Police officers on hand during the Husby riot in northern Stockholm stand accused of using racist language towards people on the ground, with one youth worker in the area claiming it is “not the last time” such scenes will occur. … Read More
Israel’s ‘illegal’ military entry permit bars selected tourists from West Bank – report
The requirement for military entry permits reportedly began at the beginning of 2013. However, not everyone is required to obtain the special pass – and no information has been published surrounding the selection process. Clerics from the US reportedly had to sign a declaration at Ben-Gurion International Airport recently, promising not to enter Area A without permits from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Area A includes all Palestinian cities and their surrounding areas, with no Israeli settlements. The area is fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority. COGAT is a military office which coordinates civilian issues between the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces, international organizations, diplomats, and the Palestinian Authority. “I understand that in the event that I enter any area under the control of the Palestinian Authority without the appropriate authorization all relevant legal actions will be taken against me, including deportation and denial of entry into Israel for a period of up to ten years,” the English-language version of the declaration reads. The clerics signed the document, but were not told how they could obtain the special permission. The clerics told Haaretz that they had been sent from their church to work with Christian communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But their mission ended before it ever began because they were not told how to obtain the military entry permit. One of the clerics sought help from the US Consulate in Jerusalem – but none of the employees were aware of the restictions. The spokesman for the US consulate declined to answer whether Israel had informed the American authorities about the obligation to sign a statement, and did not explain the viewpoint of the US Department of State. According to Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority, the Entry into Israel Law authorizes the interior minister to decide on the entry of foreigners to the State of Israel. In the case of Judea and Samaria, the Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff makes the determination with a permit from the coordinator’s office. “When a tourist or foreign national arrives at the international border crossings and it is believed that he wants to enter Judea and Samaria, he should be informed [of the procedure] and asked for his promise to receive a permit from the coordinator’s office before his entry – a permit that constitutes an essential condition [of entry to the Palestinian Authority controlled areas],” she said. But there is no mention of the existence of such a procedure on COGAT’s English website. The spokesman for the coordinator’s office said the matter of the procedure and the form is being examined. Meanwhile, lawyers are questioning the legality of the declaration. According to the Oslo Accords, citizens of countries which have diplomatic ties with Israel need only an entry permit for Israel and a valid passport to enter Palestinian Authority territories, Attorney Adi Lustigman said. The declaration “is not legal because it was formulated for an improper purpose – isolating the occupied territories – and in an improper manner. It makes the assumption that people who arrive in Israel as tourists, as clerics and for other purposes want to act in contradiction to the law, which may not have been explained to them clearly,” Lustigman said.“If there really is such a procedure, it should be publicized in a simple, clear and accessible manner…it seems there is no operative procedure, nor any procedure for submitting a request. We are left only with a prohibition, which, as we have mentioned, is invalid,” she added. The practice of requiring tourists to sign such declarations was first reported seven years ago, but was reportedly discontinued and renewed only at the beginning of this year. Several years ago, the Interior Ministry also began to limit the freedom of movement of tourists with work and family ties in the West Bank, in order to prevent their entry into Israel by means of a permit with the stamp “For the territories of Judea and Samaria only.” … Read More
Tweet profiling: New Twitter analyzer guesses user age and gender
Users have to simply enter their username into the program called ‘TweetGenie’ for it to give the personal information. The program analyzes data from the contents of the user’s last 200 tweets. Then, using its database with lists of words and sequences gathered from almost 3,000 Twitter users, compares the contents corresponding with different ages and specific genders, said Dong Nguyen, a doctoral student at the Twente University in the Netherlands.”The distinction between men and women is actually very stereotypical,” said Nguyen, “Men talk about football and women about their nails,” she said as quoted by AFP.Nguyen notes that younger people use a lot of emoticons, or the so-called ‘smiley faces’ to express their emotions and talk more about themselves. While older users use ‘longer words and sentences,’ including links and hashtags in their tweets.However the program is not exactly precise in its calculations, as it has a margin error of four years, which dips for younger users and increases when users are older.”We note that users use more uniform language from about 35 years and older. There are larger differences between users aged 15 and 20 then there are between users aged 45 and 55,” Nguyen said.According to the developers, ‘TweetGenie’ can correctly guess a tweeter’s sex in 85 per cent of cases.Currently the program can only be used by Dutch users. However, researchers at Twente, in collaboration with the Meertens Dutch Language and Culture Institute, are planning to update it for other languages and adapt it for social networks, such as Facebook.This newly-developed program may also have potential applications in various areas of marketing. … Read More
Britain to double aid to Syrian opposition in 2014 – Cameron
Cameron has vowed an extra £10 million for non-lethal equipment and £30 million more for humanitarian assistance for Syrian people as the two politicians outlined further steps to “bring to an end the killing” of Syrian people.“We will double non-lethal support to the Syrian opposition in the coming year. Armored vehicles, body armor and power generators are about to be shipped,” Cameron said at the press conference after an Oval Office meeting with US president Barack Obama. Britain’s actions in Syria completely coincide with the US plans that the Obama administration voiced last week. Speaking after a meeting of the Syrian opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would double its non-lethal aid to opposition forces in Syria in the coming year bringing the total sum to $250 million. As for arming the Syrian opposition, Britain claims it has not “made decision to arm opposition groups in Syria”, however, Cameron said that it “is pushing for more flexibility in the EU arms embargo”.“What we have done is we have amended the EU arms embargo in order that we can give technical assistance and technical advice,” he said. He also said that UK will continue to examine the embargo to “see if we need to make further changes”.The current sanctions recently amended in April allow the supply of certain non-lethal equipment as well as technical and financing assistance related to it. However, a recently leaked six-page long draft proposal revealed the UK proposed two options to EU diplomats to amend the current embargo: the first, full exemption of Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary forces from the arms embargo and the second, to remove ‘non-lethal’ language to allow shipment lethal equipment to Syria. Cameron said Assad had to realize there could be no military victory for his forces. President Obama has backed Cameron’s words. From his side, he said that the “work to establish the use of chemical weapon in Syria” will continue and the findings “will help guide” the next steps. Obama said the US would be “very persistent” in pursuing a peaceful political transition that leads to Assad’s exit but leaves Syria “intact”.”I’m not promising it is going to be successful. Frankly, sometimes once the furies have been unleashed in a situation like we are seeing in Syria, it’s very hard to put things back together,” Obama said. Both Cameron and Obama welcomed “successful” talks the Prime Minister had with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, at which the two leaders sought to hammer out a common approach to ending Syrian conflict. “There is now common ground between the US, UK, Russia and many others that whatever our differences we have the same aim, a stable, inclusive and peaceful Syria free from the scourge of extremists,” Cameron said. … Read More
Stockholm opens Spanish- language care home
Stockholm inaugurated its first Spanish-language home for the elderly on Tuesday, as the capital’s aging immigrant population prompts care-givers to diversify into new niche markets. … Read More
Busting World’s Biggest Movie Pirates Made Piracy Worse
At the turn of the decade, one piracy release group was making its mark on the Internet like no other in recent times. After releasing countless movies and even opening their own BitTorrent tracker, predictably the IMAGiNE group was soon on the radars of Hollywood and U.S. authorities.
