Study Pegs 9/11 Payout at $38 Billion; Convicted Spammer’s Bail Set at $1 Million; E-Mail Firms Meet in Washington to Discuss Spam

Study Pegs 9/11 Payout at $38 Billion

A new study says that victims and businesses of the 9/11 terror attacks have received $38.1 billion so far in government, charitable and insurance awards. According to The New York Times, insurance companies doled out 19.6 billion. Government entities contributed about $16 billion. The report is highly critical of how payments were distributed and the government’s economic response to the attacks. “The system has raised many questions about equity and fairness that have no obvious answers,” said Lloyd Dixon, a senior economist with the Rand Institute for Civil Justice, which conducted the 173-page study, along with Rachel Kaganoff Stern, an associate political scientist.

For more details, read the full article in The New York Times.

Convicted Spammer’s Bail Set at $1 Million

A man convicted in the nation’s first felony spam case had his bail set at $1 million Monday as he awaits sentencing. According to an Associated Press report, prosecutors argued that Jeremy Jaynes, 30, of Raleigh, N.C. had moved some of his $24 million fortune to foreign banks, which made him a great flight risk. A jury recommended that Jaynes get 9 years in prison, a term that the judge can either leave in place or reduce at the Feb. 3 sentencing.

For more details, read the full Associated Press article in the Boston Globe.

E-Mail Firms Meet in Washington to Discuss Spam

Representatives from America’s largest e-mail firms are gathering in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss potential solutions to the proliferation of spam. According to a report in the Washington Post, the Federal Trade Commission organized the two-day meeting to discuss technological solutions to the spam plague. The focus of the disucssions will be on standardizing authentication technology. The four largest e-mail companies (Yahoo, Earthlink, Microsoft and AOL) all agree that a standard is the way to go, but they haven’t yet found a standard they agree on.

For more details, read the full article in the Washington Post.