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If you live abroad and are requesting an ITIN for a foreign child who has been adopted or legally placed in your home pending adoption, remember to include a copy of the legal documents evidencing your relationship to the child. |
If you live abroad and are requesting an ITIN for a foreign child who has been adopted or legally placed in your home pending adoption, remember to include a copy of the legal documents evidencing your relationship to the child. |
When it comes to ITINs for dependents only IRS employees serving as certifying acceptance agents are empowered to evaluate your dependent's passport on the spot and immediately return the passport. |
When it comes to ITINs for dependents only IRS employees serving as certifying acceptance agents are empowered to evaluate your dependent's passport on the spot and immediately return the passport. |
Protesters take to the street in Chicago after recent grand jury decisions in police-involved deaths in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images) |
Congress reauthorized legislation this week that will require states to report the number of people killed during an arrest or while in police custody. |
"You can't begin to improve the situation unless you know what the situation is," Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), one of the bill's sponsors, said in an interview with the Washington Post. "We will now have the data." |
The Death in Custody Reporting Act was originally passed in 2000, but expired in 2006. Scott has attempted to reauthorize the bill unsuccessfully four times since then. |
The first time the bill was passed, it took years for data to start coming in, and it expired shortly thereafter, Scott said. |
"It's the way government works," he said. "You're trying to get local governments to make periodic reports. It just takes some time for this to become routine." |
The lack of reliable information about how many people are killed by police annually has come into focus following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In place of government-provided data, crowd-sourced efforts like Fatal Encounters and one by the Gawker Media-owned sports Web site Deadspin have been created that rely on local media reports and volunteers who input information. |
Fatal Encounters, founded in 2012 by Reno News & Review editor and publisher Brian Burghart, has recorded 3,010 deaths, with another 9,000 in its "development queue" where various leads from places like Wikipedia and FBI data are available for users to research. The site sees an increase in traffic whenever a death captures the public attention, and since Sunday, Burghart said, there's been about 600 new records submitted. |
But despite the reauthorization of the Death in Custody Reporting Act, Burghart said he'll continue collecting data and keep the site up. |
"I don't know that anything changed," he said of the first time the law was passed. But if its second iteration produces meaningful data this time around, he said, then he might consider shuttering the project. "I hope [the law] really means something," he said. |
Lawmakers are confident it does. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor, said the law "will give the information needed to strengthen trust at every level." |
"Alarmingly, on an issue this profoundly important and potentially explosive, there is no reliable data on the overall scope of the problem," he said in a statement. "The stark, staggering fact is that the nation has no reliable idea how many Americans die during arrests or police custody each year. This legislation will fix that unacceptable factual gap." |
The law requires the head of every federal law enforcement agency to report to the attorney general certain information about individuals who die while detained, under arrest or incarcerated. Among the information that must be reported are the deceased individual's name, age, gender, race, and ethnicity, the date, time, and location of their death, and a brief description of the circumstances involving their death. |
Under the bill, the Justice Department has the authority to withhold federal funds from states that don’t comply in sending the information to federal agencies. The funds total $500 million a year and are divvied up among states based on a formula that includes factors such as population and violent crime. |
The attorney general would then have two years to determine if the data could be used to reduce deaths and submit a report to Congress. |
Scott "wasn't satisfied" with how the information was used when the law was first passed, but is hopeful things will be different now. "I think providing the data should not be a hardship," he said. |
"You really can't have an intelligent discussion without good information." |
No. 1 seed Virginia (21-11) will host No. 8 seed Norfolk State (21-11) in the National Invitation Tournament on Tuesday, March 19. Tipoff at John Paul Jones Arena is set for 9 p.m. |
The Virginia-Norfolk State game will be televised on ESPNU and broadcast on the Virginia Sports Radio Network. |
The winner will advance to the second round against the winner of St. John's and Saint Joseph's. Second-round games are scheduled for March 21-25. |
Virginia is making its 13th NIT appearance and first under fourth-year head coach Tony Bennett. The Cavaliers claimed NIT championships in 1980 and 1992 and are appearing in the tournament for the first time since 2006. Virginia is 15-10 all-time in the NIT. |
The Cavaliers are 1-0 all-time against Norfolk State, defeating the Spartans, 50-49, on Dec. 20, 2010. Virginia is 19-0 all-time against Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference opponents, including a 75-57 win over Morgan State at JPJ on Dec. 19, 2012. |
The Cavaliers are coming off a disappointing 75-56 loss against NC State in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals. Akil Mitchell (Charlotte, N.C.) led Virginia in scoring and rebounding for the fourth consecutive game with 19 points and eight rebounds. Joe Harris (Chelan, Wash.) added 13 points and Jontel Evans (Hampton, Va.) had a game-high seven assists. |
