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TSA Warns Of Imminent ISIS Attack

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The FBI is investigating a possible ISIS terror attack on the basis of intercepted chatter and intelligence information, Americans.org has learned.

The news was closely followed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issuing a classified warning that ISIS is planning an attack on U.S. soil.

The classified memo was sent out Friday afternoon by TSA’s Transportation Security Operations Center. A source, who reviewed the classified intelligence warning described the threat as very general but with no specifics about location or type of attack — just the timing.

The main theme of the warning, according to a source, is that “ISIS plans an attack on U.S. soil.”

In response to alert, the TSA deployed its recently formed Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams, or VIPR for short, to various locations around the country. The VIPR teams have expanded in recent years, moving beyond airports to train stations and other busy transportation sites that make good targets for terrorists.

The warning is significant as it demonstrates that the U.S. intelligence community is now taking seriously the potential of ISIS to attack targets on U.S. soil, something whihc the group has not yet done. ISIS has made broad threats against the United States in the past, but up to now, ISIS attacks on U.S. targets have been limited to Americans in Iraq and Syria.

A press contact for the National Security Council referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. TSA officials could also not be reached for comment.

Russian Propaganda Offensive Draws U.S. Response

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Russian Propaganda Offensive Draws U.S. Response

Russia’s massive and increasingly complex sprawling propaganda network didn’t persuade the world that Ukraine is run by Nazis, that Crimea was annexed in a “popular uprising” or that Germany is a failed state but the barrage of misinformation has convinced American politicians that the propaganda network is a significant threat to U.S. security in Europe.

Leading members of Congress are pushing for the U.S. to revive its cold war era propaganda machine in eastern Europe to counter the rapidly multiplying Russian media barrage.

TV channels, news websites, internet trolls and thinktanks pushing the Kremlin line are seemingly everywhere. “Russia has deployed an information army inside television, radio and newspapers throughout Europe,” congressman Ed Royce, chairman of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, told a senate hearing on Russian propaganda. “Russia’s propaganda machine is in overdrive, working to subvert democratic stability and foment violence.”

Senator Royce has warned that the Russian propaganda “may be more dangerous than any military, because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining US security interests in Europe”.

Congressman Eliot Engel said the situation needed “a robust response from us”. Reports have drifted in that the state department has become so alarmed by the rise in Russian media that it appealed to major media companies, including Sony Pictures, for help in combating the Kremlin’s “skewed version of reality”.

But, politicians being politicians, there division over a push by Royce and others in Congress for Voice of America to play a more overtly propagandist role.

In western countries the Kremlin’s most visible mouthpiece is RT television, formerly known as Russia Today. While the station’s motto is “question more” – the broadcaster works to discredit critics of the Russian government and justify Moscow’s actions in ways that may be familiar to viewers of Fox News.

“Russian propaganda is sometimes so crazy, it says such impossible things, it doesn’t have the effect of making people believe them but it breaks down people’s defences,” said Kadri Liik, a Russia and eastern Europe expert on the European Council on Foreign Relations in London. “It’s not just lies, in the way of Soviet propaganda. It’s more sophisticated. A kind of violence against the mind.”

Research Shows Sleep Helps You Remember New Information

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Turns out there may be a reason for the old motherly advice to make sure you get eight hours of sleep. According to new research getting those hours may be a vital component of our natural learning process.

Our ability to extract general principles from a small number of examples is crucial to language and literacy. In teaching children how to read, for example, teachers introduce sets of words like chop, chin, chest, church, and chess to convey information about how to pronounce specific letters.

This general knowledge can then be applied to new words like chick, as while its new it fits a pattern we’ve seen before and so we can reliably pronounce the new work. In the later years of primary school, children develop general knowledge about how affixes work.

Through exposure to relevant sets of words like unknown, uncertain, unhappy, children become able to use affixes like -un in new contexts.

This process is vital to our ability to build knowledge.

Newly published research in the journal Cognitive Psychology investigated the brain processes responsible for acquiring this type of general knowledge.

The researchers trained adults on a made up language, in which groups of individual words were bound together by a rule that was not disclosed to participants. For example, study participants learned:

a clinglomb is a small tool used by cat burglars to cling to skyscrapers

a dunklomb is the gadget used by royalty to dunk cookies into tea

a skimlomb is a professional tool which is used to skim the cream off the milk

a weighlomb is the official scale used to weigh boxers before a fight

The team wasn’t looking to see if participants learn the individual words, but whether they could uncover the rule — in the above case, the function of — lomb.

We tested this by examining people’s understanding of untrained words like teachlomb when they were presented in sentences.

The remarkable power of sleep

The team’s key finding was that participants could apply their understanding of the rule (that — lomb means some kind of tool) to untrained words such as ‘teachlomb’.

The results were that participants were only able to do this if they were tested some days after training. Participants showed no ability immediately to figure out the patterns directly after training.

As they tested various hypothesis about why this is the case the team uncovered that people only learned the rule if they inserted a period of overnight sleep between training on the rule-based examples.

The findings fit neatly into dual-mechanism theories of memory. These theories argue that rapid learning of individual episodes is followed by a much slower process of integrating that knowledge into long-term memory.

Basically, these processes rely on different brain structures optimized for fast and slow learning.

Critically, these theories and the new research suggest that sleep is a necessary component of the second, slower process.

Their findings support existing research in adults and children that has shown that the brain continues to process new memories during sleep, making them stronger, more resistant to interference and better integrated with existing knowledge.

This research has a clear message for the teaching of language and literacy. It suggests that if teachers want to convey some general linguistic principal, then they must structure the information in a way that encourages learning.

If a teacher is trying to demonstrate use of the suffix — ing, for example, then presenting a child with a spelling list including the words standing, jumping, swimming, kicking, dancing, talking, nothing would be unlikely to facilitate learning.

In short, the work adds to a growing body of research that shows overnight sleep is critical to aspects of language learning. It suggests that key aspects of learning happen long after classroom instruction — and reinforces the importance of proper sleep behavior in children.

Intuit Facing Massive Class Action Suit Over TurboTax Security

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Intuit, creator of popular tax-filing software TurboTax, is facing a devastating class action lawsuit over rampant fraud and identity theft against people who used its TurboTax software to file their tax returns. The fraud also affected people who did not use the software but had refunds filed by fraudsters using the popular tax package.

The reports highlight two growing trends: theft of user data and companies being held to account for mishandling such data.

Intuit was notified by tax authorities from several states when they detected a large number of suspicious filings from TurboTax users This caused the company to halt state filing and then federal filings for a few days. The situation triggered an investigation by the FTC and DOJ.

The company is now being sued by high profile lawyers representing Christine Diaz and Michelle Fugatt, two victims of identity theft caused by hacks against the tax software compny.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs include Richard McCune of McCuneWright in Redlands, California; Michael Sobol of Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein in San Francisco; and John Yanchunis of Morgan & Morgan in Florida.

The lawsuit, which was filed early last week in the Northern District Court of California, alleges that due to lax security protection in TurboTax identity thieves were able to fraudulently file returns and collect unauthorized refunds in the victims’ names.

The complaint details that, “Rather than protecting customers’ personal and financial information by implementing stricter security measures, TurboTax has instead knowingly facilitated identity theft tax refund fraud by allowing cybercriminals easy access to its customers’ most private information.”

The filing goes on to state that Intuit should be held responsible for protecting sensitive customer data, especially in light of the fact that the TurboTax website promises that “all TurboTax platforms offer a secure, easy-to-use experience.”

The lawyers claim that despite the promise of a secure platform, TurboTax security was poor until it was too late.

The lawyers representing the pair are looking to establish two class actions suits; one that would represent customers like Diaz who had personal data stolen and the other for non-customers like Fugatt who were victims of fraudulent returns filed in their name through TurboTax.

Former Attorney General Lied To Congress About NSA Spying

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Former Attorney General Lied To Congress About NSA Spying

Startling revelations about U.S. domestic spying programs were revealed in newly declassified documents on Saturday, Americans.org has learned.

According to the documents former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress about the dispute between George W. Bush’s White House and the Justice Department over the legality of the National Security Agency’s warrantless spying program.

The documents were released Saturday from the inspectors general of the Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, and the National Security Agency and concerned their investigations of the surveillance programs initiated by then-President Bush after the Sept. 11th, terrorist attacks.

