In the days since Michael Jackson's death on June 25, 2009 the Internet was flooded with news, views, videos, photos, reactions of fans, speculations, conspiracy theories and more. The most intriguing and interesting thing is the theory that the King of Pop “faked his own death” and the dead body is that of a Jackson look-alike or body double who was terminally ill.

In some latest news stories it is claimed that “MJ is alive” and has been seen in Europe. It is claimed that ‘this is a gimmick for his big come back concert’ in London. Some others reported multiple sightings of Jackson in the past few days.

Earlier there were stories making the rounds that Jackson faked his death in order to escape from $500 million debt and escaped to Mexico, where he is comfortably living in a luxury hideout.

There were stories and theories about the parentage of his three children. It is known to the world that the elder two children were born to Jackson and Debbie Rowe, while the youngest kid is born to a surrogate mother whose name was never revealed. Neither is the world going to know because, reportedly, the surrogate mother never was told that she was bearing Jackson’s child.

Still more interesting is the story that Michael Jackson is not the biological father of the three children! If the story is true, why should Michael Jackson set aside “a mountain of his unreleased recordings” to take care of their future, name his mother as the custodian of the children, etc?

There are hundreds of facts to be considered and risks estimated before entering into an insurance deal with an insurance company. The first and foremost thing is to ask your questions on the risks and liabilities as regards car insurance. Excellent, exhaustive “Frequently Asked Questions” or car insurance faq in their site is highly helpful to understand all that you must know about auto insurance and related matters.

You may like to know if a lower insurance rate can cover all the possible damages and financial loses. Your auto insurance questions such as what happens if you are stopped by Police Officers after an accident, or if your old cars that cannot be refinanced needs the same type of insurance, who are financially protected in case of an accident, etc. are of utmost importance. You will get most of your answers from all-autoinsurance.com and you can get assistance to get the best money-saving auto insurance quote from their site.

There is a big difference between driving in small towns and highly populated cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas and Boston. Also there is a big difference between driving a compact car and SUV. Your driving mileage per day, previous accident history, and if your car insurance company is the same company that insures you other insurable interests like home, business, other assets, etc. can make a big difference in the insurance rates and save you tons of money. With the ease of the click of your mouse you can get all your car insurance questions answered from all-autoinsurance.

An informed customer always stands to gain, an uninformed consumer sustains loses. So is the case with auto insurance or car insurance. But all-autoinsurance educates you about automobiles/cars, types of cars, possible risks, insurance, and helps you with the best auto insurance quotes. Try them!

America’s most notorious swindler Bernard Madoff has been sentenced for the maximum prison term of 150 years for the massive fraud that robbed hundreds of thousands of investors of $65 billion (£40 billion). It is described as “the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person”.

US District Judge Denny Chin described Madoff’s crime as "staggering". Judge Chin gave Madoff the maximum sentence on all 11 charges, which included securities fraud and money laundering. Judge Chin said "the breach of trust was massive".

The sentence was pronounced after the court had heard statements from Madoff's victims, who narrated their losses emotionally. Then fraudster Bernard Madoff turned directly to those in the court who had been affected and apologized to them for their losses. Before sentencing, he also apologized for the "legacy of shame" he had brought on his family and the industry.

Bernard Madoff was inspired by Charles Ponzi, one of the greatest swindlers in American history, who notoriously used his Ponzi scheme in the United States in the 1920s. Now the term "Ponzi Scheme" is broadly used for any scam that pays investors returns from the investments of later investors.

Madoff began his career when he was 22 years with $5,000 he made from summer holiday jobs such as working as a garden sprinkler installer in New York. Then he established Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities in 1960, and later Madoff served as the Chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

Had the global recession not hit the investors, the 70-year-old Madoff would have still continued his Ponzimonium and the investors who were robbed off their money would have also remained silent if they could live through 20 years of his fraud. And the US investigators who enquired into his operations eight times in the last 16 years also would not have caught him. Hit by the downturn, investors tried to withdraw about $7 billion that he could not repay and it sparked of Bernie’s sudden downfall.

