Cross Country
A Superspammer Meets His Match
Robert Soloway won't be pitching any online Viagra or get-rich-quick schemes where the feds have him going. Last week, federal authorities indicted the Seattle man on 35 counts relating to Internet spamming in a case they hoped would lead to noticeably less unwanted E-mail.
Soloway is alleged to have employed thousands of so-called zombies, computers that are conscripted by malicious software to send false business offers and similar cons to other addresses, unbeknownst to the user. That characterizes the alleged crime as identity theft, a distinction that allowed prosecutors to invoke new federal ID theft statutes for the first time in a spamming case.
But while prosecutors were trumpeting the arrest as a major victory against unsolicited E-mail, antispam experts elsewhere were skeptical that the arrest would be anything more than a temporary setback for others.
An official with the Spamhaus Project, which once placed Soloway among the world's top 10 spammers, told the Associated Press that he had since been replaced by more prolific spammers outside the United States.
The 'Peace Mom' Calls It Quits
After almost two years of camping in Crawford, Texas, marching in Washington, and pamphleting the White House, the "face" of the antiwar movement has called it quits. Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protester whose son was killed in Iraq, posted her bitter resignation on the liberal blog Daily Kos. "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote.
Her resignation left peace activists both saddened and emboldened. "I think it's a tremendous loss not to have her voice, but I think the way she's done it has awakened a lot of people to what's needed," said David Swanson, cofounder of the peace group After Downing Street.
Sheehan also offered up for sale "Camp Casey," her property near President Bush's ranch. "I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too," she wrote, "which makes the property even more valuable."
Mixed Outcomes for Asylum Seekers
Luck may be the biggest factor in deciding which refugees are granted asylum in the United States, according to a study by law professors from Georgetown University and Temple University.
The study, released last week in Washington, D.C., examined the four possible steps that refugees can take in seeking asylum—from applying with the Department of Homeland Security to appealing a case in federal court—and found that who hears the case and where it is heard makes all the difference. Female judges are more likely to side with refugees, the study found, and judges from the South are more likely not to.
The biggest surprise, said Philip Schrag, one of the study's authors, was the disparity among judges on the same court ruling on refugees from the same country. Of the 20 judges on the New York Immigration Court, for example, one approved asylum for Albanians 5 percent of the time and another approved it 96 percent of the time.
Farming the Wind in the Mid-Atlantic
Offshore wind farms are enjoying a power surge. Delaware officials have given the green light to a proposed project to plant wind turbines in ocean waters, likely near Rehoboth Beach, a popular resort for Washingtonians.
The proposal became a microcosm of a national energy debate, pitting clean but erratic wind power against another proposal for a gas or coal plant.
Wind power is the country's fastest growing energy source, but offshore farms have faltered under heavy fire from politicians and citizens worried about air traffic interference, impacts on fishing, and fear of blighted vistas (and property values).
To date, three other offshore wind farms have been proposed: off the coasts of New York, Massachusetts, and Texas. Opposition has hampered them all. Cape Cod and Texas are vying to be the nation's first, but neither farm is expected to be finished before 2009 or 2010.
The fledgling Delaware farm is still on the drawing board, with officials already warning it may be smaller than projected.
Calling All Muggles to a Potter Park
For the millions of kids—and adults—who would like nothing better than to be a classmate of Harry Potter's at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, this is probably as close as they're going to get: a massive theme park in Orlando, Fla., devoted to the fictional boy wizard.
Universal Orlando snagged the rights to build the attraction last week, and it's expected to devote at least $230 million to the project. "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" will take in 20 acres of Universal's 85-acre Islands of Adventure park. The Forbidden Forest, Hogsmeade Village—they will all be here, promoters say, along with shops and restaurants based on the famed fictional world.
Harry Potter fans, who number in the tens of millions, are already buzzing in anticipation of the seventh and final book in the series and the movie version of the fifth book, both due out in July. In the United States alone, the first four movies grossed over a billion dollars, making the Potter franchise one of the most successful of all time.
With Chris Wilson, Nikki Schwab and Bret Schulte
This story appears in the June 11, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.