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FBI Arrests Third American In A Week For Providing Support To Terror Group ISIS

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For the third time in under a week, the U.S. justice department has arrested an American for supporting the terrorist group ISIS, this time In North Carolina. Justin Nojan Sullivan was charged on Friday with a plot involving violence in support of an Islamic extremist group. His plans involved the purchase of a semiautomatic rifle, which he would have used to kill Americans.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina said the 19-year-old from Morganton, North Carolina, was arrested Friday and appeared in Charlotte’s federal court at noon. He is charged with trying to distribute materials support the Islamic State, and two counts of weapons charges.

Sullivan said he was a Muslim convert. He was pursued by the FBI when his father called the local authorities to report that his son was behaving erratically, destroying Buddhist objects in their home, and apparently inspired by Islamic-State ideals. The family reportedly feared for their lives.

According to the complaint, Sullivan also attempted to conspire with an undercover FBI agent in order to buy the rifle at a gun show. He is reported to have said, “the war is here.” He also asked the agent to send him a homemade silencer so he could perform, “minor assassinations before the big attack for training,” and then make and send a video to the Islamic State. Prosecutors said he received the silencer in the mail prior to being arrested.

This is one occurrence among many; several young men have been apprehended in the U.S. recently, all supporting the Islamic State, and planning single attacks.

Sullivan’s arrest follows those of two Boston men, who pleaded not guilty to planning a beheading of police officers, and yet another man was apprehended in Ohio for trying to distribute materials supporting the Islamic State.

Federal agents say they are investigating similar issues all over the U.S. and that these investigations are regular and ongoing. The agency is specifically targeting those using social media or other online resources to provide aid, whether weapons or financing or any other form of support.

The FBI has confirmed that many more arrests are imminent.

World Takes Note As Fully One Third of Europe’s Electric Energy is Now Renewable

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The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) reports that fully one-third of last year’s electricity in Europe came from renewable energy. At 24% four years prior, this means fewer fossil fuels are being used. Susanne Nies, Corporate Affairs Manager at ENTSO-E, calls it a “revolution.”

ENTSO-E recently released their annual review,Electricity in Europe 2014, showing the growth in renewable energy taking place in electricity production. They claim a total of 33% of renewable energy, with 14.4% comprised of wind, solar power, and other sources, and 18.5% hydropower. Hydropower was just 15.3%, and others 9.3% in 2011. Fossil fuel has decreased from 48.6% to 40.5% in 2011 to 2014.

“The EU has a target of 27% renewable energy in 2030, which translates into 46% renewable electricity. We should have no problem reaching that target. It’s a revolution that we’re seeing,” said Nies.

The estimates reveal an increase in electricity imports and exports for EU countries. Since 2010, these exchanges have increased 16%, and France and Germany had the largest ‘negative’ exchanges, while Italy, the UK, and Belgium had more electricity coming in than going out.

She claims the change could reach 80% if the system changes to suit their needs: “The electricity system needs to change. The big issue is variability. We need more storage, more demand response, more e-mobility, data management, more cooperation between DSO’s (distribution system operators) and TSO’s (transmission system operators). In addition, we need market signals to attract investment. This is our main worry now.”

That need for electricity storage may bode well for American company Tesla which, in addition to making electric cars, is making massive investments in battery technology, which we’ve profiled previously here. Such large-scale battery storage systems will be used in wind and solar installations to reduce just the type of variability EU renewables generators are experiencing.

ENTSO-E will release its vision on June 24th with a ‘Vision Package,’ and discuss the future of renewable energy. They anticipate a rise in consumption. Nies said, “Experts expect that annual electricity consumption of the average 4-person household will increase from 3,500 kWh now to 5,000 kWh. We believe this process has already started.”

Netherlands To Air Prophet Mohammed Cartoons On National TV

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In the latest sign the enlightened world is refusing to compromise hard-won values for religious sensitivities, Dutch far-right leader, Geert Wilders, says Dutch TV will broadcast controversial cartoons involving the Prophet Muhammad. The cartoons were meant to be aired on Saturday.

According to Wilders, a “misunderstanding” was why they were not aired as scheduled. The cartoons were released at a US event last month, at which Wilders was a speaker, and which underwent an attack by two men who were eventually shot fatally by security.

Wilders first accused the TV station of purposefully cancelling his segment, but retracted his accusation and claimed it was a misunderstanding, tweeting, “I have just spoken to NPO boss Hagoort. It seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

Parliament would not allow the cartoons on its premises. They were meant to be an important part of Wilders’ presentation at the Texas event, and political party broadcasts are permitted to include almost anything. A contest at that same conference offered a $10,000 (£6,300) reward for a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

According to Anna Holligan of BBC, Wilders has been on a crusade against Islam. Pictures of Muhammad are considered offensive to Muslims, and Wilders has expressed his dislike of the religion, and wanted the Koran banned in the Netherlands.
The TV slot, intended for political parties and their views, instead showed a feature on migrants.

Wilders, angry about the cancellation, distributed the cartoons on social media. They include a bearded man in disguise, including one in which he wears robes and overlooks a bloodied map of the world. Yet another features him with a beard full of snakes.

The broadcast’s timing appears purposeful, as it occurs during Ramadan, a holy month for Islam. Dutch embassies are on alert with the knowledge that Wilders plans to exhibit the cartoons. Protests and violence following similar actions, such as the Charlie Hebdo incident, and the death of a film director during a free speech rally in Copenhagen, suggest Wilders’ actions could have serious, violent consequences.

Yet increasingly many groups, from France to Texas to the Netherlands, are willing to take this chance to defend civil and political liberties that took generations to win. Many radical Islamists are fundamentally opposed to basic human rights such as freedom of speech, religious tolerance, secularism and women’s equality, a stance that is putting them in direct confrontation with various groups willing to defend their rights and not willing to back down – at all costs.

EU Latest To Find Fracking Should Be Banned For Causing Health, Environmental Problems

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A new study has found that fracking poses “significant” risks to people’s health and the environment and that the practice should be banned in the EU until reforms are made. It also warned that the problems will worsen if the recently-formed Conservative government proceeds with shale gas fracking.

