NEWS,05 AND 06.05.2013

Google zaps brain power

The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr

IS THE internet a good thing or a harmful thing?

If that seems an odd question, it is probably because you are quite certain that the internet has been an enormous advantage to you in so many ways.

You came across my column as you quickly caught up on the latest news. You probably booked last night’s movie tickets online and searched for the critics' opinion of the movie before booking. You quickly found out everything you wanted to know about “existentialism” in a four-minute ‘Web search and skim’.

The title of the book, The Shallows, is Carr’s conclusion of what the Web is doing to how we think, read and remember. The book is an expansion of an essay he wrote for Atlantic magazine entitled “Is Google making us stupid?”.

Think of how you would have had to find information about existentialism before access to the Web was available.

You probably would have gone to a library to read a book on general philosophy as an introduction to the background out of which existentialism grew. Then, perhaps, something more specifically on the existentialists before finally settling into Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

Consider the difference between these two experiences. Carr suggests that the immediacy of the Web’s answers has turned him (and others) from “ a scuba diver in the sea of words” to someone who rides on the “surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.

At a meeting at Duke University, Professor Katherine Hayles told Carr: “I cannot get my students to read whole books any more.” The students she is talking of are studying literature!

What makes this book so fascinating is not the observation that we have shorter attention spans but that our brains are being changed to have shorter attention spans. If this is correct, the question that follows is whether this means we are sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply.

My immediate response to this would have been a quick, of course not. I read and think about certain things deeply and others superficially.

Carr takes the reader through a tour of neuroscience and the question of how technologies can change the way your brain works.

Is your brain like your hand? Your hand is limited in the movements it can make. It can only get better at the proscribed movements through practice, or worse through disuse.

There is overwhelming evidence that our experiences and the technologies we use do reconfigure the brain.

In an experiment in the late 1990s, British researchers scanned the brains of 16 London cab drivers. Compared to the scans of the control group from the general public, the taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampus was much larger.

This part of the brain stores and manipulates spatial representations of the world. The longer a cab drivers had been on the job, the larger their posterior hippocampus.

They also discovered that the drivers’ anterior hippocampus was smaller than that of the general public, and that the shrinking of the anterior hippocampus could have reduced the cabbies’ aptitude for other memorisation tasks.

Throughout the ages, the latest technologies have changed both how we think about the world and how our brains process information. Carr demonstrates how “tools of the mind” from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer have all had their effects.

Words were the aural means of communication until we developed the technology of the alphabet and we turned the aural into the visual representing the aural.

The clock changed not only how we thought about time, but how we thought about the world. The change was so wide spread and profound that we even began describing the world in the same mechanical terms.

It changed how we thought about time. It was no longer slowly evolving changes over which we have no control; rather, it was something that could be measured in minutes and seconds, and controlled. With a clock in ever town square and on every church building, our concept of time changed.

We are constantly reminded of time used, time spent, time wasted, and time lost. Our concepts of everything from achievement to productivity changed.

If the printed book forces us to focus our attention and promotes deep and creative thought, what is the effect of Google? Are we becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming? Are we are losing our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection?

Wired magazines Clive Thompson wrote: “The perfect recall of silicon memory can be an enormous boon to thinking.” What is the price of that boon? The result may be “the shallows” of the title, but that shallows is incredibly wide.

This is a must-read. It is a thought-provoking and fascinating book.

Readability:   Light ----+ Serious
Insights:       High -+--- Low
Practical:      High ----+ Low

Spies fuel China's fast military build-up

China is using state-sponsored industrial espionage to acquire the technology it needs to forge ahead with a fast-paced military modernisation programme and cut its reliance on foreign arms makers, the Pentagon said in a new report on Monday.
"China continues to leverage foreign investments, commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges, the experience of repatriated Chinese students and researchers, and state-sponsored industrial and technical espionage to increase the level of technologies and expertise available to support military research, development, and acquisition," the US Defence Department said.
The department, in its 83-page annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments, said Beijing's publicly announced defence spending grew at an inflation-adjusted pace of nearly 10% annually over the past decade, but its actual outlays could be much higher.
China announced a 10.7% increase in military spending to $114bn in March, the Pentagon report said. But it estimated that China's actual spending for 2012 could range between $135bn and $215bn. US defence spending is more than double that at over $500bn.
"China continues to engage in activities designed to support military procurement and modernisation," the report said. "These include economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, export control violations, and technology transfer."

