“It’s important to me to stay informed, but there’s just so much junk out there — so much celebrity gossip nonsense. I can barely stand to keep the television on.”

It’s usually accompanied by a sigh or an eye roll before the utterer offers a nuanced critique of a recent Instagram post by Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift.

I used to think this was the immutable condition of the media, something akin to the human condition in psychology. Just as the body must decay into nothingness despite the enduring idealism of the mind, so must the consumer of media crave a red carpet photoshoot despite good intentions to learn about tax code reforms in the Washington Post.

But the veneration of hard news and analysis at the expense of milder journalistic fare is not a media universal, as I learned recently on a trip to Pakistan. In fact, it’s very much an American phenomenon.

My j-school cohort was meeting with a delegation of seasoned Pakistani journalists at the Karachi Press Club, and I asked the group as a lark what they would change about the culture of Pakistani media if they had the power.

They thought about it for a moment, and then two journalists blurted out almost in unison, “More human interest stories!”

“More human interest stories?” I asked. Having spent the last year being inculcated with the values of free speech, governmental transparency and skepticism towards power, I found it a curious suggestion.

“What you need to understand,” explained Shabbir Sarwar, a business reporter for the Daily Times, a prominent newspaper in Pakistan, “is that we have an abundance of hard news in this country. Every day, there are major, major stories that would take the American media cycle a week or more to process fully.”

“Take this bomb blast yesterday,” continued Shabbir’s colleague and Wall Street Journal reporter Syed Hasan, referencing an attack on a Christian church in the north of Karachi. “If that happened in the U.S., you would have the initial reports for two or three days, then you would have the editorials, then the feature stories, then the talk shows, then the long form documentary pieces, and so on until you finally get it out of your system. Here in Karachi, we’ll probably have another blast or two this week.”

While Hasan’s statement is an exaggeration, his sentiment is spot on. Even a cursory glance at most Pakistani newspapers reveals a much higher concentration of newsworthy events and much less in the way of investigative and enterprise reporting.

For example, in the mere three days that our group was in Karachi, the papers were abuzz with the possibility that the city might shut down if the government went ahead with their execution of a captured assassin loyal to the country’s main opposition party.

What a story!

“What we need,” said Akber Ali, bureau chief of Dawn News, the country’s most widely read newspaper, “is less reporting of facts and events and more time to introduce Pakistanis to each other.”

“The fluff is the good stuff,” Shabbir chimed in. “It’s what binds the community. But, of course, our first responsibility is to tell people what’s going on and to make sense of it for them.”

The idea that gossip is a social adhesive has a long academic history in sociology and social psychology, one that has recently been applied to mass media by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who has studied the media in the same way that anthropologists study information dissemination among tribal groups.

Elite consumers of American media, however, have yet to give this notion any credence. The refrain that shallowness is on the rise and legitimate journalism is on the decline is stuck in our heads like a good pop song, too familiar not to be sung.

While Pakistan would certainly benefit from the relative newslessness of American society, we might also take a cue or two from Pakistan and appreciate the cohesion and intelligibility that is borne of a rich tradition of cultural journalism.

Recently a cybersecurity expert was pulled off a United Airlines flight after tweeting that he had the ability to access the plane’s systems, such as control of the oxygen masks on board.

The expert, Chris Roberts, was then taken into FBI custody and questioned for hours.

While Roberts says he was not attempting to harm anyone on board, the event drew attention worldwide to possible gaps in security onboard commercial flights with in-flight Wi-Fi.

According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, there is more connectivity in the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 between cockpit and cabin Wi-Fi systems than in previous models.

Aaron Rinehart, CEO of cybersecurity company Testbed Inc. and a former security expert for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, says that this is a step backward in terms of security and safety.

Rinehart says cockpit systems should be air gapped, meaning that the system is physically isolated from all unsecured computer networks, including the in-flight entertainment system onboard. This disconnects the cockpit from outside systems to prevent hackers from accessing it.

