THE BRAZILIAN UFO MAGAZINE OFFICE IS INVADED AND ROBBED: BANDITS WERE LOOKING FOR MORE THAN COMPUTERS AND EQUIPMENTS This is to inform to as many people as possible that the office of the Brazilian UFO Magazine was invaded and robbed last week. Bandits forced one door of the property at the night of July 30 and stole several computers, printers, equipments etc. The losses are higher than US$ 12,000 and unfortunately a large number of computer files will never be retrieved. We still haven't been able to raise the necessary funds to recover from the robbery and 80% of our activities are paralyzed. The Brazilian UFO Magazine office is located in an area on the city of Campo Grande considered reasonably safe, and the property, a rent house, was also considered secure. However, the thieves knew precisely what door to force and how to do so, because very little damage was caused to it. And presumably they also knew very well what they were looking for, because not only some specific computers, printers, equipments were stolen, but also, and very suspiciously, particular folders containing very important and sensitive information about several areas of Ufology in Brazil. I cannot describe at this time the exact contents of the many folders taken, to avoid any interference in the investigations. I can only say that the folders taken were located next to many others that haven't been touched, as they didn't contain the same kind of information. The stolen folders covered specific aspects of some UFO-cult movements going on in Brazil, as well as they had still unreleased cases of military involvement with the UFO Phenomena in several areas of the country and other nations and South America, and they also covered our plans for the future of the campaign for UFO disclosure in Brazil. Because of the very high strangeness of the MO demonstrated by the thieves, the police suspects, and so do we, that the invasion was a criminal act fully studied and meticulously planned. It implies that our activities have been closely watched for weeks and perhaps months prior to the invasion. We believe that the robbery was designed not only to cause a severe financial damage to our activities, by preventing us from publishing the Brazilian UFO Magazine for at least two months, as well as to damage us in other ways. The Brazilian UFO Magazine is one of the oldest UFO publications still in activity in the world. It was founded in 1985 and was at it 135th edition. The magazine is monthly and circulates all over Brazil, Portugal, some places on Spain and in several countries of Latin American. As of this month of August an English version of it should be initiated in the USA, based in California. We also publish books, conferences and DVD documentaries. Those friends in overseas in position to help the recovery of the Brazilian UFO Magazine are kindly asked to do so. Those of you interested in helping us may write to editor@ufo.com.br to obtain information as to what can be donated to the magazine. Any help if immensely welcome. You may spread the word. Thanks for your attention! A. J. Gevaerd editor, Brazilian UFO Magazine aj@gevaerd.com editor@ufo.com.br www.ufo.com.br Photos of the robbery can be seen at: www.ufo.com.br -- Forwarded by: Skylaire Alfvegren "yellow journalism, elfin magic" P.O. Box 291842 Los Angeles, CA 90029 ***** http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/10/2007-08-10_911_workers_outraged_by_new_rudy_claim.html 9/11 workers outraged by new Rudy claim BY CELESTE KATZ DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Friday, August 10th 2007 Rudy Giuliani drew outrage and indignation from Sept. 11 first-responders yesterday by saying he spent as much time - or more - exposed to the site's dangers as workers who dug through the debris for the missing and the dead. Speaking to reporters at a Cincinnati Reds ballgame he caught between fund-raisers, the GOP front-runner said he helped 9/11 families and defended himself against critics of how he managed the attack's aftermath. "This is not a mayor or a governor or a President who's sitting in an ivory tower," Giuliani said. "I was at Ground Zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them." His statement rang false to Queens paramedic Marvin Bethea, who said he suffered a stroke, posttraumatic stress disorder and breathing problems after responding to the attacks. "I personally find that very, very insulting," he said. "Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working," said Bethea, 47. Ironworker Jonathan Sferazo, 52, who said he spent a month at the site and is now disabled, runs a worker advocacy group with Bethea and called Giuliani's comments "severely" out of line. "He's not one of us. He never has been and he never will be. He never served in a capacity where he was a responder," Sferazo said. In the aftermath of the attacks, admirers dubbed Giuliani "America's Mayor," praising his leadership in the face of an unprecedented disaster. Detractors, including the International Association of Fire Fighters, which put out a scathing 13-minute video on his performance, suggested he profited politically and financially from the attacks. "[Giuliani] is self-absorbed, arrogant and deluded," said IAFF spokesman Jeff Zack. Responded Giuliani spokesman Michael McKeon, "Americans saw Rudy's performance for themselves during the aftermath of 9/11 and