When the head of Fox News moved to Garrison, New York, he bougt a little newspaper and tried to instill his own brand of American values. Guess what happened next?

Ozzie und Daniel Silna waren Besitzer eines erfolglosen Teams einer längst untergegangenen Liga. Dann kamen sie auf den cleversten Vertrag der amerikanischen Sporthistorie. Nun will die NBA sie aus dem Deal herauskaufen.

But Moore’s Law is not dead; it is just evolving, according to more optimistic scientists and engineers. Their contention is that it will be possible to create circuits that are closer to the scale of individual molecules by using a new class of nanomaterials — metals, ceramics, polymeric or composite materials that can be organized from the “bottom up,” rather than the top down. For instance, semiconductor designers are developing chemical processes that can make it possible to “self assemble” circuits by causing the materials to form patterns of ultrathin wires on a semiconductor wafer. Combining these patterns of nanowires with conventional chip-making techniques, the scientists believe, will lead to a new class of computer chips, keeping Moore’s Law alive while reducing the cost of making chips in the future.

There is a black market for stolen artworks, and according to the head of the F.B.I.'s art-crime team, Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, their prices are inevitably a small fraction of the works’ legitimate value. Some estimates put the average at 7 to 10 percent of perceived open-market value. A painting doesn’t need to be sold at auction to hold value. Even if it stays forever on the black market, it can be used as a kind of promissory note in a weapons or drug deal. Career criminals also believe they can extort a ransom from insurers or use the stolen work as a bargaining chip. A prison sentence, for instance, might be reduced in some jurisdictions in exchange for a criminal’s help in retrieving a missing Monet. In effect, an unframed canvas, easier to move across borders than its equivalent in cash or drugs, acts as a high-value and extremely pretty bank note.

Inside a run-down mall off of Elizabeth Street in Chinatown, down an escalator to the basement and past a raft of empty storefronts, is a minuscule store, the size of a walk-in closet, that’s quietly at the center of a peculiar global fashion empire. It has no sign and it’s not on the mall directory. It’s impossible to find on Google. The enterprise, which its owner refers to as Unique Hype Collection, is in the business of buying clothing from the skate-inspired men’s fashion brand Supreme at retail prices, waiting until the items have sold out at Supreme’s physical stores and online shop, and then putting those items up for sale in the mall and on eBay at significant markups.

Es hat ein Wirtschaftswandel stattgefunden: weg von globalen Handelsstrukturen hin zu einer Regionalisierung, wie bei Gemüse aus dem Bioladen. Das gilt für die gesamte Bundesrepublik. Auch das Bundeskriminalamt beschreibt in seinem Lagebericht 2012 den »umfangreichen Cannabisanbau«, den es inzwischen in Deutschland gibt. Wurden 2010 noch 394 Plantagen von der Polizei entdeckt, waren es 2012 bereits 809. In den allermeisten Fällen handelt es sich um sogenannte Indoor-Plantagen, also Cannabis, das nicht unter freiem Himmel wächst, sondern in Kellern, Fabrikhallen oder eben in Berliner WGs.

Electronic devices that biodegrade to order could lead to huge medical advances. And the Pentagon, through Darpa, is investing heavily in 'born-to-die' technology too…

Within Amazon.com there’s a certain type of e-mail that elicits waves of panic. It usually originates with an annoyed customer who complains to the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Jeff Bezos has a public e-mail address, jeff@amazon.com. Not only does he read many customer complaints, he forwards them to the relevant Amazon employees, with a one-character addition: a question mark. When Amazon employees get a Bezos question mark e-mail, they react as though they’ve discovered a ticking bomb. They’ve typically got a few hours to solve whatever issue the CEO has flagged and prepare a thorough explanation for how it occurred, a response that will be reviewed by a succession of managers before the answer is presented to Bezos himself. Such escalations, as these e-mails are known, are Bezos’s way of ensuring that the customer’s voice is constantly heard inside the company.

Damon Lindelof, the ubiquitous ­screenwriter-producer whose name seems attached to all of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, is doing his damnedest to get small. This summer, he miraculously pulled Brad Pitt out of the mass grave that was World War Z’s zombocalyptic original third act and restored the regular-guyness that made Pitt’s character work. He also resisted the temptation to threaten Earth’s existence (yet again!) at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, focusing instead on a personal vendetta—albeit one enacted via a dizzying mile-high pursuit across a 23rd-century cityscape. But, hey, you have to give something to get something.

It’s hard to overstate the gamble Jobs took when he decided to unveil the iPhone back in January 2007. Not only was he introducing a new kind of phone — something Apple had never made before — he was doing so with a prototype that barely worked. Even though the iPhone wouldn’t go on sale for another six months, he wanted the world to want one right then. In truth, the list of things that still needed to be done was enormous. The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.

