Tag Archives: Canada

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Canadian diplomats doubt US peeping into sensitive information

Canada’s political parties fear U.S. intelligence agencies may breach their privacy and get secret information from a cloud-based Web site Salesforce.com

Under the laws in the United States, the government can ask any Web site to reveal all information to them without informing the concerned person or party, revealed James Williamson, information technology coordinator, who represents the Canadian New Democratic Party (NDP) in Ottawa, Ontario.

The NDP is at present the key opposition party in Canada whereas Conservatives are in the government. The NDP has 123 million records of many individuals holding key information under their possession. Diplomats showed their concern when the NDP was asked to seek for stronger encryption approach instead of cloud-based Salesforce.com as its platform for its e-mails and other contacts.

The party also stores its voter tracking information database, donor’s information and other things which need to be maintained in private. The Canadian diplomats want that the NDP should use some other platform, which it can handle alone and without any breach of information by any other party.

In case, the US government forces Salesforce and its authorities to reveal any information at least the NDP should be informed about that.

Varun Badhwar, an official from CipherCloud’s business development firm  stated that the unit provides  cloud-based encryption services  to Saleforce.com, Amazon and Box.net.

Cloud-based encrypton keys are used to keep data private.

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Louisiana filled with rain, tropical storm lee dominates

Southern Louisiana witnesses heavy rainfall due to tropical storm lee on Saturday. The storm continues hanging off the Gulf of Mexico with strong winds of 60 mph. Weather experts predict there is a possibility of heavy flooding in southern Alabama as well as Mississippi and Louisiana. The region is expected to receive a rainfall of around 20 inches due to storm lee.

According to the National Weather Service, center of the storm might hit the Louisiana coast on Saturday afternoon and probably slow down as moving toward southern Louisiana.

Local officials have alarmed the residents and declared states of emergency in Mississippi and Louisiana and people have been taken away to safer places. Pictures of the areas prone to floods have been put online in order to keep people aware.

Though the officials are prepared to tackle any emergency with swift-water rescue teams, they did not want to be a failure as during Katrina hurricane that occurred in 2005.The officials further revealed that Scenario in the New Orleans sea were also very much similar to other areas that are flooded and it would take few days to clear water from the streets.

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US Senate gears up to review bill on Oil pipeline

The US House of Representatives has approved proposed $7 billion pipeline The Democratic government has moved forward to set a deadline for the pipeline that will bring Canadian oil sands crude to the United States .

The bill received 279-147 votes in its favor and this eventually pressurizes the state to allow transport of Canadian oil sands crude to California by 1 November via Keystone XL pipeline.

Ed Whitfield, a Republican stated that the pipeline continued being held up for three years due to many reasons, and now the approved bill has removed all the big obstacles for it.

He also stated that, the opening of this pipeline would also help in reducing oil prices.The proposed pipeline would transport

700,000 barrels of crude oil per day. It will transfer oilfrom Alberta to refineries situated at US Gulf coast. This would also help in securing energy supply in the country as well as promote employment. However, the bill is yet to become a law and it needs to be passed by the Senate, where DEmocrates dominate the scene.

Keystone XL pipeline has raise many environmental concerns too and therefore received strong resistance from those who oppose the bill. The oil sand production in Canada is carbon-intensive, and therefore contributes to greater pollution.

from the incidents of leakage in Exxon Mobil’s Silvertip oil pipeline has also set people to raise concern over the viability ofKeystone XL pipeline.