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SpaceX's Unique Cargo Ship Just Returned From The International Space Station

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spaceX dragon

A commercial spacecraft owned by California-based company Space Exploration Technologies splashed into the Pacific on Sunday after leaving the International Space Station five hours earlier.

The cargo ship, named Dragon, is the only supply ship capable of returning items to Earth because others burn up on re-entry. It brought back 3,500 pounds of science samples and old equipment for NASA.

The Dragon delivered a full shipment to the orbiting lab's crew on Easter Sunday (April 20). The package included supplies, science experiments, and a pair of legs for the experimental humanoid robot aboard.

"Thanks to everybody who worked this Dragon mission. It went very well,"station commander Steven Swanson told NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston after Dragon left the station's orbit.

SEE ALSO: ELON MUSK: The Russians Just Gave America A New Reason To Support SpaceX

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We'll Get A Crucial Update On The Housing Market This Week — Here's Your Complete Preview

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brazil world cup

There's very little on the economic calendar this week.

However, we will get new monthly reports on existing home sales and new home sales on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

Those measures have been among the various worrisome data points that led Goldman Sachs economists to slash their forecasts for housing and GDP growth on Friday.

It's worth mentioning that mortgage rates are at seven-month lows, which should help the housing market.

Speaking of interest rates, the 10-year Treasury note yield tumbled to 2.48% last week.

Here's your Monday Scouting Report:

Top Story

  • 2.48%: The 10-year Treasury yield started the year at 3.03%. At the time, Wall Street's interest rate strategists were convinced that the yield would climb to around 3.4% by the end of the year. So, what happened?

    "The recent strength in Treasuries that’s been impervious to incoming economic data is probably to a significant extent a result of positioning, but it seems to be increasingly spooking investors in other markets worried that there’s an underlying message being sent of the economy being in much worse shape than the economic data are indicating," explained Morgan Stanley's Ted Wieseman. Stifel Nicolaus' Dave Lutz has been warning about positioning for a while, specifically pointing out that short positions on 10-year Treasury futures contracts were at a four-year high. Cumberland Advisors' David Kotok had a nice writeup this weekend on why its about low growth and low inflation.

    One of the few people to predict the yield would fall to 2.5% was DoubleLine Funds' Jeffrey Gundlach. Now that we're there, here's what he thinks: "If we go down [more] on Treasury yields, we will see one of the biggest short-covering scrambles of all time ... If for some reason someone has to cover these shorts, you could actually see the low yields of 2012 get taken out." 

Economic Calendar

  • Federal Reserve's FOMC Minutes (Wed): The Fed will publish the minutes from its April 29-30 FOMC meeting at 2 p.m. ET. From Credit Suisse: "About the only aspect of the April 30 FOMC policy statement that could be called a surprise was the relatively upbeat assessment of the economy that came on the heels of that morning’s disappointing +0.1% Q1 GDP print (although it is worth noting that growth did improve within the quarter) ... The minutes – to be released on Wednesday – may contain some points of greater interest, however, including any details of the April 29 Board Meeting that coincided with the beginning of the two-day FOMC meeting, at which the topic of discussion was 'Medium-Term Monetary Policy Issues.' We will be looking for discussion specifically relating to the exit strategy, and in particular plans for additional testing of the fixed-rate reverse repo facility ...  Also, given Fed Chair Yellen’s subsequent public comments about the risks associated with sluggishness in the housing market, any discussion in the minutes about the housing sector would be of interest."
  • Initial Jobless Claims (Thurs): Economists estimate jobless claims climbed to 310,000 from 297,000 a week ago. "Initial jobless claims probably were little changed, after a sudden drop," said Citi's Peter D'Antonio. "First filings have been extremely volatile over the last two months, bouncing around in a wide 50,000 range. Moreover, claims have averaged about 320,000 in each of the last three months, suggesting little change in the underlying trend. Conversely, the story for continuing claims has been unambiguously better."
  • Markit US Manufacturing PMI (Thurs): Economists estimate the preliminary read on this manufacturing index will be 55.5, up from 55.4 in April. "So far in May, regional Fed manufacturing surveys have been consistent with a healthy trend in manufacturing output growth," said UBS' Kevin Cummins.
  • Existing Home Sales (Thurs): Economists estimate sales climbed 2.0% to an annualized rate of 4.68 million. "Existing home sales have slumped since August of last year due to a low inventory of homes, less investor buying, and recently, the adverse weather conditions," said Nomura economists. "The pending home sales index, which tends to lead existing sales by one to two months, increased in March, for the first time in nine months, and suggests that the existing homes market might be stabilizing."
  • Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Activity (Thurs): Economists estimate this regional activity index was unchanged at 7 in May. "The Markit PMI and the manufacturing ISM suggest a strong trend in factory output," said UBS' Cummins. "As mentioned, the NY and Philadelphia Fed surveys already reported for May were solid."
  • New Home Sales (Fri): Economists estimate the pace of sales jumped 9.4% to 420,000 in April. "Lagged effects from the weather and ongoing supply and affordability issues likely prompted the sharp drop in new home sales in March," said Nomura economists. "Mortgage applications for home purchases increased in April, but the current sales of single family homes subindex within the survey declined in April, suggesting that there probably was little improvement in new home sales in April."
  • *Fed Chair Janet Yellen will give the NYU commencement speech at 11:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, May 21.

