biden: sanctions on russia until peace in ukraine

“The United States sanctions on Russia must and will remain in place until the Minsk Agreement is fully implemented,” said Vice President Joe Biden at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

• Read Xuan Lei’s story

‘Reporting Vietnam’ a gritty look at covering the vietnam war

Marking the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Vietnam War, a new exhibit allows visitors to take a retrospective look at the war’s legacy through the lens of American journalists.

• Watch Andersen Xia’s video

MEDILL STUDENTS REPORT FROM THE GI FILM FESTIVAL

Medill graduate students are hard at work covering the 2015 GI Film Festival, an annual celebration of films that pay homage to the military experience. Check out their suite of stories below:

• GI Film Fest fans name their all-time favorite military films
• On Memorial Day: Remembering those who die from suicide

Sign up for the National Security Zone E-Newsletter

The Medill NSJI is a leading resource for covering national security issues and funded by the McCormick Foundation. Our biweekly newsletter is a great way for journalists-in-training and working journalists to stay up to date with program events, journalism tips and student work.

→ Click here to sign up

TSA gun confiscations up 21% so far this year

CHICAGO — The number of handguns confiscated at the nation’s airport security checkpoints was up 21% through May 1 compared to a year ago — and 45% compared to 2012, a National Security Zone analysis of Transportation Security Administration data it maintains shows.

Also trending up in the first part of the year: The percentage of guns that were loaded and that had a bullet in the chamber when they were discovered in carry-ons or on the passenger. Some 85% of guns were loaded compared to 82% a year ago, and 30% had a bullet in the chamber, up from 25% in the first part of 2013.

A 56% increase in confiscations at Dallas-Forth Worth’s airport pushed Atlanta from atop the list of airports witH the most guns found (42 compared to 27 a year ago). One woman in Dallas in February actually made it past the security checkpoint with a gun.

Tampa, San Antonio, Charlotte, Miami, Detroit and Austin also had large increases, while two airports jumped from 1 confiscation each last year to 13 and 10 each (Portland and Kansas City, respectively)

→ FULL STORY, including stats for top airports.

WASHINGTON – University of Chicago First Amendment scholar Geoffrey Stone was not expecting unanimity among the group of five experts called together by President Barack Obama to review the National Security Agency’s collection of vast amounts of phone records and other digital information of millions of Americans.

Stone said the fact that the group could present recommendations fully supported by all members gave extra weight to their report. The review group recommended that that phone companies or a private third party maintain the data needed by the NSA rather than the NSA itself and that access be allowed only by a court order.

In a video interview with Medill National Security Zone, Stone detailed key points from the recommendations.

WATCH WEBINARS ON VETERANS AND CYBER CRIME

• Alexander Deitchman and and Paul Knudtson discuss “Veterans as Strategic Assets.” Watch here.
• Paul Rosenzweig helps reporters better understand cyber crime how much money and intellectual property are we losing and what it means, as well as how governments can coordinate to fight it. Watch here.

josh meyer moderates war reporting talk at University of Chicago institute of politics

Didn’t make it out to the event, featuring NBC’s Richard Engel and The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson in conversation with Medill National Security Journalism Initiative Director of Education and Outreach Josh Meyer?

• Watch event video here

NSJI STUDENTS TOUR NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE

The National War College  in Washington opened its doors to students from the Medill NSJI on May 19.

• Peek inside the school

medill nSJI students embed at twentynine palms

Students from Medill’s National Security Journalism Specialization program embedded with United States Marines at the Twentynine Palms base in California’s Mojave Desert.

• Training for war with virtual combat
• Front-line training with the howitzer
• Marines prepare for the theater of war
• NSJI students embed with Marines
• Marines make millions off of recycling
• Best Training, But Worst Social Life
• USMC Archaeological Treasure Trove

By Preetisha Sen
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s planned reforms for the National Security Agency’s data collection and surveillance may not be enough to protect Americans’ privacy, several First Amendment experts said during a panel discussion, while veteran journalists worried that the government’s surveillance is hindering  reporters’ ability to cover national security issues.

The group of journalism, legal and technology experts discussed a report released days earlier from the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies; Obama’s speech outlining his plans for reform; and a report by the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that called the NSA telephone data collection program illegal.

→ Watch video and read full story.

