Tag Archives: united-states
Beware, Angry Birds are spying on you!
Beware, Angry Birds are spying on you! (Reuters) / 29 January 2014 Among these new intelligence tools were “leaky” apps on smartphones that could disclose users’ locations, age, gender and other personal information. US and British intelligence agencies have plotted ways to gather data from Angry Birds and other smartphone apps that leak users’ personal information onto global networks, the New York Times reported on Monday. It was citing previously undisclosed intelligence documents made available by fugitive American spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. The Times said the US National Security Agency and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had tried to exploit increasing volumes of personal data that spill onto networks from new generations of mobile phone technology. Among these new intelligence tools were “leaky” apps on smartphones that could disclose users’ locations, age, gender and other personal information. The US and British agencies were working together on ways to collect and store data from smartphone apps by 2007, the newspaper reported. The agencies have traded methods for collecting location data from a user of Google Maps and for gathering address books, buddy lists, phone logs and geographic data embedded in photos when a user posts to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services, the Times said. Snowden, who is living in asylum in Russian, faces espionage charges in the United States after disclosing the NSA’s massive telephone and Internet surveillance programmes last year. His revelations and the resulting firestorm of criticism from politicians and privacy rights activists prompted US President Barack Obama to announce intelligence-gather reforms on January 17, including a ban on eavesdropping on the leaders of close allies and limits on the collection of telephone data. The Times report said the scale of the data collection from smartphones was not clear but the documents showed that the two national agencies routinely obtained information from certain apps, including some of the earliest ones introduced to mobile phones. The documents did not say how many users were affected or whether they included Americans. White House spokesman Jay Carney said US surveillance agencies were only interested in collecting data on people considered a threat to the United States. “To the extent data is collected by the NSA through whatever means, we are not interested in the communications of people who are not valid foreign intelligence targets, and we are not after the information of ordinary Americans,” Carney told a regular White House news conference. Any such surveillance was focused on “valid foreign intelligence targets … I mean terrorists, proliferators, other bad actors (who) use the same communications tools that others use,” he said. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Biofuels Producers Hunting Foreign Fields
With nearly 70% of global biofuels production centered on the United States’ corn and Brazil’s sugarcane harvests, concentrated commodity feedstocks have been the common denominator in biofuels industry growth over the past decade. Advanced biofuels companies seeking to produce next-generation fuels derived from non-food feedstocks are attempting to replicate this model – without the associated social and environmental ramifications of using food-based crops. Access to land for mass feedstock production is a difficult challenge for which many innovative strategies have been proposed. Companies like SG Biofuels , Ceres , and others are squarely focused on biotechnology innovation, involving complex biological modifications at the crop’s cellular and genetic level. The central focus of these efforts is the optimization of dedicated energy crops for growth in a variety of locations where food crops are not currently grown, including poor soils and areas lacking irrigation. Among these, jatropha, camelina, energy grasses like miscanthus, and dedicated trees like eucalyptus have received the most attention. But optimizing crop strains to thrive in a variety of climates and soils is only half the battle. Recent experience has shown that the success of even miracle next-generation feedstocks like jatropha , which can produce oil-rich seeds in poor soils and without irrigation, is exaggerated. As with food crops, bountiful energy crop harvests (i.e., lots of biomass material for biofuels production) require irrigation, nutrients – and plenty of land. Land Ho! Finding suitable tracts of land with nutrient-rich soil and irrigation for which a large quantity of crops can be grown – but without diverting land otherwise dedicated to food production (see The New York Times blog on food vs. fuel ) – remains an elusive goal. Increasingly, governments and corporations are looking abroad. Since the food crisis of 2007-2008 , foreign direct investment into countries with undeveloped agricultural potential has accelerated. According to data compiled by the Oakland Institute , an estimated 56 million hectares of land (nearly the size of France) has been acquired in the developing world by international governments and investors since 2008. Last month, China announced that it will invest billions of yuan into 3 million hectares (7.5 million acres) of farmland in Ukraine, its biggest overseas agricultural project. This will more than double China’s current portfolio of 2 million hectares (5 million acres), mostly concentrated in Latin America and Southeast Asia. China is not alone in this quest. According to a policy paper published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, “One of the largest and most notorious deals is one that ultimately collapsed: an arrangement that would have given the South Korean firm Daewoo a 99-year lease to grow corn and other crops on 1.3 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar – half of that country’s total arable land.” Government and institutional investors across other developed economies, including Japan, the United States, the European Union, and wealthy Gulf states, are all actively involved in this rush. Complicated by the checkered history of international land grabs, this trend is not without its critics. Balancing Objectives While intentions may be in the right place in most instances, the past has shown that the consolidation of cultivatable land for foreign or multinational interests can often lead to the displacement of local subsistence farmers, as well as other negative environmental impacts. In recent years, governments have, at least publicly, imposed more restrictions on biofuels investments abroad to prevent a scramble toward destructive plantation-style feedstock cultivation. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) mandates that member states derive 10% of energy consumption within the transportation sector from renewable sources by 2020. Recently signed legislation caps the contribution of conventional food-based biofuels , calling for a rapid switch to advanced biofuels. A slew of sustainability standards , meanwhile, aim to mitigate the negative impacts of large-scale dedicated energy crop production for advanced biofuels. In Navigant Research’s recently published report, Advanced Biofuels Country Rankings , issues such as available arable land and the potential for sustainable feedstock hubs figure heavily into assessments of the potential of individual countries to support advanced biofuels commercialization. At one time regarded as an issue exclusively focused on conventional biofuels, access to land for advanced biofuels production is proving equally sensitive. Continue reading
RPT-USDA Offers $181 mln To Help Build Advanced Biofuel Refineries
Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:11pm EDT Oct 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Monday announced $181 million in loan guarantees to build commercial-size refineries making advanced biofuels or to retrofit existing biorefineries to produce the cleaner-burning renewable fuels. Since 2008, the Agriculture Department has provided $684 million through the Biorefinery Assistance Program to support projects in eight states. Applications for the latest round of funding are due by Jan. 30. “This financing will expand the number of commercial biorefineries in operation in the United States that are producing advanced biofuels from non-food sources,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. USDA announced the funding at a time the federal mandate for biofuels is under challenge in Congress and in the bureaucracy. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it is considering whether to scale back the mandate, now dominated by corn-based ethanol. Advanced biofuels, made from plant materials like wood and grasses and producing fewer greenhouse gases than current fuels, were expected to match corn ethanol by the end of this decade but have been far slower to develop than expected. The Advanced Biofuels Association lists more than 200 plants, including biodiesel makers. Valero Inc. and Darling International are partners in a plant that opened in June to produce 137 million gallons a year of renewable diesel from animal fats and cooking oil. Michael McAdams, head of the biofuels trade group, said the offer of loan guarantees would be “incredibly helpful” to smaller companies that want to expand production. One maker of cellulosic biofuels, KiOR Inc., announced $100 million in financing on Monday to build a second refinery at Columbus, Mississippi, to convert wood chips into fuel. The original refinery produced 357,532 gallons of gasoline, diesel and fuel oil from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31. KiOR has a target of producing 13 million gallons a year at the plant. Continue reading
