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European Countries To Build Drone In Effort To End Reliance On U.S. Models

Entertainment News

Germany, France and Italy signed a deal Monday to start technical work and end their reliance on US- and Israeli-made drones. The project is looking to build a military drone by 2025.

The project would be worth up to $1.2 billion if it gets airborne, officials said after the deal was signed in Brussels.

“The goal of the Euro-drone is that we can decide by ourselves in Europe on what we use it, where we deploy the Euro-drone and how we use it,” German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

“This makes us, the Europeans, independent.”

European powers have tried and failed to come up with a common drone project for over a decade, forcing Britain, Italy and France to rely on U.S. Reaper drones. Germany and France also use Israeli-built models.

The European drone will be medium-altitude, long-endurance and designed for intelligence and reconnaissance missions. It will also be able to carry a “variety of payloads,” according to a statement after the signing.

Airbus, France’s Dassault Aviation and Italy’s Alenia Aermacchi are the key drivers of the proposal.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the deal was a “very important step for European cooperation.”

A two-year technical assessment will try to find common ground between Germany, France and Italy on operational needs, performance, timing and cost, they said.

Yet the project will likely end the same way most pan-European defense initiative end: compromised, over budget, delayed and lacking world-beating features.

South Korean Law Forces Spyware On Teen Mobile Phones

Entertainment News

South Korea has adopted the highly repressive North Korean regime as its personal freedom reference point.

As the North blocks sites and web pages with gusto, South Korea is now telling parents they must install government-approved and manufactured spyware on the smartphones of any children under the age of 19.

Yet nobody has seen the inner workings of the app, named “Smart Sheriff”, raising serious questions about just what the app does.

A similar app named “Smart Relief” allows parents to monitor their teen’s smartphone activities and sends alerts triggered by any of the 1,100+ words on its watchlist.

Some terms it monitors (both in text messages and searches) would obviously raise concerns in parents while others seem to do nothing more than give parents a reason to lock their kids up until they’re old enough to move out:

Girl I like, boy I like, dating, boyfriend, girlfriend, breakup

In short, the level of spying is extreme.

It gives government agencies access to minors’ communications, and does so to nearly every child in the country; 80% of South Korean schoolchildren own smartphones.

It doesn’t even relate to national security, the usual bogey man cited for such privacy invasion. Communications will likely be delivered to law enforcement and intelligence agencies but also to parents, schools and service providers.

The app effectively indoctrinates children that personal freedom is unimportant and that spying is just a normal part of life. A whole generation will grow up thinking spying is normal and to be expected.

Yet children who haven’t grown up with such spying are experiencing a chilling effect.

Smartphones are now no longer viewed as essential equipment by teenagers, with students saying they will wait until they turn 19 to get a new phone.

“I’d rather not buy a phone,” said Paik Hyunsuk, 17. “It’s violation of students’ privacy and oppressing freedom.”

Home Brewed Morphine Is Coming To A City Near You

Entertainment News

Over 90 percent of the world’s opium comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan but that may be about to change as scientists have engineered brewer’s yeast to synthesize opioids such as codeine and morphine from a common sugar, it was reported on Monday.

“It is going to be possible to ‘home-brew’ opiates in the near future,” Christopher Voight of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters about the latest discovery.

While process, described in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, is inefficient right now, requiring 300 litres of genetically engineered yeast to produce a single 30 milligram dose of morphine, improvements that are well within reach.

So close, in fact, that a dose could be obtained from “a glass of yeast culture grown with sugar on a windowsill,” Voight said.

The trick behind the breakthrough is that yeast cells have been genetically engineered to carry out the second part of the complex 15-step opioid-producing reaction. All that remained was just the hurdle of coaxing yeast to carry out the first part.

That is what scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Concordia University in Montreal have accomplished.

The team, led by John Dueber at the University of California, Berkeley, isolated a crucial enzyme from sugar beets, mutated its gene to make it more productive, and inserted it into yeast.

They then added more foreign DNA to achieve their goal: the yeast carried out the first half of the reaction that produces opioids.

While the new yeast could synthesize cheaper, less addictive, and more effective pain-killers, the creation of morphine-making yeast will likely increase access to illegal opiates.

The findings could make illegal drugs “easy to grow, conceal and distribute,” with little more than a home-brew beer-making kit, policy analysts at MIT warned.

While the analysts called for policies to regulate engineered-yeast strains, the cat may be out of the bag.

The recipe for opiate-producing yeast is now public and “anyone trained in basic molecular biology could theoretically build it” Dueber said.

Facebook Creates Payment Platform To Steal Your Payment Data

Finance

It’s well known Facebook loves slurping your data. The content-ad network knows more about you than any other company on earth. It then sells this data to marketers, hence its multi-billion dollar valuation.

But Facebook’s data isn’t perfect and it could always use more.

The missing piece? Payments.

If it could connect all the personal facts and connections it knows about you to what you buy it would present marketers with the perfect data set.

And that’s exactly what the company announced Monday, when it confirmed a new peer-to-peer payment feature it will deploy in the U.S. over the next few months.

The money transfer service ‘offers’ to store a user’s Visa or MasterCard information, which the company promises to store securely in its vast database. The company said in a statement

These payment systems are kept in a secured environment that is separate from other parts of the Facebook network and that receive additional monitoring and control. A team of anti-fraud specialists monitor for suspicious purchase activity to help keep accounts safe.

But the real value here isn’t getting a cut of transactions. It’s to insert itself between you and your credit card, so that it can track you more efficiently. Were it to collect all your spending information and pair with its location, life-stage and personal connections data, it would truly have a fearsome set of data. Which is exactly what big marketers want and will pay absolute top dollar for.

It will be interesting to see how the ad-network updates its privacy policy to reflect the latest data grab.

FBI Charge Researcher With Hacking United Airlines Flight, Taking Control Of Plane Mid-Flight

News

The FBI has charged a security researcher with hacking into the entertainment system of a United Airlines plane mid-flight and causing the aircraft to fly “sideways”.

The revelations are both a damning indictment of airline security and a sharp warning that the internet of things could cause more problems than it solves.

Information security researcher Chris Roberts allegedly told FBI special agent Mark Hurley that he not only hacked the in flight entertainment system but that he was also able to issue commands to the flight control computers.

By issuing a ‘CLB’ or climb command to one of the engines, he was able to increase its power output which in turn made the plane fly sideways, with nothing the pilots could do to control it.

Roberts was also able to intercept and monitor the cockpit communications systems.

In fact, he hacked the entertainment systems of both Airbus and Boeing aircraft roughly 15 to 20 times between 2011 and 2014.

Roberts had thirteen items, including thumb drives, a MacBook Pro laptop and an iPad Air were confiscated from him on April 15th, after he exited a United Airline flight in Syracuse, New York.

He now stands accused of admitting to tampering with and compromising the systems.

In response to the allegations, he stated on Twitter:

Over last 5 years my only interest has been to improve aircraft security…given the current situation I’ve been advised against saying much.
Sorry it’s so generic, but there’s a whole 5 years of stuff that the affidavit incorrectly compressed into 1 paragraph….lots to untangle

Belgian Police Warn Facebook Is Seriously Violating Privacy Of Both Users And Non-Users

Entertainment News

Belgium’s privacy watchdog, The Commission de Protection de la Vie Privée (CPVP), condemned Facebook for its tracking of users and non-users, saying the company is in breach of EU privacy laws.

The commission said it was staggered by how agressively Facebook tramples users’ rights and tracks them across the web, whether they consent to this or not.

Specifically, the CPVP claims:

Facebook violates European and Belgian legislation on privacy. It is in a unique position and can easily connect the browsing habits of its users to their real identity, their interactions on social networks and sensitive data such as medical information, preferences religious, sexual and political

The CPVP does not have the power in Belgium to impose fines directly but it has demanded more details about how it monitors users, what information it collects and how it uses cookies.

The privacy Commission also took the unusual step of advising people to use “do not track” services like Ghostery, Blur and Disconnect to protect themselves from Facebook’s mass data collection. In essence, the commission is saying that Facebook’s main business is so abusive to personal privacy that people should use tools designed to thwart it.

The biggest concerns raised in the report is with Facebook’s ability to profile non-users simply through their interaction with those who are signed up. Interactions can include email and Whatsapp messages, which aren’t generally thought of as connected to Facebook.

The Belgian regulator isn’t the first to hit back hard against Facebook’s pervasive abuse of privacy. Dutch and German agencies are also investigating Facebook in addition to the European Commission.

Facebook denies any wrongdoing and insists it is compliant with EU law yet hides in Ireland, which uses a controversially lax interpretation. Many social media companies, like Twitter as well as other tech privacy abusers like Dropbox, have moved to Ireland for their open attitude towards abusing user privacy.

The EU is planning a continent-wide data protection regulation, which is currently being negotiated. Such a regulation would be applied the same throughout the EU, while currently each country takes working guidelines by the EC and applies it to their own country-specific laws.

The commission will forward its findings to the national prosecutor’s office and said that a criminal case could be in the works.

Fear Of Accusations Stopping Congressmen From Being Alone With Female Staffers

News

While our elected officials tend to be predominately male, the staffers who handle them – young, energetic go-getters fresh from grad school – are increasingly female. Yet fear of the political rumor mill is causing some congressmen to never meet one on one with female staffers.

The National Journal conducted an anonymous survey with female staffers in order to gather information on the difficulties they face in their careers.

While many reported usual issues, such as long hours, whether to have families and similar concerns, several aides reported being barred from being with their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with them, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office behind a closed door.

The issue is interesting because it shows both a sensitivity to gender issues and also the intractability of the issues facing our elected officials.

Male educators or child workers, for instance, will almost never meet females in their care on one on – most meetings are done with third parties involved to ensure no impropriety or false accusations of such behavior.

But in the workplace, where one-on-one time leads to career advancement, it may not be sufficient to simply avoid such meetings as is possible in other professions. Equal opportunity is well entrenched in employment law and attorneys contact regarding this issue were clear: even if erring on the side of safety, such policies are probably against employment law and could open up those who practice them to discrimination accusations.

Yet fortunately the issue is hardly the norm. Numerous staffers contacted in the survey and by subsequent media inquiries, both male and female, said they had never experienced or even heard of such a policy.