“It doesn’t seem to me either logical or rational to combine in-flight Wi-Fi with the avionics systems,” Rinehart said.

Why anyone would combine these systems and take the extra risk isn’t clear.

“My guess would be they want to combine the signal and maybe just either save money or save the amount of power because all those antennas require power,” he said.

“If there’s multiple antennas [putting off] separate signals, it may require more power for that… which to me represents a considerable threat.”

In its report, the GAO found that firewalls are currently protecting avionics systems on planes from hacks, but, like any software, firewalls don’t always prevent attacks on networked systems.

Rinehart says the systems should remain completely separate to avoid problems, including downed airliners.

What do the airlines say about this, especially United, since they’re the ones that pulled Roberts off the plane?

Although the argument can be made that it is difficult to hack into a plane’s avionics system and launch such an attack, experts say the threat of malicious activities grows along with increased connectivity.

For example, Macworld recently reported that American Airlines’ fleet of Boeing 737 aircrafts experienced a glitch in an iPad app used by pilots in their cockpits. This caused all of the fleet’s iPads to go dead at once and leaving passengers delayed for hours at airports across the country.

According to Rinehart, if it were decided that all systems needed to be air gapped, planes can be retrofitted with these systems, but it is easier to design with air gapping in mind in the beginning while factoring in the cost.

“We’ve already had enough [problems] in the past two years,” he said. “Our regulatory authorities don’t need to contribute to that.”

As if to remind the United States —and the world— of the serious crisis still unfolding in the Horn of Africa, gunmen linked to the Islamist extremist al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab stormed a university in neighboring Kenya in early April, killing 147, after systematically determining which among the students were Christians.

It is the deadliest attack inside Kenya since the 1998 US embassy bombing carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden, and one that has many analysts worrying about the power of Islamic extremists in this impoverished corner of the world.

Somalia has been considered a failed state since the early 1990s. Armed opposition to the rule of longtime Marxist strongman Mohamed Siad Barre eventually exploded into civil war in 1986; the situation was exacerbated by food and fuel shortages and famine, which killed hundreds of thousands. The presence of UN and African Union peacekeepers has been largely unable to quell the ongoing violence between various warlords and armed factions.

The failed nation has proved to be fertile ground for hardline Islamist groups like the Islamic Courts Union —which briefly controlled southern Somalia before being driven out by Ethiopian troops— and al-Shabaab (“The Youth”), a jihadist group founded by Soviet-Afghan War veteran Aden Hashi Farah in 2006.

Though Farah was killed by a US airstrike in 2008 —a fate shared by many of al-Shabaab’s “emirs”— the movement continues on. While no longer at the height of its power, the group continues to control wide swaths of the countryside in Somalia’s south. Recent operations —including the Westgate shopping center attack in Nairobi in 2013— indicate that even a weakened al-Shabaab is extremely dangerous.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, sees in al-Shabaab an increasingly dangerous and insidious threat.

“Compared to 2009, yes, Shabaab is weaker. But when I look at the issues in terms of security, it’s stagnating and at worst deteriorating,” she said.

Even though al-Shabaab no longer controls many major cities, Felbab-Brown said, the group’s influence is still widely felt. They control many small villages and roads and raise money by extorting travelers. Assassinations continue daily as al-Shabaab seeks to undermine confidence in the weak central government.

Asked about any potential links or similarities between a resurgent al-Shabaab and the more visible Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Felbab-Brown is quick to highlight their differences. While al-Shabaab and ISIS may share some superficial similarities, she says, the Somali group has more in common with the Taliban than the Islamic State. Afghanistan, like Somalia, is a deeply tribal society, and tribal affiliations give al-Shabaab the resources it needs to thrive. And like the Taliban, al-Shabaab practices a “politics of exclusion” meant to disempower certain clans and religious minorities, a practice that suggests a preoccupation with local politics, not global jihad.

