This time of the year, Hollywood rolls out its big-budget films. Monsters and superheroes are framed by spectacular special effects on IMAX screens, and the industry’s big stars flex their muscles, figuratively and literally. This summer, some of the industry’s monster flicks look promising. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports.
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The family of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell is disputing “inferences that Chris knowingly and intentionally” killed himself.
The family said in a statement that without toxicology tests completed, they can’t be sure what led to his death, or if any substances were involved.
According to lawyer Kirk Pasich, Cornell had a prescription for the anti-anxiety drug Ativan, which he said has various side effects.
The musician was found dead in his Detroit hotel room Wednesday after performing at a concert.
Cornell’s wife, Vicky Cornell, said in the statement that when she spoke to her husband after the Detroit show, he told her he may have taken “an extra Ativan or two” and was slurring his words.
The medical examiner in Detroit said Cornell hanged himself. Police told two Detroit newspapers the singer was found with a band around his neck.
We’re liberating the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending May 20, 2017.
This week’s lineup is a real thriller, but you’ll have to wait until the end for the payoff.
Number 5: Ed Sheeran Shape of You
Ed Sheeran slides three slots to fifth place with his former 12-week champ “Shape Of You.” Last year, Ed took a lengthy hiatus from the spotlight. He quit social media and traveled the globe, seeking balance in his life.
Ed says six years in the public eye had left him overweight and dependent on alcohol…he was so stressed that he was losing clumps of hair. Ed says the time off did him a world of good.
Number 4: Kendrick Lamar “Humble”
Another former champ falls in the rankings as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” slips to fourth place.
The BET Award nominations emerged this week, and Kendrick competes in two categories: Best Male Hip-Hop Artist and Best Collaboration for his track “Freedom” with Beyonce. The 2017 BET Awards ceremony takes place on June 25 in Los Angeles.
Number 3: Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee & Justin Bieber “Despacito”
Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber gain a notch in third place with “Despacito,” and Justin’s catching heat over lip synching accusations.
On May 10, Justin gave his first Indian concert in Mumbai, and some fans claimed he mimed his vocals. Actor Rohit Roy says he and his daughter saw Justin chewing gum and drinking water during songs…but also says most of Justin’s young fans didn’t seem to mind.
Number 2: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like”
Bruno Mars loses the singles crown this week, as “That’s What I Like” slips a slot to number two.
Bruno just earned five BET Award nominations, trailing only Beyonce, who has seven. He competes for Album Of The Year; Video Of The Year; Best Male R & B/Pop Artist; Viewer’s Choice; and Video Director Of The Year. June 25 is the big night in Los Angeles.
Number 1: DJ Khaled Featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper & Lil Wayne ” I’m The One”
We promised you a big payoff at the end and now it’s time to deliver: DJ Khaled bags his first Hot 100 championship, as “I’m The One” debuts at the top. It’s only the 28th song to open at number one in the 57-year history of the Hot 100. Along for the ride are Justin Bieber, Quavo from Migos, Lil Wayne and Chance The Rapper…who also earns his first Hot 100 win.
What does next week hold? Join us in seven days.
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A couple of things about the WannaCry cyberattack are certain. It was the biggest in history and it’s a scary preview of things to come. But one thing is a lot less clear: whether North Korea had anything to do with it.
Despite bits and pieces of evidence that suggest a possible North Korea link, experts warn there is nothing conclusive yet, and a lot of reasons to be dubious.
Within days of the attack, respected cybersecurity firms Symantec and Kaspersky Labs hinted at a North Korea link. Google researcher Neel Mehta identified coding similarities between WannaCry and malware from 2015 that was tied to the North. And the media have since spun out stories on Pyongyang’s league of hackers, its past involvement in cyberattacks and its perennial search for new revenue streams, legal or shady.
Meet Lazarus
But identifying hackers behind sophisticated attacks is a notoriously difficult task. Proving they are acting under the explicit orders of a nation state is even trickier.
When experts say North Korea is behind an attack, what they often mean is that Pyongyang is suspected of working with or through a group known as Lazarus. The exact nature of Lazarus is cloudy, but it is thought by some to be a mixture of North Korean hackers operating in cahoots with Chinese “cyber-mercenaries” willing to at times do Pyongyang’s bidding.
Lazarus is a serious player in the cybercrime world.
It is referred to as an “advanced persistent threat” and has been fingered in some very sophisticated operations, including an attempt to breach the security of dozens of banks this year, an attack on the Bangladesh central bank that netted $81 million last year, the 2014 Sony wiper hack and DarkSeoul, which targeted the South Korean government and businesses.
“The Lazarus Group’s activity spans multiple years, going back as far as 2009,” Kaspersky Labs said in a report last year. “Their focus, victimology, and guerrilla-style tactics indicate a dynamic, agile and highly malicious entity, open to data destruction in addition to conventional cyberespionage operations.”
