4 Gaza Children Killed By Israeli Shelling
July 17th, 2014WARNING: GRAPHIC
Via: Reuters:
Four Palestinian children were killed and one was critically wounded on a Gaza beach on Wednesday by a shell fired by an Israeli naval gunboat, a Palestinian health official said.
Asked about the incident, an Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said he was checking the report.
“The kids were playing football on the beach. They were all … under the age of 15,” said Ahmed Abu Hassera, 22.
“When the first shell hit the land, they ran away but another shell hit them all,” said Abu Hassera, whose shirt was stained with blood.
“It looked as if the shells were chasing them,” he told Reuters.
Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said four of the youngsters were killed and a fifth youth was in critical condition. “This is a cowardly crime,” he said.
Ax Falls at Microsoft as Company Looks to Cut up to 18,000 Jobs
July 17th, 2014Via: Recode:
Microsoft on Thursday announced it plans to cut up to 18,000 jobs this year–its deepest-ever cuts–as the company looked to digest its Nokia acquisition and reposition itself for the future.
Following the Nokia acquisition, completed in April, Microsoft had roughly 127,104 employees, meaning the cuts could reduce nearly 15 percent of its workforce.
Microsoft said the company is “moving now” on 13,000 of the job cuts, with the vast majority of the overall cuts coming in the next six months and fully implemented over the next 12 months.
Some 12,500 of the cuts are coming from the Nokia Devices and Services unit–roughly half that unit’s workforce. The company said it expects pre-tax charges over the next four quarters of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion for severance and other costs.
U.S. Air Force Kicks Off Multibillion Dollar Bomber Competition
July 17th, 2014Via: Reuters:
The U.S. Air Force launched a formal competition on Thursday for a new long-range strike (LRS-B) bomber, saying it expected to award a contract for the multibillion-dollar program to a winning bidder next spring.
“The LRS-B is a top modernization priority for the Air Force. It will be an adaptable and highly capable system based upon mature technology,” Air Force Secretary Deborah James said in a statement.
“We look forward to industry’s best efforts in supporting this critical national security capability,” she added.
The competition is expected to pit Northrop Grumman Corp , the maker of the B-2 bomber, against a combined team of Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp, the two top weapons makers for the U.S. government.
Feds Struggling to Cope With Medical ‘Breakdown’ at the Border
July 17th, 2014Via: ABC News:
The federal government is so overwhelmed by the current tide of migrants crossing the border it can’t provide basic medical screening to all of the children before transporting them – often by air – to longer-term holding facilities across the country, ABC News has learned.
The director of refugee health in the federal Health and Human Services Department “has identified a breakdown of the medical screening processes at the Nogales, Arizona, facility,” according to an internal Department of Defense memo reviewed by ABC News. The “breakdown” a systemic failure of the handoff of these children between CBP and HHS.
Inside the government, officials are sounding alarms, fearing that they and their teams who come in contact with the sick children face potential exposure to infectious diseases from chicken pox to influenza, including rare cases of H1N1, more commonly called swine flu.
Two unaccompanied children were flown from Nogales to California despite having 101-degree fevers and flu-like symptoms, according to the Department of Defense memo. Those children had to be hospitalized.
The memo said pointedly that officials in charge of moving the immigrants from Border Patrol processing centers to Health and Human Services facilities are “putting sick [fevers and coughing] unaccompanied children on airplanes inbound for [Naval Base Ventura County] in addition to the chicken pox and coxsackie virus cases.”
The document said three other kids were in the ICU at local hospitals in California, and two of them were diagnosed with strep pneumonia.
Less than a week later, that same Ventura Naval Base suffered an outbreak of pneumonia and influenza among the unaccompanied minors inside the shelter.
“Preliminary reports indicate that several unaccompanied minors in the shelter had become ill with what appears to be pneumonia and influenza,” according to a statement from the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services.
“Could a Brain Scan Protect U.S. Troops from Insider Attacks?”
July 17th, 2014I wonder if .gov will find domestic uses for this.
How about having to put one of these on to be able to fly?
Are you a loyal American, or a lone wolf terrorist?
Maybe the Magic 8-Ball cap can tell.
