Full-Spectrum-Dominance.com (C) 2023

Bed Bath & Beyond — whose 20% coupons, towel towers and wedding registry have been a staple of the American shopping landscape — warned Thursday that its dismal performance threatens the company's future. Driving the news: The beleaguered retailer said in a public filing that it faces "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue operating on its own — and that it could file for bankruptcy protection. Why it matters: Bed Bath & Beyond still had some 32,000 employees and 955 stores as of last summer. That included the company's other properties: buybuy Baby and Harmon. State of play: Bed Bath & Beyond has been distressed for years, having failed to reinvent itself in the digital age despite efforts to declutter its stores and remake its coupon strategy. The retailer said Thursday that it expects to report a 33% sales decline in the quarter that ended Nov. 26, "driven by lower customer traffic and reduced levels of inventory availability, among other factors." The company also said it expects to report a net loss of $386 million, up from $276 million a year earlier.

After facing sharp criticism for referring to pedophiles as “minor-attracted people”—a label used to normalize sex abuse against children—in a high-level report, Scottish police have stated that they did so at the direction of the European Union. Scottish Police Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, in his year-end report which provides an overall assessment of policing performance for the annum, said that the force had been working to support a European project whose stated primary objective is to “avoid the victimization of children by engaging Minor-Attracted People (MAPs) and provide them with the necessary support, treatment and guidance to help prevent criminal activities.” Following intense publish backlash, with many suggesting the police were attempting to normalize sex crimes against children, a police spokesman claimed that the phrase “minor-attracted people” was not commonly used to describe pedophiles, and explained that the annual report’s reference to MAPs had to do with the police force’s involvement with the European Union’s Horizon Europe Project—Prevention of Child Sexual Exploitation.

Taiwan's missile development institute has come in for criticism after it sent a measurement device used for antiship missile production out for repairs - and it ended up in mainland China. Taiwan's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) designs and builds the nation's antiship missiles, including the heavyweight Hsiung-Feng III (Brave Wind III). On its production line for the Hsiung-Feng III, the NCSIST uses a precision theodolite to take measurements of the missile, the launcher and other elements related to missile setup and testing. The device of choice is built by a Swiss manufacturer and is commonly employed in aerospace, shipbuilding and other manufacturing industries for the precise measurement of large objects. NCSIST purchased two theodolites in 2021. While the units were still under warranty, the institute decided to send them back to the Taiwanese distributor for factory service. The data cards containing measurement information were removed, and the equipment was shipped to Switzerland for repairs. The theodolites came back in good working order some months later. However, the device's repairs were actually carried out somewhere else - a regional service hub in Qingdao, China. When the delivery of two antiship missile test instruments to the mainland was discovered, it came as unwelcome news for Taiwanese security officials: any accidental release of data on the Hsiung-Feng III's systems and capabilities could allow China to engineer better defenses.

The Japanese government will task the country's Self-Defense Forces with protecting critical infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants, as it plans to respond immediately if civilian facilities become the target of an attack. According to people familiar with the government's thinking, authorities will revise the SDF's operating policy, which is currently limited to responding to emergencies, and conduct peacetime drills with the police and Japan Coast Guard in municipalities where the SDF is located to practice intercepting missiles. In Japan's National Security Strategy, which was approved by the cabinet in December, the government states that measures to ensure the safety of critical facilities will be taken, not only in the event of an armed attack but in the run-up to a crisis that does not lead to such an attack.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that he would change Israel’s strategy toward countering Iranian nuclear ambitions, promising to bring the fight back to the court of public opinion. Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that it was still a “possibility” that Western powers would resuscitate efforts to sign a nuclear deal with Iran and that he would apply public pressure to prevent it. The most recently discussed nuclear agreement with Iran was panned as a “bad deal” by Israel’s previous government and security establishment, because it would release billions of dollars to Tehran without guaranteeing a real curb to its nuclear ambitions. Israel has long vowed it will act to ensure Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons.

Google will pay Indiana $20 million to resolve the state’s lawsuit against the technology giant over allegedly deceptive location tracking practices, state Attorney General Todd Rokita announced. Rokitas filed a separate lawsuit against Google when negotiations between the company and a coalition of state attorneys general stalled, he said. Those states agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with the company in November. As a result of the separate lawsuit, Indiana received about twice as much money as it would have under the deal with the 40 states in the coalition, Rokita said in his announcement. States began investigating after a 2018 Associated Press story that found that Google continued to track people’s location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called “location history.” Google did not admit to any wrongdoing as part of the deal with Indiana. Indiana’s lawsuit alleged Google uses location data to build detailed user profiles and target ads. It alleged that the company has deceived and misled users about its practices since at least 2014. Rokita said he sued Google because even a limited amount of location data can expose a person’s identity and routines. Such data can be used to infer personal details such as political or religious affiliation, income, health status or participation in support groups, as well as major life events such as marriage and the birth of children, he said.