Meth users called it the "shake- and-bake" or "one-pot" method, and its key feature was to greatly simplify the way meth is synthesized from pseudoephedrine, a decongestant found in cold and allergy medicines like Claritin D and Sudafed. Shake and bake did two things. It took a toxic and volatile process that had once been the province of people with Breaking Bad-style knowledge of chemistry and put it in the bedrooms and kitchens of meth users in rural America. It also produced the most potent methamphetamine anywhere. Since 2007, the number of clandestine meth sites discovered by police has increased 63 percent nationwide. In Kentucky, the number of labs has more than tripled. The Bluegrass State regularly joins its neighbors Missouri, Tennessee, and Indiana as the top four states for annual meth lab discoveries. As law enforcement agencies scramble to clean up and dispose of toxic labs, prosecute cooks, and find foster homes for their children, they are waging two battles: one against destitute, strung-out addicts, the other against some of the world's wealthiest and most politically connected drug manufacturers. In the past several years, lawmakers in 25 states have sought to make pseudoephedrine—the one irreplaceable ingredient in a shake-and-bake lab—a prescription drug. In all but two—Oregon and Mississippi—they have failed as the industry, which sells an estimated $605 million worth of pseudoephedrine-based drugs a year, has deployed all-star lobbying teams and campaign-trail tactics such as robocalls and advertising blitzes.

Sobald eine der Wohnungen der „Alten“ frei wird, gestaltet sie der Eigentümer um. Nach den Umbauten heißen die alten Zweiraumwohnungen dann „Studio“ oder „Loft“ oder wenigstens „City-Appartement“. Das zieht offenbar. „Vor allem bei jüngeren Leuten“, sagt Tanja Füting. Die Maklerin bietet gerade zwei Hochhauswohnungen an der Leipziger Straße im Auftrag eines Kunden zum Kauf an. Eine liegt im 20. Stock, die andere noch zwei Etagen höher. Ein wenig erstaunt sei sie schon über das Interesse gewesen, erzählt sie. „Viele meldeten sich aus dem Ausland.“ Kaufpreise von 2500 Euro je Quadratmeter und teilweise 3500 Euro seien mittlerweile üblich für die Wohnungen in den hohen Etagen.

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees. Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) – a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 – and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months. At no stage during the civil legal proceedings brought by McDonald's in the 1990s was it disclosed that a police infiltrator helped author the leaflet.

“The first joint of a little finger can be sliced easily,” he said. “You tie the bottom of it with thread tightly and put your body weight on a kitchen knife. But the second joint was tougher than I thought.” Luckily, there was a brother to hand, who could stand on the knife and slice through the knuckle. The loss of the tip of the pinkie on his right hand was his own fault — he got drunk and started throwing furniture around in a bar. Unfortunately for him, the bar belonged to a friend of his boss. Out came the kitchen knife again, and off came the top of his little finger. But his fourth amputation bore a whole different significance.

Die Abkühlung der Kreditmärkte mag zu abrupt vonstattengehen, auch Chu zweifelt allerdings nicht daran, dass in den vergangenen Jahren viel zu viel Geld viel zu günstig verliehen worden ist. Die Neukreditvergabe wuchs deutlich schneller als das Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP), für dieselbe Wirtschaftsleistung wurde also immer mehr geborgt. Nach Berechnung von Fitch ist Chinas Kreditvolumen einschließlich der Geschäfte außerhalb der Bilanzen zwischen 2008 und 2012 um 73 Prozentpunkte auf 198 Prozent des BIP gestiegen. Ähnliche Entwicklungen habe es vor den Bankenkrisen in Japan und Südkorea in den neunziger Jahren gegeben. Allerdings betrug der Anstieg dort maximal 47 Punkte, was die Dramatik in China unterstreicht.

But Kesselman noticed that the watermarks on his rolling papers were affecting the way in which the paper burned. “I’m always trying to improve the process,” he says, “it’s what I like to do. And this is going to sound strange, but when I’m sitting there smoking, I look at the burning embers, I watch them, I try to see what they are doing and what they are trying to tell me. I really try to connect with it. And I noticed that the embers were following the watermark in a certain way, that the watermark was affecting the burn, making it canoe or run. So I started experimenting. At first I tried to approach the way a scientist would. ‘Okay, so we need to make a cube pattern and control the flame, [Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] we must control the flame!’.

