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When journalists' safety is at stake, the ICRC hotline can help
02-05-2012 Interview
Since the beginning of 2011, over 60 media professionals working in violence-affected areas have requested ICRC assistance. Dorothea Krimitsas, the ICRC's deputy head of public relations, manages the hotline for journalists on dangerous assignments. She explains how the ICRC can help.
What are the main dangers faced by journalists reporting from conflict zones or areas affected by other forms of violence? Is it safer for them today than it was in the past?
War reporting is no safer today than it was in the past. Despite all the safety measures adopted and all the precautions taken, it remains a very dangerous business.
The Libya example is telling. "Renowned photojournalist killed in Libya," "Libya releases detained journalists," "Freelance reporter shot and wounded in Tripoli": these are but a few of the headlines telling the same story. War zones are dangerous places to work in. Media professionals working in Libya, no matter who they may be – journalists, camera operators, photoreporters or whatever – or whether they are freelancers or not, have not been spared injury, abduction or death.
Deliberate acts of violence against media professionals, which constitute a violation of international humanitarian law, are all too frequent in armed-conflict situations. But the work of media professionals can also be obstructed in many other ways, such as through harassment, censorship, threats, kidnapping or other forms of arbitrary detention. There does not seem to have been any improvement in that regard.
Journalists covering events in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 are no exception. In fact, media professionals are widely perceived to be increasingly at risk. We are very concerned about this.
Does the ICRC keep records of incidents involving journalists on dangerous assignments? Just how big is the problem?
The ICRC does not compile statistics on attacks against journalists or on journalists' deaths, but a number of media-safety organizations do. In a survey entitled "Attacks on the Press in 2011," the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) highlighted some worrying trends.
Unsurprisingly, the CPJ found that the heaviest losses in 2011 occurred in the Middle East and North Africa. "Deaths during dangerous assignments such as the coverage of street protests reached their highest level on record," the report noted. It also stressed that photographers and camera operators paid a particularly heavy toll, that there was a "high proportion of freelancers among the 2011 victims," and that "the number of victims who worked online has increased steadily."
What kind of protection do journalists enjoy under international humanitarian law?
As emphasized by Article 79(1) of Additional Protocol I, journalists enjoy the same protection as civilians. They must therefore be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities. By virtue of customary international law, this dictates that civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities. This rule is applicable both in international and non-international armed conflicts.
In addition, "war correspondents", who are formally authorized to accompany the armed forces, are entitled to prisoner-of-war status upon capture although they are civilians (Article 4 A (4) of the Third Geneva Convention).
What can the ICRC do to help media professionals working in armed-conflict situations?
The ICRC is well known for what it does for civilians affected by wars, but less so for the help it can offer journalists on dangerous assignments. Nevertheless, it does have experience helping media professionals in armed-conflict situations.
In 1985, at the request of 16 major media organizations, we set up a hotline for journalists on dangerous assignments.
Can you explain what the hotline is for?
The primary purpose of the ICRC hotline is to enable our organization to take prompt and effective action, whenever possible, when journalists or their crew are arrested, captured, detained, reported missing, wounded or killed in areas where the ICRC is conducting humanitarian activities.
There is a variety of things the ICRC may be able to do. For example, we may be able to seek confirmation of a reported arrest or capture, and obtain access to detained journalists. Or we may be able to provide information to next of kin and employers or professional associations on the whereabouts of a sought-after journalist whenever such information can be obtained. In some cases, the ICRC can help family members restore or maintain contact with a detained journalist, or it can help evacuate wounded journalists. In worst-case scenarios, it may be able to recover or transfer mortal remains.
Can the ICRC demand the release of a detained journalist?
The ICRC will not demand the release of a detained journalist or otherwise advocate for freedom of expression or the right to information, as this lies beyond its mandate. The purpose of the ICRC's visits to detainees is purely humanitarian. The ICRC assesses the conditions in which detainees are being held, and asks the authorities to improve them if necessary. It may open a dialogue with authorities in order to ensure that applicable procedural and judicial guarantees have been respected. It also provides detainees with humanitarian assistance where needed.
The ICRC often steps in when nobody else can. However, it is important to note that the services offered through the hotline are strictly humanitarian and that the ICRC will only be able to do for journalists what it can do for other civilians in similar situations. Of course, the ICRC can take action only in places where it already has staff on the ground.
How can journalists, their families or their employers report a case over the hotline?
They can contact the closest ICRC office, or call the dedicated 24-hour hotline number +41 79 217 32 85, or send an e-mail message to email@example.com, in order to ask for help and advice.
Basic information such as the person's name, date of birth and nationality, information about the circumstances surrounding the incident, if available, and the reasons for which assistance is being requested, should be provided. The information will subsequently be passed on to specialized ICRC staff in the field.
How many requests have you received from media personnel over the past year? Do they all reach you over the telephone hotline?
Since the beginning of 2011, over 60 media professionals working in conflict zones or other areas affected by violence, including 50 in Libya alone – working independently or for media outlets – have requested and received some kind of assistance from the ICRC.
Most of them contacted ICRC delegations in the field by calling or visiting our offices. Requests to evacuate the journalists trapped in the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli in August 2011 reached us by phone, by e-mail, and even by Twitter. In Syria, journalists also used Twitter in one instance, as no other option was available.
Have you always been successful in handling the requests? Can you give us examples?
When taking a request, we generally explain what we can do; if we are not in a position to help, we also explain why. Obtaining results almost always requires the cooperation of several staff members involved in different activities, such as visiting people held in detention facilities, tracing missing persons or providing medical assistance. It can be a long and difficult process, which mostly takes place behind the scenes. There is never a guarantee that what we do will result in success.
Over the past year, the ICRC has succeeded in visiting a number of journalists in Libyan prisons, and it has sometimes been able to give the journalists the opportunity to send messages to their families. In other instances, the ICRC has intervened with the authorities to obtain information. Even a tiny piece of information can be important. For example, a confirmation that a person is being held captive – that he or she is alive – can bring enormous relief to worried families and employers.
Since the hotline was set up in 1985, we have helped journalists in a number of countries.
In June 2006, for example, when a Swedish journalist covering a demonstration in Mogadishu was killed, the ICRC offered its services to the Swedish embassy. The next day, the body was flown to Nairobi, along with four other journalists who had asked to be evacuated.
In November 2006, when a Colombian correspondent of Telesur was arrested at Bogota airport by security services, ICRC delegates visited him the day after he arrived in Barranquilla prison. He was released three months later.
In March 2003, after a battle near Basra in which two journalists covering the Iraqi war for ITN were killed and a third managed to escape, a fourth journalist was reported missing. He was believed to be dead, although there was no proof of his death. The ICRC and the Iraqi Red Crescent made extensive efforts to locate him, immediately after the incident and over the following years – so far, unfortunately, without success.
Why does the ICRC not share more information on the cases it handles through its hotline?
Some of the actions undertaken by the ICRC, such as the evacuation in August last year of more than 30 journalists from the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli, Libya, have been given extensive media coverage, but most efforts take place out of the public view.
For example, when the ICRC was asked to visit detained journalists in Libya and help them get back in touch with their employers or their families; or in Syria, when the ICRC was approached to help evacuate wounded journalists.
The ICRC deals with hotline cases in a confidential manner and expects in return that those requesting assistance will treat the information given to them with the same discretion. There are two reasons for this: one is that confidentiality is a key tool of the ICRC's work, which has proven effective in helping the organization to earn and maintain the trust of everyone it has to deal with and to gain access to places where nobody else is allowed in. The other reason for the ICRC's insistence on confidentiality is that it often has to work in very sensitive situations – so sensitive, in fact, that life and death may hang in the balance.


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A horse walks into a bar.
No punchline, just a video of a Burnley fan casually riding his horse into a rocking Princess Royal following yesterday's dramatic 2-1 win over Everton.
Scott Arfield's 90th minute winner no doubt left many inside Turf Moor feeling a little hoarse but it didn't stop this lone ranger nipping out for a celebratory pint afterwards.
Gives a whole new meaning to 'No Neigh Never'.

subset: commoncrawl


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Madden NFL was literally on stage with the Wii U, the day the console was formally revealed to the world. The unspoken message: No more cartoony, casual US football or minigame crap, this is a sports title you can actually take seriously on a Nintendo console. This happened more than a year ago, at E3 2011.
Since then, EA Sports has built a Madden for the Wii U that not only leaves out the big-boy version's No. 1 new feature — real-time physics — but also we find out that Madden Ultimate Team won't be a part of the Wii U release, either. Nor will online team play, though you can play with up to five people in local multiplayer. It's been nine years since I played local multiplayer in Madden with as many as three other people. You?
Here's a great exchange between ESPN's video games writer, Jon Robinson, and Yuri Bialoskursky, the producer of Madden's Wii U version.
Robinson: But how can you say that online is such an emphasis and then not include features like Madden Ultimate Team?
Bialoskursky: Madden Ultimate Team is something that we're not going to have in year one. It's another one that we plan to add in as we go.
Robinson: You're killing me.
Bialoskursky: Again, we have other features that are really great. Connected Careers is going to take a lot of your time. Being able to interact and play against other people online while you try and create a legend out of yourself or picking one of those old legends like a Vince Lombardi or a Barry Sanders and taking them through a career is fun. There is a lot to look forward to on the Wii U.
Nintendo has been a distant third in gamers' online multiplayer expectations since forever. Though everything suggests the Wii U will be as powerful as the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, the fact its Madden won't have all the online multiplayer features of the PS3 or the 360 — nor will it be tasked with a heavyweight processing feature like runtime physics — doesn't speak of Wii U as a true sibling.
The snag holding back Ultimate Team on Wii U, by my guessing anyway, wouldn't seem to have anything to do with the capabilities of the console or the new Nintendo Network infrastructure. Ultimate Team's gameplay is basically a one-off online multiplayer match, just with really different rosters. What sets the mode apart is its marketplace, where packs of player cards are bought, traded in, auctioned and sold. Maybe there are some networking limitations involved, but the simplest explanation, to me, is that Nintendo and EA Sports couldn't come to an agreement on who makes how much money off these transactions — which has been a huge revenue engine for the label.
Regardless, EA Sports has had more than a year to iron out its multiplayer offerings for Madden NFL 13 on the Wii U. Further, I was told that the decision to move forward with real-time physics for Madden NFL 13 was made back in January. I can understand why that wouldn't extend to the PS Vita version of the game; there's no good answer for why the Wii U couldn't be included, if it really is as powerful a machine as the PS3 and 360. But none of this can be blamed on last-minute pressure when Madden stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nintendo's new console more than a year ago.
'Madden NFL 13' Wii U Q&A [ESPN]


