Author Archives: Pat Turnbaugh

Hackers Access Power Grid, N.Y. Dam; Might Have Accessed Government Talks

Hackers gained access to the United States power grid, including detailed drawings that could have been used to cut power to millions of people, according to a new Associated Press report.

The report, published Monday, indicated that there have been roughly 12 times in the past 10 years when foreign hackers accessed the networks controlling lights across the United States.

That includes one instance where hackers, believed to be from Iran, had swiped passwords and detailed sketches of dozens of power plants, invaluable tools if one planned to cut off the power. Cybersecurity experts told the Associated Press the breach (which affected energy company Calpine, which operates 83 power plants) dates to at least August 2013 and could be ongoing.

The Associated Press reported that hackers accessed passwords that could have been used to access Calpine’s networks remotely, along with highly detailed drawings of 71 energy-related facilities across the country. That could allow skilled hackers to specifically target certain plants.

But targeting a plant and successfully shutting off the power are two different things.

The Associated Press report noted the power grid is designed to keep the lights on when utility lines or equipment fail. To cause a widespread blackout, a hacker would have to be exceptionally skilled, bypassing not only a company’s security measures but also creating specialized code that disrupts the interactions of the company’s equipment. Still, experts told the AP that it remains possible for a sufficiently skilled and motivated hacker to send a large swath of the country into blackout, and enough intrusions have occurred that a foreign hacker can likely “strike at will.”

The Associated Press report was published the same day the Wall Street Journal unveiled that Iranian hackers accessed the controls of a dam about 20 miles away from New York City in 2013.

In another breach, tech company Juniper Networks announced last Thursday that it discovered some “unauthorized code” in its software that could have allowed skilled hackers to improperly access some devices and decrypt secure communications. CNN reported the FBI is investigating the hack because it fears the code might have been used to spy on government correspondence.

Because government use of Juniper products is so widespread, one U.S. official told CNN the hack was like “stealing a master key to get into any government building.” CNN reported a foreign government is believed to be behind the hack, but it still is not clear who is responsible.

Juniper said it released a patch that corrects the issue. The company said it wasn’t aware of “any malicious exploitation” of the security loophole, but noted there likely wasn’t a way to reliably detect if a device had been compromised because hackers could have easily erased the evidence.

Muslims Shield Christians During Terrorist Attack in Kenya

Muslim passengers helped shield non-Muslim passengers, some of them Christians, during a terrorist attack on a bus in Northern Kenya on Monday, according to multiple published reports.

Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported a bus traveling from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi to Mandera was attacked at about 7 a.m. local time by gunmen believed to be tied to Al-Shabaab.

The Associated Press reported 60 passengers were on the bus when the gunmen stopped it in Papa City, and that some of the Muslim passengers helped some of the non-Muslim passengers put on Islamic apparel, such as head scarves, to help mask their identities from the terrorists.

The bus passengers might have been recalling a similar attack that took place last November.

Al-Jazeera reported that Al-Shabaab militants stopped a bus near Mandera, singled out 28 non-Muslims aboard, and killed them. The BBC also reported that Al-Shabaab militants singled out Christians when they shot and killed about 150 people at Kenya’s Garissa University in April.

The quick-thinking passengers ensured that a similar scene wouldn’t take place this time.

A local government official told Daily Nation that the militants reportedly asked the passengers to exit the bus and separate themselves into two groups: Muslims and non-Muslims. The official told the newspaper the gunmen “were trying to identify who were Christians and who were not.”

But the passengers refused to divide themselves. Mandera Governor Ali Roba told Daily Nation that the passengers insisted the gunmen “should kill them together or leave them alone.”

According to the Associated Press, the gunmen ordered everyone back on the bus after a Muslim passenger told them that the bus had a police escort that was due to arrive on the scene shortly.

Two people were killed and three were injured in the attacks, Roba wrote on his Twitter page. The governor said the militants also attacked a truck.

Russia Planning to Sue Ukraine Over $3 Billion Bond Default

The Russian government is gearing up for a potential court battle with Ukraine after Kiev failed to repay a $3 billion bond debt, according to official statements from Russia’s prime minister.

