China's Gu Kailai gets suspended death sentence

 China sentenced the wife of fallen Politburo member Bo Xilai to death on Monday but suspended her execution, setting the stage for a possible final purge of Bo himself in a scandal that has shaken Beijing ahead of a leadership transition.
The sentence means Gu Kailai is likely to face life in jail for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood last year.
It also brings a curtain down on China's most sensational trial in three decades, yet opens a new and more politically dangerous act for the ruling Communist Party -- how to deal with Bo, an ambitious and well-connected provincial leader whose downfall exposed rifts in the party.
"I feel the verdict is just and fully reflects the court's special respect for the law, its special respect for reality and, in particular, its special respect for life," Gu said of the sentence in official television footage of the hearing.
Gu, 53, wore a white shirt and black suit and stood expressionless, hands folded in front of her, as she spoke, pausing at one point to find the right words.
At her trial on August 9, Gu admitted to poisoning Heywood last November, and alleged that a business dispute between them led him to threaten her son, Bo Guagua, according to official accounts published by state media.

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Akin flub puts abortion at center of campaign debate

A campaign flub by a Republican Senate candidate shifted the political focus Monday to abortion and women's rights, as certain GOP nominee Mitt Romney and his conservative running mate faced a town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire.

U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, said Sunday he misspoke when he said in an earlier interview that "legitimate rape" rarely resulted in pregnancy. Akin also expressed opposition to abortion in cases of rape.

The comment by Akin, who won Missouri's Republican primary to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November, drew immediate criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.

In Massachusetts, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown called for Akin to drop out of the Missouri Senate race because of the "outrageous, inappropriate and wrong" comments.

 Hear Akin's 'legitimate rape' comment

"There is no place in our public discourse for this type of offensive thinking," said Brown, a moderate Republican in a tough re-election battle against Democrat Elizabeth Warren. "Not only should he apologize, but I believe Rep. Akin's statement was so far out of bounds that he should resign the nomination for U.S. Senate in Missouri."

The Akin statement has forced the Romney campaign to distance itself from the GOP candidate in a key race, and also declare a definitive stance on one of the most volatile political issues of the day.

A Romney spokeswoman issued a statement Sunday night that said the former Massachusetts governor and his running mate -- Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin -- differed with Akin on the matter.

"Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape," Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg wrote.

The issue is particularly sensitive for Ryan, a devout Catholic and staunch anti-abortion politician who has previously expressed opposition to abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is endangered.

A Romney-Ryan campaign official, speaking on condition of not being identified, confirmed to CNN that Ryan's personal view opposes abortion in the case of rape. The campaign official said Ryan's stance differed with Romney's view, which was described in the statement Sunday and is the formal position of the GOP presidential ticket.

Democrats immediately challenged the Romney-Ryan team on the issue.

"They've been trying to distance themselves from it -- but Congressman Ryan has already partnered with Akin on a whole host of issues that restrict women's ability to make their own health care decisions," said a statement by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. "This kind of 'leadership' is dangerously wrong for women."
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iPhone Bug Allows SMS Spoofing

A rather serious security flaw in the iPhone’s SMS messaging system has been discovered and revealed by well-known security researcher and jailbreak extraordinaire ‘pod2g’. Security flaw affecting all iPhones that he says could facilitate hackers or thieves to access your personal information.

The researcher claims that the flaw has actually been present in Apple’s iPhone software ever since the first iPhone was launched in 2007, but has failed to have been picked up on by anybody, including Apple it seems.

Researcher revealed an SMS spoofing flaw that affects every version of Apple’s mobile OS. Using the flaw, hackers could spoof their identities via text and send messages asking for private information (by pretending to be from a users’ bank, for example), or direct users to phishing sites.

Users would be under the impression they were replying to the sender displayed on the screen of their iPhone, when in fact the text would be routed through to a different number without their knowledge.

pod2g highlights several ways in which malicious parties could take advantage of this flaw, including phishing attempts linking users to sites collecting personal information or spoofing messages for the purposes of creating false evidence or gaining a recipient's trust to enable further nefarious action.

“…In the text payload, a section called UDH (User Data Header) is optional but defines a lot of advanced features not all mobiles are compatible with. One of these options enables the user to change the reply address of the text. If the destination mobile is compatible with it, and if the receiver tries to answer the text, he will not respond to the original number, but to the specified one.”

In many cases the malicious party would need to know the name and number of a trusted contact of the recipient in order for their efforts to be effective, but the phishing example shows how malicious parties could cast broad nets hoping to snare users by pretending to be a common bank or other institution.

In the meantime be prepared to update your iOS version as new options become available, as exploits are discovered Apple typically works quickly to fix those issue whenever possible.

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Boy gets arm trapped in meat grinder

One of the most disturbing msn storys i have seen, heres what the report said.

It's every parent's worse nightmare and every child's ultimate embarrassment: getting a bit of yourself caught inside an everyday object.

The child groped inside the grinder for fun, only to get his arm completely trapped.

He was taken to hospital, where doctors wanted to amputate three of the boy's fingers to free him.

This grisly outcome was avoided, however, when firefighters decided to try and use their equipment to crack open the grinder.

The plan was a success, meaning doctors were able to save the boy's hand and all his fingers.

The boy and his family returned home with one intact arm and one broken grinder. Thank goodness it wasn't the other way round.

