News

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/world/europe/inquiry-into-paris-terror-attackswidens-to-eastern-europe.html?ref=world&_r=0.

Inquiry Into Paris Terror Attacks

Widens to Eastern Europe
By ANDREW HIGGINSDEC. 4, 2015
BRUSSELS The investigation into the Paris terrorist attacks, previously focused on jihadist networks in France
and Belgium, has widened to Eastern Europe, with a Belgian federal prosecutor announcing Friday that one of the
people suspected of terrorism traveled in September by car to Hungary, where he picked up two men now believed to
have links to the carnage of Nov. 13.
The disclosure of a Hungarian connection has not only dramatically expanded the scope of the investigation but has
also put a spotlight on the question of whether jihadist militants have concealed themselves in a huge flow of asylum
seekers passing through Eastern Europe.
A statement issued by the Belgian federal prosecutor on Friday said that Salah Abdeslam, a former Brussels resident
who is the only known survivor from three terrorist squads that killed 130 people in Paris, had made two trips to the
Hungarian capital, Budapest, in a rented Mercedes-Benz a few weeks before the

Paris attacks.

On a drive back to Western Europe on Sept. 9, he was stopped during a routine check at Hungarys border with
Austria and found to be transporting two men using what have since turned out to be fake Belgian identity cards.
At a news conference on Thursday in Budapest, the chief of staff of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary said that
Mr. Abdeslam had recruited a team of Paris attackers from unregistered migrants traveling through Hungary. He did
not identify them.
The Belgian prosecutor did not confirm that but said on Friday that the names on the fake identity cards used in
Hungary in September by the two men traveling with Mr. Abdeslam were Samir Bouzid and Soufiane Kayal, names
that have since surfaced in connection with the investigation into the Paris attacks.
An identity card in the name of Mr. Bouzid, the prosecutor said, was used on Nov. 17 at a Western Union office in
Brussels to transfer 750 euros to Hasna Aitboulahcen, a 26-year-old Frenchwoman who was killed by the security
forces on Nov. 18 along with the chief organizer of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. The pair died during an
early-morning raid on their hide-out in St.-Denis, just outside Paris.
An identity card in the name of Mr. Kayal, the Belgian prosecutor said, was used to rent a house in Auvelais, a town
south of Brussels raided by Belgiums security forces last week in connection with the Paris attacks.
The confirmation that Mr. Abdeslam, who has so far eluded arrest, visited Hungary, apparently as part of
preparations for the Paris assault, gave some credence to assertions by the Hungarian government that the Paris plot
had involved migrants who passed through Budapests Kaleti railway station.
Hungary, which has taken a tough line on asylum seekers, has repeatedly sought to link migrants to terrorism, but the
visits of Mr. Abdeslam to Budapest in September and his return to Western Europe with two men carrying fake
Belgian identity cards provided the first evidence of a possible connection between asylum seekers in Hungary and
jihadist extremism.

Academic
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/automation-is-a-job-engine-new-research-says/?
ref=technology.

Automation Is a Job Engine, New Research Says

By STEVE LOHR DECEMBER 3, 2015 10:45 PM December 3, 2015 10:45 pm 7 Comments
The fear that technology is poised to kill jobs in unprecedented numbers is widely prevelent these days. Nothing is
likely to ease that anxiety much, but a new research paper might prompt some second thoughts.
Using government data, James Bessen, a researcher and lecturer at the Boston University School of Law, examined
the impact of computer automation on 317 occupations from 1980 through 2013. His conclusion, in a sentence, was:
Employment grows significantly faster in occupations that use computers more.
Historically, it is well established that the advance of technology has generated more jobs than it has replaced,
regardless of the angst of the moment. More than 80 years ago, the renowned English economist John Maynard
Keynes warned of the new disease of technological unemployment.
Yet the paper by Mr. Bessen provides a detailed study of technology and jobs in recent years. The idea that
automation kills jobs isnt true historically, and if you look at the last 30 years, its not true then either, he said in an
interview. Right now, the best thing that can happen to you is to get some automation to do your job better.
Mr. Bessen is scheduled to discuss his research on Monday at a conference in Greece, sponsored by the European
Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, an agency of the European Union.
Mr. Bessens conclusions are based on occupation, salary and computer-use data from decennial, yearly and monthly
surveys, mainly from the United States Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In his paper, he also
describes the effect of new technology on a handful of occupations.
Automated teller machines, Mr. Bessen writes, were widely adopted in banks starting in the 1990s and were pervasive
by 2005. Yet since 2000, he notes, the number of bank tellers increased 2 percent a year, substantially faster than
the entire labor force. What happened, he explains, is that ATM machines reduced the cost of operating bank
branches. So banks greatly expanded their branch networks, with increased demand more than offsetting the jobs
displaced by technology.
But something else occurred as well. Tellers were no longer handling cash, but engaged in offering personal advice
and selling new services to customers. The nature of the occupation is changing, Mr. Bessen said.
His comment echoes the main finding of a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute, which concluded that
many work tasks within jobs can be automated in the next three to five years. But the impact, according to the
McKinsey report, will be to alter jobs rather than eliminate them.
Mr. Bessens research and the McKinsey report do not necessarily counter the more grim forecasts of the future
impact of automation. Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, researchers at Oxford University, projected in a
paper published two years ago that 47 percent of American jobs were at risk from automation. But they were looking
to a further horizon, 20 years from now.
The other big variable is the course of technological progress, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, and
whether it will work more to improve human capabilities or replace them. There is plenty of debate on that front.

The policy implication of his research, Mr. Bessen said, is to promote public policies that
make it easier for workers to get vocational education and move to new jobs. By
contrast, if technology becomes an inexorable job killer across the economy, then
policies like a guaranteed minimum wage begin to look more appealing.