- Prosecuting former political leaders for crimes they
(allegedly) committed decades ago is extremely fashionable in 2013. Bangladesh
is doing it and so is Argentina, where former President Carlos Menem and 11 others were
found guilty by an appeals court on Friday of smuggling weapons to Ecuador and
Croatia in violation of international embargoes in the 1990s. Menem is 82 years
old and enjoys immunity as an Argentine senator, so he looked to be free and
clear of any further legal issues after he was acquitted at trial in 2011. The
appeals court disagreed, saying much of the evidence had been mistakenly
dismissed, and that there is no conceivable way the weapons could have been
smuggled without Menem's direct participation and approval. He admitted to signing
secret decrees to export weapons to Venezuela and Panama, but claimed ignorance
of the fact that t the tons of rifles and ammunition made in Argentina would
end up in Ecuador and Croatia, both of which were off limits at the time due to
international embargoes. The skeptics of the appeals court called his defense
"incomprehensible," citing mountains of evidence that presidential
pressure was the reason customs procedures weren't followed. The court peeled
back the layers of this onion of corruption and decided that Menem's
brother-in-law and "man of confidence," Emir Yoma, acted as his
intermediary with the government authorities and others involved in the scheme.
Yoma was also found to have collected money from the companies involved. "The
only person with enough power to influence simultaneously, and over all these
years, three different government ministries, their various agencies, the
Argentine Army and even Congress, was the President of the Nation, Carlos Saul
Menem, through Yoma," the appellate court ruled. In a 237-page ruling, the
three-judge panel convicted the former president as "co-author of the
crime of smuggling, aggravated by the fact that it involved military weapons
and required the intervention of public officials." Prosecutors previously
asked for a sentence of eight years if Menem were convicted, but he can only
serve time if the Senate votes to remove the immunity he enjoys as an Argentine
lawmaker. At least this trial was quicker than his 2008 trial on the arms
trafficking charges, which included 383 witnesses from Ecuador, Peru and Europe
testifying against Menem…….
- In what may be a first in the annals of musical history,
someone has actually expressed regret for NOT being a part of Sisqo’s 2000
“song of the summer,” the ubiquitous and lowbrow “Thong Song.” The tune is full
of sexual
bravado and innuendo and it might seem like any self-respecting woman would
want nothing to do with it, but rapper Lil' Kim feels differently. Maybe it’s
the fact that the song was nominated from a Grammy Award, but Kim said during
an interview this week that she was tantalizingly close to adding her skills to
Sisqo's ode to the most revealing beachwear possible. She expressed regrets for
missing out on the opportunity, which came her way back in her Bad Boy Records
days, back when Diddy was still Puffy and was her manager. "A long time ago, when I was with Puffy
— 'cause Puffy managed me, but
he also was basically the label," she said. "Puffy was my everything
— everybody know that. He did mostly everything for me. But a long time ago
[record executive] Lyor [Cohen], and I love Lyor; he was always somebody I
looked up to. But before, when [Lyor] was at Def Jam, he called me to be on the
Sisqo 'Thong Song' and at that time I was trying to be a business woman, but I
was a baby. I didn't know what I was doing, so I was listening to whoever was
around me that I looked up to. Puffy was giving me all the advice in the
world." As Kim tells it, she was trying to further the career of her Junior
M.A.F.I.A. pal Lil' Cease and she was trying to convince Redman and Method Man
to appear on Cease’s new single. Lyor countered with an offer for her to be on
Sisqo’s new joint and when he refused to give her the help she wanted, she
turned down his counteroffer. She and Sisqo eventually did team up for an even
more explicit song, her 2000 track "How Many Licks?" But oh,
what could have been……..
