Friday, May 18, 2007

British explorer and mountaineer Edward “Bear” Grylls, has set a new altitude record by piloting a powered paraglider above Mount Everest reaching 29,494ft (8,990m). He and his fellow pilot, Giles Cardozo, who had invented and developed the parajet engine, set out on their attempt from the Himalayan village of Pheriche (altitude 14,435ft (4,400m)) in the early morning of 14th May.

Grylls, 33, is a mountaineer, best selling author and television presenter who spent three years with the elite British Special Air Service (“SAS”) forces. During this time he was involved in a horrific parachuting accident in which he broke his back in three places, almost severing his spinal cord. Remarkably, in 1998, after months of rehabilitation, he became at 23, the youngest British climber to scale Mount Everest and return alive.

Cardozo is considered to be one of the top paragliding pilots in the world, and it is reported that he and Grylls first came up with the idea for the attempt about a year ago when he had invented the engine that would take them up the mountain.

Grylls and Cardozo flew their paragliders together to 28,001ft (8,353m) surviving temperatures of minus 76°F (-60°C) and dangerously low oxygen levels, when a fault developed in Cardozo’s engine, and he had to abort his attempt just 984ft (300m) below the summit. Grylls went on to reach his record height at 09.33 local time. He had originally intended to cross the Mountain but turned back to base camp fearing that he might be arrested if he entered Chinese airspace.

On his return to Kathmandu, Grylls voiced his feelings of loneliness and exhilaration:

The attempt was sponsored by British technology and engineering group GKN. The project, GKN Mission Everest, raised £500,000 (approximately $1m) for Global Angels, a charity helping children in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In a separate incident, a German paragliding champion has survived being sucked up by a storm to a height of 32,612ft (9,940m) whilst preparing for a world paragliding championship in Manilla, New South Wales, Australia.

Ewa Wisnierska, 35, the 2005 World Cup paragliding winner, lost consciousness and was covered in ice and battered by orange-sized hailstones as she was pulled upwards by the sudden tornado-like storm which she had been attempting to skirt. After regaining consciousness as she descended she was able to make contact with her ground team which had been tracking her by her GPS equipment, and landed safely 40 miles (60km) from where she took off.

Remarkably she spent only an hour in hospital after her experience, being treated for frostbite and blistering to her face and ears.

A fellow competitor, 42 year old Chinese man, He Zhongpin, who was also caught up in the storm, was not so fortunate and died from lack of oxygen and the extreme cold.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005According to computer security expert Bruce Schneier, a widely-used cryptography algorithm, known as SHA-1, has been broken by three researchers at Shandong University in China. Designed by the US intelligence agency NSA, SHA-1 has been adopted as an official US government standard and has become widely-used in security applications worldwide, notably digital signatures. The three female researchers, Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu, have reduced the amount of time needed to find two documents with the same signature by a factor of more than 2000.

The SHA-1 algorithm is used to compute a short string of numbers, known as a hash, for any digital document. The algorithm is constructed such that small changes in the document cause the hash to change drastically. By this means, the hash can be used to verify that a document has not been tampered with.

The attack that Schneier describes is a “collision attack,” rather than the more useful “pre-image” attack. In a pre-image attack, the codebreaker is able to find a document with different contents that matches an existing hash and so can claim an existing signature was on something else. In the somewhat less valuable “collision attack,” the codebreaker is able to devise two documents that both have some particular hash. A adversary might use this to claim that an altered document is the original on the grounds that they have the same hash. A crafty adversary might also be able to trick someone into signing an innocuous document, one of a pair from a collision. The other document, which might not be as harmless, would then also appear to have been signed by the same person. If collisions can be found for SHA-1, then digital signatures will no longer vouch for a document’s authenticity.

The attack, for now, is more of a theoretical than a practical kind: it would currently take thousands of years on a modern personal computer, and would still be slow even if a large number of computers were used in parallel.

Xiaoyun Wang is currently a professor at Shandong University, while Hongbo Yu is a doctoral candidate at the same institution. Yiqun Lisa Yin is currently a visiting researcher at the Princeton Architecture Laboratory for Multimedia and Security (PALMS). Last year, Xiaoyun Wang and Hongbo Yu also took part in breaking a series of similar algorithms, including the widely used MD5 hash, as documented in their paper presented at the Crypto 2004 conference.

Officials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have recently recommended dropping SHA-1 in favor of stronger, slower algorithms, such as SHA-256, Federal Computer Week reported on February 7, 2005, just 7 days before Schneier announced the SHA-1 break. Despite deprecating SHA-1, William Burr, the head of NIST’s security technology group, said that “SHA-1 is not broken, and there is not much reason to suspect that it will be soon.”

Monday, December 12, 2005

The smash hit “Demon Days” from cartoon concept band Gorillaz has been nominated for 5 Grammy Awards:

• Record Of The Year, “Feel Good, Inc.”
• Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals, “Feel Good, Inc.”
• Best Urban/Alternative Performance, “Dirty Harry”
• Producer Of The Year, Danger Mouse “Demon Days”
• Best Short Form Music Video, “Feel Good, Inc.”

