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BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. military estimates around 12,000 Russian soldiers are supporting pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine, U.S. Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges said on Tuesday. The Russian forces are made up of military advisers, weapons operators and combat troops, Hodges said in a speech in Berlin, adding that a further 29,000 soldiers were stationed in the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine last year. In addition, 50,000 troops are positioned on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine in case the separatists suffer a severe setback and the Ukrainian army gains the upper hand, Hodges said.

Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984

My twelve-year-old recently finished George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. When I asked her whether she had taken any lessons from the book, she airily replied, “The individual is powerless, so there’s really no point in trying.” Alarmed, I tried to explain that the world was an altogether cheerier place than Orwell, writing in 1948, could have imagined. Unrepentant socialist as he was, he never overcame his belief that the free market was doomed. He would have been stunned by the way that seventy years of exchange and specialization have served not only to make us wealthier, but to make us more...

Evidence gleaned from sources like email, social media and GPS trackers has already become common in trials. Newer tech like wearables and smartphone apps exude an even richer exhaust of information concerning our whereabouts, activities and close contacts. Cases like the one heard in Calgary raise questions about what it means to have this data in the courtroom – and how people could use it to protect themselves in the eyes of the law. An Android app called Alibi, released a few weeks ago, is designed to help citizens protect themselves in this way. Like a civilian version of the...

Austin, Texas – In what sounds like something out of the Cold War Soviet Union playbook, Austin Police Chief, Art Acevedo urged the community to turn in neighbors and friends who are “gun enthusiasts” or who have “extreme” views, just days after Larry McQuilliams shot-up buildings in Austin.Acevedo, in a press conference, stated that he is fearful of “homegrown” terrorists like McQuilliams who harbor “hate” and have access to firearms.But what Americans should be fearful about isn’t the likes of McQuilliams, but rather the response by Acevedo on how to go about countering these perceived threats. While obviously no rational...

The Internal Revenue Service, which claims to be so understaffed that it can’t bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup tapes for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!). William Jacobson, one of the best-informed and most effective critics of the agency, writes on Legal Insurrection: Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in...

If only George Orwell could see us today. When he wrote “1984� back in 1948, he probably never imagined that the “totalitarian, bureaucratic world� that he imagined would ever actually become a reality. But that is precisely what is happening. We live at a time when the government monitors billions of our phone calls and emails and hardly anyone gets upset about it. We live at a time when corporations systematically collect our voiceprints and our televisions watch us. We live at a time when reporters that try to dig into the misdeeds of the government have their computers hacked,...

I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which promises to deliver streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too. The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy. The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you...

The federal government has become a vast cornucopia for people who know how to play the system. If you do, you can enjoy showers of money for doing things that few if any Americans would willingly pay for. Just to point to a recent instance that made headlines, after Democrats griped that the Center for Disease Control had been crippled in its ability to deal with Ebola because of budget cuts, quite a few writers scrutinized the research that the CDC had been paying for. As Michael Tanner of Cato Institute showed in this column, CDC bureaucrats have been funding...

If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading "misinformation"? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your "partisanship"? My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation, a federal agency whose mission is to "promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the...

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) came to prominence and notoriety when he famously shouted, ‘You Lie’ at Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. If ever there was a prime opportunity for a reprise, it occurred during an exchange between Wilson and Secretary of State John Kerry.Wilson asked Kerry if the U.S. was at war. If Kerry’s response had been a yes or no, the clip below would be no more than five seconds. As it was, Kerry took a more circuitous route to his answer, which was beyond ridiculous. After several seconds of hemming and...

A surge in atmospheric CO2 saw levels of greenhouse gases reach record levels in 2013, according to new figures. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere between 2012 and 2013 grew at their fastest rate since 1984. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says that it highlights the need for a global climate treaty. But the UK's energy secretary Ed Davey said that any such agreement might not contain legally binding emissions cuts, as has been previously envisaged. The WMO's annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin doesn't measure emissions from power station smokestacks but instead records how much of the warming gases remain...

The EU’s justice commissioner has accused internet giant Google of leading a campaign to shoot down data protection reforms. Speaking in Lyon, France on Monday (18 August), the commissioner, Martine Reicherts, said: “Google and other affected companies who complain loudly” about a recent EU court verdict on personal data are “detractors … attempting to throw a new spanner in the works”. The Luxembourg-based EU court in May ruled that Google must remove links to any content that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” or face a fine.The ruling was based on the bloc’s 1995 data protection law, which are...

