Google has agreed to pay $500 million in fines, for running illegal Canadian pharmacy adds.
The U.S. Department of Justice, said it is illegal to mail prescription drugs from outside the country. Many of the Canadian online pharmacies did not require a prescription either.
Google officials admit they knew what they were doing could get them into trouble, so they set up a fund to pay any fines, if they were caught.
“Samsung welcomes the Düsseldorf District Court’s decision to suspend the pan-European preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.”– Rachel Jones, Samsung
Early in August Apple filed a complaint with the EU, over the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Apple claims the Samsung tablet is too similar to the iPad 2. At first the EU court agreed, but has now allowed the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in most EU member countries.
One legal analysts, Frank Mueller, says Apple still has a chance to beat Samsung, because the EU laws are too ambiguous, and open to much interpretation. However, if Apple pursued the case it would “…reinforce a lot of people’s impression that Apple’s enforcement of design-related rights is… overreaching in some areas.”
Human skin has been bio-engineered to include spider silk. Scientists in the Netherlands then fired a bullet at it. Turns out it’s bullet proof!
Don’t get too excited, it was only a .22 caliber bullet. But it shows promise, after all spider’s silk is the strongest thing in nature.
https://youtu.be/iX3LtVuGp4c
The experiment is known as 2.6g 329m/s (a reference to the .22 bullet), and was actually the invention of an artist, Jalila Essaidi. She was inspired by a U.S. scientist, Randy Lewis, at the University of Utah.
The spider silk came from Utah, it was combined with skin in a Dutch dermatology lab, and Essaidi paid for the experiment. The spidey skin has spider silk between the dermis and the epidermis.
Essaidi said her main motivation was simply to see if it could be done. She also fired a few .22 rounds at the spidey skin. She doesn’t think the spider silk is harmful because it’s biodegradable, so it would degrade over time. She also thinks that, unfortunately, that would result in loose skin.
“If the U.S. or the EU are proudly focusing on internet freedom, while security and other ICT products made in the West are used to repress the same citizens we are trying to protect, this is clearly neither credible nor effective.”-Marietje Schaake, EU Member of Parliament from Netherlands
In Bahrain, where the U.S. supported government has been cracking down on peaceful protestors, and detaining and torturing them, human rights groups have revealed that Bahraini officials are tracking people’s activities through their cell phones.
Bahrain is using technology developed by Nokia Siemens. Bahraini activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar said while he was being tortured his own cell phone conversations were being read back to him. He was detained for seven months.
This is not the first time the company has been accused of enabling spying and torture. Last year, two Iranians attempted to sued Nokia Siemens in U.S. Federal court. They alleged that the surveillance technology helped Iranian security forces to arrest and torture them.
Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture between the Finnish Nokia and the German Siemens.
The Germany auto industry has seen skyrocketing sales this year, mainly in China and India. But a Center Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, study predicts dire sales in the near future.
CAR boss Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, says the growing debt problems of Europe, United States, and even Japan, will eventually drag down the world economy. He predicts a “significant fall in growth” for the German auto industry.
Germany has the strongest performing car makers in the world. According to the Center of Automotive Management, VW holds 1st place, Daimler 2nd, and BMW holds 4th place (Korea’s Hyundai holds 3rd).
However, Center of Automotive Management predicts German car sales in China will soon drop off. So far Germany has seen 20% to 30% sales gains year after year. CAM analysts believe that in the near future German car makers will be lucky to see 5% sales growth in China and India.
5% sales growth will not be enough to make up for predicted loses in other markets (like the U.S.): “The gains that will be made in China and India won’t be able to compensate for the slight losses in other markets.”-Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, Center Automotive Research
“Some in the department, including lawyers, have privately expressed concerns about the program.”-Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) revealed that the New York Police Department is using spy tactics “that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government” and “does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.”
NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne says the report is “marked by outright fiction.”
The AP says their months long investigation included interviews with more than 40 current and former members of the NYPD, as well as Federal officials.
CIA veteran David Cohen, was hired in 2002 by NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly. The anti-terrorist program targeted non-white communities. Cops detained people based solely on how they looked.
The NYPD even asked New York taxi companies to spy on their employees.
Police attorneys told AP that when they warned police officials they were breaking the law, on the grounds that many of the people rounded up were innocent, the cops started shredding their files.
A possible reason why federal cops ratted on the NYPD, to the Associated Press, is because the NYPD overstepped their bounds. New York cops launched operations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, possibly interfering with federal operations. That made federalis like the FBI mad.
For the third time in eight days British Bobbies have killed using a taser, and pepper spray.
August 23, Greater Manchester Police officers tasered to death a 53 year old truck driver. They say they were trying to stop him from killing himself!
August 22, a 25 year old amateur rugby player, died after he was hit in the face with pepper spray and subdued by up to 11 cops.
August 16, a professional bodybuilder, and father of two, was pepper sprayed and then tasered three times with 50,000 volts, before dying. He became the first Brit to be killed with a taser.
Until last week no one in United Kingdom had been killed by the use of a taser. In United States, Amnesty International says that since 2001, more than 460 people have been killed with a taser.
Researchers from around the world have been looking for the source yeast used in Lager beers. They found it, in Argentina!
Germany has laid claim as the creator of lager beers, more than 600 years ago. But scientists realized that the yeast used, Saccharomyces Pastorianus, is not native to Bavaria.
Scientists combed five continents, and found only one source of origin: Patagonia, Argentina.
Now the question is how did Europeans get the yeast? After all the first German Lagers were created decades before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Could it be those daring Vikings who got to North America 400 years before Columbus, made it all the way to South America, then back to Europe?
“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”-Steve Jobs
Co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, has been fighting cancer, and now he has resigned. No confirmation if it’s due to his health.
Tim Cook has already been picked to replace Jobs, and the board of Apple is rushing to get Cook into the CEO position.
“Some people have said, you know, we should go on forever. Some people have said change is good … there will always be dissension. And the papers will make a big deal of it.”-Michael Bloomberg, Mayor New York City
Fox News reporting that New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, might forgo what had become tradition at the 9/11 Anniversary Ceremonies; the reading of the victims’ names.
“It’s becoming more and more clear to me that Mayor Bloomberg is becoming the dictator of 9/11 and how we should think about it and what the narrative should be.”-Tim Brown, 9/11 firefighter