
U.S. Judge
Orders Norwegian Cruise Line to Pay $110
Million for Use of Cuba Port
by Maritime
Professional
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.
Latest Launch
Marks 64th Mission for China in 2022
by Space
Daily
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 Starts
Work on the World's Largest Desert-Based
Energy Project
by Oilprice.com
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.
Egypt's
Currency Crisis Is Creating a Massive Port
Backlog
by The
Maritime Executive
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.
Israeli
Minister Sees Possible Attack on Iran "in Two
or Three Years"
by Arab
News
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.
Vivid New
Photos Give Look at the Islands China Has
Fully Militarized
by Business
Insider
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.
Face of U.S.
Changing as Foreigners Become Major Driver of
Population Growth
by Sputnik
News
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's Space
Station Releases Small Test Satellite into
Orbit
by Space.com
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.
BHP Set to Face
$12 Billion U.K. Suit Over Brazil Dam Disaster
by Mining.com
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.
NIH Awards $2.8
Million to Use AI for Precision Dosing
by Healthcare
IT News
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 EV
Maker Nio Hit in US$2.25 Million Ransomware
Data Breach
by SCMP
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.
$698 Million
Deal Ending Oregon's Monsanto PCB Pollution
Lawsuit
by Insurance
Journal
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.
Some 11% of
Young Dutch Can't Find a New home; Doubled
Since 2015
by NL
Times
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.
U.S. Farmland
Escapes Real Estate Slump as Prices Soar to
Record
by Bloomberg
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.
Calls for
Iranian Forces to Close Strait of Hormuz
by Rigzone
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 Accused
of Building on Unoccupied Reefs in South China
Sea
by Bloomberg
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.
Spain Will Not
Support "So-Called Kosovo's" E.U. Bid
by Tanjug
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.
The Risk of
Escalation from Cyber Attacks Has Never Been
Greater
by ars
TECHNICA
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.
Fierce
Dogfights in the Aegean – Over 100 Violations
by Turkish Fighters
by Tovima
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.
U.K. Government
Proclaims Netflix Password Sharing Now
"Illegal"
by TorrentFreak
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.
U.K. Sees More
Hoarding of Supplies as Financial and Energy
Crises Escalates
by Sky
News
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."
People in
Lebanon Are Still Robbing Banks to Access
Their Own Savings
by NPR
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
Authorizes Enemy Base Strike Capability in
Major Defense Policy Shift
by Kyodo
News
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
Successfully Tests Agni V Nuclear Ballistic
Missile
by India
Today
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
Biggest Industry Is in a Downward Spiral
by BusinessTech
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.
A Visit to the
City Responsible for China's Police Stations
in Europe
by Spiegel
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.
Despite
Blacklisting NSO, U.S. Said to Use Other
Israeli-Made Spyware
by ynet
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.
Former Twitter
Employee Sentenced for Spying for Saudi Arabia
by NBC
News
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.
FBI's Vetted
Info. Sharing Network 'InfraGard' Hacked
by Krebs
on Security
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 Tale of Two Nuclear Plants
Reveals Europe's Energy Divide
by Wired
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.
ROCOR Expresses Concern for
Persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church
by Orthodox
Christianity
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.
Police Raid Offices of Predator
Spyware Seller Intellexa in Athens, Greece
by ekathimerini
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 Illegal Foreigners to the
E.U. Accelerates, Which State Will Lose Its
Identity First?
by Sputnik
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.
Sears Hometown Files for
Bankruptcy in Delaware
by yahoo!
Finance
Sears Hometown Stores Inc.
filed for bankruptcy on Monday, court papers
show. The retailer listed assets of no more than
$50 million and liabilities of at least $50
million in its bankruptcy court petition, filed
in Delaware. Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows
companies to continue operating while working on
a plan to repay creditors. Sears Hometown is a
branch of the retailer that focuses on selling
appliances, tools, hardware and lawn and garden
equipment. Sears spun off the Hometown business
in 2012 to raise cash for its struggling parent
company. Representatives for Sears did not
immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hometown wasn’t part of Sears Holdings Corp.’s
2018 bankruptcy, and Transformco, a company
backed by former Sears Chief Executive Officer
Eddie Lampert, purchased it in 2019 as part of a
strategy to focus Sears’s future business on
appliances. Instead the company has continued to
fade away, with Transformco shuttering stores
and selling off signature brands like Craftsman
and DieHard. The now-bankrupt Sears Hometown
entity is at least partially owned by Lampert,
according to court papers.
