Hello! Here's what you need to know for Thursday.
Salesforce just hit an all time high (CRM) | ||
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Salesforce stock is now up more than 6% after hours, after an earnings report that confirmed the company is growing solidly. Revenue came in at $1.51 billion, up 23% from last year, and deferred revenue (which measures money that's been collected but not yet booked as revenue) was up 31%. At a current trading price of $74.79, the stock's at an all time high (in terms of closing prices; it reached an intraday high over $78 but dropped fast from there). That's particularly impressive because last month, the stock rose about 12% in one day on a report that Salesforce had hired advisors to talk it through a potential takeover bid. The company never confirmed the report, and nobody has yet run down who – if anybody — was making the bid. Here's the stock chart for the last month, not including the after-hours movement today, which won't show up until the open of trading in the U.S. tomorrow.
It's a nice validation for the company that started this whole "cloud" thing back in 1999, when most people thought delivering business software over the internet was an insane idea. That said, it's still earning only razor-thin margins — it had GAAP profits of $4 million this quarter on $1.41 billion in revenue. By way of comparison, Microsoft — the profits giant of the old software world — earned $4.9 billion on $21 billion in revenue in its last quarter. SEE ALSO: The clock is ticking for Dropbox, valued at $10 billion more than a year ago Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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These 10 Instagram users post photos from inside North Korea, the secretive 'Hermit Kingdom.' | ||
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Despite earning the nickname "Hermit Kingdom," North Korea isn't entirely disconnected from the modern world. The country added 3G network access for foreigners in 2013. These days, several people post Instagrams regularly from inside the secretive country. Many are journalists like AP photographer David Guttenfelder although some are tour operators or foreign teachers living in the capital of North Korea. We've assembled a list of some of our favorites. @drewkelly: A teacher in Pyongyang for three years, Drew Kelly has been posting iPhone-only photos from his life in the capital, including this shot from the Pyongyang 10K race.
@shinchoi: Shin is another teacher in Pyongyang. Shin publishes lots of shots of people in their every day life rather than scenery.
@dguttenfelder: David Guttenfelder is a photographer with the AP and National Geographic, among others. He only takes his Instagrams with his iPhone and was one of the first in the country to set up the geo-tags.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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Google Maps tips and tricks you probably didn't know | ||
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Admit it: You probably never use a physical map anymore. Instead, there are a bunch of app and online options, making it easier than ever to get where you want to go. One of the most popular is Google Maps, so we've compiled a list of tips and tricks to make you a power user. Scope the easiest bike paths on Maps for desktop If you're a biker, Google Maps has a sweet elevation feature that will help you better choose between routes by showing you where you'll hit steep hills. If you bike to work, knowing that you can avoid a doozy of an incline by taking a slightly longer route is incredibly helpful (and a good deterrent of showing up too sweaty). Maps also lists the total number of feet you will have to climb, as well as how far you'll get to coast downhill. Unfortunately, this feature is currently only available on desktop, not Google's mobile Maps app. Bad at directions? Drop a "pin" to seamlessly share your location with friends Sometimes trying to explain to your friends where you are is a hassle, especially if you don't know the exact address. Never fear, Google Maps makes it easy. When you're looking at a map on your phone, you can press down on your location (marked by a little blue dot) on the screen to drop a pin. Then just press that pin and you'll be able to click "Share" to send the link via text, email, or whatever else you want to use to share your spot with your buddies. Find your way around a city — even without cell service or wi-fi If you're going to be traveling in an area where you know you won't have cell service or wi-fi, you can download segments of maps to use as your guide. Just prep beforehand by finding the area when you do have service, taping the three vertical dots on the corner of the map, and tapping "Save offline map." That area will be saved under the "Your places" category in the app. Find more detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do it here. See the rest of the story at Business Insider  | ||
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THE SMARTPHONE REPORT BY COUNTRY: Adoption, platform, and vendor trends in major mobile markets around world | ||
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The global smartphone market at large is still growing at a strong, steady pace. But those numbers are being driven by very different trends on a market-by-market basis. Countries with massive populations but less developed mobile markets — namely China and India — stand to continue having a heavy influence on overall smartphone market growth.
In China, Android still dominates thanks to the rise of home-grown vendors Lenovo, Huawei, and Xiaomi. But the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as an expanded iPhone mix, helped boost Apple in this market in the fourth quarter of 2014. In India, growth is explosive, and competition among vendors is gaining steam. Top global players are losing out to a host of homegrown vendors that are fighting for significant shares of the market. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we take a look at how the platform and vendor wars are shaking up in eight major mobile markets, and discuss the opportunity for even more shake-ups and future growth based on current and future smartphone penetration in each market. We also break down China's slowing momentum and discuss India's rise as the next high-growth smartphone market. Access The Full Report And Data By Signing Up For A Trial Today >> Here are a few key points about how things are shaking up in each market:
The report is full of charts and data that can be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here. Members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts and datasets, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry.
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do  | ||
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The clock is ticking for Dropbox, valued at $10 billion more than a year ago | ||
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Dropbox’s rise has been impressive: Since its launch in 2007, it’s added 300 million new users across 200 different countries. It was reportedly valued at $10 billion in January 2014. That growth, fueled by $1.1 billion in venture funding, makes Dropbox one of the greatest Silicon Valley startup stories of all time. But Dropbox is also a company in the midst of a huge transition. The company's annualized revenue run rate was over $400 million as of December 2014, according to a person familiar with the company's finances, as well as a report in The Information. That's only about 1/25th of its last reported valuation. Even if it's growing at a rate of 50% per year, that would mean it's at about $500 million annualized run rate now, or about 1/20th its last reported valuation. (Dropbox declined to comment on these figures and on most other aspects of this story.) That's probably not enough to go public at a $10 billion valuation. Box, which is Dropbox's closest competitor in the enterprise, set its IPO value at $1.67 billion, which is a little less than 8x its 2014 revenues of $216 million. The highest multiple for any public internet software company is Xero's 15x. Dropbox for Business is the company's best chance for growing Dropbox's paid user base. With DfB, businesses pay $15/user per month or $150/user per year for unlimited storage and extra features like better security and admin controls. Dropbox claims that DfB has already signed up more than 100,000 paying businesses, including company-wide deployments at Spotify, MIT, and National Geographic. Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside has called it “the ultra high growth of our business going forward.” Can DfB get the company ready to go public as a $10 billion company? We spoke to several insiders who harbored doubts about the product and the company's pace of innovation as a whole — as well as a couple who think that the entire market is in a tough place, but if anybody can win it, Dropbox can. Growing pains and slowing innovationDropbox as a whole is in a brutally competitive business. Cloud storage in general is headed towards something called the “race to zero,” where companies keep cutting their prices, while increasing storage limits. Big companies with other strong businesses like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are not afraid of losing money up front to gain market share. It was only a little over a year ago that Dropbox finally made DfB a priority, even though it was clear that it needed that extra push from business customers, according to a former employee. In the last quarter of 2013, Dropbox hired almost 200 new people, with a heavy focus on DfB. Almost all resources in overseas offices, which went from 3 to 10 in the last 12 months, are purely allocated to DfB. It’s also added a more structured sales process, which made sales quotas higher and the pressure heavier. “People are very focused on hitting their quotas now,” this former employee says. As a result, DfB has signed up some large enterprise customers, including Under Armour, News Corp, Hyatt, and Yahoo, and some of them have bought thousands of seats. Several people close to the company insist that DfB growth is "on plan," and that they're happy with its progress.
