Dutch arrests may have been dry run, U.S. source says

(CNN) -- Two men held in the Netherlands may have been trying to test U.S. airport security by putting bottles with electronic devices attached in checked baggage, a U.S. law enforcement source said Monday.

The men were taken into custody after landing in Amsterdam on a flight from Chicago, Illinois, Dutch prosecutors said. Both men were being held at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport at the request of Dutch national police, airport spokesman Robert Kapel said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said they were arrested after "suspicious items" in their luggage raised concern.

"The items were not deemed to be dangerous in and of themselves, and as we share information with our international partners, Dutch authorities were notified of the suspicious items," the U.S. agency said. "This matter continues to be under investigation."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/30/netherlands.airport.arrests/index.html?hpt=T1#fbid=vBfS9pXfGw5&wom=false

Malaysia mulls landmark trial of GM anti-dengue mosquitoes

Malaysia is considering releasing genetically modified mosquitoes designed to combat dengue fever, in a landmark field trial that has come in for criticism from environmentalists.

In the first experiment of its kind in Asia, 2,000-3,000 male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes would be released in two Malaysian states in October or November.

The insects in the study have been engineered so that their offspring quickly die, curbing the growth of the population in a technique researchers hope could eventually eradicate the dengue mosquito altogether.

Females of the Aedes species are responsible for spreading dengue fever, a sometimes deadly illness that has killed 100 people so far this year in Malaysia alone.

The World Health Organization estimates worldwide infections at 50 million annually. Numbers have grown dramatically in recent decades, due to rapid urbanisation and enhanced mobility that has carried the virus further afield.

The proposal field trial follows a series of lab tests conducted in Malaysia since 2006, and the government is seeking public feedback before moving to the next step.

But environmentalists are not convinced, and are concerned the genetically modified (GM) mosquito could fail to prevent dengue and could also have unintended consequences.

"Once you release these GM mosquitoes into the environment, you have no control and it can create more problems than solving them," said Gurmit Singh, head of the Centre for Environment, Technology and Development.

Face recognition software raises privacy concerns

The news that facial recognition software is to be made freely available to web developers has raised concerns about the pervasive nature of the internet and the threat it poses to people's privacy.

The latest scare story concerns Face.com, a company that has developed a method of identifying people in videos and photographs that it claims is 90 per cent accurate. It works by measuring the arrangement of features such as eyes, nose and mouth.

Although the company is not new, it only made its Photo Finder software feely available recently - and it already claims that 5,000 developers are using it.

The concern is that users will be able to gather information about people armed with only a single photograph of them. Indeed, they do not even need to know the identity of the person in the photograph before they start searching the web for the subject's details.

Gil Hirsch, Face.com's chief executive officer, explained: "You can basically search for people in any photo. You could search for family members on Flickr, in newspapers, or in videos on YouTube."

Of course, the main concern is that people will not search for family members at all. Employers could use it to check up on the extramural activities of their staff, for example. And while the practice of 'Googling' people has become relatively common, the facial recognition aspect takes it a stage further.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/67597,news-comment,technology,face-recognition-software-raises-internet-privacy-concerns-facebook-facecom

http://face.com/

Monster Rat Shot Dead On Housing Estate

Full Body Scanning Vans Now On Your Public Streets

The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

Hay baling fun

GIBBON Slackline Contest at ISPO 2010

Jack Nicholson's hydrogen car

Jack Nicholson is demonstrating his new car in 1978, one that that doesn't run on gasoline but on hydrogen.

All of Harris County's voting machines destroyed in 3-alarm north Houston fire

Harris County Clerk Beverly Kaufman this morning said she is confident of timely, clean elections in November, even as a fire that destroyed the county's entire inventory of 10,000 electronic voting machines still burned.

Kaufman urged voters to cast their ballots early to help the county cope with a possible shortage of equipment on election day.

"Because I don’t expect to have 10,000 pieces to work with, no matter what we do, I’m sure that we’re going to be putting on a full court press urging people to vote early," Kaufman said.

Kaufman said she expected that the fire in a county warehouse in the 600 block of Canino, in north Houston, has destroyed $30 million worth of equipment and caused another $10 million in damage to the building.

Live at Design Miami: Wouter Scheublin’s Walking Table

Live at Design Miami: Wouter Scheublin’s Walking Table from Designer Pages on Vimeo.

http://3rings.designerpages.com/2009/12/09/live-at-design-miami-wouter-scheublin%E2%80%99s-walking-table/

Kodak 1922 Kodachrome Film Test

Some of the earliest color motion pictures you will ever see



The reason old films are dying, especially films from after 1923, is because of copyright term extensions. Thousands of films are turning into vinegary dust because the cost of finding the copyright holder exceeds the money likely to be made restoring it. If the old films had been allowed to fall into the public domain, they could be preserved - the only costs involved would be the preservation and the preservationist could sell copies.

