Category: z-Exclude

The Property Council has called for the passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and the creation of a National Housing and Affordability Council to address the worsening housing crisis. Speaking before the Senate Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia, Property Council of Australia CEO Mike Zorbas (pictured above) urged the federal government to address the growing national deficit…

A massive 20,000-gallon tank was found to be leaking ammonia at a facility in Auburndale, Florida early on Wednesday morning, a city spokesperson told a local Fox affiliate, noting that all employees were evacuated from the plant. Residents living in a two-block area near the plant were also asked to take shelter following the discovery, though the order was lifted…

Latitude Financial has revealed it has been hit by a sophisticated and malicious cyberattack that has compromised a total of 328,000 separate pieces of data that it had sourced from its customers. The loans, credit card and insurance provider said it had detected unusual activity on its systems over the last few days that was believed to have originated from a major vendor used by Latitude.

The company said the attacker appeared to have used employee login credentials to steal personal information that was being held by two other of Latitude’s service providers. In a statement to the ASX on Thursday morning, Latitude said approximately 103,000 identifications documents – 97% of which were drivers’ licences – were stolen from the first service provider, while 225,000 customer records were stolen from a second service provider.

Regulators, policymakers and bankers are looking at the role that digital messaging and social media may have played in the collapse, and whether banks are entering an age when the psychological behavior behind a bank run — mass fear from depositors of losing their savings — may be amplified and go viral quicker than bank officers and regulators can successfully respond.

Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it expects to invest 300 trillion won ($230 billion) over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean national project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul.

The chip-making “mega cluster,” which will be established in Gyeonggi Province by 2042, will be anchored by five new semiconductor plants built by Samsung. It will aim to attract 150 other companies producing materials and components or designing high-tech chips, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The Japan Securities Dealers Association said Wednesday it has imposed a penalty of 300 million yen on SMBC Nikko Securities Inc for market manipulation, matching the highest fine previously issued by the organization.

According to the JSDA, SMBC Nikko illegally propped up the prices of 10 individual stock issues to stabilize them last year in “block offering” transactions.

The fine imposed on the brokerage by the JSDA is equal to that issued to Nomura Securities Inc. in connection with an insider trading scandal in 2012.

Shares of Swiss bank lose more than a quarter of their value in one day, dragging down European and US markets.

Top New York federal prosecutors on Wednesday unveiled a new effort to encourage companies to voluntarily disclose wrongdoing to U.S. attorneys. Under the new policy, which is effective immediately, companies that self-report misconduct will receive more lenient treatment than if prosecutors discover the misconduct through whistleblowers or of their own accord. Damian Williams and Breon Peace, the U.S. attorneys in…

The notorious Emotet botnet, considered one of the biggest threats to internet security, has resurfaced after a prolonged hiatus, armed with new tactics. The botnet’s trademark strategy of sending spam messages that appear to be from a known contact, addressing recipients by name and purporting to respond to existing email threads, was observed again last week after a four-month break.

Previous resumptions of activity have seen Emotet deploy fresh techniques to avoid endpoint security products and deceive users into clicking on links or enabling dangerous macros in Microsoft Office attachments.

Antonov met with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, who protested the “unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of the drone that resulted in its loss. “We consider this incident a provocation,” Antonov told reporters after the meeting. He said he told Donfried that US drones, planes and ships had no business being that close to Russian…

CHISINAU, Moldova — On Friday, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, made a surprise announcement at a White House press briefing. U.S. intelligence, he said, had determined that the Kremlin was plotting to topple another European democracy. “Russian actors, some with current ties to Russian intelligence, are seeking to stage and use protests in Moldova as a…

The country’s inflation has not surpassed 100 percent in over three decades, as value of Argentina’s currency plummets.

Portuguese tourist Fabio Figueirado wanted to admire beautiful buildings on a romantic getaway in Paris, but instead he and his girlfriend have found themselves navigating pavements piled high…

The United States, Australia and the United Kingdom are traveling “further down the wrong and dangerous path for their own geopolitical self-interest,” China’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, responding…

Taiwan unveiled its first portable attack drone on Tuesday, an unmanned aerial vehicle similar to a U.S. model used in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, as China steps up…

Facebook parent Meta is slashing 10,000 jobs, about as many as the social media company announced late last year in its first round of cuts, as uncertainly about the global economy hits the technology sector particularly hard.

The company announced 11,000 job cuts in November, about 13% of its workforce at the time. In addition to the layoffs, Meta said Tuesday that it would not fill 5,000 open positions.

Meta and other tech companies have been hiring aggressively for at least two years and in recent months have begun to let some of those workers go. Hiring in the U.S. is still strong, but layoffs have hit hard in some sectors.