The earthquake 8.5 magnitude rocked Aceh 11 April 2012
The earthquake that rocked Aceh on Wednesday (4/11/2012) measuring 8.5 on the Richter Scale (SR) and a potential tsunami. Reported Meteorology and Geophysics (BMKG).
Data BMKG, earthquake rocked at 15:38 pm. Epicenter in the waters west of Aceh.
BMKG noted earlier 8.9 magnitude quake later revised to 8.5 magnitude. While the Unitd States Geological Survey (USGS) recorded an earthquake with magnitude 8.7.
Residents of Padang, West Sumatra on Thursday (4/11/2012) afternoon scrambled out of the house and office building due to the quake struck with a vibration that is felt for a long time.
The earthquake occurred on Wednesday at around 15:41 pm. Residents look of panic and traffic flow looks solid in the way Kampung Padang Nias.
Previously, the Meteorology and Geophysics (BMKG), released a 8.5-magnitude earthquake occurred 10 km depth to the source of the earthquake 364 km northwest of Simeulue District at 15:38 pm. Potential tsunami earthquake.
Finally, a Plausible iPhone 5 Rumor
iMore‘s Rene Ritchie has some well connected sources who are telling him that the iPhone 5,1, as it is being referred to in iOS betas, will boast: • Similar if not same sized screen (currently 3.5-inch but not set in stone)
A fairly believable iPhone 5 leak has emerged mentioning 4G LTE radio, a similar (if not identical) screen size / form factor, and a micro dock connector.
• 4G LTE radio
• New “micro dock” connector
• Fall/October 2012 release
Apart from the “micro dock” connector (which isn’t all that far fetched either), all these details seem highly plausible. There have been numerous rumors that Apple will increase the size of its iPhone to support a 4-inch display. While that may work for other smartphone vendors, Apple seems to be fine with the 3.5-inch size of the display. However, if there will be a larger screen on the next iPhone, it will most likely be achieved by reducing the size of the bezel – not by changing the handset’s entire form factor. The 4G LTE radio is pretty much a given. Not only has Apple already introduced one LTE-capable device this year (the third-generation iPad), the iPhone 5 would simply appear crippled in the face of other vendor’s handsets, should it not support the standard. Finally, the launch date. It is still being speculated that WWDC 12 may see the iPhone 5 introduced. However, it has become increasingly apparent that Apple has moved the iPhone’s refresh cycle to the fourth quarter. Until last year, Apple launched each and every new iPhone in summer. In 2011, the iPhone 4S broke that cycle by launching in fall. Apple’s annual developer event this year is not expected to bring back the summer-refresh cycle. Instead, the conference will most likely focus on a new preview of OS X Mountain Lion, and iOS 6. By simple deduction, the next-generation iPhone will most likely debut in fall as well.
Unite and PCS unions plan talks over increased co-operation
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PCS leader Mark Serwotka says May conference will deepen unions’ relationship, but dispels rumours of imminent merger
The Unite and PCS trade unions are to step up talks over co-operation in a move that will bring the UK’s largest private sector union closer to the country’s largest civil service union.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, said the organisation’s annual conference in May will debate a motion on “deepening” the relationship with Unite. However, Serwotka said full-blown merger talks will not take place for the foreseeable future, dampening speculation that the creation of a super-union with 1.8 million members is imminent.
“We will continue close working with Unite, extend it in to other parts of the union and explore the possibility of deepening our relationship,” said Serwotka. He added there is a strong case for eliminating the traditional division between public and private sector unions. “There’s a motion from our executive about our closer working relationship with Unite and that will give us an indication about how to take it forward. It shows that the old view that unions come either from the private or public sector needs to be challenged.”
Unite has around 1.5m members, including strong representation in the car, finance and transport industries, while the PCS has 280,000 members including employees at the DVLA and Border Agency. Serwotka indicated in an interview with the Guardian that a merger, if it happens, will be a long-term project. “Where it goes depends on how it is seen to have gone on the ground and that is not a matter of weeks and months, that is a matter of some years,” he said. Both unions signed a co-operation agreement last year.
