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One of the best things about owning an iPhone is that you get a lot of the newest apps first before they arrive on Android.

It may not be fair, but it’s a great perk for iPhone users, and it means there’s always something new to try.

You can enjoy the best news and weather apps, exclusives from Instagram and Adobe, and the most beautiful game we’ve seen this year. 

In these 23 iPhone-only apps, you are guaranteed to find something new — just don’t gloat too much to your friends with Android phones.

NYT Now is a brilliant and free news app.

The New York Times has made one of the very best news apps with NYT Now. There’s an entire team at The New York Times that is responsible for making sure it is constantly updated with not just breaking news (and features) from the Times, but also with the highlights from other news outlets. And the icing on the cake is its easily digestible breakdowns of the day’s news highlights. 

Oh yes, and it’s free for anyone.

Price: Free

Fresh Air is a beautiful weather app.

Fresh Air is a gorgeous new weather app that emphasizes visuals with its minimalist weather graph. You can scroll forward in time to see how the weather will be in the future, and it also connects to your calendar app to give you forecasts on upcoming appointments.

Price: Free

Overcast magically erases the pauses in podcasts so you can listen faster.

Overcast is the best app for listening to podcasts, and, thanks to a big new update, it’s all free. This means you can get access to “smart speed” (which takes away pauses to speed up the podcast), voice boost, and downloading on the cellular network.

Price: Free

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It’s happening: The Federal Reserve is going to raise rates on December 16. 

Speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Fed chair Janet Yellen laid out her thinking on whether the time has come for the Fed to begin the process of raising rates. 

And it seems clear that Yellen believes it has. 

Here’s the key passage (emphasis added):

However, we must also take into account the well-documented lags in the effects of monetary policy. Were the FOMC to delay the start of policy normalization for too long, we would likely end up having to tighten policy relatively abruptly to keep the economy from significantly overshooting both of our goals. Such an abrupt tightening would risk disrupting financial markets and perhaps even inadvertently push the economy into recession. Moreover, holding the federal funds rate at its current level for too long could also encourage excessive risk-taking and thus undermine financial stability.

And that’s really the whole story.

Does the Fed want to be forced to raise rates at every meeting in, say, 2017 to tamp down inflation running well above target? No, that could tip the economy into recession. 

And does the Fed want to do more quantitative easing following a financial crisis it judges was caused by undue market risks taken in response to its own interest rate policy? Definitely not. 

The time, then, to begin raising rates for the Fed is now. 

We’d note that ahead of this passage Yellen emphasized that risks with regard to Fed policy remain asymmetric, which has been the core argument of folks like Paul Krugman, who believes the Fed would be acting inappropriately by raising rates with inflation below its 2% target.

The idea here is that were the Fed to cut off a feeble economic recovery by raising rates, they’d be left with little room to maneuver (i.e. cut rates) in order to stabilize or encourage economic growth. 

Additionally Yellen also cautioned that no decisions have been made, with the Fed still weighing economic data as it comes in. To this end, Friday’s jobs report would seem an important entry into the ledger. 

Yellen also cautioned that in her view the labor market has not reached “full employment,” or the point at which you can judge the economy has absorbed all available employees and wage growth begins to accelerate. On the inflation outlook, however, Yellen said that expectations remain “well-anchored,” and said she expects price increases will come up to the Fed’s 2% per year target over the next few years. 

The Fed itself, and in particular Chair Yellen, is a reserved institution that wants to maintain optionality, particularly in the face of markets that hang on nearly their every word. And those who want to argue any particular interpretation of Yellen’s words are still more or less equipped to do that. 

But Wednesday’s comments are about as forward as we’ve seen Yellen during her time as Fed chair, and the message, to our mind, is clear: rate hikes are coming, two weeks from today.

SEE ALSO: Full text of Yellen’s comments at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

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Harvard University and Princeton University have said they will do away with the title “master,” the Yale Daily News reported.

Princeton will change its current title of “master of the residential college” to “head of college,” and Harvard is launching a process to rename the title.

In recent years, students have decried the term’s connotation to plantation slavery.

And this fall especially, with the high level of racial tension on many Ivy League campuses, the decision to rename the title seems to be a preemptive move to dispel some of the anger.

