Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ Australian watchdog sues Amazon unit over children’s backpack safety

    The company is accused of supplying children’s backpacks that were not compliant with mandatory safety standards for button batteries.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • The Motley Fool ☛ Amazon is Cutting Even More Jobs, Following the Mass Layoffs in January. Can It Maintain Its Cloud Dominance as Employees Exit?

    Those reductions, along with its prior elimination of about 14,000 corporate positions last October, enabled Amazon to achieve its restructuring goal of cutting 30,000 jobs. Yet it continued pruning its workforce over the past four months, with an undisclosed number of additional layoffs across its AWS, Prime Video, MGM, and selling partner service divisions.

  • After Microsoft (MSFT) Earnings, Peter Schiff Warns $1 Trillion AI Spending Spree Represents Capital Misallocation

• Security

  • Security Week ☛ Gitea Vulnerability Exposed 30,000 Deployments to Attacks

    The security flaw allowed attackers to pull private container images, exposing source code, credentials, and infrastructure.

  • Security Week ☛ Critical FortiClient EMS Vulnerability Exploited in Fresh Attacks

    Fortinet rolled out hotfixes for the security defect in April, warning that it had been exploited in the wild as a zero-day and urging immediate patching.

  • Security Week ☛ Carnival Data Breach Exposed 6 Million People

    Data breach leaves nearly 6 million Carnival customers navigating identity theft risks.

  • Federal News Network ☛ ‘Detect, understand, respond’ driving OMB, CISA’s latest cyber efforts

    Nick Andersen, the acting director of CISA, said an intergovernmental effort is providing critical infrastructure owners more help against cyber threats.

  • PCLinuxOS Magazine ☛ ICYMI: Copy Fail Malware Strikes Linux

    Nearly every Linux system built since 2017 is vulnerable to the ‘Copy Fail’ flaw, according to an article from The Record. Security researchers and European cybersecurity officials are urging administrators to address the risk posed by a newly discovered security flaw that has been hiding in the Linux operating system for nearly a decade. The bug allows anyone with a basic account on an affected computer to seize full administrative control. It also works as an escape route from cloud containers, meaning a compromised application running inside a supposedly isolated environment can break out and take control of the entire host server — a major risk given the cloud industry’s dependence on Linux distributions. Patches and mitigations began reaching users Thursday, though some systems remain unprotected. An interim workaround circulating online does not function correctly on all distributions. The flaw, dubbed “Copy Fail,” was publicly disclosed this week by researchers at cybersecurity firm Theori, which said it found the bug using an AI-powered scanning tool called Xint Code. (The previous link provides a VERY detailed explanation of the vulnerability, and how to remediate the problem).

• Defence/Aggression

  • France24 ☛ Israeli entities to be added to UN sexual violence list over alleged Palestinian detainee abuse

    This year's United Nations report on sexual violence in conflict zones will include Israeli entities in an annex of entities responsible for or suspected of carrying conflict-related sexual violence, Israeli officials confirmed Thursday in comments slamming the decision. Last year's report said it had received "credible information" of sexual violence carried out by security forces in Israeli detention centres.

  • France24 ☛ US designates Brazilian crime groups as terrorist organisations

    The United States on Thursday designated two of Brazil’s most powerful criminal organisations, the Red Command (CV) and First Capital Command (PCC), as terrorist organisations, escalating tensions with Brasilia, which strongly opposes the move. US officials said the groups operate transnational criminal networks and pose a security threat.

  • France24 ☛ Clashes between armed groups in Colombia kill at least 52 guerrillas on eve of election

    Fighting between rival armed groups killed at least 52 guerrilla fighters in the Colombian Amazon, one of the groups said Thursday. The clashes come just days ahead of crucial presidential elections that centre in part around rival strategies towards dealing with the country's decades-old insurgencies.

  • New York Times ☛ Carney Says That Canada’s Distancing is Good for U.S. in New York Speech

    Speaking in New York, the Canadian prime minister called for a new relationship between Canada and United States.