Eight million people receiving benefits and on low incomes will receive their £900 cost-of-living payments in three instalments, the government has said. The first payment of £301 will be made in the spring, with a second of £300 in the autumn and a final £299 instalment in the spring of 2024. Exact dates are yet to be finalised, but ministers said the money would help households with high energy bills. A £400 discount for all energy billpayers looks set to end by April. Charities have called on the government to do more to protect vulnerable households from soaring costs, claiming that support had not improved for those already struggling. The government also confirmed that a £150 cost-of-living payment would automatically go to those with disabilities during the summer, and a further £300 payment would be paid to pensioners during the winter of 2023-24. Cost-of-living payments have provided additional support for more vulnerable households, or those with higher energy costs, since the summer. The government also set a cap on the unit price of energy for households, which means the typical household pays £2,500 a year. This will rise to £3,000 a year when the cap is reset in April. However, the universal £400 discount, which is being paid in monthly instalments over this winter is not expected to be continued.

Hidekazu Yokoyama has spent three decades building a thriving logistics business on Japan’s snowy northern island of Hokkaido, an area that provides much of the country’s milk. Last year, he decided to give it all away. It was a radical solution for a problem that has become increasingly common in Japan, the world’s grayest society. As the country’s birthrate has plummeted and its population has grown older, the average age of business owners has risen to around 62. Nearly 60 percent of the country’s businesses report that they have no plan for what comes next. While Mr. Yokoyama, 73, felt too old to carry on much longer, quitting wasn’t an option: Too many farmers had come to depend on his company. “I definitely couldn’t abandon the business,” he said. But his children weren’t interested in running it. Neither were his employees. And few potential owners wanted to move to the remote, frozen north. So he placed a notice with a service that helps small-business owners in far-flung locales find someone to take over. The advertised sale price: zero yen. Mr. Yokoyama’s struggle symbolizes one of the most potentially devastating economic impacts of Japan’s aging society. It is inevitable that many small- and medium-size companies will go out of business as the population shrinks, but policymakers fear that the country could be hit by a surge in closures as aging owners retire en masse. In an apocalyptic 2019 presentation, Japan’s trade ministry projected that by 2025, around 630,000 profitable businesses could close up shop, costing the economy $165 billion and as many as 6.5 million jobs. Economic growth is already anemic, and the Japanese authorities have sprung into action in hopes of averting a catastrophe. Government offices have embarked on public relations campaigns to educate aging owners about options for continuing their businesses beyond their retirements and have set up service centers to help them find buyers. To sweeten the pot, the authorities have introduced large subsidies and tax breaks for new owners.

Norwegian Cruise Line must pay $110 million in damages for use of a port that Cuba's government confiscated in 1960, a U.S. judge ruled on Friday, a milestone for Cuban-Americans seeking compensation for Cold-War era asset seizures. The decision by U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami follows her March ruling that the use of the Havana Cruise Port Terminal constituted trafficking in confiscated property owned by the plaintiff, Delaware-registered Havana Docks Corp. Norwegian Cruise Line did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has harshly criticized the Helms-Burton Act, describing it as an extra-territorial violation of international law. Havana Docks had also sued cruise lines Carnival, Royal Caribbean and MSC under the Helms-Burton Act, which allows U.S. nationals to sue over use of property seized in Cuba after 1959. The ruling could fuel more lawsuits by Cuban exiles pursuing claims, which according to one estimate are worth $2 billion, over asset seizures under late Cuban leader Fidel Castro. It may also serve as a reminder to multinational firms of the complications that can come with doing business in Cuba.

China launched a Long March 3B carrier rocket on Thursday afternoon to transport an experimental satellite into space, completing the busiest year in terms of launch numbers for the country's space industry. The rocket blasted off at 12:43 pm at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan province and then deployed the Shiyan 10-02 experimental satellite into a preset orbit, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, the nation's leading space contractor, said in a news release. Among the Long March flights in 2022, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology carried out 30, while 23 were made by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. Both are subsidiaries of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. Multiple sources inside China's space industry confirmed on Thursday that there will be no other launches in the country this year. This was the first time that China conducted more than 60 rocket liftoffs in a year. Long Lehao, a top rocket scientist at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, said on Thursday that about 27 percent of all Long March flights this year were undertaken by new types of rockets developed in recent years. In 2021, China conducted 55 space launches, with the Long March series carrying out 48 of them. The final launch last year was also made by the Long March 3B model.

China has broken ground on a renewable energy project worth an estimated $11 billion in the province of Inner Mongolia. According to a Bloomberg report, the project will have a capacity of 16 GW and produce some 40 billion kWh of electricity to Beijing and the provinces of Tianjin and Hebei. The project will combine solar, wind, and upgraded coal power, and is set to become the largest renewable energy project in a desert region. China is the country with the greatest wind and solar generation capacity and it has one of the most ambitious investment programs for renewables, despite its still-heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Besides being the world’s largest wind and solar power generator, China also dominates the market for solar panel components, particularly panels, and is on an international expansion path with its wind energy technology. This dominance has put Europe and the U.S. on high alert as political relations between these two and China have not been the best lately. As a result, both the EU and the U.S. are trying to reduce their dependence on China in renewable energy but with few alternatives readily available, it would be a difficult task.

