President Barack Obama apparently reads articles about him — and he's often not happy about them. 

Longtime Obama adviser discussed how the president reads about himself in an interview with the New York Times that was published last Thursday.

"Look, every president says, 'I never read that stuff,' and no president is telling the truth when they say that," Axelrod said. "It’s only human to be aware of what’s being written and said about you and to be less than happy when you feel like you’re not being treated fairly."

Axelrod recently authored the book "Believer" wherein he shares many stories from his long career in politics including his time with Obama. 

Obama's "voracious" media diet — and his dissatisfaction with negative coverage — was previously detailed in a 2012 Times article. 

"A writer before he was a politician, Mr. Obama is a voracious consumer of news, reading newspapers and magazines on his iPad and in print and dipping into blogs and Twitter," the story said. "He regularly gives aides detailed descriptions of articles that he liked, and he can be thin-skinned about those that he does not."

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NOW WATCH: The New Mercedes Driverless Car Even Has The Driver's Seat Facing Away From The Road

New York’s 2009 Anti-Shackling law covers all state correctional facilities and local jails and explicitly bans the use of restraints on women throughout labor, delivery, and recovery.

But a recent report released by the Correctional Association of New York claims New York has failed to follow through on its promise of adequate healthcare for pregnant inmates.

The report interviewed 27 women who had given birth between 2009 and 2013 at New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). It found that 85% of those women were shackled at least once in violation of the law.

"My ankles were shackled during the whole trip to the hospital when I was in labor," one inmate told researchers. "I was shackled until I got to the delivery room, but even then they kept one of my ankles shackled to the bed."

As of 2014, 21 states had passed anti-shackling laws — and also failed to enforce them properly, the report stated.  

“These laws were passed and everybody patted themselves on the back for doing what was right and human and then went on about their business," Danyell Williams, a former doula at a Philadelphia correctional facility, told The New York Times in an article published last summer. "But there’s no policing entity that’s really going to hold these institutions responsible.”

Shackles aim to restrict an inmates' movement by binding their hands and feet using handcuffs and ankle restraints. This practice can be extremely painful since women's wrists and ankles swell during pregnancy. It also poses a health risk to pregnant inmates, whom medical professionals widely agree require mobility during labor to keep the mother and baby safe.

"Shackling women in labor runs counter to our values," delegates from the American Medical Association said in a 2010 statement.

Among other risks, shackling interferes with normal labor and delivery. "Women need to be able to move or be moved in preparation for emergencies of labor and delivery, including shoulder dystocia, hemorrhage, or abnormalities of the fetal heart rate requiring intervention, including urgent cesarean delivery," according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). The limited mobility caused by shackling can also increase the risk of blood clots — a leading cause of maternal death in the US, according to the ACOG.

The shackles continue to cause inmates serious pain and discomfort even after they give birth. When one New York inmate had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency C-section, she was promptly re-shackled on the way back to prison.

"With the weight on the stomach [from the handcuffs], it felt like they were ripping open my C-section," she told the New York Times in 2012.

Shackling women during birth has emotional as well as physical consequences. The ACOG calls it "demeaning" and warns that it may interfere with the inmate's ability to form a bond with her child. Women surveyed by the Correctional Association who had been shackled during childbirth described the practice as "horrible" and "degrading."

One woman told researchers that she had to breastfeed her baby while shackled. "I was devastated to go visit him [in the nursery or neonatal ICU]" she said. "I had to sit in a wheelchair for hours at a time shackled in pain."

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Last week we saw multiple reports that Apple is working on an electric car.

