A cold war that just keeps on keeping on

 

Common Office Desk Phone Could Be Leaking Info To Chinese Government, Report Alleges

A cold war that just keeps on keeping on

It is now 30 years since the USSR ceased to be. The end of the Cold War was to herald an…

KPMG auditors forged documents to avoid criticism, tribunal heard FT and Economic Consequences of Auditor Reputation Loss: Evidence from the Audit Inspection Scandal SSRN. From the Abstract: “Our results suggest, despite the serious ethical violations the scandal exposed, there were few market and competitive consequences for KPMG and its clients.” Study from 2020, still germane.

Life: The Lord Of The Rings: The Story Behind An Extraordinary Adventure

Washington Post – “The omicron variant is expected to have infected more than half the population in the European region in the next six to eight weeks if current trends hold, a World Health Organization official said Tuesday. In the first week of 2022, Europe registered at least 7 million cases of the coronavirus, more than doubling over a two-week period, WHO regional director Hans Kluge told an online briefing. Almost all the countries in the WHO’s European region — 53 nations and territories including some in Central Asia — have confirmed omicron cases.

 “At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation … forecasts that more than 50 percent of the population in the region will be infected with omicron in the next six to eight weeks,” he wrote on Twitter. The latest data confirms the variant’s high transmissibility, according to Kluge, “because the mutations it has enable it to adhere to human cells more easily, and it can infect even those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.”…”

Virtual Currencies: Additional Information Could Improve Federal Agency Efforts to Counter Human and Drug Trafficking. Published: Dec 08, 2021. Publicly Released: Jan 10, 2022. “This is a public version of a sensitive report that GAO issued in September 2021. Therefore, this report omits sensitive information and data on selected federal agencies’ activities to counter human and drug trafficking, associated use of virtual currency, and related challenges. Virtual currency is increasingly used illicitly to facilitate human and drug trafficking, according to GAO’s review of agency documentation and data and interviews with officials. For example, the number of suspicious activity reports filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that involve virtual currency and drug trafficking increased fivefold (from 252 to almost 1,432) from calendar year 2017 to 2020. However, in a sensitive version of this report, GAO found that data from selected federal agencies on virtual currency use for human and drug trafficking may not be consistently captured. Consequently, agencies may lack complete data when assessing or reporting on the illicit use of virtual currency in human and drug trafficking. In that report GAO made nine recommendations to selected agencies to enhance their data collection practices…”

WASHINGTON – “The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) achieved the milestone of nine billion retrievals of Government information since the agency started publishing information online in 1994. Today, govinfo, as the online, trusted digital repository is known, serves as the one-stop site for authentic, published Government information. GPO’s site, www.govinfo.gov, which has been touted as the “Google for Government Documents,” gives the public access to Presidential addresses, Congressional debates dating back to 1873, Federal regulations, Federal court opinions, maps of explorations of the West, and much more.

Bloomberg, IRS Targets Your Side Hustle In Crackdown on Transactions Over $600:

It just got harder to hide from the IRS.

Starting this month, users selling goods and services through such popular sites as Venmo, Etsy and Airbnb will begin receiving tax forms if they take a payment of more than $600. One by one in recent months, tech giants have been warning users of the coming changes and asking them to provide tax information.

“Until this year, the threshold was much higher ($20,000 and 200 transactions) so it didn’t affect nearly as many people,” Venmo told users in its messages about the change. “This requirement only pertains to payments received for sales of goods and services and does not apply to friends and family payments.”

The moves have sparked outcry on social media. For one thing, the lower threshold comes as more and more Americans bet on themselves: a record 5.4 million adults applied to form their own business last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released this week. That’s partly because it’s easier than ever to use apps to sell crafts, provide services or rent out a second or third home online.

• CNBC, No, the IRS Isn’t Taxing Your Venmo Transactions
• CNet, Unless You Have a Side Hustle, Your Venmo and Paypal Transactions Probably Won't Be Taxed

The Economic Message Behind Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Dream’ Speech Investopedia

 

The Forgotten Socialist History of Martin Luther King Jr. In These Times. From 2018, still germane.

 

If MLK Were Alive Today The American Conservative

 

Back To Normal Isn’t Enough The Defector. A must-read and worth the click-through. It would be interesting to describe the queueing behavior described here with queueing in the last days of the USSR. Again, why does it take a sports site to get writing like this?