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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 13:31

Residents of Boca de Pascuales, Mexico, prepare to evacuate on Oct. 22, 2015, before the arrival of Hurricane Patricia.Photo by Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Hurricane Patricia'--now the strongest hurricane ever measured'--is expected to make landfall in Mexico late Friday. According to the latest official forecast from the National Hurricane Center, Manzanillo, a city of 100,000 people, appears to be in Patricia's direct path.

After seeing the incredible data gathered by hurricane hunter aircraft overnight, a few meteorologists have argued that Patricia could be thought of as a Category 7 hurricane'--though the official Saffir-Simpson scale only goes up to 5. Here's the official description of likely damage from a Category 5 hurricane'--like 1992's Andrew in Florida, and 2013's Haiyan in the Philippines'--suitable for your nightmares:

A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

The original justification for cutting off the scale at 5 is that no human-built structure could withstand winds above its 155 mph threshold. So essentially there was no point in differentiating between storms once the winds were above 155. Right now, Patricia's core winds are estimated to be 200 mph'--with gusts to 250 mph'--as strong as the tornado that destroyed Joplin, Missouri, in 2011, but at least 15 times larger in area. As I wrote earlier today, Patricia, at its current strength, is close to the theoretical maximum strength for a tropical cyclone on planet Earth. In fact, at one point on Friday morning, Patricia actually went above its maximum potential intensity.

How did Patricia get to be so strong? The answer, quite simply, involves human-caused climate change. Hurricane Patricia is exactly the kind of terrifying storm we can expect to see more frequently in the decades to come. Although there's no way to know exactly how much climate change is a factor in Patricia's explosive strengthening, it's irresponsible, at this point, not to discuss it.

Scientists who study the link between hurricanes and climate change have long predicted, and debated, the trend of stronger tropical cyclones. The latest science seems to have settled on climate change boosting the frequency of the strongest hurricanes, even as total hurricane numbers may remain flat. Chris Mooney, at the Washington Post, gives a good overview of that science in the context of Patricia. Basically, storms like Patricia fit closely with these predictions, though they happen so infrequently that it's almost impossible to definitively prove.

Meteorologically, there are at least four reasons why global warming could have contributed to Patricia's ferocity: El Ni±o, exceptionally warm ocean temperatures, increased atmospheric humidity, and sea level rise.

The first two are related. Right now, the Pacific Ocean is in the middle of a near-record strength El Ni±o, which has boosted global ocean temperatures to the highest levels ever observed. Current water temperatures near Hurricane Patricia are some of the hottest on the planet, and well above normal. Recent research has shown that El Ni±os have become more intense in recent decades, and that climate change could double the frequency of strong El Ni±os by the end of the century. However, climate scientists are still very much debating this point'--mostly because it's generally difficult to attribute a climate change trend to events that are already fairly rare. Strong El Ni±os, like the current one, happen only a few times a century.

What's easier to attribute is the fact that, El Ni±o or not, the temperature of global oceans'--and more importantly, the total heat content stored in the top layer of the world's oceans'--is skyrocketing. The carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel burning does a great job of trapping the sun's energy, and recent research has shown most of that energy'--more than 90 percent'--is being funneled into the oceans. Hurricanes use that extra energy as fuel for the thunderstorms that swirl around their centers. Warmer water increases the intensity of updrafts, which draw in humid, tropical air, and in turn increases the chances of rapid storm intensification. In this way, storms forming in today's climate probably have a better chance to reach their maximum potential intensity, as Patricia has.

Since higher air temperatures boost evaporation rates, heavier rainfall is also an already-proven side effect of climate change. Higher humidity levels also provide more fuel for developing hurricanes, since intrusions of dry air into the storms' centers can sometimes slow the intensification process. As Patricia makes landfall, it's expected to produce up to two feet of rain in just a day or so along the slopes of Mexico's coastal mountain range'--creating a risk of devastating flash floods and mudslides.

As sea levels rise from melting glaciers and polar ice, the damage caused by storm surge'--the deadliest aspect of a hurricane landfall'--has also increased. In Manzanillo, the city nearest Patricia's likely landfall location, the ocean has risen by about 8 inches over the past 50 years, in line with the global average. Since El Ni±o's boost of warm water also tends to produce a temporary rise in sea levels, the ocean is probably an additional 8 inches higher in Manzanillo right now. Both of those figures are on top of Patricia's storm surge, which could top 15 feet.

Even though it may not make sense from a wind speed perspective to create new hurricane categories, the fact that super hurricanes like Patricia may be becoming more common and that storm surge is a far deadlier threat anyway means that, from a public warning perspective, it may be time to revise the Saffir-Simpson scale. Patricia has made my vote clear: Climate change means we need a Category 6.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:14

Eric Holthaus (born 1981)[1] is a meteorologist who works for Slate, and former columnist for the Wall Street Journal who has frequently written about the impacts of global climate change.[2][3][4]

Holthaus grew up in Kansas. His writing during Hurricane Sandy resulted in a substantial following. During his career, he has advised numerous groups and individuals on coping with changing weather, including Indian military officials and Ethiopian subsistence farmers.

He has traveled to Ethiopia in many occasions, where he does work for a climate project. On September 27, 2013, feeling that his extensive air travel, was contributing to the problem, Holthaus vowed never to fly again.[5]

References[edit]External links[edit]

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:15

Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) on TwitterHTTP/1.1 200 OK cache-control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 content-encoding: gzip content-language: en content-length: 9026 content-security-policy: default-src 'self'; connect-src 'self'; font-src 'self' data:; frame-src https://*.twitter.com twitter: https://www.google.com; frame-ancestors https://*.twitter.com; img-src https://twitter.com https://*.twitter.com https://*.twimg.com https://maps.google.com https://www.google-analytics.com https://stats.g.doubleclick.net https://www.google.com data:; media-src https://*.twitter.com https://*.twimg.com https://*.cdn.vine.co; object-src 'self'; script-src 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' https://*.twitter.com https://*.twimg.com https://www.google.com https://www.google-analytics.com https://stats.g.doubleclick.net; style-src 'unsafe-inline' https://*.twitter.com https://*.twimg.com; report-uri https://twitter.com/i/csp_report?a=O5SWEZTPOJQWY3A%3D&ro=false; content-type: text/html;charset=utf-8 date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:15:45 GMT expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT last-modified: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:15:45 GMT pragma: no-cache server: tsa_b set-cookie: _mobile_sess=BAh7ByIKZmxhc2hJQzonQWN0aW9uQ29udHJvbGxlcjo6Rmxhc2g6OkZsYXNoSGFzaHsABjoKQHVzZWR7ADoQX2NzcmZfdG9rZW4iJWNlZmQxOWJjMDNjNzI4ZDA1NWE1NTlmZTNiMjJhYzA1--07de347cecaa75c72cf4198ff1b52146a7f7ce9a; Expires=Thu, 24 Dec 2015 14:15:45 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure; HTTPOnly set-cookie: _twitter_sess=BAh7CCIKZmxhc2hJQzonQWN0aW9uQ29udHJvbGxlcjo6Rmxhc2g6OkZsYXNo%250ASGFzaHsABjoKQHVzZWR7ADoPY3JlYXRlZF9hdGwrCH7jWp9QAToHaWQiJWQ2%250ANzg0YmJhMmZmZjczMmQyMmM1ZTRkNDJjMjFlODJm--fd9108e2fde16b64aa97e0087b445d3f03c5f15f; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure; HTTPOnly set-cookie: ua="m2,msw"; Expires=Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:15:45 GMT; Path=/; Domain=.twitter.com; Secure; HTTPOnly strict-transport-security: max-age=631138519 vary: Accept-Encoding x-connection-hash: 5a7ef1e44d4a0127fcea619d0231104e x-content-type-options: nosniff x-frame-options: SAMEORIGIN x-response-time: 166 x-transaction: 3f66b4653a2fe0f5 x-twitter-response-tags: BouncerCompliant x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block

Eric Holthaus

@EricHolthaus

Tucson, AZ

Writing about weather and climateMeteorologist, nerding it up at

Say hi: eric.holthaus@slate.com

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 14:14

An ariel view of flooding caused by hurricane Sandy in New Jersey. Meteorologist Eric Holthaus has been flooded with email about how individuals should respond to climate change. Photograph: guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk/guardian.co.uk

A meteorologist who broke down in tears, mused about a vasectomy, and vowed to give up air travel in the wake of the blockbuster report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found himself at the centre of a storm about personal responses to climate change.

Since his emotional musings on Twitter, meteorologist Eric Holthaus has been flooded with email about how individuals should respond to climate change.

Some were openly hostile. "I've had a couple hundred people send emails or tweets that said: 'if you really want to reduce your carbon footprints why not commit suicide'?" Holthaus told the Guardian. But others were supportive of the no-fly pledge, saying they were inspired to give up meat, or take other carbon-cutting actions.

Holthaus, who gained a large following during hurricane Sandy, estimates he flew 75,000 miles last year, much of that to Ethiopia where he is involved in a climate project.

He has followed climate change for years, as a blogger for the Wall Street Journal and now at Quartz.

But he said he was overwhelmed by the IPCC pronouncing for the first time that humans were now only decades away from being locked into a course of dangerous climate change. He also despaired at the inertia in UN climate talks, which are unlikely to produce global action before 2020.

On his way home from San Francisco, Holthaus tweeted: "I just broke down in tears in boarding area at SFO [San Francisco airport] while on phone with my wife. I've never cried because of a science report before."

Two minutes later, Holthaus tweeted again: "I realised, just now: this has to be the last flight I ever take. I'm committing right now to stop flying. It's not worth the climate."

He said: "It felt like a hopeless moment to me to be completely honest. At that moment it hit me, as a citizen of the planet and as a human, not as a scientist.

"In the absence of a global coordinated carbon policy, I think it is going to be up to individuals, cities, and corporations to take action."

In his case, Holthaus said flying was by far the largest source of carbon emissions. Much of it was for work, but he also flew from his home in Wisconsin to holidays in Tanzania and California. He realised his carbon footprint from flying far outweighed his savings from sharing a car, recycling, or giving up meat.

"I was thinking the flying was all for a good cause. It is not going to matter but I think that kind of thinking is dangerous when we are at the global tipping point," he said. "When I saw I could reduce my carbon footprint with one action, for me it was a step I was willing to take."

Did Holthaus go too far? Fox News, predictably, in a segment this week labelled him a "kook" and said the "meteorologist's meltdown" discredited climate science.

Andrew Freedman, who writes at Climate Central, said on his Twitter feed that while he respected Holthaus's work: "I wonder if his overall reaction to the #IPCC report hurts his ability to credibly report on #climate."

But Holthaus said he could live with the criticism.

"Is my credibility increased or reduced? I don't know but I would argue that I am talking from a stronger standpoint now that I am practicing what I preach a little more," he said.

And he does not entirely rule out getting on a plane again one day. "Let's say, heaven forbid, my mother was in a car accident and I needed to be in hospital today. Of course I would fly," he said. "I don't have any plans to ever fly again but if there was an emergency like that than I would. My point is that there is a lot of discretionary travel by airplanes that produces a lot of emissions, whether people are taking vacations or business travel."

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:36

October 25, 2015Mexico dodged a bullet when monster Hurricane Patricia failed to live up to its threat of devastating huge swaths of the country. What saved Mexicans?

Experts say Mexico was saved from widespread destruction in big part thanks to the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains, which slowed Patricia's wrath.

The coastal region where it made landfall in western Jalisco state is also sparsely populated by fishing village, whose residents had evacuated to shelters.

The preventive evacuations by the authorities played an important role, along with a lower pressure in the north that affected Patricia's trajectory.

Patricia struck the Pacific coast as a massive Category Five hurricane late Friday, but almost 24 hours later President Enrique Pena Nieto declared that no major damage was detected.

Dozens of small homes were flattened in Chamela, a fishing village in Jalisco state, and 250 more were hit by floods elsewhere.

But it was not the widespread devastation expected for a hurricane that packed a record 325 kilometers (200 miles) per hour winds before it made landfall.

When Patricia struck the coast, its winds slowed to 270 kilometers per hour, and gradually lost steam as it moved inland.

Transport Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said Mexico was "lucky" that Patricia took a last minute turn and struck the Sierra Madre.

"Nature was kind-hearted," he said.

Uninhabited region

Pier Luigi Vidale, professor of climate system science at Britain's University of Reading, said the radius of Patricia's maximum winds was extremely small at 12 kilometers, "so it fit very well in the space" between the towns of Campo Acosta and La Barra de Navidad.

"The issue is exposure: luckily, it made landfall in a rather uninhabited region," he said.

While a second eyewall had a maximum winds radius of 100 kilometers, the distance between two inhabited locations was about the same.

"The storm continued straight to Sierra del Cuale, passing only through uninhabited zones, and rapidly lost intensity. We could hardly have been luckier," Vidale said.

Patricia was also influenced by its interaction with a low pressure extending from the north to the west of the country, said Leodegario Sanson, president of the Mexican Meteorologist Organization.

The low pressure stole some of the hurricane's clouds and "accelerating the cyclone's movement toward the northeast" and the mountains, Sanson told AFP.

In the past 24 hours, Patricia gradually weakened to a tropical storm, a depression and a "low remnant" as it moved northeast, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

The Philippines were not as fortunate when Super Typhoon Haiyan, with its 315 kilometers per hour winds, left more than 7,350 dead or missing when it struck in November 2013.

"The conditions between countries like the Philippines and Mexico are very different," said Jaime Albarran Ascencio, meteorologist at Mexico's governmental National Meteorological Service.

"Over there (in the Philippines) there were many people were crowded together close to the coast and the hurricane got them," he said.

But in the path of Patricia, he said, the homes were built better and there was "very good information" given to residents.

(C) 2015 AFP

Satellite sees Tropical Storm Patricia form near Western Mexico coastOct 21, 2015

The low pressure area that was designated as System 97E on October 20 developed into the Eastern Pacific Ocean's twentieth tropical depression of the season at 11 a.m. EDT. By 11 p.m. the depression became Tropical Storm ...

NASA sees Tropical Storm Patricia's lopsided heavy rains along Mexican coastOct 22, 2015

NASA's GPM satellite saw that the western side of Tropical Storm Patricia was packing most of the storm's moderate and heavy rainfall when it passed overhead in space. Patricia was close to the coast of western Mexico, and ...

NASA sees Hurricane Olaf still a major hurricaneOct 23, 2015

NASA's Aqua satellite saw Central Pacific Ocean Hurricane Olaf maintained its eye and remained a major hurricane on October 23.

Suomi NPP satellite sees record-breaking Hurricane PatriciaOct 23, 2015

At 8 a.m. EDT on October 23, 2015, the National Hurricane Center said that Hurricane Patricia had grown into a monster hurricane. In fact, it is the strongest eastern north pacific hurricane on record. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP ...

NASA analyzes record-breaking Hurricane PatriciaOct 23, 2015

NASA satellites and instruments have been monitoring the record-breaking Hurricane Patricia as it rapidly intensified off the southwestern coast of Mexico on October 23. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP saw frigid cloud top temperatures, ...

Why did Hurricane Patricia become a monster so quickly?Oct 23, 2015

Hurricane Patricia zoomed from tropical storm to record-beater in 30 hours flat like a jet-fueled sports car.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:41

Final answer at the end of the day: There WAS NO HURRICANE

[Picture credit '' Hurricane Patricia as seen from the ISS!]

www.Jimstone.ishttp://82.221.129.208/ifyouareinamericayouprobablycantseethis3.html

This was a lie from start to finish. It made landfall nowhere. It dissipated into a tropical depression 100 miles out at sea after barely becoming a tropical storm. This fake cane was just a load of bunk to support the climate scam. Only a little rain in Guadalajara, only a little rain in Guanajuato, only rain even in Puerto Vallarta, which the eye passed over. Many witnesses are wondering WTF happened to this storm, which never existed. It is OFF THE TV. It is NOT ON DRUDGE, and out of the news TOTALLY. It is not even in news flashes.

OFFICIAL TALLY: Zero deaths, zero property damage. The entire coast is populated from start to finish. There is no way for any real hurricane to have a tally of ZERO.

Even if, as the prevailing damage control lie goes: ''the hurricane was extremely compact and had only category 1 winds 15 miles away from the eye wall,'' we have the leading edge, at 30 miles wide, full cat 5, and the sides for another 30, for a cat 5 to category 1 total distance 60 miles. WHERE IS THE DEVASTATION? There is not one downed house, not one washed out road, not one flipped over car when cars should have been missiles and the ENTIRE coast is populated. Who is pushing this crap about a record hurricane? ANSWER:

Climate scammers who want a ''world record hurricane'' on the books for the climate change/carbon tax agenda, that is who. This is not even in the Mexican news flashes anymore, it just evaporated like a ghost into nowhere. But it is now on the books as the big BAAAAD climate change cane, just wait and see! You will see the geriatric climate change lie get up and dance with this ''cane!''.

I IS OFFICIAL: HURRICANE PATRICIA NEVER EXISTED AND IS A U.S. GOVERNMENT SPONSORED GLOBAL WARMING HOAX''Eye wall'' which only exists in computer models went directly over Puerto Vallarta, yet there were no significant winds and there was no damage or deaths, only heavy rain!This hoax hurricane arrived two days after the U.S. federal government threatened all people at NOAA and other weather agencies that if they went against the ''official word'' they would be jailed for breaking a gag orderMEXICAN NEWS GAVE THE FINAL REPORT ON THE HURRICANE: NO NEWSI am calling it as it is: The so-called cat 5 world record hurricane was a tropical storm that turned into a tropical depression 100 miles off the Mexican coast, and it caused zero damage on arrival. Though the Mexican news is still calling it a cat 5, there is a surprised tone to it all, because there was no damage anywhere and no deaths. This was a fake hurricane that will hit the books as real, to provide fodder for the climate change scam.

UPDATE: All the pictures are computer generated models. The Mexican press aired footage of the real deal, and it totally dissipated 50 '' 100 miles off the coast with no distinguishable eye, and hit the coast as only clouds. The ''hurricane'' supposedly made landfall closest to Puerto Vallarta, between the cities of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta. It supposedly took a track that should have destroyed both cities and totally obliterated the Mexican coast between those two cities. The American scam press is saying that it hit a ''remote area of Mexico's coastline'' to explain no damage. What they are not saying is that it is only 100 miles from Manzanillo to Puerto Vallarta. No damage in either city means there was no hurricane AT ALL. And there are several significant towns between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo. There is no such thing as a ''remote stretch of Mexican coastline'', it is 100 percent populated the entire way.

No deaths and no property damage ANYWHERE are being reported. All the Mexican press is saying is that there is ''no news'' and the hurricane is officially gone. The rain has already stopped in Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo. This ''category 5'' was at best a tropical depression.I sort of figured something was amiss last night when not a single whisper of wind happened, even though I was supposed to be in the damage path. From the reports, I figured the winds would be 100 mph here. NOT A WHISPER OF WIND HAPPENED AT ALL. It was a calm night.

Here is the news from Puerto Vallarta:''The Sokols, a family of five from suburban Detroit, were supposed to fly out of Puerto Vallarta on Friday but ended up for hours in a shelter at a university after their flight was canceled. By night they were back where they began: at their hotel, and no worse for wear. ''It's amazing it went from the worst in history to just some heavy rain,'' Susanna Sokol said.

My response: No, it is not surprising, with a gag order on U.S. climate scientists threatening prison if they speak up and say something other than the official word, a huge carbon tax, and a global warming/climate scam to uphold (which a world record hurricane that is off the charts would support), I don't find it surprising AT ALL that all it ended up being was tropical rain.

''CAT 5 PLUS WORLD DOOM HURRICANE PATRICIA WAS JUST A TROPICAL DEPRESSION, NOTHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPENED.UPDATE: NO HURRICANE, ONLY A TROPICAL DEPRESSION, HIT MEXICOAnd low and behold, two days before this hurricane, the U.S. federal government placed a gag order on NOAA weather officials and others in the U.S., saying they would face jail time if they spoke up against the ''official'' word given by the government. Why would they do that? Because they needed a huge storm on the records to support the climate change lie and they did not want people calling their bluff, THAT'S WHY.Ok, a little math here:How far across is a hurricane? Good estimate '' 200 '' 300 miles. How far across is the eye? 30 '' 50 miles. This means that even if the hurricane scored a perfect shot between Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, neither of those cities could have been less than 25-35 miles away from the eye wall. No damage in either of these cities, from a 220 plus mph windy eye wall, which should have had at least 150 mph winds extending 30 miles out on both sides means NOAA AND THE U.S. WEATHER REPORTING AGENCIES FAKED THIS HURRICANE.

One strange hurricaneI am holding off on calling it a hoax until I get more info, but this is what happened where I am: NOTHING.

Ok, there was a quarter inch of rain last night. But the biggest thing I noticed this morning was blasting music that was way too loud coming from somewhere. There was a super mild rain. There was never any wind AT ALL. Nothing happened, and I am only 150 miles from where this thing made landfall, and it was supposed to be headed (sort of) in my direction. If this thing was even a normal category 1, there should have been at least 30 '' 40 mph winds, possibly 100 mph winds and there was NOTHING. So I am going to say what people should see in the news, or this thing is FAKE.

Let's use as a reference the hurricane that hit the Yucatan a while back. It had 155 mph winds (not 220, like last night's hurricane was supposed to have) and it stripped every tree completely out of the ground and razed every building for miles and miles. There were lots of photos of perfect devastation. So if, from this hurricane there are not photos of mountains completely stripped bare of all vegetation, no photos of the coastal road completely missing, no photos of erased cities, BLEAK MONOCHROME PHOTOS WHERE EVERYTHING IS ONE COLOR '' MUD COLOR '' for miles and miles of nothing but mud color razed flat waste, this hurricane was a hoax and that is all there is to it.

I think we are going to get bright tropical colored photos of half ripped palm trees, IF THAT. This last hurricane should have excavated ground like a mining crew if it was real, once it gets past a certain point (and 220 mph winds with gusts up to 300 are well past that point) the earth itself cannot hold up and even the ground is scoured away and there is nothing but mud colored waste because of the dirt ripped out of the ground. If we do not see this, they hoaxed it. And why would they hoax it? To get their ''world record storm'' for the global warming scam, that is why. Come on now, THE FREAKING LIGHTS ARE ON AND THERE IS A HUGE PARTY SOMEWHERE, not a whisper of wind, NOTHING AT ALL going on here, and even though I was not in the direct path, I was at least in the strong weather path and nothing at all is simply not possible.

DID YOU KNOW: Two days before this hurricane, a gag order was placed on NOAA and other government weather reporting agencies, stating that anyone in those agencies who spoke up against the ''official'' line would be criminally prosecuted. And why would that be?So far I am only going off of what happened where I am, but it was so starkly against what was stated to be happening that I am very suspicious.

October 23 2015

Not much going on today other than a huge hurricane. Curious how fast this one developed . . . . has me wondering. And oh, I forgot '' In order to shut up climate scientists and prevent them from exposing fraud, a gag order has been placed on NOAA and other agencies to stop people from talking and blowing the lid off the global warming hoax. Sort of a banana republic type thing, but what do you expect when Hillary WILL BE PRESIDENT, even if she only gets 3 votes? People have to be silly in this day and age to believe in the Diebold vote count.

Cynthia wrote:

Jim The worst hurricane in recorded history headed for Pacific Coast of Mexico. They say it is beyond anything they have ever seen, they say it could wipe Puerto Vallarta off the map. Even the nasa folk are shocked at the size of this thing, from space it is absolutely immense. They say ot is beyond Cat 5 with 220MPH winds.Is there any real possibility they can actually ''brew'' these things and make them worse, like BP earthwatch says? Hope you are nowhere near that area of the nation. Your recent analysis of everything from the Hajj massacre to the Syrian debacle has been excellent. Amazing. '--cynthia

My response: I am not out of this hurricane's path. I should be on the outer edge of the damage path, at best. There have already been heavy rains and strange looking sky. No wind yet, but something feels eerie and it felt that way for me before I knew about this hurricane, which basically hit the news yesterday afternoon and turned into a monster overnight. This morning was super weird, with three levels of different types of clouds (no fog) with the lowest level only about 100 feet off the ground with a super clear cutoff underneath them, they were crisp and not hazy. I never saw anything like that before, and they were tall clouds, going up about 3000 feet, then a break, another layer about 8,000 feet up, then a break and another layer that was a solid sheet I could not see past about 15,000 feet up. There were probably 4 layers, ending with cirrus clouds but I could not see past the third layer. I never saw a sky like that before.

And the question: Could this be weather mod? Well, yes, it could be . . . . . I would not be surprised at all. And I think to front the global warming scam and carbon tax, they absolutely will start doing things like this so people actually believe things are going haywire as they ''predicted''. They are not past doing this for a psy op.

[PS After producing that 'photo' the ISS went completely blank with no live streaming -J].

Thanks for the generous mention on show 766.

It's an exaggeration to describe the core size for a sub or ship reactor as "football sized." It's possible to design functional cores that small, but the power output would only be a few tens of kilowatts. Might be enough for a small commercial building or grocery store.

Without violating any rules, I can tell you that the core of my 1960s vintage subs - which were 425 feet long, had a crew of 150, and displaced 9,000 tons - could fit under my office desk. That core drove the subs for 14-16 years.

Modern US subs can run for 33 years (that's a real number) without refueling. I don't know how large their cores are.

Rod Adams

Sir Atomic Rod Adams

Baronet of the Blue Ridge

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Source: TARPLEY.net

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:25

(Left): General Carter Ham (Right): General David Petraeus

Over the year we at the TWSP have exhaustively analyzed what happened in Benghazi. Today's hearing of the House Benghazi committee has totally missed the main features of what actually happened. One important fact was that this was an October surprise in September designed to advance the fortunes of Mitt Romney in the upcoming elections. The following is a compendium of our analyses over the intervening three years.

The Benghazi consulate was prevalently a CIA post, with significant military capabilities. Ambassador Stevens had strong CIA connections and served as a liaison with the Al Qaeda-linked terrorists of the Benghazi-Derna-Tobruk corridor, whom the CIA is using for the attack on Syria. His last conversation with a Turkish diplomat was evidently a discussion on this topic. Stevens and others thought they had nothing to fear because their relations with the Islamist fighters were so cordial. The attack that killed Stevens was carried out by forces under the control of Sufiyan Qumu (also Kumu or Gumu), who had been held in Guantnamo for several years and released as a CIA asset for the overthrow of Qaddafi. A significant group of CIA paramilitaries stationed nearby was ordered to stand down by the CIA command structure. Another CIA asset, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which had in the summer of 2011 assassinated General Younes in order to help the CIA operative General Hifter to take control of the rebel army, had contracted to provide additional security, but also did not intervene. General Petraeus went to the movies that night. On September 14, Petraeus told the House Intelligence committee that the Benghazi incident had been spontaneous, a demonstration gone violent. This is the line which Susan Rice mouthed on television in mid-September. (She should be fired for other reasons.) The Obama administration was in any case eager to hide the fact that it had turned Libya over to Al Qaeda. The goal of Benghazi was an early October surprise to Carterize Obama, and the CIA was commanded by Petraeus.

Petraeus arrived at the CIA on September 6, 2011. Within a month, a new provocation was launched against Iran in the form of absurd accusations that members of the Quds Force were plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, DC. Intelligence community conduit David Ignatius wrote at the time that a big reason the implausible plot story gained credibility was the ''fact the CIA [meaning Petraeus] and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informants' juicy allegations'' implicating the Quds Force and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. In reality, the patsies involved came from the Drug Enforcement Administration and/or the Mujaheddin E-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist force maintained by the US in Iraq. The MEK has now been rewarded by being removed from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. (David Ignatius, ''Those Keystone Iranians: Why Such a Crude Assassination Plot?'', Washington Post, October 12, 2011) The goal of the operation was to abort possible diplomatic solutions to tensions between NATO and Iran.

In Washington, the neocon Petraeus was always considered as General Betray-US, Bush's warlord and the key frontman for the Iraq surge. He was the darling of the civilian chickenhawk neocons, who saw in him a presidential vehicle to return to power after the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Petraeus' neocon sherpas were Frederick Kagan and Max Boot, who also helped him to refurbish his image concerning Israel. Obama was always afraid that Petraeus would run for president, and when Romney took the nomination, feared that Petraeus might be a candidate for vice president.

Like General George Marshall on the evening of December 6, 1941 '-- who stayed conveniently out of the loop under various pretexts because he wanted the Pearl Harbor attack to occur as a means of damaging President Roosevelt '' Petraeus was at the movies during the Benghazi attack, attending a private screening at the Canadian Embassy of the movie Argo with Ben Affleck, which deals with a 1979 covert CIA operation in Tehran.

An October Surprise in the Era of Early VotingThe Benghazi incident of September 11, 2012 was an October surprise which arrived a few weeks early. Its goal was to help defeat Obama, and to install Romney in the White House. (Interestingly, the name of Romney was never mentioned during the entire five-hour length of the Issa committee hearings.) There are tell-tale signs that the Benghazi incident was deliberately orchestrated by a cabal of generals and admirals favorable to Romney. Many of these flag officers have been removed from their posts over the past several months, but their ouster has generally been attributed to financial or sexual misdeeds. Even though Obama was primarily the target of the Benghazi incident, partisan Republicans are attempting anyway to blame him, betting Obama is too cowardly to go public with charges of what amounts to an attempted military coup in 2012. This is folly, since Obama's inaction leaves much of the rogue military network intact and capable of striking again.

The so-called US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in fact a CIA station with more than 50 personnel on hand to maintain liaison with the Al Qaeda death squads deployed by NATO intelligence in 2010 and 2011 for the purpose of overthrowing the Libyan government of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. Hillary Clinton was interested in building up the US presence in Benghazi in order to handle the growing workload generated by the airlift and sealift involved in this operation. By September, 2012 NATO was in the process of transferring large numbers of these terrorist fighters, along with weaponry plundered from the arms depots of Colonel Qaddafi, into Syria '-- with the goal of stoking a civil war against the Assad government. This transfer was being accomplished by way of southern Turkey, which explains why Ambassador Stevens' last official meeting was with a Turkish diplomat.

The Obama administration showed reckless disregard for probable political retribution when it embarked on a policy of systematically using Al Qaeda terrorists in the form of secret armies to destabilize and overthrow several regimes in the Arab world. Awareness of this colossal vulnerability may also explain why the Obama White House has been so reticent to provide basic information about the Benghazi incident.

Benghazi Mission Was Moving Terrorists from Libya to SyriaSecurity was lax at the Benghazi facility because Ambassador Stevens and his State Department and CIA colleagues had been working closely with the Libyan jihadis for many months on redeploying these fanatical fighters to the Syrian front. As I reported in 2011, the Benghazi-Derna-Tobruk corridor had been identified by the United States Army some years earlier as the world's most productive breeding ground for suicide bombers destined for the conflict in Iraq. The US intelligence community had decided to mobilize those fighters for the overthrow first of Qaddafi, and then of Assad.

By all accounts, Ambassador Stevens was assassinated by the organization known as Ansar al Islam, controlled by the infamous Sufian bin Qumu. Qumu, previously a member of the Al Qaeda affiliate calling itself Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, had been held up by the United States in the Guantnamo Bay concentration camp for several years until his release in 2007. Qumu had returned to Libya and set up al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a key part of the effort to overthrow Qaddafi. Qumu's career points up the widely misunderstood role of Guantnamo, which is not just a prison, but is also a training center for terrorists destined to be recycled back into the field in the service of the CIA. Another example of the same pattern is the late Said Ali ah-Shihri, who was held in Guantnamo for six years and then sent to Yemen to help found Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Shihri then zealously carried out his assignment of destabilizing Yemen. As a rule, the only way to get out of Guantnamo alive is to become a double agent in the service of the CIA. When reactionary Republicans are confronted with this phenomenon, they whine that the terrorists have duped the CIA to obtain their freedom. In reality, the CIA is deliberately sending the Guantnamo alumni into the field for terror operations against targets the US wants to hit.

