IGIHE

Author: IGIHE

  • Israel calls for end of UN Palestinian refugee agency

    {Prime Minister Netanyahu calls for total shut down of UNRWA, saying it is responsible for incitement against Israel.}

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Sunday for the dismantling of the UN agency that aids millions of Palestinian refugees, accusing it of anti-Israeli incitement and saying he had conveyed his message to the US ambassador to the United Nations.

    Adnan Abu Hasna, a Gaza-based spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said Netanyahu was pursuing a “fantasy”.

    The United States, Israel’s main ally, was the biggest donor to UNRWA last year, pledging $368 million.

    In public remarks to his cabinet at its weekly meeting, Netanyahu said UNRWA perpetuated, rather than solved, the Palestinian refugee problem and that it stoked anti-Israeli incitement.

    “It is time UNRWA be dismantled and merged with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” Netanyahu said.

    Referring to a meeting he held in Jerusalem on Wednesday with Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, Netanyahu said: “I told her it was time the United Nations re-examine UNRWA’s existence.”

    UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation.

    It says it currently aids five million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

    Chris Gunness, UNRWA’s chief spokesman, told Reuters news agency that only the General Assembly, by a majority vote, could change the agency’s mandate.

    “In December 2016, UNRWA’s mandate was extended for three years by the General Assembly by a large majority,” he added.

    Netanyahu made his comments two days after UNRWA said it had discovered part of a tunnel running under two of its schools in the Gaza Strip’s Maghazi refugee camp.

    UNRWA said it had protested to Hamas, the group that rules the enclave and which had used a network of cross-border tunnels to launch attacks inside Israel in a 2014 war.

    Hamas denied the accusations, calling them “Israeli fabrications”.

    “The Israeli claims regarding discovering alleged tunnels underneath the UNRWA school are classic Israeli lies aiming to dehumanize the Palestinian refugees,” senior Hamas leader and spokesman Izzat al-Rishq told Al Jazeera.

    “This is not the first time the Israeli government tries to spread such lies in order to destroy the work of UNRWA in helping Palestinian refugees get their education.”

    Rishq said Netanyahu’s call to dismantle UNRWA was “part of the Israeli plan to eliminate the Palestinian refugee problem once and for all”.

    UNRWA’s Guinness said the agency had “robustly intervened and protested to Hamas in Gaza”.

    He said UNRWA would seal the tunnel, which was discovered while the schools were empty during the summer holiday.

    Over the years, Hamas has built a labyrinth of tunnels, some passing under the border into Israel in order to launch attacks.

    Israel has besieged the Gaza Strip, home to nearly two million people, since Hamas wrested control of the territory from the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in 2007. Since then, it has conducted three major assaults on the territory.

    UNRWA currently aids five million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Gaddafi’s son Saif freed in Libya

    {Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, second son of the late deposed Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, has been freed from jail under an amnesty law.}

    His father’s preferred successor, he had been held by a militia in the town of Zintan for the past six years.

    The Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion said he had been released on Friday but he has not been seen in public.

    It is feared the move could fuel further instability in Libya.

    His lawyer, Khaled al-Zaidi, confirmed he had been released.

    He declined to say which city Saif al-Islam had travelled to for security reasons. A source has told the BBC he is in the Tobruk area of eastern Libya.

    The Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion said it was acting on a request from the “interim government” based in the east of the country.

    However, he has been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Tripoli, in the west of the country, where control is in the hands of the rival, UN-backed Government of National Accord.

    Saif al-Islam is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity during his father’s unsuccessful attempts to put down the rebellion against his rule.

    The Zintan Military Council – which had previously been involved in his detention – and Zintan’s municipal council have condemned his release by the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Battalion.

    The councils said in a statement that freeing Saif al-Islam was “a form of collusion, a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs and stab in the back of the military body to which they [the brigade] claim to belong”.

    Another unpredictable element: analysis by Orla Guerin, BBC News, Tripoli
    The release of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will add another unpredictable element to Libya’s unstable mix.

