Man Barricaded Inside Buckingham Home By WINK News Story Created: Mar 10, 2010 at 1:00 PM EST Story Updated: Mar 10, 2010 at 1:00 PM EST LEE COUNTY, Fla. – Lee County deputies are responding to reports of a man barricaded in a home on Irish Lane in Buckingham. Deputies received a call just before 10 a.m from a person claiming the man inside the house wanted to harm himself. He is barricaded in the bathroom and claims to have a gun. Hostage negotiators are on scene negotiating with him. The man is communicating with the negotiator. Staley Road is shut down to traffic. Residents are not allowed to return home. Lee County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team and hostage negotiators are on scene. Previous article North Fort Myers church evacuated Next article Lee County Commissioner Bob Janes Dies
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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North Fort Myers church evacuated By Nick Spinetto, WINK News Story Created: Mar 10, 2010 at 1:58 PM EST Story Updated: Mar 10, 2010 at 1:58 PM EST North Fort Myers, Fla – All Souls Church in North Fort Myers was evacuated Wednesday morning. 200 people inside reported having problems with breathing. Some reported burning in their eyes and throats. 8 people were taken to Cape Coral Hospital. A hazmat team is on scene at the church to investigate. A suspicious white powder was found near an air conditioner duct. On Wednesday’s the church hosts a luncheon for the homeless. Story developing… Next article Man Barricaded Inside Buckingham Home
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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BLAIR, Neb. (AP) — A 37-year-old woman was accused of putting her 14-year-old behind the wheel because she was too drunk to drive. The woman was arrested Saturday after Washington County Sheriff’s deputies stopped a vehicle on U.S. Highway 75 because of erratic driving. Deputies found the woman’s 14-year-old son in the driver’s seat and two other minors – ages 14 and 17 – in the car. The woman was arrested and has been charged with three counts of child neglect and one count of allowing a minor to drive. The sheriff’s department said the children in the vehicle were turned over to an uncle in Tekamah. The woman was still being held in the Washington County jail early Wednesday morning on $1,000 bond. — Information from: Fremont Tribune, http://www.fremontneb.com
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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NEW YORK (AP) — In an industry first, a new gaming service will start allowing people to “stream” popular high-end games such as “Assassin’s Creed II” over the Internet in June, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online. OnLive, unveiled a year ago with much fanfare, embraces “cloud computing,” in which software runs on a computer elsewhere, not on the player’s own PC or game console. That means players can buy or rent games with even older, less powerful computers and Macs and without owning such consoles as the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. Right now, players purchase discs to pop into such consoles. And increasingly, many game publishers are selling additional content, such as extra episodes for popular games, as Internet downloads. Services such as Direct2Drive, meanwhile, sell downloads of full games to PCs, though gamers need powerful, high-end machines. Console makers have generally been skeptical about OnLive’s threat to their business. But if it works, the company’s foray into streaming could be another force nudging the industry beyond discs toward digitally consumed content. OnLive Inc. said Wednesday it will start offering its service for personal computers on June 17 for $14.95 a month. Buying or renting games will cost extra, but the company did not disclose pricing. In addition, OnLive will launch its “MicroConsole” – a cheap, cassette-sized adapter that plugs into a TV set to stream games – at a later date. Pricing was not announced. OnLive expects the tiny console to be more popular than its PC and Mac streaming service. “We want to slow the impact of people jumping on to our servers just a little bit,” said founder and CEO Steve Perlman. One of the biggest questions for OnLive has been whether the company’s servers and players’ broadband connections would be able to handle streaming without a lag that would disrupt playing. Perlman said it’s working, and “assuming you have a decent Internet connection,” gamers who’ve been testing the service are “playing normally.” Streaming video games is a bigger challenge than music and movies, because games cannot be easily compressed into smaller files before streaming over the Internet. That’s because video games are interactive, requiring instant responses from the game to players. When you shoot at an enemy, for example, the game must respond in a split second and show whether you’ve hit or missed. OnLive says it has come up with a new form of compression that lets its game servers communicate with players over broadband connections in real time. OnLive said its service will offer new games from publishers such as Electronic Arts Inc., Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Activision Blizzard Inc., publisher of the popular “Call of Duty” games, is noticeably absent from its list. OnLive says it is in “ongoing discussions” with Activision. The service will be available only in the U.S., except for Alaska and Hawaii. — On the Net: http://www.onlive.com
