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Friday, November 1, 2013

French director slams Taiwan paparazzi

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — French film director Luc Besson on Friday slammed paparazzi in Taiwan for interfering with the shooting of his latest film starring Scarlett Johansson, but denied reports that he considered leaving the island early to underscore his disgust over their actions.

Besson spent 11 days in Taipei filming "Lucy" with Johansson, who plays a drug mule whose contact with a "super-serum" endows her with superhuman abilities.

Meeting reporters in Taipei a day after he finished shooting the Taiwan part of the film, Besson blasted the paparazzi for dogging the production, saying it was his right as a director to keep details, such as Johansson's hair style and her wardrobe, out of the public eye until "Lucy" is released.

"We don't want pictures with new dresses of Scarlett," he said. "Sometime I lost a bit of my concentration because I'm bothered by that."

"Shooting at nighttime was a nightmare" because of constant paparazzi intrusions, he said.

Besson singled out two unnamed agencies from Hong Kong for special condemnation, but labeled as incorrect press reports that he wanted to leave Taiwan early to register his disapproval of their actions.

"I read in the newspaper that I was ready to leave," he said. "This is wrong."

Besson also said it was incorrect to say that drug smuggling was the focus of the film, saying it comprised only a very small part.

"The film is about pure intelligence," he said, declining to elaborate. "We're basically using 10 percent of our brain. What happens when we use more?"

Besson said work on the film would take another year, and that it was still too early to talk about a release date.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-director-slams-taiwan-paparazzi-082854500.html
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iFixit takes apart the iPad Air, doesn't score well for repairability

As is customary with any new Apple release, the guys over at iFixit have got their hands on an iPad Air and proceeded to do what they do best; take it apart. It's as cool as ever to see what's inside, but the downer is that the Air scores pretty low on the repairability front.

iFixit has given the iPad Air a pretty lowly 2/10. On the positive side the LCD and glass on the front are separate components, so that at least is an aid to any replacements due to cracking, or worse. The battery causes some issues, not so much from a soldering perspective, but from the amount of glue holding it in place and spring contacts on the logic board that traps it in place. Looks to have been a frustrating time trying to get that thing out of there!

Any DIY-repairers out there disappointed with what you're seeing?

Source: iFixit

iPad Air
Apple's full-sized iPad gets slimmed down. Features include:

A7 custom processor
Improved LTE 4G support
FaceTime HD camera
iOS 7 software

Complete preview >

Released
November, 2013

Alternatives
Retina iPad mini, iPad 2

Replacements
iPad Air 2 (iPad 6)
Fall, 2014

Resources
Buyers guide
Help forum

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/DFBtIyY7PY4/story01.htm
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Iraqi PM: Terror 'found a second chance' in Iraq

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, center, walks with Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., right, and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, before their meeting. Earlier, the prime minister met with Vice President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki listens during a meeting with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and the committee's ranking Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, talks with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., right, during a luncheon meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, is greeted by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., center, and the committee's ranking Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, during a luncheon meeting. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Terrorists "found a second chance" to thrive in Iraq, the nation's prime minister said Thursday in asking for new U.S. aid to beat back a bloody insurgency that has been fueled by the neighboring Syrian civil war and the departure of American troops from Iraq two years ago.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a packed auditorium at the U.S. Institute of Peace that he needs additional weapons, help with intelligence and other assistance, and claimed the world has a responsibility to help because terrorism is an international concern.

"If the situation in Iraq is not well treated, it will be disastrous for the whole world," said al-Maliki, whose comments were translated from Arabic. "Terrorism does not know a single religion, or confession, or a single border. They carry their rotten ideas everywhere. They carry bad ideas instead of flowers. Al-Qaida is a dirty wind that wants to spread worldwide."

The new request comes nearly two years after al-Maliki's government refused to let U.S. forces remain in Iraq with legal immunity that the Obama administration insisted was necessary to protect troops. President Barack Obama had campaigned on ending the nearly nine-year war in Iraq and took the opportunity offered by the legal dispute to pull all troops out.

Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq between the 2003 invasion and the 2011 withdrawal. More than 100,000 Iraqi were killed in that time.

Al-Maliki will meet Friday with Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side.

Within months of the U.S. troops' departure, violence began creeping up in the capital and across the country as Sunni Muslim insurgents lashed out, angered by a widespread belief that Sunnis have been sidelined by the Shiite-led government. The State Department says at least 6,000 Iraqis have been killed in attacks so far this year, and suicide bombers launched 38 strikes in the last month alone.

"So the terrorists found a second chance," al-Maliki said — a turnabout from an insurgency that was mostly silenced by the time the U.S. troops left.

Al-Maliki largely blamed the Syrian civil war for the rise in Iraq's violence, although he acknowledged that homegrown insurgents are to blame for the vast number of car bombs, suicide bombings and drive-by shootings that have roiled Baghdad and the rest of the nation.

The prime minister warned about the consequences of a political power grab by al-Qaida fighters who are aligned with the Sunni rebellion that is seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. But al-Maliki insisted Iraq is remaining neutral in the Syrian unrest, although Baghdad has been accused of allowing Iranian aid to Assad's forces through its country. The Syrian civil war largely breaks down along sectarian lines.

Sectarian tensions also have been rising in Iraq, but al-Maliki vehemently denied they are the cause for the spread of violence and noted that Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds all have been killed by insurgent attacks.

"There is no problem between Sunnis and Shiites," al-Maliki said flatly. He added: "Al-Qaida believes they should kill all those who do not think alike."

Al-Maliki said he will ask Obama for new assistance to bolster Iraq's military and fight al-Qaida. That could include speeding up the delivery of U.S. aircraft, missiles, interceptors and other weapons, and improving national intelligence systems. Separately, Iraq's ambassador to the U.S. also did not rule out the possibility of asking the U.S. to send military special forces or additional CIA advisers to Iraq to help train and assist counterterror troops.

Shortly after al-Maliki's speech, White House spokesman Jay Carney called continued U.S. aid to Iraq "necessary" and said "denying that assistance would be contrary to our interests."

Obama is expected to raise concerns about Iraq's violence — and ways to reduce it — in his Friday meeting with al-Maliki, Carney said. "And inclusive democratic governance is a key piece of the picture there and always has been," he said.

"What's important to remember, though, is that the violence we're talking about, the attacks we're talking about, are not coming from within the political system," Carney said. 'They're coming from al-Qaida and its affiliates."

Administration officials consider the insurgency, which has rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant, a major and increasing threat both to Iraq and the U.S.

Al-Maliki has been accused for years of a heavy-handed leadership that refuses to compromise and, to some, oversteps his authority against political enemies. "I never stepped on the Constitution," he responded Thursday to a question about his government, and defended Iraq's warming relationship with Iran's Shiite clerical regime as necessary for a government looking to work amicably with its neighbors.

He sidestepped a question about whether he will seek another term as prime minister in national elections scheduled for April 2014, calling it a decision best left to the Iraqi people.

Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Iraq scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the U.S. must convince al-Maliki to move toward a more inclusive government to stabilize Iraq and the rest of the region.

"We have to be careful to set clear lines, and not arm Maliki against the growing mass of legitimate Sunni opposition and the much smaller mix of violent Sunni Islamist extremists," Cordesman wrote in an analysis released Thursday. "But, we need to try."

___

Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-31-United%20States-Iraq/id-20fc9ac7b07a44498b42a093ce6da2f8
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Silent Circle, Lavabit unite for 'Dark Mail' encrypted email project

Two privacy-focused email providers have launched the Dark Mail Alliance, a project to engineer an email system with robust defenses against spying.

Silent Circle and Lavabit abruptly halted their encrypted email services in August, saying they could no longer guarantee email would remain private after court actions against Lavabit, reportedly an email provider for NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Meet Lavabit's founder: An American hero hiding in plain sight. | Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. | Stay abreast of key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]

Their idea, presented at the Inbox Love email conference in Mountain View on Wednesday, is for an open system that could be widely implemented and which offers much stronger security and privacy. As envisioned, Dark Mail would shield both the content of an email and its "metadata," including "to" and "from" data, IP addresses and headers. The email providers hope a version will be ready by next year.

"The issue we are trying to deal with is that email was created 40 years ago," Jon Callas, CTO and founder of Silent Circle, in a phone interview. "It wasn't created to handle any of the security problems we have today."

Silent Circle, Lavabit and at least one VPN provider, CryptoSeal, shut down their services fearing a court order forcing the turnover of a private SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) key, which could be used to decrypt communications.

Lavabit was held in contempt of court for resisting an order to turn over its SSL key, which in theory allowed the government to decrypt not only Snowden's communications but also those of its 400,000 users. Ladar Levison, Lavabit's founder, is appealing.

Callas said Dark Mail is a collaboration with Levison. Rather than create a closed email service, they decided to design Dark Mail with open-source software components that could be used by any email provider.

"We need 1,000 Lavabits all around the world," he said.

Microsoft's David Dennis, lead principal program manager for the company's Outlook.com webmail portal, said Dark Mail is an "interesting proposal."

"We pay attention to any new innovations, protocols, standards and proposals impacting online communications," Dennis wrote in an email. "And we're always open to discussions with potential partners."

Representatives of Google and Yahoo who attended Inbox Love did not have an immediate comment.

Dark Mail will be crafted around XMPP, a Web messaging protocol known by its nickname Jabber, along with another encryption protocol created by Silent Circle called SCIMP (Silent Circle Instant Message Protocol), Callas said.

An adapter will be built that will enable Dark Mail within different email clients. "There's no reason why you couldn't modify Outlook and Exchange to do this," he said.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/silent-circle-lavabit-unite-dark-mail-encrypted-email-project-229906?source=rss_applications
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Amazon Has The Moto X For 50 Bucks

Following a recent across the board price drop to $100, Amazon is taking another 40 dollars off the price of the Moto X for AT&T subscribers, and $50 off for Verizon users. This the best Android phone for most people, and even if you're enamored by today's reveal of the Nexus 5, this is quite a bit cheaper.

Kerry: U.S. spying 'reached too far' in some cases

Washington (AFP) - The United States has said in some cases its surveillance program has gone too far, an unprecedented admission in its tense row with Europe over US spying against allies.

After 10 days of scandal with key European allies, a statement Thursday by Secretary of State John Kerry was the first to explicitly acknowledge overstepping by US intelligence.

Kerry justified the surveillance in broad terms, citing the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, as well as attacks in London, Madrid and elsewhere to argue that the US and other countries have had to come together to fight "extremism in the world that is hell-bent and determined to try to kill people and blow people up and attack governments."

He said US intelligence has since 2001 averted attacks with intercepts of communications. But he acknowledged, without going into specifics, that at times it has been too much.

Kerry also sought to give assurances that such steps, which have roiled close allies like Germany, would not be repeated.

"I assure you, innocent people are not being abused in this process, but there's an effort to try to gather information," Kerry told a London conference via video link. "And yes, in some cases, it has reached too far inappropriately."

"And the president, our president, is determined to try to clarify and make clear for people, and is now doing a thorough review in order that nobody will have the sense of abuse," he said.

Kerry added that what Washington was trying to do was, in a "random way," find ways of determining if there were threats that needed responding to.

"And in some cases, I acknowledge to you, as has the president, that some of these actions have reached too far, and we are going to make sure that does not happen in the future," he said.

Recent allegations and reports of widespread spying by the US National Security Agency have sparked a major rift in trans-Atlantic ties.

This week German Chancellor Angela Merkel angrily confronted President Barack Obama with allegations that the NSA was snooping on her phone, saying it would amount to a "breach of trust."

A German intelligence delegation and a separate group of EU lawmakers were in the US capital Wednesday to confront their American allies about the alleged bugging.

