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IF you are in the habit of snapping racy selfies with your smartphone, you may want to think twice about reselling it when you get a new one. Security firm Avast purchased 20 used Android devices on eBay and managed to recover the previous owners’ data from at least some of them, including emails, text messages, Google searches, and 40,000 photos – more than 1000 of which featured the subject in various states of undress.
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GOOGLE responded to the report, saying that the phones in question are older models that do not reflect current Android protections, but security researchers caution that the only way to fully protect your data on any device is to destroy it entirely.
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THE idea of creating a weapon by attaching a sharp end to a long shaft is an old one – the first spears date back to the Stone Age. Over the centuries, pole weapons have taken many different forms, from the European fauchard to the Chinese guan dao to the Japanese naginata. Masses of soldiers carrying pole weapons were recognised as effective military units early in the history of organised warfare.
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KING Abdullah I was the king of Jordan from 1946 until his death. With Britain’s support, he led Arab revolts against Turkish rule in WWI and, after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, became emir of the British mandate of Transjordan in 1921. When the mandate ended, he became king of the renamed Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 1948, he attacked the newly-established state of Israel, annexing the portions of Palestine now known as the West Bank.
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THE “Father of Humanism,” Petrarch was the greatest scholar of his age. He traveled widely, visiting fellow scholars and searching out manuscripts, and wrote numerous lyrics, sonnets, and canzoni. His awareness of the classical past as a source of literary and philosophical meaning for the present left a lasting influence on European literature and paved the way for the Renaissance.
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CONSIDERED to be among the greatest of prophets, Elijah is commemorated on this day in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. An Old Testament Jew who is revered by Jews and Muslims as well, Elijah’s story appears in the first book of Kings, with the final episode appearing in Second Kings, chapter two. The highpoint of Elijah’s ministry occurred when he called the priests who worshipped Baal, the pagan fertility god, to the top of Mount Carmel and challenged them to a contest that would prove who was the true God.
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QUOTE of the day: Observation is an old man’s memory. – Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
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