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SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — Police in San Bernardino, California, are responding to reports of an active shooter at a social services facility.
Lt. Rich Lawhead said Wednesday there are reports of multiple victims.
No arrests have been made.
Sgt. Vicky Cervantes says police are working to secure the scene in the inland region east of Los Angeles.
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Los Angeles (AFP) – At least 20 victims were reported Wednesday in a shooting in San Bernardino in California, with a gunman still at the scene, fire officials said.
“SBFD units responding to reports of 20 victim shooting incident in 1300 block of S. Waterman. SBPD is working to clear the scene,” the city fire department said on Twitter.
Fire officials said an active shooter was at the scene in the city about an hour east of Los Angeles.
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Americans are getting paid more anywhere and everywhere.
The Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book report — a collection of economic anecdotes — released on Wednesday showed that wherever Fed officials were talking to business owners, people were talking about wages going up.
For the broadest overview, the report said:
Wage pressures were generally stable to increasing. Most Districts said that wage pressures increased only for skilled occupations and for workers that were in short supply, although a few Districts saw broader pressure. Cleveland said that wage pressures were widespread, especially for higher-skilled jobs, while Atlanta reported signs of emerging pressure to raise starting wages, even among low-skilled jobs. The Atlanta and San Francisco Districts said some companies were revising incentives and benefit programs to retain and attract talent. Chicago, on the other hand, reported some firms cutting benefit packages to contain labor costs. A few Districts mentioned issues related to the minimum wage. For example, contacts in the Boston District cited increased labor costs for restaurants due to changes in minimum wages, and the Chicago District said recent initiatives were putting upward wage pressures on low paying jobs. Finally, the Dallas District reported that some hospitality contacts increased starting pay as a preemptive measure for future minimum wage increases.
But on a district-by-district level — there are 12 Fed districts — wage pressures seemed strongest in the Cleveland and San Francisco districts.
In Cleveland, wage-related comments included:
In San Francisco, wage-related comments included:
In October, the jobs report showed that average hourly wages rose 2.5% over the prior year, the most since the financial crisis. And on Friday, the November jobs report is expected to show wage growth continued but was tempered some, rising 2.3% over the prior year.
Wage growth has been closely watched as economists and strategists look to determine how much “slack” remains in the labor market, with the idea being that the more excess labor there is still looking for work, the more employers retain pricing power over their employees.
Additionally, inflation has been lagging below the Fed’s 2% target, with some arguing that no inflation is going to show up until workers (who are ultimately consumers which drive the US economy) have more money in their pockets.
SEE ALSO: The Fed is going to raise rates in December
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Did you ever wish your iPhone’s Apple logo would glow like the logo on your MacBook laptop? You could have the ultimate harmony of glowing Apple products.
Well, your wishes have come true. David Cogen from TheUnlockr.com, a smartphone how-to tutorial site, happens to sell a kit that lets you replace the shiny Apple logo on the back of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with a glowing logo. He also shows you exactly how to do it.
The kit for the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are available for pre-order.
There’s a huge caveat though. The procedure requires you to take your iPhone apart, which voids your warranty and puts you at risk of permanently damaging your device.
Here’s how it’s done.
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Don’t waste time, because that’s “the stuff life is made of.”
It was good advice when Ben Franklin said it, and it’s good advice now, no matter your age.
But your 20s are a particularly crucial time in life — many call these the “formative” years, and the habits you form in your 20s can carry you through the rest of your life.
So what’s the best way to spend this time?
We sifted through a number of Quora threads and TED talks to find out.
SEE ALSO: People weighed in on the most common regrets in life, and some of their answers will make you cry
DON’T MISS: The 27 jobs that are most damaging to your health
There are a number of life skills people need to master, and your 20s is the time to start practicing. Without the pressure of parents or school to motivate you, you’ll need to exercise discipline and motivate yourself to learn the essentials.
These skills can range from patience and dealing with rejection to living within your means and good table manners.
“There is nothing that will help you more than reading,” says Deepak Mehta.
