Air raids believed to have been carried out by U.S.-led forces hit three makeshift oil refineries in northern Syria on Sunday as part of a campaign against Islamic State, a human rights group said.
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"The price went up from 9,000 Syrian pounds to 21,000 in Aleppo. Hitting these refineries has affected ordinary people, now they have to pay higher prices," he told Reuters.
Fourteen years ago the US government, with NSA’s concurrence, ended export controls on products including strong forms of cryptography. The result was the flourishing of Internet commerce. And — at least a decade later than they should have — US companies began putting security protections into software and hardware products.
The FBI opposed the ending of cryptography controls in 2000, and it now opposes the widespread use of cryptography. But the crime-fighting agency has never really understood that the widespread use of cryptography is essential in a world for which, increasingly, the most important assets are electronic.
Peter Sinclair and Cathy Kunkel discuss emerging possibilities for fighting climate change: a combination of locally-owned affordable solar and utility scale wind energy to replace the electrical grid.
And some energy companies are trying to stop that.
In early 2012, Segarra was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs, and so was installed inside Goldman. (The people who regulate banks for the Fed are physically stationed inside the banks.)The job right from the start seems to have been different from what she had imagined: In meetings, Fed employees would defer to the Goldman people; if one of the Goldman people said something revealing or even alarming, the other Fed employees in the meeting would either ignore or downplay it. For instance, in one meeting a Goldman employee expressed the view that "once clients are wealthy enough certain consumer laws don't apply to them." After that meeting, Segarra turned to a fellow Fed regulator and said how surprised she was by that statement -- to which the regulator replied, "You didn't hear that."
On South Sudan's "Peace Process":
One problem is that the talks led by regional block IGAD are technically a “mediation” rather than a facilitation. That means IGAD diplomats take an active role in proposing a settlement and pushing the parties to adopt it, rather than merely bringing them together.
That sounds ok until you realize a leading IGAD member, Uganda, has thousands of its soldiers stationed in South Sudan and actively sides with one of the warring parties – the government. Is it any wonder then that the rebel side perceives the mediator as openly aligned with the government side?
Last week, I got the chance to catch up with Cecily about her activism, her experiences with the criminal justice system and the myriad ways that gender shaped both her own experiences and those of incarcerated women.
If you haven't heard of McMillan's case, here's why you should be concerned:
On March 17, 2012, Cecily McMillan, a graduate student and Occupy activist was arrested at Zuccotti Park and charged with assaulting a police officer, a felony that carries a seven-year prison sentence. McMillan did elbow the officer in the eye; however, it was a reflexive response to him violently groping her breast while arresting her. Although she has the scars to prove it, she was still sentenced to three months at Rikers Island.
There was video evidence, as well. Travesty of justice.
Potentially very good news for global governance:
Japan said it would change its laws in order to be able to send soldiers on United Nations peacekeeping missions. Mexico said it would revive its involvement in United Nations peacekeeping. Indonesia, Mongolia and Bangladesh promised to prepare troops for rapid deployment.
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There are more peacekeepers than ever before — 130,000 troops, police officers and civilian staff members, according to the United Nations. Attacks on them are rising.
Most importantly, by overlooking the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which caused the death of nearly 200,000 Syrians, the air strikes create the perception that the international coalition is providing a lifeline to the regime. Despite repeated reassurance by Washington, such a perception is likely to become entrenched if the Assad regime begins to fill the vacuum left by the offensive against Isis, especially that there has been no evidence yet that the opposition forces are part of the military strategy against Isis.