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There are certain things you aren’t meant to say in public in America. The systematic state-sponsorship of torture by the US used to be a major no-no, but that went by the board this year (even though Seymour Hersh treated the CIA with undue kindness in Chain of Command: the Road to Abu Ghraib) . A prime no-no is to sa... |
Friday, December 10, Webb died in his Sacramento apartment by his own hand, or so it certainly seems. The notices of his passing in many newspapers were as nasty as ever. The Los Angeles Times took care to note that even after the Dark Alliance uproar Webb’s career had been “troubled”, offering as evidence the fact tha... |
There were similar fountains of outrage in 1996 that the CIA hadn’t been given enough space in Webb’s series to solemnly swear that never a gram of cocaine had passed under its nose but that it had been seized and turned over to the DEA or US Customs. |
In 1998 Jeffrey St Clair and I published our book, Whiteout, about the relationships between the CIA, drugs and the press since the Agency’s founding. We also examined the Webb affair in detail. On a lesser scale, at lower volume it elicited the same sort of abuse Webb drew. It was a long book stuffed with well-documen... |
One of the CIA’s favored modes of self-protection is the “uncover-up”.The Agency first denies with passion, then later concedes in muffled tones, the charges leveled against it. Such charges have included the Agency’s recruitment of Nazi scientists and SS officers; experiments on unwitting American citizens; efforts to... |
True to form, after Webb’s series raised a storm, particularly on black radio, the CIA issued categorical denials. Then came the solemn pledges of an intense and far-reaching investigation by the CIA’s Inspector General, Fred Hitz. On December 18, 1997, stories in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus and in the New Yor... |
The actual report itself, so loudly heralded, received almost no examination. But those who took the time to examine the 149-page document the first of two volumes–found Inspector General Hitz making one damning admission after another including an account of a meeting between a pilot who was making drug/arms runs be... |
So why did the top-tier press savage Webb, and parrot the CIA’s denials. It comes back to this matter of Uncle Sam’s true face. Another New York Times reporter, Keith Schneider was asked by In These Times back in 1987 why he had devoted a three-part series in the New York Times to attacks on the Contra hearings chaired... |
Footnote: a version of this column ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday. In fact the oddest of all reviews of Whiteout was one in The Nation, a multi-page screed by a woman who I seem to remember was on some payroll of George Soros. She flayed us for giving aid and comfort to the war... |
(Reuters) - Airlines will likely suffer more disruptions like the one that grounded about 2,000 Delta <DAL.N> flights this week because major carriers have not invested enough to overhaul reservations systems based on technology dating to the 1960s, airline industry and technology experts told Reuters. |
Airlines have spent heavily to introduce new features such as automated check-in kiosks, real-time luggage tracking and slick mobile apps. But they have avoided the steep cost of rebuilding their reservations systems from the ground up, former airline executives said. |
Scott Nason, former chief information officer at American Airlines Group Inc <AAL.O>, said long-term investments in computer technology were a tough sell when he worked there. |
"Most airlines were on the verge of going out of business for many years, so investment of any kind had to have short pay-back periods," said Nason, who left American in 2009 and is now an independent consultant. |
The reservations systems of the biggest carriers mostly run on a specialized IBM <IBM.N> operating system known as Transaction Processing Facility, or TPF. It was designed in the 1960s to process large numbers of transactions quickly and is still updated by IBM, which did a major rewrite of the operating system about a... |
A host of special features, ranging from mobile check-ins to seat selection and cabin upgrades, are built on top of the TPF core, or connected to it. |
"They have surrounded that old industry infrastructure with modern technology," said Bob Edwards, United Continental Holdings Inc's <UAL.N> former chief information officer until 2014. "Those systems have to always reach back into the old core technologies to retrieve a reservation or to figure out who flies between Da... |
When a power outage shuts off that reservations system - as happened on Monday to Delta Air Lines Inc's "Deltamatic" system - TPF falls out of sync with the newer technologies that passenger service agents use to assist travelers, Edwards said. |
Airlines are then forced to cancel flights as demands from stranded customers flood their employees - who meanwhile are handling bookings on an older platform without their familiar, modern tools, he said. |
Several years ago, it took United six hours to recover from a test shutdown, thanks to complications with the many add-ons built atop TPF, Edwards said. |
Other recent disruptions include one in July that prompted Southwest Airlines Co <LUV.N> to cancel over 2,000 flights and two outages last summer at United Continental. |
IBM Senior Vice President Tom Rosamilia said in a statement that TPF "was not named as the source or issue in any of the recent outages" and that it "is one of the most modern and reliable systems in the airline infrastructure." |
Rosamilia added that the vast majority of airlines use TPF "to process up to a million complex transactions per second, uninterrupted by frequent feature updates or the failure of other systems." |
