Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, January 13, 2015.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: A Night In Tunisia by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Obama to call for new methane regulation in State of the Union address
By Suzanne Goldenberg
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Barack Obama will unveil a new plan to cut methane from America’s booming oil and gas industry ahead of the State of the Union address, in an attempt to cement his climate legacy during his remaining two years in the White House.
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But the clock is ticking. Any new EPA regulations would have to be finalised by the end of 2016 – and Republicans in Congress and industry lobby groups are already mobilising to oppose the standards.
Methane accounts for about 9% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. The biggest share of this by far comes from the oil and gas industry, which has exploded over the last decade.
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Unlike the power plant rules, which left industry a fair amount of latitude in cutting emissions, the methane standards are believed to be tightly focused on plugging leaks.
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“If you take steps to reduce volatile organic compounds, those steps would automatically have the secondary benefit of reducing methane emissions,” said Sandra Snyder, an environmental attorney at the Bracewell Giuliani law firm.
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Modern Day Mengeles
By Alessandra Hirsch
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The role of psychologists and physicians in the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture program is one of the most concerning and disturbing aspects of the 2014 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The New York Times recently published a strong editorial demanding that those health care professionals lose their licenses and be prosecuted. In a comprehensive review and call to action, Physicians for Human Rights detailed each instance of abuse by health care professionals, noting that “the health professionals who participated in the CIA torture program violated core ethical principles common to the healing professions.”
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The CIA’s actions share four main qualities with those of the Nazi doctors: 1) they experimented on their detainees, 2) they perverted medical procedures, turning them into rape and torture, 3) they induced diseases in their detainees, and 4) they provided necessary medical care in order to enable future torture. These parallels, described in detail below, show that, if what the Nazi doctors did qualifies as torture, so too, do the actions of the health care professionals working for the CIA.
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In 2005, health care professionals used a nasogastric tube and intravenous feeding to provide nutrients to detainees on hunger strikes. “CIA records indicate that Majid Khan cooperated with the feedings and was permitted to infuse the fluids and nutrients himself. After approximately three weeks, the CIA developed a more aggressive treatment regimen ‘without unnecessary conversation.’ Majid Khan was then subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration,” stated the Senate report. There is no indication that this change was based on Khan’s actions. This was obviously not a necessary medical procedure, but rather a demeaning, painful way of penetrating Majid Khan without his consent. Those officers were committing rape and torture.
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Other aspects of the psychologists’ involvement at the CIA share qualities with the Nazis. Both groups were relatively inexperienced. Mitchell and Jessen, both alumni of the Air Force SERE school, had no prior experience in waterboarding, for which they became administrators and experts. Nazi doctor Horst D. was recruited to the Party largely because of “his military experience and medical inexperience,” states Nazi Doctors. There were other parallels. According to Physicians for Human Rights, the psychologists managed to obtain exclusive rights to certain torture techniques, including waterboarding, which they evaluated and administered. This exclusive status was reserved for Nazi medical personnel as well: they were the only ones allowed to handle the killing gas and determine who was worthy of it.
Perhaps the most telling part of the torture summary is this notation by one medical officer: “Things are slowly evolving form [sic] [Office of Medical Services] being viewed as the institutional conscience and the limiting factor to the ones who are dedicated to maximizing the benefit in a safe manner and keeping everyone’s butt out of trouble.”
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World Bank cuts global growth forecast
By (BBC)
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The World Bank has cut its global growth forecast, warning the US alone cannot drive an economic recovery.
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"The lower oil price, which is expected to persist through 2015, is lowering inflation worldwide and is likely to delay interest rate hikes in rich countries," said Mr Basu.
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However, the Bank warned that lower oil prices would hurt growth in countries which export oil, such as Russia, weighing on its global growth predicitions.
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In contrast, it said economic activity in the US and the UK was "gathering momentum" as interest rates remain low.
But it said the lingering "legacies of the financial crisis' meant the recovery had been "sputtering" in the eurozone and Japan.
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AfriLeaks website to expose abuses in Africa
By (BBC)
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A whistle-blowing website which aims to expose politicians and businessmen who abuse power in Africa has been launched by media and campaign groups.
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Afrileaks, made up of 19 media outlets and activist groups, says it is committed to "speaking truth to power".
