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Iran says it has detected second cyber attack

Ramin Mostafavi
Reuters
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:57 UTC
Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus in a "cyber war" waged by its enemies, its commander of civil defense said on Monday.

Gholamreza Jalali told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the new virus, called "Stars," was being investigated by experts.

"Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations," Jalali was quoted as saying. He did not specify the target of Stars or its intended impact.

"The particular characteristics of the Stars virus have been discovered," Jalali said. "The virus is congruous and harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government organisations."

Jalali warned that the Stuxnet worm, discovered in computers at Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor last year, still posed a potential risk. Some experts described it as the world's first "guided cyber missile," aimed at Iran's atomic program.
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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: The military's war on the Earth

Linda Greene
Bloomington Alternative
Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:23 UTC
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© Unknown
Use as many low-energy lightbulbs as you like, turn down the thermostat and drive a hybrid car, but whatever you do as an individual -- indeed, the sum of what we all do for the environment --does almost nothing to alleviate the U.S. military's destruction of the earth.

***

In The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, Barry Sanders writes that like other capitalist institutions, "each military branch ... must grow larger and fatter each year; expansion is the life blood of imperialism." Further, Sanders asserts, "The military can brook limits of no kind whatsoever. ... The Pentagon conducts its business behind very thick and very closed doors. It writes its own rules and either follows them or violates them, depending on the situation."

Almost all "military numbers remain off of official reports, secret and out of sight." Sanders obtained the information he cites in the book by gleaning what he could from "arcane reports" and obscure Web sites belonging to the Department of Defense and Government Accounting Office, plus books and articles.
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Family

NewsPolitics'Don't say gay' bill advances in Tennessee, would ban teachers from discussing homosexuality

Aliyah Shahid
NewYorkDailyNews.com
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:00 UTC
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© Fuse/Getty
A Senate committee in Tennessee approved a bill that would ban teachers from discussing homosexuality to students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

A Tennessee Senate committee has given the green light to a bill that would bar teachers from discussing homosexuality with elementary and middle school students.

The legislation, dubbed the "don't say gay" bill, states teachers cannot "provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality."

Republican Stacey Campfield, the bill's sponsor, has argued the move is "neutral," according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

"We should leave it to families to decide when it is appropriate to talk with children about sexuality - specifically before the eighth grade," he added.
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Family

Stress drives teachers out of schools


Guardian UK
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:08 UTC
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© David Levene/GuardianIs teaching the most stressful profession?
Targets, bureaucracy and ballooning workloads make teachers increasingly anxious, delegates at NUT conference are told

Stress is driving increasing numbers of teachers out of the profession, with some even considering suicide, a teaching union conference heard on Monday.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference in Harrogate heard there had been a "meteoric" rise in work-related stress due to demands to meet government targets.

Research by the Health and Safety Executive in 2000 found teaching to be the most stressful profession, with 41.5% of teachers reporting themselves as "highly stressed".

Sue McMahon, a delegate from Calderdale, West Yorkshire, said: "As a divisional secretary, I have seen a meteoric rise in work-related stress and on more than one occasion have had to support a member who has attempted suicide.
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Magnify

Hundreds of prisoners flee through Taliban tunnel


MSNBC.com
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:40 UTC
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© Ahmad Nadeem/ReutersAfghan jailer Ghulam Dastager Mayaar stands next to the hole that the inmates used to escape from inside the Kandahar's main jail.
Kandahar, Afghanistan - Hundreds of prisoners escaped from a jail in Afghanistan's south on Monday through a tunnel dug by Taliban insurgents, officials said.

The daring escape was described as a "disaster" for the Afghan government and a setback for foreign forces planning to start a gradual withdrawal within months.

The militants tunneled at least 480 inmates out of the main prison in Kandahar overnight, whisking them through a 1,000-foot-long underground passage they had dug over months, officials and insurgents told The Associated Press.

Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, say they only discovered the breach at about 4 a.m., a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a statement.

