In 2011, Quentin Rowan - the owner of a bookstore in Brooklyn writing under the penname "Q.R. Markham" - was found to have extensively plagiarised from several authors in his debut novel, Assassin of Secrets, one week after it was released in the United States. Rowan's novel included passages taken from John le Carre, Robert Ludlum, Christopher McCrary, Charles McCarry and James Bond continuation writers Raymond Benson and John Gardner. As many as thirteen different authors were identified as having been plagiarised by Rowan. Author Jeremy Duns, who had supported Markham as a writer, recounted how the episode had come about. Duns was first alerted to the plagiarism after a post on a James Bond-themed fan forum pointed out that large sections of the text had been taken directly from Gardener's Licence Renewed, and in a blog posting on his website, described how he found that most of the novel was plagiarised with only minor alterations to the text. While researching the depth of Rowan's plagiarism, Edward Champion of the online blog "Reluctant Habits" discovered that Rowan had also plagiarised in several poems, short stories and essays that he had had published in The Paris Review and BOMB. Rowan, who had signed a two-book contract with Mulholland Books (an imprint of Little, Brown and Company) at the time of publication, had his contract cancelled and the publisher recalled Assassin of Secrets from bookstores. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_plagiarism_controversies

Assassin of Secrets "It’s dunce’s cap time for me." Jeremy Duns wrote a blurb for the book and explains that he was duped.
http://jeremyduns.blogspot.com/2011/11/assassin-of-secrets.html

Comparisons of Rowan's text to texts lifted from various books: http://www.edrants.com/q-r-markham-plagiarist/

When your vacations home becomes everybody's vacation home
Kathleen Hughes and her husband recently learned the hard way after buying a loft in Manhattan as a future retirement spot. We suddenly found ourselves facing a series of hints or outright requests from friends to use the space when we're not there—as a crash pad. "Great! Now we'll have a place to stay in New York!" was the enthusiastic response of friends, colleagues and even a few distant acquaintances. There are roughly 7.9 million vacation homes in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors, and the recent plummet in housing prices is leading more people to consider taking the leap. The typical owner spends only 39 nights a year in a vacation home. That leaves 326 days a year up for grabs. Kathleen A. Hughes
Read stories about second homes in Tuscany, Italy, Ocean City, MD, Bretton Woods, NH and other places--and of problems and solutions at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903885604576488062713503134.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Rachel Louise Carson (1907–1964) was an American marine biologist and conservationist whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Carson began her career as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her financial security and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the republished version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. Together, her sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life, from the shores to the surface to the deep sea. In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), Silent Spring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring, while met with fierce denial from chemical companies, spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides—and the grassroots environmental movement the book inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter. Rachel Carson was born on a small family farm near Springdale, Pennsylvania, just up the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. An avid reader, she also spent a lot of time exploring around her family's 65-acre (26 ha) farm. She began writing stories (often involving animals) at age eight, and had her first story published at age eleven. See her list of works, posthumous honors and centennial events at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Carson

The Volcker Rule is a specific piece of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act originally proposed by American economist and former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict United States banks from making certain kinds of speculative investments that do not benefit their customers. Volcker argued that such speculative activity played a key role in the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The rule is often referred to as a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks, whereby deposits are used to trade on the bank's personal accounts, although a number of exceptions to this ban were included in the Dodd-Frank law. The rule's provisions are scheduled to be implemented as a part of Dodd-Frank on July 21, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcker_Rule

The Durbin Rule http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20110629a.htm
The final rule governs debit card interchange fees, the fraud prevention adjustment, and routing and exclusivity restrictions. To summarize the final rule:
Debit interchange cap - $0.21 plus 5 bps (for both signature debit and PIN debit)
Fraud prevention adjustment - $0.01 (interim rule)
Routing restrictions and network exclusivity - Option A (two unaffiliated debit network)
See relevant dates at: http://www.paymentsnews.com/2011/06/federal-reserve-final-rules-on-durbin-amendment.html