Delta spokeswoman Kate Modolo said in a statement that a small fire on Monday resulted in a "massive failure" at the airline's technology center. Delta was forced to cancel flights because critical systems did not switch over to backup power as intended, she said. |
Reuters sent Delta and other major carriers detailed questions on TPF infrastructure and their technology investments. |
Modolo did not answer whether Delta relies on TPF, but said "the functionality of the IT programs we use" was not an issue. She had no comment on whether Delta had decreased or increased its spending on back-end technology over the past decade. |
"We have a new CIO who has a go-forward plan to ensure Delta is on the cutting edge of customer service technology while strengthening our IT infrastructure so that it is reliable, redundant and nimble," she said in a statement. |
Most big airlines, including the four largest in the United States - American, Delta, United and Southwest - rely on TPF in some form, industry experts said. |
In response to questions from Reuters, those airlines did not answer whether their aging systems put them at risk of future disruptions, but all stressed that they are upgrading their technology and are focused on reliability. Southwest, for example, said it is in the process of replacing its reservations system. |
Earlier this week, in a video statement, Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said: "Over the last three years, we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars on technology infrastructure upgrades and systems including backup systems to prevent what happened yesterday from occurring. I'm sorry that it happened." |
U.S. and Canadian airlines are projected to spend an average of 3 percent of their revenue on information technology this year - compared to 8 percent by commercial banks and 4 percent by healthcare firms, according to Computer Economics, a firm that tracks IT spending. |
Nason cautioned that comparing technology spending by airlines to some other industries, including banking, can be tricky. Banks have lower capital costs and they rely more heavily on information technology for their core business. |
Still, technology experts say that level of spending by the major airlines is not sufficient, pointing to the recent failures as evidence. |
Part of the challenge is that U.S. airlines are under pressure from investors to top recent record profits and boost stock prices, even as economic troubles overseas have reduced travel demand. |
Delta, for example, is looking to boost its operating profit margin to between 17 percent and 19 percent by 2018. That's up from last year's margin target of 14 percent to 16 percent. |
Airlines have also held off on making major network upgrades out of fear that systems could fail during the transition, making them feel that they cannot afford to take them down to add equipment, install patches and perform other maintenance, said Gartner analyst Mark Jaggers. |
Some consumer groups have called on airlines to do a better job at planning for disruptions like the one this week at Delta, which affected hundreds of thousands of passengers over four days. |
"It is unfair to the traveling public that the cost of under-investment in needed equipment be shifted and placed on the back of air travelers," said travel consumer advocates Paul Hudson and Charlie Leocha in a letter to the heads of the U.S. Transportation Department and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Wednes... |
Henry Harteveldt, founder of the travel consultancy Atmosphere Research Group, said some airlines are choosing to risk outages that might cost them $20 million to $40 million rather than invest, for example, $100 million on technology upgrades. He believes investors and the general public will apply increasing pressure... |
"We cannot afford, as a nation, for any of our airlines to be rendered useless by a technology failure," Harteveldt said. |
Yet it can be hard to convince airline management that the cost-benefit analysis justifies the major investments to make their computer systems truly fail-safe, said Edwards, the former United chief information officer. |
"When fuel prices are low and there's extra cash on hand, they want to spend it on the cool shiny things like planes and mobile apps," he said. "Nobody gets excited about the data center." |
The EU has said it does not rule out adding more people to its Belarus sanctions list so long as repression continues. |
Minsk in April freed two prominent political prisoners - presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov and his aide Dmitry Bondarenko - but Gunnar Wiegand, a senior official in the European External Action Service (EEAS) told press in Brussels on Monday that it is not enough to mend relations. |
"The release of two political prisoners has not put the ball in the EU's court. The ball remains in Minsk ... We could probably broaden the number of people on the travel ban," he noted. |
Over 240 members of the Belarusian nomenklatura are currently forbidden from entering the EU or doing business in the single market. |
The list includes Vladimir Peftiev and Yuriy Chizh, two oligarchs said to feed money to President Alexander Lukashenko, as well as an embargo on arms to Belarus and on goods that could be used for internal repression. |
The EU has more top people in its crosshairs, such as Aleksandr Moshensky. |
Moshensky, who runs a food and restaurant business called JV Santa Impex Brest, was instrumental in Lukashenko's 2010 presidential election campaign and is said to rank as the number three most influential tycoon behind Peftiev and Chizh. |
Meanwhile, obstruction of human rights in Belarus is worsening. |
