Tepco is struggling to contain the highly radioactive water that is seeping into the ocean near Fukushima. The head of Japan's NRA, Shinji Kinjo exclaimed, "right now, we have an emergency," as he noted the contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier and is rising toward the surface - exceeding the limits of radioactive discharge. In a rather outspoken comment for the typically stoic Japanese, Kinjo said Tepco's "sense of crisis was weak," adding that "this is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster. As Reuters notes, Tepco has been accused of covering up shortcomings and has been lambasted for its ineptness in the response and while the company says it is taking actions to contain the leaks, Kinjo fears if the water reaches the surface "it would flow extremely fast," with some suggesting as little as three weeks until this critical point.

Via Reuters:

Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-05/japan-finally-admits-truth-right-now-we-have-emergency-fukushima

In a country where Bitcoin is illegal, only criminals will use Bitcoin.

The world’s most popular peer-to-peer electronic currency ran afoul of Thailand’s Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department following a presentation on what Bitcoin is and how it works. In light of what representatives from the Bank of Thailand heard there, they’ve ruled the following activities illegal, according to a statement from Thailand’s Bitcoin Co. Ltd.:

Buying Bitcoins
Selling Bitcoins
Buying any goods or services in exchange for Bitcoins
Selling any goods or services for Bitcoins
Sending Bitcoins to anyone located outside of Thailand
Receiving Bitcoins from anyone located outside of Thailand

Bitcoin Co. Ltd.’s response was “to suspend operations until such as time that the laws in Thailand are updated to account for the existance [sic] of Bitcoin.” Previously, the Bank of Thailand “had bypassed the company’s money exchange license on the basis that Bitcoin was not a currency.”

Other countries have also wrestled with how to define, monitor, and regulate virtual currencies. The European Central Bank last year expressed concern over their instability and untraceability, while the U.S. Treasury expanded its anti-money laundering laws to cover Bitcoin.

The price of a Bitcoin in USD has fluctuated somewhat erratically over the past few months, from as high as $266 to as low as $50, in part due to the European sovereign debt crisis. When Bitcoin was riding high, many saw it as a bubble.
 

For now, anyway, the Thai will have to make do with their official currency—the baht—and old-fashioned bartering. Still, Bahtcoin.com, which describes itself as a “dealer for Bitcoin in Thailand,” appears to be operational for the time being. You can sell your Bitcoins for 2,574.37 baht ($83.24) apiece and buy them for 3,126.54 ($99.89).

 No word yet as to how violators of Thailand’s new Bitcoin regulations would be prosecuted or punished, but seeing as the country can inflict the death penalty for crimes like drug trafficking or, yes, even bribery, traders may want to play it safe.
Source: http://www.dailydot.com/business/bitcoin-thailand-illegal-banking-regulations/?fb_action_ids=10151641461287701&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151641461287701%22%3A120615454775598%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151641461287701%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

The title says it all. It is an example of a sentence that i thought was unimaginable.But, its true. What is the world coming to?

The name of the orangutan is Pony, and she was found by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in a prostitute village in Borneo chained to a wall, lying on a mattress, and completely shaved. It took 35 policemen armed with AK-47's to rescue Pony.

If approached by a man, she would place herself in a sexual position. She was 6 or 7 years old when she was rescued and had grown up with prostitution almost all her life. Initially, the madam of the brothel refused to surrender the animal because she was a big part of their income. Yes, you read it right, even with human prostitutes, men and more men came regularly just to have sex with the orangutan.

They all considered her lucky as she would pick up successful lottery numbers. Apart from forced prostitution, she also suffered different kinds of abuses. The constant shaving of her fur left her skin blemished and irritated. Mosquitoes were constantly biting her, and the bites would often become infected. Every time someone attempted to rescue her, it would be overcome by the villagers.

Finally, after a year, the rescuers decided to take some serious action and 35 policemen armed with AK-47s and other weaponry demanded Pony's release and succeeded. Although this horrible crime was committed, everyone involved in this horrifying animal abuse didn't face a single charge as it happened in Indonesia. There is little law enforcement in such matters there.