Tim Cook reportedly gave the project the green light a year ago. It's called Project Titan and is led by Steve Zadesky, who oversaw the creation of the iPod and iPhone, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Here's what we know about him:

• Zadesky has been given permission to assemble an 1,000-person team to work on Apple's car. He's allowed to poach employees from inside the company. His team is working on the car in a secret facility near Apple's HQ in Cupertino, according to the Journal.
• Zadesky has been making trips to Austria, possibly to look for a car manufacturer, according to the Financial Times.
• He has experience in the automotive industry. His first job was at Ford, where he was an engineer from 1996-1999.
• He joined Apple in 1999 to work on the iPod. Here's one of his patents for what looks like a first-gen iPod:

• After working on the iPod, Zadesky shifted his attention to the iPhone. Here's his patent for a "wireless handheld electronic device" that looks exactly like the original iPhone:

• His name is on some other interesting patents, like this one for a wireless charging station and this one for an electronic device to provide tacticle feedback.
• He's the sole Apple signatory on a 2010 business contract with LiquidMetal, which has developed a metal material that is moldable like plastic. About a year ago, a joint team of Apple and LiquidMetal employees filed a bunch of patents that seem to be related to displays in consumer electronics devices. According to Bloomberg, LiquidMetal's technology had not found their way into any Apple products as of September 2014. 
• He's been working on the iPod and iPhone since day one: "At Apple I have been lucky enough to help build and lead the teams for the first iPod, first iPhone, all subsequent iPhones and iPods as well as hundreds of Apple branded accessory products," he said on LinkedIn. 
• According to an org chart published in a 2011 Fortune article, Zadesky reported to Bob Mansfield, Apple's head of hardware engineering. In summer 2013, Mansfield moved into a new role supervising special projects, reporting directly to Tim Cook. More recent org charts have Zadesky reporting to design chief Jony Ive.
• Zadesky went to UC Berkeley for undergrad where he recieved a bachelor's in mechanical engineering in 1995. After that he went to Stanford for his master's, also in mechanical engineering.
• He's on Berkeley's Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Board. The board gives non-binding advice on Berkeley's mechanical engineering program. 

Overall, it seems that Zadesky has kept a pretty low profile — like a lot of Apple executives.

SEE ALSO: How much money could Apple make from cars, seriously?

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In its 111-year history, Rolls-Royce has crafted a rock solid identity for itself as the builder of exquisite, handcrafted luxury cruisers.

And in the modern definition, that means sedans, coupes, and convertibles. No trucks or SUVs here.

Until now.

In response to demands from its discerning customers for a "go anywhere" vehicle, Rolls-Royce has announced that it will indeed launch an SUV, although the company doesn't explicity use the "SUV" terminology.

Even Rolls-Royce is not immune to the sport utility craze. 

According to the company, development of the go-anywhere Rolls is still in its nascency. There are no official design renderings, development timetable, technical specifications, or even a code name that we know off.  

However, what we do know about the upcoming Rolls-Royce off-roader is mouthwatering.

According to Rolls-Royce, a subsidiary of Germany's BMW Group, its future SUV will be roughly the same size as the company's flagship Phantom sedan. It will be a "high-bodied car" built using an all-new aluminium construction instead of the current cars' steel monocoque framework. 

As for the engines, expect to see a version of the company's venerable 6.75 liter V-12 under the hood. Although, Rolls-Royce's monster 9.0 liter V16 found in the 101EX concept car from 2006 is still sitting in a warehouse somewhere, that option seems to be less likely. 

Like all other Rolls-Royce cars, its will be hand-built at the company's workshop in Goodwood, England.

Although breaking with tradition is not something we see Rolls-Royce do very often, it makes business sense with this car. There is a true void in the ultra-premium market. There are no luxury SUVs that live in the Rolls-Royce's $300,000 and up price point. In fact, you have to go all the down to Jaguar Land Rover's $140,000 Range Rover Autobiography or Mercedes-Benz's $137,000 G63 AMG for any competition. 

Rolls Royce isn't the only one who has noticed. Bentley recently announced its "uniquely" named Bentayga, and even Lamborghini is waiting for the greenlight to produce its high performance off-roader.

With that said, Rolls-Royce is not a brand that dabbles. Rather it's a company that's deeply committed to building what it calls "the best cars in the world."

And that's exactly what I expect from its SUV. 