In Africa, China Is Building
Influence, Brick by Brick
by SCMP
Earlier this month, officials
in the Nigerian capital of Abuja broke ground
for the new headquarters of the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS). When
completed in just over two years, the complex
will enable the regional bloc of 15 member
countries to conduct business in one centralised
site instead of the three separate locations
they now work in. The US$32 million facility to
be on 7 hectares (17 acres) of
government-donated land is being paid for by
China – the latest in a series of high-profile
donations in several African countries as
Beijing increases its clout on the continent.
“To sponsor and construct the new headquarters
is a vivid reflection of China’s support to the
work of ECOWAS, as well as the traditional
friendship between China and the West African
countries,” said Cui Jianchun, China’s
ambassador to Nigeria. “China will continue to
promote the common development of China and
Africa, and is ready to make new contributions
to building the China-Africa community.” Cui
said the building showed China’s “sincere
determination” to support the unity, peace and
development of Africa, as well as efforts to
promote Africa’s infrastructure development. The
project, which had been agreed to in 2018, is
being funded by the Chinese government through
the China International Development Cooperation
Agency. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari
called the effort “a symbol of China’s
commitment to ECOWAS”.
Japanese Government Wants to
Give People an Extra ¥80,000 to Have Babies
by Japan
Today
Japan has been struggling to
find ways to increase its low and declining
birth rate for some time now, and the Ministry
of Health, Labor and Welfare is hoping that the
promise of some extra cash in the bank will
encourage more people to add a baby to their
family. Currently, new parents in Japan receive
a Childbirth and Childcare Lump-Sum Grant of
420,000 yen upon the birth of their child.
Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Katsunobu
Kato wants to up that amount to an even 500,000
yen, and met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio
Kishida last week to discuss the proposal, which
is expected to be approved and put into effect
for the 2023 fiscal year, which starts in the
spring. However, while such an increase in the
grant amount isn’t likely to make anyone less
motivated to have children, it may not be all
that effective of an incentive either. Though
it’s called the Childbirth and Childcare
Lump-Sum Grant, little, if any, of it is left
over after the “Childbirth” part. Though the
grant is funded through Japan’s public medical
insurance system, child delivery expenses are
paid out of pocket, and according to Mainichi
Shimbun the nationwide average for delivery
costs is approximately 473,000 yen. That means
that even if the grant is increased, parents
would be looking at, on average, less than
30,000 yen of it remaining once they’re home
from the hospital, or less than the amount Asahi
Breweries is gifting workers to eat out this
holiday season. That’s not going to go very far
against the total costs of raising a child to
self-sufficient adulthood, and it’s doubtful in
the first place that an 80,000-yen boost is
going to cross over anyone’s make-it-or-break-it
point for having a baby.
Chinese Shipyards Gorge on
Record LNG Carrier Orders as Rivals Struggle
by gCaptain
China is making fast inroads in
the market for newbuild liquefied natural gas
(LNG) tankers as local and foreign shipowners
turn to its shipbuilders for the specialty
vessels because long dominant yards in South
Korea are fully booked. Three Chinese shipyards
– only one of them having experience building
large LNG tankers – won nearly 30% of this
year’s record orders for 163 new gas carriers,
claiming ground in a sector where South Korea
usually captures most of the business. LNG
tanker order books for Chinese yards tripled as
China’s gas traders and fleet operators sought
to secure shipping after freight rates soared to
records following the upending of global energy
supply flows by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
With South Korean shipbuilders swamped by orders
to service Qatar’s massive North Field
expansion, Chinese yards also attracted more
foreign bookings, including first overseas
orders for some ship makers only recently
certified to build membrane-type LNG carriers.
Satellite Images Show Saudi
Arabia's 'Line' Megacity Construction Underway
by MIT
Technology Review
In early 2021, Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia announced
The Line: a “civilizational revolution” that
would house up to 9 million people in a
zero-carbon megacity, 170 kilometers long and
half a kilometer high but just 200 meters wide.
