Kaardal News Blog

Thursday night three female University of Minnesota students were sexually assaulted by a man on a bicycle, announced the University of Minnesota Police Department.

The UMPD announced Friday that three women were assaulted on the West Bank of Campus at approximately 8:30 p.m., Thursday. The suspect is still at large as the announcement.

Two women reported to the UMPD that a man touched them in the genital area.

The first victims said that a man on a red bicycle approached her from the rear, dismounted and touched her. The man the fled the scene.

Shortly after the first victim had been assaulted, the second victim was asaulted in a similar fashion in front of Wilson Library, also on the West Bank.

The second victim reported witnessing the man assault a third victim. A third victim has yet to come forward at this time.

According to the UMPD the suspect is described as a black male, aged 29 to 39, with a tall thin build. The suspect was wearing a green hat, brown coat, white tennis shoes and sunglasses.

Posted by kaar0011 at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Best Buy said this Tuesday that they will have to use involuntary layoffs to further cut expenses, reports the Star Tribune. These cuts will affect those currently working at Best Buy's corporate headquarter in Richfield, Minn. This news comes after a voluntary layoff of 500 employees.

Best Buy announced the corporate layoffs through e-mails and meetings at their headquarters. Layoffs will begin on Feb. 19. The layoffs will only affect those working and the corporate store. No layoffs are currently planned for retail employees. No definitive number of upcoming layoffs have been announced at this time.

Anyone terminated by Best Buy will receive a severance package including six months pay and one year of medical and dental coverage.

The cuts aim to make up for consistent same store losses over the past several months, the Pioneer Press reported.

Best Buy will be joined by Minnesota based Target in making layoffs in the coming months.

Posted by kaar0011 at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Vatican launched a pope-endorsed You Tube channel last Friday, reports the BBC. This channel will include media currently broadcast upon Vatican television and radio. The channel, in addition to the Vatican website, extends the Vatican's missionary work onto the Internet.

The Vatican, which has not maintained a unified opinion about the Internet in the past, plans to use the channel to reach a broad audience. They want to reach both Catholics and general You Tube users. The channel was launched on the Church's World Day of Communications.

The Vatican has limited the ways users can communicate through their channel. Users can not leave comments on the videos. They are also prohibited from rating or embedding the videos on other websites.

This is to “secure the Pope's presence on the web", said the Vatican's Osservatore Romano newspaper.

This channel is already be losing viewers. The English version of the channel which started with 90,411 unique views in is already down to 31,558 as of Monday, said the London Times The reason for this decrease in view is unclear.

Posted by kaar0011 at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Recording Industry Association of America is suing a woman who said she did not own a computer at the time she was accused of committing the crime, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports. The RIAA accuses the woman of downloading and sharing a total of 216 songs on April 24, 2007. The woman, Mavis Roy of New Hampshire, claims to have not owned a computer on the day in question. The RIAA has filed other cases under similar circumstances, according to Techdirt.
Roy is fighting the allegations. She has hired New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce Law school to represent against the RIAA.
"For many months she thought it was just a scam," her defense said. "She vehemently denied having anything to do with file sharing."(Union Leader)
The RIAA plans to end their lawsuits against Internet users. It will now focus upon convincing Internet service providers to police themselves. The RIAA will pursue cases that are currently in litigation, like Roy's.

Posted by kaar0011 at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)