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Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and received a great deal of criticism because of it. Critics felt that the $1 billion purchase was poorly informed, considering the photo sharing social platform was producing zero revenue from its user base at the time. During that time, Facebook wasn’t doing so hot either, with their trading at an all-time-low.

But since then, Facebook has made a tremendous comeback and Instagram is undoubtedly part of this upswing. Over the course of the past year, the company’s shares have risen nearly 33%.

Recently, Instagram’s algorithm changed, making its timeline switch from reverse-chronological to an algorithm-based feed that shows users content based on interaction history and photo popularity. This change takes a page out of Facebook’s book, as the social media giant underwent this change already, resulting in increased engagement and user growth.

And in a recent blog post by Instagram, the company pointed out that the average Instagram user misses 70% of their feeds; considering that 880 billion photos were taken in 2014 alone, many of which were uploaded to social media, this comes as no surprise. That being said, the new system results in a better, more well-curated experience.

But not everyone felt as hunky dory about the algorithm changes, as the changes will likely come at the expense of brands that use the photo sharing tool. Eat24, for example, deleted its Facebook page in protest of the Instagram changes and wrote a “break-up letter” to Facebook, accusing them of intentionally limiting the company’s ability to reach audience members organically and instead asked them to pay for promoted posts.

Regardless of whether or not brands are getting the short end of the stick, the algorithm-based timeline will encourage more ad spending from brands. And this kind of thinking has worked in Facebook’s favor in the past, as increased engagement and ad spending helped the company grow 44% in the last fiscal year.

Planning your dream wedding isn’t easy. Ask any recent bride and they’ll tell you that the process is both stressful and overwhelming. But reality star turned author/lifestyle guru Lauren Conrad recently managed to stave off the marriage planning madness when she planned her own wedding. As it turns out, Conrad is so skilled at organizing soirees that she recently released her new book, Celebrate, that shares all of her party planning tricks — from weddings to dinner parties.

In a recent interview with Teen Vogue, Conrad revealed that this was her ninth book published. Over the years, she has published a number of different kinds of books, from novels to how-to guides. However, this book was especially fun for Conrad to write, as it was part of her daily life.

“This party-planning guide has felt so natural because there’s so much in my life to celebrate right now,” said Conrad.

She continues: “With this book, I was able to compile all of the basics, so that the process becomes less complicated and everyone can focus on what they’re there to celebrate — and on having fun.”

Want to emulate Conrad’s stress-free wedding planning process? Here are three of her best tips:

1. Inspiration is all around you.
   While 93% of brides use the internet to plan their weddings, Conrad recommends going beyond that. She writes:

   “The thing about a wedding is that it should really represent the couple that are getting married. I think it’s really fun to go to a wedding that’s a little different, so when you’re trying to come up with ideas it should be a combination of things that you’ve seen and that you’ve liked. Even when you’re attending other parties and weddings and you say ‘oh I really like how they did this’ — take notes as you go along.”

2. Start planning with a timeline.
   Planning a wedding is stressful. But when broken down into checklist-sized chunks, it is way more manageable:

   “I was fortunate enough to have a wedding planner so she was really the one to keep me on schedule, but I would recommend for anyone planning a wedding to put together a calendar. I included one in my book, but it’s basically a check list of things you want to have done each month before the wedding, so that you can stay on track and you’re not running around at the last minute trying to get things done.”

3. Try on as many dresses as possible.
   There’s no better time to look for a dress than right now!

   “One of the best parts of wedding planning is going to try on the wedding dresses, and you’ve got to be sure to give yourself enough time. So don’t be afraid to start looking right away. I think it’s important to try lots of different styles — for me personally, I always imagined my wedding dress being a ball of tulle, but then I went and tried on some similar styles and it looked ridiculous. So have fun with it, don’t put too much pressure on it, and even if it is different from what you imagined, that’s okay, it’s just whatever you feel comfortable in.”

President Barack Obama officially shortened the sentences of 61 imprisoned drug offenders on Wednesday, March 30.

The President of the United States has the power to grant pardons and commutations to convicted felons that he believes “deserve a second chance.” The 61 inmates, many of whom were nonviolent offenders, and more than one-third of whom were serving life sentences, will be released as early as July 28.

As the first active president to visit a federal prison, Obama has now commuted 248 inmates, which is more than the past six presidents combined.

“Throughout the remainder of his time in office, the president is committed to continuing to issue more grants of clemency as well as to strengthening the rehabilitation programs,” reported White House counsel Neil Eggleston.

