8 Tips For Google Search That Will Streamline Nearly Everything You Do | ||
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You use it every day, but do you know how to use it well? Here are some tips to master Google search. Produced by Matt Johnston Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here Are All The Mistakes Young British People Are Making In Job Interviews Right Now | ||
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At Business Insider's London office we recently sifted through more than 100 job applications — and conducted 50 or more personal interviews — with people who want to write for our new UK site, launching later this year. We were impressed with the calibre of the candidates. Everyone we saw was smart and accomplished, and they seemed to "get" our all-digital, fast-paced, anti-boring way of handling business news. But ... the British are human, too. They make mistakes. We don't hold minor mistakes against people — in fact we hired some of the people who committed these flubs — but every faux pas we describe here comes from real-life job interviews. Don't wear a Ramones T-shirt to a job interview. We get it. You're young and cool. And we love The Ramones, too. But make us feel like you're a safe bet by wearing a shirt and tie (men) or go conservative but stylish (women). One candidate impressed us by wearing a shirt and tie to a Google Hangout video interview. Don't let your cat escape out of a window during a live video chat. We often use Skype and Google Hangout. A video interview may feel casual but you need to prepare: In the background, we can see the dishes piled in your sink or the laundry hanging off your bedroom door. One candidate interrupted her conversation with us when her cat jumped out of an open window. (We hired this person anyway.) Do not try to negotiate your salary in the first meeting. We get that you're trying to make sure you aren't wasting anyone's time, but remember that this is a negotiation: The further you get through the process, the more it shows we want to hire you, and the stronger your negotiating position becomes. Obviously we don't lowball candidates based on this. But asking the question early marks you as a rookie. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Experts Are Predicting A Republican Landslide | ||
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Republicans appear headed to a landslide victory that will give them control of the US Senate and an even bigger margin of control in the House of Representatives, according to election forecasters and poll averages. The latest polling averages, according to Real Clear Politics, point to a seven-seat pickup for Republicans in the Senate, which would give them a 52-48 majority. Here's a quick rundown of the latest forecasts and predictions: • FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver gives Republicans a 76.2% chance of winning a Senate majority. The most likely outcome (22.7%), according to his model, is Republicans flipping eight seats for a 53-47 majority. • The New York Times' model has Republicans' chances of flipping the Senate at 70%. The model gives Republicans a better than 60% chance in Alaska, Iowa, Colorado, and Louisiana. • The Washington Post's model has Republicans' takeover as a virtual certainty — 98%. It also forecasts an eight-seat GOP flip for a 53-47 majority. • The Huffington Post's model gives Republicans a 79% chance. The model's most likely outcome, at 22%, is a 52-48 GOP majority. • Princeton University professor Sam Wang, whose model has been the most bullish for Democrats, has the most likely outcome as a 52-48 Republican majority. • The University of Virginia's Larry Sabato projects Republicans will gain a 53-47 margin — by holding their three competitive races and flipping Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska, South Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, and Montana. Sabato's Crystal Ball team also projects Republicans will pick up nine seats in the House, giving them a 243-192 majority. Here's a look at the averages of polls in key states, according to Real Clear Politics: • New Hampshire: Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) leads Scott Brown (R) by 0.8 • Iowa: Joni Ernst (R) leads Bruce Braley (D) by 2.3 points • Kansas: Greg Orman (I) leads Sen. Pat Roberts (R) by 0.8 points • North Carolina: Sen. Kay Hagan (D) leads Thom Tillis (R) by 0.7 points • Georgia: David Perdue (R) leads Michelle Nunn (D) by 3.0 points • Alaska: Dan Sullivan (R) leads Sen. Mark Begich (D) by 2.4 points • Arkansas: Tom Cotton (R) leads Sen. Mark Pryor (D) by 7.0 points • Colorado: Cory Gardner (R) leads Sen. Mark Udall by 2.5 points There's still one factor that could complicate Republicans' plans to celebrate Tuesday night. FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten recently projected there's a 47% chance the midterm elections will "go to overtime." The two biggest potential factors for an election extension are increasingly likely runoffs in Louisiana and Georgia, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote Tuesday night. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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America's Trade Deficit With China Hits A Record High | ||
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The US had an international trade deficit of $43.0 billion in September. Exports totaled $195.6 billion while imports totaled $238.6 billion. This was wider than the $40.0 billion reported in August, and it was much wider than the $40.2 billion expected by economists. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Mexico catches mayor blamed for students' disappearance | ||
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Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican police detained Tuesday a fugitive ex-mayor and his wife accused of ordering a police attack that left six people dead and 43 college students missing. Jose Luis Abarca, the former mayor of the city of Iguala, and Maria de los Angeles Pineda "were detained by federal police in Mexico City," the spokesman said. "There was no violence in the operation," the spokesman said, adding that the couple was taken to federal prosecutors to be interrogated. The arrests come more than a month since the students vanished after they were attacked by municipal police linked to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang in Iguala, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Mexico City. Authorities say the officers shot at buses carrying the students and then handed 43 of them to the gang, in a case that has drawn international outrage and exposed Mexico's struggle to tame police corruption and gang violence. The teacher