M&Mâs World Headlines: Jan 22, 2009
Malware creates credit-card chaos at U.S. firm Montreal Gazette
Canadians who travelled to the United States in 2008 are being advised to check their credit card statements following a massive security breach at a U.S.-based company that processes credit cards. New Jersey-based Heartland Payment Systems, which deals with credit card transactions for more than 250,000 businesses in the United States, announced Tuesday in a statement that malicious software, known as malware, had been found last week in its operating system. A website – www.2008breach.com – has been set up to provide information about the incident. As reported yesterday.
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Taliban Demands End to Music, Movies on Buses in Pakistan Fox
Bus drivers in northwest Pakistan have begun removing audio and video equipment from their vehicles after Taliban militants threatened attacks against those who played music or movies for their passengers, an industry official said Tuesday. Transport workers in the town of Mardan received letters this week from militants saying that buses offering such entertainment were guilty of spreading “vulgarity and obscenity,” Walid Mir, general secretary of the town’s transport union, told The Associated Press. The Taliban letter complained that traveling in buses that provide audiovisual entertainment was a “source of mental agony for pious people,” according to a text obtained by AP. “It is obligatory on us to stop such violations. We request you to remove the vulgar systems … otherwise … bombers are ready,” the letter said. Mir said, “We did not report it to police because it is a matter of human lives. What can the police can do? It involves the lives of hundreds of passengers, and we do not want to put them in danger”.
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China Censored Translation of Obama Inauguration Address Fox
China censored its translation of President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, removing references to communism and dissent, and quickly halted state television’s live broadcast of the address when Cold War-era animosities were mentioned. One television official tried to downplay the cutaway as a normal break in programming while an editor with the China Daily newspaper’s Web site said staff who censored online versions of the speech likely did so because they were “duty-bound to protect the country’s interests.” “There are breakaways even when broadcasting China’s own meetings,” he said. “Americans might care a lot about the presidential inauguration, but Chinese may not be very interested.” The translation was also missing Obama’s remarks on free speech when he said “those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent â know that you are on the wrong side of history.”
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Man Survives After Being Impaled on Bathroom Faucet Fox
An unusual emergency situation in China after a man showed up at a hospital with a faucet stuck in his eye socket.
Yi Zhao, 57, slipped and fell in his bathroom impaling his left eye on the faucet at his home. “It was so scary, there was blood spouting everywhere,” a relative told Chongqing Business Daily. Firefighters could only cut the pipe with hydraulic shears, leaving the tap handle and a section of pipe still stuck in his eye. He was taken to Daping Hospital, where staff called a plumber to try and make the pipe small enough to fit him in a CAT scan machine. “But the plumber couldn’t remove it without causing too much pain, so we had to change the plan and first take an X-ray,” a doctor said.
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Ontario company to produce hemp Toronto Sun
An Ontario company says it has secured $2 million from investors to open the first North American bio-processing plant for industrial hemp. Stonehedge Bio Resources Inc., based in Sterling, Ont., north of Belleville, says it plans to open a bio-refining facility this year. The operation would produce Hemcrete, an environmentally friendly limestone building material similar to concrete. The company also expects to produce more than $17 million per year in renewable hemp fibre, wood-like chips, pellets, matting and seed products. Stonehedge Bio-Resources says it plans to start with five employees this year and employ up to 27 people by 2011. The company says the global renewable and bioproducts industry is expected to exceed $125 billion in revenues by 2010.
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Dad’s grow-op busted after baby dials 9-1-1 The Star
A B.C. man probably wishes he had given his 11-month-old son a set of keys to play with instead of a phone, after the infant accidentally dialled 9-1-1 and brought police to dad’s marijuana grow operation. Mounties say a 9-1-1 call came in from a White Rock, B.C. residence Friday morning but whoever was on the other end of the line hung up. Officers arrived at the residence and after numerous knocks on the door went unanswered, they entered the home. When it was suggested a child might have dialled, the father objected and said his son was far too young. That’s when police spotted the baby boy, phone in hand. With that mystery solved, officers began inspecting the residence and soon discovered a 500-plant marijuana grow operation.