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Gin pole welding project
So what is a Gin Pole you may ask? And why would you want to build one? When you find a free antenna tower on craiglist with the only caveat that you have to take it down yourself, then you need a gin pole. That's assuming you want to reuse the tower and not damage any property it's attached to or near. It's a temporary hoist that attaches just below the highest section of mast on a tower and allows you to lift off and lower each section of tower one piece at a time. You use it the in reverse to assemble a tower.
Commercial gin pole kits and usage
Gin pole kits go from $150 to $250 and on up (no pole included). I found this gin pole kit on ebay and almost bought it. Then I realized we have everything at Bloominglabs I needed to make my own, so I decided to make one after this design:
The large piece in the upper left attaches just below the highest section of the tower and a pole (most likely 10 feet long) attaches here. The part in the upper right with the pulley on top sits on top of the pole and this should be near the top of the tower. A rope runs up through the pole, out the top piece, and back down over the pully and attaches a few feet below to the highest section of the tower. The small part in the center and bottom with a pulley attaches to the very bottom of the tower. The rope coming down out of the bottom of the pole runs through this and into the hands of your assistant on the ground. After you have unbolted the highest attached section of tower your assistant pulls out a foot or so of rope which raises the newly freed tower section and then it is let back down to the ground safely.
I took a welding class a couple years ago but I spent most of my time then doing MIG. Adam at our space has brought in a nice TIG machine which I need practice on. Adam was kind enough to give me a thorough TIG lesson on a slow Sunday. I was able to knock out 99% of this project in a half day.
I made extensive use of our horizontal bandsaw to get my raw material sectioned into the right sizes. All of the metal stock I used came from a local mega home store and another hardware store in town. I sized my kit to support a 1.5" rigid conduit pole. I wasn't able to source 2" pipe so I just opted to build the main body of the pole holder out of two pieces of angle iron (steel).
Here are some of my first welds on this project:
You can see nicer welds along the 2nd pic, of course those are Adam's ;-)
As you can see, I've over-engineered this device because I really really don't want anything to go wrong when using it. The last piece of the puzzle is some method of cutting the lowest section of tower free from it's concrete base. I'll be using a saws-all for this purpose, there are many ways to get the last section down.
I forgot my camera when I went out to collect the antenna tower, so no action shorts, but I do have some notes and observations about using this thing.
Final thoughts
First, there was one small piece I left out of my setup from the ebay kit I found. I suspected this could be a little bit of an issue and it was a little issue. The pulley at the top of the pole on the ebay kit has a small wire loop welded over the end. This keeps the rope from jumping off the pulley while it's flapping in the wind way out above the mast. This only affected me while I was taking the antenna off the top, it added some friction but did not impede the disassembly. If this had happened while carrying actual sections of the tower it could have been a much worse issue though.
Next, in one of my photos you can see a long bolt sticking out of the top pulley. It is fully tightened and locked on the pole. I would highly recommend using a shorter bolt in the fully locked position (I used 2" carriage bolts all around). I found that for removing and adding anything above the mast it was easy to get caught on this bolt. As I attempted to extend the pole above the existing antenna this was a very annoying problem. Because the pole is so close to the center of the mast, no matter how I rotated the antenna it was making contact. I was able to force it past, but this bolt was awful.
Make sure you have enough rope, but that should be obvious. 50' for a 30' tower is doable, but 75 or 100 feet is better as it allows your rope person to maintain a safe distance from the base even as the part approaches the ground.
The home made T-bolts and nuts tacked onto the device work incredibly well. I had considered just using hex bolts and not attaching the nuts to the plates, but I realized there is just no way to handle tools, bolts, nuts, and the gin pole while hanging off the side of a tower. Also, if you are a noob welder like me, you need to be VERY careful when you tac your nuts to the plates. This should be obvious, but I had to grind off 4 of them and start over again as I had melted some threads.


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5250.0 - Australian Business Expectations, Sep 2001 and Sep 2002
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 20/09/2001
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ABS business sentiment snapshot taken prior to USA and Ansett influences
The Survey of Business Expectations data released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that business profit expectations continued their upward trend and that the rate of decline in operating income has slowed for the first time in two years.
However, the Director of the Survey, Ms Merry Branson said the results, which were enumerated between 17 July and 4 September 2001, do not reflect the impact on business sentiment from events in the US last week or by the suspension of operations of Ansett Airlines.
The next Survey will be enumerated between 16 October and 4 December 2001 and the results released on 20 December.
Details are available in Australian Business Expectations December Qtr 2001 and September Qtr 2002 (cat. no. 5250.0) available from ABS bookshops. If you wish to purchase a copy of this publication, contact the ABS Bookshop in your capital city.
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BMS can consult on or design broach tooling for any broaching application, using the latest 3-D autocad software.
BMS can run your broach production. Tonnage capacities to 75 tons, and stroke capacities to 120". Long or short runs.
BMS offers Parts and Service for most makes and models of broaching machines produced in the U.S..


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Alienware occupies an interesting position in the PC integration space, especially in relation to video producers. As their über-geek name suggests, they got into this business as a gaming-oriented company, poised to blow the mainstream likes of Dell out of the water with their hot-rod gaming PCs, equipped with the sort of graphics acceleration firepower that could make the latest fast-paced, graphics-intensive games run like nobody's business. Appropriately enough, the system they sent for review came with a litany of benchmarks for games like Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2003, 3D Mark 2005, and the like.
So where does the pro videographer fit in this gaming-centric space? Long before Alienware shipped out what may be the ultimate gamer-targetted system, the Star Wars line they introduced this spring, the company figured out that the same sort of turbocharging components they were using to attract the gaming market were essential equipment for video producers as well, at least those who were looking to equip their editing bays with all-purpose Windows PCs that matched their needs more expertly than the usual run of assembly-line systems from the mass-market PC integration set.
These aren't turnkey video systems, of course, but Alienware does send out PCs fully loaded with leading NLEs like Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas 6, or other popular pro applications like discreet 3ds max 7. They've also answered the other emergent trend (and often shaky proposition) of supplying notebook systems designed specifically for processor-intensive tasks like video editing and media postproduction. With their latest line of "Mobile Desktop" systems, such as the MJ12m-7700 submitted for review, they've assembled some absolutely powerhouse PCs that are expertly positioned for use in any Windows-based videographer's editing bay—especially if it's a roving one.
Alienware describes the MJ12m-7700 as a mobile desktop, and it's an apt description. Not only does the MJ12 pack all the performance you'd expect in a desktop, but it also does so without the pretense to lightweight mobility of many notebooks. Of course it's big for a laptop, with a 17" ClearView LCD, but I've certainly handled lighter 17" notebooks. At 12.5 lbs, this one is hardly a welterweight, and even if you're used to toting heavy camera rigs you'll notice it soon enough when you're hauling it through airports. It also generates a striking amount of heat; used in my home office in March, it completely eliminated the need for the space heater that saves my joints from crackling on Wisconsin winter nights.
The payoff, of course, is performance. I've worked with this system for three months now, through a number of software reviews and a host of successful projects. It's easily slipped into the role of my workhorse production system, displacing a stalwart 3.0GHz Gateway PC with HT and a 2.4GHz Sony VAIO (both sizeable desktop systems) that's been getting long in the tooth for quite some time but is so well-loaded with software that it's been hard to let it go. And given that I work with a morass of bad habits—primarily, working with way too many applications open at once, particularly as I try to get other work done while waiting impatiently for rendering times to pass—the Alienware stood up admirably to such abuse, and still managed to churn out faster rendering times than the competition.
For the record, the Alienware system I received shipped with Windows XP Pro and featured a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 processor with HT and an 800MHz FSB, 1GB RAM (2 DIMMs), NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 256MB video card, a Promise 2+0 Stripe/RAID0 80GB SCSI hard disk, a widescreen 17" SXGA+ LCD, and an NEC ND-6500A 8X DVD±R/RW drive with DVD+R DL support. (The NVIDIA Go 6800, incidentally, has been extremely well-received, and in some respects it's the heart of the system.) The Alienware also comes with four USB 2.0 ports and two 4-pin FireWire ports, which strikes me as pure genius on a laptop (try hunting down another laptop with multiple FW ports). A final storage-support perk is the array of Flash media drives on the side of the Alienware chassis, including Memory Stick, SD, CF Microdrive, and SmartMedia.
The Alienware's 17" widescreen display turns out to be quite a bit of real estate for previewing your work, and if that doesn't satisfy you, there's plenty of room for expanding that window via external monitors, thanks to the analog and DVI Video Out ports on the back.
The Gateway used for comparison testing is a 3GHz 700XL with HT technology and 512MB RAM running Windows XP Pro.
For the purposes of this review, I repeated the rendering steps of a recent real-world project that—in the real world of its completion—I produced entirely on the Alienware, but in the tight production time frame, as you might expect, didn't have the opportunity to shadow all the steps on another PC for speed comparisons. This project, described in this issue's Nonlinear Editor, was a photo montage I built for presentation at a wedding reception in Wilmington, N.C. I had less than 10 days to clean up the scanned photos, develop production concepts around the archival material I was given, create mosaics, cut and massage the music clips, add motion to the images and sync them to the soundtrack in Canopus Imaginate, export and render low bitrate files for Web review, make changes to the individual sections, integrate the project in Premiere and add transitions and other effects, render, and author for DVD. Naturally, this didn't leave a lot of time for clean-room testing, but after the fact I found I had a little more breathing room for re-rendering the project files and various segments on the Gateway 3.0GHz HT system for comparison's sake.
The Alienware topped the Gateway across the board. A typical 77MB Imaginate project file, heavy with cuts, pans, zooms, and tilts, rendered to DV-AVI in 6:55 on the Alienware, 7:27 on the Gateway.
The complete montage, after editing in Premiere, topped out at six minutes; not exactly longform work, but sufficient for comparing rendering times. Some of the more movement- and effects-intensive segments proved difficult to preview on both systems during editing, although the Alienware seemed to fare about 20% better on the more challenging segments, and was generally smoother for preview. Rendering the complete 1.32GB DV-AVI file with its roughly 11,000 frames from Premiere took 8:32 on the Alienware, 9:59 on the Gateway. Project that over an 80-minute production with an equivalent amount of effects and you save about 19 minutes. Rendering results with a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 file from Premiere Pro showed a similar time differential: 10:46 for the Alienware, 12:33 for the Gateway. Output quality was excellent in both cases.
It's worth noting a few other characteristics of this laptop. As you'd expect, it offers wireless support via internal 802.11b in addition to Ethernet; it also comes with a built-in BisonCam which shoots video from a tiny peephole at the top of the LCD. Battery life, another key issue, is estimated at four hours. I noticed performance drops before that four-hour benchmark, but it's just not part of my working style to try and do the type of computationally intensive tasks that comprise most of my work (and my interest in a PC like the Alienware) on battery power. The performance of the Alienware's Lithium Ion battery has taken some heat elsewhere, and I, likewise, didn't find it the most impressive part of the system's performance.
But for me, as a desktop-oriented laptop user, that's not a huge shortcoming in a desktop-replacement laptop that I want to use in multiple offices and editing environments. What this system does deliver is significant processing and speed improvements over immobile desktop systems, and that more than meets the criteria of what a mobile desktop is and ought to be.


