Poundland founder Steve Smith is one of Britain's entrepreneurial poster children after he turned his market stall into a successful chain of 84 bargain goods stores in less than 10 years. Poundland still continues to dominate UK high streets to date.

Britons love bargains and clearly, Smith knew how to tap into that mindset. He now hopes to turn his latest venture, estatesdirect.com, into another IPO goldmine.

"I don’t like feeling I’ve been ripped off. The British public feel the same way I do," said Smith to Business Insider. "At estatesdirect.com I get a buzz when customers tell me how they've saved thousands by selling their property and are now able to build a new kitchen or plough that cash into doing up their new house."

"We have a three year plan of becoming the market leader in the UK. We are focusing on that at the moment, so while launching an IPO in three years' time is a possibility, the public can still invest in the company in the meantime."

He said that estatesdirect.com is already going to hit a projected value of £175 million ($264 million) in just 36 months.

Smith opened his first stall, aged 18, in Bilston, West Midlands in the 1980s. In 1990, he and business partner Dave Dodd launched Poundland. After growing Poundland to 83 stores, he sold it a little over a decade later for £50 million to Advent International.

The new owners listed it on the London Stock Exchange in March last year. Investors couldn't get enough of Poundland's shares at the time. In fact, they soared 19% from its float price 300p on the first day of trading. Poundland's stock price is currently trading at 391.30p as of 9 March.

Fixed-fee online estate agent Estatesdirect.com was launched in 2012 by DatingDirect.com's (which later re-branded as Match.com) founder Darren Richards and entrepreneur Ben Grove. Smith is the Chairman of estatesdirect.com. 

Estatesdirect.com strips out the estate agent from the supply chain, meaning that people can market and put their property up for sale across Britain's biggest housing websites for as little as a £1. For as little as £295 plus VAT, homeowners can have a fuller package of selling home, including market materials, set ups for valuations, viewings, as well as help with conveyancing solicitors.

Currently, in the UK, estate agents charge a commission plus VAT for selling your property. For example, if you used one of London's largest estate agents Foxtons' rates at 2.5% plus VAT, selling your property for £250,000 can leave you with a bill of £7,500.

Estatesdirect.com was originally launched as a regional pilot project in Midlands but has since steadily grown its network across the UK. While customers can sell their properties anywhere in Britain, estatesdirect.com have agents in Wales, the Midlands, London, Surrey, Southampton, Exmouth and East Devon, Rochdale, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. These agents are there for customers who want people to conduct viewings and deal with customers directly.

"It has always been part of our plan to grow nationally. We are aiming to be one the largest estate agents in the UK over the next three years," said Grove to Business Insider.

"We've invested over £1 million in the right technology from the start to make sure we have the best systems. Steve [Smith] and I are self-confessed tech geeks. We understand what we need to invest in to make it simpler for the customer as well as more cost effective for us. It will also allow us to expand significantly."

Smith understands the power of tech and a more grass roots approach to building up a company, as demonstrated by the meteoric rise in Poundland. Smith and Groves explained that the tech "empowers" customers due to the easy nature of applications.

For example, it uses Microsoft Cortana, which is like Apple's Siri, which is a voice activated digital assistant. It allows customers to write their property descriptions and build floor plans "before you very eyes." 

Last month, Smith offered £1.25 million worth of shares in EstatesDirect.com to the British public via crowdfunding website CrowdCude. As of 9 March, the group has raised £906,240 for 5% equity offered. In 2014, a similar round of crowdfunding generated £493,550 from 181 investors, although its target was £250,000.

"There's enough business in Britain for us right now as we still need to expand nationally," siad Smith.

Grove added "we were looking at Spain and France but then the market went tits up. But we are definitely going to be looking overseas. The US market is huge and that is definitely somewhere we'd love to be."

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NOW WATCH: Here's the anxiety even the most successful entrepreneurs deal with every day

We all woke up the last couple of mornings an hour early thanks to daylight saving time. But you probably didn’t curse the heavens until you started the work week on Monday and likely asked yourself in a dazed state, “How is this still a thing?”

Thanks to John Oliver, we now know why.

During last night’s episode of "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver," his hilarious segment “How is this still a thing?” examined daylight saving and this is what we learned.

Many people grew up being told daylight saving is to help the farm industry, but as the segment points out, "it has nothing to do with farmers." 

"I don't know one farmer who benefits from daylight savings," one farmer told "Last Week Tonight."

"The modern daylight saving was actually introduced during the first World War as a fuel saving measure by the Germans," notes the segment's narrator. "You lost an hour of sleep this morning thanks to Kaiser Wilhelm."

"And while back then, daylight saving may have indeed saved fuel..."

"In the modern era, energy consumption is a little more complicated."

