Apple on Tuesday announced its best quarter ever— and the most profitable quarter for any company in history. But that was because of the iPhone. Growth of the iPad, meanwhile, has hit a wall. In fact, the iPad was the only negative aspect of Apple's earnings report.

Based on company data charted for us by BI Intelligence, Apple sold 21.5 million iPad units, which fell below Wall Street expectations and was down 17% year-over-year. Just looking at the chart, it looks like iPad's sales growth peaked in last December, the same quarter Apple launched the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display. Apple CEO Tim Cook says there's some cannibalization going on — the iPhone on one side and the Mac on the other — but he also hinted at the iPad having room for growth, particularly in the workplace. "The real opportunity is to bring mobility into the enterprises and change how people work," Cook said on Tuesday's call.

Apple just launched its partnership with IBM last quarter, and the company is expected to launch its first 12-inch iPad, which may offer more features for advanced productivity.

SEE ALSO: The iPhone Helped Apple Make History This Quarter

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The penthouse of New York City's Pierre Hotel hit the market for a record $125 million in late April 2013.

But the property, which belonged to late investor Martin Zweig, has yet to find a buyer. The price was just slashed nearly in half to $63 million, half its initial asking price, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Zweig initially listed the apartment for $70 million in 2007 but later pulled the listing; he died in February 2013.

The apartment encompasses three floors and was originally the hotel's ballroom.

The 16-room spread is listed with Brown Harris Stevens.

The Pierre, located on 61st Street and Central Park, is one of the most iconic properties in New York City.

Zweig's apartment is a triplex, taking up floors 41, 42, and 43 of the Pierre.

It formerly housed the famous hotel's ballroom, and "the living room is considered the most magnificent privately owned room in the world," according to the original listing.

A new profile of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), published in The Boston Globe on Friday, contains several stories of his years at the elite Andover boarding school in Massachusetts.

Apparently, young Bush liked to party.

Bush admitted his youthful indulgences to the paper.

"I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover," he said. "It was pretty common."

The story included several interviews with Bush's classmates that shed light on what it was like to get stoned with the potential 2016 presidential candidate:

Bush liked to rock out. Peter Tibbetts, one of Bush's Andover classmates who talked to the Globe, said the future politician made sure there was a soundtrack on one occasion when they smoked hashish together.

"He had a portable stereo with removable speakers. He put on Steppenwolf for me," said Tibbetts, who specified that Bush played the group's 1968 hit "Magic Carpet Ride."

He had a hashish connection. Tibbetts said he first smoked marijuana with Bush. He also claimed Bush once sold him hashish.

"Please bear in mind that I was seeking the hash, it wasn’t as if he was a dealer; though he did suggest I take up cigarettes so that I could hold my hits better, after that 1st joint," Tibbetts wrote in an email to the paper. 

Bush didn't philosophize. Though Bush was at Andover during the height of national debate about the Vietnam War, his classmates said he didn't engage in much political discussion.

"He was just in a bit of a different world," said Phil Sylvester, who roomed with Bush at the school.

He wore many hats. One student said the students at Andover mainly split into three cliques: "jocks, freaks, and zeros." Bush, who was captain of the tennis team during some of his high-school career, was described as a cross between a freak and a jock. 

Bush allegedly bullied a fellow student. Tibbetts said he and Bush teased a fellow classmate including one incident where they sewed the bottoms of the other student's pants to prevent them from being worn. Tibbetts described this as "cruel."

Bush denied taking part in the teasing, but admitted it would be difficult to know for certain.

"I don’t believe that is true," Bush said. "It was 44 years ago and it is not possible for me to remember."

He eventually sobered up. According to multiple classmates, Bush became far more serious and stopped partying as much after spending a trimester in Mexico when he was 17 as part of one of his courses. During that trip, Bush met his future wife, Columba.

Harry Chandler, another ex-classmate, said Bush became less of a "party guy" after the trip.

"He seemed pretty transformed by the Mexico experience. He was more serious," Chandler said. 

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A Jetblue airliner was nearly involved in a midair collision with another aircraft near Westchester County Airport in New York last Sunday.

Flight 94, an Airbus A320, was en route from Orlando, Florida, when air traffic controllers alerted its pilots of an unidentified small aircraft headed directly at them, News12 reported.

