"Dozens of U.S. mutual funds and big banks, which invest on behalf of millions of Americans, own portions of the debt. Venezuela owes over $60 billion to bondholders. The country's central bank has only $9.6 billion left."
"In 2016, Alwaleed bin Talal, an influential Saudi prince called for an 'urgent' end to the ban, saying it is a matter not just of rights but economic necessity. He also detailed the 'economic costs' of women having to rely on private drivers or taxis, since public transit is not a viable alternative in the kingdom. Using foreign drivers drains billions of dollars from the Saudi economy, Alwaleed said. He calculated that families spend an average of $1,000 a month on a driver, money that otherwise could help household income at a time when many are making do with less."
"Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy 'smart' cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior. The program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology could lead to secret 'profiling' and misuse of data."
"Appthority has discovered a significant data exposure vulnerability we’ve named Eavesdropper that affects almost 700 apps in enterprise environments. The vulnerability is caused by including hard coded credentials in mobile applications that are using the Twilio Rest API or SDK. By hard coding their credentials, the developers have effectively given global access to all metadata stored in their Twilio accounts, including text/SMS messages, call metadata, and voice recordings."
"Pennsylvania is in the midst of a budget crisis. Seeing New Jersey success is raising revenue from Internet gambling, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives suggested that to avoid a tax increase, they would follow suit. This week, after years of haggling, Gov. Tom Wolf signed a measure to make Pennsylvania the fourth state to legalize online gaming – a move that is projected to bring in $426.3 million in tax revenue from 2017 to 2022. Michigan is also considering making a move, and guess who the chief opponent is?"
"The world’s biggest businesses, heads of state and global figures in politics, entertainment and sport who have sheltered their wealth in secretive tax havens are being revealed this week in a major new investigation into Britain’s offshore empires. The material, which has come from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens, was obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with partners including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times."
"Republican tax-writers have decided to shift the tax code’s inflation index from the Consumer Price Index, or CPI, to something known as chained CPI, which is a slower-growing method of calculating cost-of-living increases. Using the lower rate of inflation to calculate future tax rates means taxpayers will more quickly fall into higher tax brackets, meaning they will pay more in taxes than if Republicans stuck with the traditional measuring stick. It works out to taxpayers paying $128 billion more to Uncle Sam than they would otherwise over the next decade, and $500 billion more in the subsequent decade."
"The new House GOP tax plan has a small provision that adds a 6% surcharge for wealthier individuals, increasing their tax burden."
"Every single major world central bank is either raising rates, cutting QE, or both."
"Many Americans would cheer federal muzzling. Almost half of millennials supported restricting freedom of speech on social media, according to a recent survey. Congressional threats have probably already done long-term damage to corporate spines. It would be naive to expect Facebook, Twitter, or other social media companies to take heroic stands in favor of free speech. But it would be even more naive to expect anything good to result from permitting politicians to decimate freedom in the name of democracy."