Article:

Soldier jailed for leaking state secrets is suspended from recreational activities in army prison after magazines, books and expired toothpaste were confiscated

 Chelsea Manning has been found guilty of possessing unapproved reading material by a panel at Fort Leavenworth prison but will be spared the indefinite solitary confinement that had reportedly been among her possible sentences, according to a tweet sent from her official account.

 Same-sex marriage isn't equality for all LGBT people. Our movement can't end | Chelsea Manning Read more

 Instead the prison board ruled during a disciplinary hearing held on Tuesday that Manning will face 21 days of restrictions on her recreational activities, including no access to a gym, a library or the outdoors.

 Manning was given a 35-year sentence for leaking US state secrets to WikiLeaks.

 “I was found guilty of all four charges at today’s board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation – no gym, library or outdoors,” announced a tweet sent from Manning’s official Twitter account, @xychelsea.

 Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today's board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation--no gym, library or outdoors.

 A petition of more than 100,000 signatures was delivered to the US army liaison office in Congress on Tuesday asking that the charges against Manning be dropped.

 Chase Strangio, Manning’s attorney at the ACLU, said after the verdict that Manning was “so thankful for the thousands of people from around the world who let the government know that we are watching and scrutinizing what happens to her behind prison walls”.

 “It was no doubt this support that kept [Chelsea] out of solitary confinement,” said Strangio.

 Manning was accused of “disrespect”, “disorderly conduct” and other violations under the rules of the Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas where she is serving her sentence.

 She was also charged with “medicine misuse” after a search of her cell on 9 July uncovered an expired tube of toothpaste.

 “A tube of anti-cavity toothpaste, MKIC, was found in your possession past its expiration date of 9 April 2015. You are involved in violation of ACC Policy Letter 16, using, possessing, handling or storing of medicine, except as authorized by the facility medical staff. Failure to take medication as prescribed by medical staff,” read the charging documents, which were also shared on Manning’s twitter account.

 According to Manning other items confiscated from her cell included the memoir I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, a novel featuring trans women called A Safe Girl to Love, the LGBT publication Out Magazine, the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair and a copy of Cosmopolitan that included an interview with Manning.

 Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) This is the official inventory of confiscated books and magazines. pic.twitter.com/MvlaU2UmbL

 Her lawyers said they had been barred from Tuesday’s four-hour hearing and that prior to the hearing Manning was barred from accessing the prison’s library.

 Strangio said the fact that Manning faced the disciplinary board without counsel sets a “concerning precedent” for the remainder of her incarceration.

 “Not only does this punishment mean the immediate loss of library and recreation for Chelsea, but she also will carry these infractions through her parole and clemency process and will be held longer in the more restrictive custody where she is now incarcerated,” said Strangio.

 Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) Now these convictions will follow me thru to any parole/clemency hearing forever. Was expecting to be in min custody in Feb, now years added

 “No one should have to face the lingering threat of solitary confinement for reading and writing about the conditions we encounter in the world. Chelsea’s voice is critical to our public discourse about government accountability and trans justice and we can only preserve it if we stay vigilant in our advocacy on her behalf.” ||||| Chelsea Manning has been found guilty of four prison infractions and is facing 21 days of restrictions. The transgender Army private is serving time for leaking national security secrets. USA TODAY

 Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then-Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on June 5, 2013. (Photo: Patrick Semansky, AP)

 Chelsea Manning, the transgender Army private convicted of leaking national security secrets, was found guilty on Tuesday of four prison infractions. She will spend three weeks without being able to go outdoors, among other activities, she said on Twitter and her lawyer confirmed for USA Today.

 Manning, 27, tweeted details of the ruling late Tuesday, saying, "I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today's board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation — no gym, library or outdoors."

 I was found guilty of all 4 charges @ today's board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation--no gym, library or outdoors. — Chelsea Manning (@xychelsea) August 18, 2015

 She was charged with disrespect of a prison officer and accused of having books and magazines, including Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan, among other offenses. Prison documents noted that the Cosmopolitan issue included an interview with Manning and the Vanity Fair had Caitlyn Jenner on the cover.

 Manning's lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, confirmed the restrictions to USA TODAY via an e-mail and said Manning is grateful to her supporters, but added that it sets a "concerning precedent" that Manning had to face the disciplinary board for four hours without counsel.

 "Not only does the punishment mean the immediate loss of library and recreation for Chelsea, but she also will carry these infractions through her parole and clemency process and will be held longer in the more restrictive custody where she is now incarcerated," Strangio wrote. "No one should have to face the lingering threat of solitary confinement for reading and writing about the conditions we encounter in the world. Chelsea's voice is critical to our public discourse about government accountability and trans justice and we can only preserve it if we stay vigilant in our advocacy on her behalf."

 Manning's lawyers said last week that she was being harassed.

 In an earlier email, the ACLU said Manning was charged with disrespect for requesting a lawyer when she felt she was being accused of misconduct. Other charges included disorderly conduct for sweeping food on the floor, possessing an expired tube of toothpaste and possessing "prohibited property" — some of them documents pertaining to trans rights and government transparency, including the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture.

 "This kind of action has the potential to chill Chelsea's speech and silence her altogether," Strangio told USA TODAY.

 Manning could have faced indefinite solitary confinement, the ACLU said.

 The closed hearing was held at the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where Manning is serving her sentence. Officials at Fort Leavenworth and the U.S. Army could not be immediately reached late Tuesday.

 On Twitter, Manning supporters reacted to the development. Bernardo Jurema, a research associate at Freie Universitat Berlin who tweets as @bermajurema, said: "They say Snowden should come home and face a fair trial," referring to Edward Snowden, former government contractor now living in Russia after leaking information about the National Security Agency. "Look how well that's turning out for Chelsea Manning."

 When arrested in May 2010, Chelsea Manning was intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. He was accused of violating the Espionage Act after releasing to the Wikileaks website about 700,000 classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents. Charges against Manning ultimately included aiding the enemy, which could have brought the death sentence.

 Manning pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the charges and months later was convicted of more charges, but acquitted of aiding the enemy.

 The day after Manning was sentenced, defense lawyers issued a press release announcing that Manning was a female and asked that she be referred to as Chelsea.

 Manning later sought hormone therapy and to be able to live as a woman. Transgender individuals were not allowed to serve in the U.S. military, and the Defense Department did not provide such treatment. The Army approved Manning's treatment early this year.

 Last month, Defense Secretary Ash Carter issued a memo to top military brass and civilians outlining his plan to protect transgender troops from being discharged and directing officials to develop a plan within six months to incorporate those troops into the ranks.

 Contributing: Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1NDVKgL |||||
What is a summary?

– Chelsea Manning has been banned from going outside or using the Fort Leavenworth prison library for 21 days after being found guilty of prison infractions including having an expired tube of toothpaste and the Caitlyn Jenner issue of Vanity Fair. The punishment is minor compared to the indefinite solitary confinement she could have been sentenced to, but her ACLU lawyer tells USA Today that the Army private will "carry these infractions through her parole and clemency process and will be held longer in the more restrictive custody where she is now incarcerated." The lawyer says it sets a "concerning precedent" that Manning wasn't allowed to have legal counsel during the hearing, which lasted four hours. The "convictions will follow me thru to any parole/clemency hearing forever. Was expecting to be in min custody in Feb, now years added," said a tweet from Manning's official account. Ahead of the hearing, a petition with more than 100,000 signatures seeking the dismissal of the charges was dropped off at the Army liaison office in Congress, and Manning's lawyer says it was that support that kept her from getting solitary, the Guardian reports.


A scheduling glitch that allowed American Airlines pilots to take vacation at the same time has left thousands of flights during the busy holiday travel period next month without pilots assigned to them.

 American Airlines, the largest U.S. airline, is now offering pilots 150 percent of hourly pay to work those dates, an airline spokesman said.

 The scheduling problem has left flights from some of American Airlines' biggest hubs without pilots including Miami, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago's O'Hare and New York's LaGuardia Airport, without pilots, according to a memo from the airline to pilots, which was seen by CNBC.

 The union estimates some 15,000 flights next month don't have pilots assigned to fly them.

