[Forbes] The 70 million Target credit card breach might be the first time most people ever heard of EMV, if they even noted its mention in the coverage. More secure cards wouldnt have averted the breach but they would have limited the value of the stored data. News stories have drawn attention to the fact that American credit cards lag behind Europe and Canada when it comes to security. (EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, which developed the technology specification for payments which has been adopted by the major card providers.) EMV at Wik.
#1
Once a truylly secure IC process exists next step is tiny IC (EMV) chips implanted just below the skin in people that through RF provides that information either at a Toll Station, Point of Sale system in a retail store or wifi receiver on your laptop when making an on-line purchase.
#2
Merchants in the U.S. face an October 2015 deadline for moving to chip cards after that, the liability for fraudulent transactions on a mag card will shift to the stores.
Well, that's one way to go after Amazon (internet merchants et al). How does one verify an online order with a 'chip' card? For an entity as big as Amazon, they probably could go to their own card (near banking system). For the smaller guys, it's may be the cost of doing business which is transferred to the customer, wiping out the difference between them and the local brick and mortar stores.
#4
It will not be a suggestion, it will be a requirement. Per Revelations. No cash or coins, just Radio Frequency based transactions against your account.
[PEOPLE] Sid Caesar, the deft side-splitter who helped establish the new medium of television as he also established himself as a comedy legend, has died. He was 91.
"He had not been well for a while. He was getting weak," family front man Eddy Friedfeld told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
With a deceptively simple philosophy of humor -- "I don't take myself too seriously," he told PEOPLE in 1989. "I just laugh at myself a lot and call myself a dummy" -- Isaac Sidney Caesar had been eliciting laughs since the Great Depression, when he mimicked the accents of customers who came into his Russian-Jewish parents' luncheonette in his native Yonkers, N.Y.
Trained as a teenage saxophonist in the Catskill Mountains' "Borscht Belt" (so named because the beet soup was a favorite among immigrant and first-generation American resort patrons), Caesar also honed his comic craft as a Catskills tummler, a sort of on-premises master emcee who kept the hard-to-please guests entertained throughout the day. Sob!
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
History of the World Part 1
One of the funniest movies ever.
Sorry to see ya go old chap.
Posted by: Snolet Dark Lord of the Sith2553 ||
02/13/2014 11:33 Comments ||
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[PJ media] Justice Department lawyer Bradley Heard was in court today trying to stop Kansas from ensuring that only citizens register to vote. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, relying on a United States Supreme Court opinion of last year, asked the federal Election Assistance Commission to permit him to ensure that only citizens were registering to vote. Kansas Secretary of State Kobach obviously fails to realize US Supreme Court decisions only apply if they positively impact the current regime's goals and objectives.
#1
Err, allowing foreigners to vote isn't it a bit unconstitutional? True, governments sometimes do things who are not entirely legal but I never heard of something so blatant and in your face. What's next arguing against rules (1) to prevent dead from voting?
(1) I know, know. I am speaking not of dead Democratic voters but of making it legal.
#5
At one time felonies were mostly capital offenses. Dead men didn't vote (that came later). Same reason felons aren't allowed to 'bear arms'. So if they give felons the right to vote back, can they also get a gun permit too?
#7
Kansas can allow anyone to vote it wants to; it just can't stop certain people or groups from voting. Illegal - or even legal - immigrants are not supposed to be one of those protected groups.
[An Nahar] A retired senior Algerian general has called on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third or fourth term, who will probably die in office of old age... to step down "with dignity" and not run for a fourth term in April, in an interview published Wednesday.
Hocine Benhadid also accused the president's inner circle of "treason" after Amar Saidani, the ruling party's secretary general, publicly accused the powerful military intelligence chief of interfering in politics to the detriment of the country's security.
"Here is what I'm asking from President Bouteflika: He came to power with the slogan 'pride and dignity'... so he should retire... with dignity and let Algeria catch its breath," Benhadid told the newspapers El Khabar and El Watan.
His comments are the latest sign of an intensifying power struggle between Bouteflika's supporters and the army, ahead of the presidential poll.
Benhadid, who once commanded one of Algeria's military regions, said he was speaking on behalf of others in the armed forces, without saying whom, "because we cannot let this situation continue."
The 76-year-old Bouteflika, who has been in power for 15 years, suffered a mini-stroke that confined him to hospital in Gay Paree for three months last year. He has yet to say if his health will permit him to run for re-election.
But for Benhadid, the country's stability cannot be guaranteed by someone who was "sick" and the "hostage of his entourage."
He singled out for criticism Bouteflika's brother Said, the "main actor" in the presidential clan, as well as army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah, one of the ailing leader's key allies.
