Standoff Between Egypt’s Army Commander and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi
July 3rd, 2013Update: Egyptian Military Ousts Morsi, Suspends Constitution
Via: Washington Post:
A year after coming to office, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was swept aside by the military leaders who long presided over this country and proved Wednesday in a series of extraordinary maneuvers that they never really left.
President Mohamed Morsi’s dramatic fall from power came after months of political turmoil and days of tense protests, as millions of Egyptians took to the streets to call for his exit. Those protesters were jubilant Wednesday night, celebrating the ouster of a leader they viewed as both autocratic and incompetent.
But Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood supporters were irate, and Morsi himself was adamant that he remained the nation’s president. Aides said early Thursday that he was under house arrest as security forces rounded up at least a dozen top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, shuttered three television stations and surrounded Islamist demonstrators. Troops and tanks fanned out across Cairo, as clashes erupted in several cities.
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Update: Military Coup Under Way???
Via: NBC:
An adviser to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said Wednesday that a military coup was underway, that tanks were on the move outside Cairo and that communication with the president had been cut off.
As a military deadline came and went for Morsi to step aside, the army took control of state television, and boisterous crowds opposed to the regime cheered and danced in Tahrir Square.
Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports Morsi, also said that some of its leaders had been rounded up and arrested.
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Via: Reuters:
Egypt’s army commander and Islamist President Mohamed Mursi each pledged to die for his cause as a deadline neared on Wednesday that will trigger a military takeover backed by protesters.
Military chiefs, vowing to restore order in a country racked by demonstrations over Mursi’s Islamist policies, issued a call to battle in a statement headlined “The Final Hours”. They said they were willing to shed blood against “terrorists and fools” after Mursi refused to give up his elected office.
Less than three hours before an ultimatum was due to expire for Mursi to agree to share power or make way for an army-imposed solution, the president’s spokesman said it was better that he die in defense of democracy than be blamed by history.
In an emotional, rambling midnight television address, Mursi said he was democratically elected and would stay in office to uphold the constitutional order, declaring: “The price of preserving legitimacy is my life.”
Liberal opponents said that showed he had “lost his mind”.
Related: Tahrir Square Live Stream
Approved: HSBC Setttlement for Drug Money Laundering
July 3rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
A federal judge has approved HSBC Holdings Plc’s (HSBA.L)(HBC) record $1.92 billion settlement with federal and state investigators of charges that it flouted rules designed to stop money laundering and thwart transactions with countries under U.S. sanctions.
While noting “heavy public criticism” of the settlement, which enabled HSBC to escape criminal prosecution, U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, called the decision to approve the accord “easy, for it accomplishes a great deal.”
Gleeson ruled on Monday after more than six months of review, rejecting arguments by the U.S. government and HSBC that federal judges lacked “inherent authority” over the approval or implementation of so-called “deferred prosecution agreements.”
The settlement, announced December 11, 2012, included a $1.256 billion forfeiture and $665 million in civil fines.
It resolved charges accusing HSBC of having degenerated into a “preferred financial institution” for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, money launderers and other wrongdoers through what the U.S. Department of Justice called “stunning failures of oversight.”
HSBC acknowledged compliance lapses, including a failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, and conducting transactions on behalf of customers in Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Sudan, which were all subject to U.S. sanctions.
National Intelligence Director Apologizes for Lying to Congress
July 3rd, 2013Via: U.S. News and World Report:
The director of National Intelligence apologized in June to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for lying during a hearing, according to a letter published on the DNI website on Tuesday.
Director James Clapper appeared before the committee in March, where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked him specifically if NSA spies on millions of Americans. Clapper answered, “No.”
Since then, Edward Snowden reportedly leaked government documents that unveiled a secretive government program that did precisely what Wyden suggested in collecting meta data for cell phone and internet records of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Clapper says the intricacy of Wyden’s question – asking for a clarification of “hundreds of millions of dossiers on people” – combined with a need to preserve classified information prompted him to give the wrong answer.
“My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize,” he wrote in the letter to committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “While my staff acknowledged the error to Sen. Wyden’s staff soon after the hearing, I can now openly correct it because the existence of the metadata collection program has been declassified.”
Absurd Giveaway to Corporate Fascists Delayed Until 2015
July 3rd, 2013Via: New York Times:
In a significant setback for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative, the administration on Tuesday abruptly announced a one-year delay, until 2015, in his health care law’s mandate that larger employers provide coverage for their workers or pay penalties. The decision postpones the effective date beyond next year’s midterm elections.
More Temp Workers Than Ever Before
July 2nd, 2013Via: Time:
On June 7, the Labor Department reported that the nation had more temp workers than ever before: 2.7 million. Almost one-fifth of the total job growth since the recession has been in the temp sector. One list of the biggest U.S. employers placed Kelly Services second only to Walmart.
