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Intego has discovered a spyware application that is installed by a number of freely distributed Mac applications and screen savers found on a variety of websites. This spyware, OSX/OpinionSpy, performs a number of malicious actions, from scanning files to recording user activity, as well as sending information about this activity to remote servers and opening a backdoor on infected Macs.

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Two weeks ago, a resident of Key West found a divers’ camera in a waterproof housing washed ashore not far from where he lives. He found the latest pictures dated November 11, 2009, and some underwater video footage from January 2010. While the batteries were dead, the camera was in good shape. He knew the pictures were not from the Florida Keys, so he took on a little project to track down the owners of the lost camera, via bulletin boards on dive sites, and social media.

The first picture he found was his initial clue, as he looked at the sign on the truck in the image, filled with diving gear. He tracked down a company called wereldstage.com, based out of Curacao, that also has a location in Aruba, and the font in its logo matched that on the truck. He then painstakingly identified the building in the background as the Alhambra Casino – the blue dome must have been the giveaway, which meant that the hotel the divers were standing at was Casa Del Mar. Then. There was also another picture and as he Google Earthed it, he identified it as Divi Aruba, right next to the Casa Del Mar. But he knew that the people who lost the camera were no vacationers, because of several pictures of children at school and in one of the images, the writing on the wall over a boy’s head, was the name of a school called the Schakel in Aruba!

[..]

Halfway through the camera’s journey, a sea turtle came across it. When he tried to eat it, he turned the camera on and recorded himself. The camera went from stills to video and stayed on to record the sea turtle’s tranquil, uneventful journey until the batteries drained.

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Food Freedom recently reported that Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, peasant farmer leader of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the entry of Monsanto seeds into Haiti "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds. Monsanto’s seed donations were an unwelcomed gift to a country with vocal opposition to GMO seeds for fear they would ruin what little agriculture the country has left.

Monsanto will be donating 60,000 seed sacks of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to Haiti and MPP leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has vowed to burn them. According to Food Freedom, the hybrid corn seeds Monsanto has donated to Haiti are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram.[3] Thiram belongs to a highly toxic class of chemicals called ethylene bisdithiocarbamates (EBDCs). The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them.

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A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

This type of modification does not beg for a lender’s permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.

“I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn’t help,” said Mr. Pemberton’s mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son’s. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. “They’re all crooks.”

[..]

In Pinellas and Pasco counties, which include St. Petersburg and the suburbs to the north, there are 34,000 open foreclosure cases, said J. Thomas McGrady, chief judge of the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit. Ten years ago, the average was about 4,000. “The volume is killing us,” Judge McGrady said.

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At least 115 people have died after a tropical storm battered Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador over the weekend, officials in those countries reported.

Guatemala was hit hardest, with at least 92 deaths, 54 people missing and 59 injured, emergency officials said. Nearly 112,000 people have been evacuated and more than 29,000 are living in temporary shelters, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said in an address to the nation late Sunday.

The devastation has been widespread throughout Guatemala with mudslides destroying homes and buildings and burying some victims. At least nine rivers have dramatically higher levels and 13 bridges have collapsed, the nation’s emergency services said.

In the northern part of Guatemala City, the downpour created a giant sinkhole that swallowed up a space larger than the area of a street intersection. Residents told CNN that a three-story building and a house fell into the hole.

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A tech site in China has reported, Apple will provide financial subsidies to Foxconn’s employees, the amount will roughly be 1 to 2% of the profits from Apple products. Apple has conducted investigation on Foxconn, and they believe the main reason for the suicide jumps is related to the employees’ low wages. In order to solve the problem, Apple decides to offer a direct financial subsidies for the workers in Foxconn, it will first start from the iPad production line. It was reported that Apple paid Foxconn about 2.3% of the total price of iPad, after the subsidies, it will expected to reach 3%, which is equivalent to the producing cost of the iPad aluminum shell-case.

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Google is phasing out the internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system because of security concerns, according to several Google employees.

The directive to move to other operating systems began in earnest in January, after Google’s Chinese operations were hacked, and could effectively end the use of Windows at Google, which employs more than 10,000 workers internationally.

“We’re not doing any more Windows. It is a security effort,” said one Google employee.

“Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another.

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Independent scientists and government officials say there’s a disaster we can’t see in the Gulf of Mexico’s mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.

Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC — which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact — said there is "no evidence" that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea.