Новости за 27.04.2017

Reuters/Mike Hutchings

Small-scale mining is a growing issue across Africa. With regulators in Ghana this week making their first moves to shut down artisanal operations — part of an emerging campaign against environmental damage.

And in Africa’s top gold-producing nation, South Africa, things are getting even more serious. With one of the country’s top miners unveiling a never-before attempted strategy to deal with informal and illegal gold mining at its operations.

That’s Sibanye Gold. Читать дальше...

Peter Kramer/Getty Images

G-III Apparel Group, the company that makes clothing for the Ivanka Trump brand, has violated several standard labor practices, according to a report by the Fair Labor Association.

The group, which based its conclusions on a two-day assessment of a factory in China, found that in 2016 workers were being paid about a dollar an hour, with almost 60 hours of work resulting in about $62 of pay a week, reports the Washington Post.

Overtime was also an issue... Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

Global oil inventories have started to decline and the supply/demand balance will soon tip into a deficit, if it hasn’t already. That will accelerate the drawdowns in crude oil stocks, and bring the market back into “balance,” providing a lift to oil prices.

That, at least, is the working assumption. But there are a series of gigantic question marks out there – a handful of countries could upend the theory that the oil market is on a smooth trajectory towards balance. Читать дальше...

Today, Amazon unveiled the Echo Look — a $199 voice-controlled camera designed for the fashion-forward. The sleek device listens for your command and quickly takes photos and videos of the outfit you're wearing. It'll even use AI to judge your outfit. 

Getty Images

With a little more than 48 hours to go until the bill funding the federal government expires, lawmakers are scrambling to come up with a plan to prevent a partial shutdown of the federal government.

The spending bill, however, will likely be a source of horse-trading as Democrats and Republicans attempt to fit in their own political goals in the package.

One of the biggest desires of Democrats was to include funding for a key part of Obamacare, called cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments... Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Chris Morgan

To understand why it is so difficult to defend computers from even moderately capable hackers, consider the case of the security flaw officially known as CVE-2017-0199.

The bug was unusually dangerous but of a common genre: it was in Microsoft software, could allow a hacker to seize control of a personal computer with little trace, and was fixed April 11 in Microsoft's regular monthly security update.

But it had traveled a rocky, nine-month journey from discovery to resolution... Читать дальше...

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

The entire US Senate was bused to the White House on Wednesday afternoon to receive a much-hyped classified briefing on North Korea — but some Senators emerged from the all-hands meeting unimpressed by the content and the "lack of straight answers" they got from administration officials. 

"It was an OK briefing," Republican Sen. Bob Corker, chair of the Foreign Relations committee, told reporters afterward.

"What was discussed, I already knew," Corker said, according to BuzzFeed. Читать дальше...

Mark Blinch/Reuters

“Homeowners and potential first time homebuyers are now even more vulnerable to a payment shock from rising mortgage rates,” the National Bank of Canada warns in its housing affordability report.

Eight years of super-low interest rates in the US have succeeded in inflating home prices in many cities way past the peaks of the housing bubble that imploded during the Financial Crisis. A boom-crash-boom movement. But home prices in Canada barely dipped during the Financial Crisis and then continued soaring. Читать дальше...

Reuters/Rick Wilking

The recreational marijuana industry is off to a record-setting start this year in Colorado, with sales increasing by more than 30 percent over figures from 2016.

The marijuana industry in the state is coming off a record-setting year in Colorado, but analysts say early trends point to even larger sales in 2017.

Marijuana sales in January and February jumped 30 percent over profits earned in 2016 over the same period, totaling $235 million. Sales rose by... Читать дальше...

Twitter reported its latest quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and the results were better than expected. After months of lower-than-desired performance, the company reported a big beat on daily user growth. The social media site now has 328 million people (and bots) every month tweetstorming and doling out pithy comments, a 14% year-over-year increase.

REUTERS/Mark Makela

There’s no time set for when the Republicans will try to advance a new proposal for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act to make amends for their failed effort in late March, although they appear to be gaining momentum.  

The proposal, hammered out privately by White House officials, leaders of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus and centrist Republican Rep. Tom McArthur of New Jersey, would allow states to opt out of many of the Obamacare regulatory mandates. Читать дальше...

