As things get hotter between Russia and NATO, Putin is waving his nuclear dick around. Russia plans to conduct massive nuclear war maneuvers. Yesterday it successfully tested its new Bulava (“Mace”) submarine launched nuclear missile, hitting its target with complete accuracy with its dummy warheads. Read more…
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One of the most amazing nuclear explosions ever recorded on film
A respiratory illness that almost exclusively infects children and for which there is no vaccine has struck Denver, Colorado, the latest in a series of infection clusters in the Midwest; one Denver hospital alone has treated more than 900 children for the illness since August 18, though no deaths have been reported. Health officials believe that the sickness is related to a rare virus called human enterovirus 68 (HEV68), the [Denver] Post says. HEV68, first seen in California in 1962, and an unwelcome but highly infrequent visitor to communities worldwide since then, is a relative of the virus linked to the common cold (human rhinoviruses, or HRV), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … HEV68, which almost uniquely affects children, tends to first cause cold-like symptoms, including body aches, sneezing and coughing. These mild complaints then worsen into life-threatening breathing problems that are all the more dangerous to children with asthma. Since viruses do not respond to antibiotics, hospitals have treated the illness with asthma therapies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Denver Latest City Hit By Viral Respiratory Infection That Targets Kids
New submitter Prune (557140) writes with a link to a story at The Intercept which might influence the way you look at media coverage of the kind of government activity that deserves rigorous press scrutiny. According to the story, “Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.” Another telling excerpt: On Friday April 27, 2012, he emailed the press office a draft story that he and a colleague, David Cloud, were preparing. The subject line was “this is where we are headed, ” and he asked if “you guys want to push back on any of this.” It appears the agency did push back. On May 2, 2012, he emailed the CIA a new opening to the story with a subject line that asked, “does this look better?” The piece ran on May 16, and while it bore similarities to the earlier versions, it had been significantly softened. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing
Trachman writes: Popular Science magazine recently published an article about a network of cell towers owned not by telecommunication companies but by unknown third parties. Many of them are built around U.S. military bases. “Interceptors vary widely in expense and sophistication – but in a nutshell, they are radio-equipped computers with software that can use arcane cellular network protocols and defeat the onboard encryption. … Some interceptors are limited, only able to passively listen to either outgoing or incoming calls. But full-featured devices like the VME Dominator, available only to government agencies, can not only capture calls and texts, but even actively control the phone, sending out spoof texts, for example.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mysterious, Phony Cell Towers Found Throughout US
If you’ve ever brewed beer commercially in the United States, chances are you’re familiar with a one Kent “Battle” Martin. Because as far as brewers are concerned, he is the Alpha and the Omega of beer labels— without his approval, you’re effectively screwed . Read more…
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Every Beer Label In the Country Is Cleared By Just One Guy
Nicola Hahn (1482985) writes Kim Zetter of Wired Magazine has recently covered Dan Greer’s keynote speech at Black Hat USA. In his lengthy address Greer, representing the CIA’s venture funding arm, suggested that one way that the United States government could improve cyber security would be to use its unparalleled budget to buy up all the underground’s zero-day vulnerabilities. While this would no doubt make zero-day vendors like VUPEN and middlemen like the Grugq very wealthy, is this strategy really a good idea? Can the public really trust the NSA to do the right thing with all those zero-day exploits? Furthermore, recall the financial meltdown of 2008 where the public paid the bill for Wall Street’s greed. If the government pays for information on all these unpatched bugs would society simply be socializing the cost of hi-tech’s sloppy engineering? Whose interests does this “corner-the-market” approach actually serve? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Cornering the Market On Zero-Day Exploits
Although tequila dates back only a few hundred years, people have long used the heart of the agave plant to make delicious, alcoholic beverages. Read more…
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Who Invented Tequila?
linuxwrangler (582055) writes Job interviews missed, work and wedding plans disrupted, children unable to fly home with their adoptive parents. All this disruption is due to a outage involving the passport and visa processing database at the U.S. State Department. The problems have been ongoing since July 19 and the best estimate for repair is “soon.” The system “crashed shortly after maintenance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Passport Database Outage Leaves Thousands Stranded
First time accepted submitter wijnands (874114) writes Star Wars crews have started filming on the small Irish Island of Skellig Michael. This island, listed as a Unesco world heritage site, features the remains of a 6th century monastery as well as breeding populations of puffins , manx shearwaters, storm petrels, guillemots and kittiwakes. Currently the Irish navy has deployed one vessel to maintain a 2 mile exclusion zone around the island. Unesco is now concerned about what is going on the island, which is only visited 13 times a year by tourist groups, and has asked the Irish government for an explanation. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Unesco Probing Star Wars Filming In Ireland
Today I found out about a man who saved over two million lives just by donating his somewhat unique blood plasma . Read more…
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How One Man’s Blood Donations Saved Over Two Million Lives