Tuesday, Dec 02nd
Last update08:29:24 AM GMT
Technology giants Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard used offshore units to shield billions of dollars from US taxes by taking advantage of loopholes in the tax code, a US Senate panel has said.
Describing tax avoidance as rampant in the technology sector, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said tech companies used intellectual property, royalties and license fees in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands to skirt US taxes.
We're suffocating ourselves with CO2 from our ravenous use of energy too dirty to burn anymore. As tundras warm and thaw, methane is released, too -- many factors more dangerous than killing CO2.
Yes, and sea ice will calve, collapse, and melt. Oceans will rise. The lost reflectivity of snow and ice spirals up our heat, too. Rising CO2 poisons the seas, whose creatures provide half the air we breathe. Droughts march and wildly imperil anything green -- food stocks, plants and forests trying to trade us poison for fresh air.
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has developed a novel variety of genetically-modified (GM) wheat that contains an altered protein and enzyme-suppressing mechanism that some scientists are now saying could cause serious problems for the human liver. A recent report compiled by several acclaimed experts in the field of genetics says that children born to parents who consume this GM wheat variety could actually end up dying before they reach the age of five.
At a time when states are struggling to reduce bloated prison populations and tight budgets, a private prison management company is offering to buy prisons in exchange for various considerations, including a controversial guarantee that the governments maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years.
The $250 million proposal, circulated by the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America to prison officials in 48 states, has been blasted by some state officials who suggest such a program could pressure criminal justice officials to seek harsher sentences to maintain the contractually required occupancy rates.
The Hubble Space Telescope has detected light from a small galaxy emitted about 500 million years after the big bang, an early era of the universe about which scientists know relatively little.
Last year, astronomers used Hubble to find another galaxy at a redshift of about 10, suggesting it was formed 480 million years after the big bang. But the help from gravity's magnifying glass allowed the CLASH team to learn more detail about MACS 1149-JD, Zheng said.
In the first ever study to examine the long-term effects of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and the NK603 Roundup-resistant GM maize also developed by Monsanto, the CRIIGEN scientists found that rats exposed to even the smallest amounts, developed mammary tumors and severe liver and kidney damage as early as four months in males, and seven months for females, compared with 23 and 14 months respectively for a control group.
Organic rice baby cereal, rice breakfast cereals, brown rice, white rice—new tests by Consumer Reports have found that those and other types of rice products on grocery shelves contain arsenic, many at worrisome levels.
Arsenic not only is a potent human carcinogen but also can set up children for other health problems in later life.
Following our January investigation, "Arsenic in Your Juice," which found arsenic in apple and grape juices, we recently tested more than 200 samples of a host of rice products. They included iconic labels and store brands, organic products and conventional ones; some were aimed at the booming gluten-free market.
Italy's highest appeals court has upheld guilty verdicts on 23 Americans, all but one of them CIA agents, accused of kidnapping a terror suspect. Their case related to the abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003.The man, known as Abu Omar, was allegedly flown to Egypt and tortured.
The Americans were tried in absentia, in the first trial involving extraordinary rendition, the CIA's practice of transferring suspects to countries where torture is permitted.
Deepening the mystery surrounding the health effects of bisphenol A, a large new study has linked high levels of childhood and adolescent exposure to the industrial chemical to higher rates of obesity — in white children only.
The latest research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., measured bisphenol A, or BPA, levels in the urine of a diverse group of 2,838 Americans ages 6 to 19. Researchers from New York University also reviewed data on the participants' weight, dietary intake, physical activity and socioeconomic backgrounds.
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