Update @ 23:55 - Linn just contacted me to say her account has been mysteriously re-activated and she's busily downloading her books. Hopefully Amazon will have more news for us all soon. Even positive arbitrary actions disclose how much Kindle customers read only with the grace of Amazon, of course...

During the 1990s, Thomas Quick confessed to one unsolved murder after another, becoming, in the words of the father of one of his alleged victims, "a ghost who ran through Scandinavia killing more than 30 people". The sadistic murderer was a media sensation and his bespectacled face stared out from front pages and television screens. The newspapers called him "the cannibal". Thomas Quick became Sweden's very own Hannibal Lecter.

But then, in 2001, he stopped co-operating with the police. He withdrew from public view and changed his name back to the one he was born with. In 2008, Hannes Råstam, one of Sweden's most respected documentary-makers, became intrigued. He visited the former Thomas Quick, now known as Sture Bergwall, at Säter, trawled through the 50,000 pages of court documents, therapy notes and police interrogations and came to the startling conclusion that there was not a single shred of technical evidence for any of Bergwall's convictions. There were no DNA traces, no murder weapons, no eyewitnesses – nothing apart from his confessions, many of which had been given when he was under the influence of narcotic-strength drugs. Confronted with Råstam's discoveries, Bergwall admitted the unthinkable. He said he had fabricated the entire story.

TAMPA, Fla.—Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who served under George W. Bush, declared his support for a second term for President Barack Obama.

"I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012," Powell said Thursday during an interview with "CBS This Morning." "I'll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month."

Powell said he believed Obama's economic policies were helpful in turning around the sluggish economy, and he criticized Republican challenger Mitt Romney's stance on foreign policy.

Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – 'disposition matrix' – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

But then his cover was blown.

It was discovered that the man every member of the Irish police's rank and file had been looking for - a Mr Prawo Jazdy - wasn't exactly the sort of prized villain whose apprehension leads to an officer winning an award.

In fact he wasn't even human.

"Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for "driving licence" and not the first and surname on the licence," read a letter from June 2007 from an officer working within the Garda's traffic division.

Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian parachutist who broke the sound barrier by jumping to earth from the stratosphere said in an interview published Sunday he backed the idea of a dictatorship, though a moderate one.

He told Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung that such a dictatorship should be "led by experienced personalities coming from the private (sector of the) economy" to solve present social and economic problems.

Schwarzenegger's experience, said Baumgartner, who did not reveal whether the thought came to him during the four minutes and 20 seconds of his descent, showed "you can't do anything in a democracy."

Police in Suðurnes were, for possibly the first time in the history of the region, called out to break up a party being held by cats.
Morgunblaðið reports that residents living around a house known to be unoccupied for some time noticed several cats coming in and out of an open window. This piqued the curiosity of residents, who summarily called police to the location at around noon last Sunday.
Police arrived at the scene and, entering the house, found no people there. However, two to three cats - the exact number is still unclear - were allegedly occupying the house. According to police reports, the cats were "snuggling" on a couch that had been left behind by the previous residents.
Officers on the scene sprang into action, immediately evicting the cats from the house. They then ensured that all doors and windows into the house were securely closed and locked, in the hopes of preventing an incident of this sort from ever happening again.

Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.
The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.

"Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."

This was the kind of bullshit Ricks and Broadwell had been pushing — and it not only wasn’t called bullshit, it was embraced as serious work. Ricks wasn’t the only offender, of course — Petraeus more or less had journalists from many major media outlets slurping from the Pentagon’s gravy train. The typical route was to have all the cash and favors funneled through a third party like the Center for a New American Security.

CNAS was a Petraeus-inspired operation from its inception in 2007, and it made its reputation promoting Petraeus’ counterinsurgency plans. No problem, right? Except that it put the journalists who were covering those same plans and policies on its payroll. For instance, New York Times Pentagon correspondent Thom Shanker took money and a position from CNAS and still covered the Pentagon; Robert Kaplan, David Cloud from the Los Angeles Times, and others produced a small library’s worth of hagiographies while sharing office space at CNAS with retired generals whom they’d regularly quote in their stories.

