DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Tajikistan blocked access to more than 100 websites on Tuesday, in what a government source said was a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on online dissent before next year's election when President Imomali Rakhmon will again run for office.
Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional amendments that allow him to seek a new seven-year term in November 2013.
The Internet remains the main platform where Tajiks can air grievances and criticize government policies at a time when the circulation of local newspapers is tiny and television is tightly controlled by the state.
Tajikistan's state communications service blocked 131 local and foreign Internet sites "for technical and maintenance works".
"Most probably, these works will be over in a week," Tatyana Kholmurodova, deputy head of the service, told Reuters. She declined to give the reason for the work, which cover even some sites with servers located abroad.
The blocked resources included Russia's popular social networking sites www.my.mail.ru and VKontakte (www.vk.com), as well as Tajik news site TJKnews.com and several local blogs.
"The government has ordered the communications service to test their ability to block dozens of sites at once, should such a need arise," a senior government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"It is all about November 2013," he said, in a clear reference to the presidential election.
Other blocked websites included a Ukrainian soccer site, a Tajik rap music site, several local video-sharing sites and a pornography site.
VOLATILE NATION
Predominantly Muslim Tajikistan, which lies on a major transit route for Afghan drugs to Europe and Russia, remains volatile after a 1992-97 civil war in which Rakhmon's Moscow-backed secular government clashed with Islamist guerrillas.
Rakhmon justifies his authoritarian methods by saying he wants to oppose radical Islam. But some of his critics argue repression and poverty push many young Tajiks to embrace it.
Tighter Internet controls echo measures taken by other former Soviet republics of Central Asia, where authoritarian rulers are wary of the role social media played in revolutions in the Arab world and mass protests in Russia.
The government this year set up a volunteer-run body to monitor Internet use and reprimand those who openly criticize Rakhmon and other officials.
In November, Tajikistan blocked access to Facebook, saying it was spreading "mud and slander" about its veteran leader.
The authorities unblocked Facebook after concern was expressed by the United States and European Union, the main providers of humanitarian aid for Tajikistan, where almost a half of the population lives in abject poverty.
Asomiddin Asoyev, head of Tajikistan's association of Internet providers, said authorities were trying to create an illusion that there were no problems in Tajik society by silencing online criticism.
"This is self-deception," he told Reuters. "The best way of resolving a problem is its open discussion with civil society."
Moscow-based Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov told Reuters that Rakhmon's authoritarian measures could lead to a backlash against the president in the election. "Trying to position itself as the main guarantor of stability through repression against Islamist activists, the Dushanbe government is actually achieving the reverse - people's trust in it is falling," he said.
(Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Pravin Char)
Afghan policemen stand guard outside of Kabul police headquarters, where a an American advisor was killed, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2014. An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghan policemen stand guard outside of Kabul police headquarters, where a an American advisor was killed, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2014. An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghan policemen watching down from top of the Kabul police headquarters, following the killing of an American advisor in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2012. An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghans walk past by a gate of the Kabul police headquarters, where an American advisor was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2012. An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
An Afghan policeman stands guard outside of Kabul police headquarters gate, where an American advisor was killed in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Dec. 24, 2012. An Afghan policewoman killed an American adviser at the Kabul police headquarters on Monday, a senior Afghan police official said. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? The policewoman who killed an American contractor in Kabul is a native Iranian who came to Afghanistan and displayed "unstable behavior" but no known links to militants, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
The policewoman, identified as Sgt. Nargas, shot 49-year-old Joseph Griffin, of Mansfield, Georgia, on Monday, in the first such shooting by a woman in a spate of insider attacks by Afghans against their foreign allies. Nargas walked into a heavily-guarded compound in the heart of Kabul, confronted Griffin and gunned him down with a single pistol bullet.
The U.S-based security firm DynCorp International said on its website that Griffin was a U.S. military veteran who earlier worked with law enforcement agencies in the United States. In Kabul, he was under contract to the NATO military command to advise the Afghan police force.
Insider killings have eroded the trust between the foreign contingent and the Afghan government, just a year before most NATO troops are set to withdraw and turn security responsibility over to local forces.
The ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqi, told a news conference that Nargas, who uses one name like many in the country, was born in Tehran, where she married an Afghan. She moved to the country 10 years ago after her husband obtained fake documents enabling her to live and work there.
A mother of four in her early 30s, she joined the police five years ago, held various positions and had a clean record, he said. Sediqi produced an Iranian passport which he said was found at her home.
"Her mental condition is not good," he said, describing her behavior as "unstable." He said that after she attended a recent training course in Egypt a "foreign government" ? a clear reference to Egypt ? informed Afghan authorities that she did not appear to be "normal."
