• Gambian government expels Hezbollah funder

    Husayn Tajideen, one of three Lebanese brothers sanctioned by the United States for providing financial support to Hezbollah, was accused of “unacceptable business practices that are detrimental to the Gambian economy,” ordered to cease all business operations, and leave the country within thirty days.

  • App offers St. Petersburg residents information on flood levels, storm surges

    Pinellas County, Florida, will unveil a new Storm Surge Protector computer application which would provide residents of St. Petersburg with realistic views of potential flood levels as the 2015 hurricane season approaches. The app will allow people to enter any Pinellas County address and see the property’s evacuation zone and get an animated view of the structure and the water levels to expect in the area under a range of hurricane categories.

  • California’s agriculture feels pain of harsh drought

    The California drought is expected to be worse for the state’s agricultural economy this year because of reduced water availability, according to a new study. Farmers will have 2.7 million acre-feet less surface water than they would in a normal water year — about a 33 percent loss of water supply, on average. Reduced availability of water will cause farmers to fallow roughly 560,000 acres, or 6 to 7 percent of California’s average annual irrigated cropland. The drought is estimated to cause direct costs of $1.8 billion — about 4 percent of California’s $45 billion agricultural economy. When the spillover effect of agriculture on the state’s other economic sectors is calculated, the total cost of this year’s drought on California’s economy is $2.7 billion and the loss of about 18,600 full- and part-time jobs.

  • More than 10,000 ISIS fighters killed since August 2014: U.S.

    Antony Blinken, U.S. deputy secretary of state, speaking at a meeting of leaders from more than twenty countries who are meeting in Paris for discussions on how to combat ISIS, said that more than 10,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed since coalition forces started their campaign against the militant group in Iraq and Syria nine months ago. He said there had been a great deal of progress in the fight against the Islamists, but that they remained resilient and capable of taking the initiative. He said the coalition had made “real gains” and said the ISIS now had 25 percent less territory than when the air strikes began in August, but experts note, however, that even after being pushed back in a few places, the militants still control an area the size of Italy across Syria and Iraq.

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  • Senate passes surveillance reform

    The U.S. Senate yesterday voted 67-32 to pass the House’s USA Freedom Act which would end the NSA collection of bulk metadata of Americans’ phone records. The bill will now head to the White House for the president to sign. The USA Freedom Act shifts the responsibility for keeping the phone records from the government to hundreds of separate phone carriers – but important questions remain. Thus it is not entirely clear how many records the carriers will keep, and for how long, and under what circumstances will they allow law enforcement to view these records. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the Senate majority leader, who supported the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, said that the USA Freedom Act is “a resounding victory for those who currently plotted against our homeland. It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens, and it surely undermines American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in my view, at exactly the wrong time.”

  • Computer searches at border subject to case-by-case reasonableness: Court

    A Washington, D.C. District Court has upheld a ruling that U.S. intelligence and border security agents must have “reasonable suspicion” to seize and search any computer or storage media at the border – especially if the computer and storage media belong to an individual about to leave the country. A South Korean businessman, suspected of buying missile parts for China, was stopped at LAX on his way back to Korea. He was allowed to leave, but his laptop and storage media were seized by agents. Judge Amy Berman Jackson stressed that in border searches, the government has a more compelling interest in searching things that are being brought into the country than things that are about to leave the country. Kim’s lawyers asked the judge to suppress any incriminating evidence found on Kim’s laptop during a warrantless search conducted by the case agents, and she granted to lawyers’ motion. DHS says it will appeal her decision.

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  • U.S. charges Syria helping ISIS advance on Aleppo, Turkish border crossings

    The U.S. embassy in Syria posted a series of tweets on the embassy’s official account charging that the Syrian military is carrying out attacks in and around Aleppo with the aim weakening the moderate rebel forces and helping Islamic State improve its positions around the city. On Sunday, following the Syrian air force’s attacks on the moderate rebel position around Aleppo, Islamic State fighters were able to push back the moderate rebels from some positions north of the city, near the Turkish border. The Syrian military’s attacks and Islamic State’s moves on the ground had a strategic purpose: to cut the supply lines between Turkey and the moderate rebels, thus preventing Turkey from rushing additional military aid to the rebels.

  • USMobile launches Scrambl3 mobile, Top Secret communication-standard app

    Irvine, California-based USMobile, a developer of private mobile phone services, yesterday launched Scrambl3, a smartphone app that enables users to create their own Private Mobile Network. When Scrambl3 users communicate with each other, Scrambl3 creates a Dark Internet Tunnel between their smartphones. This Tunnel cloaks the calls and texts by making them invisible on the Internet. Scrambl3 App for Android-based phones is available for a 60-day free beta offering from the Google Play Store.

  • Climate change, a factor in Texas floods, largely ignored

    Climate change is taking a toll on Texas, and the devastating floods that have killed at least fifteen people and left twelve others missing across the state are some of the best evidence yet of that phenomenon, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said in an interview last Wednesday. “We have observed an increase of heavy rain events, at least in the South-Central United States, including Texas,” said Nielsen-Gammon, who was appointed by former Gov. George W. Bush in 2000. “And it’s consistent with what we would expect from climate change.” Some Republican state legislators who had opposed including climate change forecasts in state agencies’ planning work, say they are rethinking their position. Todd Hunter (R-Corpus Christi) said that after last week’s flooding, he is taking the need for planning for extreme weather seriously. “I’ll certainly have it on my radar,” Hunter said. “When you see these strange weather patterns, it’s important to keep all of these things in mind.”

