A contract killer has been dispatched to assassinate the Russian double agent who betrayed Anna Chapman and nine other spies in the United States this spring, according to reports in Moscow.

“We know who he is and where he is,” a high-ranking Kremlin source told the reputable Kommersant newspaper.

“You can have no doubt – a Mercader has already been sent after him.”

Ramón Mercader was the KGB-hired Spanish communist who was sent to kill Leon Trotsky with an icepick in Mexico in 1940.

The traitor was reportedly identified as a Colonel Shcherbakov, an officer of the SVR (foreign intelligence service) who headed the S directorate of the service’s US department, which controlled the ring of sleeper agents, including Chapman.

Shcherbakov is thought to have fled Russia three days before the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visited Barack Obama on 24 June, when the two leaders ate hamburgers together at a diner in Virginia.

“After that, the Americans, worried that we would suspect a betrayal and start pulling our agents from the US, began to arrest them,” said the Kremlin source.

A North Carolina state legislator says he supports the military, but a flyer prepared by his campaign could lead some to question which country’s.

Democrat Tim Spear’s campaign has apologised after inadvertently sending voters a leaflet showing actors in World War II-era German uniforms.

The firm that produced the advert touting his support for the military has accepted blame, US media reported.

The state Republican Party obtained the flyer and distributed it to the media.

A longtime federal judge was freed on a $50,000 bond Monday after his arrest on federal charges that he bought cocaine and other illegal drugs while involved in a sexual relationship with an exotic dancer for the past several months.

North Fulton Senior U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp Jr. was arrested late Friday night near Sandy Springs. Camp, 67, is accused of purchasing cocaine and marijuana, along with prescription painkillers that which he shared with an exotic dancer he met last spring at the Goldrush Showbar in Atlanta, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit for his arrest.

Camp met the dancer, identified in the affidavit as CI-1, when he purchased a private dance from her, according to the affidavit by Special Agent Mary Jo Mangrum, a member of a task force investigating public corruption. He returned the next night and purchased another dance and sex from her, the affidavit said. The two then began a relationship which revolved around drug use and sex.

The polygamous king of Swaziland has fired his justice minister after the politician was caught red-handed having an affair with one of the king’s 14 wives.

King Mswati III acted after pictures emerged of his minister Ndumiso Mamba hiding in the base of his adulterous wife’s bed.

The astonishing images show security officials standing around the upturned bed looking down at the forlorn minister.

Rumours that King Mswati III’s twelfth wife, 22-year-old Nothando Dube – a former Miss Teen Swaziland – had been having an affair have circulated inside the country for weeks.

While local media are banned from reporting the scandal, it was widely rumoured that Mrs Dube liked to disguise herself as a soldier in order to sneak out of the royal palace and meet her lover undetected.

Guess he likes his crust crispy and burnt.

A pyromaniac pizza-maker fired from his job at Domino’s decided to turn up the heat on his former employer — torching two of the chain’s Bronx restaurants by setting fire to pizza boxes, authorities said today.

The antics of accused arsonist Jamal Thomas threatened the life of at least one person and cost Domino’s more than $1 million in building damage and lost business, according to FDNY officials.

“Domino’s is a terrible place to work,” griped Thomas, 24, to authorities after his bust, according to court papers.

“They didn’t treat me right. They are terrible to workers. I was punched at work, and nobody helped me.”

A dismissed policeman armed with an automatic rifle seized a bus in the Philippine capital Monday with 25 passengers, most of them Hong Kong tourists, in a bid to demand his reinstatement, police said.

Six hostages, including three children, were subsequently released, and appeared to be unhurt.

Police sharpshooters took positions around the white-blue-red bus, which was parked near a downtown Manila park, and negotiations to free the remaining hostages were under way, deputy director of Manila police Alex Gutierrez said.

Memphis City Council member Janis Fullilove sent a letter of apology to the president of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials for what she described as “over the top” behavior at a party last week.

 Fullilove, regional director for NBC-LEO, said Tuesday that she engaged in dancing — including pole dancing — on a river cruise during the group’s gathering in Memphis.

“Yes, I was on the pole,” said Fullilove. “I was having a good time but I wasn’t drinking.

“I went overboard because I was trying to do the Soul Train. I was dancing on the pole and I was just trying to have a good time.

“It was over the top. It was over the top and I apologize.”

Parents at Coconut Grove Elementary School are calling for the ouster of Principal Eva N. Ravelo this week after she told a parent in an e-mail to “eat sh– and die.”

The controversy, which is now under review by the Miami-Dade County school district’s central office, started Monday.

Abigail DuBearn, a member of the school’s Educational Excellence School Advisory Committee, or EESAC, had asked Ravelo and other council members whether student representatives of the committee “could be notified today and be invited to attend and participate” at Monday’s meeting.

Ravelo, 44, then replied to DuBearn’s e-mail with the message: “Advise her to eat sh– and die.” Ravelo spelled the swear word as it appears here — without the last two letters.

Maria Orjeda, the school’s reading coach, who spoke on behalf of Ravelo, said the principal meant to send the e-mail about DuBearn to her assistant principal, Ramón Dawkins, instead of DuBearn.

DuBearn could not be reached for comment Thursday.

“Ms. Ravelo takes full responsibility for the mistake. She apologized to Mrs. DuBearn on Tuesday,” Orjeda said.

The principal, who is still running the school, has been instructed not to speak with the media, Orjeda said.

Ravelo could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

The bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China, state media reported Tuesday.

Video footage showed that the bodies – stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked “medical waste” – included some infants several months old. Some wore identification tags with their mothers’ names, birth dates, measurements and weights. The official Xinhua News Agency said there were also fetuses among the bodies.

Residents discovered the remains under a bridge in the city of Jining, Shandong province, over the weekend. Tags on the feet of eight of the babies traced them back to a hospital in Jining, according to the People’s Daily Web site. Three of them had been admitted earlier to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when.

Hat tip to Kara!

At the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, more than 30 storeys above the noise and bustle of Manhattan, there is so much high-mindedness hanging in the air you can almost taste it. This is the epicentre of a certain type of socially smart, progressive activism — the kind that persuades Hollywood grandees, power lawyers and liberal financiers to dig deeply into their pockets.

When the story broke that one of the organisation’s most prominent and vocal members of staff might be a collector of Nazi-era military memorabilia it felt like some sort of sexual scandal had erupted in the Victorian church. For a lobbying group accustomed to adulatory coverage in the media, it was a public-relations catastrophe. Human Rights Watch is one of two global superpowers among the world’s myriad humanitarian pressure groups.

It is relatively young — established in its current form in 1988 — but it has grown so quickly in size, wealth and influence that it has all but eclipsed its older, London-based rival, Amnesty International. Unlike Amnesty, HRW, as it is known, gets its money from charitable foundations and wealthy individuals — such as the financier George Soros — rather than a mass membership.

And, also unlike Amnesty, it seeks to make an impact, not through extensive letter-writing campaigns, but by talking to governments and the media, urging openness and candour and backing up its advocacy with research reports. It is an association that is all about influence — an influence that depends on a carefully honed image of objectivity, expertise and high moral tone.

So it was perhaps a little awkward that a key member of staff was found to have such a treasure trove of Nazi regalia.

A Republican National Committee (RNC) spokesperson said the committee is looking into a large expenditure at a Los Angeles club known for simulated bondage scenes and nudity.

A Daily Caller report Monday pointed out the expenditure, which was for almost $2,000 at Voyeur West Hollywood.

An RNC spokesperson said the committee is looking into the matter, but said the expenditure was made by a non-committee staffer and added that the report erroneously hinted that RNC Chairman Michael Steele attended the club.

“The chairman was never at the location in question; he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable,” the spokesperson said.

“Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear. The committee has requested that the monies be returned to the committee and that the story be corrected so that it is accurate.”

A £90,000-a-year housing boss leads a sordid secret life – dressing up as a Nazi for sick racist sex games.

By day Gareth Mead works in one of Britain’s most ethnically-diverse communities.Mead, 44, is in charge of social housing and homelessness in Hammersmith and Fulham, where his duties include helping decide who is eligible for a ­council house or emergency homeless shelter.

But at night he poses in front of a swastika in full SS regalia and tells other lovers of the vile fetish: “Gas the Jews and Wogs.”

In a series of shocking photos seen by the Sunday Mirror, the high-ranking council official shows off his array of fascist outfits.

In one shot, Mead reclines on a sofa, wearing jackboots, leather trousers, a khaki shirt with swastika armband and a Nazi officers’ hat.

In another photo, shaven-headed Mead stares menacingly into the camera, dressed in “bovver boy” boots, bomber jacket and swastika T-shirt.

Mead also sent racist texts to men he met on fetish websites. In one he wrote: “Turn on the furnaces for those Jewish boys and let them burn in hell with us 2 Nazis j****** off on their terrified screams.”

Gov. David A. Paterson personally directed two state employees to contact the woman who had accused his close aide of assaulting her, according to two people with direct knowledge of the governor’s actions.

Mr. Paterson instructed his press secretary, Marissa Shorenstein, to ask the woman to publicly describe the episode as nonviolent, according to a third person, who was briefed on the matter.

That description would contradict the woman’s accounts to the police and in court. Mr. Paterson also enlisted another state employee, Deneane Brown, a friend of both the governor and the accuser, to make contact with the woman before she was due in court to finalize an order of protection against the aide, David W. Johnson, the two people with direct knowledge said.

Ms. Brown, an employee of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, reached out to the woman on more than one occasion over a period of several days and arranged a phone call between the governor and the woman, Mr. Johnson’s companion.

Governor David Paterson’s spokespeople are denying any possible-career ending scandal that will push him out of office as a result of a bombshell story The New York Times is said to have on him. Unconfirmed rumors relating to sex, drugs, and women appear to be the most brought up topics surrounding the story.

However, Mr. Paterson seems intent on running for office, as reports say he plans to announce his campaign for governor next week. Serving as Eliot Spitzer’s Lieutenant Governor, Mr. Paterson came to New York’s Governor’s mansion after Mr. Spitzer resigned in disgrace amid a sex scandal involving a prostitute.

“I think its going to have to be something really bad for him to resign. He admitted to past drug use. I don’t think anybody would be surprised or necessarily all that shocked if he and his wife had an understanding. It would have to be something beyond the pale for him to resign,” a long time Albany insider with GOP ties said to The Washington Times Water Cooler.

The Washington Times learned from our Albany source that at least fourteen of Mr. Paterson’s security detail were transferred to other areas of New York’s State Police this past weekend.