The Great Falls of the Passaic River is a prominent waterfall, 77 feet (23 m) high, on the Passaic River in the city of Paterson in Passaic County in northern New Jersey. The Congress authorized its establishment as a National Historical Park in 2009. One of the United States' largest waterfalls, it played a significant role in the early industrial development of New Jersey starting in the earliest days of the nation. It is part of the Great Falls of Paterson-Garrett Mountain National Natural Landmark. It has also been designated as a National Historic Landmark District since 1976. The Great Falls' raceway and power systems were designated an List of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in 1977. Geologically, the falls were formed at the end of the last ice age approximately 13,000 years ago. Formerly the Passaic had followed a shorter course through the Watchung Mountains near present-day Summit. As the glacier receded, the river's previous course was blocked by a newly-formed moraine. A large lake, called Glacial Lake Passaic, formed behind the Watchungs. A s the ice receded, the river found a new circuitous route around the north end of the Watchungs, carving the spectacular falls through the underlying basalt, which was formed approximately 200 million years ago. In 1778, Alexander Hamilton visited the falls and was impressed by its potential for industry. Later when Hamilton was the nation's Secretary of Treasury, he selected the site of the nation's first planned industrial city, which he called a "national manufactory." In 1791, Hamilton helped found the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), state-chartered private corporation to fulfill this vision. The town of Paterson was founded by the society and named after New Jersey Governor William Paterson in appreciation of his efforts to promote the society.
Hamilton commissioned civil engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant, responsible for the layout of the new capital at Washington, D.C. to design the system of canals known as raceways supplying the power for the watermills in the new town. As a result the Paterson became the nucleus for a burgeoning mill industry. In 1793, two years after the society's foundation, the falls was the site of the first water-powered cotton spinning mill in New Jersey. In 1812, it was the site of the state's first continuous roll paper mill. The unique history of the falls and the city were described in the five-volume philosophical poem Paterson by William Carlos Williams . The falls were featured in the pilot as well as episode 6 of the first season of The Sopranos on television. Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park was added to the National Park System of the United States, authorized under the Omnibus Public Land Management Act. On March 30, 2009, President Obama signed legislation authorizing the falls as a national historical park, which would provide additional federal protections for the 77-foot waterfall. Great Falls State Park and other land along the Passaic River may be transferred to the federal government for the creation of the park. Formal establishment as a unit of the National Park System required action by the Secretary of the Interior. On November 7, 2011, Secretary Salazar formally dedicated the park. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Falls_(Passaic_River)#cite_note-Salazar-12

Researchers in Britain are about to embark on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a computer — but their goal is neither dazzling analytical power nor lightning speed. Indeed, if they succeed, their machine will have only a tiny fraction of the computing power of today’s microprocessors. It will rely not on software and silicon but on metal gears and a primitive version of the quaint old IBM punch card. What it may do, though, is answer a question that has tantalized historians for decades: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing? The machine on the drawing boards at the Science Museum in London is the Babbage Analytical Engine, a room-sized mechanical behemoth that its inventor envisioned but never built. The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far simpler Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision. That project was completed in 1991. John Markoff
http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20111108/NEWS0107/111080368/

Oklahoma Geological Survey Open-File Report, OF1-2011, Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma, August 2011
Read the 31-page report at: http://www.ogs.ou.edu/pubsscanned/openfile/OF1_2011.pdf

A federal district court judge in Washington D.C. has issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of new rules by the Food and Drug Administration that require cigarette manufacturers to display graphic warning labels on every pack of cigarettes sold. The judge found that the requirement violated cigarette manufacturers' rights under the First Amendment since it forced them to engage in commercial speech that goes beyond the conveyance of purely factual or uncontroversial information.
Read the 29-page document at: http://blogs.findlaw.com/courtside/2011/11/judge-extinguishes-cigarette-warning-label-law.html

Grand Jury Report on the Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal
http://www.scribd.com/doc/72061109/Grand-Jury-Report-on-Penn-State-Sex-Abuse-Scandal