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The Mail & Guardian says AfriLeaks is modelled along the lines of Europe's GlobaLeaks with the aim of making whistle-blowing safer.
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Correspondents say newspapers in multi-party democracies in Africa have often exposed corruption and human rights abuses.
The challenge AfriLeaks faces is to get whistle-blowers in repressive states like Eritrea and Sudan, where control over the internet is tight, they say.
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International |
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EU-US TTIP trade talks hit investor protection snag
By Laurence Peter
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EU-US talks aimed at clinching a comprehensive free trade deal have run up against "huge scepticism" in Europe, the European Commission says.
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But the Commission acknowledges public concern about court cases in which powerful companies have sued governments over public policy.
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But ISDS, involving independent arbitration in commercial disputes, has not yet been agreed by the European Parliament, which will have to approve any final text. And now the Commission says a decision on ISDS will have to wait until the final phase of the TTIP talks.
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The Commission says it received nearly 150,000 public responses - an "unprecedented" number for an EU consultation. But many were identical responses submitted by pressure groups (NGOs). A UK campaign group, 38 Degrees, submitted 50,000 responses.
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Russia: Shovel snow yourselves, says city politician
By (BBC)
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A Russian politician has irked residents in St Petersburg by saying people should clear snow from the city's streets themselves, it's reported.
Deputy Governor Igor Albin made the comment after city authorities were criticised for not keeping the roads clear following heavy snow, the Meduza news website reports. One complaint came from magazine editor Pavel Smolyak, who says in a Facebook post that he slipped and almost fell over because the road hadn't been cleared. But there isn't much sympathy from Mr Albin, a member of the city's development and maintenance committees, who describes dependence on government services as "the disease of modern Russian society". People expect help to "do their dishes, maintain the yard, raise their children, protect them from foreign aggressors, and put things in order in their country and their home", he says. Mr Albin suggests that instead of watching television, people should grab a shovel and get digging, adding that physical activity is "good for one's health and helps to order one's thoughts".
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Scores killed as floods hit Malawi and Mozambique
By (BBC)
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At least 48 people have been killed and around 23,000 forced from their homes by heavy flooding in Malawi, the country's leader said on Tuesday.
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Homes and crops in Malawi were destroyed by the rising torrents while roads and railways have also been cut off.
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"People have fled into schools and churches on higher ground, others are in the open because there is not enough space,'' said Grey Mkwanda, a district planning officer, speaking to the Associated Press news agency.
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The rising waters have been caused by late summer storms in the region
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Haiti parliament dissolved
By (Al Jazeera)
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The Haitian parliament has been dissolved after the failure of last-ditch negotiations for a deal to extend the terms of its members to avert a political crisis in the Caribbean country.
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For weeks, opponents to Martelly have mounted street protests in the capital accusing the president and his family of
corruption. The demonstrations took a more aggressive turn in recent days, with some protesters calling for a civil war.
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"It's not easy because the crisis of confidence is based on a tradition of people not keeping to their word."
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The political accord had been favorably received by Haiti's largest foreign donors, particularly the United States and the UN, which have expressed concern that the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is again on the brink of political chaos.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Years After Tobacco Deals Sold, SEC Says Rating Agencies Still Conflicted
By Cezary Podkul
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Documents showed that the bankers brazenly played one firm against another to relax rating criteria and grade risker, longer-term tobacco bonds. These actions mostly pre-dated the 2008 financial crisis, in which the raters earned widespread criticism for giving high marks to bum mortgage securities packaged by Wall Street.
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In 2013, the Justice Department sued S&P for "falsely" representing that "its ratings were objective" when it rated subprime mortgage debts, seeking $5 billion in damages. S&P has said in defense that its ratings simply reflected its "current best judgments" about the debts. The firm may be nearing a $1 billion settlement of the mortgage ratings lawsuit, The New York Times reported on Monday.
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Though the bonds are backed by money states and other governments get under the 1998 tobacco settlement, the amount of the annual payments is linked to cigarette sales, which have fallen faster than expected. That's forced some states and counties to engineer bailouts.
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Until 2010, Harrington worked in the Moody's division that rated complex securities at the heart of the financial crisis. He said he frequently saw managers, analysts and their teams make changes to rating criteria on the fly to satisfy business concerns, such as winning deals and market share.
