Australia: 'Prisoner X' worked for Israeli government

William West / AFP - Getty Images, file

Australian newspapers lead their front pages on Feb. 14 with the story of Ben Zygier, known as "Prisoner X".

By Peter Jeary, Senior Foreign Desk Editor, NBC News

The murky world of state-sponsored espionage has come under the spotlight in an Australian government report about the death of a man known as "Prisoner X" in a maximum-security Israeli prison.

Ben Zygier, who had dual Australian and Israeli citizenship, was arrested in January 2010 and was found hanged in his cell in an apparent suicide in December 2010.

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His identity and reasons for confinement were unknown until he was named last month following an investigation?by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

A report released Tuesday by Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, shed some light on the case.

Australian media have?said Zygier was imprisoned because Israel suspected he had disclosed secret details of Mossad operations.

The report confirmed Zygier was an employee of the Israeli government at the time of his arrest.

Carr stopped short of identifying Zygier as a Mossad agent, but told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation?Tuesday that "open-source material" suggested Zygier "worked for the intelligence arm of the Israeli government."

"You can draw your own conclusions,"?he added.

'Significant uncertainty'
Israel's government has refused to release details about the Zygier case, even after a gag order that barred Israeli media from reporting on it was partially lifted.?

The Australian report said that Zygier, who had lived in Israel for about ten years before his death, had been arrested by Israeli authorities on charges of national security.

The charges he faced carried penalties of up to 20 years in jail, but not the death penalty, it added.

"Significant uncertainty exists around the details of Israel?s handling of the arrest, detention and legal processes of Mr. Zygier," the report said.

But the government would await the outcome of "various inquiries underway or foreshadowed in Israel" before seeking further information, it said. Zygier had three Australian passports, all legally obtained, issued in his birth name and two other names following official name changes. He held only one passport at any one time.

Andrew Brownbill / AP, file

The grave of Ben Zygier, who died in an apparent suicide in 2010 in a maximum-security Israeli prison, at Chevra Kadisha Jewish Cemetery in Melbourne, Australia.

However, the report identified "the broader issue of the misuse of Australian passports by Israeli intelligence" as a concern of national security at the time of Zygier?s incarceration.

Although there was no suggestion that Zygier was involved in this misuse ? or that he obtained his passports fraudulently ? the government report said, "If media reports prove to be true that Mr. Zygier used his passport in the service of Israeli intelligence, this would raise significant questions about the appropriateness of this activity."

The issue of misused passports is particularly sensitive for Australia.

In 2010, an Australian investigation concluded that Israel had counterfeited four Australian passports used by the suspected hit squad that murdered a Hamas official in Dubai.

Australia retaliated by expelling an Israeli diplomat. Carr said there was no evidence Zygier was involved in the Dubai killing.

Related:

Controversy erupts on two continents over Israel's 'Prisoner X'

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/06/17210104-australia-prisoner-x-worked-for-israeli-government?lite

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Coalition will no longer publish attack figures

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan said Tuesday it will no longer publish figures on Taliban attacks, a week after acknowledging that its report of a 7 percent decline in attacks last year was actually no decline at all.

A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, Jamie Graybeal, said Tuesday that its reporting on the number of attacks will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan forces move further into the battlefield lead.

"Because (Afghan forces) are now conducting an increasing number of successful unilateral operations, often beyond the view of ISAF, we have determined that our databases will become increasingly inaccurate in reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated attacks," Graybeal said in a written statement.

"Additionally, we have come to realize that a simple tally of (attacks) is not the most complete measure of the campaign's progress," Graybeal said. "At a time when more than 80 percent of the (attacks) are happening in areas where less than 20 percent of Afghans live, this single facet of the campaign is not particularly accurate in describing the complete effect of the insurgency's violence on the people of Afghanistan."

The Taliban have been pushed out of many population centers and have failed to regain territory they held before the surge of U.S. troops in 2010. But they are expected to test Afghan forces as U.S. and allied troops withdraw over the coming two years. All foreign combat forces are to be gone by Dec. 31, 2014.

Coalition officials, including Obama administration officials, had previously cited the reported 2012 drop in Taliban attacks as among a number of signs that the insurgency was in decline and that the Afghans could take on more of the fighting burden.

Last Tuesday, on his final day as defense secretary, Leon Panetta indicated, after The Associated Press revealed that ISAF had incorrectly reported Taliban attack figures for 2012, that he was disappointed about the error.

The error came to light after ISAF removed from its website a set of statistics that included its tally of "enemy initiated attacks," which it had said declined by 7 percent over 2011 levels. When the AP inquired about the missing figures, ISAF said they had been removed because they contained errors. It blamed the mistake on a failure to include Afghan-provided attack figures.

Graybeal said Tuesdsay that the corrected 2012 figures will not be published.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-03-05-US-Insurgent-Attacks-Error/id-85a5222460f846eba306d3ddc958acc6

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South Korea Military Warns of 'Strong' Retaliation against North

South Korea's military has warned that it will retaliate "strongly and sternly" if the North launches "provocative attacks" during its ongoing military drill.

The South Korean warning comes a day after the North threatened to violate the 1953 truce over proposed new UN sanctions which seek to impose curbs on diplomats and cash transfers.

In a strongly-worded statement, the South Korean military said it would punish North Korea and its leadership if it decides to carry out attacks or indulges in provocative acts.

Tensions are running high in the Korean peninsula after the 12 February nuclear test by North Korea and military drills by both sides have further raised temperatures.

"The North had already received notice that South Korea-US drills are defensive in nature. If North Korea goes ahead with provocations and threatens the lives and safety of South Koreans, our military will strongly and sternly retaliate against the command and its supporting forces. We want to make it clear that (our military) has made all preparations to do that," said the military statement read out by senior official Kim Yong-hyun during a press conference.

South Korea and the US have been conducting a joint military exercise codenamed Foal Eagle since 1 March which is likely to go on till the end of April. Computer-simulated drills are expected to take place between 11 and 21 March.

Out of the 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea, close to 10,000 are to take part in the ongoing drill along with 200,000 South Korean forces.

The South has also stepped up its security following the latest developments and the military has been kept on high alert, suggest reports.

"South Korea and the US have stepped up their surveillance assets to closely monitor North Korea's military. Troops have been placed on high alert," a South Korean official told the Yonhap news agency.

North Korea has already started a submarine drill and its military exercise is expected to take place in the coming week coinciding with the US-South Korea drill, according to reports.

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Source: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/442769/20130306/south-korea-seoul-pyongyang-military-drill-sanctions.htm

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U.N.'s Ban, Syria mediator frustrated at failure to stop war

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi expressed frustration on Saturday at the failure to end Syria's conflict and said the United Nations was ready to facilitate peace talks.

Ban and Brahimi met in Mt. Pelerin, Switzerland, to discuss the two-year-old war that has killed more than 70,000 people.

In a joint statement, they said "they regretted that the government and armed opposition forces have become increasingly reckless with human life and stressed the importance of accountability for war crimes against humanity."

The conflict began as peaceful protests that turned violent when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad tried to crush the revolt.

"The United Nations would welcome and be prepared to facilitate a dialogue between a strong and representative delegation from the opposition and a credible and empowered delegation from the Syrian government," they said in a joint statement.

The U.N. Security Council has been deadlocked on Syria since 2011 over Russia and China's refusal to consider sanctions against Assad's government. They have vetoed three resolutions condemning Assad's crackdown on the opposition groups.

"Both expressed deep frustration at the failure of the international community to act with unity to end the conflict," the statement added.

Damascus and some opposition figures have recently softened their previous outright rejection of talks to resolve the civil war, with both saying they would consider talks with the other side, contingent on some conditions.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uns-ban-syria-mediator-frustrated-failure-stop-war-182746649.html

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Romney returns, but maybe not for long (The Arizona Republic)

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Improved synchronicity: Preventive care for the power grid

Mar. 1, 2013 ? President Obama in this year's State of the Union address talked about the future of energy and mentioned "self-healing power grids" -- a grid that is able to keep itself stable during normal conditions and also to self-recover in the event of a disturbance caused, for example, by severe weather.

But as the national power-grid network becomes larger and more complex achieving reliability across the network is increasingly difficult. Now Northwestern University scientists have identified conditions and properties that power companies can consider using to keep power generators in the desired synchronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.

The Northwestern team's design for a better power grid could help reduce both the frequency of blackouts and the cost of electricity as well as offer an improved plan for handling the intermittent power sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, which can destabilize the network.