But this former employee also said that a larger, company-wide problem held it back for a while: Not enough urgency. After coming out of Y Combinator in 2007, Dropbox hit 100 million users by 2012, and 300 million by 2015. That rapid growth made some people feel like they'd already made it. “There wasn’t that sense of ‘We haven’t won yet,'" this former employee says. This person also tells us that DfB growth was "not stellar" as of the middle of last year. Another person who left Dropbox last year said that the company has become noticeably slower as it's gotten larger. (Dropbox went from 500 to 1,200 employees in the past 12 months.) For example, a simple team change request had to go through multiple HR managers, creating a culture of heavy “process” that many engineers dislike. In fact, in one of the internal surveys that asked if the engineers felt they were empowered to perform at full potential, almost half of them said “No,” according to this person. Another former employee agrees that COO Dennis Woodside, who joined Dropbox about eighteen months ago after leading Google's Motorola unit, has put a lot of new process in place. But this person insists that the process, rather than slowing the company down, has actually led to it shipping more new features every week. Another person at the company criticized its product development, calling it a "s---show." Current product lead Ilya Fushman announced his departure from the company to take a role at Index Ventures this morning. Our source said Dropbox has been looking for a product VP for years. Fushman's transition has actually been under way for some time, and he has been working closely with the new product lead, Rob Baesman, for the last year, another source close to the company told us. Baesman worked at VMware for over a decade, including five years in product management, according to his LinkedIn profile, so he's got more experience in that field than Fushman, who was in business development and venture capital before taking on the product role at Dropbox. Whatever the reason, it does appear that the core product hasn’t changed much since the company's inception. One former employee who was unhappy with the pace of innovation pointed us to this early Dropbox pitch video from Dropbox CEO Drew Houston which was uploaded to YouTube in 2008. (It seems to be an updated version of the video Houston first uploaded to the Y Combinator message board Hacker News in 2007, which has now been removed.) Dropbox in 2007 looks and feels almost the same as the product does in 2015. Although Dropbox added 75 new features in the fourth quarter of 2014 alone, they're not showing up as big, obvious improvements. In fact, Ralf Rottmann, a German entrepreneur, wrote in a Medium post that his company is leaving Dropbox exactly because of that: “there’s no innovation at its core.” One of the former employees disputed this characterization of slow innovation, saying that that the last couple years have been spent building infrastructure features, which aren't as visible to the outside world. Bottom-up versus top-down: Which approach is better?The slow pace of innovation and relatively late start on the business side means that DfB is still catching up with core features competitors have, and that enterprises demand. We spoke to one CIO, Gerry Moore of St. James Hospital, who had some doubts when he looked at DfB last year. He immediately realized how popular Dropbox was — most employees were already using it and loved its simple interface. But he held off on signing up right away, saying that DfB didn’t have the granular controls and security measures typically required of enterprise software. Only after he found Sookasa, an additional layer of security software that can go on top of DfB, did he feel comfortable enough to deploy DfB. “In my opinion, heavily regulated industries like healthcare and finance will not use Dropbox alone but will add at least a second layer of security,” Moore told us. “Dropbox has made the business solution easier to administer but it still lacks the features regulated industries require.” From Dropbox’s perspective, this is all part of its user-first philosophy. Dropbox is taking a bottom-up approach, with a lighter product, acquiring individual and small teams users first, before moving up to larger organizations in regulated industries. The company told us, "In under two years we’ve transformed Dropbox into a business-ready juggernaut that is reshaping the way entire industries work....With more than 300 million consumers and 100,000 businesses, we're building a global company with two different and fast growing revenue streams." A former employee also talked about the dual revenue streams — consumer and business — and said that Dropbox's goal is to get to a 50/50 split. It's growing the business side fast in order to get there, this person said. To point out its advantages over its more enterprise-focused competitors, Dropbox has launched what it calls the “Home for Life” strategy, where Dropbox serves as the platform for other daily productivity apps. For example, Dropbox has made some moves in the collaboration space, launching new features that allow users to chat and update simultaneously within a document. It also released Carousel, a photo organizing app. But its consumer initiatives have also had mixed results. Carousel, for example, currently hovers around number 600 in overall sales in Apple's AppStore, according to AppAnnie, while some of the company's acquisitions, like note-taking app HackPad, haven’t materialized to any meaningful products. Don't count them out yet | ||
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Salesforce's CEO bashes SAP: 'They should try writing some software' (CRM, SAP) | ||
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Hot off another stellar quarter that beat on revenue and profits, Marc Benioff repeated his new goal to be "the fastest software company ever to $10 billion in revenue." But he also added that his "dream" was to "beat" SAP. And he thinks doing that will be a cakewalk, he told Wall Street analysts on the quarterly conference call. When Salesforce hits that goal $10 billion goal, the company will be the fourth largest software company in thew world, he said: When that happens, we are really targeting one company to beat and that's SAP. Fortunately for us, their kind of lackluster growth execution and lack of innovation in their core product, we just saw in their product this quarter, they are an easy target. ... the $10 billion revenue run rate that's step 1. Step 2 is go past SAP. I think we can absolutely do that. I'm personally committed to making that happen. That's my dream. And the trash talk didn't stop there. Later Benioff said, "The only innovation SAP has is in rhetoric. They should try writing some software."
Its stock has been trading at near-time highs with a market cap of about $46 billion. As to when this $10 billion dream will happen, Benioff won't commit. The $10 billion in "run rate" revenue is about double the revenue that Salesforce had when it wrapped up its fiscal 2015 last quarter. But Benioff says Salesforce already has $9 billion under contract, $3 billion of it as deferred revenue and another $6 off the books, as un-billed deferred revenue. As for chasing SAP, the biggest maker of application software in the world, Benioff isn't alone in that dream. His old employer, Oracle, has been trying to beat SAP in the application market since 1999, Safra Catz recently said. Oracle is No. 2 and closing in, she's convinced. But she also says, "Silver medal is the first loser." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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He may have been referring to SAP CEO Bill McDermott's This horrific Twitter ad shows why harassment is a threat to growth | ||
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Earlier this year, Dick Costolo identified the toxic culture and hate speech that permeates Twitter as a major obstacle to the company's user growth. Now, with an incident involving the flagrant misuse of paid promoted tweets on Twitter, we see a perfect example of how a few jerks with an agenda are presenting the company with a serious business challenge. (Be warned, there's some nasty language and at least one slur involved here.) It started with this terrible ad, ostensibly in the name of prominent feminist Caitlin Roper, that somebody paid to have placed into people's Twitter feeds unbidden:
It's bad. Really bad. The eagle-eyed may notice that the Twitter username "@Caitlin_Roperr" has an extra "r" at the end, but many didn't see that. An anonymous troll from 4chan, the Internet's very own underbelly, claimed responsibility, saying that it was retribution for Roper's efforts to get the video game Grand Theft Auto V banned from Australia on the basis of its violent and sexist content. A Twitter spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company does not allow the promotion of hate content, including hate speech against a group based on sexual orientation or gender identity. "Once this instance was flagged, we immediately suspended the account and stopped the campaign," Twitter said. Filtering offensive material is no easy task on an open platform like Twitter, where users are not required to use their real names. One potential solution on the advertising side would be to make sure that every paid ad is vetted by a human. But that would add a major bottleneck to Twitter's advertising business, which appeals to many marketers because of its quick, self-serve nature. Presumably Twitter already uses some technology to automatically scan and reject ads containing offensive terms — though this incident shows that it's not working perfectly. Any solution is sure to require more spending, adding more pressure to margins at a company that's already struggling to turn a profit. Still, there's really only one way forward if Twitter wants to fix the situation and boost its user growth: Continue to invest in anti-harassment policies, tools, and technologies to improve the experience for everybody and get the haters off the service so these issues don't come up in the first place and customers can buy ads in peace. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Patrick Stewart's Only Rule For Using Twitter  | ||
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Delta's hilarious new safety video features the stars from 23 of most viral memes ever | ||
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Many flights come equipped with wifi, but with its latest safety video, Delta is bringing even more of the internet to the skies. Featuring 23 different memes, the video provides an entertaining spin on the otherwise boring instructions for seat belts and emergency exits that precedes all flights. The video kicks off with some music from the "Keyboard Cat."
Next up, "Double Rainbow Guy" demonstrates the appropriate use of the overhead container.
Here we see the "Annoying Orange" being safely stowed for takeoff.
"Roomba Cat" glides down the aisles in his signature shark costume.
Next, viewers experience the "Invisible Seat Prank," while learning about emergency exits.
Seatbelt safety is brought to life by "The Evolution of Dance."
Next up is one of the "Slow Mo Guys" being hit in the face with jello.
Once the seatbelt sign is is turned off, passengers are free to move about the cabin and "Do the Harlem Shake."
"Deltalina" and "The Screaming Goat" remind passengers that smoking is prohibited during the flight.
Next, it's "Peanut Butter Jelly Time."
"Dramatic Chipmunk" points out the emergency exits on the plane.
Next, oxygen masks are demonstrated by the grown up brothers from "Charlie Bit Me."
In the event of a water landing, keep a lookout for "Overly Attached Girlfriend."
Delta throws it way back with the "Autodesk Dancing Baby," rocking a flotation device.
Next, one of the critters from "Tiny Hamsters Eating Burritos" munches away on a tray table.
Here we see "Nyan Cat" bouncing around the cabin tailed by his signature rainbow.
"Doge" shows passengers where to the printed version of the sa fey information in the seat back pocket.
Finally, the captain wishes passengers a enjoyable flight.
There is an Easter egg at the end of the video where viewers can see different versions featuring even more memes, mixed together by none other than Tom Dickinson from "Will It Blend?"
You can watch the whole video here or below.
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: A YouTuber created this incredible animation using a string of yarn  | ||
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A founder who sold his company for $260 million is being sued by the company that bought it (CSC) | ||
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These are strange times for the 56-year-old IT giant, Computer Sciences Corp. CSC has filed a lawsuit accusing one of its star executives, Eric Pulier of fraud connected to an alleged bribery scandal in Australia. CSC is accusing Pulier — former CEO of ServiceMesh, which CSC bought — of making "authorized payments" to two Australian bank executives. The company is seeking to recoup the full $98 million it paid to ServiceMesh shareholders, according to a CSC statement cited by Forbes. Pulier is apparently denying the allegations, according to information included in CSC's lawsuit although we have not been able to contact him. Here's what we know:Pulier joined CSC to lead its cloud computing efforts after CSC bought a company he co-founded, ServiceMesh, for over $260 million in 2013. Last week, CSC filed a lawsuit against Pulier seeking to get a good chunk of its money back. Pulier resigned in late April after allegations of bribery surfaced. He quit right before CSC was about to fire him, a CSC spokesperson told Business Insider. The CSC lawsuit accuses Pulier of making illicit payments to IT executives at an Australian bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which signed multiple big contracts with ServiceMesh. This contract helped Pulier earn an extra $25 million equity "earnout" bonus from CSC, after it bought the company, the lawsuit says. All told, CSC paid $47 million cash to Pulier, the largest shareholder of ServiceMesh, and another $26 million granted as restricted stock units. CSC says it offered a huge, additional bonusCSC paid over $260 million to buy ServiceMesh, including $93.1 million in cash, it said in the lawsuit. CSC agreed to pay more than the original cash price if ServiceMesh brought in more than $20 million of revenue within a few months after the deal closed. Specifically, it offered to pay more than $10 for every additional $1 of extra business brought in, up to a max of $33.5 million, explains the lawsuit. An additional $12 million of revenue in that period came from a bunch of contracts from the Australian bank, according to the lawsuit. With those contracts, the lawsuit says, the $20 million floor was exceeded by nearly $9.7 million. So CSC shelled out another $98 million-plus to ServiceMesh equity holders. "That included a $25.3 million+ bonus to Pulier," CSC says in its lawsuit. After Pulier received the $25 million, he founded a company called Ace, which paid more than $2 million to the two senior IT executives at the bank, the lawsuit claims. The two IT executives at the Australian bank have been arrested on charges of commercial bribery, according to the lawsuit. They are pleading innocent. Although Pulier could not be reached for comment, Pulier's lawyers have accused the banks of "making false statements about him," according to the CSC lawsuit. CSC says that it is cooperating with all authorities and says that Pulier refused to fully cooperate with its internal investigation. To be clear: although there have been arrests, a lawsuit, and plenty of accusations, no one has yet been convicted of any crimes. Pulier has only been hit with civil litigation and has not even been charged with a crime. Pulier is nowhere to be foundMeanwhile, Pulier is difficult to locate. His Twitter account is gone. Neither his address nor his legal representatives were named on the lawsuit CSC filed. (We reached out to several people who know him, including others from ServiceMesh, and will update this post when we hear back.) Prior to this scandal, Pulier was a respected software exec in his field, who founded several companies, including Akana (which just changed its name to SOA Software).
