Volcano erupts in chile causing mass evacuation

Southern Chile's Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century, prompting evacuations for 3,500 people as it sent a cloud of ash that reached Argentina, authorities said.

The National Service of Geology and Mining said the explosion that sparked the eruption also produced a column of gas 10 kilometers (six miles) high, hours after warning of strong seismic activity in the area.
"You can see the fire (in the volcano) and a plume of smoke, and there's a strong smell of sulfur," top Los Rios region official Juan Andres Varas told reporters.

The government, which earlier ordered the evacuation of 600 people, expanded that number to 3,500 people to be relocated to shelters in safe areas. Authorities issued a red alert, the maximum warning level, for the area.

A border crossing between Argentina and Chile was closed.
Yeimi Obando, a professor who was evacuated, told National Television of Chile that people "are very worried" about the effect of the ashes on their cattle and other animals.

A cloud of ash could be seen in the Patagonian resort town of Bariloche in Argentina, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of the volcano.

"We're trying to stop car traffic and ask that people stay at home and close their doors and windows to prevent the volcanic ash from coming in.

The city's airport was also closed," Carlos Hidalgo, Bariloche's communications secretary, told TN television.

"Ash was dumped like a snowstorm," he said. "The city is covered in gray ash."

Nearby localities were also affected, said Hidalgo, whose city of 50,000 people welcomes thousands of foreign tourists each year to its lakes and mountain scenery, as well as ski slopes in the winter months.
Argentine officials in La Angostura announced late Saturday that the Andean town of 16,000 people was on "red alert" and residents were urged to ration water use.

Flagship airline Aerolineas Argentinas cancelled six flights on Saturday because of the volcano, the company said.
Puyehue is located 870 kilometers (540 miles) south of the capital city Santiago in the Cordon Caulle complex nestled in the Andes mountains. Its last major eruption was in 1960, following a magnitude 9.5 earthquake.

Source: Yahoo!

South Korea vows strong response to any future North Korea attacks

South Korea’s defense minister has warned that his country would respond very strongly to any future attacks by North Korea.

Kim Kwan Jin said at a regional security conference in Singapore on Saturday that his government must react with stiffer responses than in the past because North Korean provocations are becoming increasingly bold.

Kim said North Korea has been insincere in previous talks and must change its attitude for South Korea to return to formal discussions.

North Korea vowed Friday to launch “retaliatory military actions” against South Korea, a threat that came days after Seoul said its military had used photos of Pyongyang's ruling family for target practice.

Source: AP

Mexican crime groups now making money from pirated goods

Marcelo Ramirez watches over a stall piled with pirated movies and music outside a busy Metro stop flanking the capital’s elegant Reforma Avenue. For him, buying and selling pirated goods is a way of life.

“There are no good jobs,” he said while customers browse the discs, each with a makeshift cover slipped inside a cellophane envelope. “If people could make a good living there wouldn’t be piracy. We would all buy originals.”

Absent from these discs are the disturbing drug cartel logos that have begun appearing on pirated movies and music elsewhere in the country: a “Z” or a bucking bronco for the Zetas, a monarch butterfly for La Familia Michoacana.

Experts say criminal organizations such as these have increasingly taken control of Mexico’s informal economy and with it, its multibillion-dollar market for pirated movies, music, software and other goods ― illegally producing, distributing and even exporting the latest Hollywood hits, music by popular Mexican artists and computer programs.

Criminal organizations now make only about half their money trafficking illegal drugs, said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime with Mexico’s Autonomous Technological Institute, a leading university. The other half of revenue, in the billions, comes from smuggling migrants, extortion, kidnappings and Mexico’s vast black market for pirated goods.

The consequences are enormous, said Jorge Amigo Castaneda, director of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property.

The institute estimates that Mexico lost 480,000 jobs due to piracy and falsification in 2009, the latest year for which statistics are available.

For example, the faking of brand-name apparel cost the clothing industry $9.5 billion. The footwear industry, which has seen 70 percent of businesses close in recent years, must compete with the 200 million pairs of counterfeited “brand name” shoes that enter the country illegally each year.

With intellectual property of all kinds at serious risk of piracy or falsification in Mexico, the country loses its competitive edge in attracting national and foreign investment, Amigo said.
Mexico dropped six places to No. 66 in the World Economic Forum’s 2010-2011 report on global competitiveness, falling behind Panama, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

The hand of organized crime in piracy is evident, experts say.

The cartel logos popping up on movies, music and software discs are “obviously not registered trademarks, but it’s their own brand,” according to a government official who asked not to be named for security reasons.

“If someone from La Familia shows up, enters (a store) and sees that the discs don’t carry the butterfly, things are going to get ugly for the owners,” the official said. “They are forcing stores to buy their discs.”

Drug traffickers “get involved in piracy in the same way they get involved in the kidnapping of migrants,” said Gustavo Fondevila, an expert on piracy and criminal organizations with Mexico’s CIDE think tank. “They’re looking for ways to diversify their criminal business.”

Less than a mile away from where Ramirez mans his stall, Federico de la Garza sits in the Mexico City office of the Motion Picture Association where, as director, he is working on a campaign to convince Mexicans not to buy pirated goods.

Nine out of 10 movies sold in Mexico are pirated, he said.

With law enforcement and judicial institutions weak in Mexico, both the Motion Picture Association and the Business Software Alliance are working to convince the public that piracy is harmful.

The Motion Picture Association is sponsoring commercials that aim to instill a sort of “social shame” around buying pirated goods. The spots ridicule piracy and call into question a consumer’s values.

The Business Software Alliance is working with chambers of commerce throughout Mexico to encourage business owners not to purchase pirated software.

