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iPhone 6 release date, news and rumors

2013-06-11T15:17:00.003-07:00

iPhone 6 release date, news and rumors

UPDATED Everything we've heard so far about iPhone 6

Apple made the screen bigger last time. Is an even bigger iPhone on the way?

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iPhone 6 release date, news and rumours

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, the reaction was a bit muted: where previous phones were massive leaps forward, the iPhone 5 was a bit longer and a lot easier to scratch.

So what can we expect from the next iPhone, the iPhone 6 or 5S? Let's see what we can glean from the varying sources of the internet - some reliable, some not so much.

One thing is for sure, with the release of such super handsets as the Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z andHTC One, the next iPhone will have to seriously up its game.

iPhone 6 and the iPhone 5S are two different phones

The rumour mill doesn't seem too sure whether the next iPhone is going to be the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6. Given the iPhone's history - from the 3G onwards, there's always been a half-step S model before the next numbered iPhone - we'd bet on an iPhone 5S first and an iPhone 6 a while later.

However, in May 2013 Stuff reported it received a photo of the till system at a Vodafone UK store (which it has since removed along with the reference to Vodafone), with '4G iPhone 6' listed. Interesting.

It's been suggested that there could even be three size variants of the new iPhone - check out these mocked up images by artist Peter Zigich. He calls the handsets iPhone 6 Mini, iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 XL.

Could we see both an iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 this year? Some reportssuggest a new 5S in the middle part of the year before a revamped iPhone 6 towards the end of the year or very early in 2014.

iPhone 6 release date

Many pundits predict a summer iPhone 6 release date. It's quite likely that Apple is moving to a two-phones-per-year upgrade cycle, but we'd bet on a springtime 5S model and a bigger, iPhone 6, update in the Autumn, probably September.

Digitimes reckons predicts a summertime reveal for Apple's next generation phones, which again fits with a WWDC unveiling. In May it became clear that US carrier Verizon introduced an iPhone 5 price cut of as much as $100 USD.

Reports in April also suggested that Foxconn has added as many as 10,000 assembly line workers per week to its Zhengzhou plant as it readies itself for the iPhone 6 release date.

But Jefferies analyst Peter Misek reckons we'll see an iPhone 5S first, with aJune 2014 release for the iPhone 6. Citi's Glen Yeung also believes that we won't see an iPhone 6 or cheap iPhone until 2014.

Apple may have a new roadmap, with new phones every spring and autumn

iPhone 6 casing

Multiple rumours say Apple's working on plastic cases for its next iPhone, mixing plastic and metal in such a way that "the internal metal parts [are] able to be seen from outside through special design." Could these images from Apple.pro be a new iPhone 6 complete with plastic casing? The cynic inside us says no, but you never know...

It's unclear whether such cases would be for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6, or if Apple is simply considering making cheaper iPhone 4s to sell when the iPhone 3GS reaches the end of its life.

Speaking in March 2013, a KGI analyst said it believed Apple would turn to manufacturer Pegatron to make up to 75 per cent of low cost iPhone products. Indeed, rumours in early June 2013 pointed at a $399 price point for the cheap iPhone 6.

Pretty, yes, but also horrifically scratch-prone. Will your next iPhone have a plastic back?

The iPhone 6 will finally do NFC

That's what iDownloadblog reckons, quoting Jefferies analyst Peter Misek: it'll have a better battery too, he says. Many Android phones now boast NFC.

PayPal's chief information security officer, Michael Barrett said this during arecent keynote speech: "There is going to be a fingerprint enabled phone on the market later this year," he said. "Not just one, multiple."

Could this be inside the iPhone 6?

See our video below on what Apple needs to do to slay Samsung's Galaxy S4

The iPhone 6 will run iOS 7

Developers are seeing new iPhone model identifiers in their server logs: the device identifies itself as the iPhone 6,1 (the iPhone 5 is 5,1 or 5,2) running iOS 7, and its IP address is an Apple one.

We're expecting a September or October release date for iOS 7 in line with previous releases. We'll almost certainly see a reveal at WWDC in early June. Apple has promised to give devs "an in-depth look at what's next in iOS and OS X".

9to5Mac spoke with several sources who said the new iOS 7 will be attractive to new iOS users but may alienate older iPhone addicts. Described as "very, very flat" by one source, another said the interface is without gloss and shine and is rather like Microsoft's Metro design language on Windows Phone.

iPhone 6 storage

We've already seen a 128GB iPad, so why not a 128GB iPhone 6? Yes, it'll cost a fortune, but high-spending early adopters love this stuff.

iPhone 6 home button

According to Business Insider, of the many iPhone 6 prototypes Apple has made, one has a giant Retina+ IGZO display and a "new form factor with no home button. Gesture control is also possibly included" - more on that shortly. Mind you, it was mooted that Apple would dump the home button in time for iPhone 5, but it never happened.

iPhone 6 screen

The Retina+ Sharp IGZO display, would have a 1080p Full HD resolution. It's also been widely reported that Apple could introduce two handset sizes as it seeks to compete with the plethora of Android devices now on the market.

Take this one with a pinch of salt, because China Times isn't always right: it reckons the codename iPhone Math, which may be a mistranslation of iPhone+, will have a 4.8-inch display. The same report suggests that Apple will release multiple handsets throughout the year over and above the iPhone 5S and 6, which seems a bit far-fetched to us.

Patents show that Apple has been thinking about magical morphing technology that can hide sensors and even cameras. Will it make it into the iPhone 6? Probably not.

Could the touch screen even be transparent? Emirates 24/7 sin't the first source we'd turn to for bone fide rumours about a new smartphone, but it claims that an ultra-sensitive transparent touchscreen will make it into iPhone 6. The site also believes the display will be made by Sharp, which wouldn't be so surprising. One thing's for sure - a potential wraparound screen is probably a pipedream.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek also says he believes the new iPhone will have a bigger screen. Different sizes also seem rather likely to us.

You'll probably still be able to see the camera lens in the iPhone 6

iPhone 6 processor

Not a huge surprise, this one: the current processor is a dual-core A6, and the next one will be a quad-core A7. The big sell here is more power with better efficiency, which should help battery life.

Expect to see it in the 2013 iPad first, and expect to see an improved A6 processor, the A6X, in the iPhone 5S.

iPhone 6 camera

Apple's bought camera sensors from Sony before, and this year we're going to see a new, 13-megapixel sensor that takes up less room without compromising image quality.

An Apple patent, uncovered by Apple Insider in May 2013, shows a system where an iPhone can remotely control other illuminating devices - extra flashes. It would work in a similar manner to that seen in professional photography studios. Interesting stuff.

Will the iPhone 6 be handy for pro photographers? [Image credit: Apple Insider]

iPhone 6 eye tracking

One thing seems certain - Apple can't ignore the massive movement towards eye-tracking tech from other vendors, especially Samsung. It seems a shoe-in that Apple will deliver some kind of motion tech within the next iPhone, probably from uMoove.

The new iPhone will have better 4G LTE

On its UK launch, just one UK network had 4G LTE: Everything Everywhere, which currently offers 4G on the 1800MHz band. In 2013, all the other big names will be coming on board, offering 4G in other frequency bands. International iPhones already work across different 4G bands to the UK, so you can expect the UK iPhone 6 (and possibly the iPhone 5S) to be more promiscuous than the iPhone 5.

By the time the iPhone 6 emerges, iOS devices should also have "nonclassified communication approval" status from the US FCC, which means they won't need to go through a lengthy approval process.

iPhone 6 Wi-Fi may be 802.11ac

Apple likes to lead Wi-Fi standards adoption - its Airport really helped make Wi-Fi mainstream - and there's a good chance we'll see ultra-fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi in Apple kit this year. It's faster than Lighting, and not very frightening.

iPhone 6 wireless charging

Wireless charging still isn't mainstream. Could Apple help give it a push? CP Tech reports that Apple has filed a patent for efficient wireless charging, but then again Apple has filed patents for pretty much anything imaginable.

The tasty bit of this particular patent is that Apple's tech wouldn't just charge one device, but multiple ones. Here are more details on the iPhone 6 wireless charging patent.

Meanwhile, a further Apple patent seems to imply that future iPhones will be able to adjust volume as you move them away from your ear.

And could the iPhone 6 really have 3D? It's unlikely, but the rumours keep on coming.

10,000+ People Want Obama to Pardon Edward Snowden

2013-06-10T09:59:00.002-07:00

More than 10,000 people have signed a White House petition demanding President Barack Obama pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

On Sunday, Snowden, 29, identified himself as the source behind the revelations on widespreadNSA surveillance program posted on The Guardian and The Washington Post.

"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," Snowden wrote in a note about his leaks published by The Guardian.

The petition calls Snowden a "national hero" who "should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed."

Snowden, however, might not welcome the attention. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing," he wrote.

It may be too late for that, as several commentators have opined that Snowden's decision to out himself as the NSA source will undoubtedly shift part of the focus away from the NSA programs and towards Snowden's motivations and his future.

Speaking about the leaks last Friday,

"There's a reason why these programs are classified," Obama said. "I think that there is a suggestion that somehow any classified program is a 'secret' program, which means it's somehow suspicious."White House petitions require 100,000 signatures before the White House is obligated by its own rules to respond.Snowden was working for the NSA via private security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton for approximately three months before leaking evidence of NSA surveillance programs and absconding to Hong Kong. Formerly an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, Snowden told The Guardian it was during his time at the CIA in 2007 that he first became disillusioned with the United States' international surveillance apparatus.Snowden's future is difficult to predict. The U.S. and Hong Kong have an extradition treaty with one another, but Hong Kong's foreign affairs are dictated by China; China does not have such a treaty with the U.S. The two countries have cooperated on law enforcement issues in the past, but that does not guarantee China would arrest and transfer Snowden upon an American request.

Should Obama pardon Snowden? Tell us what you think in the comments.

DOLCE & GABBANA

2013-06-10T04:38:00.002-07:00

DOLCE & GABBANA

Synonymous with luxury and decadence, Italian powerhouse Dolce & Gabbana was founded by Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce in 1985. The brand's Mediterranean heritage is evident in each collection's energy, and the duo's high-octane runway shows consistently dictate the season's must-have trends.

iPhone 5 best 20 apps and games 2013

2013-06-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

Fill up your iPhone 5 with these top apps

When the iPhone 5 first appeared, pundits moaned about how it wasn't really much of a progression over previous iPhones, presumably because it wasn't a giant pyramid made from holograms.

In reality, there were some important changes: a widescreen display that was more vibrant; a faster chip (the A6) with superior graphics performance; and a better camera for stills and HD video recording.

Although all existing iPhone apps worked fine on the iPhone 5, it rapidly became obvious that for the best user experience, apps needed to be fully optimised for the new device.

In this post, we check out 20 of the best iPhone 5 apps for creating music and videos, editing photos, catching up on news, watching shows, being productive, and then having a break by slicing up giants, racing like a loon, and solving devious puzzles.

1. GarageBand (£2.99/$4.99)

Software instruments on which GarageBand relies are notoriously processor-intensive, and so the iPhone 5's added grunt makes for a stabler, faster, smoother music-making process. The wider screen is also beneficial, giving you a few extra keys when composing and enabling you to see more notes when editing MIDI.

Download GarageBand from iTunes

2. iMovie (£2.99/$4.99)

One of the more ambitious apps on the iPhone, iMovie is a movie-making studio in your pocket. The iPhone 5's camera is great for shooting HD, and iMovie enables you to rapidly edit your creations and publish them to YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook.

Download iMovie from iTunes

3. Photogene for iPhone (£0.69/$0.99)

Photogene's interface is a mite quirky, but we prefer it to the rather opaque iPhoto for image-editing. The app includes a number of basic editing tools, export options, special effects and other features, and on an iPhone 5 it flies.

Download from Photogene for iPhone iTunes

4. Camera+ (£0.69/$0.99)

The iPhone 5 includes the best iPhone camera yet, but Apple's Camera app is pretty basic. Camera+ is therefore worth investing in if you're serious about iPhone photography.

You'll get access to touch exposure and focus, a stabiliser, a surprisingly reasonable digital zoom, in-app cropping and effects, timers and burst-shooting.

Download Camera+ from iTunes

5. iBooks (free)

Apple's iBooks might play second fiddle to Kindle in terms of selection and pricing, but it offers a wonderful reading experience on the iPhone 5. The high-quality screen combined with its revised height (thereby providing more words per 'page') makes it a no-brainer free download.

Download iBooks from iTunes

6. Flipboard (free)

Although perhaps better known on tablets, Flipboard is an essential download for iPhone 5 owners. With minimal set-up, it can become your personal news magazine, filled with beautiful imagery and engaging stories.

Again, the iPhone 5's taller screen enables you to see more of anything at any one time, and the device's A6 chip ensures perfect performance.

Download Flipboard from iTunes

7. Reeder (£1.99/$2.99)

For any iPhone 5 owner wedded to text-based content, Reeder is a must-have download. The client works seamlessly with Fever, Readability and Google Reader, enabling you to easily keep up with your favourite websites. On Apple's latest smartphone, Reeder is blazing fast and looks wonderful.

Download Reeder from iTunes

8. Tweetbot (£1.99/$2.99)

Many smartphone owners would be lost without a Twitter client and Tweetbot is the best there is for iOS. The iPhone 5's taller screen improves the app from a usability standpoint, displaying more tweets and replies at any one time, along with giving the posting screen room to breathe.

Download Tweetbot from iTunes

9. BBC iPlayer (free)

BBC iPlayer has long been the standout on-demand TV app on iOS, and it's even better on the iPhone 5, where the picture fills the gorgeous widescreen display. It's also fantastic to see the BBC regularly trumpeting about AirPlay rather than, in the case of many of the corporation's rivals, hobbling it.

Download BBC iPlayer from iTunes

10. YouTube (free)

The Apple-created YouTube app was unceremoniously ditched from iOS 6, but Google rose to the challenge and created a replacement. On the iPhone 5, the tall screen's great for browsing, and when flipped 90 degrees, it's perfect for watching widescreen video. Like BBC iPlayer, YouTube also supports AirPlay.

