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ISIS Kidnaps 500 School Children To Use As Suicide Bombers

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ISIS Kidnaps 500 School Children To Use As Suicide Bombers

The depths is the Islamic State’s depravity no knows bounds as reports surfaced that militants have kidnapped over 500 children from Iraq, which local authorities believe will be used in ‘suicide attacks’ by the Sunni radical group.

“Daesh [Arabic derogatory term for ISIS] has kidnapped at least 400 children in the western province of Anbar and taken them to their bases in Iraq and Syria,” Farhan Mohammed, a member of Anbar’s Provincial Council, told Anadolu Agency.

The Iraqi officials said that just last week hundreds of children have been ripped away from their homes and schools in Ar Rutba, Al-Qaim, Anah and Rawa. This week follows another 100 children under the age of 16 which were taken away by ISIS from Iraq’s eastern province earlier in the month.

Diyala police chief Lieutenant General Kasim Al-Saidi told reporters that the children were being taken to ISIS bases in Iraq and Syria to be used in “suicide attacks”.

Saidi revealed that ISIS is giving them weapons training as well.

In April, Rehab al-Abouda, head of the Iraqi Parliament’s Committee for Women, Family and Childhood revealed that ISIS has used hundreds of kidnapped boys as fighters in its clashes with the Iraqi security forces.

Those clashes have led to significant amounts of U.S. weapons falling into enemy hands.

Her April statement had come just days after it emerged that at least 120 children were kidnapped from schools in Mosul by ISIS militants.

Those children were taken from their schools in the al-Qayyarah, al-Shura, Badoush and al-Baaj neighborhoods of the city, which is about 200 miles from Baghdad and taken to ISIS ‘cub camps’, where they receive brainwashing and terrorist training.

China Claims To Have Created World’s First Facial Recognition ATM

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China Claims To Have Created World’s First Facial Recognition ATM

The days of remembering PIN numbers and passwords may soon be coming to an end as China claims to have unveiled the first facial recognition ATM machine in the world.

The facial recognition technology prevents people from withdrawing cash unless their face is matched to the picture on their IDs. The machine has a camera installed on it which automatically snaps a picture of the user’s face when it is approached.

The ATM was created by Tsinghua University and Hangzhou-based technology company Tzekwan, according to China’s state-sponsored Xinhua news agency.

Other features of the machine are that it allows currency exchanges and also records the serial number of every note deposited by clients, in order to identify fake bank notes.

The latter technology could be problematic, as it would also enable the government to start recording ever cash transaction, reducing financial privacy.

While the facial recognition technology is interesting, biometric identification, where body parts and features are used to authenticate users, is widely regarded as insecure.

Biometric features, like a fingerprint or facial features, lack revocation. If a technology is compromised it is impossible to change someone’s finger prints or iris or facial features, meaning that if someone devises a way to impersonate a user the whole system is compromised.

So while the technology is convenient, its also highly insecure, which is likely the reason no American banks have used such technology, preferring revocable measures like PINs and passwords.

Consumer Drone Market Expected To Be Worth $4 Billion By 2020

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Consumer Drone Market Expected To Be Worth $4 Billion By 2020

Drones, in all shapes, sizes and colors, aren’t just for the military anymore but are instead being quickly adopted by businesses in a variety of sectors looking to take advantage of the cheap aerial vehicles.

According to industry website DroneGuru.co, the market for consumer drones is skyrocketing, with companies such as DJI, Parrot, and 3D Robotics rapidly expanding as they scoop up cash from venture capital firms. This year alone has seen over $150 million invested in the three companies.

Last year saw over $110 million spent on drone investments, including crowdfunded projects, which alone raised over $10 million. VCs are taking note, with more than five funds being created to invest solely in drone and related technologies.

All the investment is for good reason. In 2015, consumer drone sales are expected to reach $1.5 billion worldwide. By 2020 the market will reach $4 Billion in revenue.

Yet these projections are probably conservative, as analysts have difficulty forecasting demand given rapidly changing FAA regulations. The national aerospace regulator has just puts its proposal to legalize commercial drone use into action, opening up a whole new drone market which is tricky to value.

Yet the big driver of drone sales in the immediate future is by regular consumers, who want them to take pictures and play with. Drones are an especially hot Christmas gift, which means the industry will see a flood of drones at very small price points, in addition to larger models used for more commercial tasks like crop surveying and shipping.

8000 Chinese Students Were Expelled From American Schools Last Year

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China isn’t just taking a cavalier attitude towards its political affairs; its study-abroad students are also taking a haphazard approach to their studies, according to a new report from WholeRen Education.

The report shows that approximately 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from U.S. colleges and universities last year. The findings highlight a negative trend in Chinese academic performance. They also come on the heels of an indictment this week against dozens of Chinese nationals for cheating on college entrance exams.

“Chinese students used to be considered top-notch but over the past five years their image has changed completely — wealthy kids who cheat,” said Chen Hang, chief development officer of WholeRen.

Approximately one-third of America’s one million international college students are from China, so the rate at which they are expelled isn’t horrible but has been increasing over time.

China is notoriously ethically challenged and the latest findings show this behavior is ramapt among its students. 80.55% of Chinese students’ dismissals were because of “academic dishonesty or low academic performances.” Academic performance is very poor for Chinese students as well – over 50% of the students had a GPA lower than a 2.0 — a grade of C.

“More than half of the Chinese students expelled were from top 100 U.S. universities, the survey found. Cheating at exams, plagiarism and finding other students to write papers for them were frequently cited as the specific causes of expulsion,” the paper reported.

Which begs the question: Is this, in light of the recent entrance exam cheating scandal, evidence that Chinese cheating on entrance exams rampant? If students can get into top schools but cannot complete their degrees it raises serious questions about just how they’re getting there in the first place.

Orange County School Board Spying On All Children’s Communications

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Troubling revelations surfaced over the weekend that the Orange County school district is now monitoring all school-children’s messages on social media sites in a supposed effort to curb cyberbullying, crime on campus and suicide.

But the move raises serious concerns about privacy and officials’ ability to monitor the communications of minors. It also raises ethical concerns about just what standard we should hold children to, who are not adults and therefor not making decisions that are as well reasoned as fully developed adults.

The district is using new software that analyzes social media messages sent to and from its campuses. More worryingly the software allows the individual school district employees to search messages posted on various sites including Facebook and Twitter for key words that might indicate trouble.

They could also use the information to learn intimate details about their students, which could be abused in a variety extremely dangerous ways.

While Chief Operations Officer Michael Eugene said the program is focused on “prevention and early intervention” he did not have an answer for who will have access to the highly sensitive chat records and what the vetting process for those individuals would be.