SEE ALSO: Meet the carbon-fiber Rolls-Royce inspired by the stealth fighter

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On Tuesday, IBM announced that it is investing $1 billion over the next five years in a hot new area of enterprise tech called "software-defined storage."

This is important and interesting for a whole bunch of reasons — and shows that CEO Ginni Rometty has her competitive game on.

She's got a plan to move her massive 400,000-ish strong workforce from shrinking businesses and towards growth areas, even though it's painful, with a number of quiet layoffs involved.

To understand why this new $1 billion investment is cool, you need to know two things:

1. "Software-defined" is a huge trend in the $3 trillion enterprise technology market.
2. This is the second big move that IBM has made that puts it on a collision course with storage giant EMC, and the $17 billion storage market that it dominates with about 30% market share, according to IDC as reported by Forbes.

Software is eating the enterprise data center

"Software-defined" is a term that refers to taking expensive hardware, removing the all the fancy features from it that makes it expensive and putting those fancy features into software apps that run on special computers. You still need the hardware, but you need less of it, less expensive varieties and your data center becomes faster, more efficient, and less expensive — important for today's cloud computing needs.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is already happening, forcing market leader Cisco to respond.

It is also coming on strong in storage, forcing EMC to respond. The poster child for this new market is IPO-bound startup, Nutanix, which has raised a whopping $312.2 million from investors and was on track to book $300 million this year when it announced second-quarter growth earlier this month.

EMC has a software-defined storage (SDS) product of its own, ViPR, which is selling well and one of the six areas where EMC is heavily investing, it says.

Second smart move by IBM

IBM's $1 billion commitment is the second big recent move it made to eat EMC's lunch. In December IBM cozied up with Cisco shortly after Cisco divorced its former close partner EMC. 

Cisco and EMC had a successful joint venture, called VCE, that was on track to sell $2 billion of equipment from Cisco and EMC in 2014 (EMC said last fall) and is growing by 50% a quarter, (EMC said in January).

VCE makes a product that combined Cisco's popular computer servers with VMware's server software and EMC's storage.

But EMC subsidiary VMware is now trying to take down Cisco with its own "software-defined networking" (SDN) product. Thanks to that, the relationship between EMC and Cisco devolved to the point where they ended the partnership in October, with EMC buying out Cisco (leaving Cisco with a 10% stake).

EMC promptly set about retooling VCE's products to sell the VMware networking product that competes with Cisco's networking products.

Cisco retaliated by firing up a new partnership with EMC's rival IBM for IBM's software-defined storage product.

Both Cisco and IBM have huge and powerful enterprise sales forces and partner networks. Together, the products they develop that combine computer servers, networking, and storage should do well.

Turf wars going on at EMC

All of this comes in the midst of reported internal turmoil going on at EMC in the Advanced Software Division, the unit responsible for the ViPR, according to The Register's Chris Mellor. This unit, and the one responsible for EMC's bread-and-butter classic computer storage systems, are apparently not getting along, although an EMC spokesperson denies such reports.

Internal turmoil or not, software-defined storage is a gift-wrapped opportunity for IBM, which has seen its market share and revenues in the traditional storage market decline in 2014.

And it's tied with a bow – a new partnership with Cisco.

Throwing $1 billion at this opportunity is a smart move.

SEE ALSO: The Inside Story Of A $1 Billion Acquisition That Caused Cisco To Divorce Its Closest Partner, EMC

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The world's most powerful woman earned her Ph.D. in quantum physics, presides over the richest economy in Europe, and is the central broker in a massive euro-bailout deal.

Germany's Angela Merkel is the undisputed leader of her political party, and she faces hardly any opposition in her now third parliamentary term as chancellor.

Merkel rose from humble beginnings under an oppressive East German regime, overthrew her political mentor single-handedly, claimed the top spot as Germany's leader much like her late British counterpart Margaret Thatcher, who also had a degree in science.

Angela Kasner was born in Hamburg, West Germany, on July 17, 1954.