Download YouTube from iTunes

11. Google Maps (free)

Google's data was also ousted from iOS 6, with Apple instead using its own data, with - to be charitable - decidedly mixed results. This free app is a better bet; it's fast and beautifully designed, and the iPhone 5's bigger screen is handy for browsing and also checking out step-by-step directions. On the move, turn-by-turn on 3G also proves effective.

Download Google Maps from iTunes

12. Fantastical (£2.99/$4.99)

Apple's own Calendar app is fine, but Fantastical has two advantages: excellent natural input for events, and an emphasis on a list view, thereby making it easier to see upcoming appointments at a glance. Naturally, the iPhone 5 means being able to view more of these at once, which is fab (unless any of said events mention 'dentist').

Download Fantastical from iTunes

13. Soulver (£1.99/$2.99)

With lots of people banging on about skeuomorphism in apps, it's perhaps surprising more products like Soulver don't exist. It rethinks and reinvents the calculator, making it relevant for modern computing, and the result is half spreadsheet, half 'back of an envelope'.

On the iPhone 4, it feels cramped, but on the iPhone 5 there's plenty of room for its line-based calculations.

Download Soulver from iTunes

14. 30/30 (free)

Task managers are commonplace on iOS, but we have a real sweet spot for 30/30. It's beautifully designed, and the straightforward manner in which you can set up task loops makes it perfect for Pomodoro-style time management. IAPs provide extra icons or a thank-you to the author, and the iPhone 5 screen really shows off the sleek interface.

Download 30/30 from iTunes

15. Dropbox (free)

Apple's vision of the future is files existing within apps, which is fine if you only use few apps with few documents. For the rest of us, a file system is still required and Dropbox brings this to iOS. On the iPhone 5, the taller screen enables you to see more items at once, but even if Sir Jony Ive had given the device a two-inch square screen, we'd still be recommending Dropbox.

Download Dropbox from iTunes

16. Infinity Blade II (£4.99/$6.99)

Swipey swordplay with RPG levelling up is what Infinity Blade II is all about. The visuals are gorgeous and the iPhone 5's full resolution is supported. Given the demanding nature of the app, you'll be grateful for that A6 chip, too.

Download Infinity Blade II from iTunes

17. Need for Speed Most Wanted (£2.99/$4.99)

The best arcade racer for iOS, Most Wanted is a stupid amount of fun as you speed about, smashing up cops, drifting for miles, and generally being a menace on wheels.

On slower hardware, though, dropped frames periodically pull you out of the experience; no such problems on the more powerful iPhone 5.

Download Need for Speed Most Wanted from iTunes

18. Super Hexagon (£1.99/$2.99)

The perfect twitch arcade experience, Super Hexagon is a bit like playing a wire loop game in fast-forward while being flung about the place on a merry-go-round.

Although visually simple, the game is far more fluid on the iPhone 5 than other iOS devices, and the widescreen display keeps your thumbs out of the way as you wrench your tiny ship left and right, avoiding infinite walls of doom.

Download Super Hexagon from iTunes

19. Beyond Ynth (£1.49/$1.99)

iOS isn't what comes to mind when you think of platform games, and virtual controls often make us shudder, but Beyond Ynth bucks trends by being brilliant at both.

This puzzler/platformer is all about helping a bug traverse 2D levels. Its method of travel: increasingly complex boxes. On the iPhone 5, the game looks lovely, your thumbs cover less of the screen, and you see a fraction more of what's coming.

Download Beyond Ynth from iTunes

20. The Room Pocket (free)

The most atmospheric iPad game of recent times loses little in its translation to the widescreen iPhone 5. The demanding graphics means The Room's perfectly suited to Apple's newest smartphone, and the game is a masterpiece.

You're alone in a room with a strange box, left to become immersed in a creepy, frequently chilling few hours of discovery. Our advice: avoid the hints, wear headphones and play in a dark room. Just don't blame us when you leap out of your seat.

Download The Room Pocket from iTunes

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5

2013-06-10T01:51:00.000-07:00

Samsung Galaxy S4 or iPhone 5 - which should you get?

The Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are the most successful phones Samsung and Apple have produced. They have sold millions of handsets across the world, and will go on to sell millions more.

If you’re at the end of you contract, there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at buying one of these phones. But which is right for you? Let’s take a closer look.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Video Comparison

Don't fancy poring over a load of text? We've produced a little video that compares the Samsung Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 side-by-side. Give it a watch.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 – Price and deals

Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB only, From £32 a month
iPhone 5 – 16GB: from £33 a month

There are hundreds of contract deals available for the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5, and they change from month to month. However, at present the phones sell at very similar prices.

Over at Carphone Warehouse, both the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are available for free on contracts of £33 a month and up. Any lower than that and you'll have to pay an up-front fee for the phone.

Go SIM-free and the Galaxy S4 is slightly more expensive in places. The 'RRP' for the Samsung phone is £579.99, while the 16GB iPhone 5 costs £529 direct from Apple. However, shop around and you can find the Galaxy S4 for a shade less than the iPhone - at the time of writing you can get the phone for £499.99 from Amazon. You'll rarely find a new iPhone selling for much less than Apple's asking price.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Design

Samsung Galaxy S4 – 7.7mm thick, plastic rear
iPhone 5 – 7.6mm thick, aluminium rear

Unlike comparing the Samsung Galaxy S4 with its Android rivals, where body shapes and sizes are similar at this high-end level, the Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5 are completely different.

It may sound trivial, but one of the most important design differences is that the Galaxy S4 is over 1cm wider than the iPhone 5. This makes it much trickier to grasp reliably than the iPhone, which is intended to fit comfortably into the hand of just about anyone.

When changing the design from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5, Apple elongated the screen rather than making it any wider for precisely this reason.

Although the Galaxy S4 is much larger than the iPhone 5, it’s not actually any thicker – well it’s 0.1mm thicker, but even in the slimness-obsessed phone world that’s not worth crowing about.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a curvier body than the iPhone, which feels harder and more severe thanks to its aluminium shell and immaculate bevelled edges. Conversely, there’s no metal on the Galaxy S4’s exterior.

Its front is top-notch Gorilla Glass, but the rest is plastic. The phone uses a removable plastic battery cover that is frequently criticised for being flimsy or cheap-feeling.

There are a few upsides to a removable cover, though. It lets Samsung bung-in a microSD memory card slot easily and means you can replace the rear part if it gets damaged or scratched.

Replacing the housing of an iPhone 5 with an unofficial repairer online will cost you £150. A replacement battery cover for the S4 can be had for a few quid from eBay.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Screen

Samsung Galaxy S4 – 1080p, 4.99-inch Super AMOLED
iPhone 5 – 640 x 1136 pixel, 4-inch IPS

The Galaxy S4 and iPhone stick to the screen technologies used by their predecessors. The iPhone 5 uses IPS, the Galaxy S4 AMOLED.

Both are huge improvements on the screens of their predecessors. Where the Galaxy S3 display was a bit dim and seemed a lot less sharp than it should have been, given its resolution, thanks to its PenTile screen type, the Galaxy S4 display is super-bright and super-sharp.

We had no real complaints about the iPhone 4S display when it was the ‘current’ iPhone, but the iPhone 5 screen makes it look a little dull, with much-improved contrast and more vivid colours.

They’re more significant generational steps-up than we were expecting – but how do they fare head-to-head? That comparison is a lot trickier.

The iPhone 5 has more natural-looking colours, while the Galaxy S4 has better contrast in low-light conditions. Although the Galaxy S4 has uses a much higher resolution, and has higher pixel density, there’s not a great difference in sharpness, though.

As both these screens are bonafide winners, the most important difference is in size, not screen quality.

The 4.99-inch display of the Galaxy is much better than the 4-incher of the iPhone 5 for playing games or watching films. We’re not totally on-board with ever-expanding mobile screens, but switching between the two, the iPhone 5 does feel flat-out small.

What you need to do it weigh-up the entertainment benefits of the Samsung’s large screen next to the negative practical issues of such a large phone.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Storage

Samsung Galaxy S4 – 16GB baseline, microSD slot
iPhone 5 – 16GB baseline, 32GB and 64GB models available, non-expandable

If you’re a big video or TV episode consumer, storage matters. The iPhone 5 comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB varieties, while the Galaxy S4 is only widely available as a 16GB model in the UK.

There’s a reason why the 32GB and 64GB Galaxy S4 editions on sale elsewhere don’t get much traction in the UK, though – the microSD memory card slot.

This lets you expand the memory by an additional 32GB for less than £20. To upgrade from the 16GB iPhone 5 to the 64GB version, you’re looking at spending an extra £170.

What is worth noting, though, is that the Galaxy S4 won’t let you install apps to the memory card – it’s best to leave microSD card storage for photos, videos or music.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - CPU and GPU

Samsung Galaxy S4 – Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
iPhone 5 – Apple A6 dual-core 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, PowerVR SGX 543 GPU

Before the phone launched, it was believed that the Galaxy S4 would be the first eight-core phone. However, that version is not on sale in the UK. We can only get our hands on the more ordinary-sounding quad-core edition, which has a Snapdragon 600 1.9GHz processor.

It may not sound as impressive as the ‘octo-core’ edition, but both trump the positively passé dual-core processor of the iPhone 5.

The iPhone 5 processor is not to be underestimated, though. Its cores use the advanced Cortex-A15 architecture, and performance is solid – even when compared to more powerful-sounding quad-core rivals. The Galaxy S4 is still the clear winner, though.

Here’s how some of their benchmark scores compare:

Sunspider (lower is better)
iPhone 5: 915ms
Galaxy S4: 855ms

AnTuTu
iPhone 5: 18,000
Galaxy S4: 21,000

Geekbench shows the iPhone 5 is arguably closer in performance to the S3 than the S4

Geekbench
iPhone 5: 1650
Galaxy S4: 3163

Samsung’s phone is more powerful across the board, whether judging javascript performance or more general productivity/gaming prowess.

This is not surprising, though. The iPhone 5 is a more direct competitor to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy S4. We’ll see Apple catch up with this year’s iPhone 5S, but for now the Galaxy S4 is the power king.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Software

Samsung Galaxy S4 – Android 4.2 with TouchWiz
iPhone 5 – iOS 6.1

That the difference in raw power won’t matter all that much to people becomes clear when you get hands-on with the phones’ software. The systems they use, and the way those systems operate, is completely different.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 uses a customised version of Android Jelly Bean. The custom interface that Samsung lays on top is called TouchWiz, and it looks and feels just like the one seen in the Galaxy S3 – it will seem familiar to Galaxy veterans.

TouchWiz is full of extra features. However, we did find that they tend to slow Android down a little, with a little more lag evident in transitions and app loading than we’d expect with a vanilla Android phone with a CPU this fast – or with an iPhone 5.

The iPhone is still that bit quicker, and it is in part down to the way iOS works. It doesn’t allow apps to run freely whenever they like in the background, which is what commonly causes battery life and performance issues in Android phones.

It is quick, but the iPhone 5’s iOS software is starting to look pretty dated.

The Galaxy S4 is a bit temperamental and iOS is long in the tooth – but there are solutions on the way. There’s a ‘Google edition’ of the Galaxy S4 on the way, which replaces the TouchWiz version of the phone’s software with a completely vanilla edition. And iOS 7 is coming soon too. It’s being designed by Jonathan Ive, brainchild of most of Apple’s hardware. It’s likely to look and feel extremely stylish.

For more on the extra features found in the Galaxy S4, read our top TouchWiz features article.

Samsung Galaxy S4 vs iPhone 5 - Camera

Samsung Galaxy S3 -13-megapixel sensor, LED flash
iPhone 5 – 8-megapixel sensor LED flash

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has more megapixels than the iPhone 5, with a 13-megapixel sensor in place of an 8-megapixel one. But is it better?

The difference is not as great as you might expect. When looking at pixel level, the Galaxy S4’s pictures have a little more detail, and a little less noise in good lighting. However, the actual quality of the photos when viewed at normal sizes is roughly comparable.

Let’s take a closer look at a few photos taken with the cameras.

iPhone 5 London scene

Galaxy S4 London scene

Pixel level comparion
This shot comparison gives the clearest indication of the sort of detail difference you can expect from the cameras in reasonable light. The Samsung Galaxy S4 renders some fine details far more successfully.

Check out the foreground building in the pixel level comparison. In the Galaxy S4 shot, the architectural lines between floors are clear, where they are reduced to mush by the iPhone 5. Similarly, there's far greater detail in the lines of the Gherkin, and the scaffolding in the shot.

iPhone 5 close-up test

Galaxy S4 close-up test

Pixel level comparison

In this second test, we tried to get up close and personal with the subject, to see how capable the phones are at macro-style photography. To start, the Galaxy S4 was much happier to focus close-up - the iPhone 5 had to be held back a little further to focus correctly.

Both phones manage a limited shallow depth of field effect, which is where the background appears blurred, bringing the subject into tighter focus. Of the two, the iPhone 5 makes a better job of bringing out the subject in question, the purple flower.

Zooming in to pixel level we see that while the iPhone 5's image is noisier, the Galaxy S4 doesn't render significantly more detail in the stamen, which was our exact point of focus.

Here we come to the crux of the problem - in difficult photographic situations, the Galaxy S4 won't fare much better than the lower-resolution iPhone 5 because the camera sensor sizes are roughly the same.

One of the main reasons why a DSLR camera can take much better photos than a phone is because it uses a larger sensor. The sensor is the part that takes in light, and a larger sensor lets it reap more light in the same exposure duration. More light equals more accurate and detailed pictures.

Software is also an important part of any phone camera.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has many more modes, filters and effects than the iPhone 5, which has only HDR and panorama. If you want to have fun with your camera, the Galaxy S4 is where it's at - although plenty of iPhone apps that do similar things are available.