I really hope people stop abusing animals. Cruelty to animals shouldn't be tolerated in any country and should be banned completely.

Source: http://www.bubblews.com/news/479960-shaved-orangutan-used-a-sex-slave-in-a-borneo-brothel-and-rescued-by-cops

McAfee Lab researchers issued a report on the large scale cyber attacks against South Korea that appear to be linked to hackers also specialized in cyber espionage.

The attackers behind these recent attacks against South Korean infrastructure are skilled professionals and they designed a specialized malware to steal military secrets from the South Korea and US military networks.

 The cyber espionage campaign dubbed as "Operation Troy", due the numerous references into the source code analyzed to the city. McAfee said that in 2009, malware was implanted into a social media website used by military personnel in South Korea.

Ryan Sherstobitoff, a senior threat researcher at McAfee, started the investigation after the malware came into action in an attacks occurred on March 20th, known as the Dark Seoul Incident, in which tens of thousands of hard drives belongs to television networks and banks in South Korea were wiped completely.

Versions of the code may still be trying to glean military secrets from infected computers. Sherstobitoff said the same coded fingerprints were found on an attack June 25, the anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War - in which websites for South Korea's president and prime minister were attacked.

On June 26th the US Government announced that personal information about thousands of U.S. troops in South Korea had been exposed online.

The attackers infected victims with “spear phishing” attacks, the hackers also compromised about a dozen Korean-language religious, social and shopping websites to steal secret information from infected networks.

In the following image is proposed the timeline of the attacks:“This goes deeper than anyone had understood to date, and it’s not just attacks: It’s military espionage,” Sherstobitoff said.

Despite the malware used to wipe the disks during the recent attacks against Korean infrastructures is different from the one used for the cyber espionage campaign, but many similarities have been found between the source codes of both and this led to believe that they must be created by the same malware developer team.

Researchers highlighted that there are various clues in the malicious code which lead to the North Korea, for example the password used to unlock encrypted files contains the number 38 probably linked to "38th parallel" that separates the North from South Korea.

After previous attack, Two different and previously unknown groups separately took credit: The "Whois Hacking Team" posted pictures of skulls and a warning, while the "NewRomanic Cyber Army Team" said it had leaked private information from banks and media organizations.

Before that attack, hackers had been sending spy malware on domestic networks for months, giving them the ability to gather information about how their internal servers work, what websites the users visit and which computers are responsible for security, the researchers found. This information would have been crucial for planning the coordinated attacks on banks and TV networks.

It is still not clear that the exact amount of information stolen or the exact networks penetrated by attackers, but South Korean officially blamed North Korean state sponsored-hackers.

The Hackers espionage on government networks with military information for at least four years, using code that automatically searched infected computers for dozens of military terms in Korean, including “U.S. Army,” ‘’secret,” ‘’Joint Chiefs of Staff” and “Operation Key Resolve,” an annual military exercise held by U.S. Forces Korea and the South Korean military.

“These included names of individuals, base locations, weapons systems and assets,” revealed Sherstobitoff.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced that it’s technically impossible to disclose classified reports from military networks because the networks of the Korean Intelligence aren't connected to the Internet and the access to the Internet is made with different computers separated by the internal military infrastructure.

Hacking sensitive South Korean military computers from the Internet “cannot be done,” “It’s physically separated.” said the South Korean government representative.

North Korea has the highest percentage of military personnel in relation to population than any other nation in the world. It has approximately 40 enlisted soldiers per 1000 people with a considerable impact on the economy of the country. A defector has declared that North Korea has increased its cyber warfare unit to staff 3,000 people and it is massive training its young prodigies to become professional hackers.

The government of Pyongyang is massive investing in cyber warfare capabilities, recruiting and forming a high skilled team of hackers. The groups will could be engaged in offensive cyber operation against hostile government and in cyber espionage activities.

