Three Simple Steps to Keep Hackers Out of Your Baby Monitor

Using an IP camera in lieu of a dedicated Internet-connected baby monitor can have its advantages. But it also comes with some profound security risks. Here's how to secure your baby cam and keep hackers at bay.

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Twitter Solves The Follow-Back Tango, Enables Direct Messages From All Your Followers

Twitter has pushed out a feature update that is extremely useful for journalists like myself, and anyone else who hopes to use Twitter to communicate both publicly and privately. The social network now lets you receive Direct Messages from any of your followers, regardless of whether you follow them or not.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/8hlVrFj-E6U/
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Wind, rain pound India as massive cyclone makes landfall

BEHRAMPUR, India (AP) — A massive, powerful cyclone packing heavy rains and destructive winds slammed into India's eastern coastline Saturday evening, as hundreds of thousands of residents moved inland to shelters in hopes of riding out the dangerous storm.

Roads were all but empty as high waves lashed the coastline of Orissa state, which will bear the brunt of Cyclone Phailin. By midafternoon, wind gusts were so strong that they could blow over grown men. Seawater pushed inland, swamping villages where many people survive as subsistence farmers in mud and thatch huts.

As the cyclone swept across the Bay of Bengal toward the Indian coast, satellite images showed its spinning tails covering an area larger than France. Images appeared to show the storm making landfall early Saturday night near Gopalpur.

With some of the world's warmest waters, the Indian Ocean is considered a cyclone hot spot, and some of the deadliest storms in recent history have come through the Bay of Bengal, including a 1999 cyclone that also hit Orissa and killed 10,000 people.

Officials said early reports of deaths from Phailin won't become clear until after daybreak Sunday.

In Behrampur, a town about 10 kilometers (7 miles) inland from where the eye of the storm hit, the sky blackened quickly around the time of landfall, with heavy winds and rains pelting the empty streets.

Window panes shook and shattered against the wind. Outside, objects could be heard smashing into walls.

"My parents have been calling me regularly ... they are worried," said Hemant Pati, 27, who was holed up in a Behrampur hotel with 15 other people from the coastal town hit first by the storm.

The hotel manager said he would bar the doors against anyone trying to enter, saying there would be food, water and electricity from generators only for guests of the Hotel Jyoti Residency. "Nobody can come inside, and nobody can go out," Shaik Nisaruddin said.

Estimates of the storm's power had dropped slightly, with the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii showing maximum sustained winds of about 222 kilometers per hour (138 miles per hour), with gusts up to 268 kph (167 mph).

The storm, though, remained exceedingly strong and dangerous. A few hours before it hit land, the eye of the storm collapsed, spreading the hurricane force winds out over a larger area and giving it a "bigger damage footprint," said Jeff Masters, meteorology director at the U.S.-based private Weather Underground.

"It's probably a bad thing it was doing this when it made landfall. Much of the housing in India is unable to withstand even a much weaker hurricane," Masters said.

He also said coasts would not be alone in suffering heavy damage. "This is a remarkably strong storm. It's going to carry hurricane-force winds inland for about 12 hours, which is quite unusual," Masters said.

Hurricanes typically lose much of their force when they hit land, where there is less heat-trapping moisture feeding energy into the storm.

By Friday evening, some 420,000 people had been moved to higher ground or shelters in Orissa, and 100,000 more in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, said Indian Home Secretary Anil Goswami.

L.S. Rathore, the head of the Indian Meteorological Department, predicted a storm surge of 3-3.5 meters (10-11.5 feet), but several U.S. experts had predicted a much higher wall of water would blast ashore. Meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private U.S. weather firm Weather Bell said that, even in the best-case scenario, there would be a surge of 7-9 meters (20-30 feet).

A storm surge is the big killer in such storms, though heavy rains are likely to compound the destruction. The Indian government said some 12 million people would be affected by the storm, including millions living far from the coast.

There were few reports coming out of Orissa in the first hours after the storm's landfall.

Phailin had already been large and powerful for nearly 36 hours, with winds that had built up a tremendous amount of surge, Maue said. "A storm this large can't peter out that fast," he said.