 Pilots loaded up their schedules with flights in early December but many opted to take days off around the holidays, after the system allowed it.

 "The airline is a 24/7 op," said Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and a spokesman for the pilot's union. "The system went from responsibly scheduling everybody to becoming Santa Claus to everyone.

 "The computer said, 'Hey ya'll. You want the days off? You got it.'"

 American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said the airline's employees are "working diligently to address the issue and expect to avoid cancellations this holiday season.

 "We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150 percent of their hourly rate — as much as we are allowed to pay them per the contract," he said. "We will work with the APA to take care of our pilots and ensure we get our customers to where they need to go over the holidays."

 The Allied Pilots Association, which represents some 15,000 American Airlines pilots, said the airline notified the union about a problem with the pilots' schedule bidding system last Friday.

 The union has filed a grievance, saying the airline's solution violates the pilots' contract because of how the airline restricted overtime pay.

 Budget airline Ryanair in September canceled some 2,000 flights, stranding thousands of travelers, due to pilot scheduling problems.

 It was unclear how much the scheduling problem will cost American Airlines, if anything. But higher labor costs have concerned investors in the past. American Airlines shares tumbled after the airline announced pay raises for pilots and flight attendants earlier this year.

 Shares of American Airlines gave up earlier gains after reports of the glitch, ending the day up less than 0.1 percent. Competitor United Airlines rose 3.2 percent, while Delta Air Lines added 3 percent. ||||| Oops, no pilots! Snafu puts thousands of American Airlines holiday flights in peril

 CLOSE Just in time for the holidays, a computer glitch could cause 15,000 American Airlines flights to be pilotless. USA TODAY

 UPDATE: The Grinch may not steal Christmas at American Airlines, after all. American says the staffing snafu caused by a glitch in its pilot scheduling system is nearly resolved. (More: Read the latest update to this story here)

 ORIGINAL POST: American Airlines pilots are warning that as many as 15,000 holiday flights face staffing issues because of a scheduling snafu, which the carrier said has been fixed.

 “On Friday, management disclosed a failure within the pilot schedule bidding system. As a result, thousands of flights currently do not have pilots assigned to fly them during the upcoming critical holiday period,” the Allied Pilots Association (APA) that represents American’s pilots said in a message to members via its website.

 The glitch affected the system in which pilots modify their flight assignments, inadvertently allowing them to drop flights that needed to be staffed during the busy holiday period.

 "The system went from responsibly scheduling everybody to becoming Santa Claus to everyone," APA spokesman Dennis Tajer said to CNBC. "The computer said, 'Hey ya'll. You want the days off? You got it.'"

 American has said the problem has been fixed and that the company does not expect continued issues.

 “We are working diligently to address the issue and expect to avoid cancellations this holiday season," American spokesman Matt Miller said to USA TODAY's Today in the Sky blog. "We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150% of their hourly rate – as much as we are allowed to pay them per the contract."

 However, the APA has already filed a grievance about that idea, saying the company’s proposed solution violates its contract because American “unilaterally invoked a solution for crewing affected flights.” The union added: "By not including APA in developing collaborative solutions to this critical holiday scheduling failure, management’s actions contrast with their handling of previous scheduling failures involving other work groups."

 BY THE NUMBERS: The fleet and hubs of American Airlines, by the numbers (story continues below)

 The pilots’ union estimated that when the problem was discovered late last week, about 19,000 cockpit seats were left empty.

 “This is a potential crisis that we see well in advance,” Capt. Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the union, said to The Associated Press. “This is very unusual.”

 As a result of the glitch, the pilots’ union says about 15,000 flights were scheduled without a captain, a co-pilot or both.

 The airline was seeking late-December pilot staffing at a number of its hubs, according to a scheduling memo sent by American to its pilots in the wake of the glitch. Dallas/Fort Worth, Charlotte, New York LaGuardia, Chicago O’Hare and Philadelphia were all among the airports where American was offering extra pay in the latter part of the month, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Today in the Sky.

 American declined to confirm the number of flights initially affected, but spokesman Miller said the company was doing everything it could to get the staffing situation resolved.

 "We will work with the APA to take care of our pilots and ensure we get our customers to where they need to go over the holidays," he said to Today in the Sky.

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 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2zBzOT1 ||||| Airline representatives declined to say how many of the carrier's 15,000 pilots were allowed to take time off for the holiday. But the number was high enough that the carrier had to quickly adopt several new measures to keep its holiday flights on schedule. ||||| A scheduling glitch has left American Airlines without enough pilots and staff during the busy December travel period, the airline's pilot union said on Wednesday.

 The Allied Pilots Association (APA) that represents pilots at the country's largest airline said in a statement that it was notified Friday by the carrier of "a failure within the pilot schedule bidding system. As a result, thousands of flights currently do not have pilots assigned to fly them during the upcoming critical holiday period.".

 American Airlines said it is working diligently to address the issue and expects to "avoid cancellations this holiday season."

 "We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150 percent of their hourly rate -- as much as we are allowed to pay them per the contract. We will work with the APA to take care of our pilots and ensure we get our customers to where they need to go over the holidays," American Airlines (AAL) spokesman Matt Miller said in a statement.

 But the pilots' union is urging crews not to take these assignments because they might violate the union contract.

 "While the overtime is legal, the way they're doling out is not in compliance with our contract," said Capt. Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the APA in an interview with CNN. "The contract is important, but the most important of this is ensuring our passengers are taken care of...but this is going to require a partnership to solve it, regardless of what the rules are."

 Miller said American's leadership spoke to the APA Wednesday afternoon to hammer out a resolution to the staffing shortage.

 The airline declined to say how many flights might be impacted by the staff shortages. American has about 200,000 flights scheduled for December and operates on average 6,700 daily. The scheduling issues predominant affect the second half of December around the holidays when a computer system inadvertently gave pilots the opportunity to withdraw from flying. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– An airline pilots union says a computer glitch at American Airlines left approximately 15,000 scheduled flights during the busy December holiday travel season without a captain, co-pilot, or both, USA Today reports. The Allied Pilots Association tells CNN it learned about "a failure within the pilot scheduling bidding system" last Friday. "Thousands of flights currently do not have pilots assigned to fly them during the upcoming critical holiday period," the APA states. According to the Los Angeles Times, a computer error let too many pilots get time off for the holidays. Or as American Airlines Capt. Dennis Tajer puts it to CNBC: "The system went from responsibly scheduling everybody to becoming Santa Claus to everyone. The computer said, 'Hey ya'll. You want the days off? You got it.'" American Airlines, which isn't confirming the number of affected flights, says it has fixed the glitch and is working to avoid canceling holiday flights. "We have reserve pilots to help cover flying in December, and we are paying pilots who pick up certain open trips 150% of their hourly rate," an American Airlines spokesperson says. This December is expected to be one of the busiest holiday travel seasons in years. Thanksgiving already saw a 3% increase in travelers over 2016.


Summarize this article:

Story highlights O'Grady on Tuesday declined to comment to CNN on the postings

 Secret Service personnel on multiple occasions have rushed to protect Trump

 Washington (CNN) The Secret Service said Tuesday it is taking "appropriate action" after one of its agents suggested on Facebook that she would not defend President Donald Trump should someone try to shoot him.

 Kerry O'Grady, a senior agent in the Denver field office, made a series of now-deleted postings on Facebook during the campaign saying that she supported Democrat Hillary Clinton and that she would not honor a federal law that prevents agents like her from airing their political beliefs publicly. O'Grady deleted the posts shortly after The Washington Examiner reported them on Tuesday.

 "As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median," she wrote in one Facebook post, as reported by the Examiner. "To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides."

 "But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her," she wrote.

 The Secret Service said in a statement Tuesday that it could not comment on a specific personnel matter but that it was "aware of the postings and the agency is taking quick and appropriate action."

 Read More ||||| A senior U.S. Secret Service agent posted Facebook condemnations of President Trump during the past seven months, including one in which she said she wouldn't want to "take a bullet" for him.

 She explained herself saying she viewed his presidential candidacy as a "disaster" for the country, and especially for women and minorities.

 Kerry O'Grady, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Denver district, oversees coordination with Washington-based advance teams for all presidential candidate and presidential trips to the area, including all upcoming or future trips by the president, vice president or Trump administration officials.

