Tag: asked
California EV owners asked to curb charging ahead of travel holiday
US Asked British Spy Agency To Stop Guardian Publishing Snowden Revelations
The late-night call and the British refusal to shut down publication of the leaks was the first of several episodes in which the Snowden affair caused rifts within the Five Eyes signals intelligence coalition, recounted in a new book to be published on Thursday, The Secret History of Five Eyes, by film-maker and investigative journalist Richard Kerbaj. According to Kerbaj, Lobban was aware of the importance of the particularly special relationship between the US and UK intelligence agencies but thought “the proposition of urging a newspaper to spike the article for the sake of the NSA seemed a step too far.” “It was neither the purpose of his agency nor his own to deal with the NSA’s public relations,” Kerbaj writes.
In October 2013, the then prime minister, David Cameron, later threatened the use of injunctions or other “tougher measures” to stop further publication of Snowden’s leaks about the mass collection of phone and internet communications by the NSA and GCHQ. However, the DA-Notice committee, the body which alerts the UK media to the potential damage a story might cause to national security, told the Guardian at the time that nothing it had published had put British lives at risk. In the new book, Kerbaj reports that the US-UK intelligence relationship was further strained when the head of the NSA, Gen Keith Alexander, failed to inform Lobban that the Americans had identified Snowden, a Hawaii-based government contractor, as the source of the stories, leaving the British agency investigating its own ranks in the search for the leaker. GCHQ did not discover Snowden’s identity until he went public in a Guardian interview. “It was a chilling reminder of how important you are, or how important you’re not,” a senior British intelligence insider is quoted as saying in the book. The book also alleges that members of Five Eyes were outraged by the revelations but weren’t prepared to challenge the Americans “out of anxiety that they could be cut off from the flow of intelligence,” reports the Guardian. Only the British representatives openly questioned U.S. practices, although they too “decided to bite their tongues when it came to frustration with their U.S. counterparts…”
Sir Kim Darroch, the former UK national security adviser, is quoted in the book as saying: “The US give us more than we give them so we just have to basically get on with it.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I’m a bridesmaid & I asked the bride to stop one annoying thing weeks before the wedding – her response left me stunned
A BRIDESMAID has shared a request that she made of the bride and the shocking reaction she got weeks before the wedding.
The frustrated friend took to Reddit to explain how she called the bride out for being slow to book things and leaving mundane tasks for the bridal party.
A bridesmaid said that a bride is losing friendships as she plans her big day[/caption]
“She seems to be ending friendships over this,” the user posted on the infamous AITA channel, where people seek advice on life and conflicts.
The user wrote that her friend of 15 years, Jan, got engaged last spring.
The Redditor threw her an engagement party, and even started a text thread for herself, Jan, and another bridesmaid Sarah to help her plan the wedding, agreeing to touch base once per week.
Since then, Jan’s wedding chats have far exceeded the allocated time, the user claims.
Read More on Wedding Drama
“It’s taken over every conversation, and we feel as if we’d like to talk about things going on in our lives too,” the bridesmaid said.
“Sarah doesn’t like weddings and was happy to have space once a week, but with it spilling over, tells Jan that she does not want to talk about the wedding anymore, and needs more of a give and take in their friendship.”
The Redditor said she doesn’t mind talking about the wedding with Jan, as their conversations “flow better” that way, and noted that Sarah and Jan were “working” on the friendship.
It was when the user visited Jan, who lives 1,000 miles away, that things spilled over.
Most read in The Sun
“I visit Jan for my birthday for a week and find that she has booked nothing except the venue and an event planner, which she isn’t utilizing,” she wrote.
“Her wedding is now in 8 months and she wants 150 people there (big event!)
“I also have control issues (ie it gives me anxiety to watch people fail/not do something myself when I could fix it) when it comes to these sorts of things, so I tell her repeatedly that she needs to start looking at vendors if not booking them right out.”
She said that she told Jen that if the pestering became too much, to communicate with her, so she could stop.
The bridesmaid explained how she helped make Jan’s wedding website and an invitation insert while Jan went to appointments.
The bride also had her bridal party stuff envelopes that night.
“While we stuff envelopes later, she just watches all of us doing it while on the phone with her mother and saying how happy she is that it’s getting done.”
Then the story took another turn, when Jan started texting the Redditor things like “can you pick up this for the wedding?”
“I have a chat with her and say that I’m happy to talk and help her plan, but I do not want to do it for her and don’t want to feel as if I’m bullying her into booking vendors,” she wrote.
She went on to tell the bride that if there is no action behind all the talk about the wedding, then it’s not productive and she’d like less of it.
“She acts off for the rest of the trip. Almost a month and a half later, she cannot talk on the phone and can’t seem to carry on a conversation,” the Redditor wrote.
She added in a comment: “If its too much she freezes and I think she froze very early in the process, but still wants to monopolize our time with the wedding while not doing anything for the wedding.”
“She seems to be ending friendships over this, I ask her fiancé if he can assist as when I try to talk to her, I can’t get through.”
Many people reassured the Redditor that she was not in the wrong.
One commenter told the user to wash her hands of the wedding and advise Jan to use an event planner.
“It’s not your responsibility to organize or plan this girls wedding. If she wants a wedding she can grow up and do the work herself,” one said.
“She seems too self-absorbed to recognise how her behaviour is coming across nor would she care. She wants all the attention but none of the effort,” said another.
We asked, you told us: You still want to buy this old OnePlus flagship
What’s the best student laptop? We asked students
Shopping for a laptop can be stressful — doubly stressful if you or your children will be learning online for the first time. Kids of different ages have a range of different laptop use cases and different needs. And as the choices for best laptop and best Chromebook evolve, so do students’ needs. So I spoke to some experts on the subject: students themselves.
My recommendations here are meant to accommodate a variety of preferences and price ranges. But they’re a jumping-off point rather than an exhaustive list: every student is different. Before making a decision, you’ll want to make sure you read reviews and try out devices yourself if you can. I’ll do my best to keep this article up to date with items that are in stock.