    He was detained in the desert in November 2011 trying to flee to Niger, and later appeared missing several fingers.

    The former playboy often appeared in the West as the public face of the Gaddafi regime and was his father’s heir-apparent.

    While reviled by many – at home and abroad – he retains some support in Libya and could try to re-enter the political fray here.

    The 44-year-old Saif al-Islam – who was controversially granted a PhD by the London School of Economics in 2008 – was captured in November 2011 after three months on the run following the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s decades-long rule.

    He was previously known for playing a key role in building relations with the West after 2000, and had been considered the reformist face of his father’s regime.

    But after the 2011 uprising, he found himself accused of incitement to violence and murdering protesters.

    Four years later, he was sentenced to death by firing squad following a trial involving 30 of Gaddafi’s close associates.

    Reaction on social media to Saif al-Islam’s release has been mixed.

    One Twitter user said: “When the world is upside down, the killer becomes innocent and the victim becomes a terrorist. The blood of the martyrs disappears and Saif al-Islam becomes a free man!”

    By contrast, another Twitter user posted a video showing celebrations of Saif al-Islam’s release in the north-western town of Asabea, in which people appeared be carrying the green flags associated with his father’s rule. He was also described as a “lifeline to the Libyan people”.

    {{Saif al-Islam: Heir to prisoner}}

    June 1972: Born in Tripoli, Libya, second son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi

    February 2011: Uprising against Gaddafi government begins

    June 2011: International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Saif al-Islam for crimes against humanity

    August 2011: Leaves the capital after Tripoli falls to anti-government forces; flees to Bani Walid

    October 2011: Father and younger brother killed

    19 November 2011: Captured by militia as he tries to flee south to Niger. Imprisoned in Zintan

    July 2015: Sentenced to death by a Tripoli court in absentia

    June 2017: Reportedly released after being granted amnesty by one of Libya’s two competing governments

    Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (pictured in 2011) was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli in 2015

    Source:BBC

  • Ethiopia’s emergency food aid to run out next month

    {Ethiopia will run out of emergency food aid for 7.8 million people affected by drought at the end of this month, the UN has warned.}

    Aid groups and the government are calling for help, but fear donor fatigue with other crises worldwide.

    Famine has been declared in South Sudan, and there are warnings of famine in north-east Nigeria, Yemen and Somalia.

    But Ethiopia is also struggling following successive failed rains.

    The government, while better at coping with droughts than in previous years, still does not have the funds to cope by itself.

    It allocated $381m (£300m) extra over the last two years, but is unable to sustain it for a third year.

    It has left Ethiopia in a “dire situation”, according to John Aylieff of the World Food Programme, a UN agency.

    “We’ve got food running out nationally at the end of June,” he told reporters on Friday.
    “That means the 7.8 million people who are in need of humanitarian food assistance in Ethiopia will see that distribution cut abruptly at the end of June.”

    His words were echoed by John Graham, of Save the Children

    He told AFP news agency: “After [the food runs out], we don’t know what is going to happen. And without that basic food then you will have problem falling into severe malnutrition because people are not getting any food.

    “These children become severely malnourished and that’s where you have a very dangerous situation.”

    Drought struck Ethiopia last year too

    Source:BBC

  • Hundreds escape after gunmen attack DRC Kangwayi prison

    {Gunmen have attacked a prison in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) freeing hundreds of inmates and rebels. It is the third major prison break in the country in the past month.}

    More than 900 inmates escaped from a prison in the eastern North Kivu province on Sunday after armed assailants stormed the building, the governor of the province said.
    Eleven people, including eight security officers, were killed in an exchange of gunfire at the Kangwayi prison in Beni, North Kivu Governor Julien Paluku told reporters.
    “Of the 966 inmates who were in the prison, there are still 30 detainees left, which means that more than 930 prisoners have escaped,” he added.

    Beni and the neighboring town of Butembo have been put under curfew. “Only police officers and soldiers should be out from this time,” the governor said.

