March 24 2005 Harley dwarfs car maker Harley-Davidson is currently worth more than the world's larget car maker, General Motors (GM), after 19 consecutive years of record profits for the motorcycle manufacturer.
Harley overtook GM in market value last week at $17.68bn to $16.17bn after GM was hit after a profit warning. 
However the car maker still wins in volume and sales building 8.99 million vehicles with a profit of $6.9bn, while Harley shipped 317,289 bikes for a profit of $889mil.
As reported on the Financial Times website, Harley has benefitted from focussing on big bikes and its brand, including accessories and clothing. 

The Mozilla Foundation issued a patch for a major security flaw in its Firefox browser on Wednesday and advised people to update their software. 

The problem is caused by a buffer overflow in legacy Netscape code still included in the browser for animating GIF images, Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for Mozilla, said. Similar memory problems have affected Mozilla's browsers and Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the past. A malicious attacker could exploit them by creating carefully crafted image files that, when viewed by a victim in a browser, execute a program and compromise the system.

Mar 24, 2005 

Sammartino Wants Nothing To Do With Hall Of Fame 
By RONALD JORDAN Media General News Service On April 2, the day before Wrestlemania 21, seven men whose names are synonymous with professional wrestling will join the ranks of 40 others who have been inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame. And for the sixth time since 1993, wrestling legend Bruno Sammartino will not be among those named as inductees. 
The exclusion of Sammartino is not an oversight on the part of WWE. The company, which says it recognizes Sammartino as one of the ''giants'' in the industry and a major contributor to its early success, has apparently stood ready to have the former wrestling champion be part of its Hall of Fame for sometime. 

It is Sammartino who refuses induction. And for good reason, he says. 

''It's a joke, for gosh sake,'' Sammartino said of the WWE's Hall of Fame recently during an interview by phone from his home in Pittsburgh, Pa. ''I would wonder where my principles are if I accepted. For me, it would be very hypocritical because it goes against everything I believe in and have been saying about wrestling down through the years. I would feel like a first-class hypocrite.'' No doubt, Sammartino's name belongs at the top of the WWE Hall of Fame list when it comes to major contributors. To my knowledge, no other wrestler in the history of WWE, or any other wrestling federation, has come close to matching the accomplishments of this man, who came to the United States from the small town of Pizzoferrato, Italy, when he was about 15 years old. 

After turning pro in the late 1950s and joining what was then known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, Sammartino captured his first world title on May 17, 1963, defeating ''Nature Boy'' Buddy Rogers in a record 47 seconds. It would be 21 years, in 1984, before another young superstar, by the name of Terry ''Hulk Hogan'' Bollea, would come along and have a similar impact on professional wrestling. 

Sammartino went on to hold the world title for 11 years during two separate reigns in the 1960s and '70s, making him the longest-reigning WWWF world champion in history. Often called as the greatest wrestler of all time, Sammartino headlined New York's Madison Square Garden on more than 200 occasions, selling out the arena at more than 180 shows. A statue erected in Sammartino's honor stands in his honor in Pizzoferrato. 

For years since he retired from wrestling, Sammartino, now 69, has been openly critical of WWE and its product, saying the company's profane performers and sexually explicit shows set a bad example for today's youth. 
Sammartino has also been outspoken about the use of drugs and steroid abuse, much of which he claims he witnessed during his tenure with the company. 

Sammartino, whose name is among those of other sports legends enshrined in halls of fame in Pennsylvania and Chicago, knows the fans want to see him inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. But he stands adamantly against allowing it, saying to do so would be ''like all of a sudden I condone what they have been doing.'' 

Hells Angels leader smiles while losing $500,000 

Paul Cherry Montreal Gazette March 24, 2005 The smile on Normand Robitaille’s face seemed to suggest that losing half a millon bucks was no skin off his nose. 

The influential member of the Hells Angels Nomad chapter learned yesterday that $500,000 worth of investments he made with drug money will be seized by the province. If that wasn’t bad enough he was also fined $49,000 for assets the police could not recover, like his Harley Davidson motorcycle. He also had an extra year tacked on to his 20-year sentence he received in 2003 for conspiring to traffic in drugs and kill members of rival gangs like the Rock Machine during the biker war. The seizure order includes $199,980 in cash the police seized at one of Robitaille’s houses in Canadiac. 

Robitaille, who became a full-patch member of the Nomad chapter in 1998, and his wife, lawyer Anne-Sophie Bédard, managed to keep their home in La Prairie. Robitialle bought the house in 1993 but Bédard took it over in 
1995. The province was also not able to confiscate other buildings believed to owned by Robitaille. 

But the Superior Court judge described Robitaille’s management company Cogesma as clearly being a money laundering vehicle. He ordered the confiscation of more than $100,000 Robitaille invested into five companies through Cogesma including the Red Lite after hours club in Laval.

Robitialle, 36, and most of the other member of the Hells Angels Nomad chapter were arrested on March 28, 2001 in a huge roundup of bikers. 

Robitaille was a close associate of the chapter’s president Maurice (Mom) Boucher who is currently serving life sentences for ordering the deaths of two prison guards. 

The Gazette is following this story. Please read Friday's paper for all the details.