Unlike Most Millennials, Norway's Are Rich Slashdotby BeauHD on money at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at July 15, 2018, 10:34 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Best known for its Viking history, snow sports and jaw-dropping fjords, Norway is making a new name for itself as the only major economy in Europe where young people are getting markedly richer. People in their early thirties in Norway have an average annual disposable household income of around 460,000 kroner (around $56,200). Young Norwegians have enjoyed a 13% rise in disposable household income in real terms compared to Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1980) when they were the same age. These startling figures come from the largest comparative wealth data set in the world, the Luxembourg Income Database, and were analyzed in a recent report on generational incomes for the UK Think Tank The Resolution Foundation. Compare this with young people in other strong economies: U.S. millennials have experienced a 5% dip, in Germany it's a 9% drop. For those living in southern Europe (the southern Eurozone suffered the brunt of the global economic crisis in 2008), disposable incomes have plunged by as much as 30%. Norway's youth unemployment rate (among 15- to 29-year-olds) is also relatively low at 9.4% compared to an OECD average of 13.9%. According to the BBC, this can be attributed to the country's rapid economic growth, thanks largely to their huge oil and gas sectors. "After seeing the biggest increase in average earnings of any large high-income economy between 1980 and 2013, it now leads multiple global rankings for wealth and wellbeing."

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What should we expect from the Trump-Putin? AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 10:30 pm)

Accusations of election tampering, the war in Syria, Ukraine and arms control are some of the issues at stake.
[no title] Scripting News(cached at July 15, 2018, 10:03 pm)

Buster Keaton's philosophy: "I always want the audience to out-guess me, and then I double-cross them."
Pakistan: Death toll rises to 149 in Mastung attack AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 10:00 pm)

At least 149 now reported killed in Friday's suicide attack at a political rally in Balochistan province.
'Like twins': Gaza mourns teenage boys killed in Israeli air raid AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 10:00 pm)

An Israeli air strike killed Luay Kaheel, 16 and Amir al-Nimra, 15, while they were playing on a rooftop of a building.
Fans in Paris, Zagreb revel in thrilling World Cup final AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 10:00 pm)

While France fans went home the happiest, crowd gathered in Croatia's capital lauded the team's great show in Moscow.
Facebook Makes Moves On Instagram's Users Slashdotby BeauHD on facebook at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at July 15, 2018, 9:35 pm)

Facebook is trying to get Instagram users to visit its site more often by further entwining the two services. According to Instagram user Spencer Chen, the Instagram app prompted him to check out a friend's new photo on Facebook. "Chen grabbed a screenshot and posted the notification on the internet, calling it a cry for attention by the older social network," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Instagram says what Chen experienced was a product test with a small contingent of users. Still, Instagram feeds Facebook in other ways. Last year, Facebook launched its own version of an Instagram tool called Stories, which lets people post videos that disappear within 24 hours. (The feature was initially copied from Snap Inc., a competitor.) Greenfield noticed the Facebook version became more popular once it became possible for Instagram users to post their stories in both places with the click of a button. Instagram Stories' 400 million users present a significant opportunity for Facebook's advertising business, according to Ken Sena, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. Instagram is on track to provide Facebook with $20 billion in revenue by 2020, about a quarter of Facebook's total, he wrote to investors. And cross-posting could help Facebook's video ambitions.

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UN: All-out war narrowly avoided after Israel-Hamas ceasefire AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 9:00 pm)

Egyptian-brokered ceasefire appears to be holding after two Palestinians killed in the latest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Tesla Will Be First Automaker To Lose the Federal Tax Credit For Electric Cars Slashdotby BeauHD on transportation at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at July 15, 2018, 8:35 pm)

Tesla has confirmed to Jalopnik that its 200,000th vehicle has been delivered this month, meaning the full $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars will slowly be phased out. Tesla is the first automaker to reach this mark. "GM is close, too, while Nissan, Ford, and others still have a ways to go," notes The Verge. From the report: Tesla customers who take delivery of their cars -- regardless of whether it's a Model S, X, or 3 -- between now and December 31st, 2018, will still be eligible for the full $7,500 credit from the IRS. Customers who take delivery of their cars between January 1st and June 30th, 2019, will only be eligible for a $3,750 credit. And customers who take delivery of their cars between July 1st and December 31st, 2019, will be offered just $1,875. After that, the incentive is dead. Put in place early on in the Obama administration, the tax credit was seen as a tool that could be used to encourage customers to buy plug-in electric or hybrid vehicles. This would simultaneously help advance the president's climate and clean energy goals while offering consumers a bit of a break while the cost of battery technology slowly came down. It was also meant to encourage manufacturers to push for greater advancements in that technology. The dollar amount was technically flexible; it was essentially a $2,500 credit with room to increase up to $7,500 depending on the battery capacity of the car being sold. The better the battery in a company's car, the better the rebate their buyers would get.

