Weird news - Cryptocurrency CEO dies without sharing password

The wonders of modern technology can sometimes make things pretty difficult. Modern privacy is built on using cryptology, with its system of private and public keys (and other key mechanisms). The more recent development of cryptocurrencies use encryption as their basis, which makes storing of these keys the 'key' to everything. There have been many cases in the past where hackers have managed to get the key and stolen the money held in cryptocurrency wallets, with no recourse to the people who owned the money held in these wallets.
This is a different kind of problem, but one that can also suddenly arise, with the problem of knowledge being held only by one person, who suddenly dies, not having transferred the knowledge to anybody and leaving the cryptocurrency money locked up (link to article):

This is a story worthy of a film script -- which will doubtless be realized. A 30-year old CEO of a Canadian cryptocurrency firm reportedly died in India from complications from Crohn's disease (an intestinal inflammation disorder) taking with him passwords that has locked up $190 million in investor cryptocurrency. Top security experts have been unable to unlock the encrypted password throwing his clients into a tizzy. The saga, just unfolding in the western media, goes back to December when Gerald Cotten, 30-year old founder of QuadrigaCX, died due to complications with Crohn’s disease, according to the company and Cotten’s wife, Jennifer Robertson. Cotten died “while traveling in India, where he was opening an orphanage to provide a home and safe refuge for children in need,” the company's social media page said.

Weird news - Man spent money received accidentally from bank

Suppose a person is living a middle class life, and then suddenly gets a large amount of money deposited into his account. The next steps depend on the amount of money. Some months back, there was a case where an ATM in Britain was loaded with 20 pounds bills rather than 10 pound bills, and a number of people benefited before the bank realized. However, the bank decided not to pursue cases with the people who had benefited, letting them take the extra money. But when the money involved is much higher, the bank will take decisive action.
So it was in this case where a man received a huge amount of money in his account, and over a period of time, withdrew the money before the bank realized. And before the bank could take back the money from him, he went on the run along with his girl-friend, with the bank getting him declared as an international fugitive, spending more than 2 months on the run before he was arrested in Hong Kong where he had run away from New Zealand. Now he is back on trial (link to article):

A New Zealand gas station owner turned international fugitive has been sentenced to four years and seven months in prison after stealing millions of dollars accidentally deposited into his bank account. Hui "Leo" Gao, dubbed the "accidental millionaire," sparked a global manhunt after fleeing New Zealand with his girlfriend Kara Hurring in April 2009. Gao had applied for overdraft financing for the gas station he co-owned with his mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, court documents said. The bank approved his application with a $100,000 limit, however while inputting the figure a bank employee made a clerical error and gave him access to 100 times the intended amount.

Weird news - Airline shuts down leaving passengers in the lurch

An airline, when in operation ferries a number of people to and from different locations in a country our around the world. People book their tickets and plan their leisure time based on these to and fro journeys. So what happens when the airline suddenly comes to a halt (because of lack of money or other such reasons) ? People get really stuck, sometimes in places distant from their home cities and without a way to get back. Buying alternate tickets on other airlines can be expensive at short notices and the entire vacation can get badly ruined because of such cancellations, and lead to monetary losses as well, with the possibility of getting the money back also not possible (refer this case)  

Thousands of travelers have been left in the lurch around the world after the carrier Air Australia went into administration and grounded its fleet Friday.

"It currently appears that there are no funds available to meet operational expenses so flights will be suspended immediately," the company said in joint statement Friday with its newly appointed administrators, KordaMentha.

About 4,000 passengers in total have been left stranded in Hawaii, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia as a result of the suspension, said Michael Smith, a spokesman for KordaMentha.

Weird news - Cat willed 10 million pounds, but won't get it

From time to time, you hear of rich people bypassing any relatives they have, and donating sizable sums of money to some of their pets, and you can wonder about the significance of such wills, since you are leaving money (which is a creation of man) to non-humans. An animal has no knowledge of money, how to handle it, or any other item related to money (except that if they live in a rich house, they get used to more luxury, food at regular intervals, and so on).
In another case, an Italian lady left a huge fortune of 10 million pounds to her cat, a stray that the lady had adopted since she loved animals. The lady had no close relatives, so this decision was all the more easy, and unlikely that you would get relatives stepping up to challenge such a decision (link to article):

Believe it or not, an Italian cat has inherited a fortune of £10 million after her owner died aged 94, reportedly making her the third richest pet in the world.
Maria Assunta died last month and according to lawyers entrusted with her estate, she left the fortune in property to Tommasino, a stray cat she had found and looked after because of her love for animals, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

However, as per Italian law, the gift cannot be made directly to the animal, and hence there is a hunt for animal rights organizations.

Weird news - Charter airline forces passengers to withdraw money from ATM's midway

Seems horrid. Imagine booking a charter airlines for your group, getting to the airport, getting all the formalities done, and finally taking off. You would have covered the most of your flight time relaxing, getting together with friends, and generally having a good time (and if you are on the return journey of your trip, you would be thinking about the good times that have been spent).
But would you ever think that at the midway flight stop, the airline would force you to withdraw additional money from any ATM that you could find, just so that you could complete your trip, else they would not leave the airport (and this is neither your departure nor your arrival airport).
What would you do in such a case ? You would mostly pay up, right ? You would be very angry, but you would pay up - which is what the people in this particular case also did (link to article):

A six-hour stay on the tarmac left passengers with no choice but to withdraw money from cash machines in the terminal building and pay the operator to complete the journey. The incident involved four chartered Austria-based carrier Comtel Air flights over the weekend and occurred during refuel stops in Vienna. Three of these have now reached Birmingham ; the other is said to be indefinitely delayed.
Dalvinder Batra, whose 80-year-old visually-challenged relative was forced to go without medicine during the ordeal, told the UK's Daily Mail website: "It is absolutely disgusting how they treated us. There are still people stuck out there. We have been told that the company has gone bust mid flight."

Weird news - Want to steal money from an ATM ? Take the entire ATM with you

Seems like the most logical step to take, right ? You are a group of thieves and are planning to steal money / need some money. Well, there is this machine that is dispensing cash to everybody, so it must contain a lot of money. Now, how to take the money ? It is not so easy to break into an ATM machine since it contains a number of security safeguards, and there would be people nearby (because of which you cannot take the amount of time you would require to break into the machine). Further, because of security issues, or even because of thieves forcing people to withdraw money at gun-point, ATM's now come equipped with CCTV cameras. This makes thieving a bit difficult. The solution ? Take the entire ATM with you, and then you can open the ATM at your own time, and the company has no way to find out where you have gone (link to article):

A shopkeeper noticed that the machine inside the ATM cabinet was missing and immediately informed the police. The police said the thieves had first blocked the view of the camera fitted at the entrance of the ATM booth with a flex board and then decamped with the cash machine containing Rs. 7.6 lakh. This happened just a day after a similar attempt-to-break-in occurred at the ATM centre on Jangali Maharaj Road. The thieves there were, however, unsuccessful. The Dehu road police said the incident took place in the wee hours yesterday. The burglars were successful in their handiwork because the machine was not fixed properly to the floor.

Girl auctions her virginity for getting money for tuition

This has happened time and again. A few years ago, a girl put up a trend by getting money by auctioning her virginity; she needed money to fund her higher studies, and was willing to sleep with anyone who paid the most amount of money. This was innovative, and she got enough money to fund her studies. At that time, there was condemnation for this sort of moral grey issue, but now seems to be something that other girls have also adopted, since we keep on hearing this time and again.
Now, there is another case of this happening, where a girl earned $32,000 dollars by auctioning her virginity online, and in the country of New Zealand, this is not illegal. If the girl does indeed go through with this arrangement, she would have got money to pay for her college fees (link to article):

A New Zealand teenager who says she auctioned her virginity online for $32,000 to raise tuition money did not break any laws but it might be risky for her to follow through on the deal, police warned Wednesday. She said in a post that more than 30,000 people had viewed her ad and more than 1,200 had made bids before she accepted an offer of more than New Zealand dollars 45,000 ($32,000).
Prostitution is legal in New Zealand under laws considered more liberal than many countries. Prostitution among consenting adults is allowed in brothels and on the streets, and offering sexual services in print ads and online is also legal. National police spokesman Jon Neilson said no law appeared to have been breached.

