Some 46 million people in Britain could potentially benefit from a legal case brought against Mastercard (MA.N) demanding 14 billion pounds ($19 billion) in damages for allegedly charging excessive fees, according to court documents filed in London.

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Submitted on September 9th 2016 by jasont

Food labels aren't just nutritional information anymore: they're moral statements about everything from fair trade to palm oil. But let's not confuse shopping with effective political action.

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Submitted on September 8th 2016 by kxh with 1 comments

After this week's unveiling of the new water-resistant, headphone jack-free iPhone 7, Apple kicked off an ad campaign with the phrase "This is 7," apparently not knowing that directly translating that to Cantonese basically means "This is penis" or "dick" in slang. As Quartz reports, Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong are delighted with the unintended joke, since the character for "seven," pronounced tsat, is frequently used in slang not only for "penis" but to mean "goofy" or "dorky," as in "You're so seven."

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by geoleo with 1 Related Links:

1. Does the new iPhone 7 slogan mean "precisely penis" in Chinese? Added by gladsdotter on September 11th 2016.

Some prominent economists contend that a minimum wage high enough to provide a decent standard of living poses too high a risk of job loss. But this fear is purely speculative; we have no reliable evidence that a $15 wage floor, phased in over four to six years, would cause declining employment opportunities for low-wage workers. Indeed, the wage threshold at which substantial employment effects are likely to occur may be considerably higher.

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Submitted on September 6th 2016 by spaceghoti with 1 Related Links:

1. A Message to Working People on Labor Day from a former labor secretary Added by spaceghoti on September 6th 2016.

Google is working on a technology that would help its self-driving car sensors identify emergency vehicles, according to a newly published patent application. At the core of the technology is the ability for a car to identify a set of lights and determine whether they are emergency vehicles or not, according to the patent.

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Submitted on September 9th 2016 by 8mm

It's not every day that Mr. Bean makes an appearance in the Wall Street Journal's commodities coverage. And that might not even be the strangest finding in the Journal's investigation into a massive pile of aluminum that allegedly just sat there, unused, in the Mexican desert for years. To start, some background: China's growing industrial sector has been hard on the aluminum producers in the United States. In 2000 there were 23 smelters operating nationwide, now there are only five.

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Submitted on September 10th 2016 by gottlieb

In its biggest expansion in decades, Yosemite National Park on Wednesday broadened its western boundary by adding 400 acres of lush meadowlands edged with cedars and ponderosa pines that provide habitat for some of California’s most threatened wildlife. The nonprofit Trust for Public Land purchased Ackerson Meadow from private owners for $2.3 million this year and donated it Wednesday to the National Park Service, marking Yosemite National Park’s largest addition of untrammeled wilderness in seven decades. Yosemite now stands at roughly 750,000 acres.

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Submitted on September 8th 2016 by messi

Copyright trolls are known for their dubious tactics but a new report from Canada shows just how low they can sink. According to the University of Manitoba’s copyright office, among a flood of 8,000 piracy notices are some warning students that they could lose their scholarships or even be deported if they don't pay a fine.

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Submitted on September 11th 2016 by funhonestdude with 1 comments

Stories of insurance companies refusing to pay out have existed for about as long as insurance companies themselves. Yet few can be as surprising, elaborate, or involve as many bizarre details as the case of British expat Christopher Robinson and the fire that destroyed his $1.6 million mansion in New Zealand. Mr Robinson, in his late sixties, moved to a remote part of North Island near Kerikeri with his wife and two children in 2005.

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Submitted on September 6th 2016 by dianep

Wells Fargo said on Thursday it fired 5,300 employees for creating ghost accounts over the past five years without the knowledge of customers.

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Submitted on September 8th 2016 by Appaloosa

FamilyMart, Japan’s 3rd largest convenience store chain, and UNY, the owner of fourth-ranked Circle K Sunkus, merged this week, creating the country's second-largest convenience store chain. And today, the newly formed company announced it's new name and logo: FU.

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Submitted on September 6th 2016 by gladsdotter

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'" author Seth Grahame-Smith is being sued by his publisher to return his advance. From Julian Assange to Amy Schumer, he isn’t alone. The last laugh? Amy Schumer, who returned her $1m HarperCollins advance, and then signed a contact for more than $8m with Gallery Books.

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Submitted on September 6th 2016 by gladsdotter

In a searing investigation into the once lauded biotech start-up Theranos, Nick Bilton discovers that its precocious founder defied medical experts—even her own chief scientist—about the veracity of its now discredited blood-testing technology.

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Submitted on September 7th 2016 by gladsdotter

The Copyright Office, isolated from effective mechanisms of governmental accountability, has become deeply and troublingly captured by major entertainment industries and other rightsholder interests.

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Submitted on September 9th 2016 by kxh

Dell said it completed its $60 billion deal to acquire EMC, the largest technology merger in history.

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Submitted on September 7th 2016 by ilyas

Lots of people have been talking the past few days about TorrentFreak's discovery of the fact that Warner Bros., via its hired DMCA agent Vobile, has been issuing DMCA takedowns on its own website. Specifically, in recent notices to Google from Vobile, on behalf of Warner Bros., the infringing domains include WB's own official websites for movies like "Batman, the Dark Knight" and "The Matrix."

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Submitted on September 7th 2016 by ilyas

UK tech firm Micro Focus is buying the software business of a division of Hewlett-Packard for $8.8bn (£6.6bn). The deal makes Micro Focus one of the UK's biggest tech companies, with total annual revenues of $4.5bn (£3.4bn). It is acquiring assets from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), including former UK tech champion Autonomy which HP bought in an ill-fated deal in 2011. Micro Focus was promoted to the FTSE 100 last week, replacing ARM after it was bought by Japan's Softbank.

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Submitted on September 8th 2016 by zyery

The Swedish Government is drafting a law that could lead to fines for listed companies which fail to allot at least 40% of their board seats to women, Industry Minister Mikael Damberg said. If approved, the law will enter the statute books next year, and enforcement begin in 2019, Damberg said. It would allow for fines of between 250,000 and five million kronor (€26,200-€520,000) depending on the size of the company.

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Submitted on September 9th 2016 by geoleo

The collapse of Hanjin Shipping (117930.KS) will boost the cost to U.S. businesses and consumers of a wide range of imported goods, from furniture and clothing to fresh fruit and frozen meat, according to federal agencies, shippers and retailers.

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Submitted on September 8th 2016 by jcscher

Taxpayers have sent billions of dollars to the company since 2010.

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Submitted on September 6th 2016 by lostwonder