Werkstraf geëist tegen spionerende agent

Het Openbaar Ministerie in Den Haag heeft een werkstraf van 240 uur geëist tegen een Marokkaans-Nederlandse politieman uit Capelle aan den IJssel die informatie zou hebben doorgespeeld aan Marokko. Justitie verdenkt de inmiddels ontslagen brigadier ervan tussen 2006 en 2008 voor Marokko te hebben gespioneerd.

Volgens justitie is de strafeis laag, onder meer omdat de man door de berichtgeving in de media en het verlies van zijn baan al zwaar gestraft is. Bovendien gaat het volgens het OM niet om staatsgeheimen, maar alleen om privacygevoelige informatie uit politieregisters. Verder zou hij door Marokko onder druk zijn gezet om mee te werken.

Eerder leek de man 'slechts' ontslagen te worden, maar nadat Nova aandacht had besteed aan de zaak werd hij alsnog vervolgd.

De uitspraak volgt over twee weken.

http://frontpage.fok.nl/nieuws/401963/1/1/100/werkstraf-ge-ist-tegen-spionerende-agent.html

LOL : Mimoun Ouled Radi krijgt beef

Amazing and funny video awnsering machine australian school

Mexican Marines Find 72 Bodies in No. Mexico

murakami’s “my lonesome cowboy” = $15 million.

When you can do no wrong, your life-sized sculpture of a bright-eyed anime manga-boy jerking off and whipping his jizz into a gigantic lasso around his head will sell at auction for $13.5 million US. Two nights ago at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening, “My Lonesome Cowboy”, estimated to go for $3-$4 million, surpassed expectations and ended up with a $13.5 million closing bid. Add in the 11% house commission and you’ve got yourself a world-famous Murakami for a cool $15.161 million. The only question that remains… where to put it?

http://shapeandcolour.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/murakamis-my-lonesome-cowboy-15-million/

China traffic jam stretches 'nine days, 100km'

A massive traffic jam in China has slowed vehicles to a crawl for nine days near Beijing, local media say.

Vehicles, mostly lorries bound for Beijing, are in a queue for about 100km (62 miles) because of heavy traffic, road works and breakdowns.

The drivers have complained that locals were over-charging them for food and drink while they were stuck.

The situation has now "basically returned to normal," state television said on Monday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11062708

Painting on Water

'It's no different to saying what I had for lunch': Outrage as mother tweets miscarriage from boardroom

Having had two abortions and a miscarriage, Penelope Trunk was certain she didn't want another child.

So when the company boss realised she was losing a baby during a board meeting, she chose to share her relief with 20,000 people on Twitter.

She cheerily announced that she was relieved because it would spare her the trouble of going through with a planned abortion.

Her message read: 'I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f*****-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.'

The 'tweet' was relayed around the world within hours, with angry bloggers calling the divorced mother-of-two callous and uncaring.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1224924/It-different-saying-I-lunch-Woman-Tweeted-miscarriage-defends-herself.html#ixzz0x5G8ysmE

Night time lapse

Perseid Meteor Shower Failure from ph dee on Vimeo.

Nao Robot

When Nao is sad, he hunches his shoulders forward and looks down. When he's happy, he raises his arms, angling for a hug. When frightened, Naohe cowers, and he stays like that until he is soothed with some gentle strokes on his head.

Nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps, except that Nao is a robot — the world's first that can develop and display emotions. He can form bonds with the people he meets depending on how he is treated. The more he interacts with someone, the more Nao learns a person's moods and the stronger the bonds become.

"We're modelling the first years of life," said Lola Cañamero, a computer scientist at the University of Hertforshire who led the project to create Nao's emotions. "We are working on non-verbal cues and the emotions are revealed through physical postures, gestures and movements of the body rather than facial or verbal expression."

In future, say the scientists, robots are likely to act as companions or integrate with the web to order groceries online. They could also provide support for the elderly. In these uses some form of emotional display will be important in making those interactions more natural and more comfortable, Cañamero said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/09/nao-robot-develop-display-emotions

Storm :)

WWII Facebook version!

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, colloquially named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union

In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. Thereafter, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded their respective sides of Poland, dividing the country between them. Part of eastern Finland was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bessarabia.

Signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...........

Your beautiful eyes

Click here to watch them all.

'AIVD runde loksite radicale moslims'

De Telegraaf schrijft vandaag inzage te hebben gehad in documenten over een undercoveroperatie van de AIVD. Het ging hier om een lokwebsite voor radicale Nederlandse moslims. Op deze manier probeerde de inlichtingendienst meer inzicht in moslimradicalen te krijgen.

