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Posted in News Roundup at 12:35 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
If you’ve ever lived somewhere it gets properly cold, you’ll know that winter’s icy grasp brings the inevitable challenge of keeping roadways safe. While road salt and gritting have long been the go-to solutions, their detrimental environmental impact and the potential for infrastructure degradation are well-documented.
Government says the month’s traditions are ‘uncivilized,’ and people should take better care of the elderly
Shedding Light on CVSS Scoring Inconsistencies: A User-Centric Study on Evaluating Widespread Security Vulnerabilities.
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a globally known scoring system used by many companies.
With the help of CVSS, security vulnerabilities are evaluated based on certain metrics – for example, whether or not a user needs to be involved in an attack. CVSS is used to calculate a score between 0 and 10, indicating the severity of the vulnerability.
However, previous research has shown that scores of different evaluators for the same vulnerability are likely to differ, but little is still known about the factors that influence the scoring. We therefore conducted an empirical study to investigate the consistency of CVSSv3.1.
If you are considering it, Julia’s other seven myths are right on. You don’t need to be an expert. You don’t need to be original. You don’t have to be comprehensive, consistent, or exciting. You don’t even always have to be right. That describes my blogging journey to a T.
Pew pew!
Inconceivable.
The site on the lunar south pole where the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made its historic Moon landing can be seen in a new image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
As public-school students return to classrooms for the new school year, some could face an unexpected test: religious indoctrination.
Thanks to various state laws enacted during the 2023 legislative session, some schools could try to impose official prayer, proselytizing, or other religious messages on students. But even if state law purports to allow these activities, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not. Public schools are not Sunday schools, and we’ll be watching to make sure it stays that way.
Among the top offenders we have our eye on is Texas. Although state lawmakers narrowly failed to enact a bill requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms, they succeeded in passing a law that authorizes public school districts to employ, or accept as volunteers, chaplains who will “provide support, services, and programs for students.” In a letter sent to every school board throughout Texas, we warned officials that “permitting volunteers to act as chaplains and proselytize students in public schools — let alone employing them — would violate the First Amendment.”
National Read a Book Day is observed annually on September 6. In honor of the holiday, we compiled a list of the best drone books for every type of drone enthusiast.
Whether you are looking for drone-related fiction, training to become a certified pilot or something in between, we have got you covered for the best drone-related books. Grab one, or why not indulge in two, and prepare yourself for National Read a Book Day with this guide to the best drone books.
Over the next few days what I was to experience was an event with some fun moments, mostly devoid of any technical discussion whatsoever. Rarely were talks geared towards technical staff, when technical questions came up during the recorded events they were almost never answered. Most importantly there was no presentation I heard that even remotely touched on long-known missing features of GCP when compared to peers or roadmaps. When I asked technical questions, often Google employees would come up to me after the talk with the answer, which I appreciate. But everyone at home and in the future won’t get that experience and miss out on the benefit.
Heavy reliance on online remote learning during the pandemic drew attention away from more equitable ways of teaching children at home, a UNESCO report says.
IFS to make chips for Tower at Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
US sanctions and unintended consequences – China mocks sanctions as Huawei technology looks stronger than ever.
It raises questions about whether US efforts to contain China’s geopolitical ascent have been effective.
U.S. Administration restricts sales of Nvidia’s advanced compute GPUs to Middle East to counter re-exports to China.
One thing I’ve loved about ThinkPad laptops for many years, is the upgradability and repairability. Ever since the early days, it’s been possible to noodle around inside a ThinkPad.
Sadly, some of the modern X1/Ultrabook line, and some others, are less upgradable than previous generations. My year-old ThinkPad Z13 has a few options for noodling around inside though, including storage.
My Z13 shipped with Ubuntu out of the box. I wanted to try something different, but didn’t want to wipe the OS off the SSD. So I replaced the existing SSD with one of these 256GB Sabrent Rocket NVMe SSD devices for ~£45.
Typically when you’re replacing parts in an old computer it’s either for repairs or an upgrade. Upgrades like adding a more capable processor to an old computer are the most common, and can help bring an old computer a bit closer to the modern era. [Dr. Scott M. Baker] had a different idea, when he downgraded a Heathkit H8 from an 8080 to an 8008.
Although some of the first Android-powered smartphones had them and Blackberries were famous for them, physical keyboards on portable electronics like that quickly became a thing of the past. Presumably the cost to manufacture is too high and the margins too low regardless of consumer demand. Whatever the reason, if you want a small keyboard for your portable devices you’ll likely need to make one yourself like [Kārlis] did for the Steam Deck.
The consumer segment of the market fell by 13.6% year-on-year in Australia though the market grew compared to the previous quarter.
IDC said the commercial segment increased by 2.6% due to increased demand from government and the education sector.
{loadposition sam08}“Rising interest rates, coupled with increasing living expenses are restricting consumer spending,” said Sharmishtha Bhatt, senior researcher, Personal Computing Devices Research, IDC Australia.
There is no question in our minds here at The Next Platform that quantum computing, in some fashion, will be part of the workflow for solving some of the peskiest computational problems the world can think of.
I’m enjoying the new Hardware Unboxed podcast. You can subscribe using the link below, or you can watch on YouTube:
YouTube channelPodcast RSS feed
I thought they raised a good point about benchmarking:
I don’t want to make it sound like its rocket science, but benchmarking today is significantly more complex and difficult than it used to be. I don’t mean that “it’s very difficult to run a benchmark” … I mean making sure that the test system is up to date and operating as it should be.
