Purveyor
Purveyor's JournalTiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones
Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.
A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the "Drone Shield," a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone's "acoustic signatures" (sound frequency and spectrum) when it's within range.
The company's founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like IndieGoGo to finance the project.
The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.
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http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/01/tiny-device-will-detect-domestic-drones
Police: Shrapnel-Filled Pipe Bomb Found In Oregon Had 100-Yard Blast Radius
A pipe bomb unexpectedly discovered by two women in Oregon was capable of 100-yard blast radius, police said.
The Associated Press reported the two women found the explosive device Saturday while helping clean up a trailer home park. The bomb was filled with explosive powder and 4-inch nails.
“Each one of these bombs is unique and we’re hoping to be able to get some evidence from the way it was constructed,” Oregon State Patrol Detective Dennis Wagner told the East Oregonian. “It wasn’t a really (an) advanced device but it was something somebody took some time to build, and it was fairly ingenious.”
The pipe bomb was found near the side of the road in an unpopulated area. Police suspect it was thrown out of a car window.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/01/police-shrapnel-filled-pipe-bomb-found-in-oregon-had-100-yard-blast-radius/
Productivity in U.S. Rises as Companies Try to Cut Labor Costs
By Shobhana Chandra - May 2, 2013
The productivity of U.S. workers rose in the first quarter as companies focused on containing labor expenses.
The measure of employee output per hour increased at a 0.7 percent annual rate, after dropping 1.7 percent in the prior three months, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 1 percent advance. Expenses per worker increased at a 0.5 percent rate after jumping 4.4 percent.
Employers tried to control expenses by making do with their existing staff as demand grew in the January to March period. The emphasis on wringing efficiency gains may mean hiring will take time to accelerate, particularly as across-the board federal budget cutbacks and higher payroll taxes restrain the world’s largest economy.
“Businesses are struggling to raise productivity,” Guy Berger, an economist at RBS Securities Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut, said before the report. “Companies are struggling to increase profits as well. Employment has taken a downshift. The second half is going to be better for employment.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/productivity-in-u-s-rises-as-companies-try-to-cut-labor-costs.html
Gore Says Congress Swayed by Political Money Not Voters
Former Vice President Al Gore says American democracy has been “hacked” by the influence of money in politics and that he hopes activist investors will continue to exert influence on corporations globally to act in civically responsible ways.
“The Congress is incapable of doing what the American people want,” Gore said in an interview late yesterday with Willow Bay on Bloomberg Television from the Milken Institute 2013 Global Conference in Los Angeles. “The influence of big money is at extremely unhealthy levels.”
The former Democratic vice president said the result has been that special interests have “way more influence over the decisions of the Congress than the American people do.”
Gore, 65, pointed to legislation to expand background checks for gun purchasers that failed in the Senate last month, even though a CBS/New York Times poll in January showed 90 percent of the U.S. public supports expanding such a system.
“They haven’t been able to regulate these phony-baloney financial derivatives that caused the financial crisis,” he said. “They can’t pass a budget. They can’t keep the country from facing financial danger.”
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/gore-says-congress-swayed-by-political-money-not-voters.html
Boston Bomb Trail Leads Into Heart of Putin’s Own War on Terror
Six blocks from the Caspian Sea, on Kotrova Street in central Makhachkala, sits a mosque being watched by undercover Russian agents charged with preventing acts of terror.
As worshipers spill out into the streets, American investigators are watching now, too, as they try to reconstruct the events that led to the most high-profile terrorist assault in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001.
It’s here that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the man U.S. authorities say masterminded the Boston Marathon bombings, went to worship during a six-month trip to Dagestan last year, according to his father. Since President Vladimir Putin tamed Tsarnaev’s ancestral homeland Chechnya, where federal forces fought two wars against Islamic militants, neighboring Dagestan has emerged as the center of separatist violence on the Russian side of the Caucasus Mountains.
“We know there were militants who started their path to Islam at this mosque,” Rezvan Kurbanov, a former deputy premier of Dagestan who oversaw security in the region in 2010 and 2011, said in an interview in Moscow. “We’ve had our eye on this mosque for a long time.”
