Judge says he suffered over decision to convict Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for Kercher murder

Properly-Designed Rough Surfaces can Reduce Drag: Study

Majorly, objects moving through water are smooth. But as a research, a study carried out by a group of researchers from UCLA, bumpiness can be better in certain cases.
Prof. John Kim from the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at UCLA said that some rough surfaces are able to reduce skin-friction drag. Before, conducting the study, they used to believe contrary to the same.
In their study, fluid movement was monitored between two surfaces coated with small ridge. The study researchers found very astonishing results that the rough surface was able to reduce drag in bumpy conditions generated by the frictions of moving water.
Studies have been taken on the topic earlier as well, but not much success has been achieved. In the current study, the study researchers have modeled a superhydrophobic surface. The surface was coated with ridges and was positioned in the direction of water flow.
Laminar and turbulent flows, bother were modeled. To their surprise, the drag reduction was found to be greater in turbulent conditions. The revelation of the same has been published in the American Institute of Physics.
Prof. Kim said about properly-designed rough surfaces, "It could lead to significant energy savings and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions".

California declares drought emergency

Los Angeles: California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency on Friday due to what could be the western US state’s worst drought in a century, which has sparked wildfires and hurt farmers.

The declaration allows authorities to access federal help to battle the dry spell that has left huge swathes of tinder-dry forest vulnerable to going up in flames.

On Thursday, a massive blaze raged just outside Los Angeles, damaging several homes and forcing residents to evacuate the area, where the fire risk had been elevated for weeks.

Brown urged state residents to reduce their water use by at least 20 per cent.

“I’ve declared this emergency and I’m calling on all Californians to conserve water in every way possible,” he said in a statement.

“We can’t make it rain,” he added.

“But we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities, and increased fires in both urban and rural areas.”

Brown told reporters in San Francisco that the current conditions were possibly “the worst drought that California has ever seen since records [began] about 100 years ago,” media reports said.

The region is suffering its third dry winter in a row, highlighted by the Los Angeles inferno.

California and other western US states are routinely hit with wildfires during the summer, but winter blazes, like the ones burning currently, are relatively rare.

California’s rivers and reservoirs have reached record lows, with only 20 per cent of the normal average supplies of water from melting snowpack, which flows down from mountains like the Sierra Nevada.

“Water years 2012 and 2013 were dry statewide, especially in parts of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California,” said the state’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) in its latest drought update.

“Water year 2014, which began on October 1st, continues this trend. Precipitation in some areas of the state is tracking at about the driest year of record.”

Farmer Mark Fontanilla was among dozens of people who staged a protest outside the state capitol in Sacramento on Thursday, urging Brown to do more.

“You can turn off your taps and minimise your pool and all that, but until we build more dams and increase the water storage, and get these clowns out of office, we’re gonna be importing our food from China,” he told KCRA television.

On average, half of California’s rain falls in December, January and February, the DWR noted, lamenting the lack of precipitation but saying it had not yet given up hope of some this winter.

“It is still too early, however, to call this water year, and Mother Nature may surprise us,” it said.

Six more U.S. retailers hit by Target-like hacks

Security firm IntelCrawler also identified a 17-year-old Russian it says wrote the BlackPOS malware, a version of which was used against Target

 

IDG News Service - Cybercriminals have stolen payment card data from six more U.S. retailers using similar point-of-sale malware that compromised Target, a computer crime intelligence company said Friday.

The conclusion comes from a study of members-only forums where cybercriminals buy and sell data and malicious software tools, said Dan Clements, president of IntelCrawler, which conducted the analysis.
The retailers have not been publicly named, but IntelCrawler is providing technical information related to the breaches to law enforcement, Clements said in a telephone interview Friday.
IntelCrawler has also identified a 17-year-old Russian who it says created the BlackPOS malware, which intercepts unencrypted payment card data after a card is swiped. Security experts believe malware based on BlackPOS was used against Target.
The teenager, who goes by the online nickname "ree4," sold more than 40 copies of BlackPOS to cybercriminals in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to forum postings IntelCrawler analyzed.
Clements said IntelCrawler is "90 percent" sure of its finding, based on the forum postings and sources it communicated with.
The forum posts indicate the teenager sold the malware for US$2,000 or for a share of the profits that came from monetizing stolen payment card details, Clements said.
BlackPOS was also sold to "carding" websites such as .rescator, Track2.name and Privateservices.biz that trade in stolen card details, according to IntelCrawler.
BlackPOS was originally called Kaptoxa, which is Russian slang for potato. Clements said the Russian teenager eventually renamed the malware BlackPOS during a fresh marketing push.
Dallas-based security company iSight Partners wrote in a report earlier this week on the Target hack, which it called the "Kaptoxa operation." It says the hackers used a high level of skill to gain stealthy access to the retailer's network.
Since early 2013, IntelCrawler has seen a brisk trade in login credentials for POS terminals on underground forums, suggesting cybercriminals are still finding gaps in industry security recommendations for how payment card data is handled.
Cybercriminals were selling "remote desktop protocol" credentials for POS terminals, which would allow them access to the machines, Clements said.
In many cases, default passwords had not been changed on the terminals, which were located in the U.S., Australia and Canada, he said. In other cases, cybercriminals were successfully trying many combinations of usernames and passwords to find the right one, known as a brute-force attack.

 

 

Sunanda Pushkar's death sudden, unnatural, reveals autopsy report

2.30 pm: In some starling revelations, the Board of senior AIIMS doctors who conducted the autopsy on Sunanda Pushkar, concluded that the post mortem suggests that it was a case of 'sudden unnatural death'.