A major hard currency crisis in Egypt is causing a massive backlog across the country’s ports, where goods worth $9.5 billion are stuck - even as the government engages in desperate measures to facilitate their release and avoid a spike in the prices of essential commodities. With Egypt sinking deeper into a prolonged economic crisis, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country’s ports have recently been clogging up with goods due to a dollar shortage, a crisis which has been worsened by a substantial nosedive of the Egyptian pound. The currency has depreciated by about 36 percent since the beginning of the year. Over the period from December 1-23, the government - which has imposed restrictions on imports to save foreign currency - managed to release goods worth $5 billion. Other cargoes worth $9.5 billion are still being held at the country's ports awaiting the securing of dollars required to release them. Priority is being given to food products, food manufacturing components, medicines and production goods.

Israel could attack Iranian nuclear sites in two or three years, its defense minister said on Wednesday, in unusually explicit comments about a possible timeline. With international efforts to renew a 2015 nuclear deal having stalled, the Iranians have ramped up uranium enrichment, a process with civilian uses that can also eventually yield fuel for nuclear bombs — though they deny having any such design. Experts say Iran could potentially raise the fissile purity of its uranium to weapons-grade in short order. But building a deliverable warhead would take it years, they say — an estimate echoed by an Israeli military intelligence general this month. “In two or three years, you may be traversing the skies eastward and taking part in an attack on nuclear sites in Iran,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz told graduating air force cadets in a speech. For more than a decade, Israel has issued veiled threats to attack its arch-enemy’s nuclear facilities if it deems world powers’ diplomacy with Tehran a dead end. However, some experts doubt Israel has the military clout to deliver lasting damage to Iranian targets that are distant, dispersed and well-defended. Under an ambiguity policy designed to deter surrounding foes while avoiding provocations that can spur arms races, Israel neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weaponry. Scholars believe it does, having acquired the first bomb in late 1966. Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, which offers access to civilian nuclear technologies in exchange for the forswearing of nuclear weaponry.

Want to see what China's island bases in the South China Sea look like? Take a look at some of the startling images taken by Getty Images photographer Ezra Acayan in October. They show airfields, radar installations, and military aircraft and warships stationed in the Spratly Islands, which are about 400 miles from the Chinese coast. Beijing has used both natural and artificial islands to build up its military capabilities in the area. "The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC beyond their continental shores," Adm. John Aquilino, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, warned in March, referring to the country's official name, the People's Republic of China. From those bases, Chinese forces "can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems," such as anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, Aquilino told the Associated Press at the time, calling the islands fully militarized.

As growth in the US population is showing early indicators of recovery after the COVID pandemic, net migration has emerged as the largest driver behind the trend, according to the US Census Bureau. Considerably low growth rates in the US between 2020 and 2021 were followed by an uptick: the US resident population increased by 1,256,003, to 333,287,557 in 2022, according to the US Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 data. The changes in annual growth came at a time of the simmering southern border crisis under the Biden administration. According to Customs and Border Protection data, the number of total encounters with illegals at the border during the fiscal year 2022 reached a staggering 2,378,944, while in 2021 it was 1,734,686. For comparison's sake, under then-President Donald Trump it was 458,088 in 2020; and 977,509 in 2019. The influx of international migrants – both legal and illegal – which considerably outpaces the natural change in the US is set to change the face of America in the coming decades. Thus, according to the US Census Bureau's earlier projections, a majority of the US population will be non-white by the year 2050. Demographers suggest that the white share of the US population has been dropping since 1950 and will continue to go down in the future. For their part, Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans will emerge as the nation's main demographic engine. In 2019, a Pew Research poll concerning future demographic changes in the US found that just a third of American adults said that this change would be either very (17%) or somewhat (18%) good; roughly a quarter said it would be very (15%) or somewhat (8%) bad; and 42% say the change would be neither good nor bad. At the same time, however, about half of Americans said that this shift could lead to more conflicts between racial and ethnic groups. About four-in-ten suggested that a majority non-white population could "weaken American customs and values."

China has released a small test satellite into orbit from its recently completed Tiangong space station. The satellite was released from a deployer on the Tianzhou 5 cargo ship, which is currently docked at Tiangong. Tianzhou 5 launched on Nov. 12 with the primary mission of delivering supplies to the space station to support the three Shenzhou 15 mission astronauts but also carried a number of cubesats. The cubesat has been cataloged by the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Defense Squadron, which focuses on space domain awareness. The satellite is in a roughly circular orbit with an average altitude of 239 miles (385 kilometers) above Earth.

