✖ ‘Absolutely no progress being made’ at Fukushima nuke plant, undercover reporter says

Conditions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are far worse than its operator or the government has admitted, according to freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who spent more than a month working undercover at the power station. “Absolutely no progress is being made” towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers’ radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

✖ 9 Underground Economies – And Greece

The fortunes of the world’s legitimate economies may rise and fall, but the global black market is currently booming. From Somalia’s “pirate stock exchange” to the flourishing illegal organ trade in Egypt, there are some making money hand-over-fist, under the table. We took a look at nine “alternative economies” — and Greece — to find out how people make do on the margins.

✖ TEPCO says it ‘no longer owns’ Fukushima fallout

TEPCO’s lawyers used the arcane legal principle of res nullius to argue the emissions that escaped after the tsunami and earthquake triggered a meltdown were no longer its responsibility. “Radioactive materials (such as cesium) that scattered and fell from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant belong to individual landowners, not TEPCO,” the utility told Tokyo District Court. The chief operating officer of the prestigious golf course, Tsutomo Yamane, told The Australian that he and his staff were stunned: “I couldn’t believe my ears. I told my employees, ‘TEPCO is saying the radiation doesn’t belong to them’, and they said ‘I beg your pardon’.”

✖ The Leading Cause of Breast Cancer?

Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer. Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer

✖ Street Cams Can Now Tag, Track and Follow Individuals (video)

The dystopian nightmare described in George Orwell’s novel 1984 took place in London, UK. This very city is today one of the most heavily monitored places in the world, using a record number of cameras and the most advanced surveillance technology to keep track of its citizens. Reuters now reports that the CCTV system of London has now the ability to tag specific people, track them across the entire system and even run a “search” on them for previous footage. The report basically praises the software and quickly dismisses the privacy concerns it raises, stating that most citizens approve of being monitored (I’d like to see a scientific survey proving this). Of course, this summer’s London Riots were mentioned as an excuse to implement this technology, as anticipated in my article entitled The London Riots and How They Will be Used to the Elite’s Advantage.

✖ Man Jailed In Near-Shooting Over Facebook

A North Strabane Township man has been jailed on attempted homicide and other charges after police said he tried to shoot his wife because he believes she spends too much time on Facebook.

✖ The Pentagon and its Sock Puppets

The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation. The inquiry confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s staff frequently provided military analysts with talking points before their network appearances. In some cases, the report said, military analysts “requested talking points on specific topics or issues.” One military analyst described the talking points as “bullet points given for a political purpose.” Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent “was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.”

✖ Child sex: Woman arrested on sex charges involving 7-year-old girl

A woman who told deputies she had sex with a 7-year-old girl to prove her love for her married boyfriend is in the Orange County Jail, where she is being held on sexual-battery and other charges. Margaret Ann O’Neill, 26, of Kissimmee, admitted to sheriff’s investigators that she had sex with the child three times last year at a home in west Orange County, they said. O’Neill, known as Meg, told detectives that her lover, Christopher P. Smith, 32, manipulated her to perform the acts. He promised to leave his wife for her and said “she was led to believe that by giving herself to Smith’s sexual appetites proves her love for him,” a sheriff’s report states. Smith was arrested Dec. 5 and is being held without bail at the same jail. Another woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair turned him in Dec. 4 after he asked her to have sex with the child, now, 8, according to the report.

✖ Rock Hill woman struck in head with bowling ball

Deputies were called Sunday to Strikers Family Sports Center, 124 N. Anderson Road, Rock Hill, and found a 28-year-old woman on the floor next to the snack bar, bleeding from the forehead, according to a York County Sheriff’s Office report. Deputies could see her skull through the cut, and EMS treated her before taking her to Piedmont Medical Center. The woman told police she and a man had been arguing because she wouldn’t let him buy her drinks, the report states. When it was his turn to bowl, the man picked up a 12-pound ball and flung it at her head while she was sitting down. Witnesses told deputies they saw Stevenson pick up the ball and throw it at the woman before he left the bowling alley.

✖ Venezuela’s Chavez: Did U.S. give Latin American leaders cancer?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speculated on Wednesday that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease. It was a typically controversial statement by Venezuela’s socialist leader, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from his pelvis. But he stressed that he was not making any accusations, just thinking aloud. “It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now … I don’t know. I’m just reflecting,” he said in a televised speech to troops at a military base. “But this is very, very, very strange … it’s a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities.”

✖ Tessa Gay, 35, ‘had sex with her daughter’s underage friends on dozens of occasions’

A mother is facing up to 80 years in jail after being accused of having sex with two of her daughter’s male teenage friends. Tessa Gay, 35, is also alleged to have played sexually charged game of ping pong with another teen where the winner allowed to intimately touch the loser. Gray, a mother of one, is said to have admitted to the underage sex charges when interviewed by police.

✖ Ohio dad charged with drugging kids

An Ohio father has been charged with giving his children a potentially addictive pain medicine so he could submit their urine for his drug tests. Police said Lawrence E. Kirk Jr., 30, Conneaut, Ohio, had to submit to a urine test before his prescription for Oxycodone could be renewed in order to assure he was not using illegal drugs. They said he diluted the Oxycodone in water and then had his 6, 7, 9 and 10 year old children drink the solution. He would then collect their urine and present it to a doctor as his own.

✖ Police Search For “Backpage Killer” After Four Women Found Dead

Police have found the dead bodies of four women this month, and police say three of them had advertised escort services on Backpage.com, a Craigslist-type site that includes ads for escort, massage and stripper services. On December 19, the bodies of 23-year-old Renisha Landers (pictured), and her cousin, 24-year-old Demesha Hunt, were found in the trunk of Lander’s new Chrysler 300 parked in the driveway of a vacant home. Their bodies showed no outward sings of trauma and investigators are awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause of death. Then, on Christmas Day, two black females between the ages of  28 and 29 were found in the trunk of a car that had been set on fire. They were both burned beyond recognition. Police would later identify them and reveal both had advertised escort services on Backpage.com, as did either Landers or Hunt.

✖ Photographer arrested after falling asleep in Mcdonalds with child porn on laptop screen

According to a probable-cause affidavit, Harrison County Police Department Officer Nicholas Smith was walking through a McDonald’s restaurant Nov. 14 in Corydon when he observed Brockman asleep in an upright position behind a table. There was a laptop computer in front of him. When the officer walked behind Brockman, he observed multiple pictures of nude children who appeared to be between the ages of 5 and 10 on the computer screen. Brockman consented to a warantless search of his computer, which was taken into evidence. An investigation by the Indiana State Police revealed “hundreds of images of child erotica,” according to court records. There was at least one image that depicted sexual conduct by a child.

✖ Caught In Act, TSA Bomb Screener Declares Child Porn “Not Right In A Legal And Moral Sense”

After waiving his Miranda rights, Wilson–who has been suspended by the TSA–told investigators that he used his laptop to download illicit images of children, and that he “sometimes masturbates to the images of child pornography.” Wilson added that he “usually deletes the child pornography” after viewing movies and images “because he knows that it is not right in a legal and moral sense. Wilson stated that he knows that he has a problem.” A “forensic preview” of Wilson’s two computers (as well as various storage devices found in a locked safe) revealed a variety of videos and photos “depicting prepubescent females engaged in sexually explicit conduct with adults.

✖ Man Who Sexually Assaulted Teen Allegedly Posed As Police Officer

A Brooklyn neighborhood remains on edge as police continue their search for a man who allegedly pretended to be a police officer and sexually assaulted a teenage boy he met in a subway station last week. Investigators say the man, seen above in a police sketch, approached a 15-year-old boy at the 53rd Street and Fourth Avenue station in Sunset Park around 9:30 a.m. Friday, after the teen threw an empty bag of potato chips on the ground.

✖ Richard Prince Lawsuit Focuses on Limits of Appropriation

One recent afternoon in the offices of the Midtown law firm run by David Boies and his powerful litigation partners, a large black clamshell box sat on a conference table. Inside were raucous, sometimes wildly funny collages of photographs and magazine pages handmade by the artist Richard Prince, works of art that have become the ur-texts of one of the most closely watched copyright cases ever to rattle the world of fine art. In March a federal district court judge in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Prince — whose career was built on appropriating imagery created by others — broke the law by taking photographs from a book about Rastafarians and using them without permission to create the collages and a series of paintings based on them, which quickly sold for serious money even by today’s gilded art-world standards: almost $2.5 million for one of the works. (“Wow — yeah,” Mr. Prince said when a lawyer asked him under oath in the district court case if that figure was correct.)

✖ Embolism After Long Flight Killed Rapper Heavy D

A pulmonary embolism brought on by a long flight killed rapper Heavy D, according to a report from the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office released Tuesday. Heavy D (real name: Dwight Arrington Myers) collapsed and died suddenly outside his Beverly Hills home on Nov. 8 at age 44. His cause of death was a blood clot in his lung, but he also suffered from deep vein thrombosis and heart disease. Craig Harvey, chief of the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, said the blood clot was “most likely formed during an extended airplane ride,” according to the L.A. Times. The rapper had recently returned to L.A. from a trip to London. Risk factors for deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, include long distance travel with little mobility, obesity, and immobility from an acute illness or surgery.

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★ Americans Shoplifted $1.8 Billion Worth of Stuff This Christmas

Hope you have a Merry Christmas, America, because you’ve been extremely naughty at the mall this year. After surveying retailers in the U.S., the Global Retail Theft Barometer says that shoppers pinched $1.8 billion worth of merchandise during the four weeks leading up to Christmas, reports the AP. $1.8 billion! For context, $1.8 billion is a 6 percent increase from 2010 — a total of approximately 62 million Tickle Me Elmos at retail. And this is a year when there aren’t even any good toys to buy. When stores are offering big markdowns because people aren’t spending as much. But that’s exactly the point: while there will always be some built-in kleptomania to society, the sour economy drives some people to buy less and steal more. Or at least gives them a good excuse for doing so.

★ Cardinal Faces Pushback For Comparing Gay Rights Movement To The KKK

Change.org has released a petition calling for the resignation of Catholic Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, following comments the Cardinal made to FOX Chicago Sunday comparing the gay rights movement to the Klu Klux Klan’s anti-Catholicism. Equally Blessed, an umbrella group of pro-LGBT rights Catholic organizations, has reinforced the pushback by releasing a statement declaring in part that George, “has demeaned and demonized LGBT people in a manner unworthy of his office. In suggesting that the Catholic hierarchy has reason to fear LGBT people in the same way that blacks, Jews, Catholics and other minorities had reason to fear the murderous nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan, he has insulted the memory of the victims of the Klan’s violence and brutality.” The petition has already garnered well over half the 2,500 signatures the organization was aiming for.

