researchers.

“During the period covered by these accounts, DeepMind laid the foundations for our groundbreaking results in protein structure prediction,” a DeepMind spokesperson said in a statement. “Our teams were involved in a huge range of projects, from improving the predictability of wind power to accelerating ecological research in the Serengeti.”

Abandon
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Translated by Arunava Sinha
Tilted Axis Press 

Classification of skills

A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation. 

A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.

The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000. 

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Company%20profile
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hall of shame

SUNDERLAND 2002-03

No one has ended a Premier League season quite like Sunderland. They lost each of their final 15 games, taking no points after January. They ended up with 19 in total, sacking managers Peter Reid and Howard Wilkinson and losing 3-1 to Charlton when they scored three own goals in eight minutes.

SUNDERLAND 2005-06

Until Derby came along, Sunderland’s total of 15 points was the Premier League’s record low. They made it until May and their final home game before winning at the Stadium of Light while they lost a joint record 29 of their 38 league games.

HUDDERSFIELD 2018-19

Joined Derby as the only team to be relegated in March. No striker scored until January, while only two players got more assists than goalkeeper Jonas Lossl. The mid-season appointment Jan Siewert was to end his time as Huddersfield manager with a 5.3 per cent win rate.

ASTON VILLA 2015-16

Perhaps the most inexplicably bad season, considering they signed Idrissa Gueye and Adama Traore and still only got 17 points. Villa won their first league game, but none of the next 19. They ended an abominable campaign by taking one point from the last 39 available.

FULHAM 2018-19

Terrible in different ways. Fulham’s total of 26 points is not among the lowest ever but they contrived to get relegated after spending over £100 million (Dh457m) in the transfer market. Much of it went on defenders but they only kept two clean sheets in their first 33 games.

LA LIGA: Sporting Gijon, 13 points in 1997-98.

BUNDESLIGA: Tasmania Berlin, 10 points in 1965-66

Profile of Tarabut Gateway

Founder: Abdulla Almoayed

Based: UAE

Founded: 2017

Number of employees: 35

Sector: FinTech

Raised: $13 million

Backers: Berlin-based venture capital company Target Global, Kingsway, CE Ventures, Entrée Capital, Zamil Investment Group, Global Ventures, Almoayed Technologies and Mad’a Investment.

 

 

In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe

Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010

Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille

Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm

Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year

Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”

Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners

TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013 

About RuPay

A homegrown card payment scheme launched by the National Payments Corporation of India and backed by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank

RuPay process payments between banks and merchants for purchases made with credit or debit cards

It has grown rapidly in India and competes with global payment network firms like MasterCard and Visa.

In India, it can be used at ATMs, for online payments and variations of the card can be used to pay for bus, metro charges, road toll payments

The name blends two words rupee and payment

Some advantages of the network include lower processing fees and transaction costs

Points about the fast fashion industry Celine Hajjar wants everyone to know
  • Fast fashion is responsible for up to 10 per cent of global carbon emissions
  • Fast fashion is responsible for 24 per cent of the world's insecticides
  • Synthetic fibres that make up the average garment can take hundreds of years to biodegrade
  • Fast fashion labour workers make 80 per cent less than the required salary to live
  • 27 million fast fashion workers worldwide suffer from work-related illnesses and diseases
  • Hundreds of thousands of fast fashion labourers work without rights or protection and 80 per cent of them are women
Emergency

Director: Kangana Ranaut

Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry 

Rating: 2/5

'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'

Rating: 1 out of 4

Running time: 81 minutes

Director: David Blue Garcia

Starring: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham

TV: World Cup Qualifier 2018 matches will be aired on on OSN Sports HD Cricket channel

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It Was Just an Accident

Director: Jafar Panahi

Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr

Rating: 4/5

Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
  1. Join parent networks
  2. Look beyond school fees
  3. Keep an open mind
Results

STAGE

1 . Filippo Ganna (Ineos) - 0:13:56

2. Stefan Bissegger (Education-Nippo) - 0:00:14

3. Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) - 0:00:21

4. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) - 0:00:24

5. Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana) - 0:00:30

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION

1. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) - 4:00:05

2. Joao Almeida (QuickStep) - 0:00:05

3. Mattia Cattaneo (QuickStep) - 0:00:18

4. Chris Harper (Jumbo-Visma) - 0:00:33

5. Adam Yates (Ineos) - 0:00:39

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets