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Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck’s driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it occurred at a busier time.

…

Authorities said the damage could take months to repair, and that it would cause the worst disruption for Bay Area commuters since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged a section of the Bay Bridge itself.

Nearly 75,000 vehicles use the portion of the road every day. But because the accident occured where three highways converge, authorities said it could cause commuting problems for hundreds of thousands of people. State transportation officials said 280,000 commuters take the bridge into San Francisco each day.

On Sunday the collapse doubled the half-hour trip drivers normally face getting to and from San Francisco and the eastern suburbs _ even though many didn’t even attempt the trip because of the crash. Traffic appeared light on the bridge itself, but motorists looking to get on and off were backed up on both sides.

Transportation officials said they already had added trains to the Bay Area Rapid Transit light rail system that takes commuters across San Francisco Bay, and were urging people to telecommute if possible.

State officials said motorists who try to take alternate routes Monday instead of relying on public transportation would face nightmarish commutes.

The tanker carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline ignited after crashing into a pylon on the interchange, which connects westbound lanes of Interstate 80 to southbound I-880, on the edge of downtown Oakland about half a mile from the Bay Bridge’s toll plaza.

A preliminary investigation indicated the driver may have been speeding on the curving road, Cross said.

Witnesses reported flames rising up to 200 feet into the air. Heat exceeded 2,750 degrees and caused the steel beams holding up the interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound Interstate 580 above to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt, leading to the collapse, California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said.

Tuesday’s four-count indictment, made public Friday, charged e-gold Ltd., Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. and owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, 50, of Satellite Beach; his brother Reid A. Jackson, 44, of Melbourne; and Barry K. Downey, 47, of Woodbine, Md., with four crimes involving conspiring to launder monetary instruments or operating unlicensed money-transmitting businesses from 1999 to December 2005.

E-gold, incorporated on the Caribbean island of Nevis but based in Melbourne, began offering Internet services in 1996. Gold & Silver Reserve Inc. operated e-gold and its Web site and offered a currency exchange called OmniPay. Services included checking, bill-paying and money transfers.

The indictment charged that the company’s digital currency functioned as an alternative payment system and was purportedly backed by stored physical gold, which investigators said was on deposit in Dubai and Switzerland.

Customers needed only to provide an e-mail address to open an account and that no other customer information was verified, according to court papers. The indictment accused some customers of using fictitious names such as “Mickey Mouse,” “Donald Duck” and “No Name” and could conduct international transactions without any government oversight.

In September, Douglas Jackson, a former oncologist, testified before a U.S. House subcommittee that his companies helped combat child-pornography payments by sharing information with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He complained that Secret Service officials had rebuffed his contacts since 2001.

Jackson also testified that e-gold had completed more than 67 million transactions, processed up to 70,000 daily account transfers exceeding $2 billion annually. E-gold, he said, had more than $68 million in gold on deposit at the time at London Bullion Market Association member repositories. Its Web site claims more than 4 million accounts.

The charges follow a December 2005 raid on the company’s offices and seizure of electronic records detailing millions of accounts, said James Glendinning, of the Secret Service’s Orlando office. The probe, he said, was a spinoff of a 2004 international crackdown on Internet identity thieves who also used e-gold to receive payments.

A call to the company was not returned Friday afternoon. The Jacksons and Downey could not be reached for comment.

“Douglas Jackson and his associates operated a sophisticated and widespread international money-remitting business, unsupervised and unregulated by any entity in the world, which allowed for anonymous transfers of value at a click of a mouse,” said Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. attorney for Washington.

Friday Apr 27 2007 – 4AM UTC

It appears that a U.S. Government court order has forced e-gold(R) to freeze or block all of 1mdc’s accounts. All of 1mdc account’s have been frozen at e-gold for unknown reasons.

Please note that it appears a few accounts of a small number of large exchangers and users of e-gold have also been frozen overnight. (Millions of Euros of gold have been involved in this event.)

If the freeze or court order in the USA is reversed, your e-gold grams remaining in 1mdc will “unbail” normally to your e-gold account and all procedures will be normal.

