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Dreamland is a film about a nation standing at cross-roads. Leading up to the country’s greatest economic crisis, the government started the largest mega project in the history of Iceland, to build the biggest dam in Europe to provide Alcoa cheap electricity for an aluminum smelter in the rugged east fjords of Iceland. Today Iceland is left holding a huge dept and an uncertain future.

They are women like Guerline, who two months after losing her husband when their home crumbled to the ground in the devastating quake, had to watch as her teenage daughter was raped in a makeshift tarpaulin camp in Port-au-Prince.

“Four men raped her. She is 13 years old,” Guerline told Amnesty International researchers, who compiled the report after interviewing more than 50 women and girls in Haiti’s post-quake camps.

“They told me that if I talked about it, they would kill me. They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead.

“I’m scared. There is nowhere safe where I can live, so I had to keep quiet,” said Guerline, who, like all the women interviewed for the report, was given a false name to protect her from reprisals.

Guerline was raped on the same night as her daughter by hooded men in the tent city. She can’t get the events of that terrible night out of her head.

As part of these programs, agency officials are being asked to figure out ways to “detect behavioral changes” among employees who might have access to classified documents.

Humans perform a wide range of visual tasks with ease, something no current artificial intelligence can do in a robust way. They have inherently strong spatial judgment and are able to learn new spatiotemporal concepts directly from the visual experience. Humans visualize scenes and objects, as well as the actions involving those objects and possess a powerful ability to manipulate those imagined scenes mentally to solve problems. A machine-based implementation of such abilities is broadly applicable to a wide range of applications, including ground surveillance.

The joint military community anticipates a significant increase in the role of unmanned systems in support of future operations including jobs like persistent stare. By performing persistent stare, camera-equipped unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) would take scouts out of harm’s way. Such a capability, however, would not constitute a force multiplier because human analysts would have to interpret streaming video from these platforms to detect operationally significant activities. A truly transformative capability requires visual intelligence, enabling these platforms to detect operationally significant activity and report on that activity so warfighters can focus on important events in a timely manner.

DARPA has contracted with 12 research teams to develop fundamental machine-based visual intelligence: Carnegie Mellon University, Co57 Systems, Inc., Colorado State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CALTECH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, SRI International, State University of New York at Buffalo, TNO (Netherlands), University of Arizona, University of California Berkeley and University of Southern California. These teams will develop a software subsystem suitable for employment on a camera for man-portable UGVs, integrating existing state of the art computer vision and AI while making novel contributions in visual event learning, new spatiotemporal representations, machine-generated envisionment, visual inspection and grounding of visual concepts.

The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth’s magnetic north.

The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of south Tampa.

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The jobless rate hasn’t fallen below 9.4 percent since May 2009 and will probably average that figure this year, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Unemployment probably declined to 9.7 percent last month from 9.8 percent in November, according to the average estimate of a Bloomberg poll prior to a Labor Department employment report on Jan. 7.

Dear friends, associates and fellow travelers,

As you may or may not know, I have been struck down by an extremely serious form of cancer. Presently I am back in the United States receiving treatment through the U.S. Veterans Administration hospital system. Due to the nature of the massive internal tumor, I am currently unable to even carry on email correspondence or Skype conversations.

Right now I am at a hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia. Once a treatment program has been designed and set in motion, I will probably be transferred back to the Veterans Administration facility near my home in Winchester, Virginia. The condition is inoperable, but it is hoped that with chemotherapy plus the use of a pain killer such as OxyContin, I will be able to resume my online work.

As soon as I am able to sit up long enough to work online and carry on Skype conversations, I will do so. Until then, please have patience and bear with me in this frustrating and difficult time. Business correspondence and relationships will not be interrupted during this period of recovery because I have several persons willing to work with me through dictation.

Thank all of you very much for your friendship and patience.

A Herald-DigiPoll survey of 750 people found benefits in growing your own food during a tough economic year.

As the price of fruit and vegetables rose 12 per cent in the year to November in Statistics New Zealand figures, 57.6 per cent of people said they had started vegetable gardening.

Women were more likely to have taken it up, at 62.1 per cent, but the majority of men also answered that they had.

In Tauranga, a community garden with 57 plots was formally opened in November and the spaces were taken up within a month.

John Goldstone had no experience growing vegetables, but now tends his plot every day, usually after his work in engineering.

He has corn, lettuce, capsicum, spinach, onions, broccoli, silverbeet, strawberries, tomatoes, basil, rhubarb, radishes, jalapeno peppers and potatoes sprouting.

The garden charges $5 a week for enough space to feed a family of four all year round.

“I take a lot of pride in my garden,” Mr Goldstone said. “It’s great. It’s stress-free. It’s a really peaceful time.”

A $2 punnet of capsicum seedlings yielded 100 vegetables – at the supermarket it would have cost at least $200, he said.

There were solo mums at the gardens who had children with allergies. By growing their own vegetables, they knew exactly what had gone into them and could be assured they were safe.

The garden had three experienced gardeners who helped the rest with their plots, Mr Goldstone said.

It had been fresh fruit and vegetable prices that had pushed him to start gardening, but since he started, the joy of it had taken over, he said.

“I’m absolutely consumed by it,” Mr Goldstone said.

“The word’s out there. Everyone now knows. It’s amazing how many people are talking about growing your own vegetables.”

Warren Knight, one of the experienced gardeners, said growing vegetables had been saving many families $50 a week.

Extra produce was donated to food banks, and the community garden had also taken up a 16-year-old for community service who had become a great asset, Mr Knight said.

Elderly residents living nearby who had not grown vegetables for years had picked it up again.

“I’m amazed at the number of people who haven’t done any gardening before trying it out,” Mr Knight said.”But they’re lovingit.