And we begin with the cop, via Sky News:
Ferguson Officer Quit Because Of ‘Threats’
The police chief complains of “egregious” threats, as the mayor says Darren Wilson will receive no severance payment package.
The white officer who shot dead black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, quit because of threats against the police department, his lawyer has said.
Darren Wilson’s resignation with immediate effect was announced on Saturday, four months after the confrontation that fuelled violent protests in the St Louis suburb and across the US.
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson told a news conference on Sunday: “The threats (from protesters) have been egregious and counselling is available to the officers.” He was joined by Ferguson Mayor James Knowles, who said Mr Wilson, 28, received no severance payment package.
On to the war, via CBC News:
Gill Rosenberg, Canadian citizen, reportedly captured by ISIS in Syria
Canada ‘pursuing all appropriate channels’ to verify reports, is in touch with local authorities
The federal government is working to confirm reports that Gill Rosenberg, a Canadian citizen, has been captured by Islamist extremists in Syria.
According to the Jerusalem Post, websites “known to be close” to ISIS extremists reported the capture of the Israeli-Canadian woman, who joined Kurdish fighters overseas, on Sunday.
“Canada is pursuing all appropriate channels” to seek further information and is in touch with local authorities, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said on Sunday.
The newspaper said the websites give few details on the alleged capture, only that it occurred after three suicide attacks on sites where Kurdish fighters were holed up.
Another Bush/Cheney legacy from the Washington Post:
Investigation finds 50,000 ‘ghost’ soldiers in Iraqi army, prime minister says
The Iraqi army has been paying salaries to at least 50,000 soldiers who don’t exist, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday, an indication of the level of corruption that permeates an institution that the United States has spent billions equipping and arming.
A preliminary investigation into “ghost soldiers” — whose salaries are being drawn but who are not in military service — revealed the tens of thousands of false names on Defense Ministry rolls, Abadi told parliament Sunday. Follow-up investigations are expected to uncover “more and more,” he added.
Abadi, who took power in September, is under pressure to stamp out the graft that flourished in the armed forces under his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Widespread corruption has been blamed for contributing to the collapse of four of the army’s 14 divisions in June in the face of an offensive by Islamic State extremists.
An upcoming visit via the News in Lagos, Nigeria:
EU delegation visiting Guantanamo Bay prison
A delegation of five European officials led by French former justice minister Rachida Dati will visit the US military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba this week, aides said Sunday.
Invited by the United States, the delegation’s informal visit is meant to help give Europe ideas on how it can help the United States shut down the controversial jail once and for all.
Dati and her delegation of European Parliament members will visit on Tuesday and will also have a chance to see inmates’ prison conditions, said Philip Kyle, her parliamentary attache.
The Canadian Press covers spookery to the north:
Disclosure of ‘sensitive’ telecom surveillance details worried feds: memo
A move by telecommunications firms to be more forthcoming with the public about their role in police and spy surveillance could divulge “sensitive operational details,” a senior Public Safety official warned in a classified memo.
Company efforts to reveal more about police and intelligence requests — even the disclosure of broad numbers — would require “extensive consultations with all relevant stakeholders,” wrote Lynda Clairmont, senior assistant deputy minister for national and cybersecurity.
Clairmont’s note, released under the Access to Information Act, provided advice to deputy minister Francois Guimont on the eve of his one-hour April 17 meeting with representatives of Telus Corp. to discuss specifically what information the company was allowed to tell the public about electronic surveillance activities.
Telus released a so-called “transparency report” five months later, revealing it had received more than 103,000 official requests for information about subscribers in 2013.
The Los Angeles Times covers a devastating hack attack:
Sony movies leak online as computer systems remain dark
If Sony Pictures employees return to work Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend without computer or email access, it will mark the beginning of the second week of blackout for the Culver City movie studio after a widespread hack.
And Sony’s headaches do not appear to have lessened. Pirated copies of some Sony movies have begun to appear online on file sharing websites in the days after the attack. It is not known whether the two problems are related.
Among the titles that have popped up are the Brad Pitt World War II drama “Fury,” the musical remake “Annie” and the upcoming film “Still Alice.” Copies of “Mr. Turner” and “To Write Love on Her Arms” have also surfaced.
From the Hill, expect more:
Corporate data breaches ‘inevitable,’ expert says
A cybersecurity expert said in an interview broadcast Sunday night that data breaches such as those at top retailers including Target and Home Depot are “inevitable.”
