Trust lacking in comparison sites

23 November 2012 Last updated at 07:23 ET

Consumers’ lack of trust in some price comparison websites means that they miss out on potential savings, a regulator has said.

A previous study by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said that consumers could collectively save up to £240m a year by using these websites effectively.

But the OFT has now written to 100 leading operators asking them to make information on websites clearer.

One consumer group recently called for comparison websites to be regulated.

‘Step forward’

The use of price comparison websites has grown significantly as more and more consumers gain internet access.

For example, the majority of motor insurance policies are now bought by drivers who search through price comparison sites.

In its latest report, the OFT said these websites had brought a “major step forward” for consumers in getting better value for money.

Yet it said that a review of 55 different sites had shown that many could improve on their privacy settings, their complaints process, the way results were displayed, and clear identification of who was operating the site.

The Data Protection Act requires that all businesses collecting personal data explain to consumers who is collecting their information, what they intend to do with it and who it will be shared with.

The report also urged consumers to:

• Look for opt-out options if they do not want their information to be shared


• Be aware of how results are displayed – by relevance, price or popularity


• Use different websites, rather than relying on a claim that the website has “found the best deal”


• Check who runs the site, not just the name, and use accredited websites if possible

“Price comparison websites help busy shoppers find a good deal, but people might not realise that by being a bit savvier they can get even more out of these websites,” said Clive Maxwell, chief executive of the OFT.

“Not all price comparison websites have the same standards.”

Watchdog Consumer Focus, which runs an accreditation service, said that these websites needed to trade fairly and openly to be regarded as trustworthy brokers between consumers and markets.

“An open and honest relationship with customers is vital given the consumer distrust of many of the markets they use comparison sites to shop around,” said chief executive Mike O’Connor.

The consumers’ association Which? has previously called for price comparison websites to be regulated because the information they provided was not always fair.

It said that initial prices could seem very cheap because sites automatically pre-selected certain options for insurance products.

That led to some quotes being misleading and could cause customers to spend more than necessary – a claim that was disputed by one comparison site.

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6 ways to tweet yourself out of a job

Hate your job? Want to leave without giving two weeks notice? Thanks to Twitter, it’s never been easier to get fired, says Rob Lammie at Mental Floss

Step 1: Drunk tweet
As any Spring Break partier knows, drinking impairs your judgment. It seems to have also impaired the judgment of Major League pitcher-turned-sports-radio-host Mike Bacsik, who put on quite a show during a San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks NBA game in April 2010. While watching the game, Bacsik bragged that he was “About 12 deep and some shots.” He proceeded to unleash a string of insults aimed at NBA commissioner David Stern, accused the refs of fixing the game, and even threatened to blow up the NBA’s offices. But the one that really got people riled up came after the Mavericks lost the game, when Bacsik tweeted: 

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@MikeBacsik: “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio.”

After sobering up, Bacsik deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology. But it was too little, too late. Numerous people complained to his radio station, which first suspended Bacsik and later fired him. After his dismissal, he told ESPN Dallas, “When you tweet like that, it’s not a playful, harmless thing… I’m very sorry and will try my best for my actions to speak louder than my tweets.”

Step 2: Break the law (or just anger your governor)
Twitter has become a great tool for politicians to connect to the voting public. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, has really embraced the technology as a way to share his opinions and views. For example, in December 2009, he sent out a tweet saying:

 @HaleyBarbour: “Glad the Legislature recognizes our dire fiscal situation. Look forward to hearing their ideas on how to trim expenses.”

Jennifer Carter, one of his Twitter followers who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC), read this message and offered up a suggestion on how Governor Barbour could personally save the taxpayers money:

“Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees overtime to do it when clinics are usually closed.” 

This “Oh, snap!” moment referred to an incident that had occurred three years earlier, when the governor requested the medical center open on a Saturday, when they were normally closed, and bring in a staff of 15-20 people who were paid overtime to administer his annual check-up. This happened before Carter worked for UMC and she was simply repeating what she had been told by other employees. 

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The governor’s office tracked down Carter and made a formal complaint to UMC, saying Carter had violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a privacy law that states no employee of a medical facility can reveal any information about a person’s “protected health information.” Some argued that Carter didn’t violate HIPAA, since she didn’t actually give out any information about the health of the governor. However, others believe that simply saying the governor had even visited a doctor is a violation. 

Semantics aside, UMC administrators said it was a violation, so they suspended Carter for three days without pay and strongly suggested she resign to avoid further disciplinary action, which she did.

SEE MORE: Facebook’s new jobs board: Is LinkedIn toast?

Step 3: Have an NSFW lifestyle
St. Louis-based blogger “The Beautiful Kind” had been writing online about her polyamorous sex life for years. Knowing that not everyone would agree with her chosen lifestyle, she was always very careful about maintaining her anonymity, especially when it came to the workplace. So when she signed up for Twitter, she wanted to be anonymous there as well. She thought that, thanks to the similarities between the two, it was like signing up for an online message board — you supplied your real name to the website privately, but could choose to be known publicly by your username only. But when she logged in for the first time and saw that, not only did it show her username (@TBK365), but also her real name on her profile, she immediately went back and removed it. 

Thinking she was now safely anonymous, she used Twitter to promote her blog and to discuss sexually explicit topics with her followers. However, when her boss at the non-profit group where she worked was told by upper management to do a Google search of all employees, TBK’s Twitter account information — with her real name still associated — came up on the Twitter tracking site topsy.com.

The next day, TBK was called into her boss’ office and fired on the spot. Afterwards, her former boss sent her a letter saying, “While I know you are a good worker and an intelligent person, I hope you try to understand that our employees are held to a different standard. When it comes to private matters, such as one’s sexual explorations and preferences, our employees must keep their affairs private.” Because Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire someone for just about any reason, TBK was SOL.

Step 4: Question company policy
When California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) traded in their standard white shirts for black ones, employee Tim Chantarangsu wasn’t happy with the change. So he tweeted @calpizzakitchen his opinion:

@traphik: “black button ups are the lamest s**t ever!!!”

He didn’t expect anyone to notice or care, but the next day he received a direct message from corporate asking what restaurant he worked for. He knew better than to respond, but they tracked him down anyway and he was fired. They not only referenced his tweet about the shirts, but also an earlier one where he had said he was getting ready to work at “Calipornia Skeetza Kitchen.” 