"The chief of staff has no credibility, and no one is fond of him," Benhadid said.
He accused Bouteflika's entourage of "playing with Algeria's destiny" in order to "save its skin, because corruption has reached dangerous levels."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 00:00 ||
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[USATODAY] Burnt trash lay in the streets Thursday, the morning after the largest protests yet against the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Signage from a government ministry lay strewn on the ground, having been broken and burned the night before in demonstrations by thousands of Venezuelans that left three people dead.
The violence caps two weeks of protests around the country, with both the government and opposition leaders pointed fingers at each other. Both sides also said they would be back in the streets this weekend.
"They both blame each other," said Wilson Ordóñez, 45, as he pointed to debris in a Caracas square.
"It's the same as ever," added Carmen Perdomo , 61, a local professional. "It's the government that has to show a good example. They don't, yet blame everybody else."
Maduro led his own counter-rally during the protests, which were held to complain about the government's state-controlled economic policies that have led to chronic shortages of basic goods.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 11:31 ||
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#4
Vzla is not far from a foreign exchange drama. Most of their debts are denominated in dollars,(lol of course) and they're running out rather quickly. The implied rate of exchange to the dollar is about 62 Bols to deh Buck, the black market rate is roughly 88 atm. the 62/88 difference is the panic that is radiating thru the country. I look for it to accelerate. I will mention the official exchange rate is either 6.3 to the buck (if you know the right people) or 12-15 if your know relatives of the right people. Dollars are being horded by the the government to pay foreign debt denominated in American Bread and this is strangling imports leading to serious shortages of roughly 30% of the market basket. Things are speeding up. One of the mainstays of the Opposition (MUD) now has a warrant out for his arrest.
I bet Barky is smacking himself in the gob saying, "Man, I wish I'd thought of that!"
The only links are in Spanish at the moment. We get to see if your much vaunted cable news channels rush to the defense of NTN 24.
A Colombia cable news channel, NTN 24, was removed from a Venezuelan line up, presumably for covering anti government protests.
#2
Well.
If the recent reports of setting the stage for the FCC to investigate the conclusions of television programs and the IRS having the authority to investigate terminations of employment...
#3
Barky doesn't have to worry about it. As swksvoIFF points out he's got the hammer, but, he doesn't need that since the media is virtually all on his side anyway.
[NY Times] Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State... headed to Asia on Wednesday to seek China's help to try to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
A senior State Department official said that Mr. Kerry wanted China to take steps to bring "the North Korean leadership to the realization" that pursing the capability to deliver nuclear weapons with a ballistic missile "does not bring security" and "is simply not tenable."
Mr. Kerry delivered the same message to the Chinese leadership during his previous visit to Beijing as secretary of state in April 2013.
North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests and its nuclear program appears to be proceeding without interruption.
Mr. Kerry's first stop in Asia will be South Korea, where he is scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Mr. Kerry will meet with President Park Geun-hye and Yun Byung-se, South Korea's foreign minister.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 00:00 ||
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Yoohoo, Bammer, I'm still waiting for you since January 2009 to take formal action to make the "57" US States a reality, or else to give the US Territories our sovereign independence???
#4
although us national gdp has meaning, state and metro gdp have some statistical quirks making it less meaningful (e.g., the hq effect, the govt salary effect)
in addition, the gdp of some countries is only a crude estimate
in any case the mapping of states to countries would have to change every year
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/13/2014 5:23 Comments ||
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#5
Ouch: NY = Mexico that will leave a mark.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/13/2014 6:29 Comments ||
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#20
that would be like the "EU" being a country. They're just mechanisms for graft, control, regulation, and redistribution, not a country, or even a State
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/13/2014 21:51 Comments ||
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#21
I find it pleasantly ironic that Illinois is Saudiland and Louisiana is Isreal.
Posted by: Charles ||
02/13/2014 22:38 Comments ||
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Ukrainian prosecutors have ended criminal proceedings against two top officials charged with abuse of power for pushing the police chief in the capital to use force against antigovernment demonstrators. These are the prosecutors who moonlight at the DoJ's investigation of the IRS...
Prosecutors in Kiev said on February 12 that the investigations against Volodymyr Sivkovych, deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, and Oleksandr Popov, the head of Kiev's city administration, had been dropped as part of a recent amnesty law approved by President Viktor Yanukovych.
The two had been suspended in December, after police violently cracked down on demonstrators on November 30, injuring dozens. The amnesty law also says that all detained demonstrators should be released, but only if antigovernment demonstrators evacuate the government buildings they occupy.
The opposition on February 12 denounced what it called the "cynicism" of the authorities and demanded that all demonstrators be released "immediately."