We suggest not panicking: more will be known on Monday when there will be more activity in the courts.

You CAN spend your 1mdc back and fore to other 1mdc accounts. 1mdc is operating normally within 1mdc. However, you should be aware that for now the e-gold remains under the court order.

Ultimately e-gold(R) is an entirely USA-based company, owned and operated by US citizens, so, e-gold users operate by the decisions of US courts regarding the disposition of e-gold. Even though 1mdc has no connection whstsoever to the USA, and most 1mdc users are non-USA, e-gold(R) is USA based.

This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.

Sincerely,

VERIO INC.
an NTT Communications Company

[Signed]

Danna Thompson
Legal Department

Verio Inc.
8005 S. Chester Street
Suite 200
Englewood, CO 80112
www.verio.com

Cryptome note:

This notice of termination is surprising for Verio has been consistently supportive of freedom of information against those who wish to suppress it. Since 1999 Cryptome has received a number of e-mailed notices from Verio’s legal department in response to complaints from a variety of parties, ranging from British intelligence to alleged copyright holders to persons angry that their vices have been exposed (see below). In every case Verio has heretofore accepted Cryptome’s explanation for publishing material, and in some cases removal of the material, and service has continued.

In this latest instance there was no notice received from Verio describing the violation of acceptable use to justify termination of service prior to receipt of the certified letter, thus no opportunity to understand or respond to the basis for termination.

Wal-Mart’s interest in intelligence operatives comes at a time when the retailer is defending itself against allegations by a fired security employee that it ran surveillance operations against targets including critics, dissident shareholders, employees and suppliers. Wal-Mart denied any wrongdoing.

Wal-Mart posted ads in March on its Web site and sites for security professionals, including the bulletin of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, for “global threat analysts” with backgrounds in government or military intelligence work.

The jobs were listed with the Analytical Research Center, part of Wal-Mart’s Global Security division, which is headed by former senior CIA and FBI senior officer Kenneth Senser. The analytical unit was created over the past year and a half, according to published comments by its head, Army Special Operations veteran David Harrison.

The job description includes collecting information from “professional contacts” and public data to anticipate and assess threats stemming from “world events, regional/national security climates, and suspect individuals and groups.”

“Familiarity with a broad spectrum of information resources and data-mining techniques” is listed among the skills sought, along with a foreign language, preferably Chinese or Spanish.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to comment on the Analytical Research Center for this story or to make any security executives available for interviews.

Many corporations hire law enforcement officers for their security departments.

Electronic Design is reporting that the Home Office is interested in a project being pursued by a senior lecturer in computer vision at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England:

Computer-based lip-reading technology would help video surveillance systems spot people planning a crime or terror attack by literally watching suspects’ lips for clues. Once it finds someone speaking certain key words or sentences, the system would automatically send an alert message to a central console, mobile phone, or other communications device. Police or security agents could then be dispatched to the scene to question the individual.

Mr Tobias, who had previously been appointed by President Bush to a top anti-AIDS post, did not give a reason for his resignation, saying it was only for “personal reasons” and had nothing to do with the timing of ABC’s discovery. His personal cell phone number was found in the records of the alleged prostitution service, which claims it was only a legal “sexual fantasy business.”

The former Deputy Secretary of State claims that he only got massages from the Pamela Martin and Associates, and that he has now moved on to another service “with Central Americans” to fulfill his massage needs. Tobias is married.

Ironically, Tobias was a big proponent of the White House’s abstinence-only policies.

The owner of the alleged prostitution service, Jeane Palfrey (often called the “DC Madam” by the media), who is charged with running a prostitution ring in a case that is expected to go to trial this year told ABC that she has many more famous clients and that she will drag all of them to the witness stand to testify that they never received sex for money from her employees.

“I’m sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, four to eight years, because I’m shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever,” Palfrey told ABC.

This dream house is the love child of artist-builder Jay Shafer, who lovingly hand-crafted it. The stainless-steel kitchen, gleaming next to the natural wood interior, is outfitted with customized storage and built-ins. From his bed, Shafer can gaze into the Northern California sky through a cathedral window. In his immaculate office space, a laptop sits alongside rows of architectural books and magazines — many featuring his house on the cover. And from the old-fashioned front porch, he can look out on a breathtaking setting: an apple orchard in full bloom.