Little did they know that Chantarangsu is kind of a big deal on another social website, YouTube. Under the name TimothyDeLaGhetto2, Chantarangsu has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, accounting for over 10,500,000 views of his videos at the time. Of course he made a YouTube video telling his Twitter story and it has been viewed well more than 100,000 times. Shortly after the incident, he asked his followers to bombard CPK’s Twitter account with RTs (re-tweets) of his offending message, which they were more than happy to oblige.

Step 5: Make a celebrity look bad
During his five years on the job, Jon Barrett-Ingels had served a lot of celebrities as a waiter at Barney Greengrass, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, Jane Adams, star of the HBO series Hung, came in and had lunch to the tune of $ 13.44. Unfortunately, when the bill came, Adams realized she had left her wallet in the car. Ingels knew who she was, so he told her she could run out and grab it and come back. The actress left, but didn’t return. Instead, someone from her agency called the next day and paid the bill. However, they didn’t leave a tip. Ingels had recently signed up for Twitter and so, his sixth tweet to his 40 followers said:

@PapaBarrett: Jane Adams, star of HBO series “Hung” skipped out on a $ 13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” 

Over the next few weeks, Ingels started using Twitter to send out a few harmless observations about celebrities that came in to eat — mainly what they ordered or what they looked like that day. Then, out of the blue, Jane Adams came back to the restaurant. According to Ingels’ blog, she was clearly upset and begrudgingly slapped $ 3 on the bar for Ingels as a tip. Surprised, Ingels told the actress she really didn’t have to do that, but her gesture was appreciated. She allegedly replied with, “My friend read about it on Twitter!” before storming off. Adams complained about the tweet to management, so someone from Barney’s corporate started following Ingels on Twitter to see what he was up to. After reading his celebrity tweets, it didn’t take long before they gave him the boot.

Step 6: Don’t get hired in the first place
If you’ve followed steps 1 – 5 and you still have a job, here’s the ultimate way to make sure Twitter will keep you from gainful employment.

When recent college grad Skye Riley heard back from Cisco, the computer networking giant, about her job application, one of her first instincts was to tweet about it. Unfortunately, this is what she tweeted:

@theconnor: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The unfortunate part? An employee of Cisco, Tim Levad, came across her post while doing a Twitter search for Cisco. He replied to her by saying:

@timmylevad: Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Riley’s story was the tweet heard round the world. It became a hot topic on tech blogs for weeks afterwards, with writers calling it the “Cisco Fatty” incident. She later claimed that the tweet was taken out of context — that part of her message was referring to a well-paid internship she had turned down — but it appears the damage had already been done. While only she and Cisco know what really happened, according to her online resume, she has never worked for the company.

 — Rob Lammie

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China’s ‘Beijing Blues’ wins at Taiwan film fest

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China‘s “Beijing Blues” has won the best film award at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Festival, an event considered the Chinese-language Oscars. Hong Kong‘s Johnnie To is taking home the best director’s award

“Beijing Blues” portrays the lives of the ordinary urban dwellers through the work of a squad of plainclothes crime-hunters.

At Saturday’s ceremony, To won the award for directing “Life Without Principle,” a movie about ordinary citizens’ struggles in hard economic times.

The film has also won veteran Hong Kong actor Lau Ching Wan the best actor’s award. Lau portrays a triad thug seeking to recover money lost in a loan shark scheme.

Taiwan’s Gwei Lun-mei won the best actress award for portraying a woman involved in a romantic triangle in “GF-BF” or “Girlfriend-Boyfriend.”

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Four new cases of SARS-like virus found in Saudi, Qatar

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The U.N. health agency issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.

On Friday it said in an outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and one of the new patients had died.

“The additional cases have been identified as part of the enhanced surveillance in Saudi Arabia (3 cases, including 1 death) and Qatar (1 case),” the WHO said.

The new virus is known as a coronavirus and shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a 10th of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

Among the symptoms in the confirmed cases are fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.

Of the six laboratory-confirmed cases reported to WHO, four cases, including the two deaths, are from Saudi Arabia and two cases are from Qatar.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency, which helped to identify the new virus in September, said the newly reported case from Qatar was initially treated in October in Qatar but then transferred to Germany, and has now been discharged.

Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections, such as flu, travelling in airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The WHO said investigations were being conducted into the likely source of the infection, the method of exposure, and the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

“Close contacts of the recently confirmed cases are being identified and followed-up,” it said.

It added that so far, only the two most recently confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia were epidemiologically linked – they were from the same family, living in the same household.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that these two cases presented with similar symptoms of illness. One died and the other recovered,” the WHO’s statement said.

Two other members of the same family also suffered similar symptoms of illness, and one died and the other is recovering. But the WHO said laboratory test results on the fatality were still pending, and the person who is recovering had tested negative for the new coronavirus.

The virus has no formal name, but scientists at the British and Dutch laboratories where it was identified refer to it as “London1_novel CoV 2012″.

The WHO urged all its member states to continue surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections.

“Until more information is available, it is prudent to consider that the virus is likely more widely distributed than just the two countries which have identified cases,” it said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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Euro zone consumer confidence falls in November

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Euro zone consumer confidence fell in November compared to the previous month, the first estimate from the European Commission showed on Thursday.

The Commission said consumer confidence in the 17-member euro zone slipped to -26.9 this month from a revised October figure of -25.7.

Consumer spending accounts for more than half of euro zone economic output, but with the effects of the debt crisis cutting disposable income, households have been in no position to contribute much to economic recovery.

In the wider 27-member European Union, consumer sentiment improved a fraction, to -23.7, compared to -24.3 last month.

EU leaders want to drive economic growth and employment after nearly three years of crisis and austerity, but the bloc has little immediate cash to invest and faces the longer-term challenge of falling productivity and an ageing workforce.

For European Commission data click on:

http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/db_indicators/surveys/index_en.htm

(Rex Merrifield, Brussels newsroom)

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Fitch cuts Sony, Panasonic debt ratings to “junk” status

TOKYO (Reuters) – Ratings agency Fitch downgraded the debt ratings of Japan’s Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp to “junk” status citing weakness in their consumer electronics and TV operations, further diminishing the luster of the once-great Japanese brands.

The cut to below investment grade, the first by a ratings firm, comes as the floundering Japanese tech giants face weak demand and fierce competition from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.