Angela Dorothea Kasner was born to Herlind Kasner, an English and Latin teacher, and Horst Kasner, a theologian and Lutheran minister.

A few weeks after she was born, her father moved the family to Templin, in East Germany, about an hour from Berlin.

Merkel's childhood was shaped by the Stasi, or secret police. The Stasi made people paranoid. Merkel learned early on to keep her cards close to her chest.

Source: The Making of Merkel, BBC

A perfectionist by nature, she excelled in her studies.

She excelled in academics, especially math, science, and languages.

In her teenage years, her parents encouraged her to join the Communist youth organization, the Freie Deutsche Jugend, or Free German Youth, to develop skills for a career in politics. 

After flunking a physics course in high school, she decided to pursue a degree from the University of Leipzig in physics to prove her mastery of the subject.

Source: The Making of Merkel, BBC 

She became a physicist.

Popular among her peers, she caught the eye of fellow physics student Ulrich Merkel, whom she met during a Russian exchange trip.

She married him in 1977 and graduated the following year with a degree in physics and physical chemistry.

She continued her academic career and went on to study at the elite German Academy of Sciences, in Berlin, and earned a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry, in 1986.

Source: The Making of Merkel, BBC

President Barack Obama just directly addressed his administration's controversial hesitation to to call terrorists "Islamic" or "Muslim."

In a Wednesday speech on violent extremism, Obama argued the US should not  "grant these terrorists the religious legitimacy that they seek." 

"They are not religious leaders, they're terrorists. And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam," he said.

Conservative critics have repeatedly needled the Obama administration in recent days over its alleged refusal to acknowledge that Islamic State jihadists (also known as ISIS or ISIL) and other radical Muslim militants are, in fact, Muslim.

"Say it, Obama: 'Islamic,'" a New York Post op-ed demanded Wednesday morning. 

However, speaking at the White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism later that day, Obama said he simply wanted to stress that Islam "calls for peace."

"Al Qaeda and ISIL do draw selectively from the Islamic texts. They do depend on the misperception around the world that they speak, in some fashion, for people of the Muslim faith," he said. "They no more represent Islam than any madman who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism, or Hinduism. No religion is responsible for terrorism; people are responsible for violence and terrorism."

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Step back in time with this 16th century French chateau just listed for $5.7 million.

Constructed in 1504 for a French cardinal in the commune of Vigny, the castle is just 30 miles from Paris.

Apart from the neo-gothic architecture, many other  features survive until the current day. The moat, the six turreted towers, and all the 16th century charm you can stand are all present.

Imma Best International realty has the listing.

The spectacular Le Château de Vigny is a real château, or french manor house.

It was built way back in 1507 for French cardinal Georges d'Amboise in the commune of Vigny, a scant 30 miles north of Paris.

Designed by architect Charles Cazot in the neo-Gothic style, it includes an insane amount of medieval detail.

With temperatures below freezing in much of the northern hemisphere, it's the perfect time to escape to one of the world’s most beautiful beaches.

TripAdvisor has just released its 2015 Travelers’ Choice Awards, which ranks the best beaches in the world based on millions of reviews from real travelers.

Baia do Sancho, a beach on the remote Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, was named the best in the world for the second time in a row.

From the white sands of Turks and Caicos to the crystal clear waters of Italy’s Rabbit Beach, here are the top 10 beaches in the world.

10. Elafonissi Beach, Elafonissi, Greece

9. Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Islands, Australia

8. Flamenco Beach, Culebra, Puerto Rico

Not all beards were created equal, at least when it comes to attracting women.

According to a 2013 Australian study, the most attractive beard length is "heavy stubble," which comes after about 10 days of growth. 

Fascinatingly, heavy beards, light stubble, and clean shaven were all equally less attractive than heavy stubble.

The science says that each length of beard sends a different signal. 

"Facial hair correlates not only with maturity and masculinity, but also with dominance and aggression," write authors Barnaby J. Dixson and Robert C. Brooks. 

