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Backlash: growing interest in counter-surveillance tools
The revelations about the NSA surveillance programs has prompted what some see as high-tech civil disobedience: a growing number of products and applications aiming to limit the NSA’s ability to access encrypted e-mails, obtain phone records, and listen to phone conversations.
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Turkey exposed Israeli spy network in Iran
Israel and Turkey used to be close allies, but the relationship began to deteriorate in 2003, when Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister after his Islamic party won the parliamentary elections the year before. The relationship reached its low point in 2010, when nine Turks were killed by Israeli commandos on a ship carrying supplies to the Gaza Strip. This was also the year that Hakan Fidan became the head of Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, or MIT, the Turkish intelligence service. Fidan is known for advocating a closer Turkey-Iran relationship – the Wall Street Journal wrote that “he rattled Turkey’s allies by allegedly passing to Iran sensitive intelligence collected by the U.S. and Israel.” Stories now emerge that in early 2012 Turkey deliberately blew the cover of an Israeli spy ring working inside Iran to collect information on Iran’s nuclear program.
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S&P: U.S. government shutdown shaved 0.6 percent off Q4 annualized GDP
Standard & Poor’s said the U.S. government shutdown trimmed 0.6 percent off fourth quarter growth, taking $24 billion out of the economy. S&P notes that in September, the rating agency expected 3 percent annualized growth of the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter, but that that expectation was based on the assumption that “politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default. Since our forecast didn’t hold, we now have to lower our fourth-quarter growth estimate to closer to 2 percent.” S&P warns that “If people are afraid that the government policy brinkmanship will resurface again, and with it the risk of another shutdown or worse, they’ll remain afraid to open up their checkbooks. That points to another Humbug holiday season.”
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Canadian city developed mathematical formula to evaluate risk
The City of Hamilton, Ontario has ranked Terrorism fourth on its list of top ten emergency risks, below Hazardous Materials and Explosions, Energy Supply Emergencies, and Epidemics/Pandemics.The city’s ranking of top 10 emergencies for which it plans is not a mere judgment call: The city’s emergency management office uses a mathematical equation to rate the risks to the city and its population.
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Maryland preparing for sea level rise
Maryland has 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline. A scientific report recommends that it would prudent for the state to prepare for a sea level rise of 1.4 feet by 2050.Maryland’s CoastSmart Communities Initiative (CCI) provides grant funding for coastal communities which want to reduce their vulnerabilities to the effects of coastal hazards and sea level rise by becoming ready, adaptive, and resilient.
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The Red Cross wants video games to incorporate the Geneva Convention
Approximately 600 million video-gamers worldwide may be violating the laws of war – at least virtually. For the past two years, a unit of the ICRC has been working on discouraging video game creators from allowing players to disregard the rules of war – that is, disregard the rules of war while playing a video game, not in real life — without consequences. ICRC calls for gamers to be “rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes.”
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Maryland preparing for sea level rise
Maryland has 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline. A scientific report recommends that it would prudent for the state to prepare for a sea level rise of 1.4 feet by 2050.Maryland’s CoastSmart Communities Initiative (CCI) provides grant funding for coastal communities which want to reduce their vulnerabilities to the effects of coastal hazards and sea level rise by becoming ready, adaptive, and resilient.
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Man arrested in connection with LAX dry ice bombs
Four dry ice bombs were planted in restricted area of LAX Sunday and Monday. Two bombs exploded, causing no injury or damage, and two were found before they exploded. The LAPD announced it had arrested 28-year-old Dicarlo Bennett, an LAX employee of one of the airport’s ground crew contractors, Servisair. The LAPD chief says the police and FBI believe there was “no nexus” between the bombs and terrorism, but that the incident is related to a labor dispute.
