`An Army lieutenant colonel who received the Bronze Star for her wartime service in Iraq was arrested yesterday and charged with taking bribes in a growing corruption scandal involving the Iraq reconstruction program. An investigation has jolted the program, embarrassed the United States military and exposed a dark underside of the American occupation authority that ran the country after the invasion in April 2003. [..]
She is charged with receiving cash bribes of $80,000 to $100,000, a Cadillac Escalade, a trove of illegal weaponry and other items for steering construction jobs to an American contractor in Iraq.
Some of the cash, intended for projects like a library in the holy city of Karbala and an Iraqi police academy south of Baghdad, paid for a new hot tub and a deck for Colonel Harrison’s home in Trenton, according to the federal affidavit. Conviction on the charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery and money laundering as well as a long list of weapons charges, could put her in prison for up to 30 years, the Justice Department said in a statement.’
`A woman has knocked herself unconscious after allegedly bashing a taxi driver in north Queensland.
A woman repeatedly punched a 36-year-old taxi driver in the face before robbing him in Townsville shortly before midnight, police said.
But she knocked herself out when she fell out of the cab.
A 24-year-old woman is under arrest at Townsville Hospital.’
The girlfriend of a friend of mine is up in Townsville at the moment. When I told him about this story he thought it that she might have gone insane and got herself in the newspaper. Thankfully/unfortunately, it wasn’t her. 🙂
`Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.
The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was incorrect.
The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. “He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. “No one went to Syria to find it.” [..]
Also Monday, Mr. Bush issued a statement saying, “Syria must comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1559, 1595, and 1636 and end its interference in Lebanon once and for all. “The resolutions call for ending Syria’s occupation of Lebanon and for Syrian cooperation into the investigation of the assassination of a Lebanese politician, Rafik Hariri.’
`A lesbian couple who entered into the nation’s first same-sex civil union are splitting up amid allegations of violent behavior.
Carolyn Conrad, 35, asked a court in October to end her relationship with Kathleen Peterson, 46.
Conrad also obtained a restraining order Wednesday against her partner, saying Peterson punched a hole in the wall during an argument and threatened to harm a friend.’
`A wonderous Office Christmas party last night and I woke up with these on me. My work collegues tell me Sam, the office token Aussie, bought them for me as a secret santa present, but I cannot confirm this. By all accounts I wore these all night, while various members of staff nibbled at them. As you can see from the photos, there are lots of sweeties left. They are in perfect working order and I have them on now.’
`A female duo who tried to rob a man at gunpoint Sunday morning after one flashed him may be the same two women who later chatted with another man at a nearby convenience store and then possibly drove away in his car, police said.
Investigators working the cases are wondering whether another five or six unsolved auto thefts and robberies might be the handiwork of two women, a rare case in law enforcement. [..]
The man told police one woman suddenly flashed him then smashed a window of his pickup with a hammer as he was getting in.
The police said that when he got out of the truck and grabbed the hammer, another woman stepped out of a small beige car and, sporting a semiautomatic weapon, demanded his wallet.’
`A utility worker who came to shut off the gas to a Bloomfield house discovered the body of a long-dead woman in the home she shared with her disoriented bother, who told the worker his sister was merely resting, authorities said. [..]
When the dead woman’s brother opened the door, the PSE&G employee explained he would have to pay the gas bill or have the gas shut off.
The resident then invited the worker in, saying, “Let me check with my sister, she’s lying down right now,” Behre reported the man saying.
There was a strong odor in the house, and the woman’s body was lying on the dining room floor. [..]
Neighbors told police the siblings were regularly seen walking to a nearby grocery store. Police believe the woman has been dead for about six months because neighbors told authorities that she had not been seen outside since the summer.
It was about that time that a gas bill was last paid, Behre said.’
`Kristina Roberts, 37, claims she was alone at JEG Advertising with her new boss on Sept. 9 when he approached her while holding his penis.