"An intermediate level of beardedness is most attractive, while full-bearded men may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring," they write.

Beyond attractiveness, researchers also found that facial hair affects perceived fertility as well. The more facial hair a man had, the more masculine a woman perceived him to be — especially when she was in the fertile phase of her menstrual cycle.

Dixson and Brooks came to their conclusions by showing pictures of 10 smiling men at different stages of beard growth to 351 women and 177 heterosexual men. 

As the Register UK observed, evolution is at work here. 

"Beardedness is a prehistoric condition," reported science writer Rik Myslewski, who argues that beards have long been a "strong indication of maleness surrounding puberty." 

Therein lies the magnetic power of the beard.

"Thus, beard quality, thickness, and fullness would signal to potential mates that he was sexually mature and prepared for fatherhood,"Myslewski writes. "This makes beardedness a sexual characteristic that is potent to women." 

SEE ALSO: 20 weird psychological reasons someone might fall in love with you

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NOW WATCH: The Secret To Grooming The 10-Day Beard That Women Find Sexiest

Oil giant Marathon Oil is slashing its capital spending plans. 

In a release on Wednesday night, the company said it plans to spend $3.5 billion on capital projects in the coming year, 20% less than the company had previously forecast in December. 

In December, Marathon Oil said it would spend $4.3-$4.5 billion in 2015, or about 20% less than it spent in 2014. 

On Wednesday, the company said that 70% of its 2015 budget would be spent on existing oil plays in North America, which Marathon CEO Lee Tillman said are the company's highest-return investments.

Tillman added, "This budget reflects an emphasis on investment selectivity, balance sheet flexibility and positioning for price recovery."

On its spending in North America, Marathon laid out its plans like this:

More than $1.4 billion in capital spending is earmarked for the Eagle Ford, where rig count is expected to drop from 18 in late 2014 to 10 by the end of the second quarter. Included in Eagle Ford spending is approximately $1.0 billion for drilling and completions.

The Company plans to spend $760 million in the Bakken in North Dakota. Drilling activity will be reduced to two rigs by the end of the first quarter, down from seven rigs at the end of 2014. Bakken spending includes approximately $550 million for drilling, completions and recompletions.

Spending of $226 million is targeted for the Oklahoma Resource Basins, which will also be down to two rigs by the end of the first quarter. This includes spending of approximately $200 million for drilling and completions.

The Baker Hughes rig count has become a more closely watched figure in recent weeks as companies shut down rigs in response to the decline in oil prices, and Marathon's plans make clear that this data is likely to decline further. 

In a note over the weekend, we highlighted comments from Goldman Sachs that said the rig count decline is still not enough to slow US oil production and balance the market. 

Through this decline, production has remained elevated, with the most recent inventory data from API showing a huge increase last week. 

Marathon's announcement also follows a report earlier this month that US oil and gas company SandRidge will cut about 75% of its rig count in Oklahoma and Kansas. 

SEE ALSO: Gary Shilling says oil is going to $10

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Working as an IT professional is an incredibly mixed bag these days. On the one hand, the pay is great, demand for skilled tech workers is high, and the work is often rewarding.

On the other, very long hours are common and the stress and pressure to perform can literally drive some of them insane.

Now add one more negative to the list: a high chance of being bullied by a co-worker.

More than half (55%) of 250 IT professionals in the US. surveyed said they had been bullied by a co-worker. And 65% have said they dreaded going to work because of bad behavior of a co-worker.

So finds a survey conducted by web hosting firm Connectria Hosting, whose founder and CEO, Rich Waidmann, is trying to start a movement to end workplace bullying called "No Jerks Allowed." Waidmann founded Connectria in 1996, after working 12 years from NCR (acquired by AT&T).

"When I started Connectria in 1996, I wanted to build a company that was great to work for and work with," Waidmann says in a video that explains why he started No Jerks Allowed.  

That means it's a job requirement at his company that every employee treat everyone else with courtesy and respect as well as "going the extra mile" to take care of people in the community who are less fortunate, he says.