“I’ve been around Albany a long time and this is as strange as it gets,” he said after pointing out that he recognized a number of the names on the detail roster who were part of this transfer as long time government employees, who served previous New York Governors as security detail.

Two Bronx men were locked up and left to rot in a filthy jail cell for nearly a week after a pair of cops mistook their candy for a bag of crack.

The “drugs” were finally tested five days later and determined to be popular Coco (coconut) Candy. The charges were dropped.

The trouble began the night of Jan. 15, as José Pena, a 48-year-old plumber, and his longtime pal and colleague Cesar Rodriguez, 33, were headed to a party, and decided to stop at a bodega on 181st Street and the Grand Concourse.

When they came out, cops were waiting and asked to search their Ford minivan.

“I said ‘Go search.’ I even opened the door,” Rodriguez told The Post. An officer rummaged around, came out holding a “Hello Kitty” sandwich bag, and shouted “Bingo!” the men said.

“It’s only candy!” Rodriguez said, as the cops handcuffed him and Pena, and several other police cars rushed to the scene.

Rodriguez said he buys a 50-cent bag of Coco Candy, a hard coconut-based treat, almost every day. Because it easily crumbles, he puts it in a sandwich bag.

“Can you test it? Can you taste it?” Rodriguez asked the cops.

“Shut up!” they replied.

A city correction officer took a cell phone photo of his co-worker sleeping on duty, leading to disciplinary action against both of them.

The photo shows guard Nadja Green, in uniform, leaning back in a chair with her arms folded on her chest, eyes closed and mouth open. An inmate is standing next to her, making a “peace” sign.

The photo, published in the New York Post on Tuesday, came to the attention of Department of Correction officials last week, said Deputy Commissioner Stephen Morello. Once it was authenticated, Green was transferred from her post at the Rikers Island infirmary and removed from supervising inmates.

The department also did the same to Claudel Barrau, the officer who took the photo. Phone numbers for Green and Barrau could not be found. Green has been in the department for 4 1/2 years; Barrau for 18 years.

A Muslim chef who lost a claim of religious discrimination against Scotland Yard after complaining he was forced to cook sausages and bacon faces a legal bill of more than £75,000.

Hasanali Khoja accused the Metropolitan Police of failing to consider his Islamic beliefs when he was asked to handle pork products as a catering manager at a police station.

The £23,000-a-year chef claimed suggestions by his bosses that he should wear gloves and use tongs left him ’stressed and humiliated’.

Muslims are banned from eating pork under Islamic law. But Mr Khoja, 62, lost his claim in May after a police employee told an employment tribunal how she saw Mr Khoja eat bacon rolls and sausages.

The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) has now won a ruling ordering Mr Khoja to pay its costs, which total at least £76,200. In its costs claim, the Met said Mr Khoja ‘knew that he had asked for a bacon roll two or three times for personal consumption before bringing his claim and throughout the conduct of his claim’.

‘The fact that he had knowingly come into contact with pork products before bringing the claim shows that the claim had no reasonable prospect of success from the outset.’ Judge Michael Southam agreed and ruled Mr Khoja should pay costs, though these would be determined at a later date at a county court.

A geologist has gone on trial in Switzerland for allegedly causing earthquakes while drilling for hot rocks to produce clean energy.

Markus Haering, who designed the geothermal project, rejected allegations that he deliberately damaged properties and said local people knew the risks. The deep drilling underground caused a series of earthquakes in 2006, including one of 3.4 magnitude, rattling residents of the north-western city of Basel.

Geopower Basel, the project leader, has already paid around 9 million Swiss francs (£5.3 million) in compensation for cracked walls and other damage on properties near the experiment.

The project was suspended at the time and shut down last week after a risk analysis concluded that more quakes could follow if the drilling continued.

The experiment aimed to be the world’s first to generate power commercially by boiling water on naturally occurring rocks 3 miles underground.

The Swiss efforts are being closely watched in the United States, where the energy department is sponsoring more than 120 geothermal energy projects in several states.

A leading US company, AltaRock Energy, in September stopped drilling at one key development site north of San Francisco, citing drilling difficulties, but said quake fears were not a factor.

“We had very little knowledge of seismicity” before starting to drill, Mr Haering testified. He called the resulting quakes “a learning process for everyone involved”.

It’s not the lifestyle of a typical federal judge: Five or six vodka cocktails during lunch; gambling with borrowed money; bankruptcy under a phony name; cash, trips or home repairs from lawyers; and a bail bondsman with business before his court.

Witnesses in the congressional impeachment case against U.S. District Court Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. paint a jarring portrait of the former Louisiana state judge appointed to the federal bench in 1994 by President Clinton.

As Congress wrapped up several weeks of evidence-gathering hearings this week, legal experts who testified before a House task force suggested Judge Porteous is a clear candidate to become just the eighth federal judge in U.S. history to be impeached and convicted by Congress.

Lawmakers appear poised to take their advice and bring charges early next year, setting up a historic trial in the Senate.

Leading commentators and diplomats have been pondering for quite some time why the Iranian leader is not prepared to act against the revolution in a major way.

The “China model” could be applied, a brutal, fast, and extremely violent strike against the opposition. According to conventional wisdom, tyrants will use all means to eliminate their opponents.

So why haven’t the mullahs adopted Chinese methods?
…
What did these soldiers write?

The last section of this brief but powerful statement will surely immortalize these brave officers: “The army is a haven for the nation and will never want to suppress the people at the request of politicians. We shall remain true to our promise not to intervene in politics. But we cannot remain silent when our fellow citizens are oppressed by tyranny.”

They go on: “Therefore, we warn the Guards who have betrayed the martyrs (from the war between Iran and Iraq) and who decided to attack the lives, the property and the honor of the citizens. We seriously warn them that if they do not leave their chosen path, they will be confronted with our tough response. The military is a haven for the nation. And we will defend the peace-loving Iranian nation against any aggression.”

Who’s hot for teacher? Looks like the other teacher.

Two female Romance language instructors were tossed out of their Brooklyn high school after being caught “undressed” in an empty classroom, sources told the Daily News Tuesday.

Students at James Madison High School in Midwood were watching a talent show in the auditorium while Alini Brito and Cindy Mauro were speaking the international language of love, sources said.

A janitor stumbled on French teacher Mauro, 33, and Brito, 29, a married Spanish instructor, and tattled to school officials on Nov. 20.

Both tenured teachers were removed from the classroom and sent to Education Department “rubber rooms” while they’re investigated for misconduct, sources said.

A state trooper has been suspended for 15 days without pay and will be required to attend diversity training after he accidentally sent an e-mail proclaiming white pride to 787 state employees.

The e-mail from Trooper Brent Gobbell states, in part, “You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member … you call him a racist.”

It also includes a list of racist epithets. The message concludes, “There is nothing improper about this e-mail. Let’s see which of you are proud enough to send it on … BE PROUD TO BE WHITE!”

An English teacher was suspended for providing his students with a graphic short story about masturbation written by “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk.

Greg Van Voorhis had given the story to read to students preparing for the English Regents exam at The Bronx School of Law and Finance in Marble Hill. The material written for Playboy magazine told the tale of a teenage boy’s use of a carrot in a sex act on himself and autoerotic asphyxiation.

Even though students were made to return the copies of the text at the end of the class, the principal of the school Evan Schwartz came to know about it as the gossip had spread in the school.

The UK’s chief drugs tsar sacked over his controversial views today launched an extraordinary attack on Gordon Brown and warned the Government’s whole advisory board could quit.

Professor David Nutt, fired last night for claiming cannabis, Ecstasy and LSD are less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes, turned both barrels on the Prime Minister. He declared that the Government had gone too far by defying his and other experts’ advise on cannabis and Ecstasy and claimed ministers were acting before they had even consulted their own advisors.

‘He [Gordon Brown] is the first Prime Minister, this is the first Government, that has ever in the history of the Misuse of Drugs Act gone against the advice of its scientific panel,’ he said. ‘And then it did it again with ecstasy and I have to say it’s not about (me) over-stepping the line, it’s about the Government over-stepping the line.

Frédéric Mitterrand, France’s culture minister, was under pressure to resign after it emerged that he had admitted to paying “young boys” for sexual acts while on holiday in Thailand.

The revelations in his 2005 autobiography “The Bad Life” have come back to haunt Mr Mitterrand after he emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of Roman Polanski, the film director currently detained in Switzerland in connection with an outstanding conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in the US in 1977.

In his book, Mr Mitterrand, the nephew of the late Socialist president François Mitterrand, wrote: “I got into the habit of paying for boys…All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously. “One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable.”

Curiously, there was little outcry when the book was published in 2005. However, Mr Mitterrand’s tastes were brought to the fore on Monday by Marine Le Pen, daughter of the far-right National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, on a political chat show. Miss Le Pen read out a passage in which Mr Mitterrand wrote: “The profusion of very attractive and immediately available young boys puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to hinder nor hide…as I know that I will not be refused.” Her call for his resignation has become an internet hit.

A leading human rights group has suspended its senior military analyst following revelations that he is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia.

The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week.

On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, “pending an investigation,” said Carroll Bogert, the group’s associate director. “We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know,” she said.

The suspension comes at a time of heightened tension between, on on side, the new Israeli government and its allies on the right, and the other side, human rights organizations that have been critical of Israel. In recent months, the government has pledged an aggressive approach toward the groups to discredit what they argue is bias and error.

Injected suddenly into that heated conflict, word of Mr. Garlasco’s interest seemed startling to many. The disclosure ricocheted across the Internet: Mr. Garlasco, an American, was not only a collector, he has written a book, more than 400 pages long, about Nazi-era medals. His hobby, inspired he said by a German grandfather conscripted into Hitler’s army, was revealed on a pro-Israel blog, Mere Rhetoric Mere Rhetoric, which quoted his enthusiastic postings on collector sites under the pseudonym “Flak88” — including, “That is so cool! The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!”

The scandal surrounding the left-wing activist organization ACORN has spread to New York, with employees at its Brooklyn office caught on video helping supposed ladies of the night get loans for their dream houses of ill repute.

Rather than reminding the women that prostitution is dangerous and illegal and advising them to change their careers, counselors at the social-services group shockingly offer suggestions on how they can launder their earnings.

“Honesty is not going to get you the house,” a loan counselor at the offices told two activists posing as a mortgage-seeking pimp and prostitute. “You can’t say what you do for a living.”

ACORN workers in two other cities, Baltimore and Washington, DC, had already fallen hooker, line and sinker for the hidden-camera sting operation by two conservative activists.

