Turkey is set to hold its largest trial over the July 2016 coup attempt, with nearly 500 people set to appear in court.

The suspects, who are to stand trial on Tuesday, are accused of conspiring to overthrow the government from an airbase seen as the plotters’ hub.

A total of 486 suspects will go on trial in a purpose-built courtroom outside the capital Ankara, charged with crimes ranging from murder, violating the constitution and attempting to kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, state-run news agency Anadolu reported.

RELATED: Turkey’s failed coup attempt – All you need to know

They are accused of running the coup bid from the Akinci airbase northwest of the capital, which the authorities regard as plotters’ headquarters.

From there, commands were given for F-16 fighter jets to attack and fly above the capital.

The Turkish parliament was bombed three times by F-16s.

Gulen among suspects

A total of 461 suspects are held in custody, while seven are still on the run. The remainder are charged but not in jail.

Fethullah Gulen, the US-based Muslim cleric-turned-businessman accused of ordering the attempted July 15 attempt, is among the main suspects named in the indictment.

He remains in the United States under self-imposed exile in a secluded compound in the US state of Pennsylvania, and strongly denies the charges against him.

Those held in custody include Akin Ozturk, a former air force chief who – like several suspects – is also on trial in another case related to the coup bid.

Theology lecturer Adil Oksuz, whom Turkish officials allege was the so-called “imam” of the plot, is accused coordinating the action on the ground in Turkey with Gulen.

Businessman Kemal Batmaz, meanwhile, is accused of assisting Oksuz.

Oksuz was detained following the coup’s defeat, but was subsequently released and is now on the run. Batmaz is in custody in Sincan prison outside Ankara.

Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar and other senior commanders were held hostage at the base during the coup attempt, before they were freed on the morning on July 16.

Around 300 people were killed during the coup attempt, which also led to purges targeting tens of thousands of civil servants among other people.

Source: News agencies

Firmware for the as-of-yet unreleased HomePod has provided a wealth of information on the speaker itself and the upcoming iPhone 8, thanks to developers like Steven Troughton-Smith who have spent time digging into the code.

Troughton-Smith shared a few new prospective iPhone 8 features and predictions this evening, once again sourced from the HomePod firmware, giving us even more insight into the radically redesigned iPhone Apple plans to release in 2017.

An iPhone glyph discovered yesterday in the HomePod firmware, which is believed to be representative of the iPhone 8 design

First and foremost, Troughton-Smith has seen no indication that there are features related to under-display Touch ID functionality in the iPhone 8, and he does not believe that such a feature will be included in the device.

For what it’s worth… I’ve seen nothing to suggest an ultrasound under-the-display Touch ID here. Looks like not this year. Quash that one

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 1, 2017

Initial iPhone 8 rumors suggested Apple was working to put Touch ID under the display as the iPhone 8 features an edge-to-edge design with no Home button, but that may not have panned out due to rumored production difficulties. Current information suggests Apple may instead replace Touch ID with a new facial recognition system, and there are indeed several references to infrared face detection in the firmware.

The iPhone 8 is expected to have an edge-to-edge design with thin bezels at the top and the sides, but there will be a blocked out area for the front-facing camera and the new sensors that will enable facial recognition. According to Troughton-Smith and developer Jeffrey Grossman, there are references to new “split” options for the visual provider system for UIStatusBar, suggesting status bar information like connection strength, battery, Bluetooth, and the time may be displayed on either side of the sensor/camera area, for a streamlined status bar at the top of the device.

Troughton-Smith says the new status bar “seems a lot more complex and powerful in design,” and could even be interactive in some way.

Some interesting related strings (I’m guessing you’ve come across these) http://pic.twitter.com/Go5ZVFlzea

— Jeffrey Grossman (@Jeffrey903) August 1, 2017

Along with details on the split status bar and the lack of references to Touch ID, Troughton-Smith has also found information suggesting the iPhone 8 could potentially support a “tap to wake” feature. Tap to Wake is a feature built into some Windows-based Lumia smartphones, allowing the screen to be activated with a double tap, something Apple could use as an alternative to a Home button for waking up an iPhone.

In regard to the Home button, it appears to be called the “Home Indicator” in the firmware, and according to Troughton-Smith, Apple has “no qualms about hiding it in certain contexts.” Rumors have suggested that while there will be no physical Home button, there could be an on-screen function area that houses a virtual Home button and other controls. Based on what Troughton-Smith says, this virtual area may be able to be hidden for things like full-screen apps and videos.

The virtual home button seems to just be called the ‘home indicator’ — looks like the OS has no qualms about hiding it in certain contexts

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) August 1, 2017

As a last little tidbit, Troughton-Smith says ARKit and Photos are getting new functionality that goes with the front-facing camera with depth sensing features, such as “ARFaceAnchor.”

There are details about the iPhone 8 within the HomePod firmware because HomePod will run a version of iOS. The firmware that Apple released corresponds to iOS 11.0.2, a future update that will be introduced sometime after iOS 11 launches in the fall alongside new iPhones.

Reince (me) giving @Scaramucci something to think about. He never replied haha http://pic.twitter.com/hutjACmogR

— EMAIL PRANKSTER (@SINON_REBORN) August 1, 2017

He also catfished (ex) White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci multiple times during his brief stint. In an email the day after Reince Priebus resigned as chief of staff, the individual pretended to be Priebus, and apparently got a response from Scaramucci saying “You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A Man would apologize.” He also managed to fool Huntsman himself, but was unable to pull one over for long on Arthur Schwartz, a friend of Scaramucci’s, or Eric Trump Jr., who said: “I have sent this to law enforcement who will handle from here.”

The ease with which he was able to communicate with White House personnel remains troubling, however, since, as CNN notes, these kinds of fake emails are a key component to the type of spear phishing attack that hit John Podesta. Within the last day, Wikileaks has posted emails purported to be from the campaign of French president Emanuel Macron, while the White House and State Department email systems have previously been breached.

Qatar Airways is expected to have access to three contingency routes over international waters in early August, after a UN-led meeting on Monday discussed air corridors for Doha following a rift with its neighbours.

The closed-door meeting with the UN aviation agency’s governing council in Montreal, discussed contingency routes that had been planned as part of a preliminary agreement reached earlier this month, but not yet opened to Qatar-registered planes.

Qatar had asked the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to intervene after its national carrier was denied access to the airspace of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates as part of economic sanctions.

OPINION: Qatar: Finding opportunities for reform in crisis

The four countries severed ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of supporting “terrorism”, something Doha denies. The closing of their airspace has forced state-owned Qatar Airways to fly longer, more expensive routes, prompting Doha to push for international corridors over Gulf waters currently managed by the UAE.

“Within a week or so they should have new routes,” said a source, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, because the talks are private.

The ICAO on Monday called on all member-states to comply with the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation and its addendums, reported Qatar News Agency.