To see whether the built-in processing is of much use, we checked out these cameras' HDR modes.

iPhone 5 HDR demo

iPhone 5 HDR demo
From a quick glance, the iPhone 5's shot appears more lively, with greater contrast, and image 'pop'. However, judging the HDR function alone, the Samsung Galaxy S4 is more successful.

Check out the trimmed bush to the right of the shot, and the greenery at the rear. More foliage detail is brought out of the shadows in the Galaxy S4's photo. The exposure of the sky is a little more even in the Samsung shot too, even if all it does is to emphasise quite how drab a day we're recreating here.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the camera winner, but not by quite as great a margin as we'd have liked. Let's hope the iPhone 5S does more than catch up with the Galaxy S4.

Verdict

Several aspects show up that the iPhone 5 is a phone of last year, while the Galaxy S4 is absolutely a phone that belongs in 2013. It’s much more powerful, its camera has a full five extra megapixels at its disposal and it doesn’t even cost any more. In truth, the extras mean little in practise because there are far greater differences at work here than pure specs.

Forgetting the elements that make this comparison a case of 'apples and oranges', the Galaxy S4 is clearly mode advanced in most respects.

In Viacom Deal, Amazon Scoops Up Children’s Shows

2013-06-09T15:52:00.004-07:00

If parents of preschoolers want to plop their children in front of the laptop or tablet to watch “Blue’s Clues” and “Dora the Explorer,” they may have to join Amazon’s subscription streaming service.

That put pressure on Amazon to secure children’s programming for its Amazon Prime subscription service, which it hopes will compete with Netflix and Hulu in the streaming video market.

Amazon has a smaller streaming audience than Netflix, but for Viacom the arrangement presents the opportunity to have tie-ins with the consumer products that Amazon sells, like DVDs, “Dora” backpacks and “SpongeBob SquarePants” beach towels.

“They’re a very consumer driven company and they also connect our Nickelodeon content to products,” Philippe Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview.

As part of the deal announced on Tuesday, Amazon also secured the rights to stream shows that are first broadcast on Viacom’s Comedy Central and MTV, including some episodes of “Jersey Shore” and “Teen Mom 2.” But the key to the agreement is making Amazon’s Prime Instant Video subscription service the exclusive outlet for pre-school-age children to watch old episodes of shows like “Dora the Explorer,” “Go, Diego, Go!” and “The Backyardigans.” Since children do not mind reruns as much as adults do, deals for these types of shows often cost less than series aimed at adults.

Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president of digital video and music, said in a statement that children’s programming was “one of the most-watched TV genres on Prime Instant Video.”

In a letter to customers, Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said the deal gave Prime Instant Video more than 250 TV seasons and more than 3,900 episodes from Nick Jr., Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central. “We have increased by 55 percent the number of episodes available to top Prime shows for kids,” Mr. Bezos wrote. The deal, he said, added “400 episodes of new shows like ‘Team Umizoomi,’ ‘Bubble Guppies,’ ‘Victorious,’ ‘Big Time Rush’ and ‘Drake & Josh.’ ”

Amazon Prime members pay $79 a year for two-day free shipping, monthly Kindle e-book rentals and video streaming. The company has said it has millions of Prime subscribers but has declined to give an exact figure. Netflix has 27 million streaming subscribers in the United States. Hulu’s subscription service, Hulu Plus, has about four million.

In the past, Viacom has had a complicated relationship with subscription video on-demand services like Netflix. After an unexpected ratings drop at its Nickelodeon channel last year, analysts partly blamed a glut of old episodes available to Netflix for cannibalizing the cable channel’s ratings. Children increasingly watch shows via streaming, but revenue from digital syndication deals still does not come close to that provided by advertisers who pay to reach viewers the old-fashioned way.

In the quarter that ended March 31, advertising revenue at Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. rose 2 percent as the network rebounded with preschool audiences. Mr. Dauman said a fresh pipeline of shows had improved Nickelodeon’s ratings. As advertising revenue grows on the cable channel, Mr. Dauman has defended deals with digital subscription streaming services as good for both parties.

“Our job is to grow the pie,” Mr. Dauman said. “And having all these different revenue streams grows the overall pie.”

Viacom will need to make an additional $125 million to $150 million in streaming deals in fiscal year 2013 to meet its goal of 10 percent affiliate growth, according to Bernstein Research.

Amazon has rapidly built its streaming service to compete with more established services, namely Netflix and Hulu. The Viacom deal is the latest example of the online retailing giant’s swooping in to gain streaming rights after deals with Netflix expire.

After Netflix declined to renew its rights to popular cable series like “Pawn Stars,” Amazon jumped in. In December, Amazon struck a deal with Time Warner to gain the exclusive streaming rights to TNT’s “The Closer” and “Falling Skies.” Netflix got exclusive rights to TNT’s “Dallas.”

Amazon and CBS have a deal that will let Prime subscribers watch “Under the Dome,” a new science fiction series based on the Stephen King novel, four days after episodes are broadcast on CBS beginning June 24
.

Ducklings Rescued by Public Works Crew

2013-06-09T15:43:00.004-07:00

After they dutifully followed their mama across a street, four ducklings got trapped when they fell into a storm sewer in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Neighborhood families were able to rescue 3 of the 4 babies with a net, but needed to call out the professionals to get the last one.

The city's Public Works crew devised a plan to send the final baby back toward the net with a burst of water from upstream.

It worked.

The emergency inspired the neighborhood to work together, with four families joining the effort.

Hero Dog Arrives Back in Asia After Facial Surgery in US

2013-06-09T15:24:00.001-07:00

Thronged by news photographers and well-wishers, Kabang the hero dog arrived back home in the Philippines yesterday after 8 months in the U.S. enduring intensive surgeries and treatment for cancer and heartworm.

Kabang became a national hero in 2011 after she lost her snout and upper jaw running in front of a motorcycle in what her owner said was "a deliberate act to save two girls who were crossing the street," according to GMA Online.

Thousands of dollars were raised for her treatment through an online campaign at CareForKabang.com.

Finally, the small 2 year-old shepherd-mix left her homeland in October, 2012still with a gaping wound in her face and carrying the hopes for recovery from thousands of fans.

It took four months for the team at the University of California Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital to even ready the dog for facial and dental surgery.

A team of UC Davis veterinarians specializing in oncology; infectious diseases; dental, oral and soft-tissue surgery and internal medicine coordinated Kabang’s multitreatment care -- and provided constant updates to Filipinos who longed to hear about her daily life and condition.

In the end it was not possible to reconstruct Kabang’s snout and a functional upper jaw, but because the facial wound has been closed using skin flaps brought forward from her head, and her cancer cured, she will be better protected against infection and prepared for an active life with her family in the Philippines.

Biden ‘comfortable’ with same-sex marriage

2012-05-07T05:24:00.002-07:00

Vice President Biden on Sunday appeared to go further than he has in the past in expressing support for same-sex marriage.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Biden described himself as “absolutely comfortable” with gay couples having the same rights as heterosexual couples.

“Look. I am vice president of the United States of America,” Biden said. “The president sets the policy. I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”

Asked whether the Obama administration in a second term would come out in favor of same-sex marriage, Biden declined to say.

“I can’t speak to that. I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.

Gay rights groups welcomed Biden’s comments and said President Obama should follow suit.

“We are encouraged by Vice President Biden’s comments, who rightly articulated that loving and committed gay and lesbian couples should be treated equally,” Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “Now is the time for President Obama to speak out for full marriage equality for same-sex couples.”

It was not immediately clear whether Biden was speaking off-the-cuff or whether his remarks might have been part of a move by the Obama administration to inch closer toward an embrace of same-sex marriage through a high-level surrogate.

The “Meet the Press” interview was taped Friday. Immediately after its airing Sunday morning, a Biden spokesman said that the vice president “was saying what the president has said previously — that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to roll back those rights.

“That’s why we stopped defending the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in legal challenges and support legislation to repeal it,” the aide said. “Beyond that, the vice president was expressing that he too is evolving on the issue, after meeting so many committed couples and families in this country.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said via Twitter shortly after Biden spoke: “What VP said-that all married couples should have exactly the same legal rights-is precisely POTUS’s position.”

The White House in February instructed the Justice Department to no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriage. The move has led to a political battle with the Republican-led House, which has moved to defend the law in court.

Biden has previously said that he believes same-sex marriage is “an inevitability,” although he has stopped short of endorsing it. Biden said in a December 2010 interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he agrees with Obama that he is continually “evolving” on the issue.

As Election Day 2012 approaches, Obama has come under criticism from gay rights groups and others for not endorsing same-sex marriage.

The issue is a politically thorny one for Obama. If he were to come out in favor of same-sex marriage, he would risk losing the support of some independents and could be viewed as acting out of political opportunism. If he continues “evolving” on the issue, he risks leaving a key part of his base disenchanted ahead of the November election.

It’s an issue that could come to a head this summer when Democrats craft their party platform at the Democratic National Convention.

In speaking about his views on same-sex marriage Sunday, Biden said that “when things really begin to change is when the social culture changes.

“I think ‘Will and Grace’ probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far,” he told host David Gregory, referring to an NBC television series that featured a gay lawyer and his best friend, a heterosexual woman. “And I think people fear that which is different. Now they’re beginning to understand.”

He declined to say whether he plans to run for president in 2016.

“I don’t know whether I’m gonna run,” he said.

Vladimir Putin takes presidential oath for new term in Russia

2012-05-07T05:23:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW — Vladimir V. Putin took the presidential oath of office for the third time Monday, swearing to uphold the Russian Constitution as his hand rested on a red-bound copy. Outside, the streets were mostly empty, except for knots of would-be demonstrators who were hustled off to police vans.

Inside the Grand Kremlin Palace, nearly 3,000 dignitaries listened as Putin said he intended to strengthen democracy and make political dialogue more inclusive. Outside, about 120 were arrested, accused by police of attempting to demonstrate without permission more than half a mile from the Kremlin ceremony.

That tension between official promises of democracy and restrictions on protest may come to define what is now a six-year presidential term for Putin. The Russians who began demonstrating in December in favor of honest elections fear that a weakened Putin will crack down rather than liberalize. Their misgivings were only reinforced Sunday, when a harsh police presence confronted a 20,000-strong legal, anti-Putin march. About 450 were arrested.

Monday’s ceremony began just before noon, when outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev’s heavily guarded motorcade arrived at the Kremlin. Putin arrived shortly afterward, borne by limousine from the Russian White House on broad deserted boulevards, along the Moscow River, past the crazy-quilt cupolas of St. Basil’s Cathedral onto Red Square and through the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate, opened for the occasion.

Greeted by bayonet-carrying guards who slowly turned their hands to watch as he passed, Putin walked on a long red carpet through the grand, gilded halls: first St. George Hall, then St. Alexander and finally St. Andrew, the throne room of the czars. Above the palace, the presidential flag fluttered in the breeze, the white, blue and red of the Russian Federation emblazoned with the czarist double-headed eagle.

Medvedev, looking wan, even diminished, spoke first. “We launched the modernization of our economy,” he said, “although not everything worked out entirely as planned.”

Medvedev, who became president in 2008 as the hand-picked successor after Putin reached his two-term limit, had been seen as offering the promise of liberalization. But he disappointed his supporters when he agreed in September to switch places with Putin, declining to run for president against his mentor. He is expected to be named prime minister Tuesday.

Putin looked impassive, occasionally even glum. “We have passed a long and difficult road together,” he said. “We now feel confident. We restored our dignity as a great nation.”

As the short ceremony concluded with stirring music, the skies outside were growing heavier and heavier. Putin walked out the way he had come, this time stopping to acknowledge his wife, Lyudmilla, who is rarely seen in public. She was standing with Boris Yeltsin’s widow, Naina, and Medvedev’s wife Svetlana. Putin kissed each woman on the cheek with equal decorum, and then spoke a few words to his wife.

Off camera, he was given the nuclear suitcase. Then, outside in Cathedral Square, Putin and Medvedev reviewed the presidential guard, who loudly saluted “Comrade President.”

On the streets, about a thousand demonstrators tried to gather but were dispersed by police. Some clashed with pro-Putin youth groups, and the police arrested some of each. Activists reported that police were arresting people simply for wearing the white ribbon associated with anti-Putin demonstrators.

Boris Nemtsov, a long-time democrat who was detained Sunday and then released, told a radio station that police stormed into the Jean Jacques restaurant frequented by the opposition, overturning tables and rounding up activists, who were sitting at tables talking.

A sign soon went up on the restaurant door: “Closed for technical reasons.”

At the Grand Kremlin Palace, the inauguration was followed by a lavish banquet with champagne and caviar for the guests, who included a few foreign dignitaries, Putin’s friend Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, among them. Also on hand were Mikhail Prokhorov, a billionaire and unsuccessful presidential candidate; Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union; and other Russian officials and cultural figures.

Happy holidays: Shock study finds people more likely to die in U.S. on Christmas Day than any other day of the year

2010-12-21T22:40:00.003-08:00

A new study has baffled researchers after revealing U.S. citizens are more likely to die on Christmas Day than any other time of the year.Analysis of U.S. death certificates between 1979 and 2004 found an extra 42,325 natural deaths in the two weeks starting with Christmas above the usual seasonal winter increase.
In an article in the Social Science & Medicine journal, researchers said that mortality in general increased over the holidays, and deaths in hospitals rose dramatically on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

A U.S. study has found people are more likely to die on Christmas Day than any other day in the year (file picture)

The study found that more people died on hospital wards, or had died before arrival, on the public holidays than on any other days of the year.
Researcher David Phillips, a sociology professor at the University of California, told the National Post: 'It's not trivial. We looked at all cause categories and, for nearly every one, we found an excess of deaths - particularly for people who are dying rapidly, like dead-on-arrival or dying in an emergency department.'
He said that the team's analysis of 57.5million death certificates showed the chance of dying during the holiday period increased 'somewhere between three per cent and nine per cent, depending on the demographic you're looking at' and 'somewhere between one per cent and ten per cent, depending on what cause of death you're looking at'.
He added: 'It's speculated that psychological stress can make a difference.
'But to make a difference so quickly and so precisely bang-on Christmas and [New Year's Day], for a huge range of diseases, makes it seem unlikely as a broad-scale explanation.'
Possible explanations behind the spike in deaths include overcrowding in emergency departments, winter travel, cold weather and substance abuse.
Mr Phillips and two other researchers at the university wrote a paper linking sudden infant death syndrome with alcohol use.
In the paper, which appeared last month in the Addiction journal, they argued that cot death increased 33 per cent on New Year's Day - triggered by an increase in alcohol consumption by carers.
Researchers also noted two other days which reported higher than usual instances of cot death.
July 5, the day after Independence Day, saw a 14 per cent increase, while April 20 - popularly used as a holiday to celebrate cannabis consumption - saw an 18 per cent rise.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

'No human being stands a chance against that type of animal': American tourists speak of horror after tour guide is ripped from kayak by giant crocodile

2010-12-21T22:40:00.001-08:00

'It grabbed him from behind, turned him upside down and pulled him under the water'
Attack happened so fast victim was unable to even cry out before he was dragged underwater
Body of Hendrik Coetzee, 35, still not recovered after attack on Tuesday

Two American friends have spoken of their horror after their whitewater rafting guide was ripped from his kayak and dragged underwater by a crocodile during a trip of a lifetime in the Congo.
Hendrik Coetzee, 35, was leading the three-man expedition from the source of the White Nile deep into the Congo when he was attacked.
Ben Stookesbury and Chris Korbulic were paddling alongside him after the trio had navigated some rapids when he was grabbed by the massive crocodile, turned over and dragged beneath the water.

Split second: Hendrik Coetzee, 35, was leading a three-man expedition on the Lakuga River, Congo, when he was grabbed by a crocodile and pull underwater

They had been navigating a relatively unknown part of the Lukuga River, one of the tributaries that feeds into the Congo River, before the fatal attack last Tuesday morning.
Mr Stookesbury, from Mount Shasta, California, told MSNBC's TODAY programme: 'This section was not well known to the outside world.
'We were paddling close together, the same formation we had been for most of the river, because it makes you appear as a larger animal [to potential predators].'

Horror: Chris Korbulic, left, and Ben Stookesbury - right - pictured in front of the Salto Belo falls in Campos Novos, Brazil. The two friends were alongside Mr Coetzee when he was killed

Grief: The two Americans have paid tribute to their South African guide and described their shock at his death

Mr Korbulic, from Rogue River, Oregon, said the South African-born outdoorsman did not even have time to cry out before the crocodile had dragged him under.
He said: 'It came from behind us, we didn't see anything until it was too late.
'It grabbed him, turned him upside down and then dragged him under.'

Dangerous: The area the group were kayaking was relatively unknown and the three were paddling close together for safety

Ron Magill, wildlife expert, said: 'There's no human being that stands a chance against that type of animal.'
Mr Coetzee's body has not been found, but a memorial service will be held for him next week.
A blog written by Mr Coetzee during their two-month expedition to highlight the need for clean water in Africa said: 'If safe was all I wanted, I would have stayed home... this is the nature of the beast: risk.'
Mr Coetzee had given the other kayakers instructions to avoid eddies because of dangerous hippos wallowing underwater and to steer clear of banks because crocodiles often sunned themselves on them.
The two Americans were unharmed in the incident and managed to paddle to safety. They have since returned to the U.S., but have not ruled out kayaking again in Africa.
The trip's sponsor company, Eddie Bauer, said in a statement: 'We are saddened by the tragic accident and express our deepest sympathies to Hendri's family and friends.'
Mr Coetzee, who lived in Uganda, was a well-known kayaker who had featured in documentaries about the sport.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Dolce & Gabbana model, 28, dies after spending four weeks in a coma following surfing accident

2010-12-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

In his prime: Male model Charles DeVoe, who died in a surfing accident

A top male model who spent a month in a coma after a surfing accident has died.
Charles DeVoe, 28, was pulled from the ocean in Rockaway, New York, after his ankle strap became snagged on a wooden pole.
He had been under the water for several minutes before rescuers managed to cut him free on November 12.
DeVoe had worked for fashion houses such as Dolce & Gabbana and Abercrombie & Fitch. He had featured in magazines including Vogue.
After the accident he was taken to the New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center, where his family remained with him for the past month. He died last Friday.
Mr DeVoe was from Philadelphia but moved to New York in 2004 to pursue a career in modelling after graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He signed to Major Model Management and posed for fashion photography heavyweights like Bruce Weber, Steven Klein and Mario Testino.
Aside from his work with D&G and Abercrombie & Fitch, Mr DeVoe had featured in campaigns for Anne Klein, Buffalo Jeans, and alongside Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen for Stefanel.
His face graced the pages of magazines such as Details, GQ, Vogue Nippon, V Magazine, and Arena Hommes Plus.

Family members said Mr DeVoe was athletic from a young age and was very interested in adrenaline sports such as snowboarding, BMX biking and – most recently – surfing.

Scroll down to see DeVoe in a fashion video

Tragic: Male model Charles DeVoe, who has died in a surfing accident in New York

Fashion success: DeVoe had modelled for top fashion houses like Dolce & Gabbana, been featured in Vogue, and was shot by Mario Testino

Initially it had seemed that Mr DeVoe’s condition was improving after the accident, according to policeman Eddie Roth.
‘[The signs] were encouraging,’ Mr Roth said. ‘His brain swelling had gone down, his lungs and kidneys were responding and he was responding to [the treatment].

'It's a shame – everyone loved him around here.’

His parents, David and Laura Lane DeVoe, who had been keeping a vigil by their son’s bedside, said: ‘He will greatly missed. This is very hard for us.’

Accident: Mr DeVoe was surfing in the Rockaways, a peninsula in New York, when the incident happened

'We are all devastated at this loss,' said Jason Kanner, a spokesman for Major Model Management, the agency who signed Mr DeVoe.

'This was a tragic and senseless loss, a horrific accident that has deeply affected all that knew and loved and cared for him.
‘[He was] a lovely kid who was respected and loved by many.’
Mr DeVoe's body was cremated on Sunday in New York.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

A grisly legacy: What is to become of the Koran written in Saddam Hussein's blood?

2010-12-21T22:37:00.001-08:00

Iraq’s government is unsure what to do with Saddam’s ghoulish legacy – a Koran written using his blood.
The 114-chapter book, which required 27 litres of his blood, has been under lock and key for almost eight years.
The fate of the macabre project is now being considered as the country debates what should become of the dictator’s final relics.

Enlarge

Dilemma: The fate of a Koran written using 27 litres of Saddam Hussein's blood is uncertain. It is currently stored behind three vaulted doors in Iraq

‘What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars,’ Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq’s Sunni Endowment fund, told The Guardian.
Despite his opposition to the very existence of the document (he describes it as ‘haraam’ or forbidden), Sheikh Sammarrai has protected the blood-soaked pages since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
He said: ‘I knew this would be much sought after and we made the decision to protect it. But to see this now is not easy.

Brought to book: Saddam takes delivery of a copy of the Koran in 2000, in Baghdad. Iraqi newspapers reported that he ordered the holy book to be scribed in his own blood as thanks for his long political career

'There are three keys and none of them are held in the one place. I have one, the police chief in the area has another and there is a third in another part of Baghdad.’

'This [book] is very destructive for the psyche of the Iraqi population. This is a clear reminder of the consequences of totalitarianism. I am for removing it' - Ahmed Chalabi, President of the Governing Council of Iraq

'We should keep this as a document for the brutality of Saddam, because he should not have done this' - Ali al-Moussawi, spokesman for the prime minister, Nour al-Maliki

The Koran, which is currently stored behind three vaulted doors, was created over the course of two years as Saddam attended regular appointments with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher.
The tyrant took on the project after deciding to re-embrace his religion after his elder son Uday survived an assassination attempt.
Abbas Shakir Joody al-Baghdadi was the calligrapher commissioned by Saddam himself.
Understandably, al-Baghdadi is reluctant to be associated with the grisly work.
Speaking from his new home in the U.S., he said: ‘I don’t like to talk about this now. It was a painful part of my life that I want to forget about.’
A towering statue of Saddam was pulled to the ground in 2003 in a symbolic act against his oppressive regime.
Working together in the heart of Baghdad, U.S. marines helped crowds of Iraqi men bring down the imposing monument on the day the city's population celebrated its liberation.
The scenes were reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, brought down by citizens of another oppressed city.

End of a tyrant: Saddam was executed in 2006

But the fate of the blood Koran remains uncertain, as a debate within Iraq rages over whether everything from the brutal regime should be removed.
Ahmed Chalabi, who is President of the Governing Council of Iraq, says anything connected to him must go.
He said: ‘This is very destructive for the psyche of the Iraqi population.
'This is a clear reminder of the consequences of totalitarianism and idealising a person that embodies evil.
'They have brought nothing to Iraq. They are not worth celebrating.
'They have nothing aesthetic to offer. I am for removing them.’
Meanwhile, Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, said: 'We should keep this as a document for the brutality of Saddam, because he should not have done this.
'It says a lot about him. It should never be put in a museum though, because no Iraqi wants to see it.
'Maybe in the future it could be sent to a private museum, like memorabilia from the Hitler and Stalin regimes.'

Fall of a regime: Iraqis watch a statue of Saddam being brought down in Baghdad's al-Fardous square in 2003 - as symbols of his reign of terror are erased from memory

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Silvio Berlusconi's daughter: 'I don't think my dad warrants some of the treatment he gets'

2010-12-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

Barbara Berlusconi has spoken out about the sex scandals surrounding her father Silvio, Italy's PM

Controversial Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's daughter has spoken of her bitterness at the sex scandals that her father has been embroiled in.
Barbara, 26, also added that at times she felt she was 'not in tune with the thoughts and political actions' of her father but it did not mean she 'loved him any less'.
Berlusconi, 74, has been involved in series of sleazy sex scandals since April last year starting with his questionable relationship with 18-year-old lingerie model Naomi Letizia.
It then emerged high class escorts had been among guests invited to parties he hosted at his official residence, with one even claiming she was paid to spend the night with him.
Then last month he was linked to Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Mahroug, 18, who was also a guest at a party he hosted and who spoke of his 'bunga bunga' parties - a reference to an after-dinner sex game.
Then just days later another escort Nadia Macri, 28, came forward to say that she had been paid 10,000 Euro to have sex with Berlusconi on two occasions - a claim he had denied.
Barbara told Italian Vanity Fair magazine: 'I have for him (Berlusconi) and his multiple successes, great admiration but I reserve the right to have an intellectual approach to his life.
'These episodes (sex scandals) have left me bitter. I find it hard to find an answer for them. It's obvious that I don't agree with a certain type of behaviour but I have to try and believe my father.'
She added: 'Some time I have found myself not being in tune with the thoughts and political actions of Silvio Berlusconi, that doesn't make me a bad daughter and I don't love my father less because of this.'

However Barbara did admit she thought the 'weaknesses' as her father called the scandals affected him and said: 'They affected him in his private life and his political life.
'What upsets me sometimes is that sometimes I don't think Silvio Berlusconi warrants some of the treatment he gets. He has done a lot and he has done good for the country, with passion and pride.
'Many things could have been avoided if he had neglected the fact that we are all vulnerable. Certain types of behaviour make things even more fragile.
'It would be a shame if his extraordinary political career would be remembered only for this.'

Relaxing on a beach holiday earlier this year before the scandals about her father broke out

When asked what she thought of the idea of comparing her father to a pop star Barbara replied: 'I think that's an appropriate comparison because he gets to the heart and mind of people because he speaks their language.
'He is a conqueror and in the end even his critics are bewitched. He has an impressive spontaneity and he can feel at home with other people.'
Barbara, who is the oldest of Berlusconi's three children with his second wife Veronica Lario, 52, also denied that she her siblings Eleonara, 24, and Luigi, 22, were the objects of a dispute over the future of Berlusconi's business empire.
There have been reports that Veronica is demanding a bigger share of Berlusconi's Fininvest company as part of their divorce settlement and she is angry that his two children from his first marriage have a larger share.
Barbara said: 'We have never been objects of discussion over my father's patrimony or what roles we should have with the firm. We have never taken a part in the personal business of my parents that is a matter for them.'
It is not the first time that Barbara has spoken to Vanity Fair about her father last year in an interview she said: 'Politicians need to safeguard the values they represent and even better them.'

Silvio Berlusconi is seen 'resting his eyelids' during a speech by President Giorgio Napolitano at a Christmas ceremony at his official residence Palazzo del Quirinale

His mouth is also given a rest but then he wakes and realises he's on camera

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Police arrest author of 'The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct'

2010-12-21T22:33:00.001-08:00

Under arrest: Phillip R Greaves II, the author of the 2010 book 'The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct' has been arrested in Colorado on an obscenity charge

Police have arrested the author of a twisted book entitled 'The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct'.
Philip Ray Greaves II was arrested after he sold and mailed a signed copy of his book to undercover police officers.
'He very proudly sold us his personal copy,' Polk Sheriff Grady Judd told the Associated Press.
'I was outraged by the content. It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was.'
Greaves was arrested at his home in Pueblo, Colorado for violating Florida's obscenity laws.
His paedophilia guide was pulled from Amazon.com last month after it sparked an online uproar.
It is not clear how the book made it on to Amazon.com in the first place.

The book included first-person descriptions of sexual encounters, purportedly written from a child's point of view.
Greaves argues in the book that paedophiles are misunderstood, as the word literally means to love a child.

He adds that it is only a crime to act on sexual impulses toward children, and offers advice that purportedly allows pedophiles to abide by the law.
Sheriff Judd said he and his detectives got Greaves to sell the book to them for $50. He sent it through the mail and told officers it was his last copy.
Sheriff Judd, known throughout Florida as a crusader against child predators, said he was incensed when he heard about the book and that no one had arrested Greaves for selling it.
'What's wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can't arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?' Sheriff Judd said.
'If we can get jurisdiction ... we're coming after you,' Sheriff Judd said.