Inmiddels bestaat de loksite niet meer vanwege de plannen die op de website gesmeed werden. De bezoekers van de website spraken over het hacken van belangrijke websites en de AIVD wilde daar op geen enkele wijze mee in verband worden gebracht. Een bron zegt: "Niemand durfde verantwoordelijkheid te nemen als uitkwam dat deze jihad-hackers waren gefaciliteerd door de AIVD."

De inlichtendienst heeft middels de website ip-adressen van de bezoekers verkregen. Ook kon worden meegelezen met onderlinge boodschappen en wilde men bestanden besmetten met spionagesoftware. De AIVD is niet bereikbaar voor commentaar.

http://frontpage.fok.nl/nieuws/399274/1/1/100/aivd-runde-loksite-radicale-moslims.html

Emulator for Traktor Pro, running on Töken multitouch device.

40 billionaires pledge to give away half of wealth

A little over a year after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett began hatching a plan over dinner to persuade America's wealthiest people to give most of their fortunes to charity, more than three-dozen individuals and families have agreed to take part, campaign organizers announced Wednesday.

In addition to Buffett and Gates — America's two wealthiest individuals, with a combined net worth of $90 billion, according to Forbes — 38 other billionaires have signed The Giving Pledge. They include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entertainment executive Barry Diller, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, media mogul Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, film director George Lucas and investor Ronald Perelman.

"We're off to a terrific start," Buffett, co-founder and chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said in a conference call also attended by Bloomberg and San Francisco hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer and his wife Kat Taylor, founder of OneCalifornia Bank.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38556042/ns/us_news-giving/

Blackberryverbod breidt zich uit

Na de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten heeft nu ook Saudi-Arabië een verbod uitgevaardigd van diensten van de Blackberry. Vanaf vrijdag is het niet meer mogelijk in Saudi-Arabië gebruik te maken van de mail- en messengerdienst van de smartphone. Ook India denkt inmiddels na over een beperking.

De Saudische commissie voor communicatie- en informatietechnologie heeft de drie mobieletelefoonproviders in het land gelast de Blackberrydiensten te blokkeren omdat Blackberry niet voldoet aan de regels van het land. De reden is dat de berichten in code worden verstuurd en niet door de veiligheidsdiensten zijn te controleren. Ook in de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten was dat de reden voor het verbod.

De makers van de smartphone zijn nog in overleg met de Saudische autoriteiten om te proberen het verbod af te wenden.


http://frontpage.fok.nl/nieuws/398939/1/1/100/blackberryverbod-breidt-zich-uit.html

Police Raid Latin King Drug Ring In Bronx. N.Y! (Getting $40,000 A Day / 14 Million A Year)

Google and CIA Plough Millions Into Huge 'Recorded Future' Monitoring Project

Hypnotist vs Police Officer

100 clone cows on UK farms: Shocking evidence of how 'super calves' have secretly spread into our food system

More than 100 cows descended from cloned cattle have been born on British farms, sparking alarm about their secret spread into the food system.

An investigation has been launched after a farmer claimed milk from a cow born to a clone had gone into high street shops without any special labelling.

The Daily Mail has now learnt at least 105 Holstein cattle descended from a clone have been born on British farms in the past four years.

The Food Standards Agency watchdog doesn't even know where the cows at the centre of the investigation are, it has emerged, because the body responsible for registering all pedigree cows and bulls on farms, Holstein UK, would not disclose the information.

The Mail revealed yesterday that milk from the direct offspring of a clone had been put on shelves, despite this being illegal.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299773/100-clone-cows-UK-farms-How-Super-calves-spread-food-system.html#ixzz0vXGQK9wN




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299773/100-clone-cows-UK-farms-How-Super-calves-spread-food-system.html

Drugsverdachte vrij na vormfout

De rechtbank in Maastricht heeft een 51-jarige drugsverdachte uit Geleen vrijgesproken omdat een onbevoegde hulpofficier van justitie hem bij zijn aanhouding op 13 april had laten fouilleren en een huiszoeking had laten doen. De inspecteur van politie had vergeten zijn certificaat van hulpofficier van justitie te verlengen.

Een woordvoerster van het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) in Maastricht bevestigde dinsdag berichtgeving hierover in de Limburgse kranten. Bij de huiszoeking van de man werden soft- en harddrugs gevonden, evenals wapens en munitie. Volgens de rechtbank is dit bewijs onrechtmatig verkregen. Het OM gaat in hoger beroep.

http://frontpage.fok.nl/nieuws/398648/1/1/100/drugsverdachte-vrij-na-vormfout.html