A strong yen and bumps in China, where growth has slowed and Japanese goods have been targeted in sometimes violent protests recently, have also weighed on their earnings.

The two companies, along with Sharp Corp, racked up combined losses of $ 20 billion last year, leading them to axe jobs, sell assets and close facilities.

“Both Sony and Panasonic are struggling to generate operating profits, but each is restructuring and I don’t envision the current situation continuing,” said Masahi Oda, Chief Investment Officer at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

“A collapse of their core business would be a problem, but we are not at the point yet, and to me Fitch looks too negative,” Oda added.

Fitch downgraded Sony by three notches to BB-minus from BBB- minus, saying meaningful recovery will be slow. The move came after Sony, the maker of PlayStation game consoles and Vaio laptops, last week announced plans to raise 150 billion yen ($ 1.82 billion) through the sale of convertible bonds.

“Fitch believes that continuing weakness in the home entertainment and sound and mobile products and communications segments will offset the relatively stable music and pictures segments and improvement in the devices segment which makes semiconductors and components,” it said in statement.

In a separate statement, Fitch cut Panasonic to BB from BBB-minus, a two-notch downgrade, citing weakened competitiveness in its TVs and display panels as well as weak cash generation from its operations. It has a negative outlook on both the companies.

The downgrade sent Sony’s five-year credit default swaps (CDS), insurance-like contracts against debt default or restructuring, 5 basis points wider to 382.5/402.5 basis points.

Panasonic’s CDS for the same maturity were quoted at 295/315 basis points, 15 basis points wider than in Thursday morning Asian trade.

Standard & Poor’s rates the two consumer electronics makers at BBB, the second lowest of the investment grade, while Moody’s Investors Service has Baa3 on them, the lowest of the high-grade category.

With two of the three major ratings agencies still having the two companies as investment grade, institutional investors won’t face too great a pressure to cut their debt holdings in them, analysts said.

SONY SHARES TUMBLE

Sony shares shed 4.4 percent in Frankfurt on Thursday. The shares ended 1.8 percent higher at 834 yen in Tokyo before the Fitch announcement, trading not too far from their 32-year closing low of 793 yen hit on November 15. Sony stock is down 40 percent so far this year.

Panasonic shares were down 0.6 percent in Frankfurt in low volume. The stock inched up 0.7 percent to close at 407 yen in Tokyo trading, near its 34-year closing low of 385 yen reached on November 13.

Last month, Panasonic cut its forecast and warned it will lose close to $ 10 billion in the year to March, as it writes off billions of yen in tax-deferred assets and goodwill related to its mobile phone, solar panel and small lithium battery businesses.

Ahead of its earnings revision, Panasonic won $ 7.6 billion in loan commitments in October from banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, a funding backstop it says will help it avoid having to seek capital from credit markets.

Sony made a small operating profit in the July-September quarter, helped by the sale of a non-core chemicals business, and kept its forecast for a full-year profit of $ 1.63 billion.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Lau in Tokyo and Umesh Desai in Hong Kong; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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SpongeBob Christmas special goes stop-motion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — How does “It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!” squeeze even more fun out of our porous little hero and the Bikini Bottom gang? By turning the animated characters three-dimensional for their holiday special.

In a tribute to classic fare such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the “SpongeBob SquarePants” crew has been re-imagined as puppets and put through their comedy paces for stop-motion photography.

The story line as dreamed up by Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob, and his musical collaborator Andy Paley: The denizens of Bikini Bottom are suddenly rude because of exposure to jerktonium, a plot by naughty Plankton to get on Santa’s (voiced by guest star John Goodman) nice list.

Plankton “wants to put everyone on their worst behavior when they should be on their best behavior, and zany mayhem ensues,” Kenny said.

“It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!” debuts 9:30 p.m. EST Friday on CBS, followed by an encore on the show’s home network, Nickelodeon, at 7:30 p.m. EST Sunday, Dec. 9.

The first-time foray into stop-motion is a welcome change for the 13-year-old “SpongeBob,” Kenny said.

“It’s fun that after all these years we can still do stuff that’s a little different. It’s like reinventing the wheel a little bit — if you can refer to a square character as a wheel,” he added, unable to resist the quip.

The actor looks back fondly on childhood memories of “Rudolph” from the Rankin-Bass studio and other stop-action projects. Even the TV commercial that put Santa on an electric razor subbing for a sleigh gets a Kenny shoutout.

Asked if young viewers might be fazed by seeing the familiar characters in a new guise, Kenny mulled the question before rebutting it.

“The characters act the same, the recording process is exactly the same. Our job is exactly the same. … There’s still plenty of the animated mayhem and anarchy that happens in the 2-D version of the show.”

Screen Novelties, the Los Angeles studio that produced the Christmas special, made a feast out of the job. In just one of their inventive approaches, filmmakers used fruit-flavored cereal to create a coral reef.

“I came to the studio and they had hundreds of boxes of cereal open and were hot-gluing it together,” Kenny recalled.

The Patrick Star puppet was covered in wool-like material and SpongeBob “wasn’t a sponge but some kind of weird material they found somewhere,” he said. “They’re like ‘MacGyver,’ always repurposing something.”

The TV special has a small element of recycling. Kenny calls it a testament to “a goofy little song” he and Paley wrote three years ago — “Don’t Be a Jerk, (It’s Christmas).”

“Bring joy to the world, it’s the thing to do. But the world does not revolve around you. Don’t be a jerk, it’s Christmas” is among its bouncy yet cautionary verses.

The tune is among a dozen included on the digital release “It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! Album,” most written by Kenny and Paley (a songwriter-producer who’s worked with artists including Brian Wilson and Blondie). Four songs are part of the special.

Music fans might want to check out the album for its craftsmanship. The veterans who play on it include harpist Corky Hale and harmonica player Tommy Morgan, both of whom have backed a roster of big stars, including Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra.

The recording sessions proved an early holiday gift for Kenny.

“We’d spend a half-hour working and then make the musicians tell stories about who they played with,” he said.

___

Online:

http://spongebob.nick.com/

http://www.cbs.com/

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Do drunks have to go to the ER?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – With the help of a checklist, ambulance workers may be able to safely reroute drunk patients to detoxification centers instead of emergency rooms, according to a new study.

Researchers in Colorado found no serious medical problems were reported after 138 people were sent to a detox center to sleep it off, instead of to an ER.