Thus, the headline for the murder of Ambassador Stevens might well read: ''Top CIA Asset Kills US Ambassador.'' The main question thus becomes why Qumu surprised the entire US mission by killing a man who might well have been his case officer and controller until the day before?

Ask General David Petraeus and General Carter HamAt any point in the Benghazi story where malfeasance or nonfeasance by CIA personnel or local assets occurs, the scrutiny of investigators must be directed towards General David Petraeus, who was allegedly attending a screening of the pro-war movie Argo at the time of the Benghazi attacks. This obvious connection was totally ignored in the Issa hearings, including by the Democratic Party minority.

Another possible source of assistance for Ambassador Stevens and his beleaguered associates would have been a small but capable team of US special forces stationed in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, some 400 miles to the west of Benghazi. According to testimony at the Issa hearings, this Tripoli team was under the command of a certain Lt. Col. Gibson. According to the sworn testimony, Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were about to board a Libyan Hercules C-130 transport aircraft for the flight to Benghazi when he received an order to stand down, do nothing, and remain in Tripoli. The hearings featured a melodramatic invocation of how bitterly disappointed Lt. Col. Gibson was when he received this order.

One of the partisan pro-Republican witnesses at the Issa hearing was State Department official Gregory Hicks, who had served as Deputy Chief of Mission under Ambassador Stevens. Hicks tried to argue that the order moving Lt. Col. Gibson and his team from Tripoli to Benghazi needed to come from the Deputies' Committee contained in the National Security Council structure at the White House. But, since Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were already in country, it is clear that they had full autonomy to proceed to Benghazi. By all indications, Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were under the command of US General Carter Ham, the boss of the United States African Command (US AFRICOM), located in Stuttgart, Germany. General Ham, who had directed US military operations against Libya in 2011, was removed from this command in the aftermath of Benghazi on October 18, 2012, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Obama's intention of replacing him with General David Rodriguez. General Ham, like General Petraeus, would therefore have to be thoroughly interrogated on his role in the Benghazi incident, and also in the context of the Seven Days in May scenario which hangs over the run-up to the November 2012 presidential election.

There was also the question of the ability of the United States military to deploy air assets over Benghazi in useful time. Pentagon officials have generally stated that US attack aircraft were too far away from Benghazi to make a difference, and that the two waves of the Benghazi attack would have been over long before these planes could have arrived. They also claimed that there were no tankers available for the necessary in-flight refueling. The acceptance of these fictitious arguments by Issa's self-styled truth seekers testifies to the extremely primitive and ill-informed level of the Issa hearings.

Sigonella air base represented by number 7.

A layman listening to the Issa hearings would have come away convinced that the closest US military airbase to Benghazi was Aviano in northeast Italy, not far from the border with Slovenia. This is absurd. The closest US military airfield was that at Sigonella on the east coast of Sicily, in the shadow of Mount Etna, about 875 miles south of Aviano. The bombing of Libya in 2011 was largely conducted from Sigonella.

The distance from Sigonella to Benghazi is about 420 miles, which a modern fighter jet can cover in one to two hours. Tankers are unquestionably available at Sigonella. Could air assets from Sigonella have arrived in time to strafe Qumu's forces, or intimidate them into a retreat? Here is a real question which the Issa committee was too poorly informed to even pose.

And who was in command of the US Naval Air Station at Sigonella on September 11, 2012? The answer seems to be General Carter Ham once again. Sigonella was also the home of Special-Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12.2, with 120 Marines ready to provide support to Marine Forces Africa and US Africa Command missions. Congressman Issa needs to question General Carter Ham about why forces from Tripoli and from Sigonella never intervened in Benghazi. Otherwise, the credibility of this investigation will be zero.

Naval assets in the Mediterranean might also have been brought to bear by either General Carter Ham or Admiral James Stavridis, the Supreme Commander of NATO and also of the US European command. Stavridis had been considered a candidate to become the top officer of the United States Navy, but his hopes were frustrated by accusations of relatively minor financial irregularities. Stavridis was then ousted from his NATO command in early 2013. Just before retiring, Stavridis told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he was eager for the United States to increase its meddling in Syria. He demanded the arming of the terrorist death squads with modern weapons, noting that this would be ''helpful in breaking the deadlock and bringing down the Assad regime.'' (AP, March 19, 2013) Many disgruntled generals and admirals regard Obama as insufficiently aggressive.

Part of the Republican mantra has been to ridicule the suggestion that a scurrilous anti-Islamic film made in Southern California had any role in preparing the Benghazi incident. One of the film's major backers, the Egyptian Copt Joseph Nasrallah, was part of the so-called Islamophobia Network of pro-Israeli publicists, academics, retired military, and former government officials. The dominant personality and most famous participant in this Islamophobia Network (which had tried in 2011 to block the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan) was none other than neocon former State Department official John Bolton, in September 2012 a close adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who might have been considering him as a future secretary of state. Whatever the connection of this anti-Islamic film to events in Libya, there is no doubt that it played an important role in more than two dozen protests and riots around the world, including one that was going on that same day in Cairo, Egypt. In that instance, rioters had broken through the security perimeter and breached the wall of the US Embassy. It is understandable that the Republicans wish to minimize attention to this film, since it was to all intents and purposes produced by a branch of the Romney presidential campaign, quite plausibly with the goal of creating incidents that could be used to embarrass Obama.

However, even before the now legendary appearances of US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice on a series of Sunday morning political programs, it was none other than CIA boss Petraeus who told a secret session of the House Intelligence committee that Benghazi incidents had been triggered by the anti-Islamic film.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:37

by Scott Creighton

I will get into how disappointing and utterly depressing Hillary's Benghazi Commission testimony really was in a little while. Let's just say it has to do with a great deal more than the deaths of ''4 patriotic and brave Americans serving our national interests''

And it certainly isn't about politics or a pathetic, rigged freak-show of an election.

Right now I would simply like to shed a little light on yet another potential troublemaker for the Clinton dynasty who just happened to die of cancer right before he could be a problem.

The list of folks like that, people who kick the bucket before a testimony having to do with Hillary, seems to get longer every year, doesn't it?

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Benghazi committee, had previously indicated that he might force Drumheller to testify in his panel. The Hill, Aug. 7, 2015

The Benghazi committee's questioning of Hillary Clinton yesterday was, to say the least, extremely disappointing.

No one delved into the fact that the White House repeatedly lied about Muammar Gaddafi ''bombing'' his citizens in Benghazi or how they claimed with no evidence at all that he ''planned' to commit genocide against his own people. That was never brought up during the testimony and therefore tacitly accepted as a given fact. It was a lie.

No one mentioned the fact that the Benghazi compound had been used to re-purpose Libyan weapons to be sent to our CIA-backed terrorist ''rebels'' in Syria or the fact that there in a DOD internal memo which makes that point painfully clear.

No one mentioned how Hillary deliberately set out to garner support from the Germans and the French and the Arab League in her pursuit of brutal regime change in Libya at all costs.

And when they did show the psychotic reaction Hillary Clinton gave during an interview (''We came. We saw. He died. hee hee hee'') it appears either MSNBC nixed the audio track of it during their live broadcast of the testimony or they did it themselves in the room. Either way, the massive audience of the live broadcast at MSNBC didn't hear how pathological Hillary Clinton really is and the glee she took in the extrajudicial murder of a beloved leader of another country that never once attacked us and certainly didn't in 2011 when Hillary started her color revolution over there.

There was nothing said about how we destroyed that country, how we turned a ''no fly zone'' mandate from the UNSC into a bombing campaign killing thousands of Libyans and decimating their civilian infrastructure in the process.

Not a single word.

Mass murder and the crime of committing a war of aggression against a sovereign state never factored into the discussion. Not once.

Also not mentioned once was HOW those Sidney Blumenthal emails became a part of the national discussion of Hillary Clinton.

For those of you who can recall, Hillary didn't simply hand them over to the State Department'... a hacker named Gruccifer stole them from Blumenthal and released them to several media outlets. That's how they became part of the discussion of Libya and the Benghazi attack.

The dispatches from Blumenthal to Clinton's private email address were posted online after Blumenthal's account was hacked in 2013 by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer. Lazar also broke into accounts belonging to George W. Bush's sister, Colin Powell, and others. He's now serving a seven-year sentence in his home country and was charged in a U.S. indictment last year.

The contents of the memos, which have recently become the subject of speculation in the right-wing media, raise new questions about how Clinton used her private email account and whether she tapped into an undisclosed back channel for information on Libya's crisis and other foreign policy matters. Gawker, March 2015

These are the ones that still existed. God knows how many Hillary's lawyers decided to destroy before turning others over to the State Department. I guess that is the ultimate advantage of hosting her email servers on her own personal equipment rather than on one controlled by the State Department.

In those emails a truth was made clear: her long time hatchet man, Sidney Blumenthal, was running around in Libya with two shady characters, Tyler Drumheller and David L. Grange, in an effort to take full advantage of the chaos created by Clinton's demolition of the country.

Mr. White declined to answer follow-up questions about what role Mr. Blumenthal was playing in the business venture. But Mr. Grange described Mr. Blumenthal as an adviser to Mr. White's company, along with two other associates: Tyler Drumheller, a colorful former Central Intelligence Agency official, and Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton friend.

''I just know that he was working with the team to work on business development,'' Mr. Grange said of Mr. Blumenthal.

In the spring of 2011, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Drumheller and Mr. Shearer were helping plan what was to be Mr. Grange's first trip to Libya, according to emails stolen by a Romanian hacker and published by Gawker and ProPublica in March. Mr. Blumenthal said he had been advised not to comment on the correspondence because the theft remained under investigation by the F.B.I. New York Times

They were there trying to arrange business deals. To profit off the decimation of the nation Hillary Clinton herself takes credit for. At the time, Blumenthal was on the payroll of Hillary Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative to the tune of $10,000 a month.

So exactly who was looking to turn a profit in the chaos created by Hillary Clinton's illegal destruction of Libya?

As they were moving around the country in the days and weeks leading up to the Benghazi attack, Sidney's communications with Hillary increased. Some 170 or so emails from Sidney to Hillary are now on the record, but God only knows how many more were destroyed by her lawyers.

Sidney Blumenthal was brought in to testify before the Benghazi commission back in June of this year. His testimony was closed to the public and the transcripts of his testimony have not been released.

Afterwards, when the leadership of the commission understood the intel being given to Clinton through Blumenthal was actually coming from Tyler Drumheller, they decided they were going to force him to appear before them as well. In fact Sidney says he was merely copying and pasting the memos straight from Tyler's work:

Blumenthal, subpoenaed by the committee, also did not verify any of the intelligence he forwarded to the nation's top diplomat. Instead, Blumenthal was copying and pasting memos from Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA operative who was looking into a Libya-related business venture, and sending them to Clinton, two people familiar with his testimony told POLITICO. Politico

So yes, the commission really wanted to talk to Tyler Drumheller about where he was getting his intel and why he was down there, unofficially, digging it up.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Benghazi hearings:

A former CIA officer who contested the spy agency's intelligence about Iraq and authored controversial emails about the 2012 attack on Benghazi, Libya, has passed away.

Tyler Drumheller died on Aug. 2 from complications from pancreatic cancer, The Washington Post reported on Thursday evening. He was 63 years old. The Hill

Drumheller had a well documented and very public falling out with CIA leadership after 9/11 and helped expose the lies the Bush administration told to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He certainly wasn't a man to be trusted by TPTB to say the right thing and stick to the story-line with regards to Benghazi like someone like Sidney Blumenthal could be trusted.

What is not clear is exactly how long Tyler Drumheller suffered from pancreatic cancer. I imagine it's safe too say he was not suffering from it while running around in Libya back in 2012 and 2011. But I don't know. No one mentions that curious bit of important information when discussing the death of Tyler Drumheller right before he was about to be called to testify before the Benghazi commission.

And of course Hillary is still the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination as she celebrated her ''victory'' over the investigators yesterday (pay attention'... I think that is one of the family members of one of the dead Americans sitting there watching Hillary high-five herself in congress)

Let me just add this in here for the record:

''Radiation poisoning from polonium-210 looks like the end stage of cancer'' CNN

Cancer has been used as a weapon by the CIA for many many years. A number of foreign leaders have been thought to have been eliminated by the CIA through the use of cancer.

Our clandestine services use it, the KGB used to use it. It makes for a convenient way to dispose of a problem without drawing too much unwanted attention to that problem's removal.

Now I'm not saying for a fact, Tyler Drumheller was offed by the CIA or Clinton's Globalist Initiative or Sidney Blumenthal or anything like that.

But you have to admit, it's awfully convenient for the guy to be placed on the ''out of service'' shelf right before being dragged into the Benghazi commission to talk about what he and Sidney Blumenthal were really doing on behalf of Hillary Clinton in Libya during the lead-up to the Benghazi attack.

Especially when you consider the guy has a track record of not always toeing the party line when it comes to the CIA and clandestine operations overseas.

Either way you look at it, that line of inquiry is dead on arrival and all we have left to tell the real story of Hillary Clinton's Blumenthal Trio is Sid and Nancy (Hillary) and if you believe anything they tell you'... you're an idiot.

'--'---

WE NEED INDEPENDENT MEDIANOW MORE THAT EVERPlease help keep us up and running if you can.Speaking truth ABOUT power since June 26, 2007(For my mailing address, please email me at RSCdesigns@tampabay.rr.com)

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Filed under: Benghazi Hearing, Benghazi Psyop, Innocence of Muslims Psyop, Scott Creighton

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 04:01

The First Battle of Benghazi occurred as part of the Libyan Civil War between army units and militiamen loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and anti-Gaddafi forces in February 2011. The battle mainly took place in Benghazi, the second-largest city in Libya, with related clashes occurring in the nearby Cyrenaican cities of Bayda and Derna. In Benghazi itself most of the fighting occurred during a siege of the government-controlled Katiba compound.[5]

Beginning[edit]The fighting in Benghazi started on 17 February,[10] after two days of protests in the city. Security forces opened fire on protesters, killing 14. The next day, a funeral procession for one of those killed passed the Katiba compound. Accounts differ on whether mourners began throwing stones first or the soldiers from Katiba opened fire without provocation. In the end, another 24 people from the opposition protesters were killed. Following the massacre, two policemen, who were accused of shooting the protestors, were hanged by the opposition.[11] Police and army personnel later withdrew from the city after being overwhelmed by protesters. Some army personnel joined the protesters and helped them seize the local state-controlled radio station.[12] In Bayda, unconfirmed reports indicated that local police and riot control units joined the protesters.[13] Two days earlier, on 16 February, it was also reported that Islamist gunmen, with the help of a defecting army colonel, stormed an arms depot in Derna and seized 250 weapons and an assortment of 70 military vehicles. During the raid four soldiers were killed and 16 were wounded.[14] By the end of 18 February, the only place that still housed a significant number of Gaddafi loyalists in Benghazi was the Katiba compound.

On 19 February, another funeral procession passed the Katiba compound en route to the cemetery in an act of defiance and were again fired upon by Gaddafi loyalists in the compound. By this time, some 325 mercenaries from southern Africa were flown into Benghazi and other towns in the east to help restore order. During 18 and 19 February, there were major retaliatory attacks by the opposition forces against the mercenaries. 50 of them were executed by the protesters in Bayda. Some died when protestors burned down the police station in which they were locked up and 15 were lynched in front of the courthouse in Bayda.[4][15]

Following the second attack on a funeral, opposition forces commandeered bulldozers and tried to breach the walls of the Katiba compound, often retreating under heavy fire. As the fighting continued, a mob attacked a local army base on the outskirts of Benghazi and forced the soldiers to give up their weapons, including three small tanks. Opposition members then rammed these tanks into the Katiba compound's walls. Days later, the burnt-out hulks of the armored vehicles could still be seen, stuck halfway into the breaches they had made.

The fighting stopped on the morning of 20 February. Another 30 people were killed during the previous 24 hours of fighting. A third funeral procession passed the Katiba compound. Under the cover of the funeral, a suicide car-bomber attacked the compound's gates, blowing them up.[1] Opposition fighters resumed their assault on the base, this time with reinforcements from Bayda and Derna. During the final attack on the compound, 42 people were killed. The gate was blown open by a Mehdi Mohammed Zeyo, a 48-year-old man, who had fashioned two gas canisters into the boot of his car, and drove into the main gate. The compound was taken by opposition forces hours later.[16] In the afternoon, Libyan Interior Minister Abdul Fatah Younis showed up with a special forces squad called the "Thunderbolt" to relieve the besieged barracks. Troops from his unit, based on the outskirts of town, arrived at the opposite side of the Katiba compound armed with machine guns and driving trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. Two tanks under Younis's command followed. However, Younis defected to the opposition and granted safe passage to Gaddafi's loyalists out of the city.[5] Gaddafi's troops evacuated, but not before killing soldiers who refused to open fire on the opposition.[5][8] Some 130 rebel soldiers were killed in Benghazi and Bayda.[8]

First demonstrations calling for the downfall of the regime in Bayda, Libya. During the demonstration, burning a police car, at the crossroads of At-Talhi, now known as the crossroads of the spark, on 16 February 2011

Confrontations between anti-Gaddafi and pro-Gaddafi forces in Bayda, on 17 February 2011

People on a tank in a Benghazi rally, 23 February 2011

Demonstrators inside the al Fadeel battalion compound, al Berka, Benghazi

Casualties[edit]110[5]-257[6] opposition members were killed in Benghazi. In addition, another 63 opposition members were killed in Bayda and 29 in Derna.[8] Also, 130 rebelling soldiers were reported to have been executed by government forces.[8] Between 332-479 members of the opposition forces died during the fighting in Benghazi, Bayda and Derna. Another 1,932 were wounded.[17] 111 soldiers loyal to Gaddafi were also killed.[18] Of the 325 mercenaries sent to the east to quell the uprising's initial phase, it was reported that 50 were captured and executed by the opposition,[4][15] and at least 236 were captured alive.[4][19] The fate of the others was unknown.

References[edit]^ ab"Saadi Gaddafi 'gave order to shoot' in Benghazi revolt". BBC. 21 March 2011. Retrieved 21 March 2011. ^Chrisafis, Angelique (20 February 2011). "Libya protests: gunshots, screams and talk of revolution". Guardian. Retrieved 1 March 2011. ^Hill, Evan (1 March 2011). "The day the Katiba fell". Al Jazeera (Benghazi). Retrieved 8 January 2012. ^ abcdHauslohner, Abigail (23 February 2011). "Libya's Alleged Foreign Mercenaries: More Gaddafi Victims?". Time Magazine (Shahhat). Retrieved 25 February 2011. ^ abcdeSchemm, Paul (25 February 2011). "Battle at army base broke Gadhafi hold in Benghazi". Washington Post (Benghazi). Associated Press. Retrieved 25 February 2011. ^ abSimpson, John (3 March 2011). "Libya revolt: Gaddafi in crimes against humanity probe". BBC News (Aqayla). Retrieved 3 March 2011. ^"Libya: detainees, disappeared and missing". Amnesty International. Retrieved 30 March 2011. ^ abcdefg"Over 640 die in Libya unrest". News AU. Agence France-Presse. 24 February 2011. Retrieved 24 February 2011. ^"Libya Protests: Benghazi Learns To Govern Itself". Huffington Post (Benghazi). Associated Press. 24 February 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2012. ^http://www.aljazeera.net/news/pages/ee1995da-6146-422c-91b5-c546d62999c2^"Two policemen hanged in Libya protests". Xinhua (Tripoli). 19 February 2011. Retrieved 24 February 2011. ^"Libya, Bahrain (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Confrontations". EA WorldView. 22 February 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011. ^"Live Blog '' Libya". Al Jazeera. 17 February 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2011. ^"Libyan Islamists seize arms, take hostages". Sydney Morning Herald. Agence France-Presse. 21 February 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2012. ^ abBlack, Ian; Bowcott, Owen (18 February 2011). "Libya protests: massacres reported as Gaddafi imposes news blackout". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 February 2011. ^Mahdi Ziu '' Hero of Benghazi Dead^"Gaddafi forces retake towns near Libyan capital". Sydney Morning Herald. Associated Press. 2 March 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2012. ^"Libya says 300 dead in violence, including 111 soldiers". The Asian Age (Tripoli). Agence France-Presse. 23 February 2011. Retrieved 24 February 2011. ^Dziadosz, Alexander (23 February 2011). "Benghazi, cradle of revolt, condemns Gaddafi". Benghazi. Reuters. Retrieved 25 February 2011. Coordinates: 32°07'²00'"N20°04'²00'"E>> / >>32.1167°N 20.0667°E>> / 32.1167; 20.0667

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:33

The underlying story of Benghazi is one that cannot and will not be talked about in any open session of Congress. This means that Thursday's hearing featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was nothing but an exercise in futility.

It is the story of a covert CIA operation that was operating from a separate facility in the Benghazi compound that was simply known as the ''Annex.'' Some two dozen CIA case officers, analysts, translators and special staff were a part of this operation and its security was provided by CIA Global Response Staff (GRS), who had entered the country under diplomatic cover.

The CIA's mission included arms interdiction '-- attempting to stop the flow of Soviet-era weapons to Central Africa '-- and very possibly the organization of Libyan arms shipments to vetted insurgent groups on the ground in Syria.

There is also evidence that the mission was working in concert with military personnel from the Joint Special Operations Group Trans-Sahara. At the time of the attack, an unarmed American surveillance drone was in flight over the territory east of Benghazi and Trans-Sahara military personnel were stationed in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

In contrast, the State Department's special diplomatic mission facility, classified as ''temporary,'' was minimally staffed with a rotating series of State Department officers sent to and from Tripoli.

US Ambassador Christopher Stevens had not been in Benghazi for a year. When he arrived for a short stay in September 2012, only a single diplomatic officer was present there, and that officer rotated back to Tripoli upon the ambassador's arrival. Stevens was accompanied by a communications officer and a handful of Diplomatic Service Security staff. The security personnel provided protection for the ambassador during his travels and meetings in the city. His presence was intended to be extremely low key, but it was exposed in the local media shortly after his arrival.

Fruitless, Meaningless, Pointless QuestioningAsking Clinton to justify maintaining the State Department temporary mission in the face of a worsening security situation is fruitless, given its actual function as a clandestine national security mission cover.

Questioning Clinton about that role would be as meaningless as questioning senior CIA personnel about operational information. Such missions cannot be publicly acknowledged or discussed, and revealing anything about them is strictly prohibited.

The same national security laws constraining State Department and CIA personnel also prevent lawmakers, other than those on select intelligence committees, from being briefed on such missions. And even those privileged individuals could not raise related questions in public '-- or even in closed sessions that include committee members or staff without the appropriate clearances.

In addition, querying Clinton about her involvement in the immediate response to the attacks is also pointless. The Secretary of State has no legal or operational role in a military response to a diplomatic facility attack. Only National Command Authority (president/secretary of defense) can order a foreign military intervention. The State Department does have Foreign Emergency Support Teams (FEST), composed of personnel from multiple agencies and maintained on alert to respond to crisis. But the FEST teams have no military elements and are dispatched only in the aftermath of a crisis, when the security situation allows. Following an attack their role is damage assessment and recovery.

Earlier investigations have already documented that President Obama ordered a military response immediately upon word reaching Washington. They showed as well that the AFRICOM commander responded to that order right away, directing deployment of the closest military quick reaction units '-- units which were on station in Spain, training in Eastern Europe, or back in the United States.

There were no armed American aircraft or naval units close enough to respond during the attack, those assets were in operation in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the Horn of Africa in Somalia and Yemen.

Maintaining a Covert ProfileAs for the well-equipped paramilitary operatives at the CIA station, according to their own statements, they were initially held back by the CIA station chief '-- as they had been in other incidents. And the station chief was, in turn, acting under his directive to let local militia groups respond. That practice was intended to maintain the station's covert profile. Unfortunately, it was not consistent with providing any real time defense for the State Department compound.

Given all of the above, it is clear why the hearing quickly turned into a game of ''pin the tail on the donkey.'' As Democrats have claimed all along '-- and some Republicans have recently admitted '-- the committee's work is mostly about beating up a political adversary and not at all about advancing the security of American diplomats abroad.

Larry Hancock conducts investigative and historical research in the areas of intelligence and national security. He has studied Benghazi in regard to both its covert aspects and the issues it raises for diplomatic security. That work is published in Shadow Warfare, A History of America's Undeclared Wars (Counterpoint, 2014) and his most recently published book, Surprise Attack, from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi (Counterpoint, Sept. 2015). Related front page panorama photo credit: US House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi Hearing (BENGHAZI.HOUSE.GOV).

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Archived Version

Source: American Everyman

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:33

Posted on October 22, 2015 by willyloman

(Of course they did. Plus, they nixed a Rand Paul amendment to hold companies accountable for their actions.)

from Tech Dirt

Well, it's not a huge surprise that it moved forward, but the faux ''cybersecurity'' bill, which is actually a surveillance bill in disguise, CISA, has moved forward in the Senate via an overwhelming 83 to 14 vote. As we've discussed at length, while CISA is positioned as just a ''voluntary'' cybersecurity information sharing bill, it's really none of those things. It's not voluntary and it's not really about cybersecurity. Instead, it's a surveillance bill, that effectively gives the NSA greater access to information from companies in order to do deeper snooping through its upstream collection points. Even the attempts to supposedly ''clarify'' the language to protect data from being used for surveillance shows that the language is deliberately written to look like it does one thing, while really opening up the ability of the NSA and FBI to get much more information.

[read more here]

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Filed under: CIA are the Real Terrorists, CISA, CISPA

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Archived Version

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 09:32

A surveillance bill that is the third attempt by lawmakers to institute controversial internet security reforms has cleared a crucial vote in the Senate.

A vote of 83-14 to end debate on a bundle of amendments to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) went through the Senate on Thursday. The controversial bill would provide incentives for companies to share user data with the federal government.

Thursday's vote was the first serious step toward the passage of CISA, but the long-stalled bill faces more debates and procedural votes in the future.

READ MORE: 'No customer oversight': Dreaded cybersecurity bill CISA is back

Senate also nixed the amendment suggested by libertarian-leaning Senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), whose campaign website says that the bill ''would transform websites into government spies.'' The measure only got 32 votes, short of the simple majority it needed to pass.

The Kentucky senator suggested an amendment to strip companies of the immunity from liability for breaking privacy agreements with their customers.

One of the amendments that the Senate agreed end debate on and allow is meant to assuage fears by restricting the type of data that companies can share, and set up a system to remove personal data that the government accidentally receives under the measure.

It was co-sponsored by Senators Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) trying to mitigate some of the privacy and surveillance fears that have kept CISA off the Senate floor for so long, and it's expected to be adopted by the Senate.

"We have been at this for six years," said Feinstein just before the vote, according to The Hill. "This is the third bill. We have been bipartisan."

READ MORE: CISA threat: How cybersecurity may harm Americans privacy and hit whistleblowers

While some groups purport that CISA is needed to stop hackers, major major tech firms '' like Apple, Google and Dropbox '' have joined Senator Paul in calling the bill a major threat to internet freedom that won't even make the internet more secure."We don't support the current CISA proposal," Apple said in a Tuesday statement. "The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of their privacy."

Dropbox said that the bill needed more privacy protections in order to win its support.

"While it's important for the public and private sector to share relevant data about emerging threats, that type of collaboration should not come at the expense of users' privacy" said Amber Cottle, head of Dropbox global public policy and government affairs, according to the Washington Post.

Other major internet players, like Wikimedia foundation '' which runs Wikipedia '' and Yelp have come out against the surveillance bill.

A group of demonstrators also gathered outside of Congress Thursday night in order to protest the bill's advancement. Organized by groups like Fight for the Future and Code Pink, the event was meant to push lawmakers to oppose CISA.

The bill is a "dirty surveillance deal between the government and corporations that takes away our basic rights, makes us less safe, and puts corporations out of reach of the law," organizers wrote on the event's Facebook page.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), a major critic of the bill, said that the overwhelming number of tech companies aligned against the bill shows the bill does not respect the privacy of Americans.

"Sharing information about cybersecurity threats is a worthy goal," said Wyden, according to The Washington Post. "Yet if you share more information without strong privacy protections, millions of Americans will say, 'That is not a cybersecurity bill. It is a surveillance bill.'"

Despite the massive amount of opposition from industry leaders and privacy advoactes, CISA has broad bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress and from the Obama administration.

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Source: American Everyman

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:14

by Scott Creighton

''CISA is on the floor of the Senate! We need a CRISIS to get them to vote for it!!!''

The new CISPA, CISA, is on the floor in the Senate right this minute and about to be voted on. It's the new cyber security bill that promises to hand over control of collection all of your information and storing it to Big Business'... it's basically the definition of fascist surveillance state. This bill makes is so Big Business can collect your data, sell your data, analyze your data, predict your behavior based on that data, share it with Big Brother and even take steps to minimize the risk you pose to the New World Order of theirs all on their own with built in immunity for fucking your life up.

It's the ''gold standard'' of the fascist control grid as Hillary Clinton might call it and it is EXTREMELY unpopular with the people of this country.

''The privacy-killing law CISA '-- which gives legal immunity to corporations when they share your private data with the U.S. government '-- is back on the Senate floor after Internet activists have successfully delayed it many times. This could be our last chance to stop it for good.''Boing Boing

We already got part of the new CISPA in the USA ''Freedom'' Act thanks to the ''Edward Snowden'' psyop and Glenn Greenwald helping manufacture a crisis they could use to pass it.

Now it's Wikileaks' turn I suppose.

Two days ago a big story broke via our controlled opposition honey-pot leak website, Wikileaks. They claim they received some relatively harmless emails hacked from John Brennan's personal email account from this ''pro-Palestinian'' hacker.

It does not appear that any classified information was accessed, according to a law enforcement official.

The alleged hacker said he was motivated both by politics and by the desire to shame the government.

''John and Jeh are both very big people and high-ranking people, so, I mean, if we hacked them, they would be ashamed,'' he said. ''But it was really because the government are killing innocent people, they also fund (Israel) for killing innocent people.'''...

The hacker told the Post he was a high school student who is critical of U.S. foreign policy and a supporter of Palestine. CNN

So let me get this straight'... right before the start of the week when the Senate is going to take up the new CISPA on the floor for a vote, Wikileaks just HAPPENS to get some emails from a personal account of the director of the CIA and then they just HAPPEN to give the contact details of that ''hacker'' to CNN so they can do a national TV interview with the guy?

The guy who just hacked the most dangerous man on the planet's personal email account?

And he's pro-Palestinian? ಠ_à²

And he does the interview with CIA Mockingbird asset, CNN? ಠ_à²

Oh yeah, that's totally legit. ಠ_à²

Turns out the fake hacker goes by the name ''Cracka'' and belongs to a group, ''CWA'' which stands for ''Crackas with Attitude''. He's supposedly from the US and white.

His Twitter page just happens to have the Muslim Shahada creed posted at the top of the page.

The hacker contacted The Post last week to brag about his exploits, which include posting some of the stolen documents and a portion of Brennan's contact list on Twitter. The hacker's Twitter page includes the Muslim Shahada creed, which translates as, ''There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.'' New York Post, Oct. 18, 2015

How convenient. He contacted Wikileaks with this info this weekend and then made sure to get some national attention on Sunday by contacting the New York Post.

Honestly folks. This tired fucking manufactured whistle-blower hacker meme is getting bothersome. It's so damn obvious, a child could pick up on it. A blind child'... living in a cave'... with no internet access.

You want a picture of ''Cracka''? I'll show you a picture of ''Cracka''. He's the same guy who runs Capitalism's Invisible Army. The same guy who helped bring you the ''Edward Snowden'' manufactured hero psyop on behalf of Big Business and their fascist New World Order wet dream.

There's ''Cracka'' right up there at the top of the screen. It's fucking John Brennan. He ''hacked'' his own email account and picked a few non-story emails to ''leak'' and then got some CIA flunkie to play the role of ''Cracka'' on CNN and during the interview with the Post (both CIA Mockingbird assets, mind you) and here we are with a ''crisis''

And of course, the character is pro-Palestinian, anti-killing children.

