In a controversial move to fight the spread of HIV in Indonesia’s Papau, lawmakers are considering a proposal to monitor the behavior of known HIV carriers with a microchip implant.

From Breitbart.com –

Lawmakers in Indonesia’s Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others, a doctor said Tuesday.

John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua’s provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.

“We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease,” Manangsang told AFP.

“Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others,” he alleged, saying lawmakers were considering various sanctions for these people.

“Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others,” Manangsang said.

“The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so, but only for those few who turn aggressive and clearly continue to disregard what they know about the disease and spread the virus to others,” he said.

A decision was still a long way off, he added.

Source:
Microchips mulled for HIV carriers in Indonesia’s Papua

Here is an interesting experiment in computer programming, investigative tactics and creative sleuthing.

Wired News is reporting that they created a software script that sorted through MySpace profiles and compared them with sex offender registries to find a number of registered sex offenders who had personal profiles on the social network site.

From the article –

Six months ago, Wired News launched an investigation of MySpace with the goal of comparing the company’s 120 million user profiles against public sex offender registries to see how many matches we could find.

The project began when Wired News contributor Jenn Shreve found a handful of matches based on a random search. How many would you find with a software script that systematically went through those records and compared them all?

We decided to find out. I wrote a series of Perl scripts and began sifting the data.

The technique was crude, like searching for a needle in a haystack. When I began checking ostensible matches by hand, false positives registered in the thousands.

Nevertheless, after several weeks of part-time work on the project, I was led to one suspect whose behavior was so disturbing I contacted New York’s Suffolk County Police Department for comment. The suspect, Andrew Lubrano, was arrested earlier this month on attempted child endangerment charges.

Some 700 other matches were also confirmed, though none of those individuals could be linked by public MySpace posts to actual evidence of wrongdoing.

Wired News is also making their sex offender script available for anyone to use, validate and improve upon. You can read the rest of the article and download the script at the link below.

Source: How to Catch a MySpace Creep

Experian press release regarding Debt Portfolio Evaluator –

Debt Portfolio Evaluator(SM) Gives Debt Buyers Superior Analytics and Detailed Credit Analysis During Due-Diligence Process

COSTA MESA, Calif., Feb. 6 /PRNewswire/ — Debt buyers can more quickly and accurately assess collections recovery and profit potential when considering the purchase of a debt portfolio using a new analysis tool from Experian, a global information solutions company.

Experian® today announced the launch of Debt Portfolio Evaluator(SM), which provides debt buyers with a deeper level of analysis by using Experian’s vast credit databases to generate a detailed profile of each consumer in the portfolio. By using Debt Portfolio Evaluator during their due-diligence process, debt buyers can bid on a debt portfolio with greater confidence, knowing that they have the most thorough analysis of the portfolio’s true value before making an investment.

“As the debt buying market continues to grow, those with the best information will make the most profitable purchase decisions by more accurately assessing the true value of portfolios before bidding,” said Kerry Williams, group president of Experian’s Credit Services. “By looking at the overall profit potential in a portfolio — from the difficulty of skip tracing to assessing which debtors have the greatest risk of bankruptcy — debt buyers using Debt Portfolio Evaluator have a distinct advantage.”

Debt Portfolio Evaluator is driven by Experian’s powerful Collection Advantage(SM), which combines consumer credit data, credit-based scoring and advanced analytics to gain insight into the characteristics of the portfolio.

The benefits of using Debt Portfolio Evaluator include:

- A comprehensive, easy-to-analyze view of each debtor’s current credit
standing on all accounts

- An indictor of whether quality contact information is readily available

- RecoveryScore(SM), which scores each debtor to determine which ones have
the greatest recovery potential

- A bankruptcy score that predicts those at greatest risk of filing for
bankruptcy in the next 12 months

- Experian’s proprietary Find Consumer search logic, which provides
superior match rates

- Quick turnaround, giving debt buyers more time to evaluate the portfolio

According to killermovies.com, Columbia Pictures is planning on releasing a comedy in 2006 called “Skip Tracer”.

The movie is about a man who accidentally kidnaps a young girl embroiled in a custody battle when he repossesses a yacht.

Columbia Pictures should have hired our readers; I am sure they have some stories that are even wilder and funnier than that.