Militias head to Nevada rancher's standoff with feds: We're not 'afraid to shoot' - Washington Times

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s decades-long battle against the federal government over grazing rights has heated to the point where militia groups have joined in and taken up spots against the feds who’ve circled his land — and talk is, they’re not afraid to open fire.

A spokesman for the one of the militia groups said as much to local 8 News Now: I’m not “afraid to shoot,” he said.

Margaret Houston, Mr. Bundy’s sister and a cancer survivor, said at a town hall gathering this week that the situation “was like a war zone” and that she felt “like I was not in the United States,” The Daily Mail reported.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal described it this way: “Serious bloodshed was narrowly avoided,” in a story about how dogs were unleashed on a woman who was pregnant while the rancher’s son was hit with a taser.

On Tuesday, armed Bureau of Land Management agents stormed Mr. Bundy’s property, escalating a court dispute that’s wound for two decades over the rancher’s refusal to pay for grazing fees.

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Mr. Bundy’s view is that he owns his property — that it’s been in his family’s hands for centuries — and he doesn’t have to pay for his own 900-head of cattle to graze on the 600,000 acre Gold Butte property.

The government, meanwhile, says the land belongs to it, and agents have swooped and circled, closing off roadway access to the property and flying helicopters overhead the family’s home.

Following the agent occupation, one of Mr. Bundy’s sons, Ammon Bundy, was tasered by a federal official to the point that blood seeped through his shirt, video showed. Ms. Houston, meanwhile, said she was roughed up and manhandled by authorities, telling town hall attendees that she was “hit from the back; it was like a football tackle” and that “they just took me and threw me down to the ground,” The Daily Mail reported.

BLM, for its part, says the situation only turned violent when protesters who rallied to the family’s defense kicked a K-9 unit officer.

Now militia groups are on the scene, promising to help the Bundys keep up the fight.

“This is what we do, we provide armed response,” Jim Lordy, with Operation Mutual Aid, told the local broadcast station. “They have guns. We need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

Mr. Lordy also said “many more” militia groups are coming to the site to join in the Bundy family defense.

“They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” another member told the Review-Journal.

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Passwords vulnerable after security flaw found - Washington Post

By Associated Press,

NEW YORK — Passwords, credit cards and other sensitive data are at risk after security researchers discovered a problem with an encryption technology used to securely transmit email, e-commerce transactions, social networking posts and other Web traffic.

Security researchers say the threat, known as Heartbleed, is serious, partly because it remained undiscovered for more two years. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability without leaving any trace, so anything sent during that time has potentially been compromised. It’s not known, though, whether anyone has actually used it to conduct an attack.

Researchers are advising people to change all of their passwords.

The flaw was discovered independently in recent days by researchers at Google Inc. and the Finnish security firm Codenomicon.

The breach involves SSL/TLS, an encryption technology marked by the small, closed padlock and “https:” on Web browsers to signify that traffic is secure. With the Heartbleed flaw, traffic was subject to snooping even if the padlock had been closed.

The problem affects only the variant of SSL/TLS known as OpenSSL, but that happens to be one of the most common on the Internet.

Researchers at Codenomicon say that OpenSSL is used by two of the most widely used Web server software, Apache and nginx. That means many websites potentially have this security flaw. OpenSSL is also used to secure email, chats and virtual private networks, which are used by employees to connect securely with corporate networks.

Despite the worries, Codenomicon said many large consumer sites don’t have the problem because of their “conservative choice” of equipment and software. “Ironically smaller and more progressive services or those who have upgraded to (the) latest and best encryption will be affected most,” the security firm added.

A fix came out Monday, but affected websites and service providers must install the update.

Yahoo’s Tumblr blogging service uses OpenSSL. In a blog post Tuesday, officials at the service said they had no evidence of any breach and had immediately implemented the fix.

“But this still means that the little lock icon (HTTPS) we all trusted to keep our passwords, personal emails, and credit cards safe, was actually making all that private information accessible to anyone who knew about the exploit,” Tumblr’s blog post read. “This might be a good day to call in sick and take some time to change your passwords everywhere — especially your high-security services like email, file storage, and banking, which may have been compromised by this bug.”