★ Aquaponics: Baltimore city, suburban residents try hand at fish farming

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s Baltimore County home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates. Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round. Sustainability is more than a buzzword for Meir Lazar, 32, a computer systems administrator and teacher who’s pursuing aquaponics in his small suburban backyard off Greenspring Avenue. He said he’s inspired at least in part by news reports about food tainted by pesticides, bacteria and even radiation from the Japanese nuclear reactor meltdown earlier this year.

★ Man Dressed as Santa Believed to Shoot Six

Police were looking for a motive in a shooting in which they believe a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six family members in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb on Christmas day before shooting himself. No one survived the carnage in the living room of a two-story apartment in Grapevine, Texas. Police said it was the single largest mass-shooting death in the city’s history and among the worst in Texas in recent years.

★ Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012

The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system. Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline.

★ 8-Bit Yulelog

★ Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

★ Killin’ for Candy and Concords: The Price of Black Life

In recent news, an up and coming rapper was killed in a crowded Atlanta mall. According to authorities, Joe Blackmon, aka “Killa Black,” was standing in line for a pair of Air Jordan Concords when he, accidentally, knocked a Jolly Rancher out of the hand of the man in front of him. The man, described only as “an African American in a black hoodie with saggin’ pants” pumped five rounds in him before fleeing the scene. Witnesses say that the crowd just stepped over the dying Blackmon like nothing happened ,some even refusing to let paramedics through for fear of losing their places in line… Recently, people were shocked that Brick Squad affiliate, Slim Dunkin, was murdered in an Atlanta studio, allegedly, stemming from a fight over a piece of candy. This tragic event was coupled by media images of mobs of people beating each other senseless over the new Air Jordan XI Concords

★ Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story

Submitter: Hello, I’m a librarian in [NY] and a huge college football fan. Shortly after the sex abuse scandal at Penn State I decided to look on amazon and in our library catalog to see if we had anything by or about Jerry Sandusky. There are 14 copies of his unfortunately titled autobiography, Touched, floating about according to WorldCat

★ Israel Spyware Sold To Iran

The clandestine arrangement worked smoothly for years. The Israeli company shipped its Internet- monitoring equipment to a distributor in Denmark. Once there, workers stripped away the packaging and removed the labels. Then they sent it to a man named “Hossein” in Iran, an amiable technology distributor known to them only by his first name and impeccable English, say his partners in Israel and Denmark. Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say their departments didn’t know that the systems for peering into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel’s ban on trade with its enemy failed, even though a paper trail on the deals was available in Denmark.

★ Report Assails Japan Response to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power. Three of the plant’s six reactors overheated and their fuel melted down, and hydrogen explosions blew the tops off three reactor buildings, leading to a major leak of radiation at levels not seen since Chernobyl in 1986.

★ An Independent America: Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves

A recent analysis conducted by USA Today showed that American voters are fed up with both mainstream political parties and are leaving them in droves. The newspaper claims that “More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections.” Over the last decade this trend has only seemed to accelerate says USA Today. While many people feel there is little difference in the parties, their options remain slim. Yet, voters switching to Independent have climbed dramatically. According to the statistics gathered from eight swing states, “Democrats’ registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans’ by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.”

★ ATF and D.C. Police Impersonate Rap Label; Arrest 70 in Year Long Guns and Drug Sting

Over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons were confiscated after a year long investigation by the Washington D.C. Police and the Bureau the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which operated as fictional rap label. According to Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. police and ATF agents acted as undercover officers and “music industry insiders” during the year-long sting. The police created the “Manic Enterprisess” studio in Northeast Washington, for fictional rap artist Richie Valdez in November of 2010. Agents then told the underground world and black market that they were seeking to purchase weapons and drugs. Over the course of the year, agents confiscated 161 firearms (including a rocket launcher), 29 assault weapons, 80 pounds of methamphetamine, 21 pounds of cocaine, 1.25 gallons of PCP, 24 pounds of marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy. “If these drugs and guns had made it to our streets, the impact would have been devastating to community,”

★ LAPD botched use of downtown crime cameras

Most of the surveillance cameras installed in downtown Los Angeles as part of an effort to help police crack down on crime have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times. The cameras were installed over the last few years in a highly publicized partnership between local business groups, which purchased them, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which was to monitor and maintain them. But officials said the majority of the cameras don’t work. Some broke down and were never fixed. In the case of six cameras purchased to watch over Little Tokyo, LAPD officials admit that they were never plugged in to the police station’s monitoring bank.

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☛ 2011′s Most Insane Facebook Stories (30 pics)

Facebook has been a blessing and nuisance to many, but for certain people it has caused nothing but trouble. See the wildest, stupidest and craziest stories of 2011 from the huge social website.

☛ Jimmy Lee Massey forced woman to watch him torture and dismember Carina Saunders

A teenager was tortured and cut up in front of another woman so she would be frightened into cooperating with a human trafficking ring, police said. Jimmy Lee Massey, 33, was arrested over the first-degree murder of Carina Saunders, 19, whose dismembered body was found stuffed in a duffel bag. The young woman had been beheaded and dumped on October 13 behind a grocery store. A 20-year-old woman came forward as a witness to say she had been kidnapped by Massey and forced to watch Miss Saunders painful death in Bethany, Oklahoma. Her identity has not been released because of concerns for her safety.

☛ Busy Signal Service Targets Cyberheist Victims

A new service on the cyber criminal underground can be hired to tie up the phone lines of any targeted mobile or land line around the world. The service is marketed as a diversionary tactic to assist e-thieves in robbing commercial customers of banks that routinely call customers to verify large financial transfers. For just $5 an hour, or $40 per day, you can keep anyoneě°Ë?€™s phone so tied up with incoming junk calls that the number is unable to receive legitimate calls.

☛ The Homeland Security Snow-Cone Machine

There have been plenty of examples already showing that large amounts of your tax money supposedly earmarked for the “War on Terror” end up getting used for purposes that are, shall we say, less than mission-critical. Back in 2006, we learned that $25 million in homeland-security money had been handed out in just one grant program with no controls at all, which resulted in $77,000 going to local fire departments to fund “puppet and clown shows,” and another $22,000 for an “educational robot.” An Indiana county got in trouble for using its $300,000 Electronic Emergency Message Boards, intended to notify the public about things like evacuation routes, to advertise the volunteer fire department’s charity fish fry. This is just the local stuff, not counting the umpteen billions spent on naked scanners that don’t do any good. Also, the war in Iraq. Still, it is something special when a homeland-security grant is used to buy a snow-cone machine.

☛ How to Open a Padlock with a Coke Can

If you’re like millions of Americans, you put a lot of trust in simple padlocks to secure your valuables. Today we’re going to continue to break down the veil of security by showing you how easy it is to shim open a padlock with a coke can. Again, as with all our lock picking and security articles, we’re not advocating anything illegal and this information is for educational purposes and Locksport only.

☛ Next Step: Identifying Customers of Surveillance Technology Companies and Turning Up the Heat

In the past monthě°˝€”thanks to reporting from the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, as well as WikiLeaks and its media partnersě°˝€”a little sunlight has finally exposed a large but shadowy industry: Western technology companies selling mass spying software to governments. The amazing and dangerous capabilities of these tools are described in hundreds of marketing documents that were recently leaked to the media organizations.

☛ Cast Your Ballot for the Worst Prison Innovation of 2011: With Solutions Like These, Who Needs Problems?

So which is the worst prison idea of 2011 ě°˝€“ no lunch, gouging families, or robo-guards?

☛ Tomas Bautista Gets a Year in Jail for Fingering a Chihuahua

It was February 17 when Bautista’s roommate arrived at their Oakland Park home and found Bautista drunk, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. Instead, Bautista told another roommate he was going outside — where the small Chihuahua mix named Mimi followed him. A little while later, one of the roommates heard the dog yelp, so he grabbed a flashlight and ran outside. There, the roommate found the dog running away from Bautista, and Bautista passed out with his pants down. The dog was bleeding, so the roommate called the cops and took Mimi to an animal hospital. Bautista told BSO detectives that “he used his finger to penetrate the dog,” and he was taken to jail for “sexually assaulting” Mimi.

☛ Moms Turn to Phone Sex Business for Income

Aubrey, 22, and the mother of a 3-year-old son, says working as a phone sex operator is difficult, and often disturbing. “There was a lot of having to get used to just, you know, the weirdoes out there,” she said. “There is basically anything you could think of. There’s married men with children. There’s divorced men. Sometimes, every once in a while, there’s a couple that’ll call,” she said. “More recently, there’s actually been a few women calling.” Aubrey said she at times feels disgusted speaking intimately with strangers while her son sleeps down the hall. “This is nothing I’d ever thought I’d be doing, ever,” she said. Working as a phone actress is as far as the 22-year-old says she is willing to go in adult entertainment. “I’d never want to take off my clothes for anyone, or actually, you know, fulfill these fantasies for anyone,” she said.

☛ Troubled Pakistanis turn to exorcism for help

A girl in a long black shirt screams incoherently, banging her head against a wall at a Sufi shrine in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Sania Haneef’s family says she is possessed by a demon. Doctors could not help, so they brought the college student, kicking and screaming, to be exorcised by the spirit of a saint.

☛ A Movie Insider’s Look At This Huge Weapons Cache In The Heart Of New York City

The weapons used in movies and television shows have to come from somewhere, and if the scene is shot outside Hollywood, it’s likely they came from The Specialists Ltd. in NYC. Owned by actor Rick Washburn, the studio is tucked into the lofts of SoHo where Washburn says he runs it like a speakeasy, “We don’t want people to know where we are.” The Specialists is home to thousands of weapons that come in fully functional and are re-fitted by Washburn’s team to fire only blanks. Directors send in their prop guys to select weapons appropriate to the production, and if they can’t find something they like, Washburn’s team will make it. They also offer training for actors.

☛ Ninja Daggers Hidden in Hollowed Book Found at Reagan National

Two throwing daggers were discovered in a passenger’s carry-on bag at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Monday, according to the TSA. The weapons, each measuring just over a half-foot long, were found inside a hollowed-out book when the passenger went through a TSA checkpoint. The passenger voluntarily surrendered the knives and the hollow book in which they were kept. The TSA has the authority to charge a civil penalty to passengers who bring dangerous and deadly weapons into the airport checkpoint.

