U.S. revokes Venezuela amassador's visa

CARACAS, VENEZUELA (BNO NEWS) -- The Venezuelan government on Wednesday confirmed that its ambassador to the U.S. had his visa revoked by the U.S. State Department.

"I confirm. USA revoked the visa of ambassador Bernardo Alvarez," Temir Porras, Venezuela's Deputy Foreign Minister, said through his Twitter account.

Gene discovery could increase value of non-food crops for industries outside agriculture

Scientists at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation (SRNF) have uncovered a gene responsible for controlling key growth characteristics in plants, specifically the density of plant material, which could highly benefit agriculture and increase the different uses of crops, the SRNF said Wednesday.

Denser plants have more biomass without increasing the agricultural footprint, meaning farmers and ranchers can produce more plant material from the same sized field. Plants that have increased density hold great potential to be used to produce biofuels, electricity and even advanced materials, like carbon fiber.

"This is a significant breakthrough for those developing improved plants to address pressing societal needs," said Richard Dixon, D. Phil., director of the Noble Foundation's Plant Biology Division.

U.S. Labor Department awards nearly $20 million to fight child labor in Bolivia, Egypt and Jordan

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- The U.S. Labor Department on Wednesday announced it has awarded nearly $20 million in grants to combat exploitive child labor in Bolivia, Egypt and Jordan.

In order to help improve the livelihoods of families so they no longer need to rely on children's labor, the department's grants will fund projects that provide children with education and training opportunities.
In addition, these projects will work with countries that have shown strong political will to address abusive child labor and tackle its root causes. They will collaborate with national partners to scale up and sustain these efforts, and will conduct rigorous evaluations of the impact of project interventions.

Apple faces two lawsuits for releasing info to advertisers without user consent

Apple Inc., along with some of its mobile application developers, is facing a couple of class action lawsuits for allegedly collecting and releasing personal information of its product users to advertisers.

According to the complaint, which was filed last Thursday in a San Jose, California federal court by Jonathan Lalo of Los Angeles, several of Apple's iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they're used and for how long.

"Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users' location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views," the suit states, explaining that the identifying device is impossible to be deactivated.

In Lalo's suit, applications named include Pandora, Paper Toss, the Weather Channel, and Discovery.com as the lawsuit seeks class-action status for Apple customers who downloaded an application to their iPhone or iPad devices between December 1, 2008 and mid-December.

In addition, a second suit - Freeman vs. Apple - was filed against Apple in which Apple, Inc. allegedly assigns an identifying number to each of its iPhones and iPads and then transmits that information along with the devices' location data to third-party advertisers.

All of this is done without the consumers' consent, the suit says, and in violation of their legal rights.

USA: Prices fell by 1,3 percent in October

photo By uzi978

A study carried out in 20 U.S. cities in the month of October showed that home prices decreased by 1.3 percent compared to September, and 0.8 percent year-over-year, a report released on Wednesday by S&P/Case-Shiller said.

While housing prices are still above their spring 2009 lows, six cities - Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Portland (OR), Seattle and Tampa - hit their lowest levels since home prices started to fall in 2006 and 2007, meaning that average home prices in those areas have fallen beyond the recent lows seen in most other markets in the spring of 2009.

In October, the annual growth rates moderated from their prior month's pace confirmed a clear deceleration in home price returns for the fifth consecutive month.