Arye ben-Shaoul

About Arye ben-Shaoul

Posts by Arye ben-Shaoul ✔:

2020-05-31

COVID-19 has Canada’s banks worried about sickly loans, but they’re still raking in the cash

Arye ben-Shaoul Business & Economics, Canada 0

Article Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bank-earnings-analysis-1.5589827

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

Canada’s 5 biggest banks took in nearly $5B in profit last quarter, but set aside twice that for bad loans If Canada’s big banks are the canary in the coal mine for the economy as a whole, then there was some good news this week, and some less good news. While the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on Canadian society, Canada’s five biggest lenders — Royal Bank, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, CIBC and TD — remained profitable even as they set aside billions of dollars to offset possible losses from loans that might go bad in the coming months.

2020-05-31

Chinese Cheating Rampant In US College Applications, And In Classrooms

Arye ben-Shaoul Culture & Race, Education, International 0

Article Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/chinese-cheating-rampant-us-college-applications-and-classrooms

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

Fake transcripts and essays, falsified letters of recommendation and test scores, paid consultants, and fake passports and IDs. These are just some of the many methods that Chinese nationals have reportedly used to gain acceptance into U.S. colleges and universities.

2020-05-30

Does Finland show the way to universal basic income?

Arye ben-Shaoul Business & Economics, International, Opinion, Politics 0

Article Link: https://www.dw.com/en/does-finland-show-the-way-to-universal-basic-income/a-53595886

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

A ‘failed’ experiment? Yet Finland’s basic income experiment has not caused a huge surge in support for the idea, either in Finland or abroad. Initial reports branded the scheme a “flop.” While recent coverage of the long-term study, released earlier this month, has been more nuanced, much has focused on the minimal effect on employment prospects. The “flop” tag is something Minne Ylikanno, senior researcher at Finland’s Social Insurance Institution (Kela), which carried out the study, rejects. “I would say the experiment was a success,” she says. “No other country in any part of the world has implemented a national basic income based on a law.” “It’s fair to say that the result is that we can’t see a very big employment effect, that’s true. But the comment that it’s a failure, I would say that’s not fair.”

2020-05-30

Microsoft ‘to replace journalists with robots’

Arye ben-Shaoul Business & Economics, International, Media & Internet, Science & Technology 0

Article Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52860247

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

Microsoft is to replace dozens of contract journalists on its MSN website and use automated systems to select news stories, US and UK media report. The curating of stories from news organisations and selection of headlines and pictures for the MSN site is currently done by journalists. Artificial intelligence will perform these news production tasks, sources told the Seattle Times. Microsoft said it was part of an evaluation of its business. The US tech giant said in a statement: “Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic.”

2020-05-30

Trump says U.S. terminating relationship with WHO as rift with China grows

Arye ben-Shaoul Health & Living, International, Politics 0

Article Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-who-world-health-organization-hong-kong-1.5590389

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday he would withdraw funding from the World Health Organization, end Hong Kong’s special trade status and suspend visas of Chinese graduate students suspected of conducting research on behalf of their government. The new measures come as the rift between the U.S. and China continues to grow during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has been expressing anger at the World Health Organization for weeks over what he has portrayed as an inadequate response to the initial outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s Wuhan province late last year. The president said in a brief White House announcement that Chinese officials “ignored” their reporting obligations to the WHO and pressured the organization to mislead the public about an outbreak that has now killed more than 100,000 people in the United States.

2020-05-30

Weeds get a bad rap, but many are crucial to the ecosystem

Arye ben-Shaoul International, Nature & Environment 0

Article Link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-weeds-plants-1.5588808

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

Weed is a very subjective term. There is no scientific definition that says: this is a weed, this is not a weed. They’re basically plants that are in a place where people don’t want them. People consider dandelions to be a weed, but if you just change your mind about dandelions, and you don’t mind them on your lawn, then they’re no longer a weed. Certainly, scientists will sometimes talk about weedy species, which tend to be plants that reproduce very quickly and tend to produce a lot of seed, or they can spread by underground roots. Some people consider weeds to be things that are non-native, but that’s not always the case.

2020-05-28

Israel thwarted attack on water systems: cyber chief

Arye ben-Shaoul International, Politics, War & Terrorism 0

Article Link: https://www.dw.com/en/israel-thwarted-attack-on-water-systems-cyber-chief/a-53596796

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

Israel successfully thwarted a major cyber attack against its water systems last month, widely thought to have been the work of its nemesis Iran, Israel’s national cyber chief announced on Thursday. The assault was a “synchronized and organized” attempt at disrupting key national infrastructure, cyber chief Yigal Unna said in a video address to CyberechLive Asia, a digital international cyber conference. “If the bad guys had succeeded in their plot, we would now be facing, in the middle of the coronacrisis, very big damage to the civilian population and a lack of water and even worse than that,” he added. If Israel’s National Cyber Directorate had not detected the attack in real time, chemicals could have been mixed into the country’s water source in the wrong proportions, causing a “harmful and disastrous” outcome, Unna said.

2020-05-28

Pulling apart a £339 anti-5G USB stick

Arye ben-Shaoul Business & Economics, International, Science & Technology 0

Article Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52810220

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

A device costing more than £300 promises to protect your family from the supposed dangers of 5G, using ground-breaking quantum technology – but does it work? Of course not. The rollout of the new 5G mobile networks began in the UK only last summer and has not yet reached outside urban areas. Yet across the country there is already a cottage industry offering protection against the supposed negative health effects, even though they have been dismissed by regulators and mainstream scientists.

2020-05-28

At least 14 million people could go hungry in Latin America due to coronavirus: UN

Arye ben-Shaoul Business & Economics, Health & Living, International 0

Article Link: https://globalnews.ca/news/6995993/coronavirus-latin-america-poverty-un/

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

The U.N. World Food Program is warning that upward of at least 14 million people could go hungry in Latin America as the coronavirus pandemic rages on, shuttering people in their homes, drying up work and crippling the economy. New projections released late Wednesday estimate a startling increase: Whereas 3.4 million experienced severe food insecurity in 2019, that number could more than quadruple this year in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

2020-05-28

Trump’s executive order could expose social media giants to more lawsuits: sources

Arye ben-Shaoul International, Media & Internet, Politics 0

Article Link: https://globalnews.ca/news/6996056/trump-twitter-executive-order/

Discussion posted by: Arye ben-Shaoul

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to order a review of a law that has long protected Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google from being responsible for the material posted by their users, according to a draft executive order and a source familiar with the situation. News of the order comes after Trump threatened to shut down websites he accused of stifling conservative voices following a dispute with Twitter after the company decided to tag Trump’s tweets about unsubstantiated claims of fraud in mail-in voting with a warning prompting readers to fact-check the posts.

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