That might sound like common-sense business courtesy but in the tech world, such manners are not a given.

Back in 1996 the role model for the IT world was the young Bill Gates, who threw notorious tantrums in those days, as did his successor Steve Ballmer. At one point, the story goes, Microsoft even employed a person to count how many times Gates dropped the "f-word" in a meeting, as a way to measure how pleased or upset he was.

Flash forward to today, and the tech industry can still be a rough and tumble place. The world-famous creator of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds, is regularly accused of verbal abuse. At Red Hat, the lines between being outspoken and being rude are so blurred that employees have been known to call the CEO "an idiot" to his face (which is fine with him).

Then there was the alleged "frat-like" behavior at Tinder that led to a cofounder leaving and suing (the case was settled for a reported $1 million). Or how about the GitHub incident, where one cofounder left the company and his wife later publicly apologized for pressuring employees to work for her own startup for free?

We could go on, but you get the point.

Waidmann wants more companies to do what schools do, and enact a zero-tolerance office bully policy. This survey finds that two-thirds of people surveyed work at companies that have no such policy.

So, not surprisingly, 83% also said they have worked with a jerk within the last five years and 25% admit to having been an office jerk themselves. 

There are five common types of Office Jerks, according to the No Jerks Allowed folks:

1. The “Know-it-all”: Nearly 30% percent say this is the most common type of jerk they have to deal with.
2. The “Bully”: 26% say this is the most common.
3. The “Complainer”: 21% say this is the most common
4. The “Brownnoser”: 16% say this is the most common
5. The “Office Gossip”: 4% say this is the most common.

Office jerks have a bunch of negative effects, according to the survey:

• Two-thirds say that they lead to low employee morale;
• 42% say they cause other employees to go "lone wolf" and work alone instead of collaborating;
• 40% say they decrease the quality of the company's work and
• one-third say they cause employees to be unable to get their own work done.

For those who like pictures, here's the full results of the survey in infographic form:

SEE ALSO: The Stress Of Being A Computer Programmer Is Literally Driving Many Of Them Crazy

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Paris (AFP) - Cristiano Ronaldo ended a rare three game goalscoring drought with the first goal in Real Madrid's record equalling 10th straight Champions League win on Wednesday beating Schalke 04 2-0 in Germany.

The holders -- whose other goal came through Brazilian Marcelo in the second-half -- will fancy their chances of easing through to the quarter-finals when they meet in the second leg next month.

Real's victory -- which fortunately for the hosts did not come near the 6-1 hammering they took in last season's last 16 first leg encounter in Germany -- equalled Bayern Munich's record which was set back in December 2013.

Honours were even in the night's other game where the Swiss side Basel -- who have never reached the last eight of the Champions League in its present format -- were held 1-1 by Portuguese side Porto, who won the competition in 2004.    

Ronaldo ended his drought with a neatly-taken header in the 27th minute to edge him closer to both the overall goals record in all European competition and the Champions League.

Schalke suffered a further blow when their talented former Real forward Klaas-Jan Huntelaar had to go off injured shortly after the half hour mark.

The German side, though, didn't fold like they did against the same opponents last year and had chances of their own principally through Felix Platee, whose fierce drive beat Iker Casillas but came back off the crossbar.

Cruelly for Schalke Real doubled their lead as Marcelo struck with a fine effort after being set up by Ronaldo. 

Schalke coach Roberto di Matteo conceded that the difference in class between the two teams had told.

"The quality made all the difference," said di Matteo, who guided Chelsea to Champions League glory in 2012.

"Real had three chances and took two of them. Perhaps if our shot had not hit the bar and gone in things would have been different." 

Basel had got off to the dream start as Paraguayan striker Derlis Gonzalez did superbly well to stroke the ball into the Porto goal despite being off-balance.

He, however, had to go off shortly afterwards with what looked like a calf injury.

The visitors -- who enjoyed an impressive group stage campaign -- had two goals ruled out for infringements with the second one quite harsh as Casemiro shot home through a crowd of players.

