Google Self-Driving Car Just Got Pulled Over By The Cops For Driving Too Slow

We would have loved to see the dash cam footage of this traffic cop's reaction as he pulls over a little white car on one of his rounds only to discover that... it has no driver! Maybe this officer forgot that Google's self-driving cars are being tested on the roads of Mountain View. Apparently, he pulled over the vehicle because it was going too slow. Google took the whole incident in stride. A photo of the enounter even showed up on the Internet. The Google Self-Driving Car Project shared the snapshot on a Google+ post, explaining that they capped the speed limit of their self-driving cars at only 25 mph for safety reasons. It was previously reported that the driverless cars were also being programmed to be safer around children. And although we're pretty sure that Google's parent company, Alphabet, can afford to cough up the fine for a traffic ticket, it turns out, no ticket was issued in this instance.

Migrant crisis: No EU-Africa grand bargain

Surely some of the first rules of wooing are: if you're going to do it, do it properly. Don't insult the object of your desire with promises you both know you can't keep. If you lack the cash for that magnificent bunch of fragrant roses, resist the temptation to brandish a fraying fake bouquet instead. There has to be a better alternative, and you're unlikely to get a positive response. And as for trying to bully or force someone into partnership with you - a little tip: it's unlikely to go down well. In this respect, the EU makes a lousy suitor. After reeling in panic and reacting in slow motion to the - to an extent predicted - dramatic surge this year in refugees and other migrants arriving, the EU is now trying a more comprehensive, strategic approach. It includes an attempt to persuade (woo/push) the migrants' countries of origin, or the transit countries, to: stop them leaving in the first place take them back, if they are deemed to be an economic migrant or failed asylum seeker. Migration to Europe explained in graphics Spanish method The EU also plans to send cash and other aid "over there", in the hope of dissuading more refugees and others from wanting to reach Europe, risking their lives.A rather similar formula worked for Spain several years ago when it was the main EU arrival point for people smugglers' boats. Bilateral deals with Morocco and Mauritania significantly reduced the arrival of "pateras", as Spaniards nicknamed those boats. But Spain came under fire from aid organisations (NGOs) at the time for trying to make African countries the "gatekeepers of Europe". The NGOs also raised concerns about possible human rights abuses against would-be migrants blocked at the border. They complained that the bilateral agreements, sorely lacking in transparency, smacked more of backroom deals. Similar concerns are now being directed at the EU as a whole. African scepticism This week, the EU hosted a summit in Malta with African nations, in the hope of coming to an "understanding" on slowing the flow of migrants to Europe. But, in addition to NGO concerns (such as the risk of groups linked to human rights abuses, like the Eritrean security forces, siphoning off money allocated to stop migrants), African leaders widely dismissed EU offers of cash and other aid, as far too little to tackle the root causes of migration. As flowers go, the extra aid package doesn't even make the gaudy plastic category. The EU offered €3.6bn ($3.9bn; £2.5bn) to improve life in a number of African countries. This in addition to the €20bn it already gives in aid to Africa. Somalia's distinctly unimpressed Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke put it to the BBC that Africa needed investment, not charity, to improve its economies. The same as the US, the EU or anywhere else in the world, he said. Persuasion fails In fact, EU countries couldn't even muster the pledged extra cash. It's a promise they seem unable or unwilling to keep. The European Commission says it will put in €1.8bn and wants the rest of the new fund made up by individual European nations. So far they've coughed up less than €80m. The EU was also unable to persuade/charm - some say bully - African countries into automatically receiving deported migrants back. Instead, in the written summit conclusions, the EU was forced to emphasise "voluntary repatriations". That prompted obvious questions about the bloc's declared aim of "speeding up the return" of economic migrants and other failed asylum seekers - a key part of its plan to tackle the migrant crisis. In short: the summit was not a resounding success. And a number of European newspapers were critical of the EU even trying to make a deal. Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung says the EU's offer of money to reduce the refugee numbers from Africa could open the EU to accusations of "showing its real values by co-operating with unjust regimes". Turkey's strong hand Similar objections are raised when it comes to EU attempts to strike a deal with Turkey - now the main departure point for refugees and other migrants crossing to Europe. EU leaders are planning a Turkey summit before the end of the year, but - as German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pointed out - "Ankara holds the cards". And diplomats worry that Ankara will demand an extravagant bouquet in terms of money and political concessions - such as lifting visa restrictions, and accelerating Turkey's EU membership bid - in exchange for help on migration. And again, critics challenge the EU for courting Turkey at all - a country with an imperious president and dismal human rights record. Border fences There are also those who say the EU's focus is far too fixed on creating "Fortress Europe", on keeping people out and not on introducing legal ways for them to come to over. Because come they will. The European Commission expects about three million refugees and other migrants to arrive in Europe by 2017. Clearly, whatever the EU does during this crisis, it will come under fire from some quarter or another. All too often, it comes up against itself - a behemoth of 28 nations, struggling to work together. Even the quota system - accepted (reluctantly) by most EU countries - to share out more equally the asylum seekers in Europe is an unmitigated flop so far. Agreed number of people to be relocated: 160,000. People moved to date: 147. Cross-border co-operation is disintegrating as barbed wire goes up and borders slam shut across Europe: in Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Norway… Even Germany is toughening border regulations. In stark contrast to the warm welcome given to hundreds or thousands earlier this autumn, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's hugely popular finance minister, has begun to mutter darkly about a migrant "avalanche" engulfing his country. There's little evidence of the EU - more of each country for itself. That prompted the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to warn that Schengen, the EU agreement allowing passport-free travel across much of Europe, risks collapse. Yet it is one of the EU's proudest achievements. You could argue Schengen has already wilted and died.

