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Monday, May 20, 2013

ZAGREB, Croatia -- Mirjana Filipovic is still haunted by the land mine blast that killed her boyfriend and blew off her left leg while on a fishing trip nearly a decade ago. It happened in a field that was supposedly de-mined.

Now, unlikely heroes may be coming to the rescue to prevent similar tragedies: sugar-craving honeybees. Croatian researchers are training them to find unexploded mines littering their country and the rest of the Balkans.

When Croatia joins the European Union on July 1, in addition to the beauty of its aquamarine Adriatic sea, deep blue mountain lakes and lush green forests, it will also bring numerous un-cleared minefields to the bloc's territory. About 750 square kilometers (466 square miles) are still suspected to be filled with mines from the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

Nikola Kezic, an expert on the behavior of honeybees, sat quietly together with a group of young researchers on a recent day in a large net tent filled with the buzzing insects on a grass field lined with acacia trees. The professor at Zagreb University outlined the idea for the experiment: Bees have a perfect sense of smell that can quickly detect the scent of the explosives. They are being trained to identify their food with the scent of TNT.

"Our basic conclusion is that the bees can clearly detect this target, and we are very satisfied," said Kezic, who leads a part of a larger multimillion-euro program, called "Tiramisu," sponsored by the EU to detect land mines on the continent.

Several feeding points were set up on the ground around the tent, but only a few have TNT particles in them. The method of training the bees by authenticating the scent of explosives with the food they eat appears to work: bees gather mainly at the pots containing a sugar solution mixed with TNT, and not the ones that have a different smell.

Kezic said the feeding points containing the TNT traces offer "a sugar solution as a reward, so they can find the food in the middle."

"It is not a problem for a bee to learn the smell of an explosive, which it can then search," Kezic said. "You can train a bee, but training their colony of thousands becomes a problem."

Croatian officials estimate that since the beginning of the Balkan wars in 1991, about 2,500 people have died from land mine explosions. During the four-year war, around 90,000 land mines were placed across the entire country, mostly at random and without any plan or existing maps.

Dijana Plestina, the head of the Croatian government's de-mining bureau, said the suspected devices represent a large obstacle for the country's population and industry, including agriculture and tourism. In the nearly two decades since the end of the war, land mines have taken the lives of 316 people, including 66 de-miners, she said.

"While this exists, we are living in a kind of terror, at least for the people who are living in areas suspected to have mines," she said. "And of course, that is unacceptable. We will not be a country in peace until this problem is solved."

In 2004, Filipovic and her boyfriend were on a fishing trip that took them to a river between Croatia and Bosnia.

"As we were returning hand-in-hand, my boyfriend stepped on a mine," the 41-year-old Filipovic said. "It was an awful, deafening explosion ... thousands of shrapnel parts went flying, hundreds ending up in my body. He was found dead several meters away, while I remained in a pool of blood sitting on the ground."

She sued the Croatian government, saying the area wasn't clearly marked as a former minefield.

"At first I thought I was asleep," she recalled. "Then I heard the voice of my father. I opened my eyes, and saw nothing. I thought I lost my eyes."

The government admitted guilt in the case for failing to keep the minefield sign, but the court has yet to determine financial compensation.

It may be a while before the honeybees hit real minefields, Kezic said. First, they will conduct controlled tests, with real mines but which are marked.

Kezic said American researchers have in the past experimented with mine-searching bees, but TNT ? the most common explosive used in the Balkan wars ? wasn't part of their experiment because its smell evaporates quickly, and only small traces remain after time. Rats and dogs are also used to detect explosives worldwide, but unlike bees, they could set off blasts on the minefields because of their weight.

Even after the de-miners have done their job in an area, some land mines are missed and remain in the soil, and they are most often the cause of deadly explosions. Once the experiment with bees proves scientifically reliable, the idea is to use them in the areas that have already been de-mined, where their movement would be followed with heat-seeking cameras, Kezic said.