 Subscribe today to get intelligence and analysis on defense and national security issues in your Inbox each weekday morning from veteran journalists Jamie McIntyre and Jacqueline Klimas. Sorry, there was a problem processing your email signup. Please try again later. Processing... Thank you for signing up for the Daily on Defense newsletter. You should receive your first issue soon!

 Despite her senior security role, she has made her disdain for Trump and his incoming administration clear to her Facebook followers, who included current and former Secret Service agents and other people who were employees at the time of the posts. O'Grady's posts triggered at least one complaint to the office that oversees investigations into Secret Service misbehavior, two knowledgeable sources told the Washington Examiner.

 In one Facebook post O'Grady wrote at 11:07 p.m. on a Sunday in October, she endorsed Hillary Clinton and said she would endure "jail time" rather than "taking a bullet" for what she regarded as a "disaster" for America.

 The post didn't mention Trump by name but clearly referred to him.

 In the same post, she mentioned the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch staff, except the president, vice president and some other senior executive officials, from engaging in certain political activities.

 "As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median," she wrote. "To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides.

 "But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her."

 Secret Service employees are among those federal employees subject to enhanced Hatch Act restrictions, including these two rules:

 May not post a comment to a blog or a social media site that advocates for or against a partisan political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.

 May not use any email account or social media to distribute, send or forward content that advocates for or against a partisan political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.

 Asked for comment, the U.S. Secret Service responded: "The USSS is aware of the postings and we are looking into the matter."

 In a lengthy interview with the Washington Examiner Monday, O'Grady said she took down the post after two to three days of greater reflection and wasn't trying to imply she wouldn't take a bullet for Trump or any officials in the Trump administration.

 "It was an internal struggle for me but as soon as I put it up, I thought it was not the sentiment that I needed to share because I care very deeply about the mission," she said.

 O'Grady repeatedly stressed that she would in no way shirk her duties to protect the president because of her opposition to Trump's candidacy and support for Clinton.

 "No, not at all. I firmly believe in this job. I'm proud to do it and we serve the office of the president," she said.

 At the time of the posting, she said she was reacting to news about Trump sexually assaulting women. O'Grady's Facebook post came in the wake of the release of a video in which Trump and "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush engaged in a lewd conversation about women in which Trump bragged about being able to grab women by their genitals.

 O'Grady said she had experienced sexual assault in college and "there was a very emotional reaction to what was said."

 "But I recognize that the agency is the most important thing to me. My government is the most important thing to me," she said. "I serve at the pleasure of the president, but I still have the First Amendment right to say things."

 O'Grady's negative stance regarding Trump did not end when he became president.

 O'Grady posted the logo for the Women's March on Denver as her Facebook cover backdrop on Inauguration Day, Friday, Jan. 21 at 12:25 p.m.

 When one of her Facebook followers commented that "none of these women represent me #justsayin," O'Grady countered that "all of these women represent me! Proud to say it! #nasty." That back and forth, captured in a screengrab of the post, no longer appears on O'Grady's Facebook page.

 Women anti-Trump activists have taken on the label of "nasty woman" to demonstrate their opposition to him. The phrase is a reference to Trump's remark calling Clinton "such a nasty woman" in the final moments of the presidential debate in late October.

 At 11:23 p.m. on Inauguration Day, she updated her profile picture to an artist's rendering of Princess Leia with the words, "A woman's place is in the resistance." "The resistance," with its allusion to the rebels in the "Star Wars" movies, has become a moniker for those opposing Trump's presidency.

 Those posts remained on O'Grady's Facebook page as of Monday afternoon. She took the posts down after her interview with the Washington Examiner and replaced them with a backdrop of a snowy scene and a smiling photo of herself sporting ski gear.

 The Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General, which investigates agency complaints of misbehavior, received a complaint about O'Grady's Facebook posts on Oct. 11, a source said.

 It's unclear whether the Secret Service explicitly bans agents and other employees from engaging in political speech on social media or has written rules prohibiting it.

 But in operational security training, instructors have long warned agents or would-be agents against the use of social media because it can make them vulnerable to threats by exposing their personal information and their movements, according to two knowledgeable sources.

 In another pre-election post that no longer appears on her Facebook page, O'Grady shared a Huffington Post story with the headline: "Scott Baio Defends Trump's Sexism with More Sexism." She accompanied her Facebook post of the story with the words: "One word: douche. How do you like them apples?!"

 In a post in late November, O'Grady shared Facebook remarks from the liberal news outlet Vox, which carried a photo of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and a story with the headline, "Donald Trump nominates Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general." The Vox Facebook post commented, "Just a few years ago, this would have been unimaginable."

 O'Grady added her own comment on the post: "We are moving our civil rights into a period of bigotry, misogyny and racism that this country has not tolerated for decades. Dark ages. I am horrified and dismayed beyond words."

 O'Grady appears to have removed the pre-election posts after fellow and former Secret Service agents complained to her supervisors and the Office of the Inspector General, according to two sources familiar with the timing of the posts' removal.

 At publishing time, O'Grady released the following statement:

 "I serve this country with pride and I proudly diligently and fiercely protect and support the institutions and pillars of our republic established by the very same document that allows my free expression. I do so with every fiber of my being for the very reason that those institutions are in place to guarantee my right and the rights of all our citizens to voice and express our opinions and beliefs even when and especially when those values may be contrary to those of the party in power. My devotion to mission and country is only strengthened by the fact that the founders recognize the value of dissent and the freedom to assemble and voice those opposing convictions.

 "They enshrine those rights for future generations so we avoid the path of authoritarian regimes that shackle their people with fear."

 In response to whether her expression of her opposition to Trump would affect her ability to do her job, she said: ||||| A senior U.S. Secret Service member suggested she would not take a bullet for President Trump in an October post on Facebook.

 Kerry O’Grady said she would rather do “jail time” than take “a bullet” for Trump — who is a “disaster to this country,” she wrote in a post obtained by The Washington Examiner.

 She also endorsed Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonGrassley blasts Democrats over unwillingness to probe Clinton GOP lawmakers cite new allegations of political bias in FBI Top intel Dem: Trump Jr. refused to answer questions about Trump Tower discussions with father MORE for president.

 In her post, O’Grady acknowledged that expressing her political beliefs on social media is a violation of the Hatch Act. The act prohibits executive branch members, excluding the president, vice president and other designed officials, from making partisan statements.

 “As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle to not violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median. To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position,” she wrote. “Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides. But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her.”

 O'Grady serves as a the Secret Service agent in charge of the Denver district, where she helps coordinate presidential trips to the area.

 The Washington Examiner reported that her post resulted in at least one complaint to the office that manages investigations into Secret Service members.

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 O’Grady said she deleted the post after several days.

 "It was an internal struggle for me but as soon as I put it up, I thought it was not the sentiment that I needed to share because I care very deeply about the mission," she told the Examiner.

 O’Grady has not stopped posting on social media, the Examiner reported. She changed her Facebook cover photo to an image promoting the women’s march in Denver.

 She commented on the post saying, "all of these women represent me! Proud to say it! #nasty." She also posted a photo of Princess Leia from Star Wars with the words, “A woman’s place is in the resistance.”

 Those images were both removed after the Examiner's interview with her.

 "But I recognize that the agency is the most important thing to me," she said. "My government is the most important thing to me. I serve at the pleasure of the president, but I still have the First Amendment right to say things." ||||| Secret Service agent under fire after posting she wouldn't take bullet for Trump

 CLOSE The agent, Kerry O’Grady, leads the Secret Service’s Denver district, which oversees coordination with Washington-based advance teams for all presidential candidate and presidential trips to the area. USA TODAY NETWORK

 The Secret Service is "taking appropriate action" after a special agent wrote a Facebook post suggesting she wouldn't take a bullet for Donald Trump if he were president.

 A Secret Service spokesperson confirmed that the agency was aware of Facebook posts made by special agent Kerry O'Grady, but wouldn't elaborate on them further because it is a personnel matter.

 The posts were reportedly written in October but came under the spotlight after a Washington Examiner article on Tuesday. Screenshots of them have since circulated social media, as critics call for her to be fired.