All-ACC performers Harris (first team), Mitchell (third team) and Evans (All-Defensive) lead the Cavaliers into postseason action. Harris ranks fourth in the ACC in scoring at 16.9 ppg and Mitchell ranks third in rebounding at 8.9 rpg. Evans leads Virginia with 114 assists. |
The Cavaliers, who earned an at-large bid into the NIT, rank in the top 12 nationally in five defensive categories, highlighted by their fourth-ranked scoring defense at 55.1 points per game. Offensively Virginia is averaging 64 points per game overall, shooting 45.6 percent from the field and 38.5 percent from 3-point land. |
Freshman Justin Anderson (Montross, Va.) leads Virginia rookies in scoring, rebounding, assists and blocked shots. Sophomore Paul Jesperson (Merrill, Wis.) has made at least one 3-pointer in 12 consecutive games. |
Freshman Mike Tobey, who made his second career start against NC State, is averaging 10.3 points and 5.3 rebounds in the last three games. |
Bennett sports a 74-52 record, including a 1-0 mark against Norfolk State, in four seasons at Virginia. Bennett, who guided the Cavaliers to their first NCAA Tournament since 2006-07 last season, is the first Virginia coach to post back-to-back 20-win seasons since Jeff Jones in 1991-92 and 1992-93. Bennett has a 3-4 postseason record as a Division I head coach. |
Norfolk State earned the MEAC's automatic bid to the NIT by winning the conference's regular season title with a 16-0 mark. The Spartans were upset by Bethune-Cookman, 70-68, in overtime in the MEAC Tournament quarterfinals. Norfolk State is making its second straight postseason appearance since moving to Division I in 1997. No. 15 seed Norfolk State upset No. 2 seed Missouri, 86-84, in the 2012 NCAA Tournament. |
Guard Pendarvis Williams leads the Spartans in scoring at 14.1 points per game. Guard Malcolm Hawkins averages 11.8 ppg and forward Rob Johnson has chipped in 9.3 ppg and 4.8 rpg. Center Brandon Goode leads the team with 5.4 rebounds per game. |
Head coach Anthony Evans has a 99-93 record in six seasons at Norfolk State. He guided the Spartans to the 2012 NCAA Tournament. |
Tickets for Virginia's first-round NIT game are on sale. Reserved tickets are $10 each. Fans may also purchase tickets through the Virginia Athletics Ticket Office by telephone and in person. The ticket office is located in Bryant Hall at Scott Stadium and open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Telephone purchases can be made by calling 800-542-UVA1 (8821) or locally at 434-924-UVA1 (8821). |
Parking will be free of charge and available on a first-come, first-served basis in the John Paul Jones Arena, University Hall and McCue Center parking lots and the Emmet/Ivy Parking Garage. The John Paul Jones Arena Garage will be reserved for permit holders. The University Hall and John Paul Jones Arena parking lots are also available for baseball fans attending Tuesday's game against Yale that starts at 5 p.m. |
Should Virginia advance in the NIT and host a second and/or third-round game, tickets will be sold for $10 each and available for purchase shortly after the second-round opponent is determined. |
Tickets will not be available for sale through the Virginia Athletics Ticket Office for away games in the NIT. |
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. AP Images / Business Insider |
North Korea attempted to fire a missile Sunday, but it blew up within seconds. |
It happened one day after the anniversary of the country's founding. |
While North Korea's missile program may be the shadowiest on earth, it's possible that US cyber warriors were the reason for the failed launch. |
A recent New York Times report uncovered a secret operation to derail North Korea's nuclear-missile program that has been raging for at least three years. |
Essentially, the report attributes North Korea's high rate of failure with Russian-designed missiles to the US meddling in the country's missile software and networks. |
Although North Korea's missile infrastructure lacks the competence of Russia's, the Soviet-era missile on which North Korea based its missile had a 13% failure rate, and the North Korean version failed a whopping 88% of the time, according to the report. |
While the missile failure on Sunday could have just been due to poor workmanship, US Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland seemed to leave room for speculation about espionage, telling Fox News, "We can't talk about secret intelligence and things that might have been done, covert operations, so I really have no comment." |
Vice President Mike Pence on Monday visited the demilitarized zone between the Koreas, saying that "all options are on the table to achieve the objectives and ensure the stability of the people of this country," and that "the era of strategic patience" with North Korea "is over." |
To those in the know, the campaign against North Korea came as no surprise. Ken Geers, a cybersecurity expert for Comodo with experience in the National Security Agency, told Business Insider that cyber operations like the one against North Korea were the norm. |
While the US hacking another country's missile program may be shocking to some, "within military intelligence spaces, this is what they do," Geers said. "If you think that war is possible with a given state, you're going to be trying to prepare the battle space for conflict. In the internet age, that means hacking." |
Reuters |
North Korea's internal networks are fiercely insulated and not connected to the internet, however, which poses a challenge for hackers in the US. But Geers said it was "absolutely not the case" that hacking requires computers connected to the internet. |
A recent report in The New Yorker on Russian hacking detailed one case in which Russia gained access to a NATO computer network in 1996 by providing bugged thumb drives to shops near a NATO base in Kabul, Afghanistan. NATO operators bought the thumb drives, used them on the network, and just like that, the Russians were in. |
