Category: Crime

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched cruise missiles at Ukraine’s capital and the Odesa region early Thursday, officials said, in an escalation ahead of a much-anticipated counteroffensive. Most of the missiles were shot down, and one death was reported from the attacks. Loud explosions were heard in Kyiv, and falling debris caused a fire in a non-residential building. It was…

  It turns out that if you fire basically all of the competent trust & safety people at your website, you end up with a site that is neither trustworthy, nor safe. We’ve spent months covering ways in which you cannot trust anything from Twitter or Elon Musk, and there have been some indications of real safety problems on the…

Iran Press TV Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has slammed French prosecutors for issuing an arrest warrant against him, saying he would appeal against the decision. Salameh made the remarks in a statement on Tuesday, after an international arrest warrant was issued earlier in the day following his failure to appear before French prosecutors to be questioned on corruption…

U.S. law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced a series of criminal cases exposing efforts by Russia, China and Iran to steal sensitive U.S. technologies. The five cases, which spanned a wide range of protected U.S. technologies, were brought by a new “strike force” created earlier this year to deter foreign adversaries from obtaining advanced U.S. innovation. “These charges demonstrate the…

Human rights defenders have sharply criticized Pakistan for announcing plans to use military laws to prosecute those responsible for arson during recent protests sparked by the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. In a statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International described the controversial move as alarming and contrary to international law, and demanded it be struck down immediately. “This is…

Natalia Arno, the U.S.-based chief of the Free Russia Foundation, says there are suspicions she may have been poisoned, “possibly by some nerve agent,” after falling ill during a recent trip to Europe, amid a report that at least two other Kremlin critics have experienced similar episodes since 2020. Arno, who previously kept silent about what she experienced during a…

Apple’s App Store team prevented more than $2 billion in transactions tagged as potentially fraudulent and blocked almost 1.7 million app submissions for privacy, security, and content policy violations in 2022. As part of its ongoing efforts to fend off account fraud, the company also terminated 428,000 developer accounts for potentially fraudulent activity, deactivated 282 million fraudulent customer accounts, and blocked…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department announced a series of criminal cases Tuesday tracing the illegal flow of sensitive technology, including Apple’s software code for self-driving cars and materials used for missiles, to foreign adversaries like Russia, China and Iran. Some of the alleged theft highlighted by the department dates back several years, but U.S. officials are drawing attention to…

  WASHINGTON – The US Justice Department said on Tuesday it has charged a former Apple Inc engineer with attempting to steal the firm’s technology related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars, and then fleeing to China. The case was among five announced on Tuesday aimed at countering efforts to illicitly acquire American technology by nations including Russia and China….

In October, reports indicated that the FBI believed it had enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes. The Justice Department reportedly ordered the team’s removal, according to the New York Post. An IRS criminal supervisory special agent came forward to Congress in April seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly showed the investigation into potential…

WASHINGTON – A Massachusetts man has been arrested for providing information about Chinese dissidents in the United States to China’s government, the Justice Department said Monday. Litang Liang, 63, of Brighton, was arrested on May 9 on charges of acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) without notifying US authorities, according to the department.

The announcement of Liang’s arrest came on the same day as a court in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou revealed that a 78-year-old US citizen, John Shing-wan Leung, had been sentenced to life in prison for espionage. The Justice Department said Liang, between 2018 and 2022, had passed information about Boston-area residents, dissidents and groups, including “community organisations with pro-Taiwan leanings,” to Chinese government officials.

Pharmacy services provider PharMerica has disclosed a massive data breach impacting over 5.8 million patients, exposing their medical data to hackers.

PharMerica is a pharmacy services provider in 50 U.S. states, operating 180 local and 70,000 backup pharmacies, and serving 3,100 medical facilities nationwide.

According to a data breach notification submitted to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, hackers breached PharMerica’s system on March 12th, 2023, stealing the full names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers (SSNs), medications, and health insurance information of 5,815,591 people.

The firm discovered the intrusion on March 14th, 2023, and its investigation determined on March 21st that client data had been stolen. However, notices of a data breach were sent to impacted individuals only last Friday, May 12th, 2023.

A former executive fired from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance made a raft of accusations against the tech giant Friday, including that it stole content from competitors like Instagram and Snapchat, and served as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government by “suppressing or promoting content favorable to the country’s interests.”

The allegations were made in a complaint last week by Yintao Yu, the head of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. operations from August 2017 to November 2018, as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed earlier this month in San Francisco Superior Court. Yu claims he was fired for disclosing “wrongful conduct” he saw at the company.

In the complaint, Yu alleges the Chinese government monitored ByteDance’s work from within its Beijing headquarters and “provided guidance on advancing core communist values.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer experienced the most significant disruption to its operations in 27 years due to what the newspaper calls a cyberattack.

The company was working to restore print operations after a cyber incursion that prevented the printing of the newspaper’s Sunday print edition, the Inquirer reported on its website. The news operation’s website was still operational Sunday, although updates were slower than normal, the Inquirer reported.

Inquirer publisher Lisa Hughes said Sunday “we are currently unable to provide an exact time line” for full restoration of the paper’s systems. 

NEW YORK – A crowdfunding effort supporting the man charged over the chokehold death of a homeless person in New York has raised more than US$1.6 million (S$2.14 million) on a platform known for facilitating funding of far-right figures.

The death earlier this month of Jordan Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator who often performed on the subway, sparked outrage after it was caught on camera.

Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old US Marine veteran, was charged with manslaughter in the second degree and released on bail. The charge accuses Penny of “recklessly” causing the death of 30-year-old Neely, but it stops short of saying he had intent to kill.

The online fund supporting him was set up by the law firm Raiser & Kenniff, P.C., which is representing Penny.