Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head. As the lovely Feòrag notes; Looks like someone’s implementing the literal kill file!
It’s not a head exploding button, but it’s close enough
Lance Armstrong has won an unprecedented seventh Tour de France, closing the curtain on one of the most extraordinary cycling careers ever. The American safely crossed the line in the peloton at the end of the 144.5-km final stage on the Champs Elysees
London has faced a second attack as bombers targeted three Underground trains and a bus. I was left with the impression that it was a copy cat attack, by people so mind-numbingly incompetent that you could almost hear the Benny Hill theme playing as they scuttled away
Little Johnny Coward has lied about any link between the London bombings and the Iraq war as he visited two Australian victims of the attack during a trip to London and got cornered on camera
A court in Nigeria has sentenced a woman to two and a half years in prison for her part in the country’s biggest ever international fraud case. Amaka Anajemba admitted helping her late husband to persuade an employee of a Brazilian bank to transfer millions of dollars into overseas accounts. Banco Noroeste lost $242m through the latter half of the 1990s. The court ordered Anajemba to surrender her houses in Nigeria, the US, UK and Switzerland to help repay the money
Officials from UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, meeting in the South African town of Durban, decided on eight additions to the prestigious list of protected sites. The sites are: India’s Valley of Flowers National Park, Thailand’s Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai forest, Japan’s Shiretoko Peninsula, Egypt’s Whale Valley, the west Norwegian fjords, South Africa’s Vredefort Dome, the Gulf of California in Mexico and Coiba National Park in Panama
Armed bandits in Brazil robbed a postal service van carrying more than 400 breast implants. Margaret Figueiredo, director of silicone implant manufacturer Silimed, explained demand is the highest in July, during the southern hemisphere winter, as women schedule surgery during the winter school holidays, which precede the beach season. Figueiredo said the implants, each bearing an individual number, could now only be sold for clandestine surgeries. Horrific stories abound in Brazil about the illegal operations, which can cause gangrene and death — via BoingBoing
Monaco’s Prince Albert II has formally ascended the throne of the tiny Mediterranean principality, taking the title of His Serene Highness three months after the death of his father Prince Rainier
Brian Paddick from the London Metropolitan Police says three bombs exploded in the Underground system and one on the bus in Tavistock Square. In one of the attacks a bomb destroyed a wall between two Underground tunnels and three trains were affected. Mobile and fixed-line telephone networks were severely congested as panicked Londoners called relatives in the city, but there were no initial reports of more widespread communications damage
Australia’s internet connections are relatively inefficient
in dealing with traffic from different time zones, according to new research. Scientists from the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, have concluded that Australia is basically out of phase with global traffic
, based on initial statistics from about 40 monitoring sites around the world, in countries such as the US, Britain, Switzerland and South America. The study has found Australia is performing no better than Kazakhstan for internet congestion
One of Australia’s best known natural landmarks, the Twelve Apostles rock formation, has been changed for ever after one of the giant pillars collapsed into the sea
A power supply problem on an undersea cable has severed all outside Internet connectivity to Pakistan. Many businesses have been seriously impacted. Repairs will involve some disruption to access from other countries, and are tentatively scheduled for overnight
The Liberals’ controversial same-sex marriage legislation has passed final reading in the House of Commons, sailing through with a vote of 158 for and 133 against. Supported by most members of the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP, the legislation passed easily, making Canada only the third country in the world, after the Netherlands and Belgium, to officially recognise same-sex unions — via Moonbeam
A young mother found at the scene of a car crash near Tokyo in which her husband and infant son were killed had been dead for at least a day before the accident happened, police were quoted as saying on Sunday. The bizarre discovery was made after emergency crews who rushed to the scene found the body of Rie Ishikawa, 28, in a state of rigor mortis — via Warren Ellis
An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA personnel on charges that they seized an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, on a Milan street two years ago and flew him to Egypt for questioning
A Nepali radio station that has been banned under the new, post-coup regime has gone back on the air. Every night, a commentator stands on the roof of his now-useless radio-station and reads the news over a megaphone to an audience of hundreds — via BoingBoing
French actress turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has urged the European Union to take legal action against France for authorising the killing of six wolves
Apparently a sudden interest in technology is catching. My mother is in good company with her recent acquisition of an iPod, Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is also a devotee of Apple’s iPod. If the thought of the Queen trolling through Apple’s online jukebox, iTunes looking for hits
is a little too much for the frontal lobes, the Sun assures its readers that, like most things, she probably has a footman to do it for her
As the Downing Street memo confirms, they had so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they were going to have manufacture excuses to go to war. What’s more damning still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional vote
On 5 May 2005, the Colorado Wildlife Commission agreed to accept the Colorado Wolf Management Working Group’s (CWMWG) policy allowing migrating wolves from Yellowstone National Park and the Arizona-New Mexico borders to roam freely in Colorado. This decision came after a public comment period earlier this year and with a unanimous vote by all 14 members of the CWMWG
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