Eideard

Chopper recovery – after the gang ditched it

The company that owns a cash depot targeted in a daring helicopter raid this week said Friday it is offering a reward of more than $1 million for information about the heist.

G4S said it is offering up to 7 million Swedish kronor ($1.01 million) for information leading directly to the arrest and conviction of the offenders or the recovery of the stolen money…

The company did not disclose how much money had been lost, but the thieves could have gotten as much as the equivalent of several millions of U.S. dollars, according to CNN affiliate TV4.

A group of heavily-armed thieves used a helicopter early Wednesday to land on the roof of the cash depot in Vastbarga, Stockholm, which serves automatic teller machines all across the capital.

They used explosives to get into the building, witness Bjorn Lockstrom told TV4, and later hoisted bags of money to the waiting chopper.

The thieves had also placed a bag marked “bomb” outside the police heliport, meaning Swedish police couldn’t immediately pursue the thieves because they had to first deal with the bag.

TV4 later reported that the bag never contained a bomb.

The thieves had also blocked the roads around the cash depot with metal spikes.

Newspaper and TV Talking Heads criticized the coppers for not opening fire on the helicopter as it lifted off the building – in the middle of Stockholm.

Well, duh! Disabling the chopper or not, there would have been a serious likelihood of shooting up a chunk of the city, as well.

Martinez and McCain dancing together after a so-called healthcare forum
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

It used to be that lawmakers were coy about any ideas they had about heading for K Street, waiting until their terms ended before announcing they were beginning a more lucrative career.

But in recent years, members of Congress planning to become lobbyists have not been able to wait. In fact, when Florida Republican Mel Martinez this week accepted a position with the mega-lobbying and law firm DLA Piper — less than two weeks after resigning from the Senate — it brought to five the number of former lawmakers since 2007 who have abandoned their constituents midterm and almost immediately resurfaced with lobbying firms, according to data provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

“This used to be considered unacceptable, but it really is a growing phenomenon,” said Meredith McGehee, who lobbies for stricter lobbying and ethics regulations for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. “The reality is that the money has gotten so big and so tempting these days, that I think a lot of these members are saying, ‘I don’t think I’ll go back into political office, first of all, and, the money is just too big to turn down.’”

Martinez was traveling in Brazil and could not be reached for comment, but in February, his office insisted he would serve until the end of his term in January 2011 before retiring from Congress to spend more time with his family. Last month, though, he reversed course, announcing he would step down as soon as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist appointed a successor…

Lobbyists’ salaries are not public information, but last year, Martinez’s new firm DLA, which registered nearly 50 lobbyists, reported more than $11.8 million in lobbying revenue, which doesn’t include legal and consultation fees unrelated to lobbying.

Martinez, who is barred from lobbying his former colleagues for two years, will advise clients on government affairs, litigation, financial services, real estate, energy, defense, infrastructure development and other matters, according to a DLA press release announcing his arrival.

Slime. Pure, unadulterated slug exudate. Only now he’ll be paid directly and above the table.

As video game giants like Sony and Microsoft touted their new gizmos at the Tokyo Game Show this week, industry executives had more than the coming holiday sales season on their minds.

Apple’s recent foray into video games — with the iPhone, the iPod Touch and its ever-expanding online App Store — is causing as much hand-wringing among old industry players as the global economic slump, which threatens to take the steam out of year-end shopping for the second consecutive year.

Among the questions voiced by video game executives: How can Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft keep consumers hooked on game-only consoles, like the Wii or even the PlayStation Portable, when Apple offers games on popular, everyday devices that double as cellphones and music players?

And how can game developers and the makers of big consoles persuade consumers to buy the latest shoot’em-ups for $30 or more, when Apple’s App store is full of games, created by developers around the world and approved by Apple, that cost as little as 99 cents — or even are free…?

The concerns highlight an accelerating shift away from hard-core games, which have traditionally driven console sales, to more casual ones played on cellphones. Of the 758 new game titles shown at the Tokyo Game Show, 168 were for cellphone platforms — more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Apple did not participate in the Tokyo Game Show, which ends Sunday. But the company introduced a beefed-up version of the iPod Touch this month, explicitly comparing it as a gaming platform with the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable.

I don’t know from gaming; but, I know a tad about marketing and design. At this point in time, I’d rather own Apple shares than Sony.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America’s customer service — really, really unhappy.

Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that “1,784 billion, trillion dollars” be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

“Incomprehensible,” U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released in Manhattan federal court.

“He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a ‘Spanish womn,’” the judge wrote. “He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers…”

The sum…dwarfs the world’s 2008 gross domestic product of $60 trillion, as estimated by the World Bank…

Judge Chin gave Chiscolm until October 23 to better explain the basis for his claims, or else see his complaint dismissed.

I know people like this. Do you know someone like this?

The Commerce Department has unveiled the first 77 “smart grid” standards aimed at removing a major barrier to the implementation of digital grid technologies.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology draft report (pdf) highlights 31 standards with “relevance” to smart-grid development and another 46 standards as “potentially” applicable to the smart grid.

