Germany Considers Typewriters to Thwart NSA

German politicians are considering a return to manual typewriters for sensitive documents in the wake of the US surveillance scandal.

The head of the Bundestag's parliamentary enquiry into NSA activity in Germany said in an interview with the Morgenmagazin TV programme that he and his colleagues were seriously thinking of ditching email completely.

Asked "Are you considering typewriters" by the interviewer on Monday night, the Christian Democrat politican Patrick Sensburg said: "As a matter of fact, we have – and not electronic models either". "Really?", the surprised interviewer checked. "Yes, no joke", Sensburg responded.

During the ongoing row over alleged US spying operations in Germany, there had been speculation that the CIA may have actively targeted the Bundestag's NSA inquiry committee.

"Unlike other inquiry committees, we are investigating an ongoing situation. Intelligence activities are still going on, they are happening," said Sensburg..

Last year, the Russian government reportedly took similar measures in response to proof of NSA spying, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The federal guard service, a powerful body tasked with protecting Russia's highest-ranking officials, put in an order for 20 Triumph Adler typewriters, which create unique "handwriting", that allows its source to be traced.

According to German media, revelations about digital surveillance have triggered a fundamental rethink about how the government conducts its communications. "Above all, people are trying to stay away from technology whenever they can", wrote Die Welt.

"Those concerned talk less on the phone, prefer to meet in person. More coffees are being drunk and lunches eaten together. Even the walk in the park is increasingly enjoying a revival".

August Supermoon to be Bigger, Brighter

This weekend’s supermoon has grabbed everyone’s attention, but astronomers say that the next moon will be brighter and bigger than this one.

When the moon reaches its ‘perigree’, it appears brighter and larger. Perigree is the point where moon is closest to the Earth on its orbit. Experts say that on August 10, perigree and full moon hour will coincide to create much larger moon.

This year’s third supermoon will shine bright in the sky on September 9; it will be brighter than the normal moon but not as bright as the other two super moons.

On average, supermoons occur after every 13-month and 18 days, and three supermoons in a row are unusual. Last year, three supermoons occur in a row also.

At perigee, a full moon appears 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than usual moon. It is 31,000 miles closer to Earth at this point.

Christian Charities Serve Immigrants on Texas Border

Despite the heated political debate about whether or not to deport the tens of thousands of immigrants who've entered the U.S. illegally through Texas, Christian charities operating in border states say they're serving those in need with a heart of Christ.

"The need is massive," pastor Chad Mason of Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen, told The Christian Post Saturday. "The goal is to do the best we can to serve with the heart of Christ in Matthew 25. We still have lot of work to do."

Mason estimates that last month alone, Catholic Charities and other volunteers in McAllen helped 6,000 Central Americans who've crossed into Texas seeking refugee status for asylum in the United States.

"We started our work in April," said Mason, who explained that he first heard about the spike in people crossing the border from Border Patrol agents in December.

Volunteer organizations are providing food, clothing, water, meals and showers; and the Texas Baptist Men have provided a wash and dry station that has three to four washers and dryers where volunteers are laundering more than 100 towels a day. Volunteers are also collecting quarters to wash people's clothes and blankets for the immigrants, some of whom have lice and scabies.

Part of Mason's work has been to facilitate incoming donations to ensure they meet the most immediate needs, which he told CP are changing daily, as one need is filled another need must met.

For those who want to help and provide donations, Mason said the best place for people to go to is South Texas Refugee Response (SouthTexasRefugees.org), that provides a way for people to volunteer, make a monetary donation, or send items, such as food, clothing and cleaning supplies.

Survey Could Create New S.C. School Standards

The Common Core standards for South Carolina schools could be headed out the door.

The current standards were adopted in 2010, but schools could see a new set of standards in 2015. Those standards could be determined in part by the Education Oversight Committee's online survey.

"I'm hoping that those individuals who've had time to work with the standards," Education Oversight Committee Executive Director Melanie Barton said, "who learn about the standards, will be the first one to fill out that survey."

However, the survey is open to anyone on the Internet including people that don't live in South Carolina. Part of that, according to Barton, points to the fact that the EOC doesn't have the power to choose what goes into the standards.

"We have to approve any changes," Barton said.

The survey's results will be open to the public and will be given to anyone involved in the process of writing the new standards. As of now, only two standards for South Carolina schools actually qualify as common core.

"South Carolina has math and English," SC Policy Council member Dillon Jones said.

Jones has studied extensively on Common Core policy. He said the real question is how much will the state standards differ from the federal Common Core standards since those are connected to federal funding.

"The problem is they still have to be college and career ready," Jones said, "which is dictated by the federal government."

