Saturday, June 15, 2013

WSJ: T-Mobile, VZW don't directly share call data to NSA, but that might not matter

Providing another wrinkle to the recently exploding privacy debate, a Wall Street Journal report indicates which wireless companies are providing call information to the government. According to the infamous people familiar with the matter, foreign ownership of Verizon and T-Mobile presents several obstacles including them in the program. Chief among them is that the requests are top secret and might prohibit some of the owners from being aware.

Meanwhile, Sprint and AT&T are said to have "long cooperated with the government," although it may not really matter which provider you're using when it comes to popping up in NSA-requested files. Last week's leaked court order requested call logs and metadata from Verizon Business Network Services, which, along with AT&T provides the backbone most calls go through. No matter which carrier you're on, if your call is routed along that backbone, the information about it is recorded and could be passed along.

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Source: Wall Street Journal

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/13/wsj-t-mobile-vzw-dont-directly-share-call-data-to-nsa-due-to/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Friday, May 17, 2013

Helping forests gain ground on climate change

May 15, 2013 ? University of Alberta researchers have developed guidelines that are being used by the timber industry and government foresters to get a jump on climate change when planting trees.

Maps developed by Laura Gray, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Renewable Resources at the U of A, provide projections of climatically suitable habitat for tree species based on climate predictions for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s.

Currently, Alberta forestry companies and government agencies plant 80 million spruce, fir and pine seedlings to reforest more than 50,000 hectares of harvested land annually.

"The information helps forest managers have more confidence in their decisions on what and where to plant. It allows them to more accurately assess the climactic risk," said Gray, co-author of the study with associate professor Andreas Hamann.

The study addresses concerns that many populations of wide-ranging tree species, which are adapted to local growing conditions, may now or in the future actually lag behind their optimal growing environment because of changing temperature and precipitation conditions. The work is the first of its kind to tackle multiple potential climate scenarios for a large number of tree species across western North America.

Gray's large-scale research, which considers 15 major commercial tree species and 18 different future climate-change scenarios, was recently published in the journal Climatic Change.

The U of A study also considers patterns of climate change observed from the 1970s until recently. The researchers found that on average, populations already lag behind their best climate niche by 130 kilometres in latitude or 60 metres in elevation.

Gray and Hamann's study has produced several maps and tables that document recent species habitat shifts and predict future ones. Generally, Gray said, forest managers should consider using seed from more southern climates or lower elevation environments. The seed should still be of the same tree species, rather than introducing a new species into a foreign environment, she added.

Foresters in British Columbia have started using the study's results as one of the tools to aid assisted seed migration strategies, Gray noted.

The study's findings help "inform and effect change in reforestation policy, so that those efforts can be leveraged to improve resilience and productivity of Alberta's forests under changing climate," Hamann said.

The study was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Alberta Forestry Research Institute, and industry partners Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, Ainsworth Engineered Canada LP, Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd., Western Boreal Aspen Corporation and Weyerhaeuser Company Ltd.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/-jJmcl1u31g/130515125038.htm

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Afghanistan says Iranian guards killed 10 migrants

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Iranian border guards killed 10 Afghan migrants and wounded another eight when hundreds tried to illegally cross into Iran in search of work, Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said Sunday. Iran denied that.

Details of the incident Friday in Afghanistan's northwestern Farah province have been sketchy and often contradictory. An Interior Ministry statement said 300 Afghan laborers tried to cross into Iran illegally, looking for work. Iranian border guards opened fire, killing 10, it said. The ministry also blamed its own border guards for allowing the laborers to cross, though they had neither visas nor passports. Two Afghan border guards were dismissed and could face charges of neglect of duty, the ministry said.

In Tehran, Iran's chief of border guards, Gen. Hamid Sharafi, denied there was any shooting at Afghan migrants, according to Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency.

"Such a report is not right. We do not confirm it based on our investigations," Sharafi said.

Several wounded laborers who arrived at the Farah district hospital for treatment also reported dead compatriots and said as many as 21 laborers were taken away by the Iranian border guards, said Abdul Rahman Zhawandai, a spokesman for the Farah provincial governor.

On Saturday, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rasoul called the Iranian ambassador to Afghanistan to lodge a complaint and to seek more details about the incident, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai.

