A compulsive gambler is suing a betting chain for losses of $4m because he was allowed to place bets after he asked to be barred.

Greyhound trainer Graham Calvert, 28, from Tyne and Wear, north east England, wants William Hill bookmakers to pay back the money on the grounds they failed in their duty of care…

Mr Calvert telephoned William Hill in June 2006 to ask them to close his account after he realized he had a gambling problem…

However, two months later he was able to open another account with the bookmakers, one of the largest in England. He went on to place several bets…

Mr Calvert is now heavily in debt and says his life is in ruins. His marriage collapsed after his wife left him taking their two young children with her.

He is suing the bookmaker for the $4 million he lost after he asked to be barred.

I’m betting on the bookies.

Found by Gasparrini

James Pickett

Investigators say they were definitely going to rob him – possibly even kill him. But an 80-year-old North Texan wasn’t about to let that happen, so he took action.

One of the suspects is in the hospital and both are facing charges. Two men obviously thought James Pickett, 80, was an easy target when they showed up at his home on Saturday with a knife. “He just came through that door, stabbing and beating,” said Pickett. Captain Clint Pullin said it looked as though the men wanted to kill him.

But before you worry too much about Pickett, learn a bit more about him. He’s a WWII veteran, former firefighter and lifelong John Wayne devotee. In short, even at 80, he is someone you just don’t mess with. What the men didn’t know is Picket had taken a pistol and put it in his pocket before opening the door. “He jumped and turned and I shot him,” Picket said. The two brothers, Paul and Holden Perry, ran but didn’t get far before calling an ambulance. A bullet just missed Paul Perry’s spine.

“The only problem was I run out of bullets,” Picket said. A neighbor describes Picket as a “hero.”

Since it looks like the gun control issue will heat up again, I thought I would post an opposing viewpoint.

A person who shot 13 people Thursday at Northern Illinois University’s DeKalb campus outside Chicago has died, local reports said.

Most of the 13 wounded were shot in the head, said Theresa Comitas, spokeswoman for Kishwaukee Community Hospital, located about 10 minutes from the school…

A woman named Corrine described the scene to CLTV, saying she was “carried out” of Cole Hall by a “wave” of students running for their lives.

“When one of the kids said, ‘This guy is shooting!’ I just ran to the next building as fast as I could and hid in an empty classroom.”

You’ll get to see all the details, the final body count, on TV, tonight. All the “analysis” over the next week.

The British Olympic Association will authorize its athletes to wear anti-pollution masks if they feel they are necessary during the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. Officials in the United States, Australia and Canada have indicated that their athletes will not be using masks during competition. But BOA chief executive Simon Clegg refused to rule out a move that would be extremely embarrassing for China. “This is a competitive issue,” Clegg told The Times newspaper. “We are in the business of trying to win medals and beat our competitors. “We are all hopeful that the Chinese authorities will have addressed this issue by August so the athletes are not put in a position where the measures we have put in place have to be deployed. Britain’s former Commonwealth 1500 metres gold medallist Michael East said he was uncertain about the potential benefits of ‘smog-masks’.

“I doubt whether it would be advantageous and I think I would feel uncomfortable wearing one,” he said. “I am sure you may get local runners using them and I suppose if the physiologists say they are advantageous, I might consider it. “But for the moment, I have to say my answer is ‘no’.” Beijing’s mayor, Guo Jinlong, admitted last month that the sprawling, traffic-choked city faced a massive task in trying to bring pollution down to bearable levels in time for the Games. The International Olympic Committee has warned that endurance events such as the marathon could be postponed or canceled to protect competitors if air-quality standards are not met.

Look on the bright side, they could put the official Beijing Olympic logo on them and sell them in the gift shops. Its a win-win.

Arsenic poisoning did not kill Napoleon in Saint Helena, as affirmed by a new meticulous examination…

The research…was performed on hair samples that had been taken during different periods of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, from when he was a boy in Corsica, during his exile on the Island of Elba, on the day of his death on the Island of Saint Helena, and on the day after his death.

