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Obama calls for religious tolerance, gender equity in final speech of India visit

NEW DELHI –  President Barack Obama gently nudged India Tuesday to fulfill its constitution's pledge to uphold the "dignity of the individual," drawing on his own experience as a minority in the United States as he closed out a three-day visit to New Delhi.
Obama said that while he has had extraordinary opportunities, "there were moments in my life where I've been treated differently because of the color of my skin." As he touted the importance of religious tolerance, he noted the persistent false rumors that he is a Muslim, not a Christian.
"There have been times where my faith has at times been questioned by people who don't know me, or they've said that I adhere to a different religion, as if that were somehow a bad thing," Obama said.
Equality is enshrined in India's constitution, but religious minorities and women have experienced harassment and violence. A horrific gang rape on a moving bus in the heart of New Delhi in 2012 sparked public protests, which prompted more stringent laws. But critics say more progress is needed and Obama gave voice to their cause.
"Every woman should be able to go about her day -- to walk the street or ride the bus -- and be safe and be treated with the respect and dignity that she deserves," Obama said to applause from the audience of 1,500 at the Siri Fort Auditorium, a government-run event center.
Since taking office in May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often talked about women's rights, urging Indians to treat sons and daughters equally. He recently launched an "educate the daughter, save the daughter," program to stem sex selective abortions that skews the gender ratio toward boys and to encourage parents to educate girls, who are often considered a burden.
Obama nodded to his wife as he noted that he's married to a strong woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. "Our nations are strongest when we uphold the equality of all our people and that includes our women," he said.
India is largely Hindu, with almost 80 percent following the faith. At over 12 percent Muslims are India's largest minority, with Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists making up the rest. While religious groups largely coexist peacefully, the country has seen several flare ups of violence, primarily between Hindus and Muslims.
Obama said no society is immune from man's darkest impulses, as he raised the 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin that killed six people. "In that moment of shared grief, our two countries reaffirmed a basic truth, as we must again today, that every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination," Obama said.
Modi was denied was denied a visa to the U.S. in 2005, three years after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the Indian state where he was the top elected official. He has denied any wrongdoing and India's top court says it found no evidence of Modi's involvement in the riots, but India's Muslims and Christians are wary of Modi's right wing Bharatiya Janata Party.
Obama's speech was the closing to a three-day visit to celebrate India's Republic Day, the anniversary of India's democratic constitution taking force in 1950. He cut out Tuesday's plans for a visit to the Taj Mahal, India's famed white marble monument of love, to add a stop in Saudi Arabia on the way home to pay respects to the royal family following King Abdullah's death.
Earlier, the Obamas met with Nobel Peace Prize winner and anti-child labor activist Kailash Satyarthi and his wife. They were accompanied by three children -- a 12-year-old rescued from a button factory, an 8-year-old who lost a finger as a farm worker and a 12-year-old girl who has advocated for clean drinking water in school and against child marriages. Satyarthi said there are still more than 5 million child slaves worldwide and thanked Obama for helping fight the scourge.
In his speech, Obama also raised his pursuit of an agreement with India to cut greenhouse gas emissions. "I know the argument made by some -- that it's unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century," Obama said. "But here's the truth -- even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly like India with soaring energy needs don't also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don't stand a chance against climate change."
Obama's remarks were well-received despite his criticisms of his host country. He drew laughter and applause when he referenced the hugely popular Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, or "the brave heart will win the bride." Obama quoted a line in Hindi from the movie as he joked that he wasn't able to dance during this visit as in his last.
The sentence translates to, "Senorita, these things happen sometimes in big countries."

Social media sites knocked offline, Lizard Squad hack group claims responsibility

The hacking group Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for what it said was an attack that briefly knocked several social networking sites, including Facebook and Instagram, offline early Tuesday. 
The Facebook glitch was reported in the United States, Asia, Australia, and the U.K. and affected access to the site from personal computers and from Facebook's mobile app. The social media giant's Instagram service was also inaccessible.
Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the outage in a Twitter posting that listed the sites it said it had affected, which included matchmaking app Tinder, AIM, and HipChat. The message concluded with the hashtagged statements "offline" and "LizardSquad."
On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour. It said its engineers had identified the cause but did not elaborate. 
The LizardSquad group has previously claimed to have been responsible for a Christmas Day outage that affected Xbox and PlayStation Live services late last year. On Monday, the group said it had hacked the website of Malaysia Airlines, changing the site to display a message reading "404 - Plane Not Found" and that it was "Hacked by Cyber Caliphate," with a photo of one of the airline's Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. The browser tab for the website said "ISIS will prevail", a reference to the Islamic State terror group. 
Lizard Squad occasionally makes tongue-in-cheek claims to support Islamic State, although there are no known links between the groups. The group also claimed that it was "going to dump some loot found on malaysiaairlines.com servers soon," and posted a link to a screenshot of what appeared to be a passenger flight booking from the airline's internal email system.
Facebook has about 1.35 billion active users and Instagram has some 300 million.
News of the Facebook outage set rival social network Twitter alight, propelling the hashtag "facebookdown" to top trend on the site. It comes ahead of Facebook reporting its quarterly earnings on Wednesday.
As access to Facebook returned, some users in Asia reported that the site was loading slowly or not offering full functionality.
The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010 when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