Qatari Minister of Transport and Communications Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti told Al Jazeera that Qatar’s main goal at the session had been that all states should adhere to the Chicago agreement.

“The organisation insisted on using the word ‘adhere’ because there was a violation of international safety and security. This is what the international community and the states represented think,” he said.

Keith Mackey, an aviation consultant, told Al Jazeera that the ICAO rules on standards by consensus and does not have regulatory powers.

“ICAO can’t force these countries to allow Qatar or any other airline to fly over their airspace. They have to do it with permission and it’s really a political problem and not a technical problem,” he said.

“ICAO prefers to deal with technical problems and the statements they made today were unusual; ICAO doesn’t usually go so far as to request member states to follow international protocol, so that may be a positive step in the right direction,” added Mackey.

The ICAO cannot impose rules on states, but regulators from its 191-member countries almost always adopt and enforce the standards it sets for international aviation.

Steps to ease the blockade

Al Jazeera’s Daniel Lak, reporting from Montreal, said that the action at the ICAO is one of several steps that Qatar is taking to ease or end the blockade – including filing a case at the World Trade Organization and pursuing ongoing talks with the International Maritime Organization.

“Qatar also says it will return to ICAO after the organisation’s summer break to press again for a complete lifting of the blockade and to continue with its case that airspace restrictions are dangerous and illegal,” said Lak.

On Monday, Qatar also filed a wide-ranging legal complaint at the World Trade Organization on Monday to challenge the trade boycott.

READ MORE: How will Qatar-Gulf crisis shape the region’s economy?

On Sunday, Saudi state news agency SPA cited a statement from the Saudi aviation authority (GACA) saying they had already agreed to nine emergency air corridors, which were identified under ICAO supervision, and would be open from August 1.

However, Qatar’s transport and communications ministry and its aviation authority denied the four countries had taken such a decision, the state news agency QNA said.

In comments to Qatar-based Al Jazeera, Qatar’s transport and information minister said the boycotting countries had discriminated against Doha in violation of an international agreement guaranteeing overflights.

“These countries have used this right arbitrarily and imposed it on aircraft registered only in the State of Qatar,” Al Sulaiti said.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Google’s brand of VR is, at last, beginning to arrive on Samsung devices.

Reports emerged last week that certain Verizon Galaxy S8 and S8+ devices were getting the Daydream update, but today Google confirmed the rollout.

Don’t panic if you don’t see the Daydream app on your device quite yet as the company said that the “update will take time to finish rolling out.”

The Daydream headset and controller are currently on sale for $59 (normally $79) while Samsung’s latest Gear VR retails for $129.

The availability of Daydream support was announced at Google I/O this May. The move brings dueling virtual reality platforms to the latest Galaxy phones, Google Daydream and the Oculus Home platform.

While this likely marks the biggest potential expansion for Google’s Daydream platform, it also signifies a clear loss for Oculus, which collaborated with Samsung on the Gear VR headset and maintains the content store that houses the device’s playable titles. Google’s potential for expansion is boundless as new higher-specced Android phones begin to add support, but Oculus is going to have to rethink some things. On its most recent earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company would have 11 different devices on the Daydream platform by the end of the year.

Facebook has gone ahead and purchased Charles Jolley’s conversational AI startup Ozlo. Jolley, formerly Head of Platform for Android at Facebook, will not be returning to the company. The Ozlo team is expected to join Facebook to work on natural language processing challenges.

Ozlo launched with a consumer-facing app back in October 2016. Jolley told me at the time that the conversational AI space was rapidly consolidating (Samsung had just bought Viv) and he was happy to run a service independent of the major tech giants. With today’s acquisition, Ozlo is no longer independent and the conversational AI space grows just a bit more consolidated.

In March, Ozlo launched a suite of APIs. One of the company’s key differentiators was its knowledge graph — its database of facts about the world necessary for demonstrating any sense of intelligence. Ozlo sold its knowledge layer to developers as a service.

That knowledge layer, in addition to an intent API and converse API, will be wound down in the wake of the acquisition, according to Facebook. The same will be true for the original, readily available, consumer bot.

“1.2 billion people around the world use Messenger to connect with the people and businesses they care about,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re excited to welcome the Ozlo team as we build compelling experiences within Messenger that are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

It’s unclear exactly what the Ozlo team will work on at Facebook. The Ozlo knowledge graph could find a home as a backbone for Facebook M. A number of recent acquisitions by large tech companies have been aimed at increasing the scale of such information repositories. Apple recently purchased Lattice Data to help convert unstructured data into a knowledge graph that can be reasoned across to deliver relevant answers to user questions.

Facebook declined to disclose the size of its purchase of Ozlo. The startup was previously backed by AME Cloud Ventures and Greylock Partners.

Featured Image: Sean Gallup/Getty

Video footage of North Korea’s latest missile test appears to show it breaking up before landing, indicating that Pyongyang may not yet have mastered re-entry technology needed for an operational nuclear-tipped missile, a think tank reported on Monday.

The apparent failure of the re-entry vehicle in Friday’s test could mean North Korea will need to carry out several more tests of its intercontinental ballistic missile before it can be deemed operational, missile expert Michael Elleman told reporters.

Elleman, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, cited video footage taken by a weather camera in Japan’s Hokkaido Prefecture broadcast by Japan’s NHK television.

OPINION: Will Trump strike North Korea?

In a report for 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project, Elleman said the video showed the re-entry vehicle shedding small radiant objects at an altitude of four or five kilometres before dimming and disappearing.

“Had the RV survived the rigors of re-entry, it would have continued to glow … A reasonable conclusion based on the video evidence is that the … re-entry vehicle did not survive,” he said.

Even so, Elleman said, further testing could still allow North Korea to deploy an operational ICBM next year.

US officials say the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon spy agency, has determined that North Korea will be able to field a reliable nuclear-capable ICBM by next year, earlier than previously thought.

North Korea said on Saturday its second ICBM test, which followed its first on July 4, had proven its ability to strike the whole of the US mainland.

Some US-based experts said last week’s launch showed the missile could have been capable of going as far into the United States as Denver and Chicago, with New York and Washington just out of range.

However, John Schilling, another missile expert and 38 North contributor, said last week the improved performance over the July 4 test could have been the result of using a lighter payload to improve its range.

Elleman said the size of the payload was crucial to range and a lighter payload could mean a more fragile re-entry vehicle less able to withstand re-entry.

He estimated the current missile was probably capable of carrying a 500 kg bomb of similar power to those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War Two as far as the US West Coast.

Source: Reuters news agency

Apple this week launched a new limited time discount on its Beats EP headphones, Beats Pill+ speaker, and urBeats earphones, which are all on sale for approximately $20 to $30 off.

The Beats EP On-Ear Headphones are available for $99, down from the original price of $129.95. All colors are available at the discounted price, including red, white, black, and blue. The Beats EP are Apples most affordable on-ear headphones, coming in at a lower cost than the Solo3 models.

