Day: June 5, 2024

Georgia Court of Appeals Halts RICO Case Against Trump Pending Appeal  The Daily Beast

JUST IN: Trump’s Georgia Election Interference Case Paused By Appeals Court  Mediaite

Trump wants gag order lifted after hush-money trial verdict  BBC.com

The Real Winner of Russia’s War? The FSB – The Moscow Times https://t.co/TaWbLaZuor
Putin’s new term is just beginning. It will take place under the full control of the FSB, whose presence in government at all levels is growing constantly. Data suggests that in the last years of…

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 5, 2024

An American Jewish military intelligence officer has resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, saying that what is happening to the Palestinians there reminds him of the Holocaust.

Major Harrison Mann submitted his resignation to the military and the Defense Intelligence Agency in November. He announced it publicly last month in a letter that gained renewed attention this week, when he officially exited the military.

“As the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing — my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany — where the paramount importance of ‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following orders’ were oft repeated,” Mann wrote in the letter.

“I am haunted by the knowledge that I failed those principles,” he added. “But I also have hope that my grandfather would afford me some grace, that he would still be proud of me for stepping away from this war, however belatedly.”

Mann told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was not saying the war in Gaza is the same as the Holocaust.

“I think there’s no benefit in weighing tragedies against each other and it’s not what I’m trying to do,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “Obviously the Holocaust was much bigger – but that doesn’t mean that smaller massacres of innocent people [also] shouldn’t happen.”

But Mann also said his thinking about whether and how to oppose the war was inspired in part by his experience visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, while participating in an IDF training for U.S. intelligence officers in 2019. He recalled seeing the iconic photograph of Jewish U.S. soldiers leading a prayer service for liberated prisoners at Buchenwald.

“That was the most proud I ever felt to be in the Army – that I got to wear the same uniform and be in the same army as those men,” he recalled. “It’s hard not to think back to that when we are seeing — again — photos of starved, emaciated children and burned corpses.”

He added, “I am now contributing to that instead of being the ones who liberated them.”

Mann’s exit adds him to a small number of government officials who have resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel and its military campaign in Gaza. Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff of the Department of Interior, became the first Jewish staffer to resign publicly over the Biden administration’s support for the war last month; she said at the time, “There are so many of us who feel this way.”

Mann said he had grown alarmed at U.S. support for Israel on Oct. 7, the day that Hamas invaded Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting some 250.

“At the same time that we were able to witness and understand the casualties and suffering and crimes inflicted on Israelis during that attack, I think everybody who follows the region had this dread that there was going to be a very violent and disproportionate response back onto Gaza, like there frequently has been in response to smaller attacks,” he said.

Mann added, “Seeing from day one that there were going to be an incredible amount of civilian casualties, and seeing that everyone on the American side was well aware of that, was very demoralizing.”

Mann’s resignation came 13 years into his military career, which he began after graduating from the College of William and Mary in 2011. He said there were previous moments in his career as a Middle East specialist where he had reservations about policies or partners he was required to support. But he said this time, with more experience under his belt and more insight about operations within the intelligence apparatus, he felt he had little choice but to resign in protest.

Mann said he had not been in touch before his resignation with groups working to stoke dissent against the war and aid people who oppose it within the Biden administration. But he said he was now hearing from others inside the administration who have sought his advice about how to navigate their own opposition to Israel’s military campaign.

He said he knew of people who had asked to be given new responsibilities, who were refusing to continue conducting work on the Israel-related portions of their portfolios and who were demanding assurances that the work they were doing is consistent with U.S. and international law.

“To resign is not a feasible option for a lot of people,” he said.

Mann told CBS News on Tuesday in his first public interview that he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza represented “some measure of ethnic cleansing” and that he had decided to make his letter public after the Biden administration expressed reservations about Israel’s war conduct but went ahead with supplying weapons nonetheless.

He also told CBS that the Israeli army had “almost certainly” used American weapons against civilians in Gaza, which would violate the terms of their use. Asked whether the Israeli army had done so intentionally, Mann said, “I don’t know how you kill 35,000 civilians by accident.”

Gaza officials say more than 36,000 people have died in Israel’s campaign but do not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israeli officials, who say their military takes measures to minimize civilian casualties, believe that more than a third of the deaths have been combatants. No independent data exists.

Mann told JTA that he did not think the precise tally of civilian deaths was important in forming his perspective on the war. “If it turns out I got it totally wrong and only half of that is civilians, I wouldn’t consider that an acceptable outcome either,” he said.

