In 1998, He Helped Save Her After A Devastating Fire. In 2016, He Watched Her Graduate College.

Peter Getz held Josibelk Aponte in 1998, after a fire ripped through a Connecticut apartment. Getz, a patrolman at the time, performed CPR on the 5-year-old victim as she was being rushed to the hospital, working in the back of a police cruiser, the Hartford Courant reported.

The fire was fatal, killing one of Aponte's relatives. But Aponte survived. The Courant reported that when she awoke after the incident, she was "surrounded by her family and the first responders who saved her."

"I did what I was trained to do, what I had to do," Getz told the newspaper this week.

"I almost died, but I was given a second chance at life," Aponte said, according to the Courant. "And it was because of Peter and all the authorities, everyone who came to help that day."

Aponte is grown now, 23 years old. This week, she graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University. And Getz, who is now retired, was there for the commencement, watching along with her family.

"Pretty proud of her, for all the adversity that she has overcome," Getz told The Washington Post. "Both physically and mentally, having to go through that, and losing one of your loved ones, that you were very close to. That she had stayed the course and that she had come out as a shining star."

Getz said he was dispatched to the scene of the blaze along with other officers, who worked on crowd and traffic control. Fire crews who responded to the apartment found two victims inside the building, including the 5-year-old Aponte.

"Josi was unconscious and basically in cardiac arrest, and I took Josi from the fireman, because he was in full bunker gear - there was no ambulance available," Getz said. "And since we were kind of close to the hospital, I was not going to wait for an ambulance, so I had another officer drive my cruiser, and I did CPR on her on the way to the hospital."

It really was a group effort, Getz said. Dispatchers took down the correct information, and let responders know that people were in the apartment. Firefighters made their way through a smoke-filled apartment, he said. Someone drove the cruiser to the hospital, where medical personnel took over.

"This is how the process is supposed to work," Getz said.

He was photographed cradling Aponte during the incident, a moment that was captured by a Courant photographer. And in the years that followed, he said, he kept tabs on her, "to make sure that she was on track." Then, about two years ago, Aponte got in touch with the retired Hartford police detective.

"She started to reach out to me and sent me an email," he said. "I think she Facebook-stalked me, is what she calls it."

And they've been communicating ever since.

"Honestly, a lump came in my throat," Getz said, describing how he felt when he received the first message from Aponte. "It was kind of cool, you know, that somebody would even remember you from that long ago. I mean, I always remembered her. There's a picture on my desk that her mom gave me a year or two after one of her birthdays."

When asked if he considered Aponte to be family, Getz said: "Oh yeah."

"I mean, physically, not in my house," he said, "but she'll always be a part of me and a part of my family."

Source: http://www.ndtv.com/

Stockholders Okay Twitter CEO's Plan to Donate Shares to Employees

Celebrating Twitter's 10th birthday at its annual meeting on Wednesday, stockholders of the micro-blogging site have approved CEO Jack Dorsey's pledge to give away one-third of his shares to employees.

Last October, Dorsey had pledged to donate shares to a pool to be "granted over time to Twitter's employees and other service providers," Forbes reported on Thursday.

The 6.8 million shares that the Twitter CEO plans to donate were worth about $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,343 crores) when he promised to give them to employees in October.

Since then, Twitter stocks have slid more than 50 percent owing to stalled users growth and falling revenues, lowering the value of the promised shares to $98 million (roughly Rs. 658 crores), the report added.

Twitter shares fell sharply about 12 percent after the micro-blogging website - which managed to add 5 million people to take its monthly active user base to 310 million - missed the first quarter revenue estimates last month.

The company posted $595 million revenue in the first quarter ending March 31. It was up 36 percent from $435.9 million (roughly Rs. 2,924 crores) in the same quarter last year but missed the $607.9 million (roughly Rs. 4,079 crores) expected on average among analysts, Forbes reported.

Twitter posted a net loss of $79.7 million (roughly Rs. 534 crores) compared with a year-earlier loss of $162.4 million (roughly Rs. 1,089 crores).

Twitter has predicted revenue for the second quarter between $590 million (roughly Rs. 3,962 crores) and $610 million (roughly Rs. 4,096 crores) much lower than the $678 million (roughly Rs. 4,551 crores) analysts expected.

"Revenue came in at the low end of our guidance range, as brand marketers did not increase spend as quickly as expected in Q1," the company tweeted.

According to Dorsey, the engagement on Twitter is growing. Direct messages are up about 50 percent year-over-year and tweets shared via direct message are up more than 75 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Twitter said more than 800 million people visit the site and there are more than 1 billion monthly unique visitors to pages that syndicate Twitter content.

The company also said that new follows on the service are up about 48 percent.

