• New tool reveals which online personal data is being used by advertisers

    The Web can be an opaque black box: it leverages our personal information without our knowledge or control. When, for instance, a user sees an ad about depression online, she may not realize that she is seeing it because she recently sent an e-mail about being sad. A new tool reveals which data in a Web account, such as e-mails, searches, or viewed products, are being used to target which outputs, such as ads, recommended products, or prices.

  • Texas Medical Center considering “reverse quarantine” to prevent Ebola infections

    The Texas Medical Center(TMC), home to more than fifty health care institutions (it is considered the world’s largest medical district), is considering using a preventive measure, known as reverse quarantine, to keep potentially at-risk employees and students from spreading Ebola to other medical staff or patients. Concerned that the Ebola outbreak could reach Texas, hospital executives are reviewing their emergency management plans, usually reserved to guide more than 100,000 employees at TMC during hurricanes and tropical storms.

  • Program aiming to facilitate cyberthreat information sharing is slow to take off

    President Barack Obama’s 2013 executive orderto improve critical infrastructure cybersecurity allows DHS to expand an information-sharing program, once restricted to Pentagoncontractors, to sixteencritical infrastructure industries. The Enhanced Cybersecurity Servicesprogram transmits cyber threat indicators to selected companies so they may prepare their network protection systems to scan for those indicators. A DHS inspector general (IG) reportreleased on Monday has found that just about forty companies from three of the sixteen industries — energy, communications services, and defense — are part of the program. Moreover, only two ISPs are authorized to receive the indicators.

  • Immigration judge says changes needed in “fast-tracking” immigration cases

    While the Obama administration cites evidence that the surge of migrant children from Central America is declining, a leading immigration judge is arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) process of “fast-tracking” the cases — often without any legal representation for the defendant — is padding the numbers and also creating other problems of its own.

  • Congress mulls declaring wildfires as natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes

    Climate change has contributed to the increasing number of wildfires in the American West as temperatures get hotter and forests get drier. Congress is now considering treating wildfires like earthquakes and hurricanes, declaring the occurrences as natural disasters. That move would provide additional emergency funding to fight wildfires as they occur, so federal and state agencies would no longer have to transfer funds from fire-prevention programs.

  • Flagstaff, Ariz. uses municipal bonds to fund wildfire mitigation measures

    Wildfires are costing more to control and put down. In 2006, 2007, and 2012, more than nine million acres burned, roughly the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. For years 2011, 2012, and 2013, fire departments nationwide spent $1.7 billion to suppress wildfires. Flagstaff, a northern Arizona city set in the middle of a national forest, has created a $10 million fund, supported by municipal bonds, to make the city less vulnerable to damage from large forest fires, floods, violent storms, and temperature extremes.

  • U.S. to ship arms to Iraq; France to send arms to Kurds

    The United States is planning to accelerate arms shipment to Iraq, especially as it becoming clear that divisive prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has accepted the fact that he would not continue in power. The U.S. shipments will include missiles, guns, and ammunition. The shipments will start when Haider al-Abadi officially becomes Iraq’s new prime minister. France has announced it is beginning to ship arms to the Kurds, while Spain and Italy said they would begin to do so shortly

  • Crime rates affected by who has administrative, budgetary responsibility for prisons

    In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court forced California to deal with the massive overcrowding in its prison system. The resulting reform shifted administrative and budgetary responsibility for low-level criminals from the state prison system to county jails. As a result, local California jails now face more overcrowding than ever, and local law enforcement is saddled with additional costs for imprisoning arrestees. In Israel, the trend has been in the opposite direction: an administrative reform which transferred authority over jails from the police to the Prison Authority resulted in the police sending more people to jail. A new study found that police are more inclined to issue arrests when prisons have administrative responsibility for detainees. The effect on crime: crime in Israel dropped as a result of the reform largely because the police — feeling less budgetary pressure — felt free to arrest more suspects, many of whom would have gotten off in the past with a warning.

