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After hearing more than 16 hours of testimony, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee voted 7-2 along party lines to advance a bill that would punish local government entities and college campuses that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials or enforce immigration laws.
Kaspersky Lab has revealed a pair of attacks targeting governments and political groups in Asia and the Middle East.
The Russian security house has issued reports outlining how the operations have been stealthily avoiding detection until now.
An unspecified diplomatic facility in central Asia was named as the home to Taj Mahal, a highly complex operation running two different pieces of malware that together load around 80 modules.
According to Kaspersky's research, nothing has been found tying the malware to any known cybercrime or espionage group, but whoever crafted the malware did an excellent job of keeping it quiet as the infection is believed to have been running undetected at the facility since 2013 or 2014.
The Taj Mahal infection operates as two separate pieces: a primary infection called Tokyo that sets up a backdoor via PowerShell and calls up the command and control server.
The second component of the attack, called Yokohama, is launched after Tokyo (but can still run alongside it) and carries the vast majority of the 80 attack modules. Those modules allow for specific espionage attacks, like pulling data from print queues, taking screenshots, or stealing cryptography keys.
Kaspersky Lab lead malware analyst Alexey Shulmin said that it is likely there are other groups infected by Taj Mahal, given the complexity and wide range of capabilities. Simply put, this thing is too big and complex to be a one-off attack.
"The distribution and infection vectors for the threat also remain unknown. Somehow, it has stayed under the radar for over five years," noted Shulman.
"Whether this is due to relative inactivity or something else is another intriguing question. There are no attribution clues nor any links we can find to known threat groups."
The second attack unearthed by the Russian security house was far less steeped in mystery. A group dubbed Gaza Cybergang was said to be behind a series of politically-motivated attacks in the Middle East and North Africa, with its primary focus being in the Palestinian Territories (hence the name).
The group's new operation, dubbed "SneakyPastes" is believed to be the work of a relatively unsophisticated bunch (two other tiers of the group run the more technically advanced operations) and borrows heavily on scripts and code snippets lifted from sites like GitHub and PasteBin before finally installing a spyware app on the target's PC.
The campaign targets government agencies, media outlets, and political groups, and uses phishing emails designed to look like political messages.
"Based on the analyzed metrics, the victims were spread across 39 countries and reached 240+ unique victims. The Palestinian Territories host the majority of the victims, followed by Jordan, Israel, then Lebanon, as noted in the below table," Kaspersky says in its summary of the attack.
"The most targeted entities are embassies, government entities, education, media outlets, journalists, activists, political parties or personnel, healthcare and banking."
In addition to being a cheap and easy way to carry out the attack, Kaspersky researchers believe that the use of various scripts and methods of infecting victims, as well as using disposable email addresses, also helps the group hide its underlying infrastructure.
"All the stages’ executables are created as chains to avoid detection and protect the C2 server," Kaspersky notes.
"They consist mainly of persistence mechanisms and simple instructions despite their different forms (VBS scripts, PowerShell scripts, known software with open source code that can be backdoored, and in-house built dotnet apps)."
Jet.com, an e-commerce site from the co-founder of Diapers.com, has yet to launch its marketplace. But it has landed a $600 million valuation, been lauded for its business model and is the buzziest e-commerce entrant in recent memory.
And it is already raising its own ambitions without any real sales.
Gotta thank the beautiful Carla for this. She insisted on loading our bikes on the 901 bus and heading for Coronado Island.
'Course first you have to get through the bridge freak-out. You watch your machines sway back and forth outside the front as the driver does a Nantucket sleigh ride down that long-legged sky-road. But a moment later you're off at the first stop, cutting past the hospital, joining the bike path that snakes under the bridge and heads for, hey, the golf course.
"Let's just go see," Carla says.
By now the sun is getting down, heading for Japan. And the fact is, we’re hungry, and down the golf club driveway you can see what look like...white umbrellas?
“Let’s eat first,” she says.
The rest is history, or really, herstory. Because it turns out this public golf club has a public eatery called Grumpy Dan’s Grill (2000 Visalia Row, Coronado).