'There's nothing in the world more important than our children.'
Greaves is being charged with distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.
Laurie Shorter, spokeswoman for the Pueblo County Sheriff's Department, said Greaves would be held in the county jail on the Florida charge.

Outrage: The cover of Greaves' book

He was being booked Monday morning and it was unclear if he has an attorney. Sheriff Judd said Greaves could be in Florida as early as Monday night.
'If he will waive extradition, it's my goal for him to eat processed turkey on Christmas Day in the Polk County Jail,' Sheriff Judd said.
Denver attorney David Lane, who has handled several high-profile free speech cases, said Florida could have a hard time extraditing Greaves. He is entitled to a hearing where he can argue he should not be sent there to face charges.
'The main question is whether what he's accused of in Florida would be a crime in Colorado,' Mr Lane said.
'Obviously, it's not a crime in Colorado because he hasn't been arrested here.'
Writs of extradition - the paperwork necessary to send somebody to another state - are routinely signed by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney.
But Mr Lane, who is not affiliated with this case, said it involves a different set of issues.
'Most of other extradition cases present clear-cut cases, the defendant was dealing drugs in that other state or some other crime that is also illegal here,' Mr Lane said.
Governor Ritter's spokesman, Evan Dreyer, did not immediately return a message.
Greaves has no criminal record, but his self-published book of advice on how to make sexual encounters with children safe caused a flap when it showed up on Amazon in November. The book was later removed from the site.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

U.S. buffets and salad bars 'threatened with poison attacks’ by Al Qaeda group behind 'ink cartridge' bomb plot

2010-12-21T22:27:00.005-08:00

Al Qaeda terrorists are plotting to put deadly poison in the salad bars and buffets of hotels and restaurants, according to U.S. intelligence sources.
They would hide either ricin or cyanide in the food at a number of locations during one weekend to cause panic.
Those who ate the poisoned meals would fall ill and die within days. It takes only tiny quantities of either ricin or cyanide to kill.

Scroll down to view the CBS News report

Attacks: The Al Qaeda-influenced group could poison Americans by poisoning buffets and salad bars in synchronised attacks in restaurants over a weekend

Sources at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who issued the warning, indicated that the targets were most likely to be in America.

Security staff in the hospitality industry at unnamed locations have been put on alert over what is being called a ‘credible’ threat.

The salad plot marks a shift away from bombings, which have been favoured by terrorists. Sources said those behind it are thought to be part of Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

This is the group responsible for the 'ink cartridge' bomb plot to blow up cargo planes including one which was just 15 minutes from detonating at East Midlands airport in October

Poisons: Al Qaeda websites provide information on how to make cyanide (left) and ricin (right), the toxic substances that could be used in the attacks

The group has praised the cargo plot and said it was part of what it called ‘Operation Haemorrhage’.

Propaganda it has posted on the internet reads: ‘Attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations would add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy.’

Militants say the plot consists of 'attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations' to 'add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy'.
Department of Homeland Security officials, along with members of the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, have briefed a small group of corporate security officers from the hotel and restaurant industries about it.
'We operate under the premise that individuals prepared to carry out terrorist acts are in this country,' said Janet Napolirano of Homeland Security a fortnight ago.
The subtle attacks would ‘initially look very much like food poisoning’, said professor of pharmaceutical sciences at St. John's University, Dr Susan Ford.

Parts of a computer printer with explosives loaded into its toner cartridge found in a package on a cargo plane coming from Yemen on October 30

A UPS cargo airplane lands at Dubai airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, after police intercepted a bomb

In the CBS News report she illustrates how just a tiny portion of each poison could prove fatal. ‘250 milligrams… that is the fatal dose,’ said Dr Ford.
However, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the public would not be made aware of certain threats.
He said: 'A threat you might feel is sufficiently specific and credible to tell the people who are professionally involved might not be specific or credible enough to tell the general public.'
Mr Chertoff added that it would be important to inform public health officials so that they know how to react to what may initially appear to be food poisoning, if, indeed, it was a terrorist attack.
Yesterday Department of Homeland Security spokesman Sean Smith said: 'We are not going to comment on reports of specific terrorist planning.
‘However, the counter-terrorism and homeland security communities have engaged in extensive efforts for many years to guard against all types of terrorist attacks, including unconventional attacks using chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials.
‘Indeed, Al Qaeda has publicly stated its intention to try to carry out unconventional attacks for well over a decade, and AQAP propaganda in the past year has made similar reference.
'Finally, we get reports about the different kinds of attacks terrorists would like to carry out that frequently are beyond their assessed capability.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Merry Christmas Mr Fritzl: Cellar monster treated to a lie-in and a roast chicken dinner on big day

2010-12-21T22:27:00.003-08:00

Cellar monster Josef Fritzl will get an extra hour in bed and a meal of roast chicken and rice on Christmas Day while his daughter celebrates with her mother and six incest children 150 miles away.
Elisabeth Fritzl, 44, has invited her mother Rosemarie to her home in a small village for the festivities at the end of a year in which her tormentor contacted her over 20 times by letter.
He also tried telephoning but the prison put a block on him making contact with her.

Josef Fritzl will get an extra hour of sleep and special food on Christmas. Meanwhile his estranged wife and the daughter he raped for 24 years will be spending the holiday together

Elisabeth, who was held in a secret dungeon be her deranged father beneath the family home for 24 years to be raped an estimated 3,000 times by him, has instructed the psychiatric prison at Stein where he is held to block all further letters to her.
In 2010 Elisabeth passed her driving test, saw her children slowly recover from their psychiatric scars left by their cellar ordeal and has slowly patched things up with her mother.
Rosemarie, in the process of divorcing 75-year-old Fritzl as he serves out his life sentence for rape, enslavement and negligent homicide - the result of the death of one of the seven children Elisabeth bore him in the cellar - is a sad figure who lives on minimal social security payments in a threadbare bedsit.
Elisabeth was estranged from her after she was freed from the dungeon in April 2008 because she learned of her father‘s rapist past.

This drawing shows the room in the basement of his house where Fritl kept his daughter captive

Rosemarie, 70, took him back into the family home after he served a prison term - a move that allowed him to plot and built the cellar lair beneath his house in the Austrian town of Amstetten.
But she has slowly learned to forgive her, telling friends and carers that “she is as much a victim as everyone else in this tale.“
Fritzl, who is showing the early signs of dementia in prison, sent letters to Elisabeth earlier this year asking her to provide money for him to study law in jail with a view to him getting a re-trial.
He also asked his sister-in-law to tell him he still loved his wife and that he dreamed of joining her on the outside one day. But to his family he is dead in all but name: no-one has been to visit him in jail since he was sentenced but his lawyer and one German journalist.
On Christmas Eve he will be fed with fish and potato salad and allowed to watch TV in the afternoon. He will also be permitted to attend a special church service for prisoners in the jail church attended by a visiting bishop.
He gets an extra hour‘s lie-in on Christmas morning to 8.00am followed by a breakfast of rolls, butter and jam and at lunchtime the chicken with rice and a green salad.
Elisabeth’s children - three of whom lived with her in the cellar and three of whom were removed shortly after birth to be brought up by Fritzl and Rosemarie - are all said to be doing well in their new home.
The cellar children recently underwent complete medical checks to see if their immune systems had recovered from the poor diet and lack of sunlight and vitamin D due to their underground incarceration. All are progressing well although Felix, eight, still has to wear sunglasses when the light is too bright.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Crazed groom guns down wife and best man at wedding reception before killing himself

2010-12-21T22:26:00.001-08:00

A groom blasted his young bride and best man to death at his wedding reception after telling guests he had a 'surprise' for them.Rogerio Damascena, 29, shot his new wife Renata Alexandre Costa Coelho, 25, in the chest and head then blew away his best friend Marcelo Guimaraes, 40, before turning the gun on himself.
Around 200 horrified guests witnesses the massacre at the party near Recife, in north east Brazil, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Crazed: Rogerio Damascena (left) shot dead his new wife Renata Alexandre Costa Coelho at their wedding reception

Today the victims' friends and family were desperate for answers as to why Damascena, a sales manager, went berserk with the .38 calibre pistol.
Homicide detective Joao Brito said: 'It was about 2pm and the party was in full swing when he left the room saying he had a surprise, then came back shooting the woman and at other people.
'He drew his gun and shot the bride in the chest region. She was cornered and had no chance to defend herself.
'He took another shot, hitting her in the head. He then fired several times at the best man, who was also his boss and friend.
'Even when he could see that Marcelo was wounded, he shot him in the back of the neck. Then he shot himself in the head.'
The detective said he believed the bloodbath was planned in advance because the groom had hidden the weapon in his father's pickup truck.
The bride's brother Roberto Guerra told a local newspaper: 'The party was going brilliantly until 2am. He left for five minutes, and when he came back he embraced my sister, gave her a kiss on the back of the neck and then started shooting.'
A nephew of the bride, called Tiago, was grazed by a bullet and treated at hospital before being released.
The bride's sister Lucia Helena Coelho said: 'My sister was a wonderful person who loved and wanted to be loved.
'He was happy, she was happy, the party was beautiful. His family adored her and don't understand this.

Massacre: The groom opened fire at the end of his wedding reception in the city of Camaragibe, in north-eastern Brazil

'He revealed himself as sociopath who fooled the entire family.'
Bizarrely the pistol disappeared from the scene and police were still looking for it tonight.
The couple had married in a civil ceremony on Friday afternoon.
Saturday night's celebration in Camaragibe included a spiritual ceremony which was due to end with a breakfast on Sunday morning.
The bride's family had paid for the festivities and had bought the couple a house as a wedding gift.
Both the bride and best man died at the scene. The gunman's father, Joao Bosco Damascena, tried to save his son, who was still alive when he reached hospital, but died later in the day.
The dad told police: 'I don't know where the gun went. At the time I was only thinking about helping my son.
'To be honest I didn't even know he had a gun.'
Speaking before his son died in hospital, he added: 'My son is a good person, he would never harm anybody.
'He will have to answer for everything.'
The dead bride's family suggested the motive for the crime may have been jealousy.
Their lawyer Hisbelo Oliveira said: 'He was quite a jealous person. When he focused on someone he had this problem. This must have been the motive for the crime.'
The bride and best man were buried on Monday on separate funerals while the killer was buried on Sunday.

Murder: The shootings took place near the coastal city of Recife

Facebook's bitchy little sister: LittleGossip.com website that lets pupils make anonymous comments about each other

2010-12-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

They attend the most prestigious private schools in the country, with their parents paying up to £30,000 a year to give them the finest education.
But after going online in their hordes to spread malicious rumours about fellow pupils’ looks, sex lives and drug habits, it seems pupils at Eton, St Paul’s, Harrow and others are in urgent need of some lessons in manners – not to mention grammar and spelling.
A new website that encourages schoolchildren to write anonymous gossip about their peers, which is then rated as ‘true’ or ‘false’ by other users of the site, has exploded in popularity among Britain’s pupils in the past month.

A screengrab from LittleGossip.com where students can write about their schoolmates

Perhaps surprisingly, it is pupils from the supposedly more illustrious institutions that appear to be the most enthusiastic users of the website.
Many of the comments on LittleGossip.com are obscene, while others are homophobic or threatening.
In one post, a student at Eton made the following barely literate contribution about a peer: ‘mate your a ******* wannabe, u spend all of dads cash on your drug addiction.’
Another pupil at Emanuel School in Battersea, South London, wrote of a girl at the school: ‘****** is working her way through the boys, but unfortunately hasn’t made any girl friends along the way, what will she do when she runs out of boys? And who is her next target?’

James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich is one of the independent schools that has a lively message board on the site

Comments made on the site are so often obscene that 10 per cent of posts submitted to the site are reported by users for deletion. Parents and headteachers are furious their pupils are so freely spreading hurtful rumours about each other.
Charlotte Macleod, the mother of four children at The Harrodian School, in Barnes, South West London, said: ‘What chills me is the viciousness of these unmoderated and anonymous posts. My 15-year-old daughter’s friends are being mocked, sneered at and goaded. True or false, these personal and sexual taunts are universally available online.’
Teachers at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich, South East London, were alerted to the site by a parent last Thursday. They have since banned students from using it.
The school’s headteacher Marion Gibbs said: ‘I’m just so angry that this vehicle for cyber-bullying exists. I can’t imagine what kind of person wants to set up a site like this. It must be some kind of sick person.’
At Tormead School for girls in Guildford, Surrey, the site has become such a problem among the girls in Year 7 that the headteacher, Christina Foord, is threatening recriminations to any student found to have used it inappropriately.
In a letter sent to parents last night, she wrote: ‘Last Friday, my attention was brought to a social website www.littlegossip.com. This site invites comments about others and also offers the opportunity to agree or disagree with the comments. Whilst some are posted in defence of those being attacked the majority are both deeply unkind and offensive.

HERE'S WHAT THE PUPILS HAVE TO SAY...

Extracts from the LittleGossip.com website by pupils at some of Britain’s most illustrious schools, complete with grammatical and spelling errors. Pupils’ names have been replaced.
CHELTENHAM LADIES’ COLLEGE, Gloucestershire Fees per annum: £21,174
‘Girl A rumoured to have beddedat least 45 guys.....legend/SLUT??’
‘Girl B is a cheap and ugly and looks like a horse.and needs som serious eyebrow work.ladies be warned, this girl is a slut.’

