Bonjour Planet Earth: October 2013

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Facebook trialling new technology to track users' behaviour online...

Facebook wants to get inside users heads with new capabilities to track and analyse their behaviour across the social network.

Not content with collecting huge troves of data about users' lives outside of Facebook, executives want new capabilities to track users' minute interactions with the service itself.

New technology would allow them to start collecting data on details like how long users hover their cursors over elements on the page and whether their newsfeed is visible as they browse the site.

Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin said the recorded data could be used for various ends - ranging from product development to targeting advertising more precisely.

But with the company among a string of Silicon Valley firms exploited for personal data by the U.S. National Security Agency, any increase in the data it collects is bound to raise users' concerns. Full story...

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Facebook facial recognition technology sparks renewed privacy concerns...

Partnership between Facebook and police could make planning protests impossible...

Google will soon put your face, name, and content in its ads...

Facebook's Zuckerberg lapdog for surveillance state...

We post nothing about our daughter online...

Günter Grass: Facebook is 'crap'

Hot fire girl...

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Avoiding NSA clutches: India set to launch internal email policy for govt communications...

India is on the verge of implementing an internal email policy for official communications in order to avoid using American-based web services that have been compromised by the National Security Agency.

In December, India will unveil a new internal policy devised to avoid major email service providers - such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Outlook.com - that house their servers in the United States.

A communications official confirmed Tuesday that the plan is near implementation, The Times of India reported.

"Email policy of the government of India, as this policy will be called, is almost ready and we are taking views from other ministries on this. Our effort will be to operationalize it by mid- or end-December," Department of Electronics and Information Technology Sec. J Satyanarayana said at a Delhi summit.

All services will be provided by India's own National Informatics Centre (NIC). Full story...

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Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has no mobile phone, email account to hack...

Indian High Commission in London returns to typewriters to fight snooping...

NSA planted bugs at Indian missions in D.C., U.N. No reacation from India...

India among top targets of spying by NSA...

Indian government may ban Gmail for official communication...

New York couple living in cemetery for 13 years...

“The dead won’t hurt you,” her husband adds. “It’s the living that can kill you!”

The UPS truck can’t seem to find them. Neither can the cable guy. And the residents of the little Queens cottage have given up ordering pizza. Then again, the neighbors are quiet, and the Manhattan-skyline views are to die for.

So goes life in a cemetery.

“I like to say I live in a gated community,” says Ellen Moschetto, 61, who shares her home — cozily set on 70-odd headstoned acres — with a Shih Tzu, two cats and her husband, Bob, the graveyard’s caretaker.

There are at least two dozen cemeteries in Queens, several of them here in Maspeth. Many have live-in — and, yes, living — residents whose job it is to open and close the gates, patrol the grounds and keep out trespassers dying to get in.

“It’s not a job,” Bob says. “It’s a responsibility.”

The gregarious 65-year-old used to make his rounds through the rolling hills astride a BMW motorcycle. These days, he cruises the winding roads in his Hyundai, pointing out headstones with the pride usually accorded national monuments. Full story...

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Five children in India forced to live in graveyard after parents die of AIDS...

Sex offender stole items from cemetery ... and gave them out as gifts!!!

Spanish cemetery warns of evictions for non-paying "tenants!"

Don't have sex in a cemetery; the dead may not like being disurbed!!!

No room for the dead in Singapore...

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide...

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. Full story...

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Stop watching us...

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders...

Internet freedom on decline worldwide as governments tighten grip...

The NSA has been widely monitoring international banking and credit card ...

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Man buys $27 of bitcoin, forgets about them, finds they're now worth $886k...

The meteoric rise in bitcoin has meant that within the space of four years, one Norwegian man’s $27 investment turned into a forgotten $886,000 windfall.

Kristoffer Koch invested 150 kroner ($26.60) in 5,000 bitcoins in 2009, after discovering them during the course of writing a thesis on encryption. He promptly forgot about them until widespread media coverage of the anonymous, decentralised, peer-to-peer digital currency in April 2013 jogged his memory.

Bitcoins are stored in encrypted wallets secured with a private key, something Koch had forgotten. After eventually working out what the password could be, Koch got a pleasant surprise:

"It said I had 5,000 bitcoins in there. Measuring that in today's rates it's about NOK5m ($886,000)," Koch told NRK. Full story...

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The corporate state of surveillance...

America was founded on the ideals of personal liberty, freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, mass spying, surveillance and the unending collection of personal data threaten to undermine civil liberties and our privacy rights. What started as a necessary means of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering during World War II has escalated into an out-of-control snoop state where entities both governmental and commercial are desperate for as much data as they can grab. We find ourselves in the midst of an all-out invasion on what’s-none-of-their-business and its coming from both government and corporate sources. Snooping and data collection have become big business. Nothing is out of their bounds anymore.

The Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA) certainly blazed one trail. The disclosures provided by Edward Snowden has brought into light the worst fears that critics of the overwrought Patriot Act expressed back in 2001. The national security state has given a blank check to the paranoid intelligence community to gather data on nearly everyone. Internet and telephone communications of millions of American citizens and millions more citizens and leaders of other countries. Even friendly ones such as Germany, France and Brazil have been surveillance targets –over 30 foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff have reportedly been targeted by this dragnet style data-collecting. More blatantly, covert devices were reportedly placed in European Union offices and earlier by Hillary Clinton’s State Department on the United Nations to eavesdrop on diplomats. World leaders are not pleased, to put it mildly.

Many Americans are not pleased either. And while most of the recent public outrage in the U.S. has been directed at instances of government snooping, giant private corporations are equally as guilty of the troubling invasion of peoples’ selves. Companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook blatantly collect and commercialize personal data — often covering their tracks with complicated fine-print user agreement contracts that most people, whose property it is, “agree” to without any consideration. Clicking “I agree” on an expansive, non-negotiable user agreement for a website or a software program is, to most people, just another mindless click of the mouse in the signup process. Full story...

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Fury at Facebook as login requests “Government ID” from users...

Partnership between Facebook and police could make planning protests impossible...

US - press freedom: Journalists complain about the climate of fear under Obama...

We're living '1984' today...

How everything you do online is tracked and stored...

Cop tasers handcuffed girl and now she is brain-dead...

Mother watched son being tasered to death...

British cops' taser attack, this time in Nottingham...

Aussie man dies after being tasered 28 times...

Drone strikes: tears in Congress as Pakistani family tells of mother's death...

The family of a 67-year-old midwife from a remote village in North Waziristan told lawmakers on Tuesday about her death and the "CIA drone" they say was responsible. Their harrowing accounts marked the first time Congress had ever heard from civilian victims of an alleged US drone strike.

Rafiq ur Rehman, a Pakistani primary school teacher who appeared on Capitol Hill with his children, Zubair, 13, and Nabila, 9, described his mother, Momina Bibi, as the "string that held our family together". His two children, who were gathering okra with their grandmother the day she was killed, on 24 October 2012, were injured in the attack.

"Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day," Rehman said, through a translator. "Some media outlets reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother’s house. Others reported that the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All of them reported that three, four, five militants were killed."

Instead, he said, only one person was killed that day: "Not a militant but my mother." Full story...

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The children killed by America's drones...

Mango trees to the rescue of Indian girls...

Anil Singh planted 11 mango trees when he was blessed with a daughter more than two-years ago. He planted 10 more recently, keeping his daughter Anjali in mind.

In doing so, he was simply following a deep-rooted tradition of Dharhara village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, where fruit-bearing trees are grown to secure the future of every female child.

The fruit and trees can be sold later, generating income and helping to pay for the girl's education and marriage. "They are an insurance for a secured future," boasts Singh.

It has been a noble practice with little parallel in a country where girls are less than safe. Female foeticide routinely snuffs out life even before birth. Those who live to grow often have to contend with life-long discrimination, marital abuse at home, and sexual harassment outside.

Fortunately though, Dharhara has not been afflicted by the same evils. Roads leading to the dusty village are bumpy and treacherous. It has possibly helped to keep the scourges away. Full story...

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A village that plants 111 trees for every girl born in Rajasthan...

Why is India so bad for women?

Man in India kicks wife to death for giving birth to second baby girl...

An estimated one million girls are killed in India every year...

5 shocking facts about aspartame...

Aspartame is a nasty chemical that’s sold as a zero-calorie healthy sweetener. But did you know that it’s technically not calorie-free? Not a lot, only about 4 calories per gram. [1] That isn’t a lot, and it’s not a big deal. But it’s one weird fact you probably didn’t know about aspartame. Let’s take a look at a few other points about aspartame that rarely get discussed.