WannaCry doesn’t fit
But some experts see the latest attack as an anomaly.
WannaCry infected more than 200,000 systems in more than 150 countries with demands for payments of $300 in Bitcoin per victim in exchange for the decryption of the files it had taken hostage. Victims received warnings on their computer screens that if they did not pay the ransom within three days, the demand would double. If no ransom was paid, the victim’s data would be deleted.
As ransomware attacks go, that’s a pretty typical setup.
But that’s not — or at least hasn’t been — the way North Korean hackers are believed to work.
“This is not part of the previously observed behavior of DPRK cyberwar units and hacking groups,” Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and founder of North Korea Leadership Watch, said in an email to The Associated Press. “It would represent an entirely new type of cyberattack by the DPRK.”
Madden said the North, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, if it had a role at all, could have instead been involved by giving or providing parts of the packet used in the attack to another state-sponsored hacking group with whom it is in contact.
“This type of ransomware/jailbreak attack is not at all part of the M.O. of the DPRK’s cyberwar units,” he said. “It requires a certain level of social interaction and file storage, outside of those with other hacking groups, that DPRK hackers and cyberwar units would not engage. Basically they’d have to wait on Bitcoin transactions, store the hacked files and maintain contact with the targets of the attack.”
Attack not strategic
Other cybersecurity experts question the Pyongyang angle on different grounds.
James Scott, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a cybersecurity think tank, argues that the evidence remains “circumstantial at best,” and believes WannaCry spread because of luck and negligence, not sophistication.
“While it is possible that the Lazarus group is behind the WannaCry malware, the likelihood of that attribution proving correct is dubious,” he wrote in a recent blog post laying out his case. “It remains more probable that the authors of WannaCry borrowed code from Lazarus or a similar source.”
Scott said he believes North Korea would likely have attacked more strategic targets — two of the hardest-hit countries, China and Russia, are the North’s closest strategic allies — or tried to capture more significant profits.
Very few victims of the WannaCry attack appear to have paid up. As of Friday, only $91,000 had been deposited in the three Bitcoin accounts associated with the ransom demands, according to London-based Elliptic Enterprises, which tracks illicit Bitcoin activity.
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Robots can see well enough to drive a car. Computers can hear our voices and respond to commands. VOA’s Arturo Martinez and Steve Baragona report that engineers are breaking through the next sensation frontier for robots: touch. Steve Baragona narrates.
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Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses, who received the Adler Planetarium’s “Women in Space Science Award” this year, views the opportunity for widely available space flight as a unifying endeavor for humanity. As Kane Farabaugh reports from Chicago, Moses is telling students about space flight as a way to motivate them to pursue careers like hers.
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Nearly 30 years after his death, the work of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is breaking records.
Basquiat’s “Untitled” canvas was sold Thursday at Sotheby’s for $110.5 million. The auction house said the price tag was a record for the artist and also set a record price for an American artist at auction.
Japanese billionaire Yosaku Maezawa, who bought the artwork in a 10-minute bidding war, said he plans to loan the Basquiat to museums and exhibitions before it is housed in a museum in Maezawa’s hometown of Chiba, Japan.
“I hope it brings as much joy to others as it does to me, and that this masterpiece by the 21-year-old Basquiat inspires our future generations,” Maezawa said.
The “Untitled” multimillion-dollar masterpiece depicts a skulllike head and was created with oil-stick, acrylic and spray paint on a giant canvas.
It had been part of a private collection since 1984 when it was sold for just $19,000.
“I’ve never seen so much emotions in such a painting,” said Gregorie Billault, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art. “He’s bringing something never seen before.”
Another Basquiat work, also labeled “Untitled,” sold last year of $57.3 million. Maezawa also purchased that piece.
Basquiat, who was black, was born in Brooklyn to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother.
He died in 1988 from a drug overdose at the age of 27.
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Two-thirds of those caught up in the past week’s global ransomware attack were running Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system without the latest security updates, a survey for Reuters by security ratings firm BitSight found.
Researchers are struggling to try to find early traces of WannaCry, which remains an active threat in hardest-hit China and Russia, believing that identifying “patient zero” could help catch its criminal authors.
They are having more luck dissecting flaws that limited its spread.
Security experts warn that while computers at more than 300,000 internet addresses were hit by the ransomware strain, further attacks that fix weaknesses in WannaCry will follow that hit larger numbers of users, with more devastating consequences.
“Some organizations just aren’t aware of the risks; some don’t want to risk interrupting important business processes; sometimes they are short-staffed,” said Ziv Mador, vice president of security research at Israel’s SpiderLabs Trustwave.
“There are plenty of reasons people wait to patch and none of them are good,” said Mador, a former long-time security researcher for Microsoft.
WannaCry’s worm-like capacity to infect other computers on the same network with no human intervention appear tailored to Windows 7, said Paul Pratley, head of investigations & incident response at UK consulting firm MWR InfoSecurity.