Pulier also co-founded several other bubble-era companies: Interactive Video Technology, Desktone, US Interactive. He was an adviser to Al Gore and a contributor to Bill Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative. And he's been a board member to a long list of other tech companies. Embarrassment for CSCThe is not a happy situation for CSC and its CEO, Mike Lawrie. Like other old-school IT companies such as IBM and Oracle, Lawrie has been trying to transform CSC into a cloud computing powerhouse and Pulier, along with ServiceMesh, were key to his plans. CSC has been on shakey ground in recent years, with revenue shrinking, as companies increasingly turn to cloud computing, instead of old-school data center tech. Under pressure to turn CSC around, Lawrie and team just this week announced they were going the Hewlett-Packard route and would split the venerable old company into two publicly traded companies. Meanwhile, prior to this scandal, Pulier had been big on the speaker circuit, representing the new CSC. Here's just one tweet from a talk he gave last year. On May 11, 2015, CSC sued Eric Pulier, the former CEO of ServiceMesh, who resigned from CSC in late April shortly before his employment was to be terminated by CSC due to violations of CSC's code of business conduct related to conflicts of interests and appearance of improprieties. The lawsuit concerns unauthorized payments Mr. Pulier made to two executives of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a CSC client, shortly after he received tens of millions of dollars from CSC's 2013 acquisition of ServiceMesh. CSC’s lawsuit seeks to recover the damages caused by Mr. Pulier's fraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duties, including recovery of all payments to Mr. Pulier under the acquisition agreement and the full amount of the $98 million earnout payment paid to ServiceMesh equityholders under the acquisition agreement. If not for revenue from contracts between ServiceMesh and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Mr. Pulier and the other ServiceMesh equityholders would have received no earnout payment at all. CSC's investigation into the Australian authorities' allegations of bribery involving Mr. Pulier and the ACE Foundation is continuing and CSC is cooperating with all relevant authorities. SEE ALSO: 56-year-old tech giant Computer Sciences is cleaving itself into two public companies Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Take a fly-over tour of the $110 million Hamptons mansion that's at the center of a huge lawsuit  | ||
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Cisco denies skirting sanctions that forbid sales to Russia's military (CSCO) | ||
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Cisco is being accused of changing sales records and booking deals under a false customer name after sanctions against Russia began, according to documents obtained by Buzzfeed. The implication is that Cisco has been selling equipment that will wind up in the hands of government agencies that US companies are not allowed to sell to, while making it look like the customers were not under such sanctions. Cisco denies these allegations. The U.S. and European Union have imposed economic sanctions against Russia which forbid U.S. companies from selling advanced tech gear to the Russian military in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and conflict in eastern Ukraine. For instance, Buzzfeed reported one case where sales were booked to the Chamber of Commerce, although the alleged real buyer was the the FSB, the successor to the KGB, an anonymous source told Buzzfeed. When Buzzfeed reached out to the Chamber of Commerce to ask about buying Cisco equipment a spokesperson there replied: This is strange ... We are not a commercial organization which purchases big things, we do not purchase anything besides office supplies. Cisco vehemently denies the charges, telling us that it investigated all the documents presented by Buzzfeed and found "Cisco is in complete compliance with the US and EU sanctions." It told Buzzfeed the changes were made to customer names to fix a quirk in its software that put the wrong names on some deals in the first place. It said the changes were innocent and were not done to mask the identity of the buyer, and that it corrected the error. Cisco has been under scrutiny before for its operations in Russia, accused of allegedly bribing Russian officials to win deals. Cisco said in early 2014 that the SEC and DOJ were looking into those allegations. In the meantime, Cisco's sales in Russia have tanked. Buzzfeed reports that Cisco cancelled $1.7 million in deals after the sanctions were imposed and outgoing CEO John Chambers specifically called out Russia as a problem market for Cisco last week, noting that sales in the country were down 41% from the year-prior quarter. SEE ALSO: 23 of the most powerful women engineers in the world Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Watch these giant container ships collide near the Suez Canal  | ||
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Everyone's obsessed with those moving selfies on Beyoncé's Instagram — here's how to make your own | ||
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Beyoncé's Instagram followers are aflutter over her latest obsession: glitchy, gif-like selfies, sometimes accompanied by music. Here's an example:
SEE ALSO: The 10 worst selfies of all time Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Source: Oracle is gutting the group that tailors its products for particular industries (ORCL) | ||
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Oracle is cutting about 40% of the team in its industry solutions group, an employee tells Business Insider. That amounts to between 50 and 60 people. The specialists in the industry solutions business that are being cut are responsible for tailoring the company's approach to speciality markets like retail, hospitality, health sciences, or education verticals. Both of Oracle's CEOs — Safra Catz and Mark Hurd — have said that the company releases too many products, and it's likely trying chop away at areas it doesn't think it needs. For Oracle, a company with more than 120,000 employees, ~60 people is a pretty small number. Our source also tells us that the people who have been laid off have been invited to apply for other positions. Nonetheless, the cuts suggest Oracle is de-emphasizing industry verticals, or at the very least changing its approach there. Oracle declined to comment on this report. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's what it takes to master any job — not just be good at it  | ||
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PayPal just got hit with a $25 million fine for signing up users to PayPal Credit without them knowing it | ||
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The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau fined PayPal $25 million this week for signing people up for its credit arm, PayPal Credit (previously Bill Me Later), without them realizing it. $15 million of the fine is going toward reimbursing PayPal customers who were erroneously signed up for PayPal Credit, and the other $10 million is a penalty. According to a CFPB statement, "The CFPB alleges that many consumers who were attempting to enroll in a regular PayPal account, or make an online purchase, were signed up for a credit product without realizing it. The company also failed to post payments properly, lost payment checks, and mishandled billing disputes that consumers had with merchants or the company." The CFPB says tens of thousands of customers were affected. This part of the complaint we found particularly interesting: Often consumers do not discover that PayPal Credit was used as the method of payment until late fees and interest have accrued and the consumer receives debt-collection calls. This is in part because many consumers do not realize that PayPal Credit automatically enrolls consumers in electronic billing at the time of their enrollment and, in many cases, electronic billing statement notices go into spam email folders. A source familiar with the matter told Business Insider that the accounts that the CFPB was based on "a very small number of customer complaints, approximately .01% of our PayPal Credit accounts," and that the time frame of the CFPB investigation was from 2008 to 2013. PayPal updated its disclosures in the first quarter of 2013. The source also suggested that the fine PayPal received was incredibly small compared to other similar fines from the CFPB against banks which had similar issues. In 2014, the CFPB ordered Bank of America to pay $772 million "to settle allegations that the bank used deceptive marketing and billing practices involving credit card products," the New York Times reports. However, most of that was for refunds to customers affected. The punitive fines were $20 million and $25 million, to the CFPB and to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, respectively. Amanda Miller, PayPal's head of global communications, said in an emailed statement to Business Insider: "PayPal Credit takes consumer protection very seriously. We continually improve our products and enhance our communications to ensure a superior customer experience. Our focus is on ease of use, clarity and providing high-quality products that are useful to consumers and are in compliance with applicable laws." SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley's housing nightmare is breeding absurd assumptions and unrealistic solutions Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Watch these giant container ships collide near the Suez Canal  | ||
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Google Maps searches are turning up some wildly racist and creepy results | ||
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Be careful what you search for in Google Maps. On Tuesday it was revealed that some Google Maps searches have a racist element to them when The Washington Post reported that searching for the racial epithet "n--gger" while hovering near Washington, DC, results in the White House showing up as your destination. Other variations, including "n--gger king" and "n--gger house," also bring up President Obama's residence.
These results were created by people using Google's Map Maker technology, not Google itself, and Google has already issued an apology. "Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused. Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly," a Google representative told Business Insider, adding that the issue is not an "Easter egg," or a hidden feature in the system. A spate of vandalism by people who use Google's Map Maker technology caused the company to suspend the ability of third parties to submit edits to Google Maps as of May 12. A story about weird search results in Google Maps eventually led me to search my own name, and the results were eye-opening. When I typed my name into Google Maps, several results, including my alma mater, a former employer, and locations I have written about in the past popped up as options. It is unclear how Google Maps made this connection considering neither location history nor location reporting was activated on my Gmail account.