Trade union membership in the UK has slipped from its heyday of 13 million in 1979 to around 6.5 million in 2012.
Obama warns North Korea over rocket launch
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US president warns regime ahead of international nuclear summit it has nothing to gain from ‘threats and provocations’
Barack Obama has urged North Korea to cancel a rocket launch planned for next month, warning the regime that it had nothing to gain from “threats or provocations”.
Speaking on the eve of an international summit on nuclear security in Seoul, the South Korean capital, Obama said the expected launch of a long-range rocket to coincide with the centenary of the birth of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, in mid-April, would deepen the country’s international isolation.
“Bad behaviour will not be rewarded,” Obama said after meeting the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. “There had been a pattern, I think, for decades, in which North Korea thought if they had acted provocatively, then somehow they would be bribed into ceasing and desisting acting provocatively.”
The US and its allies say the missile launch would be a violation of a UN ban on nuclear and missile activity; it could also derail a deal, reached last month, in which the North would halt missile tests and its uranium enrichment programme in return for US food aid.
Obama called on China to use its influence as North Korea’s only ally and biggest aid donor to persuade the regime to return to six-party nuclear talks, stalled since the North walked out in 2009 and conducted its second nuclear weapons test.
“What I’ve said to [China] consistently is rewarding bad behaviour, turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations, trying to paper over these not just provocative words but extraordinarily provocative acts that violate international norms, that that’s not obviously working,” he said.
During a visit on Sunday morning to the demilitarised zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, Obama told US troops they stood between a free and prosperous South Korea and repression in the North. “I could not be prouder of what you do,” he said. The same was true of US military bases worldwide, he added, “but there’s something about this spot in particular.
“You guys are at freedom’s frontier. The contrast between South Korea and North Korea could not be clearer, could not be starker, both in terms of freedom and in terms of prosperity.”
He later said of the DMZ: “It’s like you’re in a time warp. It’s like you’re looking across 50 years into a country that has missed 40 years or 50 years of progress.”
Obama’s visit to the 2.5-mile-wide stretch of land that has separated the two countries since the end of the Korean war in 1953 came as North Koreans ended their 100-day official mourning period for Kim Jong-il, who died of a heart attack in December.
Over the past three months the regime has sought to strengthen the position of Kim’s youngest son and successor, Kim Jong-un, culminating in a rocket launch next month as part of events to mark Kim Il-sung’s centenary on 15 April.
Kim Jong-un visited Panmunjom, the so-called peace village that lies inside the DMZ, last month and has made several high-profile inspections of military units around North Korea.
Next month the country’s supreme people’s assembly and ruling Workers’ party are expected to give Kim Jong-un the titles of chairman of the defence commission and secretary general of the party in an attempt to consolidate his grip on power.
Obama, China’s Hu Jintao and dozens of other world leaders will meet in Seoul on Monday to discuss ways to prevent nuclear terrorism. Iran and North Korea are not on the official agenda but are expected to dominate bilateral discussions on the sideline of the two-day summit.
North Korea says it has the right to launch what it describes as an observation satellite, and accused the international community of hypocrisy. “If there are any sinister attempts to deprive the [North] of its independent and legitimate right and impose unreasonable double standards, this will inevitably compel us to take countermeasures,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Media reports quoted unnamed US and South Korean military sources as saying the rocket had been taken to a site in North Korea’s north-west region in preparation for the launch. The foreign ministry in Pyongyang said preparations to put an observation satellite into orbit had entered a “fully fledged stage of action”.
The US, Japan and other countries say the launch would violate a UN ban on nuclear and missile activity because the same technology could be developed to deliver a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.
Australia and the Philippines have voiced concern about the three-stage rocket’s trajectory, while Japan has threatened to shoot it down if it threatens its territory. Even China, the North’s main benefactor, has urged its ally to “stay calm, exercise restraint and avoid escalation”.
