Drunk autopilot. by Barbie Kunkelova

The Exxon Valdez oil spill took place on March 24, 1989 in Alaska. It was probably the most devastating environmental disaster caused by a human ever to occur at sea. The accident happened at midnight while the ship was on autopilot and hit a coral reef. Around 11 million gallons of crude oil (out of 53 that were on the board) were spilled into the water. No wonder that thousands of salmons (chronic exposure to the oil boosted mortality among salmon eggs for over four years afterwards), sea otters, seals and sea birds (over 250,000, according to Science Daily) were killed. As the scientists found out in year 2003, the effects this spill had on the Prince William Sound are still showing. Those toxic insults to the Alaskan environment have long-term impacts on various plant and animal species. The experiments showed that the oil has persisted in large quantities for years after the accident. It is crucial to get exact results in order to motivate the oil companies to better control their shipping. Revising and enforcing the water quality standards can help restore fisheries' production lost due to pollution. On Monday, October 30, (18 years after the spill) the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. agreed to consider whether a federal jury ordered the oil giant Exxon Mobil to pay illegally high punitive damages. Lawyers supporting Exxon argued that $2.5 billion was way too much as a way of compensation to the fishermen, cannery workers and others. Exxon stated that at issue it a maritime law that says that ship owners are not responsible for damages caused by the ship-master who disregarded the owner's policies and orders - Joseph Hazelwood drove the ship under the influence of alcohol. So far Exxon Mobil paid $3.4 billion in cleanup costs and government fines. According to ANH, the challenge for the remaining $2.5 billion is rumored to start in early 2008.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_on_bi_ge/scotus_exxon_valdez;_ylt=AlD8aHlJ3EkBhWA1IqBkSI2s0NUE

by Barbie Kunkelova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

You have 41 new text messages. by Barbie Kunkelova

Roughly forty-seven people communicating via the same social networking website (the so-called Facebook Inc.) are a pretty strong proof of this phenomenon's success and fame. Originally, it was launched by a Harvard graduate Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of 2004 for the purpose of improving communication among Harvard students. He named it after the facebooks the college students (freshmen) are given when they enroll at the university. It is designed to help the students to get to know each other easier. Throughout the next few months Facebook expanded to more American colleges in Boston Area and more and more joined it during the upcoming years. Probably due to a globalization stimulus Facebook spread and was available worldwide & to anyone who possessed a college or university e-mail address (India or Israel joined it in 2006). Nowadays you don't have to be educated to join. The sign-in process has now only certain age requirements. After three years of functioning Mark's website made it to worlds seventh most visited webpage and it became the number one among college students (along with beating any other webpage by the amount of uploaded photos (8.5 million daily, according to Wikipedia). It cooperates with companies like iTunes or YouTube. In May, Facebook announced it will launch a new feature, the Facebook Marketplace. Here free classified advertisements are possible. An issue with text messaging arose on Monday. Lindsey Abrams filed a lawsuit against Facebook for receiving offending messages from it to her new cell phone. She was also charged for all of them. After her case was publicized, thousands of people with new phones complained about the same problem. Many huge corporations (like Microsoft, according to WSJ) tried to buy a minority stake in Facebook, but Mark is determined to keep Facebook independent.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071022/ap_on_hi_te/facebook_lawsuit;_ylt=AmcLBwWRFkw5BNaWjPsP5Xqs0NUE

by Barbie Kunkelova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

Microsoft bails out by Claudia Sonea

After years of legal battle with EU Competition Commission, on Monday Microsoft dropped and agreed to share software information with rivals in order to make programs to operate on Windows. The largest software company in the world will smooth access to the open source developers who according to the EU are the only virtual alternative users have and also confirmed that will not appeal anymore a EU Court of First Instance decision on September 17 that rejected its objection to the 2004 order gave by European Commission finding it guilty of monopoly abuse. The settlement is the result of negotiations between EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during a period of three weeks. Kroes declared that the company will no longer monopolize 95 percent share of all desktop operating system; there will be only a one-time fee of 10000 euros to any software developer, including those operating open source systems like Lynux. Also developers like IBM Corp or and Sun Microsystems Inc that sell software based on Lynux will pay a worldwide patent fee of 0.4 percent of revenues for Microsoft's data. This differs from the initial demands of Microsoft that demanded a percentage of future sales and the original rate for patent fee was 5.95 percent. Moreover, it will charge now for only 31 server protocols instead of 154 originally offered for protocol. EU Competition Commissionier also stated that Vista version might pose problems due to the Internet search, integrated security software, digital rights management tools for copyright protection. Shane Coughlan of the Free Software Foundation Europe although admits to be a big change for Microsoft, prefers to wait and see how will everything go in practice. Nevertheless, this change had added 34 cents at the company's shares. Stay connected and find out if the trust will pay the fine of 497 millions euros and comply to the 2004 EU decisions until the end.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071022/ap_on_hi_te/eu_microsoft;_ylt=ArZFhb6TYFSgRDoWBhkZJj.s0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.

Catch me if you can! by Barbie Kunkelova

I bet you a $100 bill that any person in this bank knows the name Frank Abagnale Jr. On the contrary, I bet they know everything about him. This young man was a criminal back in the 1960s, a pretty famous criminal indeed. He wrote false checks (worth more than $5.2 million) all over the world and represented himself as a qualified member of professions such as a doctor, attorney, sociology teacher at a university or American Airlines pilot. After 5 prosperous years he got caught but at the same time became so knowledgeable about fraud that he opened a financial fraud consultancy company after expiating 5 years of working for the US government without getting salary. He did all this for fun. What is the situation of "cleaning the money" today? Money-laundering, according to Wikipedia, is the practice of engaging in specific financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source or destination of money. Both individuals and firms do this deception for personal gains. However, in order to spare some money, people don't have to necessarily hide money's background information. They can also deceive the law by tax evasion and tax avoidance. Or smartly participate by presenting false accounting. This is a natural part of the business world. The fun is keeping the won money. And I bet you even $500 that the Lloyds TSB Bank or Bank of Cyprus are not going to enjoy the outcome of their money-laundering. The US federal prosecutors filed charges against Lloyds of $130 million and of $162 million for Bank of Cyprus. In the case of Lloyds TSB Bank this is not the first fraud & the last one happened in year 2002.

related story: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20071015/tts-uk-lloyds-bankofcyprus-suit-a8bf950_2.html

by Barbie Kunkelova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.