Well, there really is no junk-mail...well, everybody wants to get a check or a birthday card, but it takes just as much man-power to deliver it as their precious little greeting cards...

Massachusetts lawmakers desperate for additional revenue are eyeing the endowments of deep-pocketed private colleges to bolster the state's coffers by more than $1 billion a year, asserting that the schools' rising fortunes undercut their nonprofit status.

Legislators have asked state finance officials to study a plan that would impose a 2.5% annual assessment on colleges with endowments over $1 billion, an amount now exceeded by nine Massachusetts institutions.

"The biggest mistake by Clinton was in presuming that Indiana was like just another Rust Belt state. The reality is that it is a microcosm of the entire nation, with the almost all the same socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. In some ways, its combination of rural and urban gives it more of a resemblance to nearby Illinois or New York than Ohio or Iowa. "

Chicago Bears running back Cedric Benson failed a sobriety test while operating a 30-foot boat, then resisted arrest before being hit with pepper spray and dragged ashore by officers.

THE cheque from the Saudi Government for $360,000 was enclosed in an envelope.
It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney's Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. More than 35 years after Sydney cleric Khalil Shami received the cheque, he insists it came with no strings attached. But while the cheque had no tangible conditions in the form of written instructions or binding contracts, the cleric received a message from his donors several months after depositing it.

"They said: 'Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what's happened to them in your sermon?"' Shami tells Inquirer. "Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn't see a negative in their request."

The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients, whether the money is bankrolling a religious centre, a clerical allowance or Queensland's Griffith University, which was exposed by The Australian last month for seeking a $1.37million Saudi grant, of which $100,000 was received, and offering to keep elements of the deal a secret.

The Saudi Government - largely through its embassy - is believed to have funnelled at least $120 million into Australia since the 1970s to propagate hardline Islam, bankroll radical clerics and build mosques, schools and charitable organisations.

But the Saudi cash that has flowed into Australia, that also allegedly has paid the allowance of hardline Canberra cleric Mohammed Swaiti, who has publicly praised jihadists, is dwarfed by the $90 billion Riyadh is believed to have pumped into promoting Islamic fundamentalism internationally.

US-based Middle East expert and author Daniel Pipes says it is wrong to presume that all academics would follow their donor's line merely to keep the stream of funds rolling.

"Academics have a distinct point of view and are not about to be bought and change their point of view for any sum of money," he tells Inquirer. "But they are willing to shape their work and their views. So you can't buy them but you can rent them. So someone who might have been inclined to ask tough questions will do something else. It's subtle. It's not like the Saudis come to town to buy up academics who grovel before them, as was the case with Griffith University."

Last month, Britain's MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans reportedly told his Government that the Saudi Government's multimillion-dollar donations to universities, along with other funds from Muslim organisations in countries such as Pakistan, had led to a "dangerous increase in the spread of extremism in leading university campuses".

 Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.

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VIENNA, Austria - A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday.

Ban said the U.N. and all members of the international community were very concerned and immediate action was needed.

He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties.

"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

The style is believed to have started in prisons, where inmates are issued ill-fitting jumpsuits but no belts to prevent hangings and beatings. The look was popularized in gangster rap videos.

Danny Federici, the longtime keyboardist in Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band whose talents were showcased in some of the rocker's best-loved songs, has died.  He was 58.

Federici came back for a final appearance with the band last month in Indianapolis, playing on eight songs including “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” a Springsteen classic that spotlighted Federici's accordion playing, the Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, reported.

`Natural Musician'

The newspaper's official Springsteen blogger, Stan Goldstein, wrote today:  “To many of us E Street Band fans, it's like losing a member of our own family.”

During his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, Springsteen called Federici “the most instinctive and natural musician I ever met, and the only member of the band that can reduce me to a shouting mess. I love you, Danny. Your organ and accordion playing brought the boardwalks of Central and South Jersey alive in my music. Thank you.”

JANUS RESEARCH MEANS GETTING MORE THAN YOUR HANDS DIRTY