The Weekend Edition

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We publish the Enterprise Morning Edition in English and Arabic from Sunday through Thursday before 7am, with a focus on the business, economic and political news that will move markets each day. What you’re reading now is our Weekend Edition, which is light on news and heavy on stories to read, videos to watch, and podcasts to which you may want to listen on Friday and Saturday (that being the weekend for the vast majority of our readers). The Weekend Edition comes out each Friday between 9:00am and 9:30am CLT. We’re in beta and in English only right now.

We’ll be back on Sunday at around 6:15am with our usual roundup. Until then: Enjoy the weekend.

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SPEED ROUND, THE WEEKEND EDITION

Gird your loins, folks, people are expecting big things from Apple’s 21 March event Well, maybe big isn’t the best word. Apple is expected to launch a four-inch iPhone — that’s almost an inch smaller than the current iPhone 6. Also look for a follow up to the iPad Air 2, with additions including Apple’s Smart Connector technology that supports keyboard and stylus functionality. The unveiling of what pundits expect will be the iPhone SE and the 9.7 inch iPad Pro will stream live on Apple’s site here on Monday at 7pm CLT. If you can’t wait, 9to5 Mac has a solid wrap-up of all the gear expected to drop. The event could also include the release of iOS 9.3, with new features including TouchID protection for your Notes app (and a way to import Evernote notes) and Night Shift. And if you’re a true Apple geek, check out the latest leak on what to expect of this fall’s iPhone 7 based on leaked cases (here, including text and video).

Speaking of Apple: The new iPhone 6s ad stars none other than Cookie Monster. (Watch, run time 1:00, and make certain to check out the fine print in the last second. You’ll want to hit pause pretty quickly.)

Is Siri’s pal going to put you out of a job? That’s among the questions the Financial Times’ John Gapper grapples with this week after Goldman Sachs bought a small Texas tech startup that “organises pension plans for small companies and self-employed workers. Builders and taxi drivers are not exactly Goldman’s usual set of customers so it is a sign of the revolution in asset management.” The company, Honest Dollar, offers to manage a retirement program for small businesses at rates starting at USD 8 per employee per month. It’s not alone, with competitors including Wealthfront and Betterment. Gapper wonders whether “the game is up in asset allocation. A computer with access to a standard array of index funds and exchange traded funds can devise a suitable long-term investment strategy for most people in a blink. … The traditional industry model, in which one person handled both asset allocation and more complex advice, is dead. Robots are more expert at the first activity than advisers ever were.”

Has Banksy been unmasked? Banksy, while one of Britain’s most successful contemporary artists, has had his identity kept as a closely guarded secret. Until, that is, an academic study claimed to have unmasked him. “The study used geographic profiling of the kind used in criminal cases or in tracking the source of an outbreak of disease. Whether Banksy would appreciate his graffiti art being likened to crime or illness is unknown — though he tends to be contrarian in his publicly released statements, so perhaps he would,” CNN’s Don Melvin writes. The study reaffirms a claim made by the Daily Mail in 2008 saying Banksy is actually Robin Gunningham. While the study concedes it is difficult to make conclusive statements about Banksy’s identity, its analysis “does provide some support for the theory that [Gunningham] is Banksy.” You can view some of Banksy’s work here in artnet.

While we’re on the subject of art: The unsung importance of Edvard Munch: “The key to Munch’s originality is storytelling with a potent pictorial rhetoric of rhythmic line and smoldering color. Each work feels like a one-off personal emergency, even when it is repeated in other paintings or prints. The Expressionists adopted the look of his style, which serviced their drive to counter French formalism by stressing the psychic toll and the compensatory exhilarations of the modernizing world. But Munch’s sincerity was bound to elude them,” Peter Schjeldahl writes for The New Yorker about the late Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s legacy. Some of Munch’s work is currently on display at the Neue Galerie in a show titled “Munch and Expressionism.” Schjeldahl says the shows “settles [Munch’s] one textbook claim to historical consequence: he is the father of the most important modern movement in German and, to some extent, Austrian art.” He adds that Munch’s example to other artists is “simple”: “be a highly gifted but, especially, a particular person, and go for broke.” Need background? The Wikipedia entry isn’t bad. And you probably already know The Scream, one of the most expensive paintings ever to go under the hammer at auction.

