Global new year celebrations begin
Revellers across the globe are gathering to welcome in the new year, with New Zealand and Australia leading the celebrations.
A giant clock in Auckland's Sky Tower counted down the minutes until midnight (11:00 GMT), when fireworks erupted.
Up to 1.5m people lined the shores of Sydney harbour in preparation for the city's famous firework display.
Celebration plans have been muted in Indonesia, however, in the wake of the AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crash.
West Indies team heads to Cape Town for third Test
The West Indies cricketers are scheduled to travel to Cape Town today to prepare for the third and final Test against hosts South Africa at Newlands.
The Test starts on Friday.
South Africa leads the series 1-0 following its innings and 220-run victory in the first Test at Centurion.
The second Test ended in a draw in Port Elizabeth yesterday after rain washed out the final day.
West Indies assistant coach, Stuart Williams, says the Caribbean side had shown signs of improvement following the heavy defeat at Centurion .
The Caribbean team watched as South Africa piled up 417 for eight declared but then responded strongly as 22-year-old opener Kraigg Brathwaite, 106 runs, and the experienced Marlon Samuels, 101, both struck hundreds.
Their record third wicket partnership of 176 lifted the West Indies to 231 for two during the second session on Monday, before the tourists lost seven wickets for 44 runs to decline significantly.
West Indies entered the final day on 279 for nine, 142 runs behind South Africa’s first innings total.
DIGICEL ANNOUNCES $5,000 CHRISTMAS PROMOTION WINNER
Christmas came early for one lucky Digicel customer this year! Ms. Patrice Capron-Walker, a 40 year old Day Care Teacher with Wesley Methodist School and native of Blue Hills, Providenciales was the lucky $5,000 grand prize winner of Digicel’s “Come together this Christmas” promotion.
Digicel launched it’s ‘Come Together this Christmas’ Promotion on November 11th in its flagship store in Providenciales and unveiled the latest additions to its range of Smartphones.
The Christmas Promotion allowed customers who purchased select Samsung and DL Smartphone models to automatically enter the $10,000 cash giveaway. Five lucky customers won $1,000 each and Ms. Capron-Walker walked away as the grand prize winner of $5,000 cash!
Ms. Capron-Walker was elated to be the recipient of the Grand Prize of $5000 Cash and stated that her prayers were answered right in time as she could really use the cash. She went on to say “I never win anything! So you can imagine that I was in disbelief when I received the phone call. But it just goes to shows that anyone can be a winner!” She further stated that she will be donating a portion of her winnings back to church and will be using the balance to do upgrades to her home.
Marketing Specialist for Digicel, Trina Adams, told RTC News that the Christmas promotion was extremely successful and that she was happy that Digicel is continuing to bring smiles to its customers during the holidays. “We are delighted to be able to help our customers to have an enjoyable Christmas and to spread the joy to as many of our customers as possible.”
Other Christmas promotion winners included Decarlo Williams, and Marylene Antonie of Grand Turk, Courtella Forbes and Jolani Amador who resides in North Caicos and James Menelas of Providenciales. Each winner walked away with $1000 each while Ashley Parker and Leticia Hall of Grand Turk were the winners of home makeovers. Atiba Grant, Yelena Roberts and Karen Cox emerged as winner of Digicel’s Together Christmas Social Media Video Contest, winning brand new Samsung and Digicel DL Smartphones.
RTC congratulates all of Digicel’s Christmas Promotion winners.
Lions' Ndamukong Suh to appeal
The Detroit Lions and Ndamukong Suh have been informed that the defensive tackle will be suspended for Sunday's wild-card playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys.
Suh's punishment comes a day after he stepped on the leg of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Suh "unnecessarily stepped on [the] opponent's unprotected leg as he lay on the ground unable to protect himself," according to a statement released by the NFL.
Suh is appealing the suspension, and his appeal will be heard by Ted Cottrell.
Lions center Dominic Raiola, who himself returned from a one-game suspension Monday, defended Suh's actions.
"He was getting pushed back, you know," Raiola said. "... There's no way at that point in the game that he did something like that on purpose."
Lions safety James Ihedigbo said missing Suh will create a large void on defense.
"I don't know if you can put it into words," Ihedigbo said. "He's a dominant force in our defense. He's kind of the key centerpiece. We have faith in guys that can step up and fill that void and do the best job they can to get this win and help us out.
"It's unfortunate, whatever way you want to slice it. You're losing one of your best defensive players and one of the best D-linemen in the league, it's unfortunate."