Data from BitSight covering 160,000 internet-connected computers hit by WannaCry, shows that Windows 7 accounts for 67 percent of infections, although it represents less than half of the global distribution of Windows PC users.
Computers running older versions, such as Windows XP used in Britain’s NHS health system, while individually vulnerable to attack, appear incapable of spreading infections and played a far smaller role in the global attack than initially reported.
In laboratory testing, researchers at MWR and Kyptos say they have found Windows XP crashes before the virus can spread.
Windows 10, the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system franchise, accounts for another 15 percent, while older versions of Windows including 8.1, 8, XP and Vista, account for the remainder, BitSight estimated.
Computer basics
Any organization which heeded strongly worded warnings from Microsoft to urgently install a security patch it labeled “critical” when it was released on March 14 on all computers on their networks are immune, experts agree.
Those hit by WannaCry also failed to heed warnings last year from Microsoft to disable a file sharing feature in Windows known as SMB, which a covert hacker group calling itself Shadow Brokers had claimed was used by NSA intelligence operatives to sneak into Windows PCs.
“Clearly people who run supported versions of Windows and patched quickly were not affected”, Trustwave’s Mador said.
Microsoft has faced criticism since 2014 for withdrawing support for older versions of Windows software such as 16-year-old Windows XP and requiring users to pay hefty annual fees instead. The British government canceled a nationwide NHS support contract with Microsoft after a year, leaving upgrades to local trusts.
Seeking to head off further criticism in the wake of the WannaCry outbreak, the U.S. software giant last weekend released a free patch for Windows XP and other older Windows versions that it previously only offered to paying customers.
Microsoft declined to comment for this story.
On Sunday, the U.S. software giant called on intelligence services to strike a better balance between their desire to keep software flaws secret – in order to conduct espionage and cyber warfare – and sharing those flaws with technology companies to better secure the internet.
Half of all internet addresses corrupted globally by WannaCry are located in China and Russia, with 30 and 20 percent respectively. Infection levels spiked again in both countries this week and remained high through Thursday, according to data supplied to Reuters by threat intelligence firm Kryptos Logic.
By contrast, the United States accounts for 7 percent of WannaCry infections while Britain, France and Germany each represent just 2 percent of worldwide attacks, Kryptos said.
Dumb and sophisticated
The ransomware mixes copycat software loaded with amateur coding mistakes and recently leaked spy tools widely believed to have been stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency, creating a vastly potent class of crimeware.
“What really makes the magnitude of this attack so much greater than any other is that the intent has changed from information stealing to business disruption”, said Samil Neino, 32, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Kryptos Logic.
Last Friday, the company’s British-based 22-year-old data breach research chief, Marcus Hutchins, created a “kill-switch”, which security experts have widely hailed as the decisive step in halting the ransomware’s rapid spread around the globe.
WannaCry appears to target mainly enterprises rather than consumers: Once it infects one machine, it silently proliferates across internal networks which can connect hundreds or thousands of machines in large firms, unlike individual consumers at home.
An unknown number of computers sit behind the 300,000 infected internet connections identified by Kryptos.
Because of the way WannaCry spreads sneakily inside organization networks, a far larger total of ransomed computers sitting behind company firewalls may be hit, possibly numbering upward of a million machines. The company is crunching data to arrive at a firmer estimate it aims to release later Thursday.
Liran Eshel, chief executive of cloud storage provider CTERA Networks, said: “The attack shows how sophisticated ransomware has become, forcing even unaffected organizations to rethink strategies.”
Security Experts Find Clues to Ransomware Worm’s Lingering Risks
Researchers from a variety of security firms say they have so far failed to find a way to decrypt files locked up by WannaCry and say chances are low anyone will succeed.
However, a bug in WannaCry code means the attackers cannot use unique bitcoin addresses to track payments, security researchers at Symantec found this week. The result: “Users unlikely to get files restored”, the company’s Security Response team tweeted.
The rapid recovery by many organizations with unpatched computers caught out by the attack may largely be attributed to back-up and retrieval procedures they had in place, enabling technicians to re-image infected machines, experts said.
While encrypting individual computers it infects, WannaCry code does not attack network data-backup systems, as more sophisticated ransomware packages typically do, security experts who have studied WannaCry code agree.
These factors help explain the mystery of why such a tiny number of victims appear to have paid ransoms into the three bitcoin accounts to which WannaCry directs victims.
Less than 300 payments worth around $83,000 had been paid into WannaCry blackmail accounts by Thursday (1800 GMT), six days after the attack began and one day before the ransomware threatens to start locking up victim computers forever.
The Verizon 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, the most comprehensive annual survey of security breakdowns, found that it takes three months before at least half of organizations install major new software security patches.
WannaCry landed nine weeks after Microsoft’s patch arrived.
