TripAdvisor recently released a list of the most popular travel destinations in the world, based on millions of user reviews, and Marrakesh, Morocco, took the No. 1 spot on the list.

This is the first time that the Moroccan city has topped the list, but it's been gaining popularity as a tourist destination with Britons and Europeans over the last several years. 

With its bustling souks, flavorful food, and famously welcoming hospitality, it's no wonder that tourists are starting to take note of Marrakesh.

Located in the northwest of Morocco, Marrakesh is world-famous for its souks, which are large markets.

Here's where you can buy everything from clothes and textiles to specialty foods and more.

Colorful spices are stacked high.

The iPhone consistently offers one of the best camera experiences on any smartphone, but Apple could pull ahead of the pack should it choose to implement its latest patent published on Tuesday.

Apple's patent calls for a "digital camera with light splitter" that would be small and thin enough to fit in a wireless device, like an iPhone.

This technology is not new at all — in fact, this system of three charge-coupled devices (CCDs) is commonly found in high-end video cameras, since it's very good at capturing lights and colors and negating any wobbling on behalf of the user. But, it would be a major coup if Apple would be able to miniaturize this system to fit inside the iPhone. And here's why.

In the iPhone's current camera system, individual pixels can capture red, green and blue lights, which are scattered all over a single image sensor. But that means each color only gets one-third of the space on the sensor. By splitting the light with this proposed cube, each color can have an entire sensor to itself, which would allow for more accurate colors, and much better images in low-light scenarios.

This would be a major achievement for Apple, since it would effectively make its camera much more powerful and it'd do that without taking up any valuable space within the phone — Apple prides itself on thin devices, and its powerful-albeit-bulky camera already protrudes from the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Implementing this light splitter would help Apple stay on the forefront of mobile photography.

We first learned about this patent over at Apple Insider.

SEE ALSO: The camera in Apple's next iPhone might get a major upgrade

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NOW WATCH: 5 hard-to-find iPhone tricks only power users know about

The Department of Homeland Security's investigator general named former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's brother, Tony Rodham, at various points in a new report published Tuesday about a firm that allegedly received preferential treatment. 

Among other things, the report criticizes a top DHS employee for appearing to go out of his way in 2010 and 2011 to assist "a politically connected regional center," Gulf Coast Funds Management.

"Throughout the time period of the events we reviewed, Anthony Rodham was listed as the Chief Executive Officer of Gulf Coast," the report noted.

Clinton — a former presidential candidate, US senator, and first lady — is the Democratic front-runner for president in 2016. 

Rodham is not specifically named as her brother in the report and Clinton herself is not referred to anywhere in the document. However, CNN, Politico, and other outlets identified him as her brother and previous media stories covered his involvement with Gulf Coast.

According to the investigation, employees complained that then-United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas was "politically motivated" in his intervention on behalf of Gulf Coast. The company was a participant in the USCIS EB-5 program, which seeks to attract foreign investment in the US. The USCIS denied some of Gulf Coast's efforts to expand its "industrial scope" in 2010 and a lengthy saga followed the subsequent appeals process in which Mayorakas was apparently heavily involved.

The investigator general found that when Rodham emailed Mayorkas about "delays in processing petitions," Mayorkas forwarded the email to DHS staff with a "high importance" designation.

Along with Clinton's brother's role at the company, Gulf Coast was also highly linked to now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a staunch Clinton ally, McAuliffe served as the chair of the Democratic National Committee when Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in office. McAuliffe, whose name appears in the report far more than Rodham's, did not return a request for comment from Business Insider, but his office told CNN he did nothing wrong at the time. 

Rodham could not immediately be reached for comment and Politico wrote that he did not return emails and phone calls on the matter. Mayorkas, who is now a deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, released a statement saying he disagreed with the report but "will certainly learn from it and from this process." 

View the full investigator general account below:

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NOW WATCH: Here's how President Obama starts every morning

The University of Texas is by far the richest public university system in America, with an endowment topping $25 billion.

Texas is home to the only two public university systems with endowments larger than $10 billion, according to the most recent data available through the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). The Texas A&M University System also has a massive endowment, totalling more than $11 billion.

Both these systems' funds are still below Harvard University's endowment — the largest in America, valued at over $35 billion — but are solidly competitive with the endowments of the richest private universities in the country.

These are the top 10 richest public universities, via NACUBO:

1. University of Texas System — $25.4 billion
2. The Texas A&M University System — $11.1 billion
3. University of Michigan — $9.7 billion
4. University of California — $7.4 billion
5. University of Virginia — $5.9 billion
6. The Ohio State University — $3.5 billion
7. University of Pittsburgh — $3.5 billion
8. The Pennsylvania State University — $3.4 billion
9. University of Minnesota — $3.2 billion
10. University of Washington — $2.8 billion

SEE ALSO: The 12 richest colleges in America

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

Oracle is hosting a couple of conferences simultaneously this week in Washington, D.C., and the star attraction was supposed to be the company's flamboyant, billionaire cofounder and CTO, Larry Ellison.

