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WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Two of President-elect Donald Trump's most controversial nominees, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, sought support from U.S. senators on Monday, but it remained uncertain whether they would get the near-unanimous Republican backing they will need to win confirmation. Former Fox News personality Hegseth held a second meeting with Senator Joni Ernst, a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor seen as a key to the decorated Army National Guard veteran's hopes for becoming secretary of Defense. Ernst's statement afterward seemed to open the door to voting for Hegseth. She said the nominee had committed to completing a Pentagon audit and selecting an official who would address the issue of sexual assault within the ranks. "As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources," Ernst said. Hegseth faces concerns about allegations of misconduct in his professional and personal life, including accusations of sexual assault, which he denies. Several of his supporters have called for his accusers to come forward publicly. Trump has kept his support strongly behind Hegseth, predicting he will be confirmed. Hegseth told reporters the meeting with Ernst had gone well, saying, "The more we talk, the more we are reminded that we are two combat veterans and we are dedicated to defense." Trump's fellow Republicans will hold only a slim 53-47 Senate majority next year, meaning nominees can afford just three Republican no's and still be confirmed, if Democrats unite against them. Former Representative Gabbard, Trump's choice for director of national intelligence, arrived for Senate meetings as the abrupt fall on Sunday of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad prompted renewed scrutiny of her 2017 visit to Damascus. Gabbard, a former Democrat who lacks significant intelligence experience, is also seen as soft on Russia, although her supporters say she has a healthy skepticism about foreign U.S. military involvement, in keeping with the America First policies of Trump, whom she endorsed this year. Her selection to be director of national intelligence in November sent shock waves through the national security establishment, adding to concerns that the intelligence community would become increasingly political. Gabbard did not respond on Monday when reporters at the Capitol asked her to respond to events in Syria. Sign up here. Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Jonathan Oatis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab Thomson Reuters Patricia Zengerle has reported from more than 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China. An award-winning Washington-based national security and foreign policy reporter who also has worked as an editor, Patricia has appeared on NPR, C-Span and other programs, spoken at the National Press Club and attended the Hoover Institution Media Roundtable. She is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence.A fter a sprawling hacking campaign exposed the communications of an unknown number of Americans, U.S. cybersecurity officials are advising people to use encryption in their communications. To safeguard against the risks highlighted by the campaign, which originated in China, federal cybersecurity authorities released an extensive list of security recommendations for U.S. telecom companies — such as Verizon and AT&T — that were targeted. The advice includes one tip we can all put into practice with our phones: “Ensure that traffic is end-to-end encrypted to the maximum extent possible.” End-to-end encryption, also known as E2EE, means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is garble that can’t be unscrambled without the key. Law enforcement officials until now resisted this type of encryption because it means the technology companies themselves won’t be able to look at the messages, nor respond to law enforcement requests to turn the data over. Here’s a look at various ways ordinary consumers can use end-to-end encryption: Officials said the hackers targeted the metadata of a large number of customers, including information on the dates, times and recipients of calls and texts. They also managed to see the content from texts from a much smaller number of victims. If you’re an iPhone user, information in text messages that you send to someone else who also has an iPhone will be encrypted end-to-end. Just look for the blue text bubbles, which indicate that they are encrypted iMessages. The same goes for Android users sending texts through Google Messages. There will be a lock next to the timestamp on each message to indicate the encryption is on. But there’s a weakness. When iPhone and Android users text each other, the messages are encrypted only using Rich Communication Services, an industry standard for instant messaging that replaces the older SMS and MMS standards. Apple has noted that RCS messages “aren’t end-to-end encrypted, which means they’re not protected from a third party reading them while they’re sent between devices.” Samsung, which sells Android smartphones, also hinted at the issue in a footnote at the bottom of a press release last month on RCS, saying, “Encryption only