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Rep. André Carson To Become First Muslim On House Committee On Intelligence
By Jasmine Garsd
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Rep. André Carson of Indiana's 7th district soon will be the first Muslim lawmaker to serve on the House intelligence committee, according to Politico.
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Carson was raised Baptist but converted to Islam as a teenager. He has said he first was attracted by Muslims' "pushing back on crime" in his neighborhood in Indianapolis.
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Carson is one of only two Muslims serving in Congress. The other is Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who became the first Muslim elected to Congress in 2006. Carson won his seat — previously held for a decade by his grandmother Julia Carson — in early 2008. During that campaign the Indianapolis Star criticized his Republican opponent, Marvin Scott, as attacking Carson's Muslim religion.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
By the age of 25 (1944), Pittsburgh-native Art Blakey had already completed stints with Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson and was performing nightly alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Sonny Stitt and/or Sarah Vaughan during his tenure with Billy Eckstine's Orchestra. Gigs with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker followed in the late 1940s, and as the 1950s emerged, Blakey had solidified his reputation as a leading bop drummer.
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The group became a "rite of passage" for up-and-coming musicians - a school that provided a first-hand, first-rate education that rivaled that of any university. All the while, Blakey and his sidemen played a major role in the origins, development, and sustenance of the hard-bop movement. And let us not forget about Blakey's drumming - his consistent hi-hat foot, deep, strong cymbal grooves, thunderous tom fills, dynamic press rolls on the snare drum, and commitment to incorporating African cross-rhythms into his drumming brought a unique, instantly recognizable drumming style to his legendary group.
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Is there a more intense, energetic single track anywhere out there? The Messengers absolutely tear through the head of <"A Night In Tunisia">, replete with Blakey's blistering fills throughout the "pre-sax-break" vamp. . . The presence of Latin percussion underneath what would normally be Blakey's unaccompanied drum solo frees him to experiment with melodic rhythms that make this one of his finest and most unique solos. . .
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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We have to build much smarter cities if we want to fight climate change
By John Light
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If we can develop better cities, we can make a big dent in future greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the gist of a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The 274 cities researchers looked at are going to need more energy as they grow — a lot more, especially if we continue on our current track. The cities’ energy needs are poised to triple between 2005 and 2050 — but, with forward-thinking urban and transportation planning, we could limit those energy needs so they’ll only double.
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Improving urban and transportation planning in countries where the very concepts are often foreign would, experts agreed, be challenging. It’s common in developing countries for rickety homes and businesses to be built on underused land without obtaining permits or permission, resulting in sprawl that’s underserviced by sewer lines, roads and other infrastructure.
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And even if high gas prices return, the study’s authors suggest there’s little remedy for the most sprawling cities, many of which are here in America, where cars are more or less a necessity. The hope is that cities in developing countries will avoid making the same mistakes.
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There's a lot more methane in LA's atmosphere than we thought
By Xeni Jardin
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Los Angeles' annual emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas, are 18 to 61 percent higher than common estimates. That is the most significant finding from a NASA study that used two years of observations from a mountaintop instrument. The study is the first to demonstrate the feasibility of long-term mapping of greenhouse gases across an urban area from an elevated, but earthbound, site.
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Although the study was not specifically designed to find out where the methane is coming from, "certain areas seem to be more significant emitters than others," Sander said. "The ones we have been able to identify are -- perhaps coincidentally, but perhaps not -- located near large landfills. That is consistent with our understanding that landfills have the potential to be methane sources under certain conditions." The highest concentrations were recorded at ground sites in eastern Los Angeles County and near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
The mountaintop instrument is part of the pilot Megacities Carbon Project to monitor emissions from urban areas with populations of more than 10 million. Cities are the source of about 70 percent of the world's carbon emissions, and Earth's 22 megacities are responsible for about half of that 70 percent. Sander noted that a setup like CLARS would work equally well in other megacities that are overlooked by mountains, such as Rio de Janeiro, Seoul and Mexico City.
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Science and Health |
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Bilingualism changes children's beliefs
By (ScienceDaily)
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The study, forthcoming in Developmental Science, suggests that bilingualism in the preschool years can alter children's beliefs about the world around them. Contrary to their unilingual peers, many kids who have been exposed to a second language after age three believe that an individual's traits arise from experience.