"In fact, when Indiana adopted daylight saving in 2006, guess what happened?"

"The data shows that daylight saving actually led to a 1% overall rise in residential electricity."

"But that's not to say daylight saving doesn't have any effects at all."

"Studies show there is an increase in car accidents and work-related injuries the week after the time change. That's right, what you lose in sleep you gain in mortal danger."

"Despite all this, 70 countries across the world still observe daylight saving."

"And yet going by local news reports, no one can tell you why."

The segment then showed clips of man-on-the-street interviews with people calling daylight saving ridiculous,""a pain in the ass," and "complete nonsense."

Watch the full clip below:

SEE ALSO: Watch John Oliver skewer the cozy relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical companies

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NOW WATCH: 6 Crazy Things Revealed In HBO's Explosive New Scientology Documentary 'Going Clear'

A Swedish teenager was thrown into a jail in China for a month and then prevented from leaving the country for almost a year, forcing him to give up his spot in a prestigious college engineering program – all because he got into a fight outside of a nightclub in Beijing, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Noak Jonsson described his ordeal to the Journal and talked about what it's like to spend time in a Chinese jail.

Noak and his family moved to Beijing in 2007 for his father's work. He and his siblings attended international school, and his parents seemed happy with their lives in China.

Then one night in 2o13, the year before Noak was due to move back to Sweden to start college, he was out with some expat friends at a club in Beijing when an argument over a girl's purse turned into a physical fight.

A bystander was injured in the altercation, but Noak insists he didn't hit anyone. When he was put in the back of a police car and taken to a cell, he assumed he would be released quickly. Instead, he spent a month in a Beijing detention center and wasn't able to leave the country for about a year while his case was resolved.

Here's how he described life in Chinese jail:

• Bad food: Noak stayed in a cell with several other inmates, and meals were reportedly delivered in two buckets through an opening in the door. Most of the time, inmates were served "watery soy broth with a vegetable or two."
• Inmates taking shifts to enforce the rules: When Noak arrived, two men in his cell were sitting up for "watch duty" to "maintain order."
• Lacking basic necessities: Noak went two weeks in the detention center without a blanket while he was waiting for a package from his parents to go through screening at the detention center.
• Little communication with family: Noak's father said he couldn't see or talk to his son. Over the holidays, Noak's lawyer visited with a letter from the family, which he had to read aloud because Noak wasn't allowed to keep it.

Beijing's No. 1 Detention Center, where Noak was held, is considered one of the highest-quality detention centers in China and is held up as an example of how the country is committed to reforming its system amid accusations of abuse.

Noak was allowed to leave the detention center after a month, but then he had to wait for his case to be dismissed by the court.

Even after the man injured in the fight sent a letter to prosecutors saying Noak had stepped in to try to stop the fight, Noak still had to wait months for his case to be dismissed.

He's now back in Sweden and says he hopes to return to China one day.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal >

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NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do

San Francisco 49ers star linebacker Patrick Willis will reportedly retire, according to Yahoo's Rand Getlin.

Early Monday morning, ProFootball Talk's Mike Florio hinted that the 49ers had some surprising news coming later in the day, though he didn't reveal any details.

Willis, 30, has had a decorated career with the 49ers since being drafted 11th in the first round in 2007. He was named a First-Team All-Pro as a rookie and is a seven-time Pro Bowl player.

In 2014, Willis played only six games before missing the rest of the season with a toe injury.

According to spotrac.com, Willis would have earned more than $7 million in salary this season with about $800,000 in bonuses. His salary is not guaranteed for 2016, but if he were to keep playing, he would earn almost $8 million in salary with almost $2 million in bonuses.

Perhaps Willis' recent injuries have something to due with his unexpected retirement. 

We'll update as more details emerge.

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NOW WATCH: Cristiano Ronaldo, wearing a wig and glasses, surprised a young fan on the streets of Madrid

After a brief recovery, the price of oil is likely to go back down as global production ramps up. 

In a new research note, Goldman Sachs commodities analyst Damien Courvalin predicts that after a couple of months of lower global production — mostly because of bad weather and a little bit due to violence — things are going to ramp up again in March, sending prices lower.

Here's what the production picture looks like, according to the Courvalin:

Weather, violence or sanction-related supply disruptions in Iraq, Libya and Iran have taken 885 kb/d off the global market in January-February relative to December. While there are risks that the violence-related disruptions extend in Libya, normal weather in Iraq could see exports recover by 300 kb/d in March with Iran potentially adding another 265 kb/d in April. All along, Russia, Brazil, Saudi and US production have continued to grow sequentially.

While demand for oil has also been strong, Courvalin expects that to level off somewhat, both because winter is coming to an end and because there have been weak manufacturing numbers out of China and India.