Other Business Insider colleagues who searched their names reported that Google Maps knew about places they had written about in the past, the schools they attended, old home addresses, and venues they had visited or were planning to visit. Makes sense, but it is kind of creepy. How does Google Maps know these things? While Google declined to comment on how searches on Google Maps are indexed, technology and data journalist Hank van Ess provided an explanation in a post called "How to Put Men on the Map: Google Maps on Steroids," for the website Medium. "Type in a name of a living person and Google Maps will try to match your name to databases based on data of a local Chambers of Commerce or a similar source. This handy feature only works if the person is registered as part of a company, organization, university or foundation," writes van Ess. "If someone is not in the database, you often get results anyway. The reason: Google Maps tries to guess a name that is close to the one you used. So always concentrate on the logic of the answer." He added that this also works with Twitter handles and email addresses. What happens when you type your name into Google Maps? Let us know in the comments. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 9 animated maps that will change the way you see the world  | ||
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3D printing turned me into a space marine from 'Halo 5' | ||
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A few months ago, I was at the 2015 Game Developers Conference (GDC), when a booth outside the main hall caught my eye. A company called 3DPlusMe had a station set up where they were scanning the faces of attendees with a 3D camera array and then printing them on to custom 3D-printed vinyl action figures. 3DPlusMe partners with various companies for some recognizable licenses. At some Major League Baseball or Major League Soccer games, 3DPlusMe sets up shop you can get your face plastered on to a figure wearing your favorite team's jersey. They've also offered Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings custom action figures. At GDC, there were two action figure options: Marvel Super Heroes, where I could have had my face printed on to Iron Man or Captain America, or Halo 5: Guardians, based on Microsoft's hit first-person shooter series, where I could make myself into a power-armored Spartan II space marine. I chose the shorter line. Halo 5 space marine glory awaited. Here's the final result, as arrived to my apartment last night. The final products usually takes between six and eight weeks to ship. If you squint while looking at the photo above, you can see that they print your Xbox Live gamertag on the base. Here's a close-up of the face:
The real problem, however, is that they're not very good action figures, since they're basically stuck in place, and the vinyl 3DPlusMe uses has a weird, gritty texture. Plus, the price is a little steep: A custom figure the size of mine runs about $45, with prices varying based on the size. Still, it's definitely a one-of-a-kind collectible. SEE ALSO: The original Xbox was almost free Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Watch Microsoft's Insane Holographic Computer In Action  | ||
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Spending on native advertising is soaring as marketers and digital media publishers realize the benefits | ||
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Native is one of the hottest topics in digital media, and advertisers and publishers are taking notice. By creating advertisements that are in the same format as the content audiences are there to consume, marketers hope to provide a much less disruptive advertising experience. Native ads have also proven effective, drawing higher click rates than traditional banner ads, particularly on mobile devices. New and exclusive data from BI Intelligence finds that spending on native ads will reach $7.9 billion this year and grow to $21 billion in 2018, rising from just $4.7 billion in 2013. We are the only research service that has provided a detailed breakdown of spend projections and growth rates for each of the three main native ad types — social-native, native-style display ads, and sponsored content. Access The Full Report And Downloads By Signing Up For A Trial Membership » Here are some of the key takeaways:
The report is full of charts and data that can easily be downloaded and put to use. In full, the report:
To access the full report from BI Intelligence, sign up for a 14-day trial here. Members also gain access to new in-depth reports, hundreds of charts and datasets, as well as daily newsletters on the digital industry. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do  | ||
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Pro gamer earning six figures quit playing sports because it wasn't 'on an even playing field' | ||
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“Winning is above being happy in my mind,” Rivera told Business Insider in a recent interview. Rivera has been obsessed with video games since he was a young child, starting with Super Nintendo games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario and progressing to real-time-strategy games like Warcraft III. Rivera says that, as a kid, he viewed video games as a means to “progress,” not as an outlet for "screwing around." Rivera’s competitive spirit wasn’t limited to video games. Through most of his youth, he was heavily involved in traditional sports such as tennis and baseball. He was dedicated and skilled at both, competing in the United States Tennis Association and the Richard Dowling league in tennis and playing in regional Florida leagues for baseball. Despite his skill and competitive nature, Rivera had a moment early on that convinced him to put all of his effort into video games rather than traditional sports.
Here's what Rivera said: In sports, I was always good, but good for my region or my team. When I brought my skills to the national level, there were kids that were better. They were just more athletic. I remember playing football in fifth grade and seeing kids that were built like men. They were six feet tall. I was 5’5” and scrawny. I realized that sports weren't on an even playing field. Video games were … Sports were a risk. I didn’t know how tall I would be. I didn’t know how athletic I would be. I didn’t know what my build would be. With video games, it’s all mental. If you are good enough and you practice hard enough, you can get to the top.” Pro gaming didn't catch on until Rivera was 19. He was ready when it did. He dropped out of the University of Miami his senior year and has been playing in the League of Legends pro league ever since. Now, he plays for Team Liquid, a pro team in the League of Legends Championship series, earning between $80,000 and $100,000 in salary, endorsements, and income from streaming on Twitch. It looks like he made the right decision. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We did the math: Is Uber really cheaper than a taxi?  | ||
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With its 
How Morgan Stanley became Silicon Valley's favorite US bank (again) (MS, GS, FB, TWTR) | ||
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Once again, it is the #1 tech bank in the US. This is a comeback. Morgan Stanley's shine wore off a little in the wake of Facebook’s 2012 IPO. The bank was among a group of Facebook’s partners on the offering that withstood criticism for an oversubscribed offer that was hampered by Nasdaq’s technology. Morgan Stanley may not have actually been to blame. Even outside Morgan Stanley’s walls, other banking pros are quick to point out what went wrong in Facebook’s IPO: the company’s capital structure was muddled thanks to unfettered secondary market trading, making it difficult to gauge who owned what, or, when. Fairly blamed or not, after Facebook offering, Morgan Stanley saw its rank on Dealogic’s US technology advisory league table falter after several years being #1 in 2013. This happened for a few reasons. Goldman Sachs got better at tech. It took the lead on Twitter’s 2013 IPO, which was Goldman's biggest tech or Internet IPO lead, ever. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley also had to fend off boutique firms, like ex-Morgan Stanley veteran Frank Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners, Guggenheim Securities, or Allen & Co. But that's all over now. As of mid-week, Morgan Stanley has reclaimed both the top spot for US tech M&A, and for IPOs so far in 2015, according to Dealogic data. The comeback appears complete. That’s partly due to mega-deals like WhatsApp’s sale to Facebook, which is said to have netted Morgan Stanley about $80 million on one deal alone. But it is also thanks to Morgan Stanley reclaiming its mojo in the IPO space post-Facebook — though 2015's IPO tally is paltry, Morgan Stanley was number-one worldwide and in the US for tech IPOs in 2014, Dealogic data shows. The bank did not respond to requests for comment for this story, including questions on how many staffers Morgan Stanley's tech banking team employs. Part of the reason the firm has experienced so much longevity at the top of the technology sector league tables owes to the tenure of its top bankers: several have been with the firm nearly two decades. With specific dealmakers focusing on semiconductor companies, Internet, or software firms, industry sources say Morgan Stanley’s tech banking team has a depth of experience few firms’ “TMT” shops can top. Morgan Stanley's banking team doesn't focus on the "MT" part of TMT (which stands for telecom/media/technology, a vestige of days when technology M&A made up a smaller amount of banks' revenue). The firm's bankers that do tech deals only focus on tech.
We'd like to hear more about what people think of Morgan Stanley. Email Jmarino@businessinsider.com. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This 14-year-old has come up with a faster and cheaper way to detect pancreatic cancer  | ||
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Morgan Stanley is back on top. Yelp attacks casino mogul Steve Wynn for supporting legislation that makes it easy to sue people over bad reviews | ||
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On Friday, Yelp called out Wynn in a post on its blog for trying to "erode your free speech rights." Wynn has filed high-profile defamation litigation, and Yelp is attacking him for supporting a law to allow more so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as SLAPP lawsuits. Many states have anti-SLAPP laws in place to make it harder for companies to sue anybody who criticizes them online. People who write negative Yelp reviews have been hit with more so-called SLAPP suits over the years. A San Francisco chiropractor, for example, sued a patient for writing a negative Yelp review about a billing dispute, as The New York Times noted. Wynn Resorts is pushing SB 444, a controversial Nevada bill that proposes rolling back parts of state's protections against SLAPP lawsuits like these. Wynn may be trying to eviscerate Nevada's anti-SLAPP law because a similar law in California scuttled a suit he filed against hedge fund manager Jim Chanos. Wynn accused Chanos of defaming him by criticizing companies like his that run casinos in Macau, a special administrative region in China. "It’s understandable that Wynn may not like Nevada’s robust anti-SLAPP laws since he recently lost under a similar statute in California, but it would be a tragedy if the state of Nevada allowed the interests of one man to gut a law that is meant to protect the freedom of speech for all Nevadans," Yelp said on its blog earlier this month.
However, a lawyer who has represented Wynn and Wynn Resorts told Nevada public radio that the state's anti-SLAPP law is too broad and needs to be updated. He also said Yelp imposes too few penalties for lying and that negative reviews irreparably damage small businesses. "It's also a mechanism that allows, for lack of a better word, online terrorism and character assassination," Langburg said in an interview with KNPR. "Disgruntled former employees, competitors, dissatisfied customers who don't just have legitimate complaints but are trying to destroy a businesses reputation can get on yelp and lie about what's occurred to them, or hasn't even occurred to them, with relative impunity in the state of Nevada." Langburg told Business Insider that companies like Yelp have no incentive to discourage bad reviews, and that the company was needlessly safeguarding speech that's not protected by the Constitution. "It seems to me like Yelp is prepared to back any statute that they perceive to allow people to avoid responsibility when they have gone beyond exercising their First Amendment rights and gone into the world of making intentionally false statements, which is not protected by the First Amendment," Langburg said. When asked about Langburg's critical characterization of the customer review site, a representative for Yelp did not respond directly, but did share a Business Insider article linking to Wynn's unsuccessful 2014 defamation lawsuit against Chanos. Wynn's support for the legislation comes after years of waging war against critics of his business with mixed results. Before losing a defamation suit against Chanos, in 2012, Wynn won $20 million in a similar suit against Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis when the adult filmmaker claimed that Wynn threatened to kill him. The Nevada bill still awaits a final vote. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Take a fly-over tour of the $110 million Hamptons mansion that's at the center of a huge lawsuit  | ||
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The online review site Yelp has lashed out at casino mogul Steve Wynn for 
Depp 'storming off Pirates set' played down | ||
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Sydney (AFP) - A publicist for the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie denied reports Thursday that Johnny Depp stormed off the Australian set to be with his wife in the United States. The superstar actor has been shooting scenes as swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow on the Gold Coast tourist strip in Queensland state, but the Gold Coast Bulletin said he walked out on Wednesday, reportedly with his marriage in trouble. "He's going back to the States on the first available private charter flight he can get on," it cited a source on the production team of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" as saying. The newspaper claimed Depp and his wife of three months Amber Heard were constantly bickering, but a publicist for the movie, Michael Singer, said the claims were untrue. "I can't go into detail on our filming schedules or the movements of individuals but I can tell you that nothing in that report has any relation to reality," Singer told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Mr Depp has been filming on schedule. It's business as usual, with all participants working." Heard is believed to have returned to the United States last week with the couple's two dogs Boo and Pistol, which were forced out of the country after officials warned they would be destroyed because they entered without authorisation. The couple brought the terriers into Australia on their private jet without going through quarantine procedures, with Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce telling them to "bugger off" back to Hollywood, sparking a social media frenzy. The Bulletin said Depp had initially been scheduled to return with them but changed his plans at the 11th hour after the film's producers intervened. If he left, it would be another blow for the Disney movie, which is already behind schedule after Depp suffered a hand injury and returned to the United States to recover in March.
