PayPal was no friend in need
My son took out a £1,300 car insurance policy – or so he thought – with the insurer MMA. I encouraged him to play safe and use my PayPal account for the transaction. After a couple of months, he discovered that the car was not insured. MMA claimed he had been a victim of fraudulent brokers, who had set up bogus policies in MMA’s name, and that police were investigating similar cases.
Since he can’t afford new insurance he has had to sell his car. I contacted PayPal, who said they couldn’t help as I was outside their 45- [...]
Danger and separation from families changing job of U.S. diplomats
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON |
Sun May 19, 2013 1:41am EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda placed a bounty on her husband’s head, Mary Feierstein learned of it from a friend who called and said, “You must be a mess!”
U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein was thousands of miles (km) away at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, without his wife and family on what is called an “unaccompanied” posting.
He is one of more than a thousand U.S. diplomats on such t [...]
Working conditions in the fashion industry: news and teaching resources round up
The deaths of more than 1,100 garment workers when the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed last month, as well as those at a Cambodian shoe factory on Thursday, have forced consumers and retailers to re-examine the impact and ethics of fast fashion.
Here we round up the best news stories, multimedia, teaching resources and websites to help you study the working conditions of garment workers and the sustainability of the fashion industry in the citizenship and geography classroom, and beyond.
From the Guardian
Cambodia shoe facto [...]
Winning ticket for $590.5 million Powerball jackpot sold in Florida
Sun May 19, 2013 1:48am EDT
(Reuters) – One winning ticket for a record U.S. Powerball lottery jackpot worth $590.5 million was sold in Florida, organizers said late on Saturday.
No other information on the winning ticket was immediately available, but the grand prize accumulated after two months of drawings surpassed the previous record Powerball payoff of $587.5 million, set in November 2012.
The winning numbers picked on Saturday night were: 10, 13, 14, 22 and 52, with a Powerball number of 11, and the odds [...]
José Mourinho: second coming of the Special One? | profile
Barring any unforeseen twists in the tale, José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix will soon return to his adoring British public with a second stint as manager of Chelsea. While the return of the “Special One” (© Mourinho J) will largely be a matter for celebration in south-west London, there’s also a huge and ready constituency nationwide, licking their lips in anticipation of more fun from this much-loved pantomime villain, currently serving his last days at Real Madrid.
And, boy, does he need to get away from Madrid. On [...]
Winning ticket for huge Powerball jackpot sold in Florida
Do you have the lucky ticket? A winner for the huge Powerball jackpot was sold at a supermarket in Zephyrhills, Fla., a Florida Lottery official confirmed to NBC News early Sunday.
The winning Powerball numbers drawn late Saturday were 10, 13, 14, 22, 52 with Powerball number 11.
Powerball’s website said one winner was sold in Florida, and David Bishop of the Florida Lottery confirmed that a winning ticket was sold in Florida at a Publix supermarket in Zephyrhills.
Four out of every five possible combinations of numbers were in play [...]
David Cameron’s inner demons
Ken Robinson:
To encourage creativity, Mr Gove, you must first understand what it is
Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Claudia Hammond – review
The time we have at our disposal each day is elastic, Proust claimed. It sounds an odd remark. Surely we have precisely 24 hours, no more and no less. Even the occasional leap second – introduced to keep calendars accurate – hardly changes the fixed time we have every day on Earth.
Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
by
Claudia Hammond
Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
But as Claudia Hammond, presenter of Radio 4′s All in the Mind, argues in [...]
Google Wants to Help Apps Track You
Google is giving mobile app creators more ways to tap into people’s activities and locations without draining too much phone battery power.
More and more apps look at a person’s location to offer services, advertising, and discounts that are relevant to what they’re doing, and also to help people track their own activities. Google itself is at the forefront of this trend—with its Google Now service, it uses sensor data and other inputs, like e-mail, to try to anticipate people’s needs before they have to open an app or a search box. The [...]
PM ‘losing control of party over EU’
19 May 2013
Last updated at 00:36 ET
David Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by the end of 2017
David Cameron is losing control of his party over Europe, former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Howe has said.
The Tory leadership is “running scared” of its backbenchers by offering to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with Brussels, he said in the Observer.
He also warned that if a proposed referendum led to the UK leaving the EU, there would be dire consequ [...]
HP Launches Split x2 Win 8 Laptop-Tablet
HP on Wednesday announced the
Split x2 Windows 8 hybrid laptop-tablet, the second such device in its lineup after the Envy x2, which debuted last year.
The Split x2 is a detachable PC, meaning that the screen can be removed and used separately as a tablet. HP also announced the Android-based SlateBook x2 on Wednesday.
The screen-cum-tablet half of the Split x2 incorporates the HP ClickPad for gesture and multifinger navigation.
The Split x2 is scheduled for availability in the U.S. in August and is priced at $800.
The Split x2 and SlateB [...]
Angelina Jolie’s revelation of her mastectomy is just the latest from a brave and...
An article written by Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie provoked headlines around the world when she chose “not to keep my story private” and revealed she had undergone a double mastectomy to lower her risk of breast cancer, which was high due to her genetic inheritance. The impassioned letter, published in the New York Times, did not fit the stereotypical celebrity image. But Jolie’s act of extraordinary courage didn’t seem out of character at all to me. I already knew from my own experience that she was a woman of t [...]