Goldman is predicting $40/bbl oil over the next two quarters, with risk skewed to the upside, and $65/bbl oil in 2016, with risk skewed to the downside.

SEE ALSO: The rush to hoard oil is getting so intense that there's a market forming for oil storage futures contracts

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Yale Law School just nabbed the number one spot on US News & World Report's list of the Best Law Schools in America.

Its 13,000-plus alumni network — which includes several very famous graduates — is a hugely advantageous resource for incoming students.

Three Yalies currently sit on the US Supreme Court and one former First Couple met in the law library. The author of the best-selling memoir "Prozac Nation" even earned a law degree from Yale at the age of 40.

Find out who else bled Yale Blue.

Jane Bolin graduated in 1931 as the first African-American female alum.

Jane Matilda Bolin was the first African-American woman in the US to become a judge. During her 40 years serving as a judge of the Family Court of New York, she was an activist for children's rights and education.

Bolin was one of three women and the only black person in her Yale Law class. She was awarded the Medal of Merit in 1994 and today her portrait hangs in the Law School.

President Gerald Ford coached the football and boxing teams at Yale while attending law school. He graduated in 1941.

Before he became president in 1973, Gerald Ford was known for another talent: his athletic abilities.

After he graduated from college, he turned down several offers to play professional football and instead opted to coach football and boxing at Yale, in hopes of attending its prestigious law school.

At first Yale Law School did not accept him due to his full-time coaching responsibilities, but it eventually admitted him in 1938. Ford continued to coach while attending law school and three years later, he graduated in the top 25% of his class. He entered politics soon after.

A Phi Delta Phi Fraternity brother, Ford was presented with the Yale Law School Association’s Award of Merit in 1979. His portrait hangs in the Law School.

Before attending Yale Law School, Former Associate Supreme Court Justice Byron White played professional football and fought in World War II. He graduated in 1946.

Former Associate Supreme Court Justice Byron White, who was appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, graduated from Yale Law School in 1946. 

Before his law career took off, White won fame as a professional football halfback, nicknamed the "Whizzer." In 1938, he deferred a Rhodes Scholarship for a semester to play with the Pittsburgh Pirates, later called the Steelers. He led the league in rushing and received the National Football League's highest-ever salary, $15,800.

His football career was cut short when World War II broke out and he enlisted in the Navy. Instead of returning to football after the war, White decided to enter law school, earning the highest grades in his first-year class at Yale Law. He graduated magna cum laude in 1946.

Tesco arguably had one of the toughest years in its existence in 2014 after Britain's largest supermarket said it overstated its profits by £250 million ($377 million) in September.

However, it looks like the new CEO, who joined on 1 September 2014, Dave Lewis's turnaround plan is starting to work wonders for the embattled grocer.

According to market researcher Kantar Worldpanel, Tesco recorded its best performance in 18 months in the 12 weeks leading to 1 March. 

During that period, which included Christmas and New Year related discounts, sales were up 1.1%. Tesco even managed to control the recent falls in its marketshare. The data claims that Tesco has a 28.7% share of the market during this period. This meant that its marketshare only declined by 0.1% when compared to last year.

In comparison, sales in Britain's second largest supermarket, Asda, were down 2.1% across the same period. Its marketshare stands at 17%.

Here is a graphic from Kantar:

Kantar said that the 1.6% drop in food prices, from a year ago, created greater competition between supermarkets and helped consumers save £400 million. Kantar obtained this number by measuring the prices on more than 75,000 products across all the major retailers, over the course of a year, and then compared it to the prices from the year before. It claims it is the most authoritative figure currently available.

"All of the major supermarkets are cutting prices to win shoppers, especially within everyday staples such as eggs, vegetables and milk. Retailers are focusing their efforts on simple price cuts rather than complicated ‘multibuy’ deals," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail at Kantar. 

Tesco revealed in September last year that it had overstated its profits by £250 million. It asked accountancy giant Deloitte to internally investigate the company.

After Deloitte increased the overstated profit amount to £263 million, the company's chairman Sir Richard Broadbent stepped down. Then, in January, both Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded Tesco's credit rating. Lewis said he had no idea the company's finances were so damaged when he accepted the job in July last year.

Earlier this month Warren Buffett, who sold all his Tesco shares in 2014, compared investing in Tesco to an infestation of cockroaches.

Tesco is still under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for the £263 million profit overstatement. 

But the latest Kantar figures will throw weight behind newly appointed Lewis' turnaround plan. After taking over from Philip Clarke in the third quarter last year, he implemented a range of measures to help stop falling marketshare.

The plans included improving customer service and cutting the price of fresh produce and branded goods.

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NOW WATCH: 9 animated maps that will change the way you see the world

Syria's civil war has been raging for four years, and there are no concrete signs it will end anytime soon.

