Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/323175233?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Thursday, August 1, 2013
Analysis: Manning damage has fallen well short of worst U.S. fears
By Warren Strobel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Accused of the nation's biggest-ever security leak, U.S. soldier Bradley Manning was vilified by the government for causing irreparable damage to American national interests. In retrospect, the harm he caused seems to have been overplayed.
A U.S. military judge cleared Manning on Tuesday of the most serious charge against him - aiding the enemy - in a verdict that indicated the soldier's secrecy violations, while criminal, were not as dire as prosecutors had alleged.
Manning's revelations to WikiLeaks, including hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and raw intelligence reports from the Iraqi and Afghan battlefields, violated his military oath and "put real lives and real careers at risk," said former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
But the strategic damage to the United States - to its reputation and its ability to work with allies and conduct diplomacy - "was transitory," said Crowley, who resigned in 2011 after publicly criticizing the Pentagon's treatment of Manning in a military prison.
As reams of classified State Department cables - some containing unflattering portraits of foreign leaders or detailing U.S. envoys' contacts with human rights groups - leaked to the public, some saw catastrophe for U.S. diplomacy.
Yet, despite what Crowley called a few "isolated cases" in which foreign counterparts were less candid than in the past, fearing their words might leak, the State Department was able to mitigate the damage.
In just one of dozens of examples, U.S. ties with Indonesia wobbled after the release of cables showing the U.S. Embassy suspected collusion between Jakarta's security forces and the extremist Islamic Defenders Front, accused of attacks on religious minorities.
The leaks "were quite unpleasant," said Teuku Faizasyah, Indonesia's presidential spokesman for foreign affairs. But he said, "Our relations with the U.S. have continued normally since. The lesson is that we have to be more careful with the flow of such intelligence."
The military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, found Manning guilty on 19 counts, including five espionage charges. Manning could face a sentence of 136 years in prison. Military prosecutors had pushed for a harsher judgment. They called him a "traitor" and said his actions had helped the al Qaeda network.
'SUBTLE RATHER THAN CATASTROPHIC'
"The official damage assessments concerning Manning/WikiLeaks have not been publicly released, but my sense is that the bulk of the damage is subtle rather than catastrophic," said Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group.
"But it is nonetheless real," Aftergood said. "Because of the broad scope and overwhelming volume of the WikiLeaks cables, their disclosure cast doubt on the ability of the U.S. government to guarantee confidentiality of any kind - whether in diplomacy, military operations or intelligence. That's not a small thing."
In Australia, a crucial U.S. ally in the Asia-Pacific region, the revelations have affected the way Western diplomats operate and report on political developments, and have curtailed events such as social dinner party chats where diplomats often gain insights on what is happening in a country.
"The diplomats have told me this has affected their reporting of events in Australia, or events anywhere in the world," said government lawmaker Michael Danby, who until June was head of Australia's powerful joint intelligence committee which oversees intelligence matters.
"It has restricted political reporting and mingling for open Western societies (among diplomats and politicians)."
In late 2010, Wikileaks cables outed then Australian sports minister Mark Arbib as a regular source of information for U.S. diplomats. Danby's name was also mentioned. One cable also described current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, then the foreign minister, as a "mistake-prone control freak".
It remains to be seen whether the Manning verdict - rendered in a military rather than civilian court - will impact future prosecutions, most notably against former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked documents exposing previously secret U.S. telephone and internet surveillance programs. Snowden, who faces U.S. criminal charges, has taken refuge in a Moscow airport.
Aftergood, while cautioning that military courts are quite different from civilian leak trials, said, "Every Espionage Act case can alter the legal landscape for cases that come after it."
President Barack Obama has been more aggressive than any of his predecessors in searching out and punishing those responsible for national security leaks.
"There could also be some 'psychological' effect on how the government deals with leak cases as a result of the Manning trial, but this is harder to predict," Aftergood said.
"Prosecutors might say, 'Aha, we won - now let's go do it again.' Or they might say, 'OK, we made our point - now we can step back a little bit.'"
In the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosure, Obama ordered new steps to protect classified material stored on government computers and, in November 2012, issued a "National Insider Threat Policy" aimed at stopping future leaks like those by Manning.
Among the new steps were automated monitoring of classified government networks, aimed at detecting unusually large downloads of data. But that did not deter Snowden from allegedly making away with numerous highly classified NSA documents.
(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in Jakarta and James Grubel in Canberra; Editing by Will Dunham, Stuart Grudgings and Neil Fullick)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-manning-damage-fallen-well-short-worst-u-001024179.html
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Escaped chimps cause zoo closure
1 August 2013
Last updated at 08:19 ET
Josie, Tojo and Jomar were three of the chimps which got into the secure area of their enclosure
A Leicestershire zoo had to close when eight chimpanzees found their way into service corridors in their enclosure.
At 09:35 BST, the chimps at Twycross Zoo escaped into an area they were not meant to be, leading to safety concerns.
A police spokesperson later said "everything was now in order".
Twycross Zoo, which reopened two hours later, said the animals were encouraged back into their enclosure with ice cream and fizzy drinks.
'Cupboard fun'A zoo spokeswoman said: "At no time were the public at risk, and no people or chimps were harmed during the incident, however it is part of our safety procedures that we close the zoo whilst such events are resolved.
Continue reading the main storyGreat apes
- Chimpanzees are found in the forests of central Africa
- The primates share 98% of human genes and are our closest living relative
- They demonstrate learned behaviours and use tools
"All of the chimps are fine, if not a little excited about having ice cream for breakfast. They are all on view to the public as normal."
