Homeland Security Science & Technology at the University of the District of Columbia: March 2015

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Half of U.S. lacks network backup systems to withstand outages

Published 31 March 2015

About half of the rural United States lacks access to high-speed Internet service, and since 2009, the U.S. Agriculture and Commerce departments have provided roughly $10 billion in grants and loans to expand broadband Internet access. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also plans to distribute about $20 billion in funds over the next five years to support rural broadband, but the federal government does not require recipients to build network backup systems against outages.
While most major cities have backup systems to withstand outages, in most rural areas, damage to a fiber-optic cable will lead to a temporary loss of Internet and phone service. “The more rural the location, the more likely that there’s only one road in and out of that location,” said Sean Donelan, a former DHS Cybersecurity Program Manager. “If someone manages to cut that fiber, you’ll generally see a one- or two- or three-day outage.”
For the past two decades, the federal government has warned about the vulnerabilities of not having backup systems, but since Internet service is largely unregulated by federal and state agencies, final decisions about network reliability are left to service providers, who generally do not build backup systems or redundancies, unless they find it financially beneficial. According to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s newly created Broadband Opportunity Council, the federal government’s first responsibility is to make sure people “actually have service,” Internet providers are then encouraged to adopt backup systems.
The Star Tribune reports that in northern Arizona last month, tens of thousands of residents spent fifteen hours without Internet service after vandals cut through a underground bundle of fiber-optic cables owned by CenturyLink. ATMs could not operate and retailers were unable to process credit cards. In 2013, Washington state’s San Juan Islands were without Internet and phone service for ten days after an underwater fiber-optic cable became wrapped around a rock and broke. Aerospace consultant Mike Loucks, was shocked to find out that his home phone, cellphone, and Internet service did not work on separate cable lines. “When I figured out what all had been routed to this cable, it’s a single-point failure thing,” he said. “That’s pretty dumb. Why don’t you guys have a backup cable?”
With more than ten million miles of fiber-optic cables deployed annually in the United States, the number of outages due to damage from backhoes, trench-diggers, and vandalism has more than doubled from 221 in 2010 to 487 in 2014, according to the FCC.
Spokeswoman Linda Johnson for CenturyLink, the broadband provider in the Arizona and San Juan Islands outages said the company acts quickly to restore service and “is constantly investing in its local network and strives to deliver new services and build redundancy where possible.”

Future supply risks threaten metals used in high-tech products

Published 31 March 2015

During the past decade, sporadic shortages of metals needed to create a wide range of high-tech products have inspired attempts to quantify the criticality of these materials, defined by the relative importance of the elements’ uses and their global availability. In a new paper, a team of researchers assesses the “criticality” of all sixty-two metals on the Periodic Table of Elements, providing key insights into which materials might become more difficult to find in the coming decades, which ones will exact the highest environmental costs — and which ones simply cannot be replaced as components of vital technologies.

In a new paper, a team of Yale University researchers assesses the “criticality” of all sixty-two metals on the Periodic Table of Elements, providing key insights into which materials might become more difficult to find in the coming decades, which ones will exact the highest environmental costs — and which ones simply cannot be replaced as components of vital technologies.
During the past decade, sporadic shortages of metals needed to create a wide range of high-tech products have inspired attempts to quantify the criticality of these materials, defined by the relative importance of the elements’ uses and their global availability.
Many of the metals traditionally used in manufacturing, such as zinc, copper, and aluminum, show no signs of vulnerability. The other metals critical in the production of newer technologies, however — like smartphones, infrared optics, and medical imaging — may be harder to obtain in coming decades, said Thomas Graedel, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and lead author of the paper.
A Yale University release reports that the study — which was based on previous research, industry information, and expert interviews — represents the first peer-reviewed assessment of the criticality of all of the planet’s metals and metalloids.
“The metals we’ve been using for a long time probably won’t present much of a challenge. We’ve been using them for a long time because they’re pretty abundant and they are generally widespread geographically,” Graedel said. “But some metals that have become deployed for technology only in the last ten or twenty years are available almost entirely as byproducts. You can’t mine specifically for them; they often exist in small quantities and are used for specialty purposes. And they don’t have any decent substitutes.”
These findings illustrate the urgency for new product designs that make it easier to reclaim materials for re-use, Graedel said.
The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, encapsulates the Yale group’s five-year assessment of the criticality of the planet’s metal resources in the face of rising global demand and the increasing complexity of modern products.
According to the researchers, criticality depends not only on geological abundance. Other important factors include the potential for finding effective alternatives in production processes, the degree to which ore deposits are geopolitically concentrated, the state of mining technology, regulatory oversight, geopolitical initiatives, regional instabilities, and economic policies.
In order to assess the state of all metals, researchers developed a methodology that characterizes criticality in three areas: supply risk, environmental implications, and vulnerability to human-imposed supply restrictions.
They found that supply limits for many metals critical in the emerging electronics sector (including gallium and selenium) are the result of supply risks. The environmental implications of mining and processing present the greatest challenges with platinum-group metals, gold, and mercury. For steel alloying elements (including chromium and niobium) and elements used in high-temperature alloys (tungsten and molybdenum), the greatest vulnerabilities are associated with supply restrictions.
Among the factors contributing to extreme criticality challenges are high geopolitical concentration of primary production (for example, 90 to 95 percent of the global supply of rare Earth metals comes from China); lack of available substitutes (there is no adequate substitute for indium, which is used in computer and cell phone displays); and political instability (a significant fraction of tantalum, used widely in electronics, comes from the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo).
The researchers also analyzed how recycling rates have evolved over the years and the degree to which different industries are able to utilize “non-virgin” sources of materials. Some materials, such as lead, are highly recycled because they are typically used in bulk, Graedel said. The relatively rare materials that have become critical in some modern electronics, however, are far more difficult to recycle because they are used in such miniscule amounts — and can be difficult to extricate from the increasingly complex and compact new technologies.
“I think these results should send a message to product designers to spend more time thinking about what happens after their products are no longer being used,” he said. “So much of what makes the recycling of these materials difficult is their design. It seems as if it’s time to think a little bit more about the end of these beautiful products.”
— Read more in T. E. Graedel et al., “Criticality of metals and metalloids,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (8 January 2015) (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1500415112)