If Suh's appeal is denied, Detroit would be without both of its first-round defensive tackle selections. Coach Jim Caldwell said Monday it would take "a miracle" for defensive tackle Nick Fairley to play against the Cowboys. Fairley has not played or practiced since injuring his knee against Atlanta in Week 8.
If neither Suh nor Fairley is available, the Lions likely would start C.J. Mosley and Andre Fluellen or Jason Jones at the defensive tackle spots.
This isn't the first time Suh has had issues with Green Bay. He was suspended for two games in 2011 after stomping on the arm of then-Packers center Evan Dietrich-Smith. Suh was also fined $100,000 last season for an illegal low block on Minnesota center John Sullivan.
Source-ESPN
VW recalls 2015 Jettas for headlight glitch
Volkswagen is recalling 25,007 Jetta models from the 2015 model year in the U.S. to fix a software glitch that can affect the operation of the low-beam headlights.
Because of incorrect software within the headlight control module, the low-beam headlights may turn off when the high-beam lights are turned on. As a result, light output from the headlights may be insufficient.
Insufficient headlight output may increase the risk of a crash.
The cars were manufactured between July 11 and Nov. 13, VW said.
VW said the recalled models fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 -- "Lamps, Reflective Devices, and Associated Equipment."
Volkswagen will notify owners, and dealers will update the headlight control module software, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin in January 2015, the company said.
Tor's most visited hidden sites host child abuse images
Most traffic to sites hidden on the Tor network go to those dealing in images of child sexual abuse a study suggests.
The six-month study sought to catalogue hidden services on the so-called "dark net" and work out which were the most popular.
It found lots of sites peddling illegal drugs but the most popular were those involved with abuse.
However, the researcher behind the study said it was hard to conclude that people were behind all the visits.
Tor, or The Onion Router, is an anonymising system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in. The anonymity offered by the network has encouraged many people to set up hidden .onion sites that offer content, services and goods that it is illegal to sell openly.
Carried out by Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, the study set up servers to join the Tor network and catalogued hidden services found on it. The system was also able to visit the sites to download HTML content so they could be categorised and to track how many visits each one received.
Traffic to hidden services on Tor represents about 1.5% of all the data passing across the network on any given day.
Over the six months of the study, Dr Owen and his colleagues saw about 80,000 hidden sites on Tor.
"Most of the hidden services we only saw once. They do not tend to exist for a very long time," he said during a speech at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress in Hanover, where he presented his findings.
The top 40 hidden services were involved with controlling botnets - networks of home computers compromised by malicious programs. Many of these botnets have been shut down which has left their client computers fruitlessly polling Tor seeking the now dormant command systems.
The study found that the biggest number of hidden services were dedicated to selling illegal drugs. Also in the top five were underground markets, fraud sites, mail services and those dealing in the virtual currency Bitcoin.
Although the number of sites dealing in images of abuse on Tor is small, traffic to them dwarfs that going to other sites, said Dr Owen.
About 75% of the traffic observed in the study ended up at abuse sites, said Dr Owen.
"When we found this out we were stunned," he said. "This is not what we expected at all."
Despite the findings, Dr Owen cautioned against drawing too many conclusions since he did not know which visits were done by people and which by machines.
"It's not as quite as straightforward as it looks," he said. "It might look like there are lots of people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude that from this information."
"What proportion are people and which are something else? We simply don't know." he said, adding that "crawlers" run by law enforcement and other agencies that police abuse sites could be responsible for the steady stream of traffic.
Roger Dingledine, one of the original developers of Tor, also said the methodology of the study - which only scanned long-lived sites to see what content they offered - made it hard to draw conclusions about what people did on the network.
"Without knowing how many sites disappeared before he got around to looking at them, it's impossible to know what percentage of fetches went to abuse sites," he said.
"There are important uses for hidden services, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously," he added.
"These uses for hidden services are new and have great potential."
Travel firms sue creator of cheap airfare site
United Airlines and travel firm Orbitz have launched legal action against a site that seeks out cheap "hidden city" airfares.
The site finds cheap fares by looking for flights that have a stopover at the city someone wants to travel to.
The two firms allege the site is engaged in "unfair competition" and seeks to recoup lost revenue.
The developer behind the site said he was doing nothing wrong by exposing the "inefficiencies" in airline ticketing.
The legal action has been filed in Illinois.
The Skiplagged website works by looking for longer flights that include a stop in a big city en route to another destination. One example might be flying from New York to Lake Tahoe that has a stopover in San Francisco.