Saudi Arabia To Purchase Nuclear Weapons From Pakistan

Entertainment News

Troubling reports surfaced over the weekend that Saudi Arabia is actively lobbying its ally Pakistan to supply it with “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons, in response to a nuclear arms race with Iran and Israel.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former U.S. defense official told a major UK newspaper. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

The former official said the U.S. did not have evidence that “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet,” but stated that “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say.”

Saudi Arabia has been increasingly dis-cordial towards both friends and foes in recent months after new leadership was appointed in the coutry. It has stepped up its air campaign against Iran-sponsored Houthi rebels in Yemen and King Salman refused an invitation to attend a landmark summit hosted by President Obama last week.

Former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal said that “whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” according to The New York Times.

Faisal also warned of the Iranian nuclear deal “opening the door to nuclear proliferation.”

The Saudi – Pakistan deal is longstanding, with the Arab nation supplying Pakistan discounted oil in exchange for ready-made nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weapons programs are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was provided by Saudi Arabia,” said Lord David Owen, who served as England’s foreign secretary from 1977-1979..

“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” he added.

Millions Of Spiders Rain Down On Australian Town

Culture

An area in Australia recently has millions of baby spiders raining down from the sky in Southern Tablelands, an area near Sydney, New South Wales. Webs fell from the sky and covered entire houses and fields for dozens of square miles.

“The whole house was covered in these little black spiderlings,” said local resident Ian Watson “And when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky.” While the phenomenon was described as beautiful there were also some drawbacks.

“I was annoyed because … you couldn’t go out without getting spider webs on you. And I’ve got a beard as well, so they kept getting in my beard,” he told the Morning Herald. Watson, and others in the area, posted hundreds of images to social media sites.

Martyn Robinson, a naturalist from the Australian Museum, said that while the spiders appeared to be raining down from the sky, they were actually using a technique called ballooning, where they climb to a high point and then release a stream of silk that allows them to be carried in the air. Such mass migrations lead to the “angel hair” phenomenon, which can cover many square miles with the silky webs.

Southern Tablelands was generally spiderweb free by morning because of cold overnight temperatures. Spiders can travel great distances with the ballooning method and have been observed more than 1.8 miles above the ground.

Ramadi Falls, ISIS Now Eyes Baghdad In Route Of Iraqi Government Forces

Entertainment News

Despite having relatively advanced U.S. weaponry, Iraqi security forces attempting to defend the key city of Ramadi were routed in heavy fighting all day Sunday. It is worst defeat for Iraq’s central government since ISIS militants stormed the country last June.

Events on Sunday played out similar to last year’s military debacle; supposedly elite units abandoned their U.S.-made weaponry to Islamic State fighters and then promptly fled the area.

The so-called ‘elite’ unit’s cowardice left several hundred soldiers surrounded in what is sure to be a massacre.

Security sources, who for obvious reasons wanted to remain anonymous, described the fight for control of Anbar province’s capital as over.

“Only God can save us,” said one officer via phone from inside the Anbar operations center, where officers had been managing the battle.

The officer described a scene in which several hundred policemen and soldiers were surrounded inside the command center, which was repeatedly struck by suicide bombers and heavy artillery fire while the Islamist militants cut off their last routes of escape.

Hours later ISIS social media accounts proclaimed victory and confirmed that the operations center had been overrun. After the ISIS reports efforts to reach sources inside the facility were not successful.

Ramadi was attacked late Thursday evening and was mostly in the control of militants by Saturday. Residents and soliders were in the process of fleeing the city and had abandoned dozens of U.S.-supplied armored vehicles, as well as artillery, heavy machine guns and other military gear as they fled mostly on foot.

“Ramadi has fallen to Daash,” said one Iraqi officer. “There were many suicide bombers and many soldiers and officers are dead.”

ISIS Assault Forces U.S. To Speed Weapons Shipments To Iraq

Entertainment News

The White House announced Friday that the U.S. military is “expediting” weapons shipments to Iraq in light of the ISIS assault on the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which occurred late last week.

Vice President Joe Biden informed Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi about the faster shipments in a telephone call on Friday.

The news comes after a flurry of new airstrikes against ISIS, also known as ISIL, as Iraqi troops desperately try to hold Ramadi, the capital of the strategically important Anbar province.

On Friday, the terror group captured the provincial government building and the city’s police headquarters as well as the Ramadi Great Mosque. The city is located in the middle of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland, just 70 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. weapons shipments will include AT-4 shoulder-held rockets as well as ammunition and other supplies.

“The vice president assured the prime minister of continued and expedited U.S. security assistance to confront ISIL,” the White House statement said. “Both leaders agreed on the importance and urgency of mobilizing tribal fighters working in coordination with Iraqi security forces to counter ISIL and to ensure unity of effort among all of Iraq’s communities.”

The situation in Ramadi has deteriorated quickly over the last weeks, with senior U.S. officials giving Iraqi forces just a 50/50 chance of maintaining control of the city. Eight new airstrikes were launched against ISIS targets in Ramadi since 7 p.m. local time on Friday, as the coalition ramps up its efforts to maintain control of the region.

