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Cheese shop owner on crusade to block FDA ban on mimolette

“The US fate of the bright-orange, mild-tasting French cheese has been in jeopardy for months and the Food and Drug Administration has blocked all further imports. Why? Because US regulators determined the cantaloupe-like rind of the cheese was covered with too many cheese mites, even though the tiny bugs give mimolette its unique flavor. 1.5 tonnes (3,300 pounds) of cheese were blocked from being imported. Benoit de Vitton of French import company Isigny says those 1.5 tonnes were eventually destroyed. Mmenus inform diners about the FDA decision, noting that mimolette has been ‘the National Cheese of France since King Louis XIV.'” Continue reading →

Pope Francis warns Latin America against legalizing drugs

“Pope Francis has warned Latin America against legalizing drugs, arguing that liberal policies under consideration in his home region will not reduce the problem. ‘A reduction in the spread and influence of drug addiction will not be achieved by a liberalization of drug use, as is currently being proposed in various parts of Latin America,’ he said on the third day of his trip. Guatemala’s president has called for legalization, a vision shared by ex-presidents in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia but opposed by the United States and Mexican governments. Uruguayan President Jose Mujica has proposed legalizing marijuana.” Continue reading →

Church of England declares war on payday loans firm

“Church of England leader Justin Welby has told a company offering short-term high-interest loans that the church wants to ‘compete’ it out of existence by promoting not-for-profit credit unions. Welby, who came into office in February, has launched a campaign to expand credit unions as an alternative to payday lending that he hopes will boost competition in the banking sector. Members of credit unions pool their savings in order to provide each other with low-interest credit and other financial services. The British government announced in April that it was investing £38 million in credit unions to help them provide an alternative to payday lenders.” Continue reading →

Woman Wants Possessions Back After Bank Repossessed Wrong House

“Barnett, who had been away from the house for about two weeks, said she had to crawl through the window of her own house in order to get in after she used her own key that did not work. Some of the items in her house had been hauled away, others were sold, given away and trashed. It turns out the bank sent someone to repossess the house located across the street from Barnett’s house, but by mistake broke into hers instead. She called the McArthur Police about the incident, but weeks later, the chief announced the case was closed. She presented the bank president with an $18,000 estimate to replace the losses, but he refused to pay.” Continue reading →

Police Ordered To Return $1 Million An Exotic Dancer Saved In $1 Bills

“A stripper just won a lawsuit against Nebraska police who confiscated over $1,000,000 in $10,000 bundles tied with hair ties after a routine traffic stop. Tara Mishra, 33, had stripped for 15 years and managed to save $1,074,000. So she gave the cash to friends to open a New Jersey nightclub. But when those friends were pulled over in Nebraska, the cops suspected the money was tied to drugs and confiscated all the cash. This week, a judge ruled that since the police failed to find evidence of drug activity, and since a canine search revealed only trace amounts of illegal drugs on the money, the cash had to be returned.” Continue reading →

The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping

“More than 550,000 miles of flexible undersea cables about the size of garden watering hoses carry all the world’s emails, searches, and tweets. Together, they shoot the equivalent of several hundred Libraries of Congress worth of information back and forth every day. In 2005, the Associated Press reported that a submarine called the USS Jimmy Carter had been repurposed to carry crews of technicians to the bottom of the sea so they could tap fiber optic lines. The easiest place to get into the cables is at the regeneration points — spots where their signals are amplified and pushed forward on their long, circuitous journeys.” Continue reading →

Bitcoin exchange opens in Hong Kong

“Anti-money laundering and know-your-customer compliance is easier for banking and financial institutions when they deal with virtual currency exchanges rather than cash, says the founder of what may be Hong Kong’s first licensed Bitcoin exchange. Aurélien Menant, a former investment banker at Société Générale and now chief executive and founder of Gate Digital Services, said Bitcoin’s traceability feature would help institutions with compliance and risk management.” Continue reading →

Data, meet spies: The unfinished state of Web crypto

“Most Internet companies do not use an privacy-protective encryption technique that has existed for over 20 years — it’s called forward secrecy — that cleverly encodes Web browsing and Web e-mail in a way that frustrates fiber taps by national governments. Lack of adoption by Apple, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and others is probably due to ‘performance concerns and not valuing forward secrecy enough,’ says Ivan Ristic, director of engineering at the cloud security firm Qualys. Google, by contrast, adopted it two years ago.” Continue reading →