Yahoo Inc. said its other services, including email, Flickr and search, also have the vulnerability. The company said some of the systems have already been fixed, while work is being done on the rest of Yahoo’s websites.

The company reiterated its standard recommendation for people to change passwords regularly and to add a backup mobile number to the account. That number can be used to verify a user’s identity if there are problems accessing the account because of hacking.

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AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://heartbleed.com

http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/720951

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Connecticut routs Notre Dame, 79-58, in women's NCAA basketball final - Washington Post

By Gene Wang,

NASHVILLE—With all the pregame bluster from two undefeated teams generating so much buzz that Tuesday night’s NCAA women’s final could be one of the most compelling in the sport’s history, Connecticut instead turned the outcome into a runaway by taking over early and punishing Notre Dame for a 79-58 victory and a record ninth national championship.

The Huskies concluded their fifth perfect season by making sure Coach Geno Auriemma remained undefeated in national championship games, breaking a tie with Tennessee for all-time titles in the same state where former Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt built her dynasty.

Connecticut (40-0) won its second consecutive national championship and fourth in six seasons the day after its men did the same thanks in part to supremacy inside and crisp ball movement that yielded 25 assists on 34 field goals. The Huskies also limited their former Big East foe to 35 percent shooting, including 26 in the second half when they used an 18-4 surge to pull away.

Breanna Stewart scored a team-high 21 points for Connecticut, which owned a 52-22 margin in points in the paint and a 54-31 advantage in rebounding. The Huskies had 13 more offensive rebounds than Notre Dame.

Senior guard Kayla McBride scored 21 points for the Fighting Irish in their third loss in an NCAA final in four years. Notre Dame (37-1) has made four straight appearances in the Final Four, but its only national championship came in 2001.

The Huskies struck first by repeatedly going inside, where Notre Dame was without starting forward Natalie Achonwa. The senior tore her ACL in the region final, and Connecticut made sure to feed its front-court players who held considerable size advantage.

The strategy yielded a 22-8 lead following a 14-0 run on six layups among the Huskies’ seven field goals over that stretch. It began with Stewart’s layup that tied the score, and Stefanie Dolson (17 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists) followed with another layup that gave Connecticut the lead for the rest of the half.

Connecticut got four more layups consecutively, and when junior guard-forward Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis scored off the glass, the lead had grown to 20-8. Notre Dame Coach Muffet McGraw called timeout with 11 minutes 30 seconds left until the break, but Stewart added another layup after collecting a pass from Moriah Jefferson.

The Fighting Irish countered with precision from beyond the arc in the final minutes until halftime. Reserve sophomore guard Michaela Mabrey’s three-pointer trimmed the margin below double digits, and McBride’s three soon after had Notre Dame within 29-23.

Three of Notre Dame’s final four field goals were three-pointers, including back-to-back makes by Jewell Loyd, prompting Auriemma to turn to his bench and holler, “It’s unbelievable how bad we are sometimes.”

But the Huskies had the final say going into the locker room when Mosqueda-Lewis gathered the rebound off Dolson’s missed long jumper and put it back for a 45-38 lead.

Intrigue to the game grew considerably when the two coaches exchanged pointed barbs in the afternoon before tip-off.

It began with McGraw’s reply to a question about what it would take to bring back the civility in the rivalry between teams that met frequently when they both were part of the Big East Conference.

“I think we’re past that point,” she said.

McGraw also said she felt tension in the room when she and Auriemma had their teams with them Saturday during an awards presentation for national coach and player of the year. McGraw was named coach of the year and Stewart player of the year ahead of McBride.

When asked for reaction to those comments and about his relationship with McGraw, Auriemma continued the verbal sparring with several incendiary remarks, including using an expletive when presented with the question if he and McGraw shared similar coaching styles.

“We’re supposed to play each other, try to beat each other’s brains in, try to win a national championship and compete like hell, Muffet and Geno, and then we’re supposed to get together afterward and go have a bottle of wine,” Auriemma said.

“That [expletive] just not going to happen, so stop asking us why it doesn’t happen.”

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