The 1999 cyclone — similar in strength to Phailin but covering a smaller area — threw out a 5.9-meter (19.4-foot) storm surge.

Several hours before the storm hit, about 200 villagers were jammed into a two-room, concrete schoolhouse in the village of Subalaya, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the coast, while local emergency officials distributed food and water. The roads were almost empty, except for two trucks bringing more evacuees to the school. Children shivered in the rain as they stepped down from the vehicles, following women carrying bags jammed with possessions.

Many had fled low-lying villages for the shelter, but some left behind relatives who feared the storm could wipe out lifetimes of work.

"My son had to stay back with his wife because of the cattle and belongings," said 70-year-old Kaushalya Jena, weeping in fear inside the makeshift shelter. "I don't know if they are safe."

In Bhubaneshwar, the Orissa state capital, government workers and volunteers were putting together hundreds of thousands of food packages for relief camps.

Stranded tourists who had come for Orissa's beaches and temples instead roamed the hallways of boarded-up hotels.

"It seemed strange, because it was a beautiful sunny day yesterday," said Doris Lang of Honolulu, who was with a friend in the seaside temple town of Puri when news of the cyclone's approach reached them.

The state's top official, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, appealed for calm.

"I request everyone to not panic. Please assist the government. Everyone from the village to the state headquarters have been put on alert," he told reporters.

Surya Narayan Patro, the state's top disaster management official, had said that "no one will be allowed to stay in mud and thatched houses in the coastal areas" when the storm hits.

By Saturday afternoon, the sea had already pushed inland as much as 40 meters (130 feet) along parts of the coastline.

Officials in both Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have been stockpiling emergency food supplies and setting up shelters. The Indian military has put some of its forces on alert, and has trucks, transport planes and helicopters at the ready for relief operations.

The storm is expected to cause large-scale power and communications outages and shut down road and rail links, officials said. It's also expected to cause extensive damage to crops.

In the port city of Paradip — which was hammered in the 1999 cyclone, also in October — at least seven ships were moved out to sea to ride out the storm, with other boats shifted to safer parts of the harbor, officials said.

U.S. forecasters had repeatedly warned that Phailin would be immense.

"If it's not a record, it's really, really close," University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy told The Associated Press. "You really don't get storms stronger than this anywhere in the world ever."

To compare it to killer U.S. storms, McNoldy said Phailin is nearly the size of Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,200 people in 2005 and caused devastating flooding in New Orleans, but also has the wind power of 1992's Hurricane Andrew, which packed 265 kph (165 mph) winds at landfall in Miami.

India experiences two cyclone seasons a year, one in May before the annual monsoon rains and another beginning in October.

"Keep in mind, India's second cyclone season is only just beginning," said Masters, the American meteorologist. "We could see another big storm in October or November."

___

Associated Press writers Kay Johnson in Bhubaneshwar, Katy Daigle in New Delhi and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wind-rain-pound-india-massive-cyclone-hits-135748978.html
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Hollywood-style sting nabs alleged pirate kingpin

In this undated handout photo provided by the Belgian government, the Belgian ship Pompei, owned by De Nul, is shown in unidentified waters. One of Somalia's most notorious pirate leaders, Mohamed Abdi Hassan, was arrested in Brussels on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013 and placed in custody pending charges, judicial sources said Monday. Hassan is suspected of the 2009 capture of the Belgian ship, the Pompei, which was held for over 70 days. (AP Photo/ Belgian Government)

In this undated handout photo provided by the Belgian government, the Belgian ship Pompei, owned by De Nul, is shown in unidentified waters. One of Somalia's most notorious pirate leaders, Mohamed Abdi Hassan, was arrested in Brussels on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013 and placed in custody pending charges, judicial sources said Monday. Hassan is suspected of the 2009 capture of the Belgian ship, the Pompei, which was held for over 70 days. (AP Photo/ Belgian Government)

FILE In this July 6, 2009 file photo, the released crew members of the Belgian ship Pompei, Belgium's Jan Verplancke, left, James Law, right, and Dutchman Hendrik Toxopeus, address the media upon their arrival at Brussels airport. One of Somalia's most notorious pirate leaders, Mohamed Abdi Hassan, was arrested in Brussels on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013 and placed in custody pending charges, judicial sources said Monday. Hassan is suspected of the 2009 capture of the Belgian ship, the Pompei, which was held for over 70 days. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)

BRUSSELS (AP) — The alleged pirate kingpin thought he was going work in the movies. Instead he landed in jail.

