Google haunted by Internet "click fraud"

This sounds to me like a potentially huge business story. If Google, why not other Internet companies?

Click fraud hounds Google
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — John Thys (left, checking inventory) still hasn’t figured out how much his company has paid Google Inc. for bogus sales referrals caused by “click fraud” — a sham aimed at a perceived weakness in the Internet search leader’s lucrative advertising network.
But Thys says he has uncovered enough of it to conclude that Google is trying to shortchange his company and thousands of other advertisers by offering refunds totaling $60 million to settle a lawsuit.
“It’s almost like an insult that they expect us to take this token money,” said Thys, director of Internet marketing for Radiator.com.
Google also expects to pay $30 million to the lawyers who settled the case on behalf of advertisers, raising the settlement’s total value to as high as $90 million. Still, that’s a fraction of the more than $10 billion in cash held by the Mountain View, Calif.-based search company.
An Arkansas judge is expected to consider the proposed class-action settlement in late July.
The refunds, which will be provided in the form of advertising credits, are meant to compensate Google’s customers for undetected click fraud, which contributed to the $13.3 billion in ad revenue that has poured into the company since 2001.

(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Kansas cocaine bust indictments

Last year a cocaine sweep through Manhattan, KS and environs netted 22 arrests in "Operation Little Apple", which Kansas AG Phill Kline called one of the largest drug investigations in state history.

Prosecutors drew guilty pleas from five: Cody J. Glidden, Ryan Joseph Huninghake, Tera Beth Weisbender, Jeffrey Alan Pollit, Cyril Vernon Grindle

And more indictments: Jonathan Karl Bokelman, John L. Eichem, Johnny M. Gonzales, Mark Anthony Guesby, Clayton Thomas Holthaus, Joseph Eugene Lujan, Eric Brownlee McCuiston, Jason Scott Robinson, Alonzo Sampson, Amy Marie Shehan, Albert Aurelio Silva II, Richard Alfonso Torres, Timothy Allen Weisbender, Lucas Earl Benjamin West, and Benjamin Louis Wieland.

20 arrested in Kansas after 2005 cocaine sweep

"Operation Little Apple" is also a Googlewhack - a Google search that brings up one and only one result page.

Look for this guy with several women

Polygamy sect leader on FBI Most-Wanted List
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs has been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in hopes that the additional exposure and reward money will lead to his arrest.
Jeffs, 50, is accused of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. He is wanted in Arizona on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor. He also was charged in Utah with rape as an accomplice.

FBI placard

KC homicide #26: Harold K. Tabb Jr.

The KCMO Police Department Homicide Unit has positively identified the man killed at 83rd and Hillcrest Road on Friday, May 5, 2006 as Harold K. Tabb, Jr., black male 06/16/1974 of KCMO. Mr. Tabb had also used the name of and was also known as Derek A. Johnson. No suspect(s) are in custody and detectives are still investigating.
Anyone with information is asked to call the TIPS Hotline at 474-TIPS (8477).

KC homicide roster 2006:

#1 #2 #3 #4-5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12-13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19-20 #21 #22 #23 #24 #25

How's our Toynbee-Jupiter tile doing?

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Unless you’re hunting for them, the weird markers embedded in downtown streets in St. Louis don’t draw much attention.
For those who do notice, the words make little sense.
The shoe box-sized marker read: “TOyNBEE IDEA IN KUbricK’s 2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER.”
The plaques, numbering more than 100 and found on dozens of city streets across the U.S. and in three South American countries, present a riddle that may never be solved: What in the world — or on Jupiter, for that matter — does English historian Arnold J. Toynbee have to do with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and with raising the dead?
St. Louis has three of the “Toynbee plaques,” or “tiles,” as they are often called. Kansas City has one. www.toynbee.net

Ours is at 13th & Grand in Downtown Kansas City - or at least was in 2003, according to an item with this Star photo:

Mysterious markers on city streets still puzzling

2nd fatal Denver police shooting

The names of officers involved in police shootings are released in many other jurisdictions, I've noticed. Not here.