They show that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies had sharply divided views on Bush’s emergency order authorizing the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone and Internet data on all American citizens.

While the report, which was dated July 10, 2009, concerned programs that ran under Bush’s emergency authorizations from 2001 to 2007 these program continue and have been expanded in recent years. The level of surveillance conducted without warrants on the U.S. population currently sits at all-time highs.

The unprecedented surveillance has been documented by press accounts and the leak of classified materials in 2013 by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The Snowden revelations exposed the immense scope of our government’s intelligence gathering and highlighted the extent to which the programs undermine crucial civil-liberties protections, especially Fourth Amendment defenses against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Surveillance records of all U.S. citizens are included in the data sweeps.

The report released Saturday is most notable due to the conclusion that the Bush administration misled Congress about the major dispute within the government over the legality of the spying programs.

The inspectors general wrote that Gonzales offered patently inaccurate information when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006 and July 2007, where he stated that the program wasn’t the source of a disagreement between the White House and the Justice Department.

In actual fact several senior Justice Department officials were on the brink of resignation in March 2004 over a fight with the Bush administration about whether or not the programs were legal.

This culminated in a dramatic encounter at the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft that led Gonzales, then White House counsel, to sign the president’s expiring authorization for the spying program, instead of Ashcroft, who was recovering from surgery and refused. It is thought Ashcroft understood the programs to be illegal.

“This testimony created the misimpression that the dispute concerned activities entirely unrelated to the terrorist surveillance program, which was not accurate,” the report’s authors wrote.

In addition to highlighting the lies that were used to force the spying programs through, the report also shows that the legal basis for the unprecedented spying on Americans is highly questionable and probably non-existent.

Horse Meat Trafficking Busts Highlight Food Chain Tracking Issues

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Horse Meat Trafficking Busts Highlight Food Chain Tracking Issues

Police from seven European countries have arrested 26 people in a crackdown on a horse meat trafficking ring. The arrests come just two years after a tainted meat scandal rocked the European Union.

The arrests highlight worldwide issues with food sourcing and tracking. Even in America knowing where, precisely, your meat comes from is a difficult task with very few meat vendors having complete farm to table accountability in their supply chains.

The EU Department of Agriculture has confirmed that its department vets along with police took part in the investigations.

The EU’s judicial agency, Eurojust, said in a statement that the arrests “succeeded in stopping an organised criminal network involved in trade of illegal horse meat.”

The operation involved officers from France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Britain, the European Union agency said.

Eurojust did not specify where exactly the 26 suspects were arrested but the Dutch public prosecutor’s office said three were arrested in the Netherlands.

France, notoriously hawkish on food safety, had requested the trio’s extradition, the prosecutors added.

Media in Belgium said four of its citizens, including the alleged ringleader, were arrested in France.

Eurojust said the main suspect in the network, which is accused of introducing unfit for human consumption horse meat into the European food chain, was from Belgium.

The suspect, who was operating out of Belgium, had been under investigation since 2012, the officials added.

It is estimated that between 2010 and 2013 some 4,700 horses unfit for human consumption were slaughtered for the food trade, Eurojust said.

Police across europe searched dozens of commercial and private premises and more than 800 horse passports were seized along with medication, microchips and computer equipment.

The arrests are reminiscent of the scandal two years ago which were triggered by the discovery that horsemeat being passed off as beef in burgers and other meat products sold across Europe.

Meatballs, sausages and frozen burgers were recalled from supermarket shelves by the millions over the find.

Eurojust declined to say whether there was any connection between the current investigation and the 2013 horsemeat scandal.

Smuggling Via Drone Poses Problems For Prison Staff

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While not the chief worry of U.S. Department Of Corrections officials, smuggling contraband into prisons via drone is increasing in frequency according to new reports.

Corrections officials say that while not common, some would-be smugglers are experimenting with the method as an alternative to paying off officers, hiding contraband in laundry or throwing packages over fences.

Authorities have detected at least four drone smuggling attempts at corrections facilities in the United States in the past two years. In that period of time there were also at least four reported attempts internationally, including in Ireland, Britain, Australia and Canada.

In January of this year, guards found a drone with flashing lights on the ground inside a recreation yard at a prison in Bennettsville, South Carolina, according to investigative reports. The cargo was 55 grams of synthetic marijuana and a cellphone charger.

Corrections officials say they have no way of knowing how many attempts have been successful, but the warden in charge of the Lee Correctional Institute, Cecilia Reynolds, said that in recent weeks her officers found 17 phones in one inmate’s cell. She said she suspected that the phones continue to come in on unmanned aerial vehicles.

“We’ve got to do something about this — these cellphones are killing us,” she said.

Smartphones are desirable to prisoners because unlike pay phones at prisons, they are not recorded or monitored. The devices also allow them to watch pornography and communicate with fellow prisoners.

The phones are also critical for coordinating with smugglers using drones, because the prisoners need to know where to find the deliveries in the yard. Once a delivery is received the prisoners can then use the phones to electronically pay their suppliers.

While this may seem like an intractable problem, the solution is relatively simple: put a net over the prison yard. This approach was adopted in Montreal, Canada, after a daring escape in which a helicopter landed in the prison yard and picked up an inmate. The prison subsequently covered the yard in a mesh netting to avoid such tactics.

It’s certain that U.S. jails will do the same, but the timeline is uncertain. Given the relatively small problem and the limited budgets of corrections facilities it may be some time before the nation’s prisons implement this solution.

America’s Inactivity Level Highest In 8 Years

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Perhaps its time to get off the computer and go play outside according to a survey released this week by the Physical Activity Council, a national advocacy group for physical activity.

According to the results of their latest survey the number of Americans who were “totally sedentary” last year rose to its highest level since 2007.

These results, which looked at Americans age 6 and over, revealed Roughly 83 million Americans or about 28% of the population, are “totally inactive”

This means they did not once participate in any of 104 specific physical activities the group tracks within the last calendar year, according to the annual survey.

“We feel confident, in a sad way, that this is the largest number we’ve ever seen,” said Tom Cove, chief executive of the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, which is a members of the council. Mr. Cove said the large number of idle Americans is the biggest he’s seen in his 24 years with the survey.

The number of totally sedentary Americans is up 18% since 2007, while the percentage of the total inactive population age 6 and over has grown by three percent over the same timeframe.

The survey is based on more than 10,700 individual and household interviews which were conducted during the first two months of 2015. The topic concerned their physical activity for just the prior year. The survey tracks involvement in a range of sports and fitness endeavors, from basketball, running, and soccer to other sports like yoga, bowling, and paintball.

The data is unique in that it includes responses from across the age spectrum – children over six to adults age 65+.

The results are somewhat surprising because the rising inactivity runs counter to increasing demand for athletic apparel and footwear. But this may because the sales are driven by the so-called “athleisure” trend which may not be as athletic as leisure focused. Evidence of this can be seen in sales of performance oriented running shoes, which fell 18% for the year ended April 11, while sales of more fashion oriented pairs rose 8% over the same period, according to market tracker SportsOneSource.

One of the biggest takeaways that the Physical Activity Council found is that the level of physical education at school has a direct impact on fitness levels throughout a person’s life.

The groups that make up the council are concerned that decreasing minutes for gym time in schools is raising levels of inactivity among adults.

The group is also concerned that the trend towards demanding and competitive team sports, even among young kids, is turning off some children, Mr. Cove said.

“There are way too many kids who leave sports at age 9, 10, 11, because they simply have to make a decision: am I going to be a travel soccer kid and devote my life to this, or are there other things that I want to do?” he said. Another factor the group cited for reduced activity levels in children is financial concerns.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released physical activity guidelines for Americans in 2008 that suggested children and adolescents should receive 60 minutes or more of physical activity daily, while adults should aim for 150 minutes per week.

“A great majority of schools across the country are not meeting those recommendations,” said Paula Kun, senior director of marketing and communications for SHAPE America, a not for profit group tht tracks physical education guidelines in public schools across the country. In many cases, she said, schools have decreased the amount of time students spend in physical education classes.

Is Milk Really Healthy For You?

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Is Milk Really Healthy For You?

