Individuals with neuro-developmental disorders compensate by using brain's declarative memory center

Individuals with five neurodevelopmental disorders -- autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, and Specific Language Impairment -- appear to compensate for dysfunction by relying on a single powerful and nimble system in the brain known as declarative memory.

This hypothesis being proposed by a Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientist is based on decades of research. It is published online and will be in the April issue of .

The proposed compensation allows individuals with autism to learn scripts for navigating social situations; helps people with obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette syndrome to control tics and compulsions; and provides strategies to overcome reading and language difficulties in those diagnosed with dyslexia, autism, or Specific Language Impairment, a developmental disorder of language.

"There are multiple learning and memory systems in the brain, but declarative memory is the superstar," says Michael Ullman, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Georgetown and director of the Brain and Language Laboratory. He explains that declarative memory can learn explicitly (consciously) as well as implicitly (non-consciously).

"It is extremely flexible, in that it can learn just about anything. Therefore it can learn all kinds of compensatory strategies, and can even take over for impaired systems," says Ullman.

"Nevertheless, in most circumstances, declarative memory won't do as good a job as these systems normally do, which is an important reason why individuals with the disorders generally still have noticeable problems despite the compensation," he adds.

Knowing that individuals with these disorders can rely on declarative memory leads to insights on how to improve diagnosis and treatment of these conditions. It could improve treatment in two ways, Ullman says. First, designing treatments that rely on declarative memory, or that improve learning in this system, could enhance compensation. Conversely, treatments that are designed to avoid compensation by declarative memory may strengthen the dysfunctional systems.

Ullman says compensation by declarative memory may also help explain an observation that has long puzzled scientists -- the fact that boys are diagnosed with these disorders more frequently than girls. "Studies suggest that girls and women are better than boys and men, on average, in their use of declarative memory. Therefore females are likely to compensate more successfully than males, even to the point of compensating themselves out of diagnosis more often than males," Ullman says.

Declarative memory may also compensate for dysfunctions in other disorders, he adds, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and even adult-onset disorders such as aphasia or Parkinson's disease.

The hypothesis may thus have powerful clinical and other implications for a wide variety of disorders. Ullman says.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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The cosmological limits of information storage

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An important part of long-term thinking is the never-ending search for very long-lived methods of information storage. A perfect, eternal storage medium still eludes us; most of the ones we've invented and used over the course of civilization have had their limitations - even stone, nickel, and sapphire have a shelf life.

But new research by a team of physicists now suggests that searching for a storage medium that lives forever may be a waste of energy, because the laws of physics themselves limit the amount of time that any information can be kept.

In a paper recently published by the New Journal of Physics, the researchers review how spacetime dynamics might influence the storage of information by asking how much data we can reliably hold on to from the beginning to the end of time.

In order to answer that question, the team combined Einsteinian cosmology with quantum theories about the nature of matter and reality. They worked with a standard model of the universe, called the Friedman-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric: based on Einstein'stheory of general relativity, it describes a universe that is homogeneous and isotropic, and therefore expands (or contracts) uniformly in all directions.

Working with this metric, the researchers modeled what would happen to stored data over the course of universe expansion. When you encode information into some kind of matter and then track what happens to your storage medium throughout the life course of the universe, you'll find that the quantum state of its matter (in other words, its properties: its position, momentum, and spin ) will eventually and inevitably change. The research team was able to prove that this change in state creates 'noise' that dampens the stored information. One of the research physicists explains the process in this video abstract of the paper:

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The faster the universe expands, the team argues, the more 'noise' interferes with stored data. Looking at the storage of both classical information (anything encoded in bits) and quantum information (anything encoded by the quantum state of a given particle), they conclude that not very much data will last from the beginning to the end of time.

In other words, it seems as though we may be doomed to an eventual quantum dark age. Unless, of course, we always take care to anticipate these state changes, and continuously forward migrate our data.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Police departments blaming social media for declining recruitment rates

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Police departments around the country are beginning to complain that widespread criticism of the institution of law enforcement is making it harder for them to find people who want to work as police officers.

The recent events in Ferguson, they say, are partly to blame for the backlash against police.

But many of us know that Ferguson is only the tip of the iceberg - underneath the surface, there are thousands of other cases of beating, raping, and killing, all committed by an institution that is supposedly here to "protect" us.