According to the regional news channel, the Jetblue flight's pilots were able to change course and narrowly avoid the collision.

According to the AP, passengers on the Airbus claimed the small plane passed close enough for them to hear its engines.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.

This latest incident comes after another near miss involving a Jetblue Airbus A320.

Earlier this month, a Jetblue flight en route to Austin, Texas, had to abort takeoff and return to the gate at New York's JFK airport after a landing Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737 crossed into its path, Reuters reported.

According to the news organization, the two airliners came within 2,800 feet of each other. 

In March 2014, a landing United Airlines jet with 155 passengers nearly collided with an ExpressJet plane taking off from Newark Liberty International Airport. According to the LA Times, the two aircraft passed within 200 feet of each other when air traffic control ordered the United Airlines plane to abort landing and climb to a higher altitude.

No injuries were reported.

SEE ALSO: 10 Safest Low-Cost Airlines In The World

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Under the speculative eye of a reverse-mounted camera lens, a strand of spaghetti is transformed into a comet blazing through deep space.

The artist Pyanek photographed a number of everyday household items at an extreme zoom, turning them into works of art.

His series, "Amazing Worlds Within Our World," is available to download free, in keeping with Pyanek's philosophy that "art should be free."

Recognize the object below? Is it an unfinished diamond? A block of ice carved for a cocktail? Hardly. It's a grain of white sugar.

In his new series, "Amazing Worlds Within Our World," Pyanek set out to show you don't need expensive camera equipment to capture the remarkable beauty of everyday objects up close. This is the X key on a keyboard.

Zoomed in, the tip of a ballpoint pen becomes unrecognizable.

If you are the boss, your behavior may be speaking volumes without your even recognizing it, and it says different things around the world.

Take a simple action like riding a bike to work. In countries like Denmark, when the boss rides a bike to work (which is common), it may symbolize to the egalitarian Danes a strong leadership voice: "Look, I'm one of you." Something similar applies in Australia, as explained by Steve Henning, an executive in the textile industry:

One of my most proud lifestyle choices back in Australia was the fact that I was a near-full-time bicycle commuter. My Surly Long Haul Trucker bike wasn't just a toy; it was a fully equipped work-horse that was used for shopping, getting around, travelling to and from work, weekend leisure rides, and anything else I needed.

I'm a senior vice president in our company, and my Australian staff thought it was great that I rode a bike to work. If anything, they liked that their boss showed up to work in a bike helmet. So I decided to bring my bicycle with me when I was assigned to a new job in China.

Henning had been using his bike during his daily commute in Shanghai for a while when he discovered that the tactic had certainly attracted attention from his team members. "Just not the type of attention I was hoping for," Henning sighs. While sharing a dinner and drinks with a Chinese colleague and friend, Henning learned what his staff was saying about him:

My team was humiliated that their boss rode a bike to work like a common person. While Chinese bike to work infinitely more than Australians, among the wealthier Chinese, bikes are not an option. There are plenty of bikes on the road, but biking is for the lower classes only.

So my team felt it was an embarrassment that their boss rode a bike to the office. They felt it suggested to the entire company that their boss was unimportant, and that by association, they were unimportant, too.

Well, I love my bike, but I was in China to get my team motivated and on track. I certainly didn't want to sabotage my success just to arrive sweaty at the office every morning. I gave up the bike and started taking public transportation, just like every other Chinese boss.

Once you understand the power distance messages your actions are sending, you can make an informed choice about what behaviors to change. But if you don't know what your behaviors signify, you'll have no control over the signals you send—and the results can be disastrous.

SEE ALSO: The 8 scales reveal everything you should know about cultures

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If you thought robots could never replace journalists, think twice.

That’s certainly been the case at The Associated Press, America’s oldest 24-hour news agency. AP produced 3,000 articles in the past quarter, 10X more than it used to, by using automated technology.

According to The Verge, AP has been able to do it by partnering with Automated Insights, a company that specializes in “robot journalism.” Automated Insights uses artificial intelligence and Big Data analysis to automatically generate data-heavy articles, such as earnings reports.

Initially there was some human editing involved, but now most of the articles are fully automated — with far fewer errors than human reporters and editors. In theory, it could crank out 2,000 articles per second.

But AP says the purpose of having "robot journalists" is not about replacing its reporters, at least in the foreseeable future. Instead, it is to allow the reporters to spend more time on high-quality journalism.

Of course, this is not the first time we’ve seen a computer software do a better job than its human counterparts. Last year, we wrote about Narrative Science, another story automation company, that claims it can do the type of deep analysis a $250,000 per year consultant would do.

If you’re still not a believer in “robot journalism,” make sure you read AP’s article on Apple’s latest earnings. There’s no byline, but just a small note at the end: “This story was generated by Automated Insights using data from Zacks Investment Research.”

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Football teams playing in the Super Bowl drop up to $5,000 per championship ring. That's the allowance the NFL gives.

But to the victor who earns it, the value of the ring exceeds money.

"It isn't just diamond and gold,"said Jerry Kramer, a former Green Bay Packer player who won the first Super Bowl in 1966. "It's a collection of memories and moments."

Minneapolis-based jewelry company Jostens is the primary supplier of Super Bowl rings, in addition to manufacturing the majority of high school and college graduation rings in the US. It has made 30 rings in the Super Bowl's 49-year history.

Jostens provided us with photos of the Super Bowl rings they've supplied.

Super Bowl 1967: Green Bay Packers 35, Kansas City Chiefs 10

Super Bowl 1968: Green Bay Packers 33, Oakland Raiders 14

Super Bowl 1970: Kansas City Chiefs 23, Minnesota Vikings 7

If you're one of the people who thinks that the Super Bowl ads are the best part about watching the game, you might not even have to tune in live this year: More than 115 Super Bowl ads or teasers have already been posted to YouTube so far.

That's up 80% from the same time last year, and the posted videos had more than triple the watchtime than posted videos did in 2014.

Here are the most popular, in ascending order:

10. This Newcastle ad with Aubrey Plaza has more than 2 million views:

9. This adorable "Dear Kitten" commercial — a BuzzFeed / Friskies collaboration — already has 2.8 million views:

8. This Snickers teaser, with 2.9 million views, shows that the candy bar company plans to riff on the recent popularity of "The Brady Bunch":

7. This Mercedes-Benz racing commercial has reeled in 3.2 million:

6. This BMW shows has some hilarious vintage footage of Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel. It has more than 6 million views:

5. Burger company Carl's Jr has raked in 6.1 million views for its super sexual ad:

4. Kim Kardashian has 8.8 million views for her self-satirizing #SaveTheData T-Mobile commercial:

3. This Bud Light commercial about a man playing a game of real-life PacMan has 10.9 million views as of now:

2. Budweiser's follow-up to it super popular puppy ad last year has an astounding 12.5 million views already:

1. But the top-watched is Nissan, with the "Crazy Plastic Ball PRANK!!" which it made as a collaboration with YouTube star Roman Atwood. The video has already generated an impressive 20.6 million views:

SEE ALSO: Explanations to 13 jokes only smart people understand

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California-based Merchants Bank is ceasing its business with companies that allow people in the US to send money to Somalia. 

It was one of the last US banks willing to serve as a medium for transactions on behalf of these companies, which cannot legally expatriate funds on a large scale without the assistance of a commercial bank.

The bank is closing the accounts on Feb. 6 and halting certain services as soon as Saturday.

Every year, people in the US send a reported $215 million to relatives in Somalia, an amount that outstrips the $200 million in aid the US government has requested for the often-troubled country in the Horn of Africa in 2015.

The problem is that Somalia is home to a dysfunctional fledgling government that only achieved international recognition in 2013 — along with Al Shabaab, one of Africa's most dangerous jihadist groups. The government's weakness means that most banking and money transfers in the country take place in a regulatory environment far different from what is considered standard in Europe and the United States.

And Shabaab's presence makes American banks nervous over possible violations of the Patriot Act's update to the Banking Secrecy Act, which makes banks legally responsible for money laundering activities enabled by its services even if the bank has no complicity in or knowledge of those activities. 

Money services companies depend on banks to facilitate international transfers. And bank compliance offices have proven worried enough about possible money laundering to just freeze out companies that send money to Somalia even without a single specific allegation of wrongdoing. Most notably, the British bank Barclays, which also has business interests and legal exposure in the US, dropped Somali transfer companies in late 2013.

Ever since 2012, when Minnesota-based Sunrise Bank canceled Somali transfer company accounts in the midst of a devastating famine in the Horn of Africa, the dozen or so US-licensed companies transferring money to Somalia have depended on perhaps as few as two banks: Merchants Bank of California and a second bank in Minnesota with only two retail branches that's only legally allowed to transfer money collected within the state of Minnesota.

But earlier this week, Merchants told Somali transfer companies that it was dropping their accounts. Merchants had been the subject of an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency inquiry over possible money laundering compliance concerns and agreed to a consent order with the OCC in mid-2014 promising to review and reorganize their practices. But for a mid-sized bank, the additional business from Somali transfer companies apparently wasn't worth the additional regulatory headache.

The shutdown is starting even earlier than Feb. 6, though. Aden Hasaan, the compliance manager of Kaah Express, told Business Insider that starting Saturday, Merchants would halt an armored car pickup service that allowed the company to move its customers' cash to Kaah's Merchants account. 

Kaah is one of the larger Somali transfer companies operating in the US, with licensed branches in 14 states. Staying in business after the Merchants accounts are totally dropped will be difficult, Hasaan says: "I need a way to get money from our agents in all these other states, and without Merchants that link is cut." But for smaller companies the Merchants account closure could make it wholly impossible to transfer money to the Horn of Africa. Altogether, Hasaan estimates that the cutoff threatens 75%-80% of American remittances to Somalia. Jamila Trindle of Foreign Policy reported that Merchants processes 60%-80% of outflows to the country.

Hasaan sympathizes with Merchants' decision, even with a rapid and industry-crippling cutoff in service looming. "Merchants is just like any other bank," Hasaan says. "They are being put under a lot of pressure by the OCC and the banks feel that they cannot comply with its requirements. They resort to just getting out of this business altogether."

And the result is that an unstable and strategic part of the world will lose a major source of economic assistance until a fix can be found.

The US clearly has an interest in Somalia having an economy strong enough to provide alternatives to extremist groups like Shabaab — the US has stepped up its drone campaign against the group, killing Shabaab leader Ahmed Godane in a strike last September. But other efforts at fighting Shabaab and terrorism more generally might end up threatening the country's ever-fragile stability and undermining this exact objective.

As Scott Paul, a senior humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam America explained to Business Insider, the Treasury Department hasn't quite caught on to the degree to which US policy is operating at cross-purposes here.

"We've seen in the past that political and foreign policy interests, even when they're all aligned with one another, don't necessarily shake the Treasury Department from it's orthodoxy and its inertia," he says.

Business Insider has reached out to Merchants Bank for comment and will update if we receive anything.

SEE ALSO: There's one huge reason Mexico is becoming "less free"

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In the past few years, as online shopping exploded and smartphones became the norm, the showrooming phenomenon — consumers using their phones to comparison shop in stores — seemed poised to gut the revenue of offline retailers.

But now a recent report from BI Intelligence finds that retailers have discovered "reverse showrooming," or "webrooming," which is when consumers go online to research products, but then head to a bricks-and-mortar store to complete their purchase.  

Reverse showrooming is actually nothing new. Since the early days of online shopping, more people have researched their shopping online than have actually bought there.

What has changed is that retailers have begun to identify the reverse showrooming trend and the opportunity it offers to them, and they are now working to actively capture those sales.

In the report, we examine the numbers behind showrooming and reverse showrooming, what's driving each trend, and what the different showrooming behaviors look like. We also look at what in-store advantages retailers have, and what they are doing both to capture in-store sales from reverse showroomers and to drive up purchases across channels. 

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Here are some of the key points from the report:

• Showrooming was once seen as an existential threat to bricks-and-mortar retailers, but it turns out the reverse dynamic is more popular. Reverse showrooming is actually more common than showrooming. In the U.S., 69% of people reverse showroom, while 46% showroom, according to a Harris poll.
• And showrooming isn't the territory of the young, as many might assume. In fact, the data shows that millennials too prefer to reverse showroom. For electronics, shoes, sports equipment, and cosmetics, more millennials say they prefer to reverse showroom, rather than research in store and then buy online. 
• Amazon remains the No. 1 place where showroomers end up making their purchases, but it's an even more popular destination for reverse showroomers who ultimately buy elsewhere. Social media has also become a major referral source for bricks-and-mortar chains, not just e-commerce sites.
• But only recently have traditional retailers begun to capitalize on reverse showrooming. Offline retailers have realized they have a lot to offer, as long as they can integrate offline and digital, and beat e-commerce competitors on convenience. They're using tactics like knowledgeable sales staff, in-store pick-up of online orders, in-store Wi-Fi, and smartphone discounts that nudge showroomers to buy in-store.
• New initiatives for the connected in-store experience keep popping up: tablets and mobile phones used as register systems, robotic arms that deliver clothing into dressing rooms, and beacon hardware, which powers in-store maps and automatic hands-free payments.
• The key rationale behind all these changes: retailers are beginning to think of themselves less as purveyors of goods, and more as all-around consumer resources.

In full, the report: 

• Looks at the numbers behind reverse showrooming and showrooming to determine how big a discrepancy there is between the two activities
• Underscores what factors are driving people to either showroom or reverse showroom
• Explains what people are doing when they're showrooming and reverse showrooming— what information they're seeking and what makes them convert
• Describes some of the way retailers have begun to actively capture reverse showrooming sales
• Looks at what investments retailers are making in the next wave of technology

For full access to the report on reverse showrooming, and all of BI Intelligence's charts and analysis sign up for a free trial subscription today.

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N'Djamena (AFP) - Three soldiers and 123 Boko Haram militants were killed when the Islamist group attacked a Chadian army contingent in northern Cameroon, the Chadian military said.

Twelve soldiers were wounded in the attacks staged by the Islamist group on Thursday and Friday near the border town of Fotokol, according to a military statement read out on national television.

Chad sent a convoy of troops and military vehicles into neighbouring Cameroon on January 17 to deal with the growing threat Boko Haram poses in the region.

"The enemy was repelled by our defensive forces," the general staff's statement said, adding that the troops had "routed" the Islamists in the second attack.

The soldiers were killed by improvised explosive devices, the statement said.

A senior Cameroonian security source said the Chadian troops were deployed to the town, which sits opposite a Nigerian town under Boko Haram control and is also close to the border with Chad, on Wednesday.

Boko Haram frequently stages attacks on Fotokol from their base in the Nigerian town of Gamboru, which is just 500 metres (yards) away.

Chad has called on countries in the region to form a broad coalition in the fight against the Islamist group. The country has already deployed its army along its borders as well as sending the additional contingent to Cameroon. 

Chad's President Idriss Deby has also expressed intentions of taking back the strategic Nigerian town of Baga from Boko Haram, situated on Lake Chad.

The African Union called Friday for a regional five-nation force of 7,500 troops to defeat the "horrendous" rise of Boko Haram. 

The group's uprising has become a regional crisis, with the four directly affected countries -- Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria -- agreeing along with Benin to boost cooperation to contain the threat and to form a Multinational Joint Task Force.

More than 13,000 people have been killed and more than one million made homeless by Boko Haram violence since 2009.

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London (AFP) - A new biography of Britain's Prince Charles reveals how his inner circle is riven with backstabbing and infighting, according to extracts published by The Times newspaper Saturday.

Charles's household has been nicknamed "Wolf Hall" after Hilary Mantel's historical novel about the brutal, conniving court of Henry VIII in the 16th century, the biography says.

It adds that the son of Queen Elizabeth II and future king surrounds himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear.

"Charles: The Heart of a King" by Catherine Mayer is published in Britain on Thursday.

Mayer has based the book on interviews with Charles himself as well as friends, courtiers and critics.

"Life at court and its offshoots can be every bit as brutal as in the days when a twitching arras (tapestry) might signal a hidden assassin," it says, according to The Times's extracts.

"One former householder refers to Clarence House (Charles's household) as Wolf Hall."

Mayer adds that 66-year-old Charles "hasn't always chosen his sages wisely".

"It's hard to know whom to trust; soft soap is always in greater abundance than gritty truth-telling," she writes.

"That factor, combined with his native insecurity, means he doesn't always believe he's earned the praise that comes his way, while criticism has the power to cast him into despair."