Khmer Rouge journalist ‘fears for his life’
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Award-winning film-maker Thet Sambath says he has been followed, harassed and chased during his research
One of Cambodia’s leading journalists and foremost researchers on the Khmer Rouge has told the Guardian he fears for his life after a two-year harassment campaign by state security forces he claims are attempting to prevent him from completing his latest film about the Killing Fields.
Award-winning film-maker Thet Sambath – whose 2010 documentary about the Khmer Rouge, Enemies of the People, was shortlisted for an Oscar – claims that uniformed soldiers and plainclothes “spies” working for the Cambodian government have repeatedly followed, harassed and chased him by car and motorbike, with the intention of “making [him] disappear”.
“They are concerned I will reveal their true crime [through the new film] and … [that] their reputation will be destroyed,” Sambath said. “I know too much about what really happened. They want me dead.”
Sambath, a senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post, said the harassment started in May 2010 after news reports circulated internationally about Enemies of the People. Largely regarded as a political and historical watershed, it is the only Khmer Rouge documentary with testimony from the regime’s no 2 and ideological leader, Nuon Chea, whom Sambath spent 10 years tracking down and interviewing.
In the film, Chea admits he and Pol Pot decided to “kill and destroy” party members they considered enemies of the people, while lower-ranking cadres demonstrate, in graphic detail, how they implemented orders to slit the throats and dump the bodies of those targeted.
The film created a huge stir abroad and locally, winning the Sundance jury prize as well as some 30 other awards, and stimulating dialogue about a traditionally taboo subject in Cambodia itself. But Sambath’s follow-up film poses a greater concern for the future of the nation, he says.
“The first film explained ‘how’ the Khmer Rouge did the killing, now this film looks at ‘why’,” says Sambath, 45, of the tentatively titled Suspicious Minds. “And the answer is not the same as what the Cambodian government has been telling the public for all these years. The real story is politically huge. It will make everyone in Cambodia come out and talk, and the government will have to explain why they lied.”
Pol Pot has long been regarded as the mastermind behind the genocide that claimed nearly a third of Cambodia’s population by 1979. Through interviews with regional and senior former leaders, Suspicious Minds, however, argues that it was caused by political infighting within the party, with attempted military coups and assassinations, and massacres in villages aimed at creating an unstable government and ousting Pol Pot from office.
“The reality is that the party was split beforehand and the split of the party caused the Killing Fields,” says Rob Lemkin, an Oxford-based film-maker who co-directed Enemies of the People and is producing Suspicious Minds.
In uncovering the truth about the brutal regime which, in its short reign from 1975-79, killed off 1.75 million people, Sambath says he has turned himself into the unwitting target of a government still manned by former soldiers. He says he has faced police checkpoints outside his house in Phnom Penh, intimidation from armed thugs and “car chases like in Hong Kong films” deep in the wilds of rural Cambodia, where he conducts most of his interviews.
The government aim, he says, is to make him a victim of kidnap, robbery or car accident – events that are difficult to prove aren’t just the result of bad luck. The government says it is unaware of his case.
In one incident, Sambath says he was pursued down a dusty country road by gun-wielding men in two cars and on two motorbikes; in another, Sambath and his two passengers were chased at speed at night on an empty rural highway, where, unable to outdrive their pursuers, they abandoned their vehicle and ran for cover in a cornfield. They hid there for three hours until their would-be assailants gave up their search. “On three separate occasions, I thought I was a goner,” Sambath says slowly, his hands trembling and his voice low. “Fear is always in my heart. I am worried where I am going, who is behind me, watching me, following me.”
Sambath has long kept a low profile, frequently moving house, using false names and changing schedule. His interview with the Guardian took place in five locations in two provinces over three days. Even his wife and two children are often unaware of his exact whereabouts and work projects – simple precautionary measures to keep them safe, he says, as police reports he has filed regarding the harassment have been inadequately investigated.
Now Sambath spends much of his time in and out of hospital for shortness of breath and heart palpitations that he thinks are directly related to stress. He has had to suspend work on the second film until his health improves.
While Cambodia is celebrated for having a freer press than its south-east Asian neighbours, Sambath’s case of intimidation and harassment is not unusual, according to Phil Robertson, of Human Rights Watch, who says that journalists in Cambodia often face threats, assaults, arrests, imprisonment and staged “accidents”.