On Monday, senior Afghan officials said the policewoman was licensed to carry the weapon into the compound and was well known there. On Tuesday, however, the chief investigator, Gen. Mohammad Zahir, told reporters that she was not authorized to carry weapons into the compound but managed to pass through security checks with a hidden pistol. Zahir said the lapse of security was also being investigated, as well as whether she had connections with foreign or local militant groups.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the killing.
Zahir said that during interrogation, the policewoman said she had plans to kill either the Kabul governor, city police chief or Zahir himself, but when she realized that penetrating the last security cordons to reach them would be too difficult, she saw "a foreigner" and turned her weapon on him.
On Monday, NATO said that "some temporary, prudent measures" might be put into place to lessen exposure of NATO personnel to insider attacks, but the training of Afghan police would not be stopped. The NATO command had no additional comment on the case Tuesday.
There have been 60 insider attacks this year against foreign military and civilian personnel, compared to 21 in 2011. This surge presents another looming security issue as NATO prepares to pull out almost all of its forces by 2014, turning the war against the Taliban and other militant groups largely in the hands of the Afghans.
More than 50 Afghan members of the government's security forces also have died this year in attacks by their own colleagues. The Taliban claims such incidents reflect a growing popular opposition to the foreign military presence and the Kabul government.
A SpaceX video shows the Grasshopper prototype rocket taking a 12-story leap toward full rocket reusability in a Dec. 17 test flight.
By Alan Boyle
SpaceX's prototype Grasshopper rocket took one giant leap last week, rising to a 12-story height and settling back down safely on its landing legs at the company's Texas rocket test facility. Just for fun, the engineers let a dummy cowboy go along for the ride.
The Dec. 17 test flight at the pad in McGregor, Texas, was documented in a YouTube video released today ? and discussed in a?series of lighthearted tweets from SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk.
"To provide a little perspective on the size of Grasshopper, we added a 6-ft cowboy to the rocket. ... Then we took him for a ride," Musk wrote. So how did the cowboy fare? "No problemo," said Musk.
The 10-story-tall Grasshopper rocket is designed to take off and land vertically, as part of Musk's plan to develop a rocket capable of returning itself to a launch pad for rapid reusability. Today's vertical-takeoff launch systems generally rely upon expendable lower stages ? although the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters could be recovered from the Atlantic Ocean and refurbished for reuse. If a rocket stage can return to its launch facility intact and ready to go again, that could significantly lower the cost of spaceflight. That's what Musk is shooting for.
SpaceX says the Grasshopper consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage, a Merlin 1D engine, four steel landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure. During the prototype's first flight test on Sept. 21, the Grasshopper rose 6 feet into the air. The second test, on Nov. 1, lasted 8 seconds and lifted the Grasshopper 17.7 feet (5.4 meters) off the pad.?The company said last week's third test went for 29 seconds, during which the Grasshopper rose 131 feet (40 meters) into the air, hovered and landed safely back on the pad, using closed-loop thrust vector and throttle control.
SpaceX
A dummy cowboy is perched on SpaceX's Grasshopper rocket for a Dec. 17 test.
In addition to the Grasshopper, SpaceX is sending its Dragon capsules to resupply the International Space Station, working on a version of the Dragon that could carry astronauts into orbit sometime soon, and developing a Falcon Heavy rocket that could conceivably power flights to the moon. But Musk's long-range goal is even more ambitious: getting settlers to Mars. He has said Grasshopper-style rocket reusability is a key part of that long-term strategy.
"If it does works, it'll be pretty huge," he said last year during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. ?
More on the commercial space race:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the?Cosmic Log?community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space,?sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.
Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.
This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.
1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?
a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth
2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?
a) Poison celery
b) Murder beans
c) Inconvenience potatoes
d) Death carrots
3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:
a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years
4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?
a) Mousegut
b) Spider silk
c) Braided carbon nanotubes
d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium
5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:
a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City
6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:
a) Making a phonecall?
b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?
7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:
a) Whining
b) Hitting the booze
c) Jumping off a tall building
d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost
8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?
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Massive protests against gang rape have sprung up across India. Set off by the rape and beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus, protesters have faced police push back, tear gas, and water cannons.
By Ashok Sharma,?Associated Press / December 23, 2012
Police use a water canon on demonstrators during a protest in front of India Gate in New Delhi December 23. The Indian government moved on Sunday to stamp out protests that have swelled in New Delhi since the gang-rape of a young woman, banning gatherings of more than five people, but still thousands poured into the heart of the capital to vent their anger.
Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Enlarge
Police in?India's?capital used tear gas and water cannons for a second day Sunday in a high-security zone to break up protests by thousands of people demonstrating against the gang rape and beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus.
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Police chased angry protesters with batons some of whom fought pitched battles with steel rods and rocks as they tried to get past steel barricades and a wall created by hundreds of policemen to reach the president's mansion to present their demands. "We want justice," they shouted.
