Instant Alert: Video shows Trump's lawyer previously denied the president was involved with Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about meeting with a Russian lawyer

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

Video shows Trump's lawyer previously denied the president was involved with Trump Jr.'s misleading statement about meeting with a Russian lawyer

by Bryan Logan on Jul 31, 2017, 10:53 PM

Advertisement

One of President Donald Trump's private attorneys representing him in the Russia investigation previously said that Trump had nothing to do with a statement his son Donald Trump Jr. released to answer questions about a 2016 campaign-trail meeting he had with a Russian lawyer.

Jay Sekulow told news outlets earlier this month that the president "didn't sign off on anything," and "wasn't involved" in drafting a statement Trump Jr. used to defend his meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr.'s initial claim was that Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss a program about the adoption of Russian children.

According to a Washington Post report published Monday, the president was behind the adoption statement, which was proven false days later.

Trump Jr. took the meeting on the premise that he would receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump's then-rival in the 2016 election.

Watch footage of Sekulow denying Trump's involvement below:


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

Instant Alert: Facebook bought an AI startup that could turn its middling virtual assistant into a Siri killer

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

Facebook bought an AI startup that could turn its middling virtual assistant into a Siri killer

by Alexei Oreskovic on Jul 31, 2017, 9:13 PM

Advertisement

Facebook's virtual assistant, which goes by the name of M, hasn't quite delivered on the promise of a life-changing artificial intelligence product.

But Facebook isn't giving up. On Monday, the company announced its acquisition of a small, AI startup that will be folded into Facebook's messaging app.  Ozlo, which was founded four years ago and is based in Palo Alto, California, describes itself as "an index of knowledge about the real world."

In practice, that means a technology that lets users ask questions about everything from restaurants to movie schedules, which the AI-based system can quickly answer thanks to "a knowledge graph containing over 2 billion entities." 

A demo on an archived version of the Ozlo site (before Monday's acquisition was announced) shows a user typing in a query about the cheapest way to stream a particular TV show, followed by Ozlo's response, in natural language, proposing various viewing options. 

This kind of virtual assistant feature, similar to Apple's Siri and Google's Assistant, is something Facebook has sought to do with its M assistant. Facebook has integrated some automated M capabilities into the Messenger app. But a the full-fledged M virtual assistant is still only available to a very limited set of test users, and Facebook has acknowledged many of its capabilities are handled by a team of human "trainers" rather than true AI.

The financial terms of the deal for Ozlo were not disclosed. But Facebook has made no secret of how big of a priority AI is. During the company's quarterly earnings call last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted the importance of artificial intelligence to Facebook's 10-year plan. 

"By joining a team that shares our values and our vision, we will be able to continue to work on building experiences powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. There's a lot more for us to explore ahead and we're excited to bring our technology to the Messenger community," Ozlo said in a message on its website announcing its acquisition by Facebook. 

Facebook said in an emailed statement the the acquisition would further its goal of building "compelling experiences within Messenger that are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning." 

SEE ALSO: Facebook is working on a type of device so tough to build, even Google gave up on it


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

Instant Alert: Trump was behind the misleading original statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

Trump was behind the misleading original statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer

by Mark Abadi on Jul 31, 2017, 9:09 PM

Advertisement

President Donald Trump was behind a misleading statement that inaccurately portrayed Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer in 2016, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

The statement, published in July after The New York Times first reported the meeting, claimed that Trump Jr. and the lawyer "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children" during the meeting at Trump Tower, and that the subject of conversation was "not a campaign issue at the time."

The statement would be proven false days later, when Trump Jr. published his email correspondences with a British music producer who organized the meeting. In the email chain, Trump Jr. was told the lawyer would provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of the Russian government's attempt to influence the US election, to which Trump Jr. replied, "I love it."

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his then-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, also attended the meeting.

