Saturday, May 31, 2014

Kuwaiti woman loses custody of children because she wore a bikini to the beach...

In most countries, a woman wearing a bikini to the beach is nothing out of the ordinary.

In some, however, it’s enough for a woman to lose custody of her children. According to RYOT.org, that is precisely what happened to an unnamed, divorced Kuwaiti mother who went to the beach in another country.

The woman was accompanied by her children, and a man who wasn’t related to her. When her ex-husband found pictures of her in the bikini, he took them to court, where a judge reportedly deemed that she wasn’t fit to take care of her kids.

Specifically, Yousuf Hussein, the ex-husband’s lawyer, is said to have noted that the mother’s lifestyle was “unfit” for child care. Furthermore, the pictures apparently showed that she wasn’t “trustworthy”; her “indecent” outfit was indicative of a “deficiency in her morals.”

She has since reportedly lost custody of her children. Full story...

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'Our ambitious girl': The village where cousins were raped and hanged...

The village of Katra Shahadatganj in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is difficult to get to. The roads are in a poor state. There is hardly ever any power here and few homes have toilets.

Days ago it was the scene of a brutal rape and murder. In the late evening on Wednesday two cousins left home to visit a nearby field, which they used as a toilet.

They never returned and by the next morning they were found hanging from a tree in the village. They had been gang-raped.

Relatives say police ridiculed them when they first reported the girls missing after they heard from neighbours that the cousins had been accosted by a group of men.

They claim that caste discrimination is at the heart of this tragedy - the police deny this. Full story...

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Do personal computers come with NSA surveillance devices built-in as standard?

As Techdirt reported last year, one of the most bizarre episodes in the unfolding story of the Snowden leaks was when two experts from the UK's GCHQ oversaw the destruction of the Guardian's computers that held material provided by Snowden. As everyone -- including the Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger -- pointed out, this was a particularly pointless act since copies of the documents were held elsewhere, outside the UK. The only possible explanation seemed to be that the UK government was trying to put the frighteners on the Guardian, and engaged in this piece of theater to ram the point home. But a fascinating blog post from Privacy International raises the possibility that there is another far more disturbing explanation:

GCHQ were not just interested in hard drives nor did they destroy whole devices. An examination of the targeted hardware by Privacy International, with cooperation from the Guardian, has found the whole episode to be more troubling and puzzling than previously believed.

During our investigation, we were surprised to learn that a few very specific components on devices, such as the keyboard, trackpad and monitor, were targeted along with apparently trivial chips on the main boards of laptops and desktops. Initial consultation with members of the technology community supported our identification of the components and that the actions of GCHQ were worth analyzing further.


In other words, GCHQ weren't trying to destroy the data -- which they, like everyone else, knew was completely futile. There were interested in "apparently trivial chips on the main boards of laptops and desktops." Specifically, these were the keyboard controller chip, the trackpad controller chip and the inverting converter chip. Privacy International provides more details: Full story...

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Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden would not get a fair trial – and Kerry is wrong...

John Kerry was in my mind Wednesday morning, and not because he had called me a patriot on NBC News. I was reading the lead story in the New York Times – "US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016" – with a photo of American soldiers looking for caves. I recalled not the Secretary of State but a 27-year-old Kerry, asking, as he testified to the Senate about the US troops who were still in Vietnam and were to remain for another two years: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

I wondered how a 70-year-old Kerry would relate to that question as he looked at that picture and that headline. And then there he was on MSNBC an hour later, thinking about me, too, during a round of interviews about Afghanistan that inevitably turned to Edward Snowden ahead of my fellow whistleblower’s own primetime interview that night:

There are many a patriot – you can go back to the Pentagon Papers with Dan Ellsberg and others who stood and went to the court system of America and made their case. Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor, and he has betrayed his country. And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so.

On the Today show and CBS, Kerry complimented me again – and said Snowden "should man up and come back to the United States" to face charges. But John Kerry is wrong, because that's not the measure of patriotism when it comes to whistleblowing, for me or Snowden, who is facing the same criminal charges I did for exposing the Pentagon Papers.