WATCH WEBINARS ON VETERANS AND CYBER CRIME

• Alexander Deitchman and and Paul Knudtson discuss “Veterans as Strategic Assets.” Watch here.
• Paul Rosenzweig helps reporters better understand cyber crime how much money and intellectual property are we losing and what it means, as well as how governments can coordinate to fight it. Watch here.

By Josh Meyer

After decades of turning its critical eye to the lack of press freedoms in other countries, the renowned Committee to Protect Journalists on Oct. 10 released its first comprehensive report on working conditions in the United States — and it’s quite damning. (Read as PDF).

Essentially, just when you thought the Obama administration’s “war on national security reporters” couldn’t get any worse, CPJ comes along and describes in detail how the situation is actually far more dire than one might imagine.

The “CPJ Special Report” was authored by Leonard Downie, Jr., the former top editor of the Washington Post, and it is as important as it is scathing.

→ Continue Reading

WATCH WEBINARS ON VETERANS AND CYBER CRIME

• Alexander Deitchman and and Paul Knudtson discuss “Veterans as Strategic Assets.” Watch here.
• Paul Rosenzweig helps reporters better understand cyber crime how much money and intellectual property are we losing and what it means, as well as how governments can coordinate to fight it. Watch here.
]]> http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/09/27/promo-and-on-the-beat-feed/ Fri, 27 Sep 2013 12:38:08 +0000 http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/site/?p=16660 Continue reading →]]>

Finding and analyzing VA disability claims data

Our latest NSZ 101 how-go guide helps get you started in your pursuit of good local, state, regional and national stories that are to be had in data about the enormous backlog of disability claims filed with the Veterans Benefits Administration.

If you’ve got basic Excel skills, get started here. And even if you don’t, you’ll find information and data that you can use from our expert, Shane Shifflett.



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On the Beat

The latest headlines from On The National Security Beat, Scott Anderson’s column that provides fresh tips, news and resources to help national security reporters excel on their beats.

• Apple first to report number of secret customer data requests under new reporting rules.
• For Verizon, a solid grade on its first transparency report.
• Suicides jump among young male veterans; sexual assaults down at military academies, new reports say.
• Weekly VA disability claims snapshot: Backslide is back
• Putting the secret in an investigation of the Secret Service
• Toles ‘toon on data ‘mining’
• VA disability backlog grows for second week in a row.
• Preparing for a local disaster
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Learn how to be secure as a journalist in a hostile environment

About 1,000 journalists around the world have been killed in the line of duty in the past two decades; the pie chart above shows a breakdown of the situations in which they perished, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Journalists need to take responsibility for their own security. The changing economy of the news business makes it increasingly harder for journalists to rely on security advisors.

Instead, both international and local journalists need to assess their own risks and needs in advance of embarking on a dangerous story.

“Journalists need to take responsibility for their own security. The changing economy of the news business makes it increasingly harder for journalists to rely on security advisors. Instead, both international and local journalists need to assess their own risks and needs in advance of embarking on a dangerous story,” security expert Frank Smyth says.

In our latest “NSZ 101” how-to guide for reporters, security expert Smyth offers a comprehensive look at how to prepare to visit a hostile situation and how to go about your business while there, and deal with the stress of what you’ve been through once you’re home. → Read the full guide.

]]> http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/07/17/tsa-update-promo/ Wed, 17 Jul 2013 13:08:03 +0000 http://nationalsecurityzone.medill.northwestern.edu/site/?p=15935 Continue reading →]]> Airport gun confiscations soar in first half of 2013



About 30% more guns were confiscated at airport security gates in the first half of 2013 than that same period a year ago, a Medill analysis of federal data it aggregates from the Transportation Security Administration shows.

Atlanta, Dallas-Forth Worth and Phoenix airports topped the list, with a combined 15 percent of the 899 guns confiscated by the TSA at 168 domestic airports. Half of the top airports were in Texas and Florida.

About 84% of the guns were loaded, slightly higher than a year ago, and a third of those that were loaded had a bullet in the chamber ready to fire.

Confiscations averaged five a day compared to four a day in 2012. June was the highest, with an average 6.3 guns per day; February, the lowest at 3.7. May and June were record months overall and the week of May 15 set a weekly record, with 65 found.

→ Full Story, including interactive graphics.

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