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga described the bill’s passing as a “Christmas gift” for the Ugandan people.

The law will broaden the criminalization of same-sex relationships by dividing homosexuality into two categories; aggravated homosexuality and the offense of homosexuality.

‘Aggravated homosexuality’ is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people, pedophiles and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty.

…

The ‘offense of homosexuality’ includes same-sex sexual acts or being in a gay relationship, and will be prosecuted by life imprisonment.

As part of Virginia's waiver to opt out of mandates set out in the No Child Left Behind law, the state has created a controversial new set of education goals that are higher for white and Asian kids than for blacks, Latinos and students with disabilities.

...

Here's what the Virginia state board of education actually did. It looked at students' test scores in reading and math and then proposed new passing rates. In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities.

The death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant is the subject of two investigations at University Hospital Galway in the Republic of Ireland.
Savita Halappanavar's family asked several times for her pregnancy to be terminated because she had severe back pain and was miscarrying.
Her family claimed it was refused because there was a foetal heartbeat. She died on 28 October.

Her husband, Praveen, told the Irish Times that medical staff said his wife could not have an abortion because Ireland was a Catholic country and the foetus was still alive.

He has lost the ability to use a keyboard altogether and can do very little with a pen. His most recent four books have been written entirely by dictation, and with the help of his assistant of 12 years, Rob Wilkins.

Pratchett's assistant of 12 years, Rob Wilkins, also reveals that earlier this month, the author suffered an atrial fibrillation in the back seat of a New York taxi. Were it not for emergency CPR, he would have died.

[Rhianna] will be a co-writer on the BBC Discworld series The Watch, news of which has had fans like me chewing their cheeks in excitement. Mine may never recover after hearing some particularly exciting casting details that I'm absolutely not allowed to tell you about.

Run by Pratchett's new production company, Narrativia, The Watch will continue the well-loved City Watch saga where the books left off, and Rhianna will be an important member of the writing team. The author tells me that he will be happy for her to continue writing the Discworld books when he is no longer able to do so. "The Discworld is safe in my daughter's hands," Pratchett assures me.

Austin Texas continues to suffer difficulties stemming from the lack of civil, religious, and political freedoms imposed upon the city by less liberally minded Texans. It is entirely feasible for Austin to operate as its own state, within the United States, in the event that Texas is successful in the current bid to secede. It is important for Austin to remain in the union as to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers.

We would also like to annex Dublin Texas, Lockhart Texas, & Shiner Texas.

Meat-eaters "easily cheat, lie, forget promises and commit sex crimes", according to a controversial school textbook available in India.
New Healthway, a book on hygiene and health aimed at 11 and 12 year-olds, is printed by one of India's leading publishers.

Canadian scientists have shown that the deadliest form of the ebola virus could be transmitted by air between species.
In experiments, they demonstrated that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them.
The researchers say they believe that limited airborne transmission might be contributing to the spread of the disease in some parts of Africa.
They are concerned that pigs might be a natural host for the lethal infection.

A South Pacific island, shown on marine charts and world maps as well as on Google Earth and Google Maps, does not exist, Australian scientists say.

The supposedly sizeable strip of land, named Sandy Island on Google maps, was positioned midway between Australia and French-governed New Caledonia.

But when scientists from the University of Sydney went to the area, they found only the blue ocean of the Coral Sea.

The phantom island has featured in publications for at least a decade.

However some in the twittersphere pointed out that those sharing the video shouldn't be also voicing their own prejudices, such as stereotyping people because of where they live

"we collected data on 915,601 signatures [...] 319,415 unique combinations of names, places and dates, suggesting that a large number of people were signing more than one petition"

"In first week, of the 302,502 respondents with gendered names, 63% had male names and 38% had female names. This 26 point gender gap is twice the size of the gender gap for voters in the 2012 Presidential election. For signatures more recently, the gender gap has risen to more than 34 points."

The message was discovered by David Martin when he was renovating the chimney of his house in Surrey.
Among the rubbish, he found parts of a dead pigeon including a leg. Attached to the leg was a red canister. Inside the canister was a thin piece of paper with the words "Pigeon Service" at the top and 27 handwritten blocks of code.

