| Agent.BTZ spyware hit Europe hard after U.S. military attack: security firm Posted: 12 Mar 2014 03:36 PM PDT By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - A mysterious computer virus believed to be from Russia infected hundreds of thousands of PCs around the globe after attacking the U.S. military's Central Command in an unprecedented breach uncovered in 2008, according to the details of new research released on Wednesday. Costin Raiu, director of research at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, told Reuters on Wednesday that at least 400,000 computers across Russia and Europe were infected with the virus, dubbed Agent.BTZ, based on the number of infections detected by his firm's anti-virus software. Not much data has been previously released on the virus, so the research from Kaspersky Lab may shed new light on how sophisticated cyber espionage operations are conducted. Still, Raiu said Kaspersky published its analysis on the attacks because it believes they are likely linked to a sophisticated ongoing operation known as Turla, which is targeting hundreds of government computers across Europe and the United States. |
| Is Jake Gyllenhaal's Career Continuing to Rebound with 'Enemy'? Posted: 12 Mar 2014 01:31 PM PDT  Jake Gyllenhaal has done a lot of things you'd expect of a big movie star: been nominated for an Oscar, starred in blockbusters, dated high-profile celebs (Kirsten! Reese! Taylor!). Jake Gyllenhaal is the scion of a big Hollywood family—his dad was director Stephen Gyllenhaal, his mom producer/screenwriter Naomi Foner, and we all know his sister Maggie. He got his start early, playing Billy Crystal's son in City Slickers, but his parents kept him from taking bigger roles until he had at least decided to drop out of college (Columbia University, in his case). No matter what you think of the movie, Gyllenhaal's performance is undeniably captivating and served as a calling card for Hollywood.
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| Men's Rights Activists Embrace the Complex Rape Case Against Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair Posted: 12 Mar 2014 01:00 PM PDT  On Monday, a judge halted Brigadier General Jeffrey A. Sinclair's sexual assault trial after reviewing new evidence suggesting the case has been tainted by political pressure from the Pentagon. Colonel James L. Pohl dismissed the jury and is now allowing both sides to attempt to reach a plea deal. Sinclair stands accused of sexually assaulting a female captain. The defense maintains he will not plead guilty to sexual assault.
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| Syria Kurds hold mass funeral for suicide bomb victims Posted: 12 Mar 2014 12:11 PM PDT  Thousands of people attended a funeral in the northern Syrian city of Qamishli on Wednesday for nine victims of a triple suicide bombing, a monitoring group said. Four women were among those killed in Tuesday's bombing of Hadaya hotel in the heart of Qamishli, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, updating the death toll to nine. The attack was carried out by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Syria's most hardline jihadist group, whose fighters have been pitted against Kurds in several areas of northeast Syria. The Britain-based Observatory said thousands turned out for the funeral in Syria's main Kurdish city.
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| Iranian president visits Oman in outreach to Arabs Posted: 12 Mar 2014 12:02 PM PDT  DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's President Hassan Rouhani held talks with the leader of the nearby sultanate of Oman on Wednesday, his first official trip to an Arab country since taking office last year.
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| UAE summons Iraq ambassador over Saudi 'terrorism' charge Posted: 12 Mar 2014 11:28 AM PDT The United Arab Emirates summoned Iraq's ambassador on Wednesday to protest against his prime minister's accusation that its ally Saudi Arabia was funding "terrorism", state new agency WAM reported. Saudi Arabia has already rejected Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's assertion on Saturday that it and Qatar were funding Sunni Muslim insurgents fighting in Iraq's western Anbar province. Maliki has long had chilly ties with Sunni-led Gulf Arab states, which in turn view him as too close to Shi'ite Muslim Iran. UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said that Maliki's statements were "completely untrue and not based on any accurate assessment of the situation in the region with regards to terrorism," WAM reported. |
| Syria's Assad makes rare visit to front-line area Posted: 12 Mar 2014 10:33 AM PDT  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — In a rare public appearance, Syrian President Bashar Assad visited displaced civilians Wednesday in a front-line suburb of the country's capital, state television reported.
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| UAE summons Iraq envoy to protest Saudi terror accusations Posted: 12 Mar 2014 07:08 AM PDT  The United Arab Emirates summoned Iraq's ambassador on Wednesday to protest accusations by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Saudi Arabia was supporting terrorism, state media reported. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash handed ambassador Mowafak Mahdi Abboud a memorandum protesting Maliki's "claims that Saudi Arabia supports terrorism," the official WAM news agency said. "Such remarks are false and not based on a proper assessment of the situation in the region concerning terrorism, especially as Saudi Arabia plays a significant role in combating all forms of terrorism," said Gargash.
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| Iran hosts Syria conference of Assad sympathizers Posted: 12 Mar 2014 06:55 AM PDT  Iran hosted a rival version of a "Friends of Syria" conference on Wednesday, convening lawmakers from allies around the world to push for a diplomatic solution to Syria's civil war and lambaste alleged Western interference. Iran is a longtime ally of President Bashar al-Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, providing him with financial, military and moral support as he battles rebels trying to overthrow him. The one-day meeting appeared to mirror a series of "Friends of Syria" conferences in which Western and Arab nations pledged political and financial support for the rebels and for the millions of Syrians driven from their homes by the war. At the conference in Tehran, attended by legislators from Russia, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Cuba and Venezuela, Iran's parliament speaker challenged Syrian rebels to put down their weapons and seek to oust Assad at the ballot box.