Students at Princeton didn’t explicitly ask for the title master to be changed, a student who wished to remain anonymous told the YDN.

The Princeton administration decided to make the name change when they heard there would be a sit-in at the president’s office that day, according to the student.

At Yale, the title has also been the source of tension, and the YDN called for an end to the title of master at Yale in September.

“When a black student is asked to address an authority figure as ‘master’ — and especially when serving that person, as students do in their capacity as ‘master’s aides’ — the association can be disempowering,” the YDN wrote.

And the master of Pierson College, Stephen Davis, wrote an email to Pierson students in August arguing the same point and asking them to no longer call him “Master Davis.”

“I think there should be no context in our society or in our university in which an African-American student, professor or staff member — or any person, for that matter — should be asked to call anyone ‘master,'” Davis wrote to his students, according to YDN. “And there should be no context where male-gendered titles should be normalized as markers of authority.”

Yale is expected to reach a decision on changing the title later in the school year. For now, Yale President Peter Salovey has said little more than the school is working through the decision process.

“I am confident that Yale will come to a decision about the title ‘master’ in a reasonable amount of time,” Salovey said,” according to the YDN.

“The recent decisions at Princeton and Harvard represent information that is useful for our discussions.”

SEE ALSO: Yale students say a title for certain professors on campus is racist, and they want to do away with it

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VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. atomic agency says it believes that Iran worked in the past on nuclear weapons but its activities did not go past planning and basic component experiments

The assessment was contained in an International Atomic Energy Agency report ending nearly a decade of attempts to probe the allegations.

The evaluation says most “coordinated” work on developing such arms was done before 2003, with some activities continuing up to 2009.

The agency’s probe was based launched on intelligence provided by the United States, Israel and other Iranian adversaries and on the IAEA’s own research and interviews.

The confidential report released by the IAEA on Wednesday and obtained by The Associated Press is significant in wrapping up the probe and in preparing the ground for the lifting of sanctions on Tehran.

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People often don’t see results from fad diets because they consist of habits that are easily broken and are difficult to stick to. These healthy eating habits make it easier to understand your food to help make better choices for your future.

Produced by Emma Fierberg. Original Reporting by Jessica Orwig and  Lydia Ramsey.  Graphics by Mike Nudelman.

Produced by Emma Fierberg

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Le Bourget (France) (AFP) – Climate chiefs urged negotiators from 195 nations Wednesday to hurry towards an historic pact on global warming as frustration over the grinding pace of UN talks in Paris began to simmer.

As a December 11 deadline loomed, concern mounted over sluggish progress in forging the most ambitious climate deal ever.

“My message is clear: we must accelerate the process because there is still a lot of work to do,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, presiding over the negotiations.

“Options for compromise need to be found as quickly as possible,” he pleaded.

The UN talks aim at slashing greenhouse-gas emissions which trap the Sun’s heat, warming Earth’s surface and oceans and disrupting its delicate climate system.

Taking effect from 2020, the pact would target emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas — the backbone of the world’s energy supply today — and channel hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to vulnerable countries. 

More than 150 world leaders launched the Paris talks Monday, seeking to build momentum for the tough negotiations ahead with lofty rhetoric about the urgency of the task. 

But negotiators said the nitty-gritty discussions for a hugely complex 54-page draft text, riddled with undecided clauses, were advancing too slowly.

– ‘Growing frustration’ –

“We are not making anywhere near the progress we need to be making at this point,” said Daniel Reifsnyder, one of the two co-chairmen in the talks’ key arena.

Delegates, gathered at a highly-secured conference centre on the northern outskirts of Paris, remain deeply split over the key issues of finance for developing nations and burden-sharing, said a European negotiator who asked not to be named.

“There is a growing frustration,” the European source said, with bureaucrats refusing to budge on the wording of certain sections of a draft text, but “some progress” being made elsewhere. 

“It’s quite messy now,” agreed Greenpeace climate campaigner Li Shuo, who has observer status in the talks. “At some point, we definitely need to switch gear.”

Such frustrations are typical of the start of climate negotiations, where vast interests are at stake and a single word in an agreement can have big repercussions, said veteran observers.

“I remain confident that it will be a hard fought two weeks but at the end of the day we are likely to achieve, and I believe we will achieve, an agreement,” Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt Hunt told reporters.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres cautioned against despair. 

