The PolitiCat and the NEWS in the CITY

Aquino Cabinet yields to Supreme Court on Vat on Toll Fees

2010-08-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

The BIR Commissioner promised that she would defend the implementation of the VAT on toll fees but Finance Department Cesar Purisima advised the President to wait for the Supreme Court decision.

Here is the story from GMA7.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to rule whether or not the proposed 12-percent value added tax on toll rates by is legal.

His economic managers advised President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III to wait for the Supreme Court decision on the petitions stopping government from imposing the VAT – a sales tax – on fees for the right to use the country’s expressways or toll roads.

In an interview with reporters, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said “Our advice is to wait for the SC decision. It’s now in the court and I think it is now up to the court to decide what to do with it."

The High Tribunal on August 16 restrained the Bureau of Internal Revenue from enforcing the VAT on fees charged by toll way operators against motorists.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said that the expected proceeds from the toll fee VAT would only be P1.6 billion a year, not P12 billion as earlier announced by former BIR Commissioner Joel Tan-Torres.

The proceeds from the toll rate VAT have been incorporated into the proposed P1.645 trillion budget for 2011.

Pork Barrel Increased

2010-08-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

Next year, the pork barrel is increased to Php 22.3 billion from the original Php 6.9 billio.

Here is the news:

Aquino for P22.3-billion 'pork'
DBM requires menu of projects
By GENALYN KABILING
August 10, 2010, 4:31pm
Despite its belt-tightening pronouncement, the Aquino government has proposed a P22.3-billion pork barrel next year, a 223.18 percent increase from this year’s allocation of P6.9 billion – with the P15.4 billion increment to finance infrastructure projects.

Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad said President Benigno S. Aquino III raised the allocation of the pork barrel, officially known as Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), next year with a safeguard, requiring a “menu” for the utilization of the fund.

“The PDAF is higher at P22.3 billion. However, this will incorporate both the hard and soft components of the program. The menus will be limited to the priority programs of the administration,” Abad said last the administration,” Abad told reporters last Monday.

The higher pork barrel system was among the highlights of the proposed P1.645-trillion national budget for 2011, a 6.7 percent increase from the 2010 budget of P1.54 trillion. Although the increase in absolute terms of the pork barrel is significant, the propose amount represents only 1.355 percent of the General Appropriations Act for 2011.

Even as the PDAF allocation was increased, the government proposed a reduction of subsidy programs, tighter funding for government corporations, including their allowances, among others, amid the state’s cash flow problems

Office of the Press Secretary is now PCOO

2010-08-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

President Benigno Aquino has two cabinet secretaries for his communications need.
Except of the news:

(Updated 3 p.m.) Malacañang finally issued Executive Order (EO) No. 4 formally creating the administration's communications team tasked to disseminate messages from President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and receive feedback from the public.

EO No. 4 restructures the Office of the Press Secretary and renames it the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).

"There is a vital need to re-organize and effect functional changes within the Office of the Press Secretary and create an office to systematize, rationalize, and complement the existing structure to achieve a more efficient and systematic interaction between the people, the Office of the President, and the Executive Branch," according to EO 4.

The PCOO has two heads — former broadcaster Ricky Carandang and former Department of Transportation and Communications Undersecretary Sonny Coloma, both with Cabinet rank. Its tasks include developing guidelines on information dissemination and managing state-owned media entities for the Office of the President and the rest of the executive branch.

Coloma was designated the Presidential Communications Operations (PCO) head in charge of supervising state-owned media entities and disseminating information to private media companies.

Hacienda Luisita Compromise Deal

2010-08-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

It seems the problem on Hacienda Luisita is not yet solved with the compromise deal reached by the management and the representatives of the labor unions.

Excerpt of the news:

More than a third of the 10,502 farmer-beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita Inc. have chosen to retain their stocks in the corporation instead of land parcels as of Saturday afternoon. However, an agrarian reform official warned that the previous government already revoked the stock distribution option (SDO), now the subject of a Supreme Court case.

Some 6,000 have yet to make their choice.

More than 4,000 farmer-beneficiaries from five barangays in the hacienda have so far chosen to stick with the SDO while only 41 signed up for actual land distribution, according to farmer Eldifonso Pingol.

Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Narciso Nieto meanwhile said he was personally “surprised" at the figures apparently showing that more farmers prefer to keep their stocks in the corporation than acquire their own land.

“Hindi ba (Didn't) the PARC [Presidential Agrarian Reform Council] order the SDO to be revoked in 2005 because of clamor of the farmers? Then all of sudden, mukhang nanalo ang SDO (it now turns out that SDO won)," he told GMANews.TV in a separate interview.

He however declined to comment further on the referendum, saying majority of the farmers have not yet participated in the signing.

President Aquino fired all midnight appointees

2010-08-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

President Aquino revoked all midnight appointments allegedly made by former President Gloria Arroyo.
Here is the excerpt of the news:

Malacañang, through its second executive order, revoked on Wednesday the "midnight appointments" made by the previous Arroyo administration.

This was revealed by Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Eduardo de Mesa and presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda at a press briefing in Malacañang as they presented President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III's Executive Order No. 2 "recalling, withdrawing, and revoking appointments issued by the previous administration in violation of the Constitutional ban on midnight appointments."

EO No. 2, signed July 30, laid out three conditions that constitute midnight appointments made by Arroyo and other appointing authorities in "departments, agencies, offices, and instrumentalities including government owned or controlled corporations."

President Aquino inked EO to create Truth Commission

2010-07-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

The first Executive Order signed by President Noynoy Aquino creates the Truth Commission to be headed by Davide.

Former president and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will face the Truth Commission only if the body created Friday by President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III does not have any constitutional or legal infirmities.
Lakas-Kampi-CMD spokesman Raul Lambino said officials of the party, including Arroyo who is its chairman, have assured full cooperation in helping the body to arrive at the truth in connection with alleged anomalous transactions of the government.
“As her spokesperson has declared, Rep. Arroyo will face the Truth Commission. However, the former president’s lawyers should be expected to allow her to be subjecting herself under the jurisdiction of an illegal body,” said Lambino.
He added: “Doing so would constitute waiver of your constitutional rights as a Filipino citizen.”

Luisita Mill Owners ordered to use original formula for computing 13th month pay

2010-07-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court sided with the farmers on the issue about the reduction of their 13th month pay by the Central Asucarera de Tarlac.

Here is the news from GMA7

The Supreme Court (SC) has declared that Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT), the sugar milling company owned by the family of President Benigno Aquino III, acted in bad faith when it reduced the 13th month pay of its employees, following a strike in 2004 that ended in violence and killed at least seven people.

The High Court, in affirming the 2009 decision by the Court of Appeals (CA), ordered CAT to revert to its original formula in computing the mandatory benefit for its workers in 2006.

“This act of petitioner in changing the formula at this time cannot be sanctioned, as it indicates a badge of bad faith," read the 10-page decision, penned by Associate Justice Eduardo Nachura of the SC’s Second Division.

Concurring with Nachura were Associate Justices Antonio Carpio, Diosdado Peralta and Roberto Abad.

The SC dismissed CAT’s position that the change in formula was due to an “error" in the computation of the benefit, supposedly discovered only by the management when the CAT Labor Union questioned the formula used for computing the employees’ 13th month pay for 2006.

The SC decision also noted that the CAT management had been using the same formula for 30 years, then changed it only following the labor dispute with its employees.

The High Court cited Article 100 of the Labor Code, or the Non-Diminution Rule, which provides that once benefits are given, they become part of an employment contract, whether written or unwritten, and as such cannot be taken back or reduced by the employer.

“As correctly ruled by the CA, the practice of petitioner in giving 13th month pay based on the employees’ gross annual earnings which included the basic monthly salary, premium pay for work on rest days and special holidays, night shift differential pay and holiday pay continued for almost 30 years and has ripened into a company policy or practice which cannot be unilaterally withdrawn," the Court said.

While exemptions may be secured, the Court said the CAT failed to obtain authorization from the labor secretary and hence cannot say the reduction was due to financial losses.

Records showed that before 2006, CAT granted its employees the mandatory 13th month pay since 1975, computed by dividing the total basic annual salary by 12.

The basic annual salary included the basic monthly salary, first eight hours overtime pay on Sunday and legal or special holidays, night premium pay, and vacation and sick leaves every year.

When the workers staged a strike in 2004 following the retrenchment of over 300 union leaders and members, the CAT management dropped the formula and eventually stopped its operations.

Work in the sugar mill resumed in December 2005 but was suspended again in April and May 2006. From June to September of the same year, the employees were made to work for only 15 days every month on rotation.

For 2006, CAT determined the employees’ 13th month pay based on their total earnings for the year divided by 12.

The employees questioned the computation, saying their total earning should have been divided only by eight, the number of months they actually worked for the year, and not 12.

The employees filed a complaint against CAT before the National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) for money claims after negotiations failed.

The labor arbiter earlier ruled in favor of CAT but the NLRC later reversed the decision.

CAT’s management elevated the case to the SC after the CA upheld the NLRC’s decision.

CAT is registered with the Philippine Stock Exchange as a corporation operating a sugar mill and refinery, distillery and carbon dioxide plants in Barrio San Miguel, Tarlac City.

President Aquino said in previous interviews he owns over 300,000 shares or just one percent of the company.

Hacienda Luisita, on the other hand, is a Cojuangco family-owned plantation also in Tarlac.

Noynoy Aquino defended the Abad family in his government

2010-07-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

He was criticized for reprimanding the weather man and now he is being reprimanded for appointing the Abads in his government except for the wife who was elected as congressman.

But then he defended the Abad family.

MANILA, Philippines—So whatever happened to the 100-day honeymoon?
President Benigno Aquino III Monday expressed dismay over the stinging criticism he got from lawmakers for having too many members of the Abad family in his administration.
Less than three weeks into the presidency, Mr. Aquino said he was not given a honeymoon period—the absence of any major criticism from the press and political detractors—commonly accorded to a new chief executive.
“Just because I’m a bachelor, they thought I hadn’t experienced a honeymoon so they did not give me any,” he said in Filipino. “So I’ll just say ‘thank you’ to them.”
Mr. Aquino has appointed Florencio “Butch” Abad budget secretary and his daughter Julia chief of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS).
In addition, Abad’s son Luis has been appointed chief of staff of Finance Secretary of Cesar Purisima. Abad’s wife Henedina is the representative of the lone district of Batanes, who reportedly wants to be the vice chair of the House appropriations committee.
Certain lawmakers have voiced their concern about having members of the same family in key government positions.
A lawmaker belonging to Lakas-Kampi-CMD on Sunday said that he was worried about one family taking control of the government’s budget.
The House appropriation committee sets the General Appropriations Act, the budget secretary disburses the funds (including pork barrel funds), the PMS head dispenses the President’s pork barrel, and the chief of staff has the ear of the finance secretary, he said.
Standing by Abads

But the President stood by the Abads, saying he “did not violate any law obviously.”
“I’m confident that they will demonstrate their capabilities and their qualifications that made me decide to put them in place,” Mr. Aquino told reporters.
He described the elder Abad as a “mentor and longtime colleague” who still had to go through the usual selection process before he could get the budget portfolio.
Summa cum laude
Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Luis graduated summa cum laude from Ateneo de Manila University, who was also named one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines in the past.
Julia, 31, supposedly got the sensitive and influential PMS portfolio owing to her stint as Mr. Aquino’s chief of staff while he was in the Senate.

Noynoy Aquino ordered the review of the request of Trillanes to post bail

2010-07-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

Citing the bases reasons for charges of coup d'etat, Noynoy Aquino is of the opinion that Trillanes is a victim of injustice.

Here's the excerpt of the news:

Saying detained Senator Antonio Trillanes IV may have been a victim of injustice, President Benigno Aquino III said Friday that he wants the Department of Justice to review the senator's request for bail.

In an ambush interview in Subic, Aquino pointed out that Trillanes was first jailed because he faced coup d’etat charges before the Makati City Regional Trial Court branch 148 for his participation in the so-called Oakwood Mutiny on July 27, 2003.

The senator later also faced rebellion charges before the Makati City RTC Branch 150 for taking part in the so-called Manila Peninsula hotel siege in November 2007.

Palace defends Aquino for reprimanding PAGASA

2010-07-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

People criticized Aquino for being hard on the remaining 14 meterologists of the country, the head of which was on leave to work in Australia.

Palace defends Aquino dismay over Pagasa forecasts

Malacañang said Thursday President Aquino was not out of line for berating the country’s weather forecasters for failing to predict that Typhoon Basyang would hit Metro Manila Tuesday.

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Mr. Aquino was dismayed because other government agencies relied on the forecast of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa).

The Department of Social Welfare and Development
, for instance, was dependent on the Pagasa advisory because it could pre-position relief goods in areas most likely to be hit by floods.

“We have all the other agencies doing their job based on the prediction of Pagasa,” Lacierda said in a press conference.

President Noynoy Aquino reprimands PAGASA

2010-07-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

Aquino stated that the inability of the PAGASA to predict typhoon Basyang in Metro Manila is not acceptable. Here is the news:

President Benigno Simeon "Noynoy" Aquino III admonished the weather bureau on Wednesday for failing to predict that Typhoon Basyang (Conson) would ravage Metro Manila.

On Tuesday, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) announced that Basyang would batter Northern and Central Luzon areas, but the storm lashed Metro Manila instead.

At an emergency meeting called by the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) in Camp Aguinaldo, Aquino told PAGASA that accurate weather information is vital for the government in preparing for disasters.

Senator Edward Kennedy 1932-2009

2009-08-26T01:24:00.000-07:00

Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer. He was 77. He was the brother of the late President John F. Kennedy, and late Senator Robert Kennedy, both assassinated.

photocredt:washington post

Here is the excerpt of the news news:

Edward M. Kennedy, one of the most powerful and influential senators in American history and one of three brothers whose political triumphs and personal tragedies captivated the nation for decades, died at 77.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, was the last survivor of a privileged and charismatic family that in the 1960s dominated American politics and attracted worldwide attention. As heir through tragedy to his accomplished older brothers -- President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), both of whom were assassinated -- Edward Kennedy became the patriarch of his clan and a towering figure in the U.S. Senate to a degree neither of his siblings had been.

Corazon Cojuangco Aquino died of colon cancer

2009-08-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

The former President, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino died at age 76 after more than a year of battling colon cancer. She was the widow of the late Senator Benigno Aquino whose death stirred the nation to rally against the dictatorship.

Here is the excerpt of the news:

Former President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino has passed away.

She was 76.

Her son Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III confirmed that she died of cardio-respiratory arrest at exactly 3:18 a.m. Saturday at the Makati Medical Center.

Mrs. Aquino has been diagnosed with colon cancer early in 2008 and has been confined at the Makati Medical Center for more than a month.

Mrs. Aquino, widow of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., will be remembered as an icon of democracy, having led a military-backed popular revolt in 1986 that ousted a dictator who ruled the country for 20 years.

Ex-President Cory Aquino is fighting another battle-cancer

2009-07-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

Corazon Aquino, the former Presidentand first Woman President of the Philippines and Asia is fighting the toughest battle, colon cancer. She is the icon of democracy when she helped topple the government of Ferdinand Marcos in a bloodless revolution. She was diagnosed of colon cancer last year and now she refused to undergo more chemotherapy and medical treatment. The family is with her in the hospital. She is the widow of the late Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.

This is the news:

MANILA, Philippines—The cancer-stricken Corazon Aquino has been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room of Makati Medical Center and has refused to undergo another cycle of chemotherapy, her spokesperson Deedee Siytangco said Wednesday night.

In an earlier phone interview at 6:20 p.m., Siytangco said the former President, who is battling colon cancer, had been confined at the hospital for a week and a half because of loss of appetite, but was conscious.

“Her whole family is with her now. She’s in serious condition but we’re hoping for the best,” Siytangco said.

Richard Gordon is joining the GMA party Lakas Kampi if

2009-07-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Richard "Dick" Gordon announced that he is going to join the administration party only if the latter would choose the presidential nominee based on qualifications, integrity and track record. That means he? Ahem.

He is known to have political ambition but his name does not rank in the surveys.

This is the excerpt of the news:

MANILA, Philippines -- Senator Richard Gordon said he was willing to join the administration party Lakas-Kampi CMD so long as its standard bearer for 2010 would be chosen based on qualification, not on performance in opinion surveys.

Gordon, who is reportedly eyeing the presidency, claimed former president Fidel Ramos offered him to join the party.

“If Lakas chooses the most qualified, the one with strong qualifications, with a strong track record, with integrity, one who can do good for the country, I will join, but I will bring Bagumbayan with me,” he said in Filipino.

“If they can make someone win because of his track record, because he can motivate people, has integrity, and that is the basis [for choosing the standard bearer], we can join,” he said.

Gordon said he would turn down the offer to join Lakas-Kampi-CMD if it would be using survey results in choosing its standard bearer.

Gordon's name has not appeared in surveys for possible presidential bets next year.

But if he would advertise on television, the senator said he would top the surveys.

“E kung papasok ka diyan tapos pera-pera ulit, hindi tama yun [If it all boils down to money, that’s not right,” he said.

Ex-president Joseph Estrada acquired brand new helicopter

2009-06-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

He has not officially declared that he is running for presidential election in 2010, but the former president purchased a new helicopter that he said is going to be delivered next month.

Will he run or not ? If he does not run, will he anoint Jejomar Binay, the mayor of Makati?

This is the excerpt of the news:

MANILA, Philippines -- Soon, Joseph Estrada will be stumping the country on a spanking new $1.6-million helicopter --but like President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, he is keeping the nation guessing on his political plans for 2010.

The ousted leader yesterday said he expected the brand new, European-made chopper, an AS-350 Ecureuil (Squirrel), to be delivered next month.

He said he was buying the helicopter with two friends as a business investment and in preparation for the 2010 elections.

“I’m not the sole owner,” Estrada told the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He did not disclose the names of the two co-owners.

Estrada said he would wait until September to make up his mind on whether to run in next year’s presidential election.

Child Slavery:Imported in the US

2009-01-01T03:20:00.000-08:00

I thought it is only in developing countries where child slavery is rampant. It seems it has already reached the US mainland.
In Africa, children of the poor are commodities, often traded like cows or donkeys by adults who value their labor. This story on child maids is the third in an occasional series on the exploitation of African children. Each story stands on its own.

IRVINE, California - Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door.

They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.

But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.

Going to America
Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.

For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary.

Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city — Casablanca — a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.

The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities — including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department — have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.

She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage.

It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark.

She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her "stupid."

While the family slept, she ironed the school outfits of the Ibrahims' 5-year-old twin sons. She woke them, combed their hair, dressed them and made them breakfast. Then she ironed clothes and fixed breakfast for the three girls, including Heba, who at 10 was the same age as the family's servant.

Neither Ibrahim nor his wife worked, and they slept late. When they awoke, they yelled for her to make tea.

While they ate breakfast watching TV, she cleaned the palatial house. She vacuumed each bedroom, made the beds, dusted the shelves, wiped the windows, washed the dishes and did the laundry.

Her employers were not satisfied, she said. "Nothing was ever clean enough for her. She would come in and say, 'This is dirty,' or 'You didn't do this right,' or 'You ruined the food,"' said Shyima.

In 2006, a U.S. district court in Michigan sentenced a Cameroonian man to 17 years in prison for bringing a 14-year-old girl from his country to work as his unpaid maid. That same year, a Moroccan couple was sentenced to home confinement for forcing their 12-year-old Moroccan niece to work grueling hours caring for their baby.

Taken with parents' permission?
In Germantown, Md., a Nigerian couple used their daughter's passport to bring in a 14-year-old Nigerian girl as their maid. She worked for them for five years before escaping in 2001. In Germany, France, the Netherlands and England, African immigrants have been arrested for forcing children from their home countries to work as their servants.

Shyima was adopted last year by Chuck and Jenny Hall of Beaumont, Calif. The family lives near Disneyland, where they have taken her a half-dozen times. She graduated from high school this summer after retaking her exit exam and hopes to become a police officer.

Shyima, now 19, has a list of assigned chores. She wears purple eyeshadow, has a boyfriend and frequently updates her profile on MySpace. Her hands are neatly manicured.

But in her closet, she keeps a box of pictures of her parents and her brothers and sisters. "I don't look at them because it makes me cry," she said. "How could they? They're my parents."

When her father died last year, her family had no way of reaching her.

And now?
On a recent afternoon in Cairo, Madame Amal walked into the lobby of her apartment complex wearing designer sunglasses and a chic scarf.

After nearly two years in a U.S. prison cell, she's living once more in the spacious apartment where Shyima first worked as her maid. The apartment is adorned in the style of a Louis XIV palace, with ornately carved settees, gold-leaf vases and life-sized portraits of her and her husband.

She did not agree to be interviewed for this story.

Before the door closed behind her, a little girl slipped in carrying grocery bags. She wore a shabby T-shirt. Her small feet slapped the floor in loose flip-flops. Her eyes were trained on the ground.

She looked to be around 9 years old.

NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS WERE DUPED BY A PONZI SCHEMER

2008-12-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

BERNARD MADOFF established a reputation in Wall street only to be uncovered that he is a fraud and a scammer using the old Ponzi scheme. His total loot..50 billion dollars.

Deborah Coltin learned yesterday morning that the $8 million foundation she has led for a decade, which supported a wide range of Jewish programs on the north shore of Massachusetts, did not actually exist.

The foundation had invested its endowment with Bernard L. Madoff, a storied name on Wall Street. Every year, Madoff paid out several hundred thousand dollars to the foundation. But on Thursday, Madoff was charged with securities fraud after confessing to his sons that his business was a Ponzi scheme, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The returns paid to investors came from money invested by other people. And there was almost nothing left.

It may be the largest fraud in the history of Wall Street, authorities said. Madoff is charged with stealing as much as $50 billion, in part to cover a pattern of massive losses, even as he cultivated a reputation as a financial mastermind and prominent philanthropist.

Rod Blagojevich asked to step down

2008-12-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

The travails of the Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who was accused of selling the position vacated by President-elect Barack Obama continue as the Attorney General asked te highest court to remove him from office.

This is from CNN

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Friday asked her state's highest court to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office temporarily.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan says Gov. Rod Blagojevich needs to step down.

Moments after Madigan's announcement, news broke that Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, had resigned, a spokesman for the governor said.

Blagojevich, 52, and Harris, 46, were arrested this week on federal corruption charges relating in part to the selection of a successor to President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.

The governor's attorney has said Blagojevich did nothing wrong.

Madigan's office also asked the Illinois Supreme Court to strip Blagojevich of duties, including appointing Obama's Senate replacement.

"I recognize that this is an extraordinary request, but these are extraordinary circumstances," Madigan said Friday in Chicago.

Madigan said she wants Blagojevich out of office because, given the charges against him, she does not think he can do his job. The court filing asks that Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn become acting governor.

"As governor, Mr. Blagojevich's duty is to do what is best for the people of the state of Illinois, not for himself.

UK Reopening its door to Philippine Nurses

2008-12-06T03:48:00.000-08:00

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported yesterday in Dec. 4 that the United Kingdom has re-opened its doors to Filipino nurses.