He suggests a wide variety of books, from young adult fiction to law, from Dickens to Tzu, to learn more about contrasting viewpoints. “Do not be afraid of coming across a convincing viewpoint that is totally antithetical to yours,” he says.
Reading is also a great way to exercise your mind, says Jereme Allison, because it activates almost all areas of the mind. “The mind is a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it,” he says.
Francesco Wang refers to this as “life-extending” time.
“Investing time in caring for your health … will certainly yield you more time, literally — in days, months, if not years tacked on to your life,” he writes. “Yet we often take our health for granted until we experience a wake-up call.”
Instead, he suggests proactively investing your time in your health by eating well, exercising regularly, getting plenty of sleep, regularly seeing your doctors, and taking care of your emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
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Right now, America is in the midst of a space race between competing private spaceflight companies owned by brilliant billionaires.
The prize is a chance to make history by being the first to usher in a new era of reusable rockets that can reduce the cost of spaceflight and, ultimately, land humans on Mars and then re-launch them back home.
Currently leading the way are Blue Origin — founded by Jeff Bezos — and SpaceX — founded by Elon Musk.
At the moment, SpaceX is ahead with its fleet of Falcon 9 rockets, but Blue Origin recently completed a test that shows it means business and could become a serious competitor in the next three years.
Key to both companies are the monster engines that power their rockets. And on Nov. 24, Blue Origin proved, for the first time, that they can successfully build, launch, fly, and retrieve the BE-3 engines that give life to their New Shepard space vehicle.
Perhaps most excited about the flight — besides Blue Origin — is the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which has a lot invested in Bezos’ spaceflight company.
“We are very happy for Blue’s success last week which demonstrates Blue’s technical capabilities and commitment to spaceflight,” ULA told Business Insider over email.
Formed in 2006, ULA is a launch service provider under the joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
For years, they’ve cornered the market on US government launches, but SpaceX’s low-cost services and impending reusable capabilities has recently challenged that.
So, earlier this year, ULA selected rising SpaceX competitor Blue Origin to build the next generation of monster BE-4 engines to power the Vulcan rocket, which they are currently gathering funding for development.
“Our Vulcan rocket with BE-4 engines will fly in 2019,” ULA told Business Insider. “Our baseline plan is for the Vulcan booster to fly booster with two, BE-4 engines each, but ULA is also carrying Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR-1 engine as a backup.”
Blue Origin has not yet flown its BE-4 engines (shown below). However, it recently completed its 100th ground test, calling the test series “a key milestone” in the engine’s development. And it plans to have the engine ready for flight by 2017.
While the BE-4 engine is of a different design than the less powerful BE-3 engine that flew on Nov. 24, the flight’s success is a testament to Blue Origin’s spaceflight abilities.
In addition, the BE-4 engines will each generate 550,000 pounds of thrust — the propulsive force a rocket uses to get to space. In comparison, each of SpaceX’s latest, upgraded Merlin engines, which power the Falcon 9 rocket (and are shown below) generate 170,000 pounds of thrust.
The ULA Vulcan rocket will be what is called a heavy-launch vehicle, capable of ferrying extremely heavy loads into space — a task that requires an enormous amount of rocket engine power.
Strapped with two BE-4 engines, it will launch with 1.1 million pounds of thrust and carry payloads of up to 17.3 metric tons (38,000 pounds) to low-earth orbit — where rockets go to transport payloads to the International Space Station.
By comparison, SpaceX’s next-generation heavy-launch vehicle, the Falcon Heavy, will use essentially three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together. Each Falcon 9 contains 9 Merlin engines.
The Falcon Heavy is currently under construction at SpaceX and will generate 3.96 million pounds of thrust and lift up to 117,000 pounds into low-earth orbit. Its first demo flight, which was supposed to take place this year, was re-scheduled for spring 2016.
Ultimately, the price of launching materials, and eventually people, on these rockets will largely depend on one thing: Whether or not they can be reused.
If only one of these companies can pull it off, then it could revolutionize the spaceflight business.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have demonstrated that their BE-3 and Merlin engines can be flown to recover a rocket after launch.