As Snowden told Brian Williams on NBC later that night and Snowden's lawyer told me the next morning, he would have no chance whatsoever to come home and make his case – in public or in court. Full story...

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Co-champions crowned in spelling bee for the first time in 52 years...

After a heated competition Thursday night, two young men — Ansun Sujoe and Sriram Hathwar — were declared co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the first time since 1962.

Speller Gokul Venkatachalam, of Chesterfield, Mo., was one of three finalists until he misspelled the word “Kierkegaardian.”

Speller Sriram Hathwar, of Painted Post, N.Y., almost lost on the word “corpsbruder.”

But Ansun Sujoe, of Fort Worth, Texas, then misspelled “antigropelos,” meaning waterproof leggings, which gave Hathwar his second chance.

Hathwar was able to spell “skandhas” correctly, and then Sujoe spelled “Hyblaean” right. More + photos...

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Snowden's censored 9/11 segment - " Had all info needed to detect plot "

Anger grows in India after girls raped and murdered...

Two police officers who failed to investigate the disappearance of two teenage girls in India who were gang-raped and later found hanging from a tree have been fired.

It came as the top official in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where the incident took place, mocked journalists for asking about the attack.

"Aren't you safe? You're not facing any danger, are you?" Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said in Lucknow, the state capital. "Then why are you worried? What's it to you?"

The gang rape, with video of the cousins' bodies hanging from a mango tree, was the top story on India's news stations. But Uttar Pradesh has seen the mother of a rape victim attacked and a 17-year-old girl gang-raped by four men.

Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state, with nearly 200 million people. Full story...

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Malaysian teenager gang-raped by 38 men...

Malaysian police have detained 13 men and are looking for other suspects following allegations that a 15-year-old girl was raped by 38 men in an abandoned hut, media said on Friday.

Astro Awani television and and The Star daily reported that the assault took place in the northern state of Kelantan on May 20 when the girl met a girlfriend and was lured to an empty hut reported to be a local drug haunt.

The men took turns to rape her for hours. Police were also investigating whether her 17-year-old friend was also raped.

The alleged attack, one of several brutal caes this week underscoring the violence to which women are being subjected across Asia, sparked outrage among women's groups. Politicians from a Muslim party running the region said their proposal to introduce Islamic hudud law, with harsh penalties, would deter offenders. Full story...

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Friday, May 30, 2014

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 search now a total circus as officials say pings actually came from ping detector...

If you can believe it, the Indian Ocean area that has been intensely searched for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has now been declared a total bust. Why? Because the infamous "pings" detected there -- which we were repeatedly told came from the aircraft's battery-powered emergency broadcast device -- actually came from the ping detector used by the U.S. Navy.

You read that right: the pings were actually produced by the ping sensor, not the missing airplane, we're now being told.

This is according to Michael Dean, the Navy's deputy director of ocean engineering, as quoted on CNN (1) where he says:

Our best theory at this point is that (the pings were) likely some sound produced by the ship ... or within the electronics of the Towed Pinger Locator. Always your fear any time you put electronic equipment in the water is that if any water gets in and grounds or shorts something out, that you could start producing sound.

Sounds like some amazing technology: a pinger locator that randomly emits pings! I wonder if the U.S. Navy has also produced sonar detectors that emit random metallic banging noises. Full story...

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Wah! Wary of competition, Singapore renews push for good English...

Singapore has enlisted a drag queen comedian to give its people grammar lessons, as part of a long-running drive to encourage the correct use of English, for fear that weak language skills could dent its reputation as a business hub.

Foreigners visiting the tiny affluent Southeast Asian island occasionally find themselves bemused in conversation with Singaporeans, many of whom speak in a mishmash of broken English, Chinese dialect and Malay, popularly known as Singlish.

Despite a 15-year-long campaign to improve the use of English in the city-state, most of its population of around 5.4 million has stayed resistant to what they see as curbs on an integral element of their culture.

This week the 'Speak Good English Movement' launched a campaign to encourage better usage, enlisting comedian Kumar to act as 'The Queen of Grammar' in a series of videos berating his subjects' use of the language.

"We speak English much better than our neighbours, and that's one reason why people like to come here. But we have become overconfident about our position," said Adrian Tan, a lawyer and committee member of the Speak Good English Movement. Full story...

