CARACAS, Venezuela — A painting by Henri Matisse stolen more than a decade ago from a museum in Venezuela is to be returned to the country.
Raul Grioni is president of Venezuela’s Cultural Patrimony Institute and he tells The Associated Press that the painting “Odalisque in Red Pants” is to be returned from the United States within three to five weeks.
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee says Republican demands for more financial information from Chuck Hagel is beyond the scope of what’s been asked of previous defense secretary nominees, and he intends to press ahead with a vote.
In letter Friday, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan responded to 26 Senate Republicans who have pressed President Barack Obama’s pick for details on his paid speeches and foreign donors to the companies he’s been affiliated with, such as the Atlantic Council.
Thanks to the geniuses at ThinkGeek your coffee isn’t the only thing you can completely fix to your liking in the morning. The store’s new 12-ounce Build-On Brick mug is covered in studs and detents so you can accessorize and customize it with your favorite building toy—which of course always means Lego. More »
Air travelers may end up losing big in a deal that would create the largest airline in the U.S., consumer advocates told The Huffington Post, after various leaks this week suggested such a merger was imminent.
Reports in the financial media Thursday and Friday noted that after months of complicated haggling, US Airways and the bankrupt parent company of American Airlines were almost ready to announce a corporate marriage.
The merger would create the largest U.S. airline by revenue, and it has been encouraged by creditors and employees in both airlines as a positive step.
WASHINGTON — The era of crisis budgeting in Washington has opened new opportunities for corporations and special interests.
The latest example of a last-minute favor came in the “fiscal cliff” bill signed into law on Jan. 3 to avert across-the-board tax increases and to delay spending cuts known as the sequester. The bill, crafted on deadline, was stuffed with special provisions helping specific companies and industries. Many of these provisions were included to help offset the sequester delay and to extend the “doc fix,” a delay of physicians’ Medicare payment cuts that Congress has been extending on an ad hoc basis since 2002.
One that stands out is a reduction in the Medicare reimbursement rate for a radiosurgery device manufactured by the Swedish company Elekta AB. The cut is noteworthy because it was advocated by Palo Alto, Calif.-based Varian Medical Systems Inc., Elekta’s main competitor. The rate cut, according to the first report by The Wall Street Journal, was included in the fiscal cliff deal at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and written into the bill by the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).
A majority of Americans support using drones to kill high-level terrorism suspects overseas, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. But support drops when those suspects are American citizens, and more disapprove than approve if innocent civilians may also be killed.
According to the new survey, 54 percent of Americans approve of using drones to kill high-level terrorism suspects, while 18 percent disapprove and 28 percent are undecided. Support for drone strikes has changed little since a previous HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in early January, when 59 percent of respondents said they approved of using drone strikes and 18 percent said they disapproved.
Another survey released Friday, by ABC News and the Washington Post, found that 83 percent of respondents approve of using drone strikes “against terrorism suspects overseas” and 11 percent disapprove.
The blizzard approaching New York City has reduced the number of Justin Bieber fans lined up on 49th street hoping to get standby tickets for his appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” But as of noon on Friday, 20 to 30 die-hard fans remained, vowing to stay put despite the less-than-subtle suggestions from security.
“He has swag, that’s worth three nights of blizzard,” Dana Arcizy of New Hampshire told The Huffington Post.
“Security was trying to convince us to leave. I think they don’t want to be working in the snow,” she said. “They were like, ‘You don’t really have a good chance of getting tickets. You are probably going to be ordered to leave.’ But we made it this far, why leave now?”
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Would you like to own this massive ED-209 replica? Your move punk. Some guy is selling it on eBay for $25,000(USD). Hopefully you don’t live in Detroit or your purchase will be killed by Robocop.
According to the seller, this ED-209 model was made for Robocop 2 and may have been used as a stand-in for the robot during production or created as a marketing piece to promote the movie. This beast stands at over 10-feet-tall on two hind legs built with pneumatic cylinders.
As of this writing it is still available. Go ahead and make an offer, but don’t be that guy who says, “I’d buy that for a dollar.” You need $24,999 more than that. And ED-209 doesn’t do well on stairs. He’s probably best in a one story home.
[via Obvious Winner]
This week there’s a letter being sent to the heads at HTC from what reports claim is an anonymous defector from the company’s R&D department, this letter claiming that “more than a thousand” engineers have been asked to work 12 hour days without overtime on a regular basis. This system has been claimed by the anonymous letter-writer to have been called a “Responsibility System” and is having workers put in “1000 hours” of overtime work without overtime pay. While the letter has not yet been entirely authenticated beyond what Taiwanese publication MyDrivers claim, such claims will likely prompt a response from HTC rather rapidly.
According to MyDrivers, they’ve got word that “more than 5,000 internal engineers” are part of the Research and Development team that may be affected by this so-called “Responsibility System”. While the letter in question does appear to have been written and presented by a single disgruntled employee, it’s been claimed that “thousands” of engineers have been included in this demand for additional hours without overtime pay.
In January of this year it would appear that HTC Chairman Cher Wang was prompted to respond to allegations of “sweatshop” conditions, saying (translated): “every place has room to improve, but HTC’s workplace is based in an appreciation of each person at all times, with that appreciation applying to everyone, the company acting in that appreciation, not just in efforts to keep themselves prepared.” Note that that’s a rather rough translation, the original to be found at Sina Technological Age.
This newest incident appears to have once again created an environment in which the chairman is having to defend the company, saying this time that HTC has “always complied with the Labor Standards Act, except weekends and statutory holidays,” continuing on with notes that HTC “also encourages employees to make good use of annual leave and a good work-life balance.” The chairman spoke specifically about overtime, saying that “employees can still apply, but [overtime] is subject to the approval of the department head.”
As Unwired View‘s Staska notes, there was a bit of a surprising gap in costs for R&D between the third and fourth quarter of 2011, with HTC cutting costs by a whopping 60%. This announcement was included in Q4 earnings reports without word of any equivalent number of layoffs. Could it be that the costs were simply cut by having workers stay longer each night without equivalent overtime pay?
Stay tuned as more information on this situation comes to light – rather quickly, we must assume.
Anonymous letter suggests HTC “Responsibility System” with unpaid overtime is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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You might be able to watch Nor’Easter Nemo hammer the East Coast right outside your window, but if you’re looking to get a few other angles on the action, there’s a whole bunch of live webcams for your perusal. Check ’em out below. You don’t even have to take off your slanket. More »
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