“The text of the agreement will go through ups and downs, there will be many commas inserted and commas removed because that is the nature of this. It is a legally binding text and needs to be reviewed very, very carefully,” she said.

Touching on the rich-poor issue, British charity Oxfam issued a study saying the wealthiest 10 percent of people produce half of Earth’s climate-harming fossil-fuel emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10 percent. 

An average person among the richest one percent emits 175 times more carbon than his or her counterpart among the bottom 10 percent, the charity said. 

Developing countries say the West has polluted for much longer and should shoulder a bigger obligation for cutting back. 

– Finance wrangle –

They are also calling on rich nations to make good on a 2009 pledge to muster $100 billion (94 billion euros) a year in climate aid by 2020. 

“The finance issue is the most difficult here,” said Alden Meyer, of the respected US observer group the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).  “People are not putting a lot of things on the table.”

China briefly grabbed the limelight in Paris as its State Council vowed to slash emissions from coal-fired power stations by 60 percent by 2020.

The move would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 180 million tonnes annually, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

But specialists said Beijing’s announcement, which coincided with growing discontent over choking pollution levels in China, offered nothing new.

“These are old numbers,” said Lo Sze Ping, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s China division. “These are the outcomes of what the government has committed to.”

At the core of the talks is the goal of limiting warming to a maximum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

That objective — along with a more ambitious option of 1.5 C — has been enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since 2010.

Since then, scientists have pounded out an ever-louder warning that relentlessly climbing carbon emissions will doom future generations to rising seas and worsening floods, storms and drought — a recipe for hunger, disease and homelessness for many millions.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The married couple dubbed the “San Francisco witch killers” seemed locked away for good when each was sentenced to 75 years to life for three Northern California murders three decades ago.

But because of a recent federal court ruling, prison officials had to consider them for parole. A parole board at a women’s prison in Chino, California, is scheduled to consider Wednesday whether Suzan Carson, 73, is suitable for release.

Carson’s lawyer Laura Sheppard says her client “doesn’t seem interested in attempting to seek parole” and hasn’t helped prepare for the hearing, further diminishing her long-shot odds of winning freedom. Carson’s husband this summer canceled his hearing, telling prison officials that he won’t renounce the religious beliefs the couple say motivated them to kill.

Nonetheless, the killers’ chance at freedom has upset the families of their victims, who say the self-described vegetarian Muslim “warriors” have never expressed remorse or abandoned beliefs that they were on a “holy war against witches” during their rampage.

Carson and her second husband, Michael “Bear” Carson, were convicted of killing three people during a drug-fueled quest to rid the world of witches between 1981 and 1983.

“Witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion are causes for death,” said a bearded, long-haired Michael Carson during a 1983 press conference arranged by investigators with San Francisco media that lasted five hours.

Authorities allowed the jailhouse interview in exchange for incriminating information about the three murders. With his wife smiling by his side, Carson described her as “a yogi and a mystic with knowledge of past, present and future events.” The couple described themselves as Muslim.

Suzan Carson told reporters she ordered her husband to kill Karen Barnes in her San Francisco apartment in 1981 because she falsely converted to their religion and was “draining” Suzan of her health and “yogic powers.” The couple killed twice more in California before they were captured in 1983.

Barnes’ sister, Lisa Long, traveled from her home near Atlanta to California to testify Wednesday against Suzan’s release.

“They are unrepentant,” Long said.

Michael Carson acknowledged he still harbored his religious beliefs when he canceled his June 30 parole hearing.

“I know this is absurd,” Michael Carson wrote from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, on a form canceling his hearing. “No one is going to parole me because I will not and have not renounced my beliefs.”

He can try again in 2020, prison officials said.

The Carsons received parole consideration because a federal court concerned with prison overcrowding ordered hearings last year for about 1,400 inmates older than 60 who have served more than 25 years of their sentences. Most of those qualifying for consideration are being turned down for parole, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Since February 2014, 267 elderly inmates have been granted parole and 729 have been denied, according to the department. An additional 450 hearings have been canceled or postponed.

Despite the odds against the couple’s release, Michael Carson’s daughter also formally opposes her father’s release.

“They are still dangerous,” Jennifer Carson said.

