New Zealand aims for a smoke-free country with 40% tobacco tax hike

New Zealand’s government on Thursday announced a 40% hike in tobacco taxes over the next four years. Prices here are already among the highest in the world, and by 2016 they will top NZ$20 ($15) a pack on average.

Smoking rates among New Zealand adults have fallen from about 30% in 1986 to about 20% today. Cigarette sales have fallen more sharply, suggesting that even people who haven’t quit cut back as prices rose.

Officials hope higher taxes and new restrictions will bring the nation of 4.4 million closer to a recent pledge to snuff out the habit entirely by 2025. Other countries have lauded the idea of trying to wean their populace off tobacco, but few, if any, have been willing to put a date on it.

Health officials here are so serious they recently considered hiking the cost of a pack of cigarettes to NZ$100 ($75). Although that idea was dismissed, another measure, which will force retailers to hide cigarettes below the counter rather than putting them on display, will come into effect in July.

People who are still smoking aren’t happy about where prices are going.
 
The South Pacific nation’s smoking statistics are similar to those in other developed countries. According to a 2011 study by the World Health Organization, about 20% of adult New Zealanders smoke. That compares to about 16% of adults in the U.S., 17% in Australia, 23% in China and 27% in France.

New Zealand already charges more than 70% tax on cigarettes, compared to 41% on average for China, 45% on average for the U.S., 64% for Australia and 80% for France.

HP confirms cuts of 27,000 jobs

HEWLETT-PACKARD plans to jettison 27,000 workers as the growing popularity of smartphones, the iPad and other mobile devices makes it tougher for the company to sell personal computers.

HP CEO Meg Whitman confirmed the cuts which were rumoured last week in a statement released overnight.

The cuts announced overnight represent HP's largest payroll purge in its 73-year history. The reductions will affect about 8 per cent of HP's nearly 350,000 employees by the time the overhaul is completed in October 2014.

HP hopes to avoid as many layoffs as possible by offering early retirement packages.

The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, expects to save as much as $US3.5 billion annually from the job cuts and other austerity measures.

HP CEO Meg Whitman plans to funnel most of the savings into developing more products and services that could help the company adapt to technological shifts that are driving demand for more mobile computing and software that is provided over high-speed Internet connections.

"While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company," Whitman said in a statement.

Sugar can make you dumb

LOS ANGELES — Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brainpower, according to U.S. scientists who published a study showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats’ memories.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) fed two groups of rats a solution containing high-fructose corn syrup—a common ingredient in processed foods—as drinking water for six weeks.

One group of rats was supplemented with brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), while the other group was not.

Before the sugar drinks began, the rats were enrolled in a five-day training session in a complicated maze. After six weeks on the sweet solution, the rats were then placed back in the maze to see how they fared.

“The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier.”

While the study did not say what the equivalent might be for a human to consume as much high-fructose corn syrup as the rats did, researchers said it provides some evidence that metabolic syndrome can affect the mind as well as the body.

The study appeared in the Journal of Physiology.

Half of killed women victims of 'their man'

(Germany) Nearly half of the women killed in the country are considered to have been victims of their boyfriend or husband – a far greater figure than the share of men killed by their partners, new police figures show.

The German federal police (BKA) figures, obtained by daily newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung, show that of the 313 women killed in 2011, police named the husband, boyfriend or ex-partner as the prime suspect in 154 cases.
Of these suspects, 100 were married to the victim, 27 were their partner and a further 27 were a former partner.
Reverse the roles, though, and the statistics told a very different story. Of the 349 men who fell victim to murder or manslaughter in 2011, just 24 were believed to have been attacked by their female partner.
In 16 of these 24 cases, the suspect was the man's wife. Seven times it was a girlfriend or boyfriend and in one case it was the victim's same-sex civil partner.
Experts researching violent behaviour have taken the new figures as further proof that women predominantly experience violence in their own home, and often from their male partner, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

A separate study carried out by the country’s women's ministry showed that out of the 10,000 German women they asked, a quarter had experienced physical violence from their husband, partner or ex and 1 in 17 of the women had been subjected to severe physical or psychological abuse.

Nearly 700 arrested in Canada student protests

Police made 518 more arrests in Montreal and more than 200 more were arrested at protests in Quebec City and Sherbrookeon on Thursday morning after nightly student protests turned violent again amid police "kettling."