Milk – it does the body good. Makes the bones strong and helps kids grow up to be big and tall. At least that’s what Hollywood wants us to think. Remember the famous Got Milk? commercials? They were directed by film mogul Michael Bay, most recently of Transformers fame, at the behest of the California Milk Processor Board. The commercials premiered in October 1993 and a year later, milk sales in California increased for the first time in more than a decade.

Over the course of its insane 21-year run, the Got Milk? ads would feature figures from David Beckham (“Goals by Beckham. Body by milk”), to Batman (milk’s “unique mix of nutrients can help athletes recover after exercise”) to Tyra Banks, whose print ad offers: “Girls, here’s today’s beauty tip: three glasses of milk a day gives you the calcium your growing bodies need. Tomorrow — what to do when you’re taller than your date.”

That last point in particular is a strong sticking point for Alissa Hamilton, author of the new book Got Milked? What you don’t know about dairy, the truth about calcium, and why you’ll thrive without milk.

Not the part where Tyra Banks isn’t exactly an authority to be handing out health advice, but that milk consumption is marketed as a requirement for children to grow up tall and strong.

Government-supported advertising campaigns like Got Milk?, and its previous iteration, “Milk: Does A Body Good,” and today’s “Milk Life,” have been so effective that people believe that milk is the best, if not only, source of calcium. Hamilton thoroughly attacks this claim in her new book.

Her book is a thorough analysis of government and industry efforts to encourage milk consumption and the author hopes to accomplish two goals: shoot down the notion that milk is in any way essential and to suggest food alternatives that are just as healthful (if not more so) than a serving of cow’s milk.

It’s a formidable task considering the central role of milk in the American diet.

But Hamilton has done this before. Her 2009 book, Squeezed, debunked the idea that store-bought orange juice is anything but cleverly marketed sugar water. The line of reasoning in both books is nearly identical: people have come to accept as fact what is actually marketing, and it’s high time we learned the difference.

“If Americans are calcium deficient,” Hamilton writes “it’s because advising Americans to obtain all their calcium from dairy isn’t working.” Put another way: our knowledge of milk is well past its best-before date.

How Foreign Money Is Influencing U.S. Politics

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Hot on the heels of revelations that Hillary Clinton failed to report tens of millions of dollars in politically related charity contributions the Federal Election Commission has declined to investigate foreign funding of a campaign to defeat a Los Angeles County ballot measure.

The measure was opposed by an international conglomerate, raising fears that foreign funds are flooding into U.S. elections.

The ballot measure in question required adult film stars to wear condoms while making movies.

While the initiative still passed, a California HIV-AIDS advocacy group filed a complaint charging that $327,000 in contributions made by two pornography distributors tied to Manwin International SARL, a global pornography and advertising firm, were in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act, which prohibits foreign nationals from donating to U.S. campaigns.

The FEC’s three Democratic commissioners, including Chairwoman Ann Ravel, voted to investigate the origination of the funds and assess whether or not to fine the California organization that opposed the ballot measure for accepting the funds.

However the FEC’s three Republican commissioners voted not to pursue an investigation, citing an arcane rule that the ban on foreign donations does not apply to local ballot initiatives.

These types of FEC deadlocks are a common occurrence and mean that no probe will ensue.

The issue, especially in light of Hillary Clinton receiving staggering amounts of foreign money, underscore the urgent need for campaign finance reform. Even small amounts of money can tip the scales in obscure American communities and give foreigners control over our democracy they should not have.

But it will take significant voter pressure to upend the status quo. Campaign finance reform is notoriously avoided by our elected officials as it effects their personal fortunes and legacies. But their unwillingness to revise the current system is now allowing non-American interests to set our policies and laws.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums Suspends Japan

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The world’s leading zoo organization announced it has lost patience with Japan’s continued use of dolphins from fisheries drives in Taiji prefecture and suspended the Japanese from its roster.

The country is the worst offender when it comes to slaughtering whales, dolphins and other endangered marine mammals that are internationally protected. Most of the slaughter is simply for meat, which is a prized delicacy in the Asian nation.

The-cove
2013 dolphin slaughter in Taiji prefecture. Show animals are also captured in the hunt.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) made numerous attempts to stop Japanese aquariums from taking cetaceans that get caught in the commercial fisheries, which are undertaken for several months each fall.

The highly controversial drives frequently garner international criticism from both governmental and environmental groups.

Last summer, WAZA officials made an appeal in Tokyo, recommending Japan impose a two-year moratorium on member organizations taking show animals from the drives. The issue was again discussed during WAZA’s annual conference in November.

The Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums (JAZA) refuses to restrict its members from taking animals from the drive, WAZA said.

“WAZA council concluded that a satisfactory agreement could not be reached and voted to suspend the Japanese association’s membership,” said Hyatt Antognini Amin, a WAZA spokesman. “The council also reaffirmed its position that WAZA members must confirm they will not acquire dolphins from the Taiji fishery.”

The governing body for world zoos requires “all members to adhere to policies that prohibit participating in cruel and nonselective methods of taking animals from the wild.”

The dolphin hunts were brought into gobal focus following the 2009 release of “The Cove,” a documentary that went on to win a best Oscar in 2010.

Japan has taken extraordinary measures in recent years to keep the killing activities shielded from public view.

The culls are widely considered to be both cruel and non-selective. The method of catching the helpless dolphins involves banging metal pipes underwater to confuse the animals’ sensitive sonar.

The species are prized as “show dolphins” for aquariums and can fetch tens of thousands of dollars. The dolphins destined for aquariums are trapped in nets, while the remainder are impaled with spears behind the blowhole to sever the spinal cord.

What impact the suspension will have is unknown due to a seeming lack of concern about the Taiji drives in Japan.

Toshiaki Morioka, a member of NGO organization Action For Marine Mammals, said “most Japanese don’t know the facts” about the slaughters.

“If they did, I think most would be against it,” Morioka said. “It is symbol of a pathology in Japanese society that this news is rarely mentioned in the Japanese media.”

Morioka went on to say that JAZA ignores the global trend to reduce numbers of both dolphins and aquariums, but hopes that the suspension will act as a wake-up call for JAZA to reconsider its use of the animals.

Asked if JAZA would consider forcing member aquariums to buy dolphins from places other than Taiji, Nagai pointed to a dearth of alternatives.

“The chances of that happening are next to zero,” he responded defiantly.

Google Working On Second Version Of Google Glass

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According to reports out of Italy, Google has bee working with eyewear maker Luxottica to come up with a new version of Glass, its glasses-meet-webcam-meet-smartphone project. The news adds further weight to suggestion the project isn’t truly dead.

The search titan killed off the first version of Glass in January after the unpopular program started slipping sideways. The glasses, much like most of Google’s businesses, raised significant privacy concerns. It was also seen as being unfashionable.

In March Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, insisted his company hadn’t thrown in the towel on the head-mounted computer, hinting at a second version of Glass.

Luxottica’s CEO Massimo Vian was quoted on Thursday saying that his company will build the second coming of Glass. The Italian company controls the majority of the world’s eyewear market, including the Ray-Ban and Oakley brands.

“What you saw was version 1. We’re now working on version 2, which is in preparation,” he said at his company’s annual general meeting “In Google, there are some second thoughts on how to interpret version 3 [of the eyewear].”

Vian and other senior Luxottica officials have visited the Glass team in California and work is progressing on the next model. He declined to give a timeline for a release, but Google’s I/O developer conference in May might be a good time to reveal a prototype.

Vian also announced a new development deal Luxottica has inked with Intel though he declined to say exactly what the two companies are working on. He did however set a reveal date of February or March next year. Given the Luxottica only makes eyewear it stands to reason the Intel project is along the same lines as Glass.

The partnerships make sense for Luxottica as regular glasses haven’t changed much in design or capabilities in the last 100 years.

It remains to be seen, crucially, if the technology can be unobtrusive. Google admitted this week that Glass was a privacy failure, but gave no suggestions as to how this issue might be alleviated.

Head mounted computers with cameras on them tend to make people assume they are being recorded because in theory they very well can be. Yet removing a camera makes the devices considerably less useful.

It also remains to be seen whether glasses will become the sort of trend that smartphones have become. They do less yet are obtrusive to the face. If you don’t have to wear glasses would you wear them for some technological benefit?