“The same things are causing the same problems. That’s what the data shows,” MWR research head Pratley said.
“We haven’t seen many organizations fall over and that’s because they did some of the security basics,” he said.
After his Oscar-nominated film “Leviathan” was deemed “anti-Russian” by Russia’s Minister of Culture, director Andrey Zvyagintsev returned to the Cannes Film Festival with an equally bleak critique of Russian society.
Zvyagintsev was to premiere his fourth film, “Loveless,” on Thursday in Cannes, where “Leviathan” won best screenplay three years ago. That film, which also won a Golden Globe, was made with Russian state funding and prompted Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, to refuse any further state financing for what he called Zvyagintsev’s mix of “hopelessness and existential meaninglessness.”
“Loveless” was instead made as an international co-production. The film is ostensibly about a bitterly divorcing couple (Mariana Spivak and Alexey Rozin), whose young son (Matvey Novikov) goes missing. But “Loveless” is also filled with state news reports and other sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant references that – as in “Leviathan” – suggest Russia’s politics has bankrupted its society.
“The Ministry of Culture went to great pains to emphasize how much they disliked ‘Leviathan’ and their desire to avoid the repetition of this kind of mistake in the future,” said producer Alexander Rodnyansky. “After the uproar that ‘Leviathan’ caused in Russia, I made a conscious decision to do this without any state involvement. I decided we didn’t need to embarrass them again and to do the film on our own.”
Grim and controlled, “Loveless” is initially focused on the relationships of its central characters. But Zvyagintsev steadily builds political subtext into the tale that, by the end, moves to the film’s center. State propaganda on Ukraine is heard on the radio and on TV. In one pivotal scene, the mother wears a jogging suit emblazed with “Russia” and the national colors.
Though it didn’t immediately earn the same widespread praise as “Leviathan,” London’s Daily Telegraph praised “Loveless” as “an opaque but pitiless critique on the director’s native Russia.”
Variety wrote: “Zvyagintsev can’t come right out and declare, in bright sharp colors, the full corruption of his society, but he can make a movie like ‘Leviathan,’ which took the spiritual temperature of a middle-class Russia lost in booze and betrayal, and he can make one like ‘Loveless,’ which takes an ominous, reverberating look not at the politics of Russia but at the crisis of empathy at the culture’s core.”
In one unusual exchange Wednesday, a reporter accused Zvyagintsev of proffering his own propaganda.
“Certainly not,” said Zvyagintsev. “If you saw ‘Leviathan’ then you know where I stand vis-a-vis the powers that be. It’s not supposed to be propaganda at all in this episode. You do see these scenes on TV. It’s Russian life, Russian society, Russian anguish at the end of the day. But it’s also universal, not just Russian.”
“Loveless” will be released in Russia by a unit of Sony Pictures and the Walt Disney Co. on June 1. “Leviathan” made $1.5 million at the Russian box office in 2015. Millions, however, watched a copy that leaked online.
On Wednesday, Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film for U.S. distribution.
Mel Brooks made it clear that he was not paid to appear at the premiere of the new HBO documentary “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.”
“They never pay, they never pay,” he joked. “How funny I was tonight and I don’t get a penny.”
Brooks stole the show from fellow Hollywood legends Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke and Norman Lear, with whom he shared the stage after the screening Wednesday. The four longtime friends star in the film, which explores what makes for a vibrant, active life after age 90. Non-famous nonagenarians and centenarians are also featured, including a 101-year-old competitive runner, a 100-year-old pianist and a 98-year-old yoga teacher.
Producer George Shapiro (“Seinfeld”) said the cast is “truly sending a love letter to the human race.”
Reiner, 95, serves as host of the film, interviewing his friends Brooks and Lear, along with 95-year-old Betty White and 100-year-old Kirk Douglas.
All the active elders say the key is keeping yourself healthy and staying engaged with life by doing what you love. The film and its subjects are vivacious and inspiring.
Van Dyke is still singing and dancing – onscreen in the new “Mary Poppins,” in theaters next year, and off-screen with his wife, who’s more than four decades his junior. His advice is to “keep moving,” which is also the title of his book on aging published in 2015. Lear is working on a reboot of his 1975 series “One Day at a Time.” Reiner said writing every day gives his life purpose, adding that he just finished a book called “Too Busy to Die.”
“I just say eat bran,” Brooks quipped.
Tom Bergeron moderated the post-screening discussion with the stars. Once they got going, Brooks declared, “Tom, you’re superfluous, really. Everybody here is a self-starter.”
The conversation was actually one of mutual admiration. Reiner called Brooks “the funniest human being in the world” and Van Dyke “the single most talented man that ever lived.” Van Dyke described his stage-mates as “creative giants” and said Reiner has been his mentor and idol since they met.
When Bergeron asked if any of the men had ever considered retirement, Brooks said, “I thought of retiring Carl, but he won’t.”