Within its mirrored, car-free walls, residents
would be whisked around in underground trains
and electric air taxis. Satellite images of the
$500 billion project obtained exclusively by MIT
Technology Review show that the Line’s vast
linear building site is already taking shape,
running as straight as an arrow across the
deserts and through the mountains of northern
Saudi Arabia. The site, tens of meters deep in
places, is teeming with many hundreds of
construction vehicles and likely thousands of
workers, themselves housed in sprawling bases
nearby. Analysis of the satellite images by Soar
Earth, an Australian startup that aggregates
satellite imagery and crowdsourced maps into an
online digital atlas, suggests that the workers
have already excavated around 26 million cubic
meters of earth and rock—78 times the volume of
the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa.
Official drone footage of The Line’s
construction site, released in October, indeed
showed fleets of bulldozers, trucks, and diggers
excavating its foundations.
E.U. Commission Silent on Greek
Spyware Sale to Madagascar
by euobserver
The EU Commission says it works
closely with EU states on dual-use exports but
will not comment on new revelations that Greece
authorised the sale of spyware software to
Madagascar. "We do not comment on individual
cases or exchanges we have with member states,"
a European Commission spokesperson, told
reporters in Brussels on Friday (9 December).
The revelation, exposed in a investigation by
the New York Times on Thursday, adds to the
mounting body of evidence of spyware being used
by EU state actors against politicians,
journalists, lawyers and others. The Greek
government confirmed to the paper that it had
granted the company, Intellexa, licences to sell
Predator spyware to Madagascar. Amnesty
International, in a report, faulted Madagascar
for harassing journalists, its prison detention
of children, and state-led discrimination
against the LGBTI community. EU dual-export
rules, which governs civilian technologies with
possible military or security uses, includes
provisions on cyber surveillance technologies.
Those provisions are supposed to ensure their
trade is legitimate and will not be used to
violate human rights. National authorities are
responsible for deciding on whether to grant
authorisation. But the commission also says "it
works in close cooperation with member states to
ensure that the rules are implemented
correctly." However, when asked if this includes
Intellexa's Predator sale to Madagascar, the EU
commission refused to say.
Libyan Government Lifts Force
Majeure on Oil Exploration
by LibyaHerald
The Tripoli-based Libyan
government led by Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba
announced today the lifting of the state of
force majeure on exploration operations for the
production of oil and gas. The government
further called on international oil companies
that have concluded contracts with the National
Oil Corporation (NOC) to resume their work in
Libya, stressing its readiness to provide the
necessary support and provide them with a safe
work environment. The Aldabaiba government said
the lifting of force majeure on oil exploration
is based on a request by the NOC and after a
realistic assessment of the security situation
in the country. It added that the security
situation has improved a lot and has allowed for
exploration in areas previously not possible.
The government said that it has given
instructions to all relevant parties to provide
all the necessary cooperation to oil and gas
exploration companies.
Chinese Shake Up Israel's New
Car Market
by Globes
256,700 new cars were delivered
in Israel in the first 11 months of 2022, down
9.8% from the corresponding period of 2021, and
close to the average over the past decade. But
overall numbers aside the past year has seen
remarkable changes in the car market as the
emphasis shifts from gasoline and diesel fueled
cars to electric vehicles. Nearly 10% of new
cars sold in 2022 are electric vehicles compared
with 1% three years ago and about 35% of the new
cars sold in November were electric vehicles.
This percentage could rise further in December
as buyers rush to bring in an electric vehicle
before purchase tax rises from 10% to 20% in
January. The shift to electric cars has also
shaken up the mix of brands being sold in Israel
with Chinese companies moving strongly into the
local market. In the first 11 months of 2022,
24,000 electric vehicles were sold in Israel
including 6,000 in November alone and 64% of the
electric vehicles sold in Israel this year were
made in China. This figure includes Western
brands that are manufactured in China such as
Tesla and Polestar (Volvo) although the Chinese
see them as exports to the west.