It's right in the swank clubhouse, with a dining patio that gives you a spectacular bridge’n bay view.
But here’s the charm. It turns out they have a 7-day happy hour from three to six.
And “three” is the magic number. Three dollar appetizers like crab cakes, nachos, potato skins with cheese, bacon, green onions, buffalo chicken fingers, onion rings and street tacos. Glass of house wine’s $3, Bud pint is $2…I tell you, these admirals have it good.
But so did we. And we’re coming back - next time I’m flush - for, one, a $15 sunset round of golf (a good anonymous time to whack the ball if you're a sod-digging gofer-golfer like me), and the prime rib dinner (Thursdays and Sundays only, around $16 for 10-ounce, to $20 for the 14-ounce).
And, oh yeah, the round-the-island bike ride? Some time, real soon.
SUYAC ISLAND, Sagay City – Some participants of the recently-concluded Southeast Asian Bat Conference held in Bacolod City visited this small island in Sagay City in northern Negros Occidental.
The main purpose of the visit was to see the bat colony that is present in the area, which is only about 30 to 45 minutes boat ride from the city proper of Sagay. A good number of flying foxes, including large flying foxes and island flying foxes, are roosting in the mangrove forest, now popularly known as the Suyac Island Mangrove Eco Park.
The mangrove forest, estimated at 10 hectares, in the island is purely natural and comprises of numerous old trees. According to several old folks in Suyac, some of these mangrove trees are most likely century-old already.
The city government of Sagay had constructed a watchtower so that visitors would be able to see the flying foxes and water birds in the island. This is one of the added and unique attractions in the mangrove park, because wildlife protection has been integrated into the overall management scheme of the area. The Bat Conservation International, represented by its senior director for network and partnerships, Mylea Baylees, and international programs manager, Dr. Jon Flanders, awarded a certificate of recognition to the Sagay City government and the community for their exemplary efforts in bat conservation.
The community organization, called the Suyac Island Eco-Tourism Association, is now managing the site-based tourism activities, including guiding and catering services. Visitors are not allowed to tour in the park without guides and briefing about the features of the site, as well as prohibited activities. Together with several participants of the bat conference, we visited the island on August 10, and we were served with a variety of menu out of freshly catch or collected seafood. Members of the community organization have been trained in food preparation, presentation, and proper serving, and foreign nationals, who were with us, were impressed by the good services they rendered. They also operate the boat services for visitors from the mainland of Sagay to the island, and vice-versa.
Within the mangrove park, the patches of big trees are connected with about 800 meters long boardwalk where visitors can leisurely walk under broad daylight when the weather is just fine. The mangrove trees provide shadow effect that makes the water looks green, but it is so clean and not muddy at all, which is usually associated in mangrove areas. Visitors can swim under the mangrove trees or do boat paddling surrounding the mangrove forest.
There are also cottages for picnic in the park, but overnight stay is not allowed. One of the signs displayed along the boardwalk states, “There is no Wi-Fi in this mangrove forest but we promise you will find better connection with nature”.
Suyac Island was badly affected when typhoon Yolanda lashed out several parts of the country in November 2013. Numerous houses and other structures have been wiped out in the island, but fortunately there was no casualty at all. Island residents said it was the mangrove forest that protected them from strong winds and waves and heavy rains.
Although they had long realized the importance of the mangroves, the residents are now even more appreciative of the significance of mangrove forest in protecting their lives from natural hazards and risks, like typhoons.
Historically, Suyac Island had also been a refuge of some mainland residents of Sagay during the World War 11. Upon reading my Facebook post about the island, Davoy Castor, curator of the Biodiversity Conservation Center in Bacolod City, commented that his mother and grandparents evacuated in Suyac out of fear from the Japanese soldiers. He added the family had no food provision when they went to the island, but the seafood was so abundant, such that they survived for quite a time in Suyac until they felt safe to go back to the mainland.
Suyac Island is part of the broader Sagay Marine Reserve, a protected area declared by the Congress in 2001, measuring more than 30,000 hectares and comprising of numerous islands and islets within the Visayan Sea and tail-end of the Tañon Strait. The marine reserve is not only known for mangroves and marine life, but it is also critical for water birds, including migratory species.