With Windows all keyboards are compatible but most are with Mac as well. If we talk about Linux/Unix then there are few which are compatible with it in which some functions might not work at all or work partially. These are mostly for Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian and even Kali Linux.
Toyota has revealed a server running out of disk space after botched maintenance was the cause of an outage that forced it to shut down 14 manufacturing plants across Japan last week.
“The system malfunction was caused by the unavailability of some multiple servers (sic) that process parts orders,” states a company announcement posted on Wednesday.
In simple terms, the second-biggest carmaker in the world just had to grind production to a halt because it ran out of storage.
It’s custom-designed for delivery to the liver.
September is recognized as Hunger Action Month, and MHealthy has partnered with the Maize and Blue Cupboard to encourage faculty and staff to raise their awareness.
Mr Emanuel said he expected the US to support Japan if it takes China to WTO over China’s ban on Japan’s seafood imports.
Japan will tap additional funds to help the fishing industry.
Imports were paused in August after lumpy skin disease was found in some cattle sent to Indonesia.
Parts of Malaysia are shrouded in haze with the air quality index (AQI) hitting unhealthy levels.
The cost of imported rice is going up by 36 per cent, driven by factors including climate change and conflicts.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last week recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) move marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the law’s most restrictive category, to Schedule III, which includes prescription drugs such as anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine. Thirty-five years ago today, Francis Young, the DEA’s chief administrative law judge, likewise concluded that marijuana did not belong in Schedule I, which also includes illegal drugs such as heroin, LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA.
An uptick in hospitalizations and deaths persists, but the numbers are relatively low and new vaccines are around the corner.
Three years into the pandemic, the short- and long-term risks are becoming more clear.
The GMG Union, represented by the Writer’s Guild of America, East, expressed disappointment over the firing of Gizmodo en Español’s staff.
“Unfortunately, this move to eliminate the Español team represents yet another broken promise from G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller and Editorial Director Merill Brown, who have repeatedly said that the company’s AI experiments were intended to supplement human writing, not replace it,” the union said in a tweet.
I used to be part of these communities, which usually involved modifying Unix window managers and desktop environments to have dynamic information — stats, graphs, scripts, and more. So some thoughts on historically what’s worked well (and not so well) for the widgetification of the desktop.
Security updates have been issued by Debian (aom and php7.3), Fedora (freeimage and mingw-freeimage), Scientific Linux (thunderbird), SUSE (amazon-ssm-agent, chromium, container-suseconnect, docker, glib2, php7, python-Django1, and rubygem-rails-html-sanitizer), and Ubuntu (kernel, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-ibm, linux-iot, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-6.2, linux-hwe-6.2, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2, linux-raspi, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, and linux, linux-gcp, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-ibm, linux-kvm, linux-lowlatency, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-nvidia).
The Xen Project has released one or more Xen security advisories (XSAs). The security of Qubes OS is not affected.
Okta says some of its US-based customers have been targeted in social engineering attacks whose goal was to disable MFA and obtain high privileges.
British mesh fencing systems maker Zaun discloses LockBit ransomware attack potentially impacting data related to UK military and intelligence sites.
The Chinese social media app, which means “Little Red Book,” has taken off in Taiwan.
The usage of Blueshell malware spikes up by various threat actors to target Windows, Linux, and other operating systems across Korea and Thailand.
Nearly three months after its Azure cloud was breached, Microsoft says the “probable” cause was the cracking of a staff engineer’s corporate account.
It is our pleasure to announce that the NitroPC Pro is officially certified for Qubes OS Release 4!
Android’s September 2023 security update resolves a high-severity elevation of privilege vulnerability exploited in malicious attacks.
Single Sign On (SSO) improves security for organizations and org members in their routine access to applications required by their role. While SSO providers resolve many authentication risks with policies and configuration, new forms of phishing through providers is possible, and should be addressed.
I am broadly a MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) skeptic (cf) and as a result I don’t have much exposure to it. For reasons beyond the scope of this entry, I’ve recently been needing to understand more than usual about how it works from the perspective of people using it, so here is my current understanding of your generally available non-hardware options that can be used in a desktop environment (security keys are out of scope).
There are three generally available and used approaches to MFA at the moment: SMS, time-based one time passwords (TOTP), and what I’ve heard called ‘push-based approval’ using smartphone apps. Of these, I believe that TOTP is the most popular, and a place that simply talks about ‘MFA’ is probably talking about TOTP MFA authentication, especially if they say they support multiple smartphone apps.
Open Rights Group has responded to a report that the Government has conceded that it will not use powers to scan private messages until it is “technically feasible” to do so.
In their open letter, the signatories demand respect for the confidentiality of their medical records,[1] and in particular call for a requirement to obtain the explicit consent of patients before their health data is shared to be used for other purposes. So far, the negotiators in the European Parliament are only proposing a right to object (opt-out).
MEP Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party), who is co-negotiating the proposal on behalf of the Greens/EFA group, comments on the handover of signatures: [...]
A subset of hackers have RFID implants, but there is a limited catalog. When [Miana] looked for a device that would open a secure door at her work, she did not find the implant she needed, even though the lock was susceptible to cloned-chip attacks. Since no one made the implant, she set herself to the task. [Miana] is no stranger to implants, with 26 at the time of her talk at DEFCON31, including a couple of custom glowing ones, but this was her first venture into electronic implants. Or electronics at all. The full video after the break describes the important terms.