In 2004, according to the researchers, it’s estimated that 0.6 percent of all U.S. ER visits were made by people without any problems other than being drunk. Those visits ended up costing about $ 900 million.

“Part of the issue has been – as it is in many busy ER departments – there’s a lot of chronic alcoholics that are brought in by ambulance, police or just come in. Often they are brought in because they have not committed a crime or there is limited space in our detoxification center. So the majority were brought to the ER department,” said Dr. David Ross, the study’s lead author from Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs.

Ross said the ambulance company where he serves as medical director created the checklist with the help of the local detox center, which provided limited medical care by a nurse, and the local hospitals to reduce the number of drunks without medical needs being sent to the local ERs.

They created a checklist with 29 yes-or-no questions, such as whether the patient is cooperating with the ambulance worker’s examination and if the patient is willing to go to the detox center.

The patient was sent to the ER if the ambulance worker checked “no” on any question.

The researchers then went back to look at the patients they transported between December 2003 and December 2005 to see whether or not any of them ended up having serious medical problems at the detox center.

During that two year period, the ambulance workers transported 718 drunks. The detox center received 138 and the local ERs got 580.

Overall, 11 of the patients who were taken to detox were turned away because there was no room, their blood alcohol level exceeded the limit, their family came to pick them up or they were combative.

Another four patients at the detox center were taken to the ER because of minor complications, including chest and knee pain. However, there were no serious complications reported.

“We really believe that we did not miss anybody with a serious illness and injury that didn’t go to the ER as they should have,” said Ross.

But the researchers write in the Annals of Emergency Medicine that their study did have some limitations.

Specifically, the researchers did not plan in advance to do a study when they were creating the checklist, which means their findings are limited to whatever information was collected at the detox center and ERs.

Also, the number of people who were sent to the detox center in their study is relatively small, so it’s hard to tell how many serious complications they’d see among a larger group of people.

“We tried to estimate how likely we would have been to encounter a serious event… We estimated at most we’d encounter three serious adverse events (in 748 patients),” Ross told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QgPCT5 Annals of Emergency Medicine, online November 9, 2012.

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Leading economic indicator rises in October

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A gauge of future U.S. economic activity rose marginally in October, pointing to modest growth in the near term.

The Conference Board said on Wednesday its Leading Economic Index increased 0.2 percent to 96.0 after advancing 0.5 percent in September. It was the second consecutive month of gains and was in line with economists’ expectations.

“Based on the trends, the economy will continue to expand modestly through the early months of 2013,” said Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board.

Goldstein said superstorm Sandy, which ravaged the East Coast at the end of October, was not yet fully reflected in the LEI data. He cautioned, however, that the storm could adversely affect consumer spending and home building in the short-term.

“In addition, the outcome of the fiscal cliff debates is another factor that could alter the outlook,” said Goldstein.

The fiscal cliff refers to automatic government spending cuts and higher taxes that could suck about $ 600 billion from the economy early next year. Business confidence has taken a dive in recent months on fears of tighter fiscal policy.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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NJ jury convicts NY man in iPad data breach case

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A federal jury on Tuesday convicted a man of illegally gaining access to AT&T‘s servers and stealing more than 120,000 email addresses of iPad users including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Andrew Auernheimer, of New York, was convicted of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Prosecutors said the former Fayetteville, Ark., resident was part of an online group that tricked AT&T’s website into divulging email addresses including those of Bloomberg, Weinstein, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who’s now Chicago’s mayor, and other celebrities.

The group then shared the addresses with the website Gawker, which published them in redacted form accompanying a news article about the breach, prosecutors said.

A second man arrested with Auernheimer early last year, Daniel Spitler, of San Francisco, pleaded guilty that June.

At the time of the arrests, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said there was no evidence the men used the swiped information for criminal purposes. But authorities cautioned that it could have wound up in the hands of spammers and scam artists.

According to court papers, the men used a computer script they called the iPad3G Account Slurper to fool AT&T’s servers into thinking they were communicating with an iPad. The theft of the email addresses occurred in June 2010.

Prosecutors said at the time of Auernheimer’s arrest that he had bragged about the operation in a blog posting and in an interview with CNET published online after the Gawker article. Court papers also quoted him declaring in a New York Times article: “I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money. I make people afraid for their lives.”

Auernheimer, after he was charged and released on bail, had declined to comment.

iPad maker Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, Calif., referred questions to AT&T, which acknowledged a security weak spot on a website that exposed the email addresses. AT&T said the vulnerability affected only iPad users who signed up for its 3G wireless Internet service and said it had fixed the problem.

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Academy Sues Over “Deer Hunter” Oscar Statuette

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – A possibly counterfeit Oscars trophy for the 1978 film has sparked a very real lawsuit.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington state over an Oscar statuette that “was either a genuine statuette or a very convincing counterfeit.”

If it’s real, the trophy was the one awarded to Aaron Rochin for his sound work on the 1978 film “The Deer Hunter.”

The Academy is suing Washington resident James Dunne, who sold the statue, and Edgard G. Francisco, who purchased it.

Dunne initially offered the statuette for sale on eBay in September but deleted the listing for fear that the Academy might discover it, according to the suit, which was filed last week. He later privately sold the statue of Florida resident Francisco for $ 25,000, the suit says.

The suit goes on to allege that after an appraisal, Francisco decided the statuette was fake and demanded a $ 15,000 refund. Dunne claims he provided a full refund. He also claims that he told Francisco that the trophy might not be authentic before he bought it.

Dunne told the Academy that he had either picked up the statuette at a moving sale or obtained it from a third party who got it at an estate sale.

After getting the refund, the suit says, Francisco threw the statuette away.

The Academy’s suit is two-fold: If the trophy was real, the Academy is seeking restitution for the loss of its property; if it was fake, the Academy claims that the pair infringed on the organization’s Oscars copyright.

The latter would seem to be the more probable scenario in this case. For one thing, the Academy says that the identification number for the statuette would place its manufacture in 1979, while the eBay auction billed it as a “Rare Pre-1950 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences OSCAR Statue Award!”

The Academy is asking for unspecified damages, plus suit costs and attorneys’ fees.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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RAINN Urges Young Sexual Assault Victims to Tell

RAINN Urges Young Sexual Assault Victims to Tell

Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network campaign helps survivors of child sexual abuse.

