PHOENIX (NewsNation) — U.S. air marshals reportedly may stage a “mutiny” on the Biden administration, saying they plan to refuse the mandatory deployment to assist with the influx of illegal immigration at the southern border, even if it means termination,

The tensions come as the Biden administration is preparing for the possible end of a COVID-era border order, known as Title 42, which allows U.S. authorities to rapidly expel migrants to Mexico or other countries without the chance to seek asylum.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought volunteers from the Federal Air Marshal Service to travel to the southwest border, but when fewer than 150 signed up in October, some were assigned, said Sonya LaBosco, executive director of the Air Marshal National Council.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, said, “The rank and file air marshals are going to refuse to deploy and risk termination.”

“You’re almost going to have a mutiny of a federal agency, which is unheard of,” he added.

The Air National Council said the deployments would hurt U.S. aviation security during the holiday travel season and force marshals to take on unrelated duties at the border, including watching migrant children.

“By taking all these extra assets, bringing them down to the border, doing menial tasks to support the Border Patrol that’s not supported in the first place, makes no sense,” said Frank Terreri, a retired supervisory federal air marshal. “This pretty much puts passengers at risk, meaning their flights, especially during this heavy holiday season, aren’t covered.”

A lawyer for the air marshal group wrote in a Nov. 4 letter to the agency that the deployments are illegal because they involve duties outside the scope of the job. While DHS does not release the number of marshals, LaBosco said there were fewer than 3,000.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the air marshal service employs thousands of air marshals. But, a source with the Transportation Security Administration told NewsNation that air marshals are only on 5% of flights.

In a statement to NewsNation, TSA defended the temporary deployment, saying, “Federal air marshals will continue to support our critical mission on the ground and onboard aircrafts.”

This isn’t the first time this has happened. DHS requested air marshals be sent to the border during a surge in 2019 when encounters exceeded 850,000, only a fraction of the numbers in the last fiscal year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Thursday after a strong Wall Street rally in the previous session on hopes of a potential downshift in the Fed’s policy on aggressive rate hikes, while Salesforce fell on news of its co-CEO to step down.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday it was time to slow down coming interest rate hikes, while also signaling a protracted economic adjustment amid high borrowing costs.

The S&P 500 index (.SPX) closed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since April in the previous session, while the Nasdaq index (.IXIC) ended over 4% higher.

“Seeing a little bit of profit taking,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see market continue its rally.”

Powell, however, cautioned that the fight against inflation was far from over and indicated that the terminal rate will be “somewhat higher” than the 4.6% indicated by policymakers in their September projections.

Traders are now seeing a 91% chance that the Fed will increase its key benchmark rate by 50 basis points in December, with the terminal rate expected to peak under 5% in May 2023. FEDWATCH

Due later in the day, the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, likely rose 0.8% in October from 0.6% in the previous month.

The core PCE, excluding volatile items, is seen easing to 0.3% from 0.5% in September.

Investors also await nonfarm payrolls data on Friday, with the ADP report on Wednesday suggesting cooling demand for labor.

At 7:19 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 56 points, or 0.16%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 2 points, or 0.05%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 13.25 points, or 0.11%.

Salesforce Inc (CRM.N) lost 7.3% in premarket trading on Thursday after the software maker said Bret Taylor would step down as co-chief executive officer in January and that co-founder Marc Benioff will become the sole CEO.

Most megacap technology and growth stocks like Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) were down between and 0.1% and 0.2%.

Costco Wholesale Corp (COST.O) fell 2.8% after the membership-only retail chain reported slower sales growth in November.

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Roivant Sciences (ROIV.O) and Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) on Thursday announced the creation of a new unit to develop RVT-3101, the drugmakers’ treatment for ulcerative colitis.

Bomb disposal experts defused a fifth letter bomb on Thursday as Spain stepped up security to confront a spate of explosive devices sent to high-profile targets, including the prime minister and the Ukrainian ambassador in Madrid.

Early indications suggest that all five of the packages were sent from within Spain, the country’s Deputy Interior Minister told journalists.

