Army reservist, notorious face of Abu Ghraib scandal, out of prison.

Spc. Lynndie R. England, the U.S. Army reservist who became one of the most recognizable and notorious faces of the Iraq war after photos of her and naked Iraqi prisoners were leaked to the international media in 2003, is out of prison and back home in Mineral County.

England, a 2001 graduate of Frankfort High School who joined the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown in order to earn money for her education, was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating Iraqi detainees and committing an indecent act on Sept. 26, 2005, and sentenced to three years in military prison as a result of the scandal at Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad.

Friday, England family attorney Roy T. Hardy of Keyser confirmed England had been paroled March 1 after serving approximately half of her sentence at a military prison located near San Diego.

“She said she was in there exactly 521 days,” Hardy said. “Generally, everyone serves approximately half their sentence before they can be considered for parole.”

March 1 was England’s first opportunity to be considered for release.

England, who joined the Army Reserve when she was still a junior at Frankfort High School, first caught the attention of a shocked world when photos were released of her posing with naked detainees, smiling and giving the “thumbs up” sign while pointing to the Iraqis’ genitalia.

Throughout the investigation and court-martial proceedings, she maintained that she posed in the photos only at the direction of her superiors.

Her defense also claimed that, at 20, she was especially influenced by a fellow soldier, Spc. Charles Graner, 35, with whom she fell in love and who later became the father of her child.

Members of England’s family, who held a press conference at the Fountain Fire Hall when news of the scandal broke, also maintained England’s role was one of compliance.

“Certain people in the Army told her to do what she did. She was following orders,” said her sister, Jessica Klinestiver, who called England “a kind-hearted, dependable person.”

Hardy declined to comment on any conditions of England’s parole, but said her official status is listed as “voluntary leave” while she serves out the rest of her time.

“It’s considered ‘voluntary’ because she could have elected to stay in prison and serve out her term,” he said.

Once she completes her term of parole, the Army will issue a dishonorable discharge and “the ordeal will be over,” he said.

Since she is technically still in the Reserve until that happens, England has declined to comment on the incidents at Abu Ghraib or the court martial proceedings.

Although her family still lives in the Fort Ashby area, England and her son are keeping a low profile as they stay elsewhere in the county with friends.

source news : times-news.com

Clarabridge, a text-mining software company, today announced Release 2.2 of its Content Mining Platform(TM) (CMP), the first solution built specifically to enable the commercial use of text mining. The new version of CMP uniquely integrates entity extraction, fact extraction, categorization, sentiment extraction and other natural language processing (NLP) capabilities in a single, end-to-end solution that allows general business users to quickly, easily convert internal and external source data into useful business intelligence, without special coding. Release 2.2 includes robust, function-specific reports that organize customer feedback, measure customer sentiment and facilitate root-causes analysis.

"Text mining is a very compelling technology that will emerge as a widely used, differentiating business practice," said Fern Halper, partner with Hurwitz & Associates. "Key to its success will be the ability to yield insight quickly and more flexibly adapt to a given company's operations and market."

Clarabridge addresses each of these critical requirements with Release 2.2 of CMP. Clarabridge's CMP solution unlocks the full power of an enterprise's information assets by enabling unstructured information -- Internet-based consumer-generated content, online product reviews, survey verbatims, call-center transcripts, chat sessions, medical documents, insurance claims, emails, etc. -- to be mined and analyzed alongside structured transactional data. Clarabridge's CMP solution works seamlessly with an enterprise's standard business intelligence (BI) tools and demands no additional training of a customer's business users.

With CMP, users can effectively ask any question of any information source using any analysis technique to address a host of real-world business needs. Businesses can use the Clarabridge solution to more quickly and precisely detect customer needs, issues and opportunities -- ultimately better serving their own customers.

General availability of CMP 2.2 is scheduled for early in the second quarter of 2007.

"With Release 2.2 of CMP, we have placed text mining into the hands of commercial users instead of past applications retrofitted from the government/academic tradition," said Sid Banerjee, chief executive officer and co-founder of Clarabridge. "CMP 2.2's introduction comes at a moment when text mining is gaining traction across industries. We have experienced five quarters of consistent revenue growth, and our solutions are relied on by blue-chip customers in markets as diverse as consumer goods, retail, life sciences and financial services."

Banerjee and Halper of Hurwitz and Associates will join Marla Chupack, moderator of the American Marketing Association, for a webinar, "Methodology to Improve Your Customer Analytics," at 1 p.m. Eastern, April 3rd, 2007. The webinar will explore how companies can identify and categorize customer feelings about a brand, design programs for pursuing opportunities or responding to problems, monitor future customer intent and more quickly measure the results of marketing initiatives. Please visit https://amaevents.webex.com/ for more information or to enroll for the webinar.

About Clarabridge

Clarabridge enables Fortune 1000 customers to transform text into valuable information to improve market research, customer care, product development, quality assurance and risk management. Clarabridge's award-winning software links the worlds of text mining, search and business intelligence (BI) to enable enterprises to more quickly and intuitively leverage all of their data -- internal and external, structured and unstructured -- to make better business decisions. Clarabridge's Content Mining Platform(TM) is the first text mining solution to work seamlessly with standard BI applications, tools and techniques. Clarabridge is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. For more information, visit www.clarabridge.com.