Tuesday night the Houston Chronicle published a story about the grand jury that indicted Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Those grand jurors who spoke with the Chronicle broke the law to do so, and they knew that they were breaking the law. They claimed that they were speaking to the newspaper to counter Gov. Perry’s “spin” on the case. That’s not the job of a grand jury, by the way. One of them is a woman named Rho Chalmers. Chalmers tried to get around her lawbreaking by attempting to build this wall of implausible deniability. Rho Chalmers, who name matches that...

An in-flight magazine for travelers to Thailand offers some friendly advice on how to win friends and influence people in a country led by military junta. "Despite being under miliary control, Thailand is very safe for tourists," chirps the magazine copy, shared by Twitter user @joe_black317 this week. But for "good measure" you might want to take a few minor precautions, such as avoiding the color red, refraining from taking selfies with soldiers sans their consent, and for godssakes ditching your dystopian novels on the plane. "Don't carry George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984," the Philippine Airlines magazine warns in tip...

Jonathan Alter at the Daily Beast has an idea that will infuse the president’s “economic patriotism” rhetoric with some bite: Compel companies to take “loyalty oaths” to prove their patriotism. You may find this suggestion a little creepy, maybe even a little fascistic; but Alter says that “it’s time for red-blooded Americans to take matters into our own hands.” And by taking the matter into “our” hands, Alter means that President Obama would unilaterally bar any company that practices “inversion” – corporate merging with foreign firms to save on U.S. tax bills – from doing business with the federal government....

<p>Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible.</p> <p>Fleeing to an Oppressive Society?</p> <p>How odd that almost no advocate ever says, “We want amnesty so that our kinsmen have a shot, as we have had a shot, at an independent judiciary, equality under the law, the rule of law, true democracy, free speech, protection of human rights, free-market capitalism, and protection of private property. For all that, millions risk their lives.” But instead there is either nothing, or a continual critique of the U.S. If we were to take a newly arrived illegal alien, and enroll him in a typical Chicano Studies course, he would logically wish to return across the border as soon as possible.</p>

The National Science Foundation has committed $10 million to build robots that will act as “personal trainers” for children, in an effort to influence their behavior and eating habits. The government has spent $2.15 million so far for the five-year project, which is being led by Yale University. The project, “Robots Helping Kids,” will ultimately “deploy” robots into homes and schools to teach English as a second language, and encourage kids to exercise.

A Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is appealing a "re-education" order from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.The order requires cake artist Jack Phillips to create wedding cakes for gay couples and to re-educate his staff that the state's Anti-Discrimination Act means artists must endorse all views.It also requires him to file quarterly compliance reports for two years.According to Phillips' attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, the reports must include the number of patrons that Phillips declines to serve, along with the reason.The order stems from a 2012 incident in which Phillips refused a...

By now we know that every purchase a consumer makes is added to a list detailing one’s spending and life-style habit, which is used to target people for marketing campaigns and other services. But how would you feel if that information was used by your doctors to keep tabs on your health? A new report from Bloomberg details how hospitals are using our habits such as buying cigarettes or skipping the gym to create patient profiles in order to identify those who are most likely to get sick.

<p>The Justice Department is resurrecting a program designed to thwart domestic threats to the United States, and Attorney General Eric Holder says those threats include individuals the government deems anti-government or racially prejudiced.</p>

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

<p>How well can you predict your next mood swing? How well can anyone? It’s an existential dilemma for many of us but for the military, the ability to treat anxiety, depression, memory loss and the symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder has become one of the most important battles of the post-war period.</p>

The food industry should be regulated like the tobacco industry as obesity poses a greater global health risk than cigarettes, say international groups. Consumers International and the World Obesity Federation are calling for the adoption of more stringent rules. These could include pictures on food packaging of damage caused by obesity, similar to those on cigarette packets. The new rules could include reducing the levels of salt, saturated fat and sugar in food, improving food served in hospitals and schools, imposing stricter advertising controls, and educating the public about healthy eating. Artificial trans-fats should be removed from all food and...

They haven’t – yet – succeeded in “controlling” guns. Taking them out of our control, that is. One reason for this is the ferocious pushback from gun owners, who are numerous and take the threat posed by even innocuous-seeming schemes such as “background checks” and bans of “high capacity” magazines (and so on) very seriously.dodge ad It’s been the same – so far – with regard to their so-far-unsuccessful efforts to outlaw old cars. Or to enact legislation that would amount to the same thing via various end-runs. It is still “legal” to own and operate a vehicle built without...