A UK judge set a trial date of April 2024 for a case against BHP Group over a Brazilian mining-waste disaster, with claimants seeking an estimated £10 billion ($12 billion). An eight-week hearing is scheduled to proceed almost nine years after a dam collapse unleashed a torrent of waste, killing 19 and polluting waterways in two Brazilian states. “Given the scale and nature of the litigation, it is not surprising that there have been challenges, appeals and changes to the claims,” Judge Finola O’Farrell wrote in a judgment published Wednesday. “However, it is now time to avoid further delay and make substantive progress in determining the dispute.” Current and former executives of London-listed BHP will face cross examination regarding their roles in the disaster, according to Pogust Goodhead, the firm leading the case on behalf of more than 400,000 Brazilian claimants. It will be the largest group litigation in English civil court history, the firm estimates. BHP said in an email the hearing will not consider any compensation payment and that there has been no decision regarding BHP’s alleged liability or whether and when there will be any determination of payments to plaintiffs.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the Laboratory of Applied Pharmacokinetics and Bioinformatics at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles $2.8 million over four years to use artificial intelligence to anticipate dosing and target the condition of individual critically ill patients over time and improve clinical treatment. The lab will build a series of neural networks to predict variability in kidney function in children over time and how that influences their response to medication. By tapping into the hospital's massive Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (VPICU) database, machine learning could unlock the patterns in the clinical measurements from 20,000 critically ill children who have been treated at the hospital since 2009, according to the announcement. Variables like medication volume and clearance in a child's body can change from day to day or moment to moment. "Doctors can estimate the dose of medication needed, but that may not necessarily be the right dose for a particular patient. We make models of drug systems in patients to try to understand how the drug is behaving," Dr. Michael Neely, professor of pediatrics and clinical scholar at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, said in a statement. Computer modeling of how medications behave in patients can account for dosing differences among individuals to some extent but is limited at using present or past measurements to predict future dosages. The researchers will test these algorithms using 5,000 VPICU blood plasma measurements of the antibiotic vancomycin to measure patient exposure over time.

Chinese smart electric vehicle (EV) start-up Nio said on Wednesday it was being blackmailed by hackers who have stolen user and vehicle sales data and are asking for US$2.25 million in bitcoin as ransom. “Nio deeply regrets that this incident happened and is doing everything possible to support its users,” William Li Bin, Nio’s founder, CEO and chairman, said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange. Shanghai-based Nio issued a statement in Chinese late on Tuesday on its own community app explaining that the company had received an email on December 11, in which the sender claimed to have access to Nio’s internal data. They were also demanding US$2.25 million in bitcoin in return for not releasing this data. The automobiles industry, and smart carmakers in particular, have reported many data security concerns recently. German tyre maker Continental, for example, revealed in November that it had lost 40 terabytes of data during a cyberattack it reported in August.

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, will pay Oregon $698 million to end a lawsuit over PCB pollution associated with products made by Monsanto, the agriculture giant it now owns. It’s the largest environmental damage recovery in Oregon’s history and “magnitudes larger” than any other state settlement over PCB contamination by Monsanto, Rosenblum said. The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by Oregon against Monsanto in 2018 for 90 years of pollution in the state until PCBs were banned in the late 1970s. PCBs are toxic compounds formerly used in coolants, electrical equipment such as fluorescent lights, and other devices. They still contaminate Oregon’s landfills and riverbeds and show up in fish and wildlife. “Monsanto’s toxic legacy unfortunately lives on in our lands, rivers and other waterways, and poses ongoing risks to the health of our people and our environment,” Rosenblum said. “This is all the more reason why this settlement is so vitally important. Oregon and Oregonians will be the better for it.” Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, said in a statement that the settlement over “legacy Monsanto PCB products” fully resolves all Oregon’s claims and releases the company from any future liability. The Oregon agreement contains no admission of liability or wrongdoing by the company, the statement said.

The proportion of young adults who would like to move to a new home but cannot find one has doubled in the past six years. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), about 11 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 30 wanted to move in 2021, but were unable to do so. In 2015, roughly 5 percent were looking for a new home but could not find one. That includes about 12.3 percent of young adults who want to move out of their parents’ home, and a similar 13.0 percent, or 1 in 8 young people, in a social housing rental unit who cannot find a suitable home when looking for a change. The proportion is less for young people living in an owner-occupied home, with about 3.6 percent unable to find a new residence when they wanted to move last year. According to CBS economist Peter Hein van Mulligen, these trends are not only noticeable among young people. The tight housing market means "if you haven't moved yet, it's more difficult to achieve.” Tenants looking for other rental properties are also often disappointed. In recent years, housing corporations have built little or no additional homes. "Affordable rent has also become less accessible as a result," says Van Mulligen.