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The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved a rules change in baseball that allows umpires to conference in order to confirm or overturn an original call on whether a fielder caught a ball hit to the outfield.
Current NCAA baseball rules allow umpires to conference on certain close plays in order to get calls right. Catches in the outfield now have been added to that list of plays.
Panel members, who met via conference call Tuesday, also approved expanding the experimental video replay rule to include "catch" and "no catch" plays. Starting in 2015, conferences will also be able to request through the rules committee to use the experimental video replay rule in regular season games in addition to conference tournament games.
The video replay rule has been in effect at the Men's College World Series since 2012 and is expected to last another two seasons. The "catch" or "no catch" scenarios will join the following plays that can be reviewed:
deciding if an apparent home run is fair or foul;
deciding whether a batted ball left the playing field for a home run or a ground-rule double;
spectator-interference plays (only on plays involving home run balls); and
deciding if a batted ball is fair or foul.
So far the replay rule has not been used at the MCWS.
Under the "catch" or "no catch" rule, if a play to the outfield originally is called a catch but is overturned by umpire conference or through video evidence, the play will be declared dead and the batter will be placed at first base. Each base runner will be advanced one base from the position occupied at the time of the pitch.
If the play is overturned in foul territory, it will be ruled a foul ball and all runners will return to the base they occupied at the time of the pitch.
On plays to the outfield that are overturned from "no catch" to "catch," all action prior to the ball being declared dead will be disallowed. The batter will be declared out and all runners returned to the base they occupied at the time of the pitch.
The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee also wants conferences to apply to use the experimental video replay rule next spring. In 2014, the committee granted permission for the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the West Coast Conference to use the instant replay rule in conference tournament games.
The West Coast Conference had two video reviews in its 2014 conference tournament. One review confirmed the call of a foul ball hit down the left field line, and the other review didn't have a conclusive angle on a ball hit down the right field line that was ruled fair, allowing the original fair-ball call to remain.
Hit batter
The panel approved a new rule change regarding batters hit by pitches.
Starting in 2015, a batter must make an attempt to avoid being hit by the ball. If the umpire rules the batter did not make an attempt to get out of the way, or that he leaned into the path of the ball of the ball or intentionally tried to be hit by the ball, a pitch inside the strike zone that touches the batter will be called a strike. If the pitch is outside the strike zone, it will be called a ball. In either case, the batter will not be awarded first base.
Foul poles
The panel approved a proposal that requires all foul poles on fields operated by NCAA schools to be painted fluorescent yellow by the 2016 season.
The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee received feedback that some facilities have white, red or blue foul poles, but fluorescent yellow is the best color to help umpires determine whether a potential home run is foul or fair.
Seven-inning games
Panel members approved allowing a seven-inning game that was originally scheduled as part of a doubleheader but cannot be started – or had been halted or suspended – to be played as a seven-inning contest the following day or at a future time.
However, stand-alone seven-inning baseball games are prohibited in NCAA play, so the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee wanted to provide specific guidance to ensure the double-header rules are applied consistently around the country.


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The Muslim fasting period of Ramadan has been coming and going for centuries, but never before have Muslim minorities in the West been under such scrutiny. This year's Ramadan starts tomorrow. The UK's Channel 4 TV channel has cleverly launched a set of what it calls "provocative" programming around Ramadan, including tonight's Documentary, A Very British Ramadan, and a call to prayer to be broadcast each morning at 3am.
It's strange that programmes about an ancient religious festival should be seen as provocative at all, but there is now a hardcore Muslim-hating minority across the Western World that never wastes an opportunity to throw hatred at Muslims, much as monkeys in the zoo enjoying throwing shit. Thus, the Channel 4 decision to run Ramadan-themed programmes is a great piece of trolling, designed in part to provoke bigots who think Islam has no place in British society. And it seems to be working.
Of course, the average Muslim-hater has little or no contact with Muslims or the Muslim world. They live in a fantasy land where Muslim countries teem with extremists, and are dangerous places to visit. I admit that I too had preconceived ideas about Muslim countries, especially Arab ones.
Being British and Jewish, I was nervous when I won some contract work in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, in the mid 1990s. I had previously been to Turkey, but the UAE was a more intimidating prospect. The airport welcome was friendly though, and I easily got a cab, with a talkative driver, to my downtown hotel. The UAE is a fairly conservative country, although moderate by the standards of its neighbour, Saudi Arabia. I found that as a foreigner, I could order beer in the hotel, and wasted no time in doing so.
I then learned that Ramadan would begin two days into my visit, and wondered what this would mean. I soon discovered that no food or drink, even water, was served during daylight hours. The office I was working in adjusted its hours to make life easier for its employees, beginning at 7am and ending at 2pm, so that people didn't become too hungry or thirsty during the working day.
At one point, I was in a meeting with an Arab manager, and said I was thirsty. Without thinking, he reached into his desk and produced a bottle of water for me. As I started to drink, he suddenly remembered it was Ramadan, and asked me to drink the water out of sight of the office, in the stairwell. I was discovering that for Arab Muslims, just like for my own Jewish family, religious rules are made to be twisted and broken. People of all origins enjoy their traditions, usually without thinking a great deal about their origins.
The hotel served breakfast early, so that people could eat before sunrise. And people did eat. A lot. Likewise, after sunset, a huge Iftar buffet was laid on to break the fast. Although Ramadan is supposed to be a time of fasting, in fact Muslims tend to eat more during this time than the rest of the year. A huge meal tends to be taken after sunset, and another huge breakfast before the sun rises. As I said, religious rules are made for twisting.
One of the most amusing sights I saw was in the pastry and ice cream shops around the city. In the few minutes before sunset, people would grab a table and peruse the menu. Waiters would stand to attention, waiting. And as the call to prayer began to echo through the city, the waiters rushed out and people shouted their orders. Soon, huge slices of cake and towering ice cream sundaes were being served and devoured.
More entertainment was provided by an ongoing debate over whether nicotine patches were allowed during daylight. Many Emiratis were heavy smokers, and smoking was haraam during daylight, because the smoke was taken orally. The UAE's top mullahs pondered this deep theological problem as the nervous smokers waited; and then, to general relief, they announced that the daytime use of nicotine patches was halal.
My time in Abu Dhabi blew away preconceptions I had about Arab culture. For sure the country is run by a dictatorship, and is a deeply conservative culture. It isn't the kind of place I could have considered staying in long-term – my party lifestyle would have been too severely compromised. Yet the people were among the friendliest I had encountered – more so than most European or American strangers I had met in my travels. As for my being of Jewish origin; after a few days I was confident enough to tell locals this fact, and met no hostility at all; the strongest reactions were along the lines of "Ah! If only the Israelis and Palestinians could work together. They are the smartest peoples in the Middle East."
I welcome the Channel 4 experiment in Ramadan programming. For most, open-minded people, it represents the chance to learn something. And anyone who is upset by the coverage deserves to be upset: morons will be morons.