The Beats Pill+ Portable Speaker is available for $199, down from $229.95. All colors are discounted, including white, black, and red.

Both the Beats Pill+ and the Beats EP On-Ear Headphones were discounted by a similar amount in late 2016 and early 2017, but Apple has not recently offered a sale on the urBeats. With the promotion, the earphones are priced at $79 instead of $99.95. All colors available from the Apple Store are included in the sale: silver, gold, space gray, rose gold, black, and ultra violet.

Apple’s prices are a decent deal, but similar and occasionally bigger discounts can often be found from retailers like Amazon and Best Buy during routine sales.

According to the promotion details, Apple’s sale will last from today until August 26, 2017 at 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

NASA has announced the latest beneficiaries of its Small Business Technology Transfer program, which solicits and funds small-scale research projects outside the agency but relevant to its interests. Nineteen projects in a variety of fields are being awarded a total of $14.3 million.

Those 19 were selected from an initial pool of 56 announced last year; those “Phase I” companies and institutions were awarded up to $125,000 to pursue their proposals, and would have reported on their progress to NASA later. The surviving 19 “Phase II” projects presumably showed enough promise that they’ll get up to $750,000 to keep going.

You can peruse them all here, but here are the five I found most interesting:

• Mango Materials is making a space-compatible bioreactor for producing methane-based biopolymers. Basically they’re working on a way to feed bacteria methane and make usable plastic come out the other end, within the limitations of microgravity and so on.
• Otherlab — you may remember the company’s cardboard drone — is working on sensors that are as flexible as the soft robotic platform they’ll be part of. Your fingers can tell when and how hard they’re gripping something, so shouldn’t it be the same for our robots?
• Fibertek claims it can reduce the size and increase the efficiency of lidar systems by combining a number of techniques: flash (as opposed to scanning) imaging, 3D printing and “an ultra-compact unstable or near stable ring resonator.” They definitely didn’t make up that last one.
• Applied Research LLC (sounds sketchy) wants to improve the performance of the image processing done onboard landers and rovers. New algorithms would make it faster and easier to get depth-enhanced (or VR) views from the stereo cameras on mastcams. There’s also a lot of talk about multispectral image cubes.
• Speaking of multispectral imagery, Nanohmics claims to have produced a device that accomplishes it without the bulky lenses and filters usually necessary. Its chip-scale sensor is compact, versatile and has no moving parts — perfect for lots of missions, but especially planetary imaging.

These projects and the other 14 will prove themselves (or not) over the next two years, after which they will encounter (predictably) the Post Phase II Initiatives and Opportunities. Think your company or research might be a good match? Check out the STTR/SBIR basics page and get applyin’.

Featured Image: NASA

Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo denied hiding millions of euros in income at a court hearing near the Spanish capital on Monday where he was charged with tax evasion.

The Portuguese footballer – the world’s highest paid sportsman according to Forbes magazine – is the latest football star to fall foul of Spain’s taxman.

He follows in the footsteps of his arch-rival, Barcelona forward Lionel Messi, who was found guilty of the same offence last year.

“I have never hidden anything, nor have I had the intention of evading taxes,” Ronaldo, 32, told the court, according to a statement from the sports agency which represents him, Gestifute.

OPINION: Why does FIFA still recognise Israeli settlement teams?

“I always voluntarily file my tax returns because I think we all must file a return and pay taxes according to our income. Those that know me, know what I ask my advisors: that they have everything up to date and properly paid, because I don’t want problems.”

Accused of having evaded 14.7 million euros ($17.3m) in tax, he entered and left the court in Pozuelo de Alarcon, a wealthy suburb of Madrid where he lives, via an underground garage to avoid the press.

Prosecutors allege he took “advantage of a company structure created in 2010 to hide income generated in Spain from his image rights from tax authorities”.

They say this was a “voluntary and conscious breach of his fiscal obligations in Spain”.

Prosecutors accuse the four-time world player of the year of evading tax via a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands and another in Ireland, known for low corporate tax rates.

In addition, they say the Real Madrid striker only declared 11.5 million euros ($13.6m) of Spanish-related income from 2011 to 2014, while what he really earned during that time was close to 43 million euros ($50.8m).

They also accuse him of “voluntarily” refusing to include 28.4 million euros ($33.6m) in income linked to the sale of his image rights for the 2015 to 2020 period to a Spanish company.

Madrid judge Monica Gomez Ferrer now has to decide if the investigation goes to trial. 

‘Legal and legitimate’

Ronaldo told the court he did not create a “special structure” to manage his image rights when he moved to Real in 2009 but simply maintained the one set up in 2004 while he was at Manchester United “long before I thought of coming to Spain”.

This structure had been deemed “legal and legitimate” by the British tax office.

The affair has taken its toll on Ronaldo.

According to press reports, Real’s all-time top goalscorer threatened to leave Spain over the affair, giving supporters a fright.

READ MORE: Football’s road to recognition in war-torn Afghanistan

He has since decided to stay on, according to Real coach Zinedine Zidane.

If he were put on trial and found guilty, Ronaldo would risk “a fine of at least 28 million” euros ($33.1m) and could potentially be jailed for three and a half years, the Gestha union of experts at Spain’s Inland Revenue has said.

Since extending his contract last November until 2021, Ronaldo is the highest paid sports star in the world with $93m earned in 2016-2017, according to Forbes.

Ronaldo is not the only footballer to fall foul of authorities in Spain, which is only just recovering from a damaging economic crisis that saw countless people lose their jobs and inequalities rise.

Messi was sentenced to a 21-month jail sentence and 2.09 million-euro ($2.47m) fine last year for tax fraud.

His prison sentence has since been replaced by another fine of 252,000 euros ($298,000), which corresponds to 400 euros ($473) for each day of jail.

Barcelona’s Argentine defender Javier Mascherano, meanwhile, agreed a one-year suspended sentence with authorities for tax fraud last year.

In Spain, a judge can suspend sentences of less than two years for first-time offenders.

Brazil star Neymar, another Barcelona forward, and his parents are also due to stand trial for alleged corruption over his transfer from Santos in 2013.

Real have not been spared either.

Apart from Ronaldo, former player Angel di Maria, Portuguese defender Fabio Coentrao and Jose Mourinho, who coached the club from 2010 to 2013, have all been accused of tax fraud.

All are clients of super-agent Jorge Mendes, who was also questioned and put under official investigation last month by a Spanish court investigating alleged tax evasion by Monaco’s former Atletico Madrid striker Radamel Falcao, another footballer in his stable.

Source: News agencies

A new quarterly report published by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) shows the US has failed to account for hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on propping up the Afghan government, while the value of opium production in the country has doubled in a year.

The US has spent over $714bn in the past 15 years supporting Afghanistan’s governments, bolstering its armed forces and building infrastructure in the country, but due to a rampant culture of corruption and lack of US monitoring on the ground, the results are less than satisfactory.

