Videos of the Oklahoma tornado

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Big Data is watching you, and you, and you

Fact or fiction? Scene from the 1955 British movie of George Orwell's 1984 resonates today, though many sophisticated systems of government snooping are invisible to the ordinary citizen.


There’s an elephant in your room – and it never, never forgets.

It’s Big Data, and, says Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, co-author of a book by the same name, it is “A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think.”

From cradle to grave (and even before birth) we’re tracked, trailed, photographed, videoed, scrutinized, biometrized, analysed and….you can see where this is going.
 
Mayer-Shoenberger is a fan of Big D for its ability to put together information that connects patterns we could never understand from smaller bits and bytes. He also has some warnings about what can happen when staggering amounts of personal data are put together to map our lives in a virtual human cybergenome.

Q: Is Big Data just Big Brother writ larger -- an era of total surveillance?

A: There are two important elements. One is the obvious fact that we’re collecting more information than ever before and most of it is in a digital format. That creates a much more comprehensive capability of surveillance.

Q: And the other?

A: It takes the quality of ephemerality out of our communications. We used to depend on things we said or did being plausibly deniable. They would go away. We could say they never happened. Now that’s much more difficult.

Q: What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas?

A: If you look at Facebook and Twitter, the younger generation uses them as an ephemeral way of communicating. They don’t realize it doesn’t disappear like water cooler gossip. What I say will stay with me and may be used against me in the future.

Q: And the effect on behaviour?

A: What’s happening goes beyond surveillance per se. In the past, watching was done in the same time frame. Now it’s the panopticon. That was a prison in which inmates didn’t know if they were being watched, so they had to assume they were watched all the time. That created compliance without active watching.

Q:  No escape?

A: There’s a “data shadow” following us that transcends time, which is new. And this may freak you out, but in the Big Data age there’s an even bigger problem, our vastly increasing reliance on probability.

It means calculating propensities based on probabilities. We’re using all that data to predict a 90 per cent likelihood that the person standing in front of us is going to commit a crime next week. So punish him now – like Minority Report. Or take him into an interview and persuade him not to do it.

Q: This isn’t science fiction. Ordinary people in Britain have been arrested because surveillance data predicted they might cause trouble during the royal wedding.

A: Right, and in the U.S. there’s “predictive policing” in a number of cities. They use Big Data analysis to determine where and what time crime spikes. But this is deeply troubling because profiling becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Olivia Ward has covered conflict, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to Europe, South Asia and the U.S., winning national and international awards.

Who are the world's richest people?

Mexico's Carlos Slim is pretty rich. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File)

Can't balance your cheque book? Want to get really depressed about your negative bank balance?

Why not check out Bloomberg's interactive ranking of the world's richest people. The news agency has put some thought into this ranking, listing the top 100 of the 1 per cent by country, gender, industry, ages and sources of wealth.

To find out who is worth what, all you have to do is scroll over the sketches of the billionaires faces. The graphic even links to relevant news stories.

Combined, the total wealth of the 100 billionaires is a cool $2.1 trillion.

So, who makes it to the top 5?

Mexican businessman Carlos Slim is first on the list at $73.2 billion, Microsoft's Bill Gates is second  at $72.9 billion, Warren Buffet is at $60.2 billion, Spanish fashion czar Amancio Ortega (the clothing firm Zara is one of his) is worth $57.3 billion and Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad comes in at $56.5 billion.

Consequently numbers 6 and 7 are the politically conservative American brothers Charles and David Koch, who are both worth $45.4 billion each and are heavily interested in investing in American newspapers.

The only woman in the top 10 is Christy Walton, at number 9, who is worth $38.5 billion. She's the widow of John Walton, one of the sons of Sam Walton, the man who gave the world Walmart.

As for the Canadians on the list, there are only two -- media mogul David Thomson ranks 22nd with $25.1 billion and Galen Weston barely rounds out the top 100, coming in at number 90 with $11.6 billion.

Read it and weep.

Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga

Are countries that are better off, more or less tolerant about race?

