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Investing in small firms is risky business. But with the right strategy – and a bit of luck – rewards can be unlimited. British business investors can now benefit from government schemes which focus on tax breaks to help plough funding into unlisted firms.
Read more: Finance, Crowdfunding, Business, Investment, Startups, UK Tech, UK Tech News
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s government says Latin America’s largest economy has shrunk even more than expected.
The government statistics bureau said Tuesday the gross domestic product fell by 1.7 percent in the third quarter compared with the previous three months.
More worrisome is the cumulative number for 2015, which showed a drop of 3.2 percent, the worst result since 1996.
Families cut spending by 4.5 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
A global plunge in commodity prices continues to hurt Brazil, with the agriculture sector generating 2.4 percent less income than in the previous three months. A massive corruption scandal involving politicians and the state-run oil company has ensnared the biggest names in construction in the country and halted many projects.
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Tiger Global Management just raised $2.5 billion for a new venture capital fund, according to a filing.
This is Tiger Global’s tenth venture capital fund, and it will be called Tiger Global Private Investment Partners X, L.P.
Lee Fixel, the head of Tiger Global’s private equity and venture capital investing, will oversee the fund.
Tiger Global’s founder Chase Coleman wrote in a letter earlier this year that Fixel has spearheaded many of the fund’s “most important and successful investments.”
Fixel, who joined the fund in 2006, has led investments in privately-held companies, including Facebook, Linkedin, Warby Parker, Eventbrite, Makemytrip, Flipkart, Netshoes, Square, MercadoLibre, Trendyol, Jobs.ch and CatchoftheDay.
Tiger Global declined to comment.
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NOW WATCH: How a successful investment banker used insider information to bankroll his mistress and child
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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A woman in Portland, Maine, is starting a campaign to encourage people to tape free coats to light poles to help the needy this winter.
Gabby Kaper taped several jackets with notes on them in downtown Portland. WCSH-TV (http://on.wcsh6.com/1Xv0tKO ) reports that the notes read: “I am not lost! Please take me if you need me!”
Kaper says she got the jackets for a dollar each at Goodwill. She is using social media to ask people to do the same. She says $5 spent on jackets is enough to “make five people less freezing.”
Kaper says people are already starting to take the jackets and to wear them.
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Information from: WCSH-TV, http://www.wcsh6.com
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Ash Carter says the U.S. is expanding the U.S. special operations force in Iraq to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces fight Islamic State militants.
Carter told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that over time, these special operators will be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture IS leaders. Carter says that will improve intelligence and generate more targets. He did not offer troop numbers, but said it was being done in cooperation with the Iraqi government.
The defense secretary says the special operators will be focused on defending Iraq’s borders and building the capacity of the Iraqi government forces.
He says the forces also will be in a position to conduct unilateral operations into Syria.
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The Golden State Warriors improved to 19-0 Monday night in a narrow win over the Utah Jazz.
The Warriors are already off to the hottest start in NBA history, and they’re the undisputed best team in basketball.
In what’s been a surprisingly lopsided start to the NBA season, it’s fair to wonder who can actually challenge the Warriors.
Golden State will lose at some point, but there’s a select few teams that seem capable of beating them four times in seven games. With a young, improving roster locked in for several years, it doesn’t look like the Warriors are going anywhere.
This has some teams considering a ridiculous route to avoid them. As ESPN’s Zach Lowe sneaks into his Tuesday column, some fringe teams might just try to wait out the Warriors’ run. Lowe writes about young, building teams, saying (emphasis added):
“Everyone needs to wait out the Warriors, anyway. (Seriously: waiting out Golden State’s run of dominance is already a topic of conversation among team executives).”
Lowe never elaborates on the details of what “waiting out” entails, but the basic idea is the same: teams don’t think they can beat Golden State right now, so they might as well slow their growth until the Warriors weaken.
For some teams, that could mean tanking in hopes of getting more draft picks and young players; for playoff contenders, it may mean avoiding big trades or signings, staying put, and waiting for a better shot to make a move for the top.
