Phone-tracking billboards criticized
NEW YORK — A U.S. senator is calling for a federal investigation into an outdoor advertising company’s latest effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has dubbed Clear Channel Outdoor Americas’ so-called Radar program “spying billboards,” warning that the service may violate privacy rights by tracking people’s cellphone data via the ad space.
“A person’s cellphone should not become a James Bondlike personal tracking device for a corporation to gather information about consumers without their consent,” Schumer said in a statement ahead of a planned news conference Sunday in Times Square, where the company operates billboards.
But the company, which operates more than 675,000 billboards throughout the world, argues that characterization of its program is inaccurate, insisting it only uses anonymous data collected by other companies.
Halliburton, Baker Hughes scrub merger
NEW YORK — Halliburton Co. and Baker Hughes Inc. called off their merger, once valued at $35 billion, which has met stiff antitrust resistance from regulators in the U.S. and Europe.
The companies, the second- and third-largest oil-service firms, announced Sunday in a statement that the combination had been terminated. The companies had set a deadline for the end of April to complete the deal or walk away. Halliburton will pay Baker Hughes a $3.5 billion termination fee by Wednesday.
Halliburton Chairman Dave Lesar said in the statement that “challenges in obtaining remaining regulatory approvals and general industry conditions that severely damaged deal economics led to the conclusion that termination is the best course of action.”
Halliburton announced the Baker Hughes takeover in November 2014 in a bid to better compete against industry leader Schlumberger Ltd. The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit in early April to stop the merger, saying it threatened to eliminate head-to-head competition in 23 products and services used in oil exploration.
Court ruling lets Bergdahl case resume
An appeals court has cleared the way for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s legal case to resume, rejecting prosecutors’ arguments that defense attorneys were given too much leeway on accessing classified documents.
The United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals denied prosecutors’ appeal in a ruling released late Saturday by defense attorneys. The court also lifted a stay from February on pretrial proceedings being heard at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Bergdahl faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after he walked off an outpost in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban and its allies for five years.
Prosecutors had argued that the military judge erred in a decision that “directs the unauthorized disclosure of classified information and grants the defense unfettered access to classified information,” according to court documents.
In an opinion dated Thursday, the three-judge appeals panel wrote that it disagreed with prosecutors’ interpretation.
Ringling Bros. ends use of elephants
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Elephants performed for the last time at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on Sunday, as the show closed its own chapter on a contentious practice that has entertained audiences since circuses began in America two centuries ago.
Six Asian elephants delivered their final performances in Providence, R.I., and five performed in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., during several shows Sunday.
“We love our girls. Thank you so much for so many years of joy,” Ringmaster Johnathan Lee Iverson told the Rhode Island crowd Sunday as the elephants left the ring for a final time. “That’s history tonight there, ladies and gentlemen, true American icons.”
Alana Feld, executive vice president of Feld Entertainment, which owns the circus, said the animals will live at its 200-acre Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. Its herd of 40 Asian elephants, the largest in North America, will continue a breeding program and be used in a pediatric cancer research project.