On a mission to overhaul the nation’s criminal justice system, the president sat down with former inmates who had been granted clemency and asked them about the challenges of re-entering society. He found that several of them have pursued careers in law, and many of them got married and had families.

“Their stories are extraordinary,” Obama said. “We’re all imperfect. We all make mistakes.”

Obama has made criminal justice issues a major priority at the end of his final term in office, though he has always called for getting rid of strict sentences for drug offenses. He argues that punishments have been excessive and incarceration rates are far too high.

Opponents of the president’s clemency initiative are critical of Obama’s stance, worried that violent criminals will be released “en masse onto the streets.”

The president’s view on drug-related crime and sentencing does have supporters in both the Democrat and Republican parties across the nation. Last fall, California voters passed Prop 47, a bill that reduced drug possession and non-violent thefts from felonies to misdemeanors.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley is facing a scandal after a law enforcement officer exposed evidence of the governor’s affair with one of his top advisors.

The police officer was fired on the same day he made the allegations, and the alleged connection between the two incidents has increased the media’s interest in the governor’s affair.

After 50 years of marriage, Mrs. Bentley filed for divorce from her husband on August 28, 2015. She gave no reason other than to say that the marriage had “suffered an irretrievable breakdown.” The divorce came as a great shock to the people of Alabama.

Shortly after his wife filed for divorce, allegations began to surface suggesting that Bentley was having an affair with his administration’s Communications Director Rebekah Caldwell Mason. Mason served as Bentley’s campaign press secretary before he was elected and is also known for being a former Miss Alabama contender.

Bentley initially denied any allegations that he and Mason had a relationship beyond their professional affiliation. He said, “I have never had a physical affair with Mrs. Mason. I have never done anything illegal.” He did later admit, however, to making “inappropriate comments” to Mason two years ago.

Officer Collier says that in 2014 he investigated text messages and audio recordings “of a sexual nature” between Bentley and Mason. When he confronted the governor about his findings, Bentley confirmed the affair and promised that it would end.

“Less than a month ago,” Collier reported at a recent press conference, “the governor told me he was still madly in love with Rebekah Mason.”

When it comes to divorce across the U.S. as a whole, 20 to 25% of mediation groups say that an affair was the reason for the divorce. In Alabama, adultery is illegal, and as a part of America’s conservative religious “Bible Belt” region, residents of the state take this issue very seriously. State Representative Allen Farley spoke for himself and the people of Alabama when he said that Bentley’s affair and dishonesty would make him unfit for office.

“As a man of faith, this to me is very serious… We’re always failing — we’re human — but this is the Bible Belt,” Farley commented. “A lot of the popularity that got Dr. Robert Bentley elected was talking about his faith and being a Sunday school teacher and a deacon of the church. Those things resonated with the Republicans in Alabama, so you can see how this resonates with the same people.”

A terrorist attack targeting Christians killed over 70 people in Punjab province of Pakistan on Easter Sunday.

As Pakistani Christians were celebrating Easter in a crowded park, a suicide bomber took his life along with many others in an area of the park designated for women and children.

A faction of the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan stated, “It was our people who attacked the Christians in Lahore, celebrating Easter. It’s our message to the government that we will carry out such attacks again until sharia [Islamic law] is imposed in the country.”

Christian leaders across the globe are standing in solidarity with the Christians of Pakistan. Vincent Nichols, the Catholic leader in England and Wales, said, “The perversity of evil knows no bounds. It sinks to a new low of hatred in deliberately targeting women and children celebrating their Easter Day in peace.”

Of Pakistan’s population of 192.8 million people, only 3.8 million are Christians. A Muslim nation, Pakistan enforces strict blasphemy laws that punish religious minorities by death or life imprisonment for going against the word of the prophet Muhammad.

Christianity was first introduced to Pakistan by European Roman Catholic missionaries in the 17th century. The majority of the country’s Christians are the descendants of Hindus who had converted under British rule. Their lineage is often from a low caste, and many have remained on the poorer end of Pakistani society.

Most Muslims and Christians in the region coexist in peace; however, incidents of hostility and persecution have become more common in recent years. In 2013, a suicide bombing left more than 100 people dead at a church in Peshawar, and 14 were killed in a series of attacks on churches in Lahore. The attacks are all attributed to Pakistani Taliban groups.

Punjab’s chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, condemns Sunday’s attacks, posting on his Twitter account, “Those who target innocent citizens do not deserve to be called humans.” The government has declared three days of mourning to honor the victims.