Complicated at first but easy to grasp, Samurai II: Vengeance offers a balanced mix of slashing, bloody violence, and a puzzle-solving storyline.
The highly anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed Samurai: Way of the Warrior brings a retooled gameplay method, ultrasmooth manga-inspired graphics running at 60 frames per second, and, of course new, bloodier fight techniques.
Daisuke seeks vengeance on his arch-rival, Orochi, and will stop at nothing to defeat him. The 3D levels are tracked by a dynamic camera that floats in and out of the action, revealing vicious adversaries and challenging obstacles in each level.
The battle sequences are intense and extremely gory (decapitation, disembowelment, and skewering are just some of the ways to dispose of your enemies), but an array of moves (that you acquire throughout the game by leveling up) allow for continued variance in fighting.
If the levels get too frustrating (those swinging spikes can be a real pain) there's Survival Mode, where you can build your skills as a sword-swinging samurai.
You can watch the official Samurai II: Vengeance trailer here.
Game Center compatibility allows users to track the global leaderboard and various achievements. Samurai II: Vengeance is available in Apple's App Store for $2.99 and is universal, playable on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik today unveiled a statue of the state's first woman chief minister, Nandini Satpathy, on the occasion of her 85th birth anniversary.
Bhubaneswar, June 9: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik today unveiled a statue of the state's first woman chief minister, Nandini Satpathy, on the occasion of her 85th birth anniversary.
The 10-feet-tall statue, which stands near Raj Bhavan, has been built by the state culture department at an estimated cost of Rs 5.8 lakh.
"Nandini Satpathy was the first woman chief minister of Odisha and a good administrator," Naveen said after unveiling the statue. A host of meetings were held across the state to pay tribute to the late leader.
BJD MP Tathagat Satpathy, who is also the son of the late leader, hailed the efforts of his mother and described her as a great chief minister. "She had shown how women in the state could enter politics without reservation. The chief minister has empowered women of the state by unveiling the statue of Nandini Satpathy," said the MP.
Nandini was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 when she was 31. She was minister of state for information and broadcasting between 1966 and 1969. She was also elected to the state Assembly seven times between 1972 and 2000 and went on to become chief minister of the state twice.
During her tenure as chief minister she had undertaken a number of initiatives including police reforms. The state also witnessed growth in the areas of rural development, education and art and culture during her tenure. She had also brought in the Land Reforms Act, which freed lands from the hands of individuals who were not farmers. She died on August 4, 2006, at the age of 75.
Several other organisations in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Dhenkanal, Baripada and Sambalpur in the state and in Delhi, Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bangalore also paid tribute to the leader.
Taking a quick look down the back of the sofa may be worth your while, if a new study is anything to go by.
Britons are hoarding around £317.5 million in loose change scattered around the home, the research revealed.
Men typically have around £18.18 in loose change and women around £10.19, according to the findings from Lloyds TSB.
One in ten people have between £50 and £100 in change, while three per cent of those surveyed said they had more than £100 at home.
Pocket money goes 21st Century – but would you give your eight-year-old a Visa card that comes with a raft of fees?
The highest typical amount is kept in households in the north, with an average of £18.24, while those in Wales tend to hoard the least – just £7.78 on average kept in change at home.
The survey covered 2,000 respondents.
Layer cakes are always festive, particularly when they are four-layered, fluffy and cloudlike. This one, based on the flavors of an Indian dessert called ras malai, combines rose water, ricotta cheese and cardamom. Egg whites in the batter and mascarpone in the buttercream give the cake an especially ethereal texture, while a cardamom-infused milk syrup keeps it moist. Make sure to use cold, straight-from-the fridge mascarpone and yogurt for the frosting; it can curdle if you try to beat it when the ingredients are too warm.
Featured in: A Layer Cake Gets A Surge From Cardamom.
Drain the ricotta in a fine mesh sieve placed in a large bowl for 1 to 2 hours until very thick. If you’ve bought very thick, very freshly made ricotta from a specialty shop (not the kind from the supermarket), you can skip this step.