While both al-Shabaab and ISIS operate like Islamic armies, their aims and ideologies are different. According to Felbab-Brown, al-Shabaab seems to limit its horizons to Somalia specifically. Unlike the Nigerian Boko Haram, the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah and the Filipino Abu Sayyaf, al-Shabaab has not pledged allegiance to ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and shows little enthusiasm for a unified caliphate in their propaganda videos.

“They are struggling with the relationship they have with ISIS and al-Qaeda,” Felbab-Brown said.

Though there is some fear that foreign fighters trained by al-Shabaab may launch attacks in the West, such instances are few and far between, with most international jihadis flocking to ISIS. The real danger of al-Shabaab, Felbab-Brown said, is the possibility that the group will extend its reach. From bases inside Somalia, the jihadi group has ready access to East African countries —many of them US allies— that have so far been spared from the scourge of Islamist violence. Western embassies might also find themselves targeted.

As al-Shabaab regroups, the international community seeking to rebuild Somalia faces new challenges. Beside Islamic extremists, the UN and AU must contend with widespread corruption, an unpopular leadership, militant separatist groups, Ethiopian and Kenyan proxy forces and an unstable economy. For its part, the US has limited its involvement in Somalia as of late. Though the United States occasionally conducts drone strikes against al-Shabaab, fear of upsetting the delicate peace process and killing civilians means that drones are used less liberally there than in Yemen and Pakistan.

Experts like Felbab-Brown are urging the international community to take a new approach: hold Somalia accountable for governmental failures, even if that means confronting allies. Such steps are needed, they say, if ordinary Somalis are to see the government as a legitimate alternative to al-Shabaab.

“They [al-Shabaab] are not good governors. But Somalis often choose between the lesser of two evils,” Felbab-Brown said.

And while all of this rhetoric plays well with non-interventionists and probably is the wisest policy route, that doesn’t mean that the decision to stand by is easy, especially when one considers the probable fate of one of the region’s oldest peoples, the Christians. Also known as Assyrians or, in some contexts, Chaldeans, many of them have been expelled from their homes in Mosul and northern Iraq.

Assyrians are a Semitic Christian people whose ancient homeland reaches from Turkey to Iran. Their mother tongue is Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Because their presence in the Near East predates the Arab settlement of the region, most Assyrians will, with irrepressible pride, tell you that they are the indigenous people of ancient Mesopotamia.

“It goes back a very long time. Assyrians were at the very center of the cradle of civilization,” said Peter Bityou, director of the Assyrian Aid Society of America.

Bityou was born in Iraq and left for the United States in 1982 to look for work as an engineer. Many of his relatives —including his brother— remain in Iraq to this day and have been displaced by ISIS’s ongoing campaign. Since early 2014, Bityou and the AASA have been instrumental in delivering food, water, kerosene, clothing, medicine, gas stoves, generators, mattresses, blankets and other essentials to the refugees struggling to rebuild their lives.

The AASA and other aid groups must help, Bityou said, because no one else will. Assyrians in Iraq have been abandoned by the central Iraqi government and, in general, are not treated well by the Kurdish Regional Government in the north, he said. While the Kurdish peshmerga, or military force, allows Assyrian refugees to cross into their territory, those fleeing violence are not provided with food or other essentials.

“No one is looking out for the Assyrians. That’s why we have to do for ourselves,” Bityou said.

Martin Youmaran, an executive director of the Assyrian American National Federation, sees ISIS’s persecution of Assyrians as part of a larger pattern of racist oppression and disenfranchisement that goes back many hundreds of years.

“In Iraq, the Assyrian people have faced continuous persecution,” Youmaran said.