☛ Man Post Pics of His Daughter Bound with Tape on Facebook

A Chicago dad found himself in big trouble with the public an well as the law, when he allegedly posted pics of his daughter on facebook bound with tape. He says his actions were prompted by her hitting him and the binding was her punishment. The picture had the following caption: “This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back; )”

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The Star Wars Holiday Special is a 1978 American television special set in the Star Wars galaxy. It was one of the first official Star Wars spin-offs, and was directed by Steve Binder. The show was broadcast in its entirety only once, in the United States and Canada, November 17, 1978, on the U.S. television network CBS from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (EST), and on the Canadian television network CTV from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

In the storyline that ties the special together, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s home world, to celebrate Life Day. Along the way they are pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire, who are searching for members of the Rebel Alliance on the planet. The special introduces three members of Chewbacca’s family: his father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy (Later retconned to Attichitcuk, Mallatobuck, and Lumpawarrump, respectively).

During the special, scenes also take place in outer space and in spacecraft including the Millennium Falcon and an Imperial Star Destroyer. The variety-show segments and cartoon introduce a few other locales, such as a cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine and a gooey, reddish ocean planet known as Panna.

The program also features many other Star Wars characters, including Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa (who sings the film’s “theme song”, set to the music of John Williams‘ Star Wars theme, near the end). The program includes stock footage from Star Wars,and also features a cartoon produced by Toronto-based Nelvana that officially introduces the bounty hunter Boba Fett.

The special is notorious for its negative reception.Anthony Daniels, in a documentary promoting the worldwide tour of Star Wars: In Concert, notes with a laugh that the Star Wars universe includes “The horrible Holiday Special that nobody talks about”. George Lucas did not have significant involvement with the film’s production, and was unhappy with the results. David Acomba, a classmate of Lucas’ at USC film school, had been selected to direct the special, but he chose to leave the project, a decision supported by Lucas.

The Star Wars Holiday Special has never been re-telecast or officially released on home video. It has therefore become something of a cultural legend, due to the “underground” quality of its existence. It has been viewed and distributed in off-air recordings made from its original telecast by fans, which were later adapted to content-sharing websites via the Internet.

George Lucas himself has rarely commented on the special, or even acknowledged its existence. He is said to have nothing but the utmost contempt for it. For instance, Tom Burman, one of the costume designers for the holiday special, has said that Lucas once told him that he was very disappointed with the final product.

At one Australian fan convention, he reportedly said “If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.” In an online chat with fans, he reportedly said: “The Holiday Special does not represent my vision for Star Wars.” In an interview with Maxim in May 2002, Maxim asked the question, “Any plans for a Special Edition of the Holiday Special?” In response, Lucas said, “Right. That’s one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it.”

Later, in a May 2005 interview with StaticMultimedia.com, Lucas was asked if the film had soured him on working in television. He replied: “The special from 1978 really didn’t have much to do with us, you know. I can’t remember what network it was on, but it was a thing that they did. We kind of let them do it. It was done by… I can’t even remember who the group was, but they were variety TV guys. We let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences.”

The official Star Wars site states that the holiday special “delivered mixed results,” and states that the highlight of the special was the Boba Fett animated segment.[6] The official site also says, when referring to the fan interest in seeing the Wookiees on screen, “the 1978 Holiday Special didn’t cut it.”[7] When asked at a fan convention, “So, you don’t like it (the holiday special) either?”, Lucasfilm head of content and fan relations, Steve Sansweet replied “No. I mean, I like the ten minute introduction of Boba Fett, but that’s about it.” The official site also refers to the Boba Fett animated segment as “a cult classic”.

On February 8, 2006, Harrison Ford made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and during the interview, Conan O’Brien brought up the special, and began asking various questions regarding it, such as inquiring whether he remembered making it. Ford said nothing, but looked away and shook his head nervously, then saying he had no memory of it whatsoever and it, therefore, “doesn’t exist.” The audience responded with laughter and applause. O’Brien then asked Ford what he would think if he played a clip of the special on the show, Ford jokingly grabbed him, then said that “[he'd] never seen it, maybe it’ll be nice.” Humorously acting anxious and distracted, Ford suffered through the clip (which featured a scene showing Ford as Han Solo telling Chewbacca and his wife that they are “like family” to him), and then muttered a gruff, sarcastic “thank you” to O’Brien, before continuing with the interview to promote his then newest film, Firewall.

On the 2010 television program Times Talk, New York Times columnist David Carr asked Carrie Fisher about the Holiday Special; she said that she made George Lucas give her a copy of the Special in exchange for recording DVD commentary for the Star Wars films. She added that she shows it at parties, “mainly at the end of the night when she wants people to leave.”

☆ Fake pill improved sex drive in women

“Faking it” has long been associated with bad sex for some women, but a new study provides a pleasant twist on that phrase. According to a paper released today in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the placebo effect may increase sex drive for women suffering from sexual dysfunction.

☆ Government organised 12 Chinese Hacker Groups behind all Attacks

About 12 different Chinese groups largely directed by the government there, do the bulk of the China based cyber attacks stealing critical data from U.S. companies and government agencies, according to U.S. cyber security analysts and experts. US online security companies are suggesting that it should have the right to force them to stop “by any means possible”. Sketched out by analysts who have worked with U.S. companies and the government on computer intrusions, the details illuminate recent claims by American intelligence officials about the escalating cyber threat emanating from China. And the widening expanse of targets, coupled with the expensive and sensitive technologies they are losing, is putting increased pressure on the U.S. to take a much harder stand against the communist giant.

☆ Gynecologist faces charge for secret photos

A German prosecutor said on Monday that 700 women had agreed to press charges against a gynaecologist who is suspected of secretly taking thousands of pictures of patients during check-ups in his practice. As many as 3,000 female patients may have fallen victim to the doctor’s hidden camera during examinations at his office in the town of Schifferstadt in western Germany, local state prosecutor Lothar Liebing said. “He stands accused of secretly taking photos of female patients’ private body parts,” Liebing said. “We now need to make clear to what extent he has done this and, of course, why he did this.” The gynaecologist could face up to a year in prison if convicted for violating intimacy laws, according to Liebing, but the investigations could be protracted due to the number of photographs — more than 35,000 — found in the doctor’s office.

☆ Pat Vaillacourt to Tattoo 100,000 URLs

This unusual project wasn’t Pat’s first idea of making the world a better place. He first started a website asking people to donate $10 for the Haiti Relief Fund, but that didn’t work out very well. Still he kept thinking of ways to raise money, and when he woke up one day he got this unusual idea that would allow him to reach his goal and set a new world record at the same time. He plans to have the first layer of 50,000 web addresses tattooed in black ink, and the other half tattooed in fluorescent ink that should make him very noticeable in nightclubs. He’s currently nearing the 15,000 tattooed URLs mark, and claims over 16,000 companies have already reserved a spot on his body. His friend, a tattoo artist, takes between 1 hour – hour and a half to execute 100 URLs, so Vaillancourt says the project will be completed in 10,000 – 12,000 work hours. When it’s done, Pat will be covered in URLs from his neck to his ankles.

☆ N.J. man dies from penis enhancing injection, authorities say; woman charged with manslaughter

Authorities have filed homicide charges against a woman after she allegedly administered a silicone injection into the penis of a 22-year-old man, who suffered a fatal blood clot. The victim, who died in May, had been seeking a penis enhancement, authorities said today. Kasia Rivera, 34, of East Orange, was arrested today on manslaughter charges and unauthorized practice of medicine in the death of Justin Street, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said.

☆ Exorcism Conference: February 5-8th

If you’re a priest looking for something to do the weekend of February 5th, look no further! Tulsa, Oklahoma is again hosting the second annual ‘Conference on the Rite of Exorcisms in the Latin Church’. Unfortunately the conference is not open to the general public, but only those priests who are currently, “…engaged in the church’s pastoral care of those afflicted by extraordinary demonic activity”. Those unlucky priests currently unengaged in “regular demonic activity” will have to wait to shell out their $175 fee once they’ve levelled-up. The official registration pamphlet states the conference is meant for: “understanding the development of the rite of exorcism in the Latin church with an in-depth analysis of the Latin text.” Sounds about as interesting as paint drying.

☆ Custom-Sized Condoms Are Better For Sex But Which Size Are You?

95 sizes. Ninety-five different combinations of length and girth, people. Ordering these new fitted condoms, now legally available in Europe, using their order printable scale chart is fun. Using a condom that isn’t suited for your penis’ size increases the possibilities of breakage and slippage, which in turn increases the possibility of sexually transmitted infections or unwanted pregnancies. Thankfully, someone invented custom size condoms. It took more than two years, but now they are legally available… sadly only in Europe.

☆ Bloodless erections for big birds, say researchers

The large birds were previously thought to have blood-based erection mechanisms similar to humans. But scientists from Yale University, US, have now confirmed that the birds actually enlarge their penises with lymph fluid. All other birds with a penis achieve erections in this way, leading scientists to believe the mechanism evolved in their ancient ancestors. The findings are reported in the Journal of Zoology. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote The lymphatic system is a low pressure system, so this means that erection cannot be maintained” Dr Patricia Brennan Yale University The majority of birds reproduce with a ‘cloacal kiss’ – touching together their cloaca for long enough for sperm to transfer from the males to the females. The cloaca is a single opening through which urine and faeces are excreted but certain species, including ducks, geese, swans and flamingos also possess a penis.

☆ Red alert: Fukushima nuclear reactor 4 possibly collapsing, say sources, mass evacuations may be necessary

According to our source, the entire reactor 4 structure has been deemed “highly unstable,” and the south wall of the reactor appears to be headed into an imminent structural failure. This situation, of course, is extremely dangerous and could have devastating consequences for Northern Japan as well as North America, which is why mass evacuations in Japan would be a likely outcome in the hours following such a collapse.

☆ International Space Station Astronauts’ Dirty Laundry problem

NASA wanted space washing machine for ISS …….. NASA have moved at last to tackle the problem of dirty astronauts by commissioning a microwave with air-jets to clean underwear in space. There are no washing machines on the International Space Station so grime-encrusted nauts will wear underwear for 3-4 days and other items of clothing for months, before disposing of the dirty laundry by hurling it into the atmosphere to burn up in old Progress cargo capsules, attempting to wash it in a plastic bag or even – yuck – using it to grow plants in. …… NASA have selected small disinfectant business UMPQUA to make a prototype of a low-water, low-power washing machine that could enable the laundry to be done 250 miles above the earth’s surface – or much further afield, on deep space craft or in bases on the Moon or Mars.

☆ FBI: Carrier IQ files used for “law enforcement purposes”

A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents – but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed, might reasonably interfere with an ongoing investigation. Carrier IQ came under fire after a security researcher demonstrated that the previously little-known company had software installed on a variety of phones on a variety of networks that could track user locations, keystrokes, encrypted Internet traffic and more, some of which was or could be sent back to either the cell phone owner’s service provider or Carrier IQ’s own servers.

