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05 February 2010

BUB: Morning Update

Today's roundup starts out with these nuggets.

The military is going to start stocking the morning after pill.
The Pentagon for the first time will require military bases worldwide to offer emergency contraception or the so-called morning-after pill, a military spokeswoman said Thursday.
The decision follows a recommendation by an independent panel of doctors and pharmacists in November, said Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. The panel determined that emergency contraception should be added to the military's list of medications that must be stocked at each military facility.

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India is not feeling the love in the new QDR.
When the US Department of Defence’s 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review or QDR was released, many analysts saw within that the prospect of cooperation between India and the US on a common threat — loose nuclear weapons in Pakistan.
When the 2010 version of the QDR was released this week, in what appears to be an attempt to mollify Pakistan, such indicators are significantly missing from the document.
In fact, while the 2006 QDR described India as a “key strategic partner”, that phrase is missing from the 2010 QDR even though the new document does refer to India as a possible “net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
Instead, the 2010 QDR emphasised its commitment to a “long-term strategic partnership with Pakistan”.
Washington-based South Asia analyst Walter Andersen said of the omission: “I’m not surprised; they’re sensitive to saying something in public that the Pakistanis may find offensive.” He pointed to a similar instance with regard to the original Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy of the U.S. administration adopted in March 2009 which envisaged a “new contact group” that would include India.

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The USAF and IBM are teaming up to build a cloud-computing system.
The U.S. Air Force has contracted with IBM to design a cloud computing system secure enough to support defense and intelligence networks.

The 10-month project will utilize IBM's "stream computing," a technique for real-time analysis of thousands of data streams that would be used to detect and prevent malicious attacks and system failures.

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Japan and Korea at the same joint military exercise? And not shooting each other?
South Korea and Japan, which historically have had uneasy ties, are considering their first three-way military exercises with the United States, a senior US officer said Tuesday.
South Korea is participating for the first time in the annual Cobra Gold exercises, the largest US-led war games in the Pacific that are taking place across Thailand until February 11.
Lieutenant General Benjamin Mixon, commander of the US Army in the Pacific, expected the drills to open the way for South Korea to take part in further exercises.
"We've had discussions with both the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force, South Korea and the US about putting together a multilateral or at least trilateral exercises," Mixon told a conference call with bloggers.
Any three-way exercises would focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, he said.

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You can't be surprised that Boeing puts on a full-court press for the Pentagon to buy more F18s and scale back on the F35s.
Top Pentagon leaders on Wednesday underscored their commitment to the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program and challenged some of the arguments Boeing Co is hoping could help it sell more of its F/A-18 fighters before production of the F-35 gets into full swing.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recent data showed that a multiyear contract for new Boeing F/A-18 fighters would save only 6.5 percent in procurement costs, far short of a 10 percent threshold for signing such long-term agreements.
Gates also said the Navy faced a shortfall of about only some 100 carrier-based aircraft in 2018 before the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 reached maximum production levels, far less than a shortfall of 243 planes often cited by Boeing backers.



By: Brant

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