Outsourcing to temp agencies has cut deep into the U.S. job market: 1 in 5 manual laborers who move and pack merchandise is now a temp, as is 1 in 6 team assemblers, who often work at auto plants. This system insulates companies from workers’-compensation claims, unemployment taxes, union drives and the duty to ensure that their workers are legal immigrants. Meanwhile, the temps suffer high injury rates, and many of them endure hours of unpaid waiting and face fees that depress their pay below the minimum wage. Many get by renting rooms in run-down houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes and surviving on food banks and taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have little opportunity for advancement.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Companies Switch to Prepaid Cards for Payroll, Employees Pay Ridiculous Fees
July 1st, 2013Via: New York Times:
A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.
For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.
But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.
Cameras to Monitor Emotional States of Students
July 1st, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review:
Even a good teacher may not always be able to tell, at a glance, which students are quietly struggling and which need more of a challenge. Fortunately, laptops may soon come with enough emotional intelligence built in to do the job for them.
A recent study from North Carolina State University shows how this might work. Researchers there used video cameras to monitor the faces of college students participating in computer tutoring sessions. Using software that had been trained to match facial expressions with different levels of engagement or frustration, the researchers were able to recognize when students were experiencing difficulty and when they were finding the work too easy.
The project suggests a way for technology to help teachers keep track of students’ performance in real time. Perhaps it could even help massively open online courses (or MOOCs), which can involve many thousands of students working remotely, to be more attuned to students’ needs (see “The Crisis in Higher Education”).
It also hints at what could prove to be a broader revolution in the application of emotion-sensing technology. Computers and other devices that identify and respond to emotion—a field of research known as “affective computing”—are starting to emerge from academia.
Washington Post Brushes a Few More Prism Crumbs Onto the Floor
June 30th, 2013Thank you, Master, thank you.
My now familiar and broken-record-response to this thing is to go back to Room 641A last decade if you want a real thrill.
They have beam splitters installed at the peering points. NSA is getting everything. The end.
The media’s repeated ramblings/mantras about the FISA court and protections for Americans are absurd.
For Prism to be a big deal, you’d have to have amnesia, or not understand the implications of those beam splitters. Querying structured data from the regime’s collaborators (Prism) is a tiny piece of what they’re doing.
Ok, so what are some other aspects of the wider surveillance story that I would like to know more about?
One of my long standing theories is that the NSA intercepts represent the front end of something like Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation system. What are they doing with these simulations?
I would like to know more about MAIN CORE.
I’m pretty confident that realtime geolocation data from mobile phones/license plate readers/cameras/??? are being used as a sort of invisible tripwire. If people on the MAIN CORE list happen to stray too close to certain physical locations (critical infrastructure, corporate headquarters, government installations, etc.), that could trigger… shall we say, a variety of responses. This would be very, very trivial to implement.
Is there an automatic mechanism that adds individuals to MAIN CORE? Book purchases, Google searches, websites visited, movie or television watching habits, the number of firearms at a residence???
What is the nature of the quantum computing systems to which NSA has access? Are these one-trick-ponies, like the D-Wave system, or are they the real deal.
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programing…
Via: Washington Post:
These slides, annotated by The Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted.
Student Loan Rates Set To Double On July 1
June 29th, 2013Via: NPR:
The interest rate on government-backed student loans is going to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent Monday.
Republicans, Democrats and the Obama administration could not agree on a plan to keep it from happening. Lawmakers say a deal is still possible after the July 4 recess. But if they don’t agree on a plan soon, 7 million students expected to take out new Stafford loans could be stuck with a much bigger bill when they start paying the money back.
Booz Allen Hamilton to Hire Quantum Information Physicist
June 29th, 2013See: Well, it has been the $64,000 question for a couple of decades: Can NSA break something like PGP?
Via: Clearance Jobs:
Minimum Security Clearance
Clearance
Location
Arlington, Virginia 22201
(map)
Workplace: Not Specified
Travel: Not Specified
Quantum Information Physicist-01127026
Description
Key Role:
Serve as a consultant to government science and technology clients. Contribute to advancing state-of the-art quantum sciences by combining strategic planning and technical analysis. Assist clients with researching and formulating ideas for new research programs. Provide expertise in assessing research proposals for technical merit and proposal objectives. Conduct background research and interface with the research community to evaluate the feasibility of new technologies and assist with the management of high-risk research programs.
Qualifications
Basic Qualifications:
-4+ years of experience with active research
-Experience with research in quantum computing or a related field, including experiment or theory
-Experience with superconductor qubits or related devices, semiconductor qubits or related devices, quantum algorithms, or theoretical quantum information science
-Ability to commute to College Park, MD
-Ability to obtain a security clearance
-PhD degree in Physics
Additional Qualifications:
-Ability to convey complex technical insights to specialist and generalist audiences
-Ability to apply expertise across a wide variety of technical problems
-Possession of excellent oral communication skills
Clearance:
Applicants selected will be subject to a security investigation and may need to meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.
Integrating the full range of consulting capabilities, Booz Allen is the one firm that helps clients solve their toughest problems, working by their side to help them achieve their missions. Booz Allen is committed to delivering results that endure.
We are proud of our diverse environment, EOE, M/F/D/V.
Job : Defense Analysis
Primary Location : United States-Virginia-Arlington
Related: D-Wave Is Probably a Real Quantum Computing One Trick Pony
Research Credit: DF