With security cameras sending data to TikTok, washing machines demanding to know your age, and TVs watching you while you watch them, why are our smart homes spying on us?
Australian Labor Party debates on defence policy are often full of passion and vigour, especially those involving regional security, nuclear issues and the alliance with the United States.
More than 6,000 troops from seven nations will participate in Super Garuda Shield.
China’s military said it had recently held intensive anti-submarine exercises in the strategically important South China Sea as part of efforts to hone its capabilities amid rising maritime tensions with its neighbours and their allies.
In the latest diplomatic mission, two sides agree on information exchange and tourism summit.
Terror attacks in northern Benin have been on the rise since 2019. These incidents, attributed to the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), attract media and political attention, but are only the tip of the violent extremism iceberg in Benin.
SA Navy (SAN) Chief, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, gave delegates to last week’s IMDEC (International Maritime Defence Exhibition and Conference) in Ghana an insight into his thinking on improving African maritime security.
Fifty-three members of the security forces were killed in an attack by suspected jihadists in northern Burkina Faso, the army said on Tuesday.
A new generation of cheaper and more flexible vessels could be vital in any conflict with China, but the Navy remains lashed to big shipbuilding programs driven by tradition, political influence and jobs.
Some experts say China’s problems make it more likely to risk forcefully bringing Taiwan ‘home.’
Japan’s defence ministry made a record spending request on Thursday of 7.7 trillion yen ($52.67 billion), for fiscal 2024, the latest step of a plan to boost defence spending by 43 trillion yen over five years.
August 31, 2023 2:25 PM
The Philippines’ rejection followed a similar move by Malaysia on Wednesday.
China and Nicaragua signed a free trade agreement (FTA) on Thursday, China’s commerce ministry said, in confirmation of deepening economic ties since the Central American country switched its allegiance to Beijing from Taiwan in 2021.
The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship.
The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.
His crimes did come up in the mainstream, only to be dismissed as evidence of his career’s “broad scope.” CNN ran a piece by David Andelman, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and one-time student of Kissinger’s at Harvard. He described watching “in wonder” as demonstrators gathered outside New York City’s 92nd Street YMCA to protest a 2011 talk by the great man himself. How, he asked himself, could they refer to Kissinger as a “renowned war criminal”? A few years later, Andelman added, he found himself wondering again, as a similar set of protesters at the same venue decried Kissinger’s “history concerning Timor-Leste (East Timor), West Papua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Cyprus, Bangladesh, Angola, and elsewhere.”
Vitiuk, the head of the cyber department at Ukraine’s top counterintelligence agency, had already been battling Russian hackers and spies for years. Inspired by James Bond films and a life of adventure, he says he’d been studying all his life for this kind of work.
But on Feb. 24, 2022, members of that agency — Ukraine’s Security Service, or the SBU — took on another role: physically hauling important servers and technical infrastructure away from Kyiv to protect it from Russian invaders.
The recent release of masses of documents hacked from Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs in Tehran showed how the regime went into overdrive to secure Assadi’s release by claiming diplomatic immunity. And when that failed, they seized a Belgian charity worker – Olivier Vandecasteele – as a hostage, accusing him of spying and sentencing him to 40 years imprisonment, a $1 million fine, and 74 lashes. The documents illuminate how Tehran used this tactic to negotiate the prisoner exchange with Belgium as far back as 2021. The fact that the Belgian government capitulated to this scandalous blackmail, must surely rank as one of the most reprehensible and egregious acts of appeasement of any government since the days of the Second World War.
Iran has repeatedly targeted foreigners, imprisoning them on charges of espionage or other violations of national security. Several capitals have accused Iran of practising “hostage diplomacy” — arresting Western nationals to obtain concessions such as the release of detained Iranians.
The result is an addictive, curated experience, which US Federal Communications Commission commissioner Brendan Carr described as ‘digital fentanyl’. The demand for this addictive social media experience is, unfortunately, not going to go away. Worse, the experience is being administered to American TikTok users by China.
Attorneys general in several states are studying a section of the U.S. Constitution that hasn’t come up for about 150 years: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Several conservative legal scholars have suggested that former President Donald Trump – the front-runner for the Republican nomination – could be disqualified due to his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Challenges have been filed in several states, including Colorado, where a lawsuit to disqualify Mr. Trump was filed Wednesday by a watchdog group, and the battlegrounds of New Hampshire, Arizona, and Michigan, where a legal challenge was filed last week.
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Colorado, Democratic and Republican voters and officials, represented by the D.C.-based nonprofit and nonpartisan Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, said the 14th Amendment of the Constitution bars Trump from returning to the Oval Office because of his behavior on Jan. 6, 2021.
The lawsuit is based on a post-Civil War clause of the Constitution that says anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution – as Trump did at his Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration – and afterward “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” is barred from serving in government.
In July 2016, warships from more than two dozen nations gathered off the coasts of Hawaii and Southern California to join the United States in the world’s largest naval exercise. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and others sent hundreds of destroyers, aircraft carriers and warplanes. They streamed in long lines across the ocean, symbols of power and prestige.
The museum holds about eight million objects from six continents.
