Typhoon Soudelor Kills 6 in Taiwan and Leaves Millions Without Power
August 8th, 2015Via: New York Times:
A powerful typhoon pummeled Taiwan on Saturday, dumping rain, toppling trees and leaving millions without electricity as strong winds ripped across the island.
At least six people were killed, Taiwan’s Interior Ministry said, including in its count people who had died Thursday and Friday as the storm approached. Five people were reported missing, and more than 60 were injured, many by blowing debris, the ministry said.
NZ Milk Price Gapdown: Fonterra Slashes Farmgate Milk Price to $3.85
August 6th, 2015Break even price for many farmers: $5.70.
Via: NZ Herald:
Fonterra – New Zealand’s biggest exporter – has lowered its farmgate milk price for 2015/6 to $3.85 a kg of milksolids, down from a previous forecast of $5.25 a kg.
The co-op said its forecast total payout for the 2015/6 season would be $4.25-$4.35 a kg, comprising the revised farmgate milk price and earnings per share of 40 to 50 cents, down from the previous year’s record payout of $8.50 a kg.
The lower farmgate milk price follows sharp falls in whole milk powder prices, which have plummeted by 51.4 per cent on Fotnerra’s GlobalDairyTrade platform since March this year.
Agriculture information provider, AgriHQ, estimates that a $1/kg drop in the milk price equates to about $2 billion less income for dairy farmers.
…
A price around $5.70 is regarded as breakeven for many farmers. Those with high debt from converting other farms to dairy are more vulnerable but banks have said they are working closely with them to avoid problems.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Privacy Badger
August 6th, 2015Looks good.
Via: EFF:
How is Privacy Badger different to Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery, and other blocking extensions?
Privacy Badger was born out of our desire to be able to recommend a single extension that would automatically analyze and block any tracker or ad that violated the principle of user consent; which could function well without any settings, knowledge, or configuration by the user; which is produced by an organization that is unambiguously working for its users rather than for advertisers; and which uses algorithmic methods to decide what is and isn’t tracking.
Although we like Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery and similar products (in fact Privacy Badger is based on the ABP code!), none of them are exactly what we were looking for. In our testing, all of them required some custom configuration to block non-consensual trackers. Several of these extensions have business models that we weren’t entirely comfortable with. And EFF hopes that by developing rigorous algorithmic and policy methods for detecting and preventing non-consensual tracking, we’ll produce a codebase that could in fact be adopted by those other extensions, or by mainstream browsers, to give users maximal control over who does and doesn’t get to know what they do online.
Idaho Sheriff Guarding U.S. Navy Veteran Against Federal Gun Confiscation
August 6th, 2015Via: AP:
A group of residents in northern Idaho have lined outside a U.S. Navy veteran’s house to protest claims that federal officials are planning on confiscating the man’s weapons.
Idaho Republican state Rep. Heather Scott says the Veteran Affairs office has sent a letter to John Arnold of Priest River warning him that he cannot possess or purchase firearms.
Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler says he and his deputies will stand guard against any federal attempts to remove Arnold’s guns.
Britain: Police Investigate Child Sex Abuse Claims Against Former Prime Minister
August 6th, 2015Via: CNN:
At least four UK police forces are independently investigating claims that include child sexual abuse involving the late British Prime Minister Edward Heath.
The allegations about Heath, who led a Conservative government from 1970 to 1974 and only left Parliament in 2001, have dominated UK newspaper headlines this week.
They come at a time when Britain has been rocked by a series of revelations involving the sexual abuse of children by public figures — including UK entertainer Jimmy Savile — and allegations that the British establishment may have sought to cover up historic abuse claims involving some former senior politicians.
Heath, the most senior figure to be investigated for child sex abuse allegations dating back decades, died in 2005 at age 89.
Police forces in Kent, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Jersey, an island in the English Channel, have now confirmed they are looking into claims involving the former Prime Minister.
A UK police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, is also examining how Wiltshire Police handled an alleged claim of child sex abuse made in the 1990s.
Denver DA Charges Man with Jury Tampering for Handing Out Jury Nullification Flyers
August 6th, 2015Via: Denver Post:
Denver prosecutors have charged a man with seven counts of jury tampering after they say he tried to influence jurors by passing out literature on jury nullification on Monday.
Mark Iannicelli, 56, set up a small booth with a sign that said “Juror Info” in front of the city’s Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse courthouse, prosecutors say.
The Denver District Attorney’s Office says Iannicelli provided jury nullification flyers to jury pool members.
NSA Tried Stuxnet Cyber-Attack on North Korea Five Years Ago but Failed
August 6th, 2015Via: Guardian:
The US tried to deploy a version of the Stuxnet computer virus to attack North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme five years ago but ultimately failed, according to people familiar with the covert campaign.
The operation began in tandem with the now-famous Stuxnet attack that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear programme in 2009 and 2010 by destroying a thousand or more centrifuges that were enriching uranium. Reuters and others have reported that the Iran attack was a joint effort by US and Israeli forces.
According to one US intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.
But US agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the programme.
China to Plant Internet Police in Top Online Firms
August 5th, 2015Via: PC World:
China’s control over the Internet is set to expand. In a bid to better police local websites, the country’s security forces are establishing offices at the biggest online firms in the country.
The country’s Ministry of Public Security announced the new measures on Tuesday, at a time when authorities have been increasingly concerned also about cyberthreats.
Websites based in China already have to abide by strict provisions for online censorship, and will often delete any content deemed offensive by government censors.
The ministry’s plan, however, will place China’s security forces at the offices of the country’s major websites, so that they can quickly respond to suspected online crimes, it said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia May Go Broke Before the U.S. Oil Industry Buckles
August 5th, 2015No more Fed-Exing the Lamborghinis to London for oil changes?
Via: Telegraph:
If the oil futures market is correct, Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years. It will be in existential crisis by the end of the decade.
The contract price of US crude oil for delivery in December 2020 is currently $62.05, implying a drastic change in the economic landscape for the Middle East and the petro-rentier states.
The Saudis took a huge gamble last November when they stopped supporting prices and opted instead to flood the market and drive out rivals, boosting their own output to 10.6m barrels a day (b/d) into the teeth of the downturn.
Bank of America says OPEC is now “effectively dissolved”. The cartel might as well shut down its offices in Vienna to save money.
If the aim was to choke the US shale industry, the Saudis have misjudged badly, just as they misjudged the growing shale threat at every stage for eight years. “It is becoming apparent that non-OPEC producers are not as responsive to low oil prices as had been thought, at least in the short-run,” said the Saudi central bank in its latest stability report.
“The main impact has been to cut back on developmental drilling of new oil wells, rather than slowing the flow of oil from existing wells. This requires more patience,” it said.
One Saudi expert was blunter. “The policy hasn’t worked and it will never work,” he said.
Chicago Police Detained Thousands of Black Americans at Interrogation Facility
August 5th, 2015Via: Guardian:
At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.
Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.
Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from “drinking alcohol on the public way” to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity therein – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.