Pamela Anderson bankrupt - blames decision to line pool with platinum

Most of you would have heard of Pamela Anderson, and seen her (she was the most exciting part of Baywatch, the TV series). Her personal life has been a bit erratic, being married and divorced to the same person on a regular basis, but finally left him because of his becoming violent. You would expect such a medium level professionally successful actor to be still rolling in riches, but there is a fact that just because you make money does not mean that you have the brains to keep it. After all, how many of you would have bought some platinum jewelery ? Some of you, right ? It can be expensive. But how many would have thought of tiling a pool with platinum ? Well, Pamela Anderson did, and she claims this made her bankrupt (link to article):

London: `Baywatch` beauty Pamela Anderson has revealed that it was her decision to tile her swimming pool with platinum that led her to bankruptcy. The 42-year-old blonde bombshell has spoken for the first time about the huge debts she has been left with after splurging on a dream home, reported Daily Mail online.
"I`m going to sell it. I hate it. People commit suicide over constructions. Relationships break down over constructions and I can see why. It rips your heart out," said Anderson who shares her trailer with her electrician boyfriend Jamie Padgett, 42, and her two sons Brandon, 13, and Dylan, 11. She reportedly has just USD 4,000 in the bank and needs to spend at least USD 800,000 more to make the house habitable.

Giving away $1 million worth of savings in a mattress

Sometimes good tasks can also result in harm. What else are the results you can draw from the below story ? A daughter sought to do good to her elderly mother, and bought a new mattress for her to replace the old that the mother was using. She also wanted to make this a surprise, so she took the effort of throwing out the old one and replacing with the new one. However, this surprise turned into a huge shock for everybody concerned when it was disclosed that the old mattress contained nearly $1 million, the life savings of the mother. And the mattress had been taken away by trash (link to article):

A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat's mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio. A massive search is under way at the city dump, where security has been beefed up to keep out treasure-seekers who have heard Annat's story in Israeli media.
Annat alerted the two major dump sites in the Israeli city in an effort to locate the bed, but so far she has had no luck. Yitchak Burba, one of the dump site managers, told Army Radio that he and his men are working relentlessly to try to help Annat find the million-dollar mattress among the tons of garbage at the landfill. The publicity has triggered a wave of people also trying to find the mattress and its contents for themselves. Burba has increased security around the dump to keep them out.

Such news is very traumatic to read. It almost reminds of that saying that I heard once: "No good deed goes unpunished".

2 good people return huge amount of money they found

Did you know that if a security truck carrying money dropped money onto the road by mistake, then you cannot legally pick up the money. The money is meant to be returned to the truck company, and it is a felony to actually take the money. However, in reality, how often would you come across people who find huge sums of money lying on the road, and return the entire money they found ? Would you be the one who would return this money if you found it ? Is your conscience clear ?
Well, in this case where an armored truck (the truck whose business it is to carry money safely and away from people who would want to steal the money) dropped bag of money from a side open door and continued merrily on its way, there were some good people who actually collected most of the money (including persuading others who had the money) to return the money (link to article):

Two good Samaritans returned more than $275,000 that tumbled out of an improperly secured armored truck in Syracuse, New York, last week. But some not-so-good Samaritans seem to have walked away with another $60,000 that fell onto the street. A Brinks armored truck inadvertently strewed more than a dozen bags of money on the ground in front of the Syracuse Antiques Exchange on Friday, according to Sgt. Tom Connellan of the Syracuse police department.
As word spread that hundreds of thousands of dollars lay in the street, people streamed out of passing cars and adjacent businesses. For the most part the gatherers cooperated in the recovery effort. Herring attributed the crowd's willingness to turn over the money -- rather than run away with it -- to his imposing stature. "Had I not been the size I was, it might have went a different way."