Thousands of protesters continued to defy the controversial new law, passed last week, requiring any protest group of more than 50 people to advise police eight hours in advance.

Police declared the protest illegal but allowed it to proceed peacefully for several hours. According to reports, the violence started when riot police began "kettling" demonstrators -- surrounding them and cutting off their exit -- and students began throwing rocks. Toronto police were criticized for kettling protesters during the G20 summit in June 2010.

Police said they will lay fines and criminal charges.

The longest student strike in Quebec's history -- now 102 days old -- has morphed from student unrest over increased tuition fees to general dissatisfaction with Premier Jean Charest's nine-year-old Liberal government.

Leo Bureau-Blouin, president of the moderate FECQ student group, said Wednesday he's ready to negotiate an end to the strike.

"The Charest government has chosen the track of repression rather than the track of discussion," he told reporters.

The government says student leaders are unwilling to budge on their position against tuition hikes.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested during the three-month strike, including more than 700 in the past five days since Charest's government began legislating attempts to end the violence.

About 30% of Quebec students have been on strike since Feb. 14, and the movement has garnered support from around the world. (Torontosun.com)

Solar Impulse Plane Begins First Transcontinental Flight

GENEVA -- An experimental solar-powered airplane took off from Switzerland on its first transcontinental flight Thursday, aiming to reach North Africa next week.

Pilot Andre Borschberg planned to take the jumbo jet-size Solar Impulse plane on its first leg to Madrid, Spain, by Friday. His colleague Bertrand Piccard will take the helm of the aircraft for the second stretch of its 2,500-kilometer (1,554-mile) journey to the Moroccan capital Rabat.

Fog on the runaway at its home base in Payerne, Switzerland, delayed the take off by two hours, demonstrating how susceptible the prototype single-seater aircraft is to adverse weather.

"We can't fly into clouds because it was not designed for that," Borschberg said as he piloted the lumbering plane with its 63-meter (207-foot) wingspan toward the eastern French city of Lyon at a cruising speed of just 70 kilometers an hour (43.5 mph).

Before landing in Madrid in the early hours of Friday, Borschberg will face other challenges, including having to overfly the Pyrenees mountains that separate France and Spain.

Just in case things go disastrously wrong, Borschberg has a parachute inside his tiny cabin that he hopes never to use. "When you take an umbrella it never rains," he joked in a satellite call with The Associated Press.

Boy dies after 'fight' at school

A teenager has been charged with assaulting a boy who died after an alleged fight at a Glasgow school.
Euan Craig, 14, was injured at Rosshall Academy in the Crookston area of the city at about 11:45 on Wednesday. He died in hospital on Thursday.

At Glasgow Sheriff Court, a 14-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was charged with assault to severe injury and the danger of life.
He made no plea or declaration and was released on bail.
The teenager made his appearance in private. The case was continued.

In a statement released through Glasgow City Council, the school's headteacher Alison Mitchell said:
"The whole school community obviously feels a deep sense of grief and our thoughts are with his family at this devastating time.
"We are doing everything that we can to support all of our young people and staff."

Headline May 25th, 2012 / The Master Hunter of France

THE MASTER 'HUNTER' OF FRANCE

Respectful dedication to all students of the world !

Arno Klarsfeld looks a Film Star. He glows where he stands! BUt this glow could so easily be one of his missions true attributes. The one of final judgement!!! Arno Klarsfeld is the last of Nazi Hunters !!! So, lest I write any further let me deeply thank !WOW! for uncovering this splendid piece of research for International delight. Arno Klarsfeld has many memories. Some for sure are nightmarish. Take the one from 1969 in Germany. He was 3 years old and he was being carried by his mother, his arms around her shoulders, on the street outside a building where a political convention was being held. His mother was demonstrating. She had her right arm thrust into the air and she was chanting a slogan while the news camera recorded the event. Arno still remembers what she was shouting : "Kiesenger Nazi. Kiesenger Resign!" There's a yellowing photograph of the incident, from a right wing newspaper of the era. The photo is captioned. "Die Schlechte Erziehungder Jungere Klarsfeld" - The bad education of the young Klarsfeld. There are other memories too, other instances of her 'bad education'. There is the memory of his young German mother, Beate Klarsfeld, slapping the face of the then Chancellor Kurt - George Kiesenger, of a former official of the Nazi government in the name of 'the youth of Germany'