Mystery shrouds 'most dangerous neo-Nazi'

The woman prosecutors call Germany's most dangerous neo-Nazi took her place in the dock on Monday at a landmark trial over a racist killing spree, but despite the high-profile proceedings remains an enigmatic presence.

Beate Zschaepe, known to a horrified Germany only from a dishevelled mugshot and a handful of holiday snaps, strode into the Munich courtroom looking smart and self-confident in a tailored black trouser suit and large hoop earrings.

It was just one more mysterious turn by the 38-year-old, the last surviving member of the far-right National Socialist Underground (NSU) who since her surrender 18 months ago has hidden behind a wall of silence.

When she walked through the door of the police station of Zwickau, a sleepy town in former communist East Germany, on 8 November 2011 to turn herself in, she told officers simply: "I'm the one you're looking for."

Since then, she has refused to divulge any secrets from the previous 14 years which she, according to the authorities, spent underground and on the run as part of a militant trio blamed for 10 murders.

"Everyone in Germany knows her name but no one knows who she is," the daily Die Welt wrote about the woman who has shaken the country's self-image of having learned the lessons of its Nazi past.

Macabre love triangle

Four days before she gave herself up, her two fellow gang members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boehnhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank heist, finally bringing their lethal NSU to light.

Investigators say the three were locked in a macabre love triangle, robbing banks and living comfortably off the proceeds while they carried out their nationwide hunt for immigrant victims.

Zschaepe, the only surviving member of the group, is suspected of involvement in the killing of nine shopkeepers of Turkish or Greek origin across Germany between 2000 and 2006 and of a German policewoman in 2007, as well as 15 armed robberies, arson and attempted murder.

Dubbed "the Nazi moll" by the German tabloids, Zschaepe faces life in prison.

But those who knew her in Zwickau, where she shared a spacious rented flat with Mundlos and Boehnhardt, say she was a "gentle soul" who never revealed her far-right views.

"She was a kind of big sister, someone with a big heart," a shocked neighbour, who gave her name only as Heike K, told German television.

Dominant

She said her friend told her her name was Lisa, one of at least nine aliases Zschaepe used over the years.

Federal prosecutors say that although she likely never pulled the trigger, Zschaepe played a "dominant role" in the NSU, maintaining the delicate "emotional link" between herself and her lovers.

She fell first for Mundlos, the soft-spoken son of a university professor often seen taking care of his wheelchair-bound brother, at the age of 16, and later took up with Boehnhardt, a more volatile type with a weakness for weapons.

"Ms Zschaepe acted like a wife but for two men," one of their alleged accomplices told authorities.

Zschaepe held the purse strings, managing the windfalls from their bank hold-ups, prosecutors say.

She juggled several identities while she did the cooking and took care of their two pet cats, Lilly and Heidi.

Chaotic upbringing

On 4 November 2011, she allegedly blew up their apartment in a bid to destroy evidence after the deaths of the two Uwes - after dropping off the cats with a neighbour.

Zschaepe had a chaotic upbringing. Her mother, Annerose Apel, gave birth to her on 2 January 1975 in the East German city of Jena, purportedly after being unaware she was pregnant.

Her father was believed to be Romanian but refused to acknowledge her as his child.

During the first three years of her life, Beate's last name changed three times until she finally took the surname of her mother's second husband.

The girl spent much of her youth with her grandmother, to whom she has said she is still attached.

Zschaepe was 14 years old when the Berlin Wall fell, sending economic and ideological shockwaves through communities like hers and leading many to the political extremes.