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IS in full control of Syria's ancient city Palmyra: monitor | ||
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Beirut (AFP) - Jihadists from the Islamic State group seized full control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra on Thursday, a monitor said, putting the world heritage site at risk of destruction. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that regime troops had pulled back from positions in and around Palmyra, including from an army intelligence outpost, a military airport and a prison which the jihadists captured overnight. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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10 things you need to know before European markets open | ||
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Good morning! Here are 10 major stories in markets today. European PMIs are coming. The first round of May business surveys for European firms comes out between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. London time (3 a.m. and 4 a.m. New York time). Economists expect a very slight drop in reported output from its May levels, and the figure should be a good signal of the European recovery's strength. George Osborne told the UK's top business lobby his main challenge is boosting productivity. According to the Financial Times, at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual dinner, Osborne said he would release a “plan to make Britain work better” with ideas on productivity, ahead of his July budget. The Federal Reserve seems pretty unlikely to raise interest rates in June. The Federal Reserve released the Minutes from its April 28-29 Federal Open Market Committee meeting Wednesday night, which indicated that the Fed is unlikely to raise interest rates in June due to the recent rash of less positive economic data. Greece's creditors are reportedly making pension reform their top priority. According to Bloomberg, Greece's European creditors and the IMF are concentrating on getting concessions on the country's generous pension system, "leaving the door open to compromises on other issues like the country’s minimum wage proposals," in negotiations ahead of an IMF payment Greece probably can't make (without a bailout) on June 5. There may be a problem with the way the US measures GDP. In a statement to CNBC, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said it is "aware of issues" that the way it tabulates gross domestic product and that it is "developing methods to address what it has found." In the first quarter, the first estimate of GDP showed the economy grew just 0.2% to start the year, well below what Wall Street economists had forecast. UK retail sales are coming too. April's numbers are out at 9:30 a.m. London time (4:30 a.m. New York). Economists are expecting a 0.4% boost from March to leave sales up 3.8% from the same month last year. It's the first retail sales number after Q1, when GDP came in at a disappointing +0.3%. China's manufacturing PMI missed expectations. The preliminary reading of the HSBC-Markit manufacturing PMI gauge increased to 49.1 in May, higher than the 48.9 level of April, but yet again below forecasts for an increase to 49.3. Anything below 50 signals contraction. Asian markets are mixed. The Hang Seng is having another down day, 0.26% lower than Wednesday's close, Japan's Nikkei is basically flat, up 0.02%, and the Shanghai Composite is up 1.14%. Ukraine says it is fighting a "real war" with Russia. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sparked fresh Kremlin fury by warning that his crisis-torn country was fighting a "real war" against Russian aggressors that could escalate at any time. China's premier says the country is confident of its new growth target. Premier Li Keqiang said he was confident China has the ability to meet its 2015 economic growth target of around 7%, the official news agency Xinhua said on Thursday. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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The 10 most important things in the world right now | ||
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1. Islamic State fighters stormed the strategic Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, which is home to spectacular ancient ruins. 2. Five of the world's largest banks — Citicorp, JPMorgan, Barclays, RBS, and UBS — will pay a combined $5.8 billion (£3.7 billion) related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates. 3. The US is sending 1,000 rockets to the Iraq military to help in a counterattack on Islamic State militants to take back the city of Ramadi. 4. British authorities announced Wednesday that hundreds of celebrities and politicians are among 1,400 suspects being investigated in a child-sex-abuse scandal. 5. US intelligence this week released a trove of documents found at Osama bin Laden's compound, including video games and many English-language books. 6. Up to 105,000 gallons of oil may have leaked into California's coastal waters after a pipeline ruptured, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency. 7. France says it killed two key figures from Islamist militant group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in northwest Africa. 8. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the BBC that Ukraine was fighting a "real war" with Russia, most recently evidenced by the capture of two purported Russian regular special forces soldiers. 9. South Korean health officials have confirmed the country's second case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), but said the disease does not have a chance of spreading to the wider population. 10. After recalling 34 million cars in the US, the largest in the nation's history, Japanese air bag maker Takata said it will produce 1 million airbag inflators a month to replace defective ones. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved  | ||
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German rail strike called off: operator | ||
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Frankfurt (AFP) - German railways operator Deutsche Bahn on Thursday announced an end to a strike that had paralysed rail travel in the country, after the feuding sides agreed to mediation. "Thousands of customers can breathe easier: the GdL (train driver union) strike is over with immediate effect," said a Deutsche Bahn statement, adding that it and the union had agreed overnight to have a mediator appointed to settle their months-long dispute over wages, work hours and negotiating rights. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Polish camp trains security contractors for mission impossible | ||
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Wlosciejewki (Poland) (AFP) - Five men, armed to the teeth, have just stormed a home and it did not go well, not well at all. "You killed a kid!" screamed the instructor. A glance at the bullet marks on the child-sized mannequin leaves no doubt -- the drill must be repeated. The men are training at Poland's private European Security Academy (ESA), in the western countryside, which prepares security and military contractors from around the globe for missions in danger zones. Spread across 100 hectares (250 acres) near the village of Wlosciejewki, the centre is surrounded by fields, woods, lakes and is considered a top-flight choice for future VIP bodyguards, maritime security officers and private military contractors. "We search out the whole world for the most realistic places to train," said Criss Watts, an instructor from the London-based specialist security company Up Close and Personal (UCP). "And this is certainly the best place that we consider for our training in the world," he told AFP. One thing that sets this program apart -- the trainees use real weapons and FX marking cartridges, simulated ammunition that won't kill but feels like the real thing when the trainee fires. Members of the commando that stormed the dwelling are all working as UCP security operatives. They include a Briton, a Colombian, an Italian and a Spaniard. - 'ISIS could be on the hill' - They spent the morning in the Academy's combat village, a full-scale replica of a central section of the Somali capital Mogadishu -- complete with a hotel, coffee shop, bus stop, market and houses painted blue and pink and inscribed with Arabic. The spring sunshine and windswept sand add a touch of realism to the violent scenarios being acted out. "In the UK, it's very difficult to train to this standard. In fact, impossible. Can't use pistols for training. You can use weapons on a range but you can't use them for training," said Watts, who spent three decades working in high-risk protection. "In this centre you can use 762, 9mm, 556, M4, AK47, Glock -- all assortment of pistols and variants," the 49-year-old added, describing a range of guns. He said UCP's clients pay for them to train at the Academy. "They want to make sure they stay alive. And we want to make sure these guys come back as well, uninjured." "Anything can happen. ISIS could be on the hill." Another group trains at a large firing range that includes a 350-metre (380-yard) shooting distance, an area where the men can fire in three directions and a tactical lane allowing them to shoot from moving vehicles. The course is run by Pawel Brozek, an ESA instructor whose boyish face masks his seven years with Poland's special forces, including several rotations in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have trainees from every continent. We train security agents from Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Oman, who are on government contracts," he said. "We also have contractors from protection agencies and individuals who come on their own to get training and find a job." - Fighting pirates - Brozek's current group is training to become maritime security officers, highly sought after to safeguard ships and their crews from pirates. Reinforced security has helped curb a wave of hijackings by Somali pirates in the seas off East Africa. The 26 trainees from nine countries -- Brazil, Colombia, Croatia, Germany, Ghana, Poland, Portugal, South Africa and Spain -- have just completed the first part of their course in the Baltic port of Gdynia. "It's the realistic aspect that draws people here: the maritime training is done on real boats. All the equipment is the same as what we use at sea," said Brozek. "We also work with simulators from the Gdynia Maritime School," he added before calling a drill on the bridge of a large roll-on roll-off ship in the port. Anyone wanting to guard ships has to first obtain a maritime security licence. This means learning about maritime law and specific procedures: how to use radars, identify a boat, define its speed and distance, communicate with the crew and, of course, take action to prevent a boarding. "There's a lot of interest in this kind of course," Brozek said. At around 2,000 euros ($2,250), "it was a little bit expensive" according to Wanderlei Cunha, a 34-year-old trainee who previously served in the Brazilian army's special forces. "But I saved some money with this objective. So I'm all in. I pushed all my chips on this," he told AFP. Ervin Cahut, a 40-year-old veteran of Croatia's anti-terrorist military police unit, is also banking on ESA certification, which is recognised around the world. "I think that some company that needs security guys like me -- ex-military -- to secure a vessel on the sea maybe will take me," he said. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Poroshenko says Ukraine waging 'real war' with Russia | ||
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Kiev (AFP) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sparked fresh Kremlin fury by warning that his crisis-torn country was fighting a "real war" against Russian aggressors that could escalate at any time. The pro-Western leader said the weekend capture of two purported Russian special forces members proved the separatist uprising in the industrial east of Ukraine was a guise for a Moscow-orchestrated campaign aimed at breaking up his ex-Soviet state. "This is not a fight with Russian-backed separatists, this is a real war with Russia," the 49-year-old Ukrainian leader told the BBC. "The fact that we captured... Russian regular special forces soldiers (is) strong evidence of that." Ukraine's military on Tuesday showed off two wounded Russians who had been taken prisoner during a firefight in Lugansk -- a blue-collar region that together with neighbouring Donetsk revolted against Kiev's shift toward the West 13 months ago. The men testified during a taped interrogation that they entered the war zone nearly two months ago as part of a 200-strong reconnaissance unit from the Russian army's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). A Ukrainian Security Service spokesman said the suspects have been charged with involvement in "terrorist activity" and given a chance to phone their relatives back home. Moscow acknowledges the presence of Russian "volunteers" and off-duty servicemen in Ukraine, but rejects charges they are there under orders from President Vladimir Putin's generals. But two Russian opposition activists investigating the deaths of three other GRU members said they had found fresh graves that showed they died on active duty in Ukraine. Kiev's detention and display before world media on Tuesday of the two soldiers captured in Lugansk has outraged the Kremlin and threatened to cement Putin's resolve to keep Kiev within Moscow's orbit for years. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said flatly that the "Kremlin does not agree" with what the Ukrainian leader told the BBC. "First of all, one has to understand that unfortunately, Kiev is waging war against its own citizens," Russian news agencies quoted Peskov as saying. "They are the ones coming under fire and they are the ones dying," said Peskov. "We should probably be talking about that first."