However, English referee Mark Clattenburg -- who booked nine players in the game -- ruled it out after a long consultation with his officials.

Porto's star striker Jackson Martinez had been kept quiet for most of the match but when he worked his first real chance on goal the Colombian lobbed Vaclik but it was just too high and landed on top of the net.

The visitors, though, did get a deserved equaliser from the penalty spot -- Danilo converting after veteran 36-year-old Argentinian defender Walter Samuel had been penalised for handball.

Porto coach Julen Lopetegui said that he would have been disappointed to have lost the encounter.

"Basel were very good on the counter-attack in the first-half," said the Spanish coach.

"We dominated after the goal but it was difficult for us.

"The goal that was ruled out early in the second-half surprised me a lot and it took four minutes to take the decision.

"However overall it was a very good performance by us."

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Snapchat's in talks to raise another $500 million at a $16 to $19 billion valuation.

According to Bloomberg, the company is speaking with hedge fund managers to close the new round, which would bring Snapchat's total amount of money raised to more than $1 billion.

What's all the fuss about? If you're new to and confused by the self-destructing photo and video app, you're in luck! We decided to put together a guide to show you how to use Snapchat.

When you open the Snapchat app, it defaults to a standard back-facing camera setting.

There are buttons you can push to turn on and off your camera's flash, as well as to toggle between the back-facing camera and the front-facing, or selfie-mode, camera.

Press the white ghost button to check out your profile.

Samsung made one of its smartest acquisitions ever Wednesday by buying the mobile payments startup LoopPay.

LoopPay is still in its early days, but its technology gives it the potential to be bigger than Apple Pay once it's implemented in a major device made by Samsung.

It's pretty simple:

Apple Pay only works with special payment pads that use near field communication (NFC) technology. NFC has been around for years, but relatively few retailers have it on their sales terminals. So far, Apple says Apple Pay is supported at over 200,000 retailers in the US, but major retailers like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart don't accept Apple Pay and haven't said if they ever will.

LoopPay, on the other hand, works with standard magnetic credit card readers. The company claims that LoopPay will work at 90% of retailers that accept credit cards. Plus, it works overseas, whereas Apple Pay is only available in the US for now. Once Samsung starts incorporating LoopPay into its phones as it's rumored to do with the upcoming Galaxy S6, its payments system will immediately be much larger and more widely accepted than Apple Pay.

Apple Pay may be a great system that works flawlessly, but it's not accepted at enough places to truly replace your wallet. LoopPay brings us much closer to that reality.

On the other hand, LoopPay faces its own challenges.

In an interview with Business Insider Wednesday, LoopPay and Samsung executives declined to say if the payments system will continue to work with non-Samsung hardware. If LoopPay is only available through Samsung, it could be a problem to keep the system growing as Samsung's smartphone sales continue to shrink. It also gives rivals like Xiaomi, Google, HTC, and Lenovo an opportunity to come up with their own answers to LoopPay and Apple Pay.

Finally, it's unclear if LoopPay will let third-party shopping apps allow in-app purchases using the system like Apple Pay does now.

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The 2016 money race is underway.

A company called Crowdpac recently obtained an advisory opinion from the FEC that makes it the only place where it's currently possible to donate directly to likely 2016 candidates.

Crowdpac and Business Insider are partnering to bring you new information about their donation totals each week.

While political action committees that support the various candidates are already raising millions, these groups are barred from directly coordinating with the White House hopefuls. 

Meanwhile, Crowdpac's donation amounts are currently pretty small. As of now, Crowdpac has received a total of $739 from 50 different donations. 

Fittingly, the top two candidates are conservative firebrand Dr. Ben Carson, and on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, the very left-leaning Senator Bernie Sanders.

If you want to make your own donation and move the needle for your favorite candidate, head over to Crowdpac's donation site here.

Here are the current Crowdpac total donation amounts, as of February 17. 

