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When the George Santos scandal first hit the fan, there was the question of whether his endless series of lies included any criminal acts. While being under criminal investigation (or even being indicted or convicted) does not automatically cause you to be ousted from Congress, the threat of potential indictment can change the approach that a politician takes – including when or whether to resign.

Let’s put it this way: if a political office holder gets caught in a scandal that’s simply embarrassing and life ruining, that person can try quickly resigning and disappearing from public view, in the hope that the media will lose interest and stop digging up any more dirt on the person. But if a political office holder fears being criminally indicted, that person may be more likely to try to remain in office for as long as possible. This can be either in the hope of eventually trading resignation in exchange for leniency, or under the false belief that remaining in office will somehow protect them from indictment.

On Wednesday it was reported that George Santos is now under criminal investigation on a federal and state level. Now NBC News is reporting that the federal criminal probe is related to “potential irregularities involving financial disclosures and loans he made to his campaign.” In other words, this is a money trail thing. If Santos is indeed guilty, then this is bad news for him, because a money trail is easy to follow and easy to prove to a jury. It also means we could be stuck with this guy for awhile.

Put yourself in George Santos’ shoes. You’re about to enter Congress. You’re also looking at likely being indicted for campaign finance crimes. You stand a real chance of ending up in prison. If you resign now before taking office, then you’re just a regular citizen trying to fend off indictment and conviction. But if you stay in office, you can keep politicizing the whole thing – and you force other House Republicans to keep siding with you. This won’t save you from indictment or conviction at all, but it could make for a smoother (and potentially more profitable) go of it in the meantime.

Of course there’s a theoretical point in Santos’ downfall at which House Republicans will decide that keeping this guy’s seat is more trouble than it’s worth, and that they’d rather force him out in order to make the headlines go away, and take their chances in a special election. There’s a strong argument to be made that House Republicans have reached that threshold already. But with House Republican leaders like Kevin McCarthy being massively inept and in over their heads, the odds of them handling this in a savvy way are rather low.

So we could be stuck with George Santos for awhile. But keep in mind that while his presence in the House will be annoying for us, it’ll be nightmarish for House Republicans. They’re going to have to face media questions about this guy every day. It’ll make it a lot harder for them to push their lie-filled messaging and phony scandals. There will be an irony in that a liar like Santos will get in the way of House Republicans’ ability to spread their own lies.

And if Santos ends up indicted, House Republicans will have to cut bait in the end anyway. If things reach a point where he can’t show up to vote because he’s in a jail cell as a flight risk, then he’s not helping their fragile majority anyway. If they were smart they’d cut bait now and saddle up for a special election. But they’re just not that smart. House Republicans are going to keep riding Santos to the bottom, hoping the whole thing just magically goes away, which it won’t – and the longer they let this drag on, the worse their party’s odds will be of winning any special election for that seat.

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The website for the Port of Lisbon is still down days after it was the target of a ransomware attack claimed by Lockbit group.

The Port of Lisbon is the third-largest port in Portugal and one of the main European ports due to its strategic location.

The website of the port was hit by a cyber attack on December 25, in response to the security breach the administrators shut down it. At the time of this writing, the website of the port is still down.

The Administration of the Port of Lisbon said that the cyber attack did not compromise operational activity at the critical infrastructure. The administration notified the National Cybersecurity Center and the Judiciary Police were notified of the incident.

“All security protocols and response measures planned for this type of occurrence were quickly activated,” port officials told the newspaper Publico. “The Administration of the Port of Lisbon (APL) is working permanently and closely with all the competent authorities, in order to guarantee the security of the systems and respective data.”

This week, the LockBit ransomware group claimed responsibility for this attack, and the gang added the organization to the list of victims published on its website.

“After successful work with the Portuguese Port Authority. In our hands are. All financial reports, audits, budgets. Contracts, information about cargoes. Ship logs with all the information on the crews. Personal data of customers. All port documentation. All mail correspondence. All contracts. And much more. The entire date will be published in case of failure to contact us.” reads the announcement published by the gang on its Tor leak site.

The deadline fixed by the ransomware group is January 18, 2023.

Cyber attacks against ports are an alarming trend, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas recently told Congress that cyber attacks are the main threats to U.S. ports.

