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[MrGoutHimself]

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That was the only comedic scene in the movie really. There were other "moments" but nothing like that. I was always fascinated by Billy too, mostly because I love reading about left-handers and all the didos they get up to.

[gimmebeer]

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A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference, sources said on Saturday.

He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project.

Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland flight Thursday morning when he was pulled aside by customs and border protection agents who told him he was randomly selected for a security search, according to the sources familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous.

Appelbaum, a U.S. citizen, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Receipts from his bag were photocopied and his laptop was inspected but it's not clear in what manner, the sources said. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained, the sources said. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said.

After about three hours, Appelbaum was given his laptop back but the agents kept his three mobile phones, sources said.

Asked for comment, Appelbaum declined to talk to CNET. However, he made reference to his phone getting seized to Defcon attendees. Following a question-and-answer session after his talk on the Tor Project Appelbaum was asked by an attendee for his phone number. He replied "that phone was seized."

Shortly thereafter two casually dressed men identified themselves as FBI agents and asked to talk to him.

"We'd like to chat for a few minutes," one of the men said, adding "we thought you might not want to." Appelbaum asked them if they were aware of "what happened to me?" and one of them replied "Yes, that's why we're here."

"I don't have anything to say," Appelbaum told them. One of the agents said they were interested in hearing if "human rights" being "trampled" and said "sometimes it's nice to have a conversation to flesh things out."

Marcia Hofmann, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was in the room and asked if the agents were at the event in an official capacity or for personal reasons. "A little of both," one of the said.

Appelbaum asked when his equipment would be returned and one of them said "We aren't involved in that; we have no idea," and walked away when Appelbaum declined to talk further.

The agents declined to identify themselves to CNET. They said they were attending the conference and declined to talk further.

Appelbaum is a hacker and security researcher who co-founded the Noisebridge hacker space in San Francisco's Mission district. He's also worked to bypass the security of "smart" parking meters, unearth flaws in Web security certificates, and discover a novel way to bypass hard drive encryption.

At the Next HOPE hacker conference in New York in mid-July, Appelbaum filled in for Julian Assange, the controversial figure who's become the public face of Wikileaks. Assange skipped his appearance at Next HOPE on the expectation that Homeland Security agents would be looking for him. After his own presentation, Appelbaum beat a hasty exit and hopped on a flight to Europe.

While he was on stage at Next HOPE, Appelbaum urged the largely sympathetic audience to support Wikileaks by volunteering or by donating money, to address recent criticisms of the document-publishing Web site, and to boast that Wikileaks remains uncensorable. "You can try to take us down... but you can't stop us," he said. He also challenged modern U.S. foreign policy and called for civil disobedience by way of exposing heavily guarded secrets.

Appelbaum told the Next HOPE audience that although he's significantly involved in Wikileaks, he has no access to classified U.S. data that may have been sent to the site.

also here

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[maxbailey]

Prisoner 'died from overdose as officer surfed web'

The family of a teenager who died from a drugs overdose in custody has condemned police for failing in their duty of care.

Kristoffer Batt, 17, died at Tayside Police headquarters in Dundee while a custody assistant surfed the internet.

A fatal accident inquiry heard the teenager had snorted heroin in his cell before he died, which went unnoticed.

His family said they found it "unbelievable" that the custody officer was still working for the force.

The 19-day inquiry into Kristoffer Batt's death in November 2007 heard that the teenager died after taking heroin and diazepam.

He had taken diazepam before his arrest and used a torn-up tissue box to snort heroin he had smuggled into his cell.

The inquiry heard Mr Batt had not been strip searched because the custody sergeant did not have information from previous occasions when he had been in custody - seven times in 2007 alone - and did not know that he had previously admitted to having abused drugs.

The force also failed to keep proper records, which led to Mr Batt wrongly being classed as a low vulnerability prisoner despite the fact he was under the age of 18.

The inquiry heard that after taking heroin, Mr Batt activated his cell light on two occasions to try to attract the attention of custody assistant Stuart Lewis.

But Mr Lewis was found to have deliberately spent long periods of time in an area where he could not see the light system.


Sheriff Elizabeth Munro said Mr Batt's call for assistance was "ignored" by Mr Lewis on two occasions, the first for a period of 49 minutes and the second for more than 15 minutes.

When Mr Lewis eventually responded, he failed to ask the teenager why he had called for assistance and also failed to switch off the light, leaving the prisoner with no further means of attracting attention.
Still employed

A separate buzzer system, which could also have been used by prisoners to alert officers in the custody suite, had been deliberately switched off "some years ago", the inquiry heard.