DENVER (AP) — Police fatally shot a suspected car thief after he pulled out a fake gun and pointed at officers, investigators said.
It was the second fatal shooting involving Denver police in three weeks.
The car was stolen Saturday in suburban Aurora. Denver police surrounded the vehicle and ordered the man to get down on the ground, police said. Instead, he pulled out the plastic gun, police said.
Three officers appeared to have fired shots during the confrontation and have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, police spokesman John White said.
Police Chief Gerry Whitman on Sunday defended the actions of the officers.
“They needed to make a quick decision, and the first decision I expect them to make is to protect themselves,” he said. “I don’t know if the suspect was treating it as a toy, but he pointed it at uniformed officers. Obviously, they took that very seriously.”
Whitman described the fake gun as a replica that may have been designed to fire darts or pellets. “It’s definitely not a toy,” he said.
On April 20, an officer shot and killed a suspected burglar who was speeding toward him in a car in a parking garage, police said. The district attorney’s office said officer Rick Nixon would not be charged because the suspect’s car was considered a deadly weapon under state law.
AP story

Buffet kicks out food-wasting family

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Wendy Dershem may think twice before leaving that egg roll on her plate at her next Chinese buffet. The Des Moines woman, her boyfriend and her two children were kicked out of a restaurant last week after management accused her of leaving too much food on her plate.
"They told us we are not welcome there anymore," said Dershem, a repeat customer at the Dragon House buffet. "We waste too much food. But the buffet is all you can eat. And you know kids. They won't always eat everything and they want something else."
Dershem said she paid her $5.95 fee on Saturday but was abruptly told to leave after eating one plate of food.
Employees said they had been watching her family on previous trips to the restaurant and were fed up with her habits.
"They just take one bite and throw it away," said cashier Lin Huyen. "They take four egg rolls and crab ragoon, take one bite of egg roll and throw the whole plate. That is wasting food."

Family kicked out of buffet restaurant

Above: Restaurant employee Lin Huyen explains to reporters (Screengrab from ABC News video via Yahoo)

Former bouncer says he can spot a liar

Currently the top item at the State University of New York at Buffalo:

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- When trying to lie your way through any situation, keep a tight rein on your zygo maticus major and your orbicularis oculi. They'll give you away faster than a snitch.
So says social psychologist Mark Frank...
"Fleeting facial expressions are expressed by minute and unconscious movements of facial muscles like the frontalis, corregator and risorius," Frank says, "and these micro-movements, when provoked by underlying emotions, are almost impossible for us to control."
Frank says he began to develop identification skills when he was bouncer in a Buffalo bar. He says he trained himself to spot behavior that suggested that patrons were underage, packing a .22 or itching for a fight. He developed a sixth sense that allowed him to spot potential troublemakers by the way they looked when they walked in – "like they were trying to get away with something," he says.
News release: Lying is exposed by microexpressions we can't control

Murder rap for drive-by shooter

Teenager charged with killing ex-friend
One month before Terry L. Hutton shot a toddler in the head in 2003, he allegedly killed a former friend in a drive-by shooting, according to court records filed Friday.
Jackson County prosecutors charged Hutton, now 17, with first-degree murder, unlawful use of a weapon and armed criminal action in the May 17, 2003, shooting of Dwight D. Wynne, 20.
Hutton was 14 at the time.
Hutton is serving a 30-year sentence for shooting the toddler and a 15-year-old girl June 30, 2003, at Linwood Boulevard and Indiana Avenue. Both victims survived.
In that case, Hutton fired an assault rifle at rivals but instead hit a 2-year-old girl riding in a car. She suffered permanent brain damage. Another bullet hit the teen in the leg as she crossed the street.

All The Star's crime stories

Links to crime-related stories in The Star today and over the weekend.

Today:
Bus crash memories hauntingly stay vivid
Missing statues signify a trend
Cody’s offering: A chance for others

Saturday:
Pit bull numbers put cities on alert
After rampage, dogs appeared to be friendly
Student at Bible college says he set bookstore afire
Kennedy will again enter drug treatment
Commentary: Extend statute of limitations for victims of priest sex abuse
Libby defense dealt setback in leak case
Wiretap rules questioned by judges
Doctor says death was guards’ fault
$2.25 million awarded for policeman’s fakery
Teenager charged with killing ex-friend
KC police board gains insight of adversity
Metropolitan Digest VIDEO
Police lobbyists to get scrutiny
USDA criticizes zoo over animal deaths

Sunday
‘Chloe’ deepens Porter mystery
Policies put heat on police chief
Troopers see jump in drug busts along I-44