Biafra Activist - Biafra Or Dead. No Going Back

BMW and Daimler, Once Rivals, Join Forces to Fend Off Silicon Valley

UncategorisedLeave a comment

BMW and Daimler, Once Rivals, Join Forces to Fend Off Silicon Valley Photo Combined, BMW’s DriveNow car-sharing service and Daimler’s Car2Go will have four million users, the companies said. Credit Inga Kjer/DPA, via Associated Press FRANKFURT — The German carmakers Daimler and BMW said on Thursday that they will merge their car-sharing businesses as they try to compete better with Silicon Valley companies out to upend the traditional automotive industry.
Daimler, the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars, and BMW said they would put their respective mobility services — an array of apps and services that provide transport options for people who may not own cars — into a joint venture in which they will own equal shares.
The alliance is a major departure for BMW and Daimler, longtime rivals for the affections of affluent car buyers. Along with Volkswagen’s Audi division, the pair dominate the global market for luxury vehicles. Still, they are in danger of being overwhelmed by the superior financi..

Turner Chief Pushes Back on Core Justice Dept. Argument

UncategorisedLeave a comment

Turner Chief Pushes Back on Core Justice Dept. Argument

Video

If Media Giants Grow, So May Your Bills

The government doesn’t want you to pay too much to watch your shows. That’s why the Justice Department says it is challenging the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner.

By ERICA BERENSTEIN on Publish Date March 22, 2018.

Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters.

Watch in Times Video »

embed

WASHINGTON — The head of Turner Broadcasting on Wednesday pushed back against one of the central arguments of the government’s case to block the AT&T and Time Warner merger, saying that his company’s channels would not be used as a weapon against rivals if the deal went through.
The Justice Department has argued that Turner, which is owned by Time Warner, owns “must-have” channels like CNN and TNT that the merged company would use as leverage in negotiations with other cable and satellite TV operators. But John Martin, the chief executive of Turner, told a federal court that his cha..

Mass Die-Off of Whales in Atlantic Is Being Investigated

SCIENCELeave a comment

Mass Die-Off of Whales in Atlantic Is Being Investigated Photo Workers inspecting a dead humpback whale that washed up on Rockaway Beach in Queens this month. Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images Humpback whales have been dying in extraordinary numbers along the Eastern Seaboard since the beginning of last year. Marine biologists have a term for it — an “unusual mortality event” — but they have no firm idea why it is happening.
Forty-one whales have died in the past 15 months along the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine. In a news conference on Thursday, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries said that they had not identified the underlying reason for the mass death, but that 10 of the whales are known to have been killed by collisions with ships.
The agency is starting a broad inquiry into the deaths.
These whales “have evidence of blunt force trauma, or large propeller cuts,” said Deborah Fauquier, a veterinary medical officer at the agency..

The New Threat to Wolves in and Around Yellowstone

SCIENCELeave a comment

The New Threat to Wolves in and Around Yellowstone
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The vast, sagebrush-studded valleys in this huge chunk of wild country, teeming with herds of elk and bison, are home these days to 10 packs of wolves.
Once among the first species to be listed as endangered, the gray wolf has made a healthy comeback within Yellowstone National Park and its bordering states. Since 1995-96 when 31 wolves were trucked into the park from Canada, their numbers have grown and stabilized to the point that officials could essentially post a “no vacancy sign” at Yellowstone. That’s because the park’s wolf population has hovered for the last decade at 100, give or take, which experts consider Yellowstone’s carrying capacity.
Protected on parkland, gray wolves show little fear of humans, often living out their lives within view of roads. They attract thousands of tourists a year who sometimes become witnesses to the life-or-death dramas between predator and prey.
And some catch..

Stella McCartney Will Take Full Control of Her Fashion Brand

BUSINESSLeave a comment

Supported by Business Day Stella McCartney Will Take Full Control of Her Fashion Brand Photo The British designer Stella McCartney at a fashion show this month in Paris. She founded her brand in 2001 as a partnership with what is now Kering. Credit Patrick Kovarik/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images LONDON — Stella McCartney will buy back the 50 percent stake in her namesake fashion brand owned by the French luxury group Kering, ending a 17-year partnership and establishing the British designer as a rare independent label in a rapidly consolidating market.
The deal, announced Wednesday, followed months of speculation that Ms. McCartney and Kering were negotiating a sale.
Ms. McCartney, 46, founded the brand in 2001 as a joint venture with what is now Kering. Together they positioned Stella McCartney as one of the first luxury brands with socially conscious values, including sustainable fashion, and built it into one of the most prominent names in British fashion.
Ms. McCartney bui..

