Singer Ian Watkins sentenced for child abuse

Watkins was found guilty on 13 counts of child abuse, including 2 rapes. PHOTO: FILE

LONDON: The lead singer of British rock group Lostprophets was sentenced on Wednesday, to 35 years for child abuse, and police said they were liaising with officers in the United States and Germany to establish whether he committed sex crimes there.

36-year-old Ian Watkins pleaded guilty to 13 counts relating to child abuse at Cardiff Crown Court in Wales last month. Two mothers of children he abused, who admitted child abuse charges, were sentenced to 14 and 17 years.

Before sentencing Watkins, Judge John Royce told him, “You are a deeply corrupting influence, you are highly manipulative, and you are a sexual predator.The public and in particular young females and children need protection from you,” Royce said.

Detective Chief Inspector Peter Doyle, senior investigating officer for South Wales Police, said the investigation into Watkins “uncovered the most disturbing child abuse evidence I have seen in my 28 years as a police officer”.

Police believe they have not tracked down all of Watkins’ victims and are conducting further investigations with help from forces across Britain, international police organisation Interpol and the US Department for Homeland Security.

British detectives have already travelled to US and Germany, where Lostprophets toured on several occasions. The Welsh group, which has sold more than 3 million records worldwide, broke up in October after Watkins was charged. His former band mates have said they are “heartbroken, angry and disgusted” at revelations that Watkins had abused children.

Watkins admitted two attempted rapes, sexually assaulting a child under 13, aiding and abetting the sexual assault of a child under 13, conspiring to rape a child under 13 and conspiring to sexually assault another child under 13, a spokeswoman for the Cardiff court said. He also pleaded guilty to six counts of taking and possessing indecent images of children, the spokeswoman added.

The two women sentenced on Wednesday sexually abused their children when asked to do so by Watkins, and were prepared to make their children available to him, the court heard

Queen Bey rules 2013 with highest iTune sales

Since album release, Beyonce has outsold Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Britney Spears. PHOTO:FILE

LOS ANGELES: R&B star Beyonce’s latest self-titled album surpassed 1 million copies sold worldwide in six days on Wednesday and set a record for iTunes, said sources at Apple Inc and Columbia Records.

Beyonce, the fifth solo studio album from the singer, which released unexpectedly in the early hours of December 13 without any prior fanfare, contains 14 new songs and 17 videos, and swiftly topped iTunes album charts across the world.

The album also debuted at the top of the weekly Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, with 617,000 copies sold in the United States by the week ending December 15, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

The deluxe digital album, exclusively available on iTunes, can only be purchased as a complete set of songs and videos, and retails for $15.99 at the US store. A physical version will be made available for sale in time for the festive holiday period this month.

The surprise release of the album caps a year in which Beyonce, 32, made a carefully choreographed return to music after taking time out to give birth to her first child, daughter Blue Ivy with rapper husband Jay Z. Both Blue Ivy and Jay Z feature as collaborators on the new album, and appear in accompanying music videos.

Releasing an album without any prior fanfare or publicity is rare, especially for one of the top players in the current music industry. But Beyonce’s success does not necessarily mean other artists will be able to copy her stealth release strategy.

Beyonce’s album has outperformed some of this year’s other most anticipated new releases, selling more copies than new albums from Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Britney Spears.

Currently, the year’s top-selling album is Justin Timberlake’s first part of The 20/20 Experience, which was released in March with 968,000 copies sold in its opening week, and has topped 2.3 million sales in the US to date.

Nielsen SoundScan compiles sales in the week ending Sunday, meaning that Beyonce’s new album only showed three days of sales in the Billboard chart.

Actor Morgan Freeman mistaken for Mandela in Indian billboard blunder

"We should be proud that we were part of an era when they lived," reads the billboard portraying Morgan Freeman as Mandela. PHOTO: @FarrukhHussaini/Twitter

NEW DELHI: An Indian owner of a billboard dedicated to Nelson Mandela was left embarrassed on Thursday after the discovery that a photo of actor Morgan Freeman was used instead of one of the anti-apartheid hero.

The billboard was erected on the side of a road in the southern city of Coimbatore as part of memorials across India and the world to Mandela, who died on December 5.

But Freeman’s face loomed large in the billboard over small images of human rights icons including Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

“We should be proud that we were part of an era when they lived,” read the Tamil-language condolence message on the board.

Cloth merchant Chandrashekhar, who paid for the board in a private capacity as a mark of respect to the former South African leader, said it was a mistake by the designer.

“We will replace it with the correct picture of Mandela,” the merchant, who uses one name, told reporters by telephone from the state capital Chennai, adding that he did not know how the gaffe occurred.

