Bulger associates would sell him out - for $5 million

By adamg - Wed, 10/28/2009 - 12:03am.

J.M. Lawrence reports on a talk by a former FBI supervisor, who says the current $2 million reward just isn't enough for the "one or two people" who know Bulger's whereabouts.

Looking for ideas for Halloween costumes to make at home?

October 28, 2009 05:39 PM EDT

Last-minute Halloween costume ideas are always popular in the last few days leading up to Halloween. Homemade costumes are cheap and can be some of the most interesting to see out at whatever Halloween parties you have on your social calendar this year. Especially in this economy - who wants to blow serious cash on a store-bought costume? I know I'm looking for some cheap, easy last-minute ideas for an upcoming Halloween party. I did some poking around and here are some suggestions for Halloween costumes to make at home:

Lifelime has some good thoughts on the dead-person theme. Some old clothes, fake blood and white powder and you're good to go.
About.com has an extensive list of costumes in different categories.
Squidoo has more ideas, how-to guides, and kits to get started.

Explore, enjoy, and good luck with your homemade Halloween costumes this year!

Price to PepsiCo for Not Being in Court: $1.26 Billion

On 3:01 am EDT, Wednesday October 28, 2009

What's the cost of not showing up to court? For PepsiCo Inc., it's a $1.26 billion default judgment. A Wisconsin state court socked the company with the monster award in a case alleging that PepsiCo stole the idea to bottle and sell purified water from two Wisconsin men.

Now the company is scrambling to salvage the situation. The damages award was handed down on Sept. 30. PepsiCo filed motions to vacate the order and dismiss the claims on Oct. 13, saying it wasn't even aware of the lawsuit until Oct. 6.

The litigation began in April when Charles Joyce and James Voigt sued the soft drink maker and two of its distributors, alleging they had misappropriated trade secrets from confidential discussions the plaintiffs had with the distributors in 1981 about selling purified water. The information was illicitly passed to PepsiCo, which used it to develop and sell Aquafina bottled water, the plaintiffs allege in the case filed in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County before Judge Jacqueline Erwin.

In court documents, PepsiCo argues it was improperly served with the Wisconsin lawsuit in North Carolina, but also asks the court to excuse the corporate bureaucracy that buried a legal document for weeks. While plaintiffs say they served the lawsuit in June on PepsiCo's registered agent in North Carolina, where the company is incorporated, PepsiCo says its law department at the company's Purchase, N.Y.-based headquarters was not notified until September.

"The bottom line is there was a defect in the process for us, but also for" the plaintiffs, said PepsiCo spokesman Joe Jacuzzi, who called the case "highly dubious."

Robert Roth, a lawyer for PepsiCo at Menomonee, Wis.-based Niebler, Pyzyk, Roth & Carrig, couldn't be reached for comment. Another lawyer for PepsiCo, Dean Panos, a partner at Chicago-based Jenner & Block, declined to comment.

In court papers, PepsiCo claims it first received a legal document related to the case from the North Carolina agent on Sept. 15 when a copy of a co-defendant's letter was forwarded to Deputy General Counsel Tom Tamoney in PepsiCo's law department. Tamoney's secretary, Kathy Henry, put the letter aside and didn't tell anyone about it because she was "so busy preparing for a board meeting," PepsiCo said in its Oct. 13 motion to vacate.

When Henry received a forwarded copy of the plaintiff's motion for default judgment on Oct. 5, she sent that to Yvonne Mazza, a legal assistant for Aquafina matters. Remembering that she still had the other document, Henry passed it to Mazza too. The next day Mazza sent the documents to David Wexler, a department attorney, and he "immediately" called the agent to get a copy of the complaint.

Lawyers for PepsiCo distributors Wis-Pak Inc. and Carolina Canners Inc. made court appearances in June and July. PepsiCo was at a loss to explain why it hadn't heard about the case from them. "It's just another unfortunate thing that didn't come together," Jacuzzi said.

In seeking to dismiss the case, PepsiCo argues that the statute of limitations should preclude the lawsuit, brought 15 years after the company started selling Aquafina and more than two decades after the alleged confidential talks. Moreover, "the $1.26 billion judgment that has been entered is unprecedented in size and justice requires that PepsiCo have a chance to defend itself," the company said.

The lead plaintiffs lawyer, David Van Dyke of Chicago-based Cassiday Schade, said Wisconsin courts have been "pretty clear that they don't like" vacating default judgments. "There is a possibly that a judge may say we're going to litigate the damages aspect of it," Van Dyke said.