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"Both monolinguals and second language learners showed some errors in their thinking, but each group made different kinds of mistakes. Monolinguals were more likely to think that everything is innate, while bilinguals were more likely to think that everything is learned," says Byers-Heinlein.
"Children's systematic errors are really interesting to psychologists, because they help us understand the process of development. Our results provide a striking demonstration that everyday experience in one domain -- language learning -- can alter children's beliefs about a wide range of domains, reducing children's essentialist biases."
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Universal flu vaccine in development, could be ready soon
By Brooks Hays
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Researchers at Mount Sinai Health System say a universal flu vaccine is currently in the works. While the vaccine has yet to prove it can protect humans, researchers say the science is sound and the vaccine may soon be a reality.
. . . This year's flu vaccine turned out to be only 33 percent effective, and mostly ill-equipped to protect people from this season's dominant strain, H3. The strain has already proven especially aggressive, worrying doctors that this year's flu season could be deadlier than usual. Several children in the Midwest have already succumbed to the influenza strain.
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"So far no one has been able to develop a vaccine that works against every type of flu," Dr. Richard Besser, the chief health and medical editor for ABC, told his employer. "I'd urge caution until scientists present data showing they've really been able to achieve this."
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Your Smartphone Is Turning You Into an Ugly Jowl-Monster
By Mark Shrayber
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According to The Telegraph, the condition dubbed "tech-neck" affects mostly people between the ages of 18-39 and especially those who peer down at their phones or tabs "at least 150 times a day". That sounds like a lot, but how many times do you check your phone for that one email you've been waiting all day for (and then it just turns out to be spam)? If I'm being dishonest, I would put my phone-checking down at like 50 times a day, but it's usually much, much more than that. And with more than one device per person, doctors are now worrying about the "Y zone" which makes up your neck, lower face and upper chest area.
Dr Christopher Rowland Payne, Consultant Dermatologist at The London Clinic, said: "The problem of wrinkles and sagging of the jowls and neck used to begin in late middle age but, in the last 10 years, because of 'tech-neck', it has become a problem for a generation of younger women."
A constant downward gaze also contributes to further lines and creases around the chin and neck area, according to skin experts.
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Technology |
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Glass for battery electrodes
By (ScienceDaily)
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For some time now, energy experts have been adamant that we will need much more clean energy in the future if we are to replace fossil fuel sources and reduce CO2 emissions. For example, electric cars will need to replace the petrol-powered cars driving on our roads. Yet in order for electric cars to travel greater distances or mobile phones to stay charged for longer, we will need better batteries and more of them. In the transition to renewable energy sources, accumulators also play a key role in storing excess power from wind turbines or solar power plants and compensating for fluctuations in the energy supply.
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To produce the cathode material, Afyon and his colleagues blended powdered vanadium pentoxide with borate compounds. "Borate is a glass former; that's why the borate compounds were used, and the resulting glass compound is a new kind of material, neither V2O5 nor LiBO2 at the end," the researcher says. The materials scientists melted the powder at 900°C and cooled the melt as quickly as possible to form glass. The resulting paper-thin sheets were then crushed into a powder before use, as this increases their surface area and creates pore space. "One major advantage of vanadate-borate glass is that it is simple and inexpensive to manufacture," states Afyon. This is expected to increase the chance of finding an industrial application.
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One battery with an RGO-coated vanadate-borate glass electrode exhibited an energy density of around 1000 watt-hours per kilogram. It achieved a discharge capacity that far exceeded 300 mAh/g. Initially, this figure even reached 400 mAh/g, but dropped over the course of the charge/discharge cycles.
"This would be enough energy to power a mobile phone between 1.5 and two times longer than today's lithium-ion batteries," Afyon estimates. This may also increase the range of electric cars by one and a half times the standard amount. These figures are still theoretical.
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Obama unveils cybersecurity proposals: 'Cyber threats are urgent and growing danger'
By Dan Roberts
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Just one day after the Pentagon’s own Twitter account was compromised and Obama pushed a 30-day window for consumer security breaches, his administration was hoping the proposed legislation would toughen the response of the private sector by allowing companies to share information with government agencies including the NSA, with which the White House admitted there were “overlapping issues”.