Ellison was scheduled to talk mid-day at one event and in the evening at the other.

People assembled for the first speech and after a long delay, Ellison never showed.

He was there in D.C., but was struck with laryngitis, Oracle finally told the crowd.

The flummoxed organizers had no pinch hitter, so the crowded room was told to just go hang out with each other and "network."

Here's a picture of the crowd waiting to hear Ellison:

The reaction to all of this, naturally, hit Twitter, where attendees took it all in good-natured stride:

Here's a joke reference to Ellison's former love of hostile takeovers, notable Oracle's take-over of PeopleSoft, one of the most vicious corporate fights in software history.

Ellison was feeling ok last week. He was hanging out at the at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, seen with lots of famous people, even Bill Gates.

This was a far nicer crowd than the one Ellison ditched in 2013 when he skipped a keynote at his own customer conference to watch his team race in the America's Cup. Some attendees were really ticked off about that.

He had to cancel the other keynote speech, too, at HCM World, a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider.

SEE ALSO: 30 tech skills that will get you a $110,000-plus salary

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NOW WATCH: A lawyer in Florida has come up with an ingenious way for drivers to evade drunken-driving checkpoints

Once you press "submit" on a job application, there's no going back — and with the overload of résumés that hiring managers receive, you have very little time to impress them.

We all know to double-check for typos and grammatical errors, and to avoid crazy fonts and colors, but there are some lesser known errors you may have no idea you're committing. 

In a recent LinkedIn post CEO of Grammar Chic Amanda Clark shared five mistakes that will cause hiring managers to cringe.

"There is certain information that employers simply don’t want – or need – to see, and other essentials that you may be overlooking," she writes.

Here are two of the more subtle, yet costly, résumé mistakes that will send your application into the "no" pile:

1. Trying too hard to impress them. "If you are using fancy language and descriptions that seem too good to be true, a hiring manager will probably assume they are," writes Clark. "Avoid overinflating your job descriptions and trying to make yourself sound more important or skilled than you are. While you want to showcase your greatest strengths and accomplishments, ensure that they sound logical and reasonable."

2. Including too much personal information. "Limit personal information to a basic contact section with your name, address, phone number, email, and LinkedIn link," explains Clark. Never include relationship status, birthday, social security number, photograph, or hobbies, she advises. Besides flooding the hiring manager with extraneous information, "it could lead to unintentional discrimination," writes Clark. "It is better to leave it off all together and not take any chances."

For three more costly résumé errors, read the full post here.

SEE ALSO: Top Google Recruiter Reveals The Biggest Mistakes He Sees On Resumes

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NOW WATCH: 7 smart questions to ask at the end of every job interview

Streaming music companies have had uneven success shifting ad-supported listeners to more valuable paid monthly subscriptions, and this has created a drag on the entire digital music industry.

Paid-music streaming services account for a smaller share of revenue — and audience pool — than ad-supported versions.

We think penetration of paid subscription tiers have failed to achieve massive scale because the free ad-supported versions of the leading services — including Pandora internet radio, iTunes Radio, iHeart Radio, and Spotify — already offer deep music libraries.

In this new and exclusive report from BI Intelligence we look at how prominent players in five separate categories have tried to build a subscription-based revenue stream alongside ad-based businesses: the categories are video, music, news publishing, social networks/messaging, and dating apps.

Access The Full Report And Data Sets By Signing Up For A Trial Membership »

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Most companies operate on a "freemium model." Subscriptions typically operate alongside an advertising business.
• Success in freemium boils down to offering a core audience exclusive value that can only be accessed beyond a paywall. The key is to target the most loyal audiences, and sell them on an expanded offering — bundles of features or content — that they find irresistible.
• Some publishers and apps have had mixed results with subscriptions, and vary in terms of how hard they have pushed them. Part of the problem is that ad-dependent companies are worried about limiting audience if they pack away too much value into a subscription tier. 
• The proportion of paying subscribers within the total user base varies considerably across digital media industries. Each category is obviously different, and won't face the same challenges and opportunities in dialing up the percentage of subscribers and subscription revenue. Here are some of the proportions of subscribers in apps' user bases: Spotify (25%), WhatsApp (21%), Pandora (5%), Match Group (5%), The New York Times (3%), and LinkedIn (2%). 

