Telephone

I thought that it might be interesting to highlight some of the news stories this month that weren't mentioned much. There is always interesting stuff that seems to slip through the cracks. One of my favorite stories is about the FBI. Everyone always thinks that the FBI is super efficient and that they have all sorts of experts on their side and eventually they always get their man. Well a story that was run this week, tells us some unusual facts about FBI wiretaps and their efficiency. I hope you are sitting down, because this one is hard to take. It seems that many of the wiretaps that the FBI instituted have been cut off in midstream by the telephone companies. Why would they interrupt a criminal investigation this way? It is simple really, the telephone companies are there to make a profit. The FBI has not been paying some of it's telephone bills. Yes as hard as that is to believe, that is exactly what is happening. Wiretaps in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation, which are the most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, have been halted while in operation, for non payment. So how bad is this problem? According to the news article there was more than half of 990 telephone bills unpaid. One field office alone was in arrears over $66,000. Is this anyway to run a government? That just goes to show you that you just can't believe all those stories that you read that state how great all government departments are functioning under this administration.

Move over Great Pyramid at Giza, the Russians are going to challenge your dominance. The Russians have announced the approval by Moscow authorities, to build the world's biggest building. The building will be shaped like some sort of modernistic Teepee and be gigantic. How gigantic.? Well would you believe that it is going to cost 2 billion pounds to build? That is almost 4 billion U.S. dollars. It is going to have a steel mega frame, covered by what is called a smart skin. The base of the building will be about 620 meters wide and taper up to a 500 meter high spire. It will not be the tallest building, but with 2.5 million square meters floor space, it will certainly be the biggest. The building is slated to contain 3,000 hotel rooms, 900 apartments and a school. Some people on the planning board felt that the building was too oriental looking and would completely overshadow a nearby church. One angry member of the board stated "this idea of Foster's has been wandering all over the world, why does it have to settle on us? ". Well it seems that Russia is no longer as poor as it was at the end of the cold war. The best thing that could have happened for it's economy to improve was ending that debacle. Now if we could only learn that lesson.

Some scientists testified before congress that new data received over the last several months seems to indicate that Global Warming is not taking place. No they didn't say that there was less emissions going into the atmosphere or anything like that, what they said was it may not be having the detrimental effects that we think it is. Wow, who paid these guys off? Are they going to get funds for their pet projects? One thing that this country has resisted since day one, was agreement on reducing green house gases, even when most of the world agreed. There always was some scientists in the government's pocket. I wonder if these were the same guys that have been saying this for years now?

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, my favorite lawman and the toughest peace officer in the country, is at it again. You may recall that he is the guy that made the inmates work and wear pink jump suits. This are no cable tvs or gyms in his lockup. He believes that you have to earn your keep. He has set up an Illegal Immigration hotline and is currently receiving calls about illegals and employers hiring them. He has asked citizens to help fight this problem. “We have been cracking down on illegal immigration,” Arpaio says. “In the jails and on the streets, we have our employees trained. They are making a difference in the illegal immigration problem here in Maricopa County and across the nation.” He is one of the few people doing something about this problem. Sheriff Joe is the Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff. To go to his website click HERE.

Since we are on the subject of law enforcement, there is another story in the news that is related. A prisoner is suing the Utah Department of Corrections. If there is one thing that I am sick of, it is these frivolous lawsuits by prisoners that cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The last one I saw was from an inmate, somewhere in the midwest who sued because he said that a piece of pie he was given at dinner was smaller that the one other prisoners got. This law suit is sort of in that vein. This prisoner is suing because he said that in his religion he worships the Nordic gods and because of this he needs a sword for the religious ceremony. By the way, this guy is serving time for aggravated assault, just the type of guy you want to give a weapon to.

A story broke just a few days ago about one of the best counterfeits ever seen. It is a counterfeit of a U.S. $100 bill. How good is this forgery? Well it has been put in a whole new category called a supernote. So who is printing these things? The White House had accused North Korea of printing counterfeit currency, but a 10 month investigation by McClatchy Newspapers raised a lot of questions about those charges. One currency exchanger stated that counterfeits from Europe are much better than from anywhere else. The bills use the same paper and ink as a genuine U.S. bill. They even contain the security strip and micro printing that is supposed to prevent counterfeiting. Here is the really strange part of the story, only about 2.8 million dollars worth of bills have been seized each year since they started in 1989. That is not enough printed each year to pay for the machinery and supplies need to do this. Even stranger, when a tiny invisible change is made in the currency, it is also made in the counterfeit. This has never happened before. One expert has accused the CIA of doing this and the author of the news article talks about how the CIA printed Soviet money in the past during the cold war, to undermine their economy. So how good is this counterfeit? It is so good that an expert stated that they can no longer be called counterfeits, but a parallel printing of U.S. currency.

THAT new car is in the news again. The French have made an incredible discovery. A French inventor has figured out how to run a car on compressed air. That's right air. The car has an engine, but instead of exploding fuel forcing the cylinders up and down, compressed air does the trick. The car is under production by India's Tata Motors and gives off no pollution of any kind. It is believed that it will be available in India and Europe by the end of the year. The car is known as the Mini-CAT or City Car and only takes a few minutes to refuel from an air pump. The current model will go about 200 km or about 125 miles on a fill up that costs about 1.5 Euros at an a commercial air pump. Top speed for this car is about 70 mph. The car is completely computer controlled. The vehicle will cost about $7,000. It even has air conditioning. The same company is working on producing the world's cheapest car, which will sell for about $2,500. Will we finally get out of the oil rut with our cars, or will air start to cost $30 a fill up?

Two men wheeled a dead man through the streets in an office chair. They wheeled him right up to a check cashing establishment and tried to cash his social security check. This has to be one of the strangest stories I have ever seen. The corpse was wheeled through the streets of New York City, one of the busiest cities in the world. They left the body outside when they went in to cash the check. The check casher asked to see the person who's name the check was in and the men replied that they would go get him. By this time a crowd had formed around the body and a police detective, who was having lunch nearby noticed that the man was dead. The detective called for backup and a medical technician also arrived just as the two were getting ready to wheel the body into the store. They were arrested and the body taken to the morgue. They were not being held for murder, but on check fraud charges.

A boy in Italy was named Friday at birth. When he was about 5 months old a clerk brought this to the attention of a tribunal which bars ridiculous or shameful first names. They forced the parents to name the child Gregory in honor of the saint who was born on the same day. The lawyer for the parents said that he couldn't believe what was going on and why they even got involved.