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Donald Trump calls European Union a 'foe' AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 8:00 pm)

US president says EU has 'taken advantage of us on trade', comments European Council President Tusk calls 'fake news'.
How Minecraft Is Helping Kids Fall In Love With Books Slashdotby BeauHD on books at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at July 15, 2018, 7:34 pm)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Robert Louis Stevenson's 1881 classic Treasure Island tells of Jim Hawkins's adventures on board the Hispaniola, as he and his crew -- along with double-crossing pirate Long John Silver -- set out to find Captain Flint's missing treasure on Skeleton Island. Now, more than a century later, children can try and find it themselves, with the bays and mountains of Stevenson's fictional island given a blocky remodeling in Minecraft, as part of a new project aimed at bringing reluctant readers to literary classics. From Spyglass Hill to Ben Gunn's cave, children can explore every nook and cranny of Skeleton Island as part of Litcraft, a new partnership between Lancaster University and Microsoft, which bought the game for $2.5 billion in 2015 and which is now played by 74 million people each month. The Litcraft platform uses Minecraft to create accurate scale models of fictional islands: Treasure Island is the first, with Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom just completed and many others planned. [...] The project, which is featured on Microsoft's Minecraft.edu website, is currently being presented to school teachers and librarians across the UK. There has been "an enthusiastic response" to the trials under way in local schools, with plans to roll Litcraft out to libraries in Lancashire and Leeds from October 2018.

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France beat Croatia to win World Cup 2018 AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 7:30 pm)

France seal second World Cup triumph with a convincing 4-2 win over Croatia in a thrilling final.
The New MacBook Pro Features 'Fastest SSD Ever' In a Laptop Slashdotby BeauHD on storage at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at July 15, 2018, 6:34 pm)

Last week, Apple refreshed the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, bringing newer Intel processors and quieter keyboards. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro also just so happens to feature the fastest SSD ever in a laptop, according to benchmarks from Laptop Mag. Mac Rumors summarizes the findings: The site's tests were performed on the $2,499 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar equipped with a 2.7GHz quad-core 8th-generation Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, Intel Iris Plus 655, and a 512GB SSD. A file copy test of the SSD in the new MacBook Pro, which Apple says supports sequential read speeds of up to 3.2GB/s and sequential write speeds up to 2.2GB/s, led Laptop Mag to declare the SSD in the MacBook Pro "the fastest ever" in a laptop. Higher capacity SSDs may see even faster speeds on disk speeds tests. A BlackMagic Disk Speed test was also conducted, resulting in an average write speed of 2,682 MB/s. On a Geekbench 4 CPU benchmark, the 13-inch MacBook Pro earned a score of 18,055 on the multi-core test, outperforming 13-inch machines from companies like Dell, HP, Asus, and Microsoft. That score beats out all 2017 MacBook Pro models and is faster than some iMac configurations. 15-inch MacBook Pro models with 6-core 8th-generation Intel chips will show even more impressive speeds. With that said, the 13-inch MacBook Pro didn't quite measure up to other machines when it came to GPU performance. "The 13-inch 2018 MacBook Pro uses Intel's Iris Plus Graphics 655 with 128MB of embedded DRAM and was unable to compete in a Dirt 3 graphics test, getting only 38.8 frames per second," reports Mac Rumors. "All Windows-based machines tested offered much better performance."

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Longleat prepares for arrival vulnerable Southern Koalas BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition(cached at July 15, 2018, 6:30 pm)

It's hoped a breeding programme will help maintain numbers of the vulnerable species.
Syria: Government troops widen offensive near Quneitra AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at July 15, 2018, 6:30 pm)

Military operation comes hours after 15 buses arrived to take about 500 fighters to the opposition-controlled north.