When she finally gave herself up to police, Zschaepe had not seen her mother or grandmother in over a decade. Investigators say she saw Mundlos and Boehnhardt as her only real family.

Germany arrests alleged Auschwitz guard

German authorities arrested on Monday a 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, on charges of complicity in the mass murder of prisoners.
Prosecutors in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg said, the man was believed to have worked at the camp between autumn 1941 and its closure in 1945.
Authorities declined to release the suspect's name, but media reports indicated it was Hans Lipschis, who figures among the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's most-wanted Nazis and is said to have served in the SS "Death's Head" battalion.
The man, who was detained at his home, "appeared before a judge and was taken into custody", the prosecutor's office in the state capital Stuttgart said in a statement.
"The indictment against him is currently being prepared."
Stuttgart prosecutors confirmed to AFP last month that they were working on a probe launched late last year against a suspect, who had worked at Auschwitz.
A cook vs a guard
Lipschis has been living in the Baden-Württemberg town of Aalen and reportedly told the authorities that he worked as a cook, not a guard, in the camp in occupied Poland.
However, prosecutors said the evidence pointed to the fact that the suspect in question had broader responsibilities.
"He took on supervisory duties although he did not only work as a guard," a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office told AFP.
"We will try to determine concretely when and what he did at Auschwitz."
She said the suspect was not believed to have killed prisoners himself but rather "that he abetted the actions of the perpetrators".
Despite his advanced age, the suspect underwent a medical examination and was determined fit to be taken into custody.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, in its 2013 report, lists Lipschis as its fourth most-wanted Nazi, saying he served in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head Battalion) from 1941 until 1945 at Auschwitz and "participated in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews".
Lithuanian-born Lipschis was granted "ethnic German" status by the Nazis.
He moved to the US in 1956 but was deported to Germany in 1983, Welt am Sonntag newspaper reported last month.
Nazi Germany
More than one million people, mostly European Jews, perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau, operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1940 until it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on 27 January 1945.
Germany has broadened the scope of its pursuit of Nazi war criminals since the 2011 conviction of Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland.
In that case, the court ruled that any role at a death camp amounted to accessory to murder, widening culpability from those found to have personally ordered or committed murders and atrocities.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years' prison for complicity in about 28 000 murders. He died at a nursing home last year while free awaiting an appeal.
Lipschis is among 50 surviving Auschwitz staff, who are being investigated in Germany under the broadened culpability rules.
Renowned French Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld said he had mixed feelings about the news from Germany.
"I am torn between my idea of justice and the necessity to chase down war criminals until they take their last breath," he told AFP.
"You need evidence and documents to incriminate them and I think there won't be any more eyewitnesses to implicate them."

Raid of US home stops 'terror attack'

The FBI says it believes "a terror attack was disrupted" when authorities raided a US mobile home.

The FBI arrested 24-year-old Buford Rogers on Friday, after a search of his home in Montevideo turned up Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms.
The FBI said in a Monday statement that it believes "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" by the search and arrest.
The agency says a terror plot was discovered through analysis of intelligence gathered by local, state and federal authorities.
The statement doesn't offer further details about the extent or manner of the alleged plot.
Rogers is in federal custody and is charged with one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. It's not clear if he has an attorney.

NEWS,03.10.2012

Costly US intelligence effort 'inaccurate'