Publishers say the book reveals "a man in sight of happiness yet still driven by anguish" with "passionate views that mean he will never be as remote and impartial as his mother."

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Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama will appear in public at an event attended by the Dalai Lama next week in Washington, the White House said, in a move sure to anger Beijing.

"The president will deliver remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said. "This year, the organizers also invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama."

The White House tried to play down the simultaneous appearance, stressing the two men have met three times before. Officials said there was no "specific meeting" between them to announce.

Previous meetings have been held behind closed doors and outside the Oval Office, in a move designed to limit the diplomatic fallout with China.

The 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule and has lived in exile in India ever since.

China accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to split Tibet from the rest of China and of fomenting unrest in the region, calling him "a wolf in sheep's clothing."

Previous meetings between Obama and the Nobel prize winner have been met with formal Chinese diplomatic protests that have soured relations between the world's two largest economies.

Obama is expected to use the Thursday prayer breakfast with clergy from several faiths -- an annual Washington political tradition -- to talk about the importance of upholding religious freedom.

"The President is a strong supporter of the Dalai Lama's teachings and preserving Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic traditions," said Meehan.

"As he has done in the past, the President will see many religious leaders at the event, but we don't have any specific meeting with the Dalai Lama to announce."

More than 120 Tibetans have committed suicide by setting themselves on fire in recent years to protest against what they see as oppression by China's government and controls on their right to exercise their religion.

Obama came under domestic criticism in 2009 when he did not meet with the Dalai Lama during a visit to Washington, as the new president looked to get off on the right foot with China.

In February last year, Obama met the Dalai Lama in the Map Room of the White House -- within the residence rather than the West Wing where most presidential business is conducted.

Thanks to Chinese pressure, a string of leaders have dodged meetings with the 79-year-old monk, most recently Pope Francis who did not meet the Dalai Lama when he visited Rome.

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IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is getting a nice raise for 2015 and earned most of her bonus for 2014 even though the company's stock is performing terribly.

Rometty got a $100,000 increase in salary, from $1.5 million in 2014 to $1.6 million in 2015. She's also being granted $13.3 million in restricted stock units in 2015, up from $12.75 million last year, but she won't actually receive those shares until three years after they were granted (Feb. 2017 and 2018 respectively).

She earned most of her 2014 bonus, bringing in $3.6 million out of a possible $4 million. And she's eligible for a bigger $5 million bonus in 2015.

Meaning, if she earns her full bonus in 2015, she'll be awarded $19.9 million in total compensation in 2015, compared to $17.9 million awarded in 2014. That's an 11% raise.

Now, $20 million isn't an excessive salary for the CEO and chairman of one of the biggest, most venerable tech companies in the world, and a highly profitable one at that. Plenty of other CEOs earn millions more.

Still, at the end of 2013, when the company's revenues and profits declined, Rometty and her senior staff opted not to take their cash bonuses at all.

IBM is still going through a rough transition with declining revenues. Earlier this year, Rometty made the tough-but-necessary choice to abandon the company's Roadmap 2015. That was a promise made by her predecessor to hit $20 EPS by 2015. IBM was twisting itself into financial engineering pretzels to try and meet that promise.

The stock tumbled on that news in October and hasn't recovered, leading it to be one of the worst performing stocks on the Dow two years running.

That said, Rometty is making a lot of decisions that appear to be good for the company's turn-around, like shedding low-margin or unprofitable businesses, investing billions in hot new areas like cloud computing, and signing on huge new partners like Apple, Twitter, Tencent.

A change in leadership right now would not be good, Bill Kreher, technology analyst for Edward Jones tells us. So we can understand why IBM's board would entice her to stay. Still, the company's annual layoff cycle and troubled financials have led to some poor moral among the Big Blue workforce, sources tell us. Rometty has got a low 48% percent approval rating from employees who rated her on job-hunting site Glassdoor. So, her raise might not go over too well with everyone.

Here's the chart IBM just shared on executive pay:

SEE ALSO: The Most Overpaid And Underpaid CEOs In Tech

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Montreal (AFP) - All commercial flights worldwide could soon send out an automated signal every minute in times of distress to help rescuers find downed aircraft more easily.

The new measures are in response to last year's disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in what remains one of history's great aviation mysteries.