↺ The Gray Zone ☛ Ukraine’s ‘biggest arms supplier’ orchestrated 2014 Maidan massacre, witnesses say
The Biden administration is expected to send armor-piercing munitions containing depleted uranium to Ukraine as part of the latest military aid package, even though the weapons are radioactive and their use causes contamination that is hazardous to human health. It’s the latest escalation in the war between Ukraine and Russia that nonproliferation activists warn could possibly lead to a nuclear confrontation. The United Kingdom already provided Ukraine with depleted uranium munitions earlier this year, one of which sparked contamination fears when it was reportedly destroyed by Russian forces over the weekend, and the Biden administration followed that up by sending cluster bombs, which have been banned by an international treaty ratified by more than 110 nations. “On top of dealing with unexploded cluster munitions, they’re also going to have this huge hazard of depleted uranium to contend with, as well,” Phil Miller, chief reporter for the independent news outlet Declassified UK, says of the risk to civilians.
The prospective meeting between North Korea and Russia comes as Russia seeks to bolster its ammunition for its war in Ukraine, U.S. officials say. In return, North Korea is expected to ask for food, energy shipments, and sophisticated weapons technologies.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner private military company, joined the long list of Russian oligarchs who’ve died since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
The UK government announced Wednesday that they would designate the Wagner Group, a mercenary group known for their involvement in the war in Ukraine, as a terrorist organization. As a result of the designation, it will be illegal for anyone within the UK for anyone to be a member of or support the Wagner Group.
The number of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus is decreasing, says Defence Minister Arvydas Anušauskas.
Great Britain announced on September 6 that it will declare Russia’s Wagner mercenary group a banned terrorist organization, saying it remains a threat to global security even after the death of leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
↺ Federal News Network ☛ India’s rising geopolitical clout will be tested as it hosts the G20 summit
As host of the G20 leading economies this year, India has pledged to put the concerns of developing countries front and center and make sure they’re not left behind. This pledge will be put to the test this week as world leaders arrive in New Delhi for the G20 summit, which begins Saturday. As the grouping’s president, India also has promoted itself as a rising global star with the potential to bridge the gap between the West and Russia. That stance also will be put to the test during the summit. So far, none of the G20 meetings this year have been able to agree on wording about Russia’s war in Ukraine.
There is a dawning realization that the war in Ukraine is not going to end with the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is not going to end with a military victory for Ukraine, and it is not going to end by attaining the goals necessary to force Russia to concede Ukraine’s key demands at the negotiating table.
Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka has banned the country’s embassies from issuing or renewing passports in a move that critics see as his latest escalation against Belarus’s exiled pro-democracy opposition, writes Hanna Liubakova.
The US on Wednesday announced it was sending depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine, following Britain’s lead in sending the controversial munitions to help Kyiv push through Russian lines in its gruelling counteroffensive.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced over $1 billion of new assistance to Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv Wednesday, which he said would help Ukraine’s counteroffensive “build momentum”. Blinken’s visit came as a Russian strike on a market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens.
Ukrainian port infrastructure was damaged in another Russian drone attack early on September 7, as Russia said drones were downed near Moscow and two other regions.
The United States will provide depleted uranium tank ammunition to Ukraine as part of a $175 million aid package, the Pentagon said on September 6.
Ukrainian officials said at least 17 people were killed and many others wounded in a Russian missile strike on a busy market in the eastern city of Kostyantynivka, sparking immediate condemnation from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the United Nations, and Kyiv’s allies.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met with top Ukrainian officials in an unannounced trip to Kyiv as he pledged U.S. support for Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive and “what it needs for the long term.”
A Russian missile tore through an outdoor market in eastern Ukraine, killing 17 people and wounding dozens.
September 07, 2023 5:35 PM
Ukraine is making progress with a counter offensive started in June to reclaim territory seized by Russia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, even though it was slow going due to Russian fortifications and minefields.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that the US supply of depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine was “a criminal act”, state media reported.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö told reporters that the risk of the use of nuclear arms in the conflict should be taken seriously.
The weapons, banned by most countries over human rights concerns, are ‘not a magic wand,’ but some Ukrainian troops say they are making a difference in fighting Russian forces.
Russian officials said air defenses shot down two drones over Rostov-on-Don, home to Russia’s southern military headquarters. Ukraine did not immediately comment.
A Russian missile killed at least 17 civilians and wounded dozens, while Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken vowed lasting backing and announced a new round of aid.
Plus, the deadliest missile attack in Ukraine in months.
A Russian missile strike in Kostyantynivka that killed at least 17 and injured more than 30 others was one of the deadliest in months.
Fraudsters who call victims by telephone and try to extract bank card data sometimes speak in Latvian, so you can no longer rely on the sign that callers with bad intentions will always speak Russian first of all, security experts told Latvian Radio’s ‘How to live better’ show September 5.
Until the end of last year, LTG Cargo, the freight subsidiary of Lithuania’s state-owned railway group Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG), had a contract with the business of the Russian Emergency Situations Minister Alexander Kurenkov’s spouse.
The Lithuanian Migration Department is carrying out an investigation into whether Algirdas Švanys, who kidnapped his 9-month-old daughter and took her to Russia’s Kaliningrad, holds Russian citizenship.
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted on September 6 that “the Russian flag cannot be at the Paris Olympic Games…at a time when Russia is committing war crimes.”
Moldova’s energy minister says the government will propose that Moldovagaz, a subsidiary of Gazprom, pay the Russian gas giant $8.6 million to settle a debt that Gazprom says is more than $700 million.
Parts of a Russian drone fell on Romanian territory, Defense Minister Angel Tilvar said on September 6, the HotNews website reported, citing Antena 3 CNN.
