Freedom of Information Act

US spy agency can keep mum on Google ties: court

The top-secret US National Security Agency is not required to reveal any deal it may have with Google to help protect against cyber attacks, an appeals court ruled Friday.

The US Court of Appeals in Washington upheld a lower court decision that said the NSA need not confirm or deny any relationship with Google, because its governing statutes allow it keep such information secret.

The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest group, which said the public has a right to know about any spying on citizens.

The appeals court agreed that the NSA can reject the request, and does not even have to confirm whether it has any arrangement with the Internet giant.
"Any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA's implementation of its information assurance mission," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the appeals opinion.
The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a formal request to make public documents related to the dealings, and said much of the information had already been in news media.
The request stemmed from a January 2010 cyber attack on Google that primarily targeted the Gmail email accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
According to the Google blog, the Internet group's chief legal officer David Drummond stated that the firm was notifying other companies that may have been targeted and was also working with the relevant US authorities.
The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reported that Google had contacted the NSA immediately following the attack.
According to news reports, the NSA agreed to help Google analyze the attacks in a bid to better protect the California-based search company and its users from future intrusions.
The reported alliance would seek to allow the spy agency to evaluate Google's hardware and software vulnerabilities, as well as estimate the sophistication of its adversary in order to help the firm understand whether it has the right defenses in place.
Privacy advocates already critical of Google policies regarding saving user data and targeting ads to match online behavior patterns fear that an alliance with the spy network could put private information at risk.

No need for war to 'destroy' Israel: Ahmadinejad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that war was not essential to achieve the destruction of Israel, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported.

"The destruction of the Zionist regime does not necessitate making war," he said in a speech during a tour of northeast Iran.
"If countries of the region cut ties with the Zionists and give them dirty looks, it will spell the end of this puppet regime," said the hardline Iranian leader.
Ahmadinejad, who is known for making fiery speeches against Iran's archfoe Israel, has dubbed the Jewish state a "cancerous tumor" which is destined to be eliminated from the region.
The president on Saturday also mocked Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf over their huge oil contracts with the West, especially Israel's US ally.
"If the leaders of these countries had some brains, they would not sell their petrol just to buy 60 billion dollars worth of arms," he said.

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO

One of Facebook’s co-founders has defriended the United States.
Eduardo Saverin has decided to forgo his U.S. citizenship ahead of the company’s multibillion-dollar public offering next week, according to IRS records posted online.
Saverin will become a citizen of Singapore, where he has lived for the last three years.
Facebook’s IPO will send an estimated $3.8 billion into Saverin’s pockets, Bloomberg News reports.
Giving up U.S. citizenship will save Saverin a fortune in taxes, since Singapore doesn’t have a capital-gains tax.
Still, the 30-year-old billionaire won’t be off the hook entirely. Singapore taxes some foreign-sourced income, and Saverin will also be slapped with an “exit tax” by the U.S. on his shares, whether or not he sells them.
Saverin helped Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook in 2004 at Harvard, and was named the company’s chief financial officer. The two friends had a fallingout as the startup became a worldwide success. Saverin was eventually frozen out and left with only about 4% of the company, according to various reports.
Saverin, born in Brazil, became a U.S. citizen in 1998. He has been living for the last three years in Singapore, where he drives a Bentley, owns a penthouse and rubs elbows with the rich and famous, The Wall Street Journal reports.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” a spokesman for Saverin told Bloomberg News.
The spokesman said he made the decision late last year.
Saverin’s name appeared on a quarterly IRS report published April 30 by the U.S. Office of the Federal Register listing all the Americans who have renounced citizenship.
The ousted CFO won the right to be acknowledged as a co-founder in a 2009 lawsuit filed against Zuckerberg, the terms of which were not disclosed.
The pairs friendship and fallout was immortalized in “ The Social Network,” which tells the story of Facebook’s rise to fame.
Facebook’s IPO on May 18 is valued at as high as $96 billion, the largest for any Internet company in history.

ਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਮਹੇੜੂ ਅਲਬਰਟਾ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਸਨਮਾਨਿਤ

ਕੈਲਗਰੀ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਫਸਰ ਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਮਹੇੜੂ ਨੂੰ ਮੰਤਰੀ ਜੌਨਾਥਨ ਡੈਨਿਸ ਅਲਬਰਟਾ 
ਸਰਕਾਰ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਪ੍ਰਸੰਸਾ ਪੱਤਰ ਦੇ ਕੇ ਸਨਮਾਨਿਤ ਕਰਦੇ ਹੋਏ।

ਕੈਲਗਰੀ, 12 ਮਈ - ਅਲਬਰਟਾ ਕਾਨੂੰਨ ਮੰਤਰਾਲੇ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਕੈਲਗਰੀ ਵਿਖੇ ਕਰਵਾਏ 21ਵੇਂ ਸਾਲਾਨਾ ਜੁਰਮ ਰੋਕੂ ਸਮਾਗਮ ਵਿਚ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਮੂਲ ਦੇ ਕੈਲਗਰੀ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਫਸਰ ਸ: ਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਮਹੇੜੂ ਨੂੰ ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀਆਂ ਜੁਰਮ ਰੋਕਣ ਲਈ ਕੀਤੀਆਂ ਕੋਸ਼ਿਸ਼ਾਂ ਕਰਕੇ ਅਲਬਰਟਾ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਕਾਨੂੰਨ ਮੰਤਰੀ ਜੌਨਾਥਨ ਡੈਨਿਸ ਵੱਲੋਂ ਪ੍ਰਸੰਸਾ ਪੱਤਰ ਦੇ ਕੇ ਸਨਮਾਨਿਤ ਕੀਤਾ। ਇਸ ਸਮੇਂ ਸਮਾਗਮ ਨੂੰ ਸੰਬੋਧਨ ਕਰਦਿਆਂ ਮੰਤਰੀ ਡੈਨਿਸ ਨੇ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਜਿਸ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਇਸ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਫਸਰ ਨੇ ਜੁਰਮ ਨੂੰ ਰੋਕਣ, ਘਰੇਲੂ ਝਗੜਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਰੋਕਣ, ਅੱਤਿਆਚਾਰ, ਬਜ਼ੁਰਗਾਂ ਵਿਰੁੱਧ ਹੋਣ ਵਾਲੇ ਜੁਰਮ ਅਤੇ ਬੇਈਮਾਨੀ ਕਰਨ ਵਾਲੇ ਅਨਸਰਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਸੁਚੇਤ ਕਰਨ ਵਾਸਤੇ ਕੀਤੇ ਉਪਰਾਲਿਆਂ ਲਈ ਇਹ ਸਨਮਾਨ ਅਲਬਰਟਾ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਨੇ ਇਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਹੈ। ਉਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਹੋਰ ਵੀ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਫਸਰ ਇਸੇ ਤਰ੍ਹਾਂ ਚੰਗੀਆਂ ਸੇਵਾਵਾਂ ਨਿਭਾਉਣ। ਇਥੇ ਇਹ ਦੱਸਣਯੋਗ ਹੈ ਕਿ ਪੁਲਿਸ ਅਫਸਰ ਚਰਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ ਮਹੇੜੂ ਦਾ ਪੰਜਾਬ ਅੰਦਰ ਪਿੰਡ ਮਿਰਜ਼ਾਪੁਰ ( ਨੇੜੇ ਬੁੱਲੋਵਾਲ) ਜ਼ਿਲ੍ਹਾ ਹੁਸ਼ਿਆਰਪੁਰ ਹੈ।

Midair collision kills 5 in Saskatchewan

Debris remains a plane, collided in mid-air with another, on May 12 near St. Brieux, Saskatchewan

Saskatoon - Two private planes carrying five people collided northeast of Saskatoon on Saturday, killing everyone on board, RCMP have confirmed.

Officers from the RCMP's Wakaw detachment said they were called at 8:50 a.m. CST to investigate a report of a plane crash.
In Regina, Cpl. Rob King told reporters later that officers were responding to the first 911 call about a plane crash in the area when they came across debris from another plane and confirmed with air traffic officials that two planes had dropped from radar.
"Our underwater recovery team is on the scene … trying to recover the bodies from the planes," King said, adding Transport Canada officials were expected to arrive on scene Sunday.
One of the aircraft was a Piper PA-28, which had been flying to St. Brieux from Calgary; the other plane was a Lake Buccaneer amphibious plane, according to Capt. Robert Landriault at the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ont.
RCMP said the Piper had three people aboard, two men and a young male.
The amphibious plane was flying to La Ronge, in Saskatchewan's north, from Regina. That plane had two people on board, an adult male and an adult female.
RCMP said they have contacted family members, but said they did not yet have permission to release any names of the deceased.