Hurtful: Internet makes gossiping easier

ETON, Windsor, £29,862
To Boy A: ‘Mate you’re a ******* wannabe, u spend all of dads cash on your drug addiction, u wear all your flat caps and bandanas, talk all badman, when u go to eton; its actually amusing. U need a serious reality check. Most people in eton don’t even like you. And the few tht do just use u... You’re a mug.
EMANUEL SCHOOL, Battersea, £14,139
‘Boy C wears make up everyday to school (you will be able to see this by either looking at his collar or his eyebrows). Smells of **** Looks like a rat is gay Has only one friend ****** Smokes like a chimney gasses all the time and acts like a girl.’
ALTON CONVENT SCHOOL, Hampshire, £10,290
‘Rumour has it Girl E is an illegal immigrant who dosent even own a passport ... GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY’
ST PAUL’S GIRLS’ SCHOOL, Hammersmith, £17,526
‘Girl C, Shes so desperate she was “in love” with some retard called ******... hes not even fit.’
THE HARRODIAN SCHOOL, South West London, £16,350
‘Girl D, ****** being a slut.’
EPSOM COLLEGE, Surrey, £19,263
Boy B ‘genuinally looks like a turtle’

‘A significant number of girls are being drawn into using this site… We will act in school in January if we are able to discover any girl who is bullying in this manner.’
The site has also been slammed by the National Union of Teachers, who accuse the site’s creators of creating a ‘vehicle for cyber-bullying’.
LittleGossip.com was created by web developers in Belize, Central America, but pupils from around the world can select which country they live in and which school they attend – so peers can easily see the relevant messages.
The site was launched in the UK in November and its popularity increased as teenagers spread word of it via other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Under pressure from schools, report buttons were added next to posts so that users can hide offensive content.
The site is officially now supposed to be accessed only by adults, although its safeguards can be bypassed very easily.
LittleGossip claims the site was launched ‘to encourage deep, meaningful conversation’.
A spokesman said: ‘A major aim for us is we want to eradicate the hurtful and offensive gossip that is posted by individuals completely and give our users more moderation over content submitted.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Triple killer warned probation officers he intended to murder women... So why did no one stop the Crossbow Cannibal?

2010-12-21T22:19:00.001-08:00

Guilty: Stephen Griffiths, the 'Crossbow Cannibal', has pleaded guilty to killing three prostitutes

‘Crossbow Cannibal’ Stephen Griffiths murdered at least three women despite being known as a psychopath with an obsession about being a serial killer.
He idolised Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and repeatedly admitted his horrific bloodlust to psychiatrists, yet he was not locked up to protect the public because he was seen as ‘bad’ rather than ‘mentally ill’.
He even told a probation officer he would kill when he reached his 30s – and he did.
Yesterday the PhD student, now 40, who executed his final victim knowingly in front of a CCTV camera, pleaded guilty to murdering three prostitutes, achieving his grotesque ambition to join the ranks of the country’s most notorious convicted serial killers.
Mr Justice Openshaw described his crimes as ‘wicked and monstrous’ and told Griffiths he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Relatives of the victims, who all came originally from loving and secure homes, sobbed and one walked out as macabre details were given to a hushed Leeds Crown Court.
They heard how he murdered and dismembered the women, then cooked and ate parts of their bodies.
Griffiths indicated to detectives he may have killed six women and police will now step up attempts to identify any further victims.
Griffiths, a university researcher studying for a doctorate in the history of homicide, was arrested after the caretaker of the block of flats where he lived in Bradford studied CCTV footage and saw Griffiths murder his third victim Suzanne Blamires, 36.

Murdered: Susan Rushworth, Suzanne Blamires and Shelley Armitage worked in Bradford's red light district

On the video, Miss Blamires can be seen running out of Griffiths’s flat chased by the killer and knocked down. Griffiths brings a crossbow from his flat and fires a bolt into her head.
He drags his lifeless victim inside his flat and returns to hold his weapon triumphantly at the CCTV camera and raise a finger to it. Later he toasts his success by raising a bottle to the camera.
Over the next 24 hours Griffiths was recorded going in and out of the building carrying bags. The court heard he was taking body parts to dump them in the River Aire in nearby Shipley.

Caught: The moment Griffiths arrived at the police station following his arrest and under interview by detectives

In the dock: Griffiths, drawn by an artist while appearing in court in May, admitted the killings

By the time the remains were found Griffiths was in custody. Caretaker Peter Gee had raised the alarm and armed police raided Griffiths’s flat.
He made no attempt to flee, telling police ‘in here’ and ‘I’m Osama Bin Laden’, and commenting: ‘This is the end of the line for me.’
At the police station Griffiths said: ‘I or part of me was responsible for the murder of Susan Rushworth, Shelley Armitage and Suzanne Blamires.’
He added: ‘I am misanthropic. I don’t have much time for the human race.’
Griffiths murdered Shelley Armitage, 31, one month before Miss Blamires. Two sections of her body were found in the river near Miss Blamires’s remains.
Police believe she was killed with one of the two blood-stained crossbows found in Griffiths’s flat.
The remains of his first known victim, Susan Rushworth, 43, have never been found.
Griffiths told detectives he cooked flesh from the first two women and ate the third one ‘raw’.
All three were chopped up in the bathroom, which Griffiths described as a ‘slaughterhouse'.
Police recovered horrific video camera footage of the naked and apparently lifeless body of Miss Armitage trussed up in his flat. She had the words ‘my sex slave’ daubed in black spray paint on her back.

Griffiths had a long history of psychiatric treatment dating back to the age of 17 when he was locked up for slashing a shop security guard’s throat.

Between 1987 and 2009 he was treated by psychiatrists at three different hospitals. He was a patient at Waddiloves Hospital in Bradford in 1987 and Rampton Special Hospital for two months in 1991.
In 2007 and 2008 he was an outpatient at Newton Lodge Hospital in Wakefield and was given anti-depressants.
Crucially psychiatrists concluded he was ‘not suffering from mental illness’. Although he was identified as ‘a highly dangerous man’ he was freed to live in the community.
Over the years Griffiths beat up at least one girlfriend. He came to the attention of police, but victims were too frightened to give evidence against him.
When prostitutes began to go missing in Bradford there was no reason to suspect Griffiths as he was not on the sex offenders’ register and had never been arrested for kerb crawling, and seemingly his mental illness did not set alarm bells ringing.

Police carried out a huge search of the area surrounding Griffiths's flat after the discovery of body parts

Twisted mind of a graduate in evil

For many years Stephen Griffiths studied the disturbed minds of the most infamous serial killers, terrorists and war criminals.
His idol was Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women, most of them prostitutes.
His flat contained hundreds of books on Sutcliffe, the Moors murderers and Jack the Ripper, and he was doing research on Victorian murders.
And at some point Griffiths crossed the line from student to practitioner.Perhaps the PhD student regarded killing as a form of work experience in his warped mind.

Face of evil: Griffiths pictured left at fee-paying Queen Elizabeth Grammar school, in Wakefield, and a snap from his MySpace web page thought to be taken when he was in his 20s

He certainly craved notoriety, and becoming the next chapter in the history of celebrity serial killers was the ultimate thrill for such a well-educated student of slaughter.
Griffiths knew the level of depravity it would take to join the ‘A list’ of murderers and a crossbow killing live on CCTV, dismembered bodies and cannibalism did just that.
Griffiths’s third-floor housing association flat in Bradford gave some clues about his warped character.
Books, magazines and slasher horror movies about murder filled the shelves. Police found 30 knives inside his flat, where a foul stench emanated from the box of live rats which he fed to his lizards in a glass tank – and occasionally swallowed himself.
Yet he was obsessive about cleanliness and covered everything in plastic sheeting.
Griffiths invented an alter ego in cyberspace which he called Ven Pariah. Hours before he murdered Suzanne Blamires he wrote on his Myspace website: ‘Ven Pariah has finally emerged into the world. What will this pseudo-human do, one wonders.’
Listing his mood as ‘evil’, he described himself as a ‘pseudo-human at best. A demon at worst’.

Horrific weapons: Two crossbows belonging to cannibal killer Stephen Griffiths were recovered by police

Stephen Shaun Griffiths was born on Christmas Eve 1969, the first of three children of telephonist Moira Dewhirst and frozen food salesman Stephen Griffiths, who had married three months earlier in the West Yorkshire mill town of Dewsbury.
The marriage broke up when the children were young and they lived with their mother in a council semi in Wakefield.

Despite the family’s problems, Griffiths benefited from a private education. His father saved every penny to afford the fees (now £9,700 a year) at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield – which had previously educated ‘acid bath murderer’ John Haigh, who was hanged in 1949.
He was at the school for three years, leaving at 16. By then his pattern of strange and warped behaviour had been established.
In a school known for its sporting and academic excellence, he stood out as an oddball.
He carried a briefcase containing a knife and ‘was fascinated by martial arts magazines and weapons,’ recalled Martin Mason, now a salesman.
Another fellow pupil described Griffiths as ‘a bit of a nutter’ who talked about ‘skinning birds and doing things to animals’.
His bizarre and unstable home life no doubt had much to do with shaping his character.
His mother Moira, who was convicted of falsely claiming £8,500 in benefits in 2007, went out most nights dressed provocatively and neighbours gossiped that she was ‘on the game’.
One former neighbour said: ‘She would go out in the garden stark naked and have sex with different men in full view of the neighbours. People would complain about it, but she didn’t care.’
Griffiths and his brother Phillip, six years his junior, were regarded as ‘nerds’.
Exactly when Griffiths began killing women remains the subject of a police investigation.
But his first offence at 17 bore the chilling hallmarks of the man he was to become.
After being caught shoplifting he slashed the security guard with a knife and was sent to a young offenders’ institution for three years. At this point Griffiths lost touch with his family.
In 1989 he was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and in 1992 he was jailed for two years for affray after holding a knife to a woman’s throat.
Over the years he continued to be in trouble with police and as recently as January 2009 he was convicted of harassment.
He never had a job, managing to live off grants and benefits while studying at university in Leeds and Bradford.
However he had considerable success when it came to women. Zeta Pinder, 35, met Griffiths in 1998 and they dated for two years, during which time he pretended to live with his parents.
Griffiths would go to Miss Pinder’s home three or four times a week, but was a let-down in bed.
She said he was so afraid that insects or spiders would get into his ears at night that he would plug them with cotton wool and he also got angry if she ever touched his hair.
Eventually she discovered he had a flat and was invited there. She said: ‘I had thought of him as a little odd but quite a sweet person. There were never any alarm bells until I found out about his flat.
When I went in it was just jaw-dropping. 'His flat was horrific and very macabre, very scary.
‘You walked in and on the left-hand side there was a huge bookcase full of horror books on like the Moors murderers and Jack the Ripper, the Yorkshire Ripper. He had lots of really horrific video nasties.
‘The flat was absolutely spotless. But everything was covered in plastic. He said it was because it was new furniture and he didn’t want to get it damaged. Even his carpet had plastic on it. Most places in his flat were covered.

JUDGE ALLOWS COURT TWEETS

The judge in the case of triple-killer Stephen Griffiths today allowed reporters to use Twitter from the courtroom.
It is thought to be the first time a judge has allowed this in practice since the Lord Chief Justice issued a direction on the subject yesterday.
As the case in Leeds Crown Court began Mr Justice Openshaw made an order after he was asked by the press about 'tweeting' from court.
In a written direction he said that, subject to normal rules banning photos and sound recording:
'The use of live, text-based communications by way of unobtrusive, hand held and virtually noiseless equipment to enable the press to produce fair and accurate reports of the proceedings is permitted, provided that their use does not disturb, disrupt or interfere with the orderly conduct of the proceedings.'
The Lord Chief Justice issued an Interim Practice Direction yesterday following the appearance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before magistrates in London last week.

‘He was obsessive. You had to take your shoes off. If he made a drink you had to have it on a mat. I got a feeling where I didn’t feel safe so I made an excuse. I said, “Stephen, can you take me home, I don’t feel well”.’
Griffiths had an abusive relationship with Kathy Hancock, 37, a former prison officer whom he met through a friend.
She was not allowed out without him and when they did go outside she was terrified of looking at anyone in case he reacted with jealousy.
Miss Hancock said he once punched and headbutted her because she had gone out to a nightclub with his sister. In another incident she was knocked unconscious.
She planned to leave him and then discovered she was pregnant. But months later she lost the baby.
Miss Hancock found the courage to leave him in 2001, but for years Griffiths would track her down and harass her.
‘There were threats by voicemail, text message and email. I went for non-molestation orders but they didn’t work,’ she said.
He slashed her tyres and daubed ‘slag’ on her wall when she went on holiday.
She was replaced in the flat by lizards, which he walked on a lead around town, and snakes. ‘He even took them into a nightclub in his backpack,’ said Miss Hancock. ‘He used the animals to get people to talk to him.’

Stephen Griffiths's mother, former telephonist Moira Dewhirst. Griffiths was the first of three children

Griffiths was known in his apartment block as a violent loner, and most who met him regarded him as a creepy social misfit. One experience was recalled by student Tori Crowther, who arranged to meet him at a gig. ‘He turned up in full Goth style with all his make-up and eyeliner on and his hair spiked.
‘But he obviously thought I was going by myself, because when he arrived and saw me with two other girls he turned around again and left without saying anything.
‘That was the last I heard of him until last year when he emailed me out of the blue again. He said the reason he’d left was that “I was in a dark place at the time, and when I walked in and saw you with two beautiful women I couldn’t cope”.
‘I didn’t reply, I thought it was a bit odd. It’s terrifying to think what could have happened if I’d spent more time with him.’

VICTIMS WERE EASY TARGETS FOR 'EVIL' GRIFFITHS

Stephen Griffiths's victims worked the streets of Bradford's red light district a short distance from his flat.

Suzanne Blamires, Shelley Armitage and Susan Rushworth were familiar figures in the network of run-down streets off Sunbridge Road, a two-minute walk from the city centre.

Working the streets and being addicted to drugs made the women easy targets for the crazed so-called Crossbow Cannibal.
Parts of Miss Blamires's body were discovered in May in the River Aire at Shipley, about five miles north of Griffiths's Thornton Road flat.

Suzanne Blamires, 36

Shelley Armitage, 31

Susan Rushworth, 44

In the days which followed, more of Miss Blamires was found in the water along with a small part of Miss Armitage's body.