A map based on data from from the World Values Survey composed by The Washington Post.

 A study published by a pair of Swedish economists in the scholarly publication Kyklos, has kicked up quite a stir on the Internet, trying to determine whether economically better-off nations are more racially tolerant.

Or not.

Well, that’s the scholarly language.

We in the media are a little more plain-spoken.

What we want to know is: who’s racist out there?

To help the Swedes in their study, they consulted the respected World Values Survey, a global network of research scientists from more than 100 countries who’ve been polling people around the world about values since 1981.

Turns out the survey had just the kind of question they were looking for:  Question A124_02 which asked respondents whether they’d prefer not to have “people of a different race” as neighbours.

The best illustration of the survey’s findings was published by the Washington Post using a kind of red states – blue states theme, blue being the most tolerant countries, and red the least (see above).

Some of the findings surprised: more than 70 per cent of respondents in Hong Kong as well as Bangladesh said they definitely did not want to have neighbours of a different race.

In Jordan 51.4 per cent and in India 43.5 per cent also said they wouldn’t tolerate neighbours of a different race.

The most tolerant? Sweden, where just 1.4 per cent of respondents said they would object, followed by Argentina, and Trinidad and Tobago , tied at 2 per cent, Europe’s tiny Andorra in third place at 2.5 and in fourth place Canada at 2.9 per cent.

The United States was fifth at 3.8 per cent, followed by Uruguay at 3.9 and New Zealand with 4.1 per cent.
Great Britain stood 12^th. But that didn’t prevent some British headline writers from trumpeting the Britons as champions. Whatever.

The long and short of the Swedish economists’ study? It turns out there is no co-relation between economics and racial tolerance.

However they did discover that there does appear to be one between better off nations and a greater tolerance for homosexuality.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller

Paintings, jewels hit record sales. What austerity?

Jackson Pollock's Number 19, 1948, sold for $58.4 million. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Art and jewelry sales hit record high prices today as a stack of paintings and stones sold for a total of almost $1 billion at auctions around the world.

A contemporary art sale at Christie’s in New York sold $495 million worth of paintings, including Jackson Pollock's "Number 19, 1948," which sold for $58.4 million. Christie’s said in a statement the sales showed “a new era in the art market." Which is another way of saying there are a lot of very rich people out there who can pay a lot of money for some art.

But in recent years art sales records keep breaking. 

The second most expensive painting ever sold was in 2006. Again, it was a Pollock. "No. 5, 1948" sold for $140m. Hollywood magnate David Geffen reportedly sold it to Mexican financier David Martinez although Martinez denied it.   

The third most pricey was Willem de Kooning’s "Woman III" which was sold in November 2006 to billionaire (he would have to be) Steven A. Cohen for $137.5 million. Geffen owned that one, too.

But the Qatari royal family blew everyone out of the water when they purchased Paul Cezanne’s "The Card Players" for $250 million in 2011. It is the highest ever paid for a work of art.

Or maybe diamonds are more your thing?

Across the pond in Geneva, Christie’s held a jewels sale, where a pile of sapphires, pearls and diamonds sold for more than a million dollars each.  Jeweler Harry Winston bought a 101.7 carat, pear-shaped diamond for $26 million. The company renamed the gorgeous stone ‘Winston’s Legacy.’

“A stone of this calibre and rarity is the perfect continuation of Mr. Winston’s legacy as the King of Diamonds,” the company’s CEO Nayla Hayek burbled in a statement. 

All this begs only one question, really.

What austerity? 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour 

Bangladesh and us: outsourcing poverty

Walmart, Las Vegas in 2006. The world's largest retailer was cutting costs to counter a sales slump. It has held out against signing a fire and safety agreement for Bangladesh, saying its own inspections are more efficient. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

After the darkest week in decades for Bangladesh’s workers, glimmers of light are appearing on the horizon. But like all glimmers, they may be an illusion.