- Russia 'preparing offensive' -
Hours later, Moscow accused cash-strapped Kiev of effectively defaulting on its debt repayments after the Ukrainian parliament approved a law that would allow repayments to stop if talks with creditors fail. The new law covers a $3.0-billion (2.7-billion-euro) loan Moscow issued in December 2013, prompting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to accuse Ukraine of "invoking force majeure". "The Russian state and our banks should respond adequately and use all the possible means of self-defence, including legal action," the prime minister warned. The accusation came after Ukraine's cabinet decided to suspend all sales of military and advanced aerospace equipment to Russia that began under the terms of a landmark agreement signed in 1993. Ukraine supplied Zenit rockets for Russia's lucrative commercial and strategic military satellite launches. It also built boosters that propelled Russian Proton cargo-hauling rockets to the International Space Station. The United Nations believes the more than year-long conflict has claimed at least 6,250 lives and driven more than a million people from their homes. A second truce agreement Poroshenko struck with Putin with the help of the leaders of Germany and France in February has thus far failed to take complete hold. Ukraine has lost at least eight servicemen since Monday in clashes across both of its renegade provinces. Kiev blamed the violence on a new infusion of Russian troops, but agreed to hold a new round of ceasefire and political settlement talks with rebel representatives in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, on Friday. Such talks have previously achieved little besides keeping all-out warfare from breaking out once again across the devastated region -- a possibility that Poroshenko said was all too real. "I believe they are preparing an offensive and I think we should be ready," the Ukrainian president said. He added that he lacked "trust" in Putin but had no choice but to seek an understanding with the Kremlin strongman. "I doubt the release of my territory (from Russian forces) could happen by military means," Poroshenko said.
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Riviera gets raunchy as 'Love' comes to Cannes | ||
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Cannes (France) (AFP) - The Cannes Film Festival got its first taste of full-blown controversy on Thursday after a late-night session with director Gaspar Noe's hyper-sexual 3D tale, "Love". The movie leaves nothing to the imagination as it tells the story of a young couple's tempestuous love affair, featuring over a dozen extremely graphic sex scenes, including close-up ejaculations, orgies, a threesome and a transvestite prostitute. The posters had already given "Love" plenty of notoriety ahead of its premiere on the French Riviera, with one featuring a post-climax penis. Such large crowds showed up for the midnight screening that dozens of ticket-holders had to be turned away and arguments broke out outside the Grand Palais theatre. "For years, I have dreamed of making a film that would fully reproduce the passion of a young couple in love, in all its physical and emotional excesses," Noe said in a statement ahead of the screening. The audience gave a long standing ovation at the end of the film, but many critics seemed unconvinced by Noe's "blood, sperm and tears" vision. "Like bad sex, (it) seems to go on forever with no climax or ending in sight," tweeted Sophie Kaufman, of Little White Lies magazine. The Argentinian director, who lives and works in France, said he wanted to transcend "the ridiculous division that dictates no normal film can contain overtly erotic scenes, even though everyone loves to make love". The story follows a young man, Murphy, looking back on his lost love, Electra, and their time together. Noe puts himself at the centre of the story -- the lead character is a budding filmmaker who talks about wanting to make an explicit film about love and sex. Two of the side characters in the film are even called Gaspar and Noe. The director has said he was keen to embrace three dimensions in the film. "I felt that 3D would allow the viewer a greater sense of identification with the lead character and his nostalgic state," he said. - 'Sex scenes get boring' - Noe is no stranger to controversy. In 2002, a screening of his film "Irreversible" at Cannes led to several ambulances being called for audience members who could not cope with its extremely graphic rape scene. Around 250 people walked out of the midnight showing, starring Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, which features a 10-minute depiction of sodomy and graphic murder and rape scenes. "More than in my previous films I owe the result to the daring and trust of the actors... who joyfully agreed to play the three main roles," Noe said in the statement. Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux introduced the screening and the three unknown stars, saying the audience "will know them very, very well in two hours". "Love" got a largely negative response from critics on Twitter. "Just Gaspar Noe badly sketching a souring relationship. And the sex scenes get boring after a while," wrote Isabel Stevens, of Sight and Sound magazine, on Twitter. BBC film critic Jason Solomons said it "was definitely not a porn film -- the dialogue's not up to that level". It is not yet clear if the film will remain uncensored abroad. "Love" sold distribution rights in the United States on the sidelines of the festival on Friday, but could yet fall foul of censors. "We will do everything we can to protect this masterful film," Brooke Forde, of US distributor Alchemy, told The Hollywood Reporter. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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China gauge shows manufacturing activity still shrinking: HSBC | ||
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Beijing (AFP) - China's manufacturing activity contracted at a slower pace in May, an HSBC survey showed Thursday, but companies cut back production and jobs despite government attempts to reinvigorate the world's second-largest economy. The preliminary reading for the British banking giant's purchasing managers' index (PMI) came in at 49.1 for this month, improving from a final figure of 48.9 in April, it said in a statement. The index, compiled by information services provider Markit, tracks activity in China's factories and workshops and is regarded as a barometer of the health of the Asian economic giant. Thursday's figure marks the third consecutive month the index has been below the 50 point mark that separates contraction from growth. The production sub-index fell for the first time this year, underlining deteriorating operating conditions, Annabel Fiddes, an economist at Markit, said in the statement. "Softer client demand, both at home and abroad, along with further job cuts indicate that the sector may find it difficult to expand, at least in the near term, as companies tempered production plans in line with weaker demand conditions," she said. The government has "plenty of scope" to impose further stimulus as deflationary pressures remained "relatively strong", she added. China's gross domestic product expanded 7.4 percent last year, the slowest since 1990. Growth weakened further to 7.0 percent in the January-March period, the worst quarterly result in six years. The frailty looks to have extended into the second quarter after indicators for April's activity such as trade and industrial output came in weaker than expected. Authorities have taken a series of steps to stimulate the economy, including three interest rate cuts since November and two reductions in the amount of cash banks must keep in reserve, in a bid to boost lending. This week the country's top economic planning agency announced the approval of the construction of six railways expected to cost more than $40.8 billion. Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist with research firm Capital Economics, said the improvement in this month's PMI could be attributed to a pick-up in new orders on the back of Beijing's policy easing. "The rebound in domestic demand hinted at by the PMI's breakdown does suggest that recent policy efforts may finally be having their intended effect of shoring up short-run economic activity," he wrote in a note. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Rand Paul took over the Senate floor for more than 10 hours to protest NSA spying | ||
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For more than 10 and a half hours, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) occupied the Senate floor in an attempt to halt the renewal of a controversial American national security program. On Wednesday afternoon, Paul began filibustering the renewal of the Patriot Act. Passed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act has been broadly used to justify controversial national security programs including the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American's telephone metadata. “The people don’t want the bulk collection of their records, and if we were listening, we would hear that,” Paul said, according to ABC News. The Republican presidential candidate's filibuster lasted well into the evening. At several points, he was joined by allies from both sides of the aisles who oppose straight reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) both relieved Paul at points during his filibuster so Paul could briefly rest. Paul has been an outspoken critic of the act. The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly said that the NSA data collection program justified under the act is unconstitutional. In 2014, Paul sued the Obama administration over this, claiming the NSA was violating Americans' 4th Amendment rights by not obtaining a warrant before collecting telephone metadata. Earlier, Paul had not given an estimate on how long the filibuster would last, but he said he would do "whatever it takes" to stop the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. "Well, nobody can predict how long you can talk, but I plan on doing everything humanly possible to try to stop the Patriot Act," Paul said, according to CNN. The Senator is no stranger to the filibuster. In 2013, Paul spent 13 hours on the Senate floor filibustering Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan's confirmation to protest the US drone program. Paul said that the notoriety of that filibuster brought him fans, who now ask him what else he'll filibuster. "People are always asking, 'Are you going to filibuster this or filibuster that?'" Paul said during a forum in Philadelphia, according to the LA Times. "To my mind, there are few times when something rises to the occasion that is so important that you really have to take a stand on that issue." Paul is also cashing in on the interest in his Congressional protests. On Wednesday, the National Journal noted that the Republican presidential candidate now sells "filibuster starter packs" on his website. Paul's opposition to the Patriot Act puts him in stark contrast with other Republican presidential contenders on Capitol Hill. Fellow presidential contenders Sen. Lyndsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) support a renewal of the Patriot Act. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) supports an amended version that would limit the NSA's surveillance program. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Barney Frank has a grim outlook for the 2016 elections  | ||
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Central bankers, economists to take long view at ECB forum | ||
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Berlin (AFP) - Central bankers from across the world gather in Portugal on Thursday to try to see past pressing issues such as Greece and market turbulence, and take a longer view of the global economy. The European Central Bank has invited leading economists, academics, financial market players and central bankers from across the globe to a secluded luxury resort in Sintra, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Lisbon, for a three-day think-fest. "The ECB forum gives participants the chance to look through daily policy debates and take a longer-term perspective on a chosen topic," an ECB spokesperson said. This year the topic is "Inflation and Unemployment in Europe" and central bankers, academics, financial market representatives and specialised media are invited to take part in an "open and informal discussion that will help meet today's economic policy challenges in Europe and globally," the spokesperson said. The forum -- the second of its kind held by the ECB -- is seen as Europe's answer to a gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, organised every year by the US Federal Reserve. Aside from the official topics, discussions will almost inevitably touch on the current heightened level of nervousness in financial markets and the tortuous negotiations between Athens and its creditors over how to prevent Greece crashing out of the eurozone. Among the speakers are the ECB's president Mario Draghi and its chief economist Peter Praet, the International Monetary Fund's chief economist Olivier Blanchard, former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and US Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen. Also taking part will be Fed deputy president Stanley Fischer, as well as the central bank chiefs of England, Ireland and Japan. - Positive effects of QE - Officially, the forum is an occasion to exchange ideas and not make any monetary policy announcements. However, any statement by ECB officials on price developments in the 19-country euro area will be scrutinised closely. Given the perceived success of the ECB's policy of quantitative easing (QE) in gradually pushing up chronically low inflation in the bloc, some players are already beginning to speculate on a possible premature "tapering" or phasing out of the programme. Under QE, the guardian institution of the euro aims to buy up to 1.14 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) worth of bonds between March 2015 and September 2016 and prevent the single currency area from slipping into a dangerous downward spiral of falling prices. In the just over two months since the programme was launched, the ECB has already acquired more than 122 billion euros of public-sector bonds. And the positive effects are already being seen: area-wide inflation is moving up and growth gradually improving. Last week in Washington, Draghi said the measures had so far proven to be "potent... more so than many observers anticipated". But he nevertheless insisted the programme would be implemented in full. The other main theme on the agenda is unemployment, a topic which the French government's commissioner general for policy planning, Jean Pisani-Ferry, will speak about. Unlike at the US Federal Reserve, the ECB's mandate does not expressly include keeping down unemployment. But Draghi regularly complains that area-wide unemployment is too high and presses governments to push through the necessary structural reforms to change that. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Malaysian PM orders rescue of migrant boats | ||
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Kuala Lumpur (AFP) - Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday he had ordered the Malaysian navy and coastguard to conduct search and rescue operations for boats carrying stricken migrants including ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar. "I have further ordered (the) Royal Malaysian Navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency to conduct search and rescue efforts for Rohingya boats. We have to prevent loss of life," Najib said on his Facebook account. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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David Letterman cracks self-deprecating jokes in last monologue | ||
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David Letterman hosted his final "Late Show" Wednesday night. After entering the stage to a standing ovation, Letterman urged people to "please be seated" so he could deliver his last monologue.
