François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire tends to share the most profound observation: “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”
‘Like a bomb hit’: Sydney beaches could take a year to recover
“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy Vanity Fair
Senate Estimates Transcripts Hirschhorn, Fish, Jenkins
Figures suggest a handful of Sydney suburbs have now recorded one COVID-19 case for every three people, with analysis revealing the virus has shifted to infecting people with higher socio-economic advantage as restrictions eased.
The 2174 postcode – which covers Edmondson Park, in the city’s south-west – had the highest case rate per capita, with more than 56 cases per 100 people recorded over the course of the pandemic.
Neighbouring Leppington, and Schofields and Box Hill in north-western Sydney, had the next highest case rates, each recording more than 35 cases per 100 people.
Edmondson Park - The Sydney suburb with one COVID case for every two people
The recent expulsion of property developer Zheng Jiefu is one of several cases in which long-time Australian residents have been deported or barred entry into the country because of their suspected ties to Beijing’s security or foreign interference apparatus.
Millionaire Chinese property developer quietly expelled for ‘harming security interests’
Did Sweden beat the pandemic by refusing to lock down? No, its record is disastrous Michael Hiltzik, LA Times
Ukrainian Journalist Finds Charred Remains Where Alleged War Crime Was Filmed The Intercept
Zelenskyy is Not a Jewish Hero Times of Israel
Optimism, pessimism or skepticism? News outlets focus on the right thing in Russia-Ukraine coverage
Ukraine says Russia is seeking to form ‘occupation administrations’ FT
Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood – here’s what to do about it – What use are we in helping to solve difficult global challenges if we’re so depressed and cognitively depleted that we can’t think of the best actions to take? Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood. Professors Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Chun Shen and Jianfeng Feng describe their research findings on what to do about it.
“Taxman” (Sam’s Version)
“This website is created and maintained by Sarah Lawsky, a tax law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The website uses Dash and Python and is freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.
Q: What does this website do? A: It generates multiple-choice practice problems for federal income tax and partnership tax (that’s still a work in progress). The problems are a random selection of facts, names, and randomly (but thoughtfully) generated numbers about a range of basic tax topics and partnership tax topics. You decide whether you want to focus on basic tax or partnership tax, and then you can pick a particular topic within that subject, or you can have the website to pick both a topic and problem within that subject at random…”
Center for Data Innovation: “The Washington Post has created a series of visualizationsshowing how keeping daylight savings time all year around would affect sunrise and sunset times across the United States. One visualization groups sunrise times into half-hour increments from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., shown by increasingly darker colors, and displays the correlating color across the country. For example, if Daylight Savings Time is made permanent, the sun won’t rise in some parts of Montana, North Dakota and Michigan until after 9:30 a.m. on the days with the latest sunrise.”
Popular Science – “When you decide to share a large file or folder online—perhaps you want to send a cute home movie to a doting relative, or need to back up a photo archiveto a secondary location—you can’t just attach it to an email. Under the virtual weight of all those 1s and 0s, your regular email client could collapse. Instead, once your files reach a critical size, you must turn to apps and programs to shuttle them around the web. Use these services to shift any heavy data load, whether you’re transferring it from one computer to another or sharing it with another person…”
Huawei: The Chinese tech giant Trump couldn’t kill Axios I don’t think that was his intent, but he was at best naive about the fact that even if he gave Western firms the opportunity to gain ground, Huawei was too well entrenched for much of that to happen.
Apple and Facebook gave user data to hackers who provided fake law enforcement subpoenas
Virginia: Estonian man extradited to the US guilty of ransomware attacks; gets 66 months prison; caused $53 million losses
PPP scams called largest fraud in American History; minimum of $80 billion lost
BBB Studies. Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud, tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards, job scams, online shopping fraud, and crypto scams
Fraud News Around the world
- EFCC in Nigeria arrests 33 for internet fraud
- New Zealand: Man convicted of selling nonexistent shipping containers and forklifts on Facebook
- Europol seizes 5 million unsafe counterfeit toys worth $27 million
- India busts call center, arrest 24, many of them from the US and Canada; ran tech support scam and also impersonated law enforcement
- New York Attorney General settles with debt collector; pretended to be lawyers when were not; must pay $1.2 million
Humor
- Ukraine tells citizens that they do not need to treat captured Russian tanks as income for tax purposes
- Dorset police hunt man on the run in underwear and socks
- Two in Nebraska arrested for multiple drugs after crashing into squad car
FTC and CFPB
- Democrats try to get approval for FTC, FCC nominees with unusual process; would take full Senate vote (paywall)
- FTC gets permanent injunction against deceptive claims for dissolvable film strips marketed as a MLM and with robocalls claimed to stop smoking, lose weight, and help sexual performance; no restitution though $18 million in losses due to loss of legal authority
- In FTC case against Match.com, court dismisses much of the case, ruling that allegations that Match failed to screen out bogus profiles was protected by the Communications Decency Act, and that the FTC could not seek restitution for victims
- FTC sues Intuit over Turbo Tax claims of “free” tax filings; seeks injunction
- CFPB report finds that credit card companies charged $12 billion in late fees in 2021
- CFPB fines student loan company $1 million over deceptive claims about forgiveness and repayment options
- CFPB announces that it will address discrimination through unfairness authority
Virus Benefit Theft
- Montana: Man gets a year in prison for PPP fraud; got $400,000
- Seattle: Corporation that provides occupational health services for Energy department resolves PPP loan issues with deferred prosecution agreement; $3 million restitution
- IRS has investigated 660 cases of Covid-related fraud such as unemployment; losses $1.8 billion
- California: Jury convicts man of PPP fraud; got $27 million
Business Email compromise fraud
Ransomware
- Long Island, New York schools hit with 13 ransomware attacks and hacks in the last three years
- Ransomware attacks more than doubled in the UK over the last year
- WSJ: Leak reveals secret world of Russian ransomware group (paywall)
- Attack on Oklahoma Indian clinic
Data Breaches
- US indicts four employees of the Russian government for hacking thousands of computers in the energy sector in 135 countries
- UK arrests seven from hacking group; victims include Microsoft
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency
- New York: Two men charged with selling bogus NFT’s to victims as investments for $1.1 million in crypto
- New York: Former Goldman Sachs banker and others arrested for money laundering operation turning cash to bitcoin; $2.3 million from drugs, romance scams
- Crypto investment fraud soars in the UK; up 64% in 2021
- Police in Latvia and Estonia bust three call centers pushing crypto investments; 100 arrested; took in $3.3 million every month
ATM skimming
- Connecticut: Romanian pleads guilty to ATM skimming and theft of credit cards
- Salinas, California: Three Romanians arrested for ATM skimming
Jamaica and Lottery Fraud
Romance Fraud and Sextortion
- South Africa: Police arrest woman during church services over romance fraud
- Key West: Man gets 15 years prison for romance fraud; sent money to Nigeria
- Malaysia: Five Nigerians arrested for romance fraud; illegal drugs also involved
- Hong Kong: Waitress arrested for acting as mule to get money from Michigan lawyer
- FBI warns of extortion against boys on social media who are tricked into sex acts that are filmed online
- EFCC in Nigeria arrest 29 for romance fraud and bitcoin scams