Attempt to Deposit Fake Bonds in Vatican Bank
March 31st, 2014Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
Vatican police have apprehended a US man and a Dutch man trying to deposit billions of euros and US dollars in fake bonds in the Vatican bank.
The men were stopped by the police when they approached one of the guarded gates at the Vatican and asked to be let through to the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), as the bank is formally known, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said.
The bonds were discovered in a briefcase they were carrying and the men were handed over to Italy’s financial police, who found false passports and other fake documents in their hotel rooms.
The haul came a day after Italian prosecutors said two former top executives at the Vatican bank will go on trial for alleged money laundering in a case that led to the seizure of 23 million euros ($34.18 million).
IOR press officer Max Hohenberg said the US man and the Dutch man “are neither clients of the bank, nor were they expected”.
The bank, which handles the accounts of Catholic clerics and congregations around the world, has a tainted reputation, but the Vatican has vowed to clean it up and bring it in line with international laws.
Mr Lombardi said Saturday’s episode “shows the controls are working. But I don’t think we’re talking about a plot by criminal masterminds if they managed to get caught at the first hurdle.”
Research Credit: Brassmonkey
When One New Zealand School Tossed Its Playground Rules and Let Students Risk Injury
March 31st, 2014Many New Zealand parents went to Playcentre as children and they remember how good it was.
What’s described in the piece below sounds a bit like Playcentre for older kids—if only for recess periods.
Via: National Post:
It was a meeting Principal Bruce McLachlan awaited with dread.
One of the 500 students at Swanson School in a northwest borough of Auckland had just broken his arm on the playground, and surely the boy’s parent, who had requested this face-to-face chat with its headmaster, was out for blood.
It had been mere months since the gregarious principal threw out the rulebook on the playground of concrete and mud, dotted with tall trees and hidden corners; just weeks since he had stopped reprimanding students who whipped around on their scooters or wielded sticks in play sword fights.
He knew children might get hurt, and that was exactly the point — perhaps if they were freed from the “cotton-wool” in which their 21st century parents had them swaddled, his students may develop some resilience, use their imaginations, solve problems on their own.
The parent sat down, stone-faced, across from the principal.
“‘My son broke his arm in the playground, and I just want to make sure…” he began.
“And I’m thinking ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen?’” Mr. McLachlan recalled, sitting in his “fishbowl” of an office one hot Friday afternoon last month.
The parent continued: “I just wanted to make sure you don’t change this play environment, because kids break their arms.”
Mr. McLachlan took the unexpected vote of confidence as a further sign that his educational-play experiment was working: Fewer children were getting hurt on the playground. Students focused better in class. There was also less bullying, less tattling. Incidents of vandalism had dropped off.
Related: Playcentre New Zealand
Diet Drinks Linked with Heart Disease, Death
March 30th, 2014Via: CNBC:
Women who drink the most diet sodas may also be more likely to develop heart disease and even to die, according to a new study published Saturday.
Researchers found women who drank two or more diet drinks a day were 30 percent more likely to have a heart attack or other cardiovascular “event,” and 50 percent more likely to die, than women who rarely touch such drinks.
The findings, being presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, don’t suggest that the drinks themselves are killers. But women who toss back too many diet sodas may be trying to make up for unhealthy habits, experts say.
“Our study suggests an association between higher diet drink consumption and mortality,” said Dr. Ankur Vyas, a cardiovascular disease expert at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinic, who led the study.
“It’s not an extreme risk,” he added.
Florida: Millionaire Couple Receiving Food Stamps
March 30th, 2014It’s like “defense” contractors, but different.
Via: CBS:
The search is on for a South Florida couple who authorities said were living a lavish lifestyle while collecting food stamps.
Prosecutors are describing Colin Chisholm,III and his wife Andrea as, “rich folks ripping off the system.”
Authorities said the couple got $167,000 in welfare from the state of Minnesota while living in Palm Beach on a $1.2 million yacht.
“I’ve never ridden in a yacht that nice. I bet most of us haven’t, but they were living on it while they were collecting public assistance,” said Mike Freeman of the Hennepin County Attorney.
The Chisholms are charged with wrongfully obtaining public assistance. Prosecutors said over the years they fraudulently collected medical assistance, welfare payments and food stamps.
They also allegedly lied about where they were living, who they were living with and their source of income.
The couple, who reportedly insisted on being called lord and lady, is also accused of failing to report $3 million deposited in their bank accounts.
