http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/ en Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:07:20 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/redbar/misc/rss.jpg http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/ http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-officials-investigating-one-lot-flu-16056.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:38:20 GMT Officials investigating one lot of flu vaccine due to allergy concerns 19/11/2009 8:02:00 PM Steve Lambert, THE CANADIAN PRESS The provinces are... Officials investigating one lot of flu vaccine due to allergy concerns

19/11/2009 8:02:00 PM
Steve Lambert, THE CANADIAN PRESS
The provinces are being asked to hold back a batch of swine flu vaccine that appears to be causing higher rates of severe allergic reactions.

The vaccine's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has asked governments to stop using vaccine doses from one particular lot shipment (A80CA007A) issued in late October while the company and federal health officials investigate.

"GSK is taking this cautionary action because the Public Health Agency of Canada has received a higher than expected number of reports of anaphylaxis in this lot number compared to other lots," the company said in a written statement Thursday.

Manitoba health officials say they have noticed severe allergic reactions from that lot at a rate of one in 20,000, compared with the standard reaction rate of one in 100,000.

"We received this vaccine some time ago, as did all other provinces, and we have used almost all of this vaccine already," Dr. Joel Kettner, Manitoba's chief medical officer of health said.

"We are being cautious and following the advice ... to hold onto the remaining stock until we get further information."

The Alberta government was also holding back the vaccine, although it had not seen a jump in reactions.

"We reviewed our own data and we didn't have any of that experience here ... so at this point, we're just following the instructions from the company and the public health agency," said chief medical health officer Andre Corriveau.

"We hadn't seen any severe allergic reactions from that lot ourselves ... there were cases in B.C. and Quebec, I believe."

Ontario's health ministry said it had received 1,500 doses from the lot. None had been administered and officials were shelving them until the investigation is complete.

Because most of the vaccine in question has already been used, the decision to withhold what's left is not expected to have an impact on overall supplies.

Kettner urged people not to be alarmed. Any severe reactions from the lot have been short-lived and have not led to long-term health troubles, he said.

"The ongoing question for people considering getting vaccinated is comparing the potential benefit of the vaccine ... with the risk, which remains very low from our observations," he said.

"Our advice, based on information in Manitoba and from other provinces, is unchanged."

-With files from Shannon Montgomery in Calgary and Pat Hewitt in Ontario ]]> World News renegade9999 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-officials-investigating-one-lot-flu-16056.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-christmas-letters-service-over-16043.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:49:23 GMT *US Postal Service has been accused of Scrooge-like behaviour after it imposed strict rules on a 55-year-old Father Christmas letters service over... US Postal Service has been accused of Scrooge-like behaviour after it imposed strict rules on a 55-year-old Father Christmas letters service over fears that paedophiles might gain access to the young correspondents.


Since 1954, the Operation Santa programme, which is centred in the small Alaskan town of North Pole, has been forwarding about 150,000 letters a year addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole”.
Replies written by volunteers around the US and bearing the North Pole postmark, come signed by one of Santa’s elves. However, concerns were raised last year when a worker at a sorting centre in Maryland recognised an Operation Santa volunteer in the state as a registered sex offender.
The individual was sacked before he could answer a child’s letter, but the episode prompted the Postal Service to tighten up the rules, which already required “elves” to show identification.
The service now prohibits volunteers from having access to children’s full names and addresses. They will be replaced by codes that match computerised addresses known only to the post office.
Operation Santa will still operate but letters to Santa at the North Pole will no longer be forwarded to the Alaskan town. People in North Pole, where lampposts look like candy canes and streets have names such as Kriss Kringle Drive, are furious.
Doug Isaacson, the town’s mayor, compared postal chiefs to the Grinch, the Dr Seuss character who tried to “steal” Christmas. “It’s Grinch-like that the Postal Service never informed the elves before the fact,” he said. “They’ve been working on this for how long?”
A spokesman for the service in Anchorage said: “It’s always been a good programme, but we’re in different times and concerned for the privacy of the information.” ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-christmas-letters-service-over-16043.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-canada-s-richest-getting-richer-16041.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:47:19 GMT OTTAWA — It takes money to make money — especially in a recession, according to the Canadian Business’s 2009 list of the richest Canadians, which... OTTAWA — It takes money to make money — especially in a recession, according to the Canadian Business’s 2009 list of the richest Canadians, which shows that the rich kept getting richer despite the economic downturn that has cost 400,000 Canadians their jobs in the past year.
The five wealthiest Canadians in 2008 topped the list again in 2009.
The Thomson family of Toronto, of Thomson Reuters and Woodbridge Co. Ltd., retained a solid hold on the title of richest Canadians with a combined wealth of $21.99-billion.
However, there was some jockeying for other positions: Toronto’s Rogers family, of Rogers Communications, slipped a spot to No. 5, with a combined wealth of $4.7-billion, while Vancouver’s Jimmy Pattison, worth $5.07-billion, jumped from No. 5 to No. 4.
Galen Weston, of George Weston Ltd. and Loblaw Cos. Ltd., remained Canada’s third-richest person at $6.47-billion. James and John Irving, of New Brunswick’s Irving Oil Ltd., at $7.28-billion, stayed in second place.
The Thomsons actually managed to grow their wealth by 19% despite the recession, which was particularly harmful to media interests. But in terms of rate of wealth increase, the Thomsons have nothing on Ivanhoe mining executive Robert Friedland, whose bank account grew by 217% to $1.59-billion, according to the magazine, and who jumped from 61st spot on the top 100 to 32nd in the past year.
Goldcorp founder Rob McEwan returned to the list after dropping off last year, as his money pool grew 134% deeper, to $568-million, landing him in 89th spot.
Canadian Business, a magazine founded in 1928, says it goes through proxy statements, insider trading reports and other sources to estimate the worth of rich Canadians.
There are two more billionaires in Canada than there were last year — 55, up from 53 — and the total net worth of Canada’s richest grew to $172.7-billion in 2009 from $165.1-billion in 2008, the second-highest total in the 11 years that the magazine has been compiling its list. The highest was $176.9-billion in 2007.
It wasn’t all sunshine, of course: Lee Ka Lau, of ATI Technologies — at $472 million — is richer this year than he was last, but last year’s 99th place finisher didn’t earn enough to stay on the list. Likewise, Bill Comrie of the Brick Group’s Income Fund fell off the list after the treasure in his chest dropped to $415-million.
Ontario is the province of choice of moneyed Canadians —3 9 of the 100 richest live there, compared with 18 in Quebec, 12 in B.C., 11 in Alberta, four in Nova Scotia, and two each in Manitoba and New Brunswick. Twelve live outside the country.
Top 5 richest Canadians in 2009:

1. Thomson family $21.99-billion
2. James Arthur and John Irving $7.28-billion
3. Galen Weston $6.47-billion
4. Jimmy Pattison $5.07-billion
5. Rogers Family $4.7-billion ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-canada-s-richest-getting-richer-16041.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-offer-canadians-low-cost-skinny-16028.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:23:05 GMT *Offer Canadians low-cost skinny TV package, CBC tells cable firms * A CBC proposal for an inexpensive, no-frills TV package of Canadian channels... Offer Canadians low-cost skinny TV package, CBC tells cable firms

A CBC proposal for an inexpensive, no-frills TV package of Canadian channels was attacked by Bell TV's satellite service Tuesday as unworkable and "self-serving."


The "skinny basic" option was proposed by the public broadcaster on Tuesday as the simplest way to square the demand by conventional broadcasters that cable and satellite firms start paying for their signals, and the carriers' threat to enact a TV tax on consumers.

During the first two days of hearings on the issue that has divided the industry into warring camps, CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein has said he wants to find a way to help broadcasters without punishing consumers.

CBC president Hubert Lacroix told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that skinny basic is the answer.

"The simplest and most consumer-friendly approach would be to establish a small, all-Canadian basic service which would include all local television stations and a very limited set of other programming services," Lacroix said.

Cable and satellite carriers could then charge whatever extra they wanted to for various expanded packages, he said.

But Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada's head of regulatory affairs, rejected the proposal, saying carriers would lose money on such a package and few Canadians would want it.

And he accused the CBC of acting solely in self-interest since, under the Broadcasting Act, it would have to be part of the package.

"The proponents of skinny basic are self-serving," he said. "They are saying there's a value to the CBC signal and if BDUs (cable and satellite firms) don't agree there is a value, they say, 'Too bad, you have to carry it."'

Bibic went on to say he does not believe the CRTC has a legal right to force the carriers to negotiate on a fee-for-carriage charge.

Commissioner Michel Arpin told Bibic he was wrong about the power of the CRTC. "That's a decision we think we have a right (to make) and we've already made it," Arpin said.

The exchange once again brought to the fore the contentious nature of the hearings over fee-for-carriage, which conventional broadcasters such as CTV and Global TV say they need just to survive in a 500-channel universe that fragments advertising dollars.

Cable companies, which have become among the most profitable sectors of the industry, have refused to pay for something they say the broadcasters give away for free over the air, and to the Internet.

The situation is somewhat different for Bell TV, which Bibic noted has yet to turn a profit, although it is nearing that point.

In questioning, CRTC commissioners are giving every indication they are leaning to establishing the ground rules for some form of negotiations between the suppliers of television content and the pipeline that distributes it to Canadians.

Noting that the CRTC had foreseen this battle as far back as 1971, commission chairman Konrad von Finckenstein pointed out that the advent of specialty channels had changed the business model of the traditional broadcasters
"The model was built before we had specialty channels," he said. "There has been a paradigm shift in the underlying assumptions."

Von Finckenstein has alternated between frustration and pleading in questioning the players over the refusal of cable and satellite firms to even contemplate any form of bargaining.

In trying to allay fears, he has suggested that any agreement did not have to involve solely a cash transfer. Other considerations might confer value for the signals, he said, including better distribution of specialty channels owned by a broadcaster, or additional opportunities for ad revenues.

