Cash reward for Americans. Taliban offers cash for dead Westerners: "Al-Qaida and Taliban forces are distributing pamphlets that offer rewards for dead or captured Westerners and threaten Afghans who support the U.S.-led coalition, U.S. Army officials said Friday.

Maj. Iris Hurd said leaflets have been found in the last few weeks that offer $50,000 for a Westerner delivered dead and $100,000 for one who is alive.
The pamphlets are known as "shabnama," or "night letters," because they are distributed clandestinely, often at night. Hurd said they are sometimes slipped under people's doors."

Some sad news. I just found out that my high school friend Mike Z. is in the hospital after attempting suicide. As you can imagine, this is all pretty upsetting. Brian just told me what happened. He was out on Long Island to visit Mike in the hospital.

[details removed out of respect for his privacy]

Say a prayer for him, please.

Absolute power, no democracy. The general's referendum: "The fact that under Pakistan’s constitution the president should be elected by a college consisting of the members of the national and the four provincial parliaments, rather than via a take-it-or-leave-it referendum, seems to have bothered neither the general nor the cabinet, which had earlier voted unanimously in favour of the plan. As an absolute dictator, General Musharraf has decreed constitutional amendments in the past and will surely do so again should the need arise."

Blogger advanced planning. Bloggers slip the surly bonds of print: "Mr Sullivan is a "blogger" (short for web logger): one of the tens of thousands of individuals and small groups who publish such online diaries. The vast majority of web logs are little more than regularly updated letters to friends with rambling accounts of day-to-day life. Many see them as the latest incarnation of the personal website with family photos and holiday greetings that was briefly popular in the late 1990s.

But a few dozen bloggers with broader interests, Mr Sullivan among them, have begun to attract much wider audiences. Last month, andrewsullivan.com drew more than 800,000 visits from more than 200,000 individual readers. Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, recently reported a record 43,000 visits during one day to his instapundit.com site. Virginia Postrel, editor of Reason magazine, is also drawing a strong following for her dynamist.com.

Oddly, bloggers with right-leaning politics seem to have gained the ascendancy. This is perhaps because they frequently express a different point of view to that on the websites of most magazines and newspapers. It is also because they are sometimes outrageous and often provocative enough to draw the attention of the mainstream media they denigrate - and so gain publicity."

Scamming the Budget. Five-Year Budget Projections Seem Like a Scam: Gene Sperling: "Suppose a father one day adds up how much he expects in bonuses over the next 10 years -- and blows it all on a big family vacation the first year. Then his job goes sour, and the family is in serious debt. Nevertheless, a year later Dad buys the family an around-the-world- cruise. When Mom asks why he's making the same mistake all over again, he tells her not to worry. Now that he has learned how uncertain long-term projections can be, Dad says he is working on a five-year budget -- and since the cruise company will let him pay back most of the cost after the sixth year, the family is still in great shape. Off the wall logic? It's disturbingly close to the Alice-in- Wonderland explanation from the White House and House Republicans in justifying their use of five-year budget numbers instead of the 10-year projections employed in recent years."

The latest NYU scam. WIN A DVD PLAYER AND HELP MAKE ORIENTATION PROGRAMS GREAT!

"The Office of Student Life would like to request your participation in our All University Orientation focus groups. To better serve the needs of our incoming students we would like to obtain your feedback on All University Orientation. We are asking interested students to attend a group session
to discuss perspectives on All University Orientation.

Just choose one of the dates below and sign up. We will serve dinner and discuss your impressions of All University Orientation, what you liked and disliked, and areas you feel need to be addressed. The focus group will take approximately one and a half hours. Your participation and feedback are essential to us. We will use the information you give us to create a better orientation program for new students. All participants will be
entered in a raffle. The first prize will be a DVD player!

To register, please send an email to cej216@nyu.edu with your full name, phone number, and the session number that you have chosen. More detailed information about the location of the session will be made available to you upon registration.

SESSION TIMES
Session 1: Tuesday, April 16 6:30pm
Session 2: Wednesday, April 17 11:00am
Session 3: Wednesday, April 17 5:30pm
Session 4: Thursday, April 18 5:00pm

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this project. You are an essential component of All University Orientation. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Should you have any questions or concerns please contact Clara Jackson via e-mail at cej216@nyu.edu or at my work (212) 998-4937."

