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Two Men Allegedly Ran a ‘Hamilton’ Ticket Resale Ponzi Scheme

Reginald Edward
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Two Men Allegedly Ran a ‘Hamilton’ Ticket Resale Ponzi Scheme

Two New Yorkers were charged with raising over $81 million from investors after promising to make money off of popular live events shows.

Mathew Harriton and Joseph Meli allegedly convinced at least 125 investors to invest in a Ponzi scheme based on false claims of buying and selling tickets for popular shows including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the two men.

A Ponzi scheme is an investment operation that is completely fraudulent. Scammers that use Ponzi schemes take money from new investors to pay returns to other investors. Scammers that use Ponzi schemes promise higher returns on investments than traditional investments.

Harriton and Meli allegedly scammed investors claiming they had an agreement with Hamilton’s producer to buy tickets in bulk. The alleged scammers told investors that their funds will pay part of the tickets. Then, Meli and Harriton promised to resell the tickets at a higher price. Harriton and Meli also promised investors that in less than a year they would earn their money back plus an additional 10% annualized profit, according to a SEC federal civil complaint.

The SEC complaint alleges that Meli and Harriton only used a small portion of investor funds to make payments to people connected to the ticket reselling business. Instead, the New Yorkers took the money and developed a Ponzi scheme, according to the SEC charges. In addition, Meli and Harriton also spent over a million dollars of investors’ money on personal expenses including private school tuition, jewelry, and casinos.

Hamilton Broadway Ponzi Scheme
(EQRoy / Shutterstock, Inc.)

Hamilton started off as an Off-Broadway theater production in February 2015 and the production quickly sold out. The show then hit Broadway in August 2015 and received one of the highest advance box office sales in recent history. By 2016, Hamilton received 16 Tony nominations and winning 11 total Tony awards including Best Musical. In addition, the show won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Hamilton helped launch Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator, to superstardom. 

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Criticizes Trump’s Immigration Ban

Reginald Edward
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0
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Criticizes Trump’s Immigration Ban

The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke out on Friday against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

In a Facebook post, the multi-billionaire wrote in disagreement with Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border. Zuckerberg also criticized President Trump’s executive order banning refugees and preventing immigrants from certain countries from entering the United States.

Zuckerberg’s open letter

Zuckerberg opened up about his own European heritage and his hope that America can unite following Trump’s recent executive orders. “We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat,” Zuckerberg explained in a Facebook post. “Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans feel less safe by diverting resources, while millions of undocumented folks who don’t pose a threat will live in fear of deportation.”

Facebook, among many other companies, employs workers from countries around the world to help engineer their technology.

Zuckerberg finished his open letter to Donald Trump by saying, “We are a nation of immigrants, and we all benefit when the best and brightest from around the world can live, work and contribute here. I hope we find the courage and compassion to bring people together and make this world a better place for everyone.” Zuckerberg added, “We should keep our doors open to refugees and those who need help. That’s who we are.”

 

Donald Trump’s Executive Orders

Donald Trump Executive Orders
Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock, Inc.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump followed through with this campaign promise to “Build the wall”. Trump signed executive orders that would employee thousands of new border patrol officers, deportation agents, and end government funding for sanctuary cities.

On Friday, Trump signed another executive order that banned Syrian refugees from entering the country. According to the executive order, for the next four months, no Syrians are allowed to enter the United States. In addition, for the next three months, no residents of “terror-prone” countries will also be not allowed to enter the U.S; The terror-prone countries include Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia.

College Students Hospitalized After Caffeine Study Goes Wrong

Brent Edward
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0
College Students Hospitalized After Caffeine Study Goes Wrong

Starbucks coffee may give you the lift you need to accomplish your morning errands. But, too much caffeine and you run the risk of dying. Earlier this year, the Pentagon issued a warning to soldiers regarding the risks associated with energy drinks. Now, two college students nearly died after being given a caffeine equivalent of nearly 300 cups of coffee.

Alex Rossetta and Luke Parkin participated in a study at Northumbria University in England. The two students were supposed to be given 0.3 grams of caffeine. But due to an experimental error, the students were given approximately 30 grams of caffeine, according to the BBC.

The students were given a mixture of caffeine and water or orange juice. Immediately, thereafter, the volunteers experienced caffeine related side effects including dizziness, blurred vision, shaking and a rapid heartbeat. The students were taken to a hospital. At the hospital, the students underwent dialysis. In fact, one of the students reported having short term memory issues. Luckily, the two students recovered.

