US Scientists Boycott Nasa Conference Over China Ban

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Nasa is facing an extraordinary backlash from US researchers after it emerged that the space agency has banned Chinese scientists, including those working at US institutions, from a conference on grounds of national security.

Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency’s Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building.

The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals’ access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.

But the ban has angered many US scientists who say Chinese students and researchers in their labs are being discriminated against. A growing number of US scientists have now decided to boycott the meeting in protest, with senior academics withdrawing individually, or pulling out their entire research groups.

The conference is being held for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope programme, which has been searching the cosmos for signs of planets beyond our solar system. The meeting is the most important event in the academic calendar for scientists who specialise in the field.

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NSA and GCHQ Target Tor Network that Protects Anonymity of Web Users

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Photo Credit: Felix Clay

Photo Credit: Felix Clay

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

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‘We’re Winning’: Ted Cruz on the Latest in Washington Amid the ‘Government Shutdown’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) told Glenn Beck during a radio interview Thursday that conservatives are “winning” the battle in Washington over Obamacare and the “government shutdown.”

“We’re winning the debate,” the senator remarked. “That’s why they are scared and they are attacking us. The more shrill it gets, the more scared they are.”

Cruz — one of the lawmakers who led the effort to defund Obamacare, and brought the issue to the forefront during a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor last week — referenced a Shakespeare quote that the lady “doth protest too much.”

“Why are they screaming so loudly? Why are they so personal? Why are they so filled with hate and fear? It’s because the American people are mobilized, are passionate and energized,” he said. “And even worse, [they] understand that Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans, and that has the left terrified out of their minds.”

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Obama Just Played His Big ‘Trump Card’ On The Debt Ceiling

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Early Thursday morning, Potomac Research Group analyst Greg Valliere predicted that if the debt-ceiling deadline grew closer, President Barack Obama would play his “trump card” in the debate. He would remind seniors that if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, seniors wouldn’t get their Social Security checks.

“GOP strategists like Karl Rove surely know that it’s just a matter of time before President Obama throws a game-changer — warning senior citizens that their Social Security checks won’t be mailed because of John Boehner,” Valliere wrote in a note to clients.

A few hours later, Obama did just that during a speech at M. Luis Construction Company in Rockville, Md. He spent much of the speech warning that while the ongoing government shutdown was damaging, failure to raise the debt ceiling by an Oct. 17 deadline would be even worse.

“In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown — if we don’t raise the debt ceiling — they don’t go out on time,” Obama said. “In a government shutdown, disability benefits still arrive on time. In an economic shutdown, they don’t.”

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Rand Paul Caught on a Hot Mic – What He Really Feels About Democrats and Their Shutdown Rhetoric

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Screen shot 2013-10-04 at 1.13.38 AMA local Kentucky TV news station caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday morning discussing some congressional Republican messaging strategy regarding the showdown with Democrats over the government shutdown.

“I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise. We’re willing to negotiate,” Paul is seen on-camera telling McConnell, who is standing by for his own interview remote from D.C. “I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

“Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,” McConnell said back.

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Treasury: Under Obama, U.S Gov’t Debt Held by Public Up 90%

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Treasury released its last Daily Treasury Statement for fiscal 2013 yesterday afternoon, revealing that during the presidency of Barack Obama the U.S. government debt held by the public has increased 90 percent.

At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the U.S. government debt held by the public was $6,307,311,000,000, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for that day.

At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013—the last day of fiscal 2013—the Daily Treasury Statement said the U.S. government debt held by the public was $11,976,279,000,000.

The $11,976,279,000,000 in U.S. government debt held by the public on Sept. 30, 2013 was $5,668,968,000,000 more than the $6,307,311,000,000 in debt held by the public on Obama’s first inauguration day.

That is an increase of 89.879 percent—or approximately 90 percent.

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Democrats’s Shutdown Is Refusal To Face The American People

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memorial closedWe’ve heard stories of Democrats attempting to shut down Mount Vernon and many other privately funded and run parks. They want the shutdown for use as a weapon, to “hurt and rescue” the American people. Case in point: Canyon Voyages Adventure Company.

Don Oblak’s Moab, Utah-based Canyon Voyages Adventure Co. depends on the Colorado River, which winds through breathtaking ravines in the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

But national parks will have to remain closed during any government shutdown. The Bureau of Land Management has told Oblak that he would not have access to rivers on its lands.

That means he’d have to cancel kayak and whitewater trips on the river, his core business.

Oblak fears that if the government shuts down even for a short time, it will affect his business for the entire month of October because his clients will cancel their trips. If that happens, he’d have to furlough all 25 employees at Canyon Voyages and cancel pre-sold tours. Combined with lost sales from his retail store, a lengthy shutdown could lead to an estimated $200,000 loss.

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IRS Sued By The National Organization For Marriage For Leaking Tax Information

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) filed suit against the federal government and the Internal Revenue Service Thursday, claiming it had “irrefutable proof” someone within the agency illegally leaked the conservative organization’s confidential tax returns to its ideological opponents last year.

NOM is seeking damages from the disclosure, as well as to overturn a statute shielding the IRS from disclosing any information about the incident, according to a complaint filed by the Act Right Legal Foundation on behalf of NOM in the Eastern District of Virginia Thursday.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) obtained the NOM’s 2008 tax returns in February 2012, which contained an unredacted list of donors, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The president of the HRC became a national co-chair for the Obama reelection campaign in 2012 a day later.

NOM Chairman John Eastman said the group was able to remove redaction layers from the PDF documents that were leaked, showing that they came from within the IRS. The unauthorized disclosure of tax information is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

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California Grants Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli

Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli

California’s governor signed a bill Thursday granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, in a decision immigrant rights groups hailed as a major step forward for their movement.

The country’s largest state becomes the latest to reverse course and grant legal driving privileges to illegal immigrants.

“No longer are undocumented people in the shadows. They are alive and well and respected in the State of California,” Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said as he signed the measure in Los Angeles.

The state has until the beginning of 2015 to set up the new licenses, but Mr. Brown said when they are in effect, the state will be safer.

Mr. Brown still has several other major immigration bills pending on his desk that he must sign or reject by Oct. 13, including one that would let local police ignore immigration authorities who ask that dangerous criminals be held for transfer to the federal government.

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Part Three: FMCS Executives Forced Whistleblower to Retract Fraud Complaint

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service employees’ use of purchase cards amounted to rampant violation of federal procurement law, specialists say, and when an employee wrote to the General Services Administration to ask for a compliance review, the agency director and another top official forced her to send a “retraction,” according to documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

The FMCS is a small agency whose sole purpose is to mediate labor-management conflicts.

When accountant Carol Booth became concerned about luxury goods being delivered to employees’ homes, spending on unnecessary services and indifference to federal regulations, she sought help from the GSA, which oversees federal purchase cards, writing that “it has come to my attention that we, the FMCS, have violated several rules, regulations and/or laws concerning the government-issued purchase card program.”

That infuriated FMCS director George H. Cohen and chief financial officer Frances L. Leonard, who together sought to evade outside scrutiny by helping compose a retraction to which Booth would sign her name…

Part three of a five-part Washington Examiner series, “Just Sign Here: Federal Workers Max Out at Taxpayer Expense.” See the entire series — and FMCS workers’ salaries — at this link.

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