- Money for FAT people? Researchers from the Mayo Clinic
have published new research showing that bribing overweight people to shed the
pounds works. The news is shocking because money never motivates anyone to do
something they are otherwise too lazy to do, so hearing that cash is a great
incentive when it comes to convincing people to follow a weight-loss program
for the long term is stunning. In the Mayo study, participants who were given
cash rewards lost more weight than study participants who received no financial
incentives. Never mind the fact that America’s economy is in the tank and
selling unhealthy food is one of the few businesses making consistent profits;
the time to hand out $20 bills for dropping 20 pounds has arrived. What sets
this study apart from previous research showing that cash rewards help people
lose weight is its scope, both in terms of size and durations. Lead author
Steven Driver, an internal medicine resident at Mayo Clinic, and his team assigned
100 participants to one of four weight-loss groups: Two with cash rewards and
two without financial incentives. All participants were asked to lose four
pounds per month and were weighed monthly for one year. Those in the cash
rewards groups received $20 if they met their goals, but s had to pay $20 each
month if they failed. That money was compiled in a bonus pool that was awarded
at the end of the study to participants in the cash rewards groups who finished
the study. A whopping 62 percent of those receiving cash rewards completed the
study, compared to 26 percent of those who did not receive rewards. Driver
observed that the incentives “improve results, and improve compliance and
adherence.” Who knows what other difficult endeavors humans might undertake if
only someone would pay them to do it……..
- Mariano Rivera wasn’t going to allow a torn ACL in his
right knee to decide when his career ended. The greatest closer in the history
of Major League Baseball shredded his knee while shagging balls in the
outfield before a game in Kansas City last May and missed the remainder of last
season. He suggested that he would return but doubts lingered as to whether a
43-year-old Rivera could make it all the way back. Now that spring training is
underway, Rivera is back on the mound and preparing for what will apparently be
his final season. Rivera is expected to announce Saturday that he will retire
after the coming season, with the announcement to come at 10 a.m. ET from the
Yankees' spring training camp in Tampa. After making the news official, Rivera
plans to pitch in a game for the first time this spring against the Atlanta
Braves. Before he walks away, the man who signed for $3,000 as an undrafted
free agent in 1990 will likely widen his lead on baseball’s all-time saves
list, where he currently stands in the top spit with 608 saves, seven more than
Trevor Hoffman's career total. He also has 42 postseason saves, nine more than
the combined total of the next two on the list, Brad Lidge and Dennis Eckersley.
Unless the busted-up Yankees can somehow rally past a myriad of injuries and
win another World Series this season, Rivera will walk away with five rings and
having pitched for just one team for his entire career. There hasn’t been any
real surprise over the news that 2013 will be his last season, as Rivera hinted
during spring training last season that he might walk away after the 2012
campaign. His story is an amazing one, as he began his career as a starter,
going 5-3 with a 5.94 ERA before shifting to the bullpen and becoming a fixture
there for nearly two decades and compiling a career ERA of 2.21, the best in
history among pitchers who have thrown 1,000 or more innings except for Eddie
Cicotte's (2.20)………
- Ice, denim and hockey are three of Canada’s biggest
exports. The time may soon come to scratch ice off that list, based on the
heartbreaking revelation that about 20 percent of the ice in glaciers, on
islands such as Ellesmere or Devon off northern Canada, could vanish by the end
of the 21st century. Canada’s glaciers are the world's third biggest store of
ice after Antarctica and Greenland and if they melt, researchers from the
University of Utrecht projected that the melt would add 1.4 inches to global
sea levels. Governments worldwide are investigating how to combat every
millimeter of rising sea levels for fear that their cities will turn into
swaps. "We believe that the mass loss is irreversible in the foreseeable
future," lead author Jan Lenaerts said. Lenaerts led the project, which
featured researchers from the Netherlands and the United States, and he broke
the crushing news that the trend seemed unstoppable because a thaw of white
glaciers would expose dark-colored tundra that would soak up more of the sun's
heat and further accelerate the melt. Fortunately, a total melt of the glaciers
would take several centuries, so no one who is alive now has anything to worry
about. Previous estimates of the melt rates for Canada's glaciers predicted a
smaller contribution to sea level rise, perhaps as low as three-quarters of an
inch this century. A United Nations panel of climate scientists has projected
that world sea levels will rise by 7 to 23 inches this century if the thaw of
ice sheets in Antarctica or Greenland accelerates. Adding Canada’s melting ice
sheets to the mix exacerbates the problem and now that the world knows how dire
the situation is, the time to act is as hand. Doubting this study is unwise because
Lenaerts’ team used satellite data of the extent of Canadian glaciers over the
past decade to work out a model to project their decline, so it has to be
considered official……..
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