Such software highlights the need for strong encryption around internet communications, as organizations like school boards, who lack proper controls around who gets access to confidential information and how such access is tracked, are ill-equipped to handle the responsibility that comes with collecting and storing such powerful data on such vulnerable people.

Silk Road Trial Leads To Emoji Becoming Evidence In Court

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Silk Road Trial Leads To Emoji Becoming Evidence In Court

The trial and sentencing of the worlds’ safest drug dealer is now over and the sentence isn’t the only questionable outcome of the trial.

One of the key points of contention in the trial, which lawyers argued over for days, is the use of emoji as evidence.

Ross Ulbricht’s lawyers argued that the prosecutors left out critical evidence from their transcriptions of his online chats. Specifically, they did not include emoji in transcripts they presented in court.

After sparring over the issue concluded, judge Katherine B. Forrest ruled that emoji are admissible as evidence in court.

Before the the ruling, the transcript presented by prosecutors simply said “emoticon” every time one was used, which led to a clear loss of meaning.

Forrest ruled that the emoticons in question were “meant to be read” and that it was important for the jury to see them.

The trial actually featured a large amount of lawyers explaining internet slang, such as “IRL” meaning “in real life”.

The decision to admit the emojis into evidence will be a lasting legacy from the trial, aside from yet another casualty of America’s war on drugs.

Congress Eyes Mandatory Gun Insurance Scheme To Enrich Insurance Companies While Watering Down Rights

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Congress Eyes Mandatory Gun Insurance Scheme To Enrich Insurance Companies While Watering Down Rights

The latest attack on your rights isn’t from the Department Of Justice, State Lawmakers, local police forces or radical Islamists.

Instead its from Congress, who is looking to sneak legislation past the American people that would quietly make gun ownership both unaffordable and highly regulated.

Under a scheme introduced Friday by New York House Democrat Rep. Carolyn Malone, gun owners will have to carry liability insurance if her new bill successfully makes its way through Congress.

The Firearm Risk Protection Act would force gun owners to pay a $10,000 fine if they ignored a mandatory requirement to carry liability insurance before obtaining a weapon.

“We require insurance to own a car, but no such requirement exists for guns. The results are clear: car fatalities have declined by 25 percent in the last decade, but gun fatalities continue to rise,” the congresswoman said Friday.

Yep Maloney, who is notoriously anti-gun, is lying.

The most recent data available from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for the years from 2009 to 2013 shows a decline in the number of firearms-related homicides.

The complicated mess of gun laws already on the books doesn’t prevent criminals from getting guns, as they have long resorted to stealing rather than buying their firearms.

One more law like Maloney’s proposal will do nothing except make insurance companies rich, and be prohibitively expensive for many gun owners.

So the idea of adding one more layer of discouragement to the exercise of Second Amendment rights is not about safety but rather ensuring corporate donors make big paydays and that Americans rights continue to be watered down.

While Kim Jong-Un Eats Himself To Death And Plays With Rockets 2015 Will See Record Starvation In North Korea

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While Kim Jong-Un Eats Himself To Death And Plays With Rockets 2015 Will See Record Starvation In North Korea

There’s nothing little about Kim Jong-Un, the obese dictator of North Korea. Known for his immense appetite, the rotund leader left the public spotlight for nearly two months due to gout, brought on by eating too much rich food.

The problem was so bad that he now walks with a cane and wears special clothing to combat the illness.

Since he’s been back, Jong-Un has been investing vast sums of North Korean money on building nuclear weapons, creating new sea-launched missiles and upgrading the country’s pricey space program.

Yet while Kim eats lavishly and squanders what precious little funds the hermit kingdom has on toy weapons programs, his people are literally starving to death.

A U.N. official announced on Friday that record drought in North Korea will lead to huge food shortages this year, in a country already plagued by famine.

The problem is so bad that North Koreans turn to Meth, both to escape the harsh reality of daily life but also to stop eating. North Korea has the highest per capita use of Meth in the world, driven largely by a population tired of being hungry. The drug is a cheap and effective appetite suppressant.

Rainfall in 2014 was the lowest on record, at 40-60 percent below 2013 levels. This means reservoirs are at all-time lows.

“We’re extremely concerned with the impact of drought which will affect the crop this year severely. And we might be faced with another major incident of food availability or even hunger,” said Ghulam Isaczai, a U.N. official. “It is going to create a huge deficit between the needs and what is available.”

Yet the El Nino weather conditions are forecast to bring more drought this year, which means the situation in 2016 will be even worse, he warned.

“This is currently the rice-planting season. Normally they submerge the land almost a week or two in advance. But this year, I’ve seen it myself – they’re doing it in the dry, actually planting rice. So what we’re hearing right now is that they’re switching to maize and corn because that requires less water.”

A similar famine struck the country in the 1990s, killing over 1 million North Koreans.

The obese ruler’s erratic behavior further compounds the problem, not only by diverting much needed resources to expensive weapons systems but also in his treatment of aid workers.

The country has a history of jailing doctors and NGO personnel who can help in such situations meaning that aide workers are scared to go to the country for fear of ending up in jail.

70 percent of North Korea’s 24.6 million population, are already classed as “food insecure” according to the U.N.

The lack of water has also hit electricity supplies, which was at its worst in winter when hydroelectric power was restricted to reserve water for the rice-planting season. The power cuts led to many people freezing to death, a common occurrence in the country.

“What the government confirmed to me is that they’re operating at 50 percent of capacity in terms of power generation. A lot of it is now related to water,” the U.N. official added.

Yet Kim is unlikely to do anything meaningful to stop the shortages, despite some government policies aimed at addressing the issue. His penchant for exotic foods and elaborate weapons systems will doom his people, like those who lived and died under his father and grandfather, to a miserable life. And death.

Users March Against Facebook To Protest Dangerous Real Name Policy

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Users around the world are becoming increasingly disgruntled with Facebook, the privacy-invading social network that is increasingly placing the internet, and social lives, in a strangle hold.

A group that feels marginalized by Facebook’s ‘real name policy’ has had enough of the company’s cavalier attitude towards users and plans to lead a demonstration outside Facebook’s Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday.

Facebook is violently opposed to anonymous users and will suspended accounts when people do not use their officially recognized names. The policy has incited Native Americans, domestic violence survivors, political activists, transgender people, drag queens and others who do not use the names on their birth certificates to rally together against the policy as part of the #MyNameIs coalition.

To see just how damaging Facebook’s policy is, check out our story about an Israeli website doxing student activists in the hopes it prevents them from getting a job after graduation. Facebook makes it trivial to commit such damaging acts, which inflict real world harm on individuals forced to use their real name.

