WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A fishing crew has caught a colossal squid that could weigh a half-ton and prove to be the biggest specimen ever landed, a fisheries official said Thursday.

If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires, one expert said.

An expert in calamari?

-janelane, an expert in icecream

Tire-sized calamari rings? Half-ton squid reeled in - CNN.com

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- "Desperate Housewives" star Marcia Cross has given birth to twin girls -- the first children for the actress and her stockbroker husband Tom Mahoney, People magazine reported Wednesday.

Publicists for the 44-year-old redhead told the magazine that the twins, named Eden and Savannah, were born at a Los Angeles hospital Tuesday and both mother and babies were doing well.

Cross had been placed on bed rest by her doctors in January for the remainder of her pregnancy, forcing production of the ABC network hit TV show to move to her real-life Los Angeles living room.

Cross plays the perfectionist Bree in "Desperate Housewives" and her expanding waistline had become harder to conceal during the last two episodes planned for her in the current season.

Cross and Mahoney, 49, were married in June 2006.

Married 7.5 months ago, you say? ;-)

-janelane, on track to be the first woman in my family to marry for reasons other than unplanned pregnancy

'Housewives' star Marcia Cross has twin girls - CNN.com

The Castle is located in Newton County, Georgia on Hwy 81. It has a Covington mailing address, but in actuality lies between the towns of Porterdale and McDonough. It can be seen from the highway during the winter when the trees thin out, but during the rest of the year is difficult to see. This is not because we intended isolation as much as because much of the property is floodplain and the highest point was chosen for the construction.

Sometimes my job is cool. Apparently there's a ton of these in the US.

-janelane

Covington Castle

If you are a natural person in the United States and you entered into an agreement over the Internet with ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. or any Experian Entity to purchase any Credit Check or Credit Check Monitoring (which were formerly known as CreditCheck® Monitoring Service), Credit Manager (including Yahoo! Credit Manager), Triple Alert or Triple Advantage credit monitoring product (and/or any credit score sold on a website also selling any of the foregoing credit-monitoring products) between June 17, 1998 and December 27, 2006 and paid ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. or any Experian Entity for the credit monitoring product (and/or such a credit score) but did not later obtain complete refunds from any source of the full amount paid for the credit monitoring product (and/or credit score), you may be entitled to receive a settlement benefit.

“Experian Entity” and “Experian Entities” refer to “Experian North American, Inc. and to any company that is a subsidiary, parent, corporate affiliate, or division of Experian North America, Inc., and shall also include Credit Expert, L.L.C.”

The lawsuit was filed claiming that, because of the way Defendants advertised their credit scores and credit-monitoring products and because of certain information about credit that was contained on Defendants' websites, Defendants were required to comply with a federal statute known as the Credit Repair Organizations Act ("CROA"), and also making claims for unjust enrichment, constructive trust, and conspiracy. Defendants deny that they did anything wrong. The parties have agreed to this settlement to resolve this lawsuit without a trial and without Defendants' admitting liability.

Whoa. I totally knew these guys were full of shit! Good thing annualcreditreport.com came along, and I didn't have to deal with them anymore.

-janelane, credit score ninja

Browning v. Yahoo!, Inc. Website

DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Feb. 1 — Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida’s counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

AWESOME! Death to Diebold!

-janelane

Florida Shifting to Voting System With Paper Trail - New York Times

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

Great. Just great. The village idiot is trying to take back Congress. What corrupt CEOs? What crushing influence of the lobbyists? What child labor/environmental/FDA laws?

-janelane

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation - New York Times

The popularity of the do-not-call list unleashed a demand for other opt-out lists. A consumer can now opt out of the standard practice of their banks or loan companies selling their information to others. Other opt-outs stop credit card companies from soliciting consumers or end the flow of junk mail and catalogs.

While most of the opt-outs are intended to make life less annoying, they can also have the side effect of protecting personal information that can be misused by identity thieves or unscrupulous merchants.

“Over the years, it has gotten so much easier to opt out,” said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group that lobbies Congress on privacy issues. “There are still gray areas.”

While financial companies have to provide an opportunity to opt out of sharing personal information, other kinds of companies do not. Some that tell you they will share the information do not offer the option to protect personal information (other than not doing business with the company).

For those who just can’t take it anymore, here is a master list of where you can take control:

This article has a lot of the opt-out sites listed. Whatever you do, opt out of prescreened credit offers. It keeps your score up and makes it tons easier to monitor your report. Of course, it doesn't keep companies you already have cards with from soliciting you.

-janelane, two cents

Don’t Call. Don’t Write. Let Me Be. - New York Times

Makes storing your knives a cathartic experience!

We'll get right to the point with this product - it's a wicked cool design for a knife holder and certainly a lot more edgy than the standard old block of wood. We're not sure who the designer might have been thinking of when he created this but we definitely like the results. And it includes five knives!.

This unique artistic knife holder is made of heavy duty ABS plastic and will be the talk of the party! It's an innovative knife suspension system with individual protective knife sleeves for each blade. The five knives are made from heavy gauge durable stainless steel. The slots are magnetized to secure knives in the holder. Overall, we'd say The Ex Knife Set is very cutting edge!

Thank God for pictures on Memestreams!

-janelane

ThinkGeek :: The Ex - Unique Knife Holder

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has not publicly opposed the American troop increase, but aides to Mr. Maliki have been saying for weeks that the government is wary of the proposal. They fear that an increased American troop presence, particularly in Baghdad, will be accompanied by a more assertive American role that will conflict with the Shiite government’s haste to cut back on American authority and run the war the way it wants. American troops, Shiite leaders say, should stay out of Shiite neighborhoods and focus on fighting Sunni insurgents.

“The government believes there is no need for extra troops from the American side,” Haidar al-Abadi, a Parliament member and close associate of Mr. Maliki, said Wednesday. “The existing troops can do the job.”

The best argument yet for not sending more troops....it will inevitably cause more Iraqi civilian casualties as fighting "escalates".

-janelane, Committee to Impeach the Shrub

Promising Troops Where They Aren’t Really Wanted - New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- By the year 2030, New York City could have so many people straining its infrastructure that it won't have enough electricity or housing to meet demand, and rush hour traffic will last all day.

The city of 8.2 million people must start planning and building now for the expected growth of 1 million more over the next 25 years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a panel of experts warned.

"We now have the freedom to take on the obstacles looming in the city's future and to begin clearing them away before they become rooted in place," Bloomberg said Tuesday.

Some of the findings presented Tuesday by a team of city planners, academics, scientists and environmentalists who have spent the past year studying the city's infrastructure and assessing its viability to cope include:

• In 25 years, rails and roads will be "crammed beyond capacity" and won't be able to accommodate the swarm of commuters during what is now considered normal rush hour. Lawmakers must act now to not only expand the road network but also to update the subway system, which was built starting in 1901 and still uses signal and switch technology developed before the 1940s.

• The city will need thousands more housing units. And it has to be affordable -- already, more than a third of city renters fork over more than half their income for rent, the group said.

• Energy demand could exceed supply by as early as 2012, and by 2030 the majority of the city's power plants will be more than 50 years old. The city needs to improve efficiency, use alternative energy sources and modernize its grid, which was built in the 1920s.

New York must not only meet the needs of its growing population but has to stay competitive as a global city, said Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonpartisan planning group.

"We can't put our head in the sand," he said. "We know that Shanghai and London and other great world cities that are competing with us are making plans like these and are doing a great job of building new economies and building the infrastructure systems."

Suggestions offered by the expert panel included taxing vehicles that drive into Manhattan's most heavily trafficked neighborhoods, called congestion pricing; and charging residents by the pound for the trash they throw out.

Atlanta can't be too far behind...we don't have any natural boundaries, but it seems traffic is terrible in midtown all the time and we don't hardly have a mass transit system to update.

-janelane, the choir

New York faces all-day rush hour by 2030 - CNN.com