"We are not saying that we will discover all the mines on a minefield, but the fact is that it should be checked if a minefield is really de-mined," he said. "It has been scientifically proven that there are never zero mines on a de-mined field, and that's where bees could come in."

Earlier on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/honeybees-croatia-land-mines-bees_n_3302051.html

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Danger and separation from families changing job of U.S. diplomats

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda placed a bounty on her husband's head, Mary Feierstein learned of it from a friend who called and said, "You must be a mess!"

U.S. Ambassador Gerald Feierstein was thousands of miles (km) away at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, without his wife and family on what is called an "unaccompanied" posting.

He is one of more than a thousand U.S. diplomats on such tours of duty in danger spots around the world, part of a trend that is changing the definition of being a diplomat.

Over time, his wife has learned to stay calm when the phone rings unexpectedly at her home outside Washington. For nearly five years, she has not lived in the same country as her husband, a career diplomat who specializes in the Middle East and South Asia.

After militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen last September, breaking through to the inner building and ripping plaques and lettering from the walls, Feierstein called his wife to tell her he was OK.

He had also called her a few years earlier when he was based in Islamabad, Pakistan, and a bomb went off near his residence. He was unhurt in that attack.

But when Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - considered by U.S. officials to be al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate - offered 3 kg of gold last December for the killing of Feierstein, it was Mary's turn to call her husband. He played down the danger.

"He said it was old news. They are constantly under threat, you know," Mary Feierstein said in her first media interview since the threat.

After a police officer came to her home to give her his card and tell her to call him if she needed any help, "that's when I got scared," Feierstein said.

The new perils for foreign service officers were spotlighted last September 11, when militants overran the temporary U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Two other U.S. diplomats were killed in Afghanistan in the past year.

President Barack Obama, still grappling with controversy over the Benghazi attack, called on Congress on Friday to fully fund his $4 billion embassy security budget request.

In a memorial ceremony earlier this month at the State Department, Vice President Joe Biden said that diplomats "take risks that sometimes exceed those of the women and men in uniform."

Honored along with Stevens were Sean Patrick Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who died in Benghazi; and foreign service officers Anne Smedinghoff and Ragaei Said Abdelfattah, killed in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2012.

FIVE-FOLD INCREASE IN UNACCOMPANIED DIPLOMATS

The State Department says there are about 1,100 U.S. foreign service officers now at posts abroad where they are unaccompanied or there are limits on who can accompany them - usually meaning no children.

That is a five-fold increase in unaccompanied American diplomats over the past decade, and represents about 14 percent of U.S. foreign service officers serving overseas.

The change began with "civilian surges" into the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan to help with stabilization and reconstruction. Over 400 unaccompanied diplomats are in those countries.

Then, the Arab Spring uprisings starting in 2011 added many unstable countries to the list where the State Department did not want to send families.

The fluctuating list now includes Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Tunisia, as well as the new African state of South Sudan, the State Department said.

The U.S. embassies in Algeria, Sudan and Lebanon are in the "limited accompanied" category as is the U.S. Consulate in Mexico's third-largest city, Monterrey, a focal point for drug-related violence.

The risks to diplomats are not all external. A 2007 State Department survey said 17 percent of employees who had served in dangerous posts indicated some symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. The department, following the military's lead, has set up a program to help diagnose and treat PTSD in its employees.

Mary Feierstein realized she was one of an expanding group of left-behind relatives when she started attending the year-end holiday parties the State Department throws for them, and noticed the crowd getting bigger every year.

She also noticed a lot of small children at those parties, and admitted to thinking, "At least my kids are grown." Her children, two daughters and a son, are all in their 20s. Her son has served two tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended the holiday parties, at which some of the unaccompanied diplomats were Skyped in from abroad. Feierstein said she thought Obama should attend too.

The president did call Gerald Feierstein to thank him for his service after the Yemen embassy was attacked last September 13, two days after the Benghazi assaults.

'NEW NORM'

The United States used to be quicker to evacuate its embassies and consulates when dangers arose, said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, the official union representing the Foreign Service.