  • ISIS militants kill 500 Yezidis, burying women and children alive, forcing 300 women into slavery

    Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Iraq’s human rights minister, on Sunday said that Islamic State (ISIS) militants have killed 500 members of the Yazidi ethnic minority, including some women and children who were buried alive. Another 300 women were kidnapped and forced into slavery. U.S. bombing of ISIS forward units allowed Kurdish forces to recapture two towns taken by ISIS early last week. U.S. is dropping supplies to 40,000 Yezidis stranded on Sinjar Mountain. ISIS leaders announced that Yezidi “devil worshippers” faced a choice: convert to Islam or die on the mountain.

  • Iraq’s Yazidis are on the brink of genocide – who will save them?

    U.S. president Barack Obama has confirmed that the U.S. military made targeted airstrikes and carried out a humanitarian operation in Iraq, marking the deepest U.S. engagement in the country since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011. There will be no troop presence on the ground. This means that the IS [Islamic State, which is the new name adopted by ISIS] threat won’t be removed from Iraq — at least in the short term. The IS fighters will continue their massacres after the limited U.S. operation has finished. Iraq needs immediate, comprehensive and unlimited military and political assistance to eradicate IS fighters from the country. IS is not just a normal terrorist group and it is not a political opposition. Rather, it has become a professional irregular army with more than 20,000 well-trained soldiers and a very strong ideology, operating in a region from Iraq to Lebanon with many sleeper cells worldwide.

  • Morocco arrests recruiter involved with French terror network

    Moroccan security forces two weeks ago arrested a French jihadist who was operating in the country to recruit fighters in order to send them to al-Qaeda affiliated organizations. The unnamed suspect had fought in Bosnia before joining the ranks of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. His arrival is believed to be connected to recent strife in Libya and coordinated by the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist cell in Syria.

  • Texas coastal areas still unprepared for disaster

    When Hurricane Ike struck Galveston, Texas in 2008, leaving billions of dollars in damages and at least 100 people dead, residents knew that they were underprepared. Experts say that Texas coastal residents still are. Unlike Louisiana and New York after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, Texas has not developed a plan to protect its coast, and the state has failed to seek the same level of federal funding after Ike as the two other states sought after their hurricanes.

  • U.S. ready to strike ISIS targets in Iraq, drops supplies to besieged refugees

    Yesterday, President Obama authorized the U.S. military to attack ISIS targets in Iraq, at the same time that USAF transport planes began dropping food and other supply to help the 40,000 or so Iraqis who fled to the mountains in the last two days after ISIS militants took over four Christian-majority towns in north Iraq. Administration officials said on Thursday that the crisis on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq had forced their hand, with tens of thousands of people sheltering in the bare mountains without food, water, or access to supplies.

  • Hamas, Israel exchange fire as Gaza cease-fires collapses

    The fighting between Israel and Hamas has resumed after the 72-hour Egypt-sponsored cease-fire collapsed. Hamas has so far fired more than twenty rockets on towns in southern Israel, while Israel, in response struck the Sheikh Radwan area with air strikes and artillery fire. Thousands of Gazan have again fled their homes in anticipation of a forceful Israeli response. The talks in Cairo over a post-war arrangement in Gaza have stalled as a result of what appear to be unbridgeable differences between Israel and Egypt, on the one hand, and Hamas, on the other hand. The 72-hour Egypt-sponsored cease-fire came to an end 08:00 local time (02:00 EST). As was the case swith earlier cease-fire, Hamas fired into Israel an hour before the formal end of the truce. Hamas spokesmen said that Egyptian and Israeli proposals failed to meet Palestinian expectations. They said that the organization would resume firing rockets into Israel unless an agreement is reached.

  • Arizona voted against complying with Real ID, and state residents now face the consequences

    In 2008, Arizona lawmakers passed a bill (HB 2677), signed by then-Governor Janet Napolitano, prohibiting the state from complying with the Real ID Act. Limits on people without a Real ID-compliant driver’s license, such as no access to federal facilities, will be phased in in three stages – 21 April 2014, 21 July 2014, and 19 January 2015. Those who do not have a Real ID will need a passport, a second form of identification, or an “enhanced” driver’s license.