Bioweapons do not offer the same deterrence value nukes offer: Experts

Published 31 March 2015

Biological and nuclear weapons are both considered weapons of mass destruction, but only nuclear weapons currently serve as a deterrence. Some security experts have proposed the idea of nations adopting non-contagious biological weapons as a new form of deterrence. The new model “could work well if deterrence required threatening large human populations” without posing the risk of a global catastrophe like nuclear winter or a pandemic, writesSeth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.
The consequences of starting a global biological arms race are troubling enough, but the concept of replacing nuclear weapons with biological weapons as a form of deterrence is flawed for three main reasons: uncertainty of effects, availability of defenses, and the need for secrecy and surprise.
According to Gregory D. Koblentz, an associate professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs and deputy director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University, nuclear weapons instantaneously destroy their targets, causing predictable levels of harm. Biological weapons, however, take time to germinate and their effects can be unpredictable due to their sensitivity to environmental conditions and the importance of pathogens-host interactions. Furthermore, the inability to test the realistic effects of biological weapons, unless human experimentation is conducted, prevents nations from fully understanding how biological weapons will play out in a real life attack.
There are also no known practical defenses against the effects of a nuclear attack. A biological attack, on the other hand, can be countered with measures taken before, during, and after the attack. “Biological weapons use has been always uncertain, invisible, and delayed due to factors such as the incubation period,” according to a 2008 paper by Francisco Galamas. TheBulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes that because diseases have an incubation period of days to weeks, defenders may have time to detect an attack using sensors and biosurveillance systems. Masks and filters can prevent exposure to biological agents and vaccines can also be used to protect citizens and soldiers days or weeks before an attack. As a result, the effects of a biological attack are not absolute, and they can be curbed by a well-prepared defender. For this reason, nations relying on biological weaponsfor deterrence will have little confidence in their ability to launch catastrophic retaliatory strikes against an adversary.
During the cold war, the superpowers were able to flaunt their nuclear capabilities for deterrent purposes because doing so did not provide adversaries with improved means of defending against them. Biological weapons, however, have limited value as deterrents due to the need for states to hide their biological weapons programs for fear that the adversaries might develop defenses. Secrecy counters the goals of deterrence.
In his 2008 paper, Galamas suggests that new biotechnology techniques may enhance the deterrence capability of biological weapons, but Koblentz notes that while biological weapons have the ability to inflict great harm against an adversary, currently “they are unable to offer states an ‘assured’ capability for doing so.” Biological weapons do not measure up to the deterrence characteristics of nuclear weapons.
— Read more in Seth Baum, “Deterrence, without nuclear winter,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (9 March 2015); Seth Baum, “Winter-safe Deterrence: The Risk of Nuclear Winter and Its Challenge to Deterrence,” Contemporary Security Policy 36, no. 1 (2015): 123-48 (DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2015.1012346); and Francisco Galamas, “Biological Weapons, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence: The Biotechnology Revolution,” Comparative Strategy 27, no. 4 (31 October 2008): 315-23 (DOI: 10.1080/01495930802358364)

Head of Chemical Safety Board resigns under WH pressure, lawmakers’ criticism

Published 31 March 2015

Rafael Moure-Eraso, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board(CSB), resigned after increased pressure from lawmakers and at the White House’s request. Under Moure-Eraso, complaints have risen regarding poor management, his use of a personal e-mail account for agency work, “abuse of power, employee retaliation, and lack of honesty in his communications with Congress,” according to an 18 March letter from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Rafael Moure-Eraso, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), was expected to end his five-year term in June, but after increased pressure from lawmakers and at the White House’s request, Moure-Eraso resigned last week but will remain on the board as a regular member until mid-April.
The CSB is an independent agency modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board to issue recommendations to regulatory agencies following industrial accidents, such as the 2014 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas which killed fourteen people. Under Moure-Eraso, complaints have risen regarding poor management, his use of a personal e-mail account for agency work, “abuse of power, employee retaliation, and lack of honesty in his communications with Congress,” according to an 18 March letter from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
About two years ago, the Center for Public Integrity published an article describing the slow pace of board investigations and reports of sinking staff morale. At its January public meeting, the CSB terminated three investigations that had been open for at least five years, because there was “no realistic opportunity” to issue reports on those cases, said board member Manny Ehrlich.
Insurance Journal reports that in the 18 March letter from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, President Barack Obama was asked to remove Moure-Eraso, Managing Director Daniel Horowitz, and General Counsel Richard Loeb, from their positions. There has been no word on Horowitz’s and Loeb’s status. Vanessa Allen Sutherland, former chief counsel for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, has been nominated to replace Moure-Eraso.
Mike Wright, director of health, safety, and environment for the United Steelworkers, said Moure-Eraso’s resignation was the right move. “I don’t really want to dwell on the past. I think what we really have to do now is work as effectively as we can to make sure the new board can really go back to the kind of organization that it was … under some of the previous board chiefs,” he said.
Bill Wright, a board member from 2006 to 2011 said while Moure-Eraso’s resignation is positive news for the CSB, Horowitz and Loeb contributed to the board’s inefficiency. “Whether it was one of them or all three of them, the agency hasn’t made any progress on reports,” Bill Wright said.
In an e-mail statement sent to CSB staff last week, Moure-Eraso wrote, “It has been a privilege to serve the agency since June 2010. My wishes are for the continued success and productivity of the Board.”

Most 2014 Muslim-American terrorism cases involved Americans going to Syria: Report

Published 31 March 2015

A new report issued last week by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security shows that terrorist plots involving Muslim-Americans accounted for only a small fraction of the threats to public safety in the United States. The 2014 report shows that growth in terrorism cases involving Muslim-Americans can be attributed to individuals seeking to join terrorist groups in Syria. Of the twenty-five Muslim-Americans associated with terrorism in 2014, six plotted or engaged in violence in the United States. This number equals the lowest total since 2008. “We have not seen mass radicalization of Muslims in the United States,” the report’s author says. “That’s worth taking note of.”

A new report issued last week by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security shows that terrorist plots involving Muslim-Americans accounted for only a small fraction of the threats to public safety in the United States.
The center’s annual report offers systematic evidence on the issues of terrorism and homeland security. The Triangle Center says that the 2014 report shows that growth in terrorism cases involving Muslim-Americans can be attributed to individuals seeking to join terrorist groups in Syria. Of the twenty-five Muslim-Americans associated with terrorism in 2014, six plotted or engaged in violence in the United States. This number equals the lowest total since 2008.
“That’s far less than one would guess from media coverage and government resources devoted to this concern,’’ said Charles Kurzman, a professor of sociology in UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and author of the report. “Despite concern about the radicalizing effect of the civil wars in Syria and elsewhere, violent extremism continued to attract a miniscule number of adherents among Muslim-Americans in 2014.”
“We have not seen mass radicalization of Muslims in the United States,” Kurzman told VOANews. “That’s worth taking note of.”
Kurzman said that the numbers of Muslim-American terrorism suspects have, in fact, been declining, and over the last couple of years there have been almost no plots aimed at the United States. Most of those arrested recently on suspicion of terrorism were attempting to travel to Syria or Yemen to join terrorist groups there.
David Schanzer, director of the center and an associate professor of the practice at Duke University, said it comes as no surprise that the brutal Syrian civil war is stimulating a small number of American youth to attempt to join the fighting.
“This report is striking, however, for the data showing that hardly any Muslim-Americans — about eight per year — have been involved in terrorism offenses against targets inside the United States since 9/11,” Schanzer said. “This terrorism has caused 50 deaths in over 13 years, whereas 136 people were killed in mass shooting incidents in the United States in 2014 alone.”
Schanzer added that while federal authorities spend “a disproportionate amount of energy” thinking about domestic terrorism, local police departments across the country have other things on their minds.
“They very much realize that the things that are threats to public safety in their communities are much more things like drugs, gangs, domestic violence,” he said.
VOANews notes that although comparisons are not easy, other studies suggest that right-wing violence claimed more lives in the U.S. than terrorism committed in the name of Islam (see, for example, Peter Bergen and David Sterman, “U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists,” CNN, 15 April 2014).
The study examined a total of 250 American Muslims who have been arrested for — or who have engaged in — acts that can be called terrorism since 2001. This is out of an estimated population of three million Muslims in the United States.
The study found that while terrorism has caused 50 deaths in the United States during 2001-2014, during the same 13-year period more than 200,000 were murdered in the United States.
U.S. security authorities say that large-scale terrorist attacks have been prevented because of the broad security structure which was set up in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
Kurzman says that his findings suggest a “mismatch” between other public safety issues, such as car accidents or the easy availability of firearms, on the one hand, and the attention given to the possibility of homegrown terrorism on the other.
“We are stuck into this security mindset, where we have a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of violence and a much higher level of tolerance for other threats,” he told VOANews.
The Triangle Center is a collaborative effort among Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and RTI International.
— Read more in Charles Kurzman, Terrorism Cases Involving Muslim-Americans, 2014 (Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, 9 February 2015); and Michael Jensen et al., Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States: Preliminary Findings (START, University of Maryland, January 2015)