Responding to Climate Change

The first rule in managing any crisis is: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In order to manage climate change, we have to reduce its primary cause, the greenhouse gas emissions that are making the problem worse by the day. Mr. Koonin correctly asserts that adaptation to our new climate reality is critically important. However, it’s not enough, not nearly enough. There’s no plausible scenario whereby we can adapt our way out of huge disruption to our way of life. We must continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, too. Impacts from climate change are so broad and complex that all of our policy and technology ingenuity must be brought to bear. Any agreement from the Paris talks is another step, but it is certainly not the end. Continued foot-dragging and obstruction on reduction efforts will further endanger our way of life. We have to continue, and accelerate, reduction of greenhouse gases.

Apple is Shutting Down Beats Music

When Apple AAPL -2.90% buys a company, chances are, the acquisition (or the employees) will be swallowed up, never to be seen again. Apple announced on Thursday that it would shut down Beats Music, a move that comes less than six months after the premiere of Apple Music. All Beats Music subscriptions will be canceled on Nov. 30, but those who move to Apple Music will quickly discover that the $10-a-month streaming alternative incorporates many of Beats’ features. While the death of Beats Music (Beats’ consumer electronics business will live on) may upset some users, it’s perhaps no surprise. In fact, one could argue that it’s surprising that it took Apple this long to shutter the service. Apple bought Beats last year for $3 billion in large part for the technology behind its streaming-music service. Unlike so many recent acquisitions, Apple let Beats Music live on instead of its more typical strategy of immediately shutting down acquisitions after incorporating their technology into its own products. Since 2013, Apple has made nearly three dozen mostly small acquisitions or acquihires, a tactic in which it will acquire a company’s employees but not the firm itself. It usually keeps quiet about them, although Beats is an exception to that rule because of its size. Usually, Apple will neither confirm nor deny that it has made an acquisition or acquihire, saying only that it will, from time to time buy startups. While its canned statement does little to satisfy those who want more details, nearly all of the companies that have been bought by Apple have confirmed it through their LinkedIn pages or on their own websites. Apple declined comment for this article. In April, Apple acquired a camera company named Linx. Like the others Fortune analyzed, neither Apple nor the target company would talk about the iPhone maker’s intentions for it. However, Linx has since gone dark, its website scrubbed from the Internet, and some of its employees are now working at Apple. In fact, Linx co-founder and CEO Ziv Attar is now heading up camera algorithms at Apple, according to his LinkedIn page. Last year, Apple acquired Swell, an audio-streaming service that catered to music and podcast listeners. Again, Apple wouldn’t say why it bought the company, but the service was promptly shut down. The list of companies Apple acquired and subsequently shut down goes on: book-recommendation service BookLamp was nixed in June 2014, followed by digital magazine platform Prss in Sept. Dryft, a keyboard app, went dark in 2014. Even PrimeSense, a 3D sensing company, has stopped selling its products to other companies and is now living inside the growing Apple. In 2012, Apple made an important acquisition by buying AuthenTec, a company that made biometric technology that ultimately became the backbone of its Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Immediately after the company was under Apple’s control, Android smartphone makers had to look elsewhere for biometric technology. It was an issue that put Android vendors on their heels, former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said in an interview earlier this year. “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier,” Woodside told The Telegraph about the Nexus 6, which was originally meant to come equipped with a fingerprint sensor using AuthenTec technology. “So the second-best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry.” Of course, Apple is not the only tech company to acquire smaller firms and promptly shut them down. Google GOOG -1.95% , Facebook FB -3.72% , and other prominent technology companies will sometimes make similar moves. However, an analysis of their recent acquisitions—especially those of Facebook, which include image-sharing app Instagram and chatting app WhatsApp—show that they’re not as consistent as Apple at shuttering companies quickly after they acquire them. For example, a video-editing company Google acquired this week, Fly Labs, is still around. Better yet, it’s now making its apps available for free for a period of three months before Google finally takes them down. Experts say Apple’s acquisition strategy is based in part on its desire to cut off potential competitors from accessing technologies it deems important. Moreover, Apple isn’t interested in letting a service continue on and potentially distract it from improving its own services like Apple Maps, Apple Music, or Apple TV, they say. “Apple usually makes technology acquisitions that enhance their existing or future offering,” says Trip Chowdhry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research. Chowdhry added that Apple’s acquisition of database company FoundationDB in March was “shut down to launch the product with Apple tvOS.” Beats Music’s shutdown, he says, is all about improving Apple Music. It’s also believed that the FoundationDB acquisition was used to improve the company’s handling of data across its many products, including Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and the Mac. But perhaps there is more to Apple’s acquisitions than meets the eye. While the company clearly has no issue taking services down to improve its own, one could argue that Apple’s acquisition targets also benefit. They are, after all, making some cash from their inventions and incorporating their technologies into Apple’s services. They get more reach than they ever would have as independent companies. So, while Apple’s acquisition playbook may seem all about the company and its users, entrepreneurs don’t seem to lose here, either. Apple may protect its business with acquisitions and it may bring startups under its roof, but eventually, those technologies find their way into the company’s products. And hopefully, they benefit more people than they otherwise would.

