The new public awareness of “blood” diamonds has pushed U.S. lawmakers into action too: “The symbol of love and happiness in America should not be paid for with the blood of Africans,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) as he proposed the “Clean Diamonds Act” on Capitol Hill earlier this summer. If passed, the bi-partisan bill would — like the latest EU proposals — back up the Kimberly Process by banning the import and sale of “dirty” diamonds across the United States. “Our legislation says ‘if you can’t prove to U.S. Customs agents that your diamonds are legitimate, take your business and your diamonds elsewhere,’” Durbin said.
According to the diamond industry, Americans buy more than 65 percent of the world’s diamonds in the form of engagement rings and other jewelry, so the proposed law could have a considerable impact on the illicit trade.

Getting a step closer to getting rid of 'blood' diamonds

While some socially responsible mutual funds are out there trying to save the planet and others try to save your soul, one socially irresponsible fund is hoping to profit big from the wages of sin.

The new antisocial mutual, aptly dubbed the Vice Fund, targets the so-called sin stocks long eschewed by socially responsible investors and considered virtually "recession-proof" by its managers: tobacco, gaming, alcohol and defense stocks.

"We're not out there to do nothing but socially irresponsible investing, but the point of investing is to make money. ... That means investing in those markets that do well," said portfolio manager Eric McDonald, who co-manages the fund with Dan Ahrens.

The antisocial mutual fund - Vice Fund: Politically incorrect and socially irresponsible?

This is really great if you have not seen it before.

If Slashdotters made The Matrix

One of its agents has issued a warning about the popular practice of using chalk marks to show the location of wireless networks.

The marks, or "warchalks", are cropping up in cities and suburbs across the world.

The FBI is now telling companies that, if they see the chalk marks outside their offices, they should check the security of wireless networks and ensure they remain closed to outsiders.

FBI warns of Wireless Warchalking

Hooters of America Inc. chairman Robert H. Brooks is thinking about buying Vanguard, the Kansas City-based discount carrier that filed for bankruptcy protection and grounded its fleet last month. On Wednesday, a bankruptcy judge told Brooks he can give Vanguard $50,000 per week for the next three weeks to pay a skeleton staff, while Brooks examines the company's books and decides if he wants to buy.

We are talking about some flying now! :)

Hooters in the air?

Here’s a good bar joke: Beer is good for you — even better for you than red wine.
After more than 20 years of research and scores of studies on the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on health, beer is slowly bubbling to the top as a beverage that not only lifts spirits but delivers protection against major ailments such as heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and dementia.
The data seem so compelling that the National Beer Wholesalers Association, an Alexandria, Va., trade group representing the nation’s beer distributors, recently put on an oxymoronic sounding “health and beer” seminar and put out a press release that declared: “Eat right, exercise and drink a beer a day may be the way to keep the doctor away.”

w1ld: Ill drink to that. :)

Beer may be good for you

Jack O'Brien, manager of Sun's Linux Business Office in Menlo Park, Calif., confirmed to eWEEK that Sun will now introduce Solaris 9 for x86 going forward.

The SPARC version of Solaris is used with our hardware and therefore generates revenue, while the Intel version focused primarily on enthusiasts and others who ran Solaris on PCs and laptops," he said.

Sun to Ship Solaris 9 for Intel Servers

This is a roleplaying product with a social conscience. Some have labelled it as exploitative of current events, but after reading it, I truly believe the authors had nothing but good intentions in creating this game.

The introduction actually starts off with a decent fiction piece about a soldier stationed at the Afghan conflict, dreaming about getting home to his family, torn because he's helped blow up a building with 14 people in it... four of them definitely al Quaeda, the other ten possibly enemies, but with an equal chance of them being innocent bystanders. When this soldier gets home, how is he going to explain this to his three year old son?

RPG - Afghanistan D20

Let's reopen Alcatraz for this entire crop of corpo-criminals.

Executive suites available on Alcatraz

Yet with the U.S. economy now back to its stall speed, that's precisely the risk. Courtesy of the government's newly revised depiction of the U.S. economy, the odds of a double dip have risen, in my view. I would now place a 60 percent to 65 percent chance on such a possibility in the second half of this year.

Double-dip alert - Washington statisticians have once again redefined the economic landscape.