☆ Mexico drug gangs up ante with high-tech tunnels

When architect Felipe de Jesus Corona built Mexico’s most powerful drug lord a 200-foot-long tunnel under the U.S.-Mexican border with a hydraulic lift entrance opened by a fake water tap, the kingpin was impressed. The architect “made me one f—ing cool tunnel” Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman said, according to court testimony that helped sentence Corona to 18 years in prison in 2006. Built below a pool table in his lawyer’s home, the tunnel was among the first of an increasingly sophisticated drug transport system used by Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel. U.S. customs agents seized more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine which had allegedly been smuggled along the underground route. In the past five years, a crackdown on drug smugglers in Mexico and tighter U.S. border security above ground has led to a dramatic increase in the use, and the sophistication, of tunnels under the border.

☆ Amy Winehouse Death Hoax?

Ever since the release of Amy Winehouses’s first album in 2003, a phony persona of a drunk and drugged out Blues artist was carefully cultivated. One of her biggest hits was actually entitled “Rehab”. This clever facade garnered far more media publicity for Amy Winehouse than her average talent ever did. But notice how healthy and full her face always seems to appear. She is a healthy woman whose facial features are clearly not typical of drunks and drug addicts. . The story of the cause of her sudden death in July of 2011 keeps changing.

☆ The pirates of YouTube

Malamud’s 146-page report from FedFlix to the Archivist of the United States documents claims that companies such as NBC Universal, al-Jazeera, and Discovery Communications have used ContentID to claim title to FedFlix videos on YouTube. Some music royalty collecting societies have claimed infringements in “silent movies”. These companies’ claims – there are hundreds of them – have the potential to generate black marks on FedFlix’s YouTube account, and these black marks could lead to automated punishment from YouTube. Accounts that generate claims can be suspended or deleted, or lose the right to mark videos as being available as Creative Commons or public domain files.

☆ Life Possible On ‘Large Regions’ of Mars

Australian scientists who modeled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the Red Planet was habitable said that “large regions” could sustain life. Charley Lineweaver’s team, from the Australian National University, compared models of temperature and pressure conditions on Earth with those on Mars to estimate how much of the distant planet was livable for Earth-like organisms. While just one percent of Earth’s volume — from core to upper atmosphere — was occupied by life, Lineweaver said their world-first modeling showed three percent of Mars was habitable, though most of it was underground.

☆ Obama calls on Iran to give back downed US drone

The Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces but is not hopeful that Iran will comply. President Barack Obama said the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. “We have asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday. He would not comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it is difficult to know “just frankly how much they’re going to be able to get from having obtained those parts.”

☆ Iran to Respond to “Battlefield 3″ with “Attack on Tel Aviv” Computer Game

Iranian computer game programmers will soon release “Attack on Tel Aviv” in a retaliatory move against “Battlefield 3″ videogame which depicts a US assault on Tehran. Speaking to FNA on Saturday, Executive-Manager of Iran’s National Foundation of Computer Games Behrooz Minaei told FNA that the foundation will fund the project, and announced that many Iranian computer game programmers have voiced preparedness to contribute a role in the project. Minaei said that Battlefield 3 has many technical and video faults, adding that the location of the game in Tehran is “unacceptable”. He said that Iran has sent letters to the US videogame company, Electronic Arts (EA), and voiced its protest at the latest version of Battlefield, but the opposite side has not yet responded to the letter.

☆ 100-year-old bartender in Dunlap is still ready to mix you a drink

For this shift at least, Ray Nauroth didn’t have to sling drinks. Turn 100 and you get a break from mixing your signature grasshoppers, pink squirrels and golden Cadillacs. To be sure, Nauroth’s timecard still was tucked in the top slot in the employee rack hanging on the wall behind the bar at the Gold Slipper supper club. For more than 45 years, Nauroth, who turned 100 Friday, has been a fixture here and still works each Wednesday, Friday and Saturday night. He could be found behind the counter of other local cafes and pool halls prior to that. He’s likely the world’s oldest working bartender.

☆ Google chairman says online piracy bill would ‘criminalize’ the Internet

An online piracy bill in the House would “criminalize linking and the fundamental structure of the Internet itself,” according to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. Schmidt said the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would punish Web firms, including search engines, that link to foreign websites dedicated to online piracy. He said implementing the bill as written would effectively break the Internet. “By criminalizing links, what these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet,” Schmidt said, calling it a form of censorship. The search giant has been at the forefront of a tech industry backlash against the legislation from House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). “If Congress writes a bad law, we all suffer,” Schmidt said.

☆ Verizon says ‘civil emergency’ alert in N.J. was only a test; company apologizes for ‘inconvenience’

A mass text message warning New Jersey cell phone users of a “civil emergency” was sent out by Verizon Wireless earlier today as part of a “test emergency notification,” the telecommunications company said. In a response statement issued about two hours after the mass text was sent out, alarming some Garden State residents, Verizon Wireless apologized to its customers. “This test message was not clearly identified as a test,” company spokesman David Samberg said in an e-mailed statement to The Star-Ledger. “We apologize for any inconvenience or concern this message may have caused.” The emergency alert was sent out to New Jersey phone users in Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex counties earlier this afternoon, citing a “civil emergency in this area until 1:24 p.m.” and telling residents to “take shelter now.”

☆ #OccupyWallStreet Officially Classified As Terrorist Group Along With Al-Qaeda

We now have our first confirmation that Occupy Wall Street is being labeled as a Domestic Terrorist Threat and protestors now being labeled as possible domestic terrorists. Don’t hesitate to think for a single second that agencies across the entire US agencies haven’t already done the same exact thing. Perhaps more alarming is the photo of the original police document that has secretly handed “trusted” anti-terrorism partners has been removed from twitter. Here is a copy.

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✖ SPELL OF THE ALBINO

In Tanzania, body parts of albinos are a cash crop of sorts. A complete set of body parts – including limbs, genitals, ears, tongue and nose – can sell for $75,000. The surge in the use of albino body parts as a good luck charm is a result of the kind of marketing exercise by witch doctors who propagate the myth that spiritual potions made out of albino body parts bring good fortune. This has driven the demand among wealthy buyers and endangered the lives of Tanzanian albinos.

✖ Alisha Halfmoon, Tulsa Woman, Accused Of Trying To Cook Meth — In Walmart

“While speaking with some of the firefighters on the scene she made statements that that’s what she was doing; that she was attempting to obtain these chemicals and was in the process of trying to manufacture methamphetamine,” police officer David Shelby told the station. “However, she said that she was not very good at it.” After Halfmoon had spent more than six hours inside Walmart, loss prevention officers alerted police about the suspect’s suspicious behavior in the back of the store, according to News 9. When an officer confronted Halfmoon at around 6 p.m., the suspect had allegedly just finished mixing a bottle of sulfuric acid with starter fluid, Shelby told Fox 23. Walmart is known for its low, low prices, but Shelby said she couldn’t afford to buy the drug ingredients. At the time of her arrest, Halfmoon had managed to round up meth ingredients including lithium and chemical drain cleaner, Tulsa World reports.

✖ For the hard-up evil genius looking to move lairs: $18m Cold War missile silo with underground bunker for sale at just $1.76m

If it’s a quiet life you are after or you are worried about the end of the world, this underground bunker could be answer to your dreams. It’s nuclear and biochemically bomb proof and has enough room for an army. In fact, this Cold War missile silo was once owned by the U.S. military. Today the 185-acre site which cost $18 million to build back in the Fifties is for sale at $1.72 million

✖ Eugene Foster Taught Girlfriend’s Teen Daughter a Lesson About Sexting — By Sending Naked Photos of Her to Her Friends

Authorities say Foster, 31, found the photo’s on the girl’s phone Wednesday night. To teach her a lesson, he sent the image to 37 of the contacts stored in the girl’s phone. The girl’s mother — Foster’s girlfriend — isn’t sure exactly who receieved the photos of her naked daughter, so she asked officials at the Florence Unified School District to send a warning to parents that kiddie porn may have been sent to their children. “To spread this photo further would not only add to the devastating embarrassment of one of our students, making a bad situation worse, it would make the sender subject to severe legal consequences,” Dawn Hawman, the district’s director of public relations, told parents. “The welfare of our students is always our top priority, and we appreciate your assistance in minimizing the damage done by one adult’s poor choices.”

✖ 17 Secret Codes & Symbols Used By Chinese Thieves & Burglars

Recently, Chengdu police made public 17 types of “casing markers/symbols”. “×” represents “plan operation”, ◇ represents “no one lives here”, a wavy line represents “beware of fierce dog”, while a rectangle with slashes represents “already thieved”. Police remind city residents to be on the lookout for secret symbols/signals made by thieves and to immediately report them to the police as well as remove them upon discovery.

✖ Telemarketers, Collectors Could Target Cells Under “Mobile Information Call Act”

The innocent-sounding “Mobile Information Call Act” would allow all sorts of nuisance calls to cell phones, eating into customers’ costly minutes, Sen. Chuck Schumer warned Sunday. “The floodgates would be open to telemarketers, who could call you on your cell phone during breakfast, lunch, dinner, no matter if you’re at home, at school, at the office,” said Schumer, who vowed to fight the legislation proposed by House Republicans.

✖ Police to test laser that ‘blinds rioters’

The laser, resembling a rifle and known as an SMU 100, can dazzle and incapacitate targets up to 500m away with a wall of light up to three metres squared. It costs £25,000 and has an infrared scope to spot looters in poor visibility. Looking at the intense beam causes a short-lived effect similar to staring at the sun, forcing the target to turn away.

✖ Should Pepper Spray Be TIME’s Person of the Year?

What started out as a joke has become an increasingly real proposition: Even though it’s not a “person,” we must now begin to debate whether Pepper Spray should grace TIME’s most discussed cover. No person, place or thing has come to define the absurdity of 2011 more than the “food product, essentially,” this suddenly ubiquitous lachrymatory agent/chemical weapon. Pepper spray, essentially, gave birth to the national media’s recognition of the Occupy Wall Street movement when NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna cowardly pepper-sprayed some unwitting young women. Without his depraved indifference to the freedom to assemble and the freedom of speech, the national media, and by extension the nation, might never have begun to discuss income inequality in earnest.

✖ Long and tough road ahead for work to decommission Fukushima nuclear reactors

After the expert committee of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) compiled a report on procedures to decommission the No. 1 to 4 reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on Dec. 7, the actual work is expected to move into high gear after the turn of the year. As in the case of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the workers would try to remove melted nuclear fuel after shielding radiation with water, a technique called a “water tomb.” But the work would have to be done in a “territory where humans have not stepped into before,” said a senior official of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the troubled Fukushima nuclear power station. The work is so difficult that it is expected to take more than 30 years to finish decommissioning the reactors.

