- US intelligence chief Clapper defends spying policy
BBC 30 October 2013
The head of US intelligence has told lawmakers that discerning foreign leaders' intentions is a key goal of the nation's spying operations.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said such efforts were a "top tenet" of US intelligence policy.
But he told the intelligence panel of the House of Representatives the US did not "indiscriminately" spy on nations.
Mr Clapper was reacting to a growing international row over reports the US eavesdropped on foreign allies.
"Leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse," Mr Clapper said, adding that foreign allies spy on US officials and intelligence agencies as a matter of routine.
He said that what he called the torrent of disclosures about American surveillance had been extremely damaging and that he anticipated more.
But he said there was no other country that had the magnitude of oversight that the US had, and that any mistakes that had been made were human or technical.
The BBC's Jonny Dymond in Washington says if anyone was expecting apologies or embarrassment from the leaders of America's intelligence community they were in for a disappointment.
Also testifying before the House intelligence committee was National Security Agency (NSA) director Gen Keith Alexander, who called media reports in France, Spain and Italy that the NSA gathered data on millions of telephone calls "completely false".
The information "that led people to believe that the NSA or United States collected that information is false, and it's false that it was collected on European citizens," he added. "It was neither."
Gen Alexander said much of the data cited by non-US news outlets was actually collected by European intelligence services and later shared with the NSA.
- Foxconn’s 4G License in Taiwan Kicks Off Asia Expansion Plans
Bloomberg Oct 30, 2013
Foxconn Technology Group’s purchase of mobile-phone spectrum in Taiwan is the next step in Chairman Terry Gou’s plan to move past contract manufacturing and become a global mobile content and services provider.
Ambit Microsystems Corp., a wholly owned unit of Foxconn’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (2317), paid NT$9.18 billion ($312 million) for 20-megahertz of wireless bandwidth at auction, the National Communications Commission said yesterday. Winners have 120 days to pay their license fees and are then required to submit a business plan to the regulator. The successful bid marks Gou’s first foray into the telecommunications business since he founded the company 39 years ago.
“Getting a 4G license is part of Foxconn’s long-term plan to go beyond manufacturing to offer a full range of services,” Simon Hsing, spokesman for Taipei-based Hon Hai, said in an interview yesterday. “Taiwan will be a showcase for us to prove that we can offer integrated hardware, software, content and services.”
Securing wireless spectrum means Foxconn will set up a 4th-generation mobile-phone services business in Taiwan, adding to a deal announced in June to develop software and hardware for Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox mobile operating system. Broadening to more locations may allow Foxconn to tap into a global market for mobile data which Bloomberg Industries estimates will grow 50 percent annually until 2018.
Six companies paid a total of NT$118.65 billion for a total of 135MHz of bandwidth in 12 lots, the NCC said yesterday. The most-expensive lot was bought by Chunghwa Telecom Co. (2412) for NT$25.69 billion.
- Western health care is stuck in the sickbay
Every democratic society has to address practical questions about the availability and distribution of medical services
Simon Stevens worked for a private health company in the US for 10 years Photo:
The Telegraph 26 Oct 2013
Never in human history has the general health of most ordinary people been better than it is now. But paradoxically, there can scarcely ever have been a time when health care has been a more difficult political problem for the governments of advanced countries than it is now. These two apparently contradictory facts are not unconnected. It is precisely because of the stupendous advances in the treatment of disease that the role of government has become so contentious. With the scope for life-prolonging medical intervention now virtually limitless – and thus spending on it being potentially limitless as well – there are moral and practical questions about its availability and distribution which every democratic society has to address.
So this is where we find ourselves. In Britain, we have a government in deep trouble because it cannot find a way to relinquish an old model of health care, however anachronistic and unsatisfactory that system is shown to be. And on the other side of the Atlantic, there is a government embroiled in what may be a fatally damaging attempt to introduce an unpopular new model. Here, the limitations and drawbacks of a state-owned-and-run monopoly of medical provision have been known and (at least privately) admitted by every party in government over the past generation. But so great is the mythological terror evoked by the word “private” in conjunction with “health” among politicians that any attempt to break that monopoly and bring health care out of the wartime era of command economy rationing must be denied and abandoned before it is even properly explained. This cowardice on the part of the entire governing class is largely generated by the extraordinarily effective propaganda of vested interests such as the health service unions (including the shamelessly self-serving BMA).