In a sting operation worthy of Hollywood, Mohamed Abdi Hassan was lured from Somalia to Belgium with promises of work on a documentary about high-seas crime that would "mirror his life as a pirate," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said Monday.

But rather than being behind the camera as an expert adviser, Abdi Hassan ended up behind bars, nabbed as he landed Saturday at Brussels airport.

"(He's) one of the most important and infamous kingpin pirate leaders, responsible for the hijacking of dozens of commercial vessels from 2008 to 2013," Delmulle said.

Abdi Hassan — whose nickname, Afweyne, means "Big Mouth" — was charged with hijacking the Belgian dredger Pompei and kidnapping its nine-member crew in 2009, Delmulle said.

The Pompei's crew was released after 10 weeks in captivity when the ship's owner paid a reported $3 million ransom. Belgium caught two pirates involved in the hijacking, convicted them and sentenced them to nine and 10 years in prison.

But prosecutors still wanted the ringleaders.

"Too often, these people remain beyond reach while they let others do the dirty work," Delmulle told reporters.

Malaysian authorities almost captured the reclusive Adbi Hassan in April 2012, but a document from the Somali transitional government let him slip back home, according to a U.N. report last year that called him "one of the most notorious and influential" leaders of a piracy ring that has netted millions in ransom.

So Belgian authorities decided to go undercover to get him, because they knew he traveled very little and that an international arrest warrant would produce no results in unstable Somalia.

They approached an accomplice known as Tiiceey, dangling a fake job as an adviser to a fake movie about piracy, Delmulle said.

The two men took the bait. Tiiceey was also arrested Saturday.

The prosecutor refused to divulge any more details of the sting. The two Somalis were to appear in court Tuesday in Brugge.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-14-Belgium-Piracy/id-f79206fdfea74cd98471dd8913af4e75
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Iran talks of new proposals in nuclear talks

GENEVA (AP) — Iran is promising a new proposal to break the deadlock over its nuclear program when it resumes talks Tuesday with the U.S. and five major world powers — the first since the election of a reformist Iranian president.

The U.S. and its partners are approaching the talks with caution. They are eager to test Tehran's new style since the June election of President Hassan Rouhani but insist that it will take more than words to advance the negotiations and end crippling international sanctions.

Iran has long insisted it does not want nuclear weapons and that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful — a position received with skepticism in Western capitals. But Iranian officials from Rouhani down say their country is ready to meet some international demands to reduce its nuclear activities and build trust.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a senior member of Iran's negotiating team, said Sunday that Tehran is bringing a new proposal to the talks to dispel doubts about the nuclear program. While offering no details, he told Iran's student news agency ISNA that the Islamic Republic should "enter into a trust-building path with the West."

"In their point of view trust-building means taking some steps on the Iranian nuclear issue, and in our view trust is made when the sanctions are lifted," Araghchi said.

No final deal is expected at the two-day session.

However, if the Iranians succeed in building trust, the talks — including the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — could be the launching pad for a deal that has proven elusive since negotiations on Iran's nuclear program began in 2003.

That would reduce the threat of war between Iran and Israel and possibly the United States. The latter two have vowed never to accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

From the six-power perspective, the ideal outcome would be for Tehran to scale back aspects of its nuclear program that many nations fear could aid in making a bomb. That would trigger a gradual lifting of the economic sanctions on Iran.

On the eve of the talks, a senior U.S. administration official said Washington was encouraged by Rouhani's more moderate tone and would be testing Tehran's intentions in the coming days.

But the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States would insist on confidence-building measures "that address our priority concerns."