✖ Vatican guide: The pope’s pornographic bathroom

Embarrassingly, I had to ask the monsignor to stand aside, so I could get a proper view of the most notorious image, of the randy goat-god Pan leaping from the bushes with a monstrous erection. I was shocked to see that the image had been vandalized. Someone had etched out Pan’s manhood and filled in the gap with white paint. This, of course, made the object even larger and more noticeable—another parable about the futility of censorship.

✖ U.S. Unprepared for Disaster Arriving from Japan Nuke Plant

The problem now is that scientists are at a loss as to how to contain this pending disaster. What if large quantities of radioactive materials, which leaked into the sea when Fukushima went critical, slowly poison seas around the world, leading to contaminated seafood and widespread die-offs of ocean life? What will this do to living things on the West Coast? No one knows just how much radioactive material was dumped into the sea around Fukushima, as the Japanese government has been characteristically tight lipped. In late March, Japan’s government said scientists took samples of seawater from the Pacific Ocean around Fukushima. The government admitted that just north of the reactor, seawater was found to contain 1,150 times the safe limit of radioactive iodine. South of the site, that amount was 1,850 times.

✖ Bank fee makes teen overdrawn, resulting in more fees

At first things went smoothly, but as the money in his account dwindled, he began to ignore it. By fall, Ganziano had just $4.85 left in the account — too little to withdraw from an ATM — so he let it sit. He had all but forgotten about the account until he received a letter from TCF on Oct. 12 saying six days earlier, it had charged him a $9.95 “monthly maintenance fee” because his account had too little money in it. The $9.95 charge made his account overdrawn by $5.10, which triggered another fee. At TCF, any account overdrawn by more than $5 is charged a $28-a-day overdraft fee. The net result: Ganziano was $33.10 in the hole. By then, his nascent savings account was in a downward spiral. At $28 a day, the charges were adding up quickly. When he and his mother went to the nearest branch that weekend to close the account, they were told they would first have to pay the accumulated fees, which totaled $229.10.

✖ THAILAND: Muslims behead a 9-year-old boy (WARNING: Graphic Images)

More than than 4000 people from police and teachers to monks and children have been killed in the past 7 years by Muslims in southern Thailand, but hardly a word in the mainstream media. In Southern Thailand Muslim gunmen continue killing and threatening innocent citizens. The Muslim insurgents have threatened to kill 20 teachers and have distributed fliers that said, “WANTED: 20 Deaths of Buddhist teachers.” Muslim terrorists object to the education system which teaches Buddhist culture that is not acceptable in Islam. The attacks are intended to force Buddhists to leave the region because Muslims want to create an independent Muslim nation in the three southern provinces.

✖ 10 roughies: disturbing, extreme vintage porn of the 70’s and 80’s (a personal selection)

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➪ The Most Bizarre Use for Michael Jackson’s Old Hair Ever

Today the gambling website OnlineGamblingPal.com dropped $10,871 for a sample of entombed pop star Michael Jackson’s old hair. Why so much? Because that’s the going market rate for the amount of Michael Jackson hair you see in the photo. Also, they saw the hairball’s potential—as a roulette ball.

➪ Hey Kids! See the 10 Most Tasteless X-Rated Christmas Ornaments! (NSFW)

Christmas season is a time of warmth and love, especially if it concerns two leathermen engaging in sweaty doggie-style buttsex. At least that’s the thinking among people who enjoy X-rated Christmas-tree ornaments, and we can only assume those people don’t have a lot of little nephews and nieces over for egg nog. Here are ten of the more, ummm, striking ornament possibilities out there. The first one is safe for work; after that you’re on your own.

➪ Google+ rolling out facial recognition feature

Google is rolling out a feature that lets members of its online social network automatically find themselves in photos posted by friends. The “Find My Face” feature being added to Google+ over the next several days is opt-in only, meaning people have to make a point to turn it on. By leaving it to Google+ members to activate the feature, the Internet giant was sidestepping privacy concerns raised when social networking rival Facebook added facial recognition in an opt-out style this year.

➪ Learning high-performance tasks with no conscious effort may soon be possible (w/ video)

In the future, a person may be able to watch a computer screen and have his or her brain patterns modified to improve physical or mental performance. Researchers say an innovative learning method that uses decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging could modify brain activities to help people recuperate from an accident or disease, learn a new language or even fly a plane.

➪ Bedbugs Get Away with Incest

As if bedbugs weren’t gross enough already, entomologists have now found that they get ahead by mating with their own mothers, brothers, sisters and fathers. By inbreeding, a single pregnant female can start the infestation of an entire building on her own. Parent-sibling matings and sibling-sibling matings are rare in the animal kingdom. So this study reveals an exception to the anti-inbreeding rule. But I’m drawn to the report for a pettier reason. As far as I’m concerned, DNA evidence has trumped the words of my landlord and a New York City housing inspector.

➪ Obama GAVE Iran the Drone!

The immediate and obvious questions were these: 1) Why didn’t we try to recover the drone? 2) In lieu of a rescue effort why didn’t we bomb it into oblivion? Apparently there was third option and Onama struk that down also. THE ANSWERS WILL SHOCK YOU – or maybe not. Fox News National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that apparently the Pentagon pleaded with Barrack Hussein Obama to give the order to do just that. The Pentagon initially wanted to send a special forces team to recover the drone. Obama shot down that suggestion. Then the Pentagon offered up plan B , blow it to kingdom come. Obama refused that too and now Iran and China have a brand spanking new fully functional top secret US RQ 170 Sentinel Drone. The Drone was not recovered or destroyed specifically per Obama’s orders

➪ World Domination From Denver Airport?

Almost no one likes being in airports these days, but some people believe that one airport in particular — the Denver International Airport — is not only a hassle but also tied to conspiracies about the collapse of Western civilization. Some say there’s a top-secret underground bunker for the world’s elite to survive a nuclear war (or the impending Mayan 2012 apocalypse). Others say the airport must have a connection to Nazis since the runways form a perfect swastika (actually they don’t). Even ex-Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura got into the act, interviewing a man claiming that massive tunnels under the airport were built not for luggage handling or mass transit (that’s what they want you to think!), but instead for much more sinister purposes.

➪ 7 Creepiest Abandoned Zoos on Earth

The wind swings the old cage door open as if to free a reluctant occupant. But there’s nothing there… Or are those paw prints in the sand? Besides, isn’t that the stale breath of some meat-eating beast hanging in the air? And what’s that rustling sound in the bushes? As we explore the following places, you’ll see that abandoned zoos can be more than a little creepy.

➪ Lightning Sprites, Elves Caught on Camera

Flying above the U.S. Midwest, scientists using high-speed video cameras have caught the first 3-D images of sprites, elves, blue jets, and crawlers—in the form of lightning, that is. First seen by scientists in 1989, sprites and their menagerie of exotically named kin are bursts of electrical energy that form about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth, sometimes leaping all the way from the tops of thunderheads to outer space.

➪ Students ordered to school on a Saturday as Russia resorts to ‘devious tricks’ to limit numbers at anti-Putin rally

Russian authorities today resorted to ‘devious tricks’ to limit the numbers attending an anti-Vladimir Putin rally which is expected to be the largest ever against the prime minister. Pupils between 14 and 17 have been ordered to attend school tomorrow for hastily arranged tests during the hours of the protest. They were warned they risk flunking their courses if they fail to sit at their desks for unprecedented Saturday exams.

➪ This 28-Year-Old’s Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards

There’s a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa. Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it’s an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely. Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it’s on track to move more than $350 million in the next year. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1 or $1,000.

➪ Hundreds of NASA’s moon rocks reported missing

The space agency has lost or misplaced more than 500 pieces of the lunar rocks and other space samples, NASA’s inspector general reported Thursday, making the case for better inventory controls. Astronauts on the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil to Earth. The space agency now loans samples, along with meteorite and comet dust, to about 377 researchers worldwide. The space agency now lists 517 moon rock samples as missing or stolen. However, the inspector general audit suggests much more is missing, based on inquiries to a sample of 59 scholars loaned moon rocks, comet dust or meteorites. The audit found 19% could not locate all of their samples.

➪ Smuggler tried to hide $140,000 drug stash in nacho cheese

Customs and Border officials nabbed a 21-year-old Mexican citizen this week on suspicion of smuggling $140,000 worth of methamphetamine in these three cans of liquid nacho cheese and jalapenos, the LA Times reports. Incredibly, this is not the first time nacho cheese has been used as a smuggling tool. In October, a customs officials found 7 pounds of meth hidden in nacho cheese cans, NPR reports.

➪ White House–Laughingly–Declines to Comment on Senate Vote to Repeal Military’s Ban on Sodomy and Bestiality

At the White House press briefing on Monday, reporter Lester Kinsolving of WorldnetDaily noted the 93 to 7 Senate vote for a defense authorization bill that repeals the military’s ban on sodomy and bestiality and asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney whether President Obama, as commander-in-chief, approves or disapproves of bestiality in the armed forces. Carney declined to comment.

➪ Rats Feel Each Other’s Pain

Empathy lets us feel another person’s pain and drives us to help ease it. But is empathy a uniquely human trait? For decades researchers have debated whether nonhuman animals possess this attribute. Now a new study shows that rats will free a trapped cagemate in distress. The results mean that these rodents can be used to help determine the genetic and physiological underpinnings of empathy in people.

➪ Make no bones about it, this is Britain’s scariest cave! Photographer captures eerie skull in rock face of remote diving spot

Only the bravest would tackle a cave whose icy waters have already claimed the lives of several divers. But if there was any doubt about the peril that awaits at Hodge Close Quarry, one need only look at this picture The lake at the abandoned slate quarry is an eerie enough site – but as this image shows if you turn your head you are greeted with the terrifying sight of a giant skull.

➪ SWAT Raids, Stun Guns, And Pepper Spray: Why The Government Is Ramping Up The Use Of Force

But America’s police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It’s just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven’t generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform. Police militarization is now an ingrained part of American culture. SWAT teams are featured in countless cop reality shows, and wrong-door raids are the subject of “The Simpsons” bits and search engine commercials. Tough-on-crime sheriffs now sport tanks and hardware more equipped for battle in a war zone than policing city streets. Seemingly benign agencies such as state alcohol control boards and the federal Department of Education can now enforce laws and regulations not with fines and clipboards, but with volatile raids by paramilitary police teams.