The widespread exposure and criticism of this institution is becoming so popular that officers in the Seattle Metro area are complaining that it's hard for them to find new applicants.

And Cynthia Fajardo, the president of the Pierce County Deputy Sheriff's Guild, says that multiple police agencies are having the same problem.

Many departments report that this lack of applicants is due largely to the fact that growing numbers of Americans no longer respect the institution, and view it with deep distrust, due to stories of abuse being spread through social media.

"If you check with any of the agencies here in the Seattle metro area, every single agency is having a very difficult time getting people who want to be police officers anymore," said Fajardo, in an interview with local news affiliate K5.

Cops like Fajardo do understand that Americans have been skeptical of the institution of state policing for quite some time, that it didn't just start with Ferguson.

They believe that social media is what's causing the problem of skepticism toward police officers.

But they're wrong about that. Their own abusive actions are causing the problem.

This skepticism of police officers is a "problem" for the institution of law enforcement in the same sense that skepticism of, say, 19th century plantation overseers became a "problem" for the institution of slavery.

The reality is that police are individuals, and individuals are responsible for their actions.

Individuals who willingly agree to coerce, extort, and initiate violence upon peaceful people in order to maintain a monopolistic rule of corrupt politicians are naturally going to be distrusted.

They are responsible for what they do, not social media.

Social media is merely a new mechanism to display their actions in front of a larger audience.

As more Americans remove the scales from their eyes and see that the institution of law enforcement was created relatively recently (for most of human history we survived just fine without it) and only for the purpose of maintaining a corrupt political order, departments will have a harder time finding any applicants.

Few people want to be part of something like that.

Old institutions wither away as new generations create organic and more innovative alternatives.

The state-controlled monopolistic institution of policing is no exception.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Operation Chokepoint: Small business RIP

Last fall, I got a strange request from the bank I've been doing business with for more than 10 years. For the first time ever, this bank asked to see our books. When we asked why, they told us that they needed to review our risk profile.

It seemed odd to me, because we do everything by the book and are about as low-risk as a grocery store or a dry cleaning service. Not to mention the fact that, through all of the various fees we have to pay, our company generates tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for our bank each month.

With nothing to hide, we complied with the request. And naturally, we passed our unexpected risk assessment with flying colors. The bank thanked us for our cooperation, but never really explained the situation to my satisfaction.

A month later we were going through our semi-annual anti-money laundering (AML) training. This is another way we make sure our business is squeaky-clean at all times. Our employees are all trained to spot and report anything that has the appearance of illegality.

I casually mentioned to our AML trainer that our bank had put us through this bizarre risk assessment a couple of months earlier.

"Oh, that's because of Operation Choke Point" he said, as if it was common knowledge.

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"Operation What Point?!" I replied.

He went on to tell me the full story, and it was so frightening that it literally caused the hair on my neck to stand on end. Though he didn't use these exact words, the point of what he was telling me was that the US government is waging a new war. It's an undeclared war. It's an underground war. It's a covert war. But now, slowly but surely, more Americans are becoming aware of this war because they are finding out that they are the targets in this war. They have become the enemy of the state. That's because this war is a war on small business in America.

If this power grab by the executive branch of our government is allowed to continue, Americans soon won't be able to buy gold, guns, or a variety of other goods and services, because the businesses that sell them won't exist. Operation Choke Point is a war on liberty that's using ideological intimidation to put certain small businesses out of business.

In early 2013, unbeknownst to Congress and the American public, the Justice Department launched its first sneak attack of this war under a program called Operation Choke Point. It issued 50 subpoenas to banks asking for information on their relationships with Third Party Payment Processors (TPPPs). TPPPs process payments for a number of types of small businesses.

The purpose of the subpoenas was to notify the banks that they are now full-time regulators in the fight against money laundering and other types of financial fraud. Although banks have always had to report suspicious transactions to authorities they now have to "Know their Customers" like never before.

In much the same way that FATCA has turned every international financial institution into de facto IRS agents, Operation Choke Point is turning every domestic bank into the president's own secret morality police force. And just as international banks are now refusing to service American customers due to the high cost of compliance, many domestic banks are closing the accounts of companies, which have been with them for years, because of the new compliance costs. In other words, the cost of defying the president's whims and wishes is so high that the banks have to cave in and stop doing business with these customers.