The aircraft, with 239 people on board, has never been found, nearly a year on. 

The new tracking rules, prepared by an industry working group, would be phased in by the end of this year, said the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency.

The initiative will now be presented to delegates from all 191 ICAO member states at a meeting in Montreal from Monday to Thursday, and "a final proposal" will be submitted to the ICAO Council within six months for ratification.

The measure has unanimous support among ICAO member states, a source said Friday, meaning it is virtually assured to be brought in.

Currently, radar can track a plane, however coverage fades when aircraft are out at sea or the plane is flying below a certain altitude.

Under the new rules, airlines will be required to track their aircraft using a system that gives their location at 15-minute intervals. 

If an "abnormal event" is detected, including a change in direction or deviation from a flight path, the signal rate hastens to every minute.

Airlines would be responsible for sharing the data with authorities in cases of emergencies.

"It's the start of tracking (flights) every minute in emergency situations that is the most effective in the short term," the source said.

Following a distress signal, search and rescue teams would be able to zero in on an aircraft within six nautical miles (11 kilometers) of its last known position.

The ICAO will also ask airlines to equip their aircraft with ejectable black boxes. These would float and be more easily retrievable in case of a crash over water.

They will be mandatory on new aircraft built after 2021, the source told AFP.

The ejectable black boxes would be in addition to existing commercial flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that continually record flight information.

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Vienna (AFP) - Police in Vienna arrested more than 30 people as thousands protested against a ball organised by far-right groups and politicians.

Several thousand people flooded into central Vienna to denounce the "Akademikerball" ("Academics' Ball") at the former imperial winter palace, the Hofburg.  

Most of the protesters marched calmly amid heavy police presence.

The ball -- part of Vienna's traditional ball season which is currently in full swing -- is organised by the far-right, eurosceptic and anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), the third-largest in parliament. 

In previous years other European far-right figures have attended including France's Marine Le Pen.

This year a number of Viennese taxi drivers clubbed together using Facebook to boycott the ball and refuse to take participants to the event.

Last year's event led to scuffles between police and militants which left 20 people injured.

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Tokyo (AFP) - Panasonic has closed its last remaining TV manufacturing factory in China and is to sell its plant in Mexico as part of a restructuring plan aimed at stemming losses, a newspaper said Saturday.

The Japanese electronics giant was forced to pull the plug on local production in the two countries due to a sharp decline in TV prices in North America and China, the Nikkei newspaper said.

The move will see Panasonic cutting back overseas production by 700,000 units a year, representing about 10 percent of worldwide output, the business daily said.

In China, the firm stopped production at an 80 percent-owned joint venture in Shandong Province on Friday, the newspaper said. The company plans to liquidate the venture with the several hundred workers there likely to be laid off, the daily said.

It will continue to sell TVs in China by outsourcing production for the roughly 200,000 units a year that it used to manufacture in-house, it said.

In Mexico, Panasonic is expected later this year to sell a plant that has annually churned out about 500,000 units mostly shipped to the US market, the Nikkei said.

The company now plans to focus more on high-resolution models and other high-value-added TVs, it added.

Panasonic has been struggling to boost earnings in the TV segment, which has been losing money over the last six years.

The TV business logged a loss of 46.5 billion yen ($396 million) for the fiscal year to March last year.

Panasonic expects to sell roughly seven million TVs worldwide this fiscal year, excluding those under the Sanyo brand.

No one at Panasonic was immediately available to comment on the report.

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Paris (AFP) - After having used the Internet profusely for propaganda and recruitment, jihadist organisations have realised that investigators are gleaning crucial information online and are increasingly concealing their web presence, experts say.

Apart from recent orders given to fighters to limit their exposure, erase the footprint of their online activity and avoid revealing too many place names or faces, the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front groups are increasingly using the "Dark Web" -- the hidden part of the Internet protected by powerful encryption softwares.

"Sometimes we get the geographical location of some fighters thanks to Facebook," Philippe Chadrys, in charge of the fight against terrorism at France's judicial police, said earlier this week.

"Some even publish it on the public part of their account. That gives us elements to build a case. Because of course we don't go to Syria, we have no one on the ground, and we lack proof."

In November, Flavien Moreau, a 28-year-old jihadist who travelled to Syria and then returned to France, was jailed for seven years exclusively on the basis of what he posted online.