➪ Suit filed after NM teen cuffed for burp in class

A 13-year-old was handcuffed and hauled off to a juvenile detention for burping in class, according to a lawsuit filed against an Albuquerque school principal, a teacher and school police officer. The boy was transported without his parents being notified in May after he “burped audibly” in PE class and his teacher called a school resource officer to complain he was disrupting her class. The lawsuit also details a separate Nov. 8 incident when the same student was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched as he was accused of selling pot to another student; the boy was never charged.

➪ Dead scuba diver had been missing 26 years

It had been 26 years since anyone last laid eyes on well-known wheelchair scuba diver Peter Devoe, who failed to resurface after a 1985 family dive at Cates Park in North Vancouver. Devoe, who was 29 when he disappeared, was finally recovered in the Burrard Inlet by a pair of commercial fishers in October. Coroners said Wednesday they identified his remains by the jewelry he wore and telltale marks on his bones from a car accident. His body was surprisingly well-preserved within his full-body scuba suit, despite floating in the inlet for almost three decades. His remains were found just west of where he vanished during a dive with his brother on March 13, 1985. His body never floated out of the bay, and was anchored down in the calm waters by his weighty equipment, Coroner Stephen Fonseca said.

➪ Supercharged mobility scooter seized by Doncaster council

A supercharged mobility scooter has been seized by Doncaster council officers after being driven at speeds of up to 60mph, scaring wild deer and annoying residents in the area. Converted to be driven by a supercharged 140cc petrol engine, the mobility scooter was described as a ‘feat of engineering’ by Cynthia Ransome, Doncaster council’s communities officer. As well as the engine, it had been ‘pimped’ with go-kart wheels and a large exhaust.

➪ The Worst Sounds In The World

15. Death by electrocution, government sanctioned or otherwise. 14. Human or animal run over, hit, or maimed by a car. 13. Civil War surgeon amputating limbs. 12. Guillotine in use; subsequent lopping and dropping. 11. Monkey having its skull bashed open, brains eaten in the name of impotence-curing cuisine. 10. Cannibal chewing on his own penis. 9. Involuntary dual nipple piercing via meat hooks. 8. Bones breaking and/or cracking. 7. Disembowelment (not even Mel Gibson, Freedom!). 6. Human body ejected through the windshield of an automobile. 5. Drawing and quartering. 4. Reanimated corpse biting into your (or a loved one’s or a stranger’s) neck muscles, jugular vein or assorted sinewy tissues. 3. Hair torn from a scalp, human or otherwise. 2. Frenzied knife-stabbing-a-sandbag sound most often heard in cinematic prison shank scenes, except here. 1. Curb stomp.

➪ Pro Grade (3D Printer-Made?) ATM Skimmer

In July 2011, a customer at a Chase Bank branch in West Hills, Calif. noticed something odd about the ATM he was using and reported it to police. Authorities who responded to the incident discovered a sophisticated, professional-grade ATM skimmer that they believe was made with the help of a 3D printer. Below is a front view image of the device. It is an all-in-one skimmer designed to fit over the card acceptance slot and to record the data from the magnetic stripe of any card dipped into the reader. The fraud device is shown sideways in this picture; attached to an actual ATM, it would appear rotated 90 degrees to the right, so that the word “CHASE” is pointing down.

➪ Anti-graffiti campaign under way in Brooklyn

An anti-graffiti campaign is under way in Brooklyn to help business owners keep their buildings clean and keep customers spending money. Some consider the colorful spray-paint graffiti to be street art, but in the bustling business district of Bay Ridge along 3rd, 4th and 5th avenues, it is frowned upon. Dennis Monier has owned Tops Restaurant Supply for 43 years, and he also lives in Bay Ridge, so his neighborhood pride runs deep. He was dismayed on Sunday morning to see graffiti on his building. “It’s not good for the neighborhood, because it makes the neighborhood look dirty,” he said. “We’re trying to keep the neighborhood clean, the sidewalks, the walls, everything. And to have a graffiti-ed neighborhood, people won’t shop here. So you do want this removed.”

➪ Why Is Pesticide Used As An Ingredient In Infant Formula?

Why is cupric sulfate — a known herbicide, fungicide and pesticide — being used in infant formula? And why is it displayed proudly on product labels as a presumably nutritious ingredient? Used to kill fungus, aquatic plants and roots of plants, parasitic infections in aquarium fish and snails, as well as algae and bacteria such as Escherichia coli, cupric sulfate hardly sounds fit for human consumption, much less for infants.

➪ Prescription drug addiction skyrocketed 430% over past decade; Drug rehab for painkiller abuse soars

Federal statistics released Thursday revealed that treatment for prescription painkiller abuse has skyrocketed 430% over the last decade. The increase is even more pronounced given that over the same time period the overall rate of substance-abuse-related admissions to rehab facilities has flatlined, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. The rise occurred in every region of the country, but was highest in Maine, Vermont, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Arkansas, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. Tylenol with codeine, Darvocet, Vicodin and Percocet ranked high on the SAMHSA’s list of most-abused prescription meds. Thanks King Solomon

➪ Man jailed for blasting co-worker’s rectum with air compressor

A CARPENTER’S assistant blasted pressurised air up his friend’s rectum, rupturing his large intestine, because he was seeking a pleasant change that would break the monotony of hard work, a Nicosia court has said. The foreign EU national who is a father of two, was jailed for 45 days last week after admitting that in October last year he had seriously injured his friend who required surgery and a lengthy stay in hospital to recover. “The defendant’s idea to administer pressurised air into his friend’s anus is indeed original and in reality the thought of it provokes laughter; but putting the idea into practice ended up in tragedy for the victim and the perpetrator,” the court said.

➪ Will the Kinect 2 read your lips? Open the pod bay door, HAL

The next generation of the Kinect (bundled with future Xbox consoles) may be “so accurate it can lip read,” the Technology Review Hello World headline breathlessly reads — evoking HAL 9000 in 2001. What’s more, says Eurogamer, citing a nameless source, “Kinect 2 will be so powerful it will enable games to detect when players are angry, and determine in which direction they are facing, and track the pitch and volume of player voices and facial characteristics to measure different emotional states.” Thanks Ava

➪ Anna Nicole Smith: Never-seen-before photoshoot… months before her death

Before her tragic passing in 2007, Anna Nicole Smith was well known her outrageous behaviour. But in a bizarre never-seen-before photo shoot, it appears that she took things to a whole other level. New snaps show the late actress and model completely naked and painted in gold. Taken while she was pregnant with her now five-year-old daughter Danielynn, Smith’s modesty is merely covered by her arm and a thick veil of the metallic paint.

➪ Facebook, Google, And YouTube In 1997 Format

Three important contemporary web sites, recreated with technology and spirit of late 1997, according to our memories. Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.03 and a screen resolution of 1024×768 pixels, running under Windows 95. We recommend using a Virtual Machine or appropriate hardware, connected to a CRT monitor. If such an environment unachievable, it should be possible to experience the piece with any browser that still supports HTML Frames. The transfer speed of our server is limited to 8 kB/s («dial-up» speed).

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✸ Could the U.S. Government Start Reading Your Emails?

It’s likely Anderson is not alone in her concerns that the government may be monitoring what Americans say, write, and read. And now there may be even more to worry about: a newly revealed security research project called PRODIGAL — the Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning — which has been built to scan IMs, texts and emails . . . and can read approximately a quarter billion of them a day.

✸ Facebook Flaw Means Anyone Can See Private Photos

A surprising security hole in Facebook allows almost anyone to see pictures marked as private, an online forum revealed late Monday. Even pictures supposedly kept hidden from uninvited eyes by Facebook’s privacy controls aren’t safe, reported one user of a popular bodybuilding forum in a post entitled “I teach you how to view private Facebook photos.” Facebook appears to have acted quickly to eliminate the end-run around privacy controls, after word of the exploit spread across the Internet. It wasn’t long before one online miscreant uploaded private pictures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg himself — evidence that the hack worked, he said.

✸ Kodak’s long fade to black

Kodak Brownie and Instamatic cameras were once staples of family vacations and holidays — remember the “open me first” Christmas ad campaigns? But it may not be long before a generation of Americans grows up without ever having laid hands on a Kodak product. That’s a huge comedown for a brand that was once as globally familiar as Coca-Cola. It’s hard to think of a company whose onetime dominance of a market has been so thoroughly obliterated by new technology. Family snapshots? They’re almost exclusively digital now, and only a tiny fraction ever get printed on paper. Eastman Kodak engineers invented the digital camera in 1975; but now that you can point and click with a cheap cellphone, even the stand-alone digital camera is becoming an endangered species on the consumer electronics veld. The last spool of yellow-boxed Kodachrome rolled out the door of a Mexican factory in 2009.

✸ Greenpeace penetrates French nuclear plant

Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading “Coucou” and “Facile”, (meaning “Hey” and “Easy”) on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country. Police, whom the environmental activist group immediately told of the publicity stunt, took several hours to round up nine intruders who had broken into the power plant in Nogent-sur-Seine, about 95km southeast of Paris, on Monday. Greenpeace said the break-in aimed to show that an ongoing review of safety measures, ordered by French authorities after a tsunami ravaged Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant earlier this year, was focused too narrowly on possible natural disasters, and not human factors.

✸ ‘Human Zoos’ go on show in Paris

“Exhibitions: the invention of the savage”, at the Quai Branly museum, shows how up until the mid-20th century, labelling indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania and America “savages” helped to justify the brutality of colonial rule. Former football star Lilian Thuram, who was born on the French Caribbean island Guadeloupe, is chief curator of the show. He told AFP he was stunned by a visit to Hamburg zoo in Germany. “At the entrance there are animal sculptures, but also ones of Indians and Africans — letting visitors know they are going to see not just animals but human beings as well,” he said. “They are still there today.” In 1931, the grandparents of another French footballer, Christian Karembeu, were put on display at the Jardin d’Acclimation in Paris, then in Germany, along with around 100 other New Caledonian Kanaks, cast as “cannibals”.

✸ Seattle welfare recipient lives in million-dollar home

A Seattle woman who is receiving welfare assistance from Washington state also happens to live in a waterfront house on Lake Washington worth more than a million dollars. Federal agents raided the home this weekend but have not released the woman or her husband’s name because they have not officially been charged with a crime. However, federal documents obtained by KING 5 News show the couple currently receives more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. They have been receiving the benefits since 2003. The 2,500 square-foot home, which includes gardens and a boat dock, is valued at $1.2 million. And even though the couple has been receiving the benefits for nearly 10 years, records show that they accurately listed the address of their current home when applying for the state and federal benefits.

