What causes a person to become radicalized? This was the subject of a fascinating talk delivered by Tamar Mitts, an assistant professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, at a “data science day” hosted by the school on Wednesday. Mitts studied the efficacy of Twitter-disseminated propaganda supporting the self-identified Islamic State, or ISIS,…
Amazon paid $97 million to acquire the WiFi router maker Eero in a fire-sale deal that left the owners of the startup's common stock with practically nothing but apparently gave the founders multimillion-dollar paydays, according to documents obtained by Business Insider. The $97 million sales price was significantly below Eero's last reported funding round in…
KHALIFA HAFTAR’S decision would be troubling enough under normal circumstances. On April 4th Libya’s strongest warlord ordered his men to march on Tripoli. His self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) already controls the east and took the south in a lightning offensive earlier this year. Now it turns to the capital, home to a weak United…
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and take additional steps to stimulate economic growth, his latest attempt to put the traditionally independent central bank under his thumb. Speaking to reporters before traveling to the southwestern border, the president once again criticized the Fed’s interest rate increases…
A volatile IPO. An uncertain business model. No profits in sight. Shorting Lyft sounds like a no-brainer, right? Plenty of investors think so: As of Thursday roughly 41% of Lyft shares, worth some $937 million, were being shorted according to S3 Partners Managing Director Ihor Dusaniwsky. In contrast, that figure is closer to 23% for…
LONDON — Theresa May has written to the European Council President Donald Tusk requesting that Brexit be delayed until June 30, 2019. The United Kingdom is currently due to leave the EU on April 12, which is the final date before the country would be obliged to take part in the upcoming European Parliament elections.…
IT HAS BEEN clear for months that the entrenched hostility of hardline Tory Brexiteers and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) meant that Theresa May’s Brexit deal would not pass in Parliament. This week the prime minister accepted reality by offering instead to negotiate with Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party,…
At a news conference on Thursday, Dagmawit Moges, Ethiopia’s minister of transportation, said the flight crew had “performed all the procedures, repeatedly, provided by the manufacturer, but were not able to control the aircraft.” The report, which could change in the coming months when it’s completed, doesn’t rule out the potential for pilot error in…
The next time you call an 800 number with a gripe about a product or service, consider this: Even though it’s a real live person who answers, he or she might not be the one deciding how to deal with you. Instead, a complex series of algorithms may step in, to gauge your mood and…
The pilots on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max plane followed Boeing's procedures but were unable to regain control of the plane before it crashed and killed 157 people. Ethiopia's Transport minister Dagmawit Moges delivered the preliminary report on the disaster on Thursday, where she said "the crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by…