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No proof Yasser Arafat was killed by radioactive poisoning: scientists
Yasser Arafat died in November 2004 in a French hospital after rapid deterioration in his condition. He was 75 years old, but in good condition, and Palestinian and French doctors could not identify the reason for his decline. Even before he died, Palestinian leaders spread the rumor that he was poisoned on the orders of then-Prime Minister Arik Sharon of Israel. Last year, the Palestinian Authority agreed to a request by Arafat’s widow, Suha, and French judicial investigators to exhume his body for further tests. Tissues were harvested and were examined, along with some of Arafat’s personal effects, by Swiss, French, and Russian scientific teams. The Swiss team published its report this weekend in the leading medical journal The Lancet, saying that traces of the radioactive polonium-210 were found on some of Arafat’s personal effects, but not in his body tissues. The Swiss team uses suggestive language – the evidence they found “support the possibility of Arafat’s poisoning with polonium-210” and that his symptoms in the weeks before he died “might suggest radioactive poisoning” – but admit that the absence of evidence of polonium-210 in body tissues makes it impossible to say with certainty that Arafat was poisoned. The Russian scientists are more definitive. “He could not have died of polonium poisoning — the Russian experts found no traces of this substance,” Vladimir Uiba, the head of Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency, said earlier today (Tuesday).
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Shutdown shuts down E-Verify
The law requires that businesses verify the work eligibility of new hires within three days of hiring. Staffing companies which place employees with companies do the verification before placing employees. E-Verify has been turned off as a result of the government shutdown, causing headaches for businesses, boosting their administrative costs, and possibly landing them in legal trouble.
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Renewable fuel standard: mend it, don’t end it
Congress should minimally modify — and not, as petroleum-related interests have increasingly lobbied for, repeal — the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the most comprehensive renewable energy policy in the United States, according to a new paper. The paper argues that RFS mandates merely ought to be adjusted to reflect current and predicted biofuel commercialization realities.
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Budget impasse halts enforcement of chemical plants safety standards
Security experts say that short of a direct nuclear attack on a U.S. city, the most dangerous, mass-casualty catastrophe the United States faces is a terrorist attack on, or an accident in, a chemical facility which would release toxic clouds over neighboring cities and towns. The federal government partial shutdown is making it impossible to enforce safety and security standards formulated to strengthen the ability of thousands of U.S. chemical facilities to withstand terrorist attacks.
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Halt of CFATS work disrupts debate over program’s merit
The budget impasse-related halting of monitoring and enforcing compliance with the 2007 Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) comes at a time of growing criticism of the measure by GOP – but not only GOP – lawmakers, who complain that there are too many problems with CFATS and the way it has so far been implemented.
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Russia to improve image by developing patriotic video games
The Russian government has complained that the videogame is “Company of Heroes,” which is popular among Russian teenagers, distorts history by depicting a Second World War Russian soldier as a criminal and arsonist. The government is considering banning the game – and has also launched its own videogame project to produce games which contribute to “patriotic education.” In the meantime, a Belgian videogame developer is set to release a mobile game, titled “You Don’t Mess with Putin,” which depicts Russian president Vladimir Putin and a fictional sidekick, an alcoholic American named Mike, battling zombies who attack a Putin news conference.
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ASCB: U.S. scientific research will "pay dearly" for shutdown
The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) added its voice to those of other scientific and professional groups in warning that the federal government’s partial shutdown will hurt patients, researchers, and especially the U.S. research effort, long after an agreement to end the impasse is reached. “As America keeps hitting the brakes on scientific research, we are, in effect, accelerating the damage done to our continued leadership in global bioscience, in health outcomes and in the economic power that we have always derived from basic research,” Dr. Bertuzzi, executive director of the ASCB said. “Americans will pay dearly for these slowdowns, sequestrations, and shutdowns in finding cures and on maintaining economic competitiveness.”
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More headlines
The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States
As President Donald Trump guts the main federal office dedicated to preventing terrorism, states say they’re left to take the lead in spotlighting threats. Some state efforts are robust, others are fledgling, and yet other states are still formalizing strategies for addressing extremism. With the federal government largely retreating from focusing on extremist dangers, prevention advocates say the threat of violent extremism is likely to increase.
The “Invasion” Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
How DHS Laid the Groundwork for More Intelligence Abuse
I&A, the lead intelligence unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) —long plagued by politicized targeting, permissive rules, and a toxic culture —has undergone a transformation over the last two years. Spencer Reynolds writes that this effort falls short. “Ultimately, Congress must rein in I&A,” he adds.