The report is full of charts, data, and case studies that can easily be downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

• Analyzes the most common subscription-based digital media revenue models
• Explores the drivers that allows some subscription or freemium business models succeed  
• Explains the revenue mix and business opportunity in several key digital media industries
• Outlines companies that have succeeded with  subscription-based business models

For full access receive to all BI Intelligence's analysis, reporting, and downloadable charts and presentations on the digital-media industry, the internet of things, and mobile, sign up for a trial.

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NOW WATCH: Forget Kim Kardashian — the 'butt selfie' queen of Instagram is a 21-year-old from Long Island

The first leader elected to take over Afghanistan's interim administration following the US-led invasion was almost killed by an American missile strike in southern Afghanistan just weeks before taking office, according to the new memoir of a former CIA agent.

In his new book, "88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary," Robert Grenier, the former station chief in Pakistan, describes how Hamid Karzai almost didn't live to receive the phone call telling him that he had been chosen to head Afghanistan's transitional administration. 

On Dec. 5, 2001, Karzai and a group of his fighters were visiting an Afghan schoolhouse when the American soldier accompanying them accidentally triggered a US missile strike — on their own location.

Karzai escaped relatively unscathed, suffering some minor injuries to his facial nerves from flying glass. Others were not so lucky — more than 40 people were either maimed or killed in the so-called "friendly fire" attack. One man was decapitated. 

Karzai was selected by prominent Afghan political figures in 2001 to serve a six-month term as chairman of the country's interim administration. He then served as the administration's interim president for two years before being elected President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2004 — a position he kept for nearly a decade.

Had he been standing a few feet to the left or right in the Afghan schoolhouse that December day, Karzai might have been killed by the 2,000-pound smart bomb. A new leader might have been elected, and the fate of Afghanistan might have been irrevocably changed.

Grenier's memoir is filled with anecdotes like Karzai's near-death experience that show just how random wartime successes and failures can be, according to Justin Lynch's review of the book in Foreign Policy. 

"What makes Grenier’s memoir unique is that it depicts the war in real time," Lynch writes. "Like the incident with Karzai, successes often come down to luck, and tragedy is decided at random. The book provides a useful reminder that inevitable victories are actually decided by slim and sometimes arbitrary margins."

Click here to read the full review in Foreign Policy.

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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

Most people know that Amanda Knox— "Foxy Knoxy"— is the pretty American student who was arrested and found guilty of the stabbing death of her British roommate in Italy, during a "sex game" gone wrong, when the pair were on study-abroad programs nearly a decade ago.

Unfortunately, a far smaller number of people know Knox was probably completely innocent of the crime; that another man was successfully convicted of the murder; and that NONE of the evidence — blood, DNA, or witnesses — ever really pointed to Knox.

Here's a primer on the Knox case, and the miscarriage of justice at the heart of it.

Knox, now 27, was able to the US in 2011 after four years in jail because an Italian appeals court overturned her conviction. Italy's highest court, however, reversed her acquittal after she'd already left Italy.

She was retried and found guilty though she never went back for the trial. Italy's highest court is set to weigh in on the case again on Friday when it will decide whether to affirm her second conviction.

Italy will likely demand her extradition if her conviction is affirmed, though as CNN points out, US officials could very well say no.

Knox's retrial — and her second conviction — would never happen in a US court, where the Constitution forbids "double jeopardy."

The frustration for followers of the case — and Knox herself, of course — is that some people have a vague sense that she was Meredith Kercher's killer, and that somehow — on a technicality! — she wriggled free.

It's important to understand that when Knox went to Perugia to study, she was just 20 years old. Like a lot of kids in college, she experimented with marijuana, booze, and boys. She didn't feel the need to apologize or hide the fact.

This part of the Knox story — that she was a pretty, unapologetic party girl — seems to have worked against her from the start, even though it has nothing to do with the case.

Kercher's killer is actually Rudy Guede, an itinerant African immigrant.

Guede found Kercher's body in the house she shared with Knox (even though he didn't live there). His fingerprints were found at the scene. He admitted being there prior to the killing (and using the toilet). And one of his palm prints was found in a blood stain underneath Kercher's body.

He then fled town, and had to be extradited back to Italy from Germany to stand trial. He's serving 16 years.

In the excellent book on the case, "The Fatal Gift of Beauty; The Trials of Amanda Knox," author Nina Burleigh describes Guede's history with the law: He was previously arrested for housebreaking, and on one occasion stole a knife (Kercher was stabbed).

The book is sourced at a level of detail that's almost excruciating, and this is the most baffling question it raises: Why was Knox prosecuted in the first place?

The answer is that the Italian prosecutor in charge of the case was an obsessed weirdo who was convicted of corruption.

Giuliano Mignini had previously prosecuted the "Monster of Florence" serial killer case and became convinced it was a masonic conspiracy. His case came to nothing. Mignini was later convicted of illegally tapping the phones of various police and reporters connected to the Florence case and was given a 16-month suspended sentence.