Rafael Perez, the junior minister responsible for security, said the homemade devices were sent in brown packages containing a flammable powder and tripwire that would generate “sudden flames” rather than an explosion.

The packages were addressed to the heads of the institutions they were sent to.

Perez said one of the devices had detonated – injuring a security officer at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, three others were detonated by the security forces in controlled explosions and one had been kept intact for investigative purposes.

“It appears that they were all sent from within the country but we are basing this on early visual inspections without yet having an in-depth technical report,” he said.

Perez said it did not yet appear necessary to convene the security committee that would evaluate stepping up Spain’s terrorist threat level, which is already at the second-highest level following Islamist attacks around Europe in the past decade.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that it had, however, ordered police to strengthen security around public buildings and particularly check postal deliveries carefully.

A source close to the investigation said that while the devices were homemade, “they were not something anyone could make”, and investigators were now seeking to trace their contents to their origin.

Spain’s High Court that specialises in terrorism has opened an investigation, a judicial source said.

News of the letter bombs broke on Wednesday lunchtime after police said a security official at the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid had been slightly injured after opening a package.

Ambassador Serhii Pohoreltsev told the Ukrainian news site European Pravda that the suspicious package, addressed to him, was handed to the embassy’s Ukrainian commandant who took it outside to open.

“After opening the box and hearing a click, he tossed it and then heard the explosion…the commandant hurt his hands and received a concussion,” Pohoreltsev was quoted as saying.

“We have instructions from the ministry in Ukraine that given the situation we have to be prepared for any kind of incident… Russian activities outside the country,” Pohoreltsev told Spanish television station TVE.

Russia invaded Ukraine nine months ago in what it calls a “special military operation” that Kyiv and the West describe as an unprovoked, imperialist land grab.

After the incident, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba ordered all of Kyiv’s embassies abroad to “urgently” strengthen security, a Ukrainian ministry spokesperson said.

The Twitter account of the Russian Embassy in Spain posted a statement on Thursday condemning “any threat or terrorist act” in relation to the five letter bombs, “particularly directed at a diplomatic mission”.

Another package was received on Wednesday night at the headquarters of Spanish weapons manufacturer Instalaza in Zaragoza, northeastern Spain, police said.

Instalaza manufactures the C90 rocket launcher that Spain has supplied to Ukraine.

Spanish security forces also found a device early on Thursday in an envelope mailed to a European Union satellite centre located at an air force base in Torrejon de Ardoz, near Madrid, the defence ministry said.

The satellite centre supports the EU’s common foreign and security policy by gathering information from space intelligence devices, according to its website, and was recently described by EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell as being part of “the eyes of Europe”.

On Thursday morning Spain’s Interior Ministry revealed that an “envelope with pyrotechnic material” addressed to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had been received on Nov. 24 and disarmed by his security team. The device was “similar” to packages discovered this week, it said.

A fifth device was received at Spain’s Defence Ministry on Thursday morning and defused by specialist police officers, a defence ministry spokesperson told Reuters.