The list of Madoff's victims includes film director Steven Spielberg's charitable foundation Wunderkinder, HSBC Holdings ($1billion), Royal Bank of Scotland and Man Group and Japan's Nomura Holdings. The other victims include school teachers, farmers, mechanics and others.

Madoff was sent to prison on March 12 after he pleaded guilty to 11 felony counts. According to his own statement, Madoff began his Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s.

Modern technological advancements have made life quite different from what it used to be one or two decades ago. We often get confused about what to select when the range of products like flat panel TVs, SLR Digital Cameras, etc., as the range is too wide. BuyDig.com is one online store that can help us with a wide range of selection, great quality and good pricing.

Flat panel TVs are in, others are out. But, again screen size, iPod Dock, speaker system, HD resolution, contrast ratio, response time, brightness, clarity, and availability of lifelike wide color range can confuse us with the pricing. So, if you are looking for flat panel TVs, it will be a good idea to visit BuyDig’s online store and compare all that is on offer.

Everyone loves photos and videos. The high-tech range of SLR Digital Cameras available in the present times offer great choices to the novice as well as pro. It will be a wise step to compare brands, pricing, body features, lens, among many other aspects. Also look for the instant rebate, if any, offered, warranty, etc. For most of the users who love great photography, that too with point-and-shoot ease and features like sensors, LCD, movie mode, etc., BuyDig helps to make comparisons, features, technology, prices, etc before ordering.

Looking for buying a Nikon D90, the world's first digital SLR camera with a movie shooting function? Then look no further, it is the best you can think of in terms of the latest technology, pricing, accessories, image sensor, and more features that you look for in a camera. It delivers exemplary images with the finest details, smooth tones, rich colors and low noise across a wide range of ISO settings. Nikon D90 delivers great cinematic results and it is the first choice of professional photographers and the most reliable best for low-light situations. It has also features like auto focus, auto exposure and auto white balance for diverse shooting situations.

Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, the 16th century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel of size 77 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in) was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Now the painting is owned by the Government of France and is in the Louvre (Musée du Louvre) in Paris with the title “Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo”. Over 6 million people view the painting each year. Few other works of art has been subject to so much scrutiny, study, and mythologizing, parodying, copying and attempted robberies.

Leonardo da Vinci began painting Mona Lisa in 1503, and, after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished. He is believed to have worked on it for three more years after he moved to France and finished it shortly before his death in 1519.

Leonardo carried the painting from Italy to France in 1516 when King François I invited him to work at the Clos Lucé. Most likely, through the heirs of Leonardo's assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until it was given to Louis XIV.

Mona Lisa's fame skyrocketed when it was stolen on August 21, 1911. The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be burnt down, came under suspicion, was arrested and jailed. Apollinaire tried to implicate his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also questioned, but both were later exonerated.

Two years later it was established that the real thief was Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee and an Italian patriot, who was sentenced for a small punishment. After exhibiting it all over Italy, Mona Lisa was finally returned to the Louvre in 1913.

During 1800s Romantic poets wrote about Mona Lisa as a femme fatale, “probably, because the literary gazers were mainly men who subjected her to an endless stream of male fantasies." During the 20th century, the painting was stolen, mass-reproduced, merchandised, lampooned. It was reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements".

Until the 20th century, Mona Lisa was just another painting, and not the "most famous painting in the world”. In 1852 its market value was only 90,000 francs compared to the paintings by Raphael valued at up to 600,000 francs.

From December 1962 to March 1963, the French Government lent it to the United States to be exhibited in New York City and Washington D.C. In 1974, the painting was exhibited also in Tokyo and Moscow.

Before sending to USA in 1962, the painting was valued for insurance purposes at $100 million, “the most valuable painting ever insured” according to the Guinness Book of Records. Recently it was surpassed by three other paintings - the Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt sold for $135 million, the Woman III by Willem de Kooning sold for $138 million in November 2006, and No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock sold for a record $140 million in November 2006.