Read also: Learn English the fun way - with Kumar...

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German study finds porn makes men stupid...

Researchers found less grey matter in the brains of men who watched large amounts of sexually explicit material, according to a new study from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin.

The research, which appeared Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, could not determine if porn actually caused the brain to shrink however, and the authors called for additional study on the topic.

"Future studies should investigate the effects of pornography longitudinally or expose naive participants to pornography and investigate the causal effects over time," said researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

The institute recruited 64 male subjects aged 21-45, "with a broad range of pornography consumption." The men were not told initially that the research was monitoring their brains on porn, rather that it was "a scientific study including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements."

 The men were told during a later phone interview that questions about pornography would be part of the research, and none dropped out. Full story...

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India sets out tourist-friendly agenda...

It is still early days, but the sweeping victory of Narendra Modi in the recent Indian election could lead to something of a revolution for travellers to a country notorious for its potholed roads, Raj-era railways, complicated visa procedures – and standards of hygiene that leave a lot to be desired.

The business-focused Mr Modi has made it clear that he wants tourism to be a significant growth area for India – and that there is much to be done to make it a more attractive, cleaner and less stress-filled proposition for travellers.

In his time as chief of Gujurat state, he introduced a measures aimed at encouraging more visitors, and this is something he now wants to repeat on the national level. In the two weeks since taking power in Delhi, he has appointed a minister of tourism and has announced plans for a programme of renewal and revival of Varanasi, the sacred Hindu city in which he has his own parliamentary seat and which is a major draw for pilgrims and tourists alike.

 In the past he has said that India’s ageing railways should be brought into the 21st century with the introduction of a number of routes designed for Japanese-style “bullet” trains. Full story...

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Singapore activists warn of surging xenophobia as foreigners take the blame for social ills...

Guest workers and expatriates are increasingly the target of “xenophobic” attacks on social media, Singapore’s leading activists groups warned on Wednesday.

There is evidence of the “widespread use of racist, aggressive and militarised rhetoric” against foreigners on social networks, said a press release issued by 12 independent groups including Maruah, Singapore’s main human rights group.

It warned of a worrying trend “blaming foreigners for social ills” such as overcrowding and local unemployment, often posted anonymously online.

“We, the undersigned, are alarmed by the recent surge of racism and xenophobia in Singapore,” the statement said.

 It added that the key to addressing frustrations felt by many Singaporeans was for the government to change the policies which caused marginalisation and inequality. Full story...

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Qatar's deadly World Cup...

Is FIFA being shamed sufficiently to seriously consider moving the 2022 World Cup out of Qatar?

Don’t bet on it, though the recent admission by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter that awarding the World Cup to Qatar was “a mistake” has renewed focus on the small Gulf state’s attempt to host the world’s premier sporting event.

FIFA was quick to “clarify” Blatter’s remarks, saying the president’s comment only pertained to weather. With Qatar’s inhospitable summer temperatures, the governing body likely will have no choice but to move the event to the winter, igniting a backlash from players and fans as well as sponsors and broadcast partners.

But the weather is the least of the problems with Qatar.

Hundreds of migrant workers from South Asia have already died while building infrastructure projects associated with the World Cup. And the event is still at least eight years away; at this rate, some 4,000 are expected to be dead by the time the event is held. While Qatar’s leaders have pledged to improve working conditions, there’s little doubt that thousands more will die should the Cup be held in Qatar as scheduled.

The inhumane abuse of the workers is largely a result of the country’s kafala system, where the employers are allowed to confiscate a migrant worker’s passport as soon as he arrives in the country. Essentially these workers – primarily from India, Pakistan and Nepal – are reduced to nothing more than modern-day slaves, since employers may choose to withhold their wages as well. Full story...

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‘Need food, not football’: Brazilian graffiti art expresses outrage over World Cup...

With just two weeks remaining until the World Cup kicks off in Brazil, those who believe the global event is too much of a burden for the country’s struggling economy have found a new way to channel their protest energy – with graffiti.

Street artists have covered walls in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo with pictures which blame football’s governing body, FIFA, for exploiting Brazil and the local government for neglecting the needs of the poor.

