TSA Admits Wrongdoing in Cases of Two Elderly Woman Who Claim They Were Strip-Searched
January 19th, 2012Via: New York Daily News:
In an about-face, the feds have admitted wrongdoing in the cases of two elderly women who say they were strip-searched at Kennedy Airport by overzealous screeners.
Federal officials had initially insisted that all “screening procedures were followed” after Ruth Sherman, 89, and Lenore Zimmerman, 85, went public with separate accounts of humiliating strip searches.
But in a letter obtained by the Daily News, the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that screeners violated standard practice in their treatment of the ailing octogenarians last November.
Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Betsy Markey concedes to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) that Sherman was forced to show security agents her colostomy bag — a violation of policy.
“It is not standard operating procedure for colostomy devices to be visually inspected, and [the Transportation Security Administration\] apologizes for this employee’s action,” Markey wrote.
7 Charged In $78 Million Inside Trading Case
January 19th, 2012The point is that LOTS of people who aren’t corporate insiders know the news before the market does.
—Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets
Via: AP:
Greed on Wall Street set a new record, federal authorities said Wednesday as they unveiled a massive insider trading case charging a hedge fund co-founder with engineering a trade that earned a staggering $53 million in profits.
The illegal trade — the largest transaction ever prosecuted in Manhattan — was part of a $78 million scheme involving at least seven financial industry professionals, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told reporters.
“Today’s charges illustrate something that should disturb all of us: They show that insider trading activity in recent times has, indeed, been rampant and routine and that this criminal behavior was known, encouraged and exploited by authority figures in several investment funds,” Bharara said.
Of the $78 million, nearly $62 million was earned through tips provided by a Dell Inc. employee to a former Dell worker who spread the information among his friends at at least five investment houses, including three hedge funds. Bharara called it “a stunning portrait of organized corruption on a broad scale” and said it raised to 63 the number of people arrested in a government crackdown on insider trading. So far, there have been 56 convictions.
“Each wave of charges and arrests seems to produce leads to lead us to the next phase,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk.
She said the arrests were not the last in a 4-year-old probe dubbed Operation Perfect Hedge.
“If you are engaged in insider trading, what distinguishes you from the dozens who have been charged is not that you haven’t been caught; it’s that you haven’t been caught yet,” she said.
The criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charged four of the men with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and securities fraud, among other charges. Three analysts charged in the other documents have already pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the government.
Related: They Made a Killing: The Use of Knowledge of Covert Operations in the Stock Market
Researchers Drilling Thousands of Meters Into Frozen Antarctic Lake
January 19th, 2012Cthulhu for President
Via: Science Magazine:
Along with all the festivities surrounding the anniversary of explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s reaching the South Pole on 17 January 1912, Antarctic researchers are at the edge of their seats waiting for news that will merit another celebration. The centennial coincides with an expected new landmark: This week, a Russian team drilling into Lake Vostok in the center of the Antarctic continent is likely to break through the ice to water. It will be the first time that a subglacial lake has been breached. These modern-day explorers hope to discover whether Vostok, which at 5000 km 3 is the third largest lake on the planet, is teeming with hidden, cold-loving life that could have evolved separately from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years.
AMA Recommends Compulsory Participation in Vaccine Trials
January 18th, 2012You’ll love this one.
Via: American Medical Association:
In recent decades there has been a distressing decline in the numbers of healthy volunteers who participate in clinical trials, a decline that has the potential to become a key rate-limiting factor in vaccine development.
…
If progression of promising vaccines from the lab to the clinic is to remain unaffected and financial inducement is an ethically unacceptable solution to the recruitment shortage, other strategies need to be considered. Compulsory involvement in vaccine studies is one alternative solution that is not as outlandish as it might seem on first consideration. Many societies already mandate that citizens undertake activities for the good of society; in several European countries registration for organ-donation has switched from “opt-in” (the current U.S. system) to “opt-out” systems (in which those who do not specifically register as nondonors are presumed to consent to donation), and most societies expect citizens to undertake jury service when called upon. In these examples, the risks or inconvenience to an individual are usually limited and minor. Mandatory involvement in vaccine trials is therefore perhaps more akin to military conscription, a policy operating today in 66 countries. In both conscription and obligatory trial participation, individuals have little or no choice regarding involvement and face inherent risks over which they have no control, all for the greater good of society.
Research Credit: tal
SOPA & PIPA Internet Protest
January 18th, 2012Via: American Censorship:
On Wednesday Jan. 18th thousands of sites will go dark to protest SOPA & PIPA, two US bills racing through Congress that threaten prosperity, online security, and freedom of expression.
New York Police Will Scan Pedestrians for Concealed Weapons
January 18th, 2012Via: CBS News:
The NYPD is stepping up their war against illegal guns, with a new tool that could detect weapons on someone as they walk down the street.
But is it violating your right to privacy?
Police, along with the U.S. Department of Defense, are researching new technology in a scanner placed on police vehicles that can detect concealed weapons.
“You could use it at a specific event. You could use it at a shooting-prone location,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS 2?s Hazel Sanchez on Tuesday.
It’s called Terahertz Imaging Detection. It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.
…
Police Commissioner Kelly said the scanner would only be used in reasonably suspicious circumstances and could cut down on the number of stop-and-frisks on the street.