- Roger Moore interview: 'If I had 24 hours to live, I’d make a dry martini’
The former James Bond actor is 86 now and not quite the spry spy he used to be, but, he says, his new show is definitely not a farewell tour
The Telegraph 2013.10.26
There are some people whose conversational style calls out to be recorded in a typeface called “ironic”, and Sir Roger Moore, who playedJames Bond in seven films between 1973 and 1985, turns out to have a sense of humour even drier than his louche secret agent’s martinis.
“Call me Charlie,” he says when I address him as Sir Roger. He has always been unfailingly modest about his achievements and quite happy to admit that the knighthood, which he has had since 2003, was bestowed for services to the charity Unicef – not for his acting. Nevertheless, his latest stage show – An Audience With Sir Roger Moore – which starts tomorrow at the Leeds Grand Theatre, quite pointedly includes his title and is billed as a conversation (with his biographer, Gareth Owen) about “his astonishing life and career”.
“I’ve got a massive ego, of course,” the actor says, deadpan, when I ask for an explanation. “Actually, it’s rather fun,” he continues, “going round parts of the country I’ve never seen and meeting people that I’ve never met before.”
Of course, at 86, he could be putting his feet up in Monaco or Crans-Montana, Switzerland (he divides the year between his two homes), with his fourth wife, Kristina. “It’s nice to be in the UK,” he says. “I get over when I can and it’s possible now that I don’t get taxed for being there.”
Ah, the tax thing. Moore has been vocal about this in the past, complaining about rules that force foreign residents to pay tax when they visit Britain. But it’s noticeable that, while one of his 007 predecessors, Sean Connery, has never quite been forgiven by the British public for being a tax exile in the Bahamas, Moore has always held a warmer place in our hearts. Has he, I wonder, become a national treasure? He laughs loudly at the notion. “That sounds like I should be in the Tower – but what’s Alan Bennett’s great line about that?” (“If you live to be 90 in England and can still eat a boiled egg, they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.”)
- Turkey's Bosphorus sub-sea tunnel links Europe and Asia
BBC 29 October 2013
A railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus Strait has been opened in Turkey, creating a new link between the Asian and European shores of Istanbul.
The Marmaray tunnel is the world's first connecting two continents, and is designed to withstand earthquakes.
It was inaugurated on the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years championed the undersea engineering project, first conceived by an Ottoman sultan in 1860.
Work began in 2004, but archaeological excavations delayed construction.
The underwater section runs for 0.8 miles (1.4 km), but in total the tunnel is 8.5 miles (13.6 km) long.
Japan invested $1bn of the $4bn (£3.4bn) total cost of the project, named Marmaray, which is a conflation of the nearby Sea of Marmara with "ray", the Turkish word for rail.
'Pharaonic'
The BBC's James Reynolds in Istanbul says the Turkish government hopes the new route under the Bosphorus will eventually develop into an important trading route.
In theory it brings closer the day when it will be possible to travel from London to Beijing via Istanbul by train.
The Marmaray project will upgrade existing suburban train lines to create a direct link joining the southern part of the city across the Bosphorus Strait.
Istanbul is one of the world's biggest cities, with about 16 million people. Some two million, according to the AFP news agency, cross the Bosphorus every day via just two bridges, causing severe traffic congestion.
The rail service will be capable of carrying 75,000 people per hour in either direction.
"While creating a transport axis between the east and west points of the city, I believe it will soothe the problem" of congestion, said Istanbul's mayor Kadir Topbas.
But critics of Prime Minister Erdogan have seen the tunnel as one of his grandiose construction projects for the city where he used to be mayor.
Detractors of his proposals, including a third airport, a parallel canal, a third bridge over the Bosphorus and a second tunnel - for cars, south of Marmaray - say they illustrate Mr Erdogan's "pharaonic" ambitions.
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