The results mirror those found by the U.S. EPA just last month.

The CHEM Trust, a British charity that investigates issues such as these, suggests there are problems in the UK regulations, which will only worsen with budget cuts.
The report also discusses the potential risks involved with the chemicals which the fracking companies utilizes to open the rocks. It claims there are significant chances of air, water (both ground and surface), and wildlife.

These toxic chemicals are said to cause various cancers and heart disease, according to the report. It cites examples of these materials, “associated with leukemia in humans,” and “toxic to sperm production in males”.

This week, the Lancashire county council will vote on plans to implement the first commercial fracking sites in the area. The new report on fracking will be released tomorrow, and the CHEM Trust said it will send the report to Lancashire councillors before the official vote.

New York was the first U.S. state to stop fracking over health concerns, despite the state’s significant access to shale gas. Health commissioner Howard Zucker agreed with the health risks, and governor Andrew Cuomo compared them to secondhand smoke.

The CHEM Trust report encourages many steps to protect British water, wildlife, and health. They ask to stop fracking near drinking water, more steady research to keep track of environmental effects, and continued monitoring once fracking has ceased. These include no fracking operations near drinking water aquifers, the undertaking of environmental impact assessments for all fracking sites, and effective monitoring even after fracking operations have stopped.

“We take the environmental risks associated with oil and gas exploration and production very seriously,” said an Environment Agency spokesperson, “including hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, and are committed to ensuring that people and the environment are protected.”

Veterans Left Hanging As Funding For VA Hospitals Falls Short Of Needs

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Long waiting lists at veterans hospitals have been an issue for some time, and now the numbers have grown 50 percent. The Department of Veterans Affairs is nearly $3 billion short, making it likely they will continue to fail veterans in terms of care.

Hiring cessations, rationing treatments, and even excluding certain patients (such as those who are terminally ill) are just some of the methods the department is considering in order to address funding. The debate is ongoing and increasingly negative.

The agency wants to petition Congress for program funding, but some Republicans object to doing so because that means veterans on waiting lists may use private care in rural areas, paid for by taxpayers.

The department has done what it can since the waiting list problem came to light. They have made more than 2.7 million more appointments, and authorized hundreds of thousands of people to seek outside care. They have doubled what they thought they would need to make things better.

“We are not meeting the needs of the veterans,” said Sloan D. Gibson, deputy secretary of the department, “and veterans are signaling that to us by coming in for additional care, and we can’t deliver it as timely as we want to.” The workload has still increased, something they could not anticipate.

Those workloads increased by 20 percent, according to the New York Times. That information includes people who had to schedule multiple appointments because veterans need more care now than they previously have.

Some claim that the lack of awareness on this issue has been the result of retaliations against whistleblowers and those who criticize the department. Other say it is a lack of staff, space, and funding since Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan. Whatever the reason, Gibson said, “Veterans are going to respond with increased demand, so get your checkbooks out.”

Law and No Pulley Stops Critics From Lowering Confederate Flag In South Carolina

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Even though criticism continues to rage that the Confederate Flag in the grounds of South Carolina’s State House was not hung at half mast in respect to the nine people allegedly slaughtered by gunman and self stated racist Dylann Storm Roof last week in Charleston, it seems, no one, including the State’s Governor Nikki Haley, can do anything about it.

“In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,” a Haley spokesman said. “Only the General Assembly can do that.”

There is also a physical obstacle that prevents the flag from being lowered – it’s affixed to the pole, not on a pulley system and can’t come down unless someone climbs the flag pole and pulls it down — which would be illegal anyway.

South Carolina has been attacked about its capitol’s Confederate flag ever since it went up in the capitol in 1962 despite the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The law that keeps the flag flying high even while the USA flags limp at half mast, says the flag cannot fly from the capitol dome, but must appear at a memorial to fallen confederate soldiers, who fought under the flag, that is located near the dome. The flag is permitted to appear in legislators’ offices within the capitol building. The law even specifies the type of flag, its placement, and the dimensions of its display.

“This flag must be flown on a flagpole located at a point on the south side of the Confederate Soldier Monument, centered on the monument, ten feet from the base of the monument at a height of thirty feet,” it reads. “The flagpole on which the flag is flown and the area adjacent to the monument and flagpole must be illuminated at night and an appropriate decorative iron fence must be erected around the flagpole.”.

The law may only be amended or repealed on the passing of an act which has received a two-thirds vote on the third reading of the bill in each branch of the General Assembly.

This means that any changes to the flag policy will require near unanimous agreement from South Carolinian lawmakers, which are currently debating the issue.

Study Finds Teens Stop Smoking, View Marijuana As Less Attractive After It Becomes Legal

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New research continues to debunk just about every myth used to criminalize drugs, with the latest long-term study on the issue producing results sure to influence the marijuana debate.

According to a study analyzing data on 1 million teenagers in 48 states, legalizing medical marijuana does not lead to increased underage usage of the drug and in fact actually reduces teen usage.

The study, published in the medical journal Lancet Psychiatry, tracked 1,098,270 8th-grade, 10th-grade and 12th-grade students over 24 years. All were asked if they had smoked or used marijuana products in the prior month.

One interesting finding was that pot use decreased among eighth graders after medical marijuana was made legal because the teens started to view marijuana as a relatively harmless medical product which marijuana industry expert Debra Borchardt said “certainly doesn’t fit with the idea of being a rebellious teenager”.

Of the 21 states that had legalized medical marijuana as of 2014, not only hadn’t teenage pot use increased but had actually decreased from 8 percent before legalization to 6 percent afterward.

In states that have passed medical marijuana laws after the study began, teen use was already slightly higher than in other states. Usage was about 16 percent in those states compared to 13 percent in states that still lack medical marijuana laws.

New 8 Minute Surgery Will Give You Superhuman Eyesight. Forever.

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A revolutionary new surgically implanted eye lens developed by Canadian researchers will give people suffering from severe eye conditions or just wanting better eyesight perfect vision.

Forever.

The Ocumetics Bionic Lens, created by Dr. Garth Webb, an optometrist in British Columbia, will give patients perfect vision, ending the need for driving glasses, progressive lenses, and contacts. The implant will also be immune to eye disease or age related eye conditions because the lens replaces that of their natural eye.