Market Commentary

Last Monday, the S&P 500 passed 1,900 for the first time ever, and it got as high as 1,902 before it ended the week at 1,877.

Despite the milestone, the index is up just 1.6% this year.

"One... item confusing investors is the strength of bond prices this year even as so many believe equities would be the better performers," said Tobias Levkovich, Citi Chief U.S. Equity Strategist. He noted that falling rates were "unexpected with various theories running around, ranging from foreign buyers trying to push down their own currencies to drive exports for domestic economic growth reasons to banks covering short positions given tighter risk controls amidst greater regulatory oversight. Indeed, some think that the regulatory environment has led to low inventories that exacerbate market moves in any direction. We have heard that strong stock price gains last year have forced pension funds to rebalance their portfolios from equities to bonds as equity holdings rose to uncomfortably higher levels due to last year’s index value appreciation. And, safe haven arguments have evolved as well to explain Treasury buying due to the Ukraine and other regional trouble spots."

Levkovich pointed out that while the outperformance of bonds relative to stocks may seem odd, it's not unprecedented.

"In any event, stock price relative gains versus Treasuries had been quite strong versus history (see Figure 6) and some backup is not all that shocking," he said. "Moreover, with no indications of inflation expectations shifting, one should not worry that much about a big imminent spike in interest rates."

citi stocks bonds

For more insight about the middle market, visit mid-marketpulse.com.

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14 Pinterest Projects That Failed Hilariously

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Pintester

Pinterest is largely an aspirational social network. People post and "pin" pictures that help them create the ideal version of different aspects of their lives. 

For that reason, the site is loaded with all sorts of DIY crafts, as well as recipes and tutorials for home decor projects. 

Browsing the site, everything looks beautiful, and many things look relatively easy to make yourself.

The cold-hard truth: They're often quite the opposite. 

Blogger Sonja Foust runs a funny site called Pintester where she posts about her experience trying out different Pinterest projects. The site's slogan: "Failing at Pinterest pins so you don't have to."

SEE ALSO: 13 Things You Didn't Know Guys Were Doing On Pinterest

Foust started Pintester back in late 2011.



"Pinterest was my new favorite website," she says, "But when I would try to make things it just wasn't working out."