Unfortunately, for those teams, if this truly is a strategy, the Warriors’ dominance is going to last a long time. The Stephen Curry-Klay Thompson-Draymond Green triumvirate is locked in until 2017, when Curry becomes a free agent. Curry’s current $11 million salary is a bargain, but come 2017, he’s going to get his deserved pay raise. The Warriors still have Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala, and Shaun Livingston locked into deals until 2017, as well, so at a minimum, the Warriors have two more years (including this current season) with this core.
When 2017 hits, despite the giant salary cap inflation, the Warriors will have to make some choices. Curry, Thompson, and Green will almost surely stay together, but unless Curry or any other free agent signings are willing to take a discount, the Warriors will have to sacrifice some of that depth to have three All-Star players on the same roster.
It’s not impossible, however. The San Antonio Spurs have generated a prolonged championship run by convincing players to take discounts across the board. The Warriors could possibly do the same thing, particularly if they continue to dominate at their current rate.
So, if other NBA teams are truly willing to wait for the Warriors’ run to be over, they may be waiting awhile.
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NOW WATCH: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The biggest NBA Draft busts of all time
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are considering making it harder for government investigators to get copies of people’s old emails.
The change would close a loophole in a 30-year-old federal law that passed before online storage became so convenient and inexpensive. The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act gives the government access to emails older than 180 days once agents obtain a subpoena.
The government uses subpoenas to third parties like Google or Yahoo get people’s emails.
The new bill, taken up by the House Judiciary Committee, instead would require agents to get a search warrant, which generally requires probable cause that a crime has occurred. Exceptions in the bill would allow agents to obtain emails in terrorism investigations without any changes.
Google’s law enforcement director, Richard Salgado, told lawmakers in prepared testimony that provisions under the old law “do not reflect the reasonable expectations of privacy of users.” He also noted that the Justice Department has said there is no reason under privacy law for criminal investigators to treat old emails differently than newer emails.
Older emails were considered abandoned under the law passed in 1986, back when there was rarely enough storage space to hold emails older than six months.
The Securities and Exchange Commission opposes the new measure, saying as a civilian law enforcement agency it can’t obtain a criminal warrant.
The SEC’s enforcement director, Andrew Ceresney, said agents can’t reasonably expect the targets of their investigations to turn over emails or other messages that might implicate them in fraud schemes.
“Individuals who violate the law are often reluctant to produce to the government evidence of their own misconduct,” he said.
The Email Privacy Act was introduced by Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kansas.
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The holidays are here, which means it’s the best time of year to buy a new smartphone.
Here’s our ranking of the best phones you can buy.
Note: All prices below indicate how much the phones typically cost without a carrier contract. Prices may vary depending on the retailer.
The BlackBerry Passport may look strange, but a lot of BlackBerry fans seem to love it. It has a really nice physical keyboard, but the key feature is its unique square design.
Price: $549
If you were a BlackBerry fan back in the company’s heyday, you’re going to love the BlackBerry Classic. It looks similar to older BlackBerry models, but features a sharp touchscreen and an excellent physical keyboard.
Price: $379
If you must have a Windows phone, there’s only one device to consider: Microsoft’s Lumia 950. Although reviews were pretty bad, this phone does hold some promise for people who need Microsoft apps to do everything. It also has a really nice camera and can connect to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and let you run a lightweight version of Windows.
Price: $600
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Eight years since George W. Bush’s much-criticized No Child Left Behind law expired in 2007, Congress is finally poised to pass its replacement.
It’s called the Every Student Succeeds Act, and its departure from standardized testing could be just what American public education needs.
Members of Congress will issue their votes over the coming weeks, and President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law by the end of the year.
First introduced in 2001, No Child Left Behind required schools to issue standardized tests to all students at all grade levels in order for the schools to receive funding.
While its intentions of closing the achievement gap were good, the policy was mostly seen a failure.
As schools felt pressure to stand out and meet state test score requirements, they sent that pressure downward. Teachers began shaping their lesson plans according to what would be tested, rather than what students needed to learn.
