Justin Bieber's pal Lil Twist sentenced for 'beating up' Nickelodeon's Chris Massey - Daily Mail

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Lil Twist was sentenced to one year in Los Angeles county jail on Wednesday.

The good friend of Justin Bieber was accused of breaking into Dancing With The Stars vet Kyle Massey's apartment then beating up and robbing the actor's 26-year-old brother Chris - who is a former Nickelodeon star - in November 2014.

TMZ reported Thursday the 23-year-old rapper pled no contest to six charges, which kept him from getting a much longer sentence. He could have been given nearly 10 years behind bars.

He'll do time in 2017: Lil Twist was sentenced to one year in Los Angeles county jail on Wednesday. Here he is seen in 2014 in Atlanta

His claim to fame: The 23-year-old rapper used to be close friends with Justin Bieber, and even lived with him in Calabasas for a time. Here they are seen in 2012

Twist turned himself into authorities in September after not showing up for court appearances. 

The star - whose real name is Christopher Lynn Moore - could be out of jail as early as August for good behavior, it was noted.

The Texas native has to turn himself in by February 3, 2017.

Bad blood: Twist was accused of breaking into Kyle (right) Massey's apartment then beating up and robbing the star's brother Chris (left) in November 2014. Here they are seen in 2015

The attack on Chris was described as 'brutal.' The star was beaten and his Rolex was stolen. 

Twist was charged with making criminal threats, burglary, grand theft, battery and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, TMZ reported earlier this year. 

The hitmaker and his friends were allegedly at Kyle's home when an argument is said to have broken out.

Kyle not only competed on Dancing With The Stars but was also on That's So Raven and Cory In The House. 

On stage: The Purpose hit maker, left, and Twist, right, performing in 2012 in LA

The group allegedly left but then returned and broke into the home, before beating Chris - who worked with Jamie Lynn Spears on Zoey 101 - with brass knuckles.

They are then alleged to have pulled Chris' pants down before stealing his wallet and cell phone.

The actor required medical treatment for his injuries. 

Lil Twist used to be a close friend of Bieber's, with the pair living at the same home for some time.

Another famous friend: Lil Twist and Lil Wayne at a BET Awards pre party in LA in 2014

However, they are less frequently seen together and it was reported that Bieber's management had ruled Twist was too much of a bad influence to hang out with the Sorry pop star.

Twist caused up to $10,000 worth of damage to one of the singer's cars when speeding out of a Four Seasons parking lot in 2013.

Shortly after, he was pulled over for speeding and a paparazzo was killed by oncoming traffic while trying to photograph the car.

In March 2013, Bieber loaned a car to Twist, who went on to crash it into a pole outside a liquor store in San Fernando Valley. 

Four months later Twist was arrested for DUI in Calabasas. He was driving Bieber's Fisker Karma and was alleged to be going between 60 and 70 mph in a 30 mph zone.

A different look: Here Twist is seen with long hair as he sits court side at a basketball game in Atlanta in September 

 

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Donald Trump Thrusts Taiwan Back on the Table, Rattling a Region - New York Times

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In the longer term, officials in the Obama administration worry that the episode could not just ignite tensions across the Taiwan Strait but also inflame trade relations and embolden China in the South China Sea, where it has clashed with the Philippines, Vietnam and other neighbors over competing claims to reefs and shoals.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Trump expressed no misgivings about taking the call from President Tsai Ing-wen, which was arranged beforehand at the initiative of the Taiwanese government, not Mr. Trump’s camp.

Mr. Trump bridled at suggestions that he had committed a faux pas, writing on Twitter on Friday evening that it was “interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”

Photo

President Richard M. Nixon greeted Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972 during Mr. Nixon’s trip to China.

Credit
Associated Press

Nor did Mr. Trump or his aides make a gesture to reaffirm the One China policy, much to the chagrin of the White House. It fell to a spokesman for the National Security Council to affirm that the United States was not changing the policy. Under that policy, the United States formally recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979, abrogating its ties with Taiwan, as the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, sought to bolster China’s economy and create closer ties to the West.

Whether Mr. Trump views the call as the beginning of a change in approach toward Taiwan is not clear. A person close to him insisted that he was just being polite in taking Ms. Tsai’s call. But Stephen Yates, a former deputy national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney who is advising the Trump transition, said in an interview that people around Mr. Trump were well aware of the nuances of American policy toward Taiwan.

Among hard-line Republicans, there has always been a push to confront China by reaching out to Taiwan. In a statement on Friday, Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who was briefly believed to be a candidate for Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, praised him for taking the call, saying it “reaffirms our commitment to the only democracy on Chinese soil.”

President Ronald Reagan antagonized China by inviting a delegation from Taiwan to his inauguration. Aides to President George W. Bush pressed him to take a more confrontational approach with China until the attacks of Sept. 11 reordered his priorities, increasing the need for him to cultivate China on counterterrorism and other issues.

Tensions over Taiwan peaked under a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who in March 1996 ordered two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Strait after China conducted missile tests to intimidate the island.

For some China experts, shaking up the cross-strait relationship would not be the worst thing in the world. “We have had a status quo of sorts in the Taiwan Strait that has kept the peace, but it recently has not looked all that durable, nor was it very agreeable to most citizens of democratic Taiwan,” said Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society.

Continue reading the main story

“Whether a new kind of Trumpian brinkmanship will now cause China to reconsider its hard-line position towards Taiwan, or to respond in a dangerous and militant way, remains to be seen,” he said.

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President Xi Jinping of China and President Obama at a ceremony in Hangzhou in September announcing the formal adoption of the Paris climate agreement.

Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Mr. Trump has spoken harshly about China, accusing it of concocting climate change as a hoax to undercut American manufacturers, branding it a currency manipulator (when it in fact is trying to prop its currency up), and threatening to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods. Mr. Trump’s trade advisers have also advocated punitive responses to what they portray as unfair Chinese actions.

A few days after he was elected, however, Mr. Trump spoke with China’s president, Mr. Xi, and released a statement afterward that said the two men had a “clear sense of mutual respect.”

Taiwan is also likely to seek a closer relationship with the United States. After years of a Kuomintang government, which pursued closer China ties, Taiwan elected Ms. Tsai as its second president from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. Analysts said that Ms. Tsai, though not a firebrand, was seeking to diversify Taiwan’s economic partners and carve out more space for it in international affairs.

There are also lingering questions about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in Taiwan. The news media there has reported that the Trump Organization sent a representative to Taiwan to explore building a luxury hotel in a government-backed development near Taipei’s airport, though an official with the Trump Organization said it was not planning any expansion into Taiwan.

The Trump Organization does not dispute that one of its employees — assigned to promote hotel sales related to Asia — was in Taipei, the capital, in October for a work-related visit. The duties of the executive, Anne-Marie Donoghue, include trying to find guests for the company’s hotels worldwide, and she is not involved in developing new real estate projects for Trump Hotels.

For the Chinese government, as for many other governments around the world, Mr. Trump’s freewheeling diplomacy poses a challenge. At first, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, played down the episode, saying it was a “petty action by the Taiwan side” that would not upset the longstanding policy of One China.

But hours later, the Chinese Foreign Ministry lodged a formal complaint with the Obama administration. It urged the United States to “handle issues related to Taiwan carefully and properly to avoid causing unnecessary interference to the overall U.S.-China relationship.”

David Shambaugh, the director of the China policy program at George Washington University, said Beijing’s measured response made sense. But he said that if the Trump administration took more concrete steps to change time-tested ways of dealing with Taiwan, “they can expect additional pushback from China.”

Continue reading the main story

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Technology|Farhad's and Mike's Week in Tech: More Debate Over Facebook's Role in Media - New York Times

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We don’t know if that tool will ever get out the door — especially now that it’s been thrust into the spotlight — but it’s fascinating that Facebook is even considering it a possibility. That’s a far cry from where Google stood with China just a few years ago.

Continue reading the main story

Farhad: I spent some time thinking about your story over the holiday. (Yeah, I’m a lot of fun.) Lots of critics of Facebook connected Facebook’s apparent willingness to censor content in China with the other big Facebook story in recent weeks — the hand-wringing over whether it did enough to police fake news (most of which was pro-Trump) on the site in the run-up to the presidential election. The hot take was, “Oh look, Facebook can delete stuff when China asks, but it won’t take action when American elections are at stake.”

That seemed odd to me. If you worry about Facebook and its potential Chinese partners deciding which stories people in China can see and which they can’t, shouldn’t you also worry about their taking a greater role in deciding which news is true and false in America?

Mike: Short answer: Yes, totally. We can’t have it both ways. But please continue.

Farhad: Since the election, I’ve become more skeptical that there are many good ways for Facebook to respond to the problem of fake news (and I’m not even sure it was a big problem; the numbers on this have been dodgy, in part because Facebook hasn’t released many). I found myself agreeing with much of what Jessica Lessin, founder of the tech news site The Information, wrote in the Times’ Op-Ed section this week. Yes, Lessin has some connections to Mark Zuckerberg, but I think she raises a substantive point: Facebook already has a lot of power over the news business. Why are we clamoring for it to exercise even more power?

Mike: It’s a good point, but I do think there’s room to compromise. Clearly, false information seems like an easy thing to ax outright, which I imagine Facebook will try to do in the near future. It’ll probably stay away from the gray-area stuff.

In lighter news, CNN announced that it bought Beme, the social media start-up founded by Casey Neistat, a YouTube superstar. Beme, an app that basically let you snap raw video of yourself in the world and share it with friends, was not a breakout success, in part because it had to fight against tough competitors like Snapchat. But CNN’s hope is that Casey and his team can figure out how to use the idea of “authentic sharing” to capture new millennial audiences who have never been addicted to cable news.

I’m a millennial, and I can’t really imagine what the news consumption of the future will look like, outside of say, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. What say you, Mr. Gen Y?

Farhad: I think CNN is smart to hire talented media makers of the future. But I think Snap’s Spectacles — sunglasses that can record video clips — are the wave of tomorrow. I tried them out and I couldn’t stop raving about them. I even bought them for a hefty premium through eBay.

Mike: Wow. So desperate to be cool that you’re bidding for it online. Yikes.

In other news, Facebook launched a game center for its Messenger app, so you can now play Pac-Man against your friends while you chat. This seems like something you and I should do as “research” for work.

Continue reading the main story

Meanwhile, one tech news site reported seeing a new fake news detection feature on Facebook, which ironically ended up being fake news. Poetic.

Oh, and Twitter said it wouldn’t hesitate to bar Donald J. Trump if he violated the company’s terms of service, while Facebook chickened out and said it “values political discourse,” apparently even if that discourse breaks some of the basic rules of decency and community behavior on the platform. Can’t say I’m shocked, considering Facebook is terrified of ticking off conservatives after its Trending Topics fiasco this year.

Farhad: That was a weird story to me. Rules are rules. They should apply to everyone, right? Except you and me, of course.

Mike: Indeed. Just don’t tell our boss how much I curse on Twitter.

Fitbit, the ailing fitness tracker, reportedly wants to buy Pebble, the ailing smartwatch company, in a calculus that apparently adds up to “Two wrongs make a right.” Also, AngelList, the site for angel investment tracking, bought Product Hunt, the site where venture capitalists love to, uh, make angel investments. I guess that equation is “Two rights make a right.” Or something like that.