Some -- and only some -- of the big brands whose cheap-chic clothes are produced in Bangladesh are ready to sign accords on boosting the appalling safety conditions. And after 1,100 of its underpaid citizens died under tons of rubble in the Dhaka factory collapse, the Bangladesh government is pledging a wage hike.

That wouldn’t be hard, you’d think, with a minimum wage that averages $38 a week.

But think again.

One reason those wages are so abysmally low – and likely not to change very much -- is because wages in the West have also sunk or stagnated while the richest few have burst their metaphorical piggy banks.

That’s created a vicious circle of demand for cheaper goods among the poor and shrinking middle class, increased the pressure from Western-based corporations to keep down costs in their outsourced factories overseas and redoubled efforts of Bangladesh (and other low-waged countries) to stay “competitive” by downloading destitution onto their workers.

“We’re living at a time of year-round deals,” says economist Armine Yalnizyan of the Centre for Economic Policy Alternatives. “There’s a cut-throat level of competition and we’re moving toward lower and lower prices – but somebody is making the sacrifice.

“The flip side of every low price is a low wage.”  

And not merely in the poorest countries. A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – whose 34 members are from advanced and emerging countries -- shows that income inequality  increased more during the slump years preceding 2010 than in all the previous 12 years. And there’s little sign of a turnaround any time soon.

Even where government welfare programs cushion the blow, the OECD said, there is a threat of “greater inequality and poverty in the years ahead” as austerity programs batter social spending at the time of greatest need.

Among the countries with the biggest equality gap is the U.S. – statistically the world’s wealthiest nation. Canada rates a mediocre 22nd out of 34 on the equality scale.

Meanwhile more workers in “wealthy” countries are in temporary and precarious jobs and minimum wages have fallen behind the rising costs of food and shelter.

What does it mean to Dhaka?

“The next generation (in the West) will be paid less,” says Yalnizyan. “There will be less disposable cash. But there will also be a demand for profits. So the way to feed the beast is to squeeze costs.”

Whether the survivors of the factory disaster reap the benefits of the current sympathy surge is an open question. Whether their children will is more in doubt.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to South Asia, winning national and international awards.
 

Boston Marathon runners to get 'do-over' in 2014

Fantastic news for the more than 5,600 Boston Marathon runners stranded on the course when the bombs went off -- the Boston Athletic Association just announced it has cut through its own red tape and will give the runners a chance to finish what they started in 2014.

The BAA was in a tight spot, as we explained in detail earlier this month, frantically looking for ways to expand the limited-load running route to accommodate the stranded, even as an online petition demanding the right to run gathered momentum.

The solution: the tiny non-profit organization now will grant a special invitation to every runner who reached the halfway mark when the 2013 race came to a horrible end.

Ryan Polly, the Vermont-based runner who launched the petition at www.change.org, initially argued that the thousands who left the course in a daze were left with "a mixture of emotions that are difficult to articulate. We need to be able to finish what we started. We need the closure that only crossing the finish line can bring."

But today Polly is overjoyed at the news of a do-over and gushing with gratitude: "I'm so happy to hear that the Boston Athletic Association will allow thousands of runners like myself .. the chance to finish what we started in 2014. We are so appreciate of this opportunity."

Mitch Potter is the Star's Washington Bureau Chief, his third foreign posting after previous assignments to London and Jerusalem. Potter led the Toronto Star’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won a 2006 National Newspaper Award for his reportage. His dispatches include datelines from 33 countries since 2000. Follow him on Twitter: @MPwrites

PHOTO: Ai Weiwei's 'Baby Formula'

A staff member displays the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei's new sculpture installation "Baby Formula" which formed a map of China with cans of milk powder at a exhibition in Hong Kong Thursday. Ai Weiwei's work is inspired by the scandal over melamine-tainted milk powder in China 2008 which was reported to have affected nearly 300,000 children and causing six babies to die from kidney problems.

