Word: claims
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Google pooh-poohs this claim. Hal Varian, the company's chief economist, has pointed out that most search engines look at only a small sample of their data in order to improve their results. In other words, Microsoft already has enough data to learn from its users. "It's not the quantity or quality of the ingredients that make a difference. It's the recipes," Varian told CNET. The recipes are Google's proprietary algorithms, which it has slaved over for more than a decade. They're Google's ultimate competitive advantage, and Google believes they'll help it weather...
...everyone welcomes the rules. It is unclear if other Chinese provinces will adhere to the regulations and grow different teas under new names. The new standards, for example, shut out tea producers in neighboring Guangdong province, who claim that the tea they process is as authentic - perhaps even more so - than Yunnan's. Guangdong tea makers contend that it was Pearl River traders, not Yunnan farmers, that originally perfected Puer. Zheng Mukun, a tea master from Guangdong, says the province's claim dates to the Qing dynasty, when tightly packed leaves were fermented over the course of the three-month...
...close reading of all three documents, released the same day that the Justice Department announced it would open up a limited investigation into the interrogations, reveals not smoke but fog. And there's just enough of it that both defenders and critics of the CIA's techniques can claim to have been vindicated. The three high-value detainees who endured the harshest interrogation did yield a trove of information, including details of some schemes to attack U.S. targets. But it's hard to gauge whether these were actually looming threats. (See portraits of Gitmo detainees...
...plant thrives in the high hill country outside Sana'a, where nearly every patch of irrigated land is covered in khat. Unlike coffee, which Yemenis claim was first cultivated here, khat is easy to grow and harvest. And though cultivating and dealing the leaf doesn't generate the kind of instant wealth associated with growing poppies in Afghanistan or coca in Colombia, it certainly provides a steadier income than growing vegetables does - that's why nearly all of the country's arable land is devoted to khat. And khat needs a lot of water, which is scarce in Yemen...
...controversy began in July when Karroubi wrote a letter to Rafsanjani detailing allegations from witnesses and victims. "Some of the detainees claim incarcerated girls were raped so harshly until their uteruses were torn apart, while young boys were sexually abused so savagely that they are suffering from serious depression as well as physical and mental traumas," Karroubi wrote. "Those who have been subject to these embarrassing tortures have been threatened with death if they disclose details." Since then, Karroubi has collected evidence of the abuse, and on Aug. 19 he called for a meeting of the three branches of government...