Of course.

You want to see a picture of the group ''Crackers wIth Attitudes'' (C.I.A.)?

Here you go

Crackas wIth Attitudes a.k.a. CIA

This shit is just getting dumber and more obvious by the minute. Apparently they can't do a goddamned thing without making a fake ''crisis'' to get it done.

And of course, making the character ''Cracka'' pro-Palestinian makes it very clear who's ultimately behind this shit: the Israel firsters of the neocon persuasion.

So I guess the people that report the truth of what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank along with all those thousands of young people signing up with the BDS movement on campuses across the country had better watch out, huh?

Don't want to be called a cracker do you? Bad things happen to them.

Unbelievable.

'--'--

WE NEED INDEPENDENT MEDIANOW MORE THAT EVERPlease help keep us up and running if you can.Speaking truth ABOUT power since June 26, 2007(For my mailing address, please email me at RSCdesigns@tampabay.rr.com)

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Filed under: CIA are the Real Terrorists, CISA, CISPA, Crackas With Attitudes, Fascism, fascism in America, Fascism², Globalization, John Brennan Fake Hack Story, NSA "Leak" Scandal, Scott Creighton

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Source: FCW: The business of federal technology

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:40

Budget

$37 million in emergency OPM funding left out of CISABy Sean LyngaasOct 23, 2015Sen Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) tried unsuccessfully to secure $37 million for IT modernization at Office of Personnel Management.

The Senate's information-sharing cybersecurity bill cleared a procedural hurdle Oct. 22, but conspicuously absent from the bill was an amendment for $37 million in emergency funding for the Office of Personnel Management's IT modernization efforts.

OPM could use the funding: it is struggling to come up with the money for crucial IT projects worth at least $117 million. The Senate Appropriations Committee in July rejected an earlier request from Sen Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the vice chairwoman of the committee, to provide the $37 million in IT funding.

Mikulski also sponsored the CISA amendment to increase OPM's funding, and on Oct. 22 she urged her colleagues to support the provision.

"Some say this funding is premature, and OPM is not ready to deploy it effectively," Mikulski said in a statement. "However, those reports were written before Beth Cobert became OPM acting director. She is turning OPM around, but she needs the resources to secure OPM's IT systems, and cybersecurity is a critical issue."

The Maryland Democrat added: "We know what OPM needs to do. They have the will, they have a business plan and now they need the wallet."

However, the agency's inspector general has explicitly characterized OPM's lack of a business plan, in the form of a Major IT Business Case, as irresponsible. As of a Sept. 3 update to the IG's flash audit, OPM had yet to determine "the full scope and overall costs" of its Shell modernization project, which is part of the $117 million in projects that the agency is straining to fund.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act to which Mikulski tried to hitch the OPM funding is the latest in a long line of legislative efforts to encourage private firms to share more cyber threat data amongst themselves and with the government. Information-sharing bills in recent years have stalled in the face of privacy concerns, concerns that are again center stage this Congress.

Apple and a trade group representing Amazon, Google and Facebook have come out against the legislation. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, strongly backs the bill.

CISA supporters received a boost Oct. 22 when the White House offered its support for the bill via a Statement of Administration Policy. The statement praised legislators for strengthening privacy protections in the bill with amendments. But the administration nonetheless "remains concerned that the bill's authorization to share with any federal entity, notwithstanding any other provision of law, weakens the bill's requirement that information be shared with a civilian entity," the statement said. "This remains a significant concern, and the administration is eager to work with the Congress to seek a workable solution."

Any bill coming out of the Senate would have to be reconciled with the version of information-sharing legislation that the House passed in April.

A set of seven amendments to CISA is slated for a Senate vote on Oct. 27. That will be followed by a cloture vote and a final vote on the underlying bill.

About the Author

Sean Lyngaas is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence issues. Follow him on Twitter: @snlyngaas

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:24

Today, members of the US Congress' House of Representatives will be debating a newly proposed bill that, in brief, would make car hacking research illegal, infringing users facing potential fines of $100,000 ('‚¬88,000) every time they gain access to the car's computer without authorization.

The US government has made a habit of packing desired and much-needed legislation with incredibly outrageous clauses that clearly benefit one lobby group or another, a trick that has numerous times in the past either forced US lawmakers to knock down much-awaited bills, or approve laws that also provided backdoors for other types of nefarious activities (enter Patriot Act, stage left).

This seems to be the very same case yet again, and while there are some provisions in the law that limit the type and amount of data car manufacturers can collect from their users, other parts of the bill are clearly favoring car manufacturers, all covered up and hidden in muddled lawyer-speak.

So what does the proposed bill draft say? First off, there's the glaring issue of what the bill is calling "car hacking." To be more exact, this is:

"It shall be unlawful for any person to access, without authorization, an electronic control unit or critical system of a motor vehicle, or other system containing driving data for such motor vehicle, either wirelessly or through a wired connection."

The text is quite fair and addresses the issue of car hacking. But it's not really needed since this was also covered by the very broad Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

The problem in the quote above, extracted from the bill, is the "without authorization" term, which is so vague it can easily be interpreted as referring to the owner of the car, or the car's manufacturer.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has pointed out numerous times, the very same term was used in the CFAA, and three different US Circuit courts have had troubles in past lawsuits and investigations in attributing the "authorization" part.

Will this be enforced as a the driver's authorization because they own the car? Or will it be enforced as a manufacturer's authorization because the car computer code, which a hacker, a tinkering mechanic, or security researcher is accessing, was only licensed to the person who bought the car, and that person does not actually own it, being only authorized to use it.

Do you see the dangerous situation shaping up? No? Then let me explain it further. Since today is October 21, 2015, the date on which Michael J. Fox traveled to the future in the famous "Back to the Future 2" movie, let's go to an alternative future, where this bill was approved and became law.

A fictitious case study of the dangerous provisions the proposed bill containsImagine yourself as a car security expert. You bought a new car from company X. One of those cool new cars, with lots of computer-aided features that you can control from your smartphone. Being an expert in your field, you notice some weaknesses in how some features were implemented.

Acting on a hunch, you hack into the car's computers, and verify your theory. You create a report detailing the problems, which could be exploited to put the lives of other drivers at risk if left unfixed.

You send the report to the car manufacturer, which brazenly replies it doesn't plan a fix in the upcoming future because it would damage its reputation or it would cost too much. Faced with such "madness," you decide to warn company X that you'll disclose your findings to the public, or go on and post them online, regardless.

A few days later, you get a fine in the mail for $100,000, while Company X is not even investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for its poor security practices. Ooops! Did we forget to mention that the proposed bill also contains safe harbor measures that protect car manufacturers from both civil lawsuits and the FTC?

Here's one portion of the bill that you'll want to read: "A manufacturer is not subject to civil penalties described in section 30165(a)(1) with regard to a violation of the vehicle security and integrity plan of such manufacturer." And there are numerous other similar safe harbor provisions for various situations.

Are car manufacturing lobby groups trying to stifle car hacking security research?Something like our "imagined future" is not really such a far-fetched scenario. Just this August, we reported on the story of three security researchers who found a flaw in the keyless start function of some high-end cars. Instead of fixing the security hole, Volkswagen spent two years dragging the researchers through courts, trying to prevent them from publishing their findings.

A Corvette being hacked using an SMS message

Let's just recount a few other car hacking stories. We had the famous OnStar hacking of GM (which took 5 years to fix), BMW, Mercedes and Chrysler cars; the hacking of the famous Tesla Model S; flaws in the LiDAR sensors of various self-driving cars; a Corvette that was taken over using an SMS message; the famous 2014 Jeep Cherokee hack; hacking tests carried out on the fleet of the Virginia State police force; and the recall of 1.4 million Fiat Chrysler cars due to security flaws.

All of the security researchers who put work into improving road safety would each have $100,000 less in their bank account. If you're a security researcher, you've just found the topic that you would never want to tackle. And if you do, then the Tor browser has just become your new best friend, and all car computer bugs will start appearing on Pastebin instead of 60 Minutes.

It is a well-known fact that all these hacks inadvertently chip away at the reputation of some car makers. Ultimately, all car manufacturers will be affected by this kind of problems.

It is important to understand that, while no modern cars computers with wheels are safe from hacking, users will eventually begin to trust the companies that reply to such incidents in a fast and proper way, and not the car makers that weasel their way out of the responsibility of dealing with security bugs, either by lobbying the government for friendly laws, or by harassing security researchers.

A response in the wrong direction for the Volkswagen fuel emissions scandalWe've all found out by now that Volkswagen hacked its software to be able to cheat fuel emission tests. Surprising is the fact that the new proposed bill also offers car makers a way to dodge this kind of tests.

According to the proposed bill, if a car manufacturer launches a vehicle that comes equipped with three out of nine safety features, it will get a pass on fuel-economy and emissions regulations.

You've read that right. If the car includes warnings for forward collisions, warnings for lane departures, a driver attention monitoring system, left turning guidance, a computer-powered system for going through intersections, an automated lane-driving system, adaptive cruise control, adaptive brake assistance, and an AI-powered emergency braking control, it can ignore decades-long legislation. Check proposed bill at § 32920 - a - 1 and 2 (page 59 and 60 in the document below the article).

You may consider the timing of this bill as coincidental, but I don't buy it. There were rumors that, besides Volkswagen, other car makers were also employing a similar fuel emissions cheating system. The proposed bill, packed with all kind of shady paragraphs, comes to help car makers avoid legislation that was put into place for a valid reason. Let's see how many US-based commenters can spell "corrupt government" in our comments section. There! I said it!

The proposed bill still has a long way to go before it becomes a lawRight now, the proposed bill needs to go through a long-winded review process. There are other laws with which it needs to play nice, like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2015, and the Security and Privacy in Your Car (SPY Car) Act.

After this, both houses of the US Congress need to pass it, and usually this is where public awareness of the bill will go through the roof, this being the stage where other "sneaky" laws like SOPA have failed in the past.

In case the proposed bill is approved, President Obama still needs to sign it afterward, as many bills that went through Congress were shot down at the White House for various reasons before.

The proposed bill also includes some good partsBut let's no be all doom and gloom. We previously mentioned that the proposal has some much-needed provisions. The most significant refer to how data is collected from car users.

The bill would severely impede car makers from slurping data without any restrictions but will also make the entire process more transparent via official privacy policies, just as you see with websites and software products. Car makers that don't respect these new measures and don't take steps to protect user privacy will face fines up to $1 million / '‚¬0.88 million.

Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would get more power in managing and promoting vehicle recalls, and it will have to establish an Automotive Cybersecurity Council, for developing official best practices regarding smart-car cyber-security.

If you're accustomed to the way the US media machine works, these provisions are probably going be at the forefront of all public communications, trying to catch and draw the user's attention from the bill's "bad" parts. Unfortunately, this has become the norm for passing laws in the United States, and more and more legislation comes out as a double-edged sword, adding consumer protection regulation, but also greasing the way for nefarious business tactics for various lobby groups.

The full version of the bill introduced by the House Energy and Commerce Committee can be read below.

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Source: FCW: The business of federal technology

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:28

Cybersecurity

Former NSA chief: Data manipulation an 'emerging art of war'By Sean LyngaasOct 22, 2015Former NSA Director Keith Alexander said the future could include more efforts to manipulate digital information rather than delete or disrupt access to it.

The ability of an adversary to manipulate the content of data stored on networks is an "emerging art of war in cyberspace," former National Security Agency director and retired Gen. Keith Alexander told FCW Oct. 22.

"You can think of it as stealth radar or making planes disappear or appear," Alexander said in an interview. "And, theoretically, you can do that."

The former joint leader of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command said altering health records and military intelligence are two forms of data manipulation that he sees on the horizon. On the military front, he offered the scenario of a soldier mapping a battlefield digitally "only to find out that the brigade that you're focusing on is not really there."

The phenomenon is on the radar of U.S. intelligence officials. Alexander's successor as leader of NSA and Cyber Command, Adm. Michael Rogers, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have warned that data manipulation is an emerging cyberthreat.

The future might include "more cyber operations that will change or manipulate electronic information in order to compromise its integrity...instead of deleting it or disrupting access to it," Clapper said in prepared testimony for a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in September.

Alexander described the Office of Personnel Management hack -- which compromised the personal information of 22.5 million current, former and prospective federal employees -- as an act of reconnaissance that could lay the groundwork for future hacks of federal networks. The OPM intrusion "gives the adversary a lot of insights about government personnel, past and present, and is a way of doing massive reconnaissance on [systems] for future use," he said.

Creating a viable deterrent

Cyber Command has been fully operational for five years as a sub-unified command under U.S. Strategic Command. Alexander, who was Cyber Command's first leader, said Strategic Command was a foundation to get Cyber Command off the ground, and it's just a matter of time before the latter stands on its own.

"Cyber Command's mission set is unique," Alexander added. "It should stand alone. It supports all of the other combatant commands."

He said he does not think NSA and Cyber Command will get separate leaders in the near future. NSA capabilities in encryption and other areas make it integral to Cyber Command's mission, he said, adding that he has had conversations with U.S. officials in which the conclusion is effectively: "If we separate them, two years later you're going to put them back together. So don't waste your time."

In recent public appearances, Rogers has increasingly mentioned U.S. offensive cyber activity, albeit in vague terms. When asked if officials should be more explicit about the country's offensive capabilities, whether for the sake of transparency or deterrence, Alexander said telegraphing capabilities would be unwise.

The U.S. government should, however, clearly delineate the military's responsibilities in cyberspace before an attack occurs so that a response can be coordinated, he added.

Cyber operations are "going to become an area of future conflict," he said. "We have to be good at it, we have to set up the norms, and we have to create a viable deterrence in that area."

Alexander also cautioned against the use of personal email accounts for official work. CIA Director John Brennan's personal account was recently hacked, purportedly by a teenager, and WikiLeaks posted data from that hack online on Oct. 21.

Alexander said he has been the target of hackers and identity thieves. "The reality is [personal email accounts] aren't secure, so you shouldn't do anything that deals with mission on those," he said.

About the Author

Sean Lyngaas is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence issues. Follow him on Twitter: @snlyngaas

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:49

NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.

DetailsMultimediaCreated: 22 October 2015A Hebrew-speaking Islamic State (IS) fighter threatened in a video that the IS will remove borders between it and Israel and eliminate the ''Jews,'' and promoted the recent incidents of stabbings and vehicular attacks in the country.

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Source: Dark Web & Cyber Security

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:38

NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.

DetailsMultimediaCreated: 23 October 2015The ''Shumukh al-Islam Instigation Workshop,'' a media group affiliated with the prominent Deep Web jihadi forum Shumukh al-Islam, released a video advising Islamic State (IS) supporters in how to best utilize Twitter to promote IS material, and showing a mock beheading of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

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Source: Dark Web & Cyber Security

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 12:45

NOTE: The following materials are for information purposes only and may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the explicit permission of SITE Intelligence Group and specific attribution to SITE Intelligence Group.

DetailsMultimediaCreated: 24 October 2015

Homs Province of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria released a grotesque video of executing a Syrian soldier by running over him with a tank.Register to read more ...

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 12:52

Thousands of Iranian soldiers have arrived in Syria to join a major offensive against Sunni militants located in the northwest section of the country. The Iranian ground forces will be part of a joint operation that will include the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), Russia and fighters from Lebanese militia, Hezbollah. The assault comes on the heels of a withering two week aerial bombardment of enemy positions by the Russian Air Force which has wreaked havoc on US-backed jihadis along the western corridor. The mobilization of Iranian troops indicates that the 4 year-long conflict is entering its final phase where the Russian-led coalition will attempt to crush the predominantly-Sunni militias and restore security across the country.

Currently, the fiercest fighting is taking place in three areas that are critical for Syrian President Bashar al Assad's survival: The Rastan enclave, the North Hama salient, and the Ghab plain. While Assad's forces are expected to overpower the jihadis at all three sites, the militants are dug in and have destroyed a number of armored vehicles and tanks. The regime must seize this area in order to control the M5 highway which runs north to south and connects the cities that create an integrated state. Once these enemy strongholds are broken into smaller pockets of resistance, coalition forces will move further north to close the borders with Turkey while attempting to recapture the strategic city of Aleppo. (See: Sic Semper Tyrannis for an excellent breakdown of the ground offensive with maps.)

According to military analyst Patrick Bahzad: ''Overall, the outcome of the current operations in the three areas mentioned above is clear. Whether the various rebels groups have thrown everything they got into these battles is hard to say, therefore no assessment can be made as to how their fighting capabilities will be affected by the coming defeat.

It is also worth mentioning that once SAA units have managed to break through rebel defences'.... this might cause a disorganised retreat of the trapped rebel units. That moment of the battle could be crucial, as it might be the starting point to a massive artillery barrage (MRLs) and large RuAF airstrikes, resulting in crippling casualties among rebel ranks.'' (Sic Semper Tyrannis)

In other words, there's a good chance that the jihadis will realize that they have no chance of winning and will head for the exits, but it's still too early to say when that will be.

According to a report in Reuters, '''...a large mobilization of the Syrian army '... elite Hezbollah fighters, and thousands of Iranians'' are moving northwards to retake Aleppo. However, ISIS militants are also headed towards the city from the east which means that a major clash could take place at anytime. In response, the Russian air force has increased its bombing raids to more than 100 sorties per day. That number is expected to double in the days ahead as the fighting intensifies.

According to early reports from Syria Direct, the Syrian army has enclosed Aleppo in an open fist configuration that cuts off the main artery of vital supplies to the north from Turkey. As the fist tightens around the city, US-backed rebel units have fled to the west which is now the only possible escape route. The panicky retreat has precipitated protests against rebel leaders who are blamed for losses on the battlefield and for allowing ''the regime's disastrous completion of the Aleppo siege.'' One of the militia's commanders summarized his frustration saying:

''The myriad brigades under al-Jabha a-Shamiya's umbrella in northeast Aleppo are bleeding men and hardware across multiple fronts'...They're caught between regime forces to the south, and IS to the north'....(Due to) the complete lack of coordination between each brigade, and not nearly enough guns and cash from the Americans to compete with the much-better equipped Islamic State, and they had no choice but to retreat.'' (''Jabha Shamiya commander blames 'complete lack of coordination' for Aleppo losses'', Syria Direct)

Aleppo is a key node in Moscow's strategy to defeat terrorism and reestablish order across Syria. The battle is bound to be hard-fought, possibly involving close-range, house-to-house urban warfare. This is why it is imperative that coalition forces seal the border from Turkey and stop the flow of arms and supplies as soon as possible. There are rumors that Putin will use Russia's elite paratroopers north of Aleppo for that very mission, but so far, they are just rumors. Putin has repeatedly said that he will not allow Russian ground troops to fight in Syria.

There's no way to overstate the Obama administration's destructive and nihilistic role in Syria. Along with its Gulf allies, the US has funded, armed and trained the bulk of the jihadi hoodlums that have ripped the state apart and killed nearly one quarter of a million people. Now that Putin has decided to put an end to Washington's savage proxy war, the administration is planning to add more fuel to the fire by air-dropping pallets of ammunition and weapons to their fighters in central and eastern Syria. The editors of the New York Times derided the program as ''hallucinatory.'' Here's an excerpt from the article:

'''...the White House on Friday unveiled a plan that is even more incoherent and fraught with risk.

The Pentagon will stop putting rebel fighters through training in neighboring countries, a program that was designed to ensure that fighters were properly vetted before they could get their hands on American weapons and ammunition. The new plan will simply funnel weapons through rebel leaders who are already in the fight and appear to be making some headway'.....

Washington's experience in Syria and other recent wars shows that proxy fighters are usually fickle and that weapons thrust into a war with no real oversight often end up having disastrous effects'...'.....The initial plan was dubious. The new one is hallucinatory.'' (''An Incoherent Syria War Strategy'', New York Times editorial Board)

The administration has also delivered ''27 container loads of weaponry to the (Syrian) Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD)'' and its military wing, the People's Protection Units (YPG). The weapons are supposed to be used against ISIS, but the move has infuriated Turkish president Erdogan who regards the group as terrorists. While it appears that the Obama team is merely looking for ways to show its critics that it is being proactive in its fight against terrorism, it may have created the perfect pretext for a Turkish invasion into N Syria which would greatly complicate the situation on the ground. Here's a clip from the Turkish Daily Hurriyet:

''Findings in the aftermath of deadly explosions in Ankara on Oct. 10 targeting pro-Kurdish and leftist activists indicate the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), as well as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), may be involved, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Wednesday.

''As we deepen the investigation, based on the [information obtained about] Twitter accounts and IP addresses, there is a high possibility that Daesh [Arabic name for ISIL] and the PKK have played an effective role in the bombing,'' he said while speaking at a press conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov in Ä°stanbul.'' (''Turkish PM says both ISIL and PKK may have role in Ankara bombing'', Hurriyet)

There is, in fact, no evidence of PKK (Kurdish militia) involvement at all. DNA samples from the two suicide bombers indicate they were both members of ISIS. The only reason Erdogan would want to implicate the PKK would be to either discredit his (Kurdish) political rivals or to create a pretext for invading Syria. (Note: A Turkish court has imposed a confidentiality order on the bombing investigation that strongly hints at a government cover up. According to Altan Tan, a deputy of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), ''Bombs explode all over Turkey. Two conclusions can be made on this '-- either the government is behind those attacks or it failed to prevent those attacks.'' Either way, the government is responsible.)

While Turkey's future role in the Syrian conflict remains uncertain, US support for the Kurds greatly increases the chances of a Turkish invasion and a broader, regional war. Is this the administration's real objective, to draw Turkish troops across the border into Syria so that Russia gets bogged down in a costly and protracted quagmire?

It sounds far fetched, but there are points worth considering. For example, on CBS news program 60 Minutes, Obama said this:

''I've been skeptical from the get go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria. My goal has been to try to test the proposition, can we be able to train and equip a moderate opposition that's willing to fight ISIL? And what we've learned is that as long as Assad remains in power, it is very difficult to get those folks to focus their attention on ISIL.'' (60 Minutes)

Naturally, Obama wants everyone to believe that ''it's all Assad's fault'', after all, he's not going to blame himself. But he is being honest about one thing: He never really thought arming Sunni extremists was a good idea. In other words, he supported the objective (regime change) just not the methods. (arming jihadis) And he probably felt vindicated when''after 4 years of fighting''the conflict deteriorated into a stalemate.

So if he was convinced that arming jihadis wasn't going to work, then what was his backup plan, his Plan B?

We've suggested in earlier columns that Obama might have struck a deal with Erdogan to launch a Turkish invasion of Syria as long as the US provided air cover for Turkish ground forces. We think this was part of a quid pro quo that Obama agreed to for the use of the strategic airbase at Incirlik. Keep in mind, Erdogan withheld US access to Incirlik for more than a year until the US met his demand to help him topple Assad. Naturally, this is not something that Obama could acknowledge publicly, but it would have been an essential part of any agreement. An interview on PBS News Hour last week with David Kramer, the former assistant secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, provides some support for this theory. Here's an excerpt from the transcript:

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, David Kramer, what about that? There is the real worry if the U.S. gets involved, it gets sucked in, dragged in, and can't get out.

DAVID KRAMER: The Turks had indicated a long time ago that they were prepared to send forces in if the United States provided cover and support. So, we should create safe zones. We should create no-fly zones. We should enforce those for any planes that would threaten people in those areas, whether they're Syrian planes or Russian planes. We should give the Russians full notice that any violations or attacks on those zones would constitute an attack that we would have to respond to.

Nobody wants this. There are bad decisions that have to be made here, but that's where we are right now. And I think unless we do that, we will continue to see people get killed, we will continue to see people flee Syria, so there aren't any good solutions. We have to find the least worst options.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But my question is, isn't that an entire new level of risk, U.S. planes get shot down, U.S. troops get potentially captured, not to mention a conflict, potential conflict with Russia, unintentional?

DAVID KRAMER: We have the Turks that have indicated a willingness to go ahead. We may have other countries, including from the Gulf, although they're not great contributors to this kind of operation. The United States could provide the air support, to provide the cover that way. I think there is a way of doing this without putting U.S. forces on the ground, but there aren't any good options here.'' (''Pulling the plug on rebel training, what's next for U.S. in Syria?'', PBS News Hour)

Kramer not only sounds extremely confident that ''The Turks'... were prepared to send forces in if the United States provided cover and support.'' He also seems to imply that a great many Washington elites were aware of the deal but kept it under their hats.

Fortunately, Putin's military intervention sabotaged any prospect of implementing Plan B, so we'll never know whether Turkey would have invaded or not.

What matters now is that the Russian-led coalition move fast to solidify their gains, disrupt enemy supply lines, block the exits, seal the borders and discourage Turkey from taking any action that would expand the war. Erdogan will surely listen to reason if it is backed by force.

The jihadi mercenaries must either surrender or be wiped out as quickly as possible so that 11 million Syrians can return safely to their homes and begin the arduous task of starting over.

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Source: The Tap Blog

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:16

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.

The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

''I will not talk about anything at all about this,'' New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton told a journalist for the New York Post who pressed for details on the vans. ''It falls into the range of security and counter-terrorism activity that we engage in.''

Here are some specific questions that the police refuse to answer:

How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation?How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them?Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization?Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag?For all we know, the NYPD might be bombarding apartment houses with radiation while people are inside or peering inside vehicles on the street as unwitting passersby are exposed to radiation. The city's position'--that New Yorkers have no right to know if that is happening or not'--is so absurd that one can hardly believe they're taking it. And since the technology can see through clothing, it is easy to imagine a misbehaving NYPD officer abusing it

In her ruling, Judge Doris Ling-Cohan highlights the fact that beyond the privacy questions raised by the technology are very real health and safety concerns. She writes:

Petitioner states in his affidavit, and respondent does not dispute, that: backscatter technology, previously deployed in European Union airports, was banned in 2011, because of health concerns; an internal presentation from American Science and Engineering, Inc., the company that manufactures the vans, determined that the vans deliver a radiation dose 40 percent larger than delivered by a backscatter airport scanner; bystanders present when the van is in use are exposed to the radiation that the van emits'... moreover, petitioner maintains, and it is not disputed by the NYPD, that 'there may be significant health risks associated with the use of backscatter x-ray devices as these machines use ionizing radiation, a type of radiation long known to mutate DNA and cause cancer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2015/10/the- nypd-is-using-mobile-x-rays- to-spy-on-unknown-targets/ 411181/?single_page=true

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:31

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) released new proposal to protect seniors from financial fraud. The rules will allow financial companies to respond to situations in which there is a reasonable belief that financial fraud is occurring. If fully implemented, financial firms would be able to place a hold on the dispersal of funds for up to 15 business days. The temporary hold could be extended for an additional 15 business days under certain circumstances. Note the use of ''business days"; conceivably, a person could be denied access to his or her assets for up to six calendar weeks. In addition, financial firms would be required to ask customers for a trusted contact to be reached in cases where fraud is suspected.

The proposal will be covered in the November AAII Journal, which we sent to the printer yesterday. Since a digital format gives more flexibility in terms of space than a print format does, I'm going to expand on what you will read in next month's issue.

The rules are being proposed for a few reasons. The regulator says that the experience with its Securities Helpline for Seniors (844-57-HELPS) has highlighted issues related to financial exploitation. Financial firms have been in need of regulatory guidance on this matter, and the proposed rules give them a safe harbor they can cite as acting under if legal action by a customer is brought against them. Legislators have been slow to react to the problem of financial fraud among elders; only three states'--Delaware, Missouri and Washington'--have rules permitting financial institutions to place temporary holds on disbursements and transactions if financial exploitation is suspected.

As some of you may recall, last year I discussed the struggles the industry was having in trying to address the issue of cognitive impairment and financial fraud. These rules are the result of discussions on how to best to respond. My assumption is that the financials services industry's response to the problem will evolve over time.

The rules will apply to what FINRA labels as ''specified adult'' customers. A specified adult is a person who is 65 or older. A specified adult can also be someone who is age 18 or older and is reasonably believed by the financial firm to have a mental or physical impairment that renders the individual unable to protect his or her own interests.

In cases where there is a reasonable belief that financial exploitation is occurring, has been attempted or will be attempted, financial firms would be allowed to postpone dispersing funds for up to 15 business days. The trusted contact must be notified of the hold and reason for it within two business days. If the trusted contacted cannot be contacted or is believed to be the person engaging in the financial exploitation, an immediate family member should be contacted. If the immediate family member is reasonably suspected of committing, attempting to or intending to attempt financial exploitation, then the firm does not have to contact that person. If neither the trusted contact nor the immediate person can be reached, the financial firms can place or maintain a temporary hold on all withdrawals. Though the rules do not explain what would happen next in such situations, it is my belief that the financial firms would likely contact law enforcement if they haven't already.

The trusted contact is defined as a person who will be a ''resource for the firm in administering the customer's account and in responding to possible financial exploitation.'' This person must be at least age 18 and ''not be authorized to transact business on behalf of the account.'' Financial firms will be required to ask for the name and contact information of the trusted contact at the time an account is opened, the account information is being updated or ''when there is a reason to believe that there has been a change'' in a customer's situation. You will not be required to list a trusted contact. It is a good idea to do so, but pay attention to the ''not be authorized to transact business on behalf of the account'' language. Depending on how your accounts are titled and estate documents are written, the language could conceivably add a layer of unintended complexity. If you have questions, I would suggest contacting an estate lawyer to best determine how your various accounts should be titled and your estate documents written.

The safe harbor provision is potentially an important one for the industry. Due to the lack of federal and state laws (with the exception of the three aforementioned states), financial firms have faced a quandary. If they prevent seniors from withdrawing funds, they are technically committing the equivalence of theft. If they don't intervene when fraud is suspected, they are essentially an accomplice to fraud. FINRA is a regulatory body, not a legislative one, so it will be interesting to see how the courts rule if a financial institution is sued over these rules.

The full proposal can be read on FINRA's website. FINRA is seeking public comments through November 30, 2015, and has a list of questions they specifically would like to get feedback on (see page 7 of the proposal). You can give FINRA your feedback either by sending an email to pubcom@finra.org or by sending a postal letter to:

Marcia E. AsquithOffice of the Corporate SecretaryFINRA1735 K Street, NWWashington, DC 20006-1506

As is the case with the new rules regarding mutual funds and ETFs, I encourage you to share your opinions and concerns with the regulators.

Yesterday, the Internal Revenue Service announced the annual inflation adjustments for 2016. You may find CCH's summary easier to read. We'll include the data in our annual tax guide, which will be updated to include the 2016 data in the December AAII Journal.

John Bajkowski posted his latest ''From the President'' commentary on the AAII Blog. In it, he provides insights into the small-cap stock premium and why it makes sense to stick with small-cap stocks over the long run. I think you will enjoy reading it.

More on AAII.comThe Week AheadMy colleague, Wayne Thorp, will be speak to our Atlanta Chapter and our Birmingham Chapter on Tuesday and Thursday about how to determine a stock's true worth. AAII has more than 50 local chapters across the country.

More than 170 members of the S&P 500 will report earnings in what will be one of the busiest weeks for third-quarter earnings. Included in this group are Dow Jones industrial average components Apple (AAPL), E.I. Du Pont (DD), Merk (MRK) and Pfizer (PFE) on Tuesday and Chevron (CVX) and Exxon Mobil (XOM) on Friday.

September new home sales will be the first economic report of note, scheduled for release on Monday. Tuesday will feature September durable goods orders, the August Case-Shiller home price index and the Conference Board's October consumer confidence survey. The minutes from the October Federal Open Market Committee meeting will be released on Wednesday. Thursday will feature the first estimate of third-quarter GDP and the September pending home sales index. September personal income and spending, the final October University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, the third-quarter employment cost index and the October Chicago PMI will be released on Friday.

The Treasury Department intends to postpone the two-year note auction originally scheduled for Tuesday. Treasury officials are concerned that debt ceiling constraints would prevent the settlement of the auction. The Treasury Department still plans on auctioning $35 billion of five-year notes and $15 billion of floating two-year notes on Wednesday and $29 billion of seven-year notes on Thursday.