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Milo Yiannopoulos, the far-right provocateur who is acting as West’s campaign manager for a 2024 presidential run, said he arranged it “just to make Trump’s life miserable,” knowing that news of the controversial guest list would leak.   And: Trump once again conflated American Jewry with Israel. When asked by Fox News about his dinner with antisemites, Trump replied, “I’m the best friend and president to Israel. I gave them the embassy in Jerusalem.” ‘This Israel is not going to be governed by Talmudic law:’ Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former and future prime minister-designate, sought Wednesday to calm concern about the right-wing extremists in his incoming senior cabinet and their opposition to rights for Palestinians and LGBTQ people. “We don’t adopt the prohibition of rights to people who deserve it under Israeli law,” Netanyahu said. Read the story ➤ Bono in 2018 at a performance in California. 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Our food reporter Liza Schoenfein offers a helpful tip for those attending the New York exhibit: Don’t go on an empty stomach. Read the story ➤   But wait, there’s more… The Jewish CEO of Amazon said Wednesday the company would continue to sell the inflammatory film Kyrie Irving promoted, Hebrews to Negroes, saying it has “to allow access to those viewpoints, even if they are objectionable.” Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, was elected Wednesday to succeed Nancy Pelosi as their party’s leader in the House of Representatives, a move welcomed by Jewish leaders and pro-Israel groups. Mayors from 10 American cities – including Jackson, Mississippi, and New York – are in Athens today with counterparts from Europe for a conference on antisemitism. Danny Kalb, a founding member of the 1960s band the Blues Project and a former roommate of Bob Dylan, died at 80. 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The creator of the detective duo Holmes & Watson dedicated much of his time to researching and writing about the case, and Slater was exonerated and released in 1928.   Last year on this day, we reported that Germany cut a reparations check to a Holocaust survivor, then demanded the money back.   In honor of National Pie Day, check out this 1947 Yiddish ad for canned evaporated milk that came complete with a recipe for coconut pumpkin chiffon pie. Two weeks from tonight: Join our Yiddish editor, Rukhl Schaechter, for a conversation with comedian Rabbi Barry Schechter (no relation, different spelling). Imagine The Tonight Show – but in the mameloshn. Register here ➤ PHOTO OF THE DAY (Gilad Stern / Israel Antiquities Authority) Beetle Jews: A 3,000-year-old scarab was discovered during a school field trip to Azor, southeast of Tel Aviv, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.    “We were wandering around when I saw something that looked like a small toy on the ground,” said Gilad Stern, who was leading the tour. “An inner voice said to me: ‘Pick it up and turn it over.’ I was astonished: it was a scarab with a clearly incised scene, the dream of every amateur archaeologist.”  Read more about the discovery from our partners at Haaretz and sign up here to get their free daily newsletter delivered to your inbox.   ––– Thanks to Stewart Ain, PJ Grisar, Lauren Markoe, Sarah Nachimson and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

The post What do Jared and Ivanka think of Trump’s dinner with antisemites? appeared first on The Forward.

Data breaches can be devastating for organizations, these are 3 of the worst incidents that could have been prevented

Data breaches can be devastating for organizations and even entire countries. Eliminating the risk of a data breach is nearly impossible, but some things can be done to reduce it significantly.

Here are three of the worst data breaches that could have been avoided:

Yahoo

In 2013, Yahoo suffered one of the worst data breaches in history, exposing over 3 billion user accounts. The breach was unveiled three years later, during the process where Verizon was acquiring Yahoo.

Yahoo initially reported that 1 billion users had been affected, but the number turned out to be much higher. The attack and lack of transparency from Yahoo reduced the price Verizon had to pay for the acquisition. While no plaintext passwords or financial data was stolen, the hack did expose answers to security questions. This allowed hackers to breach many user accounts.

Experts believe Yahoo was using outdated, easy-to-crack encryption, which led to the attack. The attack is a good reminder of how critical strong encryption is in protecting your website users. This attack could’ve easily been avoided if Yahoo had invested more in the security infrastructure.

SolarWinds attack on U.S. government agencies

In February 2021, several U.S. government agencies and large organizations were hit by cyberattacks due to a vulnerability in their IT infrastructure provider – SolarWinds.

Many government agencies and Fortune 500 companies use SolarWinds, which contributed to the severity of the attack. Because of SolarWinds’ deep integration with other software solutions, organizations were forced to continue working with it despite knowing that a breach had occurred.

SolarWinds employees claim that the attack resulted from a weak password that an intern had used – “solarwinds123”. The attack affected thousands of SolarWinds’ clients, causing billions in damages.

All of that could’ve been avoided had SolarWinds implemented a strong password policy. Weak passwords are the easiest way hackers can hack into a system. Organizations must have a robust password policy. One way to help enforce such a policy is by providing employees with a password manager for easy password generation and storage.

Target

Near the holiday season of 2013, hackers exposed the credit and debit card information of over 110 million Target customers. Because it was impossible to recover the data, Target had to pay tens of millions in damages to affected customers. The attack happened around Black Friday, which was particularly bad for business due to the bad publicity.