“After a lull of over a year, the United Kingdom is again hiring Filipino nurses,” Labor Secretary Marianito Roque said in an interview.

Roque said an initial batch of 160 Filipinos would be deployed to various hospitals and retirement homes in Britain.

Over a year ago, the United Kingdom adopted stricter regulations in the hiring of foreign nurses, thus virtually closing the door for the employment of Filipino nurses there.

“For a while there has been no vacancy for Filipino nurses in UK, but because of the aging population there, they realized they need our Filipino nurses to take care of them,” Roque noted.

Roque expressed confidence that the recruitment of 160 Filipino nurses in UK signals the start of growth in demand for Filipino nurses worldwide.

“We hope that more Filipino nurses will be recruited to work in UK and other countries abroad,” Roque said.

The Philippine Nursing Association reported that the country is now experiencing a surplus of Filipino nurses due to the declining demand in the United States.

Roque had previously ordered a dialogue with all the stakeholders at the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) office to determine the real situation of the country’s nursing sector.

He said DOLE conducted the dialogue to determine whether there is really a shortage or a surplus of nurses so that the government could come out with appropriate measures.

President-elect Obama's Acceptance Speech

2008-11-05T05:37:00.000-08:00

The acceptance speech was made in Chicago by Barack Obama...the first African-American to become the President of the United States.

John McCain's Concession Speech after Obama was proclaimed winner

2008-11-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

The end of the long journey

Sarah Palin's Daughter, Pregnant

2008-09-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

Hardly a week passes and the dirt about the Vice-Presidential candidate SARAH PALIN
was already enormous.

Latest is about the 17 year old daughter, a senior high school student who is pregnant.

Here is an excerpt of the news from CNN.

Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, is pregnant and will keep the baby and marry the father, a senior aide to Sen. John McCain confirmed to CNN Tuesday.

Republican presidential candidate McCain was aware of Bristol Palin's pregnancy before he chose her mother for his running mate, the aide said.

The aide said it was decided the campaign would reveal this information now because of rampant Internet rumors that Sarah Palin's 4-month-old baby, who has Down syndrome, was actually Bristol's.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family," the statement said.

The Palins also asked the media to respect their daughter's privacy.

There is a saying, charity begins at home. Is this one way at looking at the VP where she's coming from.

Gustav Mother of Storms and Mandatory Evacuation

2008-08-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

After Katrina, the New Orleans residents have no complaint of being asked to evacuate for the coming hurricane Gustav by Mayro Ray Nagin.

Nagin declared a mandatory evacuation that began at 8 a.m. Sunday for residents living on the west bank of the Mississippi River, and at noon for all other residents.

Gustav crossed western Cuba on Saturday and has already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean. At 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was a Category 3 storm centered about 270 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving northwest near 17 mph. It had top sustained winds of around 115 mph. It had weakened slightly, but forecasters expected it to grow more intense by Monday. The storm could bring a surge of up to 20 feet to the coast and rainfall totals of up to 15 inches.

A hurricane warning was in effect for over 500 miles of Gulf coast from Cameron, La., near the Texas border to the Alabama-Florida state line. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley issued a mandatory evacuation order for some coastal areas of Mobile and Baldwin counties

Forecasters said the hurricane was most likely to strike the Gulf Coast on Monday. New Orleans could get winds of up to 73 m.p.h. and possibly greater.

CNN,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,hurricane,business,OBAMA,BIDEN,PALIN

JOHN MCCAIN PICKS SARAH PALIN AS HIS VICE-PRESIDENT

2008-08-30T04:44:00.000-07:00

Senator JOHN Mc CAIN surprised a lot of people by picking SARAH PALIN as his Vice-Presidential candidate. Could it be because he thinks that when Hillary Clinton was not nominated, the women voters were disappointed?

"She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second," the presumptive Republican nominee said at a Dayton, Ohio, rally of about 15,000 supporters, who welcomed the surprise pick of the relatively unknown politician with cheers and flags.

"She's got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today," McCain said.

Palin, 44, described herself as a fighter against corruption and a bipartisan reformer in her first appearance as a candidate for vice president, an office she said she never expected to seek.

CNN,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business,OBAMA,BIDEN,PALIN

The Great Escape

2008-07-01T04:37:00.000-07:00

The ring leader opened the door by kicking it out. The others followed. This is not from a novel nor from a movie. This is also the first time, I read a news about a great escape--led by an animal.

photocredit: freenaturepics

Fifteen camels, several llamas and a potbellied pig broke out of a circus near Amsterdam on Monday. The ringleader? A giraffe who bolted, too.

Police said the giraffe kicked open a fence and walked out.

"The other animals walked out with him," said Amsterdam police spokesman Rob Van Der Veen.

The animals were part of a traveling circus that had set up its tents in the city of Amstelveen, six miles outside the Dutch capital.

They made their break about 5:45 a.m., wandering about a residential street and riling up a neighborhood dog, police said.

MARTHA STEWART-UK visa denied

2008-06-21T04:13:00.000-07:00

Who would expect that the business magnate, lifestyle guru, author of several books and one of the most powerful women according to a magazine is banned from travelling to UK?

True, Martha Stewart is denied of the visa because of her conviction four ears ago in the IMCLONE case.

Stewart was scheduled to meet at the Royal Academy with several figures in the fashion and leisure industry, the Telegraph reported.

The newspaper attributed the rejection of her visa to a blanket policy banning people with criminal convictions.

A representative of the British Borders Agency would not comment on Stewart, saying only that "we continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offenses abroad."

Pregnancy Pact for Teens

2008-06-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

Bearing a child carries with it a lot of responsibilities. I just could not believe what youth will do just to seal their friendship. What is their objective? To have children of the same age? Who are the fathers? Is this some kind of a fad?

Here is an excerpt from msnbc.

BOSTON - An investigation has been launched into an apparent teenage "pregnancy pact" that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.

A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester, Mass., became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.

"Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine, which broke news of the pact on its Web site.

Tim Russert , 58

2008-06-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

Tim Russert, the host of the NBC's "Meet the Press," died Friday, according to the network. He was 58.

The earlier report said that he succumbed to heart attack while at work while the later news corrected the cause to be heart embolism.

He just got back from Italy with his family. It was Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC Nightly News who announced the news at 3;39 that Tim Russert collapsed and never recovered.

He said Mr. Russert had just moved his father, who is in his late 80s, from one facility to another in Buffalo. He said he loved his family, his Catholic faith, his country, politics, the Buffalo Bills, the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals.

After Mr. Brokaw made the announcement, the network switched to Brian Williams, the anchor of the NBC News, who is reporting from Afghanistan this week. Mr. Williams broke down as he tried to describe what the loss meant to his network family.

The network is struggling through shock and grief to bring the story of Mr. Russert’s life and journalistic achievements to its viewers immediately.

Tim Russert,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,CNN",NBC,politics

YVES STAINT LAURENT DIES AT 71

2008-06-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yves Saint Laurent, who was regarded as successor to Christian Dior and made names in the fashion scene in 1958 died in Paris on Sunday.

Saint Laurent was named head of the House of Dior at the age of 21 when Dior died suddenly in 1957. His stardom in the fashion world started the following year when he introduced the trapeze dress with its narrow shoulders and wide swinging skirt.

After suffering from bouts of depression and health problems, he resigned from fashion world in 2002.

For more about YSL read Fashion Icon.

Yves Saint Laurent,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,CNN"

Bush is Silent on Tibet Crackdown

2008-03-22T05:25:00.000-07:00

While Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democratic presidential contenders, issued strong criticisms of China, Bush remained silent on Tibet crackdown. He's also determined to go to Beijing Olympics to support the athletes.

Here is an excerpt from New York Times.

WASHINGTON — China’s violent crackdown on protesters in Tibet is having powerful political reverberations in Washington, where the White House is weighing how far to go in condemning the Chinese government, even as it defends President Bush’s decision to attend the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Mr. Bush has long said the United States and China have “a complex relationship,” and that complexity was on full display this week. While his administration has called for an end to the violence, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, phoned her Chinese counterpart to urge restraint, Mr. Bush himself has remained silent.

hillary clinton,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,Tibet crackdown,George Bush,obama,real estate business,politics,john mccain

Obama's Clinton's Mac Cain's passport files accessed

2008-03-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

What do these State Department Employees up to when they snooped through the files of Obama,Clinton and McCain?

Here is the exceprt of the news from MSNBC.

WASHINGTON - State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — and the department's inspector general is investigating.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.

hillary clinton,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,obama,real estate business,politics,john mccain

Blackmail for Greencard

2008-03-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

Immigrants who hope to enjoy permanent residence and ultimately the much coveted citizenship become victims of immigration agents who do not ask for money but for sex.

Read this story about a Colombian wife of an American citizen.

No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.

immigration,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,greencard,Homeland Security real estate business,politics

Heather Mills is richer by $48.6 million dollars after the divorce

2008-03-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

She did not get what she demanded, 30 million as divorce settlement but she is far richer before she married Paul McCartney with $ 48.6 million.

Aside from that money, her child will be receiving $70,000 a year.

Here is the excerpt of the news.

Mills has complained that the tabloid press treats her "worse than a murderer." One paper immediately claimed it had run an instant poll showing that 90 percent of Britons believed Mills got too much money in the settlement.

McCartney, whose first wife, Linda McCartney, died of breast cancer in 1998, declined to comment on the case on Monday.

Mills has been largely out of the public eye for months except for her appearance last year on the American TV show "Dancing With the Stars." But after court Monday, she stood before the cameras and let rip with a stream-of-consciousness monologue that was sometimes hard to follow.

She trashed McCartney's lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, who represented Prince Charles in his divorce from Princess Diana. She said Shackleton "has called me many, many names."

She said the name-calling came "before even meeting me when I was in a wheelchair." Mills's left leg was amputated below the knee after a 1993 motorcycle accident. It was unclear how exactly that factored into her treatment by Shackleton.

She said the trial judge, Hugh Bennett, had calculated McCartney's net worth at about $800 million dollars, when "everybody knows" it is actually twice that much. She also mocked the judge's conclusion that she and McCartney never lived together until their June 2002 wedding; she said they had been living together since March 2000.

Home foreclosures number is still going up

2007-09-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

This is not good for real estate business.

LOS ANGELES - The number of foreclosure filings reported in the U.S. last month more than doubled versus August 2006 and jumped 36 percent from July, a trend that signals many homeowners are increasingly unable to make timely payments on their mortgages or sell their homes amid a national housing slump.

A total of 243,947 foreclosure filings were reported in August, up 115 percent from 113,300 in the same month a year ago, Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. said Tuesday.

There were 179,599 foreclosure filings reported in July.

Read the entire news here.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,real estate business,weird news,Greenspan

War is all about global oil supply--Greenspan

2007-09-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Alan Greenspan admitted that the war is all aobut global oil supply and the ouster of Saddam is crucial for oil security.

Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

Read the entire news here.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,Age of Turbulence,weird news,Greenspan

O.J. Simpson in the News Again for Alleged Robbery

2007-09-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

He claimed he just wanted to get his belongings back.

O.J. Simpson Is Charged In Alleged Robbery

Las Vegas police arrested O.J. Simpson yesterday and charged the former football star with six felony counts in connection with an alleged hotel-room robbery, placing Simpson in his most serious legal jeopardy since his acquittal on double murder charges in 1995.

Simpson, 60, was arrested yesterday morning, three days after two sports-memorabilia dealers told police that Simpson and five other men burst into their room at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino, several of them brandishing guns, and seized various mementos, including several items autographed by the NFL Hall of Famer.

Read the entire news from Washington Post.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,OJ Simpson

Five Year Old Kid drives car because the mother is drunk

2007-08-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

See this CNN Video about a five year old toddler who drove their car home because the mother is intoxicated.

Kid driver

Strong Earthquake Strikes Indonesia

2007-07-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

An undersea earthquake with a 6.3 magnitude jolted Indonesia's eastern Moluccas chain on Sunday, but there were no immediate reports of any deaths or damage, a meteorological agency official said.

The epicenter of the quake lay in the sea at a depth of 64 miles, and 220 kilometers northwest of the town of Saumlaki in the Moluccas, Setiyono, an analyst with the meteorology and geophysics agency, said.

He said no tsunami warning had been issued.

Source: MSNBC

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Crackdown on Officials with Mistresses

2007-06-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

I hope this will be adopted by other countries.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China plans to sack all officials found to have secretly "kept and supported" mistresses, in a move aimed at raising social morals, state media reported on Friday.

The step hardens up previous policy.

"It is a misunderstanding that officials who have mistresses would only be sacked when the situation is serious," the Beijing News quoted a Ministry of Personnel spokesman as saying.

Mistresses and "second wives" are common among government officials and businessmen in China, and Chinese media have said the financial pressures of keeping mistresses have driven some officials to seek money through bribes or abuse of power.

Corrupt officials are a major cause of public outrage in China, and the country's Communist rulers have warned that if graft is not checked it could threaten the party's grip on power.

The ministry said it had studied the issue and found it "necessary to make a clarification and emphasis" on the punishment for officials who supported mistresses.

"The morality of government officials shown in their management or power operation... directly affects the moral level of the whole society," the spokesman was quoted as saying.

"Therefore, officials should set up good examples, and abide by social morality rules."

Last year, a Chinese vice admiral was jailed for life on embezzlement charges after one of his many mistresses blew the whistle on him when he refused to give in to her demand for money.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Airplane Crashed into a building in Africa

2007-06-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

JOHANNESBURG - An Angolan TAAG Boeing 737 crashed in the northern city of M'banza Congo on Thursday, killing at least six people and injuring others, Angola's ANGOP news agency said.

The airplane was carrying 78 passengers and was en route from Luanda to M'Banza Congo, which is in northern Angola near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The agency said the plane lost control upon landing and crashed into a building, destroying it. It said a number of severely injured passengers were taken to hospital for treatment.

Source: MSNBC

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Trade Secrets are Trade Secrets

2007-05-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

Trade secrets are trade secrets. Steal it and you will be convicted when caught.

The excerpt of the news:

ATLANTA - A federal judge ignored a former Coca-Cola secretary’s tearful plea for mercy Wednesday and sentenced her to eight years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from the world’s largest beverage maker.

U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester told Joya Williams, 42, that he was giving her a longer sentence than recommended by federal prosecutors and sentencing guidelines because, “This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society.”

Williams had faced up to 10 years in prison on the single conspiracy charge in a failed scheme to sell Coke’s trade secrets to rival Pepsi for at least $1.5 million.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Boris Yeltsin, 76

2007-04-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Yeltsin died Monday at 76, a Kremlin official announced. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying that he died of heart failure.

Like Peter the Great, the 18th-century czar he once mentioned as his model, Yeltsin was no towering democrat. In launching a war against the breakaway southern region of Chechnya in 1994, he was responsible for the violent deaths of more Russian citizens than any Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin. As president, he tolerated -- even authorized -- the excesses of a system in some ways as corrupt and morally adrift as the one it replaced.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Employers are checking online personal information

2007-04-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

This news is for people who are posting personal information online and discussing
their problems in their work in their blogs.

Want a job? Clean up your Web act
By Tim Ferguson, Special to CNET News.com

Employers are increasingly checking out online personal information about candidates when making recruitment decisions.

Net reputations built up through online activities--such as blogging, posting videos to YouTube, or using social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.com--can have a significant effect when applying for a job, according to a report from business social network Viadeo.

According to the research, released March 28, one in five employers finds information about candidates on the Internet, and 59 percent of those said it influences recruitment decisions.

A fourth of human resources decision makers said they had rejected candidates based on personal information found online. Most people, however, remain unaware of the effect their Net reputation can have on their job prospects.

humor,Washington Post,BBC News,Reuters,technology,business,humor,images,weird news,jokes

Diabetic Mr. Universe Tussled with the Police

2007-04-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Diabetic Mr. Universe suspected to be drunk, tussled withh the police

A reigning Mr. Universe was charged Tuesday with resisting arrest and assault on a police officer after a scuffle at a Redwood City movie theater in which police mistakenly thought the diabetic bodybuilder was drunk as he was slipping into insulin shock.

Doug Burns faces up to a year in county jail if convicted in an incident that has drawn sharp criticism from some diabetes experts who believe officers overreacted to a medical situation.

"Doug is the consummate gentleman," said Jeff Hitchcock, founder of Children With Diabetes, an educational support group that helps families of children with diabetes. "The treatment he received by the police is outrageous."

A Redwood City Police Department spokesman defended the officers.

"It's unfortunate that this event occurred, but I think the officers acted properly in the circumstances that they were faced with," police Capt. Chris Cesena said. "Our personnel were not given enough time to assess Mr. Burn's personal condition."

Officers were called to Century 20 theater in downtown Redwood City at about 7:30 p.m. Sunday after a security guard, believing the disoriented Burns was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, escorted him outside, police said. When two officers arrived, the powerfully built Burns, 43, allegedly pushed one and then assumed a "fighting stance," police said.

One officer used pepper spray in an attempt to subdue Burns but with no effect. Both officers then wrestled Burns to the ground and needed three more officers, who arrived as backup, to handcuff him, police said. During the scuffle, Burns suffered small cuts to his nose and forehead, while one officer received a small cut to his finger and another officer suffered an arm injury and was placed on medical leave, Cesena said.

Burns, a Redwood City father of three, is the 2006-07 Natural Mr. Universe, the winner of a competition that stresses bodybuilding without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He often speaks publicly about his diabetes to raise awareness of the disease.

He disputed the police version of the incident, saying: "That story is completely out of line."

Burns, diagnosed with diabetes at age 7, said he realized his blood sugar was low shortly after entering the theater. Burns tried to make his way to the snack counter on the second floor but began losing his vision. Burns said he wasn't able to stand properly as a security guard escorted him down the theater escalator.

"The last recollection I have is leaning against the security guard as he's bringing me out and perspiring a lot," Burns said. "To say that I confronted them in a fighting stance? I couldn't even stand up. I couldn't see."

Burns said he remembers nothing outside the theater, and the first time he recalls seeing police officers was as they stood over him while a paramedic treated him.

Prosecutors decided to file the misdemeanor charges against Burns based on the police reports, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. He pointed to a case several years ago in which the district attorney's office charged a man in a fatal car crash but later dropped the charges after medical evidence showed he had been in a diabetic coma at the time.

"As we read the police reports, we're not seeing a similar thing here," Wagstaffe said. "If (Burns) ultimately presents us with information to that effect -- that he was unconscious of what had occurred -- then we will consider it."

Diabetics suffering from low blood sugar levels -- or hypoglycemia -- often become confused and experience blurry or double vision, nervousness, irritability or even aggression, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

"They closely mimic drunkenness," Hitchcock said. "The presumption that someone is drunk when they are behaving that way is a bad assumption."

They can become desperate in their movements as they attempt to get sugar-rich foods while their body is simultaneously shutting down, said Dr. Joseph Prendergast, a veteran Redwood City endocrinologist.

"People get very anxious because they are seeking some help," Prendergast said. "It happens to wives, it happens to kids who have known dad for years, and it also happens at snack food counters in theaters."

Cesena said the officers had no way of knowing Burns was diabetic or slipping into insulin shock until after he was arrested. They did not notice whether Burns had a MedicAlert bracelet or any other indication he was diabetic, he said. Burns said he was not sure whether he had his MedicAlert bracelet on at the time.

After Burns was cuffed, police called medics to treat him for the pepper spray, and he told them he was diabetic and suffering from low blood sugar, Cesena said. Burns was taken to San Mateo Medical Center for treatment. He was cited on the misdemeanors and was released without being booked into jail, police said.

He is scheduled to be arraigned May 2, and prosecutors will not seek to have bail set in the case, Wagstaffe said.

diabetic recipes,chicken recipes,meat recipes,beef recipes,vegetables recipes,recipes,special diets,low sodium,calories

Korean Business Tycoon Convicted for High Profile Corruption

2007-02-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

Ordinary people would look for reasons why rich and successful people would embezzle large amount of cash. How are they going to be caught when they control the whole organization?

This news article about Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Mong-Koo explained the what, the why and what now of the beleaguered business tycoon.

Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo, handed a surprise three-year jail term for high-profile corruption, won't be donning prison garb anytime soon and for now remains in control of the troubled, yet expanding automaker.

Chung, convicted Monday for embezzling the equivalent of more than $100 million in company funds and other charges, plans to appeal the ruling, a process expected to take from six months to two years. He will be free during that time to run the company.

He must use that window of opportunity, analysts say, to reform an organization beset by woes ranging from its authoritarian management structure, chronic labor troubles, and the need to better compete in overseas markets with more harmonious Japanese competitors.

"Mr. Chung has to make the management system change," said Yong Dae-in, an auto industry analyst at Goodmorning Shinhan Securities in Seoul, emphasizing it must become more decentralized and less dependent on him.

The weakness of Hyundai's top-down operating style came into focus in April when Chung was arrested, jailed and grilled by prosecutors for two months before being allowed back into the boardroom following release on bail.

During that time the company, along with affiliate Kia Motors Corp., floundered as decisions related to overseas plants were delayed and problems with its strike-prone labor union festered.

Read the entire story here.

breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Malaysian Flooding

2007-01-21T12:48:00.000-08:00

Bayi who is from Malaysia sent me these pictures of flooding in his country.

1. Businesses are closed

2. They use banca for means of transportation within the city.

3. Streets are deep in water so only small boats can ferry people.

4. Even the main roads are gone.

5. They're lucky if the water is only knee deep high.

6. Vehicles caught in raging water have to be pushed or towed.

Google Millionaires retiring

2007-01-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

When you become millionaire what are you going to do? Work until your retirement age?
Retire and set up a business? Go back to school?

The millionaires that the legendary company Google have decided to cash in their millions and put up their own. This news article from San Francisco Chronicle tells us what the old timers in Google did.

O Googlers, where art thou?
Some employees found instant riches in the Internet search company's initial public offering -- affording them the luxury of pursuing new dreams

Who in their right mind would leave a job at Google Inc., a company legendary for pampering workers with free annual ski trips and gourmet food?

Well, it turns out plenty of people do. And many of them are some of the Web giant's earliest employees.

Extremely wealthy from stock options that soared in value, 100 of Google's first 300 workers have quietly resigned to go to law school, help poor shopkeepers get loans or simply to live the good life. Although hardly a mass exodus, the numbers are adding up, scattering what some employees considered their second families.

For Google, the departures present a new hurdle. Enticing as many old-timers to stay as possible is a priority because, with each farewell party, a piece of the company's institutional knowledge and culture is lost.

"We take a lot of time and care, in particular with our old-timers," said Stacy Sullivan, Google's human resources director. "It's so important that we are paying attention to whether they're being challenged."

What's happened to Google following its blockbuster initial public offering in 2004 echoes several of technology's other titans, such as Yahoo Inc., eBay Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But because of Google's celebrity and generous perks, the question remained whether the pattern would play out again.

Google's initial public offering immediately minted more than 900 millionaires at the company, by one estimate. Even many rank-and-file employees became instantly wealthy. The total has grown over time as its shares have catapulted in value.

Financial freedom gave the former Googlers in this article wide latitude in deciding what to do with their lives. The reasons for leaving are many: Alack of new challenges, ambivalence about the company's growth and a desire for a career change are just a few.