  • Winners and losers in California’s water crisis

    A recent article highlights the widening gap of inequality between the wealthy and the poor of California, specifically in relation to the State’s current drought. The authors discuss what has caused these inequalities to expand — the outdated and unsupervised water regulations still currently used, combined with decentralized local control means using and sourcing water comes down to the simple matter of what people can and cannot afford.

  • Broad NSA surveillance powers, granted in 2006, expired on midnight

    The NSA’s broad domestic surveillance authority, granted to the agency when the Patriot Act was first reauthorized in 2006, expired on midnight after the Senate failed to extend Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which governs surveillance, or approve the House’s USA Freedom Act, which modified Section 215. The Senate did vote, 77-17, to take up the House bill on Tuesday. The failure of the Senate to do extend or modify the NSA’s surveillance power was the result of the unyielding position of Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), and also the result of a miscalculation by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the majority leader, who believed that the prospect of the expiration of Section 215 would lead opponent of the surveillance programs, supporters of the current program, and supporters of the House’s USA Freedom Act to agree to a few weeks extension of Section 215 to allow for more negotiations among senators and between senators and House member. The Senate did vote, 77-17, to take up the House bill on Tuesday. It remains to be seen, however, how many, and what type, of amendments McConnell would allow to be brought to the floor, and, if some of these amendments are approved, whether House members would agree to any modifications to the USA Freedom Act.

  • Russia distancing itself from a weakening Assad

    Middle East analysts and reliable sources within several governments and intelligence services in the region say that there are growing signs of a major shift in Russia’s position toward the regime of Bashar al-Assad, reflecting the conclusion among close advisers to President Vladimir Putin that the Assad regime, which has suffered a series of painful defeats since January, cannot be saved, and that continued Russian support for it would undermine other objectives Russia is pursuing in the region. These sources told the London-based Arabic-language newspaperAsharq Al-Awsat that the Russia policy change could be described as a “dramatic U-turn,” with Moscow no longer hiding the fact that it is contemplating a “future without Assad” for Syria. Russia has withdrawn more than 100 military advisers, technical support professionals, and diplomats from Syria, and has cut down the number of employees at its embassy in Damascus, leaving only essential staff. Since late February, Russia no longer ships military supplies to the Syrian military, and Russian military technical personnel has been pulled out of Syria, making it impossible for Russia to abide by the maintenance contracts with Syria for the Sukhoi aircraft, the mainstay of the Syria air force. There have been increasing signs that the Assad regime is disintegrating, with Assad family members and relatives, and businessmen and high-ranking members of the Alawite community, fleeing Damascus.

  • U.S. removes Cuba from list of terrorism-supporting states

    The United States on Friday officially removed Cuba from the list of terrorism-supporting states. The move is the latest step toward the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. Removing Cuba from the list – which now has only three countries left on it: Iran, Syria, and Sudan – removes a major legal obstacles, because U.S. law imposes serious restrictions on political and economic relations with countries on the list. Still, the removal of Cuba from the terrorism-supporting countries list would have a limited impact, because many of the limitations on normal economic relations with Cuba are the result of Cuba-specific embargo legislation by Congress outside the scope of the terrorism-related measures. These pieces of legislation will have to be removed by Congressional action. The administration’s decision to remove Cuba from the list comes while the negotiations between the two countries are encountering difficulties. Officials have so far failed to reach an agreement on re-establishing diplomatic relations and opening embassies.

  • U.S. to expand cooperation with Nigeria’s military in fight against Boko Haram

    Nigeria’s new president Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as the country’s new president on Friday, and the Obama administration accompanied its congratulations to the new president with indications that the United States was prepared to expand military cooperation in the fight against Boko Haram. The growing concerns about Boko Haram notwithstanding, the United States reduced its military cooperation with Nigeria during the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, who was defeated by Buhari in the March election. The Nigerian military under Jonathan was thoroughly corrupt, and proved itself incompetent in fighting Boko Haram. The United States was also growing increasingly frustrated with rampant human rights abuses by the Nigerian military. With Buhari, a former general with a reputation as a strict disciplinarian and an anti-corruption crusader, now in power, the United States is set to resume its military ties with Nigeria.

  • U.S. to increase annual military aid package to Israel from $3 billion to nearly $4 billion

    The U.S. defense aid to Israel will increase after 2017 from the current $3 billion a year to between $3.5 and $4 billion a year, according to both American and Israeli sources. The substantial increase in the military aid package to Israel is the direct result of the negotiations with Iran — and the fact that Sunni states in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, will themselves see a major quantitative and qualitative increases in U.S. military aid to them, thus risking the erosion of the Israeli military’s “qualitative edge.” Only last year, the administration, in an effort to accommodate congressionally mandated cuts in the defense budget, informed Israel that the only changes to the package would be adjustment for inflation.