Greenback to yellowback? Say goodbye to the greenback: "Imagine opening your wallet and seeing a rainbow of dollar bills: a pale yellow $20, a baby blue $50, or maybe even a lavender Benjamin.

The idea isn't that farfetched. The U.S. Treasury Department recently testified before Congress about the need to change U.S. currency to keep ahead of growing counterfeit operations. And one security feature that may be added to the bills is what the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) terms "a subtle background color"."

The Odd Couple. Things may get dicey between the two heads of state. Bush and Blair: "Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, is to travel to Texas to spend the weekend with President George Bush. Mr Blair’s status as the most loyal of American allies makes him a natural mediator with Europe. But at a time when American and European views on the Middle East and Iraq are diverging sharply, Mr Blair may find bridge-building awkward."

Buy me a Vanilla Coke! Coca-Cola goes vanilla in effort to add fizz to sales: " If people enjoy vanilla Coke so much, why not sell it to them in a bottle or can instead of making them go all the way to a cafe to get it?

According to sources in Coca-Cola's US bottling system, the company is 90 per cent decided that this is exactly what it should do. Coca-Cola itself declines to comment but it is easy to imagine the hand-wringing as executives contemplate what a flop might do to the company's tentatively recovering morale.

In the past few years, Coca-Cola has been through one of the most appalling periods in its history. For most of the go-go 1990s, it seemed nothing could stop its remorseless global growth. But from 1998 to 2000, the company flabbergasted investors by turning in three straight years of falling profits, its worst decline in living memory."

The NYU attacker, NYU bands, Angela goes missing, and Julie and the "tale of the trip to Sophie's." That's right -- all of that and more in this "Anthony's Wacky Thursday Recap!"

What a day! Let me just recover, then i'll tell you the tale of "main bldg attack/evan, conception, angela luk/tv newscast, julie/bar, rock"!

Late Night Mud Fight! No Joke: Jay Jabs Dave in Late-Night Squawk Show: "Leno tells TV Guide that, while he often praises Letterman, he hears nothing but negative comments from Dave's camp. "You'll never get a, ‘Yeah, they did a pretty good show last week,' or, ‘That was a pretty funny joke,' " Leno says of the "Late Night" staff.

"Plenty of times, I'll say, ‘Oh, Dave had a funny thing last night,' or, ‘He had so-and-so on last night, and he was really good with them.' " But there's a reason for the hostility, says Letterman confidant Rob Burnett. "We'd be more inclined to praise Jay if we didn't hear from people that, privately, he bad-mouths us at every turn," said Burnett, president of Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants."

Missing sex. Sex loses net appeal: "Sex is finally losing its appeal on the net according to researchers in America. Interest in sex and entertainment had been replaced by more serious surfing, a study of 200,000 users conducted by Penn State University's School of Information Technology has found.

The research, conducted over five years, found that in 1997 approximately one in six web queries to search engine Excite was about sex. By 2001 only one in 12 surfers was searching for sex and many of these enquiries were about human sexuality rather than pornography."

Studios work to thwart future piracy. What collosal cause could get all seven major studios working together? Oh... the threat of losing money, of course. Studios unite for digital standard: "Seven major movie studios in the US are to establish technical standards for the development of digital cinema, in a rare joint venture. The aim of the as-yet-untitled project will be to set the agenda so that rival digital projectors, software and distribution will use a universal language. Goals for the scheme will be to establish minimum standards for picture quality and protecting films from piracy.

There are fears that when digital cinema is more widespread, with images being beamed by satellite or internet lines, hackers could break security systems and make perfect copies to pirate."

NASA takes safety precautions. Nasa to keep launch times secret: "The American space agency (Nasa) has announced that from now on all shuttle launch times will be kept secret until 24 hours in advance to guard against possible terror attacks. Under the new policy, Nasa will announce a possible four-hour launch window in advance and then only reveal the exact time of blast-off 24 hours ahead of the actual event.

The new protocol, approved late last week by top Nasa officials, marks the first time in more than a decade that all precise launch times have been kept secret."