Due to the food-safety-conscious, Chinese people flock to Hong Kong to buy baby milk formula that cause shortage supply in the city. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

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The real life flappers who would have been at Jay Gatsby's parties

The Great Gatsby film adaptation debuts today at the Cannes Film Festival with hundreds of celebrities. In these bland times few of the blonde, tanned clones on the red carpet would be a match for the 1920s flappers who truly were originals and the forefront of great social, political and cultural change.

Sure they threw off their corsets – for the first time in centuries women could do so – cut their hair and danced the Charleston while drinking champagne. But they also lived through turbulent times including World War I, segregation and the Great Depression.

Here are a few real life flappers who would have been on the dance floor at Jay Gatsby’s wild parties:

Zelda Fitzgerald: F. Scott Fitzgerald called his wife Zelda the first American flapper.  Zelda was a writer and novelist, known for her book "Save Me The Waltz" but eclipsed by her more famous husband. They had a dysfunctional marriage – Zelda was an alcoholic and in last years of her life hospitalized in a mental institution. Her biographer Sally Cline told The Observer: "Her melodramatic life was in real terms the stuff of fiction.”

 American author F Scott Fitzgerald dances with his wife Zelda Fitzgerald and daughter Frances.  (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Josephine Baker: She was the exotic, American-born dancer who found fame and fortune on the Paris stage. Baker cleaned houses for rich white families in St. Louis, Missouri before becoming a chorus girl and dancer, according to her estate’s website. She went to Paris to dance in La Revue Negre which made her an overnight sensation, all long glossy limbs, uninhibited movements and exotic skirts made from feathers or banana skins.

She was of course trading on the European public’s racist perceptions of Africans – she once dryly said “since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be as civilized as possible in daily life."

A poster for a Josephine Baker movie. (Star files)

Tamara de Lempicka: Her Art Deco paintings captured the Jazz Age with all its style and refinement.  The Polish born artist lived at the centre of bohemian Paris life, painting the rich and famous. Her friends included Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Author Judith Mackrell has written that de Lempicka would snort cocaine from a silver teaspoon to help her stay up all night partying or painting.

But these women were no airheads, either. De Lempicka spoke six languages and at the age of 17 helped her lawyer husband escape the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to her official website.  During WWII, Baker worked for the underground French Resistance against the Nazis, then went on to adopt 12 children she called her “rainbow tribe” because they were from all over the world.

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

France's very difficult year. Will it continue?

After years of sluggish growth and lost competitiveness, the French economy has officially slipped into recession. Youth unemployment is at a staggering 25 per cent.  (Tanya Talaga/Toronto Star)

Don't expect French President François Hollande to be eating cake and sipping champagne as he celebrates his first year in power

Hollande, who beat out Nicholas Sarkozy exactly a year ago to become France's second socialist president, has had a very difficult year.

The French unemployment rate is hovering just north of 10 per cent.  French industry is struggling to compete against Germany and much-needed labour reforms are slow. French actor Gerard Depardieu left the country in a snit over a threatened 75 per cent tax rate on those earning over 1 million euros a year. And then there was the expensive ground offensive in Mali. 

Now, there is news that the 2-trillion euro French economy -- the second largest in the eurozone of nations -- has slipped into a recession after two quarters of negative growth. The gross domestic product contracted 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2013.

Hollande got a bit of public grief from European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, who Wednesday demanded France speed up reforms in exchange for another two years of forgiveness to bring the country's budget deficit down. Earlier this year, the French government informed the EU the country could not reduce the budget deficit down to 3 per cent as planned.

Reuters reports that at a joint news conference between the two leaders in Brussels Wednesday, Barroso said France must shrink the "the exorbitant weight of debt" on its economy.

"The two years (grace period), if approved, notably by EU member states, should be used to speed up structural reforms on which future growth depends," Barroso told reporters.

Hollande replied the grace period would be used to push forward reforms already in place.

France’s economic issues may threaten the stability of the euro if it does not turn things around.

Change has not been easy for Hollande to broker. The French unions supported Hollande’s election but it is those same unions that now must agree to change in order to make the economy more competitive. France has also promised to cut 60 billion euros from the budget by 2017.

Tanya Talaga is the Star's global economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga