Walmart Cuts Ties With Paula Deen

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced that it has ended its relationship with the Southern celebrity chef, part of the continuing fallout in the wake of revelations that she used racial slurs in the past. The world's largest retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., currently carries a variety of products under her moniker, including food items, cookware and health and wellness products, at all of its 4,000 U.S. namesake stores. The retailer began selling her merchandise several years ago.
"We will not place new orders beyond those already committed," said Dave Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman. "We will work with suppliers to address existing inventories and agreements."
Tovar said the retailer is still working through the details with suppliers.
The severed ties with Wal-Mart are the latest blow to Deen's business. Meanwhile, Paula Deen's name is being stripped from four buffet restaurants owned by Caesars. Caesars said Wednesday that its decision to rebrand its restaurants in Joliet, Ill.; Tunica, Miss.; Cherokee, N.C.; and Elizabether, Ind., was a mutual one with Deen.
Last week, the Food Network said that it would not renew the celebrity cook's contract. And on Monday, Smithfield Foods said it was dropping her as a spokeswoman. Smithfield sold Paula Deen-branded hams in addition to featuring her as a spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, the celebrity chef's representatives distributed nine letters supporting Deen from other companies that work with her, as she fights to keep her business empire from crumbling.
Target Corp., which carries Paula Deen-branded products, reiterated Wednesday it was "evaluating the situation."
Deen appeared in a "Today" show interview earlier Wednesday, dissolving into tears and saying that anyone in the audience who's never said anything they've regretted should pick up a rock and throw it at her head.

NSA fears Snowden saw details of China spying.

The National Security Agency is worried that Edward Snowden may have accessed files that reveal how the United States spies on China and other strategic countries, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
An internal review has found that the former NSA contractor "was able to range across hundreds of thousands of pages of documents," the Post wrote, citing an unidentified former official briefed on the issue. But another intelligence official, also unidentified, told the Post that so far it did not appear that Snowden obtained data collected through hacking or other means.
The official said Snowden had "got a lot" but "not even close to the lion's share" of the NSA's intelligence trove. Nonetheless, the official described potential harm to U.S. surveillance efforts as "a concern."
The Post writes:

The possibility that intelligence about foreign targets might be made public has stirred anxiety about the potential to compromise the agency's overseas collection efforts. U.S. officials fear that further revelations could disclose specific intelligence-gathering methods or enable foreign governments to deduce their own vulnerabilities.

Snowden has stated publicly he does not plan to publicize technical specifics of the NSA's operations. He has archived encrypted documents with others, the Guardian newspaper has said, and U.S. officials worry they could eventually be out of his control.
The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald told the Daily Beast that "if anything happens" to Snowden, "the stories will inevitably be published."
Snowden leaked the files to the Post and the Guardian.
Separately, Greenwald and other Guardian reporters wrote that documents leaked by Snowden show that Microsoft "collaborated closely with U.S. intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted." The company said it was legally obligated to cooperate.
With Microsoft's help, the NSA evaded encryption to intercept e-mails on Outlook and Hotmail, and Web chats and video calls on Outlook and Skype. It also gained access to SkyDrive, the company's cloud storage service.
The NSA shared the material with the FBI and CIA,the Guardian said. One agency document described the effort as a "team sport.."
The formerly secret files illuminate the workings of the PRISM surveillance operation and reveal the extent of cooperation between big technology companies and the government during the past three years, the Guardian said.
Microsoft responded that it merely follows the law.

Edward Snowden Documents

New top secret documents provided by Edward Snowden allege Microsoft worked with the National Security Agency to get around the tech giant’s own encryption systems and Skype helped the agency collect video calls.

The documents, which were not posted online, allegedly show that Microsoft collaborated with the NSA months before the launch of their Outlook.com portal to make sure the NSA would be able to intercept and read web chats. The company also reportedly helped give the NSA easier access to its cloud storage device called SkyDrive.