The jury is decidedly out on both issues.

The fixation on Glass highlights the lengths Google is going to in order to find another business as profitable as its search engine. As profits decline at its core business the company is increasingly flailing around trying to find the next big thing.

The jury is decidedly our on that issue too.

To Avoid War Pentagon Publishes Cyberwar Rules Of Engagement

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To Avoid War Pentagon Publishes Cyberwar Rules Of Engagement

The Pentagon published an outline of its cyber-warfare strategy for the first time ever on Thursday. The document reveals the conditions under which it will hack enemy nations. At least officially.

Secretary Ashton Carter, speaking at Stanford University, named China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as the U.S.’s greatest threats in computer security.

Traditionally America’s leaders have avoided publicly singling out countries, but the secretary went further than that on Thursday, outlining a hierarchy of responses.

The Pentagon feels that routine intrusions into U.S. companies should be fended off by the businesses themselves without government involvement. In the case of more sophisticated attacks on industry, the Department of Homeland Security will step in to help.

The most serious attacks, which officials confirmed making up about two per cent of assaults – should be met with a national response led by the US Cyber Command, based alongside the NSA in Maryland.

But what’s a “serious attack?”

Carter defined a ‘major cyberattack’ as “something that threatens significant loss of life, destruction of property or lasting economic damage.” The US may retaliate in any way it seems fit – cyber attacks, covert operations or conventional military actions like airstrikes.

The latest strategy document published by the US Department of Defense has more detail in it than a similar copy released in 2011.

“As a matter of principle, the United States will seek to exhaust all network defense and law enforcement options to mitigate any potential cyber-risk to the US homeland or US interests before conducting a cyberspace operation,” the document details.

The policy paperwork details that “there may be times when the president or the secretary of defense may determine that it would be appropriate for the US military to conduct cyberoperations to disrupt an adversary’s military related networks or infrastructure so that the US military can protect US interests in an area of operations. For example, the United States military might use cyberoperations to terminate an ongoing conflict on US terms, or to disrupt an adversary’s military systems to prevent the use of force against US interests.”

It’s mostly about deterrence

Basically the pentagon is carefully laying out the conditions under which it will open fire from its cyber weapons – without admitting the existence of things like Stuxnet, the super-worm used to destroy Iran’s nuclear labs in 2010.

The new-found openness is engineered to act as a deterrent against those who wish to harm the US through computer hacking. It also sets rules to ensure there are no accidental wars from countries not knowing each others boundaries.

There is no Geneva Convention or similar internationale document outlining the rules of cyberwarfare.

Right now, our country is trying its hardest to deter China and its allies. “Deterrence is partially a function of perception. It works by convincing a potential adversary that it will suffer unacceptable costs if it conducts an attack on the United States,” the new policy states.

Five “strategic goals” for its cyberspace missions:

Build and maintain ready forces and capabilities to conduct cyberspace operations

Defend the DoD information network, secure DoD data, and mitigate risks to DoD missions

Be prepared to defend the U.S. homeland and U.S. vital interests from disruptive or destructive cyberattacks of significant consequence

Build and maintain viable cyber options and plan to use those options to control conflict escalation and to shape the conflict environment at all stages

Build and maintain robust international alliances and partnerships to deter shared threats and increase international security and stability

During his address, Carter admitted that the Pentagon had been a victim of cyber-attacks over recent months.

“The sensors that guard DoD’s unclassified networks detected Russian hackers accessing one of our networks,” he said, adding that the assault used “an old vulnerability in one of our legacy networks that hadn’t been patched.” The DoD responded by alerting a “crack team of incident responders” who had “quickly kicked them off the network.”

“While it’s worrisome they achieved some unauthorized access to our unclassified network, we quickly identified the compromise and had a team of incident responders hunting down the intruders within 24 hours,” Carter said in an official news release.

How Big Retailers Spy On You While Shopping

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A dirty little secret in retail is that every shopper that sets foot through the door of a major retail chain is being tracked in an extraordinary level of detail.

The Federal Trade Commission announced Friday it’s taking basically no action on the matter.

It announced that it had settled with a New York startup that stealthily tracks the movements of American shoppers in stores and malls using their smartphones’ Wi-Fi signals.

The FTC alleged that in late 2013 Nomi Technologies broke an FTC Act by not being upfront with shoppers.

Large retail chains use Nomi’s Listen service to analyze foot traffic through their stores: managers place Nomi Wi-Fi hotspots throughout their stores which in turn pinpoint citizens’ handhelds and log their physical whereabouts.

This is useful for store owners as they can see where shoppers tend to move in the store and what areas they avoid. New displays and store layouts can be tested to see how shoppers respond to the changes. Shoppers are tracked by their phone’s MAC addresses.

Between January and September 2013, Nomi’s technology tracked over nine million handhelds. By October that year, the company had 45 clients using the tech, although it won’t disclose who they are.

Each shopper is, forever, uniquely identified in the upstart’s database. Nomi compiles the data into stats for retailers to crunch.

Nomi ran into issues with the FTC by claiming it had a clear and obvious opt-out mechanism for user who still think that privacy exists in this country.

The FTC, however alleged in its complaint that Americans can only truly opt out and avoid being spied on if they visit Nomi’s website and add their MAC addresses to a blacklist.

But shoppers never have any idea Nomi’s technology is present in a given store – so the offer of an opt-out is worthless because consumers don’t know they’re being tracked.

“The acts and practices of respondent as alleged in this complaint constitute unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce in violation of Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act,” the watchdog said.

Under the terms of a rather toothless settlement published on Thursday, Nomi no longer claims citizens can opt-out of the system.

People can still opt-out of the technology via the web, but because its so hidden, there’s no point making statements online and in store that it exists.

In a statement, Nomi said: “We are pleased to reach this agreement. We continually review our privacy policies to ensure that they follow best practices, and had already made the recommended changes.”

And we’re sure they are. It’s troubling that the FTC is allowing such tracking technology to exist without clear disclosure to users.

In Europe, when you visit a website, the site must inform you how exactly it is tracking you and what it is doing with the data.

America needs an equivalent to this, both for websites and brick and mortar stores. People need to be informed about which of their data is being collected and how it is being used. They also need to be made aware of how to not participate in these programs.

It’s troubling the FTC is taking such a hostile-to-Americans stance on this serious issue.

HIV Outbreak In Indiana Continues To Grow

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data indicating the number of new HIV infections in a rural Indiana county has grown . The federal agency is working with state health officials to control what is being termed a “severe outbreak,” which has spread among users of an injection based prescription opioid called Opana. The sharing of needles is considered the primary transfer mechanism of the disease.

The outbreak has been ongoing since mid-December with 142 people have tested positive for HIV as of Friday and 136 confirmed cases. Six more with preliminary positive test results, all in rural Scott and Jackson counties were also reported. As the area only has a population of a few thousand people this is considered a huge number of cases and dangerous epidemic.

The CDC and state health leaders held a joint news conference on Friday to discuss the new numbers and speak about the growing threat of the spread of disease from IV drug use. The issue is especially serious in isolated rural areas that have sparse health resources.

Scott County, the center of the outbreak, only has one doctor who deals with infectious disease, and he is not an HIV specialist, the State Department of Health said. Since the scary HIV outbreak was first noticed in mid-December, the state has flooded the area with additional resources. Indiana declared a public health emergency in March for the county .

Indiana University has also helped by sending health volunteers to provide a clinic, open once a week, to help treat people and test them for HIV. The volunteer workers are also going door to door to help educate the population about the danger of sharing needles.

It is not happenstance that most of the cases of the newly infected are younger people “who weren’t around in the ’80s and ’90s when HIV was at its peak,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin said.

During the decade of the 80s, doctors saw an average of 35,000 new HIV infections among IV drug users, and that figure has been down 90% nationally since then, he said. This sharp drop means younger people are not as aware about the danger of sharing needles.

Dr. Mermin is the director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. Education is the key, he emphasized. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence has signed a 30-day executive order that allows for a needle exchange. It was supposed to expire Friday, but he extended the order another 30 days. Needle exchanges have been scientifically shown to reduce new infections.

