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Nearly seven years ago, in an effort to branch out beyond a maturing market for its flagship product, Apple began working on something quite different. The iPhone maker tried its best to keep what was known as “Project Titan” under wraps, but anything involving the world’s most valuable company was bound to attract attention — particularly if it involved trying to make its own self-driving car. St...

Fire extinguisher manufacturer Walter Kidde Portable Equipment has been ordered to pay a $12 million civil penalty following allegations that the company failed to inform the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) of product defects in a timely manner. Based in Mebane, N.C., Kidde agreed to the civil penalty and other terms as part of a consent decree entered by a federal judge.  The allegation...

MACA, based in southern France, is a new startup in the flying-car game with a concept they call the Carcopter. And while the name doesn't suggest it, this one is pretty. The brainchild of ex-fighter pilot Thierry De Boisvilliers and 12-year Airbus Helicopter veteran Michael Krollak — with nearly 60 years of combined aeronautics experience — Carcopter is a hydrogen-powered flying Formula 1 ca...

Keith Berman, 67, is the CEO of Decision Diagnostics, a medical device company based in Westlake Village, CA. On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury indicted Berman in connection with an alleged scheme to defraud investors. Berman allegedly made false and misleading statements about a new COVID-19 test, which led to millions of dollars in investor losses.

Gun enthusiasts and hobbyists have long been able to assemble their own firearms at home without running afoul of laws regarding registration. But as those do-it-yourself options became easier to use in recent years, critics have warned that they are increasingly used by those hoping to circumvent background checks for firearm purchases — leaving authorities with no way to trace weapons increasing...

While the pandemic has attacked the economy with brutal force, the impact COVID-19 has had on our pocketbooks has not been equal. Studies show that layoffs have disproportionately affected those in certain industries like retail, hospitality and restaurants, while many white collar workers have managed to make their way through by working from home, relatively unscathed.

Fresh off its historic and successful mission to the International Space Station, last week SpaceX announced even grander plans. Company founder Elon Musk, took to Twitter, if you can believe it, to announce that the company is planning to construct floating, marine-based spaceports around the world. These aqua-bases would be used to launch rockets into space, including Mars and the moon, as well...

According to the Department of Justice, a pair of Virginia attorneys pleaded guilty to federal extortion charges on Friday.  38-year-old Timothy Litzenburg and 41-year-old Daniel Kincheloe admitted to participating in a scheme to extort $200 million from multinational chemical company Monsanto. According to the DOJ, the lawyers threatened financial and reputational harm if the company didn’t hand...

About a year ago, Polestar — the electric vehicle brand founded by Swedish automaker Volvo — unveiled a compact car touted as a potential challenger to Tesla’s Model 3 in the still-young industry of mass-market electric vehicles. The Polestar 2 debuted at the 2019 Geneva auto show with plans for the car to become available this year. That’s still the plan, but the brand is also headed back to Gene...

A Denver-area autonomous vehicle startup made its public debut this week with a more than $50 million fundraising haul and the announcement of pilot projects at several large companies. Outrider says it offers first-of-its-kind technology to help automate the distribution yards of large companies. A video issued by the company shows driverless cabs maneuvering containers at loading docks as an emp...

A New York City based startup is facing the wrath of some the world’s biggest tech companies due to the way it’s populating a database for its facial recognition product. According to its website, Clearview AI’s mission is to enable law enforcement agencies to identify perpetrators and victims of crimes. It apparently does this by using a “research tool” that’s, essentially, a searchable database...

Nashville-based Atlantic Natural Foods’ is a producer and distributor of plant-based food products, and its flagship brand, Loma Linda, has a number of plant-based meat products, ranging from hot dogs and veggie steaks, to its most popular offering, seafood. The company’s TUNO brand of plant-based seafood has recently gained expanded distribution. TUNO, a soy-based protein with a texture similar t...

The UAW has been struggling, for a while now, as fallout from corruption investigations has implicated more and more of its ranking members, including president Gary Jones, who abruptly resigned from the organization this past November. Jones, who was being charged by the union of misusing funds, was just one of more than a dozen UAW execs pursued for various corruption allegations. But one exec t...