“Culpability for Khmer Rouge atrocities is one of the real electric wires of Cambodian politics,” Robertson says. “But it is also part of everyday Cambodian governance that people with power feel no compunction … to silence people who may bring out an unpleasant or inconvenient truth about them, whether it be about corruption or the political dynamics of how the Khmer Rouge insurgency ended.”
Even the Cambodian government itself openly admits that local reporters face intimidation from “bad people” and stresses that, while it promotes measures to protect their safety, journalists must keep their wits about them.
“Everywhere on Earth there are good people and bad people – and not all policemen are good,” said government spokesman Phay Siphan. “You have to be intelligent to figure out where is safe, who gives you a hard time, and who will protect you … [But] we are a safe country and we take this very seriously. There are laws in this country to maintain freedom of expression.”
Tension surrounding the Khmer Rouge and its brutal past is at an all-time high after an international tribunal last month sentenced former torture prison leader Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, to life imprisonment. It is now trying Nuon Chea, along with two other former heads of state, for war crimes. From villages to government offices, Cambodians are wondering who will be next, with many choosing to break their own silence and learn more about the past.
Born to farmers in a thatched-hut village on the edge of the jungle 100km from north-west Cambodia’s largest town, Battambang, Sambath lost both parents and a brother to the ultra-communist regime and spent four years with some 2,000 other children in a work camp, where he survived on a handful of gruel a day.
When Vietnam liberated the country in 1979, Sambath fled through a battle between Khmer Rouge and Viet Cong soldiers and ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand, where he learned English. After returning to Cambodia in 1990, he worked as a freelance UN translator and then reporter for the English-language papers Cambodia Daily and Phnom Penh Post.
“But I never understood what happened,” Sambath says. “We had no answers from the top commanders about what and who was behind the killing. Why did so many Cambodians die under the Khmer Rouge? So I found a few low-ranking cadres, became friendly, and started asking questions.” He dedicated his weekends to his “project”, driving thousands of miles across the country on a tip-off to find a single former soldier, sleeping at cheap roadside inns and travelling with his belongings in nothing more than a black plastic bag. Within a decade, Sambath had interviewed 1,000 former Khmer Rouge soldiers and leaders, logged more than 1,000 hours of video footage, and spent more than $10,000 (£6,300) of his own money.
“Everything goes to the project; I pity my family,” he says. “Once this is over, I will tell my children why we never go on holiday, and why my wife never has any new clothes or nice jewellery. I hope they understand.”
While Sambath plans to escape from Cambodia before the second film is released, he has not yet told his family the news. He knows his time is limited and that he must work fast. “We have nothing now. We rent our house. We have no cash. If they lose me, they won’t be able to survive.” Lemkin calls Sambath a “marked man” but says he has no choice but to finish what they both call a “historical obligation” to Cambodia. “This is the biggest story in Cambodia and one of the biggest stories in terms of mass violence of the 20th century,” says Lemkin. “But for Sambath, there simply is no other story. This … defines his life and explains the experiences of his life. So he is prepared to never give up.”
21 Jump Street – Movie Review
The film opens with a scene in which we see a Slim Shady-looking, braces-wearing, incredibly awkward Schmidt (Jonah Hill) trying and failing to invite the girl of his dreams to the prom. Of course, we all were a bit awkward in high school, but Schmidt practically defines the term all over again – as the age-old joke goes, look up “awkward” in the dictionary and you will find his picture there. Jenko (Channing Tatum) is the exact opposite of that: the school jock, he’s athletic, handsome, confident and, as expected, not too bright.
When word first got out that there was a “21 Jump Street” movie in the making, fans immediately assumed – and with good reason, who could blame them – that a remake would be coming out. Instead, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have delivered the best comedy of the year, that has nothing to do with the original TV series.
Years later, the two meet again as students at the Police Academy. Because one has the brains and the other is the muscle, and they’re both outsiders of some sorts, they decide to join forces and “be friends.” They make, truth be told, one of the most charismatic and funniest pairs to grace the big screen in the past few years. There is no denying their chemistry. When a drug bust goes bad – because they’re practically idiots or, to put it more delicately, boys playing grownups, but with guns – they’re demoted to a less dangerous operation. They look young, so they’re assigned to an older project, 21 Jump Street: they’re to go back to high school undercover, to try and suppress a drug ring that’s been selling a new, synthetic, and very dangerous drug. They immediately find out that high school isn’t what it used to be: nerds are now popular, jocks not so much. Physical strength is nothing to brains, while good looks come second to the ability to formulate original, well informed ideas. By another twist of the plot, the two are forced to hang around with the other group than the one they belonged to in their hey-day, which allows Schmidt to assume that he could relive high school all over again – only the right way, this time. Jenko, on the other hand, is trying too hard to understand how it could be that the world has changed so much. He’s also jealous of how popular his partner / make-believe brother suddenly is, and hates it when he, Schmidt, seems to put him on second place. If anything, it’s as if the film realizes that the plot is absurd and, instead of attempting to prove the contrary and, this way, make a fool of itself, it embraces the ridiculousness of it all – and just runs with it. And, boy, does it run! “21 Jump Street” is so packed with little nudges and nods for the knowing viewer that it’s a real pleasure to watch, a delight by all means. This also proves just how refreshing it can be to have a silly movie play out just like that and not take itself too seriously. For those who don’t get the many intertextual references sprinkled in the dialog and plot, there’s always the very special kind of humor of the film to be enjoyed. A mix of foul language, scatological jokes, physical humor, with a dash of irony and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, “21 Jump Street” breathes a life all of its own that is, at the same time, refreshing, entertaining and just a tiny bit offensive. All in all, it makes for the funniest, best comedy to come out this year, definitely not to be missed if you like a good laugh – and who doesn’t. “21 Jump Street” runs for 109 minutes, and is rated R for crude content, pervasive language, drug material, teen drinking and some violence. It opened in the UK, US and other territories on March 16, will arrive in Norway and Sweden on April 20, and conclude its run in Portugal on June 28, 2012. The Good Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill have such amazing chemistry that, at times, it’s even hard to follow the narrative because they effectively steal the show completely. “21 Jump Street” is indecent, irreverent, shameless and, above all, brilliant: the best this year. The Bad “21 Jump Street” never slows down, not even for a second: if it’s not a gag, it’s a chase scene, if it’s not that, it’s a fight or an explosion. At one point, this can become a bit taxing on the viewer. The Truth “21 Jump Street” embraces clichés and turns them into something new, with the help of two actors (Tatum and Hill) who have proved they can do comedy better than many of their peers. It might not be suitable for more delicate ears (and eyes), but it’s not just funny or entertaining: it’s a riot.
Truth be told, this sounds pretty much like a clichéd story, but it’s not like “21 Jump Street” is trying to fight cliché in any way.
This column will change your life: anti-inspiration
Would you like to hear an inspiring anecdote from Sir Richard Branson about the importance of embracing failure? No, I didn’t think so. And if you’re anything like me, this isn’t solely because there’s something about the feisty, non-tie-wearing space entrepreneur that grates. It’s also because inspirational advice in general only rarely manages to inspire. This applies to most of the stories in a book entitled The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives, published in paperback next month. (Spoiler: they triumphed over adversity, mainly.) Which is why, in recent months, I’ve found myself collecting more and more examples of a genre that should probably be labelled “anti-inspiration”: tales of high achievers and history-makers that reveal them to be as insecure, disorganised or lazy as the rest of us.
Flippant though this may sound, anti-inspiration really can be more cheering – even more inspiring – than the positive kind. To hear Sir Richard opine that “being unafraid of failure is one of the most important qualities of a champion” might help you cope with a setback or two. (Just as long as you don’t think too hard about the “survivor bias”, that is. Branson thinks that learning to tolerate failure helped make him a winner, but who knows how many would-be Bransons learned to tolerate failure, then just failed?) But it’s surely vastly more reassuring to learn that by 1883, having published The Portrait Of A Lady, Henry James still believed he was a failure. “I must make some great efforts during the next few years… if I wish not to have been on the whole a great failure,” he wrote in his journal. “I shall have been a failure unless I do something great!”
The point here isn’t that berating yourself is a good thing, still less that engaging in self-beration will make you a great novelist. The purpose of anti-inspiration is simply to remind you that your inner mental weather is a terribly unreliable guide to your accomplishments. And that because you have access only to your own inner weather, you rarely consider how many others, even at the most dizzying heights of achievement, are feeling the same. One result is a warm sense of fellow-feeling with the kind of figures who’d otherwise seem utterly distant. It turns out they are as prone to anxiety as you are.
A few other gems from my anti-inspiration collection: did you know that the psychologist BF Skinner, in order to make himself work, had to wire a timer to his desk lamp, as a method of clocking in and out? Or that Harry Truman’s mother-in-law never came to accept him as good enough for her daughter, even once he was president? The diaries of Leo Tolstoy constitute some of the best anti-inspirational texts ever published. Obsessed with self-discipline, Tolstoy constantly devised new rules – get up at five, walk for an hour a day, visit brothels no more than twice a month – only to succumb to the lure of gambling and prostitutes instead. (The next day’s entries were filled with regret: “I was too weak”, “Must make an effort to overcome indolence.”) Happiness, research keeps telling us, is at least partly relative, so one sure-fire way to feel good is to convince yourself that you’re superior, in some respect, to other people. But it follows that it’s just as encouraging to find ways in which others aren’t quite so superior to you.
Vince Cable hints coalition banking row is brewing
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Speaking at Guardian Open Weekend, business secretary says he envisages a state-owned bank that could be directed to lend
Vince Cable has sent a clear signal that rows within the coalition over banking could soon come to a head. Discussing the state of the economy with the Observer’s Will Hutton at the Guardian Open Weekend, the business secretary said that a moment was approaching where policy towards the financial sector would “have to go one way or the other”.
Cable said the choice was between “a permanent role for the state in banking” or instead moving to “sell off the state-owned banks and promoting competition” and trying to encourage loans to cash-strapped small businesses using market forces instead. And in remarks that could infuriate some Conservative colleagues and the Treasury, he added that “my instinct is towards the former”.
Ever since the state acquired first Northern Rock and then large stakes in HBOS and RBS, the official policy has been focused on getting a good sale-price for these assets. But in a private letter (pdf) to David Cameron and Nick Clegg last month, which was leaked to the BBC, Cable argued that the government needed to recognise that “RBS will not return to the market in its current shape”, and that the bank’s “time as a ward of the state [should be used] to carve out … a British Business Bank with a clean balance sheet and a mandate to expand lending rapidly to sound businesses”.
Instead of downplaying these private discussions on a public platform, Cable went further by suggesting not a time-limited role for a nationalised bank but a “permanent” one.
After spending Friday at the Federation of Small Businesses conference in Scarborough, the business secretary’s thinking is influenced by the continuing difficulties that smaller companies are having in raising finance. A recent report he commissioned from Tim Breedon, the chief executive of the finance company Legal and General, warned that there could be a shortfall of £190bn in small and medium enterprise finance by the middle of this decade.
Cable explained on Saturday: “I could do my usual bash the banks thing, but it’s all very difficult because we are telling them to do two contradictory things – rebuild their balance sheets on the one hand, and increase their lending on the other.”
He sees a state-owned bank which could be directed to lend while being backed the state’s balance sheet as the way to reconcile the two.
Since the credit crunch, Whitehall has already got involved in providing finance far more actively than before, most recently through George Osborne’s “credit easing” scheme. But Cable said Osborne’s initiative would do “modest things at the margin”.
At the end of a week in which there have been rumours on Twitter that Nick Clegg may now be persuaded that it would be better for Cable to be outside the cabinet, the business secretary did not shrink from spelling out his views on issues that go well beyond his narrow departmental brief. Asked about a suggestion that the Bank of England’s mandate to tackle inflation could be replaced by a broader target of national income, or more specifically “nominal GDP”, Cable said: “I am attracted by it.”
He said he could not go further or he would set hares running about recasting macroeconomic policy in the press. Even so, Osborne may be displeased about this encroachment into a field which is a Treasury responsibility.
Cable also revealed some of the frustration he feels at being in government. He said “arid” statisticians were thwarting ambitions for using the public balance sheet more aggressively to support industry. And he said that the decision to make the Office for National Statistics (ONS) independent, while taken out of an understandable wish to end political interference, had proved to be “a mistake” because the ONS now sat in a “God-like role” when it decided what did and did not score as public borrowing. He said it had “hemmed in” the government and prevented it from “doing all sorts of things” to boost industry.
He made a wry dig at the Conservatives when, in reply to a question about whether James Murdoch was a “fit and proper” person to run a media company, he said that “unlike some of my colleagues I have never met him”.
Cable had responsibility to oversee News Corp’s takeover of BSkyB but it was withdrawn in 2010, after he told undercover Telegraph reporters that he was going to war with Murdoch, and since that time he has been very careful about his comments in relation to media. But he did say that “cross-platform ownership has got too great”, and signalled he would be saying much more in his scheduled appearance in front of the Leveson inquiry.
In his wider remarks on the economy, Cable said that the British labour market was “hyperefficient” and that he took issue with unnamed rightwingers, who include several government figures, who believe the priority is making it “easier to sack people”. The “deep structural problems in the British economy”, he suggested, were instead to do with a “shortage of specialised skills”.
George Clooney’s satellite spies revealed
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Actor and activist funds a hi-tech project that is tracking troops and warning civilians of attacks
Nathaniel Raymond is the first to admit that he has an unusual job description. “I count tanks from space for George Clooney,” said the tall, easygoing Massachusetts native as he sat in a conference room in front of a map of the Sudanese region of South Kordofan.
Close by, pins and ink scrawlings on the map detail the positions of Sudanese army forces and refugee populations in the troubled oil-producing province, where the Sudanese army is carrying out a brutal crackdown.
The wall next to Raymond has a series of satellite images projected on it. At the flick of a mouse, tiny images of tanks and military vehicles hove into view, caught by a satellite hundreds of miles above.
Raymond is director of the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP), which aims to use advanced satellite imagery to monitor potential human rights abuses in Sudan. And it was all Clooney’s idea, turning him from just another Hollywood liberal with a pet cause to a genuine expert and campaigner on Sudan. Together with John Prendergast, another campaigner, Clooney has sneaked repeatedly into the country to document the random bombing of civilians and other atrocities.
After a trip last month to the Nuba mountains, Clooney dodged rockets to return with grisly footage of corpses, children with missing hands and entire villages forced to live in caves. He showed the film to the Senate foreign relations committee in Washington DC – to great praise from the assembled politicians – then got arrested at a protest outside the Sudanese embassy.
Images of Clooney being taken away in handcuffs appeared in newspapers and on blogs around the world. But it is in the day-to-day work of the Satellite Sentinel Project that Clooney’s impact is really being felt. He came up with the idea, and spoke to Google and the satellite company DigitalGlobe to help set it up, and he donates hefty speaking fees to keep it funded. It has been up and running now for 15 months.
The situation in Sudan is complex and violent. Ever since the mostly-black African South Sudan gained independence from the Arab-dominated north last year border disputes have flared, especially over the region’s oil resources. Meanwhile, powerful figures in the north fear that provinces along the southern border with its new neighbour may also seek to break free of Khartoum.
The army crackdown is aimed at discouraging such hopes, or even changing the ethnic mix of the area in favour of those groups who that want to stick with Khartoum.
Based in a nondescript suite of offices near Harvard Square in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, Raymond heads a small team of staff and student volunteers who monitor events on the ground in the heart of what is practically a war zone. Every day Raymond and his staff meet in what is dubbed the “situation room” and news and reports from Sudan are analysed. They also pore over satellite pictures and compare them with a database of previous shots, looking for changes such as new military roads or camps, or troops on the move.
