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Much like nutritional labels on food products, “broadband labels” for internet packages tell you just what is going into the pricing of your service, thanks to new rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in April.

“If you’ve ever shopped for home or mobile internet, you can understand how hard it can be to understand what you’re actually paying for,” said Jon Donenberg, Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council, on a call with reporters. “The broadband nutrition label is a tool that can help consumers make sure they have a clear, straightforward explanation of home and mobile services before signing up for anything.”

Following the design of FDA food labels, these broadband labels provide easy-to-understand, accurate information about the cost and performance of high-speed internet service to help consumers avoid junk fees (opaque and misleading fee structures), price hikes, and other unexpected costs.

Internet service providers selling home access or mobile broadband plans are required to have a label for each plan beginning April 10.

The labels are mandated to appear at any point of sale, including online and in stores, and they are required to disclose all pricing information—including introductory rates, data allowances, and speeds. The labels also include links to information about network management practices and privacy policies.

Hidden fees and unexpected rate hikes have dogged consumers shopping for internet service for years, and the Biden administration has been cracking down on “junk fees” across industries—including banking, hotel and airline pricing, and utility and phone services—for the past several years.

“Fees can make it hard to understand the true cost of an internet plan,” said Donenberg, adding that the agency is “committed to rooting out surprise junk fees that some companies pile on to your bills.”

On a call on April 9, a spokesperson for the FCC clarified that the labels “cannot be buried in multiple clicks” or hidden in a way that a consumer might miss.

If a provider does not display their labels or post inaccurate information about its fees or service plans, consumers can file a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A globe in the age of Google Earth?

London globemaker Peter Bellerby thinks the human yearning to “find our place in the cosmos” has helped globes survive their original purpose—navigation—and the internet. “You don’t go onto Google Earth to get inspired,” Bellerby says in his airy studio, surrounded by dozens of globes in various languages and states of completion. “A globe is very much something that connects you to the planet that we live on.”

But beyond the existential and historical appeal, earthly matters such as cost and geopolitics hover over globemaking. Bellerby’s globes run from about 1,500 British pounds (about 1,900 USD) for the smallest to six figures for the 50-inch Churchill model, and he makes about 600 orbs a year of varying size and ornamentation.

Creating them is a complex process. Bellerby says he wrestles often with customs officials in regions with disputed borders, such as India, China, North Africa, and the Middle East. “In India, I can go to prison for six months if we don’t depict the border between India and Pakistan as the Delhi government wants us to. So, we have to get things like that right.”

Bellerby doesn’t name clients, but he says they come from more socioeconomic levels than you’d think—from families to businesses and heads of state. Private art collectors come calling. So do movie makers. And yes, some of the planet’s wealthiest people buy them.

And there is a real question about whether globes—especially handmade orbs—remain relevant as more than works of art and history for those who can afford them.

They are, after all, snapshots of the past—of the way their patrons and makers saw the world at a certain point in time.

“Sadly, I think globe usage probably is declining, perhaps particularly in the school setting where digital technologies are taking over,” Joshua Nall, Director of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge, said. “I think now they’re perhaps more becoming items of overt prestige. They’re being bought as display pieces to look beautiful, which of course they always have been.”

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Fine dining might conjure up images of exotic foods, sourced from far-off lands. But St. Barts in London is on a mission to prove delicious food can be local—and it’s won a coveted Michelin award for its efforts.

St. Barts is the only Michelin-starred restaurant in London to also have a Green Michelin Star. While the traditional Michelin star indicates exceptional food, its green sister recognizes restaurants that use industry-leading sustainable practices.

From furniture made from fallen trees by a local woodworker to ingredients that are grown in an environmentally responsible way, the ethos is to protect the land and support British suppliers.

“Sustainability is for me about making sort of intelligent choices about the food that we use and the way in which we use it. So, a big thing for me is using UK produce. The fact that we can produce everything within the UK gives us a real opportunity to use all of that produce and therefore, help sustain the British farming industry,” says Johnnie Crowe, Executive Head Chef of Restaurant St. Barts. There is a strict policy to only use British ingredients—that means no olive oil, no lemons, no exotic spices.

Other restaurants would just throw waste products away, but here they become garums, sauces that can be used in dishes months from now. The idea is that not a single morsel of an animal or fish is wasted. Industry experts say being sustainable is not just about helping the environment, it makes good business sense too.

“[...] you can eliminate waste and cost from the business—and many of the green initiatives that people can take do just that, they reduce energy overheads and energy bills, which are a key headache at the moment,” says Kate Nicholls, CEO of the trade organization UK Hospitality.

But do diners care?

Crowe says he doesn’t think there is any point in “lecturing to people.” “There’s enough of that going on, without us doing it as well. But if 5 percent of diners pick up on it, appreciate it, then that’s kind of enough for me.”