But virtually all of the former Googlers fondly recall helping build what is now the most popular search engine, particular during the early years when they felt like they had a big impact and employees knew all their colleagues' names. Those cheery memories, however, are mixed with flashbacks of late nights at the office, spending Valentine's dinner in the company cafeteria and strife.

Google,stock option

Embryo Bank -bank for designer babies

2007-01-06T04:20:00.000-08:00

We have all sorts of banks, thrift banks, commercial banks, blood banks and other banks where an item can be stored and withdrawn. Here comes embryo bank.

Excerpt of the news from Washington Post

'Embryo Bank' Stirs Ethics Fears
Firm Lets Clients Pick Among Fertilized Eggs

A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors.

The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences, according to its founder.

"We're just trying to help people have babies," said Jennalee Ryan, who arranged for an egg donor to start medical treatments to produce a second batch of embryos this week. "For me, that's what this is all about: helping make babies."

But the embryo brokerage, which calls itself "the world's first human embryo bank," raises alarm among some fertility experts and bioethicists, who say the service marks another disturbing step toward commercialization of human reproduction and "designer babies."

Embryo bank,
Washington Post

Ex-US President Gerald Ford Died at age 93

2006-12-27T08:31:00.000-08:00

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., 93, who became the 38th president of the United States as a result of some of the most extraordinary events in U.S. history and sought to restore the nation's confidence in the basic institutions of government, has died. His wife, Betty, reported the death in a statement last night.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage, Calif. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

Read the news here.

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Diabetics Confront a Tangle of Workplace Laws

2006-12-26T08:59:00.001-08:00

Is there such a thing as diabetic discrimination?

Read this excerpt of a news article from New Yok Times.

MINNEAPOLIS — John Steigauf spent more than a decade fiddling with the innards of those huge United Parcel Service trucks until an icy day two years ago when the company put him on leave from his mechanic's job. A supervisor escorted him off the premises.

His work was good. He hadn't socked the boss or embezzled money. It had to do with what was inside him: diabetes.

U.P.S. framed it as a safety issue: Mr. Steigauf's blood sugar might suddenly plummet while he tested a truck, causing him to slam into someone.

Mr. Steigauf considered it discrimination, a taint that diabetes can carry. "I was regarded as a damaged piece of meat," he said. "It was like, 'You're one of those, and we can't have one of those.' "

With 21 million American diabetics, disputes like this have increasingly rippled through the workplace:

¶A mortgage loan officer in Oregon was denied permission to eat at her desk to stanch her sugar fluctuations, and eventually was fired.

¶A Sears lingerie saleswoman in Illinois with nerve damage in her leg quit after being told she could not cut through a stockroom to reach her department.

¶A worker at a candy company in Wisconsin was fired after asking where he could dispose of his insulin needles.

In each instance, diabetics contend that they are being blocked by their employers from the near-normal lives their doctors say are possible. But the companies say they are struggling, too, with confusion about whether diabetes is a legitimate disability and with concern about whether it is overly expensive, hazardous and disruptive to accommodate the illness.

The debate will probably intensify. The number of diabetics in America swelled by 80 percent in the past decade. Experts say the disease is on its way to becoming a conspicuous fact of life in the nation’s labor force, raising all sorts of issues for workers and managers.

Even an outspoken advocate for diabetics like Fran Carpentier, a Type 1 diabetic and a senior editor at Parade magazine, understands the implications for business. "Knowing what it's like to live with the disease hour by hour, day by day, I wonder if I owned my own company if I would hire someone with diabetes," she said. "I'm being bluntly honest. And it kills me to say this."

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Mice in the Plane

2006-12-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

We heard the news about snakes and other exotic animals being smuggled thru the
plane. But this is the first time, I heard of mice in a plane.

Mass mice escape hits Saudi plane

PhotocreditAP
More than 100 passengers on a Saudi plane were left panic-stricken by the unexpected appearance of furry fellow flyers - dozens of mice.

The small rodents - about 80 in total, according to a local newspaper - escaped from the bag of a man travelling on the domestic flight.

An airline official said the aircraft was at 28,000 feet (8,500m) when mice began scurrying around the cabin.

Some of the mice fell on passengers' heads, Al-Hayat newspaper reports.

The incident occurred on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from the capital, Riyadh, to north-eastern town of Tabuk.

The flight landed safely and the bag's owner was detained by police investigating how he managed to get the mice onto the plane.

No explanation was given for the man's live cargo.

Story from BBC NEWS

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Skilling Begins Sentence for Enron Malfeasances

2006-12-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

The once-upon-a-time top honcho of Enron, Harvard graduate, finance wiz started serving his 24 year month sentence where he is going to earn a few dollars per day working 7 1/2 hours as groundskeeper, food service worker or warehouseman.

Skilling Begins Sentence for Enron Malfeasances

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 14, 2006; Page D01

Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling reported to a low-security federal prison in Minnesota yesterday to start serving a 24-year, six-month sentence for his role in one of history's biggest corporate scandals.

Skilling arrived at the facility in Waseca, about 75 miles south of Minneapolis, at 1:07 p.m. EST. Accompanying him in a sport-utility vehicle were his wife, Rebecca, his longtime assistant Sherri Sera and his younger brother Mark. Under federal guidelines, Skilling, 53, must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence -- or more than two decades. He is appealing his conviction by a jury in May on 19 counts of fraud, making false statements and conspiracy.

Read the entire story here.

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Dr. Jack Kevorkian to be paroled in June 2007

2006-12-13T01:14:00.000-08:00

I did not know his whereabouts until I read this news. Several years ago, he was always in the newspaper until he was convicted for his practice of assisting suicide.

LANSING, Michigan (AP) -- After more than eight years in prison, a frail Dr. Jack Kevorkian will be paroled in June with a promise that he won't assist in any more suicides, a prison spokesman said Wednesday.

Leo Lalonde, the corrections spokesman, would not provide further details.

Kevorkian, once the nation's most vocal advocate of assisted suicide for the terminally ill, is serving a 10- to 25-year sentence for second-degree murder in the 1998 poisoning of Thomas Youk, 52, Oakland County man with Lou Gehrig's disease. Michigan banned assisted suicide in 1998.

Youk's death was videotaped and shown on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Kevorkian, who claimed to have assisted in at least 130 deaths in the 1990s, called it a mercy killing.

Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's attorney, said this summer that Kevorkian, now 78, was suffering from hepatitis C and diabetes, that his weight had dropped to 113 pounds and that he had less than a year to live.

Read the entire news here.

Chile's Gen Pinochet dies at 91

2006-12-11T00:58:00.000-08:00

Chile's Gen Pinochet dies at 91

Gen Pinochet celebrated his 91st birthday last month
Gen Pinochet's life
Chile's former military leader Augusto Pinochet has died in hospital aged 91. He had been thought to be recovering after a heart attack a week ago.

Gen Pinochet took power in a 1973 coup, and more than 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" in his 17-year rule.

He was accused of dozens of human rights abuses as well as fraud but poor health meant he never faced trial.

No state funeral or national mourning has been authorised. He will be buried with military honours on Tuesday.

"The government has authorised flags to fly at half-mast at army facilities," government spokesman Ricardo Lagos Weber said.

Thousands of anti-Pinochet protesters took to the streets in the centre of the capital, Santiago, with tear gas and water cannon used to disperse crowds.

Cheering opponents of Gen Pinochet attempted to reach the presidential palace, but found police barring their way.

Sporadic clashes broke out, with Chilean TV showing images of fires burning along one of the city's main avenues.

What saddens me is that this criminal has died without having been sentenced
Hugo Gutierrez
Human rights lawyer

Santiago's military hospital said Gen Pinochet passed away at 1415 local time (1715GMT).

Hospital spokesman Dr Juan Ignacio Vergara said that shortly beforehand, he "suffered grave and unexpected setbacks" requiring him to be moved into intensive care unit.

"We administered all the possible procedures but were not able to resuscitate the general," Dr Vergara said.

"He died surrounded by his family."

After last week's acute heart attack, the general underwent a procedure to unblock an artery, and received the last rites from a Catholic priest.

HAVE YOUR SAY
I hope my country can find peace after his death. Reconciliation is the key
Veronica, Santiago, Chile
But in the days afterwards his condition had been thought to be improving.

Chilean newspaper La Tercera de la Hora Online says dozens of supporters who had been keeping a vigil outside the hospital were weeping and praying following the general's death.

It is expected they will be joined by other supporters as the news spreads.

'Loved by many'

Opponents have expressed anger that Gen Pinochet died without justice being done over the charges that had been brought.

"What saddens me is that this criminal has died without having been sentenced and I believe the responsibility the state bears in this has to be considered", human rights lawyer Hugo Gutierrez told La Tercera Online.

Despite his human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved the country from Marxism.

But even many loyal supporters abandoned him after it became clear in 2004 that he had stolen about $27m in secret offshore bank accounts that were under investigation at the time of his death, the BBC's Daniel Schweimler says.

There were also allegations that Gen Pinochet and his son Marco Antonio Pinochet made money from cocaine smuggling, charges which the family denied.

'Political responsibility'

In September 1973, Gen Pinochet led the armed forces in a dramatic coup against the democratically elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende.

Close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancour towards anybody, that I love my country above all else
Recent Pinochet statement

The violence of the uprising and the oppression that followed shook the world. He went on to become one of South America's best-known military rulers of the 1970s and 80s.

Earlier in November, Gen Pinochet was placed under house arrest over the abduction of two people in 1973.

The charges - the latest in a series - related to the Caravan of Death, a military operation to remove opponents of his rule.

In a statement read by his wife on his 91st birthday, Gen Pinochet said he accepted "political responsibility" for acts committed during his rule.

"Today, close to the end of my days, I want to make clear that I hold no rancour towards anybody, that I love my country above all else," his statement said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6167237.stm

Published: 2006/12/11 00:53:29 GMT
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D.C. Tenants Move From Building in Fear

2006-12-11T00:28:00.000-08:00

So we think that the serious problem between landlords and tenants that results to threats arson happen only in movies.

D.C. Tenants Move From Building in Fear
Owner Denies Wrongdoing in Vandalism, Threat and Arson

By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 10, 2006; C01

In trendy Adams Morgan, in the midst of a protracted eviction battle this fall, came the broken windows, cut electrical lines, a death threat from strangers pounding on doors and a brazen arson that caused a fleeing tenant to fall from the second story and break her leg.

The District recently ruled in the tenants' favor in the eviction fight, saying they did not have to move out while the landlord renovated the worn, three-story, gray-brick apartment building to bring it up to code. But it was too late.

By last week, all but one family had given up and moved from the 12-unit building at 1846 Vernon St. NW, a block from the bustling 18th Street entertainment strip. And that family plans to move, too.

"We were very scared to live there," said Rabia Begum, 20, a Montgomery College biomedical student who had lived in the building. "You don't know what could happen."

With a shrinking pool of affordable housing, landlords in Washington frequently urge tenants to move so they can convert apartment buildings to condominiums or, as in this case, renovate rental units. But the battle on Vernon Street between the management and tenants, most of whom are from Bangladesh, was especially ugly.

Tenants have accused management of orchestrating a campaign of fear and violence to get them to give up their rent-controlled apartments to make way for extensive renovations that ultimately would generate higher rents from new tenants.

The building's co-owner, Perseus Realty of Washington, denies any wrongdoing and suggested last week that tenants were behind the vandalism -- perhaps in search of financial gain.

The Nov. 5 fire, which investigators quickly declared an arson, remains under criminal investigation by police and fire authorities. No arrests have been made.

D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who represents Adams Morgan, has been holding investigative hearings to examine whether Perseus and the building's management company, Barac Co., have used undue pressure to get residents to move out of various buildings in the District. Barac officials would not comment on the dispute.

Perseus also owns an adjacent 12-unit building at 1840 Vernon St. Residents say that there has been no similar vandalism but that the management has been urging tenants there to move out as well.

Only a few tenants remain in that building, said Natalie LeBeau of the Tenant Anti-Displacement Program at the nonprofit Housing Counseling Services Inc.

"There has been a solid year of pressure, using a variety of techniques," LeBeau said, referring to both buildings on Vernon Street.

LeBeau said that the District has had many other contentious eviction battles and that in some instances the heat or electricity was suddenly shut off or "somehow, windows get broken." But she said this case stands out and added, "I've never had tenants accuse a landlord of arson."

The dispute at 1846 Vernon St. dates to August 2005, when the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs approved an application by Perseus to evict tenants there and at 1840 Vernon St. The agency agreed that the building was unsafe to live in while it was being brought to code. The company cited a study that found structural deficiencies, environmental hazards and unsafe levels of asbestos and lead paint.

Managers sent notices telling residents to move within 120 days and offered each leaseholder $1,000 to relocate. Tenants said they were never told that they could return to their units later at the same rent, a right they have under the city's real estate law.

"The tenants were asked to vacate permanently," LeBeau said.

Not so, said Woody Bolton, a principal of Perseus Realty. Tenants were offered other places to live and given written materials telling them they could return to the building, he said.

The tenants scored a victory in September 2005, after Graham intervened. The city rescinded its approval of the evictions, concluding that the study on asbestos and lead levels was for an apartment in Leesburg, not on Vernon Street. Perseus Realty says the mix-up stemmed from a clerical error: The study was in fact for Vernon Street, the company said, but was printed on the wrong stationery. The company asked the city to reconsider.

The city conducted its own safety inspection, leading to bureaucratic glitches and delays that Graham later called unacceptable.

Throughout this year, Barac, the management company, frequently knocked on doors, offering money to tenants if they would move out permanently, the tenants said. Some did.

Others resisted. Management raised the offer to a few thousand dollars. Some people still balked.

In late September, things got scary, tenants said.

First, a tenant who has since moved out said two strangers pounded on his door late one night, yelling obscenities and saying, "If you don't move out in 48 hours, we will kill you."

About noon Oct. 16, the former tenant said, electricity was cut off in some apartments. The former tenant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears for his safety, said he went downstairs and confronted two men at the electrical box who were cutting wires. He called police, and the men vanished.

About midnight the same day, the former tenant said, someone broke a window in his apartment door and one across the hall.

"I didn't sleep one week," he said. "They cannot do it with American people, these things."

Then came the fire Nov. 5. About 10:30 p.m., residents heard the building's front door slam, followed by more loud noises.

Begum, who was doing homework on a laptop in the living room of her second-floor apartment, recalled seeing flames through the window on her apartment door and underneath it.

"I was just shocked," she said. She and her family ran to the balcony, and "we started screaming for help. Meanwhile, my brother and I started calling 911. I thought we would die."

Neighbors put out the flames before firefighters arrived, Begum said. Authorities declared that the fire had been set after they found evidence of an "ignitable liquid" in the basement and on the second floor.

Begum said she immediately suspected the management of arson.

She remained in her apartment until the fire was extinguished. Other residents described harrowing escapes. One man, speaking on the condition that his name not be used, said his wife and two children, who had arrived from Bangladesh two months earlier, had to run through the smoke down two flights of stairs. He was not in the building at the time.

Nearly everyone escaped unharmed. But a 45-year-old woman who lived on the third floor was not so fortunate. She started climbing down a drainpipe with one of her children when she fell from the second floor, according to two neighbors and the fire department. The child fell on her and emerged unscathed, but the woman broke her leg, the neighbors said.

After the fire, management again increased the incentive for tenants to move permanently. They raised the offer to $15,000 to $20,000, according to the residents.

In a statement defending Perseus Realty's handling of the matter, Bolton said owners have "continued to work with the tenants to grant them substantial assistance in the face of escalating structural and environmental concerns."

The tenants might be to blame for the fire and other incidents, Bolton contended. He said some allowed too many boarders in their apartments, running what amounted to "substandard rooming houses."

"The ownership believes that many of the building's recent problems stem from tenants trying to evict their illegal sub-tenants so they can vacate their apartments and take advantage of the relocation assistance grants," Bolton said in the statement.

"Some tenants may have used intimidating tactics to force their sub-tenants to vacate the property; it is also possible that evicted sub-tenants have vandalized the buildings," Bolton's statement said.

To that, Begum responded: "I absolutely disagree. They just made up something randomly."

Google Aims To Revitalize Advertising On Radio

2006-12-09T01:11:00.000-08:00

More about Google advertising strategies.

Google Aims To Revitalize Advertising On Radio

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 9, 2006; D01

Last week, listeners in Boston and Sacramento heard a commercial for Floorone.com, a small Internet company that aired its first radio ad with the help of Google Inc.

Until recently, Fred Yazdizadeh, owner of the Simi Valley, Calif., company, said radio air time was too expensive and the process of creating an audio message had been too daunting to consider. But under a new program being tested by Google, Yazdizadeh's ad was affordable and easy to manage. And, more important, it generated calls from potential customers living in the areas where the ad was broadcast.

"What Google is doing now is so good because I can now penetrate any market area I want," said Yazdizadeh. "It's going to take my business to the next level."

By tapping into its customer base of millions of small online advertisers, Google is looking to transform old media by removing the middleman, such as a radio station's ad department, and make it easier for small companies to gain access to radio, magazines and newspapers through the same types of online auctions that Google has used to sell its popular search ads.

This week, the company formally launched a test of the program, following almost a year of experimentation since it acquired dMarc Broadcasting, a small radio advertising firm, for $102 million in cash last January. DMarc had developed a technology that allowed radio stations to sell excess ad inventory at the last minute, using online tools.

Here's how the Google program works: A small advertiser logs into Google's Web site and creates a radio ad campaign online, selecting the geographical area, demographics of the radio audience, time of day and radio format. The advertiser bids on how much it is willing to pay to buy the air time, but doesn't know the exact station that will carry the ad.

If the advertiser doesn't already have a radio ad created, Google provides access to on-air talent and producers who bid on the job, allowing the two sides to negotiate the price and content.

The radio stations can see how many advertisers bid on each slot, listen to an ad and choose or reject one -- all online. Google makes a commission off of the transaction with the radio station.

"One of our primary objectives is to mobilize and introduce radio to our extensive advertising base and also introduce new advertisers to radio," said Ryan Steelberg, a founder of dMarc and now head of radio operations at Google. "If we can mobilize a few thousand advertisers, it's great for Google and great for radio broadcasters."

Some radio executives have expressed concern that Google's entry could force their own sales teams to compete against the search giant for the biggest customers and eventually degrade the value of a radio commercial. But others see Google's approach as a low-risk opportunity that could help bolster radio companies' lackluster results in recent years.

National radio advertising sales grew 2 percent from January to September, according to Radio Ink, an industry publication, but local ad sales during the period fell 1 percent. Next year, radio ad revenues are expected to rise 2 percent, said Mark R. Fratrik, vice president of BIA Financial Network.

Google's radio ad system "really has potential," Fratrik said. "It will take a little while, just because it's a new technique. . . . We will be seeing some impact in a year or two."

The search giant faces competition from SoftWave Media Exchange, which has a similar online technology and also sells cable television ads through its Web site. SoftWave's chief operating officer, Bill Figenshu, said Google lacked many big-market radio stations as part of its network, and its emphasis on small advertisers and excess inventory would go only so far in terms of generating sales.

"There isn't a market for all those small little advertisers to be on these big radio stations," he said. "The flower shop in Reston can't afford to be on WTOP."

But broadcasters participating in the Google test said they have been satisfied with the results.

XM Satellite Radio executive D. Scott Karnedy said Google had sold "hundreds, if not thousands of ads" since August. Rick Cummings, president of Emmis Radio, which owns 23 stations, said the experiment has not had an impact on his company's bottom line but has been worthwhile, regardless.

"There's been so much fear of Google -- they are red hot and we aren't," Cummings said. "We think doing more things in a Google-like manner might rub off on this industry and would be good for it."

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Condoms are "too big" for Indian Men

2006-12-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting news for condom makers.

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.

The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.

The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.

It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters
Sunil Mehra
The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

Doctor Chander Puri, a specialist in reproductive health at the Indian Council of Medical Research, told the BBC there was an obvious need in India for custom-made condoms, as most of those currently on sale are too large.

The issue is serious because about one in every five times a condom is used in India it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate.

And the country already has the highest number of HIV infections of any nation.

'Not a problem'

Mr Puri said that since Indians would be embarrassed about going to a chemist to ask for smaller condoms there should be vending machines dispensing different sizes all around the country.

"Smaller condoms are on sale in India. But there is a lack of awareness that different sizes are available. There is anxiety talking about the issue. And normally one feels shy to go to a chemist's shop and ask for a smaller size condom."

But Indian men need not be concerned about measuring up internationally according to Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of the men's magazine Maxim.

"It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters," he said.

"From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.

"With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimetres, let fools contend."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6161691.stm

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HP, Calif. Settle Spying Lawsuit

2006-12-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

HP, Calif. Settle Spying Lawsuit
State Exploring Deal With Dunn

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 8, 2006; D01

California's attorney general announced a $14.5 million civil settlement with Hewlett-Packard over its corporate spying scandal yesterday and said in an interview that he was exploring a possible settlement of criminal charges against the firm's former chairman.

Patricia C. Dunn was ousted as chairman in September after the HP ethics and spying scandal became public. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed fraud and conspiracy charges against her in October, a day after Dunn learned that she had suffered a relapse of ovarian cancer.

Read the entire story here.

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Sanyo phone batteries in recall

2006-12-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

After the laptop batteries recalls come the batteries fro mobile phone.

Sanyo phone batteries in recall
Sanyo shares fell to a 31-year low in Tokyo after 1.3 million of its mobile phone batteries were recalled over fears they could overheat and rupture.

The recall by mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo applies to Sanyo-made lithium ion batteries used in Mitsubishi Electric D902i phones.

Rival Sony is recalling 9.6 million laptop batteries over similar problems.

Sanyo is the world's largest producer of rechargeable batteries, but has been loss-making for the last three years.

On Friday, its shares fell 3.1% to 159 yen, their lowest level since September 1975.

Last month, Sanyo said it expected to post a 50bn yen ($430m; £224.3m) net loss in 2006/07.

The recall is the latest setback for the firm, which is struggling against high costs and strong price competition from cheaper Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers.

In June, it scrapped plans for a joint venture to make mobile phone handsets with Finland's Nokia.

Sanyo embarked on a three-year restructuring drive last year in an effort to reduce its losses and refocus its operations.

The shake-up has resulted in a management overhaul and 14,000 job cuts.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/6220528.stm

Published: 2006/12/08 09:55:54 GMT

Fannie Mae to Restate Results by $6.3 Billion Because of Accounting

2006-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

December 7, 2006
Fannie Mae to Restate Results by $6.3 Billion Because of Accounting
By ERIC DASH

Fannie Mae, the largest buyer of American mortgages, said yesterday that it would reduce its earnings by $6.3 billion to correct several years of accounting problems in one of the nation’s biggest financial scandals.

Federal regulators, meanwhile, said they planned to file a lawsuit before the end of the year in an effort to recover millions of dollars from Fannie Mae’s former top two executives, whose bonuses were tied to the manipulated earnings. Franklin D. Raines, the former chairman and chief executive, and J. Timothy Howard, who had been chief financial officer, were ousted from the company in December 2004, and investigators have laid much of the blame on their shoulders.

