IN OTHER NEWS: Obama, Facebook, Drones, Zimmerman, Spies

STUNNING LACK OF DIVERSITY IN OBAMA CAMPAIGN, PHOTOS REVEAL

A photo of Obama’s “army” originally posted on the campaign’s Tumblr site and run in conjunction with a BuzzFeed story on the Obama campaign reveals a stunning lack of diversity among the president’s Chicago staff.

The Obama campaign’s Chicago headquarters has it all—from Jack Daniels and Ping Pong to bouncy balls and ironic desk mementos.

Yet the “army of twenty-somethings” campaign manager Jim Messina has assembled in the president’s hometown is almost uniformly white, according to photos contained in a detailed BuzzFeed report Monday.

Further examination of the Obama’s campaign’s Tumblr site over the past month reveals very few black individuals—apart from the president and his wife, Michelle—in the pictures posted in the feed.

One of the only featured pictures to include a black individual is one from a recent White House visit by Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols.

The revelation is potentially embarrassing for the first African-American president and the party he leads.

Facebook to buy Instagram for $1bn

Facebook is paying $1bn to buy Instagram, a fast-growing online photo-sharing site, in its largest acquisition to date.

The purchase, for cash and stock, extends the social networking site’s reach in online photos, an area it already dominates through its own pictures service.

Set up just two years ago, Instagram – which was named iPhone application of the year by Apple last year – has grown rapidly to become one of the most popular applications running on Apple’s iOS operating system. Its number of registered users has almost doubled to 27m in the past four months. Last week it introduced its app for Android devices.

Instagram is known for the filters and effects that users can apply to pictures before sending them on to their social networks over services such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare and Tumblr. While there are many similar photo apps – including Picplz, Path, Camera Awesome and Hipstamatic – Instagram has quickly grown to be the leader.

First Man Arrested With Drone Evidence Vows to Fight Case

The tiny town of Lakota, N.D., is quickly becoming a key testing ground for the legality of the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement after one of its residents became the first American citizen to be arrested with the help of a Predator surveillance drone.

The bizarre case started when six cows wandered onto Rodney Brossart's 3,000 acre farm. Brossart, an alleged anti-government "sovereignist," believed he should have been able to keep the cows, so he and two family members chased police off his land with high powered rifles.

After a 16-hour standoff, the Grand Forks police department SWAT team, armed with a search warrant, used an agreement they've had with Homeland Security for about three years, and called in an unmanned aerial vehicle to pinpoint Brossart's location on the ranch. The SWAT team stormed in and arrested Brossart on charges of terrorizing a sheriff, theft, criminal mischief, and other charges, according to documents.

Brossart says he "had no clue" they used a drone during the standoff until months after his arrest.

Zimmerman speaks, raises funds on new website

The man at the center of a firestorm over his shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager has launched a website, warning supporters about groups that falsely claim to be raising funds for his defense and soliciting donations for himself.

"I am the real George Zimmerman," declares the website, set up over the weekend.

"On Sunday February 26th, I was involved in a life altering event which led me to become the subject of intense media coverage. As a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage, I have been forced to leave my home, my school, my employer, my family and ultimately, my entire life. This website's sole purpose is to ensure my supporters they are receiving my full attention without any intermediaries."

Zimmerman's "life altering event" was the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an act that the neighborhood watch volunteer told Sanford, Florida, police was an act of self-defense. Zimmerman has not been charged with a crime in Martin's death, a fact that has provoked demonstrations and calls that he be prosecuted for killing the teen.

American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI

Michigan State University President Lou Anna K. Simon contacted the Central Intelligence Agency in late 2009 with an urgent question.

The school’s campus in Dubai needed a bailout and an unlikely savior had stepped forward: a Dubai-based company that offered to provide money and students.

Simon was tempted. She also worried that the company, which had investors from Iran and wanted to recruit students from there, might be a front for the Iranian government, she said. If so, an agreement could violate federal trade sanctions and invite enemy spies.

The CIA couldn’t confirm that the company wasn’t an arm of Iran’s government. Simon rejected the offer and shut down undergraduate programs in Dubai, at a loss of $3.7 million.

Hearkening back to Cold War anxieties, growing signs of spying on U.S. universities are alarming national security officials. As schools become more global in their locations and student populations, their culture of openness and international collaboration makes them increasingly vulnerable to theft of research conducted for the government and industry.

“We have intelligence and cases indicating that U.S. universities are indeed a target of foreign intelligence services,” Frank Figliuzzi, Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director for counterintelligence, said in a February interview in the bureau’s Washington headquarters.