They share the belief that the US$11 billon which has been spent on the World Cup should have been used to improving transportation, healthcare, and education.

“It’s a good way to expose the country’s problems,” graffiti artist Pauo Ito told the Guardian. “If the government doesn’t want to expose these things it’s because they feel ashamed. If they feel ashamed by this they might take it more seriously – at least, that’s our intention.”

Despite the Brazilians’ passion for football, over one million people took to the streets across the country last year demanding the cancelation of the World Cup. More + photos...

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Thursday, May 29, 2014

Rich Kenyans are injecting themselves with black market creams to become white...

Standing in a small wooden booth cluttered with brightly coloured cosmetics boxes a heavily made up woman unwraps a syringe and a needle, then fills the syringe with pink cream that's been decanted from a blue packet. “You must only use a small amount, otherwise you can become albino. This is strong stuff,” she says as she pricks her customer's skin.

Rose is one of dozens of skin bleaching gurus that operate along River Road in downtown Nairobi, a hub for illicit activities that is notorious for its knock-off electronics, budget brothels, flamboyant transsexuals and petty crime. It is also known for its backstreet beauticians, like Rose, who promise clients that their treatments will make them look six years younger and ten shades lighter.

These salons have been around for a long time, and have caused a number of health scares over the years, often due to creams with high mercury content, but recently more extreme treatments have started to become popular and are causing concern amongst health officials.

The popularity of skin-bleaching injections has rocketed over the last 18 months according to Dr Pranav Pancholi, a Harvard-trained dermatologist who works at Kenya's Shah Hospital. Pranav says because it's a recent phenomenon, no one really knows what the long-term health implications are.

 “The products used on the streets are not used by certified professionals” he says. “The trade in black market creams and injections is completely unregulated. There is no way of knowing just how dangerous they are.” Full story...

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A dangerous journey: trafficking women in Africa...

Pakistan's prime minister orders inquiry into how woman could be murdered in presence of police...

Pakistan’s prime minister has ordered an urgent investigation into how a 25-year-old pregnant woman could be bludgeoned to death in public as police looked on.

Officials said Nawaz Sharif was “furious” and had ordered a full report from the police to be presented by the end of Thursday.

While such “honour killings” are far from rare in Pakistan – mostly carried out far from public view - the case of Farzana Parveen has made headlines around the world after she was killed by a mob of male residents outside Lahore’s grand court complex.

No one intervened as the attackers collected bricks from a nearby building site to use as weapons.

Her husband, Muhammad Iqbal, said he had agreed with her father to pay about £500 for the marriage but her father had tried to extort him for money before accusing him of kidnapping. Full story...

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Two Dalit girls in India gang-raped and hanged from a tree...

Two Indian girls found hanging from a tree in a village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh had been gang raped, police say.

One man has been held over the murders and three policemen removed from duty for not registering cases when the girls were reported missing.

The girls were found in Badaun district and are thought to be in their early to mid teens and from the Dalit community.

Violence and discrimination against women remain deeply entrenched.

Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.

The government tightened laws on sexual violence last year after widespread protests following that attack. Full story...

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Students at Utah school upset to discover yearbook photos photoshopped before publication...

Female students at a Utah high school want to know why their yearbook photos were altered to show less skin without them knowing about it.

The students who were surprised to find their photos altered attend Wasatch High School, and some of them said they also feel upset because it appears the decisions whether to alter the photos or not weren’t made consistently.

“I feel like they put names in a hat and pick and choose who,” Sophomore Rachel Russel said. “There were plenty of girls that were wearing thicker tank tops and half of them got edited and half of them didn’t.”

And that’s what bothered the girls the most. It seemed like the school randomly picked which pictures to edit. In one case, two different girls were wearing nearly identical tops: one photo was altered to add sleeves and the other was not.

But educators said the students know the dress code and there was a sign warning them that their pictures may be edited. However, the Wasatch County Superintendent admits the school erred in not applying the same rules to each student. Full story...

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Indian court asked to rule on whether frozen Hindu guru dead or meditating...