Anthony covers the news. Conception creates space for student artistic urges: "A variety of student artwork, music, dance and performance will be on display this week as part of Conception ‘02, the Program Board’s annual two-day student arts and music festival.
“Conception ‘02 is a chance for NYU students of all schools, regardless of major, to come together and enjoy,” said Brette Meyers, the Conception ‘02 Chairperson."

Suing the Pope. Pedophile lawsuit seeks to hold pope accountable: "In another blow to the Roman Catholic Church, two civil lawsuits that allege priest sexual abuse were filed yesterday, this time putting the problem on the doorstep of Pope John Paul II by naming the Holy See as a defendant.
The suits – one filed in Florida and the other in Oregon – are part of a national flurry of lawsuits that seek accountability for alleged incidents of sexual misconduct by priests. These latest lawsuits, along with two other recently filed suits that level racketeering charges, could determine whether the church at the highest levels can be held accountable for such incidents.

But lawsuits naming the pope have typically not been successful, because church lawyers have argued that the Vatican is a country with sovereign immunity. Thus these cases may test the boundaries of that immunity."

Where are PC prices going? The next round in the PC wars: "THE battle for leadership in the computer business is about to get a lot tougher. Despite a legal challenge, Hewlett-Packard remains determined that its $19 billion merger with Compaq Computer will take place, creating a combined group second only to IBM in the industry. Dell Computer, which recently overtook Compaq as the market leader in PCs, now plans to see off this challenge by expanding further into corporate-computing products, possibly by teaming up with companies that make printers and other equipment.

On top of all this, a new spectre is haunting the PC market: rising prices. The increasing cost of some key components, such as memory chips and the panels used to make laptops and flat screens—an increasingly popular option with buyers of new PCs—has begun to force up prices. The worry is that, just as the industry starts to recover from one of its worst-ever years, more expensive products could choke off demand. In the computer business, after all, consumers have become used to prices going down. PC makers could be squeezed between rising component costs and a resistance to rising prices among consumers."

Welcome to the DIgital Revolution. Hollywood loses out on post-production work: "Embracing change has always come hard to Hollywood, world capital of self-absorption. But the studios, which resisted introducing soundtracks for 15 years, forbade their actors to work in television, tried to make the video-cassette recorder illegal, and adopted the DVD only after a 10-year wrangle, now find themselves confronted by irresistible external forces.

Globalisation and its ally, digital technology, are changing the nature of Los Angeles and the motion picture industry. Superficial evidence appeared last year when they combined - with a little help from the economic downturn and industrial strife - to force the loss of more than 17,000 jobs: almost 12 per cent of the workforce and eight times the number lost in the previous three years."

'Eh... wanna a baby?' Woman Tries to Trade Baby for Puppy: "A woman accused of trying to trade her baby girl for a Chihuahua puppy has been charged with trafficking in children. Kathryn A. Smith, 21, surrendered on an outstanding warrant Friday and was released after an initial court appearance. Prosecutors said Smith offered to give her mother's neighbor custody of her 7-month-old daughter if the woman gave her a Chihuahua she was selling for $200.

Smith later upped the price to $2,000, authorities said."

[via Evan]

Digital copyright case continues. Judge Weighs Dismissal of Charges in Digital Copyright Case: "A federal judge heard arguments today on a request to dismiss the prosecution of a Russian software company charged with violating a digital-copyright law. The case is one of the first legal challenges to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which prohibits the sale of tools that can help people circumvent the electronic locks that protect copyrighted digital works like music or books...

...The digital copyright act "does not define the tools that it purports to prohibit," Joseph M. Burton, a lawyer representing ElcomSoft, argued in the the court here."

Mets win Home Opener! Leiter Looks Like an Ace: "The off-season strategy was rather simple: rebuild the Mets' offense by adding some big-name hitters, get the fans excited and make life easier for Al Leiter and the rest of the pitching staff.

"That was the plan," Mike Piazza said yesterday after the largest opening day crowd (53,734) in Shea Stadium history watched the Mets beat the Pirates, 6-2, in a game that, for all the glamorous new names in the Mets' lineup, did not have much in the way of fireworks." Let's Go Mets!

More airport security problems. Man Flees Tampa Airport Checkpoint: "A terminal at Tampa International Airport was evacuated for about three hours Tuesday when a passenger grabbed his carry-on luggage from a checkpoint and fled after a security official thought he saw a pistol in the bag. It was one of several security incidents at airports in the region in recent days.