He also suggested that fee-for-carriage might only apply to high definition signals.

"We're all striving for a solution in which Canadians don't have a higher bill, or if they do, it's because they are getting a better product," von Finckenstein said, such as enhanced picture quality.

But Bell TV officials told the CRTC what cable company Rogers Communications had said a day earlier - they already give fair value for the signals by distributing them to 90 per cent of Canadian viewers. That enhances broadcasters' ability to attract advertisers.

On Monday, Rogers Communications said if it were forced to pay broadcasters for their signals, customers would wind up paying up to $10 a month extra.

The sensitivity of the issue likely means that whatever the CRTC decides, the Conservative government will likely need to weigh in at some point, said media analyst Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa.

"None of the sides want to compromise," he said.

The CBC's proposal is an attempt to keep the cost low, and to exempt some Canadians from any increase.


Consumers would be protected from gouging, said Steven Guiton, CBC's regulatory officer, because the low-cost option would serve as an escape valve for viewers.

"It will temper the marketplace because if rates are going up, (consumers) will have an option. It's existence alone will help temper prices for all the other services," he said.

The CBC's position is similar to that of private sector broadcasters - except unlike CTV - it is not willing to pull its signal in the event it cannot reach agreement on a fee-for-carriage charge.

But Lacroix and other officials laid down similar arguments about why conventional broadcasting, once the linchpin of Canadian television, has hit a wall and needs a change in the rules to continue.

The recession has hurt, he agreed, but over-the-air broadcasters won't be much better off even when the economy improves.

The CBC tabled a series of charts that showed the downward slide in profitability for conventional television began in the early 1980s, when cable specialty channels began splintering viewership and advertising dollars.

Meanwhile, Lacroix said the industry's main pipeline - cable - has grown exponentially richer since 1998, when the CRTC deregulated the sector. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-offer-canadians-low-cost-skinny-16028.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-fight-climate-change-16022.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:32:23 GMT *Fight climate change with free condoms* The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free... Fight climate change with free condoms

The battle against global warming could be helped if the world slowed population growth by making free condoms and family planning advice more widely available, the U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday.

The agency did not recommend countries set limits on how many children people should have, but said: "Women with access to reproductive health services ... have lower fertility rates that contribute to slower growth in greenhouse gas emissions."

"As the growth of population, economies and consumption outpaces the Earth's capacity to adjust, climate change could become much more extreme and conceivably catastrophic," the report said.

The world's population will likely rise from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, with most of the growth in less developed regions, according to a 2006 report by the United Nations.

The U.N. Population Fund acknowledged it had no proof of the effect that population control would have on climate change. "The linkages between population and climate change are in most cases complex and indirect," the report said.

It also said that while there is no doubt that "people cause climate change," the developing world has been responsible for a much smaller share of world's greenhouse gas emissions than developed countries.

Still, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the U.N. Population Fund's executive director, told a news conference in London on Wednesday that global warming could be catastrophic for people in poor countries, particularly women.

"We have now reached a point where humanity is approaching the brink of disaster," she said.

In three weeks, a global conference will be held in Copenhagen aimed at reaching a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

On Wednesday, one analyst criticized the U.N. Population Fund's pronouncements as alarmist and unhelpful.

"It requires a major leap of imagination to believe that free condoms will cool down the climate," said Caroline Boin, a policy analyst at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank.

She also questioned earlier efforts by the agency to control the world's population.

In its 1987 report, the U.N. Population Fund warned that once the global population hit 5 billion, the world "could degenerate into disaster." At the time, the agency said "more vigorous attempts to slow undue population growth" were needed in many countries.

According to Boin, "Numerous environmental indicators show that with development and economic growth we are able to preserve more natural habitats. There is no causal relationship between population density and poverty."

In this month's Bulletin, the World Health Organization's journal, two experts also warned about the dangers of linking fertility to climate change.

"Using the need to reduce climate change as a justification for curbing the fertility of individual women at best provokes controversy and at worst provides a mandate to suppress individual freedoms," wrote WHO's Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum and Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-fight-climate-change-16022.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-growing-meat-without-animals-16020.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:06:17 GMT livescience Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep... livescience

Winston Churchill once predicted that it would be possible to grow chicken breasts and wings more efficiently without having to keep an actual chicken. And in fact scientists have since figured out how to grow tiny nuggets of lab meat and say it will one day be possible to produce steaks in vats, sans any livestock.


Pork chops or burgers cultivated in labs could eliminate contamination problems that regularly generate headlines these days, as well as address environmental concerns that come with industrial livestock farms.


However, such research opens up strange and perhaps even disturbing possibilities once considered only the realm of science fiction. After all, who knows what kind of meat people might want to grow to eat?


Advantages touted


Increasingly, bioengineers are growing nerve, heart and other tissues in labs. Recently, scientists even reported developing artificial penis tissue in rabbits. Although such research is meant to help treat patients, biomedical engineer Mark Post at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues suggest it could also help feed the rising demand for meat worldwide.


The researchers noted that growing skeletal muscle in labs - the kind people typically think of as the meat they eat - could help tackle a number of problems:

Avoiding animal suffering by reducing the farming and killing of livestock.
Dramatically cutting down on food-borne ailments such as mad cow disease and salmonella or germs such as swine flu, by monitoring the growth of meat in labs.
Livestock currently take up 70 percent of all agricultural land, corresponding to 30 percent of the world's land surface, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Labs would presumably require much less space.
Livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all of the vehicles on Earth, the FAO added. Since the animals themselves are mostly responsible for these gases, reducing livestock numbers could help alleviate global warming.

Need to scale up


Stem cells are considered the most promising source for such meat, retaining as they do the capacity to transform into the required tissues, and the scientists pointed to satellite cells, which are the natural muscle stem cells responsible for regeneration and repair in adults. Embryonic stem cells could also be used, but they are obviously plagued by ethical concerns, and they could grow into tissues besides the desired muscles.


To grow meat in labs from satellite cells, the researchers suggested current tissue-engineering techniques, where stem cells are often embedded in synthetic three-dimensional biodegradable matrixes that can present the chemical and physical environments that cells need to develop properly. Other key factors would involve electrically stimulating and mechanically stretching the muscles to exercise them, helping them mature properly, and perhaps growing other cells alongside the satellite cells to provide necessary molecular cues.


So far past scientists have grown only small nuggets of skeletal muscle, about half the size of a thumbnail. Such tidbits could be used in sauces or pizzas, Post and colleagues explained recently in the online edition of the journal Trends in Food Science & Technology, but creating a steak would demand larger-scale production.


Dark thoughts


The expectation is that if such meat is ever made, scientists will opt for beef, pork, chicken or fish. However, science fiction has long toyed with the darker possibilities that cloned meat presents.


In Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson's epic sci-fi satire "Transmetropolitan," supermarkets and fast food joints sell dolphin, manatee, whale, baby seal, monkey and reindeer, while the Long Pig franchise sells "cloned human meat at prices you like."


"In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them," Post said. "Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context - you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead - there is no reason why not."


Of course, there are many potential objections that people could have to growing beef, chicken or pork in the lab, much less more disturbing meats. Still, Post suggests that marketing could overcome such hurdles.


"If every package of naturally grown meat by law should have the text, 'Beware, animals have been killed for this product,' I can imagine a gradual cultural shift," Post said. "Of course, we still have a long way to go to make a product that is even remotely competitive with current products." ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-growing-meat-without-animals-16020.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-top-10-internet-moments-decade-16019.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:03:06 GMT The birth of Wikipedia, the death of Napster, the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter were named by the Webby Awards on Wednesday as among the top 10... The birth of Wikipedia, the death of Napster, the iPhone, Facebook, and Twitter were named by the Webby Awards on Wednesday as among the top 10 Internet moments of the decade.

Other events singled out by the New York-based International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences which bestows the annual Webby Awards were Iran's election protests, Craigslist's expansion and the launch of Google AdWords.

"The Internet is the story of the decade because it was the catalyst for change in not just every aspect of our everyday lives, but in everything from commerce and communication to politics and pop culture," said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of the Webby Awards.

"The recurring theme among all of the milestones on our list is the Internet's capacity to circumvent old systems and put more power into the hands of ordinary people," he said.

The Webby Awards list of the 10 most most influential Internet moments of the decade:

- Craigslist online classified site expands outside San Francisco (2000)

- the launch of Google AdWords (2000)

- the launch of online encyclopedia Wikipedia (2001)

- the shutdown of file-sharing site Napster (2001)

- Google's initial public offering (2004)

- the online video revolution led by YouTube (2006)

- Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter launches (2006)

- Apple's iPhone debuts (2007)

- the use of the Internet in the US presidential campaign (2008)

- the use of Twitter during the Iranian election protests (2009)

The 14th annual Webby Awards are to be announced in April 2010. They reward excellence on the Internet in a number of categories including news and other websites, interactive advertising and online film and video. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-top-10-internet-moments-decade-16019.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-1-7-households-struggles-put-15999.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:54:37 GMT Hunger in U.S. at a 14-year high By Brian Knowlton New York Times WASHINGTON - The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to... Hunger in U.S. at a 14-year high

By Brian Knowlton
New York Times


WASHINGTON - The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to sufficient food shot up last year to its highest point since the government began surveying in 1995, the Agriculture Department reported on Monday.

In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.

The results provided a more human sense of the costs of a recession that has officially ended but continues to take a daily toll on households; it describes the plight not of a faceless General Motors or A.I.G. but of families with too little food on their children’s plates.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Indeed, while children are usually shielded from the worst effects of deprivation, many more were affected last year than the year before. The number of households in which both adults and children experienced “very low food security” rose by more than half, to 506,000 in 2008 from 323,000 in 2007, according to the report.

Overall, one-third of all the families that are affected by hunger, or 6.7 million households, were classified as having very low food security, meaning that members of the household had too little to eat or saw their eating habits disrupted during 2008. That was 2 million households more than in 2007.