To make matters worse on Facebook, any user can report that another user is using a false identity. This policy leads to a mob mentality, where users are targeted by mobs who oppose their identity and behavior. “Facebook sides with those bullies,” said Sister Roma, one of the leaders of the effort to change the policy.

Such actions amount to digital hate crimes yet Facebook has so far escaped any public accountability for facilitating the cyber lynch mobs.

Victimized drag queens challenged the privacy invader last September after several received emails telling them that they must change their profiles to their “real names”, a blatant disregard for their gender identity.

Facebook subsequently apologized yet then proceeded to do nothing to address the concerns during protracted talks. While it responded rapidly to the negative publicity it seems more intent on making bad news go away rather than address the underlying concerns, which harm real people.

“Having people use their authentic names makes them more accountable, and also helps us root out accounts created for malicious purposes, like harassment, fraud, impersonation and hate speech,” the company said in a statement.

Yet those policies in fact encourage hateful actions by having groups look to ban groups of users they disagree with. Such bans effectively cancel the social lives of vulnerable members of the community who may rely on online social connections more than average users.

There have also been numerous academic studies that show forcing users to adopt real names stifles honest speech online, due to the permanent record it attaches to a user. This chilling effect means that real identities stifle free speech and honest discussion.

“Facebook is no longer a cool website started by a bunch of guys who want to chat each other and see chicks, and see who they are talking to,” said Sister Roma. “It’s changed – and it’s time for Facebook’s policies and original ideas to change, because users’ identities are as fluid as users themselves today.”

The protest will begin at 11am, across the street from Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters.

Demonstrators want the company to remove the fake-name reporting option, stop verifying people with government issued identification, and develop a clear appeals process.

Scary New Law Will Allow The FBI To Start Illegally Hacking Computers On A Massive Scale

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Scary New Law Will Allow The FBI To Start Illegally Hacking Computers On A Massive Scale

Increasingly in America when secret police agencies, like the NSA or CIA, don’t like a law they simply have it changed to ‘keep it legal’. Now the FBI is joining the party as on Friday the Department of Justice proposed a rule change makes it vastly easier for FBI agents to obtain warrants to hack a computer from basically anywhere in the world.

Its the latest step in the battle of big police, secret police and big corporations versus our constitutionally granted privacy privacy rights.

But never fear citizens, this new measure is just to stop terrorists and pedophiles. It couldn’t possibly be abused or impinge your hard-won constitutional rights.

And yet it will most definitely erode our rights, to the point of them not existing.

In traditional policing matters federal search warrants are only valid within the issuing judge’s jurisdiction. Law enforcement officials must demonstrate probable cause, find the right jurisdiction to ask for a warrant, and notify the person they’re planning on searching.

The notify part is a cornerstone of our Fourth Amendment privacy rights. As in its in the constitution.

In a few rare cases, the FBI have been granted permission to legally conduct remote computer searches, outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.

To make it make life easier for FBI agents the DoJ would now like to expand that power.

But this lazy and highly invasive change amounts to throwing out the Fourth Amendment.

In addition to the rule change permitting FBI agents to spy on any suspect’s computer anywhere, it will also make it totally acceptable to search our computers without ever telling us.

The end result will one, tiny group of judge’s in say, D.C., authorizing complete and total spying on anyone, anywhere in America.

What could possibly go wrong…

The tech community, who understands the issues far better than most groups in the country, is universally disgusted by the proposed changes.

Google lawyer Richard Salgado summed it up best in a recent blog post:

The proposed change threatens to undermine the privacy rights and computer security of Internet users. For example, the change would excuse territorial limits on the use of warrants to conduct “remote access” searches where the physical location of the media is “concealed through technological means.” The proposed change does not define what a “remote search” is or under what circumstances and conditions a remote search can be undertaken; it merely assumes such searches, whatever they may be, are constitutional and otherwise legal. It carries with it the specter of government hacking without any Congressional debate or democratic policymaking process.

The proposed rule must be approved later this year by the Judicial Conference, and then by the Supreme Court.

It will likely clear both those hurdles, as the DOJ makes laws these days, and only a Congressional intervention could save it from becoming law.

Given Congresses love of spying and large police forces this seems almost certain.

The result is that by December 2016 a small set of judges in D.C. will now be rubber stamping the FBI to go on a hacking spree across the nation and around the world.

That should deeply scare any American citizen.

We advise speaking loudly and openly about this issue to your elected officials as they’re our only hope for preventing the Fourth Amendment from becoming extinct.

It’s Not Just Apple – Every Watch Is About To Become Radically Smarter

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You’d be forgiven for thinking that Apple is the only company in the world that’s creating an internet connected so-called smartwatch.

But Apple is by no means alone. Nor was it first.

While it will undoubtedly sell tens of millions of the devices, every watchmaker at every price bracket, plus plucky new upstarts, are creating internet connected watches for all budgets and all tastes.

The latest entrant is luxury Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer, who had previously announced plans to enter the smartwatch space. The company gave some details on Friday, saying that an official release will come this fall with a price of $1,400.

The company joins an increasingly crowded field, showing that traditional watches, and watchmakers, will make the jump to digital.

Startup Pebble, beneficiary of the largest crowdfunding raise in history, announced both that the Pebble Time will is already arriving at customers’ doorsteps and a new, third generation version of the Time will start taking pre-orders in June. The third generation Time has a powerful new integration with cab-hailing app Uber, among other nifty features.

Also joining the party this week was lower-end watchmaker Swatch, which announced on Thursday that it, too, will produce a smartwatch that will include electronics for NFC payments. CEO Nick Hayek told shareholders that the new model will launch in August in Switzerland and “one big country” that has yet to be named.

The above entrants join LG, Sony, Motorola and Samsung in an increasingly crowded field. Yet unlike smartphones, in which a few models will dominate, watches are a fashion choice which will see products differentiated on design and brand appeal, meaning there is room for a wide variety of players.

During a recent interview, TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver summed that dynamic up best when he said: “Apple will get young people used to wearing a watch and later maybe they will want to buy themselves a real watch.”

The Dutch Have Discovered A Groundbreaking (And Beautiful) Way To Cut Airport Noise In Half

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The Dutch Have Discovered A Groundbreaking (And Beautiful) Way To Cut Airport Noise In Half

Nobody wants an airport in their backyard because of the noise. As existing airports get busier and busier due to increased demand for air travel and people get more sensitive to noise pollution, air transportation faces major problems in developed countries.

But a simple solution developed accidentally by Dutch farmers can be easily used to cut down the amount of noise generated by planes taking off and landing.

