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Obama confirms IRS director
sacked for political targeting


President Barack Obama says Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has asked for and received the resignation of the acting director of the Internal Revenue Service.  The tax collecting agency was found to have been improperly targeting conservative groups.

The president spoke Wednesday after meeting with Lew and his top deputy to review a report from the Treasury Department inspector general.  The report found that the IRS singled out for scrutiny conservative groups which were seeking tax-exempt status.

Top IRS officials acknowledged the abuses earlier this week and apologized.

Obama said new leadership is needed in the agency.

“Today, Secretary Lew took the first step by requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS," said Obama. "Because given the controversy surrounding this audit, it is important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward.”

Obama, who some critics say has not responded quickly or strongly enough, said he is angry about the incident.

“I have reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable.  It is inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," said Obama.

The president said he has directed Secretary Lew to immediately put in place the safeguards the inspector general has proposed to prevent any further abuses.

He also said his administration will work with Congress to investigate and ensure that actions of this kind are never repeated.

“Democrats and Republicans owe it to the American people to treat that authority with the responsibility it deserves, and in a way that does not smack of politics and partisan agendas," he said.

Earlier Wednesday, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, a Republican, alleged that crimes were committed in the matter.

“My question is not about who is going to resign," said Boehner. "My question is, who is going to jail over this scandal?”

Obama promised to take reporters’ questions on the matter today at a news conference after his White House meeting with visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The president is also dealing with two other controversies, the administration’s response to last year’s deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, and the government seizure of Associated Press phone records in a leak investigation.


White House releases emails
relating to Benghazi attack


President Barack Obama moved late Wednesday to head off further potential political damage from the controversy over his administration's response to last year's terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya.

The White House released 100 pages of emails detailing intense debate among administration officials and the CIA about how to word public talking points after the attack in Benghazi.

Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the attack.

The emails were originally requested by Republican lawmakers investigating the response to the Benghazi attacks.  Until Wednesday, the White House had declined to make them public, allowing lawmakers only to review them.

The decision to release the emails was an effort to calm the furor over the Benghazi issue, which with other controversies threatens to slow or damage Obama's second-term agenda.

Republicans accused the administration of mishandling security and the response to the attack.  They asserted that mentions of prior terrorist threats, including by groups linked to al-Qaida, were removed for political reasons.

The emails confirm what had been reported before by media organizations: that then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland asked that a reference to an al-Qaida linked group, Ansar al-Sharia, be removed.

In the email she expresses concern that the content could be used by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not heading CIA warnings.

One former White House official, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, referred to massive disinformation at the time in the U.S. Congress.

Final talking points eliminated CIA references to Ansar al-Sharia, and to CIA warnings about extremist threats linked to al-Qaida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.

Also eliminated was a reference to indications that Islamic extremists participated in the violent demonstrations in Benghazi.

Earlier Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterated President Obama's remark earlier this week that the Republican investigation was a political sideshow.

"It is absolutely political.  And we have in the course of this been focused on what isn’t political and what is essential, which is the fact that four Americans were killed and we need to find those who are responsible and bring them to justice. Secondly, we need to take action to ensure that the inadequate security that clearly existed at the time, because we could not protect those four Americans, be looked at and addressed so that it doesn't happen again," Carney said.

Release of the emails does not end the Benghazi controversy, as Republicans press for additional documents.

Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican, welcomed the email release but said there is still much more for Americans to learn about the administration's response to the Benghazi attack.


Four British hackers face
sentencing for online turmoil


Four British hackers who took part in 2011 cyber-attacks on targets ranging from the CIA to Sony were audacious, arrogant men whose motivation was anarchic self-amusement', a court heard on Wednesday.
 
The men, who have pleaded guilty to a variety of offenses, were members of the hacking collective LulzSec that caused millions of dollars of damage to corporate and government computer networks during an online crime spree they boasted about on Twitter.
 
“They are at the cutting edge of a contemporary, emerging species of international criminal offending known as cyber crime,'' prosecutor Sandip Patel told a London court at the start of the men's sentencing hearing.
 
“LulzSec saw themselves as latter-day pirates,'' he said.
 
The four men being sentenced were Ryan Cleary, 21; Ryan Ackroyd, 26; Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, and Jake Davis, 20. In their hacker days, they hid their identities behind the online monikers ViraL, Kayla, tFlow and Topiary.
 
“The real-life identities of the hackers were aggressively concealed. Similar protection did not extend to their victims,'' Patel said.
 
Among other attacks, the men hacked into Pentagon computers, crashed the CIA's Web site, stole millions of items of private individuals' data such as passwords and user names from companies including Fox or Sony and posted them online on sites such as Pirate Bay.
 
Their exploits, as they described them, also included hacking into News International's computer system to post a fake story, purporting to be from the Sun tabloid, announcing that owner Rupert Murdoch had committed suicide.
 
They also attacked the U.S. public broadcaster PBS's Web site, redirecting users to a fake news story reporting that the late rapper Tupac Shakur was alive.
 
