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President Obama visited flood-ravaged communities in New Jersey today and vowed that “Washington politics” won’t obstruct federal aid for people along the Atlantic Coast, the New Jersey Star-Ledger and the AP report. Dressed in rolled-up shirt sleeves and khaki-style pants, Obama landed in Newark just after noon and boarded a…

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Chaz Bono is already wiggling his tush and shaking off the pounds in preparation for Dancing With the Stars . Only six days into rehearsals, his DWTS partner Lacey Schwimmer says Bono is “funny,” “awesome,” ” so nice” and 5 pounds lighter than when he started. “It’s so great,” Schwimmer tells People…

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Nick Clegg says that modern Britain expects too much from teachers

He argues in a speech that teachers cannot be responsible for all society’s problems following last month’s riots The deputy prime minister is to open up a new front in his disagreements with the education secretary, Michael Gove, criticising the recent decision by the Tories to heap responsibility for children’s development on to teachers. Nick Clegg’s aides believe the Conservatives have placed too much emphasis on teachers as arbiters of authority over children in the wake of last month’s riots. Gove is planning to fast-track former soldiers into school to provide children with more male role models. In a speech to teachers and pupils, Clegg will say: “We already expect our teachers to be social workers, child psychologists, nutritionists, child protection officers. We expect them to police the classroom, take care of our children’s health, counsel our sons and daughters, guide them, worry about them – and on top of that, educate them too. “Teachers are not surrogate mothers and fathers. They cannot do it all.” Clegg’s comments come as his party claimed to have reined in Gove’s desire to allow his free schools programme to become profit-making, and that any new wave of free schools had to be in deprived areas. In response to this Lib Dem assertion, Gove refused to rule out profit-making schools as a possibility in the future. Suggesting Clegg’s claim had more to do with positioning himself before his party conference meeting with his activist base than the real state of debate inside the government on free schools, a Gove source went on to rule out the idea that the next wave of free schools would be solely located in deprived areas. The source said the government would not rewrite the rules governing the location of free schools for Clegg and pointed out that half of those approved already were in the most deprived 30% of areas. Analysis conducted by the Guardian suggests this is not true. Clegg will talk about the experience of raising his own children. He will urge parents to take a more active role in supporting their children’s education and warn that he believes teachers cannot “do it all”. Giving children a proper breakfast, reading to them and ensuring the TV is switched off when it is time to do their homework must be the responsibility of families, Clegg says. Clegg, who shares the school run and other childcare duties equally with his wife, says that schools do not expect parents to cut down on their working hours. Instead, he will say: “They just want mothers and fathers to get into simple, commonsense, inexpensive routines.” These include an extra 15 minutes of reading at home and making sure children go to bed on time. Ruling out allowing free schools to be run for a profit, Clegg will say: “To anyone who is worried that, by expanding the mix of providers in our education system, we are inching towards inserting the profit motive into our school system, again, let me reassure you: yes to greater diversity; yes to more choice for parents. But no to running schools for profit, not in our state-funded education sector.” However, the Conservatives are declining to rule this out in future. On Sunday, Gove told the Andrew Marr programme on BBC1: “I’m a pragmatist, not an ideologue. We don’t need to have profit-making organisations involved at the moment.” Gove pointed out that the Conservative election manifesto said profit-making schools were not necessary “at the moment”. Allowing profit-making companies to get involved is one way to fund the building of schools without squeezing the Department for Education’s budget. Gove has already announced plans to build schools under private finance initiatives, which costs taxpayers more in the long term. Clegg is calling for all of the next wave of free schools to be in poorer neighbourhoods or areas in desperate need of extra classroom places. The first wave of 24 free schools is tilted towards middle-class neighbourhoods, according to analysis carried out for the Guardian. The analysis shows the 10-minute commuting areas around free school locations have 57% of better-off, educated and professional households compared with the English average of 42.8%. The government published its own analysis on Sunday which showed that the majority of the first crop of schools were located outside the most deprived neighbourhoods of the country. Just three schools – Nishkam free school, Rainbow primary school and Ark Atwood primary academy – are in the most deprived 10% of areas of England. Nine out of 24 are in the most deprived 20% of areas. The next wave of free schools, due to open next year, is expected to include more projects targeting the poorest parts of the country. A source close to Gove said: “[Profit-making] has been at the back of people’s minds but Cameron gave Clegg a veto and he’s exercised it. However on the idea that Clegg is insisting that the next wave of free schools have to be in areas of need, that is already the case. The process is set up already for the next wave and we’re not going to start it all over again and actually it will be the case that many of the next free schools are in areas of deprivation anyway.” Fifteen of the first 24 schools are oversubscribed, including the west London free school, where Toby Young is chair of governors. The school received more than 500 applications for 120 places. Another nine, including the Bristol free school, are either full or still trying to fill “the last few remaining places”, according to the Department for Education. Nick Clegg Michael Gove Liberal Democrats Free schools Schools Allegra Stratton Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk

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Not an Obama fan? Then you might want to jump on this bandwagon and download the “Obama Clock,” which is currently No. 2 on the iTunes App Store’s best-seller list for “reference” apps. The 99-cent iPhone app tracks the president’s popularity according to Rasmussen polling data, and also displays the…

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Michele Bachmann isn’t giving up on her $2-a-gallon gas, today repeating her pledge to bring pump prices down, reports Politico . Asked by Face the Nation’s Bob Scheiffer how she would hit that magic number, Bachmann cited “an all-of-the-above energy strategy,” blasting the Obama administration for foiling domestic energy production. But…

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Just in case you got a good night’s sleep, you can stew on this tonight: Iran says its Bushehr nuclear plant went online last night, beginning testing on the national power grid that had been delayed for years. The Russian-built plant, which Tehran says will eventually supply 2.5% of…

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Turkish hacker group diverts users away from high-profile websites

Sites affected included the Telegraph and Betfair, as unwary users put at risk of having passwords and other details stolen A Turkish hacker group diverted traffic to a number of high-profile websites including the Telegraph, UPS, Betfair, Vodafone, National Geographic, computer-maker Acer and technology news site the Register on Sunday night, putting unwary users at risk of having passwords, emails and other details stolen. Industry experts warned people not to log into sites such as Betfair because their details could be stolen. Some people viewing the sites thought that they had been hacked directly, with the sites appearing to show a message in Turkish by a group called Turkguvenligi, who last month carried out a similar attack on a Korean company. But in fact the sites themselves remained unaffected. The group had instead attacked the domain name system (DNS), which is used to route users to websites. A list of sites affected by the hack, including Microsoft in Brazil and Dell in South Korea, was posted on the zone-h website, used by hackers to list their successes. When a user types an address, such as “telegraph.co.uk”, the request is first sent to a DNS server which translates the human-readable address into a computer-readable one known as a “dotted quad”. In the case of the Telegraph, it would be 213.155.154.113 – controlled by Akamai, which spreads its content around the world. But the hackers changed the details recorded for the affected sites by hacking into the database for the DNS at the “domain name registrar” company which registered the site. DNS servers rely on each other to record and pass on updated details about the addresses of sites. Once the DNS records for a site is hacked at its registrar, the DNS servers around the world will start to copy and pass them on – meaning that more and more people will begin seeing the site as “hacked”, although the site itself is still functioning. However it can only be reached by typing in the original dotted quad address directly into a browser and that will remain the case until the registrar database is repaired; and it could take up to two days to replace the faked records. The DNS hack means that the hackers could direct users to any web page that they wanted. The Guardian’s investigations suggest that they were being redirected to a single page owned by a customer of a US company, Blue Mile Networks. Contacted by the Guardian, Blue Mile Networks said it was investigating the situation. The hack seems to have been carried out early on Sunday evening. The hackerssaid the targeted Ascio.com, which registers domain names, and Netnames.co.uk, among others. On a Twitter feed, the hacking group said that they did it for “entertainment” and told the Guardian via Twitter that the purpose was: “Millions of dollars, large systems, small weaknesses and what I could do. Just for fun.” Q&A with the hackers The Guardian sent a number of questions to the Turkish hacker group, Turkguvenligi. Here are those questions, and the group’s responses: Q. Who did you hack? Netnames.co.uk or Ascio? Or both? It’s unclear. A. In fact both of them in addition with some other ones. Q. Was this planned for a long time, or did you just find a weakness by chance? A. We usually choose some big targets and find a way to access them. sometimes it takes months. but harder makes it funnier ;) not by chance because we are expert of all kinds of web vulnerability holes. Q Why target them? A. we target big domains. which company owns them differs. Q Did you also do the South Korea hack at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/epson-hsbc-korea-domain-registrar-hacked-100000-domains-affected/55864 ? A. Yep. in fact we attacked there in the past but forgot some domains to hack :D so reowned it. you can check other korean domain mirrors here : http://www.zone-h.org/archive/notifier=turkguvenligi.info/page=2 Q. If so, what’s so special about DNS hacking? Is it that it goes wider, or is it easier than hacking lots of sites, or ..? A. First we target site itself. if we cant find a vuln. on the script of site we try accessing server or vps. If none of them works we try domain company. The hardest one is reaching the domain company but if you can succeed there will be a treasure for you :D Hacking Internet Turkey Middle East Europe Telegraph Media Group Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Betfair Travel & leisure Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk

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Turkish hacker group diverts users away from high-profile websites

Sites affected included the Telegraph and Betfair, as unwary users put at risk of having passwords and other details stolen A Turkish hacker group diverted traffic to a number of high-profile websites including the Telegraph, UPS, Betfair, Vodafone, National Geographic, computer-maker Acer and technology news site the Register on Sunday night, putting unwary users at risk of having passwords, emails and other details stolen. Industry experts warned people not to log into sites such as Betfair because their details could be stolen. Some people viewing the sites thought that they had been hacked directly, with the sites appearing to show a message in Turkish by a group called Turkguvenligi, who last month carried out a similar attack on a Korean company. But in fact the sites themselves remained unaffected. The group had instead attacked the domain name system (DNS), which is used to route users to websites. A list of sites affected by the hack, including Microsoft in Brazil and Dell in South Korea, was posted on the zone-h website, used by hackers to list their successes. When a user types an address, such as “telegraph.co.uk”, the request is first sent to a DNS server which translates the human-readable address into a computer-readable one known as a “dotted quad”. In the case of the Telegraph, it would be 213.155.154.113 – controlled by Akamai, which spreads its content around the world. But the hackers changed the details recorded for the affected sites by hacking into the database for the DNS at the “domain name registrar” company which registered the site. DNS servers rely on each other to record and pass on updated details about the addresses of sites. Once the DNS records for a site is hacked at its registrar, the DNS servers around the world will start to copy and pass them on – meaning that more and more people will begin seeing the site as “hacked”, although the site itself is still functioning. However it can only be reached by typing in the original dotted quad address directly into a browser and that will remain the case until the registrar database is repaired; and it could take up to two days to replace the faked records. The DNS hack means that the hackers could direct users to any web page that they wanted. The Guardian’s investigations suggest that they were being redirected to a single page owned by a customer of a US company, Blue Mile Networks. Contacted by the Guardian, Blue Mile Networks said it was investigating the situation. The hack seems to have been carried out early on Sunday evening. The hackerssaid the targeted Ascio.com, which registers domain names, and Netnames.co.uk, among others. On a Twitter feed, the hacking group said that they did it for “entertainment” and told the Guardian via Twitter that the purpose was: “Millions of dollars, large systems, small weaknesses and what I could do. Just for fun.” Q&A with the hackers The Guardian sent a number of questions to the Turkish hacker group, Turkguvenligi. Here are those questions, and the group’s responses: Q. Who did you hack? Netnames.co.uk or Ascio? Or both? It’s unclear. A. In fact both of them in addition with some other ones. Q. Was this planned for a long time, or did you just find a weakness by chance? A. We usually choose some big targets and find a way to access them. sometimes it takes months. but harder makes it funnier ;) not by chance because we are expert of all kinds of web vulnerability holes. Q Why target them? A. we target big domains. which company owns them differs. Q Did you also do the South Korea hack at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/epson-hsbc-korea-domain-registrar-hacked-100000-domains-affected/55864 ? A. Yep. in fact we attacked there in the past but forgot some domains to hack :D so reowned it. you can check other korean domain mirrors here : http://www.zone-h.org/archive/notifier=turkguvenligi.info/page=2 Q. If so, what’s so special about DNS hacking? Is it that it goes wider, or is it easier than hacking lots of sites, or ..? A. First we target site itself. if we cant find a vuln. on the script of site we try accessing server or vps. If none of them works we try domain company. The hardest one is reaching the domain company but if you can succeed there will be a treasure for you :D Hacking Internet Turkey Middle East Europe Telegraph Media Group Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Betfair Travel & leisure Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk

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He’s not exactly yelling “You lie!,” but count Jim DeMint as less than thrilled about President Obama’s jobs speech on Thursday, Politico reports. “I’m so tired of his speeches it’s going to be hard for me to watch,” the South Carolina Tea Partier told State of the Union today. Instead…

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‘Twitter terrorists’ face 30 years after being charged in Mexico

School teacher and radio presenter accused of spreading false reports that gunmen were attacking schools in Veracruz A man and a woman are facing 30-year prison terms in Mexico for allegedly using Twitter to spread panic over a series of child kidnappings. Gilberto Martinez Vera, 48, a private school teacher, and Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola, a radio presenter, were accused of spreading false reports that gunmen were attacking schools in the south-eastern city of Veracruz. The resulting panic caused dozens of car crashes after parents rushed to save their children from schools across the city and jammed emergency telephone lines, which “totally collapsed” under the pressure. Gerardo Buganza, the interior secretary for Veracruz state, compared the ensuing chaos to Orson Welles’s spoof news broadcast War of the Worlds in 1938. The two are facing charges under terrorism laws. “There were 26 car accidents, or people left their cars in the middle of the streets to run and pick up their children, because they thought these things were occurring at their kids’ schools,” Buganza said. The charges, which said that phone lines “totally collapsed because people were terrified” are the most serious charges to come from using Twitter to incite violence or chaos. Last month in the UK, Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were both sentenced to four years in prison for inciting people to riot in the Manchester area. Despite setting up an event called Smash Down in Northwich Town on Facebook, only Blackshaw and the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at a designated meeting spot. The false reports in Mexico followed general unease over recent drug gang violence in the city. In one reported incident a gunman tossed a grenade near a tourist attraction, killing one tourist. Tensions were also raised after armed convoys of marines were drafted on to the streets in August. Prosecutors allege that Vera then posted numerous messages on Twitter saying gunmen were kidnapping children from local schools. In one message he is said to have tweeted: “My sister-in-law just called me all upset, they just kidnapped five children from the school.” Other tweets included a story about six teenagers who were run over in one neighbourhood but although prosecutors acknowledge the incident happened, they said it did not involve any children. Pagola, who also styled herself a “TwitTerrorist” on the Facebook website, is accused of spreading rumours of child kidnapping using the social network – a charge she denies. Lawyers for both defendants have argued that both were repeating rumours they had already seen on the internet. Speaking through her lawyer, Pagola said: “How can they possibly do this to me, for re-tweeting a message? I mean, it’s 140 characters. It’s not logical.” Amnesty International accused officials of violating freedom of expression and instead blamed the panic on the city drug wars, in which 35,000 people are believed to have been killed in five years and which has seen people turning to social networks for information – both true and false. Amnesty said: “The lack of safety creates an atmosphere of mistrust in which rumours that circulate on social networks are part of people’s efforts to protect themselves, since there is very little trustworthy information.” Raul Trejo, a Mexican media expert, said that while the terrorism charge was unwarranted, the actions of Vera and Pagola were “a very incautious use of Twitter.” Mexico Twitter Internet Jo Adetunji guardian.co.uk

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