TAMPA – Thousands of dead fish are floating along the shoreline on the south side of the Courtney Campbell Causeway, stretching from Hillsborough to Pinellas County.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission is working to determine what caused the fish kill.

Crews will be out Wednesday sampling the water.

In the meantime, the City of Tampa has temporarily closed Ben T. Davis Beach.

Source: MyFox Tampa Bay

25 years murder-free in ‘Gun Town USA’
Crime rate plummeted after law required firearms for residents
Posted: April 19, 2007
1:52 p.m. Eastern

© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Kennesaw, Ga., City Hall

As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.

In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of “Wild West” showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.

The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.

Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.

By comparison, the population of Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, has actually dropped slightly and stands at 22,202, according to 2005 statistics. More significantly, perhaps, the city’s crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent. Today, by comparison, the township’s crime rate stands at 2,268 per 100,000.

This was not what some predicted.

In a column titled “Gun Town USA,” Art Buchwald suggested Kennesaw would soon become a place where routine disagreements between neighbors would be settled in shootouts. The Washington Post mocked Kennesaw as “the brave little city ? soon to be pistol-packing capital of the world.” Phil Donahue invited the mayor on his show.

Reuters, the European news service, today revisited the Kennesaw controversy following the Virginia Tech Massacre.

Police Lt. Craig Graydon said: “When the Kennesaw law was passed in 1982 there was a substantial drop in crime ? and we have maintained a really low crime rate since then. We are sure it is one of the lowest (crime) towns in the metro area.” Kennesaw is just north of Atlanta.

The Reuters story went on to report: “Since the Virginia Tech shootings, some conservative U.S. talk show hosts have rejected attempts to link the massacre to the availability of guns, arguing that had students been allowed to carry weapons on campus someone might have been able to shoot the killer.”

Virginia Tech, like many of the nation’s schools and college campuses, is a so-called “gun-free zone,” which Second Amendment supporters say invites gun violence – especially from disturbed individuals seeking to kill as many victims as possible.

Cho Seung-Hui murdered 32 and wounded another 15 before turning his gun on himself.

Here is a clip from the DVD, Never Again: A Shocking Story of Gun Confiscation In America. It is pretty amazing what they did. I’ll be ordering this DVD to see the whole thing and contribute my $$$.

By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 23, 7:02 PM ET
From Yahoo! News

NEW ORLEANS – Sixty-four-year-old Vivian Westerman rode out Hurricane Katrina in her 19th-century house. So terrible was the experience that she wanted two things before the 2006 season arrived: a backup power source and a gun. “I got a 6,000-watt generator and the cutest little Smith & Wesson, snub-nose .38 you ever saw,” she boasted. “I’ve never been more confident.” People across New Orleans are arming themselves — not only against the possibility of another storm bringing anarchy, but against the violence that has engulfed the metropolitan area in the 19 months since Katrina, making New Orleans the nation’s murder capital.

The number of permits issued to carry concealed weapons is running twice as high as it was before Katrina — this, in a city with only about half its pre-storm population of around 450,000. Attendance at firearms classes and hours logged at shooting ranges also are up, according to the gun industry.

Gun dealers who saw sales shoot up during the chaotic few months after Katrina say that sales are still brisk, and that the customers are a cross-section of the population — doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, laborers, stay-at-home moms.

“People are in fear of their lives. They’re looking for ways to feel safe again,” said Mike Roniger, manager of Gretna Gunworks in Jefferson Parish.

Citizens, the tourism industry, police and politicians officials have been alarmed by the wave of killings in New Orleans, with 162 in 2006 and 37 so far this year. A Tulane University study put the city’s 2006 homicide rate at 96 slayings per 100,000 people, the highest in the nation.

National Guardsmen and state police are patrolling the streets of New Orleans. In neighboring Jefferson Parish, which posted a record 66 homicides in 2006, the sheriff sent armored vehicles to protect high-crime neighborhoods.

In New Orleans, police have accused the district attorney of failing to prosecute many suspects. Prosecutors have accused the police of not bringing them solid cases.

Some people are losing faith in the system to protect them.

Earnest Johnson, a 37-year-old chef who lives in Kenner, bought his first gun recently and visits a shooting range regularly. “Things are way worse than they used to be,” he said. “You have to do something to protect yourself.”

Kevin Cato, a 41-year-old contractor, bought a .45-caliber handgun for protection when he is working in some of the city’s still-deserted areas. “But it’s not much safer at home,” Cato said. “The police chased a guy through my yard one time with their guns out.”

In New Orleans, the number of concealed-carry permits issued jumped from 432 in 2003-04 to 832 in 2005-06. In Jefferson Parish, 522 permits were issued in 2003-04, and 1,362 in 2005-06.