 According to CNN, her post read: "As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act. So I keep quiet and skirt the median. To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides. But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her."

 The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, bars certain federal employees from engaging in political activity to promote fairness and nonpartisanship within the workplace. The Secret Service is among the agencies affected by the Hatch Act.

 O'Grady told the Examiner in an interview that she took down the posts after two or three days and that she wouldn't shirk her duties to protect the president, despite her support of Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

 "It was an internal struggle for me but as soon as I put it up, I thought it was not the sentiment that I needed to share because I care very deeply about the mission," she said.

 Twitter took notice, calling for O'Grady's firing.

 Secret Service Agent Kerry O'Grady: "I wouldn’t take a bullet for Trump". RT if you also think she must be fired by the end of day! pic.twitter.com/Maw3l8nc2V — Tennessee GOP (@TEN_GOP) January 24, 2017

 🔥YOU'RE FIRED!

 Senior Secret Service agent Kerry O'Grady suggests she wouldn't take 'a bullet' for Trump#MAGA

 🔥https://t.co/Jaju0PjLA2pic.twitter.com/p4oV5zyNX5 — CC (@ChristiChat) January 24, 2017

 Kerry O'Grady the agent in charge of the secret service in #Denver says #Trump is a disaster for the country. Kerry leave this country!! — Charlie C (@Maxzen2004) January 25, 2017

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2kqFK9t |||||

– The Secret Service exists in part to protect the president, which is exactly why the agent in charge of the Denver district is now in hot water. In a since-deleted Facebook post from October, highlighted by the Washington Examiner, Kerry O'Grady explained she "would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for [Trump]," whom she described as a "disaster to this country" and to the "women and minorities who reside here." Not only did the post suggest O'Grady wasn't prepared to fulfill her job description if need be, but it also violated the Hatch Act banning certain executive branch members from making partisan statements, which O'Grady herself acknowledged, per the Hill. O'Grady tells the Examiner that she is a sexual assault victim and her comments were "a very emotional reaction" to claims that Trump had sexually assaulted women. But she says she also regretted her action after a few days. "I firmly believe in this job. I'm proud to do it and we serve the office of the president," she says, noting her personal feelings toward Trump will not get in the way of her duties. Her comments may, however. A Secret Service rep tells CNN that it is "taking quick and appropriate action" after the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General reportedly received at least one complaint. Critics have suggested O'Grady should be fired, per USA Today.


Article:

James Martin/CNET

 Google became one of the most powerful companies on Earth because it has developed some of the best algorithms in the world for organizing information. But a gaffe this week shows the shortcomings of technology, particularly when it doesn't work just quite right.

 Jacky Alcine, a Web developer who is black, took to Twitter to say Google's Photo app, released in May, labeled a picture of him and a friend as "gorillas.' The label showed up in a feature that automatically categorizes photos, like cars or beaches, so they are more easily searchable.

 "My friend's not a gorilla," Alcine tweeted. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

 The incident points to the problem tech companies face as computers get smarter and are expected to take on more more tasks a human normally would do. Those areas of computer science -- such as artificial intelligence or machine learning -- are some of the biggest engineering focuses in Silicon Valley. But with that focus comes another task that computers have not traditionally tackled: grappling with the challenge of sensitivity.

 Screenshot by CNET

 This isn't the first time algorithms have messed up in ways people have found offensive. When Yahoo overhauled its Flickr photo storage app in May, the company added similar features that automatically add tags to photos. The algorithm tagged a photo of a black man as an ape, and concentration camp photos got tags like "jungle gym" and "sport."

 After Google learned of the incident with Alcine's photo, the company apologized immediately tried to fix it.

 "Lots of work being done, and lots still to be done," Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of social at Google, tweeted. "We're very much on it."

 In the mean time, Google apologized.

 "We're appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened," a Google spokeswoman said "There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we're looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future." ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Image copyright Twitter Image caption Mr Alcine tweeted Google about the fact its app had misclassified his photo

 Google says it is "appalled" that its new Photos app mistakenly labelled a black couple as being "gorillas".

 Its product automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software.

 The error was brought to its attention by a New York-based software developer who was one of the people pictured in the photos involved.

 Google was later criticised on social media because of the label's racist connotations.

 "This is 100% not OK," acknowledged Google executive Yonatan Zunger after being contacted by Jacky Alcine via Twitter.

 "[It was] high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen."

 Mr Zunger said Google had already taken steps to avoid others experiencing a similar mistake.

 Image copyright Twitter Image caption Mr Alcine said the error had affected several photos in his collection

 He added it was "also working on longer-term fixes around both linguistics - words to be careful about in photos of people - and image recognition itself - eg better recognition of dark-skinned faces".

 This is not the first time Google Photos has mislabelled one species as another.

 The news site iTech Post noted that the app was tagging pictures of dogs as horses in May.

 Users are able to remove badly identified photo classifications within the app, which should help it improve its accuracy over time - a technology known as machine learning.

 Image copyright Twitter Image caption Google has faced criticism since the error was made public

 However, Google has acknowledged the sensitivity of the latest mistake.

 "We're appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened," a spokeswoman told the BBC.

 "We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing.

 "There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labelling, and we're looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future."

 But Mr Alcine told the BBC that he still had concerns.

 "I do have a few questions, like what kind of images and people were used in their initial priming that led to results like these," he said.

 "[Google has] mentioned a more intensified search into getting person of colour candidates through the door, but only time will tell if that'll happen and help correct the image Silicon Valley companies have with intersectional diversity - the act of unifying multiple fronts of disadvantaged people so that their voices are heard and not muted." ||||| Google has apologized after its new photo app labelled two black people as “gorillas”.

 The photo service, launched in May, automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software.

 “Google Photos, y’all fucked up. My friend’s not a gorilla,” Jacky Alciné tweeted on Sunday after a photo of him and a friend was mislabelled as “gorillas” by the app.

 diri noir avec banan (@jackyalcine) Google Photos, y'all fucked up. My friend's not a gorilla. pic.twitter.com/SMkMCsNVX4

 Shortly after, Alciné was contacted by Yonatan Zunger, the chief architect of social at Google.

 “Big thanks for helping us fix this: it makes a real difference,” Zunger tweeted to Alciné.

 He went on to say that problems in image recognition can be caused by obscured faces and “different contrast processing needed for different skin tones and lighting”.

 “We used to have a problem with people (of all races) being tagged as dogs, for similar reasons,” he said. “We’re also working on longer-term fixes around both linguistics (words to be careful about in photos of people) and image recognition itself (e.g., better recognition of dark-skinned faces). Lots of work being done and lots still to be done, but we’re very much on it.”

 Google says sorry over racist Google Maps White House search results Read more

 Racist tags have also been a problem in Google Maps. Earlier this year, searches for “nigger house” globally and searches for “nigger king” in Washington DC turned up results for the White House, the residence of the US president, Barack Obama. Both at that time and earlier this week, Google apologized and said that it was working to fix the issue.

 “We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened,” a Google spokeswoman told the BBC on Wednesday. “We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labelling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”

 Google is not the only platform trying to work out bugs in its automatic image labelling.

 In May, Flickr’s auto-tagging system came under scrutiny after it labelled images of black people with tags such as “ape” and “animal”. The system also tagged pictures of concentration camps with “sport” or “jungle gym”.

 “We are aware of issues with inaccurate auto-tags on Flickr and are working on a fix. While we are very proud of this advanced image-recognition technology, we’re the first to admit there will be mistakes and we are constantly working to improve the experience,” a Flickr spokesperson said at the time.

 “If you delete an incorrect tag, our algorithm learns from that mistake and will perform better in the future. The tagging process is completely automated – no human will ever view your photos to tag them.” |||||
What is a summary?

– The automated photo-tagging on the Google Photos app introduced in May isn't perfect, Google admits. Sometimes it gives a photo a wrong or irrelevant tag—and, on at least one occasion, an extremely offensive one. The company had some groveling to do after the app labeled a photo of two black people as "gorillas," the Guardian reports. The man in the photo, software developer Jacky Alcine, complained to Google, where exec Yonatan Zunger told him the mistake was "100% not OK" and "high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen," the BBC reports. He thanked him for helping Google fix the problem. "We're appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened," a Google spokeswoman tells the BBC. "We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we're looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future." Algorithms caused similar problems at Flickr a few months ago, where some pictures of people, both black and white, were labeled "apes" or "animals," and a picture of the Dachau concentration camp was labeled "jungle gym," CNET notes. (Apple Watch gets confused by tattoos.)