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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THERMAL, Calif. (AP) — They say crime doesn’t pay. For one robber in California, it did – but not much. Authorities in Riverside County say a woman with a gun robbed 11 customers at a market and got away with $6. A Sheriff’s Department statement says the woman was armed with a semi-automatic pistol when she went to La Chicanita Market in the town of Thermal on Tuesday afternoon. Deputy Herlinda Valenzuela says the woman confronted 10 customers in the store and also demanded money from one person who was entering the market. She then fled in an old car. Nobody was hurt. — Information from: The Press-Enterprise, http://www.pe.com
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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WEST CAPE MAY, N.J. (AP) — Someone is spinning quite a yarn over one New Jersey shore town. An unknown person dubbed The Midnight Knitter by West Cape May residents is covering tree branches and lamp poles with little sweaters under cover of darkness. Mayor Pam Kaithern says police are looking into the guerrilla crocheting, which technically is against the law because it is being done on public property without permission. The mayor and many residents admit they’re enthralled by the rainbow of colors that has popped up. Resident Susan Longacre takes a walk each morning in Wilbraham Park, where several tree branches and light poles have gotten the treatment. She thinks it’s great. Even those who aren’t thrilled admit the yarn is better than spray-painted graffiti. — Information from: The Press of Atlantic City, http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a “.xxx” domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers. Parents would be able to use the system to help block access to porn sites, though because its use would be voluntary, the “.xxx” suffix wouldn’t keep such content entirely away from minors. Religious and other anti-porn groups worry that “.xxx” would legitimize porn sites, and the proposal has already been rejected three times since 2000. But the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the allocation of Internet addresses globally, may revive ICM Registry LLC’s bid yet again as ICANN meets this week in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Last month, responding to complaints from ICM, an outside panel questioned ICANN’s grounds for the latest rejection in 2007. As a result, board members have been weighing the matter ahead of formal consideration of the “.xxx” bid on Friday, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said in an interview. Beckstrom said he was not able to give details of those discussions for legal reasons, and he could not say when ICANN may reach a decision. Stuart Lawley, ICM’s chief executive, said he has been the victim of a process that he considered far from open and nondiscriminatory. ICM, which planned to charge $60 for a site to register a “.xxx” name, first proposed “.xxx” in 2000 as a way to help the online porn industry clean up its act. Those using the domain would have to abide by yet-to-be-written rules designed to bar such trickery as spamming and malicious scripts. And parents could set up Internet software to automatically block any site ending in “.xxx,” reducing the chances that minors and other Internet users would accidentally stumble on pornography online. Given its voluntary nature, however, “.xxx” would unlikely have much effect on parents’ ability to block porn sites. And because a domain name serves merely as an easy-to-remember moniker for a site’s actual numeric Internet address, even if its use is required, a child could simply punch in the numeric address of any blocked “.xxx” name. Anti-porn activists, meanwhile, worry that the creation of a virtual red-light district would serve as an endorsement of the adult-entertainment industry, as “.xxx” would be sitting alongside other suffixes such as “.com” for commercial sites and “.edu” for schools. Skeptics note that porn sites would likely keep their existing “.com” storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new “.xxx” domain name, thereby expanding the number of porn sites on the Internet. When ICANN last considered “.xxx,” board members also expressed worries that the suffix would leave the agency in the business of regulating content, or the type of material that would find itself there. The board also questioned whether “.xxx” had the support of the adult-entertainment industry, as many operators of porn sites were concerned that governments would later make the voluntary red-light district mandatory. ICANN still wasn’t swayed after ICM said that the content-regulation role would have been left solely with the company and that ICM would fend off efforts to mandate its use. Lawley challenged ICANN’s rejection before an independent review panel appointed by the International Centre for Dispute Resolution. That panel largely sided with him and concluded that ICANN’s decision was “not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy.” The panel said that after ICANN gave the bid preliminary approval in 2005, it shouldn’t have revisited some of the key issues already reviewed. Board members had used the new evaluations in deciding to reject the bid two years later, in 2007. Although the panel’s findings are nonbinding, ICANN’s board was scheduled to discuss them Friday. It was not clear whether the board would vote on the matter or defer a decision for more discussion. Lawley said the review panel was supposed to be ICANN’s mechanism for accountability, and how the organization responds to the panel’s findings “will provide great insight into the true accountability of this vital organization.” He said the process has so far cost his company about $8.5 million. ICANN tabled and effectively rejected a similar proposal in 2000 out of fear the “.xxx” domain would force the body into content regulation. ICM resubmitted its proposal in 2004, this time structuring it with a policy-setting organization to free ICANN of that task. But many board members worried that the language of a proposed contract was vague and could kick the task back to ICANN. The board rejected the 2004 proposal in 2006. ICANN revived the proposal months later after ICM agreed to hire independent organizations to monitor porn sites’ compliance with the new rules. But ICANN ultimately rejected that bid in what was to be its final consideration.
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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Lee County Commissioner Bob Janes Dies By WINK News Story Created: Mar 10, 2010 at 12:07 PM EST Story Updated: Mar 10, 2010 at 12:16 PM EST LEE COUNTY, Fla – Lee County Commissioner, Bob Janes is dead at the age of 78. He was suffering from breathing problems. A Prominent republican and former Sanibel Mayor, Commissioner Janes was first elected to his current office in 2000 and has been serving since. Next article Lee Co. Ready to Jump into Effort to Get Swim Center
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Lee Co. Ready to Jump into Effort to Get Swim Center By WINK News Story Created: Mar 10, 2010 at 10:47 AM EST Story Updated: Mar 10, 2010 at 10:47 AM EST Lee County is ready to jump right into the water, in the effort to bring a National Swim Center to SW Florida. “This is huge, a huge 80-million dollar impact to the county’s economy,” said Commissioner Ray Judah. The county could cobble together several million dollars, but the National Swim Center Corp. of Austin TX would have to pay tens of millions, Judah said. That could be a real problem, and other commissioners worry about tax-payers being saddled with the bills for the swim center, that could be located at City of Palms Park in Ft. Myers. “We can only put so many financial anchors around the necks of the taxpayers and the county,” said Commissioner Frank Mann. Cape Coral is considering the swim center also, but council members have indicated, they may not have the money or desire to proceed. The swim center wants to also have a convention center and a hotel for out of town visitors. Previous article Lee County Commissioner Bob Janes Dies Next article Governor Crist to make a stop in Fort Myers
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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ROME (AP) — Google said Wednesday it will scan up to 1 million old books in national libraries in Rome and Florence, including works by astronomer Galileo Galilei, in what’s being described as the first deal of its kind. Officials from Google and the Italian culture ministry said it was the first time Google Books and a culture ministry have had such a partnership. Culture Ministry official Mario Resca says the deal will help save the books’ content forever and noted that the 1966 Florence flood ruined thousands of books in the Tuscan city’s library. He said digitizing books from before 1868 will help spread Italian culture throughout the world. Google will cover the costs of the scanning of the books, all of them out-of-copyright Italian works, including 19th-century literature and 18th-century scientific volumes. The Italian libraries already had embarked on their own project to put their collections online, and so far digital catalogues of some 285,000 book titles and other information have been created.
March 10, 2010 | Posted in
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