Category: Corruption

Gaza’s only cancer hospital goes out of service – health officials

DUBAI: The only cancer treatment hospital in the Gaza Strip has gone out of service after it ran out of fuel, health officials said on Wednesday. The director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital told a press conference aired by Al-Jazeera TV that the hospital, which mainly treats cancer patients, had used up its fuel and was now out of service. “We tell the world don’t leave cancer patients to a certain death due to the hospital being out of service,”…

Telecom Sector Sees Major Layoffs Despite Historic Stretch Of Tax Breaks, Regulatory Favors

The Trump era was very, very good to the country’s giant telecom monopolies. Trump officials doled out billions in tax breaks (AT&T nabbed $42 billion alone) and billions more in poorly tracked subsidies. It also approved anticompetitive mergers without even reading the details, and handed out all manner of regulator favors like the dismantling of net neutrality or the elimination of media consolidation rules. In absolutely every instance telecoms like AT&T and Comcast claimed these efforts would boost broadband deployment…

Russian Hackers Accessed 632,000 Emails From Pentagon, Other Agencies: Report

Hackers have accessed approximately 632,000 emails from the Department of Defense and other federal agencies this year, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) confirmed. The report detailed a large-scale cyberattack in May 2023 in which emails from US government offices, private sectors, airlines, and academic entities were accessed by a suspected Russian group called “CL0P.” Alongside electronic personal data, the actors breached internal tracking codes and government employee survey links issued by agencies. Through File Transfer Software The cybercriminals…

Mexico’s Acapulco grows desperate for help after Hurricane Otis ravaged the area

ACAPULCO, Mexico — As a bright, hot sun filled Acapulco in the days following the furious arrival of Hurricane Otis, it revealed a city utterly transformed by destruction. The Category 5 storm slammed into the Pacific coast early Wednesday, killing at least 27 people, with at least four still missing, according to Mexican officials. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pledged unlimited resources and thousands of troops. But residents and tourists in the city of 1 million people say they’ve…

Sam Bankman-Fried denies taking denies $10bn customer funds theft in testimony at fraud trial

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began testifying at his fraud trial on Friday, saying the innovative business he hoped would move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward ended up doing the opposite and hurting customers. The onetime cryptocurrency golden boy lost his businesses and his reputation as a pioneering entrepreneur in an emerging facet of finance when a rush of customers withdrew their money last year, exposing that billions of dollars were missing. Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some of his failures early in his…

Water Crisis in Iran: A Looming Environmental Disaster

Iran is currently grappling with a severe water crisis, a situation clearly underscored by the United Nations’ water status and conditions index. The crisis is most pronounced in the central plateau of Iran, where an absolute water shortage is unfolding. Regime officials have often attributed this crisis to factors like low rainfall and excessive water consumption. However, the Majlis Research Center has emphasized that mismanagement has played a pivotal role in exacerbating the situation. The parliament’s research arm has also…

Millions of American families struggle to get food on the table, report finds

Just putting three meals a day on the table was a struggle for millions of people in the U.S. last year. That’s the sobering conclusion of a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which found hunger in the U.S. rose sharply in 2022. The report found that 44.2 million people lived in households that had difficulty getting enough food to feed everyone in 2022, up from 33.8 million people the year prior. Those families include more than 13…

Al Jazeera journalist’s family killed in Israeli airstrike

According to Al Jazeera, their Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al Dahdouh, tragically lost his wife, son, daughter, and grandson in an Israeli airstrike that occurred on Wednesday. The explosion targeted a residence in the Nuseirat refugee camp, located in central Gaza, where the family sought refuge following their displacement. “Members of the family of our colleague Wael Al Dahdouh, including his wife, son, and daughter, were martyred in an Israeli bombing,” Al Jazeera wrote in an on-air message. Al Jazeera…

Sam Bankman-Fried to testify in his own defence in crypto fraud trial Thursday

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried plans to testify at his fraud trial, his lawyer told a federal judge Wednesday, ending speculation over whether a man who embraced the spotlight during his years atop the cryptocurrency world could remain silent after prosecutors portrayed him as a greedy entrepreneur who stole billions of dollars from customers. Attorney Mark Cohen told Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that he planned to call three witnesses “and then our client is also going to be testifying” after prosecutors…

Death toll in Gaza approaches 7,000 as aid groups raise alarm about fuel, refrigeration, water

The streets of Gaza are empty of cars. Many of its bakeries are shuttered; meat suppliers have no refrigeration. Doctors perform operations by flashlight. Although 62 aid trucks have entered Gaza since last weekend carrying much-needed food, water and medical supplies, none have delivered fuel — which Israel has blocked over concerns it could be stolen and used by Hamas. As a result, aid groups have escalated their warnings, saying the lack of fuel has reached a critical point. UNRWA,…

Florida orders state universities to disband pro-Palestinian student group

The administration of Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis has taken the significant measure of associating a pro-Palestinian student group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), with terrorism. They have directed state universities to prohibit the group, alleging its support for Hamas militants who recently attacked Israel. Amid escalating Israeli actions in Gaza, several college students have shown support for Palestinians.This has led to criticism from some Jewish scholars and potential employers. However, Florida’s stance is more severe, accusing the SJP…

NY Times Tried To Block The Internet Archive

The Intercept has an interesting article that reveals another reason why some newspaper publishers are not great fans of the site: The New York Times tried to block a web crawler that was affiliated with the famous Internet Archive, a project whose easy-to-use comparisons of article versions has sometimes led to embarrassment for the newspaper. As the article explains, one of the important uses of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is to compare Web pages as they are updated over time. It allows the…

Instagram and Facebook ‘Flag’ IPTV Searches Over Piracy Concerns

Facebook and Instagram are trying to educate users on copyright infringement by showing a ‘popup’ to those who search for potentially problematic terms such as IPTV. This is one of the many voluntary anti-piracy tools the Meta-owned social media platforms have implemented, in an effort to help combat online copyright infringement. Similar to any other online platforms that deal with user-generated content, Instagram and Facebook process thousands of copyright complaints daily. Simply responding to takedown notices isn’t sufficient for all…

At least 24 journalists have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

At least 24 journalists are among the more than 6,000 people who have been killed in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, according to the latest tally released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists. In addition to the steep toll the fighting has meant for civilians in the region, the conflict in Gaza has resulted in the deadliest stretch for journalists in Israel and the occupied territories since the committee began tracking journalist deaths in 1992, the organization’s…

Bond markets are being hit hard — and it’s likely to impact you

There is a sharp sell-off in the bond market, and it has big implications on both the economy and people’s pocketbooks. Yields on U.S. government bonds, especially the 10-year Treasury note, determine the interest rates that people pay on a lot of their debt, including mortgages and credit cards. And a key bond yield hasn’t been this high since 2007. Several factors are driving the sell-off, including stronger-than-expected economic data and the government’s worsening finances. Here is what you need…

Biden says support for Israel, Ukraine vital for U.S. security; will ask Congress for billions

U.S. President Joe Biden declared it is “vital for America’s national security” for Israel and Ukraine to succeed in their wars, making the case Thursday night for deepening U.S. involvement in two unpredictable foreign conflicts as he prepared to ask for billions of dollars in military assistance for both countries. If international aggression is allowed to continue, Biden said in a rare Oval Office address, “conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world.” “Hamas and Putin represent…