There are approximately 173 million Christian adults in the U.S. today, making Christians the majority among religious groups in the country.

Aid to the Church in Need is a Catholic organization based out of New York. ACN lists Pakistan in its “high persecution category”; the group is taking donations and encourages Americans to volunteer their services in any way they can.

Although there are more environmental initiatives aimed at saving the planet these days, there’s always more that can be done. FirstEnergy Corp., an Ohio-based diversified energy company, wants to be a part of that effort and recently announced their latest campaign encouraging people to “Do More, Paper Less” with their online electronic billing services.

According to a press release from the company on PRnewswire.com, customers will be able to do even more with the eBill service while also freeing themselves of the clutter and environmentally unfriendly nature of paper bills.

“More than one million customers of FirstEnergy utilities already use eBill, and currently enjoy the convenience and security of this free service,” the release states. “In addition to offering greater convenience for customers, eBill is an easy way to go green by reducing resources associated with printing and delivering traditional bills.”

In addition to setting up and making payments, customer will be able to view and print past or current bills, set up text/email alerts for when a new bill arrives, and manage virtually every aspect of their account without ever having to pick up a phone or touch a piece of paper.

Electronic billing is certainly nothing new, but it is interesting that companies are now starting to make dedicated efforts to transitioning people from traditional services to these newer means. The healthcare industry is one field in which great strides have been made in these areas, not only for the environmental reasons but as a practical way of combating rising costs.

When it comes to the medical arena, the average cost of processing a clean claim is about $6.63 when sent manually by paper, compared to just $2.90 electronically, according to the American Medical Association (AMA).

One of the biggest companies in their industry in Mexico is coming to the United States. Polímero y Materias Primas Internacionales SA de CV (Polymat), an independent polymer resins distributor, will open a facility in the U.S. sometime in 2016, according to PlasticsNews.com.

“We’re growing and will open a company in Houston in the second quarter of this year,” said Managing Director Ángel Ramón Oria Varela. “I cannot give you the name of the company,” he said, adding, “We will invest enough money to be a global competitor in the distribution and trade of plastic resins. We’ve been working on this for the past two years.”

Resin is a non-specific name for sticky, oozing substances that come from certain trees and plants. In the plastics industry, it is used in many forms, like the four-stage process of rotational molding.

Rotational molding is an extremely specialized and unique method of production that involves heating plastic resin in a closed mold. There is no pressure involved, unlike most other plastic molding processes. The specific stages of the four-step process include: loading the resin in the mold, heating and fusing the resin, cooling, and finally unloading the part from the mold.

Polymat was founded by Oria in 1988 and has been one of the leading names in the Mexican industry since then, according to Oria. They even recently closed a $4.5 billion joint venture between Brazil’s Braskem SA and Mexico’s Grupo Idesa SA de CV. That deal is expected to take off soon.

“We’re very proud” to have been appointed, Oria said. “We’ve looked for opportunities in the past but now we are planning to go by ourselves. If someone wants to join [us], we would be prepared to listen.”

As many businesses and retailers continue to move towards plastics due to convenience, cost, and efficiency, the industry looks staged for more development and expansion like the move by Polymat.

The report indicates the new facility will be located in Houston.

In what’s being spurred by Asia-Pacific markets, a new report from global market research firm Markets and Markets estimates that the cooling tower industry will continue steady growth over at least the next four years. According to ACHRnews.com, the report indicates that the market, which stood at $2.34 billion in 2015, will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.2% and ultimately reach approximately $2.88 billion by the year 2020.

There are a variety of reasons as to why the industry is expected to see such success, including HVACR deployments, increasing power generation capacity, and technological advances in cooling towers, in general. These areas are growing at a particularly rapid rate in the Asia-Pacific region of the world, where things like the rising population, infrastructure development concerns, and overall industrialization of the region have sparked the need for more cooling towers.

Cooling tower technology is of vital importance to a number of industrial and commercial facilities, ranging from schools and hospitals to factories and power plants, and having the right cooling tower is crucial for these buildings. For example, in a typical 700 MW coal-fired power plant with a cooling tower, the cooling water circulation rate amounts to approximately 71,600 cubic meters an hour (or 315,000 U.S. gallons per minute); the circulating water requires a supply water make-up rate of about 5% (i.e., 3,600 cubic meters an hour).

When it comes to the specific segments, power generation held the largest market share in 2015. HVACR, food and beverage, and chemical application segments came in after that.

