Eideard

Her sister, Waltraut, awaits her return

A runaway cow named Yvonne is on the loose in Germany and the manhunt — or moohunt — for the Bavarian bovine has captivated the country.

The freedom-loving cow ran away from a little farm in Bavaria in May and has managed to hide successfully in the forests of southern Germany ever since — despite her sturdy 1,500-pound (700-kilogram) figure.

Locals have reported a few sightings of the brown dairy cow with the white head, but every time search teams have tried to capture her, Yvonne had already hoofed it from the area. A helicopter equipped with a thermal camera used in search-and-rescue missions returned Thursday empty-handed.

Searchers have tried to lure Yvonne into the open with food, with the bellows of her son Friesi and her sister Waltraud, even with a prospective mate named Ernst. Scores of volunteers are combing upper Bavaria’s woods for her.

The six-year-old animal would have never made national headlines if it hadn’t been for a near-collision with a police car days after she broke away. The rural district office in Muehldorf reacted by labeling the big-eyed bovine a public danger and ordering her shot on sight.

That prompted animal-rights activists to rally to her defense. A Facebook page calling for Yvonne’s rescue had more-than 23,000 “likes” by Friday, and Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, has offered a 10,000 euro reward on its front page for anyone who helps find Yvonne.

In the wake of all the attention, the order to shoot Yvonne has been suspended.

A animal sanctuary in Bavaria has bought Yvonne — sight unseen — from the farmer she escaped from and is now in charge of trying to find her. Hopefully they’re better at it than the silly buggers who have been trying.

UPDATE: Yvonne has surrendered and has been taken to the Gut Aiderbichi animal sanctuary to live out her days.

A top telecommunications regulator who voted to approve Comcast Corp.’s takeover of NBCUniversal in January is leaving to join the company as a lobbyist.

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of two Republicans on the five-member Federal Communications Commission, will become senior vice president of government affairs for NBCUniversal.

Comcast said it did not begin discussions with Baker about a possible job until after the transaction had closed…

Uh-huh.

Craig Aaron, head of the public interest group Free Press, called the move an example of “business as usual in Washington — where the complete capture of government by industry barely raises any eyebrows.”

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, bought a controlling interest in NBCUniversal after the FCC and the Justice Department approved the deal with conditions following a year-long review. The FCC’s vote was 4-1…

At the FCC, Baker was a reliable pro-business voice who frequently expressed concern that the agency was imposing unnecessary and onerous regulations on phone and cable companies.

Along with fellow Republican commissioner Robert McDowell, Baker opposed the controversial “network neutrality” rules approved by the commission’s three Democrats last year. Those rules, which prohibit phone and cable companies from interfering with Internet traffic on their broadband networks, are now facing legal challenges from Verizon and Metro PCS.

It’s called a reward for loyal service – isn’t it?

Just another flavor of Blackwater-style hired goons

Two whistleblowers will divide nearly a half million dollars following the latest settlement between the Justice Department and independent contracting firms working in Iraq.

DynCorp agreed to pay the U.S. government $7.7 million, and its subcontractor The Sandi Group promised to pay a bit more than $1 million dollars for overcharges they presented to officials, the Justice Department said Friday…

Drew Halldorson and Brian Evancho, both former Sandi Group employees who alerted authorities about the overcharges, will divide $481,710 as their share of the government’s recovery in the case, according to the federal department.

DynCorp was sued for inflated claims involving construction of camps from containers shipped to locations where contractors were able to set up temporary accommodations for fighting forces.

The Sandi Group was sued for improperly seeking reimbursement for “danger pay,” which it falsely claimed to have paid its employees in Iraq, the Justice Department claimed.

“The hard work of stabilizing Iraq is challenging enough without contractors and subcontractors inflating the cost of rebuilding by making false claims at taxpayer expense,” said Assistant Attorney General Tony West.

Good for you, dudes. There is no shortage of creeps and crooks profiteering from American wars – though the Bush/Cheney gang truly set new standards for corruption. It may come as no surprise, there are employers outside the Beltway who will hire honest folks.

Dexia bank tower in Brussels

A Belgian man renovating a house in Ghent found €300,000 in cash that had been left behind unclaimed from when the building had housed a bank almost 10 years ago.

Ferhat Kaya, 33, had bought the property, a former branch of the Dexia bank, at a cost of €180,000 to house his accounting firm and before accepting the keys turned down the estate agent’s quote of €3,500 to remove an old safe.

