America and China More Peaceful than India

The world has become more peaceful for the first time since 2009, says the 2012 Global Peace Index, a study conducted by Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). India's rank slipped to 142 in comparison with 137 last year. Unites States of America was ranked 88 while China was ranked 89 in the GPI.

 
The Global Peace Index for 158 countries composed of 23 indicators, ranging from measures of civil unrest and crime to military spending, involvement in armed conflict and ties with neighbors. The survey gauged three broad themes, namely the level of safety and security in society, the extent of domestic or international conflict and the degree of militarization.

 
Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world, followed by Denmark and New Zealand. Canada takes the fourth position on the Global Peace Index list while Japan takes the fifth. Somalia remains the world’s least peaceful nation. Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and Democratic Republic of Congo round up the bottom five. Israel and Pakistan were also ranked among one of the least peaceful nations.

 
The study also noted that Saarc nations like Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh are more peaceful than India. The survey founder Steve Killelea, an Australian entrepreneur said that in the past 12 months India's relation with its neighbors has improved. He added that "We expect this to continue for betterment of the entire region," as reported by TOI.

As per regions, Asia Pacific has an overall score improved by the largest extent from last year and included three of the top five risers. Sub-Saharan Africa is not the least peaceful region for the first time and has steadily increased levels of peacefulness since 2007. Middle East and North Africa were noted to be the least peaceful region, reflecting the upheaval and instability caused by the Arab Spring.

 
Western Europe remains noticeably the most peaceful region with the majority of its countries in the top 20 for the sixth consecutive year. North America showed a slight improvement, continuing a trend since 2007. While Latin America experienced overall gain with 16 of the 23 countries seeing improvements to their GPI score. All regions excluding the Middle East and North Africa saw an improvement in levels of overall peacefulness.

 
The top 5 fallers were noted to be Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Oman and Malawi. Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bhutan, Guyana and the Philippines were the top 5 risers on the Global Peace index list.

 
There has been a change for the indicators as well. The top three largest improvements were noted for the political terror scale, terrorist acts and military expenditure as a percent of GDP. Improvements were seen in the military sphere, including a decline in military expenditure as a percentage of GDP in 2011, as many countries hit by economic headwinds moved to reduce budget deficits. Six of the world’s top military spenders: Brazil, France, Germany, India, the UK and the U.S., cut their defence budgets in 2011.

Flame Virus! A Powerful Cyber Weapon Discovered

Bangalore:  A prominent Russian based internet security firm revealed that it had discovered a new and powerful virus that has extraordinary destructive potential, which is being utilized as a "cyberweapon" against several countries.
Kaspersky Lab, producers of largest anti-virus software said that their team of experts has discovered the virus known as “Flame” during an investigation process under the guidance of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The firm said that countries like in Iran and others in the Middle East have been attacked using this spyware virus.
Flame is a data stealing virus that has creeped into thousands of computers across the Middle East for almost five years as part of a sophisticated cyber warfare campaign.
Comments by Israel’s vice premier have hinted that the awful Flame spyware is a product of Israel, as a defensive strategy against Iran's nuclear program which sees it as a mortal Threat reports Economic Times.
Moshe Yaalon told Army Radio on Tuesday, "Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat is likely to take various steps, including these, to hobble it."
He added, "Israel is blessed with high technology, and we boast tools that open all sorts of opportunities for us."
Roel Schouwenberg, security senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab said that "If Flame went on undiscovered for five years, the only logical conclusion is that there are other operations ongoing that we don't know about."
Researchers at Kaspersky said that they are still not very familiar with Flame and are in the process of understanding how the virus works because of its complex features. Moreover, they have also mentioned that the full significance will not be known until other cyber security firms obtain samples of Flame.
Kaspersky Lab’s research shows that Iran is the most affected country with largest number of infected machines, followed by the Israel/Palestine region, then Sudan and Syria.

World's top 10 Online Pirate Nations

The U.S. government released America’s official piracy radar of 2012, a highest priority watch list of countries with highest piracy.

 
Many countries including India made it to the top 10 of the priority watch list, which said, “Online piracy is rapidly supplanting physical piracy in many markets around the world.” The list hopes to shame governments into cracking down on piracy and counterfeiting and updating their copyright laws.

 
Here are the high priority Pirate countries.

 
Russia

 
Russia is a hotbed of piracy where no copyright laws are followed. As an entertainment industry expert states it, “They’ll pirate everything in Russia.” It was Russia's 16th straight year on the list. But recently, due to the hard pressure from the entertainment industry, Russia had started to crack down on infringement.

 
 
Pakistan

 
Illegal audio and video copying is flourishing in Pakistan despite global efforts against it. Widespread counterfeiting and piracy, particularly book and optical disc remains the reason to put country in the watch list. According to the IFPI, Pakistani replication facilities are producing in excess of 230 million copies a year.

 Israel

 
Israel remains on the priority watch list. In additional to online piracy, the Cable piracy rate is high in Israel. Very high penetration rates of broadband Internet favor the digital pirates that make the latest movies, music and TV series nearly immediately available. At one time, the piracy levels of Israel had reached 50 percent. Insufficient local legislation and enforcement were poor in fighting increasing Internet piracy in Israel.

 
 
 Indonesia

 
Indonesia is one country which consistently tops the world rankings for piracy on the Web. The report says, “While Indonesia has smade positive efforts in 2011 to strengthen (intellectual property rights) protections, the United States was still “concerned that Indonesia’s enforcement efforts have not been effective in addressing challenges such as growing piracy over the Internet and the widespread availability of counterfeit pharmaceutical products.

 India

 
India remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012. The report says India’s legal framework and enforcement system remain weak.  The challenge of piracy over the Internet continues to grow and the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, which India had passed in 2010 appears to have stalled.

 
 China

 
Even though China remains under Government’s Big Wall of protection, the piracy rate in the country is high. 99% of all music downloads in China are illegal. The country has been on the priority watch list for eight years and subject to a special monitoring program. A wide range of rights holders reports serious obstacles to effective protection and enforcement of all forms of Intellectual Property rights in China, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and protection of pharmaceutical test data.

Chile

 
Chile continues to rank high as one of the countries with the worst rates of copyright and Internet piracy offenders. Additional to the internet piracy, the film industry is most suffering from pirates in Chile. In 2009, Chilean piracy caused filmmakers losses of US$15 million.

 
 
 Canada

 
Canada remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012. The piracy watchdogs are forcing Canada to enact the long awaited copyright legislation, which will help the country to control piracy to some extend. According to the report, Canada's place on the list was "subject to review" if it enacts the legislation. Recently, the Government of Canada has given priority to the legislation.

 Argentina

 
Eventhough Argentina progress in taking action against the unauthorized distribution of pirated content over the Internet, the judicial system of the country remains inefficient to control the widespread availability of pirated and counterfeit goods.

 
 Algeria

 
Algeria remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012. The country had a low which bans the import of many products to favor the manufacture of local products. There is no protection against the unfair commercial use, as well as unauthorized disclosure of data, in the country.