will dismiss this as the ridiculous and partisan rantings of a Democratic front group, because that's what they are." Giuliani backer Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter who lost his son, said no one's saying Giuliani dug through the rubble personally, but that doesn't mean he wasn't exposed to toxins. "For me to say I saw him every day [would] not be fair," said Ielpi, who participated in the recovery effort for nine months. "But I can say I did see the mayor there a large number of times, [trying] to be as helpful and supportive as possible." ckatz@nydailynews.com *** http://www.slate.com/id/2171998/ I Can Get It for You Retail Rudy Giuliani's health-care plan is great for insurance companies. By Daniel Gross Posted Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007 Last week, Rudy Giuliani tried to add some domestic policy substance to his campaign by unveiling a health-care reform plan. His proposal, as Harvard economist Greg Mankiw noted, "sounds remarkably similar to the Bush health plan." In this year's State of the Union, President George W. Bush proposed a $15,000 standard deduction for health insurance, claiming a family of four making $60,000 would receive a $4,500 tax break to buy health insurance on its own. Giuliani would similarly offer a deduction of up to $15,000, which can be claimed by families that buy their own insurance. And, the New York Times credulously noted, "the money left over, he said, could be put into a 'health savings account' to be used to pay for deductibles or other uncovered medical expenses." The time has long passed to be shocked by the ignorance that the press, many professional economists, and politicians show about the market for health insurance. After all, virtually all of them have their insurance paid for by a university, the government, or a Fortune 500 company. It never seems to have crossed the mind of President Bush, or Rudy Giuliani, or the Times reporters who uncritically noted his comments, how much insurance actually costs. (Or, in Giuliani's case, precisely which insurance companies are salivating over the prospect of insuring a 63-year-old, thrice-married cancer survivor.) The Kaiser Foundation found that in 2006, the average family premium was $11,480. (I've been buying my own—and my family's—health insurance for most of the last 14 years and claiming the tax deduction already available to self-employed people for the premiums. The policy I gave up when I joined Newsweek last month cost about $8,300 a year.) Blogger Ezra Klein and my Slate colleague Timothy Noah have already weighed in on various deficiencies of the Giuliani plan, and, by analogy, of the Bush plan. But I'd like to focus on another angle. For these proposals, which are championed by many who claim to have a natural sympathy for business, involve an understanding of business customer-supplier relationships that doesn't seem realistic. Think about how the admittedly imperfect market for insurance works today. Institutions—say, the American Enterprise Institute, or a law firm, or Procter & Gamble—buy insurance on behalf of their employees. Human resource staffers, trained professionals whose job it is to evaluate these highly complicated plans, negotiate with insurers and buy in bulk. Or they hire consultants to do the same. They have to pick a provider that will cover all employees, from the CEO on down to the cleaning staff. In the end, they may make a large purchase: a thousand employees at $7,000 per insured employee adds up to $7 million in annual premiums. One of the ironclad rules of business is that those who buy in bulk tend to get discounts. Citigroup certainly gets insurance on more favorable terms than the First National Bank of Podunk. Once insurance is in force, a zero-sum game commences. Every dollar the insurer pays out is one less it gets to keep for profits. So, insurers have powerful motivations not to pay legitimate claims. But when they're providing insurance to a large group of employees at a corporation or institution, they also have powerful motivations to pay legitimate claims. If employees experience systemic problems with slow reimbursements and claims denied, insurers are likely to hear about it from the HR staff. Make life difficult for an influential employee, and an insurer can jeopardize the whole relationship. What supplier wants to alienate a huge customer like Microsoft? Of course, even given these circumstances, insurers have succeeded in passing along higher costs to corporate purchasers. Bush and Giuliani, and advocates of their plans, want to change the dynamic. They want to turn what has been a wholesale, buy-in-bulk business into a retail business. They want to replace a bunch of giant, sophisticated consumers possessing limited bargaining power with a mass of unsophisticated consumers possessing no bargaining power. For some reason, they think you and I can do a better job negotiating with Oxford and Aetna than Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola can. In theory, they argue, insurers will hasten to develop new products and services and slash prices to compete for the dollars of millions of insurance buyers. In practice, something else may happen. For an insurer, the utility of a customer—whether it's an individual or a large group—is based on how many revenues and losses he produces. Say an insured person who has paid