It’s a restaurant that wants to prove that fine dining doesn’t have to cost the earth.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

A failed Australian taxi industry disruptor told a court that Uber began illegally operating its ride-sharing service in Australia a decade ago to gain an unfair advantage over competitors.

Taxi Apps, an Australian startup that developed taxi-hailing app GoCatch, lodged a 196-page statement of claim in the Victoria state Supreme Court in which it alleges Uber knowingly launched UberX illegally in Australia in 2014. The San Francisco-based rideshare giant was also accused of serious misconduct including corporate espionage and hacking of competitors’ systems.

The trial is scheduled to last for 10 weeks and comes two weeks after Uber agreed to pay 272 million Australian dollars ($178 million) to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by 8,000 Australian taxi and rental car drivers.

The drivers have demanded compensation for losses since Uber landed in Australia in 2012, first with the limousine service Uber Black, followed by the taxi service Uber Taxi, and then the rideshare service UberX without professional drivers. 

Taxi Apps lawyer Michael Hodge told the court that Uber lawyers agreed to a statement of facts similar to that behind the class-action settlement. Neither statement of facts has yet to be released by the court.

Hodge said Uber got a head start of at least 20 months over its competitors in Australia’s emerging transport app market by launching UberX when ride-sharing was illegal in some Australian states. 

“Uber is a company that quite deliberately set out to break the law in the hope that they could do it at such mass scale that they would ultimately be able to pressure people to allow them to then operate lawfully, and they did so intending to gain a competitive advantage,” Hodge told the court in opening his case.

“They appear to remain completely unrepentant about that and it ought, to pick up the language of exemplary damages, be something that shocks the conscience,” Hodge added.

Hodge said if Uber had complied with Australian law, GoCatch would have continued its growth trajectory, accumulated drivers and eventually launched a ride-sharing product when the law allowed.

But UberX now dominates the Australian rideshare market and GoCatch, launched in 2014, departed the transport industry in 2021.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Drink it or bin it: That phrase should have become history this summer at all U.K. airports. But it's set to persist for at least another year after the British government said it will grant extensions to several large U.K. airports unable to meet the June 1 deadline to fully install new scanning technology. The airports include London's two biggest, Heathrow and Gatwick.

The new scanners use computed tomography, commonly known as a CT scan, to produce clearer images. They are being rolled out globally, including in the U.S. and across Europe, and will allow passengers to go through security with 2 liters (70 ounces) of liquid in their hand luggage—rather than the current paltry 100 milliliters (3.5 ounces).

They will also mean laptops and tablets won't need to be removed from bags—saving even more time.

The restrictions were introduced around the world in 2006 following a foiled terror plot to blow up planes flying from London to the U.S. with homemade liquid bombs. They were not expected to be in place for 18 years and have been cited as one of, if not, the biggest cause of delays at airport security checks.

A deadline for the new technology to be in place at U.K. airports had originally been set for December 2022 but that was delayed to this summer as a result of the huge disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The new deadline comes after airports reported that they were struggling to install the scanners ahead of the busy summer holiday period, largely due to supply chain delays and construction difficulties caused by the weight of the machines.

The Department for Transport said the extensions would be granted on a case-by-case basis and that it was exploring how financial penalties could be imposed for further non-compliance.

It did not provide a breakdown of the situation for each airport, citing security concerns, but said that by the start of June about half of passengers flying from U.K. airports will be processed by the new scanners. London City Airport, a popular short-haul airport, has already successfully introduced the new scanners, as has Teesside Airport in the northeast of England.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Google has agreed to purge billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the U.S. surfing the internet through its Chrome web browser.

The massive housecleaning comes as part of a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the search giant of illegal surveillance.

The details of the deal emerged in a court filing, more than three months after Google and the attorneys handling the class-action case disclosed they had resolved a June 2020 lawsuit targeting Chrome's privacy controls.

Among other allegations, the lawsuit accused Google of tracking Chrome users' internet activity even when they had switched the browser to the "Incognito" setting that is supposed to shield them from being shadowed by the Mountain View, California, company. 

Google vigorously fought the lawsuit until U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected a request to dismiss the case last August, setting up a potential trial. The settlement was negotiated during the next months, culminating in disclosure of the terms, which Rogers still must approve during a hearing scheduled for July 30 in Oakland, California, federal court.

The settlement requires Google to expunge billions of personal records stored in its data centers and make more prominent privacy disclosures about Chrome's Incognito option when it is activated. It also imposes other controls designed to limit Google's collection of personal information.

"We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless," Google said. The company asserted it is only being required to "delete old personal technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization."

In court papers, the attorneys representing Chrome users painted a much different picture, depicting the settlement as a major victory for personal privacy in an age of ever-increasing digital surveillance.

The lawyers valued the settlement at $4.75 billion to $7.8 billion, relying on calculations based primarily on the potential ad sales that the personal information collected through Chrome could have generated in the past and future without the new restrictions.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.