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UFC 74: Respect: Light heavyweight bout: Renato "Babalu" Sobral vs. David Heath.
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Note:"Sobral has been withheld $25,000 of his purse pending a hearing because he did not immediately follow referee's directions for releasing his chokehold after Heath tapped." c/o wikipedia
Bush to request $50 bln more for Iraq war - Post
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is preparing to ask Congress for as much as $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a White House official.
The request signals increasing White House confidence that it can fend off mounting congressional pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, the Post reported.
The additional funds would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Post said.
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U.S. President George W. Bush speaks at Republican Party reception in Bellevue, Washington, August 27, 2007. Bush is preparing to ask Congress for as much as $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing a White House official. (REUTERS/Jim Young) |
Asked about the Post report, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said no decision had yet been made about funding requests.
"We have said previously that after Gen. Petraeus reports we will be evaluating what adjustments may need to be made to our pending FY 08 (fiscal 2008) supplemental request," Stanzel said.
"I would decline to speculate on this, as Gen. Petraeus has not testified nor has any decision been made at this stage about whether, when or what specific changes would be made."
Copyright © 2007 Reuters
A company that tracked thousands of users sharing anime via BitTorrent has lost its legal battle to force an ISP to reveal its customer’s details. The company would’ve used the information to demand $3,500 in compensation from each person they tracked - a plan which now lies in ruins.
Last week we reported on the Singapore-based anime distributor Odex Pt. Ltd and their campaign to track, find and threaten thousands of BitTorrent users which they claim infringe their copyrights. The demand - ‘Pay us $3,500 - or else’.
After previously forcing the ISP ‘Singnet’ to give up personal details (names, addresses) of its customers, they moved on to the ISP ‘StarHub’ who put up a fight but was also forced to hand over details. The next move was to force another ISP - Pacific Internet (PacNet) - to give up the details of a thousand of its customers so it could demand money from them also.
PacNet said that although it respects the rights of intellectual property owners, equally it believes in “protecting the privacy of all our subscribers” and refused to hand the information over. Odex went to the courts to force PacNet to comply.
Unfortunately for Odex, the court decided that Odex had ‘no right of civil action’ against those it accuses of infringing its copyrights. Apparently, Odex is merely a sub-licensee of its anime titles and is not even the copyright holder so it cannot take any action at all. It had also threatened criminal action against BitTorrent users - the judge quashed this threat too.
Furthermore, according to the report from ChannelNewsAsia, the judge wasn’t happy with the way Odex went after the BitTorrent users. He criticized the investigative methods used to collect their IP addresses and the manner in which it gathered other so-called ‘evidence’.
Odex is to appeal but in the meantime, they now know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a ‘pay-up or else’ demand. The judge has ordered them to pay more than $7,000 in legal costs.