Speaking at a meeting with his deputy prime ministers on Monday, Dmitry Medvedev said that Ukraine failed to repay the debt by a Dec. 20 deadline. While Ukraine can still repay the debt without any penalties in the next 10 days, there’s been no indication the nation plans do so.

Medvedev told his cabinet that the Russian government “must hire lawyers and start the procedure to make Ukraine pay everything, including fines,” adding that Ukraine’s failure to pay “amounts to manipulation and violation of its international commitments.”

Relations between Russia and Ukraine have been deteriorating in recent months, fueled in large part by Russia annexing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in February 2014 amid the Ukrainian revolution. The European Union issued a host of sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Crimean crisis, and announced Monday those sanctions would be extended through July 2016.

While it’s not a member of the European Union, the Ukraine has signed an economic agreement with the group. Speaking to his cabinet, Medvedev said that Ukraine implementing that pact “impinges on our interests and creates risk to our economic security.” Medvedev said he had signed a decree to enact “reciprocal economic measures” against the Ukraine beginning January 1, when the Ukraine’s revised economic agreement with the European Union goes into effect.

Bloomberg reported that Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, sold the debt to Russia in December 2013, weeks before Yanukovych was ousted. Ukraine’s new leader, Petro Poroshenko, has called that payment a bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin used to reward Yanukovych for shying away from closer trade ties with the European Union, which helped ignite the revolution.

The conflict has wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s bank accounts, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned the country $17 billion in April 2014 to help the nation reform its economy.

Bloomberg reported the Ukraine had to restructure billions of dollars in debt to obtain the IMF money, but Russia refused to participate and countered with its own proposed payment plan.

Ukraine’s finance minister, Natalie Jaresko, told Bloomberg that the decision to halt bond payments to Russia was made to remain compliant with IMF requirements, and that paying Russia “would have breached the contractual obligations that we have to our other creditors.”

Jaresko told Bloomberg she remained hopeful that an out-of-court settlement could be reached.

Cholera Outbreak Threatening World’s Largest Refugee Camp

A cholera outbreak is sweeping through the largest refugee camp in the world.

Doctors Without Borders, a medical charity, reported that seven people have died in Dadaab since the debilitating diarrhoeal disease first hit the Kenyan settlement back on November 23.

In a news release, the doctors said the disease has sickened more than 540 Dadaab residents in all, and doctors built a dedicated treatment center for cholera patients. Doctors said they have seen about 307 in the past three weeks, about 30 percent of whom were children less than 12.

According to the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, cholera is a bacterial disease that can kill within hours if it isn’t treated. The disease is usually transmitted through contaminated food or water, and is fueled by poor hygiene. Refugee camps are particularly at risk for outbreaks because their residents often lack access to clean water and proper sanitation.

Doctors Without Borders reported that funding cuts have accelerated the outbreak, as Dadaab hasn’t received any soap in two months and there aren’t enough latrines for its residents. More than 330,000 refugees live there, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. The doctors worry seasonal rains could lead to more cases, as the weather has already exacerbated the issue.

“After each heavy rain, we see an increase of patients in our treatment (center),” Charles Gaudry, the head of Doctors Without Borders’ mission in Kenya, said in a statement.

Doctors Without Borders said its staff is working to educate the refugees about cholera and decontaminating the living spaces of infected patients, but called for more long-term solutions and improvements at Dadaab, which is located near Kenya’s eastern border with Somalia.

“The fact that this outbreak has occurred further highlights the dire hygiene and living conditions in the camp and a lack of proper long-term investment in sanitation services,” Gaudry said in a statement.

91 Reported Missing After Massive Landslide in China

At least 91 people were missing on Monday after a massive landslide in China, reports indicate.

According to Xinhua, China’s official news agency, about 3,000 rescue workers were searching through an industrial park in the city of Shenzhen after construction waste slid down a hill at about 11:40 a.m. Sunday, covering a 93-acre area in 32 feet of dirt. The slide reportedly affected 33 buildings, either burying them or otherwise damaging them, and hospitalized 16 people.

Xinhua reported authorities detected some signs of life underneath the landslide, but the muddy composition of the silt was complicating rescue efforts. While 900 people were safely evacuated after the disaster, the news agency reported only seven people had been rescued from the mud.

