The Pentagon has been holding phony “arrival” ceremonies for fallen soldiers at a base in Hawaii for over seven years, according to recent statements made by the United States Department of Defense to NBC News. For nearly a decade, military personnel transported flag-draped coffins containing the bodies of troops killed in action from seemingly just-arrived cargo planes during ceremonies near hangar 35 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Author: mediahitman
User comments on European websites may face tougher scrutiny after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that an Estonian news portal was responsible for offensive anonymous posts. On Thursday, the Strasbourg-based court rejected a plea from Delfi, one of Estonia’s leading news sites, against a fine it received after readers posted angry replies to one of its articles. Delfi appealed to the European court in 2010 after Estonia’s Supreme Court ruled that the website was responsible for the comments, not the people who made them.
Austerity measures and the economic downturn in the UK have prompted the British branch of the Red Cross to begin formulating an emergency food aid plan for Britain – the first the charity has set up for the country since WWII. The Geneva-based charity is to start gathering and distributing food with the help of fellow charities and a supermarket chain, allocating donations to Britain’s needy.
An array of issues surrounding the recently launched websites for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act have rendered them largely unavailable during the last week, and a lack of funding might not be to blame. With the official launch of so-called Obamacare last Tuesday, millions of Americans flocked instantly to brand new Web portals where people could sign up for inexpensive health insurance plans. Bugs, glitches
A letter to the White House, a laundry list of recommendations for the president and a 29-page report about the administration’s assault on free press are all compiled in the latest offering from the Center to Protect Journalists. The CPJ, a non-profit founded over 30 years ago to promote “press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal,” published a special report on Thursday penned by longtime Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr.
The former mayor of Detroit, Michigan was sentenced to 28 years in prison on Thursday after being found guilty of committing racketeering conspiracy, fraud, extortion and tax crimes during his stint in office. Prosecutors asked for a minimum of 28 years for Kilpatrick, who resigned from the mayor’s office in 2008 amid an unrelated scandal. Defense attorneys, the Associated Press, reported hoped for only a decade-and-a-half.
An Illinois man has developed a Gmail browser extension designed to randomly insert fake, nonsensical stories into the signature of every email one sends to confuse the NSA’s surveillance operations. Benjamin Grosser says “ScareMail” takes keywords from an extensive US Department of Homeland Security list used to troll social media websites and utilizes them “to disrupt the NSA’s surveillance efforts by making NSA search results useless.”
The fantastic fictional powers enjoyed by comic book superheroes and villains – including enhanced strength, night vision and resistance to bullets – may become a reality soon if the US military gets its way. As if inspired by Marvel Comics itself, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has commissioned a Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS for short, which will likely contain liquid armor
The father of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has arrived in Moscow. Lon Snowden’s flight touched down at Sheremetyevo Airport – where his son famously spent five weeks in transit limbo before receiving asylum in Russia. The plane carrying Lon Snowden landed in Moscow Thursday morning, RT crew on the scene reported.
Hong Kong has sent the first sign from Asia that the region is creating extra financial buffers against a possible default in the US. China said some US short – term Treasury bonds appear to be more risky to hold as collateral than previously thought. The clock is ticking for the US to make a decision on its spending bill and the massive $16.7trln debt.
A Chicago woman was arrested late last week after confronting the president of her long-time employer McDonald’s over the low wages she earns as she struggles to raise two young children. Nancy Salgado, 26, interrupted a speech by McDonald’s Corporation President Jeff Stratton at the Union League Club of Chicago on Friday, saying her wages weren’t enough for her to supply her kids with basic necessities like shoes.
A review panel established by the White House to assess the country’s intelligence programs is due to report its findings to the president this Friday. Days before deadline, though, that board has become a voluntary casualty of the government shutdown. President Barack Obama announced in August that the unauthorized disclosure of national security documents and the subsequent discussions it sparked warranted the creation of an independent panel, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies.
Officials in Britain, Sweden and the US have arrested eight more people in connection with Silk Road, the website for criminal services, as the search for millions of dollars in bitcoins – the currency of choice for online users – steps up a gear. Britain’s newly unveiled National Crime Agency (NCA) flexed its muscles Tuesday when it detained four suspected drug offenders who used the “anonymous” services provided by Silk Road, dubbed the “Amazon.com of illegal drugs.”
Demonstrators hope that one million masked activists will descend on Washington, DC next month to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day with a mass rally to remind the world “That fairness, justice and freedom are more than just words.” That’s the mission statement of the “Million Mask March,” an event scheduled for November 5 in the nation’s capital that’s being arranged by affiliates of the hacktivism movement Anonymous
President Obama will nominate Janet L. Yellen to be the next head of the Federal Reserve, the White House said Tuesday. The historic appointment, if confirmed, would make the former UC Berkeley economist the first woman to lead the world’s most powerful central bank. Yellen, the Fed’s vice chair, would replace Ben S. Bernanke, whose second four-year term as chairman expires Jan. 31. She would take over at a crucial time — the central bank is gearing up to reduce its unprecedented support for the economy without damaging the fragile recovery.
A book authored by an agent at the center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ “Fast and Furious” gun running debacle has been rejected and barred from being published by the agency, citing concerns for morale. Special Agent John Dodson, who became a whistleblower in 2011 when he approached Republican lawmakers in Congress with details of a botched attempt by the ATF to allow sales of firearms in order to build a case against Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel
Authorities have partially blamed gadget-absorbed commuters for failing to notice a gun-wielding assailant who calmly took his time before shooting a man point blank on a San Francisco train. The man, 30-year-old Nikhom Thephakaysone, flashed his .45-caliber pistol several times in front of everyone, before proceeding to shoot San Francisco State University student Justin Valdez, 20, in the back of the head before leaving the train.
Six people working at the site of crippled Fukushima power plant have been exposed to radiation after one of them mistakenly removed a pipe connected to a contaminated water treatment system. It’s the second incident at Fukushima in three days. The accidental pipe detachment on Wednesday resulted in the leak of several tons of water, which Fukushima operator TEPCO uses to cool the reactors.