“We will file charges within the next couple of weeks,” James B. Lockhart III, director of the Office of Housing and Enterprise Oversight, said in a brief interview yesterday. “Unfortunately, the legal process is very cumbersome.”

A lawyer for Mr. Raines declined to comment, and a lawyer representing Mr. Howard did not return phone calls yesterday. A Fannie Mae spokesman also declined to comment.

The two moves are significant steps in the effort to clean up Fannie Mae — formally, the Federal National Mortgage Association — a company whose influence once reverberated through the corridors of Washington and Wall Street. Over the last two years, though, the company has been mired in scandal.

The entire story here.

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Mobile Phone should be free

2006-11-11T21:58:00.000-08:00

Good news for mobile phone users in case this comes to reality.

Excerpt of the news.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc.'s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sees a future where mobile phones are free to consumers who accept watching targeted forms of advertising.

Schmidt said on Saturday that as mobile phones become more like handheld computers and consumers spend as much as eight to 10 hours a day talking, texting and using the Web on these devices, advertising becomes a viable form of subsidy.

Read entire news here.

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Enron Saga is brought to a close

2006-10-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

The Enron Task Force's mission is almost complete with the conviction of
Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling for his high profile economic crime.

He was among the corporate executives who were found guilty for the corporate
crimes that they were accused of. Ebbers of WorldCom was sentenced 25 years in
prison and John Rigas of Adephia Communications, 15 years with appeal.

The excerpt fo the news below.

HOUSTON, Oct. 24 -- The sentencing Monday of former Enron Corp. chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling ended the saga of the scandal-ridden Houston energy company and effectively closed the book on an era of high-profile corporate malfeasance.

Skilling's sentence capped a string of lengthy prison terms handed down to top executives for economic crimes, including WorldCom Inc. founder Bernard J. Ebbers, now serving 25 years, and Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John J. Rigas, facing 15 years pending appeal.

But Enron remains that period's signature scandal. The company's December 2001 breakdown ushered in a wave of corporate collapses that roiled investor confidence and prompted the government to enlist a special band of prosecutors and FBI agents to mount the most complex business fraud investigation in history. Their pursuit of top Enron officials helped change the way corporate wrongdoing is prosecuted and spurred companies to more aggressively police themselves.

Hours after a judge sentenced Skilling to more than 24 years in prison, the leaders of the Enron Task Force announced that they would close up shop, saying their mission was mostly complete. But even as officials packed their files and prepared for other jobs in government and the private sector, there were fresh signals about the direction post-Enron corporate crime enforcement would take.

A new wave of investigations is targeting executive greed, insider trading and investment pools known as hedge funds. On Tuesday, the former finance chief of Comverse Technology Inc. pleaded guilty to covering up a scheme to trigger big paydays for employees by changing the grant dates on stock options. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors charged the former finance chief of Refco Inc. for his role in a $1 billion accounting scandal that hurled the commodities brokerage into bankruptcy proceedings.

Read the entire news here.

Tags:

Enron,
WorldCom
Adelphia+Communications

Skilling got 24 year sentence

2006-10-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

Enron is now synonymous to corporate fraud. Lay died of heart attack before he was convicted but Skilling, another executive who was found guilt was sentenced to 24 years.

Here is the news from BBC:

Former Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling has been sentenced to 24 years for his role in the giant fraud that led to the energy firm's 2001 collapse.

In May he had been found guilty on 19 counts including fraud, conspiracy and insider trading, and was told he could expect 20 to 30 years in prison.

The former chief executive of the US energy giant was convicted together with Enron's ex-chairman Kenneth Lay.

Mr Lay has since died and his convictions have been quashed.

This is because Mr Lay, who died of a heart attack in July, passed away before he was able to appeal against the verdict.

The scandal at the one-time energy giant left 21,000 people out of work, and shook corporate America, when the firm went bankrupt in 2001 with debts of $31.8bn (£18bn).

Skilling was found to have orchestrated a series of loss-making deals and financial schemes to try to hide debts from investors.

"Crimes of this magnitude deserve severe punishment," US District Court Judge Sim Lake told Skilling before sentencing him to 24 years and four months in jail.

"In terms of remorse your honour, I can't imagine more remorse," Skilling told the court before he was sentenced.

"That being said your honour, I am innocent of these charges."

Before sentencing Skilling was made to listen to testimony from a number of victims of the Enron fraud.

"You should be ashamed," said Ann Beliveaux, an employee who lost her entire retirement savings.

"When things got bad, you jumped ship."

Skilling has said he will appeal against his conviction.

The judge confined him to his home where he is to wear an ankle monitor until he reports to prison.

Building a 'Googley' Workforce

2006-10-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

This is one news article that I really want to archive.

Building a 'Googley' Workforce
Corporate Culture Breeds Innovation

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 21, 2006; D01

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- To understand the corporate culture at Google Inc., take a look at the toilets.

Every bathroom stall on the company campus holds a Japanese high-tech commode with a heated seat. If a flush is not enough, a wireless button on the door activates a bidet and drying.

Yet even while they are being pampered with high-tech toiletry, Google employees are encouraged to make good use of their downtime: A flier tacked inside each stall bears the title, "Testing on the Toilet, Testing code that uses databases." It features a geek quiz that changes every few weeks and asks technical questions about testing programming code for bugs.

The toilets reflect Google's general philosophy of work: Generous, quirky perks keep employees happy and thinking in unconventional ways, helping Google innovate as it rapidly expands into new lines of business.

Maintaining Google's culture of innovation is a hot internal topic as the Internet search king turns eight this fall and marches around the world, opening new offices in such cities as Beijing, Zurich and Bangalore. In the past three years, Google's workforce has more than tripled in size, to 9,000 employees, and the company has launched a new product nearly every week, including some widely regarded as flops. When its own offerings don't catch on, Google isn't shy about snapping up the competition, as it did this month when it agreed to acquire online video-sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

While Google places a premium on success, it appears to shrug off failure. The resulting culture of fearlessness permeates the 24-hour Googleplex, a collection of interconnected low-rise buildings that look more like some new-age college campus than a corporate office complex. The colorful, glass-encased offices feature upscale trappings -- free meals three times a day; free use of an outdoor wave pool, indoor gym and large child care facility; private shuttle bus service to and from San Francisco and other residential areas -- that are the envy of workers all over Silicon Valley.

Google employees are encouraged to propose wild, ambitious ideas often. Supervisors assign small teams to see if the ideas work. Nearly everyone at Google carries a generic job title, such as "product manager." All engineers are allotted 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. Many of the personal projects yield public offerings, such as the social networking Web site Orkut and Google News, a collection of headlines and news links.

The corporate counterculture explains a lot about why the search company rolls out such a wide range of products in its self-proclaimed mission to organize the world's information. Despite objections by publishers and authors, Google is attempting to copy every book ever published and make snippets available online. It plans to launch a free wireless Internet service in San Francisco. It also hopes to shake up the advertising world by using the Internet to sell ads in magazines, newspapers and on radio.

Philip Remek, an analyst who follows Google for Guzman and Co., sees the many initiatives as a series of lottery cards.

"A lot of them aren't going to work," Remek said. "Maybe there will be a few that take off spectacularly. And maybe they're smart enough to realize no one is smart enough to tell which lottery card is the winner five years out."

While Google often launches products before they are ready for prime time, even the premature ones instill fear in competitors, who know that the search leader has the patience and money -- a market value of about $140 billion and $2.69 billion in quarterly revenue -- to keep trying.

That's also a message Google sends employees.

"If you're not failing enough, you're not trying hard enough," said Richard Holden, product management director for Google's AdWords service, in which advertisers bid to place text ads next to search results. "The stigma [for failure] is less because we staff projects leanly and encourage them to just move, move, move. If it doesn't work, move on."

Holden said Google tried three different ways to make use of the radio advertising company it bought for $102 million this year, dMarc Broadcasting, with little success. The goal was to sell radio ads through an online auction system similar to AdWords. But, Holden said, "I would not describe what we've done as a failure," because Google finally came up with a model that he expects to work.

Google's innovative streak is apparent throughout its campus, where buildings have been reconfigured to be environmentally friendly and let light stream into interiors through glass-walled workrooms shared by three or four employees. In addition to glass cubicles, some staffers share white fabric "yurts," tentlike spaces that resemble igloos. This week Google announced that it would install 9,000 solar panels on its buildings to generate electricity for its campus.

Along interior hallways, employees scribble random thoughts on large whiteboards strung together. Outside, they whiz by on company-provided motorized scooters or mingle on grassy areas and chairs under brightly colored umbrellas.

Innovation reaches one corner of Google that most companies neglect: food. Each of its 11 campus cafes is run by an executive chef with a theme catering to the culture of people working in that particular building. This year Google opened Cafe180, a cafeteria that supports local organic farming by serving only products from within 180 miles of the campus.

Google's anything-goes culture begins and is maintained with a rigorous hiring procedure similar to those used for admission to elite universities. Underachievers need not apply, unless they stand out in some way. Experience and grade-point averages for recent college graduates matter, but also factored in is "whether someone is Googley," said chief culture officer Stacy Sullivan.

"It's an ill-defined term -- we intentionally don't define that term, but it's . . . not someone too traditional or stuck in ways done traditionally by other companies," Sullivan said.

Each prospective hire is interviewed by at least five staff members, who ask a series of questions intended to make them understand how the candidate thinks about solving a problem. Getting the right answer is not necessary.

Abraham Egnor, a 25-year-old hired three months ago, fits the Google look. At work, Egnor wears his black hair long down his back, colored with a tint of green, a black T-shirt, backpack, cargo pants and sandals.

He said the interview process was tough. "I got a sense one of the persons who interviewed me was being somewhat antagonistic to see how I would respond," he said. "He said that I don't have a college degree, so how would I know certain things. My response was there may have been things I didn't learn -- I don't know. But I think I pick up on things very quickly."

Another job candidate told Google interviewers that his worst qualities were that he was lazy and short-tempered, but was working on it. He wasn't hired.

"We skew toward people who like to solve problems -- the bigger the problem, the better, rather than those who settle in and say, 'okay, I'll do that for 30 years,' " said Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president of "people operations." Learning continues on the job across a wide range of subjects through Google's "tech talks" with well-known people invited to speak on campus much like guest lecturers in college.

On a recent visit, chief executive Eric Schmidt moderated a discussion about women and war with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda to a standing-room-only crowd. In the back, a Google employee with a long silver braid held his pet African Grey parrot on his finger.

Google executives know it will be hard to replicate such experiences as it opens offices in so many cities and countries.

Sullivan said she's thinking of ways to export the culture, such tapping longtime employees to serve as "Google ambassadors" and develop in-house videos about what it means to be Googley.

But Sullivan doesn't want it to be too formal. That would be un-Googley.

"We're not trying to solve a problem," she said. " But we want to ensure we're thinking about it and watching over it. Our culture is one of our most valuable assets.

corporate culture,Google

The Invisible Cloak

2006-10-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

James Bond movie is famous for gadgets that people think are impossible to invent and it is just pure cinematic. One such gadget is the invisible car.
Soon, it will be a reality as scientists came up with the invisibility cloak.

Experts create invisibility cloak
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

A US-British team of scientists has successfully tested a cloak of invisibility in the laboratory.

The device mostly hid a small copper cylinder from microwaves in tests at Duke University, North Carolina.

It works by deflecting the microwaves around the object and restoring them on the other side, as if they had passed through empty space.

But making an object vanish before a person's eyes is still the stuff of science fiction - for now.

The cloak consists of 10 fibreglass rings covered with copper elements. This is classed as a "metamaterial" - an artificial composite that can be engineered to produce a desired change in the direction of electromagnetic waves.

The precise variations in the shape of copper elements patterned on to the ring surfaces determines their properties.

Like light waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though at microwave frequencies the detection has to be made by instruments rather than the naked eye.

The metamaterial cloak channelled the microwaves around the object like water in a river flowing around a smooth rock.

Gone from view

When water flows around a rock, the water recombines on the opposite side. Someone looking at the water downstream would never guess it had passed by an obstacle.

In the experiment, the scientists first measured microwaves travelling across a plane of view with no obstacles. Then they placed a copper cylinder in the same plane and measured the disturbance, or scattering, in the microwaves.

Finally, the researchers placed the invisibility cloak over the copper cylinder. The cloak did not completely iron out the disturbance, but it greatly reduced the microwaves being blocked or deflected.

"This cloak guides electromagnetic waves around a central region so that any object at call can be placed in that region and will not disturb the electromagnetic fields," said co-author Dr David Schurig from Duke University.

In principle, the same theoretical blueprint could be used to cloak objects from visible light. But this would pose a challenge, as nano-scale engineering would be needed to make the cloak.

"As an application it's not clear that you're going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about - as in Harry Potter's cloak, or the Star Trek cloaking device," said co-author David Smith of Duke.

"But it shows what can be done with artificial materials. It gives us some insight that we can design something that we wouldn't have been able to do with any existing material."

A key collaborator on the project was Professor John Pendry from Imperial College London.

The researchers say that if an object can be hidden from microwaves, it can be hidden from radar - a possibility that will fascinate the military.

Cloaking differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/6064620.stm

Published: 2006/10/19 15:30:00 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Human Species May become Dumb due to Technology

2006-10-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

This is an evolutionary theory for humanity for 3,000.
I agree partly with the emergence of dim-witted underclass sub species.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

"While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is a possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other, said Dr Curry.

Read the entire story here.

Plane Crashed into a Manhattan Building

2006-10-12T02:53:00.000-07:00

The news about the small plane crash in New York City was a shock for the residents
who had the 9-11 experience. It turned out that it was a plane piloted by a Yankee
pitcher, Cory Lidle who had just gotten a pilot license.

Excertp of the news from Washington Post.

A small plane carrying New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and a flight instructor spun out of control on a blustery Wednesday afternoon and slammed into the side of a 50-story condominium tower on the Upper East Side, killing both people on board.
The airplane exploded into a fireball as it hit the building around the 30th floor, sparks and pieces of the wing and the plane's door raining down on the sidewalk below. The fire that raged afterward incinerated two apartments, although, remarkably, city officials reported no fatalities inside the luxury Belaire Condos on East 72nd Street, where apartments feature views of the East River and command $2 million and up.

Manhattan+plane+crash,Cory+Lidle,Yankees

Google is acquiring YouTube

2006-10-10T03:54:00.000-07:00

YouTube is barely two year old and the early 20's owners/originators are receiving
1.65 billion of stock from Google Inc. for its acquisition.

Read the news in Washington Post.

Excerpt of the news:

Google Gambles on Web Video
Firm to Pay $1.65 Billion for Popular, Unprofitable YouTube
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 10, 2006; A01

Google said yesterday that it will acquire Internet video phenomenon YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, a deal that leaves the search giant betting on the future of online video as well as tackling some of the risks that come with managing a site built by a homegrown audience.
The deal, which Google called "the next step in the evolution of the Internet," is reminiscent of the late 1990s, when Web companies judged their success by the buzz they created more than by immediate profits. This time, YouTube, an as-yet-unprofitable Silicon Valley start-up with two founders in their twenties, grew a huge audience at a pace outdone only by MySpace.com.
In less than a year, YouTube attracted more than 72 million unique monthly visitors by allowing users to share short homemade video clips. Through word of mouth, the site became an instant Internet phenomenon, providing a huge library of entertaining videos and giving a voice to budding Internet stars every week.

Google,YouTube

A forensic tool to investigate website attacks

2006-10-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

Many people who are pc and internet users will be interested to read this news about BBC's investigation looking into the scale of the dangers experienced by the said people.
The news said:

Using a computer acting as a so-called honeypot the BBC has been regularly logging how many potential net-borne attacks hit the average Windows PC every day.
Attack traffic
Honeypots are forensic tools that have become indispensable to computer security experts monitoring online crime. They are used to gather statistics about popular attacks, to grab copies of malicious programs that carry out the attacks and to get a detailed understanding of how these attacks work.
To the malicious programs scouring the web these honeypots look like any other PC. But in the background the machines use a variety of forensic tools to log what happens to them.

Reading the findings as to what danger the computer was subjected to in seven hours make us shiver how our own is exposed to the same elements.

Read the entire story here.

Survey shows that Geek terminologies baffle web users

2006-10-08T04:57:00.000-07:00

The survey conducted in UK shows that 40 per cent of the respondents s are buying cutting edge technology without understanding the tech jargon.

They read news feeds but they do not know that RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the official term for the service.

Other terms that they constantly encounter but do not understand are the following:

VOD - video-on-demand
Wikis - Collaborative technology for editing websites
IPTV - internet protocol television
RSS - Really Simple Syndication alias automated news feeds
PVR - personal video recorder
Web 2.0 - user-generated content phase of internet
Triple-play - internet, TV and phone in one subscription
VoIP - voice over internet protocol
IM - instant messaging
Blogging - frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts on the web
Podcasting - internet broadcasting for playback on MP3 players

The survey was conducted among British internet users and the researchers are positive that the statistics for the general population will be higher.

VOD ,RSS,VoIP

Google Opens NEW YORK office

2006-10-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Wow,and wow.

The Mountain View premier corporate giant has a new office in New York. Let it be remembered that it was opened on this day, October 3, 2006.

Google Opens block-long office

By DEEPTI HAJELA
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 3, 2006; 8:54 AM
NEW YORK -- It's so big, you won't even need Google Maps to find it. Internet search engine Google Inc. has a new home in New York: a 300,000-square foot, three-floor office that covers a Manhattan city block.
The company welcomed its 500-plus local employees to the office Monday, its first official day of business. While Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has had employees in New York in advertising sales since 2000 and in engineering since 2003, it said the new office is a step up.
"We outgrew our old space," said Craig Nevill-Manning, the company's engineering director.
The company now has three floors in a building that stretches from Eighth Avenue to Ninth Avenue and from 15th Street to 16th Street, a few blocks west of Union Square. The workspace is light and airy and built around the concept of working in teams, with people sharing offices and cubicles connected in groups. Along with a cafeteria and a game room, there are snack stations throughout the office.
There also are a number of conference rooms named after New York landmarks including Alice Tully Hall, the Cloisters and the Apollo Theater.
The office space was built to Google's specifications and the company had a long-term lease, said Tim Armstrong, vice president of advertising sales. He declined to say how long that was or how much the project cost.
Nevill-Manning said there are about 100 projects being worked on in the office. The New York office was the origin point for the project that became Google Maps.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100300423.html?referrer=email

Censoring a Blogger

2006-10-02T04:38:00.000-07:00

As a blogger myself, I am interested in the news because it confirmed my objective in this blog i.e. to archive news that I think would be use as my reference in the future.

From Washington Post.

Hard-Learned Lesson: Don't Try to Censor A Blogger

By Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 2, 2006; D01

Memories fade, but the Internet is forever.

Murry N. Gunty found that out the hard way this summer. Well known among Washington financiers, the head of Milestone Capital Management LLC ran afoul of bloggers for an attempt to censor a Web article about a 1992 incident in which he manipulated the election for officers of the Harvard Business School's Finance Club. The matter was widely reported at the time, including on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and Gunty atoned by resigning from the club and writing an ethics paper.

But when he tried to stifle a recent recitation of those facts on the Web, his personal history morphed into a morality play about the dangers of challenging the blogosphere. Instead of being described as a moderately successful and scrupulous private equity investor, he was offered as an example of greedy misbehavior and corporate censorship.

"Fifteen years ago when I was in school, I made an error in judgment, which was a meaningful life lesson," Gunty said in a written statement issued by a spokesman for Patton Boggs LLP, Milestone's law firm. "Unfortunately, what has been written about me on the Internet significantly distorts the facts. This is a cautionary tale that things live on in cyberspace regardless of their accuracy."

After graduate school, Gunty went on to a successful career at several Wall Street institutions, mostly in private equity, a wing of corporate finance that uses money from wealthy individuals or institutions to buy real estate, companies or other private assets.

Four years ago, he teamed up with veteran D.C. banker Robert P. Pincus to form Milestone Capital. The two raised $90 million, and invested it in such ventures as a Florida tile company, a maker of Christmas ornaments and dozens of Papa John's pizza franchises.

The Harvard flap seemed like ancient history until Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Pincus -- no relation to Gunty's business partner -- resurrected it. Pincus, who founded the social networking site Tribe.net, is a former Harvard classmate of Gunty's who frequently posts long essays about how the ethical lapses of U.S. business executives rarely result in substantial punishment. On Jan. 19, 2006, he posted an essay that used Gunty as a prominent example.

"I have nothing personal against the guy at all," said Pincus, whose original post included numerous disparaging personal remarks about Gunty. "I write about ethics all the time. It's something I'm passionate about. If Murry had responded on my blog, the whole thing would have just ended there."

In fact, it was just beginning.

Pincus's comments attracted dozens of posters eager to scold Gunty, and it quickly spread to several other bloggers who started their own discussion strings about the long-ago incident. "If Murry Gunty didn't exist, we'd have to invent him," one liberal blogger, Frank Paynter, wrote. Gunty's photo was posted on Pincus's blog and various aspects of his life and work were ridiculed.

By July, seven months after the original posting, Pincus's version of Gunty's story had climbed to the top ranking on a Google search for "Murry Gunty" -- above his official biography on Milestone Capital's web site. His Milestone bio is now back on top, however.

It got worse. According to two sources with knowledge of the situation, Gunty or someone representing him sent an e-mail to Six Apart Ltd., the company that hosted Pincus's blog, asking that the article be changed because it was a violation of privacy. The sources spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were describing nonpublic communications at Six Apart.

When a Six Apart staffer asked Pincus to at least remove Gunty's last name from the posting, Pincus responded by posting the request on his blog -- escalating the issue beyond corporate ethics to a matter of free speech.

Six Apart quickly backed down, saying through a spokeswoman that the company does not censor its bloggers, and that the request to Pincus had come from a "young, eager person" who "totally misread the situation."

Within a matter of days Gunty had his own entry in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, detailing the controversy, and a new round of bloggers were criticizing his effort to tame the Internet.

"Free speech is one of those topics in the blogosphere that you just don't touch," wrote tech blogger Scott Johnson, explaining the hundreds of links to Pincus's site that began popping up on blogs and chat rooms after Six Apart sought to have it changed.

The Wikipedia entry has since been removed. An editor for the online encyclopedia did not respond to a request to explain why.

But the lesson stands.

Gunty declined to be interviewed for this story. A colleague, who spoke only on the condition he not be named, said Gunty "felt really burned by the whole thing."

Stan Collender, a public relations specialist at Qorvis Communications LLC in the District, said the potential for bloggers to damage the reputation of a business or person is a growing concern.

"It's like pamphleteering on the corner, only its cheaper, quicker and vastly more broad," Collender said. "But unlike the traditional media, it's completely unregulated in that there's no fact checking, no editing. It has all the potential for creating a lot of damage to someone's or something's reputation very quickly, and it's almost impossible to eliminate it. Any unsubstantiated rumor has a very good chance of getting out there."

However, Collender said it is usually a mistake to try to squelch it.

"If you respond to this sort of thing you give it credit it doesn't deserve," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Po

EBay's PayPal OKs service settlements

2006-09-30T01:16:00.000-07:00

This news about PayPal is very important to bloggers, consumers and other people who use this online payment company.

