Media

Next Cold War Roundup 10/11/16

Saudi coalition airstrikes on a large funeral in Yemen escalated the war and puts the US at risk of participating in war crimes. The Pentagon may retaliate for an alleged missile fired at a US warship off the coast of Yemen. Naval analysts claim the USS Mason fired missiles during the incident.

Los Angeles residents will be able to vote in November on a measure that would build 10,000 housing units over 10 years for homeless individuals.

Proposition HHH would lend $1.2 billion to developers from general obligation bonds paid by property taxes. One third of the developers’ housing projects’ costs would be covered by the loan and they would raise the other two-thirds of their planned costs through state, federal and private sources.

A Saudi airstrike that destroyed a funeral hall and killed 140 people Saturday in Yemen is a scenario U.S. lawyers have been worried about under international law. Documents obtained by Reuters reveal that State Department lawyers were concerned that arms sales to the Saudis might make the U.S. liable for war crimes the Saudis might commit. The U.S. hasn’t been giving targets to the Saudis but, problematically, it has provided a no-strike list including critical infrastructure. In effect, that may make the U.S.

Congressional critics of the Saudi-led military campaign against Yemeni rebels are demanding the White House pull its support for Riyadh following an alleged weekend airstrike that killed at least 140 funeral mourners in Sanaa.

The Obama administration has already said it is considering ratcheting back its aid for Saudi Arabia -- a rare step that all but certainly will inflame America’s most powerful ally in the Arab world. But lawmakers said they remain unappeased by the White House threat in the face of the growing civilian death toll in Yemen’s nearly two-year war.

WASHINGTON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials.

Not long after Edward Snowden's revelations of massive government surveillance of the American public, Yahoo was one of the eight tech giants that called for strong reforms that would protect their customers.

And back in 2007, Yahoo went to court to challenge a government surveillance program in order to protect its users' privacy.

Well, that was then.

Breached voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona, reported earlier this year, are causing the public to become skeptical about election cybersecurity.

Even though the majority of states have turned to the Department of Homeland Security for help in protecting their election systems from hacks, cybersecurity experts are at odds to what portions of the country would be targeted for attacks.

According to a new report by Reuters citing anonymous former employees, in 2015, Yahoo covertly built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information.”