One day last week, SSP staffer Brittany Card was analysing news stories from Sudan describing a governor visiting two camps that were listed as mobilisation points for the People’s Defence Force, a militia group widely used in repressive actions by the government. SSP imaging expert Isaac Baker traced out two rectangles to cover each camp. “We don’t have a recent collect on that,” observed Raymond. Baker began to tap out a request for fresh satellite imagery as Raymond and Card discussed which camp to monitor if only one picture could be taken. “The one on the east,” she said eventually. By using such advanced satellite imagery and being able to commission and take photographs within hours of receiving reports from the ground, SSP can genuinely plot and analyse the course of the conflict. “We don’t move the pieces on the chess board. But we have to figure out what they mean,” said Raymond.
SSP’s work was initially conceived as mostly gathering evidence that might be used in any future war crimes tribunal for Sudanese leaders. But the imagery was so accurate that it could also be used to monitor claims about massacres and mass graves. After someone on the ground described watching bodies being buried in a mango grove in the town of Kadugli, SSP was able to document the site from the air. It also uncovered what appeared to be body bags lying in freshly dug pits elsewhere in the town.
It has also shown troops surrounding towns and burned villages. In one astonishing set of images, it even captured an Antonov transport plane – from which Sudanese forces regularly roll out bombs – caught in mid-flight with plumes of smoke rising where the explosives had been dumped on civilian targets.
In September last year, the group’s analysis revealed what appeared to be an imminent attack on the town of Kurmuk in the Blue Nile province. Photographs revealed at least 3,000 troops equipped with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters. That prompted SSP to issue a warning, giving an opportunity for many to flee.
For Raymond and his team, it was a turning point: they were no longer just observers, but were able to have an impact. For a humanitarian group operating thousands of miles away from the crisis, this was new territory.
“No one is doing what we are doing right now. It is a splitting the atom moment for the human rights community,” said Raymond. However, the experience of Kurmuk – which did later fall to the army – also came with a sense of danger and great responsibility. “What if we get the direction the force is going wrong? You could have walked the civilian population right into them,” he said.
There is already talk of the group’s methods being applied to Syria, or to other nations caught in the turmoil unleashed by the Arab spring. It has overturned the idea of what investigating human rights abuses means.
“It is no longer enough just to stand at the graveside snapping pictures; that doesn’t cut it any more,” said Raymond.
Acer's Ultrabook Aspire Timeline Ultra Uses Kepler GPU
When we covered the NVIDIA GeForce 600M notebook graphics line, we didn’t have many examples to give in terms of laptops equipped with them.
Microsoft, NVIDIA and Acer have jointly announced the Aspire Timeline Ultra, the first ultrabook to use a discrete GPU from NVIDIA’s 600M series.
That situation has now changed, thanks to an apparently joint effort on the part of Microsoft and Acer. The Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra has become the first ultrabook to incorporate one of the GPUs, specifically the GeForce GT640M. As an extra divergence from the regular ultrabook mold, the 15-inch item comes with a DVD drive. “It’s for the consumers who are looking for a laptop that will meet their needs today but also anticipate the things they’ll be doing nine months to a year out,” siad Sumit Agnihotry, vice president of product marketing for Acer’s Americas region. “You are able to multitask, play premium video games and so on, but at the same time, it’s portable enough that you can take it with you at any time. Looking at that experience overall, we think it’s something that will become a must-have instead of nice-to-have today.” By Acer’s reckoning, as well as that of its launch partners, the Aspire Timeline Ultra is able to last for as much as eight hours on a single battery charge. It is also possible to replace the SSD with a hard disk drive with built-in NAND Flash, making it a hybrid. That way, Acer Green Instant-On feature will always be supported. The rest of the specs are the same as the usual: full HD LCD, Intel CPU, various ports and network connectors, speakers, etc. “Acer truly focuses on the consumer,” says Johnny Liu, senior director on the OEM engineering team at Microsoft. “But it also works closely with other companies to improve the overall experience, finding the right partners to help it improve sound quality, connectivity and other features that really matter to people today.”