Buying a plot of land in rural America has never been so expensive. And that's even with soaring interest rates. Rising commodity prices mean farmers made record amounts of money this year, spurring a rush for space to plant in 2023. More demand comes just as people fled to the countryside during the pandemic - with non-metropolitan areas growing faster than urban ones - and investors turned to fields as a hedge against inflation. Farmland prices in the Midwest, the nation's breadbasket, jumped 20% just in the third quarter from a year earlier - bucking a downturn in the residential real estate market, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the National Association of Realtors. That was the eleventh consecutive quarter of gains, the longest streak since 2014. More demand for farmland coincides with pandemic-induced shifts in population. The number of people living in non-metro counties rose 0.3% in the 12 months ended in July 2021, the first time the growth in rural population outpaced that of urban areas since the mid-1990s, according to USDA. Tom Halverson, chief executive officer of CoBank, a cooperative lender serving rural America, said the expansion of broadband and the ability to work from home helped fuel that shift. Farmland has also become more attractive as owners seek to make money from the shift to clean energy. Demand for renewable diesel - made from vegetable oils but with identical chemical properties to the petroleum-based fuel - is expected to triple in the next five years, according to BloombergNEF.

Set against the backdrop of continuing internal disquiet in Iran, media outlets loyal to the regime call for Iranian forces to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to what it cites as foreign intervention. That’s what Dryad Global noted in its latest Maritime Security Threat Advisory (MSTA), adding that Egypt has assumed responsibility for the CTF (Combined Task Force) - 153 within the Red Sea area. “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a popular call in Iran, especially in times of turbulence,” Dryad Global stated in the MSTA. “However, in reality, Iran processes little capability to realize this. Further still this would be significantly against Iranian strategies interests,” Dryad Global added in the MSTA. Last week, the Egypt State Information Service (SIS) website announced that Egyptian naval forces took over the command of CTF - 153 on December 13. The organization is tasked with combating illegal activities in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden, SIS - which describes itself as the nation’s ‎main informational, awareness and public relations agency - noted.

China is building up several unoccupied land features in the South China Sea, according to Western officials, which they said was part of Beijing’s long-running effort to strengthen claims to disputed territory and potentially bolster its military presence in a region critical to global trade. Fishing fleets that operate as de facto maritime militias under the control of authorities in Beijing have carried out construction activities at four features in the Spratly Islands over the past decade, according to officials with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive information. Some sand bars and other formations in the area expanded more than 10 times in size in recent years, they said. Satellite photos shared with Bloomberg News depicted what they said was a Chinese maritime vessel offloading an amphibious hydraulic excavator used in land reclamation projects at Eldad Reef in the northern Spratlys in 2014. New land formations have since appeared above water over the past year, according to the officials, who said that images showed large holes, debris piles and excavator tracks at a site that used to be only partially exposed at high tide. They said similar activities have also taken place at Lankiam Cay, known as Panata Island in the Philippines, where a feature had been reinforced with a new perimeter wall over the course of just a couple of months last year. Other images they presented showed physical changes at both Whitsun Reef and Sandy Cay, where previously submerged features now sit permanently above the high-tide line. While China has previously built out reefs, islands and land formations that it had long controlled — even establishing small outposts and runways in some cases — the latest images represent what the officials called the first known instances of a nation doing so on territory it doesn’t already occupy. The officials warned that Beijing was seeking to advance a new status quo by building up the cays and reefs in the Spratly Islands, even though they said it was too early to know whether China would seek to militarize them.

Spanish Secretary of State for the EU Pascal Navarro said on Tuesday his government would not back an EU membership bid submitted by the so-called Kosovo as it did not recognise the territory as independent. "Spain does not recognise Kosovo as independent and will therefore vote against any procedural decision and against giving Kosovo candidate status," the notimerica.com news portal quoted Navarro as telling a Senate commission on EU affairs. "The government will not back the candidacy in the present circumstances, and that stance has not changed," Navarro noted. Spain is one of the five EU member states that do not recognise the so-called Kosovo, alongside Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Slovakia.

In 2022, an American dressed in his pajamas took down North Korea’s Internet from his living room. Fortunately, there was no reprisal against the United States. But Kim Jong Un and his generals must have weighed retaliation and asked themselves whether the so-called independent hacker was a front for a planned and official American attack. In 2023, the world might not get so lucky. There will almost certainly be a major cyberattack. It could shut down Taiwan’s airports and trains, paralyze British military computers, or swing a US election. This is terrifying, because each time this happens, there is a small risk that the aggrieved side will respond aggressively, maybe at the wrong party, and (worst of all) even if it carries the risk of nuclear escalation. This is because cyber weapons are different from conventional ones. They are cheaper to design and wield. That means great powers, middle powers, and pariah states can all develop and use them. Researchers have worked on this problem using game theory, the science of strategy. If you’ve ever played a game of poker, the logic is intuitive: It doesn’t make sense to bluff and call none of the time, and it doesn’t make sense to bluff and call all of the time. Either strategy would be both predictable and unimaginably costly. The right move, rather, is to call and bluff some of the time, and to do so unpredictably. With cyber, uncertainty over who is attacking pushes adversaries in a similar direction. The US shouldn’t retaliate none of the time (that would make it look weak), and it shouldn’t respond all of the time (that would retaliate against too many innocents). Its best move is to retaliate some of the time, somewhat capriciously—even though it risks retaliating against the wrong foe. The same logic guides potential attackers. Knowing the US won’t retaliate all of the time and might even punish the wrong country creates an incentive to take electronic risks—ones they would never take with a missile.

