Tomorrow's Newspapers Online 09-19-2013 | Sc

Canadian Rehtaeh Parsons took her own life in April having been severely bullied after a separate photo, showing her alleged rape by four boys, was circulated online, her mother has said.

Her father said on Wednesday that he had been "disgusted" by the advert.

Facebook said it had banned the company involved from the social network.

"This is an extremely unfortunate example of an advertiser scraping an image from the internet and using it in their ad campaign," a spokesman said.

"This is a gross violation of our ad policies and we have removed the ad and permanently deleted the advertiser's account.

"We apologise for any harm this caused."

The advert had used the title "Find Love in Canada!" and referred users to ionechat.com.

Apple's scanner is seen as a first step toward realizing the full potential for biometrics in personal electronics, heightening security for applications like banking and shopping while doing away with multiple passwords.

"The best part is that it actually works - every single time, in my tests," wrote reviewer David Pogue of the New York Times.

"It's nothing like the balky, infuriating fingerprint-reader efforts of earlier cellphones. It's genuinely awesome; the haters can go jump off a pier."

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg was also enthusiastic, calling it simple and reliable. But he noted that the gadget would inexplicably prompt him for a password when swiping a finger to make purchases, which he blamed on a bug.

"I have come to like it and consider it a step forward, despite a few issues," he said of the overall device.

Re-tooled iOS7 mobile software, a better camera, a more useful voice-activated "Siri" personal digital assistant and a faster processor combined to make the iPhone 5S the best smartphone on the market, he added.

However, he argued that owners of the previous-generation iPhone 5 may not have a compelling reason to buy the latest device unless they specifically wanted the fingerprint reader.

Many industry analysts view the iPhone 5S and the cheaper 5C as being modest improvements on the previous generation, reviving fears that Apple's most innovative days may be behind it. They said the mere fact of a fingerprint scanner was unlikely by itself to make the gadget a sure win in a crowded market.

Apple has embedded the scanner into the iPhone's home button, while other mobile devices usually have it on the back, making it awkward for the user and increasing the number of failed attempts.

Officials say Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy reservist, opened fire at the Naval Sea Systems Command on Monday, killing 12 people before police shot him dead.

The shooting - a mile and a half from the U.S. Capitol and three miles from the White House - sent shockwaves through Washington.

The Pentagon said it would review security at military installations around the world and the White House promised to review standards for federal government contractors.

A Defense Department Inspector General's report published on Tuesday revealed security lapses that allowed 52 convicted felons to gain access to Navy facilities because budget cuts had undermined vetting.

Meanwhile, the U.S. capital paused to remember the victims, aged 46 to 73, who included retirees, parents and a bird lover.

Police in Newport, Rhode Island, were so concerned about Alexis' behavior on a business trip there in August that they alerted Navy police.

Alexis told police he believed people were following him and "sending vibrations into his body," according to a Newport police report.

He told police that he had twice moved hotels to avoid the noise he heard coming through the floor and the ceiling of his rooms, and that the people following him were using "some sort of microwave machine" to prevent him from sleeping.

"Based on the naval base implications and the claim that the involved subject, one (Aaron Alexis) was 'hearing voices,' I made contact with the on-duty Naval Station police," a Newport police officer wrote, adding that he faxed his report of the incident to Navy police.

The Newport police report said Navy police had promised to check if Alexis was in fact a naval base contractor.

Asked for comment, a spokesman said the Navy was looking into the matter, without confirming any details.

In addition, CNN reported that Alexis had contacted two Veterans Administration hospitals recently and was believed to be seeking psychological help.

"Initial reports indicate that this is an individual who may have had some mental health problems," U.S. President Barack Obama told Spanish-language network Telemundo.

"The fact that we do not have a firm enough background check system is something that makes us more vulnerable to these kinds of mass shootings." [ID:nL2N0HD27Y]

Obama is to address the Business Roundtable as part of a renewed push to focus on domestic budget and economic issues after a month dominated by foreign policy.

The U.S. Treasury is expected to exhaust measures to avoid exceeding the $16.7 trillion debt limit as soon as mid-October. If the cap is not raised, the United States will not be able to pay all of its bills and would go into default.

Obama will tell business leaders that they should pile pressure on Congress, which must vote to increase U.S. borrowing capacity, to avoid a default.

Republicans in the House of Representatives last week considered a plan to tie raising the debt limit to withholding funds for Obama's signature healthcare overhaul, but put off a vote because the party's most fiscally conservative members felt the plan lacked teeth.

It is possible that a federal government shutdown and debt default could result from the budget standoff, although such an outcome has been avoided in past spending battles.

A White House official said Obama "will ask the business community to help send the message to Congress that a default would be disastrous for our economy and for businesses across the country."

"Many reasonable Republicans have said it would be reckless and irresponsible to use the threat of default as a bargaining chip, but some of the extreme members of the Republican Party continue to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States government," the official said.

Obama has warned he will not negotiate over the debt limit.

Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Washington, said Republicans are not threatening a debt default.

Their analysis in the British Medical Journal looked at data from 54 countries to assess the global impact of the financial problems triggered by the collapse of US credit and housing markets in 2008.

In the year after the crisis began, the male suicide rate rose by 3.3% overall.

This was largely in the countries where there were more reported job losses. Unstable economy

The researchers from the universities of Oxford and Bristol in the UK, along with colleagues from Hong Kong University, used data from the World Health Organization mortality database, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook database.

In 2009, there was a 37% rise in unemployment and 3% falls in GDP per capita, reflecting the onset of the economic crisis in 2008. At the same time, male suicide rates began to climb.

There were nearly 5,000 'extra' suicides above the expected level for that year.

These were mainly seen in the 27 European countries and 18 countries in the Americas studied.

In Europe, suicides increased among 15-24-year-old men, while in America the rise was seen in the 45-64 age group.

Yet the suicide rate for women did not change in Europe and only increased slightly in America.

The researchers say the link they found is likely to be causal - meaning the suicides were related to the emotional stress of being in a recession - but they cannot prove it.

It is possible other factors may be at play, but mental health charities say their own experience would back up the researchers' theory.

A Samaritans spokesperson said: "It is no surprise to us to be told that suicides rise during recessions.

"A snapshot survey of calls to our branches in 2008, just before the current recession began, showed that one in 10 callers talked about financial difficulties. That had risen to one in six at the end of last year. Clearly this is a factor that governments need to keep in mind when planning for economic downturns."

A spokeswoman for the charity Mind said they too had been receiving more calls to their helpline from people distressed about money worries and unemployment.

The classified documents leaked by Snowden were posted internally, and Snowden's job allowed him to single-handedly make digital copies without his supervisors' knowledge, government officials told National Public Radio.

They did not tell NPR how Snowden took copied files out of the office, citing an ongoing investigation.

"We have an extremely good idea of exactly what data he got access to and how exactly he got access to it," NSA's chief technology officer, Lonny Anderson, told NPR.

Anderson said the agency has taken steps to limit employees' options for storing data since the NSA surveillance programs were revealed.

"One thing we have done post-media leaks is lock those down hard, so those are [now] all in two-person control areas," he told NPR's "Morning Edition" program.

Snowden disclosed secret NSA programs involving the collection of telephone and email data to media outlets, including The Guardian and The Washington Post, which began publishing details in June.

He is wanted on U.S. espionage charges and is living in temporary asylum in Russia.

The NSA disclosures have raised questions about U.S. surveillance efforts and privacy as well as private contractors' clearance procedures and access to sensitive data.

But changes to data-sharing could also have national security implications given the push to share more intelligence among agencies after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Information sharing also arose as an issue in the Boston marathon bombing in April.

Anderson said other changes include limiting access to sensitive documents by "tagging" them with identifiers that will also allow supervisors to see who is viewing what data and what those individuals do with it.

Sergei Ryabkov, on a visit to Syria, said a UN report on the incident was politicised and one-sided.

The UN team found the nerve agent sarin was used in the attack in Damascus.

The US blamed government forces for the attack, which sparked diplomacy that culminated in a deal for Syria to hand over its chemical arsenal by mid-2014.

Damascus has repeatedly accused opposition forces of carrying out the assault in eastern Damascus, in which hundreds were killed. The UN report, by chief investigator Ake Sellstrom, did not apportion blame for the attack.

Mr Sellstrom told the BBC he believed that the task of finding and destroying Syria's chemical stockpile would be "stressful work", but was "doable". He said much depended on whether the Syrian government and the opposition were willing to negotiate.

The disarmament deal was brokered by the US and Russia.

