Cave News

Judge: Sarkozy voodoo doll can remain on sale

President of France Nicolas Sarkozy became the subject of a voodoo doll that became a bestselling cult classic.

Sarkozy sued to have the dolls removed from sale in France.

A judge ruled that Nicolas Sarkozy: The Voodoo Manual, which features a doll, a set of pins and a book explaining how to put the evil eye on the president, fell within the boundaries of “free expression” and the “right to humor.”

Socialist Ségolène Royal was the subject of a similar voodoo doll but didn't sue.

Royal lost to Sarkozy in the last French presidential election. She hailed the doll verdict as a victory for the freedom to “caricature the world's most powerful.”

The judges ordered that it must be sold with a bright-red banner on the packaging entitled “Judicial Injunction” and a warning that sticking needles into the doll is a blow to Sarkozy's dignity.

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Fake engineer used fake references to get a lighter sentence

Timothy McCormack used fake engineering credentials to work on aircraft for Qantas Airways.

He duped Qantas for nine months by posing as a licensed aircraft engineer before he was discovered in July last year. He had performed 30 maintenance checks.

The plane that later gained notoriety for an emergency landing in Bangkok was among the aircraft he checked for maintenance.

Mr McCormack produced four excellent character references to persuade a judge to give him a lighter sentence for faking his engineering credentials to work on Qantas aircraft.

The fake engineer had also falsified each of his references.

They included a fictional school counselor, which had been misspelled “councilor”, and an allegedly fictional Senior Sergeant Woodward, who purported to be the president of a fictional Hornsby Junior Australian Rules Football Club.

There is no football club by that name. All the references were formatted in the same way and signed by the same hand.

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Cash strapped NYC to raise $66M issuing traffic tickets

New York plans to add 200 more ticket-writing traffic agents to raise $66 Million for the cash-strapped city.

Staten Island will be spared - for now. Manhattan will get 100 of the new agents. The other 100 will be spread out across the other boroughs.

Better be on your best behavior behind the wheel in New York.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said the ticket-writing traffic agents the in Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. They will not be deployed right now on Staten Island.

The city thinks it can raise an extra $66 million this way.

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Political hack Matthews may seek Pennsylvania Senate seat

Chris Matthews (pictured), MSNBC political pundit and host of the leftwing TV program Hardball, is said to be considering running for the U.S. Senate in an attempt to unseat Republican Sen. Arlen Specter in 2010.

Yes, that Chris Matthews. The man who said it was his job as a journalist to help elect Barack Hussein Obama.

He is also the man who said he felt a tingle go up his leg when he heard Obama give a speech.

Will the former Jimmy Carter speech writer feel that same tingle go up his leg if he is elected to the Senate in 2010?

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A Mark Twain quote is even truer today

Mark Twain once said:

If you don’t read the newspaper your are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

Cardboard man holds off 30 cops for an hour

A life-size cardboard cutout of a man made turkeys out of more than two dozen law enforcement officers after an hour-long standoff at a bank in New Jersey.

Some 30 officers surrounded a PNC Bank branch in Montgomery Township after alarms at the branch went off at 8:40 p.m.

Officers looked through a window and reported seeing a person crouching inside.

The cops proceeded to evacuate a nearby housing complex, stop traffic on an adjourning highway and try to negotiate with the cardboard crook through a bullhorn.

An hour later a SWAT team stormed inside only to find that their “crook” was made of cardboard.

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Elbow room to spare

European deputies attend a debate on the financial crisis and the Commission's legislative and working plan for 2009 at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

AFP Getty photo

Two shot dead at California Toys R Us

It was a deadly ‘black Friday’ at a Toys “R” Us store in Palmdale, California.

The shooting took place Friday morning inside a Toys "R" Us store in Palm Desert, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Los Angeles, KESQ television reported.

Police made several arrests in the area, which has was cordoned off to passersby, the station said, without providing further details.

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Black Friday turns tragic at a NY Wal-Mart

An unidentified 34-year-old male Wal-Mart employee was knocked down by a crowd that broke down the doors of the Wal-Mart at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y., and surged into the store. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital at 6 a.m.

The police said that three other shoppers were injured and a 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to the hospital for observation.

One shopper, Kimberly Cribbs, said she was standing near the back of the crowd at around 5 a.m. on Friday when people started pulling the doors from their hinges and rushing into the store. She said several people were knocked to the ground, and parents had to grab their children by the hands to keep them from being caught in the crush.“They were falling all over each other,” she said. “It was terrible.”

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Possible terror plot against NYC subways

A report at the link below warns of a possible Al Qaeda-orchestrated terror plot against New York City subway and other transit systems during the holidays.

Federal authorities are warning police of a possible terror plot against the New York City subway and train systems, prompting local officials to beef up security at stations.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a "plausible but unsubstantiated" report that Al Qaeda terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

More of he story here.