In addition to the hacking offenses to which all four have pleaded guilty, Cleary alone has pleaded guilty to charges of downloading pornographic images of babies and children.
 
Patel said the four men's activities were as much about self-promotion as they were about hacking, describing them as adept at getting the attention of media and of hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and motivated by anarchic self-amusement.
 
He said LulzSec was a splinter group that had evolved out of Anonymous, a bigger, shapeless hacktivist collective, but that LulzSec lacked the libertarian political agenda of Anonymous.
 
He said the LulzSec slogan was “laughing at your security since 2011'' and that a press release in August 2011 had said they had acted in the way they had “just because we could''.
 
The name LulzSec is a combination of “lulz,'' a distortion of the commonly used “LOL'' or “laugh out loud'', and security.
 
The alleged ringleader of LulzSec was U.S.-based Hector Xavier Monsegur, known as Sabu, who was arrested in June 2011 but agreed to cooperate, maintaining his online persona for a time and leading the FBI to other members of the group.
 
Patel said the core members of LulzSec were Monsegur, Ackroyd, Al-Bassam and Davis. He said Cleary was not a core member but wanted to be.
 
Monsegur is awaiting sentencing in the United States, while a 24-year-old IT worker was arrested in Australia in April in connection with LulzSec.

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Gamera II pilot Henry Enerson hovers just short of the three-meter altitude required in the competition.

University students seek prize
for human-powered helicopter


Students at the University of Maryland want to make aviation history by building the world's first human-powered helicopter.

In 1980, the American Helicopter Society announced an award for the first person to accomplish such a feat.

The $250,000 Sikorsky Prize would go to a vehicle that could hover for 60 seconds, not stray beyond a three-meter-square area, and at some point in the flight reach an altitude of three meters.

The prize has gone unclaimed for 33 years, but the student engineers are confident they can bring it home.

What seemed impossible when William Staruk began his Ph.D. studies at the University of Maryland three years ago, is now within reach. He's part of a 50-member team developing a flyer called the Gamera II.

“It has flown for 60 seconds and on a different flight gone to an altitude of nine feet [2.7 meters]." Staruk said. "We’re hoping now to combine both of those into a single flight, get that little bit of extra altitude we need and keep the helicopter controlled and stable so that we can take home the $250,000 prize.”

The volunteers are divided into the rotor, cockpit, transmission and stability working groups.  Weight is a major concern for all of them. The 36-kilogram craft is shaped like a giant x, with 21-meter long arms that look like railroad trusses.

“Everything on the helicopter that is black is carbon fiber," Staruk said. "The blades you see are largely white. That’s insulation foam. It’s a lightweight material that we can use to hold the shape of our blades. Those blades are covered in a skin that is Mylar. It is a clear plastic that forms the surface of the wings. ”

Staruk says unlike a normal helicopter with blades on the top and tail, the 4 rotors on the Gamera II, each with two blades at the tips of each cross-piece, are close to the ground. 

“So, by keeping our blades low they actually take less power to run," he said. "As we climb, it gets harder and harder for the pilot. That's what limits our altitude.”

The pilot sits suspended under the center of the X, with his feet clipped into bike-like pedals and his hands on a crank. A lightweight cord runs from the wheels spun by the pedals, through the craft, to the rotors.

“As the pilot pedals, it reels in the string just like reeling in a fish," Staruk said. "When the pilot cranks his hands and feet, the rotors all start spinning at the same speed and that lifts us into the air.”

Colin Gore is a student in materials science and knew little about helicopters before joining the team. But he is thin, 54.4 kilograms, and strong, which made him the perfect test pilot.

“I'm a pretty slim guy, but I’ve got a lot of muscle compared to the rest of my body," Gore said. "I feel like I've got a high profile but probably, I’ve got the easiest job of all of them, just dump power into it and give them the performance that they deserve.”

The Gamera II team plans to make another attempt at the Sikorsky Prize within two months.


U.S. Navy launches first drone
from the deck of a carrier


The U.S. Navy made aviation history Tuesday by launching an unmanned jet off an aircraft carrier for the first time, taking an important step toward expanded use of drones by the American military with an eye on possible rivals like China and Iran.
 
The bat-winged X-47B stealth drone roared off the "USS George H.W. Bush" near the coast of Virginia and flew a series of pre-programmed maneuvers around the ship before veering away toward a Naval air station in Maryland where it was scheduled to land.
 
“This is really a red-letter day. May 14 we all saw history happen” said Rear Admiral Ted Branch, the Atlantic naval air commander. “It's a marker ... between naval aviation as we've known it and the future of naval aviation with the launch of the X-47B.”
 
Because of its stealth potential and a range nearly twice that of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the X-47B and its successors are seen as a potential answer to the threat posed by medium-range anti-ship missiles developed by China and Iran, defense analysts said.
 
The missiles and other so-called anti-access, area-denial weapons would force U.S. aircraft carriers to operate far enough from shore that piloted aircraft would have to undergo refueling to carry out their missions, leaving them vulnerable to attack.
 
