Retail Apocalypse: JCPenney, Payless, LifeWay Announce 3,000+ Combined Store Closures
March 29th, 2019Via: NBC:
More than 41,000 people have lost their jobs in the retail industry so far this year — a 92 percent spike in layoffs since the same time last year, according to a new report.
And the layoffs continue to mount, with JCPenney announcing this week it would be closing 18 stores in addition to three previously announced closures, as part of a “standard annual review.”
Related: Walmart Is Quietly Closing Stores
French Spy Found Dead in Alps After Being Accused of Plot to Assassinate Exiled Congolese Politician
March 29th, 2019Via: Independent:
A French spy has been shot dead after being implicated in the attempted assassination of an exiled Congolese opposition figure.
The body of Daniel Forestier was discovered last week by police in a car park in the remote Alpine town of Ballaison, close to the French border with Switzerland.
The 57-year-old had been shot five times in the head and chest. Prosecutors said the calculated nature of the shooting meant it was being treated as a professional hit.
French media have widely reported Mr Forestier was a retired agent for the DGSE, France’s external intelligence agency, comparable to MI6.
Mr Forestier had been under investigation by authorities in connection with a plot to kill Ferdinand Mbahou, an exiled military general and high-profile opponent of the Congo-Brazzaville government.
Boston Dynamics: Handle Robot
March 29th, 2019Via: Boston Dynamics:
Handle is a mobile manipulation robot designed for logistics. Handle autonomously performs mixed SKU pallet building and depalletizing after initialization and localizing against the pallets. The on-board vision system on Handle tracks the marked pallets for navigation and finds individual boxes for grasping and placing.
When Handle places a boxes onto a pallet, it uses force control to nestle each box up against its neighbors. The boxes used in the video weigh about 5 Kg (11 lbs), but the robot is designed to handle boxes up to (15 Kg) (33 lb). This version of Handle works with pallets that are 1.2 m deep and 1.7 m tall (48 inches deep and 68 inches tall).
Renegade DEA Mass Surveillance Operations
March 29th, 2019“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean.”
Via: Nextgov:
The Drug Enforcement Administration skirted numerous legal checks on a trio of bulk data collection programs dating back to the early 1990s, according to an internal watchdog.
In a heavily redacted, 144-page report published Thursday, the Justice Department Inspector General revealed the administration failed to fully assess the legal basis for three massive international surveillance operations that ran largely unchecked from 1992 to 2013. Two of the programs remain active in some form today.
Under one initiative, which investigators called “Program A,” the administration used “non-target specific” subpoenas to force multiple telecom providers to provide metadata on every phone call made from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries with “a nexus to drugs.” Investigators found some companies also provided the officials with data on all calls made between those foreign countries.
The administration also conducted two other bulk surveillance programs during that time without assessing their legality, investigators found. Under “Program B,” officials used similarly sweeping subpoenas to collect information on anyone who purchased specific products from participating vendors. Through “Program C,” DEA purchased telephone metadata for targets of ongoing investigations through a contractor for a separate government agency.
Program B ran from 2008 to 2013, and Program C began in 2007 and remains active today, according to the IG.
Investigators found the administration “failed to conduct a comprehensive legal analysis” of actions under all three programs. Previous court rulings have called into question the use of the sweeping subpoenas under programs A and B, they said. According to the report, the FBI also raised concerns about the legality of the operations.
“We also found the absence of a robust legal review troubling because the DEA utilized the bulk data collected … on an unknown number of occasions in support of investigations by non-DEA federal agencies that had no apparent connection to specific drug investigations,” the IG added. “This utilization raised significant legal questions” because the administration justified its actions by saying the information “was ‘relevant or material’ to a drug investigation.”
How Android Phones Keep Tabs On Our Every Move
March 29th, 2019I wouldn’t encourage the use of Apple’s mobile devices as an alternative, but Android is essentially malware.
Via: El País:
As a consumer, you buy a new Android cellphone. It could be any brand, but it is likely to be an Android as they account for more than 80% of today’s cellphone market. You open the box, press the “On” button and the phone connects to the internet. Without further ado, you have just triggered the most sophisticated surveillance machine to date for monitoring your routines.
It no longer matters whether you have downloaded Facebook or activated a Google account, or given permission to some app or anti-virus program to access your contacts, camera and microphone. Whatever you do from that moment on, your new cellphone will be sharing details of your activity with the rest of the world. The software that comes pre-installed is the most accurate resource on your phone for predicting where you might be, what you might download, what messages you might send and what music you might listen to.
