Pages

20 February 2010

BUB: Around the Pacific Rim

Joint US-Korea exercises on hte March calendar

Approximately 18,000 U.S. troops will participate in next month’s Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises, according to U.S. Forces Korea.

The annual joint exercises, scheduled for March 8-18, are designed to make sure both the U.S. and South Korea are prepared to "defend [South Korean] against outside aggression should that be necessary," said USFK spokesman Maj. Todd Fleming.

"It also exercises the command and control of those forces and improves the ability of the alliance to fight as a combined force," he said.

Key Resolve is a computer-based simulation, while Foal Eagle is a series of field exercises stressing such skills as transporting patients and rapidly repairing runways. Both exercises are led by the Combined Forces Command.

+++

Cyber/Hack attacks traced back to 2 Chinese schools. If this was a class project, do they get marked down for getting caught?

A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.

James C. Mulvenon said the Chinese government often used volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.

They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.

Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.

If supported by further investigation, the findings raise as many questions as they answer, including the possibility that some of the attacks came from China but not necessarily from the Chinese government, or even from Chinese sources.

Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.

The revelations were shared by the contractor at a meeting of computer security specialists.

The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, according to several people with knowledge of the investigation who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the inquiry.

+++

US and Japan still trying to resolve the Okinawa base issue.

The United States is ready to face "a variety of different possibilities" in talks with Japan on where to relocate a contentious US military base, its top diplomat for Asia was quoted as saying Thursday.
The base issue has soured ties between Washington and Tokyo since Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's centre-left government took power in September, promising a less subservient stance toward the United States.
The row centres on the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station on southern Okinawa island which many locals want closed, citing aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and past crimes committed by American troops.
Japan's new government has launched a review of a 2006 agreement to move the base from a crowded urban area to a quieter coastal part of the island, saying it may have to be moved off Okinawa instead or even outside Japan.

+++

Indonesia is banning a film about their military killing Australian journalists.

Indonesia has banned the politically sensitive Australian movie about the Balibo Five.

Indonesia's censorship board, the LSF, made the ruling late on Tuesday, just hours before a planned premiere screening of Robert Connolly's Balibo.

Organisers of the event - the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club - were forced to cancel the screening just minutes before its scheduled start.

The LSF's decision means the Jakarta International Film Festival will also be forbidden from showing the film as part of its lineup.

Festival Director Lalu Rois Amri said he was disappointed by the decision and would try to have it reversed.

"Basically they won't allow us to show it, but I'm still waiting for the formal explanation," he said.

Balibo depicts Indonesian soldiers brutally murdering the five Australia-based newsmen in the East Timorese border town in 1975.

The Indonesian military was instrumental in convincing the LSF to ban the film, which contradicts the official Indonesian explanation that the newsmen were accidentally killed in crossfire.


By: Brant

No comments:

Post a Comment