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And for years the multi-national companies behind many of the fims, music and TV programmes we enjoy have been looking for a way to shut down the website. But it's been a game of cat and mouse, made more difficult because The Pirate Bay does not keep its servers in the same country its founders are based in, and because the website itself does not store any copyrighted files - it points in the direction of copied material that are "out there" on the internet. In effect, The Pirate Bay is a global address book for copied and copyrighted material. It takes advantage of a program called BitTorrent, which makes it easy to share files among large groups of people. Each BitTorrent file comes with an addresss, a tracker, and it's the location of that address that The Pirate Bay publishes on its site.
Just Rewards?
Cash back, frequent-flier miles, gift certificates: more than 55% of all credit-card offers have some type of reward attached to them, according to the latest survey by Mintel's Comperemedia, a company that monitors direct-mail solicitations nationwide. Needless to say, the rewards can be great. Every time you use your Chase Disney card, for example, 1% of your purchases goes into an account you can use to pay for trips to Disneyland and Disney World. You get a check for $25 every time you spend $2,500 on your Chase Free Cash Rewards card. Signing up for a rewards program seems like a no-brainer. After all, it's a free perk, right? .
Suicide kills more than war and murder
Lithuania posts 70.1 male and 14.0 female suicides per 100,000, while Russia has rates of 61.6 and 10.7, according to the WHO. Another factor was that such countries had undergone extreme changes. "Even though many people have benefited from those changes, many people still feel left behind,'' Prof Mishara said. "People don't kill themselves because they want to die,'' he said. "People kill themselves because they can not see any hope to feel better in the future.'' Share this article What is this? .
02.15 F. William Engdahl's "A Century of War" (Part II)
Conditions also let foreign banks and later the IMF provide loans that became an onerous debt bondage cycle. At the same time in 1974, 70% of surplus OPEC revenues were recycled abroad into equities, bonds, real estate and other investments as part of an exclusive OPEC decision to accept only US dollars for oil. It forced world nations to buy enormous amounts of dollars and do it when the currency was weak. This effectively replaced the gold standard with a "highly unstable (petrodollar) exchange system." Washington and New York banks planned to control it and thus benefit from artificially inflated oil prices. The scheme transformed the world economy and began an unprecedented transfer of wealth to an elite minority. Engdahl called it "a perverse variation on the old mafia 'protection racket' game." Third World agricultural and industrial development suffered so a select few could prosper.
Merchants Respond to Questions About Impact of Interchange Fees
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Merchants Payments Coalition today delivered to members of the House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Task Force a detailed report responding to questions about Visa and MasterCard's hidden credit card interchange fees raised by Representative Ric Keller, R-Fla., at a recent hearing. "This report separates facts from fiction on credit card interchange practices," said MPC Chairman Mallory Duncan, senior vice president and general counsel at the National Retail Federation. "The credit card industry has made numerous questionable statements. We have attempted to set the record straight." Duncan testified on behalf of the MPC during a July 19 hearing on credit card interchange held by the Antitrust Task Force, arguing that Visa and MasterCard practices in setting interchange rates constitute a violation of federal antitrust laws that costs merchants and consumers more than $40 billion a year.
House price: $3,500. Mortgage: $228,000
True story. In reporting for my cover story in this week's issue on the housing market, Meltdown, I spoke with a 73-year-old man named George Clark. In 1977, Clark and his wife Mollie, who have six children, bought a four-bedroom house in North Minneapois for just $3,500. Things were fine until a few years ago, when they started getting bombarded by offers of new mortgages and home-equity loans. "We would get these calls and letters all the time. They were saying, 'I can put some money in your pocket,'" recalls Clark. "These guys sounded so honest, we thought they were on the level." The Clarks had a pile of credit-card debt and needed some work done on the house and the car, so finally they bit. They didn't consult a lawyer. They signed a thick stack of papers without reading any of them or having a real concept of what they were getting into.
The Editorial Board
The resolution before the council today notes that the committee studying a charter revision was split over a referendum on single-member districts (as is the City Council). It also notes that the U.S. Department of Justice has not weighed in on the matter, which is imperative in a state subject to the Voting Rights Act. A plan that dilutes the potential for African Americans on the council likely would not pass federal scrutiny. Also, it would almost certainly provoke a lawsuit by black voters, which could be time-consuming and costly. Cole's resolution says the Charter Revision Committee that proposed a referendum must recommend a specific plan before a vote is held. It says the committee also should lay out a plan for redistricting after the 2010 census and submit it to the Justice Department for comment.
Reebok heading for capacity crowd
AS it happens I was at the Portsmouth game and shall be proudly there tomorrow as part of that capacity crowd. We don't all get Japanese TV free at home on our desktops while pretending we are lauding it in the press office boxes. Now like I said feck off back to your glory seeking armchair. .
Housing affordability crisis worsens
If rates go up we still have to make all of those payments, we might just go without the steak and red wine a bit more often. The government give no incentive to save money and buy outright when they tax the working man on his savings. Get rid of this deterrent and maybe people will save to buy what the want instead of getting into more and more debt. Agree (0) Alert moderator John R: 03 Mar 2008 10:37:59am Real estate agents and lenders have no first-order effects on the price of rents. Rents work like an auction, and the market rate is set by the amount that people are willing to pay in order to secure their place.So the "crisis" is caused by there being too many people willing to pay too much to get a house. This has been driven by there being fewer occupants per house, and some people being willing and able to pay more in order to have that lifestyle.
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