A European Union court has rejected an appeal by Russian billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky to be removed from the bloc’s sanctions list for his alleged ties to the Kremlin.
September 07, 2023 5:41 PM
Bangladesh will seek completion of the nuclear plant Moscow is building in the South Asian country during the Russian foreign minister’s first-ever visit to Dhaka, government officials said.
NATO does not have any indication that drone debris found on Romanian territory was caused by an intentional attack launched by Moscow against Romania, the alliance’s chief said on Thursday.
The Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, said that if the wreckage was confirmed to be Russian, it would be “a serious violation” of a NATO member’s sovereignty.
The same fossil fuel lobbyists pulling out all the stops to defeat game-changing climate legislation in California this month are simultaneously collecting checks from dozens of cities and counties in the state being pummeled by the climate crisis, as well as major environmental and clean-energy groups pushing state lawmakers to adopt solutions, the Lever has learned.
In other words, powerful California lobbying firms — including those with ties to Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state Democratic leaders — are effectively acting as double agents for both the culprits of climate change and its victims, according to F Minus, a new climate group that reviewed thousands of state registrations for a database exposing the lobbying connections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a health advisory warning that “many people with V. vulnificus wound infection require intensive care or surgical tissue removal.” Severe cases might require “amputation of the infected limb.”
At least six people have died in the East Coast after being infected, said the CDC. The agency noted that about 150–200 V. vulnificus infections are reported each year and about one in five people with the infection die, “sometimes within 1–2 days of becoming ill.”
Scientists have said the burning of coal, oil and natural gas for human activity is driving ever-higher temperatures around the globe as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere and hold in heat. This year, El Nino, a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that occurs naturally, has also played a role in raising the global temperature.
“As the climate crisis warms the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, we have a responsibility to protect this treasured region for all ages,” he said in a statement.
In 2022, there were on average 417 parts per million (ppm) of the planet-warming gas in the air, up 2.2 ppm from the year before, according to the annual State of the Climate report led by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
China Railway has suspended several major train lines and Shanghai halted trains heading to Guangdong.
The rainfall overnight broke 12-year-old records in Fuzhou city.
The tropical cyclone was expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday. Another typhoon was forecast to hit China’s east coast on Sunday.
The Hong Kong Observatory says it will issue the T3 Strong Wind Signal between 3 pm and 5 pm on Thursday as Tropical Cyclone Saola moves towards the city.
As the Africa Climate Summit wraps up in Nairobi, we get an update from Kenyan climate justice organizer Eric Njuguna. He says the focus by Western leaders and multinational companies on establishing carbon markets in Africa amounts to a “ticket to pollute” without directly addressing the need to phase out fossil fuels. Njuguna says a key demand from activists is to create access to climate financing without new debt burdens on the continent’s governments. “Africa is bearing the brunt of the climate crisis and people are dying,” says Njuguna.
At least three people died and four were missing on Wednesday after torrential rain flooded homes and businesses and destroyed infrastructure in central Greece, the fire brigade said.
The Amsterdam public transport company GVB unveiled its 2024 Transport Plan on Tuesday. Despite initial plans that revealed major changes in the number of trams, buses, and metros running, the final plan shows that only a few routes will be shortened or relocated.
I can’t understand why anyone thinks these technologies are a good idea.
Prime Trust pitches itself as a [cryptocurrency] fintech company designed to help other startups offer [cryptocurrency] retirement plans, know-your-customer interfaces, ensure liquidity, and a host of other services. It says it can help companies build [cryptocurrency] exchanges, payment platforms, and create stablecoins for its clients. The company has not had a good few months. In June, the state of Nevada filed to seize control of the company because it was near insolvency. It was then ordered to cease all operations by a federal judge because it allegedly used customers’ money to cover withdrawal requests from other companies.
When you think of Chernobyl (or Chornobyl, now), you think of the nuclear accident, of course. But have you ever considered that where there is a nuclear reactor, there is a computer control system? What computers were in control of the infamous reactor? [Chornobyl Family] has the answer in a fascinating video documentary you can see below.
A new study conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder challenges the age-old notion that “opposites attract.” The comprehensive analysis, which examined data from millions of couples over more than a century and across more than 130 traits, found that similarity often draws people together in relationships.
The study, published on August 31 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, not only debunks the popular belief that dissimilar individuals are more likely to form romantic bonds but also sheds light on the underlying forces shaping human relationships.
In the video call, smuggler Phan Quan made it clear: He needed 20 metric tons of pangolin scales shipped to him in Vietnam. The authorities had seized his previous shipment.
Three round-the-world sailors have reached land safely after sharks nearly sank their catamaran in the Coral Sea. Both of the inflatable hulls on their 30-foot boat were damaged by what were thought to be cookiecutter sharks. It’s a small species not considered dangerous to people. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority coordinated the rescue of the sailors after they activated an emergency beacon on Wednesday. A freight ship landed them at a Sunshine Coast harbor on Thursday.
The cause of global environmental decline is clear: an immense and rapidly growing human economy, which was twenty-five times larger at the end of the twentieth century than it was at the beginning. Our carbon emissions are a function of feeding, clothing, housing, warming, cooling, transporting, and amusing unprecedented numbers of people in unprecedented luxury with unprecedently powerful technologies. So are the habitat loss and degradation driving biodiversity loss. Ocean acidification, excessive freshwater withdrawals, toxins poisoning soils and waters; in every case, immense human economic demands are driving the rush past boundaries for biospheric health.