"We will be looking at a completely different power grid in the future," said Adilson E. Motter, who led the research. "The use of renewable energy is growing. More people will be driving electric cars, and the power grid will be delivering this energy, not gas stations. We need a power grid that is more capable and more reliable. This requires a better understanding of the current power grid as well as new ways to stabilize it."

Motter is the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The crux of the challenge is that for the U.S. power grid to function the power generators in each of its three interconnections (Eastern, Western and Texas) must be synchronized, all operating at the frequency of 60 hertz. Out-of-synch power generators can lead to blackouts that affect millions of people and cost billions of dollars -- losses similar to those of the Northeast blackout of 2003.

Having a network that can synchronize spontaneously and recover from failures in real time -- in other words, a self-healing power grid -- could prevent such blackouts. To help achieve this, power companies could apply the Northwestern guidelines as they add power generators to the network or tweak existing generators.

A paper describing the researchers' mathematical model, titled "Spontaneous synchrony in power-grid networks," is published in the March 2013 issue of the journal Nature Physics.

When a problem develops in the power-grid network, control devices are used to return power generators to a synchronized state. Motter likens this to using medicine to treat someone who is ill. He and his colleagues are suggesting conditions to keep synchronicity in good shape so interventions are kept to a minimum.

"Our approach is preventive care -- preventing failures instead of mitigating them," said Motter, an author of the paper and an executive committee member of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). "The guidelines we offer could be very useful as the power grid expands."

The researchers derived a condition under which the desired synchronous state of a power grid is stable. They then used this condition to identify tunable parameters of the power generators that result in spontaneous synchronization. This synchronization can be autonomous, not guided by control devices.

"The blackout at this year's Super Bowl was caused by a device that was installed specifically to prevent blackouts," said Takashi Nishikawa, an author of the paper and a research associate professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern. "A large fraction of blackouts have human and equipment errors among the causes.

"Reduced dependence on conventional control devices can improve the reliability of the grid," he said. "Our analysis also suggests ways to design control strategies that potentially can improve the existing ones."

Power generators are very different from each other; some are large and others small. Motter and his colleagues identified a "body mass index" for power generators, which they suggest should be kept approximately the same (making, in essence, all generators look the same to the network) in order to strengthen spontaneous synchronicity in the system. If the body mass indices change, they should be changed in a coordinated way.

The researchers demonstrated their model using real power grids of hundreds of power generators, similar to the size of the Texas portion of the U.S. power grid.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Adilson E. Motter, Seth A. Myers, Marian Anghel, Takashi Nishikawa. Spontaneous synchrony in power-grid networks. Nature Physics, 2013; 9 (3): 191 DOI: 10.1038/nphys2535

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/66bNJO0KLNg/130302125404.htm

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How to Build Rapport And Create Wealth In Two Simple Steps | Epic ...

There is a secret to creating wealth that few people will share. Mostly because they don?t feel it?s as important as it is, or they are completely oblivious to its power.

The size of your paycheck and your ability to create wealth will be in direct proportion to your capacity for authentic communication and building rapport. Which means, your ability to connect with people is the ONE skill that will make or break your career as a real estate investor. If you can?t do it, you won?t make a dime.

Real estate is not about shuffling pieces of property around, it is about people.

At the foundation, you are dealing with human beings, not buildings.

Always remember that.

The more trust, affection, and camaraderie you can command from every interaction you have, the more successful you will be.

Terrified?

Not a worry, connecting with people is a skill. And skills can be learned.

Everything revolves around this key point!

In order for people to be interested in you, you must first show interest in them.

You achieve this with two basic practices.

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The majority of people don?t really listen. While the other person is talking, they?re thinking of how they want to respond, what to talk about next, or how to react. None of which includes actually paying attention to the person speaking. Listen as though there will be a quiz at the end of the conversation.

2. The second basic practice is to ask thoughtful and relevant questions.

When you ask questions, you pull people towards you. However, you can?t ask good questions if you?re not listening. Ask a question then listen to the answer. Often, people are terrified of empty spaces in the conversation and so they try to fill every moment with words. Don?t be afraid of a pause. Let the other person fill the gap. They?ll feel heard, important, and will offer information that you may not have thought to ask.

That?s it! Simple isn?t it?

Simple. Yes. Easy? No.

You have to practice. Turning your personal agenda off and focusing your undivided attention on another person is a skill that requires effort and repetition.

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Source: http://epicprofessionals.com/how-to-build-rapport-and-create-wealth-in-two-simple-steps/

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