• Ariana Grande's biggest fans are boycotting her No. 1 single "7 rings."
• The Arianators, as they're known, created the hashtag #BOYCOTT7RINGS in an attempt to topple the song from No. 1.
• They're trying to get her third single from the album, "break up with your girlfriend i'm bored," to No. 1 instead.
• If they achieve their goal, Grande will be the first artist to debut three songs from the same album at No. 1.
• The singer responded to the hashtag saying, "y'all are so insane and funny and i love u."
• "7 rings" has been top of Billboard's Hot 100 for 3 weeks.

Are Ariana Grande's biggest fans turning against her? Not exactly.

The Arianators, as her fanbase is known, created the hashtag #BOYCOTT7RINGS in an attempt to topple Grande's single "7 rings" from No. 1.

Why would they do such a thing, you might wonder?

It turns out they're trying to get Grande's third single from the album, "break up with your girlfriend i'm bored," to No. 1 instead.

Read more:Ariana Grande is being accused of 'queer baiting' in her new music video — but others say it's a representation of self-love

"To those who don’t understand why we have to STOP streaming 7 rings," one fan account explained on Twitter, "buwygfib ['break up with your girlfriend i'm bored'] NEEDS to debut at #1 to make ariana the only artist in HISTORY to debut 3 songs at #1 [from the same album].

"y’all can go back to streaming 7 rings after break up debuts at #1."

"omg 7 rings just came on and i skipped so fast," tweeted another.

Grande responded to the hashtag, saying: "y'all are so insane and funny and i love u. nothings funnier than 'boycott seven rings'..... i can't lmao. whatever’s meant to be will be, babies i ain't goin nowhere."

"r u ok," the singer responded to one fan who asked her to tweet the hashtag in solidarity.

"7 rings" has been top of Billboard's Hot 100 for 3 weeks and the US charts are looking like the tracklist of her whole album. Apple Music said Grande's "thank u, next" became the streaming service's biggest day one global pop album and biggest day one global for a female artist.

According to Spotify's latest data, "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" has overtaken "7 rings" in terms of daily plays, however, on iTunes, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's hit "Shallow" still reigns supreme.

Time will tell whether the boycott achieves its goal.

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• Research suggests cats mirror our behaviour and mood. 
• If you're anxious, this could mean your cat is more fearful and overweight. 
• People with dark personality traits are also more likely to have cats who bully others. 
• There's a theory that cats think people are just big, stupid cats. 
• But there's another theory that they're plotting to kill us the entire time.

Animals can be surprisingly aware of our emotions. Research has shown that dogs will comfort their humans when we are sad, and cats can pick up on our emotional gestures. 

According to new research from Nottingham Trent University, cats also notice when we're stressed out or anxious, and can be less healthy as a result.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, looked at the personality, behaviour, and health of 3,331 cats. Researchers found that owners and cats mirrored each other's wellbeing and behaviour.

"Our personalities may be an important factor in relation to how we interact with and manage our cats, and this can have important consequences for their wellbeing," Lauren Finka, the lead author of the study, told PsyPost. "Cats may not always find living as our pets easy, and it's important that we are aware of how our behaviour may be impacting upon them, in both positive and negative ways."

For example, people with neuroses were more likely to have overweight cats with ongoing medical problems. Their cats were also more likely to develop stress-related sickness and behavioural problems like aggression and fear. 

People who weren't so anxious were more likely to have cats of a normal weight and temperament. Meanwhile, open, sociable people were more likely to see that mirrored in their cats too.

"This study merely identifies a correlation between owner personality and aspects of cat behaviour, management and wellbeing and cannot assume causation," said Finka to PsyPost. "Further research is needed in order to understand if, and how, aspects of the owner's personalities are directly influencing the welfare of their cats."

Read more: Your dog really is trying to communicate with you — here's what their different gestures mean

Earlier this month, a smaller study from the University of Liverpool, published in Personality and Individual Differences, also found that cats are in sync with their owners. 

Researchers gave 126 cat parents questionnaires to measure five personality traits known as the "Feline Five"— friendliness, spontaneity, dominance, neuroticism, and extroversion. They were asked to rate statements like "My cat challenges the usual dominance order with other cats/people in the household."

Owners completed their own surveys, rating statements like "I sympathise with others' feelings,""I tend to lack remorse" and "I tend to want others to admire me."

Results showed owners who had dark traits like narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy were more likely to have cats who were more dominant and impulsive cats. 

"Dominant cats are greedy, defiant, and aggressive and bullying towards people/other cats, which could be attractive to potential owners who have similar tendencies in their own social interactions," the researchers suggested in their conclusion. "Impulsive cats are excitable and erratic, which could be pleasing to impulsive owners."

It's impossible to know exactly what our furry friends are thinking, and as these types of studies tend to be self-reported, they can be unreliable. 

But it's always fun to hypothesise. For example, anthrozoologist John Bradshaw has a theory that cats think we are all just big, stupid cats who are oddly non-hostile. Other research suggests your cat is a small conniving lion that may be plotting to get rid of you.

If that's the case, and your cat does actually mirror your mood, it might be in your best interest not to have too many murderous thoughts.

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• The towns housing the wealthiest people in the US have been revealed for 2019, and unsurprisingly the Silicon Valley neighbourhood, Atherton, home to tech giants has come out on top — for the third year in a row. 
• Entry-level income for 100 richest places topped $200,000, according to Bloomberg.
• Elite neighborhoods close to coasts came out on top with California, New York, and Connecticut leading the way. 

The top 20 wealthiest towns in the US have been revealed in a new ranking released by the Bloomberg Richest Places index.

Most of the neighborhoods are close to major cities and also tend to be coastal with California and the East Coast particularly well represented. Many of the places listed are the hometowns of famous financiers, politicians, and actors, providing huge boosts to average income for the area. 

Entry-level income for 100 richest places topped $200,000, according to Bloomberg, while all of the top 20 have an average income above $300,000 a year. 

20. Paradise Valley, Arizona — The town is close to state capital Phoenix and is the hometown of actors Emma Stone and Dick Van Dyke, with an average income of $300,521.

19. Rumson, New Jersey — Rumson has shot up the rankings this year. Climbing a staggering 19 places to make 19th spot in 2019 with the area enjoying an average income of $303,542.

18. Westport, Connecticut — Climbing one place this year Westport is situated on the Long Island Sound and the state's Gold Coast. It has an average income of $304,439.

• US and Chinese officials will kick off two days of negotiations on Thursday to try and reach a preliminary deal to end the trade war.
• The two sides remain far apart on the US's demands for fundamental changes to the Chinese economic model.
• Beijing has been reluctant to make major changes to their control economy, such as ending subsidies for state-owned companies.
• Any deal will ultimately come down to meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, which is still up in the air.

High-level officials from the US and China officially kicked off two days of meetings on Thursday as a critical trade war deadline creeps ever closer.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is the point person for the team of Trump administration officials that also includes Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. On the other side of the table is the Chinese group led by Vice Premier Liu He, the country's top economic official.

The two sides will try and work out the framework of a trade deal that will lower tariffs, ease trade tensions between the two countries, and allay the worries of business owners on both sides of the Pacific.