But the New York Civil Liberties Union is raising a red flag.
“It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong,” the NYCLU’s Donna Lieberman said.
NZ Asset Sales Policy Began On Wall Street
January 18th, 2012Both National and Labour are clear and present dangers to New Zealand. National’s goal is sell our country’s assets to Australia and China. Labour’s goal is get us saddled with debt to those country’s banks. In other words, the ultimate goal of both of the main parties is to sell us out, to make us renters and debt slaves in our own country.
—New Zealand: 1 Million Didn’t Bother to Vote
One for your New-Zealand-Is-In-Big-Trouble file folder.
Via: Scoop:
The Key government’s asset sales agenda is derived from the Washington Consensus – a set of Wall Street-driven policies that were pronounced dead after the global financial meltdown in 2008. The New Zealand government, however, remains loyal to this failed ideology.
Why? The obvious link is Prime Minister John Key – a former investment banker for Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest brokerage failure.
In most other countries, state asset sales have become a last resort on the road to poverty and ruin, but for the Key government, asset sales are “business as usual.”
…
The world is literally attempting to engage productive overdrive in a hopeless struggle to satisfy unproductive debt servicing.
Almost half of the average earned income is already siphoned off via direct or indirect hidden interest, and in government debt taxes. In sum, almost half of humanity’s productive effort is to serve useless debt, instead of solve the world’s problems.
The pressure to leverage fiscal advantage from assets, of all kinds, comes directly from the ruling power – the international banking elite. No political party can entirely avoid asset extraction under the fractional reserve system. Governments can adjust the debt hand-brake, but the foreign bankers are in the driving seat.
The world is sliding toward zero and eventually negative growth. Sovereign debt can only speed up. New Zealand will join the economic train-wreck down the track.
Research Credit: p
SWITCH Lighting LED Lightbulbs
January 17th, 2012Via: AllGeek:
At the 2012 International CES we had a chance to speak with SWITCH Lighting. They are a start-up from Silicon Valley that is working to create a better lighting solution than the age old Edison incandescent and take LED lights to the next level. There are two parts of their design that make them leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. The first is clear when you look at the product — it’s beautiful. They’ve managed to turn an everyday object that would normally be overlooked into something that is a pleasure to view in the on or off position. The second is where the magic happens — the bulb is filled with liquid.
The liquid is a non-toxic, non-conductive, food-grade fluid that is used to cool the LEDs that strangely enough can be found in the beer making process and also in women’s cosmetics. Heat causes the liquid to flow in a circular motion through the bulb and down through the aluminum portion which acts as a sort of radiator in the cooling process. This causes the outside of the bulb to heat to around 85°C which may seem quite hot, but in comparison to an incandescent which heats to almost 160°C it’s actually quite cool. This differs from most LED manufacturers who tout the coolness of the outside of their bulbs as an advantage, when in actuality it keeps the heat closer to the LEDs which in turn hampers light output and longevity. The cooler the LEDs, the more lumens can be produced, the longer the LEDs last, and the fewer LEDs are required to produce the same amount light output. An LED made by another company that produces the same light requires 18 LEDs compared to SWITCH’s light that uses 10, which in the end is simple math — less LEDs = a less expensive bulb.
It’s a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World
January 17th, 2012Via: Independent:
It’s a girl, a film being released this year, documents the practice of killing unwanted baby girls in South Asia. The trailer’s most chilling scene is one with an Indian woman who, unable to contain her laughter, confesses to having killed eight infant daughters.
The statistics are sickening. The UN reports approximately 200 million girls in the world today are ‘missing’. India and China are said to eliminate more female infants than the number of girls born in the US each year. Lianyungang in China has the worst infant gender ratio on record with 163 boys born for every 100 girls. Taiwan, South Korea and Pakistan are also countries in which unwanted female babies are aborted, killed or abandoned.
Gendercide in South Asia takes many forms: baby girls are killed or abandoned if not aborted as foetuses. Girls that are not killed often suffer malnutrition and medical neglect as sons are favoured when shelter, medicine and food are scarce. Trafficking, dowry deaths, honour killings and deaths resulting from domestic violence are all further evils perpetrated against women. This femicide has led the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces to report in ‘Women in an Insecure World’ that a secret genocide is being carried out against women at a time when deaths resulting from armed conflicts have decreased.
TSA Screeners Stole $40K from NY Luggage
January 17th, 2012Via: Natural News:
Any normal person found guilty of stealing $40,000 from, say, a bank or an employer, would likely be sentenced to at least five years of prison. But when you work for the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), you can expect to be given special legal treatment and sent on your way.
The Associated Press reports that two former TSA screeners, 44-year-old Coumar Persad and 31-year-old Davon Webb, both of which worked at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, have pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration, and official misconduct, for stealing nearly $40,000 from an airport traveler’s luggage. But rather than receive a normal prison sentence for such crimes, the two were sentenced to just six months in prison with five years of probation.
Reports indicate that Persad, who was an X-ray luggage screener at the time, had spotted the wad of cash in a suitcase while monitoring the X-ray screen. He reportedly then contacted Webb, who worked in another baggage area, to watch for the bag and mark it with special tape. Persad later intercepted the bag in another baggage handling area, and proceeded to open it up and take the cash.
All in all, the two thieves snagged $39,980, which was later retrieved by police from the men’s homes.