Canadians detained at border for 7 hours The Star
A group of young black Canadians on their way to see Barack Obama sworn into office say they were detained for seven hours at the U.S. border on Monday because of religious and racial stereotyping as their passports were checked and rechecked. They eventually made it to Washington yesterday to see the inauguration of the 44th president. Speaking to the Star by phone, Edwards, the 27-year-old head of Remix, said the first bus cleared customs, as did the second bus, where he was seated. But the third bus was boarded by U.S. customs officers who asked about 14 young girls, all wearing hijabs, for their passports. Because Edwards was the organizer of the trip, he kept the second bus waiting until the third cleared customs. Initially he thought it would just be a short delay. But after the girls’ passports were taken, customs officers boarded the second bus again and asked for Edwards’ passport as well as the passport of colleague and seatmate Adel Prince Nur. The customs agents also asked for the passports of two sisters on the second bus. Their last name was Mohammed, Edwards said. All of them who all held Canadian passports were then fingerprinted, photographed and questioned by U.S. customs officers.
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Police arrest stripper 22 times for impersonating an officer – The Telegraph
A police force has been criticised after spending £170,000 to arrest a stripper 22 times for impersonating an officer.
Stuart Kennedy, a 25-year-old genetics student from Aberdeen University, has spent 123 hours in police custody since his first arrest in March 2007. Since then he has faced charges including possession of an offensive weapon – his truncheon and a fake CS spray – and for allegedly fitting a flashing light to his car. But so far none of the cases brought against him have yielded a successful prosecution and the latest collapsed in court last week after the Crown Office unexpectedly dropped the charges. The UK Independent is running the story as, The £170,000 strippergram.
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Obbamas Juggle Inaugural Balls Fresno Behive
Apparently this headline went down down fast. 
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Apple drops anti-piracy measures from iWork ‘09 Apple Insider
Apple has dropped serial number verification in the new retail box version of iWork 09, making the revised office suite simply “just work” for new users who have purchased it. Apple is still selling iWork separately, so the free trial versions that can be downloaded and which will appear on new machines does require a serial number to unlock, which can be obtained by directly purchasing the software online. This will ostensibly allow users to pirate iWork 09 slightly easier, but it appears the company has determined that the risk of losing sales to piracy is less than the annoyance consumers face and the customer service efforts wasted in helping people find a lost serial numbers.
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Ice cream causes positive alcohol test UPI
An Australian man challenged to prove his claim that ice cream gave him a blood alcohol reading demonstrated his defense in court. The man, whose name was not given, had asked Frankston Magistrates’ Court to remove the breath testing alcohol interlock device from his car, the (Melbourne, Australia) Daily Sun reported Tuesday. Prosecutors inquired why the machine had registered a “fail,” which prevents the car from starting, despite the man’s claims that he had not been drinking. The man claimed the alcohol reading was the result of eating a Bubble O’ Bill ice cream treat and Magistrate Rod Crisp ordered a test to be performed to back up the claim. Police recorded the man’s blood alcohol content as 0.00 and performed the test a second time after he took a few bites of Bubble O’ Bill, yielding a 0.018 reading. Crisp granted the man’s request to remove the breath testing device from his car. Experts said consuming some foods or drinks before breath tests can cause a false positive reading.
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UN rapporteur: Bush, Rumsfeld should be pursued for torture ABC News AU
The United Nations’ special torture rapporteur called on the United States to pursue former president George W Bush and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. “Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation” to bring proceedings against Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, said in remarks to be broadcast on Germany’s ZDF television yesterday evening. He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture, which required “all means, particularly penal law” to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it. “We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld,” against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mr Nowak said. “But obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this,” added Mr Nowak, who authored a UN investigation report on the Guantanamo prison. Asked about chances to bring legal action against Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld, Mr Nowak said: “In principle, yes, I think the evidence is on the table.” At issue, however, is whether “American law will recognise these forms of torture”.
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Weapons-grade plutonium found in US dump New Scientist
An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that’s just where the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found – abandoned at the world’s oldest nuclear processing site.