Monday, March 30, 2015

New technology combats mobile malware attacks

Published 30 March 2015

As mobile phones increase in functionality, they are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life. At the same time, these devices also are becoming easy targets for malicious activities.One of the primary reasons for such malware explosion is user willingness to download applications from untrusted sources that may host apps with hidden malicious codes. Once installed on a smartphone, such malware can exploit it in various ways. Researchers have developed simple but effective techniques to prevent sophisticated malware from secretly attacking smartphones.

University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers have developed simple but effective techniques to prevent sophisticated malware from secretly attacking smartphones. This new malware defense was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, or PerCom, in St. Louis.
As mobile phones increase in functionality, they are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life. At the same time, these devices also are becoming easy targets for malicious activities.
One of the primary reasons for such malware explosion is user willingness to download applications from untrusted sources that may host apps with hidden malicious codes. Once installed on a smartphone, such malware can exploit it in various ways.
For example, it can access the smartphone’s resources to learn sensitive information about the user, secretly use the camera to spy on the user, make premium-rate phone calls without the user’s knowledge, or use a Near Field Communication, or NFC, reader to scan for physical credit cards within its vicinity.
A UAB release reports that Such malware already is prevalent, and researchers and practitioners anticipate that this and other forms of malware will become one of the greatest threats affecting millions of smartphone users in the near future.
“The most fundamental weakness in mobile device security is that the security decision process is dependent on the user,” said Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., the director of the Security and Privacy In Emerging computing and networking Systems (SPIES) Lab and an associate professor of computer and information sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at UAB.
“For instance, when installing an Android app, the user is prompted to choose whether or not the application should have permissions to access a given service on the phone. The user may be in a rush or distracted, or maybe it is the user’s kid who has the phone. Whatever the case may be, it is a well-known problem that people do not look at these warnings; they just click ‘yes.’”
Current operating systems provide inadequate security against these malware attacks, putting the burden of prevention upon the user. The current anti-virus systems are ineffective against such constantly evolving malware. UAB pursued research to find a mechanism that would defend against mobile malware that can exploit critical and sensitive mobile device services, especially focusing on the phone’s calling service, camera and NFC.
The study from researchers within the UAB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Computer and Information Sciences and Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research explains how natural hand gestures associated with three primary smartphone services — calling, snapping and tapping — can be detected and have the ability to withstand attacks using motion, position and ambient sensors available on most smartphones as well as machine learning classifiers.
If a human user attempts to access a service, the gesture would be present and access will be allowed. In contrast, if the malware program makes an access request, the gesture will be missing and access will be blocked.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, researchers collected data from multiple phone models and multiple users in real-life or near real-life scenarios, simulating benign settings and adversarial scenarios.
The results showed that the three gestures can be detected with a high overall accuracy and can be distinguished from one another and from other benign or malicious activities to create a viable malware defense.
“In this method, something as simple as a human gesture can solve a very complex problem,” Saxena said. “It turns the phone’s weakest security component — the user — into its strongest defender.”
The research team believes that, in the future, transparent gestures associated with other smartphone services, such as sending SMS or email, also can be integrated with this system.
The researchers also aim to commercialize this technology in the near future.

L.A.’s emergency communication system facing many hurdles

Published 30 March 2015

After the 9/11 attacks, the federal government encouraged authorities in large cities to build emergency communications systems that would allow separate agencies to coordinate together quickly and efficiently. The government offered grants to help pay some of the costs of the systems, pending completion of the work by a set deadline.
In Los Angeles County, a common communications system is still not a reality years after officials signed up for the federal program. Besides technological hurdles, contracting issues, and constantly changing requirements from the federal government, Los Angeles County is having to deal with firefighters and residents who object the plan citing health and property value concerns with the placement of giant cell towers in their neighborhoods. Furthermore, some cities have dropped out of the project, claiming they do not need the network and do not want to pay the costs.
Supporters of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) are now trying to get the communications system back on track. “Public safety is No. 1 here, and I would hate to see this fall apart,” said Supervisor Don Knabe. “I hope we can do a better job of outreach and move forward.” If the project loses support from too many cities and is unable to build an adequate number of towers, “the whole system could very well go away…. It would not be affordable or workable.”
The LA-RICS Authority planned to build two separate public-safety communications systems — a Long-Term Evolution for transmitting data and a Land Mobile Radio to allow first responders to communicate via voice. The LA-RICS received a $154 million federal grant to pay for 80 percent of the Long-Term Evolution data building costs, with local participants paying the rest. The Land Mobile Radio, due for 2018, is anticipated to cost about $250 million, with federal grants expected to pay for most of it. It would replace the roughly forty radio systems now operated by public-safety agencies throughout Los Angeles County and allow them to switch to new frequencies set to be available in 2021.
The Los Angeles Times notes that if the Long-Term Evolution data system is not completed by the end of September, local officials will have to return any unspent federal money. To meet the deadline, the LA-RICS Authority decided to build its cell towers on publicly owned sites, including fire stations, and received exemption from state environmental review requirements.
Firefighters are now worried that the towers’ radio frequency emissions would pose health hazards to them and their neighbors. Some cities have refused to allow the towers, reducing their planned numbers from 232 to 177. County officials insist that health concerns regarding the towers are groundless, noting that the emissions are well below Federal Communications Commission standards and less than what are given off by cordless phones and baby monitors. Firefighters, still unconvinced, have asked residents to share their concerns with county officials.
“We told them the supervisors are the only ones who can stop this thing,” said Lew Currier, a director of the Los Angeles County Firefighters Local 1014. The protesters’ strategy seem to be working. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich recently ordered a halt to tower construction at a Saugus fire station until neighbors’ concerns are addressed. “While a reliable communications platform … is vital to preserve life and property during times of natural or made-made disasters,” Antonovich said in statement, “our employees and residents need to be assured that there are no health risks, and adequate notification should be made on planned cell towers.”
Apart from safety concerns, LA-RICS officials have to deal with the consequences of twelve cities dropping out of the project, with several others behind them before a 23 November “opt out” deadline. Most cities have operating cost concerns. Reggie Harrison, director of disaster preparedness and emergency communications for Long Beach, said city officials were alarmed by the estimated $1.3 million they would be assessed annually. Costs are based on a city’s population and geographic size. “We’re extremely supportive of RICS, and if those numbers change, we could very well find ourselves back at the table,” Harrison said, adding that Long Beach has decided it can manage with its current communications systems in the meantime.
Patrick J. Mallon, executive director of the LA-RICS Authority plans to address cost concerns by devising a new pricing formula. He also hopes to calm worries about the aesthetics of the cell towers by making them look like trees or hiding them in fire station structures used to dry hoses.