Her attempts never looked as good as the pictures she'd see.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Antidepressant Use Has Exploded Since 1988

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Americans are swallowing antidepressants like Zoloft and Paxil at four times the rate they used to, according to the latest statistical report on the nation's health, released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between 2007 and 2010, more than 10% of Americans said they had taken an antidepressant within the last 30 days. More than twice as many women take the drugs as men, though rates have more than quadrupled for both:

Antidepressant Usage United States

The number of women on antidepressants has gone from 3.2% in the 1988 to 1994 survey to 14.8% in the most recent one. (For men, it's gone from 1.6% to 6.6% in the same time period, though that baseline number is considered unreliable, since the margin of error for men on the 1988-1994 survey was between 20% and 30%.)

These facts on antidepressants come from the special feature in this year's report on prescription drug usage, rates of which have increased in general for Americans over the past half century.

Why are so many people taking antidepressants?

The skyrocketing rate of "happy pill" consumption may not mean that people are more depressed than ever.

At any given time, 9.1% of adults fit the criteria for being depressed, the CDC estimates. And people also take antidepressants for other reasons, including panic disorders, anxiety, and menopausal symptoms.

The authors attribute the increased consumption of antidepressant drugs to a variety of factors. Not least is the introduction and popularization of Prozac and other SSRIs, which have much less severe side effects than older antidepressants. (Prozac was approved by the FDA on December 29, 1987.)

Other potential causes for the increase include reduced stigma around seeking care for mental illness, usage of these drugs to treat other mental disorders, and marketing efforts by pharmaceutical companies.

The question of overuse

Some recent research indicates that antidepressants may be overprescribed.

A survey last year, for example, found that two-thirds of a group of 5,000 that had been diagnosed with depression did not meet the conditions for a major depressive episode.

And some patients may be correctly diagnosed as depressed and opt for non-pharmaceutical treatment — cognitive behavioral therapy, for example.

Still, the National Institute of Mental Health says that the drugs may be both over- and under-used: they cite research that says that only half of people with major depression receive care.

SEE ALSO: 7 Ways To Tell If A Millennial Is Depressed

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PRESENTING: The 100 Most Influential Tech Women On Twitter

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Julia Boorstin presentationThere's been a lot of talk about how women are underrepresented in the tech world and the voice of tech tends to be more male-centric. Especially when it comes to the Twitter conversation, it can feel a bit XY heavy.

So we decided to put together a list of the female newsmakers in tech, the most influential women that you should be following on Twitter.

With the help of rankings from PeerIndex, we ranked the top most influential female tech tweeters to help you even out your followees. 

PeerIndex assigns each user a score of 0-100 by analyzing the speed and quantity with which users spot and share their tweets. We've included both the overall PI ranking for each tweeter, as well as the specific PI ranking among Twitter users in the tech community.

100. Christina Cacioppo

Occupation: Developer at Nebula Labs

Handle: @christinacaci

Why: This former VC analyst realized coding was where it's at and decided to build cool things on her own. She's currently working on an online education project along with a bunch of other stuff including video messaging app Hoot, Join Startups — a job board for startups — and Laisin, a book database.

Tech PI: 64

PI: 65



99. Aliza Sherman

Occupation: Author, Speaker, Founder of Cybergrrl

Handle: @alizasherman

Why: Sherman started the first woman-owned internet company in the early 1990s and tweets not only tech news but also inspirational messages about life in general.

Tech PI: 64

PI: 69



98. Kathleen Fritzsche

Occupation: Cofounder of Accelerate Stuttgar and StartUp Stuttgart

Handle: @kathl_fritzsche

Why: A self-proclaimed startup addict, Fritzsche knows what's up in Germany and the global tech world in general.

Tech PI: 65

PI: 49



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AT&T Is Buying DirecTV In A Deal Valued At Nearly $50 Billion, $67 Billion With Debt (T, DTV)

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AT&T ceo randall stephenson

AT&T announced today that it will buy DirecTV for $95 per share, in a deal valued at almost $50 billion ($48.5) and about $67 billion with debt.  

The deal isn't a surprise. The news leaked out last week through the Wall Street Journal and several other publications, but everyone was waiting for the final price. 

Now, regulators will have to approve the deal, which will take several months. 