$5.2 million will be paid in 2 separate cases
- Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006

EBay Inc.'s PayPal online payment division has agreed to a $1.7 million settlement with 28 state attorneys general over complaints that PayPal's terms of service were too long and failed to clearly explain consumer protection programs.

In addition, PayPal settled a related class-action suit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn for $3.5 million.

The agreements, announced Thursday, are a relatively painless exit for PayPal from a problem that has dogged it for some time. Many users have accused the popular service of offering a confusing explanation about the protections it offers against fraud, such as who reimburses them for disputed purchases, for how much and under what circumstances.

As part of the deal with the attorneys general, PayPal agreed to shorten and streamline its user agreement and include more information about its consumer protections. PayPal said it has already complied with many of the terms of the settlement.

Attorneys general from states including California, Illinois, New York, Texas and Nevada took part in the agreement, which was born from discussions that started in 2005. Money the states get will cover the cost of their investigations.

Tom Dressler, a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said that without a settlement, PayPal was facing a suit over deceptive business practices. Users were falsely led to believe by PayPal's terms of service that that they would get full protection in cases of disputed purchases, he said.

"What this case is about is a pretty simple principle: Businesses should deal with consumers fairly and with complete honesty, and this settlement will help ensure that PayPal's customers make informed decisions in their best interest, " Dressler said.

The proposed class-action suit in New York was filed in 2005 on behalf of users who alleged that PayPal didn't clearly disclose details about its consumer protection programs. The settlement fund will be used to pay PayPal users, their attorneys and to cover administrative costs.

PayPal, part of San Jose's eBay online marketplace, is the largest online payment service, with 114 million accounts. In the past, the service has been a frequent target of complaints about other issues including the freezing of customer accounts.

As part of the agreements disclosed Thursday, it admits no wrongdoing. Amanda Pires, a spokeswoman for PayPal, said the agreements allow PayPal to put the issue behind it and focus on its business.

PayPal

Plastic Surgery Becoming Popular to Iranian Men

2006-09-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

I would not be surprised, if it is Iranian women but men, whoaaa.
This is the news that I like to archive today.

Wealthy Iranians embrace plastic surgery
By Frances Harrison
BBC News, Teheran

It is eight in the morning in the plastic surgeon's office and Hussein is preparing for an operation.

He's going to have a nose job, following in the footsteps of his mother, his brother, his aunt and his cousin who have all had cosmetic surgery.

"Now it's really normal but of course 10 years ago if you were a boy and had a nose job everyone would laugh at you and make fun of you," admits Hussein.

"But now it's not like that - lots of people are doing it," he adds.

Hussein, who is a university student with a wealthy father involved in trade with China, says he met a woman the other day who asked why a boy needed to worry about his looks so much.

"I was shocked because everyone would love to have a more beautiful face," he says.

It's becoming increasingly common for Iranian men to have cosmetic surgery.

At first it was Iranian women who wanted nose jobs because strict Islamic dress regulations meant the only thing peeking out was their face and they wanted to make the best of it.

Since the revolution in 1979, Iran has become one of the world's leading centres for cosmetic surgery with three thousand plastic surgeons operating in Tehran alone.

Stress

Hussein is taken into the operating room and the surgeon, Dr Magid Navab, installs a suction tube in Hussein's nose to draw away the blood.

I am a little stressed because it's my son and not me... I trust the doctor though because he operated on my nose
Parinaz, Hussein's mother

At $3,000 an operation, not everyone in Iran can afford a new nose. And it takes some guts if you know how gruesome it's going to be.

Sitting outside the operating room we can hear a "tap, tap" noise of Hussein's nose being broken and refashioned.

"I am a little stressed because it's my son and not me," says Hussein's mother Parinaz.

She is meticulously dressed at this early hour of the morning in an elaborate, beaded lace blouse and embroidered chiffon headscarf.

"I trust the doctor though because he operated on my nose," she says.

At times Dr Navab closes his eyes to concentrate and feels his way around Hussein's nose.

Noses, eyelids, facelifts

He has performed so many of these operations - more than 30,000 thousand in his career so far - that he can literally do it with his eyes shut.

Compare this number with the Association of Plastic Surgeons in Britain. All their members together did only seven thousand nose jobs last year.

It's become a fashion - a competition because a boy wants to compete with another over a girl
Dr Magid Navab

Dr Navab says he only does three operations - noses, eyelids and face lifts - and his schedule is completely full the year round. And increasingly his patients are Iranian men.

"You don't see as many men with nose jobs in London or Paris or Germany but today the numbers having cosmetic surgery [in Iran] is amazing," he says.

You might have thought a country ruled by religious precepts would frown on plastic surgery as an unnecessary vanity. Not so.

Dr Navab explains that some of his patients are indeed congenitally ugly and need surgery to cope psychologically with their lives and he thinks he has operated on the odd cleric too, though they come to see him in plain clothes.

Fashion statement

Other patients are more frivolous.

"It's become a fashion - a competition because a boy wants to compete with another over a girl," Dr Navab says, adding that there are also more and more cases of middle aged men who want to keep up with their young girlfriends.

A week after the operation Hussein is preparing to have the bandages on his nose removed.

He lives with his parents in an apartment in north Tehran furnished with large gilt-rimmed furniture, plush silk carpets and chandeliers.

As we discuss all their operations, the television blasts out Persian pop singers from the Los Angeles satellite channels crooning about how much they love Iran.

"I had a hump on my nose and it was removed and then the second operation I had the tip of my nose reduced and my nostrils made smaller," explains Syed Amir Hashemi, Hussein's older brother.

He also had two operations on his jaw which meant he had to eat through a straw for many weeks after the surgery.

Veterans

Rather coyly they bring out photographs of them from before the surgery and it's hard to recognise Amir Hashemi or his mother.

As veterans of this process, they've been preparing Hussein for what to expect when the bandages come off.

"I said you can't play football for at least one year and you can't go jogging because the new nose needs some time to settle," says Amir Hashemi.

They also know that most patients hate their new noses when the bandages come off and it takes some time to get used to their new looks.

Hussein and his mother arrive at the doctor's surgery bearing flowers as a gift.

The bandages are removed, and surprisingly Hussein's now smaller nose shows no bruising - it's just a little swollen.

A little hand held vanity mirror is produced for Hussein to peer into.

"It's all very good", he keeps saying, smiling at the reflection of his new nose.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5391910.stm

Published: 2006/09/29 14:32:33 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Workers 'doubt' ageism law value

2006-09-28T04:38:00.000-07:00

Starting October 1, a law banning age discrimination will come into effect in Uk. This news was met by with skepticism by many people.

Here is the news from BBC.

Many people do not believe that new employment laws aimed at ending age discrimination will be effective, a survey suggests.

A poll of 1,000 adults by Help the Aged found that 25% of those questioned who were aged between 55 and 64 felt firms would not employ them beyond 65.

Laws under the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations come into force in the UK on 1 October.

But fewer than half of those questioned were aware of the changes.

'Outdated and illegal'

"The government has a serious job to do to make sure older workers know they can take action against employers who force them to retire before 65 or refuse them promotion simply because of their age," said Kate Jopling, senior policy manager at Help the Aged.

There are many businesses keen to harness the skills and experience older workers can bring
Department for Work and Pensions

"With the onset of new age regulations in a few days' time, ageist attitudes at work will not just become outdated, they will be illegal."

She added: "Employers need to realise that just because someone has reached a certain age, it doesn't mean they are not fit for work."

The study also suggested that most people believe older workers are considered to be more loyal and dedicated than younger employees.

Government figures show 208,000 more people aged over 50 are in work now compared with a year ago.

"The evidence suggests there are many businesses which are keen to harness the skills and experience older workers can bring," a Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said.

"We know the practice of ageism is bad for business and the new legislation will ensure that older workers are protected and ageism is stamped out."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/5372822.stm

Published: 2006/09/22 23:03:08 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Airport Securit y adjusts to new rules

2006-09-27T05:18:00.000-07:00

Of all people, why it had to be Ted Koppel who would miss the specific instruction about the 3 ounce limit for toletries and clear plastic bag for the gel-product such as toothpaste. Is he in a hurry?

Airport Security Adjusts To New Rules on Liquids

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 27, 2006; A12

Security was relatively smooth at U.S. airports yesterday, as travelers adjusted to new rules allowing them to bring aboard planes small amounts of liquids and gels in their carry-on bags. But it took some flexibility on the part of authorities to make things work. Many people did not know about revisions to month-long rules banning most liquids and gels from passenger cabins.

For example, consider Ted Koppel and the requirement that containers of 3 ounces or less had to fit easily into clear plastic bags.

The former host of ABC's "Nightline" arrived at Washington's Reagan National Airport yesterday morning for a flight to Dallas without a clear plastic bag and a too-large tube of toothpaste in his shaving kit.

A supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration rushed to the rescue. She gave Koppel the necessary plastic bag and determined that he had already used enough of the toothpaste to meet the new limits for such gels. He put the tube into the plastic bag and sailed through security.

Under the rules that went into effect yesterday morning, passengers are allowed to board with small amounts of toiletries in containers of 3 ounces or less, as long as the items are visible in a clear plastic 1-quart bag. The bags have to be pulled out of carry-on luggage to be examined separately at security checkpoints. Under the new rules, passengers may purchase drinks in secure areas and bring those aboard planes.

The TSA banned nearly all liquids and gels from passenger cabins in August after British authorities said they uncovered a terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic airliners with liquid bombs. Large containers of liquids and gels still must be checked or left behind, officials said.

TSA officials said they eased the rules because they had studied the threat and were confident that the revisions balanced the risk of attack against inconvenience for travelers.

TSA officials said they worked hard yesterday to help travelers make it through security, even if they didn't meet the letter of the new requirements.

"It went great today," said Kip Hawley, director of the TSA, before speaking at the Aero Club of Washington's monthly luncheon. "Everything I have heard suggests it went smoothly across the country . . . We worked with the security officers so they have discretion, particularly on the first day."

Hawley said officials rolled out the revisions on a Tuesday because it usually is one the least busy for passengers. Security lines were fairly short at National yesterday morning.

Rob Yingling, a spokesman for the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority, which runs National and Washington Dulles International airports, declined to comment on security lines at either airport or how the new rules affected travelers. He referred calls to the TSA. Security lines "moved very efficiently" at Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport, an airport spokesman said.

At National, passengers said they were happy that the TSA eased the restrictions, though several didn't know about the changes until they were told by a reporter.

Susan Garfield, 33, a director of women's health for a biotech company, called the original ban a "pain in the rear end" because it forced her to check her luggage and wait 40 minutes at the carousel after her flight.

But Garfield said her frustration largely evaporated yesterday when she packed her toothpaste, lip gloss and nail polish into a clear cosmetics bag with a zipper -- technically, a violation of the new rules -- and whipped through security at Boston's Logan International Airport.

"This seems like a much better approach," Garfield said.

Elliot Kash, 34, a salesman for a car-rental agency who travels between New York and the District twice a week, said he heard about the revisions yesterday and immediately bought a small silver mesh case for his toiletries -- not the clear bag the TSA requires.

Screeners at LaGuardia Airport allowed him to pass through security anyway, he said. As he opened his luggage to show a reporter the bag at National, he realized that he had toothpaste, spray-on deodorant and some cream jammed in other parts of his bag -- missed or ignored by the screeners. He said he had forgotten the items were there.

Penises of all kind, name it

2006-09-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

It intrigues me to high heavens why in the world would they serve the penises of different animals. This news from BBC deals with exotic delicacy.

Beijing's penis emporium
By Andrew Harding
BBC News, Beijing

There are many thousands of Chinese restaurants around in the UK and everyone has their favourite dish, but only in China itself do chefs specialise in a range of slightly more unusual delicacies.

The dish in front of me is grey and shiny.

"Russian dog," says my waitress Nancy.

"Big dog," I reply.

"Yes," she says. "Big dog's penis..."

We are in a cosy restaurant in a dark street in Beijing but my appetite seems to have gone for a stroll outside.

Nancy has brought out a whole selection of delicacies.

They are draped awkwardly across a huge platter, with a crocodile carved out of a carrot as the centrepiece.

Nestling beside the dog's penis are its clammy testicles, and beside that a giant salami-shaped object.

"Donkey," says Nancy. "Good for the skin..."

She guides me round the penis platter.

"Snake. Very potent. They have two penises each."

I did not know that.

Deer-blood cocktail

"Sheep... horse... ox... seal - excellent for the circulation."

She points to three dark, shrivelled lumps which look like liquorice allsorts - a special treat apparently - reindeer, from Manchuria.

Government officials... two of them... they're having the penis hotpot
Nancy

The Guolizhuang restaurant claims to be China's only speciality penis emporium, and no, it is not a joke.

The atmosphere is more exotic spa than boozy night-out.

Nancy describes herself as a nutritionist.

"We don't call them waiters here. And we don't serve much alcohol," she says. "Only common people come here to get drunk and laugh."

But she does offer me a deer-blood and vodka cocktail, which I decide to skip.

Medicinal purposes

The restaurant's gristly menu was dreamt up by a man called Mr Guo.

He is 81 now and retired.

After fleeing China's civil war back in 1949, he moved to Taiwan, and then to Atlanta, Georgia, where he began to look deeper into traditional Chinese medicine, and experiment on the appendages of man's best friend.

Apparently, they are low in cholesterol and good, not just for boosting the male sex drive, but for treating all sorts of ailments.

Laughter trickles through the walls of our dining room.

"Government officials," says Nancy. "Two of them upstairs. They're having the penis hotpot."

Most of the restaurant's guests are either wealthy businessmen or government bureaucrats who, as Nancy puts it, have been brought here by people who want their help.

What better way to secure a contract than over a steaming penis fondue.

Discretion is assured as all the tables are in private rooms.

The glitziest one has gold dishes.

"Some like their food served raw," says Nancy, "like sushi. But we can cook it anyway you like."

Rare order

"Not long ago, a particularly rich real estate mogul came in with four friends. All men. Women don't come here so often, and they shouldn't eat testicles," says Nancy solemnly.

The men spent $5,700 (£3,000) on a particularly rare dish, something that needed to be ordered months in advance.

"Tiger penis," says Nancy.

The illegal trade in tiger parts is a big problem in China.

Campaigners say the species is being driven towards extinction because of its popularity as a source of traditional medicine.

I mention this, delicately, to Nancy, but she insists that all her tiger supplies come from animals that have died of old age.

"Anyway, we only have one or two orders a year," she says.

"So what does it taste like?" I ask.

"Oh, the same as all the others," she says blithely.

And does it have any particular potency? "No. People just like to order tiger to show off how much money they have."

Welcome to the People's Republic of China - tigers beware.

Sliced and pickled

"Oh yes," she adds, "the same group also ate an aborted reindeer foetus.

"That is very good for your skin. And here it is..."

Another "nutritionist" walks in bearing something small and red wrapped in cling film.

My appetite is heading for the airport.

Still, I think, it would be rude not to try something.

I am normally OK about this sort of thing. I have had fried cockroaches and sheep's eyes, so...

There is a small bowl of sliced and pickled ox penis on the table.

I pick up a piece with my chopsticks and start to chew. It is cold and bland and rubbery.

Nancy gives me a matronly smile.

"This one," she says, "should be eaten every day."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/09/23 11:15:35 GMT

(c) BBC MMVI

TSA Eases Carry-on Liquid Bans

2006-09-26T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is good news for traveler, especially for those attending business meetings and conferences direct from the airport.

U.S. Eases Carry-On Liquid Ban
Some Drinks, Small Toiletries Allowed

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; A01

Passengers on commercial airplanes will be allowed to travel with small amounts of liquids and gels in their carry-on luggage starting this morning -- the first major revision of a ban enacted last month in reaction to an alleged transatlantic bomb plot.

Drinks purchased inside secure areas also will be permitted on board.

Top U.S. aviation security officials, under pressure from airline and passenger groups, announced the easing of restrictions yesterday after, they said, they carefully studied the threat posed by liquid bombs. The restrictions, which went into effect on Aug. 10, disrupted travel for many passengers. Travelers complained about long lines to check in luggage, lengthy waits at the baggage carousels and the lack of bottled water on planes. Many took calculated risks and sneaked small amounts of hair gel and toothpaste through security.

Starting at 4 a.m. today, passengers will be allowed to bring on board containers holding three ounces or less of toiletries, such as lip gloss, hair spray, toothpaste and shaving cream. The products must fit "comfortably" inside a single, one-quart clear plastic bag that zips closed, officials said. The bag will be examined by X-ray machines and screeners.

Larger bottles of liquids and gels must be placed in checked bags or left at home, officials said.

After passing through security, passengers will be permitted to buy bottled water and other drinks in "sterile" gate areas and carry them onto planes. Authorities said they made that change because products inside the sterile areas have been screened by security officers and do not pose a threat.

"What you see here today is the prudent balancing of the work that we need to do to protect security and common sense," said Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, at a news conference yesterday at Reagan National Airport.

Airline and passenger groups had been privately pushing authorities to alter the bans, which were implemented after British authorities said they discovered a plot to bring down transatlantic flights with liquid explosives.

Trade groups reacted enthusiastically to the revisions, saying business travelers welcomed the chance to resume carrying on their luggage rather than checking most everything. The volume of checked bags rose 20 percent after the ban was enacted. "It's a really positive change for business travelers . . . because they normally wouldn't have to check their bags to get their toiletries on board," said Caleb Tiller, spokesman for the National Business Travel Association. "This is a very good change. People are pretty pleased."

James C. May, president of the Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents major U.S. airlines, said the changes "put into place a security regimen that is consistent with the threat."

Top aviation security officials said researchers have studied how liquid explosives can damage aircraft. The tests and the analysis of bomb threats led officials to change the ban, they said.

"We now know enough to say that a total ban is no longer needed from a security point of view," said Kip Hawley, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, which provides security at more than 400 U.S. airports.

Hawley added that the changes made sense because he did not want screeners "fishing around for lip gloss -- there are a whole lot of other things we want our [officers] looking for."

The new policies will be "in place for an indefinite period of time," or until new security procedures or technologies emerge to combat the threat of liquid explosives, Hawley said.

Researchers in New Mexico are testing devices designed to detect liquid explosives. Further tests on more advanced devices are planned for coming months. TSA officials are also considering the purchase of upgraded X-ray machines and more sophisticated screening devices to help them find containers of liquid explosives and other bombs at checkpoints.

Several outside security experts, who had been critical of the TSA, said they generally supported the decision to ease the bans.

Bob Hesselbein, a pilot and the chairman of the Airline Pilots Association's national security committee, said the TSA was "moving in the right direction."

"It's a sensible step on the road to revising the screening to make better sense and be more efficient," Hesselbein said.

Hesselbein and other security experts said, however, that the TSA needs to focus more on people who pose a threat and devote less time to trying to find items. "We are concerned that a great deal of time is going to be spent on whether a liquid or gel is 2 1/2 ounces or 3 ounces," Hesselbein said. "We want to make sure that our security officers are focused on the hard-to-find explosives, and we don't want to see our security diluted."

Mike Boyd, a security consultant, said the new rules were a "knee-jerk" reaction to complaints from travel groups. Boyd said the TSA has been forced to shift tactics because it has not spent enough time or money developing countermeasures. "This ban shouldn't have been in effect at all," he said.

The End of Ebbers of Worldcom

2006-09-25T06:29:00.001-07:00

This is one story that I like to archive here in my blog. Very controversial and very
intriguing.

Cook the Books, Get Life in Prison: Is Justice Served?

By Carrie Johnson and Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 25, 2006; A01

In the category of longest prison sentence, WorldCom Inc. founder Bernard J. Ebbers recently bested the organizer of an armed robbery, the leaders of a Bronx drug gang and the acting boss of the Gambino crime family.

It was a contest Ebbers surely would have preferred to lose.

Tomorrow, the man who once swaggered through the halls of his telecommunications company as a cowboy-booted billionaire is scheduled to surrender to authorities and begin a 25-year sentence. Federal prison policies virtually ensure that Ebbers, who has a heart ailment, will spend the rest of his life in prison for his role in an $11 billion accounting fraud.

Ebbers, 65, is to report to prison on the same day that former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew S. Fastow will be sentenced by a federal judge in Houston. Fastow, who secretly pocketed more than $45 million in a scheme to disguise mounting financial problems at the energy company, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison as part of his plea deal.

The length of Ebbers's sentence when compared with others touches on one of the most controversial parts of the American criminal justice system: How large a pound of flesh should society exact for serious white-collar crime? When the victims are diffuse, the crime complex and the injuries economic, what kind of punishment constitutes justice?

A top executive who gambles his fate at a trial nowadays risks what amounts to a life term for fraud that can involve as little as $2.5 million in losses, said University of Missouri law professor Frank Bowman. Crimes such as first-degree murder, high-level drug dealing and espionage trigger similar recommendations.

"That means you have to equate fiddling with the corporate books with first-degree murder or treason," Bowman said. "My own sense is that any sentence over 20 years for anybody for an economic crime is hard to justify."

Public revulsion over financial crimes that cost small investors billions of dollars has barely waned since prosecutors began to investigate a string of corporate scandals in late 2001. The death of convicted Enron founder Kenneth L. Lay in July induced profanity-laden outrage from shareholders who felt they had been "cheated" out of seeing Lay sent to prison. Federal prosecutors seized the mood, imploring Congress this month to pass legislation that would make it easier for them to recover $43.5 million from Lay's estate, a process that has been seriously complicated by his death.

The drive to exact punishment even beyond the grave is a sign of vindictiveness in public officials and shareholders, defense lawyers contend.

Reid H. Weingarten, a Washington-based lawyer for Ebbers, said in an e-mail that the judge in his case had public relations, not justice, in mind. "The purpose of the sentence was to please and appease the howling mob demanding Ebbers's head, not a worthy goal of the criminal justice system," he said.

Fastow, 44, assessed the prospect of spending decades behind bars after the government hit him with a 98-count indictment for serving as the architect of the Enron fraud. Prosecutors also accused Fastow of enlisting his wife and using the bank accounts of his two young sons to siphon money from the company undetected. Lea W. Fastow, indicted to pressure her husband to cooperate with investigators, pleaded guilty to a tax charge two years ago for underreporting income from his business partnerships. She served almost a year in a high-security prison.

As part of the couple's package deal, Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty, agreed to testify against Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, and negotiated a substantial break in his prison term. Skilling, 52, was convicted of 19 criminal charges in May and faces decades in prison when he is sentenced next month.

Fordham University law professor Daniel Richman said shorter sentences in exchange for cooperation reflect the reality of white-collar investigations: Prosecutors must rely on tainted insiders to help convict higher-level executives. In this year's Enron trial, for example, lawyers for Skilling and Lay branded Fastow a liar, a thief and the person most responsible for Enron's collapse who avoided his just deserts by signing a deal with prosecutors.

"Sentences are the currency with which the government buys information," said Richman, a former federal prosecutor.

Not accepting a deal can be costly, as former mid-level Dynegy Inc. executive Jamie Olis, now 40, learned two years ago. Olis, who while growing up was physically abused by his mother's boyfriend and spent time in foster care before working his way through college, became a national symbol of inflexible sentencing policies. He lost his case and was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison -- despite the defense's presentation of his background -- for taking part in a $300 million accounting fraud. Olis's former boss at the energy company signed a plea agreement, testified against Olis and was sentenced to 15 months.