Time is of the essence since March 1 marks the deadline for the current 90-day pause in the trade war. After that point, US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods are scheduled to increase to 25%, up from the current 10% rate, a potentially devastating jump.

But with time running low, the possibility for a complete deal seems remote, especially given that the two country's leaders — President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping — will need to consummate any final agreement.

But with no meeting between Trump and Xi scheduled and a dwindling amount of time left before the escalation, many experts are starting to predict that the deadline may not be so hard after all.

Significant distance to bridge

Entering the second round of talks, both the Trump administration and Chinese are still struggling to find common ground on key issues.

The Trump administration has continued to push for China to make fundamental changes to their economy and make it easier for foreign firms — including American companies — to operate in China. For many in the Trump delegation, including Lighthizer, are a prerequisite to any deal.

On the other hand, China has only expressed a willingness to agree to a more limited set of changes while maintaining the core of its communist economic model. Beijing has also offered some smaller sweeteners to Trump, such as large-scale purchases of key American goods.

Even if a deal is struck, bridging the disagreements, the US is reportedly pushing for tough measures to make sure any agreement is enforced.

According to The New York Times, the Trump administration is pushing for a clause that would allow the US to quickly reimpose tariffs on Chinese goods if exports from the country continue to rise after any deal is struck.

Given the distance to go between the two sides, many experts doubt that a broad, enforceable deal can be reached in such a short amount of time.

"As the Trump administration’s March 1 deadline for a trade deal with China approaches, with another Xi–Trump summit to follow, it seems almost impossible that a comprehensive agreement will be reached in time," Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote for Axios.

Trump-Xi meeting is up in the air

Further complicating the ability to make any hard deal is the fact that both sides seem to agree that a face-t0-face meeting between Xi and Trump is necessary before an agreement can be finalized.

According to reports, Xi is expected to drop by the talks at some point during the next two days and Trump similarly met with Liu when the Vice Premier came to Washington, DC, at the end of January.

But no one is quite sure when exactly Trump and Xi will meet.

News website Axios reported Sunday that Trump advisers floated the idea that Xi could come to the US and visit Trump's Mar-A-Lago club some time in the middle of March. By contrast, the South China Morning Post reported Monday that the Trump-Xi meeting could take place on the Chinese island of Hainan during the last week of March.

How hard is the March 1 deadline?

So given the work left to be done and the lack of a meeting between Trump and Xi, what about the March 1 deadline?

Any increase of the tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods would be a problem for many US businesses and economists estimate that a major escalation of the trade war with China would cause serious problems for the US economy.

Read more:One chart shows just how badly US companies are getting whacked by Trump's trade war»

But even with those risks, Trump officials have tried to make the deadline seem firm to gain leverage over the Chinese, who are already facing a faltering economy. White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett told the Fox Business Network on Monday that March 1 "is a real deadline."

But despite the the Trump administration's attempts to keep the pressure on for the negotiations, most experts agree that it is unlikely the two sides will allow the escalation to occur while talks are ongoing.

"While reiterating the March deadline is useful as motivation, we doubt that the US is seriously considering adding tariffs as long as negotiations are making progress," Steve Englander, the head of North American macro strategy at Standard Chartered Bank, wrote in a note to clients.

Similarly Sester wrote that the two sides may come to a short-term bridge deal while negotiations continue.

"The likely outcome is a punt that defers tariff increases in exchange for ongoing Chinese purchases of US soy and energy," Sester said.

Indeed, Trump himself suggested Tuesday that the March 1 deadline may be fungible.

"If we're close to a deal where we think we can make a real deal, I could see myself letting them slide for a little while," the president told reporters.

SEE ALSO: Trump's trade war could cost every middle-class American family $453 and could eliminate 292,000 US jobs

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This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Relative to many other sectors around the globe, the US healthcare industry has been notoriously slow to embrace new payment systems and processes. 

For example, approximately 77% of healthcare providers still use paper-based patient billing methods, according to an MGMA and Navicure survey. The lack of urgency to innovate has resulted in confusion, inefficiencies, and security issues among stakeholders. 

However, this stagnation is enabling payments firms to capitalize on two key trends to disrupt — and capture a piece of — the $3 trillion healthcare industry:

• The consumerization of healthcare. Consumers are increasingly being urged to play a more prominent role in managing and paying for their own health. In effect, they've become better informed and more critical of the quality of health services. Considering that the billing process is typically the first and last interaction a patient has with a provider, a negative experience could directly impact a healthcare firm's bottom line — only 15% of patients who reported a less than satisfactory billing experience would recommend the hospital to others, according to Becker's Hospital Review. 
• The digitization of healthcare. Healthcare legislation, rising costs, and a shift from fee-for-service care to value-based care are incentivizing payers and providers to seek out digital solutions that drive down costs and improve services. 

Now is the time for payments hardware, software, and processing firms to introduce specific solutions that accommodate the shifting landscape. These could include digital payment options, such as online checkouts or point-of-service mobile wallet acceptance, or value-added services that enhance the overall payments and billing experience. However, before payments companies introduce new solutions, they must navigate the highly regulated and complex industry.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, explains how a typical healthcare transaction is structured, identifies the major players in the industry, and pinpoints the most pressing pain points for stakeholders. We then look at the opportunities available to payments companies, and explore specific solutions that could help them attract partners in the space. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Healthcare in the US is a key industry for payments firms — spending increased 3.3% to reach $3.3 trillion in 2016, according to the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
• Despite the size of the market, very few new opportunities have opened up for payments companies because of the healthcare industry's slow innovation and the complex regulations around entering the space. 
• However, two key trends — the consumerization of healthcare and the digitization of healthcare — will put some payments companies in a strong position to capture a larger share of the market. 
• The payments firms that rise to the top of the market will have to offer digital solutions that accommodate the shifting landscape, such as mobile wallet acceptance — 61% of consumers reported having interest in using mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, to make healthcare payments, according to InstaMed. 
• Payments companies will also have to introduce value-added services that appeal to healthcare providers while differentiating their offerings from competitors, such as easy-to-understand billing, integrated check-ins, and AI-based engagement tools.  

In full, the report:

• Tracks the growth of US healthcare spending. 
• Identifies subsets of healthcare payments — specifically, where payments are coming from and where they're going. 
• Explains the intricacies of a healthcare transaction and pinpoints where there are potential bottlenecks. 
• Details what some of the leading players in the healthcare payments space are doing to differentiate themselves.
• Lists some specific solutions that payments companies could turn to in order to attract healthcare partners. 

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• Shamima Begum, a 19-year-old British woman who fled London to join ISIS in Syria four years ago told The Times of London that she wants to go home.
• She described living in a boarding house for women in Raqqa while waiting to be married, and described life under ISIS as "normal."
• Begum escaped the town of Baghouz, considered the last bastion of ISIS power in the region, two weeks ago and is now living in a refugee camp in Syria.
• Britain's security minister said that anyone in Begum's position would have to find their own way out, and have to face investigation and potential prosecution if they returned to the UK.

A British student who fled her London home to join ISIS in Syria four years ago is now asking to return home, even as the UK said it would not send troops to rescue her.

Shamima Begum, now 19 and nine months pregnant, fled the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz two weeks ago in the hopes of protecting her unborn child, she told The Times of London's Anthony Loyd.

Begum is now living in the al-Hawl Syrian refugee camp, in northeast Syria, which holds some 39,000 other people.

Baghouz is the last bastion of ISIS's territorial power in Syria and Iraq. More and more people are now escaping the area as Kurdish fighters, backed by the US and UK, closed in on the region with weeks of intensive bombing.

Read more:The US military bombed a mosque amid fighting for ISIS' last stronghold in eastern Syria

Begum told The Times that she walked out of Baghouz two weeks ago, at dawn, where her husband — a 27-year-old Dutch convert to Islam — surrendered to Syrian fighters. That was the last time she saw him, she said.

Her journey from schoolgirl to ISIS wife

Begum fled her home in Bethnal Green, east London, at age 15 alongside two schoolmates in February 2015. They told their parents they were going out for the day, then took a plane from London Gatwick Airport to Turkey, before crossing the border to Syria, the BBC reported.

After arriving in Raqqa, Syria, she stayed at a "house for women" to wait to be married, The Times reported. 

"I applied to marry an English-speaking fighter between 20 and 25 years old," Begum told the newspaper. Ten days later she married Yago Riedijk, the Dutchman.

Her schoolmates, 15-year-old Amira Abase and 16-year-old Kadiza Sultana, were married to Australian and American men respectively, The Times reported. Sultana reportedly died in an airstrike in Raqqa in 2016, while Abase's whereabouts remain unknown.

Begum had two children with Riedijk — a boy and a girl — but they both died of illness within two months of each other late last year. Both were under two years old.

She told The Times it was her grief at her children's deaths, and urge to protect her unborn child, that spurred her to escape Baghuz despite her husband's wishes to stay.

Begum told the newspaper: "I'm not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago. And I don't regret coming here."

"When I saw my first severed head ... it didn't faze me at all"

Begum said she lived a "normal life in Raqqa" peppered with various atrocities of the war on ISIS.

"Mostly it was a normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff," she told The Times.

"When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam," she said, using a term that ISIS converts referred to people fighting the group.

"I thought only of what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had the chance," Begum said.

Listen to an extract of The Times' interview with Begum here:

What happens if she makes it home

Ben Wallace, the UK's security minister, declined to comment on Begum's individual case but said on Thursday that anyone in her position could be questioned, investigated and prosecuted for terrorist offenses if she returned home.

He also made clear that the government would not send troops into the region to rescue her. "I'm not putting at risk British people's lives to go and look for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state," Wallace told the BBC's "Today" radio program on Thursday.

He added that because the UK doesn't have a consulate in Syria, anyone in Begum's position would have to find help elsewhere in the region.

"We recognize that there are children involved in this who had no choice of being out there — they were born out there or whatever — but ultimately what we have to do is protect the public," Wallace told the "Today" program.

"People who went out there as amateurs are now professional terrorists or professional supporters of terrorism and we have to make sure we mitigate that threat should they come back."

Read The Times' report here.

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• A 19-year-old Instagrammer threw a chair, amongst other items, off a 45th-floor balcony onto one of Toronto's busiest highways.
• A video of the stunt went viral on social media, and many people expressed their outrage.
• The teen, Marcella Zoia, handed herself into the police, and has now deleted her social media accounts. 
• She has been charged with one count of mischief that endangers life, mischief relating to the damaged property, and common nuisance.

A 19-year-old Instagrammer has handed herself into police after a video showing her throwing a chair from a 45th-floor balcony onto Toronto's busiest highway went viral.

The video, originally posted on Snapchat and subsequently shared on various social networks including Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook, has the caption "Good Morning" and shows Canadian Marcella Zoia throwing a chair from a high balcony, which then falls down on to the Gardiner Expressway.

The video swiftly went viral, with many people expressing their outrage.

The multi-lane highway runs through downtown Toronto and is the busiest in the city.

The stunt, which actually involved throwing two chairs, was reportedly carried out at around 10 a.m. on Saturday February 9. Fortunately, there have been no reports of injuries.

Zoia has since deleted her social media accounts — she reportedly had around 4,000 Instagram followers— and she handed herself into police on Wednesday morning.

The teen has been charged with one count of mischief that endangers life, mischief relating to the damaged property, and common nuisance, the CBC reports.

According to Toronto Police Constable David Hopkinson, the chairs weren't the only items Zoia threw off the balcony.

"We now know that these two chairs, and some other objects, were tossed from approximately 45 floors above the ground," Hopkinson told VICE.

"With the high winds that we've experienced and where this is, in the middle of a fairly busy tourist spot in Toronto, this could have landed a fair distance from where it was thrown and jeopardized anyone walking underneath.

"This is a very, very dangerous thing."

Read more: A fitness influencer with more than 500,000 followers apologized after fans called her a 'scammer' — but they still aren't ready to forgive her

Toronto mayor John Tory added: "I just hope that people take from the example the consequences that will befall this woman.

"This is irresponsible behaviour that is unacceptable. It was not just a lark gone bad. It was grossly irresponsible behaviour that could have caused serious injury and death."

It's thought the balcony in question was from an Airbnb apartment Zoia was renting for a short period of time.

"We remain outraged by the blatant disregard for community safety on display in the video," Airbnb said in a statement.

"We have no evidence at this time to suggest that the accused has ever been an Airbnb user, but we have suspended the account of a guest with a reservation at the building pending further review."

Zoia, who is originally from Brazil, appeared in court on Wednesday afternoon and has been granted bail, ordered to live with her mother, and instructed not to see the others involved with the stunt, according to CBC. 

Speaking to reporters outside court, Zoia's lawyer Greg Leslie said: "She is embarrassed by what happened. She wished it never happened. Of course, she would never wish anyone would be hurt."

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• Maplelane Capital is making a $115 million bearish bet on one of Europe's newest tech darlings — Dutch payment company Adyen.
• It's part of a trend where more hedge funds have been heaping skepticism on recently IPO'd European companies, including UK-based luxury carmaker Aston Martin. 
• Adyen's shares have almost tripled since its June 2018 IPO, sending its market cap to almost €20 billion.

A little-known hedge fund called Maplelane Capital is making a $115 million bearish bet on one of Europe's newest tech darlings — Dutch payment company Adyen. It's part of a trend where more hedge funds have been heaping skepticism on recently IPO'd European companies.

Mapelane, a New York fund that was founded in 2010, placed a short position that represents 0.53% of Adyen stock on February 12, filings show. The fund built its position right before Adyen's earnings, which are due on February 27. 

"This is the first big short in Adyen," says short research firm Breakout Point, which defines "big" as a position worth more than 0.5% of the shares. The trade is worth some €102 million ($115 million), which is "among the bigger individual shorts in all of EU short-selling records." 