college students remain missing despite a vast search operation in the state of Guerrero, where a dozen mass graves containing 38 unidentified bodies have been discovered. Abarca, his wife, and the city's police chief went on the run two days after the September 26 police attack. Authorities say Abarca ordered the officers to confront the students over fears that they would derail a speech by his wife, who was the head of the town's child protection agency. Fellow students from the left-wing college near the Guerrero capital Chilpancingo said they went to Iguala to raise funds but acknowledged they had seized the buses to transport themselves. The mayor and his wife have since been linked to the Guerreros Unidos gang. Pineda also has three brothers who are known members of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. Abarca's family says he is innocent. Families of the missing have voiced frustration over the lack of progress in the search and expressed their anger to President Enrique Pena Nieto in a private meeting last week. The mass disappearance has turned into a human rights crisis for Pena Nieto, whose economic reform efforts have been overshadowed by the Iguala case and an alleged summary execution of drug suspects by army soldiers. Mexicans have held a series of protests over the disappearance. Some have turned violent, with demonstrators torching part of the Guerrero government headquarters last month. Guerreros' governor, Angel Aguirre, resigned over the case. Authorities have detained 56 people in the case, including 22 Iguala police officers and 14 members of the municipal force in the neighboring town of Cocula. The failure to find the students has infuriated a Mexican society fed up with a drug war that has killed 80,000 people and left 22,000 more missing since 2006. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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8 Tips For Google Search That Will Streamline Nearly Everything You Do | ||
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You use it every day, but do you know how to use it well? Here are some tips to master Google search. Produced by Matt Johnston Follow BI Video: On Facebook Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Here Are The Breakeven Oil Prices For America's Shale Basins | ||
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The price of a barrel of light sweet crude oil has plunged from over $100 per barrel this summer to around $80 per barrel this week. Analysts have attributed this to slowing demand due to the decelerating global economy and higher supply in large part due to the US shale energy boom. However, the US shale basins are relatively expensive to tap. And when the price of oil falls below a certain breakeven level, fracking for oil in these unconventional plays becomes uneconomical. "[O]n a reserve weighted basis, the average breakeven for unconventional plays in the US is $76- 77/bbl, at an asset level," Morgan Stanley's Martijn Rats, Haythem Rashed and Sasikanth Chilukuru write. "At the corporate level, this breakeven is likely to be higher. This too suggests that if oil prices persist at current levels, this would likely lead to a slow down in spending. " The analysts characterized the downside scenario of persistently low oil prices as the "capex cliff," a scenario in which energy companies cut back sharply on spending. And that in turn could ripple through the economy. Their report included this chart of the breakeven oil prices for the various US shale basins.
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Scientists see mechanism for spontaneous HIV 'cure' | ||
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Paris (AFP) - French scientists said Tuesday they had found the genetic mechanism by which two HIV-infected men may have experienced a "spontaneous cure", and said it offered a new strategy in the fight against AIDS. Both men were infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), one of them 30 years ago, but never developed AIDS symptoms. The AIDS-causing virus remained in their immune cells but was inactivated because its genetic code had been altered, the scientists said. The change appeared to be linked to increased activity of a common enzyme named APOBEC, they theorised. The "apparent spontaneous cure" throws up an intriguing avenue for drug engineers, the team said in a statement. "The work opens up therapeutic avenues for a cure, using or stimulating this enzyme, and avenues for identifying individuals among newly-infected patients who have a chance of a spontaneous cure." The work, published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection, was carried out by scientists at France's Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). HIV replicates by invading human CD4 immune cells, which it reprogrammes to become virus factories. A rare group of people -- fewer than one percent of those infected -- are naturally able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels. They are known as "elite controllers", but the mechanism by which they keep the virus at bay remains a mystery. The French group looked at two such individuals, a 57-year-old man diagnosed HIV-positive in 1985, and a 23-year-old diagnosed in 2011, and sequenced their virus genomes. Though they remained infected, standard tests could not detect the virus in their blood. The team found that in both cases, the virus was unable to replicate in immune cells due to mutations in its genetic code. The researchers suggested spontaneous evolution between humans and the virus, a process called "endogenisation" that is believed to have neutralised other viruses in humans in the past. A similar process has been witnessed in a population of koalas that has integrated an AIDS-like virus into their genes, neutralised it, and were passing resistance on to their offspring. "We propose that HIV cure may occur through HIV endogenisation in humans," the team wrote. "These findings suggest that without therapeutic and prophylactic strategies, after several decades of HIV/host integrations and millions of deaths, it is likely that a few individuals might have endogenised and neutralised the virus and transmitted it to their progeny," they added. "We believe that the persistence of HIV DNA can lead to cure, and protection, from HIV." The approach hitherto has been the opposite: to try and clear all traces of HIV from human cells and from cell reservoirs where they hide. "We suggest that persistence of integrated HIV DNA is not a barrier, but on the contrary, may be a prerequisite to HIV cure," said the study authors. "We propose a new vision of HIV cure through integration, inactivation and potential endogenisation of a viral genome into the human genome."