However, Dr Sudhir Gupta, Autopsy Board AIIMS ruled out the presence of poison in her body. Dr Guota also mentioned that there were i njury marks on Sunanda's body.

Her remians have been handed over to Shahsi Tharoor who is in the ambulance with Sunanda's body.
2.15 pm: The post mortem of Sunanda Puskhar's body has been completed at AIIMS and her remains handed over to husband Shashi Tharoor. The last rites of Pushkar are likely to be conducted at the Lodhi Road crematorium later on Saturday evening.

Sources said some of Pushkar's family members, including her brother and son Shiv Menon, visited AIIMS where the autopsy was conducted by a three-member panel of senior doctors.

12.30 pm: A board of three doctors, led by Dr Sudhir Gupta, on Saturday began conducting the post mortem of Sunanda Puskhar, wife of minister of state for Human Resources Development Shashi Tharoor, who was found dead in a Delhi hotel room. All proceedings are being videographed.

Earlier, a day after Sunanda was found dead, police suspected it could be a case of accidental overdose (accidental poisoning) of medicine leading to failure of respiratory system.

They have been informed by forensic experts in the absence of normal tell-tale signs of suicide. This possibility is quite high.

If somebody consumes overdose of anti-depressants, the person, all of a sudden, discovers he/she can't breathe since it leads to paralysis of lung muscles.

Sunanda Pushkar

Police sources said on Saturday at the time when her body was discovered, she was on the bed, in the normal sleeping posture, wearing a night suit (top and pyjama). They said she had covered her body with a blanket, but did not cover her face.

"Nothing unusual was found inside the room to suggest there were any signs of her struggle," police sources had said, adding, there were some blue marks on her body, but forensic experts had said earlier, sometimes it happened naturally after a person's death. 

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/nothing-ususual-in-sunandas-room-to-suggest-struggle-sdm-to-probe-death/1/338448.html

Barack Obama bans spying on leaders of US allies, scales back NSA program

Addressing privacy concerns: US President Barack Obama speaks about the surveillance techniques used by the NSA. Photo: AFP

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Washington: The United States will no longer monitor the personal communications of friendly heads of state, President Barack Obama has announced in a speech detailing a series of reforms created in response to leaks by the fugitive National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The President said the US government would no longer hold the bulk phone data gathered by the NSA. Instead under a new program a third party would be created to hold the raw data, to be accessed only with the authorisation of a judge.
 

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In a speech at the US Justice Department Mr Obama sought to reassure American allies, saying: "The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to learn what they think about an issue, I will pick up the phone and call them, rather than turning to surveillance."
He also detailed what sort of intelligence America would pursue and how it would – or would not – be used.
"The United States does not collect intelligence to suppress criticism or dissent, nor do we collect intelligence to disadvantage people on the basis of their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. And we do not collect intelligence to provide a competitive advantage to US companies, or US commercial sectors," he said.
"In terms of our bulk collection of signals intelligence, US intelligence agencies will only use such data to meet specific security requirements: counter-intelligence; counter-terrorism; counter-proliferation; cyber-security; force protection for our troops and allies; and combating transnational crime, including sanctions evasion."
And he said the US would take the "unprecedented step" of extending some privacy protections to foreign citizens, including limiting the time its agencies can hold personal information and restricting its use.
But the President showed no sign the US was softening its attitude towards Mr Snowden, whose leaks prompted the public debate over the NSA that lead to the reforms.
"Given the fact of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or motivations," he said.
"I will say that our nation's defence depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it in their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will never be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy."
He said the sensational way in which the disclosures had "often shed more heat than light" and had damaged America's intelligence gathering operations "in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come".
Mr Obama mounted a defence of the NSA and American intelligence operations.
"Now let me be clear: our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments – as opposed to ordinary citizens – around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation does. We will not apologise simply because our services may be more effective," he said.
And he said it could be frustrating that America was held to a higher standard than other world powers. "No one expects China to have an open debate about their surveillance programs, or Russia to take the privacy concerns of citizens into account. But let us remember that we are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront in defending personal privacy and human dignity."
Speaking shortly before Mr Obama made his address, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who published Mr Snowden's leaks, accused the President of engaging in a publicity stunt.
"It's really just basically a PR gesture, a way to calm the public and to make them think there's reform when in reality there really won't be. And I think that if the public, at this point, has heard enough about what the NSA does and how invasive it is, that they're going to need more than just a pretty speech from President Obama to feel as though their concerns have been addressed," he told Al Jazeera America.
Another critic of the program, Democratic senator Mark Udall, said he was pleased by the changes, tweeting: "After my years of bipartisan work and ongoing efforts, President Obama took big steps forward today on NSA reform."
Rand Paul, the libertarian Republican senator who has led Congressional opposition to the NSA's programs, said he was disappointed by the changes, telling Politico they resulted in "the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration".
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, still occupying Ecuador's London embassy, CNN: "It's embarrassing for a head of state like that to go on for almost 45 minutes and say almost nothing."

Fact file

• All data searches now require approval by a court.
• Records only be examined if a contact is two, rather than three, steps removed from a phone number connected to a suspected terrorist organisation.
• Government will not hold bulk metadata.
• It will not monitor communications of close allies without "compelling national security purpose".
• Secret data requests to private entities will no longer be "indefinite" but "terminate within a fixed time."
• Asks Congress to create a panel of public advocates to oversee Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.