Shares in Adyen, led by CEO Pieter van der Does, have surged more than 170% since the company's June 2018 IPO, sending its market cap to almost €20 billion. That a 12-year-old payment company can so swiftly reach a Deutsche Bank-sized market capitalization has not gone unnoticed. 

"We have noted a number of new short bets against recently IPO'd EU firms," Breakout Point said, noting an Oceanwood short in UK-listed guarantor loans lender Amigo Holdings; Soros Fund Management's short in Denmark's IT services company Netcompany, and "several big shorts" in Aston Martin. 

Adyen and Aston Martin were among the biggest IPOs in Europe last year, according to accountancy and auditing firm PwC. 

Maplelane popped up in filings with another short — a 0.67% position betting against Casino. The French grocery company is no stranger to short-sellers: Muddy Waters Capital, founded by Carson Block, shorted Casino back in 2015, accusing the supermarket operator of "financial engineering." Casino has denied the claims.

Unlike in the US, some European regulators require investors to disclose short positions when they exceed a certain percentage of the stock.

Mapelane is led by Leon Shaulov, a former trader at now shuttered Galleon Group.

A New York-listed number for Maplelane was not answered.

SEE ALSO: A little-known hedge fund just made a surprising short bet worth $182 million on Italian high-end clothing maker Moncler

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• Shadow Minister warns his leader Jeremy Corbyn that the Labour party will suffer the same fate as the Liberal Democrats if they allow a "Tory Brexit."
• Clive Lewis suggests the party will be similarly "utterly and comprehensively destroyed" if it allows Theresa May's Brexit deal to pass.
• The comments come as 10 Labour frontbenchers threaten to resign in protest at Labour's Brexit policy. 
• The Labour leader has resisted calls to explicitly back a second Brexit referendum.

LONDON — The Labour Party risks being "utterly and comprehensively destroyed" at the next general election if it allows Theresa May's Brexit deal to pass, a shadow minister and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, has warned.

Shadow Treasury Minister Clive Lewis told a meeting in the Houses of Parliament on Thursday that if Labour allows a "Tory Brexit" to go ahead, they risk the same "severe" fate as the Liberal Democrats, whose public support plummeted after entering into coalition government with the Conservative party.

"My fear is we know what the Conservatives did to the Liberal Democrats..." he told a meeting titled Love Socialism, Hate Brexit, organised by pro-EU Labour MPs.

"They were utterly and comprehensively destroyed by the British public and were not forgiven because they facilitated austerity.

"They facilitated the Tories doing that. And my fear is that we are now doing, is helping to facilitate a Tory Brexit and the ramifications for our party I think will be severe."

The MP for Norwich South's remarks come amid growing fear among pro-EU Labour MPs that Corbyn could offer his support to the prime minister's deal in the coming weeks and frustration with his refusal to back a new referendum. 

Lewis added: "And just like the Lib Dems, when Theresa May has bogged off somewhere to put her trotters up after she has delivered her Brexit, and a new Tory leader comes in, they will say 'you know what, she was a disaster for this country, she betrayed this country, but so to was the leader of the opposition. He was part of this sorry debacle and I'm now going to move forward to try resolve this situation in the best way I can.'

"And I tell you what, the Tory right-wing mainstream media will get behind that narrative and it is us, the Labour Party, that will pick up a lot of the flack for what happens."

The comments also come as reports suggest that at least 10 members of Corbyn's frontbench team could resign if the Labour leader fails to throw his support behind a second referendum, or what campaigners call a "People's Vote."

The Labour leader is committed to keeping the option of another Brexit vote "on the table," but has so far resisted calls to explicitly back another public vote on the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union.

Sources close to Corbyn have told Business Insider that they fear a larger number of Labour frontbenchers could resign if Labour does throw its full support for a so-called People's Vote.

The Labour leader enraged supporters of a People's Vote in his party last week after sending a letter to the prime minister in which he suggested that Labour could back May's Brexit deal if she drops her opposition to staying in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.

This week Labour members wrote to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell warning him that Labour's Brexit plan would damage the economy and leave a Labour government with signifcantly less money to implement its manifesto.

SEE ALSO: Jeremy Corbyn warned his Brexit plans would 'devastate' his manifesto pledges and create a new age of 'Labour austerity'

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•  A Delta flight was forced to make an emergency landing as it hit turbulence, hospitalizing three people.
• A passenger on board shared a video of the inside of the cabin, which showed a drinks cart tuned upside down and the aisle filled with snacks and drink cans. 
• He said the plane did "two nose dives" in "crazy turbulence," and thanked the plane's crew.
• The National Weather Center issused a turbulence warning over parts of California and Nevada on Wednesday and Thursday as an "atmospheric river" storm system moves over the West Coast, bringing floods and snow.

A video shows the mess inside of the Delta Airlines flight after it was met with "crazy tubluence"which forced the plane to make an emergency landing and hospitalized three people as an "atmospheric river" brings strong winds, rain, and snow to the Western US.

Joe Justice, a passenger on the plane, shared a short clip of the inside of the cabin, which showed a drinks cart tuned upside down and the aisle filled with snacks and drink cans. One passenger appears to comfort another passenger by reaching their arm across the aisle, while another starts to collect the spilled food into a tray.

Justice tweeted that the plane had done "two nose dives" in "crazy turbulence." But he said that the crew "handled it perfectly."

The flight, destined for Seattle, was forced to divert to Reno, Nevada. Five people on the flight were injured, Reuters reported. Two passengers and one flight attendant were brought to hospital, the news agency said, citing local media.

Read more:Delta has apologised after handing out 'creepy' Diet Coke napkins to passengers encouraging them to give their number to their 'plane crush'

Justice also shared pictures of the inside of the cabin, which show liquids splashed onto the ceiling of the plane.

Justice offered his "gratitude and professional respect" for the crew, who were from Compass Airlines, which operates flights for Delta on certain routes.

An "atmospheric river" has hit the Western US

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a turbulence warning over parts of California and Nevada on Wednesday and Thursday as an "atmospheric river" storm system moves over the West Coast.

The NWS warned of floods and snow, while forecaster AccuWeather said that the storm "will raise the risk of life-threatening flash flooding, mudslides and avalanches across California" as the state is "bombarded with heavy rain and fluctuating snow levels through Thursday night."

The NWS describes atmospheric rivers as "relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics."

These rivers release this moisture as rain or snow when they meet the land.

Some areas in Southern California have been mandatory evacuation orders, the Associated Press reported, while people have been warned that they may face power outages and limited public services.

Business Insider has contacted Delta for comment.

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• Saudi Arabia is finally normalizing Valentine's Day this year as the Islamic religious police chose not to enforce a years-long ban on celebrations.
• This year no public injunctions against Valentine's Day items were reported, Bloomberg said, after a ban on selling red items was introduced by police in 2008.
• Signs that Saudi officials were warming to the day came in 2018, when a senior Islamic cleric said the day wasn't religious and therefore not against the Quran. 
• Saudi Arabia, a strictly Muslim country, bans all Christian celebrations. Saint Valentine was a Roman priest who lived around the year 250, so Valentine's Day was considered religious.
• The overarching government ban on Valentine's Day is still in place, but police have reportedly stopped patrolling markets to confiscate red hearts, roses, and teddy bears. 