Morgan Freeman played Mandela in the 2009 film Invictus.

A photo of the billboard was being Tweeted on Thursday.

India declared five days of national mourning for Mandela, who was hailed as a “true Gandhian” and “great friend” by India’s leaders.

Google transparency report: Govt content removal requests on the rise

From January to June 2013, Google has received 3,846 government requests to remove 24,737 pieces of content PHOTO: AFP/ FILE

Google released its Transparency Report for the first half of 2013, revealing that amid a 68% rise in requests by government to remove content, Pakistan was among the countries with the least requests, while Turkey led with the most requests.

The report, which aims to provide raw evidence of how laws and policies affect access to information online, showed that from January to June 2013, Google received 3,846 government requests to remove 24,737 pieces of content—a 68 per cent increase over the second half of 2012.

Pakistan government made one request for removing one item during this period. Google said that the item, classified under “adult content,” was removed. There were no court requests from Pakistan during this period.

Google also noted that during this period, YouTube video service remained disrupted in Pakistan.

Turkey registered the largest increase in removal requests, with local Turkish authorities making 1,673 requests to remove 1,2162 items. These consist two-thirds of the total requests received by Google in this period. Of these, 184 requests for 9,610 items were made by Turkish courts while 1,489 requests for 2,552 items was by local authorities.

Of these requests, Google said it had complied with 42 per cent of requests by the courts and just 13 per cent of the requests made by Turkish government.

US was second behind Turkey in the countries with the most requests. There were 545 requests to remove 3,887 items. Google said 438 requests for 3,415 pieces of content were made by US courts, to which there was 55 per cent compliance. The US government made 107 requests to remove 472 pieces of content and 57 per cent of the requests were complied with.

Russia, which introduced a blacklist law last fall, saw the second sharpest rise in requests to remove content. Google said it received 257 removal requests for 277 pieces of content. Of these there were four requests by Russian courts for removal of four pieces of content of which only one request was complied with. Of the 253 request by the Russian government to remove 273 pieces of content, 67 per cent of the content was removed.

On the other hand, India made 16 requests based on court orders and 147 requests based on police and executive orders. The former met with a 38 per cent compliance from Google, while the latter met with 18 per cent compliance.

The requests from India included content such as impersonation, defamation, adult content, bullying and harassment, hate speech and national security.

Google noted that the most consistent trend for content removal over the past four years remains governments asking removal of political content, judges asking to remove information that is critical of them and police departments asking to take down videos or blogs that express their content.

These officials often allude to defamation, privacy and even copyright laws in attempts to remove political speech from the search engine’s services. During this period, they have collectively received 93 requests to take down government criticism and removed content in response to less than one third of them. Four of the requests were submitted as copyright claims.

Gas hydrate potential: Project initiated to process seismic data

According to preliminary studies conducted by NIO, the Makran coastal belt has extensive resources of gas hydrates which are frozen methane. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) has initiated a project with Chinese technical assistance, under which seismic data acquired by oil and gas companies and research institutions from offshore areas of Makran will be processed to determine the gas hydrate potential.

After initial assessment of samples, NIO geologists are scheduled to conduct geological survey of Gwadar and adjoining areas. NIO is planning a detailed oceanographic survey of the area onboard Pakistan Navy’s survey vessel, officials at the Ministry of Science and Technology told APP here on Wednesday.

NIO has prepared a country paper regarding gas hydrate potential of Pakistan’s offshore area, an official said, adding the institute has already undertaken preliminary studies of the island that emerged at Gwadar and extrusions off Basal River.

The exact location of the island that appeared after the earthquake on September 24 this year is the west bay of Gwadar. Officials said the tests conducted by NIO confirmed the presence of methane gas that was escaping into the air from a number of vents on the island, which is odourless and inflammable.

Three earth extrusions also appeared in the offshore area off Basal River towards the west of Ormara, said the official. “Technically, these extrusions cannot be called islands. Two of the three extrusions remained under water, the third was slightly above the water level. No gas emissions were observed from these three extrusions.”

He said the island that has emerged in the west bay of Gwadar will be washed away by sea in a few months, after losing gas pressure and the process has already started.

According to preliminary studies conducted by NIO, the Makran coastal belt has extensive resources of gas hydrates which are frozen methane. Methane gas is reported to be present a couple of hundred metres below the sea floor.

Many aspects of the gas hydrates are being investigated worldwide to understand their origin, their occurrence, the factors that affect their stability and the possibility of using this vast resource in the world energy mix.

“However, gas hydrates present both scientific and technological challenge, as they are yet to be tapped commercially,” the official added.

Lightroom 5.3 supports Nikon Df and D610, Lumia 1020 phone

Lightroom 5.3
(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Adobe Systems released Lightroom 5.3 on Thursday, extending its support to two Nikon full-frame SLRs, the enthusiast-oriented D610 and the retro Nikon Df, and one of the two first mobile phones that can produce raw photos, the Nokia Lumia 1020.

Nokia just released the Lumia 1520 phablet, making it the first phone that can produce raw images -- those that record the unprocessed sensor data before conversion into more convenient but less flexible formats like JPEG. For Adobe, though, it's the more mainstream Lumia 1020 that got the first Lightroom support, although its software won't be updated to handle raw photos until early 2014.

In other mobile-phone news, Lightroom 5.3 also can correct lens problems from Apple's iPhone 5S, along with a range of lenses from Sony, Nikon, and Canon. The iPhone 5S can't produce raw files, but Lightroom support means the software can counteract distortion and vignetting.

The software is a 480.6MB download for OS X and an 872MB download for Windows.

Adobe released the software the same day it's scheduled to report financial results for its fiscal 2013. Although Lightroom still can be purchased for about $150 with traditional perpetual licensing, which grants a user the right to use that version of the software forever, the company is moving most of its software to its Creative Cloud subscription programs, including the new Photoshop Photography Program for $10 a month for those who sign up by the end of the year. That promotion from Adobe seems to have drawn new subscribers, something Adobe no doubt appreciates since in recent quarters its stock price has risen in conjunction with Creative Cloud subscriptions.

Here's the full list of newly supported cameras, according to the Adobe blog post on Lightroom 5.3:

• Canon EOS M2
• Canon PowerShot S120
• Casio EX-10
• Fujifilm XQ1
• Fujifilm X-E2
• Nikon 1 AW1
• Nikon Coolpix P7800
• Nikon Df
• Nikon D610
• Nikon D5300
• Nokia Lumia 1020
• Olympus OM-D E-M1
• Olympus STYLUS 1
• Panasonic DMC-GM1
• Pentax K-3
• Phase One IQ260
• Phase One IQ280
• Sony A7 (ILCE-7)
• Sony A7R (ILCE-7R)
• Sony DSC-RX10

The new version of Lightroom also added tethered shooting support for Canon's EOS Rebel T4i (aka the 650D in Europe or the Kiss X6i in Asia), meaning people can slurp photos over a USB cable directly into Lightroom as they're taken.

Finally, Lightroom 5.3 boosts many of Olympus' high-end compact cameras by adding support for color profiles that let Lightroom users more easily reproduce the color and tonal settings available on the camera: natural, muted, portrait, and vivid.

Weird, wonderful world of smartphone camera accessories

Most people use their smartphone as their only camera because it's always with them and they don't have to carry a second device.

Camera accessories for smartphones may seem a little backward for that reason, since you're actually carrying around more things. At some point you might as well just get an actual camera, right?

But if you love shooting pictures or movies, and are in favor of anything that allows you to do more with the tech you have or push it beyond what it was intended for, this roundup is for you.

Several of them are specifically for the iPhone, most of which started as Kickstarter projects and are now available from BiteMyApple.co. But, as an Android user myself, there are ones here that will work with other smartphones as well.

Also, I know the idea of these accessories seems very silly to some people (I certainly feel that way about some of the accessories out there). So, if that's you, I have included a few accessories in here that will turn your smartphone into a tool to use with your digital SLR.

Olloclip

There are plenty of add-on lenses for the iPhone's camera. But for Olloclip, its lenses are all about high-quality optics and ease of use.

The company started from a Kickstarter project a couple years ago with its three-in-one lens that combines wide-angle, macro, and fish-eye lenses into one, tiny slide-on accessory.

This year, it expanded the product lineup with a quick-connect lens system that has a 2x telephoto lens on one side and a circular polarizer lens on the other, and a case with two tripod mounts, a cold shoe for attaching a mic or panel light, and a corner that flips around so you can mount a lens and use it as a shutter release.

Triggertrap Mobile

The $29.99 Triggertrap Mobile Dongle lets you use your smartphone as a remote shutter release for digital SLR or advanced compact cameras.

Though it can be used as a simple shutter release, its true strength is painless setup of time-lapse and HDR photography. It also will allow you to trigger the shutter release with sound, which comes in particularly handy when paired with its Flash Adapter for high-speed photography.

The dongle is compatible with more than 280 cameras and the apps, which recently got a complete redesign and new features, are available for iOS and Android.