"That's where SIGINT (signals intelligence) or COMINT (communications intelligence) comes into collaboration with HUMINT (human intelligence)," Geers said. |
He described the present moment as the "golden age of espionage," as cyberwarfare remains nonlethal, unattributable, and almost completely unpunished. |
But a recent missile salvo from North Korea suggests that even a prolonged, sophisticated cyberattack can't fully derail its nuclear-missile program. |
"Imagine you're the president. North Korea is a human-rights abuser and an exporter of dangerous technology," Geers said. "Responsible governments really need to think about ways to handle North Korea, and one of the options is regime change." |
The test fire of Pukguksong-2 in February. KCNA/Handout via Reuters |
Further, Geers said, because of the limited number of servers and access points to North Korea's very restricted internet, "if it ever came to cyberwar between the US and North Korea, it would be an overwhelming victory for the West." |
"North Korea can do a Sony attack or attack the White House, but that's because that's the nature of cyberspace," Geers said. "But if war came, you'd see Cyber Command wipe out most other countries' pretty quickly." |
Chanting “Long live the Intifada,” University of Texas at Austin activists recently stormed a class to protest and disrupt a talk by a guest lecturer. |
Waving Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel epithets, twelve members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) entered the public event, sponsored by Institute for Israeli Studies Professor Ami Pedahzur and hosting Stanford University military historian Dr. Gil-Li Vardi. |
Throughout the incident — during which Pedahzur insisted that the invasive students either “sit down and learn something” or leave — the PSC activists filmed everything on their cellphone cameras. |
Since that episode, which took place on Friday, November 13, mere hours before Paris was brutally attacked by ISIS terrorists, Pedahzur, professor of government and founding director of the Institute for Israel Studies, has become the focus of a PSC intimidation campaign. This includes a petition circulated by the PSC and claims that Pedahzur was violent. |
“We were met with physical force and intimidation,” the PSC said in a statement. |
A UT Austin professor as well as an attendee escalated what was supposed to be a reading of a prepared two-minute statement, culminating in professor Ami Pedahzur physically pressing his body against a PSC member, nose-to-nose in a move to physically intimidate the student. Pedahzur had to be restrained by 3 people. |
Watching the video of the episode, which was uploaded to YouTube by PSC members immediately after they crashed the event, one gets a sense of the menacing nature of the demonstration — on the part of the students, not those trying to subdue them. |
In an exclusive interview with The Algemeiner on Tuesday, Pedahzur described the incident, the first of its kind he says he has experienced in his career — as professor of government, the Arnold S. Chaplik Professor in Israel and Diaspora Studies and founding director of the Institute for Israel Studies — and the ongoing nightmare he is now living as a result of it. Wearing a disguise on campus and fearing for the safety of his family and students says it in a nutshell. |
“Along with the PSC petition smearing my name and accusing me of inappropriate behavior, I’ve received death threats,” Pedhazur said. “But no one at the university has offered to protect me or my students. That is why I went to the police last Monday to request protection for my class — titled ‘Suicide Terror’ — which is in a basement, so in an emergency situation, it would be very hard to evacuate 95 students. I couldn’t take the chance that because of my name, someone would try to do away with a ‘Zionist professor.’” |
The first course of action Pedhazur took was to vacate the offices at the Israeli Studies Institute, and, he said, “Police gave us recommendations on how to secure the facility, so as not to put anybody at risk.” |
What the university did in the immediate aftermath of the incident was to instruct Pedahzur to defer all requests from journalists to its public affairs department. Pedahzur’s silence “gave the groups the opportunity to smear me. The whole field was open to them.” |
In addition, he said, “I read press releases about the intention of these students to press charges against me. So I hired a lawyer.” (It was his attorney’s permission that enabled this interview.) |
It was not until 10 days after the event that the university offered an official response. On November 23, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Randy Diehl issued the following statement, which was also sent to The Algemeiner, following a request to speak to Pedahzur: |
Amidst the current controversy concerning the disruption of an academic lecture sponsored by the Institute for Israel Studies, I want to reiterate my deep admiration for the work of Professor Ami Pedahzur and the Institute for Israel Studies in conducting courses and public programming that represent the highest standard of academic discourse and dispassionate reasoning and research on a controversial subject of enormous importance. Students and faculty of every background, including Palestinians and Israelis alike, have enthusiastically received Prof. Pedahzur’s courses and his supervision of undergraduate and graduate research. Although reviews are still ongoing, I wish to emphasize that there are places on campus for responsibly discussing disagreements. Disruption of a visiting scholar’s invited academic lecture violates principles of academic freedom and free speech that are crucial to our mission as a great university. |
Asked why this particular lecture, open to the public and titled, “The Origin of a Species: The Birth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Military Culture,” sparked particular outrage, Pedahzur said that it was “completely orchestrated” anger and part of a nationwide campaign. |