1. Aspartame is Made from Bacteria Poop

The chemical aspartame is made from the waste product of E. coli bacteria. To be blunt, it’s made from bacteria poop. As if that’s not bad enough, the poop is then benzylated and hydrolyzed, and the result of that process is then methylated and debenzylated. [2]

Are your eyes crossed from trying to make sense of that? I thought it was bad enough to know that aspartame is really bacterial poop that’s been put through a harsh chemical process to a fare-thee-well, but then I learned something even worse. Read on.

2. The Bacteria are Genetically Modified

The patent for aspartame reveals that the E. coli bacteria are genetically manipulated. [2] That’s another way of saying that aspartame is made from the poop of bacteria that are genetically modified organisms — GMOs. Of course, the manufacturer claims that there are no GMO molecules in aspartame. I’m not betting my health on that claim! Apparently, they’re saying that genetically modified bacteria produce normal poop. However, by definition, any GMO organism’s metabolism is deranged because it contains foreign DNA. Full story...

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Woman in Chennai surrenders after confessing to husband's murder on reality show...

A 38-year-old woman confessed to abetting the murder of her husband during a Tamil television reality show.

She surrendered before the police five months after the incident, which was initially treated as a case of suicide.

She is alleged of killing her husband with the help of her aide T Rajan on May 14 at their house in Marakadai.

D Sumathi was produced in a court in Tiruvarur district and remanded to judicial custody recently.

T Rajan also surrendered two days later and was remanded to judicial custody, police said.

The victim, 46-year-old S Dhanasekar, was a headmaster in a government school and his wife Sumathi was also a teacher in another government-aided school, both in Tiruvarur district.

S Kannadasan, brother of the victim, claimed that soon after his brother's death, Sumathi herself admitted to the crime to family members, "pricked" by conscience. Later, she confessed to the crime in the TV show a few weeks ago.

Police said murder charge has been framed against the two accused. Source...

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NSA stores data to target any citizen at any time - Greenwald...

The current revelations on the NSA’s spying are just the tip of the iceberg and affect “almost every country in the world,” said Glenn Greenwald. He stressed the NSA stores data for “as long as it can,” so they can target a citizen whenever they want.

Glenn Greenwald, the man behind the reports on the NSA global spy program, spoke to El Mundo journalist German Aranda and stressed that the US espionage activities went much further than just Europe.

"There are a lot of countries, and journalists in a lot of different countries, who have been asking for stories and to work on documents for a long time," Greenwald said. He added that he was working as fast as possible to “make sure that all of these documents get reported in every single country there are documents for, which is most countries in the world.”

Shedding light on the NSA’s motives in compiling metadata on citizens, he said the spy organization’s main aim was to store the information to be able to dip into it whenever necessary.

"The very clear objective of the NSA is not just to collect all this, but to keep it for as long as they can," said Greenwald.

"So they can at any time target a particular citizen of Spain or anywhere else and learn what they've been doing, in terms of who they have been communicating with.” Full story...

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US NSA spying: Pressure mounts on White House...

Stop watching us...

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders...

Internet freedom on decline worldwide as governments tighten grip...

The NSA has been widely monitoring international banking and credit card transactions...

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Maru playing with Hana...

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Fury at Facebook as login requests “Government ID” from users...

Thousands of Facebook users have vented their fury at the social media site on Twitter after they were locked out of the site, and were requested to provide “Government ID” to log back in.

Similar mass lockouts have occurred on Facebook in the past, most recently in January this year. At that time, the ID request was in response to claims that users’ accounts had been hacked.

“This is just a general practice for both Facebook and Instagram to request photo IDs for verification purposes depending on what type of violation may have occurred,” Facebook said at the time.

This is the first mass lockout and ID request to have taken place since the NSA government data trawling revelations, and it seems to have outraged users to a greater extent.

At the time of publication, Facebook have not issued any public comment or confirmation. Source...

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7 most disgusting ingredients used to make vaccines...

Parents have the right to understand what is being put into their child’s body. The production of vaccines uses many disgusting ingredients.

Additionally, the components used during the manufacturing process may violate your personal, religious, or ethical beliefs.

Lastly, remember that whatever colorful language is used by the scientific community (using such words as purified), using such substances can come with an enormous cost. As you read this list, understand cell lines and vaccines do become contaminated.