Kerry's remarks -- released in a State Department transcript -- came in response to a question addressed to both him and British Foreign Secretary William Hague about government surveillance.

Kerry spent a good portion of his answer justifying the collection of data as necessary due to the threat of terrorism and suggested Washington was not alone in doing so.

"Many, many, many parts of the world have been subject to these terrorist attacks," he said.

"And in response to them, the United States and others came together -- others, I emphasize to you -- and realized that we're dealing in a new world where people are willing to blow themselves up."

He added: "We have actually prevented airplanes from going down, buildings from being blown up, and people from being assassinated because we’ve been able to learn ahead of time of the plans."

Kerry also lashed out at some of the reporting about alleged spying, sparked by leaks from fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, wanted by Washington on espionage charges.

"Just the other day... there was news in the papers of 70 million people being listened to. No, they weren't. It didn't happen," Kerry said.

"There's an enormous amount of exaggeration in this reporting from some reporters out there."

US intelligence chiefs have said these reports are based on a misinterpretation of an NSA slide leaked to the media by Snowden.

Rather than siphoning off the records of tens of millions of calls in Europe, as the slide seems to suggest, they argue that the data was in many cases gathered and shared by European agencies.

Still, fresh US spy allegations keep cropping around the world on a near daily basis.

Indonesia summoned the Australian ambassador in Jakarta Friday over a "totally unacceptable" report that his embassy was among diplomatic posts in Asia being used in a vast American surveillance operation.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, amplifying an earlier report by the German magazine Der Spiegel, said earlier this week that a top-secret map leaked by Snowden showed 90 US surveillance facilities at diplomatic missions worldwide.

The paper also reported that Australian embassies in Asia were being used as part of the US-led spying network.

On Wednesday, meanwhile, a report in the Washington Post alleged that NSA technicians had tapped into Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, winning access to vast amounts of private data.

The report said a program dubbed MUSCULAR, operated with the NSA's British counterpart GCHQ, can intercept data directly from the fiber-optic cables used by the US Internet giants.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-says-cases-us-spying-reached-too-far-020926694.html
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Behind the Blue Veil: Film Review

The Bottom Line

This powerful if scattershot documentary sheds valuable light on its little-known subject.

The Tuareg people of Mali don’t have it easy these days. These nomadic tribesmen, who have lived in the Sahara region for over 2,000 years, are currently beset by such crises as severe poverty, a lack of food, water and medicine, and political pressures that threaten to drive them from existence. Their travails are movingly conveyed in Robyn Simon’s (Transformation: The Life & Legacy of Werner Erhard) documentary Behind the Blue Veil, the title of which stems from the trademark blue robes worn by the people dye their skin blue over time.

The film’s central figure is Mamatel, the son of a Tuareg chief who works as a music promoter in the capital city of Bamako. This charismatic, articulate figure serves as the viewer’s guide to the culture of the “blue people of the Sahara,” who are fighting for independence from the repressive government even as Al Qaeda militants threaten to overcome the region.

Commentary by Mamatel and various scholars and academics testify to the fact that that the Tuareg are a matriarchal, monogamous society with a rich cultural heritage that is seemingly on the verge of extinction. Among the other figures profiled in the film is twelve-year-old Salah, who seeks an education in Timbuktu, a city facing severe economic pressures due to its dangerously volatile conditions that has made it off limits to tourists.

The film is more impressionistic than informative, lacking the necessary dramatic structure to make it truly compelling. But it well succeeds in its goal of shedding light on these little-known indigenous people, even if at times it more resembles a National Geographic pictorial essay than a fully realized documentary.

Opens: Friday, Nov. 1 (Symon Productions)

Director/producer/editor: Robyn Simon

Executive producers: Linda Simon, James L. Foght, Martha Foght, CA Danella Foundation

Composer: Miriam Cutler

Not rated, 62 min.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/reviews/film/~3/P8G1WhQ-M8Q/behind-blue-veil-film-review-652156
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