The hacktivists, who have long sought complete transparency online and elsewhere, published a total of thirteen documents, one of which outlines the US government’s “NetOps Strategic Vision” for monitoring the Internet. The documents are mostly pulled from 2008, just after when the government reportedly began using PRISM to mine servers at technology companies including Microsoft and Yahoo. An NSA slideshow published Thursday by the Guardian and the Washington Post reveals the intelligence community first gained access to Google in January of 2009 and Facebook in June of the same year. “NetOps will transform along with the Global Information Grid to dynamically support new warfighting, intelligence, and business processes and enable users to access and share trusted information in a timely manner,” one document states. “The future Global Information Grid will result in a richer Net-Centric information environment comprised of shared services and capabilities based on advanced technologies.” “It will be heavily reliant on end-to-end virtual networks to interconnect anyone, anywhere, at any time with any type of information through voice, video, images, or text. It will also be faced with greater security threats that NetOps must help address.” Much of the leak contains vague language that outlines the desired goals of the “NetOps Vision,” not details on how surveillance is conducted or the individuals or groups targeted by the NSA. At least a section of Friday’s information dump was previously made available by the government, according to technology news site ZD Net, which found the data on Web.Archive.org. Anonymous, however, reminded readers to share the documents before the figurative “they” try to make them disappear. “Anonymous has obtained some documents that ‘they’ do not want you to see, and much to ‘their’ chagrin, we have found them, and are giving them to you,” the poster writes. “This is happening in over 35 countries and done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners worldwide. We bring this to you so that you know just how little rights you have.” … Read More
European businessmen the least confident in Chinese economy than ever
Rising labor costs as well as a slowing Chinese economy have eroded the financial results of European companies operating in China, the report said. As a result optimism nosedived to its lowest level since the first survey in 2004. Most businesses were pessimistic about their profitability in China in the next 2 years, with only 29% being optimistic. The economic under-performance of China was a key reason for the prevailing pessimism, Adam Dunnett, secretary general of the European Chamber, told a press conference. “The figures that we’ve seen coming out of the National Bureau of Statistics… have shown… we are in for a longer haul, so I think that has caught some people by surprise that it hasn’t been a sooner recovery,” as France 24 quoted Mr. Dunnet. 2012 was the worst year for the Chinese economy this century, having grown by 7.8%, which was followed by another frustrating 7.7% growth in 1Q 2013. Limitations on market access, coupled with a tricky regulatory environment that sometimes proves to be discriminatory, seem to have become the last straw. “Despite increasing rhetoric from senior Chinese leaders that efforts will be undertaken to transform and level the regulatory environment through allowing greater play to market forces, European companies have so far perceived few concrete changes,” said Davide Cucino, the chamber president. The results of the survey come out amidst rising trade tension between the world’s second largest economy and the EU, the Financial Times says. The tariffs on Chinese solar panels that the European Commission is set to impose comes as the major apple of discord between the two. As soon as next week Karel De Gucht, EU Trade Commissioner, is expected to introduce import tariffs on Chinese solar panels averaging 47%. However, more than a half of the EU remains against the tariff. The other move by the EU that Beijing says is unjustified is an investigation into Chinese telecoms equipment. Should the trade dispute intensify, close commercial ties estimated at about €1bn a day could be put at risk. … Read More
Emergency shutdown at Russia’s Kursk nuclear plant
With the turbine generator switched off, the first power-generating unit of the plant is running at half throttle. Following the protection system malfunction, the radiation environment around the facility – which feeds the grid for central Kursk and 19 other regions – is reportedly normal.“The unit is operating. One of the electric sensors went off, so did the protection system. The turbine generator has been currently working at 50 percent of its capacity. There have been no radioactive risks whatsoever safety-wise. Normal functioning of the automatic system,” Kursk NPP representative Aleksey Suzdalev told RIA Novosti. Kursk NPP is one of Russia’s three biggest nuclear power plants and four biggest electricity producers. It is situated 40 km west of Kursk, a city with a population of 415,000, on the bank of the Seim River near the satellite city Kurchatov, located 3 km from the facility with a population of 42,000. The NPP is a one-circuit plant: The steam supplied to the turbines is produced inside the reactor by the boiling coolant, and for condensing the steam the plant uses water from a 21.5-square-meter cooling pond. The plant operates four RBMK-1000 reactors launched between 1976 and 1985. In total, since going online in 1976, Kursk NPP has produced over 745 billion kWh of energy, according to Russian nuclear monopoly Rosatom. … Read More
Big Bang: Biggest meteorite explosion rocks the Moon
The 40-kg meteorite measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide traveling 56,000 mph slammed through the Moon’s surface on March 17, 2013.The explosion from the impact, glowing like a 4th magnitude star, was so bright that it could have been seen from Earth with the naked eye. However the flash of light lasted only for a second and was rather difficult to detect.Ron Suggs an analyst at the Marshall space flight center was the first to notice the explosion on a digital video recorded by one of the monitoring programs.“It jumped right out at me. It was so bright” he acknowledged.”On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.”It exploded in a flash nearly ten times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.”Unlike Earth, the Moon has no atmosphere to protect it. As there is no oxygen, it poses the question of how they explode.“Lunar meteors don’t require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible. They hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a crater several feet wide. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site,” NASA explains.As the crater from the impact could be as wide as 20 meters, comparing it to the brightness of the explosion might give certain explanations to scientists about “lunar meteor showers”.For the past eight years NASA scientists have been observing the Moon as part of a lunar monitoring program to identify new kinds of space debris that can threaten our planet. The US space agency says that this is a ‘good candidate’ for research.The lunar impact might have been part of a much larger event, Cooke noted. NASA and the University of Western Ontario’s sky cameras detected an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors on Earth. These speeding fireballs rushed along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt. He notes that the Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time and supposes that these two events were connected.The NASA lunar monitoring program began in 2005. “Lunar meteor showers” are quite common, since the beginning of the program scientists have detected more than 300 impacts. According to NASA’s observations, half of all lunar meteors come from known meteoroid streams such as the Perseids and Leonids. The rest are from sporadic space debris.Russia plans to launch its next unmanned mission to the Moon in 2015. It will mark the country’s return to the Earth’s natural satellite after a 40-year hiatus. The Russian space agency has said that three lunar exploration missions will be launched from Cosmodrome Vostochny under construction in the country’s Far East region. The first mission is to be dubbed the ‘Luna-Glob-1’. … Read More
China wants to end World Bank business rankings
China was ranked 91st in ease of doing business, which pointed to the difficulty in paying taxes and the long waits for construction permits as unfavorable business conditions in the world’s second largest economy.The Chinese say the report doesn’t fairly assess fast-growing economies and also has a built-in bias towards regulation.Last autumn, China’s World Bank Deputy Executive Director Bin Han said the report, “used wrong methodologies, failed to reflect facts, misled readers and added little value to China’s improvement of the business environment,” Financial Times quoted.China’s Executive Director at the World Bank, Shaolin Yang, has not yet commented on the crusade against the ratings.Jim Kim, the Korean-American President of the World Bank, set up an independent review of the report, which is chaired by South Africa’s Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, but the impartiality of his panel has raised questions of bias.Jeffery Owens, the former head of tax at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, who is involved in the review process, told FT:“Basically countries that have no labor regulation whatsoever get the best marks,” he said. “The publication does have a deregulating bias which I don’t think can be got rid of without removing the ranking or even the indicators altogether.” Ease of Doing Business- World Bank Global Ranking 1.Singapore 2. New Zealand 3. Hong Kong 4. United States 5. Denmark 6. Norway 7. United Kingdom 8. South Korea 9. Georgia 10. Australia In favor of the report, seeing it as objective and fair, is Simeon Djankov, the former finance minister of Bulgaria who helped established the report in 2004.“If you don’t have the aggregate ranking then you’re going to lose a lot of the immediate contact you have with policy makers,” said Djankov.“The moment you start saying that we’re afraid to publish this report in this way then what is next?”The panel will report their findings at the end of May and Jim Kim will have to either accept or refuse its recommendations“We will make decisions about the report after we get the review, not before,” a spokesman for the bank told FT.Kim, whose first trip to Washington DC was to protest the Bank, became the 12th president of the 185 member lending organization in July 2012, just as the report was being published.In a February interview Kim told RT, “the bank of 20 years ago is very different to the bank today. Today, I have to say, the fundamental values and mission of the bank are completely in line with the work that I’ve done my entire life.”China’s assertiveness over the ranking is a recent example of its challenge to liberal economic paradigms. The report, released in October 2012 ranked the World Bank members on their ease of doing business, from 1-185, using benchmark calculations from June 2012. Singapore came out on top for the seventh consecutive year, and Georgia made its debut into the top ten. Poland jumped the highest in the rankings, with great improvement in property registration, taxes, and contract enforcement in the last year.Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Burundi, Costa Rice, Mongolia, Greece, Serbia, and Kazakhstan were recognized alongside Poland as having most improved ease of business in their countries. The full report can be viewed on the World Bank’s website. … Read More
US counter-terror database jumps to 875,000 names – report
The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database has reached 875,000 names from 540,000 just five years ago, an anonymous official told Reuters. The increase in names is due in part to security agencies using the system more in the wake of the failed 2009 attack on a plane by “underpants bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Detroit. US agencies use the database to build other catalogs of possible terrorists, such as the ‘no-fly’ list. The list is maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. The vast size of TIDE came into the spotlight after last month’s Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Twenty-six-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was proved to have been on the list since 2011, after the CIA received a request from Russian authorities to investigate him for suspected radical Islamist activities.After being put in the TIDE system, Tsarnaev’s name was entered in another database maintained by the Homeland Security Department’s Customs and Border Protection bureau. Tsarnaev was flagged on that database when he left the US for Russia in January 2012, but no alarm was raised.When he returned from Russia six months later, he had been automatically downgraded in the database, as there was no new information requiring that he be placed under further scrutiny.Tsarnaev’s inclusion in the list, as well as the tip-off from the Russian government, prompted many to criticize the US for allowing the alleged terrorist to fall through the cracks.But officials say that simply being listed in TIDE is not enough to justify special attention by law enforcement, and that Tsarnaev was not known to be an active threat.TIDE has been scrutinized in the past for being so large and vague. However, an official familiar with the latest statistics said that the growing database does not mean the information is any less manageable. He said that intelligence agencies have become better at extracting information from the sea of data.But others are less optimistic about the database’s growth, fearing it could have negative consequences on TIDE’s efficiency.”What you want is more focus, not less focus. It can’t be just about quantity. It has to be about specificity,” said Karen Greenberg, expert in counter-terrorism policy at Fordham University. … Read More
NYT’s Beat Sweetener on New Interior Secretary
“Beat sweetener” was written all over John Broder’s April 30 New York Times profile of new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, “a woman of untamed energy, competitiveness and confidence in the boardroom and on a mountain trail.” … Read More