Over the past two years, Fiat Chrysler has seen some dramatic highs and some crushing lows. After the automaker endured the sudden passing of longtime leader Sergio Marchionne in 2018, it concluded 2019 with a binding agreement to merge with Peugeot to form the world’s fourth largest car company. Sandwiched in between these events was FCA’s quiet settlement of a lawsuit that stemmed from a 2016 ca...

The F-35 program has been the target of a lot of criticism. Like, a lot. The military aircraft, said to be the most lethal and connected fighter jet in the world, has been plagued by ballooning cost, delays and technical problems for years, and the F-35’s annual assessment by the Pentagon’s test center isn’t exactly giving its reputation a boost. It’s being reported by Bloomberg that, while Robert...

A Northeast Wisconsin heavy-duty vehicle manufacturer stands to bear the brunt of tens of millions in proposed spending reductions if the White House gets its way. Defense contractors are always subject to the whims of global conflict and political considerations, but a new report suggests that orders for hundreds of Oshkosh Corp.-built Army trucks could be a casualty of the administration's...

More than 30 years after snowmobile pioneer Bombardier first entered the aerospace sector, the company is reportedly set to depart the commercial aircraft industry entirely amid a broad restructuring effort. CBC/Radio-Canada reports that fresh off a $1.6 billion loss in its latest fiscal year, the one-time aviation and rail giant sold its stake in the A220 passenger jet to its partner Airbus for $...

The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group on the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona is often referred to as the Boneyard. That’s because it houses approximately 4,000 retired military aircraft – more than anyplace else in the world. And, according to recent reports, it’s about to get a little bigger. The Air Force has announced plans to retire more than 100 planes across...

In an era filled with smart cars, smart phones and smart TVs, it doesn’t sound too far-fetched that the Army would like to develop some smart weapons for what we’d like to believe have always been some pretty smart soldiers. Last month at the annual SHOT Show, Israeli-based Smart Shooter Ltd. unveiled their SMASH Fire Control System. The company is working with Sig Sauer on the Army’s advanced fir...

For those of you who don’t know, Jersey is the largest and southernmost of the Channel Islands located between England and France. The island itself isn’t that important for this story, except that a dad from Jersey recently sacrificed his weekend so his daughter could most likely spend a great number of hers ignoring her father.  Rory Steel, who heads up the Jersey Digital Academy, which provides...

Is nostalgia enough to get you to pay $1,500 for the same phone you had in college? Motorola thinks so. And in their defense, it’s not exactly the same phone… but it is a flip phone and if you thought we moved away from that, remember: everything old is new again. Late last year, Motorola announced the reboot of the Razr, the world’s most popular phone before the iPhone. Back when flipping made se...

San Francisco autonomous driving startup Cruise’s more than six-year existence has been a wild ride even by Silicon Valley standards. The company was purchased by General Motors for nearly $1 billion less than three years later, and its ambition, fundraising and payroll skyrocketed in subsequent years. Putting autonomous cars on the road, however, proved much more difficult. A fleet of self-drivin...

A recent announcement from Subaru reveals that it will be the latest automaker to commit to an electric vehicle future – and it won’t go it alone. Subaru plans to harness Toyota’s more mature hybrid technology to get off the ground, and that’s because Toyota owns about a nine percent stake in the brand. The partners are also working on a few joint projects including some electrics expected sometim...

A recent announcement from Subaru reveals that it will be the latest automaker to commit to an electric vehicle future – and it won’t go it alone. Subaru plans to harness Toyota’s more mature hybrid technology to get off the ground, and that’s because Toyota owns about a nine percent stake in the brand. The partners are also working on a few joint projects including some electrics expected sometim...

It stands to reason that global disease outbreaks would have a measurable impact on the sales of cleaning and sanitation products, and a few years back, a study by IRI suggested that the 2014 Ebola outbreak sent hand sanitizer product sales up 56 percent year-over-year. But for Gojo Industries, the parent company behind Purell hand sanitizer, a ramp-up in the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus may be a...