The family and followers of one of India's wealthiest Hindu spiritual leaders are fighting a legal battle over whether he is dead or simply in a deep state of meditation.

His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj, the founder of the Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan religious order with a property estate worth an estimated £100 million, died in January, according to his wife and son.

However, his disciples at his Ashram have refused to let the family take his body for cremation because they claim he is still alive.

According to his followers, based in the Punjab city of Jalandhar, he simply went into a deep Samadhi or meditation and they have frozen his body to preserve it for when he wakes from it.

His body is currently contained in a commercial freezer at their Ashram. Full story...

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Leggings are not pants, Qatar warns tourists...

The Gulf state has launched a modesty drive to make sure tourists understand what is and isn’t appropriate dress. And leggings fail to make the cut.

The Reflect your respect campaign, managed by Qatar’s state-run Islamic Culture Centre, uses Twitter, Instagram and leaflets distributed in public places to inform visitors of basic modesty laws in preparation for the 2022 Football World Cup.

“If you are in Qatar, you are one of us. Help us preserve Qatar’s culture and values. Please dress modestly in public places,” the leaflets explain.

The word “modestly” has been starred on the leaflet and a footnote reads: “Leggings are not pants”.

According to Qatar leggings are not appropriate dress because they are too tight and they can be translucent.

“It is expected that you wear decent clothes and women should avoid wearing any garments that are too tight; too short or translucent such as mini-skirts or sleeveless dresses,” the Culture centre says. Full story...

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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Depressed goat refused to eat until reunited with donkey friend...

New campaign to rein in WeChat - China's instant messaging...

The Communist party has opened a new front in its battle to control information: the smartphone apps that hundreds of millions of Chinese use to send instant messages to each other.

On Tuesday, three Chinese government agencies launched a "special operation" to censor WeChat, the hugely popular Chinese version of WhatsApp, promising to save the public from "objectionable, illegal and harmful information".

The campaign is part of a broader move to dilute the use and influence of social media among Chinese, many of whom now spend their days glued to the screens of their mobile phones.

 Already, the government has succeeded in transforming Weibo, China's version of Twitter, from a vibrant public square of ideas and information into a bland wasteland of selfies and advertisements. The Communist party has described its plan as the "purification of the online environment". Full story...

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Why mass killers are always male...

Whenever there's a mass shooting or massacre, there's a 98% chance the perpetrator is a man. Why is that?

There are no absolute certainties when it comes to mass killers, but a few things come close. Someone will use the term “disaffected youth” to describe the perpetrator. Somewhere there will be a diary—either Tweets, blogs, YouTube videos or scrawled musings in a lined notebook. And the murderer will—with more than a 98% certainty—be male.

That was the case again on Friday as Elliott Rodger, a 22-year-old student at Santa Barbara City College, killed six people and wounded 13 others in a stabbing and shooting spree, before taking his own life. If you say that you were surprised that his name was Elliott and not, say, Ellen, you either haven’t been paying attention or you’re playing at political correctness. But the fact remains: it’s almost always boys who go bad. The question is, Why?

There is no shortage of explanations for the overwhelming maleness of the monster population. Some of the answers reveal a lot—and yet nothing at all. Testosterone fuels aggression. Stipulated. Boys take longer to mature than girls. Stipulated. And like the forebrains of young females, those of young males are not fully myelinated until the late 20s or even early 30s. The forebrain is where executive functions—impulse control, reflection, awareness of consequences—live. In the case of males, who are already trip-wired for aggression, that provides a lot of years to behave badly. Full story...

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The rank hypocrisy of Tony Blair: He threw open Britain to millions of immigrants, but now sneers at Ukip...

There is a particular tone of voice that BBC presenters use when announcing that the airwaves are to be cleared for an interview with Tony Blair.

A solemn preamble conveys the sense that after that morning’s tawdry squabbling of contemporary pygmy politicians such as Nigel Farage, this is the main act.

In truth, very few of us outside BBC headquarters want to hear anything more from Mr Blair, apart, that is, from him uttering one single word. Which is why I stay tuned, in the forlorn hope that I might one day hear Blair say: ‘Sorry.’

