Category: Truth that’s Stranger than Fiction

When is local journalism not really local? When it’s about Pasadena and written by someone in India.

Local news reporting outsourced to India: A news site hires two to cover Pasadena from afar. That helps a shoestring budget go further.
By Alex Pham
LA Times Staff Writer
May 11, 2007

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200.

The council broadcasts its meetings on the Web. From nearly 9,000 miles away, the outsourced journalists plan to watch, then write their stories while their boss sleeps “” India is 12.5 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. Continue reading “Staying ahead of the news”

A well crafted hoax — complete with a fake movie production company, script, shooting schedule, camera gear, make-up artists, trade ads, and of course, aliases, passports and visas that only the CIA can “legally” forge — saves six U.S. Embassy employees, who had escaped from the Embassy during the first hours of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, but who were stranded in dire danger in Tehran for several months.

From: wired magazine: issue 15.05
by Joshuah Bearman
April 24, 2007

November 4, 1979, began like any other day at the US embassy in Tehran. The staff filtered in under gray skies, the marines manned their posts, and the daily crush of anti-American protestors massed outside the gate chanting, “Allahu akbar! Marg bar Amrika!”

Mark and Cora Lijek, a young couple serving in their first foreign service post, knew the slogans “” “God is great! Death to America!” “” and had learned to ignore the din as they went about their duties. But today, the protest sounded louder than usual. And when some of the local employees came in and said there was “a problem at the gate,” they knew this morning would be different. Militant students were soon scaling the walls of the embassy complex. Someone forced open the front gate, and the trickle of invaders became a flood. The mob quickly fanned across the 27-acre compound, waving posters of the Ayatollah Khomeini. They took the ambassador’s residence, then set upon the chancery, the citadel of the embassy where most of the staff was stationed. Continue reading “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran”

Thanks to Larry Croft for us this…

Climate change provides rise to weather hedge
By Paul J Davies
April 24, 2007
Financial Times

The first Global Warming index is to be launched this week by UBS, allowing businesses most affected by the uncertainty of climate change – from ice-cream salesmen to makers of winter coats – to hedge their profits against it in a simple and transparent fashion.

Retail and institutional investors will also be able to buy exposure to, or short sell, the index in much the same way they would with the FTSE or Dow Jones stock indices. If temperatures rise, so will the value of the index. Continue reading “Let it rain, let it pour. I don’t care anymore. I’m making money”