Somehow, he was allowed to be in charge of the Kercher murder, and he screwed that up too.

The alleged ritualistic sex game, for instance, turned out to be manufactured from whole cloth.

There was no DNA evidence indicating Knox killed Kercher:

• The forensic evidence that did exist was mishandled by Italian authorities prior to trial. (Kercher's bra clasp was left on the floor of the crime scene for six weeks before blood evidence was found on it.)
• A bloody knife print didn't match the knife police had in custody, so Mignini's team had to create a theory involving two knives, Burleigh reports.
• One of Mignini's witnesses against Knox was Antonio Curalato, a homeless anarchist who slept on a bench near Knox's house. He testified on who was near the house that night, and he also remembered seeing a party bus on the night of the killing. Burleigh's book shows that that bus was not scheduled to run on the night of Kercher's death.
• Curalato turned out to be a serial witness and heroin addict whom the police had persuaded to testify in two other murder cases.

It's not just that Knox was falsely accused. It's that her entire life was ruined in the process, in the most vindictive and sexist way possible. At one point, Burleigh reveals, a police official posing as a doctor informed Knox she had HIV, and asked her to name all her previous sexual partners so they could be alerted to the risk. She did so, and only found out later that it was a trick. The Italian cops just wanted to know about her sex life. (Her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, was also eventually acquitted of aiding in Kercher's murder and convicted again.)

Knox was guilty of two things:

She did falsely accuse Patrick Lumumba, a bar owner, of being involved in the crime. She was convicted of that libel and sentenced to time served (three of the four years she spent behind bars).

She was also guilty of being young and naive. Burleigh's book paints a picture anyone who has ever been 20 years old and away from home for the first time will recognize: a young woman enjoying herself, taking risks, being a bit of a jerk by all accounts, and not really understanding — or caring — how the perceptions of older adults might play against her.

She was convicted in part because the Lumumba accusation made her look guilty; because she failed to act sad enough; and because the Italian authorities and jury had sexist views of her behavior.

Few Americans regard the Knox case as a feminist issue, or Knox as a victim of discrimination. They should reconsider. 

She essentially served four years in prison for having a sex life.

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NOW WATCH: Watch an inmate escape from an Idaho jail through a closet crawl space

The black boxes on the Germanwings jet that crashed in France this week have been recovered, but both were damaged.

It remains to be seen whether investigators will be able to use what data they can recover the black boxes to confirm the now-dominant theory that the aircraft's co-pilot locked himself in the cabin and committed suicide by effectively flying the Airbus into a mountainside in the Alps.

Black boxes are pretty tough. The units on Air France 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, were found about two years later and worked fine.

The devices came into use in the 1950s, according to Boeing. They served the same role then as they do now: (1) to record what's happening on board and (2) be able to survive a crash so that investigators can discover the cause of an accident.

Today, airliners come with two units, the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). The FDR keeps track of a wide variety of parameters, including speed, altitude, engine power, and flight controls. If something is happening that changes how the plane is flying, it's noted. The CVR records the pilots' voices, air traffic control, and noise in the cockpit.

On Germanwings 9525, the CVR enabled investigators to hear the attempts by the pilot to get back into the cockpit. Investigators were also reportedly able to hear the co-pilot's breathing and the screams of passengers when the plane crashed.

The FDR, however, was badly damaged. Various outlets reported that its memory card was dislodged during the crash and wasn't located.

The information contained on teh FDR and the CVR often makes the difference between being mystified by a plane crash and understanding what happened — and making sure it doesn't happen again.

The FDR and CVR are remarkably robust. According to the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), both units can handle:

• acceleration up to 3,400 g (3,400 times the intensity of gravity on Earth)
• an hour in temperatures up to 1,100° C (2,012° F)
• a month in water six miles deep

No surprise the units survive nearly 100% of crashes.

Black boxes can't be disabled by the pilots, Steve Abdu, a 777 captain for a major carrier, told Business Insider. 

The FDR and CVR are also designed to be found after an accident. That's why they're painted bright orange, not black. To handle ocean crashes, each is mounted with an underwater locator beacon, which emits a pulse that can be detected by sonar equipment up to two nautical miles away. It stays active for about 30 days, and works at a depth of 20,000 feet. 

[An earlier version of this article was written by Alex Davies.]

SEE ALSO: French prosecutor: Co-pilot of Germanwings flight appears to have crashed plane deliberately

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NOW WATCH: This ‘Shark Tank’ investor once made a $5 million mistake

Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's right hand man, is not a fan of derivatives. 