This is often hidden under the term “adventitious agents.” Full story...

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Meet the private companies helping the police spy on protestors...

The documents leaked to media outlets by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden this year have brought national intelligence gathering and surveillance operations under a level of scrutiny not seen in decades. Often left out of this conversation, though, is the massive private surveillance industry that provides services to law enforcement, defense agencies and corporations in the U.S. and abroad – a sprawling constellation of companies and municipalities. "It's a circle where everyone [in these industries] is benefitting," says Eric King, lead researcher of watchdog group Privacy International. "Everyone gets more powerful, and richer."

Promotional materials for numerous private spy companies boast of how law enforcement organizations can use their products to monitor people at protests or other large crowds – including by keeping tabs on individual people's social media presence. Kenneth Lipp, a journalist who attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia from October 19th to 23rd, tells Rolling Stone that monitoring Twitter and Facebook was a main theme of the week. "Social media was the buzzword," says Lipp. He says much of the discussion seemed to be aimed at designing policies that wouldn't trigger potentially limiting court cases: "They want to avoid a warrant standard."

While the specifics of which police departments utilize what surveillance technologies is often unclear, there is evidence to suggest that use of mass surveillance against individuals not under direct investigation is common. "The default is mass surveillance, the same as NSA's 'collect it all' mindset," says King. "There's not a single company that if you installed their product, [it] would comply with what anyone without a security clearance would think is appropriate, lawful use." Full story...

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The data hackers: mining your information for Big Brother ...

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NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel...

NSA paid Google,Microsoft,Facebook,Yahoo to spy on you...

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US NSA spying: Pressure mounts on White House...

Pressure is growing on the White House to explain US intelligence gathering and why President Barack Obama appeared not to know the extent of operations.

The intelligence agency head and other officials are to testify before the House of Representatives later.

The chair of the Senate's intelligence committee said there would be a "total review" of US spying programmes.

The president has spoken publicly of his intent to probe spying activities amid claims of eavesdropping on allies.

An EU delegate in Washington has described the row over intelligence gathering as "a breakdown of trust".

(...)

"It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel's communications were being collected since 2002. That is a big problem."

Senator Feinstein said the White House had told her that all surveillance of leaders of countries friendly to the US would stop.

However, the BBC's North America editor Mark Mardell says a senior administration official has told the BBC this is not accurate - there have not been such policy changes. Full story...

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Horrific video shows Saudi husband beating Asian man with a belt 'because he dared speak to his wife'

Human rights campaigners are outraged at a video that has surfaced from Saudi Arabia of an Asian man being severely beaten by a Saudi man, allegedly for looking at his wife.

The footage shows the Asian worker, wearing an orange overall, sitting opposite the Saudi man dressed in white robes.

The Asian man has a swollen eye and is repeatedly slapped and hit in the face by the other man.

According to the English service of Al Arabiya, a news site, the Saudi man is allegedly accusing the other man of talking to his wife.

The Saudi man then starts to repeatedly whip the Asian man with his belt. The victim falls to the floor crying out in pain, where he is kicked and whipped over and over.

When he gets to his feet, the Saudi man appears to grab him by the throat and forces him up against the wall before continuing to beat him. More + video...

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Mothers of Syria: Women take up arms to fight against rebels...

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13-year-old girl buried alive after rape in Pakistan...

A teenage girl was buried alive after being raped in Pakistan's Punjab province, prompting a court to order a probe into the brutal attack.

Siddique Mughal, a resident of a village in Toba Tek Singh district, located 225 km from Lahore, told police that his 13-year-old daughter was abducted by two unidentified men while she was going to a seminary for Quran lessons.

The men took the girl to a deserted place and raped her. They believed she had died during the assault and buried her by the roadside, Mughal said.

However, the girl regained consciousness and dug her way out of the mud covering her. She raised an alarm and caught the attention of a passerby, who took her to a nearby rural health centre.

As police were not cooperating with the girl's family, the Lahore High Court Chief Justice's Complaint Cell took notice of the incident on Saturday and directed the district and sessions judge of Toba Tek Singh to probe the matter.

The sessions judge subsequently directed police to take steps to arrest the rapists, complete their investigation and submit a report to the court without any delay. Source...

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Kenya's women fight for justice as rapists are sentenced to cut the grass...