Salesforce

Marc Benioff's stature in San Francisco is on the rise, as Salesforce Tower, the city's tallest building, nears completion.

But Benioff's paycheck is getting smaller.

The CEO of Salesforce took a 60% paycut in the recently ended 2017 fiscal year, according to the company's annual proxy report, filed on Wednesday.

Of course, Benioff still took hom $13 million in total compensation for the year. 

The 52-year-old founder of Salesforce's pay package has been in investor sights for several years. Читать дальше...

Mark Mirko (Associated Press)

A murdered woman's FitBit data led Connecticut police to arrest her husband in connection with the death,   the Hartford Courant reports.

In December 2015, Connie Dabate was shot in her home with a .357 Magnum that her husband, Richard Dabate, 40, had bought a few months before.

After more than a year of investigations, the Hartford police charged Dabate with his wife's murder, tampering with physical evidence, and making false statements to the police. Читать дальше...

Fresno Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — The black suspect in a racially motivated shooting rampage in Fresno was charged Wednesday with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of white men he targeted randomly on the street, prosecutors said.

The charges come just over a week after Kori Ali Muhammad was charged with killing a white motel security guard days before the rampage. Muhammad told investigators that learning he was wanted for that slaying... Читать дальше...

Thomson Reuters

Disposable income and consumer spending in China continue to grow at a slow but steady pace.

Rising incomes are helping boost the fortunes of the country’s ecommerce sector, which has been a clear beneficiary of consumers’ growing largesse.

According to an April 2017 forecast by iResearch Consulting Group, average annual ecommerce spending in China continues to rise.

iResearch projects the average digital buyer in China will spend RMB12,198 ($1,836) online in 2017... Читать дальше...

Today’s data visualization comes from Datashown, and it compares the world’s largest companies by their 2016 revenues to really help put the size and scale of these companies into perspective.

The Justice Department argued that ignoring speeding laws could wind up costing a naturalized American his or her US citizenship, during the final scheduled oral argument at the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

REUTERS/ James Fassinger

Whether it is lashing out on China for unfairly weakening its currency, or calling out “unfair” government subsidies on Canadian softwood lumber, it’s safe to say that re-opening discussions about foreign trade has become a key priority under President Trump.

Is this the right route to take, and does America really need to negotiate new trade deals?

There are arguments either way, but the the reality is that trade agreements like NAFTA are perceived to have a mixed track record of success. Читать дальше...

For years, notorious environmental disregard at US military bases has resulted in poisoned drinking water and placed military personnel and their families at serious risk because of exposure to toxins.

Mark Wilson

Part of President Donald Trump's tax reform outline released on Wednesday would do away with itemized deductions on individuals' tax returns except for the mortgage and charitable giving deductions.

Here's a rundown of the itemized deductions this plan would cut:

• Deductible state and local taxes: Currently, individuals are allowed to deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax payments. This includes:
• Personal property taxes: Allows... Читать дальше...

Starbucks

Starbucks, with the success of its Unicorn Frappuccino, has become one of a handful of companies that have managed to master the art of capturing public attention. Call it car-crash public relations, or liken it to a person wearing a bright pink tuxedo at a black-tie affair. In any case, the brightly hued, super-sugary drink was simply too bizarre to ignore.

The Unicorn Frappuccino joins products like KFC's Double Down (the sandwich that used fried chicken as bread), Tacos Bell's original Doritos Locos Taco... Читать дальше...

His headline is a little hyperbolic, but I want to associate myself with Matt Yglesias' argument for why former President Barack Obama should, in the best interest of the center-left political movement he once led, decline payments like the $400,000 speaking fee he will receive from the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

Matilde Campodonico/AP

(Reuters Health) - Where medical marijuana is legal, adults are more likely to use the drug illegally and are at an increased risk of cannabis use disorder, according to a new study.

Researchers found that illegal use of marijuana and rates of cannabis use disorder rose to a greater extent in US states that adopted laws legalizing marijuana for medical purposes than in states that didn't adopt such laws.

The risks of medical marijuana laws are important to convey... Читать дальше...

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

Associated Press/Carolyn Kaster

Hours after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday that blocked part of President Donald Trump's executive order targeting so-called "sanctuary cities," the White House released a scathing statement slamming the judge's ruling.

"Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation," the statement said. "This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single... Читать дальше...