• Environment

  • Energy/Transportation

    • France24 ☛ Brazil's Lula backs new oil, gas drilling in western Amazon

      Brazilian oil giant Petrobras announced Wednesday the drilling of new wells at an oil and gas field in the Amazon rainforest for the first time in a decade, at an event attended by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In November, Lula hosted the COP30 UN climate conference where he urged world leaders to present "roadmaps" for the transition away from fossil fuels.

• Finance

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Civil servants may get up to 4.12% pay rise as gov’t plans appraisal revamp in October

    The Hong Kong government could raise civil servants’ salaries by up to 4.12 per cent this year and plans to introduce a revamped appraisal system for its employees in October, a minister has said.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • JURIST ☛ California governor signs bill restricting law enforcement at polls ahead of June 2 primary

    California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 73 on Wednesday, expanding the state’s election security protections by restricting unauthorized law enforcement access to polling places, banning military personnel from voting locations, and making it a felony to seize voted ballots ahead of the June 2 statewide primary election.

  • Bridge Michigan ☛ Gretchen Whitmer on 2028 presidential aspirations: ‘Never say never’

    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used her final keynote speech at the Mackinac Island Policy Conference to outline priorities for the remainder of her term and said “never say never” to a question about whether she wants to run for president.

  • JURIST ☛ South Africa President challenges independent panel corruption report in court following ‘Farmgate’ scandal

    South African President Cyril Ramaphosa re-filed ​in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday, challenging a panel report alleging he violated the constitution during his previous “Farmgate” scandal. In 2020, thieves broke into President Ramaphosa’s farm and stole over half a million dollars from inside one of his couches.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Press Gazette ☛ Telegraph, Sun and Mirror hoaxed by Hey Hi (AI) picture of Thai police in drag

      Image shared on Thai police Facebook (Farcebook) page was created using AI.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • France24 ☛ Crackdown on culture: Israel censoring Palestinian voices

    A United Nations commission, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have all separately concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war in October 2023. The cultural life of the enclave is also profoundly threatened, with historic buildings destroyed and writers, poets and academics among that huge death toll.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • JURIST ☛ Rights group condemns forced labor in Sri Lanka

    Amnesty International on Wednesday released a report alleging that tea workers on private estates in Sri Lanka are being subjected to conditions that “may amount to forced labour,” calling on the government to launch immediate criminal investigations and targeted inspections.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Patents

    • Dennis Crouch/Patently-O ☛ The Myth of Patent Growth

      U.S. patent monopoly applications doubled in 20 years while U.S.-origin original filings stayed flat. What does that say about American innovation?

    • Kangaroo Courts

      • JUVE ☛ Battle in InterDigital vs Amazon reaches next stage at Court of Appeal [ed: UPC is illegal; JUVE is paid to normalise a fake kangaroo court]

        At the centre of the dispute is Amazon’s request for an interim licence at the UK High Court and the UPC’s preliminary measures against it. The situation had escalated over the Christmas period and into the spring, attracting a great deal of attention.

      • JUVE ☛ Pirelli wins against Chinese tyre makers Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber and Tianjin Kingtyre at UPC [Ed: Illegal court; they continue to violate constitutions and the media refuses to talk about it]

        Last November’s International Two-Wheeler Exhibition (EICMA) has had repercussions for two Chinese tyre manufacturers. This week, the Milan local division ruled that both had infringed a patent monopoly held by the Italian company Pirelli Tyre. The proceedings between Pirelli and Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber concern the infringement of EP 3 519 207.

  • Copyrights

    • Public Domain Review ☛ Animal, Vegetable, Lamb: The Zoophyte from Tartary

      In the Middle Ages, rumours spread across Europe of a strange hybrid creature, half-animal, half-plant, known as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary. A hoax based on fern rhizomes? A euphemism for culled fetal lambs? Or perhaps a medieval misapprehension of cotton? Thom Sliwowski traces the roots of this fabled zoophyte.