Japan Eyes 56% Increase in
Defense Budget Over Five Years
by Space
War
Japan's Prime Minister Fumio
Kishida instructed ministers on Monday to boost
the country's defence budget by 56 percent over
the next five years to $318 billion. The
government is overhauling its defence and
security strategies in response to regional
threats from nuclear-armed North Korea and an
increasingly assertive China. Defence Minister
Yasukazu Hamada said Kishida told him that "the
size of the medium-term defence programme for
the next five years, which is currently being
arranged, should be around 43 trillion yen ($318
billion)". The amount would be more than 1.5
times larger than the current five-year spending
plan of 27.5 trillion yen. The decision comes a
week after Kishida announced he wanted to
increase defence spending to two percent of GDP
by 2027. For decades, Japan has spent around one
percent of GDP or less on defence, less than the
NATO standard of two percent. But growing
pressure from China, including military
exercises and the presence of boats around
disputed islands, has helped build support for a
bigger budget.
U.S. Navy Lowers Entrance Exam
Requirements in Bid to Get More Recruits
by MilitaryTimes
As the military struggles to
attract new recruits, the Navy on Monday began a
pilot program that will let in those who have
lower scores on part of the entrance exam used
to gauge a recruit’s ability to serve. Potential
sailors are required to take the Armed Forces
Qualification Test, or AFQT, to determine
whether they are qualified to serve, as part of
the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery,
better known as the ASVAB. Under the Navy’s
pilot program, the service will accept lower
scores on the AFQT, between the 10th and 30th
percentile, as long as the prospective sailor’s
ASVAB individual line scores are still high
enough to qualify for a Navy rating. The test
score change announcement comes after the Navy
raised its maximum enlistment age to 41 last
month, up from 39. The sea service barely made
its active-duty enlisted recruiting goal for
FY22, which ended Sept. 30, bringing in just 42
bodies more than the goal of 33,400 new members.
Exxon Mobil Raises CEO Pay by
10 Percent as Oil Giant Makes Huge Profits
by Houston
Chronicle
Exxon Mobil is raising the base
pay for its CEO and other executives as the
company posts record quarterly profits. The
annual salary for Chairman and CEO Darren Woods
will rise to $1.88 million next year from $1.7
million, about 10 percent, according to a filing
with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The
annual salary for Chief Financial Officer
Kathryn Mikells, who joined the company in 2021
with pay of $437,500, will rise to $1.2 million.
The salaries for executives are a small part of
total compensation. Woods' total compensation
package for 2021 was about $23.6 million. Other
executives seeing raises will be senior vice
presidents Neil Chapman, whose salary will
increase to $1.2 million and Jack Williams, who
will receive $1.21 million next year, according
to the SEC filing. Exxon did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.
Filmmakers Want to Link ISP
Subscriber Data to "Pirating" YTS and Reddit
Users
by TorrentFreak
The filmmakers accuse the ISP
of failing to terminate the accounts of
subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for
sharing copyrighted material. They want to hold
WOW! liable for these pirating activities, which
could lead to millions of dollars in damages.
The ISP challenged the claims and filed a motion
to dismiss the case. Among other things, it
argued that an IP address is not sufficient to
prove that subscribers downloaded or shared any
infringing material. The filmmakers opposed this
motion, which has yet to be decided on by the
Colorado federal court. In the meantime, another
issue has raised its head. Both sides are
gathering evidence to prepare for the case
moving forward. As part of that process, the
filmmakers have demanded the personal details of
roughly 14,000 subscribers whose WOW! accounts
were allegedly used to pirate content. WOW!
objected to this request, arguing that the names
and addresses of its subscribers are irrelevant
to the core question of whether it reasonably
implemented a repeat infringer policy. The
filmmakers disagreed, noting that the
information can be cross-checked to determine
whether the ISP notified its subscribers and
terminated accounts in response to infringement
notices.
Chinese Security Firm
Advertises Ethnicity Recognition Technology,
Faces U.K. Ban
by The
Guardian
A Chinese security camera
company has been advertising ethnicity
recognition features to British and other
European customers, even while it faces a ban on
UK operations over allegations of involvement in
ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. In a brochure
published on its website, Hikvision advertised a
range of features that it said it could provide
in collaboration with the UK startup FaiceTech.
