It’s known that intelligence officers working for the US air force in Florida keep tabs on social media accounts and online forums where enemies dwell, and it seems those efforts can pay off—at least according to the story one man told his colleagues recently.
A poll released yesterday (June 3) by CNN and ORC International found that only 49% of Americans have a “favorable” view of US president Barack Obama. Historically, presidents have been least popular with the public during their second terms in office, so it isn’t surprising to see Obama’s favorability rating slip below 50%. It’s not even the first time he has had less than a majority of favorable responses.
German chancellor Angela Merkel joined Instagram on June 2. The first photo shared by the verified account @bundeskanzlerin—meaning female chancellor—features Merkel at a 2013 EU summit in Brussels.
Avian flu has been the bane of American poultry farmers for months. Three deadly strains have forced them to kill off entire flocks of chickens, turkeys, and other birds to stop infection spreading, and to shut down facilities for costly disinfection procedures. Now consumers are going to start feeling the effects too.
Thirty people in South Korea have tested positive for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and officials are awaiting test results on 99 more suspected cases. In hopes of containing the outbreak, which is the largest ever documented outside the Middle East, the government has quarantined 1,364 people and temporarily closed at least 230 schools.
In earthquake-ravaged Nepal, the international aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, has been shuttling workers and supplies on helicopters to and from remote villages in need. MSF, like all non-governmental groups, charters private helicopters for these missions—sometimes only for several hours in a day, just enough time to fly from Kathmandu to a particular village and back.
The reality television star formerly known as Bruce Jenner acquired a million Twitter followers in a mere four hours yesterday, after posting her first tweet as @caitlyn_jenner. When US president Barack Obama debuted his new Twitter account, @POTUS, in May, it took four hours and 52 minutes before he reached the one million mark.
American Apparel is still struggling to cut ties with its founder and former CEO, Dov Charney. The Los Angeles-based clothing company announced today that a court has granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting Charney from disparaging American Apparel or from doing anything to instigate the removal of any of its board members.
A female scientist asked a prominent elder in her field about how she should deal with a lab advisor who frequently looked down her shirt. This was the response she got:
Unlike his predecessor, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is publicly committed to both corporate and personal philanthropy. One of the first things he did after being named CEO was start a matching gift program to encourage employees to donate to charitable causes. Within two months Apple and its employees had donated more than $1.3 million.
Move over, coconut water: US consumers bought nearly $400 million worth of carbonated, fermented tea—aka kombucha—in 2014.
Nogales, Arizona, is the largest inland food port in the world. Much of the fresh produce trucked up the “food superhighway” of Mexico’s west coast comes through there—and a shocking amount of it doesn’t travel much farther, dropping into local landfills instead of being sent to consumers.
Traveling to a national park or wilderness area and “camping out”—pitching a tent, cooking over portable stoves, possibly enduring a few days without showers or toilets—is a timeless tradition in America. Approximately 40 million people go camping in the US each year, although the number of them who pitch their own tents or forgo indoor plumbing while doing so is undoubtedly smaller. Modern camping increasingly includes cabins, RVs, and even yurts. (Be advised: If you’re staying in a yurt, you’re probably “glamping.”)
Small beer labels had a big year in 2014. Craft brews accounted for 11% of all US beer sales by volume last year, marking the first time that small, independent beer makers accounted for a double-digit share of overall volume.
The Starwood hotel group announced plans for its first St. Regis polo resort, to open in early 2017 in Dubai.
Facebook has published a detailed update of its “community standards,” which outline what kinds of content may be shared or blocked on the social networking site, to explicitly define its notions of offensive and harmful images and language. In a blog post on Sunday, company executives wrote: ”While our policies and standards themselves are not changing, we have heard from people that it would be helpful to provide more clarity and examples… For example, what exactly do we mean by nudity, or what do we mean by hate speech?”
Tropical Cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm, made landfall in the South Pacific today—barreling across the chain of islands belonging to Vanuatu. Meteorologists and local authorities were anticipating this, and the nation’s 260,000 residents have been on high alert for the past 24 hours. The capital city of Port Vila, located on the southern coast of one of the central islands, has been directly hit. The storm is carrying 165 mph (270 kilometers per hour) winds, with gusts of up to 200 mph, according to CNN, and causing widespread flooding and power outages across the infrastructure-light nation.
The era of global whaling evoked in Moby-Dick came to an end in the early 1900s. Then the real slaughter began: With mechanized harpoons and motorized boats, a few countries killed more whales during the 20th century than the whole world did in the years before. The total number of kills is close to 3 million, according to newly published research (pdf).
Reporting quarterly earnings for the first time since its January 2015 IPO, Wall Street’s favorite burger joint dished up some undercooked numbers on Wednesday, after the bell. Although revenue ($34.8 million) and increase in same-shack sales (7.2% for shacks that have been open at least two years) were both higher than analysts expected, there was a net income loss of $1.4 million ($0.05 a share) for the fourth quarter of 2014. And $1.1 million of that loss was attributed to expenses from the IPO.
Is the locavore movement stalling out?
A wholesaler in Finland has renamed the meatballs it sells in stores because the meatballs “contain only machine-recovered meat, essentially scraps, which are not defined as meat in Finnish law,” according to the Finnish news service YLE. From now on, the Finnish food giant Kesko’s spheres of unspecified protein—made from “the equivalent of 52 percent meat” from pork and chicken—will simply be called pyöryköitä, which translates to “balls” in English.
McDonald’s’ decision to only buy chickens that have been raised “without antibiotics important to human medicine” is being hailed as a necessarily aggressive step to address the growing problem of antibiotic abuse in America’s meat supply chain.
For McDonald’s, hitting on a fresh idea that will bring people back to the Golden Arches is no small task. Don Thompson, 25-year McDonald’s veteran, couldn’t do it. He stepped down as CEO on March 1. Steve Easterbrook, his replacement, plans to “allow technology to do the heavy lifting“ when it comes to making customers happier. It’s the opposite of a “back to basics” approach; Easterbrook wants innovation.
If Americans are known collectively for having a sweet tooth, they’re indulging it less at dessert time.