Summarize this article:

Researchers ought to be able to duplicate the findings of other scientists’ work, but a new study suggests that many published psychology results can't be recreated.

 A huge, collaborative research project attempted to recreate 100 studies that were recently published in major psychology journals, and it found that only 39 of those studies' results could be replicated. That could mean that the studies were wrong in the first place, but researchers say that the findings tell more about the difficulty of designing a reproducible study than the accuracy of the studies themselves.

 Studies need to be reproducible so that scientists can confirm their effects. That's why scientists have generally pushed toward reproducing studies — and not just in psychology. In part, that's to catch scientific fraud, but it's also simply to make scientific findings more trustworthy. In January 2014, the National Institutes of Health announced it would create new initiatives to address these concerns, but there still aren't widely established reproducibility guidelines. The study being published today speaks to why a bigger focus on reproducibility is necessary.

 "The results present an opportunity."

 "I don’t see this story as negative or pessimistic," Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia researcher and the study's corresponding author, told reporters this week. "The results present an opportunity, and the project is a demonstration of science demonstrating one of its central qualities: self-correction."

 That self-correction even extended to the 39 studies that researchers were able to replicate. Of those, 83 percent had smaller effects that were in the initial reports; the drop in effect size was usually around 50 percent. The report is being published today in the journal Science.

 Nosek says that there are three reasons studies' results may not have been replicated or may have changed. First, it's possible that the original result identified an effect that wasn't real. Second, it's possible that the researchers failed to detect a real effect in the reproduction. Finally, it's possible that both studies were accurate but that their methodologies differed in slight but meaningful ways.

 The scientists attempting to reproduce studies tried to hew closely to the originals; they even worked with the original researchers and published their study designs for feedback from the over 270 people who worked on the reproduction project. That certainly suggests that errors are being made throughout these experiments, which mostly focused on social psychology and cognitive psychology. But for these researchers, the differing results suggests something else: that there’s a problem with the reproduction process.

 "Despite its central importance, there is little known about the reproducibility of research in general," Nosek said. "And there has been a growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired."

 Research is typically focused on new results, not reproduction

 One factor encouraging that, Nosek suggests, is researchers' desire for publication. Succeeding in academia means regularly publishing work, and novel results — rather than reproductions of older results or results that fail to establish a correlation — are far more likely to make it into prestigious journals. "If this occurs on a broad scale, then the published literature may be more beautiful than reality," Nosek says.

 To move toward more repeatable studies, researchers and journals need to shift their interests away from novelty, the current focus. That's part of why the people behind this study — operating as part of an initiative from the Open Science Collaboration called the Reproducibility Project: Psychology — worked with the original researchers whose studies they were replicating. It encouraged them to view these experiments as steps forward, not as threats to their work.

 E.J. Masicampo, a researcher at Wake Forest University, both conducted one of the reproductions and had one of his own studies reproduced by someone else. "Mine was a study that did not successfully replicate," Masicampo told reporters. His study had looked at whether giving someone a sugary beverage made it easier for them to make mentally challenging decisions while fatigued.

 Both Masicampo's study and its replication asked students to decide between apartments of different sizes and distances from a college campus. It turned out that the decision was difficult for students at Florida State, where Masicampo was working, but the question was too easy for students at the University of Virginia, where it was being reproduced. "What we found, I think, was that the [methodology] that worked at the original location ... didn't quite translate for participants at the replication location," Masicampo said.

 How exact must a replication be?

 The group was trying to be very faithful to the original study, Masicampo said. The fact that doing so resulted in a failed replication, "highlighted the issue of how exact these replications should be and how much things change going from one place to another." Were replication standards to be put in place, these questions might be answered and lead to a clearer view of each finding's accuracy.

 The researchers want to underscore that this isn't a failure of science — it's just science working normally. "The real challenge here is that we so much want to have clear answers from any individual study, from any program of research, from any report about studies," Nosek said. "But science doesn't provide certainty. At least not immediately."

 Of course, all that may make you wonder: how reproducible are these findings? "It's a very good question and I don't envy the group trying it again," Nosek said. "But it does illustrate the precise point of the reproducibility effort: that even this project itself is not a final word, a last word, a definitive word about reproducibility." ||||| Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. Scientific claims should not gain credence because of the status or authority of their originator but by the replicability of their supporting evidence. Even research of exemplary quality may have irreproducible empirical findings because of random or systematic error.

 There is concern about the rate and predictors of reproducibility, but limited evidence. Potentially problematic practices include selective reporting, selective analysis, and insufficient specification of the conditions necessary or sufficient to obtain the results. Direct replication is the attempt to recreate the conditions believed sufficient for obtaining a previously observed finding and is the means of establishing reproducibility of a finding with new data. We conducted a large-scale, collaborative effort to obtain an initial estimate of the reproducibility of psychological science.

 We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. There is no single standard for evaluating replication success. Here, we evaluated reproducibility using significance and P values, effect sizes, subjective assessments of replication teams, and meta-analysis of effect sizes. The mean effect size (r) of the replication effects (M r = 0.197, SD = 0.257) was half the magnitude of the mean effect size of the original effects (M r = 0.403, SD = 0.188), representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had significant results (P < .05). Thirty-six percent of replications had significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.

 CONCLUSION

 No single indicator sufficiently describes replication success, and the five indicators examined here are not the only ways to evaluate reproducibility. Nonetheless, collectively these results offer a clear conclusion: A large portion of replications produced weaker evidence for the original findings despite using materials provided by the original authors, review in advance for methodological fidelity, and high statistical power to detect the original effect sizes. Moreover, correlational evidence is consistent with the conclusion that variation in the strength of initial evidence (such as original P value) was more predictive of replication success than variation in the characteristics of the teams conducting the research (such as experience and expertise). The latter factors certainly can influence replication success, but they did not appear to do so here.

 Reproducibility is not well understood because the incentives for individual scientists prioritize novelty over replication. Innovation is the engine of discovery and is vital for a productive, effective scientific enterprise. However, innovative ideas become old news fast. Journal reviewers and editors may dismiss a new test of a published idea as unoriginal. The claim that “we already know this” belies the uncertainty of scientific evidence. Innovation points out paths that are possible; replication points out paths that are likely; progress relies on both. Replication can increase certainty when findings are reproduced and promote innovation when they are not. This project provides accumulating evidence for many findings in psychological research and suggests that there is still more work to do to verify whether we know what we think we know. |||||

– A new study on psychology research is essentially bashing all other psychology studies. The research area has gotten a bad rap recently thanks to retracted research papers, so psychologists set out to discover what was going on. When research is valid, others should be able to duplicate the study and come up with the same results. But when more than 250 scientists tried to re-create 100 studies from three respected psychology journals—working closely with original researchers—the results matched in just 39 cases. Even among those, 83% were found to have smaller effects than first reported, reports the Verge. The studies covered topics like personality, relationships, learning, and memory, and were the kind trusted by therapists and educators, reports the New York Times. A scientist argues the reproducibility issue could apply across other fields, too. "To see it so clearly, on such a large scale—it's unprecedented," adds another. "There is little known about the reproducibility of research in general," says study author Brian Nosek. "And there has been a growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired." He adds that scientific journals tend to focus on new research, so those hoping to get published don't waste time testing older studies. Nosek doesn't consider the results "negative or pessimistic," but he hopes they'll lead to self-correction and replication standards. So are these results reproducible? "Even this project itself is not a final word, a last word, a definitive word about reproducibility," Nosek says.


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 Sean “Diddy” Combs broke his silence Sunday, addressing the death of ex Kim Porter.

 Taking to social media, the rapper posted a touching tribute to the mother of three of his children, who died Thursday at the age of 46.

 “For the last three days I’ve been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do without you baby. I miss you so much,” Diddy, 49, wrote.