If you fly into Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport you’ll notice that just past the edge of the runway, there’s an odd assortment of hedges and ditches laid out in a diamond-like pattern. At first you may think its just one of the Netherlands world-famous gardens.

But this garden has a very specific purpose: cancel out airplane noise.

Covering just over 80 acres the green space is the Buitenschot Land Art Park. It’s not just an agricultural solution to noise pollution but also serves as a recreation area, containing numerous bike paths and sports fields.

Schiphol is one of the busiest airports in the world and the main hub of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. In addition to passenger traffic its also a major shipping point for cargo going to Asia. It sees 1,600 daily flights meaning its busy and loud.

The location was originally chosen because of it is flat, wide and open. But those qualities also make it a giant megaphone, effectively amplifying the noise of the planes across a wide area. This problem is common to most airports of the world and becoming more acute as once rural sites are increasingly surrounded by houses.

Ground noise is difficult to control due to the way it travels. The low frequency, long wavelength sound skips over single barriers, like concrete walls.

In 2008, responding to increased resident complaints, Schiphol called upon the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research [TNO] to study the problem.

The researchers made the fascinating discovery that in the fall, after the nearby fields had been plowed, noise levels decreased markedly. The furrows in the fields, because they had multiple ridges to absorbed the low frequency sound waves, deflected the sound and thereby muted the noise.

But Dutch officials, knowing for clever uses of land for centuries, didn’t just want to cut the noise. Instead they reimagined the land surrounding the airport to drown out as much of the ground noise as possible while also designing a maze-like park that could be used for something other than just cancelling sound.

By October 2013, the Buitenschot park had cut the decibel level of the noise in half. The airport thinks it can cut that down even further by changing when certain planes take off and by limited the type of aircraft allowed to land based on their specific noise profile.

NASA studied the impact of just controlling noise by conventional means, such as limited the number of flights or time of day aircraft can take off and land and found that “noise management plans have the potential to severely disrupt interstate, or international, commerce and exert strong negative pressure on the aviation industry,” the study said.

By using the Dutch method noise can be cut by over half without causing the negative economic consequences created by just cutting down the number of flights. It also helps beautify the surrounding area and improves the social lives of local residents.

The development should also pay big dividends in the future, as planemakers increasingly design jets around low noise profiles. Canadian company Bombardier is doing just that with its new C Series jet that is specifically designed to dramatically reduce engine noise. Such planes may become mandatory in the future in order to cut the noise pollution around airports.

Google’s Push Into TV Accelerates, Will Now Offer HBO Now On Chromecast

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Google’s Push Into TV Accelerates, Will Now Offer HBO Now On Chromecast

Google’s I/O 2015 developer conference saw some interesting announcements from the company, which we’ve profiled here and here.

Perhaps one of the most interesting announcements came from Google’s de-facto CEO, Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai, who announced that HBO Now is coming to both Android TV and Chromecast. The announcement comes right at the end of a 7 week exclusive that Apple had on HBO’s stand-alone streaming and on-demand video service.

The fact Google pounced so quickly after Apple’s exclusive shows that its taking TV very seriously. And the fact it announced it for Chromecast confirms our earlier report that Chromecast, possibly combined with Android phones, will be a key component of Google’s TV strategy going forward.

HBO Now, launched last April, was a turning point in the TV space as HBO became the first premium cable network to offer its content without a cable or satellite TV subscription. HBO Now subscriptions cost $15 a month and were previously only available for Apple devices.

In addition to the Google announcement boosting HBO’s userbase, it also offers high quality content for Google’s services which should boost Chromecast popularity.

Given Google has already sold over 17 million Chromecast units its clear that with HBO on board the search giant will sell many more, further extending its push into TV land.

NASA Successfully Test Fires Largest American Rocket Engine Since Landing On The Moon

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NASA continues to push the American space program towards its former glory as on Thursday it conducted a successful 450 second test of the new RS-25 rocket engine at Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi.

The “hotfire test” fittingly took place on the historic A-1 test stand, where Apollo program rocket stages and Space Shuttle program main engines were also tested. The engines tested on Thursday will power the core stage of NASA’s new rocket, the Space Launch System, which is being developed to carry humans on deep space missions, likely to Mars.

The heavy-lift SLS will be the most powerful rocket rocket currently available and will carry the nation’s next era of space exploration. The current plan is to first carry humans to an asteroid and then eventually to Mars.

The SLS vehicle will use four RS-25 engines at launch, firing simultaneously to produce more than 1.6 million pounds of thrust. RS-25 engines are based on the Space Shuttle main engines, which powered 135 low-Earth-orbit missions.

Thursday’s test of the engines was looking at the engine controller or brain of the engines. The RS-25 will automatically runs through its cycles and programs and it’s essential that the controller communicates properly with the engine.

Because the SLS will be a bigger rocket and fly new types of missions its engines will have to perform in new ways.

Testing at Stennis will ensure the new controller and engine are in sync and able to deliver the required performance to meet the SLS’ strict requirements.

NASA engineers conducted the first RS-25 engine test on Jan. 9th. After that, testing was put on hold for scheduled maintenance on the A-1 stand’s high-pressure industrial water system, which provides the tens of thousands of gallons of water needed to cool the test facility during an engine test.

RS-25 testing will now continue throughout the summer and pave the way for America to start exploring space again with humans.

FIFA President Blatter, Who Oversaw Bribes, Re-Elected

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FIFA President Blatter, Who Oversaw Bribes, Re-Elected

D.C. isn’t the only body of rich men that wreaks of corruption. World soccer body FIFA, long known as perhaps the most corrupt sports organization on earth, decided on Friday that it was perfectly fine with a culture of graft and bribery as it re-elected chief Sepp Blatter, who has presided over the corruption for decades.

Mr Blatter, who apparently sees nothing wrong with the way FIFA conducts itself, wasted no time in pointing the finger at the United States and Europe over the corruption allegations that overshadowed the soccer committee’s annual congress and threatened his presidential bid.

In an interview Friday with Swiss channel RTS, Blatter said the arrests of seven FIFA officials in Zurich, Switzerland, on U.S. warrants only two days before the election “are not a coincidence.”

Showing just how deluded the 79 year old is, he further stated “I am not certain, but it doesn’t smell good,” in reference to what he sees as an unjustified attacks on his graft-ridden organization.

He then went on the chalk up the arrests to sour grapes over the 2022 World Cup. “There are unmistakeable signs: The Americans were candidates for the 2022 World Cup, and they lost. The English were candidates for the 2018 World Cup. They lost” he said.