That is, sorry for leading us into ill-judged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with thousands of casualties on all sides; sorry for permanently damaging our country’s diplomatic standing by fatuously endorsing President George W. Bush’s cack-handed statecraft; sorry for changing, through a purposeful policy of mass immigration, the cultural fabric of our country without first asking if there was a consensus to do so.

Mr Blair is a man who will gabble silkily for lucrative corporate bonding sessions or cosy media interviews.

But he will never utter what we actually want to hear from him - the faintest hint of contrition to those of us living in the country that he seems effectively to have abandoned. Full story...

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Thailand's junta goes after the press...

On May 27, junta troops barged into Bangkok’s exclusive Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand and seized a fugitive politician even as journalists were interviewing him.

The soldiers hustled Chaturon Chaisang, the education minister in the deposed elected government, into a white van and drove him away for failing to obey last week's summons to appear at the regime's headquarters for questioning, leaving reporters gaping. Chaturon apparently faces the possibility two years in jail for failing to report in.

However, ignoring the protection offered by the FCCT is the kind of tough action that coup leader Prayuth Chan-Ocha has prescribed against what had once been one of the region’s freest press corps. Unprecedented pressure is being directed against journalists, with foreign journalists singled out for particular intimidation.

Rugged soldiers armed with assault rifles and wearing helmets, green camouflage uniforms and bullet-proof vests have positioned themselves inside the editorial offices of the local Nation newspaper and other media, insisting they can control the flow of published information. Three senior Nation editors were summoned yesterday by the junta and ordered to tone down reporting and commentary.

All local and international media are prohibited from reporting "distorted" information which "could cause social division and unrest," or "widespread fear," Prayuth's newly named Peace and Order Command declared. Prayuth told the media to muzzle themselves because his junta is now inspecting publications, radio and TV broadcasts, and the Internet to find forbidden quotes, analysis and other news considered taboo. Full story...

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Kids react to old computers...

Why would you spy on yourself for the government?

(...)

That means you and your house will be constantly creating bits of data that form a blueprint of your daily life: how much electricity and water you use and when you use it, on top of a camera that video tapes you using it. And what of privacy?

And if you can “drop in” on your house, you have to wonder, who else can drop in, too?

After all, it was just last month that a hacker tapped into a couple’s app-controlled baby monitor, and they awoke to a strange man operating the camera and screaming at their baby in the middle of the night from inside their home.

Beyond that, we live in a world where the so-called National Security Agency’s habit of spying on Americans through major telecommunications companies like Google and Apple has been fully exposed now.

It’s not even a question of if they do it anymore. They are openly doing it. Period. Why else would they need to build a $3 billion data hub in the Utah desert? Full story...

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Singapore: Blogger removes posts under threat from prime minister...

A Singaporean blogger has had to take down another four blog posts and a YouTube video after receiving another letter from the lawyer of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Roy Ngerng first received a letter from lawyer Davinder Singh on behalf of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week demanding that he take down and apologise for one blog post that had drawn parallels between Lee’s position as chairman of a sovereign wealth fund and the management of Singapore’s state pension fund and an ongoing trial into the misappropriation of funds by a megachurch.

Lee’s lawyer said that alleging that the he had misappropriated funds “constitutes a very serious libel”. On top of asking Ngerng to apologise, Lee also wanted to claim costs and damages.

Ngerng apologised for the article on Friday morning, admitting that the allegation was “false and completely without foundation”. He asked that Lee waive his demand for damages. Full story...

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Nobody wants to host the 2022 Olympics...

The next Olympics to be awarded, a little more than a year from now, will be the 2022 Winter Games. Rather than going to the strongest bid, the games may end up going to the last city standing—a long list of potential hosts have given up on their Olympic dreams because the whole thing is one huge, useless waste of money.

Yesterday, Krakow, Poland, officially withdrew its bid for the games, a day after a citywide referendum where 70 percent of voters came out against hosting the Olympics. "Krakow is closing its efforts to be the host of the 2022 Winter Games due to the low support for the idea among the residents," said mayor Jacek Majchrowski.