Webb says that anyone over the age of 25 is the best candidate, because that is when the eye is fully developed.

“This is vision enhancement that the world has never seen before,” he said, “If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the Bionic Lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away.“

Surgery to fit the lens can be done within 8 minutes. The lens will be custom-made, folded in a saline-filled syringe and when placed in the eye, will unravel itself within 10 seconds, immediately correcting a patient’s vision.

Pending clinical trials on animals and then blind human eyes, the Bionic Lens could be available in Canada and elsewhere in about two years, depending on regulatory processes in each country.

The lens has taken over eight years to develop, costing approximately $3 million in research and development fees, international patents, and the securing of a biomedical manufacturing facility.

Webb said he was driven to free himself and others from wearing glasses since he was prescribed glasses in Grade 2.

“My heroes were cowboys, and cowboys just did not wear glasses — Perfect eyesight should be a human right.” he said.

It is likely the United States would be the first market the new product is available in, sometime in 2017.

While Facebook Builds Goggles, Google Builds The Tools To Make Virtual Reality Videos

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As we’ve said before, 2016 is set to be the year virtual reality goes mainstream. Facebook, Google, Samsung, GoPro, Sony, Conde Nast and a host of others are all lining up to launch 3d goggles and content late this year and early in 2016.

While Facebook, thanks to its $2 billion acquisition of Oculus, is intent on making the glasses to view 3d content, arch-rival Google is going in a different direction by making 3d video capture tools.

The Mountain View based search giant announced on Monday that it is now looking for help to test its Jump virtual reality capture platform. The company released a short survey to screen potential applicants who want to help shape the future of virtual reality.

The straightforward form asks for basic biographical information, what country you live in and what your job is and then asks would-be producers to write what kind of content they wish to create with the platform. “Tell us about what you have in mind,” reads the form. “Not required, but awesome answers might put you at the top of the list.”

Google’s 3d creation platform, Jump, was unveiled it at this year’s annual I/O developer conference and was created in partnership with GoPro. The system consists of an array of 16 GoPro Hero4 cameras that capture 360 degree panoramic video at incredible speed.

Google hasn’t yet announced any launch details or time-frames on the new product but given the intense interest in the market for all things virtual reality, and competitor products on-tap, expect to see production versions of Jump hit the market in early 2016.

Google has an especially vested interest in making 3d film and television thanks to its ownership of video sharing platform YouTube. There is a distinct worry in Mountain View that if Google fails to attract 3d content to its video sharing platform it could drive users away and relegate the platform to has-been status.

Food Giant Nestle Believes Every Drop of Water On Earth Should Be Corporate Owned

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If you’re thirsty and want or need a drink of water you should have to pay for it according to the former CEO and now Chairman of Nestle SA, the largest food product manufacturer in the world.

An article published on peacefulwarriors.net by Anthony Gucciardi, the Editor of Natural Society, claims that in a recent video interview reported on by the website Corporate Watch, Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said he believes corporations should own every drop of water on the planet, adding that it is a commodity that should not be free nor viewed as a basic human right.

Gucciardi wrote that Nestle “goes into struggling rural areas and extracts the groundwater for their bottled water products, completely destroying the water supply of the area without any compensation. In fact, they actually make rural areas in the United States foot the bill” .

Quoting a report on the Corporate Watch website, he said Nestle and Brabeck-Letmathe’s history of “disregarding public health and abusing the environment to take part in the profit of an astounding $35 billion in annual profit from water bottle sales alone” goes back many years.

“Nestlé production of mineral water involves the abuse of vulnerable water resources. In the Serra da Mantiqueira region of Brazil, home to the “circuit of waters” park whose groundwater has a high mineral content and medicinal properties, over-pumping has resulted in depletion and long-term damage.”

While Nestlé sometimes takes action on these issues, such as moving bottling of water out of drought-stricken California, it appears to do so only when publicly exposed. Judging by the attitude of its top executive these moves are purely to sway public perception and not standard corporate policy.

Another Study Finds Chocolate Is Good For The Heart, Prevents Stroke

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A new study involving almost 21,000 men and women has discovered that eating as much as 3.5 ounces of chocolate each day was associated with a lowered risk of heart disease and stroke. The study was published in the health journal Heart.

“The calculations showed that compared with those who ate no chocolate, higher intake was linked to an 11 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease and a 25 percent lower risk of associated death,” read the journal study.

But the researchers were quick to point out they were not suggesting everyone add daily chocolate to their diet, saying much more research was needed.

There has been on-going debate over several years over whether or not chocolate was good for ones health.

Howard LeWine, chief medical editor of the Harvard University health blog, said finding a link or association between chocolate and heart health is not the same thing as proving a cause and effect.

“We don’t yet know enough to put eating chocolate on a par with eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains,” he said.

Other experts said the latest study adds weight note to an increasing list of research that show bioactive plant compounds in cocoa beans, known as polyphenols, may provide some protection against heart disease.

JoAnn Manson, chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said they will be testing cocoa beans in capsule form so that none of the sugar, fat and calories found in a typical candy bar can be a factor.

The experts suggest, stick to dark chocolate since it has more cocoa with its polyphenols and less of the sugar and milk found in milk chocolate.

New Website Shines Bright Light On Shady World Of Campaign Finance

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Politicians will find it harder to cover the tracks of questionable campaign funding thanks to a soon to be launched website partly funded by the Sunlight Foundation and a public Kickstarter campaign.

The Sunlight Foundation is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog that uses the tools of civic tech, open data, policy analysis and journalism to make the Government and politics more accountable and transparent to all.

The website was devised and built by Solomon Kahn, a Sunlight Foundation OpenGov grantee, and an Edmond J. Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University

He says the motivation behind creating the website was to give the public a venue from where they could see exactly how much money a politician raised each year, and from which sectors they raised it, “offering users more context than they would normally receive —- on the micro-level, I wanted people to be able to dig as deeply into the details as they wanted”

Content on the website will be obtained from both information politicians and political parties have declared, publicly available information that is hard to find if one does not know where to look for it, and verifiable information submitted by the public and found on the internet

“No single person or media organization could possibly investigate the funding sources of 24,000 federal politicians, but with the help of the internet, we might actually be able to hold every single politician accountable for how they raise money, said Kahn.

