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Millions of Verizon customer records including phone numbers and account PINs exposed by Israeli technology company

Zack Whittake
ZDNet
Wed, 12 Jul 2017 13:00 UTC
Verizon
An Israeli technology company has exposed millions of Verizon customer records, ZDNet has learned.

As many as 14 million records of subscribers who called the phone giant's customer services in the past six months were found on an unprotected Amazon S3 storage server controlled by an employee of Nice Systems, a Ra'anana, Israel-based company.

The data was downloadable by anyone with the easy-to-guess web address.

Nice, which counts 85 of the Fortune 100 as customers, plays in two main enterprise software markets: customer engagement and financial crime and compliance including tools that prevent fraud and money laundering. Nice's 2016 revenue was $1.01 billion, up from $926.9 million in the previous year. The financial services sector is Nice's biggest industry in terms of customers, with telecom companies such as Verizon a key vertical. The company has more than 25,000 customers in about 150 countries.

Privacy watchdogs have linked the company to several government intelligence agencies, and it's known to work closely with surveillance and phone cracking firms Hacking Team and Cellebrite. In regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Nice noted that it can't control what customers do with its software. "Our products may also be intentionally misused or abused by clients who use our products," said Nice in its annual report.
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Question

Food racism: Central and Eastern Europeans decry lower quality standards for packaged foods compared with those in Western Europe

Morgan Childs
NPR
Wed, 12 Jul 2017 08:00 UTC
grocery store Prague
© NPR
The outside of a grocery store in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. For years, governments and consumer advocates have been decrying what they call lower quality standards for packaged food available in Central and Eastern Europe, as compared with identically branded items sold in Western European countries.
The frozen fish sticks you'll find in a Prague supermarket may be short on one key ingredient: fish.

And that's not because the Czech Republic is landlocked.

For years, governments and consumer advocates have been decrying what they call lower quality standards for packaged food available in Central and Eastern Europe, as compared with identically branded items sold in Western European countries. Hop the train east from Berlin to Warsaw, and you may find that the same popular soft drink brand is made with artificial sweeteners, rather than real sugar; a carton of juice comes with an extra serving of stabilizers; and lunchmeat is produced with smaller quantities of actual meat.

Yet despite the differences in ingredients, these products look the same on supermarket shelves from Brussels to Bratislava, leading some to ask — as did Polish daily Gazeta Prawna — "Is it food racism?"

But recent activity in the upper echelons of EU politics suggests that awareness of the so-called dual-quality foods finally may have reached a critical mass.
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Snowflake

Trump supporter gets 'anti-fascist protesters' to applaud speech consisting entirely of Hitler quotes


RT
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:19 UTC
anti-fascist Trump protest
© Adam Richard / YouTube
A Trump supporter posing as a protester managed to trick anti-fascist demonstrators in Chicago into applauding a speech riddled with quotes from Adolf Hitler. The trickster is aiming to take his "troll campaign" to other cities as well.

When anti-Trump protesters gathered for the 'Impeach Trump March' in Chicago earlier this month, the scene was what you might expect.

Demonstrators shouted "The people united will never be defeated!" and held signs reading "Impeach Trump" and "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."
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Family

Former British High Court judge says 'epidemic' of family breakdowns is at the root of crime and widespread extremism


RT
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:41 UTC
handcuffed
© Global Look Press
An "epidemic" of family breakdowns is at the root of crime and widespread extremism across Britain, a retired High Court judge claims.

Sir Paul Coleridge claims there is a clear correlation between family breakdowns and the perpetration of violent offences and extremist acts. He believes people that have missed out on a family habitat will associate with "like-minded" people, ultimately to achieve a sense of belonging and identity.

Coleridge, who was a High Court judge for 14 years, reiterated US President Donald Trump's statement following the Manchester terrorist attack in May - which killed 22 people and injured hundreds more - that terrorists are "losers."

Terrorists are all from appalling family backgrounds," Sir Coleridge told the Times.
"Donald Trump was right: they tend to be losers with no ties and so they find their identity in groups of like-minded people; or suffer mental breakdown," the former senior judge said.
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Dollar Gold

About time! New law in Connecticut prohibits civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction

Nick Sibilla
Forbes
Tue, 11 Jul 2017 17:55 UTC
policing for profit
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed HB 7146 on Monday, which curbs the state's civil forfeiture laws. Not only did the bill earn endorsements from the Yankee Institute for the Public Policy and the state chapter of the ACLU, HB 7146 even passed both the House and the Senate without a single no vote.

Under the new law, in order to permanently confiscate property with civil forfeiture, the property must be first seized in connection to either a lawful arrest or a lawful search that results in an arrest. If prosecutors do not secure a guilty verdict, a plea bargain or a dismissal from finishing a pretrial diversion program, the government must return the property to its rightful owner. With the stroke of a pen, Connecticut now becomes the 14th state to require a criminal conviction for most or all forfeiture cases.
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Attention

Grenfell Tower fire survivor diagnosed with cyanide poisoning


RT
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 09:46 UTC
Grenfell tower
© Hannah McKay / Reuters
Amid fears that toxic materials contributed to some of the at least 80 deaths during London's Grenfell Tower inferno, a young survivor has been diagnosed with cyanide poisoning.

Luana Gomes, her sister and mother have all been affected by cyanide, according to medical discharge forms.

Her mother Andreia, who was seven months pregnant, miscarried.The three were placed in medically-induced comas after escaping.

All were administered with cyanide antidote, though only Luana was said to have been poisoned.

The report again raises questions about the external cladding which was attached to the building to make it less of an eyesore for luxury apartment owner in Kensington.

Comment: Grenfell Tower victims killed 'within seconds by cyanide gas,' says professor of environmental toxicology

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Health

'None of us wanted this': Boston nurses go on strike for higher pay and more staff


RT
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:19 UTC
Tufts Medical Center nurses march
© Getty Images
Tufts Medical Center nurses march on Washington Street in a picket line in front of the hospital as they walk off their jobs and begin a strike in Boston on the morning of Jul. 12, 2017.
The Massachusetts Nurses Association has announced a strike after negotiations with Tufts Medical Center fell apart. The nurses felt betrayed as they walked off the job in hopes of securing better pay and more staff.

Some nurses felt like the hospital's administration forced them to this point. The negotiations between the hospital administration and the MNA ultimately failed.

"We came to the table today hoping to reach an agreement," Mary Havlicek Cornacchia, an operating nurse, told WCVB. "But Tufts management is determined to force a strike and subsequent lockout of our nurses."

Another nurse, Karen Currier, said, "I feel like we're at a moment that I knew we were going to come to. None of us wanted this to happen."
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Cult

'Bleak future': State in Malaysia will enforce sharia law with public canings


RT
Wed, 12 Jul 2017 16:13 UTC
Malaysia public canings
© Beawiharta / Reuters
A state in Malaysia governed by a conservative Islamist party has amended its laws to allow public canings for crimes against sharia law. Critics have called the move unconstitutional, with one politician saying it indicates a "bleak future" for the country.

The amendment was passed by the assembly of Kelantan to more closely align the state's policies with Islamic criminal law, Kelantan deputy chief minister Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah said, as quoted by Bernama state news agency.

"Caning can now be carried out inside or outside of prison, depending on the court's decision," Mohd Amar said.

This is in line with the religion, which requires that sentencing must be done in public," he said.

Comment: Thank you, Saudi Arabia!

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Phoenix

A place called Gaza: Closer to hell than to heaven

Irwin Jerome
Counter Currents
Sun, 09 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
Gaza stop the killling
The recent confessional "I Like Gaza", written by Uri Avnery - Peace Activist, Journalist, founding member of the peace bloc Gush Shalom, former publisher and editor-in-chief of the news magazine Haolam Hazeh, founding member of the Knesset, founding member of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and columnist for Internet - will break the heart of anyone who has ever anguished over the plight of the Palestinian peoples; especially over the ensuing long decades since the Zionists first invaded Palestine in 1948, with the blessings of the world, and Israel ever since has continued its heinous, incessant racist, apartheid persecution of the Palestinian people, again with the continued blessings of the world.

Sadly, this persecution now includes the Palestinian peoples themselves, caught in the grip, as they are, of a fatal death spiral as they viciously fight and squabble; as oppressed peoples predictably often do amongst themselves once they're forced to 'circle the wagons' and then begin shooting each other over what few scraps of power and hegemony remain. What is now occurring in Gaza could spell the final chapter in this ugly saga of what human beings everywhere, since time immemorial, seem hopelessly destined to do to one another in whatever contentious theatre of human endeavor.
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People 2

'Ladies and gentlemen' scrapped to make London Tube announcements gender neutral


RT
Wed, 12 Jul 2017 23:14 UTC
London Tube passengers
© Kevin Coombs / Reuters
London transport workers have been told to stop using the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" in announcements as part of a city-wide push to become more gender-neutral.

The order follows months of campaigning by LGBTQ activists, who appealed to London Mayor Sadiq Khan to change the language used by train and bus drivers, which they described as "polite but really belonging to yesterday," according to the Evening Standard.

The Transport for London (TfL) rule book used to state: "When using the Public Address (PA) system, you must start all service information announcements with 'Ladies and gentlemen,' except for routine announcements such as 'mind the gap' and 'stand clear of the doors.'"

Now staff will use terms such as "good morning everyone." All new pre-recorded announcements are also set to be changed to new phrases.
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