Television footage showed that some protesters were injured in the clashes.
The protesters made bonfires and damaged cars and police vehicles.
Police blamed the violence on hooligans. "A peaceful protest by people has been taken over by hooligans," Dharmendra Kumar, a senior police officer, told reporters. He urged people to go home to help police deal with the trouble makers.
The demonstrations continued Sunday despite Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde promising to consider their main demand for death penalties for all six suspects who have been arrested by police following the Dec. 16 attack.
Shinde said Saturday night that the government was taking steps to better ensure the safety of women.
A group of protesters met Sonia Gandhi, the governing Congress party chief, and her son and lawmaker Rahul Gandhi, on Sunday and demanded a speedy trial of the suspects.
Popular yoga guru Babar Ramdev stood on the roof of a bus and pledged support to the protesters. "The government must set up fast-track courts to punish the offenders in rape attacks," he said.
The attack one week ago has sparked days of protests across the country. The victim is recovering from injuries in a New Delhi government hospital but is still in critical condition.
After battling the protesters throughout the day on Saturday, authorities early on Sunday banned their entry into the high-security zone, which also houses the offices of the prime minister and defense, home and external affairs ministries. Police evicted dozens of protesters who had spent the night there.
However, as groups of protesters marched through the streets of New Delhi and began converging on the high-security area on Sunday, authorities withdrew the ban on the assembly of more than five people there. But it set up barricades to keep them away from the president's residence.
Protesters tried to break the police cordon repeatedly by hurling stones and water bottles and pressing against the steel barricades. Policemen responded by firing tear gas and using water cannons against them. The battle continued throughout the day.
NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Three miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, a white Colonial-style building stands about 50 feet back from the road, an unassuming presence in a town that never got much attention until now. On a recent day, a security guard got out of a parked car at the end of the driveway and said he?d received instructions to turn away anyone who didn?t work in the building. It wasn't hard to see why his employers might have hired him. In a bizarre coincidence, the people working inside were among the country's most adamant champions of the kinds of weapons and ammunition that Adam Lanza used to kill 26 children and adults just down the road last week.
The Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, or NSSF, is the nation's premier gun manufacturers trade association, and in recent years the group has concentrated on marketing military-style assault weapons of the kind used by Lanza, James Holmes and other mass murderers. In the last decade, as the national interest in hunting has declined, gun manufacturers have increasingly relied on the sale of high-powered rifles, capable of killing many people in seconds. Behind the scenes, the NSSF has done much of the work of pitching those products to politicians, the media and gun buyers.
Doug Painter, a former NSSF president, delivered a pitch characteristic of the NSSF?s folksy approach in a video released by the group in 2009, a year when many gun-owners were worried that the newly Democratic White House would try to take away their weapons.
Holding up the same kind of rifle that Adam Lanza would eventually use to commit mass murder, Painter asked the camera, ?Am I gonna trade in Ol? Betsy for one of these?? He answered himself, ?Maybe not. But there?s a more important point to consider. Anti-gun folks insist on labeling these rifles as ?bad guns,? as opposed to more traditional-looking ?good guns.? How can any inanimate object be considered ?good? or ?bad???
The ad was part of a broad, multi-year effort by the gun industry-backed NSSF "to put a happy face on these military weapons,? said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the gun-control advocacy group the Violence Policy Center. "People would be shocked if they knew that the industry has taken guns that were designed for warfare and marketed them to civilians," said Sugarmann, who happens to be a native of Newtown, Conn.
* * * * *
Since the Sandy Hook massacre, the NSSF has stated publicly that it will not respond to media requests, and attempts to reach Steve Sanetti, the president, were unsuccessful. Nor did anyone answer at two publicly listed numbers for Painter, the former president. In a statement posted on its website, the group acknowledged the NSSF's proximity to the school, saying, ?there are not many degrees of separation in small communities like Newtown, and so, not surprisingly, we had family, friends and acquaintances that were affected.?
The group later added another statement, claiming that it would ?welcome the opportunity? to eventually become part of a ?full national conversation? aimed at improving the ?protection of our children and our communities.?
As that conversation unfolds, Sanetti, the group?s president since 2008, is likely to emerge as a controversial figure. A former Army captain, Sanetti previously served as president of Sturm & Ruger, a Connecticut-based company that produced the assault weapon used in the Norway massacre of 2011. He helped direct "the successful coordinated response to municipal lawsuits that threatened the firearms industry in the late 1990s,? according to a 2008 press release from the firm.
"I think the world of him," said Russ Thurman, a gun magazine editor and a member of NSSF's board of governors, who has noted in the past that while Sanetti's "long-term involvement in the legal issues has not been pleasant or glamorous," it is "important.?