Speaking at the annual meeting of Daily Journal Corporation, a newspaper publisher at which Munger serves as chairman, Munger said, "What do you think a derivatives trading desk is? It’s a casino in drag. They make the witch doctors look good."

Derivatives are securities whose value is tied to the value of another asset or index, like a futures or options contract. 

Munger and Buffett famously preach the idea that investors are best served buying businesses, not stocks, with Buffett writing 30 years ago that the key to investing is searching for discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in the market. 

In Berkshire's latest letter to shareholders, Munger outlined four things he think made Berkshire so successful over the last 50 years:

• The constructive peculiarities of Buffett.
• The constructive peculiarities of the Berkshire system.
• Good luck.
• The weirdly intense, contagious devotion of some shareholders and other admirers, including some in the press.

Munger also spoke at the Daily Journal meeting about the situation in Greece and the deal announced earlier on Wednesday for Heinz — which Berkshire owns along with 3G Capital — to merge with Kraft Foods. 

Read the full report of Munger's comments at Bloomberg »

SEE ALSO: 30 years ago, Warren Buffett gave away the secret to good investing and correctly predicted no one would listen

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NOW WATCH: 7 amazing maps that show how important Canada is

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is using his social media site to connect with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). 

Christie, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, shared a video of a recent town hall meeting on his public Facebook page Wednesday and Zuckerberg "liked" the post.

In the video, Christie described how, as governor, he generally has to walk through side doors and "kitchens" when he arrives somewhere.

Along with "liking" the post, Zuckerberg left a comment.

"I love this. The part about walking through every kitchen and side door made me laugh so hard. This is why town halls are great," he wrote.

In addition to his public Facebook presence, Christie seems to have a private, personal page on the site. That page lists Christie and Zuckerberg as Facebook friends. The governor has not responded to a friend request from this reporter.

View the post Zuckerberg "liked" below. 

(via Weekly Standard)

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NOW WATCH: Here's what it takes to be President Obama's right-hand man

Saudi Arabia began a military operation in Yemen on March 25 to counter Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have dissolved the Yemeni state and forced president Abd Rabbu Mansur Hadi to flee the country by boat.

The operation is a Saudi attempt to reclaim a strategic frontier from its primary regional adversary, or to at least limit Iran's potentially reach into the Arabian peninsula. 

But it's also becoming rapidly apparent that the Yemen operation, called Operation Decisive Storm, is driven by something more than just Saudi-Iranian competition.

Every single Arab monarchy (except for Oman) is involved in the effort, including distant Morocco — a sign that governments ruling a combined 90 million people across 8 countries believes that the prestige and core interests of traditional conservative powers are at stake in Yemen. 

Furthermore, there's one extremely curious participant in the anti-Houthi coalition — and its presence is the clearest sign of just how seriously Saudi Arabia and the Arab monarchies are taking the Yemen crisis.

The fact that Sudan is sending 3 warplanes to the operation— and is even deploying ground troops that would fight alongside the Egyptian military — is a revealing glimpse into how events in Yemen are being interpreted in the Middle East's Sunni centers of power.

Sudan's participation in the war against the Houthis, along with the government's reported closure of the offices of Iranian organizations and groups, indicates a possible re-alignment of Khartoum's loyalties, and a Gulf-state effort to pry Sudan and Iran away from one another.

Sudan is the only Sunni Arab government allied with Iran. The country is ruled by an internationally sanctioned, nominally Islamist government whose human rights abuses in Darfur and southern Sudan and support for terrorist groups like Hamas have turned it into one of the region's pariah states.

It's facing civil wars in multiple theaters, while South Sudanese Independence in mid-2011 and ensuing instability in the newfound country has threatened Khartoum's oil revenues, which were plunging to begin with. Khartoum's oil revenue went from $11 billion in 2010 to less than $1.8 billion in 2012, while still accounting for a crucial 27% of government cash flow.

Fiscally threatened and internationally scorned, Sudan's National Congress Party regime has allowed the Iranians to operate weapons facilities in Khartoum, including an installation that was the target of a 2012 Israeli bombing attack and that a US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks implicated in the production of chemical weapons for the Iranian and Syrian regimes. Iranian warships have been allowed to dock in Port Sudan in May of 2014.

And Sudan is a staging area for the transiting of Iranian weapons to both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to minutes of a high-level August 2014 meeting leaked to researcher Eric Reeves in September, Sudanese Minister of Defense Abdal-Rahim Mohammed Hisen believes the country's "relation with Iran ... is strategic and everlasting. We cannot compromise or lose it.

All the advancement in our military industry is from Iran." There have even been rumors of Khartoum rendering forms of support to the same Houthi rebels that they are now fighting in Yemen.