Indiana is also offering employment services to people in the area. Dr. Joan Duwve, the chief medical consultant at the Indiana State Department of Health, spoke about how communities all along the Ohio River in Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia have seen a big issue with prescription drug abuse, particularly in areas where there “is not a lot to do.”

Family members, across generations, will occupy the same house and use the drugs together as “a community activity,” Duwve said. And leads to more needle sharing which in turn spreads infection. She said the problem has been ongoing for at least a decade.

“The situation in Indiana should serve as a warning not to let our guard down,” Mermin said. “This is a powerful reminder” that HIV “can gain ground at any time, unless you remain vigilant.”

Nav Sarao: What You Need Know And Why He’s Important

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Nav Singh Sarao is the Briton blamed for causing the May 2010 Wall Street ‘flash crash’ where about $1 trillion was briefly wiped out from U.S. stock markets in a matter of minutes.

Mr Sarao operated a one-man trading shop from his parents’ house in a working class London suburb, miles from the financial district. He showed few, if any, signs of wealth yet was making millions a year manually trading futures contracts by being quick with his mouse. He techniques were old school – buying big positions, holding them a very short time and selling them on intuition moments later.

This week Mr. Sarao was charged in separate civil and criminal complaints in the United States. He has been granted bail in London on strict conditions, including a $7.5 million bond. He has said he opposes extradition to the United States for trial.

So how does one man cause this much chaos in the financial markets, which are supposed to be safeguarded from events such as this?

The answer is that Mr Sarao was not the real cause. High Frequency Trading (HFT) firms are the real responsible parties.

HFT firms play elaborate games, using sophisticated computer software, to predate the markets looking for human trades they can front-run. By being faster than human traders – or each other – they have invaded the market, inserting themselves between legitimate buyers and sellers and taking a huge profit in the process.

These firms have rigged the market such that they can never lose.

Virtu, an HFT firm that listed publicly just 24 hours before Mr Sarao’s arrest (we’ll get back to this coincidence), has lost money exactly one day in the last 6 years. Citadel, another colossal HFT firm has a similar record and has now become bigger than most Wall St. investment banks. It enjoys a cozy relationship now with Federal Reserve, providing it de-facto government backing to conduct its activity.

The HFT firms rely on their computer algorithms to produce profit day in and day out on virtually every trade. They don’t lost and because of this have become very rich, very powerful and very connected.

Mr Sarao found himself, as a human trader, increasingly trading against these firms and their trading bots. The firms would duck and dive and weave around him, looking to steal profits on his trades. Mr Sarao spoke to his brokers on many occasions to get them to put limits in place to curb the abusive robotic traders but his brokers refused due to the massive commissions they earned from the frantic trading activity.

But Mr Sarao was smart. He worked with his broker to design three ways to place his orders into the market that made it difficult for these robotic trading firms to steal from him.

He then was able to trade effectively against the robots in a fair fight. As a successful, seasoned trader this was a fight he was able to win.

But the trading bots at HFT firms don’t react well to losing. As the losses at the firms mounted the bots engaged in increasingly strange behavior, effectively moving the entire market lower and lower and lower, trying to find the point at which Mr Sarao would capitulate.

But Mr Sarao was actually winning. So as the bots went lower he profitably traded the move. But as the contract they were trading, S&P futures, is influential in the market and used to price many other financial instruments, the sudden drop in price was noticed by other bots.

Fearing a loss other HFT firms joined in the selling. As traders up and down Wall St. picked up on this selling, they started to sell shares of actual companies, along with the HFT firms, fearing something bad was about to happen in the market.

The result was a 9% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the total estimated decline was worth approximately $9 billion.

The market had become so unstable because of the computerized trading firms that one single trader was able to cause a massive market panic simply because he had found a way to beat the robotic traders.

In addition to exposing the danger HFT firms cause in the markets Mr Sarao had also found a way to beat the firms. And to firms like Virtu and Citadel, who simply never lose, this was unacceptable. Sarao’s ingenuity made him enemy number one for the newly powerful trading firms.

The reason Mr Sarao is now in jail is because of HFT firms like Virtu and Citadel. These firms have infected the market, inserting themselves between legitimate buyers and sellers like a parasite. They control brokerages, trading platforms, regulators and state prosecutors.

They have turned this heft on Nav Sarao.

His indictment comes a mere 24 hours after HFT kingpin Virtu listed publicly, an unlikely coincidence.

Mr Sarao is nothing but a scapegoat for the events of May 6 2010. The real culprits are high frequency trading firms and the regulators that enable them.

These firms create instability in the markets and levy a tax against honest buyers and sellers of securities.

Our robust financial markets are vital to America’s success as a country. Faith in them makes them efficient and secure. HFT firms, not a single trader like Nav Sarao, give us reason to distrust the market and weaken them from the inside out.

HFT firms and the regulators who are asleep at the switch (or on the payroll) need to be held accountable for the events of May 6th 2010 not Nav Sarao.

700 Dead As 7.8 Magnitude Earthquake Slams Nepal,

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700 Dead As 7.8 Magnitude Earthquake Slams Nepal,

The tiny mountain nation of Nepal was struck by a deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake early Saturday morning. The powerful quake was centered less than 50 miles from Kathmandu. Authorities say at least 700 are presumed dead with the count likely to rise as rescuers comb through the rubble.

Historic buildings in city lay in rubble on the ground with chaotic scenes of the injured being treated outside hospitals. The city was also hit with a seemingly endless series of aftershocks, forcing terrorized residents to huddled outdoors.

The death toll was reported by Laxmi Dhakal, a spokesperson for Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs. Given that rescue effort are still in the early stages and that people from outlying areas have likely been affected as well it seems certain that the number will rise.

Kathmandu, which rests in a valley surrounded by the Himalayas, has a population of 1 million people.

People who experienced the quake spoke by telephone with CNN, describing scenes of chaotic scenes full of fear and suffering.

Avalanches hit Mount Everest, one of Nepal’s most famous tourist attractions, sending mountaineers running for cover.

“Everest base camp huge earthquake then huge avalanche from pumori,” said mountaineer Alex Gavan said. “Running for life from my tent. Unhurt. Many many people up the mountain.”

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Puerto Rico Warns Of Government Shutdown Due To Liquidity Crisis

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Puerto Rico Warns Of Government Shutdown Due To Liquidity Crisis

Two months ago Puerto Rico’s third largest bank, Doral, failed. The event cost U.S. taxpayers $750 million in the process. Doral Bank wasn’t alone in having a Non Performing Loan ratio bordering on 40% – troubled Greek banks had similar ratios, well above what experts would consider safe levels.

Less than 60 days after this event Puerto Rico is looking even more like Greece in a lot of ways. The U.S. territory faces a looming government shutdown due to “the absence of liquidity to operate.”. In short Puerto Rico’s central bank, the Government Development Bank (GDB), has run out of money.

The territory’s top finance officials have said the government will likely shut down in three months because of a looming liquidity crisis and warned of a catastrophic impact on the island’s economy.

In a letter to leading lawmakers, including Governor Alejandro Padilla, the government officials said a last minute financing deal that could salvage the government’s finances looked unlikely to succeed. It then warned of laying off government employees and reducing public services in an effort to conserve cash.

“A government shutdown is very probable in the next three months due to the absence of liquidity to operate,” the officials said. “The likelihood of completing a market transaction to finance the government’s operations and keep the government open is currently remote.” the letter read.

The letter was dated April 21 and was sent to the heads of Puerto Rico’s Senate and House in addition to the governor. It was signed by the government’s fiscal team, including the head of the Government Development Bank and the Treasury Secretary.

Puerto Rico, which has a total debt of more than $70 billion, is currently trying to raise $2.95 billion in financing. At the same time it is pushing through unpopular tax reforms such as a higher value-added tax and increasing a levy on crude oil.

The reason for the tax overhauls is for hedge funds (who own a large portion of the bonds from a $3.5 billion deal floated last year) to feel comfortable supporting the new bond issue. The letter from the GDB appears to be an effort to shock lawmakers into action before time runs out.

If the GDB’s timetable proves accurate we could see major financial collapse inside of 90 days.

Why Electric Car Sales Have Tanked Lately

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Ford just laid off 700 Michigan plant workers working on small cars and hybrid manufacturing The Detroit News reported yesterday. Specifically, Ford said that it is cutting a shift at its Michigan Assembly Plant where it manufacturers the Ford Focus compact car and C-Max crossover because of low sales of small cars, hybrids and electric vehicles.