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Calls for rethinking cockpit door security policy

Published 30 March 2015

Following the 9/11 attacks, the European Air Safety Agency (EASA) and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in an effort to make hijackings more difficult, told commercial airlines to adopt systems which would prevent the takeover of passenger planes. “The systems differ according to each plane and airline to avoid a standard and prevent would-be terrorists from knowing how they work from one carrier or plane to another,” said an aviation specialist to Agence France‑Presse. Germanwings planes require an access code to open a cockpit door from the outside, but the doors could also be manually locked from inside the cockpit.
News that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz of the Germanwings flight 4U95251 deliberately locked the flight captain out of the cockpit as part of what is now considered a murder-suicide case, has raised concerns over whether the post-9/11 cockpit door safety policy is too secure, posing a more serious threat to civil aviation than terrorism.
The International Business Times reports that European airlines have now introduced a policy requiring a second crew member to be in the cockpit at all times. The two-pilot system is expected to add another layer of safety. “If you think about the mindset of a pilot wanting to deliberately crash an aircraft, having another person sitting in the cockpit may make them rethink their actions,” said Dr. Anil Padhra, senior lecturer in aviation studies at Kingston University.
Padhra later added, though, that the Germanwings flight 4U95251 incident could still have occurred even if airlines required two people in the cockpit at all times. “Possibly, because if the pilot wanted to deliberately crash the aircraft — and wanted to do so even with a senior cabin crew member inside the cockpit — what he could have done is physically abused the cabin crew member and incapacitated him,” she said.
The recovery of the plane’s Black Box voice recorder revealed that the captain tried to kick the cockpit door down, but the door was too strong. Some in the industry now say that the Germanwings incident highlighted to problems with cockpit doors that can be locked from the inside, and that consideration should be given to allow the door to be opened from the outside in certain circumstances.
Padhra is not convinced that rolling back the locked door policy is the best solution moving forward. “If you change that, you are removing a layer of safety that prevents passengers from getting into the cockpit,” she said. “It’s a question of which way you go — do you go to the left or do you go to the right? It’s a difficult one.”
On whether suicidal pilots are a greater risk than terrorism, “The reality is that if you speak to many of the aviation safety experts in the industry, they will tell that the threat of terrorism or inappropriate action from passengers is far, far greater than the threat of a pilot acting alone in a cockpit to deliberately crash the aircraft,” Padhra said.

Arab states to form joint military force to combat Jihadists, Iran’s influence in region

Published 30 March 2015

The leaders of the Arab League announced yesterday (Sunday) that they were forming a joint military force to fight fundamentalist Sunni Jihadist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. It was also clear that the joint force would tackle pro-Iranian Shi’a groups which are helping Iran to expand its regional influence. Arab allies of the United States see the proposed nuclear accord with Iran as a betrayal of U.S. commitment to their security. Egyptian security officials have said the proposed force announced on Sunday would be made of up to 40,000 elite troops based in either Cairo or Riyadh. It would be backed by fighter jets, warships, and light armor.

The leaders of the Arab League announced yesterday (Sunday) that they were forming a joint military force to fight fundamentalist Sunni Jihadists groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. It was also clear, however, that the joint force would tackle pro-Iranian Shi’a groups which are helping Iran expand its regional influence.
The announcement was made by Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, on the final day of the Arab League summit.
“The Arab leaders have decided to agree on the principle of a joint Arab military force,” Sisi said.
“The challenges facing our national Arab security are grave, and we have succeeded in diagnosing the reasons behind it,” Sisi said, without specifying those reasons. The meeting, he added, was “pumping the blood of hope in the arteries of Arab cooperation.”
Nabil al-Arabi, the secretary general of the Arab League, said the decision was made primarily with the need to combat Jihadists who now control large parts of Iraq and Syria, and who now have a presence in North Africa.
Arabi told the meeting on Sunday that the Middle East was under attack by a destructive force which threatened “ethnic and religious diversity.”
The New York Times reports that the summit also agreed to support Saudi-led military action in Yemen, and Arabi told journalists that the Saudi air strikes would continue until Iran-supported Shi’a Houthi rebels “withdraw and surrender their weapons.”
Arabi read a final summit communique outlining the leaders’ views. “Yemen was on the brink of the abyss, requiring effective Arab and international moves after all means of reaching a peaceful resolution have been exhausted to end the Houthi coup and restore legitimacy,” he said.
Saudi brigadier general Ahmed bin Hasan Asiri said that the Saudi sustained air strikes, which began last Thursday, have pushed Houthi insurgents out of contested airbases and destroyed any fighter jets remaining in Yemen. The Saudis destroyed the Yemeni Air Force’s planes on the ground and in their hangars to prevent the Houthis from seizing them.
The strikes also continued to target the Yemeni military’s Scud missiles, destroying most of their launching pads. Asiri said, however, that the rebels may control more missiles.
Egyptian security officials have said the proposed force announced on Sunday would be made of up to 40,000 elite troops based in either Cairo or Riyadh. It would be backed by fighter jets, warships, and light armor.
The Times notes that it is unlikely that all 22-member countries of the often-fractious Arab League will contribute troops to the proposed force. The creation of such a force has been a longtime goal of the Arab League, but it has eluded the organization in the sixty-five years since its members signed a joint defense agreement.
The idea of a joint military force “has been there before but not so seriously,” Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, told the Times. He noted that Arab joint defense treaties date to 1950 and a joint military command was previously formed for a time in the mid-1960s. That was during the era of Pan-Arab nationalism, when Arab governments joined forces against Israel. That vision ended in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, with the humiliating defeat of the Arab armies.
“It is the renewal of an old idea,” Soltan said, “but this time the level of seriousness looks higher, even if we do not know yet whether the outcome this time will be different than in the past.”
The announcement declares that the purpose of the Arab joint force is to fight the Jihadists, but analysts note that there is little doubt that the growing influence of Iran in the region, and the need to check it, were also behind to idea of the moderate Sunni states creating a joint military force. Saudi Arabia and other American allies in the region have made it clear that in light of what they perceive as growing coordination between the United States and Iran, they would be seeking to strengthen independent regional security measures. Arab allies of the United States see the proposed nuclear accord with Iran as a betrayal of U.S. commitment to their security.
They note, as Israel has, that irrespective of Iran’s nuclear program, the nuclear agreement would do nothing to stop Iran from continuing, even more energetically, to seek the expansion of its influence around the region by actively supporting local favored factions, as it has done in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Why rooftop solar is disruptive to utilities – and the grid

