Archive for June, 2011
Man Mines Precious Metals and Gems on Midtown Manhattan Sidewalks
June 20th, 2011I happen to like stories about weird ways that people make it through this… reality. Wow, I definitely wouldn’t have ever thought of this. He probably should have told people he lost his contact lenses or something. Via: New York Post: There’s gold in them thar sidewalk cracks! A Queens man has discovered enough hidden […]
Largest Ever Marine Corps Drill on U.S. East Coast
June 20th, 2011[???] Via: CNN: It’s mid-June, a perfect time to visit the beach to watch porpoises play in the surf or seagulls strut the sand — or you could watch a formation of Marine Corps warplanes darting over the shore at hundreds of miles per hour. But don’t worry — the United States hasn’t declared war […]
Bitcoin Flashcrash on Mt.Gox
June 19th, 2011Update: Mt.Gox User Database Stolen, Service Down There’s ugly, there’s fugly and then there’s… Via: Mt.Gox: [Update – 2:06 GMT] What we know and what is being done. It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull […]
Greece: Increasing Possibility of ‘Lehman-Style’ Event
June 19th, 2011Via: Telegraph: UK banks have pulled billions of pounds of funding from the eurozone as fears grow about the impact of a “Lehman-style” event connected to a Greek default. Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available […]
Federal Judge Dismisses Third Party Environmental Claims Against Transocean and BP
June 19th, 2011Via: Courthouse News Service: Ruling in favor of Transocean and BP, a federal judge on Thursday dismissed third-party environmental claims in a giant pleading bundle in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, saying the fact that the oil flow has stopped makes those lawsuits irrelevant. “The injunction at this stage would be useless, as not […]
Eisenhower’s Worst Fears Came True: We Invent Enemies to Buy the Bombs
June 19th, 2011Via: Guardian: Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain’s borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again […]
Russia Orders Stalin-Era Leather Coats for Putin Guards
June 18th, 2011Via: AFP: Russia’s federal guard service, in charge of protecting President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, may soon sport black leather overcoats harking back to the era of Stalin’s purges. The elite service known by its Russian acronym FSO has launched a tender to purchase 60 leather trenchcoats on the official site for […]
An Idea for the Billionaires Who Claim to Love New Zealand: How About an Electric Water Kettle?
June 18th, 2011The economy in Northland is in a state of collapse: The recession in Northland has had most impact on young people, with 29 per cent of the region’s 18- to 24-year-olds now on welfare, and on Maori, with an extraordinary 48 per cent of Maori aged 18 to 64 on benefits. Now, in New Zealand, […]
Puerto Rico: Banker Shot Dead, Professional Hit
June 17th, 2011Via: Business Insider: A banker was gunned down in Puerto Rico on Wednesday and at least one Puetro Rican news agency suspects that it might have had something to do with an audit he had recently launched. The banker, 56-year old Maurice J. Spagnoletti, was Doral Financial corporation’s executive vice president of Mortgage and Banking […]
Lawsuit Alleges Whole Foods Sold Frozen Vegetables from China Grown in a Polluted Region by Prisoners and Certified as Organic
June 17th, 2011Ahh, imagine my shock. Rant mode: On. We buy some organic foods in bulk from wholesale distributors here in New Zealand. Increasingly, if we want to buy these ‘certified organic’ bulk foods, the country of origin is China. We refuse to buy any food from China, regardless of which organic certification it has. We’ve indicated […]