Brands Finding Social Ads as Effective as Traditional Advertising

Social advertising is growing on nearly every platform — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and more — but the biggest knock against paid social has been proving effectiveness. It appears the tide is changing. According to a recent study by IZEA, 52 percent of companies surveyed have a sponsored social budget and they find social ads to be in the top three most effective marketing investments they’ve made. Ted Murphy, chairman and CEO at IZEA, commented on the study in a press release: For the second year in a row, Marketers are seeing the value in leveraging Content Creators to reach their target audiences in authentic and original ways. We have created the Creator economy, a place where content has real power. Sponsored content has the ability to dramatically change the trajectory of conversations and sentiment for and about brands; we have the power to send products flying off of shelves. Interestingly enough, many consumers surveyed also said that social ads were as effective as TV ads. Just how prevalent are social ads? From the IZEA study: Over one in three adult online users age 18 to 70 have seen a Sponsored Social message in the past year. Overall, consumers estimate they see a total of 86 Sponsored Social messages per month across all platforms — or about three per day. Overall, about two in five consumers are seeing more Sponsored Social messages than one year ago, with highest penetration sites driving the greatest increase. Marketers are feeling a lot better about social ads than in the past. More than half (54 percent) of marketers surveyed feel more positive about paid social than they did a year ago. It definitely shows in the budgets of those polled — 25 percent had an annual budget greater than $500,000; 5 percent of brands surveyed said their social ad budget is greater than $5 million. Marketers also reward content creators, as they are willing to pay 2.1x premium for sponsored video and blog posts over other forms of social advertising. Sponsored social is a source of income for 9 of 10 creators, who say it accounts for 55 percent of their income. Readers: Have you noticed more ads on social channels in the past year?