By Seth Blumsack

Published 27 March 2015

Electric utilities have a unique role in society and the economy, one that is rooted in a set of arrangements with state regulators that goes back nearly a century. In exchange for being granted a geographic monopoly on the distribution of electric power, the utility is responsible for ensuring that its transmission and distribution systems operate reliably. In other words, it is the utility’s responsibility to ensure that blackouts occur infrequently and with short duration. Power-generating panels, called solar photovoltaics (PV), represent the fastest-growing source of electric power in the United States – but the proliferation of roof-top PVs poses a problem for the business model of electric utilities, a problem similar to that telephone companies have been facing: The rise of “cord cutters” — people with a cell phone but no land-line — places land-line phone companies in a quandary. They must continue to maintain their network infrastructure with fewer customers to pay for it. Roof-top solar technology will eventually force a conversation about the fundamental role of the electric utility and who should have ultimate responsibility for providing reliable electricity, if anyone. Going off the grid has a certain appeal to an increasing segment of the population, but it is far from clear that such a distributed system can deliver the same level of reliability at such a low cost.

Yahoo to offer user-friendly e-mail encryption service

Published 26 March 2015

Yahoo has announced plans to create its own e-mail encryption plug-in for Yahoo Mail users this year, adding to already growing competition among Silicon Valley firms to capitalize on consumers increased privacy desires.

Thee Washington Post reports that the service will feature “end-to-end” encryption, or the locking up of message contents so that only the user and receiver have access to the information — typically a more advanced and time consuming process which involves specific software and encryption codes.
“What we’re trying to do at Yahoo is build our products so they’re safe and trustworthy, not just secure,” said Yahoo information security chief Alex Stamos. “That means making tools that are both simple enough for everyday users and strong enough to protect those facing more advanced threats, such as journalists and activists working in areas where freedom of expression is restricted.”
Google announced last June that it was also working on an end-to-end service for users of their Chrome platform. The version of the plug-in for Yahoo Mail users would work with the Chrome service to ensure better security between the competing mail services, benefitting the users for both services in the long run.
The move is part of a larger plan for the company to compete with Chrome and others, especially as the Yahoo Mail service is considered to be a generation older than its competitors.
With more attention to online security following the Edward Snowden leaks, and the involvement of Stamos, who joined Yahoo a year ago, the company is now trying to make a competitive move to offer more comprehensive benefits.
“Mail is one of the cornerstones of the Yahoo experience. It’s one of the ways we engage with some of the oldest and most dedicated Yahoo users,” Stamos said.
The company intends to make the service so easy to use that customers will be able to incorporate it with just a few clicks. Stamos and others imagine the plug-in to be used for a variety of situations, including the messaging of sensitive documents such as tax information or a private conversation with a spouse.
At a presentation during South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, the company premiered a video which compared the new platform to the more traditional end-to-end models. In the piece, a new user is able to send their first encrypted message in less than a minute.
Yahoo is not yet making the service available, but it is releasing the code behind the plug-in for public review in the hope that more patches to the software can be made before launching by the end of 2015.

Why rooftop solar is disruptive to utilities – and the grid

By Seth Blumsack

Published 27 March 2015

Electric utilities have a unique role in society and the economy, one that is rooted in a set of arrangements with state regulators that goes back nearly a century. In exchange for being granted a geographic monopoly on the distribution of electric power, the utility is responsible for ensuring that its transmission and distribution systems operate reliably. In other words, it is the utility’s responsibility to ensure that blackouts occur infrequently and with short duration. Power-generating panels, called solar photovoltaics (PV), represent the fastest-growing source of electric power in the United States – but the proliferation of roof-top PVs poses a problem the business model of electric utilities, a problem similar to that telephone companies have been facing: The rise of “cord cutters” — people with a cell phone but no land-line — places land-line phone companies in a quandary. They must continue to maintain their network infrastructure with fewer customers to pay for it. Roof-top solar technology will eventually force a conversation about the fundamental role of the electric utility and who should have ultimate responsibility for providing reliable electricity, if anyone. Going off the grid has a certain appeal to an increasing segment of the population, but it is far from clear that such a distributed system can deliver the same level of reliability at such a low cost.