Farhad: I really have nothing to add about these companies. Sorry. Did I mention I love Snapchat’s Spectacles?

Mike: Ugh. So thirsty.

But I want to talk about Signal, the secure, encrypted messaging app that is seeing a surge of activity and downloads in the wake of the presidential election.

That means a lot. Trump has made, and continues to make, many inflammatory accusations against journalists. We’re the “lowest form of life” and comments of that sort. Now, in a time where we may have to face an openly hostile administration in the course of doing our jobs, journalists are equipping themselves with the tools they need to keep themselves safe, which I think is a great thing.

Let me hear your take on this, fellow lowlife.

Farhad: Yeah, it’s great that journalists, activists and others who may be targeted by an overpowerful executive branch are looking to do more to protect their communications. This could be a long-term legacy of President Trump — he could be the guy who finally gets everyone in Washington to use secure channels, as opposed to, say, not bothering to turn on two-factor authentication for their Gmail accounts.

Continue reading the main story

But for the historical record, it’s worth noting that it’s not just Trump who’s been at war with journalism. So has President Obama. The Obama administration has mounted a more aggressive fight against leakers than any recent president. Obama has also failed to disclose much information under Freedom of Information Act requests. And remember that it was under the Obama administration that the FBI sought to compel Apple to create a backdoor in iPhones.

Sure, things could get worse under Trump. But we should all have switched to Signal years ago.

OK, that’s it for now. I’m going to go make some hot cider.

Mike: As long as it’s not egg nog, I’ll take some too. Ciao!

Continue reading the main story

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SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (SEAS) Stock Rating Lowered by Citigroup Inc.

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SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (NYSE:SEAS) was downgraded by research analysts at Citigroup Inc. from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a research report issued to clients and investors on Wednesday.

Several other equities analysts also recently commented on the stock. Janney Montgomery Scott reissued a “neutral” rating and issued a $14.50 target price (down previously from $19.00) on shares of SeaWorld Entertainment in a report on Monday, August 8th. Credit Suisse Group AG raised shares of SeaWorld Entertainment from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and lowered their target price for the stock from $15.00 to $12.00 in a report on Thursday, August 11th. They noted that the move was a valuation call. Dougherty & Co lowered their target price on shares of SeaWorld Entertainment from $6.00 to $5.50 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, September 2nd. Zacks Investment Research downgraded shares of SeaWorld Entertainment from a “hold” rating to a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 19th. Finally, Barclays PLC set a $12.00 target price on shares of SeaWorld Entertainment and gave the stock an “underweight” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 16th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have issued a hold rating, five have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. The stock currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $15.46.

Shares of SeaWorld Entertainment (NYSE:SEAS) opened at 17.09 on Wednesday. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $15.42 and its 200 day moving average is $14.77. SeaWorld Entertainment has a 12 month low of $11.77 and a 12 month high of $21.85. The stock’s market cap is $1.46 billion.

SeaWorld Entertainment (NYSE:SEAS) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, November 8th. The company reported $0.77 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $1.06 by $0.29. SeaWorld Entertainment had a positive return on equity of 6.17% and a negative net margin of 0.87%. The company earned $485.30 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $411.29 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.14 EPS. SeaWorld Entertainment’s quarterly revenue was down 2.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities analysts predict that SeaWorld Entertainment will post $0.31 EPS for the current year.

TRADEMARK VIOLATION NOTICE: This article was originally posted by Daily Political and is the sole property of of Daily Political. If you are viewing this article on another website, it was stolen and republished in violation of U.S. & international copyright & trademark laws. The correct version of this article can be read at http://www.dailypolitical.com/2016/12/02/seaworld-entertainment-inc-seas-stock-rating-lowered-by-citigroup-inc.html.

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of SEAS. BlackRock Inc. boosted its position in SeaWorld Entertainment by 7.9% in the second quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 8,201 shares of the company’s stock worth $117,000 after buying an additional 597 shares during the period. Teacher Retirement System of Texas boosted its position in SeaWorld Entertainment by 6.0% in the second quarter. Teacher Retirement System of Texas now owns 9,353 shares of the company’s stock worth $134,000 after buying an additional 533 shares during the last quarter. Eqis Capital Management Inc. bought a new position in SeaWorld Entertainment during the second quarter worth approximately $144,000. Pitcairn Co. bought a new position in SeaWorld Entertainment during the second quarter worth approximately $163,000. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted its position in SeaWorld Entertainment by 12,238.0% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 12,338 shares of the company’s stock worth $166,000 after buying an additional 12,238 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 96.70% of the company’s stock.

SeaWorld Entertainment Company Profile

SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc is a theme park and entertainment company. It owns or licenses a portfolio of brands, including SeaWorld, Sea Rescue and Busch Gardens. It has a diversified portfolio of approximately 10 destination and regional theme parks that are located across the United States. Its theme parks feature a range of rides, shows and other attractions.

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US Health Spending Grew Especially Fast Last Year - NBCNews.com

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U.S. health spending always grows but it grew at an especially fast rate last year as more people got health insurance for the first time and as pricey new hepatitis drugs hit the market.

The annual medical spending report from the federal government shows the country spent $3.2 trillion on health care in 2015, 5.8 percent more than in 2014.

Health Spending Project Hope

This adds up to close to $10,000 per person — $9,990 to be precise, far more per capita than in any other comparable country.

"Health care spending grew 2.1 percentage points faster than the overall economy in 2015," the team at the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Friday.