Over 200,000 people have been killed and more than 11 million more have been displaced. The conflict is forcing combatants and civilians underground: Syrians are using massive cave complexes in the countryside as strongholds, meeting places, and defensive positions for battles.

Some of the caves are natural while others are artificial and recently excavated. They're used by combatants but also by civilians desperate to shield themselves and their families from the violence.

Looking inside these caves and tunnels shows us how brutal Syria's civil war has become.

Captions by Reuters and Christian Storm.

Mariam, a 9-year-old girl, carries her brother as she stands with other children at an underground ancient cemetery in Jabal al-Zawiya in the southern countryside of Idlib, Syria, November 26, 2014. Residents are fleeing to ancient caves and cemeteries for safety during shelling from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Many of the caves were once used during the Roman period but were abandoned and sealed for centuries. Some now serve as makeshift homes for families as they wait for the shelling to end.

Residents take shelter in a similar cave near Hama in this photo from 2012. The civil war has been raging in Syria for almost five years.

Here kitty, kitty.

The National Park Service in Santa Monica recently released these rare photos of a 15-month-old female mountain lion cub, called "P-33", feeding with her mother (P-19) and brother (P-32).

Some of the images below are pretty graphic but capture a rare glimpse of these majestic, large cats in their natural habitat doing what they do best: surviving.

WARNING: If you're squeamish, then admire this adorable lion cub photobombing the camera but don't scroll down!

If you're even the slightest bit curious what it's like to live in the wild, then continue on.

These wild mountain lions live in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in southern California. The National Park Service has dispatched a number of motion-sensor-activated cameras throughout the region to observe mountain lions and other animals in the wild.

The mountain lion, like the pack shown here, is the largest wildcat in North America and mainly dine on mammals like deer, squirrels, and beavers.

Here, the family has come across a freshly killed deer. These large cats usually begin feasting by tearing open the animal's abdominal cavity and devouring the vital organs, like the heart and liver.

In the photo below, the mother on the left takes a mouthful of venison as the brother looks like he's ready to do the same. The collar on the male-cub is to help biologists track his location, but the device is designed to fall off of him as he matures into adulthood.

Once the organs are down the hatch, the cats go to work on the hide. Here's a picture of P-33 biting through the tough deer flesh.

Anyone who has tried venison might agree with this cub that it's lip-licking good.

Occasionally, the cats take a minute away from their tasty meal to check out the cameras watching them.

These carnivorous cats sit at the top of the food chain, but are threatened by habitat loss and hunted for their dangers they pose to livestock.

CHECK OUT: Incredible photo shows a weasel 'riding' a woodpecker

SEE ALSO: Amazing images of what Mars looked like with water

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NOW WATCH: A Passionate Argument For Killing Animals You Eat With Your Own Hands

So much for high school biology.

Evolution, it turns out, isn't the long, invisible process we once thought.

Instead, it's happening all around us, all the time.

And we are it's primary drivers.

By shaping landscapes, dumping pollutants into rivers and lakes, and transforming wild areas into suburban ones, humans are spurning the creation of everything from wild animal hybrids to pests immune to poisons and superbugs that can't be killed with bacteria.

All of this is taking place at an unprecedented scale.

Bedbugs are becoming a new species of nightmare insects.

While you might be familiar (a little too familiar, you might say), with bedbugs, they didn’t always used to be the terrifying critters we know today.

Thousands of years ago, our cave-dwelling ancestors got along perfectly fine with bedbugs — mainly because they were nearly an entirely different species back then. Unfortunately, as humans migrated out of caves and into cities over thousands of years, they brought bedbugs along for the ride. The insects with traits that made them better able to survive their new urban lifestyle— such as being more active at night, when humans sleep, and having longer, thinner legs for hopping away from us quickly — outlived their less-evolved bedbug friends. 

In just the last few decades, these city-dwelling insects have become almost an entirely separate species from their cave-dwelling cousins. In addition to their new penchant for the nightlife, today’s urban bedbugs have also evolved resistance to pesticides: They have thicker, waxier exoskeletons (to shield them from toxins) and faster metabolisms (to beef-up their natural chemical defenses). 

Two distinct species of mice are mating and their hybrid mice pups are immune to pesticides.

Typically, members of two different species can’t mate with one another — and if they do, the offspring they produce are often infertile or so weak they die before they can produce any babies. 

In mice, at least 50% of hybrids are sterile. But sometime in the past 50 years, when wandering Europeans brought together the Algerian mouse (Mus spretus) and the common house mouse (Mus musculus), the two species got to mating.  

Miraculously, their mice pups were fertile. Although rare, this sort of thing can happen every so often with just the right combination of genes. In addition to their baby-making capabilities, the hybrid mice got another gift from their parents: a chunk of genes that makes them immune to the poison warfarin, meaning they can’t be killed by pesticides.

