0 Schoolboys fined £20 for skipping rush to buy £1 train ticket

EXETER schoolboys are being fined for not paying their rail fares between Topsham and Digby – even though they have the money and want to buy a ticket.

The boys are pupils at St Peter's Church of England School who catch the Avocet line train from Exmouth to Exeter at Topsham.
The mother of one boy who has twice been fined £20 for not having a ticket said: "It is terrible because they have the money – it's only £1 return – but there is only one ticket machine on Topsham platform.
"The train is already crowded when it arrives at Topsham and there is a rush to get on.
"Some children get left behind and others jump on without a ticket rather than miss the train.
"It is only a four or five-minute trip to Digby but when they get off they are fined £20 even when they offer to pay.
"The other day 12 boys got fined – although a group of four or five girls without tickets were just waved through.
"At £20 a time it is a nice little earner for the railway company.
"There should at least be another ticket machine at Topsham to give people a better chance of getting a ticket before the train pulls out."
A spokesman for First Great Western, which operates the train service, said they would be looking into the situation at Topsham.
 http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/Schoolboys-fined-skipping-rush-buy-train-ticket/story

0 How Banks, Credit Cards Will Get Around Restrictions On Selling Your Info

Credit card companies are sitting on a wealth of information about their clients — they have a running record of everything they buy.

Due to strict rules entitling consumers to financial privacy, though, banks are limited in the secondary use of that data. However, they’ve happened upon a rather ingenious way to....                                        work around that restriction.

The Chicago Tribune reports on banks’ “billion dollar plan” to “sell your shopping data.” The story starts off (rather salaciously):

"Many of the nation’s leading banks and card issuers, including Wells Fargo, Citi, USAA,* Sovereign Bank and Discover, are selling information about consumers’ shopping habits — how much they spend, where they shop and what they buy — to retailers."

That’s a misleading description (and CNN Money later revised that article). Banks don’t actually hand any information about their users over to retailers. They’re “selling” shopping habits the same way Facebook “sells” personal data about its users: in-network.

It’s a clever privacy work-around. Just as Facebook allows advertisers to specifically target certain kinds of users based on their profile information (without actually providing that profile information to the advertisers), banks plan to allow advertisers to send deals and coupons to their customers based on what they’ve bought before. That way, no user data actually leaves the network — instead, deals just enter the network. Each time a customer cashes in on one of those deals, the bank gets a commission.

0 Jim Traficant "Israel has used us like a whore!"

It wasn't easy, finding Jim Traficant. Without the help of the American Free Press, (AFP), we never would have found him. Traficant of Youngstown Ohio was running for his old Congressional seat. What sort of campaign could he be running? After all, we'd seen the Greta von Susteren Fox News interview (Sept. 9, 2009, just a few days after Traficant was released from prison).

Here's some of what Traficant had said, "I believe that Israel has a powerful strangle hold on the American government. They control...the House and Senate. "They have us involved in wars of which we have little or no interest. Our children are coming back in body bags. Our nation is bankrupt over these wars, and if you open your mouth, you get targeted. And if they don't beat you at the polls, they'll put you in prison... It's an objective assessment that no one will have the courage to speak about."

They're controlling much of our foreign policy. They're influencing much of our domestic policy. Wolfowitz as Under Secretary of Defense manipulated President Bush #2 back into Iraq. They pushed definitely, definitely to try and get Bush, before he left, to move into Iran. We're conducting expansionist policy of Israel and everybody's afraid to say it. They control much of the media..."

WAS IT POSSIBLE somewhere in Ohio someone could say such things and not be ostracized, denounced, trounced? Actually, no. There really was no campaign. Few in the political business dared have anything to do with him, donate to him, invite him, quote him. Only a maverick Tea Party organizer offered him an evening campaign event. Otherwise, the popular sheriff and then Congressman was pretty much shunned. And yet he came in a close third on Nov.2, 2010, with over 30,000 votes.

0 Devon, UK, Angry car owner shot with Taser

Devon and Cornwall Police have said they were were forced to tackle a man with a Taser stun gun after he became aggressive when his car was towed away.

 

DVLA officials took the car away because the man had failed to pay road tax. When they came to remove the vehicle the owner became angry and threatened them, police said.

The incident happened at around 6pm on Tuesday in the Tip Hill area of Ottery St Mary.

An officer shot the 44-year-old with a Taser to subdue him. He was then arrested and bailed.

The man is due to appear before magistrates in Exeter on July 19 charged with two counts of assault and one of resisting arrest.

 http://www.rac.co.uk/news

0 UK Police probe after pensioner, 82, is Tasered by officers

A police watchdog was today probing why an 82-year-old man was Tasered by armed officers and hospitalised for six days.

The pensioner was shot with the 50,000-volt stun gun after apparently 'threatening' a man.

A team of armed police officers swooped on him in a west London street before firing the electroshock weapon.

He was later arrested on suspicion of carrying an offensive weapon and criminal damage to a vehicle in Ealing, west London.
However, he was later rushed to hospital by ambulance after complaining of 'pain' after arriving to Acton police station.
The gun fires darts attached to lengths of wire which carry an electric charge causing temporary paralysis.
The 82-year-old was kept in Central Middlesex Hospital for six days after being Tasered before being discharged.
The case is now being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission following the shooting on the morning of June 28.
IPCC Commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne said: 'Our investigation will examine whether the use of a Taser in these circumstances was proportionate and appropriate.'
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police refused to comment while the investigation is being managed by the watchdog.
An 89-year-old man from Llandudno, North Wales, is the oldest man to have been shot by a Taser.
The war veteran was shot by officers after escaping from his care home and threatening to cut his throat with a piece of broken glass.
North Wales Police said they shot the retired carpenter for his own safety in January 2009.
Hailed as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, Tasers, which have a range of around 20ft, have been linked by human rights groups with hundreds of deaths in the U.S. and Canada.
Experts have warned against using them on children and vulnerable adults because of the risk that they can trigger a heart attack.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013458/Pensioner-82-hospitalised-days-tasered-police.html#ixzz1RnpIei00