Contact:

Interprose Public Relations (for Clarabridge)
Cathy Palmen, 408-268-8112
cathy.palmen@interprosepr.com

Source: Clarabridge

Levy County Commissioner Lilly Rooks wants everyone to contact their representatives in Tallahassee, because there is potential legislation to take all mining regulation away from local government.

Rooks attended a conference with County Coordinator Freddie Moody and assistant Dick Tummond, where she learned that Sen. Carey Baker (R-Eustis) has proposed Senate Bill 2784. This bill is using a shortage of aggregate materials, such as limestone, as the reason for the state to take complete authority and override county mining ordinances.

This means that if the state approves a mine to be built next to Manatee Springs Road, then the county would have no say over whether that mine was brought to fruition. The proposed law would cause the state to be able to override all local controls over mining matters.

Noise limitations are another county ordinance that the state could override as a result of the reportedly urgent need for material mined in Florida.

The bill was filed on March 5, according to records in Tallahassee.

In other action at the March 20 County Commission meeting, commissioners unanimously:

€Accepted the donation of a 1989 pumper fire truck from Marion County Fire Chief David Cooper. Chief Rick Bloom of Levy County Fire Rescue said the truck is functional and was a spare from Marion County.

€Agreed to pay $8,182.89 as its share for the Economic Zone Development Agency's $28,000 budget. Bronson, Williston, Fanning Springs and Chiefland had all agreed to pay a pro-rata share of the budget, based on the number of miles of the Economic Zone that is in each place. Dave Bibby of Williston thanked the commission for accepting the EZDA. He also noted his appreciation for Pam Blair and City Manager James Coleman bringing Shadow Trailers to the Williston Municipal Airport Industrial Park. Commissioner Tony Parker noted the county has sought economic development through various agencies for 24 years.

€Revised the agreement where each commissioner's district receives funds for recreational groups. This year, each district receives $10,000. Commissioner Lilly Rooks shares some of her district's money with Commissioner Nancy Bell's because Cedar Key children use Strickland Park and are part of the Chiefland Area Athletic Association's leagues. The revised agreement changes the money being spent only on uniforms and equipment, to now include the ability to spend it on park improvements.

source news : willistonpioneer.com

A police probe into the cause of the "mud volcano" that has made 15,000 people homeless in Indonesia's East Java, points to negligence by a mining company, reports said Sunday.

Mud began to flow out of a gas exploratory drilling well operated by Pt Lapindo Brantas in Sidoarjo, East Java in May 2006.

The mud has since flooded some 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of land and submerged whole villages.

"All depositions by experts say that there is a correlation between the mudflow and the activities of the Lapindo exploratory well.

"Therefore, according to police investigations, there is clearly a link between the Lapindo well and the mud outflow," East Java Police Chief Herman Suryadi Sumawiredja said, according to the Kompas newspaper.

Speaking on Saturday, Suryadi said that the police have questioned eight experts over the cause of the outflow dubbed the "mud volcano."

The probe concluded that the mud had began to break out to the surface because of negligence by PT Lapindo Brantas during drilling at the well, but Suryadi gave no further details.

The police have declared 13 people as suspects in the case, all of whom are executives of Pt Lapindo Brantas or field workers. Their indictments were still being prepared.

Kompas also quoted the head of the Indonesian Geologists Association, Andang Bachtiar, as saying that Lapindo's use of mud to offset fluid coming out from the well was of a wrong density and caused the shaft to crack.

Rudi Rubiandini, an oil and gas expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology, said that the company had used the regulatory steel casing to drill the well only up to a depth of 3,600 feet and dispensed with its use for the remaining 5,700 feet.

Meanwhile in Sidorarjo, efforts to curb the mud outflow by dropping chains of concrete balls down the main mud crater remained hampered by heavy rains.

"Because of the rains in the past few days, we have been unable to resume our operations," said Satria Bijaksana, an expert from the Bandung Institute, who devised the audacious plan.

Bijaksana told AFP that the rains had made access dangerous for the heavy machinery used in dropping the chains, each of which links four concrete balls.

A total of 374 such chains have been dropped in the first phase that ended earlier this month and another 500 strings are expected to be inserted in the current phase.

AFP

Anglo-Swiss mining company Xstrata PLC on Monday said it offered $4 billion for LionOre Mining International Ltd., a Canadian nickel and gold miner, which accepted the offer.

Xstrata last year won a bidding war for Canadian nickel miner Falconbridge Ltd. with an $18.8 billion offer that gave Xstrata entrance to the North American market.

The company's cash bid for LionOre amounts to 18.50 Canadian dollars per share, or a total price of C$4.6 billion -- a 6 percent premium over LionOre's closing stock price Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. That total price equates to nearly $4 million (U.S.).

Merger and acquisition activity among global metals companies has heated over the past year and has been a significant driver of share prices in the sector. In the U.S., New Orleans-based Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. recently closed its $25.9 billion takeover of Phoenix-based rival Phelps Dodge Corp.

On the New York Stock Exchange, shares metals miners were mixed on Monday. Freeport shares rose $1.91 to $64.25 in afternoon trading. Shares of Australian miner BHP Billiton Ltd. added 98 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $48.23. Canadian gold miner Barrick Gold Corp. saw its shares dip 4 cents to $29.03.

AP