In January, another of the six original finalists pulled out, when Stockholm, Sweden's ruling political party declined to fund the games. They cited the pointlessness of paying hundreds of millions for facilities that would be used for two weeks and then rarely again, a story common to almost all Olympic hosts. "Arranging a Winter Olympics would mean a big investment in new sports facilities, for example for the bobsleigh and luge," the Moderate party said in a statement. "There isn't any need for that type of that kind of facility after an Olympics."

In November, voters in Munich, Germany, rejected a proposed Olympic bid. "The vote is not a signal against the sport," said one lawmaker, "but against the non-transparency and the greed for profit of the IOC."

Last March, a joint bid from Davos/St. Moritz, Switzerland, fell apart after being rejected by a public referendum. Full story...

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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

How Brussels elite was stunned by a flurry of right (and left) hooks from disgruntled Europeans...

There has never been a night like it. Early on Sunday evening, even before the last polls had closed, the first tremors were shaking the pillars of European power.

Then came the full force of the earthquake. And by the time the dust had settled, it was clear that something had fundamentally changed at the heart of Europe’s body politic.

In Britain, the headlines belonged to Ukip. For more than a century, no party other than the Conservatives or Labour had won a national election.

But on Sunday night, Nigel Farage’s little band of rebels turned history on its head, topping the polls with almost 28 per cent of the vote. Nobody, surely, doubts now that Britain has entered an age of four-party politics.

The really significant thing about Sunday night, though, was that Ukip’s victory was merely part of a wider trend. Across the Continent, millions of voters have turned their backs on the European political elite.

The bare facts make extraordinary reading. In France, the governing Socialist Party, crippled by the wretched performance of President Francois Hollande, sank to just 14 per cent of the vote, while the big winners were Marine Le Pen’s openly Far Right National Front, which took a record 25 per cent. Full story...

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How Facebook and Google are killing the classic Internet and reinventing it in their image...

It was a week of rage, nostalgia and despair on the Internet.

Sure, you could say that about any week on the Internet. But last week delivered some prime material. Check out this gamer exploding in fury at the rumor that Google — “The King Midas of Shit!” — might buy the hugely popular streaming gamer site Twitch TV. Or this sad note from the founder of the venerable “community weblog” MetaFilter explaining why a Google-precipitated decline in advertising revenue had forced him to lay off three much beloved staffers. Or this diatribe from a Facebook manager, savaging the current state of the media.

All is not well on the Web. While the particulars of each outburst of consternation and anger vary significantly, a common theme connects them all: The relentless corporatization and centralization of control over Internet discourse is obviously not serving the public interest. The good stuff gets co-opted, bought out, or is reduced to begging for spare change on the virtual street corner. The best minds of our generation have been destroyed by web metrics, dragging themselves across a vast wasteland in search of the next clickbait headline.

At Twitch TV, the gamers are worried that Google’s “copyright monster” will tame their freewheeling Wild West and obliterate years of work. At MetaFilter, the inscrutability of Google’s page-ranking algorithms determines whether publishing outlets live or die. The Facebook rant underscores how unsatisfying our viral media diet has become.

It’s a big mess. The last two lines of the Facebook rant are “It’s hard to tell who’s to blame. But someone should fix this shit.”

That’s easier said than done. Full story...

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Bahrain top human rights activist Nabeel Rajab: 'People were tortured in front of my eyes'

Pakistan woman stoned to death by family for marrying man she loved...

A 25-year-old woman was stoned to death by her family outside one of Pakistan's top courts on Tuesday in a so-called "honor" killing for marrying the man she loved, police said.

Farzana Iqbal was waiting for the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore to open when a group of around dozen men began attacking her with bricks, said Umer Cheema, a senior police officer.

Her father, two brothers and former fiance were among the attackers, he said. Iqbal suffered severe head injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital, police said.

All the suspects except her father escaped. He admitted killing his daughter, Cheema said, and explained it was a matter of honor. Many Pakistani families think a woman marrying her own choice of man brings dishonor on the family.

Iqbal had been engaged to her cousin but married another man, Cheema said. Her family registered a kidnapping case against him but Iqbal had come to court to argue that she had married of her own free will, he said. Full story...

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Twitter has quietly learned to censor and ban its users when government ask...