According to The Post, when news of the meeting broke, a group of Trump's advisers agreed the White House should release a truthful statement that could not be repudiated if more details of the meeting surfaced later. 

But Trump overruled the advisers and "personally dictated" the misleading statement that was eventually published, according to The Post's report. The statement was crafted aboard Air Force One as Trump returned from the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Trump has maintained that he only learned of the meeting days before news of its existence was broken by The New York Times, and previous reporting claimed he had merely signed off on the statement. But Monday's report detailing Trump's direct involvement in the response could add more ammunition to allegations that the president participated in a cover-up of Russian election interference.

"This was … unnecessary," one of Trump's advisers told The Post. "Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth."

The meeting has caught the attention of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, who sent a request to White House officials to preserve any documents relating to the 2016 meeting.

Meanwhile, Trump has defended his son and has repeatedly dismissed the Russia probe as a "witch hunt."

"You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history — led by some very bad and conflicted people!" Trump tweeted on July 15.

Read the Washington Post report here »


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

Instant Alert: The White House used a familiar excuse to dismiss Trump's comments about roughing up police suspects

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

The White House used a familiar excuse to dismiss Trump's comments about roughing up police suspects

by Mark Abadi on Jul 31, 2017, 7:28 PM

Advertisement

President Donald Trump wasn't being serious when he seemed to endorse rougher treatment of suspected criminals last week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday.

"I believe he was making a joke at the time," Sanders said at a press briefing.

Trump earned widespread criticism for his comments, made on Friday during a speech to law-enforcement officers in Brentwood, New York. In an unscripted rant, Trump said police shouldn't be "too nice" with suspects as they're placing them in the backs of police cars.

"Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over. Like, 'don't hit their head,' and they've just killed somebody," Trump said, as law-enforcement officers in attendance broke out in cheers and applause. "'Don't hit their head.' I said, 'You can take the hand away.' OK?"

Several police departments, including those in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, released statements over the weekend denouncing the president's comments.

"The President's comments stand in stark contrast to our department's commitment to constitutional policing and community engagement," New Orleans Police Department chief Michael Harrison said on Saturday.

A familiar excuse

In claiming Trump's remarks were a joke, the White House retreated to a familiar tactic to excuse the president's controversial, off-the-cuff statements.

It's the same one Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price used on Sunday to dismiss Trump's vow to fire him if he couldn't corral enough Republican votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

"Oh, I think that statement was a humorous comment that the president made, but I think what it highlighted is the seriousness with which he takes this issue," Price said on ABC.

Last month, then-press secretary Sean Spicer argued that Trump was "joking" in 2016 when he urged Russian hackers to go after Hillary Clinton's emails.

"He was joking at the time,” Spicer said at a press conference. "We all know it."

Donald TrumpAnd Trump himself used the "just-kidding" excuse on multiple occasions during the presidential campaign, like in August 2016, when he made the shocking claim that Barack Obama was "the founder of ISIS."

"Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) 'the founder' of ISIS, & MVP. THEY DON'T GET SARCASM?" Trump said in a tweet.

Trump also claimed he was joking when he erroneously claimed in a 2012 tweet that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive."

"I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China," Trump told the hosts of "Fox and Friends" in January 2016. "Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China."

And in an interview with a Wisconsin TV station in March 2016, Trump dismissed lewd comments he's made about women over the years.

"Well, number one, I'm no different than anybody else, and people joke, and I joke," Trump told the local FOX 11 station. "And I never knew I was going to be running for office. And you joke, and you kid and say things, but you're not a politician so you never think anybody cares."

SEE ALSO: Trump's campaign keeps dismissing his controversial statements with the same defense

DON'T MISS: Another major police department blasted Trump's comments on being 'too nice' to suspects


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

Instant Alert: Top Republican senator says his party his in 'denial' about Trump

Posted On // Leave a Comment

Your Message Subject or Title

  MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE
 
 
 
 
 

Top Republican senator says his party his in 'denial' about Trump

by Allan Smith on Jul 31, 2017, 6:34 PM

Jeff Flake

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona wrote that his party is in "denial" about President Donald Trump in a column in Politico on Monday.