A multibillion-dollar information-sharing programme created in the aftermath of 9/11 has improperly collected information about innocent Americans and produced little valuable intelligence on terrorism, a US Senate report concludes. It portrays an effort that ballooned far beyond anyone's ability to control.What began as an attempt to put local, state and federal officials in the same room analysing the same intelligence has instead cost huge amounts of money for data-mining software, flat screen televisions and, in Arizona, two fully equipped Chevrolet Tahoes that are used for commuting, investigators found.The lengthy, bipartisan report is a scathing evaluation of what the Department of Homeland Security has held up as a crown jewel of its security efforts. The report underscores a reality of post-9/11 Washington: National security programmes tend to grow, never shrink, even when their money and manpower far surpass the actual subject of terrorism. Much of this money went for ordinary local crime-fighting.Disagreeing with the critical conclusions of the report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it is outdated, inaccurate and too focused on information produced by the programme, ignoring benefits to local governments from their involvement with federal intelligence officials.Because of a convoluted grants process set up by Congress, Homeland Security officials don't know how much they have spent in their decade-long effort to set up so-called fusion centres in every state. Politically important money Government estimates range from less than $300m to $1.4bn in federal money, plus much more invested by state and local governments. Federal funding is pegged at about 20% to 30%.Despite that, Congress is unlikely to pull the plug. That's because, whether or not it stops terrorists, the programme means politically important money for state and local governments.A Senate Homeland Security subcommittee reviewed more than 600 unclassified reports over a one-year period and concluded that most had nothing to do with terrorism. The panel's chairperson is Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma."The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion centre reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot," the report said.When fusion centres did address terrorism, they sometimes did so in ways that infringed on civil liberties. The centres have made headlines for circulating information about Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU, activists on both sides of the abortion debate, war protesters and advocates of gun rights.One fusion centre cited in the Senate investigation wrote a report about a Muslim community group's list of book recommendations. Others discussed American citizens speaking at mosques or talking to Muslim groups about parenting.'Out of date'No evidence of criminal activity was contained in those reports. The government did not circulate them, but it kept them on government computers. The federal government is prohibited from storing information about First Amendment activities not related to crimes."It was not clear why, if DHS had determined that the reports were improper to disseminate, the reports were proper to store indefinitely," the report said.Homeland Security Department spokesperson Matthew Chandler called the report "out of date, inaccurate and misleading". He said that it focused entirely on information being produced by fusion centres and did not consider the benefit the involved officials got receiving intelligence from the federal government.The report is as much an indictment of Congress as it is the Homeland Security Department. In setting up the department, lawmakers wanted their states to decide what to spend the money on.Time and again, that set-up has meant the federal government has no way to know how its security money is being spent.Collaboration urgedInside Homeland Security, officials have long known there were problems with the reports coming out of fusion centres, the report shows."You would have some guys, the information you'd see from them, you'd scratch your head and say, 'What planet are you from?'" an unidentified Homeland Security official told Congress.Until this year, the federal reports officers received five days of training and were never tested or graded afterward, the report said.States have had criminal analysis centres for years. But the story of fusion centres began in the frenzied aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks.The 9/11 Commission urged better collaboration among government agencies. As officials realised that a terrorism tip was as likely to come from a local police officer as the CIA, fusion centres became a hot topic.But putting people together to share intelligence proved complicated. Special phone and computer lines had to be installed. The people reading the reports needed background checks. Some information could only be read in secure areas, which meant construction projects.All of that cost money.Independent operationMeanwhile, federal intelligence agencies were under orders from Congress to hire more analysts. That meant state and local agencies had to compete for smart counterterrorism thinkers. And federal training for local analysts wasn't an early priority.Though fusion centres receive money from the federal government, they are operated independently. Counterterrorism money started flowing to states in 2003. But it wasn't until late 2007 that the Bush administration told states how to run the centres.State officials soon realised there simply wasn't that much local terrorism-related intelligence. Terrorist attacks didn't happen often, but police faced drugs, guns and violent crime every day. Normal criminal information started moving through fusion centres.Under federal law, that was fine. When lawmakers enacted recommendations of the 9/11 Commission in 2007, they allowed fusion centres to study "criminal or terrorist activity". The law was co-sponsored by Senators Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, the driving forces behind the creation of Homeland Security.Five years later, Senate investigators found, terrorism is often a secondary focus."Many fusion centres lacked either the capability or stated objective of contributing meaningfully to the federal counterterrorism mission," the Senate report said. Continued support"Many centres didn't consider counterterrorism an explicit part of their mission, and federal officials said some were simply not concerned with doing counterterrorism work."When Janet Napolitano became Homeland Security secretary in 2009, the former Arizona governor embraced the idea that fusion centres should look beyond terrorism. Testifying before Congress that year, she distinguished fusion centres from the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) that are the leading investigative and analytical arms of the domestic counterterrorism effort."A JTTF is really focused on terrorism and terrorism-related investigations," she said. "Fusion centres are almost everything else."Congress, including the committee that authored the report, supports that notion. And though the report recommends the Senate reconsider the amount of money it spends on fusion centres, that seems unlikely."Congress and two administrations have urged DHS to continue or even expand its support of fusion centres, without providing sufficient oversight to ensure the intelligence from fusion centres is commensurate with the level of federal investment," the report said.And following the release of the report, Homeland Security officials indicated their continued strong support for the programme.