The NSSF?s efforts to rebrand military-style semi-automatic rifles, or ?AR-15 rifles? in industry speak, as consumer-friendly recreational products can be traced back to 2009, when the group launched a national media campaign designed to convince hunters of the benefits of the newer, more expensive assault weapons.
In a newsletter released at the time, Sanetti emphasized how important the guns were to the industry?s bottom line. "The best-selling rifles in America today are those based on the AR-15 platform," he said.
In 2010, the group began working to promote the AR-15 with Guns and Ammo, a major gun magazine that devoted a recent cover story to the best guns for surviving a zombie apocalypse. The group also held combination seminars and shooting sessions where members of the media were lectured on the differences between machine guns and semi-automatic rifles (machines guns are even more dangerous). And yet it has rarely, if ever, attempted to advance the argument that these weapons are necessary, or even particularly useful. "Why are these guns so popular?" asks a lecturer in a video of one of the NSSF media seminars. "One word: They're fun!"
"These are fun fun guns to shoot," says an unidentified journalist in the same video. "As a mother of three I'd have no problem letting my kids, with the correct supervision and safety gear, you know, try one of these guns."
In order for gun manufacturers to keep growing, Sugarmann said, "they've got to do two things. First, find new markets, which is what they're doing with their womens' and childrens' programs. The other option is to find something new to sell the guys who already have guns. The answer for that is increasingly militarized weapons."
* * * * *
Statistically, it's difficult to discern how well these efforts are working. The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has a long history of suppressing statistical reports on both gun registrations and gun violence, while simultaneously painting a rosy picture of industry growth.
What's clear is that the gun industry's growing dependence on AR-15s has made it more vulnerable to any legislation that might limit the sale of ARs or high-capacity magazines. And so in April of 2010, the NSSF launched its first-ever political action committee, called NSSFPAC.
In its first nine months, the PAC raised $10,000. In the next election cycle, in 2012, it raised ten times that, $102,000. NSSF also spent $500,000 in the first ten months of 2012 on lobbyists, a nearly five-fold increase over the 2008 total.
The increased presence on Capitol Hill appears to have paid dividends. In its 2011 report, the NSSF boasted that its annual members' lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. had an "immediate result," the introduction of legislation in both the House and Senate to exempt lead bullets from regulations of toxic substances. And indeed, on April 14, less than a week after the NSSF visited Congress, one member in each house, Montana's Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Florida's Rep. Jeff Miller (R), introduced the legislation.
Asked about the timing of the bill, a spokeswoman for Sen. Tester disputed the NSSF's characterization. Tester, she said, consults his own constituents on Second Amendment issues, and "was getting ready to introduce the bill long before NSSF's fly-in." Miller's office did not respond to questions from HuffPost about the bill.
The group has also helped lead a successful lobbying effort in Connecticut, working with the NRA and other organizations to help defeat a proposed ban on high-capacity ammunition clips -- magazines containing more than 10 bullets. Jake McGuigan, the NSSF's government-relations director, told lawmakers that the bill would take a heavy toll on the state?s $1.3 billion firearms industry.
Adding to the irony of NSSF's proximity to Sandy Hook Elementary, the weapons industry's history in Connecticut stretches back almost to the very founding of the country, earning the state a proud nickname: "the arsenal of democracy."
Eli Whitney began manufacturing pistols in Connecticut in 1797, and Samuel Colt, the inventor of the Colt 45 and one of the architects of the industrial revolution, was born in Hartford and started producing guns there in 1848. The Connecticut River Valley, which stretches from Springfield, Mass., in the north to Old Saybrook, Conn. in the south, made Connecticut an ideal setting for industry. For more than two centuries, the fate of the state's industrial plants, gun businesses and military bases have been closely intertwined. As NSSF and many other proponents of the latest and most dangerous weapons models are quick to point out, gun makers in America have long looked to the military for inspiration and funding; the Colt 45 was initially designed for soldiers, and the Civil War financed the construction of many stately homes along the Connecticut River.
Last year, Marlin Firearms, a well-regarded manufacturer that had been in business in Connecticut for a century, closed its plant, costing the state hundreds of jobs. Following the Newtown shooting, the NSSF is facing what may be a far more formidable challenge. Legislation to ban assault weapons has gained momentum in Congress, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has vowed to reintroduce the expired 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban on the Senate's first day back in 2013.
One recent evening outside Sandy Hook Elementary School, a local man who'd come by to pay his respects said he owned a semi-automatic rifle and some 30-round magazines -- the same kind of ammunition that Lanza used and that the NSSF promoted.
He said he'd never heard of the NSSF, but he agreed with their message: powerful, military-style guns are fun.
"But big deal," he added. "I wouldn't mind if they banned them at all."