Saudi Arabia looks to have finally embraced the romance of Valentine's Day, ending years of crackdown by the country's Islamic religious police.

2019 was the first year ever there were no public injunctions against the sale of Valentine's gifts, Bloomberg reported on Thursday— ending the long tradition of Saudi religious police sweeping through towns confiscating roses, bears, and heart symbols.

In 2008 Saudi Arabia's religious police announced a fatwa— an official religious order — banning shops from selling red objects and Valentine's Day merchandise.

Restaurants were warned against "creating a Valentine's atmosphere," school teachers warned students against marking the occasion, and salesmen and waiters avoided wearing red, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

All Christian and even most Muslim feasts are banned in the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, because they are considered unorthodox creations that Islam does not sanction, the AP said. Saint Valentine is widely believed to have been a martyred Roman priest or bishop who lived around 250 CE.

Riyadh appeared to relax on its strict rules on Valentine's Day on February 13, 2018, when a senior Islamic figure said the day wasn't religious after all, gave his approval, and said it didn't contradict the Quran.

Sheikh Ahmed Qasim al-Ghamdi, cleric and former president of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, told state news site al-Arabiya: "All these are common social matters shared by humanity and are not religious issues that require the existence of a religious proof to permit it."

He said the day celebrates "a positive aspect of the human being."

This year Saudi religious police stopped patrolling markets and towns across the country to confiscate red hearts, roses and teddy bears, Bloomberg reported.

People also reportedly stopped avoiding the use of candles in tablecloths in red, pink, and white.

But despite the apparent acceptance of Valentine's Day across the kingdom, the government has not made announcement to officially lift the ban on celebrations, Bloomberg reported.

Change is slow

Since Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — widely hailed within the country as a reformer and the man to modernize Saudi Arabia — came to power in 2017, there have been small progressive changes to the conservative society.

Music concerts and cinemas are now permitted, and men and women are able to spend more time together in public. Saudi women were given the right to drive in June 2017.

However, his reforms were overshadowed by the brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who died at the hands of Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey last October.

Crown Prince Mohammed is widely believed to be responsible for Khashoggi's death, despite Saudi officials' repeated attempts to distance him from it.

Read more:Trump accused of breaking law after refusing to report to Congress on Khashoggi's brutal killing

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NOW WATCH: How Apple went from a $1 trillion company to losing over 20% of its share price

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

The US smart home market has still yet to meet the expectations many observers had in the early part of this decade.

The same issues Business Insider Intelligence first identified back in 2015 still plague the space — persistently high prices, technological fragmentation, and consumers' lack of a perceived benefit from the devices.

But the newfound popularity of smart home voice control has revolutionized smart home ecosystems across the country, and convinces more consumers to equip their homes with smart devices on a daily basis. The Amazon Echo, released in 2014, has become immensely popular and capable, awakening users to the utility of both voice control and smart home devices. This has prompted companies to rush to release competing devices and integrate voice control into their smart home ecosystems.

In a new report from Business Insider Intelligence, we examine the overall state of the US smart home market — both the professionally and self-installed markets. We analyze the factors driving demand for smart home devices and smart home voice speakers, and discuss the future of voice control in the home.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Voice control is becoming a key remote interface within the home, a trend that began with the introduction of the Amazon Echo in 2014. Since then, Google, Samsung, and Apple have all integrated voice control into their smart home ecosystems.
• While progress has been made, prices are still too high and consumers still have yet to show strong demand for smart home devices.
• The US smart home market is only now entering the mass market phase of consumer adoption and overcoming the chasm that it sat in back in 2015.

In full, the report:

• Analyzes current consumer demand for smart home devices based off results from Business Insider Intelligence's proprietary survey.
• Forecasts future growth in the number of smart home devices installed in American homes.
• Analyzes the factors influencing the proliferation of voice control devices in the homes.
• Identifies and analyzes the market strategies of various companies that have integrated voice control into their smart home ecosystems.

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

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Here is what you need to know.

1. Officials from the US and China will kick off two days of negotiations in an attempt to end Trump's trade war as a critical tariff deadline nears. The two sides remain far apart on the US's demands for fundamental changes to the Chinese economic model.
2. Google has joined Apple in probing Saudi app that lets men control where women travel. Google says it will review the app to determine whether it is in line with its policies.
3. Apple's rumored video streaming service reportedly won't include Netflix. The news comes just a day after a report suggested that Apple is clashing with publishers over terms for the news subscription program it's allegedly working on.
4. A former Apple executive was accused of insider trading by the SEC. Gene Levoff, who was Apple's senior director of corporate law and corporate secretary until September, is accused of exploiting his positions to unlawfully trade Apple securities ahead of Apple's quarterly earnings announcements. 
5. Yelp's stock is trading higher after the company beat on earnings and revenue. The company said it expected to "exit 2019 with strong revenue growth."
6. Everyone thinks the market's hottest tech stocks are too expensive — but new research suggests one segment is offering a major bargain right now. Scott Opsal of Leuthold Weeden Capital Management unveils which tech group you should buy.
7. Goldman Sachs has a strategy it says you should use to combat a stock-market slowdown. They laid out fundamental reasons why returns are going to be moderate going forward.
8. Global equity indexes were mixed. The Hang Seng and Nikkei declined slightly in Asia, while the Euro Stoxx 50 and DAX increased at least 0.2%. S&P 500 futures traded 0.4% higher in the premarket.
9. Inflation data is set to be released. Initial jobless claims, PPI, and advance retail sales will come out at 8:30 a.m. ET.
10. Earnings reports will continue to be released. Coca-Cola, AstraZeneca, Nvidia, and Kraft Heinz are among the companies set to report.

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NOW WATCH: Michael D'Antonio reveals Donald Trump's 'strange' morning ritual that boosts his ego

• 7 million Americans have gone into "serious delinquency" on their car loans.
• The automobile industry in both the US and Europe — for different reasons — has started to look like a serious drag on the Western economy that threatens to tip both continents into recession.
• In Europe, many people have simply stopped buying cars.

More than 7 million Americans have gone into "serious delinquency" on their car loans, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and that is one of the reasons the US Fed has become more cautious about raising interest rates.

In fact, the automobile industry in both the US and Europe — for different reasons — has started to look like a serious drag on the Western economy that threatens to tip both continents into recession. In America, it's auto-loan debt. In Europe, many people have simply stopped buying cars.

Both factors suggest that consumers feel their finances are no longer robust enough to handle big-ticket purchases.

First, in the US, an increasing number of Americans have apparently become too poor to continue paying for the cars they drive. 90-day past-due delinquencies among 18-to-29-year-olds are already at the same level they were back in 2008, during the financial crisis:

Now look at what has happened in the eurozone, the 19 European countries that use the euro currency:

What is happening in Europe is complicated, and not directly correlated to auto-loan debt. But it's having the same effect: People have reduced the car-buying by as much as 10%, and that's threatening to tip Europe into recession.

In Germany — the world's fourth-largest economy and Europe's driving manufacturing force — new-car buying fell off a cliff in the last few months.

