Riots Break Out at Foxconn Factory in China
September 24th, 2012Via: NBC:
Reports early Monday from China suggest that a mass disturbance or riots may have broken out at a Foxconn factory in the Chinese city of Taiyuan.
It is still unclear what exactly happened, but posts on China’s popular twitter-like service, Weibo, from users in the area show photographs and video of large numbers of police in and around the factory – many in riot gear – blocking off throngs of people.
Other photos show debris strewn around the Foxconn compound and in one case, an overturned guard tower.
According to popular tech blog engadget, the disturbance kicked off after Foxconn security guards allegedly hit a worker around 10 p.m. on Sunday.
Censors in China have reportedly already started deleting pictures from the scene.
This is not the first time that Foxconn has had problems with its Taiyuan facility, which is reportedly responsible for the fabrication of the back plate of the immensely popular new iPhone 5. In March, strikes broke out there after workers did not receive a pay raise they had reportedly been promised.
Suicide Now Kills More Americans Than Car Crashes
September 24th, 2012Via: Medline:
More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes, making suicide the leading cause of injury deaths, according to a new study.
In addition, over the last 10 years, while the number of deaths from car crashes has declined, deaths from poisoning and falls increased significantly, the researchers report.
“Suicides are terribly undercounted; I think the problem is much worse than official data would lead us to believe,” said study author Ian Rockett, a professor of epidemiology at West Virginia University.
There may be 20 percent or more unrecognized suicides, he said.
Many of the poisoning deaths may actually be intended, he added. A lot of these deaths are due from overdoses of prescription drugs, Rockett noted.
“We have a situation that has gotten out of hand,” he said. “I would like to see the same attention paid to other injuries as has been paid to traffic injuries.”
The report was published online Sept. 20 in the American Journal of Public Health.
For the study, Rockett’s team used data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics to determine the cause of injury deaths from 2000 to 2009.
The leading causes of unintentional deaths were car accidents, poisoning and falls, and for intentional deaths they were suicide and homicide.
Deaths from intentional and unintentional injury were 10 percent higher in 2009 than in 2000, the researchers noted.
And although deaths from car crashes declined 25 percent, deaths from poisoning rose 128 percent, deaths from falls increased 71 percent and deaths from suicides rose 15 percent, according to the study.
Suicide is now the first cause of injury deaths, followed by car crashes, poisoning, falls and murder, Rockett said.
Cryptogon Reader Signs Up for Hosting With BlueHost
September 23rd, 2012Thanks to the owner of integratedtaichi.com for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon earned a $90 commission.
Corrie Yelland Cured Anal Cancer with Cannabis Oil
September 23rd, 2012Warning: No information that appears on Cryptogon should be considered medical advice.
Via: Cannabis Nation:
Already coping with 2 spots of skin cancer on my collar bone, I was stunned when I was diagnosed with Anal Canal Cancer. (This is the same cancer that took Farrah Fawcett’s life.) Following 2 surgeries, the doctor told me they did not get all the cancer and I would have to endure a regime of radiation treatments. I started researching what this would entail, and attended a intake meeting at the Cancer Clinic. I was informed that “this is the worst area of of the body to radiate”, the radiation beam would hit both my coccyx and public bone potentially causing permanent damage.”
They would try not to hit my spine.”
Additionally, I would suffer 2nd and 3rd degree burns vaginally, rectally, across my buttocks, as well as my entire “nether regions”, and there was a “good possibility” both my vagina and rectum would fuse shut from the burns and subsequent scaring. The list of both short and long term side effects was endless and horrendous, but you get the gist. I told the doctor, I needed time to think about it. His response was hostile, as he told me I had 2-4 months, possibly 6. He mumurred something abut a “death wish” and walked out.
One day some one sent me Rick Simpson’s video, Run From The Cure. It took me days to get around to watching it, but when I did I was blown away.
…
On September 20, 2012, I saw my specialist/surgeon, whom I had not seen for approximately 6 months. He examined me once, then a second time, and then a third time. My heart was pounding so loudly I could hear the whooshing in my ears. And then the news I had only dared to hope for. “It’s gone! I can’t find anything at all. If it wasn’t for the scar tissue I would never have known you had ever had cancer.”
Related: phoenixtears.ca
Law Enforcement Speech Recognition System Stores Millions of Voices
September 23rd, 2012Made in Russia.
Via: Slate:
Russia’s Speech Technology Center, which operates under the name SpeechPro in the United States, has invented what it calls “VoiceGrid Nation,” a system that uses advanced algorithms to match identities to voices. The idea is that it enables authorities to build up a huge database containing up to several million voices—of known criminals, persons of interest, or people on a watch list. Then, when authorities intercept a call and they’re not sure who is speaking, the recording is entered into the VoiceGrid and it comes up with a match. It takes just five seconds to scan through 10,000 voices, and so long as the recording is decent quality and more than 15 seconds in length, the accuracy, SpeechPro claims, is at least 90 percent.