With DirecTV, AT&T wouldn't just be getting a paid TV service that covers much of the U.S. DirecTV also has a sizeable presence in South America. About 20% of DirecTV's revenues last quarter came from its South America business, and it has a good amount of market share in the region.

AT&T also has a cable TV and broadband internet product called U-Verse, which is available in limited markets in the U.S.

The deal is just the latest in a series of consolidation moves between internet and paid TV providers. Comcast announced a few months ago that it would buy Time Warner for $45 billion, making it the largest cable and broadband provider in the country. The deal is expected to go through this fall.

To appease regulators, AT&T will frame the DirecTV purchase as a way to provide blanket internet access to portions of the country that don't have reliable broadband yet. Meanwhile, AT&T will have to prove to the government that its proposed merger won't give it an unfair advantage over other TV and internet providers. However, AT&T could spin its own proposal as a counterweight to the Comcast deal.

There's another big consolidation play that has everyone talking. Sprint is reportedly in talks to buy T-Mobile, which would create a strong third competitor to challenge AT&T and Verizon, the two wireless giants that control most of the business in the U.S. That deal could be announced this summer, assuming talks don't fall through.

This isn't AT&T's first time trying to make a big acquisition. In 2011, it tried to buy T-Mobile, but the Department of Justice blocked the merger.

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An $80 Million 'Dracula Castle' With A Secret Staircase Is On Sale For $80 Million

America's Best City For Food Trucks Is Not New York


'The Internet Of Things' Will Change Everything About The Global Consumer Economy

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IoTImplementation

The arrival of the Internet of Things marks a major watershed in the global consumer economy. Internet connections will be built in to a massive quantity of new products, from air conditioners to light bulbs and security alarms. These will all be controlled through apps and websites, and feed data into the cloud. 

Startups specialized in home automation, established consumer electronics giants, and large Silicon Valley-based tech companies are all poised for a huge battle over this new consumer space, sometimes also referred to as the "Connected Life" market.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we examine the forces and numbers driving growth in the consumer Internet of Things or IoT, including the mind-boggling numbers for total market size. It's difficult to overestimate the importance of the Internet of Things because it will come to encompass all manner of products we don't normally think of as high-tech, such as UV-filtering window shades and door locks. We also look at the enterprise market for the Internet of Things

Here are some of our top findings: 

  • Defining the Internet of Things: It’s helpful to think about IoT devices as a new device category layer that exists as the connective tissue between the formerly static non-connected world, and the world of PCs, tablets, and smartphones. For example, a connected washer and dryer unit can report energy usage and cycle settings to a smartphone app. 
  • It's a huge opportunity: Machina defines “Connected Life Market Revenue” as the sum of all of the revenue accruing from the sale of connected devices and all related services. They see revenue ballooning to $2.5 trillion by 2020.
  • How can it be so large? Many consumer categories are crossing into the IoT: These include kitchen and home appliances, lighting and heating products, and insurance company-issued car monitoring devices that allow motorists to pay insurance only for the amount of driving they do.  
  • Large manufacturers are already making big plays: These include LG, the Korean manufacturer of home entertainment systems and appliances and Friedrich, maker of AC units. 
  • But startups are making a grab for this market too: SmartThings has built its entire business model around easily deployable sensors, monitors, and apps that allow consumers to run everything in their home through their smartphone. It raised a $3 million seed round late last year. We also expect companies such as Apple, Google, and others to get more involved. 
  • The Internet of Things seems esoteric, but it's relatively simple: IoT devices will contain three ingredients: An Internet connection, either in the device itself or a base station; a sensor, to collect incoming data; and a processor, because just like any computing device, an IoT gadget will have a chip that parses information. 
  • These are the qualities that all IoT devices need to have: They need to be energy efficient, reliable over long time periods, work well in varied environments even outdoors, and be secure to avoid data breaches and hacking. 