Dorsey hinted that Twitter's deal with the National Football League (NFL) to stream 10 games this fall will help the company earn better traffic.

Source: http://gadgets.ndtv.com

Spread of Locky Virus in Mantralaya PCs Contained, Data Safe: Official

The state's Information Technology department has managed to contain the spread of Locky virus, a file-encrypting ransomware, in computer systems at Mantralaya and all the data are safe, a senior official claimed.

The virus had affected about 150 computers, mostly in Revenue, Public Works Department and some isolated computers in other departments of Mantralaya and these computers have now been isolated and being sent for forensic tests, Principal Secretary, IT department, V K Gautam, said.

All the data on the Maharashtra Local Area Network (Maha LAN) are safe, he said.

"The virus first showed its presence around Friday last week, which probably sneaked into the Maha LAN through a spam mail," Gautam said.

After gaining entry into the system, the virus begins encrypting the DOC, PPT or other files into Locky files, the official said.

"When one tries to access these encrypted files, the system asks the user for lock key and then asks to pay for it in Bitcoins for granting access to the files," he said.

He added that the virus is actually very dangerous for the world of finance and corporates, wherein data related to financial accounts and other sensitive information gets locked and the user is asked to pay for the access to own data.

"The virus begins to send spam mails using the official e-mail ID deceiving the user in opening it or its mail attachments allowing the virus to enter the system," he said.

Users need to guard against accessing spam mails of such nature by clicking on to the senders' e-mail address to know the real sender and better still use only the official government e-mail Intra-net rather than private e-mails like Gmail, Yahoo and others, Gautam added.

"There are around 53,000 computers in various government departments in Mantralaya that are on the Maha LAN," he said, adding that following the incident, the IT department has fortified its server and data center and that no damage has been caused to the government files.

Both the Centre and the state government have a policy that mandates all its employees to use the official government intra-net rather than private e-mail, he said.

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Source: http://gadgets.ndtv.com

EgyptAir plane 'did not swerve' before crash

The head of Egypt's state-run provider of air navigation services says that EgyptAir flight 804 did not swerve or lose altitude before it disappeared off radar, challenging an earlier account by Greece's defence minister.

Ehab Azmy, head of the National Air Navigation Services Company, told The Associated Press news agency on Monday that in the minutes before the plane disappeared it was flying at its normal altitude of 37,000 feet, according to the radar reading.

He said: "That fact degrades what the Greeks are saying about aircraft suddenly losing altitude before it vanished from radar."

According to Greece's defence minister Panos Kammenos, the plane swerved and dropped to 10,000 feet before it fell off radar.

Greek civil aviation authorities say all appeared fine with the flight until air traffic controllers were to hand it over to their Egyptian counterparts.

Meanwhile the search for the plane, which crashed with 66 aboard on Thursday, continues, with French navy ships arriving in the Mediterranean Sea on Monday.

The 10 crew and 56 passengers included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals.
The vessel is equipped with sonar that can pick up the underwater "pings" emitted by the recorders. It is specialised in maritime surveillance, and rescue and marine police missions.

Moreover, teams searching for the black box flight recorders have been facing technical constraints.

Air crash investigation experts say the search teams have around 30 days until the batteries die to listen for pings sent out once every second from beacons attached to the two black boxes, as they scour 17,000 square kilometres of sea north of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.

At this stage of the search, they would typically use acoustic hydrophones, bringing in more advanced robots later to scan the seabed and retrieve any objects once they have been found.

French investigators say the Egyptian jet sent warnings indicating that smoke was detected on board. The signals did not indicate what caused the smoke, and aviation experts have not ruled out deliberate sabotage or a technical fault.

Ships and planes scouring the sea have found body parts, personal belongings and debris from the Airbus 320, but are still trying to locate the black box recorders that could shed light on the cause of the crash.

The search for EgyptAir's Airbus A320 is especially challenging because its wreckage lies in one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean, at a depth of 2,000-3,000 metres, which is on the edge of the range for hearing pinger signals.

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com

Facebook drops news outlet input in ‘trending topics’ review

Facebook says it is dropping its reliance on news outlets to help determine what gets posted as a “trending topic” on the giant social network, a move adopted after a backlash over a report saying it suppressed conservative views. Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch outlined the change in a 12-page letter sent Monday to Republican Sen. John Thune, chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the Internet and consumer protections.

The move comes less than a week after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Glenn Beck and more than a dozen other conservative commentators to address concerns stemming from a report in the tech blog Gizmodo. The Gizmodo report, which relied on a single anonymous former Facebook worker with self-described conservative leanings, claimed that Facebook downplays conservative news subjects on its trending feature.

As part of the changes outlined Monday, Facebook will stop looking to news outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Drudge Report to automatically nominate topics for its trending feature. It also automatically nominates topics based on a spike in user posts about a subject.