A leading French chess player turned up drunk and dozed off after just 11 moves in an international tournament in Kolkata, losing the round on technical grounds, domestic media reported Friday.

Grandmaster Vladislav Tkachiev arrived for Thursday’s match against India’s Praveen Kumar in such an inebriated state that he could hardly sit in his chair and soon fell asleep, resting his head on the table, Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

Indian papers carried pictures of the world number 58 sleeping and the organizers’ futile attempts to wake his up. The game was awarded to the Indian on the technical ground of Tkachiev being unable to complete his moves within the stipulated time of an hour and 30 minutes, the paper said.

Being laid off in Florida isn’t surprising news these days, but what happened to poor Scott Janke doesn’t seem quite right.

 Janke, who was the esteemed town manager of Fort Myers Beach, was fired Tuesday because of his wife’s job — or rather the kinds of jobs she did on film.

Janke’s wife, Anabela Mota Janke, is a porn star better known by the name of Jazella Moore. If you’re familiar with her work, then you can see the problem at hand. The couple has been married for about a year, but an adult industry website outed Moore as Janke’s undercover porn wife.

And then the firestorm of debates on political correctness and public decency ensued.

Commissioners voted unanimously to fire Janke, who by all accounts — even those of the commission — had done a stand up job running the town.

Two state workers are off the job tonight after police say they set up a party lounge in a state parking garage and allegedly smoked and sold marijuana.

 A maintenance worker at the OGS East Garage on Madison Avenue between Eagle and Philip Streets in downtown Albany has been charged and his boss is accused of being in on a drug ring that ran on the taxpayer’s dime.

Parking garages are pretty ordinary places, except when people who work in them allegedly turn them into essentially a party lounge.

That’s what investigators say 48-year-old OGS cleaner Gary Pivoda and his supervisor 50-year-old Louis Marciano did for months in a maintenance area tucked away in this garage at the Empire State Plaza.

An investigation is under way in Australia over claims that navy sailors competed with each other to bed their female colleagues for cash prizes.

According to Channel Seven news, sailors on board HMAS Success put a cash value on each woman’s head.

Sleeping with a female officer or a lesbian, or having sex in a strange place, won more money, the report said.

The Defence Department confirmed that a number of individuals had been sent back to Australia for interviews.

For a storied newspaper that cherishes its reputation for ethical purity, this comes pretty close to a public relations disaster.

Politico reported this morning that The Post has been soliciting lobbyists to pay from $25,000 to $250,000 to underwrite off-the-record “salons” at the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth that would provide access to administration and congressional leaders and the paper’s reporters and editors.

The story, accurately reported by Politico (and former Post) reporter Mike Allen, is based on a flier being circulated by a new marketing arm of The Post that has been created to host conferences and events.

The problem: The Post often decries those who charge for access to public officials. This raised the specter of a money-losing newspaper doing the same thing — and charging for access to its own reporters and editors as well.

The distinct possibility that precious metals may have been stolen from the Royal Canadian Mint is “inexcusable,” the federal minister responsible for the Crown corporation said Monday.

The findings of a long-awaited external audit, released earlier in the day, concluded that $15.3 million in missing gold is not the result of accounting or bookkeeping errors, raising even more questions about the whereabouts of the metals from what has been touted as one of the most secure facilities in Canada.

“The mint’s still unexplained loss of precious metals is inexcusable,” Transport Minister John Baird and Minister of State for Transport Rob Merrifield, whose department is responsible for the mint, said in a joint release. “The mint will be held accountable.”

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is out of luck if he hoped that the extramarital affairs of Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign would take people’s minds off his own cheating scandal.

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal. St. Martin’s Press just inked a deal with Young, who also says in his proposal that, contrary to his public statement last year, he is not the father of Hunter’s infant daughter — Edwards is.

Edwards has denied that. Young says that his belief in Edwards ran so deep that he agreed to take the fall for the candidate, inviting the pregnant Hunter to live with him, his wife, Cheri, and their three children. Later, after Hunter delivered the baby, Young and his family moved to a different home in California.

While he was unpacking, Young discovered a videocassette, according to the book pitch. Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.

A Queens teacher and her student were recently caught having sex in the classroom.

On Thursday she was behind bars, charged with rape, sexual abuse and child endangerment after the student’s mom tracked her down.

Her head hung low, Melissa Weber was ushered away in cuffs, no doubt thinking about the probable end to her teaching career and whether her alleged sexual rendezvous with her 14-year-old student had been worth it.

“It’s real disconcerting to find that,” said parent and school employee Stacy Gold. Gold works at I.S./M.S. 8 with Weber. “It’s extremely shocking. This is a teacher that teaches my son,” Gold said.

It was inside a second-story classroom where police said Weber gave one of her students an up close and personal lesson in sex education.

Canada’s public broadcaster was wrong to show a skit that joked about the possible assassination of President Barack Obama and suggested he could be a thief, an industry panel ruled on Monday.

The New Year’s Eve “Bye Bye” comedy program — shown by the French-language Radio Canada network — generated more than 200 complaints. In one segment, two hosts discussed Obama’s election in November 2008. Obama, who took office in January, is the first black U.S. president.

“We’re not racists. It will be good to have a Negro in the White House. It will be practical. Black on white, it will be easier to shoot him,” one of the show’s hosts remarked. The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council said it found “nothing redeeming in the allegedly comedic notion that an American president should be shot, still less that this would be easier to achieve because of the color of the president’s skin. It was a disturbing, wounding, abusive racial comment”.

The show also featured an interview with an actor pretending to be Obama. The host said, “The blacks, you all look alike,” and then warned viewers to hide their purses.

GORDON Brown was under pressure last night to call an immediate general election in the face of public fury over the Westminster expenses scandal. Angry voters across the country are demanding a mass clearout of MPs.

At the same time, Scotland Yard has announced a team of leading police officers and prosecution lawyers will meet next week to decide what action to take against those who have abused the public’s trust. A poll of voters yesterday found two-thirds want an election called as soon as poss­ible. The same number want MPs who have been named and shamed to be forced to stand down, according to the ComRes poll.

Sickened by the amount of taxpayers’ money wasted on moats, trouser presses and mole catchers and chocolate snacks, many fear the depth of sleaze revealed by the leaking of MPs’ expenses details means a significant section of the ruling establishment needs to be swept away for good. Opposition MPs backed the call for an election as the only way of restoring trust in Britain’s political system.

A teacher at a Head Start preschool in Miami has been charged with hitting three children in his care, including a 5-year-old girl whom police say he kicked in the face as she lay on her cot during nap time.

Jean E. Dorvil, 56, a preschool teacher at the Head Start program at Charles R. Drew Elementary in Miami, was charged Friday with aggravated child abuse with great bodily harm, three charges of battery and two charges of child abuse with no harm.

Four of the charges are felonies. Dorvil is in jail without bond.

A Clarendon County waitress is accused of shooting a customer at the restaurant after the two had a dispute.

Yakeisha Ward, 29, is charged with assault and battery with intent to kill. An early morning run for breakfast at the Waffle House on Paxville Highway in Manning turned terribly wrong for Crystal Samuel.

 ”I thought I was gonna get me an All-Star,” says Samuel. A popular meal on the menu. “Grits, sausage, toast, eggs and a waffle,” says Samuel. She didn’t get what she came for. Instead, she says while she waited for her order, her friends started eating.

That’s when Samuel says she was told they couldn’t eat from carryout trays inside the restaurant.

“I said what is your fuss about. I said we haven’t paid for our food. She (Ward) said well you all got to leave. How you want us to leave and we ain’t paid for the food yet,” says Samuel. That’s when it got ugly.

Samuel says she threw a waffle at the waitress. “I did actually throw some food but it didn’t hit her,” says Samuel. “That’s when she (Ward) jumped across the counter and we got into it,” says Samuel.

Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett says the altercation continued outside where he says Ward got a gun from her car and a gun magazine from her trunk.

Britain’s prime minister called for drastic steps to restore trust in the country’s scandal-tainted political class, as lawmakers across the political spectrum sought to take cover from public anger over their lavish expense claims.

Political leaders have been writing checks, making apologies, calling for inquiries and even threatening action against their own lieutenants in an effort to survive the publication of their expense claims in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper over the past few days.

The paper has stoked outrage in recession-hit Britain by revealing how lawmakers have asked to be reimbursed for everything from porn movies to chandeliers to housekeepers. One legislator even charged the public for sacks of horse manure, while an ex-minister submitted a claim for cleaning the moat that circles his country home.

Brown said “extreme action” was needed to reform the expense system “because politicians must show themselves worthy of public trust.”

Security minister Lord West denied today that he placed a bet on Labour to lose the next general election. The former head of the Royal Navy was named in the Daily Telegraph today as the minister who had reportedly made the wager on a Labour defeat.

It followed a report in the Sunday Times that an unnamed minister placed a bet at odds of 66-1 in mid-2007. But arriving today for a conference in London, West said: “I have never placed a bet on Labour losing the election.”

He added: “I have never placed a bet at all while a minister ever on a political issue.” The bet – that Labour would fail to win an outright majority – was said to have been made around the time Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair as prime minister.

Hat tip to Una!

An unexpected surprise in their son’s backpack caught some Yakima Washington parents off guard. It was human waste, with a note attached from the boy’s teacher. And the school isn’t denying that’s what happened.

“I’m still kinda in shock over this, because why would somebody do this? It’s disgusting,” said Jason, the father of the little boy. It all started on Friday at Apple Valley Elementary, when kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Graham called Jason and told him her classroom was “stinky” and asked if it could possibly be his son.

Jason’s son had a couple of accidents in the past. So when the teacher called, he says he told her right away, there was an extra set of clothes in his son’s bag. But when the 5-year-old came home, the boy was still wearing his original outfit, and Jason says his son was completely clean.

It wasn’t until Jason’s wife emptied her son’s backpack that they got a big surprise.

“She found a clear plastic baggie with a piece of fecal matter wrapped up in some a brown paper towel with the note on it. ‘This little turd was on the floor in my room’ And that’s all it says. Q: Nothing else? A: Nothing else. If it was his did she see him do this? Or did she follow him around to make sure this was his, did she see it drop out? Or just assume it was his because he had an accident a few months ago?”

Domino’s Pizza says there is a warrant out for the arrest of two fired North Carolina employees who videotaped themselves passing gas on salami, stuffing cheese up their nostrils — then using the foul fixins’ in the fast food.

The silly-yet-stomach-turning clips — which also showed the workers sneezing and blowing their noses on meals they were handling — were filmed at a Conover, N.C., Domino’s and posted on YouTube.

