US SENATE VOTES TO BAN KASPERSKY LAB PRODUCTS.

The logo of the anti-virus firm Kaspersky Lab is seen at its headquarters in Moscow, Russia September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin.

WASHINGTON (Reuters):

The U.S. Senate on Monday voted to ban Moscow-based cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab’s products from use by the federal government, citing concerns the company may be a pawn of the Kremlin and poses a national security risk.

The vote is the latest in a series of setbacks in the United States for Kaspersky Lab, a 20-year-old anti-virus company that reaches 400 million customers globally and has vigorously denied that it conducts espionage on behalf of the Russian government.

The vote, which was included as an amendment to an annual defense policy spending bill approved on Monday by the Senate, seeks to codify and expand a decision by the Trump administration last week to order civilian government agencies to purge from their networks any Kaspersky Lab products.

U.S. lawmakers and intelligence officials have grown more alarmed about Moscow’s capabilities to conduct cyber espionage following a 2016 presidential contest that was marred by allegations of Russian interference.

Co-founder and chief executive Eugene Kaspersky has repeatedly denounced the allegations against his company as false and lacking credible or public evidence. Last week, he accepted an invitation to testify to U.S. lawmakers later this month about the security of his products, but said he would need an expedited visa in order to do so.

Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who has led efforts in Congress to blacklist Kaspersky Lab, said in a statement that the prohibition “removes a real vulnerability to our national security.”

She added that the amendment had strong support in the House of Representatives, which also must vote on a defense spending bill, and that she expected it would soon be signed into law.

The bill would bar the use of Kaspersky Lab in civilian and military agencies. The directive issued by the Trump administration last week applies only to civilian government agencies and not the Pentagon, but U.S. intelligence leaders said earlier this year that Kaspersky Lab was already generally not allowed on military networks.

SOURCE:
reuters.com

Comments

CUBA CLAIMS CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER IS FIDEL CASTRO'S SON.

The suicide note left by Fidel Castro’s eldest son has rocked the Cuban nation this week, with the most astonishing revelation being the claim that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was his half-brother and the son of the late Fidel Castro. The handwritten note left by Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, 68, the eldest of Fidel Castro’s children, appears to confirm the longstanding rumor in Cuba that Fidel Castro fathered Justin Trudeau after a public tryst with Margaret Trudeau in 1970. “ Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning ,” Cubadebate website reported. The death of the high-profile government nuclear scientist, also known as “Fidelito”, or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, stunned the nation, however it is his “ explosive ” suicide note that has set tongues wagging in Havana. Amid a wide-ranging barrage of complaint

MINERS IN NAMIBIA DISCOVER SHIPWRECK LOADED $13 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD.

Image: Dieter Noli. Diamond miners working off the coast of Africa were beyond surprised when they discovered a 500-year-old shipwreck teeming with gold worth $13 million and other treasures. The ship, aptly named ‘Bom Jesus’ or ‘Good Jesus,’ was like a miracle to the miners. Bom Jesus was first identified and discovered by geologists working for the mining company De Beers in 2008. It was found off the coast of Namibia near Oranjemund. Image: Dieter Noli. According to experts, Bom Jesus is from the Golden era of Portuguese explorers who set sail in all directions in search of new lands to colonize. The ship left Lisbon in 1533 under the supervision of Sir Francisco de Noronha. But on its way to India, it mysteriously vanished. Before the discovery, the miners were draining an artificial salt lake. As the lake dried out, many lost ships were found at the bottom of the lake. Bom Jesus was among them, and it is considered the oldest of all the shipw

LETHOTO'S PRIME MINISTER FACES IMPEACHMENT MOTION OVER HIS WIFE'S ACT.

Lethoto Prime Minister Tom Thabane & The first Lady Maesaiah Thabane. Maseru, LETHOTO: Lesotho's Prime Minister Thomas Thabane is facing a motion of no confidence for allegedly allowing his wife to meddle in government affairs, as political in-fighting rocks his ruling party and threatens the breakdown of his coalition government. The motion was filed in parliament this week by a member of Thabane's own ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC), raising the possibility he will call snap elections in the tiny mountainous southern African kingdom. "We hereby move a motion that this honourable house has no confidence in a government of Lesotho led by the Prime Minister Thomas Motsoahe Thabane," read a motion filed by ABC's Motebang Koma and seconded by the main opposition Democratic Congress deputy leader, Motlalentoa Letsosa. Parliament was adjourned on Monday with no date fixed for it to sit again. While the motion did not outline reasons fo

HOW BOTSWANA NEW PRESIDENT SURPRISED THE WORLD BY APPOINTING 29 YEARS OLD WOMAN MINISTER.

The newly sworn in presidentof Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi has also sworn in his 18-member cabinet last Wednesday and making the list is the country’s youngest member of parliament Bogolo Joy Kenewendo. The 30-year-old economist, media commentator and policy analyst first joined parliament in 2016 as a specially elected MP by former president Ian Khama, and she is now the Investment, Trade and Industry Minister. Her appointment as a minister makes her the country’s youngest minister and one of few women to ever gain political leadership in the landlocked Southern African country. This feat has generated a lot of reaction from many young Africans on social media who were not only admiring her good looks, but rethinking the choice of older political leaders in their countries. One Twitter user EnviroMan from South Africa compared Bogolo to the women in his country’s cabinet who he described as Gogos – which means Grandmothers in the Xhosa language. “Get to

BEES 'ARRESTS' SUSPECTED THIEVES IN UGANDA.