A researcher with the China Academy of Railway Sciences, who was assisting the rescue, told Xinhua it was the only time he’d seen a landslide of this magnitude in his 30 years on the job.

Xinhua reported that the landslide caused part of an important pipeline that carried natural gas to nearby Hong Kong to explode. Crews were reportedly building a temporary pipe on Monday.

It’s still not known what exactly spurred the landslide, according to Xinhua. It reportedly occurred at a former quarry that had been turned into a site where construction waste could be dumped.

Flint Mayor Declares State of Emergency As Lead Seeps Into Water Supply

The new mayor of Flint, Michigan, declared a state of emergency earlier this week, the latest development in the embattled city’s ongoing battle with elevated levels of lead in its water.

Karen Weaver, who became mayor in November, said in a statement on the city’s website that she made the declaration to raise awareness that the water still isn’t safe to drink, almost two months after the city stopped taking problematic water from the Flint River and reverted to its old supplier, the city of Detroit. Weaver said Flint was experiencing “a man-made disaster.”

“It’s been going on for over a year now,” Weaver said in a televised interview on The Rachel Maddow Show. “We have problems with our infrastructure. We have children that have been damaged by this lead. They have permanent brain damage. We know that Flint is not in a position to bear this burden alone, and we are asking and looking for state and federal assistance. The only way we were going to have this happen was to declare a state of emergency.”

According to MLive.com, which covers news in Michigan, the problem started in April 2014. That’s when the city stopped taking water from Detroit and started taking water from the Flint River as it awaited the construction of a new pipeline to Lake Huron. City officials decided not to ink a short-term contract with Detroit, which gets water from the lake, and use the river instead.

But in her interview with Rachel Maddow, Weaver said that the river water was corrosive and damaged a protective part of the city’s pipes, allowing lead to leach out into the water supply. Michigan Radio reported that city and state officials continued to insist the water was safe, even as scientists from Virginia Tech found higher levels of lead in the city’s tap water. MLive.com reported the city finally issued a lead advisory in September 2015, 17 months after the switch.

The city reverted to Detroit’s water system in October, but the danger of lead exposure is still very much real. The problem is no longer with the water source, but Flint’s damaged pipes.

“We don’t want people to feel that because we’ve made the switch back to Detroit water that everything is fine now, because it’s not,” Weaver said in her interview with Maddow.

The World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, says that lead poisoning is particularly harmful to children. It’s known to damage nervous and reproductive systems, as well as cause high blood pressure and anemia. If enough lead gets into the blood of children, it can lead to irreversible consequences like learning disabilities, retardation and even death.

In September 2015, the day before the city issued the lead advisory, doctors from the Hurley Medical Center released a study that found that more of Flint’s children were displaying elevated levels of lead in their blood since the switch. The percentage of children with elevated lead levels went from 2.1 percent to 4 percent citywide, though it was as high as 6.3 percent in some areas.

Speaking to British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday, one of the doctors responsible for that study, Mona Hanna-Attisha, said up to 15 percent of children in certain parts of the city now have high levels of lead in their blood. Hanna-Attisha called the water situation “an emergency” and said it was “a disaster right here in Flint that is alarming and absolutely gut-wrenching.”

“We are assuming that the entire population of the city of Flint has been exposed, if you drank the water or cooked with the water,” Hanna-Attisha told the newspaper, noting that cooking with the water would actually concentrate the levels of lead. According to Flint’s website, the levels of lead “remain well above” federal safety standards for drinking water “in many homes.”

In her interview with Maddow, Weaver said some kids under the age of six have neurological damage, and the city would have to attempt to provide services to them and their families.

The city encourages residents to keep using water filters while it works on a long-term solution.

Virginia School District Closes Over Backlash from Islamic Homework Assignment

Schools in one Virginia county were closed Friday after a controversial homework assignment, in which students were reportedly asked to copy the Islamic statement of faith, drew backlash.

In a statement posted on the Augusta County Public Schools website, the district announced that schools would be closed Friday after “parental objections to the World Geography curriculum and ensuing related media coverage” spurred a bombardment of phone calls and emails.