A report earlier this month detailed how electric utilities were working through state regulators to stunt the spread of rooftop solar, the latest tactic in a campaign an industry group started three years ago.
What worries utilities so much? At one level, the problem is obvious: customers with rooftop solar panels buy less energy and pay less to utilities. But the issue is not limited to giant utility companies’ earnings potential. After all, we all use electricity and rely on utilities to maintain the power infrastructure.
Why is solar so threatening to utilities? And how is the rapid growth of solar changing how the grid works? The answers lie in the sometimes-arcane world of electric utilities and their business model. In all the change, though, there needs to be a discussion over how solar fits into the grid and how to ensure grid reliability.
Disruptive
Power-generating panels, called solar photovoltaics (PV), represent the fastest-growing source of electric power in the United States. In percentage terms, installed PV has grown four-fold over the past several years, and costs have fallen as rapidly as installations have risen.
The point of so-called “grid parity,” where the cost of generating electricity from solar PV falls to the point of being competitive with conventional power generation sources such as coal or natural gas, appears to be fast approaching. In some states, most notably Hawai’i, it has probably already arrived.
Large-scale solar power plants will continue to get built. But it is in the many millions of rooftops (and in the future, building facades) where the real potential for solar energy as a disruptive technology is taking shape. By installing solar panels, a consumer pays the utility less and, for the first time, becomes an energy producer rather than a consumer only.
Electric utilities in many states have responded in ways that, on the surface, conjure up stereotypical images of big companies trying to crush small competitors. Utilities have asked their state regulators to assess high fees on homeowners that install solar PV panels but maintain their connection to the electric grid. An Arizona utility, for instance, proposed levying a monthly US$50 grid interconnection fee for consumers with solar PV.
Net metering rules — which allow homeowners to sell surplus electricity from their solar panels back to the grid — are being challenged as well. Utilities are seeking additional restrictions on net metering or to reduce the price they pay homeowners for this surplus power.
Monopolies behaving badly?
The loss of revenue from solar PV is primarily happening in sunny states such as California and Arizona but also in less-sunny New Jersey and others states with generous solar incentive programs.
But what happens when utilities — which, after all, are in the business of selling electricity — continue to lose business? The more kilowatt-hours generated by rooftop solar panels, the fewer kilowatt-hours sold by utilities. With fewer kilowatt-hours sold, utilities have a harder time justifying investments in new power stations, transformers and other types of capital investments that utilitiesearn money from.
While it makes economists cringe, the use of the political system to disadvantage competitors is hardly a novel business strategy. Yet the response of some utilities to the rapid growth in rooftop solar cannot, however, be so simply portrayed as incumbents guarding their turf at all costs.
Electric utilities have a unique role in society and the economy, one that is rooted in a set of arrangements with state regulators that goes back nearly a century. In exchange for being granted a geographic monopoly on the distribution of electric power, the utility is responsible for ensuring that its transmission and distribution systems operate reliably. In other words, it is the utility’s responsibility to ensure that blackouts occur infrequently and with short duration.
Regulators, meanwhile, need to allow the utility to recover the costs associated with maintaining the grid infrastructure and ensuring reliability. So ultimately, the costs of building and maintaining a reliable system fall, for the most part, on utilities and their ratepayers.
Infamous duck curve
At first blush, the rise in rooftop solar installations would seem like a boon for reliability — after all, solar panels can be installed so that peak solar PV production is roughly correlated with the hours of peak electricity demand. The more power that is taken off the grid and placed onto solar panels, it would seem, the lower the blackout risk is.
There is some truth to this. In fact, electric system operators have been paying customers to take demand off the grid for many years during times when the grid is stressed.
But because the boom in rooftop solar PV is not controlled by utilities, there are some genuine implications for the cost of keeping the rest of the grid operating reliably. With enough rooftop solar, the daily patterns of power supply and demand change dramatically.
One of the best-known analyses of this change and its potential costs is known as the “duck curve”” from the California Independent System Operator (see Figure 2 on p. 3). A typical day’s electricity demand in California has historically featured two peaks — one in the morning and a larger one in the afternoon. There’s a trough, or “shoulder,” period between them. Fleets of different power plants are fired up to meet this pattern of daily electricity demand and to match the ramp-up and ramp-down.
Now that California has substantial solar on its grid, the daily demand curve is starting to look very different. With solar panels cranking out power during the midday hours, the overall demand for power from the grid — that is, from central power plants — during the shoulder period in the middle of the day declines substantially. Solar PV energy production could grow so much that by 2020 the demand for grid-provided electricity would be lower at 12:00 noon than at 12:00 midnight. The two peak periods form the head and tail of the duck; this dip in the middle of the day forms the belly of the duck.
Cord cutting from the grid
Normally, lowering the demand for electricity would be good for society. Costs would decline and stress on the grid would decrease. But the deep dip in grid demand during the middle of the day — the duck’s belly — has significant implications for the costs of keeping the grid operational.
It is not the case necessarily that fewer power plants would be needed. Instead, different power plants would be needed — ones that could rapidly adjust output to offset the rise in solar PV production. The solution may well involve a mix of power plants and other strategies to control demand during certain hours. California has recently set up an entirely new market for this so-called “ramping” capability, and the costs will eventually trickle down to ratepayers in the state.
The second implication for the cost of maintaining reliability will seem familiar to anyone who has thought about the telephone company. The rise of “cord cutters” — people with a cell phone but no land-line — places land-line phone companies in a quandary. They must continue to maintain their network infrastructure with fewer customers to pay for it.
Electric utilities are not quite there yet, but the day could well be coming. Unused power plants could be retired, but electric transmission lines, substations and other delivery infrastructure generally cannot simply be declared unused and retired because that infrastructure is collectively needed for reliability. Ratepayers typically support this infrastructure through the several cents paid for every kilowatt-hour they consume.
Homeowners that install solar PV are, in most places, shifting the cost of this infrastructure to ratepayers that have not installed solar panels. There is thus the potential to create a type of “death spiral.” The more homeowners that install rooftop solar, the more expensive the grid maintenance costs become for everyone else, which in turn encourages more homeowners to install solar panels to avoid higher utility costs.
In the near term, states with high penetration of rooftop solar may need to restructure how the grid is paid for. This technology will eventually force a conversation about the fundamental role of the electric utility and who should have ultimate responsibility for providing reliable electricity, if anyone. Going off the grid has a certain appeal to an increasing segment of the population, but it is far from clear that such a distributed system can deliver the same level of reliability at such a low cost.
Seth Blumsack is Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives.

U.K. debates whether Britons helping ISIS as medics are terrorists

Published 27 March 2015

Counterterrorism officials are debating how to categorize nine British students who had been studying medicine in Sudan, and recently travelled to Syria to work as medics for the Islamic State (ISIS). Are they terrorists? Have they even committed an offense? How officials treat this latest group of Westerners joining ISIS should they return to the United Kingdom may encourage or discourage others who are contemplating joining the fight in Syria and northern Iraq.
“It’s a difficult judgment to make, it really does depend on the nature of their involvement and whether that constitutes a form of terrorist activity,” a British counterterrorism official told the Guardian.
According to the U.K. Home Office, participating in a foreign conflict could be an offense under criminal and anti-terrorism laws. Further clarifying, the office added that, “fighting in a foreign war is not automatically an offense, but will depend on the nature of the conflict and the individual’s own activities.” With that understanding, Britons could possibly travel to Syria for a few months and return home without fear of prosecution.
Furthermore, British police have made an effort to distinguish girls who travel to ISIS territories to become jihadi wives and homemakers from men who take up arms on the battlefield. Just a few weeks ago, Metropolitan police head of counterterrorism, Mark Rowley, told members of parliament on the home affairs committee that the three London schoolgirls who went to Syria would not be prosecuted if they returned because there is no evidence they had committed any terrorist offense. The girls are different from someone “running around in northern Iraq and Syria with Kalashnikovs” who later apologized for committing terrorist offenses, Rowley explained.
Intelligence experts are aware that this perspective on Britons who travel to join ISIS could be used by returning fighters hiding under the cloak of humanitarian work.
The nine British medics should be prosecuted with full force of the law, some terrorism experts say, arguing that offering medical assistance to wounded ISIS fighters is as militarily effective as being a fighter on the frontlines. “They appear to be providing material support which is just as combat effective as if they were providing direct assistance on the battlefield. They should be treated in the same way as if they belonged to a fighting unit,” said Shashank Joshi, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
The Guardian notes that Britons have been permitted to give medical assistance to designated terror groups in the past. In 2010 the Red Cross staff in Afghanistan taught the Taliban basic first aid, even though 103 U.K. service personnel were killed that year in the Afghanistan War. Explaining its decision, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) cited the Geneva conventions which note that medical care should be given to all people injured in a conflict, regardless of their position in the conflict.
The medical students upon their return to the United Kingdom could claim that their support of ISIS fighters abides with the Geneva conventions’ treaties governing the humane treatment of soldiers incapable of fighting; but it should be noted that ISIS is a non-state actor, and therefore unlikely to be protected by the conventions’ treaties.
Britons openly fighting against ISIS on behalf of Kurdish rebels — some linked to terrorists groups — are generally commended. British prime minister David Cameron has said there is a fundamental difference between fighting for the Kurds and fighting for ISIS. Yet, many Britons on the battlefield with rebels fighting against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have been arrested under counterterrorism laws on their return to the United Kingdom.
The nine British medics can hope to be treated differently. “Let’s not forget about the fact that they are doctors, they went there to help, not to fight,” said Turkish opposition politician Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who has kept contact with the medics’ families.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

