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UK: Operation Weeting plods cuff 13th hack in phone-hack probe

Kelly Fiveash
The Register
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:59 UTC
Reportedly former NotW showbiz bin-rifler

The Metropolitan police have arrested another man as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged phone-hacking at axed Sunday tabloid News of the World.

"On Thursday, 18 August, officers from Operation Weeting arrested a man [H], aged 38, on suspicion of conspiring to unlawfully intercept voicemails contrary to section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977," said Scotland Yard in a brief statement this morning.

The unnamed man was cuffed by appointment at a London police station, where he remains in custody.

This arrest brings the total number of people allegedly associated with the NotW phone-hacking scandal to 13.

A Guardian report suggest that James Desborough, who joined the tabloid as a showbiz reporter in 2005 before being promoted to Hollywood editor in 2009, is the man currently being quizzed by police.
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Robot

DARPA shells out $21m for IBM cat brain chip

Timothy Prickett Morgan
The Register
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:02 UTC
Here, Skynet Skynet

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is moving ahead with IBM in the third leg of its Synapse cat brain chip. That leaves one more leg, a tail, and nine lives to go.

Because this is the military, the third leg of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (Synapse) project at DARPA is called phase 2, and IBM's techies have already completed phases 0 and 1. The initial phase of the project simulated the cortex of a cat brain on an IBM BlueGene massively parallel supercomputer with 147,456 cores and 144TB of memory and developing the basic synaptic circuits for the brain chip.

ibmresearcher
© The RegisterIBM Research's Dharmendra Modha
Phase one, which brought in $16.1m in funding spread across IBM and researchers at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center, and the University of California-Merced, focused on simulating and building prototype brain chips that have electronic synapses and memory circuits instead of simulating them using sequentially processing von Neumann-style processors like the ones on our desktops and in the data centers of the world.
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Card - VISA

Better ATM skimming through thermal imaging

Dan Goodin
The Register
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:08 UTC
Technique automates PIN theft

Security researchers have found that thermal cameras can be combined with computer algorithms to automate the process of stealing payment card data processed by automatic teller machines.

At the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco last week, the researchers said the technique has advantages over more common ATM skimming methods that use traditional cameras to capture the PINs people enter during transactions. That's because customers often obscure a camera's view with their bodies, either inadvertently or on purpose. What's more, it can take a considerable amount of time for crooks to view the captured footage and log the code entered during each session.
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Bad Guys

Iranian Commander Predicts Massive Deployment of US Police Forces in Major Cities


Voltaire Network
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
A senior Iranian commander said that the US plans massive deployments of police forces in major cities fearing the eruption of popular protests similar to the recent developments in the Middle East, the Arab world and the European countries.

The Deputy Head of Iran's Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri described the deployment of US police forces in cities as "military rule," which basically aims at a quick crackdown on political unrest in the country under a "threadbare" pretext of preventing terror attacks in the US.

He noted how incumbent US President Barack Obama has followed in the path of his predecessor, George W. Bush, in inflicting huge costs on US taxpayers through the continuation of the Bush-era war policies.
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Pistol

India: Cops kill 3 as Farmers Protest Water Project, Land Seizure Near Mumbai

Rady Ananda
foodfreedom.wordpress.com
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:30 UTC
On August 9, police shot nine farmers, killing three, who were part of a mass protest against a water pipeline project in Baur Village, 50 miles east of Mumbai, India. Police also smashed cars, fired tear gas and threw rocks at farmers as they fled the violence. This was all caught on video:

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Arrow Up

India Protests Swell as Anna Hazare Fasts

Arup Roychoudhury and Matthias Williams
Reuters
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:49 UTC
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© Reuters/Adnan AbidiA supporter of veteran Indian social activist Anna Hazare shouts anti-government slogans as he waits for Hazare to leave Tihar jail in New Delhi August 17, 2011.
Protests swelled across India Wednesday in support of a self-styled Gandhian anti-corruption campaigner fasting to the death in jail, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's struggling government at a loss over how to end the standoff.

Singh, 78, who is widely criticized as out of touch, dismissed the fast by Anna Hazare as "totally misconceived," sparking outrage as lawmakers cried "shame."

