Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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Hello officer, I’d like to report a missing item of mine. You see, I had some odd pound of cocaine in a couple of backpacks and they just disappeared on me! What are you doing with those handcuffs sir?

Federal agents thought there was something fishy about Leroy Carr.

On four occasions since last December, Carr either crossed the Canadian border or was found near it with thousands of dollars in cash, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He also sometimes carried night vision goggles and a GPS device programmed with coordinates for a well-known drug-smuggling trail.

But Carr refused to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and they let him go — until he called to ask if they had seen his cocaine.

(Full story)

This news article actually inspired the addition of a new category to Scuttlebutt Pipeline, Tales of Stupidity, because I’m just finding that many stupid acts. For more stories of stupidity you might want to visit Mari’s blog, which offers a week feature called Stoopid Saturday. You’ll bust a gut laughing, I promise.

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The concept behind the rookie challenge is the sharing of ideas and information. You can view other member’s profiles and their tack ratings (which are determined based on their success as compared to other rookies) to see where you may or may not be going wrong and build upon it.

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Sign up at WallSt.net today, whether it’s to take the rookie challenge or to play in the real market and get a free hat as well. Hey, they’re just giving things away over there!

HOUSTON - An infestation of bats at Texas Southern University has health officials concerned.

The bats took over a dormitory, forcing more than 200 students into hotels. Now, there are worries the students may have been exposed to rabies.

Videos posted on the Internet show students swinging a broom and a tennis racket as several bats fly about in a dorm hallway. One student said he killed dozens of bats but didn’t know if anyone was bitten.

Health officials asked students who had been in the dorm to meet with them this week to determine whether any would need rabies vaccinations.

Texas Southern officials, meanwhile, say they’re trying to rid the dorm of the bats. It’s not clear how many bats were in the building.

(source)

I’m actually kind of surprised that bats would even think of making a dorm their home. Bats generally need somewhere dark and removed from intrusion for their resting grounds. Caves, trees, burrows, this is where you would expect to find bats. Not a University dorm.

I don’t think that says very much about the dormitory conditions at that school.

If you enjoy playing casino games online with real money, laying down a bet or two on your favorite teams, or are just looking for a new virtual den to play some online poker you might be interested in paying Bet365.com a visit.

Bet365 is not exclusively an “online casino” that provides a selection of casino games for you to try your luck at. Nor does it cater to the Fantasy Football fans or those who like to play the odds on favorite sport teams. Bet365 has a very wide range of online betting facilities. So what does Bet365.com have to offer that others don’t? How about access to an online casino, Sportsbook facility, interactive games, and an online poker playing area as well. If more than one of these available avenues interests you then Bet365.com might be the best choice for you. And with their one wallet system you can be sure that you will have access to all of these venues and services with just easy to use account.

Personally, I can’t stand any kind of site that makes you create multiple accounts to access separate and different services, so Bet365.com’s one wallet system gets a huge thumb’s up from me. Another point I feel needs to be pointed out is the fact that, despite having a wide variety of services, the site loads very quickly and easily - and I’m on a dial-up connection at the moment.

A fireball fell from the sky and slammed into southern Peru over the weekend, creating a huge crater that emitted a sickeningly smelly gas, local authorities said. More than 600 villagers fell ill, the Peruvian radio network RPP reported Tuesday.

Video reports from the scene, near the remote Andean village of Carancas along Peru’s border with Bolivia, showed what appeared to be a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide), 20-foot-deep (6-meter-deep) impact crater with a bubbling pool of water at the bottom.

Authorities said that the crater was made Saturday by a falling meteorite. Agence France Presse quoted a local official, Marco Limache, as saying that “boiling water started coming out of the crater, and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby.”

Limache told RPP that the gases emanating from the crater caused nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches and stomach pain — so much so that authorities were considering calling a state of emergency. The newspaper La Republica reported that seven policemen became ill and were taken to a hospital.

(full article

To be frank I don’t understand why authorities are considering declaring this an emergency, it clearly already is one. Honestly, the moment authorities first responded and began falling ill the officials should have stepped up and taken measures to protect their people. Something unknown falls from the sky and upon visiting the site people fall dangerously ill. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that, hey, that could because of what fell out of the sky, and hey, having people living near it right now without any knowledge of what is causing the problem is a very bad thing.

Common sense truly isn’t so common anymore.