The district said those messages “significantly increased in volume” Thursday and they were concerned about their “tone and content.” The district made the decision to close the schools “out of an abundance of caution,” though said there was “no specific threat of harm to students.”

The district didn’t offer details about what specific assignment prompted the backlash, but multiple media outlets reported that students at Riverheads High School were asked to practice drawing calligraphy by copying down the shahada, which is the Islamic statement of faith.

CNN published a copy of the assignment, which notes calligraphy’s importance in Islam. It shows the shahada written in Arabic calligraphy and instructs students to copy it into a box. “This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy,” the assignment reads.

One of the most common objections to the assignment is that the shahada, when translated into English, reads “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The News-Leader, a Virginia newspaper, reported that more than 100 people “met in fury” over the assignment, and some parents had called for the teacher who gave it to be fired. But the state Department of Education and the district’s superintendent both reviewed the assignment and determined it wasn’t a violation of students’ rights, and deemed it in line with state standards.

As of Friday afternoon, 2,500 members had joined a Facebook group to support the teacher. Still, some parents weren’t happy about the message the students were asked to copy.

“I will not have my children sit under a woman who indoctrinates them with the Islam religion when I am a Christian, and I’m going to stand behind Christ,” Kimberly Herndon told Virginia television station WHSV. The news station identified her as a parent of a Riverheads student.

The News-Leader reported that the teacher didn’t come up with the assignment, but rather pulled it out of a workbook about world religions. The newspaper also reported that students had learned about other religions in the teacher’s class, including Christianity and Judaism.

In its website posting, Augusta County Public Schools said “no lesson was designed to promote a viewpoint or change any student’s religious belief.” School officials said that their students will keep learning about world religions, which is required by state education officials, but a new, non-religious calligraphy sample will be used in future homework assignments about Islam.

Before making the decision to close, the district said it increased police presence at its schools.

Weather Experts Predict 2016 Could Be Hottest Year in History

British meteorologists said Thursday that 2015 is on track to be the warmest year in history, and forecasts indicate that next year could be even hotter.

Britain’s Met Office predicts the average global temperature is expected to be between 1.2 and 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than a 30-year average, with a “central estimate” of 1.5 degrees.

Temperatures in the first 10 months of this year were about 1.3 degrees hotter than that 30-year average, the Met Office said. If that trend continued, 2015 would be the hottest year on record.

“This forecast suggests 2016 is likely to be at least as warm, if not warmer,” Chris Folland, a research fellow at the Met Office, said in a statement accompanying the forecasts.

The 30-year average the Met Office cites covers global temperatures from 1961-1990. In those years, the average temperature on Earth was 57.2 degrees. But the Met Office said that human-induced climate change, as well as naturally occurring weather phenomena like El Nino, have factored into the recent observed temperatures, along with the forecasts for the future.

“This forecast suggests that by the end of 2016 we will have seen three record, or near-record years in a row for global temperatures,” Adam Scaife, who heads long-range prediction at the Met Office, said in a statement.

The Met Office said the forecast doesn’t include “random events” like volcanic eruptions, which could cause temperatures to cool temporarily. It also said that while it doesn’t expect the run of record-setting years to continue indefinitely, the forecast does indicate how climate change “can combine with smaller, natural fluctuations” to push temperatures to unprecedented levels.

The latest forecast comes on the heels of last week’s landmark COP21 agreement in which nearly 200 countries pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to keep average global temperatures from rising to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. Scientists have publicly warned that eclipsing that long-feared threshold could yield catastrophic results.

U.N. Moves to Cut Off Funding for Terrorist Groups

The United Nations Security Council took another step toward bankrupting the Islamic State on Thursday, voting to approve several measures aimed at cutting off the group’s funding sources.

The vote, which was unanimous, calls for United Nations members to do more to ensure that funds don’t find their way to the terrorist organization. A U.S. treasury official has publicly said the Islamic State has acquired roughly $1.5 billion by selling oil on the black market and looting bank vaults, as well as extorting millions more from people living in cities that it has captured.

The new resolution calls for U.N. members to improve cooperation between themselves, as well as work more closely with the private sector, to snuff out suspicious transactions. It also calls for putting a stop to all ransom payments to anyone on the Islamic State or Al-Qaida sanctions list, along with updating those lists. The council also called for U.N. members to do more to “detect any diversion” of the components terrorists could use to make explosive or chemical weapons.