In September 2011 IMAGiNE was dismantled when its U.S-based members were rounded up and arrested. In the months that followed IMAGiNE members were brought to justice and handed some of the harshest copyright infringement sentences on record.
Lower ranking members of the group received 23 months in prison but a sysop, cammer and group leader were hit with jail sentences of 40, 48 and 60 months respectively, the latter being the longest sentence ever in a case of this type.
One of the witnesses to be heard in the IMAGiNE case was Toronto-based anti-piracy group Deluxe. They were hired by the studios to spy on group members and produce an intelligence report on their activities. A copy obtained by TorrentFreak reveals some interesting facts.
Deluxe lists IMAGiNE’s strengths as being able to get a movie online shortly after its theatrical release, ability to provide consistently high audio captures, maintaining a high volume of releases, and their connections to international suppliers.
The following chart shows a league table of release groups between September 2009 and December 2011, a period in which IMAGiNE is said to have been “easily the most significant release group in terms of volume.”
IMAGiNE are said to have been responsible for 41% of all English language movie audio piracy from September 2009 until they were busted in 2011, five times the amount of their closest competitor. The group used a total of 15 video sources between September 2009 and September 2010, and a further 39 between then and the group’s demise in September 2011.
Deluxe obtain some of their evidence by analyzing forensic codes embedded into video and audio of new movies. They note that IMAGiNE successfully removed the codes from seven movie releases including Fast Five and X-Men:First Class. However, Deluxe were able to trace many back to the theater in which they were originally recorded, as the chart below shows.
Interestingly, IMAGiNE themselves were also victims to piracy. Deluxe report that for some pirated movies released online by other groups, every audio track could be traced back to IMAGiNE. Over a single year period IMAGiNE were responsible for 54% of all English language audio tracks examined by Deluxe.
Of course, the raids had an immediate impact.
“The enforcement actions occurred in early September 2011, and there was a decrease of unique pirated English audio sources this month. In fact, September 2011 had the lowest amount of English-language piracy instances in the entire dataset,” Deluxe report.
But the downturn didn’t last.
“However, in the following month, the amount of new English audio sources shot up dramatically, with more English-language release than each of the nine months prior to the enforcement actions. Electronic audio, which is typically higher quality (and more difficult to obtain) continued to be captured and released,” Deluxe reveal.
“October 2011 [the month after the IMAGiNE raids] had more electronic English audio theft than most other months in the dataset. This content was released by many groups including ILLUMINATI, MISTERE, FYA, UnKnOwN and DTRG. Since the enforcement actions against IMAGiNE we have seen several groups with similar release patterns emerge to provide pirated English audio captures.”
“The data implies that the enforcement action towards IMAGiNE impacted the volume of English language audio piracy strongly in September, and other release groups increased their activity in response to IMAGiNE’s departure,” Deluxe add.
The anti-piracy group further notes that audio piracy in December 2011 was down on the same month in the previous year but there was still a high volume of pirated releases in the months following IMAGiNE’s demise. But there was more bad news when Deluxe examined piracy latency – the number of days between a movie being released and subsequently being pirated online.
“The latency period during September 2011, the month of enforcement actions, increased substantially. During the following three months, there was another significant change, with the latency period decreasing substantially.
“This implies that the piracy community re-oriented itself following IMAGiNE’s departure. English language audio was, on average, available online sooner after the theatrical release date than was previously normal when IMAGiNE was active,” Deluxe note.
While the information produced by Deluxe suggests that busting IMAGiNE yielded only short-term success, the report only goes as far as December 2011 and therefore omits the important period starting January 2012 when everything had settled down. We shall have to wait for further information to become available to assess the long term impact the IMAGiNE busts had on movie piracy and whether or not it was worth all the effort.
Source: Busting World’s Biggest Movie Pirates Made Piracy Worse
Navajo actors audition for the first major Hollywood film to be dubbed into Dine: ‘Star Wars’
Members of the Navajo tribe in the southwestern United States are hoping the force will be with them as they dub “Star Wars” into their native Dine language. Two days of auditions began Friday at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona for Navajo wishing to lend their voices to…
