The Complaints Department
Marriott Acquired Starwood's Reservation System in 2016 Without Noticing Chinese State-Linked Hackers Had Already Been Inside It for Two Years. Its 2024 Settlement Requires Learning the Due Diligence That Was Supposed to Catch That the First Time.
In July 2014, attackers later assessed by U.S. investigators as linked to China's Ministry of State Security got into Starwood Hotels & Resorts' guest reservation database. They stayed. In September 2016, Marriott completed its acquisition of Starwood for roughly $13 billion, absorbing the reservation system, the
West Fertilizer Company Told the EPA Its Worst-Case Scenario Was a Small Ammonia Leak, No Fire or Explosion. Fifteen People, Mostly Volunteer Firefighters, Died Proving It Wrong Twenty Minutes Later.
West Fertilizer Company had been mixing and storing agricultural chemicals in the small Texas town of West, population roughly 2,800, since 1962. On the evening of April 17, 2013, a fire broke out inside the wood-frame facility. Firefighters, most of them volunteers, arrived to fight what looked like
3M Invented the Chemical Behind Scotchgard, Sold It to DuPont as a Raw Material for Fifty Years, and Found It in Its Own Workers' Blood by 1976. It Kept Selling It Anyway, Until Its Own Liability Made It Stop in 2000.
In 1953, a 3M lab assistant named Patsy Sherman spilled a fluorochemical compound on a tennis shoe and couldn't get it off. The stain resisted everything, and 3M turned the accident into Scotchgard. It was a good story, and 3M told it often. What 3M told far less
Boeing's Quality Manager Spent Years Warning That Sub-Standard Parts Were Slipping Onto 787s Unchecked. He Died Alone in a Parking Lot Mid-Deposition Against the Company, and the Case Closed Within Months.
For 32 years, John Barnett worked the assembly lines that built America's commercial airliners, first on the 747, 767, and 777 programs in Everett, Washington, then from 2010 to 2017 as a quality manager at Boeing's 787 Dreamliner plant in North Charleston, South Carolina. In 2017
A Hand-Tightened Blind Flange and a Botched Shift Handover Killed 167 Men on Occidental Petroleum's Piper Alpha Platform in 22 Minutes. No One at the Company Was Ever Criminally Charged.
At around 10 p.m. on July 6, 1988, a pressure safety valve that had been pulled for maintenance that morning let gas condensate leak past a blind flange that had only been hand-tightened. Within 22 minutes, the Piper Alpha platform, 120 miles northeast of Aberdeen in the North
Netflix Spent Six Years Telling Customers Love Is Sharing a Password. Once It Started Charging $7.99 a Month Per Shared Password Instead, Subscriber Growth Hit Its Best Year Since the Pandemic.
On March 10, 2017, Netflix's official Twitter account posted four words that would follow the company around for the next six years: "Love is sharing a password." It was a promo tweet for a show called Love, but it was also, unmistakably, a policy statement — an
New York Paused Congestion Pricing for 'Affordability' Weeks Before a 2024 Election, Then Relaunched It at a Lower Price Once Voting Was Over. A Year Later, Traffic Was Down 11 Percent and the Federal Government Was Still in Court Trying to Kill It.
On June 5, 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul stood before reporters and "indefinitely paused" New York's Central Business District Tolling Program, the long-planned congestion charge for driving into Manhattan below 60th Street. The launch was three weeks away. Hochul cited affordability concerns for working- and middle-
Twitter Cut Off the Third-Party Apps That Built Its Developer Ecosystem in January 2023 With No Warning. One of Those Apps Coined the Word Tweet and Designed Twitter's Bird Logo Before Twitter Had Either.
On January 13, 2023, Twitter's API went dark for third-party client apps with no announcement and no explanation. Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Fenix, and others simply stopped working, all at once, for everyone. Developers spent days guessing whether it was a bug, an outage, or deliberate. Four days later,
China GT Says Its Safety Setup Complied With National-Level Standards. The Driver Was Pulled From His Burning Ferrari by a Rival Who Stopped Mid-Race and Took a Fire Extinguisher From a Marshal.
On Saturday 5 September 2026, on the back straight at Shanghai, David Chen of Harmony Racing and Neil Verhagen of TBC by 610Racing made contact and slid through the grass. Chen's Ferrari 296 GT3 struck the Ferrari of Ollie Millroy, which caught fire with Millroy inside it. Loek
Meta's Georgia Data Center Draws Roughly Ten Percent of the County's Daily Water Supply to Cool Servers. A Member of Congress Had to Bring Jars of the Neighbors' Brown Tap Water to a Hearing Before the EPA Agreed to Look.
Beverly and Jeff Morris live about 1,000 feet from Meta's data center campus straddling Newton and Morgan Counties, Georgia, a $750 million-to-$1 billion-plus build in the Stanton Springs industrial park. Their well water ran dry, then came back brown with sediment, and in the
A Power Bank Stored in an Overhead Bin Destroyed an Air Busan Jet in January 2025. Airlines Across Asia Responded by Requiring Passengers Keep Their Power Banks Closer to Their Bodies, Not Farther Away.
On the night of 28 January 2025, an Air Busan Airbus A321 with 176 people aboard was preparing to taxi at Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, when a fire broke out in the rear cabin. Everyone evacuated down the slides; seven people came away with minor smoke-inhalation
New York City's Local Law 18 All But Eliminated Short-Term Rentals to Protect the Housing Stock. Manhattan Hotel Rooms Now Average $444 a Night, and the Hotel Industry That Lobbied for the Law Calls Itself Fully Supportive.
New York City's Local Law 18 took effect on September 5, 2023, requiring anyone renting out a room or apartment for under 30 days to register with the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement, pay a non-refundable $145 fee, and be physically present for the entire