Chemical weapons: Easy to make and disperse, impossible to get rid of

Anyone with a few years of training in chemistry and access to some freely available raw materials could easily produce chemical weapons like sarin gas, although it is unlikely that “somebody on the street” could do it, Tour says that by recruiting a chemist with just about a master’s level of training, Syrian rebels could easily pull off a deadly attack.

And if the political solution fails and the US proceeds with the planned surgical strikes on Syria’s military facilities including depots holding chemical weapons, Tour says it will only expose those in the location to their debilitating effects, which cause the afflicted to writhe in pain and lose all motor control, akin to an insect sprayed with insecticide.  

source rt.com

NATO developing beam to pin drones and car bombers

NATO scientists in Norway have revealed a technology, which can stop a suicide bomber’s car before it can reach its target and can also knock UAVs out of the sky.

The block’s scientists have developed a high-intensity electromagnetic beam, which can stop cars, jet skis and drones by interfering with the vehicle’s electronics, in another test the beam emitting device is located in the back of a vehicle, which then stops another car approaching it from behind. 

source rt.com video

CIA starts arming Syrian rebels overtly

In the past two weeks the US has reportedly begun delivering arms to militants fighting the Syrian government. Washington expects the CIA to monitor the delivery so that the aid does not end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda associates.

According to the Washington Post report, after months of promises to provide aid to Syrian rebels in an ‘official’ manner, Washington has finally sanctioned open delivery of arms and munitions to anti-Assad forces - despite fears that some of the weapons could end up in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.

source rt.com

Fourteen people feared dead in psychiatric hospital fire in Russia

Fourteen people are believed to have died after a fire engulfed a psychiatric hospital in Russia’s Novgorod Region. The firemen have managed to localize the fire that spread over 670 square meters of the building.

According to preliminary information 59 people were inside the building when the blaze broke out at 22:52 GMT on Thursday. Twenty two people were evacuated with no injuries while over a dozen managed to get out themselves.

"The fate of 14 people remains unknown,” the head of the Russia's Emergencies Ministry Oleg Voronov told RIA Novosti, “everything has collapsed inside as a result of the fire,” local police source told RIA. “The people believed to be inside are now most likely dead,” bodies of several of the victims have been recovered, RBK reports. The exact number of victims of fire is yet to be specified.

source rt.com

US consulate in Afghanistan rocked by car blast, gunfire

The US consulate in the Afghan province of Herat was reportedly under attack with at least seven civilians wounded after a car bomb explosion was followed by a gun fight between militant and security forces.

Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi, the governor of the Herat province, told the Associated Press it was unclear if any of the attackers were able to make their way inside the American compound. No insurgent group claimed responsibility for the attack but the Taliban has detonated car bombs and followed the explosion with gunfire in cities throughout Afghanistan.

Massive fire engulfs New Jersey seaside battered by Hurricane Sandy

A New Jersey boardwalk that was just rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy has been destroyed again by a massive fire, with flames engulfing an ice cream shop and other buildings along the coastline in the span of just a few hours.

The blaze originated at about 2:15 pm EST at Kohr’s Ice Cream and, fueled by a strong wind to the southeast, quickly spread to at least 19 structures within 15 minutes, a Seaside Heights police officer told the New Jersey Star-Ledger. 

source rt.com

Twitter files confidential IPO registration

Since Twitter has submitted for IPO confidentially that means it had annual revenue of less than $1 billion in the recent fiscal year, as the US Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act only allows companies with less than $1 billion in annual gross revenue to file in secret.

Goldman Sachs will reportedly be a lead underwriter with a primary directive for organizing an initial public stock offering for Twitter, Bloomberg reports.

Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social media services used worldwide and its IPO has been long expected. Last month, GSV Capital Corp (GSVC), one of Twitter’s investors, valued the company at over $10 billion, achieving about five per cent growth in three months.

However, many potential investors worry that listing Twitter shares will have a similar effect as the initial offering of Facebook that went public in May 2012.  

source rt.com

North Korean hackers suspected of cyber-espionage attack on South

North Korean hackers are suspected of launching a covert cyber-espionage campaign against the South Korean government in an attempt to steal highly classified intelligence on defence and security,

"this discovery is interesting because the vast majority of attacks we are seeing are from Chinese origins, so for it to come from North Korea is very unusual and rare," said Costin Raiu, research director of Kaspersky Lab.

"There were some attacks earlier this year that targeted banks, media companies and the suspicion there was also towards attackers in North Korea but this is the first time we have come by something that directly points to North Korea."

Analysts have identified at least 11 targets inside South Korea, including thinktanks such as the Sejong Institute, the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses and supporters of Korean unification. It is also believed that the computers of Seoul's ministry of unification and the shipping giant Hyundai Merchant Marine were targeted by hackers.

The cyber-espionage campaign – dubbed "Kimsuky" – was first detected by security experts on 3 April, amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang carried out its third nuclear tests and threatened attacks on neighbouring countries.

source  theguardian.com

Zuckerberg: US government 'blew it' on NSA surveillance

Why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the US surveillance industry was up to. "Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated," she said.

Mayer said she was "proud to be part of an organisation that from the beginning, in 2007, has been sceptical of – and has been scrutinizing – those requests from the NSA."

On Monday, executives from Yahoo, Facebook, Google and other tech leaders met the president's group on intelligence and communications, tasked with reviewing the US's intelligence and communications technologies in the wake of the NSA revelations.

The meeting came as Yahoo and Facebook filed suits once more to force the Fisa court to allow them to disclose more information. 

source theguardian.com

What Apple's 64-Bit Architecture Really Means For Your iPhone

A more thorough technical explanation of 64-bit architecture follows below, but in terms of actual, noticeable differences the A7 processor will bring to the iPhone 5S, the list is surprisingly short. It will help speed up the intensive image processing necessitated by those fancy new camera features. It'll enable games with better graphics and larger worlds. And it'll make CPU-intensive operations—like, say, scanning your fingerprint to unlock your phone—happen without any noticeable lag.

That's what's in it for you right now. But 64-bit is part of a longer game Apple, and every other hardware manufacturer, has been playing for some time. Not only does it allow for more RAM in mobile devices (4GB, an amount no one needs today but the inevitable future), it clears a path for Apple to release a MacBook Air, or some sort of laptop-tablet convertible, on a super-efficient mobile processor. Conversely, it clears the path to put OS X on a mobile device. In short: It positions Apple perfectly for the coming convergence of desktop and mobile.

source gizmodo.com

How far did the NSA go to weaken cryptography standards?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is usually seen as an impartial judge of standards, so this was potentially catastrophic. This week, NIST denied the allegations, saying they would never "deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard," but the damage was done. Had the NSA been poisoning the well of cryptography?

The articles don't name specific programs as a concession to law enforcement, but the program was widely assumed to be a standard called the DUAL_EC_DRBG, which many have suspected of being an NSA plant for years. The algorithm works as a random number generator, but if it doesn’t work as advertised, it could easily serve as a backdoor codebreak for a third party like the NSA. (Most encryption schemes rely on random numbers to foil code-breakers, but if the NSA can guess the "random" string, it makes the code much easier to crack.) Early suspicions were also raised by two Microsoft engineers, John Kelsey and Niels Ferguson, which is consistent with the New York Times' description of the plant. If it's true, it's both good and bad news: the NSA really did get a bad standard approved by one of the most important boards in cryptography, but it probably didn't do them any good.

source  theverge.com