NY Governor Wants Tax on All Internet Downloads -- Including Porn

David Paterson, the governor of New York, has proposed a 4% tax on all Internet downloads, which has caused a bit of a kerfuffle because the tax could include pornography and other unsavory content.

Paterson said the tax would apply to software, music, books and video downloads as well as other content on the Web. "It is a general proposal, not focused on the content, so it would apply to any download, regardless of the content."

Mr. Paterson proposes the tax to help the state's deficit. Michael Long, from the New York Conservative Party, slammed the idea because it would include a tax on porn. "By taxing it you're legitimizing it". 20 states currently have some download tax.

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7 Tonnes Of Cocaine Seized

Since 23 tonnes of cocaine were seized and confiscated at Manzanillo, Mexico, the next seizure was the biggest on the past weekend when a Mexican Navy patrol ship with the help of the US Coast Guard intercepted a fishing vessel.

7 tonnes of cocaine were on the vessel that were seized and confiscated by the patrol ship in international waters. Also the five crew members were arrested. It's yet unknown under which flag the fishing vessel was sailing.

Since a new president took office in 2006, 70 tonnes of cocaine were seized across the country.

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Young Girl Marries Dog

India: A girl from eastern Jharkhand has been made to wed a stray dog by locals who believe that the union will negate any curses directed at the family.

Many rural areas of India are still uneducated and rife with superstition. Should this young bride wish to marry a man later in life she is free to do so without divorcing her canine husband.

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YouTube Soon To Be YouPay?

Thursday, YouTube announced to its users a pilot program that lets its colleagues choose whether or not to charge a fee for their videos. To purchase a video, users pay through Google Checkout.

In return for the fee, users "receive a permanent, offline copy of the file in return." Those who offer their videos can set their prices and licenses they wish to set on their videos.

Khanacademy, householdhacker, pogobat, and others are participating in the money making program. YouTube did not line out how much it anticipates to profit, or share those profits.

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Global Warming Insanity

Last year a 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psych unit of the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He refused to drink water believing that millions would die from drought related climate change.

Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the unit has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related disasters.

Anxiety over current events is not a new phenomenon. Worries about threats such as nuclear war or AIDS have been woven into the mental illnesses of each generation. But global warming could have a broader and deeper effect on mental health.

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Mexico to Begin Fingerprinting Cell Phone Users

In a bid to nab crooks who are using cell phones for extortion and kidnapping ransoms, Mexico will begin a national registry of cell users complete with fingerprints. The new law is set to be put into force in April.

According to the law, cell companies have a year to create a database of their users, along with prints. Since most phones in Mexico are prepaid, users would be required to submit prints with a new contract or the purchase of more minutes.

Cell carriers would also be forced to keep a log of all calls, texts and voicemails for a year. Only court approval would let the information be used.

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Boy Vanishes, Feared Dead By Crocodile Attack

In Queensland, Australia, yesterday a seven year old boy alerted his father by his screaming that his younger brother, 5, was taken by a three-metre long crocodile, fearing he is dead.

His father, a tour guide, in his dispair flung himself into the floodwaters, only for trying to find his son but it was in vain. The man owns Daintree Rainforest Rivertrain.

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Love Triangle Results In Two Murders, One Suicide

An upscale apartment on the upper West Side of NYC is the scene of an apparent murder-suicide which left three dead. The shooter was identified as 55-year-old Miguel Ruiz. Also dead were Debra Silver, 46, and Daniel Tedlie, 57.

Police say that Silver was cooking dinner for her lover Tedlie, when Ruiz showed up. Police found Silver and Tedlie dead on the floor, and Ruiz sitting in a chair with a gunshot wound to his head and a 9-mm sitting in his lap.

Silver had lived in the apartment owned by family, for more than a decade.

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Man Issued 50 Traffic Citations... In One Day

Elvis Alonzo Barrett was arrested after he fled from police over a traffic violation. Elvis ran multiple red lights, crashed into another car and fence after he fled. After searching his car, police discovered crack cocaine as well as a crack pipe.

Elvis was charged with fleeing and eluding and reckless driving. Elvis also accumulated over fifty traffic citations during the day, including speeding, running red lights and not wearing a seat belt and has since had his driver license suspended.

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British Student Dies After Drinking Red Bull

After drinking at least four cans of Red Bull at a nightclub, 21-year-old Chloe Leach collapsed and died from cardiac arrhythmia. It is thought that her arrhythmia was worsened by the high level of caffeine present in her body from the energy drinks.

Coroner Geoffery Saul ruled out drug use and excessive drinking as causes of death and said none of her decisions "reflected badly" on her. While not officially diagnosed, Leech likely had QT syndrome which affects the heart's electric activity.

Chloe Leach also suffered from epilepsy. According to Tina Leach, her daughter regularly took her epilepsy medication and monitored with her caffeine consumption. "She would drink Red Bull occasionally and was aware it contained caffeine," Tina said.

