It’s every technophobe’s nightmare, but this time its true. Some $50,000 was stolen from Fan Bao’s online bank account by Croatian computer hackers and the bank told him that the loss is not their problem.

Could it happen to you? Here’s the back story to help fill in who is at risk.

Seven years ago, Fan Bao opened a checking account at Bank of America to facilitate his small import-export business called ZICO USA. When he needed to wire money, he or his wife, Cathy Huang, would walk a few blocks to Bank of America’s Highland Park, Calif., branch and execute the transfer in person.

But two summers ago, a BofA branch official urged Bao to do his banking online, assuring him that it was every bit as safe as banking in person. Only wires sent from Zico’s computer, accompanied by a downloaded security certificate, would be honored, he was told. Bao followed the bank’s security instructions to the letter, and accepted the bank’s assurances that his money was safe.

But last summer, two fraudulent drafts were sent through Bao’s account–one for $50,000 and another for $99,100. Both drafts were going to a bank in Croatia that Bao had never done business with. In fact, Bao had never before sent a wire transfer to anyone outside of Hong Kong or China.

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ALBANY, NY – The New York Association of Convenience Stores (NYACS) announced earlier this week that it strongly opposes the “obesity tax” on sugar-sweetened beverages that Governor Paterson proposed earlier this week while releasing his new state budget.

Paterson’s tax would slap a $1.44 fee to the price of a 12-pack of non-diet Coke or Pepsi, nearly 10 times New York’s excise tax on a 12-pack of beer.

“Besides artificially driving up prices, it would create a price differential more than sufficient to chase our customers away to nearby Native American stores to buy these beverages ‘tax free,’ replicating the cigarette tax evasion epidemic that has crippled our stores,” said NYACS President James Calvin.

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The Climategate Emails describe how a small band of climatologists cooked the books to make the last century seem dangerously warm.

The emails also describe how the band plotted to rewrite history as well as science, particularly by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, a 400 year period that began around 1000 AD.

The Climategate Emails reveal something else, too: the enlistment of the most widely read source of information in the world — Wikipedia — in the wholesale rewriting of this history.

The Medieval Warm Period, which followed the meanness and cold of the Dark Ages, was a great time in human history — it allowed humans around the world to bask in a glorious warmth that vastly improved agriculture, increased life spans and otherwise bettered the human condition.

But the Medieval Warm Period was not so great for some humans in our own time — the same small band that believes the planet has now entered an unprecedented and dangerous warm period. As we now know from the Climategate Emails, this band saw the Medieval Warm Period as an enormous obstacle in their mission of spreading the word about global warming. If temperatures were warmer 1,000 years ago than today, the Climategate Emails explain in detail, their message that we now live in the warmest of all possible times would be undermined. As put by one band member, a Briton named Folland at the Hadley Centre, a Medieval Warm Period “dilutes the message rather significantly.”

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I love the way they renamed Global Warming to Climate Change a few years ago, that way no matter what the weather does it can be blamed on ‘Climate Change’. If the planet is getting hotter its because of all the hot air being spoken by the eco idiots. If it was 30C in February then I would be worried but its not, its winter and its cold so thats a good thing if you ask me.

- Mark, London, 7/2/2010 19:16

“The weather outside your window is not the climate.
Learn the difference

- J, Sheffield”

Oh give it a rest! It’s people like you who have destroyed any credibility in climatologists – even the good ones.

Climate and weather are inextricably linked, years of ‘weather’ equals ‘climate’. You can’t have one without the other.

- Elle, UK, 8/2/2010 5:06

Lol ! MalMonroe, Sheffield, 21:29 – Why can’t people understand about global warming?!!!

Because most of us have more than 2 brain cells and can recognize a scam when we see one.

Continue in your frustrated despair until you too see the light. You should get together, in your ignorance, with Mark of Kent, 19:05, and huddle in your shelter until this great danger has passed. Meanwhile the world will roll on as normal, get hot, get cold and do whatever else it wants to do.

- Paul, Rochester UK, 7/2/2010 22:09

Global warming = the biggest con of the 21st Century. It is nothing more than a ploy to hike taxes and restrict access to fuel, so the Have’s can have more of it.

- Stewart, Keighley Yorkshire, 7/2/2010 21:58

Even a grade school science class will teach you that in order to prove a theory you must test it against all other possible causes for the outcome you reach.

Note: YOU MUST PROVE THE THEORY. There is no scientific requirement for disproval.

If you cannot prove the theory then it is never accepted as fact or scientific law.

Global Wamring/Climate Change/Catch Phrase of the Week has never been proven, which is why it remains a theory. If you want anyone to ever treat it as fact it must be proven, not disproven.

Do date, nobody on earth can prove the theory because nobody on earth is capable of disproving natural causes.

Thus, it remains nothing more than a theory, which any true scientist would accept as being nothing more than an unproven belief with a notable lack of evidience supporting it.

- John, Dallas, Texas, 8/2/2010 16:02

So its the coldest winter in the UK for 30 years.

Its ‘Snowmageddon’ in the USA

Mongolia has the coldest winter in living memory

And Yet:
Mad warmists want us to beleve Global Warming is going to kill us all in 20 years, and we have to pay £Billions in Extra Tax to “Save The Planet”
What a Crock of *****!
The AGW scam has been well and truely unmasked in the past few months, no wonder warmist Climate Scientists have been lying and covering up the truth.

- Aslan, London, 8/2/2010 10:51

Global Warming Data?
Think of the answer that you want!
Choose the data that will give you the answer!
Throw all the inconvenient data away!
Publish your findings!
Sit back and accept the plaudits and pounds for being so clever!
Dont get found out!