Historical fact largely supports that narrative. While Assyrians have peacefully coexisted with their Muslim Arab neighbors for centuries, to say that they were treated well would be a conceptual stretch. Under the Seljuqs and the Ottomans, Assyrians were given three options: convert to Sunni Islam, pay a tax (known as jizia) or face expulsion and possible death. Ottoman discrimination against Christians became so severe that, during World War I, the nationalist government killed 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians —all Christian subjects of the empire.

The treatment of Assyrians during the 1960s and 1970s under the Iraqi Ba’ath Party varied widely. Ba’athist ideology stressed secularism and sought to brush aside religious differences in the service of national unity; Islamic extremism was largely kept at bay. Many Assyrians ascended to high levels of power within the Iraqi government, including Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister who was also one of Saddam Hussein’s closest advisors.

Assyrian expressions of ethnic pride however, met with severe repression.

“People will say that under Saddam, Assyrians were not persecuted. But Saddam hanged three Assyrian nationalists,” said Bityou, referring to the executions of Youbert Shlimon, Youkhana Esho Jajo and Yousip Hermis, who were put to death without trials in 1985.

“What can you call that other than persecution?” Bityou asked.

Saddam’s relationship with Iraq’s many ethnic and religious minorities worsened in the late 1980s, when Kurdish peshmerga forces rebelled against the government. Faced with a secession campaign, the government used conventional weapons alongside unidentified chemical agents —most likely the nerve gas sarin mixed with mustard gas— to eradicate entire villages; according to Human Rights Watch, nearly 2,000 Assyrians perished from gas alone.

Iraqi Assyrians fared even worse after the 2003 American invasion. By 2004, Islamic terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda in Iraq were blowing up Assyrian churches and enforcing hardline sharia law on Assyrian Christian communities. Many Assyrians sought refuge in Turkey, Europe, Syria and the United States.

“In 2003, there were 1.2 million Assyrians in Iraq. Today, less than 300,000,” Bityou said.

ISIS has continued the violence instigated by its predecessors, expelling and in some cases kidnapping Assyrians along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Due to the escalating violence, Youmaran and the AANF are more insistent than ever. Among their most pressing concerns: military intervention against ISIS.

“We want intervention not only from the US but from the UN under Chapter Seven,” Youmaran said, referring to the section of the United Nations Charter that gives the UN Security Council the power to intervene to stop crimes against humanity.

Beyond a foreign offensive against ISIS, Assyrian groups have renewed calls for an autonomous Christian homeland in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate, known as Nīnwē to the Assyrians.

“We need an internationally protected homeland,” Youmaran said. “We demand that the international community preserve it [the Assyrian homeland in Nineveh], because the Iraqi government cannot.”

In May of 2013, the online organization Defense Distributed publicly released the blueprints for a plastic 3-D printed handgun they designed and built. Within two days, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered the group to remove this information, but it was too late. By then, over 100,000 people had downloaded the plans for the single-shot pistol, dubbed the Liberator.

The process of 3-D printing involves the layering of an additive, such as plastic, to create a model based on a digital file. This technology has the potential to revolutionize several industries and sectors, including manufacturing, medical implantation and art, but some are fearing the dangerous implications of 3-D printed firearms.

Last year, Illinois State Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) and Illinois State Representative Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) proposed respective bills in the Illinois Senate and House that would ban the production of 3-D printed firearms without a Federal Firearms License. Both proposals are active in the Illinois General Assembly.

The current federal law, the Undetectable Firearms Act, outlaws firearms that could go unnoticed by a metal detector. That means a gun must have at least a 3.7-ounce metal component.

However, gun control advocates argue that 3-D printed firearms can be built with a purely superficial metal piece that can be removed and still yield the gun operable. Furthermore, the guns tend to have a short shelf life, making them particularly dangerous.

“They’re not reliable,” said Mark Walsh, program director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. “There are only a certain number of opportunities to fire a bullet before the weapon malfunctions and has the potential to injure the person using it or someone else.”