The Turks in the Aegean exceeded all limits of provocation today by carrying out massive violations with dozens of fighters, even armed ones. The Greek fighters proceeded to intercepts after fierce air battles, while after many years there were 20 engagements between Greek and Turkish fighters. According to the data made public by GEETHA, 32 Turkish F-16s, including 20 armed ones, i.e. an entire squadron, violated the National Airspace 43 times, while another 59 violations were carried out by an Unmanned Aircraft, reaching a total of 102 violations. Violations occurred almost all over the Aegean, North-East, Central and South-East while all the Turkish ones were recognized and intercepted according to international rules, according to standard practice.

The UK Government's Intellectual Property Office published new piracy guidance today, and it contains a small, easily missed detail. People who share their Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+ passwords are violators of copyright law. And it gets worse. The IPO informs TorrentFreak that password sharing could also mean criminal liability for fraud. Following a limited launch in 2007 with just 1,000 titles, Neflix now carries more than 6,600 movies and TV shows for the enjoyment of more than 223 million subscribers. There’s little doubt that Netflix password sharing contributed to the company’s growth and by publicly condoning it, the practice was completely normalized – globally. The message was clear – Netflix loves you, you love Netflix, and now all your friends love Netflix too. Thanks for sharing. Netflix and similar streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime and Disney+, still want you to love them, but password sharing? Not so much.

Behind a locked door in Barry's house is a room he's been getting ready for the past year. Driven by uncertainty, he has been stockpiling food, first aid, torches and battery-powered lamps. "The cost-of-living crisis, power outages, fuel shortages, those things I'm well prepared for now," he says. On the shelves are at least a dozen boxes of tinned and dried food goods - all carefully labelled and meticulously stored to keep them dry and airtight. "There is about four months of food for three of us, here at the moment," Barry says. "But my goal now is to have enough food, for three of us, for six months." Asked why, he replies: "Because you just don't know. Life is just very unpredictable right now." Barry is a so-called prepper, part of a growing community in the UK defined by the phrase: "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst." The prepping movement started in the US, where it is more frequently associated with preparing for Doomsday-like events. It is different from the Survivalist movement, which focuses on surviving full societal breakdown. But here in the UK, prepper and psychologist Dr Sarita Robinson says it's become "much more mainstream". Dr Robinson, who lectures on the psychology of survival at the University of Central Lancashire, describes herself as a "low-grade prepper". "It's just about having enough in reserve in case the government or local authorities can't really do things for you immediately," she says. For Dr Robinson, it's just about "being ready before an emergency hits, because by the time you're in a crisis, it's too late". "It's like in the pandemic when suddenly there was no loo roll anywhere, that wasn't because of preppers," she says. "Because preppers will have had 100 loo rolls under the stairs for months."

On a recent weekday in Lebanon's second-largest city, the atmosphere at a branch of the IBL Bank is tense. Security and police are gathered outside. Soldiers are clutching M16 rifles. People are crowding the entrance. Inside, Zahra Khaled, a 53-year-old in a wheelchair who's in urgent need of medical care, is refusing to leave until she is given her savings. The bank has frozen all of it — tens of thousands of dollars. After selling personal possessions and exhausting all other options, she and her adult daughter have now entered the bank and will not budge. Lebanon's banks froze most accounts three years ago amid an economic collapse. This year, faced with increasingly desperate circumstances, more people are resorting to extreme measures to access their savings. Khaled's protest is one of the milder tactics. Other Lebanese have taken to robbing banks for their own funds, brandishing real or toy guns. Most take only what they are owed, and so far no one has been reported killed in a robbery. Kamel Wazni of the Lebanese Control Commission, which supervises the country's banking sector, can't rule out that some of the depositors' money might be gone for good. Billions of Lebanon's dollar reserves have been taken out of the country, and billions more have been spent on subsidies and seeking to respond to the economic collapse. Banks do allow withdrawals of $400 per account per month, plus some Lebanese currency, in a strategy that he says will repay as many as 70% of depositors. But this does little to help those who need larger and more immediate sums. So depositors have started coordinating their actions, even forming a movement.

Japan decided Friday Dec. 16th to acquire the capability to strike enemy bases and double defense spending in a dramatic shift in its postwar security policy under the nation's war-renouncing Constitution, provoking a harsh backlash from China. With the security environment surrounding Japan becoming unstable amid threats from China, North Korea and Russia, Tokyo, which has rejected warfare for the past 77 years, will be able to directly attack another country's territory in case of an emergency. Obtaining the ability to deter attacks from outside forces, called a "counterstrike capability," was stipulated in the government's three key defense documents, including the National Security Strategy, updated by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Cabinet. Critics note that the Constitution only allows Japan to act in self-defense, but the NSS said the nation needs to have the ability to "make effective counterstrikes in an opponent's territory as a bare minimum self-defense measure." The NSS mentioned that Japan is facing the "most severe and complicated security environment" since World War II, while the government has pledged to stick to its commitment to the "exclusively self-defense-oriented policy" and "not to become a military power." In their first revision since 2013, the long-term security policy guidelines said that missile defense alone is insufficient to deal with the "significant reinforcement of missile forces" by Japan's neighboring countries, which have opposed its renewed defense policy. Under the new defense buildup program, around 43 trillion yen will be allocated to defense budgets for five years from fiscal 2023, a jump from 27.5 trillion yen under the existing plan for the five years from fiscal 2019. Out of the 43 trillion yen, some 5 trillion yen will be used to acquire "standoff missiles," which are capable of being launched from beyond the range of enemy fire by extending the range of Self-Defense Forces' surface-to-ship guided missiles, as well as procuring U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of about 1,600 kilometers.

