Catapult to future: Facebook ‘building $1.5-billion data center’ in US to conquer Internet

An employee walks past servers in one of four server rooms at the Facebook Data Center on April 19, 2012 in Forest City, North Carolina. (AFP Photo)

Facebook has been revealed to be the company behind a $1.5-billion installation under construction in Iowa, already dubbed the “most technologically advanced data center in the world,” according to US media.

For over a year, the mysterious project in Altoona, Iowa, a town of just over 15,000 people, was a topic of heated speculation – what company is spending $1.5 billion on a data center occupying 130,000 square meters, with servers and databanks?

Now, legislative sources have revealed to Iowa newspaper the Des Moines Register that they are “finalizing some elements” for Siculus Inc. and its ‘Project Catapult,’ believed to be a Facebook initiative.

The three-building installation is expected to be completed in two stages, each worth $500 million, with the final price tag for the facility reaching as high as $1.5 billion, analysts said.

Facebook already has three similar facilities: In Prineville, Oregon($210 million); in Forest City, North Carolina ($450 million) and in Luleå, Sweden (worth $760 million). The Altoona installation would be the largest, worth more than all three others combined. All of Facebook’s data centers are also brand new, having been built in 2010 at the earliest.

Ideal location

Facebook’s Catapult will join Google and Microsoft, which are also building IT hubs in the region. Another site lobbied fiercely to host the Facebook facility – ‘Project Edge’ in Kearney, Nebraska – but Altoona won out for several reasons.

Any data center needs a high-capacity fiber optic cable system, like the one running along Interstate Highway 80 near Altoona. Reliable power supplies are another crucial element – despite claims of ‘green’ energy powering the project, the proximity to a large power station appears to have contributed to Facebook’s decision to construct its datacenter in Altoona. The Duane Arnold Energy Center, the only nuclear power plant in Iowa, is also about 150 km away from the site.

 

Picture taken on November 18, 2012 shows the construction site of the new Facebook Data Center and firm’s first outside the US in the city of Lulea, in Swedish Lapland. (AFP Photo)

 

The announced use of solar arrays, fuel cells and wind energy in Altoona would likely be unable to fully satisfy the power needs of such a huge energy-intensive facility, but development of renewable power sources in the area might bring Facebook certain tax credits anyway, the Des Moines Register reported. And like Facebook’s other two US data centers, the Altoona facility will also likely be equipped with backup diesel generators.

A large data center also needs extensive water cooling – the Saylorville Lake reservoir on the Des Moines River is about 20km away. Iowa is also a relatively safe from natural disasters, as neither hurricanes nor earthquakes happen frequently in the region.

Finally, the installation needs to be near major highways, and Altoona is located near three major arteries: Interstates 80 and 35 and US Highway 65.

A master plan?

In October 2012, Facebook registered 1 billion active users a month; founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company is now aiming for 2 billion users.

Such growth would necessarily require new data centers to be built. Matz Engman, chief executive of Luleå Business Agency, told the UK’s Sun in January that the construction of a Facebook data center in Luleå is “just the beginning… What we want is to be the actual hub for all data traffic in Europe.”

 

Prineville Data Center (Photo from facebook.com/prinevilleDataCenter)

 

 

The construction of the Altoona data center could empower Facebook to broaden its horizons beyond just European and US data traffic. US media reports last month suggest some clues to their plans.

In late March, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman discussed plans to monitor private Internet communications in real time.

And a cyber-security directive signed in February by US President Barack Obama, increased the mandatory security for private-sector firms such as Gmail and Facebook, which might soon be considered “critical infrastructure” entities and asked to share information with the federal government.

Moreover, the US government has long vowed to use the Internet to advance its foreign policy. The construction of multi-billion-dollar facilities by giants like Facebook and Google might fit within thisframework.

PHOTO NEWS:Life of Nigerian Sex Workers in Italy

The phenomenon of foreign women, who line the roadsides of Italy, has become a notorious fact of Italian life. These women work in sub-human conditions; they are sent out without any hope of regularizing their legal status and can be easily transferred into criminal networks.

Many are Africans working as prostitutes to send money home to their families. For nearly twenty years the women of Benin City, a town in the state of Edo in the south-central part of Nigeria, have been going to Italy to work in the sex trade and every year successful ones have been recruiting younger girls to follow them.

The Nigerian trafficking industry is fueled by the combination of widespread emigration aspirations and severely limited possibilities for migrating to Europe.