Sudan's relationship with Iran has come at a cost: The Gulf States had cut off the vast majority of their financial support for the Sudanese regime by 2012. Qatar, the last Gulf donor willing to work with Khartoum, has earmarked much of its aid to reconstruction projects in the war-torn Darfur region.

Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir figured that he needed the unconditional assistance and the ideological backing of a fellow revolutionary-Islamist rogue regime like Iran more than he needed the help of the more demanding Gulf monarchies. But Bashir's regime is in even worse shape now than it was in the aftermath of the country's 2011 split.

As a March 2015 Enough Project report detailed, with the oil industry suffering Sudan's government is now almost entirely dependent on the smuggling of artisanal gold as a source of foreign currency. It's hard enough to fight wars on multiple fronts without international sanctions and a domestic economic crisis. But it's nearly impossible without any real government revenue streams or foreign cash to fall back on.

Bashir now realizes that his survival depends more on the Gulf countries than it does on Iran. Saudi Arabia can solve his regime's problems with a single stroke of the pen. Iran can't do that.

And at the same time, the Saudis realize that their own prestige depends on an ability to beat back Iranian advances in their strategic backyard, which only increases the urgency of shearing allies away from Tehran.

There's indication that the Gulf states were trying to recruit Sudan into their anti-Houthi push: Bashir, who is still under International Criminal Court indictment for crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, has traveled to both the United Arab Emiratesand Saudi Arabia in recent weeks.

The Sunni Gulf countries understand the value of lining up an Iranian ally behind a war effort targeting a second Iranian ally. And in Sudan's case, they had the leverage needed to affect such a dramatic and apparently rapid strategic shift. 

Militarily, the current coalition doesn't need Sudan. Khartoum's regular military is a thoroughly corrupt and compartmentalized institution, and most of the heavy fighting (and the alleged war crimes) in Darfur and the South has been carried out by proxy groups and militias.

But the coalition was apparently eager for an immediate sign that Iran has lost the strategic initiative. With Sudan joining the fight in Yemen, they now have one — if only for the time being.

SEE ALSO: War in Yemen could threaten one of the world's most important oil chokepoints

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

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) reportedly told a group of New Hampshire Republicans on March 13 that he supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, contradicting his recent statements on the issue.

"He said no to citizenship now, but later they could get it," Bill Greiner told The Wall Street Journal about Walker's comments at the private event.

Franklin Mayor Ken Merrifield (R), another attendee, claimed Walker said undocumented immigrants should "get to the back of the line for citizenship" but not face deportation. 

This position would appear to contradict what Walker has said recently, including the day after the New Hampshire event, according to The Journal. In 2013, Walker told the Wausau Daily Herald that "it makes sense" to have a pathway to citizenship. However, he said on March 1 that he "absolutely" changed his mind on the issue after witnessing the recent problems along the US-Mexican border.

Walker spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski told The Journal that Walker remained steadfast in his opposition to "amnesty." 

"Gov. Walker has repeatedly said that President Obama’s unconstitutional executive action and the collateral damage it has had on his fellow governors has made it evident that border security must be the top priority before we can have a conversation about anything else," she said. "He is opposed to amnesty. There must be consequences for violating our laws."

Immigration reform is one of the most hot-button issues in Republican Party activists, with activists vehemently opposed to expanding citizenship to undocumented immigrants. However, The Journal suggested Walker may have trying to appeal to "business leaders and general election voters who have been more supportive of granting legal status to undocumented immigrants."

Update (3:48 p.m.):Kukowski released a statement declaring The Journal story "false": "We strongly dispute this account. Governor Walker has been very clear that he does not support amnesty and believes that border security must be established and the rule of law must be followed. His position has not changed, he does not support citizenship for illegal immigrants, and this story line is false."

SEE ALSO: Scott Walker keeps changing his mind

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NOW WATCH: What the Chinese saying 'The ugly wife is a treasure at home' actually means

It took only one juror to spareJodi Arias the death penalty for the brutal murder of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008.

Considering the United States has executed only 13 women in the last 40 years, a death sentence would have been highly unusual.

Women committed less than 10% of all murders in America between 2000 and 2010, a Wall Street Journal analysis of crime data found. Women defendants, however, only make up 2% of death row, according to a recent report by the NAACP.

Even fewer women actually get executed, Death Penalty Information Center executive director Richard Dieter told Business Insider.

"There's just less enforcement of the death penalty at almost every stage for females," he said.

Two major factors contribute to the low number of women who get capital punishment: the nature of the crime and how juries view women in general. The death penalty is often used for killers who also commit other felonies like robbery or rape, law professor Victor Streib has previously told the LA Times.

Many of the murders women commit, on the other hand, involve people they're related to.