 

IMF: Crisis to last 10 years

The world economic crisis could take 10 years to run its course, the IMF's chief economist Olivier Blanchard told Hungarian business news site Portfolio.hu in an interview published on Wednesday."It's not yet a lost decade," Blanchard said, "but it will surely take at least a decade from the beginning of the crisis for the world economy to get back to decent shape."Urging greater solidarity between member countries of the eurozone and more integration in fiscal and economic policy, he said Europe "has to go forward" with integration to make the common currency zone a success."It cannot stay where it is. I think nobody really wants to go back," he said."When a country is doing poorly the others have to be willing to help in various ways, not only out of solidarity, but because trouble in one country may well spill over to theirs."This is why the fiscal union and the banking union proposals being worked on as we speak are so important," he explained.Blanchard also said the United States has a fiscal problem which it hasn't dealt with yet."Most analysts are confident that when it needs to be done it will be done. I hope they are right," he said.Elsewhere, Blanchard said Japan faced a difficult fiscal adjustment and could take decades to solve its debt problems, but that the IMF did not forecast any hard landing for China."China has probably taken care of its asset boom although it has slower growth than before," he said.

Iran presses on despite currency woes

Iran will press on with its nuclear programme despite the problems caused by Western sanctions, including a dramatic slide in the value of its currency, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday."We are not a people to retreat on the nuclear issue," he told a news conference in Tehran."If somebody thinks they can pressure Iran, they are certainly wrong and they must correct their behaviour," he said.Ahmadinejad's comments came amid an accelerated slide in Iran's currency, which has now lost more than 80% of its value compared with a year ago - with 17% of its value shed on Monday alone.The rial slipped another 4% on Tuesday to close at 36 100 to the dollar, according to exchange tracking websites.Ahmadinejad said the plunge was part of an economic "war" waged by the West on the Islamic republic and "a psychological war on the exchange market".Under 'enormous pressure'Iran, he said, had sufficient foreign currency reserves.Those reserves were estimated at around $100bn at the end of last year, thanks to surging oil exports.The White House said on Tuesday that Iranians blamed their leaders for the rising deprivation caused by US and international sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme.White House spokesperson Jay Carney said the fast-deteriorating economic situation in Iran, which has also sparked price hikes in basic foods, was a sign the government in Tehran was under "enormous pressure"."The Iranian people are aware of who is responsible for the circumstances that have befallen the Iranian economy as a result of the regime's intransigence in its refusal to abide by its obligations."The US Treasury estimates Iran's foreign earnings have been cut by $5bn a month under the Western economic measures.Criticism over talksIn his media conference, Ahmadinejad backtracked on hints he had made during a visit to New York at the UN General Assembly that Iran could consider direct negotiations with the United States on the nuclear issue."Direct negotiation is possible, but needs conditions, and I do not think the conditions are there for talks. Dialogue should be based on fairness and mutual respect," he said.But he also said: "I think that this situation cannot last in the relations between Iran and the United States."Hardliners in Iran criticised Ahmadinejad on his return for opening the door to the possibility of talks with the United States. That also fuelled criticism that his government has mismanaged the economy.The chairperson of Tehran's chamber of commerce, Yahya Ale-Eshagh, was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency that "part of this [currency] tumult is due to sanctions".No vote of confidenceBut he also said "the person who is not able to manage in a time of crisis should not continue working in his post".Mohammad Bayatian, a member of parliament on an industry and mines commission, said, according to the parliamentary website icana.ir, that "a petition has been prepared to question the president".He said the petition was "due to the government not paying attention to the parliament's remarks over its management of the forex market".The parliament's presiding board was to decide whether to admit the petition. If it goes ahead, it would only be to hear Ahmadinejad speak on the issue, and it would not involve a confidence vote or other serious procedure.Mehdi Mohammadi, a figure close to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, wrote in a piece for the Vatan Emrouz newspaper on Tuesday: "Is the currency situation in the market due to sanctions? No... The problem is not a lack of [foreign] currency."Israel 'not a concern'He blamed the government, and unidentified "mafias" he said were profiting from the currency volatility.Mohammadi also said holding talks with the United States was not an option."Past experience shows that speaking of negotiations in these conditions only sends a signal of weakness. The enemy only makes concessions and takes you seriously when you're strong," he wrote.On the prospect of a military conflict breaking out over the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad reaffirmed that he was "not very concerned" about persistent threats from Israel."Iran is not a country to be shaken by, let's say, a few firecrackers," he said.