text:
On Saturday morning, March 14, Hussain Mohamed Salim was driving from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, when he received a call on his pager from Mohammed Ayyoub. In addition to being the branch manager of the Dubai Islamic Bank in Abu Dhabi, Salim also served on the bank's finance committee, which oversaw the institution's day-to-day operations.
Salim thought it odd that Ayyoub, who managed the bank's main branch in Dubai, was trying to contact him so early in the morning, and he called back using his cellular phone. "He immediately asked, 'Where are you, Hussain, at the moment? Are you far away or close to Dubai?' I told him I was [about eighteen miles outside Dubai], on my way to the office," Salim remembered. "Ayyoub said there was a very important matter to discuss. He said he wanted to inform me about it right away."
Ayyoub went on to say that he didn't wish to talk in his office and wanted to meet somewhere away from the bank. They agreed on a site -- a parking lot on the outskirts of the city. Salim arrived first and a few minutes later Ayyoub pulled up in his green Range Rover. Salim was still confused about the clandestine nature of this meeting when Ayyoub slipped into the passenger seat beside him.
Salim asked what was wrong. Ayyoub began by telling Salim that he had made a terrible mistake. He said he had fallen under the spell of an African man and had been transferring money to him abroad. "I was shocked," Salim recalled. "I asked, 'What is the amount? Is it ten million dirhams?'"
(The dirham is the currency of the United Arab Emirates. Ten million dirhams would be slightly more than $2.7 million.)
"More than that," Ayyoub replied. "It's a big amount."
"How much?" Salim asked again.
Ayyoub couldn't bring himself to say the number aloud and so took out a piece of paper, wrote on it, and passed it to Salim. There, on a four-inch-square scrap, Ayyoub had written the figure in ballpoint pen: 891 million dirhams.
Approximately $242 million.
Salim could not believe his eyes. Ayyoub anxiously explained that he was trying to figure out a way to get the money back but he had been unable to reach the African man. He told Salim that auditors from the United Arab Emirates' Central Bank -- the country's main banking authority -- were conducting their annual audit and were asking questions about some of the wire transfers. He had stalled them, but they were becoming insistent.
"I asked how he had transferred so much money without approval or authorization," Salim later recalled. "Ayyoub said he had been under the influence of, or pressured by, the rich man to transfer the money." The rich man had told Ayyoub that he could make the money magically reappear whenever he wanted so Ayyoub shouldn't worry about forwarding him the funds. Ayyoub told Salim he had been trying to call the rich man for several days, to no avail. (The bank's telephone records would later show that as soon as government auditors began their review, Ayyoub dialed the man's phone number in Africa more than 150 times over several days.)
Ayyoub was hoping Salim might have a suggestion about what to do, but Salim was dumbfounded. "I did not know what to tell him or what to think," Salim testified in a subsequent affidavit. "So much money transferred with no authority. I thought, maybe the bank is sinking." After the two men parted, Salim drove to the home of the bank's chairman, Saeed bin Ahmed Lootah. "I was not sure how to start. What to say?" Salim remembered. "I told him the story. He was incredulous. 'What? Ayyoub did that? What's the amount? When did it happen? Why did he do it?'"
Other officers of the privately owned bank were called to Lootah's home. "The general reaction of all the people at the chairman's house was shock," Salim added. Ayyoub was then summoned and he repeated his story. This time, however, Ayyoub divulged the name of the rich African.
He said the man's name was Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko.
He called him Baba.
Miami's mystery man may be a mystery no longer. For more than a year Baba Sissoko charmed South Floridians with his lavish spending and calculated acts of charity. He bought condos on Brickell Key, purchased dozens of luxury automobiles in South Dade, and spent millions in the shops and boutiques of Bal Harbour. He gave $300,000 to Miami Central High School so its marching band could attend the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, donated $1.2 million to Camillus House, and once tipped a masseuse $10,000.
He did all of this while fighting a nasty legal battle with the U.S. Attorney's Office over his arrest for attempting to bribe a Customs agent who was holding up the transfer of helicopters from Miami to the tiny African nation of Gambia. Eventually he pleaded guilty to paying an illegal gratuity, spent 43 days in jail, and several weeks under house arrest before being deported this past November. His exploits were chronicled by local and national media, including New Times, which published three stories about him between September and November 1997.
When Sissoko left Miami, he took with him the true answer to the question that had most intrigued admirers and detractors alike: Where did his money come from? He seemed to have as many answers to that question as he had wives. The New York Times reported that he began his entrepreneurial career as a textile trader in India. His Miami attorneys distributed a biography in which he had become wealthy when oil was discovered on land he owned. Sissoko, however, told an Associated Press reporter that he had never owned land that contained oil; rather, he asserted, he was an oil middleman.
In 1996, according to the Miami Herald, Sissoko told a French-language magazine that he made his fortune in Gabon, largely in the wood trade. And in 1997 the Herald reported what it described as "prevalent rumors" that Sissoko's fortune was the result of his having looted archaeological treasures from Mali. The most fanciful account, promoted by Sissoko himself, had him striking it rich while working as a laborer in the diamond mines of Liberia.
Authorities now believe they know the source of the man's wealth. Within days of Ayyoub's admission, investigators around the globe began snooping their way along a trail of money that has led directly to Sissoko. Bank records show that between August 1995 and January 1998, nearly $81 million was wired from the Dubai Islamic Bank to bank accounts under Sissoko's control in New York and Miami. Approximately $72 million was sent to banks in Switzerland and the Isle of Man. Another $10 million was charged on a Visa card issued by the Dubai Islamic Bank in Sissoko's name, with most of the purchases made in Miami. And finally, auditors say, they discovered that nearly $80 million was carried out of the Dubai Islamic Bank in cash during that 30-month period. Witnesses told United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities that the money was picked up by Sissoko's minions and carted off in plastic shopping bags.
According to Rob Ellison, an English bank investigator who has been hired by the UAE government to track down Sissoko and his assets, warrants have been issued for Sissoko's arrest in both the UAE and Switzerland, where he is now suspected of money laundering. Sissoko, however, has not been charged with a crime in either country.
The UAE has also requested the help of both the U.S. Justice Department and the Treasury Department in investigating Sissoko's activities. New Times has confirmed the "request for judicial assistance" -- as it is formally known -- and has learned that twice in recent months U.S. Customs agents have been dispatched to Dubai to share information with UAE officials and to gather evidence for a newly initiated criminal investigation against Sissoko here in Miami.
William Richey, a Miami attorney and former state prosecutor who has been retained by the Dubai Islamic Bank to seize Sissoko's assets in the United States, claims he has presented "clear and compelling" evidence to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami that Sissoko engaged in money laundering in the United States. "The allegations outlined against Mr. Sissoko constitute a violation of federal criminal law, and I would assume the U.S. Attorney's Office would investigate that and take the appropriate steps," he says. The U.S. Attorney's Office had no comment on the allegations.
"This is a world-class con man, a world-class fraudster," adds Richey. "He essentially conned most of Dade County and South Florida. Most people here believed in him." Richey, along with co-counsel Alan Fine, filed a lawsuit last month in state court against Sissoko, hoping to recover as much money and property as possible. The entire lawsuit remained under seal until earlier this week.
Sissoko's principal attorney in Miami, Thomas Spencer, was dumbfounded by the allegations. "Wow," he said after learning of the lawsuit. "I am just stunned, absolutely stunned. This is unbelievable. What a shame." Spencer noted he has been unable to reach Sissoko for three weeks. "All of the phone lines we had for him were suddenly disconnected," he said. "Maybe this explains why."
As a result of the lawsuit, Sissoko's bank accounts in Miami and New York have been frozen for nearly a month. Accounts in Switzerland and the Isle of Man have also been frozen. "What we are trying to do now more than anything else is to find the money," Richey explains. "We are going from bank to bank looking for assets. And to the extent that we can find his assets -- either money or property -- we are going to take steps to recover those assets for the bank in Dubai."
To date, Richey and Rob Ellison have had only limited success. Just two million dollars was left in the Swiss accounts, and about a million in the United States. Most of the accounts had been cleaned out and the money transferred to Africa, Ellison says.
But Richey is not limiting his search to banks. He has a team of private investigators tracing items purchased by Sissoko so they too can be seized, including the condominiums Sissoko bought on Brickell Key near downtown Miami. "We have several million dollars' worth of property here in Dade County that we are going to be acting on," Richey says.
Another target for seizure: The $60,000 Mercedes-Benz automobiles Sissoko gave as gifts to his Miami attorneys -- H.T. Smith, Tom Spencer, and Ted Klein. "We will probably have some dialogue with those attorneys," Richey notes. "Those lawyers are reputable, good, decent people, and to the degree that those are gifts bought with stolen money, I feel comfortable that those attorneys will do the right thing and would not want to be holding the proceeds of a theft."
Ultimately, Richey adds, it will be up to the courts to decide if the cars, the property, and the money in the frozen accounts will be turned over to the Dubai Islamic Bank.
Spencer said he and the other attorneys had no way of knowing the cars were not legitimate gifts. "I don't see that the bank would have any legal right to seize them," he added.
Regarding Sissoko's philanthropy, both Richey and Ellison have recommended to bank officials in Dubai that the institution not try to recover the money Sissoko donated to Camillus House, the venerable Miami homeless shelter. "I've made the recommendation that the bank shouldn't do anything about the Camillus House donation," Ellison affirms. "Except if there is a plaque up anywhere that says this facility was provided by the generosity of Sissoko, then that should come down and one should go up that says this was provided by the generosity of Dubai Islamic Bank."
The same holds for the donation to Miami Central High School.
In Dubai, Ayyoub and the bank's chief accountant, Hussein El Refaie -- who has admitted assisting Ayyoub in making the transfers to Sissoko's accounts -- were arrested this past March and charged with embezzlement. Though the government did not want to precipitate a public scandal and tried to keep the bank's losses secret, word leaked out. An independent, Arabic-language newspaper published a story in late March indicating that a large sum of money was missing from the Dubai Islamic Bank. Panic ensued.
In a matter of hours, hundreds of people lined up to retrieve their savings from the bank. In only a few days, more than two billion dirhams ($545 million) was withdrawn by individuals who were afraid the bank was about to go under.
The run on the bank not only threatened to destroy the Dubai Islamic Bank, but it began to undermine the stability of other banks in the country. "The government was very concerned that the run on the bank would spread," confirms an American embassy source who asked not to be identified. "It was front-page news here and a lot of people were talking about it."
The government was forced to step in; it provided 1.7 billion dirhams ($463 million) in emergency loans to restore confidence in the bank. It also announced that it was appointing a special four-member executive committee to take over daily operations of the institution and to investigate what had occurred.
Publicly the UAE government downplayed the crisis. Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Deputy Ruler of Dubai and the country's minister of finance and industry, issued a statement describing the bank's problems as "a little difficulty that did not lead to any financial losses either in the bank's investments or depositors' accounts."
That "little difficulty" has kept Ellison busy for nearly four months now. Hired by the bank's newly appointed executive committee to sort through the tangled finances and sordid tales of mismanagement, Ellison is a globe-trotting professional troubleshooter for wayward banks. Over the years he has dealt with all manner of thievery and incompetence among bank managers, he says, but among all those experiences he says he has never encountered a stranger tale than the one he found at the Dubai Islamic Bank. "I have never been in a situation like this one before," he says. "Never."
The earliest record Ellison could find of Sissoko having contact with the bank was in the summer of 1995, when he applied for and received an automobile loan. "That was his introduction to the bank," Ellison says. "The question everyone asks is, 'If Sissoko was such a rich man, why did he need a bank to purchase a car?'" Ellison suspects the loan was a pretext to meet bank officials like Mohammed Ayyoub.
In his statements to bank executives and police, Ayyoub said Sissoko invited him to have dinner. According to Ellison, Ayyoub visited a villa Sissoko was renting in Dubai and came to believe that Sissoko was wealthy. "Bankers love rich men," Ellison observes. "They're drawn to them." Sissoko apparently dazzled Ayyoub, at one point showing him a room Sissoko claimed was filled with cash and gold bullion. Ellison believes this was part of Sissoko's plan to gain Ayyoub's confidence. "When they went inside the room, there were flashing lights and it was hard to see," Ellison says. "Who knows what was really in there?"
Investigators are still attempting to determine Sissoko's wealth before he met Ayyoub. "He could be a clever con man who has been doing things like this for years and who came to Dubai because he heard there were rich pickings in the Gulf," Ellison speculates. "We just don't know. But so far we've come up with nothing to suggest that Sissoko had more than a relatively small sum of money with him when he arrived."
According to Ellison, Ayyoub believed Sissoko had special powers and could use black magic to control individuals around him. Ayyoub described one encounter in which Sissoko applied some sort of potion to Ayyoub's skin. "It was left on him until it dried and then he was told to take a shower," recalls Ellison. "His version of events is that ever since that happened he always did what Sissoko told him to do."
Ayyoub also claimed that Sissoko hung a black glass ball from the ceiling of Ayyoub's bedroom. According to Ayyoub, Sissoko said he could watch Ayyoub through that ball and would know everything the banker was doing.
Sissoko then explained that he was about to embark on certain business ventures and needed Ayyoub to provide him the necessary funds. He assured Ayyoub that he could make the money reappear any time he wanted and that he would add an appropriate profit for the bank. The spellbound Ayyoub agreed and followed Sissoko's instructions.
During the next two and a half years, Ellison explains, Sissoko would either meet with or call Ayyoub whenever he needed money: "Sissoko began each conversation with the words, 'Baba here,' or 'Baba speaking.'" Once Ayyoub heard Sissoko's voice and those words, he did whatever Sissoko wanted.
From August 1995 until January 1998, 183 separate wire transfers were made between Dubai and the United States. The smallest individual transaction was $42,000; the largest $966,000. Court and bank records show that during those two and a half years, money from the Dubai Islamic Bank was transferred to the following U.S. institutions:
*Citibank in New York received $37.2 million, which was deposited into an account bearing Sissoko's name
*Barnett Bank in Miami received $26.5 million, which was deposited into an account under the name Abdou Karim Pouye, who has been described by Sissoko's attorneys as his chief financial officer overseeing daily operations of Sissoko's businesses
*City National Bank in Miami received $10.7 million for an account in Pouye's name
*NationsBank in Miami received $2.4 million for an account in Pouye's name
*First Union Bank in Miami received $1.4 million for an account in Pouye's name
*Commercebank National Association in Miami received $400,000 for an account in Pouye's name
In Switzerland Sissoko's preferred bank was Banque Multi Commerciale, in Geneva. Ellison says it received nearly $68 million. He also used the Geneva branch of New York-based Citibank for about $2 million in transfers. On the Isle of Man, located off the coast of England, $150,000 was deposited into an account at Barclays Bank.
In addition, tens of millions in cash turned up missing from the Dubai Islamic Bank. "As I understand it," Ellison relates, "the sum of money that left the bank in cash was $80 million. It was carried out over time in bags. They were plastic bags and they had the name of a local supermarket on them. That's literally what was used."
Ayyoub apparently transferred the money to Sissoko without receiving any clearance from his superiors at the bank. "There are no loan documents, no loan agreements. He just gave him the money," Ellison says, adding that Ayyoub was able to hide the transactions by falsifying bank ledgers with the help of the institution's chief accountant, Hussein El Refaie.
Hussain Mohamed Salim, the Abu Dhabi bank manager Ayyoub had called for help, stated in a sworn affidavit that he interviewed Refaie, and the accountant admitted receiving money from Ayyoub in a series of payments totaling about $52,000. Refaie reportedly told Salim the money was given to him to help the poor, but Salim stated in his affidavit that he believed it was a bribe to buy Refaie's help and silence. (The affidavit is included in court papers filed by Richey to freeze Sissoko's various bank accounts in the United States.)
Ellison says he is also trying to determine why the bank's outside accountants, Ernst & Young, failed to discover any irregularities in the bank's bookkeeping during its annual audits. "In December they gave the bank a clean bill of health," Ellison notes. "That's one of the issues we are working on."
In the end, it was an inquisitive auditor from the UAE's Central Bank -- which plays a role similar to the Federal Reserve Board in the United States -- that ultimately exposed the fraud. During its own annual review, after the Ernst & Young audit, something just didn't seem right to the government bureaucrat reviewing the bank's books, Ellison reports: "He would ask a series of questions and Ayyoub and Refaie would answer, and the auditor was never satisfied with the answers he was given." When it appeared that the auditor was going to keep digging and was on the verge of discovering the truth, Ayyoub contacted Salim and the other bank officials.
If the tales of black magic aren't to be believed, then the question is why did Ayyoub do it? "It is something nobody quite understands," Ellison shrugs. "Ayyoub was effectively the chief executive of the bank, on a good salary. He had a family, a big tribe of kids, a new house -- he shouldn't have been under any financial pressure at all. And yet he throws it all away by organizing and orchestrating what must be one of the world's largest bank robberies." So far, Ellison adds, Ayyoub has admitted receiving one car from Sissoko, although seven additional automobiles were found at his house. But there is no evidence to suggest Ayyoub received any of the cash.
According to Ellison, it's true that Ayyoub attempted to recover money from Sissoko on his own, but those efforts not only cost the bank even more money, they have now led investigators down another bizarre and unexpected path.
Ayyoub has told authorities that in early December of last year, a man named Cherif Haidara came to see him at the bank. "He told Ayyoub he could assist him in recovering the money from Sissoko," Ellison says. Worried about the impending year-end audits, Ayyoub agreed to pay the man for his assistance. He advanced some cash to Haidara, who returned a few days later, reported on his progress, and asked for more money. This went on for several weeks, Ellison recounts, until finally Haidara disappeared completely. "By the time it was over, Ayyoub had paid Haidara nearly three million dollars in bank funds," Ellison sighs, "and he never actually provided any useful information. He was just a con man."
Ellison traced the payments made to Haidara and discovered that Ayyoub had transferred a total of $2.85 million from the Dubai Islamic Bank to a numbered account at Merrill Lynch in New York between December 7, 1997, and January 6, 1998. Just last week Merrill Lynch confirmed for Ellison that the account was controlled by Haidara.
When Ayyoub confessed to authorities in March, he also told them about Haidara. Ellison suspects Haidara probably has some connection to Sissoko as well -- how else would he have known that Ayyoub had secretly transferred money to him?
By the end of March, UAE police had issued a warrant for Haidara's arrest. A few weeks later authorities discovered that he had re-entered the country and they promptly raided his home. "When they arrested him, he had in his possession five million Bahraini dinars," Ellison says. (The Bahraini dinar is the currency of the small island nation of Bahrain, located in the Persian Gulf. Five million Bahraini dinars is worth about $13.2 million.)
"It was subsequently discovered that these five million Bahraini dinars were actually counterfeit currency notes," Ellison says with amazement. Authorities believe the bills were the work of a criminal ring that has reportedly printed more than 150 million Bahraini dinars ($400 million) to spread throughout the Middle East. The phony bills are believed to have been produced in Brazil.
Does Sissoko have anything to do with the counterfeit dinars? Ellison has asked himself that question but says there is no evidence to support a connection. Still, he says, one of the reasons police arrested Haidara and thereby found the money was their suspicion that he was somehow tied to Sissoko. "It's all quite amazing," Ellison laughs.
Just about everything associated with Foutanga Dit Babani Sissoko can be described as amazing. He first came to the attention of law enforcement agencies here in Miami during the summer of 1996, when two of his employees purchased a pair of Vietnam-era helicopters and sought to have them shipped to the West African nation of Gambia, where Sissoko owned a hotel and a casino. Those particular helicopters needed a special export license. Rather than apply for the necessary permits, the pair tried to smuggle them out of the country and were caught by Customs agents at Miami International Airport.
The two Sissoko lackeys then attempted to bribe a Customs agent. The agent reported the bribe to his superiors, who then set up a sting operation that ensnared Sissoko. In secretly recorded telephone conversations, Sissoko promised additional payments to the Customs agent if he allowed the helicopters to be shipped without the permits. As a result, and unbeknown to Sissoko, an international warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of attempting to bribe a U.S. Customs agent.
In the meantime, Sissoko concentrated on his chief priority -- starting up his own airline, Air Dabia. For more than a year he had been buying passenger jets and other aircraft in the United States -- apparently with money provided by the Dubai Islamic Bank.
One of the individuals Sissoko did business with was John Catsimatidis, CEO of a New York supermarket chain, who sold Sissoko a pair of jetliners for three million dollars. Catsimatidis also happened to be a major Democratic Party fundraiser. Last year he told the New York Times he had initially approached Sissoko in 1996 about donating to the Democratic Party. Indeed, two months before the 1996 presidential election, Sissoko was invited to attend a dinner party with President Clinton in Washington. He accepted.
Unfortunately Sissoko was unable to go. Just days before the September 6, 1996, White House gala, he was arrested by Interpol in Geneva, Switzerland, on warrants issued in Florida. In October he arrived in Miami in handcuffs and was subsequently released after posting a $20 million bond -- the largest bond ever issued in a criminal case in the federal Southern District of Florida.
A large entourage followed Sissoko to Miami and established residence on posh Brickell Key. According to his own attorneys, Sissoko leased ten apartments on the 26th floor of Courvoisier Courts for approximately $50,000 per month; he also purchased five condominiums at Tequesta Point for somewhere between two and three million dollars.
In early March 1997, while walking through the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental, he heard a high school marching band playing and inquired about them. He learned that they were at the hotel playing for a bar mitzvah as part of their effort to raise enough money to attend the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Sissoko was told the school needed $150,000. He immediately wrote them a check for $300,000.
That single act garnered him a priceless amount of favorable publicity from the Miami Herald and local television stations. The remarkable story of the generous African was picked up by national news media and spread across the nation. Soon tales of his generosity were cropping up all over town. A woman told reporters that Sissoko had just bought her a Range Rover. Other people talked about how he handed out hundred-dollar bills to homeless people.
Unreported by the Herald and local television stations, however, were the accounts of people who had worked for Sissoko's fledgling airline. Last year several of them told New Times horror stories about being abused and mistreated by Sissoko's airline managers. They complained that they had been held against their will, hadn't been paid for months, and that his planes were unsafe to fly.
In addition, the Herald never reported Sissoko's heavy-handed attempts to have the bribery charges against him dropped. In addition to a team of powerful local attorneys, he also employed former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh to pressure Justice Department officials. During the process, Bayh and others sought to destroy the reputations of the prosecutors in Miami who were handling the criminal case.
Sissoko even enlisted the support of several current members of Congress, most notably Jacksonville's Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), who personally spoke to Attorney General Janet Reno on Sissoko's behalf. Brown's actions have come under intense scrutiny in recent months, after the St. Petersburg Times reported that, following Brown's contact with Reno, her daughter received a $60,000 Lexus from Pouye, Sissoko's chief financial officer.
Ellison says it appears the money used to purchase that car came from the Dubai Islamic Bank. In Ellison's opinion, Representative Brown's conduct in the Sissoko case has been "highly immoral and a breach of her duty to her constituents." Brown has denied she did anything wrong.
Ellison had looked forward to going after the car given to Brown's daughter, but earlier this month, as a result of the controversy, the car was sold and the proceeds donated to a Washington charity.
Sissoko did not leave his fate completely in the hands of attorneys and bureaucrats. Perhaps conjuring up some of those same forces he may have used on Ayyoub, Sissoko attempted to use black magic to make the bribery case disappear. According to Ewa Adamek, a former member of Sissoko's Miami entourage, he arranged for evil spells to be cast over the prosecutors and presiding judge. Adamek says she was asked by one of Sissoko's aides to carefully spell their names over the telephone for a woman in Africa, who then delivered the names to a remote village in Mali, where a prayer service was conducted. "They prayed that the power of the judge and the prosecutor would be destroyed," she recounts.
That wasn't all. A special mixture of powders and a bottle of violet-color water were brought to Miami by courier from Africa. Some of the powders were surreptitiously spread around the downtown federal courthouse before the hearings, Adamek says. Sissoko poured the rest in the bay waters around Brickell Key, along with milk and salt. "He would watch the way the water carried the milk for a sign of what to do," she recalls.
As for the violet-color water, Sissoko was instructed to wash behind his ears with it twice a day to stave off any danger from those trying to imprison him. "In their minds, this was the most powerful thing they could do to the prosecutors and the judge," Adamek explains. "And they were shocked when it didn't work."
Sissoko spent 43 days in jail and had begun serving the remainder of his time under house arrest on Brickell Key when U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore abruptly decided he could go home. As New Times reported this past November, Moore had secretly orchestrated a $1.2 million donation from Sissoko to Camillus House earlier that month. Within 48 hours of Sissoko's writing the check to the homeless center, Moore signed an order permitting him to leave the country, even though three months remained on his sentence. At the time, Moore was criticized by legal experts for creating the perception that Sissoko bought his way out of confinement.
Now it seems Sissoko did it with someone else's money.
Since being hired four months ago, Rob Ellison has pored over Sissoko's canceled checks and credit card statements for purchases he made in the United States, and he confirms that the tales of his exorbitant spending were no myth.
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In addition to approximately a dozen cars he bought in Miami for his attorneys and other supporters, Sissoko also purchased 74 automobiles he loaded into cargo containers and had shipped by freighter to Africa. Bank records, included in court papers filed in Miami, show that he charged millions on his Visa credit card at Miami shops, mostly in Bal Harbour. At Mayor's jewelers alone, for example, Sissoko spent $3.4 million between August 1996 and January 1998. He spent $471,000 at Escada Boutique, a women's clothing store; $575,000 at Cartier; $160,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue; $275,000 at Pratesi Linens; and $125,000 at Tiffany.
"He would go to the Bal Harbour mall and would spend tens of thousands of dollars in each of these stores at a time," Ellison says. "He was like a kid in a candy store -- grabbing stuff off the shelves and giving it to his friends. It's easy to be extravagant, it's easy to be generous, it's easy to be charismatic under these conditions. I could probably be quite charismatic as well with $242 million of other people's money."
As the hunt for Sissoko's money continues, the search for the man himself also proceeds. He is believed to be in Africa, probably Gambia, but his precise whereabouts are unknown. In addition to the arrest warrants in the Middle East and Switzerland, and the investigation into possible money-laundering offenses in the United States, Ellison reveals, U.S. immigration officials have been trying to find Sissoko in order to question him about allegations that he has re-entered the country using phony names and passports. Under the terms of his sentence in the bribery case, Sissoko was barred from returning to the United States without written permission from the attorney general.
"There are a lot of people trying very hard to find him," Ellison says. "We anticipate that he will eventually be found. There are too many people looking for him now for him to just disappear.


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Taxpayers continue to receive calls from scammers posing as employees of the Internal Revenue Service, while the agency itself is being criticized for its failure to protect sensitive taxpayer information.
On Wednesday, the IRS reissued a warning to consumers based on 90,000 complaints the government has received about fraud that has caused some 1,100 individuals to lose an estimated $5 million.
"There are clear warning signs about these scams, which continue at high levels throughout the nation," said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, in a press release.
"A big red flag for these scams are angry, threatening calls from people who say they are from the IRS and urging immediate payment. This is not how we operate. People should hang up immediately," Koskinen explained.
In March, J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) called the situation "the largest scam of its kind that we have ever seen."
At the time, some 20,000 complaints had been made about the fraud.
In other news, the government shared a report recently that disclosed more than a dozen cases in which the IRS awarded contracts that required access to taxpayer information without mandatory and complete background investigations of employees working for the outside contractors.
"Allowing contractor employees access to taxpayer data without appropriate background investigations exposes taxpayers to increased risk of fraud and identity theft," said George, in a statement released Thursday.
Of 28 contracts reviewed, the inspector general's audit revealed five cases in which contractors had not had any background checks. For instance, a contractor working on printing and mailing tax forms was given a disk containing 1.4 million taxpayer names, Social Security numbers and other personal information.
In addition, TIGTA says it identified 20 contracts for which some contractor personnel did not sign nondisclosure agreements. The IRS subsequently issued more explicit guidance requiring the execution of nondisclosure agreements.
"Americans deserve to have their personal information treated securely and with discretion, and the IRS should follow the policies that are there to protect taxpayers from fraud and identity theft," Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., said in a public statement on Thursday.
TIGTA outlined five recommendations to the IRS. The IRS agreed with four of them, but disagreed with a plan to review a waiver that exempts expert witnesses from background investigations.
"TIGTA believes that waiving the background investigation requirement presents a security risk," the organization said in a statement on Thursday.
TIGTA's issued its audit report to the IRS on July 7. However, it says it publicly released the report only this week "due to TIGTA's internal review process to ensure that public release is in compliance with Federal confidentiality laws."
Also this week, a U.S. District court judge in Washington opened an inquiry into the issue of missing emails associated with former IRS official Lois Lerner.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the IRS to provide more details about Lerner's computer troubles by Aug. 22.
The IRS maintains that Lerner's hard drive crashed and was later erased after it was determined that no information could be retrieved. Lerner admitted last year that the agency had inappropriately subjected conservative and tea party organizations to extra scrutiny when determining if they were to get tax-exempt status.
The House of Representatives found her in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify under oath, determining that she waived her protections when she made a statement of innocence.
Judicial Watch is suing the IRS in federal court to obtain Lerner's emails.
Tips to Avoid Fraud
When it comes to avoiding scammers, "Taxpayers should remember their first contact with the IRS will not be a call from out of the blue, but through official correspondence sent through the mail," Koskinen noted.
The IRS adds that it:
- Never asks for credit card, debit card or prepaid card information over the telephone.
- Never insists that taxpayers use a specific payment method to pay tax obligations
- Never requests immediate payment over the telephone and will not take enforcement action immediately following a phone conversation. Taxpayers usually receive prior notification of IRS enforcement action involving IRS tax liens or levies.
Some other features of the current fraud schemes are that:
- Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves.
- Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim's Social Security number.
- Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that it's the IRS calling.
- Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls.
- Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site.
- After threatening victims with jail time or driver's license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.
Steps taxpayers may want to take include:
- If they owe taxes or think they may owe taxes, call the IRS at 800-829-1040; the IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue, if there really is such an issue.
- If they know they don't owe taxes or have no reason to think that owe any taxes, call and report the incident to TIGTA at 800-366-4484.
- If they've been targeted by this scam, they should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their FTC Complaint Assistant at FTC.gov; please add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint.
Related on ThinkAdvisor:


