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Cryptocurrency Exchange Binance to List Tezos (XTZ) on Binance.US, to Support Trades with Binance USD, and US Dollars – Crowdfund Insider

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange by adjusted trading volume, has announced that Binance.US, the trading platforms US-based division, will begin listing Tezos (XTZ) on March 16, 2020 at 9:00 AM EST.

As mentioned on the exchange operators official website, Binance.US will support trading for the XTZ/USD and XTZ/Binance USD (BUSD) trading pairs.

Binance.US may deposit US dollars, BUSD (the exchanges stablecoin), or XTZ tokens to their exchange wallets before trading for the supported pairs goes live on Monday.

The XTZ token is trading at $1.47 at the time of writing.

Founded in 2014 by Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, the Tezos project raised $232 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) back in July 2017. At the time, it was the largest ICO ever conducted, but was later overtaken by Filecoin.

Last month, Tezos XTZ crypto token hit a yearly high of about $3.90, having outperformed most other altcoins.

Binance continues to expand its operations across the globe.

Changpeng Zhao, CEO at Binance, revealed recently that the exchange will introduce a fiat gateway for South African cryptocurrency traders, which will allow them to make deposits in Rands.

The announcement was made during the Blockchain Africa Conference, which is being held in Johannesburg.

Zhao said that South African crypto traders will soon have the option to make Rand deposits on the platform via Binances official website.

Zhao noted:

Africa illustrates one of the largest demands and instrumental use cases for cryptocurrency, notably for financial access. According to the World Bank, approximately 66 percent of sub-saharan Africans are listed as unbanked. So instead of trying to bank the unbanked, lets try and Bitcoin the un-Bitcoined.

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Cryptocurrency Exchange Binance to List Tezos (XTZ) on Binance.US, to Support Trades with Binance USD, and US Dollars - Crowdfund Insider

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX invests $1.3M in education initiative ‘TryCrypto’ – YourStory

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Mumbai-based CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency trading platform and liquidity aggregator, has invested $1.3 million in TryCrypto, its own initiative, which is working to make blockchain and cryptocurrency more accessible to mainstream users.

The funds will be used towards educational initiatives, seminars, online courses, roadshows and awareness campaigning, meetups, community events, community engagement, and to product trials.

Founders Neeraj & Sumit

As part of the initiative, CoinDCX will roll out DCXlearn, a full-fledged crypto learning program, on TryCrypto.

Sumit Gupta, CEO and Co-founder, CoinDCX, says,

According to CoinDCX, its education-led approach is geared towards giving first-time crypto users a sufficient knowledge base to help them navigate the cryptocurrency market safely and securely.

DCXlearn will consist of an online learning program along with massive open online courses (MOOCs). The cryptocurrency exchange is already in conversation with a number of top Indian universities to promote crypto education and the TryCrypto initiative within campuses.

In addition to DCXlearn, CoinDCX will also organise meetup events, educational seminars, and consumer campaigns to encourage large-scale cryptocurrency adoption and awareness targeting Indias 50 largest cities in the first iteration of the TryCrypto campaign.

To ensure the success of the TryCrypto initiative, CoinDCX said it will be working with industry partners, including Inblox Network, Amesten Assets, and Cashaa, to promote greater awareness and understanding of digital assets among mainstream audience. It added that leading Indian online media outlets and cryptocurrency news providers such as Cryptokanoon and CoinCrunch have also dedicated themselves to support the TryCrypto initiative.

CoinDCXs investment in TryCrypto follows the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of India on March 6, which struck down the Reserve Bank of Indias (RBI) ban on financial institutions providing banking services to cryptocurrency businesses, as well as the announcement that CoinDCX became the first cryptocurrency platform in India to integrate bank account transfers just six hours after the Supreme Court decision was made public.

With one of the youngest populations in the world, India requires solutions which are modern and novel for millennials who are looking for better instruments to manage their finances. Crypto is fast becoming a preferred choice for these young, technologically savvy consumers. However, an initiative like CoinDCX's TryCrypto campaign has the potential to bring the benefits of cryptocurrencies to a larger audience than ever before, said Kashif Raza, Co-founder of CryptoKanoon.

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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Cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX invests $1.3M in education initiative 'TryCrypto' - YourStory

Elon Musk and Daniel Craig Featured in Cryptocurrency Scam Promising Massive Returns – The Daily Hodl

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

YouTube is reportedly taking action against a cryptocurrency advertising scam featuring fake endorsements from Elon Musk and Daniel Craig.

The false advertisements were discovered by Business Insider and promised huge returns to investors who bought Bitcoin Era an automated trading app that claims to be backed by high-profile entrepreneurs including Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

The advertisement purports to be from Blitz News promoting an article called Bond franchise comes to an end. However, when users click the ad, they are redirected to a post with the headline SPECIAL REPORT: Brits are listening to 007s Daniel Craig and theyre raking in millions from home.

The article says readers can take advantage of a wealth loophole that can turn anyone into a millionaire in three to four months.

Crypto scammers have a rich history of targeting celebrities. Since 2017, schemers have created phony accounts designed to look like Elon Musks official profile in an attempt to trick users into giving away their digital assets. Last year, schemers promoted a similar wealth loophole featuring Elon Musk, Kate Winslet, Richard Branson and Bill Gates.

As for this new advertising scam, YouTube has declined to comment. However, a source at the company says the ad has been removed. So far, theres no comment from Musk or Craig.

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Elon Musk and Daniel Craig Featured in Cryptocurrency Scam Promising Massive Returns - The Daily Hodl

View: Why it’s better for RBI to just wait and watch on cryptocurrency – Economic Times

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

By Ateesh TankhaImagine an Indian hotel chain thats mortally afraid of the coronavirus. No cases have yet been reported at any of its properties, but, lacking sufficient information and medical infrastructure, the chain instructs its properties to cancel all guest bookings in line with what hotels abroad have done. A set of disgruntled guests take the hotel to court, claiming that the chain has taken disproportionate action.

Should the law rule be in favour of the guests because the hotel lacks empirical evidence that proves that the properties would have suffered reputational or other damage if the bookings had not been cancelled? A March 4 Supreme Court judgement overturning an earlier 2018 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ruling on cryptocurrencies seems to suggest as much.

In April 2018, after five years of unregulated trading in cryptocurrencies, RBI issued a ruling to its member banks not to deal in virtual currencies (VCs) or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling VCs.

Subsequently, a governmental committee urged GoI to ban and criminalise the use of unofficial virtual currencies in India. The reasons for this are neither so outrageous nor so far-fetched.

There are two parts to a cryptocurrency. First, theres the distributed ledger technology (DLT), like blockchain, thats a system of replicating, sharing and synchronising digital data personal details, transactions, etc without the need for a centralised authority or trusted service provider. The many advantages of this technology relate to activities ranging from the efficient collection and authentication of KYC (know your customer) and batch-processing micro-payments, to expediting cross-border payments and sharing defaulter data.

In short, DLT can make many processes in the world of payments and financial services cheaper, faster and more reliable. But then, theres the token, the actual virtual currency. As a store of value and as a medium of exchange, there are a few challenges that exist.

The least of these relates to the creation of technology integration and transaction processing speed. Over time, and with enough investment and innovation, these issues will be overcome. Far greater concerns exist in two principal areas fraud, and money laundering and illegal transactions.

Consumers have been the victims of virtual currency fraud for some time now. Let alone the 2018 Gain Bitcoin scam that defrauded the public of Rs 2,000 crore, there have been scams like OneCoin that make the former look like loose change. Add to this the fact that even legitimate exchanges like Bitpoint and Binance have had tens of millions of dollars stolen by cybercriminals. It is estimated that $4.2 billion was stolen from cryptocurrency users and exchanges in 2019. Its no wonder that RBI wishes to err on the side of caution.

An even greater regulatory and oversight challenge, however, exists when it comes to controlling transactions related to money-laundering and other nefarious activities.

Early on in the cryptocurrency saga in the US, it quickly became apparent that VCs were mainly used for completing transactions related to narcotics. Similarly, thanks to the Dark Web, many regulators have banned, or severely restricted, the use of VCs to control activities like terrorist financing, sanction circumvention, and other forms of illegal trafficking.

Which brings us back to RBI. As the official entity that oversees the health of the financial system in India, it is only to be expected that it will take a more conservative approach to enabling and regulating something as protean as cryptocurrency.

Critics complain that RBI does not fully understand the technology, or the power of VCs. This may be true. They also say that the purpose of RBI is to build a regulatory infrastructure around technology so that consumers are not defrauded.

This is true, but easier said than done. The recent debacles with both public and private sector banks should serve as cautionary tales for those advocating less stringent oversight.

And until RBI is comfortable with a way forward, it should not need to show empirical evidence of how its member banks have suffered any loss or adverse effect directly or indirectly on account of enabling VC transactions. There is sufficient global evidence and precedence for the stance taken by RBI.