How easy it is to think of not returning the money, well these people withstood all those inducements and simply did their duty.

Van does 120 miles to escort a prisoner for 200 yards

Taxpayer groups that monitor Government expenditure to ensure avoidance of wastage and tracking expenditure were horrified at this recent case in the United Kingdom. A prisoner was to be moved between courts for a hearing; the distance between the courts was 200 yards. The police washed their hands off the matter since the prisoner was in the custody of the courts system, and it was deemed inappropriate to the rights of the prisoner (since he was an accused and not convicted) to make him wear handcuffs for the 200 yard journey across the road. So what was the solution ? A van was called to take him, and the van was called from a place more than 60 miles away:

Local Tory MP Brian Binley said: “I’ve never heard such nonsense. Quite frankly I don’t care about his human rights in this situation and I’m sure he wouldn’t have either. To get a matter like this mixed up with human rights is nonsense.” Labour MP Sally Keeble said: “This seems to me like a complete waste of public money and a breakdown of common sense.”
The “dilemma” arose when Mark Bailey, 35, appeared at Northampton Crown Court to answer theft charges. After a short hearing, he was told to report to the magistrates across the road. Rather than walking, a vehicle was dispatched from Cambridge almost 60 miles away.

It is quite normal for tax payers to respond in outrage to such a case. In times of such high oil prices, and when people are struggling with bad economic situation, such wasteful expenditure should have been avoided. A compromise should have been found.

Cat brings in passengers to Japanese railway station

In an interesting marketing spin, a Japanese company has used the cuddly pull of a cat to bring back customers to travel in trains. The company has been in a tight financial situation recently, and seems to have found an ideal solution to grow the business. So what does it do? It puts a nine year old cat in a railway uniform cap at the entrance of Kishi station, and revenue has actually grown by 10%. Cats are considered good luck in Japan:

All the nine-year-old cat does is sit by the entrance of Kishi station in a railway uniform cap and pose for photos for the tourists. Tama has done such a good job of raising revenue for the Kishikawa train line that she was recently promoted to “super-station-master”.
Appointing a cat to turn around fortunes makes cultural sense in Japan, where cats are believed to bring in business. People are snatching up postcards, notebooks and badges decorated with Tama's picture. There is even a ¥1,365 (£6.65) book of photographs called Diary of Tama, the Station Master.

If you click on the link of the article, you will see a cute photo of the cat.

Thailand opens zoo of long-necked women

In Thailand, there is a ethnic group where the women wear brass rings around their neck, both as a beauty enhancement and as a status symbol. As a result of the constant pressure of these brass rings, their necks become much longer than normal, and give them a distinctive appearance. They are called the Padung or long-necked Karen in Thailand, but they consider those terms denigrating and call themselves Kayan. The authorities have made many of the villages of this ethnic group as tourist attractions, and in a new issue, have actually started charging money from tourists:

Thai provincial officials have allowed a new "human zoo" featuring "long-necked" or "giraffe" women to open in Sattahip near Bangkok despite mounting international criticism of the exploitative tourism practice, media reports said on Monday.
It charges an entrance fee of 25 baht for Thai visitors and 250 baht for foreigners, the newspaper said. Sattahip district chief Narong Thirachantarangkoon brushed off accusations that he had allowed the establishment of a "human zoo" in his district. "I don't think so because the Karen are willingly living here," he said. "This is better than staying in their home region and starving." The rings worn by the Kayan women can weigh 10 kg or more, and over the years, the weight pushes down their collar bones and shoulders, making their necks appear longer and giving the women their nicknames of "long-necked" women.

Charging tourists for being able to visit villages where these women live, just for the purpose of being able to see these women makes the whole picture that of like a zoo, and is an abhorrent concept.