“For the last 25 years, these politicians have never expected us to actually find much in this data, and I’m extremely excited to dig up dirt on things that politicians thought we would have long forgotten by now. If you’re excited about this project, and want to contribute, the Kickstarter campaign will be running for a few more weeks. The project will be open source, so you can contribute code as well, or stick this system on top of data from your state or country!”

Commercial Rocket Startup SpaceX Prepares For Third Try At Reusable Rocket

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Elon Musk’s rocketry outfit SpaceX is hard at work this week preparing for its third attempt to land its all-original Falcon 9 rocket booster on a barge anchored at sea. The attempt will take place this Sunday, after a mission to send a Dragon cargo capsule on a supply run to the International Space Station (ISS), which is in desperate need of supplies after a Russian rocket failed to reach orbit earlier this year.

SpaceX has been trying to land the booster, the most expensive piece of the rocket, since January this year. That attempt saw the booster descend to the barge under control, but run out of fuel just before touchdown. The result was a gigantic explosion which resulted in the rocket being destroyed. Or, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk termed it a “rapid, unscheduled disassembly.”

A second attempt in April this year saw the booster touch down on the barge but the tall space vehicle tilted and fell, resulting in another explosion that destroyed the rocket.

Sunday’s mission is the first resupply mission to the ISS since a Russian Progress spacecraft, which contained food, science experiments and other supplies, halted communication with mission control shortly after launch and began to spin out of control in April.

Yet NASA says there is no panic surrounding Sunday’s mission as even if it doesn’t go to plan, supplies won’t run out.

If SpaceX is successful in landing the booster and is able to consistently achieve this feat it will lead to drastic cost savings on future launches, totally reinventing the space industry. Right now every space launch system in the world throws away the rocket portion of launch vehicle, which happens to be the most expensive part.

This process is like throwing away a brand new Boeing 747 on each and every launch. If SpaceX can recover the rocket, and its pricey motors, on each launch it will be able to shave something like $100 million off each and every launch.

Just Ten Days In, Time Warner Caught Breaking Net Neutrality Rules

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Never ones to be troubled by the rule of law, telecom giant Time Warner Cable (TWC) violating the “no paid prioritization” and “no throttling” provisions of the FCC’s net neutrality regulations which took effect just ten days ago.

The first accusation of a breach of the rules, which are designed to stop big cable and wireless companies from charging gate-keeping taxes to rivals like Netflix and Google, has been brought by streaming company Commercial Network Services (CNS).

CNS provides internet for a number of webcams but also for high-frequency traders, who are aware of every millisecond difference in their internet access speed.

CNS claims TWC is only offering it access to congested, high-latency connections unless it pays extra. In the world of high frequency trading a solid, low-latency internet connections is essential, and what everyone should be entitled to.

“TWC has repeatedly refused to peer and instead offered ‘a commercial transit arrangement that will provide you with a functionally equivalent solution,'” the complaint states.

“By requiring any payment to peer at a common public internet exchange (a management policy), TWC is violating the No Paid Prioritization rule thru the creation of a paid fast lane to Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS) subscribers on their network by way of their peering policy.”

CNS, through CEO Barry Bahrami, cites three cases of such abuses. His company sought direct connections to three internet exchanges: NYIIX, Equinix NYC and Any2 Los Angeles.

In each case, Bahrami said, TWC refused to provide a direct peer connection and instead offered a much slower “commercial transit arrangement” claiming that such access “will provide you with a functionally equivalent solution.”

In short, TWC made a business decision to offer the slower service, instead of such a service simply being unavailable.

Bahrami expected TWC to say just that, specifically saying that it didn’t have enough capacity to execute the request.

TWC, on the other hand, says that CNS doesn’t qualify under the terms set forth for peering arrangements, though it apparently didn’t inform CNS of this fact.

FCC will now decide what to do about the situation. Currently, CNS has only filed an informal complaint, but Bahrami said that he would make the complaint formal if necessary, which is tantamount to a lawsuit.

What Is Our Government Telling Us? Federal Employee Data Breach Now Said To Compromise 18 Million Records

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Word has leaked early Tuesday that the personal data of an estimated 18 million current, former and prospective federal employees was stolen by attackers in a cyber breach at the Office of Personnel Management, far more than currently disclosed by the Obama administration.

Specifically, it is four times worse than the 4.2 million records the agency has publicly acknowledged.

Which was five times more than the agency first acknowledged, as we reported here and here.

The 18 million number is even expected to grow, according to anonymous U.S. officials aware of the investigation.

Despite no disclosure to American taxpayers about the extent of the mishandling of employee records, FBI Director James Comey has nonetheless been using the 18 million estimate in a closed-door briefings to Senators in recent weeks.

That assessment is apparently based off of the OPM’s own internal data, according to U.S. officials.

Yet the agency, and the Obama administration, refuses to level with the public, and potential victims, about the extent of the security lapses.

It is now understood that those affected include people who applied for government jobs, but never actually ended up being employed by the government.

The same hackers, who have been confirmed to be agents of the Chinese government, responsible for the breach of OPM’s data are believed to have last year compromised an OPM contractor, KeyPoint Government Solutions, according to U.S. officials.

When the OPM intrustion was discovered in April, investigators identified KeyPoint security credentials that were used to breach the OPM records system.

It remains unclear as to why, after the intrusion last year, OPM officials did not block all access from KeyPoint, as doing so could have prevented more serious damage.

According to OPM officials, of course speaking anonymously, they don’t believe such a move would have made a difference because the OPM breach is believed to have pre-dated the KeyPoint breach.

According to one official, the Chinese hackers had the “keys to the kingdom” for many years.

U.S. investigators have called the attack the largest data breach of the federal government in history but aside from that have refused to level with the public about just how serious the attack is and when investigators first knew about the breach.