This was given to GCHQ at the start of the month.

"We didn't really hold out any hopes we would be able to read the message because the sort of codes that were constructed to be used during operations were designed only to be able to be read by the senders and the recipients," said GCHQ historian Tony, who asked that only his first name be used.

He told the BBC: "Unless you get rather more idea than we have of who actually sent this message and who it was sent to we are not going to find out what the underlying code being used was."

"It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico."

A team of scientists can verify that their 5-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” living in North America. Researchers’ extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.

Scientists have found life in an Antarctic lake that was sealed off from the outside world by a thick sheet of ice several thousands of years ago.

Brine collected from boreholes drilled into Lake Vida contains scores of bacteria that clung on to life despite making their home in one of harshest environments on Earth.

The lake lies in a barren region called the McMurdo Dry Valleys, in the east of the continent. The water in Lake Vida is acidic, starved of oxygen, and so salty that it remains liquid despite its temperature hovering around the -13C mark all year round.

Researchers identified organisms from eight major groups of bacteria, among them common forms such as proteobacteria, firmicutes and bacteroidetes. Another group, the verrucomicrobia, are named for their wart-like bulges.

"Lake Vida is an incredibly harsh environment. It has not been exposed to the surface for thousands, if not millions, of years," said Mike Bentley, a professor of geology at Durham University. "If you understand life in extreme environments, you understand life better: it tells you what the controls are on life."

On Aug. 30, a Japanese mathematician named Shinichi Mochizuki posted four papers to his faculty website at Kyoto University. Rumors had been spreading all summer that Mochizuki was onto something big, and in the abstract to the fourth paper Mochizuki explained that, indeed, his project was as grand as people had suspected. Over 512 pages of dense mathematical reasoning, he claimed to have discovered a proof of one of the most legendary unsolved problems in math.

Mochizuki was different. Depending on how you calculate it, he’d been working on a proof of ABC entirely by himself for nearly 20 years. During that time, he’d constructed his own mathematical universe and populated it with arcane terms like “inter-universal Teichmüller theory” and “alien arithmetic holomorphic structures.”

Before mathematicians can even start to read the proof, or understand his four papers, they need to wade through 750 pages of Mochizuki’s incredibly complicated foundational work in anabelian geometry. At the moment, there are only about 50 people in the world who know anabelian geometry well enough to understand this preliminary work. Then, the proof itself is written in an entirely different branch of mathematics called “inter-universal geometry” that Mochizuki—who refers to himself as an “inter-universal Geometer”—invented and of which, at least so far, he is the sole practitioner.

The show, Acercate a Los Astros, is an Astrology/Psychic/Numerology show. The host, Franklin Barazarte, is the producer. He personally burned Wayne. Franklin's wife, Adriana Azzi is the normal host, but she was out of town. The voodoo charges, and the suggestion that this was God's revenge, were made against the the show in general, and the Curiosidades team that were on the show (BJ Bueno, Wayne and Fran) in particular, by Domngo Bautista, host of the television program Super Revista.

In Samana (same island...Dominican Republic) a few years ago, during holidays...

The owner of an hotel and the local magician asked me to perform the Steve Fearson floating cigarette in his discotheque. I did

Then, about 10 guys left their chairs, towards me. The owner told me not to move. The local magician had to explain to the group that it was THROUGH ME, thanks to my powers (I remember he used the formula "white great magician") that he could do his daily show on stage !!!!
As a precaution !

The following day, the owner told me that in fact, these clients wanted to ask me to "give" them the power to do the same thing with their own cigarettes...but as he also said...we never know.

Local mayor Miodrag Vujetic admitted: "People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people. We are all frightened."

He added that it was all very well for people who didn't live in the area to laugh at their fears but he said nobody in the region was in any doubt that vampires do exist.

"We are 99.999 percent certain it was suicide," a Hamburg police spokeswoman told The Local.

"There is no other explanation; no other motive and no other evidence."

