A man who stayed a virgin until the age 34 has become a father of 82 in the space of just nine years and he has another ten children on the way.

You might think that the phone calls you make or the emails you send to your friends are private. Think again please….

In fact, someone else is listening in all the time. Organizations, such as the American National

Security Agency (NSA) with the headquarters in Maryland, continually eavesdrop on phone calls and emails. The NSA is sometimes jokingly called “No Such Agency” because its existence was for ages denied.

Using a program called Echelon; this eavesdropping agency monitors all forms of electronic communications. The main target is probably to listen for terrorists and terrorist sleeper cell networks, but no one for sure knows. Here’s how they do it.

Email exchanges

When you send an email, the electronic signal carrying the email goes to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). From there it is sent via an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) to your friend’s ISP, and then on to your friend. To intercept your email without you knowing, the eavesdropper simply taps into the IXP. The NSA’s computers also continually search through every website on the internet in order to locate anything suspicious.

Telephone cables

The cables that carried phone calls under the sea used to be made of copper wires.

Eavesdroppers could listen in by sending divers down to wrap electric coils around the wire. This enabled listeners to hear the phone signals which “leaked” out from the copper. Today the cables are fiber optics, which are completely un-tappable... or are they?

Mobile signals

When you call someone on your cell phone, microwave signals travel through the air to an antenna, from where they are relayed through other antennae until they reach the cell of the person you are calling. All an eavesdropper has to do is intercept the microwave signal as it travels between antennae.

Tapping telephones

It is illegal to tap telephone calls in many countries, but eavesdroppers tap them anyway by connecting to major telephone exchanges. With the Echelon system, the security services are not listening in on particular people; they are listening to all calls, them homing in on people when they hear something suspicious.

Satellites

Communications satellites allow telephone calls and television broadcasts to be bounced around the world almost instantly. But these communications can be intercepted from ground stations, which are often set up right next to the dishes that are sending the signals. Sometimes, the ground stations have intriguing codenames, such as the American NSA’s “Moonpenny,” which is located at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England, and intercepts all telecommunications between the UK and Europe.

Voice recognition

There are too many telephone calls for spies to listen to every call, so computers are used to scan millions every second. Some work by “voice recognition,” in which the computer analyzes voices on the phone to detect a particular “wanted” voice.

Computers can be programmed to scan emails and look for suspicious words. In the

1990s, the Echelon program searched for the words “Greenpeace” and “Amnesty International.” It caused a scandal.

Tracing

Computers are used to trace the phone calls and emails of anybody considered to be suspicious. The computers also look for any “links” with other people who have been in touch with the suspect.

Source: DO NOT OPEN: An encyclopedia of the world’s best known secrets.

The Swiss government has extended its financial sanctions against Iran by freezing the assets of 11 more companies and people but decided not to take any action against Tehran's central bank, officials said Wednesday.

Dick Clark, the creator of "American Bandstand" and "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," died Wednesday morning.

He was 82.

Clark suffered a massive heart attack after entering St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on Tuesday night for an outpatient procedure, his family said in a statement.

Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

Clark had suffered a stroke in 2004, which forced him to significantly curtail his hosting of "New Years' Rockin' Eve," a show he created in 1972.

Long dubbed "the world's oldest teenager" because of his boyish appearance, Clark bridged the rebellious new music scene and traditional show business, and equally comfortable whether chatting about music with Sam Cooke or bantering with Ed McMahon about TV bloopers.

 He long championed black singers by playing the original R&B versions of popular songs, rather than the pop cover.

Ryan Seacrest, who took over main hosting duties on the New Year's countdown show from Clark after years of working beside the legend, said in a statement Wednesday that he was "deeply saddened."

"I idolized him from the start, and I was graced early on in my career with his generous advice and counsel," Seacrest said. "He was a remarkable host and businessman and left a rich legacy to television audiences around the world. We will all miss him."

Clark thrived as the founder of Dick Clark Productions, supplying movies, game and music shows, beauty contests and more to TV. Among his credits are "The $25,000 Pyramid," "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes" and the American Music Awards.

But it was "American Bandstand" for which Clark was best known. The show was one of network TV's longest-running series, airing as part of ABC's daytime lineup from 1957 to 1987. Over the years, it introduced stars ranging from Buddy Holly to Michael Jackson to Madonna.

Clark joined "Bandstand" in 1956 after Bob Horn, who'd been the host since its 1952 debut, was fired. Under Clark's guidance, it went from a local Philadelphia show to a national phenomenon.