Miss America Contestant to Undergo Double Mastectomy

Miss America Contestant to Undergo Double Mastectomy

Miss D.C. Allyn Rose discusses preventative procedure to avoid breast cancer.

Robin Roberts Bone-Marrow Transplant Update: Day 60

Robin Roberts Bone-Marrow Transplant Update: Day 60

The “GMA” Anchor wrote about how she is doing after a brief stay back in the hospital.

Maine Man Hiccups for 13 Days and Counting

Maine Man Hiccups for 13 Days and Counting

Doctors struggle to find a cure for the man’s non-stop hiccups.

Miss America Contestant to Undergo Double Mastectomy

Miss America Contestant to Undergo Double Mastectomy

Genetically predisposed to cancer, Allyn Rose, 24, elects to take preventative measure after January pageant.

Woman Gives Birth to Largest Triplets Ever

Woman Gives Birth to Largest Triplets Ever

California mother gives birth to heaviest triplets on record, weighing a combined 20 pounds.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New York Times’ Murdoch Moment

Why is Mark Thompson increasingly reminding us of James Murdoch?

Not long ago, Thompson and Murdoch were rivals of sorts. Murdoch was the head of News International in London. Thompson was the head of the BBC. Sometimes they took turns criticizing each other’s media operations in public.

Then scandals hit both organizations. And in the aftermath, as they have both repeatedly explained how the problems might have occurred on their watch without them knowing, as they have tried to distance themselves from widening probes and allegations of corporate cover-ups, and as they left London for new jobs in New York, the two rivals have started to sound a lot alike.

Recall Murdoch’s situation first.

In the summer of 2011, revelations of widespread phone hacking at News International triggered a huge wave of public outrage in the U.K., a range of public investigations, and allegations of a company cover-up on Murdoch’s watch.

In the immediate aftermath of the revelations, Murdoch said repeatedly that he was not part of any alleged cover-up; that for a long time he had been led to believe the phone hacking had been limited to a single “rogue” reporter; and that he had never been made aware of any allegations of widespread phone hacking taking place at News International until after the whole thing had erupted in public.

But then a correspondence involving lawyers for Murdoch surfaced, raising questions about those claims.

In the e-mail chain, an editor for one of News International’s papers updated Murdoch on a union official who was suing the company, noting that the situation “is as bad as we feared.” He also forwarded Murdoch two e-mails from company lawyers, one of which explained that the union official was eager to show that phone hacking was “rife” at News International and not limited to a single “rogue” reporter. The e-mail was sent to Murdoch well before the scandal erupted publicly—which seemed to cast serious doubt on his claims that he had been kept in the dark about the possibility of a broader problem.

But even after the e-mail surfaced, Murdoch stood firm.

He explained that when he had originally received the correspondence, he had just returned from overseas, was in the company of his young children, and so he might not have read to the bottom of the e-mail chain. Thus, he had apparently failed to absorb its meaning.

This past week, Thompson offered up a story reminiscent of Murdoch’s.

In October, allegations that the late Jimmy Savile, the former BBC star, had used his position to sexually abuse a large number of minors over the years triggered a huge wave of public outrage in the U.K., touched off multiple investigations, and raised allegations that a company cover-up had taken place on Thompson’s watch.

Like Murdoch, Thompson has denied that he was part of a cover-up. He explained that he had never been made aware of any allegations of sexual abuse until after the whole thing erupted in public.

“During my time as director general of the BBC, I never heard any allegations or received any complaints about Jimmy Savile,” Thompson  told the New York Times in mid-October.

Then a correspondence involving lawyers for Thompson emerged, casting doubt on those claims.

The Times reported that 10 days before Thompson left the BBC in September 2012, lawyers representing him threatened in a letter to sue a newspaper in London that was preparing to publish an article suggesting, among other things, that Thompson had been involved in killing a BBC news investigation into Savile. “Interviews show that the letter included a summary of the alleged abuse, including the allegation that some abuse might have occurred at the BBC,” reported the Times.

Even after the Times broke the news of the letter’s content, however, Thompson stood firm.

An aide to Thompson explained to the Times that while Thompson had “orally authorized the sending of the letter” he might not have read its content—in part, because he had recently been traveling on vacation. In any case, he had apparently failed to absorb its meaning.

In February, Murdoch stepped down as the head of News International and relocated to New York for a job overseeing News Corp.’s (NWSA) international TV businesses. The ongoing investigations into wrongdoing at News International have raised questions about the future of his leadership role at the company. “I look forward to expanding my commitment to News Corporation’s international television businesses and other key initiatives across the Company,” said Murdoch at the time of his announced relocation to New York.

Recently, Thompson relocated to New York to become the new chief executive officer of the New York Times Co. (NYT). The ongoing investigations into wrongdoing at the BBC have raised questions about the future of his leadership role at the company. Last week, on his first day at work, camera crews greeted him outside his new office. A reporter asked if the crisis at the BBC would impact his role at the Times.  ”No,” said Thompson. “I believe that it will not in any way affect my new job, which I’m starting right now.”

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Kopp: Impostor filed motion in NY Facebook case

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Lawyers fighting a New York man’s ownership claim against Facebook Inc. say a bizarre motion bearing the name of convicted abortion doctor killer James Charles Kopp earlier this month was apparently filed by an impostor.

In court papers, Facebook lawyers say they received a sworn statement from the imprisoned Kopp Monday denying he’s filed any motion in Paul Ceglia‘s lawsuit. An accompanying letter from Kopp to the federal judge handling the case says someone is impersonating him.

The motion signed with Kopp’s name had sought permission to intervene in Ceglia’s lawsuit while accusing Ceglia of a litany of personal slights, threats and crimes. Kopp’s serving life in prison for the 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian in suburban Buffalo.

Facebook says the Kopp motion, even if it’s real, should be denied.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne to reprise roles for “Insidious” sequel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – FilmDistrict, Alliance Films and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will bring “Insidious Chapter 2,” the sequel to last year’s hit film “Insidious,” to U.S. theaters on August 30, 2013, the companies announced Monday.

Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins will reprise their roles in the film, which “Insidious” director James Wan will direct from a script written by Leigh Whannell who also wrote the first film.

Jason Blum, who produced “Insidious,” is producing the low-budget sequel through his Blumhouse Productions. Brian Kavanaugh Jones, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, and Charles Layton are executive producing. Production on the sequel is set to begin on January 15 in Los Angeles.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired the U.S. rights to the film in conjunction with FilmDistrict. The film is being financed by Alliance Films. FilmDistrict will distribute the film theatrically in the United States, with Sony handling the majority of ancillary rights in the U.S.