Make the cake: Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 9-inch cake pans, line the bottoms with parchment paper, then grease the parchment. Flour the entire pan and parchment, tapping out any excess.
In a medium bowl, lightly whisk together the egg whites, milk, vanilla and rose water.
Using an electric mixer, combine the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, cardamom and salt, and mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend. Add the butter and about a third of the milk-egg white mixture. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and beat for a minute or so until everything is very smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
Add the remaining milk mixture in 3 batches, beating well between additions. Scrape down the sides.
Transfer the batter to the prepared pans and smooth the surface with a spatula. Bake until a tester inserted near the center comes out clean and the cake springs back when pressed lightly in the center, 25 to 35 minutes. The cakes should start to shrink from the sides of the pans only after removal from the oven. Let the cakes cool in the pans on racks for 20 minutes, then unmold and cool completely.
Make the ricotta filling: Using an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the ricotta, cream and confectioners’ sugar until quite smooth, about 30 seconds. Beat in rose water to taste. Beat on medium-high speed for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. The mixture will thicken.
Make the mascarpone frosting: Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, confectioners’ sugar, rose water and cardamom until fluffy, about 2 minutes. On low speed, beat in mascarpone and yogurt until the mixture is just combined and looks smooth. Do not overbeat or the mixture may curdle.
When the cakes have cooled, use a long serrated knife to trim the tops of the cakes, so the tops are flat and even. Then cut each cake in half into 2 layers, to make a 4-layer cake. Brush cake layers on all sides with milk syrup. Place one cake round on a cake stand or serving platter, then top with one third of the ricotta filling, leaving a small border around the edge of the cake. Repeat with the remaining cake layers and ricotta filling.
Frost top and sides of the cake with the mascarpone frosting. Top with chopped pistachios and candied rose petals, if using; chill until ready to serve.
If you'd prefer not to use rose water in any part of the recipe, you can substitute vanilla extract or brandy in the same amounts.
In the era of President Donald Trump, everyone seems more riled up than usual—even scientists. That’s not a bad thing, though. That activation gave us the March for Science last year and the important conversations that came out of it. Like ones about race, gender, class, and, ultimately, justice.
Those conversations continue today, and the Union of Concerned Scientists is now trying to take that conversation even further through a new blog series, Science for Justice. The blog will feature the writing and musings of scientists who do authentic work with low-income and communities of color, to engage with other scientists who maybe don’t. The goal? Offer some advice to scientists who want to do a little more in the current political climate because it’s about time that disenfranchised communities receive some attention from all scientific fields.
Johnson, who worked on marine mammals and fisheries before joining the Center to focus more on connecting communities with researchers and data, has been a major driving force within the Union of Concerned Scientists to get the ball rolling on this monthly blog series. The way she sees it, “science and social justice are inextricably linked.” That view isn’t really the status quo right now, though, and she’s hoping that changes.
Johnson hopes to see the series cover the notion that science is never really objective. Sure, scientists need to put their biases aside when doing the work, but they also need to acknowledge the biases that seep into their work so that their work better represents the communities it’s looking at.
For example, when community members blame a toxic facility for their high cancer rates, Johnson wants researchers to hear them out and take their experiences into consideration. The people living with pollution every day are experts on their situation, after all. A key role of scientists, she says, is to help disadvantaged communities uncover the evidence they need to convince decision-makers to take action.
Scientists help build the evidence that drives policy and keeps communities healthy. But if they don’t start connecting more with real communities and their problems—especially under an administration that doesn’t prioritize science or public health—those marginalized will be the ones that suffer.
Edgar Bronfman Jr., the former Seagram Co. chief, is expected to announce a final agreement today to buy Time Warner Inc.'s global music division for about $2.6 billion, sources said.
The sale would shift control of Warner Music, the world's fourth-largest music conglomerate, to private hands and vault Bronfman back to his former status as a power in the record industry. It also would end Time Warner's three-decade run as a dominant force in the music business.