There’s a mystery investor reportedly haunting Istanbul stocks. The investor appeared about a year and a half ago with USD 450 mn in bets on a single day — almost double the market average. He/she is now executing more and more major transactions, spooking others who can’t put their fingers on when “the dude” will strike next. “At least one European bank’s clients have stopped taking short-term positions in Turkish stocks after concluding the investor is using an algorithmic system in which complex formulas decide trades, while others are avoiding the market until they have more information,” a person familiar with the matter said.

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The Importance of Hating People, David Weinfeld, the Harvard Crimson, 2004: “I know a girl back home who stopped dating a guy because he couldn’t name a single person he hated. Her rationale: it showed that he could not be discerning. I understand her completely.” (Read)

The Importance of Being Hated, Chuck Klosterman, Esquire, 2007. “Nemeses and archenemies are the catalysts for everything … you’re probably asking yourself, How do I know the difference between my nemesis and my archenemy? … If this distinction seems confusing, just ask your girlfriend to explain it in detail; women have always intuitively grasped the nemesis / archenemy dichotomy. Every woman I’ve ever known has had at least one close friend whose only purpose in life is to criticize her actions, compete for the attention of men, and drive her insane; very often, this is a woman’s best friend … Women intrinsically understand human dynamics, and this makes them unstoppable.” (Read)

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No, we still don’t know why things disappear in the Bermuda Triangle: If you’ve been on the internet at all this week you may have run into articles claiming scientists have discovered the secret behind the Bermuda Triangle. What actually happened was scientists discovered huge craters at the bottom of the Barents Sea in the Arctic. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway found evidence that suggests they may have resulted from blowouts caused by high-pressure methane gas that migrated up from deep oil deposits and accumulated in shallow rocks from the Triassic period between 206 mn to 248 mn years ago. The shining beacon of ethics and science that is the Daily Mail, however, twisted said research claiming the craters “could also possibly explain the loss of ships and aircraft in the controversial area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle.” The Arctic University of Norway, the supposed source of the revelation, itself quickly jumped in to debunk the tabloids’ spin on its science, in a news release rather emphatically titled Craters in Barents Sea Not Connected to Bermuda Triangle.

Speaking of the Bermuda Triangle, techies are starting to wonder if there’s a South by Southwest curse that causes apps launched at the event to peter out and disappear off the face of the tech earth. Bloomberg runs down a list of five apps that have suffered that fate, including Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s hard to remember a time when we thought using an app to announce our every move and location was considered anything more than an invitation for stalking.

Stop the presses, we’ve been doing swaps accounting wrong, according to a paper published (pdf) by professor Darrell Duffie of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Banks are “locking up money that could otherwise be paid out as dividends to their shareholders,” according to Duffie. “Banks are masking the funding cost of their swaps desks by applying the cost — in the form of a discount — to the value of those positions that they report in their financial results every quarter,” Bloomberg writes.

It appears to be all but over now: The New Yorker’s veteran business and politics commentator John Cassidy looks ahead to the impending showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. For Cassidy, the bottom line is this: “Should Trump be confirmed as the G.O.P. Presidential nominee, we can expect more lies, more deceit, and more viciousness. Unless something very unexpected happens, it will be up to Hillary Clinton to keep him out of the White House.” The New York Times adds nuance to the piece with “Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Are Winning Votes, but Not Hearts.”

The newest YouTube celebrity in Germany is … a Syrian refugee: Firas Al Shater, a Syrian refugee, became a YouTube celebrity “pretty much overnight,” Quartz reports, “by explaining German culture to Germans” on his YouTube channel: Zukar. Al Shater talks about how Germans “need some time to warm up, but once they do, they don’t stop,” which Quartz says is not particularly original, “but his goofy and endearing manner won over thousands of fans.”

Michael Bloomberg loves Justin Trudeau. The former mayor of New York and founder of the eponymous business news service (who isn’t running for president, after all), praises the Canadian PM in a guest column for the Globe & Mail the same week Trudeau headed to D.C. for his first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama.

Marty McFly’s self-lacing trainers are here: Nike has unveiled its first power-lacing sneaker, the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0, which allows you to make the fit looser or snugger on by pressing buttons on the side of the shoe. The shoes is set to go on sale this holiday season, but only for users of its Nike+ app.

Lloyd Shapley, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2012, died last Saturday. The Economist’s very aptly-titled obituary, “Matchmaker in heaven,” delves into Shapley’s achievements, chief amongst which is the Gale-Shapley matching algorithm. The algorithm “became the workhorse of matching theory” and fellow Nobel laureate Alvin Roth used it as a basis to create his own algorithm that matches organ donors to recipients and medical students to hospitals. One thing Shapley insisted on, despite the Nobel prize; he is not an economist, he was a mathematician.

