Category: Stupidity

Insurance pricing to change soon, warns AA

Posted by Nexus – 26/02/2011

[via bbc.co.uk]

Car insurance prices may fall for men but rise for women

The European Court of Justice is considering banning insurance companies from using gender to decide how much of a risk customers are.

If it does happen, it would mean young men would eventually see their premiums go down, and young women would end up paying extra.

But the AA is warning that, at least in the short-term, the confusion could lead to higher prices all round. At the minute, young women pay less because they are seen as safer drivers. Statistics show men in their late teens and early 20s are more likely to speed, to be involved in drink driving accidents, and to claim on their policies.

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Media-Mogul Attacks Avaaz

Posted by Nexus – 16/09/2010

Avaaz has come under attack from a major media-mogul.

Huge numbers of Canadian Avaazers recently mobilized against government favours for a new radical-right propaganda network run by the Prime Minister’s former spin doctor. The media empire behind the network and its billionaire owner, Pierre Karl Peladeau, has attacked our community with several smear pieces in their own newspapers, and one of their executives admitted insider knowledge of a criminal sabotage of our campaign. Now the mogul has threatened to sue Avaaz if we don’t take down our campaign within 24 hours!

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Sharp rise in domestic violence after England knocked out of World Cup

Posted by Nexus – 08/07/2010

[via telegraph.co.uk]

Domestic violence incidents increased sharply on the day England were knocked out of the World Cup Photo: PA

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) recorded 353 incidents on June 27, when England suffered their humiliating 4-1 defeat against Germany.

It is the highest number recorded in a day so far this year, save New Year’s Day, the force said.

Kent Police said it witnessed a 400 per cent rise in cases of domestic abuse on the same day.

There were 26 offences reported in the south Kent area, compared to an average weekend total of six.

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UK School Wants To Fingerprint Kids Who Take Out Library Books

Posted by Nexus – 31/05/2010

[via consumerist.com]

What’s your children’s privacy worth? Should they be subjected to fingerprinting just to take out a library book? That’s the question parents at a school in the UK are grappling with.

From the Telegraph:

Under the scheme, pupils swipe a bar code inside the book they want borrow then press their thumb on to a scanner to authorise the loan. Books are returned in the same way.The scheme is being trialled on junior classes at Higher Lane Primary in Whitefield, Bury, Greater Manchester.

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Music industry spokesman loves child porn

Posted by Nexus – 05/05/2010

[via boingboing.net]

A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you’ve got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others…

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Hamas: Egypt gasses 4 smugglers

Posted by Wilhelm – 30/04/2010

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
29/04/2010 08:23

Official: This a “terrible crime” against simple Palestinian workers.

GAZA CITY — Egyptian forces pumped gas into a cross-border tunnel used to smuggle goods into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing four Palestinians, Hamas officials said.

The Hamas Interior Ministry later said in a statement the gas used to try to clear the tunnel was poisonous. Besides those killed, six people were injured, it said.

“This is a terrible crime committed by Egyptian security against simple Palestinian workers who were trying to earn their daily bread,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum to The Associated Press. “It was a killing in cold blood. Hamas and all the Palestinian people condemn it strongly.”

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Moscow mourns subway suicide bomb victims

Posted by Nexus – 30/03/2010

[via cnn.com]

Relatives of victims of the subway blasts cry outside a morgue in Moscow where they arrived to identify a body

Moscow paused to mourn its dead Tuesday, a day after suicide bombers struck a pair of subway stations in a deadly rush-hour attack.

Flags across the city were lowered to half staff as hundreds of thousands of commuters returned to the transit system where the bombings had claimed dozens of casualties. Authorities said the attacks have killed at least 39 people — an increase of one since Monday — and wounded more than 60 others.

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PETA found guilty of animal cruelty

Posted by Nexus – 29/03/2010

Authorities in Ahoskie, North Carolina dropped a disturbing bombshell yesterday with the news that they had charged two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty.

PETA’s Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle were arrested late Wednesday night after police saw them dump bags containing seven dead puppies and 11 other dead animals in a grocery store’s dumpster. Their PETA-owned van, seized by police, contained another 13 animal bodies.

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Harvard profs trash ACTA, demand oversight, threaten lawsuit

Posted by Nexus – 27/03/2010

[via arstechnica.com]

Harvard Law School professors Lawrence Lessig and Jack Goldsmith took to the op-ed page of the Washington Post today to slam the Obama administration’s approach to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)—and to threaten a lawsuit if ACTA is signed without Congressional oversight.

The US has positioned ACTA as an executive agreement rather than a treaty. Such a move means that ACTA doesn’t need Senate approval, but it also means that the agreement should not alter US law, either. If you want to change the law, you go to Congress.

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Switzerland to ban violent games?

Posted by Nexus – 23/03/2010

[via bit-tech.net]

The Swiss parliament has reportedly passed a law to ban any violent videogames from going on sale within the country, with further proposals in the pipeline which could see all first-person shooters for adults being banned specifically.

Specifically the law calls for a ban on any videogame which “requires cruel acts of violence against humans and human-like creatures for in-game success“, according to GI.biz.

The new law was initially put forward last month and has just been passed into law, though the government is still in the process of deciding the specifics of how the law will operate and what exactly will and won’t be allowed. You’d think they’d establish that before that passed the motion though…

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