As with the coronavirus, if you dont know what you dont know, and you are still likely to be held liable for an outbreak, enforcing a quarantine may be the best way to wait and watch developments.

(The writer is former head, partnerships and Citi merchant service, Citibank, US)

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View: Why it's better for RBI to just wait and watch on cryptocurrency - Economic Times

Cyberpunk 2077 is at rating agencies around the world – GamesRadar+ AU

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Cyberpunk 2077 may have been delayed, but it's just reached an important production milestone - submission to age rating agencies.

CD Projekt Red Head of Studio Adam Badowski took to Twitter to confirm the game has been submitted to agencies like PEGI and ESRB. While the studio awaits a rating, it's working on "polishing technical aspects and playtesting" the long-awaited RPG.

For reference, CD Projekt Red's beloved RPG that contained a fair bit of sex scenes, brothel visits, and beheadings, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was rated M for Mature by the ESRB and PEGI 18 in Europe. Considering Cyberpunk 2077 will have mo-capped sex scenes, I think it's safe to expect the title to garner a mature rating as well.

However, it's not really about what the game will be rated, as much as it's about the developer reaching such an important milestone especially when you consider the game was initially meant to drop next month. CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk 2077's five-month delay back in January, pushing the release date from April 16 to September 17.

While it's clear from Badowski's Tweet that the game is still in need of polish, it's great to see its content is ready for review from age rating agencies. That just means we'll get a cleaner, better-running game when it drops in September, which is especially important now that we know Xbox One players will get an Xbox Series X version of Cyberpunk 2077 for free through Smart Delivery, as GamesRadar+ previously reported.

Simply put, Cyberpunk 2077 is nearing completion, and we couldn't be more excited.

Speaking of, here's the best upcoming games of 2020 (and beyond).

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Cyberpunk 2077 is at rating agencies around the world - GamesRadar+ AU

Cyberpunk 2077 : Pre-Orders Reopen For Backpack, This Is What It Will Cost You – Trending News Buzz

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Cyberpunk is all set to be one of the best games youll see in 2020. The game features strong storytelling and a great perception that will bound you to itself. Through strong characters and evocative world-building CDPR, the game is all set to blow you away. To add to the aura of the game, it will feature Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand.

The game was first expected to be released by April 16, 2020. But the makers have shifted it to September 17 this year. You do have the option to pre-order the game. It will be available on PS4, PC, or Xbox One. However, you should consider some things before pre-ordering it.

GameStop will give you a bonus for pre-ordering. You will become one of the PowerUP Rewards members and will be liable to get am exclusive samurai medallion. This is a very exclusive goodie that you can enjoy if you pre-order the game.

The game will feature amazing customization and have a lot of options for a general one person combat. The makers have stated against the news of micro transactions. So, you can expect a DRM-free version on PC and DLC similar to the size of Witcher 3.

Although the collector edition is currently sold out everywhere, you can still stay updated since it will be restocked soon. This will be very heavy in your pocket and costs a whopping $250, but for the things that you get with it, it is worth the price. Some items that feature in the collector edition, as notified by the makers, include:

Cyberpunk 2077

If you buy the standard edition of the game, it will cost you about $49.94 on sale at Amazon and Walmart for both PS4 and Xbox One. It will include the base game with some digital bonus content. So, you can expect to get an art booklet, the game soundtrack, wallpapers for desktop and mobile, and also a cyberpunk 2077 sourcebook.

You will also receive many physical goodies alongside. They include Night City postcards, stickers, maps of the Night City and a world compendium.

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Cyberpunk 2077 : Pre-Orders Reopen For Backpack, This Is What It Will Cost You - Trending News Buzz

Xbox Series X Could Offer The Definitive Version Of Cyberpunk 2077 This Year, And Here’s Why – Pure Xbox

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Our friends over at Eurogamer's Digital Foundry have just delivered a massive helping of Xbox Series X specifications and info, and one of the most exciting pieces of news relates to how the console will handle games produced for older Xbox systems.

We already knew that Microsoft was aiming for full backwards compatibility with all Xbox software, but what Digital Foundry has seen takes things to an entirely new level. Xbox One games, for example, won't run in emulation and will benefit from the full processing power of the Series X; that means your existing games will get a boost in terms of resolution and frame rate. During its time at Microsoft's HQ, Digital Foundry saw Gears of War: Ultimate Edition running at 4K resolution, and came away very impressed indeed.

Microsoft's objective is to apply these enhancements as well as 'auto HDR' to all Xbox titles across the ages which is a show-stopping feature, if you ask us. The other good news? This process is handled by Microsoft's backwards compatibility team, so the developer of the original game doesn't have to lift a finger.

Peggy Lo, compatibility program lead, had this to say:

Hopefully you realise that we are still quite passionate about this. It's a very personal project for a lot of us and we are committed to keep doing this and making all your games look best on Series X.

While the notion of seeing your favourite classic Xbox games running in higher resolutions and with silky-smooth frame rates is enticing enough, it's worth returning to the fact that more recent games are going to really benefit from Series X's raw power. Digital Foundry was shown an updated version of Gears 5 produced in two weeks which featured 60FPS cutscenes, improved contact shadows and ray traced screen-space global illumination.

Coalition technical director Mike Raynor was keen to stress that more optimisation will follow, and that existing Xbox One owners won't have to fork out money for a 'remastered' version of the game:

Gears 5 will be optimised, so the work you've seen today will be there, available at launch on Xbox Series X. The title will support Smart Delivery, so if you already have the title in whatever form you'll be able to get it on Series X for free.

This could be something of a game-changer as the upcoming console war looms ever closer; not only will Xbox One owners benefit from seeing their existing library of games running even better on the Series X, we could see instances where Microsoft's new console provides the best platform to experience the hottest current-gen titles of 2020.

If the rumours of Cyberpunk 2077's poor performance on PS4 and Xbox One are to be believed, the Series X which will offer the ability to drastically improve the performance of the Xbox One version could be the definitive system to play it on this year at least until the PS5 gets it inevitable update of the game, of course, but that might not be until next year, and you might have to pay extra for it.

What do you make of Microsoft's efforts to ensure top-notch backwards compatibility with its existing games? Do you think this will be something that the average person on the street will appreciate, or is the company simply preaching to the converted? Let us know with a comment below.

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Xbox Series X Could Offer The Definitive Version Of Cyberpunk 2077 This Year, And Here's Why - Pure Xbox

National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) distance from 20-day Simple moving Average is -15.14% : What to Expect? – The InvestChronicle

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Lets start up with the current stock price of National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA), which is $30.37 to be very precise. The Stock rose vividly during the last session to $32.3 after opening rate of $31.08 while the lowest price it went was recorded $28.73 before closing at $29.93.

National Storage Affiliates Trust had a pretty favorable run when it comes to the market performance. The 1-year high price for the companys stock is recorded $38.22 on 02/18/20, with the lowest value was $27.16 for the same time period, recorded on 04/22/19.

Price records that include history of low and high prices in the period of 52 weeks can tell a lot about the stocks existing status and the future performance. Presently, National Storage Affiliates Trust shares are logging -20.53% during the 52-week period from high price, and 11.82% higher than the lowest price point for the same timeframe. The stocks price range for the 52-week period managed to maintain the performance between $27.16 and $38.22.

The companys shares, operating in the sector of financial managed to top a trading volume set approximately around 748525 for the day, which was evidently higher, when compared to the average daily volumes of the shares.

When it comes to the year-to-date metrics, the National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) recorded performance in the market was -9.67%, having the revenues showcasing -9.18% on a quarterly basis in comparison with the same period year before. At the time of this writing, the total market value of the company is set at 1.81B, as it employees total of 459 workers.

During the last month, 3 analysts gave the National Storage Affiliates Trust a BUY rating, 2 of the polled analysts branded the stock as an OVERWEIGHT, 3 analysts were recommending to HOLD this stock, 0 of them gave the stock UNDERWEIGHT rating, and 1 of the polled analysts provided SELL rating.

According to the data provided on Barchart.com, the moving average of the company in the 100-day period was set at 34.26, with a change in the price was noted -4.23. In a similar fashion, National Storage Affiliates Trust posted a movement of -12.23% for the period of last 100 days, recording 398,791 in trading volumes.

Total Debt to Equity Ratio (D/E) can also provide valuable insight into the companys financial health and market status. The debt to equity ratio can be calculated by dividing the present total liabilities of a company by shareholders equity. Debt to Equity thus makes a valuable metrics that describes the debt, company is using in order to support assets, correlating with the value of shareholders equity. The total Debt to Equity ratio for NSA is recording 2.19 at the time of this writing. In addition, long term Debt to Equity ratio is set at 2.19.