Twitter has a reputation as an open platform for expressing one's opinions. It's become a place for dissent and debate. It played a key role in the "Arab Spring" revolutions of the last couple of years.

But last week, it agreed to censor a pro-Ukrainian Twitter feed in Russia. It also blocked a "blasphemous" account in Pakistan. It's not the first time Twitter has censored politically sensitive accounts. Now, it seems, Twitter's reputation as a platform for free speech is at risk.

Here's a brief history of Twitter's foreign policy.

At a conference in 2011, CEO Dick Costolo proudly proclaimed, "We’re the free speech wing of the free speech party.” His words came after events in Egypt, Tunisia — and also the U.S. — where Twitter made it possible for people to organize protests and voice their ideas inside often repressive regimes. Twitter was a place where you could let your unfettered opinion ring free, even if your government wasn't too happy about it.

But then things began to change. Full story...

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Passengers, crew on Australian aircraft exposed to toxic fumes...

The passengers and crew of Australian planes have been exposed to potentially toxic fumes on over 1,000 occasions, a report reveals. Former cabin crew are now taking legal action, alleging the exposure is linked to cancers and neurological disorders.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has released a report on aircraft safety documenting over 1,000 cases of exposure to toxic fumes on Australian flights over the past five years. While the report says that most of the cases when members of the cabin crew or passengers were affected were of “minor consequence,” there were 11 minor injuries and “one incapacitation.”

Reports of fumes filling the cabin ranged from minor smells to cases of smoke from aircraft engine fuel seeping into the plane.

The document said most of the fumes could be attributed to aircraft system issues “relating to failure or malfunction of electrical and auxiliary power unit (APU) systems.” The ATSB concludes that the risk of an incident occurring were rare and effective measures were deployed in most cases to combat the fumes.

However, former cabin crew members have complained, claiming prolonged exposure to the fumes has caused chronic health problems ranging from neurological disorders to cancer. They claim that they were never warned of the potential impact on their long-term health.

 Former pilot Susan Michaelis told news.com.au that she collapsed in the cockpit of a BAe146 aircraft because of repeated exposure to fumes from heated jet oil. Full story...

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Manuel Uribe, once world's heaviest man, dies in Mexico at age of 48...

A Mexican man once listed as the world's heaviest human being died Monday, at the age of 48.

Manuel Uribe had slimmed down to about 867lbs (394kg), well below his then-record peak weight of 1,230lbs (560kg), which was certified in 2006 as a Guinness World Record.

Uribe's death was confirmed by an official of the health department of Nuevo Leon state, where the city of Monterrey is located.

Uribe had been confined to his bed in Monterrey for years, unable to walk on his own.

The official, who was not authorised to be quoted by name, said Uribe had been taken to the hospital on 2 May because of an abnormal heartbeat. He had to be taken to the hospital with a crane by emergency and civil defence workers.

Doctors have not yet certified the cause of death. In addition to the cardiac condition, Uribe was also believed to have suffered from liver problems. Full story...

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Thailand: coup ousts US-backed dictator...

Life goes on as normal in Thailand's capital of Bangkok the day after the Royal Thai Army declared it was taking power from the diminished, ineffectual "caretaker government" Thursday. Businesses and offices were open as usual on Friday with no discernible difference for Thais. TV programming is expected to be returned to normal today as well.

The coup was carried out at the climax of half a year of massive and protracted street demonstrations against the proxy regime of billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra was himself ousted in a coup in 2006 and has since fled the country, residing primarily in Dubai. With his formidable political machine left intact, however, he has been able to rule the country remotely through a series of nepotist-appointed proxies including his brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat, and his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

While the Western media continues portraying Shinawatra's various proxy regimes as "democratically elected governments," they are nothing of the sort. Shinawatra - a convicted criminal, neither on the ballot or even in the country but admittedly running his political party and those standing in for him as prime minister - is unelected and therefore a dictator.

Shinawatra's ability to continue running the country remotely, and even contest elections despite being a convicted criminal evading a two year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants, and a growing list of pending court cases is due not only to his impunity within Thailand, but impunity he has enjoyed as a result of significant and continuous support from Wall Street, London, and Brussels. Full story...

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