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Sunday, 11 January 2009
Kalundborg Marathon
We drove a little over an hour from Næstved to a seaside town in the northern part of the island of Sjælland called Kalundborg.
Never have the many windmills of Denmark produced as much energy as today. Normally, I'd be happy about that, but not today. SR (in his incredibly generous and sweet way) offered to run the half marathon with The Lorax in the babyjogger, while I ran the full marathon. I felt terrible for SR because of the wind and was hoping that The Lorax wouldn't start crying in the middle of his race.
As always, I sized up the competition at the starting line. There was a very thin, strong looking woman who had a marathon number on. She did a bit of a double take when she saw I also had a marathon number. She was lined up right at the front. I'm sure she figured I had nothing, though, what with my baggy pants and big, turquoise mittens.
And really, I didn't feel like a had much competitive fire in me today. I had actually been out of class on Friday because of a terrible brochitits that had kept me up most of Thursday night. Plus, my previous marathon PR (the only marathon I've run, now almost 3 years ago) was 3:44.
The route was two out and backs (the first with the half marathoners). We started in a stadium in the city and ran up rather enormous hills (for Denmark) into the blustery wind of the countryside.
At the start, I was the leading marathon woman. About 1km into the race, a guy with the best looking behind I've ever seen sped by me with a baby jogger.
At 5km, we started to ascend the hills. And a young woman with a marathon jersey on caught up to me. I then sped ahead, just to create cushion. I figured she was too young to know how fast to start, anyway. Time would tell.
I actually felt great and was doing between 4 and 5 minute kms, just as planned. I was smiling and listening to my music and enjoying the sun when I realized that the terrible wind was, of course, at our backs. I hate that feeling.
I made it into 10k in 48 minutes (a little under what SR had suggested). And then the run into the wind started. Oh, man. I could barely make forward motion. My baggy clothes acted like a sail and my 50kg did not hold me fast to the ground. Men and women passed me left and right. But somehow all of the women were half marathoners. The terrible wind lasted about 6km and then was at our side. It was at this point I realized I was starving. The next aid station just had fruit... what?!?! Man, I hate fruit. Anyway, I ate an apple slice and felt a bit better.
I came into the half marathon point at 1:45 and first marathon woman.
Somehow SR had survived the wind with the baby jogger and managed to get 4th place in the half marathon! He was right when he said he had "gotten his super powers back." (there was some fear he would lose his "super powers" when he moved back to his native land)
My knees were hurting at this point because I (so stupidly) wore racing flats. WHAT was I thinking? I toyed with the idea of changing shoes at the half way point, but not knowing how far in the lead I was, I didn't want to risk losing the time. Shortly, the pain in my knees went away and after enjoying a little european chocolate, I got a second wind. I managed to do the first 10k of the second half of the race in 50 minutes. At this point, I realized I was going to survive.
There were no women behind me to be seen, so I hunkered down to battle the wind once again, this time a bit more optimistically. I was slowly starting to pass the men around me. I wasn't speeding up, they were just slowing down.
The banging on the asphalt with my racing flats began to take it's toll and I developed the most excruciating neck pain. For the rest of the race, the only thing I enjoyed was my music (Birds by Frida Hyvönen was a favorite) and, of course, the fact that I was the leading woman. The end of the race was eternal. But when I approached the end, Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush came on and I started having fun despite the neck pain.
I came into the stadium area finish and saw SR with the Lorax with a very small crowd (everyone was in the clubhouse because it was so cold and windy). I crossed the finish line in 3:39, thus winning the marathon for the women.
The race directors were very congratulatory and handed me a 300 kr. prize and a medal. Cool!
I had a coughing attack, which I was a little embarrassed about. And then I attempted to speak with the race directors and workers with my accent, which I was even more embarrassed about. They were surprised I had an 11 month old baby (and SR pointed out that this was likely the last time I'd get any kudos for being a new mom runner.
We then enjoyed some warm soup and bread in the hyggelig clubhouse and spoke with a bunch of other runners.
It seems like long distance runners all over the world have the likable, laid back personality and are just the type of people who enjoy talking to and meeting others.
Happily my neck pain promptly went away. But I'm never running another marathon in racing flats.
I owe SR big time for running with The Lorax. Our next marathon is hopefully in March. Then it will be my turn to run the half with the baby jogger.
Running Song of the Day: Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush
9 comments:
- TheLastTurd said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- 11 January 2009 at 18:18
- TheLastTurd said...
Congratulations!! What do you do with your medals?
- 11 January 2009 at 18:19
- olga said...
Tracy, what an awesome experience, and congratulation on your win! How did SR did with a jogger in half?
- 11 January 2009 at 20:55
- Danni said...
Congrats on the PR! You undoubtedly have a much faster race in you but under the circumstances it sounds like you did fabulously. Nice work!
- 12 January 2009 at 01:59
- Michelle said...
Wow!! That is impressive!!
You're going to make the natives jealous!! ;-)
And yay for SR, also! I can't imagine running a HM with a baby jogger!
- 12 January 2009 at 05:57
- Sophia said...
Congratulations!! Didn't know one can run a half marathon with a baby jogger, very impressive.
Well done to all of you, mummy, daddy and little man!
- 12 January 2009 at 11:35
- Abbie said...
What fantastic news! I would feel so awesome winning a marathon. I sure hope you do! I was so happy to see your post. I've missed your regular postings. But it sounds like things are going well. Keep up the good work!
- 12 January 2009 at 16:24
- SteveQ said...
Nice race! But you hate fruit?! Two years ago, I stayed at an aid station until I'd eaten all the strawberries they brought - about a kilo, about 15 minutes. Cost me a trophy.
- 12 January 2009 at 17:40
- Lisa said...
Who else, but SeaLegsGirl, could wear paddle shaped mittens, pajamas (baggy is right!) and slippers (c'mon, they were kinda like slippers) to a windy marathon and win it? Great job! Hope you feel better soon.
And to Steve Q, you lost a trophy for consuming all the strawberries, but wow, you probably gained a stomach ache.
- 12 January 2009 at 18:39