North Korea Sentences Two South Koreans To Hard Labor For Life

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In what is sure to inflame relations between the hardline South Korean government and its neighbor, North Korea, the North announced today that two South Korean citizens detained inside the hermit kingdom on charges of spying have been officially sentenced to hard labor for life, according to the South Korean Ministry of Unification.

The arrests of Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil were announced by North Korea in March. The two are among four South Koreans confirmed to be imprisoned by the communist country.

North Korea alleges that former missionary Kim, and businessman Choe, were spying for South Korea’s intelligence service. It has accused them of committing “terrorism” and bringing in “large quantities of forged currency,” a North Korean official said anonymously in March.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has repeatedly denied either of the men were working for it.

With government minders present, the two gave a lengthy staged interview to CNN in march, during which they gave elaborate confessions, each with similar talking points.

It is likely that the two men are being used as pawns in the political power struggle between the isolated North and the prosperous South.

Australia’s Top Two Terrorists Reportedly Killed In Drone Strike

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Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says authorities are in the process of confirming reports that two of the country’s most wanted terrorists have been killed while fighting for ISIS in Iraq.

Australian media are reporting that Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar were both killed by a drone strike that took place in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Sharrouf gained infamy last year when he tweeted a picture of his seven-year-old son holding a severed head, captioned “That’s my boy.”

Sharroufsonhead

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to the picture as “one of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed.”

Sharrouf and Elomar are notorious ISIS murderers, frequently tweeting pictures of themselves with the decapitated heads of Syrian government fighters. After seeing the pictures, Australian Federal Police issued arrest warrants for the pair in late July.

Bishop told reporters late Monday that the government knew about the reports and was working to confirm them.

But the ISIS-controlled areas of Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria are not accessible to Australian forces, making the reports difficult to confirm.

“It’s very difficult to gain the information necessary given that it is a war zone,” she said. “There is a conflict going on, and Australians should not be there.”

There was no official confirmation of who carried out the attack but it is believed that the drone was operated by the U.S. Air Force.

Big Healthcare Keeps Getting Bigger As Anthem Ups Its Bid for Cigna

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A $54-billion bid by Anthem Inc. to purchase chief rival Cigna Corp. will result in more consolidation of the health insurance market and potentially higher premiums and less choice for Americans looking for health insurance.

Anthem, the nation’s second-largest health insurer, is offering $184 a share for Cigna in cash and stock, or $54 billion, including debt, but has expressed frustration that talks had stalled in recent days over the future role of Cigna’s chief executive as it could let in another company to vie for the Bloomfield, Conn. based Cigna which is the nation’s fifth-largest health insurer.

Anthem said its purchase of Cigna would result in $115 billion annual revenue and serve 53 million members making it the industries leader ahead of UnitedHealth Group Inc. in terms of membership.

Cigna has been negotiating its own deal for Humana Inc which is prized for its strong Medicare Advantage business, while UnitedHealth has made merger overtures to the nation’s third-largest company, Aetna Inc.

Each of the companies with their merger and takeover bids are looking to take advantage of rising revenues from the Affordable Care Act and Medicare and Medicaid’s growing privatization.

Although health law expansion of subsidized, private coverage and Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurance program for the poor, has benefited the health insurance sector, expanding membership and revenue hasn’t seen bigger profits for much of the industry.

Health insurers are hoping consolidation will assist them to squeeze out more costs and negotiate better prices with hospitals, doctors and drugmakers.

Anthem sells Blue Cross plans in 14 states. It also has a big Medicaid managed-care business in many states.

Healthcare experts have expressed deep concern that any savings likely won’t be passed along to employers and consumers and that these deals raise serious antitrust concerns given the lack of choice in the market already.

The FTC has not indicated at this point if it will object, though any deal of this size will receive significant regulatory scrutiny.

Google Will Get Massive Fine From The European Union For Abuse Of Competitive Position

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Google Will Get Massive Fine From The European Union For Abuse Of Competitive Position

The European Union made clear on Monday that it intends to levy fines on Google Inc. large enough to act as a deterrent to other monopolies as punishment for squeezing out rivals in the comparison shopping market.

The EU’s competition commission (EC) told the search giant that it could face a fine based on its AdWords revenue attributed to European users, according to the EC statement of objections released to Google. The EU will also dictate to Google how its shopping services are displayed on the search engine going forward.

The EC “intends to set the fine at a level which will be sufficient to ensure deterrence,” the document reads. It further “considers that, based on the facts described in this statement of objections, Google committed the infringement intentionally or, at the very least, negligently.”

Google took a dim view of the EC’s complaint, which eventually led to the patience of the European regulator running out after three settlement bids were rejected by Google. Rival companies complained that Google unfairly promotes its own services and paid ads over direct competitors. The EU began their probe in 2010.

Microsoft Corp., Expedia Inc., and other web publishers asked the EU to examine complaints that Google favors its own services over competitors and interferes with specialized search engines that compete with it.

According to the full version of the document the EC sent to Google in April, fines could be based on a variety of factors, including clicks for which google was paid, the number of search queries it handle or the number of searches conducted for which competitor sites should have been displayed.

A fine is certain at this point, as the report said the EC has reached the “preliminary conclusion that Google’s practice of positioning and displaying more favorably, in its general search result pages, its own comparison shopping service compared to competing comparison shipping services constitutes an abuse by Google in the relevant markets for general search services.”

The big question is: How much will the fine be?

Given Microsoft paid billions for similar transgressions, you can imagine Google will be paying somewhere north of that.

Federal Trade Commission Petitioned To Stop Uber Spamming From Your Phone, Tracking You 24/7

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A privacy group filed a formal legal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding taxi service Uber’s pending “unfair and deceptive data collection practices.” The group is asking federal authorities to halt the unneeded data collection which is due to take effect on July 15, as we covered in late May.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a 23 page complaint on Monday, taking issue with the fact the company will begin collecting location data even when the app is running in the background. The change will not be visibly disclosed to users, instead it will just be a small edit to its lengthy and vague privacy policy.

EPIC has been successful in filing similar complaints against Google and Facebook, resulting in a negotiated settlement to stop the abusive practice.

The complaint also takes issue with another backdoor tactic that allows the scofflaw taxi company to access your address book and use its contents to send unsolicited text messages promoting its service.

The new privacy policy slips that one in there, too. Use the app and you by default agree.

For Uber, a company that notoriously flouts the law, it comes after a November 2014 incident when a company executive proposed hiring private investigators to look into the personal lives and Uber records of journalists in order to “give the media a taste of its own medicine.”

The company also has a terrible track record of protecting user privacy, as in an October 2014 incident company executive displayed a real-time activity map of thirty of its “notable users” at a launch party in Chicago.

The map was a backend feature of Uber’s platform known as “God View,” which lets company officials see a map of all active Uber cars and their passengers. News of this flagrant violation of user privacy only leaked because one of the users on the map found out he was being tracked when an attendee of the party began texted him his Uber’s exact location.

Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer in law at the University of California, Berkeley, said “I’m willing to bet that the FTC is already investigating Uber. The FTC loves to target the whales in industry because matters bought against large companies generate headlines and bring smaller companies to heel as well.”

Uber spokeswoman Molly Spaeth said that “There is no basis for this complaint. We care deeply about the privacy of our riders and driver-partners,” yet it remains to be seen how this squares with the company’s well documented track record of both flouting the law and flagrantly abusing user privacy.

Uber refused to comment directly on the FTC investigation or the changes, except that they were disclosed in its privacy policy – which nobody currently running the app will ever read.

Utah University Unveils ‘Texting While Walking’ Lanes To Improve Campus Safety

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Utah Valley University may be blazing a trail for urban planners everywhere by giving students glued to their smartphones a designated lane for texting while walking.

The school painted neon green lanes on the stairs to the gym in an effort that was originally intended as a lighthearted way to brighten up the space and get students’ attention, said spokeswoman Melinda Colton.

The effort worked extremely well, with a picture of the lanes creating widespread buzz on social media after it was posted online.

While the lanes are just in the school’s recreation center, 22-year-old student Tasia Briggs wouldn’t mind seeing them deployed across campus.

“There’s nothing worse than walking behind someone who’s texting, and you can’t get around them and go anywhere,” Briggs said. Smartphone messaging is increasingly a big part of how the younger generations communicate, leading to new issues for building and city planners.

Student Chelsea Meza, 22, said “it’s kind of funny. You walk down the hallway and instead of saying hi, everyone is walking and texting,” she said.

While new to America the dedicated lanes have been tried elsewhere in the world.

The Chinese city of Chongqing created a smartphone sidewalk lane that served as a reminder to people that staring at phones while on the go can be extremely dangerous, especially in cities with cars and buses.

While the lanes may seem funny or be used to get attention, they may end up being used to both manage congestion and avoid accidents. Most major cities already heavily use dedicated lanes for cyclists and its not a stretch to think that the concept could be applied to sidewalks, especially in high traffic or particularly dangerous areas.

Amazon To Pay Authors Based On How Many Pages You Read

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If the fabulously wealthy Taylor Swift thinks music royalties are too low you can imagine what authors will think of a new idea from eBook giant Amazon, which announced Monday a new pricing plan that will see its Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners’ Lending Library authors paid based on the number of pages users read.

Amazon is looking to compensate writers for their work on longer titles while at the same time encourage quality material. In order to avoid cheating, by say wider margins or larger font sizes, Amazon will use a normalized page count that compensates for how much content is actually in a book, so that the rate will be the same no matter the layout.

This may change the format of what you read, as images will count as content, so there may be novels with a few extra illustrations.

Yet the move may punish authors of textbooks, industry guides and other reference books that aren’t likely to be read cover-to-cover. The new pricing also raises the concern that writers will compromise stories by including more cliffhangers, epilogues and other tactics designed strictly to make you read more but not necessarily better content.

The impact is not likely to be felt right away, given this will only affect how authors are compensated on Amazon’s subscription services. Users can buy titles at regular prices, but depending on how its trials go Amazon may well unveil this model to its regular eBook distribution system.

Martha Stewart Sells Her Namesake Company For Discount Price

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Former media tycoon and do-it-yourself maven Martha Stewart sold her unprofitable lifestyle business Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, for a near clearance price.

Once valued at $2 billion after it went public at the height of the dot-com bubble, the company is selling for a much smaller yet still respectable $353 million in a cash-and-stock deal to Sequential Brands Group, which licenses and promotes a number of brands such as pop star Jessica Simpson’s collection and bedroom retailer Linens N Things.

Martha Stewart herself is expected to stay on as chief creative officer of the brand and will also still be a “significant stockholder” of the new company once Sequential and Martha Stewart Living have combined. Showing their faith in the domestic diva, Ms Stewart will also be nominated to serve on Sequential’s board of directors.

Stewart still owns 49% of her company’s Class A shares, making her future ownership stake in the combined company logical.

“This merger is positioned to further the growth and expansion of the unique Martha home and lifestyle brand,” Martha Stewart said in a statement. “With our media business operations now successfully transitioned to Meredith, we now have the opportunity to tap into Sequential’s expertise and resources to expand our merchandising business both domestically and abroad.”

Since Ms Stewart was jailed for insider trading in 2004 the company has faced some tough challenges and remains mired in annual losses and sliding sales. Total sales fell to just $142 million last year from $231 million in 2010.

The company has reported an annual loss for every year during that five-year stretch due to declines in circulation and advertising revenues for the company’s magazines, a trend affecting the broader print magazine industry as well.

Despite being an ‘omnimedia’ company, the brand never fully transitioned to digital and instead refocused in the last few years on retail products bearing Ms Stewart’s iconic name.

Europol Launches Online Crackdown On ISIS Social Media Accounts

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An elite European police team is being set up to track and take down ISIS affiliated social media accounts it was announced Monday.

While Europol, the Europe-wide police agency, didn’t say which networks it would target first it’s clear that the move came after a report revealed that at least 46,000 Twitter accounts are controlled by ISIS.

This marks the first move from a government organization against ISIS supporters on social media, although as we covered yesterday the FBI seems to have been carefully following the group’s activities since 2013.

On March 16, hacktivist group Anonymous, which the the world’s governments usually hate, released 9,200 ISIS supporter Twitter account names to put pressure on the social network to suspend them. The group released a further 25,000 account names for the same purpose.

