Thursday, December 5, 2013

Six In The Morning Thursday December 5

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

By Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, Thursday, December 5, 5:18 AM E-mail the writer

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.

The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool.

The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result.

Cricket Australia apologises for ‘racist’ Monty Panesar Teletubbies tweet

The associations posted a picture of four Sikh men with the message: ‘Will the real Monty Panesar please stand up?!’

The image was published by the association’s official Twitter feed, which has more than 250,000 followers and has been posting regular coverage of the Ashes this year.

The message was deleted shortly afterwards, and followed up with an apology which read: “We apologise for any offence caused by our earlier tweet. That was certainly not the intention. It has been removed.”

The original post had already been circulated by other users, and was seen by the presenter and journalist Piers Morgan, who said: “Will someone please get fired for this?”

Protests and government threats grow as Ukraine turmoil deepens

Former presidents Kravchuk, Kuchma and Yushchenko back demonstrators after Kiev’s rejection of EU deal

Daniel McLaughlin in Kiev

Ukraine’s crisis has deepened with a widening of anti-government protests and threats from officials to severely punish demonstrators who continue to block state buildings.

Amid calls from the European Union, United States and Nato for a peaceful resolution to the turmoil, three former Ukrainian presidents expressed support for protesters, who are furious at the government’s postponement of a historic deal with EU and the brutality of riot police in Kiev.

There was no sign of protests subsiding last night, as thousands of people gathered again on Independence Square and reinforced barricades around the area.

Pakistani CIA Informant: 'Drone Attacks Are the Right Thing to Do'

An Interview By Hasnain Kazim

A Pakistani who works as an operative for the CIA spoke to SPIEGEL about his motives for helping the Americans, the civilian casualties of drone attacks and his fear of the Taliban.

Intelligence operative Mohammed Hassan (*) cancelled prearranged meetings several times. He called us from a different phone each time, never offering a reason, merely saying: "I unfortunately can't make it." But then he suddenly turned up in a small, inconspicuous hotel in Karachi. A short man with a salt-and-pepper beard, Hassan arrived wearing a white turban and a white shalwar kameez, a knee-length shirt and cotton pants. Hassan works for the CIA.

He provides data and information for the Americans' drone missions in the Pakistani tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. He lives there and is of Pashtun ethnicity. He says that he has decided to talk because if he didn't, he would drive himself crazy, and because the whole world is critical of the drone attacks -- and in his perception, this makes the world critical of his actions, too. "However, I feel that this weapon is the right tool in the fight against extremists," he says.

Clashes erupt as militia enter Central African Republic capital

Reuters | 05 December, 2013 10:33

Heavy and small arms fire rang out in the capital of Central African Republic on Thursday, the heaviest clashes in Bangui for months, hours before a UN vote is due to authorise a French mission to restore order.

Former rebels controlling the city scrambled fighters in the direction of the gunfire and said they had come under attack from local militia and fighters loyal to ousted President Francois Bozize. In the pre-dawn hours, panicked residents scrambled for safety.

The UN Security Council is due to vote later on Thursday on dispatching French reinforcements to restore order in the country, which has slipped into chaos since mainly Muslim rebels seized power in March, leading to tit-for-tat sectarian violence.

“There has been gunfire all over town,” Amy Martin, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bangui, told Reuters.

Can UNESCO save traditional Japanese cuisine?

Japanese cuisine is up for distinction as a UNESCO intangible cultural asset at a time when Japanese diets are becoming more Western, posing challenges for its culture and its economy.

By Schuyler Velasco, Staff writer

TOKYO

This week, the UN will decide whether to award traditional Japanese cuisine, called Washoku, distinction as an intangible cultural asset at a meeting in Azerbaijan.

From a global standpoint, the benefits of UNESCO recognition are clear. Aside from French cusine, Washoku would become the only national cuisine to be named a cultural asset. (Mexico’s traditional dishes are listed, as well as individual food-related elements from certain countries, like Viennese coffeehouse culture in Austria or the Mediterranean diet in Greece.) Globally, it gives an extra sense of legitimacy to Japanese food’s rising popularity over the past two decades at a time when the government is looking to boost exports – the Abe administration wants to double Japanese exports by 2020.

Ignoring Asia