The pizza delivery giant said it was stunned when the footage surfaced. The pair, who call themselves “Michael” and “Kristy,” were promptly terminated.

Flying and oral sex don’t mix, a judge ruled Tuesday as he upheld the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to revoke the license of a pilot who allowed a busty blonde woman to perform a sex act on him as he flew her around San Diego.

The FAA took the action earlier this year after a videotape of the May 29, 2005, encounter surfaced on the Internet. Neither the identity of the videographer or the woman seated next to David Martz was revealed. However, published reports have identified the woman as a Swedish porn star.

“The evidence clearly shows grossly reckless conduct on the part of the respondent,” National Transportation Safety Board administrative law Judge William R. Mullins said after spending an hour in private reviewing an unedited version of the video with FAA officials, Martz and his lawyer.

News Corp like all major Hollywood studios takes the crime of piracy very seriously. Nor will the Fox parent company tolerate it if its employees don’t.  Especially after a stolen, early and unfinished work print of 20th Century Fox’s big summer blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine was put onto the Internet illegally this week in a major scandal that the FBI is now investigating.

So there was universal shock on Friday when long-time “Fox 411″ freelance columnist Roger Friedman wrote what I’m told his bosses felt was a blatant promotion of piracy on his Fox News web outlet. Besides writing a review from watching the purloined print of Wolverine, Friedman posted, “I did find the whole top 10 [movies in theaters], plus TV shows, commercials, videos, everything, all streaming away. It took really less than seconds to start playing it all right onto my computer. I could have downloaded all of it but really, who has the time or the room?

For what it’s worth, there’s a hell of a lot more out there than just the top 10 in the theaters.  Indeed, there’s vastly more out on USENET than there is on Netflix.

A former executive from a white-shoe Boston wealth management firm was arrested for exposing himself to young women and is now being eyed as the pervert dubbed the “campus flasher” who preyed on Wellesley College students, the Herald has learned.

 Stephen J. Barrett, 40, was terminated from his position as a senior vice president at Eaton Vance on March 13, the firm said, two days after he was arrested at Wellesley College and charged with flashing students.

 Barrett was spotted by campus cops allegedly fondling his genitals and has been charged with indecent exposure and open and gross lewdness, said Wellesley Police Deputy Chief Bill Brooks. If convicted, Barrett will have to register as a sex offender.

A medical examiner’s office in Michigan has canceled public school tours after a high school group watched the autopsy of a 14-year-old girl from their district. The Detroit News reports Monday that Oakland County officials decided to stop the tours in Pontiac after they were contacted by the girl’s parents, who were very upset about the March tour. Mike Zehnder, the county’s director of public services, says it was “a poor decision” to let the tour go on.

Sometimes, you wake up following a drunken night out and realise you have sent an inappropriate text to an ex-girlfriend or your boss.

And sometimes you realise you have drunkenly admitted to plagiarism to camera, and spectacularly resigned from your job, shouting “F**k you’ to your boss.

This is what happened to Birmingham Mail reporter Adam Smith on Wednesday morning, as footage appeared on YouTube of him writing a report on the US election, slumped on a Miami pavement, and barely able to speak.

Mr Smith, who also calls himself Steve Zacharanda in the hit video which was viewed almost 20,000 times in 48 hours, had taken a week’s holiday to go to Miami to volunteer for the Barack Obama election campaign.

…

“I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign,” Mr Smith explained in a strong, if rather slurred, Brummie accent. “As an ill-advised promise, I’ve decided to say to my paper back home that I’d write about the American election.

“I wanted to be here because I’m here for history. The trouble is, the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history. And I’m just a little bit pissed…”

With a laugh and a clap of the hands, he added: “And thank god for the BBC, because I’m cutting and pasting, oh, baby!”

Not wanting to seem too unprofessional, he added: “I’m a proper news journalist.”

A Phoenix high school teacher resigned after being accused of playing pornographic videos during class earlier this week.

The Scottsdale Unified School District said the photography teacher, who has been and employee at Arcadia High School for about the last five years, submitted his resignation letter Wednesday.

Police opened an investigation into the allegations this week. According to a letter sent home to parents at Arcadia High School, the incident happened Monday.

Teenagers in the classroom said they saw six video clips of what one student described as, “torture porn, of like girls being tied up.”

Struggling media agency Carat is planning a major restructuring of its U.S. operations, including an undetermined number of layoffs — news it accidentally released today via a memo the agency’s top New York-based HR executive e-mailed to the entire agency that appeared to be intended only for senior managers.

In a rare, uncomfortable look into the preparations for employee layoffs, management informed its rank and file of forthcoming layoffs and other changes in Microsoft PowerPoint and Word documents full of “message” points on how people should be told of their fate and what should be said to their still-employed colleagues, clients and vendors. According to one person with knowledge of the memo, it was sent to all staffers before the mistake was realized, and it was pulled back by the IT department. The documents, obtained by Advertising Age and posted with this story, detail talking points for managers as they talk to clients, vendors, the press and employees as Carat tries to navigate the fallout from the news.

An Iowa community college president resigned less than a week after a photo was published appearing to show him pouring beer into a young woman’s mouth.

The school’s board of trustees on Thursday unanimously approved Robert Paxton’s resignation. It also approved a severance package that officials said was valued at about $400,000.

Mark Crimmins, the president of the board, said although the incident happened in Paxton’s private life, “it reflected poorly on the college.”

A drunk fan of Olympic competitors from Belgium has been identified as the country’s sports minister.

A loud Belgian fan had been shouting out during a doubles match between Argentinian and Belgian players.

Eventually Argentine tennis ace David Nalbandian lost his temper and told him to be quiet.

But other Belgian supporters recognised the “very drunk” man as sports minister Michel Daerden, media in the country have reported.

After months of flat-out lying to the public, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally copped to having a sleazy extramarital fling while his wife was battling breast cancer – but coldly denied ever loving the woman or fathering her daughter.

Edwards, 55, admitted in an interview that aired last night on ABC’s “Nightline” that he bedded Rielle Hunter, 44.

The well-coiffed cad said he told his wife and family long ago about the affair, but “had hoped that it would never become public.”

The NATIONAL ENQUIRER is releasing the photograph that the world has been waiting for – the first-ever picture of John Edwards and his love child!

The stunning “spy photo” shows the former presidential contender holding his infant daughter Frances Quinn Hunter at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles – where the ENQUIRER caught him visiting the baby’s mother, his mistress Rielle Hunter.

Edwards is holding his love child while standing in front of a distinctive striped curtain.

The same window covering hangs in each one of the hotel’s guest rooms – and is clearly visible in photos of guest rooms on the hotel’s Web site.

“These photos are damning proof,” said a source close to the situation.

“He’s been caught lying about his affair with Rielle and their love child for many months – and now the proof against him is piling up.

“His elaborate coverup is unraveling at the seams.”

By day, the engineers work on NASA’s new Ares moon rockets.

By night, some go undercover to work on a competing design. These dissenting scientists and their backers insist they have created an alternative rocket that would be safer, cheaper and easier to build than the two Ares spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

They call their project Jupiter, and like Ares, it’s a brainchild of workers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and other NASA facilities.

The engineers involved are doing the work on their own time and mostly anonymously, with the help of retirees and other space enthusiasts.

Sirius Satellite Radio host Howard Stern supports the merger of his network with XM Satelitte Radio and is fuming at Democratic opposition on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) panel.

After FCC commissioners announced they have reached a deal to approve the merger of Sirius (NASDAQ:SIRI) and XM (NASDAQ:XMSR), Stern ranted about Democrats’ ‘gangsterism’ and ‘communism’ and the obstacles to the merger.

Stern described a phone conversation he had with his agent, who he described as a “liberal Democrat kind of guy.”

“I go, ‘That’s it!’” Stern said. “[I] go, ‘You know what Don, I’ve voted Republican and I’ve voted Democrat. I have vowed I will never vote for a Democrat again. I don’t give a [expletive] – no matter who they are. I don’t care if God becomes a Democrat.’ I said, ‘I backed Hillary Clinton, I backed Al Gore, I backed John Kerry. I am done with them.’”

Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tinyEuropean country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.
Kieber

Heinrich Kieber, a bank computer technician in Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme. He has been branded a thief by the government of Liechtenstein for violating the country’s bank secrecy laws.

He is now in hiding but scheduled to testify to the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Thursday via a video statement from a secret location, according to Congressional investigators.

A police officer and his family have won $40,000 in their lawsuit against a restaurant that had served them food tainted by an employee’s spit and urine.

A jury on Friday ruled in favor of Sidney police Officer Keith Andrew, whose two sons, then 4 and 7, were sickened by the food they ate at a KFC/Taco Bell in October 2005. Sidney is a town of about 6,000 in western Nebraska.

The younger boy became violently ill with gastroenteritis and dehydration, vomited for hours and was forced to spend time in a hospital, the family’s lawsuit said.

A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco’s new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg, has been charged with four counts of computer tampering and is scheduled to be arraigned today.

Prosecutors say Childs, who works in the Department of Technology at a base salary of just over $126,000, tampered with the city’s new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials’ e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates’ bookings are stored.

Childs created a password that granted him exclusive access to the system, authorities said. He initially gave pass codes to police, but they didn’t work. When pressed, Childs refused to divulge the real code even when threatened with arrest, they said.

Santusht Perera’s physician’s license was suspended after he removed of portions of the wrong lung during surgery and allegedly attempted to conceal the error.

Perera was issued a two-year suspension on June 5 from the State Board of Medical Examiners. The Board’s appellate court upheld the suspension in Perera’s appeal case with a final decision on June 12.

After the surgery, Perera told the patient, Richard Flagg, the right lung tissue, which was wrongfully removed, contained a life-threatening tumor even though he knew it did not.

He altered his records to show he intended to operate on the right lung even though he was actually supposed to remove the tumor in the left lung.

An Air India flight soared past its Mumbai destination on June 4 as its pilots allegedly dozed off in the cockpit, The Times of India reported Thursday.

The napping pilots flew 359 miles past the airport and were still at cruising altitude when nervous air traffic controllers woke them up.

The flight, which was on autopilot flying toward Mumbai, had about 100 passengers on board.

“The plane took off from Dubai at 1:35 a.m. Indian Standard Time and then from Jaipur at 7 a.m. After operating an overnight flight, fatigue levels peak, and so the pilots dozed off after taking off from Jaipur,” an unidentified source told The Times of India.

Air India officials vehemently denied the report, saying the plane lost radio contact with air traffic control for some time, and only flew 14 miles off course.