Europol is apparently thinking that it is capable of doing better and also will be able to arrest operators who live within its borders.

ISIS, as we covered previously, is a top social media spammer, with its active accounts sending an estimate of 100,000 tweets everyday.

The formal crackdown will begin on July 1st.

Europol director Rob Wainwright said of the offensive:

We will have to combine what we see online with our own intelligence and that that is shared with us by European police services, so we can be a bit more targeted and identify who the key user accounts are… and concentrate on closing them down.

He also stated that Europol will also be hunting down money used to fund ISIS. “Where you follow the money trail, it helps find who they are, what they are doing and who their associates are,” Wainwright said.

Another UN Reports Finds Israel Is Committing War Crimes Against Palestinians

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In what will only strengthen the case for the Boycot Divest Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, a United Nations investigation has found “serious violations of international humanitarian law” consistent with “war crimes” by both Israeli militants in the Gaza Strip during their bloody battle last summer. A report on the incident was released on Monday in Geneva.

Written by a two member independent commission of inquiry and submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, found that “impunity prevails across the board” for Israeli forces in Gaza, and called on Israel to “break with its recent lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers accountable.”

We’ve covered Israel’s track record of genocide, notably here and here, which is consistent with the report published today.

“Comprehensive and effective accountability mechanisms for violations allegedly committed by Israel or Palestinian actors will be a key deciding factor of whether Palestinians or Israelis are to be spared yet another round of hostilities and spikes in violations of international law,” the report stated.

The report is expected to provide a road map for the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court, who are conducting an ongoing investigation into Israel’s massacre of civilians and genocide against the Palestinian people.

General Mills Announces It Will Remove All Artificial Colors And Flavors From Its Foods. But Is That Enough?

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In a major indication of the pressure large food processors are receiving from consumers looking for healthier food choice, General Mills Inc, maker of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cheerios cereals, announced on Monday that it would stop using artificial flavors and colors in nearly all of its cereals.

The processed foods maker said it plans to have 90 percent of its cereals artificial flavor and color free by 2016, up from approximately 60 percent today.

The company will begin on the notoriously unhealthy Trix and Reese’s Puffs cereals, using ingredients such as fruit and vegetable juices, cocoa, natural vanilla and peanut butter flavors, with new versions hitting stores this winter.

U.S. restaurant chains and food companies are under significant pressure to remove synthetic ingredients from their products amid growing awareness that such ingredients cause health problems.

Kraft Foods Group announced in April that it was removing synthetic colors and preservatives from its popular Kraft Dinner products.

Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Subway and Nestle USA have all made similar moves as consumer dollars shift to healthier products.

Yet the trend may still not be in General Mills’ favor, as cereals like Trix and Reese’s Puffs are still nutritionally awful, containing immense amounts of sugar and virtually no nutrients whatsoever. Nutrition experts are now recommending to avoid the so-called ‘inner aisles’ of the grocery store, as virtually all canned and packaged goods, accounting for nearly all of General Mills’ revenue, are loaded with chemicals and purged of nutrients, leading to long term health consequences for those who eat them regularly.

Federal Government Caught Using School Lunch Programs To Track Children

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The Hazleton Area School District in Pennsylvania will now provide free meals to all students, regardless of need. But there’s a gigantic catch: It is scanning students’ thumbprints to track all of their lunch purchases and is then turning the data over to the federal government, according to a new report.

The move raises questions about the true motive for the federal government program that incentivizes school districts to provide more meals to more students, so long as they track their pupils with biometrics.

“We will at least break even, if not come out ahead because of federal reimbursement,” said district superintendent Craig Butler.

In order to qualify for the program, the district purchased biometric software to track students who receive free or reduced-cost lunches. The student’s thumbprint is scanned each time he or she receives a meal.

“This data provided by the biometrics was made available to the district and federal government for tracking purposes,” local newspaper The Citizen’s Voice reported.

Administrators refused to clarify just why they had the privacy invading tracking and said they were “unsure” whether they will continue the tracking scheme.

But, like most tracking programs across the nation, the district didn’t indicate how the data was being protected, if it could be used to identify an individual student or how long the federal government would retain it.

Similar fingerprint and tracking initiatives, usually in return for ‘free’ food, have been met with stiff resistance from parents, when they have been disclosed.

Massachusetts’ North Adams Public Schools deployed a similar lunch payment program using scanners.

While the district “wanted to make sure those transactions are as transparent as possible,” it specifically does not want to make it transparent what data is collected, who is using it, for what purpose or for how long.

“No child should have to have a body part scanned to get a meal! There was no problems with those swipe cards that we were never made aware of,” said one parent on Facebook, who replied that she would send her child with a bag lunch before allowing a fingerprint scan.

“Let us not allow our children to allow privacy to become a thing of the past. Our duty is to educate and protect them, not to catalog them like merchandise,” parent Cara Roberts wrote in a letter to the mayor and a news outlet.

“Our duty is to teach them to protect and care for their bodies. What message are we sending when we tell them their body is a means of identification, a tool for others to use to track them?”

Despite promising to be the most transparent administration in history, the Obama team is notoriously tight-lipped on such initiatives and has refused to clarify anything about the data collection and what it would be used for.

Officials also declined to specify why fingerprints were necessary to track lunch purchases rather than swipe cards or other, more effective, authentication measures.

EU Planning Military Action To Fight Human Traffickers

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EU members states have authorized a military crackdown against people traffickers in the Mediterranean, after a weekend meeting in Brussels.

Approximately 100,000 illegal migrants have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, most landing in Italy, Greece and Malta which all want their fellow EU members to share in controlling the flow.

According to one EU diplomat “Everything is now in place” so that EU foreign ministers meeting today (Monday) can approve beginning of operations.

Apparently EU member states have promised to provide ships and aircraft to allow an initial intelligence-gathering phase to start.

Forced to take action in April after the loss of some 800 illegal migrants when their “rickety” boat sank off the southern Italian coast, EU leaders met at an emergency summit to draw up a comprehensive plan to strike at the source of the problem.

As well as increasing search and rescue efforts, the summit asked EU foreign chief Federica Mogherini, to come up with military options against the traffickers who exploit the thousands of people looking to get to Europe illegally by crossing the Mediterranean.

