Social Media: CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter grilled on content moderation in US Senate hearing

The leaders of Twitter, Google, and Facebook have faced strong criticism from US senators over content moderation in a high-profile hearing.

Read more at: CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter grilled on content moderation in US Senate hearing | Euronews

Red Cross: in dire need of accountability

Red Cross financial reporting not adding up.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7511080

USA: CIA director announces overhaul of spy agency - by Ken Delanian

Director John Brennan has ordered a sweeping reorganization of the CIA, an overhaul designed to make its leaders more accountable and close espionage gaps amid widespread concerns about the spy agency’s limited insights into a series of major global developments.

Brennan announced the restructuring to the CIA workforce on Friday, including a new directorate devoted to boosting the CIA’s computer hacking skills. He said the move comes after nine outside experts spent three months analyzing the agency’s management structure, including what deputy CIA director David Cohen called “pain points,” organizational areas where the CIA’s bureaucracy does not work efficiently.

Briefing reporters with Cohen at CIA headquarters this week, Brennan said the changes are necessary to address intelligence gaps that the CIA is not covering. He lamented that there is often no single person he can hold accountable for the spying mission in any given part of the world.

“There are a lot of areas that I would like to have better insight to, better information about, better access to,” Brennan said. “Safe havens, denied areas. Whether because we don’t even have a diplomatic presence in a country, or because there are parts of countries that have been overrun and taken over by terrorist groups and others.”

The changes come against a backdrop of evidence that the CIA’s focus on hunting and killing terrorists since the Sept. 11 attacks has led to an erosion of the espionage and analytic capabilities the agency built during the Cold War. The CIA, along with other U.S. intelligence agencies, wrongly assessed the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002 and failed to anticipate the rapid collapse of Middle East governments during the Arab Spring in 2011, among other shortcomings.

The agency’s greatest public success of recent years – the 10-year effort to locate and kill Osama bin Laden in 2011 – may have taken longer than it should have, according to evidence made public in the recent Senate report on CIA interrogations. Internal CIA surveys have cited bad management and bureaucratic frustration as factors in driving talent away from the agency.

Under Brennan’s reorganization, the CIA would break down the wall between the operations and analytical arms, a system that typically has required the case officers who recruit spies and run covert operations to work for different bosses, in different offices, than analysts who interpret the intelligence and write briefing papers for the president and other policymakers.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article12878321.html#storylink=cpy

Read more: CIA director announces overhaul of spy agency | Miami Herald Miami Herald

E.U. Summit: Up All Night, But Consensus Finally Reached

When it comes to confronting the crisis threatening the euro’s very existence, nothing ever seems to come easy for European Union leaders—even a mutually sought agreement. That was demonstrated Friday at the E.U. summit in Brussels, where it took all-night haggling to approve growth stimulus measures that Italy and Spain had blocked until they obtained a softening of rules on bailouts that they’re likely to eventually seek. Only in the madness of the euro crisis can taking yourself hostage become an effective bargaining tool.

Yet, despite what were described as tense and grinding negotiations, decisions announced early Friday morning appear to represent important steps towards the survival of the embattled euro zone—and in both the short- and long-term context of the crisis. “(We took) a very ambitious decision that shows once again the commitment of the member states,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters. “The irreversibility of the euro… will be recognized by all.”


At least once they wake up in the afternoon. Before the sleep-deprived leaders of the 17-member euro group broke their huddle at around 5 a.m. Friday, they adopted three significant concrete measures to confront the major factors in the crisis. The first involves allowing E.U. bailout funds to be paid directly to swamped euro-zone banks, rather than funneled through national governments. The old structure—designed to hold governments accountable for E.U. taxpayer rescue money—had the consequence of increasing the already crushing debt loads recipients were struggling to simultaneously finance and reduce. The change had been a demand Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called vital in light of Spain’s pending $125 billion bank bailout request.

Read more: E.U. Summit: Up All Night, But Consensus Finally Reached | World | TIME.com