Unlike the house mice, the Algerian mice had this poison-resistance gene naturally — they likely evolved it as an adaptation to a vitamin-K diet (the same gene that’s responsible for warfarin-immunity manages vitamin K in the body.)

Clepto sea slugs steal genes from their food and incorporate them into their own DNA.

How to adapt to survive for months on nothing but sunlight? Try taking a cue from plants. Better yet, steal a few of their genes.

When food in the chilly coastal waters where they live runs scarce, the bright green sea slug snatches chunks of DNA from the algae they eat. Coupled with tiny energy-producing powerhouses called chloroplasts (which the sneaky slugs also pilfer from their algeae meals), the stolen genes are enough to allow the slugs to survive on nothing but sunshine for days. 

The best part? The algae genes get passed onto the next generation of slugs. 

Although future slugs will then come pre-equipped with the algae genes in their DNA, they'll still need to snatch up new chloroplasts to keep the process going. This gene-swapping process is called horizontal gene transfer. By doing it, the slugs are effectively bypassing traditional evolution, which typically happens over thousands or millions of years. So far, these sea slugs are one of the only known examples of this process occurring between multicellular organisms. 

The Houston Texans have released receiver Andre Johnson after 12 years with the team.

John Mcclain of the Houston Chronicle reported last Monday that Johnson and his agent were given permission to seek a trade from the Texans. Last Wednesday, Johnson's agent told ProFootball Talk that he asked the Texans to release Johnson.

By asking for his release, Johnson walked away from the remaining $23 million on his contract.

Teams would have been reluctant to trade for Johnson because of the amount of money remaining on his contract and because he is turning 34 this summer.

His targets and total receiving yards also have decreased each of the last three seasons. Last year he finished 936 receiving yards, his lowest in a season in which he played 10 or more games since 2005.

Johnson is now a free agent and can sign with any team that offers him a contract. Johnson is reportedly interested in the Seahawks, Colts, Packers, and Patriots. Johnson still has value, but it's unlikely a team would sign him to a contract similar to what he just left behind with the Texans.

According to McClain, Johnson met with Texans coach Bill O'Brien weeks ago and was told his role would be reduced in the 2015 season. 

It did not sit well with Johnson who said:

"I don’t know how you tell a guy who catches 85 balls that he’ll only probably catch 40. I feel like the role they were trying to put me in I’d be held back from maximizing my talents. I feel like that was the best thing for both sides. Why sit there and be miserable when I can go somewhere else and be able to show my talents."

Perhaps by asking for a release, Johnson and his agent have reason to believe they can make up the money he's be losing elsewhere, but it's a risk nonetheless for a player on the backend of his career.

SEE ALSO: The Eagles traded their best player to create millions in salary cap space and he's furious

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NOW WATCH: Marshawn Lynch channels 'Boyhood' in bizarre trailer for movie about his life

Walt Disney Pictures gives us the lengthiest look at "Tomorrowland" we've seen so far, and the sci-fi adventure looks very promising. Named after the popular Disney theme-park attraction, "Tomorrowland" stars George Clooney as a scientist who takes a teenager (Britt Robertson) on a journey into a futuristic world that could hold the key to saving the planet.

The movie is directed by Brad Bird, who helmed such animated hits as "The Incredibles,""Ratatouille" and the beloved cult-classic "The Iron Giant." However, this isn't Bird's first foray into live-action. He previously helmed "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," which earned nearly $700 million at the international box office.

"Tomorrowland" opens on May 22.

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U.S. News & World Report just released its list of the best law schools for 2016.

The top seven schools remain exactly the same as last year.

Yale topped the list, followed by Harvard and Stanford, which tied for second.

The consistency in results between this year's and last year's rankings is somewhat surprising, given that U.S. News made a change to its law school ranking methodology for 2016.

This year, law schools that had a large number of graduates who went on to work jobs funded by the law school or university ranked lower than if the graduates had been employed by law firms or government agencies.

A recent American Bar Association report noted that jobs funded by law schools and universities are often temporary, and less desirable than law firm, government, or corporate law jobs. Last year, U.S. News weighed post-law school employment the same, regardless of where the job was held.

Here is U.S. News' new ranking of the top 10 law schools:

1. Yale University

2. Harvard University (TIE)

2. Stanford University (TIE)

4. Columbia University (TIE)

4. University of Chicago (TIE)

6. New York University

7. University of Pennsylvania

8. Duke University (TIE)

8. University of California – Berkeley (TIE)

8. University of Virginia (TIE)

BUSINESS INSIDER'S RANKING: The 50 best law schools in America

NEWS AS IT HAPPENS: Follow @BI_University on Twitter!