Opposition and civil society are being increasingly harassed, with many given administrative sentences of up two weeks in prison. |
The power and authority of the state security service, the KGB, has also been expanded. A recent law passed by Minsk now gives it the right to break into people's homes without a warrant, day or night. |
Despite the bleak assessment, Wiegand said the sanctions are effective. |
"The fact that we keep up the pressure on the government may very well have contributed to the release of some of the 23 political prisoners," he noted. |
Among those still behind bars is human rights defender Ales Bialistki and political prisoner Syarhei Kavalenka. |
Kavalenka - whose crime was planting a banned Belarus national white-red-white flag on top of a Christmas tree in Vitebsk - was diagnosed with hepatosis last week. He is serving a two-year sentence. |
Bialiatski - the imprisoned head of the Belarus human rights center Viasna - is facing mounting prison restrictions for refusing to admit his guilt for alleged tax evasion. He is serving a four and a half year sentence. |
Sannikov's spokesperson Alexander Atroshchonkau told EUobserver the EU's sanctions did contribute his boss's release. |
"Targeted economic sanctions in today's form are quite symbolic ... [But] the system built by Lukashenko's clan is so ineffective that they are extremely sensitive to even very limited restrictive measures," he said. |
Joerg Forbrig - an expert on Belarus at the Berlin-based NGO, the German Marshall Fund - also told this website the sanctions have influenced decision making. |
Minsk, says Forbrig, released Sannikov and Bondarenko "to avert further and more painful EU measures." |
He urged the EU to expand sanctions and to target Belarus oil exports. |
Last year, crude oil and oil products accounted for 36 percent of Belarus' sales to the Union. Just over 16 percent was potash and fertiliser. In total, trade between the two surged by 69 percent in 2011 despite the political deep freeze. |
Selling arms firms from yourself to yourself, labelling petrol as solvents then petrol again - Lukashenko is trying to make a living while being squeezed by the EU and Russia. |
EU states have agreed to create a European fund to promote "deep and sustainable democracy" in neighbouring countries. |
NBC has been having ratings success with two shows based on the windy city — Chicago Fire and Chicago PD. Will USA have similar luck with Sirens? Will it be cancelled or renewed for a second season? Stay tuned! |
Sirens follows the lives of EMT’s who work for the Eminent Ambulance Company in Chicago. The cast includes Michael Mosley, Kevin Daniels, Kevin Bigley, Jessica McNamee, Kelly O’Sullivan, Maura Kidwell, Bill Nunn, and Kirsten Fitzgerald. |
Below are the TV show’s ratings, the best way to tell if it will be cancelled or renewed. These figures will be updated as the weeks progress so you can check back to see how things are going. |
6/11 update: This series has been renewed for a second season by USA. |
Final season averages: 0.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 1.13 million total viewers. |
What do you think? Do you like the Sirens TV series? Do you think it should be cancelled or renewed for a second season? |
Sirens should not be cancelled. It’s a hilarious show, should make it a Netflix series. With all the people watching Netflix, Sirens will be popular on there. |
Tony Hoffman HP LaserJet Enterprise M606x The HP LaserJet Enterprise M606x monochrome laser printer can handle the demands of midsize to large workgroups with massive printing needs. |
High standard and optional paper capacity. 275,000-sheet maximum duty cycle. NFC touch-to-print and HP Wireless Direct. PCL and PostScript drivers. Password-protected printing. Port for USB thumb drive. |
On the slow side for its price and rated speed. Slightly subpar text output quality in testing. |
The HP LaserJet Enterprise M606x monochrome laser printer can handle the demands of midsize to large workgroups with massive printing needs. |
As the new high-end model in the company's monochrome laser printer series, the HP LaserJet Enterprise M606x ($2,099.99) is built for high-volume printing, as evidenced by its prodigious maximum monthly duty cycle and massive standard and optional paper capacity. Its output quality should be fine for general business u... |
This printer measures 20.5 by 16.7 by 21.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 71.5 pounds. It will need a bench or table of its own, and at least two people to move it into place and set it up. The bottom 500-sheet tray comes packaged separately, and the rest of the printer needs to be carefully aligned above it so that posts on ... |
Paper capacity for the M606x is a hefty standard 1,100-sheet paper capacity, split between two 500-sheet trays and a 100-sheet multipurpose feeder, and includes an automatic duplexer for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Additional paper-handling options are available to bring the paper capacity to a maximum ... |
The M606x offers USB, Ethernet, NFC, and Wireless Direct connectivity. The latter two options enable printing from compatible mobile devices. NFC touch-to-print, which you launch by simply touching a compatible smart phone or tablet to a spot on the printer to the left of the touch screen, works with the HP ElitePad 90... |
Although it doesn't offer the familiar 802.11 Wi-Fi, you can still print to the M606x from iOS and Android phones and tablets (it is HP ePrint, AirPrint, and Mopria Alliance compatible), provided they're on the same network as the printer, and the network has a wireless access point. I tested the M606x over an Ethernet... |
