A car bomb has exploded outside a hospital in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi. Reports on the number killed by the blast vary between 3 to 15 people, with up to 30 wounded. One restaurant was destroyed and nearby buildings were heavily damaged by the explosion. Benghazi was…
Military jet comes down in Yemen
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Cleveland police face scrutiny following three Ohio women’s rescue
The three women who were found living captive in a west side residential neighborhood, Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus, were held for about a decade by the suspect, Ariel Castro, 52, evidently with the assistance of his brothers, Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50.Since the three were freed by neighbors who contacted police and broke down the home’s front door, more individuals are coming forward with stories of odd events, and phone calls to police that failed to lead them to the trio’s location.Rescued with the three women on Monday was a 6-year-old girl, who police have said is Berry’s daughter. In a disturbing development, authorities believe she would have been conceived and born during Berry’s captivity.Israel Lugo, a neighbor, tells Reuters that she had called the police in November of 2011 after his sister saw a girl at the house holding a baby and crying for help. And yet, according to Lugo, police officers came and banged on the door several times but left after no one answered.Another local resident, Anthony Westry, has stated that a little girl could often be seen peering looking out of the attic window of Ariel Castro’s home.”She was always looking out the window,” Westry told Reuters. Castro, a local bus driver, would take her to the park to play very early in the morning, “not around the time you would take kids to play,” he added.Perhaps even more surprising is that Children and Family Services authorities with the city were at the Castro residence in January of 2004 following a report of a child having been left on a school bus.According to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, members of the agency “knocked on the door but were unsuccessful in connection with making any contact with anyone inside that home.” According to police, Ariel Castro was extensively interviewed during an investigation into that incident, though no criminal intent was determined.Other details slowly being revealed include one neighbor who claims he saw a naked woman crawling on her hands and knees in the backyard a few years ago. According to CBS News, another neighbor had heard pounding on the home’s doors, and noticed plastic bags placed over the windows.Whether local police were guilty of any negligence remains to be seen, as the FBI continues to investigate the Castro house, and authorities continue to collect details regarding the case. Neighbors also wonder whether there was more they could have done, in light of what turned out to be critical clues to the three women’s captivity.Neighbor Joe Popow told Reuters that he found it chilling to have known Ariel Castro.”After all this has happened, I think, Oh my God, what did I miss? This person came to my house,” he said. … Read More
Foreigners snatching up property from cash-strapped Italians
According to Bloomberg, the demand from German customers has jumped significantly over the last year.Italy with its mild climate, lots of cultural attractions and developed infrastructure has long been a popular destination for foreigners looking to buy a holiday home. It’s not just the Germans, but British and Russian buyers who are looking for a place in the sun, Bloomberg reports.“This is a good time for foreigners to buy,” Bloomberg quotes Francesca Andreini, head of Italian-based real estate agency Case e Ville. “Properties that cost 2.5 million euros have come down to 1.5 million euros due to taxes and the economic downturn.” She added that successful haggling can slash 30 percent off the price during negotiations.Foreign investment has grown with the contraction of the domestic Italian residential property market. Sales shrank by almost 26 percent last year on the back of tighter mortgage lending, two years of recession, and uncertainty over a new tax on primary residences.A study from the Scenari Immobiliari research institute shows second-home sales to foreign buyers increased 14 percent in 2012 accounting for 2.1 billion euros ($2.8 billion) of non-Italian investment. Most buyers since 2009 turned out to be Germans who accounted for about 40 percent of the deals by foreigners. Deals with Britons amounted to 18 percent and Russians came out the third most popular buyers accounting for 13 percent of the transactions.Engel & Voelkers realty agent Yasemin Rosenmaier engaged in property sale in Italy told Bloomberg that more and more Germans are buying property in Italy each year. According to Rosenmaier’s experience “60 percent of our closings are with Germans, which is much higher than in previous years.” Rosenmaier explains that the growing demand for property is based on the “fear of inflation, the uncertainty on the financial markets, fear of what happened in Cyprus,” the latest European country to get an international bailout.According to a survey conducted in summer 2012 by the Engel & Voelkers agency and vacation-rental website HomeAway.com, about 43 percent of those polled claimed they consider vacation properties a form of retirement savings and around 25 percent saw such an investment as a hedge against inflation. The study revealed that most of the properties are bought in Germany, followed by Spain, Austria and Italy. … Read More
“Killer Joe” Sues VPN-Using BitTorrent Pirates
Movie studio Voltage is no stranger to suing BitTorrent users.