In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack emphasized the administration’s efforts to combat hunger by creating jobs, providing job training, extending unemployment benefits and taking other measures. He called hunger “a problem that the American sense of fairness should not tolerate and American ingenuity can overcome.”

During his campaign, President Obama promised to eliminate hunger among American children by 2015. The administration has yet to offer a detailed plan to do so, and the report on Monday underscored the daunting dimensions of the challenge.

Problem understated?
Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization with a national network of more than 200 food banks, said that the Agriculture Department probably understated the problem. With unemployment and other economic indicators continuing to worsen in 2009, she said, “there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states.”

In September, the group found a sharp increase in requests for emergency food assistance; the food banks in its network reported an average increase in need of nearly 30 percent this year over 2008.

“National socioeconomic indicators, including the escalating unemployment rate and the number of working poor, lead us to believe that the number of people facing hunger will continue to rise significantly over the coming year,” added Ms. Escarra.

The Agriculture Department report was issued as a World Summit on Food Security was opening in Rome.

Jacques Diouf, director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, has urged governments to invest $44 billion a year to end chronic hunger afflicting an estimated 1 billion people.

But as Bloomberg News reported, a draft of the session’s final declaration includes promises of reinforced government efforts to sharply reduce world hunger but makes no mention of new financial commitments. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-1-7-households-struggles-put-15999.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-national-debt-now-tops-12-a-15998.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:53:17 GMT Technically, the debt hit the new high yesterday, but it was posted on the Treasury Department website just after 3:00 p.m. ET today. The exact... Technically, the debt hit the new high yesterday, but it was posted on the Treasury Department website just after 3:00 p.m. ET today. The exact calculation of the debt is a 16-digit tongue-twister and red-ink tsunami: $12,031,299,186,290.07

This latest milestone in the ever-rising journey of the National Debt comes less than eight months after it hit $11 trillion for the first time. The latest high-point is not unexpected, considering the federal deficit for the just-ended 2009 fiscal year hit an all-time high at $1.42-trillion – more than triple the previous year’s record high…

But the White House budget review issued in August projects that by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept 30th, the National Debt could top $14 trillion.

It gets worse. The same document projects that by the end of the decade, the National Debt will hit $24.5 trillion — exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projected for 2019 of $22.8 trillion. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-national-debt-now-tops-12-a-15998.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-unfriend-us-dictionarys-word-year-15962.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:03:25 GMT NEW YORK - What word sums up 2009? How about unfriend?

That's the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 Word of the Year. It means to remove someone as a friend on a social networking Web site such as Facebook.

Each year Oxford University Press tracks how the English language is changing and chooses a word that best reflects the mood of the year.

Oxford lexicographer Christine Lindberg says unfriend has "real lex appeal."

Finalists for 2009 also included netbook, which is a small laptop, and sexting, which is sending sexually explicit texts and pictures by cell phone. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-unfriend-us-dictionarys-word-year-15962.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-fearless-3-year-olds-might-15960.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:44:24 GMT Children who are fearless at 3 years of age might just be poised for a life of crime. According to a new study, poor fear conditioning at the... Children who are fearless at 3 years of age might just be poised for a life of crime.


According to a new study, poor fear conditioning at the tender age of 3 can predispose that person to break the law as an adult. Yet other factors, such as education of the parents, large family size, nutrition, physical activity, configuration of the household and other elements also play a role, the researchers concluded.


"There's no 100 percent correspondence between conditioning deficits and crime: Not all poor conditioners will become criminals and not all criminals have the early fear conditioning deficits," explained study author Yu Gao, a research associate in the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. His findings are published in the Nov. 16 online issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.


Specifically, what Gao and his associates set out to determine is whether dysfunction of the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass that resides deep in the human brain and is linked to fear conditioning as well as emotions and mental state, leads to an inherent intrepidness and disregard for the law.


Twenty years ago, the research team tested almost 1,800 children who were 3 years old from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island off the coast of southeastern Africa, by exposing them to two sets of sounds, one with a short shrill noise, and the other deeper in pitch and with a pleasant tone, and then measuring the children's physical responses through an electrode attached to their index and middle fingers. Sweating upon hearing the loud noise indicated a sense of fear, while no sweat meant the child lacked fear -- that is, had poor fear conditioning.


Two decades later, using court records, Gao and his team tracked down 137 study participants -- 131 males and six females -- who had committed serious crimes involving property, drugs, violence and driving. These individuals had shown an absence of fear during testing at age 3, whereas 274 study participants who had grown to adulthood without a criminal record had displayed typical fear responses.


Experts agreed that the findings don't constitute a cause-and-effect situation, but hailed the study for its longevity and what the work adds to what is known about how childhood factors influence adult behavior.


"Any time you have a 20-year study, that's significant," said Dr. Elissa P. Benedek, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based psychiatrist who has worked in private practice with children and adults for more than 40 years and is a past president of the American Psychiatric Association.


"It's good for putting another link in the chain in terms of what is early brain dysfunction, and what increases the risk for such behaviors as attention-deficit disorder and criminal activity. It's another link back to whatever we all ready know about early brain dysfunction that may cause problems later in life," Benedek added.


So what do the results mean for individuals with fear conditioning deficits and their loved ones, and for society at large? It's a wake-up call about potential problems, said Gao and other experts in the field. To enhance the proper working of the amygdala, which is believed to reduce criminal behavior in later life, enrichment programs are essential.


In fact, according to Gao, some at-risk children between the ages of 3 and 5 who have benefited from those programs, which include sound nutrition, adequate physical exercise and cognitive brain stimulation, had shown an improvement in brain functioning by age 11 that reduced the chances of criminal behavior by 35 percent 20 years later.


Addressing parental concerns, Benedek added: "Don't be discouraged if your child has early brain dysfunction. It doesn't mean that he or she is going to grow up and be a criminal. The brain can change and grow." ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-fearless-3-year-olds-might-15960.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/earths-capacity-absorb-co2-15927.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:17:26 GMT Is Earth's Capacity To Absorb CO2 Much Greater Than Expected?

Controversial New Climate Change Data: Is Earth's Capacity To Absorb CO2 Much Greater Than Expected?

ScienceDaily — New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.


This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early in December have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.

So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? "Not necessarily," says Knorr. "Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed."

Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published in early November in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.


New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. (Credit: iStockphoto/Karl Dolenc)




NASA's Latest Discovery: Sun Heats (What Sun?) the Earth

NASA's Latest Discovery: Sun Heats the Earth
Otis A. Glazebrook IV
Robert Calahan at NASA’s Goddard Space Center could be in big trouble -- for telling the truth. Here is a headline for an article in the Daily Tech:

"NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming"

Here are some excerpts from the piece:

A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

This report may represent the third time that NASA’s DR. James Hansen, Al Gore’s point man on his AGW hoax, has had to backtrack on his claims that humans are responsible for climate change.

In the past Dr. Hansen was forced to admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year on record due to a lack of standardization of weather reporting stations. Hansen also misstated that “October 2008 was the hottest on record,” largely because the data used repeated September’s.

The article concludes:

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past. And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.

Could Dr. Hansen’s Reign of Error as head of the Goddard Institute for Space Flight be coming to an end? Or will Robert Calahan get the ax for telling the truth?
__________________
"I cannot bring myself to depict the humiliation to which this Government and people might be sooner or later reduced, if the means for defending their rights are to be made dependant upon those who may have the most powerful of motives to impair them."

- President M. Van Buren, Message to the U.S. House of Representatives, Dec. 2, 1839. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/earths-capacity-absorb-co2-15927.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-world-s-most-powerful-person-15847.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:18:58 GMT U.S. President Barack Obama is the world’s most powerful person, at least according to Forbes magazine. On Wednesday, the magazine released its first... U.S. President Barack Obama is the world’s most powerful person, at least according to Forbes magazine. On Wednesday, the magazine released its first ever list of “The World's Most Powerful People,” which included some of the world's most powerful personalities.

To grab the top spot on the list, Obama beat out Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, with whom he has to meet few days after in Beijing to discuss their economic ties and political potential The first ever listing of the world's top people includes politicians, businessmen, religious figures, media heads and one drug trafficker who really run the world, according to Forbes.

There are 67 people on Forbes’ list of “The World’s Most Powerful People”, one for every 100 million people on the planet, the magazine says.

US leads the list
American President Barack Obama has topped the list, with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rounding out the top three.

As stated on the magazine’s Web site, Obama tops the list for a number of reasons: as head-of-state over the world's sole superpower, he presides over the largest, most dynamic and most innovative economy in the world, is commander-in-chief of the richest and deadliest military, his political party has the majority in Congress and he was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Price, "apparently for general awesomeness."



To grab the top spot on the list, Obama beat out Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, with whom he has to meet few days after in Beijing to discuss their economic ties and political potential.

“China has more people, more potential to be world-dominating than the United States does in the long run, but the United States still has the deadliest, largest military and is the world’s reserve currency and has the largest economy,” Forbes managing editor Bruce Upbin said of Hu, who secured the runner-up position.

“I think Barack Obama still deserves to be No. 1. ... He was by a long shot.”

Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, earned the No. 3 ranking.

Forbes created the first ever ranking of world’s powerful candidates by assessing power using four criteria: the number of people one influences; one’s ability to project power beyond his sphere of influence; control of and access to finances’ and how actively one uses his power.

The top 10 bigwigs on Forbes’ “The World’s Most Powerful People” list

1. Barack Obama, President, U.S.
2. Hu Jintao, President, China
3. Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister, Russia
4. Ben Bernanke, Chairman, Federal Reserve
5. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Founders, Google
6. Carlos Slim Helu, Chief Executive, Telmex, Mexico
7. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman, News Corp.
8. Michael Drake, Chief Executive, Wal-Mart Stores
9. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, King, Saudi Arabia
10. Bill Gates, Co-chairman, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Other notables in the list
The list includes Pope Benedict XVI at a respectable No. 11. Forbes describe Pope as the spiritual leader of more than a billion souls, or about one-sixth of the world's population.

