• 1.3 million Cobalts and G5s recalled due to power steering source

• 25% the amount the broadcasting company, which is subsidized by the British government, plans to cut its spending over the next few years
• half of its Web pages will go bye-bye in the shake-up, along with BBC 6 Music, an alternative music radio station, and one other radio station
• why? the broadcaster got a lot of criticism for moving away from its original purpose and competing with commercial networks source

• They won’t do titles other than their most popular unless Adobe and Apple get along. Later this year, you can expect issues of Wired, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Glamour to hit the iPad in an “experimental” format. But it won’t go beyond that unless Apple can reach an accord with Adobe, because two development tracks is kind of a pain. They do have some encouraging numbers working in their favor. 22,000 people paid $2.99 for an iPhone-formatted version of GQ. source

• Good news, everyone! Fans of reading Associated Press stories now have a lot to look forward to with the iPad. They plan to charge readers for some stories with an app on the device. If we could make a suggestion: Don’t charge for the blades – charge for the razors. And make the razors unlike anything else already on the market. We know it inverts the Gillette model, but it’s also the only way anyone’s not just going to open up a Web browser and grab your news that way. Unless you have a better idea. source

• Ah, studies! The things we love! The Pew Internet and American Life project just released a really interesting study about readership habits, with the key point being that online news is a huge chunk of readership nowadays. Here are a few key numbers and points, because we know that you guys like it when we do that for you:

The overall key number from this study:

• 59%like getting news on AND off the Web

We like mixing mediums:

• 92% get their news from multiple media platforms daily (as many as six)
• 2% get their news solely online – we call these people early adopters

Who reads what, where?:

• 78% like to get news from a local TV station
• 61% like getting their news on the Internet
• 50% still like reading news in a local newspaper

Online usage habits:

• variety Most people don’t have favorites. 65 percent don’t have a preferred site for their information.
• national Local news isn’t read so much online – weather and national news are much more popular.
• social Talkers are a big driver of news – three-quarters of people get news via e-mail or social media.

Lessons to take:

• » Newspapers need to focus on local: Many newspapers already do so. It’s their bread and butter, and the journalism they offer is still valuable. Readers agree, which is why they still prefer newspapers and TV for local news.
• » Can’t stop the Web: Online news is already ingrained into the public consciousness, and much of it is grabbed through social media. And it’s decentralized reading too. No point trying to plug it up at this point. In fact, it’s grabbing a massive hold on mobile phones, too.
• » People like talking about news: 72 percent of news-readers say that journalism is a social experience – they read because they like talking about it. Online, this means that social media needs to be a huge part of news-distribution efforts. source

• 133k number of workers Apple’s contractors, over 102 facilities, use to create their products
• 17 number of violations it found as a result of its own internal audits of contractors
• three number of cases it found of contractors purposely hiring underage workers; that’s bad source

• $6.1M the size of HSBC chief executive Michael Geoghegan’s bonus this year – four times his salary
• 100% the amount he plans to give to charity after a row over bank bonuses source

• 200 Google-worker-rooted startups since 2005 source

• $8.9
  billion the size of AIG’s losses this quarter alone, which is laughable
• $182.3
  billion the size of the many bailouts the U.S. government has given it source

• action Fabulis, a gay-themed social media company along the lines of Yelp, found that Citi blocked their bank account due to “objectionable” content on their blog (which is sorta frisky at best). This is really bad.
• reaction Twitter gets all over the story, causing lots of attention for the venture-backed startup. Citi responds, apologizing profusely and trying really freaking hard to make nice. This is better. source