Operation Choke Point is an unconstutional backdoor way of closing otherwise legal companies by cutting off their access to the banking system and capital. If they can't deposit their revenue in a bank account or accept credit card payments they are effectively shut down.

There are three problems with Operation Choke Point

The first is procedural. The President, through the DOJ, the FDIC, and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, implemented new regulations without Congress passing any law or even being informed of what was going on. This executive action was an end run around the legislative process and it prevented any type of public discussion or input on it.

The second is market oriented. The new rules require the banks to collect so much information about their business customers, the cost of compliance not only makes it unprofitable for the banks to service the accounts, it also puts tremendous financial strain on the companies who are forced to spend time and money gathering the information and filling out forms. The end result is that the banks turn them away, thereby cutting off or choking their access to the banking system or they fail because their profit margin is eaten up by the regulations.

The third problem is that even if criminal activity, like money laundering or other fraudulent activity are being committed by some of the targeted businesses, there are many more innocent and legal firms that have become collateral damage. They are being unjustly and economically harmed by the government, even though they haven't broken any laws.

There is ample evidence that proves many of the types of companies being targeted are included on the list for ideological reasons. The administration doesn't like what they sell or the services they provide so they are nothing more than political targets of an ideological war. Not surprisingly, the list includes businesses that generally attract the small government, rugged individualist crowd, or in other words, the types of people who the administration sees as a threat to its power.

Furthermore, the fact that the operation was rolled out in secret and its very name Choke Point suggest that the executive branch and the Justice Department knew exactly what they were doing when they designed it. There is little doubt in many people's minds that the program is specifically intended to shut these companies down even though most of them are perfectly legal and operate within the law.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects citizens and private enterprises from unreasonable searches and seizures by requiring a search warrant that is approved by a judge, based on probable cause, and limited to very specific parameters. The Fifth Amendment is supposed to guarantee them due process if they are charged with a crime, but Operation Choke Point violates both of these protections. First, it requires banks to collect all kinds of information on their customers without any probable cause of a crime, and secondly it incentivizes banks to close their customers accounts based on spurious claims of "reputational risk" without any form of due process.

The design of Choke Point is as genius as it is sinister. It forces companies that the government dislikes to close without ever being accused of any crime, without a trial, and without even a direct link back to the government. In fact, most business owners who are victims didn't even know about it until their bank notified them their accounts were being closed because the bank didn't want their patronage anymore.

Eric Holder was the Attorney General at the time Operation Choke Point was launched

When the companies asked why their accounts were being closed their banks told them they were all of a sudden "too high risk" even if they had been customers for decades. When 31 members of Congress learned of the operation and sent a request for information on what the DOJ and FDIC were doing the DOJ responded by telling Congress it was under no obligation to answer any questions. Members of the media had to file a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to get more information, but the DOJ is fighting it in court. The FDIC has deferred to the DOJ since the DOJ is the lead on the operation.

Operation Choke Point was born out of a 2009 executive order that created the President's Financial Fraud Task Force that was supposed to determine the cause of the financial crisis so the government could exonerate itself and pin the blame on someone else. A year earlier, at the height of the financial crisis, Rahm Emanuel, then President elect, Barack Obama's chief of staff said in an interview, that government, "should never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

And it is clear that the administration took those words to heart. Under the guise of cracking down on financial fraud to prevent future crises the government launched the task force and a whole slew of new regulations that it never would have been able to before. Some of them went through Congress like Dodd-Frank and others completely bypassed it, like Operation Choke Point.

Operation Choke Point is a perfect example of an alarming trend that has been around for decades, but was really taken to another level by both the Bush and Obama administrations. It is the growing use of executive orders issued by the President in order to bypass Congress. This abuse of power is a gross violation of the Constitution. It has been called "executive overreach" in polite conversation, but in more blunt terms it is nothing less than the creation of an Imperial Presidency.

Rahm Emmanuel "never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."

The administration knows it could never have gotten Operation Choke Point passed in an open forum, such as Congress, which is why it circumvented the legislature. That's why executive orders have become such popular tools of Presidents. They neatly bypass the checks and balances that were put in the Constitution to prevent such abuses of power.