Economists have more recently been cheered by an uptick in sales, but they are still rising from a steep trough and well below the level they were at a year ago:

Disastrous auto sales are one of the major factors in hurting the German economy, which went into a technical recession in Q3 2018 and appears to have stagnated, with exactly 0.0% growth, in Q4 2018:

Britain has problems too. This is new car registrations in the UK:

Since 2017, British consumers seem to have permanently shaved about 10 percentage points off their demand for new cars. 

The German and British car markets are closely linked. Unsurprisingly, Brexit — especially if Britain leaves the European Union with no trade deal — will hurt both of them. Oxford Economics estimates "no deal" will cut 0.3 percentage points from Europe's manufacturing economy, but up to 0.7 points from the car industries.

"Particularly vulnerable would be the German and Spanish industries, with output falling 0.6 ppt and 0.8 ppt below baseline over the same period," Oxford analyst Stephen Foreman told clients recently. 

Cars are being hit in Europe over a variety of factors. The fake diesel testing scandal has deterred people from buying new diesel models. Makers have had to retool their plants to cope with new WLTP regulations that improve emissions and fuel consumption standards, and that has reduced production. There is some anecdotal evidence that the popularity of ride-sharing apps like Uber has reduced people's desire to replace their private cars. And in Britain a change in vehicle tax ramped up sales in 2017, thus depressing them afterwards. 

But all of that, coupled with the US delinquent debt problem, has had tangible macro results:

• Italy is already in recession.
• Germany has exactly zero GDP growth.
• In the UK, GDP growth was revised down to 0.2% for Q4 2018.
• And the Fed has difficulty gauging how much distress American workers are in.

Read more:

Apps like Uber and DriveNow may be hurting the demand for new cars, studies suggest

The UK car business has 'exactly the same problems' as the mortgage market 10 years ago, according to Morgan Stanley

British people have suddenly stopped buying cars

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NOW WATCH: Michael D'Antonio reveals Donald Trump's 'strange' morning ritual that boosts his ego

• OpenAI, the AI research company cofounded by Elon Musk, has made an AI tool which can generate fake text.
• The Guardian's Alex Hern played with the system, generating a fake article on Brexit and a new paragraph for George Orwell's "1984."
• The company isn't open-sourcing the system because it fears it could be misused, for example to infinitely generating negative or positive reviews.

AI research nonprofit OpenAI has created a system that can generate fake text from a single line — and it's not open-sourcing the code for fear of misuse.

OpenAI was cofounded by tech mogul Elon Musk, and its sponsors include Silicon Valley heavy-hitters such as Peter Thiel and Amazon Web Services.

Last year it gained the praise of Bill Gates after it built a team of five neural networks capable of beating human players in the computer game "Dota 2."

Read more: Bill Gates hails "huge milestone" for AI as bots work in a team to destroy humans at video game "Dota 2"

Now the company has created a system, named GPT2, capable of imitating and generating text based on only a sentence.

The Guardian's Alex Hern got to play with the system, and tried typing in a single Guardian headline about Brexit. From that headline alone, GPT2 was able to generate quotes from UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as a fictional spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May.

"The PM has made it absolutely clear her intention is to leave the EU as quickly as is possible and that will be under her negotiating mandate as confirmed in the Queen's speech last week," the fictional spokesman said.

You can watch Hern's experiment with the text-generating tool here:

Hern also tried feeding the system the first line of George Orwell's "1984": "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." From that, GPT2 spun the following snippet of prose:

"I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

OpenAI's research director Dario Amodei told Hern that the models used to make GPT2 were enormous, and it was trained by reading through roughly 10 million articles, which were selected by crawling through Reddit. If an article had more than three upvotes, it was selected.

While GPT2 is potentially groundbreaking, OpenAI is not ready to share it with the world just yet. Its head of policy told the Guardian that GPT2 needs to be tinkered with for a while to find out whether it could be used for mischief.

"If you can't anticipate all the abilities of a model, you have to prod it to see what it can do. There are many more people than us who are better at thinking what it can do maliciously," he said.

As an example, OpenAI showed how the system could be used to generate limitless bad or good reviews. The internet is already awash with spam, and product reviews are often gamed — whether by people promoting their own products or rivals seeking to sabotage them.

Read more: Facebook employees were caught writing 5-star reviews for its Portal device on Amazon, and now they must take them down

OpenAI told the Guardian that the goal was to show people technology what could become commonplace in a year or two.

SEE ALSO: Microsoft's top lawyer met with Pope Francis to discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence

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• Prince Harry was met with a shrine to himself and his wife Meghan Markle when visiting British armed forces in the Arctic Circle.
• The Duke was invited inside a snow dugout during his flying visit to northern Norway where the Royal Marines are taking part in winter survival training.
• The servicemen had been busy before his arrival decorating the interior of the makeshift igloo with photos from the prince's royal wedding.
• "You weirdos," Harry said in response to the unique decor.

Prince Harry, who is used to seeing his face just about everywhere, probably wasn't expecting to see it plastering the walls of an igloo he was visiting in the Arctic Circle.

The prince was dropping in on British armed forces taking part in winter survival training in Bardufoss, northern Norway, when he was invited into a snow dugout to meet some servicemen.

They had been busy, though, decorating the Quincey Shelter with candles and photos of the prince and his wife Meghan Markle the Duchess of Sussex. Chilled music was also playing in the background.

"You weirdos," Harry chuckled as he came inside adding, "nice" as he caught the photo of himself on his wedding day.

"It's very kind of you to invite us into your private, err, shrine," he continued.

"He was really keen to engage," Sergeant Ads Lesley said, according to The Telegraph.

"He asked if they had got their girlfriends or wives or partners flowers for Valentine's Day - he was keen to make sure no-one was in trouble.

"He liked to compare what we're doing out here, how amazing it is, with what we're doing back in the UK. He was really happy that we're in a beautiful environment and to see how happy we are.

"There was a little light humour: he saw people in sleeping bags and said 'oh, have you just woken up?'"

In the shelter, Lesley said, "he had a smile on his face. We had some chill-out music on, just to show how creative you can be."

He added that the royal wedding decorations seemed "almost a bit of a shock" for the Duke, who "had a chuckle to himself."

800 Royal Marines are currently stationed in the region undergoing extreme weather training as part of Exercise Clockwork as Britain looks to strengthen its Arctic capability.

Aside from visiting an igloo, the Duke — who as Captain General Royal Marines is the ceremonial head of the elite commando force — also admitted he misses being an Apache helicopter pilot and joined the servicemen for lunch in the mess during his three-hour visit.

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NOW WATCH: How Apple went from a $1 trillion company to losing over 20% of its share price

• The e-commerce giant Amazon quietly rolled out video ads in search results six months ago and has been shopping it to performance and brand marketers with a minimum spending requirement of $35,000 to $50,000.
• The format is sold direct and on Amazon's iPhone app, but Amazon is close to expanding it to its self-serve platform and its Android app, according to agencies.

• The format is geared toward getting brands to spend more with Amazon, but agencies say it's unclear which kind of advertiser the format is aimed at.
• Agencies cited issues with creative, price, and data as main reasons the ad format has been sluggish to take off with clients.

