WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an effort that an agency official admitted faces "a very big hurdle having to do with privacy." The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a "middleman" between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies "before they jump into the pool," said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's division of borders and maritime security. Appleby provided program details to a friendly audience at the Counter Terror Expo here last week. Just days before, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued new rules to streamline ... Continue reading →
At 17 I have a lot to worry about: graduating from high school, keeping in touch with friends, staying out of trouble, dealing with sexual issues, etc. But who thought I would have pressure from Facebook to decide whether I am male or female. Maybe this isn't an issue for everyone, but it is for me. I'm CJ, formerly known as Chana. I'm also "genderqueer," which means that I feel part-female and part-male. I'm not sure yet whether I will transition or not. I have two sisters, a mom, and a dad. When I went away to school, we discovered that it was fun to communicate and share things on Facebook and see what the others were doing. (Of course, almost every kid I know ... Continue reading →
Huffington Post staffers got a progress report last week on the site's plans for live streaming video. Originally billed during a splashy press event back in February as The Huffington Post Streaming Network, the service is now being called HuffPost Live and is gearing up for an early July launch, according to people briefed on the plans during two well attended Wednesday afternoon staff meetings.Roy Sekoff, Huffington Post's founding editor and a top lieutenant of the site's matriarch, Arianna Huffington, ran the meetings, during which he also announced some of the talent recently recruited for the venture. They include former Al Jazeera English co-host Ahmed Shihab-Eldin (whose hiring was previously reported by Ad Age); Alicia Menendez, the daughter of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who ... Continue reading →
Can it really be true that Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama among women? This is what The New York Times (and CBS) said in their latest poll—Romney 46, Obama 44. The Obama team and liberal blogs immediately went to work crapping on the poll. The methodology was weird—they called back respondents from an earlier poll. But what if...? Obama can afford a lot of things to go wrong against Romney, but one thing he absolutely cannot afford is to have no gender gap. So pondering this situation has got me thinking for the first time semi-seriously about you-know-who. President Obama walking along the colonnade of the White House with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Pete Souza / The White House) Joseph Curl of The Washington ... Continue reading →
President Barack Obama's administration refused a request from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to position a large cache of medical supplies in his city in case of a terrorist attack or other public health emergency at last weekend's NATO Summit, according to a source familiar with security planning for the event. Prior to the two-day event, the city now headed by Obama's former White House chief of staff asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to deploy several tractor trailers of supplies from the Strategic National Stockpile to Chicago two weeks before the summit. City officials wanted to be prepared in case something major went wrong at the summit, which the Secret Service designated as Chicago's first-ever "National Special Security Event." According to someone ... Continue reading →
RT @khayadlanga A 94-year-old woman is reunited with her son 67 years after he disappeared http://t.co/Arvs1CXV RT @jaybilas Good article by Warren Zola on College Sports tipping point: http://t.co/gOCVF9R9 Biggest tipping point is NCAA's huge pile of cash. Good article by Warren Zola on College Sports tipping point: http://t.co/gOCVF9R9 Biggest tipping point is NCAA's huge pile of cash. Continue reading →
Mitt Romney "I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman," Mitt Romney said. Kyrsten Sinema Daniel O'Donnell Kirsten Gillibrand Jeff Merkley Elizabeth Warren Michael Bloomberg "This is a major turning point in the history of American civil rights," said New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. "No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people - and I have no doubt that this will be no exception. The march of freedom that has sustained our country since the Revolution of 1776 continues, and no matter what setbacks may occur in a given state, freedom will triumph over fear and equality will prevail over exclusion. Today's announcement is a testament ... Continue reading →
WASHINGTON -- More than a decade after 9/11, it isn't easy to stage a "first-of-its-kind" event centered on homeland security and counterterrorism. Yet that's what the organizers of a two-day Counter Terror Expo called their show at the Washington Convention Center this week. While the expo does mark the U.S. debut for the British trade show company, it is among a proliferation of homeland-security-industrial complex gatherings that have mushroomed since the attacks and far from the largest. "Counter-terrorism has become a fetish in the U.S.," Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. Noting that in 2010 there were "two American deaths from terrorism worldwide, outside of Afghanistan," compared with more than 32,000 Americans dying ... Continue reading →
