Agneta, Berit, and the busker

Found this one in the AP a while back:

Outside the New York Stock Exchange hundreds of tourists joined police, TV crews, school children, hot dog vendors, and a white-bearded busker playing "Amazing Grace" on the flute.

Swedish visitor Agneta Blomgren, 43, photographed her mother Berit outside the exchange. An electronic board displaying plunging share prices provided the backdrop.

"We wanted to come and see it," Blomgren said. "The Americans aren't world leaders any more. It's time for a shift and this is the symptom of that. Power is shifting away -- perhaps to China."

The Chinese were there too.

"lucrative radioactive disposal scheme"

So should this blog be so inside that I don't have to explicitly spell out the DeLillo references? I'll weigh all comments on this. Here goes post number 1:

Italian mafia 'sunk toxic waste'

Italian authorities have begun investigating a shipwreck allegedly containing toxic waste off the Calabrian coast, after claims it was deliberately sunk by the mafia.

A former member of the criminal organisation says the vessel and its cargo were blown up in a lucrative radioactive disposal scheme and that the ship contained "nuclear" material.

Investigators have obtained pictures from a robot submarine with a video camera taken at the scene and are now examining samples taken from the wreck.

The Cunsky ship may be one of 32 vessels with toxic material on the Italian seabed, prosecutors said.

Mafia informant

Officials said Francesco Fonti, a former member of Calabria's 'Ndrangheta crime group, had disclosed the location of the ship to authorities.

Fonti said he used explosives to sink the vessel, along with two others.

Silvestro Greco, the head of Calabria's environment agency, said: "If the turncoat who admits sinking this ship also says that he personally has sunk another two ships, even without taking into account other investigations that suggest more than 20 ships were sunk, the government must find these other two ships."

Al Jazeera's Claudio Lavanga said investigators believe the mafia began sinking ships when the European Union introduced wider restrictions on toxic waste disposal.

Lavanga said the restrictions have made the process of waste disposal expensive and lengthy.

Sebastiano Venneri, vice president of the environmental group Legambiente, said former members of the 'Ndrangheta mafia have said that the crime syndicate had been paid to sink ships with radioactive material for the last 20 years.

Somehow "Cunsky" works, too.