Justice Department working on national car-tracking database

The Justice Department has acknowledged constructing a database to track the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S. in real time. 
The program, whose existence was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is primarily overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to combat drug trafficking near the U.S.-Mexico border. However, government emails indicate that the agency has been working to expand the database throughout the United States over the past several years. 
A Justice Department spokesman told Fox News that the tracking program is compliant with federal, claiming it "includes protocols that limit who can access the database and all of the license plate information is deleted after 90 days." In 2012, a DEA agent testified before a House subcommittee that the program was inaugurated in December 2008 and information gathered by it was available to federal, state, and local law enforcement organizations. 
It is not clear whether the tracking is overseen or approved by any court. 
According to the Journal, the DEA program uses high-tech cameras placed on major highways to collect information on vehicle movements, including location and direction. Many of the devices are able to record images of drivers and passengers, some of which are clear enough identify individuals. Documents seen by the Journal also show that the DEA uses information from federal, state, and local license plate readers to burnish their own program.

White House gets drone defense wake-up call

The quadcopter drone that crashed onto the White House grounds overnight has highlighted the growing security threat posed by small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), experts warn.
The White House incident comes less than two weeks after a drone flew over the French presidential palace in Paris.
“I do think it’s a wake-up call for the government to start thinking about how it will protect against this type of thing -- it’s important for the government and the military in general,” Missy Cummings, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University, told FoxNews.com. “This [White House drone] was harmless, but in the future it might not be.”
The Secret Service said Monday that the drone was a 2-foot-long commercially available "quadcopter." Brian Leary, a Secret Service spokesman, said an officer posted on the south grounds of the White House complex "heard and observed" the device "flying at a very low altitude" shortly after 3 a.m. ET. The commercially available device was said to pose no threat.
Caroline Baylon, a cybersecurity researcher at the The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London, told FoxNews.com that drones, thanks to their small size and ability to hover low over the ground, can pose a huge security headache.
“They have opened up this whole area that we haven’t defended against before,” she said. “Most radar can’t deal with drones that fly really low.”
Baylon, who has studied the spate of drone incidents in the French nuclear industry, explained that taking down a drone is no easy task. “You can shoot a drone down, but it requires a certain level of marksmanship,” she said. “It’s easier said than done.”
The researcher told FoxNews.com that technologies being considered to combat UAVs include a new breed of ‘interceptor’ drones.
One interceptor that has attracted plenty of attention is the Rapere drone. The developers behind the technology say Rapere will hover over a target drone and lower a “tangle-line” to disable its rotor blades. “Right now we are flying under the radar for commercial reasons, but all will be revealed in time,” explains the Rapere project website.
“All you have to do is get something in the rotors,” noted Cummings, a former fighter pilot, but warned that it can be hard for an interceptor drone to find the “enemy drone.”
The Rapere drone uses 12 cameras pointing in every direction. The device uses a range-imaging technique called ‘structure from motion’ to reach its target, according to the project website.
The U.S. military is also ramping up its anti-drone efforts. Last year, for example, the Office of Naval Research announced plans to build a laser weapon to shoot down drones.
However, Cummings believes that this type of technology, like the U.S. military’s “Black Dart” anti-drone program, will be more effective at taking down much larger drones. She also noted the risk of collateral damage that laser weapons pose in a densely-populated area. 
For secure locations such as the White House, quickly identifying small, low-flying drones will be key, according to Cummings. “They need to figure out how to detect these things,” she said. “Radar doesn’t detect them so you really need some new camera vision technology.”
Wireless technology could also be a crucial weapon in combating the drone threat, enabling authorities to locate UAVs and also identify IP addresses associated with the devices.
Scott Schober, CEO of Metuchen, N.J.-based wireless specialist Berkeley Varitronics Systems told FoxNews.com that his company sells a drone detection tool. “All these commercial drones are using standard open Wi-Fi for video telemetry and control and communication,” he said. “We can pick up an approaching drone that might be a threat, the model number, its altitude and approach speed.”
The company’s Yellowjacket tablet Wi-Fi analyzer also can find the precise location of a drone and its pilot, according to Schober.
A man has claimed responsibility for the drone that crashed onto the White House grounds early Monday, an incident that triggered an immediate lockdown and a Secret Service investigation. 
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole B. Mainor said the individual contacted the agency Monday morning to "self-report" the incident. According to Mainor, "initial indications are that this incident occurred as a result of recreational use of the device." 
A U.S. official told The Associated Press the man said he didn't mean to fly the drone over the White House; he is said to be cooperating with investigators. The New York Times reported he is a government employee, though he does not work for the White House. 
The FAA is referring inquiries about today’s incident to the White House.

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Rand Paul clashes with Rubio, Cruz on defense, foreign policy at Koch forum

WASHINGTON –  Rand Paul is demonstrating how he could disrupt the Republican presidential field if he seeks the nomination, sparring with potential rivals over Iran, Cuba and the Pentagon's budget in a face-to-face forum that offered an early preview of the feisty policy debate to come.
The Kentucky Republican joined fellow first-term senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida on stage Sunday evening in California for a summit organized by Freedom Partners. That group is the central hub of the powerful network of organizations backed by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Each likely candidate has broad backing from tea party activists, who helped push them to victory over establishment-minded rivals in their most recent races. But a split is already starting to emerge even before they formally decide if they will run, and Paul seems to be an eager wedge.
"I'm a big fan of trying the diplomatic option as long as we can," Paul said of talks with Iran over its nuclear plan. "I do think diplomacy is better than war."
Lawmakers from both parties are pushing for a new round of sanctions against Iran. The White House and foreign leaders have urged Congress to not do that, for fear it would agitate Iran and prompt them to end negotiations over its nuclear abilities.
Cruz and Rubio were sharply critical of negotiations, backed by President Barack Obama.
"This is the worst negotiation in the history of mankind," Cruz said, predicting an Iranian nuclear strike in "Tel Aviv, New York or Los Angeles."
Added Rubio: "At this pace, in five years, we're going to build the bomb for them."
Paul urged his colleagues to have patience. "Are you ready to send ground troops into Iran?"
Cruz was having none of it. "The problem with Iran is Khomeini and the mullahs are radical Islamic nutcases," he said.
It was as intense a disagreement on Cuba. Obama late last year sent shockwaves across the hemisphere by restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba after more than a half-century of estrangement and embargoes. Politicians from corner of both parties were critical.
Cruz and Rubio, both Cuban-Americans fiercely opposed to the Castro regime's hold on power there, have been outspoken critics of Obama's move, while Paul notes the embargo has not ousted Fidel or Raul Castro.
"I'm kind of surrounded on this one," Paul said, sitting between Cruz to his right and Rubio to his left.
"The Castros are brutal dictators," Cruz said. He also said the potential for U.S. dollars flooding into Cuba would only keep the Castro regime in power longer.
"Maybe. Maybe not," Paul said.
Even on military spending, which is typically sacrosanct among Republicans, Paul needled his colleagues. Paul said national security is the most important spending in the budget, but "I'm not for a blank check."
Rubio said the United States' economic challenges did not stem from defense spending and smaller budgets would only threaten its future economic growth.
"Try economic growth while you're under attack," Rubio said.
The trio of lawmakers is laying the groundwork for presidential bids that are expected to launch in the coming months and will be competing for many of the same donors, including those the Kochs count as allies and who joined the weekend summit in Palm Springs, California.
The Koch network, which includes Americans for Prosperity, Generation Opportunity and the Libre Initiative, is unlikely to formally back one of the presidential hopefuls but its deep pockets can certainly focus the terms of the debate.
Sunday's event was closed to journalists but Freedom Partners broadcast the panel discussion with the three senators online for reporters, an unusual step toward transparency at the historically private gatherings. An earlier session with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, another likely contender, was not available online.
"There are a bunch of Democrats who have taken as their talking point that the Koch brothers are the nexus of all evil in the world," Cruz said, acknowledging the event's organizers.
"I admire Charles and David Koch," Cruz continued. "They are businessmen who have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and they have stood up for free market principles."
The evening session's online broadcast did not include images of the audience so it was impossible to know if either Charles or David Koch were in the audience.