They also talked about Donald Trump, the “2000 Year Old Man” and who had the nicest shoes (Brooks).
“Well, I have the most money here, except for Norman,” Brooks said. “Norman, you should dress better.”
“If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast” is set to debut June 5.
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The European Union’s competition watchdog has fined Facebook 110 million euros ($122 million) for providing misleading information over its buyout of mobile messaging service WhatsApp.
The European Commission said Thursday that when Facebook informed the Commission of the 2014 buyout, it said it would be unable to “establish reliable automated matching” between Facebook and WhatsApp user accounts.
But the Commission says that in 2016, WhatsApp offered updates including the possibility of linking user phone numbers with Facebook user IDs.
Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the fine is proportionate and serves as a deterrent.
She said “the Commission must be able to take decisions about mergers’ effects on competition in full knowledge of accurate facts.”
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American country singer Toby Keith, known for songs such as “Whiskey Girl” and “Beer For My Horses,” is scheduled to perform in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, this weekend in an event that coincides with President Donald Trump’s first overseas visit.
Saudi entertainment website Lammt, which is advertising the event, says Saturday’s free concert is open to men only. It will also feature an Arabian lute player.
Saudi Arabia adheres to an ultraconservative interpretation of Islamic law. Alcohol is banned and unrelated men and women are segregated in public.
The kingdom has recently loosened the reins on entertainment, including allowing musical concerts that had been banned for the past two decades.
Saudi Arabia hopes to dazzle Trump with a line-up of summits and events this weekend.
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Fox News CEO and Co-Founder Roger Ailes died Thursday morning at 77 years old, the news organization announced.
The network was informed of Ailes’s death by his wife Elizabeth. News anchors struggled to control their emotions as they read a statement written by Ailes’s wife.
“I am profoundly sad and heartbroken to report that my husband, Roger Ailes, passed away this morning,” the statement said.
“During a career that stretched over more than five decades, his work in entertainment, in politics, and in news affected the lives of many millions. And so even as we mourn his death, we celebrate his life,” the statement continued.
Ailes spent 20 years as the head of Fox, but he was removed last year amid claims of sexual harassment against him.
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Rocker Chris Cornell, who gained fame as the lead singer of the bands Soundgarden and later Audioslave, has died at age 52, according to his representative.
Cornell, who had been on tour, died Wednesday night in Detroit, Brian Bumbery said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Soundgarden played a concert at the Detroit’s Fox Theatre on Wednesday as part of a North American tour that had been scheduled to continue Friday in Columbus, Ohio.
Bumbery called the death “sudden and unexpected” and said his wife and family were shocked by it. The statement said the family would be working closely with the medical examiner to determine the cause and asked for privacy.
Seattle grunge scene
With his powerful, nearly four-octave vocal range, Cornell was one of the leading voices of the 1990s grunge movement with Soundgarden, which emerged as one of the biggest bands out of Seattle’s emerging music scene, joining the likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.
Formed in 1984 by Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, Soundgarden’s third studio album, Badmotorfinger, in 1991 spawned enormously popular singles Jesus Christ Pose, Rusty Cage and Outshined that received regular play on alternative rock radio stations.
Cornell also collaborated with members of what would become Pearl Jam to form Temple of the Dog, which produced a self-titled album in 1991 in tribute to friend Andrew Wood, former frontman for Mother Love Bone.
Three years later, Soundgarden broke through on mainstream radio with the album Superunknown, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Record in 1995. It included hit singles Spoonman, Fell on Black Days, Black Hole Sun, My Wave and The Day I Tried to Live.
On to Audioslave
Soundgarden disbanded in 1997 because of tensions in the band, and Cornell pursued a solo career. In 2001, he joined Audioslave, a supergroup that included former Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford. The band released three albums in six years and also performed at a concert billed as Cuba’s first outdoor rock concert by an American band, though some Cuban artists have disputed that claim.
Audioslave disbanded in 2007, but Cornell and Soundgarden reunited in 2012 and released the band’s sixth studio album, King Animal in 2012.
In addition to his music, Cornell also became involved in philanthropy and started the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation to support children facing challenges, including homelessness, poverty, abuse and neglect.
His contemporaries reacted to his death with shock and surprise on Twitter early Thursday.
Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of the band Bush, called Cornell’s death a “great loss.”
Dave Navarro, best known as a guitarist for Jane’s Addiction, said he was “stunned” by the news.
And Jimmy Page, guitarist for the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, said of Cornell: “Incredibly talented.Incredibly young.Incredibly missed.”
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When Hurricane Sandy swept over Long Island, New York, in October 2012, power was knocked out and traffic lights were inoperable. While driving in her car, Stony Brook University student Vishwaja Muppa, 21, was struck by a police car and later died. The death of Muppa, from India, was one of 53 that were blamed on the storm.
On Stony Brook’s campus, damage was limited and students who sheltered remained safe. But university officials took the hurricane’s visit as a wake-up call and planned a state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
Stony Brook hired two security technology firms, VCORE Solutions and IntraLogic Solutions, to install equipment and software that would bring separate monitoring and communications systems under one roof.
“All the things we have in different silos, managed by different systems, are imported into one virtual environment,” Larry Zacarese, director of emergency management at Stony Brook, told VOA.
From the command center during Hurricane Sandy, Zacarese had little contact with other parts of the campus or local emergency responders off campus, he said. The new system shows images from cameras throughout campus and projects them on several monitors mounted across a 6½-meter-long wall.
Eyes everywhere
The system is regarded as a model and has been studied by other universities. Among the devices linked electronically are entry codes on hundreds of doors across campus, Global Positioning System units, fire alarms, video cameras and large, flat-screen television sets. The information from cameras and sensors is projected onto a large computer screen that shows the entire campus from above, including each building.
“We have a three-dimensional world overlaid on top of satellite imagery of our campus,” Zacarese said.
Software allows operators in the command center to expand each image and go into a building, checking its characteristics and the status of its sensors and alarms on each floor.
The system also allows the Emergency Operations Center to communicate in 15 ways with students across campus, utilizing social media, text messages, public address speakers and the 175 flat-screen television panels across campus. Operators can use the screens to warn students and faculty of a problem. They can use screens at all locations, or only at one site.
“If there is a fire in a chemistry lab,” Zacarese said, “we could communicate specifically to people in the chemistry building, as well as those in the immediate vicinity outside.”
Violence on campus
Zacarese said Stony Brook’s security system is vital in responding to violence and protecting those on campus. Last year, threatening messages of a “terroristic nature” appeared at a campus bus stop, he said. Using the information from cameras and other devices, police were able to identify the perpetrator and arrest him.
“In less than three hours,” Zacarese said, “we had someone in custody.”
There are more than 25,000 students enrolled at Stony Brook during a normal semester, but adding faculty and staff, campus population swells to about 50,000.
“The population size of this campus is essentially as big or bigger than some small cities,” Zacarese said.
The high-tech Emergency Operations Center can also be useful in police and fire investigations, he said, because investigators can use recorded data to find evidence and trace suspects.
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Apple will reportedly announce an update to its lineup of laptops at its annual developer conference, known as WWDC, in June.
The report from Bloomberg suggests Apple is responding to increased competition from rival Microsoft.
According to the report, Apple will announce three new laptops: The MacBook Pro will get a quicker processor, as will the 12-inch MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Air. The processors, according to Bloomberg, will be Intel’s newest, seventh generation chips.
Apple’s laptops account for 11 percent of the company’s annual $216 billion in sales. iPhones make up nearly two thirds of the company’s sales.
Rival Microsoft recently unveiled its own Surface Laptop as a possible competitor to MacBook Air. That device reportedly boots up quickly and has a touchscreen.
According to Bloomberg, the new MacBook Pro would share the same basic external look of the current models.
It has been seven years since Apple redesigned the MacBook Air and more than a year since the company released a new MacBook Pro. The 12-inch MacBook saw its last update last spring.
Apple will also reportedly announce an upgrade to its macOS operating system.
The WWDC will start June 5.
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Ashin Wirathu, the Burmese Buddhist monk known for whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, is the subject of a new documentary airing at France’s renowned Cannes Film Festival, which starts Wednesday.
By filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, “The Venerable W” will appear in a special screening at one of the most prestigious cultural events in the world, marking the culmination of Wirathu’s journey from an obscure rabble-rouser to international infamy.
But his path to notoriety abroad points to questions back home about how much of a role the media have played in fueling his rise. Some believe he has been given too much of a platform for his hateful views or that coverage of his activities merits a more thoughtful approach.
Media attention for anti-Muslim views
“He has been famous because of the interviews and because of the posts in the local media,” said Thitsa Hla Htway, secretary of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Myanmar.
He urged journalists to not report his more repugnant musings and to report on more diverse issues.
“What I want to stress is that they should just stay away from him and his popularity will go down. There are many important issues in Myanmar which are more important than him,” he said.
In and out of prison
This wasn’t the feeling five years ago, when Myanmar was emerging from military rule and grappling with ascendant Buddhist nationalist forces in the form of the 969 movement and Ma Ba Tha, the Committee to Protect Race and Religion.
Sentenced to prison for 25 years in 2003 for inciting violence, Wirathu was released in an amnesty in 2012, the same year that saw the first of several deadly riots to plague the country’s transition to democracy from nearly five decades of military rule.
‘Time magazine’ interview
Though Myanmar has long struggled to contain religious enmity, the story was not often heard outside of the country due to its isolation. That changed with a 2013 TIME magazine issue that put Wirathu on the cover and sought to explain the man’s connection to the mayhem.