Amazon is clamoring for ad budgets from big brands to prove that its platform is more than an e-commerce machine, but agencies say the company's pitch for video dollars has a few snags.

Last fall, Amazon quietly rolled out video ads in mobile search results in its iPhone app. The ad format is called "video in search" and lets brands buy ads against broad keyword searches like "paper towels,""mascara," and "dog food." The ads show up below the fold in mobile search results.

In the past week, the General Mills-owned Blue Buffalo Pet Products, Procter & Gamble's Tide, CoverGirl, Brawny, and the online cosmetic brand Elizabeth Mott have run such video ads. The ads match Amazon's lucrative targeting data with short product videos that appear in search results when shoppers are looking for specific products.

Amazon's growing ad business is primarily known as a direct-response vehicle, but it's been less successful helping marketers increase brand awareness. Amazon's mobile video ads could appeal to brands that do a lot of video advertising.

Amazon is testing the ad format in a small beta program where brands can buy them only through an Amazon sales representative. But several sources said Amazon planned to make the format available through its self-serve ad platform this quarter. Three sources say Amazon simultaneously plans to roll out ads in its Android app, which would double the amount of ad inventory sold and open price bidding to advertisers.

But agencies say the video ads have been a tough sell for performance and brand-oriented marketers because it's unclear which group Amazon is targeting.

"You've got this middle-of-the-road, really fascinating ad format, but it becomes difficult to bucket as an upper-funnel video tactic or a performance search tactic," said Emily Anthony, the senior director of media services at Merkle. "It's in this weird middle ground between their search product and managed service, which typically [includes] higher impact ad formats and more awareness-based media."

Read more:Big brands like Verizon and Toyota are backing Amazon's Freedive as the e-commerce giant pushes deeper into OTT advertising

"It's not something that we have clients clamoring for," Nich Weinheimer, the vice president of e-commerce at Kenshoo, a third-party marketing tech platform that helps marketers plan and buy digital ads, said of the search-based video ads. "To Amazon's credit, they're trying to figure out if there's space for video in the low-funnel shopping experience. For most marketers that leverage Amazon, it's very transactional, it's all about sell-through. Amazon's trying to make strides to develop that consideration phase of their site and engage with a brand more broadly."

Some performance marketers are having sticker shock

Agencies struggle with Amazon's search-based video format for other reasons.

The format uses exact-match targeting, a search marketing tactic where ads are targeted to run against broad terms like "toothpaste" or "dog food," but search advertisers like to use more specific keywords like "whitening toothpaste" or target competitors' names.

"It's a low-volume play at the moment because the keywords are defined by Amazon, and the budget overall is determined by Amazon," said David Hutchinson, national director of paid platform merchandising at iProspect. 

There's evidence that's starting to change. A quick search on Amazon's mobile app shows that Georgia-Pacific's Brawny, for example, is targeting its competitors and running ads alongside searches for "Bounty paper towels" and "Sparkle paper towels" in addition to its own query of "Brawny paper towels" and the more generic "paper towels" query.

Merkle's Anthony added that the below-the-fold placement can make ads buried in search results. To compare, Amazon has text-based search ads that appear at the top of search results.

Price is another concern. The campaigns require advertisers to spend a minimum of $35,000 to $50,000, depending on the demand of the keyword, which agencies said is too expensive for most search advertisers, especially because there aren't any case studies or results to prove that the ads perform. Anthony said the price would need to drop to $10,000 for her clients to get on board.

Amazon has its own definition of a view

Rina Yashayeva, VP of marketplace strategy at Amazon-focused ad agency Stella Rising, said the agency began pitching a beauty brand on Amazon's video ads last week and hinted that Amazon may be willing to budge on price.

"I think there's an opportunity to work with the Amazon advertising team if you commit to something early on to negotiate a smaller budget if you can test it for a shorter period of time," she said.

Sources also said that they'd like to see the ad format sold through Amazon's self-service platform so they could bid on ads as they can with Amazon search ads. 

Another issue is the pricing approach. Search advertisers typically buy ads on a cost-per-impression, or CPM, basis. However, video advertisers typically buy ads on cost-per-view (or CPV) basis. Amazon's video ads are priced at 5 cents per view, according to one source, and a view counts as two seconds, starting when a video begins autoplaying on the screen as a user scrolls. Videos can be up to 90 seconds long, though most advertisers seem to run ads that are less than 15 seconds long.

Amazon's definition of a view differs from that of Facebook, which primarily counts a view as three seconds; and YouTube, which has long counted a view as 30 seconds but recently began counting views as 10 seconds for some ads.

Amazon's autoplay video feature "has been a bit of bone of contention," said iProspect's Hutchinson. "It doesn't quite seem like the industry norm."

Amazon is notorious for withholding data with advertisers, and agencies said the data Amazon gives them from the direct-sold video ad campaigns doesn't match the data Amazon supplies through its self-serve platform, making it hard to compare the performance of video campaigns to existing search campaigns.

"The two big pushbacks have been: 'We don't have the right kind of creative or we're not comfortable with the attribution that you're getting back,'" said iProspect's Hutchinson. "Amazon builds and reports on the campaign behind the scenes."

The format often requires brands to come up with new creative

Figuring out the right creative approach is another challenge. The creative needs to be promotional and quickly show images of products within the first few seconds, according to best practices Amazon published on its website. Agencies have found the sweet spot with video length to be under 10 seconds.

IProspect found eight seconds to be ideal, but Hutchinson said that brands don't have such assets readily available, so making them adds to the production cost.

For a fashion client, iProspect tested a video ad in Amazon search results and found that the creative was too long at more than 10 seconds to get people to click through on it.

"There wasn't the attribution to see the sales so it was one that couldn't sustain a second test until we got creative specifically designed for the product shots," he said. "To get that creative briefed in, something would have had to be scarified and there's far more established channels and places for that creative to go."

The challenges with video reflect advertisers' larger frustrations getting a handle on Amazon's ad business. Amazon has integrated its advertising teams into a single brand, but agencies say it's still difficult to navigate the company's ad products, which sit in different divisions.

"You have two traditionally separate groups that are trying to handshake with this product," said Kenshoo's Weinheimer.

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• The New York Times has had strong subscription growth, leading it to set an ambitious goal of 10 million subs by 2025.
• The Times says it's been able to grow because it invests in its journalism, its user experience, and its onboarding efforts, leading people to pay more and renew.
• Other publishers are leaning more on subscriptions to supplement their ad revenue, but the Times has a formula that's hard for others to replicate.

The New York Times has been on a subscription growth tear, hitting 4.3 million print and digital subscriptions by the end of 2018. Based on those results, it's looking to increase the price this year and set a goal of exceeding 10 million subscriptions by 2025.

Read more: Vox Media is asking people to help cover the high cost of making videos with a $4.99-a-month membership program

With all the widespread layoffs in media lately, the question looms of how online news can be financially viable. It’s tempting to think that the success of the Times means success for the other publishers that are turning to paywalls to complement their advertising business, like Condé Nast, New York Media, and The Atlantic.