India on Thursday Dec. 15th successfully tested the nuclear capable Agni V missile capable of striking targets at ranges up to 5,000 kilometres with a very high degree of accuracy. India successfully carried out the night trials of the Agni V nuclear-capable ballistic missile today, defence sources said. This comes days after Indian and Chinese troops clashed in Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The test was carried out to validate new technologies and equipment on the missile, which is now lighter than before. The trial has proved the capability to enhance the range of the Agni V missile, if required, defence sources said on Thursday. The test-firing of the missile from the APJ Abdul Kalam Island off Odisha coast came amid India's ongoing border row with China.

South Africa’s R1 trillion mining industry is in a downward spiral, say economists at Nedbank, with the sector recording its ninth consecutive month of decline in October. Mining production declined by 10.4% year on year in October, the bank noted this week, after shrinking by 5.1% in September. Month-on-month, mining production dropped by a sharp 2.5% MoM, after declining by 0.1% and 0.4% in September and August, respectively. The diminished output of platinum, manganese ore and diamonds drove the monthly decline, Nedbank said. Making matter worse, mining production has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels and remained 13.4% below the level achieved in October 2019, highlighting the continued strain on the sector. Mineral sales grew by 0.5% YoY in October, slower than 21% in September. On top of prevailing market conditions and the state of South Africa’s electricity grid, mining companies are now also speaking up about extortion rackets that are increasingly disrupting their businesses. In an interview with Bloomberg this month, chief executives from several local mining groups, including AngloPlatinum and Implats, spoke of so-called “procurement mafias” that mobilise communities into violent extortion schemes. According to the Hawks, the mining industry is under attack, with syndicates “creating their own mafia-type groupings that exert pressure.

China's secret police stations abroad have caused outrage around the world. But the idea apparently didn't come from Beijing. The representations came from individual Chinese cities – one of which is Qingtian, a city with many international ties. The Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese of Qingtian is located on the 12th floor of a high-rise building on the city's main street. With the reporter from DER SPIEGEL showing up unannounced, the office staff agree after a brief discussion that they have no time. But they do welcome the reporter to check out the Qingtian Emigrant Museum, which is located one floor below. A large display board on the wall is titled: "Protecting the Interests of Overseas Chinese." Several photos show agency employees conferring at long tables. One caption reads: "On April 8, 2021, the County (Qingtian) Public Service Bureau held a video conference with seven of its service centers in Barcelona, Milan, Frankfurt, etc." When asked if he could also share something about this police work, the historian was silent, before saying, "I think it's better if we end the tour here." In Qingtian, they are proud enough of their foreign police stations to hang them up in the museum. Have the local authorities really somehow overlooked just how problematic their police stations are under international law? After all, such issues aren't usually within their remit. The Chinese diplomats who supported the initiative, on the other hand, cannot claim such ignorance for themselves. In a 2018 article, a state-run media quoted Lu Cijun, then the vice consul general in Barcelona, as praising the establishment of the stations. After the international controversy erupted, the Spanish daily El Correo was able to speak with an anonymous official from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The newspaper quotes him as saying, "I don't see what's wrong with pressuring criminals to face justice." Even if it is true that the Chinese police stations abroad weren't based on a central government plan, Beijing knew about them and obviously considered them advantageous.

The Biden administration took a public stand last year against the abuse of spyware and blacklisted the Israeli firm NSO Group, but it didn't prevent the U.S. from using other Israeli offensive spyware to hack into mobile phones, The New York Times reported. According to the report, the Biden administration allowed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to deploy a tool called Graphite, made by the Israeli firm Paragon, according to five people familiar with the agency’s operations. Very little information has been published about the company, which mostly consists of Israeli military cyberintelligence veterans and even some past NSO workers. Even Ehud Barak, Israel's former prime minister, is a member of the board of directors at Paragon, which is funded by an American venture capital fund. Just like NSO's Pegasus spyware, Graphite can invade mobile phones and harvest data. However, unlike Pegasus, the Paragon spyware vacuums up content mostly from the cloud. The Biden administration is attempting to impose some degree of order on this spyware chaos, but it ultimately tries to have the cake and eat it at the same time.