According to SIGAR, despite the massive US spending, the balance between US-backed Afghan government and the insurgency remained at standstill since 2016. Sixty percent of the total districts in the country are under government control and the remaining 40 percent remained under Taliban or other insurgent control.

OPINION: What should the US’ next move be in Afghanistan?

The number of bombings and clashes between insurgents and government forces also increased during the reporting period.

“From March 1 through May 31, 2017, the UN recorded 6,252 security incidents, a 21 percent increase from last quarter,” stated the report.

“January 1, 2017, through May 8, 2017, there were 2,531 [Afghan forces] service members killed in action and an additional 4,238 wounded in action.”

Also, the estimated value of opium and its by-products produced in Afghanistan increased to $3.02bn in 2016 from $1.56bn in 2015.

On June 13, 2017, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee the US is “not winning in Afghanistan right now, and we will correct this as soon as possible”.

New US strategy for Afghanistan

Mattis is expected to deliver the Trump administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the coming days. The new US strategy is expected, according to some reports, to send more US troops to Afghanistan as advisors and trainers to its armed forces.

But a Department of Defense official, who declined to speak publicly because he is not authorised to do so, told Al Jazeera that the thinking among top DOD brass is that the new strategy on Afghanistan could go either way. “The administration has yet to decide whether to increase the level of troops in Afghanistan or even decrease it,” said the official.

The new regional strategy will also see a different approach to Pakistan the DOD official said.

“Pakistan might see a tougher approach by the Trump administration that requires it to end its practice of providing sanctuary for insurgent elements inside its territories,” he said.

A report by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, however, quoted a senior administration official saying the Trump White House might scale back the US troop’s presence in Afghanistan.

If the Trump administration has decided to scale back US troops presence, the current situation in the country might become worse than it is today.

SIGAR recommended in its report that the US must not shy away from taking risks and should venture beyond the heavily fortified US-government compounds to monitor the US investments and spending in the country.

But if the administration decides to scale back the US footprints in the country, it will be less clear how the US will account for the billions of dollars already earmarked to be spent in Afghanistan during the 2018 fiscal year.

“SIGAR is concerned that US officials, whether at State, USAID, Justice, Treasury, Commerce, or elsewhere, cannot oversee the billions of dollars the United States is dedicating to Afghan reconstruction if, for the most part, they cannot leave the US embassy compound,” said John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

“Hunkering down behind blast walls damages not only the US civilian mission but also handicaps the US military mission,” he said.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter @ali_reports

Source: Al Jazeera News

Podcasts will get their own dedicated tab in the platform’s “browse” section, too, at some point. The company’s investment remains experimental, but it will begin a new campaign to lure in more listeners to its limited podcast offerings. In exchange for promoting certain shows within the Spotify app and on bus ads, the hosts of “Reply All,” “Pod Save America” and “The Bill Simmons Podcast” will promote the streaming service during episodes.

The reasons are mostly financial: Podcast ad revenue is expected to increase 85 percent this year to $220 million. As Bloomberg points out, 15 percent of Americans listen to podcasts weekly, while a quarter listen to at least one a month. Podcasts, as longer-form media than songs, might keep users around for longer sessions (ergo, more ad money) than a three-minute song. Plus, the streaming titan could get non-music content for a lower price, given that royalties to record labels made up an astonishing 75 percent of Spotify’s costs last year.

The latest batch of leaked emails from the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States Yousef al-Otaiba has revealed the extent of influence the UAE held over various US think tanks, and in turn US foreign policy.

The Intercept reported that Otaiba, through the UAE embassy in Washington, DC, had gained substantial favours from Obama administration veterans by paying them handsome sums of money.

The emails are part of a collection of hacked correspondences leaked last month belonging to Otaiba’s Hotmail account, which he had used for official business.

One of the documents obtained was an invoice from an influential national security think tank, which billed the UAE embassy for research papers in return for facilitating the UAE’s purchase of large military-grade weapons from the Missile Technology Control Regime.

Under former President Barack Obama’s term, the MTCR prohibited the sale of such weapons beyond the US’ closest allies. However, the Center for New American Security think tank was part of a campaign to allow the UAE to buy these weaponries, specifically drones, The Intercept reported.

The CNAS had billed an invoice to the UAE embassy for $250,000 for a paper on “the legal regime governing the export of military-grade drones”.

Michele Flournoy, a senior Pentagon official in the Obama administration, wrote an email to Otaiba on June 24, 2016.

“Yousef: Here is the CNAS proposal for a project analysing the potential benefits and costs of the UAE joining the MTCR, as we discussed,” she wrote. “Please let us know whether this is what you had in mind.”

Otaiba replied two weeks later.

“Thank you for the report,” he wrote. “I think it will help push the debate in the right direction,” referring to moving his country’s agenda forward.

In a different set of emails, Flournoy asked Otaiba to intervene in his country’s interior ministry in order to assist in the promotion of selling electronic surveillance technology from a US-based firm, Polaris Wireless, to the UAE.

It is not clear where the hackers, who refer to themselves as “GlobalLeaks,” are from but they responded to The Intercept’s inquiry by saying they were “not affiliated with any country or religion”.

Source: Al Jazeera News

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is claiming victory in the election for a new constitutional superbody, which he says will help save the country from political and economic disaster.

Opponents both at home and abroad describe the vote as a naked power grab that will only escalate the paralysing conflicts.

Election organisers say more than eight million voters turned out – more than double the estimates of government critics.

With further protests and sanctions threatened, are there more dark days ahead for a country already torn apart by political and economic strife?

Presenter: Martine Dennis

Guests:

Teresa Albanes – opposition coalition member.

Francisco Dominguez – Head of Latin American Studies, Middlesex University.

Jennifer McCoy – Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and author of ‘The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela’. 

Source: Al Jazeera News

As it prepares to go public, Spotify has reached 60 million paid subscribers, reports TechCrunch. The 60 million mark comes nearly five months after the company announced its 50 million paid subscriber milestone in March.

When adding in customers who listen to the free ad-supported tier, Spotify has more than 140 million subscribers worldwide. Comparatively, Apple Music now boasts 27 million paying subscribers, a number Apple shared at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Since its 2015 debut, Apple Music has been growing steadily by luring customers with exclusive album releases, concerts, and original television programming, but it does not offer a free tier like Spotify. Apple Music subscriptions start at $9.99 per month after a three-month free trial.

Spotify paid subscriptions are also priced at $9.99 per month, and in 2016, Spotify’s revenue grew over 50 percent to $3.3 billion.

In the near future, Spotify plans to go public through a direct listing, forgoing the traditional initial public offering and making existing Spotify shares available to the public. With this method, likened to an elopement instead of a full-on wedding, Spotify avoids the fanfare of an IPO and does not have to hire an underwriter. Spotify is expected to initiate its direct listing in 2018.

Image Credit: @tjhorner

Today, election hacking is not just about hacking voting machines, rather it now also includes hacking and leaking dirty secrets of the targeted political parties—and there won’t be a perfect example than the last year’s US presidential election.

