The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) is a hacker collective that has made its name disrupting media outlets it perceives as against Syrian President Bashar Assad and sympathetic to Syrian rebel forces. The anonymous hackers have previously infiltrated the Associated Press, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and the Onion, a parody news site. Twelve posts were published on the Financial Times’ website Friday afternoon with the title “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.” The news organization’s official Twitter feeds bore a similar message, reading “The Syrian Electronic Army was here.” One tweet, quickly removed, linked to a YouTube video of an execution. “We have now locked those accounts and are grateful for Twitter’s help on this,” Robert Shrimsley, the managing editor of FT.com, said in the Financial Times. “Unfortunately this is an increasingly common issue for major news organizations.” Earlier this week the New York Times reported it “was subjected to denial of service attacks,” meaning the outlet’s web site was “temporarily unavailable to a small number of users.”By instigating a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) hackers falsify Internet users and turn them onto one specific page, overwhelming that site with traffic. The New York Times would not reveal whether the SEA or another group was responsible for the DDoS attack earlier this week. Real consequences of an attack showed themselves last month when the SEA announced, under the guise of the Associated Press’ Twitter, that the White House had been attacked and US President Barack Obama was injured. Stocks on Wall Street immediately plummeted before the confusion lifted. One SEA hacker, who identified himself as “The3 Pr0” to the New York Times, said the collective has little difficulty breaching high profile websites. Their method of choice, in the AP incident for example, had been to send out a net of duplicitous emails to reporters requesting log-in information. When the results come in the SEA simply uses that code to access whatever they can. The process is known as phishing. … Read More
Every television newscast is a staged event
Focus on the network evening news. This is where the staging is done well. … Read More
“Downton Abbey” inspires retail line
ITV’s surpise hit “Downton Abbey” is expanding its global empire with a “range of products,” turning itself into a brand. According to a CNBC interview with Gareth Neame, the show’s executive producer and production company Carnival Films’ managing director, you’ll soon be able to wear “Downtown Abbey”, cook like “Downtown Abbey,” smell like “Downton Abbey,” look like “Downton Abbey,” write like “Downton Abbey” and sit in rooms like “Downton Abbey”: “We’ll be working across an entire range of products coming out this year. From fashion, apparel and homeware and furniture to wallpapers, beauty products and stationary,” Neame, who is also the show’s executive producer, told CNBC. “Some of these things have been available since 2012 and we publish books and have made a music album, but the more complex products take time,” he said, adding that there would be even more scope for merchandizing in the future.Continue Reading… … Read More
Pakistan – Four newspapers, TV news station accused of violating anti-terrorism law
Four of the most widely-read Urdu-language newspapers in the southwestern province of Balochistan – Mashriq, Express, Intikhab and Jang – are being investigated under the anti-terrorism law for publishing a statement by the banned Balochistan Liberation Army in which it claimed responsibility for the murder of a policeman. Two of these newspapers – Mashriq and Jang – and the TV station Geo News are also being investigated for carrying an anti-democratic diatribe by Hakeemullah Masood, the head (…) … Read More
Iranian scientist says he has built a machine that can predict the future
A scientist from Tehran, Iran, claims to have invented a machine that can predict the future of an individual with 98 percent accuracy. 27-year-old Ali Razeghi, managing director of Iran’s Centre for Strategic Inventions, said the device uses a complex set of algorithms to predict anywhere between five and eight… … Read More
Katherine Mangu-Ward on Teachers Unions and Virtual Learning
In 2012, education technology
firms ;attracted ;$1.1 billion from venture capitalists,
angel investors, corporations, and private equity—an order of
magnitude more than the industry was pulling in 2002. But gains for
the industry could easily be wiped away by politicans. While Wall
Street’s interest in online education may bode well for
entrepreneurs and students, writes Managing Editor Katherine
Mangu-Ward in Slate, bullish investors and parents would
do well to listen to war stories from weary education policy
wonks. View this article.
… Read More
Russian oil could take Kazakh route to China in 2014
“Such negotiations are underway right now, starting in 2014,” Interfax quoted Kazakh Energy Minister Sauat Mynbayev as saying. “We and Russia have the possibility of carrying out swap operations. Perhaps Russia will ask to ship the oil received in swap operations to Alashankou.” The minister added that the “actual swap operations in the amount of 7 million tons” will be discussed during the talks with Moscow. Mynbayev’s statement contradicts the public stance of Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft, which believes it would be economically unprofitable to ship Russian oil, particularly the oil of state-owned Rosneft, to China through the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline. “We don’t support this initiative because transshipment of oil through Kazakhstan to China entails serious costs for Transneft,” Transneft’s CEO Nikolay Tokarev said. “We lose revenue. This is $1.5 billion in losses for transshipments.” According to Tokarev, Kazakh transshipments could proceed if that lost revenue is compensated in the budget, as Rosneft has not yet asked Transneft to pump oil in this direction.”We know that there are such plans, but we haven’t been approached with this subject,” he said. Kazakh experts believe that there are political reasons behind Russia’s reticence to ship oil to China through the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline.”The Russians simply don’t want to go to China, I think,” Malik Saligereyev, managing director of Kazakhstan’s Samruk-Kazyna state fund told Interfax. “This is simply a little political. Probably this is related to the fact that the Russians themselves don’t want to go.” Saligereyev stressed that he sees the project advantageous for all parties involved, and that Kazakhstan has created “ideal” conditions for the shipment of Russian oil, as it agreed to offer a discount rate on the route The Atasu-Alashankou pipeline has not been used by Russian companies since 2010, before which Gazprom Neft and TNK-BP delivered oil to China through Kazakhstan. China, which is rapidly becoming Russia’s biggest oil partner, has proposed the Atasu-Alashankou as a possible shipping route on several occasion.During new Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow last week, Rosneft agreed to increase exports to China by an additional 31 million tons over the next 25 years. In 2013, Russia plans to increase its oil supplies to the country by 1 million tons through the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean oil pipeline. From 2015 to 2017, Rosneft may also transport 7 million tons of oil to Asia by sea, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. … Read More
