Gizmodo – Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads. But why did Kodak have a hidden nuclear reactor loaded with weapons-grade uranium? Read Article
Bloomberg – Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Merrill Lynch & Co. employees discussed helping naked short-sales by market-maker clients in e-mails the banks sought to keep secret, including one in which a Merrill official told another to ignore compliance rules, Overstock.com Inc. (OSTK) said in a court filing. The online retailer accused Merrill, now part of Bank of America Corp., and Goldman Sachs of manipulating its stock from 2005 to 2007, causing its shares to fall. Read Article
The Australian – Most of the scientists advising the federal government on coal-seam gas pollution have financial links with the mining industry. Four of the six members of the interim independent expert scientific committee on coal-seam gas and coalmining have a financial connection with mining companies, the Environment Department has revealed. Read Article
CTV — An industry-funded program that offers high school teachers a six-day trip to Fort McMurray to “experience Alberta’s oilsands” is being expanded across the country. While the operators of Inside Education say they work hard to ensure their programming offers plenty of balance, others say informing educators about controversial developments shouldn’t be left to those with most to gain from them. Read article
BBC – Major UK-based firms cut secret tax deals with authorities in Luxembourg to avoid millions in corporation tax in Britain, the BBC’s Panorama has found. The programme obtained confidential tax agreements detailing plans to move profits off-shore to avoid what was a 28% corporate tax rate at the time. Those involved include pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and media company Northern & Shell. Both firms told the programme they have a duty to be tax efficient. Read Article
Daily Mail – Americans consume 80 percent of the world’s supply of painkillers — more than 110 tons of pure, addictive opiates every year — as the country’s prescription drug abuse epidemic explodes. That’s enough drugs to give every single American 64 Percocets or Vicodin. And pain pill prescriptions continue to surge, up 600 percent in ten year… Read article
Daily Mail – Britain has become a nation of sleeping pill addicts since the start of the economic downturn, figures revealed yesterday. Stress-related insomnia has been blamed for a sharp increase in the number of people prescribed powerful drugs to help them sleep. The annual cost to the NHS of handing out the pills has risen by a sixth in the past three years to nearly £50million. Read article
Independent – Panasonic’s January-March losses ballooned 10-fold to 438 billion yen (£3.4 billion), completing a year of record red ink at the Japanese electronics maker battered by natural disasters and an ailing TV business. The firm racked up a 40.7 billion yen loss for the same period the previous year. Read Article
Forbes – If the world’s largest surveillance agency has a working relationship with the world’s largest Internet firm, that’s no one’s business but theirs, according to an appeals court in the DC Circuit. In the ruling issued Friday, (PDF here ) the court decided that the National Security Agency doesn’t need to either confirm or deny its relationship with Google in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, ruling that a FOIA exemption covers any documents whose exposure might hinder the NSA’s national security mission. Read Article
BBC – Bosses of the UK’s biggest companies earn millions in “excess remuneration”, a report reveals. Pay packages designed to incentivise FTSE 100 chief executives had little effect on company performance, it found. Reckitt Benckiser, ICAP, and BG Group are among the “worst value FTSE 100 companies”, said Zurich-based financial research firm Obermatt. Read Article
Guardian – Lord Mandelson has been recruited to advise a multinational company accused of illegally chopping down endangered rainforest. The Labour peer and his staff in the political consultancy that he set up after leaving government have been meeting officials on behalf of Asia Pulp and Paper. For more than a decade, APP, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, has been accused by environmental groups such as Greenpeace of destroying thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest and endangering some of the world’s rarest animals. A growing number of firms have boycotted APP. The disclosure comes as Mandelson and other peers are expected to face pressure from the House of Lords authorities to declare their clients. Read article
AP — A deadly lead poisoning outbreak that began two years ago in northern Nigeria continues to claim young victims even today, an aid agency official said Thursday, while calling on the government to do more to protect those at risk. Ivan Gayton of Doctors Without Borders also criticized the government of oil-rich Nigeria for not taking the threat seriously, despite 4,000 children already being sickened by the outbreak linked to gold mining. Foreign aid groups have done much of the work to clean the villages affected in rural Zamfara state and provide care to the children, who likely will suffer long-term brain damage from their exposure to the lead. Read article
Spiegel – Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned. Sources in the German government said that the ministers were “very skeptical” about fracking, which injects chemicals as well as sand and water into the ground to release natural gas. “There are many open questions which we will first have to carefully examine,” Rösler told close associates. Read article
AFP – Laos has postponed construction of a controversial dam on the Mekong, an official said Thursday, dismissing fears that the work was going ahead despite growing regional opposition. “There is no construction on the Mekong river,” Viraphonh Viravong, director general of the Ministry of Energy and Mines’ department of electricity, told AFP by telephone. Read article
