A few weeks ago, Sony wowed photography nerds with something actually new: Two mirrorless, interchangeable-lens cameras with full-frame image sensors, the same big chips used in professional DSLRs. The compact design is a marvel on its own, and after using the cameras for a few days, I can safely say that, yes, these might be the most exciting shooters we've seen all year.
BERLIN (AP) — The text of a letter that German lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele says National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden gave him during a meeting on Thursday in Moscow. Stroebele released the letter Friday.
"To whom it may concern,
I have been invited to write to you regarding your investigation of mass surveillance.
I am Edward Joseph Snowden, formerly employed through contracts or direct hire as a technical expert for the United States National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
In the course of my service to these organizations, I believe I witnessed systemic violations of law by my government that created a moral duty to act. As a result of reporting these concerns, I have faced a severe and sustained campaign of persecution that forced me from my family and home. I am currently living in exile under a grant of temporary asylum in the Russian Federation in accordance with international law.
I am heartened by the response to my act of political expression, in both the United States and beyond. Citizens around the world as well as high officials — including in the United States — have judged the revelation of an unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance to be a public service. These spying revelations have resulted in the proposal of many new laws and policies to address formerly concealed abuses of the public trust. The benefits to society of this growing knowledge are becoming increasingly clear at the same time claimed risks are being shown to have been mitigated.
Though the outcome of my efforts has been demonstrably positive, my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense. However, speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior. I hope that when the difficulties of this humanitarian situation have been resolved, I will be able to cooperate in the responsible finding of fact regarding reports in the media, particularly in regard to the truth and authenticity of documents, as appropriate and in accordance with the law.
I look forward to speaking with you in your country when the situation is resolved, and thank you for your efforts in upholding the international laws that protect us all.
In this image taken from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, people try to extinguish a fire on the roof of a building, allegedly caused by shelling in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. President Bashar Assad's government met a key deadline in an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 and avoid international military action. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP Video)
In this image taken from video obtained from the Shaam News Network, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, people try to extinguish a fire on the roof of a building, allegedly caused by shelling in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013. President Bashar Assad's government met a key deadline in an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 and avoid international military action. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP Video)
BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli warplanes attacked a shipment of Russian missiles inside a Syrian government stronghold, officials said Thursday, a development that threatened to add another volatile layer to regional tensions from the Syrian civil war.
The revelation came as the government of President Bashar Assad met a key deadline in an ambitious plan to eliminate Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile by mid-2014 and avoid international military action.
The announcement by a global chemical weapons watchdog that the country has completed the destruction of equipment used to produce the deadly agents highlights Assad's willingness to cooperate, and puts more pressure on the divided and outgunned rebels to attend a planned peace conference.
An Obama administration official confirmed the Israeli airstrike overnight, but provided no details. Another security official said the attack occurred late Wednesday in the Syrian port city of Latakia and that the target was Russian-made SA-125 missiles.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the attack. There was no immediate confirmation from Syria.
Since the civil war in Syria began in March 2011, Israel has carefully avoided taking sides, but has struck shipments of missiles inside Syria at least twice this year.
The Syrian military, overstretched by the civil war, has not retaliated, and it was not clear whether the embattled Syrian leader would choose to take action this time. Assad may decide to again let the Israeli attack slide, particularly when his army has the upper hand on the battlefield inside Syria.
Israel has repeatedly declared a series of red lines that could trigger Israeli military intervention, including the delivery of "game-changing" weapons to the Syrian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.
Israel has never officially confirmed taking action inside Syria to avoid embarrassing Assad and sparking a potential response. But foreign officials say it has done so several times when Israeli intelligence determined that sophisticated missiles were on the move.
In January, an Israeli airstrike in Syria destroyed a shipment of advanced anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah, according to U.S. officials. And in May, it was said to have acted again, taking out a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles at a Damascus airport.
The Fateh-110s have advanced guidance systems that allow them to travel up to 200 miles (300 kilometers) per hour with great precision. Their solid-fuel propellant allows them to be launched at short notice, making them hard to detect and neutralize.
Israel has identified several other weapons systems as game changers, including chemical weapons, Russian-made Yakhont missiles that can be fired from land and destroy ships at sea, and Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. Israel's January airstrike is believed to have destroyed a shipment of SA-17s.
Syrian activists and opposition groups reported strong explosions Wednesday night that appeared to come from inside an air defense facility in Latakia. They said the cause of the blasts was not known.
The announcement Thursday that Syria had completed the destruction of equipment used to produce chemical weapons came one day ahead of a Nov. 1 deadline set by the Hague-based watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
But while some experts portrayed the step as a milestone, others said it has little impact as long as Syria still has its entire remaining stockpile of functioning chemical weapons.
"Only after those weapons have been destroyed or removed from Syrian control will the state be demilitarized," said David Reeths, director at HIS Jane's Consulting.
With the initial stage of verification and destruction of weapons machinery completed, the hard task now begins.
The executive committee of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has until Nov. 15 to decide how best to permanently destroy Syria's chemical weapons program and its stockpile of deadly mustard gas, sarin and precursor chemicals.
It's not yet clear how and where the arsenal will be destroyed, but carrying out the work in Syria or transporting the chemical weapons out of the country for destruction elsewhere are both fraught with risks amid the ongoing civil war. The country is believed to have around 1,000 metric tons of chemical weapons.
Assad has so far met all required deadlines according to the strict timeline, demonstrating his willingness to go to great lengths to avoid international military action.
"This is a clear indication of the Syrian government's wish to cooperate and abide by its commitments," said Syrian lawmaker Issam Khalil. He said Syria knows "full well that the U.S. has not ceased its hostile policies toward Syria and will attempt to exploit any excuse — however small and inconsequential — to carry out a military strike against Syria."
The U.S.-Russian deal to destroy Syria's stockpile averted a U.S. military strike against the Syrian government that appeared certain in August, following a chemical weapons attack near Damascus that killed hundreds the U.S. blamed on Assad.
By making him a partner in implementing the disarmament deal, the agreement appears to have restored some of Assad's legitimacy while angering his opponents, who now balk at attending political transition talks the U.S. hopes will begin in Geneva in November.
No final date has been set for the talks, and there have been disagreements among opposition groups on whether to attend or not, and the conditions for taking part. Syria's main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Coalition, postponed its general council meeting in Istanbul from Friday to Nov. 10, pending further discussions on the highly divisive talks.
U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, currently in Damascus, has urged both sides to come to the talks without preconditions. But both have placed seemingly unrealistic conditions for attending.
At a Senate hearing in Washington on Thursday, Sen. John McCain said Assad, who was about to be toppled a year ago, has "turned the tide" while continuing to slaughter innocent civilians.
Fighting continued at a high pace across many parts of the country, including in the town of Safira, in northern Aleppo province. Experts say the town is home to a chemical weapons production facility, as well as storage sites.
Activists said troops were advancing Thursday in the town, capturing several neighborhoods and causing casualties on both sides.
Also on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based Syria watchdog, said more than 120,000 people have been killed since the start of the country's conflict nearly three years ago. In July, the U.N. estimated 100,000 have died in the conflict since March 2011. It has not updated that figure since.
The violence underscored the dangers the chemical weapons' inspectors face as they race against tight deadlines in the midst of an ongoing civil war.
Earlier this week, the inspectors said they had completed their first round of verification work, visiting 21 of 23 sites declared by Damascus. They were unable to visit two sites because of security concerns, the inspectors said.
On Thursday, the chemical weapons agency said the two locations were, according to Syria, "abandoned and ... the chemical weapons program items they contained were moved to other declared sites, which were inspected."
It was not immediately clear if the facility in Safira was one of the two sites.
Commenting on the two sites, OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said, "it was just deemed too risky." He told the AP that Syrian authorities were not able to offer the necessary security guarantees for inspectors to visit those sites.
He added, however, that the Syrian side provided "quite compelling documentary evidence" that equipment in one of the sites was moved to another location that inspectors did visit.
___
Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press writers Robert Burns in Washington, Albert Aji in Damascus and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
"We often become numb to the numbers when discussing breaches, but 38 million is a vastly different scale of breach -- it's massive," explained Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy with Tripwire. "It surpasses last year's 24 million record Zappos breach and will undoubtedly cost Adobe tens of millions of dollars."
After initially estimating that a mere 3 million customers had been affected by the security breach it announced at the start of October, Adobe on Wednesday admitted that the actual number now looks to be closer to an eye-popping 38 million. In addition, the breach seems to be more far-reaching than initially thought, extending to the Photoshop family of products as well.
In its original announcement, Adobe said hackers stole 3 million encrypted customer credit card records and login data for Adobe user accounts. This past weekend, however, AnonNews.org posted a file that appears to include more than 150 million username and hashed password pairs taken from Adobe, according to Krebs on Security.