Raw Stochastic average of National Storage Affiliates Trust in the period of last 50 days is set at 18.91%. The result represents downgrade in oppose to Raw Stochastic average for the period of the last 20 days, recording 18.91%. In the last 20 days, the companys Stochastic %K was 15.94% and its Stochastic %D was recorded 22.01%.

Considering, the past performance of National Storage Affiliates Trust, multiple moving trends are noted. Year-to-date Price performance of the companys stock appears to be encouraging, given the fact the metric is recording -9.67%. Additionally, trading for the stock in the period of the last six months notably deteriorated by -6.35%, alongside a boost of 7.96% for the period of the last 12 months. The shares increased approximately by 1.84% in the 7-day charts and went up by -16.06% in the period of the last 30 days. Common stock shares were lifted by -9.18% during last recorded quarter.

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National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) distance from 20-day Simple moving Average is -15.14% : What to Expect? - The InvestChronicle

Heres How The National Security Agency Will Protect Itself During A Pandemic – BuzzFeed News

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Secret documents sketch out the worst-case scenario for a 1918-like pandemic and no effective response.

Posted on March 13, 2020, at 4:54 p.m. ET

The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that intelligence community personnel have at least three months worth of food on hand in the event of an uncontrolled pandemic.

The recommendation was contained in an unclassified influenza contingency plan drafted in 2009 by the National Security Agency. It details the sweeping steps the spy agency should take to keep its personnel safe and working on critical intelligence matters in the event of such a crisis.

The 50-page document obtained by BuzzFeed News last July following a six-year Freedom of Information Act battle tracks closely with steps that have now been widely adopted by Americans facing the current coronavirus outbreak, which the World Health Organization officially declared a global pandemic this week. The contingency plan was drafted in response to a 2006 directive from then-president George W. Bush that called upon federal government agencies to implement a "national strategy" for a potential influenza pandemic.

The new coronavirus is a novel virus in the same family as those that caused SARS and MERS. So far it has spread to more than 132,000 people across the globe and killed 4,900 people, mostly in China. While the coronavirus is much more deadly than influenza, a flu pandemic can also have devastating impacts. The 1918 Spanish flu killed almost 50 million people worldwide.

Since 2013, BuzzFeed News has filed more than two dozen public records requests with multiple federal agencies seeking their influenza pandemic plans. Many agencies have refused. As recently as Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission cited an exemption under FOIA that applies to "the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.

The NSA did not respond to a request for comment about whether the contingency plan it issued a decade ago has been updated and if it can be applied to the coronavirus pandemic. However, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community, told BuzzFeed News the agency intends to implement guidance issued by the Office of Personnel Management to ensure the intelligence communitys mission remains uninterrupted.

The IC has numerous missions requiring a global workforce presence, the official said, referring to the intelligence community. Agencies are developing preparation and response plans consistent with federal guidelines and regulations.

During a pandemic, the NSA's 2009 plan states that every time affiliates civilian or military personnel assigned to work at that agency enter a government building they would be screened for fever or other flulike symptoms, in an area outfitted with special airflow and filtration capabilities. The plan also limits employee travel and requires a physicians clearance to return from work after illness. In a crisis, the plan would give NSA leadership the ability to quarantine individuals, campuses or NSA headquarters.

Some workers would be asked to do jobs they dont normally do to staff critical mission functions for the NSA. During a pandemic, the agency would make evacuation payments to workers so they can reach a safe haven and continue working. The NSA also planned to provide access to psychologists or social workers to address stress.

The plan pointed out that simple steps, such as social distancing and proper hand-washing, are effective at slowing the spread of the virus. And the plan said that the goal of public health officials should be to slow down the rate of infection and limit the burden on medical staff and hospitals.

The plan is supplemented by a PowerPoint presentation titled Pandemic Planning that was written by the Department of Health and Human Services and contains specific recommendations for the intelligence community.

In one slide, HHS made stark predictions about a possible viral outbreak. We dont know when the next pandemic will occur, which influenza virus will cause it, or how severe it will be, the document stated.

A slide titled Pandemic Severity Index ranks threat levels. The top level is at Category 5 at which at least 2% of infected people die. Assuming a 1918-like pandemic and no effective response, the document said, more than 1.9 million Americans would die and 9.9 million others would require hospitalization.

Another slide titled Pandemic Policy to Maintain the IC Mission Objectives suggests that intelligence officers based overseas leave foreign countries early, return home and have enough food for 12 weeks and stockpile masks and medication.

HHS updated its pandemic influenza plan in 2017.

Original post:

Heres How The National Security Agency Will Protect Itself During A Pandemic - BuzzFeed News

Even With Corona Virus, the Show Must Go On – Wheeling Intelligencer

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

When I was in Houston recently for our National Speakers Association (NSA) Winter Conference, one of the topics discussed was the corona virus. For professional speakers, it is a big concern since speaking at conventions or conferences is a major source of their income. Canceled meetings mean lost revenues.

A panel of experts told the attendees to expect many meetings to cancel out of caution, especially international meetings. They also gave us hope. Several years ago, one of the panelists had been to the region of China where the virus initiated. He told us the population in that region is over 20 million.

The number of reported virus cases in that region is approximately 200,000.

A person in that high-risk region has a very small chance of getting the virus and an even lower chance of being killed by it. We probably have a higher chance of getting the flu. This doesnt mean we shouldnt be concerned or take common sense precautions.

The panel made the point that speaking is a delivery system. This is a time to be creative. There are other ways to communicate information, such as webinars or video conferences, to name just two. The point is, we cant control the spread of the corona virus and we cant control the decision of an organization or company to cancel a convention or conference.

We cant control the actions of others. We do have control of our own actions and how we react to a problem.

Lynnda and I left Houston on a Sunday and flew to Orlando. We went straight to Epcot at Walt Disney World for a test run. We are both recovering from knee surgery and are coming back to Disney in a month with our youngest son and his family of four children. We wanted to make sure we could navigate the parks and rides without the need of a wheelchair or other assistance.

There is a lot of walking involved. Could we do it? Waiting for Lynnda to get her purse inspected at Epcot security, I got a call from my friend, Ben at IHSMarkit. He told me that out of concern for attendee safety, the World Petrochemical Conference in New Orleans the week of March 23 was canceled. As predicted at NSA, I was impacted by the corona virus.

WPC is a big deal for Shale Crescent USA. We have been preparing for months. We are a major sponsor. We were doing a lunch presentation. Last year our lunch presentation was packed to standing room only. I had meetings set up with six major companies all prospects for coming to our region. Historically WPC has been our best source of prospects and leads. All of this gone with one phone call we had no control over.

The panel of experts told us at NSA that if a conference is canceled, the reasons for people attending remain. That creates opportunity.

Most likely if WPC had been held, attendance would be lower. There would have been an increased risk for us of being infected, especially from a foreign source.

A number of other meetings have already been canceled. Some companies have restricted travel. We were going to meet our son in-law from Baltimore at the Orlando airport hotel. He was flying in for a one- day meeting. It was canceled.

At Shale Crescent USA, we have a choice. We can do nothing and feel sorry for ourselves or we can do something.

The WPC attendees have needs. We can help. We believe the show must go on. We decided to take control and seize the opportunity. We have begun to reschedule our WPC meetings with U.S. companies. We are still working on our presentation to turn it into a webinar or video conference. We can reach out to the same people and companies that would have been in attendance at our luncheon.

Asian companies will be more difficult, since we cant meet individually right now. There is a 12- to 14-hour time difference, so some of our webinars and video conferences could be at some odd night time hours. We may be able to get some of these companies to attend Select USA in June and meet with them at that time. There are always other possibilities we havent considered.

What does this mean to you? Life and business are full of surprises, some of them bad. There are circumstances and people we have no control over.

We have 100% control over our attitude and our actions. Doing nothing or having a personal pity party is not an option if we want to succeed.

We will all be impacted by the corona virus in some way. We are seeing lower gasoline prices due to reduced Chinese demand. We are also seeing lower stock market prices impacting our net worth, 401K or retirement. Business travel is already being restricted. Companies and individuals depending on China for products are impacted. We cant change these macro impacts. We can decide how we choose to react to them.

The corona virus is like any other problem we have no control over. We can choose to take control of our attitude and our actions. We can use our creativity. Some of what we do will fail. We can try something else. We can choose not to quit. I dont know what the result of our actions at Shale Crescent USA will be. The show must go on.

We will move forward.

I do know Lynnda overcame her surgery and I overcame my injury to have three great days without needing a wheelchair at Disney World. The show did go on. We believe we are ready for the grandkids. All things are possible.

Greg Kozera, gkozera@shalecrescentusa.com is the director of marketing and sales for Shale Crescent USA. He is a professional engineer with a masters degree in environmental engineering who has over 40 years experience in the energy industry. Greg is a leadership expert and the author of four books and numerous published articles.