No trace of Miss Rushworth has yet been found. Miss Blamires was 36-years-old. Her mother Nicky Blamires, 55, said her daughter went to college and had been training to be a nurse.

But Mrs Blamires said: 'Unfortunately my daughter went down the wrong path and she did not have the life she was meant to have.

'She was a much-loved daughter, sister and niece and what has happened to her will haunt me to the day I die.

'Suzanne was a bright, articulate girl who went to college and was training to be a nurse."

She added: "Even though she ended up on the wrong path, she tried to protect her family and kept herself to herself so people knew very little about her.'
Miss Blamires lived on Barkston Walk, in the Allerton area of Bradford. She had only gone missing four days before her body parts were found.

Ms Armitage, 31, lived a short distance away and it is understood the two women knew each other.

She was described as a 'much-loved daughter and sister' and a 'bubbly, lovely' person. Friends spoke of her 'big smile' and her 'big heart'.

The horror of her death and the cruel fact that only part of her body has been recovered was emphasised at her funeral in August when her brother Carl carried a 2ft 6in coffin into the church carrying her remains.

Ms Armitage disappeared at some point between the late evening of Monday. April 26 and the early morning of the next day, in Rebecca Street, in Bradford city centre.
Most people who worked in that area said they remembered her because of her engaging personality.

Everyone who knew Ms Armitage said she only got involved in prostitution because of her drug addiction and was always talking about leaving, about becoming a model.

Emile, a volunteer who worked with prostitutes in the area, said: "She was bubbly, lovely, a really nice person.'
Miss Rushworth was the first of the three sex workers to disappear. She was a grandmother who had been battling heroin addiction.

The 43-year-old was last seen on June 22 last year near to her flat in the Manningham area of Bradford.

Ms Rushworth - known as Sue or Susie - suffered from epilepsy and had been getting help for her heroin addiction when she disappeared. Her mother Christine Thompson said: 'She was my best friend and like a sister to me.'

Mrs Thompson said she had tried to help her daughter beat heroin and had paid £3,000 for rehab for her. Miss Rushworth also had two other children, Kirsty, 20, and nine-year-old Aaron.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Four Belarus opposition leaders arrested following 'vote-rigging' riot over President Lukashenko's landslide victory

2010-12-20T03:31:00.000-08:00

At least four out of the nine candidates who ran against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Sunday's election were being detained by police on Monday, political aides said.
They included Vladimir Neklyayev, 64, who was taken from his hospital bed by police in the early hours after being earlier beaten by police, his wife said.
Others were Andrei Sannikov, head of the pro-rights Charter 97 group, Grigory Kostusev, head of a nationalist party, and Nikolai Statkevich, 54, a retired colonel who leads a social-democrat party, their aides said.

Protest: Presidential candidate Vladimir Neklyaev, 64, lies injured on the ground after he was allegedly beaten during an opposition rally in Minsk, Belarus, yesterday. He was later taken to hospital

Injuries: Mr Neklyaev was hurt as thousands of opposition supporters tried to storm the main government building to protest what the opposition claims was large-scale vote-rigging in yesterday's presidential election

Pavel Rodionov of the state prosecutor's office told Belarussian state television that some of them would be charged with organising mass unrest and could face up to 15 years in jail.

Police spokesman Konstantin Shalkevich confirmed that several hundred people in all had been detained on Sunday night after riot police moved in on Minsk's Independence Square to break up an anti-Lukashenko rally of several thousands.

An unofficial rights defence website called Vyasna (Spring) www.spring96.org published a list of 221 people whom it said had been arrested.

The opposition says Lukashenko supporters rigged the vote through fraudulent vote counting. Early on Monday the state electoral commission said Lukashenko had won 79.7 percent with 100 percent of votes counted.
Up to 10,000 people marched through the snow-bound capital Minsk as voting ended and a pro-government pollster forecast a landslide victory for Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic with a tight grip since 1994.

Force: Riot police block demonstrators trying to storm the government building in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, yesterday. Hundreds of protesters were arrested

Violent: Protesters clash with riot police during the rally in Minsk, after it became apparent that President Alexander Lukashenko would be returning for a fourth term

For more than two hours, led mainly by opposition candidate Andrei Sannikov, the protesters massed on Independence Square, chanting 'Out!', 'Long live Belarus' and other anti-Lukashenko slogans.
Then riot police waded in, beating people with batons. Some protesters threw stones and snowballs at police.
Mr Neklyaev was hurt after police dispersed a column of his supporters heading to join the protests that began in central October Square.
Black-clothed security forces fired shots into the air and launched stun grenades after breaking up Neklyayev's group. His wife, Olga, said police had later taken him from the hospital.
Photographers and cameramen were forced to the ground to stop them capturing the police action against Neklyayev and his supporters, a witness said.
The Interior Ministry gave a different account, saying unarmed police had encountered an angry crowd. 'The crowd moved towards the police, with the result that some police officers were injured and hospitalised,' a spokesman said.

A bleeding opposition supporter walks in front of riot police during a rally denouncing the results of presidential elections near the Parliament building in central Minsk

Protesters clash with riot police during a rally in Minsk. Tens of thousands of protestors massed against elections that exit polls said were swept by President Lukashenko

A protester wearing a mask shouts slogans during a protest march in the central of Minsk

An aide to nationalist candidate Grigory Kostusev said the 53-year-old had been stopped in his car and arrested.
The head of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, said the incident involving Neklyayev was unacceptable. 'This cowardly attack on a defenceless candidate for President of Belarus is outrageous and disgraceful,' he said.
Several people were left sprawled on the ground, including an elderly woman who had been hit on the head. Others were bundled into police cars.
The opposition reported at least three presidential candidates were detained.
In the main rally, some demonstrators broke the glass doors to the government building but were restrained by others in the crowd.
The European Union is watching the events closely, weighing how far to engage with the country of 10 million people amid tension between Lukashenko and chief benefactor Russia.
Veteran leader Lukashenko, 56, had earlier scoffed at the opposition's plans to protest against the conduct of the election. He predicted nobody would turn out.

Angry: Opposition supporters shout slogans against President Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic with a tight grip since 1994

Chase: A riot policeman runs after an opposition protester yesterday. Witnesses said security forces also fired shots into the air and launched stun grenades

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko wipes his forehead as he speaks to media after casting his ballot during the presidential elections at a polling station in the Belarusian capital

An exit poll by pro-government research group EcooM gave him 79.1 percent of the vote, which, if confirmed, would hand him a fourth term in power.
He has ruled for 16 years, during which Belarus's command economy has been propped up by energy subsidies from chief ally Russia. The country serves as a buffer between Russia and NATO and a transit route for Russian gas heading to Europe.
But relations with Moscow have been on the rocks in recent years, and the former state farm director has been courting the West.
The European Union has dangled the prospect of financial aid if yesterday's vote is deemed fair. It will take its cue from monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who report back today.
The OSCE said yesterday that the election already appeared 'better' than in 2006.
One opposition figure told protesters on October Square that, according to an unofficial opposition exit poll, Lukashenko won only 30.7 percent against Neklyayev's 18 percent. He called for a second round of voting.
State security forces gave a warning on the eve of the vote that they would crack down on attempts to 'whip up tension'.
Lukashenko crushed dissent harshly in the early years of his rule, jailing opponents and muzzling the media. He was dubbed Europe's 'last dictator' by the Bush administration.

A wounded protester is pictured after clashes with riot police during an opposition rally in Minsk

An opposition demonstrator tries to storm the government building, by breaking a glass door, in Minsk during a rally to protest against the presidential elections

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Saudi King 'in talks to buy disused NY hospital to move mosque away from Ground Zero'

2010-12-20T03:30:00.000-08:00

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is said to be in talks to buy the disused St Vincent's Hospital site in New York to move the proposed mosque away from Ground Zero

The King of Saudi Arabia is said to be in talks with New York officials about a plan to move the controversial Ground Zero mosque to a disused medical centre.
Lawyer Dudley Gaffin claims King Abdullah is considering buying St Vincent's Medical Center in the West Village to build an Islamic cultural centre on the site.
Under the proposals, the hospital would also be saved with units shut when it filed for bankruptcy in April reopened, the New York Post reported.
Sources said that Mr Gaffin has come up with the plan in a bid to head off the Rudin Organization, which is trying to buy St Vincent's with a view to constructing luxury housing.
One community leader, who did not want to be identified, told the newspaper: 'He's asking what it would take to put in a bid.
'He says the king wants to do this as a PR move - to save the hospital and move the mosque away from the World Trade Center site.
'He wants to show that Muslims can do good works.'
The former hospital would cost at least $300million - the amount that the Sisters of Charity - which owns the site - owes to creditors GE Capital and TD bank.
Mr Gaffin said the mosque and cultural centre would be built on the site of a former nursing facility on 12th Street.
It is unclear whether he has discussed the idea with Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg.

New site? St Vincent's Medical Center has been disused since it filed for bankruptcy in April

His nephew, Ariel Barkai, confirmed he was friends with a Saudi royal.
He said: 'There were some discussions - somebody's trying to save the hospital.
'But the Saudis never hired us.'
King Abdullah, 87, is in New York recovering from back surgery at the Presbyterian hospital on December 3.
He has previously said he would not get involved in the controversial Ground Zero mosque.

New home? Construction work continues at Ground Zero. The original location for the mosque is two blocks from the former World Trade Center

Anger: The proposed Ground Zero mosque has sparked fury among some Americans, with many saying it insults the victims of the 9/11 attacks

Developer Sharif el-Gamal wants to construct a $100million mosque and Islamic centre two blocks from the Ground Zero site, but the project has become embroiled in mass protests and financial problems.
The St Vincent's site included a 758-bed teaching hospital and most of the people injured in the 9/11 attacks were treated there as the nearest trauma centre.
A fence near the hospital was covered with photographs of victims and it became a meeting point for family and friends of the missing.
Some 2,995 people were killed when terrorists flew two passenger jets into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Relocation: Under the plan, the mosque and cultural center would move from near Ground Zero to New York's West Village

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Facecrook: As offences linked to social networking sites increase 7,000%, the terrifying truth about criminals targeting your home

2010-12-20T03:29:00.000-08:00

When Kai Leighton was born with a life-threatening heart defect, his mother and father did what many *modern *parents would do: they kept their concerned family and friends up to date with regular *postings on Facebook.

For five weeks, father Haydn and mother Jamie-Leigh maintained an anxious vigil at the child’s *bedside in Leeds, updating everybody with one *message at a time instead of making dozens of phone calls to their home town of Hull.

And when Kai went into the operating *theatre, they were able to announce with relief that the *surgery had been successful.

Convicted: Facebook predator Peter Chapman, left, and Ashleigh Hall, who he met on Facebook before he lured and murdered her

Hard to believe, then, that someone would take advantage of their Facebook messages not to send flowers and heartfelt congratulations, but to burgle their home safe in the knowledge that they were 60 miles away.

Not once, but twice. ‘Everyone was anxious to know how Kai was doing and it helped us to share what was happening day-by-day,’ said 18-year-old Haydn. ‘We never dreamed for a minute that someone would read our messages, realise we weren’t at home and steal from us. It was utterly devastating.’

Haydn and Jamie-Leigh aren’t alone. They’re among an explosion of crime *victims who have been targeted through social *networking sites such as Facebook.

A Daily Mail investigation revealed this week that over the past three years, numbers of crimes associated with the networking site have increased by as much as 7,000 per cent in some areas — including cases of murder, rape, paedophilia, bullying, assault and burglary.

Police, insurance companies and IT security experts are so concerned that they have issued urgent warnings to users to be more vigilant about the personal information they post on the web. But all the evidence *suggests that while the public isn’t growing any more internet savvy, the criminals are.

In spite of the warnings, Facebook users continue to tell their ‘friends’ when they are going on holiday; what the address of their party is; when their birthday is; what expensive items they have bought for their homes; and just how sexy they look in that new outfit.
CAUSE FOR CONCERN

Crimes associated with Facebook have increased as much as 7000% over the last 3 years

And, as one security expert told me: ‘You might as well put up signs *saying: Burgle me on this day. Stalk me at this address. Or, here’s everything you need to steal my identity.’

Haydn and Jamie-Leigh found out the hard way.
Their son, Kai, was born on *September 12 with a severely-*constricted artery. ‘It was life-*threatening and we were concerned he wouldn’t survive,’ says Haydn, a motor mechanics student.

‘He was being treated at Leeds General Infirmary and we were *staying there in a house for parents. Each night we would use our phones to update everyone on Facebook.

‘After three or four weeks, we got a call from a neighbour to say she had seen people with torches creeping around our living room.

‘My mum went home to check and they had taken an Xbox and several computer games. And one of our TVs was down on the floor as if they were going to steal that, too, but were disturbed.

‘About a week later, they went back and finished the job. They took two flat-screen TVs, my dad’s computer and lots of DVDs, and we weren’t insured. You just don’t expect people to take advantage of you when you’re going through something so awful. But I suppose we had told them it was safe to burgle us.’

Haydn says his mistake was to set his privacy settings on Facebook to allow ‘friends of friends’ — effectively, people he did not know — to see *everything he wrote on the site about his whereabouts.
On that setting, they could also see his profile — including his *biographical details, name, address, phone number and educational and employment *history, if he chose to put them there — and all his personal photographs.
‘I ended up with about 250 friends, but I suppose I didn’t know a lot of them,’ he says. ‘I just thought that if they were friends of friends of mine, then they must be OK.
‘I now have the site very secure, with only my closest personal friends and relatives allowed to view it. And if I get people asking to be my friend, I refuse unless I know them really well.’

Freedom of Information requests to 16 police forces by the Mail have revealed that officers are being swamped with cases associated with Facebook. There have been more than 100,000 in the past year, including 7,545 since January. In 2005, there were just 1,411.