and then there is the memory of his French father Serge Klarsfeld visiting the ruins of Auschwitz death camp where Arno's grandfather died in the holocaust. That Serge and Beate Klarsfeld - him a French jew and she a German Christian - were among the most famous of the post war Nazi hunters meant little to Arno then.  He went to Lycee and university and then joined the French Bar. He went to New York University, then passed the New York and California Bar Exams.With these credentials he became an International business lawyer and worked in Wall Street. While Arno was growing up, his parents were continuing their lives' work. They successfully agitated for changes in the law, in France and in Germany, that would make it easier to prosecute war criminals. They flew to Syria to press for the extradition of Allois Brunner, who was one the deputy commander of the Drancy Concetration Camp in France. And who organised numerous deportations, where they were arrested by the Syrian police. They discovered Klaus Barbie, the former Lyons Gestapo Commander, in hiding in South America and succeeded in having him extradited to France, where Serge led the team tht successfully prosecuted him. Don't miss morrow's nerve-wrecking headline post.  Good night and God bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice of the Voiceless !

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Why Women Leave Academia And Why Universities Should be Worried

Young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men for three reasons. During their time as PhD candidates, large numbers of women conclude that (i) the characteristics of academic careers are unappealing, (ii) the impediments they will encounter are disproportionate, and (iii) the sacrifices they will have to make are great.

This is the conclusion of The chemistry PhD: the impact on women's retention, a report for the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this report, the results of a longitudinal study with PhD students in chemistry in the UK are presented.

Men and women show radically different developments regarding their intended future careers. At the beginning of their studies, 72% of women express an intention to pursue careers as researchers, either in industry or academia. Among men, 61% express the same intention.

By the third year, the proportion of men planning careers in research had dropped from 61% to 59%. But for the women, the number had plummeted from 72% in the first year to 37% as they finish their studies.

If we tease apart those who want to work as researchers in industry from those who want to work as researchers in academia, the third year numbers are alarming: 12% of the women and 21% of the men see academia as their preferred choice.

This is not the number of PhD students who in fact do go to academia; it's the number who want to. 88% of the women don't even want academic careers, nor do 79% of the men! How can it be this bad? Why are universities such unattractive workplaces?

Part of The chemistry PhD discusses problems that arise while young researchers are PhD candidates, including too little supervision, too much supervision, focus on achieving experimental results rather than mastery of methodologies, and much more. The long-term effects, though, are reflected in the attitudes and beliefs about academia that emerge during this period.

The participants in the study identify many characteristics of academic careers that they find unappealing: the constant hunt for funding for research projects is a significant impediment for both men and women. But women in greater numbers than men see academic careers as all-consuming, solitary and as unnecessarily competitive.

Both men and women PhD candidates come to realise that a string of post-docs is part of a career path, and they see that this can require frequent moves and a lack of security about future employment. Women are more negatively affected than men by the competitiveness in this stage of an academic career and their concerns about competitiveness are fuelled, they say, by a relative lack of self-confidence.

Women more than men see great sacrifice as a prerequisite for success in academia. This comes in part from their perception of women who have succeeded, from the nature of the available role models. Successful female professors are perceived by female PhD candidates as displaying masculine characteristics, such as aggression and competitiveness, and they were often childless.

As if all this were not enough, women PhD candidates had one experience that men never have. They were told that they would encounter problems along the way simply because they are women. They are told, in other words, that their gender will work against them.

By following PhD candidates throughout their study and asking probing questions, we learn not only that the number of women in chemistry PhD programs who intend to pursue a career in academia falls dramatically, but we learn why. (See also Why go for a PhD? Advice for those in doubt.)

This research and the new knowledge it produces should be required reading for everyone leading a university or a research group. The stories surely apply far beyond chemistry. Remember that it's not just women who find academia unappealing. Only 21% of the men wanted to head our way, too.

Universities will not survive as research institutions unless university leadership realises that the working conditions they offer dramatically reduce the size of the pool from which they recruit.


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Nearly 700 arrested in Canada Student Protests: Police

Nearly 700 people were arrested overnight in rowdy demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec over a planned hike in student tuition fees with rocks being hurled at police, a spokesman said Thursday.