The obvious solution is to decrease the size of the human economy. Under the “if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging” principle, we might at least pause our ceaseless scaling it up. Unfortunately, humanity has built a powerful global economy around the primary goal of rapid, continuous growth. People want their economic demands met, not questioned, and there are more of us than ever—billions more. Furthermore, a dominant economic ideology espouses the possibility, necessity, and goodness of endless growth. Yet realistically, without limiting growth, global environmental decline will continue.
U.S.-based streaming company Roku is planning to cut hundreds of positions in its workforce and slow down its hiring process in an effort to boost profits after a series of quarterly losses.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Wednesday, Roku, which specializes in audio and video manufacturing, said it plans to lay off 10 percent of its workforce, or approximately 360 people.
After years of operating losses and high costs, Domtar Corporation (Domtar) is shuttering its Espanola, Ont., pulp and paper mill — affecting approximately 450 employees.
In a news release on Sept. 6, the manufacturer announced that the facility will close in early October. Following the mill’s closure, the paper machines will be “shut down by early November.”
“The Espanola mill has been challenged for some time now,” Steve Henry, president of Domtar paper and packaging, said in the release.
It wants Roger Ng to return to Malaysia for trial before starting his US prison sentence.
He explained that gangs would convert their dirty money into Bitcoin and then use the cryptocurrency to pay people who sold fake streams on Spotify — many of whom they meet on Facebook. Those people “made sure we ended up at the top of the charts,” he said, noting that the fake streams would lead to a noticeable uptick in legitimate streams. Higher streams then lead to higher payouts from Spotify.
“Spotify has become a bank machine for the gangs. There’s a direct link to the gangs and the deadly violence,” an investigative police officer who wished to remain anonymous told Svenska Dagbladet. Police data reveals that in 2022, Sweden registered 90 blasts, another 101 cases of attempted bombings or preparations for bombings, and 91 shootings, 62 of which were fatal.
As average temperatures increase and heat waves strike the United States, the heat stress on farmworkers is getting worse.
To bolster financial inclusion in the Caribbean, the United States must treat corresponding banking relationships as a public good.
The Latvian central bank, Latvijas Banka (LB) said September 7 it is advising people to familiarise themselves with what to expect if a major crisis hits the country, and has published a booklet containing advice.
From the Hollywood strike to the teamsters, labor movements in the U.S. are having a moment.
The charges against her are baseless, defective and premature, said Rosmah.
Campaign groups are putting up posters in British universities, only to see them torn down overnight.
A presidential election in the Maldives on Saturday could be decisive in determining whether China or India win a competition for influence over the tiny Indian Ocean island chain.
Australia and China have started their first high-level dialogue in three years in a sign of a slight thaw to relations between countries that have clashed on human rights, COVID-19 and trade. The head of the Australia delegation said he welcomed the positive developments but there was more work to do. The dialogue that opened in Beijing on Thursday will focus on trade, people-to-people links and security. China’s former Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the two countries should work together while adhering to the liberalization of trade. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also met with China’s Premier Li Qiang at a regional summit. His office said Albanese would visit China later this year at the invitation of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Chinese exports and imports both fell in August, reflecting tepid global demand that is adding to pressures on its slowing economy. Customs data released Thursday showed exports for August slumped 8.8% from a year earlier, while imports slid 7.3%. The total trade surplus for the world’s No. 2 economy shrank to $68.4 billion from $80.6 billion in July. China’s trade has been slowing for two years, sapped by a weakening global economy and by a lackluster recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. But the declines in August were less severe than in July. China’s exports to the U.S. fell 17% in August from a year earlier, while exports to Southeast Asia dropped 13%.
Join Reason on YouTube and Facebook at 12 p.m. Eastern for a discussion of the Trump indictments with Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy.
The Foreign State Immunity Law takes China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy a step further.
It wants to expand cooperation in various areas including green energy, digital economy and AI.
Leodegar Tenga, CTI executive director, said Tanzanian industrialists looked forward to attending the forum, stressing that China is a perfect partner when it comes to the development of an industrial economy.
The designated companies will have to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to ensure greater competition in the EU’s digital market. It entered into force in November 2022.
While the DMA includes rules for gatekeepers, the EU has only specified now who these gatekeepers will be.
To comply with the legislation, the companies will have to ensure that their services are compatible with competitors’ products, and are obliged to share data with them, among other things. Compiling user data from different sources will only be allowed with explicit user consent.
The latest announcement is a milestone in the application of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will force the largest firms to change their ways under a checklist of dos and don’ts and, regulators hope, create a fairer market.
Observers say the law could open a new battlefront between digital titans and the European Union as some companies consider launching legal challenges.
The European Commission, the EU’s powerful antitrust body, named 22 “core platform” services belonging to five US tech behemoths identified as “gatekeepers” — Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft — and China’s ByteDance.
The problems with government’s Bill C-18 draft regulations involve more than just what amounts to a 4% link tax on Google and Meta alongside little effort to ensure the resulting revenues are used to support spending on journalists and news content. As noted in previous posts, the draft regulations put an end to the claim that the Online News Act involves compensation for news creation since the standards are now simply a function of Internet platform revenues, not news production costs. Given the global implications of a 4% tax on revenues to support media, that approach likely further cements Meta’s decision to comply with the law by stopping news links and increases the chances that Google follows suit.
