Tag: america

Oh Snap: NY AG Sues EX-Bank Of America CEO For Fraud

Posted by Nexus – 05/02/2010

[via consumerist.com]

Andrew Cuomo has announced a lawsuit against Bank of America’s former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, its former CFO Joseph L. Price, and the company itself, for “duping shareholders and the federal government in order to complete a merger with Merrill Lynch.” Uh oh!

According to the lawsuit, the AG alleges that Bank of America intentionally didn’t disclose massive losses at Merrill Lynch so that its shareholders would approve the merger. Once it was approved, the lawsuit alleges that the management tricked the government into “saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out of the deal without bailout funds.”

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America’s Biggest Rip-offs

Posted by Nexus – 05/02/2010

[via cnn.com]

Are you infuriated every time you open your cell phone bill? Livid when you buy a snack at the movies? These are nine of the rawest deals around.

Text messages – 6,500% markup

Text messages are short, quick and cheap to transmit. So why are they adding so much to your wireless bill?

The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.

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US forces Haiti to pay for aid

Posted by Nexus – 05/02/2010

[via fromtheold.com]

Obama pledged $100 million dollars in aid to Haiti when the stricken countryi has $500 million debt to America. How does that make sense?

Haiti’s long troubled history actually started out as a accomplishment the world can be proud of. In 1825 Haiti was the first country to free themselves from slavery. But it came at a cost, they had to pay back the French slavers $21 billion and slowly it crippled the country. Yes, they are people overtaken by witchcraft and strange beliefs, but they were one of the richest islands of the time. With their successful sugar and rice cropsm they had always had the means to come out of poverty if the debt would’ve been dropped. But it was only a hundred years later that this happened, and by that time their economy had taken a serious knock.

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Secret copyright treaty leaks. It’s bad. Very bad.

Posted by Nexus – 04/02/2010

[via boingboing.net]

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

  • That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
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    Mars and a Colorful Lunar Fog Bow

    Posted by Nexus – 03/02/2010

    [via APOD]

    Even from the top of a volcanic crater, this vista was unusual. For one reason, Mars was dazzlingly bright two weeks ago, when this picture was taken, as it was nearing its brightest time of the entire year.

    Mars, on the far upper left, is the brightest object in the above picture. The brightness of the red planet peaked last week near when Mars reached opposition, the time when Earth and Mars are closest together in their orbits.

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    Why do people often vote against their own interests?

    Posted by Nexus – 02/02/2010

    [via bbc.co.uk]

    Americans voicing their anger at the healthcare proposals at a "town hall meeting"

    The Republicans’ shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US.

    Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why there is often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters.

    Last year, in a series of “town-hall meetings” across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.

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    Cocaine found in shuttle work area, NASA says

    Posted by Nexus – 15/01/2010

    [via msnbc.com]

    Workers align the space shuttle Discovery's thrusters in Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in December 2009. A small amount of cocaine was found in a restricted area of the facility on Wednesday, NASA said.

    NASA has launched an extensive investigation to determine how a small amount of cocaine ended up in a space shuttle hangar at the agency’s Florida spaceport.

    A bag containing a small amount of white powder residue that was later confirmed to be cocaine was discovered in the space shuttle Discovery’s hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The hangar, known as the Orbiter Processing Facility, is a restricted zone for shuttle workers only.

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    Pro-Iran hackers hit China search engine

    Posted by Nexus – 13/01/2010

    [via news.yahoo.com]

    A man uses a laptop computer at a wireless cafe in Beijing. China's top search engine Baidu has been hacked in what state media said was an attack by a pro-Iranian government group that replaced the usual home page with an Iranian flag.

    China’s top search engine Baidu was hacked Tuesday in what state media said was an attack by a pro-Iranian government group that replaced the usual home page with an Iranian flag.

    Internet users trying to access the site found a message saying “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army”, the People’s Daily reported on its website.

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    Dell raking in big bucks from Twitter specials

    Posted by Nexus – 09/01/2010

    [via gadgetinn.blogspot.com]

    The founders of Twitter may not be making much money from the microblogging platform, but savvy marketeers like Dell are already way ahead of the curve in online sales.

    The US PC maker has revealed that its Twitter followers have spent over $6.5 million (£4 million) on products specifically promoted through tweets alone.

    Discounts worldwide
    By offering Twitter-only discounts and special products in 12 different countries, Dell has proved the power of building a strong online brand and communicating it directly to potential customers.

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    I Stopped A Nosey Target Clerk From Scanning My License

    Posted by Nexus – 09/01/2010

    [via consumerist.com]

    Photo by Lovingier Photography

    Mike isn’t comfortable handing his ID to just anyone who asks. While buying some cold medicine at Target, he maneuvered his way into getting the clerk to back off on his driver’s license-scanning demands.

    He writes:

    I had an experience at Target today that I thought you might want to share with Consumerist readers.

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