Asian shares edge higher as Wall Street rebounds on solid US data |
- Asian shares edge higher as Wall Street rebounds on solid US data
- Cover Media Video: Jennifer Garner celebrates birthday
- Guardian, Washington Post win Pulitzers for US spying coverage
- Google unveils email scanning practices in new terms of service
- Sub forced to abort search for MH370 as waters too deep
- Quantum physics may be key to keeping data safe — Artur Ekert, Lee Kong Chian
| Asian shares edge higher as Wall Street rebounds on solid US data Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:58 PM PDT
Investors were cautious, however, as tensions in Ukraine tempered demand for riskier assets. Ukraine's president threatened military action after pro-Russian separatists occupying government buildings in the east ignored an ultimatum to leave and another group of rebels attacked a police headquarters in the region. The flare-up came less than a month after Russia completed its annexation of Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan just 0.2 per cent up, edging back towards an 11-month high of 486.70 hit last week. Australian shares climbed 0.6 per cent and Japan's Nikkei rose 0.8 per cent after skidding to a six-month low yesterday. Yesterday, encouraging retail sales from the world's biggest economy, which had been bogged down by a harsh winter, gave some respite for the Standard & Poor's and Nasdaq indexes, which had just suffered their worst week since June 2012. Persistent signs of slowing growth in China also added to the recent anxiety in global markets. A recovering US economy should help ease concerns about slack in the global economy. Investors in the US also took heart from news that Citi's quarterly net profit rose, as a smaller loss on its troubled assets offset lower revenue and profit from its core trading and lending businesses. In the currency markets, the dollar held steady after the solid US retail sales data. The euro remained under pressure from weekend comments from European Central Bank officials, including ECB President Mario Draghi, who rekindled speculation about more easing in the euro zone. The dollar stood at ¥101.88 (RM3.25), little changed from late New York trade yesterday, when it pulled away from a three-week trough of 101.32 hit late last week. The euro was also little changed at US$1.3818, having been knocked off a three-week peak of US$1.3906 hit last week on the back of the dovish comments from ECB officials. "Jawboning by policymakers and the risk of more stimulus should be enough to put a top in the EUR/USD but unfortunately there are other factors at play that are out of the ECB's control," Kathy Lien, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, wrote in a note to clients. "With the European Sovereign Debt crisis in the distant memory, capital inflows are returning to Europe, creating demand for euros. At the same time, there is very little upside momentum in US yields even after today's strong retail sales report," Lien said. US Treasuries yields rose on Monday as stocks gained on the better-than-expected retail sales data, but the 10-year US Treasury note still at 2.65 per cent late yesterday, not far from a six-week low of 2.603 per cent hit in that session. In commodities, gold was near its three-week high of US$1,330.90 touched yesterday when renewed concerns over hostilities in the Ukraine increased the precious metal's safe-haven appeal. Spot gold traded at US$1,326.50 an ounce. ― Reuters  |
| Cover Media Video: Jennifer Garner celebrates birthday Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:52 PM PDT On April 17, Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner celebrates her birthday. Known by many as Mrs Ben Affleck, Jennifer has in fact carved out a successful acting career of her own. — Cover Media |
| Guardian, Washington Post win Pulitzers for US spying coverage Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:43 PM PDT
Reuters won in international reporting for its coverage of the violent persecution of a Muslim minority in Myanmar who in efforts to flee often fall into the hands of brutal human-trafficking networks. The celebrated prizes, awarded by Columbia University, are the most respected in US journalism and can bring badly needed attention and recognition to newspapers and websites suffering from economic pressures and budget constraints. The prize-winning work by the Guardian US and The Washington Post in the Pulitzer's public service category was based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed details of global electronic surveillance by the US spy agency. Reporting on the leaks not only sparked international debate over the limits of government surveillance but prompted President Barack Obama to introduce curbs on NSA spying powers. "We are particularly grateful for our colleagues across the world who supported the Guardian in circumstances which threatened to stifle our reporting," Guardian editor in chief Alan Rusbridger said in a statement.
Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum last year after the US Justice Department charged him with violating the Espionage Act. In giving Reuters its first Pulitzer for text coverage, the board commended Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall for their "courageous reports" on the Rohingya, who in their efforts to flee the Southeast Asian country often fall victim to human-trafficking networks. "For two years, Reuters reporters have tirelessly investigated terrible human-rights abuses in a forgotten corner of the Muslim world, bringing the international dimensions of the oppressed Rohingya of Myanmar to global attention," Stephen Adler, Reuters editor-in-chief, said in a statement. Szep, from Washington, said: "What we were writing about was under-reported. I hope through this, there is greater international attention to the risks and presence of religious violence in Myanmar." Reuters was also a finalist in the investigative reporting category for a series by Megan Twohey, which exposed the underground market for adopted children. Her work won praise for "triggering governmental action to curb the practice" of exchanging unwanted kids online. Goran Tomasevic of Reuters was named a finalist for breaking news photography, with judges recognising "his sequence of photographs that chronicle two hours of fierce combat on the rebel frontline in Syria's civil war". The breaking news photography prize went to Tyler Hicks of The New York Times for coverage of the attack by Islamist militants at Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The feature photography prize went to Josh Haner of The New York Times for an essay on a Boston Marathon bomb blast victim. The Boston Globe won for its breaking news coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing manhunt. Finalists included The Arizona Republic for coverage of a wildfire that killed 19 firefighters and The Washington Post for coverage of the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. The prize for investigative reporting went to Chris Hamby of The Centre for Public Integrity for reports on how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease. The prize for explanatory reporting went to Eli Saslow of The Washington Post for work on the prevalence of food stamps in post-recession America. The prize for local reporting went to Will Hobson and Michael LaForgia of the Tampa Bay Times for an investigation into squalid housing conditions for the city's homeless population. The prize for national reporting went to David Philipps of The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for his examination of how wounded combat veterans are mistreated. No award was given in the category of feature writing. The commentary prize went to Stephen Henderson of the Detroit Free Press and the criticism prize went to Inga Saffron of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The editorial writing prize was awarded to the staff of The Oregonian and editorial cartooning went to Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer. Click here for an example of the work by Szep and Marshall — "Special Report: Thailand secretly supplies Myanmar refugees to trafficking rings" — Reuters |
| Google unveils email scanning practices in new terms of service Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:40 PM PDT
The revisions more explicitly spell out the manner in which Google software scans users' emails, both when messages are stored on Google's servers and when they are in transit, a controversial practice that has been at the heart of litigation. Last month, a US judge decided not to combine several lawsuits that accused Google of violating the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of email users into a single class action. Users of Google's Gmail email service have accused the company of violating federal and state privacy and wiretapping laws by scanning their messages so it could compile secret profiles and target advertising. Google has argued that users implicitly consented to its activity, recognizing it as part of the email delivery process. Google spokesman Matt Kallman said in a statement that the changes "will give people even greater clarity and are based on feedback we've received over the last few months." Google's updated terms of service added a paragraph stating that "our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customised search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored. ― Reuters |
| Sub forced to abort search for MH370 as waters too deep Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:33 PM PDT
The unmanned submarine loaded with sonar to map the ocean floor deployed last night from the Australian ship Ocean Shield which has spearheaded the hunt for the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8. "After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded its operating depth limit of 4,500 metres and its built in safety feature returned it to the surface," JACC said, without detailing the exact depth of operations. "The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is currently being extracted and analysed," JACC said. The AUV had been due to spend up to 16 hours collecting data. US Navy Captain Mark Matthews explained the vehicle had exceeded its programmed operational limit and automatically resurfaced. "There's certain abort criteria that the vehicle has as it's executing its mission," he told CNN from Perth. "If there's certain conditions that occur, it stops and it comes to the surface. "In this case the vehicle's programmed to fly 30 metres over the floor of the ocean to get a good mapping of what's beneath." Charts put the depth at 4,200-4,400 metres, he said.