The other nominations for Record of the Year are “We Belong Together” by Mariah Carey, “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” by Green Day, “Hollaback Girl” by Gwen Stefani, and “Gold Digger” by Kanye West.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

What would you tell your grandchildren about 2008 if they asked you about it in, let’s say, 20 years’ time? If the answer to a quiz question was 2008, what would the question be? The year that markets collapsed, or perhaps the year that Obama became US president? Or the year Heath Ledger died?

Let’s take a look at some of the important stories of 2008. Links to the original Wikinews articles are in all the titles.

Monday, December 31, 2007

Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) reported a fifth Guantanamo captive, named Abdul Razzak, died in captivity, on December 30, 2007.

JTF-GTMO asserted that Razzak had complained of abdominal pains in September 2007, and had begun to receive cancer therapy in late October 2007. JTF-GTMO estimated that he was born in 1939.

According to the JTF-GTMO press release that announced his death:

Abdul Razzak was assessed to be an experienced jihadist with command responsibilities and was assessed to have had multiple links to anti-coalition forces. He was detained in Guantanamo as an enemy combatant, consistent with the international law of Armed Conflict.

Abdul Razzak was one of the few Guantanamo captives who continued to attend his Combatant Status Review Tribunal and his annual Annual Review Board hearings.

Abdul Razzak had disputed all but one of the allegations against him, at each opportunity, and had provided his JTF-GTMO interrogators and the officers who sat on his CSR Tribunal and ARB hearing with easily verifiable corroborated details. At each of his Administrative review the officers were unaware of the exculpatory details he had provided.

The one allegation that Abdul Razzak acknowledged was that he had been subjected to involuntary conscription, and had served the Taliban for three months out of every year for the five years they were in power before he fled Afghanistan. He had, however, not served in the Taliban’s armed forces, but had been a truck driver, delivering non-military supplies.

One of the main allegations against Abdul Razzak was that he had plotted to help free Taliban leaders. Abdul Razzak testified that, on the contrary, two years prior to al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11th, 2001, he and his son had played a key role in a successful plot to free three imprisoned senior Northern Alliance leaders, who he identified as “Ismail Khan, Haji Zahir, son of vice president Haji Qadir and General Qassim.” — Ismail Khan is currently the Minister of Energy.

Abdul Razzak testified that his son, one of the relatively few Afghans who was fluent in English, had been conscripted by the Taliban, so he could provide some computer support. His son had contacted anti-Taliban forces, secured funds to purchase a four-wheel drive vehicle. His son, using the trust the Taliban had placed in him, due to his computer support, had lead the three men out of their imprisonment. Abdul Razzak had driven the four by four. The vehicle was damaged by a land mine. Abdul Razzak’s hand was injured. His son lost a foot. But the Northern Alliance leaders were rescued.

Abdul Razzak testified that when they arrived in Iran the Afghanistan Council paid his living expenses. But, when Hamid Karzai assumed power, following the ouster of the Taliban, he was told that the pension would be discontinued, because Afghanistan now had a democratic government.

Abdul Razzak testified that he then returned to Afghanistan, where he was falsely denounced by a distant cousin named Mohammed Jan. Mohammed Jan’s branch of the family was engaged in a feud with his branch, that had lead to the death of his father, two uncles, and three of his sons.

Abdul Razzak was also accused of being a leader of anti-coalition forces, and of being a member of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, an older militia, which was first founded to oppose the regime of Mohammed Daoud Khan,the politician who had ousted Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, in 1973.In 1979 this militia split, and has been lead, since then, by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s militia played a major role in the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This militia acquired a reputation for ruthlessness, and disregard for civilian life.

Abdul Razzak testified that his only contact with the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militia was early in the war against the Soviets. He testified he was imprisoned for four and a half months in an underground pit. They had captured him because he had served as a driver for a member of the communist regime.

American intelligence analysts assert that, when Osama bin Laden was leaving Sudan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar offered him sanctuary in the areas of Afghanistan under his control.

Although not part of the Northern Alliance the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militia fought with the Taliban, prior to their ouster. When the USA allied with the Northern Alliance and other resistance forces to oust the Taliban the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militia fought against the USA. In 2003 the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin formed an alliance with the rump of the Taliban.

Abdul Razzak was also accused of being the Abdul Razak who had been the second in command of the Taliban’s 40-man unit, even though witnesses described Abdul Razak the commander as a much younger man, with a full black beard. Americans held five other men in Guantanamo named Abdul Razak.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Internet-based group “Anonymous” released a new video on YouTube Monday, announcing international protests outside Church of Scientology centers set for February 10. The video “Call to Action” uses the same computer synthesized voice as a previous video titled “Message to Scientology”, which was posted to YouTube last Monday. The “Message to Scientology” video has been viewed over 1,400,000 times, and the “Call to Action” video has already been viewed over 237,000 times.