These included using facial recognition for
retail security, border control, and anti-money
laundering checks for retail banking. The
brochure also advertised “Optional Demographic
Profiling Facial analysis algorithms”, including
“gender, race/ethnicity, age” profiling. A
second, Italian-based, company was also cited on
Hikvision’s website as offering racial
profiling. The company removed both claims from
its website following an inquiry from the
Guardian, and said the technology had never been
sold in the UK. The document, it said, detailed
the “potential application of our cameras, with
technology built independently by FaiceTech and
other partners”. FaiceTech denied ever having
worked with Hikvision, and said the brochure was
created and published without its knowledge or
consent. In a legal letter sent to Hikvision,
seen by the Guardian, the British company
demanded the document be removed since it “is
likely to deceive the public into a mistaken
belief that our client is in some way associated
with Hikvision”. The brochures were first
discovered by the campaign group Big Brother
Watch. In a statement, Madeleine Stone, the
group’s legal and policy officer, said: “It is
deeply alarming that the same racist technology
being used in Xinjiang to repress the Uyghur
population is being marketed in Britain.
Hikvision is normalising deeply intrusive
surveillance capacities which have no place in a
democracy.
Microsoft 365 Faces More GDPR
Headwinds as Germany Bans It in Schools
by The
Register
Germany's federal and state
data protection authorities (DSK) have raised
concerns about the compatibility of Microsoft
365 with data protection laws in Germany and the
wider European Union. According to the German
watchdog's report [PDF], which was written after
two years of negotiations with Microsoft, the
body says that the product "remains in breach"
of the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR). The 2020 working group was put together
to bring the cloud service into line with the
Schrems II decision of the European Court of
Justice – and relates to ongoing European
concerns about cloud data sovereignty,
competition, and privacy rules. Under the GDPR,
children below the age of 13 are incapable of
consenting to their data being collected, while
consent may be given by those with parental
responsibility for those under 16 but not
younger than 13. When platforms do store data on
adults, those customers are meant to be able to
request the deletion of their records. The
report adds: "Many of the services included in
Microsoft 365 require Microsoft to access the
unencrypted, non-pseudonymized data." The DSK
report means the office suite is therefore not
suitable for legally compliant use in schools or
public authorities in Germany, although it won't
affect use by businesses or consumers.
79,000 People Lost Their Jobs
Last Month, Up 400% Year Over Year
by 24/7
Wallstreet
Everyone expected more job
losses in November, but the size of the increase
may not have been expected. Outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported
Thursday morning that U.S.-based employers fired
78,835 workers last month, an increase of 127%
month over month and 417% year over year. Job
losses so far in 2022 total 320,173, a
year-over-year increase of 6%. The tech sector
accounted for two-thirds of November’s firings.
November’s total is the highest for the sector
since Challenger, Gray began keeping records in
2000 and is the highest total since 2002 when
tech companies chopped 128,563 jobs during the
dot-com bust. Job losses in the tech sector are
more than 500% higher so far this year than in
2021. Excepting the carnage in the
pandemic-related layoffs in the travel and
leisure industry in 2020, the last time any
sector cut this many jobs was 2015, when the
U.S. Army announced a three-year plan to cut
more than 40,000 troops. Andrew Challenger,
senior vice president at Challenger, Gray
commented, “The Tech sector has announced the
most job cuts this year by far. While other
industries are cutting jobs at a slower pace,
hiring appears to have slowed as well.” The
company’s year-to-date data indicates that U.S.
companies have announced plans to hire 1.43
million workers, compared to plans for hiring
1.75 million at the same point last year. Auto
industry workers also have been hit hard with
job losses. More than 30,000 autoworkers have
lost their jobs in the first 11 months of this
year, a year-over-year increase of almost 200%.
Rising mortgage rates and inflation have led to
nearly 8,000 job losses in the real estate
industry, an increase of 187% compared to 2021’s
losses in the sector.
CGN Is Being Forced Out of
Britain
by AtomInfo.RU
The recent decision of the
British government on public investment in the
Sizewell C NPP construction project is
equivalent to a complete withdrawal from the
project of the Chinese state corporation CGN.