But a rising Times doesn’t necessarily lift all boats. While the strong news cycle drives reader interest and willingness to pay for news, there’s a finite number of subscriptions people will pay for. Only 8% of people in the US pay for an ongoing news subscription, according to the Reuters Institute's 2017 report, Paying for News.

The institute's 2019 report, "Journalism, Media, Technology Trends and Predictions 2019," warns that there may be pushback from consumers as they encounter more paywalls on sites.

The Times plans to hire more journalists

The Times has a number of things going for it that other publications don't. Advertising as well as subscription growth enabled it to add 120 journalists last year for a total of 1,600, the biggest in Times history, EVP and COO Meredith Levien said. She said the paper would add more journalists this year, without committing to a number. When it comes to the breadth of reporting in the Times, she said, “I'm not sure we have a peer.”

“As we get better at the product, we're also making it more valuable,” Levien told Business Insider. “I don't think there are a lot of places in news where you can say that.”

Meanwhile, many other publishers have been laying off rather than adding journalists.

The Times also can afford to spend a lot to improve on and grow its products, which helps sell subscriptions. It's planning to make improvements to its app. It recently rolled out a Cooking subscription product and is planning to introduce more subscription-based puzzles, a parenting product, and other utility-based products. One third of new subscriptions are coming from crossword puzzles and Cooking.

The Times also has a big marketing budget it can use to attract subscribers and market its brand. It spent $48.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from $32.6 million in the year-ago period.

It's especially hard for general news publications to differentiate themselves enough to attract subscriptions, but The Times' journalistic distinction and ongoing improvements have helped it win subscribers.

The paper was promoting a $1-per-week special, half off the regular price, for six months. But Levien said people readily pay full price after the introductory period ends, though she wouldn’t say the retention rate. Asked about the impact of competitors cutting their prices, she said the Times is fundamentally different and "worth paying more for."

“We've had a number of people come in at 50% off who we had to step up to full price, and that went really well,” she said. “We're getting better at how we onboard you and interact with you in the first 90 days. We're still not as good as the best subscription companies out there, but we're a lot better than we were, and that gives us confidence we should be able to retain at whatever offer we get people in at.”

In fact, the Times is also thinking more about how to get at high-end subscribers, after testing discounts with price-sensitive people in mind.

“We're putting lot of thought into how to get at the high end of the demand curve,” she said. “We'll test higher prices. We'll put out more product. We keep putting more value in the paper.”

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NOW WATCH: Meet the three women who married Donald Trump

• Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and self-driving technology are helping the transportation and logistics industry finally transform by cutting costs, optimizing delivery routes, and automating mundane tasks.
• Startups will be the lynchpin of this transformation because they specifically target areas of need  with cutting-edge solutions.
• Business Insider Intelligence examined the top 5 startups within five key areas: digital freight services, warehouse robotics, AI for supply chain management, last-mile delivery robotics, and self-driving car software.

Transportation and logistics industries have operated largely the same way for decades. But the surge in e-commerce in the last several years, combined with consumers’ appetite for same-day delivery, has brought us to a tipping point.

Delivery companies are doing all they can to get orders to customers’ doors as quickly as possible, which has facilitated wholesale changes in how they operate.

Cutting-edge digital solutions (including digital freight services, warehouse robotics, AI for supply chain management, delivery robotics, and autonomous driving software) are forcing traditional delivery companies to either evolve or see their core businesses erode.

Transportation & Logistics Startups to Watch, a new report from Business Insider Intelligence, monitors the biggest change agents in the industry to offer unique insight into the development of the transportation and logistics space at large, and shows how traditional companies are adapting to their new environment.

Want to Learn More?

Business Insider Intelligence's Startups to Watch reports give a high-level overview of the funding trends for startups in a particular coverage area, as well as a list of key startups (by function, what they do, key news, and statistics). Businesses need to understand new competitive threats, technologies, and acquisition opportunities in order to thrive. These reports provide that contextual information in an easy-to-digest manner.

In full, the Transportation & Logistics Startups to Watch report dives into the top 25 companies - five startups across five key disruption areas - that are easing shipping burdens, improving order fulfillment efficiency, optimizing delivery, and automating processes.

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• A large-scale study into post-menopausal women has found a link between consuming two or more artificially sweetened diet sodas or juices per day and increased risk of heart attacks, clot-based strokes, and earlier death.
• The researchers note that they cannot prove causation, and the results may not be applicable to younger women or men.
• Limiting consumption of diet beverages is recommended by experts.

The narrative around diet sodas is continually changing — for every study claiming they're linked to dementia, there's a nutritionist recommending them.

The latest research, however, claims that consuming diet sodas and juices is linked to a higher risk of stroke and heart disease, as well as a higher risk of dying early from any cause.

A large-scale study of women over the age of 50 by the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association found that drinking two or more artificially sweetened drinks per day was linked to having an increased risk of heart attacks, clot-based strokes and early death.

The study, published in Stroke, involved over 80,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79 and found that drinking two or more diet drinks (one serving being 335ml) a day increased a woman's chance of stroke by 23% compared to women who consumed less than one a week.

The women who drank more of the artificially sweetened drinks were also found to be 29% more likely to develop heart disease and 16% more likely to die from any cause during the 12-year trial.

The health risks were found to be higher in certain sub-sets of women: those who were obese, African-American, or without previous heart disease or diabetes.

The researchers adjusted for various stroke risk factors such as age, high blood pressure, and smoking, and point out that the results may not be applicable to men or younger women. 

Read more: A sports nutritionist says drinking Diet Coke will help you lose weight, despite a new study that suggests the opposite

Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, lead author of the study and an associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, said: "Many well-meaning people, especially those who are overweight or obese, drink low-calorie sweetened drinks to cut calories in their diet.

"Our research and other observational studies have shown that artificially sweetened beverages may not be harmless and high consumption is associated with a higher risk of stroke and heart disease."

She continued: "We don't know specifically what types of artificially sweetened beverages they were consuming, so we don't know which artificial sweeteners may be harmful and which may be harmless."

The researchers note that they cannot say drinking diet drinks directly causes these consequences, mainly because the study was observational and relied on participants' own reporting, but they say the link is worth noting.

Read more: Low-calorie sweeteners are no better for weight loss than sugar, according to a new study

"Unfortunately, current research simply does not provide enough evidence to distinguish between the effects of different low-calorie sweeteners on heart and brain health," said Rachel K. Johnson, Ph.D., R.D., professor of nutrition emeritus, University of Vermont and the chair of the writing group for the American Heart Association's science advisory, Low-Calorie Sweetened Beverages and Cardiometabolic Health.

"This study adds to the evidence that limiting use of diet beverages is the most prudent thing to do for your health.

"The American Heart Association suggests water as the best choice for a no-calorie beverage. However, for some adults, diet drinks with low calorie sweeteners may be helpful as they transition to adopting water as their primary drink.

"Since long-term clinical trial data are not available on the effects of low-calorie sweetened drinks and cardiovascular health, given their lack of nutritional value, it may be prudent to limit their prolonged use."

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