Ten songs from 1984 that stood the test of time.Nineteen eighty four wasn’t just a landmark year for the film industry. Many classic songs from the 1980s were actually released in 1984. From Wake Me Up Before You Go Go to What’s Love Got To Do With It, some of these songs were the soundtrack of the lives for many who grew up in that era. Here are 10 songs from 1984 that defined the year and stood the test of time. You can watch all the music videos on our YouTube playlist. What’s Love Got To Do With It...

Here Are The Two Soviet Propaganda Posters Hanging In The White House Press Secretary's Home Washingtonian MOM magazine's spring issue has a profile of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's wife, ABC News contributor Claire Shipman, that features a picture taken inside their home. In the background of the photo, you can see two framed Soviet-era propaganda posters. One of Carney's posters is a version of this iconic design by artist Dmitry Moor with a soldier pointing his finger alongside text that says "Have YOU Enlisted?" in Russian: The other poster features a female factory worker. According to this eBay...

<p>‘as time goes on, weirdly, I’m growing less liberal. I’m more like, ‘No, religion is ruining the world, you need to stop!’.</p>

Transparency and truth are the fuels that run sophisticated civilizations. Without them, the state grinds to a halt. Lack of trust -- not barbarians on the frontier, global warming or cooling, or even epidemics -- doomed civilizations of the past, from imperial Rome to the former Soviet Union. The United States can withstand the untruth of a particular presidential administration if the permanent government itself is honest. Dwight Eisenhower lied about the downed U-2 spy plane inside the Soviet Union. Almost nothing Richard Nixon said about Watergate was true. Intelligence reports of vast stockpiles of WMD in Iraq proved as...

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on Friday emphasized the need for the group to institute “population behavior change” in order to engineer healthier Americans.DGAC Chair Barbara Millen said the upcoming report would serve as the “foundation for public policy and food nutrition, physical activity, and health-related areas.” The group will release new recommendations for federal food policy in the 2015 report.Millen said the “potential is vast” for their recommendations, which deal with everything from “sustainability” in the food supply to “carbon footprints,” food deserts, alcohol consumption, and obesity “interventions.”“From our food programs, WIC [Women, Infants, and Children], SNAP, and so...

I just refreshed my Yahoo! homepage, and there is not one story visible on page one about Ukraine.Obviously the journo-list-ers have decided that the story was hurting King Barack I, so poof! no more Ukraine news!Isn't nice we live in a country under the firm hand of our Glorious Leader, the Hindmost, where we don't have to be disturbed by such upsetting stories?

The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media. Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.” As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall...

Every conservative by now should have noticed that February has become Ronald Reagan Month for Republicans. The man’s birthday was last week, February 6, the forerunner to Lincoln’s birthday (February 12), Washington’s birthday (February 22), and President’s Day (February 17). Throughout the nation, county and statewide Republican groups have been changing their longtime annual Lincoln Day dinners into Reagan Day dinners. I’m speaking on Reagan multiple times this month, including at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, where we’re releasing (pardon the plug) my new book that endeavors to answer the question “What is a Reagan conservative?” Thus, this...

Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).

Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza was indicted Thursday on federal charges of violating campaign finance laws by using straw donors to funnel money to a U.S. Senate candidate. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced the grand jury charges in a statement Thursday. D’Souza is expected to be arraigned Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. .... “Mr. D’Souza did not act with any corrupt or criminal intent whatsoever,” Brafman said in the statement. “He and the candidate have been friends since their college days, and “at worst, this was an act of misguided friendship by...

Verizon Wireless (VZ), in its first such disclosure, says U.S. officials requested data about subscribers some 322,000 times in 2013, along with another 1,000 to 1,999 requests in the form of "National Security Letters." "Our report reflects the fact that telecom providers receive more government demands than companies in perhaps any other industry," Verizon General Counsel and Executive Vice President Randal Milch wrote in a Wednesday blog post. The company says the 321,696 total requests it received from government and law enforcement officials were up from 2012, but it didn't say how many requests it received in 2012.

That's the title of a new book by Fred Jerome, a compilation of essays from these and other noteworthies: This anthology features essays by revolutionary thinkers, activists, and artists-including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, civil rights activist Angela Davis, incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, and economist Rick Wolff- addressing various aspects of a new society and, crucially, how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, living in a society that is truly fair and just. I suppose that's one way to describe their vision. I might ask the question, "fair and just for whom"?...

Kristen Stewart is hooking up with Jennifer Lawrence's boyfriend on the big screen. The 23-year-old actress has signed on to star opposite Nicholas Hoult in the upcoming futuristic love story Equals. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Stewart explains why she's nervous to take on the part. "I can't believe I agreed to do it," Stewart told The Associated Press on Monday, Jan. 14. "I'm terrified of it. Though it's a movie with a really basic concept, it's overtly ambitious." "It's a love story of epic, epic, epic proportion," she added. "I'm scared." Equals is an adaptation of...

A&E has placed Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson on indefinite hiatus following anti-gay remarks he made in a recent profile in GQ. "We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty," A&E said in a statement. "His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely."

A Silicon Valley startup is poised to replace the everyday security guard with high tech robots the company plans to introduce to the world on Thursday. The 300 pound R5 Autonomous Data Machine looks like a hybrid of R2-D2 and the robot from Lost in Space. More than just yelling ‘danger,’ manufacturer Knightscope hopes the machines will actually help predict crimes and even cut current rates in half. And its inventors say it was a recent school shooting that actually inspired them to create the R5....

In 1984 moment, N. Korea deletes near entirety of news archives In striking development, North Korean media deletes near-entirity of its article archives by Chad O’Carroll , December 16, 2013 North Korean state media outlet the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) has deleted over 35,000 articles from its on-line archives. The deletion, the biggest ever article removal in KCNA’s history, means that with the exception of a small number of articles about Kim Jong Un, the digital record of state-approved news currently only reaches back to October 2013 on KCNA’s North Korea (.kp) hosted website. “There were 35,000 articles dated...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm-vfxZyJwo

Subtitle: And Intellectuals Are Really Dumb----- The topic for today is one world government. The main group of people who claim to think this is a swell idea are intellectuals. That’s how you know intellectuals are not that intelligent. As George Orwell noted, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” The theory, much hyped throughout the 20th century, is that the world would be better off if it had only one government managing everything. Instead of dispersing power to many parts of the world, there would be a central tribunal composed of superior humans, wiser and more...

President Barack Obama told his enthusiastic supporters Monday night that he never promised what video recordings show him promising at least 29 times. The videos show Obama promising 300 million Americans that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan, period.” (snip)

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt called reports of the U.S. government spying on the company's data centers "outrageous" and if proven true, potentially illegal. "It's really outrageous that the National Security Agency (NSA) was looking between the Google data centers, if that's true," Schmidt told The Wall Street Journal. "The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people's privacy, it's not OK." According to Schmidt, Google has registered complaints against President Obama, the NSA and members of Congress.

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and SANDY COHEN 2 hours ago LOS ANGELES (AP) — The health care overhaul might get a Hollywood rewrite. The California Endowment, a private foundation that is spending millions to promote President Barack Obama's signature law, recently provided a $500,000 grant to ensure TV writers and producers have information about the Affordable Care Act that can be stitched into plot lines watched by millions. he aim is to produce compelling prime-time narratives that encourage Americans to enroll, especially the young and healthy, Hispanics and other key demographic groups needed to make the overhaul a success. "We...

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshal Service. Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland’s Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6. The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times...

Glenn Beck on Thursday broached a topic that he said “horrified” him when it was brought to his attention roughly two weeks ago, describing it as an “effort to re-write our history and catalyze a new culture for America” with the help of “America’s latest propaganda machine.” Beck proceeded to tell his viewers about two groups, the first called “Imagining America” and the second called “The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.” The latter isn’t actually a body of the United States government, but in the group’s own words, “the nation’s newest people-powered department, founded on the truth that art...

Even as President Obama and his administration are making a last minute push to encourage enrollment in Obamacare, a quiet change was made on the Healthcare.gov website regarding those who will still not be able to afford coverage after the program kicks in. From at least June 26, 2013 to as recently as September 15, under the topic, "Where can I get free or low-cost care in my community?" the following statement appeared: "If you can't afford any health plan, you can get free or low-cost health and dental care at a nearby community health center." Here is how the...

Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off.It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter.That is not to suggest that we are the only website in the world that attracts vexing commenters. Far from it. Nor is it to suggest that all, or even close...