“Nearly every company … is vulnerable,” Dave DeWalt, Fire Eye’s chief executive, told 60 Minutes. “Even the strongest banks in the world — banks like JPMorgan, retailers like Home Depot, retailers like Target can’t spend enough money or hire enough people to solve this problem,” he added.
“This isn’t a lack of effort. Most of the large companies are growing their security spend — yet 97 percent, literally 97 percent, of all companies are getting breached,” DeWalt said.
DeWalt said it takes 229 days, on average, to discover a security breach, which are often blamed on poor passwords.
A rousing dronal endorsement from TechWeek Europe:
London Needs More Drones To Beat Its Traffic Problems, Says Boris Johnson
Drones could prove the answer to the hordes of delivery vehicles clogging the capital’s streets, Mayor believes
The skies of London could become much more crowded after the city’s Mayor called for airborne drones to take the place of road vehicles.
Speaking at an event in Singapore during his six-day tour of south-east Asia, Boris Johnson called on the capital’s technology firms, particularly the financial technology sector, to come up with a solution to the traffic problems that plague the city, and suggested drones could be the answer.
“We have a problem, folks – all this internet shopping is leading to a massive increase in white van traffic dropping this stuff off – 45 percent it’s going to go up in London in the next seven years,” he said. “That’s going to be terrible for congestion in our city and doubtless the same will be true of Singapore as well.
“I look out at this brilliant audience here today, bulging with ideas, and I ask you possibly to solve it. We need a solution … Is it, as I hope, going to be drones? I want to be controlling an app that enables my shopping not only to be click and collect … I want my own personal drone to come and drop it wherever I choose.”
From the Guardian, a source of domestic insecurity:
Begging prosecutions increase dramatically across England and Wales
Number of cases rises 70%, prompting concerns that cuts in support and benefits make more people resort to begging
Prosecutions for begging have rocketed across England and Wales over the past year with dramatic increases recorded in many police force areas.
The number of cases brought to court under the 1824 Vagrancy Act has surged by 70%, prompting concerns that cuts to support services and benefits are pushing more people to resort to begging.
Some areas have spiked spectacularly. The number of charges for begging in the area covered by Merseyside police rose nearly 400% from 60 cases to 291 in 12 months, while Thames Valley, which covers relatively prosperous Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, showed a similar rate of increase from 20 cases to 92.
Deutsche Welle covers a Colombian release:
Colombian rebel group FARC ‘frees kidnapped general, two soldiers’
Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, has confirmed that FARC rebels freed an army general captured earlier this month. General Ruben Alzate’s release may help restart Bogota’s suspended peace talks with the group.
The Colombian president wrote on his Twitter account on Sunday that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had also released two other hostages, Corporal Jorge Rodriguez and army advisor Gloria Urrego. Santos said General Alzate and his fellow captives would be reunited with their families soon.
“Freed … in prefect condition,” Santos wrote.
Fifty-five-year-old General Alzate was the highest-ranking Colombian military official ever to have been kidnapped by the Marxist group. Alzate, Rodriguez and Urrego were kidnapped by FARC fighters on November 16 when they were travelling to the remote area of Choco.
And from Xinhua, the Egyptian crackdown continues:
Egypt court jails Badie and 26 others 3 years for insulting judiciary
An Egyptian court sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s top official Mohammed Badie and 26 of the Islamist group’s leading figures to three years in prison for insulting the judiciary.
Badie and other defendants were in the criminal court of Cairo Sunday on charges of jailbreak during the 2011 uprising. The judge delivered the sentence after the group’s leaders offended the court during trial.
The trial of Badie and other defendants on the charge of escaping from jail has been adjourned to December 20.
After the jump, on to Asia and the ongoing Games of Zones, first with a seismic shift on a contested island, the crackdown on Occupy Hong Kong heats up with a city hall siege and a street-clearing, another Chinese crackdown, Uncle Sam ups the ante in the Game of Zones as China mulls missile sales and asserts insular singularity, Japan adds island-claiming amphibious boats, Tokyo stakes a secret documents claim, and Japan ramps up its cleanup of its chemical warfare effort in occupied China, plus odds on an apocalyptic scenario. . .
