World's most libertarian countries

As Uruguay, a country which has never criminalized cannabis for personal use, turns to legalizing its cultivation and distribution, we look at other trailblazing, libertarian countries.

Drugs

1. Portugal
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to decriminalise possession of all drugs for personal use. The country introduced state-funded therapy programmes for abusers which have seen record number of people seeking help. Rates of HIV infection and drug-related deaths have also halved in the ten years since the new legislation.

2. Czech Republic
While most nods go the Netherlands’ way when considering drug possession, it is in fact the Czechs that have the most liberal laws when it comes to personal use. Citizens can legally be in possession of up to half an ounce of marijuana, 40 ‘magic mushrooms’, four tabs of LSD or Ecstasy and one gram of cocaine. Read more >>

Ikea Withdraws Meatballs After Horse Meat Is Found

Smoked and salted horse meat on a sandwich.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The escalating crisis over horse meat in beef products in Europe claimed another big retail victim Monday when the Swedish furniture giant, Ikea, withdrew meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

The retailer said it had removed some products from its stores in Sweden after the authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in Ikea meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its own tests two weeks ago had not detected horse DNA.

Ikea also announced that it was stopping sales “of the concerned batch” of meatballs in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Britain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Ireland.

“We are now initiating further tests on the same production batch in which the Czech Republic authorities found indications of horse meat,” Ikea added in a statement. It said results were expected in the coming days. Read more >>

Google engineer finds British spyware on PCs and smartphones

Two security researchers have found new evidence that legitimate spyware sold by British firm Gamma International appears to be being used by some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Google security engineer Morgan Marquis-Boire and Berkeley student Bill Marczak were investigating spyware found in email attachments to several Bahraini activists. In their analysis they identified the spyware infecting not only PCs but a broad range of smartphones, including iOS, Android, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Phone 7 handsets.

The spying software has the capability to monitor and report back on calls and GPS positions from mobile phones, as well as recording Skype sessions on a PC, logging keystrokes, and controlling any cameras and microphones that are installed. They report the code appears to be FinSpy, a commercial spyware sold to countries for police criminal investigations. FinSpy was developed by the German conglomerate Gamma Group and sold via the UK subsidiary Gamma International. In a statement to Bloomberg, managing director Martin Muench denied the company had any involvement.

Parallel research by computer investigators at Rapid7 found command and control software servers for the FinSpy code running in Indonesia, Australia, Qatar, Ethiopia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Mongolia, Latvia, and the United Arab Emirates, with another server in the US running on Amazon's EC2 cloud systems. Less than 24 hours after the research was published, the team noted that several of these servers were shut down. Read more >>