Cops set up task force to monitor cyberspace

Cops set up task force to monitor cyberspace - POLICE have been monitoring social media networks since yesterday to trace at least 26 forms of seditious and slanderous remarks being made in the public domain about the election.

Bukit Aman public relations officer ACP Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf said such statements were mostly made in blogs and being shared in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

"We have a team that monitors blogs and various social networking websites where such slanderous statements are being made. If this continues, police will take action against them," he said.

Ramli said monitoring will continue throughout nomination day, the campaign period, polling day and the cooling-off period.

He also urged the public to lodge a report if they had been threatened by anyone with regard to the election.

"What we mean by threats is that if any of you have been warned by someone on anything to do with the election, please lodge a report."

Ramli said 32 police reports had been lodged thus far all over the country since the dissolution of Parliament.

The reports involved small fights and slanderous and seditious remarks made by politicians and supporters.

He said yesterday alone, there were 338 political activities regarding the 13th general election.

He advised politicians and supporters to respect each other during this period and asked them to conduct their campaign responsibly.

"Politicians and supporters must stay away from hate speech and character assassinations, as this could provoke others and cause big trouble."

Ramli said any party that wanted to have ceramah must submit a notice to the district police chief as stated in the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012. ( Malay Mail )

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300-Pound Pumpkin Plucked From Illinois Farm Stand

300-Pound Pumpkin Plucked From Illinois Farm Stand - Unless it magically turned into a carriage at midnight to get Cinderella safely to the ball, the 300-pound pumpkin that used to adorn an Illinois farmstand was stolen. 

Or at least that's what Hammer's Farm Market owner Roger Hammer, of Peoria, Ill., believes happened.

"The last person that saw it was my brother. He drove by on 6:30 Sunday evening, and he said he saw it there. But 10 a.m. Monday when we opened, it was missing," Hammer told ABCNews.com.

 

Courtesy Hammer's Farm Stand

Hammer is unsure how anyone would be able to remove or steal such a large pumpkin, since it was a feat even getting it to their own farm stand.

"I picked this up from another farmer farther north in Illinois. I actually had two of them. We sold one, and I didn't want to sell the second one because I thought it would be a good attraction for kids to take pictures with. We wanted to keep one mainly as an attraction," Hammer said.

Although the pumpkin wasn't grown on their own farm, the pumpkin being stolen is still a sore subject for the Hammers.

"When we took it off the truck, we had to use the bucket of the tractor to move it. We had to use the tractor to roll it off onto the pallet," Hammer said. "They'd have to have a truck, or an SUV maybe. It'd have to be multiple people to pick it up. One person wouldn't be able to do it. I'm pretty strong myself and I wouldn't be able to pick it up."

The market is located along a river, not set too far back off the road. The Hammers had the pumpkin sitting out front with a display of mums. They weren't worried about tying the pumpkin down at night, because they thought it would be too big of a burden for anyone to steal.

"I figured someone might try to steal one of the smaller ones, but I didn't think anyone would have the guts to steal one that big," Hammer said.

Now, all that's left where the giant pumpkin used to sit are signs asking people to please be on the lookout for it.

"My mom made a couple of signs right where the pumpkin used to sit: 'Someone stole the great pumpkin, if you could please let us know if you've seen it, we'd love to get it back,'" he said.

A pumpkin this size would typically sell for $40 to $50, but money aside, the Hammers are just baffled at how it disappeared.

"It's a 300-pound pumpkin, so it can't exactly hide. No one else around has a pumpkin this size, so it's pretty obvious where they got it from if I find it," Hammer said.

No ransom money is being offered for the over-sized orange hostage, but Hammer said perhaps they would give the pumpkin-nappers a smaller one for its safe return. ( ABC News )

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Monthly Social Security payments to increase by 1.7 percent, among lowest raises since 1970s

Social Security benefits to go up by 1.7 percent -- Monthly Social Security payments to increase by 1.7 percent, among lowest raises since 1970s -- More than 56 million Social Security recipients will see their monthly payments go up by 1.7 percent next year.

