European Commission fines computer chipmaker Intel $1.45B

The European Commission found leading computer chipmaker Intel guilty Wednesday of violating European anti-trust rules and ordered that it pay a fine of 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion). It is the largest fine the commission has ever imposed, said Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition. Intel has said it plans to appeal the decision.

Share

Supreme Court wants new look at ‘wardrobe malfunction’

The case of Janet Jackson’s "wardrobe malfunction" on national television — and subsequent fines against CBS — will be re-examined at the order of the Supreme Court. The justices Monday sent the case back to a federal appeals court in Philadelphia that had thrown out a $550,000 government fine against the broadcast network and its affiliates for airing the incident during halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl. The pop singer’s breast was briefly exposed during a performance with singer Justin Timberlake

Share

Supreme Court rules against networks on indecent speech

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that federal regulators have the authority to clamp down on broadcast TV networks that air isolated cases of profanity, known as "fleeting expletives." The 5-4 vote was a victory for Bush-era officials who pushed fines and sanctions when racy images and language reached the airwaves. Controversial words have been aired in scripted and unscripted instances on all the major over-the-air networks in the past six years, when the Federal Communications Commission began considering a stronger, no-tolerance policy

Share

EU slashes cell phone roaming costs

European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to slash the cost of texting and surfing the Internet on cell phones abroad. As of July 1, the cost of a text message sent from one EU country to another will drop from around €0.28 ($0.36) to €0.11 ($0.14). According to a statement on the European Union’s Web site, the age of consumers expecting “bill shocks” for downloading a picture or a movie from a cell phone while roaming in the EU is over

Share

North Korean leader gives brother-in-law top job

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has added his brother-in-law to a military board in a move analysts say paves the way for an heir, according to South Korea’s state-sponsored Yonhap news agency. The addition of his kin to the powerful National Defense Commission also solidifies his standing, Yonhap said. Kim was reappointed Thursday as chairman of the military board in his first major public appearance since a reported stroke in August.

Share

Video: Police at G-20 protest shoved man who later died

A man who collapsed and died near last week’s protests at the G-20 summit was shoved to the ground by police shortly before the collapse, according to a video of the incident posted on the Web site of the British daily The Guardian. A spokeswoman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is already investigating any contact Ian Tomlinson had with police before his death, said she is certain the man in the video is Tomlinson, 47, who was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital after his collapse on April 1. “However, that is not the question,” the spokeswoman said.

Share

Recordings: Kennedy saw nuclear test ban as Cold War thaw

Former President John F. Kennedy saw a proposed ban on aboveground nuclear tests as a way to thaw U.S.-Soviet relations after the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to recordings released Thursday. “If it does represent a possibility of avoiding the kind of collision that we had last fall in Cuba, which was quite close, and Berlin in 1961, we should seize the chance,” Kennedy said in a July 1963 meeting with top government scientists.

Share