Channel NewsAsia Singapore covers a seismic shift:
China policy in question after Taiwan polls
The Beijing-friendly ruling party suffered a landslide defeat at the local elections, amid public fears of growing Chinese influence in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s warmer relations with China were called into question Sunday (Nov 30) after the island’s Beijing-friendly ruling party suffered a massive defeat at local elections, sparking the resignation of premier Jiang Yi-huah.
The major rout came as the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party struggles to combat public fears over growing Chinese influence, as well as a slowing economy and a string of food scandals.
Seen as a key barometer ahead of presidential elections in 2016, the dramatic poll results may now force the KMT to re-examine its China policy – and encourage the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is traditionally Beijing-sceptic.
On to Hong Kong and the continuing crackdown with the Guardian:
Hong Kong: clashes escalate between pro-democracy protesters and police
Injuries on both sides as police force demonstrators to abandon barricaded position in one of city’s main thoroughfares
Thousands of pro-democracy protesters forced their way past police and poured on to a main road in Hong Kong late on Sunday night, escalating their direct action campaign.
But within hours, officers using dogs and wielding batons and an apparently powerful pepper-based spray had forced demonstrators out of the road tunnel they had barricaded, chasing them into a nearby park in chaotic scenes close to government offices and the main protest zone in Admiralty.
There were injuries on both sides and multiple arrests amid the clashes, with police and protesters seemingly braced for a long and unpredictable confrontation.
More from the New York Times:
Hong Kong Police Turn Back Siege on Government
Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong suffered a setback on Monday, when their attempt overnight to besiege government offices collapsed and the police thrust into the protesters’ biggest street camp.
The reversal came after a night of seesaw clashes in the political heart of the city, ending weeks of anxious calm at the protesters’ main street camp, in the Admiralty neighborhood, and threw into question how much longer the Hong Kong government would tolerate hundreds of tents there, only a stone’s throw from the city’s administrative and legislative complex.
Fear rippled through the protest camp, with some student leaders defending the decision to escalate the confrontation with the police, and others wondering whether the protest leaders had made the right decision.
Reuters covers another Chinese crackdown:
China’s Xinjiang passes rules, plans fines to curb unrest: Xinhua
China’s Xinjiang region has banned the practice of religion in government buildings and will fine those who use the Internet to ‘undermine national unity’, in a package of regulations aimed at combating separatism in the north-western province.
Deadly attacks attributed to ethnic Uighur separatists have left hundreds dead in Xinjiang and other parts of China in recent years.
The rules, passed by the standing committee of Xinjiang’s parliament on Friday, stipulate penalties of between 5,000 and 30,000 yuan ($4,884) for individuals who use the Internet, mobile phones or digital publishing to undermine national unity, social stability or incite ethnic hatred.
Uncle Sam ups the ante in the Game of Zones, via Want China Times:
US 5th-gen fighter drills targeting China, Russia: CNS
The training of US fifth-generation fighters F-22A and F-35A and the bi-annual US-Japan exercise Keen Sword are geared towards combat scenarios and strategies against the world’s most powerful aerial fighters, including China and Russia, reports China’s state-run China News Service.
F-22s stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska were present for Exercise Keen Sword on Nov. 18, according to the Virginia-based Air Force Times. The fighter was added to the exercise in order to “stun China.” US military operations focused on anti-submarine, over-water, air-to-air and defensive air battles during the exercise, which began in the 1980s and is commanded by one of the most powerful US military units in the Western Pacific.
The F-22’s participation in an US-South Korean exercise in Osan Air Base over 60km south of Seoul in early 2013 was considered a gesture to contain North Korea and display US military power to China, the report said.
China makes of move of her own, via Want China Times:
China may export TL-50 missile defense system
China is likely to export more of its Tianlong-50 anti-craft missile system, also known as the TL-50 to buyers in Asia, Africa and Latin America after it recently sold the system to Rwanda, the Moscow-based Military Parade reported on Nov. 27.
The TL-50 was designed by China North Industries Corporation and can intercept a target at any altitude between 30 and 19,800 meters, fired from a road-mobile launcher. Equipped with the IBIS-150 radar, the TL-50 is able to detect an object 130km away and has an attack range of 250km. The missile can track 12 targets in the same time.
Before this missile system enters service with the People’s Liberation Army, Military Parade said it is likely to be exported to China’s partners around the globe. Various nations expressed interest when the TL-50 was demonstrated at the Africa Aerospace and Defence 2014 Exhibition and Air Show. The report said that the first foreign operator of the TL-50 missile after Rwanda may be a country in South America.
