Business & Education

Siding with surfers and other backers of the public's access to beaches, a California appeals court is ordering a Silicon Valley billionaire to reopen public access to Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems who has invested in renewable energy, closed the beach to the public in 2009, prompting a legal challenge from the Surfrider Foundation that brought a ruling against Khosla back in 2014. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected Khosla's appeal.

For about eight minutes on Thursday, Hailiang Education Group outshone Apple, Alphabet and other titans, with a market capitalization that streaked past $5 trillion. But then a market error was corrected that had priced Hailiang's stock at a staggering $200,000, rather than around $10.

We may be in the middle of a seltzer bubble.

Americans are drinking nearly 170 million gallons of the fizzy stuff each year, and sales have gone up 42 percent over the past five years with no signs of slowing down. There's even a restaurant in Boston offering a $40 flight of limited-edition seltzers.

When people in several North Carolina precincts showed up to vote last November, weird things started to happen with the electronic systems used to check them in.

"Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn't," recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Promising online shows that run from comedy and reality to live sports, Facebook says its new Watch platform will let creators connect with their audiences — and earn money in the process. The social media giant's plan calls for using ads to monetize video.

Since President Trump took office in January, enforcement of environmental laws has dropped dramatically, compared with past administrations. A study released by the Environmental Integrity Project finds that $12 million in civil penalties have been collected from violators in 26 cases between January and the end of July.

Delray Beach's charming downtown, palm trees and waves attract locals, vacationers and, increasingly, drug users who come here to try to get off opioids. In some parts of the small Florida community, there's a residential program for people recovering from addiction — a sober living house or "sober home" — on nearly every block. Sometimes two or three.

Every day, more than 10 Americans suffer amputations on what is by far the most dangerous woodworking tool: the table saw. Regulators in Washington, D.C., are moving closer to adopting a rule that would make new saws so much safer that they could prevent 99 percent of serious accidents.

A Google engineer was fired this week over a memo he wrote about what he saw as the company’s “politically correct monoculture” and questioning policies aimed at hiring more women.

He argued that women were biologically less suited for certain jobs in tech, drawing outrage over both his opinions and over his firing.

With guest host John Donvan.

President Donald Trump has insisted that his 17-day stay at his New Jersey golf course is not a standard vacation:

Working in Bedminster, N.J., as long planned construction is being done at the White House. This is not a vacation – meetings and calls!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2017

Google fired a male employee after he wrote an incendiary memo about women at work. But now what?

The tech giant has a poor track record when it comes to diversity. A new leader at Google could have the solution — if her bosses want to listen.

Most of us think of jellyfish, when we think of jellyfish, as something to be avoided at the beach (or as the protagonists in that one episode of Friends).

Even marine biologists have historically cast aside these bothersome interlopers when conducting surveys of more "important" ocean species.

When Donald Trump was running for president last year, he never failed to portray the U.S. economy in the direst terms, with sky-high jobless rates, an anemic manufacturing sector and huge trade deficits as far as the eye could see.

"Look, our country is stagnant. We've lost our jobs. We've lost our businesses. We're not making things anymore, relatively speaking," he said during one of the presidential debates.

What a difference an election makes.

Since its inception nearly a decade ago, Airbnb has faced questions from people of color as to whether the company's worldwide "vacancy" sign really applied to them.

The company has been plagued by allegations and several lawsuits, predominantly but not exclusively from African-Americans, claiming discrimination.

Disney is saying goodbye to Netflix and will aggressively enter the crowded subscription streaming market.

There will be one streaming service for sports and another for films and television shows, the company announced on Tuesday. The same day it reported weak fiscal third-quarter earnings.

On Nov. 23, 1914, the Financial Times ran a piece about the wild success of British efforts to fund World War I.

War Loans were "oversubscribed," the paper said; applications were "pouring in"; the public "has offered the Government every penny it asked for — and more." The "amazing result" showed "how strong is the financial position of the British nation."

On Aug. 8, 2017, the paper had a follow-up. A "clarification."