Equifax Picks Private Equity Executive as New C.E.O.

BUSINESSLeave a comment

Supported by Business Day Equifax Picks Private Equity Executive as New C.E.O. Photo Equifax, one of the so-called big three credit reporting bureaus, is based in Atlanta. Last year it disclosed a data breach that exposed information of 148 million people. Credit Tami Chappell/Reuters Equifax on Wednesday named Mark Begor, a private equity executive who once led General Electric’s credit card business, as its new chief executive.
Mr. Begor, 59, takes over for Paulino do Rego Barros Jr., who has filled the role on an interim basis since September, when Richard F. Smith stepped down after a data breach exposed sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 148 million people.
Mr. Begor, a managing director at the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, will start at Equifax on April 16. He is also a member of the board at the credit-scoring company FICO, a position he plans to give up before joining Equifax.
Equifax said it would give Mr. Begor stock and options v..

Medicare Is Cracking Down on Opioids. Doctors Fear Pain Patients Will Suffer.

HEALTHLeave a comment

Medicare Is Cracking Down on Opioids. Doctors Fear Pain Patients Will Suffer. Officials are close to limiting doses of the painkillers, but doctors say doing so could put older patients into withdrawal or lead them to buy deadly street drugs.
Medicare officials thought they had finally figured out how to do their part to fix the troubling problem of opioids being overprescribed to the old and disabled: In 2016, a staggering one in three of the 43.6 million beneficiaries of the program’s drug plan had been prescribed the painkillers.
Medicare, they decided, would now refuse to pay for long-term, high-dose prescriptions; a rule to that effect is expected to be approved on April 2. Some medical experts have praised the regulation as a check on addiction.
But the proposal has also drawn a broad and clamorous blowback from many people who would be directly affected by it, including patients with chronic pain, primary care doctors and experts in pain management and addiction medicine.
Criti..

For Many Strokes, There’s an Effective Treatment. Why Aren’t Some Doctors Offering It?

HEALTHLeave a comment

Supported by Health For Many Strokes, There’s an Effective Treatment. Why Aren’t Some Doctors Offering It? It was one of those findings that would change medicine, Dr. Christopher Lewandowski thought.
For years, doctors had tried — and failed — to find a treatment that would preserve the brains of stroke patients. The task was beginning to seem hopeless: Once a clot blocked a blood vessel supplying the brain, its cells quickly began to die. Patients and their families could only pray that the damage would not be too extensive.
But then a large federal clinical trial proved that a so-called clot-buster drug, tissue plasminogen activator (T.P.A.), could prevent brain injury after a stroke by opening up the blocked vessel. Dr. Lewandowski, an emergency medicine physician at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and the trial’s principal investigator, was ecstatic.
“We felt the data was so strong we didn’t have to explain it” in the published report, he said.
He was wrong. That groundbr..

Public Health: You’d Be Surprised at How Many Foods Contain Added Sugar

HEALTHLeave a comment

You’d Be Surprised at How Many Foods Contain Added Sugar Photo Some pasta sauces have high amounts of added sugar. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times You may know there’s added sugar in your Coke or cookies. But did you know that it’s in your salad dressing, pasta sauce and bread?
The Food and Drug Administration came out Friday with its new template for nutrition labels. One big change was the addition of a line for “added sugar,” to be placed below a line for total sugar. The change is designed to distinguish between sugars that are naturally occurring in a food — like the milk sugar in a plain yogurt — and the sugars that food manufacturers include later to boost flavors — like the “evaporated cane juice” in a Chobani Kids strawberry yogurt.
A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina conducted a detailed survey of the packaged foods and drinks that are purchased in American grocery stores and found that 60 percent of them include some form of added sugar. When the..