Posts Tagged ‘million’
$150 million drug bust at sea was – ‘peaceful’
HMCS Toronto boarding party
A Canadian navy crew was all smiles after making one of the largest heroin seizures ever on the high seas…when it intercepted a boat transporting between $150-million and $250-million worth of drugs on the Indian Ocean.
The Department of National Defence said HMCS Toronto seized about 500 kilograms of heroin from the boat on Friday. The exact location of the incident was undisclosed, because it’s part of a Canadian Forces counter-terrorism operation…
The discovery began late Thursday night when a naval helicopter — codenamed Raptor, after Toronto’s basketball team — spotted the small fishing boat in the water and began tracking it. Patchell told CBC News that fishing vessels called dhows are often used in that region of the world to carry drugs.
A team boarded the vessel Friday morning and began to search.
“Very early on in the boarding, we got the reports back that they found one or two suspicious packages,” Patchell said. “Didn’t take too long before three packages turned into 500 packages of heroin…”
“I had some intelligence that indicated some of these vessels we’ve been tracking may be carrying narcotics, but certainly nothing of this size was expected,” Patchell said…
Canada’s naval ships have been patrolling the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
Uh, why? The 9-11 attacks didn’t originate there. Bin Laden hasn’t been near that part of Africa since the mid-1980′s. It would be nice if this Anglophone Navy was spending their time interfering with piracy in the region – but, no special mention of that as a goal from the Commander.
We get to hear on a daily basis about activities that have somehow prevented dozens of attacks upon every one of our nations – with no evidence whatsoever because it’s “classified”. Sometime – a century from now – someone will open a couple of sealed vaults and possibly list the results of millions of dollars per hour spent on Homeland Security.
“You’re stopping my food stamps because I won a million dollars?!”
A Michigan woman who won the lottery but continued to receive food assistance from the state government has had her benefits pulled, officials said.
Amanda Clayton hit it big playing the Michigan Lottery. Like many winners, she used her $1 million prize to buy a new house. But the Lincoln Park, Michigan, resident continued to receive money in another form — $200 a month in state food assistance, according to CNN Detroit affiliate WDIV.
…On Thursday, the state’s Department of Human Services announced that she is no longer getting the benefits.
According to Michigan law, welfare recipients must report any changes in assets or income to the agency within 10 days. The department “relies on clients being forthcoming about their actual financial status. If they are not, and continue to accept benefits, they may face criminal investigation and be required to pay back those benefits,” Director Maura Corrigan said in a statement…
“I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn’t, I thought, maybe, it was OK because I’m not working,” Clayton, 24, told WDIV when it asked whether it was appropriate for her to receive the money…
In October, Clayton walked away with $1 million in the “Make Me Rich!” lottery game show. She also bought a car…
After taking a lump sum and paying taxes, the unemployed woman said she ended up with just more than $500,000.
Asked if she had the right to the public assistance money, Clayton answered, “I kind of do. I have no income, and I have bills to pay. I have two houses.”
Sheesh. Somewhere inside that peabrain there are an insufficient numbers of functional synapses.
What does she think she is? An oil company?
Harassed by bill collectors, woman wins lawsuit for $1.26 million
New Mexico State Court
A Santa Fe federal court jury has awarded a woman $1.26 million in damages from a debt-collection law firm that pursued her for three years in a case of mistaken identity.
Denver-based Farrell & Sandlin twice filed to garnish the wages of Lucinda Yazzie of Farmington — the second time despite assurances from her employer that the collectors had the wrong person — and didn’t back off until Yazzie filed her federal court lawsuit, said Rob Treinen of Albuquerque, Yazzie’s attorney.
“They had been on notice that they had been pursuing the wrong person for three years,” Treinen said. “They just would not stop coming after her.”
Treinen said the jury awarded Yazzie $161,000 in actual damages for emotional distress and $1.1 million in punitive damages.
The Target credit card debt that the firm was trying to recover — the responsibility of another person named Lucinda Yazzie, with a different Social Security number, address and other identifiers — was about $5,000, Treinen said…
But Farrell & Sandlin filed a complaint in state court for money due against the wrong Lucinda Yazzie in April 2007 and obtained a garnishment of wages writ against her employer, a Farmington energy company. Yazzie couldn’t solve the problem with calls to Farrell & Sandlin, but the garnishment was dropped when Yazzie’s boss filed an answer saying she was the wrong person…
U.S. District Judge Bruce Black, in a pretrial order in the case, wrote that Farrell & Sandlin admitted that the Social Security number of the actual debtor “was changed in the Law Firm’s records by an unauthorized act of a former employee” and as a result the firm went after the wrong Lucinda Yazzie.