While the state's Common Core may not exactly match the federal government's version, Barton believes something similar may come from what gets put together.

"I think you're going to see something in the middle," Barton said. "That's generally the way the compromise process works."

The survey covers standards for every grade and level of education. Anyone who fills out the survey only has to fill out what matters to them. The survey can be found at this link.

Progressives Turn from Obama to Warren

Populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) got a rock-star reception during a standing-room-only campaign rally here Monday, as hundreds of liberal activists cheered her broadsides against corporate interests and voiced hopes that her presence might shift the political winds in an increasingly Republican state.

The rally on behalf of Senate candidate Natalie Tennant was the latest in a string of recent Warren appearances in red and blue states alike, where Democratic base voters have embraced her fiery message as an envoy to working-class voters frustrated with both Wall Street and the Obama administration.

“Our job is to fight for the families of America,” Warren said, speaking to a packed ballroom at the Clarion Hotel in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. “Stitch up the tax loopholes so that millionaires and billionaires pay at the same tax rate as the people in this room.”

Warren stumped in Kentucky late last month for Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, who, like Tennant, is running for the Senate in a state easily won by Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Later this week, the freshman senator and former Harvard professor will be in Michigan supporting Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters.

Warren also has visited Oregon, Ohio, Washington and Minnesota this year and has made dozens of e-mail solicitations on behalf of Democratic Senate colleagues — an unusually aggressive effort by a senator who has repeatedly denied interest in a presidential campaign. In Kentucky, Warren raised more than $200,000 for Grimes, who is running against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R).

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World Vision: Returning Immigrant Children "Death Sentence"

CRISTIAN OMAR REYES, an 11-year-old sixth grader in the neighborhood of Nueva Suyapa, on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, tells me he has to get out of Honduras soon — “no matter what.”

In March, his father was robbed and murdered by gangs while working as a security guard protecting a pastry truck. His mother used the life insurance payout to hire a smuggler to take her to Florida. She promised to send for him quickly, but she has not.

Three people he knows were murdered this year. Four others were gunned down on a nearby corner in the span of two weeks at the beginning of this year. A girl his age resisted being robbed of $5. She was clubbed over the head and dragged off by two men who cut a hole in her throat, stuffed her panties in it, and left her body in a ravine across the street from Cristian’s house.

“I’m going this year,” he tells me.

I last went to Nueva Suyapa in 2003, to write about another boy, Luis Enrique Motiño Pineda, who had grown up there and left to find his mother in the United States. Children from Central America have been making that journey, often without their parents, for two decades. But lately something has changed, and the predictable flow has turned into an exodus. Three years ago, about 6,800 children were detained by United States immigration authorities and placed in federal custody; this year, as many as 90,000 children are expected to be picked up. Around a quarter come from Honduras — more than from anywhere else.

Children still leave Honduras to reunite with a parent, or for better educational and economic opportunities. But, as I learned when I returned to Nueva Suyapa last month, a vast majority of child migrants are fleeing not poverty, but violence. As a result, what the United States is seeing on its borders now is not an immigration crisis. It is a refugee crisis. 

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Council to Consider Reed Road Zoning Change for Grocery Store

Anderson County Council will consider a zoning change for property on Reed Road near Greenville Street as part of Tuesday meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the historic courthouse downtown. The property in question would be used for a grocerty store. 

Council will also consider enforcement of substandard housing and demolition as part of the meeting. The public is invited.

Full Agenda Here

Senior Vouchers Available for Farmers Market

The Anderson County Senior Citizens Program has received 40 additional Senior Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program.  The Jo Brown Senior Center will open  July 21 from 1:30 for those interested in signing up for the vouchers.. Vouchers will be first come, first served to eligible seniors 60 and older who meet the income guidelines and live in Anderson County. Seniors can only receive one set of vouchers per year. The vouchers are $25.00 worth of checks redeemable only with participating farmers at our local Farmer’s Markets.

For more information contact Kelly Jo Barnwell, Manager of the Anderson County Senior Citizens Program at 864.231.2237

Gates, Buffett, Adelson Support Immigration Reform

Three influential businessmen, who are among America's richest people but differ in their political views, have blasted Congress and come together to push for the passing of an immigration reform bill.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Republican donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who is a friend of President Barack Obama, wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times Friday that if they can overcome their political differences, then why has Congress not been able to.

"The three of us vary in our politics and would differ also in our preferences about the details of an immigration reform bill," they wrote. "But we could without doubt come together to draft a bill acceptable to each of us. We hope that fact holds a lesson: You don't have to agree on everything to cooperate on matters about which you are reasonably close to agreement. It's time that this brand of thinking finds its way to Washington."

