Tens of thousands march against budget cuts in Rome
Tens of thousands of people joined a union-organised march in Rome Saturday, protesting against the new coalition government’s austerity measures. The metal workers union FIOM said the rally was to demand “the right to jobs, training and health care”. “We cannot wait any longer,” said FIOM secretary Maurizio Landini as Italy is mired in recession. [...]
After US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks showed that the State Department was lobbying worldwide for Monsanto and other similar corporations, a new report based on the cables shows Washington’s shilling for the biotech industry in distinct detail. The August 2011 WikiLeaks revelations showed that American diplomats had requested funding to send lobbyists for the [...]
Still recovering from the backlash to its flawed Maps app, Apple is looking to beef up the iPhone’s indoor location capabilities by acquiring WiFiSlam. According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal, Apple paid $20 million to scoop up the two-year-old startup based in Silicon Valley. As per usual for Apple, which [...]
In the online world – for now, at least – it’s the advertisers that make the world go round. If you’re Google, they represent more than 90% of your revenue and without them you would cease to exist. So how do you reconcile the fact that there is a finite amount of data to be [...]
Google will pay $7 million to settle complaints from dozens of U.S. states about its unauthorized collection of personal data transmitted over Wi-Fi networks. The money will be paid to 37 states and the District of Columbia, which had gone after Google after it admitted that its Street View cars had collected the data inadvertently [...]
WikiLeaks: US ‘to call bin Laden raid Navy Seal to testify against Bradley Manning’
February 27, 2013 No Comment
Prosecutors trying Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old soldier accused of engineering the largest intelligence leak in US history, are seeking to prove that al-Qaeda directly benefitted from access to the classified files. They claim that when bin Laden requested information about US defence policy a subordinate emailed him with data taken from the trove of documents [...]
The Newtown, Connecticut Town Clerk is seeking to deny newspapers from viewing public record death certificates of Sandy Hook victims, according to the Newtown Bee. The Clerk maintains that access to vital records such as death and marriage certificates should be limited to immediate family members or their representatives, and has undertaken to change present [...]
Yale will train US Special Forces in interrogation techniques using immigrants as guinea pigs
February 19, 2013 No Comment
Yale University is planning to train US Special Forces to detect lies by practicing on immigrants. The program strives to provide soldiers with such interview tactics by practicing on “someone they can’t necessarily identify with”. Starting as early as April, the university will launch a new training center on its campus for interrogators to practice [...]
Tens of millions of dollars of U.S. military financing will continue to flow to Yemen and three other countries that recruit and use child soldiers, despite a 2008 U.S. law designed to restrict U.S. taxpayer funding of foreign militaries that enlist children to fight in war. The White House issued a memorandum Tuesday evening to [...]
It hasn’t drawn much attention, but Facebook’s first annual earnings report contains an accounting gem: a multibillion-dollar tax deduction for the cost of executive stock options and share awards. Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive [...]
Japan’s aggressive attempts to spur on its struggling economy were set to escape censure from the G20 nations today as bickering in Moscow kept alive fears of a “currency war”. Finance ministers at the G20 gathering are understood to have pulled back from explicit criticism of Japan, whose prime minister Shinzo Abe has embarked on [...]
Hemp Is Harmless, a Potential Economic Miracle, and Still Illegal in America — But the Tide Seems to Be Turning
February 15, 2013 No Comment
The American hemp industry, revived in the 1990s in a wave of cannabis-fueled environmentalism, now sells $450 million a year of products from hemp-oil soap to hemp-coned speakers for guitar amplifiers, according to an industry trade group. Yet all the raw material used for these products, from fiber to hempseed oil, has to be imported, [...]
Just like the suspected 9/11 terrorist’s explosion-proof passport that was found magically intact amid the ground zero rubble, the mainstream media is now reporting that suspected cop killer Christopher Dorner’s wallet and identification card were found beside charred remains in the burned out Big Bear cabin where police cornered him yesterday. Citing the Associated Press, [...]
Super Bowl Is Single Largest Human Trafficking Incident In U.S.: Attorney General
February 4, 2013 No Comment
When it came time for the Super Bowl, Clemmie Greenlee was expected to sleep with anywhere from 25 to 50 men a day. It’s a staggering figure, but it doesn’t shock advocates who say that the sporting event attracts more traffickers than any other in the U.S. “The Super Bowl is the greatest show on [...]
NYPD officer threatened to shoot grandmother of killed teen, lawsuit claims
February 4, 2013 No Comment
After shooting dead an unarmed teenager in his bathroom, a New York City police officer threatened to kill the boy’s distraught grandmother, a newly filed lawsuit alleges. Filed Friday, a day before the one-year anniversary of the death of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham, the suit accuses the NYPD of improperly training its officers, disproportionately targeting minority [...]