Detectives have worked out that there was enough of an opening in the sack between the cable ties for Sattler to get an arm out and shoot himself so that afterwards the gun would fall to the ground. He would have had to have done this while perched on the edge of a bridge or jetty to ensure falling into the water.

News of a pioneering sex change operation, one of the first involving both surgery and hormone therapy, was announced in 1952 - exactly 60 years ago this weekend.
"Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty!" screamed one headline as newspapers in the United States broke the news.
A quiet boy from New York, George Jorgensen, shocked a nation by returning from a trip to Denmark transformed into the glamorous Christine.

Sex changes in the UK:
• 42 - Median age at time of operation
• 11% - Rate of rise year on year
• 80% of sex changes are male to female

This assignment was this year given to year nine students at Northern Bay College in Geelong.

Denis Duthie was celebrating his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary with drinks when his world suddenly went dark. As Stuff.co.nz reported, following a four-hour drinking spree — involving vodka on ice and whiskey — at his home on New Zealand‘s North Island, the 65-year-old chef tutor discovered he had gone blind.

Doctors suspected that Duthie was suffering from formaldehyde poisoning, which occurs when methanol — a common byproduct of home-brewed alcoholic beverages — metabolizes into formaldehyde, the Herald reported. In his case, they believed that the alcohol he had ingestedreacted with the five medications he was taking to manage his diabetes, stuff.co.nz reported. Treatment for this type of poisoning involves administering ethanol, which is commonly found in alcoholic beverages and prevents the formation of the harmful compound.

There was just one problem: the hospital lacked enough ethanol to serve as an effective antidote. All hope was not lost for Duthie, though, thanks to the medical staff’s decision to improvise. They sent the hospital’s registrar to purchase a $55 bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey from a local liquor store, and Duthie received a whiskey drip to his stomach through a tube routed first through his nose, the Herald reported.

Five days later, Duthie awoke in the intensive care unit with his sight restored, feeling “good as gold.” Although he lost 14 kg (almost 31 pounds) in the hospital, he told the Herald that he was impressed with the creative cure.

Hannah Sabata is 19 and not very smart. Here’s why: she stole a car and then robbed a bank of $6,256. She then made a YouTube video where she bragged about it, even going so far as to flash the cash that she stole, and the car keys to her new (stolen) car. Oh, and an ounce of weed… and an Insane Clown Posse pipe.

A former death row inmate with intellectual disabilities has languished in the Texas prison system for over 30 years despite having no valid criminal conviction. Jerry Hartfield, an illiterate man with an IQ of 51, had his capital conviction overturned in 1980 because the jury at his trial had been improperly selected. A Texas appeals court ordered a new trial for Hartfield, but that trial has never happened. In 1983, then-Governor Mark White attempted to commute Hartfield's former death sentence to life without parole. However, a federal court has recently ruled that the commutation was irrelevant since Hartfield was not convicted of a crime. No action had been taken on the case until 2006, when another inmate helped Hartfield file a handwritten motion, asking that he be either retried or set free. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the petition, but a federal judge agreed with Hartfield, saying the decision overturning his conviction still stands. U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Hughes said, "Hartfield's position is as straightforward and subtle as a freight train....The court's mandate was never recalled, its decision never overturned, the conviction never reinstated; yet Hartfield never received the 'entirely new trial' ordered by the court." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit called the state's defense of Hartfield's incarceration "disturbingly unprofessional" and returned the case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for further action. Given the Sixth Amendment's right to a speedy trial, it is not clear that Hartfield could be re-tried.

The gunman, who was believed to be in his 20s, walked into a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School where his mother was a teacher. He shot and killed her and then shot 18 students in the classroom. He also shot five other adults, and then killed himself inside the school. Various news outlets identified the shooter as Ryan Lanza. The shooting ranks among the worst in recent United States history.

The suspect in the Connecticut school shootings is Adam Lanza, 20, the son of a teacher at the school where the shootings occurred, a law enforcement official said Friday. A second law enforcement official says the boy's mother, Nancy Lanza, is presumed dead.

Adam Lanza's older brother, Ryan, 24, of Hoboken, N.J., is being questioned by police, said the first official. Earlier, a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names.