Instead he called two close friends, the brothers Murat and Hurun Tufan to remove the metal vault. “When the vault was open it revealed bags of 20 and 50 euro bills,” said Murat Tufan. “The receipts were still there, dated December 31, 2001. We started counting, and it came to some 300,000 euros.”

After speaking to his Turkish father, Mr Kaya decided to call the police even though it would have been easy to keep the cash as it had been lost and left unwanted by the bank for almost a decade.

“My friends and I thought we would really make a statement with it: that even immigrants are people that say honesty is the best policy,” he said.

Ulrike Pommée, a spokesman for Belgium’s Dexia Bank, said that an investigation had been opened but suggested that no trace of money would ever be found.

“We will carry out the investigation and then see if there will be a decision to give him a reward for reporting the money to police straight away.”

Bravo!

The Mote Marine Laboratory sent out a plea today for the return of their autonomous underwater vehicle.

“Mote scientists spent Thursday using side-scan sonar in an effort to find a scientific robot that has been missing since Monday, July 31, 2009,” the e-mail stated. “Now we’re seeking the public’s help for the safe return of the robot.”

The robot in question is a little over six feet long, 115 pounds, yellow, and answers to the name “Waldo.”

It was last heard from on August 31, patrolling the waters off Southwest Florida looking for signs of red tide – a very important job — and gliding up and down and forward through the water, sending signals to satellites when it surfaced…

A $500, “No-Questions-Asked” reward is being offered for the return of Waldo so it can be re-united with its AUV siblings, Carmen and Nemo.

If you have any information, please call 941-388-4441, x 271.

Cripes. Here I am doing an Amber Alert for a robot.

The author Evan Ratliff has gone missing. Wired magazine has put a bounty of $5,000 on his head. Wannabe private eyes have less than 30 days to track him down to his lair and turn him in…

It’s an intriguing project that at its heart aims to find out “what does it take to up and disappear these days? Not to head off the grid for a few days, mind you, but to actually vanish from your life?”

In a piece Mr Ratliff has written for Wired he explained that one of his inspirations was a chap called Matthew Alan Sheppard who at 42 devised a plan to disappear from the lives of his wife of 10 years and his 7-year-old daughter.

On a weekend away with his family, he jumped into a river as his wife watched and simply seemed to vanish. All searchers found at the time was his orange hat.

But not everyone was convinced he was dead and as the story in Wired reveals, it is the simple things that result in the unravelling of this tale.

Now Mr Ratliff is testing out how easy, or difficult , it is to go on the lam and see how long he can remain hidden at a time when digital information collection, location-aware technology and post 9/11 security measures are everywhere. Or certainly seem to be…

To make the chase a little more interesting, Mr Ratliff is dropping digital clues here and there. The magazine is scooping all its intelligence together and revealing IP addresses and other titbits to help anyone trying to track down Mr Ratliff close in on their prey.

While he says that “going on the lam is not like it used to be” Mr Ratliff wants to find out what the Matthew Alan Shepards of the world can’t tell us: “how hard is it really, to disappear?”

So, it’s a contest. You can find the rules and trivia and daily clues over here.

Looks more or less like a promo effort for WIRED circulation.

A US firm is offering $5,000 (£3,450) for clues leading to the arrest of an arsonist who has been setting portable toilets on fire across San Francisco.

The Clorox Company is also offering a year’s supply of toilet cleaning products in exchange for such tips.

More than two dozen toilets on San Francisco construction sites have been set on fire in the city in recent months, the Associated Press reports.

The cost of the damage has been estimated at $50,000.

The free cleaning products is a nice touch.

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Unrelated Link: What is it? (pictured above)

In response to the Conficker worm’s massive infection of millions of PCs worldwide, industry heavyweights including Microsoft, Symantec and others today announced they’re forming a new team to fight back against the worm.

In addition to the team’s mission to grab domain names Conficker (aka Downadup) might try to use, Microsoft is offering a fat $250,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the worm. The reward is available to residents of any country, Microsoft says…

According to Symantec’s announcement, the team includes “Microsoft, ICANN, Neustar, Verisign, CNNIC, Afilias, Public Internet Registry, Global Domains International Inc., M1D Global, AOL, F-Secure, ISC, researchers from Georgia Tech, The Shadowserver Foundation, Arbor Networks, and Support Intelligence.”

I agree with Larkin. The joint task force makes such sense, I’d like to see it maintained even after this latest thug is caught and grounded.