The whole incident eventually went to court. Adam Farrer, the prosecutor in the court case, told the court that people have previously died after ingesting a fraction of what the young boys consumed during the study. Farrer explained, “If they had not been admitted to intensive care immediately for treatment they could have died from caffeine overdose.”

The University was fined over $500,000. The school also apologized, “All those involved are deeply sorry and genuinely sorry for the breach in this case.”

Caffeine warnings

Earlier this year, the official U.S. Defense Department Science blog warned soldiers to monitor how much caffeine they are consuming. The Pentagon warned soldiers to avoid consuming more than 200 mg of caffeine every four hours.

Caffeine does does have benefits. A 2016 study published in the “Journal of Psychopharmacology” examined how Red Bull affected performance. Researchers found that Red Bull improved memory, accuracy, and speed of working memory.

Google Chrome is Now Nearly 30% Faster

Jonathan Antonio
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0
Google Chrome is Now Nearly 30% Faster

Google has announced a major improvement to their Google Chrome web browser. The latest version of Chrome will process reloading web pages by reducing the number of validation requests. Ultimately, speeding up the web browser’s speed by nearly 30%.

Reloading is one of the most common functions internet users use while, surfing the web. Over the years, webmasters have developed new tools to improve the quality of web pages. This has led Google to change the way the company handles how it processes reload requests.

Initially, a browser checks the web server to see if cached resources are still usable. This is called validation. A usual website has hundreds of validation requests on every page. It takes a longer time for a web page to be displayed especially on mobile devices, if it has too many validation requests. However, with the latest version of Chrome, web pages are able to load nearly 30% faster. In addition, have 50% less validation requests.

If you are reloading a page on Facebook, a large majority of the page elements are going to be the same. Facebook informed Google that Chrome was sending validation requests three more times the rate of other browsers. As a result, Google did something about it. Following Google’s upgrade, web pages now load 28% faster and feature 60% less validation requests on Google Chrome.

“We hope this faster reload will come in handy whenever you want to get the latest content on your favorite website or quickly recover from a flaky connection in the subway,” Takashi Toyoshima reported on Google Chrome’s blog.

Google Chrome

Google first released their very own web browser nearly a decade ago. Now, the company reports that 63% of all internet users use Google Chrome. Following the success of Google Chrome, the search engine giant attached “Chrome” to other products such as the Chromecast, Chromebook, and other “Chrome” branded products.

 

Study: More People are Showing Up Late for Work

Reginald Edward
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0
Study: More People are Showing Up Late for Work

Since the start of 2017, companies have announced plans to hire more employees. Wal-Mart, Amazon, General Motors and many other companies launched initiatives to hire thousands of new employees starting this year. But, these companies may have a new problem on their hands. After surveying over 2,000 human resource managers and over 3,000 employees, CareerBuilder has discovered an ever growing number people are showing up late for work.

3,400 employees and 2,600 hiring and human resource managers were surveyed in this nationwide survey. Researchers found 16% of employees admitted to showing up to work late at least once per week, which is an increase of 3% from last year. In addition, nearly 30 percent of employees admitted showing up to work at least once per month – an increase from 25% last year.

Researchers also asked questions related to hours employees are expected to work. CareerBuilder found nearly 2 out of 3 employers and employees believe working a “9 to 5” is old fashioned. But, more than 50% of employers expect their employees to show up to work on time. Over, 40% of employers report firing someone for being late.

Researchers also found that 29% of employees had no problem with an employee occasionally showing up late, as long as it did not become a frequent occurence. The most common excuses for showing up late for work include traffic, oversleeping, bad weather or simply procrastinating.

The study showed that employees are becoming more honest about the hours they work. 69% of employees who arrive late say they will stay later to make up for it, which is an increase from last year’s study – up from 62%.

CareerBuilder also shared some of the most outrageous excuses reported in the survey. Some of the craziest excuses include: “I forgot it wasn’t the weekend,” “I thought Flag Day was a legal holiday,” and “My mother-in-law wouldn’t stop talking.”

If your boss does not buy your “pet turtle needed to visit the exotic animal clinic” excuse, have no fear because Amazon is reported to hire over 100,000 new jobs by 2018.

 

Oprah Teams with Kraft Heinz Launching Ready-To-Eat Food Company

Reginald Edward
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0
Oprah Teams with Kraft Heinz Launching Ready-To-Eat Food Company

The Kraft Heinz Company has partnered with Oprah Winfrey to create a new company called Mealtime Stories, LLC.