Comment: Does it necessarily have to be 'the Taliban'? Could it have been a group of citizens concerned for their fellow men who were wrongfully imprisoned?

One shoe does not fit all feet.

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Bulb

Knife-wielding plane hijacker overpowered by flight crew after he took stewardess hostage


Daily Mail
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:50 UTC
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Mid-air scare: Alitalia flight crew were forced to act after a middle-aged Kazakh man tried to hijack their plane and divert it to Libya
Alitalia flight crew were forced to overpower a man who pulled a knife on their passenger flight and tried to divert it to Libya.

As 131 passengers looked on in terror, the would-be hijacker held a knife to the throat of an air-stewardess and ordered the Paris to Rome flight diverted to Tripoli.

'The man grabbed the stewardess from behind her back and pointed the knife. She was in difficulty and tried to turn around,' a passenger named Sofia told reporters.
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X

US: Huge Long Island explosion completely destroys house, blows out neighbours' windows and sends 21 to hospital


The Daily Mail
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 05:20 UTC
A huge explosion flattened an empty house, blew out the windows of neighbouring homes and sent shoes and bedding flying into nearby trees.

Amazingly no one died in this morning's explosion on Long Island, New York, but 21 people were taken to hospital for evaluation.

The blast, which happened at 10.40am in Brentwood, Suffolk County, was most likely caused by a ruptured gas pipe, but investigators have not ruled out arson, according to the New York Post.

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© Paul MazzaRocked: Amazingly no one died in this morning's explosion on Long Island, New York, but 21 people were taken to hospital for evaluation
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© Associated Press
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Stormtrooper

Footage reveals Bahrain police brutality


Press TV
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 01:51 UTC
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New footage coming from Bahrain shows a protester has been beaten brutally to death by Saudi-backed troops in the capital Manama.

Officials in Salmaniyah hospital have pronounced him clinically dead.

Another footage from the same hospital indicates two protesters are being brutally beaten by Bahraini troops as well.

The victims are shown to have sustained severe injuries in their heads and legs.

Earlier on Sunday, Saudi-backed Bahraini forces stormed into an all-girls' school in the north of the country as part of the government's violent crackdown on popular revolution that has engulfed the Persian Gulf state since mid-February.
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Stormtrooper

US: Police beating of Las Vegas man caught on tape

Mike Blasky
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 03:43 UTC

When Mitchell Crooks checked out of the county jail last month and checked into a Las Vegas hospital, the 36-year-old videographer knew he had a fight on his hands.

His face was bloodied and bruised. His $3,500 camera had been impounded by police, and he faced criminal charges for battery on a police officer.

One month later, things have changed for Crooks.

The Clark County district attorney's office has dropped all charges, and Crooks has retained an attorney of his own. The Metropolitan Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the Las Vegas police officer, Derek Colling, who Crooks says falsely arrested and beat him for filming police.

And his camera -- which captured the entire March 20 altercation between Crooks and Colling -- has been returned.
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Newspaper

US: California gangster's tattoo of crime scene helps solve murder

Camille Mann
CBS News
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:29 UTC
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© Los Angeles County Sheriff's DepartmentAnthony Garcia
When Los Angeles County Sheriff's homicide investigator Kevin Lloyd was routinely looking through snapshots of tattooed gang members, he saw something that caught his eye - a crime scene he was familiar with.

Anthony Garcia, a member of the Rivera-13 gang, had a tattoo that resembled the scene of the liquor store killing of 23-year-old John Juarez in Pico Rivera on Jan. 23, 2004, reports the Los Angeles Times.

There were numerous details the murder inked on the gang member. The paper reports that the tattoo included the Christmas lights that lined the roof of the liquor store where Juarez was shot and killed, the direction his body fell, the bowed street lamp across the way and the street sign. Above everything read the title, "RIVERA KILLS", a reference to the gang. A helicopter was also placed above the scene raining down bullets, a nod to Garcia's alias "Chopper."

When police discovered the evidence on Garcia's chest in 2008, they launched an investigation, which was followed by the arrest of Garcia, reports the paper.
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