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(credit: Mike Mozart)

AT&T overcharged two Florida school districts for phone service and should have to pay about $170,000 to the US government to settle the allegations, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday. AT&T disputes the charges and will contest the decision.

The FCC issued a Notice of Apparently Liability (NAL) to AT&T, an initial step toward enforcing the proposed punishment. The alleged overcharges relate to the FCC's E-Rate program, which funds telecommunications for schools and libraries and is paid for by Americans through surcharges on phone bills. The FCC said AT&T should have to repay $63,760 it improperly received from the FCC in subsidies for phone service provided to Orange and Dixie Counties and pay an additional fine of $106,425. AT&T prices charged to the districts were almost 400 percent higher than they should have been, according to the FCC.

AT&T violated the FCC's "lowest corresponding price rule" designed to ensure that schools and libraries "get the best rates available by prohibiting E-Rate service providers from charging them more than the lowest price paid by other similarly situated customers for similar telecommunications services," the FCC said. Instead of charging the lowest available price, "AT&T charged the school districts prices for telephone service that were magnitudes higher than many other customers in Florida," the FCC said. Between 2012 and 2015, the school districts paid "some of the highest prices in the state... for basic telephone services."

Formula E—the world's first fully electric racing series—recently wrapped its second season with a close championship fight in London. Ahead of the start of the third season later this year, the series has just unveiled a revised version of the Spark-Renault SRT_01 cars that each of the 10 teams will race in cities around the globe.

In fact, from the wheels back, the cars are basically the same; the big change is a striking new front wing, meant to make the car look more aggressive:

"I like the look of the new front wing—it looks a little bit more futuristic, and from inside the car you can see the top part of the wing, so visually for the driver there is also a small change," said Sebastian Buemi, the Swiss driver and reigning Formula E champion. "We want Formula E to look different and be different, and the new wing is a good way of showing that. I don’t think it will make too big of an impact on aero which isn’t in the ethos of this championship—but it’s a good way to show visual development heading to Hong Kong for the start of season three."

NASA's Orion spacecraft may first carry crew into space in 2023. (credit: NASA)

At the request of Congress, the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office reviews the finances and management of federal programs, and this week it released a study critical of NASA’s crew capsule, Orion. Most worryingly, the 56-page report (PDF) regularly draws parallels between the Orion program and another large NASA project, the James Webb Space Telescope. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is notorious for ballooning from a 10-year, $500 million project to a 20-year, $8.8 billion (£6.7 billion) instrument that may finally launch in 2018.

Although Orion has not yet experienced such dramatic increases in costs, the spacecraft is now into its second decade of development. NASA estimates that it will spend a total of $16 billion (£12 billion) to ready Orion for its first crewed flight in April 2023. However, the GAO review, signed by Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Cristina T. Chaplain, did not find these numbers to be reliable.

The federal auditing agency based this conclusion on the fact that only a handful of NASA’s methods for estimating costs and schedule were consistent with “best practices.” Moreover, the GAO found, in making a number of its estimates, NASA appears to be relying too heavily on data analysis from the primary contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin. In regard to Orion’s cost and schedule estimates, then, the GAO report concludes, “They do not fully reflect the characteristics of quality cost or schedule estimates and neither estimate can be considered reliable.”

(credit: quinn norton)

Sorry, kids. You may be doing your best at jamming your finger up your nose, digging tirelessly. But it seems scientists are the ones that have struck gold.

Sifting through the bacteria that inhabit our cavernous snouts, researchers came up with one that produces a new antibiotic—an antibiotic unlike any other bacteria-busting drugs known to modern medicine. That prized chemical nugget can kill off Staphylococcus aureus strains, including the dastardly methicillin resistant kind called MRSA, plus other drug-resistant foes. Though it's still unclear how exactly the new drug slays nasal rivals, scientists are hopeful that the compound will be useful in treating deadly MRSA infections and even clearing out S. aureus from the nose before it has a chance to cause an infection.

“Nobody has found something like this before,” Bernhard Krismer, a bacteriologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and a lead scientist for the research, said in a press briefing. The drug, along with its bacterial maker, have “a huge impact on the composition of the microbiota,” Krismer added. The full results of the nasal excavation appear in the July 28 issue of Nature.