One in three UN employees say they were sexually harassed in last two years

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told staff in a letter that the study contained “some sobering statistics and evidence of what needs to change” to improve the workplace at the United Nations

International News: A third of United Nations employees have reported experiencing sexual harassment at the world body over the last two years, according to the findings of the first-ever survey on such misconduct released Tuesday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told staff in a letter that the study contained “some sobering statistics and evidence of what needs to change” to improve the workplace at the United Nations.

One in three respondents, or 33 per cent, reported at least one instance of sexual harassment in the past two years, but that figure climbed to 38.7 per cent for those who reported some form of sexual harassment during their time at the United Nations.

The most common type of sexual harassment were sexual stories or jokes that were offensive, or offensive remarks about appearance, body or sexual activities.

UN employees were also targeted for unwelcome attempts to draw them into discussion about sexual matters, offensive gestures and touching, according the survey carried out by Deloitte in November…

Contain Source: Business Standard or BS

Alexa & Siri can hear this command. You can't

Researchers can now send secret audio instructions undetectable to the human ear

 

Many people have grown accustomed to talking to their smart devices, asking them to read a text, play a song or set an alarm. But someone else might be secretly talking to them, too.

Over the past two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetectable to the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant. Inside university labs, the researchers have been able to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to unlock doors, wire money or buy stuff online — simply with music playing over the radio.

A group of students from University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University showed in 2016 that they could hide commands in white noise played over loudspeakers and through YouTube videos to get smart devices to turn on airplane mode or open a website.

This month, some of those Berkeley researchers published a research paper that went further, saying they could embed commands directly into recordings of music or spoken text. So while a human listener hears someone talking or an orchestra playing, Amazon’s Echo speaker might hear an instruction to add something to your shopping list.

“We wanted to see if we could make it even more stealthy,” said Nicholas Carlini, a fifth-year PhD student in computer security at U C Berkeley and one of the paper’s authors.

Carlini added that while there was no evidence that these techniques have left the lab, it may only be a matter of time before someone starts exploiting them.

These deceptions illustrate how artificial intelligence — even as it is making great strides — can still be tricked and manipulated. Computers can be fooled into identifying an airplane as a cat just by changing a few pixels of a digital image, while researchers can make a self-driving car swerve or speed up simply by pasting small stickers on road signs and confusing the vehicle’s computer vision system.

With audio attacks, the researchers are exploiting the gap between human and machine speech recognition. Speech recognition systems typically translate each sound to a letter, eventually compiling those into words and phrases. By making slight changes to audio files, researchers were able to cancel out the sound that the speech recognition system was supposed to hear and replace it with a sound that would be transcribed differently by machines while being nearly undetectable to the human ear.

The proliferation of voice-activated gadgets amplifies the implications of such tricks. Smartphones and smart speakers that use digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri are set to outnumber people by 2021, (Technology)according to the research firm Ovum. And more than half of all American households will have at least one smart speaker by then, according to Juniper Research.

Amazon said that it doesn’t disclose specific security measures, but it has taken steps to ensure its Echo smart speaker is secure. Google said security is an ongoing focus and that its Assistant has features to mitigate undetectable audio commands. Apple said its smart speaker, HomePod, is designed to prevent commands from doing things like unlocking doors, and it noted that iPhones and iPads must be unlocked before Siri will act on commands that access sensitive data or open apps and websites, among other measures.

The technique, which the Chinese researchers called DolphinAttack, can instruct smart devices to visit malicious websites, initiate phone calls, take a picture or send text messages. While DolphinAttack has its limitations, experts warned that more powerful ultrasonic systems were possible.

That warning was borne out in April, when researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated ultrasound attacks from 25 feet away. While the commands couldn’t penetrate walls, they could control smart devices through open windows from outside a building.

Carlini said he was confident that in time he and his colleagues could mount successful adversarial attacks against any smart device system on the market.

FB scandal: It was my mistake and am sorry, Zuckerberg tells US Senate

Zuckerberg traversed Capitol Hill on Monday surrounded by police and trailed by packs of reporters ahead of his scheduled appearance before three congressional committees

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg swapped his trademark T-shirt and jeans for a dark suit and a purple tie on Monday as he met U.S. lawmakers to apologize for the social network's misuse of its members' data and to head off possible regulation.

His apologies precede two days of congressional hearings this week, where Zuckerberg will be asked how 87 million Facebook users' data was improperly shared with a political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica.

He will also likely face questions about ads and posts placed by Russian operatives, in what U.S. authorities believe was an attempt to influence the U.S. 2016 election.

"We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake," he said in written remarks released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday. "It was my mistake, and I'm sorry."

If Zuckerberg does not provide satisfactory answers this week, Congress is more likely to push new laws to strictly regulate Facebook. Anticipating such a move, the company has already said it favors new legislation that would make social networks disclose who is behind political ads, much as TV and radio stations must already do.