The hackers used social engineering techniques, sending phishing emails to several of Target’s vendors, and successfully breached Target’s network. They then installed malware, which helped them obtain customers’ credit/debit card information.

Organizations are now very interconnected and depend on the services of vendors, suppliers, and other entities. Focusing on your own cybersecurity practices isn’t enough. You must also worry about that of your third parties. Before engaging in business with a third party, ensure that they meet your cybersecurity standards. You can do so by sending questionnaires or through security ratings.

Final thoughts

Organizations are constantly under threat of data breaches. Attackers are relentless and regularly discover new ways to harm. While eliminating the risk completely is impossible, there are a few things organizations can do to improve their cybersecurity posture. Here are some of them:

• Strong encryption
• Strong password policy for employees
• Third-party risk management
• Educate employees about cyber risks

About the Author: Anas Baig

With a passion for working on disruptive products, Anas Baig is currently working as a Product Lead at the Silicon Valley based company – Securiti.ai. He holds a degree of Computer Science from Iqra University and specializes in Information Security & Data Privacy.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breaches)

The post 3 of the Worst Data Breaches in the World That Could Have Been Prevented appeared first on Security Affairs.

On May 26, 2022, Joe Garcia died suddenly of a heart attack just two days after his wife, Irma, was killed in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting. The papers reported a Garcia’s family member saying, “I truly believe Joe died of a broken heart.”

As a cardiac scientist working in this field, I am regularly asked to comment on tragic cases like these. Sometimes they are celebrities such as Debbie Reynolds, who died soon after her daughter, Carrie Fisher. But often, they are long-married couples who pass away on the same day or soon after.

These events can be rare and sporadic, so it is hard to find a pattern. But large and well-controlled studies are now confirming that this is a real phenomenon and are measuring its extent. A U.S. study on short and long-term associations between widowhood and mortality, following 12,000 people who are over 50 years old and in stable couples, showed that male participants were nearly twice as likely to die in the three months following their partners death, and that increased death rates were still seen over a year later.

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Death from heart disease after bereavement can be sudden, especially when the circumstances are devastating as with the Uvalde shooting. Sudden cardiac death is usually caused by a massive disturbance in heart rhythm (or arrhythmia) called ventricular fibrillation, either as part of a heart attack, or just by itself. The heart twists and writhes in an uncoordinated way, and is no longer able to pump blood into the body. Without immediate CPR or access to a defibrillator, death occurs in around four minutes.

Read More: This Woman’s Heart Actually ‘Broke’ After Her Dog Died. Here’s How It Happened

The key instigator of this disastrous effect is adrenaline. We know that adrenaline is the heart stimulant that makes our hearts beat harder and faster when we exercise or in times of stress. Adrenaline is part of the fight-or-flight mechanism that has evolved to get us out of danger, and it brings extra calcium into the heart cells to increase the force of beating. Blood levels of adrenaline shoot up when we are under threat.

But adrenaline has a dark side—too much can throw the heart into calcium overload and uncontrolled arrhythmia.

Bereavement is a huge emotional shock, and this can cause a rapid surge of adrenaline. Other extreme physical or emotional stresses can have the same effect: earthquakes and other natural disasters, unaccustomed intense exercise, arguments, or taser stunning. Watching sport is a strong trigger, with cardiac admissions to hospitals regularly peaking during big football finals like the World Cup.

Most of us can cope with even very distressing events without tipping into drastic heart collapse. But what is it that makes the difference between dying of a broken heart and surviving a stressful event?

The clue has come from an unlikely source, another disease called broken heart syndrome, but with a very different demographic and outcome: Takotsubo syndrome. Takotsubo differs in that it is predominantly (80 to 90%) seen in post-menopausal women, compared to sudden cardiac death, which is 80% male. Exactly the same triggers are involved in sudden cardiac death, but the death rate is far lower—around 5%.

Typically, the Takotsubo patient comes into hospital after a stressful event and with all the signs of a heart attack: chest pain, electrical signal changes, and increased markers of heart damage in the blood. But when their heart is scanned, no blood vessel blockage or death of cardiac muscle is seen.

Instead, the cardiac heart muscle undergoes a very unusual pattern of partial paralysis, often around the lower part of the heart, known as the apex. New imaging picking up this pattern was first used in Japan over 20 years ago on patients being admitted for heart problems during an earthquake. The Japanese cardiologists named the condition after the tako-tsubo—a fishing pot meant for trapping octopus—because the left ventricle of the heart resembles this type of pot.

While there is an immediate danger to life from the heart failure, the most striking phenomenon is that recovery can be very rapid—days or weeks. Patients can walk out of hospital apparently perfectly well. Chronic heart failure this severe is usually very persistent and hard to reverse, even with the best treatments.

The triggers for sudden cardiac death are also the triggers for Takotsubo syndrome: bereavement and other strong emotional or physical stresses. Even pleasant but still emotional events, like a surprise birthday party, have been known to do the same. Two particular triggers stand out: an adrenaline-secreting tumor and the epi-pens used for anaphylactic shock, which contain adrenaline. Adrenaline (and drugs that mimic it) is the culprit in Takotsubo, as well.

But why is adrenaline now depressing heart function in these circumstances instead of stimulating it? And more importantly, why are post-menopausal women reacting in this very different way?

We decided to test this out. In a laboratory, we set up a system to explore the mechanism of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Rats were anaesthetised, and given a dose of adrenaline which would be equivalent (adjusted for their smaller body weight) to a single epi-pen treatment in a person. Amazingly, just this one dose was able to produce the Takotsubo pattern of paralysis at the apex of the rat heart, and the effect was reversible as the dose wore off over the course of a hour.

Using this model, we were able to work out that very high adrenaline could switch to a new signaling pathway that temporarily depressed cardiac function. Intriguingly, this new signaling system was also linked to known protective pathways which act to shield the heart against damage.

At last, we were ready to see if blocking this new signaling pathway would prevent Takotsubo, hoping that we would have a targeted treatment for the disease. Patients with Takotsubo were being treated supportively with the hope they would recover spontaneously, but there was no specific drug to give.

Our rats were given the blocker together with adrenaline to try to stop the Takotsubo effect, and it worked. The contraction of the heart was not depressed. But, to our dismay, blocking the new pathway also triggered massive arrhythmia. The high dose of adrenaline was overstimulating the heart and flooding the cells with an excess of calcium. Now, the adrenaline was mimicking the effects seen in sudden cardiac death, with ventricular fibrillation and rapid failure of cardiac function.

Our hoped-for Takotsubo cure was a disaster. However, it gave us a new and important insight into the disease. Maybe Takotsubo is an effort by the body to avert the worst consequences of a massive adrenaline surge, by switching signaling to a protective mode. The heart is temporarily shut down to prevent a worse outcome, and maybe this protective pathway is active in most of us—but in a less dramatic form—to save us from the effects of sudden stress. For instance, during panic attacks, people can report feeling as if they are having a heart attack, but this quickly wears off as they recover.

Finally, what is the basis for the sex difference in this response to adrenaline? Estrogen, we know, is a powerful protector against arrhythmia, and younger women seem less likely to get either of the broken heart syndromes. The difference in risk of sudden cardiac death between men and women is greatest below the age of 50. My personal conjecture is that the risk from the physical and emotional stress of labor and birth has led to an evolutionary pressure for protective mechanisms against adrenaline toxicity in fertile women.

Women in the menopausal range will have decreasing levels of estrogen, but still some residual amounts. Perhaps they are moving from the protected status of the younger women towards the more vulnerable male situation, but with still some remaining advantage? Men were 90% more likely to die in the first three months after bereavement, but for women in the 50-year-and-older range this figure was only 50%.

So yes, you can die of a broken heart, but your risk depends on both your sex and age. Perhaps, then, the better question remains: if you can die of a broken heart, why are so many of us spared?

Coroner Cathy Mabbutt said the wounds were “pretty extensive”, each victim was stabbed a different amount of times and in different places on the body, and that the autopsies did reveal one thing: “It’s personal.”

independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…