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| Life inside Syrian refugee camps Posted: 12 Mar 2014 06:40 AM PDT Three years ago this week, Syria began to be torn apart. |
| Saudi confiscates Islamist publisher's books at fair Posted: 12 Mar 2014 06:01 AM PDT  The stall of the Arab Network for Research and Publishing disappeared last Friday night from the Riyadh International Book Fair that opened on March 4, a participant said. "One of the organisers told us that the editor had displayed banned books that may affect security in Saudi Arabia," he added. Head of the Arab Network Nawaf al-Qudaimi said on Twitter he had been "surprised to find out on my arrival at the book fair" early on Saturday that another company had taken over his stall during the night. The local Mecca daily quoted the Minister of Culture and Information Abdulaziz Khoja as saying that the publisher "has broken the law by secretly bringing in banned books and trying to distribute them".
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| Iraq warns Syria war violence could spread to West Posted: 12 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PDT BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister has warned Syria has become the world's main arena for terrorism, which could spread to the West if its civil war continues. |
| Islamist militants, local men said to kill 22 in Syrian village Posted: 12 Mar 2014 05:46 AM PDT Islamist militants and their local supporters have killed at least 22 people in a village in northern Syria near the Turkish border, opposition activists said on Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group quoted residents in Shuyukh, 100 km (65 miles) northeast of Aleppo, as saying that militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), had killed 12 fighters from rival rebel groups and at least 10 local tribesmen, including a 16-year-old. The British-based watchdog, which has a network of sources across Syria and opposes President Bashar al-Assad, said the men had been executed by gunfire and knives. |
| Russian MPs want US excluded from World Cup Posted: 12 Mar 2014 04:34 AM PDT  Two Russian lawmakers have called on FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter to expel the United States from the World Cup finals. Alexander Sidyakin and Mikhail Markelov sent their letter to Blatter a week after two US Republican lawmakers called on FIFA to take the 2018 World Cup finals away from Russia because of the military intervention in Crimea.
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| Syria's Assad makes rare visit to tense area Posted: 12 Mar 2014 03:39 AM PDT DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — In a rare public appearance, President Bashar Assad on Wednesday visited displaced Syrians in a frontline suburb of the country's capital, where he vowed to keep up the fight against gunmen whom he blamed for driving people from their homes, state TV said. |
| As Syria war enters fourth year, regime eyes victory Posted: 12 Mar 2014 02:27 AM PDT  As Syria's conflict enters its fourth year, ravaging the country and creating a massive humanitarian crisis, President Bashar al-Assad's regime is on the offensive to regain territory from a divided opposition. Diplomatic efforts by Russia and the United States are all but on hold with the two powers now divided over the crisis in Ukraine, while the fighting continues on the ground in Syria. "Without Western intervention, the war will continue for many years more and such an intervention is very unlikely while (US President Barack) Obama is in the White House," said Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh. For now, neither side seems to have the means to win decisively a conflict that has cost more than 140,000 lives and displaced nearly half Syria's population, many of them now refugees.
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| Jihadists 'execute' at least 22 in Syria: NGO Posted: 12 Mar 2014 02:26 AM PDT  Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant "executed" at least 22 people, including 12 rebels, in the north of the country Tuesday, a monitoring group said. "ISIL members executed at least 22 persons with firearms or knives, after taking control of Shuyukh outside the town of Jarabulus" in Aleppo province, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. ISIL seized Jarabulus, near the northern border with Turkey, from the rebels last month. At least 3,300 persons have been killed in that fighting, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on activists and other sources inside Syria.
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| Syria's Assad visits refugees near Damascus Posted: 12 Mar 2014 12:57 AM PDT  DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's state TV is reporting that President Bashar Assad has made a rare public appearance, visiting people displaced by the war in a Damascus suburb.
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| U.N. refugee chief warns world powers not to forget Syria conflict Posted: 11 Mar 2014 10:34 PM PDT  By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the United Nation's refugee agency said on Tuesday it must be ready in case Ukraine's crisis causes refugees to flee Crimea, but his biggest worry is that "a total disaster" could occur if the international community diverts its attention away from Syria's conflict. Antonio Guterres, the head of the U.N.'s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), said in an interview that little progress was being made in efforts by the United States and Russia, now at loggerheads over Ukraine, to bring Syria's warring sides together after the collapse of talks in Geneva last month. "In the moment in which we need the most relevant countries in the world to be able to come together to narrow their differences and to try to find a way to move into peace for Syria, this tension around Ukraine will obviously not help," Guterres told Reuters while visiting Washington to discuss Syria's refugee crisis.
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| Judge upholds Missouri limit on funeral protests Posted: 11 Mar 2014 06:19 PM PDT JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal judge has upheld a Missouri law requiring protesters to stay at least a football-field length away from funeral sites, beginning an hour before they start until an hour after the services end. |
