Breaking News Thread

[Flynbyu]

He had a great career.

~Brian

[Krandall]

The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/


Just minutes ago the verdict in the case of The Pirate Bay Four was announced. All four defendants were accused of 'assisting in making copyright content available'. Peter Sunde: Guilty. Fredrik Neij: Guilty. Gottfrid Svartholm: Guilty. Carl Lundström: Guilty. The four receive 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000.

While only a few weeks ago, it seems like an eternity since the trial of The Pirate Bay Four ended and the court retired to consider its verdict. The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were 'assisting in making copyright content available' and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty - backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

Today, Friday April 17, the court issued its decision: article continuously updated

"The court has found that by using Pirate Bay's services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case," said the district court. "This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances."

[Flynbyu]

Hide the rum.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

~Brian

[Krandall]

I figured they'd get a bigger fine.

[Flynbyu]

I figured they'd get a bigger fine.

Bribe 'em!

~Brian

[Flynbyu]

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – The head of the Organization of American States said Friday that he will ask its members to readmit Cuba 47 years after they ousted the communist nation. And in another step toward improving relations, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Cuban President Raul Castro's latest comments a "very welcome gesture."

After a series of overtures by U.S. President Barack Obama, Castro said Thursday that he is ready to talk with the U.S. and put "everything" on the table, even questions of human rights and political prisoners.

That prompted a warm response from Clinton: "We welcome his comments, the overture they represent and we are taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond."

As leaders of 34 nations converged on Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas — an OAS-sponsored gathering that includes every nation in the region but communist Cuba — expectations were soaring for a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations that have been largely frozen since the Cold War.

Things seemed to be moving quickly. Obama and Clinton had earlier said that Havana needs to reciprocate after Obama's "good faith" gesture of removing restrictions on some American money and travel to Cuba. But Raul Castro's conciliatory response seemed to be enough to move things forward even without a more concrete move on U.S. sticking points.

"We're going step by step," OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said, explaining that he will ask the group's general assembly in May to annul the 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba.

Other leaders arriving in Trinidad also offered to help. Jamaica's prime minister, Bruce Golding, said the 15-member Caribbean Community is willing to mediate any Cuba-U.S. talks on easing tensions and lifting the decades-old American trade embargo against Cuba.

Golding told The Associated Press that Caricom leaders also agreed to not push Obama too hard on the issue during the summit.

"I'm hoping that nothing is done that will make the process more difficult and that we seek to encourage further progress rather than cause the situation once again to become polarized and intractable," he said.

Washington provides more than 70 percent of the OAS budget, which affords it certain privileges. And for 47 years, the Washington-based organization has officially considered Cuba's communist system to be incompatible with its principles.

But there is a growing clamor in the region to end efforts to isolate Cuba, not just from Raul and Fidel Castro's close friends, but also from conservative U.S. allies like Mexico.

Raul Castro spoke Thursday at a meeting of leftist leaders in Venezuela who vowed to represent Cuba's interests in Trinidad. Vehemently defending his government's resistance to the U.S., he said "the OAS should disappear" and that Cuba would never want to join the organization he called a tool of the U.S.

"The North Sea will unite with the South Seas, a serpent will be born from an eagle's egg before Cuba joins the OAS," Castro said.

Inzulza said Castro's feelings are only natural: "If my country were suspended from an organization for nearly 50 years I'd be very upset."

Castro's other comments about negotiating with the U.S. represented the most conciliatory language that either Castro brother has used with any U.S. administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower in early 1961, when the nations broke off relations.

Raul Castro has previously said he would be willing to discuss all issues with Obama. But Cuban officials have historically bristled at including human rights or political prisoners in the talks, saying such matters are none of the Yankees' business.

Now, he even suggested that "many other things" could be up for discussion. "We could be wrong, we admit it. We're human beings," Castro said. "We're willing to sit down to talk as it should be done, whenever."

Castro said his only conditions are that Washington treat his government as an equal, and respect "the Cuban people's right to self-determination."

Most Cubans, however, likely heard little about these overtures, unless they watched TV using illegal satellite hookups.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma on Friday did not carry Castro's comments about the U.S., focusing instead on his talks on regional matters with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders. Granma also ignored Obama's statements about Cuba, and dealt instead with Mexican President Felipe Calderon's call to drop the embargo.

And Fidel Castro, who still pens enormously influential columns from the sidelines of power, was silent on Friday.

Obama said a relationship frozen for 50 years "won't thaw overnight." But their words seemed as historic as any that leaders of the two nations have made to one another.

Relations warmed briefly during Jimmy Carter's administration, adding direct flights between Miami and Havana and opening interests sections in lieu of embassies in each country. But that honeymoon soon ended with a refugee crisis when 125,000 Cubans fled to the United States from the Mariel port west of Havana in 1980.

Warming relations under Bill Clinton were put in the freezer after Cuban fighter jets shot down two civilian planes off the island's coast in 1996, killing the four exiles aboard.

