"Obama said the programs were critical to counterterrorism work. But he said more needed to be done to assure Americans they were not being spied on themselves. 'We don’t have a domestic spying program,' he said. 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.'" Continue reading →
"Landowners in Broome and Tioga counties, who had leased acreage to Chesapeake over the past decade, had battled the pioneering oil driller in court to prevent it from extending the leases under their original terms, many of which were agreed to long before a boom in hydraulic fracturing swept the United States. 'I can renegotiate with other companies now,' said Frank Laskowski, who owns land in Broome County. 'Before that we were tied up with Chesapeake at $3 an acre and 12.5 percent. Most people are getting much more than that.' One landowner in Broome County said he now hoped to secure up to $3,000 an acre." Continue reading →
"UBS agreed to pay nearly $50 million to settle charges over its disclosures related to a money-losing 2007 investment vehicle linked to sub-prime loans, a US agency announced Tuesday. UBS presented inaccurate or incomplete information about upfront payments in marketing literature to investors and in submissions to the CDO’s directors, the SEC said. When the CDO was liquidated in 2007, outside investors lost approximately $130 million in the CDO, according to an SEC administrative order. In the settlement, UBS agreed to pay about $50 million in disgorgement, interest and penalties. The bank did not admit or deny the SEC’s findings." Continue reading →
"Zhang Suxia, the doctor responsible for the birth, allegedly persuaded the parents to give up their child last month after informing them he had serious congenital diseases. The paper reported that a farmer with three daughters bought the baby boy from the alleged traffickers for 60,000 yuan ($9,800). Trafficking of children is a serious problem in China, blamed in part on the 'one-child' policy which has put a premium on baby boys, with girls sometimes sold off, abandoned or put up for adoption. Chinese police rescued 89 children and arrested 355 suspects in December after breaking up a series of child trafficking rings." Continue reading →
"A woman has posted an offer on a French website to breast-feed babies of homosexual male couples for 100 euros ($130) a day, stirring up media interest just weeks after a divisive same-sex marriage law was passed. The offer, addressed to male homosexual couples who can marry legally in France since May, promises up to 10 breast-feeds a day. Alexandre Woog, chief executive of the e-loue website, said staff had no doubt about the seriousness of the proposal. 'Our legal advisers are sure of this. It’s illegal in France to sell maternal milk but this is a person proposing a service, not selling the milk in flasks,' Woog told Reuters." Continue reading →
"Most Americans do not want to live beyond age 100, and a poll out Tuesday suggests many worry that anti-aging technologies may end up being a luxury for the rich. A majority of US adults (56 percent) said they would not 'choose to undergo medical treatments to slow the aging process and live to be 120 or more,' said the Pew report. The median, or midpoint, for ideal lifespan was 90, or about 11 years longer than the current US average. Asked whether current medical treatments are worth the costs, 54 percent agreed and 41 percent disagreed on grounds that modern medical advances 'often create as many problems as they solve.'" Continue reading →
"The 19-year online retail juggernaut, which began as a bookseller but now does everything from groceries to patio furniture, launched 'Amazon Art' to market works from galleries in Miami, San Francisco, New York and other US cities. The site showcases more than 40,000 works from over 150 galleries and dealers that run the gamut as far as subject, genre and period are concerned. Works range from modest canvasses like a $44 cat portrait to Norman Rockwell’s 'Willie Gillis: Package from Home,' which retails for $4.85 million. 'From gallery walls to your walls,' boasts the site, which enables users to quickly click through works by period and genre." Continue reading →
"With its so-called signature strikes, Washington often goes after people whose identity it does not know but who appear to be behaving like militants in insurgent-controlled areas. The strikes end up killing enemies of the Pakistani, Somali, and Yemeni militaries who may not threaten the United States at all. Worse, because the targets of such strikes are so loosely defined, it seems inevitable that they will kill some civilians. The drone campaign has morphed, in effect, into remote-control repression: the direct application of brute force by a state, rather than an attempt to deal a pivotal blow to a movement." Continue reading →
"Owners of dogs that kill people could face life imprisonment if an online consultation run by the government demonstrates public support for more severe penalties. Public response will be one – but not necessarily the decisive – factor in shaping changes that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) plans to make to the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act. Some 16 people have been killed by dangerous dogs since 2005. The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents postmen and women and telecoms engineers, who suffer around 5,000 dog attacks each year, welcomed the consultation." Continue reading →
"Turkey has successfully completed a trial run of a rail tunnel connecting Istanbul's European and Asian sides, the first of several planned mega-projects in the country's largest city. The 13.6km (8.5-mile) tunnel, including a 1.4km immersed tube – the deepest of its kind in the world at 56 metres – passes under the Bosphorus strait, the busy shipping channel linking the Marmara Sea to the Black Sea. A Japanese-Turkish consortium began constructing the tunnel in 2004, with funding coming from the Japan Bank for International Co-operation and the European Investment Bank." Continue reading →