Primetime Posts

The New York headquarters of Goldman Sachs, which has made a higher-than-expected first-quarter profit of $1.81bn

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled "Facts about Goldman Sachs" – the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago.

In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled "Does Goldman Sachs run the world?". However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues.

Fourteen children by 13 different women in Genesee County and more than $530,000 in unpaid child support.

Even in a county with $700 million in uncollected child support, Thomas Frazier may hold the unenviable title of biggest deadbeat dad.

Frazier, who has already spent five years on probation for attempted non support of a child, does have one piece of advice for his children.

"Use a condom," he said. "You don't want to end up like your dad."

The woman told police that they were having sex and he gave her $20 for oral sex.

The search is on for a team of crooks who robbed an Arlington couple at gunpoint for their takeout Popeye's chicken.

A cell phone used by a Wyoming 13-year-old to run up a nearly $5,000 phone bill will text no more thanks to her angry father and his hammer. Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne sent or received about 20,000 text messages over about a month, and her parents' phone plan didn't cover texting.

A man shot himself to death in a Eugene movie theater just after midnight Monday morning.

A man faces an arson charge after telling authorities he wasn't thinking when he decided to use gasoline for cleaning up his apartment, and then tossed a lit cigarette into a pile of gas-soaked cushions and clothes.

Click for Full Story

ARMED police boarded a flight at London's Heathrow Airport and arrested a trio involved in mid-air argument over a sex act.

Mr Melia, 36, and Ms Irby, 29, were arrested for alleged gross indecency while Sarah was held for being drunk on an aircraft. All three were released on bail.

A Russian spacecraft carrying a crew of three including U.S. billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi landed safely in Kazakhstan Wednesday, officials said.

A "very healthy, very energetic" Fidel Castro asked visiting Congressional Black Caucus members what Cuba could do to help President Barack Obama improve bilateral relations during his first meeting with U.S. officials since falling ill in 2006.

Rep. Jason Lorber, D-Burlington, right, gets a hug from Stan Baker following the passage of a gay marriage


The House barely achieved the votes necessary to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto of a bill that will allow gays and lesbians to marry beginning September 1. Four states now have same-sex marriage laws and other states soon could follow suit.

The death toll in Italy's quake has risen to 250, officials said Wednesday, as strong aftershocks cause further fear among residents sheltered in tent camps.

Officials said some 10,000 to 15,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed in the 26 cities, towns and villages around L'Aquila, a city of 70,000 that is the regional capital of Abruzzo. Teams planned to begin surveying those buildings still standing on Wednesday to see if residents could move back in.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

So far, the research has been done only on animals. But scientists say this memory system is likely to work almost identically in people.

Police said the suitcase was discovered by farmworkers who were draining the irrigation pond to water fields.

The suitcase was removed from the pond later in the afternoon and taken to the coroner's office, where it was opened and the little girl's body was positively identified.

There have been a series of aftershocks since the 6.3 quake early Monday killed at least 179 people, injured more than 1,500 and left tens of thousands homeless. Tuesday's aftershock appeared strongest in L'Aquila, a city of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance architectural treasures in a valley surrounded by the snowcapped Apennine mountains.

A lad of 11 was fighting for life yesterday after he and a nine-year-old friend were knifed and battered by two young boys.

The terrified victims, who were on a fishing trip, were repeatedly slashed, hit with a brick and burned with cigarettes.

Two boys aged 10 and 11 were yesterday being questioned by police.

A powerful earthquake in mountainous central Italy knocked down whole blocks of buildings early Monday as residents slept, killing at least 50 people and trapping many more, officials said. Tens of thousands were homeless.

Although it has since been deleted from the news outlet's Web site, Roger Friedman's online column, "Fox 411," last week featured a review of a leaked copy of 20th Century Fox's anticipated blockbuster "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." The movie isn't due to hit to theaters until next month and a leaked copy surfaced online last Wednesday.

The systems generally work like this: Businesses and individuals form a network to print currency. Shoppers buy it at a discount — say, 95 cents for $1 value — and spend the full value at stores that accept the currency.

"We don't know if he had bad teeth," a police spokeswoman in Rostock said Friday.

Vancouver is the battlefield in a war between myriad drug gangs, which include Hell's Angels, Big Circle Boys, United Nations, Red Scorpions, Independent Soldiers and the 14K Triad. Guns – often machineguns – are fired almost daily.

Sarah Palin's Sister-in-Law Arrested for Burglary

According to the Anchorage Daily News, police say Diana Palin, 35, entered the home Thursday morning and made straight for a bedroom cabinet where cash was stowed. The house had already been burgled twice in recent weeks. This time the owner, carrying a gun, was waiting in a bathroom after seeing an unfamiliar car pull up outside.

