The Wingnut Doughnut

Kicking off a new jobs campaign, Florida’s Governor Rick Scott went to work in a Tampa doughnut shop this morning. Apparently, Scott worked in a doughnut shop in his youth. Scott’s campaign slogan was “Let’s get to work.” For the unemployed in Florida that probably did not imply clerking in a doughnut shop, but here’s the message being sent to unemployed Floridians: “You better find something, anything, and get your lazy butt on a treadmill in a low wage, low skill job.” The move to do the doughnut gig comes as no surprise though. Scott’s ratings are in the basement and this jobs thing just so happens to coincide with a new media campaign clearly trying to clean up Scott’s tarnished reputation, but trying to put a shine on shit is tricky business. Honestly, with Florida’s unemployment at 9%, shouldn’t Scott try to put the focus on skilled jobs available in Florida and take to moment to tie in these jobs with the numerous workforce training programs available in Florida? For years, the administrations in Tallahassee have been courting the lucrative Biotechnology industry into the state and they have answered the call. Now, there is a need for trained lab techs, jobs available for those trained at the post-secondary certificate, associates, bachelors and higher levels. Florida high school graduates can land good work with just one year of college, but Scott says, “Start at a doughnut shop.” This just does not send a resonating message needed from a campaign designed to highlight work in Florida. All it says is “Look at me I still remember how to sprinkle doughnuts.”

UK Government Abandons File-Sharing Website Blocking Plans

Tom Watson: 'Phone hacking is only the start. There's a lot more to come out'

'Collar bomb' alert grips Sydney

Police and emergency workers at the scene of the 'collar bomb' drama in Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Paul Miller/EPA
Australian bomb squad officers are working to defuse a suspicious device found at a home in a wealthy suburb of Sydney, police have said. Surrounding streets have been closed to traffic and emergency services rushed to the scene.
New South Wales police said in a statement that an 18-year-old woman called them to the house in Mosman, on Sydney's north shore, at around 2.30pm Australian time and that the bomb squad was in the process of examining the device.
Reports that a "collar bomb" had been strapped to the woman by someone else could not be immediately confirmed. But police told the Associated Press the incident was "not being treated as self-harm".
Asked by the Australian Daily Telegraph whether the girl could move away from the device, Mark Murdoch, an assistant police commissioner, was quoted as saying: "No, she can't get away from it."
"I can't confirm whether it is strapped to the woman involved but she is still in the vicinity of the device," he said. The paper quoted an unnamed police officer as describing the device as a "collar bomb" and the incident as an extortion attempt. This could not be independently confirmed.
The house is in Burrawong Avenue, an exclusive road full of multi-million dollar properties including one belonging to the Scottish-born horse trainer Gai Waterhouse. Homes near the house involved have been evacuated.
Police said defusing the device demanded "a high level of skill and must be meticulous".
Lizzy Davies @'The Guardian'

UPDATE

Nosh: 404

Periodically, pages go missing, assets get misplaced -- you should not be concerned. This is a startup, this kind of thing happens. At Nosh, we are fortunate to have a relationship with several teams of ex-special forces operatives who help us track down these missing pages. When a page on this website goes rogue -- and a code 404 arises -- we dispatch one of our teams to bring it back. Ideally they are able to salvage the missing page, but sometimes, if the page is truly lost, they have to take it out (resulting in the subsequent code 500 when the page gets taken down).
Regarding the page you are currently looking for, one of our teams actually did find it, but it did not want to be found and a firefight ensued. This encounter is documented above.
We are very sorry we are not able to display the page you were looking for. Please go back home and we’ll do our best to ensure this kind of mix up is resolved peacefully in the future.
Behind the scenes: vimeo.com/26952527
nosh.me/404
Via

Gillard keeps mum on News Ltd meeting

Julia Gillard says News Ltd has a responsibility to answer "hard questions" from Australians, but the prime minister isn't talking about her own conversations with the company.

Ms Gillard had a private meeting with editors from Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd newspapers in Sydney on Tuesday night after she was invited to address a gathering of editors and executives by News Ltd CEO John Hartigan.
Last month, Ms Gillard said revelations of the UK phone hacking scandal, which resulted in the demise of Mr Murdoch's 168-year-old newspaper News of the World, had disturbed Australians.
She said Australians would have questions to ask of News Ltd and the company had a responsibility to answer those questions.
But as for her meeting with News Ltd editors, those talks were private.
"I'm not going to go to individual matters discussed," she told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday.
"It was a broad-ranging discussion, it was a good discussion, canvassing a number of topics."
Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said Ms Gillard should reveal what "hard questions" she posed during the meeting.
"I'd be interested in what she said," Mr Turnbull told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
"She said in a rather menacing way that Rupert Murdoch had some hard questions to answer in Australia.
"Then when she was asked what those questions were, she couldn't nominate them."
On Tuesday the prime minister said it would be a private meeting, but she expected to talk about her vision for the future and the government's reform agenda.
"Such meetings have been addressed by prime ministers and opposition leaders in the past, so when I was invited by Mr Hartigan I accepted the invitation," Ms Gillard said.
@'SBS'

Four Tet - Locked

Mushroom Death Suit

The first prototype of the Infinity Burial Suit is a body suit embroidered with thread infused with mushroom spores. The embroidery pattern resembles the dendritic growth of mushroom mycelium. The Suit is accompanied by an Alternative Embalming Fluid, a liquid spore slurry, and Decompiculture Makeup, a two-part makeup consisting of a mixture of dry mineral makeup and dried mushroom spores and a separate liquid culture medium. Combining the two parts and applying them to the body activates the mushroom spores to develop and grow.
@'The Infinity Burial Project'

Jae Rhim Lee wearing the Mushroom Death Suit

Designing a mushroom death suit

Fault Lines: The Top 1%

The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it's been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' 14.3 trillion dollar debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above 9%, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programs that are the backbone of the US's social safety net, and whether to raise taxes — or to cut them further.
The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the United States has never seemed so divided — both politically and economically.
How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top 1% impacting the other 99% of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest.
This episode of Fault Lines first aired on Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2011 at 0930 GMT.

'UK's biggest' cocaine haul found on Southampton yacht

The UK's largest ever seizure of a Class A drug has been made from a luxury yacht in Southampton, the UK Border Agency has said.

Officials found 1.2 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of between £50m and £300m in the yacht two months ago.
The 90% pure drugs were so well hidden in the 65ft pleasure cruiser, the Louise, it took six days to find them.
They had originated in the Caribbean and were en route to the Netherlands. Dutch police have arrested six men.
They are thought to be an organised crime gang.
Morning raids French authorities were alerted to the £1m craft Louise while it was in the Caribbean in May and it was then tracked to Southampton, on its way to Holland.
Officials spent six days searching the vessel and found the drugs packed in a specially-designed compartment beneath the boat's bathing platform, UKBA said.
It is understood the cocaine, which originated in South America, was packed inside the boat while it was in Venezuela.
Since the drugs were found in June, the UKBA has helped Dutch police track members of the gang and six men were arrested during early morning raids on Tuesday.
Two 44-year-olds were arrested in Amsterdam, a 60-year-old was held in Meppel, a 32-year-old and 34-year-old were arrested in Heusden, while a 27-year-old was held in Waalwijk.
A total of 100,000 euros (£87,300), two Harley Davidson motorcycles, two firearms, a silencer and a quantity of ecstasy were also seized.
@'BBC'