But, in countries like America, even hacking electronic voting machines is possible—that too, in a matter of minutes.

Several hackers reportedly managed to hack into multiple United States voting machines in a relatively short period—in some cases within minutes, and in other within a few hours—at Def Con cybersecurity conference held in Las Vegas this week.

Citing the concern of people with the integrity and security of American elections, for the first time, Def Con hosted a “Voting Machine Village” event, where tech-savvy attendees tried to hack some systems and help catch vulnerabilities.

Voting Machine Village provided 30 different pieces of voting equipment used in American elections in a room, which included Sequoia AVC Edge, ES&S iVotronic, AccuVote TSX, WinVote, and Diebold Expresspoll 4000 voting machines.

And what’s horrible? The group of attendees reportedly took less than 90 minutes to compromise these voting machines.

Members of the Def Con hacking community managed to take complete control of an e-poll book, an election equipment which is currently in use in dozens of states where voters sign in and receive their ballots.

Other hackers in attendance claimed to have found significant security flaws in the AccuVote TSX, which is currently in use in 19 states, and the Sequoia AVC Edge, used in 13 states.

Another hacker broke into the hardware and firmware of the Diebold TSX voting machine.

Hackers were also able to hack into the WinVote voting machine, which is available on eBay, and have long been removed from use in elections due to its vulnerabilities.

Hackers discovered a remote access vulnerability in WinVote’s operating system, which exposed real election data that was still stored in the machine.

Another hacker hacked into the Express-Pollbook system and exposed the internal data structure via a known OpenSSL vulnerability (CVE-2011-4109), allowing anyone to carry out remote attacks.

“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributors of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” said Jake Braun, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Chicago, told Reg media.

“The scary thing is we also know that our foreign adversaries — including Russia, North Korea, Iran — possess the capabilities to hack them too, in the process undermining the principles of democracy and threatening our national security.”

Election hacking became a major debate following the 2016 US presidential election, where it was reported that Russian hackers managed to access U.S. voting machines in at least 39 states in the run-up to the election.

However, there is no evidence yet to justify these claims.

Even, Hacking of voting machines is also a major concern in India these days, but the government and election commission has declined to host such event to test the integrity of EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) used during the country’s General and State Elections.

Anthony Scaramucci is out as White House communications director after just 11 days on the job – and just hours after former General John Kelly took over as US President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff.

Hoping to turn the page on a tumultuous opening chapter to his presidency, Trump had insisted earlier on Monday that there was “no chaos” in his White House as he swore in the retired Marine general as his second chief of staff.

Not long after, Scaramucci, who shocked many with his profane outburst last week against then-chief of staff Reince Priebus, was gone.

“Mr Scaramucci felt it was best to give Chief of Staff John Kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. We wish him all the best,” read a statement from the White House press secretary on Monday.

Scaramucci has been in the spotlight since he was first announced as communications director earlier this month.

The New Yorker magazine published an interview on Thursday in which Scaramucci went on a profanity-laden tirade against Priebus.

Kelly, a retired general and previous homeland security secretary, was sworn into his new job on Monday morning.

The statement about Scaramucci’s departure used the same “clean slate” language that departing press secretary Sean Spicer used to describe his own reason for resigning the day Trump brought Scaramucci aboard.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a press conference on Monday that all staff in the White House will report to Kelly.

“The president certainly felt that [Scaramucci’s] comments were inappropriate for a person in that position and [Trump] didn’t want to burden General Kelly with that line of succession.”

She added that the decision for Scaramucci to leave was taken after a “mutually agreed conversation that took place between several people”, which included Scaramucci and Kelly.

Trump on Friday ousted Priebus as chief of staff and turned to Kelly, who he hopes will bring military discipline to an administration weighed down by a stalled legislative agenda, infighting among West Wing aides and a stack of investigations.

Scaramucci’s brief tenure shoved internal White House disputes into the open. In media interviews, he trashed Priebus as a “leaker” and senior White House aide Steve Bannon as a self-promoter. One of Scaramucci’s first – and it turns out only – acts was to force out a communications aide seen as loyal to Priebus.

Spicer, Priebus and Bannon had all objected to Trump’s decision to hire Scaramucci, who would have reported directly to the president.

‘A new sheriff in town’

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC, said it was clear that “there is a new sheriff in town and we’ve already seen the first head roll”, but that apparent chaos at the White House was becoming a significant problem.

“It has been countering the message that it is in chaos. Donald Trump has been directly saying that that is not the case on social media, and even trying to highlight some of the successes with the economy at his cabinet meeting,” she said.

“But the appearances coming out of the White House is very different from the language being used by the president himself.”

READ MORE: Can Muslim politicians survive in today’s US?

Halkett said that a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with many of Trump’s choices of staff, who tend to have either military or Wall Street backgrounds.

“There is a little bit of discomfort with Donald Trump boasting he wants rich people in charge and he wants generals in charge – that’s making some people nervous on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans,” said Halkett.

“So while there might be a sense that there is some order being restored to – despite what Donald Trump is saying – a somewhat chaotic White House up to this point, there’s also concern about what that might look like moving forward,” she said.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Google announced today the public availability of a developer tool that will allow Android apps to better communicate with nearby devices, even while offline. The company touts a number of potential use cases for this technology – like hotel rooms that sense your entry then set the temperature accordingly and turn on your favorite music, or phones that can merge their address books while in proximity, among other things.

However, the initial implementations of the technology aren’t perhaps quite as magical. Instead, forthcoming apps will use the Nearby Connections API, as the technology is called, for things like offline media sharing or the distribution of urgent weather warnings in low-bandwidth areas, for example.

Google has been developing its Nearby Connections API for some time. The API was first announced in 2015 as a way for mobile devices to be used as second screen controllers for games that are running on your TV.

At this year’s Google I/O developer conference in May, the company announced the API was being refreshed.

(Nearby Connections API discussed above at 24:15 mark)

The technology itself leverages Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE and Classic Bluetooth under the hood to establish connections with nearby devices, Google explains. Apps using the API can switch between these various radios when it makes sense, or even take advantage of new radios when they become available – without requiring developers write new code to do so.

Apps can take advantage of this technology in a couple of ways.

In one scenario, a centralized device – like the host of an offline game or a teacher’s device in a classroom quiz app – could be connected to other nearby devices. Another implementation could create “mesh networks” for things like offline chat or ad-hoc project groups for real-time collaboration.

Google also today announced some of the apps that will be using the new API.

This includes The Weather Channel, which is using the technology to create on-demand mesh networks in data-deficient areas to spread urgent weather warnings; Hotstar is working on offline media sharing for those times connectivity isn’t available, like on airplanes or subways; and GameInsight will use the API to find nearby players and to run entire games offline.

In addition, Android TV will get a new remote control app that will use Nearby Connections to make the initial setup process easier on end users, as well to enable new second screen experiences.

