‘Some big companies have had a surprise during their earnings conference calls this quarter — and it has nothing to do with the weak economy.
At least seven times just the past three weeks, a mystery caller has cleverly insinuated himself into the normally well-manicured ritual of the quarterly calls. As top executives of publicly traded companies respond to securities analysts’ questions about their balance sheets, he impersonates a well-known analyst to get called upon. Then, usually declaring himself to be “Joe Herrick of Gutterman Research,” he launches into his own version of analyst-speak.
“Congratulations on the solid numbers — you always seem to come through in challenging times,” he said to Leo Kiely, president and chief executive officer of Molson Coors Brewing Co., on Feb. 12, convincingly parroting the obsequious banter common to the calls. “Can you provide some more color as to what you are doing for your supply chain initiatives to reduce manufacturing costs per hectoliter, as you originally promised $150 million in synergy or savings to decrease working capital?”‘
‘It is the biggest food recall in US history. About 65 million kilograms of beef products from a Californian slaughterhouse have been recalled because of concerns about the plant’s production line.
Some animals were unable to stand and that has prompted concerns about their ability to be tested for infections like mad cow’s disease.
The plant is now under investigation and two of its employees have been charged with animal cruelty.
Everything from sirloin to taco meat has been recalled, as have some of the more curious by-products of the beef industry such as salivary glands and six gallon containers of beef bile.’
A couple of decent attempts to injure the woman.. Hooray for machines on the rampage. 🙂
(1.1meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Police say a Parks Department employee took his city-issued golf cart on a rampage, running over and killing five birds in a public park.
Police said they arrested the 45-year-old employee Friday evening after receiving complaints that he was driving erratically in the park in Lower Manhattan. He faces charges of reckless endangerment and intentional injury to an animal.
Three pigeons and two seagulls were killed.’
‘Grover Cleveland High School Principal Bob Marks has his limits.
On Thursday, it was the labeled diagram of a vagina splashed across the front page of the student newspaper’s Valentine’s Day issue.
Flustered teachers rushed to confiscate the publication, but with some copies already in circulation and the Reseda campus in an uproar, it quickly became a hot read for the school’s roughly 3,700 students.
And some of the contraband issues made their way home, getting a quick reaction from parents.
“My phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Marks said. Only one parent asked why the paper was taken away; the others called to say they were offended, he said.
The drawing in question ran under the hot-pink headline “Have a happy Vagina Day!” and the four-page edition included stories titled “Ending shame for nature’s gift” and “Rejected!!!!!!!”‘
‘As a former child prodigy blessed with chiselled good looks, they called him the David Beckham of the classical violin. Now he is more likely to be known as the lad with the broken Strad.
David Garrett, 26, one of the nation’s foremost young concert performers, had an accident that every world-class musician must dread: at the end of a concert at the Barbican he tripped and landed on his violin.
The instrument is a 290-year-old Stradivarius, so rare that it would be almost impossible to estimate its value. Certainly there are people who would have gladly paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for it, before its glamorous owner did a turn as Mr Bean.
Now he has a badly damaged violin that will be out of use for at least eight months, and may never sound the same again. He is also facing a £60,000 repair bill.’
‘A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of US President John F Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, the Dallas Morning News said.
The documents are said to include a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby.
The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney’s office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference tomorrow.
The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former district attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president’s death.
Also found were official records from Ruby’s trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, district attorney Craig Watkins told the newspaper.
But one potentially controversial item is a transcript of an exchange between Oswald and Ruby in which they discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, attorney-general Robert Kennedy.’
A 2:30am sneaky lotion application doesn’t go as planned.
Followup to Angry Grandpa Ruins Christmas and Angry Grandpa Pissed About Dinner.
(5.9meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Ailing leader Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba’s president from nearly a half-century early Tuesday, saying in a letter published in online official media that he would not accept a new term when the newly elected parliament meets on Sunday.
“I will not aspire nor accept–I repeat I will not aspire or accept, the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief,” read a letter signed by Castro published quietly overnight without advance warning in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma. [..]