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Heartland Recreational Vehicles LLC announced the hiring of industry veteran Tom Montague as general manager for the company's Landmark luxury fifth-wheel line, effective Jan. 6.
According to a press release, Landmark stands as the Elkhart, Ind.-based builder's flagship brand, launched when Heartland was formed in the fall of 2003.
"There is not a guy in Elkhart County the last three to four years that has spent more time and energy paying attention to the full-time retail customer," said Heartland President Chris Hermon. "This is a great hire and we are looking for Heartland to rapidly build sales and own the luxury fifth-wheel market."
Montague noted, "One of my first tasks will be to focus 100% on the full-timing market and the end user. As the market continues to evolve, it is ripe for an explosion, and Heartland will be poised to make a serious push for these customers. This is a tremendous opportunity to work with a proven brand and a top-notch team."
Montague, 43, entered the RV arena in 2003, serving as a territory sales manager for Keystone RV Co.'s Cougar and Montana divisions while working alongside Hermon, named as Heartland president in May of 2012 .
"Chris was my product manager for Cougar," Montague said. "We have an excellent relationship and a successful track record, which we are going to continue to build on with Landmark."
For the past four years, Montague has focused solely on the the residential fifth-wheel sector, working for Carriage Inc. before co-founding Redwood RV in August of 2010.
"We took a new approach at Redwood – working closely with dealers and consumers – and were able to grow sales very quickly," Montague said. "We took our first coach on a 3,400 mile road trip, stopping at dealerships and campgrounds to gain feedback on the product. We plan to do the same with Landmark."
Hermon added, "Tom's work and passion in this market has proven that the price point for Landmark is very real in the customers' eyes. We are expecting big things for our flagship Landmark line."
Montague, an Indiana native, received his bachelor's in marketing and advertising from California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks. In addition to serving the RV market, he held sales positions with IBM, Xerox, and a high-profile medical equipment company.