So far, Adobe's investigation has confirmed that the attackers obtained access to Adobe IDs and what were at the time valid, encrypted passwords for approximately 38 million active users, the company said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Marissa Hopkins.
"We have completed email notification of these users," Adobe said. "We also have reset the passwords for all Adobe IDs with valid, encrypted passwords that we believe were involved in the incident -- regardless of whether those users are active or not."
Adobe believes the attackers obtained access to many invalid Adobe IDs, inactive Adobe IDs, Adobe IDs with invalid encrypted passwords, and test account data as well, the company added: "We are still in the process of investigating the number of inactive, invalid and test accounts involved in the incident. Our notification to inactive users is ongoing."
There's no indication so far, however, that there has been unauthorized activity on any Adobe ID account involved in the incident, the company pointed out.
38 Million!
As with most security hacks, information is limited and experts are left filling in the blanks with speculation. For example, there is the question of how one breach could encompass so many people.
"We often become numb to the numbers when discussing breaches, but 38 million is a vastly different scale of breach -- it's massive," Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy at Tripwire, told TechNewsWorld. "It surpasses last year's 24 million record Zappos breach and will undoubtedly cost Adobe tens of millions of dollars.
"As more information about the attack vector and details emerges, we'll be able to understand what Adobe might have done to prevent this compromise," Erlin added.
A breach of this size doesn't happen overnight, noted Craig Young, also a security researcher with Tripwire.
"Clearly, attackers were on Adobe's networks for a prolonged period of time without being detected," Young told TechNewsWorld. "In fact, the attacks were only brought to light when researchers found Adobe's data on a server used by organized cybercriminals."
Very likely, the hackers attacked an account management server that contained most if not all Adobe accounts, suggested Dodi Glenn, a security researcher with ThreatTrack Security.
Adobe has acknowledged publicly that the breach was possible in part due to server-side accessibility and consolidation of security credentials, noted Lockbox CEO Peter Long.
If nothing else, what this breach has served to highlight "is that a strategy of attempting to secure the infrastructure ultimately can be overwhelmed by a consistent and focused attack," Long told TechNewsWorld.
'Should Have Been Prevented'
Given the magnitude of the numbers involved, it is fair to rethink Adobe's after-the-fact approach to the breach.
When it was first revealed, Adobe apologized and offered free yearlong credit monitoring for affected customers. It also made sure the passwords were encrypted and issued a password reset for the accounts that were compromised, Glenn told TechNewsWorld -- all to the good.
However, "the damage is already done," he added. "The leak occurred, and should have been prevented in the first place."
Where Adobe's response could stand improvement is in providing more transparency about what happened, he concluded, "instead of letting people and security groups speculate."
Ancient myths of dragons, titans, and giants—inhuman creatures battling it out on an alien earth before mankind—are easy enough to find. Seemingly every culture has them. What's perhaps more surprising is that many of these tales of deformed and monstrous beings, whether terrifying dragons or beneficent heroes armed for battle, often resulted from a misunderstanding of the fossil record.
CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
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CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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]
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
###
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Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
That's how many people signed up for Obamacare on Day 1, according to CBS News, and no that's not a misprint.
The Obama administration has kept the number of enrollments close to the vest. Its touted the number of visitors to the troubled HealthCare.gov website – 4.7 million – but hasn't released the actual number of enrollments.
But according to CBS News, notes from a "war room" meeting the day after the Affordable Care Act launched on Oct. 1 say "six enrollments have occurred so far." By the end of Day 2, enrollments totaled 248 nationwide.
The White House predicted 500,000 would sign up by the end of the month, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press, and that was considered a "modest start" for the market.
CBS notes that in order to meet the goal of seven million enrollments by March 1, the exchanges need to enroll an average of 39,000 a day.
During Wednesday's Congressional hearing, Health and Human Services head Kathleen Sebelius was asked several times for the number of enrollments. She explained that the data was unreliable and would not be available until mid-November.
"We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven’t given it to date," she said.
The Obama administration has enlisted the services of computer engineers from tech companies such as Google and Oracle to help fix the troubled healthcare website, which has been plagued with issues from the start. As Sebelius testified Wednesday that the site "has never crashed," users trying to access it found a message that read, "The system is down at the moment."
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Gj_AeAxcEm4/sony-a7r-and-a7-first-impressions-full-frame-power-pa-1456083926
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