business

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By Alexandria Sage and Paul Lienert SAN FRANCISCO/DETROIT(Reuters) – Google's self-driving car team is expanding and hiring more people with automotive industry expertise, underscoring the company's determination to move the division past the experimental stage. The operation now employs at least 170 workers, according to a Reuters review of their profiles on LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network. Many are software and systems engineers, and some come from other departments at Google.

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Japan's financial watchdog plans to seek a financial penalty on Toshiba Corp , currently being investigated by an independent committee over accounting irregularities, the Nikkei reported on Saturday. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) believes the company falsified financial statements and will recommend as early as September that the Financial Services Agency impose a fine, the business daily said, citing sources. An SESC spokesman declined to comment, while Toshiba officials were not immediately available for comment.

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By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans' phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, putting pressure on Congress to quickly decide whether to replace or end the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance. Ruling on a program revealed by former government security contractor Edward Snowden, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans' calling records in bulk. Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for a three-judge panel that Section 215, which addresses the FBI's ability to gather business records, could not be interpreted to have permitted the NSA to collect a “staggering” amount of phone records, contrary to claims by the Bush and Obama administrations.