The Liberator, a plastic 3-D printed gun, disassembled. (Photo: Justin Pickard)

Julie Friedman Steele, founder and CEO of the 3-D Printer Experience, a Chicago facility that manufactures 3-D printed objects, disagrees with restrictions placed on the technology.

“The first human innovation was fire, you could either use it for good or you could be an arsonist,” Friedman Steele said. “No matter what innovation it is, you’re going to find people using it for good or using it for bad, but if you take away the ability to use it, then there is so much innovation for good that we won’t be able to access.”

Back in 2013, Philadelphia became the first U.S. city to ban the production of 3-D printed firearms. That same year, the United Kingdom passed strict legislation banning all 3-D printed guns or gun components. Violators in Great Britain could face up to 10 years in prison.

In a city like Chicago that’s no stranger to gun violence, gun control advocates are hoping for similar legislation.

(Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Medill Reports: Chicago.)

WASHINGTON, May 21 (UPI) — Doug Hughes, the Florida mail carrier who landed his gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol’s West Lawn last month, appeared in court on Thursday to plead not guilty to all six federal charges against him.

Among the charges against Hughes are two felonies: operating an aircraft without a license and flying an unregistered aircraft. He faces up to nine and half years in prison.

“As long as I’m free I’m going to introducing voters to groups with solutions to problems of corruption that the vast majority of voters recognize and oppose.” Hughes said after the hearing.

On April 15, tax day, Hughes piloted the low-altitude aircraft from Gettysburg, Pa., to Washington, landing on the Capitol lawn.

Hughes carried 535 two-page letters, one for every member of Congress, highlighting the need for campaign finance reform because of what he sees as the corrosive effect of money politics. He described his actions as an act of civil disobedience.

“I’ll never do anything like this again, but I would do it exactly the way I did,” Hughes said.

Capitol Police arrested Hughes after he landed the small aircraft. He was later released on bail and remained under house arrest in Ruskin, Fla., where he wore an ankle monitor.

Mag. Judge Alan Gray allowed Hughes to move within Hillsborough Count,y where he lives, though he still must wear the monitor.

The judge also refused to let Hughes visit the Capitol, White House and other areas in Washington, which he was banned from doing immediately after the incident.

Hughes was also put on administrative leave from his job at the U.S. Postal Service.

The postal worker’s protest has raised concerns from lawmakers about the security of the Capitol. Hughes flew across 30 miles of some of the nation’s most restricted airspace on his route to D.C.

The Tampa Bay Times wrote about Hughes’s protest plans before the flight. He also informed the Secret Service and other news organizations by email and live-streamed the event on The Democracy Club, a website dedicated to congressional reform.

Hughes has stated his frustration at the focus on the security concerns raised, rather than the reasons for his flight:

“I have faith in a jury of my peers and will accept whatever consequence I must,” Hughes wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “I simply hope by putting my freedom on the line, others might realize how precious their freedom is and join those of engaged in this fight to preserve and protect our government of, by and for the people.”

Members of CODEPINK, the women-led grassroots activist group, presented Hughes with a framed stamp after the hearing.

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TWENTYNINE PALMS, Ca. — The United States Marines are not afraid of relying on computer technology when it comes to saving time and resources in combat convoy training. Saving thousands of dollars per exercise, Marines at this sprawling base here are using a Virtual Combat Convoy Trainer to practice maneuvering through a foreign landscape while in a military vehicle convoy.

The Lockheed Martin Corporation developed the VCCT system in 2004. Before it, the military would train its Marines and soldiers with classroom lectures and videos.

With this technology now in use at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Ca., units are able to train to whatever scenario they might encounter on an upcoming deployment overseas. “You can come in here and tell me, specifically, this is what we want to train to and I am able to build whatever you want,” said Ryan Brown, former Marine and the Electronic Maintenance Technician for the system at the base.

“So what they’re doing is training to move multiple vehicles from point A to point B, keeping a distance, keeping a speed and doing check points and radio communications the entire time,” said Mike King the operations officer for the Marine’s more than half-million acre base..