Mr Batt died between three and four hours after his arrest.

The inquiry was also told that Mr Lewis had admitted falsifying records of cell checks the night Mr Batt died.

He was disciplined following an investigation by Fife Police but is still employed by Tayside Police in a different role.

In a statement, the teenager's family said: "We find it extraordinary that people charged with the safety of others should so blatantly abuse their position as to devote all night playing on the internet and concerned with their own personal interests.

"From the moment he was taken into custody and certainly once he pressed alarm bells, Kristoffer was entitled to at least a minimum of consideration for his welfare.

"We find it unbelievable that a man who falsified official documentation and was using unauthorised internet access has not lost his job.

"Sadly, we as parents and Kristoffer's two younger brothers are deprived of a future with the boy that we all loved deeply and are immensely proud of."
'Been addressed'

In her findings, the sheriff recommended that the light/buzzer system at the station be improved so custody officers could not "hide from it".

She also said that anyone under the age of 18 should be classed as a juvenile and automatically regarded as "highly vulnerable" while in police custody.

It added: "Initial consideration of the determination indicates that most of the issues raised have already been addressed in terms of current procedures, others will be progressed by the force or will be raised with the other Scottish police forces as they relate to issues that merit discussion nationally.''

Congressman Calls for Execution of Wikileaks Whistleblower

A Michigan congressman said this week that if an Army private charged with leaking classified material to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks is found guilty, he should be sentenced to death.

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told a local radio station on Monday that the charges against Pvt. Bradley Manning are worthy of capital punishment.

"We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed," he told Michigan-based WHMI. "That's pretty serious. If they don't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder.

"I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here," he said. "He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of U.S. soldiers . . . If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

Manning is being held at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia, awaiting possible trial on 12 offenses.

He is accused of leaking a helicopter cockpit video from Iraq that WikiLeaks posted in April, and a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, dated Jan. 13, 2010, that also has appeared on WikiLeaks.

Manning also is charged with illegally obtaining more than 150,000 classified State Department cables and leaking more than 50 of them. It's not clear from the charges, though, whether the allegedly diverted documents were those published on the WikiLeaks site.

"He put soldiers at risk who are out there fighting for their country," Rogers said. "And he put people who are cooperating with the United States government clearly at risk -- them forever. Our soldiers will be out of that combat zone one day; those folks will never be."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called the release of the documents that WikiLeaks calls its "Afghan War Diary" deeply damaging and potentially life-threatening for Afghan informants or others who have taken risks to help the U.S. and NATO war effort.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has dismissed allegations that innocent people or informants had been put in danger by the publication of the documents.

Missing French chef's body found stuffed in freezer

Paris, France (CNN) -- The body of a retired restaurateur who's been missing for two years has been found in a freezer in the French city of Lyon, police there told CNN Wednesday.

The corpse of Jean-Francois Poinard, 71, was discovered Tuesday in the apartment he had shared with a girlfriend in Lyon, regarded as the culinary capital of France.

Police said an autopsy will be conducted.

The French newspaper Le Monde cited a police source as saying the man's girlfriend, 51, has been taken into custody in connection with the case.

Police said the body was found after a tip from a close family member of Poinard, who was considered one of Lyon's top chefs in the 1970s and 80s.

[gimmebeer]

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In 2003, a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer?s disease in the human brain.
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Michael Temchine for The New York Times

Neil Buckholtz, chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch at the National Institute of Aging, in the National Institutes of Health.
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Now, the effort is bearing fruit with a wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer?s using methods like PET scans and tests of spinal fluid. More than 100 studies are under way to test drugs that might slow or stop the disease.

And the collaboration is already serving as a model for similar efforts against Parkinson?s disease. A $40 million project to look for biomarkers for Parkinson?s, sponsored by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, plans to enroll 600 study subjects in the United States and Europe.

The work on Alzheimer?s ?is the precedent,? said Holly Barkhymer, a spokeswoman for the foundation. ?We?re really excited.?

The key to the Alzheimer?s project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.

No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort.

?It was unbelievable,? said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer?s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. ?It?s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.?

Biomarkers are not necessarily definitive. It remains to be seen how many people who have them actually get the disease. But that is part of the research project.

The idea for the collaboration, known as ADNI, for Alzheimer?s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, emerged about 10 years ago during a casual conversation in a car.