Chinese nuclear giants CNNC and CGN have a lot
in common with Rosatom in their structure,
however, unlike the Russians, their portfolio of
foreign orders for the construction of nuclear
units can be said to be empty. From this point
of view, the units built by CNNC in Pakistan can
be mentioned as the only Chinese success, but it
is difficult to call it a victory by the
ultimate rating, since only Chinese companies
can build nuclear power plants in Pakistan due
to the twists of international law. Chinese
analysts have never said out loud the strategy
that should have been chosen by the sworn
friends of CNNC and CGN to repeat the foreign
successes of Rosatom. One can restore the
adopted strategy. studying the ways and actions
of Chinese corporations. It is obvious that in
the struggle for foreign orders, Chinese nuclear
scientists have relied on the provision of
loans. But they went even further. To overcome
the natural doubts about the ability of CNNC and
CGN to implement major projects outside of
China, the following approach was adopted: "We
will pay you to build a unit or units with
reactors of your choice, and for this you will
then allow us to build a unit or units with
Chinese reactors." Fortunately, the Chinese
nuclear scientists have enough money for such
generosity. CNNC adhered to this strategy in
Argentina (heavy water unit first, then
"Dragon"), and CGN - in Romania (heavy water
units at the Chernavoda nuclear power plant and
a possible second nuclear power plant with
Dragons) and Britain (EPR first, then Dragon).
In all three cases, the Chinese strategy failed.
Chinese analysts could not adequately take into
account in their calculations and forecasts the
risks of political opposition from those forces
that do not like the technological cooperation
of their countries with China. The CGN
corporation was ousted from Romania in 2020, and
in 2022 the participation of CGN in the British
new construction program is coming to an end.
Britain: Census Reveals The
Massive Impact of Immigration on Society
by Migration
Watch U.K.
In the last 20 years the
population of England and Wales has increased by
around eight million entirely as a result of
immigration. This has meant huge population
shifts and churn in different areas of the UK
but particularly in London, the South East and
East of England, and the West and East Midlands.
As a result, the white British are now a
minority in London, Birmingham and Manchester.
1) The Census statistics for 2021show that the
total ethnic minority population in England and
Wales has risen by eight million in twenty
years. It stands at nearly 15 million (nearly
tripling from 5.7 million in 2001) and has more
than doubled from 12% of the population to 26%
since 2001. 2) The overall population of England
and Wales rose by around eight million since
2001 – rising from 52 million to nearly 60
million in 2021. However, although there was a
plateauing of the White British and Irish
populations, the rise in the ethnic minority
population accounted for nearly all of net
population growth (increasing by a total of 8.4
million). 3) Since 2001, the UK has 3.2 million
more people of Asian background, 2.4 million
more from White Other backgrounds, 1.3 million
more from Black backgrounds, a million more from
mixed race backgrounds, and half a million more
from other ethnic backgrounds. Meanwhile, the
white British population has essentially
plateaued over that period at around 44 to 45
million. 4) It is not surprising that
immigration has driven population growth as
every year between 600,000 and a million
migrants come here long-term while about 300,000
to 500,000 leave. The resulting overall net
migration total of a quarter of a million more
means huge demographic shifts, especially in
major cities and areas adjacent to them – such
as the East of England and south-eastern suburbs
of London and Birmingham and its surrounding
environs. 5) A comparison with ONS figures
released for 2016 show a remarkable change in
the population makeup in the top 5 five cities
in England and Wales in just five years, with
the white British population in the five major
cities in England and Wales declining by a total
of 800,000 since that year, with the bulk of
this shift being from London and the next
largest drop in Birmingham (90,000). Two of the
top three cities (Birmingham and Manchester)
have become minority White British.
If You Offer Internet Service,
Your Speech Is Now Highly Regulated by the FCC
by CommLawBlog
In an order released on
November 17, 2022, the FCC dictates in detail
the specific words that an Internet service
provider must use when communicating with its
customers. The FCC has adopted new rules
requiring specific information (referred to as
the broadband consumer label) to be displayed at
the point of sale when offering mass-market
retail Internet access service by wire or radio.
Internet service providers must display unique
identifiers for each of their Internet service
plans that must consist of their FCC
Registration Number followed by 15 alphanumeric
characters. A provider’s broadband consumer
label must include the information on the FCC’s
label template (see page 6 of the FCC order).
Any customization of the label is prohibited.