The UK’s top storytelling brands 2015

Technology brands have overtaken FMCG favourites, such as Cadbury and Walkers, as those rated best for storytelling, new research shows. Although Apple retains the top spot in the 2015 Brand Storytelling report by marketing agency Aesop, fellow tech names Xbox (fifth), Samsung (seventh), PlayStation (eighth), Google (ninth) and Facebook (10th) also break into the top 10 for the first time. The report, now in its third year, surveyed 2,800 UK adults about their views on 154 major brands. Respondents rated all of the brands they were familiar with against nine criteria, including the brands they feel have “a clear sense of purpose and vision”, those that “produce content you want to share or talk about” and those where “you are intrigued to see what they will do next”. Aesop took an average of the scores across all the criteria to create the ranking of the top storytelling brands. The rise of technology brands has come at the expense of the food and drink category. Cadbury falls from second place in 2014 to 27th, McDonald’s is down from third to 43rd, Walkers from fifth to 29th and Coca-Cola from sixth to 39th. Ed Woodcock, director of narrative at Aesop, suggests that technology brands are performing strongly because they are seen as “platforms for other people’s stories”. Increased investment in advertising by these brands, such as Facebook’s ongoing TV campaign, may also have boosted their storytelling credentials in the public’s eyes. Meanwhile, seasoned advertisers such as McDonald’s have slid down the ranking at a time when they are struggling to create growth within their own businesses. “Tech brands are now with us day in, day out,” notes Woodcock. “They are in our hands, taking up a lot of mental space in the way that FMCG brands used to. Now the brands that we’re closest to are the ones on our screens.” Supermarket brands are also big fallers in this year’s report, with no UK supermarket making it into the top 20 for the first time. Marks & Spencer is the top-performing grocer, coming in at 22nd, while Morrisons sees the biggest fall as it drops out of the top 100 from 47th place last year to 111th. Woodcock suggests that Morrisons has struggled to tell a coherent story owing to its internal challenges this year, which include a management overhaul and a 52% slide in profits in March. Only 13% of respondents cite the retailer as a brand they ‘feel an emotional connection with’, while just 15% say it produces content that is ‘memorable’. Similarly, the UK’s biggest supermarket chain Tesco has seen a dramatic fall in its storytelling ranking from 27th in 2014 to 51st this year. Tesco announced its biggest ever loss in April and has also undergone significant internal restructuring over the past year, prompting it to put brand storytelling efforts on hold. Last month, it launched its first TV advertising campaign with new agency BBH, in which it is seeking to breathe new life into its ‘Every little helps’ strapline. Discount retailer Lidl outperforms all of the ‘big four’ supermarkets, coming in 29th. The retailer launched its widely praised #Lidlsurprises campaign by agency TBWA last year and scores strongly in the report (33%) for ‘vision and purpose’. “I don’t think Tesco knows what it is about anymore,” says Woodcock. “I know it’s sorting out its strategy, but is it about value, food, or breadth of offer? It used to be very clear about what ‘Every little helps’ means, but I’m not quite sure what that stands for in this day and age.” Purposeful storytelling Certain business categories appear better disposed to storytelling than others. The charity sector, for example, is the best performing category overall for the second year running, with each of the charities included in the sample featuring in the top 20. Macmillan Cancer Support is second, while Cancer Research UK is sixth, followed by the British Heart Foundation (12th) and Oxfam (16th). Although charities lend themselves to emotional, purposeful storytelling, other categories such as financial services and utilities struggle to tell stories that the public cares about. Npower is the lowest ranked brand at 154th, while British Gas makes it to only 143rd place. By contrast, SSE performs relatively strongly, coming in 89th. Woodcock attributes this to the success of its advertising this year, in which a CGI orangutan is seen wandering around a city environment marvelling at the things powered by electricity. By focusing on creativity, emotional resonance and purpose in this way, brands from all sectors can strike a chord with the public, he claims. “SSE hasn’t shied away from its central purpose – providing energy,” says Woodcock. “With many utility brands it’s the last thing they talk about. When a brand talks about what it’s here to do, it helps people to understand its purpose in their lives.”

US air strike targets 'Jihadi John' in Syria

A US strike on Syria that targeted British militant "Jihadi John" was "an act of self defence", Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday while acknowledging his death was "not yet certain". Mohammed EmwaziCameron said the operation against Mohammed Emwazi, who appears in a string of graphic videos showing the execution of Western hostages, was a combined British-US effort. "We cannot yet be certain if the strike was successful," Cameron said in a statement delivered outside his Downing Street office. If it was confirmed, it would be "a strike at the heart of Isil," he said, using an alternative term for the Islamic State militant (IS) group. But analysts said the impact of his death would likely be symbolic rather than tactical for the jihadist group which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria and is known for perpetrating widespread atrocities. The Pentagon said Thursday's air strike hit Raqa, the group's de facto capital in war-torn Syria. "Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages," the Pentagon said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said four people were killed in a strike in Raqa late on Thursday. "The car was hit in the centre of town, near the municipality building," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, quoting sources who said one of the victims was a "senior British member of the group". - Executioner with an accent - Emwazi, a London computer programmer, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed. Dubbed "Jihadi John" by British and US media, he first appeared in a video in August 2014 showing the beheading of Foley, a 40-year-old American freelance journalist who was captured in Syria in November 2012. Foley is seen kneeling on the ground, dressed in an orange outfit resembling those worn by prisoners held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Emwazi is dressed entirely in black and wears a mask. Foley's mother Diane told ABC News that if Emwazi's death were confirmed, it would be "small solace" to his family. "Jihadi John" was six years old when his family moved to London. He grew up in North Kensington, a leafy middle-class area where a network of Islamist extremists was uncovered in recent years. As a child he reportedly was a fan of Manchester United football club and the band S Club 7 who went on to study information technology at the University of Westminster. Court papers published by British media connected Emwazi to a network of extremists known as "The London Boys" that were originally trained by the Shebab, Al-Qaeda's East Africa affiliate.