    Scores of armed groups operate in mineral-rich eastern Congo, with at least 70 in North and South Kivu province alone, according to the US-based Congo Research Group.

    Located near the border with Uganda, Beni and surrounding areas have witnessed a spike of violence in the past several years by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
    Many of the inmates freed from Kangwayi were captured ADF fighters on trial for violence that has killed more than 700 civilians since 2013. More than 60,000 people have been displaced due to fighting and looting.

    According to the UN, the ADF has engaged in numerous violations of human rights law including recruitment of child soldiers, abduction, murder, maiming and rape.

    The Muslim rebel group first emerged in western Uganda in the 1990s before becoming active in North Kivu province. ADF founder and leader, Jamil Mukulu, was arrested in Tanzania in 2015 and subsequently extradited to Uganda to face trial.
    Some intelligence sources have suggested the ADF has links to Somalia’s al-Shabaab.

    {{Third jailbreak in a month}}

    Sunday’s jailbreak is the third to hit the DRC in the past month.

    On May 19, dozens of prisoners escaped from a prison in Kasangulu, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Kinshasa.

    Two days earlier, armed militia members belonging to the Bundu dia Kongo (BDK) religious-political sect freed the group’s spiritual leader and dozens of prisoners from an overcrowded Kinshasa prison. BDK seeks to restore a pre-colonial kingdom in the western part of the country, as well as parts of Angola and Gabon.

    {{Political crisis fuels more violence}}

    The prison breaks and rising violence come as the Congo faces a mounting political crisis after President Joseph Kabila postponed elections in November, sparking widespread protests.

    Kabila should have stepped down in December under a constitutionally mandated two-term limit.

    Elections are now scheduled to take place at the end of this year under a power-sharing agreement. But the opposition questions whether Kabila will yield power.
    Earlier this month, Kabila hinted that he would not follow through with the deal.

    “I have not promised anything at all,” Kabila told the German magazine “Der Spiegel” in an interview. “I wish to organize elections as soon as possible. We want perfect elections, not just elections.”

    Source:DW

  • Sserunkuma downs Cape Verde again as Cranes make winning start

    {Uganda took over early leadership of Group L in the 2019 Afcon qualifiers after picking maximum points away to Cape Verde in their postponed game on Sunday evening.}

    The pre-match talk of the game had centered around Cranes’ failure to make it in time for the game moved 24-hours from Saturday by Caf on Uganda’s request.

    This was after a combination of poor planning on Uganda’s part and some underhand tactics from hosts Cape Verde saw 11 Cranes players only arrive in the country at the scheduled 1730 GMT kickoff on Saturday.

    But after being granted an extra day, the Ugandan team grabbed the all-important three points to move two ahead of Lesotho and Tanzania that had earlier played out a 1-1 draw.

    Striker Geoffrey Sserunkuma, scorer of the lone goal that separated the two teams in 2005, the last time they met, repeated the trick seven minutes from the final whistle.
    The veteran KCCA front man who had come on as a substitute for Emmanuel Okwi tapped home at the far-post from a swift move that culminated into left back Godfrey Walusimbi’s low cross.

    Coach Micho Sredojevic had fielded virtually the same team from Tuesday’s warm up goalless draw with Senegal with only captain Dennis Onyango coming into the side in place of Benjamin Ochan.

    Villa defender Bernard Muwanga was again preferred to Timothy Awany in central defence in what appeared as a 4-3-3 formation.

    As expected, the hosts with several European-based players, dominated possession and it required some alert goalkeeping from Onyango to keep them at bay with one particular fingertip save in the second half catching the eye.

    They were then undone by Sserunkuma’s positioning with the striker having only taken to the pitch six minutes earlier.
    Attention now shifts to next month’s Chan qualifier against South Sudan while the Afcon games resume in March next year with Uganda hosting Tanzania.

    The winner of the group will qualify directly for the final tournament due in Cameroon in addition to the best three runners up from the other 11 groups.

