'Impermissible conflict of interest'

Google likes to argue that its search advertising empire is immune to anti-trust claims because it doesn't set ad prices. AdWords, the company says, is an auction where advertisers bid for the placement of paid links. But the reality is far more complicated.…

Could the consumer electronics manufacturers, the ones who crank out our cell phones, actually cut a deal on including a mandatory FM tuner in every device they produce? They certainly could—if the price is right (and legislation looks inevitable).

Earlier this week, we reported on the compromise talks underway between the National Association of Broadcasters (radio) and musicFIRST (artists and labels). The two sides have been talking for almost a year, trying to work out some deal to free up the Performance Rights Act from its legislative logjam in Congress.

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AP - Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, a short-lived Confederate prison camp began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for it in southeastern Georgia.

What's not to like about "Capitalist Myopia," a blog post by an economist that starts with a consideration of the song "Sixteen Tons" and ends with the speculation that "socialized investment banking" -- the effective subsidization of the financial industry by the U.S. government -- might achieve  "what generations of coal miners, steel and auto workers, teamsters, teachers unions, and union organizers could not": the emergence of true class consciousness in the United States?

This gives whole new meaning to the phrase "adult social care." A 21-year-old man with learning disabilities is taking a trip to Amsterdam to have sex with a prostitute -- all on taxpayers' dime. This eyebrow-raising news comes courtesy of a £520 million plan to improve care for disabled citizens by giving them the freedom of a personal allowance. The unnamed man's social worker tried to defend the choice like so: "Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights." Would it really?