The API was previously available to early partners, but is now open to all Android developers, and works across all Android devices running Google Play services 11.0 and up.

Storing the energy produced from renewable sources is a significant challenge, and one that a number of players, including Tesla, are looking to address. Add Alphabet’s X (formerly Google X) to the list of those making an attempt: Its new Malta project is focused on building storage facilities that can support full-scale power grids.

The Malta project, described by Bloomberg, uses cold antifreeze and hot salt to store power, in a system designed to keep power in reserve for longer than lithium-ion batteries, which are what Tesla uses to keep its power using the commercial-scale Powerpack stations that populate installations like its Kauai-based facility.

Malta is another “moonshot” from the ambitious X lab, which also spawned initiatives like the self-driving car project at Google that became Alphabet, as well as Google Glass. It’s also been looking at a few different energy-focused projects, but Malta seems one of the more promising.

Here’s how it works: Two tanks get filled up with salt, and another two are filled with antifreeze (or a similar hydrocarbon liquid), and then the system takes in electricity generated by renewable sources like wind or solar. This is converted into both hot and cold air, which heats up the salt and cools down the antifreeze. Then, the process is reversed, with hot and cold air pushed towards each other and resulting in gusts of wind that move a turbine, generating usable electricity again for the grid.

This kind of thing is needed because renewable generation has typically had trouble dealing with peak and off hours of power consumption. A fuel-based power generation facility can spin up when the grid needs the power on-demand; solar and wind generate when nature makes it possible to do so, and the schedules don’t necessary line up with human use.

Rather than just discarding excess energy, and falling short during off-peak times, storage solutions like Malta and Tesla’s Powerpack allow generation at peak generation times, and distribution at peak consumption times. As governments and utilities globally look to invest more in renewable power generation, storage will be an increasingly valuable commodity.

Britain’s High Court has blocked an attempt by an Iraqi ex-general to prosecute former Prime Minister Tony Blair for invading Iraq in 2003.

General Abdulwaheed Shannan Al Rabbat’s case centred on the concept that a “crime of aggression” would be recognised under English law. But the High Court said that while the concept exists under international law, it does not exist in domestic law at present.

“Having formed the view that there is no prospect of the Supreme Court overturning the decision [by the lower court], it is our duty to refuse permission to bring the proceedings for judicial review,” it said.

The former army general’s lawyers said in a statement on Monday that the judgment “sets a dangerous precedent in times of global insecurity” and called on parliament to enact a law making accountability clear in the future.

The United States and Britain were part of a coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003, following accusations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.

Lawyers for Al Rabbat had argued that last year’s publication of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war had given new grounds to prosecute Blair.

The inquiry concluded that Blair’s government had decided to invade Iraq before exhausting peaceful options, used intelligence presented with a “certainty that was not justified”, and undermined the authority of the United Nations.

Following its publication, Blair admitted “mistakes in planning and process” but said he would take the same decision again.

Source: News agencies

Blogger Carsten Knobloch noticed the new feature earlier today, and TechCrunch also got it working. We tried it on a Google Pixel running the beta version of Android O, but the option didn’t show up on our end. A Google spokesperson noted the experimental nature of Canary and said that the ad-blocker was “part of our general approach of running experiments to test possible features that could provide users with the best experience on Chrome.”

As such, there’s zero guarantee that this ad-blocker shows up in more stable Chrome builds. But given the noise around Google’s intention to start blocking more “intrusive” ads, this little test is worth taking note of. Still, it’ll probably be a while before it rolls out in a wide fashion — the WSJ said last month that it likely wouldn’t arrive until 2018 to give sites and advertisers time to make sure their ads weren’t deemed intrusive.

An official charged with overseeing Kenya’s electronic voting system has been found dead just days before the August 8 presidential election, according to the commission’s chairman.

The body of Chris Msando, a top information technology manager at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), has been identified at the city morgue, Wafula Chebukati, IEBC chairperson, said on Monday.

“There was no doubt he was tortured and murdered. The only question in our mind is who [killed him] and why he was killed a few days to elections,” Chebukati told reporters.

Msando was declared missing over the weekend.

In an earlier statement, Chebukati said Msando was last seen on Friday night and sent a text message to a colleague early on Saturday morning suggesting “that he was conscious and fully aware of his itinerary for that day”.

A mortuary employee said Msando’s body was brought in by police on Saturday alongside that of a woman.

Both were naked and appeared to have been tortured before their bodies were dumped in a forest in Kiambu outside Nairobi.

It was unclear why it took 48 hours for the body to be identified.

READ MORE: Why Kenya’s presidential election on August 8 matters

Msando was in charge of a system of electronic voter identification and vote counting seen as crucial to avoid rigging, and was the second in command in the commission’s IT department.

A source close to the IEBC told AFP news agency that Msando had helped seal loopholes that could be used to manipulate vote tallies.

Msando’s death should be “urgently” investigated, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

“Msando’s killing comes as the electoral management body was due to audit its systems, a week away from the election day,” said the group’s Africa researcher Otsieno Namwaya.

Chebukati announced the cancellation of that audit after Msando’s killing.

Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi, reporting from Nairobi, said the death adds to the doubt cast on the upcoming election.

“This is just adding more doubt and more tension to the situation in the country ahead of the election. People want to know why he was killed, who would benefit most from his death and they want a very speedy investigation,” she said.

“And whatever happens, they want a credible and fair election.”

Mysterious attack

Msando’s death follows a mysterious attack at the home of deputy president William Ruto on Saturday in Eldoret northwest of Nairobi.

Police say a lone assailant killed one police officer, wounded another, then held off security forces for nearly 24 hours before being killed.

The race for the presidential polls between President Uhuru Kenyatta and longtime opposition leader Raila Odinga has been bad-tempered and tight.

Both sides have accused the other of underhanded tactics in the run-up to the polls, with the president saying Odinga is trying to divide the nation and provoke violence, and the opposition leader claiming Kenyatta plans to rig the poll.

Odinga’s opposition alliance NASA condemned the “heinous murder” of Msando, saying in a statement they were “gravely concerned” about its implications.

“That no effort was made to camouflage this killing as an accident shows the determination of the killers to send a chilling message that they will stop at nothing to ensure the outcome they desire,” read the statement.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

Apple today uploaded a new trailer for its upcoming original television show “Carpool Karaoke: The Series.” The new trailer, set to the song “On the Road Again,” teases several of the celebrities who will appear on the show.

“Carpool Karaoke: The Series,” which Apple purchased in mid-2016, is based on the popular Carpool Karaoke segment from “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” with James Corden, Ben Winston, and Eric Kankowski producing.

Apple’s new television show will feature 16 half-hour episodes featuring celebrity pairs riding in a car as they sing songs together. Each episode will feature a different host, with new content coming out on Thursdays.

