An anonymous reader writes "London's Metropolitan Police have delivered an 'Extradition Notice' to Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, who sought refuge and political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London last week. Scotland Yard have said in a brief statement that 'the notice requires Julian Assange to attend a police station of our choosing at a set time.' SY also said, 'This is standard procedure in extradition cases and is the first step in the removal process. He remains in breach of his bail conditions and failure to surrender would be a further breach of those conditions and he is liable to arrest.' However, under international diplomatic arrangements, the British Metropolitan Police cannot actually go into the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Mr Assange. Assange would have to leave the embassy to be lawfully arrested. This raises the following question of course: Is this the 'endgame' for Julian Assange as far as extradition is concerned? If the Ecuadorians fail to grant Assange political asylum, which is a possibility, will he be arrested by Metropolitan Police, and sent to Sweden to stand trial for two alleged counts of 'rape?' Will Sweden then hand Assange over to the United States, where many well known and quite senior politicians have publicly stated that they think 'Assange should be punished severely' for publishing confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on Wikileaks?"

Freshly Exhumed writes "In a speech Wednesday, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt. The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said. Tillerson blamed a public that is "illiterate" in science and math, a "lazy" press, and advocacy groups that "manufacture fear" for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations."

pigrabbitbear writes "Anti-drug squads are now using Brazilian spy drones to sniff out drug labs that dot Bolivia in increasing numbers. Felipe Caceras, Bolivia's top anti-drug official, claims that some 240 drug labs have been busted in Santa Cruz, an eastern lowlands state bordering Brazil, this month alone, all thanks to Brazil's drones."

An anonymous reader writes "Texas Republican delegates met earlier this month to put together their 2012 platform. Much of this focused on the educational system. Alarmingly, they openly state that they oppose schools teaching critical thinking, on the grounds that it may challenge 'student's fixed beliefs' and undermine 'parental authority.' Page 12 of their official platform (PDF) discusses their thinking on teaching thinking."

OverTheGeicoE writes "Former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley has been in the news in recent months, talking about how the Transportation Security Administration is broken and how it can be fixed. Some of his TSA criticisms in the popular press seem to make sense. This seemed strange to me. Just last March he was defending TSA in a debate with Bruce Schneier in The Economist. Then, the very next month, he's criticizing his former agency as if he was on the other side of that debate to begin with. Why? I felt like I was missing something, so I decided to read his book to find out more about his position. The title of the book is Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security, and it is co-written by Nathan Means." Keep reading for the rest of OverTheGeicoE's review.

An anonymous reader writes "After being in development for more than a decade, GRUB2 was released today as stable. The mailing list announcement covers new features including a standard theme, support for new file-systems, ports to new CPU architectures, new driver coverage, better EFI support, and many other new features that have materialized over the years of development to succeed GRUB Legacy."

Dupple writes with news that the British government is considering restrictions for ISPs that would block by default anything considered "adult content." From the article: "Ministers are suggesting that people should automatically be barred from accessing unsuitable adult material unless they actually choose to view it. It is one of several suggestions being put out for a consultation on how to shield children from pornography. Websites promoting suicide, anorexia and self-harm are also being targeted. The discussion paper asks for views on three broad options for the best approach to keeping children safe online, in a rapidly changing digital industry. ... The latest system, called 'active choice-plus,' is aimed at reaching a compromise. It would automatically block adult content, but would set users a question, along the lines of whether they want to change this to gain access to sites promoting pornography, violence and other adult-only themes. This is partly based on 'Nudge' theory, a U.S. concept which states that persuasion, rather than enforcement, can be an effective way of changing behavior."

This morning the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The health insurance mandate, also known as "Obamacare" was found to be "permissible under Congress's taxing authority." The full ruling (PDF) is now available, and the court's opinion begins on page 7. Amy Howe from SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling thus: "The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding." Further coverage is available from CNN, the NY Times, and Fox.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that RLP, a legal firm that sues shoplifters on behalf of retail groups, has shown its ignorance of the Streisand Effect by attempting to censor The Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and other consumer websites. RLP has accused CAB of harassment and is demanding that they and other consumer websites remove all 'defamatory posts' and publications. This is the latest salvo in a long running battle and although organizations like CAG (Consumer Action Group) have removed some offending posts, CAB and the Legal Beagles website are refusing to remove content and have accused RLP of trying to stifle reporting of adverse court judgments against them."

judgecorp writes "UK Universities have been found using weak SSL security implementations on their websites. An investigation by TechWeekEurope found 17 of the top 50 British universities scored C or worse on the SSL Labs tool launched by the Trustworthy Internet Movement earlier this year, which grades SSL security. Contacted by the site, most have put upgrades in place to improve security."

mk1004 writes "Computerworld says that the industry lobbying group TechNet is calling on Congress to eliminate the per-country cap on H-1B workers. Last year a bill was passed in the house, 389-to-15, to remove the cap. Grassley put a hold on the bill in the Senate, indicating that he would be willing to lift the cap if companies faced an annual audit. The US currently allows 140K H-1B workers, but allows only 7% of those to come from any one country."

First time accepted submitter vu1986 writes "The Federal Communications Commission has settled with Comcast over charges that the cable company made it hard for consumers to find stand-alone broadband packages that don't cost an arm and leg. As part of the settlement Comcast paid the U.S. Treasury $800,000 and the FCC extended the length of time Comcast had to provide such a service."

About two months ago, HP made the first source releases of webOS components. Conspicuously absent, however, were the sources to the Luna system manager, and it was not possible to build an image for the TouchPad with what was available. On Tuesday, the webOS team released the Luna sources and build tools as "webOS Community Edition." This is a continuation of their previous source releases, and is intended only for the TouchPad; Open webOS is still slated for release in September and will be designed for porting to new hardware platforms. Quoting the developers: "With the release of the webOS Community Edition you can now learn how the TouchPad works, modify your TouchPad experience and then apply that learning to Open webOS 1.0 in the future. We are excited to empower the community to create custom user experiences on the TouchPad. For example, developers can now modify the card view, launcher, notifications, Just Type and more." You can grab the latest over at Github. The developers claim you can build and install it onto actual hardware: anyone want to give it a shot?

ananyo writes "A new round of exploratory oil drilling is due to begin in the Arctic this July. The oil giant Shell was granted permission some months ago by the U.S. government to drill two exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea and three in the Chukchi Sea, both north of Alaska, this year — between 15 July and late September. The project is finally coming to fruition after years spent fighting legal challenges. It will be the first oil-exploration program to run in U.S. Arctic waters since 2000, and could mark the start of the first offshore commercial drilling in the American north, although it would take another decade to establish production wells."

dsinc writes with news of a but of altruism on the part Family Guy's creator. From the article: "Seth MacFarlane once included a gag on his animated TV comedy 'Family Guy' about an 'edited for rednecks' version of Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos,' featuring an animated Sagan dubbed over to say that the earth is 'hundreds and hundreds' of years old. Jokes aside, his admiration for Sagan runs deep. The Library of Congress announced Wednesday that, thanks to MacFarlane's generosity, it has acquired the personal papers of the late scientist and astronomer, who spoke to mass audiences about the mysteries of the universe and the origins of life. While MacFarlane never owned Sagan's papers, he covered the undisclosed costs of donating them to the library."