Ford Pinto.

Chevrolet Cavalier.

Chevrolet Astro.

Ford Taurus.

Ford Explorer.

Jaguar X-Type.

Hummer H2.

Toyota Prius.

Chrysler Sebring.

Jeep Compass.

Click for Full Story

An irate customer fired gunshots at a McDonald's restaurant in the US following a menu dispute, police have announced.

The incident occurred after a female visitor had her order rejected when she tried to use the drive-through service at the Salt Lake City diner.

Workers refused to serve a lunch meal to the woman early on Sunday morning because only the breakfast menu was available.

Following the rejection, two male passengers left the vehicle and one pulled a shotgun from the car boot, before using it to fire gunshots at the drive-through window.

An agent for suspended NFL star Michael Vick told a bankruptcy court on Thursday that he hopes the ex-Atlanta Falcons quarterback could return to the league by September.

“You will hear from Mr. Vick his future intentions, how he’s going to change the way he lives his life,” his lawyer, Michael Blumenthal, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Frank J. Santoro.

One of those changes will be a construction job, Blumenthal said. Vick has lined up a 40-hour-a-week, $10-an-hour job at one of W.M. Jordan Co.’s 40 commercial construction jobs, said John Robert Lawson, whose father helped start the Newport News company.

Pigeons smuggle cell phones into Brazil prison

Guards at the Danilio Pinheiro prison near the southeastern city of Sorocaba Brazil recently discovered a plot to smuggle cell phones into the prison via carrier pigeon.

The birds, which instictively return home when released, were bred in the prison, smuggled out, had small bags with cell phone parts attached to their legs, and released. Guards dicovered the plot after seeing one resting on a wire near the prison.

"The guards nabbed the bird after luring it down with some food and discovered components of a small cell phone inside the bag," Inmates use the phones to plan criminal activity whilst incarcerated.

The men and women called together in London by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to counter an economic slump are politicians -- just at a time when the world's electorates are demonstrating their lack of faith in governments and in their ability to understand, let alone sort out, the economic mess.

Magic pull off cruel, nay, crafty April Fool's joke

The Magic's PR and Marketing team sure had some fun with April Fools' Wednesday in Orlando. Let me try my best to explain.

Giddy with whoopee cushion excitement all night long, the Magic pretended to "trade" Dwight Howard to the Oklahoma City Thunder, "re-sign" former great Penny Hardaway, and "play professional basketball" exactly like the Washington Generals. (They nailed that last one flawlessly, falling 99-95 to the sub-sub-sub-.500 Raptors.)

A 27-year-old Australian man who pimped a 16-year-old girl so he and his girlfriend could afford their apartment, would pay the schoolgirl with chicken nuggets, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Ronald Vikash Gander used the $4,500 the teen made for having sex with five middle-aged men in June of last year to pay the weekly $1,050 rent on his Brisbane apartment, the Brisbane District Court was told.

Gander and his 16-year-old girlfriend would pay the teen with an occasional box of chicken nuggets, the AAP reported.

"The girl was used as if she was a piece of meat ... and your conduct can properly be described as that of a sleaze merchant," Judge Marshall Irwin told Gander.

Police say a 19-year-old who tried to rob a liquor store sat down and cried after 76-year-old owner locked him in the store. Police said the owner, who was behind the counter, triggered the lock after the man grabbed a bottle of Hennessy cognac and bolted for the door.

The man then allegedly pulled out a handgun and demanded to be released. But the owner said he saw that the gun was a fake, refused to unlock the door and called police.

HONG KONG – World stock markets soared Thursday, with Hong Kong's benchmark vaulting more than 7 percent, as stronger-than-expected U.S. economic figures boosted confidence the world's largest economy is on the mend.

Huge gains in Asia and a strong open in Europe followed an overnight surge on Wall Street and extended last month's rebound in world equity markets amid tentative signs of stabilization in the hard-hit global economy and banking industry. It came as Group of 20 leaders met in London for a summit that aims to hammer out policies to combat the economic slump and reform the global financial system.

Stem cells that could be used to restore hearing have been successfully created, scientists have said.

A Sheffield University team took stem cells from embryos and converted them into cells that behave like sensory hair cells in the human inner ear.

Their discovery could ultimately help those who have lost hair cells through noise damage and some people born with inherited hearing problems.

But any cure is still some years away, experts told the journal Stem Cell.