FBI needs to improve intelligence capabilities, hire more linguists: Report

Published 26 March 2015

The FBI needs to improve its intelligence capabilities and hire more linguists to counter evolving threats to the United States, according to a 9/11 Review Commission report examining the bureau’s progress since the 9/11 attacks, which was released Wednesday. The review commission was created by Congress in 2014 to assess the bureau’s progress since the attacks, and its implementation of the recommendations from the 2004 9/11 Commission report.
“Many of the findings and recommendations in this report will not be new to the FBI,” the report said. “The bureau is already taking steps to address them. In 2015, however, the FBI faces an increasingly complicated and dangerous global threat environment that will demand an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is moving faster.”
The report concludes that the FBI has enough linguists in its large offices, but lacks enough of them throughout the rest of the country. Often the agency’s linguists use a virtual system to communicate remotely with agents and analysts working on cases. “Hiring additional linguists and integrating them should be a high priority,” the report said. Intelligence gathering and analysis should be improved under a five-year “top-down strategic plan,” the report said.
The New York Times reports that the review commission, headed by Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general, and Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic House member from Indiana and former ambassador to India, was also critical of how the FBI treats its analysts. “Despite its stated intentions to address concerns from its analysts” the FBI does not regard them as a “professional work force” that needs to be continually trained and educated.
FBI director James B. Comey, who took over in September 2013, has said that raising the profile of analysts is one of his top priorities.
The FBI has made improvements in its intelligence collection and sharing, but its ability to gain information from people and to analyze it lags “behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities.” “This imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, from adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer hackers, and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates,” the report said.
The FBI also has to improve how it communicates with local law enforcement authorities and the private sector. The agency will be increasingly dependent on domestic and foreign partnerships “to succeed in its critical and growing national security missions — including against the rapidly evolving cyber and terrorist threats,” the report said.

Training camps in Mauritania train foreign recruits for ISIS, al-Qaeda

Published 26 March 2015

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS) could be working together at al-Qaeda-run training camps in the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, where at least eighty recruits from the United States, Canada, and Europe are being indoctrinated into radical jihad and training for attacks that could reach as far as the West. “The situation in Mauritania is a powder keg very few people are talking about,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director for the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), which had a source on the ground in Mauritania who visited the camps and obtained documentation.
Mauritania’s roughly three million people are concentrated on the coast, around the capital of Nouakchott, while the rest of the vast country is arid desert and sparsely inhabited. This is where the al-Qaeda training camps are based. “This is not a travel destination,” Khan said. “The only reason to be there from a Western country is to train for terrorism.”
Videos and photos of the camps obtained by TRAC show signs in English, providing some evidence of Westerns’ presence. “The fear of returning foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq is high, but Mauritania-trained fighters are not even on anyone’s radar,” said Khan. Besides the two main al-Qaeda camps, Mauritania has about 1,000 madrassas, most of which face little or no government monitoring, creating opportunities for these institutions to be used as propaganda and training centers, Khan said.
The al-Qaeda training camps received a boost with the release of five terrorists formerly imprisoned in the Nouakchott Central Prison until a 24 January prison riot in which two guards were taken hostage. “The situation was resolved following negotiations with the public prosecutor and Chief of the National Guards,” Khan said. “The detainees were released on Feb. 23 and are free to pursue their jihadist activities.” Freed were al-Qaeda official, El Khadim Ould Seman, and his four associates who were members of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a group’s whose core membership became Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Fox News reports that other jihadists who trained in the Mauritanian camps include Canadians Kristos Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej of London, Ontario, who were accused of participating with three-dozen armed Islamists in the 16 January 2013 al-Qaeda-linked attack on a gas plant in Algeria, where they were both killed along with fellow attackers. Marcus Dwayne Robertson, also known as Imam Abu Taubah, used his Florida-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary to send recruits to Mauritania before he was imprisoned in Florida on a weapons charge.
On 15 October 2014, the Algerian military arrested Safieddine al-Mauritani, a Mauritanian member of the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade, which operates in the Jebel Chaambi border region of Algeria and Tunisia, and had “pledged allegiance” to ISIS earlier in 2014. Algerian security forces report that al-Mauritani and another member of his group were traveling to Mail in a vehicle loaded with arms and a considerable amount of cash to execute attacks.
“The Safieddine al-Mauritani arrest means that the traditional supply routes used by the cornucopia of jihadist terrorist groups in North Africa is now also being utilized by the Islamic State to catalyze their expansion on the African continent,” Khan concluded. In December 2014, Mauritanian security forces arrested four ISIS terror suspects in Zouérate, the largest town in northern Mauritania, who claimed ISIS was “on its way” to Mauritania.

Saudi Arabia launches attacks against Houthi insurgents in Yemen

Published 26 March 2015

Dozens of Saudi Air Force jets, accompanied by fighter jets of several Gulf States, yesterday (Wednesday) launched a series of attacks against Shia’ Houthi insurgents in Yemen in an effort to beat back to progress of the Houthi forces across Yemen. The Saudis’ ultimate goal is to defeat the pro-Iranian Houthis, but the immediate Saudi worry is the growing presence of the Houthis – who hail from north Yemen – in and around the port city of Aden in south Yemen. The Saudi air strikes, carried out after consultations with the United States, are the first step in a broad military campaign which will include ground forces and will see the participation of other Arab states. Iran, through its regional agents – the Shi’a government in Baghdad; the Alawite Assad regime in Damascus; and the Shi’a Hezbollah militia in Lebanon – already calls the shots in three Arab countries. It appears that the Arab Sunni states have decided the draw the line in Yemen in order to deny Iran yet another regional gain and check the growth of Iran’s regional sway.

Dozens of Saudi Air Force jets, accompanied by fighter jets of several Gulf States, yesterday (Wednesday) launched a series of attacks against Shia’ Houthi insurgents in Yemen in an effort to beat back to progress of the Houthi forces across Yemen. The Saudis’ ultimate goal is to defeat the pro-Iranian Houthis, but the immediate Saudi worry is the growing presence of the Houthis – who hail from north Yemen – in and around the port city of Aden in south Yemen.
The Saudi air strikes, carried out after consultations with the United States, are the first step in a broad military campaign which will include ground forces and will see the participation of other Arab states.
On Tuesday, Houthi rebels seized al-Anad airbase, located between Taiz — Yemen’s third largest city, which was seized by the Houthis last week — and President Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s stronghold of Aden. The Houthis thus appear determined to expand beyond their stronghold in the northt in an effort to take over the entire country.
The aggressive move by the Houthis convinced the Sunni Arab states that Iran and its regional agents must be confronted more directly. Iran now calls the shots in three Arab countries where its loyalists are in power:

Iraq, where the Shi’a majority is in power in Baghdad
Syria, where the minority Alawites, led by the Assad family, control Damascus and Syria’s north west
Lebanon, where the powerful Shi’a Hezbollah militia is in full control over half of Lebanon, and is the dominant force in the coalition government which controls the other half.