One, unsurprisingly, is legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham — the man Dick Cheney, plus a lot of other rich people, trusts with his money. Grantham, chairman of Boston firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, has been a voice of caution for years. But he has upped his concerns in his latest letter to shareholders. Grantham says we are now seeing the first worldwide bubble in history covering all asset classes.

Everything is in bubble territory, he says.

Everything.

“From Indian antiquities to modern Chinese art,” he wrote in a letter to clients this week following a six-week world tour, “from land in Panama to Mayfair; from forestry, infrastructure and the junkiest bonds to mundane blue chips; it’s bubble time!”

“Everyone, everywhere is reinforcing one another,” he wrote. “Wherever you travel you will hear it confirmed that ‘they don’t make any more land,’ and that ‘with these growth rates and low interest rates, equity markets must keep rising,’ and ‘private equity will continue to drive the markets.’ “

As Grantham points out, a bubble needs two things: excellent fundamentals and easy money.

“The mechanism is surprisingly simple,” he wrote. “Perfect conditions create very strong ‘animal spirits,’ reflected statistically in a low risk premium. Widely available cheap credit offers investors the opportunity to act on their optimism.”

And it becomes self-sustaining. “The more leverage you take, the better you do; the better you do, the more leverage you take. A critical part of a bubble is the reinforcement you get for your very optimistic view from those around you.”

It’s something to think about the next time you hear someone tell you that the stock market will keep rising simply because the world economy is doing so well. That would make sense only if we were paying a constant price for each unit of world GDP, instead of higher and higher prices for one slice of that GDP — equity.

Grantham concludes that every asset class is expensive today compared with historic averages and compared with the cost of replacing it. By his calculations, the only assets likely to beat inflation by any significant margin if you hold them for the next seven years are managed timber, “high-quality” U.S. stocks, and bonds.

…

“The bursting of [this] bubble will be across all countries and all assets, with the probable exception of high-grade bonds,” Grantham warned. “Since no similar global event has occurred before, the stresses to the system are likely to be unexpected. All of this is likely to depress confidence and lower economic activity.”

Ouch.

Grantham sees two big potential catalysts that might turn this bull market into a bear: a surge in inflation, leading to higher interest rates, and a squeeze on profit margins, which are currently running way above long-term averages.

As for timing, he concedes that’s impossible to predict. But here’s the kicker: Even Grantham thinks you probably need to be bullish right now. The reason? Most bubbles, he notes, go through a short but dramatic “exponential phase” just before they burst. Like Japan in 1989 or the Internet in early 2000.

London (PRWEB) April 27, 2007 — Commercial gold storage is becoming increasingly difficult to secure in the United States, said BullionVault.com — the world-leading gold ownership service — today.

We would have stayed with Brinks if we could have found a way to do so
The company was recently told by its U.S. owned vault operators that they no longer wished to continue with a long-term gold storage agreement.

“Although we will continue to operate New York storage, as well as London and Zurich, we will switch the vaulting of all our customers’ gold bullion to a Swiss company within the next month,” said Paul Tustain, founder and director of BullionVault.com.

BullionVault previously vaulted with Brinks Inc., the $3-billion U.S. security firm headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.

“We would have stayed with Brinks if we could have found a way to do so,” said Tustain. “We have been very happy with their service.”

Forced to look elsewhere, however, “we have been delighted to negotiate and sign a stronger and longer-term contract with ViaMat International,” he said.

“Our clients have already chosen to hold 26 times as much gold in Zurich as they do in New York. So the move to a Swiss-owned operator is a perfectly natural development.”

Launched in April 2005, BullionVault.com saw its customers double their holdings of gold bullion stored in Zurich during the six months to April.

The euro hit $1.3682 in midday trading in Europe, shooting past its previous high of $1.3667 in December 2004 after the U.S. Commerce Department reported that economic growth slowed to a 1.3 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2007, its weakest performance in four years. It then settled back a bit to $1.3677.