 “Today I’m going to pay tribute to you, I’m going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship. We were more than best friends, we were more than soulmates. WE WERE SOME OTHER S–T!! And I miss you so much. Super Black Love 🖤,” he continued.

 A rep confirmed to Page Six on Thursday that Porter had passed away.

 Law enforcement insiders previously told TMZ that authorities were called to Porter’s LA home, with a 911 call reporting “a patient in cardiac arrest.” A source also revealed Porter had been experiencing flu-like symptoms for a number of weeks.

 Diddy and Porter dated on and off for 13 years and share three children together, son Christian, 20, and 11-year-old twin daughters, Jessie James and D’Lila. Diddy also adopted Porter’s son Quincy from her relationship with music producer Al B. Sure!. ||||| (CNN) Sean "Diddy" Combs has found the words to publicly grieve Kim Porter three days after her death.

 The 47-year-old model and actress was found dead Thursday at her home in Toluca Lake, California. No information has been released about the cause of her death.

 On Sunday, the hip hop mogul broke his silence over his ex's death with a heartfelt tribute on social media.

 Kim Porter and recording artist Sean "Diddy" Combs.

 "For the last three days I've been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven't. I don't know what I'm going to do without you baby. I miss you so much. Today I'm going to pay tribute to you, I'm going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship," he wrote in the caption.

 Porter and Combs were a couple for more than a decade and remained close after they parted ways in 2007. They had twin daughters and a son together. Porter had an older son from a previous relationship. |||||Summary:

– Sean "Diddy" Combs took to Instagram on Sunday to comment publicly for the first time on the death of ex Kim Porter, the mother of three of his children. Alongside of video of the two of them that's been viewed nearly 6 million times, the 49-year-old wrote: "For the last three days I've been trying to wake up out of this nightmare. But I haven't. I don't know what I'm going to do without you baby. I miss you so much. Today I'm going to pay tribute to you, I'm going to try and find the words to explain our unexplainable relationship. We were more than best friends, we were more than soulmates. WE WERE SOME OTHER S---!! And I miss you so much. Super Black Love." CNN reports the video features footage from a 2006 Essence shoot that shows a pregnant Porter dancing with Diddy as SWV's "When U Cry" plays. "We don't get a chance to see much" black love, Porter says, in extolling themselves as an example of it. She and Diddy split in 2007; their children are son Christian, 20, and 11-year-old twin daughters, Jessie James and D'Lila, per the New York Post. Porter, 46, was found dead Thursday in her Toluca Lake, Calif., home. No cause of death has been released.


Article:
Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil this week dismissed as mere election politics President Obama's implicit threat to intervene should the Syrian regime deploy its chemical weapons stockpile. (Andrey Smirnov, AFP/Getty Images / )

 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has made contingency plans to send small teams of special operations troops into Syria if the White House decides it needs to secure chemical weapons depots now controlled by security forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, senior U.S. officials said.

 President Obama warned this week that any effort by Assad to move or use his arsenal of chemical munitions in the country's conflict would cross a "red line," implying it could prompt swift U.S. intervention.

 But Pentagon planners are more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups.

 Securing the sites would probably involve stealthy raids by special operations teams trained to handle such weapons, and precision airstrikes to incinerate the chemicals without dispersing them in the air, the officials said. U.S. satellites and drone aircraft already maintain partial surveillance of the sites.

 U.S. intelligence agencies believe Syria has over the years produced or acquired hundreds of tons of sarin nerve agent and mustard gas, a blister agent, and has sought to develop VX, another powerful nerve gas. The toxicity of some chemical agents degrades significantly over time, so it is unclear how lethal the stockpiles are.

 Experts say the chemical agents are stored in bunkers and other sites around the country. Four production facilities are near the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs, all tinderboxes in the 17-month uprising, as well as the coastal city of Latakia, an area considered a stronghold for Assad's Alawite religious sect.

 An unclassified report by the director of national intelligence this year said Syria's chemical agents "can be delivered by aerial bombs, ballistic missiles and artillery rockets." But Syrian rockets, including Scud missiles procured from North Korea, are notoriously inaccurate, making them ineffective for delivering a heavy concentration of toxic chemicals to a specific target.

 They can be very effective, however, at creating chaos.

 "The actual killing may be less important than the panic they would induce," said Leonard Spector, who heads the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

 Although he did not make an explicit threat, Obama's comments at the White House on Monday were widely seen as a direct warning to Assad that the U.S. would take military action if necessary to stop the use of chemical weapons. But officials said later that no large-scale U.S. intervention is likely unless it is part of an international coalition.

 "You shouldn't interpret what Obama said to mean that there would be automatic military action, but rather that we would respond as part of an international effort," said one senior official.

 Officials said Obama could make a unilateral decision, however, to order special forces teams to stop weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands.

 Pentagon officials and senior military officers said the Syrian stockpiles seem well guarded for now, and they stressed that the White House has not ordered detailed planning of operations aimed at securing the facilities.

 "We have done contingency planning but we're not doing detailed planning — identifying numbers [of troops], units and platforms — until the White House tells us we need a specific plan for this," a senior officer said.

 Although U.S. officials said they are closely monitoring the unconventional weapons sites, they also acknowledge the stockpiles are large enough that some materials, such as small artillery shells filled with chemical agents, could be relocated without their knowledge.

 U.S. officials told reporters last month that they had evidence Syrian forces were moving some chemical arms, apparently to keep them away from areas of fighting.

 Assad's government has said it will not use chemical munitions against the Syrian people, though it has implied they could be used if foreign troops sought to intervene in the war.

 "Any chemical or bacterial weapon will never be used — and I repeat will never be used — during the crisis in Syria, regardless of the developments," Jihad Makdissi, a Syrian government spokesman, told reporters last month. "These weapons are stored and secured by Syrian military forces and under its direct supervision and will never be used unless Syria faces external aggression."

 Analysts say it's unclear how much of the chemical arsenal could be deployed, and they note that the agents, particularly VX and sarin, may have weakened if the regime isn't regularly refilling its stocks. U.S. intelligence officials have said that Syria, which is under international sanctions, relies heavily on foreign sources for chemicals and other key parts of its weapons program.

 The VX stockpiles maintained by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government had a shelf life of about six months, and the sarin less than two years, the EU Non-Proliferation Consortium, a network of European think tanks, said in a report last month.

 "To keep those sorts of quantities replenished, you have to have a very robust program," said Charles P. Blair, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based group.

 In response to a reporter's question Monday, Obama mentioned Syria's biological weapons program. But that appears a minor concern at this point.

 In 2008, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before Congress that Syria had "a program to develop select biological agents as weapons" and that the program was "in the research and development stage."

 U.S. officials no longer appear to believe that Syria is actively pursuing a biological weapons program. The unclassified U.S. intelligence report this year said only that Syria had the infrastructure to support the development of biological weapons.