What's Trending on AAIIWhy Buy Bonds If Interest Rates Will Rise?How Interest Rate Changes Affect the Price of BondsHow to Use the CAN SLIM Approach to Screen for Growth StocksAAII Sentiment SurveyFor the first time since the market's correction occurred, more than 40% of individual investors describe their short-term outlook for stocks as being "neutral," according to the latest AAII Sentiment Survey. Pessimism fell further, while optimism edged up slightly.

Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, rose 0.7 percentage points to 34.8%. Even with the modest increase, optimism remains below its historical average of 39.0% for a record 33rd consecutive week.

Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay essentially unchanged over the next six months, rose 2.4 percentage points to 41.2%. Neutral sentiment was last higher on August 6, 2015 (44.0%). The increase keeps neutral sentiment above its historical average of 31.0% for a sixth consecutive week and the 40th week this year.

Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, declined 3.1 percentage points to 24.0%. The historical average is 30.0%.

Neutral sentiment is back to an unusually high level. (Readings above 39.6% are more than one standard deviation above the historical mean.) Such readings have previously been correlated with above-median returns for the S&P 500. (There is no guarantee that history will repeat, however.)

Even though there is optimism on the part of some individual investors that a bottom in the market has been set, sentiment overall remains mixed. Some AAII members bought on the dips while others increased their cash positions. Impacting AAII members' six-month outlook for stocks are global and international events (particularly China and global economic weakness), U.S. monetary policy, technical factors (seasonal trends, the recent correction or the chance of further price declines occurring), U.S. politics and the pace of U.S. economic growth.

This week's special question asked AAII members if a market-related factor or if a fiscal policy-related matter has a greater impact on their six-month outlook for stocks. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (64%) said market-related factors, particularly citing monetary policy, earnings and valuations. Less than a third of respondents (31%) said that a fiscal matter has a greater impact. These members particularly cited the debt ceiling, the debt, the deficit and the budget standoff.

Here is a sampling of the responses:

''Market factors are more important. The federal budget and the debt ceiling will eventually take care of themselves.''''Earnings and the lack of Fed direction.''''Stock valuations, earnings, free cash flow and price movement. The ineffectiveness of Congress matters less.''''Fiscal policy events could have quick, large negative market reactions.''''For the next six months, I suspect political matters will reign.''This week's Sentiment Survey results:

Bullish: 34.8%, up 0.7 pointsNeutral: 41.2%, up 2.4 pointsBearish: 24%, down 3.1 pointsHistorical averages:

Bullish: 39.0%Neutral: 31.0%Bearish: 30.0%Take the Sentiment Survey.Local Chapter MeetingsAAII Local Chapter Meetings offer you a variety of presentations from expert speakers who will give you their view on the world of investing. A bonus of attending a Chapter Meeting near you is the opportunity to meet other AAII members who share your interest and enthusiasm for investing. You can even share the Chapter experience with your family and friends by inviting them to attend Chapter Meetings with you!

Hello AC,

see screenshots below from Bild newspaper

So: German propaganda machine rolling full steam - Goebbels would be proud,

and this propaganda says:

taking refugees to Germany is all good and good for Germany!

So it says:

- refugees don't steal jobs

- refugees are all good people no criminals and no t*rrorists

- all will be good

In other words: there is no room for criticism, press is just spreading propaganda Goebbels-style.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:10

Many Swedes have expressed concern over the recent number of suspected arson attacks, such as the one in Munkedal (pictured). Photo:TT/Adam Ihse

UPDATE: Two more buildings connected to refugee housing were hit by suspicious fires on Friday night. One of the structures burned for the second time in less than a week.

In Eskilstuna, around 112 kilometres west of Stockholm, emergency services got a call at around 11pm that a building, part of a children's summer camp and under consideration for refugee housing, was on fire.

The building, the main structure in the camp complex, burned to the ground. There were no people inside it at the time and no one was injured.

Police are investigating the incident as arson but currently have no suspects.

The local Eskilstuna-Kuriren newspaper reported earlier this month that the municipality was considering using the building as a possible location for the provisional housing of refugees.

In Munkedal, a town of 10,000 inhabitants in south-western Sweden, fire broke out at the same refugee centre that burned last week. This time, the blaze was not as extensive and was extinguished quickly.

The area had been cordoned off since the earlier fire and no one was injured in this new incident.

These fires are the latest in a string of suspicious blazes to hit asylum centres in the country. There have been at least 15 since the beginning of this year.

As The Local previously reported, more refugees have sought asylum in Sweden so far in 2015 than in any other year in the nation's history.

On Friday, a political row related to the refugee centre fires flared up. Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson of the Social Democrats reacted strongly to a list of prospective refugee centres published on Facebook by the far-right Sweden Democrats in the city of Lund.

''In a time when refugee centres are being set ablaze, the Sweden Democrats in the city of Lund put out addresses and a map of planned centres. Disgusting!'' he wrote on Twitter.

Ted Ekeroth, spokesman for the Lund Sweden Democrats, dismissed the idea that publishing the information would increase the risk of new attacks.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:11

Some 44,000 of the 213,000 refugees who arrived in Europe were from SyriaA further 27,000 new arrivals on the continent came from AfghanistanBritain received one in 30 of all the asylum claims made by new applicantsDavid Cameron has offered to take in 20,000 refugees but none from the EUBy Ian Drury for the Daily Mail

Published: 08:44 EST, 18 September 2015 | Updated: 13:19 EST, 22 September 2015

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Only one in every five migrants claiming asylum in Europe is from Syria.

The EU logged 213,000 arrivals in April, May and June but only 44,000 of them were fleeing the Syrian civil war.

Campaigners and left-wing MPs have suggested the vast majority of migrants are from the war-torn state, accusing the Government of doing too little to help them.

'This exposes the lie peddled in some quarters that vast numbers of those reaching Europe are from Syria,' said David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth. 'Most people who are escaping the war will go to camps in Lebanon or Jordan.

'Many of those who have opted to risk their lives to come to Europe have done so for economic reasons.'

Hungary has announced plans to build a giant fence along the Croatian border - just days after sealing off access from Serbia with a 100 mile razor-wire barrier (pictured)

One man lifts a crying baby as he waits to board a bus heading for a reception centre for migrants in Croatia's capital of Zagreb

Sir Bill Cash, a fellow Tory, said: 'These figures make extremely disturbing reading. The whole argument has been made that this influx is all real refugees from Syria whereas this adds to the substantial evidence that there are a large number of economic migrants who are aiming for a better life.'

The figures from Eurostat, the EU's official statistical agency, show that migration from April to June was running at double the level of the same period in 2014.

The number of Afghans lodging asylum claims is up four-fold, from 6,300 to 27,000. Another 17,700 claims were made by Albanians, whose country is at peace.

A further 13,900 applicants came from Iraq which, like Syria, is being torn apart by the Islamic State terror group.

This exposes the lie peddled in some quarters that vast numbers of those reaching Europe are from Syria.

David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth

Half a million migrants have arrived in Europe so far this year, with 156,000 coming in August alone. Rather than claiming asylum in the first safe EU country they reach, most head on toward wealthy northern states. The human cost of the crisis has been paid by the estimated 3,000 migrants who have drowned after putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers for the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean.

Risks being taken by many families were highlighted by the deaths of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi and his brother Galip, five, whose bodies were washed up on the tourist beach of Bodrum in Turkey earlier this month.

More than 250,000 migrants have reached Greece and Italy, where the authorities are close to breaking point.

Struggling to cope: Croatia's Prime Minister said today that his country will redirect migrants to Hungary and Slovenia

Police officers watch on as migrants sit on the windows of a train at a railway station near the Slovenian-Croatian border in Dobova, Brezice

Refugees are making increasingly desperate attempts to cross Europe. A group of migrants are pictured trying to cross the river Sutla near Senkovec, Croatia on their way to Slovenia

DAILY MAIL COMMENT TO listen to the BBC, you might believe that every one of the hundreds of thousands of migrants clamouring to get into the EU was a Syrian refugee fleeing the horror of Islamic State or tyrannical president Bashar al-Assad.

But new Eurostat figures show the truth: 80 per cent are from as far afield as Pakistan, Nigeria and Albania - many of them economic migrants simply looking for a better life.

The Mail does not underestimate the agony and desperation of genuine Syrian asylum seekers who, of course, deserve care and compassion. That's why David Cameron was right to ensure that those granted refuge in Britain come from camps on the Syrian border, rather than from among those already in Europe '' who may not be Syrian.

But Germany '' by first extending a welcome to all migrants, then slamming its borders shut when overwhelming numbers responded to the invitation '' has created chaos for all its neighbours, where untold numbers are now stranded.

Through her naive and muddled policy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has placed the very future of the EU in jeopardy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel fuelled the chaos last month by declaring that any Syrian who reached the country could claim asylum.

When the numbers became uncontrollable Berlin shut its borders, throwing Austria, Hungary and other EU countries into turmoil.

Croatia has received 14,000 migrants in the past two days and was last night moving some to the Hungarian border.

Hungary is laying razor wire on the border having done the same on its border with Serbia.

Croatia has closed seven of eight road crossings to Serbia and ordered its border guards to redirect migrants to Hungary and Slovenia. The Hungarian government described this as 'totally unacceptable'.

Violence broke out yesterday between Syrian and Afghan migrants fighting to board trains across Croatia.

And Slovenian riot police last night stood in the path of 200 migrants trying to enter from Croatia. Slovenian ministers say they will accept asylum seekers but send back anyone deemed to be an illegal immigrant.

Britain, which received 7,470 asylum applications between April and June, has come under fire for failing to join an EU scheme to spread 160,000 migrants between the 28 member states.

A man uses crutches as he joins other migrants crossing the border between Greece and Macedonia near the city of Gevgelija, Macedonia

Refugees sit under a bridge at the border between Austria and Germany, in Freilassing, southern Germany this morning

GERMANY COULD SPEND UP TO '‚¬25 BILLION ON MIGRANT INTAKE Germany's lead in housing hundreds of thousands of migrants heading to Europe from a war-torn Middle East could cost its Treasury tens of billions of euros over the next two years, according to early private estimates.

The Japanese investment bank Mizuho was one of the first to put a number on it on yesterday, saying that accepting up to one million refugees a year over the next two years could cost Berlin '‚¬25 billion euros.

That is derived from a basic calculation of '‚¬12,500 per migrant, according to Peter Chatwell, senior rates strategist at Mizuho. Part of the extra spending may have to be met by extra borrowing.

Over half a dozen banks contacted by Reuters broadly agreed with Mizuho's calculations.

David Cameron has announced the UK will shelter 20,000 vulnerable Syrians from camps in Lebanon and Jordan. But he rejected calls to take migrants already in Europe, saying this would encourage more to make the dangerous journey.

Yvette Cooper, who chairs Labour's refugee taskforce, said: 'Britain's approach of only planning to take refugees from the camps in Syria isn't working.

'It ignores the crisis also happening in Europe itself and means Britain has no leverage to get other countries to sign up to help.'

But a Home Office spokesman said: 'Claiming asylum must not be viewed as an easy means of settlement by those who are not actually refugees.

'We need systems which keep out unfounded claims so we can all respond more quickly and effectively to those genuinely in need of refuge.

'That is why the UK is focused on resettling genuine Syrian refugees directly from the region. This will ensure we are taking in the most vulnerable people and deter people from attempting the perilously journeys which have already led to so many tragic deaths.'

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Adam,

Over the past few months you and John have been discussing mass shootings, and the link to medications. I feel that you both are on the right track. I thought I would share with you my experience. I have had Epilepsy my entire life, now my old doctor who I had have seen since around 1977 had me on the same medication (Phenobarbital) since I was diagnosed in the early eighties. Since moving my new Neurologist has suggested a new medication. You would roll your eyes at his sales pitch. Through slightly unintelligible English, he went on to tell me how I should not be taking the Pheno, and should be on Fycompa. His assertion was the Phenobarbital only should be used by children, and as a "Peer Reviewed" (or Something like that) Epilepsy specialist I should be on a newer medication. He likened the new medication to the iPhone of all things, telling me it was "new technology" and I would be a new man when I was weened off the Phenobarbital. When I finally relented he had a look like a kid in a candy shop, he scurried down to his office and came back with four packets of samples that would last me around 30 days. I could almost se the dollar signs in his eyes as he instructed me how to transition the drugs.

I decided to try the new medication after about six months of his pestering me. Mind you the new medication with my insurance costs me $50.00, without is is at least $1200 for a 30 day supply. My old medication was $5.00 w/ insurance, $40.00 without.

Cost alone is not the only thing that gives me pause. The side effects are somewhat concerning. I have attached a scan of the warnings from my pharmacy. The first paragraph is of the most concern and I quote:

Warning: This drug may cause mental problems or make then worse. It may also cause bad problems with how you act. Ideas of killing yourself, or murder, forceful actions, fury, anxiety, and anger have happened with use. These problems have happened in people with, and without a history of mental or mood problems.

At current I have a bad case if dizziness from this that i did not have with my obviously "low technology" medication I was on for more than 35 years. I will try to keep you apprised.

Cary

P.S.

I currently work in a second had retail shop outside Fort Bragg North Carolina, and I had a soldier come in last week around Wednesday, she had just come from a Company meeting (Military Intelligence) well short story long, Half her company is going to Afghanistan, the other Syria. They are wheels up in less than two weeks. But yet we do not have boots on the ground in Syria John could probably attest to this in his 3x3 I wish I had more to tell you, but sometimes information is hard to come across.

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:20

Image caption Drug resistance is a problem in tuberculosis The rise in drug resistant infections is comparable to the threat of global warming, according to the chief medical officer for England.

Prof Dame Sally Davies said bacteria were becoming resistant to current drugs and there were few antibiotics to replace them.

She told a committee of MPs that going for a routine operation could become deadly due to the threat of infection.

Experts said it was a global problem and needed much more attention.

Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. However, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs.

MRSA rapidly became one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.

Prof Davies said: "It is clear that we might not ever see global warming, the apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years I'll die from a routine infection because we've run out of antibiotics."

She said there was only one useful antibiotic left to treat gonorrhoea.

"It is very serious, and it's very serious because we are not using our antibiotics effectively in countries.

We have to be aware that we aren't going to have new wonder drugs coming along because there just aren't any.Prof Hugh Pennington, University of Aberdeen"There is a broken market model for making new antibiotics, so it's an empty pipeline, so as they become resistant, these bugs, which they would naturally but we're breeding them in because of the way antibiotics are used, there will not be new antibiotics to come."

Possible solutions will be included in her annual report to be published in March.

The World Health Organization has warned the world is heading for a "post-antibiotic era" unless action is taken.

It paints a future in which "many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated".

Media captionConservative MP Stephen Metcalfe warns that research is not happening quickly enough.Prof Hugh Pennington, a microbiologist from the University of Aberdeen, said drug resistance was "a very, very serious problem".

"We do need to pay much more attention to it. We need resources for surveillance, resources to cope with the problem and to get public information across.

But he said it was not a problem entirely of the UK's making.

"People are going abroad for operations, going abroad for, let's say, sex tourism and bringing home gonorrhoea which is a big problem in terms of antibiotic resistance - and then there's tuberculosis in many parts of the world.

Prof Pennington said the drugs companies had run out of options too as all the easy drugs had been made.

"We have to be aware that we aren't going to have new wonder drugs coming along because there just aren't any."

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:45

For years you've been telling your friends, family, co-workers and anyone who will listen that you're addicted to cheese. It's a part of every meal or snack, and you think about it constantly. According to a new study from the University of Michigan, cheese crack is a real thing. And so is your addiction.

The study, published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, examines why certain foods are more addictive than others. Researchers identified addictive foods from about 500 students who completed the Yale Food Addiction Scale, designed to measure if someone has a food addiction.

Pizza, unsurprisingly, came out on top of the most addictive food list. Besides being a basic food group for kids, college students and adults, there's a scientific reason we all love pizza, and it has to do with the cheese.

The study found certain foods are addictive because of the way they are processed. The more processed and fatty the food, the more it was associated with addictive eating behaviors.

Cheese happens to be especially addictive because of an ingredient called casein, a protein found in all milk products. During digestion, casein releases opiates called casomorphins.

"[Casomorphins] really play with the dopamine receptors and trigger that addictive element," registered dietitian Cameron Wells told Mic.

So there you have it. Your cheese addiction has been validated by science. This may be better than that time science said your addiction to Oreos is real. Just maybe.

I'm an aged gouda freak. Follow me on Twitter @Jenn_Harris

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Jonathan Gold's 5 best L.A. burritos

7 grilled cheese recipes you need to know

Those scones you love at Proof Bakery? Here's the recipe, plus five more recipes for scones

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Source: BlackListed News

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:48

Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe's monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.

Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal's constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.

He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.

This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.

Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership.

''In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,'' said Mr Cavaco Silva.

''This is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy.

"After we carried out an onerous programme of financial assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets,'' he said.

Mr Cavaco Silva argued that the great majority of the Portuguese people did not vote for parties that want a return to the escudo or that advocate a traumatic showdown with Brussels.

This is true, but he skipped over the other core message from the elections held three weeks ago: that they also voted for an end to wage cuts and Troika austerity. The combined parties of the Left won 50.7pc of the vote. Led by the Socialists, they control the Assembleia.

Read More...

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Wed, 21 Oct 2015 10:54

European data protection authorities have given the European Commission and national governments three months to come up with an alternative to the Safe Harbor agreement swept away two weeks ago by a ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

But any new agreement must protect the personal data of European citizens from massive and indiscriminate surveillance, which is incompatible with EU law, the data protection authorities making up the Article 29 Working Party said late Friday.

Since the CJEU ruled on Oct. 6 that the Safe Harbor agreement between the Commission and U.S. authorities did not offer necessary legal guarantees, businesses that relied on it for the transfer of their customers' or employees' private personal information from the EU to the U.S. have been doing so in something of a legal vacuum.

The High Court of Ireland triggered the CJEU's ruling by referring some matters of law to it in a case pitting an Austrian Facebook user, Maximilian Schrems, against the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. Schrems had complained that, in the light of the revelations of Edward Snowden about the U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance of data held by U.S. companies, Facebook's handling of his personal information did not meet EU legal requirements. Schrems appealed to the Irish high court after the DPC dismissed his initial complaint. With the CJEU's ruling now in, that case is set to continue at the high court on Tuesday, according to Schrems.

EU law allows such information to be exported only if it can be guaranteed the same privacy protections as the data enjoys within the EU, and provides for a number of ways to provide those legal guarantees. The Safe Harbor agreement was one such, covering all transfers of data by companies that certified they met its requirements. However, the CJEU determined that the agreement, while binding on the activities of companies, imposed no such restraints on the behavior of U.S. law enforcers or intelligence agencies.

For the authorities making up the working party, countries where state authorities have powers to access information beyond what is necessary in a democratic society are not safe destinations for the export of personal data.

In the absence of a replacement agreement, companies must resort to time-consuming and potentially expensive ad-hoc legal arrangements, such as model contract clauses or binding corporate rules, or refrain from transferring personal data. The working party members consider that those arrangements may still be used while they complete their legal analysis of the CJEU's decision.

In the wake of Snowden's revelations, the Commission had already recognized that the Safe Harbor agreement did not offer sufficient protection from surveillance, and had begun negotiating new terms with U.S. authorities.

Those negotiations could form the basis of a new agreement, the working party said, as long as it includes obligations on the necessary oversight of access by public authorities, on transparency, on proportionality, on redress mechanisms and on data protection rights

If no new agreement has been reached by the end of January, the working party warned, its members would consider coordinated enforcement actions to ensure companies complied with EU data protection requirements.

Companies still relying on the old Safe Harbor agreement are now acting unlawfully, it said, adding that they should consider what technical or legal steps they need to take to protect the personal data they handle.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 07:31

Image copyrightAFPImage caption Protesters carried a banner reading "Our Future, Our Right" Police in Montenegro have fired tear gas to disperse several thousand demonstrators demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

Protesters in the capital, Podgorica, chanted "Milo, thief!" and demanded fair elections organised by a transitional government.

Some threw flares and fireworks at police guarding parliament.

Fifteen policemen were injured and 24 protesters sought treatment after being teargassed, the interior minister said.

An leader of the Democratic Front opposition group, Andrija Mandic, was been questioned by police after the rally, along with another protest leader, Slaven Radunovic.

Mr Djukanovic has been in power for much of the past two decades, after holding prominent positions in the republic from the early 1990s when it was part of the former Yugoslavia.

In 2012, he won elections and became prime minister for the third time since Montenegro became independent after splitting from neighbouring Serbia in 2006.

"More than 25 years in power would be too much even if he was Mahatma Gandhi and not this thief," Raso, a 30-year old protester, told the AFP news agency.

Montenegro's government hopes to be invited to join the Nato in December, but many Montenegrins with historic ties to Russia are opposed to this.

Elections are scheduled for early 2016.

Image copyrightAPImage caption Police fired tear gas to try to disperse the protesters

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 19:56

Five days after a Houston woman was raped by two men, she was driving down the street when she spotted 16-year-old Josiah Sutton. She thought she recognized his hat, and then immediately identified him as one of her attackers. Claiming his innocence, Sutton obligingly provided investigators blood and saliva samples '-- but months later, in July 1999, that DNA evidence would be the linchpin in his conviction.

The Houston Crime Lab, after looking at a mixed-DNA sample from semen in the woman's car, had concluded that the chances were 1 in 674,000 that another black person shared Sutton's DNA pattern. An analyst told jurors that ''no two persons will have the same DNA except in the case of identical twins.'' The message to jurors was unambiguous: DNA testing proved that Sutton committed the crime.

Except that it didn't. Sutton was exonerated in 2003, pardoned by Gov. Rick Perry and compensated $118,000 after a more sophisticated test revealed that, actually, the DNA profile examined could have belonged to as many as 1 in 16 black men.

Now, following a new advancement in mixed-DNA testing, Texas might begin seeing a wave of narratives like Sutton's sprout up in coming months and years.

Forensic science experts now worry that analysts may have been wrongly interpreting mixed-DNA test results like Sutton's for years, potentially leading to an untold number of wrongful convictions that, unlike Sutton's, haven't been caught. Already, the number of defendants affected is staggering: The Texas Department of Public Safety has identified almost 25,000 cases involving mixed DNA since 1999,the year today's standard technology was first used, that may need to be retested if the cases ended in convictions. These 25,000 cases do not include cases from many other local, non-DPS crime labs like Houston's.

And when those new test results come back, some of them could be dramatic. Previously, a prosecutor or expert witness may have told the jury that the odds are 1 in over a billion that the DNA in question belonged to someone other than the defendant; now, with the new method, that stat is more like 1 in less than 100. Which means that a growing mountain of defendants may be entitled to a retrial, if those previous faulty stats were used to convict them.

''We have to start identifying the cases and whittling the case list down,'' Lynn Robitaille Garcia, general counsel at the Texas Forensic Science Commission, said during the group's meeting last week. ''We have a duty to correct this.''

During the meeting, forensic experts and prosecutors discussed how they should even begin this massive undertaking. They agreed the first step would be to review DNA testing protocols at every crime lab in the state to make sure that, at least right now, all current cases are being tested correctly. But as for the thousands of casesthat have already been adjudicated, Garcia said they may have to ask the governor for financial help. ''There is no question that this cannot be done without additional resources,'' she said.

Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady said he has put all mixed-DNA cases pending trial on hold in order to send them back to the lab for retesting. A few weeks ago, Roady was among the first in the state to begin receiving the new test results; in one murder case, the likelihood that the DNA belonged to someone other than the defendant dropped from 1 in 1.4 billion to 1 in 38. (The case was not dependent on DNA, however, because defense attorneys argued he acted in self-defense.) ''That was the first evidence that we had '-- and a lot of people across the state had '-- that this was a significant issue,'' Roady told the Houston Press.

Given Galveston County's smaller size, the commission calledit a ''guinea pig" tasked with finding the fastest method of identifying which of its 1,000 retroactive mixed-DNA cases resulted in convictions. Larger jurisdictions, like Harris County, could then adopt that method. Inger Chandler with the Harris County District Attorney's Office's conviction integrity unit expects that at least a few thousand cases since 1999 will be affected, though prosecutors don't yet have a comprehensive list. More than five hundred such cases, however, are pending trial, and Chandler says her office has already individually notified all those defendants about the new testing. ''We already knew that manual labor would be a part of this,'' she said. ''Once we say, 'This was done wrong,' every single defendant affected is entitled to know.''

Chandler is part of a statewide panel that the FSC has given three core tasks. After figuring out which of the 25,000 or more mixed-DNA cases resulted in convictions, they'll have to find a way to notify all those defendants. Then they'll have to help all of those defendants find lawyers to file writs; and then they'll have to make sure there are enough resources to prepare prosecutors to handle the cascade of appeals. This is a case in which, for once, defense attorneys, prosecutors, forensic scientists, innocence projects and the courts are all working toward the same goal.

During an interview with the Press, Chandler said that, on a daily basis, she's constantly conflicted about where to begin attacking the problem. Should they immediately start reinterpreting every case involving mixed DNA that has ever been tested? Should they wait until defendants respond to the notifications and ask for a new test themselves? ''How do we proceed from here?'' she said. ''It's so intimidating to wrap your mind around how you can accomplish everything that needs to be done efficiently and effectively and fairly. Because at the end of the day, if even one person was wrongfully convicted based on mixture evidence, that is a horrible travesty.''

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 15:21

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We weten ook niet hoe het hier terecht is gekomen, vermoedelijk heeft iemand zijn auto­radio­hand­leid­ing hier laten slingeren. Excuses voor het ongemak, maar scroll vooral even door.

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Hieronder staat het, nog even doorscrollen.

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Cookies van Advertentiebedrijven aka de schoorsteencookiesAdvertentiebedrijven meten het succes van hun campagnes, de mogelijke interesses van de bezoeker en eventuele voorkeuren (heb je de reclameuiting al eerder gezien of moet hij worden weergegeven etc) door cookies uit te lezen. Heeft een advertentiebedrijf banners op meerdere websites dan kunnen de gegevens van deze websites worden gecombineerd om een beter profiel op te stellen. Zo kunnen adverteerders hun cookies op meerdere sites plaatsen en zo een gedetailleerd beeld krijgen van de interesses van de gebruiker. Hiermee kunnen gerichter en relevantere advertenties worden weergegeven. Zo kun je na het bezoeken van een webwinkel op andere sites banners krijgen met juist de door jezelf bekeken producten of soortgelijke producten. De websitehouder kan die cookies overigens‚ niet‚ inzien.

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Cookies van overige externe partijen aka de restNaast bovenstaande zijn er meer onderdelen die een cookie kunnen opleveren. Veelal worden deze gebruikt door de content-partners om te analyseren op welke sites hun gebruikers actief zijn en hoe hun diensten presteren. Denk hierbij aan filmpjes van bijvoorbeeld YouTube, foto's van diensten als Imgur, Tumblr of picasa, en 'like' knoppen van sociale mediasites als Twitter en Facebook

Op het NewsMedia Netwerk gebruiken we onderdelen (en dus cookies) van onder andere Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr, Tumblr, Imgur etc. Deze websites schijnen best wel een beetje populair te zijn dus we dachten: laten we maar een paar van deze diensten faciliteren. Graag gedaan hoor. Geen dank.

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Source: American Everyman

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:45

Posted on October 23, 2015 by willyloman

from Common Dreams

University of Washington police are investigating a break-in at the school's Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) after files from a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were stolen from the center's offices.

A computer and hard drive containing information from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on October 2 were stolen from the offices of Dr. Angelina Godoy sometime between Thursday and Sunday, according to police. The UWCHR is investigating whether the CIA illegally withheld information about human rights violations carried out by U.S.-backed El Salvador army officers during the country's civil war against leftist rebels in the 1980s.

Godoy said ''about 90 percent of the information'' was taken in the break-in. The UWCHR has backups of the stolen files, but Godoy said the concern now is how the data might be used against rights workers in El Salvador who are involved in the lawsuit.

''What worries us most is not what we have lost but what someone else may have gained,'' she said in a statement. ''The files include sensitive details of personal testimonies and pending investigations.''

The break-in had ''suspicious and disturbing'' elements, the Seattle Timesreported'--including that it coincided with a campus visit by CIA director John Brennan, who gave a speech at the university's law school Friday.

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Filed under: CIA are the Real Terrorists, John Brennan Fake Hack Story

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:33

The Ad Council invented iOS 9.1's mystery emoji.Photo: Goodby Silverstien & PartnersApple's new ''Eye in Speech Bubble'' emoji has mystified us ever since it was first discovered last month, but now that iOS 9.1 is out to the public, we finally know the full story (and meaning) behind the odd new pictogram.

The mystery emoji was fast-tracked by Apple instead of going through the normal Unicode approval process, except the new icon wasn't even Apple's idea at all. It was made by the same people that created Smokey the Bear.

The Ad Council '-- which gave us the ''Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk'' ads, the Crash Test Dummies, Scruff McGruff and more '-- invented the new eye-in-speech bubble emoji as part of it's anti-bullying campaign, ''I am a witness.''

San Francisco ad agency Goodby, Silverstien & Partners designed the original eye-in-speech bubble character as a way for teens to stand up when they see bullying online. In an interview with Wired, designers Angie Elko and Patrick Knowlton say once they brought up the idea to Apple, the company bent over backward to bring it to teens' keyboards ASAP.

''When we first asked about bringing this emoji to the official Apple keyboard, they told us it would take at least a year or two to get it through and approved under Unicode,'' says Wittmark. However, Apple found a clever way to fast-track it by using a zero-width joiner to combine two emojis '-- the speech bubble and eye '-- into a single emoji. The same process was used by Apple to create its same-sex couple emojis.

If you're not running iOS 9.1, you can download the new I Am A Witness app on iOS or Android that includes a keyboard with stylized logos, GIFs, stickers and other anti-bullying art that can be shared online.

''It's a powerful symbol,'' says Wittmark. ''It says, 'I see this, and I'm speaking up. I'm doing something about it.'''

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Archived Version

Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:34

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 22, 2015

Oval Office

3:52 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: As President and Commander-in-Chief, my first and most important responsibility is keeping the American people safe. And that means that we make sure that our military is properly funded, and that our men and women in uniform get the support, the equipment, the support for their families that they need and deserve when they protect our freedom and our safety.

The bill that has been presented to me authorizing our defense -- excuse me -- the bill that's before me, authorizing our defense spending for this year, does a number of good things. It makes sure that our military is funded. It has some important provisions around reform for our military retirement system, which is necessary to make sure that it is stable and effective. It's got some cybersecurity provisions that are necessary for an increasing threat.

Unfortunately, it falls woefully short in three areas. Number one, it keeps in place the sequester that is inadequate for us to properly fund our military in a stable, sustained way and allows all of our armed forces to plan properly. I have repeatedly called on Congress to eliminate the sequester and make sure that we're providing certainty to our military so they can do out-year planning, ensure military readiness, ensure our troops are getting what they need. This bill instead resorts to gimmicks that does not allow the Pentagon to do what it needs to do.

Number two, unfortunately it prevents a wide range of reforms that are necessary for us to get our military modernized and able to deal with the many threats that are presenting themselves in the 21st century. We have repeatedly put forward a series of reforms eliminating programs that the Pentagon does not want -- Congress keeps on stepping back in, and we end up wasting money. We end up diverting resources from things that we do need to have the kind of equipment and training and readiness that are necessary for us to meet all potential threats.

And the third thing is that this legislation specifically impeded our ability to close Guantanamo in a way that I have repeatedly argued is counterproductive to our efforts to defeat terrorism around the world. Guantanamo is one of the premiere mechanisms for jihadists to recruit. It's time for us to close it. It is outdated; it's expensive; it's been there for years. And we can do better in terms of keeping our people safe while making sure that we are consistent with our values.

So I'm going to be vetoing this authorization bill. I'm going to be sending it back to Congress. And my message to them is very simple: Let's do this right. We're in the midst of budget discussions -- let's have a budget that properly funds our national security as well as economic security. Let's make sure that we're able, in a constructive way, to reform our military spending to make it sustainable over the long term, and let's make sure that, in a responsible way, we can draw down the populations in Guantanamo, make sure that the American people are safe, and make sure that we're not providing the kinds of recruitment tools to terrorists that are so dangerous.