Operation Choke Point is just one example of the dangers of an out-of-control executive branch, but in a separate scandal, the Internal Revenue Service was also discovered to be illegally harassing and persecuting groups for their political beliefs. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the government can persecute political enemies for having opposing viewpoints. The US is supposed to be a country where the people can speak their minds without fear of government interference and petition their government for redress of grievances. But between Operation Choke Point and the IRS, it is becoming obvious that the politicians and bureaucrats who run the government today have absolutely no respect for the laws they have sworn to uphold.

But political considerations aside, Operation Choke Point has had a serious economic impact on the country as well. Small businesses employ thousands of Americans and are a huge engine of economic growth. By covertly squeezing thousands of small companies to the point where they have to close thousands more jobs are being lost.

One of the first banks to receive a subpoena from the DOJ was Four Oaks Bank in North Carolina. It was targeted because it serviced a lot of TPPPs. The bank was told that it should stop doing business with the TPPP's because they carried "reputational risk."

Reputational risk is the risk that your reputation will be impugned by your own actions, or by association with someone of questionable character. Reputational risk is something that all companies worry about and remain ever watchful for, because one mistake can lead to the loss of customers, bankruptcy, and disgrace.

But now companies have something new to worry about. If the government doesn't think you're worrying enough about your image and reputation, then they'll fine you or drag you into court. And if the government fines you or drags you into court it will damage your reputation. So you're dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

One of the first casualties of Operation Choke Point. The bank paid a $1.2 million fine without admitting any wrongdoing.

In the end, Four Oaks Bank agreed to pay a $1.2 million fine for not doing enough due diligence on their TPPP customers. The bank did not admit to any wrongdoing, so it obviously calculated that paying the fine was less expensive and faster than enduring a potentially long drawn out and expensive legal battle. Which is exactly what the government was hoping for. Its main weapons in this fight are intimidation and its ability to outspend and outlast small business owners in court.

Luckily, as more and more people and members of Congress find out about it, a resistance is being mounted. Bank of America customer, Kelly McMillan, a gun manufacturer in Phoenix, Arizona, had his account closed after 12 years of patronage. He posted his story on Facebook and found out that he wasn't alone. So he took matters into his own hands. He started his own credit card payment processing company for other firms affected by OCP. Other affected companies have banded together to form citizen action groups like the Online Lenders Alliance to fight back against this abusive policy.

Last May, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a scathing report on OCP in which it concluded:

"Forceful prosecution of those who defraud American consumers is both responsible and admirable. However, Department of Justice initiatives to combat mass-market consumer fraud must be legitimate exercises of the Department's legal authorities, and must be executed in a manner that does not unfairly harm legitimate merchants and individuals."

"Operation Choke Point fails both these requirements. The Department's radical reinterpretation of what constitutes an actionable violation under § 951 of FIRREA fundamentally distorts Congress' intent in enacting the law, and inappropriately demands that bankers act as the moral arbiters and policemen of the commercial world. In light of the Department's obligation to act within the bounds of the law, and its avowed commitment not to "discourage or inhibit" the lawful conduct of honest merchants, it is necessary to disavow and dismantle Operation Choke Point."

In November, Representative Luetkemeyer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee introduced the Financial Institution Customer Protection Act that will, if passed, prohibit any Federal agency from ordering a bank to close a customer's account unless it has material evidence that the customer is breaking the law. In other words, we now have to pass special laws with specific language, just to point out to the president and the rest of the government that there is a Constitution and Bill of Rights that they have sworn to uphold, and that they may not violate.

But because there has been such strong opposition to Operation Choke Point, in an effort to keep it as low profile as possible, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is telling banks that they cannot inform their customers about it even if the customers are being investigated or scrutinized under the regulation. If this is allowed to continue a business could have its bank account closed without any explanation or recourse against the bank or the government. If this is allowed to continue it should be obvious to everyone that America is now controlled by a secretive and unaccountable government. If this is allowed to continue there will be no better proof that America is no longer governed by the rule of law where citizens have a right to face their accuser and defend themselves in court.

As a bullion coin dealer that has been targeted by Operation Choke Point, we feel it is our duty to not only stand up and resist this government abuse, but also warn others about what is going on. The more people who are aware of how the government is waging war on the Constitution the more people who can write to their elected representatives and let them know that OCP is illegal and it is their job to reign in the out of control executive branch.