a $7,500 annual premium suffers an accident, which results in a $30,000 hospital bill. Worse, one of his children comes down with a chronic condition that requires $15,000 in annual, recurring costs. The insurer can pay the claims and sustain a loss. Or it can try to figure out ways not to pay. Or it can jack up premiums to such a level that the policy holder either becomes a profitable risk or can no longer afford to remain a customer. Alienate a single insured person and the insurance company only jeopardizes a single unprofitable customer relationship. What's the customer's recourse? Fights between insurance companies and individuals are never fair. The overwhelming majority of individuals lack the resources, time, and fortitude to confront well-funded, profit-obsessed bureaucracies. Nor do they have human resource staffs or outside consultants that can act as advocates. Michael Moore can only make so many phone calls. Ah, but what about the vaunted power of the consumer to "negotiate" by taking his or her business elsewhere? Here, again, the individual can often be at the mercy of a brutal market. If you have a pre-existing condition or an adverse history, it's not that easy to switch. Consumer behavior can, of course, bring down the prices of all sorts of commodities, products, and services. But frequently, the magic works because a powerful, smart agent is acting on consumers' behalf: a wholesaler or a retailer that buys in bulk. Wal-Mart's customers can't show up at factories and demand that the owner sell them a pair of shoes for $8. Wal-Mart can. Wholesale is always cheaper than retail. Given this, you have to question the real motivation behind the plans of these business-friendly candidates. Are they really interested in unleashing the power of millions of consumers on insurance companies? Or are they more interested in giving corporations an easy way of relieving their burdens and tilting the tables even further in favor of insurance companies? Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com. He is the author of Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. ***** http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070810/sc_nm/space_hotel_dc Fly me to the moon: space hotel sees 2012 opening By Pascale Harter Fri Aug 10, 2007 "Galactic Suite," the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes. Its Barcelona-based architects say the space hotel will be the most expensive in the galaxy, costing $4 million for a three-day stay. During that time guests would see the sun rise 15 times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their pod rooms by sticking themselves to the walls like Spiderman. Company director Xavier Claramunt says the three-bedroom boutique hotel's joined up pod structure, which makes it look like a model of molecules, was dictated by the fact that each pod room had to fit inside a rocket to be taken into space. "It's the bathrooms in zero gravity that are the biggest challenge," says Claramunt. "How to accommodate the more intimate activities of the guests is not easy." But they may have solved the issue of how to take a shower in weightlessness -- the guests will enter a spa room in which bubbles of water will float around. When guests are not admiring the view from their portholes they will take part in scientific experiments on space travel. Galactic Suite began as a hobby for former aerospace engineer Claramunt, until a space enthusiast decided to make the science fiction fantasy a reality by fronting most of the $3 billion needed to build the hotel. An American company intent on colonizing Mars, which sees Galaxy Suite as a first step, has since come on board, and private investors from Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates are in talks. PLENTY RICH ENOUGH If Claramunt is secretive about the identity of his generous backer, he is more forthcoming about the custom he can expect. "We have calculated that there are 40,000 people in the world who could afford to stay at the hotel. Whether they will want to spend money on going into space, we just don't know." Four million dollars might be a lot to spend on a holiday, but those in the nascent space tourism industry say hoteliers have been slow on the uptake because no one thought the cost of space travel would come down as quickly as it has. Galactic Suite said the price included not only three nights in space. Guests also get eight weeks of intensive training at a James Bond-style space camp on a tropical island. "There is fear associated with going into space," said Claramunt. "That's why the shuttle rocket will remain fixed to the space hotel for the duration of the guests' stay, so they know they can get home again." In an era of concern over climate change, Galaxy Suite have no plans so far to offset the pollution implications of sending a rocket to carry just six guests at a time into space. "But," says Claramunt, "I'm hopeful that the impact of seeing the earth from a distance will stimulate the guests' urge to value and protect our planet." ***** http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-08-12-griffinobit_N.htm TV mogul Merv Griffin dies By William Keck, USA TODAY 8-12-7 Who was America's foremost talk show host, game show creator and billionaire hotel mogul? Merv Griffin, who would surely consider the question too easy for Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune— two shows he created and proudly called "America's games." The affable Hollywood tycoon died of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his the family that was released by Marcia Newberger, spokeswoman for The Griffin Group/Merv Griffin Entertainment.Griffin, who was 82, leaves behind a vast empire that will continue to entertain the world for many years. Griffin began as bit player in film and on stage. In 1950, he crooned the No. 1 novelty song, I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. During his lifetime, he became a billionaire owner of hotels, casinos, a jet, a yacht, champion racehorses and a television legacy rewarded with numerous Emmys. The always well-dressed, perpetually tan California native created Jeopardy! in the 1960s and Wheel of Fortune in the '70s. Wheel, he said, was based on the Hangman games he would play with his sister during family road trips. And he credited his ex-wife, Julann, with suggesting the concept behind Jeopardy!— contestants providing questions to supplied answers. The 1986 sale of the shows and his entire Merv Griffin Enterprises holdings netted him a widely reported $250 million, plus a share of future profits. He also pocketed $80 million in royalties for composing the catchy Jeopardy! theme. "Every show I go on, I sing it," he said of his trick for increasing royalties. Griffin, who was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996, will not see how his latest game show brainchild, Crosswords, fares when it debuts in syndication on Sept. 10. He believed it would succeed, like his two earlier hits, because of its simplicity. "If you can't explain your game in one sentence, forget it," he told the New York Post. During his 1962-86 run as host of daytime TV's The Merv Griffin Show, he interviewed four U.S. presidents and routinely booked controversial figures, such as Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, transsexual pioneer Christine Jorgensen, Spiro Agnew and Muhammad Ali, many of whom had been banned by other shows. "I did a very unusual interview with Martin Luther King Jr.," he told The Miami Herald. "I had Bobby Kennedy on. Rose Kennedy, I don't think anybody else ever sat her down on television, and she came on with me twice." He told The New York Times that he took pride in never asking boring questions, such as "How did you prepare for the role?" or "Do you have any hobbies?" And cocktails, he admitted, were sometimes employed to get guests like Bette Davis to loosen her lips. "If we knew they were stiffs, we'd get 'em a little stiff," he said. He was fond of recalling when he got the extremely private Orson Welles, a frequent guest, to finally talk about his past loves — just two hours before the famed director died in 1985. Though Griffin took great pleasure in getting stars to open up about their personal lives (though never "too personal," he clarified), he rarely discussed his own. His 2003 autobiography, Merv: Making the Good Life Last, devoted just three pages to his 1958-76 marriage to Julann Elizabeth Wright, with whom he had one son, Anthony Patrick. For more than a decade, until shortly before her 1995 death, Eva Gabor was his constant companion, a vacancy filled in recent years by close friend Nancy Reagan. Quizzed about two high-profile, multimillion-dollar 1991 sexual harassment suits — both dismissed, from former male employees — Griffin told a New York Times reporter, "I tell everybody that I'm a quartre-sexual. I will do anything with anybody for a quarter." Such self-deprecating humor (he often poked fun at his expanding waistline) and admiration in the Hollywood community helped him quickly bounce back. In 2005, he received the lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. Of his many Emmys, Griffin joked to the Los Angeles Times in 2003, "They're everywhere. Some of them are even lamps now." While he criticized present hits such as Deal or No Deal and The Jerry Springer Show ("Like watching somebody go to the toilet"), he praised David Letterman and Ellen DeGeneres, the latter whom he said was "born for the medium." He was also a huge American Idol fan and took pleasure in crossword puzzles (at least four a day), his dogs (including a beloved Shar-Pei named Charlie Chaplin), a 142-foot yacht (he had three over the years, all named The Griff), a 18th century manor in Ireland, a 57-acre Carmel Valley vineyard, and a 240-acre thoroughbred ranch in La Quinta. His great love of horses, he told the L.A. Times, was sparked by seeing the legendary Seabiscuit race twice when he was a boy. He acquired quarterhorses, Arabians and thoroughbreds. One horse, Stevie Wonderboy, was a Kentucky Derby hopeful in 2006. Earlier this year, he competed at the Derby again with Cobalt Blue. "It's always nice to win an Emmy," he recently told the Houston Chronicle. "But there's nothing like the winner's circle." Throughout the decades, he amassed an empire of hotels and casinos, with some acquisitions pitting him against Donald Trump. He called his present relationship with Trump "perfect" because "he doesn't see me, and I don't see him." Retiring to any of his exotic resorts was never an option for Griffin, who likened retirement to death. "At a certain age, you just await your turn," he said in the 2005 New York Times interview. But, he boasted, "I've got great energy, and I've got all my hair."