"We are following this issue very seriously through our embassy in Tehran," Mosazai told reporters Sunday. While admitting that the migrants were trying to enter Iran illegally, he said "the reaction of Iran should have been a civilian reaction, not a military" one ? a reference to the shooting.

Protests over the incident erupted on Sunday on the Afghan side of the border. Dozens of residents demonstrated in the streets of the provincial capital, also named Farah, shouting anti-Iran slogans.

Poor Afghans often try to sneak into Iran in search of work as day laborers.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a roadside bomb on Sunday killed a district prosecutor in southern Helmand province, where Taliban insurgents roam with relative ease in much of the countryside.

The bomb struck early in the morning as prosecutor Mohammed Lal Hakimi was on his way to work, said Ummar Zawaq, a spokesman for the provincial governor.

Zawaq said the district prosecutor received threats from the Taliban, angry about the number of insurgents he convicted and sent to prison.

No one claimed responsibility for the killing, but Taliban have stepped up their assassinations in recent months, attacking government and security officials they accuse of being traitors.

___

Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi contributed from Tehran, Iran.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afghanistan-says-iranian-guards-killed-10-migrants-162527006.html

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Friday, May 3, 2013

Startling survival story at historic Jamestown: Physical evidence of survival cannibalism

May 1, 2013 ? Douglas Owsley, the division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, presented today a forensic analysis of 17th-century human remains proving that survival cannibalism took place in historic Jamestown. The findings answer a long-standing question among historians about the occurrence of cannibalism at Jamestown during the deadly winter of 1609-1610 known as the "starving time" -- a period during which about 80 percent of the colonists died.

The announcement was made with chief archeologist William Kelso from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project at Preservation Virginia, and historian James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg; each expert provided context about the discovery and the history of the site.

Owsley has worked closely with Kelso and his team of archaeologists since 1996, examining skeletal remains to help researchers understand the lives of individual colonial settlers in the Chesapeake. This particular incomplete human skull and tibia (shin bone) were excavated by Jamestown archeologists in 2012 as part of a 20-year excavation of James Fort. The remains were unusual due to their location and extensive fragmentation, so Kelso approached the Smithsonian's forensic anthropologist for a comprehensive analysis.

Owsley and his research team identified a number of features on the skull and tibia that indicated the individual was cannibalized. Four shallow chops to the forehead represent a failed first attempt to open the skull. The back of the head was then struck by a series of deep, forceful chops from a small hatchet or cleaver. The final blow split the cranium open. Sharp cuts and punctures mark the sides and bottom of the mandible, reflecting efforts to remove tissue from the face and throat using a knife.

"The desperation and overwhelming circumstances faced by the James Fort colonists during the winter of 1609-1610 are reflected in the postmortem treatment of this girl's body," said Owsley. "The recovered bone fragments have unusually patterned cuts and chops that reflect tentativeness, trial and complete lack of experience in butchering animal remains. Nevertheless, the clear intent was to dismember the body, removing the brain and flesh from the face for consumption."

Through specialized scientific analyses, Smithsonian scientists determined details about the life and story of this 14-year-old girl from England. By analyzing the dental development of the third molar and the growth stage of her shin bone, the research team determined that "Jane" was approximately 14 years old when she died. The cause of death could not be determined from the remains, estimated to be less than 10 percent of the complete skeleton.

Through a combination of digital and medical technologies, Smithsonian researchers led the effort to reconstruct the girl's likeness through forensic facial reconstruction. After scanning the incomplete remains of the fragmented skull with the museum's CT scanner, a virtual model of the skull was pieced together digitally. This digital rendering was sent to the Medical Modeling company to print a three-dimensional replica of the reconstructed skull. Finally, StudioEIS, in Brooklyn, N.Y., worked with Smithsonian scientists to create a forensic facial reconstruction of the girl's likeness.

On May 3, the facial reconstruction will be on display in the National Museum of Natural History's popular "Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th Century Chesapeake" exhibition, alongside other materials and information about Smithsonian forensic science. The skeletal remains will be on display at Historic Jamestowne near the discovery site on Jamestown Island.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/r7CRl5SblRk/130501191845.htm

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Boston bomb suspect captured, brother killed

WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) ? A 19-year-old Massachusetts college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombing was captured hiding in a boat parked in a backyard Friday night and his older brother lay dead in a furious 24-hour drama that transfixed the nation and paralyzed the Boston area.