The new partnership will initially sell “ready to eat refrigerated products”. In addition, the company will donate 10 % of their revenue to charities to stop hunger.

In a press release, Kraft Heinz explains the company’s mission “is to create a new line of food that will make real, nutritious products more accessible to everyone.”

Oprah Winfrey started off poor but, became a millionaire in her thirties after her talk show became syndicated nationwide. At 41, Winfrey had a net worth of over $300 million beating Bill Cosby. In turn, Winfrey became the only African American on the Forbes 400 list. Since then, Oprah Winfrey has became the first African American female billionaire in world history worth over $2.9 billion.

In 2015, Oprah purchased a 10% stake in the Weight Watchers company and joined the board of Weight Watchers International. Earlier this month, Oprah appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and revealed she lost over 40 pounds on Weight Watchers.

“Everybody who has watched me over the years knows I’ve struggled with food. It’s the first time I’ve actually felt that I’ve gotten it under control,” she said on Colbert’s show.

The next day, the company’s stock price rose by over 20%. In fact, according to a CNBC news report, Sidoti analyst Frank Camma reports that stock is worth between $28 to $25 per share, thanks to Oprah’s marketing campaign.

In other Kraft news, Kraft-Heinz launched a petition for a national day off after the Super Bowl, named Smunday. The company started a Change.org petition and launched a website called, www.smunday.org. If 100,000 people sign the petition, Kraft Heinz will send a petition to Congress to turn the day after the Super Bowl a holiday. The company will also be giving all of their salaried employees the day off.

 

Tostitos Party Bag: Tostitos Announces New Partnership with MADD to Prevent Drunk Driving After the Superbowl

Jonathan Antonio
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0
Tostitos Party Bag: Tostitos Announces New Partnership with MADD to Prevent Drunk Driving After the Superbowl

The Superbowl is just days away and New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons’ fans across the country are gearing up for one of the biggest sporting events in the world. But, NFL fans are not the only ones preparing for the big game. Tostitos announced a new partnership with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.). The partnership includes limited-edition “Party Safe” bags. A new marketing strategy that hopes encourage people to “think twice before drinking and driving”.

Just in time for the Super Bowl, Tostitos will nationally release Tostitos bags that tell people if they are too drunk to drive. In addition, 25,000 football fans will be able to receive $10 off an Uber ride on Sunday, February 5th.

The “Party Safe” bag will feature an alcohol sensor. The sensor will remind people to not drink and drive. The bag’s alcohol sensor will turn green if alcohol is not detected. But, will turn red if it is. It will then reveal a code for a $10 off an Uber ride along with a “Don’t drink and drive” message.

Jennifer Saenz, Frito-Lay chief marketing officer said, their goal is to remove 25,000 drunk drivers from roads during the Super Bowl. “Whether watching the big game at a friend’s house or at a local bar, a safe ride home is just a few, easy taps away. By simply entering a participating Tostitos UPC code in the Uber app, fans nationwide can receive $10 off an Uber ride,” Saenz said.

Football fans can visit their local store to purchase a bag of Tostitos and participate in the new awareness campaign.

According to a 2014 study, the average blood alcohol content during Super Bowl Sunday is .091%, which is higher than the legal limit for driving while intoxicated. In fact, it is the second biggest drinking day behind New Year’s Eve.

The study continued by saying that Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Rhode Island have the highest percentage of drivers involved in fatal crashes with a blood alcohol of .08 or higher.

50% of College Admission Officers Report Checking Applicants’ Social Media, Study Finds

Jonathan Antonio
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2
50% of College Admission Officers Report Checking Applicants’ Social Media, Study Finds

50% of college admission officers report checking a student’s social media account, according to a new study.

New research points out as teenagers use social networks to share parts of their lives with their friends and family, college admission officers are now reviewing their social media profiles.

The Social U, a company that analyzes social media data, surveyed college admissions officers. The results of the study reveal that 79% of college admission officials consider “quality of character” an important component of the admissions process.

In addition, 50% report checking  applicants’ social media accounts. The study showed that 57% of admission officers involved in the study say they discovered profanity, evidence of prejudice, partying, drinking or drug abuse while reviewing applicants’ social media profiles. In fact, researchers report 69% of college admission officers report seeing a form of prejudice on applicants’ social media profile.

Researchers involved in the study report that while 50% of college admissions officers report looking at an applicant’s social media profile it does not mean that every applicant is getting their social internet history analyzed. However, Social U explains an applicant may not know that their social media accounts are being reviewed.