The find was made at the Hanford Site, Washington State, which supplied the US nuclear weapon program from its beginnings until the 1980s. The site is dangerously contaminated by radioactive waste indiscriminately buried underground over years.
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UK government backs down in expenses row due to People-2-People Power BBC
[UK] Ministers have shelved plans to exempt MPs’ expenses details from the Freedom of Information Act, after the Tories and Lib Dems said they would fight it. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government had thought it had cross-party agreement but would now “continue to consult on the matter”. Campaigners said it was a victory for “people power” after a web protest.
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Health Canada testing compact fluorescent bulbs for UV radiation CBC
Health Canada says it is testing compact fluorescent bulbs to measure potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation and electromagnetic-field exposure levels. It started the tests in December, and preliminary results are expected by late summer or early fall, Health Canada spokesman Philippe Laroche said Wednesday. “Even though the bulk of scientific studies to date have not identified any health-related issues, Health Canada has decided to test the bulbs to acquire reliable technical data,” said Laroche. “If the tests establish that there are reasons for concern, actions will be taken to force manufacturers to correct the situation.” The move follows a warning from British health officials over some types of compact fluorescent bulbs.
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Fun and weird Barack Obama facts you maybe didn’t know UK Mirror
A 30-point list that starts off with: 1) He doesn`t like ice-cream as a result of working at Baskin-Robbins as a teenager.
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Hackers tried to steal hundreds of millions from bank, court told Times Online
An international gang plotted to steal £229 million from customers’ accounts at a leading bank by hacking into computers, a court was told yesterday. A security supervisor smuggled two Belgian computer hackers into the London offices of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation by pretending that they were friends who had arrived for a game of cards. The hackers installed spy software that recorded employees’ names and passwords at the bank’s European headquarters in the heart of the City, Snaresbrook Crown Court was told. The scheme was foiled because the hackers failed to fill in one of the fields in the Swift system used to make money transfers. The trial continues.
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Scotch whisky goes “green” Reuters
Scotch drinkers who care for the climate will soon relish their tipple in the knowledge it is providing clean renewable power in the home of whisky. Scottish authorities have given planning permission for a consortium of distillers to build a biomass-fueled combined heat and power plant near the heart of the whisky industry in Speyside. Helius Energy Plc said on Wednesday it and the Combination of Rothes Distillers Ltd would build the plant, which would use distillery by-products and wood chips to generate 7.2 megawatts of electricity, enough for about 9,000 homes, and heat. “Not only will it generate renewable heat and power, but it secures additional markets for our distillery co-products,” Frank Burns, general manager of the Combination of Rothes, said.
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Online pornography law appeal denied Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Wednesday a ruling that a federal law designed to keep Internet pornography away from children violated constitutional free-speech rights. The high court rejected a Justice Department appeal defending the law and handed a victory to those who argued that the efforts of Congress to regulate cyberspace by keeping minors away from online pornography infringed on free-speech rights. The law in question required that website operators use credit cards or adult access codes and personal identification numbers to keep minors from seeing harmful pornography. Violators faced up to six months in prison and fines of as much as $50,000 a day.
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China extends “lewd” crackdown to mobile phones Reuters
China has extended a crackdown on electronic porn to the country’s mobile phones, after shutting down 1,250 websites because of their explicit content, the official Xinhua agency said Wednesday. “We will incorporate ‘lewd’ messages spread via mobile phones into the crackdown,” the report quoted a joint notice from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Culture and five other government offices saying.
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Italy to Follow French 3 Strikes Model for P2P Torrent Freak
According to a THR report, yesterday Italy`s Ministry of Culture signed an agreement with French officials to cooperate on anti-piracy issues. Furthermore, in an indication of how Italy sees its legislation progressing in the future, Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi said that Italian laws will follow the French model in providing strict protection and controls for copyright works.
January , 2009
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January 22nd, 2009 at 11:02 pm
“Taliban Demands End to Music, Movies on Buses in Pakistan”
Shite the RIAA opened shop in Pakistan?