✸ Fury as Virgin Megastore recommends Hitler’s Mein Kampf

The music, entertainment and media retailer came under fire as pictures have been circling the internet of a ‘Virgin Recommends’ book shelf with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf for sale and published in Arabic. Virgin recommended the book in its store in the Landmark Shopping Centre in Doha. It has since taken it off the shelves. Charlie Gandelman took the picture and then posted it on Twitter after he was alerted to it by his friend Anna Peregrini.

✸ Ex-Pro wrestler Andre Davis ‘Gangsta of Love’ convicted of 14 felonious assault counts in HIV case

A jury on Wednesday convicted a former professional wrestler of 14 felonious assault counts alleging he had sex with women without telling them he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Hamilton County jurors deliberated over two days before returning the verdict against Andre Davis, of Cincinnati. Prosecutors said the 29-year-old Davis, who wrestled using stage names including Gangsta of Love, Sweet Sexy Sensation and Andre Heart, violated state law by not telling a dozen sex partners about his HIV status or lying to them. Davis’ attorney, Greg Cohen, told WLWT-TV he would appeal the verdict. He said the state law regarding HIV and felonious assault is poorly written because it doesn’t require proof that there has been “harm or an attempt to commit harm.”

✸ Architecture of Fear – a conversation with Trevor Paglen

For his Limit Telephotography series, Paglen used high powered telescopes to picture the “black” sites, a series of secret locations operated by the CIA. Often outside of U.S. territory and legal jurisdiction, these locations do not officially exist, they range from American torture camps in Afghanistan to front companies running airlines whose purpose is to covertly move suspects around.

✸ Planet like Earth found in star’s habitable zone

Scientists and their Kepler spacecraft have discovered for the first time a planet in distant space that is much like Earth, circling a sun-like star and lying in a region neither too hot nor too cold for an atmosphere that could support some form of life. The temperature on that planet, the scientists say, probably is a comfortable 72 degrees, rain or shine. The planet, whose discovery was announced Monday at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, was first detected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft two years ago, shortly after it began surveying 155,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

✸ U.S. Drug Agents Launder Profits of Mexican Cartels

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials. The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are. They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

✸ Scientists trying to clone, resurrect extinct mammoth

A team of scientists from Japan, Russia and the United States hopes to clone a mammoth, a symbol of Earth’s ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, according to a report in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. The researchers say they hope to produce a baby mammoth within six years. The scientists say they will extract DNA from a mammoth carcass that has been preserved in a Russian laboratory and insert it into the egg cells of an African elephant in hopes of producing a mammoth embryo.

✸ How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch

An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.

✸ German neo-Nazi gang ‘developed Monoploy-style game with death camps’

Called “Pogromly” and intended for other far-right extremists the game has the names of four Nazi concentration camps instead of the railway stations found on the traditional Monopoly board. Players have the chance to buy Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Ravensbruck, with each camp costing 4,000 reichsmarks, the currency used in Hitler’s Germany. A number of sets of the game were discovered in a garage used by the gang the self-styled National Socialist Underground amongst bomb-making equipment and unused nail bombs last month. Players start on a square emblazoned with a swastika and also have the chance of landing on a numbers of squares marked with the SS emblem. The board also comes with pictures of Hitler and sinister looking Jews.

✸ Indian state trades gifts for sterilisation

India has 1.2 billion people and is fast catching up with China as the world’s most populous nation. In an attempt to slow down the baby boom the state of Rajasthan, home to 68 million people, is offering prizes in exchange for sterilisation. Now women can win anything from food processors to cars if they undergo the knife. This latest effort has raised controversy as the procedure is is still viewed with suspicion after the government introduced a forced sterilization program the 1970s.

✸ The digital future of narcotics

Technologists will become the next drug dealers, administering narcotics through brain stimulation, according to Rohit Talwar, the founder of Fast Future Research speaking at Intelligence Squared’s If conference. Talwar was charged by the government to investigate the drugs landscape over the next 20 years, exploring scenarios going beyond the traditional model of gangs producing and shipping drugs around the world. He described how the world of genomic sequencing and services such as 23 and Me open up possibilities for tailoring drugs to the individual, delivering effects based on your physiology — which could apply just as effectively to narcotics as it could medicines.

✸ Nude Suspect Viewing Child Porn Before Arrest

Acting on a tip, authorities went Thursday morning to the home of 63-year-old Thomas Davis in the 2000 block of Westwood Northern Boulevard. Deputies said Davis answered the door in the nude, and they escorted him inside to retrieve some clothing. Investigators said they saw obvious child pornography images scrolling on a computer monitor inside the apartment, and Davis was arrested.

✸ Selah School District settles termination agreement of Selah Jr. High teacher

On October 13, Selah Police began an investigation of McMillen after a student discovered a camera hidden under a desk in his classroom. Police told KIMA they believed the camera had been hidden with the intent to look up girls’ skirts.

✸ Public high school teacher starred in porno movies released last year

Kevin Hogan is an English teacher and crew coach at a top-rated Massachusetts public high school, but he brings some unusual experience to the job: until recently, he was starring in pornographic movies. Hogan has worked at the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden since September. In addition to his coaching and teaching duties, he also chairs the high school’s English department. But he can also be found on the Internet and in adult entertainment stores under his screen name: Hytch Cawke. His movie credits include “Fetish World” and “Just Gone Gay 8,” and FOX Undercover found his third movie, whose title is not fit to reveal in a family news outlet, in a local adult store. It features him answering an ad to have sex for money.

✸ Weta insect: Heaviest in the world weighs 3 times more than a mouse

A nature-lover has revealed how he spent two days tracking down a giant insect on a remote New Zealand island – and got it to eat a carrot out of his hand. Mark Moffett’s find is the world’s biggest insect in terms of weight, which at 71g is heavier than a sparrow and three times that of a mouse. The 53-year-old former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and his real life Bug’s Bunny has now been declared the largest ever found.

✸ Druggiest Colleges in U.S.: Colorado, Denison, Dartmouth, Kenyon, More

From study enhancers to bong rips, American colleges remain a hotbed for illegal drug experimentation. The Daily Beast finds the 30 institutions of higher learning where students experiment the most. The college experience is all about stepping out of your comfort zone and trying new things. For some college students, that includes experimenting with drugs, from Adderall to acid to marijuana. It’s no wonder, then, that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy singled out university students as a group particularly prone to drug abuse in its latest strategy report. “Reducing substance use behaviors among college students requires prevention strategies at the college or university as well as in the surrounding off-campus community,” according to the White House report.

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★ Graffiti artists caught out by their handiwork

Being hand-drawn, each piece is different, even when the same design is drawn by the same person, so Jain’s system identifies key points in the design that remain more-or-less consistent. And since a gang’s graffiti often incorporates its name or other identifying words, he uses crowdsourcing to identify those words, asking the human workers of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service to decipher any text in the images.

When using both text and image features to assess a piece of graffiti, the system correctly names the gang or individual about 65 per cent of the time. Michael O’Grady, who researches graffiti detection at the University of Huddersfield, UK, says this means it is only really good enough for filtering images down to a manageable level for a human to examine. “I’d want it up around 85 per cent,” he says.

★ The Poppers Story

In the gay ghettos of the Seventies and early Eighties, poppers were always at the center of the action. On any given night at, say, the Anvil in Manhattan, a large percentage of the men on the dance floor would have poppers in hand, and many of the rest would be helping to pass the bottles around. Some disco clubs would even add to the general euphoria by occasionally spraying the dance floor with poppers fumes.

Michael Rumaker, in his classic book A day and a Night at the Baths, describes the tubs as “permeated with that particularly inert, greasy odor of poppers. Wherever you went, the musky chemical smell of it was constantly in your nostrils.” He found himself heading to the single, small window, in order to gasp a few breaths of “something other than the cold, kerosene smell of amyl.”

★ Warsaw protester launches drone to spy on police

During protests in Warsaw last weekend, one crafty activist deployed a flying drone to spy on riot police.

YouTube user latajacakamera — or “flying camera” in Polish — uploaded the amazing video that the drone effortlessly captured as it hovered over teargas-filled streets.

In another video, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) floats in front of a formation of police in riot gear as they rush towards demonstrators. None of them appear to notice.

★ 101 Year Old Inventor Of LSD Asked Steve Jobs How Dropping Acid Helped Him Create The Mac

Steve Jobs had a life-long fixation on LSD, and often ended up asking potential Apple employees during interviews how many times they had dropped acid to throw them off guard. Steve Jobs personally considered doing LSD to be one of the formative experiences in his life, and was insistent that others should do it, too.

With such a famous advocate working for free, it’s not a surprise that the man who invented LSD eventually contacted Steve Jobs. What is surprising, though, is how long he waited to get in touch… until he was 101 years old!

★ All About Poppers

WIDELY RECOGNIZED AS THE MOST CREDIBLE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT POPPERS. REGULARLY REFERENCED BY RESEARCHERS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE. SERVING THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY FOR OVER A DECADE.

★ Vandal renames Avenue J station ‘Avenue Jew’

A vandal altered a sign at a subway station in a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn to make it read “Avenue Jew,” according to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. A subway rider saw the graffiti, photographed it, and contacted Hikind’s office.

The photo shows the letters “e” and “w” in blue spray paintin at the end of the “J” in the Avenue J sign. The station is located at the intersection of Avenue J and East 16th Street.

Police removed the sign and are investigating it as a possible bias incident, according to a news release from Hikind’s office. But the NYPD has not confirmed that information.

★ Paul A. Laduke, Schaumburg Christian School Teacher, Charged With Masturbating During Class

A teacher at Schaumburg Christian School has been charged with sexual exploitation of a child after allegedly masturbating while students were in his classroom.

Paul A. Laduke, 75, allegedly told police he had been “masturbating while fantasizing about various students for the past 10 years,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

Schaumburg police told Fox Chicago that a student spotted Laduke “engaged in what appeared to be inappropriate lewd conduct while seated at his podium” on Nov. 11. That student informed a teacher and Laduke, described by his family as a “strict Christian,” was fired the same day.

★ Facebook users hit by hardcore porn, violence and animal abuse images

Explicit and violent images have flooded the newsfeeds of many Facebook users in the last 24 hours or so.

The content, which includes explicit hardcore porn images, photoshopped photos of celebrities such as Justin Bieber in sexual situations, pictures of extreme violence and even a photograph of an abused dog, have been distributed via the site – seemingly without the knowledge of users.

★ Divorcing couple ordered to hand over Facebook and dating site passwords

Do you, Facebook user, take your privacy, as stated in Terms of Service, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, through scams and through flirtations with high school sweethearts, in viral malware and in health, to love and to shield your adulterous licentiousness, till death do you
part?