The Social U Founder, Julie Fisher, also pointed out the likelihood of an admissions officer to review a student’s social media profile increases when the applicant is applies for a scholarship or had a disciplinary record. “While students may never know if their social media profiles are being reviewed, it is wise to take steps now to make sure their social media accounts reflect their character and academic commitment,” Fisher said.

This news comes after teens report Snapchat as their favorite social network. A Piper Jaffray study found that 35% of teens report Snapchat as their favorite social network. While, Instagram came in second. Piper Jaffray surveyed 10,000 U.S. teens and found that 80% of teens check their Snapchat at least once per month.

Social networking companies are making it easier for people to broadcast facets of their lives to the public. Earlier this week, Instagram debuted Live Stories. Live Stories allow for Instagram users to go livestream what is going on in real time.

Facebook Continues The War Against Fake News With Trending News Update

Jonathan Antonio
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0
Facebook Continues The War Against Fake News With Trending News Update

Facebook updates their Trending news feature.

Facebook’s VP of Product Management, Will Cathcart, announced on Wednesday updates to their Trending news feature. Facebook reports the new trending topics will feature three new changes. A publisher headline below each topic name. An improved system lists what is currently trending. Also, everyone in the same area will now see the same trending topics.

Starting today, publisher headlines will provide more information about what is currently trending on Facebook. Facebook says this was the most requested feature since the company last updated their Trending feature.

“These are the same headlines appear when you hover over or click on a Trending topic, but people told us they wanted these headlines directly within Trending, too,” Cathcart explained.

Facebook says the headline will appear automatically based on several factors surrounding engagement of the news article, the publisher, and whether other news outlets are reporting on that story.

Facebook also announced they will be updating how they identify what is trending on the social network. Cathcart explained, previously, what was listed as Trending was linked to highly engaged stories on the social network surrounding on a single story.

Now, the new Trending feature will focus on what is popular surrounding a group of topics in order to capture a wider range of news and events.

Furthermore the Trending update will “help ensure that trending topics reflect real world events being covered by multiple news outlets,” Cathcart added.

Finally, Facebook announced the Trending feature will no longer be personalized and based around a user’s interest. Everyone in the same area will see the same topics. The company explains this is to make sure people do not miss out on important news that may not appear on their News Feed.

The changes will become effective immediately as the company says they are responding to Facebook user’s feedback in order to provide a “valuable Trending experience.”

Last summer, the social network reportedly fired 15 editors from their trending news team. The decision to fire writers came after a report from Gizmodo revealed how the Trending featured worked and allegations the feature suppressed conservative news reports.

Since then, the company moved away from using actual people choosing what is listed on the Trending section to an algorithm. Facebook explains “Topics are selected by an algorithm and are reviewed by a team to ensure they represent real-world events.”

Ultimately, this is another move by Facebook to combat fake news on the social network. The company has hired new staff, increased reporting efforts, and a new journalism initiative.

Can This New Treatment Cure Autism?

Brent Edward
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0
Can This New Treatment Cure Autism?

Researchers may have found a new way to treat Autism.

Arizona State University researchers are taking an out of the box approach to treating autism. Scientists are focusing on improving the type of bacteria found within the stomach by doing fecal microbial transplants.

In a small study of only 18 participants with autism disorders, subjects underwent a 10-week treatment program. The program included a bowel cleanse, antibiotics and daily fecal microbial transplants over the course of eight weeks.

Researchers report that the study showed long-term benefits, including an 80% improvement of gastrointestinal symptoms associated with autism disorders. In addition, Arizona State University researchers found a 20 to 25% autism-behavior improvement. For instance, scientists found an improvement in social skills and sleeping habits.

James Adams, ASU President’s Professor of materials science and engineering and one of the lead researchers praised the results of the study. “We look forward to continuing research on this treatment method with a larger, placebo-controlled trial in the future,” Adams said.

Arizona State University has been actively studying autism as it relates to gut bacterial. In 2013, ASU researchers analyzed the type of bacteria found in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and discovered a link between the type of gut bacteria and patients with autism. In order to test their results, researchers began feeding mice a beneficial type of bacteria that is known to affect mental health and noticed improvements.

What is Autism?

Around the world there are approximately 22 million people with autism. The disease most often occurs in boys with about 1.5% of children in the United States diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a range of conditions listed in the DSM-5. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder must exhibit several characteristics. These features include problems with social communication and social interaction. In addition, researchers explain individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder report having repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities. Currently, there is no cure for autism.

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