“In our meetings last week, we received feedback that any list — even a good one — inherently raises questions of which publications are included versus which are not,” said Facebook spokeswoman Jodi Seth. “Based on this feedback, we felt that the best approach would be to clear up this issue by removing these lists entirely and focus on surfacing the conversation on Facebook.”

Trending topics are seen on the right side of the screen on computers, or after tapping on the search bar in a mobile app. As part of its review, Facebook found that members of the team working on trending topics could temporarily suppress topics if news outlets weren’t reporting on them enough.

But said it found no evidence of systemic political bias, though it couldn’t discount that a lone wolf might be able to game its system. “It is impossible to fully exclude the possibility that, over the years of the feature’s existence, a specific reviewer took isolated actions with an improper motive,” it said.


Source: http://tech.firstpost.com

NSA surveillance: Obama warns Congress against 'reckless' decision

As Rand Paul threatened to “force the expiration of the NSA illegal spy program”, Barack Obama on Saturday made a last-ditch plea to Congress to pass a bill that limits some surveillance powers, saying it would be “irresponsible” and “reckless” to allow such authorities to expire at midnight on Sunday.

“This is a matter of national security,” Obama said in his weekly address. “We shouldn’t surrender the tools that help keep us safe. It would be irresponsible. It would be reckless.”

Obama blamed “a small group of senators [who are] standing in the way”, understating the gridlock in Congress caused by several groups who support or oppose the reform-minded bill, the USA Freedom Act, over a status quo renewal of powers under the Patriot Act.

Republicans and Democrats are divided into three primary factions that do not necessarily fall in party lines. Surveillance hawks, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, want a clean, temporary reauthorization of NSA and FBI powers. Another faction, backed by the White House, supports the USA Freedom Act as a “reasonable compromise” between privacy and security.

A third Senate faction, including the Republican Paul and Democrat Ron Wyden, believe the USA Freedom Act does not go far enough in limiting surveillance powers.

On Saturday, while insisting he would not “obstruct”, Paul promised to block any version of the renewal of the authorities, suggesting another after-midnight debate on Sunday.

“I acknowledge the need for a robust intelligence agency and for a vigilant national security,” Paul said in a statement. “But we do not need to give up who we are to defeat them … There has to be another way. We must find it together.”

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed the bill with bipartisan support earlier this month.

Feuding between these groups prevented either a renewal of the Patriot Act or passage of the USA Freedom Act before a legislative recess, obliging senators to reconvene over the weekend for a final attempt to vote. On Friday, Paul suggested he would filibuster the vote and force the expiration of Patriot Act provisions.

The president framed the USA Freedom Act as a set of positive reforms, including the end of the NSA’s bulk collection of American phone records – as revealed in the Guardian by the whistleblower Edward Snowden – the transition of those records to telecom companies, and greater transparency regarding the mostly secret Fisa court decisions that authorize surveillance warrants for intelligence agencies.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com

How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers

By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet. When this newspaper began publishing the NSA documents in June 2013, it ignited a fierce political debate that continues to this day – about government surveillance, but also about the morality, legality and civic value of whistleblowing.

But if you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you have to know the stories of two other men.

The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed.

Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored.
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“The government spent many years trying to break me, and the more I resisted, the nastier they got,” Drake told me.

Drake’s story has since been told – and in fact, it had a profound impact on Snowden, who told an interviewer in 2015 that: “It’s fair to say that if there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake, there wouldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.”

But there is another man whose story has never been told before, who is speaking out publicly for the first time here. His name is John Crane, and he was a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well.

His testimony reveals a crucial new chapter in the Snowden story – and Crane’s failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers should now make it very clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public with his revelations.
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During dozens of hours of interviews, Crane told me how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake’s identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge.

The supreme irony? In their zeal to punish Drake, these Pentagon officials unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches when the 29-year-old NSA contract employee blew the whistle himself. Snowden was unaware of the hidden machinations inside the Pentagon that undid Drake, but the outcome of those machinations – Drake’s arrest, indictment and persecution – sent an unmistakable message: raising concerns within the system promised doom.

“Name one whistleblower from the intelligence community whose disclosures led to real change – overturning laws, ending policies – who didn’t face retaliation as a result. The protections just aren’t there,” Snowden told the Guardian this week. “The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake. Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance.”

Snowden saw what had happened to Drake and other whistleblowers like him. The key to Snowden’s effectiveness, according to Thomas Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), was that he practised “civil disobedience” rather than “lawful” whistleblowing. (GAP, a non-profit group in Washington, DC, that defends whistleblowers, has represented Snowden, Drake and Crane.)

Source: http://www.theguardian.com