Quote via NYT.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has admitted it is investigating allegations that its managers in Mexico used widespread bribery to secure the company’s presence in the country and expand its market share.

“This work is ongoing and continues today,” David Tovar, vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement late on Saturday.

He added, however, that “We don’t have a full explanation of what happened”.

It sounds like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was breached. Sounds like Walmart already did enough “investigation”.

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News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country’s biggest media companies, which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations, are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure that would require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

They’re all for transparency except when it comes to their own income.

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“This Agreement is contrary to European Treaties and privacy laws and does not meet the minimum criteria set by Parliament itself. Diplomatic relations with the United States appear to be more important than the fundamental rights of our own EU citizens.”

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Jon Huntsman “took a battle axe to his own party, comparing it to China’s Communist Party and criticizing it’s standard bearer in a wide-ranging interview,” BuzzFeed reports.

He also “jokingly blamed his failed candidacy in part on his wife, Mary Kaye, who told him she’d leave him if he abandoned his principles.”

Said Huntsman: “She said if you pandered, if you sign any of those damn pledges, I’ll leave you. So I had to say I believe in science — and people on stage look at you quizzically as though you’re was an oddball.”

Huntsman added that Ronald Reagan would “likely not” be able to win the GOP nomination in this environment.

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A few of the 10,000 G4S private security guards hired to police the London Olympics have been videoed while illegally harassing photographers who were taking pictures of the Olympic site from public land. In the video, the guards make lunges for the press-cameras, put their hands over lenses, and make inaccurate statements about whether and where images may be taken of the site. Scotland Yard had previously assured the National Union of Journalists that the private security at the Olympics had been trained on the legality of taking images from public land.They were totally wrong.

Video is an 8 min collage of footage taken from an RC-controlled plane with POV camera (GoPro). Looks like a good alternative to learning to fly real planes: cheaper, less carbon impact, and safer for you.

It’s also interesting to watch this in the context of recent coverage of drone planes entering law-enforcement use. It’s not just governmental agencies that will have drones; any of your neighbors can gather good quality video footage from above.

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The leader of a group of US Catholic nuns on Saturday rejected condemnation from a Vatican report that said it defied Church doctrine.

“We haven’t violated any teaching,” Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told AFP, insisting the group would not stop “caring for the least among us on the margins of society.”

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After the report was published, Campbell said it was “painfully obvious” the Vatican leadership was “not used to having educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue.”

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Confirming years of speculation, a new study from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Health Monitoring System has found that red meat significantly increases the risk of premature death in cows. “Our research suggests that by having red meat, a cow’s life can be shortened by as many as 10 years, sometimes more,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview with CNN Tuesday. “Unfortunately, in some cases, even just a single daily serving of red meat can hurt a cow’s chances of surviving past the earliest stage of life.” On a more positive note, researchers found that other high-protein foods like milk, cheese, and butter only decrease a cow’s life by 7 to 9 years.

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The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.

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Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year. The increase alone would more than offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science.

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Ever wondered why U.S. propaganda efforts abroad are such a joke? Now you can stop wondering.

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…Valve pays people very well compared to industry norms. Our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and we believe strongly that the right thing to do in that case is to put a maximum amount of money back into each employee’s pocket. Valve does not win if you’re paid less than the value you create. And people who work here ultimately don’t win if they get paid more than the value they create.