Category: corporate corruption

Google has partnered with the United Nations, World Health Organisation and others in a new global censorship tool that was introduced last Monday, according to LaToya Drake, head of Google News Lab. Below are the short descriptions from GNI’s ‘About’ page.  The titles are misleading.  For example, following the ‘Our partners’ hyperlink contained in the words “learn more” does not lead to a list or overview of its partners.  It leads to ‘Case Studies’: Some “stories” about “how news organisations around the…

Shares of Sage Therapeutics fell more than 50% Monday after the Food and Drug Administration approved the biotech company’s oral drug zuranolone for postpartum depression, but not for major depressive disorder, a bigger potential market. Shares of Biogen, which jointly developed the treatment with Sage, were up modestly. Who is Sage Therapeutics? Biogen Inc owns more than 10% of Sage Therapeutics, while FMR LLC owns almost 10%. Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC  owns almost 12% and Wellington Management Co….

Canadian news industry groups have asked the country’s antitrust regulator to investigate Meta Platforms’ decision to block news on its platforms in the country, accusing the Facebook parent of abusing its dominant position. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada last week in response to a law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Canada’s Online News Act, part of a global trend to make tech firms pay for news, became…

The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses. A new cleanup effort has been ordered. The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by missile community members,” Air Force Global Strike Command said in a release Monday. In those samples, two…

Intellexa (AKA Intellexa Anonymi Etaireia), an alliance of digital intelligence firms in Greece run by an ex-Israeli intel officer, and Cytrox AD (AKA Sytrox), which produces their Predator spyware, added to U.S. ‘entity list’ which already includes Israel’s NSO and Candiru. Late last year, Citizen Lab uncovered the hacking of an Egyptian dissident’s phone. The affected device was host to two forms of malware, one created by NSO Group and the other by Cytrox. According to the Citizen Lab investigation, these infections were…

Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to put Sam Bankman-Fried in jail ahead of his trial, which is scheduled to start in October. As he considers their request, the judge has imposed a broad, temporary gag order in the case. There were audible gasps in the courtroom on Wednesday when prosecutors told the judge they were seeking Bankman-Fried’s detention. His defense attorney, Mark S. Cohen, said he was only notified of the ask “one minute before court.” Bankman-Fried has been…

The judge in the Hunter Biden case said Wednesday she is not ready to accept the plea deal struck between the president’s son and the Justice Department, and asked both parties to submit additional briefs and return to the court on a future date. Judge Maryellen Noreika demanded that the lawyers from both sides make clear that the deal does not convey broad immunity offered to Biden from prosecution on his business dealings. As a result, Hunter Biden pleaded not…

The French-Italian owner of the Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear brands was sued for allegedly scheming with competitors to inflate prices by as much as 1,000%. Paris-based EssilorLuxottica SA, the world’s largest eyewear company, is the “instigator and primary enforcer” of the price-fixing scheme in the US market, forming illegal agreements with Frames for America Inc. and For Eyes Optical Co., among others, according to the consumer antitrust complaint filed Friday in San Francisco federal court as a proposed class action….

U.S. prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering and asked a federal judge to issue an order that would bar the former billionaire and other parties from making public statements likely to interfere with a fair trial. The prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referencing a New York Times article titled “Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case.” The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s personal Google documents…

Former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges of withholding and concealing classified and top-secret documents will begin in Florida on May 20, 2024. That schedule puts the trial at the tail end of the Republican presidential primary process. Trump is currently the front-runner for the GOP nomination and already may have become the nominee by that time. In an order issued in Ft. Pierce, Fla., U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon says the evidence in the case is “extremely voluminous…

“The US Department of State has finally turned into the ‘Ministry of Truth’ predicted by George Orwell and actually dictates to the American media what exactly they should write and say. In June, the Department of State issued instructions to major telecommunications holdings such as AT&T, Comcast Corporation, Graham Media Group, Nash Holdings, Newsweek Publishing, and The New York Times Company to misrepresent events in and around Russia,” the SVR said in a statement, adding that the goal is to…

BENGALURU – Nearly 900 Amazon workers at a warehouse in Britain will stage a strike for three days in the coming week over a pay dispute, labour union GMB said on Saturday. The strike will take place from July 11-13 at Amazon’s warehouse in Coventry, for two hours during the morning and two hours in the evening on the three days, GMB said in an emailed statement to Reuters. It coincides with a “Prime Day” sales event the company has…

This July 3 marks the 10th anniversary of Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah Sisi’s violent seizure of power in Cairo. The first democratically elected leader in 5000 years of Egyptian history, Mohamed Morsi, was swept from office, his supporters were massacred by the hundreds, and he ultimately died in prison. With US and UK support, Sisi quickly reversed any tentative democratic gains made during the country’s brief, difficult transition from the rule of longtime Western-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak. In…

Dr. Jordan Peterson, the ex-University of Toronto psychology professor who gained fame for his vigorous defense of free speech, has been subjected to what is perceived as a systemic censorship effort by YouTube. A popular figure in media circles, Peterson’s prolific online presence took a hit when the video-sharing platform decided to censor his account, a move the professor lamented on social media. On Wednesday, the professor shared on Twitter a copy of the email he received from YouTube justifying…

  The body of missing 59-year-old Mexican journalist Luis Martín Sanchez Iniguez was found in the Mexican state of Nayarit with signs of violence, the state public prosecutor’s office confirmed Saturday. Sanchez Iniguez worked for the newspaper La Jornada. He had been missing since Wednesday and his wife filed a missing person’s report with Mexican authorities on Friday. His body was found on the outskirts of the city of Tepic. It was not immediately clear how he died, but authorities…

HOUSTON – On the afternoon of July 4, as Americans were celebrating the country’s independence with elaborate fireworks displays, a prisoner named Joseph Martire passed out in his cell in Texas, amid the excessive heat that has been swamping much of the southern United States in recent days. In concrete, brick and metal penitentiaries, industrial fans churn warm vapour without really cooling the air. And with no air-conditioning in most prisons, when outside temperatures exceed 40 deg C, it can…