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The proposed new cybersecurity bill includes separate protections for consumers and children announced on Monday, which also require companies to notify customers of data breaches and which Obama announced at approximately the same time as the Pentagon Twitter episode.
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Speaking about the proposals at an event at the Department of Homeland Security, Obama conceded that the American people had an interest in making sure the government was not abusing information it got from the private sector and insisted the information sharing rules would come with checks and balances to protect privacy.
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Privacy campaigners were somewhat comforted by administration assurances that information shared with government agencies would be restricted to non-personal data but said it should not be left up to the agencies to decide how this was defined.
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Cultural |
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Letter From an Army Ranger: Here's Why You Should Think Twice About Joining the Military
By Rory Fanning
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Dear Aspiring Ranger,
You've probably just graduated from high school and you've undoubtedly already signed an Option 40 contract guaranteeing you a shot at the Ranger indoctrination program (R.I.P.). If you make it through R.I.P. you'll surely be sent off to fight in the Global War on Terror. You'll be part of what I often heard called "the tip of the spear."
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But, to be blunt, as George W. Bush said early on (and then never repeated), the war on terror was indeed imagined in the highest of places as a "crusade." When I was in the Rangers, that was a given. The formula was simple enough: al-Qaeda and the Taliban represented all of Islam, which was our enemy. Now, in that group-blame game, ISIS, with its mini-terror state in Iraq and Syria, has taken over the role. Be clear again that nearly all Muslims reject its tactics. Even Sunnis in the region where ISIS is operating are increasingly rejecting the group. And it is those Sunnis who may indeed take down ISIS when the time is right.
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The number of non-combatants killed since 9/11 across the Greater Middle East in our ongoing war has been breathtaking and horrifying. Be prepared, when you fight, to take out more civilians than actual gun-toting or bomb-wielding "militants." At the least, an estimated 174,000 civilians died violent deaths as a result of US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan between 2001 and April 2014. In Iraq, over 70% of those who died are estimated to have been civilians. So get ready to contend with needless deaths and think about all those who have lost friends and family members in these wars, and themselves are now scarred for life. A lot of people who once would never have thought about fighting any type of war or attacking Americans now entertain the idea. In other words, you will be perpetuating war, handing it off to the future.
Finally, there's freedom and democracy to unpack, if we're really going to empty that duffel bag: Here's an interesting fact that you might consider, if spreading freedom and democracy around the world was on your mind. Though records are incomplete on the subject, the police have killed something like 5,000 people in this country since 9/11—more, in other words, than the number of American soldiers killed by "insurgents" in the same period. In those same years, outfits like the Rangers and the rest of the US military have killed countless numbers of people worldwide, targeting the poorest people on the planet. And are there fewer terrorists around? Does all this really make a lot of sense to you?
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I'm writing to you especially because I just want you to know that it's not too late to change your mind. I did. I became a war resister after my second deployment in Afghanistan for all the reasons I mention above. I finally unpacked, so to speak. Leaving the military was one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences of my life. My own goal is to take what I learned in the military and bring it to high school and college students as a kind of counter-recruiter. There's so much work to be done, given the 10,000 military recruiters in the US working with an almost $700 million advertising budget. After all, kids do need to hear both sides.
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On gay rights, Vietnam is now more progressive than much of the US
By Patrick Winn
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Vietnam’s communist party abolished a ban on same-sex marriage last week. Unlike states such as Texas — where vindictive politicians want to stop paying any official who certifies a gay wedding — Vietnam’s political class has responded with a collective shrug.
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In Aceh, the most orthodox corner of Muslim-majority Indonesia, gay sex is punishable by 100 lashes by a man in dark robes. The Philippines, a bastion of Catholicism and a former US colony, is mired in an America-style debate over same-sex marriage.
But Vietnam is an atheist state with few religious hang-ups. Gays in Vietnam are more likely to fear condemnation from mom, not God, according to Hoang Van Chuyen, operator of the gay-friendly service Rainbow Tourism Vietnam.
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Fully legalized gay marriage, with all of the benefits enjoyed by straight couples, may be in store for Vietnam in the near future. During official deliberations on same-sex marriage, Huy says, Vietnam’s officials were prepared to offer full benefits to gay couples.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |