Headlines from around the world: 2-7-10

Egyptian protesters are calling for President Hosni Mubarak to leave office immediately. After 10 days of protests and fighting, President Mubabrak says that he cannot step down for fear that the country will become more chaotic. The government is urging the citizens to go back to their homes, to prevent further damage to the economy.

Text messages are being used by the Egyptian government to try to quell the current civil unrest in Egypt. Under the telecoms act, the government has the power to order cellular service providers to send messages to every one of their subscribers, the content of which is dictated by the government alone.

Pain continues to follow the family of Enron’s former president Jeff Skilling, as his youngest son was found dead in his apartment. The son was a sophomore at Chapman University in southern California and his friends said that he was upset over breaking up with his girlfriend. It appears that an accidental drug overdose was the culprit.

While the blizzard of 2011 appears to be mostly over, the cleanup is far from complete. Snowplows, salt trucks, and line crews work nearly around the clock to restore transportation and power to those who have been without for days. Houston and the gulf coast are faced with freezing rain and snow.

JPMorgan Chase is being sued for damages relating to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. JPMorgan allegedly turned a blind eye in its dealings with Madoff, continuing with financial transactions even when Madoff investments seemed to be doing too well. The lawsuit is worth $6.4 billion.

Last week, Las Vegas police arrested the man they suspect robbed the Bellagio casino in on December 14. The man made off with an estimated $1.5 million in chips, apparently driving off on a motorcycle with a gun in hand. The police believe the Suncoast casino was robbed by the same man one week earlier.

Snow is proving to be more than a temporary inconvenience, as cash-strapped cities in much of the country try to find ways to pay for the removal of the mountains of snow. The blizzard of 2011 has cost many cities their entire 2011 snow removal budget, leaving many to wonder how to pay for future storms.

Verizon is warning new customers that it may practice throttling when the iPhone goes live and their networks quickly reach their carrying capacity. Verizon says that it would only use this measure, which involves slowing data throughput speeds, on the top 5% of data users, if the network becomes overloaded.