Alliance Films will distribute in Canada, the U.K. (via its Momentum Pictures subsidiary) and Spain (via Aurum), and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will distribute in all other international territories.

Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s CEO, said: “We are all very excited to see the next chapter of James and Leigh’s vision of the Further. It’s great to be in business again with Blumhouse, Alliance and Sony.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rockets hold up aid for Gaza from Israel

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Hamas rockets forced the closure of the main crossing point for humanitarian aid from Israel to Gaza on Tuesday, holding up the transfer of more than 100 truckloads of food and medical supplies including anesthetics, Israeli officials said.

Despite the fact its air force is bombarding the coastal enclave, Israel is trying to maintain the essential daily flow of basic foodstuffs into the Gaza Strip where most of 1.7 million Palestinians are dependent on aid.

A Twitter message from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that “120+ trucks of supplies from Israel are waiting at Gaza border crossing. Hamas is firing rockets at the crossing. Trucks can’t enter now”.

Israel says it launched its military offensive a week ago to halt increasing Islamist militant rocket fire on southern Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip.

The Kerem Shalom crossing at the extreme south of the Israel-Gaza border, next to Egyptian territory, is the only freight passage into the blockaded territory.

No comment was available from Hamas. But a Palestinian liaison official said the crossing was closed after some mortar bombs landed at Kerem Shalom and work was suspended after just one hour of operations. The western-backed Palestinian Authority liaises with Israel on Kerem Shalom transfers.

For security reasons, it operates on a back-to-back system: trucks go in from Israel and offload within the protective concrete walls of the terminal, then trucks come in from the Gaza end and load up.

Since the start of the latest round of violence, now in its seventh day, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), says it has let in 123 trucks loaded with food, medicine and fuel, including 43 that passed on Tuesday before rockets started to fall.

The rest of the transfer included 16 truckloads of medical equipment “specifically vital equipment, such as medicines, anesthetics and disposable medical equipment”, COGAT said.

The main Israeli fortified crossing-point at Erez was opened to permit the exit of 26 patients and their escorts into Israel in order to receive medical treatment, the authority added.

“While Israel is committed to providing continued assistance, it is subject to the limitations created by continuous rocket fire and attacks on the part of Hamas and other extremists groups in Gaza,” COGAT said.

“Rocket attacks endanger the staff manning the crossing and often hinder or prevent the transfer of goods,” it added.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) says 1.2 million Gazans rely on UNRWA assistance, which enters the territory via Israel.

“UNRWA will continue to provide food aid to more than 800,000 refugees in the Strip. Our schools are providing a place of safe shelter. Our health clinics remain open and ready to bring medical care to the children, the sick, and the elderly,” the agency said in its latest update on the crisis.

In relatively normal times about 130 truckloads of aid — mainly bulk staples — go through the Kerem Shalom crossing daily.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Wall Street rises on budget talk optimism

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rose more than 1 percent on Monday, rebounding after last week’s decline, on signs of progress in talks to resolve the fiscal crunch.

Adding to optimism, U.S. home resales unexpectedly rose in October, a sign that the slow improvement in the job market is helping the housing sector.

In another positive report on housing, sentiment among home builders rose for a seventh straight month in November to the highest level in over six years as demand for new homes increased.

Over the weekend, leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressed confidence that they could reach a deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” even as they laid down markers on raising taxes and spending cuts that may make any agreement more difficult.

“While not our base case, we believe that stocks could rise substantially if U.S. policymakers can negotiate a ‘grand bargain’ that credibly addresses long-term tax, spending and entitlement reforms,” said Jonathan Golub, strategist at UBS in New York.

“Unfortunately, our sense is that the most important structural issues will be pushed off into the future, leaving significant uncertainty about the long-term direction of the economy and corporate profits.”

Reflecting the uncertainty, UBS introduced a cautious outlook with a year-end 2013 price target on the S&P 500 at 1,425.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 152.40 points, or 1.21 percent, at 12,740.71. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX> was up 20.35 points, or 1.50 percent, at 1,380.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was up 39.37 points, or 1.38 percent, at 2,892.50.

U.S. financial markets will be closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Stronger-than-expected earnings also contributed to the market’s advance.

Shares of Lowe’s Cos Inc , the world’s No. 2 home improvement chain, rose 7.3 percent to $ 34.28 after the company reported higher-than-expected quarterly profit and raised its full-year sales forecast.

Shares of Tyson Foods Inc jumped 7 percent to $ 18.07 after the company reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings, helped by higher prices.

But Intel shares fell 0.7 percent to $ 20.06 on news that the company’s Chief Executive Paul Otellini will retire in May, and that the board will consider internal and external candidates to choose Otellini’s successor.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Canada pledges again to balance budget by 2015

OTTAWA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Friday reiterated its intention to balance its budget by 2015, three days after projecting there would be deficits until 2016-17.

In separate appearances in Quebec City and New York, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.

“It remains the government’s plan, intention, to balance the budget prior to the next federal election. The recent economic and fiscal update by the minister indicates we are actually very close to that objective,” Harper told reporters in Quebec City. The next election is in October 2015.

Flaherty’s fall fiscal update on Tuesday had pushed back the target date for eliminating the deficit by a year, to 2016-17, citing a weak global economy.

But the minister said in a speech in New York that the government was on track to balance the budget in the next two to three years, barring major external events, and he later clarified that he intended a balanced budget by 2015.

“The prime minister’s always correct,” he chuckled.

He sought to explain the discrepancy by saying the fiscal update had built in a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion, meaning there was an underlying surplus of C$ 1.2 billion for 2015-16. He said the projection of a C$ 1.8 billion deficit amounted to about half a percent of the C$ 275 billion federal budget.

“There’s lots of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” he said.

The opposition New Democratic Party noted the discrepancy in a release headlined: “Stephen Harper makes stuff up about balancing the budget.”

It pointed out that balancing the budget by the next election was not the same as balancing it by 2016-17.

As it is, even the 2015-16 timetable is a year later than offered in the Conservative campaign for reelection in May 2011. They had promised a balanced budget by 2014-15, followed by major personal income tax relief before the 2015 election.

Flaherty’s timetable drew criticism this week from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which said the minister had become expert at kicking the can down the road.

The projections could be thrown out of whack if the United States goes off the fiscal cliff, a set of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that are to be triggered on January 2 if legislators and the White House cannot agree on a more nuanced budget deal.

Flaherty said U.S. failure to avert the fiscal cliff would cause a significant and immediate decline in Canada’s gross domestic product, and he would counter it.

Referring to a possible economic shock from Europe or the United States, he said: “If that were to happen and if the Canadian economy were to be pushed back into recession with the resulting danger for higher unemployment and the danger always of a prolonged recession, then we would act.”

He added: “We would not stand by and let that happen. The kinds of measure we can take: there are various tax measures we can take, there are measures with respect to stimulus we can take, these are things that we have done before and we can do again.”

On Tuesday, Flaherty spoke of having prepared various contingency plans.

(Additional reporting by Louse Egan; Editing by David Gregorio)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Amazon’s larger Kindle Fire HD ships early

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has started shipping the larger version of its Kindle Fire HD tablet computer on Thursday, five days ahead of schedule.

Amazon is short on stock, though, so new orders won’t ship until Dec. 3. Amazon.com Inc. had been taking orders for shipment on Nov. 20.

The Kindle Fire is one of several tablets challenging Apple’s iPad.

The tablet, which has an 8.9-inch screen measured diagonally, is available on Amazon’s website for $ 299. The tablet will be available at Best Buy stores beginning Friday and at more retailers in the coming weeks.

A version with cellular access is available for $ 499 and will start shipping next week as planned, though new orders won’t ship until Dec. 3.

The smaller version, which has a 7-inch screen, has been available since September.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Metal singer Aaron Lewis finds second home in country music

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Aaron Lewis stands as one of the more unusual crossovers into country music, but the singer of the metal band Staind believes it was a fit made in the cradle.

“It’s been quite the pleasant eclectic mix of tattoos and black eyeliner, and Stetsons, cowboy boots and big shiny buckles,” Lewis said in an interview after the release of his first full-length country studio album, “The Road,” this week.

Lewis, 40, was raised on what he terms his grandfather’s country music: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels and George Jones. He collaborated with Daniels and Jones on his country EP, “Town Line,” released last year.

This made the transition from the angst-ridden world of metal to the laid-back country scene an easy step for him, but perhaps not so much for his head-banging fans.

“A few fans are really having a hard time with it,” Lewis said. “I can’t make everyone happy. Music is about making me happy first. For those who wish I would stick with Staind, they’ll get what they want, too.”

Lewis, who sold seven studio albums over a 17-year career with Staind, says he has two musical careers because he is “creatively bipolar” and suffers from attention deficit disorder.

“I need to switch it up a little bit,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to write a song about taking my daughters to the beach instead (of) about something that’s tearing me apart from the inside.”

For Lewis, each song on “The Road” is the opportunity to explore his creativity in music, while winding down a road filled with new country listeners and taking Staind fans along for the ride.

“The Road” includes “Forever,” a thoughtful song of life on the road, and “Endless Summer,” a simple track about digging up clams and casting for striped bass with his daughters.

“If we catch a keeper we throw it on the grill,” he says. “The beauty of the adventure that I’m on now is I can write songs about stuff like that. I could never bring a song like that to the table for Staind.”

He describes writing “Endless Summer” as a “refreshing and a nice change” from his metal past.

“I remember having a big smile on my face the whole time I was writing it,” he said. “In the past, what’s usually coming up for lyrics is not smiley material. The song wrote itself in 10 minutes.”

In contrast, “Party in Hell,” which has fans up and dancing, was the last song Lewis wrote for the album and was inspired by a stint in Las Vegas.

“Las Vegas really is, in a metaphorical sense, a party in hell; you can get into anything you want to,” he said. “It was like well, ‘OK, I’m going to hell, who else is going to be there? We might as well have a party with it.’”

SAME PROCESS

His previous country EP, “Town Line,” featured the gold-selling single “Country Boy,” a collaboration with Daniels and Jones that hit the top of the “Billboard” album charts and topped off at No. 7 on the Top 200.

“That’s crazy, right?” Lewis asks, shaking his head. “It was pretty amazing for me, pretty surreal. I was actually in the studio with Charlie, which was a lot of fun. We have become good friends.”

The writing process for country or rock is the same, according to Lewis.

“The music is always first, then the melody, and the lyrics third,” he said. “I need the music to know what the landscape is that I’m singing over, and I need the melody to fit the words in, and then the words come last.”

But the lyrics do not come while he is writing on a piece of paper. “They come with me standing in front of a microphone with the song playing in the background and singing,” he said. “It’s total improv, right off the cuff.”

As with recording, Lewis does not approach a rock performance differently from a country performance.

“I go out on stage and perform those songs I recorded to the best of my ability to sound just like the recording,” he said. “I have always tried to approach every show like it’s the only show that I have. That’s kind of how I’ve gone about this crazy career I’ve had now coming up on 15 years.”

(Reporting by Vernell Hackett; Editing by Christine Kearney and Lisa Von Ahn)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Teens Turn to Protein Shakes to Pump Up

Teens may be chugging protein shakes and taking other muscle-enhancing supplements more often than previously thought, a new study found.

According to a self-reported survey conducted among adolescent males and females, nearly 35 percent said they used protein powders and shakes, while almost 6 percent reported using steroids, according to study author Maria Eisenberg of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and colleagues. Both both behaviors were more common among boys versus girls.

Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.

In comparison, recent studies with population-based samples of U.S. youth have indicated that 8 percent of females and 10.2 percent of males reported the use of protein supplements.

Use of muscle-enhancing products or behaviors to bulk up, such as different eating habits or exercising more, were significantly associated with grade level, Asian race, body mass index, and sports team participation, the current authors wrote in Pediatrics online.

Women and how media images impact thinness and body image has been the subject of a great deal of research, but images of men depicted in the popular media show people who are increasingly large, lean, and muscular, the authors pointed out.

“Boys’ body dissatisfaction has simultaneously increased, and research has demonstrated that exposure to images of extremely muscular models contributes to body dissatisfaction and muscle dysmorphia in young men,” they wrote.

For the current study, they gathered data through the Eating and Activity in Teens (EAT 2010) study, a large, population-based study of weight status, dietary intake, physical activity, weight control behaviors, and related factors for adolescents from the Minneapolis and St. Paul metropolitan area during the 2009 to 2010 school year.

