NATO Will Set Up Commands in Nervous Eastern Europe

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BRUSSELS NATO defense ministers are expected to agree next week to set up command units, staffed with national and NATO soldiers, in six Eastern European allies as part of a new strategy in response to the Ukraine crisis, NATO's chief said on Friday.

Creating the units in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the three Baltic countries is one of the most concrete steps NATO has taken to show that the alliance will protect its eastern allies, some of which are nervous about Russian intentions following Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denied that the creation of the units could be considered provocative by Russia. "It is completely within all our international obligations and what we are doing is defensive and it is proportionate," he told Reuters in an interview.

The posting of small numbers of NATO soldiers at existing bases in eastern European countries falls short of requests by Poland to have a large NATO base on its soil but creates a symbolic NATO presence and would help the alliance to reinforce the countries rapidly in a crisis.

A NATO diplomat said the units were expected to consist of 40-50 people, split roughly equally between soldiers from the host nation and those from other NATO allies. The units will organize exercises and plan for NATO reinforcement if required.

First published January 30 2015, 9:13 AM

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NATO Will Set Up Commands in Nervous Eastern Europe

NATO Deputy Secretary General on Planned Training Center in Georgia

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Despite Russias very negative reaction towards planned joint Georgia-NATO training center, the alliance is firm in resolve to go ahead with this plan and have the facility in Georgia before the end of this year, NATO Deputy Secretary General, Alexander Vershbow, said in Tbilisi.

Setting up of a joint training and evaluation center in Georgia is part of that substantial package, offered to Georgia by NATO at its summit in Wales in September.

During his two-day visit to Georgia, the NATO deputy secretary general also toured the Vaziani training range outside Tbilisi on January 30, which is one of the potential locations for the planned joint training center. Vershbow said that Vaziani is one of the strong candidates, but there are some other options as well. An assessment team from NATO is expected to visit Georgia tentatively in February that will look into different possibilities in order to pick the location for the planned training and evaluation center, he said.

Speaking to an audience at the Tbilisi-based think-tank, Atlantic Council of Georgia, Vershbow said that NATO and Georgia have yet to flesh out the goals and purposes of the center.

He said that it has to be determined whether the focus will be primarily on command post exercises or there will also be capacities for field exercises with participation of troops from multiple countries. The hope is that it will be the latter, Vershbow said.

He also said that the centre could host live and simulated trainings and certification for allied and partner military units, in particular for units committed to the NATO Response Force, and it could also host exercises and training in support of NATOs Connected Forces initiative.

Vershbow said that the training and evaluation center will be the most visible element of a NATO presence in Georgia and also is the most visible element of the substantial package of cooperation agreed at the Wales summit.

He also said that the substantial package of cooperation contains all the tools necessary for Georgia to meet its membership aspirations.

Its implementation, Vershbow said, requires important political and financial commitments from both NATO and Georgia.

But we have already made good progress in finding the necessary resources, he said, adding that the work is expected to be further advanced when NATO and Georgian defense ministers meet in the NATO-Georgia Commission in Brussels on February 5.

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NATO Deputy Secretary General on Planned Training Center in Georgia

Former Pennsylvania First Lady Midge Rendell Takes On New Role

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January 31, 2015 11:31 AM

(Judge Marjorie Rendell, at the National Constitution Center, during a break in a schoolteachers forum on the First Amendment. Photo by Pat Loeb)

Pat Loeb's radio experience has the makings of a country song:s...

By Pat Loeb

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Pennsylvanias former First Lady, Judge Marjorie Rendell, is giving up her full-time seat on the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals but shes hardly retiring.

Judge Rendell says she may be able to have a greater impact in her new role. Shell be a senior judge, with 80 percent of a full-time caseload, and shell be doing more work at the Rendell Center for Citizenship and Civics, an outgrowth of her focus as First Lady. She started the center just over a year ago with her husband, former governor Ed Rendell, from whom she is separated. Its currently piloting a fourth-grade civics curriculum and working with Annenberg on high school civics and a project on judicial independence.

Im looking forward to working with Annenberg to have impact, Rendell says. In fact, Im wondering whether that aspect of my life might have more impact than even what Ive been doing so far.

But giving up her seat now assures that President Obama will appoint her successor, a factor that she says figured into the timing of her decision.

Hes done a pretty good job, Rendell says. Were very fortunate that we have three new judges that Obama has picked, and our senators have been fabulous in agreeing on the nominees, because that can be an issue. So Im hopeful that my successor would be chosen fairly promptly.

Rendell will lose her vote on en banc cases, but she says shell still have a voice on the court where she served for 21 years.

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Former Pennsylvania First Lady Midge Rendell Takes On New Role

Feds Caught the Silk Road Mastermind With… A Google Search

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"Dread Pirate Roberts," the mastermind behind the online drug market Silk Road, seemed like a smart dude. He amassed a multimillion dollar fortune in drug money in just a few years! And he did it using the deep web and cryptocurrency usually associated with sophisticated cybercrime. But if 30-year-old self-styled "Robert Pattinson lookalike" Ross Ulbricht is found guilty of being the Dread Pirate Roberts, he will have revealed his identity in a remarkably unsophisticated way. A federal agent says he pinned the Silk Road on Ulbricht with a simple Google search.

In court on Thursday, special agent Gary Alford described how he googled the Silk Road's original Tor browser address and looked at the earliest results, Motherboard reported today. You can't access Tor websites through Google, but you can see when people discussed their URLs. This led him to a post in a Bitcoin forum by someone called "altoid" trying to attract people to the Silk Road back when it was starting out. Alford looked through the posts by "altoid" and saw that rossulbricht@gmail.com, Ulbricht's personal email address, turned up in his posts. He took screenshots of the damning search.

If the prosecution's evidence is true, Ulbricht sucked SO BAD at keeping his identity a secret. He got tied to the site using literally the most basic Google search imaginable. And he left a veritable treasure trove of evidence, including a friggin diary of his internal turmoil regarding his burgeoning drug empire, on his computer.

The Silk Road trial has covered a broad swath of internet culture, with the Tor Browser, emoticons, Bitcoin, and now Google search playing significant roles in the proceedings.

And screenshots could have an important legacy in this case. Alford presented the screenshots of his Google search as evidence, which is noteworthy because screenshots are on shaky ground as legitimate evidencesomething Ulbricht's defense will surely pounce on. In United States v. Vayner last year, a court ruled that screenshots couldn't be used as evidence, since it's so easy to alter images or just outright fake them. Unless Alford and the prosecution have a way to verify that they're unaltered, the defense may try to invalidate this connection in the eyes of the jury.

If the screenshots are taken as legitimate and Ulbricht gets convicted partly because of the screenshot evidence, it'll a precedent for how screenshots are treated in courtrooms in the future. So this Google search isn't just a potential smoking gun; it could have lasting repercussions on the legal system. [Motherboard]

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Feds Caught the Silk Road Mastermind With... A Google Search

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Understanding What is Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency – It’s More than You Think (The Blockchain) – Video

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Understanding What is Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency - It's More than You Think (The Blockchain) - Video