Epic Fail: Wife caught smuggling husband out of prison in a suitcase
A woman has been caught trying to sneak her common-law husband out of a Mexican prison in a suitcase following a conjugal visit.
A spokesman for police in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo said staff at the prison in Chetumal noticed that the woman seemed nervous and was pulling a black, wheeled suitcase that looked bulky.
Full Story at Belfast Telegraph.
Hacker dumps internal Florida voting system online to show lack of security
Election fraud and accusations of rigged voting might be as old as US election systems themselves, but some may wonder, if a hacker can gain access to the election voting system, how secure are elections anyway?
The AntiSec movement is definitely rolling along, but Anonymous is pointing to a recent hack that could raise some serious questions over the integrity of voting in Florida. It seems that a hacker obtained parts of the Florida voting database which has been subsequently posted online.
It appears that the hacker in question wanted to show that voting fraud can easily happen today and dumped parts of the Florida database to prove it. From the comments of the release:
“So, this is a little ironic. Here is inside details of florida voting systems. Now.. who still believes voting isn’t rigged? If the United States Government can’t even keep their ballot systems secure, why trust them at all? FAIL!”
Full story at ZeroPaid.com
Obama dead, according to Fox News
Hackers have taken over a Twitter account belonging to US broadcaster Fox News and declared President Obama dead. The @foxnewspolitics feed stated: “BREAKING NEWS: @BarackObama assassinated, 2 gunshot wounds have proved too much.”
More than two hours after the malicious postings appeared, they had still not been removed.
A group or individual, calling themselves The Script Kiddies appeared to claim responsibility. Fox News said it was investigating the posts. The bizarre messages began appearing around 07.00 BST on July 4.
The first read: “Just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th.” The next posting stated: “@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead.”
Fox News Politics is one of the Twitter accounts associated with the industry-leading cable news network.Its Twitter account carries the “verified” tick icon, indicating that the feed belongs to the organisation it claims to be.
In a statement, Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital said: “We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.”
Master forgery: ’17th century work exposed as a fake’
It was believed that The Procuress, at the The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, was a 17th century anonymous copy of a 1620s brothel scene by Dutch master Dirck van Baburen.
After tests for a BBC One show, Fake of Fortune?, it is now accepted that the work is a forgery by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch forger who died in 1947.
As recently as 2009, the respected Art Newspaper revealed that curators at the Courtauld and the National Gallery (NG) believed the painting had “every appearance of being of 17th-century origin”, as the latter put it.
Now, scientific tests commissioned for the BBC programme detected a synthetic resin similar to Bakelite mixed into the paints to mimic age.
Full story at The Telegraph
Scientist-Politician-Atheist Offers Own Money For Origin of Life Prize
A millionaire scientist who once ran as a Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate has just launched a $50,000 prize to promote research on the origin of life. Yes, he has an ulterior motive: He hopes that researchers working on the question will eventually prove that life’s origins can be fully explained by physical and chemical processes, without invoking a creator.
Harry Lonsdale is a chemist in Bend, Oregon, who made a fortune when he sold his drug development and research company to Pfizer more than 25 years ago. Since then, he has leveraged his wealth for social, civic, and political causes, including a series of unsuccessful bids to become a U.S. senator. The 79-year-old Lonsdale is an avowed atheist who has advocated for gay rights, campaign finance reform, and environmental protections. Now, he’s on a mission to accelerate the quest to understand how life originated. Over the past 2 weeks, Lonsdale has taken out ads in Science, Nature, and Chemical and Engineering News announcing an Origin of Life Research Award that includes $50,000 for the best proposal to study the origin of life and up to $2 million in potential funding to carry out the work.
Full story at Richard Dawkins
3 high school pupils die, Principal’s hypnotism blamed
ABC NEWS claims that three Florida high school students are dead after being hypnotized by their school principal in Sarasota County, one in a car accident and two by suicide.
Principal George Kenney is believed to have hypnotized up to 75 people, including students, members of the school staff and their children. Sarasota County School District officials repeatedly warned Kenney to stop the practice, which the principal insists was only done in the interest of helping students to be motivated and focused on school work and sports.
Click here to watch the ABC News report (contains pre-roll advert)
Russian court bans Scientology literature as ‘extremist’
A court in a Moscow suburb has banned works by the founder of the Church of Scientology, officials said Thursday.
The Shchyolkovo court ruled that “What is Scientology?” and other books by L. Ron Hubbard “contain calls for extremist activities,” the Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement.
It said that once the court decision comes into force, scientology books will be put on the federal list of extremist materials banned for release throughout Russia. The court made the ruling following a request by local prosecutors.
A court in the Siberian city of Surgut had earlier made a similar decision, but then overturned it. Scientology officials said they would protest the decision.
“There have been many legal violations, the case is unfounded and the trial was hasty,” the group’s attorney Sergei Korzikov told The Associated Press. “We could not defend our legal interests.”
Full story at the Washington Post