Other notable persons who made the list include Warren Buffet (No. 14), the Clintons -- Hillary at 17 and Bill at 31, Osama bin Laden (No. 37), Dalai Lama (No. 39), Oprah Winfrey (No. 45), New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (No. 51).

Forbes also included Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman on the list at No. 41. The magazine notes Guzman’s profession as "drug trafficker." ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-world-s-most-powerful-person-15847.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-ugliest-people-15827.html Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:39:49 GMT Britons are among the ugliest people in the world, according to a dating website that says it only allows "beautiful people" to join.

Fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who have applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted, an emailed statement from the website showed.

Existing members of the "elite dating site" rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile.

Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, the website said.

The way that BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members is simple. A potential member applies with a photo and a brief profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote whether or not to admit them, the site said.

Options are: "Yes definitely," "Hmm yes, O.K," "Hmm no, not really" and "No definitely not."

The site was founded in 2002 in Denmark and went live across the globe last month. Since then, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries, admitting just 360,000 new members.

"I would say Britain is stumbling because they don't spend as much time polishing up their appearance and they are letting themselves down on physical fitness," Beautiful People managing director Greg Hodge said. "Next to Brazilian and Scandinavian beauties, British people just aren't as toned or glamorous."

Only the male Russian and Polish applicants fared worse than British men, although Russian women had a 44 percent acceptance rate. Polish women did not appear in the table.

German applicants were slated for offering up unflattering photographs, which may have hindered their acceptance rates at 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women, the lowest rate in their category.

"German men and women aren't faring well, but they are submitting stern images, they need to soften up," Hodge said. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-ugliest-people-15827.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-day-history-november-11-a-15807.html Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:34:35 GMT 315th day of 2009 - 50 remaining Wednesday, November 11, 2009 ARMISTICE DAY This is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day or Veterans Day or... 315th day of 2009 - 50 remaining

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
ARMISTICE DAY

This is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day or Veterans Day or Victory Day or World War I Memorial Day. The name of this special day may be different in different places throughout many nations; but its significance is the same.

It was on this day at 11 a.m. in 1918 that World War I ceased. The Allied and Central Powers signed an armistice agreement at 5 a.m. in Marshal Foch’s railway car in the Forest of Compiegne, France.

Many still bow their heads in remembrance at the 11th hour of this the 11th day of the 11th month.

Events
November 11
1851 - The telescope was patented by Alvan Clark of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1889 - Washington became the 42nd of the United States of America on this day. Known as the Evergreen State because of its rich stands of Douglas fir, white and ponderosa pine, and spruce trees, Washington calls the willow goldfinch its state bird. The colorful rhododendron is the official flower. Olympia, home of the famous Olympia oyster (from Puget Sound), is the state capital.

1905 - Editor William Bok of Ladies’ Home Journal called the Morris chair, which sold for $31.00, “a hideous piece of furniture.” The (very popular) Morris chair was named after William Morris, whose Morris & Company produced home furnishings. The chair had an adjustable back and loose, removable cushions. Editor Bok probably wouldn’t have been so critical had he known that the Morris chair (and others of similar design) would evolve into the big, soft, cushy, recliners we enjoy today.

1926 - The University of Wisconsin announced that women could get college credit for a dance course offered by the school.

1929 - Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy recorded Froggy Bottom -- in Kansas City.

1938 - Kate Smith sang God Bless America for the very first time. It would later become her signature song. Irving Berlin penned the tune in 1917 but never released it until Miss Smith sang it for the first time on her radio broadcast.

1940 - The chant, “invovo legem magicarum,” was heard for the first time when Mandrake the Magician debuted on WOR radio in New York City.

1944 - Frank Sinatra began a long and successful career with Columbia Records.

1944 - The Fighting Irish of Notre Dame got whipped by Army, 59-0. The shutout was the worst margin of defeat for any Notre Dame team.

1946 - A crowd of 17,205 showed up at Madison Square Garden to check out the new NBA team in town. The New York Knickerbockers, or Knicks, as they are known, played Chicago -- and lost, 78-68.

1965 - Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, declared its independence from Britain. It took until April 18, 1980 for independence to actually happen.

1981 - The first rookie baseball player to win the coveted Cy Young Award was honored. The 21-year-old honoree was LA Dodger Fernando Valenzuela.

1984 - 13-year-old TV star Gary Coleman (of Diff’rent Strokes) underwent a kidney transplant in Los Angeles. He had undergone his first transplant operation at age 5.

1984 - The Houston Oilers won their first game of the season by defeating the Chiefs, 17-16, in Kansas City. It was the first Oilers victory on the road since September 1981 (23 consecutive road losses).

1986 - Sperry Rand and Burroughs merged to form Unisys, becoming the #2 computer company. Changeover costs were estimated at $15 million.

1992 - For the first time, women were permitted to become priests of the Church of England. One of 28 Anglican state churches throughout the world, the Church of England voted in favor of women on this day.

1992 - Bobby Fischer won his re-match with Boris Spassky in Sveti Stefan, Yugoslavia. The match was organized by banker Jedzimir Vasiljevic. Fischer had 10 wins, 5 losses, and 15 draws. He got $3.65 million for his winnings and Spassky received $1.5 million.

1995 - Smashing Pumpkins’ album Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness hit #1 on the U.S. album chart. The Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan, James Iha, D’arcy and Jimmy Chamberlin) band was formed in 1988.

Birthdays
November 11
1744 - Abigail Smith Adams
First Lady: wife of 2nd U.S. President of the United States John Adams; died Oct 28, 1818

1821 - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
political revolutionary, author: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot; died Feb 9, 1881

1836 - Thomas Bailey Aldrich
author: The Story of a Bad Boy, Cruise of the Dolphin, The Sisters' Tragedy, The Wyndham Towers; died Mar 19, 1907

1885 - George S. (Smith) Patton Jr.
‘Old Blood and Guts’: U.S. Army General: commander of Third Army during drive across France in WWII: “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”; subject of film: Patton; died Dec 21, 1945

1889 - Clifton Webb (Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck)
actor: Laura, Razor’s Edge, Satan Never Sleeps, Titanic, Three Coins in the Fountain, Sitting Pretty, Mr. Belvedere series; died Oct 13, 1966

1899 - Pat (William Joseph Patrick) O’Brien
actor: Knute Rockne, All American, Ragtime, Fighting Father Dunne, Some like It Hot, Harrigan and Son; died Oct 15, 1983

1899 - Pie (Harold Joseph) Traynor
Baseball Hall of Famer: Pittsburgh Pirates third baseman: [World Series: 1925, 1927/all-star: 1933, 1934]; playing manager, Pirates’ scout, radio announcer; died Mar 16, 1972

1909 - Robert Ryan
actor: Bad Day at Black Rock, Battle of the Bulge, The Dirty Dozen, Flying Leathernecks, The Longest Day, On Dangerous Ground; TV narrator: World War I; died July 11, 1973

1911 - Patric (Reginald Lawrence) Knowles
actor: Chisum, The Devil’s Brigade, Auntie Mame, Three Came Home, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, The Wolfman, How Green was My Valley, The Adventures of Robin Hood [1938], The Charge of the Light Brigade; died Dec 23, 1995

1918 - Stubby Kaye
actor: Cat Ballou, Guys and Dolls, Li’l Abner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, My Sister Eileen, Love & Marriage; TV panelist: Pantomime Quiz; died Dec 14, 1997

1922 - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
writer: Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions; died Apr 11, 2007

1925 - Jonathan (Harshman) Winters III
Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian: Davis Rules [1990-91]; The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters, NBC Comedy Hour, The Jonathan Winters Show, Mork & Mindy, Hee Haw, And Here’s the Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Shadow, The Flintstones; character: Maude Frickert; TV panelist: Masquerade Party; commercials: Hefty trash bags

1929 - LaVern Baker
singer: Tweedle-Dee, I Cried a Tear, Jim Dandy; second woman [Aretha Franklin was first] inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [1991]; died March 10, 1997

1935 - Bibi (Birgitta) Andersson
actress: Duel at Diablo, Story of a Woman, The Concorde: Airport ’79

1938 - Roger Lavern (Jackson)
musician: keyboards: group: The Tornados: Telstar, Globetrotter

1939 - Denise Alexander
actress: General Hospital

1944 - Jesse Colin Young (Perry Miller)
songwriter, musician: group: The Youngbloods: Get Together

1945 - Vince Martell
musician: guitar, singer: group: Vanilla Fudge: You Keep Me Hanging On, Take Me for a Little While

1945 - Daniel Ortega Saavedra
President: Nicaragua

1946 - Chris Dreja
musician: guitar: group: Yardbirds: For Your Love, I’m a Man

1947 - Pat Daugherty
musician: bass: group: Black Oak Arkansas: Jim Dandy to the Rescue, Memories at the Window

1950 - Jim Peterik
musician: keyboard: group: Survivor: Eye of the Tiger, Burning Heart; singer: group: Ides of March: Vehicle

1951 - Paul Cowsill
singer: group: The Cowsills: Hair, Indian Lake

1951 - Fuzzy (Frank) Zoeller
golf champion: Masters [1979], U.S. Open [1984]

1956 - Ian Craig Marsh
musician: keyboards: group: Heaven 17: We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang, Ball of Confusion, Temptation, Crushed by the Wheels of Industry, Soul Deep, The Foolish Thing to Do, Steel City; Human League: LP: Reproduction

1962 - Mic Michaeli
musician: keyboard: group: Europe: The Final Countdown

1962 - Demi Moore (Demetria Guynes)
actress: Indecent Proposal, Ghost, The Seventh Sign, A Few Good Men, Color of Night, St. Elmo’s Fire, Choices, General Hospital, Striptease, G.I. Jane

