Originally published on Thu September 27, 2012 9:12 am
Rent-to-own companies may have a right to use software to track the computers they lease out — and disable them remotely if a customer stops making payments.
But they don't have the right to spy on their customers, which is exactly what the Federal Trade Commission says took place. The agency found that the compromised data included everything from passwords to highly personal images.
Frustration over the NFL's not-ready-for-primetime replacement referees has inspired web designer Erik Johnson to present Google as if its search engine had replacement engineers at the controls. The result is a web page that looks a lot like the standard Google Search page — with a note that it is sponsored by the NFL.
Originally published on Thu September 27, 2012 7:42 am
Months after his sudden removal from his post in Afghanistan, Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair has been charged with multiple violations of the military's Uniform Code, ranging from wrongful sexual conduct to several rules violations.
For our Newscast desk, NPR's Tom Bowman reports that "Sinclair faces multiple counts of sexual misconduct and maltreatment of subordinates, as well as charges he violated orders by possessing alcohol and pornography while deployed."
Winemakers like Stellios Boutaris, shown near his vineyard outside Naoussa, Greece, and other business leaders have been forced to pursue new financial tactics because credit is hard to come by.
Credit JIm Zarroli / NPR
Grapes ripen on the vine at Kir-Yianni vineyard outside Naoussa, Greece.
When the economic crisis erupted in Greece and the bottom fell out of the domestic wine market, the Kir-Yianni vineyard outside picturesque Naoussa decided to adapt. Like other wineries in Greece, it has increasingly tapped the export market, successfully marketing and selling wine in Europe, the United States and even China.
"If you ask me, this crisis has been good for us," says Stellios Boutaris, the son of the company's founder. "It's going to make us stronger."
Cheryl Gleasner, a research technologist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, works with a genome sequencing machine designed for disease surveillance. Since the SARS epidemic in 2003, advances in sequencing technologies have greatly speed up the ability to detect and track a new virus.
Credit BSIP / UIG via Getty Images
Coronaviruses get their name from the crown-like tentacles that surround their rims.
Credit Courtesy of Health Protection Agency.
The new coronavirus has been tentatively named London1_novel CoV 2012. A small piece of its genome tells researchers how closely related the virus is to other known coronavirus, such as SARS.
In January, NPR and ProPublica reported on a potential conflict of interest at Freddie Mac, a mortgage giant sponsored by the federal government. The stories noted that even as Freddie Mac was writing rules making it harder for homeowners to refinance their mortgages, it also was stepping up investments in securities that gain when homeowners remain stuck in high-rate loans.
Or, more accurately, making sure Hegge Jeanette Oksnes has recently given birth — or is just about to.
Last week, her brother, 19-year-old Tord Oksnes, won 12.2 million kroner ($2.12 million) and became the latest member of the Oksnes family to win Norway's national lottery — a few months after his sister gave birth to her third child.
Originally published on Wed September 26, 2012 1:58 pm
A year ago, Omran Ben Shaaban was among the young men who helped capture Moammar Gadhafi as the former Libyan leader tried to hide in a drainage ditch.
This spectacular image of the large spiral galaxy NGC 1232 was obtained by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 1998. NGC 1232 sits in the constellation Eridanus (The River) at a distance of about 100 million light-years and is about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
Where does the Universe end? Or, to put it differently, does the Universe have an edge? When cosmologists say that the Universe is expanding, people tend to think of an exploding bomb. They see galaxies as shrapnel, flying off in all directions. Even if intuitive, this image is dead wrong.
The cosmic expansion is an expansion of space itself. Since Einstein's theory of general relativity, space has been endowed with a plasticity that allows it to expand, shrink or fold like a rubber balloon in response to the presence of matter (and energy).
Spend a little time where seniors hang out and there's a good chance you'll hear about somebody getting a new knee — maybe two.
Some figures pulled from Medicare data analyzed in the latest JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, help explain why.
There are about 600,000 knee replacements a year now, at a cost of around $15,000 a piece. All told, the tab for all that orthopedic work is about $9 billion a year, the JAMA study says.
Reinforcing some things you might have suspected, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, along with the Knight Foundation, report today that a national telephone survey of adults finds:
Originally published on Thu September 27, 2012 3:13 pm
In the fairy-tale world, a shiny red apple can lead to a poisonous end. But some see two genetically engineered green apple varieties, poised to become the first to gain U.S. Department of Agriculture approval,as similar harbingers of doom.