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Human Behaviour, Emotional Processes, Psychology and Race, Mental Health and Illness, Personality Theories, Perception and Cognition.
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moving pictures by avi glijansky and friends
HIGHWAY 9 PICTURES is the production banner of Los Angeles-based filmmaker Avi Glijansky.
Along with a regular group of collaborators, Highway 9 creates short films and web series that always maintains a strong focus on character and genuine human emotion.
rojects include: "The Further Adventures of Cupid and Eros," "The Silver Lake Badminton and Adventurers Club," and "The Ladies and The Gents."
Now Playing: Showreel


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BROCKTON, Mass. – Trying to build a late season spark, the Beacons changed things up a little bit in the final non-conference meeting with the Rams of Framingham State University (11-18). Led by a solid pitching effort from lefty Nick Radcliffe (Randolph, Mass.) and some clutch hitting in the late innings the Beacons (12-14) recorded their second consecutive win with a 6-3 victory Thursday afternoon at Campanelli Stadium.
The new faces in Thursday's line-up took full advantage of their opportunities both in the field and at the plate. Perhaps making the biggest impact was sophomore Ryan Manning (Plainville, Mass.) who drove in the game-winning run in the seventh inning on a clutch RBI single to break a 3-3 draw, which had stood since the top of the fifth. Manning, who got the start at third, finished 2-for-4 with the game winning RBI and also reached home plate once.
On the hill Steve Roche (Worcester, Mass.) was also huge as he recorded his first career victory after pitching a scoreless and hitless 1.1 innings. Coupled with a Matt Dziok (Southampton, Mass.) save, his third of the year, the Beacons continue to grind out wins as the regular season is quickly coming to an end.
Junior right fielder Jamill Moquette (Boston, Mass.) had one of his best days as he went 4-for-5 with two runs scored and a stolen base. Patrick Murphy (Stamford, Conn.) also took advantage of his first start in left field as he drove in one of the Beacons three runs in the bottom half of the fourth on a single to right center.
Radcliffe making only his second start of the year went a solid 6.2, in which he allowed three runs, all unearned on seven hits. The lefty recorded seven strikeouts and just one walk, before leaving the game with the scored tied at 3-3.
After the Manning RBI in the seventh, senior infielder Matt Consiglio (Southbury, Conn.) sealed the victory with his first home run of the season, a two-run blast to left field which plated junior Jose Pena (Boston, Mass.). Consiglio, who got the start at first, made some key plays with the big glove that helped to keep the Rams off the scoreboard early in the contest.
For Framingham State, they featured a variety of pitchers in Thursday's contest, with the loss going to Mike Mainini, his first of the year. Mainini surrendered the game-winning run in the seventh as he allowed two hits in one inning of work. Justin Forman got the start on the hill and went 3.1 and allowed three runs, all earned, on five hits. He also strikeout four and walked one. At the dish catcher Kevin Driscoll went 2-for-4 with a run scored, while Forman drove in a pair of runs on his lone hit of the day.
Baseball returns to action on Saturday when they travel to Keene State College for a noon Little East Conference doubleheader.


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Session 2: H&W Adventures | June 8-14, 2019
Session 2: H&W Adventures | June 8-14, 2019
Accommodation Options - Click to View >
Session 2: June 8-14, 2019
All inclusive 6 day / 6 night luxury accommodations for two. All of your meals, adventure activities and transportation to and from the activities, are included in your registration.
At Scott River Lodge, all of your worries are left at the door. Just bring your spouse, appropriate clothing & a desire for lasting rest & rejuvenation. We'll take care of the rest!
Arrival time is between 6pm and 8pm with orientation at 8pm. Check out is 9am on the last day of your program, continental breakfast is available at 6:30am for early departures. You will be contacted at least one week from your arrival date by Lodge staff in order to ensure we have answered any questions you may have about your stay. Thank you and we look forward to serving you!


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Fairfield County city is one of the most pampered
If you live in Fairfield County, chances are you look pretty good.
According to a survey done by daily deal site Groupon.com, "the cities of Bridgeport, Stamford and Norwalk in Connecticut had the most wrinkle injection and face-lift deals purchased per subscriber. Those cities also landed in the top five cities for facials and photofacials." - Business Wire
In honor of Groupon's Beauty Week, the company set out to find the cities that spent the most money so far this year on beauty deals like hair cuts, manicures, teeth whitening and tanning.
Stamford made the top 10, and Fairfield County as a whole tends to be very pampered. Groupon lists 154 spots in Fairfield County under the category "Beauty & Spas."
Our neighbors in White Plains, NY are even more pampered - they landed at number two on the list.
Green Bay, WI is the top pampered city. Residents came in at number one for most facials purchased and number two for hair treatments.
Groupon also broke down the data to find the most popular services in some major cities. While Connecticut residents are concerned with fresh-looking faces, Las Vegas invests in intravenous hangover cures and Seattle's priority is hair removal - which earned the city the title of "Most Likely to Wear a Bikini in the Rain."
Click through to see the top 10 most pampered places as well as the top beauty and wellness purchases in major cities.
Visit Businesswire.com for more information and a deeper look into Groupon's findings.


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Artist: Various Artists (Smithsonian Folkways)
Album: Classic Folk Songs for Kids
Description: Just a few months ago, I wrote for the Smithsonian that it was about time for Volume 2 of Smithsonian Folkways Children's Music Collection. Well, they've sort of done that now in this, the 26th entry in Folkways' "Classic Series." The playlist -- artists and songs -- itself is certainly classic. Go to the link below to hear Pete Seeger, Bess Hawes, and Tom Glazer sing "Polly Wolly Doodle" and Elizabeth Mitchell sing Woody Guthrie's classic "Riding in the Car."
Source: Smithsonian Folkways


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Continental cuisine is also known as a great diversity world's best cuisine. Continental cuisine can be divided into four major regions; there are Eastern Continental cuisine, Northern Continental cuisine, Southern Continental cuisine, and Western Continental cuisine. Basically, the culinary art and ingredients used are different between each country in Europe. The Continental Cuisine section of KhanaPakana.com where you will discover a hugely attractive range of savory and sweet foods from both the Continent and the UK, and all designed to tantalize your taste buds!
Looking for recipes based on Dairy products then you have come to the right section. KhanaPakana.com contains hundreds of free, trusted, authentic and KP community tested recipes and cooking videos that contain Dairy products as main ingredient, all categorized into easy-to-navigate recipe collections. These recipes and cooking videos are handpicked and contributed by home, professional and celebrity cooks across the world - you're sure to find a favorite recipe from our collection. Our recipe section expands every week, so visit us often. We welcome your contribution, please upload via myKP or email us with your favorite recipes, and we will post them up to share with others.
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A Formula 2 driver is racing in Belgium, going 150 miles per hour when he sees a massive jam suddenly emerge out of the mists. In what could be the save of the year, he dodges the other cars and what would be a catastrophic accident.
The conditions at this Spa-Francorchamps Circuit in the Ardennes are hardly different than what we see on motorways across Europe, where heavy fog can cause horrifically large accidents.
The driver in this clip, Dino Zamparelli is just coming off of Eau Rouge, one of the most daunting turns in motorsport, he manages to dodge multiple cars, on the grass, in the wet, escape with just a broken rear right, and pass four cars while doing so. There's no question that he deserves an entry in this year's Save of the Year competition.
(Hat tip to Fabio!)


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How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Campaign
Originally intended for the election year, VerticalResponse has created an infographic on How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Campaign.
With over three billion email accounts open worldwide, numbers are showing that email marketing is a viable strategy to target and captivate potential customers. That number is expected to grow to a whopping 4.3 billion by 2016.
How do you make your email stand out from an inbox that receives an average of 112 emails per day? If stats citing click-through rates for 2011 are accurate, only 22 of those emails are opened, leaving the other 90 emails to become unopened, or worse, marked as spam (a four-letter word that strikes fear into the hearts of email marketers).
With election day coming up, we wanted to celebrate the occasion with a patriotic infographic on email marketing. From choosing the right "from" name to integrating your email with social networks, if email marketing has your vote, check out the infographic for five steps towards a winning email marketing campaign.
This is a good way to use an infographic as a visual explanation instead of a bullet list in text for a blog post. It's easier to share and includes the images to make it easier to understand.
They had some great data about the growing number of email accounts, but they didn't include that in the infographic. Any text description on the infographic landing page is usually lost when people share the infographic, so all of that information should be included in the infographics itself.
Thanks to Leigh for sending in the link!