The bloody endgame came four days after the bombing and just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives that ripped through the crowd at the marathon finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

The two men were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, Mass. But investigators gave no details on the motive for the bombing.

Early Friday morning, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a ferocious gun battle and car chase during which he and his younger brother hurled explosives at police from a stolen car, authorities said. The younger brother managed to escape.

During the getaway attempt, the brothers killed an MIT policeman and severely wounded another officer, authorities said.

After a tense, all-day manhunt and house-to-house search by thousands of SWAT team officers with rifles and armored vehicles, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was cornered in a homeowner's yard, where he exchanged gunfire with police while holed up in a boat, authorities said.

He was taken away on a stretcher and was hospitalized in serious condition with unspecified injuries, police said.

Just before 9 p.m., Boston police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was in custody. They later wrote: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."

The news was met with jubilation across the Boston area. A cheer went up from a crowd of bystanders in Watertown.

"Everyone wants him alive," said Kathleen Paolillo, a teacher.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted, "We got him," along with a photo of himself talking to the police commissioner.

Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.

Up until the younger man's capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across Boston and some of its suburbs because they had come up empty-handed.

But then a break came in a Watertown neighborhood when a homeowner saw blood on his boat, pulled back the tarp and saw the bloody suspect hiding inside, police said.

Chechnya has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.

The older brother had strong political views about the United States, said Albrecht Ammon, 18, a downstairs-apartment neighbor in Cambridge. Ammon quoted Tsarnaev as saying that the U.S. uses the Bible as "an excuse for invading other countries."

Also, the FBI interviewed the older brother at the request of a foreign government in 2011, and nothing derogatory was found, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official did not identify the foreign country or say why it made the request.

The FBI was swamped with tips after the release of the surveillance-camera photos ? 300,000 per minute ? but what role those played in the capture was unclear. State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their long night of crime.

The search for the younger brother all but paralyzed the Boston area. Officials shut down all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open, and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to stay inside and unlock their doors only for uniformed police.

"We believe this man to be a terrorist," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. "We believe this to be a man who's come here to kill people."

Around midday, the suspects' uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: "Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness."

Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 ? the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures ? was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.

Exactly how the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.

They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.

Some 200 spent shells were found afterward.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev somehow slipped away. He ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died at a Boston hospital after suffering what doctors said were multiple gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury.

The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded "like it was right next to my head ... and shook the whole house."

She said she was looking at the front door when a bullet came through the side paneling. SWAT team officers were running all over her yard, she said.

"It was very scary," she said. "There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.

The men's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is "a true angel." He said his son was studying medicine.

"He is such an intelligent boy," the father said. "We expected him to come on holidays here."

The city of Cambridge announced two years ago that it had awarded a $2,500 scholarship to him. At the time, he was a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.

Tsarni, the men's uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews "losers" and said they had struggled to settle in the U.S. and ended up "thereby just hating everyone."

___

Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun and Jack Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bomb-suspect-captured-brother-killed-020616709.html

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Gold set for worst two-day rout in 30 years, stocks drop

By Leah Schnurr

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold slumped anew on Monday, racking up its worst two-day loss in 30 years, and investors dumped stocks and other commodities after weaker-than-expected Chinese data raised concerns about the global economic outlook.

Gold dragged other metals lower as its price plunged to a more than two-year low. Brent crude fell towards $100 a barrel, while on Wall Street stocks were down more than 1 percent.

Spot gold dropped as much as 8 percent on Monday alone, falling as low as $1,355.80 an ounce. In the last two sessions gold has fallen over 12 percent, making for the worst two days since late February 1983.

Gold was recently at $1,365.66, down 7.7 percent. Strategists have cited various reasons for gold's decline, including plans from Cyprus to sell excess gold reserves and feared selling from other central banks. The already sharp correction has caused short-term investors to flee the asset.

"The pressure from the proposed sale of Cyprus gold is one of the factors, and once one of them start, they all run from the hen house," said Robert Richardson, senior account executive and trading officer at Canadian broker-dealer W.D. Latimer Co. Ltd.