    {{2019 Afcon qualifiers Group L results}}

    Cape Verde 0-1 Uganda
    Lesotho 1-1 Tanzania

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Kenya:Nurses strike still on as Cotu steps in to end deadlock

    {The Central Organisation of Trade Unions has offered to mediate in the deadlock between nurses on strike and their employer, which enters the seventh day today.}

    Acting Cotu Secretary-General Benson Okwaro said the talks will be held in Nairobi tomorrow, attended by officers from the Ministry of Labour and the nurses’ union officials.

    Mr Okwaro called on the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC) to stick to its advisory role and “stop meddling” with the workers’ welfare.

    {{HOSPITAL DESERTED}}

    The strike has paralysed health care in public hospitals across the country.

    Because of the nature of their job, and their constant, close contact with patients, nurses are the backbone of any functioning health care system.

    At Nakuru Level 5 Hospital yesterday, the casualties area and the waiting bay, usually busy throughout the week, were deserted. Only a few members of the support staff could be seen.

    {{PATIENTS TURNED AWAY}}

    Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source at the key referral hospital told the Nation that no new admissions were being allowed as there were no nurses to attend to patients in the wards.

    Some patients seeking services from doctors were allowed in while the critically ill were turned away by security guards manning the gate.

    The hospital acts as a referral facility for more than five counties — Laikipia, Baringo, Kericho, Nyandarua and Samburu.

    At Bondeni Maternity, an extension of the hospital, services were paralysed.

    All maternity wings were locked, with a security guard at the gate turning away patients seeking services.

    {{HONOUR CBA}}

    In Laikipia and Nyahururu, patients were turned away at key government hospitals.

    The most affected included Nyahururu County Referral Hospital, which serves patients from as far away as Baringo, Samburu, Nyandarua and Laikipia.

    In the western region, nurses in Kisii, Siaya, Kisumu, Homa Bay and Bomet counties planned to demonstrate on the streets today to compel governors and the Ministry of Health to implement their collective bargaining agreement, terming the Sarah Serem-led SRC as illogical.

    The CBA was signed in December with government officials.

    {{STRIKE CONTINUES}}

    Mr Benard Cheruiyot, the Kenya National Union of Nurses (Knun) deputy secretary for Bomet branch, said they will not listen to empty rhetoric.

    “We signed a CBA with Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto with all the representatives of the health workers to increase our pay by 12.5 per cent, but now, that has been shelved, leaving us wondering about who was fooling whom,” Mr Cheruiyot said.

    In Kisii, nurses said they will be back in the streets today for “the mother of all protests”.

    The union’s branch secretary, Mr Richard Riang’a, said they are ready “to stay away from our work stations as long as the government is not ready to cede ground and sign the CBA”.

    He said: “We will forge on with the demos until we get it signed.”

    {{RESUME WORK}}

    At Kisii Level 5 Hospital, several patients were stranded with no nurse in sight, even though a handful of doctors and clinicians were on duty.

    In Siaya, the more than 400 county-employed nurses vowed to stay away despite a return-to-work order.

    The union’s branch secretary, Mr Sylvester Ng’anda, said the strike would continue as planned until the national and county governments address their grievances.

    He dismissed letters from the county chief officer of health ordering the nurses back to work.

    “I am the only one who can call off the strike. I want to call on all our members to stay put and disregard the directive,” Mr Ng’anda said.

    {{ILLEGAL ACTION}}

    On Friday, the county government, through the chief officer of Health, Ms Dorothy Owino, warned in a memo that nurses who failed to resume work would be absconding duty.

    Ms Owino termed the strike illegitimate as it contravened the Employment Act and the code of regulation, both of which help in solving labour disputes.

    At Baringo County Referral Hospital, patients lay in the wards unattended and only those who cleared their medical bills were discharged.

    The maternity wing had two patients under the care of student nurses.

    Last week, the Federation of Women Lawyers (Fida) warned of legal action against the government should it fail to end the impasse.

