JUNE 1, 2012: “Your First Amendment rights can be terminated,” yells the Chicago police officer, caught on video right before arresting two journalists outside a Chicago hospital. One, an NBC News photographer, was led away in handcuffs essentially for taking pictures in a public place.* He was released only minutes later, [Keep reading]
JPMorgan Chase will pay $166 million to settle charges that it engaged in illegal debt collection activities for years, and must adhere to strict new debt collection rules, state and federal authorities announced Wednesday. The bank will also refund at least $50 million to consumers and agree to permanently end [Keep reading]
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Cybercriminals have stolen a staggering amount of information from government computers, a federal agency revealed Thursday. The total number of victims and the type of information gathered, taken together, make the hack historic. While researching an attack that saw the compromise of 4.5 million federal workers’ data, the Office of Personal [Keep reading]
You might not be surprised to hear that Time Warner Cable mistreated a consumer; you might delight in hearing that a New York judge is making TWC pay $230,000 to an aggrieved consumer. But Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling is particularly stern, and offers enough schadenfreude that it’s worth a quick scan. It’s also [Keep reading]
Chaos was having a very good day and IT departments a very bad day on Wednesday. First, passengers around the country were stranded — many still are — after United Airlines issued a ground stop for all flights. Then, at nearly the same time United announced its systems had been fixed, [Keep reading]
Remember when you used to get statements from the Social Security Administration about your earnings credits and the estimated benefit you would receive at retirement? Those went away during a federal budget crisis back in 2011, only to be partially restored last fall. They are now sent every five years, when [Keep reading]
It’s summer – Do you know where your vacation time is? Yet another study shows Americans leave a lot of their paid vacation time on the table, essentially giving free work to their employers. The average American donates $500 worth of labor, according to this study. You also know that [Keep reading]
Buying furniture has always been a perilous, complex affair. There are loads of places you can get your furniture from, for example, you can get your furniture from somewhere like furniture in fashion. You don’t buy a couch the way you buy a television or a laptop computer. You can’t [Keep reading]
In many parts of the country, housing prices gave returned to pre-recession levels. That’s good news for sellers, bad news for buyers. But buried within the latest housing data is some good news for everyone — everyone on Main Street, anyway. All-cash buyers seem to be finally retreating. The percent [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan