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Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum pleaded guilty in a New York court last week to one count of bank-card fraud for his part in a hacking scheme that U.S. officials say netted some $10 million from American banks, technology news Web site Wired.com reported. Tenenbaum, 29, who is also known as "the analyzer," was arrested in Canada last year along with three other hackers for allegedly stealing about $1.5 million from Canadian banks. But he was put on trial in the U.S. after officials there filed a request to have him extradited. Prosecutors alleged that Tenenbaum hacked into two U.S. banks, a credit- and debit-card distribution company and a payment processor, Wired.com reported. But he was only charged with one count of conspiracy to commit access-device fraud and one count of access-device fraud. Advertisement   "The analyzer" first became known in 1998, when he was arrested at age 19 along with several other Israelis and two California teens after hacking into comput...

A retired atomic scientist who was closely associated with India's 1998 nuclear tests has said they were not as successful as was claimed. By Sanjoy Majumder BBC News, Delhi K Santhanam said one of the tests – on a hydrogen bomb – had not worked, and that India would have to carry out more tests for a credible nuclear deterrent. His statement has been dismissed by the government and his former colleagues. The Indian tests led to similar tests by Pakistan, raising fears of a nuclear conflict between the two countries. Cover-up? K Santhanam is a respected Indian atomic scientist who was project director of the 1998 nuclear tests. He now says that one of the five tests that were carried out, in which a thermonuclear device or hydrogen bomb was detonated, did not perform as well as expected. He also said that everyone associated with the tests immediately recognised that something had gone wrong. If his statement is accurate it points to a massive cover-up by India and also c...

By Khalid Mustafa ISLAMABAD: In clear defiance of two immensely powerful foreign capitals which are fuming over Pakistan's pertinence, Islamabad is going ahead with the multi-billion dollar Iran-Pakistan gas line project and has initiated the process of arranging finances to the tune of $1.245 billion (Rs106 billion) required for laying the 800 km long pipeline from Pak-Iran border to Nawab Shah. This was revealed by the minutes of the last meeting of Steering Committee of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) on IP gas line project held in Karachi on August 22. According to the minutes of the meeting, Pakistan will also be importing 1.05 billion cubic feet of gas per day (bcfd) from Iran, at 78 per cent of crude oil parity price. It is pertinent to mention that Pakistan and Iran have already signed Gas Sales Purchase Agreement (GSPA) for importing 750 million cubic feet gas per day (mmcfd), which will be used to generate 4,500 MW of electricity and would be a cheaper alternati...

By Jonathan S. Landay, Mcclatchy Newspapers Fri Aug 28 BAGHLAN-I-JADID, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents have taken over parts of two northern provinces from which they were driven in 2001, threatening to disrupt NATO's new supply route from Central Asia and expand a war that's largely been confined to Afghanistan's southern half, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Insurgents operating out of Baghlan district along the highway from Tajikistan launched coordinated attacks during the Aug. 20 presidential elections, killing the district police chief and a civilian, while losing a dozen of their own men, local officials said. It was the worst bloodshed reported in the country that day. The violence has been on the rise in recent months, however, as the Taliban and al Qaida -linked foreign fighters have staged hit-and-run attacks, bombings and rocket strikes on German, Belgian and Hungarian forces in Baghlan and neighboring Kunduz provinces. The insurgents now control three ...

Posted by Teeth Maestro , August 28, 2009 In a very shocking development a young 32 year old person, father of four kids looses his life during the filming of a reality show sponsored by Unilever and being produced by their advertising agency Mindshare. Saad Khan was a game show contestant and the host/model Amina Sheikh, who also is the model of Clear Shampoo, gave an underwater challenge to Saad and during the execution of the stunt he apparently lost control, struggled and pleading for help could not recover, the inadequate safety personal and the equipment could not react in time and eventually he drowned Saad Khan, 32 year old young man from Karachi and a father of four kids is sadly the victim, his body was returned to Karachi for burial two days back and the infuriated family has been running from pillar to post but it seems for some awkward reason it fails to catch the media attention and apparently no media house is ready to ' run the story '. It is a known f...