- Barry, Cumbria, 8/2/2010 11:44

Mmm This Global Warming (whoops I mean Climate Change) really is a metaphor for liberals isn’t it!

No matter how much factual scientific evidence is put into the public domain the environmental fascists refuse to admit they were wrong.

The dopey IPCC (the said fascists leading body) said:-

Warming would continue to rise from 2001? It’s colder!
Polar bears were decreasing in record numbers? Of the 11 main kinds of polar bear only 2 have either stabilised or shown a slight decrease. Others have all increased.
Carbon dioxide omissions caused a warming effect? In fact it is the reverse. Indeed the planet was warmer 1000 years ago yet where was the industrialisation pumping out the Carbon Dioxide then?

Nothing they have said is true and only the EU the US and, unfortunately now they have a socialist leader, Australia believe it and are committing their respective countries to economic suicide by remaining disciples of it.

God Help Us!

- Patrick Quigley, West Boldon, 8/2/2010 12:39

Windmill huggers,
The majority of British people have made it abundantly clear, we do not believe in Man Made Global Warming/Climate Change. We do not support Green Taxes and we do not trust the IPPC, CRU, Gore, Pachauri or any other charlatans currently making money from this cause.

To those (ever shrinking numbers) who STILL believe…
Please find yourselves a religion that does not enslave the rest of us.

- LWP, Newcastle upon Tyne, 8/2/2010 23:49

Some much for global warming. By the way, Florida has had it’s coldest weather for consecutive days on record. Global warming is something the same clown who invented the interent, Al Gore, has deampt up! As youy Brits say, what a load of rubbish!

- Mike, Miromar Lakes, Florida USA, 06/2/2010 14:09

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) – Like every other Afghanistan conference, the sixth conference in London on January 28 did not discuss the country’s opium problem.

The more than 70 countries and international organizations that met in London have declared the goals of creating “a more stable and secure Afghanistan,” transferring power to the Afghan government, and reintegrating “those who renounce violence, cut links to terrorism and agree to work within the democratic process” into Afghan society.

However, refusing to discuss Afghanistan’s opium problem is like discussing reconciliation in Colombia without touching on the cocaine trade which has sustained rebels for a long time.

The United States and Britain do not like to discuss heroin at international conferences, and they do not like it when Russia tries to convince them to launch major anti-drug projects in Afghanistan and adjacent regions. Russia is pursuing this mostly because the Afghan connection has become a strategic threat to Russia, as the Central Asian countries’ borders with Afghanistan are completely unprotected.

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Climate scientists have overlooked a major cause of global warming and cooling, a new study reveals today.

American researchers have discovered that the amount of water high in the atmosphere is far more influential on world temperatures than previously thought.

Although the findings do not challenge the theory of man-made global warming, they help explain why temperatures can rise and fall so dramatically from decade to decade.

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An HSBC worker has been jailed for stealing more than £38,000 from dormant accounts – including a man who died in the 7/7 London bomb attacks.

Callous Paul Walsh, 35, repeatedly extended the credit limit of Anthony Fatayi-Williams – who was killed in the 2005 terror attacks.

A year after his death, Walsh used a ‘dummy card’ to access the account, which he raided on 90 separate occasions after changing the correspondence address.

His scam went unnoticed by fellow employees for over a year because a delay in the death certificate meant the account could not be closed.

Walsh was jailed for two years at Cambridge Crown Court on Wednesday after admitting six counts of false accounting, one count of fraud and one count of theft.

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A machine equipment company in Texas is tussling with its bank after organized crooks swiped more than $800,000 in a 48-hour cyber heist late last year. While many companies similarly victimized over the past year have sued their banks for having inadequate security protection, this case is unusual because the bank is preemptively suing the victim.

Both the victim corporation – Plano based Hillary Machinery Inc. – and the bank, Lubbock based PlainsCapital, agree on this much: In early November, cyber thieves initiated a series of unauthorized wire transfers totaling $801,495 out of Hillary’s account, and PlainsCapital managed to retrieve roughly $600,000 of that money.

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A judge has thrown out all juvenile cases that were handled by former Luzerne County judge Mark Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008.

For many it was a big sigh of relief. For others, it was a reminder of the corruption that troubles the county. Either way, Luzerne County officials feel like they are moving forward.

A Luzerne County judge ruled Monday that 5,000 juvenile cases overseen by disgraced former judge Mark Ciavarella will all be thrown out. The move comes after District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll announced she would not retry the accused.

It comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the plea agreement made between Ciavarella and federal prosecutors. That agreement has since been withdrawn.

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Tony Blair is to give speeches to a secretive hedge fund that made millions betting on the collapse of UK banks.

The former prime minister will be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds by Lansdowne Partners, one of London’s biggest, yet lowest-profile funds.

The Mayfair-based company reputedly made £100million betting on the demise of Northern Rock and £12million in a matter of days exploiting a dramatic fall in Barclays shares.

The move by Mr Blair  -  who is to appear on Friday before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war  -  infuriated Labour MPs.

Peter Kilfoyle, who was a defence minister under him, said: ‘I never cease to be amazed by Mr Blair’s money-making activities.

‘It goes to show that as far as Mr Blair is concerned, his political and public life is behind him and he appears to have no sense of responsibility to those who have been left behind.

‘His entire lifestyle is an ongoing source of embarrassment to everyone in the Labour Party.’

Bob Marshall-Andrews, another Labour MP, said: ‘Nothing that this man does surprises me any more after watching him in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

‘It has gone beyond embarrassing for the Labour Party as he is someone who is now completely divorced from everything the party stands for.

‘The only person that he is doing more damage to is himself, if that were possible.’

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: ‘This is deeply embarrassing for the Labour Party, but is also embarrassing for the country.





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