But with a range of 2,000 nautical miles, an unmanned jet like the X-47B could give the Navy both a long-range strike and reconnaissance capability.
 
“That makes it strategically very important,” said Anthony Cordesman, a senior defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He described the drone as “essentially a really long-range stealth system.”
 
“As we rebalance to the Pacific, the Navy is going to increasingly need range,” said Brien Alkire, a senior researcher at RAND's Project Air Force. “That's something an unmanned system can bring them that they don't really have right now and give them the ability to operate from a good standoff range.
 
The X-47B, one of only two demonstrator models made by Northrop Grumman Corp, carries the equivalent of two precision-guided bombs. It was catapulted from the aircraft carrier on Tuesday using the same sling-shot system that sends manned aircraft aloft.
 
It is scheduled to undergo two weeks of testing aboard the carrier leading up to a landing on the ship, in which a plane's tailhook grabs a wire that will slow it and keep it from plunging overboard.
 
While the carrier takeoff represented a significant milestone, defense analysts are focused on the next step, when the Navy attempts to use what has been learned with the X-47B to develop an unmanned aircraft for actual operations.
 
“The X-47B is a great story,” said Mark Gunzinger, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think-tank. “It's a milestone and a step forward for unmanned, carrier-based aviation. But I think the real story is what's next. How do we operationalize this capability?”
 
Future variants of the drone could probably be designed for full-spectrum broadband stealth, which means it would be hard for radar to locate it, analysts said. That level of stealth would be one of the drone's major defenses.
 
U.S. drones currently in use in places like Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, like the Predator and Reaper, are not up against any air defenses and are not stealthy aircraft.
 
Because of its long range and the Navy's need to have it take off and land, day and night, from an aircraft carrier, the X-47B has been designed to operate with far greater autonomy than the remotely piloted aircraft currently in use.
 
That has raised concerns among some organizations worried about the heavy U.S. reliance on drones in warfare and the rising use of autonomous robots by the American military.
 
Human Rights Watch, in a report launching its recent campaign against “killer robots,” cited the X-47B as one of several weapons that represent a transition toward development of fully autonomous arms that require little human intervention.
 
A follow-on program, known as the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System, or UCLASS, is expected to build on what was learned with the X-47B to produce operational aircraft.
 
An initial request for design proposals is expected to be issued by the Navy some time this month. Other aircraft makers, from Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co to General Atomics - are expected to compete to participate.

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NASA says its Kepler space telescope, which has been leading the search for Earth-like planets throughout the universe, has been crippled by the failure of one of the mechanical reaction wheels that helps keep it pointed.

The U.S space agency announced Wednesday that unless the reaction wheel's operation can be restored, or another way found to orient the spacecraft, Kepler's planet-hunting efforts will have come to a premature end.

Kepler was launched in 2009 on a seven-year mission to determine how many stars beyond this solar system are likely to host earth-like planets in habitable orbits. The space telescope has been carrying out a survey of hundreds of thousands of stars in one region of space looking for tell-tale blinks in starlight that signal the transit of an orbiting planet. So far, Kepler has identified 132 exoplanets and spotted 2,740 candidates.

NASA officials say they will continue trying to fix the faulty spacecraft, and will not give up on Kepler until the space telescope can no longer perform useful science.

Kepler was launched with four reaction wheels, and needs at least three of the critical positioning devices to keep its telescopic instruments precisely aimed at distant stars. One failed last year, and the wheel that failed Wednesday began showing signs of abnormal friction several months ago.

NASA engineers tried shutting down the space telescope for two weeks, in the hope that lubricants might redistribute on the wheel and solve the problem. But the friction was still there when they resumed operations. Until now, the problem had not interfered with telescope operations.


Eurozone economy shrinks
to continue its recession


The Eurozone economy shrank more than expected in 2013, falling two tenths of one percent between January and March.  The new data means the 17-nation currency bloc has now been in recession for six consecutive quarters, longer even than the deep recession that followed the global financial crisis of 2008.

Of the 17 nations that make up the common currency bloc, nine countries are now in recession.

While not as steep as the recession that came after the 2008 financial crisis, Commerzbank chief economist Jorg Kramer says this has been the longest.

“Usually a recession lasts only two, three, maximum four quarters. But six quarters is a lot. And to make the thing worse, the forward looking indicators such as the euro zone PMI, a gauge of manufacturing activity, these indicators have declined two months in a row.  Therefore we really have a problem in the euro zone,” Kramer said.

Senior economist Carsten Brzeski says in France, Europe's second largest economy, what is now a double dip contraction for the French economy spells more trouble.

“We do see some very vague light at the end of the tunnel in Spain, in Greece, because there we do see that these structural reforms are working.  In France, nothing has happened so far," Brzeski said.

Even Europe's powerhouse economy, Germany, just barely avoided recession, growing only one tenth of 1 percent between January and March this year.

With an overall population of more than half a billion people, the European Union is currently the world's largest export market.