Repeat: electric car sales have been dropping like crazy.

According to Edmunds.com, the automotive industry authority, sales of electric cars and hybrids are at their lowest level since 2011.

The trend has further negative effects beyond low current sales. What’s even more worrisome is motorists who leased those first-generation hybrids and electrics, have now decided not to buy them at the end of their lease terms. Instead, they’re turning them in, leaving dealer lots full of low mileage cars at huge discounts to new ones. Edmunds concludes that while “the government’s going to keep pushing it, there is time to pause right now.”

All this comes even with hefty federal tax credit and incentives. Electrics and hybrid purchases get you a $7,500 federal tax credit as well as other incentives going to automakers. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Nissan have all dropped prices in an attempt to move their new hybrids and electrics. Cadillac became the most recent to lower the sticker on an electric car, when it whacked $9,000 off its ELR plug-in hybrid last week.

The reason for the slowing sales? Low oil prices.

As the price of gasoline drops the incentive to drive fuel efficient vehicles declines. GM’s first quarter number show this, as they were driven largely by increased sales of trucks and SUVs. The same thing happened for large dealer networks PACCAR and Rush.

As long as fuel prices remain low there will be pressure on automakers investing heavily in electrics. Tesla, we’re looking at you.

America Still Saddled With Burden Of 100 Year Old Chemical Weapons

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100 years later the United States is still struggling to get rid of its chemical weapons. Some 780,000 mustard gas shells are stored near a Colorado disposal plant, the vast majority of the remaining U.S. stockpile. The plant isn’t even operational yet – that starts this October. Destroying the stockpile will take at least four years and cost a minimum of $4.5 billion.

This is the legacy of one of mankind’s most vile inventions: chemical weapons.

“Chemical agent destruction is a hard role. It’s a high hazard operation,” says project manager Kim Jackson.

At a cutting edge military installation on the windswept prairie of southern Colorado, an army of workers in protective gear, assisted by precision robots, is training to destroy the toxic and increasingly unstable weapons. The facility’s official name is the Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant.

“We have explosion hazards, and we also have agent hazards. That means anyone who might be exposed to the blister agent. So we spend a lot of our time with our personnel on training to ensure that our workforce is ready to complete chemical weapons destruction.” says Jackson.

In the 1940s, as the US entered World War Two, the military created a huge stockpile of chemical weapons, mainly in the form of artillery shells.

Fortunately for humanity, neither side used chemical weapons against enemy troops during the war. So the ageing munitions – primarily mustard gas – sat for decades inside concrete and earth covered bunkers at the Pueblo Chemical Depot. The weapons date to as far back as the first world war.

In the 1990s, the U.S. and many other nations signed a treaty pledging to destroy their stockpiles. After much delay that process is happening now to the mustard gas shells stored at Pueblo.

“Mustard rounds were introduced in World War I,” Jackson said. “And to think here we are 100 years later completing destruction of those chemical weapons.”

Right now the workers are practicing on dummy shells exactly like the artillery that was manufactured during World War II.

Full scale weapons destruction will begin in October. Currently, Jackson is running a battery of tests on both equipment and personnel.

“They never know what I’m going to throw at them,” she says, smiling. “We use different contingencies, such as a medical event, a chemical spill, or a loss of equipment, and they have to respond.”

When the process begins for real each shell will be carefully unpacked and have its explosives removed, then repeatedly checked for leaks. The round will then be taken apart, soaked in neutralizing chemicals, blasted with high pressure water, and baked in ovens to strip away every trace of poison.

In a more dangerous and separate building, some live shells that are leaking or have been damaged are already being destroyed with controlled explosions.

Workers clad in protective clothing carefully load rounds into a thick steel cylinder, constantly checking items off a lengthy safety checklist. Inside the cylinder, explosive charges neatly split the shells in two, which are then treated with neutralizing agents.

“The mustard gas is inside the destruction system vessel. That’s neutralized with monoethanolamine,” a spokesman says. “We rotate the vessel and typically in no more than an hour the monoethanolamine has completely broken down the mustard agent.”

While the engineers who carry out this dangerous and painstaking job don’t usually talk about the historical or moral aspects of their work, engineer Jon Miller sees it is as a deeply satisfying task.

“Chemical weapons are about the worst thing going,” Miller says. “They’re dirty, they’re nasty. So really, getting rid of them, in my opinion, is kind of an important thing.”

Does Viral Ad Campaign Offer Scary Glimpse Into Our Future?

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Does Viral Ad Campaign Offer Scary Glimpse Into Our Future?

Every day in Hong Kong more than 16,000 tons of waste is dumped in the streets and public spaces. A new project from the Hong Kong Cleanup Challenge and ad agency Ogilvy & Mather Hong Kong hopes to bring attention to the issue. It may also offer a scary

The pair teamed up with DNA technology firm Parabon Nanolabs to take technology typically used in catching criminals and using it to create DNA-based composites of litterbugs from genetic material left behind on discarded garbage. Posters of the perpetrators will be put up across the city and online.

How realistic is it to create a picture of you from a soda can you tossed on the street?

According to Parabon, pretty realistic. Its Snapshot tech is able to identify a high probability of certain features, such as eye color, showing that it’s not just brown, blue or green, for example, but that someone’s eyes may be blue with some green.

The technology can also show skin color, hair color and ancestry. These findings then determine the start of what a person looks like. Face shape is made up of traits, like small eyes, wide set, bumpy nose, big lips, etc. So the system builds a model from the genotype and phenotype data in the sample and then uses a facial modelling program to represent the face from 44 possible variables in order to draw an accurate portrait of the litterbug.

While a catchy ad campaign the technology is a scary look into the future of our log everything, track you from cradle to grave society.

American authorities already have massive DNA databases of people investigated, charged or convicted of criminal offenses. These DNA databases are tied to pictures, thanks to mugshot and driver’s license databases.

And we already use similar roadside scanning technology. Police are increasingly using automatic license plate readers to ticket cars or track deadbeat dads.

We’re not far away, at all, from a system like that used in the anti-litter campaign.

As a country we need to decide if this is the way we want to live. Automated policing is a slippery slope and ripe for abuse. Red light cameras, for instance, can be and are carefully tuned to maximize revenue while leaving motorists with no humanly possible chance to avoid their tickets. They are tuned to prey on us not be fair.

We must be careful to learn from these failures and develop policing systems that reflect the values of our country – liberty, freedom and justice. We can’t be seduced by clever technology that fundamentally destroys the values we hold dear, even if means tolerating a certain amount of bad behavior. It’s a small price to pay for liberty.

Starbucks Handles Rare Failure The American Way

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Starbucks Handles Rare Failure The American Way

Starbucks on Friday saw the company’s computer system fail across North America. The company operates one of the biggest retail networks in the United States and also operates in many countries around the world. It counts more than 22,000 stores worldwide and serves millions of customers each day.

According to a brief statement released by the company “the outage was caused by a failure during a daily system refresh” and caused nearly all stores in North America to lose the ability to accept payments.

The company handled the outage with grace and character – many stores simply gave drinks away for free until closing early for the day.

News of the failed system spread quickly across Twitter as customers celebrated getting their hand-crafted beverages for free.

A hashtag — #thefrappening — was cheerfully adopted.

The response by Starbucks is a case study on handling failure and turning a problem into an opportunity. The company has now drawn their loyal customers even closer by taking the opportunity to throw them a freebie and thank them for their business. This move will pay dividends in the future.

The company also got a significant amount of free, good, publicity. While the cost of the outage will no doubt impact earnings this cost effectively becomes advertising. The type of advertising big brands pay huge dollars for. Financially the decision made good business sense and limited the financial damage from the mistake.

More importantly Starbucks today did the right thing. They owned a failure and used it as an opportunity to do something nice for their customers. It’s a great lesson in American ingenuity and values.

Why Ecuador Loves The Two Dollar Bill

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Two dollar bills are relatively rare but are still legal tender and can be ordered from the U.S. Mint. While most Americans may look a little surprised to receive one in Ecuador people are overjoyed.

