Judge awards $1 billion in anti-spam lawsuit

DAVENPORT, Iowa -- A federal judge has awarded an Internet service provider more than $1 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgment ever against spammers. Robert Kramer, whose company provides e-mail service for about 5,000 subscribers in eastern Iowa, filed suit against 300 spammers after his inbound mail servers received up to 10 million spam e-mails a day in 2000, according to court documents. AMP Dollar Savings Inc. of Mesa, Ariz., was ordered to pay $720 million and Cash Link Systems Inc. of Miami, Fla., was ordered to pay $360 million. The third company, Florida-based TEI Marketing Group, was ordered to pay $140,000.

Al Gore lauds mother as role model for women

CARTHAGE, Tenn. -- Former Vice President Al Gore remembered his mother at her funeral Saturday as an inspiring role model for women who believed education was the "key to freedom in life." "She wanted everyone to personally feel the enlightenment from knowledge that she had felt in her own life," Gore said of Pauline LaFon Gore, who died Wednesday at the age of 92. More than 200 people attended the funeral at the United Methodist Church in Carthage, a small town about 50 miles east of Nashville where the Gore family owns a farm. Born in poverty in the small town of Palmersville, Tenn., Pauline Gore became one of the first female graduates of Vanderbilt University's law school in 1936.

Radio station plans call-in show for prison inmates

WHITESBURG, Ky. -- Inmates across the nation can receive some holiday cheer from faraway relatives through a radio call-in show that will be aired nationwide this year. WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, which is popular among big-city inmates being held in isolated prisons in central Appalachia, will host a call-in show Monday so that people can offer Christmas wishes to inmates from Red Onion in Virginia to Folsom in California. Prisoners also are invited to call in for the program, which is slated to run from 6 p.m to 9 p.m.

Salvation Army counting gold coins in kettles

PEORIA, Ill. -- Salvation Army officials don't know who has been dropping gold coins into their holiday kettles over the past 20 years, but they hope the mysterious donations continue. More than 300 gold coins have been collected since the early 1980s, with an average value of about $200 each, said Cliff Marshall, spokesman for the charity in Chicago, where the tradition began. Chicago bell-ringers have brought in 10 gold coins so far this year. They aren't the only ones. In Kirksville, Mo., someone donated a gold coin that was minted 20 years before the Civil War, worth nearly $1,000. A $400 South African Kruggerand was dropped in a kettle in Bloomington, Ind.