A federal appeals court last year threw out Olis's sentence, and a federal judge in Houston on Friday reduced it to six years. That means Olis is likely to spend about two more years in prison.

"Not every case is Enron, and not every white-collar offender is one of the smartest guys in the room," said Washington defense lawyer Barry Boss, referring to the name of a book and documentary film about the Enron scandal. "We're such a vindictive country."

But white-collar criminals are unusually sensitive to deterrence, according to prosecutors and securities regulators. The sight of colleagues in handcuffs, or signing away their homes and fortunes, sends a powerful message.

What's more, legal experts say, former executives do not deserve lighter treatment than drug dealers or burglars simply because they broke accounting rules or lied -- crimes that are harder to unravel and whose victims are more diffuse.

"You want people to understand that just because they're in high places, they make a lot of money and they can hire fabulous lawyers, that they're not going to walk away with a slap on the wrist," said former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey L. Pitt. "If you ask me, 'Did Bernie Ebbers destroy lives?' I would tell you that his conduct did."

Historically, white-collar criminals have not received long sentences. Probation was common even for crimes that involved large losses, and even the most famous defendants received sentences that by today's standards appear lenient. Junk-bond king Michael Milken was initially sentenced to 10 years on fraud charges, but a judge reduced the sentence to 33 months, and he was paroled after serving only two years.

That began to change in the mid-1990s, after policymakers expressed concern that punitive sentences for nonviolent drug crimes carried life sentences while white-collar criminals often skated. In 1994, financier Tom J. Billman, who bilked savings and loans of $25 million and fled the country, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He served about 10 years before being paroled in 2005.

Sentences became even longer when parole was abolished in the federal system and sentencing guidelines were repeatedly amended to increase prison terms for white-collar crimes.

Were the WorldCom and Enron scandals to happen today, the sentences for Ebbers and Fastow might be even longer. Angry lawmakers enacted even tougher penalties for corporate fraud after those companies filed for bankruptcy protection. But the stiff new punishments apply only to people who committed crimes after 2002.

"On a personal level, you've got to feel for people" like Ebbers who will probably die in prison, said University of Texas law professor Henry T.C. Hu, "but overall I think the system's got it right."

Toy Recall

2006-09-24T00:22:00.000-07:00

One of the considerations in manufacturing toys is that there should be no components
that could choke or pose safety hazards for the children.

Washington Post has this news today Sept. 23, 2006.

Hasbro Inc. yesterday recalled about 255,000 Playskool toy tool benches after a toddler in West Virginia and another in Texas died from choking on the set's oversize plastic nails.

The nails are part of the Team Talkin' Tool Bench, a set that comes with a toy hammer, screwdriver, two 2¼-inch plastic screws and two 3-inch plastic nails.

Hasbro agreed to conduct the recall voluntarily after notifying the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

A commission statement said the two young children died after the plastic nails became "forcefully lodged in their throats."

The workbench was sold nationwide at stores including Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Target and KB Toys from October 2005 through September 2006 for about $35.

Consumers with the workbench should keep the toy nails away from children and can contact Hasbro to exchange the nails for a $50 certificate for another Hasbro product.

"The toy without the nails does not present a hazard," Consumer Product Safety Commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese said. "Parents don't have to take the entire toy away, they just have to remove the nails."

The first victim, a 19-month-old boy from Martinsburg, W.Va., died in January. Hasbro learned of the death in February after an employee saw a reference to it on Amazon.com during a routine check of online comments about Hasbro products, spokesman Wayne S. Charness said.

A message left with an attorney for the family of the Martinsburg boy was not returned.

Hasbro asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission to investigate. The agency concluded that the oversize plastic nail met federal regulations for small parts and that the company had complied with federal labeling standards. The toy was marketed for use by children age 3 and older.

The second victim, a 2-year-old in League City, Tex., died in July after running and falling on one of the plastic nails, said Michael Howell, an attorney for the family.

Howell said that the family reported the death to the commission a week after it happened, but that the agency did not interview family members until this week.

When asked why the agency did not investigate the case earlier, Vallese said the investigation took place "in a timely manner from when we learned about it."

Hasbro, of Pawtucket, R.I., learned of the death Sept. 15, after the family filed a lawsuit against the company in Galveston, Tex. Hasbro, in turn, notified the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is still investigating the case, Vallese said.

Deaths caused by toys "are very rare," said Alan Korn, director of public policy for the nonprofit group National Safe Kids.

"For the most part, toys in this country are wildly safe, so when there's been a death with a toy involving choking and then a second death, it should be a concern to parents, the government and the company," he said. "Just because a toy is compliant with federal regulations does not mean it is necessarily safe for the marketplace."

Don Mays, senior director for product safety at Consumer Reports magazine, said federal product safety officials should reconsider how they determine when a small part is a choking hazard.

Parts that are small enough to cause such harm are tested to see if they fit inside a cylinder with a 1.25-inch diameter when tested. If they fit and they are intended for use by children younger than 3, they are banned.

"That is a screening tool but not a panacea for catching choking hazards," Mays said.

Mays believes the cylinder used for testing should be larger. Consumer Reports recommends that parents do their own test, using a tube from a roll of toilet paper.

Mays also questioned the target age group for the Team Talkin' Tool Bench. "Clearly this is a toy that is attractive to a child under three," he said.

As with most recalls, major retailers have begun pulling the toy from store shelves.

Hasbro's recall hotline is 800-509-9554.

Is Bin Laden dead?

2006-09-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

People are shocked. Is it true or not?

News from BBC.

President Jacques Chirac has ordered an inquiry into the leak of a French secret service memo claiming that Osama Bin Laden had died.

Mr Chirac told reporters he was surprised the memo had been leaked, and refused to comment on the claim itself.

A French newspaper quoted a document as saying the Saudi secret services were convinced the al-Qaeda leader had died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August.

Officials in Pakistan and the US said they could not confirm the account.

Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taleban government there was overthrown by US-backed forces in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Since then, US and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding in the lawless border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

His last videotaped message was released in late 2004, but several audio tapes have been released this year - the last at the end of June, in which Bin Laden praised Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an American air strike.

Internal organs paralysed

In its report, French regional daily L'Est Republicain said it had obtained a copy of a DGSE foreign intelligence service report dated 21 September.

"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," it read.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."

Mr Chirac said: "I am surprised that a confidential memo from the secret services has been published, therefore I've ordered the defence minister to start an inquiry.

"As far as the information itself is concerned, it's not confirmed in any way. Therefore I have no comment at all."

The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said it was not aware of any similar reports on the internet.

"We've seen nothing from any al-Qaeda messaging or other indicators that would point to the death of Osama Bin Laden," director Ben Venzke told the Associated Press news agency.

First Penis Transplant Reversed

2006-09-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

This could have been a solution to problem of penile erection for old men but it seems there is still a need for psychological preparation for the spouses.

Read the news.

Surgeons in China who said they performed the first successful penis transplant had to remove the donated organ because of the severe psychological problems it caused to the recipient and his wife.

Dr Weilie Hu and surgeons at Guangzhou General Hospital in China performed the complex 15-hour surgery on a 44-year-old man whose penis had been damaged in a traumatic accident.

The microsurgery to attach the penis, which had been donated by the parents of a 22-year-old brain-dead man, was successful but Dr Hu and his team removed it two weeks later.

"Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Dr Hu said in a report published online by the peer-reviewed journal European Urology, without elaborating.

"This is the first reported case of penile transplantation in a human."

Both the man and his wife had requested the surgery.

He had been unable to have intercourse or urinate properly since the accident that occurred eight months before the surgery was performed.

Ten days after the operation, which had been approved by the hospital's medical ethical committee, the recipient had been able to urinate.

There had been no signs of the 10-centimetre organ being rejected by the recipient's body.

But Dr Hu said more cases and longer observation are needed to determine whether sexual sensation and function can be restored.

"The patient finally decided to give up the treatment because of the wife's psychological rejection, as well as the swollen shape of the transplanted penis" Dr Hu said.

In a commentary in the journal, Yoram Vardi, of the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa in Israel, said the successful surgery represents an additional step in contemporary medicine.

But he added that careful patient selection is required as well as thorough informed consent of the patient and his family.

"Satisfactory consideration of these issues must be taken into account so that this approach can be considered a serious therapeutic option in the future," he said.

- Reuters

Search for Fountain of Youth Continues

2006-09-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

This news from San Francisco Chronicle shows that the quest for Eternal youth continues.

Entrepreneur backs research on anti-aging
Scientist says humans could live indefinitely
- Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, September 18, 2006

A controversial scientist who hopes to help humans live for thousands of years has received a multimillion-dollar grant from a Bay Area entrepreneur.

Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former chief executive officer of the online payments system PayPal, announced Saturday he is pledging $3.5 million "to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging."

The recipient will be the Methuselah Foundation, a Springfield, Va., nonprofit started and run by the most colorful scientist in aging research: Aubrey de Grey, a 43-year-old English researcher who says he hopes to "radically postpone aging, giving indefinite life spans."

In short, de Grey's thesis is that there are seven main causes of aging, and that if those can be licked, then people could live indefinitely.

Among aging experts, de Grey's reputation is so widely contested that a headline over an article last year in an MIT-based publication, Technology Review, asked: "He's brilliant, but is he nuts?" In a tongue-in-cheek letter to the magazine in response to the story, top authority on aging Richard Miller, of the University of Michigan, wrote that he would like de Grey to help him solve a similarly complex technological problem: how to make pigs fly.

De Grey told The Chronicle in e-mails and phone conversations last week that he isn't disturbed by scientific critics. Some of them, he noted, argue that death is inevitable because the cells and genes of living organisms inevitably accumulate errors that eventually kill them. But, he pointed out, because of careful upkeep "we have vintage cars driving around that were designed to last 15 years -- and they're 100 years old."

So why should humans be any different?

De Grey, who received a doctorate in biology at Cambridge University in 2000 and worked in the university's genetics department from 1992 until a few months ago, characterized the $3.5 million grant as a "major breakthrough" in his effort to get research on indefinite extension of life span "really moving in the laboratory."

"It's "pump-priming," he said. "I need probably $1 billion over 10 years" to achieve that goal."

Advocates of indefinite life extension seem to hope the future will resemble the film "Boynton Beach Club," in which white-haired, super-fit senior citizens party, play and have busy sex lives that would shame a college fraternity. But critics of de Grey-style longevity research fear that if everyone lived indefinitely, Earth would become miserably packed with old, sick people, and nursing homes would be more ubiquitous than Starbucks.

De Grey is confident that humanity will figure out a solution to the crowding dilemma. One possibility: "Maybe people of the future will decide that children are not much fun anyway and will reduce the birth rate," he said.

Experts on aging tended to have a strong personal liking for de Grey, and said he had stimulated some interesting thinking in aging research, but believe that in recent years, he has become sensationalistic in his public comments.

"Many of my colleagues are extremely critical of him -- they believe he's a pseudoscientist, that he is out for publicity -- and that he has no redeeming features," said Judith Campisi, a cell and molecular biologist who has joint appointments at the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"I must say I don't agree with that," added Campisi. "I do think he started out sincerely hoping to stimulate interesting research. And I think in his small way he did get people to think. ... But where he seems to have lost his way is he doesn't listen to rational argument anymore."

S. Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois who confronted de Grey on CBS' "60 Minutes" earlier this year, added: "Where I have vehemently disagreed with Aubrey is where he tries to convince people, especially reporters, that we are on the verge of immortality -- that we have people alive today who will live for 1,000 or for 5,000 years."

At present, scientists don't even know what causes aging, but "Aubrey seems to think that he does -- that there are seven (causes for aging), that we have to reengineer the body to eliminate them, and that we'll live forever.

"In the world of science," Olshansky said, "you don't make declarative statements (like that) without evidence to support them."

No. 1 on de Grey's list of seven causes of aging is to focus on the atrophy or degeneration of cells. Others include gene mutations, mutations to the energy-generating mitochondria inside cells, and the unhealthy accumulation of "junk" inside and outside cells such as the amyloid proteins found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

In response to Olshansky's criticism, de Grey told The Chronicle by e-mail that "I have published a lot of papers that provide the scientific basis for my optimism."

Thiel could not be reached for comment.

Heartbreak heaven for staff

2006-09-18T05:21:00.000-07:00

I just wrote about how to mend a broken heart and among those recommendations is taking a leave. In Japan, they call it shitsuren kyuka.

By YOKO HANI

Staff writer

It's 9 o'clock on a Monday morning. A phone rings in an office and the boss picks it up. At the other end she hears the fragile voice of one of her staff telling her she broke up with her boyfriend the day before. "I would like to take a shitsuren kyuka," the staffer says. Unperturbed, the boss replies: "No problem. Take care of yourself." And with that the conversation ends.
* * * * *

That phone conversation is likely to occur in the future in the Tokyo office of Miki Hiradate's market-research company Hime & Company. By asking for a shitsuren kyuka, the staffer would be requesting "compassionate leave to fix a broken heart" -- and its granting would be the norm.

News photo
Miki Hiradate in the Tokyo salon of her market-research firm Hime & Company, whose all-female staff she treats in considerate ways that most women workers in Japan could only dream of.

"Unless you are extremely lucky," says Hiradate, the firm's 37-year-old founder and president, "you will definitely have the experience in your 20s and 30s of being brokenhearted after someone leaves you.

"So, shitsuren kyuka is a [paid] holiday you take when that happens and you feel too devastated to come to the office. I introduced it after I asked young women what they wanted from 'female-friendly companies,' and they suggested these holidays."

Of course, a female-friendly workplace would offer flexible working hours and child-care leave to help women balance their lives as both mothers and workers. But Hiradate wanted something more, and when she heard the suggestion for "heartbreak leave," she went for it at once.

"Some people may just call their office and say they're taking a day off because they don't feel well, but in my company the employees can openly say they are taking a shitsuren kyuka. They are not asked anything more.

"You know, when you are brokenhearted, you feel terrible and have red eyes and the condition affects your work performance. I recommend them to come to the office after taking some rest. That's good for the company, too," Hiradate says in an upbeat tone.

As for how much rest a lovelorn lady might be allowed, Hiradate believes that the damage done by breaking up gets more serious the older you become. Consequently, her company grants one day a year off to staff in their early 20s, two days off to those in their late 20s and three days off to thirtysomethings.

Sounds nice. How many staff have actually taken the holidays since the company introduced them last year?

"Fortunately, nobody has," Hiradate says. But she swears that she herself will take her shitsuren kyuka if the need arises. "Of course, I will take three days off!" she says.

In fact, in the way it reflects women's real needs, Hiradate's shitsuren kyuka policy also aptly symbolizes the character of her business, which hinges on reflecting the women's market.

Hiradate started her Hime Club (meaning Princess Club) market-research business mainly targeting women in their 20s and 30s in 2002, then renamed it Hime & Company. The business has grown steadily while attracting such clients as cosmetics and beverage makers who create and sell products tailored to that age group.

Hiradate currently employs four full-time staff, all women, who organize and conduct market research on a pool of about 4,000 women who signed up to her "focus groups" mainly through her Web site at www.himeclub.com . She calls those women her hime (princesses) because the purpose of her business is ultimately to promote products and services that make them and their contemporaries happy, she says.

The decor in the salon of her Aoyama office is deliberately girlish, with a white fluffy carpet and pink artificial flowers twined around the spiral stairs up to her office -- as it is there that her hime often come to evaluate new drinks, cosmetics and other products.

"One day, I would like to create a big, castle-shaped department store which sells items selected by hime," she says, smiling, in the rosy room.

But to push forward to achieve her grand design, Hiradate freely admits that she relies on having the right kind of staff coming up with unique ideas.

"I started shitsuren kyuka also because I wanted to have staff who are freed from stereotype and who understand humor. I needed people who would say: 'Shitsuren kyuka? Cool. Can I take that if I get brokenhearted when it's revealed that my favorite pop star has got a girlfriend?"

As unusual as her "heartbreak holidays" may be, Hiradate says she is not just "trying to challenge stereotypes." Rather, she seems to enjoy the reactions to what she is doing.

"When we started the business under the name Hime Club, it probably sounded like a hostess club in Ginza. People in PR companies, for example, had to explain to their client companies that we were actually a marketing company. However, the impact of the name was far stronger than the usual names of marketing businesses, such as 'AA Research' or 'Woman Something.' So that way our business became widely known in the industry.

"I did that on purpose. I try to create something that people cannot help chatting about."

Hiradate's stream of new strategies seems to never stop. Another new holiday at her company is bagen hankyu (a half-day off to go to the sales) -- an idea that came from her experience of working in a big company.

"You can't miss the seasonal discount sales, especially the morning of the day when they start. Of course you can take a half day off in any company, but in a big company employees tend to do that secretly and often keep their booty in the company locker.

"But in my opinion, shopping in the sales is exciting and also fun, because you can show off your bargains and share your excitement and happiness later. It's nonsense to hide them away."

The system benefits the company, too, Hiradate says. "My company is a venture business, and I can't pay much to my employees. But if they can buy their clothes at half-price utilizing the holidays, that may help."

So what's next?

"I will try and do anything -- as long as it's legal -- to help make my staff happy," Hiradate says with a broad smile and a twinkle in her eye that suggests she already has something else in mind.

Toilet College in Japan

2006-09-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

This is not a news but an article written by Amy Chavez, entitled
Commode confession of Sound Princess

While this may be true for Japan nowadays, just a decade ago, Japan had such a reputation for filthy toilets, there was an entire page on the Internet dedicated to the location of the dirtiest toilets in Japan. Then toilet manufacturing giants such as Toto started flaunting their toilet technology in public areas. I remember walking into a public toilet five years ago and being so in awe of the cleanliness and gadgetry, I thought: "Whoa! Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!" No, urine Japan, and ready to meet a different kind of Wiz.

Most public toilets nowadays offer deluxe Western-style toilets that feature bottom washers, bottom dryers and heated seats. Some public bathrooms even have odor-decomposing walls.

While wee in the United States would never imagine outfitting even our home bathrooms with such luxurious thrones, half the households in Japan pay the princely sum of $ 3,000 for one. Those privy to the wonders of modern toilet technology can then empress their friends with remote-control toilet seats that play music and open and close on command. For the first time, at weekly bridge parties, everyone will have an equal chance at a royal flush. Some toilet seats even measure your body fat ratio with electrodes, and others glow in the dark. In short, Japanese toilet companies are out to make sure that no man will yearn the urinal. For the new, modern whiz kid.

Japan, proud of its toilet technology, has even started a toilet college and has sent experts to Singapore to teach bathroom attendants how to properly clean toilets in public restrooms.

I suppose it would not be fair for me to criticize, from my humble commode, one of Japan's original pit-style toilets, which makes sounds so atrocious that no Oto Hime could ever cover them up. Over the years, this toilet has provided many a child with stories of the toilet monster and many an adult with night soil to fertilize gardens with. There's no need to worry you may smell up the bathroom or forget to flush. And the toilet seat doesn't sing, so you have to do the singing yourself.

As I sit on my throne right now, singing, I can finally feel the royal connection. I have become my own Sound Princess.

Japan's centenarians are increasing in number

2006-09-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

This news intrigued me a lot as to the lifestyle of the Japanese which contributes to their longevity.

From Associated Press/Yahoo News

By CHISAKI WATANABE, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 16, 12:34 PM ET

The number of Japanese living beyond 100 has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years, with the once-exclusive centenarian club expected to surpass 28,000 this year, the government said Friday.

The Health Ministry said Japan was likely to have 28,395 citizens aged 100 years or older at the end of September, a jump from last year's record 25,554 — of which women comprised 85 percent. The ministry conducted a nationwide survey and the figure is a projection of centenarians by the end of the month.

The number of people living older than 100 has been on the rise since 1971, and has accelerated since 1996 when Japan had 7,373 people who had reached three figures, according to the ministry.

The rapid increase underscores both positive and negative sides of the country's aging population.

While experts say that there are more active centenarians than before, the rapidly graying population adds to concerns over Japan's overburdened public pension system.

Its centenarian population is expected to reach nearly 1 million — the world's largest — by 2050, according to U.N. projections.

Yone Minagawa is the oldest woman at 113 in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka, while the oldest man at 110 is Tomoji Tanabe in another southern prefecture, Miyazaki, the ministry said.

Tanabe drinks milk and keeps a diary every day, saying that the key to long life is not to drink alcohol, the ministry said.

Tokyo has the most centenarians with 2,562. Okinawa, Japan's southernmost chain of islands, has the highest concentration, with 740 centenarians, or 54 for every 100,000 people, well above a nationwide average of 22 per 100,000.

The ratio for the United States was about 18 in 100,000, according to the 2000 census.

The announcement was made prior to Respect for the Aged Day on Sept. 18, a national holiday honoring the country's elderly, when the government gives each new centenarian a letter from the prime minister and a silver cup.

Web Surfing in Public Places is not Safe

2006-08-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

If you are a business traveler think twice before using the wirless network at the airport.

Web Surfing in Public Places Is a Way to Court Trouble
By SUSAN STELLIN

Any business traveler who has logged on to a wireless network at the airport, printed a document at a hotel business center or checked e-mail messages at a public terminal has probably wondered, at least fleetingly, “Is this safe?”

Although obsessing about computer security is a bit like worrying about a toddler — potential hazards lurk everywhere and you can drive yourself crazy trying to avoid them — the fact is, business travelers take certain risks with the things they do on most trips.

“If you go into the average hotel and sit down in the business center and have a look at their computer, I’m sure you’ll find some interesting things that people shouldn’t have left behind,” said Paul Stamp, a security analyst with Forrester Research.

“The first step companies need to do is to educate people about how valuable the data is and also how small the circles are in which they travel,” he said, noting how loudly many people discuss business on cellphones, without a thought for who may be nearby.

Or what may be in the air. Robert Vamosi, a senior editor with the online technology publisher CNET, said wireless networks at airports — or for that matter, hotels or cafes — are not as secure as most people think.

“Someone may have some software on their computer that allows them to look at all the wireless transactions going on around them and capture packets that are floating between the laptop and the wireless access point,” he said.

These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information — which is why Mr. Vamosi says shopping on the Web is not a great way to kill time during a flight delay.

“Where I’d draw the line is putting in your bank account information or credit card number,” he said, adding that checking e-mail messages probably is not that risky, but if you want to be cautious, change your password once you are on a secure connection again.

That said, if you gain access to your corporate network through a V.P.N., or virtual private network, you are safer using public hot spots, because your data is encrypted as it travels between Gate 17 and your office’s server, where it is decoded before going to its destination.

In other words, your communications are automatically encoded by software on your computer so the data looks like gibberish to anyone trying to intercept it. If your company does not offer a V.P.N. for employees working away from the office, there are services you can subscribe to for about $10 a month that do the same thing.

Michael Sellitto, a graduate student studying international security at Harvard, said that even though he encrypted any sensitive data on his laptop, he planned to sign up for a service like HotSpotVPN to add another level of security when he is traveling, especially when using poorly protected networks at cafes and hotels.