Mike Mayer, owner of Jefferson Indoor Range and Gun Outlet in suburban Metairie, said that despite the dropoff in population, sales are up about 38 percent overall since Katrina.

Just how many guns are out there is anybody’s guess. Gun buyers in Louisiana are not required to register their weapon or obtain a concealed-carry permit if they keep the gun in their house or car.

In a measure of how dangerous New Orleans is becoming, guns are finding their way into criminal hands at an alarming rate. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “time-to-crime” analysis of the interval between the legal sale of a gun and the time it is seized in a crime investigation is five years on average around the nation, said ATF spokesman Austin Banks. In New Orleans, time-to-crime is six months, he said.

This sometimes happens because of “straw purchases,” in which a buyer obtains a gun for someone not legally eligible to purchase one. Many guns also are stolen from homes and cars.

While many are buying guns for protection, only two defensive killings of criminals by civilians took place in New Orleans in 2006, according to police. No charges were filed against the shooters.

Westerman, an artist who lives in the city’s Algiers neighborhood, is prepared to use deadly force.

“I’m a marksman now. I know what I’m doing,” she said. “There are a lot of us. The girl next door is a crack shot.”

http://www.lukemccoy.com/files/Catastrophic Firearms Failure.pdf

All Armed Officers:

The attached intel report concerns the reloading and firing of handgun ammunition. If you have chambered a round and then extracted (by cycling the slide back) the same round, the force of chambering causes the bullet to seat slightly deeper into the casing.

The problems described in the attachment were catastrophic when the same round was chambered and extracted several (5-6) times and then fired, causing the barrel and slide to be propelled downrange.

Glock and SigArms confirms that this type of accident can occur by rechambering ammunition, and SigArms says in the report that rechambering a round once voids the warranty.

As a word of caution don’t rechamber a round of ammunition once chambered and extracted. We need to make sure that the extracted round is segregated from the empty casings for proper disposal.

Thank you,

Dean Fittz
SAC/Dallas
Senior Firearms Instructor

What started out as an apparent debunking of an A-list blogger conspiracy has evolved into a made-up word shedding light on the search world. Microsoft’s controversial employee blogger, Robert Scoble, invited readers to use the word ‘brrreeeport” on their blogs as a way to get “Z-list” blogs noticed, while testing the reach of the various search engines.

Scoble’s snarky experiment was in response to the notion of the supposed Blog Club, where A-list bloggers only link to each other and thereby keeping lesser-known bloggers out of the loop of recognition in typical Critical Theory style.

The invention of the word “brrreeeport” and the invitation to put on a person’s blog created a vacuum to Technorati’s blog listings and popular tags. Very soon, the term was listed at the top of Technorati’s most searched word. Two days later, “brrreeeport” is out ranking searches for information on the Dick Cheney hunting accident, and is third on the list of tags.

The original purpose of the experiment worked. Technorati returns some 487 results for the word, leading searchers to blogs they may have never encountered. But the memetic results led to another exploration of the efficacy of various search engines.

At the time this article was written, a search on Technorati returns 487 results; Google’s Blog Search: 452; Feedster: 569. On that information alone, it would appear that Google Blog search is missing an element the other blog engines aren’t. But the more interesting question Scoble brings up on Wednesday, when he compares results of Google, MSN, and Yahoo!

Google’s main page (as of present) says it found 22,400 results for the word. Scrolling through, however, there are only 353 results after similar entries are omitted. Re-searching with omitted results included returns only 979 results, as the other 21,000 are apparently inaccessible.

Scoble calls this an example of “lies that are going on on search engines.” Scoble reports that MSN returns over 1, 369 entries (though my results continue to say 221), and Yahoo! returns over 1,010. The varying numbers does bring up an interesting question as to the veracity of any given search engine’s reach.

One thing’s for certain, many are taking advantage of the memetic appeal of the word, “brrreeeport.” Bloggers have committed to throwing the word onto their blog posts. Even the famous New York City gay and lesbian publication The Village Voice has thrown it into a headline for an unrelated music review.

There are even sponsored links for the word on Google and Yahoo!’s SERPs. On Yahoo!’s system though, it’s not the exact word, but ads served up based on similar keywords.

Whatever the deeper implications, the immediate benefit was for Z-list bloggers who otherwise may have never been found. Someone’s even reserved the brrreeeport domain.

About the Author:
Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors have charged three men with copyright infringement for selling modified Xbox consoles that enabled the original video game machine from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to play pirated games.

The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday named ACME Game Store co-owners Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, as well as Pei “Patrick” Cai, 32.

The complaint alleges that Jones and Bryant sold Xbox systems that Cai modified with chips and hard drives that allowed users to copy rented or borrowed games onto the console for future play.