The ISIS push began Thursday with armored bulldozers and at least 10 suicide bombings to burst through gates and blast through walls, according to a security source who has since left the city. Dozens of militants spilled into the city center in what the U.S. military called a “complex attack.”

Thousands In Guam Left Without Power And Water After Typhoon Dolphin

News

Guam was hit by a powerful typhoon over the weekend which destroyed homes, knocked down trees and left thousands without power or water by early Sunday morning.

Government utility crews worked through the night and into the morning so that 80% of residents’ power is back up, according to Joint Information Center spokeswoman Jenna Gaminde.

Over 10,000 homes were back online Sunday morning, she said, adding that crews will be moving through the villages throughout tonight to restore individual homes.

Residents were being asked to conserve water, as the Guam Waterworks Authority (GWA) worked to repair damaged lines and reconnect residents in order to prevent the spread of disease which accompanies such disasters if water is not immediately reconnected.

Hundreds remained in island storm shelters as the crews worked through the night to fix the damaged utilities system.

Over 3,300 GWA subscribers experienced water outages and 40 percent of Guam Power Authority customers experienced power outages that lasted through yesterday, according to GPA and GWA spokeswoman Heidi Ballendorf.

While GWA had installed backup generators prior to the storm making landfall more than five of the emergency generators experienced malfunctions, which left about 8.2 percent of the agency’s 41,000 customers without water.

FDA To Lift Blood Donation Ban On Gay And Bisexual Men

Health & Wellness

In response to a record shortage of blood donations and improved blood testing procedures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have proposed lifting the ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.

Every year there are 15.7 million blood donations while the risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion sits at just 1 in 2 million.

The ban was enacted in 1983 during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, banning all men who have had sex with other men since 1977 from donating blood.

In December 2014 the agency proposed lifting the man, so long as the men donating the blood have not had sex with another man in the past 12 months.

On Friday the FDA issued a draft guidance recommending the change, which would bring the U.S. in line with blood donation regulations for gay and bisexual men in the UK, Australia, Sweden and Argentina, and many other developed countries.

Men who have tested positive for HIV, engaged in commercial sex work or non-prescription injection drug use would still remain indefinitely banned from blood donation.

There is a major need for blood donations, with am American needing a blood transfusion every 2 seconds across the country. The American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) and America’s Blood Centers all welcomed the FDA’s draft guidelines.

“The top priorities of the blood banking community are the safety of our volunteer blood donors and the ultimate recipients of blood,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “This change in policy would align the donor deferral period for men who have sex with men with criteria for other activities that may pose a similar risk of transfusion-transmissible infections.”

Gay rights activists, who have campaigned for changes in blood donation regulations for many years, believe these new guidelines are still not acceptable.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights group in America, said that while the new policy is a “step in the right direction,” he believes it “falls far short” as it continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men.

Yet such changes may be slower than prevailing social attitudes because medical science tends to lag behind popular opinion or knowledge. Understanding new diseases, their risk factors and then developing effective mitigation strategies can take decades, while changes to regulations can take years.

Penn State Victim Of Sophisticated Chinese Cyber Attack

News

Penn State University is the latest U.S. institution to be attacked by Chinese government hackers as its school of engineering went offline Friday after falling victim to a malware attack.

The school was alerted to the problem by the FBI and upon auditing its systems found that PCs on the network of its College of Engineering were infected with malware that was harvesting research data and personal information.

The outage is expected to last for several days after the college announced it needed to take the entire network down for days in order to disinfect its computers. Classes are continuing as normal.

“In a coordinated and deliberate response by Penn State, the College of Engineering’s computer network has been disconnected from the Internet and a large-scale operation to securely recover all systems is underway,” the school said in a statement.

“Contingency plans are in place to allow engineering faculty, staff and students to continue in as much of their work as possible while significant steps are taken to upgrade affected computer hardware and fortify the network against future attack.”

The shutdown was made following a six-month investigation by both the school and the FBI. The school says that after being notified in November, it began to investigate its networks to find the source of the breach.

After months of research, two persistent malware infections were found within the school of engineering’s network. It was found have been in place as far back as September 2012.

Penn State said that over 10,000 student records, including Social Security numbers, were compromised in the attack. Other research data may have been stolen as well.

“While investigators have found that only a small number of these accounts have been used by the attackers to access the network, as a precaution and beginning immediately, all College of Engineering faculty and staff at University Park, as well as students at all Penn State campuses who recently have taken at least one engineering course, will be required to choose new passwords for their Penn State access accounts,” the school said.

Amtrak Installs New Speed Controls At Site Of Deadly Crash

News

As news that Amtrak spent the weekend installing new speed controls on the section of track where one of its passenger trains derailed near Philadelphia, questions began to emerge about why, exactly, the safety equipment wasn’t installed in the first place?

Such systems have been around for years and installed many other places on the busy commuter trains. Known as Automatic Train Control (ATC), these systems work to slow speeding trains regardless of driver input using wireless technology. The federal railroad administration has now mandated these to be installed near the site of the crash.

As investigators pondered this question, other examiners were looking into reports that the New York-bound train was hit by an unknown object shortly before the fatal crash. This object-strike was the third such impact reported that day, on the third separate train.

