- How long has it been since the world has been able to enjoy a quality international smuggling ring accused of stealing millions of dollars in antiquities from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries? Too long, that’s how long. Thankfully, such a ring has been discovered and its members are now facing federal charges in the United States. Authorities announced the charges Thursday as they detailed some of the items seized by investigators. "It is the first time an alleged cultural property network has been dismantled within the United States," James Hayes Jr., special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security investigators in New York. A federal indictment spelled out the charges against four men who are alleged to have conspired to smuggle artifacts and launder money. These intrepid smugglers are identified as Mousa Khouli, who operated a business called Windsor Antiquities in New York; Salem Alshdaifat, who operated a business called Holyland Numismatics with a mailing address in West Bloomfield, Michigan; Joseph A. Lewis, II, described only as a collector of Egyptian antiquities; and Ayman Ramadan, who operated a business called Nafertiti Eastern Sculptures Trading in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. None of the four comes across as any sort of lowlife criminal thug, which makes sense because they are alleged to have operated a sophisticated smuggling operation that wrapped around the globe, purchasing valuable antiquities from looters in several countries and then selling them to collectors. At present, Ramadan is the only one of the four suspects not currently in custody. The investigation of the ring lasted more than three years and took investigators around the world and back again. "In addition to smuggling cultural property, this case also focuses on significant money laundering activity," Hayes said. "This is notable because the illicit sale of cultural property is the third most profitable black market industry following narcotics and weapons trafficking." As happens so often in major theft investigations, the break in the case came from something much smaller. ICE Special Agent Brenton Easter said his team initially was looking for one item - a terracotta head uncovered in Iraq in 2000 -- when they stumbled upon a multinational network. “This is one of the first times in the U.S. that we've actually dismantled an entire network. What we've done is identified the person in the Middle East who was the conduit, we've identified the broker, we've identified the individual providing false provenance, and we've identified the end-all collector," Easter said. The total value of items recovered from the ring by ICE agents has been estimated at $2.5 million, including a Greco-Roman-style Egyptian sarcophagus, a nesting set of three Egyptian sarcophagi, a set of Egyptian funerary boats, and Egyptian limestone figures that date back to 552 B.C. Investigators also seized artifacts from Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. All of the antiquities were smuggled in to the United States from the Port of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and many were discovered by using rudimentary metal detectors. All of these factors add up into something the world has desperately been lacking, namely a major international antiquities theft ring to entertain it…………
- Friday Night Lights has had its run as a feature film, it has enjoyed a few critically acclaimed seasons as a television show and now that run is ending, leaving the franchise to……go back to the big screen? As the fifth and final season of the show comes to a close on NBC, rumors are already swirling that FNL may live on by making a return to Hollywood. Armed with Emmy nominations and a certain cult following, the drama may churn out a sequel to the original film that spawned the show in the first place, which would certainly be a nice little circle. The first movie starred Billy Bob Thornton in the lead role and speculation has the next film picking up where the small screen version left off and center on Coach Taylor (Thornton’s role) and his love interest Tami, as played by Emmy nominees Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton (who played the same role opposite Thornton in the original movie). Series creator Peter Berg has gone on the record as saying he wants to do the movie and since he piloted both the movie and series (with help from executive producer Jason Katims), he would certainly have a lot of sway in making another movie happen. Going back to the big screen may not be quite as simple as making the transition from film to TV series initially, as book rights and multiple production companies, Imagine and NBC’s production arm, Universal Media Studios, involved. NBC has already said it does not currently have a FNL project in development, but any chance of cashing in on this profitable franchise one more time and scoring another big pay day before FNL is retired would change that “not currently” into a “work in progress” in a hurry…………
- Google is pretty happy with itself right about now. This week’s successful launch of its Google+ social network has sufficiently bolstered the tech giant in its ongoing quest for global domination and led to the requisite flexing of its corporate muscle. In that spirit, Google is requiring users to provide Google Profiles, the identity component of Google+, with "the name that you commonly go by in daily life." The concept is essentially the same as Facebook's name policy, which has already rankled Internet users who prefer to interact online without being personally identified. As a small concession to those fans of online privacy, Google recently added "Other" as a gender designation option in Profiles, but the overarching sentiment is clearly for more information to be shared. Look no further than the Google News portion of the website for evidence of this, as on Thursday Google took major steps forward turning it into a social media experience by introducing a system of online badges that Google News readers can earn by reading news articles. The process, known as "gamification," combines the basic principles of online gaming with non-game activities. Gamification has been a major topic at several recent game industry conferences and tech experts believe it will be practiced by a much wider range of organizations with an online presence in the next two to three years. Google is merely ahead of the game and has designed more than 500 badges to recognize diligent news reading. The badges are private for now, but Google hopes to see users make them public and has designed them to be shareable while making certain information associated with the badges private by default. "Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends," wrote Google engineer Natasha Mohanty in a blog post. "Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation, or just plain brag about how well-read you are." Bragging is also a big component of Google’s current endeavors and Google Profiles has recently added a data field titled "Bragging rights." This feature will allow Google News readers in the U.S. to boast titles like Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Ultimate. In order to use news badges, users need to have their Web history enabled. Users who are vigilant about their privacy can still duck all of these new features by disabling their Web history and not signing in to Google when they search and browse for news and other assorted content……….