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Over Objections From Privacy Advocates, Tame Surveillance Bill Sails Through the House – Reason

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

It took all of a day after the text was released for the House of Representatives to vote for a surveillance reform and reauthorization bill that privacy groups (and some members of Congress) say doesn't go nearly far enough.

On Tuesday evening, Reps. Jerry Nadler (DN.Y.) and Adam Schiff (DCalif.) released the text of the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act. On Wednesday evening, it sailed through the House by a vote of 278136.

The bill renews but revises the USA Freedom Act, which was passed in 2015 after Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had secretly been collecting and storing massive amounts of Americans' phone and internet records. The USA Freedom Act was a compromise between those who pointed out these acts violated Americans' privacy and Fourth Amendment rights and those who insisted the United States needed the info to fight terrorism. The law allowed the NSA and FBI to access these collected records under more strict guidelines and authorized the use of roving wiretaps to keep track of "lone wolf" terrorists.

The USA Freedom Act sunsets this weekend, and privacy activists on both the left and the right have used the opportunity to push for stronger protections from secret surveillance and unwarranted data collection.

Last night's vote suggests we will not see tougher reforms. The bill does include some milder (but nevertheless welcome) changes. It ends the records retention program entirelynot as big a deal as it might sound, since the NSA has already abandoned it. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment (FISA) Court will have modestly expanded powers to bring in outside advisers when the feds want a warrant and to review decisions.And the attorney general will have to sign off on any secret surveillance warrant applications that target federal officials or federal candidates for office. But the bill does not grant civil libertarians' demands for limits on how business records can be secretly collected and used, for stronger protections against secret surveillance of First Amendmentprotected activities, and for a stronger role for those outside advisers.

The vote did not follow party lines. There is a consistent group of Democrats and Republicans who support strong privacy and Fourth Amendment protections, even if they don't see eye to eye on most other issues. Among the 60 Republicans who voted against the limper reforms were Louis Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, and Tom McClintock of California. Among the 75 Democrats who voted no were Zoe Lofgren of California, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ted Lieu of California, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. Independent Justin Amash of Michigan also voted against the bill.

But they're the minority. The larger, more establishment-minded leadership of Congress seems fine with kicking the can down the road yet again (the law will sunset once more in 2023) and reforming as little as they can get away with.

One of the more notable "yea" votes comes from Rep. Devin Nunes (RCalif.). A vocal defender of the president, Nunes has long insisted that the feds and the FISA Court abused their powers when they snooped on Trump aide Carter Page. (Subsequent investigation shows he was right to be concerned.) Nunes has even gone so far as to call for the entire FISA Court to be dismantled. Yet when it came time to vote, he, like he has done historically, voted to preserve the wider surveillance authorities.

This bill wouldn't have done anything to stop the FBI from wiretapping Page. He was neither a candidate for office nor a federal official at the time. But it will make it harder for the feds to wiretap Nunes.

The legislation heads over to the Senate now, where Rand Paul (RKy.) is trying to use his influence over Trump to stop the bill and demand stronger reforms. A tweet from Trump suggests Paul has the president's ear:

We went through this once before. That time, Trump wound up approving legislation that actually expanded the feds' authority to secretly spy on American citizens. Let's hope this isn't yet another case where the people in power care only about whether they are the ones being surveilled.

Read this article:

Over Objections From Privacy Advocates, Tame Surveillance Bill Sails Through the House - Reason

To Defend Forward, the U.S. Must Strengthen the Cyber Mission Force – Lawfare

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Editors note: This post is part of a series exploring the findings and recommendations of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

The Cyber Mission Force is the locus of the Department of Defenses efforts to counter, disrupt and impose costs for malicious adversary behavior in cyberspace. Three key changes enabled it, under Title 10 authorities, to conduct cyber effects operations more routinely outside of the Defense Departments information network and outside of a defined area of hostilities in support of campaign plans. The first was the debut of the 2018 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy, which introduced the strategic concept of defend forward. The second was the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which defined cyberspace operations as a traditional military activity. The third was National Security Presidential Memorandum-13 (NSPM-13), which, as described by the Pentagons General Counsel in March 2020, allows for the delegation of well-defined authorities to the Secretary of Defense to conduct time-sensitive military operations in cyberspace. Together, these changes reflect a significant shift in strategic thinking from the 2015 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy, and from operational engagement limited to the kinetic battlefield, such as Joint Task Force ARES. However, while the Cyber Mission Forces operational goals have grown in scope and scale commensurate with the threat environment, its force size and structure have remained constant. Therefore, one of the Cyberspace Solarium Commissions key recommendations is to ensure the Cyber Mission Force achieves the appropriate resourcing, force size and capability mix.

Planning and conducting cyber operations and campaigns demands a significant investment in resources, human capital, access and tool development, and time. Yet, the core component of the cyber force across the joint services is essentially the size of one conventional army brigade. The Cyber Mission Force reached full operational capability in the spring of 2018; this includes 133 teams comprising a total of approximately 6,200 individuals. These teams are responsible for a plethora of diverse missions, including national mission teams that defend the nation by countering malicious adversary activity, combat mission teams that support the missions of the geographic combatant commands, cyber protection teams that defend the Defense Departments information network, and cyber support teams that conduct analysis in support of the national mission teams and combat mission teams.

However, full operating capability requirements were determined in 2013, well before the U.S. experienced or observed key events that subsequently shaped our understanding of the urgency and salience of the threat posed by malicious adversary behavior. Examples of such activity include Russia conducting cyberattacks against Ukraines power grid in 2015, as well as Russian cyber-enabled interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. The full operating capability requirements were also determined prior to the development of the Defense Departments defend forward strategic concept, which broadened the scope of what it means for the Cyber Mission Force to defend the nation in cyberspace short of war.

This raises a number of critical questions. First, is the Cyber Mission Force appropriately sized and resourced given current and future mission requirements? The Cyber Mission Force is tasked with conducting a diverse set of missions, at scale, and must also have sufficient capacity to maintain steady-state operations while surging to respond to an emerging crisis.

Second, is the allocation of resources across teams within the Cyber Mission Force matched to the prioritization of threats? For example, if U.S. strategy identifies the most salient and significant threat to be malicious adversary behavior against the homeland below the threshold of armed attack, it follows that the national mission teams, which make up the Cyber Mission Force and are the operational arm of U.S. Cyber Command, should merit additional teams.

Finally, concurrent with an increase in the size of the Cyber Mission Force, how can the U.S. ensure that supporting entities, particularly the National Security Agency (NSA) in its combat support agency role, are also appropriately resourced? The NSA provides critical intelligence support to cyber operations conducted by Cyber Mission Force teams, particularly at the tactical and operational levels. As the Cyber Mission Forces operations and needs grow, intelligence collection demands corresponding resourcing.

There has been some progress in assessing Defense Department cyber personnel, structure and organizations, particularly in Sections 1652, 1655, and 1656 of the recently passed FY2020 NDAA. However, Congress must also ensure that the Cyber Mission Force, in particular, conducts a force structure assessment and troop-to-task analysis that takes into account the increasing scope and scale of Cyber Mission Force missions compared to previous fiscal years and projected into the future, as well as an assessment of resource requirements for the NSA in support of this aspect of its mission. This is why the commission recommends that Congress should request in the next Cyber Posture Review, and quadrennially thereafter, that the Defense Department provide an assessment of the requirements to grow the Cyber Mission Force, including projected force size and mixture necessary to sustain all Defense Department missions in cyberspace. The results of this assessment should drive resource allocation, force size and mix, and continued congressional oversight of these efforts.

Further, the threat environment and rapid pace of technological change in cyberspace demand speed and agility. These realities drove additional recommendations from the commission. Here, we highlight three in particular that, taken together, would enhance the flexibility of acquisitions and decision-making to enable adaptability, and rapid response and maneuver.

First, Congress should establish a major force program funding category for U.S. Cyber Command. Congress requires the Defense Department, according to 10 U.S.C. 221, as part of the Future Years Defense Program, to annually submit a budget that includes estimated expenditures and appropriations projected over a 5-year period. This program is currently organized into 12 different major force program funding categories that represent a total amount of dollars, manpower and forces appropriated for each category. A new major force program funding category for U.S. Cyber Command, similar to what currently exists for U.S. Special Operations Command, would provide U.S. Cyber Command with acquisition authorities over goods and services unique to the commands needs. It should also provide a process to expeditiously resolve combatant command/service funding disputes.

