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CEOs tell Trump they are hiring more Americans without college degrees

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U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Ivanka Trump look on during a meeting with the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board inside the State Dining Room on March 6, 2019 in Washington, DC.

by reuters.com --The White House hosted CEOs of major corporations who joined a Trump administration advisory board on workforce issues, including from Apple Inc, IBM Corp, Lockheed Martin Corp, Siemens USA and Home Depot Inc, who are part of a 25-member board co-chaired by President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “We have a chance to employ so many more people - and not always with a college degree, a less than a four-year degree will get a very good paying job in the new economy,” said IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty. Apple CEO Tim Cook said nearly 50 percent of the people the company hired in the United States last year did not have a four-year degree.

“We never thought that the college degree was the thing that you had to have to do well,” Cook said, adding that “our founder was a college dropout,” an apparent reference to Steve Jobs. Cook said he believed “strongly” that computer coding proficiency should be a requirement before U.S. students graduate from high school. Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson said of 14,000 people hired last year by Lockheed, half did not have a four-year degree and 6,500 were in manufacturing. The company has boosted workforce training, she said.

Trump said he wants to help companies find workers and he wants more high-skilled immigrants as U.S. unemployment remains low at 4 percent. “In one way, I love it,” Trump said of low unemployment. “But in another way, I don’t want to make it hard for you.” Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said U.S. job openings reached a record high in December at 7.3 million. The White House says the job openings present “a mismatch between the skills needed and those being taught, requiring immediate attention to help more Americans enter the workforce.”

The advisory board members will work “to develop and implement a strategy to revamp the American workforce to better meet the challenges of the 21st century,” the White House said. Board members also include the chief executives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as the governors of Iowa and Indiana, the president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions and the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, among others. Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bill Berkrot

Google Finds It’s Underpaying Many Men as It Addresses Wage Equity

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by cnbc --- Google says it paid men less than women in certain positions, according to its annual analysis, with some male software engineers receiving less discretionary funding than women. Google compensated 10,677 employees an extra $9.7 million to offset the underpaid wages found in the study, the company wrote in a blog post, though it's unclear what percentage of those recipients were men. In 2017, Google said it increased compensation for 228 employees it found were underpaid, spending a total of about $270,000. Google's 2018 analysis found that in one group of lower-level software engineers men "received less discretionary funds than women," according to the post authored by Google's lead analyst for pay equity and people analytics, Lauren Barbato. Nearly half of the adjustment fund was spent on discrepancies in offers to new hires, Barbato wrote, which was the result of a new hire analysis Google conducted in the 2018 study.

Lebanon withdraws Hayek from World Bank leader race

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WASHINGTON, (Reuters) by David Lawder - Lebanon has withdrawn its nomination of Ziad Alexandre Hayek to run for World Bank president, but the government privatization official said he is trying to persuade board members of the multilateral development lender to renominate him. Hayek told Reuters on Monday that he received a formal notification from Lebanon's finance ministry that his nomination was rescinded, two weeks after he announced his candidacy on Twitter. He said the decision was due to pressure from other governments, which he declined to name. An official with Lebanon's finance ministry confirmed that the nomination had been withdrawn before it was registered by the World Bank's nominating committee, adding: "there was no American pressure or other (pressure)." The same official said some parts of the Lebanese government which includes nearly all of Lebanon's rival political factions - wanted to nominate Hayek, but others did not. In the end, the finance ministry decided not to proceed with a candidate viewed as having little chance of winning, the official said. The withdrawal leaves U.S. Treasury Undersecretary for International Affairs David Malpass as the sole announced candidate to lead the World Bank with about 10 days to go before the nomination period closes on March 14. A World Bank spokesman declined to comment on the decision. The United States, which wields the most voting power on the World Bank's board, has chosen every leader of the institution since it began operations in 1946. Challengers from Nigeria and Colombia emerged in 2012 under a new open nomination process when the U.S. nominee, Jim Yong Kim, was first elected as World Bank president. Kim resigned in January to join a private infrastructure fund

Russia to Syrian asylum seekers: Get out

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By Maria Vasilyeva MOSCOW (Reuters) - In pre-war Syria, Safaa Al-Kurdi sold wedding dresses. Fed up with the conflict, the mother-of-three fled Damascus four years ago and sought asylum in Moscow. Now, Russia is saying she must go home. Safaa is one of thousands of Syrian refugees that Russia, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, is urging to return. Large parts of Syria are safe, Russian officials say, and there is no reason for asylum seekers like Safaa, 55, to remain. The Russian stance is creating problems for Syrians here who are seeing their asylum requests rejected. Banned from working, they face the threat of arrest and deportation. "Since my children are there and Syria is my country, I would naturally like to return," Safaa, whose two eldest sons were drafted into the Syrian army, said through tears. "But it's not possible for anyone to return in this situation. People know that there is poverty, that people are dying of cold or from hunger, or from bombing."

According to the U.N. refugee agency, nearly 5.5 million Syrians have fled a war that has raged over seven years. In 2015, when Moscow launched a military operation in Syria, Russia granted temporary asylum to 1,924 Syrians. That number has fallen every year since, according to statistics agency Rosstat, hitting a low of 823 asylum applications in 2018. The Civil Assistance Committee, an NGO working with refugees, says Russia wants the Syrians out.

"DON'T COME BACK" "Most of them get rejected, and the ones that don't are told: We warn you, this is the last time we will extend your documents, next year don't come back," said Yevgeny Yastrebov, a co-ordinator with the committee. Some Syrians have already left, he said, adding that others are forced to bribe the police to stay. "It's a constant game of hide-and-seek you have to play with the government, which is not a fun thing to do if you have kids and you need to feed them," he said. When Safaa left Damascus in 2015, she had a little money from selling her garments workshop. Her youngest son, Al-Amir, 23, followed her to Russia afterwards.

