San Diego Mayor Bob Filner has resigned following ongoing allegations of sexual harassment that spurred a related lawsuit. His resignation was confirmed upon a Friday vote by the city council agreeing that the city will pay part of his legal fees. Filner maintains he did not sexually harass any of his 18 female accusers, blaming “awkwardness and hubris” for his behavior.
Robert ‘Bob’ Adams to serve as Interim City Manager of DHS
Desert Hot Springs, California (August 22, 2013) – The City Council has hired Robert Adams to serve as Interim City Manager until a permanent City Manager is hired in the near future. Mr. Adams was selected from a group of six qualified candidates. Mr. Adams’ first day on the job will be September 3, 2013.
Since Mr. Adams is a retiree of the CalPERS, the State’s retirement system, he is only permitted to work a maximum of 960 hours per fiscal year (July – June). Mr. Adams will be paid an hourly wage of $93.75 per hour and mileage reimbursement with no benefits..
See attached Employment Agreement and Resume for further details.
Microsoft CEO to step down within year
The world’s largest software maker announced on Friday that Chief Executive, Steven Ballmer, will retire in the next 12 months.
Ballmer will continue as acting CEO and will lead the company until a successor is chosen by the board.
Microsoft shares surged 9 percent in premarket trading on the news.
“We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction,” Ballmer said in an official statement on the company’s website.
“We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing Senior Leadership Team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company,” he said.
Ballmer served as CEO for over a decade, but has struggled to lead the company’s transition in tablets and mobile devices.
Profits have missed analysts’ forecasts, as demand for Windows-operated PCs drops, and the tablet market dominates sales.
Under Ballmer, Microsoft was forced to cut the price of its Surface RT tablet by nearly 30 percent, as the device failed to glean market share from tablet veterans such Apple and Samsung.
Bill Gates said Microsoft is “fortunate to have Steve in his role until the new CEO assumes these duties.”
Rumors have circulated tech blogs that founder Gates, who currently acts as board Chairman, may return as operational CEO.
The Nasdaq-listed Microsoft Corp is a leader in business software, and champion of Windows operating system.
Manning to ask Obama for pardon, will pay ‘high price’ if not granted
Bradley Manning’s defense team will file a pardon request to US president Barack Obama early next week, or will ask to commute the Private’s sentence.
A US military judge on Tuesday sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison.
Manning will be credited with the 1,294 days he spent in pre-trial confinement plus an additional 112 days.
He was also dishonorably discharged, saw his rank reduced to private from private first class and was forced to forfeit all pay and benefits.
No additional fine, however, was levied against him.
Bradley Manning will be eligible for parole in seven years, attorney says.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW
New record: Federal Reserve owes more than $2 trillion in US debt
The United States Federal Reserve has set a new record, but it’s not one exactly worth celebrating. For the first time ever, the Fed owns more than $2 trillion in US debt.
According to the Fed’s latest weekly account, the central bank currently is holding roughly $2,001,093,000,000 in US Treasury securities.
That statistic, first reported by CNS News, was published by the Fed on August 14. One week earlier, the bank reported that it amount of federal debt it owned totaled only $1,993,375,000,000.
By comparison, the amount of federal debt owned by the bank since the start of 2009 and the administration of US President Barack Obama has more than quadrupled. On Dec. 31, 2008 that statistic was less consisted of less than a half-trillion in Treasury securities, but efforts undertaken by the Fed to revive the economy — so called “quantitative easing” — have instead left the bank to bear record amounts of national debt.
China, the second place holder with regards to US debt, was owed $1.2758 trillion by the US as of late June. CNS News reported that only 16.7 percent of the government’s debt is being held by the Fed, and that an additional $5.6 trillion — including the amount held in China — is owned by foreign entities.
Also this week, the Fed announced the results of a study launched to identify any stresses that could cause another economic collapse like what was seen after the 2008 financial crisis.
“A key lesson from the recent financial crisis is that many financial companies simply failed to adequately identify the potential exposures and risks stemming from their firm-wide activities….,” the Fed determined. “But more importantly, many companies failed to consider the full scale and scope of exposures, and to analyze how the size and risk characteristics of their exposures and business activities might evolve as economic and market conditions changed.”
Commenting on the latest numbers, Reason’s Ed Krayewski wrote, “Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has filled its balance sheet with private assets and public debt through instruments like quantitative easing, and the totals are adding up.”
Taking into account all debts, the US is said to be in the hole to the amount of $16.9 trillion. University of California, San Diego economics professor James Hamilton has laid other claims as of late, though, going on record recently to estimate the real debt owed by the US is closer to a staggering $70 trillion.
“The biggest off-balance-sheet liabilities come from recognition of the fiscal stress that will come in the form of an aging population and rising medical expenditures,” Hamilton told Fox News, adding, “It is worth noting that there are many historical episodes in which off-balance sheet liabilities ended up having quite significant on-balance sheet implications.”
Meanwhile, President Obama is reportedly working alongside banking regulators to issue a status report on the upcoming five-year anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse.
NSA has ability to read 75% of all US internet traffic – report
Newly unveiled National Security Agency programs detail how the US government has the ability to monitor approximately 75 per cent of American internet traffic, and further discloses how telecommunications companies are compelled to provide such data.
The programs – known as Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium, and Stormbrew – are able to monitor the writing of emails, not just a message’s metadata, according to The Wall Street Journal. The programs also affect digital phone calls placed inside the US.
Among other capabilities, the systems can “reach roughly 75 per cent of all US internet traffic, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.”
The NSA commands internet service providers (ISPs) to send “various stream internet traffic it believes most likely to contain foreign intelligence,” then copies that data and searches through it.
NSA officials have claimed in recent weeks that the intelligence agency “touches” a mere 1.6 percent of internet traffic, although TechCrunch speculated that rhetoric refers to information that has been sent to the NSA and “culled to their liking.”
Perhaps the most disturbing news is that the NSA worked in conjunction with the FBI to monitor all email and text messages for the six month period surrounding the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.
One NSA official, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Wall Street Journal that the NSA is “not wallowing willy-nilly” through Americans’ communications. “We want high-grade ore.”
The WSJ report is based on interviews with current and former government officials familiar with the NSA’s tactics. They claim the filtering was designed to identify communications that either begin or end outside the US, although the “broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected,” not foreign ones.
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said that oversight is in place in the event that domestic communication is inadvertently recorded, including “minimization procedures that are approved by the US attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons.”
While lawmakers have asserted that NSA surveillance is necessary to protect national security, Blarney is known to have been in use since before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The program was operating near important fiber-optic landing points, including one in San Francisco, California and another in New Jersey, with the intention of intercepting foreign communications entering and exiting the US.
Such laws are permitted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was expanded in 2008. Section 702 grants the NSA and the FBI the ability to monitor people who are “reasonably believed” to be located outside the US. Before FISA was expanded, it allowed the government to track targets if there was “probable cause” that they were an “agent of a foreign power.”
The PRISM surveillance program is also permitted under Section 702. One of the first Edward Snowden leaks to be published, an internal NSA document described PRISM’s method of collecting stored internet communications as “the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.”
Multiple telecommunications companies have denied that PRISM requests administered by the government require bulk data turnovers – an indication that they are more precise than the internet filtration systems under Barney and other newly disclosed programs.