#1
In the Third Millennium, we have reached a point where it is no longer possible to distinguish between news of the day and the latest from The Onion. I am not sure what this portends for humanity, but I suspect we are boned.
#2
See also GROONG > TURKEY'S PROPOSED AIRCRAFT CARRIER COULD ALTER THE BALANCE OF POWER IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN.
* WAFF > TURKEY TO CONTROL THE MANAGEMENT OF [post-UKRAINE] CRIMEAN PENINSULA | [Hurriyet News] IFF UKRAINE FRAGMENTS [breaks up], TURKEY HAS RIGHT TO CRIMEA.
versus
* GROONG > TURKOLOGIST: KURDISH AUTONOMY [State] IN SYRIA, TURKEY IS PAYING THE PRICE FOR PM ERDOGAN'S [Geopol = "Great Power"] ADVENTURISM.
D *** NG IT, TURKEY = IRAN + PAKISTAN [Saudis? Egypt?] AREN' THE ONLY ONE(S) WHOM ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ISLAMIC SUPERPOWERS [Nuclear]!?
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > FROM "EUROPE'S BRIC" [+ 'Next Superpower"], TURKEY BECOMING ANOTHER "SICK MAN OF THE MIDDLE EAST" [again = "Sick Man of Europe"?] | TURKISH FINANCIAL CRISIS ADDS TO REGION'S CHAOS.
#10
Actually Pappy, the Forrestal was recently hauled off for scrap, after the USN paid a penny to the salvage company to take it away. pretty sad thing, it could have had a second life as John McCain's Senatorial Library, complete with replica Skyhawks.
[DAWN] One sunny afternoon as she skipped home from school, Saneeda was accosted by her estranged father, who wanted to marry her to a man she'd never met to settle a debt of "honour". She was five years old.
A few months earlier, Saneeda's father Ali Ahmed had eloped with a girl from another valley. To avoid violent Dire Revenge from her family, he promised to give them his daughter and niece Sapna in marriage.
Offering maidens of tender years as brides in compensation to settle disputes persists in certain areas of Pakistain.
In Saneeda's home district of Swat, in the country's northwest, the practice is known as "swara".
Government data show that it is on the rise in Swat, four years after an army operation ended the Taliban's brutal two-year rule in the scenic valley.
Nine cases were registered in the area in 2013, up from just one in 2012. Rights groups say the true number is much higher.
"My father stopped me in the street and told me that he has given me in swara and soon will hand me over to a man who will be my husband," Saneeda, wearing a golden shawl with red and purple embroidery, told AFP, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.
Her mother dismissed it at first, but the arrangement had been ordered by a jirga, a traditional tribal gathering, and the gravity of the situation soon became clear.
"We initially thought they can't take this girl away but then they increased pressure with every passing day to give her in swara," Fazal Ahad, Saneeda's maternal uncle, told AFP.
Eventually Saneeda's family got a court order protecting her. Police tossed in the clink Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages! her father and the jirga members who had decided to give her in swara.
A lucky escape, but Saneeda, now aged seven, still faces discrimination and mockery.
"Whenever I go to school, children taunt me and tell me that I have been given in swara and will be married to a man," she said.
Saneeda was unusual in that her family challenged the jirga's ruling. In Pakistain's patriarchal society, where family reputation is paramount, airing the "dirty laundry" in public in this way is very rare.
"There are many other cases of swara, but people in our area don't go to police and court and don't highlight such cases. We don't take matters of our women to the court -- the victimised girls have to bear it all," said Ahad.
The authorities do not keep detailed data on swara, but Samar Minallah, an activist who made an acclaimed documentary on the practice, said she had identified at least 132 cases around Pakistain in 2012.
The other girl given by Saneeda's father, 16-year-old Sapna, had to abide by the jirga ruling and settled with the husband they chose for her.
The custom and the code of silence that surrounds it is so strictly followed that AFP was unable to reach her to speak about her experience.
Ahad said the nine Swara cases reported in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... are just the tip of the iceberg, but victims were becoming increasingly willing to speak out.
"People are slowly getting aware through media that this custom is an evil, so some of them have started reporting," he said.
Forced marriage under swara is against the law, but police say that even when a complaint is brought there is great reluctance among witnesses to give statements.
"In the cases of swara, people don't provide evidence against each other, because they are from the same village and community," Naveed Khan, a senior police official told AFP in Mingora, the district headquarter of Swat.
"In the single swara marriage case in 2012, all 12 accused were set free because there was lack of evidence against them. Nobody speaks up in such cases."
Officers arrested 65 suspects in the nine swara cases in 2013, including Saneeda's father, Khan said, but their fate rests with the courts.