The report is full of charts and data that can be downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

To access BI Intelligence's full report, Here Comes The Internet Of Things, sign up for a free trial subscription here. Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports on social and mobile, and hundreds of charts and datasets

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BMW Takes Its Car-Sharing Service To The Streets Of San Francisco

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ActiveE

BMW's car-sharing service, called DriveNow, is adding 80 cars to its fleet in the Bay Area, and starting this month, it will offer street parking spots in the Mission District in San Francisco.

That means that you don't have to drop the car off in a dedicated lot, as you would with, say, Zipcar. Instead, the car will tell you when you're in an approved drop-off zone, which is between Potrero Avenue and Folsom Street and between 16th and 26th streets.

DriveNow_app

"We're starting in certain streets in the Mission District, and on those streets, we only have to contend with street cleaning," Dana Goldin, DriveNow's chief marketing officer, told Business Insider. "So right now we're avoiding meters and we're avoiding residential permit areas."

After you drop off the car, push the "End Booking" button, and all you have to worry about is avoiding a street cleaning ticket. You can also drop the car off in one of the 17 DriveNow stations, located around the Bay Area, including Palo Alto and both the San Francisco and Oakland airports.

"On the website, in the app, and in the car, you can view the DriveNow drop-off zone," Goldin said. 

And one-way dropoffs are allowed, which makes for a way cheaper ride than taking a taxi to the airport.

DriveNow charges a one-time fee of $39; you then pay $12 for the first half hour and $0.32 for each additional driving minute. If you park or charge the car during the rental period, you only pay $0.13 per minute. You can also pay by the day. 

Let's all just get along

Although it may seem that DriveNow is gunning after Zipcar, that's not necessarily the case, said Richard Steinberg, CEO of DriveNow USA. With Zipcar, you reserve the car further in advance and it's up to the drivers to return the cars to the appropriate spot when their time is up. 

But DriveNow allows you to use the car as you need it: you can book the car just 15 minutes in advance. 

"We're not necessarily giving you the same liability or guarantee that Zipcar does, but we give you the spontaneity," Steinberg told Business Insider. "We believe the two services are complementary: their service makes sense in certain instances, and our services makes sense in other instances."

Luxurious, eco-friendly cars

BMW Charging StationThe fleet consists of 70 BMW ActiveE all-electric cars, which are based on the BMW 1 Series Coupe. They have a range of about 100 miles before they need to be charged. 

I didn't get a chance to test-drive the ActiveE, but I did get a chance to take the similar i3 out for a spin. The i3 is the next phase in BMW's "Project i" program, which aims to develop a lightweight, eco-friendly electric car for city dwellers. People field tested and gave their feedback on the ActiveE, and BMW followed up with the i3. 

The i3 offered a smooth ride and cool looks. The body is made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, and the inside is made of recycled and eco-friendly materials.

BMW i3

Looking ahead

Looking forward, DriveNow looks to expand its number of cars, so that there could be a DriveNow car on every block. It just added 80 cars to its fleet, bringing the total to 150 in the Bay Area.

DriveNow and its street parking component is already a success in Germany, where they have around 2,350 cars in the fleet.

It wants to extend street parking to include areas of Bernal Heights, Haight Ashbury, Noe Valley, NOPA, Alamo Square, and Potrero Hill in San Francisco by 2014 — all parts of the city that allow DriveNow to stay within parking regulations. 

"Street parking has been a challenge for us, because that's our true business model," Goldin says. "So we took a hybrid approach with having stations here first, and then we want to open up more street parking."

DriveNow here in the U.S. is based on how it works in Germany, where there's basically a car on every block. "Pretty much anywhere you are, you're going to find a car," Steinberg said. "And that's the model we're basing it on."

SEE ALSO: Now there's an app that lets you auction off your parking spot

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Deutsche Bank Is Raising $11 Billion More In Capital

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Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank plans to raise $11 billion in new capital, the Frankfurt-based megabank announced Sunday.  

The funding round comes amid concerns about the firm's capital levels, the paper notes. As the FT's Alice Ross and Daniel Schäfer wrote a couple of weeks ago

Deutsche is one of the least well capitalised banks among its peers and has faced pressure from investors in recent weeks to do more to plug its capital gap.