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Chinese Earthquake May Have Been Man-Made

Scientists say the 7.9 earthquake responsible for killing more than 80,000 people in China last May could have been triggered by the enormous Zipingpu dam. The dam is in close proximity to the fault line and just 3 miles from the Sichuan quake site.

Christian Klose of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory said the sudden shift of the 315 million tonnes of water the dam held increased the natural stress from tectonic movement by 25x, causing a rupture that lead to the quake.

Fan Xaio, chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, opposed the construction of Zipingpu and had warned the Chinese government that dams like Zipingpu were dangerous when built in seismically active areas to no avail.

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Men Kill Teenage Girl, Ate Her

Two men, each 19, were arrested by police in St Petersburg, one is a florest and the other is a street-market butcher who was a one-time psychiatric patient. They are accused of killing a young girl and cooking her as food for themselves.

Prosecutors said, what they did is a cannibalism, they believe the girl was drowned in a bathtub, then the body was cut into body parts. For example some of her organs was baked with potatoes in a stove.

A top city prosecutor believes, the men decided to kill the teenager after tere was an argument between the girl and one of the men.

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Your chance to own 867-5309!

Spencer Potter, a 28-year-old DJ from Weehawken, NJ is selling the famous 867-5309 phone number along with his business on eBay. As of Monday morning bids had reached $5,100. The number was originally made famous in a song by Tommy Tutone.

Potter claims that he has received about 40 calls a day since plugging in the phone. Potter also met a woman by answering the phone. The woman used to give the number out as a fake and one day decided to call to see who was receiving the calls.

Normally phone numbers cannot be sold but since the auction includes the sale of the DJ business Vonage, the company that assigned the number, has allowed the sale to take place. Potter hopes to make at least $40,000 from the sale.

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Man Dies From Mobile Phone Explosion

About a 20-year-old shop assistant has died after he changed battery in his cell phone in Guangzhou, China. The phone exploded in his breast pocket, severing major artery in his neck.

Authorities believe that the battery and
the cell phone were counterfeit, but they have yet to determine it. Nokia and Motorola do not believe the battery and the phone were origin.

In China this is the ninth cell phone explosion since 2002.

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Girl With No Criminal Record Jailed for Three Months for Writing Her Name on Cafe Wall

18-year-old Cheyene Back has been sentenced to three months in prison after she was captured on CCTV writing "2shie" on the wall of the Hyde Park Cafe. She was with a group of other people who were also defacing the wall.

For its part the café wanted $200 to compensate them for the clean up. After being sentenced by Magistrate Ian McRae a second magistrate agreed to unconditional bail until an appeal can be heard.

The state government launched a crack down on graffiti just days ago. It is now illegal to sell spray paint to minors and spray cans can be confiscated from unsupervised minors. Graffiti clean up costs reportedly reach $100 million annually.

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11-Year-Old Shoots and Kills 7-Year-Old

An 11-year-old boy from Avondale, OH, shot and killed 7-year-old neighbor Earl Robinson on Friday. Police arriving to the scene found Earl's body and took the shooter into custody. Four children and one adult were home at the time of the shooting.

The boy was released shortly later by police due to "severe physical disabilities" and need for medical care. Prosecutor Joe Deters isn't sure if criminal charges will be filed against the boy, gun owner or adult who was present during the shooting.

Sgt. Gary Conner of the Cincinnati Homicide Unit said the boy was "open and frank" and "honest." While police are currently investigating where the boy got the weapon, Conner believes this case is just another example of a "kid playing with a gun."

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Google Declares the Internet is Malware

Surprised Google users on Saturday morning were warned that the entire Internet was construed of harmful malware. For almost one hour yesterday morning, a glitch in Google's filtering system declared every Web site as harmful.

Google was quick to explain the glitch, which they said was a result of human error. Spokesperson Marissa Mayer said: "We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again."

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Scrapped Safe Full of Cash

Some very honest men working on a steel plant in Berlin struck lucky with a safe and could have bagged themselves a neat little package of 100,000 Euros (around $128,500USD) when employees of ‘Postbank’ dumped a safe.

An employee at the German bank had completely forgotten to grab the cash before sending it to the local dump site.

Bank spokesman Ralf Palm laid the blame and responsibility for the money being left in the safe on one worker, due to "the carelessness of an employee when a branch office moved in December."

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At Least 111 People Died From an Explosion of a Petrol Tanker

In Kenya, in the town of Molo at least 111 people died and about 200 wounded when a petrol tanker truck overturned and exploded as they were trying to pilfer free fuel from it. Unfortunately the death toll is yet expected to rise.

It is yet unknown, but it may be, someone's cigarette may have caused the blaze. Similar cases often occur in Nigeria where people tap gas pipelines, for example 200 people died from a gasoline blast.

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