Twenty-four flights were delayed at Tampa and about 1,000 people were evacuated from the satellite terminal during the search for the man, airport officials said. He was not caught." Read on for more wacky airport security breaches!

Middle Eastern violence intensifies. Israel Seizes 2 West Bank Towns; Arafat Rejects Exile Offer: "Breaking Yasser Arafat's isolation, a U.S. envoy met with the Palestinian leader at his tank-encircled headquarters Friday on the bloodiest day of fighting since the beginning of the week-old Israeli military offensive.

At least 35 Palestinians -- including the suspected mastermind of a Passover attack that triggered the offensive -- died as gunmen and Israeli forces fought in Nablus, Tubas and Jenin in the West Bank. At least one Israeli soldier also died."

Bush Is Criticized for Mideast Role: "President Bush, under rising criticism for his handling of the growing violence in the Middle East, expressed frustration today that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has failed to denounce what he called the "constant attacks" of suicide bombers." Its about time.

Police step in for Guard. Police to replace Guard at airports: "National Guard troops patrolling airports will be replaced by uniformed police officers, the new Transportation Security Administration government said Monday.

In a security directive to airports, the agency said the police officers would be stationed at airport screening stations in place of the Guard. Local police will be at the checkpoints until the security agency hires its own law enforcement officers."

Elderly Crime. 65-Year-Old Woman Pleads Guilty to Leading Pickpocket Ring: "A 65-year-old arthritic grandmother pleaded guilty Monday to leading a statewide pickpocket ring and faces up to eight years in prison. Ernestine Williams dispatched her 15-person crew to pilfer credit cards and checks from elderly shoppers in retail stores from Miami to Atlanta, taking a cut for each crime, according to a two-year investigation conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office."

[via Evan]

Government screws independent radio stations. Royalties Proposal Casts Shadow Over Webcasters: "The proposed royalties, which the copyright office has until May 21 to revise or approve, have radically dimmed the prospects for the legions of entrepreneurs and hobbyists whose radio stations — from MinistryofSound.com to Radio Margaritaville — have for the last two years provided free access to a startlingly wide range of music. Last week, lawyers for the Webcasters and the recording industry submitted their final comments to the copyright office, with the record labels urging the agency to increase the rate and the Webcasters pleading for a lower alternative.

Hundreds of Internet stations have plastered their sites with requests that listeners write to Congress and with links to www.saveinternetradio.org, an advocacy and information site. "It's not an exaggeration to say the number of Internet radio stations will shrink from tens of thousands to four or five if this goes through," said Kurt Hanson, editor of Radio and Internet Newsletter."

SAB elections. Tonight I was nominated for a couple of Student Activity Board eboard positions -- Chair and Vice-Chair. They like me, they really like me!

The real story behind Google technology. Google Technology: "Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools." (Happy April Fool's Day!)

Oprah says 'no' to Bush. Oprah declines Bush invite to Afghanistan: "Oprah Winfrey turned down an invitation from President Bush to join a U.S. delegation to tour Afghanistan's schools, a spokeswoman for her company, Harpo Productions, said Friday.

The spokeswoman said the talk-show host respectfully declined because, "given her responsibilities to her show, she's not adding anything to her calendar."'

Happy Easter! (and Passover, too!) I wish all the best for you and your loved ones on this blessed day of Christ's resurrection for Christians. Also, enjoy the chocolate bunnies!

If only the killing would stop: Dozens Injured as Suicide Bomber Hits Tel Aviv (1 killed, 32 injured), Haifa Explosion Followed by Another in West Bank Settlement (14 killed, 40 injured). Listen to the pope's call for peace: Pope's Address Urges Mideast Peace.

Napster Legal Update. Imagine having continuing legal troubls while trying to get a doomed-to-fail pay mp3 service off the ground!
Napster Dispute Puts Bid on Hold: "German media giant Bertelsmann has been negotiating to buy Napster Inc. for $15 million to $30million, but the talks are on hold because of infighting among Napster's other investors, shareholders in the closely held firm said Wednesday."

Napster Gets 10 Months to Prove Claim: "U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel on Tuesday gave Napster Inc. nearly 10 months to prove its claim that the major record companies have misused copyrights and impeded competition."