The railroad administration also has forced Amtrak to assess the risk of all curves on the corridor where the approach speed is significantly higher than curve speed, the condition under which more crashes are likely to occur. The administration is looking to have more signs posted in such conditions and also reduce approach speeds to reduce the likelihood of a crash.

The acting administrator of the FRA, Sarah Feinberg, said Amtrak is looking to resume Northeast Corridor service at full capacity on Monday or Tuesday, so long as the mandated measures can be fully implemented by that time.

Russia Loses Second Rocket In A Month

Entertainment News

Russia lost its second rocket of the month when a technical problem sent part of a rocket and its satellite payload, raining down onto southeastern Siberia, according to Russian state media.

Roscosmos is a large launcher of commercial satellites and other payloads for the private sector, the vast majority of which complete their missions successfully.

The Proton-M, a reliable and well-used rocket, was feared lost after launch, the TASS news agency reported. This was due to an “emergency situation” occurring during the boost phase, Roscosmos said.

“Preliminary data indicate that the third stage and the Mexican satellite may fall in the Chita region. “The emergencies ministry has been notified,” the space agency said.

Roscosmos had announced the rocket would be carrying a communications satellite for the Mexican government.

ISIS Commander Killed In Special Ops Raid

Entertainment News

A senior ISIS commander was killed by U.S. Special Operations forces during a raid in eastern Syria overnight Friday to Saturday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter confirmed on Saturday. The raid was intended to capture him.

Abu Sayyaf, the ISIS commander, resisted capture and was killed in the raid in al-Amr.

Carter ordered the raid at the direction of President Obama. All U.S. troops involved in the operation returned home safely.

“Abu Sayyaf was involved in ISIL’s military operations and helped direct the terrorist organization’s illicit oil, gas, and financial operations as well,” he said.

His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured and is now in military detention in Iraq, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan confirmed in a statement.

Sayyaf “played an important role in ISIL’s terrorist activities, and may have been complicit in what appears to have been the enslavement of a young Yezidi woman rescued last night,” Carter said.

Umm Sayyaf has been involved in human trafficking and hostage taking.

About a dozen ISIS fighters were killed in the firefight, according to sources.

FCC Poised To Hit Back Hard If Comcast Sticks To Data Caps

News

A well-placed source in Washington, D.C. told advocacy group Stop the Cap that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is prepared to take a detailed look at the issue of Internet data caps and usage-based billing if a major cable operators impose usage allowances on broadband internet access.

Comcast introduced a usage cap market trial in Nashville, Tenn. in 2012 but then expanded it to include Huntsville and Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson, Mississippi; Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee; Charleston, South Carolina; and Tucson, Arizona.

In short, its pushing it out nationwide.

“Two and a half-years is exceptionally long for a ‘market trial,’ and we expected Comcast would avoid creating an issue for regulators by drawing attention to the data cap issue during its attempted merger with Time Warner Cable,” said the well placed source. “Now that the merger is off, there is growing expectation Comcast will make a decision about its ‘data usage plans’ soon.”

Comcast is limiting residential customers to 300GB of usage per month, after which an overage fee of $10 per 50GB applies. Comcast is using the usage-based billing to force customers to upgrade to the most expensive plans, which do not have such limits. That move is seen by abusive and predatory by the FCC.

Comcast customers in market test cities have been universally unhappy with the usage caps, after being confronted with inaccurate usage measurement tools or “bill shock” after claiming to find surprise charges on their cable bill.

One federal employee incurred $200 in overage fees on his April Comcast bill. Yet was only spending $70 a month on broadcast basic cable television and Comcast Internet service.

As a cord-cutter, he could instead rely on one of several alternative online video providers like Netflix or Hulu, but watching these services subjected him to hundreds of dollars in extra fees.

This is likely the primary aim of the billing scheme – force customers to pay the same price as internet plus TV, at a time when users are increasingly cancelling their TV service.

Air Force Readies Next Launch For Mystery Space Plane

News

The Air Force will launch its mysterious orbital space drone for yet another mission on On May 20th, although the precise details of the mission are still secret.

The X-37B space plane, launched from Cape Canaveral, will head into low earth orbit aboard an Atlas V rocket for an undisclosed amount of times. While in space, the X-37B will carry out two public missions, in addition to top secret work. The missions will be for the Air Force and NASA.

The drone will publicly test a “new super-efficient propulsion system” for the Air Force known as a Hall thruster. It will also carry samples of various materials for NASA in order to study how well they respond to conditions in space.

The Hall thruster is a cutting edge electronic propulsion system which creates thrust by ionizing Xenon gas.

This system generates less power than a typical rocket but is significantly smaller and has much better fuel economy than a conventional rocket engine. This allows the X-37B to carry out more advanced maneuvers in space compared to other orbital vehicles.

Such maneuvers could be useful to, say, take out an enemy satellite. Or, given the X-37B has a cargo bay, capture an enemy satellite and return it to earth.

Previous missions of the space plane, while classified, have involved radical orbit changes which seem to have no other purpose other than to capture or destroy enemy satellites. China, as we covered earlier this week, is also working on these type of systems. It’s logical to conclude that the U.S. Air Force is doing the same.

The next launch for the X-37B will be the space craft’s fourth trip into space. All previous missions have been classified.

North Korea Publicly Executes Defense Minister With Anti-Aircraft Gun

Entertainment News

According to reports from South Korea, North Korea has publicly executed the country’s defense minister for treason.

Hyon Yong Chol was apparently killed by an anti-aircraft gun at a Pyongyang military school in front of hundreds of people. The report came from the South Korean Intelligence Agency and was delivered to members of the government in a private hearing.

The reason for Hyon’s execution is that he expressed discontent with dictator Kim Jong Un, and failed to follow his orders on several occasions, according to the chairman of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee and a lawmaker who attended the briefing.

The precise timing of Hyon’s execution is unclear but reports suggest he was killed “around April 30.” The last mention of him in North Korean state media was on Wednesday, April 29.

South Korean lawmaker Kim Gwang-lim said that Hyon was executed without trial within two to three days of being arrested.

The spectacular fall from grace is evident by the fact Hyon led a North Korean delegation to Moscow for a seminar on global security just last month.

His quick demise shows just how difficult it is to negotiate with the hermit kingdom – those who make deals may not be around long enough to see them through.

Kim himself had been scheduled to go mark Victory Day commemorations in Russia on May 9.The face Russian officials announced that he had pulled out to attend to “domestic issues” at home correlates with the minister’s execution.

While no single incident is said to have provoked Hyon’s arrest and execution, although along with general neglect of duty, Hyon was seen sleeping during a meeting organized by Kim Jong Un.

“Our government views that the purge is promoting the solidification of the only monolithic leadership of Kim Jong Un by creating atmosphere of fear,” said Lim Byeong-cheol, a South Korean official.

The United States confirmed earlier this week that the regime’s alleged test of s submarine launched missile was in fact a lie. Pentagon intelligence shows that North Korea is in fact at least five year away from such a successful test.

U.S. Considering Sending Surveillance Aircraft To South China Sea

Entertainment News

China’s belligerence in the South China Sea may have ramifications for the communist state, it was reported early Wednesday.

Officials reported to the press that the U.S. is considering deploying aircraft and ships to contest Chinese claims it has made regarding disputed islands in the South China Sea.

China’s neighbors have loudly objected to the building of military bases on disputed territory. China, as it tend to do in diplomacy, has outright lied and said it is not doing any building, despite satellite images to the contrary.

The options being considered are to fly surveillance aircraft or sail Navy ships nearby. Such a move would put the U.S. directly into a contentious territorial contest in East Asia, which, until now, the U.S. has avoided taking sides in.

China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam are all disputing sovereignty of several island chains and nearby waters.

Deadly Amtrak Derailment Kills At Least 6, Injures over 150

News

An Amtrak from Washington to New York derailed in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The crash tore cars apart, sent seven cars off the track and completely destoryed the train’s locomotive.

“We have confirmed an engine and all seven cars derailed,” a U.S. Department of Transportation representative said on Wednesday.

The engine and two cars were left standing upright, three cars were flipped on their sides, and one was nearly flipped over on its roof. A seventh is “leaning hard,” they said.

The train was travelling on Washing to Boston route, known as the northeast corridor, the busiest passenger line in the country. At the time of the crash the train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members.

Six people have been confirmed killed and over 150 injured.

The cause is currently under investigation.

“We do not know what happened here. We do not know why it happened,” the USDOT said, through a spokesman.. There was no indication the derailment was a result of an impact with another train, he said.

So far, there’s nothing to indicate the incident was an act of terrorism.

The general area of the crash is known as Frankford Junction. It was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest train accidents when The Congressional Limited crashed, killing 79 people, in 1943.

Google Leaves Backdoor In Hangouts For Easy Warantless Wiretapping

News

Google, a known NSA collaborator, has done its very best to muddy the waters about its cooperation with the unconstitutional spy programs. While on one hand allowing NSA wiretapping of its servers on the other its complained loudly and vocally about how NSA spying hurts its overseas business. To help placate users, it releases pretty reports showing which agencies have asked for what, ignoring that most requests come under FISA letters and therefore cannot be disclosed to anyone.

The company has again been caught talking out of both sides of its mouth, with revelations surfacing that while it claims its Hangouts chat product is secure, thanks to encryption, this is not done ‘end to end’.

Google has, in other words, left a backdoor so that the company, law enforcement and the NSA can all eavesdrop at will on the popular chat product.

Google has admitted during a Reddit Ask Me Anything post that while it does encrypt Hangouts conversations, it does not use end-to-end encryption, like Apple’s FaceTime, which cannot be tapped even by the company offering the service.

“A spokesperson confirmed that Hangouts doesn’t use end-to-end encryption. That makes it technically possible for Google to wiretap conversations at the request of law enforcement agents, even when you turn on the “off the record” feature, which actually only prevents the chat conversations from appearing in your history—it doesn’t provide extra encryption or security.” the company told blog Motherboard.

Google’s Transparency Report shows that the company received 26 wiretap requests from the US government in the 18 months running from the beginning of 2013 to the middle of last year. The company did not identify how many of these, if any, were for Hangouts.