1964 - Calista Flockhart
actress: Ally McBeal, The Guiding Light, Pictures of Baby Jane Doe, Telling Lies in America

1964 - Philip McKeon
actor: Alice, Red Surf, Return to Horror High

1968 - Ronnie Devoe
singer: groups: New Edition, Bell Biv Devoe: Poison

1974 - Leonardo (Wilhelm) DiCaprio
actor: Titanic, Parenthood, Growing Pains, Critters 3, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Aviator

Chart Toppers
November 11
1950All My Love - Patti Page
Goodnight Irene - The Weavers
Thinking of You - Don Cherry
I’m Moving On - Hank Snow

1958It’s Only Make Believe - Conway Twitty
Tom Dooley - The Kingston Trio
To Know Him, is to Love Him - The Teddy Bears
City Lights - Ray Price

1966Last Train to Clarksville - The Monkees
Poor Side of Town - Johnny Rivers
Dandy - Herman’s Hermits
Open Up Your Heart - Buck Owens

1974You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet/Free Wheelin’ - Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Jazzman - Carole King
Whatever Gets You Thru the Night - John Lennon with The Plastic Ono
Nuclear Band
Love is like a Butterfly - Dolly Parton

1982Up Where We Belong - Joe ****er & Jennifer Warnes
Heart Attack - Olivia Newton-John
I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near) - Michael McDonald
You’re So Good When You’re Bad - Charley Pride

1990Love Takes Time - Mariah Carey
Pray - M.C. Hammer
Giving You the Benefit - Pebbles
Home - Joe Diffie ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-day-history-november-11-a-15807.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-8-indicted-9-million-dollar-15790.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:33:34 GMT PC world 8 Indicted for 9 million dollar hack Tuesday, November 10, 2009 9:10 AM PST A U.S. grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight people... PC world
8 Indicted for 9 million dollar hack
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 9:10 AM PST

A U.S. grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight people related to hacking into a computer network operated by credit-card processing vendor RBS WorldPlay and stealing US$9 million.

Indicted Tuesday were Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and a person known only as Hacker 3. They were charged in a 16-count indictment of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, computer fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Also indicted in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia were Igor Grudijev, 31, Ronald Tsoi, 31, Evelin Tsoi, 20, and Mihhail Jevgenov, 33, each of Tallinn, on a charge each of access device fraud.

The indictment alleges that the group used sophisticated hacking techniques to compromise the data encryption that was used by RBS WorldPay to protect customer data on payroll debit cards, which are used by companies to pay employees. Using a payroll debit card, employees are able to withdraw their regular salaries from an ATM.

Once the encryption on the card-processing system was compromised, the hacking ring allegedly raised the account limits on compromised accounts, and then provided a network of so-called "cashers" with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Those counterfeit cards ere used to withdraw more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in about 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada.

The $9 million loss happened in less than 12 hours last November.

The hackers then allegedly sought to destroy data stored on the card-processing network in order to conceal their hacking activity, the DOJ said. The indictment alleges that the cashers were allowed to keep 30 percent to 50 percent of the stolen funds, but transmitted the rest of the funds back to Tsurikov, Pleshchuk and other co-defendants. After discovering the unauthorized activity, RBS WorldPay, a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, immediately reported the breach.

Several overseas law-enforcement agencies cooperated in the investigation. Estonian Central Criminal Police apprehended Tsurikov, Ronald Tsoi, Evelin Tsoi and Jevgenov in Estonia earlier this year. Each is facing related charges in Estonia. Tsurikov is also in custody in Estonia and is pending extradition to the U.S.

Cooperation between the Hong Kong Police Force and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation also led to a parallel investigation in Hong Kong, resulting in the identification and arrest of two individuals who were responsible for withdrawing RBS WorldPay funds from ATMs there. The Netherlands Police Agency National Crime Squad High Tech Crime Unit and the Netherlands National Public Prosecutor's Office also provided significant assistance, the DOJ said.

Tsurikov, Pleshchuk, Covelin and Hacker 3 each face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and each wire fraud count; up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit computer fraud; up to five or 10 years in prison for each count of computer fraud; a two-year mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated identity theft; and fines up to $3.5 million dollars.

The charges against Grudijev, the Tsois and Jevgenov carry a maximum of up to 15 years in prison for each count and a fine of up to $250,000. The indictment also seeks criminal forfeiture of $9.4 million from the defendants.

"The charges brought against this highly sophisticated international hacking ring were possible only because of unprecedented international cooperation with our law enforcement partners, particularly between the United States and Estonia," Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general in the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a statement.

Sally Quillian Yates, the acting U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia, said the assistance of RBS WorldPlay and other law enforcement agencies helped solve the case.

"Last November, in just one day, an American credit card processor was hacked in perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted," she said in a statement. "Today, almost exactly one year later, the leaders of this attack have been charged. This investigation has broken the back of one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world." ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-8-indicted-9-million-dollar-15790.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-firefox-celebrates-fifth-birthday-15785.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:18:15 GMT Mozilla Foundation’s signature open source Firefox browser turned half-a-decade old on Monday 9th of November, and in a span of these five years the browser has amassed a whopping 330 million users across the globe.





Five years ago on the same day, Mozilla Foundation rolled out the open source web browser Firefox 1.0, and it immediately became so popular that the demand crashed its servers and engineers at the Foundation took one hour to bring back the situation to normalcy.

The browser has inked an incredible success story since its birth in November 2004, and scaled heights that only few would have thought of.

It has moved on to become the second most popular browser, after Microsoft's Internet Explorer, across the web with around 25 percent of the web browsing market share.

Mozilla’s fans across the world are commemorating this remarkable occasion by hosting parties under a campaign referred to as “Light the World with Firefox”. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-firefox-celebrates-fifth-birthday-15785.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-record-breaking-50m-lotto-win-15784.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:16:14 GMT A First Nations couple who had "a hard time in their lives making a living" are now $50 million richer, thanks to the biggest single-ticket lottery win in Manitoba's history.
Kirby and Marie Fontaine, who live in a mobile home with two children on the Sagkeeng First Nation reserve, are keeping a low profile. But friends and family are sharing their excitement.
"It's just hard to believe," said Donavan Fontaine, a relative and chief of the Sagkeeng First Nation.
Another friend, George McIvor, said it's "an awful lot of cash. I don't know what I would do."
The winning ticket was bought at Broadlands Convenience Store in Pine Falls, about a two-hour drive northeast from Winnipeg.
Dale Swampy was the man working behind the counter, and said he's now become the area's good-luck charm.
"Ever since then, people are touching my hand and arm, always wanting me to sell them tickets," he said.
Lori Wilson, who was also at the store when the winning ticket was sold, says she initially mistook the commotion for a car accident.
"I heard somebody screaming and I actually thought somebody got hit by a car, because often strange things happen here," she said.
Relatives of the Fontaines say they've worked hard to make a living, but had recently had some bad luck. Marie Fontaine works in personal care, while Kirby had been employed as a band constable until he fell ill.
"They had a hard time in their lives just making a living, and then something like this happens," said relative Ken Swampy. "It's a dream come true."
Their daughter will graduate high school in June, and last week had been planning on fundraising so she could afford a grad ring.
Stan Dorie, a family friend who grew up with Kirby Fontaine, said that won't be a problem anymore.
"Fifty million -- that's the best thing that could have happened to them," he said.
The Western Canada Lottery Corporation said it will give the couple the record-breaking cheque on Tuesday. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-record-breaking-50m-lotto-win-15784.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-can-flu-passed-dollar-bills-15764.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:43:05 GMT Image: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/Image/money_flu.jpg Wealth may not be the only thing people spread when they fork over...

Wealth may not be the only thing people spread when they fork over funds. Researchers warn that banknotes may be reservoirs for the common flu virus. Researchers report in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology that human influenza viruses can survive on for as long as 17 days.

But here's the good news: just because the flu virus can survive on a banknote does not necessarily mean touching money will put a person at risk for flu infection. What's more: U.S. bills may not be as hospitable to the germs as other currency, as microbiologist Peter Palese of Mount Sinai School of Medicine suggested in National Public Radio's most recent Science Friday broadcast.

"We didn't study directly the transmission from banknotes to fingers and from fingers to upper respiratory tract," says study co-author Yves Thomas, director of the National Influenza Research Centre at Geneva University Hospital.

Studies suggest that the virus can only live on the skin for up to five minutes, which might be due to a variety of factors including temperature and pH of the skin, says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. That means, she says, that "even if it's on the bill, you are in much better shape if you can inactivate it on human skin." The best way to do that? Wash your hands frequently and do not touch your eyes, nose or mouth unless you have done so immediately before. Aiello says, "The reason I recommend frequent hand washing during influenza season is because the eyes, nose, and mouth are all membrane passages for self-inoculation with the flu virus which then makes it's way to epithelial cells, usually in the nose, throat and lungs where it replicates."

In addition, says Thomas, not all banknotes have the ability to shelter live viruses like the Swiss currency (Swiss franc) he and colleagues used in their study.