Police in Montreal had said the unsanctioned protest would be tolerated if there was no trouble but after some unruly behavior around midnight they moved in and arrested 518 demonstrators. Another 170 people were detained in Quebec. All were issued with a more-than $600 fine and released on Thursday morning, the police spokesman said.

Several thousand demonstrators had poured into Montreal's central square late Wednesday for the rally, defying a law passed last week requiring organizers to notify authorities eight hours ahead of public demonstrations.

Of those arrested in Montreal, 506 were held for unlawful assembly but among the other 12 detentions one person was held for "armed aggression," two others for assaulting police, and one more was detained for wearing a mask. Protesters said they were handcuffed and their arms held behind their back, local media reported.

Demonstrations have raged in Montreal since mid-February over a plan by provincial Premier Jean Charest to raise tuition fees at Quebec universities by 82 percent to rein in a budget deficit.

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Catholic School Board Considers Naming Province’s First Ombudsman

The Toronto Catholic District School Board could become the first Ontario school board to have an ombudsman, if trustees vote in favour of a proposed motion Thursday night.


Such a move would go a long way to repair the board’s previous poor image in public accountability, says trustee Jo-Ann Davis who has championed the motion. TCDSB was plagued by charges of conflict of interests and spending scandals that prompted Queen’s Park to seize control of its finances from June 2008 to January 2011.

“It would be quite a turnaround for us to be a school board under supervision to one that’s leading the province in accountability,” Ms. Davis said. She said she has heard of several parents who want access to an independent voice to appeal issues and help cut through the bureaucratic red tape.

The motion calls for an ombudsman appointed and paid by the board, with a potential background in education and law, on a two-year full-time contract. The ombudsman would report annually to trustees and investigate any disputes and claims affecting students, parents and staff.

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Student pleads guilty to threat on Obama

MIAMI - A college student pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to threatening in a Facebook post to kill President Barack Obama by putting "a bullet through his head."

Joaquin Amador Serrapio, 20, had pleaded not guilty after his arrest by Secret Service agents in February. He changed his plea after accepting what his lawyer Alan Ross said was an offer from prosecutors.

"He was really stupid, really stupid," said Ross. He said that Serrapio never intended to make good on his threats, which were posted on Facebook under the assumed name "Jay Valor." Ross said the threats had been made "to rile up Obama supporters."

The statements Serrapio made included various threats against Obama. In one he announced the president had been targeted for assassination during a visit to the University of Miami this year. "If anyones going to UM to see Obama today, get ur phones out an record ... Im gonna put a bullet through his head and u don't wanna miss that," one of the Facebook posts said.

Serrapio, who studies music business at Miami-Dade College, remains free on bail and was due to reappear in court for sentencing on August 22. Under the terms of the plea agreement, Ross said Serrapio will likely face up to 10 months in jail or on probation.

"There's no requirement that any portion of the sentence be served in jail," Ross said, referring to the sentencing guidelines.


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Hamas-Run Schools Set Out to Teach ‘the Language of the Enemy

GAZA — There are few electives in the Hamas-run high schools here. Students can study health and the environment, or they can learn French. And, starting this fall at some schools, they will be able to sign up for a new course called Know Your Enemy.

It is a Hebrew class, beginning with the Aleph Bet — there is a six-word Arabic acrostic of the 22 Hebrew letters to help students remember. It has been nearly two decades since the language was taught in Gaza’s schools, and last month, after much debate, Hamas officials chose to add it to the optional curriculum rather than Turkish or German.


“Through the Hebrew language we can understand the structure of the Israeli society, the way they think,” explained Mahmoud Matar, director general of the Hamas-run Ministry of Education here. The Arabic language is a basic thing for the Israelis, and they use it to achieve what they want,” Dr. Matar added. “We look at Israel as an enemy. We teach our students the language of the enemy.”....

Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages that share as much as 40 percent of their grammar and word roots, experts say. The numbers and parts of the body sound similar — head is “ras” in Arabic, “rosh” in Hebrew — as do the words for right and left, and every day: kol yom. Both are written and read from right to left.

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Yahoo's own Web browser -- Axis

Yahoo is announcing tonight that it's getting into the browser business with its new Axis browser. There are versions for iPad and iPhone, and plug-ins for the desktop browsers Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari.

