August 2011

Before a phone-hacking scandal forced Rupert Murdoch to close the News of the World or his News America Marketing division was accused of hacking into computers at Floorgraphics, a US rival, another News Corp offshoot faced allegations that it had hacked into competitors’ security systems, costing them more than $2 billion.

Lawsuits since 2002 from several pay-TV groups claimed that NDS, a digital technology company that was at the time about 80 per cent owned by News Corp, cracked the codes of rivals’ smartcards that are used to secure pay-TV set-top boxes, then released them to pirates, who flooded the market with counterfeit cards. The lawsuits were filed by Canal Plus Technologies, a division of the French pay-TV operator Canal Plus, Echostar and DirecTV in the US and Sogecable, the Spanish pay-TV company.

Women's rights leader Gloria Steinem will not be tuning into NBC's Playboy Club when it premieres in September.

Steinem once worked undercover at the New York City nightclub to report on conditions at the club, and told Reuters she doubts the drama will depict the scene realistically. Her essay on the club, "I Was a Playboy Bunny," depicts a workplace where its employees were regularly harassed and mistreated. She went on to say she hopes there's a viewer backlash about the subject, "I expect that The Playboy Club will be a net minus and I hope people boycott it. It's just not telling the truth about the era. It normalizes a passive dominant idea of gender. So it normalizes prostitution and male dominance. I just know that over the years, women have called me and told me horror stories of what they experienced at the Playboy Club and at the Playboy Mansion."

As the larger economy swoons amidst a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating and an extremely volatile stock market , some tech companies are bucking the trend.

Perhaps no tech start-up has grown as fast as IPO-bound Groupon: to more than 1,700 workers in North America from 300 in March 2010. Since July, Facebook has moved 500 workers to a sparkling, 1-million-square-foot campus in nearby Menlo Park. The company employs more than 2,000 worldwide. Technology businesses large and small are trying to manage what LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and others call hypergrowth, or onboarding. In the midst of a hiring frenzy in Silicon Valley and other tech hotbeds that has put a premium on talent and swelled workforces, the kerfuffle for some companies is how to add new workers without gumming up operations and fracturing the corporate DNA. The stampede for tech talent, whether through hiring or acquisition, has been well documented. Established companies and start-ups alike are courting top talent in engineering, social media, website and product design, data crunching and analysis, and management with money and stock options — even goodies such as iPads, nifty work spaces and shuttle service. But landing a prized recruit may be the easy part.

The real work comes in finding a suitable, larger workplace, packing and moving computer and networking equipment, then integrating new people and equipment — all while trying to preserve a company's culture, says Christine Comaford, an executive coach and serial entrepreneur who has started and sold four tech companies. "You don't want to lose your (corporate) soul," she says.

Several House Democrats from New York have sent letters to Verizon siding with the company’s unionized workers in the negotiations over a new contract. Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen wrote to every member of Congress on August 9, claiming Verizon is looking for $1 billion in concessions from its organized employees and refusing to budge from its demands.

“It has come to our attention that many of the contract changes that Verizon has proposed may potentially undermine the financial security of CWA and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) employees,” Reps. Tim Bishop and Steve Israel wrote on Aug. 3, before the strike began. “We are specifically troubled by the proposal to eliminate limits on low-wage contracting and overseas outsourcing. Now more than ever, we need businesses that are willing to invest in keeping skilled workers on our shores and willing to negotiate with those workers in good faith for the benefit of the employees, the company and the U.S. economy."

“From what I have been told, the company’s proposals could reduce the standard of living of thousands of middle-class employees who live in New York State and potentially lead to the elimination of thousands of those jobs,” wrote Rep Edolphus Towns (D-NY) on July 29. “While I am well aware of the changes that have taken place in the telecommunications industry, the need to preserve a robust landline network maintained and service by skilled technicians remains the same."

Other New York Democrats backing the workers’ position include Reps. Louise Slaughter and Maurice Hinchey, whose spokesman called for Verizon “to act responsibly and take care of their employees.”