From today’s decision by Judge Paul Oetken in Atas v. N.Y. Times Co.: Plaintiff Nadire Atas, proceeding pro se, brings this action against Defendants The New York Times Company [and others], alleging defamation. According to Atas, The Times—through news articles, podcast episodes, and interviews of its journalists—defamed her by describing her as a mentally ill…
Seven-layer stacks, messy anecdotes, and the conservative case for net neutrality.
People could face jail time and fines who offend the government’s sensibilities by wearing the wrong clothing.
“Elon Musk’s professed commitment to free speech is nothing more than fig leaf flapping in the wind,” said Media Matters Chairman and CEO Angelo Carusone. “For Musk, it’s always been about morphing Twitter into a free for all that enables extremists and promotes his red-pilled worldview. Rarely does a day go by where Musk does not further expose himself as a volatile and petty hypocrite. “We know that Musk is going to continue to ratchet up the temperature on the simmering cauldron of deceit and hate that Twitter has become. Accordingly, the most important question isn’t what Musk will do next, it’s what will Twitter’s few remaining big-name advertisers and business partners do now? Continuing to support Twitter in its current state is akin to actively financing hate. It’s also a truly bizarre decision given that it’s only a matter of time before they inevitably get scorched by the noxious stew that Musk is cooking.”
When an artist brings up cancel culture, it’s usually because they’re super-edgy or deeply political. So why are the Barenaked Ladies doing it?
Even at schools with solid speech policies, many students show little tolerance for opposing political beliefs.
The government’s statement against racism declared that the denial of the Holocaust would be criminalised in Finland’s legislation. Prohibiting the public use of Nazi symbols is a contemporary concern, and celebrating the memory of Holocaust victims is undoubtedly a commendable idea. However, criminalising Holocaust denial presents a different kind of issue. It is not primarily a question of freedom of speech because this right is not absolute and cannot legitimise hate speech.
Myanmar is one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists according to advocacy groups.
Activists at the Detained Journalist Group report that over 150 journalists have been arrested, and four media workers have lost their lives since the coup.
“His sentencing is yet another indication that freedom of the press has been completely quashed under the military junta’s rule, and shows the hefty price independent journalists in Myanmar must pay for their professional work,” Myanmar Now Editor-in-Chief Swe Win said in a statement.
Military authorities raided Myanmar Now’s office in Yangon shortly after the February 2021 coup and later revoked the independent news outlet’s publishing license, those reports said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists on Wednesday expressed deep concern about the arrest of three journalists only weeks after Ethiopia declared a state of emergency and called on authorities to promptly release all members of the press detained for their work.
When Heather Aleinik was laid off from Shopify Inc. last summer, it was “one of the biggest curveballs” of her career.
The now 29-year-old Calgary woman had discovered remote work was conducive to her neurodivergence and love of travel while at the Ottawa-based e-commerce company, which launched a remote work policy at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – a policy it claimed would be permanent.
Aleinik eventually found a new job at a software firm advertising a “five-year remote commitment,” but just as she started to get comfortable, the company built a new office in Florida and its CEO started extolling the benefits of working on-site. She quit just before employees living near the office were ordered back three days a week.
A lawsuit has been filed against Ayla Akat Ata, Ayşe Yağcı, Dilek Yağlı, Meryem Adıbelli, and Pervin Oduncu, accusing them of “producing ethyl alcohol” requesting imprisonment of one to three years.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he had raised human rights concerns at “every single one” of his meetings with top Chinese officials, as he made a state visit to Beijing on Wednesday.
Tibetans, Uyghurs and Burmese are among the many victims of enforced disappearances in Asia.
In a kingdom that crushed an Arab Spring uprising more than a decade ago, prisoners are now on hunger strike to demand better conditions, fueling protests in support of their cause.
By offering tours, travel agencies are implicitly supporting China’s repression of Uyghurs, it says.
The pair, a 38-year-old man and 55-year-old woman, used an excavator to widen an existing gap and make a shortcut, the authorities said.
Staffing difficulties continue to challenge small-town police departments. A combination of factors, from police criticism to the pandemic to low salaries, are among the reasons why more police are leaving forces.
China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced Monday that China has arrested Cui Maohu, former head of its National Religious Affairs Administration, over bribe-taking suspicions. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate is China’s highest prosecutorial organ.
Two people have been detained after using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall of China, state broadcaster CCTV said.
The court says the city must provide a legal framework for the recognition of same-sex relationships.
The government expands a program of compulsory school trips as universities follow suit.
Georgia is intensifying its crackdown against opponents of Cop City, with the state’s Republican attorney general announcing sweeping indictments of 61 people on racketeering charges over protests and other activism related to the $90 million police training facility planned to be built in Atlanta. The RICO charges were approved by the same grand jury that indicted former President Trump and 18 others on RICO charges in the same county by the Democratic district attorney, and come after many of the same people were earlier charged with domestic terrorism and money laundering as part of the Stop Cop City movement, which is still seeking to block construction of the new police complex. “They are choosing to use the legal process in an essentially violent way to target protesters,” says attorney Devin Franklin with the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is organizing legal representation for the defendants in the case. We also speak with Keyanna Jones, a Stop Cop City organizer with Community Movement Builders, who notes the indictments are dated from May 25, 2020, the day Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. “Since that date, this country has been upended by governments across the nation trying to build Cop Cities in order to quell protest,” says Jones. “The government is simply upset that people seek to … use their First Amendment right to protest when we see injustice coming from those in authority.”