Letterman then said it has been annoying to constantly be asked what he's going to do now that he's retired. "Want to know what I'm going to do? By god, I hope to become the new face of Scientology," Letterman quipped. "Don't kid yourselves, emotions are running high in this building," he continued. "Here's a video of the goodbye statement to staff that took place earlier today,"he said before showing a clip of himself blowing a kiss to staffers via hologram. "Paul and I have been doing this show for 33 years, that's 6,028 shows," Letterman said on a seemingly serious note, before joking: Earlier today we got a call from Stephen Hawking, he ran the numbers because he's a genius. He said it makes out to be about eight minutes of laughter." Letterman continued with the jokes. "Time gets away from you," he said. "When we started this program the hottest show on television was 'Keeping Up with the Gabors.' The worst thing about not having his own show? "When I screw up now I have to go on somebody else's show to apologize." "Do you remember Elian Gonzalez?" Letterman continued. "The kid is 21-years-old and yesterday he announced that he wants to come back to America. Now my question to you is, should I take this personally?" Letterman later called bandleader Paul Schaefer his best friend, but told fans not to worry because the two aren't done in the entertainment 'biz just yet. "We are going to continue on in show business. Next month in June, Paul and I will be debuting our new act with white tigers," he joked. Letterman also showed two video tributes from Fox’s "The Simpsons" and later "Wheel of Fortune." Developing... stay tuned for video. SEE ALSO: Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Murray, and more read Letterman's final 'Top 10' list Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This new 'Pan' trailer with Hugh Jackman could be the craziest take on Peter Pan yet  | ||
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Sponsors pressure FIFA amid fresh Qatar worker abuse claims | ||
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Dubai (AFP) - Major sponsors Visa and Coca-Cola pressed FIFA to help improve labour conditions in Qatar as Amnesty International accused the 2022 World Cup host of failing to deliver on promised reforms for migrant workers. "We continue to be troubled by the reports coming out of Qatar related to the World Cup and migrant worker conditions," credit card giant Visa said Wednesday, adding that it had expressed its "grave concern" directly to football's top body. Coke said it was also pressing FIFA to demand more labour reforms from Qatar, after fresh accusations from rights group Amnesty that labourers in the tiny oil-rich country were dying in their hundreds. "We expect FIFA to continue taking these matters seriously and to work toward further progress," the company said. Their statements, which come after similar criticism from sponsor Adidas, are the strongest indication yet that high-profile commercial backers are becoming increasingly uneasy over the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar. FIFA is due to hold a meeting later this month that could see a resolution put forward to remove the World Cup from the country -- the first ever awarded to the Middle East -- because of the slow pace of labour reforms. World football's governing body said it would continue "to urge the Qatari authorities to accomplish reforms". "FIFA has repeatedly urged publicly and with the highest authorities in Qatar that fair working conditions for all workers in Qatar are imperative," it said. But Amnesty warned that "without prompt action, the pledges Qatar made last year are at serious risk of being dismissed as a mere public relations stunt to ensure the Gulf state can cling on" to the event. In the latest of a string of reports on migrant worker "abuse", the rights group said Doha had failed to deliver reforms in key areas such as pay, the "kafala" system that blocks workers from leaving the country and curbs on changing employers. Some 440 migrant workers from India and Nepal -- the two countries with the largest number of migrants working on World Cup projects -- died in 2014, Amnesty said, citing their governments' figures but without detailing how they were killed. "Qatar is failing migrant workers," said Mustafa Qadri, Gulf migrants researcher at Amnesty. "Last year the government made promises to improve migrant labour rights in Qatar, but in practice, there have been no significant advances. "The lack of a clear roadmap of targets and benchmarks for reform leaves serious doubts about Qatar's commitment to tackling migrant labour abuse," he said.
- 'Promising little, delivering less' -
The release of Amnesty's report, "Promising little, delivering less: Qatar and migrant labour abuse ahead of the 2022 Football World Cup," caps a turbulent week for Doha. On Monday, it emerged that a BBC journalist invited to Qatar to examine the living conditions of workers building infrastructure for the World Cup had been arrested and held without charge. Qatar has been repeatedly criticised for the poor working conditions of as many as one million migrant workers in the small, oil-rich Gulf country. Facing searing international condemnation, Doha pledged in May 2014 to reform some of its more contentious labour laws but has so far failed to live up to its promises. Earlier this month Abdullah bin Saleh al-Khulaifi, the minister of labour and social affairs, said he was "90 percent" certain the kafala system would be replaced by the end of 2015. He added that the wage protection system would be up and running by mid-August as well as improvements to workers' accommodation. But Amnesty said that with the number of migrant workers in the country expected to more than double, reforms to labour conditions were becoming increasingly vital. Amnesty listed nine "fundamental" areas for reform and said Doha has managed only "limited progress" in five, and none at all in four. It criticised Qatar for not meeting a target of having 300 labour inspectors in place by the end of last year and for the slow introduction of an electronic wage protection system. "With Qatar's construction boom continuing and the migrant worker population set to expand to 2.5 million, the need for urgent reform is more pressing than ever," said Qadri. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Murray, and more read Letterman's final 'Top 10' list | ||
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On Wednesday, David Letterman hosted his last "Late Show." Tons of celebrities came out to celebrate the occasion and help Letterman with his final "Top 10" list. Check out the final list below, with who said what: Top 10 Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave 10. Alec Baldwin: “Of all the talk shows, yours is the most geographically convenient to my home.”
SEE ALSO: David Letterman cracks self-deprecating jokes in last monologue MORE: Jimmy Kimmel gave the best, teary tribute to his idol David Letterman Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Amy Schumer gives a brutally honest interview about her sex life  | ||
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9. Barbara Walters:
8. Steve Martin:
7. Jerry Seinfeld:
6. Jim Carrey:
5. Chris Rock:
4. Julia Louis-Dreyfus:
3. Peyton Manning:
2. Tina Fey:
1. Bill Murray:
Murray was Letterman's first-ever guest in 1982.