While women commit about 10% of murders, they were responsible for 35% of murders of intimate partners between 1980 and 2008. Most juries consider these crimes of passion arising from disputes — one-time offenses, Dieter said. Because of the high rate of domestic violence against women, though, juries don't give men the same benefit of the doubt.

On the other hand, most states consider killing a child an aggravating factor, or a reason for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. Hiring someone to do the work could also land a woman on death row. "If a woman hires someone, there's a coldness, a calculation. It's different than something that arises out of an argument," Dieter said.

Teresa Lewis, for example, plotted to kill her husband and stepson for the insurance money. "Instead of pulling a trigger on a gun, she pulled a couple of young men in to pull the trigger for her," prosecutor David Grimes told a judge at the time, The Washington Post reported. She was the first woman Virginia sentenced to die in more than 100 years. 

But the second factor — the jury's perception of the "fragile" female psyche — can overpower aggravating factors. "It's just easier to convince a jury that women suffer emotional distress or other emotional problems more than men," Streib told the LA Times.

Take Susan Smith. She killed her two sons by backing her car into a lake while they sat in the backseat. But when the jury heard about her abusive childhood, they took pity on her, Dieter said. She only got a life sentence — with parole. In TruTV's coverage of her story, the headline reads: Child Murderer Or Victim?

"These 12 people [the jury] are asked to see if this person has any redeeming qualities. And they often see their own mother or wife or grandmother, not someone who will continue to be a threat to society," Dieter said. "Jurors just see women differently than men."

Of course, most women aren't going to argue for gender parity in the death penalty, Dahlia Lithwick has written in Slate. Only 59% of women favor the death penalty compared to 67% of men, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.

"For equality's sake, you think that women would want the death penalty pursued more often," Dieter said. "But of course, they don't."

SEE ALSO: These are the only 13 women executed in America in the past 40 years

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Crude oil prices were surging on Thursday after news broke that the Saudi Arabian air force is bombing Houthi rebels in the country.

Saudi Arabia says it will do "anything necessary" to defeat the rebels, but the group took over an airport on Wednesday, and the President reportedly fled the country by boat.

The Houthi militias are primarily Shia and backed by Iran, which is not good news as far as the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia is concerned. 

All of this is sending crude oil prices surging.

After several days of relative stability Brent oil prices were up more than 4% to $59 a barrel while West Texas Intermediate crude trading in New York were up 4% to more than $51 a barrel. 

Here's the really in WTI:

Yemen is a minnow in terms of global oil production, and is not important to the supply on its own. But it has both a border with Saudi Arabia (the world's biggest oil exporter) and the Yemeni city of Aden lies on the Gulf of Aden, a narrow shipping route through which much of the world's oil travels — leaving the gulf and destined for Europe and the Americas.

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The new Facebook Messenger, which lets users install other apps to use with the popular chat platform, seems to conflict directly with Apple's App Store guidelines — meaning that Apple may have cause to pull Messenger from iPhones and iPads. 

"Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected," goes Section 2.25 of the App Store Review Guidelines, the bit in contention, as pointed out by Button co-founder Chris Maddern on Twitter.

This means that you can't run another app store within your own app, for the obvious reason that Apple doesn't want anybody operating a competing app store on its platform, as Amazon does on Android (to Google's annoyance). If you get an app on iOS, Apple wants to know about it, and if you're paying for it, it wants a cut. 

But just look at this screenshot from Facebook Messenger:

It resembles an app store, especially since any apps you install in Messenger appear on an iOS home screen.

Apple has banned apps in the past that don't fall in line with its guidelines, such as Launcher, which adds shortcuts to apps to your iPhone's lock screen in the notification panel. Launcher was just allowed back into the App Store, however. 

So far, there's been no indication that Apple has any intention to stop iPhone owners from using Facebook's new platform. 

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There are multiple reports of an explosion and partial building collapse in the East Village area of Manhattan shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday.

Up to 30 people have been hurt, according to New York Post law enforcement sources, and others are reportedly trapped.

The FDNY is on the scene, which is reportedly near St. Marks and East 2nd Avenue. 

Here's a map of the location:

The images coming in show the intensity.

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A Russian security researcher was able to hack into his own smart bracelet in a relatively easy way (well, easy for a programmer).

Roman Unuchek, a mobile threats expert at Kaspersy Lab, built an application that connected with dozens of devices in the wild and surreptitiously hacked into his own bracelet. He would not divulge what kind of device it is.

Smart bracelets are generally considered to be the "dumbest" of the smart wrist devices. They include Jawbones, Fitbits, Nike Fuel Bands, and numerous others that have no digital display but track movements and other biometric data. Their adoption has been rapidly rising — Nielsen predicts that a third of all US adult consumers will own some form of a wearable device by 2017.