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Cutting grass as punishment for rape? Anger in Kenya...

More than a million people have signed an online petition demanding justice after three men accused of brutally gang-raping a girl in Kenya were ordered to cut grass as punishment.

The policemen who ordered the punishment should be disciplined for failing to investigate rape charges, the petition said.

The 16-year old was gang-raped and dumped in a pit latrine in Busia.

When her case came to light earlier this month, it caused national outrage.

The director of public prosecutions has ordered the national police to investigate why the local force, known as administration police, did not fully investigate the alleged rape, and instead ordered the suspects to cut grass.

The alleged rapists are reported to have gone into hiding. Full story...

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Dolphins chopped up, skinned alive in Peru to use as shark bait for shark fin soup...

Animal conservation groups are enraged over the brutal slaughtering of thousands of dolphins off the coast of Peru, where the mammals are used as shark bait for an Asian delicacy known as shark fin soup.

Shark fin soup is a very expensive dish in China, among other Asian countries. The extravagant dish comes at a much higher cost -- not only on a humane and ethical level, but the price paid could be the disruption of our oceans' entire ecosystem.

Both the dolphin and shark populations have been devastated by the hunt, and a new investigation reveals that at least 10,000 dolphins are killed off the coast of Peru each year by fisherman who use them as shark bait, according to watchdog group Asociación Mundo Azul.

The London-based Ecologist Film Unit recently recorded one of the hunts in an undercover investigation and released its material, CNN reports. The disturbing video (watch below) shows the crew plunging a harpoon into the pod, and once captured, the carnage begins. Full story...

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If all these countries are so outraged by the Snowden revelations, why aren't they offering him asylum?

Glenn Greenwald makes some really good points in a Guardian column (one of his last) discussing the reactions to the latest revelations about the NSA surveillance on citizens and (mainly) top politicians in other countries. The key one being, if these countries are really so outraged by these revelations, shouldn't they be offering Ed Snowden asylum, since they appear to be admitting that these revelations are important?

All of these governments keep saying how newsworthy these revelations are, how profound are the violations they expose, how happy they are to learn of all this, how devoted they are to reform. If that's true, why are they allowing the person who enabled all these disclosures – Edward Snowden – to be targeted for persecution by the US government for the "crime" of blowing the whistle on all of this?

If the German and French governments – and the German and French people – are so pleased to learn of how their privacy is being systematically assaulted by a foreign power over which they exert no influence, shouldn't they be offering asylum to the person who exposed it all, rather than ignoring or rejecting his pleas to have his basic political rights protected, and thus leaving him vulnerable to being imprisoned for decades by the US government?

Of course, when put in the context of how it's really just about cutting off the power of American hypocrisy, this situation makes more sense, even as it highlights the hypocrisy of those other countries.

The reality is that none of these leaders expressing outrage are actually shocked by this. Everyone knew this was going on. They're reacting this way because it's all part of the theater, in which they have to act shocked and to condemn the US, but it's really just about the information being revealed. When looked at under that light, of course they have no interest in offering Snowden asylum. He's the one who created the "shock" by revealing this information which all those officials almost certainly knew about, while pretending not to. Source...

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Europe falls out of love with Obama over NSA spying claims...

Snowden: US govt allows top officials to lie to Congress, yet prosecutes truth-tellers...

US leaker Snowden 'wears disguise, in danger': lawyer...

Edward Snowden, NSA and fairy tales...

Monday, October 28, 2013

Rich parents in New York give babies personal tuition in French and Chinese...

The pursuit of educational excellence is so competitive in New York that some babies are given personal tuition in French and Chinese, and four-year-olds are hothoused for the best schools.

Some of the richest, most competitive, most fashionable parents on the planet leave no stone unturned in the fight to provide their children with the upper hand.Babies who cannot even form sentences in their native English are signed up to "baby and me" lessons in Chinese or French in the ultra-trendy TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan.

At TriBeCa Language, the lessons are open to tots as soon as they start babbling.

In one, a French teacher sings a well-known French nursery rhyme to nine-month-old twins sitting under a "baby gym" on a mat with their American mother.

The teacher then guides them through a game with little doors illustrated with pictures of rooms in a house, behind which are animal figurines. "Where is the rabbit? In the sitting room!" she says in French, opening one of the little doors. Full story...

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Stop Watching Us: Largest privacy rally in US history hits DC...

