- City officials in Long Beach, N.Y. are sick and tired of
false alarms. With more and more homeowners installing security systems and
those systems bound to sound a bogus alarm from time to time, police officers,
firemen and ambulances often end up racing to a home or business and find no
emergency at all. In the past year alone, Long Beach first responders have
reported to the scene of more than 1,000 false alarms. Those responses cost
money and Long Beach Police Commissioner Michael Tagney has had enough. At his
urging, city officials passed a new law that will asses fines for false alarms.
Fees will begin at $100 per incident up to $700 for repeat offenders, meaning
the South Shore city of 35,000 will be the first on Long Island to hire an
outside firm to go door to door collecting fines that the city levies for false
alarms. “I’m proud that we are innovative and the first ones doing this. And I
think many municipalities will follow suit,” Tagney said. He has plenty of
support from city leaders as well. “We inherited a tremendous fiscal crisis
here in Long Beach, and one of the first things we noticed is that we have fees
that go uncollected,” City Manager Jack Schnirman said. Schnirman believes the
fines will curb the number of occasions when his emergency response teams are
led on wild chases false alarms and hoax 911 calls. Many residents have express
support for the idea, but others have wondered if it’s a wise business decision
to hire a company from Texas to collect the fines and make about 25 percent off
each fine. These bottom-line thinkers believe the new law is essentially
handing outsiders thousands of dollars in commissions. However, if there are no
false alarms to fine, then there are to commissions to collect………..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Northern France was the scene
Tuesday as several months of tension between police and young people in a troubled district
exploded into a massive riot in the city of Amiens. Dozens of youths clashed
with The Man and 16 officers were injured, a pre-school and public gym were
torched and at least three passing drivers in Amiens were dragged from their
cars and accosted. The area where the riots occurred is in economic turmoil and
less than two weeks ago, the French government declared Amiens among 15
impoverished zones to receive more money and security. That relief does not
have seem to have placated citizens of the city and the resulting riots
indicated a culture every bit as combustible as the one that yielded nationwide
riots in 2005, leaving entire neighborhoods in flames in the far-flung suburbs.
In the Amiens riots, 150 officers — both local and federal riot police — faced
off against rioters who fired buckshot and fireworks at them. The city, located
about 75 miles north of Paris, was the scene of skirmishes throughout the early
part of the day, although no arrests were made. "The confrontations were
very, very violent," Amiens Mayor Gilles Dumailly said. He expressed some
understanding for rioters, identifying them as impoverished residents “who are
in some difficulty.” The spark that ignited Tuesday’s riots was the arrival of Interior
Minister Manuel Valls in the neighborhood Tuesday afternoon. A small group of
people attempted to push past Valls' security detail as he walked through the
area and began heckling him. One asked, "When are you going to speak to
us?" before the minister evaded his pursuers by ducking into a meeting with
the mayor, the head of the local prefecture and some residents. Maybe it was a
matter of where and who in terms of summer riots in France, as summer clashes
with police are something of a summer rite in the world’s most-visited nation. Tuesday’s
riots occurred in the same neighborhood that saw clashes between police and citizens
last summer, when police and firefighters responding to a car fire came under
attack by about 20 young men throwing stones. The latest round reportedly
involved about 100 rioters and occurred between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. In an
ironically timed speech, French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that
public security is a pressing matter for his government. "Public security
is not just a priority but an obligation," Hollande said while speaking at
a memorial for two gendarmes killed in June. "We owe it to the population,
we owe it to the security forces." Yes, but you also owe it to the rest of
the world to provide some quality riot action for the masses to enjoy……….
- The next lethal computer virus is always lurking on the
horizon and the paranoid, tech-limited sect is always living in mortal fear
that their computer will crash and burn because they stupidly download the
wrong email attachment from someone they don’t know. Determining the
appropriate level of fear is difficult when no one is quite sure what the
purpose of the next big virus is, though. Security experts are so puzzled by the newly
discovered Gauss supervirus that they are openly calling on cryptographers and
tech experts to analyze the virus and determine its purpose. The complex
malware features many information-stealing capabilities and specifically
focuses on capturing website passwords, online banking account credentials and
system configuration data from infected machines. However, the virus's
encrypted payload is still a mystery. Kaspersky Lab tracked Gauss for weeks and
announced its discovery last week, leaving antivirus experts poring over the
virus since then. Analyzing its structure unique modules and communication
methods hasn’t yielded anything, but experts have theorized that its hidden
binary blob, when decrypted and executed, looks for a program specifically
named using an extended character set, such as Arabic or Hebrew. Its encryption
remains unbroken, so its overall purpose is still unclear. The prevailing
theory is that Gauss is a nation-state sponsored cyber-espionage toolkit. In
the past three months, 2,500 Gauss-related infections have been recorded by
Kaspersky Lab’s cloud-based security system, with the majority originating in
Middle Eastern nations including Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Iran.