Health spending also grew rapidly last year and much of it's because so many more people have health insurance than before, CMS said. There are indications that people who'd been sick for some time were seeking medical care for the first time, said CMS's Aaron Catlin, who worked on the report.

Related: Average Family Healthcare Costs Have Tripled

"Following five consecutive years of historically low growth, from 2009 through 2013, health spending growth accelerated in 2014 (to 5.3 percent) and 2015 (to 5.8 percent)," the team wrote in their report, published in the journal Health Affairs.

"The faster growth in 2014 and 2015 occurred as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded health insurance coverage for individuals through Marketplace health insurance plans and the Medicaid program."

"Private health insurance spending increased 7.2 percent in 2015."

CMS says 20 million Americans have health insurance because of the ACA, widely known as Obamacare. Roughly half have bought private health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and half have coverage in the states that agreed to expand their Medicaid programs.

Now 90 percent of Americans have health insurance coverage.

Obamacare has been under fire because of rising health insurance premiums, and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly voted to repeal it. President-elect Donald Trump at first said he'd repeal it but now says he would ask Congress to keep many of its provisions.

Trump's nominee as Health and Human Services secretary, Georgia rep. Tom Price, has been an Obamacare opponent while his nominee to head CMS, which administers the ACA, is health consultant Seema Verma. Verma helped negotiate a custom-made expansion of Medicaid in Indiana.

Related: Medical Care Prices All Over the Map

The federal government currently foots the whole bill for Medicaid expansion, and that helped fuel the growth in federal health spending, the report showed.

"The acceleration in total health care spending growth in 2015 was primarily driven by faster growth in spending on private health insurance, hospital care, and physician and clinical services," the report reads.

"Private health insurance spending increased 7.2 percent in 2015 (up from 5.8 percent in 2014)."

In all, private health insurance, which accounts for one-third of all health spending, reached $1.1 trillion last year.

Americans spent $338 billion of their own money on health care, up 2.6 percent from 2014, the report found.

Related: Growth in U.S. Health Spending Lowest on Record

Spending on prescription drugs grew at an especially high rate — up 9 percent over 2014 for a total of $324.6 billion.

"Recent rapid growth was due to increased spending for new medicines (particularly for specialty drugs such as those used to treat hepatitis C), price growth in existing brand-name drugs, increased spending on generics, and a decrease in the number of expensive blockbuster drugs whose patents expired," the report read.

"Recent rapid growth was due to increased spending for new medicines (particularly for specialty drugs such as those used to treat hepatitis C)."

Catlin named two specific drugs helping drive that increase: Sovaldi, knowns generically as sofosbuvir, and Harvoni, a combination pill that includes Sovaldi. Both are made by the drug company Gilead.

"Last year it would have been Sovaldi," Catlin told reporters. "This year it would have been Harvoni."

Sovaldi costs about $84,000 for a weeks-long regimen that can cure someone of hepatitis C. Harvoni costs more than $94,000 for similar treatment.

Hepatitis C affects about 3.2 million Americans, once killing more than 15,000 each year. Gilead argues that the expensive cure costs less than treating a patient for a lifetime with less effective drugs.

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Bowe Bergdahl Seeks Pardon From Obama Ahead of Court-Martial Trial - NBCNews.com

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WASHINGTON — A former prisoner of war accused of endangering his U.S. comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan is asking President Barack Obama to pardon him before leaving office.

Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl went missing from his post in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. U.S. Army via AFP - Getty Images file

White House and Justice Department officials say U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl submitted the clemency request. If granted, it would allow Bergdahl to avert a court-martial trial scheduled for April. He faces charges carrying a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Bergdahl walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held captive by the Taliban and its allies for five years. The Obama administration's decision to swap prisoners for his return in 2014 was criticized by some Republicans.

During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump described Bergdahl as a "no-good traitor, who should have been executed."

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What interns and new grads really get paid at top tech companies - TechCrunch

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From woefully underpaid internships to legendary hiring bonuses at huge Silicon Valley companies, it’s hard for job seekers to know what they’re worth in tech. It’s even harder when they’re new to the rat race.

One undergraduate computer science student at Purdue University, Jesse Collins, has taken it upon himself to gather data from undergrads and recent grads to find out what’s going on, for real, around job offers and paid internships today in tech.

Collins released the preliminary results of his survey this week, in a Google spreadsheet here, and the study is already full of juicy tidbits.

For example, Collins found that, according to 19 survey respondents so far, Facebook is offering an average annual salary of $109,526 with a massive signing bonus of $79,737 for employees in technical roles like iOS or full stack developer, or software or network engineer.

By comparison, according to 31 survey respondents, Google is paying recent graduates in tech roles an average of $107,000 annualized salary with an average signing bonus of $27,327.

And Microsoft was offering new grads a $107,455 annualized salary with a $26,591 signing bonus, according to 22 respondents.

Looking at the self-reported salary and bonus data by job title, Collins found that software engineers and developers are out-earning their peers in user experience design and sales engineering by tens of thousands, annually.

And even though government salaries are presumed to be much lower than those in the private sector, working in tech in a government office will score entry-level engineers and developers a slightly better salary, on average, than working for a seed- or Series A-stage startup, the survey suggests.

It’s important to note that some large tech employers, including Facebook and Google, offer internships to both graduate and undergraduate students, and may be hiring people with doctorates and prior work experience into entry-level roles. That could account for some of those high salary and internship compensation numbers.

Collins began his survey last year, asking recent tech hires and interns what offers they got and from which companies, as well as for a bit of personal information, including their educational background and gender.

He says, “I’m interested in bringing transparency to job searches and salary negotiations overall, and hope that the data…will help prevent racial bias, a gender wage gap and the like.”