Women's rights groups say the government needs to do more to crack down on swara.
"There are more than 15 cases of Swara, which have been highlighted," Tabassum Adnan Safi, the chair of a local women's campaign group, told AFP.
"We are working to make women aware of the evilness of this custom. Besides these awareness campaigns, we also protest against Swara and raise voice for the protection.
"But getting evidence in such cases is no doubt a big challenge because nobody talks about it."
Minallah says that nothing will change until the police and prosecutors are prepared to challenge the authority of local elders -- a difficult task in areas where such traditional power structures are deeply entrenched.
"An awareness has been created against swara, that is why there are more reported cases, but the authorities need to take strict action against jirgas and stop them violating the law," she said.
And there are those, even in the legal community, who defend the practice staunchly.
"It is helpful in removing deadly enmities among scores of tribes, saves dozens of lives and brings peace among families," Syed Kareem Shalman, a practising lawyer in Mingora, told AFP.
"If a family, which gets a bride in Swara mistreats her, faces Dire Revenge from the family who give their daughter to resolve the dispute."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 00:00 ||
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[Egypt Independent] Thailand's Constitutional Court on Wednesday rejected a request by the country's main opposition party to annul a controversial election disrupted by anti-government protests.
The court said in a statement that it had declined to consider the petition by a Democrat Party lawyer to nullify the February 2 vote because there were insufficient grounds.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called the election in an attempt to assuage opposition protesters who have staged more than three months of mass street protests seeking her resignation.
The Democrats boycotted the vote, saying it would not end a political crisis stretching back to a military coup in 2006 that ousted Yingluck's elder brother Thaksin Shinawatra as premier.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/13/2014 00:00 ||
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I was hoping for some other IRS employees, namely every single one that was involved in the Exempt Organization division who was active in denying Tea Party org's from forming 501(c)(4)'s. Those SOB's should all be fired, stripped of their pensions and hit with criminal charges. I'll take this one, though.
For you curious types, here's what may be her Facebook page. Einstein can rest easy...
A former IRS tax preparer was arrested today after being indicted on charges of fraud for falsifying the returns of members of the public and transferring funds earned through fraudulent returns to her personal banking account.
Sherelle Pratt, 49, of Philadelphia, could face up to 33 years in prison for charges of tax fraud and identity theft. Court papers list her alleged illegal income obtained through fraud as $28,767.95.
According to court documents, Pratt was hired in January 2008 by the IRS.
By April 2009, an individual had reportedly contacted the IRS to complain that his son had not received a his tax refund of $958 from the IRS or his $600 stimulus check. From another link, she was cooking returns back to 2006. So the IRS hires this AA baby and she immediately starts scamming the system and ripping people off. How thorough was the background check, if it happened at all?
#1
If Ms. Pratt was involved in IRS taxpayer audits, perhaps a demographic analysis should be conducted of cases she reviewed. Sorting categories of urban, rural, suburban, farm, obvious name taxonomies [Xe Lo Ming, Peit and Greta Vanderschultz] etc. might be useful.
Comcast is expected to announce on Thursday an agreement to acquire Time Warner Cable for more than $45 billion in stock, a deal that would combine the biggest and second-biggest cable television operators in the country.
For Comcast, which completed its acquisition of NBC Universal, the television and movie powerhouse, from General Electric less than a year ago, the latest deal would be its second big act to radically reshape the media landscape in the United States. And the merger is almost certain to bring to an end a protracted takeover battle that Charter Communications has been waging for Time Warner Cable.
#2
One of the most glaring situations of antitrust in the US today is the bundling policy of cable providers. This is naked rent-seeking to force people to purchase a product/service they do not want so that the employees and owners of hundreds of channels (which would fail overnight if the market were freed up and a la carte offerings were the case) can have a guaranteed income. Also, it disguises the actual costs of sports networks like ESPN.
Even Canada now has a la carte cable. This move by comcast to acquire Warner will of course strengthen the ability of the industry to lobby Congress to keep the current awful system of bundling.
The reason that the entertainment industry thinks that all businesses are lobbying fat cats which use government to interrupt the market and line their own pockets is that that is how THEIR industry works. Simple projection.
I'll buy cable again when it is a la carte.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/13/2014 5:03 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PEOPLE] Sid Caesar, the deft side-splitter who helped establish the new medium of television as he also established himself as a comedy legend, has died. He was 91. 
Bouteflika
[NY Times] Secretary of State 
[DAWN] One sunny afternoon as she skipped home from school, Saneeda was accosted by her estranged father, who wanted to marry her to a man she'd never met to settle a debt of "honour". She was five years old.