The initial coverage was revealing, but over the years, Wirathu was interviewed by countless journalists, including the author of this article. Doubt crept into the worthiness of the enterprise for many journalists.
Social media star
But his following on social media is enormous, his posts can be inflammatory, and the fact that he has not faced strong pushback implies he has connections.
Thiha Saw, the director of the Myanmar Journalism Institute, said he credits Wirathu’s rise more to the explosion of internet access that has occurred in recent years. He added that mainstream media outlets in Myanmar have been cautious about not giving Wirathu an unnecessary amount of exposure.
Supported military
But his level of influence remains an open question. He supported the military-backed ruling party in a 2015 election contest against Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won easily. This past March, Wirathu was hit with a ban on giving sermons for one year.
Even so, he was allowed to travel to a part of northern Rakhine State this month that has been largely closed off to observers since Rohingya militants attacked border posts in October, killing nine and setting off a crackdown that has resulted in accusations of possible crimes against humanity.
British journalist Oliver Slow, the chief of staff for the weekly magazine Frontier Myanmar, said in his personal opinion there needs to be a mix of scrutiny and restraint in the reporting.
Journalists want more scrutiny of Wirathu
“I think obviously he [Wirathu] needs to be heavily scrutinized. His group and the people behind him have the potential to cause massive issues, so I think it’s important to be reporting on him and what they are doing,” Slow said. “But I think we pretty much know all his views now, they’ve been aired for the past four or five years. His views on Muslims, his views on religion, have been so well aired, I just don’t really see any benefit any more of interviewing him.”
Matthew Smith, executive director of the NGO Fortify Rights, said in an email he isn’t persuaded by arguments the media has disproportionately fueled Wirathu’s rise to power, even if Wirathu has benefited from the attention.
“Wirathu is a populist demagogue with a considerable following and powerful connections behind the scenes,” Smith said. “But he and his followers have unarguably used international media attention to their advantage, to build their prominence and advance nationalist and racist narratives.”
Smith wants more investigative coverage of Wirathu.
“We see the occasional profile piece and don’t find those terribly helpful. Most foreign readers, particularly in the West, regard Buddhism as a tranquil religion of peace, so editors have endless fodder in stories of an extremist monk who preaches hatred.”
Schroeder, the filmmaker, did not immediately respond to a request for an interview sent through his production company.
The 70th Cannes Film Festival is opening Wednesday under sunny Cote d’Azur skies, heavy security and widespread unease in the movie industry.
Security was greater than ever at the French festival, with stepped up efforts to restrict access and even an anti-drone system. France remains under a state of emergency since the November 2015 Paris attacks. This is also the first festival held since the nearby Nice attack last year that killed 86 people.
Festival organizers have said everything has been done to maintain a balance of safety and the celebratory atmosphere of the world’s most prestigious film festival.
This year’s festival has its own anxieties. Television, virtual reality and Netflix are a larger presence than ever before in the program.
Arnaud Desplechin’s “Ismael’s Ghosts” will open the festival Wednesday.
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This year’s Eurovision song contest, hosted in Kyiv, saw Portugal crowned the winner.
But Russian officials cried foul even before the competition, as Ukraine banned their last-minute entry of contestant Yulia Samoylova, a singer who is disabled and uses a wheelchair.
“We were all very much surprised,” says chairwoman of the Moscow branch of Russia’s Disabled People Society Nadezhda Lobanova-who is herself in a wheelchair. “We don’t know how they treat their disabled, but it seems to me we wouldn’t have done anything like this. But we were surprised. And we wondered whether they’d let in a healthy singer or whether it was was done only to the disabled person.”
Instead, Samoylova performed on May 9 for Russia’s World War II Victory Day celebration in Russia-annexed Crimea. Her performing in Crimea in 2015 got her blacklisted from entering Ukraine in the first place.
Critics say Russia’s choice of a disabled contestant, while knowing she would be banned for breaking Ukrainian law, was a cynical move.
“It was not just tactless, it was so unfair,” says translator and disability expert Veronica Ivanova-who is also disabled and uses a wheelchair. “It was cruel to use a disabled person in their political games knowing in advance the risks. Hoping that the disability would melt the hearts of the European Union and, especially performing in Ukraine, I think that was very cruel.”
It’s not the first political scandal involving the Eurovision contest and Crimea. Last year’s winning song “1944”, by Crimean Tatar Susana Jamaladynova, was about Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s forced deportation of Crimean Tatars. It was seen as a subtle rebuke of Russia’s current occupation of Crimea.
But Russian claims of Kyiv’s discrimination against disabled are even more dubious as Russia itself still struggles to provide for disabled people. It took five years for Ivanova to get a proper ramp installed at her apartment building.
“It takes a long time due to bureaucratic processes but, in the end, it’s possible,” she says. “In the provinces, I am scared even to imagine how to do it.”