Flake, who is up for reelection in 2018 and is one of the more vulnerable GOP senators in the upcoming election, held little back in the Politico op-ed, describing an executive branch "in chaos" and a president who has "seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians."

The Arizona Republican also took issue with his party's mission while President Barack Obama was in office.

"Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process," he wrote. "With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump."

He continued: "I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obama's failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama's election, stated that our number-one priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president — the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime."

He said conservatives were "largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama's legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us."

He continued: "It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a coequal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial."

Dating back to the presidential campaign, Flake has been one of Trump's most vocal critics among Republican senators. He wrote that he's been "sympathetic to this impulse to denial" that he earlier mentioned. But he added that the Constitution does not provide much of an ability for others in government to "do something about an executive branch in chaos."

"There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the president's party," he wrote. "We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplars — the Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more importantly, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great."

Flake ended his piece by providing three suggestions for his party.

"First, we shouldn't hesitate to speak out if the president 'plays to the base' in ways that damage the Republican Party's ability to grow and speak to a larger audience," he wrote. "Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, put they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries."

Read Flake's full commentary in Politico>

SEE ALSO: Trump is quietly moving at a furious pace to secure 'the single most important legacy' of his administration


 
Share the latest business news with your network:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Sailthru

INSTANT MBA: A banker-turned-Googler explains how a finance background makes you the ideal candidate for tech jobs

Posted On // Leave a Comment
MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS  |  UNSUBSCRIBE  |  VIEW ONLINE

July 31, 2017

Advertisement

When Sameer Syed worked as an investment banker at JP Morgan, he knew that every email had to be perfect.

"You didn't want to make a mistake in an email and have someone senior read it," he says. "They might be like, 'This guy doesn't really care about his work.'"

This pressure to get the details right ended up serving Syed well, even after he quit finance and headed off to work at a tech startup.

Today, he works in strategic partnerships at Google and organizes quarterly roundtables known as Wall Street to Silicon Alley, which strives to help financial professionals transition to jobs at tech startups.

"That's my goal, to highlight some of the talent that exists on Wall Street and figure out ways for tech companies and startups to start tapping into them," he says. "In finance, you have to have a very good work ethic."

He says that bankers and other financial professionals tend to possess a tremendous work ethic and a fresh perspective that can compliment traditional tech workers.

Here are two other strengths that Syed says finance workers can bring to the world of tech:

1. Attention to detail

When Syed landed his first job at a tech startup, his colleagues would often comment on his emails and presentations.

"They were like, 'Oh wow this is very clean and very professional. It looks like we hired a bank to do this,'" he says. "And I was like, 'Well, I did work at a bank.'"

Syed credits his time in finance with sharpening his attention to detail.

"When you're sending out emails when you're working in banking you have to be super detail-oriented and make sure that there's no mistake and no errors," he says. "Every presentation you put together is very nicely done. The formatting is perfect. Everything is great. That kind of stuff is super valuable."

2. Flexibility

Syed says that, despite the stereotypes about stiff bankers, flexibility is a trait that most financial professionals are taught to embrace.

"You develop an ability to adapt very quickly and learn about new products very quickly," he says.

This means learning things on the job, quickly.

"That's one of the things that I always tell people, to make sure they can demonstrate that in an interview with tech startups," he says. "Explain that, 'I can pivot very quickly and pick up a new product or understand a new concept very quickly because I've done that in investment banking. I've had to understand new regulations that will have an impact on my client, or if I'm working with financial products I need to understand all the products.'"

SEE ALSO: 3 websites a smart job hunter checks every day

Share this:

Facebook Share Twitter Share Email Share
  

Email sent to:     |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe

Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy

150 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor New York, NY 10011
Sailthru