“The problem is, the really good people have written sniffer programs so that the less-sophisticated people have access to the same technology,” Mr. Sellitto said. “Say a Microsoft Word document gets transmitted. The sniffer program will collect that and someone could open it up on their computer.”

While it is hard to say how likely it is that someone is lurking on a public network, many public networks do not have adequate security.

Last fall, InfoWorld magazine published an article about a security researcher who managed to collect more than 100 passwords, per stay, at hotels with lax security (about half the hotels she tested).

Gathering reliable statistics about security breaches is notoriously difficult, since companies are reluctant to reveal this information. Still, the most recent computer crime and security survey, conducted annually by the Computer Security Institute with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, found that the average loss from computer security incidents in 2005 was $167,713 per respondent (based on 313 companies and organizations that answered the question).

As Jim Louderback, editor of PC Magazine, noted, the statistics may not matter given the problems one data breach can cause.

“Even if it’s 1 or 2 percent,” he said. “You don’t want to run that risk.”

Using a public computer can also mean courting trouble, because data viewed while surfing the Web, printing a document or opening an e-mail attachment is generally stored on the computer — meaning it could be accessible to the next person who sits down. (To remove traces of your work, delete any documents you have viewed, clear the browser cache and the history file and empty the trash before you walk away.)

“You also run the risk that somebody has loaded a program on there that can capture your log-ins and passwords,” Mr. Louderback said, recalling an incident a few years ago when a Queens resident was caught installing this type of “key logger” software on computers at several Kinko’s locations in New York.

One way to foil these programs, which record what you type and can send the transcript to a hacker, is to use a password manager like RoboForm. This $30 software encrypts all your user names and passwords for various Web sites, then enters the data at the click of a mouse when you are prompted to log in.

There is a mobile version that can be stored on a flash drive that plugs into a U.S.B. port — making your passwords secure and portable.

There are also simple measures you can take to protect your hardware, like using a cable lock to secure your laptop in a hotel room or even a cafe (in case you leave the table for any reason), and making sure you lock your computer bag in the trunk rather than leaving it on the back seat.

For travelers who do carry around sensitive data, it is worth looking into programs like Absolute Software’s LoJack for Laptops, which can help recover a missing computer. The software reports its location when connected to the Internet — and some versions can even be programmed to destroy data if a computer is reported lost or stolen.

But perhaps the most common snoop that business travelers encounter is someone nearby “shoulder surfing” to see what is on a laptop, out of curiosity or mere boredom.

To foil prying eyes, 3M sells a Notebook Privacy Filter, a plastic film that makes it impossible to view a laptop screen from an angle.

Trevor Stromquist, a sales analyst for a manufacturing company in Minneapolis, has been using one for the last two years to dissuade nosy neighbors on the road, but he has noticed an added benefit back at the office.

Web surfing,laptop,business,IsulongSEOPH

Stock Option Dating is the culprit

2006-08-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

Backdating stock options is the financial scandal that has been rocking the TECHNOLOGY firms. The practice already has led to criminal charges against the former chief executives of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Comverse Technology Inc.
Backdating is not illegal per se but the proper disclosures are required to inform the investors when stock options were awarded.

Two techonology firms, Apple and E Plus are restating their financial statements because of the stock options-related accounting practices.

Excerpt of the news:

EPlus Finds Problems in Stock Option Accounting
Herndon Firm Is Latest Affected

EPlus Inc., a maker of business software in Herndon, announced yesterday that it would restate its financial results for the past two years because of "incorrect accounting" for stock option awards, as disclosures mounted about questionable compensation practices.

The company said it had uncovered problems with options granted to four senior officers -- chief executive Phillip G. Norton, Executive Vice President Bruce M. Bowen, Treasurer Kleyton L. Parkhurst and Chief Financial Officer Steven J. Mencarini -- after a stockholder flagged the issue with a letter to management in late June.

The audit committee at ePlus expanded its review to cover every stock option awarded since the company's initial public offering a decade ago. The review, which is not yet complete, has found that the "actual measurement dates" for options doled out between 1998 and 2005 "differ from the recorded measurement dates," according to a news release issued yesterday.

In a preliminary estimate, the company predicted that it would record $3 million in compensation expenses because of the problem, not including undisclosed but "significant" costs of the ongoing investigation and of revamping its "inadequate" financial controls. An ePlus spokesman declined to comment yesterday beyond the news release.

The ePlus announcement came the same day that Apple Computer Inc. said it would miss a deadline for filing its quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission because of a continuing review of "irregularities" related to past stock option awards. Apple said it received a letter from the Nasdaq Stock Market formally warning that its failure to file a timely quarterly report with the SEC put the company's shares at risk for possible delistment. Apple said it would request a hearing before Nasdaq's listing panel and that its shares would keep trading on the market pending the panel's decision.

Read the entire story here.

technology,stock options,Apple,Nasdaq,stock market

Martha Stewart paid the last cost of her long battle

2006-08-08T07:47:00.000-07:00

The lie that costed Martha Stewart several millions in punitive damages and loss in the price per share of her publicly traded stocks is about to be buried and forgotten with the final settlement of the civil suit.

Excerpt of the news:

Martha Stewart agreed to pay $195,000 to settle civil insider-trading claims yesterday, marking the end of a long and costly legal battle that sent her to prison only to reemerge as a celebrity on television and in her namesake magazine.

The settlement, which requires court approval, resolves civil charges against Stewart stemming from her December 2001 sale of stock in ImClone Systems Inc. Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers argued that Stewart took advantage of inside information to avoid $45,673 in losses before a negative announcement about ImClone's signature cancer drug. Two years ago, a jury convicted Stewart of lying to investigators about the sale.

Washington Post has the news about the fallen goddess of the home improvement business.
breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Getting Rich on line

2006-07-30T03:08:00.000-07:00

A new business model emerged as Google adsense becomes popular to website owners.
Take this experience of Andrew Leyden as reported in the Washington Post.
He's making $ 30,000 to $ 40,000 a year. Holy ....

Here is an excerpt of the news:

For hundreds of thousands of people, the dream of making an Internet fortune works like this: Earn pennies at a time in exchange for allowing Google Inc. or Yahoo Inc. to place advertisements on a personal or small-business Web page.

Take Andrew Leyden, former House Commerce Committee counsel and founder of a dot-com venture that failed, who started PodcastDirectory.com, a search engine for podcasts. As the site's popularity rose from a hundred hits a month in 2004 to nearly a million now, Leyden started making the equivalent of an entry-level government worker's salary -- $30,000 to $40,000 a year -- simply because people clicked on ads. That allowed him to work at home in Chesapeake Beach, Md., trying to make more money by attracting still more traffic to his site.

Read the entire news here.

breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Home Prices Drop in the DC Region

2006-07-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Is this the start of the bubble?

Washingon Post reports:

In what may be the most telling sign yet that the real estate market here has shifted downward, median prices of homes in several parts of the Washington area have declined when compared with the same time last year.

In Loudoun County, for example, the median price of homes sold dropped 1.2 percent last month, compared with June 2005, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., the area's multiple listing service. In Fairfax County, prices fell by half a percent in May and a tenth of a percent in June. And in the District, the decrease was 0.8 percent in March and 1.2 percent in May, compared with the same months last year, even though prices in the District in June were higher than the year before. The median is the point at which half of the houses cost less and the rest more.

The declines are small, and certainly not universal. Prices continue to rise in some areas, most notably Prince George's County, where houses are still relatively inexpensive. But the drops are significant because they mark the first time in half a decade that home prices have fallen in a 12-month span, illustrating just how much the real estate landscape has changed after five years of double-digit growth in home prices.

The areas with declines have some things in common: swelling numbers of houses for sale, slowing sales and lots of new houses on the market. In Loudoun, where developers have put up acres of new subdivisions in recent years, nearly 5,000 properties are for sale via the multiple listing service, which includes mostly resale homes. That compares with 1,800 a year ago. Homes there now take an average of 75 days to sell, compared with 21 days a year ago. In the District and Fairfax County, the number of unsold homes and time on the market has also increased, boosted by a large supply of condominiums.

Read the entire story here.

breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

Business and Redemption

2006-07-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

I am not talking about coupon redemption. Not even soul's redemption. This is the redemption of the tarnished image of Wal-Mart after issues about employment of non-documented aliens had put this big retail store chains in the limelight.

Here is the excerpt of the news:

A Bid to Get Religion? Wal-Mart Hires Ex-Nun
Firm Seeks to Address Critical Areas

Harsh public criticism can make any company search for redemption. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hoping a former nun will help bring salvation.

The world's largest retailer has hired Harriet Hentges, a former nun and foreign conflict mediator, to help steer the company's policies on the environment, health care and labor relations -- three areas where Wal-Mart's public image has suffered.

Hentges, 65, this week assumed the newly created position of senior director of stakeholder engagement. She will work with nonprofit organizations, academic groups and government agencies to "lead the company's sustainability efforts," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

What the union says about the hiring.

Wal-Mart "must walk away from is history of inaction and publicity stunts," he said. "It must become a better company that pays a living wage, provides affordable health care and reflects the best of American values."

What the other people in the religious sector say about Wal-Mart latest corporate strategy?

Plenty of companies reach out to people of faith for guidance, said Patricia Wolf, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. Wal-Mart, however, may be the first to hire someone with Hentges's background to a position of such stature, she said.

Business,Wal-Mart,social responsibility

ABANDON SHIP

2006-07-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

As a Cerified Public Accountant, I feel bad when a big company trusted by many of its clients would go down the drain because of manipulation of its books. Do these people
understand that the partner of accounting is auditing whereby anything that is done can always be checked for its accuracy and appropriateness.

Exodus Continues at Troubled Fannie Mae
Chief Information Officer, Deputy General Counsel Are Among the Executives Planning to Leave

S

enior executives at Fannie Mae are heading for the exits two years into a $10.6 billion accounting scandal that has no end in sight.

Last week, the company announced that its chief information officer, Julie St. John, would step down at the end of the year. Deputy general counsel Renie Y. Grohl, a 12-year veteran of Fannie Mae, is leaving in September. Barry Zigas, who was senior vice president for corporate and regulatory housing goals and joined Fannie Mae in 1993, left last month.

The recent departures are part of a steady outflow of top management at the company since federal regulators first determined two years ago that the company botched its accounting.

Since the end of 2004, 44 of the top 55 executive positions at Fannie Mae have changed hands and are now occupied either by people from outside the company or by a handful of insiders who have switched jobs, spokesman Brian Faith said.

Some executives were forced out or left as part of housecleaning efforts in the aftermath of the scandal. But many, such as former senior vice president for investor relations Jayne Shontell and former senior vice president for portfolio transactions Andrew McCormick, have quit.

At least 29 senior executives, including 15 who have left Fannie Mae, are under scrutiny for their possible roles in the accounting manipulation. Some may be forced to return bonus payments based on the faulty bookkeeping, under an agreement Fannie Mae signed with federal regulators in May.

In addition to paying $400 million to settle charges of earnings manipulation with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Fannie Mae also agreed to determine whether any of the current and former executives named in OFHEO's report on the accounting scandal should be punished or fired retroactively and forced to return money. OFHEO set a deadline of around October for the company to complete its review.

Neither Fannie Mae nor OFHEO officials would comment on whether any of the recent departures were related to the personnel review. St. John, Grohl and Zigas were not singled out in OFHEO's report or by a second inquiry led by former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) at the request of the board of directors.

The Rudman report largely blamed former chief financial officer J. Timothy Howard and former controller Leanne G. Spencer for the accounting mistakes -- allegations that both Howard and Spencer deny -- and faulted former chief executive Franklin D. Raines for fostering a culture that was obsessed with hitting earnings targets and took a fast-and-loose attitude toward accounting rules. Raines denies those charges.

St. John, in a written statement, said she was leaving because it was time for her to consider other opportunities. She will turn 55 in December, making her eligible for early retirement.

Grohl, 56, said in a telephone interview that she had long been planning to take early retirement and delayed her departure by a year out of "loyalty to the company."

Zigas did not return messages left at his home.

The committee set up by the board of directors to lead the personnel review has cleared chief executive Daniel H. Mudd and allowed him to keep his job. But it is still looking at whether to force him to repay bonus payments.

OFHEO found that Mudd attended a 2003 meeting at which earnings management appeared to have been discussed and that he didn't sufficiently look into an employee's complaints about the company's bookkeeping.

breaking-news,Washington Post ,BBC News ,Reuters,technology,business

THOUGHTS TO CONTROL COMPUTER

2006-07-14T04:48:00.000-07:00

It was in the movie BONE COLLECTOR starring Denzel Washington as the quadreplegic detective solving crime when I saw how a paralyzed man could make himself useful with the use of modern gadgets using his brain power. The other one was a movie which title I could not recall. It starred Christopher Reeve,a quadreplegic in real life when he was still alive. I could not believe that controlling the computer by thoughts is now a reality. Thanks to technology.

Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor

Excerpt of the news:

A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday.Those results offer hope that in the future, people with spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s disease or other conditions that impair movement may be able to communicate or better control their world.

In a variety of experiments, the first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, moved a cursor, opened e-mail, played a simple video game called Pong and drew a crude circle on the screen. He could change the channel or volume on a television set, move a robot arm somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.
Although his cursor control was sometimes wobbly, the basic movements were not hard to learn.

Mr. Nagle, a former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., was paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he had not been involved in starting the brawl and did not even know what had sparked it. The man who stabbed him is now serving 10 years in prison, he said.

The sensor measures 4 millimeters by 4 millimeters — less than a fifth of an inch long and wide — and contains 100 tiny electrodes. The device was implanted in the area of Mr. Nagle's motor cortex responsible for arm movement and was connected to a pedestal that protruded from the top of his skull.
When the device was to be used, technicians plugged a cable connected to a computer into the pedestal. So Mr. Nagle was directly wired to a computer, somewhat like a character in the
"Matrix"movies.
Mr. Nagle would then imagine moving his arm to hit various targets. The implanted sensor eavesdropped on the electrical signals emitted by neurons in his motor cortex as they controlled the imaginary arm movement.
Obstacles must be overcome, though, before brain implants become practical. For one thing, the electrodes’ ability to detect brain signals begins to deteriorate after several months, for reasons not fully understood. In addition, the implant would ideally transmit signals wirelessly out of the brain, doing away with the permanent hole in the head and the accompanying risk of infection. Further, the testing involving Mr. Nagle required recalibration of the system each day, a task that took technicians about half an hour.
Still, scientists said the study was particularly important because it showed that the neurons in Mr. Nagle's motor cortex were still active years after they had last had a role to play in moving his arms.

The implant system, known as the BrainGate, is being developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. of Foxborough, Mass. The company is now testing the system in three other people, who remain anonymous: one with a spinal cord injury, one with Lou Gehrig's disease and one who had a brain stem stroke.
Timothy R. Surgenor, president and chief executive, said Cyberkinetics hoped to have an implant approved for marketing as early as 2008 or 2009. Dr. Donoghue, the chief developer, is co-founder and chief scientist of Cyberkinetics. Some of the paper’s other authors work at the company, while still others are from academic or medical institutions including Massachusetts General Hospital.

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Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist

2006-07-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting news for women like me. It answers the questions why almost all Nobel Prize winners are men. Read this news from Washington Post.

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist
Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women

Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.

That's because Barres used to be a woman himself.

In a highly unusual critique published yesterday, the Stanford University biologist -- who used to be Barbara -- said his experience as both a man and a woman had given him an intensely personal insight into the biases that make it harder for women to succeed in science.

After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."

And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."

"By far," Barres wrote, "the main difference I have noticed is that people who don't know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect" than when he was a woman. "I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man."

Barres said the switch had given him access to conversations that would have excluded him previously: "I had a conversation with a male surgeon and he told me he had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man."

Barres's salvo, bolstered with scientific studies, marks a dramatic twist in a controversy that began with Summers's suggestion last year that "intrinsic aptitude" may explain why there are relatively few tenured female scientists at Harvard. After a lengthy feud with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Summers resigned earlier this year.

The episode triggered a fierce fight between those who say talk of intrinsic differences reflects sexism that has held women back and those who argue that political correctness is keeping scientists from frankly discussing the issue.

While there are men and women on both sides of the argument, the debate has exposed fissures along gender lines, which is what makes Barres so unusual. Barres said he has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.

Barres's commentary was published yesterday in the journal Nature. The scientist has also recently taken his argument to the highest reaches of American science, crusading to make access to prestigious awards more equitable.

In an interview, Nancy Andreasen, a well-known psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, agreed with Barres. She said it took her a long time to convince her husband that he got more respect when he approached an airline ticket counter than she did. When she stopped sending out research articles under her full name and used the initials N.C. Andreasen instead, she said, the acceptance rate of her publications soared.

Andreasen, one of the comparatively few women who have won the National Medal of Science, said she is still regularly reminded she is female. "Often, I will be standing in a group of men, and another person will come up and say hello to all the men and just will not see me, because in a professional setting, men are not programmed to see women," she said. "Finally, one of the men will say, 'I guess you haven't met Nancy Andreasen,' and then the person will turn bright red and say, 'Oh Nancy, nice to see you!' "

Summers did not respond to a request for an interview. But two scientists Barres lambasted along with Summers said the Stanford neurobiologist had misrepresented their views and unfairly tarred those who disagree with crude assertions of racism and sexism. Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker and Peter Lawrence, a biologist at Britain's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, said convincing data show there are differences between men and women in a host of mental abilities.

While bias could be a factor in why there were fewer women at the pinnacles of science, both argued that this was not a primary factor.

Pinker, who said he is a feminist, said experiments have shown, on average, that women are better than men at mathematical calculation and verbal fluency, and that men are better at spatial visualization and mathematical reasoning. It is hardly surprising, he said, that in his own field of language development, the number of women outstrips men, while in mechanical engineering, there are far more men.

"Is it essential to women's progress that women be indistinguishable from men?" he asked. "It confuses the issue of fairness with sameness. Let's say the data shows sex differences. Does it become okay to discriminate against women? The moral issue of treating individuals fairly should be kept separate from the empirical issues."

Lawrence said it is a "utopian" idea that "one fine day, there will be an equal number of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research."

He said a range of cognitive differences could partly account for stark disparities, such as at his own institute, which has 56 male and six female scientists. But even as he played down the role of sexism, Lawrence said the "rat race" in science is skewed in favor of pushy, aggressive people -- most of whom, he said, happen to be men.

"We should try and look for the qualities we actually need," he said. "I believe if we did, that we would choose more women and more gentle men. It is gentle people of all sorts who are discriminated against in our struggle to survive."

Barres and Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard psychologist who has publicly debated Pinker on the issue, say they have little trouble with the idea that there are differences between the sexes, although some differences, especially among children, involve biases among adults in interpreting the same behavior in boys and girls.

And both argue it is difficult to tease apart nature from nurture. "Does anyone doubt if you study harder you will do better on a test?" Barres asked. "The mere existence of an IQ difference does not say it is innate. . . . Why do Asian girls do better on math tests than American boys? No one thinks they are innately better."

In her debate with Pinker last year, Spelke said arguments about innate differences as explanations for disparities become absurd if applied to previous eras. "You won't see a Chinese face or an Indian face in 19th-century science," she said. "It would have been tempting to apply this same pattern of statistical reasoning and say, there must be something about European genes that give rise to greater mathematical talent than Asian genes."

"I think we want to step back and ask, why is it that almost all Nobel Prize winners are men today?" she concluded. "The answer to that question may be the same reason why all the great scientists in Florence were Christian."

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Semiconductor Trade Show in San Francisco

2006-07-11T04:31:00.000-07:00

When I was taking up my MBA, my classmate and I prepared a business plan for a
semi-conductor as an exchange deal for a course requirement and their need to expand
in terms of additional equipment and manpower. So I immersed myself in studying the market of integrated microchips, knowing the demand and supply, the pricing, the suppliers and competitors in Asia.

They have thinnest margin for error
For chipmakers, improving by a hair would be gigantic

Smaller, faster and above all cheaper -- those words will rule San Francisco's Moscone Center this week as the toolmakers of the semiconductor industry gather to show off the industrial wizardry to create the chips of the future.

The annual Semicon West trade show is expected to draw about 1,300 companies and 35,000 people to show off the latest tools and techniques for turning thin slices of silicon into electronic brains inside everything from computers to cell phones.

Making chips is a capital-intensive business. Worldwide sales of semiconductors totaled $227 billion in 2005. The toolmakers whose wares will be on display this week booked sales of $32.9 billion last year.

That works out to roughly 14 cents spent on equipment for every dollar's worth of chips sold. Before the dot-com crash, spending on equipment was higher, ranging from 17 to 20 percent of semiconductor sales, according to Dan Tracy, research director for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, the trade association behind the show.

In recent years, however, caution in the aftermath of the crash, coupled with a change in the nature of the electronics marketplace, have lowered the tool-to-chip spending ratio.

Many semiconductors now end up in cars, cameras and music players, rather than in computers. About 46 percent of chips went into computers in 2005, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents the chipmakers who buy equipment from the tool vendors meeting in San Francisco. The next-biggest chunk, 20.9 percent, went into communications equipment, followed by 17.2 percent for consumer electronics. Automobiles and industrial equipment each consumed roughly 8 percent of the chip market.

This trend has increased the pressure to cap costs throughout the production chain from toolmakers to chipmakers to finished-goods makers.

"A lot of the (electronics) industry is moving toward the consumer and price becomes essential when you're dealing with consumer rather than corporate buyers,'' said Doug Andrey of the Semiconductor Industry Association.

Just as chips are the key component in electronic devices, transistors are the bedrock of each semiconductor. Transistors are switches that turn electricity on or off. When the transistor was invented nearly 60 years ago at Bell Telephone Laboratories, it was about the size of an old-fashioned, metal-case cigarette lighter.

Today, a 4-GB iPod Nano stores music on a flash memory chip that incorporates 32 billion transistors, according to Mark Pinto, chief technical officer at Applied Materials Inc., one of the world's leading semiconductor toolmakers.

"A lot of the things consumers want today are small and mobile,'' said Pinto, articulating the challenge of making tools to mass produce tiny objects that must be flawless and cheap: "Can you make a billion of them and can you sell the (electronic) product for $10?"

On a recent tour of the Applied Materials campus in Santa Clara, company officials showed off the dust-free clean rooms, where technicians in white suits and booties design and test the machines that stamp out chips. Given the number of transistors that must fit into so little space, even minute amounts of airborne dust could foul the process. According to Applied, the air inside clean rooms is about 2 million times more dust-free than what we breathe at home.

About 500 to 700 steps are required make a chip, said Applied spokesman Dave Miller. The process begins with a circular wafer of silicon about the thickness of a credit card. On this silicon base, a variety of techniques -- some borrowed from printing and others from baking -- build up a series of layers that constitute the chip's electronic features.

The working parts of a chip are so small as to be scarcely imaginable. A state-of-the-art chip incorporates millions of transistors, each 65 nanometers wide. How small is that? Well, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick -- which means that 1,230 or so transistors could sit side-by-side in a hair's width.

