SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Visitors to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum must now pay a $2 service fee to reserve passes online or by phone. The fee went into effect last month, although there is no charge for admission to the memorial on the World Trade Center site. There's also no charge for same-day passes distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Family members of some 9/11 victims say the fee violates the memorial's mission. "They're making money…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Every week, a group of teenagers and 20-somethings dressed in hoodies gets together in a tiny room on a college campus and plug in their laptops. They turn up pulsing electronic funk music, order pizza and begin furiously hacking into computer networks. But they’re not shadowy criminals: They’re students training to become “white-hat” hackers, experts to help business and government agencies protect their data from cyberattacks that have become an almost daily occurrence. “It’s…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Every week, a group of teenagers and 20-somethings dressed in hoodies gets together in a tiny room on a college campus and plug in their laptops. They turn up pulsing electronic funk music, order pizza and begin furiously hacking into computer networks. But they’re not shadowy criminals: They’re students training to become “white-hat” hackers, experts to help business and government agencies protect their data from cyberattacks that have become an almost daily occurrence. “It’s…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) For the first time, scientists have managed to demonstrate that ten times more ice melts in the summer months on the Antarctic Peninsula now than it did 600 years ago. The Antarctic Peninsula is the biggest and most prominent peninsula in Antarctica. It consists of a rugged mountain chain, which rises more than 2000 m high. Unlike the majority of the continent, the ice on the peninsula experiences a degree of melting every summer. Over…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) Two people in the central Chinese province of Henan have been infected by a new strain of avian influenza bringing the nationwide total to 51, state media have reported. The latest cases of infections from the H7N9 bird flu virus, reported on Sunday, were the first in the province. One of the victims, a 34-year old man in the city of Kaifeng, is critically ill in hospital, while the other, a 65-year old farmer from…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) For many shop owners, e-commerce remains a riddle. Each step, from creating an online shopfront that lures in customers to taking payment for goods, can flummox retailers selling their wares online. In many cases, intimate knowledge of such technical wizardry as Perl, PHP and MySQL databases is needed. Enter Tictail, a ten-month-old Swedish start-up, which aims to radically simplify the process for businesses to go online. It takes no more than a few minutes before…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) When it came to solving the riddle of the peacock's tail, Charles Darwin's powers of evolutionary deduction were second to none – the more extravagant their feathered displays, he reasoned, the greater their chances of attracting a peahen. But when he tried to account for the human propensity to weep, Darwin found himself at a loss. "We must look at weeping as an incidental result, as purposeless as the secretion of tears from a blow…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – Samsung officially announces the Galaxy Mega series. Galaxy Mega 5.8 The Galaxy Mega 5.8 codename GT-I9152 will be a high-end DUOS smartphone with a 5.8” qHD (960×540) TFT display. Samsung will give the Galaxy Mega 5.8 a 8 megapixel back camera and a 2 megapixel front camera. The processor would be a dual-core clocked at 1.4 GHz with 1.5 GB of RAM. Of course Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 80211 a/b/g/n and A-GPS are on the…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – We reported on a story where a hacker claimed to have created an Android application that would be able to completely take over an aircraft. Hugo Teso, who is a security consultant and ex-commercial pilot, says his application would be able to make an aircraft “dance to his tune,” but the FAA has dismissed Teso’s claims today. The FAA responded to Teso’s claims by saying the systems that are certified to be used on…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – A photo of what looks to be the front panel of the upcoming fifth-gen Apple iPad has surfaced today, giving us a hint of what the upcoming slate might look like. Judging from the photo, the new iPad will sport many of the design characteristics of the iPad Mini, but on a larger scale. The edges aren’t as round as the current-gen iPad, and the side bezel is much narrower, too. The usual Home…