 david.cloud@latimes.com

 sbengali@latimes.com ||||| * S. Damascus pounded by tank, helicopter, shells -activists * Moscow believes Syria won't use chemical weapons -report * Urban warfare continues unabated in biggest city Aleppo * Fighting rages for control of airfield near Iraq border By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Oliver Holmes AMMAN/ALEPPO, Syria Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Syrian army shelled southern Damascus on Wednesday and helicopters fired rockets and machineguns during an assault meant to shore up President Bashar al-Assad's grip on the capital 17 months into an uprising, opposition activists said. The army has this week used tanks and helicopter gunships in an offensive around Damascus that coincided with the departure of U.N. military observers, their mission to stop the bloodshed and nudge Syria towards a peaceful transition a failure. The United Nations estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed in what has become a civil war after the state's violent response to peaceful street protests triggered an armed rebellion in the pivotal Arab country. Anti-Assad activists said at least 47 people had been killed in Damascus in what they called the heaviest bombardment this month. "The whole of Damascus is shaking with the sound of shelling," said a woman in Kfar Souseh, one of several districts hit in the military offensive to root out rebel fighters. The United Nations said some of the weapons being used by government forces appeared to have been supplied by Iran, in violation of a U.N. resolution that banned such exports. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will raise the Syria crisis with Iran at a summit of non-aligned developing nations in Tehran next week, a U.N. spokesman said. As the army continued to shell southern Damascus, activists said at least 22 people had been killed in Kfar Souseh and 25 in the nearby district of Nahr Eisha. One of the dead was named as Mohammad Saeed al Odeh, a journalist employed at a state-run newspaper who was sympathetic to the anti-Assad revolt. Activists said he had been executed in Nahr Eisha. "There are 22 tanks in Kfar Souseh now and behind each one there are at least 30 soldiers. They are raiding houses and executing men," an opposition activist in Kfar Souseh, who gave his name only as Bassam, told Reuters by Skype. More than 250 people, including 171 civilians, were killed across Syria on Tuesday, mostly around Damascus, Aleppo and the southern city of Deraa, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition monitoring group. Activists in the southwestern Damascus suburb of Mouadamiya said Assad's forces had killed 86 people there since Monday, half of them by execution. It was not possible to verify that report. There was no immediate government account of the latest fighting. But state television broadcast footage of weapons it said had been seized from rebels in Mouadamiya, one of the first districts to join the uprising. The conflict, which pits a mainly Sunni Muslim opposition against a ruling system dominated by Assad's Alawite minority, threatens to destabilise neighbours including Lebanon, where Sunni-Alawite violence flared for a third day. The death toll from the fighting in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli rose to at least 10 with more than 100 wounded, medical sources said, in what residents said were some of the fiercest clashes there since Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. The Syria conflict has revived old tensions in Tripoli between pro-Assad Alawites in the hilltop district of Jebel Mohsen and their Sunni neighbours in Bab al-Tabbaneh below. ALEPPO BATTLES In Syria, Assad's forces have lost swathes of territory in recent months, but have fought back hard in Damascus and in Aleppo, the country's biggest city and commercial hub until it became a theatre for urban warfare. Reuters journalists in Aleppo on Wednesday heard gunfire and shells exploding every minute. Rebels trying to advance in Saif al-Dawla, a front-line Aleppo district, encountered mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire. At one point, their escape route was cut off by gunfire as tank shells exploded nearby. Much of the area was destroyed. State television said government forces were pursuing "the remnants of armed terrorist gangs." D onatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser for A mnesty International, who recently returned from a 10-day visit to Ale ppo, said the rights group in vestigated some 30 attacks in which scores of civilians not involved in hostilities, many of them children, were killed or injured in their homes, while queuing for bread and even in places where those displaced by the conflict were sheltering as a result of indiscriminate attacks against residential neighbourhoods. "The use of imprecise weapons, such as unguided bombs, artillery shells and mortars by government forces has dramatically increased the danger for civilians", Rovera s aid. While the situation at the front line remained difficult, just 400 metres (400 yards) behind it, women and children were walking down the streets casually - some carrying groceries - and just 1 km back streets were bustling with normal life. Children carried groceries from shops doing brisk business and couples held hands as smoke from the fighting rose into the sky behind them. Away from the main cities, government forces fought rebels for control of a military base and airfield near the eastern town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, according to a local Iraqi official and a Syrian rebel commander. The rebel commander, known as Abu Khalid, said his forces now controlled Albu Kamal, straddling a supply route from Iraq where many Sunni tribes sympathise with their Syrian kin. But rebels were on the back foot near the border with Turkey after Syrian soldiers backed by helicopters attacked a village to try to cut off a supply line, opposition sources said. At least three people were killed and 10 wounded when army helicopters bombarded Qastoun, a village in Hama province, 24 kms (15 miles) east of the Turkish border, and rebels fought loyalist troops, the Hama Revolutionary Council said. As Syria slips deeper into chaos, the United States and Israel have voiced concern that Assad might lose control of his chemical weapons arsenal or even be tempted to use it. Russia, a Syrian ally since Soviet times, believes Syria has no intention of using its chemical weapons and is able to safeguard them, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified Foreign Ministry official. U.S. President Barack Obama threatened Assad on Monday with "enormous consequences" if he employed chemical weapons or even if he moved them in a menacing way, drawing a warning from Russia against any unilateral action by the West. In telephone conversations with Obama and French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed "how to build on the support already given to the opposition to end the appalling violence in Syria," Cameron's office said. The White House said Obama conveyed his concerns on the call about the "increasingly dire humanitarian situation in Syria," and the need for contributions to humanitarian appeals in the region. Lakhdar Brahimi, the incoming U.N. mediator on Syria, met representatives of the Free Syrian Army in Paris on Wednesday. The group said it was sceptical he would succeed where his predecessor - Kofi Annan - had failed. "Foreign intervention that is not through a Security Council resolution is something that very seldom works," Brahimi told Finnish public broadcaster YLE. "My instinct is to say please, let's see if we can solve this problem without external military intervention." |||||Summary:

– If the Syrian regime falls, the US plans to deploy troops to stop its chemical weapons from becoming a first-come, first-served bonanza for insurgent groups, senior officials say. Plans are in place to secure the sites if necessary, a move that would probably involve teams of special forces operatives entering the country to guard sites as well as precision airstrikes to incinerate other locations without releasing poisons into the air, the Los Angeles Times reports. The Pentagon fears that stockpiles left unguarded could fall into the hands of rebels linked to al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremists. American satellites and drones are already watching the sites, which are believed to hold hundreds of tons of sarin gas and other nerve agents. Earlier this week, President Obama warned Bashar al-Assad's regime that the US considers the using or moving of chemical weapons a "red line" beyond which military force could be used. Activists say hundreds of people have been killed in continued fighting this week, including many civilians in army shelling of southern Damascus, Reuters reports.


Article:

When a crime occurs in the physical world, investigators search for specific types of evidence.

 Say they're looking into a robbery. Where was the break-in point? Was a weapon used?

 SEE ALSO: More than 10 million devices helped take down the internet on Friday

 At Dyn, the domain name service-provider hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack on Friday that shut down a huge chunk of the internet, the company hasn't said much about its investigation. But others have unearthed new leads that may point to the perpetrators.

 This photo shows Dyn, a New Hampshire internet service company, in the old mill section of the city, on Oct. 21, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Image: AP Photo/Jim Cole

 Of course, the attack was so massive that the results of the investigation may not help prevent another attack. Sure, you can reenforce your windows and put a bolt on the door, but what good will that do against an innumerable number of invaders?

 The attack that jammed the internet

 Friday's DDoS attack on Dyn came in three waves that left the internet reeling.

 Dyn allows internet users to access a range of hugely popular sites such as Twitter and Spotify, and the attack on Dyn left major websites dealing with outages and extreme slowness.

 A distributed denial of service attack is when an onslaught of web traffic overwhelms a server so everyday users are unable to access it.

 "The nature and source of the attack is under investigation, but it was a sophisticated attack across multiple attack vectors and internet locations," Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategy officer, wrote in a company blog post on Saturday.

 Hackers essentially weaponized video cameras to send unmanageable amounts of traffic to Dyn's servers, causing much of the Internet to slow to a crawl. Image: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

 The investigation points to attention seeking hackers

 Adam Coughlin, Dyn's director of corporate communications, told Mashable the company "should" have completed a "root cause analysis" by mid-week.

 "At this point we know this was a sophisticated, highly distributed attack involving 10s of millions of IP addresses," York wrote in a blog post.

 But while Dyn isn't revealing many details, the cybersecurity firm Flashpoint released more information on Tuesday about who might be behind the attack.

 Flashpoint, a company that has provided analysis to Dyn, found that the hacker or group of hackers who attacked the site on Friday also targeted a video game company.

 "We look at a lot of different DDoS attacks that happen, and political actors don't attack video game companies, generally," Allison Nixon, Flashpoint's director of security research at Fl Security Research, told Mashable.

 Researchers also doubt the hack was intended for financial gain, since hacks for money usually target Bitcoin exchanges or gambling sites.

 "They're trying to show how powerful they are, and how else do you show how powerful you are than taking down someone that's powerful."

 Instead, early signs point to a hacker or a group of hackers who just wanted to show off. "They're trying to show how powerful they are, and how else do you show how powerful you are than taking down someone that's powerful," Nixon said.