Preliminary survey results show that women who are recent grads may be getting paid more on average than their male peers in entry-level tech roles. Women say they are getting $105,000 to $142,674 annualized salary on average, while men are saying they are getting an average annualized salary between $99,767 and $105,000.

However, the same survey suggests that women are paid less, right after college, than men, at Facebook, Google and Twitter, taking stock, stipends, hiring bonuses and annual salaries all into account.

And women are not getting hired as often as men, the survey also reflects, comprising just 14 percent of new grad tech hires who were gender-identified respondents.

Collins isn’t the first to try to understand who gets paid for what in tech.

Other noteworthy researchers include Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin, 20-something software engineer Rodney Folz, who began his own internship-focused survey as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley, and companies that get paid by recruiters and job seekers, like LinkedIn, CareerBuilder or Glassdoor.

A self-proclaimed machine learning and stats nerd, Collins cautioned readers of his spreadsheet that survey results are not final, and the data set he’s gathered is not big enough to draw broad conclusions about pay, or bias in tech.

The information is self-reported and salaries were not adjusted for cost of living by region. And he hasn’t connected with companies to verify the data.

The survey, 2016 New Grad & Internship Offer Data, is still open if you’re a recent graduate or undergrad who wants to contribute internship or job offer data.

TechCrunch has reached out to a number of employers in the survey to verify the salary and other information reflected there. We will update this post if or when we have new information. Facebook does not comment on its employees’ compensation, a company spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Collins has accepted a full-time job as a software engineer at the Seattle office of Curalate after he graduates from Purdue. He declined to disclose his salary in a press interview.

 

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Chapecoense air crash: UEFA confirm minute's silence ahead of Champions League ties - Daily Mail

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A minute's silence will be held ahead of all of next week's Champions League and Europa League matches as a mark of respect to those who died in a plane crash which killed 71 people and most of the Chapecoense football team from Brazil.

The charter jet carrying the Chapecoense team, along with club officials and journalists, to Medellin for their Copa Sudamericana final match against Colombian side Atletico Nacional came down late on Monday night.

Civil aviation officials in Colombia have since confirmed the aircraft had run out of fuel at the moment of impact.

People come together at Medellin Stadium in Colombia to pay tribute to the Chapecoense side

The extent of Chapecoense's loss became clear with the news of deaths of players and officials who were on the flight.

Only three players - defender Alan Luciano Ruschel, reserve goalkeeper Jackson Ragnar Follmann and centre-back Helio Hermito Zampier Neto - were listed as among the six survivors, as well as journalist Rafael Valmorbida and crew members Ximena Suarez and Erwin Timuri.

UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said in a statement: 'European football is united in expressing its deepest sympathy to Chapecoense, the Brazilian football confederation (CBF), CONMEBOL (the South American confederation) and the families of all the victims following this week's air disaster.

Gabriel Paulista fought back tears during the minute's silence ahead of Arsenal's EFL Cup tie

'This tragedy has shaken the world of football, and we would like to send our support to all of those affected by it.'

Clubs across Europe have paid tribute to the victims all week, with a minute's silence held before kick off in each of the four EFL Cup quarter-finals, and players wearing black armbands.

Paris Saint-Germain striker Edinson Cavani revealed a tribute to Chapecoense on his t-shirt after scoring against Angers in Ligue 1, while Real Madrid and other sides fell silent ahead of their Copa del Rey clashes.  

The 'black box' flight recorders from the British Aerospace 146 plane have been retrieved and are being brought back to the UK to be examined in Farnborough, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch has confirmed.

A recording of the flight's final minutes revealed the pilot told air traffic controllers there had been a 'complete electrical failure' and that he had run out of fuel before the doomed plane plunged into a wooded mountainside.

A full investigation into the crash is expected to take months and will review everything from the 17-year-old British Aerospace aircraft's flight and maintenance history to the voice and instruments data in the black boxes.

Manchester United and West Ham players took part in a minute's silence at Old Trafford

Officials from Colombia' civil aviation authority said at a news conference in Medellin they believed the plane had run out of fuel when it went down some 11 miles from the Jose Maria Cordova de Rionegro airport.

Secretary for the Air Safety Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics Freddy Bonilla said: 'We can clearly state that the aircraft had no fuel at the time of impact, so we started an investigation process to establish the cause.'

Bonilla added regulations state an aircraft must have 30 minutes of fuel in reserve to reach an alternative airport in an emergency, but 'in this case the plane did not'.

Some 59 bodies have been identified, including 52 Brazilians, five Bolivians, a Paraguayan and a Venezuelan.

Edinson Cavani revealed a tribute on his T-shirt to the Brazilian team after scoring in Ligue 1

In an update on the club's official website, Chapecoense confirmed Follmann remained in a 'serious condition' after having one leg amputated, while defender Neto was in a critical but stable condition, and was now 'providing good prospects for improvement'.

Ruschel had undergone 'surgery of the spine, but has normal movements in his arms and legs', while journalist Valmorbidal, of Radio Oeste Capital, had a 'thoracic (chest) trauma and a leg fracture' and was 'also critical, but the outlook is optimistic'.

The club, whose medical team are in Colombia led by Dr Carlos Henrique Mendonca, added there was currently no time-frame on any discharge of patients, but said everyone was being offered the 'best possible care'.

After this weekend's schedule was called off, the final round of league matches in Brazil's top flight is now set for December 11.

Real Madrid and Leonesa players stood still for a moment of reflection at the Bernabeu

Chapecoense's acting president Ivan Tozzo has suggested the club will hope to be able to fulfil their fixture against Atletico Mineiro, fielding a combined team of youth players and those remaining who were not on board the flight to Colombia.