It's time for the House to draft and pass a bill that reflects both America's humanity and its self-interest, they said, drawing attention to immigrants' purchasing power and other resources.

"Most Americans believe that our country has a clear and present interest in enacting immigration legislation that is both humane to immigrants living here and a contribution to the well-being of our citizens … We believe it borders on insanity to train intelligent and motivated people in our universities – often subsidizing their education – and then to deport them when they graduate."

Although Bill Gates has supported same-sex marriage, he has embraced Democrats as well as Republicans.

Sheldon is CEO of Las Vegas' Sands and has financially supported Republican candidates. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sheldon, his wife and their companies spent $93 million on Republican and conservative efforts in 2012.

Buffett is close to Democrats and has given over $200,000 to Obama and the Democratic National Committee. Obama called a millionaire tax provision, which could not be implemented, the "Buffett Rule."

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Great White Sharks Settling Along S.C., Ga. Coast

The great white sharks patrolling the Beaufort County, South Carolina and Georgia coasts aren’t just passing tourists.

They’re starting families here in what has become the prime birthing location of the north Atlantic Ocean, according to some marine scientists who study the ancient predators.

Fishermen and scientists are closely watching Mary Lee — a 16-foot, 3,450-pound great white who is pregnant and appears to be headed toward Hilton Head Island, presumably to give birth, said Chris Fischer, founder of OCEARCH, a nonprofit group that tracks and studies the animals.

Full Story Here 

10% of All Iraqi Students in U.S. at Univ. of South Carolina

Of the approximately 1,300 students currently studying at U.S. universities through the programs, the largest share - roughly 10 percent - have enrolled at the University of South Carolina. 

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BMWs Made in Upstate Lead U.S. Auto Exports

In South Carolina’s Blue Ridge foothills, the Hans & Franz Biergarten serves Wiener schnitzel, German spaetzle and a concoction of sauerkraut, cream cheese, bacon and corned beef rolled in bread crumbs and fried.

The Bavarian-themed eatery in Greenville, like the annual Oktoberfest in nearby Greer, are testament to the mark made by BMW in the area since the manufacturer started auto assembly there 20 years ago Friday.

The impact has gone both ways. The factory in Spartanburg, a 10-minute drive from Hans & Franz, is integral to BMW’s efforts to protect profit margins and keep ahead of German luxury-car rivals Audi and Mercedes-Benz. The only auto plant in the state also serves as a model for the industry.

“The plant overcame qualms to show the world that good cars could be made at a reasonable cost in the U.S.,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “That led to a renaissance of carmaking, first in the southern states and then in Detroit itself.”

Pushed by spiraling energy costs and tightening labor rules in Germany, Munich-based BMW will have poured $7.3 billion into the site once the latest expansion is completed in two years. That investment, more than seven times the amount Volkswagen spent on a new plant in Tennessee, will mean more BMWs are made in South Carolina than anywhere else.

The factory, which will employ 8,800 people by 2016, is already the biggest exporter of U.S.-made cars to markets outside North America, beating any facility run by General Motors, Ford or Chrysler as well as the entire state of Michigan.

That lead is likely to grow. BMW plans to increase capacity in Spartanburg 50 percent to as many as 450,000 cars a year. Almost all of BMW’s sport utility vehicles, including the new top-of-the-line X7, are made there, and 70 percent are exported to more than 140 countries from what was BMW’s first test of full-scale auto production outside Germany.

Rising costs in Germany, along with the expense of developing cleaner cars, make South Carolina an attractive site. Auto workers in the United States are about 47 percent cheaper to employ than their counterparts in Germany, according to data from the Berlin-based VDA auto lobby.

Still, the South Carolina factory was a big gamble in the early 1990s, when BMW was less than one-third its current size. Known for quality and precision, the German carmaker needed to ensure its standards were met by workers new to making autos.

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Zais Plans to Wipe Common Core from S.C.

Lawmakers who wanted to see Common Core disappear from S.C. classrooms could not kill the education standards this spring. But lame-duck state schools Superintendent Mick Zais says he has a plan to make Common Core a thing of the past in South Carolina.

The Richland Republican, whose term ends when a new superintendent takes office in January, said he will instruct a group of educators tasked with revising the state’s K-12 education standards to ignore Common Core.

Zais’ move — to shape what S.C. school children should know and be able to do in different grades, long after Zais has left office — has the support of some Common Core opponents and at least one candidate to succeed him.

But some state leaders, including the chairmen of the two education boards that must approve any new standards, said throwing Common Core out of the process of writing new standards violates state law.

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