So this hacking discovery may come as a wake-up call to companies trying to build out their wearables programs.

Hacking a smart bracelet generally consists of two parts:

• Scanning and connecting to the bracelet (the easy part)
• Gaining authentication — that is, spoofing the actual user's identity — from the main app on the user’s smartphone (harder)

Unuchek was able to build an app that scanned the area for devices in his area. Most wearables connect using Bluetooth LE technology, a common low-powered protocol. Because these devices don’t have screens, they do not require passwords to connect. This made it a breeze to gain an instant connection from his hacking app to the devices.

He brought his new wearable-scanning app into the wild and connected to 54 devices in six hours. After one hour in a gym, he connected to 25 individual devices. While in a subway for two hours, he found 19 others. 

The authentication proved a bit more difficult. If a bracelet is already connected with a smartphone, the only way for it to communicate with another app is for this new app to be given the go-ahead. This requires quite a bit of savvy coding, as well as slyly having the device-wearer consent to the app's connection.

Unuchek's bracelet sought out authentication by sending a vibration. All he had to do was press the only button on his bracelet to complete the authentication.

If a real-world hacker kept trying to connect to the device, and the user kept getting phantom vibrations on their arm, they'd probably press the button in an attempt to shut it up.

As Unuchek explained, “It is not difficult to make the user press a single button on the wristband. You just need to be persistent. You can keep trying authentication process over and over until the user finally presses the button or moves out of range.”

By following those two steps, he was able to access the bracelet’s data. 

Of course, not much can be done with a hacked smart bracelet. The data these devices track are relatively benign. The hacker can learn how many steps the wearer made, or how well their sleep cycle is.  

But Unuchek sees a future of nefarious wearable hacks. For example, as the devices become more intelligent they may track more personal biometric data including pulse sensors. Stores could use this data to detect how users respond to in-store stimuli. Or, in a more farfetched world, hackers could write a torturous line of code that makes a bracelet vibrate incessantly, and the attackers “demand money to make it stop.”  

Whatever the possibilities with this data, Unuchek was able to highlight a real vulnerability in popular new connected technology. While he wouldn’t name the vendor, but it’s highly likely that this problem extends to numerous devices on the market. 

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FA Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that delivers the top news and commentary for financial advisors.

America's view on taxes (Think Advisor)

With the April 15th tax deadline just three weeks away, Pew Research asked the American public for their views on taxes. Of those surveyed, 53% say their share of taxes is appropriate for the benefits they receive from the federal government while 40% believe they pay too much.

Interestingly, 64% of the sample was bothered 'a lot' about corporations not paying enough and 61% had a similar feeling towards the wealthy. Perhaps not unexpected, 50% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats felt they paid more than their fair share of taxes. 

The ins and outs of the 529 plan (Wealth Management)

The 529 plan is becoming more popular as education costs continue to rise. Wealth Management discusses what you need to know about the plan. Withdrawals from the plan are tax exempt as long as the student is at a qualified institution (most 2 or 4 year schools qualify), and the proceeds can be applied to the cost of tuition, books, fees and mandatory supplies and materials.

However, Wealth Management notes, "If the account is completely liquidated, the loss may qualify as a miscellaneous itemized deduction on Schedule A of the account owner’s 1040 tax form." Families should be aware it may be more beneficial to take a portion of the money out each year as student loans may become more expensive over the course of the education and additional tax savings may become available.

Northwestern Mutual buys LearnVest (InvestmentNews) 

Northwestern Mutual has purchased online advice platform LearnVest for its technology and comprehensive planning capabilities. InvestmentNews notes, "As part of the deal, Northwestern Mutual will be bringing on 1.5 million LearnVest users, plus 25,000 clients through LearnVest at Work, a year-old program where the company works directly with employers to provide financial planning services to employees." Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Doing your taxes is taking longer (Bloomberg)

More and more Americans are taking longer to do their taxes. In 2013, 13 million Americans filed for an extension, up 20% from 2011. Why are more and more Americans getting their taxes done later? Bloomberg delays can be attributed to not have the correct forms, waiting for other people, and a more complex tax code. 

The impact of currencies on stocks (WisdomTree)

Continued US dollar strength is likely to pose problems for multinationals while providing a tailwind for foreign companies earning revenue in the US. WisdomTree compared US-based Proctor & Gamble with European-based Unilever and noted investors should be mindful that American Depository Receipts (ADRs), which are often used to trade foreign-listed companies, do not provide a hedge against currency risk. "While Unilever's stock price has appreciated 41.0% cumulatively over the past year, the ADR price has appreciated only 9.0%. Why? The euro’s exchange rate versus the U.S. dollar depreciated 23.5% over this period; the ADR’s appreciation was thus significantly mitigated by the euro’s depreciation."

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