And those who just months ago had happily posted videos, photos of themselves holding Kalashnikovs or of beheadings on Facebook have now realised that they were single-handedly building a case against themselves, if they ever decided to come home.

"We are starting to notice the beginnings of disaffection with Facebook -- they have understood that's how we get incriminating evidence," said Chadrys.

"They are resorting more and more to Skype or WhatsApp, software that is much harder to intercept.

"We realise that the people we are interested in are increasingly specialised in computing. They master encryption software and methods to better erase data."

- 'Cyber-surveillance' key -

Chadrys also said that jihadists were increasingly using the "Dark Web."

"That makes our probes much more complicated. The terrorists are adapting, they understand that the telephone and Internet are handy, but dangerous.

He pointed to Mehdi Nemmouche, saying last year's alleged Brussels Jewish museum killer had no mobile phone and no Facebook account.

Faced with this problem, police are resorting to calling in cryptography and computing experts, but there are never enough, which slows down investigations.

Last autumn, the Islamic State group (IS) published guidelines for its members, asking fighters not to tweet precise location names, to blur faces or stop giving too many details about on-going operations.

"Security breaches have appeared, which the enemy has taken advantage of," read the text, written in Arabic.

"The identity of some brothers has been compromised, as have some sites used by mujahedeen. We know that this problem does not only involve photos, but also PDF, Word and video files."

In a recent report, Helle Dale of the US-based Heritage Foundation think-tank wrote that cyber-surveillance was key to the fight against IS "as human intelligence is hardly available on the ground, especially in Syria, and the number of unmanned drones is limited."

But, she added, the group "is changing is communications strategy. It is encrypting its electronic communications, limiting its presence online and using services that delete messages as soon as they are sent."

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Nearly 15,000 students attend Cornell University, an Ivy League college set against the rolling hills and gorges of Ithaca, New York.

Getting in is no easy feat; just 15% of applicants are accepted, and a great majority graduated in the top 10% of their high-school classes.

We sought the help of Cornell's public-affairs office to track down the best and brightest students.

Edgar Akuffo-Addo is combatting malnutrition in Ghana.

Class of 2016

Akuffo-Addo, the recipient of a Projects for Peace grant, launched ENAM to build a sustainable poultry farm in a deprived Ghanaian village. The community space aims to alleviate the threat of malnutrition by providing a local, dramatically cheaper source of animal protein in an area in which women and children suffer severely.

Akuffo-Addo has secured funding, three acres of land, and the chicks, and he is passing the construction reins over to locals and expert building contractors — all despite pushbacks thanks to an unfavorable economy in Ghana. Still, he anticipates about 250 families will benefit from the farm upon its completion this summer.

The human biology major is applying for a master's degree in healthcare administration at Cornell, and he plans to one day earn his medical degree.

Kristen Barnett summited Mt. Kilimanjaro for charity.

Class of 2015

As the president of Mountains for Moms, Barnett led a 13-person trip to the 19,341-foot-high summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised more than $19,000 to combat obstetric fistula. The money funded more than 90 reconstructive surgeries for women suffering from this painful condition.

Barnett also founded the Dyson Symposium on Women in Leadership, a conference to boost support and programming for women in leadership on campus. She invited female leaders to speak and present, bringing together more than 120 participants at the two-day conference.

The president of the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, Barnett will join the Boston Consulting Group when she graduates; she plans to eventually work and live in Europe and to go to business school in Boston.

Marianne Collard is discovering potential medicinal properties in the plant fenugreek.

Class of 2015

Collard has been researching the health effects of fenugreek, an herbaceous plant whose seeds are often used in Indian, North African, and Middle Eastern cooking.

Fenugreek is the least-studied plant containing phytoestrogens, chemical compounds that can interact with human hormones. In studying their properties and applying them to human health, Collard sought to isolate the compound that has been recorded to interact with hormones like estrogen and even to increase the production of breast milk in lactating women. Fenugreek could either be harmful or beneficial, depending on an individual's health situation, and Collard's research sees potential toxicological purposes in the plant that could eventually be used in medication.

Collard is also a captain of the Cornell cross-country team, and she plans to get a Ph.D. in pharmacology when she graduates.