Neil S. Buckholtz, chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch at the National Institute on Aging, was in Indianapolis, and Dr. William Potter, a neuroscientist at Eli Lilly and his longtime friend, was driving him to the airport.

Dr. Potter had recently left the National Institutes of Health and he had been thinking about how to speed the glacial progress of Alzheimer?s drug research.

?We wanted to get out of what I called 19th-century drug development ? give a drug and hope it does something,? Dr. Potter recalled in an interview on Thursday. ?What was needed was to find some way of seeing what was happening in the brain as Alzheimer?s progressed and asking if experimental drugs could alter that progression.?

Scientists were looking for biomarkers, but they were not getting very far.

?The problem in the field was that you had many different scientists in many different universities doing their own research with their own patients and with their own methods,? said Dr. Michael W. Weiner of the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs, who directs ADNI. ?Different people using different methods on different subjects in different places were getting different results, which is not surprising. What was needed was to get everyone together and to get a common data set.?

But that would require a huge effort. No company could do it alone, and neither could individual researchers. The project would require 800 subjects, some with normal memories, some with memory impairment, some with Alzheimer?s, who would be tested for possible biomarkers and followed for years to see whether these markers signaled the disease?s progression.

Suddenly, in the car as he drove Dr. Buckholtz to the airport, ?everything just jelled,? Dr. Potter said, adding, ?Maybe this was important enough to get people to work together and coordinate in a way that hadn?t been possible before.?

The idea, Dr. Buckholtz said, was that the government?s National Institutes of Health ?could serve as an honest broker between the pharmaceutical industry and academia.?

Soon, Dr. Richard J. Hodes, the director of the National Institute on Aging, was on the phone with Dr. Steven M. Paul, a former scientific director at the National Institute of Mental Health who had recently left to head central-nervous-system research at Eli Lilly. Dr. Paul offered to ask other drug companies to raise money.

It turned out to be relatively easy to get companies to agree, Dr. Paul said. It had become clear that the problem of finding good diagnostic tools was huge and complex. ?We were better off working together than individually,? he said.

[pmpn8ez112]

Plastic Surgeon Was Texting in Car Before Fatal Crash - Heidi Montag : People.com
Originally Posted by people.com
Dr. Frank Ryan, plastic surgeon to Heidi Montag and other celebrities, was sending a Twitter message about his border collie just before his fatal car accident, his ex-girlfriend tells PEOPLE.

"He lived up in Malibu on a tiny street and he was texting while driving and he accidentally went over the cliff," Charmaine Blake says.

Blake, a celebrity publicist, says Ryan's family was told by investigators that the Tweeting caused the wreck on Monday.

The dog, whose name is Jill ? Blake's middle name ? was in the car at the time of the crash and survived injuries to the head, eye and paw.

The California Highway Patrol confirms Ryan was texting before the crash, but investigators have not officially determined the cause of the accident.

"It is one of the elements that we are investigating," CHP Officer Steven Reid says.

Blake says she lived with Ryan from 2003 to 2006. After breaking up, they remained close and Ryan was also helping support her, says Blake.

"It was the only serious relationship I ever had and he was the love of my life," Blake, 29, says. "It was hard for us to stay away from each other."

She adds that she hopes other people learn from this tragedy that "people should not text and drive at all."






.....LOL

[towdog]

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DEA seeks Ebonics experts to help with cases

ATLANTA ? Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations.

The Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent memos asking companies that provide translation services to help it find nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics, Special Agent Michael Sanders said Monday.

Ebonics, which is also known as African American Vernacular English, has been described by the psychologist who coined the term as the combination of English vocabulary with African language structure.

Some DEA agents already help translate Ebonics, Sanders said. But he said wasn't sure if the agency has ever hired outside Ebonics experts as contractors.

"They saw a need for this in a couple of their investigations," he said. "And when you see a need ? it may not be needed now ? but we want the contractors to provide us with nine people just in case."

The DEA's decision, first reported by The Smoking Gun, evokes memories of the debate sparked in 1996 when the Oakland, Calif., school board suggested that black English was a separate language. Although the board later dropped the suggestion amid criticism, it set off a national discussion over whether Ebonics is a language, a dialect or neither.

The search for translators covers a wide swath of the Southeast, including offices in Atlanta, Washington, New Orleans, Miami and the Caribbean, said Sanders. He said he's uncertain why other regions aren't hiring Ebonics translators, but said there are ongoing investigations in the Southeast that need dedicated Ebonics translators.

Linguists said Ebonics can be trickier than it seems, partly because the vocabulary evolves so quickly.

