Climate sceptic Lord Monckton told to stop claiming he’s a member of the House of Lords
The House of Lords has taken the unprecedented step of publishing a “cease and desist” letter on its website demanding that Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate sceptic and the UK Independence party’s head of research, should stop claiming to be a member of the upper house.
The move follows a testy interview given by Monckton to an Australian radio station earlier this month in which he repeated his long-stated belief that he is a member of the House of Lords. When asked by ABC Sydney’s Adam Spencer if he was a member, he said: “Yes, but without the right to sit or vote … [The Lords] have not yet repealed by act of parliament the letters patent creating the peerage and until they do I am a member of the house, as my passport records. It says I am the Right Honourable Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. So get used to it.”
Last year, the then clerk of the parliaments, Michael Pownall, wrote to Monckton stressing that he was not entitled to call himself a member, nor should he use parliament’s famous portcullis symbol on his letterheads or lecture slides, as he has done for a number of years.
Full story at The Guardian
70 year old woman sued for “porn piracy”
For those who believe that using the BitTorrent protocol for piracy is a young person’s game, you might want to know about a San Francisco woman risking a potential $150,000 fine for torrenting porn. She’s 70 years old, you see.
Of course, she claims to not even know what BitTorrent is, but who can believe the word of a thief? Well, as you might expect, the case isn’t exactly a slam dunk. The anonymous 70-year-old was named as part of a lawsuit against multiple users for illegally downloading adult material, but she believes that someone else was using her unsecured Wi-Fi to do so.
Refusing to pay the $3,400 settlement requested by the lawsuit, the woman plans to go to court and explain to the judge what’s what.
Full article at Techland
Epic Fail: Wife caught smuggling husband out of prison in a suitcase
A woman has been caught trying to sneak her common-law husband out of a Mexican prison in a suitcase following a conjugal visit.
A spokesman for police in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo said staff at the prison in Chetumal noticed that the woman seemed nervous and was pulling a black, wheeled suitcase that looked bulky.
Full Story at Belfast Telegraph.
Hacker dumps internal Florida voting system online to show lack of security
Election fraud and accusations of rigged voting might be as old as US election systems themselves, but some may wonder, if a hacker can gain access to the election voting system, how secure are elections anyway?
The AntiSec movement is definitely rolling along, but Anonymous is pointing to a recent hack that could raise some serious questions over the integrity of voting in Florida. It seems that a hacker obtained parts of the Florida voting database which has been subsequently posted online.
It appears that the hacker in question wanted to show that voting fraud can easily happen today and dumped parts of the Florida database to prove it. From the comments of the release:
“So, this is a little ironic. Here is inside details of florida voting systems. Now.. who still believes voting isn’t rigged? If the United States Government can’t even keep their ballot systems secure, why trust them at all? FAIL!”
Full story at ZeroPaid.com
Master forgery: ’17th century work exposed as a fake’
It was believed that The Procuress, at the The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, was a 17th century anonymous copy of a 1620s brothel scene by Dutch master Dirck van Baburen.
After tests for a BBC One show, Fake of Fortune?, it is now accepted that the work is a forgery by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch forger who died in 1947.
As recently as 2009, the respected Art Newspaper revealed that curators at the Courtauld and the National Gallery (NG) believed the painting had “every appearance of being of 17th-century origin”, as the latter put it.
Now, scientific tests commissioned for the BBC programme detected a synthetic resin similar to Bakelite mixed into the paints to mimic age.
Full story at The Telegraph
US Navy bought fake Chinese microchips that could be remotely shut down
Last year, the U.S. Navy bought 59,000 microchips for use in everything from missiles to transponders and all of them turned out to be counterfeits from China. Wired reports the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time.
If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe. Apparently foreign chip makers are often better at making cheap microchips and U.S. defense contractors are loathe to pass up the better deal.
The problem remains with these “trojan-horse” circuits that can be built into the chip and are almost impossible to detect — especially without the original plans to compare them to.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) is now looking for ways to check the chips to make sure they haven’t been hacked in the production process.
Full story at Business Insider
Former cop says his lies wrongly sent hundreds to prison
A former undercover police officer has confessed his lies in court more than 30 years ago may have sent 150 people wrongfully to prison.
Police said they had started a criminal investigation into the activities of Patrick O’Brien after he wrote to Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias and former Police Commissioner Howard Broad, saying he was racked with guilt after carrying a “dreadful secret” for more than 30 years.
Mr O’Brien, an undercover officer during drugs operations in the 1970s, was the star witness in court trials but he later confessed he lied on oath every time he testified, the New Zealand Herald reported today.
His confession was made in November 2007 and police hired Wellington lawyer Bruce Squire, QC, to investigate.
He interviewed Mr O’Brien in July 2009 and reviewed court files, and a copy of his completed inquiry was now with police.
Mr O’Brien told the newspaper he would co-operate fully with the inquiry and plead guilty to any charges.
In his confession, he said he could not guess the number of people who were sent to prison because of his lies because he stopped counting arrests at 150, half-way through his three-year undercover stint.
He lied to the courts and juries to get convictions in every case, he said. As well, he was often high on drugs, including cannabis, cocaine, heroin and LSD – but never during trials.
Full story over at Stuff.nz
BBC Newsnight: Theta healing, the new crackpot faith healing movement
There’s a new movement in what’s known as Theta Healing, it’s a form of faith healing and it’s here in the UK. It’s practitioners claim to be able to regrow parts of the body and even cure AIDS. Newsnight tries to uncover the truth.
Contortionist hid in luggage so he could steal from other bags
A man has been arrested in Spain after curling up inside a large suitcase that was placed in an airport bus cargo bay and sneaking out to steal from other people’s luggage.
A police official in the north-eastern Catalonia region said on Thursday that the man arrested last week was very thin.
Also arrested was an accomplice who placed the contortionist thief inside the cargo hold of a bus running from Girona airport to Barcelona, boarded the bus and then retrieved him at the end of the line.
During the 60-mile (100km) ride, the thief would slip out of the suitcase and use a sharp object to pick locks or open zips to steal from bags. Police were alerted by bus passengers who reported items stolen from their baggage.
What is Stuxnet? Excellent infographic animation on the world’s first open source weapon
Conspiracy theory or scary technology future. You decide whilst we sit back and watch some very clever animation.