“We emphatically deny the report. No such incident took place. We’ve checked our records,” Jitender Bhargava, Air India’s director for public relations, told The Times.

Police in Macedonia have arrested a journalist on suspicion that he is behind three murders he reported on.

The journalist, Vlado Taneski, is accused of raping, torturing and killing three elderly women in the south-western town of Kicevo.

Macedonian police began to suspect him after he included details in his reports that they had not made public.

Other men have reportedly already been convicted of the first two murders. The third was committed last month.

Mr Taneski, 56, has not yet been charged with any offence, police said.

A public school teacher preached his Christian beliefs despite complaints by other teachers and administrators and used a device to burn the image of a cross on students’ arms, according to a report by independent investigators.

Mount Vernon Middle School teacher John Freshwater also taught creationism in his science class and was insubordinate in failing to remove a Bible and other religious materials from his classroom, the report said.

Around 4,000 local government bodies in Nepal have gone on strike after a Maoist minister locked up an “errant official” in a toilet.

The official had incurred the minister’s wrath for allegedly running an illegal stone mine.

Striking workers said that his incarceration inside a toilet was an “inhumane and objectionable act”.

But the minister responded by saying that the official now knows what it is like to live in a “foul environment”.

So the AP has been threatening bloggers who quote their stories:

Last week, The A.P. took an unusually strict position against quotation of its work, sending a letter to the Drudge Retort asking it to remove seven items that contained quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words.

Even after an AP spokesman acknowledged that the organization’s tactics were “heavy-handed,” they still didn’t really back off:

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

Now, in a slightly ironic twist, the AP is taking content from a blog site. Namely, mine.

In a news item about the e-mail from Judge Kozinski’s wife that I posted on this site, an AP article lifted numerous passages.

I counted 154 words quoted from my post. That’s almost twice the number of words contained in the most extensive quotation in the Drudge Retort.

Alex Kozinski is more accustomed to appearing on lists to fill U.S. Supreme Court vacancies than headlines involving pornographic scandals.

But on Wednesday, the chief judge of the country’s largest federal appeals court was forced to suspend an obscenity trial he was presiding over after sexually explicit images posted to his personal Web site became public.

The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site that Kozinski had posted sexual material on his personal Web site and then blocked access after being interviewed about it Tuesday evening.

Kozinski, 57, told the Times he thought the material on his site, which included a video of a man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal, couldn’t be seen by the public. The judge said he didn’t believe any of the images were obscene.

Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting team will undoubtedly run across some quirky and potentially troublesome issues as it goes about the business of scouring the backgrounds of possible running mates. But it’s unlikely they’ll find one so curious as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb’s affinity for the cause of the Confederacy.

Webb is no mere student of the Civil War era. He’s an author, too, and he’s left a trail of writings and statements about one of the rawest and most sensitive topics in American history.

He has suggested many times that while the Confederacy is a symbol to many of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation, for others it simply reflects Southern pride. In a June 1990 speech in front of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, posted on his personal website, he lauded the rebels’ “gallantry,” which he said “is still misunderstood by most Americans.”

Webb, a descendant of Confederate officers, also voiced sympathy for the notion of state sovereignty as it was understood in the early 1860s, and seemed to suggest that states were justified in trying to secede.

Melissa Barton said she is considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Barton said.

By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.

Melissa Barton filed a complaint with Morningside’s school resource officer, who investigated the matter, Port St. Lucie Department spokeswoman Michelle Steele said. But the state attorney’s office concluded the matter did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse, so no criminal charges will be filed, Steele said.

Fourth Judicial District Attorney John Newsome apologized Wednesday after being caught by a television news station’s hidden camera drinking at a bar and later driving a county-owned vehicle.

“I sincerely apologize for ever allowing myself to be placed in that situation where there’s even a perception of wrongdoing,” Newsome said. “Perception can be as damaging as actual wrongdoing. . . . Even the appearance is a distraction for the office.”

Newsome said he is no longer disputing the KOAA report and vowed to do better.

“I realize I need to be setting the standard for setting an example, and that’s what I’ll strive to do,” Newsome said. “I will strive to make sure a thing like this never happens again.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to continue her quest for the Democratic nomination, arguing she would be the stronger nominee because she appeals to a wider coalition of voters — including whites who have not supported Barack Obama in recent contests.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Authorities have arrested nearly 100 people and seized guns and drugs in a sting operation at San Diego State University in California, the Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday.

Among those arrested were 75 students, some of them working toward criminal justice or homeland security degrees. One criminal justice major was charged with possession of guns and cocaine, authorities said.

One student sent a mass text message offering a “sale” on cocaine, the DEA said in a news release.

Campus police and the DEA began their undercover operation after the death of a student from an overdose in May 2007, the news release said. A second overdose death occurred as recently as February at a fraternity house.

“DEA agents infiltrated several student drug distribution cells and more than 130 drug purchases and seizures were made” during the investigation known as Operation Sudden Fall, the news release said.

Whether he was up to no good or simply desperate to play BrickBreaker, a Mexican press attaché was caught on camera pocketing several White House BlackBerries during a recent meeting in New Orleans and has since been fired, FOX News has learned.

Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, Rafael Quintero Curiel, served as the lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation and was responsible for handling logistics and guiding the Mexican media around at the conference.

Mexican Embassy spokesman Ricardo Alday said Thursday he was asked to tender his resignation once he arrived back in Mexico City.

“Mr. Quintero will be responsible for explaining his actions to the American authorities conducting an investigation. The Mexican Government deeply regrets this incident,” he said.

Quintero Curiel took six or seven of the handheld devices from a table outside a special room in the hotel where the Mexican delegation was meeting with President Bush earlier this week.

A CNN reporter was arrested Friday in Central Park with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket, but he avoided jail time by agreeing to undergo drug counseling and therapy.

Richard Quest, 46, was arrested around 3:40 a.m. on a count of possession of a controlled substance _ a misdemeanor that usually refers to a personal use amount of a drug. He was also charged with loitering; the park officially closes at 1 a.m.

When police saw and detained Quest, he told them, “I’ve got some meth in my pocket,” according to the complaint filed in court. The complaint said he had a plastic sandwich bag containing methamphetamine in a jacket pocket.

Quest, who is British, is a correspondent for CNN International and is known for his reports on business travel. He hosts “CNN Business Traveler” and “Quest.”

Update: More here, including details about “a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals”

Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.

Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.

Burgess, the top officer in the county of 26,000 since 1994, appeared in court Wednesday was released after posting $50,000 bail.

A message left at Burgess’ home Thursday was not immediately returned.

Among other things, Burgess is accused of having sex with a female drug court participant who was in his custody. The crimes are to have occurred between October 2005 and April 2007.

Ruggedly handsome actor Jason Beghe was best man at the wedding of “X-Files” star David Duchovny (his childhood pal) and actress Tea Leoni. In 1998, he starred as Demi Moore’s love interest in “G.I. Jane.” He’s been featured in numerous TV dramas such as “Criminal Minds,” “Numb3rs” and “CSI.”

In 2005, Beghe appeared in promotional spots for the Church of Scientology. But now, Beghe has escaped the church after taking courses since 1994. He’s made a video that’s up on YouTube.

This is what he has to say: “Scientology is destructive and a rip-off.”

He also says: “It’s very, very dangerous for your spiritual, psychological, mental, emotional health and evolution. I think it stunts your evolution. If Scientology is real, then something’s f—ed up.”

You can see from the video that Beghe does not mince words. But his refreshing candor about the religion he joined in 1994 should shake the Celebrity Center to its core.

An Iranian police chief in charge of fighting vice in Tehran was jailed today for reportedly consorting in an underground brothel.

Local media reported that General Reza Zarei was jailed after being caught with six naked women at a prostitution den in the Iranian capital.

Ali Reza Jamshidi, a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, confirmed today that Mr Zarei had been taken to jail. He refused to elaborate further about the case, however, saying it was now “in the legal stage.”

But officials, speaking anonymously, have supported the allegations, which have been extensively reported in recent weeks.

THE Lonely Planet guidebook empire is reeling from claims by one of its authors that he plagiarised and made up large sections of his books and dealt drugs to make up for poor pay.

Thomas Kohnstamm, whose explosive new book Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? is out this month, also claims to have accepted freebies in contravention of the Melbourne-based company’s policies.

Kohnstamm told The Sunday Mail yesterday he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including their titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile.

In one case he said that he had not even visited the country he had written about.

“They didn’t pay me enough to go Colombia,” he said.

“I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating who was an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party says President Robert Mugabe has “unleashed a war” in his bid to stay in power after party offices were raided and foreign journalists detained five days after presidential elections.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had not released official election results by Thursday, despite increasing international pressure. Mugabe was said to be pondering conflicting advice from his advisers on whether to quietly cede power or face a run-off, both humiliating prospects for the 84-year-old president.

Diplomats said Thursday’s events indicated he might be considering a third option: declaring a state of emergency and suppressing the opposition.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency outright, but that it is prepared to compete in a run-off.

MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said hotel rooms used as offices by the opposition at a Harare hotel were ransacked Thursday by intruders he believed were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organization.

“Mugabe has started a crackdown,” Biti told The Associated Press. “It is quite clear he has unleashed a war.”

A Roman Catholic nun accused of taking more than $250,000 from the Archdiocese of Omaha and gambling much of it away has pleaded guilty to theft.

Sister Barbara Markey entered the plea to a charge of theft of more than $1,500 on Monday in Douglas County District Court, according to her attorney, J. William Gallup. She also agreed to pay $125,000 in restitution to the archdiocese.

In exchange, Gallup said, the state and the archdiocese agreed not to object to probation for the 73-year-old Markey. Her sentencing is set for July, and she faces up to 20 years in prison.

Last week’s bombshell Los Angeles Times report claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs and that the rap impresario knew of the plot beforehand was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The Times appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion “Suge” Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been identified as a long-standing client of a second high-priced call-girl ring, The Post has learned.

The ex-governor regularly patronized Wicked Models, the Manhattan-based operation taken down Tuesday, according to financial documents and other evidence unearthed in a yearlong prostitution in vestigation, law-enforcement sources said.

Daniel Hynes was a newly minted lawyer, only one month in, when he apparently came up with a bright idea, according to this report in the New York Lawyer.

Fifteen months ago, Daniel Hynes of Manchester told a Concord hair salon to pay him $1,000 or face a lawsuit because its different prices for men and women were discriminatory. In one court document, he said the unequal prices at Claudia Lambert’s salon caused him mental anguish. That’s even though the salon charged women more than men.

Well, how is a young lawyer supposed to make a living when he’s got no clients and needs a haircut?

Unfortunately, a jury was unimpressed by Hynes’ career move, and convicted him of misdemeanor theft by extortion.

Hynes, apparently relying on his vast legal experience, disagreed with the jury.

“The conviction goes against the First Amendment,” he said. “People have a right to petition the courts.”

A U.S. attorney announced the bust of The Emperors’ Club last Thursday. We noted that the Duke of Westminster was allegedly linked, back in the day, but otherwise the story seemed mostly innocuous, as the only people named were in brothel management, not customers. Except to the Times reporters who realized that a government official was involved. They learned it was Spitzer by Friday, and they amazingly held on to that news until the following Monday, when they went live with it at 2 p.m. and immediately caused all sorts of media hell to break loose.

Everyone’s initial reaction: OMG. The most jaded of observers couldn’t conceal their shock. We who have seen everything were still stunned at how this came seemingly out of absolutely nowhere. AIM windows across the city lit up.

A high-profile supporter quit Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Wednesday after a remark about black Democratic rival Barack Obama was interpreted as racist.

Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major U.S. party’s White House ticket, had said Obama was leading Clinton in the race for the Democratic party nomination for November’s presidential election because he was black.

Ferraro, the trailblazing 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, was a member of Clinton’s finance committee and raised funds for the New York senator and former first lady before stepping down, a campaign spokesman said.

As Gov. Spitzer held the state hostage to negotiate a sweet plea deal Tuesday night, probers looked to see if he used tax dollars for trysts with high-priced hookers totaling up to $80,000.

A source familiar with the probe said IRS and FBI investigators found at least nine instances going back 18 months in which Spitzer made multiple cash transfers linked to Emperors Club VIP, a high-priced prostitution ring.

Although the cash used to pay for a $4,300 prostitute named “Kristen” apparently came from Spitzer’s account, he used taxpayer dollars to fly to and from his .illicit rendezvous.

Investigators are looking to see whether he used state money for the hotel rooms.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.

Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides inside his Fifth Avenue apartment early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He scheduled an announcement for 2:15 after inquiries from the Times.

Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform an end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.

Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.

An apparently drunk Russian tank driver rammed his 25-tonne fighting machine into a remote village cottage while on a vodka run, footage aired on Friday on state television showed.

The soldier was filmed driving the tank, armed with an anti-aircraft gun, through a tiny street in Oktyabrskaya, in the Ural mountains’ Sverdlovsk region.

He clambered unsteadily into his vehicle with two freshly purchased bottles, then rammed a fence and a house while attempting to leave.

Video can be seen here.

The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.

Centerton Mayor Ken Williams said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.

Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.

A driving instructor accused of being drunk while teaching a lesson in Ipswich pleads not guilty.

Daniel Winsky of Salem was arraigned on a drunken driving charge today in district court.

Court documents say the 52-year-old had a blood alcohol level of .233 after he was stopped by police in December. That’s nearly three times the legal limit.

Witnesses called police while Winsky was instructing a student because he allegedly appeared drunk. Winsky wasn’t driving the car, but instructors have a brake on the passenger side.

Eight British soldiers have been forced to return home from Norway after they reportedly stripped naked and urinated on each other in a bar during an Arctic training exercise, the defence ministry confirmed Tuesday.

“It’s being taken extremely seriously,” a spokesman for the defence ministry in London said.

He continued: “We can confirm that eight soldiers from 59 Commando Regiment Royal Engineers were arrested by the Norwegian police following inappropriate behaviour.

A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.
In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.”
Prosper president Dave Ellis responded that the allegations amount to “sensationalized” versions of events that have gone uncorroborated by Hudgens’ former coworkers.
“They just roll their eyes and say, ‘This is ridiculous . . . That’s not how it went down,’ ” Ellis said.
The suit claims that Hudgens’ team leader, Joshua Christopherson, asked for volunteers in May for “a new motivational exercise,” which he did not describe. Hudgens, who was 26 at the time, volunteered in order to “prove his loyalty and determination,” the suit claims.
Christopherson led the sales team to the top of a hill near the office and told Hudgens to lie down with his head downhill, the suit claims. Christopherson then told the rest of the team to hold Hudgens by the arms and legs.
Christopherson poured water from a gallon jug over Hudgens’ mouth and nostrils – like the interrogation strategy known as “waterboarding” – and told the team members to hold Hudgens down as he struggled, the suit alleges.
“At the conclusion of his abusive demonstration, Christopherson told the team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as Chad had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded,” the suit alleges.

A special-education aide at Highlands Senior High School resigned under pressure yesterday and faces possible drug and corruption of minors charges for a hotel party involving high school teenagers.

New Kensington police said they found suspected crack cocaine, empty beer cans and used condoms in a room that Abbiejane Swogger, 34, of Harrison, shared with minors Thursday night at New Kensington’s Clarion Hotel. The room contained drug paraphernalia and a marijuana odor when officers arrived just before noon on Friday to follow up on reports of missing teens, said Detective Dennis Marsili.

Investigators questioned Ms. Swogger at the New Kensington police station Friday afternoon, but did not arrest her. Charges could be filed as soon as today, Detective Marsili said.

A British pilot has been sacked after performing a low-flying stunt with a brand new Boeing 777.

Captain Ian Wilkinson flew the Cathay Pacific plane within 28 feet of the ground with its undercarriage raised, at Boeing’s Seattle airfield.

The aircraft was on its delivery flight and packed with the airline’s VIPs.

The airline said Capt Wilkinson, 55, had not sought or obtained permission for the fly-by on January 30, and had been dismissed.

The co-pilot, Ray Middleton, has also been “subject to disciplinary actions” – understood to be suspension from training duties for six months.

A woman who said she was relentlessly taunted by colleagues because of chronic flatulence has lost her discrimination claim, an employment tribunal confirmed today.

The woman, who cannot be named, claimed she was subjected to cruel jibes from staff at Leeds Metropolitan University because she suffered from severe irritable bowel syndrome.

A Boston-based federal judge wore a black cocktail dress, fish-net stockings and high heels when police arrested him for drunk driving after he rear-ended a pickup truck last week, sources said.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Somma, 63, struck a plea deal with the city Wednesday in which he pleaded no contest to a first-offense misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge in Manchester District Court. In exchange, the judge agreed to pay $600 in fines and penalties and a 12-month license suspension, which can be reduced to six months if he proves he successfully completed a driver education and alcohol awareness course, court records show.

A veteran Florida sheriff’s deputy is in hot water after she was caught on video dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair while he was being booked on Jan. 29, MyFOXTampaBay.com reported.

The video shows Brian Sterner, 32, out of his wheelchair and on the floor while Deputy Charlotte Marshall Jones is booking him into the Hillsborough County Jail, the Web site reported.

University of Georgia officials said they have removed a pharmacy professor from contact with students as they investigate whether he repeatedly punched a doctoral candidate during a drunken rage at an off-campus party. But some students claim the professor is still teaching and are outraged he hasn’t been fired.

Last semester, Shawn Holaway, a clinical assistant professor in the university’s College of Pharmacy, was accused of an unprovoked attack on graduate student Philip Almeter at a private Homecoming party in Athens. Although the alleged incident occurred Nov. 2 and Almeter said he reported it to college administrators the next day, university officials still are investigating.

“[Holaway] is contesting the allegations and being uncooperative in the university’s attempts to investigate, so it is taking longer than we would like,” university spokesman Tom Jackson wrote in an e-mail Monday to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But appropriate measures have been taken to remove him from contact with students and to set in motion the steps necessary to reach an appropriate resolution, which could include dismissal.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified.

Leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams’s call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system.

With the Church of England plunged into crisis, senior figures were said to be discussing the archbishop’s future.

One member of the church’s “Cabinet”, the Archbishop’s Council, was reported as saying: “There have been a lot of calls for him to resign. I don’t suppose he will take any notice, but, yes, he should resign.”

A monkey, slotted to be used in a drug-product research experiment, was instead boiled alive inside an Everett laboratory, a KIRO Team 7 Investigation found.

It’s a deadly error, but not the first one KIRO Team 7 Investigators uncovered at SNBL USA.

That company is near the Boeing Plant off Merrill Creek Parkway in Everett. It houses around 2,000 primates and represents clients like Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly and Seattle Genetics.

Using hidden camera footage, Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne shows you inside a facility that’s no stranger to federal animal care violations.

When it comes to scientific experiments, often the Cynomolgus Macaque monkey is the primate of choice. They weigh anywhere from about 3 to 25 pounds and make lots of barking noises. It’s hard to image how anyone could miss one sitting inside a small cage.

In early November, SNBL employees set out to clean pens full of monkeys and, at times, their babies.

Our hidden camera footage, taken inside SNBL headquarters, shows just how obvious it is to see and hear these animals jumping around in their enclosures.

Despite that, KIRO Team 7 Investigators confirmed someone placed a wire kennel, with a healthy female macaque monkey still inside, into a giant rack-washer.

The 180-degree water, caustic foam and detergent killed the primate at some point during the 20-minute cycle.

The co-pilot of a Heathrow-bound plane was dragged kicking and screaming from the cockpit after suffering a mental breakdown while in control of the flight.

He began yelling and “invoking God” as the Air Canada 767 flew at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic. He was held down by other crew members and a passenger, a member of the Canadian armed forces.

The co-pilot then had restraints fastened to his wrists and ankles and was handcuffed to a seat. The flight from Toronto made an emergency landing in Shannon and the co-pilot, who had been crying and screaming according to witnesses, was taken off the plane.

He was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric ward where he is being treated for a suspected nervous breakdown.

A Texas prosecutor who was accused of using the word “Canadian” as a racial slur in an e-mail could be part of the focus of an ongoing probe into the actions of another district attorney.

The e-mail, sent out in 2003 by Harris County assistant district attorney Mike Trent, has recently come to light as part of an investigation of Harris County Texas District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, who is accused of sending racist and sexist e-mails.

In 2003, Trent sent a staff-wide e-mail congratulating his colleague Robert Freyer for winning a conviction.

In the e-mail, Trent wrote: “He overcame a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing.”

A 24-year-old volunteer at community radio station 91.7 FM KOOP took his music so seriously that he set fire to the station when it didn’t play the songs on his playlist, Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Greg Nye said.

Paul Webster Feinstein has been charged with second-degree felony arson and was being held Monday in the Travis County Central Booking Facility. If convicted, he could be sentenced to two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

The fire Jan. 5 at 3823 Airport Blvd., Suite B, caused $300,000 in damage. The radio station was off the air for 19 days before broadcasting resumed Friday from studio space donated by Entercom Communications, which owns several other local stations.

French bank Societe Generale has uncovered a $7.14 billion fraud that, combined with a write-down from its subprime exposure, will force it to seek $8.02 billion in new capital, the bank said.

France’s second-largest bank by market value after BNP Paribas SA said it detected the fraud at its French markets division the weekend of Jan. 19. A trader at the futures desk had taken “massive fraudulent directional positions in 2007 and 2008 beyond his limited authority,” SocGen said.

The trader, who was not named, used his knowledge of the group’s security systems to conceal his positions through a series of elaborate fictitious transactions, a SocGen statement said.

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic’s most remote research facility after an incident described as a “drunken Christmas punch-up”.

The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent. The station, where staff carry out a range of scientific investigations from astrophysics to seismology, is currently being rebuilt in a £76m project.

After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Programme, which is located on Ross Island, a US Air Force Hercules was sent to pick up the injured man and the other worker.

Staff members at a group home made multiple mistakes when they followed a prank caller’s direction to give dozens of electrical shocks to two emotionally disturbed teenagers, according to a report by a state agency that investigated the incident.

The report by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care said six staffers at a Stoughton residence run by the Canton-based Judge Rotenberg Education Center had ample reason to doubt the orders to administer the shocks, but did nothing to stop it.

The six staff members and video surveillance worker on duty that night have been fired, Ernest Corrigan, the school’s spokesman, said Thursday.

Initial investigations showed that a former student at the Judge Rotenberg Education Center allegedly called in orders for electric shock treatments on Aug. 26 and officials at the school self-reported the prank call and unnecessary treatments the day after they occurred, Cindy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Early Education and Care, said Monday.

After the call, the teens, ages 16 and 19, were awakened in the middle of the night and given the shock treatments, at times while their legs and arms were bound. One teen received 77 shocks and the other received 29. One boy was treated for two first-degree burns.

A fire chief in Penobscot County has been charged with being drunk behind the wheel while driving a fire truck with its lights on and its sirens going.

Russell Banks of Burlington was arrested around midnight Saturday after a resident complained that Banks was racing a fire tanker by his home even though there was no fire in the area.

A Sacramento County computer technician pleaded guilty today to trying to shut down California’s power grid by pushing a button marked “Emergency Power Off,” authorities said.

Lonnie Charles Denison, 33, of South Natomas admitted in U.S. District Court in Sacramento that he went into a room at the Independent System Operator’s data center in Folsom on April 15, broke a glass cover and pushed the button, prosecutors said. Denison, a contract employee at the data center, was upset with his employer, authorities said.

The ISO oversees electricity purchases and distribution. Denison prevented the data center from communicating to the electricity market for about two hours, leaving the electrical power grid vulnerable to shortages, Matthew St. Amant, a California Highway Patrol officer assigned to an FBI taskforce, wrote in an affidavit. No blackout occurred because the incident – which cost $14,000 for 20 computer specialists to repair – happened on a Sunday, investigators said.

Someone likes to watch. On the heels of the so-called “videogate” incident comes breaking news of a disturbing pattern of behavior exhibited by New England Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick. Apparently Belichick enjoyed sneaking over to the summer home of his former Assistant Coach (and current New York Jets Head Coach) Eric Mangini to watch he and his wife engage in what Belichick calls ‘playing in the red zone.’

Dr. H. S. Meltzer, a sports psychologist who grew up across the street from the Patriots’ coach isn’t surprised. “When I heard about Bill taping the Jets’ defensive signals I wasn’t exactly stunned,” said Meltzer. “You think three Superbowl rings come without controversy? To think these kinds of covert activities just flare up or are isolated incidents is ludicrous. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
…
“Look, it started during his teen years,” Meltzer added. “Here’s how it plays out folks — you begin with an overwhelming curiosity – perhaps seeking the love of an unresponsive mother or an abusive father – followed by the accumulation of a stash of magazines like Fabulous Boobies and Jawbreakers, generally for the purpose of getting one’s rocks off – if you catch my drift. It’s all innocent dime store fun, but before you know it, you’re onto the real hard stuff, like Horse Jizz Slurpin’ Harlots, Taint Misbehavin’, and Probing for Corn. Then you apply this perverted, self-destructive method to your life’s work, and hope nobody finds out. But then, like your mother discovering your ill gotten booty of 42nd Street low-rent, pages-stuck-together smut, you’re snagged by the NFL commissioner like a sixty-two year old salesman in a raincoat pleasuring himself in the back of a porn house. That’s our Bill.”

Hat tip to John M

Call it a special delivery. A postal carrier pocketed dozens of greeting cards he was supposed to deliver to get at the cash inside, postal inspectors said.

He was found with more than 130 pieces of other people’s mail in his car, according to a court complaint.

Michael Olivio was released on his own recognizance Thursday following his arrest the previous day, court records show. The exact charges against him were not listed in court records available early Saturday, and a spokesman for prosecutors did not immediately return a telephone call.

A New York judge who jailed a courtroom full of people over a ringing cell phone is off the bench.

Judge Robert Restaino was removed Tuesday by a state judicial panel.

During a court session in March 2005, Restaino got upset when a cell phone went off.

He demanded that the phone be handed over, threatening to lock up everybody if no one came forward.

When nobody did, the judge ordered all 46 people in the room hauled off to the city jail, where they were searched.

The woman behind the gentle, even voice that warns London’s subway commuters to “Mind the gap” was fired after telling a newspaper she thought the transit network was dreadful.

Emma Clarke has been recording messages for London’s sprawling subway network, popularly known as the Tube, since 1999. In addition to warning passengers to watch their step in walking between subway cars and the platform, she also reads the trains’ stops, tells Londoners how long they have to wait until their next ride, and delivers service updates.

Transport for London, the body responsible for running the subway, said Monday that Clarke, 36, was fired for telling The Mail on Sunday she avoided using the subway whenever possible.

“The thought of being stuck in the Tube with strangers for minutes on end and having to listen to endless repeated messages of my own voice fills me with horror,” she told the paper.

Politicians quit their posts all the time, citing predictable reasons for stepping down.

Either they want to spend more time with their family or they have had a fling with someone instead of spending time with their family.

So respect then to the former mayor of a town in Arkansas, who has resigned because he was brainwashed by worshippers of Satan.

Ken Williams left his position in Centerton, claiming the devil lovers kidnapped him nearly 30 years ago.

Everyone who receives child benefit is under threat of fraud after a catastrophic blunder by civil servants.

Two computer discs packed with the personal and banking details of 25million people – nearly half the UK’s 60million population – have disappeared in the post.

Last night, Chancellor Alistair Darling was trying to head off a consumer panic after he admitted that nearly every family in the country is at risk. Police were ransacking offices in London and the North East for the missing CDs, but insisted there was no evidence they have fallen into criminal hands.

The discs, which include names of parents and children, their dates of birth, addresses and National Insurance and bank account numbers of all those who claim Child Benefit, had only minimal computer protection and could be easily hacked into by gangsters.

The Hoboken, N.J., police SWAT team — which is taking heat for racy pictures showing its members frolicking with Hooters waitresses — is no more. Hoboken’s newly named public safety director disbanded the SWAT team shortly after being sworn in on Friday, authorities confirmed.

“The unit itself has been disbanded permanently,” Public Safety Director Bill Bergin told the Jersey Journal. He is a former deputy chief with the Hoboken Fire Department.

A bank cashier has been caught stealing from children aged between one and nine. They handed her their piggy banks full of pocket money and she credited their savings accounts with less than was in them. The case has shattered the children’s faith in banking.

A female German bank cashier has been convicted of stealing money from children’s piggy banks and ordered to pay €1,800 to a charity.

The herd of wild elephants that are on the rampage in the forest areas of Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts claimed yet another victim, this time a reporter working for a Telugu daily, on Friday.

K. Nagaraju of Andhra Prabha was suspected to have been trampled to death while three other reporters narrowly escaped the wrath of the nine pachyderms which have been playing havoc in several villages.

Disregarding the advice of forest officials, the four scribes had gone to take photographs of the herd in the Hussainapuram reserve forest area, near Veeraghatam in the early hours.

An Italian monsignor was suspended from his position at the Holy See after the cleric said in a television interview he “didn’t feel he was sinning” by having sex with gay men, the Vatican and news reports said Saturday.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told journalists that while the case was under investigation the monsignor was suspended from his job as a top official in the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy, an office which aims to ensure proper conduct by priests.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

Tim Brady, 33, was caught in a random speed check on the A420 near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, driving a �98,000 3.6-litre Porsche 911 Turbo in January this year.

The current highest speed to result in a conviction is 156mph.

Intel, the computer chip maker, has been forced to apologise for an advertisement which has been widely criticised as racist.

The ad, which was for a new generation of micro-processors, showed six black sprinters crouched in the start position in front a white man wearing a shirt and chinos in an office.

Above the image was a slogan which read: “Multiply computer performance and maximise the power of your employees.”

A PANEL has found that astronauts were allowed to fly on at least two occasions despite warnings they were so drunk they posed a flight risk, Aviation Week reported today on its website.

The publication said the panel set up by NASA to study astronaut health issues reported “heavy use of alcohol” within 12 hours of launch.

It said flight surgeons and other astronauts warned that the drunken astronauts posed a flight risk when they flew on the two known occasions.

Incensed by the most recent arrest of an alleged drug dealer, a Cleveland politician wrote the perp a scathing, profanity-filled letter that referred to the man as a “crack dealing piece of trash” who should “go to jail or the cemetery soon.” In a July 12 letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, Councilman Michael Polensek, 57, tore into Arsenio Winston, 18, after learning of the teenager’s arrest earlier this month on a felony drug trafficking rap.

China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.

The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.

During Zheng’s tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

A man who took an armoured vehicle on a joy ride and flattened a car has been banned from driving.

Jack Carroll “gleefully” drove the 25-tonne Warrior at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, in July last year.

A soldier captured the 22-year-old’s antics on a mobile phone video, which was then circulated on various websites, including YouTube.

Carroll, from Anfield, Merseyside, pleaded guilty to taking the vehicle without consent at Northallerton Magistrates’ Court.

In a move that will certainly set into motion hundreds of bloggers and journalists eager to unearth the next Washington sex scandal, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, aka the “DC Madam,” has posted 13 years worth of phone records on her website Monday afternoon. The records cover Palfrey’s time as head of “Pamela Martin & Associates,” a Washington, D.C.-based escort service. As Yeas & Nays noted last week, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler recently lifted the temporary restraining order prohibiting Deborah Jeane Palfrey from releasing those telephone records.

During an interview with Yeas & Nays last Thursday, Palfrey indicated that she had “every intention” of releasing her records to the public, but the move to post them on her website so quickly was not anticipated by many.

ZIMBABWE’S leading cleric has called on Britain to invade the country and topple President Robert Mugabe. Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, warned that millions were facing death from famine, unable to survive amid inflation believed to have soared to 15,000%.

In the world of competitive eating, you can’t make it anywhere if you can’t open wide.

But the state of perhaps the most important tool in competitive eating legend Takeru Kobayashi’s toolbox is in question after he posted a blog entry Sunday loosely translated as “Vocational Disease.”

In it, Kobayashi paints a dire picture of his oral health, claiming that he has been diagnosed with a form of temporomandibular joint disorder — pain in the joint that connects the lower jaw to his skull.

Kobayashi writes that he can only open his famous hatch as wide as a fingertip without suffering extreme pain and draws a comparison to a baseball pitcher with torn elbow ligaments.

A music teacher is under investigation by school officials after a student stunned a concert audience with a profane tirade that she said was merely imitating the instructor’s style.

Savannah Larson, 13, gave the first performance in the spring concert attended by about 700 students, teachers, relatives and friends at Monticello Middle School. At the end of singing Rogers & Hart’s “Where or When,” she delivered what first appeared to be a verbal nod to the instructor, Constance S. “Connie” Noakes.

“I forgot to thank my wonderful choir teacher, Ms. Noakes, for all that she’s taught me these past couple of years, like always knowing what to say in any situation, like…,” Larson began, then let fly a stream of expletives and obscenities she said Noakes regularly used in class.

The next day, June 6, the eighth grade honors student was suspended for 10 school days, forcing her to miss her graduation ceremony and party.

An Ohio charter school that emphasizes African history and culture served gin to sixth graders at a graduation ceremony and state education officials said they plan to investigate.

Four students were given a teaspoon of gin mixed with water in a ceremony modeled on a Ghanian rite of passage event, said Kwa David Whitaker, a Phoenix Village Academy official.

The ritual was intended to teach truthfulness, said Whitaker, who oversaw the Tuesday ceremony.

A record number of Japanese literally worked themselves to death last year, the Government said, despite campaigns to ease their country’s notoriously long office hours.

The 355 workers who fell severely ill or died from overwork in the year to March was the highest number on record – up by 7.6 per cent from the previous year, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour said. Of that total, 147 people died, many from strokes or heart attacks.

Death from overwork grew so common during Japan’s post-World War II economic miracle that the country coined a word for it, karoshi.

HBO chief executive Chris Albrecht said he was taking a leave of absence to regain control of his alcoholism following a weekend assault arrest in Las Vegas.

Bill Nelson, HBO chief operating officer, will take over Albrecht’s duties “pending resolution of the police incident,” the company said.
…
“Two years ago, I decided that I could handle drinking again. Clearly, I was wrong. Given that truth, I have committed myself to sobriety. I intend to take a temporary leave of absence from HBO effective today, in order to go back to working with AA.”

The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation’s capital.

For the past two years, however, they’ve been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants. Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are so disheartened that they’re considering moving back to Seoul, said their attorney, Chris Manning, who spoke on their behalf.

“They’re out a lot of money, but more importantly, incredibly disenchanted with the system,” Manning said. “This has destroyed their lives.”

The lawsuit was filed by a District of Columbia administrative hearings judge, Roy Pearson, who has been representing himself in the case.

Unfortunately for the judge, the story has spread like wildfire and now the Washington Post is calling for his head:

IS THERE anything more absurd than someone pursuing a $65 million lawsuit over a lost pair of pants? Well, how about this same person being in a position to adjudicate the cases of other people? Or that there’s a chance of his getting a new 10-year term as judge?

Prime minister Ehud Olmert is accused of grave failures of judgment, responsibility and caution in his decisions to go to war in Lebanon last summer and its management. His decision was hasty and undertaken without in-depth study of the circumstances in the arena, a proper plan of action and clearly defined objectives.Full partners in these failures are defense minister Amir Peretz and former chief of staff Dan Halutz.

These are the key findings of the tensely-awaited 250-page interim report evaluating the government’s conduct of the Second Lebanon War 2006 presented by an inquiry panel led by Judge Eliahu Winograd, Monday afternoon, April 30, 2007.
…
The defense minister, lacking in military and political experience, was unable to appreciate a strategic situation, yet failed to take advice, heed alternatives proposed to him or develop an independent approach. Therefore, Amir Peretz fell down on the job and was a weak link in the government’s ability to contend with the challenges. [Emph. mine]

“Big, powerful law firms like Nashville’s King & Ballow really ought to hire someone with journalistic and new media experience to advise them on how to handle clients who complain about things published by bloggers. Then they wouldn’t do stupid things like issue threats of libel suits that they can’t win against bloggers who, it turns out, have lots of friends willing to make the law firm and its client look bad for it.

That thought occurred to me as I read that Nashville blogger Katherine Coble is being threatened by the powerful Nashville law firm King & Ballow with a libel lawsuit unless she removes from her blog something she wrote that offended one of the law firm’s clients. King & Ballow sent Coble a “demand letter” demanding she take down a post she published. K&B and the client – the headhunter firm JL Kirk Associates – are already getting blowback – and it’s only going to get worse as word of the case spreads throughout the blogosphere.”

A principal and a teacher at a suburban elementary school quit amid allegations they were caught on video having sex in the principal’s office, authorities say.

In keeping with Cook County’s reputation for bare-knuckle politics, the scandal broke after copies of the sex tape were mailed anonymously to parents this week, just days before a contested school board election.

The case has also created something of a mystery: Who planted the camera that recorded the action?

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a Northwest Airlines pilot who locked himself inside an airplane lavatory while screaming obscenities before the flight was scheduled to take off for Detroit from Las Vegas on Friday. As passengers boarded Northwest Flight 1190 at McCarran International Airport they heard the captain shouting curse words.

Top-secret data on Aegis destroyers obtained by a Maritime Self-Defense Force petty officer 2nd class were found to have been obtained after he copied obscene images to his hard disk from a colleague’s computer, without knowing the information contained the secret data, police sources said Wednesday.

The Kanagawa prefectural police also found the secret information was leaked to another petty officer, meaning the case now involves three petty officers, including the 33-year-old 2nd class petty officer, who is a crew member of the destroyer Shirane of Escort Flotilla 1.

Hard disks and computers of each officer were found to have contained obscene images along with the secret information, the police said.

The police believe that repetitive exchanges of such images triggered the spread of the secret information.

A Phoenix television station fired an employee suspected of inserting pornography into a broadcast of a news show featuring former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw.

 The unnamed worker for ION Media Networks’ KPPX-TV “was immediately terminated and faces further legal action” after an investigation determined who was responsible for the March 12 incident, spokeswoman Leslie Monreal said in a statement.

Palm Beach, Fla.-based ION Media Networks, which offers family-friendly programs, called the incident “an intolerable act of human sabotage” and apologized to viewers. About 30 seconds of porn was inserted into the broadcast.

An intern with the National Archives stole about 165 Civil War documents – including the War Department’s announcement of President Lincoln’s death – and sold most of them on eBay, prosecutors charged Thursday.

Denning McTague, who runs a Web site that sells rare books, worked at a National Archives and Records Administration site in Philadelphia last summer, prosecutors said.

McTague, 40, of Philadelphia, has helped officials recover most of the missing items and plans to plead guilty, his lawyer said.

A court stenographer was sent to jail when she didn’t finish a trial transcript needed for the appeal of a convicted rapist.

Ann Margaret Smith was jailed Friday for contempt of court. Circuit Judge Charles Greene noted that Smith failed for months to finish the transcript and missed a final deadline in February. She also failed to produce the transcript at her contempt hearing.

Steve Bartelstein has run out of second chances at WABC/Ch. 7. The anchor, who has messed up several times on the job only to get another shot, was fired after sleeping through a newsbreak he was to anchor last Thursday morning on the horrific Bronx house fire. He was in his Ch. 7 office at the time.

A party leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo who proposed an apparently fictitious person for a post in the new cabinet has been sacked.

The so-called case of the “phantom” government minister, Andre Kasongo Ilunga, has puzzled politicians in the war-torn African nation in recent days.

The case came to light when Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga began to appoint ministers to his new cabinet. The elusive Mr Ilunga got the post of trade but resigned before taking it up. The party’s leader, Honorius Kisimba Ngoy, leader of Unafec, a party allied to President Joseph Kabila, allegedly invented Mr Ilunga in the hope that submitting the name of an unknown along with his own would ensure he was appointed to the cabinet.

It was supposed to be college day for the students of Ware Shoals High School in South Carolina, a chance to learn about educational prospects at a local institution.

But according to police, two of the school’s cheerleaders ditched the event (the exact date hasn’t been made public) and instead headed to a motel with Jill Moore, their coach. There, they met up for a tryst with two National Guardsmen who recruited at their school.

Moore loosened things up by allegedly providing the girls with vodka. Then, the cops say, she repaired to a room with one of the soldiers and set up a different room for the two cheerleaders and the other soldier to “hook up.”

Nine blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a marketing campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. At least one of the devices depicts a character giving the finger.

Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

“It’s a hoax and it’s not funny,” said Gov. Deval Patrick.

Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”

It’s awards season in Hollywood, with all red carpets leading to the Oscars. But winning that prestigious award can sometimes lead to nothing more than bad roles and even oblivion.

“It’s known as the curse of the Oscar, which is very real. The actor’s ultimate dream can turn out to be the ultimate nightmare,” said movie pundit Tom O’Neil, awards columnist for the Web site The Envelope.

Winners like F. Murray Abraham, Brenda Fricker, Linda Hunt, Marlee Matlin and Louise Fletcher are hardly household names despite earning the film world’s most coveted award.

Oct. 19, 2004, while substituting for a seventh-grade language class at Kelly Middle School, Amero claimed she could not control the graphic images appearing in an endless cycle on her computer.

“The pop-ups never went away,” Amero testified. “They were continuous.”

The Web sites, which police proved were accessed while Amero was in the classroom, were seen by as many as 10 minor students. Several of the students testified during the three-day trial in Norwich Superior Court to seeing images of naked men and women.

Royal Nepal Airlines has apologized to Peru after mistakenly using a photo of the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu to promote tourism in Nepal. Peru’s foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday the flagship carrier of the Himalayan kingdom, about half way around the world from the Andean country, had put the picture of Peru’s tourism icon, Machu Picchu, on a poster under a slogan “Have you seen Nepal?”