available for Android to Android communication.” To avoid getting caught out when trading texts, experts recommend using encrypted messaging apps. Privacy advocates are big fans of Signal, which applies end-to-end encryption to all messages and voice calls. The independent nonprofit group behind the app promises never to sell, rent or lease customer data and made its source code publicly available so that it can be audited by anyone to examine it “for security and correctness.” Signal’s encryption protocol is so reputable that it has been integrated into rival WhatsApp, so users will enjoy the same level of security protection as Signal, which has a much smaller user base. End-to-end encryption is also the default mode for Facebook Messenger, which like WhatsApp is owned by Meta Platforms. Telegram is an app that can be used for one-on-one conversations, group chats and broadcast “channels” but contrary to popular perception, it doesn’t turn on end-to-end encryption by default. Users have to switch on the option. And it doesn’t work with group chats. Cybersecurity experts warned people against using Telegram for private communications and pointed out that only its opt-in ‘secret chat’ feature is encrypted from end-to-end. The app also has a reputation for being a haven for scammers and criminal activity, highlighted by founder and CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in France. Instead of using your phone to make calls through a wireless cellular network, you can make voice calls with Signal and WhatsApp. Both apps encrypt calls with the same technology that they use to encrypt messages. There are other options. If you have an iPhone you can use Facetime for calls, while Android owners can use the Google Fi service, which are both end-to-end encrypted. The only catch with all these options is that, as with using the chat services to send messages, the person on the other end will also have to have the app installed. WhatsApp and Signal users can customize their privacy preferences in the settings, including hiding an IP address during calls to prevent your general location from being guessed. Get local news delivered to your inbox!D ear Heloise: I wanted to write in concerning not using rugs and towels at animal shelters. I have to wonder what sort of “shelter” is being offered to dogs and cats where it gets so cold and wet that the cloth can freeze. Not to mention the possibility of the poor animal freezing to death! Are they saying these indoor animals are being kept outside? Or are their facilities not being properly heated and dry? This is shocking to me! I hope they can explain themselves. — Frank F., Ventura, California Frank, the letter was referring to feral cats and other outdoor animals. Shelter cats and dogs usually have a better situation than those that are born wild or mistreated by their owners. In my opinion, no animal should be kept outside in the winter if they have owners with a warm house. Sadly, there are too many abandoned cats and dogs that have no one to look after them, making their existence difficult and their lives short. Straw is the best solution to helping these animals stay warm, provided that there is plenty of straw to snuggle in for warmth inside of some type of enclosure. There are a variety of such houses for animals online, and most aren’t expensive. — Heloise Dear Heloise: I often use paper-towel rolls and toilet-paper rolls to keep artificial flower stems together. I also cut them lengthwise to put on gift-wrapping paper rolls. If the paper roll is too thin to keep a cardboard roll on, then I use a rubber band to secure the roll. Your readers have given me so much I can use. I thank you and thank them, too. — Jackie, Colorado Springs, Colorado Jackie, I like your cardboard roll ideas. Lately, I’ve received several letters stating that readers use the cardboard roll in paper towels and toilet paper to start a fire in their fireplace. Some also use a toilet roll of cardboard to gather a number of loose cords together. Others use a paper-towel roll to wrap tree lights around when putting them into storage. All of these are great ideas, as well. — Heloise Dear Heloise: Our glass pie plates wouldn’t get clean, so my husband had the successful idea to use a ceramic cooktop cleaner! The pie plates are sparkling now! — Connie B., Universal City, Texas Dear Heloise: My mom was never really happy with any gift I gave her. Since she relied on Social Security, money was tight, so I started to give her a goody box. I usually used an empty paper box and filled it with toiletries and products that I knew she used. I also included postage stamps and gift cards for car washes. She would love her goody box and looked forward to it every year. One year, my aunt was visiting from the old country at Christmas, so I made up a smaller box for her. I found out that she loved a certain brand of canned corn, so I included six cans. She was over the moon! It was also easy for me, as I would add things to the box all year long, making it easier on my time and budget. — Liz N., via email Send a money-saving or time-saving hint to Heloise@Heloise.com . Get local news delivered to your inbox!Americans have been appalled by thousands of illegal immigrants — those granted temporary legal status