END 3:57 P.M. EDT

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Source: The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:34

"During that period, there were 56 airstrikes that killed 35 suspects. Those strikes also killed 219 people who do not appear to have been specifically targeted but were labeled ''enemy killed in action,'' the documents showed."

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Source: The Intercept

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 21:12

Read the complete Drone Papers.

VIEWED FROM HIGH ABOVE, Chabelley Airfield is little more than a gray smudge in a tan wasteland. Drop lower and its incongruous features start coming into focus. In the sun-bleached badlands of the tiny impoverished nation of Djibouti '-- where unemployment hovers at a staggering 60 percent and the per capita gross domestic product is about $3,100 '-- sits a hive of high-priced, high-tech American hardware.

Satellite imagery tells part of the story. A few years ago, this isolated spot resembled little more than an orphaned strip of tarmac sitting in the middle of this desolate desert. Look closely today, however, and you'll notice what seems to be a collection of tan clamshell hangars, satellite dishes, and distinctive, thin, gunmetal gray forms '-- robot planes with wide wingspans.

Unbeknownst to most Americans and without any apparent public announcement, the U.S. has recently taken steps to transform this tiny, out-of-the-way outpost into an ''enduring'' base, a key hub for its secret war, run by the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), in Africa and the Middle East. The military is tight-lipped about Chabelley, failing to mention its existence in its public list of overseas bases and refusing even to acknowledge questions about it '-- let alone offer answers. Official documents, satellite imagery, and expert opinion indicate, however, that Chabelley is now essential to secret drone operations throughout the region.

Tim Brown, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and expert on analyzing satellite imagery, notes that Chabelley Airfield allows U.S. drones to cover Yemen, southwest Saudi Arabia, a large swath of Somalia, and parts of Ethiopia and southern Egypt.

''This base is now very important because it's a major hub for most drone operations in northwest Africa,'' he said. ''It's vital. '... We can't afford to lose it.''

Aerial image of Chabelley Airfield, Djibouti, April 2013.

Photo: Google Earth

Aerial image of Chabelley Airfield, Djibouti, October 2013.

Photo: Google Earth

Aerial image of Chabelley Airfield, Djibouti, March 2015.

Photo: Google Earth

The startling transformation of this little-known garrison in this little-known country is in line with U.S. military activity in Africa where, largely under the radar, the number of missions, special operations deployments, and outposts has grown rapidly and with little outside scrutiny.

The expansion of Chabelley and its consequent rise in importance to the U.S. military began in 2013, when the Pentagon moved its fleet of remotely piloted aircraft from its lone acknowledged ''major military facility'' in Africa '-- Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti's capital, which shares the country's name '-- to this lower-profile airstrip about 10 kilometers away.

A hasty perimeter of concertina wire and metal fence posts was constructed around a bare-bones compound once used by the French Foreign Legion, and the Pentagon asked Congress to fund only ''minimal facilities'' enabling ''temporary operations'' there for no more than two years.

But Chabelley would follow a pattern established at Lemonnier. Located on the edge of Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport, Lemonnier also began as an austere location that has, year after year since 9/11, grown in almost every conceivable fashion. The number of personnel stationed there, for example, has jumped from 900 to 5,000 since 2002. More than $600 million has already been allocated or awarded for projects such as aircraft parking aprons, taxiways, and a sizeable special operations compound. It has expanded from 88 acres to nearly 600 acres. Lemonnier is so crucial to U.S. military operations that, in 2014, the Pentagon signed a $70 million per year agreement to secure its lease through 2044.

But as the base grew, the skies over Lemonnier and the adjoining airport became increasingly crowded and dangerous. By 2012, an average of 16 U.S. drones and four fighter jets were taking off or landing there each day, in addition to French and Japanese military aircraft and civilian planes, while local air traffic controllers were committing ''errors at astronomical rates,'' according to a Washington Post investigation. The Djiboutians were specifically hostile to Americans, ignoring pilots' communications and forcing U.S. aircraft to circle above the airport until low on fuel '-- with special ire reserved for drone operations '-- adding to the havoc in the skies. While the U.S. did not find Djiboutian air traffic controllers responsible, six remotely piloted aircraft based at Lemonnier were destroyed in crashes, including an accident in a residential area of the capital, prompting Djiboutian government officials to voice safety concerns.

As Lemonnier expanded, the Chabelley site underwent its own transformation. Members of the Marines and Army conductedtraining there during2008 and, in 2011, troops began work at the base with an eye toward the future. That October, a Marine Air Traffic Control Mobile Team (MMT) undertook efforts to enable a variety of aircraft to use the site. ''We provide our commanders the ability to keep the battle line moving forward at a rapid pace,'' said Sgt. Christopher Bickel, the assistant team leader of the MMT that worked on the project.

It was in February 2013 that the Pentagon asked Congress to quickly supply funds for ''minimal facilities necessary to enable temporary operations'' at Chabelley. ''The construction is not being carried out at a military installation where the United States is reasonably expected to have a long-term presence,'' said official documents obtained by the Washington Post. The next month, before the House Armed Services Committee, then-chief of Africa Command (Africom), Gen. Carter Ham, explained that agreements were being worked out with the Djiboutian government to use the airfield and thanked Congress for helping to hasten things along. ''We appreciate the reauthorization of the temporary, limited authority to use operations and maintenance funding for military construction in support of contingency operations in our area of responsibility, which will permit us to complete necessary construction at Chabelley,'' he said.

In June 2013, the House Armed Services Committee noted it was ''aware that the Government of Djibouti mandated that operations of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) cease from Camp Lemonnier, while allowing such operations to relocate to Chabelley Airfield, Djibouti.''

But there was another benefit of moving drone operations from the capital to a far less visible locale. In an Air Force engineering publication from the same year, U.S. Air Forces in Europe/Air Forces Africa engineers listed as ''significant accomplishments'' the development and implementation of plans to shift drones ''from Camp Lemonnier to Chabelley Airfield '... providing operations anonymity from the International Airport and improving host-nation relations.''

Tim Brown of GlobalSecurity.org notes that Chabelley allows the U.S. to keep its drone missions under much tighter wraps. ''They're able to operate with much less oversight '-- not completely in secret '-- but there's much less chance of ongoing observation of how often drones are leaving and what they're doing,'' he told me recently.

Dan Gettinger, the co-founder and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and the author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery, agrees. ''It seems they started with two CAPs '-- combat air patrols '-- about seven aircraft, a mix of Predators and Reapers,'' he said. ''And since then, we've really seen expansion, particularly within the last couple months; a few more hangars and certainly a lot more facilities for personnel at Chabelley.''

By the fall of 2013, the U.S. drone fleet reportedly had been transferred to the more remote airstrip. Africom failed to respond to questions about the number and types of drones based at Chabelley Airfield, but reporting by The Intercept, drawing on formerly secret documents, demonstrates that 10 MQ-1 Predators and four of their larger cousins, MQ-9 Reapers, were based at Lemonnier prior to the move to the more remote site. Neither the Pentagon nor Africom responded to repeated requests by The Intercept for comment on other aspects of drone operations at Chabelley Airfield or the transformation of the outpost into a more permanent facility. The reasons why aren't hard to fathom.

''These are JSOC and CIA-led missions for the most part,'' Gettinger told me recently, conjecturing that the hush-hush operations are likely focused on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities and counterterrorism strikes in Somalia and Yemen, as well as aiding the Saudi-led air campaign in the latter country. Indeed, an Air Force accident report obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act details a February 2015 incident in which an MQ-9 ''crashed during an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission in the United States Africa Command Area of Responsibility.'' The Reaper, assigned to the 33rd Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron operating from Chabelley had flown ''about 300 miles away from base'' when it began experiencing mechanical problems, according to the pilot. It was eventually ditched in international waters.

Special Operations Command, JSOC's parent organization, would not comment on Gettinger's assertions. ''We do not have anything for you,'' responded spokesperson Ken McGraw.

Despite the supposed temporary nature of the Chabelley site, Africom ''directed an expansion of operations'' at the airfield and the U.S. inked a ''long-term implementing arrangement'' with the Djiboutian government to establish Chabelley as a ''enduring'' base, according to documents provided earlier this year to the House Appropriations Committee by the undersecretary of defense (comptroller). The Air Force also reportedly installed a ''tactical automated security system'' '-- a complex suite of integrated sensors, thermal imaging devices, radar, cameras and communications devices '-- to provide extra layers of protection to the site.

In June, the Pentagon contacted the House Appropriations Committee about reallocating $7.6 million to construct a new 7,720-meter perimeter fence around the burgeoning base, complete with two defensive fighting positions and four pedestrian and five vehicle entry points that also ''provides a platform for installing advanced perimeter sensor system equipment.'' Last month, defense contractor ECC-MEZZ LLC of Burlingame, California, was awarded a $6.96 million contract for a fence, gates, a perimeter roadway, and a modular guard tower.

Africom remains close-lipped about the expansion and increasing importance of Chabelley. Phone calls and emails seeking comment were ignored. Multiple requests by The Intercept were even ''deleted without being read'' according to automatic return receipts. After days of also sending requests to Major James Brindle at the Pentagon's press office, it became apparent that The Intercept isn't alone in getting the cold shoulder when it comes to America's preeminent African drone base. A note from Brindle suggested Africom didn't want to talk to him about Chabelley either. He had apparently passed along my requests only to be similarly ignored. ''Still waiting on a reply from Africom. Sorry,'' was all he wrote.

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:50

At this year's Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting, Lockheed Martin unveiled a new capability that will allow users to detect and counter emerging threats from unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The solution, ICARUS, was designed to operate defensively in various threat environments. The AUSA meeting was held Oct. 12-14 in Washington, D.C.

''The U.S. government is seeing an increase in the use of commercially available UAS platforms for surveillance and weaponization,'' said Deon Viergutz, vice president of Cyber Solutions for Lockheed Martin. ''What Lockheed Martin has developed in ICARUS is a system that can detect, recognize and counteract these systems with pinpoint accuracy.''

Lockheed Martin's Counter-UAS system has been field tested and demonstrated to several domestic and international customers over the past year. Those tests demonstrated the ability of ICARUS to identify and intercept commercially available unmanned aerial systems.

The development of the ICARUS software system draws on Lockheed Martin's history of innovations in electronic warfare, cybersecurity and countermeasures associated with sophisticated threats. It was developed through Lockheed Martin internal investment and combines advanced cyber and cyber electromagnetic activity experience with sensor technology and non-kinetic techniques.

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:29

Oct 18, 2015Paul Dietrich (@paulmd199)Adventures in Twitter CensorshipIt started simply enough, I woke up this morning to an unusually high number of notifications mentioning several posts I had made. Usually this means that an account with a large following retweeted something I said. I was curious to find out who. I determined that Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) had retweeted a news article I was involved with. But a second post I made also suddenly had a large number of retweets. I saw a notification that he had favorited it, but no indication that he retweeted. Favorites usually don't have a snowball effect. I thought it might be the case that he perhaps had undid the retweet.

And that would be the end of it, but for a memory of a similar incident the day before. A keyword search on ''drone papers'' returned a quote-tweet of the same post. But when I checked the user's profile, it had vanished. Hmm, perhaps he deleted it. But his tweet was still appearing in search results, and when I clicked on the link to the tweet itself, not the user's profile, it was still there. Then I checkedhis profile with the tor browser. And sure enough, there it was. ''That was odd,'' I thought, but dismissed it as Twitter weirdness. And when it showed up in my regular browser, the next day, it was forgotten.With this memory, I decided to check with tor browser. And there it was all along, in Appelbaum's twitter feed. I thought this was worthy of a post , which prompted another retweet from Appelbaum, andseveral helpful responses, among them were posts from two other users (one of whom has worked with the Snowden Archive and been published in Der Spiegel ) confirming that they too were experiencing the same issue. The tweet had disappeared from view from US, in Appelbaum's feed. From these posts, and my own work, it appears the issue was not limited to only one ISP (it affected both CenturyLink and Verizon), to one browser (Firefox, Chrome, IE and Opera were tried), one operating system (it affected both Windows and Android), or one login (at least 3 different users affected, I was also unaffected whilst logged in, but still using tor). It was also not a case of tor vs non-tor (US tor exits affected, as were my regular home IP addresses). Apparent location of the user's IP address seemed to be the main factor. Germans could see it the post, Americans couldn't.

And there was something else, the postcontained fragments of a top secret documentrelating to drones, that were not publishedanywhere else. It happens that the '' dronepapers '' were printed double-sided and thenscanned, and the verso image shows through. Inmost cases, that image was published anywaymore plainly. But in one case, it showsfragments of an unpublished page. The takeawayis that The Intercept hasn't yet published theentire cache. Which I said: ''It would be unwiseto assume that we've heard the last from # dronepapers . There is a hint they have more tosay.'' I thought Top Secret documents would behigh on the list of things that might bedeliberately censored. Here is a short analysis of the document fragment itself.' Tasking, NSA-speak for the process of collecting information from specific sources to be forwarded to analysts.' ''OEF....: ISAF... wide... line to NSAG'''—... OEF, refers to Operation Enduring Freedom'—... ISAF, International Security Assistance Force '—... NSAG, refers to the NSA facility in Georgia' ''FMV tasking,'' FMV means Full Motion Video. In other words, this refers to the collection andanalysis of drone video footage. Perhaps the word ''SOCOM'' appears, which would refer to U.S. Special Operations Command. Additionally the phrase ''..ate target'' appears. Perhaps this is ''eliminate target''' ''Handsets can be...'', handsets are primarily what drones target, they can be geolocated, listenedto, and hit with hellfire missiles.It became apparent that Twitter itself was the cause. Moreover, that it was likely not a bug, but a deliberate feature of the system, one that has been documented . The social media company also says, " we have begun to test a product feature to help us identify suspected abusive Tweets and limit their reach. This feature takes into account a wide range of signals and context that frequently correlates with abuse including the age of the account itself, and the similarity of a Tweet to other content that our safety team has in the past independently determined to be abusive. It will not affect your ability to see content that you've explicitly sought out, such as Tweets from accounts you follow, but instead is designed to help us limit the potential harm of abusive content. This feature does not take into account whether the content posted or followed by a user is controversial or unpopular". If this tool is in use, it has several interesting capabilities. To suppress posts from individual feeds, for certain viewers, depending on where they are, and for a specific time. Most views and retweets usuallyoccur within 24 hours. If a post can be hidden for a time, its reach will be severely limited. And if the original post is a retweet, the person controlling the feed is unlikely to notice (especially if it shows up in his own view). If notifications that someone has retweeted are suppressed, the poster himself is less Writing on the reverse side shows through.

likely to notice. On the odd chance someone notices, and goes back the next day to check, the post will be right where it was supposed to be, and that person says ''oh well, guess it was nothing,'' and moves on. But worse than that, even if a person is dead sure, the effects soon become non-reproducible, whichreduces the chances that the person can prove it. Censorship that doesn't look like censorship. It deliberately reduces the spread of information that might otherwise go viral. Vicious. ''You can say what you like but no one will hear you. And also, you'll think no one cared, so you'll give up trying.'' Subtle, deniable, and quite ruthless.Who controls this software? Does Twitter itself set all the rules? Do governments set policies for Twitter to administer? Or can they drive it directly? Is it all automatic, censorship by algorithm? Some mutant hybrid? (The tool's existence is not in question, as Twitter has acknowledged it, the only question is whether it was being used here, and if so, what it implies for the capabilities and policies governing the tool.)This time, I was lucky enough to notice, to have a post that credibly would be censored, and have my claims investigated and confirmed by others within the window. It is also a case where the censorship isnot legitimate. Twitter definitely has some explaining to do.

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Source: Zero Hedge

Fri, 23 Oct 2015 17:30

Several days ago, Citi announced that it "expects the upcoming IMF review (scheduled for early-November) will probably lead to China's inclusion in the SDR basket from late-2016. But we expect that the CNY will over time weaken versus the USD either way '-- either because of a poor outcome from SDR review or (if China joins the SDR) because of gradual (and limited) FX liberalization."

While it remains to be seen just how negative the impact on the CNY would be as a result of any possible SDR inclusion, and the definition of China's currency as a reserve currency, it now appears virtually assured that the IMF will include the CNY in its SDR basket, "validating efforts by President Xi Jinping to push through policies aimed at making the world's second-biggest economy more market oriented, boosting China's prestige as it prepares to host Group of 20 gatherings next year."

Just a few short weeks after The IMF appeared to snub China by delaying its decision on Yuan inclusion in the SDR basket, Bloomberg reports that Otaviano Canuto, executive director at the IMF for 11 countries including Brazil, said "prospects for approval seem to be favorable," adding that the story "is going in the direction of the renminbi becoming a necessary component of the SDR." China is taking that as a 'yes' and is preparing statements celebrating IMF SDR approval.

Per Bloomberg:

International Monetary Fund representatives have told China that yuan is likely to join the fund's basket of reserve currencies soon, according to Chinese officials with knowledge of the matter.

IMF has given Chinese officials strong signals in meetings that yuan is likely to win inclusion in current review of Special Drawing Rights, said three people who asked not to be identified because talks were private

Chinese officials are so confident of winning approval that they have begun preparing statements to celebrate the decision, according to two people

Board has requested that IMF staff members look into some operational challenges of including yuan in the basket, such as ability of fund's 188 member nations to quickly convert SDRs into yuan, according to another person familiar with the matter.

''We realize that although we've done a lot, it's really first up to the staff, and second up to the board, to make a final judgment,'' Jin Zhongxia, China's representative to the IMF executive board, said in interview Friday. ''We have to fully respect their decision''

As one analyst notes, ''I think a political decision has already been made,'' said Domenico Lombardi, director of the global economy program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ontario.

''The Chinese have invested considerable political capital. They've mobilized their intellectual and political resources to this purpose, and it's a case that's difficult to argue against.''

* * *

''The most probable outcome is the board will vote to include the renminbi in the SDR basket,'' said Meg Lundsager, who served as the U.S. representative on the IMF's executive board from 2007 to 2014. ''I really haven't heard any big opposition. If there were countries which had real problems with it, they would have been raising their concerns.''

The U.S. took a step toward backing China's SDR bid last month, when it softened its insistence that the Chinese implement financial reforms to win support. The U.S. now says it will support inclusion of the yuan if it demonstrates it meets the IMF's technical criteria.

''This is going to make it very hard for the Chinese to undo a lot of these reforms,'' said Lundsager, now a public-policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. ''Once you move into this group of major currencies, it becomes pretty much impossible to backslide.''

The bottom line is that the "internationalization" and an increasing free float of the Yuan is bearish. And since the currency urgently needs even more devaluation as today's PBOC rate cut confirmed, this may just be the IMF's way of greenlighting even more devaluation for China's currency. And since any devaluation would lead to a surge in capital outflows, what the IMF is doing is merely blessing the Yuan's weakness while pretending it is in a position of strength, in an attempt to slow down the capital outflow as much as possible.

China's offshore Yuan has plunged to 1-month lows in the last few days (and decoupled - for now - from the onshore market suggesting outflows are accelerating)

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Wed, 21 Oct 2015 20:03

While America was falling in love with Ahmed, the right wing internet was having a field day with the story. They decided that Ahmed's clock wasn't really homemade, or at least not homemade enough, and it really did look like a bomb, so therefore fuck that adorable 14-year-old kid!

A family friend named Anthony Bond, told The Washington Post "Everybody's vilifying him, and he's not a villain. He's a 14 year old boy," adding, "The whole world was concerned about this, and it's impossible that anyone could have expected this international reaction."

One of those international reactions was an invitation from the Qatar Foundation for Education, that will let Ahmed join something called a "Young Inventors Program." So if we're going to be dicks to him in the States, he'll be inventing shit in Qatar.

That's after he got to go to "Astronomy Night," at the White House, to meet Obama, and'--in a twist that was probably even more fun'--Bill Nye the Science Guy, and NASA administrator Charlie Bolden. Prior to that event, Ahmed had been on a whirlwind "I dropped out of school and am suddenly famous!" tour, during which he met Queen Raina of Jordan, and'--since he has Sudanese ancestry'--the fairly horrifying president of Sudan.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Ahmed wrote that he was excited about his big move to Doha, Qatar: "I loved the city of Doha because it's so modern. I saw so many amazing schools there, many of them campuses of famous American universities. The teachers were great. I think I will learn a lot and have fun too."

He thinks that now, but let's not forget he's on the cusp of puberty, and 15 is a rough year for anyone.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Note: The location where he was taken in handcuffs was on campus, not a jail, as a previous version stated.

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:20

In a move that would make many capitalists' head explode if it ever happened here, Iceland just sentenced their 26th banker to prison for their part in the 2008 financial collapse.

In two separate Icelandic Supreme Court and Reykjavik District Court rulings, five top bankers from Landsbankinn and Kaupping '-- the two largest banks in the country '-- were found guilty of market manipulation, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duties. Most of those convicted have been sentenced to prison for two to five years. The maximum penalty for financial crimes in Iceland is six years, although their Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to consider expanding sentences beyond the six year maximum.

After the crash in 2008, while congress was giving American banks a $700 billion TARP bailout courtesy of taxpayers, Iceland decided to go in a different direction and enabled their government with financial supervisory authority to take control of the banks as the chaos resulting from the crash unraveled.

Back in 2001, Iceland deregulated their financial sector, following in the path of former President Bill Clinton. In less than a decade, Iceland was bogged down in so much foreign debt they couldn't refinance it before the system crashed.

Almost eight years later, the government of Iceland is still prosecuting and jailing those responsible for the market manipulation that crippled their economy. Even now, Iceland is still paying back loans to the IMF and other countries which were needed just to keep the country operating.

When Iceland's President, Olafur Ragnar Grimmson was asked how the country managed to recover from the global financial disaster, he famously replied,

''We were wise enough not to follow the traditional prevailing orthodoxies of the Western financial world in the last 30 years. We introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, and we didn't introduce austerity measures like you're seeing in Europe.''

Meanwhile, in America, not one single banking executive has been charged with a crime related to the 2008 crash and U.S. banks are raking in more than $160 billion in annual profits with little to no regulation in place to avoid another financial catastrophe.

James Woods ( AKA '' JamesFromTheInternet) is an independent journalist based in New York City who can be reached on twitter @JamesFTInternet or via email:jamesftinternet@gmail.com

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Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:49

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You could have predicted that as soon as speech I/O became a mass-market app, speech-based hacks would appear. And here comes one '-- Andy Greenberg, "Hackers can silently control Siri from 16 feet away", Wired 10/14/2015:

SIRI MAY BE your personal assistant. But your voice is not the only one she listens to. As a group of French researchers have discovered, Siri also helpfully obeys the orders of any hacker who talks to her'--even, in some cases, one who's silently transmitting those commands via radio from as far as 16 feet away.

A pair of researchers at ANSSI, a French government agency devoted to information security, have shown that they can use radio waves to silently trigger voice commands on any Android phone or iPhone that has Google Now or Siri enabled, if it also has a pair of headphones with a microphone plugged into its jack. Their clever hack uses those headphones' cord as an antenna, exploiting its wire to convert surreptitious electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that appear to the phone's operating system to be audio coming from the user's microphone. Without speaking a word, a hacker could use that radio attack to tell Siri or Google Now to make calls and send texts, dial the hacker's number to turn the phone into an eavesdropping device, send the phone's browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

A technical paper on this method has been published '-- C. Kasmi & J. Lopes Esteves, "IEMI Threats for Information Security: Remote Command Injection on Modern Smartphones", IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, 8/13/2015. They seem to have considered a wide variety of practical issues, e.g.

1) Permanent Activation: The voice control command has been activated by default by the user. This means that the voice command service starts as soon as a keyword is pronounced by the user. The experiments demonstrated that it is possible to trigger voice commands remotely by emitting an AM-modulated signal containing the keyword followed by some voice commands at 103 MHz (this frequency is given as an example as it is related to a specific model). The resulting electric signal induced in the microphone cable of the headphones is correctly interpreted by the voice command interface.

2) User Activation: The voice command is not activated by default and a long hardware button press is required for launching the service. In this case, we have worked on injecting a specially crafted radio signal to trigger the activation of the voice command interpreter by emulating a headphones command button press. It was shown that, thanks to a FM modulated signal at the same emitted frequency, we were able to launch the voice command service and to inject the voice command.

3) Discussion: It was also observed that the minimal field required around the target was in the range of 25''30 V/m at 103 MHz, which is close to the limit accepted for human safety but higher than the required immunity level of the device (3 V/m). Thus, smartphones could be disturbed by the parasitic field. Nevertheless, no collateral effects have been encountered during our experiments. Moreover, depending on the cable arrangement and the cable length (between 1 and 1.20 m), it has been observed that the efficient frequency leading to command execution varies in the 80''108 MHz range.

They also discuss some simple hardware and software changes for defeating such attacks.

Meanwhile, I wonder whether any (text or video) thrillers have picked up on this idea?

October 18, 2015 @ 12:44 pm · Filed by Mark Liberman under HLT

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 13:23

October 15, 2015The French can now even control your smartphone, according to France's Network and Information Security Agency (ANSSI). In an old, but only recently discovered development (link to pay-per-view article), the French security services can now clandestinely and remotely put commands to iPhone and Android gadgets with voice technology, like Siri.

This scary new ability does have one caveat: It must have headphones (with microphone) attached. By using the headset as an antenna and getting into range, ANSSI can transmit commands via radio waves which, once picked up, are turned into electrical signals.

Because the signals are coming through the mic, the smartphone considers them voice commands. From there the French spooks can have their way with your phone, sending texts and emails and even opening webpages that contain malware.

Using equipment that fitted in a backpack, researchers could hack phones from two metres. Longer range attacks could be possible with more powerful equipment.

While the chance of your smartphone getting hacked in this way isn't particularly likely, disabling voice activation might be a good idea if you have reason to be concerned about this method of attack. The researchers also recommend shielding your headphone cords to protect against this electromagnetic attack.

Gavin Reid, VP of threat intelligence at Lancope spoke to SCMagazineUK.com on this new piece of technology: "Additional functionality, especially concerning user convenience, has often come at the cost of some security. In this case the hack needs proximity to work and is a proof of concept needing specialised hardware."

He added, "High security government equipment and installations have often come with additional shielding specifically to limit emanations and any covert channels. This attack is less likely to be leveraged by the criminal underground especially with other methods much easier to implement."

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 09:58

Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets. But before they can become widespread, carmakers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality.

When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking'--features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.

So it'll come as no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars that take the driving out of your hands altogether (see ''Drivers Push Tesla's Autopilot Beyond Its Abilities''). These cars will be safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. And yet they can never be perfectly safe.

And that raises some difficult issues. How should the car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random?

The answers to these ethical questions are important because they could have a big impact on the way self-driving cars are accepted in society. Who would buy a car programmed to sacrifice the owner?

So can science help? Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Jean-Francois Bonnefon at the Toulouse School of Economics in France and a couple of pals. These guys say that even though there is no right or wrong answer to these questions, public opinion will play a strong role in how, or even whether, self-driving cars become widely accepted.

So they set out to discover the public's opinion using the new science of experimental ethics. This involves posing ethical dilemmas to a large number of people to see how they respond. And the results make for interesting, if somewhat predictable, reading. ''Our results provide but a first foray into the thorny issues raised by moral algorithms for autonomous vehicles,'' they say.

Here is the nature of the dilemma. Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?

One way to approach this kind of problem is to act in a way that minimizes the loss of life. By this way of thinking, killing one person is better than killing 10.

But that approach may have other consequences. If fewer people buy self-driving cars because they are programmed to sacrifice their owners, then more people are likely to die because ordinary cars are involved in so many more accidents. The result is a Catch-22 situation.

Bonnefon and co are seeking to find a way through this ethical dilemma by gauging public opinion. Their idea is that the public is much more likely to go along with a scenario that aligns with their own views.

So these guys posed these kinds of ethical dilemmas to several hundred workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to find out what they thought. The participants were given scenarios in which one or more pedestrians could be saved if a car were to swerve into a barrier, killing its occupant or a pedestrian.

At the same time, the researchers varied some of the details such as the actual number of pedestrians that could be saved, whether the driver or an on-board computer made the decision to swerve and whether the participants were asked to imagine themselves as the occupant or an anonymous person.

The results are interesting, if predictable. In general, people are comfortable with the idea that self-driving vehicles should be programmed to minimize the death toll.

This utilitarian approach is certainly laudable but the participants were willing to go only so far. ''[Participants] were not as confident that autonomous vehicles would be programmed that way in reality'--and for a good reason: they actually wished others to cruise in utilitarian autonomous vehicles, more than they wanted to buy utilitarian autonomous vehicles themselves,'' conclude Bonnefon and co.

And therein lies the paradox. People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives'--as long they don't have to drive one themselves.

Bonnefon and co are quick to point out that their work represents the first few steps into what is likely to be a fiendishly complex moral maize. Other issues that will need to be factored into future thinking are the nature of uncertainty and the assignment of blame.

Bonnefon and co say these issues raise many important questions: ''Is it acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the passenger of the car, than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should different decisions be made when children are on board, since they both have a longer time ahead of them than adults, and had less agency in being in the car in the first place? If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chose one of them, is the buyer to blame for the harmful consequences of the algorithm's decisions?''

These problems cannot be ignored, say the team: ''As we are about to endow millions of vehicles with autonomy, taking algorithmic morality seriously has never been more urgent.''

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1510.03346 : Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:21

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 13:25

The Department of Justice is trying to get Apple to unlock a defendant's iPhone. While Apple has stated that it can technically bypass the phone's passcode security, it has so far refused to do so for various reasons. So the DOJ has come up with a new strategy, force Apple to comply because it licenses the software on the phone. Because of that, the DOJ contends that the iPhone maker actually has a relationship with the phone that's currently evidence in a case. In a reply to Apple's response to the court order to unlock the phone, the government states, "Apple cannot reap the legal benefits of licensing its software in this manner and then later disclaim any ownership or obligation to assist law enforcement when that same software plays a critical role in thwarting execution of a search warrant." In other words, it's your software Apple, not the defendant's, unlock it.

The government's strategy is a reaction to Apple's refusal to comply with a court order to unlock an iPhone 5s. In its response to the order Apple lawyers stated, "forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand." It also noted that unlocking the phone would eat up resources and might not even yield any information. Plus, just for good measure, it would be impossible to circumvent the passcode of any iPhone running iOS 8 and later. The phone in question is running iOS 7.

As expected, the government isn't too happy about not having access to the phones of defendants. Apple CEO Tim Cook has been on a privacy crusade recently. He recently said that people have a, "fundamental right to privacy." Cook has also insisted that the government does not have a backdoor into Apple's servers.

As Boing Boing points out, if the government succeeds with this argument, it opens up a terrifying precedent. Nearly every piece of technology has software that is licensed and not sold to the end user. All of those companies could be compelled to unlock, decrypt and allow the authorities access to these devices because it doesn't belong to the defendant, it belongs to the person that owns the software.

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Source: newest submissions : inthemorning

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:02

Greens Senator Scott Ludlum asked government officials if there were any law that could prevent the facial recognition system from accessing photos from social media sites. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Images harvested from social media sites such as Facebook could be part of the latest counter-terrorism measures, the attorney general's department has confirmed.

In September, the justice minister, Michael Keenan, announced that the federal government would spend $18.5m to develop the national facial biometric matching capability, known simply as ''the capability''.

Under questioning in Senate estimates on Tuesday night, senior officials from the attorney general's department said that photos could be pulled from social media sites and used in the new system.

The Greens senator, Scott Ludlam, asked: ''Is there any law that would prevent the system from ingesting [photographs] from publicly available sources like social media sites?''

Related:The facial recognition databases are coming. Why aren't the privacy laws? | Kyle Chayka

Andrew Rice, the assistant secretary of the department, answered: ''It's possible that still images out of these kinds of environments could be put into the system. That would be a choice for the users of the system.''