- Stunning, just stunning. North Korea is accused of engaging in dishonest, deceptive behavior involving illegal substances. But take a deep breath and relax, world, because the substances in question aren’t nuclear and no world wars will start over these allegations. In fact, the entire situation revolves around something completely irrelevant and unimportant: women’s soccer. The North Korean women’s national team may not have won a game or even scored a goal in being eliminated in the group stage from the ongoing World Cup in Germany, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t trying their damndest to compete and win. According to soccer governing body FIFA, five North Korea players have tested positive for steroids at the World Cup, soccer's biggest doping scandal at a major tournament in 17 years. And as anyone who has ever played a sport at any level knows, if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Saturday that two players were caught during the tournament this month, leading tournament officials to test the rest of the North Korean squad. Those tests led to three more positive results. "This is a shock," Blatter said at a news conference. "We are confronted with a very, very bad case of doping and it hurts." Those words coming from someone who just won re-election as FIFA’s president despite rampant corruption in the organization and scandals in which he was personally involved is a bit rich, but let’s roll with Blatter’s righteous indignation for the moment. The scandal is the first of significance since the men's 1994 World Cup in the United States, when Argentinean star Diego Maradona was kicked out after testing positive for stimulants. North Korea’s defense against the allegations is predictably bizarre, with officials telling FIFA that the steroids were accidentally taken with traditional Chinese medicines based on musk deer glands to treat players who had been struck by lightning on June 8 during a training camp. That’s right, they’re invoking the old “lightning strike necessitates musk deer gland usage” excuse. That argument should play very well with FIFA's disciplinary committee, which will now take up the case. Defenders Song Jong Sun and Jong Pok Sim were the first two players to test positive in testing conducted after North Korea's first two group games. They were suspended for the last match, which ended in a scoreless draw with Colombia. Blatter didn’t seem to find the initial explanation for the positive tests plausible, saying the North Korean federation "wrote to us and they presented their excuses. They said that a lightning strike was responsible for this." The musk deer gland remedy comes from musk deer living in a large swathe of Asia from Siberia to North Korea and the hairy 4-centimeter gland is usually cut open to extract a liquid that is used for medical purposes. FIFA officials encountered steroids that had never before been found by any governing body and were initially perplexed by what they discovered. "It was very complex," FIFA's chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak said. "It is really the first case in which this has been discovered." The organization has yet to release the names of the other three players who tested positive, but with women’s soccer set to fade right back into obscurity once the tournament ends Sunday, odds are this entire saga will soon be forgotten…………
- Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Enough travelers have been put through enough invasive searches/gropings by Transportation Security Administration officials while going through security checkpoints at airports across the United States that one was eventually going to snap. When millions of people are scanned, wanded, patted down, groped and undressed, TSA screeners are bound to run into one who will snap and do something insane in response to being put through their requisite thorough examination before being allowed to proceed to their gate and board their plane. That the person who snapped was a 61-year-old Asian-American woman from Colorado may not have been the obvious choice, but it’s not really that stunning. Yukari Mihamae was passing through security at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix when she was pulled aside by a female TSA agent for closer screening. Instead, it was the agent who received a more thorough examination when Mihamae reportedly grabbed the agent’s left breast and squeezed and twisted it with both hands. Phoenix police are not sure why Mihamae committed the bizarre act, but the police report states that she admitted to the crime. She was later released on her own recognizance and now faces a felony count of sexual abuse. Without having any legal expertise, the best advice for Mihamae has to be taking the case to trial. After all, her chances of going in front of a jury and finding 12 people who have suffered through a TSA screening nightmare of their own and are sympathetic to someone exacting a bit of revenge on the blue-shirted jerks who seize tubes of toothpaste in excess of three ounces from carry-on bags and force people to disrobe and allow a total stranger to feel them up in a public places would seem to be fairly good. Well, either that or Mihamae can claim she is not guilty by reason of insanity because her actions would definitely seem to back that up. Or there is always the chance she just thought the TSA agent was hot and that was Mihamae’s crude way of hitting on her………..
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