She said her college-educated father was a stay-at-home dad caring for her in 1970s suburban Phoenix while her mother supported the family by teaching.

“I remember those times as very happy times,” Jennifer Carson said. “But then his behavior began to change.”

She said her father changed dramatically after he met Suzan Carson at a party. The couple soon divorced their respective spouses and married each other.

Jennifer Carson said her father and Suzan Carson were heavy drug users who created their own moral and religious code.

“It was like a match meeting dynamite,” she said of the day the couple met.

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CLEVELAND (AP) — A museum dedicated to “A Christmas Story” has acquired the holy grail of movie memorabilia: a Red Ryder BB gun wielded by Ralphie in the beloved holiday film.

The Cleveland house where exteriors for the 1983 movie were shot already draws thousands of tourists year round. Now visitors to the adjacent museum will get to lay eyes on the Christmas gift Ralphie longed for most of all: the “Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.”

Brian Jones, the owner of the house and museum, paid $10,000 for it on an Internet auction site. It was one of six special models produced for the movie by Daisy, the company that makes Red Ryder guns.

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked Politico’s Mike Allen to apologize to Emanuel’s wife for inadvertently revealing the mayor’s family-vacation plans during a generally awkward and tense interview.

The panel interview Wednesday focused on the mayor’s handling of the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old black teenager at the hands of police.

At one point, Allen attempted to shift gears by asking Emanuel why he was choosing to take his family on a trip to Cuba later this year.

The Democratic mayor was not pleased.

“Thanks for telling everybody what I’m going to do with my family,” Emanuel said. “You just had a private conversation with me, and now you decided to make that public. I really don’t appreciate that.”

“I am expressing to you now, publicly, my displeasure,” he added.

Emanuel said that his wife would “kill him” for Allen’s question, and asked for the Playbook author’s cell-phone number so he could apologize to her directly.

“Can you give me your cell number because I’d like you to listen to Amy,” Emanuel said, referencing his wife. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s not going to work.”

Emanuel has been sensitive to the coverage of his administration’s handling of the shooting and the subsequent investigation of the Chicago Police Department’s practices. On Wednesday, Emanuel also announced that he would cancel his trip to Paris to attend the global climate talks there, in order to focus on the ongoing situation in Chicago.

The interview itself featured palpable tension. Both Allen and Politico’s Natasha Korecki pressed the mayor over whether he intentionally attempted to block or slow the release of a video showing black teenager’s Laquan McDonald’s shooting death.

When Allen asked Emanuel about The New York Times editorial board’s call for Emanuel’s resignation, the mayor noted his displeasure with the way the interview was going.

“Because I really so much look forward to this interview and I wanted to have it,” Emanuel said, before turning to Allen. “It just felt so good saying that to you.”

Watch the exchange below:

SEE ALSO: Rahm Emanuel just had a tense and awkward interview the day after firing his police chief

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Mental strength isn’t often reflected in what you do. It’s usually seen in what you don’t do.

In her book “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do,” Amy Morin writes that developing mental strength is a “three-pronged approach.” It’s about controlling your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions.

Following are 13 things that mentally strong people do not do, Morin says.

This is an update of an article originally written by Steven Benna.

SEE ALSO: 7 ways mentally strong people handle stress

DON’T MISS: The 27 jobs that are most damaging to your health

1. They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves.

“Feeling sorry for yourself is self-destructive,” Morin writes. “Indulging in self-pity hinders living a full life.” It wastes time, creates negative emotions, and hurts your relationships.

The key is to “affirm the good in the world, and you will begin to appreciate what you have,” she writes. The goal is to swap self-pity with gratitude.

2. They don’t give away their power.

People give away their power when they lack physical and emotional boundaries, Morin writes. You need to stand up for yourself and draw the line when necessary. If other people are in control of your actions, they define your success and self-worth. It’s important that you keep track of your goals and work toward them.

Morin uses Oprah Winfrey as an example of someone with a strong grip on their power. Winfrey grew up dealing with poverty and sexual abuse, but “she chose to define who she was going to be in life by not giving away her power.”

3. They don’t shy away from change.

There are five stages of change, Morin writes: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.

Following through with each of the five steps is crucial. Making changes can be frightening, but shying away from them prevents growth. “The longer you wait, the harder it gets,” she says. “Other people will outgrow you.”

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