WRITTEN BY Carlo Francardo
Buenos Aires is a city with many faces, and its shantytowns, villas de emergencia (emergency villages) – euphemistically also called asentamientos (settlements) or villas miseria (villages of misery) – represent, for the rest of the society, the most scary and impenetrable face of them all. Collecting data, or even knowing the number of its inhabitants, is in this area very difficult. According to the census conducted in 2010, there are in Buenos Aires Capital, without considering its surrounding provinces, about 23 villas and a total of 170,000 residents. Over the last four years the number has increased to 225,000. This however seems to be an approximation, as in 2006 the inhabitants of the 796 villas in the capital and surrounding provinces were calculated to exceed one million.
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WRITTEN BY Hana Abul Husn
In a mountainous sanctuary where it is easy to forget the neighboring war in Syria and the threats that have become commonplace in Lebanon, the stories of the children and women affected converge.
Perched against the railing, with a mosque in the near distance, one woman describes the Borj El Barajneh refugee camp where she and her classmates live with reserved distaste. Revealing that the dirty streets and cramped housing do not speak for the well-kept homes of its inhabitants. With her thickly accented Arabic and a touch of regret, she mentions that visitors to the area are afraid of what they see. But like the surface infrastructure, the preconceptions of those living outside of the refugee camps in Lebanon falsely taint this woman and her classmates attending their English and I.T. classes on this sunny morning.
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WRITTEN BY Erik R. Barnett
Introduction
The potential societal benefits of virtual currencies include mobile banking systems in developing countries, decreased transaction costs to merchants, and elimination of fees associated with normal bank accounts - all practical benefits for most businesses and consumers.
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However, there is significant risk of large-scale criminal use of these same virtual currencies because of a lack of universal regulation, a gap in critical industry-based checks against money laundering, decentralized administrations, and the anonymity of transactions.
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WRITTEN BY Alan Brill and Snezana Petreska
Mass gatherings of cyber connected people are magnets for predatory cyber criminals
Events like the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympic Games (both of which are being held in Brazil) as well as national and regional events can draw tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fans. Cultural events like concerts at arenas and sports stadiums can result in masses of viewers.
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WRITTEN BY Carola Frediani
The “Deep Web” is not an easy subject to investigate. To begin with, the first rule of the Deep Web is: “You do not talk about the Deep Web”. And that holds true for the second rule. While the third rule of the Deep Web is: “You can talk about it, but just if this is related to drug lords, weapons, terrorism or other similar topics.”
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WRITTEN BY by Irakli Beridze and Odhran James McCarthy
On 16 May 2014, the first multilateral discussion of lethal autonomous systems was convened at the United Nations Office in Geneva on the margins of the Expert Meeting for the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The subject of discussion, in more colloquial terms, was the so-called ‘killer robot’ – that is, fully autonomous lethal weapons systems that can select and engage targets without human intervention. During this milestone meeting, discussions touched on the various technical, legal, operational and ethical implications of robotic weapons and, of course, a number of concerns were voiced about a future with weapons void of human control, judgment or compassion.
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WRITTEN BY Jonathan Lucas
Unprecedented globalization, expansion and change is irrevocably altering global dynamics. Technological evolution has brought about unparalleled levels of progress which continually restructure the fabric of our society, beginning from the very way we interface with one another. Indeed, the achievements of a fast-evolving and increasingly interconnected world with a quantum jump in technology in different sectors benefit mankind as a whole.
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