    “Maternal and child health care is the most affected. No woman should die while giving life,” Fida Kenya chairperson Josephine Mong’are said.

    Patients at Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital on June 8, 2017 wait to be attended to as nurses continue with their strike.

    Source:Daily Nation

  • Tanzania:Govt bans pig importation, to curb swine disease

    {The government has banned, for one year, importation of live swine and its products following an outbreak of Africa Swine Fever (ASF) which has hit some regions in the country.}

    The move is aimed at containing the spread of the disease.

    So far, some regions have been hit by the disease, a move which forced the government to announce a special quarantine as a means to prevent it from spreading.

    The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Mr William Ole Nasha, told this paper in a telephone interview, yesterday, that due to the outbreak, the affected areas have been quarantined.

    He named some of the affected regions as Mbeya, Rukwa, Dodoma, Dar es Salaam and Kibaha in the Coast Region.

    “We have decided to take precautions to prevent further spread of the Africa Swine Fever, thus those areas identified with the disease are on quarantine as well as banning importation of live swine and its products,” said Mr Ole Nasha.

    He said that much as banning importation, we have as well, prohibited, transportation of live swine and its products from the locally affected areas.

    He however, pointed out that the disease is more of concern because it possesses neither vaccine nor cure; therefore the current measure is to prevent more spread.

    “Upon, discovery that some of your animals have been affected, you should isolate them and disinfect the areas with V-RID to prevent contamination,” he said.

    The Deputy Minister noted that veterinary officers are imparting knowledge on how the disease should be managed.

    In another development, Dodoma Municipal Council has banned any business operations related to pigs and pork meat until further notice.

    According to a statement issued by the Municipal Council’s Communications Officer, Mr Ramadhan Juma, such a move comes following the death of 285 pigs in Miyuji and Ipagala wards in the region.

    “Pigs and all animals of the same nature will not be allowed to move from one area to anoth-er without authorisation from the Dodoma Municipal Council Director’s office,” noted Mr Juma.

    He emphasized besides the animals, movement of related products will also not be allowed.

    The African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) is the causative of ASF. It leads to haemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in pigs.

    ASFV is a large, double-stranded DNA virus which repli-cates in the cytoplasm of infected cells, and is the only member of the Asfarviridae family.

    ASFV infects domestic pigs, warthogs and bushpigs as well as soft ticks (Ornithodoros), which likely act as a vector.

    The virus causes a lethal haemorraghic disease in domestic pigs.

    It is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. The disease was first discovered after European settlers brought pigs into areas endemic with ASFV.

    Source:Daily News

  • Study examines link between obesity, food container chemical subsitutes

    {A new study from the University of Iowa shows that a pair of common chemicals that manufacturers use to make plastic food containers, water bottles, and other consumer products do not contribute to obesity to the extent of the chemical it’s replacing.}

    The chemicals — bisphenol F and bisphenol S (known as BPF and BPS) — are being used increasingly by food packaging manufacturers as substitutes for bisphenol A (BPA), which studies have found disrupts endocrine systems and causes numerous health problems. BPA is used in many kinds of packaging for snacks and drinks, canned foods, and water bottles. The chemical is absorbed into the body mainly through the food or water it contacts in the container.

    But concern was raised several years ago when numerous studies found BPA increases the risk of various health issues, in particular obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. A consumer backlash erupted after the studies received media attention so manufacturers started reducing the use of BPA in some consumer products or even eliminating it in so-called “BPA-free” products by replacing it with such alternatives as BPF and BPS.

    However, little is known on the potential impact of BPF and BPS exposure in humans. The new University of Iowa study is the first to determine the health impacts of BPF and BPS exposure on obesity in humans. Using data from a nationwide population-based study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the researchers confirm that BPA is associated with increased obesity in humans. But the study found no links between obesity and either BPF or BPS at the current exposure levels.

    However, the researchers warn that fewer products currently use BPF and BPS — BPA still has more than half the global market share for the chemicals, and the average concentration of BPF and BPS is about one-fourth that of BPA in the US population. Whether BPF and BPS pose an increased risk of obesity at the same population exposure levels as BPA remains unknown. Future studies will be needed to confirm the results, as BPF and BPS are likely to replace BPA in more consumer products.

    A new study from the University of Iowa shows that a pair of common chemicals that manufacturers use to make plastic food containers, water bottles, and other consumer products do not contribute to obesity to the extent of the chemical it's replacing.

    Source:Science Daily

  • 7 in 10 smartphone apps share your data with third-party services

    {Our mobile phones can reveal a lot about ourselves: where we live and work; who our family, friends and acquaintances are; how (and even what) we communicate with them; and our personal habits. With all the information stored on them, it isn’t surprising that mobile device users take steps to protect their privacy, like using PINs or passcodes to unlock their phones.}

    The research that we and our colleagues are doing identifies and explores a significant threat that most people miss: More than 70 percent of smartphone apps are reporting personal data to third-party tracking companies like Google Analytics, the Facebook Graph API or Crashlytics.

    When people install a new Android or iOS app, it asks the user’s permission before accessing personal information. Generally speaking, this is positive. And some of the information these apps are collecting are necessary for them to work properly: A map app wouldn’t be nearly as useful if it couldn’t use GPS data to get a location.

    But once an app has permission to collect that information, it can share your data with anyone the app’s developer wants to – letting third-party companies track where you are, how fast you’re moving and what you’re doing.

    {{The help, and hazard, of code libraries}}

    An app doesn’t just collect data to use on the phone itself. Mapping apps, for example, send your location to a server run by the app’s developer to calculate directions from where you are to a desired destination.

    The app can send data elsewhere, too. As with websites, many mobile apps are written by combining various functions, precoded by other developers and companies, in what are called third-party libraries. These libraries help developers track user engagement, connect with social media and earn money by displaying ads and other features, without having to write them from scratch.

    However, in addition to their valuable help, most libraries also collect sensitive data and send it to their online servers – or to another company altogether. Successful library authors may be able to develop detailed digital profiles of users. For example, a person might give one app permission to know their location, and another app access to their contacts. These are initially separate permissions, one to each app. But if both apps used the same third-party library and shared different pieces of information, the library’s developer could link the pieces together.

    Users would never know, because apps aren’t required to tell users what software libraries they use. And only very few apps make public their policies on user privacy; if they do, it’s usually in long legal documents a regular person won’t read, much less understand.

    {{Developing Lumen}}

    Our research seeks to reveal how much data are potentially being collected without users’ knowledge, and to give users more control over their data. To get a picture of what data are being collected and transmitted from people’s smartphones, we developed a free Android app of our own, called the Lumen Privacy Monitor. It analyzes the traffic apps send out, to report which applications and online services actively harvest personal data.

    Because Lumen is about transparency, a phone user can see the information installed apps collect in real time and with whom they share these data. We try to show the details of apps’ hidden behavior in an easy-to-understand way. It’s about research, too, so we ask users if they’ll allow us to collect some data about what Lumen observes their apps are doing – but that doesn’t include any personal or privacy-sensitive data. This unique access to data allows us to study how mobile apps collect users’ personal data and with whom they share data at an unprecedented scale.

    In particular, Lumen keeps track of which apps are running on users’ devices, whether they are sending privacy-sensitive data out of the phone, what internet sites they send data to, the network protocol they use and what types of personal information each app sends to each site. Lumen analyzes apps traffic locally on the device, and anonymizes these data before sending them to us for study: If Google Maps registers a user’s GPS location and sends that specific address to maps.google.com, Lumen tells us, “Google Maps got a GPS location and sent it to maps.google.com” – not where that person actually is.

    {{Trackers are everywhere}}

    More than 1,600 people who have used Lumen since October 2015 allowed us to analyze more than 5,000 apps. We discovered 598 internet sites likely to be tracking users for advertising purposes, including social media services like Facebook, large internet companies like Google and Yahoo, and online marketing companies under the umbrella of internet service providers like Verizon Wireless.