At issue in Cemex was what the NLRB should do about employers that violate labor law during union drives. For decades, even the most flagrantly illegal union-busting was met with a wrist-slap. For example, if a boss threatened or fired an employee for participating in a union drive, the NLRB would typically issue a small fine and order the employer to re-hire the worker and provide back-pay.
Everyone knows that “a fine is a price.” The NLRB’s toothless response to cheating presented an easily solved equation for corrupt, union-hating bosses: if the fine amounts to less than the total, lifetime costs of paying a fair wage and offering fair labor conditions, you should cheat – hell, it’s practically a fiduciary duty: [...]
Stop Cop City organizers have fought for years to halt the construction of the massive police and fire training facility. Opponents have expressed concern that it will lead to further police militarization, while also destroying several acres of forestland that they say are crucial to the area’s climate resiliency. In January, Georgia State Police officers shot and killed activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán while clearing out a protest encampment in the forest. Authorities claim Paez Terán fired on officers first, but Paez Terán’s family has contested this narrative. An independent autopsy released by the family in March showed that Paez Terán’s hands were raised at the time of the shooting.
The state’s use of RICO charges against Stop Cop City activists marks the latest escalation in an increasingly authoritarian crackdown on the protest movement. Earlier this year, prosecutors with the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office filed domestic terrorism charges against 42 Cop City protesters, many of whom are also named in the RICO indictment. One of the people hit with RICO charges had previously been arrested for handing out fliers calling one of the officers involved in Paez Terán’s killing a murderer.
For now, Zhao says the takeaway from the study is, “For people who pass the screening criteria in our study, the policy implication is that government should increase the income assistance for these folks so they can get back into housing and get their life back.”
Che-Hoo Cheng gave the APNIC Report at APAN 56, held in Colombo, Sir Lanka from 21 to 25 August 2023.
Find out how APNIC grew to a community of 24,000 participants across 56 economies.
At the end of September 2023 Google will officially celebrate its 25th birthday. In fact the day itself has already come and gone as it was on September 4th, 1998 that Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
From today’s perspective it is difficult to imagine a world without either the Google search engine or the World Wide Web – a combination that has brought untold convenience to individuals, businesses and governments.
The Justice Department has spent three years over two presidential administrations building the case that Google illegally abused its power over online search to throttle competition. To defend itself, Google has enlisted hundreds of employees and three powerful law firms and spent millions of dollars on legal fees and lobbyists.
On Tuesday, a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will begin considering their arguments at a trial that cuts to the heart of a long-simmering question: Did today’s tech giants become dominant by breaking the law?
Now, Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are facing their most significant legal challenge. They are preparing to face off next week in federal court against the Justice Department and a collection of states, which claim the tech giant illegally abused its monopoly power to keep its search engine on top.
The Justice Department has argued that Google illegally used agreements with phone makers like Apple and Samsung, as well as internet browsers like Mozilla, to be the default search engine for their users, preventing smaller rivals from getting access to that business.
In Brazil amendments to claims are possible if the patent applicant can show the changes are limited to the matter initially disclosed in the patent application (Article 32 of Patent Statute 9,279 of 1996). Thus, like most other countries, Brazilian patent law contains a prohibition against added matter.
Over the past three years, Thierry Lautier (41) has built up Reed Smith’s patent litigation practice in Paris. With his legal and engineering background in optics and electronics, he works for companies in the digital communication and automotive industries, among others.
In 2019, Sisvel began asserting its U.S. Patent Nos. 7,433,698 and 8,364,196 against cell phone makers, wireless chip suppliers, and cellular network operators. These patents claim methods and systems for exchanging frequency information between a mobile station and a mobile switching center to facilitate switching a mobile device’s connection point within a cellular network. Several defendants petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) for inter partes review (IPR), arguing that the challenged claims were invalid as anticipated and/or obvious based on prior art references. The PTAB instituted IPR and ultimately issued final written decisions concluding that the claims were unpatentable. See IPR2020-01070, Paper No. 31 (PTAB Nov. 8, 2021); IPR2020-01071, Paper No. 30 (PTAB Nov. 8, 2021).
The latest issue of the The Trademark Reporter includes a Commentary [pdf here]. by Professor J. Thomas McCarthy on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his treatise, McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition. The treatise has been relied on as an authority in over 8,000 judicial decisions, including in eighteen U.S. Supreme Court opinions.
Just days after Geffen and Hybe announced the (potential) members of their long-awaited girl group, K-pop firm Attrakt has teased a new girl group of its own and secured a reported $7.5 million investment. Seoul-headquartered Attrakt, the agency behind Fifty Fifty, just recently scored the multimillion-dollar investment and informed fans of the forthcoming girl group.
We now know over 90,000 preprints¹ have been posted to various preprint servers since January 2020 and a new preprint by Lariviére et al. (2023) found that 79.9% of COVID-19 papers between January 2020² and December 2021 are open access. So if researchers recognized and responded to the need for rapid, open access to COVID-19 research, what about other global challenges?
We have an incredible group of people lined up to be keynote speakers at the 2023 CC Global Summit, to be held 3–6 October in Mexico City. In our first announcement, we welcome writer Anya Kamenetz, who will close the Summit with a keynote that grows out of her work as a journalist, and now, activist focused on climate education for children.
The US Copyright Office has ruled that streaming services must pay late fees on royalty payments in connection with the Music Modernization Act’s blanket mechanical license.
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