Logic Signal Analyzer on Intel Processors Would Allow Spyware Operations at Lowest Level Possible
March 29th, 2019Via: ZDNet:
At the Black Hat Asia 2019 security conference, security researchers from Positive Technologies disclosed the existence of a previously unknown and undocumented feature in Intel chipsets.
Called Intel Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture (Intel VISA), Positive Technologies researchers Maxim Goryachy and Mark Ermolov said this is a new utility included in modern Intel chipsets to help with testing and debugging on manufacturing lines.
VISA is included with Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chipsets part of modern Intel CPUs and works like a full-fledged logic signal analyzer.
…
Unauthorized access to the VISA feature would allow a threat actor to intercept data from the computer memory and create spyware that works at the lowest possible level.
But despite its extremely intrusive nature, very little is known about this new technology. Goryachy and Ermolov said VISA’s documentation is subject to a non-disclosure agreement, and not available to the general public.
Normally, this combination of secrecy and a secure default should keep Intel users safe from possible attacks and abuse.
However, the two researchers said they found several methods of enabling VISA and abusing it to sniff data that passes through the CPU, and even through the secretive Intel Management Engine (ME), which has been housed in the PCH since the release of the Nehalem processors and 5-Series chipsets.
U.S. to Return Astronauts to the Moon by 2024, VP Pence Says
March 29th, 2019I wonder what this is actually about?
Via: Space.com:
The United States plans to land astronauts on the moon within the next five years, Vice President Mike Pence announced today (March 26).
The nation had been shooting for a 2028 lunar touchdown, but “that’s just not good enough,” Pence said during the fifth meeting of the National Space Council (NSC), which he chairs. “We’re better than that.”
So, it is now the official policy of the United States to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024, the vice president stressed, invoking a 21st-century space race with China and Russia.
Duke Announces Research Fraud Settlement with $112.5 Million Payment to U.S. Government
March 28th, 2019Standard operating procedure. Except for the whistleblower part.
Via: Duke Chronicle:
Duke will pay $112.5 million to the federal government in a settlement for a lawsuit regarding its handling of falsified data that the suit alleged was linked to $200 million in federal research grants.
“This is a difficult moment for Duke,” President Vincent Price wrote in an email to the Duke community. “This case demonstrates the devastating impact of research fraud and reinforces the need for all of us to have a focused commitment on promoting research integrity and accountability.”
The lawsuit, filed by former lab analyst Joseph Thomas, alleged Duke used the data to obtain grants and covered up the fraud.
The lawsuit came from fraud allegedly committed by former Duke researcher Erin Potts-Kant. A researcher in the pulmonary, allergy and critical care department of Duke Health, Potts-Kant has had more than 12 scientific papers retracted since word broke of the allegedly falsified data.
Potts-Kant admitted to changing parts of the data but said that experiments actually were run. Thomas brought the case under the False Claims Act, which could have forced Duke to fork over as much as $600 million.
Thomas alleged Potts-Kant falsified data in research on mice’s lungs. From these data, labs at the University were able to secure additional federal funding, calling roughly $200 million in grants into question.
Mom Ignores Doctor When Her Sick 2-Year-Old Starts Feeling Better, Child Services Send a SWAT Team
March 28th, 2019Via: Reason:
Chandler, Arizona, cops broke through the door of a family’s home in the middle of the night, stormed in, pointed their guns, handcuffed the father, and watched as the state’s Department of Child Safety (DCS) took custody of the parents’ three kids—all because mom had decided her toddler’s fever was not serious enough to merit a trip to the hospital.
It was dinnertime on February 25 when the pregnant mother took her 2-year-old to the doctor with a fever of over 100. The doctor told her to take him to the emergency room, fearing that because the boy was unvaccinated, perhaps he had meningitis—a life-threatening disease.
The doctor called the hospital to alert them. But by the time the mother and child left his office, the boy was “laughing and playing with his siblings,” according to this excellent piece by Dianna M. Nanez in The Arizona Republic. Mom took his temperature again, and it was almost normal. So instead of going to the emergency room, the family went home. The mom called the doctor to say her boy’s fever had broken and she wasn’t going to the emergency room. The doctor told her she should go anyway, so she agreed she would—but then she didn’t.
That’s when the madness began.
U.S. Approved Secret Nuclear Power Work for Saudi Arabia
March 27th, 2019Via: Reuters:
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has approved six secret authorizations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
The Trump administration has quietly pursued a wider deal on sharing U.S. nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia, which aims to build at least two nuclear power plants. Several countries including the United States, South Korea and Russia are in competition for that deal, and the winners are expected to be announced later this year by Saudi Arabia.