FDA could set millions of genetically modified mosquitoes loose in Florida Keys

KEY WEST, Fla. –  Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the Florida Keys if British researchers win approval to use the bugs against two extremely painful viral diseases.
Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood.
"This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease," said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.
Dengue and chikungunya are growing threats in the U.S., but some people are more frightened at the thought of being bitten by a genetically modified organism. More than 130,000 signed a Change.org petition against the experiment.
Even potential boosters say those responsible must do more to show that benefits outweigh the risks.
"I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill mosquitoes, but the GMO issue still sticks as something of a thorny issue for the general public," said Phil Lounibos, who studies mosquito control at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. "It's not even so much about the science — you can't go ahead with something like this if public opinion is negative."
Mosquito controllers say they're running out of options that can kill Aedes aegypti, a tiger-striped invader whose biting females spread these viruses. Climate change and globalization are spreading tropical diseases farther from the equator, and Key West, the southernmost city in the continental U.S., is particularly vulnerable.
"An arriving person would be infectious for several days, and could infect many of the local mosquitoes," Doyle said. "Within a few weeks you'd likely end up with several infected mosquitoes for each infected visitor."
There are no vaccines or cures for dengue, known as "break-bone fever," or chikungunya, which causes painful contortions. U.S. cases remain rare for now, but dengue sickens 50 million people annually worldwide and kills 2.5 percent of the half-million who get severe cases, according to the World Health Organization. Chikungunya has already overwhelmed hospitals and harmed economies across the Caribbean after infecting a million people in the region last year.
Insecticides are sprayed year-round from helicopters and door-to-door in charming and crowded neighborhoods throughout the Keys. But because Aedes aegypti don't travel much and are repeatedly doused with the same chemicals, they have evolved to resist four of the six insecticides used to kill them.
Enter Oxitec, a British biotech firm launched by Oxford University researchers. They patented a method of breeding Aedes aegypti with fragments of proteins from the herpes simplex virus and E. coli bacteria as well as genes from coral and cabbage. This synthetic DNA has been used in thousands of experiments without harming lab animals, but it is fatal to the bugs, killing mosquito larvae before they can fly or bite.
Oxitec's lab workers manually remove modified females, aiming to release only males, which feed on nectar and don't bite for blood like females do. The modified males then mate with wild females whose offspring die, reducing the population.
Oxitec has built a breeding lab in Marathon and hopes to release its mosquitoes this spring in Key Haven, a neighborhood of 444 homes closely clustered on a relatively isolated peninsula at the north end of Key West.
FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said no field tests will be allowed until the agency has "thoroughly reviewed all the necessary information."
Company spokeswoman Chris Creese said the test will be similar in size to Oxitec's 2012 experiment in the Cayman Islands, where 3.3 million modified mosquitoes were released over six months, suppressing 96 percent of the targeted bugs. Oxitec says a later test in Brazil also was successful, and both countries now want larger-scale projects.
But critics accused Oxitec of failing to obtain informed consent in the Caymans, saying residents weren't told they could be bitten by a few stray females overlooked in the lab.
Instead, Oxitec said only non-biting males would be released, and that even if humans were somehow bitten, no genetically modified DNA would enter their bloodstream.
Neither claim is entirely true, outside observers say.
"What Oxitec is trying to spin is that it's highly improbable that there will be negative consequences of this foreign DNA entering someone that's bitten by an Oxitec mosquito," said Lounibos. "I'm on their side, in that consequences are highly unlikely. But to say that there's no genetically modified DNA that might get into a human, that's kind of a gray matter."
Asked about these points, Creese says Oxitec has now released 70 million of its mosquitoes in several countries and received no reports of human impacts caused by bites or from the synthetic DNA, despite regulatory oversight that encourages people to report any problems. "We are confident of the safety of our mosquito, as there's no mechanism for any adverse effect on human health. The proteins are non-toxic and non-allergenic," she said.
Oxitec should still do more to show that the synthetic DNA causes no harm when transferred into humans by its mosquitoes, said Guy Reeves, a molecular geneticist at Germany's Max Planck Institute. To build trust in any cutting-edge science, a range of independent experts — not just the company that stands to gain or the regulatory agency involved — should have enough access to data published in peer-reviewed journals to be able to explain the specific benefits and risks, he said.
"Failing to do this almost inevitably means a potential for controversy to be sustained and amplified," said Reeves, adding that mosquito-borne diseases need more solutions. "We should not be closing down productive avenues, and genetically modified mosquitoes might be one of them."
With the FDA watching, Doyle and Oxitec's product development manager, Derric Nimmo, checked their frustration at public meetings in November and December, repeatedly fielding the same questions from the same critics.
Their selling points:
This experiment is self-limiting, using insects engineered to kill their progeny, not make them stronger. It is contained, since Oxitec's mosquitoes won't breed with other species. Killing off Aedes aegypti can protect human health while eliminating an invasive species. And most Key Haven residents responded positively to a district survey about the planned field test.
Using GMOs also could save money: The district spends 10 percent of its budget on Aedes aegypti, which represents less than 1 percent of the 45 mosquito species buzzing around the Keys.
Key Haven resident Marilyn Smith still wasn't persuaded. The Keys haven't experienced a dengue outbreak in years, and no chikungunya cases have been reported here, she said.
"If I knew that this was a real risk and lives could be saved, that would make sense," Smith said. "But there are no problems. Why are we trying to fix it? Why are we being used as the experiment, the guinea pigs, just to see what happens?"
If the FDA decides against the test, or the modified mosquitoes fail to work as promised, Doyle will still need to kill the bugs.
"I'm convinced the only way to fight this is using the mosquitoes to fight each other," he said.