Here is a list of businesses targeted by Operation Choke Point:

• Ammunition Sales


• Cable Box De-scramblers


• Coin Dealers


• Credit Card Schemes


• Credit Repair Services


• Dating Services


• Debt Consolidation Scams


• Drug Paraphernalia


• Escort Services


• Firearms Sales


• Fireworks Sales


• Get Rich Products


• Government Grants


• Home-Based Charities


• Life-Time Guarantees


• Life-Time Memberships


• Lottery Sales


• Mailing Lists/Personal Info


• Money Transfer Networks


• On-line Gambling


• Payday Loans


• Pharmaceutical Sales


• Ponzi Schemes


• Pornography


• Pyramid-Type Sales


• Racist Materials


• Surveillance Equipment


• Telemarketing


• Tobacco Sales


• Travel Clubs

As you can see from the list a couple of the industries are legitimate concerns for the government because they are inherently rife with fraud, such as Ponzi-schemes and racist materials, but most of this list is made up of legitimate and legal businesses that provide valuable products or services to their customers. It is not the government's job to pick winners and losers or take away people's private choices about how they spend their currency.

It's clear that Operation Choke Point is meant to intimidate and economically destroy the administration's political enemies, and create fear among those who oppose the President's agenda. Because the targets of Operation Choke Point are generally small firms, the government knows that they don't have the resources to mount any kind of meaningful defense against it. The Federal government on the other hand, despite being $18 trillion dollars in debt, has limitless resources to conduct its assault.

Operation Choke Point is seen by many as an underhanded way of closing legitimate, legal industries by cutting off their access to the banking system and capital. In my opinion this unconstitutional and illegal act by the executive branch, which bypassed Congress and the Supreme Court, is flat out evil. By implementing Operation Choke Point, the president and the justice department are actively committing crimes against the Constitution they swore to uphold and against the American people. We can't let our government get away with it.

It's entirely possible that this is the method the government will use in the future to prevent you from legally buying what you need, when you need it most. If there's civil unrest, you won't be able to buy firearms or ammunition. If there's a dollar crisis, you won't be able to buy gold or silver. Whatever the administration decides it doesn't want you to have, it will now prevent you from getting it by choking off the financial "air" to the providers of those goods and services so those companies die. Without due process, this is tantamount to the executive branch committing the financial murder of law-abiding businesses.

If there's anything you think you may want from a company that falls into Operation Choke Point's targeted list, even if you don't think you'll need the item for many years, I suggest you get it now ... while you still can.

Yes, America is choking

It's choking on tens of thousands of laws, codes, orders, regulations, and restrictions. It's choking on overspending, and with it, over-taxation. It's choking on lobbyists and cronyism, through which legislators create laws to benefit their friends and contributors, enriching the few at the expense of the many. It's choking on bureaucrats who spy on all of us. It's choking on civil forfeiture laws where police can take anything they want of yours without even accusing or charging you of a crime. Instead they charge your property with a crime and confiscate it. And, believe it or not, your house, your car, or your cash is guilty until proven innocent.

America is choking on a corrupt monetary system designed to transfer wealth from the population to the banks and financial sector. It's choking on central planning that stifles the free market. It's choking on politicians who punish success and reward failure by playing Robin Hood with your income. It's choking on a central bank with Keynesian economists who destroy the free market by manipulating the quantity of currency and interest rates, causing massive speculative bubbles that eventually burst, resulting in economic devastation. Then these clueless clowns rush in with more Keynesian stimulus and, while in the midst of the next bubble of their own creation that's about to burst, they declare "You see! We saved you from the free market!"

America is choking, and if we don't do something about it soon I fear that it will soon be dead.

We must perform a societal Heimlich maneuver to expel these cancerous ideas from our economic airway. We do this by speaking out and educating others about where prosperity comes from and what extinguishes it. We do this by promoting freedom.

Thomas Jefferson once said,

"When the people fear the government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people there is liberty."

Our government is out of control and tyranny is slowly taking root.

I choose to speak up.

I choose liberty.

I choose freedom.

How about you?

Mike Maloney is the author of Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver, part of Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad's Advisors" series of books, and is the producer and host of Hidden Secrets of Money.

Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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U.S. gunman kills three young Muslims; motive disputed

A gunman who had posted anti-religious messages on Facebook and quarreled with neighbors was charged with killing three young Muslims in what police said on Wednesday was a dispute over parking and possibly a hate crime.

© REUTERS/Chris Keane

Namee Barakat and his wife Layla Barakat, parents of shooting victim Deah Shaddy Barakat, react as a video is played during a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a full-time paralegal student from Chapel Hill, was charged with first-degree murder in Tuesday's shootings around 5 p.m. two miles (three km) from the University of North Carolina campus.

The victims were newlyweds Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a University of North Carolina dental student, and his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Yusor's sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. All were involved in humanitarian aid programs.

Students at UNC, where Yusor Mohammad was going to join her husband as a student later this year, gathered on Wednesday for an evening vigil and prayer service.

The suspect, in handcuffs and orange jail garb, appeared briefly on Wednesday before a Durham County judge who ordered him held without bail pending a March 4 probable cause hearing.

© REUTERS/Chris Keane

Namee Barakat, father of shooting victim Deah Shaddy Barakat, cries as a video is played during a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.

Police said a preliminary investigation showed the motive to be a parking dispute. They said Hicks, who has no criminal history in Chapel Hill, turned himself in and was cooperating.

The killings drew international condemnation. The shooting sparked the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter on social media with many posters assailing what they called a lack of news coverage.

"I guess that Muslims are only newsworthy when behind the gun, not in front," tweeted a poster who goes by the handle @biebersrivals.

Muslim activists demanded authorities investigate a possible motive of religious hatred.

"We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case," Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement.

Hundreds of people gathered on the UNC campus Wednesday evening for a candlelight vigil for the victims.

University and city leaders urged inclusiveness during a time of unease, while a brother of one of the victims called for nonviolence.

'EXECUTION-STYLE MURDERS'

The killings occurred in a condominium complex in a wooded area filled with two-story buildings. Neighbors said parking spaces were often a point of contention.

"I have seen and heard (Hicks) be very unfriendly to a lot of people in this community," said Samantha Maness, 25, a community college student. But she said she had never seen him show animosity along religious lines.

© REUTERS/Chris Keane

A woman places flowers near a building where three young Muslims were killed on Tuesday, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.

On Facebook, Hicks' profile picture reads "Atheists for Equality" and he frequently posted quotes critical of religion. On Jan. 20 he posted a photo of a .38-caliber revolver that he said was loaded and belonged to him.

Hicks' wife, Karen Hicks, told reporters at a news conference that her husband had been locked in a longstanding dispute over parking and the killings had nothing to do with religion. She said Hicks was not hateful and believed "everyone is equal."

Barakat's family urged the shooting be investigated as a hate crime and said the three were killed with shots to the head.

"Today, we are crying tears of unimaginable pain over the execution-style murders," Barakat's older sister Suzanne told reporters. She said her brother was light-hearted and loved basketball.

The incident appeared to be isolated and not part of a targeted campaign against North Carolina Muslims, Ripley Rand, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, told a news conference with local police officials.

Imam Abdullah Antepli, chief representative of Muslim affairs at Duke University, told the news conference it may or may not have been a hate crime and called for an easing of tensions.

A TURNING POINT?

© REUTERS/Chris Keane

A makeshift memorial for Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad and Yusor's sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, who were killed by a gunman, is pictured inside of the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina February 11, 2015.

Groups including the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the local Raleigh-based Muslims for Social Justice called for a federal investigation into possible hate crimes.

"I hope this terrible tragedy will be a turning point that brings the reality home that if we keep demonizing Muslims and equating their religion to terrorism, it will lead to more attacks," said Manzoor Cheema, co-founder of Muslims for Social Justice.

Barakat, an American citizen of Syrian origin, wrote in his last Facebook post about providing free dental supplies and food to homeless people in downtown Durham. He was raising funds for a trip to Turkey with 10 other dentists to provide free fillings, root canals and oral hygiene instruction to Syrian refugee children.

His sister-in-law, Abu-Salha, a sophomore at nearby North Carolina State University, was involved in making multimedia art to spread positive messages about being Muslim American.

Students at UNC said the three friends came from two of the most prominent Muslim families in the Raleigh area.