Although sources cautioned that the deal could be delayed, they said Bronfman's investment team and Time Warner spent Sunday hammering out details. Bronfman's team in recent days had slightly increased its bid for the company's recorded music and music publishing operations, apparently beating out a rival offer from British music giant EMI Group.
On Sunday, Bronfman's bid hit an obstacle when a key partner, TV billionaire Haim Saban, pulled out amid questions over his management role in the venture, sources said. Late in the day, however, Saban reversed course and rejoined the bid. Initially, Saban committed an estimated $200 million to the package. Saban could not be reached for comment.
Any additional financing is expected to come from Bronfman or New York leveraged buyout firm Thomas H. Lee, the bid's lead investor. If the deal is sealed, Bronfman is expected to become chairman of the new company, to be called Warner Music. Its board members probably would include Scott Sperling, managing director of Lee and a key player in assembling the deal, sources said.
EMI is expected to announce this morning a formal withdrawal of its bid, which would have paid Time Warner about $1 billion in cash for the music labels and as much as a 25% stake in the combined company. The move marks the London-based company's third failed merger run since 2000, and it now faces the prospect of becoming the only publicly traded stand-alone music company in an industry beset by sagging sales and rampant piracy.
Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons had been concerned that an EMI deal would risk being rejected by regulators, particularly with antitrust officials reviewing a proposed plan to join the recorded-music divisions of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann at the same time.
The deal also signals a major shift for Time Warner, which once viewed ownership of music catalogs as a central piece of its strategy to sell cable and Internet subscriptions. The media conglomerate retains an option to repurchase about 15% of the music company at a discount in three years, sources said.
Bronfman reenters the music business at a difficult time. Global music sales still are declining, and the value of many record companies' libraries may be permanently damaged. Vast archives of music now are housed on consumers' personal computers, ready to be swapped or copied to a CD free, probably crimping future growth.
Many music executives see consolidation as a potential short-term cure, believing they can join with a partner and squeeze out cost savings by integrating their operations. Indeed, some analysts believed that a Warner Music tie-up with EMI could have resulted in savings of about $290 million.
Bronfman would have to reduce costs without the help of a corporate partner with duplicative jobs that could be cut.
But sources close to Bronfman, 48, scion of the Seagram liquor family -- and occasional songwriter -- said he believed that music sales basically had hit bottom and that Warner Music was a bargain. His thinking is that new licensed music services, such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, antipiracy technology and the threat of legal action against consumers who illegally copy music, will reverse sales declines and make music a robust industry again.
Bronfman also faces the prospect of competing against the company he built: industry leader Universal Music Group, now a unit of Vivendi Universal. After Bronfman bought control of Universal Studios parent MCA Inc. and its film and music divisions in 1995, he paid $10.4 billion to acquire music giant PolyGram. The combination created Universal Music, which now accounts for about 26% of global sales. Bronfman may resign from Vivendi's board, sources said.
If he buys Warner Music, Bronfman will acquire one of the world's richest music catalogs -- with artists ranging from Madonna and Eric Clapton to Kid Rock and Missy Elliott. The vast library was built since the 1960s by record industry legends such as Mo Ostin, Ahmet Ertegun and David Geffen.
Under Warner Music's current chairman, Roger Ames, the labels have picked up steam this year in the U.S. market, the world's biggest. The company jumped from fourth to third place among the five major record companies in sales of new releases, and last week captured two spots on Billboard's top 10 with new CDs from Kid Rock and Josh Groban.
How much additional cost-cutting Warner Music can do is unclear. The company already has shed about 2,000 jobs in the last three years, and shifted another 5,500 off the payroll this year when Time Warner sold its CD and DVD-manufacturing operation for $1 billion to Cinram International Inc. Warner Music now has about 4,500 employees.
Overall, Warner Music's revenue has fallen from $4 billion in 1998, the year before Napster arrived on the scene and created an endless appetite for free music, to an estimated $3 billion this year. In 1998 the music unit generated $493 million in EBITDA; this year it's projected by Bear, Stearns & Co. to reach $200 million. EBITDA is a gauge of cash flow used by Wall Street and measures earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.