The second phase of the crack down is supposed to see the boarding of ships in the Mediterranean, arresting the traffickers and disabling the vessels, followed by a third phase which would extend similar actions in Libyan territorial waters and possibly inside the country itself.

Britain and France favor moving quickly to Phase 2 and 3, but other EU nations are not so sure about direct involvement in Libya where rival factions are battling for control and the internationally-recognized government has set up in Benghazi after fleeing the capital Tripoli.

To smooth over these fears the EU April summit decided that Phase 2 and 3 would go ahead only under Libyan consent and a resolution from the five member UN Security Council (UNSC).

A senior EU official who wanted to remain anonymous said permanent UNSC member Russia wants “a clear Libyan consent” which the EU is working towards.

“We are rather optimistic that in the end there will be a UNSC resolution to go on with the other phases; there is no absolute certitude but there is a very good prospect,” the official said.

The European Commission has proposed that 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum-seekers who have arrived in Europe should be redistributed and that 20,000 Syrians living in camps outside Europe should be resettled across the 28-nation bloc.

While many member states say they will help with humanitarian efforts of search and rescue, they are not in favor of accepting more migrants or the EU’s military option.

Migration is a sensitive issue and far-right political parties are using public concerns about an influx of refugees against more established parties.

World’s Digital Watchdog Accuses Facebook of Selective Censorship

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a “leading non-profit Organization defending civil liberties in the digital world” has found that Facebook differentiates from country to country in the number of “content restrictions” it has fulfilled in its Government Request Report, calling it a “sanitized term for censorship.”

In a report posted to its website, the EFF claims that in the United States, Facebook’s home country, the “content restrictions” category is “conspicuously missing”, but not for other countries.

“It restricts access to three items of content on its site to comply with Brazilian court orders, restricted access to 15 pieces of content to comply with Israeli laws banning Holocaust denial, restricted access to 3,624 pieces of content in Turkey and another 5,832 pieces of content in India, all under “a variety of nefarious censorship laws” said the organization.

EFF said this was strange “considering that Facebook has been suspending the accounts of inmates in the U.S. for at least four years at the requests of prison officials, and even had an easy and confidential “Inmate Takedown” form corrections officers could fill out to make the profiles disappear”.

According to the article written by EFF writer David Maass, Facebook complied with 74 requests for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 2014 and that between California and South Carolina, Facebook processed more than 700 takedown requests over the past four years.

Maass claims EFF could file public records requests in all 50 states to learn more, but “since Facebook’s system allows prisons to file these requests without creating a paper trail, only Facebook knows how many requests it has complied with nationwide”.

” In direct response to Facebook’s secrecy, as well as inconsistencies in Facebook’s explanations of the takedown process, we have added a new category to “Who Has Your Back?”, our annual scorecard that evaluates how companies handle government requests. To earn a star in the category for “Disclosing Government Content Removal Requests,” companies do not have to reject government requests, but just be transparent about how they handle these requests,” read the article.

In contrast to Facebook, Twitter not only produces the data, but it publishes an interactive map that shows details about content removal requests, while Google also provides data about government requests to remove content, including examples with information on the nature of the request and the outcome.

“Based on information we have received through public records requests filed in several states, inmates are more often caught using Facebook than any other service. But this isn’t just about prisoner accounts. The fact that Facebook has not been reporting these takedown requests raises larger questions about what other kinds of censorship Facebook has been hiding,” read the report.

“In its report, Google gave examples in the U.S., such as a request from a law enforcement officer asking the company to remove a link to a negative news story from its search results and a request from a government agency to remove an allegedly defamatory video about a school administrator. (Google complied with neither request, but included both in its transparency report.)”

“If Google received requests to takedown this kind of content, then we believe it is highly likely that Facebook has received them as well. In the coming months, we may even see more direct evidence of this through crowdsourced reports at OnlineCensorship.org, an alpha-stage project co-founded by EFF Director for International Freedom of Expression Jillian York”.

The article concluded by urging Facebook to “publish the data and show U.S. government agencies that censorship shouldn’t happen in the dark”.

IRS Urged to Investigate Walmart’s Use Of Overseas Tax Havens

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Walmart has used foreign tax havens to shelter $76 billion in assets avoiding having to pay $3.5 billion in income tax over the last six years according to a Americans for Tax Fairness report.

The report —”The Wal-Mart Web: How the World’s Biggest Corporation Secretly Uses Tax Havens to Dodge Taxes” – shows the company used a “network of 78 subsidiaries and branches in 15 overseas tax havens, which may be used to minimize foreign taxes where it has retail operations and to avoid U.S. tax on those foreign earnings.” .

Research for the study was carried out by the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union.

The report said Walmart subsidiaries that account for 10% or more of a company’s assets and income, are required by law to be listed in 10.K filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission—but the company “had simply failed to do so”.

It said Walmart shell companies in just two countries, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, account for $76 billion in assets—which is 90% of the assets in the company’s International Division, as well as 37% of its $205 billion total assets—decisively higher than the SEC’s 10% requirement.

Tax Experts refer to Luxembourg, where Walmart has registered 22 of its shell companies, the “magical fairyland” because profits seem “supernaturally protected from taxation in the tiny country”.

The report claims Walmart transferred more than $45 billion in assets to its subsidiaries in Luxembourg, reporting tax payments of less than 1% to the country on $1.3 billion in profits between 2010-2013—even though the company does not even have one store in there. One third of Walmart’s annual profits come from its International Division, yet the majority of its foreign companies are owned by subsidiaries in these tax havens.

Walmart company spokesperson Randy Hargrove said the Americans for Tax Fairness report was incomplete and “designed to mislead.” He claimed Walmart has “processes in place to comply with applicable SEC and IRS rules, as well as the tax laws of each country where [they] operate.”

Americans for Tax Fairness has called on U.S. and foreign authorities to carry out their own investigations with several key points to address. It said there was an obvious need for an IRS audit to track the “elusive assets”. It has also recommended the European Commission to investigate whether Luxembourg’s actions as a tax haven amount to “illegal state aid.”

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