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Chinese scientists create light bulb that creates super-fast wireless internet...

Scientists at Shanghai's Fudan University have created a one-watt light bulb that provides access to wireless internet.

Using a technology called Li-Fi, or light fidelity, the prototype created by the scientists is claimed to be an affordable and efficient alternative to existing means.

According to Chi Nan, an information technology professor with the university, four computers were found to be able to connect easily to the internet when kept near the Li-Fi bulb.

The use of light frequency enables all computers to connect simultaneously. The Li-Fi bulb, featuring a microchip, generates around 150 mbps that is 20 times faster than the average connection in China. Nan also states that the current wireless signal transmission equipment is expensive and inefficient.

"As for cell phones, millions of base stations have been established around the world to strengthen the signal but most of the energy is consumed on their cooling systems," Nan told Xinhuanet. Full story...

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Gypsy child snatchers ( aren't coming for your kids)

Hysterical and unfounded fears of Gypsies stealing babies spread through Ireland this week, which led to the police taking children away from two separate Roma families. The police turned out to be the only child snatchers in these cases, which were the culmination of years of growing anti-Roma sentiment that at every point politicians – and sometimes the press – have perpetuated rather than prevented.

The Roma community have long been Europe’s whipping boys and girls. They are the last minority group that it is safe for ostensibly respectable politicians to openly attack. Despite the dark legacy of the Porajmos, the Nazi extermination of as many as 1.5million Romani during World War II, in Europe it has never become taboo to repeat centuries-old slurs about their culture.

This particular round of Gypsy hate started last week in Greece, where a child – Maria – with blonde hair and blue eyes was found living with Gypsies who were not her real parents. Immediately, the centuries-old myth of Gypsy kidnappings was reborn. The parents of missing blonde children lined up to say they had found new hope from the case because Gypsies could have taken their child. The idea is as discredited as the blood libel against Jews – that they used Christian children in rituals – but people still like to trot the lie out every so often.

Today, it was confirmed that the child in Greece actually is Roma, that her parents are from Bulgaria and that her mother gave her away because she was too poor to mind her. But this is unlikely to stall the momentum of a continent-spanning anti-Roma news narrative. The story came just after French president Francois Hollande revealed his nasty side by deporting the parents and siblings of a Roma girl who'd been seized from a school bus. After protests, the girl was offered a chance to return to France without her parents, who were back home in Serbia, being violently attacked. Domestically, the Mail had us all very concerned about six – yes, six – homeless Roma who had been flown from the UK back to Romania, only to have the gall to return to live in a public park. Full story...

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Amish girl forced into experimental chemotherapy taken out of US and recovers with natural treatment...

Early in October 2013, the entire nation heard about how Sarah Hershberger, a 10-year old Ohio Amish girl with leukemia (now recovered), is being forced into a two-year unproven experimental chemotherapy study by Akron Children’s Hospital (ACH). It was just learned the parents, Andy and Anna Hershberger, took their significantly recovered daughter out of the United States before the court ruled that a hospital-affiliated, attorney-nurse, Maria Schimer, was made the medical guardian to make sure Sarah will get her treatments. Parents reported this week the child is fully recovered through natural treatments. Schimer is General Counsel (chief legal advisor) for Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED), a close affiliate and business partner of the hospital. According to Andy, Ms. Schimer has never met Sarah or him and his wife and they were never told their child was being used in a research study—among other things.

Although they do not know it yet, the hospital now has a big problem they must deal with. Sarah is completely recovered, as of October 23, according to Andy. The hospital told them and the news media that Sarah would die in a few months without the treatment they recommend. Three doctors that have treated her with a natural, biochemical protocol using nutrition, supplements and plant extracts have declared Sarah cancer free based on cat scans and blood tests—confirmed three times.

Of the 100s of stories and broadcasts, the local and national media failed to investigate the story behind the story—the side of parents Andy and Anna Hershberger and the grandfather, Isaac Keim, a bishop in the Amish church. Andy told us “after the news media took only a part of my statements and twisted them, I wasn’t going to talk anymore.” He and his family were happy and thankful that the Journal took the time to hear their side—never told before. Full story...

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Can Singapore tackle its match-fixing stain?

Singapore, South East Asia's wealthy island city-state, has a reputation for being safe and stable. Its squeaky-clean image, however, only goes skin deep, argues British writer and journalist Neil Humphreys, who has tracked Singapore's football match-fixing for many years.

On Halloween, the spectre of match fixing returns to Singapore when a nightclub owner appears in court in a trial featuring sex, prostitutes, bribery, three football officials, and an alleged criminal betting syndicate.

Eric Ding is accused of providing prostitutes for a Lebanese referee and his two assistants in return for fixing an international match in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Cup.

The Lebanese trio arrived in Singapore in April last year to officiate a match between Singapore's Tampines Rovers and East Bengal of India.

However, they never made it to the pitch. Instead, they were picked up by Singapore's Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) and led away in handcuffs.

A year earlier, Ali Sabbagh, the referee, met 31-year-old Mr Ding in a Beirut cafe where he alleges he was told that match fixing would make him "more money in one year... than he would as an AFC referee in 10 years". Full story...

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Are we missing out on life by spending too much time on the internet?

Breaking news from the internet…. Cats are cute. Also: Dogs are cute too. This just in: Reports indicate that dogs may not be as cute as cats. And finally: Dogs have woofed off suggestions they are not as cute as cats. Cats were unavailable for comment.

If you love cats or dogs or both cats and dogs (do such people exist?), then it’s probably safe to say you love going online.

The internet is a wonderful place filled with all sorts of things, of course, but like the often repeated mantra about all of us only ever being a few feet away from a rat, you are never more than three clicks away from a picture of a cat.

No offence to dogs, who have put up a really good fight, but cats are winning the internet. In fact, they’ve already won it. If the internet was a football match, Miaowchester United would be 4-1 up on Rover Rovers with ten minutes to play. There is no way back for the doggies in this game. Unless, of course, one of their breed tail-wags his way on to the London Underground and sits down on a seat on the Tube or something. But that’s just ridiculous – that will never happen. Full story...

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"Some 1,000 Swiss bankers no longer dare to go to the United States, or even travel abroad,"

As an American hunt for tax evaders and their accomplices gains momentum, many Swiss bankers are afraid to go abroad for fear of arrest, one business leader said in an interview published Sunday.

"In my opinion, some 1,000 Swiss bankers no longer dare to go to the United States, or even travel abroad," Martin Naville, the head of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, was quoted as saying by Le Matin Dimanche weekly.

Swiss banks and industry representatives are increasingly cautioning bankers who have worked with American clients to refrain from travelling outside Switzerland, the paper reported.

Swiss banks are believed to have accepted tens of billions of undeclared dollars from US citizens, though they now refuse such money, and a number of banks are under investigation by Uncle Sam.

The US has not made public which individual bankers it is probing, but according to Le Matin Dimanche, about 30 names are on the list. Full story...

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World’s anger at Obama policies goes beyond Europe and the NSA...

Whether miffed over spying revelations or feeling sold out by U.S. moves in the Middle East, some of the United States’ closest allies are so upset that the Obama administration has gone into damage-control mode to ensure the rifts don’t widen and threaten critical partnerships.

The quarrels differ in their causes and degrees of seriousness. As a whole, however, they pose a new foreign policy headache for an administration whose overseas track record is seen in many quarters at home and abroad as reactive and lacking direction.

In Europe and the Middle East, rifts that once would’ve been quietly smoothed over have exploded into headlines and public remonstrations.

The uproar in Europe over revelations from fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States spied on as many as 35 government leaders, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has become so great that early Friday 28 European leaders said Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would open negotiations with the United States over a “no-spying agreement.” Full story...

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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Over 10% of US largest firms pay no tax...

There are 57 separate companies listed on the index that paid a zero percent rate from the past year. Those companies include both household names like Verizon and News Corp. and lesser-known corporate giants like the data storage manufacturer Seagate (market value $15.9 billion) and Public Storage (market value $29.5 billion). Many of the companies USA Today identified in its analysis as paying negative rates make the list because they lost money, but several were profitable. Previous analyses have shown that the typical corporation pays a lower effective tax rate than most middle-class families, and a far lower one than the statutory corporate tax rate against which business interests disingenuously rail.

Getting to a zero percent tax rate despite turning a profit requires creative accounting, but not lawbreaking. The corporate tax code allows companies to avoid tax liability even in years when they turn a profit. Some of the profitable companies on the newspaper’s list, such as General Motors, achieved a zero percent rate by banking tax credits from previous years when business was bad. But the more common gambit involves moving revenues from parent companies to offshore subsidiaries based in tax haven countries in the Caribbean, Europe, and elsewhere.

