Google to face lawsuit over providing consumer data to advertisersReuters / Francois Lenoir A federal judge has denied Google Inc’s attempt to dismiss a privacy lawsuit brought against the technology giant for commingling user data across its different products and offering that data to advertisers without permission.
Bank of America threatens to take California man’s home, force into foreclosureBrian Dillard is a responsible homeowner. He has a mortgage with Bank of America for his home in the Inland Empire where he lives with his wife and young daughter, and he has never once missed a payment.
FBI entrapped suspects in almost all high-profile terrorism cases in USReuters / John Gress A new report by Human Rights Watch accuses the FBI of using sting operations to entrap informants, creating terrorists out of law-abiding individuals and targeting American Muslims in the agency’s counterterrorism investigations.
Carlos Slim calls for three-day working week to improve quality of lifeMexican billionaire tycoon, Carlos Slim, has called for the introduction of a three-day working week, offset by longer hours and a later retirement, as a way to improve people’s quality of life and create a more productive labour force.
Solar has won. Even if coal were free to burn, power stations couldn’t competeLast week, for the first time in memory, the wholesale price of electricity in Queensland fell into negative territory – in the middle of the day. For several days the price, normally around $40-$50 a megawatt hour, hovered in and around zero.
Phil Donahue’s vindication: Media icon unloads on Fox, Cheney and what happened at MSNBCLegendary TV host was fired for opposing Iraq war. Here’s how he feels seeing the return of those who got it wrong As has been well-documented, and will hopefully long be taught in journalism schools nationwide, the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not the American mainstream media’s finest hour.
Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on AmericansJohn Napier Tye served as section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from January 2011 to April 2014. He is now a legal director of Avaaz, a global advocacy organization.
Study: Millennials can afford homes, but aren’t buying | Al Jazeera AmericaMost millennials living in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas can afford to buy homes, but are instead choosing to rent or live with their parents, according to two leading household research institutions.
Largest US sentence reduction in history approved for drug offenders | Al Jazeera AmericaThe federal agency that sets criminal sentencing policies for judges voted on Friday to allow tens of thousands of inmates serving time for drug crimes to apply for reduced sentences, the largest such sentencing reduction in modern U.S. history. The unanimous vote by the seven members of the U.S.
Lawsuit Filed Against Georgia Debt Collection ‘Factory’The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing Frederick J. Hanna & Associates, a Georgia-based law firm that specializes in suits against consumers who have outstanding debts owed to banks, debt buyers, and credit card companies. The suit, filed earlier this week in the Atlanta Division of Georgia’s Northern District, says the firm “…operates less like a law firm than a factory.
BRICS announce $200B challenge to world financial order | Al Jazeera AmericaAfter years of railing against the Western-dominated global financial order, a powerful bloc of the world’s emerging economies has finally done something about it. On Tuesday, the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – formally introduced their long-awaited $100 billion development bank, to be headquartered in Shanghai, and a currency reserve of the same size, institutions that aim to be both competitor and antithesis to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Conscientious objector: US Navy nurse refuses to force-feed Guantanamo detaineeAFP Photo / John Moore A Navy nurse is making waves for refusing to force-feed inmates participating in hunger strikes at the prison complex in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The unidentified nurse – described by one inmate as a 40-year-old Latino – is believed to be the first conscientious objector to Guantanamo’s controversial tube feeding policy.
Obama administration says the world’s servers are oursGlobal governments, the tech sector, and scholars are closely following a legal flap in which the US Justice Department claims that Microsoft must hand over e-mail stored in Dublin, Ireland. In essence, President Barack Obama’s administration claims that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even if the content is stored overseas.
Consumer Bureau: Debt-Collection Firm Is a Shoddy Lawsuit ‘Mill’The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued a major debt collection law firm on Monday, alleging it is a “mill” that produces shoddy, mass-produced credit-card collection lawsuits. The bureau’s claim, filed in federal court in Atlanta, states that Frederick J.
BIS chief fears fresh Lehman from worldwide debt surge – Telegraph40pc of syndicated loans are to sub-investment grade borrowers The disturbing twist in this cycle is that China, Brazil, Turkey and other emerging economies have succumbed to private credit booms of their own, partly as a spill-over from quantitative easing in the West. Their debt ratios have risen 20 percentage points as well, to 175pc.
Exposed: N. Carolina cops lied about 911 calls to illegally search homesReuters / Philip Scott Andrews Questions are being asked of a North Carolina police department after an officer in the city of Durham testified that its common practice for cops there to make up excuses to illegally enter, then search, the homes of local residents. Durham Police Dept.
Stressed? Meditating really does workResearchers found 25 minutes of mindful meditation for three consecutive days alleviated psychological stress By Mark Prigg Meditating can have an almost instant effect on reducing stress, researchers have found. They say three consecutive days of 25 minute sessions can have a dramatic effect.
CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.