"I played records, the kids danced, and America watched," was how Clark once described the series' simplicity. In his 1958 hit "Sweet Little Sixteen," Chuck Berry sang that "they'll be rocking on Bandstand, Philadelphia, P-A."

At just 22 years, Abdu Ssekalala’s appearance is that of an ordinary student, but looks can be deceptive.

The young man, is no ordinary student, while his colleagues await to celebrate sitting their last exam, he is already thinking about his next big challenge, how to improve his first innovation, a computer application. While others worry about where to find a job and earn their first salary, Sekalala is keenly watching the number of downloads of his application in one column while he calculates the financial return the hits make in the other.

Sekalala is a student of at Makerere University’s School of Computing and Informatics Technology (CIT) who has so far developed at least nine internationally recognized mobile phone applications that are not only building his career as an innovator but minting millions for him.

Sekalala got his break when Nokia, an international mobile phone company organized a special training session to help software developers hone their skills. The training in April and May last year presented a major break for the young man, whose application has crossed quarter a million hits so far.
While Sekalala’s success has excited his colleagues and trainers at Makerere, the challenge is where he will manage to control the excitement and keep focused. Sekalala says this is exactly what he is gunning for.
Software development has lately become an a global hit to make dollar millionaires and billionaires with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg founder of the social networking site Facebook, which he founded with colleagues while a student at Havard in 2004. Mr Zuckerberg is only 27 and is worth US$17bn (one and a half times bigger than the entire Ugandan budget for last year).

Finding success
Sekalala’s most successful application is the Wordbook which has already gone commercial and is making for him a Euro per down load or Shs3,200. Wordbook is a dictionary application with word of the day capability fully packed with definitions, examples and a selection of related words.

Speaking to Jobs and Career, Sekalala said his current success was guided by a clear focus and paying attention and making the best of the training opportunity when it presented itself.

“I paid attention throughout the sessions because I didn’t want to miss any information that I would [later] need. When we were asked to develop our own, I put my best and luckily my applications have been adopted by Nokia,” Ssekalala told Jobs and Career.

The applications are available on the Nokia Ovi Store with one of them, the Uganda Theme is a free download which has attracted over 300, 000 downloads making it the third most downloaded application.

The Nokia Ovi Store, is the firm’s application store. The greatest number of the downloads was registered in the Asian countries of India and Thailand.

Advice to young people
There is nothing impossible once you are determined to achieve your goals. He encourages young people to utilize all chances available while still in school.

The College’s training was aimed at improving the student’s mobile application development techniques to enable the public use Ugandan products world over and improve the visibility of the local software developers in the country.

His other applications
101 Romantic SMS, WhirlSports, nLightFlashlight and Tutu translate are free but have adverts provided by an Indian-based firm Vserv. Ssekalala is paid for the different brands that advertise through his applications.

He has already achieved his one million target downloads for his mobile applications and is set to earn $1million (about Shs2.5billion) before he turns 23.

“I make at least $100 (Shs250,000) a day from one application. I don’t have to look for a job after I finish school. In fact I make money while am seated in class learning and make more money than my lecturers,” Ssekalala boasted.
Michael Niyitegeka, a computer and information technology lecturer at the university said it is one of the university’s strategy to partner with government and the private sector to familiarize the students with employers so that they get to know what is needed before they are there.

Ssekalala already owns two companies; Gogetta which employs eight people and Foo Technology with seven employees. The companies focus on mobile and website development.

“Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to do something with computers and my biggest motivation has always been a desire to innovate and leave a mark that says I was once here,” he said.

The second leg of the Miss Uganda 2012 regional tours took place over the weekend at Diana gardens in Gulu, with Gulu University presenting the highest number of contestants.

The northern region search proved to be more successful than the more anticipated trip to Western Uganda the weekend before. Sixteen contestants turned up for the pageant, out of which seven were selected and finally the top three, with Serah Rachael, 21, a Public Administration student at Gulu University walking away with the regional crown.

Lilly Ajok, a senior six vacationer and Susan Namirimu, 21, a student in Gulu University were the first and second runner-up respectively.  According to the organisers, seven contestants from northern Uganda will take part in the top 20 selection, and that is more than the three girls that were found in Mbarara the previous weekend.

“The girls in Gulu fitted the physical profile of world-class models and had well-thought-out answers to the judges’ questions, making them very strong competitors on the whole,” said Brenda Nanyonjo, Miss Uganda chief.

Grace Nakimera and a host of local artistes from Gulu spiced up the event with performances. The third leg of the regional tours takes place this weekend in Jinja at Crested Crane hotel and it is expected to be highly competitive as far as quality of the contestants is concerned.