 

FILE - This Feb. 2005 file photo shows trays of printed social security checks, in Philadelphia, waiting to be mailed from the U.S. Treasury. More than 56 million Social Security recipients will see their monthly payments go up by 1.7 percent next year. The increase, which starts in January, is tied to a measure of inflation released Tuesday. It shows that inflation has been relatively low over the past year _ despite the recent surge in gas prices _ resulting in one of the smallest increases in Social Security payments since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. (AP Photo/Bradley C. Bower, File) 

The increase, which starts in January, is tied to a measure of inflation released Tuesday. It shows that inflation has been relatively low over the past year, despite the recent surge in gas prices, resulting in one of the smallest increases in Social Security payments since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975. 

Social Security payments for retired workers average $1,237 a month, or about $14,800 a year. A 1.7 percent increase will amount to about $21 a month, or $252 a year, on average. 

Social Security recipients received a 3.6 percent increase in benefits this year after getting none the previous two years. 

About 8 million people who receive Supplemental Security Income will also receive the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, meaning the announcement will affect about 1 in 5 U.S. residents. 

Social Security also provides benefits to millions of disabled workers, spouses, widows, widowers and children. 

"The annual COLA is critically important to the financial security of the (56) million Americans receiving Social Security benefits today," said Nancy LeaMond, AARP's executive vice president. "Amid rising costs for food, utilities and health care and continued economic uncertainty, the COLA helps millions of older Americans maintain their standard of living, keeping many out of poverty." 

The amount of wages subjected to Social Security taxes is going up, too. Social Security is supported by a 12.4 percent tax on wages up to $110,100. That threshold will increase to $113,700 next year, resulting in higher taxes for nearly 10 million workers and their employers, according to the Social Security Administration. 

Half the tax is paid by workers and the other half is paid by employers. Congress and President Barack Obama reduced the share paid by workers from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for 2011 and 2012. The temporary cut, however, is due to expire at the end of the year. 

Some of next year's COLA could be wiped out by higher Medicare premiums, which are deducted from Social Security payments. The Medicare Part B premium, which covers doctor visits, is expected to rise by about $7 per month for 2013, according to government projections. 

The premium is currently $99.90 a month for most seniors. Medicare is expected to announce the premium for 2013 in the coming weeks. 

"If seniors are getting a low COLA, much of their increase will go to pay off their Medicare Part B premium," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League. 

By law, the increase in benefits is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W, a broad measure of consumer prices generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It measures price changes for food, housing, clothing, transportation, energy, medical care, recreation and education. 

Over the past year, housing costs have gone up 1.4 percent but home energy costs have dropped by 3.8 percent, according to the CPI-W. Medical costs, which tend to hit seniors harder than younger adults, have increased by 4.4 percent. 

Gasoline prices have climbed by 6.8 percent, but much of that increase happened in the past month, so it is not fully reflected in the COLA for Social Security. 

To calculate the COLA, the Social Security Administration compares the average price index for July, August and September with the price index for the same three months in the previous year. The price index for September — the final piece of the puzzle — was released Tuesday. 

If consumer prices increase from year to year, Social Security recipients automatically get higher payments, starting the following January. If prices drop, the payments stay the same, as they did in 2010 and 2011. 

Since 1975, the annual COLA has averaged 4.2 percent. Only five times has it been below 2 percent, including the two times it was zero. Before 1975, it took an act of Congress to increase Social Security payments. 

Most older Americans rely on Social Security for a majority of their incomes, according to the Social Security Administration. Over the past decade, the COLA has helped increase incomes for seniors, even as incomes have dropped for younger workers. 

From 2001 to 2011, the median income for all U.S. households fell by 6.6 percent, when inflation was taken into account, according to census data. But the median income for households headed by someone 65 or older rose by 13 percent. ( Associated Press )

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Goldie Starling's Awesome Halloween Makeup Tutorials

Glam Meets Gore: Goldie Starling's Awesome Halloween Makeup Tutorials - A fierce pirate wench, with puckered scars running along the side of her face. An eerie doll, with pursed lips and hauntingly oversize eyes. A grim Jack the Ripper and his final victim, Mary Kelly, her throat slashed and oozing blood.... Goldie Starling's Halloween make-up creations are a creepy combination of glam and gore—and she shares her beauty secrets in her deeply detailed video tutorials.

Goldie Starling's sultry, DIY Spider Queen look for Halloween. (Photo: Goldie Starling/Facebook)

"When I started making tutorials there weren't a lot of people uploading artistic tutorials so I decided to try it out," Starling, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "There was definitely a learning curve but after four years I feel like I've grown so much as an artist. And my subscribers have helped encourage me the most. When I learn a new technique I get excited to share it with them. That passion for learning has kept me going."

Starling, whose real name is Angie Davis, has no formal training as a makeup artist—she has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design and computer animation—but her love of drawing and painting helped her hone her makeup skills. (You can see some of her other amazing looks on her Facebook fan page.) She currently works as a freelance makeup artist, a cake decorator, and a graphic designer, she says. And of course Halloween is one of her favorite holidays. 

For 2012, "I had grand plans to make a Zoltar costume from the movie 'Big' but I may actually go as Vincent Van Gogh," she says. "I just filmed a tutorial based on one of his self portraits and I really like the way it turned out, plus he is one of my favorite painters." 

Her attention to detail (and her super-steady hand) is clear in every video she posts. A simple tutorial may take six or seven hours to make from start to finish, she confides in one of her videos, but the theatrical Halloween how-to's take much longer. 

"For these Halloween videos, it's been quite the labor of love," she says. "At least 20 hours, 30 hours per video just from conception to visualization, going and finding products and costumes, backgrounds, things like that." And that doesn't include the days of prep work before shooting. 

"It's something I just like to do, though, so it doesn't bother me," Starling adds. "I'm also a night owl, so all of my creative juices are flowing at night." 

An amazingly detailed take on a watery Davy Jones. (Photo: Goldie Starling/Facebook)

Some of her Halloween looks, like her sultry Spider Queen, can be created with products many women already have in their beauty bags. But others, like her version of the horrifying deep-sea denizen Davy Jones—her all-time favorite video tutorial, Starling says—requires liquid latex and other specialized products. She made latex starfish using a candy mold and dipped cheerios in liquid latex to make barnacles, which she glued to her face using a medical-grade adhesive. A sea sponge dipped in watered-down face paint adds texture. For really complicated designs, she maps features out with a white eyeliner before filling in with face paint and white foundation, which she mixes with different pigments to get custom colors. 

"I apply my foundation with a brush and a sponge," she says in that video. "I find that by doing it this way you're able to get into the cracks and crevices around the barnacles." 

Her other secrets? Plenty of powder, to set the makeup and prevent smudging. Don't be afraid to use eyeshadow in unusual ways. Lipstick is awesome ("I know a lot of people think lipstick is outdated but I love the way it defines the lips," she says). And make sure to properly prep your "canvas." 

"I'm all about taking care of my skin," Starling told Yahoo! Shine. "In the morning I wash my face, moisturize and apply sunscreen. Then I'll apply makeup. Mascara and concealer are great to have when you want to appear awake. At night I will cleanse my face, exfoliate if I need to and apply replenishing moisturizers and eye creams." 

Though she's honed her makeup skills in a variety of ways, she says that painting has helped her the most. "You prep a canvas with gesso the way you would prep a face with primer," she explained to Styleist.com. "You paint on your design the way you would apply your eye shadow and lipstick. You add shadows and depth where you would contour. Painting translates perfectly." ( Beauty on Shine )

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Paul Ryan visits soup kitchen for photo op, angering its president

Ryan at a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio, on Oct. 13, 2012 (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Paul Ryan visits soup kitchen for photo op, angering its president - Republican Rep. Paul Ryan stopped by a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio, over the weekend for what seemed to be your typical campaign photo opportunity. During his 15-minute visit on Saturday morning, the vice presidential candidate donned a white apron and offered to wash some dishes that—as several bloggers and a pool reporter later pointed out—did not appear to be dirty.

"We just wanted to come by and say thanks for doing what you do," Ryan said. "This is what makes society go. It makes it work. Helping people."

But according to the president of Mahoning County's St. Vincent De Paul Society, the faith-based charity that runs the soup kitchen, the campaign did not have permission and "ramrodded their way" into the facility.

"We are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations," Brian Antal told the Washington Post. "It's strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.

"The photo op they did wasn't even accurate," Antal continued. "He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall."

An aide for Mitt Romney's campaign told the paper that the campaign sent a staffer to the soup kitchen ahead of Ryan's visit and "spoke with a woman in charge on-site, who said that it would be fine for the congressman to stop by."

