Arrests in Russia raise questions about hacking of the U.S. presidential race and security of your personal computer

Quite an interesting story from Bloomberg about the arrests in Russia yesterday of an executive with a Russian cyber security firm and a second man working in the government security agency that has replaced the KGB. 


There are few available facts about what is behind the arrests but the fact that they happened lends to speculation both about Russian/American espionage and about the security of  American computers–even yours if you are using a very popular software product designed to keep hackers out.

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Pa lawmaker’s bill would limit methane emission rules

Pa State Senator Guy Reschenthaler

Pennsylvania state senator Guy Reschenthaler (R-37) has introduced a bill that would limit the state’s regulation of methane gas emissions from Marcellus drilling operations.


The legislation, SB175, would prohibit the imposition of methane standards more stringent in Pennsylvania than those set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.


In a message to fellow legislators Reschenthaler wrote: 

“Over the past year, the EPA has announced several significant new regulatory requirements to control methane emissions. However, efforts in Pennsylvania to expand standards and requirements beyond those mandated by the federal government continue to place our state at a competitive economic disadvantage. These actions harm job creation and discourage capital investment across the Commonwealth, all while providing little if any tangible environmental benefit for our communities.

“Pennsylvania job creators and those in our communities that depend on them would benefit significantly from avoiding a duplicative, confusing, and costly patchwork of standards. ”    

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NJ labor, faith and green groups join for climate fight


Powerful union members with deep pockets like NJEA and SEIU could help Jersey Renews achieve its ambitious environmental agenda

Tom Johnson  reports for NJ Spotlight:

Alarmed by climate change, an unusual coalition of labor, faith, community, and environmental organizations is banding together to more forcefully promote steps to curtail global warming.
The coalition, Jersey Renews, cited steps taken by the Trump administration along with years of inaction in Trenton as the motivation behind its efforts to vault New Jersey into a leadership position in curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and advancing clean-energy initiatives.
In a press conference in the State House, the group unveiled an ambitious agenda, including many proposals long pending or neglected in Trenton — increasing the state’s reliance on solar and offshore wind energy, stopping the diversion of money from the Clean Energy Fund, and expanding programs to use energy more efficiently.
Achieving those objectives, however, has proved elusive despite years of lobbying by environmental groups and clean-energy advocates. This time, the coalition vows, will be different. Its optimism stems from new alliances with labor groups that have often been on the opposite side of the issues and from the backing of the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, with the money and political clout that goes with it.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Get ready to hear about Jersey Renews,’’ said the Rev. Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith, an interfaith coalition for the environment. “In your schools, in your places of worship, and in your union halls.’’
A big selling point for the coalition’s agenda is its potential to drive a new green economy, built on well-paying jobs in emerging sectors in the solar, offshore wind, and electric car infrastructure, according to its organizers.
“Climate change is one of the fundamental planks in how we are going to save jobs,’’ predicted Kevin Brown, vice president and New Jersey state director of the Service Employees International’s Unit 32BJ. “We cannot continue denying the reality of what is going on with our planet.’’
In laying out an agenda to fight climate change, the coalition focused on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by more aggressively dealing with problems already being tackled by the state or federal governments. It urged action to increase fuel efficiency in the transportation sector, an issue addressed by the Obama administration, but not likely to come under scrutiny by President Donald Trump.
The coalition wants more aggressive efforts to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by eliminating leaks from pipes, an increased emphasis on energy efficiency, and an expansion of the state’s renewable-energy commitments.
Finally, the coalition recommended trying to create 100,000 family-sustaining jobs across the state and protecting communities from pollution. “We believe kids should get dirty when they play in the mud,’’ said Kate Schumacher, New Jersey field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, “not from the air they breathe.’’
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Fattah surrenders to begin serving 10-year prison term

Ex-Congressman Chaka Fattah after sentencing – Jessica Griffin Inquirer photo

Jeremy Roebuck reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer

Chaka Fattah’s new residence on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest doesn’t quite have the charm of the Poconos vacation home he bought in 2012 with help from a $18,000 bribe.

But on Wednesday, the man who represented Philadelphia in Congress for the last two decades moved into a federal prison camp in Lewis Run, McKean County, Pa., to begin serving a 10-year sentence for corruption-related crimes.

Officially, the new abode is known as Federal Correctional Institution-McKean, a medium-security prison with a minimum-security satellite camp, on the New York-Pennsylvania border.

Its 1,200 or so inmates have included Wesley Snipes, who spent two years there for tax evasion, and former Colombo crime family boss Alphonse Persico, who still resides there serving a life sentence.

As Fattah joined their ranks just after 11 a.m., he was assigned a fresh moniker to match his new address: Inmate No. 72340-066.