Executives have complained that the bank was unprepared for fresh regulations it will face this year. These include the European Banking Authority’s stress tests, which could see Deutsche ordered to raise more equity, as well as the possibility the European Central Bank will decide to impose tougher accounting standards on the lender.

Among the new stakeholders is the Qatari royal family, which kicked in $2.4 billion. The FT says the new round is at the high end of what analysts were expecting.

SEE ALSO: Deutsche Bank's Top Investment Banker Sent An Intense Warning To Employees About Their 'Vulgar' Behavior

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College Speaker Calls Students Immature, Arrogant

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william bowen

HAVERFORD, Pa. (AP) — A commencement speaker on Sunday blasted college students as "immature" and "arrogant" for protesting another speaker who then decided to withdraw.

William Bowen, former president of Princeton University, used his commencement speech at Haverford College outside Philadelphia to criticize students who campaigned against Robert Birgeneau, former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

Birgeneau is among several commencement speakers who canceled their appearances this spring amid student protests.

More than 40 students and three professors had protested Birgeneau's invitation to speak, objecting to his handling of a 2011 incident at Berkeley in which police used force at a student protest during the Occupy movement. The group wanted Birgeneau to apologize, support payments for victims and write a letter to Haverford students explaining his position on the events and "what you learned from them."

Birgeneau, who was also supposed to receive an honorary degree from Haverford, refused those demands and others in a terse email.

Bowen chastised students in his speech for driving Birgeneau away, The Philadelphia Inquirer (http://bit.ly/1sHYBcW ) reported.

"I am disappointed that those who wanted to criticize Birgeneau's handling of events at Berkeley chose to send him such an intemperate list of 'demands,'" Bowen said Sunday. "In my view, they should have encouraged him to come and engage in a genuine discussion, not to come, tail between his legs, to respond to an indictment that a self-chosen jury had reached without hearing counterarguments."

Bowen also said Birgeneau had "responded intemperately, failing to make proper allowance for the immature, and, yes, arrogant inclinations of some protesters. Aggravated as he had every right to be, I think he should be with us today."

He called Birgeneau's withdrawal a defeat for the school.

His remarks drew a standing ovation.

___

Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.com

SEE ALSO: The Most Desirable College In Each State

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YouTube Is Reportedly Buying Videogame-Streaming Startup Twitch For More Than $1 Billion

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Twitch

YouTube has reached a deal to buy the popular videogame-streaming company, Twitch, for more than $1 billion, sources with knowledge of the agreement told Variety

Twitch is a video service that lets XBox or Playstation 4 gamers live-stream their gameplay to thousands of viewers simultaneously. More than one million people recently teamed up on the site to beat a Pokemon game after 390 hours of playing; the community is both vast and strong.  

If you visit the site, you'll be able to browse through a selection of games that users are playing, and watch their gameplay either live or from a recording. You can chat with other people who are watching the same game. 

Here's an example of what that would look like if you wanted to watch someone play a WWE wrestling game:

Twitch

Twitch also partners with all the major tournament companies to stream their events on its site and has deals with partners like CBS Interactive's GameSpot and Joystiq to offer their shows.

Like YouTube, Twitch inserts ads into streams, and broadcasters can enter into partnership agreements to share the ad revenue. It offers a subscription option for streamers who average about 1,000 viewers at any given time, and for a monthly fee, those broadcasters can allow others to subscribe to their streams, removing the advertisements.  

The three-year-old startup claims to have more than 45 million monthly users, and it has more peak internet traffic than Facebook or Hulu. Since becoming one of the first sites to host user-generated, live-streamed video, it has raised $35 million in funding.

Variety also reports that YouTube is preparing for U.S. regulators to take a hard look at the potential acquisition to make sure that it doesn't raise anti-competitive issues in the online video market. If the acquisition happens, it would be the largest in YouTube's history.