What remains to be seen is how sponsors, who really call the shots, will react. Credit card titan Visa has said it will be looking at whether to continue with the sport while Nike, as we covered earlier, could face criminal charges for paying bribes to secure lucrative sponsorship rights.

Expect that if FIFA loses a slew of marquee sponsors because of its dirty culture things will change very quickly for the sports body and Mr Blatter.

Former House Speaker Hastert Paid To Cover Up Underage Sex Crimes

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Former House Speaker Hastert Paid To Cover Up Underage Sex Crimes

The scandal surrounding former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert got deeper and uglier late Friday when reports surfaced that the $3.5 million he’s accused of mishandling was to pay a former student to keep quiet about his sexual abuse of students from when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach in Illinois.

Hastert taught in Yorkville, Illinois between 1965 and 1981 and was a teacher and wrestling coach before entering politics. Hastert was indicted by federal prosecutors on Thursday for lying to the FBI about $3.5 million paid to an anonymous person so he could “cover up past misconduct.”

A federal law enforcement official confirmed early Friday night that the former student was a male and a minor at the time the alleged sexual abuse took place. Law enforcement officials said investigators deemed it was not a case of extortion and the claims had merit, as they declined to pursue extortion charges against the recipient of the money.

Haster’s former employer, Yorkville High School, said it had no knowledge of the matter.

“Yorkville Community Unit School District #115 has no knowledge of Mr. Hastert’s alleged misconduct, nor has any individual contacted the District to report any such misconduct,” it said in a statement.

Hastert’s bail was set at $4,500, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Friday. His first appearance in court, for an arraignment, will likely be next week.

The new revelations raises a variety of questions which will surely come to light in the coming weeks.

It also exposes deep corruption of our elected officials, who play by a different set of rules than hard working Americans. There is deep hypocrisy in the sexual abuse revelations as Hastert painted himself as a crusader for child sex abuse victims.

“At home, we put the security of our children first, and Republicans are doing just that in our nation’s House,” he once stated. “We’ve all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist. Protecting our children from Internet predators and child exploitation enterprises are just as high a priority as securing our border from terrorists.”

The word ring hollow and show clearly that our politicians say one thing and do another.

Uber Joins Silicon Valley Privacy Abuser Club, New App Will Track You 24/7

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The latest attack on individual privacy comes courtesy of quasi-legal ride sharing app Uber, which will release an update to their app the week of July 15th that will track your location even when the app is not running in the foreground, a ‘feature’ Uber says is supposed to help “get people on their way more quickly.”

Another way to put it is that it’s a blatant privacy invasion.

Uber has played fast and loose with user privacy in the past, showing at fundraising meetings a secret dashboard which allows its employees to spy on VIP users and where they’ve come and gone.

The new settings would allow the company to spy on users 24/7.

But tracking you 24 hours a day, seven days a week isn’t enough for the super-aggressive company – it will also force you to share your contacts with Uber, allowing the ridesharing company to spam your friends, family, and other contacts with “special offers”, according to a recent blog post.

The stunning abuse of privacy comes at an odd time, as there have been countless privacy-related scandals at the company. In addition to its ‘god view’ dashboard it has also posted data about users’ “Rides of Glory“, or Ubers taken after one-night stands.

The company has set up an email address to answer your privacy questions: [email protected].

We highly encourage all Americans to let them know how you feel about being tracked all day every day by your taxi company.

U.S. Tried To Destroy North Korean Nuclear Reactor With Copy Of Virus Attack Used On Iran

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U.S. Tried To Destroy North Korean Nuclear Reactor With Copy Of Virus Attack Used On Iran

Word leaked late Friday that the U.S. secret agencies, likely a group within the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations group, tried to deploy a version of the Stuxnet computer virus to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons program but the attack was unsuccessful. The attack supposedly took place five years ago, and was originally part of the Stuxnet attack that was used to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

The now-famous Stuxnet attack damaged over one thousand of Iran’s centrifuges, the key tool used to enrich uranium.

Intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that Stuxnet’s developers, who were a joint U.S. – Israeli team, produced a related virus that would become active when it detected Korean language on an infected machine.

While the virus did penetrate North Korea’s computer system it was not able to access the core machines running Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, One of the sources of the leak is a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.

North Korea’s extreme secrecy and unparalleled isolation from modern communications systems were cited as reasons why the attack failed.

Merely owning a computer requires in North Korea requires police permission, and the open Internet is unknown except to a precious few people. China supplies the country with its single internet connection to the outside world, which actually protects the country somewhat as China is keen to keep its network as closed off as possible as well.

Iran enjoys relatively free internet access and computers and mobile phones are popular and easy to obtain items in the Islamic state.

The North Korean operation is only the second time that the NSA is known to have targeted with software designed to destroy equipment.

Nuclear experts say there are similarities between North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs, which makes sense given the two countries continue to collaborate on the underlying technology.

Both countries use the same P-2 centrifuges, illicitly obtained when Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, defected to Iran.

Both countries control these centrifuges with software developed by Siemens AG that runs on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Stuxnet exploited vulnerabilities in both the Siemens and Microsoft packages.

Given the similarities in the programs, it wouldn’t have taken much work to modify Stuxnet to attack both programs.

David Albright, who founded the Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on North Korea’s nuclear activities, thinks U.S. cyber agents probably attempted to infiltrate North Korea’s network by first hacking suppliers from Iran, Pakistan or China and infecting them with the malware.

Revolutionary New Drug Doubles Life Expectancy For Lung Cancer Patients

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Revolutionary New Drug Doubles Life Expectancy For Lung Cancer Patients

This year is seeing real progress for Americans suffering from deadly lung cancer. First, as we covered earlier, Americans will now have access to a long-known yet unavailable Cuban lung cancer vaccine. On Friday, drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb revealed data that showed a new drug therapy can more than double the life expectancy of some patients, in what researchers are calling a “milestone”.

The drug, Nivolumab, stops cancerous cells that are hiding from the body’s own defenses, allowing the cancer to be attacked by other drugs.

The results were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and were described as “giving real hope to patients”.

Lung cancer kills nearly 1.6 million people every year and widely considered the deadliest form of the disease.

Its hard to treat because it is usually diagnosed late and many people with smoking-related diseases are ineligible for surgical options.

The trial, conducted in Europe and the U.S., was on 582 patients who had advanced lung cancer and had run out of treatment options.

People on the regular course of drugs lived for 9.4 months at that stage, but those who took Nivolumab lived for 12.2 months on average.

But some patients did unbelievably well. Those who had tumors that were producing high levels of PD-L1, the key mechanism targeted by the new drug, lived for another 19.4 months.