His arrival put a period on his career as one of the region’s most recognizable political names and the scandal that led to his conviction last year of charges including racketeering, bribery, money laundering, and fraud.

Fattah’s fate had been forecast since December, when U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III imposed Fattah’s sentence, the second longest ever received by a member of Congress, and condemned him for abusing “the trust voters placed in [him] time and time again.”

Still, he resisted up until the last minute.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied his request earlier this month to remain free while he challenged his conviction. The White House remained silent on his last-minute bid for a pardon from former president Barack Obama.

Yet in an interview Tuesday with WHYY-FM, Fattah remained upbeat.

“There won’t be a day in my life in which I’m not upbeat,” he said. “I’m not talking about any unusual or unhealthy sort of enjoyment out of my predicament. That’s not my point. My point is that I’m more than capable of dealing with these challenges than most people in our country.”

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CDC abruptly cancels long-planned climate conference

Brady Dennis reports for The Washington Post:
With little warning or explanation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently canceled a major climate change conference that had been scheduled for next month in Atlanta.
The Climate and Health Summit, which had been in the works for months, was intended as a chance for public health officials around the country to learn more about the mounting evidence detailing the risks to human health posed by the changing climate. But CDC officials abruptly canceled the conference the week before President Donald Trump‘s inauguration, sending a terse email to those who had been scheduled to speak at the event. The message did not explain the reason behind the decision.
But one scheduled keynote speaker, Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said agency officials decided to pre-emptively call off the summit, rather than risk running afoul of an incoming president who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” and has nominated climate change skeptics to his Cabinet.
“They ran it up the flagpole and realized that it was so close to the inauguration, the chances of it being canceled were pretty real with the administration that was coming in,” said Benjamin, whose organization was one of the promoters of the event. “Some might argue they should have said, ‘We’re going to do this and make them tell us no.’ But that was the decision they made. We should think of this as a strategic retreat.”
Another scheduled speaker, Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, argued that the summit should have gone forward, no matter who had just been sworn in as the next president. He said he fears the move will set a precedent of government officials self-silencing, in part over fears of reprisal or loss of funding, rather than standing behind the established science around climate change.
“I don’t know why they canceled the meeting, but I do know the meeting was important and should have been held. Politics is politics, but protecting the health of our citizens is one of our government’s most important obligations to us,” Maibach said in an email. “Climate change is bad for America, and bad for the world, in so many ways. One of these ways is that it is harming our health, already, and is likely to get much worse over the next few decades unless we take action. As the nation’s public health agency, we need CDC to be fully engaged in protecting our health from climate change.”
“Unfortunately, we are unable to hold the Summit in February 2017,” CDC officials wrote, adding that the agency is “currently exploring” whether it could reschedule the event later in the year.
CDC officials contacted by The Washington Post have not commented about the cancellation, which was first reported by E&E News.
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Trump signs orders reviving two controversial pipelines

Steven Mufson and Juliet Eiperin report for the Washington Post:
President Trump signed executive orders Tuesday clearing the way for the controversial Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines to move forward, another step in Trump’s effort to dismantle former President Obama’s environmental legacy.
He also signed an executive order to expedite environmental reviews of other infrastructure projects, lamenting the existing “incredibly cumbersome, long, horrible permitting process.”
“The regulatory process in this country has become a tangled up mess,” he said.
It remained unclear how Trump’s order would restart the pipeline projects or expedite environmental reviews. Many of those reviews are statutory and the legislation that created them cannot be swept aside by an executive order.  The White House did not immediately release texts of the orders.
Trump said that both pipeline projects would be subject to renegotiation. In an Oval Office signing before reporters, the president said he would want any new projects to make use of American steel.
“I am very insistent that if we’re going to build pipelines in the United States, the pipe should be made in the United States,” he said.
The orders will have an immediate impact in North Dakota, where the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners wants to complete the final 1,100-foot piece of the 1,172-mile pipeline route that runs under Lake Oahe. The pipeline would carry oil from the booming shale oil reserves in North Dakota to refineries and pipeline networks in Illinois.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other Native American groups have been protesting the project, which they say would imperil their water supplies and disturb sacred burial and archaeological sites. The Army Corp of Engineers called a halt to the project in December to consider alternative routes.
The executive order from Trump on the Keystone XL pipeline threatens to undo a major decision by President Obama, who said that the project would contribute to climate change because it would carry tar sands crude which is especially greenhouse gas intensive because of the energy it takes to extract the thick crude.
TransCanada, the Calgary-based project owner, has said it would be interested in reviving the pipeline. But it was unclear what Trump’s caution about renegotiation would mean for TransCanada’s plans. Originally, TransCanada had planned to get about 65 percent of the steel pipe from U.S. manufacturers but other supplies from Canada.
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