SEE ALSO: Twitch Has The Power To Make Or Destroy A Professional Gamer's Career

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An Insurance Company Is Suing 200 Illinois Towns For Not Being Better Prepared For Climate Change

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illinois flooding

An insurance company is suing nearly 200 Chicago-area towns for failing to do more to prevent damages it says are linked to climate change, Reuters' Mica Rosenberg reports.

Farmers Insurance is asking the communities to return flood claims from the spring of 2013, which caused at least $218 in losses. The towns should have done more to fortify their sewers and stormwater drains, the group argues. Rosenberg: 

The legal debate may center on whether an uptick in natural disasters is foreseeable or an "act of God." The cases raise the question of how city governments should manage their budgets before costly emergencies occur.

It's not the first time an insurance company has made such a contention — there were a flurry of climate-change related lawsuits, ultimately dismissed, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — but experts say we are likely to see more.

"No one is expected to plan for the 500-year storm, but if horrible events are happening with increasing frequency, that may shift the duties," Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York, told Rosenberg. 

Ironically, the region's avowal of the threat posed by climate change — and its alleged subsequent failure to do more to address it — may have made them a target, Rosenberg reports. Farmers cites Chicago's climate action plan in its suit to argue it was aware of risks like flooding. 

Read the full story here »

(Via Ken Silverstein)

SEE ALSO: Government Report Says An 'Unexpected Problem' Is Killing Honeybees

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Here's What It Costs To Eat At The 15 Best Restaurants In The US


Japan Stocks Open Higher

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nikkei

Japan's Nikkei index opened higher Monday morning after the country reported larger-than expected-orders for core machines ahead of a recent sales tax increase.

Receipts jumped 19.1% month-over-month well above forecasts for 5.8%.

The Nikkei opened up 0.2%. 

Korea's Kospi index was down 0.5%.

 

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Here's Why Netflix And Google Are Building Out Their Own Content Distribution Networks

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CDNTrafficShare2013

Internet service providers (ISPs) get a lot more attention than any of the other players in  the streaming video pipeline. But there's another piece of the transit ecosystem that is becoming absolutely critical to how content on streaming sites like Netflix finds its way to people's TVs: Content Distribution Networks (CDNs).

A  new report from BI Intelligence on the video transit ecosystem finds that CDNs specialize in delivering large volumes of traffic over multiple ISPs, varying geographies, and piping it through infrastructure including fiber-optic lines and Internet traffic exchange centersIn short, CDNs take the guess-work and heavy lifting out of the complex task of delivering video, in a reliable manner, to millions of viewers served by a variety of different ISPs.

Now, content providers like Netflix and Google are building out their own CDN networks — Netflix OpenConnect and Google Global Cache, respectively — to better deliver content to consumers and attain more control over how their traffic is routed.

Netflix OpenConnect already accounts for 13% of CDN traffic as of 2013.

While custom-built CDNs like OpenConnect give streaming video services greater control over the performance and cost of content delivery, they typically come at a high upfront cost. Just like third-party CDNs, content provider-run CDNs must also establish peering relationships with other network operators. 

Netflix, for example, would not have had to establish an individual peering agreement with Comcast, if it had continued to use a third-party CDN service instead of OpenConnect.

Access The Full Report On The Video Transit Ecosystem By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

In full, the report: 

 

 

Slide1

 

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Here's The Odd List Of Words China Bans Because Of Tiananmen Square

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Tiananmen Square

The 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre is this week, and China is taking extreme measures to make sure nobody commemorates the event.

In 2012, China Digital Times identified more than 100 search terms China bans around the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The country has already shut down Google services ahead of the 25th anniversary.

The government puts a lot of effort into erasing the 1989 massacre from books, TV, and internet resources that are available to its citizens. China's younger generation seems mostly unaware of the student-led, pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing that drove Chinese soldiers to kill hundreds (or possibly thousands) of people.

Some of the words and terms the government has blocked seem odd and out-of-place, but they're tied to the event and could bring up information about it. Some of these words were coded in an (unsuccessful) attempt to evade Chinese government censors.

