| Vumber Launches Virtual Phone Number Service on Paltalk.com
NEW YORK, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Vumber (www.vumber.com), the secure, two-way disposable calling service, today announced a new partnership with Paltalk (www.paltalk.com), the leading real-time, video-based community with over 4 million active members, to provide privacy-ensured virtual phone numbers to its user base. "Online dating and chat groups continue to be a fast growing trend, yet some participants are reluctant to share their personal phone numbers online," said Vumber Co-Founder Cliff Wener. "With Vumber, Paltalk members will have more privacy, control and freedom when providing phone numbers to one another." According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 11% of all American Internet-using adults - about 16 million people - say they have gone to an online dating website or other site where they can meet people online.
Will the Prince Turn Pauper?
Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei once was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Now he's worried he may soon be homeless and forced into bankruptcy. "They want me to give it all back," he says, flanked by giant Dutch landscape paintings and billowing gold drapery in the cavernous living room of his London villa, where he resides with one of his three wives and two of his 18 children. "We don't know where we are going to live." The 53-year-old younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei, Prince Jefri is on the losing end of one of the world's most colorful family feuds. It started a decade ago, when the prince was stripped of his government roles and later accused by Brunei authorities of misappropriating $14.8 billion of the royal treasury's money. He denies that, but there's no doubt much had been expended on Prince Jefri's famously sybaritic lifestyle.
Britons Strike Back at Bank Fees
On Jan. 14, a long-awaited hearing begins in Britain to determine the legality of bank overdraft charges. The test case pits Britain's main consumer watchdog against eight big British banks in a battle that will have major ramifications for retail banks and their customers. The court's ruling, says HSBC Holdings (HBC) Chairman Stephen Green, could "change the economics of retail banking" in Britain. British banks, like their U.S. counterparts, love to charge their depositors overdraft fees—those levies a bank collects for honoring a check when there's not enough dough in the account to cover it. British overdraft charges average some $57, much higher than the U.S. average of $34. Last year, banks in Britain generated an estimated $7 billion from overdraft and excess-borrowing charges, according to the Office of Fair Trading, the government's competition watchdog.
The Four-Body Problem in Politics
If you take a course in celestial mechanics, one of the things learned is that there is no general solution for the motions of more than two gravitationally-bound objects. All other solutions - the "three-body" or the "four-body" problem - involve special treatment and successive approximation to get a solution under a specific set of parameters. Not so in politics, and the current four-body problem in the mechanics of the current Democrat contenders for the presidential nomination is a good example. The smaller objects - Hutchinson and Kucinich have - eliminated themselves and up until today it looked as if it would resolve itself into a three-body problem involving Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Had Edwards simply bowed out instead of just suspending his campaign, then it would have resolved it into an elegantly simple Clinton-Obama dynamical that could then be approximated over the next few with the usual tools of polls, etc.; however, by suspending his campaign, Edwards has not disappeared from the equation but has become something like a high-order term in a drivative of an equation: He cannot be dismissed until a further analysis of his influence is gauged.
Gun control is only realistic answer
There are 15 states that have a crime rate worse than Illinois, so concealed weapons aren't the answer. U.S. citizens own over 233 million guns and almost 35,000 people are killed each year in the U.S. with guns. I'm not interested in stopping people from owning guns, protecting themselves or hunting. All I know is that on Feb. 2 and 14, a bunch of people died and they were shot by guns. Banning guns outright may never completely eliminate the threat. However, it is far less likely that the "sick," "twisted" and "crazed" people will be outlawed, and until they are, I'm ready to explore every alternative. Eric Podlogar Hoffman Estates .
Delphos library gearing up for busy new year
Digging around more carefully, Kinsey unearths horrifying details of Solana's past and must act quickly to save Gus. Twisted Justice — Patricia Gussin Laura is a successful surgeon with five children and a prominent husband, Steve, who works as a nightly news anchor on the Tampa TV News. Her seemingly perfect world shatters when she discovers that Steve is sharing much more than a news desk with his sexy co-anchor, Kim. When Kim is murdered, Laura becomes the prime suspect and within days, lands in jail facing murder charges. Laura's perfect life spirals into a perfect nightmare when Steve turns on her in the worst ways imaginable: leaving Laura in jail, incriminating her on television, and holding their children captive. In an all too real world where things are not always as they seem, looks can be deceiving — and deceit can be deadly.
Do You See Me?
While some unlucky residents claim they have been scammed into paying down-payments to poseurs who promised to give them houses and never fulfilled their end of the deal, others have run into a wall of red tape as they are unable to prove ownership or residency. .
Mid-Season Story Ideas from New Hampshire Ski Resorts
Ski New Hampshire resorts are in the midst of another classic New England ski season. North Woodstock, NH (Vocus/PRWEB ) February 28, 2008 – Ski New Hampshire (www.SkiNH.com) resorts are in the midst of another classic New England ski season. The season had a spectacular start with record breaking snowfalls in December, then a brief January thaw, and now plentiful snowfalls have returned. With a deep snowpack and two months of skiing and riding left in the Granite State, you may be looking for some fresh story ideas. Below are a variety of fresh and unique stories that may peak your interest. If you want to pursue any of these, please contact Ski New Hampshire to facilitate getting you the details and/or contacts necessary to complete your work. Wildcat Mountain, Pinkham Notch – This winter marks the 5th Annual 100k Day at Wildcat.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Why do we pay more for an orange with a Sunkist sticker? Because inspecting the outside of the orange doesn't guarantee the quality of what's inside. We need the assurance of the Sunkist brand. A variant on this theme is ingredient branding: putting the brand of an ingredient on the outside of a product to increase its appeal. Think Gore-tex or Nutrasweet. More .
Australian stock market stronger at noon on Wall Street lead
THE share market continued to extended its comeback at noon after Tuesday's slide, following a positive lead from Wall Street and higher commodity prices. At 12.15pm AEDT the S&P/ASX200 index was up 166.9 points, or 2.99 per cent, to 5747.3 and the All Ordinaries had lifted 174.7 points, or 3.12 per cent, to 5780.5. On the Sydney Futures Exchange the March share price index futures contract was up 191 points to 5734 on 17,689 contracts. Austock Securities senior client adviser and strategist Michael Heffernan said the market was recovering its losses. "It's a very happy day on the market,'' he said. "This is the third day in a row that we've had increases in the market of well over 2 per cent.'' Mr Heffernan said the main catalyst contributing to the strong resurgence was the US interest rate cut.
Manhattan Transfers
This week's contents
View the index of all articles from the February 1, 2008 print edition and web-exclusive Latest News. All articles from the print edition are available for subscribers only on Friday mornings. Certain features from the paper, such as the Top 25 list, record materials and special publications, are not available on the web at this time. .
Britney Spears
Sam Lutfi was finally served the restraining order yesterday that effectively requires him to stay 250 feet from Britney Spears and have no contact with her whatsoever. The restraining order was set to expire today, but the judge in the case extended it to March 17, according to the AP: In court papers, Jeffrey Wexler, an attorney for her father, James Spears, wrote that "after three weeks of apparently evading service," Lutfi was served at 11 a.m. outside his Los Angeles apartment.
The order, which requires Lutfi to stay 250 yards away from Spears and her home, was set to expire Friday. Wexler had asked for the order to be extended. Poor Sam Lutfi. He must miss Britney Spears. I bet he walks in on random pap smears just to remember the good times. Surprisingly none of the women really cared until Sam started throwing Cheetos at them and screaming "Where's the checkbook?! I'll feed you to Satan!" Then it got a little weird.
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