“Plaintiff was sitting at her desk doing the work she was given earlier that day when Mr. Garcia came up behind her,” her civil suit says. “He asked Ms. Roberts to turn around, and when she did, defendant proceeded to ejaculate onto her and her clothing. Mr. Garcia apologized and stated that he did not mean to do that.”
“You don’t really want to go there, do you? I really don’t have any comment at all,” Garcia told Courttv.com when asked about the incident. “Just say it was consensual.”‘
`Armed Indonesian troops have hoisted their nation’s red and white flag over a remote island and proudly reclaimed its sovereignty from an Aussie surfer.
The military recently landed on tiny Mengkudu – a palm-fringed speck lying between Bali and Timor – after angry villagers from a neighbouring island accused an Australian expatriate of banning them from visiting his out-of-the-way surf camp.
Colonel Airwind Nokbola, the military commander for East Nusa Tengarra province, said 17 armed soldiers were now stationed on the traditionally uninhabited island, which has Indian Ocean surfbreak of international repute just south-east of Sumba.’
Old Hungarian ad for what appears to be fried turds.
(6.6meg MPEG)
`A 75-year-old Amish widower, afraid his church community would find out about him seeking sex from a prostitute, was scammed out of more than $67,000 from the prostitute and her boyfriend, a prosecutor says.
Jake Byler of Burton Township gave the pair the money because they had convinced him that photos of Byler and the prostitute would appear on the Internet, county prosecutor David Joyce said. [..]
He told detectives that Lansdowne had convinced him that someone broke into his rural home east of Cleveland and installed a camera in the bedroom.
Lansdowne said he knew a man who would get rid of the pictures for money. Byler tapped into his accounts, took out a loan and gave the pair cash he had stored in his home.’
`As the joke goes, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. But although anonymity has been part of Internet culture since the first browser, it’s also a major obstacle to making the Web a safe place to conduct business: Internet fraud and identity theft cost consumers and merchants several billion dollars last year. And many of the other more troubling aspects of the Internet, from spam emails to sexual predators, also have their roots in the ease of masking one’s identity in the online world.
Change, however, is on the way. Already over 20 million PCs worldwide are equipped with a tiny security chip called the Trusted Platform Module, although it is as yet rarely activated. But once merchants and other online services begin to use it, the TPM will do something never before seen on the Internet: provide virtually fool-proof verification that you are who you say you are.’
Clip with some scary footage of Christians.
(8.2meg Windows Media)
`Combing through cosmic radiation could reveal a message from the universe’s creator, if it has one, say two physicists.
According to theory, anyone could make a universe by squashing a lump of matter violently enough to replicate the big bang. And by tweaking something called the inflaton field, the creator–be it a physicist-hacker or a deity–could put a binary message in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Or so argue Stephen Hsu of the University of Oregon, Eugene, and Anthony Zee of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a paper at arXiv.org. The message might sit, like cosmic Braille, in the bumps and ripples of the CMB, they say. They calculate that it could hold up to 100,000 bits of information–enough to encode, say, clues to the long-sought grand unified theory that joins all the physical forces. Some people “think we are nuts,” says Hsu. “I think it’s a legitimate scientific question.” Telescopes now in the works could detect such a message within 20 years, he says.’
Read the full article: Message in the Sky.
`Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered her 9-month-old son’s name was on the United States’ “no-fly” list of suspected terrorists.
“We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled,” Zapolsky said, recalling the incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in July. “The desk agent started laughing. … She couldn’t print us out a boarding pass because he’s on the no-fly list.”
Zapolsky, who did not want her son’s name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. “But when I found out you can’t actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed.”
Zapolsky isn’t alone.’
`Here’s a great gift idea just in time for the holidays: Make your friends and relatives their very own copy-protected CDs using the same industrial-grade passive protection technology built into XCP and Macrovision discs.
Passive protection exploits subtle differences between the way computers read CDs and the way ordinary CD players do. By changing the layout of data on the CD, it’s sometimes possible to confuse computers without affecting ordinary players — or so the theory goes. In practice, the distinction between computers and CD players is less precise. Older generations of CD copy protection, which relied entirely on passive protection, proved easy to copy in some computers and impossible to play on some CD players. For these reasons, copy protection vendors now use active protection — special software designed to block copying.