Second, Congress should request that the Defense Department provide in the next Cyber Posture Review an analysis of, and recommendations for, the conditions under which further delegation of cyber-related authorities is appropriate to U.S. Cyber Command, as well as to other Defense Department components, such as the NSA. The pace of cyberspace operations may require delegated authorities under certain conditions to pursue and deliver effects against adversary targets. This would, when appropriate, remove friction and support rapid response and maneuver. Importantly, this recommendation does not call for new authorities within the scope of Title 10. Rather, it is focused on the cyber-related authorities that already exist within the Defense Department but may be fragmented across different elements (for example, functional combatant commands, geographic combatant commands and the various services). Examples of these authorities include those that support planning and implementing offensive cyber operations, such as information operations-related authorities that include creating, procuring and deploying personas. Relevant authorities to review for delegation to the NSA should include those authorities that enable the agency to rapidly tip relevant foreign intelligence collection to private entities within the Defense Industrial Base and their service providers to support the latters own defensive operations.

Finally, as part of the next Cyber Posture Review, the Defense Department should produce a study that assesses and provides recommendations for amendments as necessary to the Standing Rules of Engagement and Standing Rules for Use of Force for U.S. forces. These rules have not been updated in more than a decade, despite major changes in technology and the strategic environment. The commission, in particular, recommends assessing how these rules apply to activities in cyberspace below the level of war or armed conflict, and how unique aspects of cyberspace (for example, the absence of high seas and the definition of territory) affect their current application. Importantly, this recommendation should not be construed as necessarily calling for a loosening of the rules under all conditions. Rather, updating and clarifying how these apply in cyberspace where U.S. forces are already operating in day-to-day competition is as important for risk mitigation as for reducing operational friction.

Taken together, these recommendations will empower the Cyber Mission Force and U.S. Cyber Command to plan for cyber operations above the level of armed conflict as well as to rapidly maneuver against and engage adversaries below it.

Excerpt from:

To Defend Forward, the U.S. Must Strengthen the Cyber Mission Force - Lawfare

Ensuring the Cybersecurity and Resilience of the Defense Industrial Base – Lawfare

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Editors note: This post article is part of a series exploring the findings and recommendations of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Cyber-enabled intellectual property theft from the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) and adversary penetration of DIB networks and systems pose an existential threat to U.S. national security. The DIB is the [t]he Department of Defense, government, and private sector worldwide industrial

complex with capabilities to perform research and development and design, produce, and maintain military weapon systems, subsystems, components, or parts to meet military requirements. It is a compelling example of a cross-domain challenge that lies at the intersection of cyberspace and conventional domains of warfare. This is because adversary behavior in cyberspace has broader ramifications, such as the potential to erode the United Statess conventional military advantage, undermine deterrence, and provide emerging nation-state competitors with an edge over the U.S. in military contingencies and conflicts. The threat is multifaceted. Intellectual property theft can enable adversaries to replicate cutting-edge U.S. defense technology without comparable investments in research and development. Adversary access to the DIB could inform the development of offset capabilities. It could even provide insights or access points that enable adversaries to thwart or manipulate the intended functioning of key weapons and systems designed and manufactured within the DIB.

As the sector-specific agency for the DIB, the Department of Defense takes the lead within the federal government for working with this critical infrastructure sector. The 2018 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy identifies defense of the DIB as a crucial imperative, noting that the Defense Department will defend forward to halt or degrade cyberspace operations targeting the Department, and collaborate to strengthen the cybersecurity and resilience of [the Defense Department], [Defense Critical Infrastructure], and DIB networks and systems. There are a number of federal entities involved in identifying, prosecuting and thwarting cyber threats to the DIB. These include the recently established Cybersecurity Directorate within the National Security Agency (NSA); the DIB Cybersecurity Program; and law enforcement and counterintelligence entities such as the FBI, the Air Force Office of Special Investigation, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, U.S. Army Counterintelligence and the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center.

Nevertheless, vulnerabilities within the DIB persist and there are gaps in existing efforts. Two critical shortcomings are, first, that there is no truly shared and comprehensive picture of the threat environment facing the DIB and, second, that efforts to rapidly detect and mitigate threats to DIB networks and systems are lacking. Adversaries operate in cyberspace across multiple areas and sectors within the defense industry. This means that, while an advanced threat actor may be targeting a number of entities within the DIB, any given target can only observe the adversaryits capabilities, tools, techniques and indicators of compromiseas it operates on its own assets, if at all. However, to gain insight into adversaries as strategic organizations, the Defense Department needs a consistent and coherent picture of where, how and why they are operating.

These gaps drive two important recommendations advocated by the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. First, through legislation, Congress should require companies within the DIB, as part of the terms of their contract with the Defense Department, to participate in a threat intelligence sharing program that would be housed at the department component level. Information sharing programs do exist, but they are insufficient. For example, the departments Cyber Crime Center and the DIB Cybersecurity Program are largely voluntary, although DIB entities have some mandatory reporting requirements. Existing programs also tend to benefit the larger prime contractors, which have the ability to share and consume threat information. But small and sub-prime contractors play vital roles in the supply chain, and vulnerabilities within these entities can have cascading negative implications. Finally, the Defense Department lacks a complete view of its supply chain, which may include non-U.S. companies. There are no mandatory reporting requirements that require prime contractors to disclose to the department the identities of their subcontractors.

The ultimate end state of this information sharing program is to leverage fused, real-time information from DIB network owners and operators, coupled with U.S. government intelligence collection products, to create a comprehensive picture of adversary organizations and an improved understanding of the adversaries own intelligence collection requirements. This would help the Defense Department and the intelligence community anticipate where adversaries will seek to collect against DIB targets. And, importantly, this information would need to be communicated to DIB network owners and operators so that they can proactively defend against impending threats, as well as support the threat-hunting efforts described further below.

The program should contain a number of key elements. First, drawing on the Defense Departments new Cyber Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) regulation, the requirements associated with participation would be tied to a firms level of maturity. In addition, there should be incentives around participation, particularly for small- and medium-sized companies. Second, there should be defined frameworks that guide specifically delineated information sharing, such as incident reporting and reporting on the use of subcontractors. Third, participation in the program should automatically entail consent by DIB entities for the NSA to query in foreign intelligence collection databases on DIB entities and provide focused threat intelligence to them, as well as enable all elements of the Defense Department, including the NSA, to directly tip intelligence to the affected entity. Finally, as it develops, the program should aim to support joint, collaborative, and colocated analytics, as well as drive investments in technology and capabilities to support automated detection and analysis.

The second committee recommendation is that Congress should direct regulatory action that the executive branch should pursue, through the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, to require companies within the DIB to create a mechanism for mandatory threat hunting on DIB networks. This would be as part of the terms of a companys contract with the Defense Department. Threat hunting is the act of proactively searching for cyber threats on assets and networks. This recommendation is meant to address the detection and mitigation of adversary cyber threats to the DIB, going a step beyond the intelligence sharing recommendation described above. As reflected in the new CMMC regulation, companies at different levels of maturity vary in their internal capacity to conduct threat hunting. There are several vehicles to support threat hunting, such as allowing Defense Departmententities to conduct threat hunting on DIB networkswith prior coordination with network owners and operatorsor enabling companies to contract with department-approved third-party entities to conduct threat hunting. Data generated from these activities should be fed back to the department and to the NSAs Cybersecurity Directorate. Threat hunting on these networks, particularly those that are assessed to be of interest to an adversary, enables network owners and operators, as well as the Defense Department, to have increased confidence in the security of such assets. Additionally, if threat activity is identified, it brings all parties attention to the breach so that they can work in concert to contain, remediate, and assess any potential damage and information exposure.

Every major U.S. strategy document frames the current environment as defined by a revival of great power competition. During historical periods of great power competition, strategic outcomes were often driven by advantages and innovation in military weaponry and technology. Therefore, failure to protect and secure the DIB, which drives the United Statess technological edge and military advantage, could have deleterious long-term consequences and is an example of how adversary activities in and through cyberspace on a routine basis can affect strategic outcomes.

See the original post here:

Ensuring the Cybersecurity and Resilience of the Defense Industrial Base - Lawfare

Four priorities of the education agenda – The Daily Star

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

If over the next two decades Bangladesh is to maintain its impressive 6-plus percent annual GDP growth, special policy level attention must be given to educational investment. Higher spending and better accountability of education officials for good management and results should be the focusand four priorities must be on the education agenda.

First, the government should consider spending on universal education as an investment instead of treating schools as cost centres. Recent experience from the Delhi's Legislative Assembly election and the stunning victory of the Aam Admi Party (AAP), defying the political tide, demonstrates that higher spending in public education combined with good school management pays off. It has resulted in better learning outcomes, higher student attendance and improved school infrastructures, which earned the APP political credits. This is a lesson worth noting for Bangladesh.