As a result, the kids that got pushed forward weren’t always ready. They may have been moving through the system at a normal rate according to the tests, but in reality their education still lagged behind that of their peers, and now perhaps to an even greater degree.
The new law would work toward reversing the damage done by No Child Left Behind.
Among its changes:
Kids will still need to be tested in reading and math every year from third to eighth grade, and once again in high school, but the tests won’t look the same as under No Child Left Behind.
Under the new system, states will get to decide how to assess their students’ progress, not the federal government.
Washington won’t “mandate or incentivize states to adopt or maintain any particular set of standards,” a Senate report on the new law reads. “States will be free to decide what academic standards they will maintain in their states.”
Though tests will still be heavily weighted in the assessment of schools, states will also look at the kind of learning climate their schools create, how engaged the teachers are, how safe the school is, what kind of access kids have to advanced classes, and whether they succeed in those classes.
Each year, states will be required to create solutions to help the bottom 5% of schools in terms of test performance and those schools that graduate fewer than two-third of the student body. It is up to the states to determine the course of action if a school chronically underperforms.
As part of the new policy, 7% of the $500 million set aside by the federal government to help students in poverty can be used toward turning around failing schools. That 7% is up from 4% under No Child Left Behind.
Teacher evaluations will be conducted entirely at the state level, not federally.
The Every Student Succeeds Act is the kind of education system that experts have wanted for decades.
Earlier this year, veteran educator and beloved TED speaker Ken Robinson told Tech Insider that the best thing schools can do for their students is judge them on an individual level. Standardized tests kill kids’ spirit because they send the message that numbers matter more than critical thinking, creativity, or smarts.
While standardized tests are “very powerful measures,” Robinson says that “they’re often being applied in ways that harm the engagement and culture of schools. I mean, if you look at America, they haven’t worked at all.”
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NOW WATCH: A bunch of teens used Skype to meet and learn from kids from all over the world
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Netflix lets multiple people use an account at the same time, and this feature is great when it allows you to mooch off a friend’s account without inconveniencing them.
But one problem with this policy is that it has inadvertently created a black market for “access” to stolen Netflix accounts.
A recent report by McAfee Labs revealed you can buy access to Netflix accounts in “Dark Web” marketplaces, which can only be accessed using a special internet browser called TOR that hides your IP address.
Hackers in these marketplaces are selling lifetime access to Netflix accounts for as little as $0.50. While some of these accounts are likely ones purchased with stolen credit card information, others used hacked login information, Raj Samani, the CTO of Intel Security, told Tech Insider.
And sometimes hackers don’t even sell the stolen accounts, but rather, just dump the login credentials on the internet for people to use.
Motherboard writer Rachel Pick came face-to-face with this phenomenon recently when she noticed weird movies and TV shows showing up in her “Recently Watched” section on Netflix. At first, she says she thought it was just a glitch in Netflix, but after reading about the black market for stolen Netflix accounts, she decided to check if hers had been hacked.
The tool she used was haveibeenpwned.com, which gives you a rough idea of whether your personal information has been leaked onto the internet. Pick found that her family’s login info had appeared on Pastebin, a site for dumping plaintext files, in a document with the title “BunchaNetflixAccounts.” The information from 2,400 other users had also been compromised.
While haveibeenpwned.com worked for Pick, it’s not always effective for finding out if you’ve been hacked, especially if your login is being sold on the “Dark Web.”
Luckily there’s an easy measure you can take if you think there might even be the possibility you’ve been hacked. Netflix has a feature that allows you to force all users who are logged into your account to log out. This means everyone with the username and passwords saved gets temporarily booted. Once you’ve done that, just change your password to keep them out permanently. This also works if you get too many “friends of friends” clogging up your account.
Here is how you do it.
Go to the account page and select “Sign out of all devices.”
You then will be prompted to confirm.
After that, all that’s left is changing your password so they can’t log back in (bear in mind the signing out can take up to eight hours to take effect).
SEE ALSO: Cable companies still have one big weapon against Netflix — and they’re starting to use it
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NOW WATCH: Cable channels are speeding up ‘Seinfeld’ reruns to squeeze in more commercials
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