Yet the number is suspiciously low, as most wiretap requests these days come in the form of FISA letters, which require the company to undergo a vow of silence regarding the order. The company is not permitted to say it received a request, skewing the data it releases.

FISA letters are not court approved and are instead issued by a shadowy ‘court’ of which few details are known.

Iowa Men Caught Smuggling Large Shipment Of Weapons To Syria

News

A shocking discovery in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, shows that the reaches of the middle east conflict extend to main street America. Packages from a charity clothing drive, organized in support for Syria and Lebanon, contained boxes of brand new guns and ammunition among the clothing, according to federal court documents filed Tuesday.

Authorities seized more than 152 firearms in two shipments to Lebanon. It is unknown if more firearms were shipped and not discovered by the investigation.

Four individuals with connections to middle east were charged in the complaint: Ali Herz, 50; his brother, Bassem Herz, 29; his son, Adam Herz, 22; and Sarah Zaeiter, 24, the spouse of Bassem Herz.

The four have been taken into custody and are awaiting a hearing.

The conspiracy that came to light last year when an unnamed firearms dealer in Eastern Iowa became suspicious and notified authorities. An investigation led authorities to the four individuals and two businesses which they ran.

Early Tuesday morning local and federal law enforcement officials conducted several raids including at Midamar and Pizza Daddy, the two businesses owned by the family.

“Homeland Security Investigations is conducting a joint federal/state/local law enforcement operation in various locations around Cedar Rapids today,” Shawn Neudauer, public information officer for ICE and Homeland Security, said in a statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation there is nothing further that is publicly available at this time. However, there should be additional information available via the U.S. Attorney’s Office — Northern District of Iowa (Cedar Rapids) later today.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, which declined to comment.

ITT Educational Services Latest Education Compay To Hit Rocks, Charged By SEC

Finance

The federal government continues its wide ranging crackdown on low quality for-profit colleges, as the SEC today announced fraud charges against ITT Educational Services Inc., its chief executive officer Kevin Modany, and its chief financial officer Daniel Fitzpatrick.

The announcement was made just hours after Art Institute announced it was closing 15 colleges across the country and weeks after former high flyer Corinthian Colleges filed for bankruptcy, closing all its campuses.

The SEC alleges that the national operator of for-profit colleges and the two executives fraudulently concealed from ITT’s investors the poor performance and looming financial impact of two student loan programs that ITT financially guaranteed.

ITT formed both of these student loan programs, known as the “PEAKS” and “CUSO” programs, to provide off-balance sheet loans for ITT’s students following the collapse of the private student loan market. To induce others to finance these risky loans, ITT provided a guarantee that limited any risk of loss from the student loan pools.

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, the underlying loan pools had performed so abysmally by 2012 that ITT’s guarantee obligations were triggered and began to balloon. Rather than disclosing to its investors that it projected paying hundreds of millions of dollars on its guarantees, ITT and its management took a variety of actions to create the appearance that ITT’s exposure to these programs was much more limited. Over the course of 2014 as ITT began to disclose the consequences of its practices and the magnitude of payments that ITT would need to make on the guarantees, ITT’s stock price declined dramatically, falling by approximately two-thirds.

The charges show that for-profit education companies were scamming both students and investors. Students received low quality education at sky-high prices while having few employment prospects. Loans to the students were then sold onto investors who were unaware of the true credit quality of the loans.

“Our complaint alleges that ITT’s senior-most executives made numerous material misstatements and omissions in its disclosures to cover up the subpar performance of student loans programs that ITT created and guaranteed,” said Andrew J. Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Modany and Fitzpatrick should have been responsible stewards for investors but instead, according to our complaint, they engineered a campaign of deception and half-truths that left ITT’s auditors and investors in the dark concerning the company’s mushrooming obligations.”

Third Bangladeshi Blogger Hacked To Death By Masked Islamic Extremists

Entertainment News

Masked men with machetes hacked to death a prominent blogger and author Tuesday, near his home in northeastern Bangladesh, police said.

This marks the third fatal attack by masked men on authors this year in the country.

Ananta Bijoy Das died immediately after being attacked in the city of Sylhet. He was on his way to work at a bank, said Rahmat Ullah, police commissioner in Sylhet.

Ullah said the blogger was attacked by at least four masked men. “We don’t have details, we are looking into it,” he said.

While it was not immediately clear why Das was targeted, Islamic extremists are likely responsible. He was reportedly close to Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-American blogger and writer who was executed in February by Islamist extremists.

Das wrote for Roy’s popular blog Mukto-mona, or Free Mind, which featured articles on scientific reasoning and religious extremism. Das also edited a science magazine and wrote several books which are frowned upon by extreme Islamists.

Roy wrote strongly against religious fundamentalism and was attacked along with his wife on the streets of Dhaka, the capital, when he returned from the United States. His wife survived the attack although she was severely injured.

Another blogger, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu, died in March after also being attacked by Islamic radicals.

As Alcohol Consumption Declines Dangerous Binge Drinking Rises

Health & Wellness

While alcohol consumption in wealthy, developed countries has declined globally over the past two decades its given rise to dangerous binge drinking among the young, according to a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The 34-nation OECD advises governments on policies for economic growth.