Veteran goalkeeper Nivaldo was not set to be involved for the Copa Sudamericana final as the home match with Mineiro was to be his 300th and last appearance for the club.

The 42-year-old had stated he would retire immediately, but now appears determined to turn out one last time in memory of his dead colleagues. 

 

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Hi-tech replica to bring prehistoric art of Lascaux within reach

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In the Dordogne village of Montignac sur Vézère, the story of how one boy and his dog discovered one of the most haunting examples of prehistoric art has gone down in local folklore.

On 8 September 1940, Marcel Ravidat’s black-and-white mongrel, Robot, dived into a hole in the ground in pursuit of a rabbit. The 17-year-old Ravidat retrieved his pet, and returned a few days later with three friends to explore what appeared to be an underground cave. Dropping into the rocks, they entered a grotto where the flickering light of their oil lamp lit upon a painting of a red bull. The rest is prehistory.

Ravidat and his friends had stumbled across what became known as Lascaux, an extraordinary network of subterranean caves decorated with drawings and engravings dating back 22,000 years to the palaeolithic era.

The depictions of horses, bulls, bison, goats, deer, cows, as well as lions, a bear, a rhinoceros and even a unicorn were so strikingly beautiful that the local abbot, a historian, declared the grotto was a “prehistoric Sistine chapel”.

Some of the paintings in the Lascaux caves. Photograph: Denis Nidos/Département 24

Today, Lascaux is closed to the public and has been for more than 50 years, after it was discovered visitors were unwittingly destroying the Unesco world heritage site simply by breathing in the caves. But next week, French president François Hollande is expected to open a meticulous €57m (£48m) replica of the grotto that attempts to recreate the magic and detail of the original.

Germinal Peiro, the local MP, said it was the first time such an ambitious project had been attempted. “Lascaux is chez nous, but it doesn’t belong to us and we have always wanted to share these spectacular paintings with the world. This is the first copy of a grotto of this size in the world and it is a work of art in itself,” Peiro told the Observer during a pre-opening tour of the project, known as Lascaux-4.

An exhibition space in Lascaux 4. Photograph: © Casson Mann

Stepping into the replica grotto, built 800 metres down the hill from the original with the same sombre, humid atmosphere, visitors are greeted with paintings of herds of animals, overlaid on earlier older paintings or etched into stone, that have taken a dedicated team of modellers, sculptors and artists three years to reproduce, as near to the Cro-Magnon original as possible.

Archaeologist Jean-Pierre Chadelle described it as a work of art in itself and said work on the replica had enabled experts to discover new details about the original Lascaux, which he admitted had still not given up all its secrets. “We know the paintings were done with natural colours found in the earth around here, but we cannot exactly date the pigment so we cannot exactly date the paintings,” he said. “Lascaux is still a mystery, even today.”

He added: “We also know the paintings were done by tribes of hunter-gatherers, but there is no moon, no sun, no depictions of the countryside, or even pictures of reindeer, which we know they depended on for food.”

Chadelle points out that there is also only one semi-human figure: a naive stick figure drawn in black, with four fingers, and the head of a bird, who is either dead or injured. “Is this a man? We don’t know for sure. What we do know, given the time and effort involved in making them, is that the paintings represented something very important to the people of the time.”

Experts believe the Lascaux caves were not used as shelter but were more likely a spiritual sanctuary. The drawings, they say, were almost certainly created by skilled tribal painters, as opposed to the prehistoric equivalent of roaming graffiti artists.

In the excitement following the discovery of the Lascaux grotto in 1940, little heed was paid to the long-term conservation of the paintings. Workmen blasted through the hole in the rocks Ravidat and his friends had entered, to bring electricity and air filtration. Without a second thought, they lowered the floor to make a passage for visitors. Inevitably, they upset the delicate natural balance of the atmosphere within.

Between 1948 and 1963, when the caves were open to the public, thousands of visitors traipsed through the grotto. They brought with them bacteria, as well as moisture and carbon dioxide in the air they exhaled, setting off a biological chain reaction that caused fungus to spread across the paintings. First came the “green malady”, then the “white malady”, then “black stains”. The original grotto is being left to “rest” to find a natural balance. Only a handful of scientists are allowed inside to check on its health, and only with special permission.

The experts at work in Lascaux. Photograph: Denis Nidos/Département 24

Nicolas St-Cyr, artistic decorator of Lascaux-4, officially known as the International Centre for Cave Paintings, is one of the few to have visited the real Lascaux. “It’s very special. You have the feeling you are in the presence of man 22,000 years ago when you see the paintings. These were talented artists, working by the light of animal oil lamps, and it’s like they were done yesterday. I was trembling when I came out.”

A partial copy of the original grotto – Lascaux-2 – was opened in 1983 and has attracted 8 million visitors, and a travelling exhibition – Lascaux-3 – is currently touring Asia. Lascaux-4, which has received funding from regional and department authorities, the French state, the EU and public donations, is expected to attract 400,000 visitors a year. Award-winning London design company Casson Mann was responsible for creating the exhibition space, which includes a cinema, an interactive picture gallery and a theatre.

St-Cyr added: “It’s impossible for anyone to see the original now, but this is the next best thing. What is lost in not having the real thing is balanced by the fact people can see so much more of the detail of the wonderful paintings and engravings.”

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Meet the 'Mad Dog' Donald Trump wants to lead the Pentagon - CNN International

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Revered by his troops as a "warrior monk" with a knack for hard-edged quips, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis led troops in Afghanistan in 2001, won laurels for leadership in one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq War and most recently headed US Central Command, perhaps the military's most complicated and challenging post.

Now, Mattis faces an entirely different kind of fight.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to formally nominate the former four-star to head the Pentagon, some Democrats are signaling his confirmation might not be entirely easy. Some observers question whether Mattis' battlefield experience prepares him for the very different task of running an enormous bureaucracy, while senior lawmakers worry about what the 66-year-old's nomination means for maintaining civilian control of the military.

Republicans issued glowing testimonials to Mattis and his career. California Rep. Devin Nunes, who heads the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he could think of "no better candidate to lead America's military in our long fight against jihadism and countering other pressing threats."

Noting that Mattis hasn't been out of uniform long enough to lead the Pentagon without a congressional waiver, California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said that while he "would make an excellent Secretary of Defense, we must also bear in mind the precedent we would be setting and the impact it would have on the principle of civilian leadership of our nation's military."

Donald Trump speaks with Taiwan's President

Kirsten Gillibrand, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee on personnel, was more definitive.

"Civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy," Gillibrand said in a statement Thursday, "and I will not vote for an exception to this rule."

Just one senator can demand that the waiver for Mattis meet a 60-vote threshold, meaning he would need to get the support of all Republicans and eight Democrats to move toward confirmation next year.

If he's approved, Mattis would be the highest-ranking former officer to serve as defense secretary. The Washington State native and history major led troops through the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. From 2010 to 2013, he led Central Command, which oversees the Middle East and Southeast Asia, until the Obama administration let him go over disagreements on Iran.

The White House was pushing for a nuclear deal with Tehran in 2013, the same year Mattis was telling the Aspen Security Forum that his top concern as Centcom commander was "Iran, Iran, Iran."

Obama to sign Iran sanctions bill

Mattis has since been critical of the deal and of the Obama administration's refusal to engage more aggressively in the Middle East, saying it has fueled extremism in the region. In 2015, he told a congressional panel that the US needed to come out of its "reactive crouch" in the Middle East and defend its values.

Indeed, Mattis has not been known to mince words. He's affectionately known as "Mad Dog" by troops who trade his quips like prized baseball cards. On the news of his nomination, many of those sayings instantly became memes on Twitter. Among them: "a good soldier follows orders, but a true warrior wears his enemy's skin like a poncho," and "be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."

Human Rights Watch called on Congress to fully examine his views on a number of issues.

"Media accounts suggest that Gen. Mattis doesn't agree with President-elect Trump's more outrageous campaign proposals, such as bringing back waterboarding, targeting terrorist suspects' family members, or tampering with anti-torture laws," said Washington director Sarah Margon.

She urged that during the confirmation process "senators make sure Mattis unreservedly repudiates these proposals, acknowledges that they are illegal, and confirms that they are not up for future consideration."

Mattis is one of a slew of generals Trump has been considering for other Cabinet-level jobs, including Gen. David Petraeus for the State Department, Gen. John Kelly to head Homeland Security and Adm. Mike Rogers as the director of national intelligence.

Erin Simpson, a national security consultant and senior editor at WarontheRocks.com, said the incoming administration may be trying to capitalize on public respect for the military by considering so many generals. But "where there are really weak civilian institutions and an inexperienced president, it just doesn't sit right by me," said Simpson.

The silver lining, she adds, is that many military and security professionals wary of Trump may be convinced to serve under Mattis.

"It provides some top-cover for other qualified folks to come in who might not have otherwise," Simpson said. "There are a lot of jobs to fill at the Pentagon, this could bring in some talent and that's a net gain."

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ShowBiz Minute: La La Land, Kunis, Potter

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ShowBiz Minute: La La Land, Kunis, Potter 'La La Land' leads Critics Choice Awards with 12 nominations; Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher welcome second child; 'Harry Potter' play eyes Broadway jump in spring 2018. (Dec. 2) Check out this story on USATODAY.com ...
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Chelsea football club apologises 'profusely' to sex abuse victim Gary Johnson

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Chelsea Football Club has "apologised profusely" to Gary Johnson who was sexually abused at the club in the 1970s.

In a statement the club said Johnson had "suffered unacceptably" while a youth team player.

Chelsea's apology comes after Mr Johnson, 57, said the London club had paid him £50,000 not to go public with allegations.

The club admitted that the confidentiality clause had been "inappropriate", especially in light of abuse on a wider scale in the game. 

Image Caption:
Gary Johnson has spoken out about the abuse

The club added that it now had "no desire to hide any historic abuse we uncover from view".

An external review would examine whether it carried out a proper investigation when the allegations first came to their attention in 2014.

Mr Johnson said he had been sexually abused by the club's former chief scout Eddie Heath, who died in the early 1980s.

Video:
More ex-players from different clubs claim abuse

Solicitor Tom West told Sky News he had been contacted by another former first team Chelsea player, who was remaining anonymous.

He too claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Heath.

Chelsea's statement came as at least 17 more former footballers came forward with allegations of sexual abuse within the game.

More than 20 players had already contacted the Professional Footballers' Association union to report historical sex abuse.

Some 18 police forces are now examining claims from more than 350 people, across 55 clubs.

Video:
Campaigner: Confidence in FA will drop further

Chelsea said they were "fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all children and young people who are in our care or attending our premises".

The statement read: "Everyone at Chelsea Football Club has been profoundly shocked by news of historical child sex abuse across British football and our heart goes out to all the victims.

"We pay tribute to the enormous courage of the people who have spoken out about the horrific abuse which they endured, including former Chelsea player Gary Johnson.

"We recognise that to do so, after carrying the burden of those events for so long, must have been an extremely difficult thing to do.

"It is clear that Gary Johnson suffered unacceptably while in our employment in the 1970s for which the club apologises profusely.

Video:
Sky Data poll: Little confidence in FA's handling of football abuse claims

"If further evidence is uncovered we will ensure that we help victims in any way we can.

"We certainly have no desire to hide any historic abuse we uncover from view. Quite the opposite.

"Chelsea today is a very different club than it was in the 1970s.

"We are fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all children and young people who are in our care or attending our premises."

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Farhad’s and Mike’s Week in Tech: More Debate Over Facebook’s Role in Media

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We don’t know if that tool will ever get out the door — especially now that it’s been thrust into the spotlight — but it’s fascinating that Facebook is even considering it a possibility. That’s a far cry from where Google stood with China just a few years ago.

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Farhad: I spent some time thinking about your story over the holiday. (Yeah, I’m a lot of fun.) Lots of critics of Facebook connected Facebook’s apparent willingness to censor content in China with the other big Facebook story in recent weeks — the hand-wringing over whether it did enough to police fake news (most of which was pro-Trump) on the site in the run-up to the presidential election. The hot take was, “Oh look, Facebook can delete stuff when China asks, but it won’t take action when American elections are at stake.”

That seemed odd to me. If you worry about Facebook and its potential Chinese partners deciding which stories people in China can see and which they can’t, shouldn’t you also worry about their taking a greater role in deciding which news is true and false in America?

Mike: Short answer: Yes, totally. We can’t have it both ways. But please continue.

Farhad: Since the election, I’ve become more skeptical that there are many good ways for Facebook to respond to the problem of fake news (and I’m not even sure it was a big problem; the numbers on this have been dodgy, in part because Facebook hasn’t released many). I found myself agreeing with much of what Jessica Lessin, founder of the tech news site The Information, wrote in the Times’ Op-Ed section this week. Yes, Lessin has some connections to Mark Zuckerberg, but I think she raises a substantive point: Facebook already has a lot of power over the news business. Why are we clamoring for it to exercise even more power?

Mike: It’s a good point, but I do think there’s room to compromise. Clearly, false information seems like an easy thing to ax outright, which I imagine Facebook will try to do in the near future. It’ll probably stay away from the gray-area stuff.

In lighter news, CNN announced that it bought Beme, the social media start-up founded by Casey Neistat, a YouTube superstar. Beme, an app that basically let you snap raw video of yourself in the world and share it with friends, was not a breakout success, in part because it had to fight against tough competitors like Snapchat. But CNN’s hope is that Casey and his team can figure out how to use the idea of “authentic sharing” to capture new millennial audiences who have never been addicted to cable news.

I’m a millennial, and I can’t really imagine what the news consumption of the future will look like, outside of say, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. What say you, Mr. Gen Y?

Farhad: I think CNN is smart to hire talented media makers of the future. But I think Snap’s Spectacles — sunglasses that can record video clips — are the wave of tomorrow. I tried them out and I couldn’t stop raving about them. I even bought them for a hefty premium through eBay.

Mike: Wow. So desperate to be cool that you’re bidding for it online. Yikes.

In other news, Facebook launched a game center for its Messenger app, so you can now play Pac-Man against your friends while you chat. This seems like something you and I should do as “research” for work.

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Meanwhile, one tech news site reported seeing a new fake news detection feature on Facebook, which ironically ended up being fake news. Poetic.

Oh, and Twitter said it wouldn’t hesitate to bar Donald J. Trump if he violated the company’s terms of service, while Facebook chickened out and said it “values political discourse,” apparently even if that discourse breaks some of the basic rules of decency and community behavior on the platform. Can’t say I’m shocked, considering Facebook is terrified of ticking off conservatives after its Trending Topics fiasco this year.

Farhad: That was a weird story to me. Rules are rules. They should apply to everyone, right? Except you and me, of course.

Mike: Indeed. Just don’t tell our boss how much I curse on Twitter.

Fitbit, the ailing fitness tracker, reportedly wants to buy Pebble, the ailing smartwatch company, in a calculus that apparently adds up to “Two wrongs make a right.” Also, AngelList, the site for angel investment tracking, bought Product Hunt, the site where venture capitalists love to, uh, make angel investments. I guess that equation is “Two rights make a right.” Or something like that.

Farhad: I really have nothing to add about these companies. Sorry. Did I mention I love Snapchat’s Spectacles?

Mike: Ugh. So thirsty.

But I want to talk about Signal, the secure, encrypted messaging app that is seeing a surge of activity and downloads in the wake of the presidential election.

That means a lot. Trump has made, and continues to make, many inflammatory accusations against journalists. We’re the “lowest form of life” and comments of that sort. Now, in a time where we may have to face an openly hostile administration in the course of doing our jobs, journalists are equipping themselves with the tools they need to keep themselves safe, which I think is a great thing.

Let me hear your take on this, fellow lowlife.

Farhad: Yeah, it’s great that journalists, activists and others who may be targeted by an overpowerful executive branch are looking to do more to protect their communications. This could be a long-term legacy of President Trump — he could be the guy who finally gets everyone in Washington to use secure channels, as opposed to, say, not bothering to turn on two-factor authentication for their Gmail accounts.

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But for the historical record, it’s worth noting that it’s not just Trump who’s been at war with journalism. So has President Obama. The Obama administration has mounted a more aggressive fight against leakers than any recent president. Obama has also failed to disclose much information under Freedom of Information Act requests. And remember that it was under the Obama administration that the FBI sought to compel Apple to create a backdoor in iPhones.

Sure, things could get worse under Trump. But we should all have switched to Signal years ago.

OK, that’s it for now. I’m going to go make some hot cider.

Mike: As long as it’s not egg nog, I’ll take some too. Ciao!

Continue reading the main story

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