There is one other printer in HP's M606 series. The HP LaserJet Enterprise M606dn ($1,749.99) lacks the M606x's second 500-sheet tray and its NFC and Wireless Direct capabilities, and replaces the touch screen with a non-touch version. It will save you money over the M606x, but with a corresponding reduction in feature... |
The HP M606x, along with the HP M606dn, is at the pinnacle of HP's laser printers for speedat least based on their specswith a rated speed of 65 pages per minute (ppm) in printing letter-size pages. The rated speeds provided by companies are based on printing text documents without graphics or photos, while our test ... |
The M606x's overall output quality in our testing was a touch below average for a monochrome laser, with slightly subpar text quality, and average quality for both graphics and photo output. Fortunately, even slightly subpar text quality is still good enough for nearly all standard business uses, except those requiring... |
With graphics, the M606x did well at handling very thin lines in our tests. In several printouts, it had trouble differentiating between zones of similar tone, and in one illustration meant to show a gradation from dark to light and back to dark, there was very little difference in shading. Still, graphics quality is g... |
I saw some dithering in the form of dot patterns in several test photos. Some prints showed a loss of detail in bright areas. Photo quality should be fine for printing out recognizable images from Web pages. |
The M606x has a low running cost of 1.1 cents per page, matching those of the HP M605x. (Both employ the same high-volume toner cartridge with a 25,000-page yield.) The costs are a tad higher than the Dell B5460dn's penny a page, and lower than the HP LaserJet Enterprise M604dn's costs of 1.6 cents per page. |
Like the Dell B5640dn or the HP LaserJet Enterprise Printer M603DN, two Editors' Choice models, the M606x is built for very high-volume printing. It matches their prodigious 275,000-page maximum duty cycle, and its 1,100-sheet paper capacity is nearly double that of either the HP M603DN (600 sheets) or the Dell B5460dn... |
The M606x is much the same printer as the HP LaserJet Enterprise M605x, but with a higher rated speed and maximum monthly duty cycle, and a substantially higher price. In our testing, however, their speeds were nearly identical, so we can only be sure that you're getting a boost in duty cycle for the extra money. The H... |
Bottom Line: The HP LaserJet Enterprise M606x monochrome laser printer can handle the demands of midsize to large workgroups with massive printing needs. |
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has denied reports that he has resigned in view of the Congress leadership's decision to carve out a separate Telangana state. |
The chief minister's office has termed the resignation reports in a section of the media as 'incorrect and baseless'. Kiran Kumar on Tuesday morning left for New Delhi on summons by the party leadership ahead of the meetings of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coordination panel and the Congress Working Committee. |
Congress sources have not ruled out Kiran Kumar submitting his resignation if the party announces a decision to bifurcate the state. He has already conveyed to the leadership that he can't preside over the state's division. If he quits, the party may either name his successor or bring the state under President's rule t... |
Hailing from Rayalaseema region, Kiran Reddy is opposed to state's division and had pleaded the leadership to at least delay a decision. After the core group meeting, the chief minister had called on party president Sonia Gandhi but had returned disappointed to Hyderabad the same day. |
The ministers from Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and Andhra regions) who called on him during last three days, said he was very upset over the turn of events. One minister T.G. Venkatesh said Kiran Reddy may quit if a decision was taken to accord statehood to Telangana. |
Both spouses and first-degree relatives of patients with celiac disease are at increased risk of nonceliac autoimmune disease, according to a study in the July issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. This risk represents ... |
"The prevalence of celiac disease in first-degree relatives of individuals with celiac is approximately 10 percent. Despite these findings, little is known about the risk of nonceliac autoimmune disease in these individuals," said lead study author Louise Emilsson, MD, PhD, from Oslo University and Primary care researc... |
Researchers conducted a nationwide, population-based long-term observational cohort study using the Swedish Multi-Generation Register to monitor the risk of nonceliac autoimmune disease, which includes Crohn's disease, type 1 diabetes mellitus, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidos... |
During the follow-up period, which averaged close to 10.8 years, 4.3 percent of celiac relatives developed nonceliac autoimmune disease, compared to 3.3 percent in the control group. Systemic lupus erythematosus, type I diabetes mellitus and sarcoidosis were the most common nonceliac autoimmune diseases seen in patient... |
While the excess risk found in celiac first-degree relatives can be explained by genetics, the higher risk in spouses points to the impact of environmental factors. It is also possible that spouses share microbiome characteristics with their husband/wife, which might impact the risk of developing and diagnosing other a... |
Another explanation is ascertainment bias, meaning that first-degree relatives and spouses are likely to seek medical advice or undergo celiac disease testing more often than the general population. It could also mean that doctors who are aware of the celiac disease patient are more likely to investigate first-degree r... |
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