Second, all providers of primary and secondary educationpublic, non-state and privateshould focus on student learning outcomes, not just enrolment, dropouts and completion. Great strides have been made in Bangladesh in bringing children including girls into schools. A National Student Assessment (NSA) is undertaken every two years on a nationwide sample of grade three and five students and schools by the Directorate of Primary Education. NSA measures student learning in Bangla (the first language) and arithmetic against basic skills specified in the curriculum. NSA showed that more than half of class three and class five students did not perform at grade level in Bangla and arithmetic. In other words, after five years of primary education, the majority of students do not acquire literacy and numeracy at a functional level, handicapping them for further education or vocational skill training.

Education researchers and academics suggest two measures to help children achieve the essential competencies specified in the curriculum: i) Attract and retain enough capable teachers in the system and support and motivate them to perform in classrooms according to set performance standards; and ii) Discontinue the present high stake, nationwide public examinations at the end of grade five and eight which push students to memorise guidebooks and spend time and money on private tutorsand force teachers and parents to aid and abet this distortion of learning.

Testing is not a substitute for good teaching. School-based formative assessment of learners should be emphasised. The assessment of system, school and teacher performance can be better done through an adaptation of the NSA approach, without putting young children in tough competition with their peers.

Third, Bangladesh should consider joining OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment for Development (PISA-D). It is a pilot project that aims to make cross-country assessment more accessible and relevant to a wider range of countries. PISA measures key knowledge and skills that are essential to function in modern societies across countries.

In today's global world, Bangladesh has to compete in the world market and be at par in skills and competencies with other countries. Up to 700,000 young workers, almost half of all new entrants to the workforce every year, go abroad as migrant workers. These individuals as well as those staying at home must acquire the skills and capabilities necessary to adapt to the changing needs of the global market.

Cambodia, a country facing quality issues similar to Bangladesh, has joined PISA-D in its bid to improve student learning and assessment capacity. Its focus is on equipping young learners with 21st century skills that are in demand globally. Cambodia is being assisted by UNICEF-sponsored Southeast Asia Programme on Learning Metric (SEA-PLM). Bangladesh can benefit greatly by joining PISA-D.

Fourth, school level education planning, budgets, governance and management need to move progressively towards meaningful decentralisation and devolution of authority, where accountability lies with district, upazila and individual institutions. No other education system with the size and scale of Bangladeshwith 40 million students, a million teachers and 200,000 institutionsis run in such a top-down way as it is done here. The decisions that should be taken by the schools or local education authorities are often taken in Dhakafrequently the buck is even passed onto the highest level of the government.

Schools of the 21st century must be responsive and adaptive to the diverse needs and circumstances of students all across the country. Given that Bangladesh wants to join the rich countries club by 2041, it needs to pursue these four strategic steps.

Mohammad Shahidul Islam is an education policy researcher at the University of Toronto, and former Senior Education Adviser of USAID in Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Link:

Four priorities of the education agenda - The Daily Star

Is an *NSYNC Reunion Any Closer to Reality? Weve Been Talking, Says Lance Bass – Variety

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

What does Justin Timberlake really think about an *NSYNC reunion? And would JC Chasez consider taking the group on the road without him? Those were two burning questions posed by fans on The Daily Popcast With Lance Bass, airing this week and sort of answered.

A return to the *NSYNC original lineup Timberlake, Chasez, Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone would be the ideal way to mark 20 years since No Strings Attached was released, selling over 2.4 million copies in its first week, a record for the time.

Weve been talking about it, Bass tells Variety. No plans have been made. If there will even be plans, who knows? I think if we did anything, it would be for the fun of it the world needs something fun to listen to and I think we could bring some positivity to it. Thats what we need right now. It could be something simple to test it out, and if it works, it works and if it doesnt, it doesnt.

Bass, 40, says fans will get clearer answers on where the group stands on the idea when he releases his interviews, one day at a time starting today. One member will also interview Bass for Fridays edition of the Popcast, while Saturdays anniversary special features co-hosts Peachy Keen (Jess Keener) and Giggles (Lisa Delcampo) asking the singers hilarious rapid-fire questions.

Ive done Joey and JC so far and theyre very different interviews, Bass adds. JCs the hardest to nail down and more mysterious, so it was interesting to get into his head. Youll definitely hear his opinion on the reunion and if itll happen.

Bass is also thrilled about getting a rare insight into Timberlakes thoughts on topics the two have never discussed in their 25-year friendship. Hes the only [bandmate] I havent interviewed before, so Im super-excited to delve into what his lifes like now, talk about No Strings Attached and that era, ask what that [solo] transition was like and get his opinions on the future of *NSYNC, says Bass. I want to pull the curtain back and show you who Justin is who my best friend was years ago. He was 14 years-old when I met him. A bond thats incredible. We experienced things most people didnt go through and I love the juxtaposition of what we were then to now, and how weve all grown into who we grew into its all because we influenced each other at such a young age.

Its not surprising how impactful the young singers friendships were given the tumultuous wave they rode together preceding NSAs release. While working on the follow-up to 1997s self-titled debut, the group as well as their peers, the Backstreet Boys became suspicious of their then-manager Lou Pearlmans financial dealings. Both bands took legal action, with *NSYNC successfully cutting ties with Pearlman and RCA, signing with Jive Records and retaining their name.

It was a crazy time because we didnt know where our careers were going and every expert around us said, Your careers over kids, recalls Bass, who produced the film Boy Band Con, a 2019 documentary about Pearlman. That hurts when youre that young and have worked so hard. The last thing you want to hear is the head of the label saying, Guys, you might have one more album in you if you just stick with Lou Pearlman. It was a scary moment. We thought our careers were done. So many crazy thoughts went through our heads, but when we finally got our name back and ended our relationship with Lou, everything started flowing.

NSA spawned two of *NSYNCs biggest hits, Bye Bye Bye and Its Gonna Be Me, which featured writing credits by Max Martin, Andreas Carlsson and the Cheiron Studios team. The album also featured songs by Richard Marx and Diane Warren.

While *NSYNC followed up with 2001s Celebrity, the quintet announced a hiatus in 2002, and in recent years have only reconvened on stage to honor Timberlake and his Video Vanguard Award at the 2013 MTV VMAs. He was absent from Coachella 2019, where the four joined Ariana Grande for a surprise appearance, having just wrapped his Man of the Woods tour.

It was at Coachella where Bass met an artist hed never heard of Lizzo who would become key to one of his biggest 2020 projects, collaborating with Richard Bransons Virgin Fest. Lizzo and A$AP Rocky are headlining the Los Angeles music and environmental awareness event in June.

Richard Branson and myself are big space geeks and tech people, so we wanted to create something that entertained people by bringing in the Lizzos and Anderson.Paaks but also showed the future, Bass elaborates. Its about doing right [for] the environment and what next cool futuristic thing will help our planet. It reminds me of the World Fair, where people used to go to see new stuff, with a little mix of Coachella!

Bass love for podcasts will feature at Virgin Fest, where The Daily Popcast and Bass favorite hosts will broadcast live from the Bubble Tap VIP Area, a nod to his Bubble Tap Trailer mobile wine business. Its one of several boozy endeavors, including his West Hollywood bar Roccos WeHo and upcoming mixers line, J.A.X. (Just Add X X being your favorite spirit), a collaboration with Vanderpump Rules star Jax Taylor, launching at Virgin Fest.

The fun thing has been coming up with J.A.X flavors because theyre unique, taste great, are low-calorie and have vitamins, says Bass, whos also producing a film about *NSYNC superfans who put their lives on hold in order to follow the band on tour. The dangerous part is you cant taste the alcohol. Itll sneak up on you.

As for whether J.A.X or Bubble Tap have been loosening lips in-studio during Bass *NSYNC interviews: I havent done Justin or Chris yet, so maybe Ill bring some in then they can give me testimonials!

Is an *NSYNC Reunion Any Closer to Reality? Weve Been Talking, Says Lance Bass - Variety

Op-Ed: The US should call NATO to action and defend Europe against coronavirus – CNBC

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

While listening to President Trump announce the European travel ban in his Oval Office address, my mind wandered back in time to the early G20 meetings of finance ministers and heads of government in 2009 when the United States and its European partners worked together to head off a global financial meltdown.

I then traveled back a little further in time to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a day on which I found myself traveling on the Eurostar between London and Brussels, my two homes at the time. For the first time in NATO's history, our European and Canadian allies triggered the alliance's Article 5 commitment to common defense.

Going back to read the language of this provision, written in 1949 to deter Soviet aggression, it struck me that Trump could have produced a far more presidential moment this week if he had done what the Europeans did for the United States back then. He should offer the transatlantic community an Article 5 declaration of war against this deadly pathogen.

If NATO could bend Article 5 to combat a non-state terrorist actor striking the United States, why not also to combat the Chinese-originated COVID-19, which by Friday had infected more than 28,000 individuals and killed more than 1,200 among NATO allies. Given current transatlantic divisions, there is far greater need now than after 9/11 for a symbolic gesture of unity.