NEWS,04.04.2012.

French anti-terror raids: security and protection, or electioneering?

Nicolas Sarkozy's opponents query the 'spectacle' of the raids and their timing in the wake of Mohamed Merah's killing spreeOnce again, France woke to news of a string of dawn raids against suspected Islamists across the country, from the old industrial heartlands of the north to Marseille on the southern coast. Days earlier, rolling TV-news and breakfast bulletins broadcast dramatic images as elite anti-terrorist squads in black body armour smashed windows and bashed down doors shouting "Police!", emerging with hand-cuffed suspects with their faces covered, on residential streets from Nantes to Toulouse.Less than three weeks before the first round of the presidential election, France is gripped by one of its biggest crackdowns on suspected radical Islamists in recent memory. Amplified by TV coverage, it has been led by an unrelenting Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also battling for re-election. Opposition politicians now openly question whether the timing and TV crews are as much linked to electioneering as anti-terrorist crime prevention.France is still in a state of shock and confusion after Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old unemployed panelbeater from Toulouse, went on a 10-day killing spree across south-west France, executing three paratroopers and shooting children and a rabbi at the gates of a Jewish school. Following a dramatic 32-hour siege at his flat, Merah died in a hail of police bullets as he leapt from the balcony. But questions remain over how Merah  who claimed inspiration from al-Qaida, was heavily armed, on police intelligence files and had been under surveillance  was not picked up earlier and his attacks prevented. Some commentators warn that the new anti-terrorist crackdown, which included the deportation of a handful of preachers, should not be used as a smokescreen to distract from potential failings in the Merah operation.The right-wing Sarkozy had long ago seen his election strategy compared to that of his friend George W Bush's 2004 fight for re-election in the US: styling himself as the only trustworthy protector of the nation in the face of serious threat. A month ago, the danger was impending financial meltdown. Now, it is closer to Bush's own target: Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism. Sarkozy last week likened the Toulouse killings to France's 9/11. The scale of the attacks maybe different, he said, but the national "traumatism" was the same.The justice system will have the last word on the arrests, which were not directly linked to Merah. Preliminary charges have been filed against 13 alleged members of a banned fundamentalist group. An intelligence chief suggested militants were planning a kidnapping. The 10 arrested on Wednesday were suspected of links to Islamist websites and of threatening violence in online forums.But in an election more than ever determined by TV coverage, Sarkozy's opponents queried the "spectacle" of the raids and their timing in the wake of the Toulouse killings. "I'm not questioning all that's being done. I'm simply saying that we should have perhaps done more before," said François Hollande, the Socialist candidate. The government insists the arrests had nothing to do with the elections, but with the security and protection of France.The "Toulouse effect" on the presidential race has so far been limited. Crucially, it allowed Sarkozy, during a week of national mourning, to regain presidential stature. Before Toulouse, he had been heckled so badly on the campaign trail in the Basque country that he took refuge in a bar. Now, over 70% of French people approve his stance at the time of the Toulouse killings. His poll ratings have lifted giving him a narrow lead in the first-round, but Hollande remains ahead in the final 6 May run-off.Yet the shootings have not changed French voters' chief topics of concern: crippling unemployment and the difficulty making ends meet. Crime and terrorism remain low on their list. Indeed, many French people feel disappointed that the presidential debate isn't addressing their everyday worries, and abstentionism could be high. But the extreme-right Front National's Marine Le Pen has used Toulouse to hammer home her rhetoric on fears about Islam,terrorism, immigration and what she warned were fundamentalists festering on France's notorious suburban high-rise estates (even if the raids were often carried out on smart semi-detached houses). To win the election, Sarkozy knows he must court Le Pen's voters. Politicians and religious leaders, have warned against stigmatising French Muslims a long held fear following Sarkozy's recent Front National-inspired election crusade against halal meat.

