Earlier this month, a cease-fire agreement was signed in Minsk, Belarus, after long talks between leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France. Ukrainian government troops and rebel forces in Eastern Ukraine agreed to cease hostilities by February 15 and withdraw heavy weapons at least 30 miles from the agreed-upon buffer zone stretching roughly from Luhansk to Mariupol. Heavy fighting ensued right before the deadline, and sporadic violence continues even now, more than a week later. Some Ukrainian forces claim they are unable to withdraw, as the Russian-backed rebels are still shelling their positions...
Saudi King Unleashes a Torrent of Money as Bonuses Flow to the Masses →
European leaders are still battling over austerity. The United States Congress is gearing up for another fight over the budget. But in Saudi Arabia, there are no such troubles when you are king — and you just dole out billions and billions of dollars to ordinary Saudis by royal decree.
Not surprisingly, Saudis are very happy with their new monarch, King Salman.
“It is party time for Saudi Arabia right now,” said John Sfakianakis, the Riyadh-based Middle East director of the Ashmore Group, an investment company, who estimates that the king’s post-coronation giveaway will ultimately cost more than $32 billion.
That is a lot of cash, more, for example, than the entire annual budget for Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy.
Former Federal Judge Regrets 55-Year Marijuana Sentence →
Weldon Angelos was just 24 years old when he was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison for three marijuana sales. He is one of the hundreds of thousands of federal prisoners serving decades-long sentences for non-violent crimes, thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing laws created in the 1980s during America’s war on drugs.
As a result, Angelos may not live long enough to experience freedom again. His case has haunted the federal judge that put him there.
"I do think about Angelos,” said Paul Cassell, a now-retired federal judge in the Utah circuit. “I sometimes drive near the prison where he’s held, and I think, ‘Gosh he shouldn’t be there. Certainly not as long as I had to send him there. ... That wasn’t the right thing to do. The system forced me to do it.”
The Pro Dumpster Diver Who’s Making Thousands Off America’s Biggest Retailers →
Matt Malone doesn’t mind being called a professional dumpster diver. He tells me this a little after 2 am on the morning of July 7 as we cruise the trash receptacles behind the stores of a shopping center just off the Capital of Texas Highway in Austin. Given the image that conjures, though, it’s worth pointing out that Malone has a pretty good day job, earning a six-figure salary as a security specialist for Slait Consulting. He is also founder of Assero Security, a startup that he says has recently been offered seed money by not one but two separate investors. Nevertheless, the 37-year-old Malone does spend a good many of his off-hours digging through the trash. And the fact is, he earns a sizable amount of money from this activity—more per hour than he makes at his Slait job.
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...If he were to dedicate himself to the activity as a full-time job, he says, finding various discarded treasures, refurbishing and selling them off, he’s confident he could pull in at least $250,000 a year—there is that much stuff simply tossed into dumpsters in the Austin area...
THE GREAT SIM HEIST →
AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
A Look Behind the Headlines on China’s Coal Trends →
To Cohen, the persistent China coal push points to the importance of intensifying work on cutting the costs of systems for capturing smokestack carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground...
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...Unfortunately, I don’t share Cohen’s optimism about prospects for the deployment of such systems at a scale the climate would notice, mainly because there’s no incentive for China to pay the additional cost, no sign (unless you can identify one?) that developed countries will be willing to cover the difference and little evidence that the world is serious about a much more ambitious push on large-scale demonstration of integrated systems for capturing and storing CO2.
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...The issue isn’t technology or geology (finding safe storage sites for huge volumes) nearly so much as cost. And remember, this isn’t about the affordability of the technology in the United States or Europe. It’s about the cost of deployment at large scale in the coal-boom countries, China and India.
Deposed Egyptian president Mursi to face military court →
Egypt's deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi has been referred to a military court for the first time, the state news agency said on Tuesday, part of a sustained crackdown against Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
Mursi was ousted by then army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after mass protests against his rule in 2013.
Mursi, who has been incarcerated in an Egyptian jail, is facing trial in several cases in civilian courts...
Five myths about violent extremism →
Citing the “tragic attacks in Ottawa, Sydney, and Paris,” the White House on Wednesday is convening a summit on violent extremism. Its goal is admirable and ambitious: neutralizing terrorism’s root causes by stopping people from radicalizing in the first place. Yet the causes of violent extremism are poorly understood, and programs are often targeted at the wrong audiences. So to help the world leaders at the summit do more good than harm, let’s dispel some of the biggest myths.
1. We understand radicalization...