If someone wanted to travel to San Francisco they might spend less on the fare by booking the stopover flight and not travelling to Tahoe than they would simply booking a flight to San Francisco from New York. In some cases, the site suggests, travellers can save 40% or more on ticket fares.
The trick only works with one-way flights. Travellers cannot check in any luggage as that would then travel on to the flight's final destination.
Twenty-two-year-old developer Aktarer Zaman, who created the site, told CNNMoney that he had made no profit from Skiplagged. He declined to comment specifically on the case to CNN.
Mr Zaman has launched a fundraising campaign to gather cash to fight the legal battle against United and Orbitz. So far he has raised $10,538 (£6,776) of the $15,000 needed.
In its legal filing, United and Orbitz said the site was "intentionally and maliciously" interfering with the travel firms' business and was making it breach its contracts with its partners.
The documents added that "logistical and public safety concerns" meant using "hidden city" tickets was prohibited and, as a result, using Skiplagged broke these rules.
The two firms are seeking damages of at least $75,000 in revenue they claim they have lost as a result of Skiplagged operating.
Source-BBC
Sean Paul cancels Maldives gig
International recording artiste Sean Paul has cancelled a New Year’s gig in the Maldives amid death threats.
The artiste issued a statement to the media yesterday.
“Unfortunately, the world has reached a point where cyber threats must affect real life decisions. With that said, due to safety concerns for my crew and the people of the Maldives attending the Tourist Arrival Countdown, it is with deep regret that I have come to the difficult decision to cancel my appearance,” Sean Paul’s statement read in part.
He also used the opportunity to thank the Government and people of the Maldives for their invitation.
Britain’s Independent newspaper reported the video message carries the logo of the Bilad Al Sham Media (BASM) group, an organisation which claims to comprise Maldivian jihadists based in Syria and the Maldives.
“Sean Paul, if you visit the Maldives, the world will see your burned and blood-drenched dead body,” said cards held by a cloaked figure in the video posted on YouTube last week.
A Twitter account allegedly belonging to BASM denied being behind the threat, revealing in a tweet: “We would clearly like to announce that our media have nothing to do with the Sean Paul death threatening video.”
Haiti deal reached to avert crisis over delayed polls
Haitian President Michel Martelly has reached a deal with the senate and the chamber of deputies to avert a political crisis over long-delayed elections which sparked mass protests.
Officials said Mr Martelly had signed an agreement with the presidents of the two chambers to extend their mandate.
Lawmakers will now have to sign off on the deal.
If it is not passed, Haiti could be left without a functioning government once the mandates expire on 12 January.
Under the agreement, Haiti's deputies would be extended in their posts until 24 April and senators until 9 September.
The deal comes just over two weeks after Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe resigned in the wake of violent protest at the delayed elections.
Former Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe speaks during an interview with Associated Press in Port-au-Prince on 15 December, 2014
Mid-term senate elections had been originally due in May 2012, while the municipal poll is three years behind schedule as Haiti slowly emerges from the earthquake which left much of the country devastated in 2010.
They were postponed again on 26 October - the day they were due to be held - because of an ongoing stalemate between the government and a group of opposition senators over an electoral law.
The repeated delays have triggered protests, some of them violent, by critics of the government, who accuse President Martelly of wanting to rule by decree.
Martelly has appointed Evans Paul, a former radio journalist, as the new prime minister.
Mr Paul has to be confirmed by parliament before he can start forming a government.
Officials say debris of Air Asia QZ8501 is missing plane
Indonesian officials have confirmed that bodies and debris found in the Java Sea off Borneo are from AirAsia flight QZ8501 that went missing on Sunday, a statement by AirAsia says.
AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes said he was "devastated" by the news.
President Joko Widodo told media he had instructed all search teams to focus on finding the passengers and crew.
The Airbus A320-200, carrying 162 people from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore, disappeared on Sunday.
The head of Indonesia's search operation, Bambang Soelistyo, says three bodies have been retrieved, not 40 as previously stated by naval officials.
The discovery came on the third day of searching. A navy spokesman said rescuers were "very busy now" with the salvage operation.
The AirAsia statement said the remains were found in the Karimata Strait, south-west of Pangkalan Bun in the Borneo province of Central Kalimantan.
Mr Fernandes said: "I am absolutely devastated."
He told a news conference there could now be an end to uncertainty for everyone involved.
"This is a scar with me for the rest of my life," he said.
"It doesn't change anything. There is at least some closure as opposed to not knowing what's happened and holding out hope."
The AirAsia statement said family members would be assigned care providers and an emergency call centre would be set up for those seeking information.
Source-BBC