The study included a 235-question self-report survey and physical measurements of participants height and weight.

The authors focused on participant response to questions related to frequency of participation in any of five muscle-enhancing behaviors over the year prior to the survey, including altered eating behaviors and exercising more — considered “healthy” behaviors as well as use of protein powder or shakes, use of steroids, or use of other muscle-building substances, such as creatine, amino acids, or growth hormones, considered “unhealthy” behaviors.

Participants also reported their school level, gender, race, socioeconomic status based on parental educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), sports team participation, and weight status.

The study population consisted of 2,793 students with a mean age of 14.4 and almost equally divided among females (53.2 percent) and males (46.8 percent). Nearly 30 percent of the participants were black and about 20 percent were white or Asian.

Almost 60 percent of the study population played at least one after-school sport.

Among boys, the authors found that more than two-thirds reported changing their eating to increase their muscle size or tone, and 90 percent exercised more to increase their muscle mass or tone. In terms of the prevalence of “unhealthy” behaviors:

34.7 percent reported using protein powders or shakes

5.9 percent reported using steroids

10.5 percent reported using some other muscle-enhancing substance

Among the girls, 21.2 percent reported using protein powders, while 4.6 percent said they used steroids, and 5.5 percent used other muscle-enhancing substances.

The authors also found that overweight and obese girls had significantly greater odds of using protein powders or shakes than girls of average BMI.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Cable attacks company ‘tax abuse’

18 November 2012 Last updated at 07:14 ET

Vince Cable: “It is completely unacceptable when there is systematic abuse taking place”

Business Secretary Vince Cable has condemned corporate tax avoidance as “completely unacceptable”, saying there are “appalling stories of abuse”.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show UK authorities should do more to stop it.

However, he said that tackling the issue required international agreement as well as domestic action.

His comments came after executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon were grilled by MPs, although the firms say they operate within the tax rules.

The executives were questioned earlier this month by the Public Accounts Committee about how they used favourable European tax jurisdictions for their UK businesses.

Starbucks, for example, has made a taxable profit only once in its 15 years of operating in the UK. As a consequence, the company is thought to have paid just £8.6m in corporation tax over the period.

During the hearing with MPs, Starbucks admitted the Dutch government had granted a special tax deal on its European headquarters, which receives royalty payments from its UK business.

‘Intensive investigation’

Mr Cable told Andrew Marr: “The best off in society have got to contribute more, and that includes companies.”

Amazon’s Andrew Cecil was condemned by MPs for failing to answer questions

He acknowledged that smaller companies, many of which face competitive pressures from the major firms, will be angered by the situation.

“There’s nothing more galling to small and medium-sized enterprises when they are paying (tax), and others are dodging it,” Mr Cable said. “Our own tax authorities have got to be very tough on things like royalty payments, which is where a lot of the subterfuge takes place.”

However, he said that finding a solution was difficult, especially as the UK had to make itself attractive to inward investors. “The big question is whether you can get wider (international) agreement,” he said.

As companies are using favourable tax jurisdictions overseas there needs to “a combination of action at the international level as well as beef up our own capacity to deal with it”.

Mr Cable said: “It is quite difficult to drill down to what the problems are. Starbucks claims they are actually making losses in the UK. I don’t know whether they are not but you would need some pretty intensive investigation by the Inland Revenue to establish what exactly is going on, whether their transfer prices and their royalties are being fiddled or not.”

All the companies under fire over the amount of corporation tax paid said that they operated within the tax rules and regulations and have done nothing wrong.

BBC News – Business

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Israel, Gaza fighting rages on as Egypt seeks truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion though Egypt saw “some indications” of a truce ahead.

Militant rocket fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning with three rockets fired at the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli army said.

“As of now we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is or isn’t worth it to cease fire,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, over Twitter.

“If there is quiet in the South and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack.”

Forty-eight Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 13 children, have been killed in Israel’s raids, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three people and injuring dozens.

Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the commander of the Hamas Islamist group that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state. Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has plagued Israeli border towns for years.

Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. A Gaza City media building was hit, witnesses said, wounding 6 journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”.

Two other predawn attacks on houses in the Jabalya refugee camp killed two children and wounded 13 other people, medical officials said.

These attacks followed a defiant statement by Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, who told a news conference: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”

The masked gunman dressed in military fatigues insisted that despite Israel’s blows Hamas “is still strong enough to destroy the enemy”.

An Israeli attack on Saturday destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.

Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, and thus their lives were spared, witnesses said.

Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.

Among those killed in air strikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding motorcycles, and several civilians including a 30-year-old woman.

ISRAELI SCHOOLS SHUT

Israel said it would keep schools in its south shut on Sunday as a precaution to avoid casualties from rocket strikes reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few days.

Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system destroyed in mid-air a rocket fired by Gaza militants at Tel Aviv on Saturday, where volleyball games on the beach front came to an abrupt halt as air-raid sirens sounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it had fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of calls from world leaders to seek an end to the violence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides,” in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.

London was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believes Israel has a right to self-defense.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees.”

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope,” but it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official declined to comment on the negotiations. Military commanders said Israel was prepared to fight on to achieve a goal of halting rocket fire from Gaza, which has plagued Israeli towns since late 2000, when failed peace talks led to the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising.

Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.

POSSIBLE GROUND OFFENSIVE

Israel, with tanks and artillery positioned along the frontier, said it was still weighing a ground offensive.

Israeli cabinet ministers decided on Friday to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000 and around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan. … It will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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So, Here’s That ‘Big Bang Theory’ Flashmob You Wanted

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

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Psychologist Richard Wiseman has an interactive game for you to let you know you’re just predictable. To be fair, a couple of us tried it out and were not as predictable as Wiseman thought we were going to be. But without further ado, here it is (have some screen cleaner ready):

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We too are very excited for the Disney installments of Star Wars. New movies, Ewoks, whatever count us in. We’re just not this excited: 

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If you don’t know, The Big Bang Theory is basically a show about a bunch of really smart, really nerdy dorks. Now when it comes to the actual cast of The Big Bang Theory, we’re only pretty sure (and happy to be proven wrong) only one of those things apply:

And finally, do you have $ 37? If so, would you mind donating it to The Atlantic Wire robot fish aquarium fund? We promise, it’s totally a great cause. Thanks in advance!

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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