Heading Iran's delegation at the talks is Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a veteran, U.S.-educated diplomat who helped negotiate a cease-fire with Iraq 25 years ago. He says his country is ready to allow more intrusive international perusal of Tehran's nuclear program.

Other Iranian officials, meanwhile, say there is room to discuss international concerns about Iranian uranium enrichment to 20 percent — a level that is higher than most reactors use for power and only a technical step away from weapons-grade uranium suitable for warheads.

Iran now has nearly 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of 20 percent-enriched uranium in a form that can be quickly upgraded for weapons use, according to the U.N's atomic agency, which keeps tabs on Iran's nuclear activities. That is close to — but still below — what is needed for one nuclear weapon. 

Even if Iran agrees to stop 20-percent production, ship out its 20-percent stockpile and allow more oversight by U.N. nuclear inspectors, the six powers want more.

A former senior U.N. official who has acted as an intermediary between U.S. and Iranian officials said the six powers want significant cuts in the more than 10,000 centrifuges now enriching uranium.

They also demand that Iran ship out not only the small amount of 20 percent uranium it now has but also most of the tons of low-enriched uranium it has produced. And they want caps on the amount of enriched uranium that Iran would be allowed to keep at any time. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the talks.

Iran says it needs this material to power a future reactor network, and Iranian state television Sunday quoted Araghchi as saying Tehran was ready to discuss its enrichment program but would never ship enriched materials abroad. He described that stance as "our red line."

For the U.S. and its allies, low-enriched uranium is problematic because it can also be used to arm nuclear weapons, albeit the process is longer and more complicated than for 20 percent uranium.

While seeking only to reduce enrichment at a sprawling underground facility at Natanz, the six powers also want complete closure of another enrichment plant at Fordo south of Tehran. The Fordo site is heavily fortified, making it more difficult to destroy than Natanz if it turns toward making nuclear weapons.

Demands to reduce enrichment instead of stopping it implicitly recognize Iran's right to enrich for peaceful purposes. That already is a victory for Tehran, considering talks began 10 years ago with the international community calling on the Islamic Republic to mothball its enrichment program.

"It's pretty clear that Iran will have to be allowed some degree of enrichment," said former U.S. State Department official Mark Fitzpatrick, who now is a director at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "But the enrichment has to be limited."

That could be a tough sell politically in the U.S. and Israel.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, 10 leading U.S. senators — six Democrats and four Republicans — insisted that Iran must end all uranium enrichment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his parliament Monday that the international community must maintain firm pressure on Iran until it quits enriching uranium.

The former U.N. official also said that his talks with senior Iranian officials indicate there will be tough bargaining on centrifuge numbers.

Even if Tehran agrees to downsize enrichment, the Iranians will probably offer stiff resistance to closing Fordo, he added summarizing his talks with senior Iranian officials directly involved in the upcoming negotiations.

___

Associated Press Vienna bureau chief George Jahn has covered Iran's nuclear program since 2003.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-talks-proposals-nuclear-talks-182917157--finance.html
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Hong Kong's Media Asia to Produce 'Helios' From Sunny Luk, Longman Leung

HONG KONG – Hong Kong's Media Asia has unveiled upcoming thriller Helios, the follow-up to award-winning blockbuster Cold War by the local directing duo Sunny Luk and Longman Leung.

A story about a South Korean mobile nuclear bomb made from Uranium stolen from North Korea being sold in Hong Kong, Helios stars a cast from Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, including Hong Kong stars Jacky Cheung (July Rhapsody), Nick Cheung (Unbeatable), and Shawn Yue (Love in the Buff), Korean actor Ji Jin-Hee (Dae Jang Geum), Choi Si-won (A Battle of Wits), a member of Korean-pop boy band Super Junior, Chinese actor Wang Xueqi (Iron Man 3, Bodyguards and Assassins), and Taiwanese actor Chang Chen (The Grandmaster).

PHOTOS: Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong Bring out the Region's Stars

The film, now in production, will make its market debut at the upcoming American Film Market.

