San Francisco is one of the most exciting, dynamic, and richest cities in the world.
But it's far from being the cleanest.
In February, the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit spent three days surveying 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco to see what they would find. Their search turned up drug needles, garbage, and feces in concentrations comparable to some of the world's poorest slums.
On a recent commute to Business Insider's office in San Francisco, I took a detour through the Tenderloin neighborhood, where NBC conducted its survey, to see how the claim held up.
Roughly 100 million US adults — or nearly 10% of the population — have diabetes, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 84 million Americans have prediabetes, a condition can lead to type 2 diabetes within as few as five years.
Characterized by an inability to control one's blood-sugar levels, which can spike or plummet depending on the content of sugar or simple carbs in a meal, diabetes is a serious condition that can be fatal.
It's important to know that eating too many Oreos in a single sitting will not give you diabetes. Instead, there appears to be an indirect link between high-sugar diets and weight gain. And being overweight is a known risk factor for diabetes.
Still, more research on that relationship is needed, as made clear by a 2017 review of more than 15 studies comprising more than 250,000 people.
"Current evidence does not allow us to conclude that fructose-containing sugars independent of food form are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Further research is likely to affect our estimates," the researchers wrote in their paper.
Lauren Friedman wrote a previous version of this story.
Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes, whose sudden wealth changed the way he thinks about success.Chris Hughes/Facebook
Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes made $500 million in 2012 when Facebook went public.
His career and sudden wealth taught him that "success" is more than wealth and notoriety.
He now sees success as the freedom to pursue what makes him feel fulfilled.
Chris Hughes, 34, has been spending a lot of time lately thinking about his life's trajectory. And it's led him to reconsider what it means to be successful.
Hughes had the good fortune of being Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at Harvard, and he helped Zuckerberg build what became Facebook. Zuckerberg considered Hughes the most socially adept of the founding team, and he helped with the site's user experience and worked with writers to get Facebook's first press coverage.
Hughes decided that the site wasn't going to be his life, and stepped away after three years. But those three years got him a 2% ownership in the company, and that stake ultimately brought him $500 million after Facebook went public in 2012.
"I made a lot of money at a young age, but I didn't feel a connection to the work that I put in," Hughes told us in a recent episode of Business Insider's podcast "Success! How I Did It."
You can listen to the full episode below:
"So success, I feel like, for me, is having an opportunity to work on what I want to work on, and hopefully having an impact on the world as part of the process," he said.
Hughes first began to feel this in college, when he knew he wasn't willing, as Zuckerberg was, to drop out and move to California to turn their dorm room project into a real company.
"I loved working at Facebook, but it wasn't a religion for me in the same way it was for Mark," he said. "And I think to be able to be in the trenches and have the resilience and the dedication — with any startup, really — you have to believe in the mission of it. Almost with a kind of religious zeal."
In 2007, he joined a group that he could have that zeal for: the initially long-shot presidential campaign of freshman US senator Barack Obama. He was praised in the media for his successful work on building Obama's online presence.
When he found himself several years later with what he called the "boatload" of Facebook money, he decided he'd try to turn around the struggling New Republic magazine and turn it from a niche liberal journal into a mainstream hit with millions of readers. After spending $25 million over four years and dealing with an outpouring of talent in response to changes he was making, he decided to sell it.
The experience taught him, he said, that he could no longer set "really unrealistic goals." He needed to be driven by purpose, but it needed to be grounded in reality.
It's why with his newest project, he feels he has a clear definition of success that can guide him. As outlined in his new book "Fair Shot," he's working through his nonprofit the Economic Security Project to advocate for a guaranteed basic income of $500 for working Americans making under $50,000. He's already overseeing an experiment with it in Stockton, California.
"I have to stay focused on what I care about most," Hughes told us. "That's the work that I do on a day-to-day basis, and, of course, my family. And as long as I'm focused on the impact that I want to have through work, through my family, then I'll be fine."
One of the oldest tailors on London's Savile Rowe told Business Insider some surprising facts about the world of suits.
Simon Cundey, Managing Director of Henry Poole & Co, claims that the tailor invented the dinner jacket.
He said there's actually no difference between the dinner jacket and the tuxedo — and the different names came about due to their location in the world.
From doing your homework to choosing the right fit, there's plenty to know when buying and wearing a suit.
It's also important to know the difference between certain styles.
Business Insider caught up with Simon Cundey, Managing Director of Henry Poole & Co — one of the oldest tailors on London's Savile Rowe whose clients have included former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, supermodel David Gandy, and even Her Majesty the Queen — and we discovered some surprising facts about the world of suits.
One, according to Cundey, is the fact that the only difference between a dinner jacket and a tuxedo is the suit's location.
Cundey said the dinner jacket — or the tuxedo — first came about when Edward VII, later the king of the United Kingdom, decided in 1865 he was "tired of wearing tails at dinner by himself."
"He asked Henry Poole to come up with another evening dress, more relaxing," Cundey said. "[Poole] lowered the fronts, cut the tails off, and made it into a lounge dining jacket for him."
Here's a tuxedo being made inside Henry Poole:
Alison Millington
The same jacket was then copied by another customer named James Potter, according to Cundey.
"He had one made here and went back to his native address just outside of New York, called Tuxedo Park.
"One or two other customers who also dressed here began to have them made as well, so they became known as the Tuxedo Boys.
"That's why we have the name dinner suit for London, and Tuxedo for USA."
Here's what the suits looked like back in 1886...
Alison Millington
...And here's what a typical tuxedo from Poole looks like today:
Henry Poole & Co
According to Cundey, there's no difference between the two.
"It's two words separated by land, formed by two different sides," he said. "That's another claim to fame that started its origins at Poole."
Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis delivers a speech in Vienna, Austria, February 20, 2018. Reuters / Heinz-Peter Bader
David Davis says Britain will refuse to pay its Brexit divorce bill unless Brussels backs down on demands to keep Northern Ireland aligned with EU rules after Brexit.
He told MPs Britain would not finalise any payments to the EU until "all of the issues" concerning Britain have been resolved.
Tensions between UK and EU negotiators have escalated rapidly.
The prime minister will outline her rejection of the proposals in a meeting with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, at Downing Street today.
LONDON — Britain will refuse to pay its £39 billion Brexit divorce bill unless Brussels backs down on legal demands that would keep Northern Ireland aligned with European Union rules, David Davis has warned.
The Brexit secretary wrote to Tory MPs on Wednesday evening in a letter seen by the Times. He said Britain would not finalise any payments to the EU until "all of the issues" concerning Britain have been resolved.
Davis also said the government would not sign the EU proposals to give the European Court of Justice the power to rule over UK-EU disputes after Brexit, and rejected "punitive sanctions" proposed in the event that Britain broke the terms of its transition deal.
The letter came hours after the EU Commission published a draft Withdrawal Bill setting out the legal terms of Britain's exit from the EU. The document said Northern Ireland should remain in a customs union with the EU if the UK cannot find a different solution which avoids a hard border between north and south Ireland.
The proposal caused outrage and surprise among Conservatives and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) because it would mean a new border emerged between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK when it leaves the customs union.
EU figures pointed to the fact the UK had already agreed to similar provisions in its a draft agreement reached in December between UK and EU negotiators, when the UK also settled on the size of its divorce bill.
The news comes as tensions between UK and EU negotiators escalated rapidly. The prime minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the draft bill would, if implemented, "undermine the UK common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK," adding that "no UK prime minster could ever agree to it."
She said she will outline her rejection of the proposals in a meeting with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, at Downing Street today.
Tusk last week described the UK's approach to the next round of negotiations at "pure illusion."
LONDON — Royal Bank of Scotland's chief financial officer has said it is "inevitable" that there will be more job cuts at the government-owned lender.
Ewen Stevenson told Bloomberg TV: "It's inevitable that there will be further job cuts, but we are not going to talk publicly about figures."
Stevenson said job losses were coming as part of the bank's digital transformation plan, announced last week. RBS announced a £2.5 billion restructuring plan last week that Stevenson told Bloomberg would create "a better bank in 2020, a better bank equipped for digitization."
RBS's staff numbers fell 8.5% last year to 71,200 and many banks are cutting headcount as customers move online, leaving branch networks overstaffed.
Antony Jenkins, the former CEO of Barclays, predicted in late 2015 that Uber-style disruptions could shrink headcount in banking by as much as 50%, while profitability in some areas could collapse by over 60%.
EXCLUSIVE FREE REPORT: Top trends from this year's Money20/20 by the BI Intelligence Research Team. Get the Report Now »
China's ruling Communist Party proposed this week to eliminate presidential term limits, making it possible for current president Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely.
Without a set limit, Xi will be following in the footsteps of communist China's founder Mao Zedong, who ruled from 1949-1976, but also oversaw the deaths of tens of millions.
The most impressive aspect of Xi's leadership — and potentially the most threatening — is his calculated consolidation of power.
As president for the last five years, Xi initiated a corruption crackdown, which jailed some of China's highest-ranking leaders, and created central leading groups that allow him to bypass regular checks and balances. Xi has effectively gained oversight on almost all aspects of Chinese policy, from military reform to cybersecurity.
He has also increased internet censorship, which is aimed at curbing popular dissent, and implemented the ambitious Belt and Road initiative, China's global trade and infrastructure plan to link 70 countries.
Xi is coming to the end of his first five-year term and is set to be appointed to a second, and no longer final, term starting March 5.
Here is a look at some key moments that marked Xi's rise to absolute power.