While President Xi asserts insular singularity, from JapanToday:
Chinese leader vows to protect territorial interests
Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a key foreign policy speech that the rising Asian nation would protect its sovereign territory, the Xinhua news agency reported, as it faces maritime disputes with several neighbors.
“We should firmly uphold China’s territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and interests and national unity,” Xi told a Communist Party meeting on foreign affairs held on Friday and Saturday, according to excerpts of his speech released by Xinhua on Sunday.
Ties between China and Japan have been strained over the past two years after Tokyo nationalised the Senkaku islands—which it already administered—in the East China Sea. Beijing also claims the chain, which it calls the Diaoyu islands.
China and Southeast Asian countries—including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei—also have competing claims for the Spratly islands in the South China Sea. Taiwan, which China considers part of its sovereign territory, also has a claim to part of the Spratlys.
Accompanying the article, and AFP map delineates some of the conflicting claims:
And Japan adds insular landable boats, from NHK WORLD:
Japan to introduce 52 amphibious vehicles
Japan is to introduce 52 amphibious vehicles to build up its capability to defend its remote islands.
The Defense Ministry has been strengthening the defense of remote islands in southwestern Japan, including the Senkakus in Okinawa Prefectures in the East China Sea.
The ministry is setting up an amphibious brigade that would be based in Sasebo city, Nagasaki Prefecture, and will decide soon to introduce the 52 AAV7s over the next 5 years.
Tokyo stakes a secret documents claim, from Kyodo News:
Japan to designate around 460,000 documents as “special secrets”
The Japanese government will likely designate around 460,000 documents as “special secrets” deemed highly sensitive in the areas of diplomacy, defense, counterterrorism and counterespionage after a state secrecy law takes effects on Dec. 10, a Kyodo News survey covering 19 government offices showed Sunday.
The documents are currently considered as highly confidential state secrets in the area of national security and diplomacy based on a 2007 government guideline, with the Cabinet Secretariat keeping the largest portion of around 353,000 items as of late last year.
Signaling the opaqueness of the new system aimed at toughening penalties on leakers of secrets, only three of the 19 government offices provided concrete answers regarding how much information they plan to label as “specially designated secrets” when the secrecy law takes effect.
A toxic legacy, from NHK WORLD:
Japan speeds up chemical weapon disposal in China
A new facility to dispose of chemical weapons left in China by the former Japanese military at the end of World War Two will start its operation on Monday.
The Japanese government has been collecting and destroying abandoned chemical weapons under an international convention to ban such weapons.
The new disposal facility will begin operating in Haerba-ling in northeastern Jilin province. It’s estimated that as many as 400,000 chemical munitions are buried there.
And to close, the odds-on favorite from Motherboard:
Dying In a Nuclear Apocalypse Is Still a Pretty Likely Outcome
Nowadays, some 23 years after the official end to the Cold War, families can tour decommissioned nuclear missile silos in around a dozen US states. Maybe more. A park service guide (at least at some of the sites) will explain that here, in this room, is where Air Force officers monitored missiles that each contained a 1.2 megaton warhead capable of incinerating everything within a 7 mile radius. At the Delta-01 facility in South Dakota, kids can become Minuteman Missile Junior Rangers, with a badge and everything.
A 2008 analysis done by Stanford engineering professor Martin E. Hellman estimated that those Junior Rangers currently live with a 10 percent probability of being incinerated or otherwise dying at the hands of a nuclear weapon. A 10-chambered game of Russian roulette, he said. Sure, many silos are empty now, which is great, but the world is still home to some 16,000 active nuclear weapons.
In a more recent analysis, Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, looked specifically at the chances of an inadvertent (accidental) nuclear war between Russia and the United States occurring. Depending on the assumptions made, the odds were as high as 1-in-100. Overall, figure that the odds of a nuclear war, inadvertent or otherwise, between any number nuclear armed states should be much, much higher if the scope is expanded beyond the US and Russia.
So: the Junior Rangers won’t die of heart disease or cancer or COPD, but instead of vaporization or burning alive or the relatively slow death of radiation poisoning, an agonizing and irreversible plunge marked by opportunistic infections, hemorrhaging and bleeding, and cognitive impairment. This nuke-death, according to Hellman’s calculations, is vastly more likely than dying in a car accident (1 in 112) and just a bit less likely than dying of (regular, not radiation-induced) cancer (1 in 7).