Leung and Luk's Cold War swept the Hong Kong Film Awards earlier this year, with awards in nine categories won. Produced by Edko Films, the cop thriller was also the highest grossing Chinese-language film of 2012 in Hong Kong.

Media Asia will also bring two other new titles to AFM. These include Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, the sequel to the 2011 romantic comedy directed by Johnnie To, which sees original cast members Louis Koo and Gao Yuanyuan joined by singer-actress Miriam Yeung (Love in the Buff). To is back at the helm and will produce the film with longtime collaborator Wai Ka-fai.

Also on the slate is extreme sports drama Urban Games, co-directed by famed stuntman Bob Brown and Zhang Peng, starring Shawn Dou (Dangerous Liaisons) and Michelle Chen (You Are the Apple of My Eye). The film, now in post-production, tells the story of a parkour enthusiast on a mission to rescue his kidnapped sister.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HollywoodReporterAsia/~3/JtOYoT_YUt0/story01.htm
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Thursday Morning Political Mix

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and a sign of the times.

Evan Vucci/AP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and a sign of the times.

Evan Vucci/AP

Good morning, fellow political junkies. It's Day 10 of the federal government's partial shutdown. And while it's a dreary, rainy day in Washington, there did appear to be more glimmers of hope this morning than in recent days.

Today's theme is movement, as in, there seem to be some tentative steps towards resolving the current fiscal impasse as President Obama and House Republicans are scheduled to meet at the White House later Thursday.

With that, here are some of the more interesting items of political interest culled from my morning reading.

• With the day of reckoning of a possible U.S. default on its debts drawing closer, signs emerged that congressional Republican saw a were considering a window out of the corner they seemed to have painted themselves into — a short-term debt-ceiling extension in exchange for negotiations with Democrats over longer term entitlement-spending reforms, The Wall Street Journal reported.


• The possible breakthrough comes as President Obama is due to meet Thursday with a smaller group of congressional House Republicans than he earlier said he wanted at the White House. Speaker John Boehner and his team decided more fruitful talks could happen without bringing along a small army of 232 House Republicans. So only 18 decidedly non-Tea Party House GOP leaders will attend. CQ Roll Call's Matt Fuller reports on why entitlement spending, not Obamacare, could dominate the Republican side of the discussion.


• When he appears before Congress Thursday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was unlikely to diverge from his recent dire warnings that his beancounters have exhausted all their tricks for keeping the U.S. from soon defaulting on its obligations. He's also likely to rebut default deniers by saying they shouldn't be so sure holders of U.S. Treasuries would get paid if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling because he isn't, the Washington Post's Zachary Goldfarb and Lori Montgomery reported.


• After President Obama negotiated over a 2011 raise in the debt-ceiling with congressional Republicans, the president vowed to never repeat that experience, according to John Podesta, an informal Obama adviser, write Bloomberg News' Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev.


• Obama's nomination of Janet Yellen to be the new chair of the Federal Reserve was widely hailed as a win for continuity in monetary policy. But as American Banker's Donna Borak noted (registration required), if the Senate confirms her, Yellen is likely to be more involved in bank-regulation matters than her immediate predecessors because of her background as a regulator when she headed the San Francisco Fed.


• The outrage over the stopping of death-benefit payments to the families of U.S. troops killed in action because of the government shutdown will no doubt be fueled by a piece by the Daily Beast's Michael Daly who provides details about some of the soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan whose loved ones are affected.


• Ohio, where Republicans control state government, is trying to persuade women against abortions with a new law requiring clinics to offer women a chance to hear fetal heartbeats. The Democratic-controlled state government in California, however, has moved to expand abortion availability, the New York Times reports in twin stories.


• The Associated Press retracted a potentially politically explosive story that said documents in a federal fraud case referred to Democratic Virginia governor's candidate Terry McAuliffe as having lied to investigators. AP's reversal came after McAuliffe's campaign's vigorous and persuasive denial that the candidate was the "T.M" referred to in the documents and after the erroneous report sparked a Twitter frenzy, writes Politico's Elizabeth Titus.

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