    We found that more than 70 percent of the apps we studied connected to at least one tracker, and 15 percent of them connected to five or more trackers. One in every four trackers harvested at least one unique device identifier, such as the phone number or its device-specific unique 15-digit IMEI number. Unique identifiers are crucial for online tracking services because they can connect different types of personal data provided by different apps to a single person or device. Most users, even privacy-savvy ones, are unaware of those hidden practices.

    {{More than just a mobile problem}}

    Tracking users on their mobile devices is just part of a larger problem. More than half of the app-trackers we identified also track users through websites. Thanks to this technique, called “cross-device” tracking, these services can build a much more complete profile of your online persona.

    And individual tracking sites are not necessarily independent of others. Some of them are owned by the same corporate entity – and others could be swallowed up in future mergers. For example, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, owns several of the tracking domains that we studied, including Google Analytics, DoubleClick or AdMob, and through them collects data from more than 48 percent of the apps we studied.

    Users’ online identities are not protected by their home country’s laws. We found data being shipped across national borders, often ending up in countries with questionable privacy laws. More than 60 percent of connections to tracking sites are made to servers in the U.S., U.K., France, Singapore, China and South Korea – six countries that have deployed mass surveillance technologies. Government agencies in those places could potentially have access to these data, even if the users are in countries with stronger privacy laws such as Germany, Switzerland or Spain.

    Even more disturbingly, we have observed trackers in apps targeted to children. By testing 111 kids’ apps in our lab, we observed that 11 of them leaked a unique identifier, the MAC address, of the Wi-Fi router it was connected to. This is a problem, because it is easy to search online for physical locations associated with particular MAC addresses. Collecting private information about children, including their location, accounts and other unique identifiers, potentially violates the Federal Trade Commission’s rules protecting children’s privacy.

    {{Just a small look}}

    Although our data include many of the most popular Android apps, it is a small sample of users and apps, and therefore likely a small set of all possible trackers. Our findings may be merely scratching the surface of what is likely to be a much larger problem that spans across regulatory jurisdictions, devices and platforms.

    It’s hard to know what users might do about this. Blocking sensitive information from leaving the phone may impair app performance or user experience: An app may refuse to function if it cannot load ads. Actually, blocking ads hurts app developers by denying them a source of revenue to support their work on apps, which are usually free to users.

    If people were more willing to pay developers for apps, that may help, though it’s not a complete solution. We found that while paid apps tend to contact fewer tracking sites, they still do track users and connect with third-party tracking services.

    Transparency, education and strong regulatory frameworks are the key. Users need to know what information about them is being collected, by whom, and what it’s being used for. Only then can we as a society decide what privacy protections are appropriate, and put them in place. Our findings, and those of many other researchers, can help turn the tables and track the trackers themselves.

    Source:Science Daily

  • IGP Gasana commends sports teams for good performances

    {The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Emmanuel K. Gasana has commended RNP handball and football clubs for the spirit of dedication and determination exhibited in the recently played games.}

    He said that the sense of triumph should continue to characterize them in future tournaments to achieve even more or sustain the current performances.

    The Police Chief made the remarks yesterday at RNP general headquarters while addressing both the handball and football teams at a function to celebrate the good performance of teams. During the event, Police handball team presented three trophies won in last year’s tournaments.

    Police handball club won the 2016 handball Champion, the Genocide commemoration league played to honour handballers who died during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis.

    Police handball club last year also won the national league tournament of the top four handball clubs.

    “I want to say a big thank you to all players and others involved in the outstanding accomplishments. RNP and the nation is proud of you” said IGP Gasana.

    The police chief however, urged players to remain disciplined and sustain the spirit of teamwork and humility if there are to remain at the top of their competitors.

    He thanked them for promoting the police brand and reassured them of RNP management’s commitment and support needed to improve or sustain the current positions of the clubs.

    Players on their hand promised to retain their positions and even perform better.

    Source:Police