China's recovery unexpectedly stumbled in the first three months of 2013, as it reported its annual growth rate eased to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent in the final quarter of last year. Economists had forecast 8 percent growth.

Industrial output in China in March also undershot expectations and added to investor sensitivity after recent disappointing economic data out of the United States.

A U.S. regional manufacturing report on Monday showed the pace of growth slowed, the latest data to suggest the world's biggest economy lost some steam heading into the second quarter.

"The growth numbers out of China are absolutely crucial for commodities and the numbers that came out are significantly worse than people were expecting," said Nic Brown, head of commodities research at Natixis in London.

"China makes up 40 percent of demand for base metals and all the growth in demand for oil is coming from the developing world, so to see weakness in China is bad for commodities generally."

Last week Cyprus revealed it would sell around 400 million euros worth of gold to help shore up its ailing finances and the move has sparked suggestions that larger countries in the region could use the move to cash in on some huge jumps gold has seen over the last decade.

Traders also cited concern that the Federal Reserve might reduce U.S. monetary stimulus towards the end of the year.

"We are entering a phase of additional long liquidation by ETF investors and short-selling from hedge funds, which will continue in the foreseeable future," Saxo Bank senior manager Ole Hansen said.

Brent crude futures dropped more than $2 to $100.30 a barrel as the disappointment stirred already-festering global recovery concerns. U.S. crude also lost more than $2 to $88.72.

Copper fell to its lowest price in 1-1/2 years. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange fell to $7,085 a tonne in intraday trade, its lowest since October 2011.

Silver was down 9.6 percent at $23.38 an ounce, having fallen to its lowest since October 2010 at $22.97.

U.S. stocks also fell, putting the benchmark S&P 500 on track for its first two-day losing streak in a month.

"None of the economic data has been very good for the last couple of weeks. When you look at the whole scope of data, it looks like we have been going into a slowdown here," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.

"I wouldn't say this is over yet, but there are enough indicators out there to really indicate that investors should approach this market with a degree of caution which doesn't seem to exist right now."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 183.09 points, or 1.23 percent, to 14,681.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 25.54 points, or 1.61 percent, to 1,563.31. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 59.65 points, or 1.81 percent, to 3,235.30.

The FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3> ended down 0.6 percent and MSCI's world share index <.miwd00000pus>, which tracks stocks in 45 countries, lost 1.4 percent.

The yen rose as traders sold riskier investments funded by the cheap Japanese currency. The dollar accelerated losses in mid-afternoon trading, falling 1.16 percent to 97.08 yen, while the euro dropped to a fresh session low, down 1.7 percent at 126.78 yen.

(Additional reporting by Clara Denina in London and Chuck Mikolajczak and Manuela Badawy in New York; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/asian-shares-fall-weak-u-sales-await-china-003004561--finance.html

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Simple stem cell jab helps boost fitness in heart disease patients ...

The heart failure breakthrough involves injecting patients with their own stem cells.

The quick and easy procedure saw doctors take bone marrow from the patients? hips before injecting them directly into the heart to strengthen the muscle.

Heart pumping function improved within six months for every patient given the ground-breaking treatment. They also enjoyed improved fitness and could walk longer distances.

The trial offers new hope to the tens of thousands of people struck down by heart failure each year in the UK and could transform the lives of millions suffering the after-effects of a heart attack.

The research, published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, took place at the Mayo Clinic?s Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota.

Lead researcher Dr Andre Terzic said: ?I think it?s an exciting time where regenerative medicine is no longer science fiction. This study is providing clinical evidence for a new approach in cardiovascular regenerative medicine.?

In the trial, 45 heart failure patients were treated with a special type of stem cell harvested from the top of the patient?s hip.

Researchers used proteins to instruct the stem cells to behave like heart cells and then injected them into the patient?s heart.

All patients saw greater improvements in their heart health than another group given the standard treatments for heart failure. The amount of blood pumped out with each heartbeat increased by a dramatic seven per cent. Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation, said: ?More research is needed to identify just what it is in these cells that causes this effect."

Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/391222/Simple-stem-cell-jab-helps-boost-fitness-in-heart-disease-patients

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