According to anti-poverty charity Oxfam, the wealthiest 1 percent will soon own more than the rest of the world’s population. As the BBC reports, the findings coincide with the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The portion of Americans who count protecting the country from terrorism as a top priority in the new year, a figure that’s neck-and-neck with the improving economy, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. That’s a marked change from last year, which pegged job creation and the economy as top priorities by far.
Travis Kalanick, chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc. stated that his company would add 50,000 jobs to the European economy this year, taking 400,000 cars off the road in the process. As reported by the WSJ, Kalanick’s comments at the Digital Design Life conference come at a time when Uber is facing major obstacles to entering the European market.
The year the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance was created, providing a template for the regulation of roads nationwide. Most notably, the suggested model included laws against jaywalking, which were pushed through by the automotive industry. Vox has the full secret history of the law that ceded control of the road.
That’s how many pounds of sand are used for oil and gas fracking every year, much of it from the Midwest. And in states like Wisconsin, mines often go uninspected, fines are modest and some rules have lapsed.
That’s about how many U.S. malls have a vacancy rate over 10 percent, a number that turns into an all-out “death spiral” once it hits 40 percent. The New York Times has a fascinating look at the way malls die and the strangely beautiful husks that are becoming more common.
New York City is notorious for expensive real estate, but the market for pricey apartments just got more ridiculous. A penthouse at One57, a luxury high rise, recently sold for a record-breaking $100 million dollars. As Quartz reports, the previous record was held by Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of a Russian fertilizer billionaire, who paid $88 million for an apartment in 2012.
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