“It was a targeted opportunity; it was entrapment,” Pedahzur said. “We at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies have never had a single problem since we started the program in 2007. But last week’s episode, based on what I’ve heard, was an attempt by different groups to attach themselves to a larger movement that has been afflicting campuses, such as Mizzou [University of Missouri].” |
Pedahzur, an Israeli who has been in the US for 12 years, pointed to the fact, for example, that the PSC students “didn’t say a word about the news from Paris that same night. These rioters said nothing on Facebook nor condemned the attacks. They call themselves ‘Palestinian,’ but most of them don’t even speak Arabic, other than what they’ve learned in language classes at the university. Most of them are not even Muslims; they’re American kids that don’t have anything to do with Islam.” |
But, he added, “I am going to do whatever I can as a researcher to find out who is behind this group,” whose leader has openly called on people to rally behind Hamas, Islamic jihad and other groups against the Palestinian Authority, which he views as ‘collaborators’ with Israel. |
Pedahzur also laughed bitterly at the notion that the students in question, while defaming his character, are claiming to be the ones who are living in fear. “Really? Who, exactly, are they afraid of? Kids at Hillel House?” |
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton meets voters at a campaign rally in St. Louis on Saturday. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) |
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was ahead by a slim margin in Missouri on Wednesday, but the race remained in limbo pending word on whether rival Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont would seek a recount. |
The delay postponed a definitive answer to whether Clinton had made a clean sweep of five big primaries on Tuesday night. Even if she does not prevail in Missouri, her other victories push her closer to the Democratic presidential nomination even as the considerably weakened Sanders vowed to press on with his insurgent campaign. |
Clinton won big in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, while claiming a narrower victory in Illinois. In Missouri, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton was ahead 310,602 votes to 309,071. With a difference of less than 1 percent, state officials held off calling the race. A recount is not automatic, but Sanders could request one. |
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and her rival, Bernie Sanders, spoke about the challenges going forward after primary voters took to the polls in five states on March 15. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post) |
Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said the campaign has not made a final decision on whether to request a recount and is still looking at the numbers. Because delegates are awarded proportionately, it’s not clear how much a small change in the vote totals would matter, he said. |
“If it’s not going to make a material difference in the delegate count, we’re not going to put people through it,” he said. |
[A good night for Trump and a better night for Clinton] |
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook issued a memo to supporters and the media Wednesday that claimed a decisive advantage. He also took Sanders to task for turning negative. |
"Both campaigns agreed that the measure of success for yesterday's pivotal contests was delegates," Mook wrote. "Sanders went all out in these 5 states, pouring more than $8 million on TV in the last 5 days alone," including at least one ad Mook termed negative. |
"It's pretty clear this negative strategy backfired," he wrote. |
Addressing supporters Tuesday night, Sanders did not mention the night's outcome, a disappointment for him after hopes that he could ride momentum from an upset victory in Michigan last week to victories in other large, delegate-rich states in the Midwest. |
In a statement issued overnight, Sanders congratulated Clinton and pledged to continue a primary fight that he said he is confident he can still win. He did not mention Missouri or the other contests by name. |
"With more than half the delegates yet to be chosen and a calendar that favors us in the weeks and months to come, we remain confident that our campaign is on a path to win the nomination," Sanders said. |
But that path looked much more difficult, if not impossible, on Wednesday. Clinton's victories set her more than 300 delegates ahead of Sanders, and she is on track to collect a large share of the more than 1,000 delegates she still needs to lock up the contest. Sanders ended the day further behind in the delegate count — and needing to win a slew of upcoming states by improbably large margins. |
“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” Clinton said at her victory party here Tuesday. As if to prove the point, she quickly pivoted to the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump. |
“Our next president has to be ready to face three big tasks," Clinton said during a speech that looked past her primary fight with Sanders and ahead to a probable matchup with Republican front-runner Donald Trump. |
"First, can you make positive differences in people’s lives? Second, can you keep us safe? Third, can you bring our country together again?” |
Clinton’s indictment of Trump’s policy positions sounded like a preview of arguments to come. |
“When we hear a candidate for president call for the rounding up of 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong,” Clinton said. |
Clinton has been eager to refocus her campaign to confront Trump more directly. But asked Tuesday if she was concerned that a protracted primary fight with Sanders would hobble Democrats ahead of the contest against a Republican nominee, she declined to encourage Sanders to leave the race. |