Tighter regulation of how Facebook uses its members' data could affect its ability to attract advertising revenue, its lifeblood. Facebook shares closed up 0.5 percent on Monday. They are still down almost 17 percent from highs hit in January, amid a broader tech selloff, partly because of investor concerns about regulation.

PRIVACY ISSUES

Zuckerberg traversed Capitol Hill on Monday surrounded by police and trailed by packs of reporters ahead of his scheduled appearance before three congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Zuckerberg held meetings with the top Republican and Democratic senators on the Commerce and Judiciary committees that will question him on Tuesday in a joint meeting. He faces further grilling from the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

On Monday, he was pictured in one photo showing his mobile device to Senator Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee. He did not respond to questions from reporters as he entered and left the building.

Nelson told reporters after the meeting: “The message I wanted to convey to him is that if we don't rein in the use of social media, none of us are going to have any privacy anymore." He met Senator John Thune, the Commerce Committee's Republican chairman, later in the day. He also met Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican chairman, and the leading Democrat on that committee, Dianne Feinstein.

Top of the agenda in this week's hearings will be Facebook's dealings with Cambridge Analytica, a London-based company that counts U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign among its past clients, or go-betweens. Cambridge Analytica has disputed Facebook's estimate of the number of affected users.

Lawmakers are also expected to press Zuckerberg closely on the 2016 election, which he anticipated in his written testimony.

"It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm..." he said. "That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy."

Zuckerberg's testimony said the company was "too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference, and we're working hard to get better." He vowed to make improvements, adding it would take time, but he was "committed to getting it right." Facebook disclosed in September that Russians under fake names had used the social network to try to influence U.S. voters in the months before and after the 2016 election, writing about inflammatory subjects, setting up events and buying ads.

In February, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies with interfering in the election by sowing discord on social media.

The company's data practices are under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Click here : Mark zuckerberg

'Flying taxis' by 2020? Uber strikes deal with Nasa to make it a reality

Uber had previously unveiled its plans to introduce flying taxi fleets, known as uberAIR, reported CNN

 

 

Uber is a step closer in making its flying taxi plans a reality as it has signed a deal with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop an air traffic management system.

Uber said at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon that it signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA for the development of "unmanned traffic management."

Uber had previously unveiled its plans to introduce flying taxi fleets, known as uberAIR, reported CNN.

Uber is already testing another emerging technology, self-driving cars, in various cities around the country, according to the reports.(technology news)

This is the start-up's first partnership with a U.S. federal government agency.

Uber's partnership is part of NASA's Space Act Agreement, a consortium of industry players working to ensure "safe and efficient operations" of its taxis and other small unmanned aerial systems flying at low altitudes.

Uber plans to trial the project in Los Angeles in 2020 along with the already announced cities Dallas and Dubai, the company said.

It is also hopeful of having commercial operations ready in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the report added.

Rohingya crisis: Return of 'displaced persons' only solution, says Swaraj

India's External Affairs Minister spoke on the issue during her two-day visit to Bangladesh

 

India is "deeply concerned" at the spate of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State where normalcy will be restored only with the return of "displaced persons", External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Sunday said amidst the raging Rohingya refugee crisis.

Nearly 600,000 minority Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since late August to escape violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State where the army has launched a crackdown against militants.

Myanmar doesn't recognise Rohingya as an ethnic group and insists that they are Bangladeshi migrants living illegally in the country.(economy news)

Bangladesh has sought India's "sustained pressures" on Myanmar for its resolution.

"India is deeply concerned at the spate of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State," Swaraj said after talks with the Bangladeshi side as part of the fourth Joint Consultative Commission.

She, however, preferred not to use the word "Rohingya" and said: "We have urged that the situation be handled with restraint, keeping in mind the welfare of the population."

Swaraj is on a two-day visit to Bangladesh at the invitation of Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali.

"It is clear that normalcy will only be restored with the return of the displaced persons to Rakhine state.....read more

Harvey Weinstein fired after harassment allegations

Weinstein, known for aggressive awards campaigns that led to Oscars for movies like 'Shakespeare in Love'

Weinstein, the Oscar-winning movie studio, fired co-founder and guiding creative force Harvey Weinstein, just days after he stepped away from the company over allegations of sexual harassment stretching back decades.

Weinstein, 65, had taken a leave of absence from the company he started with his brother Robert after the New York Times said he had reached settlements with at least eight women claiming to have been harassed by him. Among those were at least three employees and an unidentified actress, the Times said.

“In light of new information about misconduct by Harvey Weinstein that has emerged in the past few days” the board informed “Weinstein that his employment is terminated, effective immediately,” the company said in an email Sunday.

The one-sentence statement culminated a swift fall for the longtime movie mogul and marked a new period of uncertainty for the company, which has struggled financially despite its artistic accolades. The independent studio is being led by co-Chairman Robert Weinstein and Chief Operating Officer David Glasser.

