News Burst 22 December 2019
- The trove of U.S. “Lessons Learned” documents on Afghanistan published by the Washington Post portrays, in excruciating detail, the anatomy of a failed policy, scandalously hidden from the public for 18 years.
- Soft Disclosure: At least one hundred mysterious red objects in the sky have vanished inexplicably over the past 70 years, claims a group of scientists, as they suggest that alien technology could be one possible explanation for their disappearance. The team published the results of their study in The Astronomical Journal on 12 December.
- The personal data of 2,400 Singapore’s Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces personnel may be affected by a potential personal data breach. The potential breach was a result of a recent series of email phishing activities involving malicious malware sent to its employees’ email accounts.
- Last year, 1.26 million electric and plug-in hybrid cars were sold in mainland China, accounting for about 60% of the global total.
- Wawa, the Philadelphia-based gas and convenience store chain, disclosed a data breach incident that may have exposed payment card information of thousands of customers who used their cards at about any of its 850 stores since March 2019. Attackers managed to install malware on its point-of-sale servers used to process customers’ payments and by the time it was discovered on 10th December, the malware had already infected in-store payment processing systems at “potentially all Wawa locations.”
- A Chinese national who acted as a property agent for criminal gangs in Britain, renting hundreds of houses to be used as brothels and cannabis farms, was jailed on Friday for seven years and four months by a court in Birmingham. Feng Xu amassed around 5,500 forged documents to secure tenancy agreements on at least 446 properties.
- China in recent years has built artificial islands to house military facilities at seven geographical features across the Spratly Islands in South China Sea and encouraged fishing in the waters. Other Southeast Asian nations have made similar moves, but on a smaller scale. The corals are dying.
- Three members of an international organized cybercrime group that was behind a multi-million dollar theft primarily against U.S. businesses and financial institutions have been sentenced to prison, the U.S. Justice Department announced. The criminals used the GozNym banking Trojan to break into more than 4,000 victim computers globally, primarily in the United States and Europe, between 2015 and 2016, and fraudulently steal nearly $100 million from their banking accounts.
- For the past three months, thick crude oil blobs have washed up on beaches along more than 4,400 kilometers (2,700 miles) of Brazil’s coastline, mangroves and reefs in the worst oil spill in the country’s history. The exact date the oil first reached Brazil’s shores is unclear, but government reports point to August 30. As of December 18, the oil had polluted more than 950 beaches.
- Twitter shared over a terabyte of information on 5,929 accounts they say belonged “to a significant state-backed information operation on Twitter originating in Saudi Arabia, which were “amplifying messages favorable to Saudi authorities.” Disclosed in a Friday blog post, the state-linked accounts represented the “core portion of a larger network of more than 88,000 accounts engaged in spammy behavior across a wide range of topics.”
- On Monday a key initiative undertaken by the Russian government for over the past year to establish a ‘sovereign internet’ will face a major test. That’s when the country and its information systems will be intentionally disconnected from the worldwide web, according to Russia’s communications ministry. Russia aims to ready its own web to both survive a global internet shutdown and defend against foreign cyber-attacks and intrusion on its data infrastructure.
- Desert locusts are destroying tens of thousands of acres of crops and grazing land in Somalia in the worst invasion in 25 years, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday, and the infestation is likely to spread further. The locusts have damaged about 173,000 acres of land in Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia, threatening food supplies in both countries and the livelihoods of farming communities.
Notable Resignations Worldwide
- Dec. 20 2019 – Bill Bozeman – CEO PSA Security Network USA – Resigned
- Dec. 20 2019 – Rosemary Collyer – Judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court USA – Resigned
- Dec. 20 2019 – Kelly Harder – Head Dakota County Community Services – Resigned
- Dec. 20 2019 – Juan Perez – Director Miami-Dade Police Department USA – Retired
- Dec. 20 2019 – Rustom Jilla – CFO & VP MSC Industrial Direct Co. Inc. USA – Resigned
- Dec. 19 2019 – James Mackey – CFO Freddie Mac USA – Resigned
- Dec. 19 2019 – Tina Kaidanow – Advisorx U.S. Department of Defense USA – Resigned
- Dec. 18 2019 – Lady Hale – President Supreme Court UK – Retired
- Dec. 18 2019 – Kari Bingen – Principal Deputy Undersecretary – USA – Resigned
Active Weather
- Tropical Depresstion Thirty 30 kts ↑ 1002 hPa ↓ North of Solomon Island – Moving WMW 14 kts
Strongest EQ in Europe M3.7 Greece
Strongest EQ in US M4.6 Alaska
Strongest EQ on the Planet M5.2 Ushuaia, Argentina
Deepest EQ M3.3 202 km Celebes SeaNews Burst 22 December 2019
Rose Rambles... 