The company has pioneered mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States and is estimated to have made a lot of money doing so.
This week another Voltage movie landed in court, with a series of lawsuits filed under the flag of “Killer Joe Nevada LLC” for the black comedy crime movie Killer Joe.
The film in question grossed disappointing box office earnings, but these fresh lawsuits offer new revenue potential.
On the surface the suits don’t seem to bring much new to the table. The complaints, filed at the Delaware District Court, are pretty standard and describe how a handful of defendants are responsible for distributing the movie all across the world without permission.
“Thus, a Defendant’s distribution of even one unlawful copy of a motion picture can result in the nearly instantaneous worldwide distribution of that single copy to a limitless number of people. The Plaintiff now seeks redress for this rampant infringement of its exclusive rights,” the complaints read.
The purpose of the lawsuits is to reveal the identities of the file-sharers who are only known by their IP-addresses, so they can be encouraged to settle. To accomplish this the movie studio asked the court to grant a subpoena so they can order associated ISPs to give up their customers’ details.
Usually the list of ISPs is limited to residential Internet providers, but in the Killer Joe suits we see also see several IPs that belong to hosting provider Leaseweb. These IPs could run a seedbox for example, but a few of them trace back to privacy boasting VPN service SpotFlux.
The question rising now is how private these seedboxes or SpotFlux users really are. VPNs and seedboxes are often advertised as anonymous ways to download, but when the hosting company or VPN provider keeps logs that can link an IP to a user there is not much privacy left.
TorrentFreak asked both Leaseweb and SpotFlux what kind of information they will be able to share when the subpoena comes in, but we have yet to receive a response. In its privacy policy Spotflux explains that it will comply with court orders, but that the company keeps logs to a minimum.
Why the movie company is targeting VPN and other Leaseweb IP-addresses is a mystery. Conspiratorial thinkers may suggest that they want to crush people’s privacy, but the more likely explanation is that they didn’t bother to examine who owns the IPs.
After all, the true purpose of these lawsuits is to get the personal details of infringers with the least possible effort.
IP-addresses from one of the Killer Joe mass-lawsuits
Source: “Killer Joe” Sues VPN-Using BitTorrent Pirates
Blast plant fined for lack of risk management plan, claimed ‘no fire danger’
Complaints were made in June 2006 regarding a strong smell of ammonia emanating from the plant, according to reports publicized by The Dallas Morning News (DMN). The concerns prompted Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to investigate. The plant was fined later in August by the EPA, which imposed a fine of $2,300 for failure to have a risk-management plan that was in line with federal standards. Such federal regulations are in place to ensure the prevention of chemical accidents through safeguards. A later report filed by the plant itself with EPA stated “no” under fire or explosive risks, saying that the, “worst possible scenario … would be a 10-minute release of ammonia gas that would injure no one.” They went on to say that their ‘second-worst’ scenario would be a leak from a broken hose used to transfer the product, which would also not result in any injuries. Regulators in Texas were fully aware that the fertilizer plant harbored two 12,000-gallon tanks of anhydrous ammonia and was near a school and residential neighborhood. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) online records also show that there have been no federal inspections of West Fertilizer Co. over the past five years. The OSHA itself has repeatedly come under fire for being “dangerously ineffective” in protecting the health and safety of workers across the US.“The regional investigator described the area surrounding the facility as residential and farmland. There are two schools located within 3,000 ft. [1km] of this facility,” said the DMN report. A middle school, a nursing home and a hospital were all within a 1,500 feet radius of the plant when the explosion occurred, killing up to 15 people and injuring some 160 others. The West Fertilizer Co. itself reported having as much as 54,000lbs (24.5 tonnes) of anhydrous ammonia on site. “It’s revealing some of the weaknesses of the US state and its regulatory architecture,” Professor Sreeram Chaula, a world affairs analyst, told RT.“What has happened in Texas is symptomatic of the larger issue of world economy – we have lost any moorings in terms of how to regulate and manage capitalist industries,” he said. … Read More
Activists claim Arkansas oil spill diverted into wetland
Activists with the group Tar Sands Blockade published new videos on Sunday showing oil from the Arkansas pipeline rupture purportedly diverted from a residential neighborhood into a wetland area to keep it out sight and, most importantly, out of the media. While it’s not clear if the oil was…