According to a news release, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said an increasing number of member states had ratified the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, a U.N. treaty that criminalizes financing terrorism, but more needed to be done.

“They are agile and have been far too successful in attaining resources for their heinous acts,” Ban said of the terrorist groups in his opening remarks, noting that terrorists have exploited financial loopholes and forged destructive links with criminal and drug syndicates for income.

Ban noted that the Islamic State was running a multimillion-dollar economy in the territory it controlled, bringing in money through oil smuggling, extortion, kidnapping, racketeering and human and arms trafficking. The Islamic State also looted and sold cultural property for cash, Ban said, and other terrorist groups like Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and the Taliban followed suit.

Ban also told the Security Council that terrorists are constantly finding new ways to diversify and conceal income, making it imperative the U.N. act to prevent them from doing more harm.

“Just as terrorist groups are innovating and diversifying, the international community must stay ahead of the curve to combat money-laundering and the financing of terrorism,” Ban said.

New U.N. Data Suggests Record 60 Million People Displaced Worldwide

The number of people forced to flee their homes in 2015 likely “far surpassed” 60 million, a new record for global displacement, a new report from the United Nations Refugee Agency indicates.

The report, published Friday, projects that about 1 in every 122 people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of conflict or persecution. It’s based on data from the first half of the year, which indicated global surges in refugees, asylum-seekers and so-called internally displaced persons, or people who fled their homes but still live in their own countries.

According to the report, there were 20.2 million global refugees at end of June. It was a rise from last year’s total of 19.5 million, and the first time that number hit 20 million since 1992.

The U.N. report also documented a 78 percent increase in applications for asylum during the first half of 2015, from last year’s total of 558,000 to this year’s figure of 993,600. And the number of internally displaced people hit 34 million, an increase of about 2 million over 2014.

“Never has there been a greater need for tolerance, compassion and solidarity with people who have lost everything,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

The Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, which analyzes global conflict, reported 46 highly violent conflicts in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available.

The U.N. report indicates Syria’s civil war remains the single largest driver behind displacement, with about 4.2 million people fleeing the war-torn nation and another 7.6 million forced out of their homes but still in the country as of mid-2015. But the report notes that even without Syria included in the totals, there still would have been a 5 percent global rise in refugees since 2011.

There was also a rise in new refugees this year — about 839,000 in six months, or 4,600 a day. About half came from Syria and the Ukraine, the site of another armed conflict. Globally, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Myanmar, Eritrea and Iraq were the 10 countries that produced the most refugees.

A large number of refugees flee to neighboring countries, the report indicated. Turkey hosts the most refugees — 1.84 million in all, 1.81 of them from Syria — followed by Pakistan with 1.5 million, “virtually all of them from Afghanistan.” Lebanon is third with 1.2 million — 99 percent of them from Syria — followed by Iran, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, Chad and Sudan.

The United Nations warned that countries hosting the refugees are facing growing pressure, which, if unmanaged, “can increase resentment and abet politicization of refugees.” The report also indicated refugees in this day and age are less likely to return home than at any other point in the past 30 years, according to a statistic the United Nations calls the voluntary return rate.

In terms of asylum, Germany was the runaway leader in new applications. It received 159,900 in the first six months of 2015, nearly equaling the 173,100 it received in 2014. The country is known for having extremely favorable, yet often criticized policies for those who seek to resettle there. Russia was next with about 100,000 — fueled by conflict in Ukraine, the report indicates.

The United States was third with 78,200. While that was an increase of 44 percent from last year, the report indicated that most people who sought asylum in the United States were from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and China. Syria wasn’t mentioned.

Other countries in the top 10 for most new asylum applications were Hungary, Turkey, South Africa, Serbia, Italy, France and Austria.

The report indicated there were 6.5 million internally displaced people in Columbia, 4 million in Iraq and 2.3 million in Sudan. Pakistan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Ukraine also had more than 1.4 million internally displaced people. Yemen, the site of an ongoing civil war, and Afghanistan also saw surges in their figures, the report indicated.