Hundreds of mainly young men took to the street for afternoon prayers last Friday, halting traffic around the mosque because they were unable to squeeze into a building designed to hold 1,800. They knelt on sheets of cardboard, carpets and plastic bags and prayed along the dusty road.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/boston-bomb-trail-leads-into-heart-of-putin-s-own-war-on-terror.html
Detroit Beats Estimates in Best U.S. Sales Since ’07
Source: Bloomberg
By Keith Naughton, Craig Trudell and Mark Clothier - May 2, 2013
Detroit’s boom-and-bust history was built on a dependence on big, fuel-thirsty vehicles. Now, with freshly stocked showrooms of new cars and more-efficient trucks, U.S. automakers are gaining ground on their Asian competitors with the best lineup in a generation.
“No matter what the economy does, no matter what fuel prices are, I’ve got a car for all seasons,” said Chuck Eddy, a Chrysler dealer in Youngstown, Ohio, who is seeing sales boom for Dodge Dart compact cars and Ram 1500 pickups. “I didn’t have that in ’09.”
General Motors Co (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F) and Chrysler Group LLC -- which all gained market share in the first quarter for the first time in 20 years -- exceeded sales forecasts last month and led the industry to its best April since 2007.
Ford sales rose 18 percent and GM and Chrysler deliveries both increased 11 percent. That beat forecasts by analysts of a 17 percent rise for Ford and 10 percent for Detroit-based GM and Fiat SpA (F)-controlled Chrysler.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/detroit-beats-estimates-in-best-u-s-april-sales-since-07-cars.html
Consumer Comfort Reaches Five-Year High as U.S. Top Earners Gain
Consumer sentiment climbed last week to its highest level in more than five years as Americans felt the most upbeat about spending since before the recession began.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index improved to minus 28.9 in the week ended April 28, its highest since January 2008, from minus 29.9 the week earlier. The buying-climate gauge rose to minus 32.5, the best reading since November 2007, a month before the worst economic slump since the Great Depression began.
The gain in sentiment is being driven by high-income earners as rising home and stocks values bolster balance sheets, which may help underpin consumer spending. While easing fuel costs may help those at the other end of the pay scale, the higher payroll tax that took effect in January may be starting to hurt those households.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/consumer-comfort-reaches-five-year-high-as-u-s-top-earners-gain.html
Companies Hire Less, Manufacturing Growth Slows In April
(Reuters) - Companies hired the fewest employees in seven months in April while manufacturing growth slowed to a crawl, suggesting the economy has run into a soft patch as budget-cutting in Washington starts to bite.
Businesses added 119,000 employees to payrolls last month, according to the ADP National Employment Report released on Wednesday, short of economists' expectations for 150,000 jobs and the smallest gain since last September.
The slowdown was primarily due to the effect of tighter fiscal policy through a combination of an increase in payroll taxes at the start of the year and the $85 billion government spending cuts that took effect across the board in March, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, which jointly develops the ADP report.
"They are starting to bite and starting to weaken growth," said Zandi. "It's affecting all industries and almost all company sizes."
The Federal Reserve also expressed concern about the drag on growth linked to fiscal belt-tightening and said the central bank could lift or taper the pace of its asset purchases depending on the economy's performance.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/01/us-usa-economy-idUSBRE93P04P20130501
Jobless Claims Fall Sharply To Five-Year Low
Source: REUTERS
(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week to its lowest level since the early days of the 2007-09 recession, suggesting the job market is still healing despite weakness in the broader economy.
Other data on Thursday showed a narrowing of the U.S. trade gap in March, although drops in imports and exports during the month gave potential warning signs over the strength of domestic and foreign demand.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 324,000 the Labor Department said.
The claims report runs counter to a growing number of signals that economic activity softened in March and April, a phenomena economists have dubbed the spring swoon because it also happened in the previous two years.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/us-usa-economy-jobless-idUSBRE9410LX20130502
US Manufacturing Growth Slows; Construction Spending Falls
Source: REUTERS
The pace of U.S. manufacturing growth slowed in April as the sector expanded only modestly, an industry report showed on Wednesday. A separate report showed that construction spending fell in March.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 50.7 from 51.3 in March, coming in below expectations for 50.9. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.
In a sign of potential resiliency, the forward-looking new orders component edged up to 52.3 from 51.4, while production improved to 53.5 from 52.2.
But employment fell to 50.2 from 54.2, boding poorly for the Labor Department's national unemployment report due on Friday.
Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100694720
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