In spite of McAfee researchers haven’t indicated the origin of the attacks many security experts have no doubts about the nature of the offensive, North Korean state sponsored hackers appear as the main culprits.

Source: http://thehackernews.com/2013/07/operation-troy-espionage-campaign.html

Foreign visitors to North Korea are allowed to attend sports matches alongside their minders. But football in this secretive republic has little in common with the passion and glamour of Europe's major leagues.

The game was a sell-out, though you would never have guessed it.

As we entered the 50,000-seater Kim Il-Sung Stadium below the watchful eye of the Eternal President and Great Leader, not forgetting his son, the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il, there was no-one to be seen.

There were no queues, no turnstiles and certainly no hotdog stands or programme sellers.

But once inside it was a different matter. Every seat was taken and row upon row of men sat silently, wearing identical dark suits and red ties, everyone sporting a tiny enamel badge on their left breast.

No, not of Pyongyang FC, but of the Great Leader himself.

The artificial pitch looked immaculate under the spring morning sun. Kick off was at half past nine.

Maybe it was the early start but there were no chants and no flags or scarves in sight, just a quiet murmur around the darkened rows of seats.

Many of the fans were soldiers in green uniforms and broad-brimmed hats.

I do not know if they were under orders to attend but some were quietly reading paperbacks and showed no interest in the game.

The opposition, the crack army outfit Amrokgang, looked stronger in the first half but it was a scrappy match.

Pyongyang fought back and won a penalty though you would be hard pressed to know that from the reaction of the crowd. There was none.

My travelling buddies decided to inject some old-style terrace atmosphere of our own and we chanted: "One nil to the referee, one nil to the referee."

The dozen or so Westerners who had joined us in the VIP box - at 30 euros a seat, hard currency only please - laughed at us.

One or two even joined in as we grew bolder: "Pyongyang ooh, ooh! Pyongyang ooh, ooh!"

But the locals just stared at us. In a land where it appears you must ask permission to speak, this show of individuality, of spontaneity, was not seen as rude, or aggressive. They just stared blankly at us.

I think they thought we were, well... a little odd.

Our tour party was closely monitored at the game. Two guides led from the front while a mysterious "Mr L" who hardly spoke, brought up the rear.

It was never clear if he was just minding us or was making sure our guides stuck to the strict party line that all was rosy in this socialist utopia.

The national side uses the official name of the country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Their greatest footballing moment came in the 1966 World Cup when they beat Italy by two goals to nil to reach the quarter finals. They also qualified for the 2010 finals.


At the last World Cup, in South Africa, North Korea's coach, Kim Jong-Hun, told the media that he received "regular tactical advice during matches" from Kim Jong-Il "using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye" and purportedly developed by the Supreme Leader himself.

But the team is struggling at the moment and has not qualified for next year's World Cup in Brazil. Its last game was a goalless draw in a friendly against fellow communists Cuba.

Back on the pitch at the Kim Il-Sung stadium, Amrokgang had got one back.

Another penalty, though why the referee had to confer with the linesman is anyone's guess - the Pyongyang striker was taken down five yards inside the box.

The goal caused little reaction. The crowd stayed quiet. Neither manager ventured out of the dugout, there was no high-fiving, no pats on the back from the players.


Now I like to watch controlled football, but not quite like this.

Surprise, surprise! There was some half-time entertainment.

A brass band piped up behind the goal. But immediately another band behind the opposite goal struck up. They were playing different tunes, though no-one seemed to care.

The match went into stoppage time. Pyongyang were pressing hard.

The crowd, at last, seemed to rouse themselves, if only a little, at the prospect of another goal.

And finally, Pyongyang scored with a low shot following some good passing.

It was the very last kick of the most bizarre game I had ever watched and it came in the 94th minute.

Maybe the referee was under orders to ensure a home win in the Great Leader's stadium.

I would like to think the crowd went home happy.

But with no emotion one way or the other on the faces of the soldiers and party faithful as they marched silently out, I just couldn't tell.


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22470430