The ever-shrinking size of these switches was first observed by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, when he predicted that the number of transistors per chip would double roughly every 18 months. During the past four decades tool vendors and chipmakers have continued this doubling feat, making what is now called "Moore's Law" an article of faith in the electronics industry.

At some point, however, Moore's Law may run afoul of the more fundamental laws of physics or chemistry as semiconductor-makers continue this incredible shrinking act.

"The transistor is supposed to be a switch, it's either on or off,'' said Applied's Pinto. "Trouble is, when it gets very, very small it's hard to make it stay off."

Of course, small is relative when it comes to chips. Not content with 65-nanometer transistors, the industry is working on ways to slim these electronic gates to 45 nanometers -- which would allow nearly 1,800 of them to fit in a hair -- all to keep producing the ever-cheaper and more-powerful gadgets to which modern consumers have become accustomed.

"The lever to drive down the cost per transistor is to make it smaller,'' Pinto said.

EMPIRE BUILT ON SAND

2006-07-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

This news from San Francisco Chronicle is very important to me since I live in the
BAY AREA. Let me reproduce the whole news article so I will have a full record why the Golden Gate's retofitting projects did not make it safe for earthquake.

Ricardo Ramirez seemed an unlikely success story: At 57, the former Marine Corps judo instructor had spent more than 20 years as a paving contractor and had little to show for it but a long string of lawsuits, business failures and bankruptcies.

Then, in 1998, the struggling businessman appeared to hit upon a way to make it in a new venture. Taking advantage of city and state programs designed to help minority-owned businesses, Ramirez started turning out low-priced, locally produced concrete for projects that included earthquake retrofit work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. By 2003, his Pacific Cement venture was supplying a third of the concrete used in San Francisco's public works projects.

Prosecutors now believe it was an empire of sand.

Ramirez built Pacific Cement on a combination of moxie, deceit and greed, prosecutors say, only to have it crumble. Left behind, they say, was a costly and potentially dangerous legacy: tons of substandard concrete built into vital public structures.

Ramirez, now 65, faces charges of grand theft and fraud for allegedly passing off inferior recycled concrete -- a cheaper material that is more prone to wear, cracks and water penetration -- as meeting higher durability standards for the Golden Gate Bridge and a Burlingame wastewater treatment plant. He has pleaded not guilty.

Continued from Page A1: Ramirez was a well-connected political player who sometimes broke the rules. He had given nearly $100,000 to state and local politicians since 1995, and twice had been fined for making illegal contributions. Some of his work for San Francisco had been criticized by city officials for its poor quality. Still, he was able to secure work on major state and city projects.

His fall finally came when former truck drivers for Ramirez told prosecutors that they delivered load after load of flawed product -- recycled concrete made from ground-up construction debris, rather than hard rock -- not just to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Burlingame, but also to the retrofit of the Bay Bridge's western approach, the Muni's Third Street light-rail line and a new parking garage in Golden Gate Park.

San Francisco officials say Pacific Cement's concrete failed a "disproportionate'' number of strength tests in 2004 and 2005 as the company began to run into financial problems.

Prosecutors say Ramirez ignored warnings from his own staff against using recycled concrete. "I just said it was improper, immoral and wrong,'' said Ramirez's former sales manager, Wayne Breider. "He said I didn't know what I was talking about.''

Ramirez's attorneys and supporters say that the charges are overblown and that any flaws in the concrete were inadvertent, the result of a company expansion that proved to be too rapid. They say even prosecutors admit that nearly all the concrete Ramirez sold to public agencies passed strength tests when it was poured, and that the small amount that failed was nevertheless structurally sound.

"He was not a malicious guy. He didn't go into this business thinking he was going to rip people off,'' said San Francisco Supervisor Fiona Ma, who gave back $5,500 that Ramirez contributed in 2004 to her state Assembly bid after the news broke of the fraud allegations in May.

"He's a hard-working guy, just trying to survive,'' Ma said. "He takes care of his grandkids. He doesn't have an easy life.''
Some former workers, however, say life wasn't all bad for Ramirez. They say he liked to wear $500 cowboy boots, drove a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz and threw parties at restaurants, complete with mariachi bands, for friends he amassed over three decades as a contractor.

"He drove around looking like a big shot," said Breider, who worked five years at Pacific Cement before he was laid off in 2005. "He liked being thought of as a big shot.''

Ramirez's attorney, Dek Ketchum, said his client was "a self-made guy.''

He was also generous, Ketchum said, someone who sponsored scholarships for local high school students and never refused to help an employee in a pinch.

One of his advocates was former San Francisco Supervisor Jim Gonzalez, who did some work for Ramirez as a lobbyist in the 1990s.

"I knew him as a good, active Latino person, a self-made man,'' Gonzalez said. "He was a very strong family man -- he raised two grandchildren. I always considered him a really salt- of-the-earth guy.''

His attorney said Ramirez served stateside during the Vietnam War as a drill instructor for the Marine Corps. His career as a contractor began in 1975, when he and a half brother, Reynaldo Nunez, started a construction equipment rental business and ran it out of Ramirez's home on a 12-acre ranch in Gilroy. On his resume, Ramirez boasted that the business had started with equipment worth $39,000 and he "turned it around 30 times,'' giving him a net worth of $1.2 million in 1990.

Over the next two decades, Ramirez started at least four more businesses, including an asphalt company that he said did $5 million in work for the city of San Francisco in the 1980s. At least two of his firms were certified by the state and city as disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses. That gave Ramirez, the son of a Mexican immigrant, a leg up on bigger, white-owned companies in winning contracts for such public works projects as paving and sewer replacement.

Still, by the late 1990s several of his companies either had folded or were in bankruptcy protection. In one 1998 bankruptcy filing, Ramirez said he had $4.6 million in paving and other contracts in 1996, mostly from the city, but that business had dwindled to just $75,000 two years later.

His attorney acknowledged that Ramirez had an up-and-down financial history, but said that bankruptcies were common in that line of work. "Construction is a tough, brutal business,'' Ketchum said.
Financial issues, however, were not Ramirez's only problem.

In 1985, on a one-mile paving job on San Francisco's Bay Street from Embarcadero to Fillmore Street, Ramirez's West Bay Contractors, Engineers Inc. was faulted by city officials for defective work in at least eight locations, records show. The blacktop started to break apart soon after the project was done, and Ramirez was ordered to repave it at his expense. Ramirez complained that city inspectors were harassing him.

In 1997, in a Ramirez project to replace sewers along Jackson Street, the city refused to pay his company nearly $40,000 because of poor-quality or unfinished work, records show. Ramirez complained again of harassment.

Public Works Department construction manager Larry Wong later said Ramirez had suffered big losses on the Jackson Street project "due to third-party claims from illegal debris dumping, flooded basements, electrical outage to (an) apartment house and restaurant business, and runaway equipment damaging (a) concrete truck.''

Wong said Ramirez and West Bay had been plagued by "mismanagement, lack of proper resources, ongoing disputes with his business partner, continued bickering with general contractor and poor quality of concrete products.''

Ramirez's attorney said there was simply a personality clash between Wong and Ramirez. The quality-control problems such as those Ramirez suffered are common for contractors and, given all the work Ramirez did over the years, were not significant, Ketchum said.

"When you look at that volume of work, and you look at the number of jobs he was asked to do over, it's minuscule,'' Ketchum said. "I would put that record up against any record in the industry.''
Ramirez also had a record of making political donations to people who could help him -- though he didn't always do so legally.

An investigation by state regulators in 1997 found that Ramirez illegally contributed $2,000 to Willie Brown during the 1995 San Francisco mayoral campaign. The state Fair Political Practices Commission concluded that Ramirez had funneled money to the Brown effort by using employees and family members to get around the $500 individual limit that the city imposed.

Ramirez was ultimately fined $6,000 in the civil action by regulators and was separately ordered to perform 25 hours of community service to resolve a criminal case filed by the San Francisco district attorney's office.

Several years later, as he was branching out into work on state road projects, Ramirez donated $70,000 to Cruz Bustamante and independent expenditure committees headed by the lieutenant governor. He also gave $12,000 to groups tied to John Burton, the San Francisco Democrat who was president pro tem of the state Senate.

"He was friends with John Burton, Willie Brown, Cruz Bustamante, all the traditional folks," Supervisor Ma said.

The contributions to Bustamante and Burton got him in trouble again with state regulators, who found last year that he had failed to report most of his donations in a timely manner -- in some cases waiting three years after the fact. He was fined $1,600.

Brown says he doesn't remember Ramirez. A spokesman for Bustamante said the lieutenant governor had no comment.

Burton said Ramirez impressed him as hardworking. "It seemed like he was a little guy being pushed around by big guys,'' he said. "Like a little guy struggling to stay afloat.''
In 1998, with his latest paving and engineering business in bankruptcy protection, Ramirez hit on the idea of starting a concrete plant that he would call Pacific Cement.

He approached the Port of San Francisco about leasing a site on Pier 80, on the southeastern waterfront near the end of Cesar Chavez Street. Ramirez advertised himself in his lease proposal as a "skilled, accomplished and experienced professional in such areas as concrete, paving, excavating and building.''

He won approval, in part, because of his contacts with longtime Brown friend Charlie Walker.

Walker, a trucking contractor and self-styled "mayor of Hunters Point," went to prison in the 1980s for bilking the city's minority contracting program. Brown was his lawyer at the time, however, and when the former Assembly speaker took over at City Hall, doors opened for Walker.

When San Francisco International Airport built a new international terminal, Walker obtained a share of more than $800,000 worth of city trucking subcontracts.

In 1999, Walker testified at Port Commission hearings on behalf of Ramirez's lease bid. Walker said that he considered Ramirez a business partner and that he had invested in concrete trucks on his behalf.

Ketchum confirmed that Walker had been a business partner but said their arrangement had fallen through.

Mike Hardeman, a port commissioner who voted with the board to approve the Pier 80 deal, said he had been impressed by Ramirez's proposal. Ramirez said he would provide about 50,000 cubic yards a year of quality concrete for city projects at cut-rate prices. He promised 30 new jobs and predicted $2 million to $3 million in sales within a year.

Hardeman said commissioners had relied on port staff to do background checks on Ramirez and review his proposal. Nothing alarming turned up, he said.

"It seemed like a real reasonable deal. Everybody was happy,'' Hardeman said. "Charlie (Walker) spoke on his behalf, as did a lot of members of the public. This was a big win-win situation for everybody.''

Among the winners was Walker -- Ramirez hired his daughter Crystal Sims as a driver for the plant.

The Port Commission formally approved the deal that secured the lease for a little over $7,000 a month, and Ramirez began operations in July 1999.

But at first, business was slow. Ramirez didn't know much about concrete, and the relatives he brought in to work at the office didn't either.

"Let me put it this way," said Breider, a concrete-industry veteran who was hired as a salesman but quickly filled the expertise void in early 2000. "It used to be when you went to the prom, you dressed in a suit, with a handkerchief in the top left pocket and one in the back pocket. One is for blow, and one is for show. He's the show.''
Although he may have lacked knowledge, Ramirez's status as the only concrete provider certified by the city as a disadvantaged minority contractor practically ensured his success. And soon, Ramirez was swamped with orders. He started making twice the amount of concrete that he had estimated on his business plan.

His product didn't always pass muster. In 2000, city officials faulted Pacific Cement for pouring several loads of concrete at the Crocker Amazon skateboard park that did not meet specifications for the project. The city ordered Ramirez to replace the concrete at his expense.

That same year, Pacific was accused of supplying substandard material to the Golden Gate Park reservoir and pump station, a project worth $180,000 by Pacific's estimate. But the prime contractor defended Ramirez's product, saying "the city has in no way been compromised'' by receiving Pacific's concrete.

Ramirez's big break came in 2001, when the Golden Gate Bridge district awarded a contract that included a deal for his firm to provide concrete for an earthquake retrofit of the span, Breider said.

Bridge officials would later say that most of the 1,400 truckloads of concrete that Pacific supplied over the next four years met specifications. Prosecutors do not dispute that, saying most of the problems with bad cement cropped up in 2005. But at least one driver said the company was known to cut corners even earlier.

Joe Riblie, who worked part time for Pacific, recalled that he took one load of the company's concrete to the Golden Gate Bridge in 2002 and inspectors turned it away as inferior. He said he drove it back to the plant, where it was simply retagged and shipped back to the bridge.

"They didn't throw it away," Riblie said in an interview. "They just wet it up and told me to bring it back out there.'' He said the bridge then unknowingly took the same load it had rejected earlier.

Ketchum said that workers could make all kinds of accusations, but that the material provided to the bridge had been inspected and passed muster.

Prosecutors say Ramirez would soon find a way to cut corners that would get him in trouble.

In 2001, Ramirez met Tom Chasm, who ran an Oakland-based concrete recycling company, Specialty Crushing. Chasm said he had talked up the advantages of using recycled concrete as the base for sidewalks and under roadbeds.

Recycled concrete -- which is composed of ground-up concrete and other construction debris -- isn't strong enough for major, load-bearing structures, but it is perfect for more decorative work, Chasm said.

Ramirez "didn't say anything'' in response to the recycling idea, Chasm recalled.

But the idea clicked, Breider said. Ramirez soon decided that he, too, could grind up old concrete and put it in the mix.
Ramirez got the port's permission in 2003 to set up a portable crusher for concrete recycling at his Pier 80 plant. He told officials he needed it to break up old material so he could use it for a concrete pad to be poured for a larger plant on nearby Pier 94, where the port had given him approval to expand. He later installed two larger machines without port permission, officials say.

Ramirez's business with the city of San Francisco was growing quickly. Over three years, Pacific won contracts for the city's Youth Guidance Center, the Muni's Third Street light-rail project and the earthquake retrofit of Summit Reservoir near Twin Peaks.

His business was going so well that in 2003, state officials said he had exceeded the $750,000 net-worth limit for eligibility for disadvantaged contractor status. Ramirez appealed the ruling, saying he had made mistakes in his application, and ultimately Caltrans let him keep his disadvantaged status.

By early 2004, Breider started to hear from drivers that Pacific was using recycled concrete in projects that shouldn't incorporate it, he told prosecutors.

He saw piles of old concrete and debris at the plant at Pier 80 and asked whether the recycled material was being used in major projects. Ramirez at first denied it, according to an affidavit that prosecutors filed in court in May.

Breider said in an interview that he had warned Ramirez that recycled concrete did not meet specifications for structural projects. Despite Breider's objections, prosecutors say, Ramirez went forward with grinding up chunks of old buildings, sometimes rebar and all, and throwing it into the mix. Within months, the use of recycled concrete at Pacific Cement was routine, prosecutors say.

At this point, the orders were rolling in not only from city projects, but from Caltrans as well. Ramirez provided concrete to the rebuild of the Central Freeway and poured roughly 2,700 cubic yards -- enough to cover a football field nearly 20 inches deep -- in December 2004 and January 2005, Caltrans officials say.

He also won bids for work on the Fourth Street off-ramp of Interstate 80. Most of that concrete, roughly 2,900 cubic yards, was poured from October 2004 to May 2005, Caltrans officials say. And he got deals to provide concrete for the western approach retrofit of the Bay Bridge -- 27,300 cubic yards, enough to cover a football field 161/2 feet deep -- and for the new eastern span.

A former dispatcher for Pacific who doubled as a maintenance supervisor, Jeff Kollmann, told investigators that Ramirez had ordered him in May 2004 to use recycled concrete on all Pacific's jobs because the company's supplier of the rock normally used in concrete no longer would fill orders on credit. Recycled concrete cost $2.50 a ton to make, compared with $20 a ton to buy rock, Kollmann said.

Kollmann said he made exceptions when the concrete ordered had to withstand heavy loads or when it was destined for customers who had already complained about poor quality. However, "Ramirez would often override their decisions,'' Kollmann told prosecutors, according to the affidavit in support of the case. "This overriding mandate by Ramirez would happen even for jobs where Ramirez had previously told them not to use recycled concrete aggregate for fear of getting caught or because of complaints.''

One project that drew repeated complaints was a Burlingame sewage treatment plant, where Pacific supplied concrete in 2004.

In August 2004, a load of concrete for the new plant's control house repeatedly jammed in a pumping apparatus, which became clogged with rebar and large chunks of recycled material, Robert San Felipe, a driver that day for Pacific, said in an interview.

After several attempts at cleaning the line, San Felipe said, the pump operator tried to flush it out. The hose jerked and smashed into the face of Kenneth Mercado, a worker manning the hose, according to Mercado's lawyer, Troy Otus.

Mercado was badly injured in one eye, limiting his vision, and suffered a broken nose, Otus said.

Otus claimed in a lawsuit filed on Mercado's behalf that Pacific had been negligent for jamming the hose with recycled concrete consisting of "all types of debris, including, but not limited to rebar, glass and painted cement.''

Pacific denied the allegation and blamed the incident on the pump operator. The suit was recently settled for more than $100,000, paid by Pacific and the pump operator's insurance company, Otus said.

Pacific also told sewage plant officials that it had put construction debris in the concrete mix by mistake and that no recycled concrete had been used intentionally. According to Otus, Pacific officials said a worker had been fired over the mistake.

By December 2004, after several letters and a threatened work cutoff, the quality of the concrete being poured at the Burlingame plant improved, according to prosecutors.

Syed Murturza of Burlingame's Public Works Department said all the Pacific Cement concrete that eventually went into the structures at the sewage treatment plant met strength requirements. "Our consultant told us it is not an issue to worry about,'' he said.
Just where else Pacific's recycled concrete was poured is unclear.

In interviews with The Chronicle and statements to prosecutors, drivers said they had found rebar, wood, brick and other debris in many loads they shipped in 2004 and 2005. One driver, who was not named in a criminal affidavit, told prosecutors that Pacific Cement workers would "guard the operation from inspectors.''

The projects receiving Pacific Cement concrete were some of the biggest public works jobs going in the Bay Area -- the rebuilding of the freeway approach at the western end of the Bay Bridge, the extension of Muni's light-rail service to the Bayview neighborhood, and a garage in Golden Gate Park for patrons of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

Former driver San Felipe said that in 2004 he drove a load of recycled concrete to the Muni project that hardened so fast contractors on the site told him to take it back. The rate of hardening is critical to the ultimate strength and durability of concrete, and concrete that hardens too quickly is often rejected.

"When I pulled away, I couldn't get it out of my chute," San Felipe said. "I literally had to take a sledgehammer to get it out of my truck.''

Caltrans has confirmed that some recycled concrete is in the new western approach to the Bay Bridge and says it may have to undertake a costly procedure to try to keep water infiltration from destroying the concrete prematurely.

Golden Gate Park garage officials say they're confident no recycled concrete was used in their structure, but have conducted no tests to confirm their belief. Muni refuses to comment pending the outcome of city investigations.

Testing has not borne out drivers' suspicions on all projects involving Ramirez's company. Some drivers told prosecutors that they believed they had delivered recycled concrete to a retrofitting project at the 14 million-gallon Summit Reservoir on San Francisco's Twin Peaks, but samples have revealed no sign of substandard material.

"There is no reason to believe there is anything wrong with it,'' said Tony Irons, deputy general manager for the city's Public Utilities Commission. "All the cores taken showed the concrete was acceptable.''
After Gavin Newsom became mayor in 2004, the port began pressuring Ramirez about cleaning up a pile of concrete waste on Pier 80 that authorities say was as high as 13 feet.

Prosecutors say Ramirez put the dregs from that waste pile into making more recycled concrete.

As port officials started to crack down, Ramirez accused them in a letter to the Human Rights Commission in May 2005 of being insensitive to small business. "There seems to be a pattern of discrimination by the port against Pacific Cement,'' Ramirez said.

By mid-2005, the port moved to have Ramirez stop work at the Pier 80 site and to bar him from moving to the larger Pier 94 location.

Last July, Caltrans discovered that recycled concrete had been used on the western approach of the Bay Bridge. Tutor-Saliba, the general contractor, fired Pacific.

Prosecutors say that by then, Ramirez was also forced to let many of his workers go. Breider said he had already been moved from Pier 80 to an office after he continued to object to using recycled material.

Ramirez's attorney, Ketchum, said the city's refusal to let him move to Pier 94, together with the refusal of contractors to pay Pacific some $2 million, put Ramirez in a bind. He became "trapped'' at the Pier 80 site, unable to expand, Ketchum said.

Ramirez had invested $3 million at Pier 94 in preparation of the site and equipment. "To not get the permits, it was devastating,'' Ketchum said.
Ramirez now faces charges of breaking environmental law, as well as grand theft and fraud associated with the Golden Gate Bridge retrofit and Burlingame wastewater project. Nunez, his half brother, who oversaw the Pacific Cement plant, faces the same charges, and like Ramirez has pleaded not guilty.

At the Golden Gate Bridge, prosecutors say, tests showed that anywhere from 5 percent to 35 percent of the concrete that Pacific supplied for facades on the Fort Point arch pillars was recycled. They said the problem was most evident in concrete that was poured in mid-2005.

Tests on the Bay Bridge western approach continue.

Ketchum said the amount of disputed concrete is so small as to be insignificant. "It's a contamination problem,'' he said. "It's easy to have a contamination problem. It makes no sense to claim it's a deliberate substitution.''

Walker, who has known Ramirez for 30 years, said Pacific Cement was only doing what was needed to survive in a business climate where "white folks" had it in for Ramirez from the start.

"He was a Mexican, and the whites didn't want him in on it,'' Walker said. "He tried to cut the corners so he could make money like them, and now they say he is a big old criminal. That is what it boils down to.''

San Felipe, the former driver for the firm, said the story of Pacific Cement is one of how a "perfect" opportunity to build something lasting was squandered.

"They had this city wrapped around their finger," San Felipe said. "They could have kept this business going. It would have been able to give back to the community, as far as jobs, as far as quality product. No -- greed got in their way.''

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Backdating stock options being investigated

2006-06-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

Backdating scandal expands
Tougher regulations expected to restrict how stock options fit within executive compensation
- Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 18, 2006

Is it Enron all over again?

The stock-options backdating scandal continues to metastasize. Almost every day, reports come to light of yet another company under scrutiny for possible rigging of stock-option awards to executives.

About four dozen companies, including 17 in the Bay Area, are now under investigation to determine whether they retroactively changed option award dates to a time when the stock price was low, thereby padding the value of the options.

An option gives a person the right to buy stock in the future at a fixed price -- usually the price on the date the option is granted. The more the stock rises, the more the option is worth.

By selecting award dates when company stock prices were at or near their lowest, backdated options come with built-in profits for recipients. That undercuts the main intent of stock options: to motivate executives to increase the company's stock price.

Read the entire story here.

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Laptop Stolen from DC Home -Again?

2006-06-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

It seems that the thieves are not after money but after the most important number for a man-his social security number.

Here is the except of the news fron Washington Post.

Laptop Stolen From D.C. Home
Computer Had Social Security Numbers of 13,000 City Workers, Retirees
By Lyndsey LaytonWashington Post Staff WriteSunday, June 18, 2006

A laptop containing personal data -- including Social Security numbers -- of 13,000 District workers and retirees was stolen Monday from the Southeast Washington home of an employee of ING U.S. Financial Services, the company said yesterday.
ING, which administers the District's retirement plan, known as DCPlus, notified the city about the theft late Friday.

Read the entire news here.

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