Such offshoring of profits has caught the attention of policymakers in the United States and Europe this year, with the focus predominantly on Apple Inc. The US tech giant not only avoided the American tax system, but managed to shelter about $100 billion in revenues from any taxes at all. That scheme relied upon a loophole in Irish law which that country’s government says it intends to fix, but the narrow change proposed by Ireland’s finance minister will not address the larger problem of corporate tax avoidance. Full story...

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Top 10 Illuminati puppets and masters of entertainment...

From top hip-hop business legends who became millionaires like Jay-Z, to slutty sellouts like Lady Gaga and Ki$ha who are poisoning the youth of the world with traumatic mind-control performances and “haunted vaginas”[1], we see one common denominator — the use of subliminal messages and symbolism.

The entertainment industry is full of power-brokers, people who seek to control and dominate the masses by projecting programming that they themselves deem fitting to their own personal or worldly agendas. These are the “shadow masters” as Jason Bermas mentioned in the new indie documentary film Shade the Motion Picture, the men and women behind the curtain actually pulling the strings.[2]

In the cutthroat industry of entertainment anything is possible. In fact, the artists and management firms themselves can be random loose cannons so to speak, each with their very own agenda, each with their own creative mind. After all God created all men equal. However, some things just go beyond creativity, entering a whole new realm altogether.

To give yourself a feel for what is really going on behind the curtain in the entertainment industry, one must dive deep into rumors and conspiracy theories that run rampant on the Internet to then later form a general consensus for themselves. Although a good portion of the most powerful, top and vastly influential entertainment industry puppets might want you to believe that they themselves are affiliated with the Illuminati, rest assured a good percentage of them do it either for the money and fame. They are actually controlled in a puppet-like fashion by their masters that remain hidden in the shadows behind the secret veil of the entertainment industry. These puppet masters are who we as individuals should be concerned about as we have already witnessed the total decimation of all society and moral values after the implementation of the T.V. Full story...

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Barack Obama 'approved tapping Angela Merkel's phone 3 years ago'

President Barack Obama was personally informed about secret US monitoring of Angela Merkel three years ago, according to latest reports on the eavesdropping affair.

The President allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to continue spying on the German chancellor, it was claimed.

Mr Obama was told of the secret monitoring of Mrs Merkel by General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, in 2010, according to Bild am Sonntag, a German newspaper.

“Obama did not stop the action at that time but allowed it to continue,” a US intelligence source close to the NSA operation told the Sunday newspaper.

The White House later commissioned an extensive NSA dossier about Mrs Merkel, according to Bild. Full story...

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Women from all over the world are being sex-trafficked into Greece...

In times of austerity, the value of human life seems to plummet. Suddenly, people find themselves dodging rubber bullets, taking devastating drugs and setting themselves on fire, while their governments look on, wondering how to salvage the situation. Greece in particular has proved to be an exemplary case study in how no money leads to more problems, and its latest problem is sex trafficking. Although prostitution in Greece is legal, in recent years the number of legally registered sex workers has been dwarfed by the multitude of unregistered foreign women who are rumoured to have sex for as little as five euros. Most of these girls are said to be trafficked from abroad and despite the country's efforts to get on top of things, it's a sore that continues to fester.

"Every situation is different and every girl has a very different story," said photographer Myrto Papadopoulos, whose transmedia project The Attendants aims to document the lives of sex workers as well as offering them practical help. Aspects of the project range from the setting up of a safe house in conjunction with the Greek Salvation Army, to organising a photography workshop for prostitutes and women who'd been trafficked. The project's genesis was in 2009, when Myrto noticed, "an explosion of porn films in Athens starring D-list celebrities. I wanted to know how so many copies of porn films managed to be sold while Greece was in chaos." As she discussed the matter with more and more people, the focus quickly shifted from porn to prostitution and trafficking.

Myrto only took pictures once she'd formed a relationship with the women she met on Athens' streets. The personal connection she's built up has allowed her to hear stories of girls getting their faces slashed by pimps and being locked in cars. There was one about a girl who was locked in an apartment and repeatedly raped by her captors. When they left the door unlocked and she escaped, running through the building naked and screaming for help, nobody came to her aid. Full story...

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