"The composition of banknotes is different from one country to he other," he says, noting that he has no clue whether the findings would translate to U.S. dollars or other international paper currency. But whether the money's dirty or not, the best way to avoid the flu, says Aiello, is to get the flu shot and scrub those paws frequently. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-can-flu-passed-dollar-bills-15764.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-modern-warfare-2-cyber-pirate-15761.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:02:07 GMT *How investigators tracked down a Modern Warfare 2 cyber pirate * The posting last Thursday on Craigslist was alarming. Someone was selling... How investigators tracked down a Modern Warfare 2 cyber pirate




The posting last Thursday on Craigslist was alarming. Someone was selling a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, with both a console and a game, for $500. The problem was that Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, doesn’t officially go on sale until Nov. 10.
Activision Blizzard, the game’s publisher, called in IPCybercrime.com, a Dallas private investigation firm that specializes in online investigations. The investigators tracked down the seller and stumbled into a scheme to pirate the game and sell a bunch of fake copies over the Internet. While the bust led to the arrest of just one hacker among many, it sheds light on the shadowy underground of the business of illegal piracy. It also offers a peak at how investigators try to head off a major piracy disaster before it happens.
“It all happened very fast,” said Rob Holmes, owner of IPCybercrime. “If these guys get their stuff out, then they can do some major damage to sales and spoil it for everybody. We plug leaks every day, but this was one of the biggest ones of the year.”
The investigators started by calling the Craigslist ad phone number and talking with the seller, who said he had two items for sale. They negotiated a deal to buy two bundles for $800 each. Then IPCybercrime dispatched its investigators in Los Angeles to perform an undercover pickup. Then another Craigslist ad appeared for the same Modern Warfare 2 bundle. A search on social networks revealed that the first seller was a friend of the second seller. And the second seller said on his social networking page that he worked as a “box boy at a major retail chain.”
IPCybercrime’s client, Activision Blizzard, approached the sellers, who then admitted having stolen a crate of the bundles from the backroom of a game retail store. Then IPCybercrime folks turned the case over to the loss prevention department at the retailer, which dealt with the thieves. This kind of inside job involving physical theft is becoming common, though it’s hard to do because retailers get a major game just a week in advance and then lock the boxes up in a high-security part of their warehouses.
On Oct. 30, the client told IPCybercrime that an individual going by the name “cedelamo” and “cdelamo815″ had posted a message on the piracy forum at xbox360iso com. The post asked for users to donate funds to him via PayPal so that he could buy one of the above-listed Craigslist bundles and crack the anti-piracy code. Once he did that, he could distribute counterfeit copies of the game widely and make a bundle of money doing it.
There wasn’t an obvious way to track the person who made the post. But IPCybercrime checked on Facebook to see if the email address belonged to someone with a Facebook account. The search turned up a page for someone who was anonymously offering “modding services.” Modders are people who hack into Xbox 360 systems and turn them into repositories for pirated games. They stand in a gray area of the law, as it’s legal to make your own backup copy of a copyrighted disk, but it’s not OK to sell that copy commercially. To evade the law, the modders often describe their services in ads as selling “backup disks.”
The Facebook page had a cell phone number and it said that customers could contact that number via text message. Holmes’ investigators stayed in contact with the person sending text messages for four days as they negotiated a business deal. At one point, they convinced the person to call them with a cell phone. Holmes called that number back and then managed to get a business address out of the person.
Meanwhile, the person on the web forum said that he had received a copy of Modern Warfare 2 on Oct. 30. Over the weekend, the hacker went to work on the copy protection built into the DVD disk with the game on it. He cracked the code — something that isn’t that hard for hackers to do these days — and announced that he had done so on Monday. Coincidentally, pirate digital copies of Modern Warfare 2 flooded onto torrent sites, which are peer-to-peer sites for sharing software, on the same day. That has likely caused untold losses for Activision Blizzard, Holmes said.
Holmes was looking into the business address he got from the Facebook modder. The location (pictured right) was a computer business in Miami, owned by the subject’s father, Hiram Del Amo. IPCybercrime sent an investigator to the address and then determined that the cyberhacker was Christian Del Amo, an 18-year-old who was known as a modder and had a site for selling modded Xbox 360 hard disks on iOffer.com, an eBay-like site. The modder advertised 250-gigabyte Western Digital hard drives, loaded with 125 hacked games, for $150.
IPCybercrime handed the case over to the Miami-Dade police department. They conducted a buy-bust sting where Del Amo had sent a “runner” to make the exchange. The runner gave them a disk with the Modern Warfare 2 limited edition image on it. That meant that not only was Del Amo making pirated digital copies on DVDs, he was also sophisticated enough to know how to make disks that look like legitimate copies. On his Twitter account, Del Amo was in a conversation with an underground hologram maker. Holograms can be used to make the disks look like legitimate copies of the game. Those who bought the pirated game would be able to play it in modded Xbox 360s.
“This kid was in a position to sell thousands of these,” Holmes said.
Police interrogated the runner, who led them to Del Amo’s home. They then arrested Del Amo yesterday Del Amo’s attorney has not returned a call for comment. The whole process, from finding the first tip to the bust, took less than a week. While the operation snagged a perpetrator, it didn’t move fast enough to prevent the massive copying of the game on the torrents on the Internet.
“Hopefully it is a lesson,” said Holmes. “If you try to do piracy on a large scale, you will get caught. When you use the Internet, you always leave tracks somewhere. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-modern-warfare-2-cyber-pirate-15761.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-dead-man-attends-own-funeral-15756.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:33:01 GMT CURITIBA, Brazil, Stunned relatives tried to jump out a window when a man presumed dead showed up at his own funeral in southern Brazil, officials... CURITIBA, Brazil, Stunned relatives tried to jump out a window when a man presumed dead showed up at his own funeral in southern Brazil, officials said.

"In my 10 years in this business, I have never witnessed a scene like this," said Natanael Honorato, manager of the funeral home in Brazil's Parana state.

Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, a bricklayer, was identified as the victim of a car crash and his funeral scheduled for Nov. 2, a religious holiday known as the Day of the Dead, CNN reported Sunday.

Goncalves, however, wasn't dead. He'd spent the night drinking at a bar near the site of the crash, but wasn't the victim. When he learned of the mix-up, he went to the Funeraria Rainha das Colinas funeral home and walked in on his grieving family, some of whom tried to jump out a window when they saw him.

The mystery was solved later in the day when a family from a neighboring town identified the dead man as their missing son and took his body home for burial, Honorato said ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-dead-man-attends-own-funeral-15756.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-bahrain-satellite-piracy-blitz-15750.html Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:28:13 GMT Bahrain Satellite piracy blitz


Orbit Showtime has welcomed the recent crackdown on websites enabling the Dreambox satellite TV receiver by authorities in Bahrain, however calls remain for stronger action against the physical distribution of the hardware itself.
The Dreambox can be used in conjunction with a signal of codewords streamed over the internet, to access encrypted pay TV channels.
“Dreamboxes are illegal STBs giving illegal access to Orbit Showtime channels,” said Marc-Antoine d’Halluin, CEO, Orbit Showtime, speaking exclusively to DPME.com.. “It is theft of intellectual property rights (IPR), and the Middle East is now fast joining the markets defending IPR holders. This will enable the development of a local movie and TV production industry, a much needed dimension of the region’s progression.”
Last month the country’s Telecommunication’s Regulatory Authority (TRA) ordered the internet service providers to block websites that enabled illegal access to pay TV signals and channels from outside the region broadcasting content unsuitable for the region.
“We are thankful to the local authorities that have taken these fundamental anti-piracy actions,” added d’Halluin.
Despite these efforts Arabian Anti-piracy Alliance CEO Scott Butler called for a clampdown on the availability of the Dreambox hardware itself.
Speaking to Bahrian-based newspaper Gulf Daily News, Butler said the country needed to follow the same course as the UAE and Saudi Arabia by bringing criminal charges against those distributing Dreamboxes and similar devices. ]]> World News rajuB4U http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-bahrain-satellite-piracy-blitz-15750.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-landmark-health-bill-passes-15739.html Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:47:56 GMT Image:...


The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

A triumphant Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the legislation to the passage of Social Security in 1935 and Medicare 30 years later.

Obama, who went to Capitol Hill earlier on Saturday to lobby wavering Democrats, said in a statement after the vote, "I look forward to signing it into law by the end of the year."

"It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans. It offers everyone, regardless of health or income, the peace of mind that comes from knowing they will have access to affordable health care when they need it," said Rep. John Dingell, the 83-year-old Michigan lawmaker who has introduced national health insurance in every Congress since succeeding his father in 1955.

But minority Republicans cataloged their objections across hours of debate on the 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation.

"We are going to have a complete government takeover of our health care system faster than you can say, `this is making me sick,'" said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich.

In the run-up to a final vote, conservatives from the two political parties joined forces to impose tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies to be sold to many individuals and small groups.

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government's mandates.

Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. The industry would also lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price fixing and market allocation.

At its core, the measure would create a federally regulated marketplace where consumers could shop for coverage. In the bill's most controversial provision, the government would sell insurance, although the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that premiums for it would be more expensive than for policies sold by private companies.

The bill drew the votes of 219 Democrats and Rep. Joseph Cao, a first-term Republican who holds an overwhelmingly Democratic seat in New Orleans. Opposed were 176 Republicans and 39 Democrats.

From the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a statement saying, "We realize the strong will for reform that exists, and we are energized that we stand closer than ever to reforming our broken health insurance system."

To pay for the expansion of coverage, the bill cuts Medicare's projected spending by more than $400 billion over a decade. It also imposes a tax surcharge of 5.4 percent on income over $500,000 in the case of individuals and $1 million for families ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-landmark-health-bill-passes-15739.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-sinister-things-internet-viruses-do-15738.html Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:33:07 GMT *Framed for child porn — by a PC virus* Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an... Framed for child porn — by a PC virus




Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.

Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it's your reputation that's stolen.

Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites.

Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.

An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus. It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence.

Their situations are complicated by the fact that actual pedophiles often blame viruses — a defense rightfully viewed with skepticism by law enforcement.

"It's an example of the old `dog ate my homework' excuse," says Phil Malone, director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The problem is, sometimes the dog does eat your homework."

The AP's investigation included interviewing people who had been found with child porn on their computers. The AP reviewed court records and spoke to prosecutors, police and computer examiners.

One case involved Michael Fiola, a former investigator with the Massachusetts agency that oversees workers' compensation.

In 2007, Fiola's bosses became suspicious after the Internet bill for his state-issued laptop showed that he used 4 1/2 times more data than his colleagues. A technician found child porn in the PC folder that stores images viewed online.