Lead researcher Dr Luis Paz-Ares, from Madrid’s Hospital Universitario Doce de Octubre, said: “[The results] mark a milestone in the development of new treatment options for lung cancer.”

“Nivolumab is the first PD-1 inhibitor to show a significant improvement in overall survival in a phase III trial in non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.”

Many other companies are working hard on similar drugs.

Dr Martin Forster, from the University College London Cancer Institute, is conducting trials of some of them.

“It’s really exciting, I think these drugs will be a paradigm shift in how we treat lung cancer” he said.

He outlined that after chemotherapy fails, current survival rates were “dire”.

“But in those that respond [to immunotherapy] there seems to be very prolonged disease control, I think it’s a huge shift in lung cancer and for patients it’s going to be dramatic,” he said.

Dr Alan Worsley, who works for a cancer charity said that “This trial shows that blocking lung cancer’s ability to hide from immune cells may be better than current chemotherapy treatments.”

“Advances like these are giving real hope for lung cancer patients, who have until now had very few options.”

The drugs may also work on a wide range of cancers. Nivolumab has been approved in the U.S. for melanoma.

While the breakthrough is significant these therapies will be very expensive and will pose a challenge for health services trying to deliver them to patients already in financial hardship.

China Puts Artillery On Disputed Islands In Latest Show Of Aggression

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China Puts Artillery On Disputed Islands In Latest Show Of Aggression

Tensions got higher in the Pacific on Friday as U.S. defense officials said they have detected artillery on artificial islands being illegally built by China, in what has been described as a “disturbing and escalatory” development in the dispute.

The U.S. military is understood to have made the discovery a few weeks ago. Defense called on China this week for land reclamation in the disputed region to be brought to an immediate end, as Defense Secretary Ashton pushed China and other countries near the sea to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, said of the discovery:

“It is a disturbing development and escalatory development, one which heightens our need to make the Chinese understand that their actions are in violation of international law and their actions are going to be condemned by everyone in the world.”

“We are not going to have a conflict with China but we can take certain measures which will be a disincentive to China to continue these kinds of activities,” he said.

The dispute has angered the whole region. The U.S. has not been directly involved, but has stood to support allies who have repeatedly called on the U.S. Navy to help protect their territorial waters from Chinese aggression.

China’s reasoning for reclaiming the islands remains a mystery. It could be an effort to provide a diversionary war, should the there be a popular uprising against China’s corrupt communist party. It’s also possible the output is there to enable illegal Chinese fishing, which we covered recently, that remains a scourge of international waters. Chinese has depleted its own supply of fish through over-fishing and must now steal fish from its neighbors.

All The Photos You Upload To Google’s New Photos App Can Be Used By Google

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All The Photos You Upload To Google’s New Photos App Can Be Used By Google

Google’s new Photos app is a service that wants to “organize your memories.” But what Anil Sabharwal, head of Google Photos, didn’t tell you on Thursday is that all the photos you upload to Google’s service can be used by Google for marketing and promotion.

The slimy detail is buried in the app’s lengthy Terms of Service, which most people will not be familiar with. It’s written in legalese and is buried far off the path to install the app.

The clause buried in the terms means Google reserves the rights to use anything you decided to upload for both marketing and other, vague, purposes. Given Google’s record on privacy abuse that’s a big unknown.

The clause reads:

When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

The new service is looking to build a massive archive of data as it allows users to push huge collections of pictures onto the service.

But what constitutes “prompting and improving” the service? As Yahoo showed earlier this week, techn companies play fast and loose with your privacy and their ‘improvement’ could very well be your privacy invasion.

This type of sliminess needs to stop from mammoth tech giants like Google, who should know better. They should tell users in plain English what they will and won’t use their data for and provide specific examples.

Peer To Peer Lending Could Be The Next Financial Bubble

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Peer To Peer Lending Could Be The Next Financial Bubble

The $77 billion Peer to Peer (P2P) lending market is expanding exponentially thanks to Wall Street’s efforts to securitize the loans. It’s the same risky practice that led to the Great Financial Crisis, where poor quality mortgages were issued and then sold on to unsuspecting investors who later realized the losses when people couldn’t pay the loans.

P2P lending seems to be embarking down this dangerous path, allowing borrowers struggling with high-interest credit card debt to refinance via loans from individual lenders. The net effect of the transactions is transforming credit card debt into unsecured personal loans. Which are then sold to investors, who may not be aware of the precise credit quality of the very stretched borrowers.

It also presents a scenario where borrowers could subsequently max out the credit cards they just paid off.

Transferring credit risk from large financial institutions to private lenders, means it isn’t entirely clear what the implications of that shift might eventually be, especially if the market continues to grow at its present pace.

After all, using a relatively low-interest P2P loan to pay off a high-interest credit card isn’t any different than using a new credit card that comes with a teaser rate to pay off an old credit card.

Borrowers who do this often max out the old card again and thus end up with twice the original amount of debt. They then get other cards and repeat the process, accumulating huge amounts of debt that eventually must be paid off.

But the dangers get worse because of perverse incentives created by securitizing the debt and selling it to retail investors. As demand for these asset backed loans grows, it causes lenders to lower their underwriting standards.

That’s exactly what led to the housing crisis.

Proof of this can be seen from the industry’s number-one player, LendingClub, which is presently advertising to “pre-approved” borrowers that they can get up to $35,000 with “no collateral required.”

It’s clear that Wall Street’s securitization machine needs to be fed which means the race to the bottom is on. Its now a race to see who can recruit the most under-qualified borrowers.

We’re sure this will not end well.

World’s Safest Drug Dealer Sentenced To Life In Jail

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World’s Safest Drug Dealer Sentenced To Life In Jail

The man who allegedly ran Silk Road, the world’s largest yet safest drug marketplace, has been given life in jail. Ross Ulbricht, found guilty of narcotics conspiracy and other charges earlier this year, received the harshest possible sentence possible in a case that exposes the absurdity of the U.S. war on drugs.

The charges were a result of Ulbricht’s alleged management of the Silk Road, which ran as a Tor Hidden Service and accepted anonymous Bitcoin payments to create a marketplace for drugs and other goods.

In October 2013, at the time it was shut down, Silk Road was the largest marketplace of its kind. Law enforcement officials estimate that the Silk Road handled as much as $200 million in drug transactions, a figure that seemed to play prominently in today’s sentencing decision.

And yet what the government is hiding, as we detailed extensively here, is that Silk Road was also the safest drug marketplace that has ever operated in the United States. The site featured a registered doctor who was paid by Ulbricht to give advise about dosage, drug interactions and addiction treatment options to the site’s users.

Unlike street corner peddlers, who often mix dangerous chemicals into their products that alone can kill people, Silk Road sought to ensure drugs were as advertised and that medical help was available to any and all who needed it.

So while the prosecution focused on how many people died as a result of Silk Road drugs – just five in total – it is likely that relative to the large volume of sales many more lives were saved by providing medical advise and drug verification.

The ending to Ulbricht’s story is like so many other victim’s of the United States’ war on drugs: A bright young man with the ability to contribute to society in spite of his crimes will now spend the rest of his days rotting in jail.

NSA Tracking Americans By How They Swipe And Type

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While the theater over the NSA’s spying continues in Congress, under the grand illusion that a piece of legislation will stop the agency, the spooks at the NSA are now tracking people based on the way they swipe their smartphone screen.

The new technology can identify you from the way your finger swipe strokes and text on a smartphone screen, according to Lockheed Martin who designed the identification technology on the agency’s behalf.

Such links to the military indsutrial complex show just how powerful the forces in favor of spying are: Spying is big business for defense contractors. With massive ‘black’ budgets that do not face scrutiny, defense contractors like Lockheed can get lucrative contracts with little oversight. This means they have every reason to push for more illegal spying on the American people.

John Mears, a senior Lockheed IT and Security Solutions executive, told NextGov that Lockheed Martin called the technology a “secure gesture authentication as a technique for using smartphones.”

‘Authentication’ also mean ‘identification’. If the agency has access to your phone, which it does, it can build a fingerprint of the actual user of the phone.

The sneaky identification technology, dubbed “Mandrake,” analyses the curve, unique speed and acceleration of a person’s finger strokes across their smartphone’s touchscreen.

“Nobody else has the same strokes,” Mears stated. “People can forge your handwriting in two dimensions, but they couldn’t forge it in three or four dimensions.”

“Three is the pressure you put in, also to the two dimensions on the paper. The fourth dimension is time. The most advanced handwriting-type authentication tracks you in four dimensions.”

The agency initially played with smartphone-swipe recognition technology in an attempt to move past passwords and have something more secure.

But the NSA is not commenting on how exactly it is using the new technology though Mears did confirm that NSA is actively deploying the technology right now. That means it is already part of its global surveillance program to spy on innocent people.

Combined with the latest revelation that the agency planned to hijack Google and Samsung app stores, which we covered here, to infect smartphones with Spyware, such technology would be the perfect compliment to determine who is actually using the phone rather than just who owns it.

Residents Flee As Japanese Volcano Unexpectedly Erupts

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Residents Flee As Japanese Volcano Unexpectedly Erupts

Residents fled the sparsely populated Kuchinoerabu Island on Friday morning as a dormant volcano unexpectedly erupted, sending smoke and ash soaring into the sky.

Mount Shindake, the island’s main peak, produced a plume over six miles high and a flow of lava that reached the shoreline, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said.

There was no warning whatsoever of the eruption.

“I heard a loud boom and when I looked at the mountains, I saw a gigantic plume rising above,” said a 64-year-old innkeeper who was in her garden at the time.

“I thought I’d be dead if I got caught in the cloud,” she said explaining why she ran to the shelter without any belongings. “There was an eruption last year, but this time the sound was really loud.”

All residents have been evacuated by ferry, coast guard ship and helicopter to neighboring Yakushima Island by Friday evening, and all were safe according to the Yakushima town office.

“I have instructed the relevant personnel to do all they can to ensure the safety of the islanders,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said to reporters.

North Korean Rocket Complex Getting Significant Upgrade

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A U.S. research institute announced Thursday that North Korea’s main rocket launch site is undergoing significant new construction, according to satellite imagery. The upgrades are a sign of leader Kim Jong Un’s determination to pursue a space program despite severe international sanctions.

Under UN Security Council resolutions North Korea is barred from launching rockets because if it can launch a rocket it can launch a weaponized ballistic missile.

Kim, who’s grip on power is under threat from many parties within the hermit kingdom, declared this month that its rocket program “can never be abandoned.”

The upgrades to the Sohae launch site on its west coast have been ongoing since 2013, after its its first rocket was launched into space in December 2012.

Since an upgrade completed last year to accommodate larger rockets, satellite imagery shows North Korea has been working on a support building and what looks to be a movable platform to allow a fully assembled rocket to be shifted on tracks to the launch pad.

The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, author of the new report, says that the facilities closely resemble those used in China, the North’s neighbor, though there is no publicly available evidence to suggest Chinese involvement.

It remains highly probable that China is assisting the North, as the communist state is notoriously open to doing business with human rights violators and other shunned members of the international community for the sake of a few dollars.

“The Sohae facility upgrade program represents a significant investment of financial, material and personnel resources and is another indicator, along with its public statements, that North Korea is determined to pursue its space program,” read the research report.

In South Korea on Wednesday, nuclear envoys from South Korea, the United States and Japan agreed to increase pressure on North Korea in response to increasing belligerence from the despotic country.

The hermit kingdom’s unpredictable leader, Kim, has championed the space program. In May, Kim inspected a new satellite control and command center and was quoted as saying the North would launch satellites into space.

The North’s space program is notoriously poor, with a 2012 launch lifting a satellite into space that soon tumbled out of control in orbit.

It is believed that North Korea will mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Korean Workers Party with a rocket launch.

While Kim and his cronies play with rockets, his people starve amid tough sanctions and rampant graft and corruption by top officials. Kim, along with the top members in the government and military routinely squander what little foreign currency reserves the country has on luxury good and food items including high end alcohol and caviar.

SEC To Allow All Americans To Invest Directly In Startups

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SEC To Allow All Americans To Invest Directly In Startups

The SEC has passed historic regulations that will allow everyday Americans to invest in startups for the first time ever. Previously only rich investors were permitted to take part, limiting the opportunities available to retail investors in a world where fewer companies are raising funds on the public markets, the only allowable venue for retail investors.

The streamlined securities registration process is being called “Reg A+,” and it will change the landscape not only for startups but also for film financing and other creative projects.

The new rules permit investment offerings to the general public starting on June 19th, so long as a long list of requirements are met.

Until now, the everyday Americans has been giving away millions of dollars to startup companies on sites like Kickstarter, but only in pre-sales of actual products. Investing directly in the companies has thus far been prohibited.

This means that crowdfunded darlings that have gone on to sell for billions have provided no reward to the initial public funders.

Reg A+ is interesting for two reasons.

First, it allows equity investments in early stage companies which helps both startup companies and retail investors. This means a new asset class for investors and a new, competitive source of capital for American businesses.

Secondly, it also provides a new source of funding for creative projects like movies and TV shows. This could disrupt Hollywood studios as well as see more content created that the public wants to see – think controversial documentaries or fan favorite shows that have been cancelled because studios don’t want to take a risk.

The specific rules of the new regulations are as follows, according to TheHollywoodReporter:

➻ The offering cannot exceed $50 million within a 12-month period.

➻ The investors cannot invest more than 10 percent of the greater of (a) their annual income or (b) their net worth (excluding their home).

➻ The company making the offer­ing (the “issuer”) has to complete a lengthy document containing detailed information in a format required by the SEC (“Form 1-A”). This document then has to be submitted and approved by the SEC before accepting any investors.

➻ The individuals involved in the offering (the “promoters”) can­not have been found guilty by a court or administrative agency of violation of securities or certain other laws.

➻ The offering material must accurately state all material facts.

➻ The issuer must file audited financials with the Form 1-A and must file follow-up reporting to the SEC with audited financial statements for at least one year (and annually if it has more than 300 investors).

➻ The promoters cannot directly sell their own interests in the issuer in excess of the lesser of (a) 30 percent of the offering or (b) $15 million.

➻ The issuer must use a registered transfer agent to record ownership and transfers by investors.

➻ The issuer does not have to comply with state securities laws (other than filing fees), which is a huge advantage compared to the impossible aggravation of having to comply with myriad conflicting state securities laws.

➻ The issuer is permitted to advertise the offering, including using social media.

➻ The issuer is allowed to “test the waters” by sending out general marketing materials as long as it doesn’t accept any investors before delivering the SEC-approved Form 1-A.

➻ The issuer can accept invest­ment from all investors, not just “accredited investors” (meeting certain net worth requirements), and with no limit on the number of investors.

➻ The issuer can raise investments on a crowdfunding website. For example, IndieCrowdFunder.com provides all the required forms and handles filing them with the SEC as well.

U.S. Army Finds Another Batch Of Live Anthrax As Scandal Worsens

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U.S. Army Finds Another Batch Of Live Anthrax As Scandal Worsens

The Army’s anthrax mishandling scandal continues to widen, as we first suspected, as another batch of live anthrax has been discovered. The new batch is genetically the same as the live samples sent to Australia from the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.

A new revelation is that defense officials are beginning to explain just how the mishap happened. According to an interview with NBC, defense officials believed that the anthrax spores had been irradiated to kill them in 2008.

Experts confirm that it is very difficult to inactivate a large batch of anthrax spores and that this is a persistent problem across U.S. labs. While the The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says no member of the public is in danger, people potentially exposed to the anthrax spores are taking antibiotics.

The news is troubling because defense officials have continually downplayed the incident, despite daily updates that it continues to be worse than originally suspected. It appears that the government departments are not fully informing American citizens the true danger the Army has put people in.

Additional details on the incident are likely the emerge in the coming days and we will keep readers updated on the latest developments.

U.S. Drops Cuba From List Of State Sponsors Of Terrorism

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The U.S. moved closer to complete normalization with the tiny island of Cuba this morning, after the State Department announced that Cuba has officially been dropped from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“The rescission of Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission,” the department said in a written statement. “While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.”

The move is the latest in a series of action to restore ties to the socialist country that lies just 70 miles off the coast of Florida. Last month President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro met for the first head of state dialog in 54 years.

In an interview last month, President Obama said that the change in the relationship with Cuba is “a real opportunity” for both countries.

“Our hope is to be in a position where we can open an embassy there — that we can start having more regular contacts and consultations around a whole host of issues, some of which we have interests in common,” the president told Steve Inskeep.

By removing Cuba from the list of state terrorism sponsors some sanctions placed on the coutnry are automatically removed, a crucial step in normalizing relations. The country still has other sanctions which must be manually lifted by Congress.

Google’s New Products Highlight Huge Problems With Apple’s Software

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Google’s New Products Highlight Huge Problems With Apple’s Software

Yesterday Google announced a big update to its Google Now product, which will add contextualized information to every app on your phone. For example if Spotify is playing a song, simple asking your phone what the artists real name is will product an accurate result. No need for flipping apps and typing stuff into a web search.

Its the latest upgrade to Google Now, the company’s voice search product that has been light years ahead of Apple’s cute talking yet not very functional voice assistant Siri.

The reason Google is so far ahead is that the computing horsepower behind Google Now is vastly superior to Apple’s Siri, both in terms of ability to handle complex tasks and how, exactly, the software is interpreting what is being said.

Google’s product is a learning, near-living, piece of software that relies on super complex ‘neural network’ learning algorithms to try and understand what a user is saying and in what context. Siri is a primitive list of basic commands mapped to actions.

The latest addition to Google’s Now product comes thanks to its $500 million acquisition of artificial intelligence specialist DeepMind. The new version of Now will understand what context you’re speaking in when asking your phone to do something rather than you having to explicitly tell your phone where you are. While Google Now knows, Apple’s Siri just does what its told with no real thinking going on behind the scenes.

Apple clearly feels threatened by this development, enough so that it was compelled to ‘leak’ a story to insider blog 9to5Mac that it, too, is developing a competitor to Google Now.

The system is codenamed “Proactive,” and will leverage the company’s suite of iOS apps, including Siri, Contacts, Calendar and Passbook, as well as other apps, to provide timely information based on how they use their devices.

Google Now has had similar features for nearly three years, highlighting that Apple lacks the technical skills to put together a world beating artificial intelligence project on its iDevices. Apple is, after all, a design company not a tech company.

Worryingly the new app is supposed to include an augmented reality component, where users can take a picture of something in real life and have the phone provide information about it, tying into its lackluster Maps application.

Sounds good in theory but augmented reality is hard. Just ask Color, the once hyped augmented reality app that was supposed to do just that but instead fizzled into oblivion due to the immense technical challenges of figuring out exactly where you are and what you’re looking at. The software works fine for obvious places, say looking at the Statue of Liberty, but is ineffective if you were say looking at a relatively unknown piece of art and wanted to know about the artist. There’s just too many items in the world right now to catalog, even with the immense computing power of today’s cutting edge data centers.

Apple’s messaging in the leak says the new app will react to a person’s app usage, so if a person opens Facebook when they wake up in the morning, Proactive will note that usage and provide a widget in the morning for that user to quickly get into Facebook.

The Google engineers are no doubt laughing about this in Mountain View. Such a ‘proactive’ feature amounts to machine learning 101.

If Proactive is announced as the marquee feature of iOS9, to be announced next month, Apple users and investors should be scared.

Such simple artificial intelligence based on the already terrible Apple Maps product means that Apple’s software is three to four generations behind Google’s.

In short, Apple has a huge software problem on its hands.

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