(AP) The Homeland Security Department, the lead U.S. agency for fighting cyber threats, suffered more than 800 hacker break-ins, virus outbreaks and other computer security problems over two years, senior officials acknowledged to Congress.
In one instance, hacker tools for stealing passwords and other files were found on two internal Homeland Security computer systems. The agency's headquarters sought forensic help from the department's own Security Operations Center and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team it operates with Carnegie Mellon University.
In other cases, computer workstations in the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration were infected with malicious software detected trying to communicate with outsiders; laptops were discovered missing; and agency Web sites suffered break-ins.
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said such problems undermine the government's efforts to encourage companies and private organizations to improve cyber security.
"What the department is doing on its own networks speaks so loudly that the message is not getting across," Thompson said.
Congressional investigators, expected to testify Wednesday during an oversight hearing about the department's security lapses, determined that persistent weaknesses "threaten the confidentiality, integrity and availability of key DHS information and information systems," according to a ...   more »

By Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - A far-right Italian senator outraged Muslims on Thursday by calling for a "Pig Day" protest against the planned construction of a mosque in northern Italy.
Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he was ready to bring his own pig to "defile" the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna.
"I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque," Calderoli, who is a deputy speaker of Italy's Senate, said in a statement.
Calderoli also said he would eat "a nice plateful of pork chops to show my lack of sympathy for those who consider pork forbidden meat."
Muslims do not eat pork and consider pigs and their meat too filthy to touch.
"Those words are highly offensive and indecent, especially as they are coming from an Italian lawmaker," Mario Scialoja, a prominent leader of Italy's Muslim community, told Reuters. "It left me speechless".
Tensions flare regularly between communities in predominantly Catholic Italy over the site of new mosques to serve a growing Muslim population.
On Wednesday night, around 20 people staged a ...   more »

 Two separate news stories came out recently about how Russia is beefing up its arsenal and trying to keep its population up, as well. At first glance the stories appear to be unrelated, but on closer inspection they do share a common theme—Russia’s ambition to become bigger and better in a post-communist world that has been a harsh struggle for many of its citizens.
The Kremlin has been campaigning for citizens to boost the country’s birth rate. In support of the initiative, the governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday to go home and make love instead. It’s just one way the government is hoping to help boost Russia's low birth-rate. Women who give birth 9 months from now (on Russia's national day on June 12) will be rewarded with prizes, such as household items, or maybe even a new home.
"It's normally something for the home -- a fridge or a television set," Yelena Yakovleva at the Ulyanovsk regional administration press office, said. "It doesn't matter if it's a girl or a boy."
Russia is trying to reverse the trend of a shrinking population, which is down by about 700,000 annually. Birth rates ...   more »