(Kazakhstan , August 27, 2009-issue 579) By Jack Losh TCA correspondent ASTANA (TCA) — This Saturday sees the 60th anniversary of the former USSR's first nuclear bomb test at Semipalatinsk, north-east Kazakhstan. Carried out deep in the vast, desolate steppes of Soviet Central Asia, as it then was, the detonation at 7am, August 29th 1949 ushered in a new and terrifying era. The figures are incredible. Over the next forty years, the 18,000 sq km site would be home to practically 75% of all Soviet nuclear tests: 456 in total, both below and above ground, unleashing energy equivalent to 2,500 Hiroshima bombs. Thanks to the powerful, grassroots anti-nuclear movement, 'Nevada-Semipalatinsk', nuclear explosions here are a thing of the past, but although the testing of nuclear weapons may have ceased, the fallout's devastating legacy endures. Tests inside the 'Polygon', as the site was known, have affected peripheral land over 16 times its ...

By William Lind August 05, 2009 " Military.com " --  In early July, U.S. Army Colonel Timothy Reese committed truth.  According to a story by Michael Gordon in the New York Times (reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer , where I saw it), Colonel Reese wrote an unusually blunt memo (concluding) that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government and that it is time "for the U.S. to declare victory and go home." As the old saying goes, 'Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,'" Reese wrote.  "Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose." As usual, committing truth horrified Reese's superiors.  Michael Gordon reported:  Those (Reese's) conclusions are not shared by the senior U.S. Commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno . . . A spokeswoman for Odierno said that the me...

by Fred Reed I love it. The following is an account of Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talking to Albert Jazeera: "When asked why the United States was not in FATA despite having the knowledge that Al Qaeda was present there, he [Admiral Mullen] said, `Because FATA is in Pakistan and Pakistan is a sovereign country and we don't go into sovereign countries.'" Hahn? The hell we don't. What was this buoyant cannibal thinking? The US loves to go into sovereign countries. It hardly does anything else. I suppose Iraq wasn't sovereign. It isn't now, but it was. How about Panama, Laos, Cambodia? We gave Pakistan, until recently sovereign, the choice of inviting us to kill its people with drones, or else be bombed into the Stone Age. Recently we have bombed Somalia, technically sovereign. When the Pentagon's alpha-floater says something so transparently nonsensical, so patently false, one wonders: Is he merely lying, or does he some...

BY MARIA LEVINA , TCA CORRESPONDENT BISHKEK (TCA) — Kyrgyzstan is helping in the construction of the Chinese-Kyrgyz-Uzbek railway, said General Director of the Kyrgyz Temir Jolu (Kyrgyz Railway) National Company, Asan Rysmendiev, during celebrations of the 85th anniversary of the Kyrgyz Railways. Construction of the Chinese-Kyrgyz-Uzbek railway is expected to be hugely beneficial to the Kyrgyz economy. The project will create a southern corridor in the Eurasian transcontinental railway, connecting Kyrgyzstan with ports in both the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf . "The new railroad will help these Central Asian countries to integrate into the global transportation infrastructure, and establish new trade and economic ties with the outside world. Moreover, the railroad will help to intensively develop regions adjacent to it," said Rysmendiev. At 268.4 km , the Chinese-Kyrgyz-Uzbek railway will travel from the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang, northwest China, to the Kyrgyz-Chine...

By Alex Rabinowitz August 5, 2009 Steven Mackay/Virginia Tech University Wesley Majerus finishes driving the Virginia Tech Blind Driver Challenge vehicle on a campus driving course. In the passenger seat is Greg Jannaman, who led the student design team. Undergraduate students at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering have entered relatively uncharted territory in the automobile world. They have created a vehicle that enables the visually impaired to drive unassisted. Virginia Tech began work on the project in 2004 . The college was the only research institution to accept the challenge and grant offered by the Jernigan Institute , a subsidiary of the National Federation of the Blind, to design a car that the blind can drive without assistance from another person. "We accepted because we saw the potential impact of all the spin-off technologies that can come out of this project — both for the blind and the sighted, both for driving and nondriving applications," sai...

Wednesday, August 05, 2009 A Japanese company has unveiled a robotic suit that is designed to help people with weak limbs or limited physical range to walk and move like an able-bodied person. The suit, called HAL – or Hybrid Assistive Limb – is the work of Cyberdyne Corporation in Japan, and has been created to "upgrade the existing physical capabilities of the human body". HAL, which weighs 23kg, is comprised of robotic 'limbs', and a backpack containing the suit's battery and computer system. It is strapped to the body and controlled by thought. When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles, and very weak traces of these signals can be detected on the surface of the skin. The HAL suit identifies these signals using a sensor attached the skin of the wearer, and a signal is sent to the suit's power unit telling the suit to move in unison with the wearer's own limbs. People with physical disabilities, such as stroke-i...