The 81-year-old Castro’s overnight announcement effectively ends his rule of almost 50 years over Cuba, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency.’
‘Tammie Mills said she was tired of being hurt in relationships. She was just a teenager, she said, but she wanted to be a mother.
Mills, now 24, said she began a sexual relationship with her father seven years ago. She was 17 when their first daughter was born, Mills said, and they have another daughter who is 2.
“I know it was wrong, but it is my life,” Mills said in an interview Friday. “We loved each other. We were in it together.”
Her father, Michael A. Mills, 46, was arrested Thursday on an incest charge, based on the longstanding sexual relationship he allegedly had with his daughter. [..]
Tammie Mills said her father did not force her to have sex. She wanted a baby.’
‘Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, is refusing to remove medieval artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, despite being flooded with complaints from Muslims demanding the images be deleted.
More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad. But the defiant editors of the encyclopaedia insist they will not bow to pressure and say anyone objecting to the controversial images can simply adjust their computers so they do not have to look at them.’
‘A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the Web site that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who’s the father.
Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names, a spokesman for a court in the southwestern city of Stuttgart said Wednesday.
“The woman wanted to discover which one of the men had made her pregnant,” the spokesman said. “So she needed their contact details. Of course, if they’re not willing to go along with the gene test, she’ll have to take them to court.”‘
‘A U.S. study said a protein in the saliva of deer ticks prevents HIV-1 from attaching to the surface of white blood cells called T Cells.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst said the finding may lead to new treatments for autoimmune diseases and prevent rejection of organ transplants, the university said Friday in a release.
The researchers said the HIV-1 virus cripples the human immune system by targeting T cells that form the body’s first line of defense in fighting infection. Deer tick saliva contains the protein Salp15, which stops T cells from activating by binding to a specific site on their surface called the CD4 receptor.’
‘So we stop at Sacramento Street (just before the tunnel), and a whole group of people want to push on to the bus. Everybody at the stop manages to squeeze in when there is a bit of a commotion at the front.
An old Chinese lady (I am assuming she was Chinese) was holding in her hand a live chicken. She was holding it by the feet and, as a chicken in such a situation would do, this particular chicken was squawking up a storm.
The bus driver (a large African-American gentleman; this was back before a majority of the drivers became asian) was standing up, pointing at the squawking chicken, telling the lady, “Hey! You can’t come on the bus with a live chicken!”
Anyone who believes the Chinese people (or asian people) in San Francisco cannot understand english is completely naive. They understand. Oh yes they do. [..]’
‘Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7” and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.’
‘Ongoing turmoil in the troubled kitchen-floor region of the Branson household reached a boiling point Tuesday, as relations between rival house cats Boswell and Johnson erupted into fresh violence. Observers said the arrival of a new brown paper-bag in the area ignited long-standing tensions and set off another round of territorial conflict between the two factions in the most serious aggression since the devastating stove-side siege of 2005.
The afternoon was marred by sporadic fighting, according to reports, with opposing forces darting and then retreating in surprise attacks. Boswell held his position despite relentless onslaughts from Johnson, who repeatedly batted the controversial bag along the ancient linoleum surface. By the end of the day, neither side displayed any intention to halt reprisals without the other first relinquishing claims and pulling out permanently — an outcome those close to the fighting called “unlikely at best.”‘
‘Four sheriff’s deputies have been suspended after a paralyzed man was tipped out of his wheelchair at a Florida jail.
Jail surveillance footage from Jan. 29 shows a veteran deputy dumping Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and searching him on the floor after he was brought in on a warrant after a traffic violation.
Sterner said that when he was taken into a booking room and told to stand up, the deputy grew agitated when he told her he could not.’
‘Scientists at Canada’s McGill University have discovered a way to boost an organism’s natural anti-virus defenses, effectively making its cells immune to influenza and other viruses. In effect, this makes the cells immune to flu and other viruses.
The researchers performed their study with mice, and knocked out two key genes that repress production of interferon. Without these repressor genes, the mouse cells produced much higher levels of interferon, which effectively blocked viruses from reproducing. The researchers tested the process on influenza virus, encephalomyocarditis virus, vesicular stomatitis virus and Sindbis virus.
“People have been worried for years about potential new viral pandemics, such as avian influenzas,” Dr. Sonenberg, the study’s lead author, said in a press release issued by McGill University. “If we might now have the means to develop a new therapy to fight flu, the potential is huge.”‘
‘An accidental push of a button Friday had students at Palm Bay High questioning what they’d done wrong and parents plotting punishments.
Parents of all 2,550 students in the school received an automated call Friday reminding them that their student had to report for Saturday morning detention. Problem was, the message only should have gone to 16 homes.
“One of my friends texted me to ask if I had Saturday detention,” said Robert Lenoci, 15, of Valkaria. The sophomore is going to the state science fair finals and hasn’t been in trouble before.
“I looked and I had a message from mom. She was asking, ‘What did you do?’ It was pretty bad,” he said.’
‘Newspapers across Europe Wednesday reprinted the controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked worldwide protests two years ago.
The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked widespread outrage in the Muslim world two years ago.
The move came one day after Danish authorities arrested three people allegedly plotting a “terror-related assassination” of Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the drawing.
Berlingske Tidende, was one of the newspapers involved in the republication by newspapers in Denmark. It said: “We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper always will defend,” in comments reported by The Associated Press.’
‘An eight-year-old boy had to be freed by firefighters after getting stuck in a pair of handcuffs he found in his mother’s bedroom.
Firefighters took the schoolboy to Copnor Fire Station in Portsmouth, Hampshire.
The crew had to use industrial metal cutters to free the boy.
The cuffs were described as made of “hardened steel” and not meant as a toy. [..]
“Before we released him I asked if he was on the run from the police but he assured me he wasn’t.
“And then his grandmother said he’d found the cuffs in his mother’s bedroom.
“She immediately realised what she’d said and put her hand over her mouth.’
‘Mao Zedong proposed sending 10 million Chinese women to the United States, in talks with top envoy Henry Kissinger in 1973, according to documents released today.
The powerful chairman of the Chinese Communist Party said he believed such emigration could kick-start bilateral trade but could also “harm” the United States with a population explosion similar to China, according to documents released by the State Department on US-China ties between 1973 to 1976.
In a long conversation that stretched way past midnight at Mao’s residence on February 17, 1973, the cigar-chomping Chinese leader referred to the dismal trade between the two countries, saying China was a “very poor country” and “what we have in excess is women.”‘
‘During the week of December 17 – 19, 2007, Lakota Indian leaders traveled to Washington DC and withdrew from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. They do so in a fully honest, legal, and ethical manner.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy. All were gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference. In other words, the Republic of Lakota is now inviting everyone within their country borders to join them and to live free and create a new government based on the laws of brotherhood.’
‘Softball, drunken orgies and a prison system run like the mafia. That’s what Florida’s former prison secretary says he inherited when he took over one of the nation’s largest prison systems two years ago.
In fact, on his first day on the job, James McDonough says he walked into his office — the same one his predecessor used — and there was crime scene tape preventing anyone from entering.
“That was an indication we had a problem in the department,” McDonough told CNN in an exclusive interview before he stepped down last Thursday. [..]
“Corruption had gone to an extreme,” McDonough said, saying it all began at the top. “They seemed to be drunk half the time and had orgies the other half, when they weren’t taking money and beating each other up.” [..]
McDonough described a bizarre prison culture among those that ran the system — one that he says seemed obsessed with inter-department softball games and the orgies after games.’
They earn more than I do.
So, the war on $cientology continues with real life protests meant to be happening all over the world at the moment.
The internet is pretty funny some times. 🙂
For now, here’s a video of 100’s of people marching and yelling in Sydney and Melbourne..
There should be more videos if there’s more protesting. Hilarious. 🙂
(1.9 and 17meg Flash videos)
see it here »