These days, Washington tries to manage risks by building up the physical security of posts and increasing diplomatic security personnel, she said.

"In the process, we seem to have built a new level of tolerance for the amount of risk our diplomats face," Johnson said, adding that unaccompanied tours were increasingly becoming "a new norm."

There is pressure on diplomats to do the dangerous tours in order to advance. It is perceived to be "almost mandatory" to serve at an unaccompanied post and "punch that ticket" during a Foreign Service career, she said.

The State Department said 20 percent of its current employees had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The department offers incentives such as danger pay and shorter tours. Unaccompanied posts can be just 12 months, with several breaks, and families can often be left behind at a previous post to minimize disruption.

The State Department has made considerable progress in supporting employees in unaccompanied posts, its inspector general said in a 2010 report. Still, it said, "many returnees experience problems adjusting to their follow-on assignments," and more counseling services may be needed.

Mary Feierstein was born in Pakistan and met her husband on his first tour there in the 1970s. She said he was one of some "really tough people" that the State Department keeps cycling through stressful, dangerous posts.

Gerald Feierstein served in Lebanon unaccompanied in 2003 and 2004, then returned to Washington for a few years and was a senior official in the State Department's counterterrorism office.

He was sent to Pakistan for the third time in his career in 2008, as deputy chief of mission in Islamabad. His family stayed in the United States. In September 2010, Feierstein went to Yemen, again without his family.

"We were planning to go later. ... After the Arab Spring, we haven't been able to go there at all," Mary Feierstein said.

At home, she volunteers for the local Democratic Party and supports causes like gun control. She last saw her husband in March.

While tired of the separation, she said she felt sorrier for her children, even though they are grown. "They miss him so much. They are so happy when he comes home."

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/danger-separation-families-changing-job-u-diplomats-052021750.html

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Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup

This week saw the kickoff of Second Term Scandal Season, though the first entrants fall on very different parts of the manufactured scandal vs. real scandal continuum. On the deeply-contrived end is Benghazi -- with supposedly damning White House emails having been altered by GOP leakers. On the actually scandalous end is the administration's snooping through the AP's phone records, which the New York Times called "an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers." The incident points out the hypocrisy of a White House that praises whistleblowers in the abstract, but then goes after them -- aggressively and often. "Speaking truth to power is now a criminal act," says whistleblower and former NSA executive Thomas Drake, who the DOJ charged under the WW I-era Espionage Act. It's President Obama's war against whistleblowers that is the true scandal.

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/sunday-roundup_282_b_3299201.html

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Sunday, May 19, 2013

Budget deal reached (Offthekuff)

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Multiple Vulnerabilities Found in File Lite and File Pro iOS Apps

Bad news this week for any users of the iOS file management apps File Lite and File Pro. Researchers over at Vulnerability Laboratory have published details for three vulnerabilities that they discovered in the latest versions of both apps.

Ranging from low to high risk, two of the vulnerabilities allow for code injection in the user?s browser when they view a file listing, while the most severe vulnerability allows an attacker to upload arbitrary files to a user?s account without any user interaction. While the impact of these vulnerabilities could be quite severe, exploitation requires a victim to be running the app?s Wi-Fi Sharing option.

The Wi-Fi Sharing method for sharing files runs a web server locally on your iPhone. It appears that all of the published vulnerabilities rely on the web server running to be exploited. If you already have the app on your phone and don?t want to lose the documents you have in it, you should be fine leaving the app on your phone, just avoid using the Wi-Fi Sharing option. Although based on the insecurities found by Vulnerability Laboratory, it?s probably not unwise to start using a different app to manage your files.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/foCkyF9051c/story01.htm

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14 Reasons to Keep Your Gadgets Away from Open Flame

Some men (and women!) just want to see the world burn. Others are content to focus more specifically on technology. Whichever one you are, if you've ever thought about chucking a misbehaving iPod into the incinerator, you're going to enjoy this.