Federal officials issued a complaint against Walmart Wednesday, formally charging the corporate monolith of breaking US labor law when it attempted to break up Black Friday protests organized by its workers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is responsible for enforcing labor laws that apply to businesses as well as union organizations
Author: mediahitman
Biotech titan Monsanto has made significant advances in the development of herbicide-tolerant wheat, the company announced recently, and could have the first-of-its-kind crop ready for farming in just a few years’ time. Genetically-modified wheat isn’t legally approved anywhere in the world, but the billion-dollar St. Louis, Missouri-based agriculture company has for years been determined to develop the first GMO variety of the cash crop.
Should internet service providers be allowed to restrict access to websites and block certain content from customers depending on how much they pay to be connected? On Tuesday, a federal appeals court said yes. That ruling was handed down early Tuesday by way of a 2-1 decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the District Columbia Circuit in Washington, DC
Google announced Monday it acquired Nest, a maker of futuristic “smart” thermostats and smoke alarms founded by two former Apple executives in 2011. For US$3.2 billion, Google bought Nest, owned by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, in a move that puts the multinational power into the home-hardware business, offering it further access to the behavior of those who use its web services.
Between 2000 and 2012, the US government had a deal with Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa that allowed the group to smuggle billion of dollars of drugs in return for information on its rival cartels, according to court documents published by El Universal. Written statements made by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a US Department of Justice official in US District Court of Chicago following the 2009 arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla
A man has been charged with attempting to send technical data on the F-35 joint strike fighter to Iran, according to the US Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Mozaffar Khazaee was arrested on January 9 at Newark International Airport in New Jersey following the first flight of a trip to Tehran, Defense News reported. Khazaee, a naturalized US citizen since 1991, was charged with “transporting, transmitting and transferring in interstate or foreign commerce goods obtained by theft
Fish with deadly levels of radioactive cesium have been caught just off the coast of Fukushima prefecture, as scientists continue to assess the damage caused to the marine food chain by the 2011 nuclear disaster. One of the samples of the 37 black sea bream specimens caught some 37 kilometers south of the crippled power plant tested at 12,400 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium
A Brooklyn native has taken the preliminary steps towards getting New York City its first Bitcoin ATM. The New York Post reported over the weekend that 30-year-old William Ling of Brooklyn has managed to get his hands on one of the new high-tech automated teller machines, and he hopes to soon install it inside of a bubble tea shop in Manhattan’s East Village.
The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials. The high court left intact Monday a federal appeals court decision that threw out a 2011 lawsuit from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and over 80 other plaintiffs against Monsanto that sought to challenge the agrochemical company’s aggressive claims on patents of genetically-modified seeds.
By Matthew Sparkes The most accurate simulation of the human brain to date has been carried out in a Japanese supercomputer, with a single second’s worth of activity from just one per cent of the complex organ taking one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate. Researchers used the K computer in Japan, currently the fourth most powerful in the world, to simulate human brain activity.
The American army conducted experiments with biological weapons aimed at destroying rice crops on the Japanese island of Okinawa in the 60s, Kyodo news agency reports. The alleged target of the tests was the China and Southeast Asia region. Citing classified US documents, Japanese news agency Kyodo said the US military carried out experiments on their sovereign territory between 1961 and 1962.
Nuclear radiation at the boundaries of the stricken Fukushima power plant has now reached 8 times government safety guidelines, TEPCO has said. The firm has been struggling to contain radioactive leaks at Fukushima since the onset over the crisis in 2011. The levels of nuclear radiation around Fukushima’s No. 1 plant have risen to 8 millisieverts per year, surpassing the government standard of 1 milliseviert per year, reports news site Asahi Shimbun citing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
Sending an ex-girlfriend an email invitation to join Google+ despite an active restraining order landed a Beverly, Massachusetts man in handcuffs and behind bars. The problem? Thomas Gagnon, 32, says he never actually sent an email of any sort. Instead, he claims it was Google’s fault. According to Gagnon, Google automatically sent the invitation without informing him or asking for his consent.
Schools and businesses have shut down and shops have sold out of bottled water following a chemical spill into the Elk River in West Virginia that has affected 300,000 people in nine counties. The White House has declared the incident a federal disaster. American President Barack Obama “ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts,” said a US administration statement on Friday morning.
A new, “potentially hazardous” asteroid has been discovered by one of NASA’s recently reactivated spacecraft – and it’s headed in Earth’s direction. The new asteroid, called 2013 YP139, was spotted by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), and marks the spacecraft’s first discovery since being resurrected last year.
Responding to inquiries about a possible data breach involving customer credit and debit card information, upscale retailer Neiman Marcus acknowledged today that it is working with the U.S. Secret Service to investigate a hacker break-in that has exposed an unknown number of customer cards. Earlier this week, I began hearing from sources in the financial industry about an increasing number of fraudulent credit and debit card charges that were being traced to cards that had been very recently used at brick-and-mortar stores run by the Dallas, Texas based high-end retail chain.
Ford’s global vice president in charge of marketing and sales now says the automobile company doesn’t keep a close eye on their customers’ driving habits after recent remarks at a Las Vegas trade show raised concerns among car owners. On Thursday, Ford’s Jim Farley told Business Insider that he didn’t accurately portray the company’s operations with regards to recording and logging user data with new smart car technology when he told a crowd at the CES electronics show in Vegas over the weekend
A chain of gun-shops that has built gun ranges across central Florida has announced it will no longer rent out guns in order to stop a string of suicides that occurred when customers borrowed weapons and used them to take their own lives. Shoot Straight, the largest independently owned chain of gun stores in the state, announced on Friday that the company would end its policy.