The Death Of Cash MONEY talks - and in the very near future it will be talking through your mobile phone.
Fumbling for coins in your pocket will be a thing of the past as the latest technology lets you load up your phone with credit and pay by simply pointing it at the till.
It's further proof that new technology is killing off hard cash.
In the coming year, even the smallest purchases will be paid for electronically after credit card giants Visa and Barclaycard struc... (more)
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Texas Toll Road Mailing Bills for 25 CentsA Texas toll road authority is spending 39 cents in postage to deliver bills to motorists asking for just 25 cents. Those who drove a portion of State Highway 121 in Denton County this month are receiving tiny bills for taking the road just once. Because the road has no toll booths, cars that use the road without a toll payment transponder are photographed and a bill issued to the registered owner. The tolling authority imposes a hefty penalty of 21 times the original cost ($5.25) if the vehicle... (more)
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CNN, US media disregard condemnation of Saddam execution CNN.com's homepage exclaimed "DEATH OF A DICTATOR" in an increased 32 point font on Saturday (12/30/06) after Saddam Hussein was hanged. The accompanying article did not contain any condemnation from world leaders or legal experts, many of whom believed that Saddam's trial was flawed.
Islam Online, however, quoted EU President Erkki Tuomioja, who said the execution could "prove to be divisive for the future of Iraq especially since there has been serious criticism of the way the ... (more)
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Localities Operate Intelligence Centers To Pool Terror Data Frustrated by poor federal cooperation, U.S. states and cities are building their own network of intelligence centers led by police to help detect and disrupt terrorist plots.
The new "fusion centers" are now operating in 37 states, including Virginia and Maryland, and another covers the Washington area, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The centers, which have received $380 million in federal support since the 2001 terrorist attacks, pool and analyze information ... (more)
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Red Light Camera System Raises Red Flag Cameras may soon make it easier for police to catch drivers running red lights. The city is signing a contract with Redflex Traffic Systems, of Arizona, to install the technology. But, as "Big Brother" snaps shots of drivers... some question if the cameras violate basic rights under the law.
You'll soon think twice about running a red light in Sioux City. Cameras will snap shots of cars going through red lights. The images will then be sent to the police department, where an offi... (more)
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Bush "outpolled by Lucifer" Apparently, when Chavez called him El Diablo - he meant it as a compliment.
SCARBOROUGH: Now[,] you don't have to have a [doctorate] in Political Science to realize it's never a good sign when you're outpolled by Lucifer
Watch it: WMP | MOV ... (more)
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After a sinister year, it's down to us to protect our freedoms An article in the New Scientist has reported that a rhesus monkey named Murph and a bottlenose dolphin called Natua, which lives in a harbour in Florida, have both exhibited a fascinating ability when doing reward-based tests. As well as being able to understand when they answered right or wrong, they learned to signal when they didn't know something and so avoid the disappointment of being wrong. Like Mastermind contestants, they elected to 'pass'.
Knowing what you don't know is... (more)
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Hillary falls to earth in poll race THE first vote is still more than a year away, but the campaign to replace President George W Bush in the White House is already throwing up surprises.
Unfortunately for Senator Hillary Clinton, long the front-runner in the Democratic drive to retake the presidency, most of them are coming at her expense.
A brace of Christmas opinion polls has left Clinton with a political hangover after a year that had appeared to cement her status as the Democrats’ best-org... (more)
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Iran terms Saddam's execution as victory for Iraqi people Tehran- Iran on Saturday termed the execution of Saddam Hussein as a "victory for the Iraqi people", state news agency IRNA reported.
"The execution of Saddam Hussein was a victory for the Iraqi people and no other country should take credit for that," Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid-Reza told IRNA in a first reaction by Tehran to the execution.
Assefi however criticised the swift execution and speculated that the United States preferred to avoid disclosure of more d... (more)
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Safety project focuses on Isle eyes GALVESTON — Technology developed to keep track of prisoners by scanning their irises became available Thursday to identify missing children or elderly people afflicted with Alzheimer's disease in Galveston County.
The Galveston County Sheriff's Department is the first sheriff's department in Texas and the 47th nationwide to join the Children's Identification Database, or CHILD Project.
The addition of Galveston County is part of an effort to image the irises ... (more)
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General says Prime Minister puts soldiers' lives 'unnecessarily at risk' Tony Blair is today accused of "disgraceful hand-washing" in Iraq by a former British Army chief, the latest attack on the Government by an increasingly outspoken military.
General Sir Michael Rose, the former commander of British troops in Bosnia, accuses the Prime Minister of putting British soldiers at "considerable and quite unnecessary risk" in Iraq, in an article for today's Independent on Sunday.
His remarks follow those of the ... (more)
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Litvinenko murder may be linked to mystery Russian poisoningsPROSECUTORS in Moscow are investigating the possibility that the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London last month is linked to two unsolved poisonings involving prominent Russian businessmen.
Both men were embroiled in the multi-billion-pound battle over Yukos, the Russian oil company, before its assets were taken back into state control by the Kremlin.
One is Roman Tsepov — a former bodyguard to President Vladimir Putin — who is reported to have inte... (more)
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Flashback: Saddam Key in Early CIA PlotU.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the f... (more)
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Saddam's Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald RumsfeldSaddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let's reach back into history and extract these facts:
* On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country."
* Two days later, the New York Times cited a "senior American official" who "said that the... (more)
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A dictator created then destroyed by AmericaSaddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Ir... (more)
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Saddam was Right and Bush was WrongThink about it. It was the Bush administration and not Saddam that turned out to be lying about WMDs. As we all know now, there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Amazingly enough, it was Saddam who was telling the truth from the very beginning. Bush was the one who lied to the whole world.
You may remember that in 2002, the UN Security Council ordered Iraq to put together a report detailing the entirety of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. ... (more)
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Lawyer Ends Up Dead After Taking On RoveIt's fishy as hell.
Paul Sanford, a prominent Aptos, California, attorney, who accused Karl Rove of treason in the Plame outing case, took a leap from the Embassy Suites Hotel in Monterey Bay on Christmas Eve. Police describe it as "probable" suicide, even though it appears Sanford was not depressed.
"Friends and associates expressed disbelief at the news of Sanford'... (more)
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Would You "Support the Troops" in Bolivia? Soldiers who join the military voluntarily sign a very unusual contract with the federal government. It is a contract that effectively obligates the soldier to go anywhere in the world on orders of the president and kill people as part of an invasion force against other countries. It doesn’t matter whether the intended victims deserve to die or not. That issue is irrelevant as far as the soldier is concerned. His job is not to question why people he is ordered to kill should be killed; his... (more)
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FBI Says Files In Leak Cases Are 'Missing'SAN FRANCISCO - The FBI is missing nearly a quarter of its files relating to investigations of recent leaks of classified information, according to a court filing the bureau made last week.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the FBI said it identified 94 leak investigations since 2001, but that the investigative files in 22 of those cases "are missing" and cannot be located. "There is no physical slip of paper on the shelf which indicates that the file has been c... (more)
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Our Next Big Mess NEW YORK--Chances are that you heard more about Rosie O'Donnell's flame war with Donald Trump than the passing of Sapamurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. As seems to occur with increasing frequency, America's media ignored the most important story of the year.
A handful of news outlets that bothered to cover the 66-year-old dictator's death wallowed in the humor inherent in the extravagant personality cult he built up after Turkmenistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.... (more)
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Gerald Ford's other contribution to American history: The single bullet theoryIn the non-stop roller coaster ride that is the media's coverage of the death of Gerald Ford, our 38th president, it is amazing what still gets left behind. For example, this interesting post shows how Ford -- overridden, thank God -- vetoed the Freedom of Information Act, at the urging of three guys who you may have heard of, Dick... (more)
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The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford I believe that the picture below tells us all we need to know about the lasting impact the presidency of Gerald R. Ford has had on the United States of America, the nation he so proudly led for a couple of years after pardoning the man who was at that time the biggest criminal ever to occupy the Oval Office.
... (more)
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High School To Start Random Breathalyzer Tests Los Gatos High School plans to join a growing number of high schools that perform random breath alcohol tests on students at dances and other events.
Principal Doug Ramezane said he would institute the new policy after winter break because several students were found to be under the influence of alcohol at football games, the school's Coronation Ball and even during class this year.
"It isn't OK that any of these kids are doing it," Ramezane said. "It probably isn'... (more)
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