Samples taken from the King of Rome (Napoleon’s son) in the years 1812, 1816, 1821, and 1826, and samples from the Empress Josephine, collected upon her death in 1814, were also analysed…In addition to these “historical” hair samples, 10 hairs from living persons were examined for comparison purposes…

The examination produced some surprising results. First of all, the level of arsenic in all of the hair samples from 200 years ago is 100 times greater than the average level detected in samples from persons living today. In fact, the Emperor’s hair had an average arsenic level of around ten parts per one million whereas the arsenic level in the hair samples from currently living persons was around one tenth of a part per one million. In other words, at the beginning of the 19th people evidently ingested arsenic that was present in the environment in quantities that are currently considered as dangerous.

The other surprise regards the finding that there were no significant differences in arsenic levels between when Napoleon was a boy and during his final days in Saint Helena. According to the researchers, and in particular the toxicologists who participated in the study, it is evident that this was not a case of poisoning but instead the result of the constant absorption of arsenic.

Scratch that particular conspiracy theory.

Bring me their heads!

Hewlett-Packard has agreed to a financial settlement with The New York Times and three BusinessWeek magazine journalists in connection with the company’s spying scandal, which stemmed from its surreptitiously obtaining private phone records…

To trace what Dunn and others considered disloyal and risky leaks from the company’s board, HP retained investigators who engaged in a wide-ranging investigation in 2006. The inquiry involved “pretexting,” a practice that had someone pretending to be someone else to obtain private records from phone companies…

The New York Times said it had pursued a claim against Hewlett-Packard in part to send the message that “corporate misconduct aimed at silencing the press is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.” The Times pursued the claim on Markoff’s behalf, and he did not individually seek compensation.

The Times donated its money from the settlement to groups including the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Investigative Journalism Program at the journalism school of the University of California, Berkeley…

When will they ever learn…?

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

What is there to say?

Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot wrongly accused of training some of the September 11 hijackers, should be allowed to claim compensation, the UK’s high court has ruled.

“I wept with relief when I heard the judgment,” Raissi said outside the court, following the decision. “I have always said I believed in British justice and I finally got it today.”

Raissi said his wrongful arrest had ruined his life and left him blacklisted as a pilot and unable to work…

His name had been on an FBI watchlist and he became the first person to be accused of participating in the attacks. After five months as a category A prisoner in Belmarsh high security prison, in south-east London, he was released when a judge ruled there was no evidence whatsoever to connect him with terrorism.

A video the FBI claimed showed Raissi with Hani Hanjour, one of the hijackers, was revealed in court to be footage of him with his cousin. The government refused to compensate him for wrongful arrest and imprisonment and claims the British authorities were acting properly on an American request.

Once again, freedom and justice seems to have little to do with policing. The political hacks in charge of the practice of law will never admit their mistakes. Or the harm they cause.

Apollo Logic Module

Apollo Guidance Computer and Logic Modules [no longer on display returned to CMHC] (1960) – Stanford.edu: This is the type of computer that went to the moon in the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972. There was one computer in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and one the mothership (CM) circling above. It was the first use of integrated circuits, as still displayed in the timeline cabinet to the left. It’s cycle time was 1 Mhz, 11 instructions. It had 1K of 16 bit words of erasable (RAM) core memory and 12K of read-only memory (ROM). The ROM held the “Colossus 249” flight control software. There were no disks or tapes in the flight system.

“We are controlling transmission.”

So, when will we have fiber to every home so we can become a first-world tech nation again?

Comcast FCC filing shows gap between hype, bandwidth reality

Comcast has come clean to the FCC about its secretive traffic-management practices… not that Comcast thinks it has been keeping secrets. According to its 57-page filing, “experience suggests that Comcast needs to ensure that its disclosures on matters such as network management are timely and in sufficient detail to ensure transparency while not providing a roadmap to those who would seek to defeat its efforts at reasonable network management.” While that doesn’t explain the months of stonewalling from the company, at least now we have some official answers to how Comcast’s Sandvine network management system works.
[…]
The question that many users are probably asking themselves right now is, “But didn’t I pay for a certain level of bandwidth? Can’t I use it however and whenever I want?” To which Comcast says, simply, “No, you cannot.”