It all started fifteen years ago when Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as its official currency. It was a contentious issue and it still stirs debate to this day. It was so unpopular that when it was first announced protesters took over the capital and the government collapsed. The next government stuck with the plan because The Sucre, Ecuador’s native currency, was in the throes of a decade of hyper-inflation that was destroying the economy.

In 1990 $1 bought you 900 Sucres while in 2000, the Sucre’s last year, every citizen was forced to trade 25,000 Sucres for each dollar. The effect was to wipe out the savings of an entire nation.

Today the economy is doing better with GDP growing, poverty coming down and inflation significantly lower. But in the midst of all this economic stability a curious devotion to the $2 bill emerged.

“They bring us good luck. If you keep a $2 bill with you it will bring more money,” said one resident.

The devotion to the two dollar bill seems to stem from Ecuador’s strong Catholic majority and long tradition of superstition that dates to before the arrival of the Europeans. Many cities have giant statues of various virgins perched on hills that watch over the city, similar to Brazil’s iconic Christ The Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro.

When Ecuador dollarized, our Federal Reserve flew them plane loads of cash. They didn’t send any two dollar bills though, which makes them rare.

Ecuador actually mints its own coins and mixes them in with U.S. coins that have the same size and value, but all dollar bills are flown down from the Federal Reserve every few years. During years when cash is not delivered tourists add small amounts of new bills while they visit the country.

Breaking out a two dollar bill in a crowded market elicits reactions such as “My God! Look! Look! A two dollar bill” and “How much do you want for each one?”

People willingly pay many times more than face value to get one of the rare bills. As Ecuador moves to a new digital dollar, where each is in theory backed by a physical U.S. bill, demand for twos seems to be un-dented.

“I don’t care if we stop using the dollar,” a woman selling bananas was quoted as saying. “I’m going to hold on to this bill right here.” Holding up her two dollar bill “This will bring me more money no matter what currency we use.”

Positive Thinking Shown To Help Fight Brain Cancer

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Positive thinking is always a good thing. It is a key tactic taught to Navy SEALs as they battle impossible odds and grueling physical challenges. It’s been known to help golfers and other professional athletes stay in the zone and it has been shown to make you seem more attractive to the opposite sex.

Now research has shown that the simple act of thinking can accelerate the growth of many brain tumors.

Those are the findings of a paper in Cell, published on Thursday, that show how activity in the cerebral cortex of the brain affects high-grade gliomas, which account for about 80 percent of all malignant brain tumors in people.

“This tumor is utilizing the core function of the brain, thinking, to promote its own growth,” says Michelle Monje, a researcher and neurologist at Stanford who led the research team.

Based on the findings the theory would be that doctors could slow the growth of these tumors by using sedatives to reduce mental activity. But that isn’t practical in real life because it wouldn’t eliminate the tumor and “we don’t want to stop people with brain tumors from thinking or learning or being active.”

But the discovery alludes to other ways to slow down some of the trickiest brain tumors, says Tracy Batchelor, director of the neuro-oncology program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We really don’t have any curative treatments for high-grade gliomas,” Batchelor says. The discovery that tumor growth is linked to brain activity “has opened up a window into potential therapeutic interventions,” he says.

The discovery came after a team of scientists implanted human glioma tumors in mouse brains. The scientists used a process called optogenetics that uses light to control brain cell function. The technique increased the activity of cells near the tumors.

The team was lookin to see if high levels of activity would make the glioma grow more quickly. “And it turns out that it did,”

She began to suspect that this rare form of cancer was somehow hijacking a process called myelination, which happens in healthy brains. the Myelination process creates a layer of insulation around nerve fibers, which makes them better able to carry signals.

Last year, Monje andher team showed that the cells responsible for myelination began to grow quickly in response to heightened brain activity. “That was an intriguing finding and it was consistent with our idea that activity in the brain, thinking, planning, using your brain, might be promoting the cancer arising within it,” she says.

The mouse experiment confirmed the team’s suspicion. An additional experiment showed that the cancer cells were growing in response to the chemical signals that typically cause myelination.

“This work has much broader implications for brain tumors,” says Batchelor. “It’s not just pediatric tumors [the initial target], it’s pediatric and adult. And it’s not just one particular type of glioma. This has potential implications across the entire family of gliomas in the brain.”

Batchelor says the new research suggests a possible way to slow down these tumors — by disrupting the pathways linking brain activity to tumor growth.

Monje says she is glad that her work has led to a better understanding of tumors but says it’s still hard to feel gratified.

“It will be gratifying when we make some difference for these kids,” she says.

Why Tanning Chains Could Be The Next Tobacco Companies

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They both have claimed to be healthy. They both have targeted young people. Both are addictive and yet one is heavily regulated while the other is not. Tanning salons and cigarette manufacturers share many of the same bad habits and yet only one of them is regulated. That looks set to change as New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, filed lawsuits against two popular indoor tanning salon chains on Thursday.

The lawsuits accuse the chains of playing down the health hazards associated with indoor tanning and promoting the practice as a healthful activity.

Authorities said that the two chains, Portofino Spas and Total Tan, have violated state laws against deceptive business practices by making statements on their websites and in advertisements suggesting that indoor tanning is both safe and good for your health.

The chains cited health benefits of increased vitamin D production and reduced risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. There is no medical to data to suggest any of these is actually true, according to the lawsuit.

Increasingly, health agencies and experts are taking issue with the practice. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that indoor tanning causes aging of the skin and several types of skin cancer, including the most deadly, melanoma. A comprehensive study last year estimated that indoor tanning contributed to 400,000 cases of skin cancer in the United States each year.

“Indoor tanning exposes users to two types of UV rays, UVA and UVB, which damage the skin and can lead to cancer,” the CDC. says on its website. The agency warns that indoor tanning also raises the risk of blinding eye diseases when eye protection isn’t used, and states that while vitamin D is important for good health, the safest way to obtain it is through food.

In his lawsuit against Portofino Spas, which has five Portofino Sun Center locations in New York City, Mr. Schneiderman said that the company had made statements on its website denying a link between cancer and tanning. “Conflicting data exist questioning the UV-melanoma relationship,” one of the statements cited in the lawsuit reads. “Some independent dermatology researchers question whether UV and melanoma are related at all.”

Brian C. Mahoney, a partner at Harris Beach, the law firm that represents Total Tan, said the company denied the allegations in the AG’s complaint and that it had consulted with a business professor at Siena College. The professor, claims the company, did not find any of its claims about vitamin D “misleading or otherwise deceptive.”

The company also claimed that it was a “small, upstate, family-owned business that refuses to be intimidated by Mr. Schneiderman, who is trying to impose his own view of the world on our industry.”

User of tanning salons should be reminded of history. Not long ago cigarette companies were touting the health benefits of their products and attempting so skirt regulation. Regardless of who owns the business if its dangerous, which tanning clearly is, it should be carefully regulated so that users are fully aware of any and all associated dangers.

Hezbollah Now Has World’s Largest Terrorist Drone Fleet

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According to new research from IHS Jane’s, the arms industry publication, terrorist group Hezbollah now has the world’s largest non-state drone fleet. The group claims to operate over 200 Iranian made drones and the militant Shia group has even constructed an airstrip in the northern Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, for its fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), an analysis of satellite imagery suggests.

The Bekaa Valley is located in a remote and barely populated area about 6 miles south of the town of Hermel and just 10 miles west of the Syrian border. The crude airstrip was built sometime between February 27 2013 and June 19 2014. The analysts studied imagery that recently became publicly available on Google Earth.

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The field consists of a single unpaved runway with a length of 2000 ft and width of 60 ft. Material has been excavated from a nearby quarry to build up the northern end of the strip so that it is level. It is built over a shorter strip that had been in existence since at least 2010.

The relatively short length of the strip indicates that the facility is not intended to smuggle in weapons shipments from Syria or Iran as it is too short for virtually all the transport aircraft used by the air forces of those countries.

Another explanation is that the runway has been built for Iranian-made drones, including the Ababil-3, which has been employed over Syria by forces allied to the Syrian regime, and possibly the newer and larger Shahed-129.

A Hezbollah spokesman actually confirmed to IHS Jane’s that the organization is using drones in operations against rebel forces in Syria, particularly over the mountainous Qalamoun region on Lebanon’s eastern border.