But he added that it could only happen if users of the capability, such as police agencies, could legally draw on those sources at present.

''Making those choices will be on the basis of their existing legal permissions,'' Rice said.

The proposal is for the new system to draw on official photos, including driver's licence and passport photos, to create a database. Stills taken from CCTV and other sources are of lower quality and therefore more likely to be inaccurate, Rice said.

The fine print of the new system is still being worked out. Privacy impact assessments are expected to conclude in early 2016. The threshold for what offences would necessitate the use of the capability is also unclear.

''This is not something that would be available for broad usage within agencies,'' Rice said.

The attorney general's department has consulted with all state and territory police agencies, as well as federal departments such as immigration and foreign affairs and trade.

Consultations will also occur with privacy organisations, but not with members of the public, Rice said.

Ludlam expressed concern that the system was being handled ''behind the scenes'' by security agencies and the attorney general's department.

''We're certainly looking at being very transparent about the use of the capability,'' Rice replied.

Keenan said in September that the system would have strong privacy safeguards. ''The new capability will initially provide a one-to-one image-based verification service among commonwealth agencies, with other agencies expected to join over time,'' he said.

''This process will expedite putting a name to the face of terror suspects, murderers and armed robbers, and will also help to detect fraud cases involving criminals that use multiple identities. This initiative does not involve new powers for the commonwealth; it's simply a mechanism to share existing information already held by jurisdictions.''

The new powers do not need to go through parliament to be enacted.

''I'm not aware that it requires legislation,'' the attorney general, George Brandis, told Senate estimates on Tuesday.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:50

Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, on CNN in the U.S. at 10 a.m. ET and 1 p.m. ET, features an interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the war in Iraq and post-war Iraq.Also look for CNN's documentary: Long Road to Hell: America in Iraq. It premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET.

"I can say that I apologize for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong because, even though he had used chemical weapons extensively against his own people, against others, the program in the form that we thought it was did not exist in the way that we thought," Blair said in an exclusive interview on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS that airs Sunday.

Blair was referring to the claim that Saddam's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was used by the U.S. and British governments to justify launching the invasion. But the intelligence reports the claim was based on turned out to be false.

The ensuing war and dismantling of Saddam's government plunged Iraq into chaos, resulting in years of deadly sectarian violence and the rise of al Qaeda in Iraq, a precursor of ISIS. Tens of thousands of Iraqis, more than 4,000 U.S. troops and 179 British service members were killed in the lengthy conflict.

As the most high-profile foreign ally of former U.S. President George W. Bush in the Iraq invasion, Blair has found his legacy overshadowed by the war, with questions and criticism following him wherever he goes.

The consequences of Bush's decision to to take America into Iraq has repeatedly reared its head this year among candidates vying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

'I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam'Blair told Zakaria that besides the flawed Iraq intelligence, he also apologizes "for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime."

But he stopped short of a full apology for the war.

"I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam. I think, even from today in 2015, it is better that he's not there than that he is there," Blair said.

Saddam was notorious for his ruthless oppression of Iraqi citizens during more than three decades of dictatorship. He launched ruinous wars against neighbors Iran and Kuwait, and used chemical weapons against the Kurds in northern Iraq.

But present day Iraq is still under heavy strain from sectarian tensions and is struggling to deal with the threat of ISIS, the Sunni Muslim extremist group that has imposed its brutal rule on significant parts of the north and west of the country.

Admits partial responsibility for ISIS riseBlair acknowledged to Zakaria that there are "elements of truth" in the view that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the principle cause of the rise of ISIS.

"Of course, you can't say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015," he said. "But it's important also to realize, one, that the Arab Spring which began in 2011 would also have had its impact on Iraq today, and two, ISIS actually came to prominence from a base in Syria and not in Iraq."

More broadly, Blair said, the policy debate on Western intervention remains inconclusive.

"We have tried intervention and putting down troops in Iraq; we've tried intervention without putting in troops in Libya; and we've tried no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria," he said. "It's not clear to me that, even if our policy did not work, subsequent policies have worked better."

Asked by Zakaria how he feels about being branded a "war criminal" for his decision to go into Iraq, Blair said he did what he thought was right at the time.

"Now, whether it's right or not, that's for -- everyone can have their judgment about that," he said.

Blair's interview with Zakaria comes ahead of a special program, "Long Road to Hell: America in Iraq," that premieres on CNN and CNN International on Monday at 9 p.m., ET.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:34

Stop bombing us before talking about helping us'...

That is the reaction from Western-backed rebels in Syria to Russia's offer of support in fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Russian air strikes have hit several rebel groups affiliated to the Free Syrian Army in areas crucial to the survival of Moscow's ally President Assad.

Among other propositions from Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is a call for Syria to prepare for presidential and parliamentary elections.

The Kremlin has spoken broadly about the need for elections in Syria before. But Lavrov's comments were its most specific call for political renewal yet and came just days after a surprise visit by Assad to Moscow.

Lavrov on Saturday spoke about Syria on the telephone with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been meeting Saudi Arabia's King Salman.

The US has criticised Russia for so far focussing much of its firepower on armed groups supported by the West and its allies rather than ISIL, angering the Kremlin which has said it is impossible to make a distinction between terrorists.

Moscow says Assad must be part of any transition and that the Syrian people will decide who rules them.

Washington has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to exit the political stage.

Lavrov has called Washington's refusal to coordinate its Syria campaign with Moscow ''a big mistake''.

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Source: BBC News - Europe

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:14

BBC reporter John Sweeney is on the refugee trail searching for a young Syrian boy, Azam.

When they met last month in Serbia, Azam had a broken jaw and had been sent to hospital for treatment. Then he vanished.

As part of the search for Newsnight, Sweeney passed the Serbia-Croatia border, where he filmed the vast numbers of people waiting to cross over.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:10

Jeb Bush is now acting as though the American people should be grateful he is running for president.

At a forum in South Carolina today, the fading candidate said Americans should elect Donald Trump if they want gridlock and name calling.

At a presidential forum hosted by Sen. Tim Scott, Bush said:

If this election is about how we're going to fight to get nothing done, then I don't want any part of it. I don't want to be elected president to seek gridlock that people are literally in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation.

I've got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.

The outburst is likely the culmination of frustration that is sagging campaign is going nowhere, while Trump's support continues to rise.

The News-Press reports:

Bush's campaign is slashing payroll costs by 40 percent, downsizing its Miami headquarters by more than 50 percent, reducing travel costs by 20 percent and cutting 45 percent of spending in areas not related to media and voter contact.

''Here's a guy who wants to run our country, and he can't even run his own campaign. And you know what? He's cutting back big,'' Trump said in Florida today.

''Bush has no money. He's cutting. He's meeting today with mommy and daddy and they're working on their campaign.''

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 13:07

Russia says it wants Syria to prepare for parliamentary and presidential elections, as Moscow intensified its drive to convert its increased clout with Damascus into a political settlement. Gavino Garay reports.

TRANSCRIPT +

++EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: RESENDING TO REFLECT NO ACCESS RUSSIA RESTRICTIONS++ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the Kremlin wants to see Syria get ready for parliamentary and presidential elections. The announcement comes nearly one month after Russia launched air strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. Lavrov also said Russia would be willing to help Western-backed Free Syrian Army rebels with Russian air support, if it knew where they were. (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEI LAVROV, SAYING: "We are ready to give air support to patriotic opposition as well, including the so-called Free Syrian Army, but we need to get in contact with the people who will have the authority to represent certain armed groups that are fighting against terrorism among other things." Moscow and Washington have butted heads over a political transition of power in Syria, with Washington saying a solution must see Assad removed from power. But the latest move could be a sign that Russia is beginning to use it's increased influence in Damascus to reach a political settlement.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 06:49

You might call it a "perfect storm." A cold front that stalled over North and Central Texas has been reinforced with remnants of Hurricane Patricia. The result -- up to 13 inches of rain so far and up to 7 inches more are expected today. The storm forced officials to cancel some airline flights and close part of Interstate highway 45. The flood waters left some motorists in Navarro county stranded. SOT: UNIDENTIFIED MOTORIST, SAYING: "As you can see, I have a kind of little car, and I just didn't think that I could make it, so I stopped and called 9-1-1, and they just said, 'stay there.'" Some 10-million people in the area are under a flood watch this weekend as the storm slowly moves south.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 03:41

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 03:17

Video cross-posted here at NewsBusters. This week in profiles of the lame and lazy features ABC's Modern Family, a show which used to induce multiple ''LOL's'' per episode in the Gwinn household, that has now settled for the kind of humor one can get steady doses of in high school cafeterias.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 03:14

Crossposted on Newsbusters.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell must be so proud. Her defense of Hillary Clinton, on Meet the Press, was actually played to Clinton during her October 22, 2015 Benghazi testimony by Democratic Congresswoman Linda Sanchez. Sanchez also quoted The Washington Post's ''fact-check'' to the former Secretary of State. For her part, Clinton seemed very pleased by these defenses by the liberal media.

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 02:58

Hillary Clinton told the House Committee on Benghazi Thursday she did not have a computer in her office while secretary of state, and when a State Department spokesman was asked whether that was unusual, replied that ''email's a relatively new beast.''

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 02:31

October 22, 2015Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was investigating the events'... read more

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was investigating the events surrounding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others died. close

Javascript must be enabled in order to access C-SPAN videos.

*This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

People in this videoMore PeopleHosting OrganizationMore Videos FromHillary Clinton Testifies Before House Select Committee on BenghaziMore VideosRelated VideoOctober 22, 2015Republican Representatives During Benghazi Hearing BreakMembers of the House Benghazi Committee, Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL), Martha Roby (R-AL), and Lynn Westmoreland'...

October 22, 2015Hillary Clinton Testimony at House Select Committee on Benghazi, Part 3Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was'...

October 22, 2015Hillary Clinton Testimony at House Select Committee on Benghazi, Part 4Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was'...

October 22, 2015Hillary Clinton Testimony at House Select Committee on Benghazi, Part 2Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which was'...

Clips from This VideoView all clips from this video

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 02:27

Video cross-posted here at NewsBusters. PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff came to bury the Benghazi committee on Thursday night's program. ''What difference does it make'' seemed to be her Hillary-echoing mantra. Or in her case, it was ''Why does it matter?'' Lies? Coverups? Who cares about that?

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Sun, 25 Oct 2015 02:02

[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]

ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts on Friday all failed to cover the Justice Department announcing that it would be ending its investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. The Big Three networks' news program did find time to air reporting on the top Google searches for Halloween costumes, the fewer number of turkeys available for upcoming Thanksgiving dinners, and the controversy over the first bear hunt in Florida in 20 years.

By contrast, PBS NewsHour did air a 20-second news brief on the DOJ closing its probe into the scandal:

JUDY WOODRUFF: Former I.R.S. official Lois Lerner will not face criminal charges for allegedly targeting Tea Party groups. The Justice Department ended a two-year probe today, and said that it found no evidence that anyone at the I.R.S. acted out of political motives. Lerner once headed the unit that handles applications for tax-exempt status.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:11