The technology has already been deployed across Mexico, where it is being used by law enforcement to collect, store, and search hundreds of thousands of voice-prints. Alexey Khitrov, SpeechPro’s president, told me the company is working with a number of agencies in the United States at a state and federal level. He declined to reveal any names because of nondisclosure and confidentiality agreements. But Khitrov did divulge that various versions of the company’s biometric technology are used in more than 70 countries and that the Americas, Europe, and Asia are its key markets. Not all of its customers are law enforcement agencies, either. SpeechPro also designs voice recognition technology that can be used in call centers to verify the identities of customers. Depending on the size and specifics of the installation, it can cost from tens of thousands up to millions of dollars.
Iran Claims Siemens Planted Bombs in Parts Meant for Nuclear Program
September 23rd, 2012Via: AP:
Iran on Saturday accused the German technology company Siemens of planting tiny explosives inside equipment Iran bought for its disputed nuclear program, a charge Siemens denied.
Aladdin Boroujerdi, a prominent lawmaker, said Iranian security experts discovered the explosives and removed them before detonation. The authorities believe that the booby-trapped equipment was sold to derail uranium enrichment efforts, he said.
Siemens said its nuclear division had had no business with Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Any sale of nuclear equipment to Iran is banned under United Nations sanctions, raising the possibility that if the country indeed has some, it was acquired through third parties.
Mr. Boroujerdi did not say when or how Iran had obtained Siemens equipment. Despite a wide array of international sanctions, Germany remains one of Iran’s most important trading partners.
Facebook Wants You To Snitch on Friends Using Pseudonyms
September 22nd, 2012Via: Paul Bernal’s Blog:
A story about Facebook went around twitter last night that provoked quite a reaction in privacy advocates like me: Facebook, it seems, is experimenting with getting people to ‘snitch’ on any of their friends who don’t use their real names. Take a look at this…
Wall Street Rolling Back Another Key Piece of Financial Reform
September 22nd, 2012Via: Rolling Stone:
Wall Street lobbyists are awesome. I’m beginning to develop a begrudging respect not just for their body of work as a whole, but also for their sense of humor. They always go right to the edge of outrageous, and then wittily take one baby-step beyond it. And they did so again last night, with the passage of a new House bill (HR 2827), which rolls back a portion of Dodd-Frank designed to protect cities and towns from the next Jefferson County disaster.
Jefferson County, Alabama was the most famous case – the city of Birmingham went bankrupt after being bribed and goaded into taking on billions of dollars of toxic swap deals – but in fact it was just one of hundreds of similar examples of localities being duped into suicidal financial deals by rapacious banks and financial companies. The Denver school system, for instance, got clobbered when it opted for an exotic swap deal pushed by J.P. Morgan Chase (the same villain in Jefferson County, incidentally) and then-school superintendent/future U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, that ended up costing the school system tens of millions of dollars. As was the case in Jefferson County, the only way out of the deal involved a massive termination fee that might have been even more destructive than the deal itself.
To deal with this problem, the Dodd-Frank Act among other things included a simple reform. It required the financial advisors of municipalities to do two things: register with the SEC, and accept a fiduciary duty to respect the best interests of the taxpayers they are advising.
Sounds simple, right? But Wall Street couldn’t have that. After all, if companies are required to have a fiduciary responsibility to cities and towns, how in the world can they screw cities and towns? The idea was a veritable axe-blow to the banks’ municipal advisory businesses.
So what did Wall Street lobbyists and trade groups like SIFMA (the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association) do? Well, they did what they’ve been doing to Dodd-Frank generally: they Swiss-cheesed the law with a string of exemptions. The industry proposal that ended up being HR 2827 created several new loopholes for purveyors of swaps and other such financial products to cities and towns.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Scientists Warn That GM Wheat Could Cause Extremely Dangerous Gene Silencing Effects in Humans
September 21st, 2012Via: Safe Food Foundation:
Expert scientists warn that genetically modified wheat may cause Glycogen Storage Disease IV, resulting in an enlarged liver, cirrhosis of the liver, and failure to thrive. Children born with this disease usually die at about the age of 5.
Australia is on track to be the first country in the world to grow GM wheat commercially, and to test this in human feeding trials.
Today in Melbourne molecular biologist and risk assessment researcher Professor Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury, NZ, and Associate Professor Judy Carman, a biochemist at Flinders University, will release expert scientific opinions on the safety of CSIRO’s GM wheat. These opinions have been reviewed by Dr Michael Antoniou, reader in molecular genetics at King’s College, London.
Italy Upholds Convictions of 23 CIA Operatives in Absentia
September 21st, 2012Via: AFP:
Italy’s highest court confirmed the guilty verdicts Wednesday of 23 CIA agents tried in absentia for the 2003 abduction of Egyptian imam Osama Mustafa Hassan in Milan. The United States has already refused to extradite the agents.
Italy’s top court Wednesday confirmed guilty verdicts against 23 CIA agents for the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam in Milan and ordered a re-trial for five Italian ex-spies accused of taking part.
The CIA agents were all being tried in absentia in one of the world’s biggest court cases against the US “extraordinary rendition” programme to interrogate alleged Islamist militants after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The 23 CIA agents were originally sentenced in November 2009 to five to eight years in prison and in December 2010 had their sentences increased to seven to nine years on appeal and ordered to pay damages to the imam.
Italy’s justice ministry is now obliged to make a formal request for the extradition of the agents, legal sources said, but the United States has already refused.
All the agents remain at liberty but risk arrest if they travel to Europe.
