December 18, 2013

Aircraft crash in Afghanistan kills 6 NATO troops

http://kdhnews.com/military/aircraft-crash-in-afghanistan-kills-nato-troops/article_be58a696-672d-11e3-911e-0019bb30f31a.html

Aircraft crash in Afghanistan kills 6 NATO troops
Posted: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:13 am
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO says six service members have died in an aircraft crash in southern Afghanistan, in an area where there was no fighting reported at the time.

The alliance says in a statement the crash occurred on Tuesday and that it's under investigation. It did not provide any further details nor on the nationalities of the service members on the aircraft.

Stars and Stripes reported that a U.S. defense official in Washington said all the victims were Americans.

The U.S.-led international coalition has service members from several countries deployed in the south.

December 18, 2013

Military housing allowance to increase Jan. 1

http://kdhnews.com/military/military-housing-allowance-to-increase-jan/article_40de7f10-6755-11e3-ab56-0019bb30f31a.html

Military housing allowance to increase Jan. 1
Posted: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 4:30 am
Jacob Brooks | Herald staff writer

Fort Hood soldiers who live off-post will see an increase in their housing allowance beginning next month.

The 2014 Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH, rates, will increase an average of 5 percent beginning Jan. 1, according to a news release from the Defense Department on Tuesday.

On average, BAH rates for service members with dependents worldwide will increase about $79 per month and $76 for personnel without dependents. However, one government website listed Fort Hood-area BAH increases at more than $100 for some ranks.

“A typical midgrade enlisted member with dependents, for example, will find his/her BAH about $79 per month higher than last year, while a typical junior officer without dependents will find his/her BAH about $76 higher than last year,” according to the release.

December 18, 2013

Boeing exec: Selection process narrowing for 777X

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/12/17/2952990/boeing-exec-selection-process.html

Boeing exec: Selection process narrowing for 777X
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press
December 17, 2013 Updated 18 hours ago

SEATTLE — A Boeing executive said Tuesday the company is narrowing its options as it searches for a place to build the 777X passenger plane.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner also told employees in a message that the machinists union's rejection of a new contract proposal that would have the planes built in the Puget Sound area was disappointing.

"It was a rejection, plain and simple, and we now have to turn and face the reality of the union leadership's final decision," Conner said.

Local union leaders have said they didn't see the point of bringing the latest offer to a vote because it was too similar to one that was previously rejected. Of particular concern, union officials balked at Boeing's insistence that workers move from a traditional pension plan to a 401(k)-style retirement plan.

December 18, 2013

Washington state courts Airbus amid Boeing tension

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/12/17/2952975/washington-state-courts-airbus.html



A Boeing 747 jet is parked in front of a Boeing Co. building Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013, in Seattle. Even as they try desperately to hang on to Boeing, officials in Washington state have been courting the main competitor of the aerospace giant. During the past several months, state officials have traveled to the U.S. headquarters of Airbus SAS in Virginia, moved to connect Airbus with Washington state suppliers, and signed a five-year confidentiality agreement with the company to allow further exploration of business opportunities, according to records obtained by The Associated Press under public disclosure laws.

Washington state courts Airbus amid Boeing tension
By MIKE BAKER
Associated Press
December 17, 2013 Updated 13 hours ago

SEATTLE — Even as they try desperately to hang on to Boeing Co., officials in Washington state have been courting the main competitor of the aerospace giant.

During the past several months, state officials have traveled to the U.S. headquarters of Airbus SAS in Virginia, moved to connect Airbus with Washington state suppliers, and signed a five-year confidentiality agreement with the company to allow further exploration of business opportunities, according to records obtained by The Associated Press under public disclosure laws.

In a confidential memo provided to Gov. Jay Inslee in July, state officials described dozens of potential ways to expand or recruit aerospace businesses in the state. At the top of the memo was Airbus, described as just one of a few major opportunities.

One expert said for years it was generally frowned upon for Washington state officials to jeopardize the relationship with Boeing by seeking ties with Airbus. However, the steps outlined in the memo came amid tension created when Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago and started an assembly line in South Carolina to build its 787 passenger plane.