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These activities may include, among other things, improving our Services and/or offering new products or services to you; performing quality control activities; conducting data analysis that may lead to and/or include commercialization with a third party."Product Development" means research performed for the purpose of new product development and new product development activities performed by 23andMe on de-identified user data. These activities may include, among other things, improving our Services and/or offering new products or services to you; performing quality control activities; conducting data analysis that may lead to and/or include commercialization with a third party.3"Service" or "Services" means 23andMe's products, software, services, and website (including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material and information) as accessed from time to time by the user, regardless if the use is in connection with an account or not."Service" or "Services" means 23andMe's products, software, services, and website (including but not limited to text, graphics, images, and other material and information) as accessed from time to time by the user, regardless if the use is in connection with an account or not.4"Personal Information" is information that can be used to identify you, either alone or in combination with other information. 23andMe collects and stores the following types of Personal Information:"Personal Information" is information that can be used to identify you, either alone or in combination with other information. 23andMe collects and stores the following types of Personal Information:5"Registration Information" is the information you provide about yourself when registering for and/or purchasing our Services (e.g. name, email, address, user ID and password, and payment information)."Registration Information" is the information you provide about yourself when registering for and/or purchasing our Services (e.g. name, email, address, user ID and password, and payment information).6"Genetic Information" is information regarding your genotype (e.g. the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome), generated through processing of your saliva by 23andMe or by its contractors, successors, and assignees; or otherwise processed by and/or contributed to 23andMe."Genetic Information" is information regarding your genotype (e.g. the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs at particular locations in your genome), generated through processing of your saliva by 23andMe or by its contractors, successors, and assignees; or otherwise processed by and/or contributed to 23andMe.7"Self-Reported Information" is all information about yourself, including your disease conditions, other health-related information, personal traits, ethnicity, family history, and other information that you enter into surveys, forms, or features while signed in to your 23andMe account. Self-Reported Information is included in 23andMe Research only if it has been indicated for 23andMe Research use on the website and if you have given consent as described in the applicable Consent Document."Self-Reported Information" is all information about yourself, including your disease conditions, other health-related information, personal traits, ethnicity, family history, and other information that you enter into surveys, forms, or features while signed in to your 23andMe account. Self-Reported Information is included in 23andMe Research only if it has been indicated for 23andMe Research use on the website and if you have given consent according to the applicable Consent Document.8"User Content" is all information, data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials - other than Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information-generated by users of 23andMe Services and transmitted, whether publicly or privately, to or through 23andMe."User Content" is all information, data, text, software, music, audio, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials - other than Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information-generated by users of 23andMe Services and transmitted, whether publicly or privately, to or through 23andMe.9"Web Behavior Information" is information on how you use the 23andMe website (e.g. browser type, domains, page views) collected through log files, cookies, and web beacon technology."Web Behavior Information" is information on how you use the 23andMe website (e.g. browser type, domains, page views) collected through log files, cookies, and web beacon technology.10"Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information" is Genetic and Self-Reported Information that has been stripped of Registration Information and combined with data from a number of other users sufficient to minimize the possibility of exposing individual-level information while still providing scientific evidence."Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information" is Genetic and Self-Reported Information111. Acceptance of Terms.Acceptance of Terms12Your use of 23andMe's Services (excluding any services provided by 23andMe under a separate agreement) is subject to the terms of the legal agreement between you and 23andMe set forth in these Terms of Service ("TOS"). Except as specified herein, these TOS apply to any use of the Services, including but not limited to a) submitting a saliva sample for DNA extraction and processing, b) uploading a digital version of your Genetic Information and interacting with it on the 23andMe website, and/or c) creating and using a free 23andMe account without providing your saliva sample or Genetic Information. In order to use the Services, you must first agree to the TOS. You may not use the Services if you do not accept the TOS. You can accept the TOS by (1) clicking to accept or agree to the TOS, where this option is made available to you by 23andMe for any Service; or by (2) actually using the Services. In this case, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the TOS from that point onwards. In addition, when using particular 23andMe Services, you shall be subject to any guidelines or rules applicable to such services that may be posted from time to time. All such guidelines or rules are hereby incorporated by reference into the TOS. 23andMe also may offer other services from time to time that are governed by different terms of service.2. PrerequisitesYour use of 23andMe's Services (excluding any services provided by 23andMe under a separate agreement) is subject to the terms of the legal agreement between you and 23andMe set forth in these Terms of Service ("TOS"). Except as specified herein, these TOS apply to any use of the Services, including but not limited to a) submitting a saliva sample for DNA extraction and processing, b) uploading a digital version of your Genetic Information and interacting with it on the 23andMe website, and/or c) creating and using a free 23andMe account without providing your saliva sample or Genetic Information. In order to use the Services, you must first agree to the TOS. You may not use the Services if you do not accept the TOS. You can accept the TOS by (1) clicking to accept or agree to the TOS, where this option is made available to you by 23andMe for any Service; or by (2) actually using the Services. In this case, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the TOS from that point onwards. In addition, when using particular 23andMe Services, you shall be subject to any guidelines or rules applicable to such services that may be posted from time to time. All such guidelines or rules are hereby incorporated by reference into the TOS. 23andMe also may offer other services from time to time that are governed by different terms of service.Prerequisites13Whether you submit your own saliva sample, a saliva sample for anyone for whom you have legal authority to agree, or otherwise provide your own Genetic Information, you may not use the Services and may not accept the TOS if (1) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with 23andMe, or (2) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the jurisdiction in which you are resident or from which you use the Services.Whether you submit your own saliva sample, a saliva sample for anyone for whom you have legal authority to agree, or otherwise provide your own Genetic Information, you may not use the Services and may not accept the TOS if (1) you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with 23andMe, or (2) you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of the jurisdiction in which you are resident or from which you use the Services.14In addition to the conditions above, if you contribute or otherwise provide your own Genetic Information, you must be eighteen (18) years of age or older to agree to these TOS on behalf of yourself or those for whom you have legal authority to agree.In addition to the conditions above, if you contribute or otherwise provide your own Genetic Information, you must be eighteen (18) years of age or older to agree to these TOS on behalf of yourself or those for whom you have legal authority to agree.15If your use of the Services includes creating a 23andMe account, without submitting a saliva sample or otherwise providing Genetic Information, you must be thirteen (13) years of age or older to use the Services and accept the TOS.3. Description of the ServicesIf your use of the Services includes creating a 23andMe account, without submitting a saliva sample or otherwise providing Genetic Information, you must be thirteen (13) years of age or older to use the Services and accept the TOS.Description of the Services16The Services include access to the 23andMe public website and personal genotyping services, including the collection and analysis of your saliva sample. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, each new feature that augments or enhances the current Service shall be subject to the TOS. You acknowledge and agree that the Services are provided "AS-IS" and are based on the current state of the art of genetic research and technology in use by 23andMe at the time of the purchase or viewing. As research progresses and scientific knowledge and technology evolve, 23andMe is constantly innovating in order to provide the best possible experience for its users. You acknowledge and agree that the form and nature of the Services which 23andMe provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you. As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing some Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at 23andMe's sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform 23andMe when you stop using the Services unless you are requesting closure of your account. 23andMe assumes no responsibility for the use of Services outside the terms of this TOS or other applicable terms.The Services include access to the 23andMe public website and personal genotyping services, including the collection and analysis of your saliva sample. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, each new feature that augments or enhances the current Service shall be subject to the TOS. You acknowledge and agree that the Services are provided "AS-IS" and are based on the current state of the art of genetic research and technology in use by 23andMe at the time of the purchase or viewing. As research progresses and scientific knowledge and technology evolve, 23andMe is constantly innovating in order to provide the best possible experience for its users. You acknowledge and agree that the form and nature of the Services which 23andMe provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you. As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing some Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at 23andMe's sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform 23andMe when you stop using the Services unless you are requesting closure of your account. 23andMe assumes no responsibility for the use of Services outside the terms of this TOS or other applicable terms.17In order to use the Services, you must obtain Internet access, either directly or through devices that access web-based content, and pay any service fees associated with such access. You are solely responsible for paying such fees. In addition, you must provide all equipment necessary to make such Internet connection, including a computer and modem or other access device. You are solely responsible for providing such equipment. You acknowledge and agree that while 23andMe may not currently have set a fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through the Services or on the amount of storage space used for the provision of any Service, such fixed upper limits may be set by 23andMe at any time, at 23andMe's discretion.4. Risks and Considerations Regarding 23andMe ServicesIn order to use the Services, you must obtain Internet access, either directly or through devices that access web-based content, and pay any service fees associated with such access. You are solely responsible for paying such fees. In addition, you must provide all equipment necessary to make such Internet connection, including a computer and modem or other access device. You are solely responsible for providing such equipment. You acknowledge and agree that while 23andMe may not currently have set a fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through the Services or on the amount of storage space used for the provision of any Service, such fixed upper limits may be set by 23andMe at any time, at 23andMe's discretion.Risks and Considerations Regarding 23andMe Services18Once you obtain your Genetic Information, the knowledge is irrevocable. You should not assume that any information we may be able to provide to you, whether now or as genetic research advances, will be welcome or positive. You should also understand that as research advances, in order for you to assess the meaning of your DNA in the context of such advances, you may need to obtain further services from 23andMe or from your physician or other health care providerOnce you obtain your Genetic Information, the knowledge is irrevocable. You should not assume that any information we may be able to provide to you, whether now or as genetic research advances, will be welcome or positive. You should also understand that as research advances, in order for you to assess the meaning of your DNA in the context of such advances, you may need to obtain further services from 23andMe, your physician, a genetic counselor, or other health care provider.19We encourage you to talk to a genetic counselor, a health professional with special training in genetic conditions, prior to collecting your sample for testing to learn more so you can make an informed decision about whether testing is right for you. A genetic counselor also can help you understand your results and options.20.Some people feel a little anxious about getting genetic health results. This is normal. If you feel very anxious, you should speak to your physician or a genetic counselor prior to collecting your sample for testing.21You may learn information about yourself that you do not anticipate. This information may evoke strong emotions and has the potential to alter your life and worldview. You may discover things about yourself that trouble you and that you may not have the ability to control or change (e.g., your father is not genetically your father, surprising facts related to your ancestry, or that someone with your genotype may have a higher than average chance of developing a specific condition or disease). These outcomes could have social, legal, or economic implications.You may learn information about yourself that you do not anticipate. This information may evoke strong emotions and has the potential to alter your life and worldview. You may discover things about yourself that trouble you and that you may not have the ability to control or change (e.g., your father is not genetically your father, surprising facts related to your ancestry, or that someone with your genotype may have a higher than average chance of developing a specific condition or disease). These outcomes could have social, legal, or economic implications.22The laboratory may not be able to process your sample, and the laboratory process may result in errors. The laboratory may not be able to process your sample if your saliva does not contain a sufficient volume of DNA, you do not provide enough saliva, or the results from processing do not meet our standards for accuracy. If the initial processing fails for any of these reasons, 23andMe will reprocess the same sample at no charge to the user. If the second attempt to process the same sample fails, 23andMe will offer to send another kit to the user to collect a second sample at no charge. If the user declines this option, the user is entitled solely and exclusively to a complete refund of the amount paid to 23andMe, less shipping and handling, provided that the user shall not resubmit another sample through a future purchase of the service. If the user opts to receive another sample collection kit and 23andMe's attempts to process the second sample are unsuccessful, 23andMe will not send additional sample collection kits and the user will be entitled solely and exclusively to a complete refund of the amount paid to 23andMe, less shipping and handling, provided the user shall not resubmit another sample through a future purchase of the service. If the user breaches this policy agreement and resubmits another sample through a future purchase of the service and processing is not successful, 23andMe will not offer to reprocess the sample or provide the user a refund. Even for processing that meets our high standards, a small, unknown fraction of the data generated during the laboratory process may be un-interpretable or incorrect (referred to as "Errors"). As this possibility is known in advance, users are not entitled to refunds where these Errors occur.The laboratory may not be able to process your sample, and the laboratory process may result in errors. The laboratory may not be able to process your sample up to 3.0% of the time if your saliva does not contain a sufficient volume of DNA, you do not provide enough saliva, or the results from processing do not meet our standards for accuracy.* If the initial processing fails for any of these reasons, 23andMe will reprocess the same sample at no charge to the user. If the second attempt to process the same sample fails, 23andMe will offer to send another kit to the user to collect a second sample at no charge. If the user declines this option, the user is entitled solely and exclusively to a complete refund of the amount paid to 23andMe, less shipping and handling, provided that the user shall not resubmit another sample through a future purchase of the service. If the user opts to receive another sample collection kit and 23andMe's attempts to process the second sample are unsuccessful, (up to 0.35% of all samples fail the second attempt at testing according to 23andMe data obtained in 2014 for all genotype testing),* 23andMe will not send additional sample collection kits and the user will be entitled solely and exclusively to a complete refund of the amount paid to 23andMe, less shipping and handling, provided the user shall not resubmit another sample through a future purchase of the service. If the user breaches this policy agreement and resubmits another sample through a future purchase of the service and processing is not successful, 23andMe will not offer to reprocess the sample or provide the user a refund. Even for processing that meets our high standards, a small, unknown fraction of the data generated during the laboratory process may be un-interpretable or incorrect (referred to as "Errors"). As this possibility is known in advance, users are not entitled to refunds where these Errors occur.23You should not change your health behaviors solely on the basis of information from 23andMe. Make sure to discuss your Genetic Information with a physician or other health care provider before you act upon the Genetic Information resulting from 23andMe Services. For most common diseases, the genes we know about are only responsible for a small fraction of the risk. There may be unknown genes, environmental factors, or lifestyle choices that are far more important predictors. If your data indicate that you are not at elevated genetic risk for a particular disease or condition, you should not feel that you are protected. The opposite is also true; if your data indicate you are at an elevated genetic risk for a particular disease or condition, it does not mean you will definitively develop the disease or condition. In either case, if you have concerns or questions about what you learn through 23andMe, you should contact your physician or other health care provider.You should not change your health behaviors solely on the basis of information from 23andMe. Make sure to discuss your Genetic Information with a physician or other health care provider before you act upon the Genetic Information resulting from 23andMe Services. For most common diseases, the genes we know about are only responsible for a small fraction of the risk. There may be unknown genes, environmental factors, or lifestyle choices that are far more important predictors. If your data indicate that you are not at elevated genetic risk for a particular disease or condition, you should not feel that you are protected. The opposite is also true; if your data indicate you are at an elevated genetic risk for a particular disease or condition, it does not mean you will definitively develop the disease or condition. In either case, if you have concerns or questions about what you learn through 23andMe, you should contact your physician or other health care provider. Please note that genetic risk assessment is not applicable to results of carrier screening tests.24Genetic research is not comprehensive. While we measure many hundreds of thousands of data points from your DNA, only a small percentage of them are known to be related to human traits or health conditions. The research community is rapidly learning more about genetics, and an important mission of 23andMe is to conduct and contribute to this research. In addition, many ethnic groups are not included in genetic studies. Because interpretations provided in our service rely on these published studies, some interpretations may not apply to you. Future scientific research may change the interpretation of your DNA. In the future, the scientific community may show previous research to be incomplete or inaccurate.Genetic research is not comprehensive. While we measure many hundreds of thousands of data points from your DNA, only a small percentage of them are known to be related to human traits or health conditions. The research community is rapidly learning more about genetics, and an important mission of 23andMe is to conduct and contribute to this research. In addition, many ethnic groups are not included in genetic studies. Because interpretations provided in our service rely on these published studies, some interpretations may not apply to you. Future scientific research may change the interpretation of your DNA. In the future, the scientific community may show previous research to be incomplete or inaccurate.25Genetic Information you share with others could be used against your interests. You should be careful about sharing your Genetic Information with others. Currently, very few businesses or insurance companies request genetic information, but this could change in the future. While the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was signed into law in the United States in 2008, its protection against discrimination by employers and health insurance companies for employment and coverage issues has not been clearly established. In addition, GINA does not cover life or disability insurance providers. Some, but not all, states and other jurisdictions have laws that protect individuals with regard to their Genetic Information. You may want to consult a lawyer to understand the extent of legal protection of your Genetic Information before you share it with anybody.Genetic Information you share with others could be used against your interests. You should be careful about sharing your Genetic Information with others. Currently, very few businesses or insurance companies request genetic information, but this could change in the future. While the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was signed into law in the United States in 2008, its protection against discrimination by employers and health insurance companies for employment and coverage issues has not been clearly established. In addition, GINA does not cover life or disability insurance providers. Some, but not all, states and other jurisdictions have laws that protect individuals with regard to their Genetic Information. You may want to consult a lawyer to understand the extent of legal protection of your Genetic Information before you share it with anybody.26Furthermore, Genetic Information that you choose to share with your physician or other health care provider may become part of your medical record and through that route be accessible to other health care providers and/or insurance companies in the future. Genetic Information that you share with family, friends or employers may be used against your interests. Even if you share Genetic Information that has no or limited meaning today, that information could have greater meaning in the future as new discoveries are made. If you are asked by an insurance company whether you have learned Genetic Information about health conditions and you do not disclose this to them, this may be considered to be fraud.Furthermore, Genetic Information that you choose to share with your physician or other health care provider may become part of your medical record and through that route be accessible to other health care providers and/or insurance companies in the future. Genetic Information that you share with family, friends or employers may be used against your interests. Even if you share Genetic Information that has no or limited meaning today, that information could have greater meaning in the future as new discoveries are made. If you are asked by an insurance company whether you have learned Genetic Information about health conditions and you do not disclose this to them, this may be considered to be fraud.2723andMe Services are for research, informational, and educational use only. We do not provide medical advice. The Genetic Information provided by 23andMe is for research, informational, and educational use only. This means two things. First, many of the genetic discoveries that we report have not been clinically validated, and the technology we use, which is the same technology used by the research community, to date has not been widely used for clinical testing. Second, in order to expand and accelerate the understanding and practical application of genetic knowledge in health care, we invite all genotyped users to participate in 23andMe Research. Participation in such research is voluntary and based upon an IRB-approved consent document. As a result of the current state of genetic knowledge and understanding, our Services are for research, informational, and educational purposes only. The Services are not intended to be used by the customer for any diagnostic purpose and are not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should always seek the advice of your physician or other health care provider with any questions you may have regarding diagnosis, cure, treatment, mitigation, or prevention of any disease or other medical condition or impairment or the status of your health.23andMe Services are for research, informational, and educational use only. We do not provide medical advice. The Genetic Information provided by 23andMe is for research, informational, and educational use only. This means two things. First, many of the genetic discoveries that we report have not been clinically validated, and the technology we use, which is the same technology used by the research community, to date has not been widely used for clinical testing. Second, in order to expand and accelerate the understanding and practical application of genetic knowledge in health care, we invite all genotyped users to participate in 23andMe Research. Participation in such research is voluntary and based upon an IRB-approved consent document. As a result of the current state of genetic knowledge and understanding, our Services are for research, informational, and educational purposes only. The Services are not intended to be used by the customer for any diagnostic purpose and are not a substitute for professional medical advice. You should always seek the advice of your physician or other health care provider with any questions you may have regarding diagnosis, cure, treatment, mitigation, or prevention of any disease or other medical condition or impairment or the status of your health.2823andMe does not endorse, warranty or guarantee the effectiveness of any specific course of action, resources, tests, physician or other health care providers, drugs, biologics, medical devices or other products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on our website. If we provide to you on our website any recommendations that identify for you, based on your Genetic and Self-Reported Information and scientific literature or research, potentially actionable information, this information is intended for informational purposes only and for discussion with your physician or other healthcare provider. As explained on our website, 23andMe believes that (a) genetics is only part of the picture of any individual's state of being, (b) the state of the understanding of Genetic Information is rapidly evolving and at any given time we only comprehend part of the picture of the role of genetics, and (c) only a trained physician or other health care provider can assess your current state of health or disease, taking into account many factors, including in some cases your genetics as well as your current symptoms, if any. Reliance on any information provided by 23andMe, 23andMe employees, others appearing on our website at the invitation of 23andMe, or other visitors to our website is solely at your own risk.23andMe does not endorse, warranty or guarantee the effectiveness of any specific course of action, resources, tests, physician or other health care providers, drugs, biologics, medical devices or other products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on our website. If we provide to you on our website any recommendations that identify for you, based on your Genetic and Self-Reported Information and scientific literature or research, potentially actionable information, this information is intended for informational purposes only and for discussion with your physician or other healthcare provider. As explained on our website, 23andMe believes that (a) genetics is only part of the picture of any individual's state of being, (b) the state of the understanding of Genetic Information is rapidly evolving and at any given time we only comprehend part of the picture of the role of genetics, and (c) only a trained physician or other health care provider can assess your current state of health or disease, taking into account many factors, including in some cases your genetics as well as your current symptoms, if any. Reliance on any information provided by 23andMe, 23andMe employees, others appearing on our website at the invitation of 23andMe, or other visitors to our website is solely at your own risk.29While we are licensed in California as a clinical laboratory, not all jurisdictions require our Services to be subject to license. Therefore, we are not universally licensed by all state, federal, or international authorities for genetic testing conducted for health and disease-related purposes. In addition, there are certain jurisdictions in which we do not offer our Services because we do not have required licenses.5. User RepresentationsWhile we are licensed in California as a clinical laboratory, not all jurisdictions require our Services to be subject to license. Therefore, we are not universally licensed by all state, federal, or international authorities for genetic testing conducted for health and disease-related purposes. In addition, there are certain jurisdictions in which we do not offer our Services because we do not have required licenses.User Representations30By accessing 23andMe Services, you agree to, acknowledge, and represent as follows:By accessing 23andMe Services, you agree to, acknowledge, and represent as follows:31You understand that information you learn from 23andMe is not designed to independently diagnose, prevent, or treat any condition or disease or to ascertain the state of your health in the absence of medical and clinical information. You understand that the 23andMe services are intended for research, informational, and educational purposes only, and that while 23andMe information might point to a diagnosis or to a possible treatment, it should always be confirmed and supplemented by additional medical and clinical testing and information. You acknowledge that 23andMe urges you to seek the advice of your physician or other health care provider if you have questions or concerns arising from your Genetic Information.You understand that information you learn from 23andMe is not designed to independently diagnose, prevent, or treat any condition or disease or to ascertain the state of your health in the absence of medical and clinical information. You understand that the 23andMe services are intended for research, informational, and educational purposes only, and that while 23andMe information might point to a diagnosis or to a possible treatment, it should always be confirmed and supplemented by additional medical and clinical testing and information. You acknowledge that 23andMe urges you to seek the advice of your physician or other health care provider if you have questions or concerns arising from your Genetic Information.32You give permission to 23andMe, its contractors, successors and assignees to perform genotyping services on the DNA extracted from your saliva sample and you specifically request 23andMe to disclose the results of analyses performed on your DNA to you and to others you specifically authorize.You give permission to 23andMe, its contractors, successors and assignees to perform genotyping services on the DNA extracted from your saliva sample and you specifically request 23andMe to disclose the results of analyses performed on your DNA to you and to others you specifically authorize.33You represent that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older if you are providing a saliva sample or accessing your Genetic Information.You represent that you are eighteen (18) years of age or older if you are providing a saliva sample or accessing your Genetic Information.34You are guaranteeing that any sample you provide is your saliva; if you are agreeing to these TOS on behalf of a person for whom you have legal authorization, you are confirming that the sample provided will be the sample of that person.You are guaranteeing that any sample you provide is your saliva; if you are agreeing to these TOS on behalf of a person for whom you have legal authorization, you are confirming that the sample provided will be the sample of that person.35If you are a customer outside the U.S. providing a saliva sample, you confirm that this act is not subject to any export ban or restriction in the country in which you reside.If you are a customer outside the U.S. providing a saliva sample, you confirm that this act is not subject to any export ban or restriction in the country in which you reside.36You agree that any saliva sample you provide and all resulting data may be transferred and/or processed outside the country in which you reside.You agree that any saliva sample you provide and all resulting data may be transferred and/or processed outside the country in which you reside.37You are warranting that you are not an insurance company or an employer attempting to obtain information about an insured person or an employee.You are warranting that you are not an insurance company or an employer attempting to obtain information about an insured person or an employee.38You are aware that some of the information you receive may provoke strong emotion.You are aware that some of the information you receive may provoke strong emotion.39You take responsibility for all possible consequences resulting from your sharing with others access to your Genetic Information and your Self-Reported Information.You take responsibility for all possible consequences resulting from your sharing with others access to your Genetic Information and your Self-Reported Information.40You understand that all your Personal Information will be stored in 23andMe databases and will be processed in accordance with the 23andMe Privacy Statement .You understand that all your Personal Information will be stored in 23andMe databases and will be processed in accordance with the 23andMe Privacy Statement .41Waiver of Property Rights: You understand that by providing any sample, having your Genetic Information processed, accessing your Genetic Information, or providing Self-Reported Information, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners. You specifically understand that you will not receive compensation for any research or commercial products that include or result from your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information.Waiver of Property Rights: You understand that by providing any sample, having your Genetic Information processed, accessing your Genetic Information, or providing Self-Reported Information, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners. You specifically understand that you will not receive compensation for any research or commercial products that include or result from your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information.42You agree that you have the authority, under the laws of the state or jurisdiction in which you reside, to provide these representations. In case of breach of any one of these representations 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof) and you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages arising out of the breach of the representation.6. Account Creation, Customer Account, Password, and Security ObligationsYou agree that you have the authority, under the laws of the state or jurisdiction in which you reside, to provide these representations. In case of breach of any one of these representations 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof) and you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages arising out of the breach of the representation.Account Creation, Customer Account, Password, and Security Obligations43In consideration of your use of the Services, you agree to: (a) provide true, accurate, current, and complete Registration Information about yourself as prompted by the Service; and (b) maintain and promptly update the Registration Information to keep it true, accurate, current, and complete. If you provide any Registration Information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current, or incomplete, or if 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that such information is untrue, inaccurate, not current, or incomplete, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).In consideration of your use of the Services, you agree to: (a) provide true, accurate, current, and complete Registration Information about yourself as prompted by the Service; and (b) maintain and promptly update the Registration Information to keep it true, accurate, current, and complete. If you provide any Registration Information that is untrue, inaccurate, not current, or incomplete, or if 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that such information is untrue, inaccurate, not current, or incomplete, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).44After you have purchased our Service, you will create a password and account designation. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the password and account, and are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your password or account. If you allow third parties to access 23andMe's website through your username and password, you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages, including attorney fees, arising out of claims or suits by such third parties based upon or relating to such access and use. You agree to (a) immediately notify 23andMe of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security, and (b) ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. 23andMe cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with this Section.7. 23andMe Privacy Statement and Disclosure of InformationAfter you have purchased our Service, you will create a password and account designation. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the password and account, and are fully responsible for all activities that occur under your password or account. If you allow third parties to access 23andMe's website through your username and password, you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages, including attorney fees, arising out of claims or suits by such third parties based upon or relating to such access and use. You agree to (a) immediately notify 23andMe of any unauthorized use of your password or account or any other breach of security, and (b) ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. 23andMe cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from your failure to comply with this Section.23andMe Privacy Statement and Disclosure of Information45In order to use the Services, you must first acknowledge and agree to the Privacy Statement . You may not use the Services if you do not accept the Privacy Statement. You can acknowledge and agree to the Privacy Statement by (1) clicking to accept or agree to the Privacy Statement, where this option is made available to you by 23andMe for any Service; or by (2) actually using the Services.In order to use the Services, you must first acknowledge and agree to the Privacy Statement . You may not use the Services if you do not accept the Privacy Statement. You can acknowledge and agree to the Privacy Statement by (1) clicking to accept or agree to the Privacy Statement, where this option is made available to you by 23andMe for any Service; or by (2) actually using the Services.46You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe has the right to monitor any use of its systems by its personnel at any time and maintain copies documenting such monitoring. Our Privacy Statement sets forth the only expectations of privacy any individual should have in terms of usage of the 23andMe Services, website, or other systems. If you have given consent for your Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information to be used in 23andMe Research as described in the applicable Consent Document, we may include your information in the Aggregated Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information we disclose to third parties for the purpose of publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 23andMe may also include your information in Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information disclosed to third-party non-profit and/or commercial research partners who will not publish that information in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 23andMe will never release your individual-level Genetic Information and/or Self-Reported Information to any third party without asking for and receiving your explicit consent to do so, unless required by law. Further, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe is free to preserve and disclose any and all Personal Information to law enforcement agencies or others if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process (such as a judicial proceeding, court order, or government inquiry) or obligations that 23andMe may owe pursuant to ethical and other professional rules, laws, and regulations; (b) enforce the 23andMe TOS; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of 23andMe, its employees, its users, its clients, and the public. In such event we will notify you through the contact information you have provided to us in advance, unless doing so would violate the law or a court order. You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Services, including your Personal Information, may involve (a) transmissions over various networks; and (b) changes to conform and adapt to technical requirements of connecting networks, or devices. Finally, 23andMe may, in its sole discretion, restrict access to the website for any reason.You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe has the right to monitor any use of its systems by its personnel at any time and maintain copies documenting such monitoring. Our Privacy Statement sets forth the only expectations of privacy any individual should have in terms of usage of the 23andMe Services, website, or other systems. If you have given consent for your Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information to be used in 23andMe Research as described in the applicable Consent Document, we may include your information in the Aggregated Genetic Information and Self-Reported Information we disclose to third parties for the purpose of publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 23andMe may also include your information in Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information disclosed to third-party non-profit and/or commercial research partners who will not publish that information in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 23andMe Research may be sponsored by, conducted on behalf of, or in collaboration with third parties, such as non-profit foundations, academic institutions or pharmaceutical companies. 23andMe Research may study a specific group or population, identify potential areas or targets for therapeutics development, conduct or support the development of drugs, diagnostics or devices to diagnose, predict or treat medical or other health conditions, work with public, private and/or non-profit entities on genetic research initiatives, or otherwise create, commercialize, and apply this new knowledge to improve health care. 23andMe will never release your individual-level Genetic Information and/or Self-Reported Information to any third party without asking for and receiving your explicit consent to do so, unless required by law.Further, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe is free to preserve and disclose any and all Personal Information to law enforcement agencies or others if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process (such as a judicial proceeding, court order, or government inquiry) or obligations that 23andMe may owe pursuant to ethical and other professional rules, laws, and regulations; (b) enforce the 23andMe TOS; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of 23andMe, its employees, its users, its clients, and the public. In such event we will notify you through the contact information you have provided to us in advance, unless doing so would violate the law or a court order. You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Services, including your Personal Information, may involve (a) transmissions over various networks; and (b) changes to conform and adapt to technical requirements of connecting networks, or devices. Finally, 23andMe may, in its sole discretion, restrict access to the website for any reason.47Please refer to our Privacy Statement to read about data protection related to your information. See our complete Privacy Statement here.8. Limited LicensePlease refer to our Privacy Statement to read about data protection related to your information. See our complete Privacy Statement here.Limited License48You acknowledge that all User Content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person from which such User Content originated. This means that you, and not 23andMe, are entirely responsible for all User Content that you upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit via the Service.You acknowledge that all User Content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person from which such User Content originated. This means that you, and not 23andMe, are entirely responsible for all User Content that you upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit via the Service.49You acknowledge that the Services content presented to you as part of the Services, whether original 23andMe Services content or sponsored content within the Services, is protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights that are owned by 23andMe and/or the sponsors who provide that content to 23andMe (or by other persons or companies on their behalf). 23andMe grants you a Limited License to copy and distribute free of charge, for non-commercial purposes only, any of the Services content with the exception of content from "MD's Perspectives" in the "For the Experts" section of the website and any other content marked as not subject to this Limited License on the website, provided you: (i) provide the Services content as it appears on the 23andMe website with no changes including but not limited to presenting selections which might tend to misrepresent the substance of the Services content; (ii) include the following attribution on the first page of any materials you distribute: (C) 23andMe, Inc. 2007-2015. All rights reserved; distributed pursuant to a Limited License from 23andMe; (iii) agree you have no right to offer anyone else any further right with respect to this Services content. Aside from the Limited License provided in this paragraph, you may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on this Services content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by 23andMe or by the owners of that content, in a separate agreement.9. Customer Conduct - Unlawful and Prohibited UseYou acknowledge that the Services content presented to you as part of the Services, whether original 23andMe Services content or sponsored content within the Services, is protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights that are owned by 23andMe and/or the sponsors who provide that content to 23andMe (or by other persons or companies on their behalf). 23andMe grants you a Limited License to copy and distribute free of charge, for non-commercial purposes only, any of the Services content with the exception of content from "MD's Perspectives" in the "For the Experts" section of the website and any other content marked as not subject to this Limited License on the website, provided you: (i) provide the Services content as it appears on the 23andMe website with no changes including but not limited to presenting selections which might tend to misrepresent the substance of the Services content; (ii) include the following attribution on the first page of any materials you distribute: (C) 23andMe, Inc. 2007-2015. All rights reserved; distributed pursuant to a Limited License from 23andMe; (iii) agree you have no right to offer anyone else any further right with respect to this Services content. Aside from the Limited License provided in this paragraph, you may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on this Services content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by 23andMe or by the owners of that content, in a separate agreement.Customer Conduct - Unlawful and Prohibited Use50As a condition of your use of the Services, you warrant to 23andMe that you will not use the Services for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these terms, conditions, or notices. You may not use the Services in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the Services or interfere with any other party's use and enjoyment of the Services. You may not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available or provided for through the Services. Furthermore you agree not to use the Services to: (1) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any material that is derogatory, defamatory, obscene, or offensive, such as slurs, epithets, or anything that might reasonably be construed as harassment or disparagement based on race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, religious or political beliefs, or other statutorily protected status; (2) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, anyone affiliated with 23andMe, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (3) add your own headers, forge headers, or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content transmitted through the Service; (4) "stalk" or otherwise harass another; (5) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (6) use any information received through the Services to attempt to identify other customers, to contact other customers (other than through features for contacting other users such as DNA Relatives offered pursuant to the Services), or for any forensic use; (7) download any file posted by another user of the Service that you know, or reasonably should know, cannot legally be distributed in such manner; (8) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights ("Rights") of 23andMe or any other party; (9) harm minors in any way; (10) advertise or offer to sell or buy any goods or services for any business purpose, unless such area specifically allows such messages; (11) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those areas that are designated for such purpose and only to the extent such content is authorized by law; (12) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files, or programs designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment; (13) use manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, ''scrape,'' ''crawl'' or ''spider'' any web pages or other services contained in the site, unless explicitly permitted by 23andMe; (14) engage in ''framing,'' ''mirroring,'' or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of 23andMe's website; (15) attempt to or actually override any security component of 23andMe web services; (16) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies, or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (17) violate these Terms of Service, any code of conduct or other guidelines which may be applicable for any particular area of the Service or have been communicated to you by anyone affiliated with 23andMe; or (18) intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law, or any regulations having the force of law.As a condition of your use of the Services, you warrant to 23andMe that you will not use the Services for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these terms, conditions, or notices. You may not use the Services in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the Services or interfere with any other party's use and enjoyment of the Services. You may not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available or provided for through the Services. Furthermore you agree not to use the Services to: (1) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any material that is derogatory, defamatory, obscene, or offensive, such as slurs, epithets, or anything that might reasonably be construed as harassment or disparagement based on race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, religious or political beliefs, or other statutorily protected status; (2) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, anyone affiliated with 23andMe, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (3) add your own headers, forge headers, or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content transmitted through the Service; (4) "stalk" or otherwise harass another; (5) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any content that you do not have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (6) use any information received through the Services to attempt to identify other customers, to contact other customers (other than through features for contacting other users such as DNA Relatives offered pursuant to the Services), or for any forensic use; (7) download any file posted by another user of the Service that you know, or reasonably should know, cannot legally be distributed in such manner; (8) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other proprietary rights ("Rights") of 23andMe or any other party; (9) harm minors in any way; (10) advertise or offer to sell or buy any goods or services for any business purpose, unless such area specifically allows such messages; (11) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those areas that are designated for such purpose and only to the extent such content is authorized by law; (12) upload, post, email, or otherwise transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files, or programs designed to interrupt, destroy, or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment; (13) use manual or automated software, devices, scripts robots, other means or processes to access, ''scrape,'' ''crawl'' or ''spider'' any web pages or other services contained in the site, unless explicitly permitted by 23andMe; (14) engage in ''framing,'' ''mirroring,'' or otherwise simulating the appearance or function of 23andMe's website; (15) attempt to or actually override any security component of 23andMe web services; (16) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies, or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (17) violate these Terms of Service, any code of conduct or other guidelines which may be applicable for any particular area of the Service or have been communicated to you by anyone affiliated with 23andMe; or (18) intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law, or any regulations having the force of law.51You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for (and that 23andMe has no responsibility to you or to any third party for) any breach of your obligations under the TOS and for the consequences (including any loss or damage which 23andMe may suffer) of any such breach. In case of breach of any one of these agreements 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof) and you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages arising out of the breach of the representation.You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for (and that 23andMe has no responsibility to you or to any third party for) any breach of your obligations under the TOS and for the consequences (including any loss or damage which 23andMe may suffer) of any such breach. In case of breach of any one of these agreements 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof) and you will defend and indemnify 23andMe and its affiliates against any liability, costs, or damages arising out of the breach of the representation.52If you violate the terms of this Section and/or 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that you have violated the terms of this Section, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).10. Export Control and Applicable Laws and RegulationsIf you violate the terms of this Section and/or 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that you have violated the terms of this Section, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service (or any portion thereof).Export Control and Applicable Laws and Regulations53Recognizing the global nature of the Internet, you agree to comply with all local rules regarding online conduct and acceptable content. Specifically, you agree 1) that providing your sample is not subject to any export ban or restriction in the country in which you reside, 2) that your sample and data may be transferred and/or processed outside the country in which you reside, and 3) that you will comply with all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country from which you access 23andMe's Services online.11. Material Posted Through The ServiceRecognizing the global nature of the Internet, you agree to comply with all local rules regarding online conduct and acceptable content. Specifically, you agree 1) that providing your sample is not subject to any export ban or restriction in the country in which you reside, 2) that your sample and data may be transferred and/or processed outside the country in which you reside, and 3) that you will comply with all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from the United States or the country from which you access 23andMe's Services online.Material Posted Through The Service5423andMe will not, at all times, control any of the User Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of such non-23andMe content. You understand that by using the Services, you may be exposed to content that is offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Under no circumstances will 23andMe be liable in any way for any non-23andMe content, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any such content, or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any such content posted, emailed, or otherwise transmitted via the Services.23andMe will not, at all times, control any of the User Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of such non-23andMe content. You understand that by using the Services, you may be exposed to content that is offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Under no circumstances will 23andMe be liable in any way for any non-23andMe content, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any such content, or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any such content posted, emailed, or otherwise transmitted via the Services.55You acknowledge that 23andMe and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to pre-screen, review, filter, modify, refuse, or move any content that is available via the Services. Without limiting the foregoing, 23andMe and its designees shall have the right to remove any content that violates the TOS or is deemed by 23andMe, in its sole discretion, to be otherwise objectionable. You acknowledge and agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such content.12. Material Provided to 23andMe - Your Proprietary RightsYou acknowledge that 23andMe and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to pre-screen, review, filter, modify, refuse, or move any content that is available via the Services. Without limiting the foregoing, 23andMe and its designees shall have the right to remove any content that violates the TOS or is deemed by 23andMe, in its sole discretion, to be otherwise objectionable. You acknowledge and agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such content.Material Provided to 23andMe - Your Proprietary Rights56User Content. 23andMe does not claim ownership of the User Content you provide to 23andMe (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input, or submit to the Service. Unless otherwise specified, you retain copyright and any other rights you already hold over User Content that you create and submit, post, or display on or through the Services. However, by submitting, posting, or displaying User Content, you give 23andMe, its affiliated companies, sublicensees (including but not limited to sublicensees who avail themselves of the Limited License granted in Section 9 above) and successors and assigns a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, reproduce, edit, reformat, and create derivative works from any User Content that you submit, post, or display on or through the Services. You acknowledge and agree that this license includes a right for 23andMe to make such User Content available to other companies, organizations, or individuals with whom 23andMe has relationships, and to use such User Content in connection with the provision of those services.User Content. 23andMe does not claim ownership of the User Content you provide to 23andMe (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input, or submit to the Service. Unless otherwise specified, you retain copyright and any other rights you already hold over User Content that you create and submit, post, or display on or through the Services. However, by submitting, posting, or displaying User Content, you give 23andMe, its affiliated companies, sublicensees (including but not limited to sublicensees who avail themselves of the Limited License granted in Section 9 above) and successors and assigns a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, reproduce, edit, reformat, and create derivative works from any User Content that you submit, post, or display on or through the Services. You acknowledge and agree that this license includes a right for 23andMe to make such User Content available to other companies, organizations, or individuals with whom 23andMe has relationships, and to use such User Content in connection with the provision of those services.57You understand that 23andMe, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your User Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your content as are necessary to conform and adapt that content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services, or media. You acknowledge and agree that this license shall permit 23andMe to take these actions. You represent and warrant to 23andMe that you have all the rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the above license.You understand that 23andMe, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your User Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your content as are necessary to conform and adapt that content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services, or media. You acknowledge and agree that this license shall permit 23andMe to take these actions. You represent and warrant to 23andMe that you have all the rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the above license.58Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information. Disclosure of individual-level Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information to third parties will not occur without explicit consent, unless required by law. Note that 23andMe cannot control any further distribution of Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information that you share publicly on the 23andMe website. You acknowledge and agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that 23andMe has no obligation to do so on your behalf.Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information. Disclosure of individual-level Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information to third parties will not occur without explicit consent, unless required by law. Note that 23andMe cannot control any further distribution of Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information that you share publicly on the 23andMe website. You acknowledge and agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that 23andMe has no obligation to do so on your behalf.59Your saliva sample, once submitted to and analyzed by us, is processed in an irreversible manner and cannot be returned to you. See our website for more information on sample processing. Any Genetic Information derived from your saliva remains your information, subject to rights we retain as set forth in these TOS. You understand that you should not expect any financial benefit from 23andMe as a result of having your Genetic Information processed; made available to you; or, as provided in our Privacy Statement and Terms of Service, shared with or included in Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information shared with research partners, including commercial partners.Your saliva sample, once submitted to and analyzed by us, is processed in an irreversible manner and cannot be returned to you. See our website for more information on sample processing. Any Genetic Information derived from your saliva remains your information, subject to rights we retain as set forth in these TOS. You understand that you should not expect any financial benefit from 23andMe as a result of having your Genetic Information processed; made available to you; or, as provided in our Privacy Statement and Terms of Service, shared with or included in Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information shared with research partners, including commercial partners.60Waiver of Property Rights. As stated above, you understand that by providing any sample, having your Genetic Information processed, accessing your Genetic Information, or providing Self-Reported Information, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners. You specifically understand that you will not receive compensation for any research or commercial products that include or result from your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information.13. IndemnityWaiver of Property Rights. As stated above, you understand that by providing any sample, having your Genetic Information processed, accessing your Genetic Information, or providing Self-Reported Information, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by 23andMe or its collaborating partners. You specifically understand that you will not receive compensation for any research or commercial products that include or result from your Genetic Information or Self-Reported Information.Indemnity61You agree to defend and hold 23andMe, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, contractors, partners, employees, successors, and assigns harmless from any claim, or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of User Content you submit, post to, or transmit through the Service; your use of the Service; your connection to the Service; your violation of the TOS; or your violation of any rights of another.You agree to defend and hold 23andMe, and its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, agents, contractors, partners, employees, successors, and assigns harmless from any claim, or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of User Content you submit, post to, or transmit through the Service; your use of the Service; your connection to the Service; your violation of the TOS; or your violation of any rights of another.62If you have submitted a saliva sample or otherwise provided your own Genetic Information, you will defend and hold harmless 23andMe, its employees, contractors, successors, and assigns from any liability arising out of the use or disclosure of any information obtained from genotyping your saliva sample and/or analyzing your Genetic Information, which is disclosed to you consistent with our Privacy Statement or results from any third-party add-ons to tools we provide. In addition, if you choose to provide your Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information to third parties - whether individuals to whom you facilitate access, intentionally or inadvertently, or to third parties for diagnostic or other purposes - you agree to defend and hold harmless 23andMe, its employees, contractors, successors, and assigns from any and all liability arising from such disclosure or use of your Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information.14. No Resale of ServiceIf you have submitted a saliva sample or otherwise provided your own Genetic Information, you will defend and hold harmless 23andMe, its employees, contractors, successors, and assigns from any liability arising out of the use or disclosure of any information obtained from genotyping your saliva sample and/or analyzing your Genetic Information, which is disclosed to you consistent with our Privacy Statement or results from any third-party add-ons to tools we provide. In addition, if you choose to provide your Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information to third parties - whether individuals to whom you facilitate access, intentionally or inadvertently, or to third parties for diagnostic or other purposes - you agree to defend and hold harmless 23andMe, its employees, contractors, successors, and assigns from any and all liability arising from such disclosure or use of your Genetic and/or Self-Reported Information.No Resale of Service63Other than pursuant to the terms of the Limited License in Section 9 of this TOS or unless otherwise agreed in a separate agreement between you and 23andMe, you agree not to display, distribute, license, perform, publish, reproduce, duplicate, copy, create derivative works from, modify, sell, resell, exploit, transfer, or transmit for any commercial purposes, all or any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service.15. General Practices Regarding Use and StorageOther than pursuant to the terms of the Limited License in Section 9 of this TOS or unless otherwise agreed in a separate agreement between you and 23andMe, you agree not to display, distribute, license, perform, publish, reproduce, duplicate, copy, create derivative works from, modify, sell, resell, exploit, transfer, or transmit for any commercial purposes, all or any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service.General Practices Regarding Use and Storage64You acknowledge that 23andMe may establish general practices and limits concerning use of the Services, including without limitation the maximum number of days that Personal Information and Services content will be retained by the Service, the maximum disk space that will be allotted on 23andMe's servers on your behalf, and the maximum number of times (and the maximum duration for which) you may access the Services in a given period of time. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe has no responsibility or liability for the deletion of or failure to store any messages, other communications, or other content maintained or transmitted by the Services; or for the loss of Genetic Information due to malfunction or destruction of data servers or other catastrophic events. You further acknowledge that 23andMe reserves the right to change these general practices and limits in its sole discretion.16. Modifications to ServiceYou acknowledge that 23andMe may establish general practices and limits concerning use of the Services, including without limitation the maximum number of days that Personal Information and Services content will be retained by the Service, the maximum disk space that will be allotted on 23andMe's servers on your behalf, and the maximum number of times (and the maximum duration for which) you may access the Services in a given period of time. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe has no responsibility or liability for the deletion of or failure to store any messages, other communications, or other content maintained or transmitted by the Services; or for the loss of Genetic Information due to malfunction or destruction of data servers or other catastrophic events. You further acknowledge that 23andMe reserves the right to change these general practices and limits in its sole discretion.Modifications to Service6523andMe reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You acknowledge and agree that (i) modifications may result in a delay in computations for some of the 23andMe features or Services, and (ii) 23andMe shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension, or discontinuance of the Services.23andMe reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Services (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You acknowledge and agree that (i) modifications may result in a delay in computations for some of the 23andMe features or Services, and (ii) 23andMe shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension, or discontinuance of the Services.66The Software that you use may from time to time automatically download and install updates from 23andMe. These updates are designed to improve, enhance, and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules, and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit 23andMe to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.The Software that you use may from time to time automatically download and install updates from 23andMe. These updates are designed to improve, enhance, and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules, and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit 23andMe to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.67You acknowledge that 23andMe may offer different or additional technologies or features to collect and/or interpret Genetic Information in the future and that your initial purchase of the Service does not entitle you to any different or additional technologies or features for collection or interpretation of your Genetic Information without fee, and that you will have to pay additional fees in order to have your Genetic Information collected, processed, and/or interpreted using any future or additional technologies or features.17. TerminationYou acknowledge that 23andMe may offer different or additional technologies or features to collect and/or interpret Genetic Information in the future and that your initial purchase of the Service does not entitle you to any different or additional technologies or features for collection or interpretation of your Genetic Information without fee, and that you will have to pay additional fees in order to have your Genetic Information collected, processed, and/or interpreted using any future or additional technologies or features.Termination68The TOS will continue to apply until terminated by either you or 23andMe as set out in this Section.The TOS will continue to apply until terminated by either you or 23andMe as set out in this Section.69If you want to terminate your legal agreement with 23andMe, you may do so by notifying 23andMe at any time in writing, which will entail closing your accounts for all of the Services that you use. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to 23andMe's address, which is set out at the beginning of the TOS, or online via Customer Care . If you provide notice online, 23andMe will send you an email asking you to confirm your request, and your notice will be effective following receipt of a second email confirmation from you.If you want to terminate your legal agreement with 23andMe, you may do so by notifying 23andMe at any time in writing, which will entail closing your accounts for all of the Services that you use. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to 23andMe's address, which is set out at the beginning of the TOS, or online via Customer Care . If you provide notice online, 23andMe will send you an email asking you to confirm your request, and your notice will be effective following receipt of a second email confirmation from you.7023andMe may at any time, terminate its legal agreement with you (and in conjunction therewith, your password and account(s)) if: (1) you have breached any provision of the TOS (or have acted in manner which shows that you do not intend to, or are unable to comply with, the provisions of the TOS); (2) 23andMe is required to do so by law (for example, where the provision of the Services to you is, or becomes, unlawful); (3) the partner with whom 23andMe offered the Services to you has terminated its relationship with 23andMe or ceased to offer the Services to you; (4) 23andMe is transitioning to no longer providing the Services to users in the country or state in which you reside or from which you use the Services; or (5) the provision of the Services to you by 23andMe is, in 23andMe's opinion, no longer commercially viable.23andMe may at any time, terminate its legal agreement with you (and in conjunction therewith, your password and account(s)) if: (1) you have breached any provision of the TOS (or have acted in manner which shows that you do not intend to, or are unable to comply with, the provisions of the TOS); (2) 23andMe is required to do so by law (for example, where the provision of the Services to you is, or becomes, unlawful); (3) the partner with whom 23andMe offered the Services to you has terminated its relationship with 23andMe or ceased to offer the Services to you; (4) 23andMe is transitioning to no longer providing the Services to users in the country or state in which you reside or from which you use the Services; or (5) the provision of the Services to you by 23andMe is, in 23andMe's opinion, no longer commercially viable.71Any suspected fraudulent, abusive, or illegal activity that may be grounds for termination of your use of the Services may be referred to appropriate law enforcement authorities. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be liable to you or any third party for any termination of your access to the Services.18. Survival of TermsAny suspected fraudulent, abusive, or illegal activity that may be grounds for termination of your use of the Services may be referred to appropriate law enforcement authorities. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be liable to you or any third party for any termination of your access to the Services.Survival of Terms72When the TOS come to an end, all of the legal rights, obligations, and liabilities that you and 23andMe have benefited from, been subject to (or which have accrued over time while the TOS have been in force) or which are expressed to continue indefinitely, shall be unaffected by this cessation, and the provisions of sections 1.(Definitions); 2.(Acceptance of Terms); 3.(Prerequisites); 4.(Description of the Services); 5.(Risks and Considerations Regarding 23andMe Services); 6.(Representations); 7.(Account Creation, Customer Account, Password and Security Obligations); 8.(23andMe Privacy Statement); 10.(Customer Conduct - Unlawful and Prohibited Use); 11.(Export Control and Applicable Laws and Regulations); 12.(Material Posted through the Service); 13.(Material Provided to 23andMe - Your Proprietary Rights); 14.(Indemnity); 15.(No resale of Services);18.(Termination); 19.(Survival of Terms); 20.(Dealings with Information Providers and Listed Resources); 21.(Hyperlinks and 23andMe Website); 22.(23andMe Proprietary Rights); 23.(DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES); 24.(LIMITATION OF LIABILITY); 25.(Notice); 27.(Violation or Suspected Violation of TOS); and 28.(Miscellaneous) shall continue to apply to such rights, obligations, and liabilities indefinitely.19. Dealings with Information Providers and Listed ResourcesWhen the TOS come to an end, all of the legal rights, obligations, and liabilities that you and 23andMe have benefited from, been subject to (or which have accrued over time while the TOS have been in force) or which are expressed to continue indefinitely, shall be unaffected by this cessation, and the provisions of sections 1.(Definitions); 2.(Acceptance of Terms); 3.(Prerequisites); 4.(Description of the Services); 5.(Risks and Considerations Regarding 23andMe Services); 6.(User Representations); 7.(Account Creation, Customer Account, Password and Security Obligations); 8.(23andMe Privacy Statement and Disclosure of Information); 10.(Customer Conduct - Unlawful and Prohibited Use); 11.(Export Control and Applicable Laws and Regulations); 12.(Material Posted through the Service); 13.(Material Provided to 23andMe - Your Proprietary Rights); 14.(Indemnity); 15.(No Resale of Services);18.(Termination); 19.(Survival of Terms); 20.(Dealings with Information Providers and Listed Resources); 21.(Hyperlinks and 23andMe Website); 22.(23andMe Proprietary Rights); 23.(DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES); 24.(LIMITATION OF LIABILITY); 25.(Notice); 27.(Violation or Suspected Violation of Terms of Service); and 28.(Miscellaneous) shall continue to apply to such rights, obligations, and liabilities indefinitely.Dealings with Information Providers and Listed Resources73Your correspondence or business dealings with-or participation in promotions of-information providers, vendors, and/or resources found on or through the Service, including payment and delivery of related goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties, or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such information provider or resource. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or as the result of the presence of such information provider or resources on the Service.20. Hyperlinks and the 23andMe WebsiteYour correspondence or business dealings with-or participation in promotions of-information providers, vendors, and/or resources found on or through the Service, including payment and delivery of related goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties, or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such information provider or resource. You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or as the result of the presence of such information provider or resources on the Service.Hyperlinks and the 23andMe Website74The Service provides, and third parties may provide, links to other sites and resources on the Internet. Because 23andMe has no control over such sites and resources, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe is not responsible for the availability of such external sites or resources, and does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites or resources. You further acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods, or services available on or through any such hyperlinked site or resource.21. 23andMe's Proprietary RightsThe Service provides, and third parties may provide, links to other sites and resources on the Internet. Because 23andMe has no control over such sites and resources, you acknowledge and agree that 23andMe is not responsible for the availability of such external sites or resources, and does not endorse and is not responsible or liable for any content, advertising, products, or other materials on or available from such sites or resources. You further acknowledge and agree that 23andMe shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with use of or reliance on any such content, goods, or services available on or through any such hyperlinked site or resource.23andMe's Proprietary Rights75You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe (or 23andMe's licensors, as applicable) own all legal right, title, and interest in and to the Services, including any intellectual property rights (including but not limited to patents) which subsist in the Services (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). You further acknowledge that the Services may contain information which is designated confidential by 23andMe and that you shall not disclose such information without 23andMe's prior written consent.You acknowledge and agree that 23andMe (or 23andMe's licensors, as applicable) own all legal right, title, and interest in and to the Services, including any intellectual property rights (including but not limited to patents) which subsist in the Services (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). You further acknowledge that the Services may contain information which is designated confidential by 23andMe and that you shall not disclose such information without 23andMe's prior written consent.76You further acknowledge and agree that the Services and any necessary software used in connection with the Services ("Software") contain proprietary and confidential information that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws. You further acknowledge and agree that information presented to you through the Services or sponsors is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, or other proprietary rights and laws. Except as expressly authorized by 23andMe, you agree not to-and not to permit anyone else to-modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works of, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Services or Software or any part thereof, in whole or in part. Software, if any, that is made available to download from the Services, excluding software that may be made available by end-users through the Services, is the copyrighted work of 23andMe and/or its suppliers. Your use of the Software is governed by the terms of the end user license agreement, if any, which accompanies or is included with the Software ("License Agreement"). You may not install or use any Software that is accompanied by or includes a License Agreement unless you first agree to the License Agreement terms.You further acknowledge and agree that the Services and any necessary software used in connection with the Services ("Software") contain proprietary and confidential information that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws. You further acknowledge and agree that information presented to you through the Services or sponsors is protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, or other proprietary rights and laws. Except as expressly authorized by 23andMe, you agree not to-and not to permit anyone else to-modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works of, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Services or Software or any part thereof, in whole or in part. Software, if any, that is made available to download from the Services, excluding software that may be made available by end-users through the Services, is the copyrighted work of 23andMe and/or its suppliers. Your use of the Software is governed by the terms of the end user license agreement, if any, which accompanies or is included with the Software ("License Agreement"). You may not install or use any Software that is accompanied by or includes a License Agreement unless you first agree to the License Agreement terms.7723andMe, Inc., 23andMe, and other 23andMe logos and product and service names are trademarks of 23andMe and these marks together with any other 23andMe trade names, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features are the "23andMe Marks". Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with 23andMe, other than through the Limited License in Section 9, nothing in the TOS gives you a right to use any 23andMe Marks and you agree not to display, or use in any manner, 23andMe Marks.23andMe, Inc., 23andMe, and other 23andMe logos and product and service names are trademarks of 23andMe and these marks together with any other 23andMe trade names, service marks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features are the "23andMe Marks". Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with 23andMe, other than through the Limited License in Section 9, nothing in the TOS gives you a right to use any 23andMe Marks and you agree not to display, or use in any manner, 23andMe Marks.78You agree that you shall not remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary rights notices (including copyright and trade mark notices) that may be affixed to or contained within the Services.You agree that you shall not remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary rights notices (including copyright and trade mark notices) that may be affixed to or contained within the Services.79Unless you have been expressly authorized to do so in writing by 23andMe, you agree that in using the Services, you will not use any trade mark, service mark, trade name, logo of any company or organization in a way that is likely or intended to cause confusion about the owner or authorized user of such marks, names, or logos.Unless you have been expressly authorized to do so in writing by 23andMe, you agree that in using the Services, you will not use any trade mark, service mark, trade name, logo of any company or organization in a way that is likely or intended to cause confusion about the owner or authorized user of such marks, names, or logos.80For any Software not accompanied by a License Agreement, 23andMe grants you a personal, non-transferable, and non-exclusive right and license to use the object code of its Software on a single computer. You may not (and may not allow any third party to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, reverse assemble, or otherwise attempt to discover any source code, sell, assign, sublicense, grant a security interest in, or otherwise transfer any right in the Software unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by 23andMe, in writing. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by 23andMe, in the manner permitted by the TOS. Unless 23andMe has given you specific written permission to do so, you may not assign (or grant a sublicense of) your rights to use the Software, grant a security interest in or over your rights to use the Software, or otherwise transfer any part of your rights to use the Software. You agree not to modify the Software in any manner or form, or to use modified versions of the Software, including (without limitation) for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to the Service. You agree not to access the Service by any means other than through the interface that is provided by 23andMe for use in accessing the Service. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.22. Disclaimer of WarrantiesFor any Software not accompanied by a License Agreement, 23andMe grants you a personal, non-transferable, and non-exclusive right and license to use the object code of its Software on a single computer. You may not (and may not allow any third party to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, reverse assemble, or otherwise attempt to discover any source code, sell, assign, sublicense, grant a security interest in, or otherwise transfer any right in the Software unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by 23andMe, in writing. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by 23andMe, in the manner permitted by the TOS. Unless 23andMe has given you specific written permission to do so, you may not assign (or grant a sublicense of) your rights to use the Software, grant a security interest in or over your rights to use the Software, or otherwise transfer any part of your rights to use the Software. You agree not to modify the Software in any manner or form, or to use modified versions of the Software, including (without limitation) for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to the Service. You agree not to access the Service by any means other than through the interface that is provided by 23andMe for use in accessing the Service. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.Disclaimer of Warranties81YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT: (1) YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES ARE AT YOUR SOLE RISK. THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. 23ANDME EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. (2) 23ANDME MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT (a) THE SERVICES WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS; (b) THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, UNFAILINGLY SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (c) THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICES WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE; (d) THE QUALITY OF ANY PRODUCTS, SERVICES, INFORMATION, OR OTHER MATERIAL PURCHASED OR OBTAINED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICES WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND (e) ANY ERRORS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED. (3) ANY MATERIAL DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE USE OF THE SERVICES IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK AND THAT YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OF ANY SUCH MATERIAL. (4) NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU FROM 23ANDME OR THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED IN THE TOS. (5) YOU SHOULD ALWAYS USE CAUTION WHEN GIVING OUT ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF OR THOSE FOR WHOM YOU HAVE LEGAL AUTHORITY. 23ANDME DOES NOT CONTROL OR ENDORSE ANY ACTIONS RESULTING FROM YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE SERVICES AND, THEREFORE, 23ANDME SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY WITH REGARD TO ANY ACTIONS RESULTING FROM YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE SERVICES.23. Limitation of LiabilityYOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT: (1) YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES ARE AT YOUR SOLE RISK. THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. 23ANDME EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. (2) 23ANDME MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT (a) THE SERVICES WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS; (b) THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, UNFAILINGLY SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE; (c) THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE SERVICES WILL BE ACCURATE OR RELIABLE; (d) THE QUALITY OF ANY PRODUCTS, SERVICES, INFORMATION, OR OTHER MATERIAL PURCHASED OR OBTAINED BY YOU THROUGH THE SERVICES WILL MEET YOUR EXPECTATIONS AND (e) ANY ERRORS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED. (3) ANY MATERIAL DOWNLOADED OR OTHERWISE OBTAINED THROUGH THE USE OF THE SERVICES IS DONE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND RISK AND THAT YOU WILL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM OR LOSS OF DATA THAT RESULTS FROM THE DOWNLOAD OF ANY SUCH MATERIAL. (4) NO ADVICE OR INFORMATION, WHETHER ORAL OR WRITTEN, OBTAINED BY YOU FROM 23ANDME OR THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES SHALL CREATE ANY WARRANTY NOT EXPRESSLY STATED IN THE TOS. (5) YOU SHOULD ALWAYS USE CAUTION WHEN GIVING OUT ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF OR THOSE FOR WHOM YOU HAVE LEGAL AUTHORITY. 23ANDME DOES NOT CONTROL OR ENDORSE ANY ACTIONS RESULTING FROM YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE SERVICES AND, THEREFORE, 23ANDME SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY WITH REGARD TO ANY ACTIONS RESULTING FROM YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE SERVICES.Limitation of Liability82WITHIN THE LIMITS ALLOWED BY APPLICABLE LAWS, YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT 23ANDME SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES (EVEN IF 23ANDME HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM: (a) THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICES; (b) ANY ACTION YOU TAKE BASED ON THE INFORMATION YOU RECEIVE IN THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES, (v) YOUR FAILURE TO KEEP YOUR PASSWORD OR ACCOUNT DETAILS SECURE AND CONFIDENTIAL, (d) THE COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS AND SERVICES RESULTING FROM ANY GOODS, DATA, INFORMATION, OR SERVICES PURCHASED OR OBTAINED OR MESSAGES RECEIVED OR TRANSACTIONS ENTERED INTO THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES; (e) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA; (f) THE IMPROPER AUTHORIZATION FOR THE SERVICES BY SOMEONE CLAIMING SUCH AUTHORITY; or (g) STATEMENTS OR CONDUCT OF ANY THIRD PARTY ON THE SERVICES.24. NoticeWITHIN THE LIMITS ALLOWED BY APPLICABLE LAWS, YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT 23ANDME SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS, GOODWILL, USE, DATA OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES (EVEN IF 23ANDME HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES), RESULTING FROM: (a) THE USE OR THE INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICES; (b) ANY ACTION YOU TAKE BASED ON THE INFORMATION YOU RECEIVE IN THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES, (v) YOUR FAILURE TO KEEP YOUR PASSWORD OR ACCOUNT DETAILS SECURE AND CONFIDENTIAL, (d) THE COST OF PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS AND SERVICES RESULTING FROM ANY GOODS, DATA, INFORMATION, OR SERVICES PURCHASED OR OBTAINED OR MESSAGES RECEIVED OR TRANSACTIONS ENTERED INTO THROUGH OR FROM THE SERVICES; (e) UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO OR ALTERATION OF YOUR TRANSMISSIONS OR DATA; (f) THE IMPROPER AUTHORIZATION FOR THE SERVICES BY SOMEONE CLAIMING SUCH AUTHORITY; or (g) STATEMENTS OR CONDUCT OF ANY THIRD PARTY ON THE SERVICES.Notice83Notices to you may be made via either email or regular mail. 23andMe may also provide notices of changes to the TOS or other matters by displaying notices or links to notices to you generally on or through the Services.Notices to you may be made via either email or regular mail. 23andMe may also provide notices of changes to the TOS or other matters by displaying notices or links to notices to you generally on or through the Services.84Official notices related to this TOS must be sent to us at: 23andMe, Inc.Official notices related to this TOS must be sent to us at: 23andMe, Inc.85ATTN: General CounselATTN: Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer86899 West Evelyn Avenue899 West Evelyn Ave.87Mountain View, CA 94041Mountain View, CA 9404188Additionally, 23andMe accepts service of process at this address. Any notices that you provide without compliance with this section on Notices shall have no legal effect.25. Changes to the Terms of ServiceAdditionally, 23andMe accepts service of process at this address. Any notices that you provide without compliance with this section on Notices shall have no legal effect.Changes to the Terms of Service8923andMe may make changes to the TOS from time to time. When these changes are made, 23andMe will make a new copy of the TOS available on its website and any new additional terms will be made available to you from within, or through, the affected Services.23andMe may make changes to the TOS from time to time. When these changes are made, 23andMe will make a new copy of the TOS available on its website and any new additional terms will be made available to you from within, or through, the affected Services.90You acknowledge and agree that if you use the Services after the date on which the TOS have changed, 23andMe will treat your use as acceptance of the updated TOS.26. Violation or Suspected Violation of Terms of ServiceYou acknowledge and agree that if you use the Services after the date on which the TOS have changed, 23andMe will treat your use as acceptance of the updated TOS.Violation or Suspected Violation of Terms of Service91If you violate the terms of these TOS and/or 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that you have violated the terms of these TOS, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof).27. MiscellaneousIf you violate the terms of these TOS and/or 23andMe has a reasonable ground to suspect that you have violated the terms of these TOS, 23andMe has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Services (or any portion thereof).Miscellaneous92Entire Agreement. The TOS constitute the entire agreement between you and 23andMe and govern your use of the Services, superseding any prior agreements between you and 23andMe on this subject. You also may be subject to additional terms and conditions that may apply when you use affiliate services, third-party content, or third-party softwareEntire Agreement. The TOS constitute the entire agreement between you and 23andMe and govern your use of the Services, superseding any prior agreements between you and 23andMe on this subject. You also may be subject to additional terms and conditions that may apply when you use affiliate services, third-party content, or third-party software93Applicable law and arbitration. Except for any disputes relating to intellectual property rights, obligations, or any infringement claims, any disputes with 23andMe arising out of or relating to the Agreement ("Disputes") shall be governed by California law regardless of your country of origin or where you access 23andMe, and notwithstanding of any conflicts of law principles and the United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods. Any Disputes shall be resolved by final and binding arbitration under the rules and auspices of the American Arbitration Association, to be held in San Francisco, California, in English, with a written decision stating legal reasoning issued by the arbitrator(s) at either party's request, and with arbitration costs and reasonable documented attorneys' costs of both parties to be borne by the party that ultimately loses. Either party may obtain injunctive relief (preliminary or permanent) and orders to compel arbitration or enforce arbitral awards in any court of competent jurisdiction.Applicable law and arbitration. Except for any disputes relating to intellectual property rights, obligations, or any infringement claims, any disputes with 23andMe arising out of or relating to the Agreement ("Disputes") shall be governed by California law regardless of your country of origin or where you access 23andMe, and notwithstanding of any conflicts of law principles and the United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods. Any Disputes shall be resolved by final and binding arbitration under the rules and auspices of the American Arbitration Association, to be held in San Francisco, California, in English, with a written decision stating legal reasoning issued by the arbitrator(s) at either party's request, and with arbitration costs and reasonable documented attorneys' costs of both parties to be borne by the party that ultimately loses. Either party may obtain injunctive relief (preliminary or permanent) and orders to compel arbitration or enforce arbitral awards in any court of competent jurisdiction.94Waiver. The failure of 23andMe to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the TOS shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of the TOS is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the TOS remain in full force and effect.Waiver. The failure of 23andMe to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the TOS shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of the TOS is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the TOS remain in full force and effect.95Term for cause of action. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Services or the TOS must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.Term for cause of action. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Services or the TOS must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.96Admissibility of printed version. A printed version of this agreement and of any notice given in electronic form shall be admissible in judicial or administrative proceedings based upon or relating to this agreement to the same extent and subject to the same conditions as other business documents and records originally generated and maintained in printed form.Admissibility of printed version. A printed version of this agreement and of any notice given in electronic form shall be admissible in judicial or administrative proceedings based upon or relating to this agreement to the same extent and subject to the same conditions as other business documents and records originally generated and maintained in printed form.97Section titles. The section titles in the TOS are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect.Section titles. The section titles in the TOS are for convenience only and have no legal or contractual effect.98Severability Clause. If any portion of these TOS is found to be unenforceable, the remaining portion will remain in full force and effect.Severability Clause. If any portion of these TOS is found to be unenforceable, the remaining portion will remain in full force and effect.99Amendments. We reserve the right to modify, supplement or replace the terms of the Agreement, effective upon posting at www.23andMe.com or notifying you otherwise. If you do not want to agree to changes to the Agreement, you can terminate the Agreement at any time per Section 18 (Termination).Amendments. We reserve the right to modify, supplement or replace the terms of the Agreement, effective upon posting at www.23andMe.com or notifying you otherwise. If you do not want to agree to changes to the Agreement, you can terminate the Agreement at any time per Section 18 (Termination).100Assignment: You may not assign or delegate any rights or obligations under the Agreement. Any purported assignment and delegation shall be ineffective. We may freely assign or delegate all rights and obligations under the Agreement, fully or partially without notice to you. We may also substitute, by way of unilateral novation, effective upon notice to you, 23andMe for any third party that assumes our rights and obligations under this Agreement.Previous version of this documentAssignment: You may not assign or delegate any rights or obligations under the Agreement. Any purported assignment and delegation shall be ineffective. We may freely assign or delegate all rights and obligations under the Agreement, fully or partially without notice to you. We may also substitute, by way of unilateral novation, effective upon notice to you, 23andMe for any third party that assumes our rights and obligations under this Agreement.*23andMe data on file.Previous version of this document