Target National Bank, the financial arm of Target stores, had provided the firm with correct information, the judge’s order says.
Aside from the egregious incompetence of the debt collection firm – Farrell & Sandlin – there is nothing that matches the sheer stupidity of the bureaucratic hacks working in the state court system who also had access to the fact that wrong information was being used to harass Ms. Yazzie.
And still they issued an order to garnish her wages – twice! They should all be fired and forced to find an honest job.
T-Mobile — We already have a million+ iPhones on our network
As AT&T tries to swallow up the American wing of the German telekom, many have wondered whether Apple would allow T-Mobile to carry the iPhone. Apple’s answer so far is a no*, but that hasn’t stopped T-Mobile customers from adopting iPhones. In huge numbers.
In a meeting with T-Mobile spokespeople today ahead of the NYC Pepcom event, I received word that there are actively over a million Apple iPhones currently on T-Mobile’s network.
When asked for a breakdown, the spokesman said the majority were pre-iPhone 4 but that a significant amount of people had “taken the scissors” to their T-Mobile SIM cards. T-Mobile doesn’t currently offer a Micro-SIM solution for Apple’s iPhone 4 so people who want to use the iPhone 4 must modify their SIMs into MicroSIMs. Those using iPhone 4s also won’t receive T-Mobile’s 3G or 4G data speeds because of the radio differences between the networks.
When asked to elaborate further on Micro-SIMs, the spokesman told me they are in the works but there was no time frame for release. Why not wait until the deal with AT&T is done to make MicroSIMs? Perhaps we’ll have a little surprise come September?
Cripes. I may finally have an excuse to get my wife an iPhone.
German government says they want a million electric cars by 2020
The German government has unveiled plans to get one million electric cars zipping around the country by 2020, offering sweeteners to jump-start national giants like BMW and Volkswagen into action.
“It is the federal government’s aim that by 2020, there will be a million electric cars on Germany’s streets,” said Berlin’s “national electro-mobility plan,” which was approved by the cabinet. “In 2030, this could be over 5 million. By 2050, traffic in towns and cities could be predominantly without fossil fuels,” the proposal added.
Berlin plans to spark development in electric cars by offering incentives for research in areas such as batteries and recharging systems, as it battles to catch up with Asian firms that have zoomed ahead of their German rivals.
“We are very confident that we in Germany can provide enough of an impulse to compete with the United States and Asia,” Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee told reporters.
Germany could run straight past the United States with both eyes closed.
“The Japanese are strong in hybrid technology but … the big markets in Europe, the United States, and Asia are still open,” he added.
He said the goal of the plan was to “bring electro-mobility as quickly as possible into everyday life.”
One of the first nations to introduce cash-for-clunkers, they’re “still examining” the possibility for electric cars.
German luxury car maker BMW has already teamed up with auto-parts maker Bosch and its Korean partner Samsung to supply lithium-ion batteries for a future electric city car.
Volkswagen hopes to turn out its first all-electric car in 2013.
Do you think Ford will offer an EV Focus in Germany before VW? Whoo-Hoo.
A tip o’ the hat to Josie Garthwaite
Apple sells 1 million new 3G iPhones over introductory weekend
Apple has sold 1 million new iPhones in its initial weekend, on par with estimates set by analysts, sending its stock rising more than 2 percent.
The original iPhone, introduced in late June 2007 in the United States only, sold about 270,000 units in its first two days. Sales topped 1 million by early September. The new device sells in 21 countries…to start.
“IPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement. “It took 74 days to sell the first 1 million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world…”
“We don’t yet know the breakdown of how many phones were sold to new customers and how many existing iPhone customers upgraded, but regardless, sales during the first weekend were very impressive,” said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst, in a note.
I find the critter interesting as a mobile platform – more so than as a smart phone. I don’t travel on business anymore; so, I don’t plan on getting one. Yet.
My wife may surprise me one of these days, though – and show up with one for herself. Working in banking IT, she could use something with expanded capabilities.
Reflecting that broad range, the new iPhone App Store downloaded 10 million apps over the first weekend.
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