“We are increasing the level of technology by which our ports operate and that is why not only Customs and Border Protection have a focus on cybersecurity but so does the United States Coast Guard,” Mayorkas said. “I would identify, with respect to our ports, cybersecurity, as a significant threat stream and we are of course very focused on defending against it and strengthening our cybersecurity.” 

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, critical infrastructure)

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South Korea has left an indelible mark on the global zeitgeist with critically acclaimed films such as Parasite and Decision to Leave, blockbuster K-dramas like Squid Game and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, K-pop sensations like BTS and Blackpink, and ongoing contributions to the world of e-sports, which it pioneered back in the 1990’s. But its outsized impact on pop culture—which has been decades in the making—doesn’t stop there. Media and entertainment executives on both sides of the Pacific are increasingly turning their attention to another Korean cultural phenomenon that is capturing audiences across the globe: webtoons.

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Webtoons—a portmanteau of “web” and “cartoon”—are a type of digital comics optimized to be read on mobile devices. In most cases, readers view webtoons from top to bottom by scrolling vertically on their phones, though there are a few exceptions that use the more traditional horizontal format. Since the mid-2010’s, webtoons have become some of the most sought-after source material for hit K-dramas, like Kingdom, Sweet Home, Hellbound, D.P., Itaewon Class, True Beauty, All of Us Are Dead, Business Proposal, Misaeng: Incomplete Life, Yumi’s Cells, and countless others. To date, almost all webtoon-based K-dramas have been made available to international audiences primarily through Netflix or Viki—and other streaming platforms are looking to catch up. Disney+, for instance, has released Kiss Sixth Sense and The Golden Spoon in select regions, with Moving set to premiere next year. Apple TV+’s first Korean-language show, Dr. Brain, was adapted from a webtoon. Amazon Prime Video is also getting into the game with Island, a fantasy thriller about a motley crew fighting to save the world from dark forces. Based on a popular webtoon of the same name by Youn In-wan and Yang Kyung-il, the highly anticipated K-drama starring Kim Nam-gil, Lee Da-hee and Cha Eun-woo launched globally this week.

As webtoons continue to inspire K-dramas, here’s what to know about the digital comics, how they grew in influence, and why creators look to them for story ideas.

Courtesy WEBTOONFrom left: Webtoons Yumi’s Cells, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and Sweet Home.

The history of webtoons and how they took over the Internet

The first webtoons appeared in the late 1990’s when individual creators uploaded their comics to their personal webpages and a handful of newspapers included cartoons on their sites, says Dal Yong Jin, author of Understanding Korean Webtoon Culture: Transmedia Storytelling, Digital Platforms, and Genres. Webtoons began gaining traction with the Korean general public in 2000 when Chollian, a now-defunct internet service provider, launched its own webtoons portal. Internet giants Daum (now part of Kakao) and Naver quickly followed suit and established their own webtoon platforms in 2003 and 2004, respectively, further popularizing the art form throughout South Korea.

Today there are dozens of webtoon publishers around the world, with most of the major ones based in Korea. WEBTOON (known as Naver WEBTOON in Korea), is by far the largest and best-known, with roughly 89 million monthly active users worldwide. About 75% of its readers are Gen Z and younger Millennials, and 60% are women—audiences that have been historically underserved by traditional comic book publishers. For WEBTOON, however, they have become a key factor behind its recent exponential growth. “Most of the webtoons are relatable to me on a personal level,” says Liliana Rosas, a California-based machine operator who fits that demographic. “When I have long days, a good update or a new webtoon gives me the feels or a good laugh.”

Webtoons span a variety of genres, from horror to comedy to slice of life and everything in between, though a recent study by the Korea Creative Content Agency found that fantasy romance is the most popular. Regardless of the genre, experts, industry insiders and readers alike seem to agree that one of the most appealing features of webtoons is their accessibility. Anyone with a mobile device can download one of the webtoon apps and gain instant access to a vast selection of content—much of which is free. “I like webtoons because it’s easy to pick up my phone and open the app whenever,” says Raksa Nhoung, a college student in Oregon. “Having webtoons that update weekly helps keep me entertained during my breaks at school or at home.”

The webtoon’s easily digestible format has fueled its ever-increasing popularity in today’s “snack culture,” a term used in South Korea to denote the modern trend of consuming media in short periods of time. “Korea developed this new speedy snack culture partly due to the convergence of an emerging cultural genre and smartphones,” says Jin. “People’s daily activities are reliant on smartphones, and cultural content providers have released webtoons short enough to be viewed in under 10 minutes on mobile devices.”

David Lee, VP of content at WEBTOON, points out that this ease of access applies not only to readers, but to creators, too. WEBTOON, for instance, runs an open platform called Canvas where creators can instantly upload their comics for millions of readers to enjoy. Creators get paid through an ad revenue-sharing program (and—for those lucky enough to be selected for WEBTOON’s Originals section—through additional monetization channels).

Why webtoons make great TV

Courtesy WEBTOON; Courtesy Studio Dragon

The sheer proportion of webtoon-inspired K-dramas that have gone on to garner global success is staggering. For example, some of the biggest shows on Viki, one of the world’s leading streaming services for watching Asian content, have originated from webtoons. According to Sarah Kim, Viki’s chief content officer, many of its licensed webtoon-based titles, including True Beauty; Yumi’s Cells; What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim; My ID Is Gangnam Beauty; So I Married the Anti-Fan; Meow, the Secret Boy; My Roommate Is a Gumiho; Clean with Passion For Now; and The Tale of Nokdu, all ranked in the platform’s global Top 10 list of TV shows throughout their run, with some reaching number one.

K-drama adaptations of webtoons have been a boon for local Korean streamers too. TVING, a leading OTT service in Korea, saw its subscriber base surge when it released Yumi’s Cells, a coming-of-age romance about a 30-something office employee whose daily life is partly recounted from the perspective of her brain cells (think Inside Out, but with cuter cartoon characters). “A lot of people became paid users [on TVING] because they wanted to see Yumi’s Cells,” says Seungyun Ro, the IP business team leader at Naver WEBTOON, which published the original webtoon by Lee Dong-geon. “So a lot of OTTs are showing great interest [in webtoons] these days.”

According to Ro, about 30 of Naver’s webtoons were adapted into K-dramas between 2020 and 2022, and that number is only expected to grow. “We have a lot of works that are under contract, and only a small portion of them have been adapted,” he says. “But there’s a long list coming in the future.”

So why are so many of the most popular K-dramas adapted from webtoons? And what about webtoons makes them such a reliable wellspring of inspiration? Song Jae-jung, the head screenwriter of the TV version of Yumi’s Cells, says, “As the number of platforms increased, the demand for content also increased, but there were only so many shows that could be made based on original screenplays. To create more shows, many production companies started turning to the webtoon industry, which already had a lot of original works that were readily adaptable into TV series.”

She adds that as K-dramas grew in popularity and began targeting global audiences, many creators became more risk-averse. “As production costs increased and casting A-list actors became more important, K-drama screenwriters leaned into safer and more universal stories, while the webtoon industry kept embracing fresh and adventurous stories,” says Song. “Given that more and more young, creative writers were venturing into webtoons, TV executives began looking into the webtoon space for ideas and talent.”

For local TV and cable channels as well as domestic and global streamers constantly on the hunt for new material that will satisfy their viewers, webtoons provide a seemingly endless supply of stories that are beloved by many fans around the world. “The materials are just infinite,” says Ro. “They’re already proven in terms of popularity and quality within the platform.”

Webtoons have been a valuable source of IP for more than K-dramas. Korean movies like Inside Men; Secretly, Greatly; and the blockbuster film franchise Along with the Gods are all based on webtoons. Tower of God, Noblesse, The God of High School, and Lookism were each turned into an animated series, with the last one even ranking in Netflix’s Global Top 10 list of non-English-language shows. Money Game, a thriller webtoon in which eight contestants compete for $38 million in prize money, was developed into a YouTube series in Korea last year and later became the first Korean webtoon to be adapted into an American reality show.

The webtoon adaptation craze is not just limited to Korean-language content. For example, an animated version of Rachel Smythe’s wildly popular webtoon Lore Olympus is currently being produced by The Jim Henson Company and Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, formed last year through the merger of Wattpad’s and WEBTOON’s studio divisions. And the Netflix smash hit Heartstopper is actually a screen adaptation of Alice Oseman’s webtoon and graphic novel. Though the earliest webtoon creators may have all been Korean, these days plenty of successful webtoon artists and writers hail from other countries, proving that great stories—regardless of their geographical origin—have the potential to resonate with audiences globally.

A reverse trend of popular TV shows being adapted into webtoons is also emerging, with a few notable examples being Good Doctor, Extraordinary Attorney Woo and She Would Never Know. “These K-dramas were a hit, so the audiences’ demand to experience these dramas again was channeled into webtoons,” notes Ro, adding that since webtoons are a medium and a platform that anyone can easily access, “it’s not just K-dramas that are being adapted into webtoons, but other types of media that are also being turned into webtoons. And I predict that these types of trends will continue in the future.”

Major entertainment players in Korea—and increasingly, other countries as well—are beginning to build entire ecosystems of webtoons, graphic novels, TV shows, films and other types of content around a single story idea—what is often referred to as “transmedia storytelling.” Ro explains that such crossovers in terms of format and genre are no longer a new phenomenon in the industry. “A single successful story can now be retold through diverse methods,” he says.

As more creatives and showbiz execs around the world take notice of webtoons, they’re discovering that this booming art form is affording them boundless opportunities in transmedia storytelling. “Webtoons are the next, even current, frontier in the global cultural industries,” says Jin. “There is no doubt that webtoons will continue to grow as the major constituent of Korean cultural industries and youth culture, and eventually in the global cultural scene.”

For those who haven’t yet tuned into the webtoon revolution, it will be only a matter of time.

Regina Kim is a freelance entertainment writer focusing on Korean pop culture. Her articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, ELLE, Rolling Stone, NBC News, Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, MTV News and more. You can find some of her writings at reginakim.com.

Wall Street was set to open lower on the final trading day of a roller-coaster year marked by aggressive interest-rate hikes to curb inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war and recession fears.

The three main indexes were set for their first annual drop after three straight years of gains as the Federal Reserve’s fastest pace of increase to borrowing costs since the 1980s to tame soaring prices marked an end to the era of easy money.

Investors avoided riskier bets and fled to safer assets such as the U.S. dollar, pushing down the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) 19% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC) 33% this year.

Both indexes were on course for their biggest yearly decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Focus has now shifted to the outlook for corporate earnings in 2023 as investors grow increasingly concerned about the likelihood of a sharp economic downturn due to the rate hikes.

“The economy is going to go south because we’ve raised rates too much. So, by the time we’re a few weeks (into 2023), we’re going to start to get some earnings warnings,” said Dennis Dick, market structure analyst and trader at Triple D Trading.

“(The) back half of 2023 is going to be better because I believe the Fed will stop raising interest rates. And I also believe that they will talk about lowering interest rates.”

Wall Street’s main indexes closed higher on Thursday after unemployment data signaled the Fed’s policy tightening was starting to take a toll on the U.S. labor market.

Still, signs of resilience in the American economy have fueled concerns that the rates could stay higher for longer though easing inflationary pressures have kept alive hopes that the Fed could dial down the size of its hikes.

Most rate-sensitive technology and growth stocks such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) fell between 0.9% and 1.2% in premarket trade on Friday, as U.S. Treasury yields rose.

Growth stocks have been under pressure from rising yields for much of 2022 and have underperformed their economically-linked value peers in a reversal of a decade-long trend.

The S&P 500 growth index (.IGX) is down nearly 30% this year while the value index (.IVX) has dropped 7%, with investors preferring high dividend yielding sectors with steady earnings such as energy.

Money market participants see 67% odds of a 25-basis-point hike in the Fed’s February meeting, with rates expected to peak at 4.96% by the middle of next year.

At 8:10 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 132 points, or 0.4%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 22.75 points, or 0.59%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 104 points, or 0.94%.

U.S.-listed shares of Shaw Communications Inc jumped 9.9% after Canada’s antitrust tribunal approved rival Rogers Communications Inc’s (RCIb.TO) C$20 billion ($14.77 billion) bid for the telecom company.

Apeiron Investment Group

• Top biotech investor Christian Angermayer expects a wave of biotech bankruptcies in 2023.
• It could be a signal to other industries that the economy won’t be recovering any time soon. 
• During the 2008 recession, biotech companies also struggled with mass layoffs and restructuring.

Biotech companies are being crushed by the tough market, and it’s not expected to get better anytime soon.

That’s according to billionaire biotech investor Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investment Group.

Angermayer told Insider that as the economic slowdown continues into 2023, he expects a wave of biotech companies will fail to receive funding and eventually go bankrupt. 

“There will be some great science that unfortunately will not come to fruition,” he said.  

Most biotech companies are still pre-revenue, which means they are hit hard and fast when economic slowdowns occur. 

That’s because companies developing new drugs don’t tend to make any money until the drug comes to market. And to make that happen, the companies need an average of ten years of research, and often more than one billion dollars, to fund clinical trials and generate data that shows the drug is safe and works on patients. 

“Unfortunately for biotech and pre-revenue companies, they are a canary in the coalmine,” Angermayer said. “Inflation hits non-cash flow positive companies hardest and first since the market is always forward-looking, and only later starts to eat the margins of cash-generating enterprises.”

The biotech industry has been struggling since last year and it’s only now that many other companies, like those in big tech, are starting to catch up. Soon, economists predict that the whole country could face a recession.

This pattern has been seen before. In the massive 2008 recession, biotech companies were hit hard and early as venture capital funding faltered. Tens of thousands of jobs were cut and a host of research efforts were either paused or abandoned all together.

We’re already seeing a wave of biotech layoffs in 2022. At least 118 companies in the space have laid off staff this year, according to a layoff tracker published by Fierce Biotech. 

Several years after the 2008 recession, the biotech sector did bounce back. In 2011, biotech companies raised $4.82 billion from venture capitalists, a significant increase from prior years according to Reuters. 

And despite a tough economic landscape, some companies may still be able to convince investors that they’re worth taking a chance on right now. Angermayer said he believes that VCs with an eye for the future will still be willing to place big bets into the right companies.

And other VCs previously told Insider that they were beginning to adjust their priorities amid the economic downturn, prioritizing startups with a quicker path to generating revenue rather than placing large bets on interesting but risky investments. 

Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit

• Jared Kushner denied Biden’s team access to COVID-19 plans in late 2020, a former aide said.
• Kushner said Biden’s team should “absolutely not” be looped in, claimed Alyssa Farah Griffin.
• She made the claim in a newly released transcript of her interview with the Jan. 6 House panel.

Jared Kushner ordered that the incoming Biden administration be excluded from COVID-19 planning in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a former aide said.

Alyssa Farah Griffin made the claim in an interview with the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, according to a newly released transcript.

Farah Griffin told the panel that Kushner shot down the a suggestion to include President Joe Biden’s transition team in planning discussions after the election had been called for Biden, per the transcript.

At the time, Trump was angrily refusing to concede defeat, and hyping his baseless theory that the election had been stolen. Though he left office in January 2021, he continues to claim he won the 2020 vote.

In the transcript, Farah Griffin described former COVID Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx asking whether they should be “looping” the incoming Biden transition in.

“Jared just said, ‘Absolutely not,'” Farah Griffin told the panel. “And then we just moved on.”

Farah Griffin’s allegation, which was first reported by The Independent, is the first to directly put blame for the stonewalling on Kushner.

Biden officials complained at the time that the Trump administration was refusing them access to COVID-19 data in the weeks after the election.

Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told “Fox News Sunday”  on November 15, 2020, that the Trump administration had stonewalled crucial COVID-19 data and plans.

Biden also said that week that Trump officials were harming the US by denying them access, per The New York Times.

“If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind,” Biden told reporters, referring to the date of his inauguration. “More people may die if we don’t coordinate.”

In the same speech, Biden pressed the Trump administration to provide more details about the allocation of COVID-19 vaccinations. “The sooner we have access to the administration’s distribution plan, the sooner this transition would be smoothly moved forward,” Biden said, per Politico.

It comes from one of the dozens of witness transcripts released by the January 6 committee in the past week.

Kushner did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.