Ryan spokesman Michael Steel told ABC News, "It was a great opportunity to highlight the importance of volunteerism and local charities."

Antal, though, said it was just too risky for the charity to appear to be favoring one party over the other.

"I can't afford to lose funding from these private individuals," he told the Post. "If this was the Democrats, I'd have the same exact problem."

It may sound silly, but there's a reason even a soup kitchen controversy could impact the presidential race. Why? Because it took place in Ohio.

"You can probably win the presidency without Ohio, but I wouldn't want to take the risk," Ohio Sen. Rob Portman said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "And no Republican has."

"We need to win Ohio," Romney said on Friday. "If we win Ohio, we take back America." ( The Ticket )

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Get a Tiny Job, Earn a Tiny Payment

Get a Tiny Job, Earn a Tiny Payment. Repeat - When Fernando Navales lost his job last June, things looked pretty grim. 

His efforts to find gainful employment proved futile until he downloaded an app called Gigwalk, where companies offer small amounts of money for small tasks that take little time. (Users simply swipe to "accept" the task and complete it within a set time period.) Within days, he was earning more than he had in his previous position. 

Navales threw himself into the work, taking between 30 and 40 "gigs" per day (often photographing restaurants for Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing search engine). Over the past year, he has completed about 750 gigs - and this new kind of employment has changed his perceptions of the working world.

"It's a large part of my life," he said. "I actually turned my brother onto it. He's in Ohio, but we flew out to New York together and we basically took a working trip to NY taking pictures of restaurants." 

Navales's experience is unique in that he has taken so many of these small jobs, but he's part of a growing trend. 

More and more, companies are tasking out micro-projects to consumers - tiny jobs for which it makes no financial (or logical) sense to send a full-time employee, but that still need to get done. And the hiring of these "tasksumers," as they're called, is quickly becoming a popular way for people with a little spare time to pocket a few extra dollars. 

While Gigwalk is a business-to-consumer tasksumer play, the field has also seeped into the consumer-to-consumer and even consumer-to-business fields, thanks in large part to the ubiquity of mobile devices. 

While there have been businesses catering to this audience for some time, it was the advent of the smart phone that allowed them to take off.

"But as these services now get pushed to your phone ... it's more convenient for the task consumers to receive the jobs when they're out already," said Henry Mason, head of research and analysis at TrendWatching.com.

Beyond Gigwalk, there are a few leaders in the business-to-consumer tasksumer space, including TaskRabbit and Mechanical Turk, a division of Amazon (AMZN). 

The model is similar at all of the sites, though: Consumers are offered a variety of odd jobs for varying amounts. Among the current offerings: $35 to test the customer service experience at a national retailer, $4 to photograph a restaurant's menu or $29 to stand in line at a popular BBQ joint in Austin and deliver the food to an office. 

"What you're starting to see is a higher degree of comfort with the concept," said Ariel Seidman, CEO and co-founder of Gigwalk. "Where [it] really shines is when you get to places that are hard get to, like Kalamazoo, MI or Kodiak, AK. Those types of places, you can all of a sudden reach into them with the same efficiency and speed in which you can reach into a Chicago or LA." 

Other business-to-consumer tasksumer companies include CloudFactory, which boasts a global workforce that enters, collects, processes or categorizes data for companies; it has access to over half a million remote laborers from emerging markets that work on digital tasks. Workers can be divided into stations (like a factory assembly line) depending on their skill level, where they check the previous station's work for errors 

Businesses aren't just luring tasksumers, though. Some tasksumers are turning the heads of businesses, as well. Foap, for instance, is an iPhone app that allows budding photographers to upload pictures into a virtual marketplace, where they're tagged by category and sold for $10 each (with the fee split evenly between the photographer and Foap). Competitor Fotolia offers a similar service, with pictures ranging from 75 cents to $75, depending on size and resolution. (Users keep up to 63 percent of that amount.) 

One of the more intriguing areas of the tasksumer movement, though, is in the consumer-to-consumer space. As people become more comfortable entrusting others (since they can do minimals check on them via social media), tasksumers have started bypassing businesses and dealing with each other directly. 

Collaborative consumption companies like Rentalic and SnapGoods let people rent out household belongings they're not using for rates of their own choosing. Renters pocket a little extra money, while rentees save the bother of having to buy an item they might only want to test out or need just once.

