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A former employee of Twitter was found guilty Tuesday of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia in federal court in San Francisco after a two-week trial. Al-Asaker had Abouammo access the email addresses and phone numbers (which could reveal the identity of anonymous accounts) of Twitter users who were critical of the Saudi royal family. Abouammo enlisted a coworker, Ali Alzabarah, a site reliability engineer, into the espionage scheme. As an SRE, Alzabarah had even more access to user information than the average Twitter employee.

Here’s something that will definitely make that $5 cup of coffee go down a little smoother: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced Wednesday that he will be donating $30 million to help our war veterans. The donation will mostly go toward traumatic brain injury and PTSD research, he told CBS News. "[D]epending on who you’re talking to, 20, 30, 40 percent of the two million people who have served are coming back with some kind of brain trauma or [PTSD]. So we’re going to fund the opportunity for significant research and for medical practitioners and science to understand the disease...

Per Fox (Kelly), National Guard troops to be sent to Mexican border have been ordered not to patrol or interfere with worst, most violent smuggling routes across the border. The main mission will be to sit at desks in an administrative role far from the border. IOW, it's a cynical misuse of the Guard. Also, the federal government forbids border agents to patrol about 70% of the AZ border because of the potential damage to wild life habitats for owls, mice, etc. The Interior Department places most of the border off-limits to US patrols even as hundreds of thousands of...

SEND IN THE DRONES: PREDATORS TO FLY ABOVE TEX-MEX BORDER Tue Apr 27 2010 19:39:41 ET Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate hearing Tuesday that unmanned aerial drones will soon fly through Texas skies! "Big Sis" declared that over the past 15 months, federal law enforcement initiatives have made the border more secure than in any other time in history, the SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS reports in Wednesday editions. The new "predator bees" have the capability to fly at altitudes used by commercial aircraft, and are designed to enhance intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement. But...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has told his military aides not to wear combat fatigues to work at the Pentagon anymore, reversing a symbolic change of protocol ordered in the harrowing days after the Sept. 11 attacks. There was no formal announcement about Mr. Gates directing his military staff to shed their fatigues in favor of business uniforms — the smartly pressed ones bedecked with combat medals and service ribbons that are the military equivalent of a civilian coat and tie, worn with dress shoes and not combat boots. But throughout the Defense Department, where every action by...

New York Rep. Peter King, a prominent House Republican, said there are “too many mosques in this country” in a recent interview with Politico. “There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam,” King said. “We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them.” King is the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. And as an outspoken advocate of strong anti-terror measures, he has been unafraid to ruffle some feathers in his drive to protect the homeland. When asked to clarify his statement, King did not revise his answer, saying “I...

The governor of the US state of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, has signed into law legislation designed to deter illegal immigrant workers. The law requires businesses to verify that all their employees are legally entitled to work in the US, or face the prospect of being closed down. The tougher penalties were introduced days after President Bush's immigration reform bill failed in the Senate. Arizona is one of the main gateways for illegal migration into the US. Federal failure Under the new legislation, an employer's first offence would be punished by a temporary licence suspension. Congress finds itself incapable of coping...

New governors from California to New Jersey have cut spending and reordered priorities in recent years in an attempt to get their states on a path toward stability and prosperity. People were uncomfortable with these actions at first, but later saw that change was necessary and beneficial. We must do the same thing in New York, but it will be harder than in other states because we've put off tough decisions for years. Our budgeting often has been driven by politics instead of common sense. We've made commitments that drive billions of dollars into ineffective programs that benefit the few...

WASHINGTON, DC (AgapePress) - A Republican senator is hailing it as the strongest effort to secure the U.S. border with Mexico in his lifetime. But one expert on political violence and terrorism doubts the border fence authorized by President Bush's signature on Thursday will ever become reality. Yesterday the president signed a law authorizing construction of 700 miles of fence along a third of the U.S.-Mexico border. At the signing Bush acknowledged "the United States has not been in complete control of its border for decades." If the barrier is built as planned, the state of Arizona would be virtually...

On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement proudly announced that they arrested one of the owners of a Mexican restaurant in Missouri following worksite enforcement operations at his Missouri and Iowa restaurants. Julio Zapala-Urbina, co-owner of Julio's Mexican Restaurants in St. Joseph, Mo., and Cedar Falls, Iowa, was arrested on criminal charges of knowingly hiring illegal aliens to work at his restaurants. His arrest followed the execution of a federal search warrant, and the administrative arrest of nine illegal aliens at his St. Joseph restaurant. ICE agents also executed a federal search warrant at Zapala-Urbina's Cedar...

After advising his yet-unnamed successor to grow "thick skin," Secretary-General Annan yesterday appeared to have thinned his own, lashing out at reporters who asked about United Nations and Annan family scandals. Mr. Annan refused to allow a London Times correspondent, James Bone, to ask a question, accusing him of being "an embarrassment" to his profession. The eruption...reflected frustrations...poor supervision of the oil-for-food program...failed to move on such world events as the Darfur genocide... none of the U.N. reform ideas championed by Mr. Annan were implemented beyond window-dressing. Mr. Annan's...remark that the Iraq war was illegal. The comment did not sit...

On August 12, 2005 Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico issued Executive Order 2005-040 declaring a ‘state of emergency’ in four New Mexico counties along its border with Mexico. It is intended to free up funds totalling $1.5 million for a variety of actions he felt necessary. Specifically, Hidalgo, Luna, Grant and Dona Ana counties are in “an extreme state of disrepair” according to the governor. The state of emergency stems from the governor’s conclusion of “violence encountered by law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling and human smuggling, with an increase in the number...

Musharraf urges holy war on terrorJuly 22, 2005 From combined dispatches ISLAMABAD, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called on Pakistanis yesterday to join a jihad, or holy war, against preachers of hatred and violence and announced steps to rein in militant Islamic schools and organizations. In a televised address to the nation after security forces detained nearly 300 militant suspects in a crackdown following the July 7 London bombings, Gen. Musharraf said all Islamic schools, or madrassas, would have to register with authorities by December. The speech was recorded before yesterday's fresh wave of attacks on the London transit system, which...