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NOW WATCH: Why Law School Is A Waste Of Money Unless You Get Into A Top School

A woman who writes for a news magazine in Paris went undercover as a young Muslim convert to infiltrate the Islamic State's online network of jihadists looking for brides.

"Anna Erelle" (not her real name) talked to The Sunday Times of London about how she got involved with a top ISIS militant. It's unclear whether the Times independently verified her story.

Erelle told the Times that she created fake social media accounts and posed as "Melodie" online to find out first-hand how young girls are lured to join ISIS' ranks in the Middle East as "jihadi brides." She said she had previously interviewed some of these girls during her work as a journalist.

"They knew very little about religion. They had hardly read a book and they learnt jihad before religion," Erelle told the Times. "They’d tell me, 'You think with your head, we think with our hearts.' They had a romantic view of radicalism. I wondered how that happened."

Soon after Erelle created her fake accounts, she attracted the attention of Abou-Bilel, whom Erelle described as a top ISIS commander. Bilel reportedly sent her this message: "Salaam alaikum, sister. I see you have watched my video. It has been seen round the world, it’s crazy! Are you a Muslim? What do you think of the mujaheddin? Are you thinking of coming to Syria?"

After that, Bilel started contacting her frequently, professing his love for her and trying to convince her to come to Syria and marry him. To woo her, he reportedly sent her pictures of himself with his 4×4 Jeep, holding a gun, according to the Times. He promised Erelle that she'd be treated like a princess in Syria.

Westerners becoming radicalized online and then traveling to the Middle East to join jihadist groups has become a growing problem since ISIS announced a 7th century-style caliphate in August.

"What it really demonstrates is the tremendous power of social media," Jonathan Adelman, a professor at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies, told the Denver Post after ISIS lured three teenage girls from Colorado. "[ISIS militants] are out there on Facebook. They are out there on Twitter. They are reaching out without any intermediaries."

Three young girls recently left London to become jihadi brides, likely recruited by 20-year-old Aqsa Mahmood, who defected from Scotland and now writes a blog on Tumblr that talks about her new life in Syria and encourages others to join her.

"[Young girls] are persuaded that [the Middle East] is a paradise and that they don’t have any future in Britain or France and they won’t find good husbands and can never be good Muslims surrounded by infidels," Erelle told the Times. "Bilel told Melodie she could have a beautiful life, a big apartment and lots of children."

The attention that comes with being a Westerner who travels to the Middle East to join terrorists might also factor in to some young girls' decisions.

"The ones who go to Syria know they will be in the newspapers and on the Internet and people will be talking about them," Erelle said. "These girls were following a friend who had already left for Syria. They must have seen the pain that caused her family, but it didn’t stop them."

Bilel's recruitment of "Melodie" reportedly included a Skype session and promises of a better life in Syria. He reportedly referred to her as his fiancee. Erelle said he made plans for her to travel to Syria after flying to Amsterdam, telling her that a woman would meet her in Turkey to take her across the border.

Erelle also pointed out the hypocrisy of some ISIS militants, noting that Bilel wanted her to pick up some luxury goods for him from the Amsterdam airport.

"[The fighters] say they reject the West, that they are anti-capitalist, but they love luxury and designer labels, it’s all Nike trainers and Ray-Ban sunglasses mixed in with their military clothes," she told the Times. "It’s another way of luring in kids, of saying, 'I was once poor like you but look at me now.'"

Eventually, once Erelle failed to show up in Turkey and then wrote about her experience infiltrating jihadist networks, Bilel figured out that she had lied to him. She said she now fears for her life and is under police protection.

An estimated 550 Western women have so far traveled to the Middle East to join Islamist groups, according to figures cited by The New York Times.

SEE ALSO: This Scottish teenager went from reading Harry Potter to recruiting for ISIS in Syria

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NOW WATCH: This 26-year-old from Baltimore took a 35,000-mile road trip and ended up fighting in the Libyan revolution

Back in 1982, a 26-year-old Steve Jobs gave a speech upon receiving the "Golden Plate" award from the Academy of Achievement in Washington, D.C.

It was a chance for Jobs to talk to high-achieving youngsters about how to make their lives and the world better.

He told them about his remarkably accurate theory of creativity.

He also detailed a realization that changed his life.

"One of the things that I had in my mind growing up — I don't know how it got there — but that the world was sort of something that happened just outside your peepers, and you didn't really try to change it,"he said, according to the transcript provided on Genius."You just sort of tried to find your place in it and have the best life you could. And it would all just go on out there, and there were some pretty bright people running it." 

But here's the thing.

"As you start to interact with some of these people," he continued, "you find they're not a lot different than you."

In other words, the people leading the world — in business, politics, culture — are just people.