A former Twitter employee found guilty of spying on users on behalf of the Saudi royal family has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Ahmad Abouammo, a dual U.S.-Lebanese citizen who helped oversee media partnerships for Twitter in the Middle East and North Africa, was part of a scheme to acquire the personal information of users, including phone numbers and birth dates, for a Saudi government agent. He was sentenced Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The Justice Department has said it believes that another former Twitter employee accused of accessing user accounts and a man accused of helping the Saudi government with the scheme have fled to Saudi Arabia to evade American authorities. The Saudi consulate did not respond to a request for comment.

InfraGard, a program run by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to build cyber and physical threat information sharing partnerships with the private sector, this week saw its database of contact information on more than 80,000 members go up for sale on an English-language cybercrime forum. Meanwhile, the hackers responsible are communicating directly with members through the InfraGard portal online — using a new account under the assumed identity of a financial industry CEO that was vetted by the FBI itself. On Dec. 10, 2022, the relatively new cybercrime forum Breached featured a bombshell new sales thread: The user database for InfraGard, including names and contact information for tens of thousands of InfraGard members. In response to information shared by KrebsOnSecurity, the FBI said it is aware of a potential false account associated with the InfraGard Portal and that it is actively looking into the matter. KrebsOnSecurity contacted the seller of the InfraGard database, a Breached forum member who uses the handle “USDoD” and whose avatar is the seal of the U.S. Department of Defense. USDoD said they gained access to the FBI’s InfraGard system by applying for a new account using the name, Social Security Number, date of birth and other personal details of a chief executive officer at a company that was highly likely to be granted InfraGard membership. The CEO in question — currently the head of a major U.S. financial corporation that has a direct impact on the creditworthiness of most Americans — told KrebsOnSecurity they were never contacted by the FBI seeking to vet an InfraGard application. USDoD told KrebsOnSecurity their phony application was submitted in November in the CEO’s name, and that the application included a contact email address that they controlled — but also the CEO’s real mobile phone number.

A forest of wind turbines rises out of the fields on both sides of the highway running east out of Vienna. But at the border with Slovakia, which stretches between Austria and Ukraine, they stop. Slovakia gets only 0.4 percent of its energy from wind and solar. Instead it is betting its energy transition on nuclear power. Without Russian gas, Europe has been racing to avoid blackouts. Every day, Paris is turning off the Eiffel Tower’s lights an hour early, Cologne has dimmed its street lights, and Switzerland is considering a ban on electric cars. Nuclear power advocates, like Strýček, are using this moment to argue that Europe needs nuclear technology to keep the lights on without jeopardizing net-zero targets. “It provides an immense amount of secure, predictable, stable baseload, which renewables are not able to provide,” he said at the World Utilities Congress in June. The energy crisis is not a deal breaker in Europe’s nuclear debate, but in some countries it is boosting the pro-nuclear side of the argument, says Lukas Bunsen, head of research at consultancy Aurora Energy Research. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany has announced it will keep the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants open until April 2023. Belgium proposed to keep its nuclear plants running for another 10 years. In October, Poland signed a deal with the US company Westinghouse to build its first nuclear power plant. But Europe remains deeply divided on the use of nuclear power. Of the European Union’s 27 member states, 13 generate nuclear power, while 14 do not. “It’s still a very national debate,” says Bunsen. That means public attitudes can drastically change from one side of a border to the other. Surveys show that 60 percent of Slovakians believe nuclear power is safe, while 70 percent of their neighbors in Austria are against it being used at all—the country has no active nuclear plants.

The hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia are alarmed by the increasing persecution against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The ROCOR Synod of Bishops met in New York on December 8. Among other items, the hierarchs addressed the tragic situation in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Security Service has been conducting searches at UOC monasteries, churches, and diocesan administrations over the past few weeks, and several hierarchs and clerics are being officially investigated by the Ukrainian Security Service. The state has also imposed sanctions upon a growing number of hierarchs and clerics. Local administrations have declared bans on the Church in various places throughout the country, and there are bills before the Parliament to adopt a nationwide ban.

The Athens offices of Intellexa, which sells the Predator spyware in Greece, and Krikel, an ICT and electronic security systems provider, were among six companies raided by police as part of the investigation into the wiretapping affair on Tuesday. Two other companies which share offices with the aforementioned companies or have the same shareholders were also raided by officers from the police’s cybercrime division. The raids also targeted the homes of executives of all six companies. The prosecutors who ordered the raids were acting on evidence and documents that emerged in recent days, including in reports in Sunday’s Documento newspaper, as well as other information.

As Europe becomes increasingly globalized and diverse, it faces new challenges that include the possible loss of established national identities, as borders and boundaries get increasingly blurred because of mass migration ranging from economic migrants to asylum seekers. Although touted as a remedy against low birthrates and labor shortages, immigration also leads to new, previously unknown challenges through poor integration, such as segregation, social exclusion zones and the attrition of the social fabric. The debate on these issues is notoriously febrile, as the media and the lawmakers are often reluctant to recognize the realities and their consequences that could threaten their societies, despite all sorts of polls indicating citizens' desire to limit immigration or tighten integration procedures.