 

Anna Chapman never got anywhere near seducing a member of US cabinet

Anna Chapman, the famously sultry Russian operative who was arrested in the US with nine others for espionage in 2010, was apparently "close to seducing a sitting member of President Barack Obama's cabinet."The reports were based on an interview that Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's assistant director of counterintelligence, gave to the BBC in which he called the confessed spy a "honeytrap", adding: "She got close enough to disturb us."The story went viral.There's only one problem with it, though: it's not true in the slightest."It's a completely bogus story,"a defense department spokesman told. "They made a giant leap."Figliuzzi never mentions Chapman, 30, by name in the BBC video. And while he did say that one of the 10 operatives had gotten "close enough to a sitting US cabinet member" to "disturb" the agency, he wasn't talking about Chapman. Nor was he talking about seduction. The New York Daily News picked up the story under the drooling headline: "Sexy Russian spygal Anna Chapman got too close to President Obama's inner circle, FBI official tells BBC."heir article, which ran Wednesday, is maddeningly confusing.In the fourth paragraph, the Daily News reports: A high-ranking FBI official says Anna Chapman was busted in 2010 spy ring because flame-haired sexpot got too close to sitting President Obama cabinet member.But the sixth paragraph directly contradicts this: Flame-haired sexpot Anna Chapman was quickly fingered as the tight-bodied temptress by the British press  but the needle slowly moved in the direction of dowdy New Jersey housewife Cynthia Murphy, who was also taken down in the spy sting.It's not until the twelfth paragraph that the paper admits: Figliuzzi refused to reveal the cabinet member  or the female spy.But the "honey trap" may have actually been G-man speak for cold, hard cash  and the access it can gain with powerful people.So why headline it otherwise?It was ABC News that actually bothered to pick up a phone to call the FBI. The network reports that the spy Figliuzzi was referring to is, in fact, Cynthia Murphy. And by "getting too close" to an Obama cabinet member, he meant as a financial advisor to a Hillary Clinton fundraiser.The FBI, for its part, released a statement denying that Chapman attempted to seduce a cabinet member. Mr Figliuzzi's comments to BBC were consistent with and confined to the information outlined in the criminal complaint that was filed nearly two years ago. There is no allegation or suggestion in the complaint that Anna Chapman or anyone else associated with this investigation attempted to seduce a US cabinet officialChapman, of course, is a red-headed beauty who has since modeled in lingerie for Maxim and hosted a TV programme in Russia. She was ratings and Internet gold when her story broke in 2010  a femme fatale in the flesh. So it's perhaps somewhat understandable that the Telegraph and the Daily News would leap at the opportunity to splash her come-hither photograph on its pages without actually bothering to fact check their stories.