by Scott Carmichael on May 20th 200 Amsterdam airport just won an award for their "something to declare" PR stunt. To remind arriving passengers to be honest, and use the red line to declare taxable items, they used suitcases with fake crocodiles sticking out the side. The suitcases were pulled through the airport, and placed on the baggage carousels in the arrivals hall. Despite having a natural aversion against using the red customs line, I have to admit that this is a pretty funny stunt, though I'm fairly sure it only reminds people to put even more effort into putting on a poker face when you walk through the green line pretending that those extra bottles of booze in your suitcase are filled with water

By Monica Hesse Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 7, 2009 What happened Thursday, in 140 characters: Twitter went down. Facebook went down. People panicked, unused to not oversharing minutiae of life. Twitter back up. Facebook back up. Phew. At 9 a.m., millions of users of Twitter.com found themselves unable to access the microblogging Web site , the modern version of the telephone party line through which more than 40 million people announce what they are doing, reading, eating and thinking at any given moment. Twitter has been used for on-the-ground reports from protests in Tehran and, more recently, by Paula Abdul, who announced her resignation from "American Idol" via her Twitter feed. Undaunted, the rejected Twitterers trooped to Facebook.com, the social networking site that has more than 200 million users, which has "status updates" that mimic Twitter feeds. But before users could begin to type, "Is sad that Twitter is down," a...

From Tom Wishon , for About.com There are two primary ways to manufacture steel golf shafts. One is called "seemless" construction; the other is "welded tube" construction. A seamless steel shaft starts life as a large cylinder of solid steel. The cylinder is heated and pierced with a special machine, turning the solid steel log into a large, thick-walled tube. Over a series of stretching operations on very specialized machines called draw benches, the large, thick tube is gradually reduced in diameter and wall thickness to become a thin-walled steel tube five-eighths of an inch in diameter. These shaft "blanks," as they are called, are then subjected to a series of squeezing operations that form the individual sections of diameter reduction called the "step-downs" on the shaft. A welded tube construction steel shaft begins as a flat strip of steel that is coiled and welded into a tube. The welding procedure is quite different than what most peop...

By Iftekhar A. Khan "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do" ( Samuel P Huntington ). August 04, 2009 " Information Clearing House " -- It's irrelevant to discuss who was responsible for 9/11. The western world kn ows who engineered it and rest of the world fearful for its safety is silent about it. Why to destroy the Towers by demolition when the West could invade sovereign countries without the stratagem would remain a mystery. Iraq had no link to WTC destruction yet the West invaded and occupied it. The FBI said it had "no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Neither did FBI in its Most wanted terrorist web page, implicate Laden in 9/11, but US attacked Afghanistan nonetheless. Muslims' perception that the West has no qualms about unleashing its violence against them is t...

By A Khokar • Aug 2nd, 2009   On July 4, 2009 – authorities in New York made heroin bust with a street value of US$33 million and arrested 12 people, who were using Build-A-Bear dolls packed with drug as their distribution network. They also seized US$150,000 in cash – Daily News , July 5, 2009. Source of heroin was Afghanistan. After humiliating the Red Army in Afghanistan and making Uncle Sam the sole world power – The Mujahideen Islamist leaders fell from the favour of America and its proxy governments in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – in the fear that they might establish an Iran-friendly Islamic regime in Kabul. Therefore, a new group based on Saudi-version of Islamic state was given birth by CIA, ISI and Riyadh, which with the active help from Pakistan Air Force – forced two prominent Mujahideed leaders, Afghan President Rabbani and Afghan Prime Minister Gulbedin, to seek refuge in Iran in 1996. These two leaders were treated like foreign dignatories till the Taliban were ous...

By Mahir Ali Wednesday, 05 Aug, 2009 'IN the interests, then, of peace; in the interests of commerce; in the interests of moral and material improvement, it may be asserted that interference in Afghanistan has now become a duty, and that any moderate outlay or responsibility we incur in restoring order at Kabul will prove in the sequel to be true economy.' The language, to some extent, betrays the provenance of this piece of advocacy: 21st-century spin doctors would couch their aims in somewhat different terms. Yet the advice offered in 1868 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, a member of the Council of India, serves as a useful reminder of the longevity of the Great Game. His comments were made in the context of the potential threat posed by a Russian presence in Afghanistan, and it is notable that commerce took precedence over other concerns. It could also be argued, not entirely without merit, that in the late 20th century the Great Game was resumed only when the prospect of a Russian ...