Although the above prices are greater than the insured value of Mona Lisa, the comparison does not account for the change in prices of dollar and does not show the actual market value. It is because $100 million in 1962 was approximately $670 million in 2006 when adjusted for inflation using the US Consumer Price Index.

The current recession has added 100 million extreme poverty stricken people to the 1.1 billion sufferers of extreme poverty, making it 1.2 billion. In other words, out of the total world population, one in every six person is hit by extreme levels of poverty.

According to the World Bank, extreme poverty is living on less than US $1.25 per day, and moderate poverty is living on less than $2 a day. The World Bank estimated that in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day, and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day. That means, in approximate terms, one in every three people of the world live in conditions of moderate poverty.

According to the Ebbing Tides in the Golden State report released by the Economic Roundtable, in the United States job losses due to recession are projected to cause under-employment rates of 18.5%, with nearly 2 million people in poverty and 17% in California, with nearly 6.7 million people in poverty. California recorded an unprecedented 253,000 foreclosures in 2008, more than three times the peak of foreclosures in the 1990 recession.

In 2006 the poverty rate for minors in the United States was the highest in the industrialized world, with 21.9% of all minors and 30% of African American minors living below the poverty threshold.

In the US educational system, poor children are at a higher risk than other children for retention in their grade, special placements during the school’s hours and even not completing their high school education.

Brain drain, one of the initiators of poverty for poor nations, has cost the African continent over $4 billion in the employment of 150,000 expatriate professionals annually.

Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia are the most affected by brain drain. According to UNDP, "Ethiopia lost 75% of its skilled workforce between 1980 and 1991". There are more Ethiopian doctors in Chicago than there are in Ethiopia. Over 80% of Jamaicans and Haitians with higher education live abroad.

The UNDP estimates that India loses $2 billion a year because of the emigration of computer experts to the U.S. Indian students going abroad for their higher studies costs India a foreign exchange outflow of $10 billion annually.

One third of deaths, some 18 million deaths a year or 50,000 deaths per day, are due to poverty-related causes. Total 270 million people, most of them women and children, had died as a result of poverty since 1990. Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday. 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. There are over 100 million street children worldwide.

Some countries can have economic growth and reduce poverty while other poor nations cannot. For the poorest country, poverty reduction is simply impossible without economic growth. For example, in 2008 Sierra Leone had an annual per capita income of $677. This means that in Sierra Leone, even with a perfectly equal distribution of income the poverty rate would be 100%.

Instances of good governance leading to economic development and poverty reduction can be seen in countries such as Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Vietnam. These nations have the will and authority to create and maintain policies that lead to long-term development that helps all their citizens, not just the wealthy.

The best prospects for economic growth and poverty reduction have been found in China, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In Thailand the economy has grown at double-digit rates since the early 1980’s. China has been the world leader in economic growth since 2001, recording the highest rate of growth of GDP at 13% per year.

Interestingly, it took 60 years for England to double its per capita income when the Industrial Revolution began. It took 50 years for USA to double its per capita income during the American economic take-off in the late nineteenth century. But currently, several East Asian and Southeast Asian countries have been doubling the growth of their economies every 10 years.

In a case filed before the Supreme Court the NRA has asked the court to strike down strict gun control laws in the Chicago area, initiating another battle over Second Amendment protections for gun owners. The framers of the Constitution intended “to protect the right to keep and bear arms and other rights from state infringement,” the NRA said in the filing before the court.

Personal and home security is of high priority in the minds of all people. Hence, the right to own guns and security and safety gadgets cannot be denied as it is a constitutional guarantee.

Talking about firearms, the areas that need strict action is the reliability, efficiency and durability of guns and gun parts. Some of the online and offline stores offering these seemed to be wanting on these aspects. What happens if the gun malfunctions at a critical situation, may be just because of one of the gun parts, most importantly the magazine? The difference is not merely intricacies of law but that of life and death. If you too feel so, check up at Brownells that offer more than 30,000 products including the best selection of gunsmithing tools and firearms accessories.