Bees 'handcuffed' one of the suspects around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands. Image: Daily Monitor. Kampala, UGANDA: Two burglars who are suspected to have stolen a television set in Sofiia village, Busia Town in eastern Uganda are in police custody after they were attacked by a swarm of bees. Like police would handcuff a suspect, a swarm of bees mobbed the hands of one of the suspects, while another reportedly had the TV set stuck on his hands as they returned the stolen items to where they had been picked from. Ms Rashida Jowelia, the owner of the property, said her TV set was stolen from her house last Friday, but she decided to seek the services of a medicine man in Sofia Village rather than report the matter to police. The suspects were identified as Wycliffe Kinara and Richard Duki, both Kenyan nationals from Nakuru. Bees 'handcuffed' one of them around the wrist, while another had the TV set reportedly stuck on his hands

ZIMBABWE VICE-PRESIDENT'S WIFE ARRESTED FOR FAKING MARRIAGE.

Harare, ZIMBABWE: Mary Chiwenga, the estranged wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, has been arrested for causing a fraudulent marriage between herself and the former army General to be registered. Chiwenga and his wife are said to have fallen out after the former model allegedly asked the VP to formalise their marriage when he was on his sick bed at a South African hospital. The former army general who led the military coup that toppled long time ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017 spent the better part of this year battling for his life in hospitals in South Africa, China and India. When he was flown to China, Marry was allegedly banned from visiting him. On his return to Harare on November 23 she was not among those that welcomed him at the Robert Mugabe International Airport. Marry was also conspicuous by her absence a week later when Chiwenga held a prayer meeting and a party at his homestead in Wedza. The two are said to be living separately after the VP moved i

WOMAN ACCIDENTALLY SHOOTS A MAN IN THE HEAD WHILE SHOWING OFF ON FACEBOOK LIVE.

Houston police are investigating an incident where a man was accidentally shot in the head in a car. Three people were inside the vehicle in a petrol station carpark around 2:30am after Easter Sunday. A Facebook Live video was recording the two people playing around with two handguns, however, at one point, victim Devyn Holmes could be heard saying: "You're making me nervous." Another person replied: "It ain't got no clip, bud." Holmes tried to stop Cassandra Damper from waving the gun around the in car while she was talking about 'lying ass hoes'. He asked Damper where she's from and she replies: "Say something bitch". Seconds later the trigger was pulled and 26-year-old Holmes was shot in the head. Image: Jam Press. A CCTV camera captured the moment Damper and the other man jumped out of the car before several people who heard the commotion came over to see if they could help. Police and emergency se

UGANDA ANNOUNCES "KILL THE GAYS" LAW IMPOSING DEATH PENALTY TO HOMOSEXUALS.

Kampala, UGANDA: Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The government said the legislation would curb a rise in “unnatural sex” in the east African nation. “Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” the country’s ethics and integrity minister, Simon Lokodo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence.” Mr Lokodo said the bill, which has the support of the co

EGYPTIAN VILLAGE WHERE MOSQUE WAS BOMBED HAD BEEN WARNED.

CAIRO (AP) : Elders of a village in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula where militants killed 305 people in a mosque had been warned by Islamic State operatives to stop collaborating with security forces and to suspend rituals associated with Islam’s mystical Sufi movement, security officials and residents said. The latest warning came as recently as a week ago, telling villagers in Al-Rawdah not to hold Sufi rituals on Nov. 29-30 to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, according to residents and the officials who work for security and military intelligence agencies operating in Sinai. Local operatives of the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Sinai consider Sufis to be heretics who should be killed. Ahmed Saqr, an expert on the Sinai insurgency, said militants had publicly identified the mosque, which also serves as a Sufi center, as a target months ago. He wrote on Saturday in a Facebook post that the selection of the Al-Rawdah mosque as a target “raises questions about tho

WOMAN WHO HAD 44 CHILDREN BY 36 YEARS-OLD BANNED FROM HAVING MORE BABIES.

Kampala, UGANDA: Mariam Nabatanzi had her first set of twins when she was just 13 and has since had another five sets, three sets of quads and four sets of triplets Mariam Nabatanzi suffers from a rare genetic condition and had given birth to 44 children by the age of 36. Tragically, Mariam has been left to raise her massive family alone after her husband walked out on her almost four years ago. Now 40, doctors have taken action to stop Mariam having more children after it emerged her father had 45 children with several different women. Mariam has three sets of quadruplets, four sets of triplets and six sets of twins and incredibly manages to care for and feed them all on her own. The fertile mum was just 12 when she was married to her husband, who at 40 was 28 years her senior. Just a year later she gave birth to her first set of twins. Now, she and all of her kids have no choice to live in appallingly cramped conditions in just four tiny

Kioo17 Journal

Search This Blog