Tag Archives: company

Feds seizure of baseball players’ drug tests ruled illegal

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that federal investigators’ seizure of drug-test results of more than 90 major league baseball players five years ago was illegal. The decision recommended new guidelines for computer searches to prevent investigators from using information about people who are not named in a search warrant but whose private data is stored on a computer being searched. Investigators looking into steroid use by professional baseball players obtained search warrants and subpoenas for the drug tests results on 10 major league players, but they took the results on 104 players.

Share

Apple to release Snow Leopard on Friday

Snow Leopard, the highly anticipated new operating system for the Mac, will be released ahead of schedule Friday, Apple announced Monday. The Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade to the current Leopard system for $29 and can be pre-ordered now, the company said. “Snow Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever, and we’re happy to get it to users earlier than expected,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering

Share

Qantas announces 87 percent profit drop

The Qantas Group on Wednesday announced that its annual profit tumbled 87 percent. Australia’s largest air carrier reports its full year pre-tax profits fell to US$150 million The carrier — which operates its flagship Qantas as well as discount airline Jetstar — says its bottom line was hit by falling demand for air travel during the global recession. Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce, said the diversity of the company’s operations had contributed to its being one of the few airline operators worldwide to produce a full-year profit, despite the global economic downturn, according to a company statement

Share

Shooting the boss (and getting paid for it)

To thank him for letting them spend the last two hours of their workweek playing video games on the company dime, Kevin Grinnell’s employees often single him out and shoot him in the head. To be fair, the employees at Grinnell Computers aren’t firing real weapons at their boss but are instead releasing the stresses of their week in a multiplayer online game known as Combat Arms. Most Fridays for the last couple of months, the six employees of the Beaumont, Texas-based company have been encouraged to spend from 3 p.m.

Share

Australian quadriplegic granted right to starve to death

An Australian high court ruled Friday that a quadriplegic man has the right to refuse food and water and can be allowed to die, a rare legal finding that some see as a major victory for right-to-die campaigners. The ruling means that the nursing facility in which Christian Rossiter has lived since November 2008 cannot be held criminally liable for allowing the patient to die, the Supreme Court of Western Australia said.

Share

Congresswoman: U.S. ties with Xe, formerly Blackwater, must end

A member of Congress Friday called on the State Department to stop doing business with Xe, the North Carolina-based security company formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton whether the State Department had just signed a new $20 million dollar contract with Xe for Iraq, saying she is “very concerned” that the State Department may be signing new security contracts with Xe, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Share