or who crossed the border undetected — exacerbating homelessness and straining shelters, schools and social services budgets. President-elect Donald Trump promised aggressive deportations during his campaign, but he hardly has a mandate. He won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points, and Republicans enjoy a House majority of only three seats. President Biden muffed the immigration issue by reversing most of Mr. Trump’s tough border policies — including requiring many migrants to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims could be heard. The Biden policy coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and economic disorder in much of Latin America, and the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally surpassed 13 million. Hardly all deadbeats, many found work and proved vital to sustaining the robust 2.5% pace of economic growth we enjoyed in the Trump and Biden years, compared with the 1.9% accomplished during the Bush-Obama era. After the pandemic shutdowns, the economy rapidly recovered and was at full employment in the summer of 2023. Over the next year, it added 195,000 jobs a month, when indigenous population growth and legal immigration could support only about 80,000 a month. Illegal immigrants made up the difference, account for half of agricultural workers and are prominently represented in the building trades, hospitality and day care for children and older adults. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance argues that these workers could be replaced by offering Americans higher wages, but that’s silly. In an economy with just 7 million job-seekers, it’s highly problematic to visualize how more than 1 million Americans could be motivated to take backbreaking jobs picking avocados and lettuce in the Central Valley of California, packing meat in Iowa or milking cows in Wisconsin. The combination of workers deported, fleeing to Canada or going into hiding would create significant food shortages and the kind of grocery price inflation suffered during and after the COVID shutdowns. It would force many women to quit the workforce for lack of child care. Familiar faces would disappear at supermarkets, restaurants and dry cleaners, while the pace of inflation, which appears to be settling at about 2.5%, would jump to 4.5%. Economic growth would slow dramatically and retirement security impaired by an anemic stock market. Workers in immigrant-dominated occupations would get pay raises that exceed the rate of inflation. But for Americans employed in other industries, moribund or nonexistent growth would spell more joblessness and wages lagging inflation like the years following the COVID shutdowns. The cost of mass deportation could reach $900 billion — enough to build nearly 3 million homes or 43,450 elementary schools. The incoming Trump administration is misreading its mandate. Americans may want the border and immigration laws tightly enforced, but according to a recent Pew Trust poll, 64% of Americans favor letting illegal immigrants who are already here stay if they meet conditions such as passing a background check. Seeing real incomes fall, shortages of basic services such as child care, elder care, home and office cleaners and counter help at fast-food places — and draconian images of the National Guard and sheriff’s deputies dragging immigrants from their workplaces and homes — would surely make the latter statistic rocket and permit Mr. Trump’s critics to paint him as a fascist. With only a slim Republican majority in the House, prospects for a good deal of his other economic and foreign policy priorities would be impaired. In the propaganda competition with China and Russia for influence in emerging nations, the American brand of champion of human rights would be severely damaged. Our current system permits too few legal immigrants, creating worker shortages, including in the tech sector. It is too biased toward family reunification, which can be abused through chain immigration and a diversity lottery. Instead, we should increase quotas enough to ensure 1 million to 1.5 million more workers a year. Like Canada, we should screen applicants primarily on the basis of their prospective contribution to the economy — prioritize those applicants filling needed employment categories. Let employers sponsor workers but pay a significant fee to be set by auction — the proceeds could be used to assist local governments with resettlement costs. Employers should be required to guarantee work for a minimum period of perhaps a year or two, subject to safeguards to prevent churning. It’s not just blue-collar and low-wage occupations that suffer shortages, and bigger quotas for engineers and other technology workers would likely accelerate growth in ways we have not calculated. Raising the cost to employers of immigrant workers through auctioned licenses would greatly reduce their incentive to turn to immigrants to avoid paying native-born Americans and green card holders higher wages. Stronger growth would raise real incomes for most everyone and help create more secure retirements through a higher worker-to-reitree ratio and a stronger stock market. . Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. .
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