Obama said he acted in good faith to lift restrictions on visits and money sent by Americans with families on the island — steps he called "extraordinarily significant" for the families. But he ruled out a unilateral end to the embargo, even as Clinton said Friday that "we vew the present policy as having failed."

No one should expect a sudden, major breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba relations, but these latest developments should not be lightly dismissed, said Peter DeShazo, a Latin America expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. diplomat.

"These are very preliminary steps," he said in a telephone interview in Washington. "But they are significant" not only as symbolic gestures of good will but also as building blocks of a foundation for a new relationship.

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Toothaker in Cumana, Venezuela, Frank Bajak and Bert Wilkinson in Trinidad; and Anita Snow in Havana and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

~Brian

[Peelz]

Former US congressman killed in atv crash.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=6210097

Type of ATV crash that killed Orton all too common
April 19th, 2009 @ 5:30pm
By John Hollenhorst
JUAB COUNTY -- Former Utah Congressman Bill Orton died Saturday from a type of ATV crash that's all too common in sand dunes. It appears he went too fast over the top of a dune and wound up pinned underneath his heavy four-wheeler. As far as we know, no one witnessed Orton's ATV crash. So the precise details may never be known.

But experts say it seems pretty clear he made a common mistake that's claimed lives before in the Little Sahara Sand Dunes.

Related: Orton being remembered as a trailblazer
Former Congressman Bill Orton being remembered for his personality and his years of service.
The sand dune that killed Bill Orton doesn't look like much--not too tall, not too rough--but just steep enough to get him into trouble, like many before him.

Little Sahara Sand Dunes Manager Tim Finger said, "A lot of people tend to think about just coming out here and having fun. But it's just like driving a car. You have to think about what you are doing"

We crisscrossed the deadly dune with veteran driver Ken Poulsen. In the so-called "sandbulance," he frequently swings into action to rescue the injured in a place where wind constantly resculpts the landscape.

"It changes all the time," Poulsen said. "One day the tops of the dunes will be rounded; the next day they're like razors."

The problem is when you're going up a dune you don't know what's on the other side. And if you get to the top and it's too steep and you're going too fast, you can be in real trouble.

Poulsen recommended, "Either turn when you get to the top or stop."

Poulsen suspects Orton raced over the top. When he realized how steep the backside was, he may have suddenly applied his handbrakes, locking the front tires, so the four-wheeler flipped over and landed on top of him. It's a common mistake that leads to a lot of accidents.

"Maybe they're going a little bit too fast and they're already committed so, as they go over the dune, maybe they have a little too much speed and they lean forward a little bit too much and they flip the ATV," Finger said.

Although drivers can learn safety measures on their own, training for adults is not mandatory.

Finger said, "State of Utah requires that children in particular have to have training. We would always say you can use more training."

About two or three people a year die at Little Sahara Sand Dunes.

Managers say they think that's actually a rather low fatality rate, considering that on a busy day as many as 30,000 people are out there and a lot of them doing some pretty wild driving.

[Flynbyu]

Looks like the guys inUtah are f*cked now.

~Brian

[Peelz]

Looks like the guys inUtah are f*cked now.

~Brian

yep sad for his family...but prepare for the negative press. Our sport really needs that. 

[Krandall]

Freddie Mac official found dead in apparent suicide
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_freddie_mac_official_dead

WASHINGTON – David Kellermann, the acting chief financial officer of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide.

Mary Ann Jennings, director of public information for the Fairfax County, Va., Police Department, said Kellermann was found dead in his Reston, Va., home. The 41-year-old Kellermann has been Freddie Mac's chief financial officer since September.

Jennings said that a crime scene crew and homicide detectives were investigating the death, but that there didn't appear to be any sign of foul play.

McLean-based Freddie Mac has been criticized heavily for reckless business practices that some argue contributed to the housing and financial crisis. Freddic Mac is a government-controlled company that owns or guarantees about 13 million home loans. CEO David Moffett resigned last month.

Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie Mae, which together own or back more than half of the home mortgages in the country, have been hobbled by skyrocketing loan defaults and have received about $60 billion in combined federal aid.

Kellermann was named acting chief financial officer in September 2008, after the resignation of Anthony "Buddy" Piszel, who stepped down after the September 2008 government takeover. The chief financial officer is responsible for the company's financial controls, financial reporting and oversight of the company's budget and financial planning.

Before taking that job, Kellerman served as senior vice president, corporate controller and principal accounting officer. He was with Freddie Mac for more than 16 years

[Flynbyu]

I bet he's about to get busted for something big.

~Brian

[Krandall]

probably some $$ scandal. bastards.

[Flynbyu]

If it goes public, the market will drop like a rock again.

~Brian

[disco]

Homebuilt plane lands on street on the way to a fly-in.

From youtube:  CNN: A newly-released video shows two men landing a home-built airplane Sunday. Pilot Kyle Davis, 22, and passenger Joe Surowiec were flying from Winter Haven to Sun n' Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, FL when the engine failed. Two cameras -- one in the cockpit and another facing the engine -- captured the landing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eADLzMOWgFo

[Mad Dog]

For Brian/Aaron

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html