The term Trafficking of persons is restricted to instances where people are deceived, threatened, or coerced into situations of exploitation, including prostitution. This contrasts with Human smuggling, in which a migrant purchases services to circumvent immigration restrictions, but it is not a victim of deception or exploitation.

Most migrant women, including those who end up in the sex industry, have made a clear decision to leave home and take their chances overseas. They are headstrong and ambitious women who migrate in order to escape conflict, persecution, environmental degradation, natural disasters and other situations that affect their habitat and livelihood.

Ensuring a better future for one’s family in Nigeria is a principal motivation for emigration within and outside the trafficking networks. Working abroad is therefore often seen as the best strategy for escaping poverty. The success of many Italos, as these women are called, is evident in Edo. For many girls prostitution in Italy has become an entirely acceptable trade and the legend of their success makes the fight against sex traffickers all the more difficult.

One concern is that the anti-trafficking crusade is causing effects opposite to its objectives. What presents itself as a campaign to protect migrants from harm is actually making their efforts to flee home, to find work, to make the most of their lives in often difficult and unforgiving circumstances, much harder.

 

Credit: http://www.paolopatrizi.com

Mohammed Ali could be dead in days…Legend’s brother reveals family feud

MUHAMMAD Ali’s brother says the ailing boxing icon is on the verge of death – and his final days are being marred by a bitter family feud fuelled by his wife. The former heavyweight champion, 71, is gripped by Parkinson’s and Rahman Ali’s fears he is in terminal decline. But the 69-year-old said the disease is NOT the most devastating factor in Ali’s heartbreaking demise.

He blames Lonnie, his wife of 26 years, for tearing the family apart and said Ali would be “mad as hell” if he knew what was going on. He said: “The worst thing to happen is not the illness, but his wife.” In an exclusive interview, Rahman broke down in tears as he admitted he would rather wish his brother dead, so he can escape his suffering. Rahman revealed: “My brother can’t speak – he doesn’t recognise me. He’s in a bad way. He’s very sick. “It could be months, it could be days. I don’t know if he’ll last the summer. He’s in God’s hands. We hope he gently passes away.

“He told me before he got really bad that he’s in no pain. He grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘Rah, I’ve achieved everything I’ve ever wanted to accomplish. Don’t cry for me, I’m in no pain.’ It’s best he goes now. The longer he goes on, so does his suffering and misery. “He’s going to heaven, there’s no doubt. If his funeral was tomorrow, all the statesmen of the world would turn up. He touched everyone from the rich to the poor. “I love my brother over anybody. Of all the famous people who ever lived, he’s the best. Everyone knows Muhammad Ali. He’s up there with Jesus Christ.

“I cry because it hurts me, it breaks my heart. I hope to see him again alive, but I can only hope.” Rahman last saw Ali in London in July at the Sports For Peace Gala to pay tribute to his incredible career and dedication to the civil rights movement. He even spoke on behalf of his beloved brother at the star-studded event at the Victoria and Albert Museum. But he claims he has been cut from dad-of-nine Ali’s life and blames his fourth wife Lonnie. He now speaks to ailing Ali only by phone.

Speaking from his dingy two-bed flat in Louisville, Rahman said: “We’ve all been pushed out. The only time I get to see him is at public events. She and her family are draining him. It’s so sad. There’s nothing I can do, they’ve blocked us all off. “Before he got sick he told me, ‘Rahman, I’ve set up a trust fund for you after I die, you get the money.’ But she’s put a stop to it. “If he knew what was happening and where I’m living now, he’d be as mad as hell, so angry. He’d divorce her.

If he saw what was happening with his children, he’d go crazy.” Ali’s biological children are all from previous relationships and some share Rahman’s anger. Muhammad Ali Jnr, 30, who lives in a drug-infested area of Chicago, barely sees his father and has claimed he’s been “blocked”. Rahman revealed: “I spoke to Muhammad Ali Jnr last week, as he was concerned about his dad. They’ve all tried to get in contact with him. She’ll put him on the phone sometimes, but he can only breathe on the line.

“I know him better than anyone, I can sense he’s unhappy. I can see it in his eyes. “I love him, but she stops him from loving anyone. This is the saddest thing in my life. I’m going to let God take care of it – he’s the best attorney anyone can have.” The brothers – born Cassius and Rudolph Clay – grew up in the same bedroom of a humble two-bedroom home in Louisville, Kentucky, with dad, Cassius Clay Snr and mum, Odessa. They were inseparable as youngsters and joined the local boxing league together.