“Different types of cooling towers are manufactured for various applications,” the report reads. “They serve various end-use industries including chemical, petrochemical and oil and gas, HVACR, food and beverage, power generation, and others for an array of applications. The value chain for the cooling tower manufacturers begins with research and product development and ends at the end-use industries.”

Considering all the other industries and developments that stem directly, or indirectly, from the benefit of cooling towers, there’s no question this continued growth looks to be good news for economies on a global scale.

The debate over medical marijuana has moved from controversial, and even contentious, arguments over whether to allow it at all to a much more generally accepted idea. Now the debate focuses on more intricate details in terms of who can use it and how it can be grown, distributed, and sold. Basically, it’s become an issue that’s bordering on universal acceptance with people only debating the specifics. That notion is reinforced by the recent unionization of employees in the industry, and now a shop in Orange County, CA, can be added to that list.

According to the Los Angeles Times, South Coast Safe Access, a dispensary in Santa Ana, has signed a collective bargaining agreement with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 324, which went into effect on Monday, March 8.

In total, the city of L.A. has 26 unionized medical marijuana dispensaries. Proponents believe that the addition of the first one in Orange County is just adding to the industry’s credibility. In fact, UFCW Local 324 executive vice president Rick Eiden believes this sort of expansion and inclusion fits in perfectly with the way the world is heading.

“[Unionizing dispensaries] really coincides with the work we’ve done in the retail drug industry,” Eiden said. “Employees interact with the patients in determining their needs and working on a sensible prescription for what their needs are.”

The minimum wage is $10 an hour in California, but the 20 workers at South Coast Safe Access will work for no less than $13.50 an hour and receive employer-paid medical benefits as well as employer contributions to a retirement pension. The union organization is already in talk with other marijuana shops about similar plans.

As of last year, 23 states and the District of Columbia legally allowed medical marijuana, and that number could soon rise as more states take notice of moves like this. In addition to the benefits these deals could have in moving the medical marijuana industry forward, Eiden thinks it could help the labor union industry too.

“Here in California, we’ve maintained our numbers in the labor movement,” Eiden said. “But we haven’t seen large numbers of growth in decades.”

By now you’ve certainly heard about the looming legal battle between Apple and the U.S. government. If you have access to a computer and internet it would be almost impossible to not have heard at least one comment, perspective, or show of support for one side or the other. What you may not have heard yet, though, is the most recent way Apple’s team of lawyers plan to go about their defense.

According to Wired, Apple’s lawyers are prepared to invoke one of the country’s most protected and valued rights — that being the First Amendment, and specifically their freedom of speech. There are actually two ways they plan to approach this delicate issue.

The first, and considered a more shallow of an argument by experts in the field, is that technical coding is a language and therefore speech. For the government to compel (force) Apple to create the backdoor encryption code they have publicly and vehemently spoken out against would be the equivalent of forcing them to say something they don’t want to say.

The next point is really a continuation of that line of thinking, but bolsters their argument in the eyes of experts. In order for Apple to do what the Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking them, they would need to create an entirely new version of their iOS software that would specifically eliminate the very security protections they’ve built into their phones. To see that through, the company would also have to use its digital “signature” key to sign the software, thus signalling to the phone’s software to accept the encryption.

This is the part that makes it particularly interesting to people like Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

“The human equivalent of the company signing code is basically saying, ‘We believe that this code is safe for you to run,’” Granick told Wired. “So I think that when you force Apple to cryptographically sign the software, it has a communicative aspect to it that I think is compelled speech to force them to do it.”

The courts actually have some precedent already set in this area. In the mid 1990s, the case of Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice established that code is a form of speech and is, in fact, protected under the First Amendment. Apple is known for efficiency — an iPhone 6, for instance, takes just under two hours to charge using a 12-watt USB power adapter — but it seems likely this case will be a long, drawn out war with Constitutional Rights being invoked.

Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney working on another amicus brief for the Electronic Frontier Foundation agreed with Granick’s assessment.

“In the computer security world the digital signature is affirmation that not only is this code genuine, but it’s intended,” Cardozo said. “[I]f Apple signs this [software tool], it’s the computer version of Apple saying, ‘Yes this is us; yes we meant to do this; and yes it’s a genuine representation of our will.’”

Clearly Apple has taken a stand that would be in stark contrast to that notion if compelled to create this backdoor encryption, but ultimately it will be up to the courts to decide if they agree with such logic.