Smaller providers will have one year to come
into compliance with the new rules after Federal
Register publication of OMB’s approval. A small
Internet service provider is one with 100,000 or
fewer subscriber lines. Larger providers have
six months to display the broadband consumer
labels. In addition to the order adopting the
new label rules, the FCC also issued a Further
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comments
on whether the FCC should impose additional
requirements for broadband consumer labels. In
that rulemaking proceeding, the FCC will
consider whether it should require additional
pricing information on labels, more speed and
latency metrics, service reliability
measurements, cybersecurity practices, mandatory
foreign languages, and making the labels
interactive. The deadline for filing comments
regarding additional label requirements will be
30 days after Federal Register publication.
IDF Holds Joint Air Drills with
U.S., Simulating Strikes on Iran and Proxies
by The
Times of Israel
The Israel Defense Forces on
Wednesday published footage and details of a
series of joint aerial exercises it held with
the US military this week, simulating strikes
against Iran and its regional terror proxies. In
a statement, the IDF said that during drills,
which took place over Israel and the
Mediterranean Sea, four IAF F-35i fighter jets,
accompanied four American F-15 aircraft and an
American KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft,
refueled several IAF F-16i fighter jets. The IDF
said the drills also “simulated an operational
scenario and long-distance flights.” The joint
drill was agreed upon during IDF chief Aviv
Kohavi’s trip to the US last week. The IDF said
Kohavi told American defense officials in
Washington that the two militaries must
accelerate joint plans for offensive actions
against Iran. Last Thursday, he said joint
activities with the US military in the Middle
East would be “significantly expanded.”
Jerusalem opposes US President Joe Biden’s
attempts to revive a nuclear agreement between
Tehran and world powers that traded sanctions
reliefs for curbs on the Islamic Republic’s
nuclear program. In light of growing uncertainty
regarding a return by Iran to the deal, the past
two years have seen the IDF ramp up efforts to
prepare a credible military threat against
Tehran’s nuclear sites.
U.K. Court Orders Crypto Firms to
Share Data to Track Thieves
by Bank
Info. Security
A British court ordered six
cryptocurrency exchanges to reveal the
identities of account holders allegedly tied to
a 2020 hack of an anonymous English
cryptocurrency platform during which thieves
stole $10.7 million worth of digital assets. The
exchanges must share the status of the stolen
funds, the "know your customer" details of the
alleged hackers and their bank account and
payment card details, email addresses,
residential addresses, phone numbers and bank
statements, High Court Justice Christopher
Butcher ruled. His Tuesday order on behalf of a
plaintiff whose identity isn't public - the
plaintiff goes by the moniker LMN in court and
isn't associated with a similarly named NFT
collection of cartoon lemons - directs the
exchanges to cooperate without "avoidable
delay." The exchanges are Binance, Bitflyer,
Payward - which operates as Kraken, Luno PTE,
Coinbase Global, and Huobi Global. The victim
company initially contacted law enforcement
authorities and later hired a cryptocurrency
expert to trace the stolen funds. That
investigation hit a dead end with the platforms,
since the wallet addresses the investigator
found were omnibus accounts used by the
platforms to manage the trades of multiple
individuals. Ari Redbord, a former senior
adviser to the Department of the Treasury on
money laundering and an ISMG contributor, said,
"It will be interesting to see how the exchanges
in this case respond." Most will likely respond
to the court order, he said. "That said, it is
hard to enforce legal process outside of the
jurisdiction. So if an exchange decides not to
comply, enforcement could be a challenge." The
exchanges, including Coinbase - which actively
participated in a Nov. 11 hearing leading to the
order - did not respond to a request for
comment, including whether they intend to comply
with Butcher's order. The British judge issued
the order despite the exchanges' location
outside the United Kingdom by citing an October
2022 update to civil procedure law that
streamlined orders for information disclosure
against foreign entities in cases of fraud
intended to be pursued in English or Welsh
courts.
Majority of U.S. Defense
Contractors Not Meeting Basic Cyber Security
Requirements
by info. security
Nearly nine in 10 (87%) of US
defense contractors are failing to meet basic
cybersecurity regulation requirements, according
to research commissioned by CyberSheath. The
survey of 300 US-based Department of Defense
(DoD) contractors found that just 13% of
respondents have a Supplier Risk Performance
System (SPRS) score of 70 or above. Under the
Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation
Supplement (DFARS), a score of 110 is required
for full compliance. Anecdotally, a score of 70
is believed to be “good enough” to be considered
compliant, according to the study authors.