The takeover of Yemen by the Houthis would not only bring a fourth Arab country into Iran’s camp, but would more directly threaten Saudi Arabia.
In an unusual press conference yesterday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, told reporters that a 10-country coalition had joined the military campaign in a bid “to protect and defend the legitimate government” of Yemen’s president, Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Hadi’s whereabouts are not known, and the Saudi ambassador declined to give any information about him.
Jubeir said the Houthis, backed by Iran, “have always chosen the path of violence.”
The New York Times reports that the White House announced late Wednesday that President Obama had authorized U.S. forces to provide logistical and intelligence support to the operation. The American military was establishing a “Joint Planning Cell” with Saudi Arabia to coordinate military and intelligence assistance, the White House statement said.
Jubeir said the Saudis “will do anything necessary” to protect the people of Yemen and “the legitimate government of Yemen.”
Jubeir said Saudi Arabia launched the attack “in response to [a] request from the legitimate Yemen government” and insisted it would be a limited operation “designed to protect the people of Yemen and its legitimate government from a takeover by the Houthis.”
“The [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries tried to facilitate a peaceful transition of government in Yemen, but the Houthis have continuously undercut the process,” he said.
“Based on the appeal from President Hadi, and based on the kingdom’s responsibility to Yemen and its people, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with its allies within the GCC and outside the GCC, launched military operations in support of the people of Yemen and their legitimate government,” he added.
Jubeir said the airstrikes began at 7 p.m. Washington, D.C. time and were conducted by Saudi Arabia along with “partner nations in the Persian Gulf” and others, although he declined to specify any other participants. He said that some countries had already transferred military assets to Saudi Arabia and that others were on their way.
Jubeir said that Saudi Arabia and its partners had made every effort to prevent violence but that those attempts had been thwarted by the Houthis. They are now “in control of ballistic missiles and heavy weapons,” in addition to Yemeni aircraft, he said.
In a statement published by the Saudi press agency, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain said they would respond to a request from Hadi “to protect Yemen and his dear people from the aggression of the Houthi militias which were and are still a tool in the hands of foreign powers that don’t stop meddling with the security and stability of brotherly Yemen.”
Oman, the sixth member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and a neighbor of Yemen, was not a signatory to the statement.
Egypt also announced it was providing political and military assistance for the anti-Houthi operation.
The Houthi insurgents are members of the Zaydi offshoot of Shia Islam – but note that while all the Houthis are Zayidis, not all Zayidis are Houthi, as is the case with Ali Abdulah Saleh, who was the president of North Yeen from 1978 to 1990 and, after the unification Yemen in 1990, the president of Yemen from 1990 until 2012.
The Houthis captured the capital, Sana’a, last year and placed Hadi under house arrest. He escaped to Aden earlier this month.
“This is all about Sunni v Shia, Saudi v Iran,” said Michael Lewis, professor at Ohio Northern University College of Law and a former navy fighter pilot who watches Yemen closely. The United States, he told the Guardian, “can’t be a disinterested observer. Nobody’s going to buy that. What we needed to do was pick a side.”

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

U.S. engineering schools to educate 20,000 students to meet U.S. major engineering challenges

Published 24 March 2015

In a letter of commitment presented to President Barack Obama at the White House Science Fair yesterday, 122 U.S. engineering schools announced plans to educate a new generation of engineers expressly equipped to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing society in the twenty-first century. Each of the 122 signing schools has pledged to graduate a minimum of twenty students per year who have been specially prepared to lead the way in solving such large-scale problems, with the goal of training more than 20,000 formally recognized “Grand Challenge Engineers” over the next decade.

In a letter of commitment presented to President Barack Obama at the White House Science Fair yesterday, more than 120 U.S. engineering schools announced plans to educate a new generation of engineers expressly equipped to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing society in the twenty-first century.
These “Grand Challenges,” identified through initiatives such as the White House Strategy for American Innovation, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges for Engineering, and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, include complex yet critical goals such as engineering better medicines, making solar energy cost-competitive with coal, securing cyberspace, and advancing personalized learning tools to deliver better education to more individuals.
A NAE release reports that each of the 122 signing schools has pledged to graduate a minimum of twenty students per year who have been specially prepared to lead the way in solving such large-scale problems, with the goal of training more than 20,000 formally recognized “Grand Challenge Engineers” over the next decade.
More than a quarter of the U.S. engineering schools are now committed to establishing programs to educate engineers to take on the Grand Challenges. “We’re poised to transform the landscape of engineering higher education,” said Tom Katsouleas, dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and a co-leader of the initiative along with Yannis Yortsos, dean of the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, and Richard Miller, president of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.
“The tremendous response suggests we’ve tapped into something powerful — the very human element connecting engineering with students who want to make a real difference. I think we’re going to see these Grand Challenge Engineers do just that.”
Grand Challenge Engineers will be trained through special programs at each institution that integrate five educational elements: (1) a hands-on research or design project connected to the Grand Challenges; (2) real-world, interdisciplinary experiential learning with clients and mentors; (3) entrepreneurship and innovation experience; (4) global and cross-cultural perspectives; and (5) service-learning.
“Teaching engineering fundamentals in the classroom is important, but it’s not enough,” said Richard Miller of Olin College. “Solving our planet’s Grand Challenges requires engineering expertise, but they won’t be solved by engineers alone. Doubling down on even more hard sciences and math will not help. Instead, we need to incorporate new elements into engineering students’ education to give them both the skillset and the mindset needed to become leaders in addressing societal challenges.”
The training model was inspired by the National Academy of Engineering-endorsed Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP), established in 2009 by Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, Olin College, and the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering in response to the NAE’s 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the twenty-first century. There are currently twenty active GCSPs and more than 160 NAE-designated Grand Challenge Scholars have graduated to date. Half of the graduates are women — compared with just 19 percent of U.S. undergraduate engineering students — demonstrating the program’s appeal to groups typically underrepresented in engineering.
“The idea of giving back is so important, and we’re actually learning how to do that,” said Lyssa Aruda, a Grand Challenge Scholar at the University of Southern California, who is working on making solar energy economical. “I think that’s probably the reason most of us choose engineering in the first place — to have the opportunity to give back to people.”
Other examples of GCSP participants working on Grand Challenges include: Alex Caven at the State University of New York (SUNY), who is involved in efforts to provide access to clean water in Haiti; Michaela Rikard, who is working on engineering better medicines at North Carolina State University; Allison Kindig at Iowa State, who is creating sustainable engineering projects in developing countries; and Olin College’s Luke Metz, who is engineering computerized writing aids to advance personalized learning.
“The NAE’s Grand Challenges for Engineering are already inspiring more and more of our brightest young people to pursue careers that will have direct impacts on improving the quality of life for people across the globe,” said NAE President C.D. Mote Jr. “Imagine the impact of tens of thousands of additional creative minds focused on tackling society’s most vexing challenges. ‘Changing the world’ is not hyperbole in this case. With the right encouragement, they will do it and inspire others as well.”

More information on this initiative, including a copy of the letter of commitment, is available here. The release notes that the initiative grew out of a 2014 workshop organized by the American Association of Engineering Societies, Epicenter, Engineers Without Borders USA, EPICS, and the NAE Grand Challenge Scholars Program.