SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- A panel discussion on race at the Conservative Political Action Conference turned into a debate over slavery and segregation when an attendee from North Carolina said that "young, white, Southern males" are being disenfranchised by Republicans. Scott Terry, 30, rose from his seat to question the discussion leader, K. Carl Smith, from the Frederick Douglass Republicans, over the role of race in the Republican Party. Terry said that the growth of diversity in the…

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SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- For the past month, management at Carnival Cruise Line has been in a nearly constant state of damage control. In the past week alone, three of the cruise line's giant floating playgrounds have experienced embarrassing malfunctions that have at least inconvenienced, if not angered many passengers. Here's the latest status report: On Saturday, Carnival Elation had to be escorted by tug because of a problem in its steering system. Since Wednesday, Carnival Dream has experienced…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the humble son of a railwayman, kicked off his first full day as pontiff on Thursday with private prayers at a Rome basilica. The election of the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, who had not been considered a favourite in the run-up to this week's secret conclave, met with widespread surprise and expressions of hope for a groundswell of change for a Church dogged by scandal and internal conflict. It…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- "Everyone over the age of 69 should immediately face a firing squad." That's one example of what Yale researchers found on Facebook that led them to conclude the social media giant is a platform for negative age stereotyping. Yale researchers, led by Becca Levy, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, analyzed the site descriptions of publicly accessible Facebook groups that focused on older persons. The sites, with a combined 25,000 members,…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- AMANDA PALMER, an American musician, took the stage at a recent TED conference like a human statue. She stood on a plastic crate with a man's hat upturned in front of it, held a length of tulle across her arms and a flower in one hand, and paused. Ms Palmer, who is an advocate of crowdfunding and communicating with her fans online, then delivered an electric talk about patronage in the internet age. The…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- The life and work of science fiction and comedy writer Douglas Adamshas been marked by a Google doodle. Adams was probably best known for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life as a radio comedy before being published as a "trilogy" of five books, the first published in 1979. It was later turned into a Hollywood film. The doodle marks the anniversary of his birth. Adams was born on 11 March 1952 in Cambridge…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Computing the consumer surplus of the modern online economy is challenging. No researcher has yet worked out the consumer surplus for major online applications, such as Facebook and Google Search, at least not with actual data. Let’s review the challenges. Quantifying consumer surplus requires knowing the demand for a product. But Facebook and Google Search are “platform providers:” advertisers pay to access the platform of users the firms have assembled, but those users pay…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Sheryl Sandberg is not backing down. The Facebook chief operating officer's book "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" goes on sale Monday amid criticism that she's too successful and rich to lead a movement. But Sandberg says her focus remains on spurring action and progress among women. "The conversation, the debate is all good, because where we were before was stagnation — and stagnation is bad," she said in an interview…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- THIS week's leader on the Dow points to the vast gulf between the performance of the US stockmarket and economy on the one hand, and the Chinese economy and the stockmarket on the other. Although it is often assumed that the domestic economy is the main driver of the stockmarket, it usually isn't. A study by Bank of New York Mellon of the relationship between US GDP growth and the S&P 500 between 1970 and 2012…