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Google pledges $2 million in prizes to hackers who exploit Chrome

Google has upped the ante in its industry-leading cash-for-security-bugs program with hefty bonuses and a hacking contest that will award up to $2 million worth of prizes to people who successfully exploit its Chrome browser.

On Wednesday, the search giant announced plans for Pwnium 2, a contest that will pay $60,000 for hacks that fully exploit its Chrome and Chromium browsers. The competition, scheduled for October 10 at the Hack In The Box security conference in Malaysia, will award smaller amounts for Chrome attacks that rely on code not native to the browser. For instance, a "partial Chrome exploit," such as one that combines a bug in Chrome's native code base with a bug in Windows, will be awarded $50,000. A "non-Chrome exploit" in Adobe Flash, Windows or other app will fetch $40,000.

"You may have noticed that we've compressed the reward levels closer together for Pwnium 2," Google software engineer Chris Evans wrote in Wednesday's blog post. "This is in response to feedback, and reflects that any local account compromise is very serious. We're happy to make the web safer by any means—even rewarding vulnerabilities outside of our immediate control."

Google will award prizes until the $2 million threshold is reached. The company paid just $120,000 worth of awards during the first Pwnium contest in March. While the amount was only 12 percent of the $1 million it pledged, the competition resulted in two exploits that were noteworthy because they relied entirely on code native to Chrome to break out of its highly regarded security sandbox. The mechanism contains JavaScript, HTML and other web content inside a tightly restricted perimeter to prevent it from hijacking sensitive operating-system functions such as changing registry settings or accessing user data.

Among the contestants winning one of the $60,000 prizes was a 19-year-old hacker who went by the moniker Pinkie Pie. Google later released an autopsy of his exploit that showed it relied on six separate bugs to circumvent the sandbox and other defenses baked into Chrome.

Wednesday's announcement came less than 24 hours after Google said it would pay $1,000 bonuses on top of the already large sums it already pays to researchers who privately report exploitable bugs. Under the Chromium Rewards Program, severe bugs already fetched a reward of $3,133.70, although it has been known to pay as much as $10,000 for particularly severe exploits.

Show me the money

Along with Facebook, Mozilla, PayPal, and djbdns creator Daniel J. Bernstein, Google is one of a handful of services or software developers to pay bug bounties. The rewards address a complaint made by some researchers that they frequently receive no compensation for the countless hours they spend discovering and reporting vulnerabilities in other companies' software. To date, Google said, it has paid more than $1 million for bugs affecting its software and web properties. Companies such as Adobe and Microsoft, by contrast, have paid nothing, although Microsoft recently awarded $250,000 to three people in exchange for defenses designed to improve the overall security of its software.

The debate about bug bounties comes amid a larger discussion about the propriety of researchers who sell exploits to governmental agencies. Critics of the practice say it could enable repressive governments to track down dissidents or allow unlawful spying by governments without a court order. Proponents down-play the role of so-called "zero-day" exploits in hacks and say they are careful about who they sell to.

Google said the $1,000 bonus to its Chrome rewards program came amid a "significant" decline in the number of externally reported bugs.

"This signals to us that bugs are becoming harder to find, as the efforts of the wider community have made Chromium significantly stronger," the company said.

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Ukrainian commission wants to ban ‘gay’ SpongeBob and Teletubbie ‘losers’

First they came for the Simpsons and now they want SpongeBob Squarepants. The Ukraine is considering a move to censor several children's shows after a new study from a conservative commission labeled the shows "a real threat" to the country's youth.
The Ukraine's National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality released the report, which attacks several U.S. and international programs as detrimental to the country.
Psychologist Irina Medvédeva is quoted in the study, alleging that children aged 3 to 5 years old, "pull faces and make jokes in front of adults they don't know, laugh out loud and repeat nonsense phrases in a brazen manner," after viewing the shows.
The Ukrainian paper Ukraínskaya Pravda reported on Thursday that some of the shows under fire include "Family Guy," "Futurama," "Pokemon," "The Simpsons" and "Teletubbies," which the report says are, "projects aimed at the destruction of the family, and the promotion of drugs and other vices."
The Wall Street Journal reported that the study results first appeared on "fringe Catholic website Family Under the Protection of the Holy Virgin."
While the accusations sound a bit silly, a 2011 study by a University of Virginia professor claimed that watching just nine minutes of SpongeBob could adversely affect the attention span and learning abilities of 4-year-olds.
The Ukrainian commission had previously attempted to ban other shows, including "The Simpsons."
Some of the accusations leveled against the programming in the study:
SpongeBob Squarepants: "gay"
Teletubbies: "Deliberately aims to create subnormal (men), who spend all day in front of the television with their mouths open swallowing all types of information," and promotes the "psychology of losers."
Shrek: "containing sadism"
South Park: "reincarnation propaganda"
Japanese Anime: "A clear example of sexist propaganda"
The study concluded that the programming represents "a large-scale experiment on Ukrainian children" to "create criminals and perverts."

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Tony Scott Suicide??

"Top Gun" director Tony Scott fatally jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro on Sunday afternoon, according to Los Angeles police sources.

His body was pulled out of the water by Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and U.S. Coast Guard officials.

[For the record, 9:48 p.m. Aug. 19: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said a suicide note was found in Scott's car, which was parked on the bridge. In fact, the note found in his car listed contact information. Investigators later found a suicide note at his office.]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/20...death.html

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