Top-Fußballer wie Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi oder Wayne Rooney zahlen bei Spielen in Deutschland mit ihren Mannschaften keine Steuern. So will es das Bundesfinanzministerium. Der Erlass gilt für Spiele aller Mannschaftssportarten im Rahmen europäischer Vereinswettbewerbe.  Künstler und Sportler werden im Steuerrecht gleich behandelt. Doch der neue Erlass ist nur für den Sport gültig, nicht für die Kultur.

After the vuvuzela, the caxirola. The World Cup in Brazil is still more than a year away and already the marketing campaign for the tournament's stadium soundtrack is under way.

Reverend Pat Robertson said, "Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular. But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil. "This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil." A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia. If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests, "We don't need another $200 billion war….It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with." Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton. So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times.

Frito-Lay had a formidable research complex near Dallas, where nearly 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research [...] on questions of crunch, mouth feel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.

A University of Washington graduate whose football team had the best defense in the country at the time, Costacos came up with the idea of making a "Purple Reign" T-shirt to honor the team, featuring a lineman in a purple jersey falling from a cloud in the sky. Costacos printed up the shirts, traveled to a road game at Stanford one fall weekend and sold them in the parking lot. The idea was brilliant. By the end of the first week, he later estimated he had sold 20,000. An idea was born. Along with his older brother, Tock, he parlayed those T-shirts into series of sports-themed posters that, like that first T-shirt, played on pop culture. Together, they created one of the most influential businesses in the history of sports marketing. Its lasting impact eventually would extend all the way to a New York City art gallery, where, 25 years later, those posters were viewed as art and sold for thousands. At one show Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White bought the entire gallery collection.

Am 23. November 2010, so ging es bereits aus früheren französischen Medienberichten hervor, war es zu einem Treffen im Amtssitz des französischen Präsidenten in Paris gekommen. Am Tisch im Élysée-Palast saßen demnach Sarkozy, der katarische Kronprinz Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, Sebastian Bazin, Europa-Repräsentant der US-Investmentfirma Colony Capital und damals noch Hauptaktionär des Fußballklubs Paris St. Germain, und eben Platini. Das Treffen soll bis auf Platini für alle zufriedenstellend verlaufen sein: Bazin wurde sein Verlustgeschäft mit PSG los, der Kronprinz aus Katar freute sich über eine weitere Investitionsmöglichkeit und Sarkozy war über die vielversprechende Zukunft seines neureichen Lieblingsklubs PSG schlicht „glücklich“, wie ihn sein Sprecher hernach zitierte. Blieb Platini da nichts anderes übrig, als seine Interessen denen seines Landespräsidenten unterzuordnen? Immerhin schaffte, ganz nebenbei, sein Sohn Laurent kurz darauf im Januar 2011 den Sprung in die Chefetage bei Qatar Sports Investment (QSI), jenem Ableger des Staatsfonds Qatar Investment Authority, der nun Eigentümer von PSG ist. Der Deal mit PSG, dem Klub, der seit über anderthalb Jahren mit Geld nur so um sich wirft, sei dabei „nur Teil eines größeren Deals“ gewesen. Das erzählt James M. Dorsey, Autor des Blogs „The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer“ und ein viel beachteter Experte zum Thema Fußball im Nahen Osten.

The program was created with the music and film industry and the largest Internet firms, with some prodding by US government. The system had been set to take effect late last year but was delayed until early 2013 by the Center for Copyright Information, the entity created to manage the program. Participating in the program are the five largest broadband Internet providers — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Cablevision and Verizon — covering some 85 percent of US residential customers. A Verizon document leaked on the TorrentFreak blog suggests that the big Internet provider would deliver warnings for the first two suspected offenses and for the third and fourth incident, redirect customers to a page where they would have to “acknowledge” the warning. For the fifth and six offenses, Verizon would “throttle” the Internet download speeds of customers to just above dial-up speeds. Customers could appeal the actions by paying $35 for a review by an arbitrator. Other leaked documents showed AT&T would block users’ access to some of the most frequently-visited websites and that Time Warner Cable would temporarily interrupt the ability to browse the Internet, according to TorrentFreak.

In a Berlin courtroom earlier today, the Technoviking met his maker. The star of one of the most emblematic Internet cultural phenomenons of the past decade issuing the artist who surreptitiously filmed him, claiming he stole his image and profited from the results. Fritsch let the video collect dust on his personal website for six years, until he finally uploaded it to YouTube in 2006, where it continued to exist in obscurity for months. It took until 2007 for it to really take off. Fritsch has traced the origins of its viral path to an obscure Central American porn site. From there it jumped to Web communities and humor blogs, and at one point racked up 2 million views in a single night. In 2009, the star of the video, whose real identity is still a mystery, hit Fritsch with a legal notice asking him to stop using the video and all derivations of it.