A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 6.

Pilots missed Twin Cities by 150 miles — but how?

By JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer 11 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Were the pilots distracted? Catching up on their sleep? Federal investigators struggled to determine what the crew members of a Northwest Airlines jetliner were doing at 37,000 feet as they sped 150 miles past their Minneapolis destination and military jets readied to chase them. Unfortunately, the cockpit voice recorder may not tell the tale.

A report released late Friday said the pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were apologetic after Wednesday night's amazing odyssey. They said they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy. But aviation safety experts and other pilots were frankly skeptical they could have become so consumed with shop talk that they forgot to land an airplane carrying 144 passengers.

The most likely possibility, they said, is that the pilots simply fell asleep somewhere along their route from San Diego.

"It certainly is a plausible explanation," said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

One of the two pilots, first officer Richard I. Cole, said that wasn't the case.

"I can assure you none of us was asleep," Cole told ABC News. He declined to comment further except to say, "I am not doing very good."

New recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, but the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes — only the very end of Wednesday night's flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin and were heading back to Minneapolis.

They had flown through the night with no response as air traffic controllers in two states and pilots of other planes over a wide swath of the mid-continent tried to get their attention by radio, data message and cell phone. On the ground, concerned officials alerted National Guard jets to go after the airliner from two locations, though none of the military planes got off the runway.

With worries about terrorists still high, even after contact was re-established, air traffic controllers asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns.

"Controllers have a heightened sense of vigilance when we're not able to talk to an aircraft. That's the reality post-9/11," said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

A report released by airport police Friday identified Cole and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney. The report said the men were "cooperative, apologetic and appreciative" and volunteered to take preliminary breath tests that were zero for alcohol use. The report also said the lead flight attendant told police she was unaware of any incident during the flight.

The pilots, both temporarily suspended, are to be interviewed by NTSB investigators next week. The airline, acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating. Messages left at both men's homes were not immediately returned.

The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot's licenses could be suspended or revoked.

Investigators don't know whether the pilots may have fallen asleep, but National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said Friday that fatigue and cockpit distraction will be looked into. The plane's flight recorders were brought to the board's Washington headquarters.

Voss, the Flight Safety Foundation president, said a special concern was that the many safety checks built into the aviation system to prevent incidents like this one — or to correct them quickly — apparently were ineffective until the very end. Not only couldn't air traffic controllers and other pilots raise the Northwest pilots for an hour, but the airline's dispatcher should have been trying to reach them as well. The three flight attendants onboard should have questioned why there were no preparations for landing being made. Brightly lit cockpit displays should have warned the pilots it was time to land. Despite cloudy conditions, the lights of Minneapolis should have clued them in that they'd reached their destination.

"It's probably something you would say never would happen if this hadn't just happened," Voss said.

The pilots were finally alerted to their situation when a flight attendant called on an intercom from the cabin. Two pilots flying in the vicinity were also finally able to raise the Northwest pilots using a Denver traffic control radio frequency instead of the local Minneapolis frequency.

On the ground, police and FBI agents prepared for the worst.

"When the aircraft taxied to the gate I was able to see the two white males in the seats of the flight crew, both were wearing uniforms consistent with Delta flight crew," said a police report, signed by an Officer Starch. "When the aircraft had stopped, the male seated in the pilot seat turned, looked at me and gave me two thumbs up and shook his head indicating all was OK."

Air traffic controllers in Denver had been in contact with the pilots as they flew over the Rockies, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. But as the plane got closer to Minneapolis, she said, "the Denver center tried to contact the flight but couldn't get anyone."

Denver controllers notified their counterparts in Minneapolis, who also tried to reach the crew without success, Brown said.

Officials suspect Flight 188's radio might still have been tuned to a frequency used by Denver controllers even though the plane had flown beyond their reach, said Church, the spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. Controllers worked throughout the incident with the pilots of other planes, asking them to try to raise Flight 188 using the Denver frequency, he said

Passenger Lonnie Heidtke said he didn't notice anything unusual before the landing except that the plane was late.

The flight attendants "did say there was a delay and we'd have to orbit or something to that effect before we got back. They really didn't say we overflew Minneapolis. ... They implied it was just a business-as-usual delay," said Heidtke, a consultant with a supercomputer consulting company based in Bloomington, Minn.

Once on the ground, the plane was met by police and FBI agents. Passengers retrieving their luggage from overhead bins were asked by flight attendants sit down, Heidtke said. An airport police officer and a couple other people came on board and stood at the cockpit door, talking to the pilots, he said.