 In response to the new report, Microsoft again emphasized that the company “only ever compl[ies] with orders about specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks…”
“To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket access to SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product,” the company said in a statement to ABC News. “We have clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and national security issues.  First, we take our commitments to our customers and to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data only in response to legal processes.”

Snowden, a 30-year-old former contractor with the NSA, is believed to be stranded in the transit area of a Moscow airport. While in Hong Kong in mid-June, Snowden revealed himself as the source of a series of reports in The Guardian and other international outlets about the NSA’s vast foreign and domestic surveillance programs. Snowden fled Hong Kong for Moscow in late June for Moscow and has applied for political asylum in nearly two dozen countries. He has been charged in the U.S. with espionage.

Breaking News US to go ahead with F-16 jets delivery to Egypt

The ouster of the first Egyptian elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and a consequent political unrest nothwithstanding, the United States has said it will go ahead with the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt.

American officials said that the jets are likely to be delivered in August as the US has made no changes its plans so far.
This comes even as the White House has not come up with its clear stand on the ouster of Morsi by the Egyptian army. The US has neither welcomed the removal not has it denounced it as a military coup. It says that it needs time to evaluate the situation.
Washington will have to cut a huge military aid to Cairo if the removal of the Islamist leader is determined to be a military coup.
Subsequently the jet deal will also be affected because the Egyptian military receives the lion's share of the $1.5 billion in annual American assistance to the country.
But officials said there is no change in the US outlook as of now.
"There is no current change in the plan to deliver F-16s to the Egyptian military," an US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Asked whether American review of Egyptian political crisis had put the F-16 delivery on hold, the official said: "The delivery remains scheduled as planned."
White House spokesman Jay Carney also said the US has not changed its mind as of now.
"It's our view that we should not in the best interests of the United States make immediate changes to our assistance programmes," Carney said.
The spokesman directed specific questions about the jets to the Defense Department and added that the administration would take its time to consider the implications of removing Morsi from power.
The Pentagon in a statement reiterated what President Barack Obama had said on July 3 about having ordered a review of U.S. assistance to Egypt.
The jets are part of an already agreed bigger order of 20 planes - eight of which were sent to Egypt in January. The final eight are expected to be shipped later this year.
President Obama has been careful not to use the word "coup" in relation to the recent events in Egypt to avoid triggering a legal cut-off of aid.
An Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman has said Morsi is being held in a "safe place" and treated in a "very dignified manner" even as arrest warrants have been issued for the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and nine senior figures.
They are charged with inciting deadly violence in Cairo on Monday

Paula Deen

Paula Deen has replaced her lead legal team, the latest fallout from her admission she used racial slurs in the past.
Deen announced last week she had cut ties with her longtime agent who helped make her a Food Network star and start a media and merchandising empire that has largely collapsed.
Grace Speights, an attorney for Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, has been retained as the new lead counsel for Paula Deen Enterprises Inc. and other defendants in an employment discrimination lawsuit, according to Jennifer Costa, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based firm.
The lawsuit was filed by Lisa Jackson, who once worked as a manager at Uncle Bubba's Seafood and Oyster House, which Deen co-owns with her brother, Bubba Hiers. Jackson says she was sexually harassed and worked in an environment rife with racial slurs and innuendo.
Asked in a deposition if she had ever used the N-word, Deen replied: "Yes, of course." But she also insisted "it's been a very long time."
According to the Morgan Lewis website, Speights specializes in defending clients in employment discrimination cases and consulting clients on best practices in corporate diversity.
Court documents filed Thursday asked that all future documents in the case be sent to the Morgan Lewis & Bockius Law Firm and to the Weiner, Shearhouse, Weitz, Greenberg and Shawe law firm in Savannah.
The Oliver Maner law firm and the Gillen Withers and Lake firm in Savannah had been representing Deen, Hiers and their businesses.
Patricia Glaser, of the Los Angeles law firm Glaser Weil, told The Associated Press that Deen had also retained that firm as a general counsel and that it would be monitoring the case.
Calls to each of the other law firms were not immediately returned.

Old porch dogs

Fight outside - Big Time!!!