Tick Bites That Trigger Severe Meat Allergy on Rise Around the World
October 6th, 2016Via: Guardian:
People living in tick-endemic areas around the world are being warned of an increasingly prevalent, potentially life-threatening side effect to being bitten: developing a severe allergy to meat.
The link between tick bites and meat allergies was first described in 2007, and has since been confirmed around the world.
Sufferers of “tick-induced mammalian meat allergy” will experience a delayed reaction of between two and 10 hours after eating red meat. Almost invariably, they are found to have been bitten by a tick – sometimes as much as six months before.
National Guard, State Police Descend on 81-Year-Old’s Property to Seize Single Pot Plant
October 6th, 2016Via: Daily Hampshire Gazette:
All that remains of the solitary marijuana plant an 81-year-old grandmother had been growing behind her South Amherst home is a stump and a ragged hole in the ground.
Margaret Holcomb said she was growing the plant as medicine, a way to ease arthritis and glaucoma and help her sleep at night. Tucked away in a raspberry patch and separated by a fence from any neighbors, the plant was nearly ready for harvest when a military-style helicopter and police descended on Sept. 21.
In a joint raid, the Massachusetts National Guard and State Police entered her yard and cut down the solitary plant in what her son, Tim Holcomb, said was a “pretty shocking” action — one that he argues constitutes unlawful surveillance and illegal search and seizure.
“It’s scary as hell,” said Tim Holcomb.
Russia Launches Massive Nuclear War Training Exercise
October 6th, 2016Via: Independent:
The Russian government has launched a nationwide civil defence training exercise to ensure the country is properly prepared in the event of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack from the West.
Amid growing international tensions, particulary over Russia’s conduct in Syria, the Defence Ministry-run Zvezda TV network announced last week: “Schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow.”
Lasting three days, the exercise bing run by the Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) will involve 200,000 emergency personnel and the co-operation of 40 million civilians.
FBI Arrests NSA Contractor
October 5th, 2016Via: The Atlantic:
The FBI arrested a National Security Agency contractor in late August for stealing classified material from the intelligence organization, according to court documents unsealed Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors have charged Harold Thomas Martin III, 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials. Martin had a top-secret national security clearance, according to Justice Department officials.
On August 27, police searched Martin’s home, two storage sheds, and his car and found hard-copy documents and information stored on electronic devices, according to the criminal complaint. “A large percentage of the materials recovered from Martin’s residence and vehicle bore markings indicating that they were property of the U.S. government and contained highly classified information,” the complaint says.
Prosecutors say Martin initially denied having taken the materials, but later “stated that he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized.”
Not OK, Google
October 5th, 2016Via: Tech Crunch:
At its hardware launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Alphabet showed the sweeping breadth of its ambition to own consumers’ personal data, as computing continues to accelerate away from static desktops and screens, coalescing into a cloud of connected devices with the potential to generate far more data — and data of a far more intimate nature — than ever before.
…
The scope of Alphabet’s ambition for the Google brand is clear: it wants Google’s information organizing brain to be embedded right at the domestic center — i.e. where it’s all but impossible for consumers not to feed it with a steady stream of highly personal data.
Outage Knocks Out All Major Phone Providers on the East Coast
October 5th, 2016Via: Daily Dot:
Every major phone carrier experienced outages on United States’ east coast this morning from about 11:00am local time until around 11:45am.
DownDetector.com, which tracks technology failure, illustrated the precipitous collapse of major networks.
More: Outage at Level 3
Homeland Security Tracks License Plates At Gun Shows
October 5th, 2016Via: ZeroHedge:
Newly discovered emails from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reveal efforts of the federal government to track American citizens who visit gun shows across the country. The discovery came via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Wall Street Journal that revealed internal emails from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent requesting the support of local California police officers to “deploy license plate readers” at a 2010 gun show in Del Mar, California.
In an email titled “Request for Assistance,” an ICE investigator wrote, “We would like to see if you can support an outbound guns/ammo operation on (redacted) at the Crossroads (Del Mar) Gun Show. We would like to deploy license plate readers.” The email, whose sender and recipient are redacted, includes a large section of operational details that are also redacted.
According to the emails, the program was intended to collect license plate data from gun shows and then cross reference that data with border crossings in an attempt to identify gun runners. Of course, the program has drawn criticism from gun rights organizations across the country who argue that this form of mass surveillance draws undue suspicion to people who happen to engage in two completely legal activities.
Pacific Garbage Patch Far Worse than Previously Thought
October 5th, 2016Via: Guardian:
The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.
A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the “great Pacific garbage patch”, located between Hawaii and California.
The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated.
Obama DOJ Drops Charges Against Arms Dealer After Threat to Expose Hillary Clinton’s Libya Role
October 4th, 2016Via: Politico:
The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.
Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.
The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.
Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi’s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case.
A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants.
WH spokesman dings Filipino president’s latest Obama jab
“They don’t want this stuff to come out because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election,” said the associate.
Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence
October 4th, 2016Via: Reuters:
Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company complied with a classified U.S. government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.
Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.
It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.