The design goal, according to Ethan Batraski, head of product for the Search Innovation Group at Yahoo, is to eliminate the middle step in the usual Web search process: Enter a query, see the results, go to a page. With Axis, you're supposed to be able to go directly from query to page, skipping the step of surfing a sea of links.

The implication that Axis entirely by passes the need to pick from search results is false, but Axis does nonetheless have a much better way of getting you from searching to visiting a Web page. The browser works well. This is an aggressive product for the struggling Yahoo to launch out of its search group.

Here's why: Yahoo, which still generates more than a billion dollars a year in revenue from its search division, makes a lot of that money from that second step in the search process. It runs ads on search result pages.

On Axis, there are no search result pages.

Instead, what you get when you search, at least 80 percent of the time, Batraski says, is a horizontal display of Web page thumbnails. (The other 20 percent of the time you get text boxes with results in them.) It's easy to see if one of the pages is what you're looking for, and then you can go there directly. To see the tiles again and go to other results, you just pull down the page from the top. To move forward or backward in the list of results directly from a page you're on, you drag your finger from the right or left. bypassing the results list entirely.

So, to be clear, there actually is a list of search results. It just looks a lot better because it's integrated into the browser. Ads will get inserted into the list of search tiles eventually, assuming the product is a success with users. But for the time being, the more successful Axis is, the more it will drive Yahoo traffic away from search revenues -- which only this last quarter began to recover after years of sliding.

As a tactic for launching the browser, focusing on the user experience above all and forgoing search revenues is probably very wise, since it may be difficult for the browser to make a dent in the market. Batraski was asked about other alterna-browsers that struggled to win major market share, and mostly failed: Flock, Rockmelt, Opera, AT&T's Pogo, and others. Why does Yahoo think it can pull a Chrome with its product?

Distribution, says Batraski. There are 700 million people using Yahoo, and they can all be marketed to. Also, Yahoo distributes browsers (mostly IE with the Yahoo embedded toolbar) to 80 million people a year. The company knows how to get browsers out there, at least on desktop operating systems. But Axis on the desktop is actually not its own browser, but rather a plug-in that works with the browser a user already has. If you use the plug-in's URL and search box in the lower-left of your browser, you'll get Yahoo's results. If you forget it's there and use the browser's standard URL/search box, you get whatever you've already been getting.

One gets the feeling that the desktop versions of Axis exist primarily as accessories to the mobile versions, so users can move between platforms and keep their open tabs and histories intact. When you're logged in, Axis knows what you do on each device and makes it easy to pick up on one where you left off on another.

Mobile is where the action is, so it makes sense that Yahoo threw the bulk of its development love into the tablet and smartphone versions. On the iPad, Axis is simply a great browser. The integrated search feature is intuitive, and being able to move through search results without having to go back to search makes sense. After only a few minutes using it I thought, Why hasn't Google done this yet? It's that good.

Although mobile devices like the iPad come with embedded browsers, Batraski says the product has Apple's blessing. He also said that Apple reps have told him they're not throwing many resources into Apple's own iOS browser, Safari. Axis takes the best that Safari has to offer -- its core rendering engine, Webkit -- and really does make it better. But no matter what Apple says, it's not yet fully behind alternative browsers like Axis: On iOS, you can't change your default browser (unless you jailbreak your device). Click a link in an e-mail message or another app, and your device will open it up in Safari, no matter how in love with Axis you are.

Batraski is convinced this will change eventually, and that if it doesn't, Apple will have a Microsoft-scale antitrust issue on its hands.

What about Android? The Android version of Axis is still in development, and while it's much easier for a user to get an alternative browser installed and embedded in an Android product, it's a pretty safe bet that Google isn't exactly going to roll out the welcome mat for Yahoo's browser. Google already has two of its own browsers for mobile, the Android browser and the still-in-beta Android version of Chrome. And those drive traffic to Google's ads, not Yahoo's. (Firefox, by the way, defaults to using Google for search, so even when people use it instead of Chrome, Google still wins.)

The Axis browser may not conquer the world, but it is a very strong mobile product with an important new design concept for search. It's also a gutsy business move from Yahoo. It's rather refreshing.


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Facebook to inaugurate new office in Dubai

Facebook plans to open its first Middle East office in Dubai next week, according to the Associated Press. This United Arab Emirates city is considered the Silicon Valley of the region and so it makes sense that the social network would put its Persian Gulf hub here.