Business Insider – U.S. corporations are selling drones to undisclosed foreign governments for anti-narcotics and anti-terrorism operations, according to Teddy Wilson at The American Independent. The global market for unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones) is growing rapidly as the use of drones expands from military to domestic law enforcement. The U.S. government sells drones to other countries through Foreign Military Sales, and U.S. corporations can sell drones and other defense technologies directly to foreign governments after going through a screening process run by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Read Article
Bloomberg – Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Merck & Co. (MRK) are being pulled into an expanding congressional investigation about the agreement drugmakers reached with the Obama administration to support the Democrats’ overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, according to three people familiar with the talks. The probe began last year, with Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking documents from an industry trade group, said the people, who aren’t authorized to speak publicly. Read article
Business Day – John Auta, the Acting Director of Forestry Department, Federal Ministry of Environment has decried the illegal production of charcoal in the country, saying it aggravate the process of deforestation in the country. He appealed to marketers of kerosene to make it accessible to all Nigerians so as to reduce the over-dependence on forestry products as alternative energy sources. Read article
Reuters – U.S. drug reviewers on Monday questioned whether the benefits of Pfizer Inc’s experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis outweighed its risks of cancerous cells and infections. The Food and Drug Administration staff said the drug, called tofacitinib, appeared to reduce swollen and tender joints during clinical trials. But the staff questioned the method of analyzing X-rays to prove the drug worked. Read article
Reuters – U.S. drug reviewers on Tuesday said Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc’s obesity pill appeared to help people lose weight and was unlikely to cause tumors in humans, but questioned if the company had provided enough data to rule out heart problems. Lorcaserin is one of three new potential obesity treatments vying to gain U.S. approval and be the first new weight-loss treatment on the market in over a decade, after initial rejections over safety issues. Read article
CN – Exposure to chemical dispersants BP used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill left a commercial diver with seizures, unable to walk and going blind – and two members of his dive team committed suicide, the man claims in Harris County Court. David Hogan and his wife sued BP and NALCO Co. – which made the Corexit oil dispersants – and a host of other defendants, including Halliburton, Transocean, ConocoPhillips, Xplore Oil & Gas and Stuyvesant Dredging Co. Read article
WSJ – Skype was told a year and a half ago about a security flaw that allows for the location tracking of customers, but left it unfixed, the security researchers who first discovered the vulnerability told CIO Journal. The flaw, which allows hackers to secretly track IP addresses, should be of interest to CIOs. Skype, which is now owned by Microsoft, said last year about 37% of its 663 million community members use the “Skype product platform occasionally or often for business-related purposes.” r
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CNN – The U.S. Treasury is giving up $14 billion in tax revenue because of a sweetheart deal it’s giving General Motors. The automaker is expected to post its first profitable year since 2004 when it reports fourth-quarter results on Thursday. But GM (GM) won’t have to worry about being hit with a big tax bill because billions in previous losses will provide shelter for years to come. Read article
CRI English – U.S. toothpaste brand Crest stated on Wednesday that the fluoride toothpaste products it sells on the Chinese mainland meet the Chinese national standards, after netizens expressed concern regarding the ingredients in the products, China Network Television reports. A Chinese netizen posted a microblog on Sunday night, quoting a CEO who tested the ingredients of Crest fluoride toothpaste bought in Shanghai, stating that the product contained no fluoride but did contain industrial waste. Fluoride in toothpaste benefits the formation of dental enamel and bones. However, children are not recommended to use fluoride toothpaste as fluoride may affect their normal growth. Read article
Business Insider – After taking heat for shipping jobs to China and contracting to employers with questionable labor conditions, Apple (rather publicly) took credit for creating more than half a million jobs in the U.S.; 514,000 to be exact. … But what about the competitors Apple has bumped off in its relentless move to the top? … What happened to those jobs? Business Insider analyzed data on Bloomberg, went through dozens of 10-Ks, and read through layoff announcements to see how Apple’s peers have done. Read article
ScienceDaily — While chlorpyrifos is no longer registered for household use in the US, it continues to be widely used around the world, as well as on many food and agricultural products throughout the US. Even low to moderate levels of exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos during pregnancy may lead to long-term, potentially irreversible changes in the brain structure of the child, according to a new brain imaging study … The changes in brain structure are consistent with cognitive deficits found in children exposed to this chemical. Read article
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