“It is not about prosecuting more people; it’s about asking society for a pact in which we can all work together,” said the association’s Mexico manager, Kiyoshi Tsuru. “The problem is massive.”

Studies suggest that Mexicans generally don’t view piracy as criminal or immoral.

Even when people believe that buying pirated items links them to organized crime, foments delinquency and weakens local industry, they still shop for pirated goods. In a 2009 study of affluent consumers, the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico reported that 88 percent of respondents had purchased pirated goods, even though most view piracy negatively.

Ramirez, the vendor, said he knows it’s a crime to buy pirated goods. Still, he regularly shops for movies ― action flicks for himself, cartoons for his children.

The stall he watches was raided by police about three months ago, he said, but normally “they don’t bother you here.”
Source: The Dallas morning news

Life discovered 1.3 km beneath the earth's surface

Scientists discovered tiny worms in deep earth where it was thought creatures could not survive, Science News reported.

The discovery of the worm “Halicephalobus mephisto,” and “Plectus aquatilis,” found 1.3 kilometers deep in South African mines, hints that habitable environments may exist on other planets, such as Mars, according to the report.

They are the deepest-living known “multi-cellular” organism and survive up to 41 degrees Celsius and at very low level of oxygen.

Dr. Gaeton Borgonie of the University of Ghent in Belgium found them in the samples of water and soil from the South African gold mines by placing filters over the mines’ bore-holes.

The report showed that the water in which the worms were found is at least several thousands years old and the scientist believed that the animals originally lived on the surface but were washed down through the crack by rainwater.

Source: YonHap

Muslim girl stoned to death after attending beauty contest

A teenage Muslim girl was stoned to death under 'Sharia law' after she participated in a beauty contest in Ukraine, Daily Mail reported.

Katya Koren was found dead in a village in the Crimea region near her home.

The 19-year-old loved wearing fashionable clothes and had come seventh in the beauty contest, her friends said.

Her body was buried in a forest and was found a week after she disappeared.

Police is investigating the cases and probing claims that three Muslim youths killed her. The Muslims are claiming her death was justified under Islam, the report said.

One of the three -- named as 16-year-old Bihal Gaziev -- is under arrest and told police she had 'violated the laws of Sharia.

Source: YonHap

Massive Gmail phishing attack hits top U.S. officials

Hundreds of personal Gmail accounts, including those of some senior U.S. government officials, were hacked as a result of a massive phishing scheme originating from China, Google said Wednesday.


The account hijackings were a result of stolen passwords, likely by malware installed on victims' computers or through victims' responses to e-mails from malicious hackers posing as trusted sources. That type of hack is known as phishing. Gmail's security systems themselves were not compromised, Google said.


The company believes the phishing attack emanated from Jinan, China. In addition to the U.S. government personnel, other targets included South Korean government officials and federal workers of several other Asian countries, Chinese political activists, military personnel and journalists.

The news comes a little more than a year after a separate hack originating from China affected Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In that case, attackers were able to break through Google's security systems, and two Gmail accounts were hacked.

That cyber attack set off a series of events that eventually led to Google ending its agreement with the Chinese government to censor certain search results, and the company physically moved its servers out of the country.

This time around, the hack appears larger in scope -- but Google itself was not attacked. A person with knowledge of the attack's details said there was no apparent correlation between last year's attack and this one.

A spokesman from Google declined to comment on how the company obtained the information about the most recent hack. Public information, user reports and a third-party hacking blog called Contagio was used to determine the scope, targets and source of the attack.

Google said it notified the victims and disrupted the campaign.

The hackers were attempting to monitor the victims' e-mails, and some users' forwarding settings were altered.
The company urged users to "please spend ten minutes today taking steps to improve your online security so that you can experience all that the Internet offers -- while also protecting your data."

Google provided several examples of how Gmail users can better protect themselves from phishing attacks on its blog, including enabling a setting that allows users to login to their accounts only after receiving a verification code on their phones. The company also suggested that users monitor their settings for suspicious forwarding settings.

Source: CNN

U.S. blasts Syria for boy's alleged torture, death

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says Syria's alleged torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy underscores that the Syrian government is making no effort to institute real reforms.
She says she hopes the child didn't die in vain, and that President Bashar Assad's regime ends its brutal crackdown.

The killing has outraged Syrians since images of the body appeared on YouTube.

Syria's government hasn't addressed the claims by an opposition group that its security forces were responsible for the death.

Clinton told reporters Tuesday that the boy's death symbolizes the ``total collapse of any effort by the Syrian government to work with and listen to their own people.''

Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been killed in unrest in Syria since mid-March.

The New York Times reported on Monday that an online video showed a 13-year-old boy, arrested at a protest on April 29, who it said had been tortured, mutilated and killed before his body was returned to his family.

"I can only hope that this child did not die in vain but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy," Clinton told a news conference.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to crush 10 weeks of protests against his 11-year reign with a military crackdown in which rights campaigners say 1,000 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 people arrested.

Activists said at least five people were killed on Tuesday when tanks shelled the central town of Rastan and security forces stormed Hirak, a town in the southern Hauran Plain where the uprising first broke out in mid-March.

Syria blames the violence on armed groups, Islamists and foreign agitators, saying more than 120 police and soldiers have been killed in the unrest nationwide.

Syrian state television said Assad had issued a "general amnesty" for all members of political parties but the United States dismissed this, as it has other moves such as his lifting of a state of emergency, as talk without action.

"He has talked reform but we have seen very little in the way of action," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at his daily briefing. "He needs to take steps -- concrete steps, not rhetoric -- to address what is going on in the country."

Source: YonHap News