I conducted a search on a UK *newspaper database, inserting the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘victim’ and got 2,693 results. This doesn’t mean that Facebook is responsible for any of these crimes. That would be like blaming roads for helping criminals drive away from bank robberies.

And as Facebook says: ‘With the number of people using Facebook *rising rapidly from 100 million *globally in August 2008 to more than *500 million globally in December 2010, Facebook’s name was bound to *feature more in the conversations we all have every day. As such, it is no surprise *Facebook is also mentioned in criminal reporting.’
But it does suggest there is a whole new world for criminals to exploit — and they are doing so.

Bizarre coincidence: A blurred photo of Ashleigh Hall was captured on the photo mapping service Google Streetview. Pictured is one of the cars used to photograph the streets

‘The information people give out on Facebook, when linked up with other information freely available on the internet, is an absolute *goldmine for criminals,’ says Michael Fraser, a reformed burglar who presents the BBC’s Beat The Burglar programme.

‘One year, you might have a party and give out your address. A while later, you might tell everyone that it is your 30th birthday.

‘So, if you’ve accepted me as a friend of a friend, I know your name, your address and your birth date.

‘From that, I can go to 192.com and on there I can find out what you do for a *living, how much your home is worth — and whether you’re likely to be worth burgling.

‘I might have already made up my mind because you’ve posted party *pictures on Facebook and I can see what kind of valuables you have in the house — and which rooms they’re in. Then you go and tell your Facebook friends how much you’re looking forward to going on holiday next Tuesday.

‘I can go on to Google Street View and see actual photographs of your home. I can see if you have a burglar alarm, or whether there are any bushes in the garden to hide in. And I can see all the alleyways I can escape down. And, of course, I know you won’t be at home.

‘Burglars only burgle homes if they think they can get away with it. All of this information is likely to leave them feeling much more confident that they can.’
A quick trawl of those 2,693 victim stories reveals myriad abuses of the networking site.

There is the case of Melissa *Wedgewood, from Hull, who was viciously attacked by her ex-*boyfriend and his new girlfriend — because he had made advances to Melissa on Facebook, which she had rejected, and the new girl had become jealous.
There was the revenge attack in Bridgend, Wales, where a man was severely beaten after accepting an invitation by a woman to become a Facebook friend.

The woman’s account had *actually been hacked by a man with a grudge and he had arranged a meeting with the victim.
'The public isn't internet savvy but criminals are'

There was the honeytrap where a woman became a married man’s Facebook friend before taking the relationship further.

An accomplice then rang the man, claimed the woman was just 15, and threatened to call the police unless he handed over £1,250.

And, of course, there was the tragic case of Ashleigh Hall, the 17 year old from County Durham, who accepted 33-year-old Peter *Chapman as a Facebook ‘friend’. He had posed as a teenager and lured Ashleigh to her death. She had no idea that he was a actually a convicted rapist.

That case led to criticism of *Facebook for not doing enough to protect teenagers, while in the other cases the perpetrators were caught. But, in thousands of *others, they haven’t been traced.

Robert and Tracy Mullaney, from Bournville, in the West Midlands, still don’t know exactly which Facebook bullies ganged up on their son, Thomas, in May, causing him to commit suicide. He was just 15.

‘Thomas had had some altercation with a boy at school and it escalated, but instead of getting into trouble he just left it and came home,’ said Robert, 48. ‘He was on Facebook and we told him to forget about it. We were going on holiday and we expected it to blow over.

‘Later that night we went out and when we came back he wasn’t there. We weren’t too worried at that stage because there had been a few times where he had gone out with friends and stayed up late.

‘But he hadn’t come back by the next morning. We went looking for him and found him behind the *garden shed, hanging from a tree.

‘It turned out that after we had gone out, he had been sent a *barrage of abuse and threats from a group of Facebook bullies and apparently this was just too much for him. It wasn’t a sustained, long-term attack. It was just one day.

‘It demonstrates the power of this kind of abuse on Facebook, but parents often don’t know about it or understand how it works.

‘That means the bullies and *criminals can take advantage of that ignorance while the parents don’t understand, the teachers are powerless and Facebook puts responsibility for security on to users themselves.

‘We need to come together — the police, Facebook, the school and parents — to see what we can do to make children and their parents more aware of the dangers of using social networking sites.

‘At the moment, everyone agrees there is a problem, but no one is doing anything effective about it. I actually believe Facebook is a useful tool when properly used. But it is being abused by too many people.’

In spite of repeated warnings, it appears that users of social *networking sites are not learning as fast as the criminals.
Recent research by The *

Co-operative Insurance company revealed that 36 per cent of users regularly make use of them to broadcast their whereabouts when they are away from home.
And a survey by Legal & General found that 45 per cent of users would be happy to befriend *someone online simply because they liked their picture.

‘Once you accept a stranger into your Facebook account, they can begin what we call social *engineering — *delicately asking questions to build up information about you,’ says Jason Hart, *senior vice *president of *CRYPTOCard Network Security.

‘And that can cause havoc. Let’s say they got your email address, then they could go to your email account pretending to be you and saying you have *forgotten your password.

‘The account will then ask a security question — something like your favourite food or your first pet. Over the following weeks and months, it isn’t hard for them to work *conversations round to subjects like that on Facebook.

‘Once they have that secret *information, the email account will let them in. And once they are in there, they can find lots of sensitive information, such as your Amazon and eBay account history.

‘They can then go to those sites pretending to be you and saying you have lost your passwords, and guess what happens then?

‘Those sites send the passwords to your email account — the one that they have already conned their way into.

‘Crooks who do this usually use the credit card details you have stored there to buy online gift vouchers that can be traded on the internet. It is a form of instant *currency.

‘Even worse, if you have a PayPal account and have credit in it, your so-called friend could clean it out.

‘Effectively, they have become an electronic version of you, they can change all your passwords and begin stealing from you.

‘The message is simple: you wouldn’t invite a perfect stranger into your house simply because they knocked on your door and said they wanted a look around. So why do it on Facebook?’

Fury as U.S. woman adopts Russian boy, 7, then sends him back alone with note saying: 'I don't want him anymore'

2010-12-20T03:24:00.000-08:00

First picture of U.S. mother emerges
Russian foreign minister calls for adoption freeze
Bitter tug-of-war as Russia denies U.S. consul access to child

Russia reacted with horror today over the heartbreaking story of a seven-year-old Siberian boy adopted by an American family who was sent back to Moscow alone - because his U.S. mother didn't want him any more.
Little Artem Saveliev was last year taken from a grim orphanage and given a new life in Tennessee last year.
But his adoptive mother Torry-Ann Hansen, a 34-year-old nurse, yesterday put him on a ten-hour flight as an unaccompanied minor with a note 'to whom it may concern' saying: 'I no longer wish to parent this child'.
In his rucksack, she had placed sweets, biscuits and colouring pens for the journey.

A mother's rejection: Torry-Ann Hansen plays with her adoptive son Artem at the Vladivostok orphanage last year. Yesterday he arrived back in Moscow alone, clutching a note from her saying she did not want him anymore

Unwanted: Artem Saveliev is led away by authorities after being rejected by his adoptive American mother

She did not tell him she was rejecting him. Instead, she and a grandmother that he was going on an 'excursion' to Moscow.
In the typed note, which the blond boy was clutching when Moscow police picked him up, she said she wanted the adoption annulled.
She accused the Vladivostok orphanage of misleading her about the child's behavioural problems.
The Russians angrily denied this, saying he was stubborn but that his only disability was that he was 'flat-footed'.

Officials said they have never witnessed such cruelty to a child after promising a 'new life'.
Unwanted Artem, eight next week, looked confused and bewildered as he was taken into care by Moscow social services.

Enlarge

'Broke all rules and procedures': The letter from the boy's adoptive American mother, Torry Hansen, returning him to Russian authorities

The Kremlin's children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov lambasted the U.S. mother, who is understood to be a nurse and a single parent with a natural son.
Russia's foreign minister is now demanding a freeze on adoptions between the U.S. and Russia.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.
'We have taken the decision ... to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the USA sign an international agreement' on the conditions for adoptions and the obligations of host families, Lavrov was quoted as saying.
He also said he was 'indignant' at the way the child was treated 'as a parcel'.

HOW WAS HE ALLOWED TO TRAVEL ALONE?

Artem, just seven years old, travelled from Tennessee to Washington, and from Washington to Moscow, apparently unaccompanied.
United Airlines refused to discuss the case but stressed that its rules on unaccompanied minors were strictly adhered to.
However these rules state that children aged seven 'may not travel on connecting flights'.
The airline said its 'unaccompanied minor service is available to ensure that your child is boarded onto the aircraft, introduced to the flight attendant, chaperoned during connections and turned over to the appropriate person upon arrival at their final destination.'
Having bought a ticket and put the child on the plane, it seems Hansen found a Russian tour guide on the internet who agreed to meet the child at the airport.
This man, called Artur, passed him to the authorities in central Moscow. Hansen agreed to pay Artur $200 for meeting the child, said officials.

Lavrov said the U.S. had refused to negotiate such an accord in the past but 'the recent event was the last straw'.
U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was 'deeply shocked by the news' and 'very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted'.

Russian officials also refused the U.S. consul access to the child saying: 'If his American parent kicked out him from the country on a plane like a sack of potatoes, then we will look after the boy.
'Our care system will take up the case. After a full medical examination, he will be placed into one of our orphanages.'
Ashtakhov questioned how American immigration had let the child leave Washington, and why United Airlines had carried him alone to Moscow. Normally, stringent checks are applied on minors travelling without parents.
It appears the child was also alone when he flew from Tennessee to Washington before boarding the flight to Moscow.
'The adoptive mother broke all the rules and procedures by sending an adopted child back,' he said.
Ashtakhov, who said he played with the child and talked to him, said the mother had another son called Logan.
'Artem said he made good friends with Logan,' he said. 'He was talking quite calmly about the family, but when he started to talk about his mother he began to cry, showing how she dragged him by the hair.'
In a shocking typed letter she gave to her seven-year-old 'son' to take with him to Moscow, she revealed how she adopted the boy in September 2009.

She claimed he is 'mentally unstable' and that his problems were hidden from her by Russian orphanage officials before she adopted him.
'He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviour. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability,' she wrote.

Experts fear the effects of the rejection will be traumatic for the boy

'They chose to grossly misrepresent those problems in order to get him out of their orphanage.'
The letter - addressed 'to whom it may concern' at the Russian Ministry of Education in Moscow - said: 'After giving my best to this child I am sorry to say that for the sake of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.
'As he is a Russian national, I am returning him to your guardianship and would like the adoption disannulled.'
Adoption officials in Partizansk, near Vladivostok were stunned, saying that the U.S. woman had made a good impression on them when she went through adoption procedures last year.
She spent four full days with Artem watched by adoption workers before she was allowed to become his mother.
'It was clear that there was mutual affection, and it was good,' said Vera Kuznetsova, chief adoption officer in the region.
'She seemed a nice, kind woman. Artem immediately reached out to her. She even learned a few Russian words to communicate with her future son,' said one official.
U.S. social workers also submitted reports on Hansen for the court which granted the adoption. 'They did not doubt Hansen's honesty and sense of responsibility,' she said.
Recent follow-up reports from America on the boy did not detect any strains in the family, it is claimed.

Russian officals deny Hansen's claims about Artem having severe behavioural problems and being mentally unstable.

BITTER CUSTODY TUG-OF WAR OVER ARTEM

American embassy officials in Moscow say the Artem is legally a U.S. citizen even though he flew to Moscow on a Russian passport he had used when he was first adopted, it was reported.
Kremlin children's rights supremo Pavel Astakhov said that on Thursday night U.S. consular officials appeared at Moscow Hospital Number 21 where the child is being cared for and demanded to be allowed access to Artem and to take him with them.
'They had a conversation with the guards, threatening, and saying that they will make the hospital administration responsible for not letting them take an American citizen,' he claimed.
Astakhov insisted the child is a Russian citizen, adding that the U.S. mother accepted this in her letter returning the boy.
The U.S. embassy refused to comment on the case today but it is understood America was making diplomatic enquiries about the child.
Normally, Russian children adopted abroad take up their citizenship of their new country.
Usually, in the case of joint citizenship, the U.S. would have no rights over the child if he is in Russia, just as Russia would have no rights if he was in America.

'Artem is normal for his age,' said the official. 'He is a little stubborn child, but this is not a problem for loving parents.

'We are shocked by how the American family has treated our child. Artem grew up as a completely normal, relatively advanced child for his age, and healthy. Does she count being flatfooted as a disability?
'No other medical abnormalities were found. The child was completely ready for school (Russian pupils start school at seven years of age) and had learned to read when the American mother came to the orphanage.'
American psychotherapist Joe Soll told Russian media that the boy's rejection from his adopted family would have a serious impact.
'When you remove a child from a family, no matter what the circumstances are, it's a trauma,' he said.
'We don't look at children who have been adopted as tramuatised, but they are. I don't think people are educated at all to understand what adoption is really about.'

The child's real mother Ekaterina was deprived of her parental rights because she was an alcoholic, officials said yesterday.
She gave birth to the child at 19 and cared for him until he was six.
He was adopted by Hansen on 18 September 2009 in Russia and eleven days later she formally changed his name to Artem Justin Hansen.
Astakhov said the boy told him that neither he nor Logan went to school, but played at home in America. The boy spoke of a grandmother who shouted at him.
Russian officials believe it is this grandmother who actually organised the one-way trip to Moscow for Artem.
'Artem is a very nice kid. We drew pictures together and had nice chat,' said Astakhov.
Officials say they want action against the mother for child abuse. The Moscow media angrily denounced the 'cruelty' inflicted on the seven-year-old.
This shocking return of an unwanted child follows several appalling cases of Russian children being killed after being adopted to America.
In one case, a two-year-old boy died after his American father left him alone in a car in 30C temperatures.
The cases led to a public outcry and new curbs on adoption.
The case was highlighted on a day when U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev signed an historic nuclear arm reduction treaty in Prague.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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