Discs with XCP or Macrovision protection employ active protection in conjunction with a milder form of passive protection. You can create your own CD with exactly the same passive protection by following a straightforward five-step procedure. I’ll describe the procedure here, and then explain why it works.’
`A family’s display featuring a bloody Santa Claus wielding a knife, beheaded Barbie dolls and a severed head with blood gushing from its eyes has scared children and angered some homeowners in a New York neighborhood, according to a Local 6 News report.
The display, which can be easily seen by neighbors on East 18th Street in New York, was put up by Joel Krupnik, his wife and daughter.
A tree next to the blood-cover Santa Claus has doll heads attached to its branches.’
with pictures.
Ironic ExxonMobil advertisement.
`Thousands of airline passengers unexpectedly found themselves stranded in line at U.S. border checkpoints in August, after a Department of Homeland Security computer crashed. [..]
The holdups can be attributed in part to the Homeland Security Department’s antiquated computer systems. The agency’s mainframes do not share data and are accessible only by some offices. An upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system failed because of application incompatibilities, which meant one division had to undertake a cumbersome reversion back to Windows 95. [..]
Not one of the systems can talk with another, according to government reports, and not all offices are equipped to log into the systems they need to update records.’
`[..] down on Quassaick Avenue, around the corner from the New Windsor Elementary School, the 6-foot tall, anatomically correct, finely detailed penis raised some questions Monday.
Especially for police.
“We got some calls that people thought it was offensive,” said New Windsor police Chief Michael Biasotti. “We assumed it was some kids who did it.”
Officers found no one home. Assuming the snow sculpture was more prank than nod to Christmas’ pagan roots, the police knocked it down. Beat it down with shovels, actually.’
`A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.
Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and “novelty items” such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.
The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict.’
`A DVD that retails for $21.99 could cost a local man more than $100,000, News 5’s John London reported.
Russell Lee is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description. [..]
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee’s home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off.’
`A Pennsylvania student is off the hook after the American Civil Liberties Union defended his right to wear a political T-shirt to school.
Chris Schiano’s T-shirt said “International Terrorist” and had a picture of President Bush.
A security guard at his high school north of Philadelphia told him to take it off. He refused.
Schiano says he’s well versed in the First Amendment. He says he “knew right off they had no legal footing to stand on.”‘
`The record industry has long considered online file-sharing a serious threat to its livelihood. But a new study released Tuesday suggests that consumer-to-consumer music recommendations — a growing feature of online music stores and Web sites — will benefit the industry, artists and fans alike. [..]
Nearly one-quarter of frequent online music users say that the ability to share music with others is a key factor when selecting an online music service. And a third were interested in technology that helps them discover and recommend music, such as tools that allow Internet users to publish and rank lists of their favorite songs. Perhaps most important for the recording industry, a tenth of those surveyed said they frequently make music purchases based on others’ recommendations.’
`The Sony BMG-Rootkit, DRM, XCP (or whatever you might want to call it) scandal is one of the most important scandals affecting the music world this year. And even if everyone’s argued time and time again about its effects on both company and consumers, people seem to leave out one of the most affected parties , the artists whose CDs are affected by the Rootkit plague.
Actually, they have a problem with Sony as well. Not only that their sales have decreased following this entire scandal, but their popularity too. And that’s why some of the artists are taking matters into their own hands.’
`A Wal-Mart Santa Claus was arrested Monday for allegedly exposing himself to a 15-year-old boy and attempting to have the boy engage in oral sex with him at his home on Dec. 9, according to a City of Newburgh police press release.
Ransford George Perry, 57, of Newburgh, has acted as an advocate for numerous children around Newburgh through a business called the Association Against Biased Educators. He is also a promoter for “talented children,” and a Santa Claus at the Wal-Mart on Route 300 in the Town of Newburgh, police said.’