All three men are charged with one felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and to violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The charge of conspiracy carries a maximum possible penalty of five years in federal prison.

Lawyers for the men, who will be summoned to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in late January, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Jones and Bryant demonstrated the modified Xbox game consoles in their Melrose Avenue store. They charged from $225 to more than $500 for the modifications, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of games preloaded onto the hard drive, according to a statement from prosecutors and the complaint affidavit obtained by Reuters.

During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox, according to the criminal complaint.

Microsoft released the Xbox 360, the new version of its game console, on November 22 in North America. The premium version of the system sells for $400 and is sold-out at many retail outlets.

The original Xbox was released in late 2001 and now retails for around $150. Games for the system cost up to $50 each.

Reuters

By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 5 minutes ago

NEW YORK – Mob boss Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the powerful Mafioso who avoided jail for decades by wandering the streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers, feigning mental illness, died Monday in prison. He was 77.

The head of the Genovese crime family, who had suffered from heart disease, died at the federal prison in Springfield, Mo., said prison spokesman Al Quintero. It was the same place where rival mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002 at age 61.

Gigante’s death also was confirmed by Christine Monaco, a spokeswoman for the FBI, the organization that worked for years to put him behind bars.

Dubbed the “Oddfather” for his bizarre behavior, Gigante had scored a lengthy string of victories over prosecutors, but it ended with a July 1997 racketeering conviction. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

After a quarter-century of public craziness, he finally admitted his insanity ruse at an April 2003 federal hearing in which he calmly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. That brought him another three-year sentence.

At that hearing, he chatted amiably with his son, shook hands with defense lawyers and said “God bless you” to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser.

For the man described by The New York Times Magazine as “the last great Mafioso of the century,” his admission was the final act in a 50-year career linking the era of old-time gangsters and the modern-day Mafia of Gotti.

At the height of his power, Gigante’s empire stretched from Little Italy to the docks of Miami. Mob experts called him a traditional boss who settled issues by whatever means — verbal or violent — were required.

Denying he was a gangster, Gigante would wander the streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood in nightclothes, muttering incoherently. Relatives, including a brother was who a Roman Catholic priest, insisted Gigante suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Authorities charged it was a brazen act to avoid the law — although it wasn’t until 1997 that a jury agreed. The trial was a spectacle, with Gigante in a wheelchair, mumbling silently, seemingly oblivious to the proceedings. His lawyers claimed they could not communicate with him in any “meaningful way.”

None of that swayed jurors, who convicted Gigante of racketeering, extortion and plotting the murder — never carried out — of ex-mob associate Peter Savino.

Born in the Bronx in 1928, one of five sons of Italian immigrant parents, Gigante became a small-time boxer and drifted into the crime family founded in 1931 by legendary gangster Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

In 1957, Gigante was the hitman in a botched attempt to assassinate then-boss Frank Costello. After refusing to name his attacker in court, the shaken Costello retired, making Gigante’s patron, Vito Genovese, kingpin of the family that still bears his name.

Over time, Gigante, a stocky figure with a pugilist’s face and 1940s pompadour, proved better at beating the law than Gotti, the so-called “Teflon Don” who won two acquittals before tapes and turncoats sent him to prison for life.

Before 1997, Gigante had served only a five-year heroin rap in 1959.

From Yahoo

For the “hip and happening” set – it might be “cool” to listen to music on an iPod or MP3 player, with ear buds plugged directly into the ears But Dean Garstecki, a Northwestern University audiologist, warns that these ear buds might increase the risk of hearing loss.

Garstecki says that ear buds associated with modern devices the likes of iPods, MP3 players, etc, boost sound signals by as much as 6 to 9 decibels, and are likely to result in loss of hearing.

According to Garstecki, an increasing number of young people are now experiencing the kind of hearing loss found in aging adults, which can be traced back to their music habits.

Students are found to listen to music at nearly 110 to 120 decibels, capable of causing hearing loss after just about an hour of listening; with ear buds placed directly in the ears, adding to the damage caused.

As solution to the problem, Garstecki recommends use of muff-type ear phones associated with older devices, as against the ear buds preferred by music fans today. He also suggests lowering of volume levels while listening to music. Another option is to use noise-cancelling headphones, which eliminate background noise unlike ear buds.

But Garstecki says that these headphones by virtue of their higher cost and larger size, may not go down very well with fashion-conscious youngsters.

Tech Tree

News on Monday that Microsoft plans to discontinue support and development of its Internet Explorer Web browser on the Macintosh hardly came as a surprise.

The company telegraphed the move nearly two and a half years ago, citing competition from Apple Computer’s Safari browser as the primary reason for the decision.

Mac loyalists aren’t shedding any tears. Why? Many point to what they say is IE’s lack of standards conformity which make development and support more difficult.

From News.com