[Quote:]

In Orlando, Florida, David Partin pledged to name his son after local radio hosts to win a $100 gas card as part of a contest. Partin will collect the card in December, when his son is born, if he can produce a birth certificate proving the baby is named Dixon Willoughby Partin, after the hosts.

[..]

At the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Beatty, Nevada, clients who spend $300 or more this month will receive $50 gas vouchers as part of a promotion to beat the summer slump in business.

[..]

In Mesquite, Texas, thieves drained $100 worth of gasoline from buses used by the Higher Ground Church day-care center and have hit four or five other church center fleets in the area.

“It was someone who was desperate,” said James Green, the church’s pastor. “All he had to do was come and ask us and we would have bought him a tank of gas.”

[Quote:]

Zimbabwe’s troubled central bank introduced $100 billion banknotes Saturday in a desperate bid to ease the recurrent cash shortages plaguing the inflation-ravaged economy.

The bills officially come into circulation Monday, although they were on the foreign currency dealers market Saturday.

As high as they are, though, the bills still aren’t enough to buy a loaf of bread. They can buy only four oranges.

[Quote:]

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

[Quote:]

This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what’s left to argue? to argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing. Obviously, our national interests aren’t equivalent to Iraq’s, but… Malik isn’t listening to the generals on the ground…but the “hasn’t been to Iraq” line doesn’t work here.

So how will the McCain campaign respond?

Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re fucked.”

[Quote:]

Last Friday, I was getting out of work. I was in a meeting so I was wearing a suit, which ended up being perfect.

I was waiting at a crosswalk, and this lady wasn’t paying attention and walked into the street. She’s about 45-50 I guess? The street was pretty empty in both directions except for a bus in the close lane that the lady didn’t see. The bus was coming in pretty fast, and I don’t know how she missed it, but to her credit there were some bus stops and parked cars and stuff that may have obstructed the view.

Anyways, just as the bus started honking and slamming breaks, I grabbed her and pulled her back. She would have probably made it anyway, but it made a pretty nice dramatic effect.

So this lady was really freaked out by the whole thing. She was sorta stuck in between thanking me, and catching her breath. So (and wtf did this come from I have no idea), I pulled out my PDA and said “This is Commander Navarrette, I saved the subject. The time is 4:39 pm.” She had no idea what was happening and kept looking at me all dumb. So I said something to the effect of, “Ma’am I need your signature to affirm that you were here and I stopped you from getting run over by the 4:39 bus.”

I didn’t know what she thought about the situation, but I decided to press it a bit further. I opened my pda’s drawing thing (ooo high tech) and asked her to sign it, which she did.

I thanked her then followed up with “Your grandson is very important,” which immediately I realized was really dumb because she didn’t look like she was old enough to have grandchildren.

“I don’t have a grandson,” is all she said. I freaked out for a second, thinking I just made a total ass of myself. But then I said “You will,” and gave her sorta a wink/smile.

The crosswalk light was green and I walked off. She stood there A few seconds later she yelled “wait!” but I was already across the street and pretended I didn’t hear and kept walking.

I have no idea what she thought of the whole thing, but even the idea of her thinking I was from the future totally made my day.

[Quote:]

State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona’s DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles.

The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.

In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer found dozens of similar matches — each seeming to defy impossible odds.

As word spread, these findings by a little-known lab worker raised questions about the accuracy of the FBI’s DNA statistics and ignited a legal fight over whether the nation’s genetic databases ought to be opened to wider scrutiny.

The FBI laboratory, which administers the national DNA database system, tried to stop distribution of Troyer’s results and began an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to block similar searches elsewhere, even those ordered by courts, a Times investigation found.

Apparently the FBI is more interesting in getting convictions than getting crimes solved.

[Quote:]

Here you go. [appears to be down for now, we took link down until we can revive the poor wounded server]

We’ll be releasing a more official announcement soon, but we wanted to get the tool out there. We sincerely hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it

Update 1: Just to clear up some confusion over what this actually does: yes, it jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches. We only support the 2.0 firmwares.

Update 2: It looks like there aren’t enough TCP ports on that server, so _BigBoss_ has generously offered to mirror it.

Update 3: If you get Error 1600 from iTunes (or if you see in your log a failure to prepare x12220000_4_Recovery.ipsw), try: mkdir “~/Library/iTunes/Device Support” ;  if that directory already exists, remove any files in it.  Then re-run PwnageTool.  

Update 4: Here’s another mirror.