“Central to this report is cybersecurity,” Secretary Gary Locke said at the GridWeek conference in Washington, D.C. “We need to do it right, but we cannot take forever because everything else depends on the foundation of our cybersecurity efforts.”

While NIST has held three workshops that drew more than 1,500 participants to work on the initial standards, the agency will also collect comments for 30 days on the draft report. After that, NIST will release the final standards report, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will decide which standards will be authorized, as mandated by the 2007 energy bill.

NIST plans to release the final “phase 1.0″ report by the end of the year.

Some of my favorite skeptics from the gene pool of do-nothings, know-nothings, at the big blogs on the hill will now have a chance to spend the next few months whining. Anything to perpetuate inaction.

No doubt the cybersecurity tasks referenced above are already moving to stricter codification. This can prove to be a useful test.

A huge fire last year at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Ga., that killed 14 workers and injured 36 more was “entirely preventable,” a federal official said Thursday as the results of an investigation into the fire’s causes were released.

The owner of the plant, the Imperial Sugar Company, and the plant’s managers knew for decades about the hazards of sugar dust but failed to take the necessary precautions, according to the report, issued by the Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents.

The report blamed inadequate equipment design, poor maintenance and ineffective housekeeping for the explosion and fire in February 2008, and said that Imperial Sugar and the sugar industry as a whole were aware of the dangers of dust explosions at least as early as 1925.

No inclusion of the collaboration of politicians and bureaucrats, state and federal, who looked the other way all these decades.

Imperial Sugar had not conducted evacuation drills and the explosion and fires disabled most emergency lighting, trapping workers in a dark maze of corridors, the report said.

The Chemical Safety Board does not issue citations or levy fines, but in July 2008, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration found violations at the Port Wentworth plant and at an Imperial Sugar plant in Gramercy, La., where an inspection five weeks after the Georgia fire found sugar dust four feet thick in some areas.

The agency proposed fines of $8.7 million, the third-largest in the agency’s history. Imperial Sugar is contesting the fine.

Fines should be in the billions and corporate bosses – should be in jail.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Drawing on 2006 remarks in which he compared former U.S. President George Bush to the devil, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the United Nations, said, “It doesn’t smell like sulfur anymore.”

In a rambling speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Chavez spoke highly of current President Obama, saying he is an “intelligent man” and comparing him to President John F. Kennedy.

“I hope God will protect Obama from the bullets that killed Kennedy,” he said. “I hope Obama will be able to look and see, genuinely see, what has to be seen and bring about a change.”

Three years ago, Chavez spoke at the gathering the day after Bush spoke, and said the lectern “still smells of sulfur.”

But on Thursday he looked around the podium and said, “It doesn’t smell of sulfur. It’s gone. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope.”

I have agreements – and disagreements – with Chavez. Must admit I appreciate his understanding of American humor.

Of course, most of what he said was playing to the Latin American audience and went straight over the TV talking heads.

“Big wheel keeps on turning, Proud Mary keeps on burning…”
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The Group of 20 is set to become the premier coordinating body on global economic issues, reflecting a new world economic order in which emerging market countries like China are much more relevant, according to a draft communique.

Leaders of the G20 developed and developing nations also agreed to make the International Monetary Fund more representative by increasing the voting power of countries that have long been under-represented in the world financial body, said the draft G20 communique obtained by Reuters…

Following are some of the implications of the decisions:

* By making the G20 the new global economic coordinator, countries are committing to maintaining cooperation even after the global financial upheaval and recession recede. The G20 was upgraded from a ministerial to a leaders-level forum only last year as the crisis deepened…

* Adopting the G20 as the new economic steering committee raises questions over the whether or not the Group of Eight, which makes up the world’s industrial countries, will eventually be faded out. Diplomats said the G8 would continue to function but would focus on non-economic issues…

* The shift of at least 5 percentage points in voting power is the largest increase ever seen in the IMF’s voting structure and is likely to see China overtake old European powers Britain and France which have long resisted the move.

* The G20 also agreed the head of the IMF should be selected based on qualifications and not nationality, according to the draft communique obtained by Reuters. The decision is significant because the head of the IMF has always been a European, while the president of the World Bank has always been an American.

That last change should be enough to piss off neocon nutballs for a decade.

A California man was arrested on suspicion of stalking after he allegedly used his airplane to violate a restraining order by buzzing a neighborhood.

In recent weeks, Concord, California, police were investigating an incident in which leaflets were dropped over a residential neighborhood, possibly by a low-flying airplane, police said in a statement.

“The leaflets referenced a specific person and contained defamatory language and racial slurs. As the investigation has progressed, it appears that the motivation behind this situation is a failed domestic relationship,” the statement read…

On Wednesday evening, police received several calls from residents of the neighborhood reporting a low-flying private airplane in the area. “The plane was reported to have made eight passes over the neighborhood.”

He was arrested on suspicion of stalking and violating a restraining order.

The man was booked into the county jail in Martinez, California, in lieu of $155,000 bail, police said.

Ingenious – but, dumb.