"Deah was a very proud Muslim American. He was proud of all his identities," said Sofia Dard, a 21-year-old senior psychology major. She said Muslims were used to occasional harassment in post-9/11 America, but the shooting "adds a whole level of seriousness."

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Ten million stolen passwords were released

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Earlier this week, noted security researcher and consultant Mark Burnett made waves when he posted 10 million stolen usernames and passwords on his blog. Of course, the security expert didn't post the passwords with malicious intent. Instead, his goal was to "release a clean set of data" that gives the world insights into user behavior, and also to draw attention once again to the arrest and prosecution of Barrett Brown.

Burnett didn't steal the passwords in question, of course, but they're now easily accessible to anyone and everyone — here's how you can quickly and easily find out if you are affected.

Burnett posted the 10 million leaked usernames and passwords in one big torrent file that anyone with a computer can download in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, one of the people who downloaded that file used it to create a simple site where anyone can check to see if their accounts have been compromised.

Here's how you can check:

Simply visit this page on programmer Luke Rehmann's website, where you'll be able to search for your usernames and passwords in the leaked file.

Now, before you start wondering if Rehmann is just using this page to collect the usernames and passwords people input, it's important to note that you can (and should) search with partial entries. So, for example, if your password is "trustno1," you can simply search "no1″ or "trus" and see if one of your accounts comes up.

As Burnett notes in his blog post, the usernames and passwords he posted are a small sample pulled from earlier username and password dumps containing upwards of 1 billion sets of stolen credentials. As a result, running a check on the site linked above doesn't guarantee that your usernames and passwords aren't floating around on the deep web.

To check your usernames against more complete databases of stolen credentials, visit Havibeenpwned.com and Pwnedlist.com.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Paranoid America: Alabama cop accused of paralyzing Indian man during pat-down

An Alabama cop is under investigation after allegedly using excessive force while handcuffing a man visiting from India who has since been diagnosed as partly paralyzed.

© AL.com

The altercation occurred last Friday when Sureshbhai Patel, a 57-year-old Indian citizen from the small town of Pij, was approached by an officer of the Madison Police Department while outside his own son's home in an affluent up-and-coming community in northern Alabama.

Police say they were responding to calls concerning a suspicious person in the neighborhood when they confronted Patel, according to a statement provided to the AL.com news portal, and learned he did not speak English.

According to local news network WHNT, Patel's son said his dad told the officers: "No English. Indian. Walking," then pointed to the family home he had been staying in for less than two weeks.

The officers then attempted to search Patel, according to the police. But when the man allegedly put his hands in his pockets and pulled away, one of the cops forced him to the ground.

"He was just walking on the sidewalk as he does all the time," his son, Chirag Patel, told AL.com on Tuesday. "They put him to the ground."

"The only thing that would have been suspicious is that he was of brown skin," Hank Sherrod, an attorney for the Patel family, told RT on Wednesday.

Not only did the incident end without arrests, but Patel had to be hauled off to an area hospital temporarily paralyzed. At first he was unable to move his legs and had limited motion in his arms, but some mobility was restored after doctors performed cervical fusion surgery the next day.

"The doctors say there was trauma to the cervical spine that caused immediate swelling," Sherrod told RT, "and they needed to do the cervical fusion in order to go in there and relieve the pressure on the spine."

"This is just one of those things that doesn't need to happen," the lawyer told AL.com. "That officer doesn't need to be on the streets."

Indeed, the Madison Police Department has since placed the officer on administrative leave pending the results of an internal investigation, and soon the agency may have a better idea of what exactly happened.

Capt. John Stringer, a spokesman for the force, told AL.com that both audio and video exists of the incident, but the recordings will be kept from the public for now, since they are considered evidence in the internal affairs probe.

"You only release the video and the audio , which they admit they have, but you only release that when it supports you. You don't do that in this case when obviously you're concerned it doesn't," Sherrod told RT.

Also sealed, for the time being, are the names of the two officers who responded to the suspicious person calls.

"The Madison Police Department takes all use of force incidents seriously and reviews them as a matter of policy," the department said in a statement.

Chirag Patel, the victim's son, came to the United States roughly a decade ago, according to AL.com, then attended college and married a US citizen. After gaining full citizenship in 2012, the older Patel was approved for permanent residency on account of being an immediate family member, the news portal reported.

"He came here to help; he came here to be a granddad," Sherrod told RT.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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