Featured celebrities will include Will Smith and James Corden; Miley, Noah, Billy Ray and the entire Cyrus family; Shakira and Trevor Noah; Game of Thrones stars Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams; Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith; John Legend, Alicia Keys and Taraji P. Henson; LeBron James and James Corden; and more.

Apple plans to debut “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” on Tuesday, August 8 in more than 100 countries. It will be limited to Apple Music subscribers.

Convoys of buses are waiting to transfer thousands of Syrian fighters and refugees from Lebanon’s border region into rebel territory in Syria in exchange for Hezbollah prisoners.

Under a local ceasefire between the opposition fighters and Hezbollah, about 9,000 fighters and their relatives were to leave on Monday, in exchange for eight Hezbollah fighters held by the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front.

The first step of the ceasefire, brokered by Lebanon’s internal security agency, unfolded on Sunday as the two sides exchanged the bodies of dead fighters.

The deal includes the departure of all Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters from Lebanon’s border region around the town of Arsal, along with any civilians in nearby refugee camps who wish to go.

READ MORE: Hezbollah makes gains in Syria-Lebanon border assault

The truce echoes deals struck within Syria in which Damascus has shuttled rebels and civilians to Idlib province and other opposition areas. Such evacuations have helped President Bashar al-Assad recapture several rebel bastions over the past year.

Speaking from Labweh, a town near the Lebanese side of the border, Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab called the latest deal “unprecedented”.

“This is the first time that we’re seeing a deal which would see such a large number of Syrian refugees and fighters who are opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and have been in open conflict with Hezbollah and Lebanese forces, exit the area and go to another area in Syria,” he said.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has played a major role in fighting rebels along the frontier during Syria’s six-year war, sending thousands of combatants to support Assad’s government.

Last week, Hezbollah took most of the mountainous zone of Juroud Arsal in a joint offensive with the Syrian army to drive Jabhat Fateh al-Sham fighters from their last border foothold. 

The Lebanese army, which receives considerable US and British military support, did not take an active part in the operation, setting up defensive positions around Arsal.

The next phase is expected to target a nearby enclave currently in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The UN refugee agency, not involved in the deal, was trying to reach refugees in the Arsal region to evaluate whether returns were voluntary, spokeswoman Lisa Abou Khaled said.

“UNHCR believes that conditions for refugees to return in safety and dignity are not yet in place in Syria,” she said, with war continuing across large swaths of the country.

The multi-sided Syrian conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven at least 11 million from their homes – about half Syria’s prewar population.

Nearly 1.5 million refugees have poured into Lebanon and they now make up around a quarter of the country’s population. Most languish in severe poverty and several thousand live in makeshift camps east of Arsal.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

SoundCloud is on shaky financial footing, saying it only has enough money to last a few more months unless someone buys or invests in it. That’s sure to cause anxiety in content creators with their life’s work stored on SoundCloud. Now some new startups are nipping at SoundCloud’s heels by focusing on podcasting in ways the music streaming service never did.

Anchor is a fast-rising podcast app that layers community features on top of audio streaming. It lets creators record right from their phone and take talk show-style call-ins, while listeners can join in-app chat rooms to bond with fellow fans, and give digital ‘applause’ at their favorite moments.

But paying to podcast is so passé. Expensive hosting services like SoundCloud can charge $15 per month for unlimited uploads and downloads. So Anchor is looking to capitalize on SoundCloud’s moment of weakness.

Anchor today launches its podcast transition tool that lets anyone port their audio from another service like SoundCloud to Anchor’s free podcast hosting service. All you need to do is stick the RSS feed for your podcasts into Anchor, and it will download and store them all from SoundCloud, LibSyn or any other source. From there you can distribute your podcasts to iTunes, Google Play, and other outlets.

The transition tool is Anchor’s latest bid to grow into a podcasting powerhouse. Launched in 2015, Anchor has raised over $4.4 million from some big investors like Accel, BetaWorks, CrunchFund, HomeBrew, and SV Angel. The 10-person startup wants to take the mystery out of podcasting, as CEO Michael Mignano tells me “Our goal is to make it so you never even have to know anything about an RSS feed.”

For now, Anchor is completely free for everyone, but promises to cut podcasters in when it starts to earn money. “We strongly believe creators should be able to monetize their craft” says Mignano. Anchor may eventually generate revenue by appending ads to episodes, or offering subscriptions to premium podcasts.

Breaker is another top new podcast listening app, while PodBean and Buzzsprout are a few other affordable hosting options. Parking your podcasts on a fledgling startup may still be risky, but perhaps less worrisome than hosting on a damaged late-stage startup in danger of vaporizing if it can’t find money to make payroll.

This month TechCrunch spoke to several SoundCloud employees who pointed to broken business models and poor morale after the startup aggressively hired people up until the last minute when it layed off 40% of its staff. It needs someone to swoop in and invest around $100 million or acquire it to stay afloat.

“We’ve been hearing everything in the news and we obviously wish them the very best” Mignano said diplomatically as he kicks SoundCloud while it’s down. “What I can say is that there is a huge opportunity to make audio more interactive, more social, and more accessible, and we’re super excited to take that on.”

As SoundCloud crawls towards the cliff’s edge, out come the vultures.

Reportedly, at least one senior cyber security analyst working with Mandiant, a Virginia-based cybersecurity firm owned by the FireEye, appears to have had its system compromised by hackers, exposing his sensitive information on the Internet.

On Sunday, an anonymous group of hackers posted some sensitive details allegedly belonged to Adi Peretz, a ‎Senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Mandiant, claiming they have had complete access to the company’s internal networks since 2016.

The recent hack into Mandiant has been dubbed Operation #LeakTheAnalyst.

Further Leaks from Mandiant Might Appear

The hackers have leaked nearly 32 megabytes of data—both personal and professional—belonging to Peretz on Pastebin as proof, which suggests they have more Mandiant data that could be leaked in upcoming days.

“It was fun to be inside a giant company named “Mandiant” we enjoyed watching how they try to protect their clients and how their dumb analysts are trying to reverse engineer malware and stuff,” the Pastebin post reads. 

“This leak was just a glimpse of how deep we breached into Mandiant, we might publish more critical data in the future.”

Hackers dumped a treasure trove of sensitive information, which includes:

• Peretz’s Microsoft account login details
• Peretz’s Contacts
• Screenshots of the Windows Find My Device Geolocator, linked to Peretz’s Surface Pro laptop.
• Client correspondence
• Presentations
• Contents of his email inbox
• Several internal Mandiant and FireEye documents
• Threat intelligence profiles for the Israeli Defence Force (IDF)

Besides leaks, the anonymous hackers also reportedly broke into Peretz’s LinkedIn page and defaced it. His profile has since been deleted from the professional media network.

Although the motives behind the hack are not known at this moment, Mandiant has yet to comment on the incident.

In response to the leak, Mandiant’s parent company, FireEye issued a statement, blaming the employee’s social media accounts for the leak. The statement reads:

We are aware of reports that a Mandiant employee’s social media accounts were compromised. We immediately began investigating this situation, and took steps to limit further exposure. Our investigation continues, but thus far, we have found no evidence FireEye or Mandiant systems were compromised.

