India - now nuclear and environmental dissent is a crime

Nuclear export group divided over ties with India - diplomats

India Plans World’s Largest Floating Solar Power Project (50 MW)

Fr. Carl Kabat spray-paints huge sign at NNSA’s nuke-parts plant in Kansas City

Source: Nuclear Resistor

Carl Kabat, 80, a priest in the Order of Mary Immaculate, spray-painted the National Security Campus entry sign at 10 a.m. on July 4. This is Carl’s fourth consecutive “interdependence action” in July at the so-called campus, the new home for the Kansas City Plant (in Kansas City, Missouri), where the National Nuclear Security Administration this year will begin making and procuring non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons. In a phone call to friends at 10:03 a.m., Carl said, “This damned plant has got to be closed somehow, some way.” He chose red paint to signify blood, he said, and after painting was sitting alone by the huge sign, awaiting arrest.

The new $687 million facility replaces the Kansas City Plant at Bannister Federal Complex, also in Kansas City, Missouri, where the federal government has documented about 900 toxins – the legacy from radioactive and other substances used at the old plant. The Kansas City Plant makes parts such as wiring, fuses, guidance systems, security devices, and the trigger for nuclear weapons.

It is expected that Carl will spend the weekend in the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department’s holding cell; will come before a judge via TV court on Monday, July 7; will be freed; and will be told to return to Kansas City for a hearing, where he’ll speak truth to power.

<snip>

In 1980, Kabat took part in the first Plowshares action, following Isaiah’s mandate to “beat swords into plowshares.” He has spent about 17 years in prison for resisting nuclear weapons. In his short phone call this July 4, Carl signed off, “God bless! Peace on you!”

Read more: http://www.nukeresister.org/2014/07/05/fr-carl-kabat-spray-paints-huge-sign-at-nnsas-nuke-parts-plant-in-kansas-city/

New nuclear watchdog commissioner received additional industry payment

Source: Asahi Shimbun

An incoming commissioner of the Nuclear Regulation Authority received payments from the nuclear industry until last month, raising fresh doubts about his impartiality at the nuclear watchdog, The Asahi Shimbun has found.

<snip>

Under the guidelines for nominating NRA commissioners, candidates who received more than 500,000 yen ($4,900) a year from the nuclear industry within three years are disqualified.

But it is not clear how much Tanaka received from the two companies because the payment entries were blackened out in the university records.

He also did not declare the payment in his report on his association with the nuclear industry that was submitted to the NRA in April, when he became a member of an NRA special committee.

<snip>

Read more: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201407050057

Russia Blinded By Loss of Missile Detection Satellite

Climate policies could lift global GDP by $2.6 trillion/year - World Bank

Super-grid: China masters long-distance power transmission

German Student Under N.S.A Scrutiny, Reports Say

Source: New York Times

A 27-year-old informatics student in southern Germany was identified in news reports on Thursday as the first German citizen known to be under surveillance by the National Security Agency since it was revealed last year that the agency had once tapped the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The news came on the same day that two former American security officials testified to a parliamentary inquiry about reports of sweeping digital surveillance and monitoring in Germany by American intelligence, which touched off a major controversy and put strains on German-American relations.

The student, Sebastian Hahn of Erlangen in Bavaria, said he had been active for six years in the Tor network, a group that works to encrypt digital communications, and that he had rented space on a computer in Nuremburg that he said was one of several around the world that direct other computers involved in Tor. Two German state broadcasting channels reported that there was evidence that the N.S.A. was tracking the Nuremberg computer as part of an operation called “XKeyscore.” A server at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that is used by Roger Dingledine, a well-known web activist, was also tracked in the operation, the German broadcasters reported.

After classified materials leaked by the former security contractor Edward J. Snowden indicated in June 2013 that the N.S.A. had swept up the electronic communications of millions of Germans, the government sought reassurances from Washington that no German laws had been broken. It appeared to receive such assurances and said the affair was settled, only to have it flare up anew when word of the eavesdropping on Ms. Merkel emerged in October. That news prompted lawmakers here to begin a formal inquiry, which is expected to last at least two years.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/world/europe/german-student-under-nsa-scrutiny-reports-say.html?_r=0

Report: Rare leaked NSA source code reveals Tor servers targeted

Source: Ars Technica

NSA says it only gathers such data for "valid foreign intelligence purposes."

Two Germany-based Tor Directory Authority servers, among others, have been specifically targeted by the National Security Agency’s XKeyscore program, according to a new report from German public broadcaster ARD. Tor is a well-known open source project designed to keep users anonymous and untraceable—users' traffic is encrypted and bounced across various computers worldwide to keep it hidden.

This marks the first time that actual source code from XKeyscore has been published. ARD did not say how or where it obtained the code. Unlike many other NSA-related stories, the broadcaster did not specifically mention the information being part of the trove leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

XKeyscore is one of the high-level NSA surveillance programs that have been revealed via Snowden over the last year. The interface allows NSA and allied intelligence agencies to search all kinds of short-term data captured directly off of various Internet Exchanges worldwide.

This new code, which was published on Thursday, appears to flag people who are believed to live outside the United States and who request Tor bridge information via e-mail or who search for or download Tor or the security-minded TAILS operating system. Those users' IP addresses can then be tracked for further monitoring.

<snip>

Read more: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/report-rare-leaked-nsa-source-code-reveals-tor-servers-targeted/