"A lot of times people think you're just dealing with a few slang words, and that you can finesse your way around it," said John Rickford, a Stanford University linguistics professor. "And it's not ? it's a big vocabulary. You'll have some significant differences" from English.

Critics worry that the DEA's actions could set a precedent.

"Hiring translators for languages that are of questionable merit to begin with is just going in the wrong direction," said Aloysius Hogan, the government relations director of English First, a national lobbying group that promotes the use of English.

"I'm not aware of Ebonics training schools or tests. I don't know how they'd establish that someone speaks Ebonics," he said. "I support the concept of pursuing drug dealers if they're using code words, but this is definitely going in the wrong direction."

H. Samy Alim, a Stanford linguistics professor who specializes in black language and hip-hop culture, said he thought the hiring effort was a joke when he first heard about it, but that it highlights a serious issue.

"It seems ironic that schools that are serving and educating black children have not recognized the legitimacy of this language. Yet the authorities and the police are recognizing that this is a language that they don't understand," he said. "It really tells us a lot about where we are socially in terms of recognizing African-American speech."

Rickford said that hiring Ebonics experts could come in handy for the DEA, but he said it's hard to determine whether a prospective employee can speak it well enough to translate since there are no standardized tests. He said the ideal candidate would be a native speaker who also has had some linguistics training.

Finding the right translators could be the difference between a successful investigation or a failed one, said Sanders. While he said many listeners can get the gist of what Ebonics speakers are saying, it could take an expert to define it in court.

"You can maybe get a general idea of what they're saying, but you have to understand that this has to hold up in court," he said. "You need someone to say, 'I know what they mean when they say 'ballin' or 'pinching pennies.'"

[jljones83]

British pop singer 'feared he had crippled a fan' just hours before plunging to his death at Belgian music festival


Pop singer Charles Haddon feared he had crippled a fan before committing suicide, it emerged today.

The 22-year-old lead singer of London band Ou Est Le Swimming Pool took his own life by jumping off a satellite mast after a performance at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium on Friday.

Now investigators fear he started a ?near riot? only a few hours earlier after he suddenly dived into the audience during the gig, seriously injuring a young girl.

A video being looked at by investigators shows him emerging from backstage within seconds of the gig ending at around 2.30pm.

Haddon was apparently scared he might have crippled the girl for life, and that the band might be facing a multi-million pounds law suit.

As the crowd became angrier, Haddon was reportedly heard saying: ?I hope she pulls through. I hope she will still be able to walk.?

Witness Jens Borms said: ?As people were completely surprised by this, they jumped away instead of catching him. Apparently one girl couldn't get away and was severely injured in the back.?

Another eyewitness, who did not want to be named, said: ?I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt anyone. The look in his eyes when he stood up and they pulled the girl from the ground was very scary.?
The structure from which it is believed Charles Haddon plunged to his death

Flemish daily newspaper De Standaard, which had reporters at the event, then said that Haddon had a ?furious argument? with fellow band members.

Hours later, at around 8pm, Jan Van Biesen, a Studio Brussels DJ discovered Haddon?s body in the car park below the 60ft mast.

It is believed that Haddon had injured himself first before climbing up the mast and then jumping.

The injured girl is currently still in St Saviour?s Hospital, close to the concert site, and has serious injuries to one leg and four vertebrae.

A Flemish Cross spokesman said: 'She will make a full recovery. The prospects are good, but she will need much rest.'
A stage at the Pukkelpop music festival

Attorney Marc Rubens happened to be a VIP guest at the festival and announced that there were no third parties involved in Haddon?s death and that the investigation had already been closed.

Haddon?s family today said they were too distraught to talk about their loss.

Speaking from their home in Yelvertoft, Northamptonshire, Mr and Mrs Haddon, both in their late 50s, and Charles? brother said his death was ?devastating?.

Music fans enjoy the Pukkelpop 2010 festival in Kiewit, near Hasselt. The tragedy has left a dark cloud hanging over the event

A statement from the band posted on their official Facebook page in the early hours of Saturday morning, read: 'We are all so deeply saddened to confirm that our friend Charlie Haddon passed away yesterday, Friday 20 August.

'The singer had just performed with his band, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium. He was 22 years old.

The London three-piece were in Europe playing a number of festivals before embarking on a tour of Australia as part of the Parklife festival next month.




Am I the only one that thinks it is funny that a guy in a band called "where is the swimming pool" died by jumping off of something?

[Eccles]

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I never thought of helium as non-renewable