With 80 percent of users outside the U.S. and Canada and more than 70 languages being used on the social network, Facebook has a massive global presence. Besides several offices throughout the U.S., the company also has 18 international offices, from Auckland to Hyderabad to Tokyo. Its international headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland.

The news of the Dubai office came with a Facebook invitation to journalists to learn more about the new office, which is scheduled for May 30, according to the Associated Press. Until then, the company is not releasing further details.

However, according to Gulf News, Facebook will be opening its office in a sector of Dubai called "Dubai Internet City." This business park is home to dozens of offices of international tech and telecom companies, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, HP, Dell, Intel, and Cisco. Those businesses with an office here are entitled to a tax-free income within the United Arab Emirates, according to the Dubai Internet City's Web site.

Facebook's Dubai office will concentrate on enlisting new advertisers from the Middle East, according to Gulf News.

Source

Samsung, Apple CEOs meet without coming to agreement?

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung met face-to-face over their patent disputes this week, but according to a new report, they couldn't seem to get along.

The Korea Times is reporting today, citing a Samsung "official," that the chief executives "could find no clear agreement through the talks," leaving the firms no other option but to battle it out in court.

Both Cook and Choi, as well as their general counsels, were ordered in April by Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to meet in San Francisco to try to reach a settlement over some of their differences. Koh said at the time that the trial would be scheduled for July 30, but if no agreement was inked, the court might be forced to push the trial back to next year to accommodate its size.

Although the chief executives reportedly didn't come to a deal, they seemed to have tried. FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller, who has followed these cases quite closely, reported today that Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero revealed in a minutes order that Cook and Choi spent nine hours in talks on Monday, and seven hours discussing the cases on Tuesday.

Apple and Samsung have been waging their bitter patent dispute across the world. Both sides argue that the other violates patents they hold related to mobile software and hardware, and are looking to have their counterpart's products banned from sale. So far, however, neither side has been able to gain the upper hand.

Source

Malware increases on all platforms, McAfee

Malware increased significantly across several platforms in the first quarter, with PC malware reaching the highest levels in four years, according to a McAfee report.

The first-quarter report also noted a huge increase in malware -- short for malicious software -- targeting the Android platform and a rise in Mac malware. The findings indicate total malware could reach the 100 million mark within the year, with the U.S. being the primary source of cyberattacks, according to a press release from McAfee.

McAfee said 8,000 total mobile malware samples were collected in the first quarter. "This large increase was due in part to McAfee Labs' advancements in the detection and accumulation of mobile malware samples," the company noted in the release. Nearly 7,000 were Android threats, mainly coming from third-party app markets. This is up from 600 Android samples collected at the end of the fourth quarter last year.

In the first quarter, McAfee collected 83 million pieces of PC malware samples, up from 75 million samples collected by the end of the fourth quarter last year. The company cited increases in rootkits, a stealth form of malware, and password stealers as major contributors. Also, e-mail continued to be a medium for targeted attacks.

Source

Russian spam mastermind jailed for creating botnet

A cybercrime mastermind who hijacked the PCs of more than 30 million people has been jailed for four years.

Russian hi-tech criminal Georgiy Avanesov was found guilty of computer sabotage by an Armenian court.

Mr Avanesov was tried and sentenced in Armenia, as he was arrested at the country's Yerevan airport in 2010.

The authorities closed in on Mr Avanesov after they took and dismantled the network of computers he controlled.

Bredolab began operating in 2009 and Mr Avanesov used a variety of techniques, including automated attacks and phishing messages, to expand it. A network of hijacked machines run in this way is known as a botnet and they have become the staple of many hi-tech criminals.

At its height, the Bredolab botnet - as it was called by security investigators - was sending out more than three billion junk mail messages a day. The network was also hired out to others cyber criminals who used it to carry out attacks on websites, advertise fake anti-virus programs and send out their own spam and viruses.

By sending out spam and doing work for hire, Bredolab reportedly produced a revenue of about 100,000 euros (£80,000) a month for its 27-year-old creator.

In October 2010, Dutch police gained control of the Bredolab botnet and began taking it apart to reveal who was controlling it. Mr Avanesov tried to hamper this investigation using a web-based attack on the police but the attempt to regain control of Bredolab failed. His arrest followed soon after.

The trial is a milestone for Armenia as it is reportedly the first time the country has convicted a computer criminal. (BBC)