"It is a wake-up call for all of us unless we put our house in order. The people of this country are becoming restless," said Arun Jaitley, a leader of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The squat and slight 74-year-old Hazare fasted as thousands of his followers gathered outside the jail, the latest development in a crisis that saw him arrested Tuesday and then refuse to leave jail after the government ordered his release.
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Megaphone

UK Propaganda: Clegg Brands Riots 'An attack on Liberty'

Ian Dunt
Politics.co.uk
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:01 UTC
Image
Clegg: We need punishment that sticks.
Nick Clegg made his first major foray into the political debate over the riots today, with a speech branding them an "attack on liberty".

The deputy prime minister was in danger of being overshadowed yesterday as David Cameron and Ed Miliband both made speeches laying out markedly different responses to the violence which rocked England last week.

"Crime and lawlessness deprive ordinary, decent people of their freedom," he said.

"Violence and disorder are an attack on liberty, on the freedom of individuals to live and work in peace in their own communities."

Comment: For a more balanced view of the London riots read: Who Started The London Riots?

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Crusader

Texas Observer: Rick Perry's Army of God


BlogForArizona.com
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:34 UTC
The radical religious right Christian Reconstructionism and Dominionism movements have a prophet to lead them to their end-times Rapture: Governor Rick Perry of Texas.

The Texas Observer has this disturbing must read report by Forrest Wilder in its August issue, Rick Perry's Army of God:

Comment: Read also:

Rick Perry's Army of God
Dominionism: A 'dangerous' Christian movement influencing Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry?
US: Meet the Christian Dominionist 'Prayer Warriors' Who Have Chosen Rick Perry as Their Vehicle to Power
Texas Governor Perry took Merck money before mandating cervical vaccine

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People

The "Israeli Spring" versus Netanyahu

Etgar Keret
CBS News
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:31 UTC
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© Getty ImagesDemonstrators shout slogans near the Knesset in central Jerusalem on August 16, 2011 to protest against rising housing prices and social inequalities in the Jewish state
Nine days ago, in the middle of Ibn Gevirol Street, on the cornerof Shaul Hamelech, I saw D. We were separated by the hordes of people flooding the street on the way to the demonstration in Tel Aviv, and though I was close enough to recognize him, there was too much noise to hear exactly what he was shouting. From his lip movements, I could guess that it was "The people demand social justice."

A few days earlier, when Margol, the well-known Mizrachi (a term used for Jews who immigrated to Israel from the Arab world) singer and judge on A Star Is Born, the Israeli version of American Idol, spoke out against the social revolution and its "inauthentic" activists, she must have been thinking of him. D. is a fair-skinned, round-spectacled redhead. He has two apartments on a quiet Tel Aviv street given to him by his well-to-do family. In addition, he holds a summa cum laude masters degree from Tel Aviv University and a dream job at one of Israel's successful high-tech companies, the kind featured in financial columns. In short, the guy has it made. And this guy who has it made, instead of sitting home and watching the finale of A Star Is Born, is standing and sweating in the middle of Ibn Gevirol Street on Saturday night, shouting hoarsely with thousands of others that the people want social justice.
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Cell Phone

UK: 'Devastating' Evidence Puts Murdochs Back in the Crosshairs

Adam Clark Estes
The Atlantic Wire
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty
New evidence in the News Corp. phone hacking scandal reveals a widespread cover-up that casts doubt on sworn testimonies from the company's most senior leadership. A 4-year-old letter written by former News of the World reporter Clive Goodman but published Tuesday claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at the tabloid and conducted with "the full knowledge and support" of the tabloid's senior management. The fresh revelation spells trouble for former Dow Jones chief Les Hinton, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, Prime Minister David Cameron, and Rupert Murdoch. But it's potentially explosive for James Murdoch, who now faces another set of allegations that he lied to Parliament.

The Parliamentary committee investigating phone hacking allegations describes the Goodman letter as "absolutely devastating." Based on the context in which it was written in March 2007--just after Goodman's release from a four-month-long, phone-hacking-related prison sentence--the letter implicates each of the above News Corp. leaders in a slightly different way.
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