If you’re an investor who’s been duped by a Chinese company, this guy is just about the only game in town if you want to try to recover some of your assets. It’s long slog, though: He’s recouped only about USD 8 mn of the USD 90 mn he’s gone after so far, the New York Times tells us.

Curious what happens on the internet in one second? How many emails are sent, Skype calls are made, etc? PayFort has a suggestion.

It could be that Queen Nefertiti is buried in Tutankhamen’s tomb after all. A news conference held yesterday in Cairo revealed that “a deeper analysis of radar scans taken last year in the tomb of King Tutankhamen indicated that organic material or metal could be hidden behind its walls — inching forward a theory that someone, perhaps Queen Nefertiti, was buried in the tomb, too,” Kareem Fahim reports for the New York Times.

If you love Alexandria — or care about Egypt’s future — read Peter Schwartzstein’s “If Climate Change Doesn’t Sink Alexandria, Egypt’s Official Incompetence Will,” on the threat to coastal areas being wrought by climate change.

WATCH THIS

Every frame is a Van Gogh-style painting: Loving Vincent claims to be the world’s first feature-length painted animation. It is an investigation into the life and death of painter Vincent Van Gogh “told by his paintings and by the characters that inhabit them.” Every frame in Loving Vincent is an oil on canvas, using the very same technique in which Vincent himself painted. Watch the trailer here (run time 01:20).

“Well-done steak is great if you like dry, flavorless meat”: Telling if your steak is the right temperature comes down to science, apparently, as the Eater YouTube channel explains. Whatever your preference for steak, please do not waste a good piece of meat on a well-done steak. We agree with Matthew Yglesias that “Cooking both the juice and the fat out of your steak completely negates the purpose of selecting a nice, expensive, well-marbled piece of meat in the first place.” (Run time 02:21)

READ THIS

Twenty years after the The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence was first published — it was one of the first best-sellers about the business of the internet — author Don Tapscott was asked to to write a dozen reflective mini-chapters for the anniversary edition of the book. “While the digital revolution has brought us many wonders, in hindsight my somewhat discouraging conclusion is that the ‘promise’ of a more fair, equal, just, and sustainable world has been unfulfilled,” he writes for the Harvard Business Review. “It has become clear that the original democratic architecture of the internet has been bent to the will of economies and societies in which power is anything but distributed. If anything, the power has become more concentrated, and the main benefits of the digital economy have been skewed.”

LISTEN TO THIS

What are the new mysteries of the universe? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson addresses the latest cosmic conundrums and answers fan questions submitted to him on StarTalk. He discusses with astrophysicist Charles Liu issues including what could be happening around the “mysterious megastar” KIC 8462852 and the possibility of it being surrounded by an alien megastructure. They also discuss the discovery of gravitational waves and the current debate over whether space is continuous or granular that’s dividing quantum physicists and supporters of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. (Run time 58:55)

Free trade might not be all it’s cracked up to be: MIT economist David Autor went on Ross Roberts’ excellent podcast EconTalk to discuss the fundamentals of trade and his research on the impact on workers and communities from trade with China. Autor challenges the consensus surrounding the notion of free trade and how, due to distributional impact, trade can hurt some people, especially if the government is unable to counter the effects with effective redistribution mechanisms. Autor’s research on trade with China “finds large and persistent effects on manufacturing jobs and communities where those jobs once were” and discusses with Roberts “what the policy response might be that could help workers hurt by trade.” (Run time 01:12:59)

SOMETHING THAT MADE US THINK

Anyone following the Bernie Sanders story will know how big of an advocate Sanders is of womens’ rights. That’s why we were surprised to learn that of the top-ten highest paid people on his campaign, exactly zero are women despite the fact that the campaign pays women on average a little under USD 1,000 more than men. The Clinton campaign pays men and women largely the same, while the Ted Cruz campaign pays male employees an average of USD 20,000 more than female employees.

SOMEONE TO FOLLOW

Kayla Itsines is the biggest fitness star on Instagram among women under 30. You can check out her feed here or go read about the Aussie twentysomething in a recent New York Times profile. The photo-only success stories she posts are pretty amazing.