Last week, Apple released the firmware of its upcoming smart speaker, the HomePod. It sounds like it was pushed out a bit earlier than expected as it isn’t supposed to come out until later this year. Steve Troughton-Smith took advantage of that to find out that the next iPhone is going to feature facial recognition and a brand new “bezel-less” design.

Patents and previous rumors already hinted at facial recognition for the iPhone 8. Rumor has it that Apple could either replace or complement the Touch ID fingerprint sensor with a brand new facial recognition technology.

While facial recognition isn’t new, Steve Troughton-Smith found references to infra-red face unlock in BiometricKit, the framework behind Touch ID. Codenamed Pearl ID, the feature should let you unlock your iPhone in the dark, even if you’re looking at your phone from a weird angle with your face partially blocked.

If all of this is true, this should be quite a neat replacement for Touch ID. If Apple wants to replace Touch ID with something else, it has to be at least as accurate and fast as Touch ID. The main concern with facial recognition is that you have to hold your phone in front of your face in a brightly lit room.

It sounds like Apple is aware of that. Now let’s hope that it only takes a fraction of a second to unlock your phone as the current Touch ID sensor is incredibly fast. Rumor has it that Apple tried to embed the Touch ID sensor in the display itself. But it might not be ready for prime time just yet as Apple has to produce tens of millions of devices per year with this technology.

As for the design of the next iPhone, many reports, leaks and dummy devices indicate that Apple is working on a more powerful iPhone 7s as well as a brand new super premium phone. This rumored “iPhone 8” is going to feature a taller screen that is going to completely fill the front of the device, except for the speaker, camera and sensors at the top:

Guilherme Rambo‏ found an icon representing the upcoming iPhone in the HomePod firmware. The new phone is currently codenamed D22, and you can find this icon in the Apple Pay framework. It confirms previous leaks and the cutout at the top, but this time it’s coming straight from Apple’s servers.

You may remember that the MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar also leaked in the Apple Pay framework for macOS. If Apple follows its usual pattern, the company should reveal new iPhone models in early September.

It is not every day that you see one country hit by two cyclones in 24 hours. But how about two storms hitting two countries in 48 hours?

This is exactly what happened when Typhoon Nesat in the western Pacific and Tropical Storm Haitang in the South China Sea combined forces – and moved on similar paths towards Taiwan and then into China.

The first typhoon of the year made landfall on the northeastern coast of Taiwan on Saturday evening.

It crossed the island country in three hours and re-entered the Taiwan Strait as a weakened tropical storm, then made another landfall in Fujian Province of China where it rapidly weakened.

From the south, Tropical Storm Haitang made landfall on Sunday along the southerly coast of Taiwan. Then followed a similar path to Nesat, crossing the Strait and making landfall just to the north of its predecessor on Sunday.

Taiwan recorded some impressive rainfall totals of more than 1,000mm because of the two storms.

Flash flooding, mudslides, and widespread power outages were reported across much of the country.

The remnants of both storms have now combined and continue to bring rain to parts of southeastern China.

Ring, maker of the popular video doorbells and recently launched Floodlight Cam, is today announcing a new line of Spotlight Cams.

Similar in function to the Floodlight Cam but with a different lighting system, the new Spotlight Cam features LED light panels that automatically turn on when motion is detected, as well as a 1080p camera with night vision, two-way audio, and a 110 dB siren to let homeowners see activity around their homes and communicate with people who set foot on their property.

Wired model

The Ring Spotlight Cam will integrate with other Ring products through the Ring app to provide a complete security solution around the perimeter of the home.

Ring’s new Spotlight Cam is available in either black or white and will be available in three versions: Wired, Battery, and Solar. The Wired version includes a 270-degree horizontal motion detection angle, 140-degree camera field of view, and a 20-foot power cable. It is priced at $199 and is available to order today with shipments starting in 7–10 days.

Solar model

The Battery ($199) and Solar ($229) versions have a narrower 160-degree motion detection angle but the same 140-degree camera field of view as the wired version. The Battery and Solar models each come with a single 6000 mAh battery pack, but the light itself can hold two battery packs for maximum battery life. Extra battery packs are priced at $29 each. The Solar model comes with a Ring Solar Panel to keep the battery packs charged at all times. The Battery and Solar models are available for pre-order today and will begin shipping in the fall.

More than 100 Indian military veterans have condemned the targeting of Muslims and low-caste Dalits over suspicions of beef consumption and cattle slaughter in an open letter to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister.

The letter sent to Modi and state chief ministers over the weekend and released on Monday spoke of a climate of fear and intimidation perpetuated by Hindu cow-protection vigilante groups in the country.

“What is happening in our country today strikes at all that the armed forces, and indeed what our constitution, stands for,” the letter signed by 114 veterans and sent by email said.

“We are witness to unprecedented attacks on society at large by the relentless vigilantism of self-appointed protectors of Hinduism.”

OPINION: What is behind India’s epidemic of ‘mob lynching’?

The veterans condemned the targeting of Muslims and Dalits as well as what they called the clampdowns on free speech through a campaign of “anti-national” branding.

“We can no longer look away. We would be doing a disservice to our country if we do not stand up and speak for the liberal and secular values that our constitution espouses,” the letter added, demanding action against such groups.”

India’s Hindu majority regard the cow as holy, and their slaughter is banned in several Indian states.

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, there have been increasing incidents of mob violence and lynchings targeting Muslims and Dalits for whom beef and buffalo meat are a staple food.

‘Cow vigilantes’

In May 2017, two Muslim men suspected of stealing cows died of injuries sustained after being assaulted by villagers in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, according to local police.

In June, about 20 men attacked four Muslims on a train in the outskirts of New Delhi, fatally stabbing a teenager and seriously injuring two others.

The Indian government had placed a nationwide ban on the sale and purchase of cattle for slaughter at animal markets in May, which was later suspended by the Supreme Court. 

Critics accuse far-right Hindu groups, some linked to the BJP, of fomenting or not doing enough to stop violence against Muslims and lower-caste Hindus who eat beef or work in the meat and leather industries.

Modi denies the accusation and has publicly criticised so-called cow vigilantes.

In another development on Monday, the Indian parliament witnessed a debate on the violence, with Mallikarjun Kharge, an opposition leader, accusing the Modi government of indirectly supporting the Hindu far right.

“Violence in the name of protecting cows is not stopping,” he said. “The entire country is living in fear and there is an atmosphere of terror.

READ MORE: India’s battle over buffalo meat

“It is shameful that the government is incapable of taking any action.”

The Not In My Name campaign was launched across India in June to protest against the wave of attacks on Muslims by mobs.

According to data analytic website India Spend, 97 percent of attacks related to cow vigilantism since 2010 were reported after the BJP came to power in 2014.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies