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The Cygnus spacecraft, which was launched on an Antares rocket, is scheduled to arrive at the space station around 4:35 a.m. on Monday, February 21. NASA Television, the NASA app, and agency’s website will provide live coverage of the spacecraft’s approach and arrival beginning at 3 a.m. The spacecraft will then be installed on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Unity module. This is Northrop Grumman’s 17th contracted resupply mission under the second Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The delivery includes critical materials to support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations occurring during NASA’s Expedition...

An armed group has stormed the Tripoli headquarters of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Libya. Security forces clashed with the armed men at the landmark building in the centre of the city, and blasts and gunfire could be heard, witnesses say. A security official at the site said at least two staff members and two gunmen have been killed in the attack. Last week, the UN announced that a truce between warring militias had been agreed in the capital. A UN-backed government is nominally in power in Tripoli but militias occupy much of the rest of the country. …...

ockheed Martin's (LMT) F-35 wowed crowds at the Farnborough Airshow in the U.K. last month... Despite ongoing concerns about its development, the stealth fighter continues to reach key milestones, and production will hit full speed in a few years. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman (NOC), which is a major subcontractor on the F-35, has locked down the other key piece of the Pentagon's combat aircraft upgrade cycle, winning the B-21 contract last year to build replacements for Cold War-era Boeing (BA) B-52s. With the $400 billion F-35 and $80 billion B-21 contracts in hand, Lockheed and Northrop would appear to have established...

Libya's internationally recognized government said on Tuesday that any sales of the country's oil should be arranged through a state firm based in Benghazi under its leadership to prevent fraud. If implemented, the decision would escalate a battle for control that is raging, four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, between the official government based in the east and a rival administration in Tripoli. Oil markets have been wondering who is owning Africa's largest oil reserves. But so far customers have continued paying for exports worth hundreds of millions of dollars each month through state National Oil Corp (NOC)...

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.” RT adds: "Previously established guidelines within the administration say...

This weekend some interesting developments appeared to rip some holes in the Wilson Gambit and further erode Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s credibility. David Corn of The Nation magazine and VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) have pushed nonsensical claims that Valerie Plame was a nonofficial cover agent (NOC), supplying the necessary predicate for an Agee Act (Intelligence Identity Protection Act) prosecution. While I could find scant reporting in the pre-indictment period poking holes in this ridiculous notion, Saturday’s Chicago Tribune carried five stories doing just that. In two of the most significant articles, the paper showed how easy it was...

WASHINGTON -- The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contends that Plame's friends "had no idea she had another life." But Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.

<p>BODY: She was a CIA case officer working in Europe covertly, holding herself out as the representative of a Texas foundation that was interested in world economics.</p> <p>Unlike most CIA case officers overseas who work out of U.S. embassies and purport to be diplomats, she was operating under what CIA calls "nonofficial cover" (NOC).</p>

SO much in this article .. sorry for all the snips .. ================================================= (snip) Valerie Plame had dinner with five of her classmates from the agency's training academy. (snip) But even though Plame's "cover" had been cracked wide open, her dinner companions didn't pry for details.(snip) "Cover is a mosaic, it's a puzzle," said James Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer who attended the dinner. "Every piece is important [to protect] because you don't know which pieces the bad guys are missing." (snip) The case also has called attention to the precious, concealing commodity the intelligence community calls "cover." The...