Their asylum applications have been repeatedly rejected and so far their appeals have also been refused. With her savings gone, Safaa makes ends meet by selling jewellery at a Moscow market. Her son declines to talk about his employment situation for fear of official reprisals. Their joint income is just enough to rent a small apartment in a village some 50 km (31 miles) east of Moscow. "I want to stay for a while before returning, I want to try to save a little bit of money to be able to open a little venture, to be able to live off of it in Syria," said Safaa. When her asylum appeal process is exhausted, she says she will return home, but wants her son to stay away from Syria. "Life is not possible there. It's like the war is over but it's not over at the same time." (Additional reporting by Ahmad El-Katib in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Osborn and William Maclean)

3 Top Cloud Computing Stocks to Buy Now

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by Chris Neiger (TMFNewsie) -- There's a battle raging between a handful of data storage companies to be the dominant player in the public cloud computing market. Apps, analytics, advertising, artificial intelligence and a host of other services all depend on cloud-based data to function, which is why Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) have invested so heavily in this tech over the past few years. Each company is trying to carve out more market share in the $278 billion (by 2023) public cloud computing market. And the good news is that there's likely enough cloud computing demand for all three companies -- and their investors -- to benefit. If you're interested in investing in the top cloud computing stocks, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon are the top-notch contenders you should be considering. Here's why.

Alphabet's growing focus

Alphabet sells cloud computing services through its Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and right now it holds a 9.5% market share, making it the third-largest player behind Amazon and Microsoft. The company doesn't disclose how much its cloud platform makes, but a recent report from Canalys estimates that sales from GCP were $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. That's far less than Amazon's revenue of $7.3 billion, but Google is making moves to help it catch up to its rivals. Google has made several purchases of smaller cloud computing companies to help boost its services, the most recent one being the acquisition of a cloud migration company called Alooma. Google has also said that it will spend $13 billion to add additional data centers throughout the U.S. to improve its cloud services. On Alphabet's most recent earnings call, management said that GCP had more than doubled the amount of cloud computing deals worth more than $1 million last year. And with the company's recent commitment to spending billions on building more data centers and snatching up smaller cloud companies along the way, counting Alphabet out in the cloud space would be a huge mistake.

Microsoft's reinvention of itself

Microsoft has emerged as one of the strongest cloud computing contenders through its Azure cloud service. The company has about 16.5% of the market right now, and in the most recent quarter sales from Azure were up 76% year over year. The company made several significant cloud deals in the second quarter, including agreements with UBS, MasterCard, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Starbucks, and Kroger. The new Kroger deal will use Azure and Microsoft's artificial intelligence prowess to improve in-store customer experiences. Microsoft's Azure is not only generating significant sales for the company, it's also an essential driver of gross margin as well. In the second quarter the company's commercial cloud gross margin increased by five points to an impressive 62%. For a company that was once synonymous with PC software, it's nothing short of amazing for Microsoft to have successfully transitioned to the cloud -- and become the No. 2 player no less. Investors should expect a lot more from Microsoft's cloud business, as the company looks to pair Azure even more with artificial intelligence in the future to become a dominant AI cloud computing company.

The classroom of the future

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by Bill Gates -- Textbooks are becoming obsolete as software is finally changing how students learn. I read more than my share of textbooks. But it’s a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best text can’t figure out which concepts you understand and which ones you need more help with. It certainly can’t tell your teacher how well you grasped last night’s assigned reading. But now, thanks to software, the standalone textbook is becoming a thing of the past. Suppose you’re taking high school algebra. Instead of just reading a chapter on solving equations, you can look at the text online, watch a super-engaging video that shows you how it’s done, and play a game that reinforces the concepts. Then you solve a few problems online, and the software creates new quiz questions to zero in on the ideas you’re not quite getting.

All of this is a complement to what teachers do, not a replacement. Your teacher gets a rich report showing what you read and watched, which problems you got right and wrong, and the areas where you need more help. When you come to class the next day, she is equipped with a ton of specific information and suggestions to help her make the most of her time with you. When I told you about this type of software in previous letters, it was mostly speculative. But now I can report that these tools have been adopted in thousands of U.S. classrooms from kindergarten through high school. Zearn, i-Ready, and LearnZillion are examples of digital curricula used by students and teachers throughout the U.S. More than 3,000 schools are teaching a free digital course that I fund called Big History, which uses software to give students immediate feedback on their writing assignments.

Lebanese government faces first public dispute between Future Movement and Hezbollah

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by arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: Former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has responded to a campaign launched by Hezbollah accusing him of corruption and demanding that he should be brought to justice. He said: “The campaign aims to demonize all the governments headed by Rafic Hariri and attack him as well as all the prime ministers who followed him, including Saad Hariri.” “This campaign against Siniora, and therefore against Hariri’s axis, has commenced before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues its ruling on the assassination of former PM Rafic Hariri, which five Hezbollah members are accused of and are escaping from prosecution,” a source close to Siniora said. Siniora broke his silence in a press conference on Friday, during which he attacked Hezbollah: “The biggest corruption is political corruption, and everyone who establishes smaller states within the state, controls the state’s facilities, disrupts the constitutional deadline, and denies the course of law is politically corrupt.” He said: “We are looking these days at something similar to what happened during the days of the security regime 20 years ago when I was framed.” Siniora’s speech reminded the Lebanese people of a campaign launched by the Lebanese-Syrian security regime against Rafic Hariri in 1998-2000.