SEE ALSO: These are Wall Street's top 16 political donors

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NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

Business Insider recently published a list of the biggest political donors on Wall Street. Here, we take a closer look at their political ideologies.

SEE ALSO: 'The 2016 money race is on'

Crowdpac, a company working to inform voters about the political process, used decades of campaign finance reports from the Federal Election Commission to create a scoring system that evaluates where politicians and campaign donors fall on the left-right spectrum based on who is donating to whom and officials' voting records.

Liberal donors will donate to liberal candidates; conservatives running for office will seek out conservative donors. By tracking the relationships between donors and candidates, Crowdpac is able to assign an ideology score to candidates and donors alike.

Here's where the 16 biggest Wall Street donors fall on Crowdpac's ideological scale. Donors in blue are left of center, donors in red are to the right.

While conservatives outnumber liberals on the list ten to six, the more liberal donors fall pretty far to the left on Crowdpac's scale:

And here's how each of the Wall Street megadonors gave between the 2012 and 2014 campaign cycles. Thomas Steyer of Farallon Capital Management's donation total is staggeringly huge, requiring an axis break in the chart:

SEE ALSO: Here are the most conservative Fortune 500 CEOs

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The global stock market looks very different today than is did 115 years ago.

From Credit Suisse's new Global Investment Returns Yearbook:

"Figure 1 shows the relative market capitalizations of world equity markets at our base date of end-1899. Figure 2 shows how they had changed by end-2014. Markets that are not included in the Yearbook dataset are colored black. As these pie charts show, the Yearbook covered 98% of the world equity market in 1900 and 91% at end-2014."

The New York Stock Exchange had been in operation for under a century in 1899. Today, the market capitalization of listed companies is $28 trillion, and the US stock market is bigger than all its other major counterparts combined.

The explosion of China's stock market is also apparent. It's 2.2% of the global market, despite only opening in November 1990.

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Ellen Pao, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, filed a gender discrimination suit against the firm in 2012. The trial finally got going this week.

Pao is suing for $16 million, alleging she was pressured into having a short affair with partner Ajit Nazre and that the firm discriminated against her after the affair ended. 

Kleiner's first official response to the lawsuit (known as a trial brief) sheds some light on how the company will defend itself.

In that brief, Kleiner portrays Pao as a difficult person who frequently clashed with other partners.

Here's what the firm is going to argue in defense:

• In her first role as an aid to John Doerr, Pao often had conflicts with other partners, and those conflicts were reflected in her employee reviews throughout her time at the firm. Reviews called her "dismissive" and "political," and one said, "Ellen seems to have 'clashes' or issues with many different partners at different times. More so than I have seen with anyone else in the partnership."
• When she was promoted to investment partner, these conflicts continued. Here, the reviews include descriptions like "territorial" and "not cited as team player."
• Her affair with Nazre was consensual, and her complaints about Nazre after the affair ended were "no different than her complaints about everyone else."
• Pao was in dire financial straits. Kleiner notes that Pao filed the lawsuit "simultaneously" with her husband filing for bankruptcy after his hedge fund failed. Pao and her husband also owed "millions" in back taxes. The implication is that Pao filed this lawsuit for financial reasons.
• Kleiner paid Pao a higher salary than her male peers.

Kleiner will also make various other legal and procedural arguments.

The trial brief also reveals that John Doerr remained a staunch supporter even as the rest of the firm was starting to sour on her performance.

In 2011, "senior members of the digital investing team" decided she should move out of the firm and into an operating role at a portfolio company — a common move for junior partners who are not on track to become senior partners. But "staunch supporter Doerr intervened" for her, so "language regarding Pao's exit was therefore deleted from the review and replaced with a development plan expressing her performance defects and what she needed to do to improve," according to Kleiner's brief.

The firm intends to use this as evidence that she was not systematically discriminated against, as one of the firm's most powerful partners was sticking up for her.

We've reached out to attorneys representing Pao for comment, and will update this story if we hear back. Here's the full brief:

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