Facebook hacked

Facebook Inc., operator of the largest social network with more than 1 billion members, is working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to probe a malware attack, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Facebook said Friday that it was subjected to a "sophisticated attack" by hackers last month, without saying where the attack originated. Investigators haven't found any evidence that user data was compromised, Menlo Park, Calif.- based Facebook said on its website. The people who discussed the FBI's involvement asked not to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of the probe.
Facebook, which stores information on users, often grapples with attempted breaches. It has a team dedicated to detecting and responding to attack attempts, pays bounties to outside programmers who help identify malfeasance and said it successfully prevents attacks the "vast majority of the time."

20 year-old mother accused of witchcraft burnt alive

A mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday. It was the latest sorcery-related killing in this South Pacific island nation.
Bystanders, including many children, watched and some took photographs of Wednesday's brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country's two largest newspapers, The National and the Post-Courier, while the prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing.

Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in a hospital. She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, and then set alight on a pile of car tires

In rural Papua New Guinea, witchcraft is often blamed for unexplained misfortunes. Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery, but responses to allegations of witchcraft have become increasingly violent in recent years.
Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in a hospital on Tuesday.
She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, and then set alight on a pile of car tires and trash in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen, national police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.  (Click here for photo of the barbaric burning)

Nine year-old girl gives birth

A 9-year-old Mexican girl, under the reported name of Dafne, gave birth to a baby girl on Jan. 27, 2013 in Jalisco, Mexico.
Both mother and child are at home and healthy, Dr. Enrique Rabago, director of Zoquipan Hospital, said at a press conference this morning.
The search continues, according to authorities, for the baby’s 17-year-old father, who may be criminally charged for having a sexual relationship with Dafne.

“She did not realize that she was pregnant until the seventh month”

“Due to her young age, we don’t know if she is being entirely truthful,” says Lino Ginzalez Corona, spokesperson at Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office, who received an account of the relationship from the young mother who describes a loving relationship.
According to Corona, the 17-year-old and Dafne were dating but the young girl is unwilling to release any further information regarding the association between the two.

Gunmen kill 9 health workers in Nigeria

Gunmen have shot dead at least nine health workers who were administering polio vaccinations in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, police say.  The attacks on Friday morning in two different locations in Kano.
"Nine people were killed in two separate attacks by gunmen on [motorised] tricycles when they attacked two dispensaries where polio immunisation workers were preparing to go out for polio campaigns," police spokesman Magaji Majia said.

Read details here

Rape victim jailed for crying out, journalist jailed for reporting it

Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab controls southern Somalia

Somali male journalist, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, is facing jail time. His crime? Interviewing a woman (also facing jail time), who claimed to have been raped by soldiers.
Court officials claim that there is medical evidence that the woman had not been raped and that she and the reporter had insulted the government in suggesting otherwise. This story is only the latest demonstration in Somalia’s general attitude against women — uncaring and unyielding.
Human Rights Watch Africa Director Daniel Bekele condemned the arrests as a “politically motivated attempt to blame and silence” as well as point out how often rape cases go under-reported due to fear of backlash. A United Nations official has also condemned the results of the case while the U.S. Department of State has since given a press statement displaying concern.
Experts have ranked Somalia as one of the worst places in the world for women to live. The sheer amounts of discrimination and sexual violence against women living in the country is frankly, disturbing. In militia-controlled areas of Somalia, any speck of hope shines dim.
Women’s rights activist Lisa Shannon interviewed a woman whose father was killed when he refused to force his daughter into sexual slavery by the militia known as Al-Shabaab. She was also brutally gang-raped by Al-Shabaab officers in front of her family.

Facebook developing app that will track your every move – even when it’s turned off

Facebook is developing a new smartphone app to track the location of users in an effort to target them with localised adverts, according to reports.
The app will help users to find friends who are nearby, alert them when it detects one in close proximity even when the app is not open on the handset, it is claimed.
It will be just one of a whole suite of mobile apps Facebook is building up to help it profit from the increasing proportion of its users who access the social network on the go.
But privacy campaigners warned it was another example of 'profit trumping privacy' and called the function 'intrusive'.

Facebook's privacy policies already warn users that the social network may use location data to 'tell you and your friends about people or events nearby, or offer deals to you that you might be interested in.'

The new app would help Facebook target advertising to users based on their location and their daily habits, helping corporate clients to reach the audiences they feel are most likely to want their products.

Plans for the app were leaked to Bloomberg by two people 'with knowledge of the matter', the financial news service said.

Food waste is eating up billions in the US

Americans talk a lot about government waste. But some of the most astonishing waste occurs in how Americans produce and consume food.
According to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of food in the United States is wasted. What does that cost? It translates to $40 billion a year in losses just for households, the report estimates, and $90 billion overall.

40 percent of food in the United States is wasted. What does that cost? It translates to $40 billion a year in losses just for households

The report includes other mind-numbing figures. The average American throws away 33 pounds of food every month. With the amount of water that goes into food production, 25 percent of all freshwater in the United States is wasted. It costs $750 million just to dispose of all the wasted food, and food waste accounts for about 4 percent of total U.S. oil consumption.

"One billion people are malnourished even though the world produces enough food to feed twice the world's present population."

Food is wasted in all parts of the world, and most waste occurs in production. But, through over-purchasing, spoilage, and plate waste, consumers waste an enormous amount of food, and North Americans are by far the worst offenders.