Obama looks to anchor Tunisia's democratic gains | ||
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Washington (AFP) - Barack Obama and Tunisia's president will on Thursday discuss increased military and economic aid designed to ensure the brightest democratic light to emerge from the Arab Spring is not extinguished by jihadists or joblessness. Obama will host President Beji Caid Essebsi at the White House, hoping to strengthen a man who in December became the first democratically elected leader in Tunisia's 60-year history. In 2011, a desperately disaffected Tunisian fruit vendor set himself alight, arousing pent up anger at failing government and economic hardship that led to popular revolts across the Middle East. Since then Tunisia has held elections, but has also faced steep security threats, including chaos in neighboring Libya and a March attack on the Bardo National Museum which killed 21 tourists. With Tunisian youth unemployment running at over 30 percent and the key tourism sector rocked by attacks, experts warn social tensions could again spill over into unrest. Obama and Essebsi gave a positive assessment of the country's tumultuous recent history in a joint op-ed for the Washington Post released Wednesday. "Tunisia shows that democracy is not only possible but also necessary in North Africa and the Middle East," the two leaders said. "Today’s national unity government includes secularists and Islamists, proving that democracy and Islam can thrive together," they added. US officials say that Obama will outline a range initiatives centered on increased US aid and trade, including an already planned request to Congress to triple military financing. "Since the revolution, the United States has provided critical economic assistance, including loan guarantees," Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told AFP. "The Presidents will examine ways to expand trade and investment between our countries." "To strengthen US support for Tunisia's security forces and to help them meet evolving threats, we will look to increase military financing assistance to Tunisia next year," Baskey added. - Deeper engagement - The White House hopes to signal a deeper engagement with Tunisia, which has not always been high on Washington's list of priorities. It has asked Congress to approve $138 million in assistance for Tunisia next year, which includes $62.5 million in military financing. A bipartisan group of Senators has written to Obama urging be bold about support for Tunisia's democratic transition. "Many members believe that Tunisia's success is as much a national security priority as US relationships with Israel or Jordan," a Senate aide said, asking not to be named. Aside from the symbolic value of supporting an Arab democracy, Tunisia also has broader strategic significance according to Sarah Feuer, a North Africa expert at the Washington Institute. "A failed Tunisian state would only embolden religious extremists across the region," she said. "Policymakers should not underestimate the implications of such a development, especially given the dangerous tumult that extremist actors are already causing throughout the Middle East and North Africa." Speaking in Washington on Wednesday Essebsi insisted Tunisia was still in the process of finding its feet and needed more investment to do so. "If investors had asked to come to Tunisia a year and a half ago, I would not have advised them to," he said touting a package of economic reforms. But after decades of authoritarian rule, rights groups complain that democratic gains remain fragile. Amnesty International has roundly criticized a draft security law that lays down stiff jail sentences for divulging state secrets or "denigrating" the army or police force. The White House is likely to press Essebsi -- an 88-year-old, who styles himself as a protege of Tunisia's founding father Habib Bourguiba -- on that issue. "The Presidents will discuss the importance of consolidating Tunisia's democratic progress by building transparent and accountable institutions, strengthening civil society and a free press, and fostering tolerance and inclusion," said Baskey. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Bill O'Reilly accused of choking his ex-wife, dragging her down the stairs | ||
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The alleged transcripts — which we have not been able to verify on the record — come from O'Reilly's divorce from Maureen McPhilmy, his ex-wife. As part of their divorce, Trotter reports that the court justice overseeing their child custody dispute "assigned a Manhattan psychologist named Larry Cohen to interview and assess each member of the family: Bill O’Reilly, Maureen McPhilmy, and their son and daughter." Cohen allegedly testified in court that O'Reilly's daughter reported, "having seeing an incident where I believe she said her dad was choking her mom or had his hands around her neck and dragged her down some stairs." This is Trotter's second story on the matter. He initially reported this news on Monday, but that story didn't have the alleged transcripts. Instead, it relied on "a source familiar with the facts of the case." After Trotter published his story on Monday, we reached out to O'Reilly about the allegations, and the following statement was issued to Business Insider: "All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100% false. I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further." O'Reilly's lawyer Fred Newman and two Fox News spokespersons did not return calls for comment from Business Insider on Wednesday regarding the latest report that includes the alleged court transcripts. The psychologist also allegedly testified that the couple's daughter told him that O'Reilly was never around to have a relationship with her for 11 years and that O'Reilly told him he sometimes had trouble with impatience and with "going ballistic." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Watch this angry mom in Baltimore confront her son and pull him out of the police protests  | ||
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Fox News star Bill O'Reilly allegedly abused his ex-wife, Here's a look at Michelle Obama's explosive workout routine | ||
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In honor of the fifth anniversary of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative, she posted a video on Twitter showing her exhaustive workout routine from the White House gym. In the video, Obama is seen jumping rope, kickboxing, and lifting a pair of 35-pound weights while her personal trainer Cornell McClellan spots her. After stretching, Mrs. Obama alternates between different jump rope routines: | ||
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US TV pioneer David Letterman bows out | ||
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New York (AFP) - The king of America's special brand of late-night television, David Letterman, broadcasts his final show Wednesday, closing the door on a pioneering, 33-year-long career that inspired a generation of comedians. Not only is he the longest-serving nighttime US talk show host, but his unique style of caustic and at times grumpy humor set him apart even if rivals pulled in more viewers. He announced his retirement in 2014 and as the clock as ticked down, there has been an avalanche of tributes to his extraordinary career from emotional celebrities and stacks of columns written in the press. Wednesday's episode of the "Late Show with David Letterman" will be the broadcaster's 6,028th television show of his career when it airs at 11:35 pm (0335 GMT) from the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York. Other than featuring rock giants Foo Fighters, whom the 68-year-old has described as his favorite band, CBS television has kept the lid on the rest of the show, promising only many surprises. Hollywood comedy giants Steve Martin and Jim Carrey were among those reportedly spotted heading into the theater earlier Wednesday. Bill Murray and Bob Dylan were guests Tuesday, Tom Hanks on Monday, while Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Al Pacino and Bill Clinton featured last week. Critics have praised Letterman for combining innovative and odd-ball antics with traditional interviews, and for inspiring some of most the talented comics working today in Britain and the United States. "I'm naked and afraid," Letterman told CBS Sunday. "Any enormous uprooting change in my life has petrified me," he said. But once through the other side "the reward has been unimaginable," he added. Letterman got his first comedy show on NBC in 1982, before defecting to CBS in 1993 to host the "Late Show" after the biggest career disappointment of his career -- losing out to Jay Leno as host of the "Tonight" show. But initially, his ratings eclipsed Leno's on NBC. Then Leno landed an interview with British actor Hugh Grant in 1995, just after he was caught with a prostitute, and Letterman's ratings never caught up.
- Stand-out moments -
Sarcastic, at times angry and scathing, some celebrities admitted they feared him, and ended up in his crosshairs. Singer Cher once quipped on air that she thought he was an "asshole" and yet he enjoyed an on-camera chemistry with many of guests. Through it all, Letterman won 12 Emmy awards -- the most highly prized accolade in American television -- and was nominated for a total of 67, including every year from 1984 to 2009. Other stand-out moments also set him apart. After the horror of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Letterman was the first comedian to go back on air -- six days after the Al-Qaeda hijackings that killed some 3,000 people. In January 2000, he underwent a quintuple heart bypass. Five weeks later, he was back on air with his doctors as his guests. In 2009, he admitted to affairs with female staffers and apologized on air, alongside his wife and his team. He kept his job. Today a younger, social-media savvy generation of late-night comedy hosts dominate the airwaves; Jimmy Fallon, 40, on NBC; Jimmy Kimmel, 47, on ABC; and Seth Meyers, 41, on NBC at 12:35 am. Letterman will be replaced from September 8 by Stephen Colbert, 51, who until last December hosted the "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. "They didn't push me out," Letterman told The New York Times. "When Jay was on... I thought, this is still viable -- an older guy in a suit. And then he left, and I suddenly was surrounded by the Jimmys." Married to long-time companion Regina and the father of 11-year-old Harry, he compared retirement to a "punch to the head." "For the first time since Harry's been alive, our summer schedule will not be dictated by me. It will be entirely dictated by what my son wants to do," he told the Times.
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Wary Djokovic on brink of history | ||
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Paris (AFP) - Novak Djokovic can become just the eighth man to complete the career Grand Slam with a maiden French Open victory, but the world number one steps into Roland Garros badly bruised by his Paris history. Djokovic, who turns 28 on Friday, two days before the start of the season's second major, is the overwhelming favourite to lift the Coupe des Mousquetaires and claim his ninth career Grand Slam title. Victory would take him alongside Fred Perry, Don Budge, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal as a winner of all four majors. It would also take him halfway to a calendar Grand Slam, a challenge so daunting that only Budge (1938) and Laver (1962 and 1969) have managed to pull it off. Djokovic comes into Paris riding a 22-match winning streak, a season which has already seem him capture a fifth Australian Open as well as Masters titles in Indian Wells, Miami and on clay at Monte Carlo and Rome. However, the Serb has been in this situation before. In 2011, he entered the French Open as hot favourite but saw a 43-match winning sequence ended by Federer in the semi-finals. A year later, Djokovic was defeated by Nadal in a four-set final which was completed on the third Monday because of rain. In 2013, it was the Spaniard who again came out on top, this time in the semi-finals despite Djokovic having led 4-2 in the fifth set. Twelve months ago, Nadal claimed his ninth title as Djokovic wilted once more in the championship match. No surprise then to see Djokovic, whose overall 2015 record reads 35 wins and just two losses, trying to contain the hype ahead of his 11th French Open. "I don't think that I need to gear up or do anything special in order to be successful at Roland Garros. I have been very close to that title before, played several finals," he said after beating Federer 6-4, 6-3 to win a fourth Rome title last weekend. "I just need to continue preparing myself for that event as I prepare for any other, try to keep the routine going and hope it will take me where I want to be."
- 'Life goes on' -
Nadal goes into the French Open with his astonishing record of nine titles, 66 wins and just one loss. But the 28-year-old defending champion has slumped to seven in the world, his lowest ranking since 2005, the year of his maiden Roland Garros title. Nadal heads for Paris without a European claycourt title for the first time in a decade and his relatively humble ranking means he could come across the likes of Djokovic, Federer or in-form Andy Murray as early as the quarter-finals. "I'm going to be ranked lower than ever playing Roland Garros, so that will mean the chance to play against very tough opponents," 14-time major winner Nadal said. "At the same time, if I go to Roland Garros and I lose and I don't play well, life continues. It's not the end of the world." Federer completed the career Grand Slam with his only French Open triumph in 2009. A five-time finalist, the 33-year-old has endured steadily diminishing returns in Paris with a 2011 runners-up spot followed by the semi-finals in 2012, a quarter-final exit in 2013 and a shock fourth round defeat to Ernests Gulbis 12 months ago, Federer, who won the last of his record 17 majors at Wimbledon in 2012, believes it would be foolish to write off Nadal. "It's going to be best-of-five sets. We know how tough Rafa is physically and mentally. He is the favourite still to me. Novak at this point probably has to win, with the results he's shown this year. It feels similar to 2011 when he didn't lose the whole year." World number three Murray has surprisingly emerged as Djokovic's greatest threat. After failing to lift a claycourt trophy in 10 years of trying, the Scot suddenly won two in the space of six days in Munich and Madrid. The 28-year-old has a 10-0 record on clay this year and was the first marquee name to practice at Roland Garros on Monday. Murray, who has twice been a semi-finalist at the French Open, losing in straight sets to Nadal in 2011 and 2014, withdrew from Rome after one match to safeguard his Paris campaign.
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