Therefore, it's actually within the realm of possibility that you — also just a person — could change the world.

"The people actually making these decisions every day, that are sort of running the world, are not really very much different than you," Jobs said. "And they might have a little more judgment in some areas, but basically they're the same."

With the right connections, the right training, and the right mindset, it's possible to become one of them.

To Jobs, this realization brought about a sense of "responsibility" toward the world. If you have the capacity to improve the well-being of society, then you're obligated to. Like philosophers have said for centuries, it's essential to a meaningful life.

SEE ALSO: This Personality Trait Is The Most Important Driver Of Creative Achievement

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I have a special folder on my iPhone.

I labeled it with the poop emoji.

That's because my poop folder holds all the preinstalled Apple apps I never use. Here's the complete list:

1. Mail (Because I use Outlook)
2. Music (Because I use Spotify)
3. Game Center (Because this app is pointless)
4. FaceTime (I hate video chatting)
5. Apple Maps (Because I use Google Maps)
6. Calendar (Because I use Sunrise)
7. Health (Because this app is confusing)
8. Books (Because I have a Kindle)
9. Tips (Because this app is pure garbage)
10. Compass (Ugh)
11. Voice Memos (Because I use Recordium)
12. Notes (Because I use Evernote)
13. Reminders (Because I use Sunrise)
14. Weather (Because I use Yahoo Weather)
15. Stocks (Because I use Yahoo Finance)
16. Podcasts (This app is also pure garbage)

That's a grand total of 16 (!) apps Apple put on my phone that I never want to use. And there's no way to hide or uninstall them. I have to keep them in that stupid poop folder.

On Monday, I added a 17th app to the poop folder, the new Apple Watch app, which came included with the new update for iOS, version 8.2. The Apple Watch app will let you install apps and manage settings on your Apple Watch if you buy one starting April 24. For now, it's basically just an ad for the watch, with a bunch of promotional videos and a teaser that you'll be able to preorder the device on April 10.

Maybe one day we'll all be wearing Apple Watches on our wrists, but that's not going to be the case in the near term. Instead, Apple just put another piece of junk I don't want on my iPhone.

I understand why Apple includes many of these apps, but I wish it let you hide the ones you don't want to use.

SEE ALSO: Apple's new super-thin MacBook may seem like a bad deal now, but just wait...

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More than $10,000 in cash is missing in from the police raid on Eike Batista, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Officials raided Batista's home and assets earlier this year, following concerns that the former billionaire was getting rid of assets frozen in the insider trading case against him. 

Assets taken include $32,490 in cash, computers, and watches, real estate, his boat, airplanes, and seven cars including his white Lamborghini. In a statement on Monday, officials reported $10,165 in cash gone.

The judge presiding over the insider trading case, Judge Flavio Roberto de Souza, was recently seen driving in one of Batista's luxury cars seized in the raid last month. Souza claimed that this was a "normal situation," and took the white Porsche to his building in order to protect it.

Souza was taken off Batista's case and is under criminal investigation.

Formerly the richest man in Brazil, Batista has become a 'negative billionaire' and faces charges that he sold off shares of his company based on insider information. His self-built empire came crashing down in 2013 with his flagship oil company OGX, where he lost more than $34 billion. Now, Batista is $1.2 billion in the hole.

Read more over at Bloomberg >>

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According to Bloomberg, it's as big as a Boeing 747 but weighs only as much as a "family car."

It's the Solar Impulse, an aircraft that powered by light — but that can still soar in darkness because it uses batteries to store energy gathered during daytime flight.

It isn't exactly supersonic, however. But it's currently flying around the world. And it's going to take rather less than 80 days.

Last year, Bloomberg reported that the duo of pilots taking turns at the controls would need to "withstand flying non-stop for five days and nights to prepare for ocean crossings stuffed in a tiny cabin traveling as high as 27,000 feet at about 45 miles per hour."

The aircraft has covered vast distances before: In 2013, it was flown (slowly) across the U.S., in multiple legs, and it's flown (slowly) across continents, from Switzerland to Morocco.

Even though it lacks afterburners, it still looks cool, lazily transiting the skies above the world's cities.

Here are some more photos of the spectacular aircraft and its pilot as they fly around the globe.

Check out this recent video, from the organization behind the plane:

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SEE ALSO: Check Out Solar Impulse, The Solar-Powered Airplane That Can Fly Forever

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Job interviews are a two-way street.

The hiring manager asks the applicant questions to figure out if they're the ideal candidate, while the interviewee asks the employer questions to figure out if they're the right fit.

But even when the hiring manager is the one in the hot seat, they're still evaluating you as a potential employee. So it's imperative that you ask good, smart questions — ones that will impress the interviewer.

Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Local and author of "Likeable Social Media," recently asked a few of his friends at the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs, to share the one most impressive interview question applicants have asked (or that they wish applicants would ask).

He published their responses (as well as his own favorite question) in a recent LinkedIn post.

Here are our favorites:

1. What can I help to clarify that would make hiring me an easy decision? —Dan Pickett, cofounder of Launch Academy

2. How do you see this position evolving in the next three years? —Jared Brown, cofounder of Hubstaff

3. What's the most frustrating part of working here?—Avery Fisher, president of Remedify

4. Who's your ideal candidate and how can I make myself more like them? —Phil Laboon, president of Eyeflow Internet Marketing

5. How did you get your start? —Jayna Cooke, CEO of EVENTup

6. What keeps you up at night? —Kofi Kankam, CEO of Admit.me

7. What concerns/reservations do you have about me for this position?—John Berkowitz, cofounder and Chief Revenue Officer of Yodle

8. How will the work I'll be doing contribute to the organization's mission? —Dave Kerpen, founder and CEO of Likeable Local.

Click here to read the full LinkedIn post.

We want to know your most pressing questions related to your career or job search! Tweet Careers editor Jacquelyn Smith @JacquelynVSmith or email her at jsmith[at]businessinsider[dot]com, and we'll do our best to answer them.

SEE ALSO: 31 answers to really tough interview questions

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To the delight and horror of millions around the world yesterday, we finally got a look at the price of the Apple Watch Edition.

In the US, it's going to cost $10,000 (£8,000 in the UK). There's a super-high end version that will sell for $17,000, too.

But how much does it really cost for Apple to make, and how much will the company be raking in from it? Understandably, Apple hasn't been keen to announce it, but we've broken down the costs to give you an idea.

Here are the three main components: 

• 55 grams of 18-karat gold: As of today, the spot price of 18-karat gold means this would set you back about $1,550.
• The Watch itself. It costs about $549 for the watch with a white sport band (the $10,000 gold model also comes with the white band).
• Cost of production. This part is hard to say, but remember that the cost of producing the ordinary watch (and some profit) are included in the $549 watch. There may be some extra costs to the gold element, but given the scale of production, they don't seem likely to be a big part of the cost.

If you add the cost of 55 grams of 18-karat gold to the cost of the watch, plus say $100 per unit (which seems quite liberal) for other production costs, you get to about $2,200. The cost of shipping it, marketing it and selling it once it's arrived in whatever country are priced into the basic watch itself. Those things together would imply a mark-up of about 354%. At least $7,800 of the price-tag would be profit.

But in fact, that might be too low an estimate. 

Forbes notes that the actual gold content of the watch is lower than standard 18-karat gold, and estimates that there's as little as $640 of gold in the model. That's because it's a metal matrix composite that Apple has patented: You can find out exactly what it's made of here. 

My estimate used regular 18-karat gold as a base, which uses silver and copper as a mix. Apple's ceramic mix uses less gold than that, and ceramic is less expensive than either of the other metals. That means the $1,550 price I've included is probably too high. If the cost was reduced to $1,000 it would mean a500% mark-up.

The mark-up could actually be even higher than that. There's already some profit to Apple in the basic $549 model which I haven't even included.

This incredible profitability means that a small increase in the proportion of Edition models that are sold will raise the overall profit of the watch range colossally. Morgan Stanley's analysts broke that down:

If Apple achieves 1% penetration of the 30m-unit a year Swiss luxury watch market with the high-end gold collection, and the rest of the Watch units are split between the entry and mid-range collections, Apple's Watch ASP in the first 12 months would be $618, or 37% higher than our $450 estimate.

Goldman Sachs research thinks the profit would be even larger if the share of sales accounted for by Apple Watch Editions rose to 1%, boosting earnings by two thirds:

If we were to increase our Watch Edition mix to 1% at the expense of the low-end (i.e., keep overall units the same), watch revenue would increase by 27% and gross profit would increase by 66% over the first 12 months of selling.

Apple's products are notoriously profitable. The cost of manufacturing an iPhone runs to just over a quarter of the final price. That doesn't include the cost of marketing and sales, so the Apple Watch Edition is in another league. Even counting those costs (which are really factored in to the $549 basic price), it seems like the cost to Apple to produce, advertise and sell the product makes up less than 20% of the price.

It's safe to say this isn't going to matter to most of the people who are buying gold Apple Watches. The price of the individual parts of the item is far less important than the Veblen effect that its owners will get: Veblen goods confer status. As their price rises their perceived value does too, and demand for them increases likewise. It's the exact opposite of what you'd expect from a normal supple/demand curve, where higher prices reduce demand.

So while you're reading headlines about how crazy it is for Apple to charge $10,000 for a watch, consider that all the company is doing is creating the demand that it will happily meet with supply.

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