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Kosovo honors former US president with statue

On Sunday a statue was unveiled in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, honoring a man many ethnic Albanians consider integral to their fight for independence - former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

“I never expected that anywhere, someone would make such a big statue of me,” Clinton told the crowd of thousands who stood in the cold, waving flags and cheering.

The statue is gold plated, stands 11 feet tall, and depicts Clinton waving and holding a folder with his name and the date March 24, 1999, engraved on it. It was erected on a street named after Clinton, who gave a speech at the unveiling of his new statue. He thanked the Kosovars and called for them to set aside the past and work together with minority groups to build their new country.

As president, Clinton ordered NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, helping to end a wave of genocide that claimed the lives of 10,000 Albanians and displaced some 800,000 more. Kosovo was officially recognized as a state by 62 countries in the UN last year.

“He is our savior. He saved us from extermination,” sculptor Izeir Mustafa told an interviewer in 2007. “I was thrilled by the work because I know what he did for us.”

AMC Liquidators capitalize on Stanford Financial

AMC Liquidators has acquired the furniture of the former Stanford Financial Group.

Allen Stanford was the C.E.O. of the bank until it was seized by United States authorities in 2009, for allegations of fraud. 

U.S. authorities uncovered that Stanford Financial Group was operating a “Ponzi Scheme”.  This type of fradulent investment operation involves paying returns to investors from their own money or monies from subsequent investors instead of dividends earned. 

Since the collapse of the bank, AMC liquidators have purchased a large amount of old assets, in the form of furniture. 

AMC does not usually publicize the sources of reclaimed assets but they chose to do so in this situation based on the high profile of their client.  AMC liquidators has acquired thousands of pieces of furniture at a fraction of the cost, and is enjoying the free publicity.  AMC will recondition the furniture and then resell it for as high of a profit margin is possible.    Michael Grimme, who runs AMC liquidators estimated the total value of the paintings and furniture to be around $2 million. 

Allen Stanford has yet to be charged with any criminal offense, but is facing a $100 million dollar tax lean placed by the Internal Revenue Service.

Suspected Student Shot Near Harvard University Dorm

Police report that a man has been shot near a Harvard University dormitory.  harvard University is located in Cambridge, Mass.

Local police reported that the shooting occurred at approximately 5 p.m. near the Kirkland House and Mount Auburn street.

The victim remains unidentified and was taken to a nearby hospital.  It is not known if the victim was a student.

Shortly after the shooting, and email was dispatched by the Kirkland House Administrators and sent to Harvard students.  The email urged the students to cooperate with authorities.  The area immediately surrounding the area was cordoned off and some students are unable to return to their rooms.  Those students are being asked to stay in the dining hall or basement.

A anonymous witness stated that the victim “appear college aged” and “was bleeding but conscious”.

The university has been unavailable for comment at this time.

GM To Close 1,100 Dealerships

 

General Motors dealership owners across the U.S. are awaiting the arrival of their “pink slip” from GM.  Over 1,100 franchise agreements will not be renewed this year.  GM plans to notify dealership owners by telephone or by FedEx letters beginning on Friday, May 15th.

General Motor’s announcement comes just 24 hours after a similar one made by Chrysler.  Chrysler will be removing 789 of it’s dealerships, about 25% of its total sales force.  Daimler Chrysler was purchased by Mercedes Benz in 1998 and then later, in 2007, to a private equity firm based in New York city. 

The GM dealership closings are expect to have a greater impact than those announced by Chrysler.  Many Chrysler dealers are more diversified as they sell multiple brands.  Many Chrysler dealerships are expected to stay open after their franchise agreement ends.  Many GM dealerships carry only GM products, which makes the chances of total dealership closings more likely.

Both situations will have deep economic impacts across the country including lost tax revenue and unemployment rates.

Chrysler is already under bankruptcy protection and is likely to have an easier case for eliminating franchise agreements.  A hearing scheduled for June 3 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York will determine whether to approve Chrysler’s motion to fire its dealers.

Google experiences outages

Google outages and slowness reports starting filtering in around 10:45 AM Eastern Standard Time on May 14, 2008.  the ”Google slow” and “Google down” reports affected the speed of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as well as other services such as GNews and GMail that completely failed.

The Internet Storm Center, a website that monitors internet traffic and viruses reported to have received  ”reports of a total fail(ure) of Google Applications. Gmail, Reader, Docs, News, Apps. etc.”

The outages appear to be sporadic, and most of the reports contain experiencing slowness and not total outages.  A ping test with Google’s data centers revealed a 50% packet loss in cities such as Melbourne,  Australia,  Madrid,  Spain, and New York City around 11:45 A.M.

It is a possibility that a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is occurring.  The widespread nature of the attack certainly suggests a DDoS attack and quite possibly a result of a new Windows worm Conficker.

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