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US will limit visas for Chinese tech students
The Trump adminstration's ever-growing trade fight with China is about to have a significant impact on Chinese students traveling abroad. After the State Department confirmed that it would shorten the length of some Chinese citizens' visas, the AP has learned that officials would limit visas to one year for any student studying in tech-related fields like aviation, high-tech manufacturing and robotics. While the exact aim isn't clear, those fields line up with the Made in China 2025 plan -- this would discourage students from earning degrees in the US solely to give China a technological edge.
State Department releases emails from Clinton aide Huma Abedin
Like it or not, the Hillary Clinton email saga isn't over yet. The US State Department has released about 2,800 emails and other documents from former Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on the laptop of her soon-to-be-former husband Anthony Weiner. The disclosure is a response to a 2015 Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has been hoping to use the presence of classified emails from personal accounts as evidence of lawbreaking by Abedin and Clinton. Most of the messages (covering January 2009 to February 2013) are unclassified, though a handful have been redacted at least in part.
Clinton tech says he warned of email server violations in 2009
The FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server continues to turn up important new details. Reuters has found interview summaries showing that Bryan Pagliano, a technician who joined Clinton's team when she became Secretary of State, says he shared concerns about the legality of the server with chief of staff Cheryl Mills back in 2009. Two colleagues pressed Pagliano to bring up the server with Clinton's "inner circle," according to his statements, including one who was specifically worried about a possible "federal records retention issue." One said he "wouldn't have been surprised" if there was classified info passing through.
Many recovered Clinton emails won't go public before election
Hope you aren't waiting for the State Department to publish every last document from Hillary Clinton's private email server before making a voting decision -- you're going to be disappointed. A federal judge has set a schedule that will only publish 1,050 pages of recently recovered material (out of roughly 10,000 pages) by November 4th, mere days before the US presidential election on the 8th. The Department has promised to process 500 pages per month, so you won't get the full scoop until well after the next president takes office.
Arms control and free speech go to court over 3D-printed guns
Cody Wilson fundamentally altered the way we produce and distribute firearms in 2013 when his company, Defense Distributed (DD), first published the plans for a 3D-printed pistol, dubbed The Liberator, on its website. The State Department didn't take too kindly to this revelation and sent DD a letter demanding the instructions be removed as they violated a number of US Arms Export control laws. Now, two years later, Defense Distributed and the State Department are going to court over the matter in a lawsuit that potentially holds far-reaching implications for both the First and Second Amendments.
State Department shuts down unclassified email to cope with hack
The US government is no stranger to dealing with cyberattacks, but it just took a rare and relatively extreme step to keep itself safe. The State Department shut down its entire unclassified email system this weekend to bolster its defenses after spotting "activity of concern" (read: potential data breaches) that happened at the same time as an earlier hack that targeted the White House. Officials aren't naming culprits at this stage -- they've pinned some previous attacks on China and Russia, but it's not clear that there was digital warfare involved this time around. More details are expected to come once the security upgrades are in place, so you may get a better sense of what happened in the near future. [Image credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]