However, neither company has yet to launch an orbital rocket to space — one capable of transporting payloads to low-earth orbit — and retrieve it.
This is the next big step.
And SpaceX will try its next attempt to achieve that hurdle this month. As for Blue Origin, its next major move will be to send a rocket into orbit — higher than where it has currently flown.
Right now, the company is working on upgrades to its BE-3 engines and testing its BE-4 engines to accomplish this.
LEARN MORE: There’s a major difference between SpaceX and Blue Origin that makes them incomparable
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve says the U.S. economy grew at a modest pace this fall, lifted by higher consumer spending and more home sales and construction.
The Fed says in its latest snapshot of the economy that nine of its 12 regional banks reported growth was modest or moderate from early October through mid-November. The New York Fed said growth leveled off, while it slowed in Boston and was mixed in Kansas City.
The Fed’s report suggests that healthy consumer spending is offsetting overseas headwinds that have weighed on U.S. manufacturers.
The report, known as the Beige Book, will be used for discussion when the central bank next meets Dec. 15-16. Fed officials at that meeting are widely expected to raise interest rates for the first time in nine years.
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Mexico City (AFP) – Mexico will open in January a national debate on overhauling its marijuana laws, the interior minister said Wednesday, weeks after the Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing pot.
The top court’s landmark ruling in November forced President Enrique Pena Nieto’s administration to consider whether to decriminalize marijuana in a country that has a endured years of brutal drug cartel violence.
The government will launch a website in the beginning of 2016 that will publish scientific and academic papers to provide information on the topic to the public, said Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong.
A series of public debates will begin in the third week of January with medical and legal experts as well as academics and members of civil society to discuss the “implications of marijuana use,” he told a news conference.
“To be effective, we must consider the different alternatives as well as the costs, benefits and viability of each of them and their impact on the population,” he said.
“Mexico will have to decide in the next months which policy it will need to face a phenomenon that affects different areas and aspects of the lives of millions of Mexicans.”
Five debates will be held in different regions of the country.
They will focus on the health implications of pot; the potential regulations and their costs; the effect that decriminalizing marijuana could have on violence; and whether consuming it is a human right.
The Supreme Court authorized a group of four people to grow and consume their own marijuana for recreational use, creating a potential precedent for others seeking similar permits.
Pena Nieto said he could consider changing his anti-legalization stance depending on the outcome of the national debate. The Congress is expected to hold its own hearings on the matter.
Legalization supporters argue that decriminalizing marijuana would strip drug cartels of a major source of revenue and reduce violence.
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If you want to build a billion dollar company, don’t be afraid to do things that don’t scale well, said Nextdoor cofounder Sarah Leary onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit.
She cofounded her social network for neighbors five years ago. This March, it achieved the mythical “unicorn” status in Silicon Valley when its valuation reached $1.1 billion, following a $110 million fundraising round.
In Silicon Valley, where building automated online services that can serve hundreds of millions of people is the conventional wisdom, Leary’s advice may sound like heresy. But according to the entrepreneur, companies can often benefit early-on from doing things the old-fashioned way.
In the Nextdoor’s early days, the company did things that wouldn’t be possible when the service’s reach grew to 170,000 neighborhoods.
For Leary, that meant drawing neighborhood borders by hand and signing up customers one-by-one. It gave her team time to find the ‘special sauce’ for what makes Nextdoor work and to study how people were using it.
“You can’t skip that first step of doing things that are unscaleable in the beginning if you eventually want to bring it to scale,” she said.
Some investors and employees might shy away from a slower approach in the beginning if they’re expecting explosive growth, so both Leary and Eventbrite co-founder Julia Hartz emphasized having those discussions with investors and employees early on.
“Growing it iteratively is so, so, so important. We haven’t had this crazy hockey stick growth curve. We’ve had steady growth year over year,” Hartz said. “That comes back to not only patience but the people who you choose to have with you.”
SEE ALSO: A top VC firm just put together a stunning presentation on the state of startups
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Americans have some pretty off-center misconceptions about their country.
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