Anonymous is taking action against the Church of Scientology in response to what it sees as suppression of freedom of speech on the Internet. The group was first motivated after the Church of Scientology issued a copyright infringement claim to YouTube regarding a promotional video of Scientologist Tom Cruise speaking about his beliefs and using Scientology jargon. The Church of Scientology also issued a legal complaint to the website Gawker.com which is also hosting the video, but Gawker has stated it will not take the video down because it is newsworthy.

Anonymous set up a movement called “Project Chanology” to coordinate their efforts, and took down several Church of Scientology websites through denial-of-service attacks. Members of Anonymous have also participated in prank calls to Church of Scientology centers, as well as protests or “raids” outside Scientology buildings, and have posted some of their exploits to YouTube.

In the “Call to Action” video, Anonymous denies that they are composed solely of “super hackers”, stating “Anonymous is a collective of individuals united by an awareness that someone must do the right thing, that someone must bring light to the darkness, that someone must open the eyes of a public that has slumbered for far too long.” The video goes on to state “We want you to be aware of the very real dangers of Scientology,” citing what they term “gross human rights violations”.

Specific controversial events in Scientology history are cited in the video, including Operation Freakout and Paulette Cooper, and Operation Snow White. Operation Freakout was the name of a Church of Scientology operation whose goal was to “get P.C. [Paulette Cooper] incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks.” Paulette Cooper had written a book critical of Scientology called The Scandal of Scientology. Operation Snow White was the name of a Church of Scientology operation where members of the Church’s secretive Guardian’s Office infiltrated United States government agencies in Washington, D.C. including the I.R.S. The F.B.I.’s investigation into Operation Snow White led them to discover the planning of actions taken against Paulette Cooper.

The video concludes by inviting the viewer to “take up the banner of free speech” and protest with Anonymous world wide. In an email to CNET News, Anonymous stated that cities where unknown activities are planned on February 10 include New York City, Montreal, Houston, London, Melbourne, and Los Angeles.

On Friday, two spokespersons for the Church of Scientology commented on the recent actions of Anonymous. A spokesman told News.com.au “These types of people have got some wrong information about us,” and Church spokeswoman Yvette Shank told Sun Media that she regarded members of Anonymous as a “pathetic” group of “computer geeks”. On Monday, Radar reported that the Church of Scientology has asked the U.S. Attorney General‘s office in Los Angeles, the F.B.I., and the LAPD to start a criminal investigation of possible criminal activity related to the Internet attacks. A source told Radar that the Church of Scientology is arguing that the Internet attacks are a form of “illegal interference with business.” Radar also reports that the Church of Scientology is emphasizing its status as a religious organization in the United States, in order to assert that the Internet attacks can be classed as hate crimes.

On Saturday, Mark Bunker of the website XenuTV.com posted a video to YouTube criticizing the illegal actions of Anonymous and suggested legal methods for them to retaliate against the Church of Scientology, including peaceful protesting, writing letters to their government representatives, and persuading the United States government to take away the Church of Scientology’s tax exempt status. In the video, Bunker states “I’m mainly concerned because you shouldn’t be doing things that are illegal, you just shouldn’t. It’s not morally right, and it’s not right when Scientology does it, it’s not right when we do it.” Bunker’s video post has been viewed over 156,000 times. On Sunday, Bunker posted a follow-up video to YouTube where he gives advice to Anonymous on how to peacefully picket. He also provides viewers with resources and weblinks to more information on how to hold a peaceful protest. He concludes this video by imitating Obi-Wan Kenobi‘s Jedi mind trick technique and voice from Star Wars, stating “And if I may, as Obi-Wan, tell you: You will do nothing illegal “.

Friday, February 12, 2010

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen has died at the age of 40. He was found dead inside his residence in London, England yesterday.

The Metropolitan Police said they are are not treating the death as suspicious. A spokesperson for the police force said, “[w]e were called by London Ambulance Service at about 10.20am this morning to reports of a man found dead at an address in Green Street, W1. He is believed to be 40 years old and from London. Next of kin have been informed, however we await formal identification before releasing the name of the deceased.” According to reports, McQueen committed suicide by hanging, however this has not been confirmed.

Between the years of 1996 and 2003, McQueen received Fashion Designer of the Year four times. He was also given a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003. The fashion designer had a new selection of clothing, entitled “McQ”, that was expected to be shown on Thursday; the show has now been cancelled. Alexander’s mother Joyce died earlier this month. In response to this, McQueen placed a message on his Twitter page which said “RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.” Isabella Blow, who assisted in making McQueen famous, killed herself in 2007.

Yesterday, a statement was released from McQueen’s company headquarters stating “On behalf of Lee McQueen’s family, Alexander McQueen today announces the tragic news that Lee McQueen, the founder and designer of the Alexander McQueen brand, has been found dead at his home. At this stage it is inappropriate to comment on this tragic news beyond saying that we are devastated and are sharing a sense of shock and grief with Lee’s family. Lee’s family has asked for privacy in order to come to terms with this terrible news and we hope the media will respect this.”