The terror group’s new airbase includes a large antenna located on a hill 1300 ft south of the strip. While it appears to be a standard Lebanese mobile telephone tower it could potentially be used to extend the range of a drone ground control station.

Hezbollah has operated UAVs from Lebanese airspace since November 2004, when it dispatched one that it identified as a Mirsad-1 for a brief reconnaissance mission over northern Israel. It then flew attempted to fly at least three UAVs into Israel during the July-August 2006 war.

Hezbollah said it was responsible for the UAV that was shot down over southern Israel on October 6th 2012. It said it used an Iranian-made aircraft for the incursion.

Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Iranian Aerospace Forces, said the UAV was of a type that had been in existence for a decade, a possible reference to the Ababil-3.

Iranian UAVs have been spotted on numerous occasions in Syrian airspace, mainly the Ababil-3 variant, but also the smaller Yasir-type.

The fact Hezbollah operates the same drone types as Iran leads to issues identifying who is operating the drones when they are spotted. The new airbase suggest Hezbollah will be ramping up its UAV operations in the coming months.

People Who Have More Sex Make More Money (And Vise-Versa)

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People Who Have More Sex Make More Money (And Vise-Versa)

New research published in the International Journal of Manpower shows there is an interdependent relationship between making money, having sex, and being physically healthy. While the health benefits of sex have been known for some time the relationship with money and career success is a new finding.

The research team found that workers who have sex two to three times per week earn, on average, 4.5 percent more than coworkers who have sex less often. The team surveyed 7,500 individuals and found that “workers with health problems who are sexually active earn 1.5 percent more than those with similar ailments who are not sexually active.”

Dr. Nick Drydakis, from Anglia Ruskin University, concluded that having a higher income results in leading a more active sex life, and that having more sex supports our efforts at the office. In short it works both ways – have sex to get ahead, have more sex because you’re ahead.

“Does lack of sex lead to lower wages or lower wages lead to less sex? In the literature there are studies that have examined both effects. Celibacy results in lower wages, as well as lower wages leading to less sex. That is, we can provide socio-economic arguments and health- and mental health-based arguments in order to support both effects.” Drydakis said.

Drydakis also noted that it is both the physical and the emotional effects of sex that improve our mental well-being. This healthy mental state leads us to perform better at other tasks. So it isn’t just sexual forms of care that are important to sustaining a healthy mental life and thus achieving our professional goals.

Without non-sexual care and support, we fall victim to loneliness, anxiety, and depression, which in turn affects our performance in other areas of life.

But if you think earning more money allows you to simply have more casual sex, think again says Helen Fisher, a sexual health researcher. A majority of men and women are looking to trigger a long-term relationship when they engage in sexual contact, which produces much of the non-sexual care that is so important to mental health.

The research also showed that maintaining a good level of health is absolutely essential.

“Workers taking medication were 5.4 percent less sexually active; those with diabetes 2.4 percent less; and those with arthritis and rheumatism 3.9 percent less,” according to the team. “People whose health is impaired face a 9.5 percent productivity penalty at work, while there is also a health-based discrimination factor on the order of 8.9 percent.”

Rare Pocket Shark Found In Gulf Of Mexico

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Rare Pocket Shark Found In Gulf Of Mexico

Scientists excitedly announced Thursday they had discovered a very small and rare species of shark for only the second time in history. The last time they found one of the little sharks was over 35 years ago and none have been spotted since.

The species’ common name is the “pocket shark,” though its scientific name is the less interesting Mollisquama sp., according to the study which was published in the international journal Zootaxa.

While the sharks are actually small enough to fit in your pocket, it’s called “pocket” because of the distinctive opening behind its pectoral fin. The opening is one of many physiological features scientists hope to better understand.

“The pocket shark we found was only 5 and a half inches long, and was a recently born male,” said Mark Grace of NOAA Fisheries’ Pascagoula, Miss., Laboratory, lead researcher of the new study, who commented that the shark displayed an unhealed umbilical scar. “Discovering him has us thinking about where mom and dad may be, and how they got to the Gulf. The only other known specimen was found very far away, off Peru, 36 years ago.”

Interestingly, the specimen Grace discovered recently was not found in the ocean, per se; rather it was in the holdings of NOAA’s lab in Pascagoula.

The specimen was collected in the deep sea about 190 miles offshore Louisiana during a 2010 mission by the NOAA to study sperm whales. Grace uncovered the sample at the lab years later and recruited Tulane University researchers Michael Doosey and Henry Bart, and NOAA Ocean Service genetics expert Gavin Naylor, to give the specimen an up-close examination.

“This record of such an unusual and extremely rare fish is exciting, but its also an important reminder that we still have much to learn about the species that inhabit our oceans,” Grace added.

Whitehouse Dinner Highlights Administration’s Transparency Issues

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Whitehouse Dinner Highlights Administration’s Transparency Issues

Media types often remark that the Obama administration as one of the least press-friendly of modern times, with a track record of stonewalling, investigating and generally snubbing the media. Yet on Saturday night, media’s most prominent members will party with the very president whose administration has treated them, and thus the American people, with such disrespect.

The contradiction is palpable.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner on Saturday a ballroom full of Washington media types, advertisers and a few celebrities will schmooze with the same government officials, including the president, that they are supposed to be holding to account.

Most big news organizations refuse to take a stand on the issue and party on. This year’s event is just as popular as it has always been. All 260 tables at the Washington Hilton, 2,600 seats in all, are sold out despite a $3,000 price tag per table. In fact the event is so popular that the WHCA turned away 1,200 requests for tickets this year.

But a few reputable news outfits take a stand on the ethical issues with the dinner. The New York Times has been banning its reporters from attending since 2007. Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, said this week that he imposed the ban when he was Washington bureau chief because he thought the dinner made “the press and politicians [look] too cozy.”

News personality Tom Brokaw expressed similar sentiments in 2012 after watching the fuss kicked up around attendee Lindsay Lohan. “If there’s ever an event that separates the press from the people that they’re supposed to serve, symbolically, it is that one,” Brokaw said on Meet the Press. “It is time to rethink it.”

While few are willing to sacrifice a trip to the glitzy dinner on mere ethical grounds, many journalists would probably agree with a more general critique of president Obama: his administration has often been uncooperative, if not downright hostile, to the people who cover him.

Some journalists have been refreshingly blunt in their assessments. In a TV interview given last year, Jill Abramson, then editor of the Times, called the administration “the most secretive” she had ever encountered in her career.

David Sanger, the Times‘ White House correspondent, described the Obama administration as “the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” in a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013.

To underscore the point, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has initiated seven investigations of classified leaks to news organizations, which is more than double those of any previous administration. And it has used unusually aggressive tactics in doing so, such as issuing secret subpoenas to seize phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press and labeling Fox News reporter James Rosen as “an aider, abettor and/or conspirator” of a suspected leaker.

To press advocates, this is criminalizing the act of reporting.

For an administration that rose to prominence on the ideas of hope, change and transparency Obama and his team, led by architect Valerie Jarret, have taken nothing but a business as usual attitude.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Canada Signs Law To Limit Regulatory Red Tape

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We tend to think of our northern neighbors as the slightly more socialist and government heavy version of ourselves. But it appears they’ve caught onto this and are taking decisive measures to limit the amount of bureaucracy in their frosty country.

Canada’s ruling Conservative government took aim this week on the government’s hidden tax: regulation. Regulatory decisions and their implications get precious little scrutiny, unlike traditional budget items.

Regulatory transparency in the country got a considerable boost Thursday when the Red Tape Reduction Act (C-21) received Royal Assent and became law.

Minister Tony Clement, who has driven the bill, has now made Canada the first country in the world to require that for every new regulation introduced one of equivalent burden must be removed.

Although just recently signed into law, C-21 has been operating as policy for several years already, meaning that the costs of new rules must all be quantified and equal or greater costs removed elsewhere for them to become law.

The law effectively caps the cost of rules coming directly from regulations. Rules can also come from legislation and policy so the one-for-one rule does not cut the cost of all government rules. Still, it is a very good start.

The Canadian legislation should be looked at by our own politicians at both the state and federal level. With our record number of agencies and bureaus it could be an easy way to ensure new, costly, rules are not perpetually layered on top of old and outdated ones.

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