Mann said that in addition to his grandparents who fled Eastern Europe for North America, he has a grandmother who was born in Palestine, before Israel’s establishment, after her family left Hungary. He lived briefly in Jerusalem while studying Hebrew as a college student (he also studied Arabic in the West Bank and Lebanon) and as an adult said he had grown more engaged in his Jewish identity — celebrating his bar mitzvah while stationed in Kuwait. He also said he had seen pro-Israel sentiment shift within his own family over the course of the war, especially as he shared his own thoughts about how unconditional U.S. aid has given Israel little incentive to show restraint in a volatile region.

“I think it’s important for Jewish Americans to understand how U.S. support for Israel right now is making America and Israel immeasurably less safe,” he said.

“I do understand why Israel is incredibly meaningful to Jews who live outside of it,” Mann added. “Many of them had the same experience that my grandparents did. … This was their refuge. But it’s not the 1940s or the 1840s anymore, and I think the biggest threat to Israel and the Jews now is Israel’s own behavior.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Jewish US Army Major explains why he resigned over US support for Gaza war appeared first on The Forward.

There is no vaccine for the latest identified strain of bird flu, and the routine practice of stockpiling vaccines is no indication of “planning a manmade pandemic.”

В марте 2023 года Кейт Миддлтон сообщила, что проходит ранние стадии профилактической химиотерапии. Диагноз был поставлен после тестов, проведенных после операции в брюшной полости.

Королевский эксперт Ричард Фицуильямс отметил, что принцесса будет следовать рекомендациям врачей при планировании своей деятельности. По словам инсайдеров, Кейт Миддлтон переоценила свои силы и возможности организма. После химиотерапии ей, скорее всего, придется сократить объем выполняемой работы по сравнению с тем, что было раньше.

Несмотря на болезнь, Кейт Миддлтон продолжает выполнять свои королевские обязанности и даже была удостоена Ордена Кавалеров Почета в апреле 2023 года. Король Великобритании наградил принцессу Уэльскую в благодарность за многолетнюю государственную службу.

Диагноз, поставленный Кейт Миддлтон, может повлиять на ее способность выполнять королевские обязанности в полном объеме. Однако принцесса Уэльская будет руководствоваться советами врачей и принимать решения в соответствии с состоянием своего здоровья. Королевская семья и общественность выразили ей свою поддержку и пожелания скорейшего выздоровления.

Cybersecurity researchers demonstrated how malware could potentially steal data collected by the new Windows Recall tool.

The Recall feature of Microsoft Copilot+ is an AI-powered tool designed to help users search for past activities on their PC. The data collected by the tool is stored and processed locally. After its presentation, it raised security and privacy concerns among cybersecurity experts because it scans and saves periodic screenshots of the computer screen, potentially exposing sensitive data, like passwords or financial information.

Microsoft attempted to downplay the risks for the users, the company pointed out that an attacker would need physical access to obtain data collected by the Recall tool.

However, multiple researchers have demonstrated that a malicious code could steal data collected by the Recall feature.

The popular cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont explained that an attacker can gain remote access to a device running Recall using a malware.

“When you’re logged into a PC and run software, things are decrypted for you. Encryption at rest only helps if somebody comes to your house and physically steals your laptop — that isn’t what criminal hackers do.” reads a post published by Beaumont. “For example, InfoStealer trojans, which automatically steal usernames and passwords, are a major problem for well over a decade — now these can just be easily modified to support Recall.”

Microsoft pointed out that information captured by their tool is highly encrypted and nobody can access them, but Beaumont said it is false and published a video of two Microsoft engineers accessing the folder containing the images.

The cybersecurity researcher Alex Hagenah has released a PoC tool, named TotalRecall, that can automatically extract and display the snapshots captured by Recall on a laptop and saved into its database.

“The database is unencrypted. It’s all plain text,” Hagenah says.⁩” told Wired.

“Windows Recall stores everything locally in an unencrypted SQLite database, and the screenshots are simply saved in a folder on your PC.” Hagenah explained “Here’s where you can find them:

C:Users$USERAppDataLocalCoreAIPlatform.00UKP{GUID}   

The images are all stored in the following subfolder

.ImageStore   

The IT researcher Marc-André Moreau explained that an info-stealing malware can easily steal temporarily visible passwords from Remote Desktop Manager, which are captured by the Recall tool, from a local SQLite database.

While Recall remains as a “preview” feature and, according to Microsoft’s small print, could change before it launches, Beaumont writes in his research that the company “should recall Recall and rework it to be the feature it deserves to be, delivered at a later date.” concludes Wired.

Pierluigi Paganini

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, AI)

FBI Challenged With Building Workforce Needed to Detect Deepfakes  MeriTalk

The post The World Has Seen Record-Breaking Temperatures for 12 Months. Experts Warn They Will Be ‘Comparatively Cold’ to the Future first appeared on The News And Times.