So far, the virus appears more focused on tracking targets than stealing
passwords, but Kaspersky is still asking anyone with an interest in
cryptography, reverse engineering or mathematics to help find the decryption
keys and unlock the hidden payload. There might even be a nice reward in it for
whoever can crack the code…………
- He may have left Los Angeles, but Andrew Bynum is taking
more with him from the Lakers than the rings he won with them and the millions
of dollars they paid him. Bynum, who was shipped to Philadelphia in Friday's blockbuster trade that sent
Dwight Howard to the Lakers, is hoping to suit up for his new team with a newly
rejuvenated knee. He battled knee issues throughout his time with the Lakers
and to address those issues, Bynum plans to follow in the steps of former
teammate Kobe Bryany by undergoing the experimental Orthokine/Regenokine procedure
on his knee in Germany. The non-surgical treatment, which is a derivation of
platelet-rich plasma therapy, removes a patient’s own blood, spins it in a
centrifuge and then reinserts it with its reshuffled composition to expedite
healing. Grant Hill and Alex Rodriguez also have reportedly undergone the
procedure, but they and Bryant are all aging stars at the tail end of their
careers. Bynum is a player who should just be entering his prime. Ironically,
he isn’t currently suffering from any knee injuries but was impressed with the
results Bryant experienced from the procedure last season and wants to see if
he can add some pep to his step. Last season was the healthiest of his career
and he played in 60 out of a possible 66 games during last season's
lockout-shortened campaign. The 7-footer posted averages of 18.7 points and
11.8 rebounds in 35.2 minutes per game, all career highs. Another big season
would make him an even more attractive commodity when he becomes unrestricted
free agent following the 2012-13 season………
- NBC’s crap-tastic new reality series “Stars Earn
Stripes” is offensive not just to viewers who have better things to do than
watch a bunch of D-listers go through military training exercises, but
apparently to Nobel
Peace Prize winners as well. The show premiered Monday night, offering a swift
transition from the Peacock’s booming ratings for the Olympics to its
significantly lower ratings for its non-Games programming, and it didn’t take
long for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and eight fellow Nobel laureates protested in
an open letter sent to the network. The basic concept of the series is to pair celebrities
with inactive U.S. military personnel for simulated military challenges. Its
cast of D-listers includes former boxing champion Laila Ali, actor Dean Cain,
Olympic gold medalist Picabo Street, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's husband,
Todd Palin, former NFL player
Terry Crews (The Expendables), former
man-bander Nick Lachey, “The Biggest
Loser” trainer Dolvett Quince and WWE personality Eve Torres. The angry
Nobel Peace prize winners believe the series treats military maneuvers like athletic
events and glorifies war and armed violence. The letter, sent Monday to host and
retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark Clark, NBC executive Robert Greenblatt, producer
Mark Burnett and others, claims "this program pays homage to no one anywhere" and
criticizes it for "trying to somehow sanitize war by likening it to an
athletic competition." Clark has spoken about how much he believes in the
show, very much what one would be expected to say if cashing a large paycheck
to host a TV show. "I'm doing this series for one reason," says Clark
at the top of the show — "to introduce you, the American people, to the
individuals that sacrifice so much for all of us." On the show’s website,
NBC promotes it as a "fast-paced competition" whose contestants
"will gather at a remote training facility where they will be challenged
to execute complicated missions inspired by real military exercises.”
"This show is not a glorification of war, but a glorification of
service," NBC said in a statement. Responding to the letter from Tutu, Jody
Williams, Mairead Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Jose Ramos-Horta, Adolfo Perez
Esquivel, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Betty Williams………..
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