EDINBURGH, Scotland – Police said Thursday that 16 people were killed when a helicopter went down off Scotland's northeast coast, announcing that the search for eight people still missing was now a recovery rather than a rescue operation.
Eight bodies recovered from the sea were brought ashore Thursday morning.
"The grim reality is that the crew of 16 on board has been lost," said Colin Menzies, assistant chief constable of Grampian Police.

Miami-Dade prosecutors on Wednesday charged Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donte' Stallworth with DUI manslaughter, alleging the football player was driving drunk on the morning of March 14 when he struck and killed a pedestrian on Miami Beach.

Letter 'Expressed Remorse' at Death of Man Walking Home From Job at McDonald's

The person responsible for a fatal hit-and-run accident in southeastern Texas left an unusual piece of evidence behind at the scene : an anonymous apology note.

League City, Texas, police told ABCNews.com that the note was left near the body of 34-year-old Maurice Jones, who they believe was walking home from his job at a McDonald's when he was struck and killed.

As judged by notoriety, creativity, and number of people duped. Click here for all time list.


Pranks from this Year

YouTube Flipped
YouTube flipped its videos upside-down. The effect displayed for visitors who opened the home page and then went to a video from there. It was also possible to activate the effect by adding the code &flip=1 to the end of a youtube URL. YouTube wrote that it had introduced the new format because, "Our internal tests have shown that modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it's best to rotate your mattress every six months." To see the new format, it advised viewers to either 1) Turn your monitor upside-down; 2) Tilt your head to the side; or 3) Move to Australia.


Click for more from 2009

A desperate husband tried to kill his mother-in-law with an anti-tank missile launcher after claiming she'd turned his wife against him.

And when his mother-in-law survived the rocket attack on her home, he tried to finish her off with a machine gun, a court in Doboj, Bosnia, was told.

Amazingly, she survived both attacks with barely a scratch, judges heard.

According to local TV reports, the rapper was arrested driving his 2007 Porsche Carrera at 109 miles per hour, 44 mph over the 65 mph speed limit along that stretch of I-75.

Jerome Blanchett took a loaded handgun into the Holiday Inn-Harrisburg East on Friday, passing dozens of unmarked police cars in the parking lot and a sign at the hotel's entrance welcoming 300 officers to the Pennsylvania Narcotic Officers' Association conference, police said.

Nevertheless, the 19-year-old Harrisburg man went into the men's room and waited to rob the next person who walked through the door, police said.

Unfortunately for Blanchett, that person was John Comparetto, a retired New York City Police Department lieutenant.

The top Pakistani Taliban commander said Tuesday that his group had carried out the deadly assault on a police academy in eastern Pakistan, and he vowed to launch an attack on the U.S. capital.

Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head from the U.S., said Monday's attack on the outskirts of the eastern city of Lahore was retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against militants along the Afghan border.

"Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," Mehsud told The Associated Press by phone. He provided no details.

A 'fit and healthy' 25-year-old man suddenly collapsed and died in front of his horrified girlfriend and best friend as he played a wii game.

A 21-year-old man was arrested for assault on Wednesday, accused of punching a 50-year-old woman several times in her face, breaking her jaw, while on a Japanese train and in a train station office Wednesday morning, police said Thursday.

Police said Jun Ando, a computer programmer and resident of Toda City, became angry on the train bound for Shinkiba at around 8 a.m., after the woman asked him to stop playing games on his cell phone as the train was so crowded. Ando told her to shut up and sprayed her with some colorful language, before punching her several times.

A British air passenger became so fed up during a delay on the tarmac he tried to open the aircraft door and get out, US prosecutors have said.
Robert McDonald, of Glasgow, has been charged with reckless endangerment and criminal tampering for opening an emergency exit hatch as the plane waited at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York due to bad weather.

A police force has apologised to a widow after officers gave her the rope her husband used to hang himself.

Angie Gerrelli found the blood-stained yellow tow rope in a sack of items returned after her estranged 50-year-old partner, John Gilmore, killed himself in a park in Barry, south Wales.

"I went to pieces - I just sunk to the floor. I dropped it and put my hands to my face."

She added: "I'm not sleeping and I've got to go back to the doctors."

The accident occurred around 5:30 pm on Sunday evening, the station said.

Rescuers from the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate could not revive the two sisters, aged four and six, after they were found in the family bathroom.

Police said there was no evidence of foul play and they await autopsy results to determine the exact cause of death.

“Therefore police believe for the time being that it was a tragic accident,” the station said.

The boy overcame the 17-year-old girl while she was jogging in the Wedding district, a police statement said. He hit and kicked her, then took her mobile phone and attempted to flee, but she held him down.