But while his boxing great brother is worth more than £50million, Rahman and his church minister wife, Caroline, live off a pittance. He revealed: “I haven’t got much money and I’m on disability benefits. I’ve had many strokes, 20 in all, and it’s affected my brain and short-term memory. The doctor told me I’m lucky to be alive – I should be dead. Every day is a blessing to me. “We’ve barely got enough to pay our bills. The rent is $512 a month, and if we’re lucky, we may have $150 left after bills.

“If my brother had all his faculties, he’d look after me. I’d be living in a mansion.” Their childhood home is in a state of neglect but Rahman revealed Ali wants to be buried in Louisville with a quote from civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr on his headstone. He said: “This is his hometown. He’d want to be buried in the cemetery with mum and dad. On his tombstone, he said he wanted the Martin Luther King quote: “I tried to love somebody, I did try to feed the hungry. I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked.

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.’ The Greatest.’” Ali’s appearance at last year’s Olympic opening ceremony in London alongside wife, Lonnie, touched hundreds of millions around the world. And Rahman told how Ali always knew he was destined for greatness. He revealed: “When he was six, he’d tell me he was going to be world champion. He said he was going to be famous, was going to change the world, said he’d look after me, my mum and dad

Adama Drabo, Malian Child Soldier, Illustrates Dirty War With A Complicated Enemy

The boy sits with his knees tucked under his chest on the concrete floor of the police station here, his adolescent face a tableau of fear. He’s still garbed in the knee-length tunic he was ordered to wear by the Islamic extremist who recruited him.

It’s these same clothes, styled after those worn by the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century, which gave him away when he tried to flee earlier this week. They have now become his prison garb.

Adama Drabo is 16, and his recruitment into the ranks of a group designated as a terrorist organization, followed by his violent interrogation at the hands of the Malian army, underscores the obstacles faced by France as it tries to wash its former West African colony clean of the al-Qaida-linked fighters occupying it.

“In terms of the rules of engagement, you have to think to yourself, what will you do if a child comes up to you wearing an explosive vest? What do you do if a 12-year-old is manning a checkpoint?” says Rudolph Atallah, former director of counterterrorism for Africa at the Pentagon during the Bush administration. “It’s a very difficult situation.”

France, which now has around 2,500 troops on the ground, plunged headfirst into the conflict in Mali two weeks ago, after the Islamist groups that have controlled the nation’s northern half since last year began an aggressive push southward. The French soldiers are equipped with night vision goggles, anti-tank mines and laser-guided bombs. However, their enemy includes the hundreds of children, some as young as 11, who have been conscripted into the rebel army.

Among those the French will have to fight are boys like Adama, the uneducated, eldest child of a poor family of rice growers, who until recently spent his days plowing fields with oxen near the village of N’Denbougou. Living just 15 miles (25 kilometers) from the central Malian town of Niono, which has become one of the frontlines in the recent war, Adama fits the profile of the types of children the Islamists have successfully recruited. His village has a single mosque, and unlike the moderate form of Islam practiced in much of Mali, the one he and his family attended preached Wahabism.

“We have observed a pattern of recruitment of child soldiers from villages that for many years have practiced a very strict form of Islam, referred to as Wahabism,” says Corinne Dufka, senior researcher for West Africa at Human Rights Watch. “We estimate that hundreds of children have been recruited.”

The groups allied with al-Qaida started recruiting children soon after they seized control of northern Mali last April. Rebel leaders quoted verses from the Quran which they claim describe children as the purest apprentices. Since then witnesses have described seeing children staffing checkpoints, riding in patrol vehicles, carrying out searches of cars stopped at roadblocks, as well as preparing tea and cooking food for the fighters in the towns controlled by the insurgents, says Dufka.

The United Nations children’s agency said late last year that it had been able to corroborate at least 175 reported cases of child soldiers in northern Mali, bought from their impoverished parents for between $1,000 and $1,200 per child. Malian human rights officials put the total number of children recruited by the Islamists considerably higher at 1,000 – and that was before the French intervention.

Adama, who is now being held at the Sevare gendarmerie, was hired as a cook two weeks ago by Islamist fighters in Douentza, a city controlled by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad, or MUJAO. Its members have been linked to the recent terrorist attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria, which ended in the death of at least 37 hostages, according to the Algerian government.