As you know a battle rifle’s reliability depends on its magazine, and the best you can have is from Brownells, as reliability was their first priority when they built their own AR15 Magazine. Also, they use the best materials for manufacture under strict ISO quality control standards.

Ordering gun parts, methods of payment, shipment and all related aspects are quiet efficient and customer friendly. You can straightaway place an order or order their extensive catalog before ordering.

Buying and selling websites is a very common business nowadays. It has, in fact, evolved as a big business. There are thousands of sites specializing in website valuation, buying and selling sites or functioning as broker sites that facilitate the transactions. There are people making millions from this business.

But how do you evaluate your site? I have found many popular sites that will tell you how much your site is worth, along with elementary statistics like the number of unique visitors, page hits, inbound links, ranking, etc. I have been using such services to understand the basic things about sites I am dealing with. In such valuation sites, if you want to know how much your site is worth you just have to enter the URL of your site.

But I started doubting about the reliability of such website valuation, because the same site will show different values and statistics in different web valuing tools. What does it mean? It simply means that you cannot take those values as true or the real value of your site.

As there could be a more reliable method for website valuation, I searched the web and found some other sites that ask you to fill in fields relating to domain name, income from the site, expenses on advertising and hosting, type of site (like a blog, forum, product sale, directory, etc.). Then there are optional fields (for more accurate valuation) like time required to run the site, unique visitors, page views, opt-in subscribers, uniqueness of content, etc. Filling such information gave a better website valuation, though different site valuing services gave varied values for the same site.

Then how do you find out the exact value of your site? In fact, it is not easy, as various valuation tools and experts use varied parameters for valuation.

Suppose, per month, you make advertising revenue $7,000, spend about $600 for the site, and expect advertising revenue $10,000 by next year, for what amount will you sell your site? Tricky question! Any person who wants to buy your site will surely consider your current net income from the site, cash flows, capital invested and the future possibilities. So, it is a complex set of facts and parameters to determine the true value of your site.

However, there are many financial experts, website valuation sites, brokers, auction sites, etc. exclusively dealing with website valuation, though none of them can give you an accurate valuation. It is just like trying to find out the value of a classic artwork or real estate. The real value is what the buyer can pay you. So, try many sources before selling or buying sites.

“Your Planet Needs You - UNite to Combat Climate Change”, is the theme of World Environment Day (WED) 2009. The world has celebrated World Environment Day on 5 June. WED was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

By celebrating World Environment Day (WED) the UN stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and urges on political attention and action of nations for the protection and improvement of the environment. The day's agenda is to:

1. Give a human face to environmental issues;

2. Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;

3. Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;

4. Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

This year’s theme encourages nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. Overcoming poverty in all parts of the world and better management of forests are of utmost importance.

This year’s host for WED is Mexico which plays an important role in the fight against climate change, and the country has a growing participation in the carbon markets. Mexico is also a leading partner in UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign. Mexico, accounting for about 1.5 % of global greenhouse gas emissions, has pledged to plant 25 per cent of the trees under the campaign.

This year’s theme reflects the urgency for nations to take adaptation and mitigation measures to address climate change in accordance with the policy of sustainable development and reach agreed outcomes at the crucial climate convention meeting slated in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The first and foremost requirement of direct mail and telemarketing campaign is a highly reliable database of mailing lists that are accurate and highly responsive. Such mailing lists cannot be put together overnight or purchased from unreliable sources. In fact, compiling reliable and responsive mailing lists is a highly professional job. You need mailing lists from a well-established mailing list company such as The List Company so that your campaigns are successful.

The List Company, a leader in the list industry, has one of the largest databases containing over 14 million US businesses and 300 million US consumers. They will provide you the most effective resources for all your direct mail and telemarketing needs. Some of their products include, consumer lists, business lists, telemarketing lists, mortgage mailing list, and specialty response lists.

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