 According to Tuesday's report, Flashpoint believes they're "likely connected to the English-language hacking forum community, specifically users and readers of the forum hackforums.net."

 The attacker used a type of malware called Mirai, which hacks poorly protected devices and uses them to hurl junk data at whatever the attacker wants.

 A hacker who goes by the handle Anna-Senpai released the Mirai source code earlier this month on hackforums.net, making it accessible to anyone. This means it is more difficult to track down the person who directed the operation, as any hacker could have put the code to work.

 The attack was similar to recent DDoS attacks against the security blog Krebs on Security as well as OVH, a French "internet service hosting provider." Flashpoint has said similar types of attacks often originate from users of hackforums.net.

 Friday's attack, though similar, involved devices that were "separate and distinct" from the devices used in the other digital assaults.

 The malware used in last week's DDoS attack hijacked digital video recorders as well as cameras. Image: Soeren Stache/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

 The investigation only matters up to a point

 The size of the attack leveled at Dyn makes it unclear how useful the company's post-mortem will be, because it likely can't bolster its cyber defense quickly enough to prevent such a massive assault.

 Friday's attacker hijacked millions of "Internet of Things" (IoT) devices such as DVRs and video recorders, and had those devices flood Dyn with data. Dyn doesn't control those cameras, and experts said many of those devices can't be patched, meaning someone can simply hack them again and again to launch new assaults.

 "This is the internet of largely un-patchable things," Joshua Corman, the director of The Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft Initiative, told Mashable. "Unless you take them out of service, these [devices] can be repeat offenders for the life of the internet."

 A surveillance camera outside the Landtag state parliament in Potsdam, Germany. Image: Ralf Hirschberger/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

 Even if companies get better at mitigating large DDoS attacks, it will be difficult to scale at the rate at which the number of hackable devices increases. According to Intel, by 2020 there will be 200 billion objects connected to the internet. That's up from 2 billion in 2006.

 Due to the sheer number of devices, the attackers have a significant advantage. The more devices they can use in the attack, the more powerful the attack will be.

 In the coming days and weeks, investigators will no doubt explore how they were exploited, how the attack was carried out and the effectiveness of their response to the attack. Cybersecurity experts said Dyn will likely want to take stock of what vulnerabilities could be strengthened in case the company again falls victim.

 Can major DDoS attacks be stopped?

 CCTV cameras were among the devices hacked in last week's DDoS attack on Dyn. Image: Clive Gee/PA Wire

 These kind of attacks are likely to continue as long as millions of IoT devices remain hackable.

 Companies might be able to do a few things to mitigate the damage, but they can't stop manufacturers from making hackable devices, and they can't singlehandedly educate the public about enhancing the security of every device hooked up to the IoT.

 "I'm not saying every user should be a security expert and figure out how to reconfigure their toaster or whatever," Zach Lanier, director of research at Cylance, a cybersecurity firm, told Mashable. "But there are some basic practices that users can do to make sure their IoT devices aren't accessible."

 Krebs on Security suggests resetting IoT devices such as wireless routers and IP cameras to their factory settings, which is often just a matter of finding a reset button on the device. This wipes out any malware already on the device.

 But it could be reinfected in minutes, so you'll need to quickly reset the device's default password.

 Googling the device's make and model should turn up a web address and a factory default username-password combo. Typing that into a web browser should take you to the device's "administration panel," where you can reset the password, Krebs on Security reported.

 Until many IoT device owners get on top of security, we should all expect some more slow days on the internet. ||||| Researchers at Flashpoint pointed a finger of blame at “script kiddies” for the huge IoT-based DDoS attack that made parts of the internet inaccessible last Friday. In fact, the primary target may have been a “a well-known video game company” that happened to use Dyn for DNS services.

 The researchers wrote:

 Flashpoint assesses with moderate confidence that the most recent Mirai attacks are likely connected to the English-language hacking forum community, specifically users and readers of the forum “hackforums[.]net.”

 Flashpoint explained:

 The infrastructure used in the attack also targeted a well-known video game company. While there does not appear to have been any disruption of service, the targeting of a video game company is less indicative of hacktivists, state-actors, or social justice communities, and aligns more with the hackers that frequent online hacking forums. These hackers exist in their own tier, sometimes called “script kiddies,” and are separate and distinct from hacktivists, organized crime, state-actors, and terrorist groups. They can be motivated by financial gain, but just as often will execute attacks such as these to show off, or to cause disruption and chaos for sport.

 Although Flashpoint never named which specific video game company, it seems like the PlayStation Network may have been the real target.

 As Network World's Time Greene pointed out, there is a post on hackforums[.]net which reads: “this is funny, only because they didnt actually attk DYN fun fact DYN was never intentionally attkd until later that day PSN was the target (bf1 release) they used DYN's ns: ns00.playstation.net, ns01.playstation.net, ns02.playstation.net etc.”

 Flashpoint does not believe there was any political motivation behind the attacks. Allison Nixon, director of researcher at Flashpoint, shot down theories that The Jester, WikiLeaks or New World Hackers were responsible for the attacks, calling their claims of responsibility “dubious.”

 Nixon added, “All the arrows point away from any sort of political motivation,” which hurts “the nation-state argument. Of course, you never know until someone’s got handcuffs on them.”

 At the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said he also believes a “non-state actor” was behind the attack. Not that everything Clapper says can be considered entirely truthful.

 So far, Dyn has refused to speculate regarding motivation or the identity of the attackers. However, Dyn has said its analysis indicated the Mirai botnet was the primary source of “maliciously targeted, masked TCP and UDP traffic over port 53.”

 Senator wants ISPs to ban insecure IoT devices from their networks

 Senator Mark Warner, a co-chair of the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, has grown increasingly concerned about the flood of insecure IoT devices; the massive DDoS attack on Dyn DNS, which took down large chunks of the internet on October 21, seems to have been the last straw.

 On Tuesday, Warner sent a letter to the FCC, FTC and DHS, pointing out that “manufacturers today are flooding the market with cheap, insecure devices, with few market incentives to design the product with security in mind, or to provide ongoing support.” And the effectiveness of Mirai depends, “in large part, on the unacceptably low level of security inherent in a vast array of network devices.”

 He added, “Because the producers of these insecure IoT devices currently are insulated from any standards requirements, market feedback, or liability concerns, I am deeply concerned that we are witnessing a ‘tragedy of the commons’ threat to the continued functioning of the internet, as the security so vital to all internet users remains the responsibility of none.”

 Although “ISPs cannot prohibit the attachment of ‘non-harmful devices’ to their network,” after the release of Mirai source code and the crippling attack on Dyn DNS, Warner believes it is “entirely reasonable” for “devices with certain insecure attributes” to be “deemed harmful to the ‘network’.” In addition to wanting to know if ISPs can block “insecure” IoT devices from connecting to their networks, Warner asked for answers to another eight questions.

 Dyn amends number of Mirai-controlled IoT devices used in DDoS attacks

 Dyn had previously suggested there had been tens of millions of infected IoT devices used in the Oct. 21 attacks. Today, Dyn said: |||||
What is a summary?

– The distributed denial of service attack that sent Internet users into a tailspin Friday was the most powerful of its kind by far, say cybersecurity researchers, and they're especially alarmed because it looks to be the work of amateur hackers. Twitter, Netflix, Reddit, and other sites went down as the Mirai botnet took over poorly protected "Internet of things" devices like DVRs and webcams—whose owners hadn't changed the devices' default passwords—and bombarded domain host company Dyn with traffic so regular users couldn't get through. Apparently there were a lot of insecure devices out there to use. Dyn says there were "100,000 malicious endpoints" leading an attack twice as powerful as any other DDoS attack reported, per the Guardian. Researchers from cybersecurity firm Flashpoint suspect the attack was tied to the community at Hackforums.net—where the Mirai source code was published earlier this month, per Mashable—and was meant to target a video game company, perhaps the PlayStation Network, reports Computer World. If amateur hackers did so much damage, "imagine what a well-resourced state actor could do with insecure IoT devices," says a cybersecurity rep at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We have a serious problem with the cyber insecurity of IoT devices and no real strategy to combat it." Experts recommend users reset an IoT device to its factory settings to erase any existing malware, then create a new password immediately.