President Trump could have confounded his critics, calmed markets and perhaps even outlined common cause efforts including travel limitations that he and his administration had agreed to during consultations with our NATO partners and the European Union. "Article 5 provides that an attack on one of us is an attack on all," he could have said, Three Muskateer-like. "It's all for one, and one for all!"

There's also a strong America First reason why President Trump should have leaned more in that direction. He's going to need Europe, just as the United States did in 2009, as this health crisis is quickly becoming a markets and financial crisis that could be addressed far more effectively through coordinated public health and fiscal stimulus measures.

Though no one wishes the world a financial crisis of the 2008 and 2009 dimensions, it would be irresponsible not to begin talks among the world's major economies and democracies about what strains they see in the system and what contingency planning they should be undertaking should the coronavirus economic slowdown continue. Compared to 2009, the world's record debt levels and its low to negative interest rates provide far less capability and then demand even more common cause.

Instead, what unfolded on 3/11/2020 in Europe and the United States were events that further underscored how divided the United States and its European partners are when they should be most united. Without consulting our allies at all, he implemented the ban which took effect at midnight Friday in an Oval Office address on all American television networks that left his own national security team scratching their heads, correcting mistakes (cargo wouldn't be banned, as the President initially said), and filling in critical omissions (Americans could still travel home from Europe).

The result was one of the harshest responses ever recorded from EU leaders to an American President. A joint statement by President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and President of the European Council, Charles Michel, read: "The Coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action. The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation. The European Union is taking strong action to limit the spread of the virus."

"When it comes to solidarity and unity, the United States is failing the coronavirus test," Benjamin Haddad, the director of the Atlantic Council's Future Europe Initiative, wrote in the Washington Post. "President Trump's speech Wednesday on the response to COVID-19 marked one of the most consequential foreign policy turning points of his presidency. This moment represents the lowest point in transatlantic relations in recent memory."

Sadly, the recent days have also shown how divided Europeans are among themselves, with Italians that there call for help has brought insufficient assistance to the country so far hardest hit in Europe by the virus. At previous such times of European uncertainty, the United States could provide necessary glue to keep everyone together.

".it's time now for the EU to go beyond engagement and consultations," Maurizio Massari, the Italian permanent representative to the European Union, wrote in Politico, "with emergency actions that are quick, concrete and effective."

He complained that "not a single EU country" had responded to Italy's call to active the European Union Mechanism of Civil Protection for the supply of medical equipment for individual protection. "Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity."

Unimaginably, Italian newspapers were full of Beijing's outreach to help on the very same day that President Trump declared his European travel ban.

A plane carrying a team of specialist doctors with battleground experience fighting the virus left China on Wednesday for Italy, the European epicenter of the pandemic, with urgently needed medical equipment. That includes 2 million facemasks, 20,0000 protective suits and 10,000 ventilators.

The gesture was widely publicized in China and Italy. A report in China Daily said that thanks to donations from people living in the East China Zhejian province, some 4,556 boxes of disaster-relief materials were on their way to Italy. More than 300,000 people from the province live and work in Italy.

Crises either make institutions and relationships stronger or weaker, but they don't leave them unchanged. A pandemic's political danger is that countries just like some individuals feel that it's everyone for themselves.

Yet after an unforgivable initial delay, Europeans are beginning to show more solidarity among themselves. EU leaders have committed 25 billion euros to respond to the economic fallout, of which $7.5 billion euros should be available quickly to provide emergency necessities.

Now it's the United States' turn to mend the message of this week. As fanciful as this idea might sound, it's time to invoke NATO's Article 5 to tackle the virus. It may take that dramatic of a symbolic action to repair the transatlantic damage that has been done.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, prize-winning journalist and president & CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States' most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant managing editor and as the longest-serving editor of the paper's European edition. His latest book "Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth" was a New York Times best-seller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter@FredKempeand subscribe hereto Inflection Points, his look each Saturday at the past week's top stories and trends.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.

Original post:

Op-Ed: The US should call NATO to action and defend Europe against coronavirus - CNBC

NATO’s budget virus: How the pandemic could slash military spending | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

President TrumpDonald John TrumpThe Hill's Morning Report - Biden commits to female VP; CDC says no events of 50+ people for 8 weeks This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Juan Williams: Trump must be held to account over coronavirus MOREs 30-day travel ban on Europeans entering the United States angered the European Union, whose leaders had not been informed prior to his announcement. In fact, the baninitially was not directed at the EU per se, but rather at the 26 Schengen Area countries whose citizens can travel freely without passports anywhere within Schengens boundaries. Neither Switzerland nor Norway are EU members, for example but they are part of the Schengen group, and their citizens now cannot travel temporarily to the United States. On the other hand, Britain and Ireland are not part of the Schengen area; hence, their initial exemption now revoked from the administration's travel ban.

Health experts will debate whether an area-wide ban was called for. What is not debatable is the likely impact of the ban on the economies of the affected countries.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank and a former French finance minister, stated at a news conference that the heightened uncertainty negatively affects expenditure plans and their financing and that even if ultimately temporary by nature, it [the coronavirus epidemic] will have a significant impact on economic activity, in particular it will slow down production as a result of disrupted supply chains and reduce domestic and foreign demand, especially through the adverse impact of the necessary containment measures.

One of the first casualties of the virus may well be European defense spending, which long has taken a back seat to domestic spending in most EU states also are NATO members. This is especially the case in Western Europe. As Sawomir Dbski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, puts it, Defense budgets may be the first victims of [the virus], especially in so-called old Europe, to use (Donald) Rumsfelds phrase, referring to the famous description used by the U.S. defense secretary during the George W. Bush administration.

On the other hand, Dbski adds, In Central Europe, defense budgets are of high priority for obvious reasons that is, close proximity of (an) aggressive Russia. Second, the economic situation of NATO Eastern Flank countries is in much better shape than that of their Western European allies. Poland, for example, for the first time ever, has (a) fully balanced budget for the fiscal year 2020. So if the coronavirus hits Polands economy, the government simply will make necessary budget corrections allowing some deficit, without cutting defense spending.

While Polands defense budget may withstand the ravages of the coronavirus, that may not be the case elsewhere in Russias neighborhood. Spending on emergency measures to combat the virus it is estimated that a European Central Bank bailout for Italy alone could exceed $500 billion Euros, or about $560 billion could increase the pressure on European economies that have only just begun to show growth in their gross domestic products (GDP). Depending on how long the virus continues to ravage Europe, recovery could take years, not months.

Coupled with ongoing immigration from the Middle East and North Africa, it likely will take the European NATO states considerably longer to reach their agreed goal of achieving defense spending that is equal to 2 percent of their respective GDPs by 2024.

NATO already is feeling the ravages of the virus in other ways. Major exercises such as Defender are being radically restructured and trimmed; others have been cancelled. At this time of worldwide crisis, it is crucial that Washington not further complicate Europes challenges by exacerbating tensions over defense spending. Moreover, it should lead the Alliances strategizing for the rapid restoration of all planned training, exercises and deployments immediately upon indications that the threat of the pandemic is beginning to wane.

Unless Washington takes these steps, the major beneficiary of NATOs travails will be none other than that soon-to-be constitutionally-engineered president for life, Russia's Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at theCenter for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for theForeign Policy Research Institute. He was under secretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy under secretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.

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NATO's budget virus: How the pandemic could slash military spending | TheHill - The Hill

Recommitting to NATO, Resisting Putin’s Aggression – Charged Affairs

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

Editors Note: This article is part of our special series Predictions & Predicaments. It should be read as if written in April 2024. Read more about the special series here.

It is one thing to send little green men to attack Ukrainiansoldiers. It is another to send them to attack the 1st BrigadeCombat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division. Vladimir Putin learnedthat lesson the hard way.

NATO member states could have reacted to Putins recentoffensive by reinforcing their own defenses, preparing for the day Spetsnazcommandos and eastern Ukrainian separatist militias came to their borders. Luckily,the alliance remembered its recent history. As in Bosnia and Kosovo in the1990s, the alliance had a reason to act even though the conflict was outsideNATOs borders.

What led the alliance to dispatch U.S., UK, and Frenchparatroopers to Kyiv International Airport, daring Putins troops to continuetheir march toward the Ukrainian capital? It is possible to label any one ofhundreds of events, large or small, as the decisive one. But three decisionsmade by the United States in the last three years stand out. The fact that theywere U.S. decisions shows how indispensable the country is to Europeansecurity.

First, commanders challenged very long-held assumptions.Take heavy armor, for example. Decades after the threat of Red Army tanksdriving through the Fulda Gap vanished, the U.S. Army in 2019 was still orderingmore M1 Abrams tanks. But with Military Sealift Command strained,and its ability to transport tanks across the Atlantic compromised, plannersquestioned their reliance on armor to fight off a Russian incursion. Theyrealized cyber security was more valuable witness the swiftness with which U.S.cyber units blocked Russian hackers attempts to disable Ukrainian governmentwebsites the same day as the invasion.