MMA fighter Ray Elbe -- who competed on "Ultimate Fighter 9" -- had to be rushed to a hospital in Malaysia earlier this month and required 10 stitches ... after he BROKE HIS PENIS during sex.
Elbe told the whole story -- in painfully graphic detail -- on an MMA website ... explaining how he was having sex with his GF, who was "on top" ... when she bounced a little too high, and crunched Ray's erect penis.
According to Ray, his penis "fractured" ... and "blood was everywhere." Ray says he immediately passed out from the pain.

Jennifer Wederell, of Hawkwell, Essex, died at home in August - 16 months after the transplant at Harefield Hospital in London.
She had been on the waiting list for a lung transplant for 18 months when in April 2011, she was told there had been a match.
She married her fiance David Wederell in September last year, but by February 2012 a malignant mass was found in her lungs.

Colin Grannell said he believes his daughter would not have agreed to the transplant had she known the middle-aged donor was a heavy smoker.

The hospital has apologised for not giving her that choice.

Conspirators murdered Egyptian King Ramesses III by slitting his throat, experts now believe, based on a new forensic analysis.

The first CT scans to examine the king's mummy reveal a cut to the neck deep enough to be fatal.

The secret has been hidden for centuries by the bandages covering the mummy's throat that could not be removed for preservation's sake.

It wasn’t uncommon for boys to lie about their age in order to serve. Ray Jackson, who joined the Marines at 16 during World War II, founded the group Veterans of Underage Military Service in 1991, and it listed more than 1,200 active members, including 26 women.

Among the study’s other findings:

• While aging has a detrimental effect on reasoning and short-term memory, it leaves verbal abilities “completely unimpaired.”

• Smoking has a negative impact on verbal abilities and short-term memory but does not affect reasoning skills.

• People who play video games performed “significantly better” in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory.

• Products that are advertised to improve brain function aren’t effective. “People who ‘brain-train’ are no better at any of these three aspects of intelligence than people who don’t,” Owen said.

People can still take the tests at cambridgebrainsciences.com/theIQchallenge. Owen said he hopes that 1 million people across the globe will eventually participate.

The fox urine is mixed with glycerin and water and is sprayed on the trunks of hundreds of evergreens in city parks to prevent them from getting clandestinely cut down and stolen. The smell of the fox urine is dulled outdoors in the cold, but becomes unbearable when “thawed” and brought into a warmer environment, like a house.

“The fox urine smells like skunk. And this year, we added a little bit of skunk essence to it, so it’s a really good batch,” Dave Allder, a city parks supervisor, told the Lincoln Journal Star.

The freedom to vote, drive, conduct business, earn money, drink, smoke, swear, own a gun or wear pants was traditionally the exclusive province of men. Young girls were commonly forced into arranged marriages, often with much older men in distant villages. As an alternative, becoming a Sworn Virgin, or ‘burnesha” elevated a woman to the status of a man and granted her all the rights and privileges of the male population. In order to manifest the transition such a woman cut her hair, donned male clothing and sometimes even changed her name. Male gestures and swaggers were practiced until they became second nature. Most importantly of all, she took a vow of celibacy to remain chaste for life. She became a “he”. This practice continues today but as modernization inches toward the small villages nestled in the Alps, this archaic tradition is increasingly seen as obsolete. Only a few aging Sworn Virgins remain.

In a 14-page opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the "ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity."

The Italian central bank has suspended all bank card payments in the Vatican, citing its failure to implement fully anti-money laundering legislation, Italian media report.

The Holy See was required to meet European Union safeguards on finances by the start of 2013.

Its failure means tourists will have to pay cash at its museums and shops.

In August of 1966, 2 years prior to the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick wrote to the vice president of his production company and asked whether IBM — a company with whom Kubrick consulted during production, and whose logo briefly appears in the film — were aware of HAL's murderous actions in the story. His letter, and Roger Caras's reply, can be seen below.

It's worth noting that both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke have since denied that HAL represented IBM, and have claimed that the "one-letter shift" between the names "HAL" and "IBM" is purely coincidental.