Other firms bring people together in a different way. PleaseBringMe acts as a handshake service between travelers who can volunteer to bring things like hard to find items to someone at their destination. 

"My wife is pregnant and craving In-n-Out," wrote one user. "We used to live in CA but are now in the NYC area. If anybody would be willing to buy 4 Animal Style cheeseburgers and bring them on a plane to me in NYC, that would be awesome." 

Another user, from Brazil, is on the hunt for a drink that's only sold in Greece. "I want Mythos beer!!!!," he pleads. "I pay with money or some goods you want from Brazil!!" 

The site sees anywhere between 100 and 1,000 postings per day, according to founder Orkun Batar. It does not charge users to place the ads. 

"I lived a long time abroad," he said. "When I moved back (from Vienna) to Istanbul a year ago. I brought my printer with me and had problems finding appropriate cartridges - so I was always looking for some friends flying to Europe and back and asked them to bring me these cartridges. I realized that I was not alone. There were many others like me." ( CNBC )

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Asteroid-Smashing Space Probes Set for Cosmic Crash in 2022

Asteroid-Smashing Space Probes Set for Cosmic Crash in 2022 — Scientists in Europe and the United States are moving forward with plans to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a huge nearby asteroid in 2022 to see inside the space rock.

The ambitious European-led Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, is slated to launch in 2019 to send two spacecraft — one built by scientists in the U.S, and the other by the European Space Agency — on a three-year voyage to the asteroid Didymos and its companion. Didymos has no chance of impacting the Earth, which makes it a great target for this kind of mission, scientists involved in the mission said in a presentation Tuesday (March 19) here at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

Didymos is actually a binary asteroid system consisting of two separate space rocks bound together by gravity. The main asteroid is enormous, measuring 2,625 feet (800 meters) across. It is orbited by a smaller asteroid about 490 feet (150 m).

The Didymos asteroid setup is an intriguing target for the AIDA mission because it will give scientists their first close look at a binary space rock system while also yielding new insights into ways to deflect dangerous asteroids that could pose an impact threat to the Earth.

"Binary systems are quite common," said Andy Rivkin, a scientist at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., working on the U.S. portion of AIDA project. "This will be our first rendezvous with a binary system."

In 2022, the Didymos asteroids will be about 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from the Earth, during a close approach, which is why AIDA scientists have timed their mission for that year.

Rivkin and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory are building DART (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test), one of the two spacecraft making up the tag team AIDA mission. Like its acronym suggests, the DART probe crash directly into the smaller Didymos asteroid while travelling at 14,000 mph (22,530 km/h), creating a crater during an impact that will hopefully sending the space rock slightly off course, Rivkin said.

The European Space Agency is building the second AIDA spacecraft, which is called the Asteroid Impact Monitor (or AIM). AIM will observe the impact from a safe distance, and the probe's data will be used with other data collected by telescopes on Earth to understand exactly what the impact did to the asteroid.

"AIM is the usual shoebox satellite," ESA researcher Jens Biele, who works on the AIM spacecraft, said. "It's nothing very fancy."

AIDA scientists hope their mission will push the smaller Didymos asteroid off course by only a few millimeters. The small space rock orbits the larger, primary Didymos asteroid once every 12 hours.

The goal, Rivkin said, is to use the DART impact as a testbed for the most basic method of asteroid deflection: a direct collision with a spacecraft. If the mission is successful, it could have implications for how space agencies around the world learn how to deflect larger, more threatening asteroid that could pose a threat to Earth, he added.

At the moment, AIDA researchers are not sure of the exact composition of the Didymos asteroids. They could just be a loose conglomeration of rocks travelling together through the solar system, or made of much denser stuff.

But once DART impacts the asteroid, scientists will be able to measure how much the asteroid's orbit is affected as well as classify its surface composition, Rivkin said. And by studying how debris floats outward from the impact site after the crash, researchers could also better prepare for the conditions astronauts may encounter during future manned missions to asteroids — such as NASA's project to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, he added.

The AIDA mission's AIM space craft is expected to cost about 150 million euros (about $194 million), while the DART spacecraft is slated to cost about $150 million, mission officials said. ( space.com )

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