Fiola was fired and charged with possession of child pornography, which carries up to five years in prison. He endured death threats, his car tires were slashed and he was shunned by friends.

Fiola and his wife fought the case, spending $250,000 on legal fees. They liquidated their savings, took a second mortgage and sold their car.

An inspection for his defense revealed the laptop was severely infected. It was programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half.

Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.

The Fiolas say they have health problems from the stress of the case. They say they've talked to dozens of lawyers but can't get one to sue the state, because of a cap on the amount they can recover.

"It ruined my life, my wife's life and my family's life," he says.

The Massachusetts attorney general's office, which charged Fiola, declined interview requests.

At any moment, about 20 million of the estimated 1 billion Internet-connected PCs worldwide are infected with viruses that could give hackers full control, according to security software maker F-Secure Corp. Computers often get infected when people open e-mail attachments from unknown sources or visit a malicious Web page.

Pedophiles can tap viruses in several ways. The simplest is to force someone else's computer to surf child porn sites, collecting images along the way. Or a computer can be made into a warehouse for pictures and videos that can be viewed remotely when the PC is online.

"They're kind of like locusts that descend on a cornfield: They eat up everything in sight and they move on to the next cornfield," says Eric Goldman, academic director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. Goldman has represented Web companies that discovered child pornographers were abusing their legitimate services.

But pedophiles need not be involved: Child porn can land on a computer in a sick prank or an attempt to frame the PC's owner.

In the first publicly known cases of individuals being victimized, two men in the United Kingdom were cleared in 2003 after viruses were shown to have been responsible for the child porn on their PCs.

In one case, an infected e-mail or pop-up ad poisoned a defense contractor's PC and downloaded the offensive pictures.

In the other, a virus changed the home page on a man's Web browser to display child porn, a discovery made by his 7-year-old daughter. The man spent more than a week in jail and three months in a halfway house, and lost custody of his daughter.

Chris Watts, a computer examiner in Britain, says he helped clear a hotel manager whose co-workers found child porn on the PC they shared with him.

Watts found that while surfing the Internet for ways to play computer games without paying for them, the manager had visited a site for pirated software. It redirected visitors to child porn sites if they were inactive for a certain period.

In all these cases, the central evidence wasn't in dispute: Pornography was on a computer. But proving how it got there was difficult.

Tami Loehrs, who inspected Fiola's computer, recalls a case in Arizona in which a computer was so "extensively infected" that it would be "virtually impossible" to prove what an indictment alleged: that a 16-year-old who used the PC had uploaded child pornography to a Yahoo group.

Prosecutors dropped the charge and let the boy plead guilty to a separate crime that kept him out of jail, though they say they did it only because of his age and lack of a criminal record.

Many prosecutors say blaming a computer virus for child porn is a new version of an old ploy.

"We call it the SODDI defense: Some Other Dude Did It," says James Anderson, a federal prosecutor in Wyoming.

However, forensic examiners say it would be hard for a pedophile to get away with his crime by using a bogus virus defense.

"I personally would feel more comfortable investing my retirement in the lottery before trying to defend myself with that," says forensics specialist Jeff Fischbach.

Even careful child porn collectors tend to leave incriminating e-mails, DVDs or other clues. Virus defenses are no match for such evidence, says Damon King, trial attorney for the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.

But while the virus defense does not appear to be letting real pedophiles out of trouble, there have been cases in which forensic examiners insist that legitimate claims did not get completely aired.

Loehrs points to Ned Solon of Casper, Wyo., who is serving six years for child porn found in a folder used by a file-sharing program on his computer.

Solon admits he used the program to download video games and adult porn — but not child porn. So what could explain that material?

Loehrs testified that Solon's antivirus software wasn't working properly and appeared to have shut off for long stretches, a sign of an infection. She found no evidence the five child porn videos on Solon's computer had been viewed or downloaded fully. The porn was in a folder the file-sharing program labeled as "incomplete" because the downloads were canceled or generated an error.

This defense was curtailed, however, when Loehrs ended her investigation in a dispute with the judge over her fees. Computer exams can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Defendants can ask the courts to pay, but sometimes judges balk at the price. Although Loehrs stopped working for Solon, she argues he is innocent.

"I don't think it was him, I really don't," Loehrs says. "There was too much evidence that it wasn't him."

The prosecution's forensics expert, Randy Huff, maintains that Solon's antivirus software was working properly. And he says he ran other antivirus programs on the computer and didn't find an infection — although security experts say antivirus scans frequently miss things.

"He actually had a very clean computer compared to some of the other cases I do," Huff says.

The jury took two hours to convict Solon.

"Everybody feels they're innocent in prison. Nobody believes me because that's what everybody says," says Solon, whose case is being appealed. "All I know is I did not do it. I never put the stuff on there. I never saw the stuff on there. I can only hope that someday the truth will come out."

But can it? It can be impossible to tell with certainty how a file got onto a PC.

"Computers are not to be trusted," says Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security Inc. He describes it as "painfully simple" to get a computer to download something the owner doesn't want — whether it's a program that displays ads or one that stores illegal pictures.

It's possible, Grossman says, that more illicit material is waiting to be discovered.

"Just because it's there doesn't mean the person intended for it to be there — whatever it is, child porn included." ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-sinister-things-internet-viruses-do-15738.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-950th-try-charm-15724.html Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:55:49 GMT 950th Try Is a Charm: Woman Finally Passes Driver's License Test




SEOUL, South Korea — A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver's license with near-daily attempts since April 2005 has finally succeeded on her 950th time. The aspiring driver spent more than $4,200 in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60 on Wednesday, said Choi Young-chul, a police official at the drivers' license agency in Jeonju, 130 miles south of Seoul.

Police said Cha took the test hundreds of times, but had no specific total. Local media said she took the test 950 times.

Now she must pass a driving test before getting her license, Choi said.

Repeated calls to Cha seeking comment went unanswered. She told the Korea Times newspaper she needed the license for her vegetable-selling business. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-950th-try-charm-15724.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-toronto-host-2015-pan-american-15717.html Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:11:01 GMT *Toronto wins vote to host 2015 Pan American Games* Toronto was awarded the 2015 Pan American Games on Friday by beating the South American... Toronto wins vote to host 2015 Pan American Games


Toronto was awarded the 2015 Pan American Games on Friday by beating the South American capitals Bogota and Lima on the first ballot.

Toronto, which has twice failed in bids to land the Summer Olympics, has budgeted $2.4 billion for the Games that will be spread out across 16 other southern Ontario municipalities.

"I'm sure it was a very difficult decision for voters," Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said.

"We were honoured to be in this competition with Lima and Bogota and we will do everything we can to reach out to the people from those communities in particular, so that they feel they have a special stake in the 2015 Games."

The Pan American Sports Organisation voted on Thursday for the introduction of six more sports at the 2011 Games to be staged in Guadalajara in western Mexico, taking the total to 36.

The new sports are karate, 10-pin bowling, Basque pelota, water skiing, squash and roller skating.

Canada has twice before hosted the Pan Am Games, in 1967 and 1999 in Winnipeg and is preparing to stage the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next February.

Rio de Janeiro hosted the 2007 Pan Am Games and used the event as a launch pad for its successful bid to land the 2016 Olympics.

Guadalajara's preparations for the 2011 Games have been beset by problems and construction delays.

Colombia was attempting to stage the games for the second time after Cali hosted them in 1971.

Lima's bid was Peru's first. President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Peru's President Alan Garcia were both in Guadalajara for the vote. ]]> World News robby3333 http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-toronto-host-2015-pan-american-15717.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-family-teen-set-fire-gets-15703.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:15:18 GMT Fort Lauderdale, Florida (CNN) -- She walked to the cameras and could barely look up. With her lip quivering, Sherry Jarvis apologized to the family... Fort Lauderdale, Florida (CNN) -- She walked to the cameras and could barely look up. With her lip quivering, Sherry Jarvis apologized to the family of 15-year-old Michael Brewer, who is clinging to life in a hospital burn unit.

Jarvis is the mother of two boys who, along with three other youths, are accused in the burning of Brewer. Detectives say witnesses saw Brewer, consumed in flames, run about a hundred yards, tear off his shirt and jump into a swimming pool.

Brewer's screams can be heard on a 911 call from the October 12 incident. Doctors say he was burned on about 65 percent of his body.

"I'd just like to express how horribly sorry we are," Jarvis said in a public statement she and her family made Wednesday. Accompanied by her husband and two daughters, Jarvis spoke slowly as she addressed a gathering of reporters.

"This is a horrible incident that should have never had occurred." said Jarvis, her voice full of sorrow and shock. Her sons, ages 13 and 15, face charges that could send them to prison for a long time.

Authorities in Broward County, Florida, believe that Brewer was attacked in a chain of events that began when he did not pay one of the five boys $40 for a video game. That boy stole Brewer's father's bicycle, and when Brewer told police, the youth was arrested, then released, authorities said.

The next day, the group of five teens allegedly surrounded Brewer and, according to eyewitnesses, yelled, "He's a snitch. He's a snitch" before one of them poured alcohol over him, another sparked a lighter, and Brewer was ablaze.

All of the boys had been friends since elementary school, authorities said. They did sleepovers at one another's homes, and their families knew each other.
"We pray for Michael's recovery every day, that he gets stronger, which we know in our hearts that he will," Sherry Jarvis said.

But doctors are unsure about his recovery.

Brewer remains on a ventilator. A machine is breathing for him. Each day, a team of doctors spends about four hours changing his bandages.

He remains heavily sedated and is going through a very difficult period right now, according to doctors.

"The swelling has come way down, and you can recognize facial expressions now," said Dr. Nicholas Namias, medical director of the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital Burn Center in Miami.

"We're still dealing with the respiratory failure. We're dealing with infection now and the need to supply the massive amount of nutrition that this person needs to survive," Namias told CNN.