- Not unique -
The team said they did not believe the two patients were unique or that the phenomenon was new. And they called for "massive sequencing" of human DNA, particularly from Africans who had been exposed to HIV for longest, to find further proof. Only one person is thought to have ever been cured of HIV: Timothy Ray Brown who had bone marrow transplants as a treatment for leukaemia, from a donor with resistance to HIV. A baby given anti-AIDS drugs immediately after birth for 18 months, was at first also thought to have been cured, but the virus later came back. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Burkina's army leader vows to 'give power back' to civilians | ||
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Ouagadougou (AFP) - Burkina Faso's army-appointed leader on Tuesday promised he would "give power back" to a civilian government, a traditional chief said, but provided no timetable for the transfer despite intense international pressure. Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida made the vow in a meeting with the country's Mogho Naba, the "king" of Burkina Faso's Mossi people, the latter told AFP. The meeting was one Zida and other military officers were holding with local leaders and envoys from abroad following the army's power grab on Saturday after a popular uprising toppled president Blaise Compaore. Zida's pledge "to give power back to the civilians" reiterated similar reassuring words from the army over the past couple of days. But thus far no concrete move has been seen to make it reality. The army took over after a wave of violent protests against attempts to extend Compaore's 27-year rule provoked his resignation last Friday. The military had promised on Monday to hand power to a "consensus" leader, as African nations gave the regime two weeks to return to civilian rule and former colonial power France called for a rapid handover to civilians. Zida has claimed that "power does not interest us" and pledged to install a unity government with a "broad consensus". Opposition leaders were meanwhile meeting with mediators from the United Nations, the regional west African body ECOWAS and the African Union, which has named Togo's former prime minister Edem Kodjo as a special envoy to the landlocked west African nation. Former colonial power France said late Monday it hoped for an announcement on the return of civilian rule "in the coming hours". For elections to be held, "it must be a civilian power that does it", said French President Francois Hollande on the sidelines of a visit to Quebec. Washington said it was still "gathering facts" on the situation but could yet withdraw its $14 million (11 million euro) annual aid package to Burkina Faso. - Ouagadougou streets back to normal - The streets of the capital Ouagadougou bustled normally on Tuesday. Only five days earlier, hundreds of thousands of protesters had gone on a rampage in the capital against Compaore's bid to cling to power, setting parliament and other public buildings ablaze. Hollande announced Monday that France had helped facilitate Compaore's departure "without drama", but denied it had actively participated in his escape. Compaore and his wife are currently staying in a luxury government mansion in Yamoussoukro, the capital of the neighbouring Ivory Coast. Ratings agency Standard & Poor's has put Burkina Faso on watch for a downgrade from its speculative B rating, which is just two steps above the range for indicating a country is vulerable to a default. S&P warned on Monday that the turmoil afflicting the country "could affect the relationship between Burkina Faso and key donors", noting that cheap loans provided by donors have been "instrumental" in financing the domestic budget as well as external trade. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Spain court blocks symbolic Catalan independence vote | ||
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Madrid (AFP) - Spain's Constitutional Court on Tuesday blocked a symbolic independence referendum, planned by the wealthy northeastern region of Catalonia on November 9, at the request of the nation's central government. The Catalan regional government in mid-October dropped plans for an official non-binding independence referendum and replaced it with the symbolic vote, after the court also suspended that vote.
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