Second, the Pentagon began investing more in personnel, rather than putting excessive faith in traditional warfighting technology. As impressive as the United States warships, armored vehicles, fighter planes, and other machinery are, they will be useless if the men and women operating them are not fully prepared. Learning from the two fatal collisions involving Navy destroyers in 2017, and from the Marine Corps high number of deadly aviation mishaps in 2018, the U.S. military paid more attention to the troops training and wellbeing. Today, service members have ample opportunities to upgrade their skills, rest after long missions, and learn from their comrades.

Along with this investment came a different conception of what it means to fight. After much resistance, each of the services now has a cyber auxiliary, a unit whose members, while they must be physically fit, are not expected to meet the same high fitness standards as infantrymen. Former Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller was half-joking when he said a Marine in the Cyber Auxiliary can have purple hair, but he spotted the value of flexibility in particular standards. It was the warrior ethic that mattered, the commitment to using ones skills in service to ones country, not just the number of pushups one could do.

Third, and most importantly, was simply recommitting to thealliance. With a separate European Defense Force still under discussion, andwith Americans domestic economic anxieties flaring up, it was tempting tosimply let the Europeans go their own way. It is their continent, after all, aless committed president might have said. Why not let them boost their defensebudgets, square off with Putin themselves, and leave the U.S. free to confront astill-rising China in the Pacific?

Fortunately, Washington chose the opposite path. Forexample, while continuing the multilateral TridentJuncture exercise in the Arctic, it restarted Marine Corps trainingmissions along the Black Sea, a rejection of the false choice betweenpreparing for conflict in one and in the other. So prepared were the U.S. seaservices that, when the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit sailed towardCrimea aboard an Amphibious Ready Group, in tandem with the paratrooperslanding in Kyiv, there was no doubt the United States was ready to fight.

Putin must have thought he had timed his incursionperfectly. When his troops set off for Kyiv on March 19, he saw no reason toworry. Surely, he thought, NATO members would not risk their soldiers livesfor a non-member. Ukrainian resistance would crumble by April 4, giving NATO ablack eye on its 75th birthday. But he reckoned without U.S. andallied resolve.

As his henchmen withdrew to the Donbass, unwilling to fight a U.S.-led detachment, Putin offered the laughable idea that his intention all along was simply to show the world what Russia was capable of. That remark will quickly fade from memory. Instead, the world will remember the words of dozens of ordinary people who spoke at NATOs summit last week: Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians saved from massacres by NATO airstrikes a generation ago; Ukrainians who fled Crimea and the Donbass after seeing the brutal crackdown on friends who resisted Russian domination; Russians who risked their lives to speak out against the Putin regime. None of them were citizens of NATO members, but all praised NATO eloquently a stark reminder that the alliance, when it summons the will to act, protects millions outside its ranks.

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Recommitting to NATO, Resisting Putin's Aggression - Charged Affairs

Russian Planes Are Flying Thousands of Miles to Track NATO Submarines – The National Interest

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

A pair of Russian navy Tu-142 patrol planes flew one of the longest-ever flights in international air space in decades on and around March 11, 2020.

The powerful, swept-wing planes with their four turboprop engines flew from Kipelovo-Fedotovo airbase near Vologda in northern Russia, skirted the Arctic Circle as they headed west around Norway and the United Kingdom then south to the waters off Spain -- and then flew back.

NATO fighters rose to intercept the 174-feet-long Tupolevs, but at no point did the planes, which are based on the Tu-95 bomber, stray into any countrys national air space.

The impressive flight was just the latest in a surge of sorties by the small fleet of around two dozen Tu-142s, which with their nearly 8,000-mile endurance are among the farther-flyest military aircraft in the world.

The Tu-142 and other Russian long-range warplanes have flown several epic missions in the spring of 2020, in part in order to keep tabs on NATO submarines conducting exercises in European and Arctic waters.

The Russian sorties mirror a similar surge by NATO patrol planes that took place in late 2019 as the Russian fleet deployed an unusually large number of submarines. The escalating missions below and above the waves point to intensifying preparation for a potential war on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.

The March 11, 2020 sortie might have targeted NATO submarines participating in the alliances Cold Response war game. NATO canceled Cold Response in reaction to the rapid spread of the flu-like novel-coronavirus, but the submarines may have lingered in the exercise zone.

The Norwegian air force scrambled fighters to check in on the Tu-142s as they passed by Norway. Its unclear which types the Norwegians launched, but Oslos air arm earlier in March 2020 sent F-16 and F-35 fighters to intercept a patrol by a Tu-142 and an escorting MiG-31 interceptor.

The Royal Air Force with its Typhoon fighters took over as the Russian patrol planes neared United Kingdom air space. These Russian bombers do not comply with international air traffic rules, are a hazard to airliners and are not welcome in our air space, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston stated. RAF Typhoons, alongside our NATO allies, ensured these Russian aircraft posed no hazard.

But the Russians were back at it a few days later with a pair of Tu-160 long-range bombers. Again, RAF fighters rose to intercept.

British and Norwegian Typhoon and F-16 fighter jets also scrambled twice in late February 2020 to intercept pairs of Tu-142s after the Russian planes flew farther south than normal and approached Norwegian air space.

The Russian patrol surge isnt limited to Europe. On March 9, 2020, a pair of Tu-142s took off from Russias Far East region and flew northeast over the Arctic.

U.S. Air Force F-22s and Canadian air force F/A-18s simultaneously intercepted the patrollers and followed them as they flew over a temporary base for two U.S. Navy submarines conducting the services biennial ice exercise.

American sailors captured dramatic images of the Russian planes buzzing USS Connecticut and USS Toledo.

The Arctic is a potential strategic corridor -- between Indo-Pacific, Europe and the U.S. homeland -- for expanded competition," U.S. Navy vice admiral Daryl Caudle explained in a statement.

As recently as late 2019, NATO was the one launching patrol planes to keep watch over Russian submarines. The Russian navy in mid-October 2019 deployed eight submarines in the countrys biggest undersea exercise since the Cold War.

More than a dozen NATO patrol planes flew back-to-back missions in order to find and track Moscows submarines.

Between Oct. 25 and Nov. 7, 2019, the NATO planes flew more than 40 missions. Six Norwegian air force P-3s, four U.S. Navy P-8s and a Canadian air force CP-140 flew from Andoya in Norway. At least one additional P-8 flew from Keflavik in Iceland. A French navy Atlantic 2 patroller staged from Prestwick airport in Scotland.

The Russian exercise seemed to highlight Moscows new approach to undersea warfare. While the war game reportedly was defensive in nature, the same submarines with their long-range cruise missiles could conduct offensive operations from the same waters.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is theauthor of the graphic novelsWar Fix,War Is BoringandMachete Squad.

Image: Royal Air Force Facebook.

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Russian Planes Are Flying Thousands of Miles to Track NATO Submarines - The National Interest

NATO warships unable to collect intel on Russian Navy in the Black Sea: report – AMN Al-Masdar News

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Danzig

The US and its Western European allies regularly send warships to the Black Sea, with other NATO countries bordering the body of water including Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey maintaining a sizable permanent presence in the region.

NATO warships sailing near Russias borders in the Black Sea around the Crimean peninsula are virtually incapable of carrying out any useful reconnaissance thanks to the Russian militarys powerful coastal electronic warfare systems, a source in the regions security apparatus has said.

Commenting on the alliances attempt to penetrate the regions communications and digital networks, the source indicated that this was made impossible as a result of the deployment and real-world testing of the latest electronic warfare countermeasures.

As a result [of these measures] NATO warships turn around and leave, the official said.

According to the source, Russias electronic countermeasures are powerful enough not only to make snooping impossible, but to screw up warships navigation systems, resulting in false readings on their current coordinates.

The US and its NATO allies have substantially increased their reconnaissance patrols along Russias borders in recent years, deploying dozens of warships in the Black Sea and sending hundreds of drones and spy planes on intelligence-gathering missions around Crimea, the home to Russias Black Sea Fleet.

Late last month, the US deployed the USS Ross guided-missile destroyer into the body of water for drills. The Russian Navy assured observers that it had the capabilities to monitor the warships movement. Earlier this month, the Russian military reported detecting 25 foreign aircraft engaged in reconnaissance activities near the countrys borders, with fighters scrambled twice to prevent illegal entry into Russian airspace.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned the US and its NATO allies over their maritime exercises, drone and spy plane flights and bomber drills near Russias borders, warning that such behaviour only serves to stoke tensions. The alliance has so far ignored these objections.

Credit: Sputnik

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NATO warships unable to collect intel on Russian Navy in the Black Sea: report - AMN Al-Masdar News

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