DFARS, which was enacted into law in 2017, is
designed to bolster cybersecurity in the defense
industrial base. Defense contractors also must
comply with the Cybersecurity Maturity Model
Certification (CMMC), a certification framework
they must pass to bid for contracts with the
DoD. The first version of CMMC was released in
January 2020, with an updated version, 2.0,
coming into effect in May 2023. It offers five
certification levels spanning one through five,
with five being the highest. Each level maps to
a different level of process maturity. The new
study suggests the vast majority of DoD defense
contractors are neither meeting current DFARS
obligations or in a position to comply with the
updated version of CMMC.
Israel Beefs Up Protection of
Its Senior Spies, as Proxy War with Iran
Intensifies
by Intelnews.org
Israeli authorities have
stepped up measures to protect its senior
intelligence and security figures, over concerns
they may be targeted by agents of the Iranian
state, according to news reports. The news comes
amidst widespread concerns that the ongoing
shadow conflict between Israel and Iran is
escalating in the shadow of the Russo-Ukrainian
war. On Thursday, Israel’s state-owned
broadcaster and news agency, Kan, reported
that the government of Israel had
implemented additional security measures to
protect current and former members of its
security and intelligence agencies. The report
added that the measures are focused largely on
current and former members of Israel’s foreign
intelligence agency, the Mossad, as well as
those associated with Israel’s intelligence and
security apparatus that are living abroad. The
report comes amidst concerns among security
observers that a clandestine war between Israel
and Iran is growing in intensity. To a notable
extent, this growth is being fueled by the
ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Iran’s supply
of cheap and reliable attack drones appears to
be enabling Moscow to subvert and outright
destroy Ukraine’s national infrastructure. In
what seems like a direct response to Iran’s
actions, Israel war materiel is now flowing into
Ukraine, reportedly through a NATO country.
Meet the Man on a Mission to
Expose Sneaky Price Increases
by The
New York Times
A few weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky
got a promising tip by email. “Diluted cough
syrup,” read the message, accompanied by a photo
of two packages of syrup with a curious
difference: The new one appeared to be half the
strength of the old one. Mr. Dworsky gets emails
like this frequently, alerting him to things
like a bag of dog food that discreetly shrank
from 50 pounds to 44 pounds. A cereal box that
switched from “giant” to “family” size and grew
about an inch taller — but a few ounces lighter.
Bottles of detergent that look the same, but the
newer ones come with less detergent. The cough
syrup message looked intriguing. Mr. Dworsky
made plans to investigate. He has dedicated much
of his life to exposing what is one of the
sneakier tricks in the modern consumer economy:
“shrinkflation,” when products or packaging are
subtly manipulated so that a person pays the
same price, or even slightly more, for something
but gets less of it. Consumer product companies
have been using this strategy for decades. And
their nemesis, Mr. Dworsky, has been following
it for decades. He writes up his discoveries on
his website, mouseprint.org, a reference to the
fine print often found on product packaging.
Print so tiny “only a mouse could read,” he
says. He writes about shrinkflation in
everything — tuna, mayonnaise, ice cream,
deodorant, dish soap — alongside other consumer
advocacy work on topics like misleading
advertising, class-action lawsuits and
exaggerated sale claims. One recent Mouse Print
report explored toilet paper shrinkflation.
“Virtually every brand of toilet paper has been
downsized over the years,” Mr. Dworsky wrote,
documenting more than a decade of toilet paper
shrinkage.
Massive Cancellations Make Mess
of Already Low New-House Sales
by Wolf
Street
Sales of new single-family
houses have been zigzagging along low levels for
months. In October, they rose 7.5% from
September, after having plunged 11% in
September, according to the Census Bureau today.
At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 632,000
houses, they were down 5.8% from the already low
levels a year ago, and down 37% from two years
ago. These sales are based on signed contracts
between buyer and homebuilder, and they’re no
indication of how many of those deals actually
close. And those sales that actually close are
far lower amid a huge wave of cancellations.
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