"It went to 4,500 metres and once it hit that max depth, it said this is deeper that I'm programmed to be, so it aborted the mission." Matthews, a search and recovery expert, said the crew would now refine the task to cope with the depth encountered. "It happend in the very far corner of the area it's searching. So they are just shifting the search box a little bit away from that deep water." The US-made Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 would embark on a second mission during the day, weather permitting, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said. ― AFP |
| Quantum physics may be key to keeping data safe — Artur Ekert, Lee Kong Chian Posted: 14 Apr 2014 05:23 PM PDT
Even encrypted data is vulnerable. In documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the US National Security Agency was revealed to have a programme called Penetrating Hard Targets with a goal of cracking strong encryption. An element was "to determine if, and how, a cryptologically useful quantum computer can be built". It is well known that a quantum computer, which uses physics inaccessible to conventional computers to speed up calculations, can crack RSA — one of the most widely used encryption systems today. This month, news of the Heartbleed bug in the implementation of supposedly secure Internet protocols reminds us that even well-meant attempts to protect us can go wrong. So what can individuals, organisations and governments concerned about keeping our secrets do? What are the ultimate limits of privacy? Researchers in Singapore and elsewhere are developing a form of cryptography that could end the long-running battle between code-makers and code-breakers. It promises that we can communicate secretly even when we do not trust our devices; we can certify their security without knowing every detail of their implementation. What's more, the scheme is resistant to enemies with superior technology. You can be surrounded by the most powerful adversaries you can possibly imagine and still keep your data secure. The quantum of solace When technical buzzwords are stripped away, all we need to communicate secretly is a sequence of random bits — just 1s and 0s. These bits make a cryptographic key. To encrypt your message, you convert it into 1s and 0s, like the codes inside computers. Then, bit by bit, you add the key to your message. The random bits scramble the message. The result is easily deciphered by someone having the same cryptographic key, but cannot be cracked by anyone else. For this technique to be secure, it is vital that the key bits are truly random, never reused and securely delivered. So, the problem is: How do we make and share such keys? In 1991, I proposed a way to use quantum physics to distribute a cryptographic key. Unlike encryption techniques that get their security from being computationally hard to hack, quantum cryptography relies on the laws of physics for protection. Quantum physics is our best description of how the world operates at its most fundamental level. It describes how individual particles of matter and light, atoms and photons, behave and interact. The scheme I invented shares a key between two people (let's call them Alice and Bob) using pairs of quantum "entangled" photons. A source of entangled photons can be placed anywhere — with Alice, Bob or adversarial Eve, on a satellite or in any location whatsoever — as long as Alice and Bob are able to receive photons from the source. These photons may be beamed through open air or, like light signals that carry Internet traffic, be sent through optical fibre. Alice and Bob measure the polarisation of each photon (polarisation is the phenomenon in which light points in a particular direction, like the polarised glare that sunglasses block) as being 1 or 0. Quantum physics tells us the result for an individual photon is random, but that Alice and Bob's results for each pair must be correlated — they will match — thanks to their entanglement. With a few extra steps, this is how Alice and Bob end up with matching cryptographic keys. Any eavesdropping attempt introduces a mismatch to the keys, which Alice and Bob can detect by openly comparing a portion and discarding the key if it is insecure. Recently, my Singapore colleague Valerio Scarani and others showed this idea to be more powerful than I originally thought, pioneering the concept of "device-independent" cryptography. They realised you can certify the security of devices simply by checking the correlation of Alice and Bob's measurements. As long as our devices pass the test, we can confidently use equipment bought from any source, including an adversary. Remarkably, this check even guarantees security if the enemy has technology that is beyond our knowledge. More recently still, we have discovered that we do not even need to completely trust ourselves. Key distribution requires Alice and Bob to make random choices in the measurements they perform. What if these choices are manipulated; if we don't have free will? Thanks to the discovery of a quantum trick to perform "randomness amplification", as long as our choices are not completely predictable, we can communicate secretly. Making it real Quantum cryptography is not only an academic curiosity. Devices that perform simple quantum cryptography protocols are already in the market and have been used in banking and voting. They do not do "device-independent cryptography" with entangled photons, but technology under development may sooner or later mature to the level at which such schemes can be implemented. This kind of cryptography is on the edge of being feasible in research labs. Singapore is among the world leaders in this field. My colleagues at the Centre for Quantum Technologies here already demonstrated some years ago the cryptography scheme I had first proposed. Professor Christian Kurtsiefer and Assistant Professor Alexander Ling used lasers and telescopes on the rooftops of buildings to exchange a secret key across the NUS campus using entangled photons. Now, we are working towards making the kind of correlation measurements that will certify device-independent schemes and developing compact, rugged quantum devices that can form nodes in a future quantum network. We even plan to test a device on a satellite as satellites can distribute keys over long distances. With world experts also in the theory of cryptography, everything is in place for us to make fast progress. I think the day when we stop worrying about untrustworthy or incompetent providers of cryptographic services may not be that far away. — Today * Professor Artur Ekert is Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies and Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is also Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. An article, titled 'The ultimate physical limits of privacy' on the same subject by Prof Ekert and Renato Renner, has been published in the international journal Nature. **This is the personal opinion of the writers or publications and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online. |
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