The penalty for any possible breaches by Syria are now being thrashed out by the UN Security Council permanent members. Selective and incomplete

In an interview with Russian media, Mr Ryabkov said the government of President Bashar al-Assad had given him new evidence that rebel forces had used chemical weapons.

"Just now we were given evidence. We need to analyse it," he said, without giving any details.

Mr Ryabkov criticised the UN report, saying it was "distorted" and "one-sided".

"The basis of information upon which it is built is not sufficient, and in any case we would need to learn and know more on what happened beyond and above that incident of 21 August," he said.

"We are disappointed, to put it mildly, about the approach taken by the UN secretariat and the UN inspectors, who prepared the report selectively and incompletely." In response to Mr Ryabkov's comments, Mr Sellstrom told the BBC he thought Russia was not criticising the report itself but the process, which he described a political matter and therefore not his remit

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius defended the UN report, saying he was surprised by the Russian reaction.

"Nobody can question the objectivity of the people appointed by the UN," he said.

Human Rights Watch has taken the trajectory of the rockets from the UN document and plotted their likely path.

The rights group said the likely launch site for the missiles was in a government military compound. The UN inspectors were originally mandated to go to Syria to investigate three alleged chemical weapons attacks, at Khan al-Assal, Sheikh Maqsoud and Saraqeb.

But they were later ordered to shift their focus to the Damascus incident, which was the most deadly chemical assault.

Symantec Corp said the group, which it dubbed "Hidden Lynx," was among the most technically advanced of several dozen believed to be running cyber espionage operations out of China. Unlike a previous report by another company, Symantec did not accuse the Chinese government of involvement in the cyber attacks.

Symantec's 28-page report described Hidden Lynx as a "professional organization" staffed by between 50 and 100 people with a variety of skills needed to breach networks and steal information, including valuable corporate secrets.

The company said its researchers believed Hidden Lynx might have been involved with the 2009 Operation Aurora attacks, the most well-known cyber espionage campaign uncovered to date against U.S. companies.

In Operation Aurora, hackers attacked Google Inc, Adobe Systems Inc and dozens of other companies. Google in January 2010 disclosed the attacks, in which hackers tried to read Gmail communications of human rights activists and to access and change source code at targeted companies.

Symantec researcher Liam O'Murchu said his company could not determine which individuals were behind Hidden Lynx or if it was linked to the Chinese government.

A separate study, released in February from U.S. computer security company Mandiant, said a secret unit of the Chinese military was engaged in cyber espionage on American companies. Beijing vehemently denied the accusations in that document, which contained photos of the building that Mandiant said was the unit's headquarters. (reut.rs/ZcXODG)

Symantec believes Hidden Lynx is based in China because much of the infrastructure used to run the attacks is there and because the malicious software was written using Chinese tools and with Chinese code, O'Murchu said.

The Symantec report attributed several recent attacks to Hidden Lynx, including a breach at cybersecurity firm Bit9 and follow-on attacks at three Bit9 clients. (reut.rs/XXMqKs)

It also connects Hidden Lynx to a major campaign dubbed Voho, which was discovered last year by EMC Corp's RSA security company. Voho targeted hundreds of organizations, including financial service, technology and healthcare companies; defense contractors; and government agencies.

FINANCE TARGETED

It will compete against a similar new product, Google's Chromecast.

Sony told entertainment trade-magazine Variety that it would formally launch the Android-powered Smart Stick later this week.

It will offer access to online content including video streams, music and games. However, one analyst said its price might prove its weakness.

Sony told Variety the Smart Stick would cost $150 (£94), but Google's plug-in is being sold in the US for $35. App downloads

Many of the features offered by Sony's device were included in its earlier Google TV set-top boxes, which have struggled to find demand.

However, the Smart Stick is designed to do away with the need for a separate cable as it can be plugged directly into a TV's mobile high-definition link (MHL) socket.

News of the gadget was revealed on the company's blog last week. The post was later pulled but can still be seen via Bing's cache facility, and the device's instruction manual remains online. They state that the dongle offers access to Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube and the Chrome web browser - which will all come pre-installed - and the option to download more software from the Play app store.

The gadget comes bundled with a remote that includes a microphone for voice-control, a touchpad and more traditional buttons.

Cheaper competitor

The details have emerged two months after Google unveiled its Chromecast dongle.