The organization found that average annual alcohol consumption in its member countries fell 2.5 percent over the past 20 years, to 9.1 litres of pure alcohol per person.

But the overall trend hides a dangerous increase in hazardous drinking by young people as measured by both the amount and the rate that alcohol is consumed.

Teens tend to be drinking less often, but in higher volume and pace than their historical peers, in a phenomena known as ‘bing drinking’. So while alcohol use is down on the whole, its up in a particular demographic.

Consuming alcohol now accounts for a higher proportion of deaths worldwide than HIV/AIDS, violence and tuberculosis combined, according to the report, entitled “Tackling Harmful Alcohol Use.”

Wall Street Already Busy Rewriting History For 2016 Election

Finance

Understandably top executives from the biggest U.S. banks are concerned about anti-Wall Street rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail.

The banks have, after all, been running sophisticated criminal enterprises that have victimized hardworking Americans in varies schemes over the last 15 years. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Barclays and more have all pleaded guilty to numerous criminal offenses in the last year alone.

The size of the fines is in the 10s of billions yet nobody has been held criminally accountable for the highly predatory actions of the banks.

Most Americans go to jail for stealing a few hundred dollars and yet banks steal billions, get fined only millions and then are free to try again.

And if their scheme backfire, as they did in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, main street America has to bail them out and pay the lavish banker bonuses.

So understandably, people are upset.

But the large criminal banks are undeterred. Senior executives from seven of the biggest U.S. banks gathered or dialed into a March 31st conference on the 51st floor of the Bank of America Tower in New York to discuss how the firms can counteract statements about large banks, according to secret emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The effort underscores the degree to which Wall Street banks will go to maintain their criminal rackets. With deep pockets and loads of political influence, the banks are more than capable of re-writing history. And that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.

Gathering of top firm executives was organized by John Rogers, of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and James Mahoney, Bank of America Corp.’s head of corporate communications. Both banks are among the leaders of the criminal banking syndicates and have recently been subjected to tighter regulation in an effort to reduce their riskiness and limit losses to taxpayers in the event of another financial crisis.

It is unclear if the banks will continue to meet on the issue but further discussions are likely to take place, as the banks seek to aggressively fight regulation and cover up their dirty deeds.

Australia Denies Medical Coverage To Those Who Refuse Vaccines

Health & Wellness

Australia’s hardliner conservative government has instituted a “no jab, no pay” policy, which will stop families of unvaccinated children from accessing family and child care benefits. The government estimates it will save more than $500 million from the measure.

The move, designed to punish parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, will affect at least 10,000 families per year. It is estimated to save $142 million per year, totaling $508 million over the next four years. Some doubt the estimates as if parents are cut off from other, vital, services they may just vaccinate their children, eliminating any financial benefit to the government.

At the same time as the program is instituted the government will spend $26 million during that time on programs to encourage immunization, including improved vaccine registers covering all school-based vaccinations, incentives to doctors who target non-immunized children, and running an information campaign to raise public awareness of the health risks.

The “no jab, no pay” policy has faced opposition from immunization experts, who say it’s more effective to spend money on programs that target families that want to be immunized, but face barriers such as poverty or have missed vaccines because they were born abroad.

According to University of Sydney professor Julie Leask has said only about 2 per cent of families are registered as conscientious objectors to vaccination, and about half of those aren’t hardened opponents that could be easily swayed.

Yet about 4 or 5 per cent of parents have not had their children immunized because of difficulty accessing the program.

Yet slogans like “no jab, no pay” and the idea of punishing objectors resonate with the governing party’s conservative voter base, so the policy goes for the votes rather than solving the underlying health issues.

The strategy is familiar to many citizens around the globe who see policies come into force that do not represent logic, instead seeking to win votes and appeal to party ideologies rather than solve problems.

Connecticut Serial Killer Positively Identified

News

The killing of at least seven people, whose bodies were buried behind a New Britain, Connecticut, shopping center has led multiple law enforcement sources to identify William Devin Howell as the serial killer responsible.

The 45-year-old is currently incarcerated at a Connecticut prison on separate manslaughter charges.

Howell’s is spending 15-years at the Garner Correctional Institution stemming from the homicide of Nilsa Arizmendi, a 33-year-old Wethersfield resident who vanished in 2003. Her body was never found.

Howell was put on trial for her murder but pleaded to the lesser charge of manslaughter, according to the state Division of Criminal Justice.

Howell was arrested in North Carolina in 2004 and his van was seized as evidence. Arizmendi was last seen entering his van before she disappeared. Authorities found Arizmendi’s blood in the van, as well as the blood of an unidentified person. They also found video that shows two other women. Their identities and fates remain unknown.

Howell was working odd jobs in Connecticut at the time of Arizmendi’s disappearance.

Investigators have now recovered the bodies of at least seven people from a wooded area behind the shopping plaza at 593 Hartford Road, where a local hunter found the first set of remains in 2007.

Police have declined to officially name the suspected serial killer, citing an ongoing investigation, but have said that the person they are looking at is no longer a threat to the community. Multiple sources have leaked William Devin Howell’s name to the press.

Four of the seven victims have so far been identified – all as women who vanished in 2003.