"I did jokingly call my wife and say, 'This is the first time I've seen the police meet the plane. Maybe they're going to arrest the pilots for being so late.' Maybe I was right," Heidtke said.

Delta said Friday it plans to give flight vouchers worth a few hundred dollars to each of the passengers.

Slain Fla. girl's mom vows to find unknown killer

Associated Press Writer 59 mins ago

ORANGE PARK, Fla. – Somer Thompson was last seen alive walking along the sidewalk in front of a vacant house, and authorities said Friday that they're searching for anyone who saw what happened to the 7-year-old after that.

Her teary but resolute mother warned her daughter's killer: "We'll get you."

The day after the child's body was identified, authorities said they had ruled out all 161 registered sex offenders who lived within a 5-mile radius of Somer's home. Despite doggedly pursuing hundreds of leads, police have not made an arrest.

Investigators sifted through evidence from the vacant house and the Georgia landfill where her body was discovered Wednesday after investigators followed garbage trucks some 50 miles away from her neighborhood in suburban Jacksonville.

Somer vanished while walking home from her elementary school on Monday afternoon. The vacant house is on her route through a heavily populated, well-manicured neighborhood, and witnesses last saw the girl alive in front of it. She had become upset as she walked home with other children Monday and ran ahead of the group. Somer never came home.

However, no witnesses have come forward to say they saw Somer attacked or abducted, sheriff's spokeswoman Mary Justino said.

"What we've been trying to figure out is who frequents that area, because obviously it's more than just the people who live there," she said.

Neighbors said they were accustomed to watching out for each other's children as they walked to and from school.

"Everybody knows everybody here. If there was a stranger on the street, we'd be looking at watching where they were going, seeing what they were doing here," said Monica Loeb, a family friend of the Thompsons.

Somer's mother, Diena Thompson, had a friend greet her children as they came home from school Monday because she was working, according to a police report. When Somer didn't arrive with the other children around 4 p.m., the friend sent Diena Thompson a text message. She raced home, and flagged down a passing police officer while she, her other children and her boyfriend scoured the neighborhood.

An autopsy has been completed and investigators know how Somer died, but authorities won't disclose their findings or any details about the body.

Missing child posters featuring Somer's face, framed by her thick brown bangs, still plaster nearly every utility pole along the mile-long route from her elementary school to her home.

Diena Thompson declined to be interviewed Friday by The Associated Press. She spent part of the day making funeral arrangements, and a law enforcement officer was seen carrying a child's white dress from the family's home. A viewing will be held Monday night and a funeral will follow on Tuesday.

But Thompson appeared red-eyed on all three network television shows and said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that investigators will catch her daughter's killer.

"We're coming for you," she said. "We'll get you, and hopefully justice will be served."

Obama family

WH releases official Obama family photo; high-profile week for first lady

1 hr 5 mins ago

This week the White House released the much-anticipated official Obama family photo on its Flickr page. The portrait was taken in the Green Room of the White House on September 1 by famed Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz, notable for her decades of work capturing the images of rock stars and Hollywood's elite as well as for her multimillion-dollar fortune's recent collapse. The seated and beaming first family looks happy and relaxed, with Sasha and Malia Obama each draping an arm over mom and dad.

Michelle Obama style-watchers may want to note she’s not in a sleeveless dress: The bare arms in her solo official portrait caused a minor stir when it was released last February.

The portrait adds to a flurry of Michelle Obama publicity this week. On Wednesday she hosted a "healthy kids fair" for approximately 100 Washington D.C.-area schoolchildren on the South Lawn of the White House. During the event, part of her ongoing effort to educate children about the importance of proper diet and exercise, the first lady wowed onlookers by swiveling a Hula-Hoop 142 times before it finally hit the ground. Not quite done there, Mrs. Obama also took off her shoes to run an obstacle course with hurdles.

Also on the agenda: tackling the 10 questions segment of “The Jay Leno Show” on Friday night. The rapid-fire “Ten @ Ten” questions — fielded recently by Justin Timberlake, Sen. John McCain, Tom Cruise, and LeBron James — have made for some water-cooler conversations after the show, which has been tanking in the ratings of late. Mrs. Obama's appearance with Leno is notable but certainly not unusual, as former first lady Laura Bush appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show” when it was hosted by Leno during her husband's presidency.

Also this week, a new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that the American people view Michelle much more favorably than they do her husband or Vice President Joe Biden, a change from the numbers just after the first family took up residence in the White House.

