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Saturday, December 4, 2010

China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'

Post under china, google, google hacking, leadership, wiki, wikileaks at 6:09 PM Posted by DeamoN

China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'
Chinese flag in front of Google offices in Beijing (March 2010) Google left the mainland after refusing China's demand to censor its searches
Continue reading the main story
Wikileaks Revelations

* Cables at a glance
* Britain still a useful US ally?
* Has Wikileaks cost lives?
* Bumpy ride ahead for US diplomats

Senior Chinese figures were behind the hacking of Google earlier this year which forced the search engine to quit the country, leaked US cables suggest.

One cable, released by whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, cites a "well-placed" contact as saying the action against Google was "100% political".

A politburo member is said to have been angered after Googling his name and finding critical comments online.

The cable says it is unclear whether China's top leaders were involved.

Other cables show Beijing has been "extremely concerned" about the use of high-resolution satellite imagery on Google's mapping software, Google Earth.

In January, Google said it had been subjected to a "sophisticated cyber attack originating from China" - it said the e-mail accounts of human rights activists were among those hacked.

In the ensuing row over internet censorship, Google abandoned mainland China and moved its Chinese-language operations to Hong Kong.

The company did not say who it thought was responsible but the cables, released by Wikileaks and published on the Guardian website, show the company had repeatedly raised concerns about
'Forbidden fruit'

The BBC's Nick Childs says the allegations contained in the cables will reinforce both the perception that the Chinese government is highly sensitive about the internet and suspicions that it was behind the hacking attacks on Google.
Continue reading the main story
The Main Leaks So Far

* Fears that terrorists may acquire Pakistani nuclear material
* Several Arab leaders urged attack on Iran over nuclear issue
* US instructs spying on key UN officials
* China's changing relationship with North Korea
* Yemen approved US strikes on militants
* Personal and embarrassing comments on world leaders
* Afghan leader Hamid Karzai freed dangerous detainees
* Russia is a "virtual mafia state" with widespread corruption and bribery
* Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "paranoid and weak"
* Comments on the extent of alleged corruption in Afghanistan

* Wikileaks cables: Key issues

One cable from the US embassyy in Beijing cites a "well-placed contact" as claiming "that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems".

"According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level," it says.

The source, whose name is deleted from the text, told the US that the operations against Google were "100%" political in nature, not an attempt to reduce Google's influence in China in favour of domestic search engines, such as Baidu.

But the writer of the cable notes that it is "unclear whether President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were aware of these actions" before Google publicly announced its concerns.

The cable also reports on alleged concern in the Chinese government that, by challenging official censorship of the internet, Google had made itself seem more appealing to Chinese net users and given the impression that the US and Google were working together "to undermine Chinese government controls of the internet".

"All of a sudden, XXXXXXXXXXXX continued, Baidu looked like a boring state-owned enterprise while Google "seems very attractive, like the forbidden fruit," it says.

In cable dated 18 May 2009, US diplomats quote a Chinese source as saying that "the root of the problem" was an unnamed member of the politburo standing committee who wanted Google to stop linking to its international site from its sanitised version, google.cn.

The politician is said to have "recently discovered that Google's worldwide site is uncensored, and is capable of Chinese language searches and search results". He reportedly carried out a search for his own name and found sites personally critical of him.

Google consistently refused to remove the link, citing its own anti-censorship principles, and eventually left the Chinese mainland.

The cable says that while the US can neither confirm nor deny the allegations against Beijing, "the potential for continuing escalation by the Chinese, assuming Google sticks to its guns - and the likelihood of loud US Congressional and public outcry if it caves - suggest a high-level USG [US government] response may be in order".

The following January, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to fully investigate the hacking allegations.

"Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said.

BBC

Friday, December 3, 2010

Loan

Post under car loan, debt consolidation loan, loan, loan bad credit, loan calculator, payday loan, personal loans, student loan, unsecured loan at 4:59 PM Posted by DeamoN

A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower.

In a loan, the borrower initially receives or borrows an amount of money, called the principal, from the lender, and is obligated to pay back or repay an equal amount of money to the lender at a later time. Typically, the money is paid back in regular installments, or partial repayments; in an annuity, each installment is the same amount.

The loan is generally provided at a cost, referred to as interest on the debt, which provides an incentive for the lender to engage in the loan. In a legal loan, each of these obligations and restrictions is enforced by contract, which can also place the borrower under additional restrictions known as loan covenants. Although this article focuses on monetary loans, in practice any material object might be lent.

Acting as a provider of loans is one of the principal tasks for financial institutions. For other institutions, issuing of debt contracts such as bonds is a typical source of funding.

Travel

Post under airlines, cruises, last minute travel, travel, travel channel, travel guide, travel magazine, travelocity, travelzoo at 4:55 PM Posted by DeamoN

Travel is movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations for any purpose and any duration, with or without any means of transport. Travel also includes relatively short stays between successive movements. Movements between locations requiring only a few minutes are not considered as travel.

Economy

Post under american economy, economics, economist, Economy, economy crisis, economy definition, market economy, u.s. economy, world economy at 4:49 PM Posted by DeamoN

An economy consists of the economic system of a country or other area, the labor, capital and land resources, and the economic agents that socially participate in the production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of goods and services of that area. A given economy is the end result of a process that involves its technological evolution, history and social organization, as well as its geography, natural resource endowment, and ecology, as main factors. These factors give context, content, and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions.

Today the range of fields of study examining the economy include social sciences such as economics, sociology (economic sociology), history (economic history), anthropology (economic anthropology) and geography (economic geography). Practical fields directly related to the human activities involving production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services as a whole, range from engineering to management and business administration to applied science to finance.

All kind of professions, occupations, economic agents or economic activities, contribute to the economy. Consumption, saving and investment are core variable components in the economy and determine market equilibrium. There are three main sectors of economic activity: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Escrow

Post under escroue, escrow, escrow account, escrow agreement, escrow mortgage, escrow payment, escrow real estate, escrow scam, escrow taxes at 4:45 PM Posted by DeamoN

An escrow is:

* an arrangement where an independent trusted third-party receives and disburses money and/or documents for two or more transacting parties, with the timing of such disbursement by the third-party dependent on the performance by the parties of agreed-upon contractual provisions, or
* an account established by a broker, under the provisions of license law, for the purpose of holding funds on behalf of the broker's principal or some other person until the consummation or termination of a transaction;[1] or,
* a trust account held in the borrower's name to pay obligations such as property taxes and insurance premiums.

The word derives from the Old French word escroue, meaning a scrap of paper or a roll of parchment; this indicated the deed that a third party held until a transaction was completed

Health

Post under Health, Health Promotion, Health Triangle, World Health Organization at 4:41 PM Posted by DeamoN

Health is the general condition of a person in all aspects. It is also a level of functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism, often implicitly human.
The Caduceus.

At the time of the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO), in 1948, health was defined as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

Only a handful of publications have focused specifically on the definition of health and its evolution in the first 6 decades. Some of them highlight its lack of operational value and the problem created by use of the word "complete." Others declare the definition, which has not been modified since 1948, "simply a bad one."

In 1986, the WHO, in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, said that health is "a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities." Classification systems such as the WHO Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC), which is composed of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) also define health.

Overall health is achieved through a combination of physical, mental, and social well-being, which, together is commonly referred to as the Health Triangle.

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