The device uses an HDMI socket to offer a more limited range of online content and relies on owners using a smartphone or tablet to control it via wi-fi.

However, it has the benefit of a lower price and is not restricted to being used on a specific brand of TV.

"For many consumers this will boil down to the fact that it's $150 versus $35," said Ian Maude, a digital media expert at consultants Enders Analysis.

"Sony is offering yet another device without offering anything that different from other internet-enabled set-top boxes."

"There is clearly demand to watch internet video via the TV set, but there's a whole new price point for these devices and at $150 I don't think the Smart Stick will fly." Sony also faces competition from others who are also investing in new smart TV facilities. Samsung - the world's bestselling television manufacturer - has bought Israeli firm Boxee's assets. Boxee's most recent product had let subscribers record TV shows onto its servers and then stream them to TVs, computers and smart devices.

LG has acquired WebOS - the operating system formerly used to power Palm handhelds - to "enhance" its smart TV products.

Late on Monday, several people in Iran found they could log in to their accounts on the U.S.-based social media sites without using techniques to circumvent blocks on Twitter and Facebook that the state imposed four years ago, during a clampdown on the biggest protests since the Islamic revolution.

That prompted speculation that it might herald a broader easing of censorship under President Hassan Rouhani; last month, he succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose re-election in 2009 sparked the demonstrations, in which social media played a part.

However, access was being blocked again on Tuesday and an official involved in controlling Internet usage said the brief lifting of the embargo at some Iranian Internet service providers was probably caused by a technical malfunction.

"The lack of a filter on Facebook last night was apparently due to technical problems and the technological committee is investigating this issue," Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, secretary of a state panel that filters sites, told Iran's Mehr news agency.

Service providers were being investigated, he added.

International executives at Facebook and Twitter had no immediate comment on the development.

One Iran expert based abroad said controls had briefly been removed across a very wide range of sites, including online pornography, supporting the view that it was a glitch.

Another, however, said Rouhani's new administration could be considering easing restrictions on sites that remain popular among Iranians able to get around the domestic firewall - and which senior government figures, and even Iran's clerical Supreme Leader, have themselves used to convey their messages.

SECURITY LAPSE

"I strongly believe it was a technical glitch because all Web sites that support SSL were available in the country last night, even porn websites," said Amin Sabeti, a British-based expert on the Internet in Iran. SSL is a Web security tool.

Sabeti added: "Iran has invested millions of dollars for its filtering system and it is clear that the regime will not give up Internet censorship very easily."

Nonetheless, there have been signs in that direction. Rouhani, a moderately reformist cleric, pledged to relax some social controls during his campaign for June's election. New, U.S.-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has Facebook and Twitter profiles and has engaged with other users.

Ambassador Gerard Araud told the Russian diplomat France was going to go public with proof from its intelligence services that Syria's government was using chemical weapons against its own people. The Russian diplomat laughed, according to a source familiar with the meeting. "Gerard," he told his counterpart, "don't embarrass the Americans."

It was a revealing exchange. France and Britain had been pressing for almost a year for the United States to engage more directly in the war in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's battle against a popular insurgency has killed 100,000 people and displaced more than 6 million. But Washington had resisted pleas for action, reluctant to get sucked into another Middle East quagmire after a decade of fighting and misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan. It had no desire for France to pile on further pressure by telling the world Assad was committing atrocities with weapons of mass destruction.

Even when the French went public with their claims in early June, the Obama administration said it needed more time and evidence to judge what had happened. A couple of weeks later the White House said that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Assad had launched small scale chemical attacks at various points over the previous year. But while Paris said all options were on the table, Washington played down the attacks, merely promising to give more aid to the anti-Assad rebels in Syria.

The gap between the two Western allies was just one awkward step in an extraordinary two-year dance around the civil war in Syria. That dance, detailed here with reporting drawn from interviews with senior diplomats and officials over the past year, has grown ever more complicated in recent weeks after graphic evidence of a much bigger chemical attack hit computer and television screens around the world on August 21.

Videos posted online after the attack showed hundreds of people in suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus struck by a mysterious, lethal affliction. Men, women and children struggled for breath, foaming at the mouth and twitching. Other scenes showed scores of corpses with no obvious wounds.

Rebels said Assad had killed hundreds of civilians with chemical weapons. Assad denied it, but the evidence suggested otherwise.