Approval numbers for the president, meanwhile, have been sliding; the USAToday/Gallup poll notes that Obama is viewed favorably by 55 percent of respondents, down from 68 perecent just after the election. Insiders were quick to note when Laura Bush raised her profile during the last days of her husband’s embattled term; similarly, her successor’s PR efforts are getting noticed.

public health plan

Dems scrambling for support for public health plan

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Democratic leaders in Congress scrambled Friday to round up votes for allowing the government to sell health insurance in competition with private industry as they struggled to finalize a health care bill that meets President Barack Obama's goals.

In a change in the Senate, long seen as hostile to the so-called public option, senior Democrats were considering including such a measure, officials said. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., spent Friday calling and talking with wavering Democrats to test support for different versions of the plan.

A similar process was under way in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi was scratching for votes in favor of her preferred version of the so-called public option, even though opposition from moderates seemed to indicate that the votes weren't there.

"We are continuing to count the votes on this," the California Democrat told reporters after a Democratic caucus meeting where lawmakers were asked to state where they stood on the plan. "By no means is the count complete."

Tensions were running high with Democrats in both chambers in the final throes of completing sweeping health care bills they want to bring to the floor within weeks. The remaining details were proving sticky but in its broad outlines the legislation would remake the nation's $2.5 trillion health care system with a new requirement for most Americans to purchase health insurance, and government subsidies to help lower-income people do so. Insurers would face new restrictions against dropping coverage for sick people or denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions.

"It's just a question of when, and how soon," Pelosi said.

Liberals in Congress have long viewed a public option — a sort of Medicare for the middle class — as a critical ingredient for the plan, and Obama has said frequently he favors it. But he has also made clear it is not essential to the legislation he seeks, a gesture to Democratic moderates who have opposed it.

"The president thinks that the public option is the best way to achieve choice and competition and bring down health care costs for the American people. And he will continue to ensure that it is achieved in the final health care reform legislation," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters Friday.

A new version was drawing interest: a federal public plan that would allow states to opt out. Reid was testing support for that idea and for a second alternative, which would hold government-sponsored insurance coverage in reserve and "trigger" it only if private companies weren't providing enough affordable alternatives in given states.

The "trigger" version has the advantage of being backed by Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican so far to vote for health care legislation. Obama would like to end up with a health care bill with at least a hint of bipartisanship so bringing Snowe along is seen as important, and she's voiced skepticism about other versions of the public plan.

Reid and other Senate leaders met with Obama Thursday evening at the White House.

Legislation taking shape in the House is also expected to include a public option, and Pelosi indicated openness Friday to the "opt out" plan though it's not been under active consideration there.

Her preferred option would tie reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals to rates paid by Medicare, but it didn't appear to command enough support to prevail. Some moderates have been wary of that approach because those lower rates could hurt hospitals and providers, particularly in rural areas.

Pelosi also appeared with AARP officials Friday to announce new benefits in the House bill for seniors, a crucial constituency that polls have shown have deep concerns about the pending legislation, in part because it would be paid for by cuts to Medicare providers.

Pelosi said that the bill will close a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug benefit over 10 years, instead of the 15 originally envisioned, and also moves up to 2010 from 2011 a new 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs purchased by seniors who fall in the coverage gap. Aides couldn't say how much the changes cost or how they would be paid for.

Both the House and Senate measures aim to expand coverage to about 95 percent of Americans.

The two bills differ at many points, although both are paid for through a combination of cuts in future Medicare spending and higher taxes.

Anthony Weiner: GOP Public Option Opponents Should Give Up Their Medicare

Anthony Weiner: GOP Public Option Opponents Should Give Up Their Medicare

Announced todayOn Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) called on 55 Republican adversaries of the public option to give up their government-funded health insurance.

The congressman argued that it is hypocritical for Senate and House members receiving "government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare" to oppose making such coverage available to the American public.

"Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize," Weiner wrote. "They apparently think the public option is ok for them, but not anyone else." Weiner, a member of the Health Subcommittee and co-chair of the Caucus on the Middle Class, has been a strong advocate of the public option.

In recent weeks, he has challenged his own party, as well as President Obama to ensure that the final health bill includes an affordable public insurance plan for Americans.

A press release from Weiner's office identifies the congressional recipients of Medicare that he thinks should give up their government-funded insurance plans. The list includes Senate Finance Committee members Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), part of the Gang of Six that helped shape health care reform.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://newsnewsforex.blogspot.com/2009/10/anthony-weiner-gop-public-option.html