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:09

An honors student in Fort Worth, Texas, was sent to the principal's office and punished for telling a classmate that he believes homosexuality is wrong.

Holly Pope said she was ''absolutely stunned'' when she received a telephone call from an assistant principal at Western Hills High School informing her that her son, Dakota Ary, had been sent to in-school suspension.

''Dakota is a very well-grounded 14-year-old,'' she told Fox News Radio noting that her son is an honors student, plays on the football team and is active in his church youth group. ''He's been in church his whole life and he's been taught to stand up for what he believes.''

And that's what got him in trouble.

Dakota was in a German class at the high school when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality in Germany. At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and ''being a homosexual is wrong.''

''It wasn't directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me,'' Dakota told Fox. ''I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.''

Dakota was sentenced to one day in-school suspension '' and two days of full suspension. His mother was flabbergasted, noting that her son had a spotless record, was an honor student, volunteered at his church and played on the school football team.

Officials at the high school did not return calls for comment. However, the Fort Worth Independent School District issued a statement that read:

''As a matter of course, Fort Worth ISD does not comment on specific employee or student-related issues. Suffice it to say that we are following district policy in our review of the circumstances and any resolution will likewise be in accordance with district policy.''

After a meeting with Pope and her attorney, the school rescinded the two-day suspension so Dakota would be allowed to play in an upcoming football game.

''They've righted all the wrongs,'' said Matt Krause, an attorney with the Liberty Counsel. ''This should have no lasting effect on his academic or personal record going forward.''

Pope contacted the Liberty Counsel immediately after her son was punished.

''I told the school that he should never have been suspended for exercising his Constitutional rights,'' Krause told Fox News Radio. ''The principal is sincere in trying to do the right thing and hopefully they will tell the teacher, 'Do not do that anymore.' He won't be pushing his agenda.''

Krause called the incident ''mind blowing'' and said the teacher had frequently brought homosexuality into ninth grade classroom discussions.

''There has been a history with this teacher in the class regarding homosexual topics,'' Krause said. ''The teacher had posted a picture of two men kissing on a wall that offended some of the students.''

Krause said the picture was posted on the teacher's ''world wall.''

''He told the students this is happening all over the world and you need to accept the fact that homosexuality is just part of our culture now,'' Krause said.

The school district would not comment on why a teacher was discussing homosexuality in a ninth grade German class.

''In German class there should be no talk of being pro-Gay or homosexual topics,'' Krause said.

Dakota's mother said she believes the teacher should apologize.

''He should never have been punished,'' Pope said. ''He didn't disrupt the class. He wasn't threatening. He wasn't hostile. He made a comment to his friend and the teacher overheard it.''

''My son knows people that are homosexual,'' she said. ''He's not saying, 'I don't like you.' He's saying, 'I'm a Christian and I believe that being that way is wrong.'''

Krause said school leaders told Dakota that in the future he should be careful when and where he talks about his opposition to homosexuality '' suggesting that he talk about such matters in the hallway instead of the classroom.

He said Liberty Counsel will monitor the situation to make sure there is no future retaliation. Meantime, Pope said her son will return to the teacher's classroom.

''I've told him to treat this teacher with respect,'' she said. ''He is your elder. He is your teacher. What his beliefs are or what they are not '' outside the school is none of our business.''

Click here to read more on this story from Fox News Radio.

Click here to read more on this story from MyFoxDFW.

Student Suspended for Saying Gay Is Wrong: MyFoxDFW.com

Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. Sign up for his American Dispatch newsletter, be sure to join his Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter. His latest book is "God Less America."

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:44

October 24, 2015 | 3:22 | Public Domain

In this week's address, the President laid out the importance of serving as good stewards of the environment and maintaining the planet for generations to come.

Download mp4 (125MB) | mp3 (8MB)

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Source: Aangirfan

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:44

Ghouta chemical attack in Syria.The 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria was organised by the Turkish government, according to two Turkish members of parliament.The whistleblowers refer to chemicals from MKE (The Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation) and to wiretapped conversations.In 2014, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh wrote that Turkish intelligence was involved in planning the sarin attack.CHP deputies Eren Erdem (L) and Ali Şeker (Photo: Cihan)Turkey's role in Syrian chemical attack. - Today's Zaman - 21 Oct 2015 Two deputies from Turkey's opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) have referred to Turkey's reported role in sending toxic sarin gas to Syria for the attack on civilians in Syria in 2013, in which over 1,300 were killed.CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali Şeker have held a press conference in İstanbul.

They say that the investigation into reports of Turkey's involvement in the sarin gas has been derailed.

Erdem stated that the Adana (city in Southern Turkey) Chief Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into reports that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen.

An indictment followed regarding the accusations targeting the government.

Above, we see the American Jewish Congress handing to Erdogan a Jewish 'profiles of courage award'. According to Erdem: "The MKE (Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation) is mentioned in the investigation file.

"Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists (ISIS and al Qaeda), along with audio recordings, are inside the file."

Erdem noted that the prosecutor's office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin.

Erg¼n Poyraz, in his 2007 book Children of Moses, wrote that Turkey' Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his wife, are crypto-Jews, who secretly work with Israeli intelligence.

Erdem said: "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas.

"However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case.

"Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism."

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus.

The West blamed the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Russia claimed it was a 'false flag' operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

Erdogan with his Jewish classmate Rafael Sadi. They studied economics together. CHP deputy Şeker said: "The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals ... faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities."

While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident,'' Şeker further commented.

Erdem said that he will launch a criminal complaint against those responsible.

Turkey's role in Syrian chemical attack. - Today's Zaman - 21 Oct 2015

SURUC BOMBING IN TURKEY - 'INSIDE JOB'

THE CIA's 'GLADIO B'.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:43

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) U.S. President Barack Obama told the Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum on Friday in Washington that he perceived the Republican party as largely pessimistic towards his policies. "Why is it that Republican politicians are so down on America? Have you noticed that? I mean, they are gloomy. They're like Grumpy Cat," he said. "According to their story, their narrative, everything was terrific back in 2008, when unemployment was skyrocketing, and uninsured rates were rising, and folks were losing their homes and their jobs, and we were engaged in two wars, and Bin Laden was still at large."

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:39

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) A meeting on Friday between the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aimed at exploring a political solution to Syria's civil war raised ideas that might change the dynamic in the country, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said. "I am convinced ... that today's meeting was constructive and productive," Kerry told reporters after the meeting in Vienna. The four countries failed to resolve differences on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in talks on Friday (October 23) but could meet again in a week to discuss how to end Syria's civil war. Speaking to reporters afterwards, ministers said they had been unable to bridge the central dispute between Washington and its allies, who say Assad has no future in Syria, and Russia, which showed its support by hosting him in Moscow this week. In a separate development, Russia and Jordan agreed to coordinate their military actions on Syria by setting up a "special working mechanism" in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. Russia's three-week-old campaign of air strikes against Islamist groups opposed to Assad has halted an offensive by rebels, including some backed by the United States and its allies, which had eroded Assad's control in the west of Syria. "The United States, I want to emphasize, welcomes support in the fight against Daesh and if Russia intends to join in that fight, we welcome a constructive role," said Kerry. Some diplomats and analysts believe Russia might be able to exploit its influence with Assad and its newly demonstrated military muscle in Syria's skies to broker a deal to end the conflict. Speaking after the roughly two-hour meeting, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the fundamental disagreement but suggested that there may be a solution and spoke of the possibility of holding wider talks in a week's time.

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Sat, 24 Oct 2015 13:08

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 19:27

House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy was pulled into a fiery exchange with Democrats on the panel Thursday when they surprisingly called on him to release the transcript of Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's June 2015 deposition.

Getty Images

''I move that we put into the record the entire transcript of Sidney Blumenthal,'' Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, shouted. ''Let's do the transcript! That way the world can see it!''

A second Democrat can be heard on video ''seconding'' the motion.

''We're not going to take that up a hearing,'' Gowdy replied.

At that moment, Clinton, who appeared to testify before the committee, can be seen shaking her head and laughing.

CNN

''Why is it that you only want Mr. Blumenthal's transcript released?'' Gowdy asked.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) eventually cut in and argued Gowdy should release Blumenthal's transcript to provide context to his emails that have been released.

''I'm not going to release one transcript of someone who knows nothing about Libya by his own admission, while people who risked their lives '-- you have no interest in their story getting out,'' Gowdy said.

Watch the fiery moment below:

'--

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:12

The mother of a U.S. diplomat killed in the 2012 Benghazi attacks blasted Hillary Clinton Thursday, telling Fox News she had a ''very simple'' response to the Democratic frontrunner's testimony: ''She lies!''

Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, told host Megyn Kelly she was not impressed with Clinton's 11-hour testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

When asked to respond, she immediately did so with two words.

''She lies!'' Smith passionately said. ''Very simple.''

''She is not telling the truth,'' the mother continued. ''She's trying to push her own agenda through.''

Smith added that each time she asks the government for more details about her sons death, she's told she's ''not a member of the immediate family.''

''I've got to know what happened,'' Smith told Kelly. ''They don't tell me. I still don't know. The government has never told me. They have never contacted me, and I've got to know. That was my only child.''

'--

Follow the author of this story on Twitter and Facebook:

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:10

Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) literally confronted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with two piles of her emails during Thursday's highly anticipated House Benghazi Committee hearing.

''I'd like to show you something,'' Brooks said to Clinton as she pulled out the stacks of emails.

CBS News livestream

In one pile, Brooks said, were emails that Clinton sent or received on Libya in 2011. In the other were emails she sent or received on Libya from early 2012 until the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that left four Americans dead.

''There are 795 emails in this pile,'' Brooks said of the first pile. ''There are 67 emails in this pile in 2012. And I'm troubled by what I see here.''

Brooks said there were ''daily updates'' from Libya in the 2011 emails, but only a ''handful'' of emails on Benghazi were sent from her senior staff in 2012.

''We know from talking to your senior advisers that they knew'...to send you important information,'' she added. ''I can only conclude by your own records that there was a lack in interest in Libya in 2012.''

Watch Clinton's response below:

'--

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 17:13

On the road with Vladimir Putin. The Russian President gets behind the newly made Lada Vesta Thursday to offer a boost to the domestic car industry. While the Russian auto industry has enjoyed sales growth in excess of 10 percent for the past decade -- it has been hit hard by Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. When Putin is asked 'What's the verdict" he says verdicts are made in court. He says now is the time to buy. (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN PRESIDENT, VLADIMIR PUTIN, SAYING: "It is not about crisis, it is about the currency exchange differences, of the national currency, of other currencies against the ruble. This is an absolute competitive advantage, that our producers should undoubtedly use, which implies not only reclaiming the domestic market, but also moving on to the international (market)." And the statistics back Putin. Last month the Association of European Businesses said Russian car sales could total 1.7 million units this year, higher than previously forecast.

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 16:28

Well, the video and the events described are over four years old, the link to secrecykills.com now takes one to a Japanese fashion blog discussing plancentas and plans to live alone.

Of course, if you followed this story posted on hystericalcommieresearch.ca, you would think it all happened last month:

http://theinternationalreporter.org/2015/10/22/cia-threatens-911-researchers-who-discovered-explosive-evidence-of-a-coverup/

ReplyDelete

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:33

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Fireworks at the Benghazi panel came from bickering between Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and Rep. Elijah Cummings who bickered over the role Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal played in Libya. "We just heard, email and email after email, about Libya and Benghazi that Sidney Blumenthal sent to the Secretary of State." Gowdy said. "I don't care if he sent it by morse code, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, the fact that he happen to send it by email is irrelevant what is relevant is that he was sending information to the Secretary of State." Cummings responded, "you asked for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, well that is what we want to have. Let the world see it." Clinton's appearance before the Benghazi panel was another major challenge for Clinton, who has been on a hot streak with a strong performance in last week's first Democratic debate and the news that her strongest potential challenger, Vice President Joe Biden, will not seek the Democratic nomination.

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 15:26

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended her handling of the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, from Republican criticism during high-stakes testimony on Thursday telling her interrogators in Congress that she has "lost more sleep" than all of them put together over the events in Benghazi. The front-runner in the 2016 Democratic presidential race, Clinton told a congressional committee the attacks by suspected Islamist militants that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans must not discourage U.S. action globally and said the incident already had been thoroughly investigated. Her appearance before the Benghazi panel was another major challenge for Clinton, who has been on a hot streak with a strong performance in last week's first Democratic debate and the news that her strongest potential challenger, Vice President Joe Biden, will not seek the Democratic nomination. Clinton's long-awaited appearance before the panel follows months of controversy about her use of a private home email server for her State Department work, a set-up that surfaced in part because of the Benghazi committee's demand last year to see her official records. It also follows weeks of political brawling over whether the Republican-led House committee's real goal was to puncture her front-running presidential prospects. The committee is made up of seven Republicans and five of Clinton's fellow Democrats.

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 11:55

If you missed the historic live-stream, free-energy announcement given Friday by the Keshe Foundation, this video is the "Cliff Notes" version. World leaders were given a 10 day "heads-up" to what's coming... the global release & distribution of patented, plasma-based, free-energy knowledge and technology into the PUBLIC domain!!! Mr. Keshe has just warned spaceship earth of yet another imminent "world shattering" event!!

Email me when people reply ''

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Fri, 23 Oct 2015 09:52

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton burst our laughing when asked if she was alone the whole at her house on the night of September 11, 2012 during her testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee on Thursday.

Hillary was asked by Representative Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL) whether she was alone at her house on the night of the attacks. Hillary answered that she was. After Roby asked if she was alone the whole night, Hillary began laughing after stating, ''Well yes, the whole night.''

Roby said, ''I don't know why that's funny. '... I don't find it funny at all.'' Hillary stated, ''I'm sorry, a little note of levity at 7:15.''

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:15

Khloe Kardashian and her basketball player husband, Lamar Odom, called off their divorce a week after the athlete collapsed and fell into a coma in Las Vegas. Various media outlets have reported that Kardashian's attorney asked a judge to withdraw the divorce petition that both sides had signed earlier this year and that was awaiting final approval. Kardashian and Odom split up in 2013 after a four-year marriage, but the reality TV star has been a constant presence at Odom's side since he was rushed to hospital after being found unconscious at a Nevada brothel. Last week, Odom's prognosis looked grim after several days on life support following a reported series of strokes after authorities said he used cocaine and herbal supplements. He was transferred on Monday (October 19) by helicopter from Las Vegas to a hospital in Los Angeles where he is currently being treated.