Someone is finally making some money off Bernie Madoff.

A Queens construction worker used the swindler's prison number to play the lottery and won $1,500.

Ralph Amendolaro, 50, noticed the digits under Madoff's mug on the front page of the Daily News the day after he pleaded guilty - 61727-054.

When he stopped at a corner store near his Glendale home on March 13, he played the last three digits in the New York State Lottery's Numbers game.

"I'm going to be a winner with this guy even though everyone lost money with him," Amendolaro thought at the time. "Somebody had to get a little lucky with him."

2007 - 2008 - eFluxMedia.com

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON

I was just watching MSNBC when the story of "Gunman kills 5 at City Council meeting in Mo" came on. The news reporter started saying that Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton said that the city was harassing him with city tickets for his business van. Then in the ticker headline below the reporter it said that Charles Lee had received of $160,000 in tickets. And that was it, went straight to a video of his brother with no information in regard to what got Charles Lee “Cookie” Thornton over the breaking point.

I stood in front of my television is shock, where is the real news,
The NOTE
The Tickets
What put him over the edge
Why did the news reporter stop talking about the problem he had with the city,

THEN................  PRESIDENT BUSH came on !!!!!!

Oh that's why the reporting stopped, the Bush set up.

I used to laugh @ MSNBC
now I cry.


Danny Z
TodaysMadWorld.com

If you’re out there in deep space, you’ll want to be tuning in at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, Feb. 4 (plus however long it takes electromagnetic radiation to reach you from Earth doing the 186,000-miles-a-second speed limit).

That’s when NASA will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first space mission — the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite — by using the system of huge antennas that usually listen for inbound signals from space to send one outbound instead: the Beatles’ song “Across the Universe,” which as it happens was mostly recorded exactly 40 years earlier, on Feb. 4, 1968.

Reception will be best in the general direction of Polaris, 431 lightyears away, which is where NASA is aiming the signal. (That would be the North Star to us laymen.) But it ought to be audible in plenty of places on Earth as well, at least by imitation: NASA is encouraging space fans and Beatle fans alike to play the song themselves at the same time.

NASA’s press release includes some perfectly in-character comments from Sir Paul McCartney (”Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul.”) and from Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, the song’s main author (”I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe.”). Presumably, Julie Taymor will be pleased as well; her film “Across the Universe,” built around a soundtrack of Beatle songs, is still in theaters and contending for an Oscar; it is due for release on DVD on Tuesday.

The event also commemorates the 45th anniversary of the creation of the antenna system, the Deep Space Network, which NASA uses to explore space at one remove by listening to the electromagnetic radiation coming our way from Out There; the system also comes in handy for picking up data sent by space probes we have dispatched to the planets and beyond over the years.

ABRO Industries learned early on that it was facing an audacious challenger. In 2003 Timothy Demarais, vice president of the South Bend, Indiana-based industrial adhesive manufacturer, says he walked into the Canton Trade Fair in Guangzhou, China, and found that his company's product line — and his company's identity itself — had been knocked off by a Chinese firm called Hunan Magic Power, also known as Magpow. When Demarais attempted to have the imposter kicked out, he says, Hunan Magic Power chairman Yuan Hongwei produced documentation that he claimed showed his company had the right to use the trademark ABRO. He had even copied ABRO's labeling, including one sample card with a photo of a woman applying epoxy to a bicycle. The woman, it turned out, was Demarais' wife. After Demarais pulled out another photo of his wife from his wallet, the trade fair officials booted Hunan Magic Power. "How blatant can you be when you steal my wife's picture for your card?" asks Demarais.

While intellectual property rights battles are often seen as the stuff of pirated DVDs and fake designer handbags, a manufacturer of comparatively mundane adhesives is now waging one of the most pitched and public fights over counterfeiting. And ABRO, a private company with two dozen employees, has learned just how tough the fight can be. It has spent four years and more than $4 million in legal fees battling Hunan Magic Power. Last fall, ABRO finally thought it was making headway when police in the U.K. arrested Yuan at Heathrow airport on a warrant stemming from a criminal counterfeiting charge in Louisiana. A London court was to hear an extradition request from the U.S. on Jan. 10. But Yuan, who had posted $200,000 bail and surrendered two passports, somehow managed to flee the country and is now back home in Hunan. "Clearly this is very disappointing for us both on a practical level and also from a standpoint of respect for the rule of law," says ABRO's CEO Peter Baranay.

While ABRO says Yuan is a bold fraudster, in China many see him as a victim of U.S. bullying. More than 10,000 put their names on an online petition supporting him, and his flight from justice has only boosted his standing as a folk hero. Yuan says he came up with the ABRO product line on his own, although the U.S. company predates his. In an open letter published on a Chinese website last week Yuan said he would only accept a trial before a Chinese court. He added that he had been tricked into flying to the U.K., and that he was owed the bail money he forfeited because his name was misspelled on a court document. He also wanted to thank his many fans. "I most want to say thank you to all levels of the motherland's government and the people for the loving concern, help and support you gave me during my period of misfortune in London," he wrote. (A call to Yuan's cell phone was answered by a woman who said that he was undergoing treatment for a heart condition.)

On Chinese blogs, ABRO is increasingly being labeled the villain in the saga, and the company's Chinese attorneys have been called traitors. "Thanks to America and Britain, and with the help from the traitors, Chinese people were left in the dark and really thought Magic Power and Yuan Hongwei violated the law," reads one posting. Baranay estimates that ABRO, which does more than $100 million a year in sales in 150 countries, loses as much as $12 million to $15 million in business annually due to Hunan Magic counterfeiting. ABRO has succeeded in having counterfeit products destroyed in Cameroon, Nigeria and Ghana. The company has also won trademark infringement cases against Hunan Magic in Guangzhou and Beijing, although both are being appealed. "The Chinese legal system has been very supportive of our case," Baranay says. "We've been tarred and feathered, but we're not going to abandon China. We sell in China and we manufacture some of our products in China." But despite government support at the national level, Baranay says local authorities in Yuan's home of Hunan haven't gone after him. "Good gracious, he employs people, he pays taxes — that's a powerful incentive to local people to turn a blind eye."

In 2005, Hunan Magic allegedly shipped $22,000 worth of products to Livingston Parish, Lousiana, sparking the charges that led to Yuan's arrest in London. Under Louisiana laws, among the toughest in the U.S. against counterfeiting, he could face millions in fines and up to five years in jail. But the Chinese government has no extradition treaty with the U.S., meaning Yuan would likely only be sent back to face those charges by a third nation. While Yuan's recent experience seems to indicate he won't likely be risking any trips abroad anytime soon, ABRO plans to continue their pursuit of him. "We're not going away," says Baranay. And Yuan seems determined not to go away either.

With reporting by Jodi Xu/Beijing

By Del Quentin Wilber and Michael Laris