"People are writing horror stories ... but people just can't imagine the kind of sickness we're talking about. He is by no means well ... but the expectation is survival," he said.

Because he is sedated and on the ventilator, Brewer has been unable to communicate with detectives.

Earlier this week, prosecutors were granted extra time to build their cases against the five teens, four 15-year-olds and the 13-year-old. Prosecutors have until November 12 to charge the five as adults, or they will be charged as juveniles and released pending trial later.

The 13-year-old cannot face adult charges under Florida law, but that would change if Brewer died.

Prosecutors want to interview Brewer about the incident, but doctors say that is unlikely to happen before next week.

Brewer's family was not represented at the Jarvis family's public apology. The victim's parents could not be reached for comment.

After making her apology, Jarvis said the family would not take questions from the gathered reporters.

"I don't have the words to express any more. I can't answer any more questions because of the criminal case that's still pending," she said.

The Jarvis family has received death threats, according to family members and their attorney. They haven't stayed at their home since the incident, they say, adding that people have been throwing garbage and even dead animals on their property.

On Wednesday, with their attorney at their side, they simply wanted to say to Michael Brewer and his family that they are sorry.

Detectives have returned to the Brewer house, after two dolls were found in the swimming pool. The male and female dolls had been melted together, head to feet.

"At this point, we're thinking it's a sick joke, said Jim Leljedal, a spokesman for the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

"It's being classified as criminal mischief, but we'd like to know who's responsible," he said. ]]> World News BabyGirl http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-family-teen-set-fire-gets-15703.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-10-year-old-boy-tells-15702.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:06:09 GMT ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A recording of a six-minute call to emergency dispatchers obtained Thursday by the Associated Press details the moments... ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — A recording of a six-minute call to emergency dispatchers obtained Thursday by the Associated Press details the moments after a 10-year-old boy allegedly shot his father in the head with a shotgun.

"Just get a doctor over here!" the desperate boy begs the operator on the night of Aug. 27. "Please hurry up. It looks like he's dying."

His father, 42-year-old Bryon Hilburn, was on the floor inside, still breathing, when police arrived at the family's home in Belen, just south of Albuquerque. He died later that night at a hospital.

Now, the boy faces a charge of first-degree murder.

The district attorney filed charges against the boy Tuesday. He cannot face adult sanctions because New Mexico law says a child must be 14 or older to be tried as an adult for murder. The boy remains in the custody of his mother. His name is being withheld because of his age.

During the call, the boy's desperation and concern was interrupted at times with frustration as the operator tried to figure out what had happened.

"I need a doctor. My dad's dying," the boy first tells the operator. The boy gets confused when the operator asks for the home's address. He tells her he will check on the mailbox and tells her his father is bleeding badly and "he fell asleep."

Then in a panicked voice as he breathed heavily, the boy gets further agitated when asked his father's age.

"I don't know. Just come and get him out of here!" he demands.

When the operator asked the boy if he knew what happened, the boy told her he shot his father out of anger.

"I was so over my head. I shot him in the back of the head. I got so angry at him," the boy says two minutes into the call. "Oh, please hurry."

The boy's attention then turns to his sister.

"Don't worry," he gently tells the girl before telling the operator: "Oh, my sister's crying her head off ... I think I hear the sirens."

When asked where the gun is, the boy tells the operator it's in "my dad's gun closet."

The boy can then be heard yelling to officers who arrived at the scene.

"Hurry! My dad!" he shouts at them as the call ends.

Hilburn was divorced and had custody of the boy and his two siblings. The boy's siblings have been staying with relatives following the shooting.

The state's Children, Youth and Families Department reports that state officials received nine calls regarding the family on a department hot line used to report possible child abuse or neglect. Officials substantiated only one claim involving the boy's mother. ]]> World News BabyGirl http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-10-year-old-boy-tells-15702.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-baby-sitter-mom-charged-disappearance-15701.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:04:35 GMT The baby sitter and mother of a 7-month-old Florida girl missing for five days and then found alive in a box under the sitter's bed were charged Thursday in Shannon Dedrick's disappearance.

Last week, baby sitter Susan Elizabeth Baker asked the infant's mother Chrystina Lynn Mercer to give her custody and Mercer agreed, Washington County Sheriff Bobby Haddock said.

The baby was turned over on Saturday, the day she was reported missing, according to Haddock.

The sheriff said Baker and Mercer both were charged with several felonies, including interfering with child custody, false report of a crime, false report of a missing child and contributing to the delinquency of a child.

Baker also was charged with neglect of a child with aggravating circumstances; Mercer faces additional child desertion charges.

SLIDESHOW: Baby Shannon Found Alive

Baker already is suspected along with her husband James in the 1987 disappearance of her 3-year-old stepson Paul, who was never found.

On Wednesday night, authorities said they found the baby alive in a sealed 2-by-3-foot box hidden under Baker's bed in her Chipley home.

Shannon had been inside the box for almost 12 hours, Haddock told reporters Thursday afternoon, choking back tears.

"The baby had been fed, well cared for," he said. "There was no baby bottle in the box. This was a hiding place. She knew we were coming and would place her in the box."

Baker's husband James Arthur Baker was detained along with the women, but released after being questioned when police determined he wasn't involved, the sheriff said.

The child's father, James Russell Dedrick Jr., — who is related to Susan Baker — also wasn't charged.

Haddock called an unusual 1 a.m. press conference Thursday and told reporters he had "good news." He then went to another room with television cameras rolling and came back holding Shannon in his arms. People applauded.
"We are the proud papas of a little girl," Haddock announced. "This is Shannon Lee Dedrick. We found her safe."

Investigators discovered Shannon at 9:55 p.m. Wednesday in a box tucked under a bed surrounded by objects intended to hide the little girl at the Bakers' home in Chipley, the sheriff said.

The baby was placed in protective custody.

"Statistically speaking this should not have ever happened, that we found this child alive, especially after so many days. Time was against us," Haddock said.

Shannon was taken to a hospital but appeared healthy, according to Haddock.
"It was very emotional for us, because once we got her to the hospital, we called our wives and every one of us was crying. Grown men crying. It's just such a relief," he said. "We've had missing children cases in the past, but nothing like this."

Haddock wouldn't provide details about the possible charges against Susan Baker, James Arthur Baker and Mercer or say how they believe the mother was involved.

The baby had been missing since Saturday morning. Her parents said they last saw her when in their rural Panhandle mobile home when they went to bed around 3 a.m. and investigators believe she vanished sometime between then and 8 a.m.

Her parents did not report her missing until after 11 a.m., but authorities have not explained the discrepancy.

About 100 law enforcement agents and others spent days scouring dense vines and marshes around the baby's home in a remote, makeshift community of dirt roads, tin-roof shacks and old mobile homes.

On Wednesday, investigators contacted the Bakers and asked to search their home, about 12 miles from where Shannon was last seen. They agreed and authorities found the baby there Wednesday night.

According to court documents, child welfare officials began looking into allegations Shannon was being abused less than two weeks after she was born.

In August, Susan Baker wrote a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist's office, pleading for help for the baby.

She claimed Dedrick shook Shannon and that he, Mercer and others smoked cigarettes and drugs in front of her. Baker also claimed Dedrick was not the child's father and said he claimed paternity to get welfare benefits.

Investigators frequently went to the infant's home from August to late September and reported that both parents used marijuana and kept a messy home.

But they said Shannon seemed to be cared for and in September, a physician determined that she was healthy and expressed "no concerns regarding the baby."

Susan Baker was involved in another missing child case in South Carolina more than two decades ago. She told authorities her stepson, 3-year-old Paul Leonard Baker, disappeared from the family's Beaufort, S.C., home on March 5, 1987, while she was napping.

A massive manhunt in the swampy area around the home turned up nothing. She and her husband, James Baker, were extradited to South Carolina in 2000 and charged with assault and battery in Paul's disappearance, according to police reports provided by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

But a grand jury never indicted them and the child was never found.

Susan Baker did serve prison time after authorities investigating her stepson's disappearance discovered a 6-year-old girl in the Baker home believed to be Paul's sister had been badly beaten.

Baker was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the sentence was suspended after 80 days.

A sheriff's investigator from Beaufort County was sent to Florida to assist in the missing child case, spokeswoman Robin McIntosh said Wednesday.

Shannon's grandmother Kandis Boyer told the News Herald that she left her Texas home at 6 a.m. Tuesday with her two daughters and drove to Chipley.

“We’re taking this one step at a time,” Boyer told the paper. “The main focus is on Shannon. Thank God for bringing my granddaughter to safety.” ]]> World News BabyGirl http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-baby-sitter-mom-charged-disappearance-15701.html http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-coercing-6-year-old-student-15700.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:02:31 GMT A Florida kindergarten teacher reportedly has been removed from her classroom after allegedly coercing a 6-year-old girl to clean up another... A Florida kindergarten teacher reportedly has been removed from her classroom after allegedly coercing a 6-year-old girl to clean up another student's urine.

Teacher Martha Ensley told police she was in the middle of a lesson at Floresta Elementary Monday when the girl informed that there was urine on the bathroom floor, the TCPalm.com reported.

Despite her policy that students clean their own messes, Ensley said she told the girl to 'just clean it up,' then gave her Dolphin Dollars – play money given to students to encourage good behavior – as a reward for following those orders, the officer's report stated.

The girl's mother, Lisa Portieles, came to the school to complain two days later, triggering the call to police, and an internal investigation, TCPalm.com reported.

“It worries me because she’s got a stack (of Dolphin Dollars) this big, and I’m just imagining if she’s done that, what else did she do for that stack of dolphin cards?” Portieles told TCPalm.

Police and the state attorney’s office concluded no crime was committed, but the school is conducting an its own probe to determine if school rules were broken, TCPalm.com reported. ]]> World News BabyGirl http://www.fta-gods.com/forums/f191/news-coercing-6-year-old-student-15700.html