The teenager claims he didn’t know he was working for a terrorist group, even though the insurgents who ate the macaroni he cooked carried guns, wore beards and dressed in the unfamiliar Gulf-style clothes they gave him. He says he joined them only for the money they promised they would pay at the end of each month. The police holding him say he was promised around $200 a month, several times the average monthly salary here.

Adama explains that his friends in Niono said they knew people in Sevare who would give them work. So they took a Peugeot 207 taxi to reach the town.

“It was there in the town that we met some people and they hired us to cook for them,” he says. “They said that at the end of each month we would get paid. … And so we started cooking for them.”

He says that even though some of the fighters in their entourage went to fight in the Niono area, he was unaware of their battle plans. The men spoke Arabic and Tamashek, a Tuareg language, which he did not understand.

One day, when he went to the corner store, the shop owner told him a war was on, he says.

“I told my friend, `Even if the month isn’t over yet, we need to get out of here.’ We walked to the next village, where we found an old man there, and we asked him if he could please give us some water? The old man said he couldn’t give us any water, because we’re rebels. We said, `We’re not rebels. Give us some water.’ It was then that a man on a motorcycle came by. The motorcyclist said that we are wearing the clothes of the Islamic fighters.”

The boys tried to run.

The friend got away. Adama was handed over to the Malian military, which in recent days has been accused of executing dozens of suspected Islamists, including a group of six men who arrived in Sevare without identity cards. Adama may have been saved by the international outcry that followed the reported executions this week, says Atallah, putting immense diplomatic pressure on Mali’s ill-trained and often incompetent army to respect human rights conventions.

“I was frightened,” says Adama. “They said they were going to kill me. … They said this several times.”

During the interrogation, especially on the first day, the soldiers threatened to execute Adama if he did not tell the truth, he says. They hit him, he says, and slapped him across his face. It was only on Friday, according to Adama, that the soldiers told him they would not kill him.

“For four days, they kept me in jail with two big people,” he says. “I feel somewhat reassured now, but not totally reassured. Because I am still not free.”

Child soldiers have been part of the fabric of African conflicts for decades now. In Liberia’s civil war more than 10 years ago, drugged 12- and 13-year-olds were famously photographed toting automatic weapons and teddy bears. However, the standoff this time is between a Western army bound by the Geneva Convention and Western values on human rights, and an enemy that includes hundreds of children. One of the most active groups in northern Mali is al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the terror network’s affiliate in Africa, which originated in Algeria. In 2008, the group released a video showing a cheerful 15-year-old in Algeria who was suffering from a terminal illness, Atallah says. The Islamists convinced the boy that the best thing he could do with what remained of his life was to die for Allah, according to Atallah, who saw the recording.

“The video shows him smiling,” he says. “They taught him how to drive a van. And then they filmed the van as it left, just before he detonated himself. I wouldn’t put it past them to do this again.

 

 

 

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Iran Publicly Executes 2 Men For “waging war against God” By Showing YouTube Of Their Robbery

Iran has hanged two men for “waging war against God,” over their role in an assault that was filmed and posted on YouTube.

A 37-second video posted on YouTube in December and later shown on Iranian state television showed four masked men approaching the victim on motorcycles, and then two of them assaulting him, taking his bag and jacket. On the video, one of the attackers seemed to be holding a long knife or machete.

The attack prompted public outrage, and officials vowed to punish those responsible.

In Tehran, the Iranian capital, early on Sunday morning, Alireza Mafiha and Mohammad Ali Sorouri were hanged, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).

After being convicted of “moharebe”, or waging war against God, which under Iran’s interpretation of Islamic law is punishable by death, their lives were ended. Their sentence was issued by a Revolutionary Court in late December, ISNA said.

Amid the howls of grief and rage, a judge recounted their crime and delivered the verdict, that they would be hanged for ‘waging war against God.’ Moments later nooses were looped around their necks as a group of women at the front of the crowd begged their captors for forgiveness.

“The issue of security for our people is more important even than daily bread,” said Sadeq Larijani, head of Iran’s judiciary, in December.

Two accomplices were sentenced to 10 years in prison and 74 lashes, ISNA reported.

Iran carries out one of the world’s highest number of annual executions, according to rights group Amnesty International, which has called on the Islamic Republic to commute death sentences.

 

 

 

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