HEALTH

Memories lost by Alzheimer’s could be recovered: MIT Scientists have tested a technique called “optogenetics,” which uses light to activate cells tagged with a special photosensitive protein in mice with Alzheimer-like symptoms. They found that the stimulated nerve cells grew connections with other cells that resulted in the recovery of their memory. The study is significant as it disproves the widely-held notion that memories are deleted from the mind of people with Alzheimer’s. “The important point is, this a proof of concept. That is, even if a memory seems to be gone, it is still there. It’s a matter of how to retrieve it,” lead scientist Professor Susumu Tonegawa of MIT said, reported the Telegraph. However, even though the results are intriguing, Simon Ridley, science director at Alzheimer’s Research UK, thinks “there is a long way to go to understand this process.”

Can virtual reality help fight depression? University College London and University of Barcelona researchers conducted a study where patients are forced to interact with a life-size avatar of themselves that tells them compassionate statements in their own voice. The trick is to not challenge the patient’s unhealthy thoughts or directly tell them to stop being depressed. Instead, allow them to step outside their distorted reality and give them “a first-person perspective.” Even though the test was conducted on a small number of people, patients reported that it made them feel much better, which could call for future research. The Washington Post reports that technology is increasingly moving into the world of therapy, and virtual reality therapy may provide “an affordable treatment alternative that people could have in their own homes.”

ENTREPRENEURS

Finally, a Forbes “contributor” piece that didn’t make us want to toss our cookies: The comic at the head of this column by Hala Fadel of regional VC outfit Leap Ventures is your starting point for an argument for “a moonshot opportunity for the Middle East. Current oil prices have put all Arab countries on an equal footing: whether oil producing or not, they are ‘oil-poor’ given current oil prices. The moonshot opportunity is to reach 30% of GDP coming from the digital economy in any Arab country within 10 years. Leaders in these countries should start this process today by priding themselves on being “youth-rich” and investing in sectors that employ their predominantly young and growing population.”

There’s a MENA-region umbrella group for groups of angel investors, with members including the Cairo Angels, Bahrain’s Tenmou and Saudi’s Oqal as well as WOMENA, a Gulf-based network of HNW women. Check out the Middle East Angel Investment Network’s website here.

TECH

Can hackers turn the lights out? While security experts have long warned against the threat of hacking utilities and infrastructure, a very real threat emerged in Ukraine just last year. A coordinated attack against a power firm called Prykarpattyaoblenergo (say that five times, fast) left 225k Ukrainians in the dark. About 30 substations were turned off after the hackers were able to gain remote access to the control center, implanting the “Killdisk” malware, and leaving the systems defunct due to deleted key files. The good news is, an attack of this magnitude is neither easy nor quick, explains senior director at security firm iSight Partners Stephen Ward. “The basic software may be the same but you have to write the logic to control and create the process and that’s unique to the installation itself,” said Ward.

Microsoft is using Minecraft as a digital playpen to develop Artificial Intelligence, using a platform developed by Microsoft’s UK research lab in Cambridge called AIX, BBC reports. The agent starts out knowing nothing at all about its environment or even what it is supposed to accomplish. It needs to understand its surroundings and figure out what’s important (going uphill) and what isn’t (such as whether it’s light or dark). It needs to endure a lot of trial and error, including regularly falling into rivers and lava pits. And it needs to understand, via incremental rewards, when it has achieved all or part of its goal. “We’re trying to program it to learn, as opposed to programming it to accomplish specific tasks,” said Fernando Diaz, a senior researcher in the New York lab and one of the people working on the project.

THE WEEK’S MOST-CLICKED STORIES

The most-clicked stories in Enterprise in the past week were:

• The richest Egyptian family in the U.S. that you’ve never heard of. (Wall Street Journal)
• “Artist” El Seed’s mural painted in fragments on the sides of residential buildings in the informal settlement of Zaraeeb. (Photo)
• Corruption in Egypt: Egypt’s dirty wheat problem. (Reuters)
• Kate McKinnon transforms into Hillary Clinton transforming into Bernie Sanders (Saturday Night Live, video)
• Loutfy Mansour — the rising son (Financial Times)

ON YOUR WAY OUT

If you’re as obsessed with the US presidential campaign as we are, you may enjoy  this quiz: Who Said This Crazy Thing: The Donald Trump Campaign or the Manson Family? Hint: it all sounds so insane it won’t matter which you choose.

David Gilmour is returning to Pompeii, the site of Pink Floyd’s classic Live in Pompeii concert film, for the first time in 45 years, announced Italy’s culture minister Dario Franceschini in a tweet. “Agreement reached. After 45 years, David Gilmour will play again at Pompeii on 7 and 8 July,” the tweet read.

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