The system is not meant to eliminate actual convoy training completely, but simulating missions saves time and fuel while creating practical experience, King said. When Marines and Navy sailors used to go through the training, King would put them in vehicles, send them onto the course and watch as they’d make a mistake, have to back up, refuel, and get briefed and set up again. “In here,” he says, “all Ryan has to do it hit a couple buttons.” The VCCT is an opportunity for Marines to practice common procedures such as discovering an improvised explosive device in the road, and setting up a perimeter of the area to safely move around the area until it is discharged.

Within the training, Marines operate Humvees, communicate with others in the convoy, and carry electronic weapons to fire at enemy combatants. The system trains Marines to keep a safe following distance between vehicles in case of an IED explosion.

With 360-degree screens in the room, the training can appear to be a glorified shoot and kill video game. But Brown and King say Marines can spend hours in the simulator without firing a round.

Brown sees the VCCT as an opportunity to focus on fixing weaknesses within the unit without holding up the larger battalion. “That’s the point of coming here,” he says, “you make the mistakes here before going out of the country” The simulator has detailed databases that can mimic the conditions of key Iraqi battlegrounds like Fallujah, Baghdad and Tikrit, as well as others that serve different purposes.

The system is currently set up to focus on Middle Eastern regions, but Brown said it can be reconfigured to look like Ukraine or similar terrain if that is what a unit needs training for.

“A simulation never fully replaces live training, but we can come close here,” said Brown.

The Marines are currently seeking to extend their contract that allows them to use the Lockheed Martin technology.

As good as the advanced technology is, overreliance on it could compromise the basic skills that Marines need in the field, like reading a map and compass, Brown says, “What happens when the technology fails?”

BALTIMORE — As the third night of Baltimore’s curfew set in on Thursday, the Maryland National Guard stood watch over an empty City Hall. Their real action, however, took place 31 miles away at the Joint Operations Command in Adelphi, Maryland.

There, Joint Task Force Maryland had gone online to guide all National Guard operations in the state.

At 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, the makeshift operations center was activated in a converted gymnasium at the Maryland National Guard Center to coordinate the approximately 2,000 soldiers streaming into the city from across Maryland, explained Capt. Patrick Elliot, who oversees day operations at the JOC.

In an interview Thursday evening, Elliot described JTF Maryland’s role in responding to the civil unrest in Baltimore.

“Anytime civilian assets are unable to address a problem, they call us in,” Elliot said. “Our job is to respond to and direct all Army assets in the state of Maryland.”

On Monday evening, the Maryland National Guard received Gov. Larry Hogan’s call to assist city and state police in responding to the violent protests that engulfed Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray.

“We rehearse this every year, if not every couple months, on top of all the other Army [training] requirements” Elliott said. “I think it shows in the quick response that we were able to put on the ground to support the governor.”

The JOC, staffed by the 58th Troop Command, receives missions from the Maryland State Police through liaison officers to provide resources the police lack, logistical or transportation support and requests for extra forces to bolster security throughout Baltimore.

“In this type of sustained operations, there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes in order to support the troops that are out there,” Elliot said.

The mission has thus far proved successful, according to Elliot. The JOC has been able to provide continuous guidance on how to respond to conflict, how and when to use force, and what are appropriate escalation and de-escalation tactics.

“As a troop on the ground, it’s good to know that at the end of the day, you’re helping to protect the community,” Elliot said.

“The soldiers know that they’re protecting lives and property in Baltimore.”

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Canteen serves police officials and servicemen amidst Baltimore turmoil from Medill Washington on Vimeo.

Larry Wenschhof and Canteen 1 from the Independent Hose Company of Frederick are at the M&T Stadium where servicemen and police officials camp out between shifts. With food donations made by surrounding counties, they are making sure the men and women dispatched to help Baltimore during the state of emergency remain hydrated and well-nourished.

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