Here's a list of some of the terms:

  • Big yellow duck (because an image circulated online showing giant toy ducks replacing military vehicles in the Tank Man photo, the same photo at the top of this post)
  • Tank Man (a reference to the above photo of a lone protester trying to block tanks)
  • Shanghai index (a reference to the Shanghai stock market closing down 64.89 points on 2012's anniversary)
  • 63 + 1 (because it adds up to 64, or June 4th)
  • Candle (because the candle emoticon is commonly used online to mourn deaths)
  • Today
  • Square
  • Mourn
  • When spring becomes summer
  • That year
  • Special day
  • Pillar of shame (a reference to sculptures symbolizing those who died in the massacre)
  • Victoria Park (where some of the sculptures were placed)
  • Black shirt
  • Redress
  • Take to the streets
  • Against bureaucratic profiteering (because it's part of a slogan from the Tiananmen protests)
  • Suppress
  • Tank

SEE ALSO: China Goes To Absurd Lengths To Make Sure People Don't Remember Its 1989 Tiananmen Square Crackdown

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The Shockingly Awful Living Conditions Of Construction Workers In Qatar Before The 2022 World Cup

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qatar world cup kitchen

There are 1.4 million migrant workers in Qatar — the tiny, oil-rich Arabian peninsula that won the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Many of these workers came from poor regions of southeast Asia, and they work under an archaic system called kafala that human rights watchers call "modern-day slavery." These workers can't leave the country without an exit visa. And they can't get an exit visa without their employers' approval.

The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that 4,000 of them will die working in Qatar before the opening game of the 2022 World Cup.

ESPN's Jeremy Schaap traveled to Qatar and did a fantastic feature that aired on E:60 in May.

He visited a migrant camp on the outskirts of Doha, and found workers living in squalor.

The camp from afar:

qatar world cup building

A bathroom:

qatar bathroom

 

A hallway filled with rubble:

qatar world cup worker living conditions

The entrance to the camp:

qatar world cup worker camp

These men are forced to work long hours in the sun. As a result, they're dying of cardiac arrest at an abnormally high rate. The Indian embassy says 241 workers from India died in Qatar in 2013. The Nepalese embassy says 185 workers from Nepal died last year. The ITUC estimates that that number will stretch into the thousands in the coming years

While the Qatari government maintains that no workers have died on World Cup projects (ground has yet to be broken on all but one of the stadiums), everything is effectively a World Cup project in Qatar.

It's a nation of 200,000 people tasked with building a hospitality, transportation, and sporting infrastructure that takes other countries decades to build. And they're doing it with scores of poor, mistreated migrants from Asia who can't leave.

Amid mounting criticism, the Qatari government gave ESPN these photos of the newly-built housing complex that it says workers will use when construction on World Cup stadiums gets going:

qatar official housing

qatar official housing nice

Watch the full ESPN report here:

 

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New Jersey Mayor Punched In The Face By Elderly Man On Election Day

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titojacksonWelcome to the wild world of politics, Jersey style. 

Bogota, New Jersey Mayor Tito Jackson told PolitickerNJ he was attacked by an elderly gentleman named Sal Trotta, after voting in the local election Tuesday. 

 "I cast my vote, he was waiting by my car, he shook my hand and wouldn't let go," Jackson said. "He punched me in the face."

It was later uncovered that Trotta, whom PolitickerNJ described as being "at least in his seventies," is the father of Jackson's rival borough council candidate, Tina Trotta. 

"He didn't beat me up," Jackson said. "He took my phone out of my hand and punched me. I'm not hurt. My face is a little swollen."

While Jackson was not severely injured, he was clearly upset about the violence as a matter of principle. 

“No one should be harassed or intimidated," he said. "I feel very strongly about this. Hopefully at the end of the day we show these people the door."

Jackson said he filed an assault complaint with local police authorities. Jackson did not respond to an email from Business Insider Tuesday and Trotta could not be reached for comment. 

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