December 18, 2013

Suit: Fire risk known before Carnival ship sailed

http://www.adn.com/2013/12/17/3235908/suit-fire-risk-known-before-carnival.html



FILE - In this Thursday, Feb. 14, 2013, file photo, passengers spell out the word "HELP" aboard the disabled Carnival Lines cruise ship Triumph as it is towed to harbor off Mobile Bay, Ala. Carnival Cruise Lines knew about the risk of leaks from engine fuel hoses and recommended taking precautions on the ill-fated Carnival Triumph, which caught on fire at sea, according to documents filed in recent days. A "compliance notice report" sent to the Triumph one month before it departed Galveston on Feb. 7 for what was planned as a four-day cruise recommended spray shields be installed on engines' flexible fuel hoses, according to documents filed Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013, by Carnival Cruise Lines in federal court in Miami.

Suit: Fire risk known before Carnival ship sailed
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Associated Press
December 17, 2013 Updated 7 minutes ago

McALLEN, Texas — Carnival Cruise Lines knew about the risk of leaks from engine fuel hoses and recommended taking precautions on the ill-fated Carnival Triumph that later caught on fire at sea, according to court documents.

A compliance notice report sent to the Triumph one month before it departed Galveston on Feb. 7 for what was planned as a four-day cruise recommended spray shields be installed on engines' flexible fuel hoses, according to the documents filed Tuesday by Carnival Cruise Lines in federal court in Miami.

A leak from a hose on engine No. 6 led to a fire early on Feb. 10 as the ship returned from a stop in Cozumel, Mexico. No one was injured, but the fire disabled the ship. More than 4,000 people aboard endured a nightmarish tow to Mobile, Ala., that the plaintiffs' attorney called a "floating hell."

The documents, first reported by CNN, are part of a lawsuit that was filed in February against Carnival Cruise Lines and its parent Carnival Corporation on behalf of dozens of the Triumph's passengers.

December 18, 2013

Charters Get Kids Cubicle-Ready

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20681-charters-get-kids-cubicle-ready

Charters Get Kids Cubicle-Ready
Tuesday, 17 December 2013 09:25
By Samantha Winslow, Labor Notes | Op-Ed

From Silicon Valley, the Rocketship chain of charter schools is hoping to expand across the country. It’s backed by some of the biggest names in the tech world and claims high test scores.

Rocketship leaders brag that they think outside the box. Teachers, for instance—who needs them? The company says it saves half a million dollars a year by using fewer teachers, replacing them with non-certified instructors at $15 per hour.

These instructors monitor up to 130 kids at a time in cubicles in the schools’ computer labs. Rocketeers, as students are called, sit looking at computer screens up to two hours per day, supposedly learning by solving puzzles.

Business leaders such as Bill Gates often stress the need to train kids for the jobs of the future—digital animators, nanotech engineers? But it looks more like the Rocketeers are being prepared for online “microtasks” at Crowdflower, which contracts out data categorization and de-duplication.

December 18, 2013

Beyond the NSA: Other Agencies Spy on You, Too

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20670-beyond-the-nsa-other-agencies-spy-on-you-too

Beyond the NSA: Other Agencies Spy on You, Too
Monday, 16 December 2013 14:40
By Shahid Buttar, Truthout | Op-Ed

The latest discoveries about NSA spying revealed that the agency has collected 27 terrabytes of information about cellphone locations to track its targets not only in cyberspace, but also real space. The Panopticon is real. It siphons billions of dollars each year from a federal budget in crisis. And it is watching you and your children.

Lost in the debate about NSA spying, however, have been the dozens of other federal agencies also complicit in Fourth Amendment abuses.

Leading the Charge: The FBI

The FBI is among the federal agencies leading the assault on the Constitution. The FBI runs its own intelligence databases, has long abused the very same sections of the PATRIOT Act for which the NSA has recently come under fire and has the further distinction of having infiltrated First Amendment-protected activist groups and religious institutions all over the country.

Nor are these new issues. Unfortunately, the FBI's abuses are well established: For at least a quarter century, the bureau deployed a series of domestic "counterintelligence programs" that were discovered by activists in the 1970s and then investigated by Congressional oversight committees. Summarized as a "sophisticated vigilante operation" in 1976 by the Senate, CoIntelPro presaged the recurrence of similar abuses under the Bush administration and continuing into the Obama administration.

December 18, 2013

Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Found in Water at Fracking Sites

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20696-hormone-disrupting-chemicals-found-in-water-at-fracking-sites



Bob Bellis, who works for A&W Water, opens a fire hydrant to fill up his tanker truck with water to be used in new drilling techniques that use powerful streams of water, sand and chemicals to crack the ground and release stores of oil and gas, in an industrial area of Greeley, Colorado, August 30, 2012. As a new race for water ripples through the drought-scorched heartland, many farmers and environmental activists worry that deep-pocketed energy companies will have purchase on the increasingly scarce water supplies as they drill more and deeper wells.

Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals Found in Water at Fracking Sites
Tuesday, 17 December 2013 13:00
By Neela Banerjee, Los Angeles Times | Report

Water samples collected at Colorado sites where hydraulic fracturing was used to extract natural gas show the presence of chemicals that have been linked to infertility, birth defects and cancer, scientists reported Monday.

The study, published in the journal Endocrinology, also found elevated levels of the hormone-disrupting chemicals in the Colorado River, where wastewater released during accidental spills at nearby wells could wind up.

Tests of water from sites with no fracking activity also revealed the activity of so-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs. But the levels from these control sites were lower than in places with direct links to fracking, the study found.

"With fracking on the rise, populations may face greater health risks from increased endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure," said senior author Susan Nagel, who investigates the health effects of estrogen at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

December 18, 2013

America's Child Soldiers: JROTC and the Militarizing of America

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20657-americas-child-soldiers-jrotc-and-the-militarizing-of-america



America's Child Soldiers: JROTC and the Militarizing of America
Monday, 16 December 2013 10:09
By Ann Jones, TomDispatch | News Analysis

Congress surely meant to do the right thing when, in the fall of 2008, it passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA). The law was designed to protect kids worldwide from being forced to fight the wars of Big Men. From then on, any country that coerced children into becoming soldiers was supposed to lose all U.S. military aid.

It turned out, however, that Congress -- in its rare moment of concern for the next generation -- had it all wrong. In its greater wisdom, the White House found countries like Chad and Yemen so vital to the national interest of the United States that it preferred to overlook what happened to the children in their midst.

As required by CSPA, this year the State Department once again listed 10 countries that use child soldiers: Burma (Myanmar), the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Seven of them were scheduled to receive millions of dollars in U.S. military aid as well as what’s called “U.S. Foreign Military Financing.” That’s a shell game aimed at supporting the Pentagon and American weapons makers by handing millions of taxpayer dollars over to such dodgy “allies,” who must then turn around and buy “services” from the Pentagon or “materiel” from the usual merchants of death. You know the crowd: Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Northrop Grumman, and so on.

Here was a chance for Washington to teach a set of countries to cherish their young people, not lead them to the slaughter. But in October, as it has done every year since CSPA became law, the White House again granted whole or partial “waivers” to five countries on the State Department’s “do not aid” list: Chad, South Sudan, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia.

December 18, 2013

Russia: Expect More Anti-U.S. Venom in the State Media

http://www.sptimes.ru/index_bp.php?action_id=2&story_id=38719§ion=3



Expect More Anti-U.S. Venom in the State Media
By Vladimir Ryzhkov
Published: December 17, 2013 (Issue # 1790)

President Vladimir Putin has destroyed RIA Novosti, Russia's largest news agency. With a single stroke, he has leveled a powerful brand that the government had spent about $1 billion developing over the past decade. In place of RIA Novosti, the authorities will create a new agency called ­Rossia Sevodnya, which means "Russia Today," headed by Dmitry Kiselyov. He will dismantle the outgoing team headed by Svetlana Mironyuk, who labored over those 10 years to create a modern, world-class new agency. Putin's decree last week announcing the liquidation of RIA Novosti came as a complete surprise to the agency's 2,000 employees.

Kremlin officials justified the decision as a way to improve efficiency and cut costs. But the dismantling of RIA Novosti could not be a more inefficient and wanton waste of the state's resources. What is the point of spending so much time and money building up a world-class brand and then summarily destroying it? That is like eliminating the Coca-Cola brand and replacing it with Volga Kvass — and all in the name of greater efficiency. How is it "efficient" to destroy an agency that has long led Russian media in the use of modern technology, that is by far the most quoted domestic news agency, and that is ranked almost on par with leading foreign media? If the authorities really wanted to save money, they could have simply made budget cuts without demolishing an efficiently operating organization.

Senior officials have long had it in for Mironyuk. They disliked the fact that Mironyuk was too independent and that she refused to quickly carry out orders from superiors. The long-standing intrigue was resolved in a typically Russian fashion: By dismantling the entire organization that Mironyuk headed. It was like getting rid of a pesky neighbor by leveling his entire apartment building.

Of course, RIA Novosti was not an independent news agency. It was state-owned and carried out government policy and propaganda. But it worked very professionally by trying to objectively report all the basic information on domestic and international events.