Forget about it. The courts have no compunction about parting us from our supposed privacy, regardless of what social media privacy terms of service seem to promise us vis-a-vis confidentiality.

That was made evident in the case of Stephen and Courtney Gallion, a Connecticut couple who’ve been ordered to turn over their social networking passwords in their impending divorce.

★ John Lennon’s Tooth Sells for More Than $31,000 at Auction

The tooth fairy’s rates have dramatically increased in the last 40+ years, especially when the bounty is a Beatle’s molar. John Lennon’s tooth fetched £19,000 (about $31,200) at auction in England Saturday.

The tooth had been in the family of Lennon’s former housekeeper. Lennon gave it to Dot Jarlett to dispose of sometime between 1964 and 1968, but then he suggested she keep the tooth to give to her daughter, who was a big Beatles fan.

★ ‘Family Circus’ creator Bil Keane dies at 89

Bil Keane’s “Family Circus” comics entertained readers with a simple but sublime mix of humor and traditional family values for more than a half century. The appeal endured, the author thought, because the American public needed the consistency.

Keane, who started drawing the one-panel cartoon featuring Billy, Jeffy, Dolly, P.J. and their parents in February 1960, died Tuesday at age 89 at his longtime home in Paradise Valley, near Phoenix. His comic strip is featured in nearly 1,500 newspapers across the country.

★ Jerry Sandusky Ice Cream Out Soon at Penn State?

The Penn State Creamery is renowned for its ice cream. It makes about 100 different flavors, some of which are named after famous Penn Staters.

One of those flavors – the Sandusky Blitz – was named in honor of disgraced former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who is facing felony charges for allegedly sexually abusing young boys. While it reportedly has not been served for several years, it was still listed on the creamery’s website on Sunday and described as a banana flavored ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts and a caramel swirl.

It has since been pulled down from the site.

While it sounds delicious, who would take their kids out for ice cream and buy a flavor named after an alleged child molester?

Too creepy.

★ Met police using surveillance system to monitor mobile phones

Britain’s largest police force is operating covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area.

★ A Different Kind of Secret Code

Researchers have invented a new form of secret messaging using bacteria that make glowing proteins only under certain conditions. In addition to being useful to spies, the new technique could also allow companies to encode secret identifiers into crops, seeds, or other living commodities.

★ The Rise of Crime-Sourcing

Crowdsourcing began as a legitimate tool to leverage the wisdom of the crowds to solve complex business and scientific challenges. Unfortunately, these very same techniques are increasingly being adopted by the criminal underground for nefarious purposes.

★ Police arrest man for child pornography after tipoff from burglars

But the young people who stole the CDs were in for a surprise. When they began putting the discs into their computer, they discovered that some of them contained pornographic images of children, the statement said.

Despite having obtained the CDs under decidedly shady circumstances, the pair decided to report Stockard to the police.

A search warrant was served and three more computers and three laptops were taken from Stockard’s home, along with several external hard drives. Police said there were thousands of pictures and movies on the CDs — more than 30 of the 50 discs had child pornography on them.

Investigators said Stockard has been downloading indecent images of children since 2004. He has admitted possessing the pornography on the CDs but has refused to say whether there is pornography on the computers, they said. Stockard was booked for possession of child pornography and posted $25,000 bail.

The two burglar suspects who reported Stockard have not been arrested.

★ Texas county police buys drone that can carry weapons

The ShadowHawk from Vanguard Defense Industries is a pilot-less helicopter remotely controlled by an operator using a game console-like, laptop size device. The drone was purchased with a $300,000 grant from DHS.

The Montgomery police says it will be used in chases of escaping criminals and tracking drug shipments.

Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, told the Examiner that Montgomery County is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units.

He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement. “The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,” he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a “stun baton.”

★ 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues. In Europe there is a requirement that entities with data about individuals make it available to them if they request it. That’s how Max ended up with a personalized CD from Facebook that he printed out on a stack of paper more than a thousand pages thick (see image below). Analysing it, he came to the conclusion that Facebook is engineered to break many of the requirements of European data protection. He argues that the record Facebook provided him finds them to be in flagrante delicto.

★ Rave kills dolphin

A DOLPHIN died after marine park bosses allowed a deafening rave yards from its pool.

Wildlife experts warned the banging techno at the two-day dance event would lead to stress among the ten dolphins. Animal activists even turned up to protest at Connyland marine park in Lipperswil, Switzerland.

Shadow, an eight-year-old dolphin, appeared very distressed and disoriented after the event, and was later found dead.

An activist said: “The sound levels dolphins heard were comparable to a pneumatic drill.” Connyland bosses denied any wrongdoing.

★ Lush Workers Cut Wallets From the Pockets of Drunk Train Riders

In the world of crime statistics, there is a certain subsection of victim on the city subways: a reveler who, overserved during a night on the town, nods off on a train. He wakes with a flapping, precision-cut hole in his trousers and cool, thin air where his wallet used to be.

This victim shakes his head in self-disgust, joining the besotted ranks to fall prey to a brand of criminal as old and established below the streets as a twisted root.

The police, long ago, coined a name for this criminal. The lush worker.

★ ‘Urine power’ tests at UWE in Bristol are successful

‘Regulating the flow’

The bacteria anaerobically (without oxygen) respire just like any other living organism, and this process gives off electrons.

Those electrons are then passed through an electrode and a measure of electricity is generated.

Bacteria feed on the urine, which they effectively use as a fuel to continue to breathe and give off electrons.

“Urine is chemically rich in substances favourable to the MFCs,” said Dr Ieropoulos.

“Through this study… we were able to show that by miniaturisation and multiplication of the number of MFCs into a stack and regulating the flow of urine, it may be possible to look at scales of use that have the potential to produce useful levels of power, for example in a domestic or small village setting.”

★ Josie From Josie And The Pussycats Is Possessed By The Devil

In the last Occult post, I showed you a story in Archie comics that seemed a bit heavy handed with the occult. Well, that was nothing, folks. In this one, Josie becomes possessed by an evil spirit… and it is disturbing as shit.

I know Archie comics became “born again” at some point in their history, but this ain’t it – the rest of the issue is completely “normal”. The Josie issues before and after this issue were free from overt religious messages…. so, I don’t know what the f–k is going on here.

I’m no expert in Archie comics (I have, however, been reading them for four decades), so I’m hoping someone more knowledgeable than I can fill me in.

Perhaps Archie comics were slipping in “born again Christian” story lines as early as ’73, but I seem to remember this happening much later (like the early eighties). Or, perhaps, the authors had just seen The Exorcist and let their enthusiasm run away with them.

★ Is an abortion based sexual fetish immoral?

One of my friends is sexually submissive and recently she encountered a man online who is to be her sexual dominant. The two of them have come to the conclusion that they are soulmates and one of the ideas that they particularly agree on is that he should be able to impregnate her and then abort the baby. He is a doctor so he would do it himself. My question is, she says that because abortion is legal… this isnt immoral. But I feel that it is premeditated murder. I mean, I am pro-choice: accidents, rape – there are lots of reasons to abort. But she is PLANNING to get pregnant for the sole reason to kill the child. And not just once… they want to do this thing over and over again. He says, “I will let you keep the baby just long enough to let you get attached to it and then I will take it from you.” UGH. Am I the only one that thinks this is INSANE?! I mean, sure abortion is legal.. but premeditated PLANNED abortion?!? How in the world can I express to her how wrong this is? Help!!

★ Ultrasound of patient’s testicles reveals startling image of a man in agony

Doctors at a Canadian hospital found a shocking image staring right back at them as they were scanning the testicles of a 45-year-old paraplegic man. The image of one of the testicles, shown above, looks like a man’s face grimaced in agony.

“It was very ghoulish, like a man screaming in pain,” Dr. Naji Touma of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario told The Toronto Star. “His mouth was open and it looked like one eye was gouged out.”

★ Apple Vice President of Global Security John Theriault departs company following lost iPhone 4S investigation

In July, an Apple employee was reported to have lost a prototype version of the later to be announced iPhone 4S with Siri, an improved camera, and the dual-core A5 processor. Following the loss of the prototype device, Apple apparently also visited the home of the device’s purported finder and offered him cash for the return of the phone. Apple security officials reportedly posed as police officers in their search of this prototype iPhone, and the San Francisco Police Department have been said to be investigating the situation.

★ Embarrassing Bodies – Large Labia (Video)

★ Labiaplasty (Video) NSFW

Yikes! The Donner Cut

★ Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the internet [Video]

2004: Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father’s backwards views. The judge’s wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge’s wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist.

★ In dangerous new development, TEPCO detects nuclear fission occurring in destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi – Bellona

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) detected signs of a nuclear chain reaction at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, raising the risk of increased radiation emissions as trace amounts of radioactive Xenon gas isotopes were discovered at the wrecked plant’s reactor No 2, officials said.

★ DMX — Mopping Up Messes at Waffle House

The rapper adds, “The minute you get too big to mop a floor or wipe a counter, that’s the exact minute you have life f**ked up.”

STOP. MOP.

★ Steven Tyler Says He Wasn’t Drunk Or High When He Fell In Shower

Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler said that the Paraguay shower fall that knocked his teeth out and cut his face was caused by food poisoning not a drug relapse, in a TV interview Thursday.

The veteran rocker, who has spoken openly about his drug and alcohol problems in the past, told NBC’s “Today” show that he blacked out in an Asuncion hotel shower because he was suffering “Montezuma’s revenge” not because he had fallen off the wagon.

“Quite frankly I just passed out,” he said during a phone interview from Buenos Aires. “I was on the shower and I got nauseous and I started to get sick and I fell on my face, passed out, and woke up with the water running over me wondering where the hell I was.”

★ Man claims prostitute turned into a donkey

A MAN caught having sex with a donkey told a court the beast was actually a prostitute who turned into an animal overnight.
Thanks Cat

★ Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis

Widespread demonstrations in support of Occupy Wall Street have put the financial crisis back into the national spotlight lately.

So here’s a quick refresher on what’s happened to some of the main players, whose behavior, whether merely reckless or downright deliberate, helped cause or worsen the meltdown. This list isn’t exhaustive — feel welcome to add to it.

★ Wiki – 1993

★ Copper Traded For Crack

Some enterprising drug dealers are helping copper thieves cut out the middleman. They’re accepting copper pipe as legal tender in exchange for crack cocaine.

“Whether it’s a copper aluminum coil or insulation, it can be sold at night to bootleggers who are open from 9 o’clock at night to 3 in the morning,” scrapyard owner Van Kono told Local 10 in Miami, Florida.

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