An Internal Revenue Service agent who audits taxpayers in California has agreed to plead guilty to cheating on his own taxes.
In a plea agreement filed Monday in Orange County, 43-year-old Jim H. Liu (LOO) of Diamond Bar admitted that he filed a tax return claiming a loss on a real estate transaction when he in fact saw a large profit.

After a backstage mishap sent him to the hospital last week for some emergency dental surgery, T-Pain was back to the grind on Sunday night, a bit bruised, but not too worse for the wear.

"There's a lot of talk that I flipped over in a golf cart," Pain told his audience on Sunday at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, Rap-Up.com reported. According to reports, Pain suffered cuts and abrasions, and lost four teeth in the accident, which caused him to miss the Friday stop of Lil Wayne's I Am Music tour in San Jose, California.

"That's f---ing true," Pain confirmed about the accident. "It did happen like three days ago. My ass is on fire right now. My side hurt, my mouth hurt."

But despite the bumps, bruises and missing teeth, the Titan of AutoTune was reportedly in a good mood on Sunday, telling the crowd, "I bust my ass. I'd show you the marks, but I don't wanna pull my pants down right now. ... I got my teeth fixed the same day. Rich n---a teeth."

A spokesperson for T-Pain could not be reached for comment at press time, but according to reports, the injury also caused the singer to miss a video shoot for Lil' Kim's new single, "Download." Kim told HipHollywood.com that though Pain missed out on the shoot, he will be in the video. "He's gonna be in the video, but we've got to wait until he heals and gets better."

Pain appeared to have a good sense of humor about the incident, telling the Gibson crowd, "I don't give a f--- how many golf carts I flip over. If I was any less of a showman tonight, I apologize."

President Barack Obama asserted unprecedented government control over the auto industry Monday, bluntly rejecting turnaround plans by General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, demanding fresh concessions for long-term federal aid and raising the possibility of quick bankruptcy for either ailing auto giant.

One of the people named this week to President Obama's new Task Force on Tax Reform is a member of the AIG board of directors.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, has been on the board of American International Group since 1988. He also was a prominent economic adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Asked about the AIG connection, a senior administration official said Friday that the White House declined to comment on the story.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday there is little doubt that the planned launch is designed to bolster that North Korea's military capability.

Two men are being hailed as heroes by police for catching a toddler who fell 30 feet from a third-story window in Lawrence.

A McDonald's drive-through was shot up early Sunday after a customer was angered that the restaurant had shifted from the lunch menu to the breakfast menu, police said.

Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. Despite years of public outrage over its euthanasia program, the animal rights group kills an average of 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters.

Grammy Award-winner Elvis Crespo denies a passenger's accusations that he was performing a sex act on an airplane en route from Houston to Miami.

Cigarettes: increase from .39 cents per pack to $1.066 per pack
Little cigars: from .04 cents per pack t $1.066 per pack
Large Cigars: capped at .4026 cents per cigar
Chewing Tobacco: from .195 cents per pound to .5033 cents
Loose Tobacco: from $1.0969 per pound to $24.78 per pound
Pipe Tobacco: from $1.0969 per pound to $2.8311 per pound
Cigarette papers: from .0122 cents per 50 to .0193 cents per 50

U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown are seeking to lead the world into battle against the financial crisis, putting up trillions of dollars to revive their economies and bail out banks. Now, investors and other politicians are posing a troubling question: Can their governments handle the bill?

A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then turned toward his 9-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him dead in what their chief described as "a killing field."

General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will step down immediately at the request of the White House, administration officials said Sunday. The news comes as President Obama prepares to unveil additional restructuring efforts designed to save the domestic auto industry.

Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home, authorities said.

Two disgraced Roman Catholic priests have been sentenced to prison in a case involving the misappropriation of more than $8 million from their church, a theft one judge called "greed unmasked."

Several of the featured games dabbled with dimension. Flashbang Studios' puzzler "Shadow Physics" casts players as a shadow who can interact with 3-D objects in different rooms. Bernhard Schulenburg's eccentric 2-D side scroller "Where's My Heart?" is composed of overlapping boxes reminiscent of comic book panels. Marc ten Bosch's "Miegakure" takes place in 4-D.

From an Antarctic research base and the Great Pyramids of Egypt to the Empire State Building in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago, illuminated patches of the globe went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast electronic spying operation that infiltrated computers and stole documents from government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

On Thursday, it announced it planned to refer to the building by its address -- One World Trade Center -- because that was easiest for people to identify with.

In an industry dominated by men, leave it to women to come up with the winning idea in a contest to create a concept for a video game about losing one's virginity.
Click for Full Story