Sharon Redrobe, the zoo's director, told BBC Radio Leicester: "Eight adventurous chimps got into the service corridors, but still within the main building, so it was still reasonably safe.
"They had a fun time running up and down, opening and closing cupboards. It took about an hour to get them into their day place.
"We apologise for closing but it was for a very good reason."
An internal investigation will now take place to discover how the animals escaped.
Leicestershire Police said the problem occurred during the moving of eight chimps and officers were called as a precaution.
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Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23533133#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Video: Tonight: Manning cleared of aiding the enemy, Gulf of Mexico "dead zone," preserving TV history
Unusual fishing tournament lets sharks off the hook
Shark fishing tournaments have been popular off the coast of New York's Long Island for decades, and they've always ended with dead sharks on the dock. This year, 64 sharks were reeled in during a tournament off the coast of Montauk, and for the first time, they were all released back into the water. Chip Reid reports.
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsVideo/~3/LBfT21Jup6A/
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Federal Court: Cell Phone Tracking Without a Warrant is A-OK
A Federal Appeals court has ruled that search warrants are not required by law enforcement agencies if they wish to seize cellphone records.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/federal-court-cell-phone-tracking-without-a-warrant-is-972962256
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Ultrasound patch heals venous ulcers in human trial
[unable to retrieve full-text content]In a small clinical study, researchers administered a new method for treating chronic wounds using a novel ultrasound applicator that can be worn like a band-aid. The applicator delivers low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound directly to wounds, and was found to significantly accelerate healing in five patients with venous ulcers.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/Cxn5M4r_Tmk/130801095410.htm
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Angry Twitter spat leads'Fez' creator to leave game industry
fez 
20 hours ago
Polytron
"Fez" creator Phil Fish abruptly cancelled production of a sequel and retired from the game industry this weekend after a bucolic fight on Twitter.
When it comes to the caustic and chaotic world of online forums and social media, the video game industry often stands out from other areas of tech and entertainment for just how quickly a seemingly innocuous Twitter rant or indignant message can escalate into a real-world corporate dilemma. That's what forced game developer BioWare to buckle under the pressure of legions of angry "Mass Effect" fans demanding that it change the game's ending, after all. And it's the same pressure that vindicated many opponents of digital rights management who implored both Sony and Microsoft to revise their respective policies for the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
Most gamers would herald all these different cases as triumphs of social media or online discourse helping individual consumers advocate on behalf of themselves and their community. This past weekend, however, a similarly minded Twitter spat resulted in a highly anticipated sequel to a beloved independent video game being cancelled by its own creator.
Phil Fish, an indie developer who in 2012 achieved a rare kind of celebrity (for game developers, that is) after appearing as one of the main characters in the documentary "Indie Game: The Movie" in January and finally releasing his game "Fez" to widespread critical acclaim later that year, abruptly announced Saturday that he was canceling production of "Fez II" ? little more than a month after the game was first announced.
Details about what, exactly, provoked Fish's decision (or even if the famously quirky developer is actually sincere in his promise to axe "Fez II") are still murky. But many gaming outlets are pinning the sudden death of the game to a heated exchange between Fish and Marcus Beer, a gaming critic who goes by the moniker "Annoyed Gamer." The argument began last week when Beer criticized Fish and fellow indie game developer Jonathan Blow for not commenting on recent stories about Microsoft's prospective independent game development policies for the Xbox One during a rant on his GameTrailers video show. It escalated to Fish telling Beer on Twitter to "compare your life to mine and then kill yourself."
Fish's Twitter account has since been made private, but "Fez" developer Polytron issued a statement shortly after the initial Twitter showdown in which Fish reiterated that he had had enough of dealing with video games and all their assorted cultural baggage.
"i am done," he wrote. "i take the money and i run. this is as much as i can stomach. ... this is isn?t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win."
Many gaming journalists have since weighed in to share their own experiences dealing with the reprehensible side of gamer culture on the Internet. Cliff Bleszinski, the creator of the popular third-person shooter series "Gears of War," penned a lengthy, heartfelt letter on his personal Tumblr telling Fish "the industry needs people like you."
Thing is, Fish was already on something of a recent Twitter-rage tear by the time he erupted this past weekend. Just last week, he spent the good part of a day lambasting the video game website Polygon for quoting fellow game industry figure Kevin Dent in a story about the Xbox One's new indie publishing policies ? that coming the two traded blows on Twitter earlier this year over problems with the original "Fez's" performance. Fish may have reached the amount of Internet bile he was able to "stomach," but it was also a world that he willingly, even eagerly, participated in for part of his career.
Of course, there's also the possibility that by hanging "Fez II's" fate in the balance, Fish is deliberately courting this kind of controversy in the hopes of marshaling like-minded developers and fans (like Bleszinski) or simply to help sell more copies of the game if it ever does see the light of day.
Either way, many in the gaming press are doubtful that this is truly the last we've seen of Fish or "Fez." As Patrick Klepek put it in a recent piece on Giant Bomb: "I suspect we will, at some point, see (and play) the sequel to Fez, but this weekend?s events provide an opportunity for Fish to leave the spotlight and protect his sanity from the world and, well, himself."
"Fish speaks too passionately about games to leave them behind," he added.
Yannick LeJacq is a contributing writer for NBC News who has also covered technology and games for Kill Screen, The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. You can follow him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq and reach him by email at: Yannick.LeJacq@nbcuni.com.
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