Via: DefenseOne:
So, if you’re a U.S. soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan today, how do you determine whether or not the Iraqi or Afghan soldier next to you is going to give up your location to the enemy at the first chance? One solution, developed by a former Army counterintelligence agent, is scanning the brains of Iraqi troops for signs of potential betrayal.
Veritas Scientific, based in Virginia, markets a truth detection system called HandShake for soldiers to diagnose the trust-worthiness of people they may have to work with. The technology was developed by Derrell Small, who served as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent in 2003 and 2004.
Some Pictures Added to Storm Post
July 17th, 2014https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=44370
3D Printed Firearms? *Pfft* Check Out the AK with a Receiver Made from of a $2 Shovel
July 16th, 2014Via: Northeast Shooters:
Receiver came out as straight as Liberace in drag thumbing through gay porn magazines. I do not however discriminate between straight AK receivers and those that chose different orientation.
Research Credit: Pookie
Let’s Start Telling Young People the Whole Truth About College
July 16th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
The idea that college is appropriate—essential, even—for all Americans is a myth. We’ve been told there are no decent jobs without a college education. While unemployment among recent college grads is 8.5 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, if you dig into the numbers you’ll find that 46 percent of them consider themselves “mal-employed.” Translation: They’re working largely in retail and entry-level hospitality, jobs that do not require their college degree.
Legislation Proposed in Australia that Would Jail Journalists for Reporting on Material Released by Goverment Whistleblowers
July 16th, 2014Via: Guardian:
Australian journalists could face prosecution and jail for reporting Snowden-style revelations about certain spy operations, in an “outrageous” expansion of the government’s national security powers, leading criminal lawyers have warned.
A bill presented to parliament on Wednesday by the attorney general, George Brandis, would expand the powers of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), including creation of a new offence punishable by five years in jail for “any person” who disclosed information relating to “special intelligence operations”.
The person would be liable for a 10-year term if the disclosure would “endanger the health or safety of any person or prejudice the effective conduct of a special intelligence operation”.
Special intelligence operations are a new type of operation in which intelligence officers receive immunity from liability or prosecution where they may need to engage in conduct that would be otherwise unlawful.
The bill also creates new offences that only apply to current and former intelligence operatives and contractors in a move which appeared to directly address the risk of documentary disclosures being made following revelations by the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden – whom Brandis has previously labelled a “traitor”.
Israel Firing Experimental Weapons at Gaza’s Civilians, Say Doctors
July 16th, 2014Via: Common Dreams:
Doctors treating patients in Gaza have accused Israel of using experimental weapons on Palestinian civilians.
Addressing reporters at a press conference on Sunday, Youssef Abul Resh, undersecretary of the health ministry in Gaza said, “Medical teams have registered injuries consistent with those caused by DIME [dense inert metal explosives] and other banned weapons.”
He added, “Israel has mercilessly targeted Palestinian civilians leaving many of them with life-threatening injuries and future handicaps.”
In the last week, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 190 people, eighty percent of them civilians, including at least 34 children.
Using Gaza as a laboratory
DIME munitions were developed by the US Air Force in 2006 and have since been tested repeatedly on the people of Gaza, who have long served as involuntary lab rats for Israel’s weapons industry.
DIME bombs contain tungsten, a cancer-causing metal that helps to produce incredibly destructive blasts which slice through flesh and bone, often decapitating the lower limbs of people within the blast radius.
Renowned Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who witnessed the horrific injuries caused by DIME bombs during Israel’s 2009 Gaza onslaught, told The Electronic Intifada over the phone from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that patients are showing up with DIME-related injuries.
“A good number of the injuries seen here are consistent with the use of dense inert metal explosives, or DIME, that we saw during the 2009 attack and also in 2006,” said Gilbert. “The bodies are pretty much destroyed by enormous energy released by the explosives that are shot near them or at them.”
Gilbert first witnessed the effects of DIME munitions on the human body during Operation Summer Rains, Israel’s 2006 months-long attack on the Gaza Strip that killed more than four hundred Palestinians. “Large chunks of flesh, of muscles were cut away. We didn’t find any shrapnel and [the wounds] were delivering a strange fume. Gradually we came to understand these must have been the new DIME weapons developed by the US Air Force together with the Israelis.”
Research Credit: almaverdad2