Andrea ran a high end kennel and entered dogs in fancy dog show. She is accused of using $60,000 of public assistance money for massages at a spa.
The couples alleged scam ran from January 2005 to March 2012. At times they were allegedly collecting welfare benefits in both Florida and Minnesota, at the same time.
GCHQ and NSA Targeted Private German Companies
March 29th, 2014Shocker.
Via: Spiegel:
Documents show that Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service infiltrated German Internet firms and America’s NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany and collected information about the chancellor in a special database.
Possible Classified Aircraft Photographed Over Texas
March 29th, 2014Via: Aviation Week:
The photos tell us more about what the mysterious stranger isn’t than what it is. The size is very hard to determine, for example, although the image size at contrailing height suggests that it is bigger than an X-47B. However, the basic shape – while it resembles Boeing’s Blended Wing Body studies or the Swift Killer Bee/Northrop Grumman Bat unmanned air system – is different from anything known to have flown at full size, lacking the notched trailing edge of Northrop Grumman’s full-size designs.
After Seven Years, Exactly One Person Gets Off the Government No-Fly List
March 28th, 2014Via: Ars Technica:
A hearing in federal court Tuesday has apparently marked the conclusion of a drawn-out, costly, and, to use the judge’s own term, “Kafkaesque” legal battle over the government no-fly list. Malaysian college professor Rahinah Ibrahim sued the government back in 2006, after Dr. Ibrahim’s name mistakenly ended up on a federal government no-fly list.
Last month, US District Judge William Alsup ruled that Ibrahim must be removed from the government’s various watchlists. At Tuesday’s hearing, a Department of Justice lawyer said that the government did not intend to appeal the ruling. The ruling in Ibrahim v. DHS calls into question the government’s administration of its controversial no-fly list as well as other terrorist watch lists, but it leaves no clear roadmap for other people wrongly placed on such lists.
IBM: Mass Biometric Surveillance Unstoppable
March 28th, 2014Via: Wired:
It’s already too late to stop the ubiquitous tracking and monitoring of the public through biometrics, says Peter Waggett, Programme Leader at IBM’s Emerging Technology Group. We need to stop worrying about prevention, and start working out how to make the most of data garnered from that kind of surveillance.
“We’re fighting the wrong battle when we ask should we stop people being observed. That is not going to be feasible. We need to understand how to use that data better,” urged Waggett, who was speaking as part of a Nesta panel debate on what biometrics mean for the future of privacy.
“I’ve been working in biometrics for 20 years, and it’s reaching a tipping point where it’s going to be impossible not to understand where people are and what they are doing. Everything will be monitored. It’s part of the reason why when we put together the definition of biometrics it included biological and behavioural characteristics — it can be anything.”
To back up his point, Waggett identified a few of the futures once portrayed in science fiction movies, now a reality. Minority Report is generally the go to film for these kinds of comparisons. But it’s the commercial aspects of the film Waggett flagged up, rather than the gesture technology. In the film, the protagonist walks into a shop where an advert immediately pops up and draws on his past preferences to offer up some suggestions. “The one thing they got wrong is you won’t recognise you’re being scanned — the flashing red light in the film is for effect, but all that’s now feasible.”
1 in 68 U.S. Children Has Autism
March 28th, 2014Via: CNN:
One in 68 U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a 30% increase from 1 in 88 two years ago, according to a new report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This newest estimate is based on the CDC’s evaluation of health and educational records of all 8-year-old children in 11 states: Alabama, Wisconsin, Colorado, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Arizona, Maryland, North Carolina, Utah and New Jersey.
The incidence of autism ranged from a low of 1 in 175 children in Alabama to a high of 1 in 45 in New Jersey, according to the CDC.
Children with autism continue to be overwhelmingly male. According to the new report, the CDC estimates 1 in 42 boys has autism, 4.5 times as many as girls (1 in 189).
The Shift From Low-Wage Worker to Robot Worker
March 27th, 2014Via: FiveThirtyEight:
The minimum-wage occupations that Frey and Osborne think are most vulnerable include, not surprisingly, telemarketers, sales clerks and cashiers. But also included are occupations that employ a large share of the low-wage workforce, such as waiters and waitresses, food-preparation workers and cooks. If the computerization of these low-wage jobs becomes feasible, and if employers find it economical to invest in such labor-saving technology, there will be huge implications for the U.S. labor force.