Weinstein, known for aggressive awards campaigns that led to Oscars for movies like “Shakespeare in Love,” denied many of the allegations and told the New York Post the report was unfair. Three board members at New York-based Weinstein resigned Friday, according to Deadline. The remaining directors —Robert Weinstein, Lance Maerov, Richard Koenigsberg and Tarak Ben Ammar—hired outside lawyers to investigate the allegations.

Pak responds to US, says ISI's 'links' with terrorists not same as support

After US' Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the ISI has links to terrorists, Pak attempted to defend itself by claiming that having links with such groups was not the same as supporting them

Pakistan's military establishment on Thursday attempted to draw a distinction between its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency "having links" with militant organisations and "supporting" such outfits, the Pakistan daily Dawn reported.

In a wide-ranging conference that saw the country's powerful military establishment discuss security issues, including internal security, civil-military relations, and relations with India, Afghanistan, and the US, the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, hit out against allegations that the ISI has tied with militant organisations.

"Having links is different from supporting. Name any intelligence agency which does not have links. Links can be positive, and he [US Defence Secretary James Mattis] did not say there was support, so the narrative [against Pakistan's army and intelligence agencies] that I talked about is relevant here as well. We should not be a part of it. We have our own narrative," Ghafoor said, according to Dawn.

ALSO READ: Economic benefits for Pak from India if it ends terror safe haven: Mattis

Ghafoor's attempt at differentiating "links" from "support" came even as the country's civilian establishment, stung by remarks from US officials, sought to defend the ISI.

According to agency reports that cited Dawn, the Pakistani Foreign Office on Thursday refuted as "baseless" the remarks of a top US general who said the ISI has connections with terrorist groups.

"The US government and army cannot make Pakistan a scapegoat for its failures in Afghanistan," Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said....read more

Amazon Fire TV Stick: All that you need to know

The streaming device market is hotting up with Amazon launching Fire TV Stick in India

 

Watching streaming content has caught on big time in India. Hotstar started streaming IPL two years ago and had a viewership of 41 million which crossed 100 million in 2016 and in the latest edition of the T20 Cricket tournament, Star is targeting a viewership of more than 130 million on its platform, Hotstar.

It is this market that companies are rushing to corner. While Airtel launched its “internet tv” device last week, Google’s Chromecast has been around for longer.

The latest entrant in this field is Amazon with its Fire TV Stick being launched in India today. 

What does Fire TV Stick do?

The Fire Stick TV is a HDMI stick that converts a tv into a smart tv. It plugs into the tv’s HDMI port and allows wireless streaming of content.

What are the tech specs like?

Fire TV stick runs a MediaTek Quad-core processor clocking at 1.3GHz, 1GB RAM and Mali450 graphics. It is a complete media player in itself and does not need a laptop or a phone to play content. Unlike Google Chromecast, it is not just a connectivity device between phones, laptops and tv sets. It runs on Android operating system with Amazon’s custom interface loaded on it.

What content can we get on the Fire TV Stick?

The stick comes preloaded with apps like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube etc. One can play content on these apps using the stick itself.

In India, the stick also carries Voot, NDTV, Hotstar, Sony Liv, Gaana on it.

Amazon Prime subscribers already get complimentary access to Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime membership can be purchased for just Rs 499 per annum.| READ MORE..

Trump needs a brain

The dearth of Trumpists in official Washington was always going to be a major problem

 

The series of columns I’ve been writing lately, floating implausible proposals for an ideologically unstable age, has been a useful way of avoiding the depressing subject of the Trump administration’s first 100 days — because really, in the face of such incompetence and chaos, what is there to say?

But precisely because this administration seems so hopeless, any constructive advice for the Trump White House automatically falls into the category of implausible ideas. So I can continue my ongoing series while also talking about Donald Trump — by proposing, as this week’s unlikely-to-happen proposal, that our president should go out and get himself a brain.

I do not mean a vat-grown cerebral cortex cooked up in some underground anti-aging lab funded by Silicon Valley immortalists … though I gather those may be soon available as well. I mean a brain in the sense that people (unkindly, but not inaccurately) used the term to describe Bill Kristol when he was the aide-de-camp to Vice President Dan Quayle 25 years ago: a person, or better a group of persons, who can tell Trump what specific policies he ought to support.

Because a core weakness of this White House, more devastating (for now) than the pugilistic tweets and permanent swirl of scandal, is the absence of anyone who seems to have thought through how one might translate Trumpism, the populist nationalism on which the president campaigned, into substantive policy on any specific issue except a temporary visa freeze.

The dearth of Trumpists in official Washington was always going to be a major problem for this administration, both in staffing the White House and in negotiating with Congress. But it’s been worse than anticipated, because Trump himself doesn’t know what he wants to do on major issues and there’s nobody in his innermost circle who seems to have a compelling vision that might guide him......READ MORE