Despite a handicapped accessible sign, for Ivanova to enter her local grocery store requires serious help as there is an impassable step before a ramp that is too steep to safely climb in a wheelchair.
Forcing disabled access is still a challenge, grants Lobanova, as owners don’t want to pay for properly equipping their businesses, and apartment buildings require permission from all residents. “That’s rather ridiculous. But often the residents and especially landlords do not understand,” she says. “So there is a problem with the installation of stairlifts because permission must be received from all residents of the building.”
But Moscow has seen a lot of progress since she started working for disabled people three decades ago.
“There were no disabled in Moscow because there was no possibility to move around. Only those who had their own cars had such an opportunity. It was hard to find employment. It was hard to get education. There was no access,” says Lobanova.
About 85 percent of Moscow is accessible for the disabled, she says, a much higher rate than most Russian regions.
Today, vehicles and sports for Russia’s disabled are available in most cities, while education and jobs come easier, though not without problems
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“In Moscow it is not such an acute problem as a lot of enlightenment work is carried out among employers by various social bodies,” says Ivanova. “In the regions, it’s worse.”
The controversy over Russia’s Eurovision contestant has had one positive outcome, says Ivanova, it raised more discussion on the plight of Russia’s disabled.
Olga Pavlova contributed to this report.
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The hacker group behind the leak of cyber spying tools from the U.S. National Security Agency, which were used in last week’s “ransomware” cyberattack, says it has more code that it plans to start selling through a subscription service launching next month.
The group known as Shadow Brokers posted a statement online Tuesday saying the new data dumps could include exploits for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, and for web browsers and cell phones, as well as “compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean nukes and missile programs.”
Shadow Brokers tried unsuccessfully last year to auction off cyber tools it said were stolen from the NSA.
The WannaCry ransomware virus exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft’s older Windows XP operation system. The company had largely stopped offering support such as security updates for Windows XP, but did release a patch to protect users against the attack that demanded people pay to avoid losing their data.
There is no definitive evidence yet of who used the NSA tools to build WannaCry.
Cybersecurity experts say the technical evidence linking North Korea to the cyberattack is somewhat tenuous, but Pyongyang has the advanced cyber capabilities, and the motive to compensate for lost revenue due to economic sanctions, to be considered a likely suspect.
Since Friday, the WannaCry virus has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries, at least temporarily paralyzing factories, banks, government agencies, hospitals and transportation systems.
On Monday, analysts with the cybersecurity firms Symantec and Kaspersky Lab said some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, which has been identified by some industry experts as a North Korea-run hacking operation.
“Right now we’ve uncovered a couple of what we would call weak indicators or weak links between WannaCry and this group that’s been previously known as Lazarus. Lazarus was behind the attacks on Sony and the Bangladesh banks for example. But these indicators are not enough to definitively say it’s Lazarus at all,” said Symantec Researcher Eric Chien.
Bureau 121
Symantec has linked the Lazarus group to a number of cyberattacks on banks in Asia dating back years, including the digital theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank last year.
The U.S. government blamed North Korea for the hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that leaked damaging personal information after Pyongyang threatened “merciless countermeasures” if the studio released a dark comedy movie that portrayed the assassination of Kim Jong Un. And South Korea had accused the North of attempting to breach the cybersecurity of its banks, broadcasters and power plants on numerous occasions.
Pyongyang is believed to have thousands of highly trained computer experts working for a cyberwarfare unit called Bureau 121, which is part of the General Bureau of Reconnaissance, an elite spy agency run by the military. There have been reports the Lazarus group is affiliated with Bureau 121. Some alleged North Korean-related cyberattacks have also been traced back to a hotel in Shenyang, China near the Korean border.
“Mostly they hack directly, but they hack other countries first and transfer [the data] so various other countries are found when we trace back, but a specific IP address located in Pyongyang can be found in the end,” said Choi Sang-myung, a senior director of the cybersecurity firm Hauri Inc. in Seoul.
Ransom
It is not clear if the purpose of the WannaCry malware is to extort payments or to cause widespread damage.
The WannaCry hackers have demanded ransoms from users, starting at $300 to end the cyberattack, or they threatened to destroy all data on infected computers. So far the perpetrators have raised less than $70,000 according to Tom Bossert, a homeland security adviser for U.S. President Donald Trump.
The countries most affected by WannaCry to date are Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and India, according to Czech security firm Avast.
Suffering under increased economic sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, it would not be surprising for North Korea to attempt to make up for lost revenue through illicit cyber theft and extortion. But the WannaCry ransomware is more advanced than anything North Korean hackers have used in the past.
“Previous ransomwares required people to click an attachment in an email or access a specific website to get infected, but this time [computers] can be infected without getting an email or access to a website, just by connecting an Internet cable,” said Choi.
FireEye Inc., another large cybersecurity firm, said it was also investigating but cautious about drawing a link to North Korea.
In addition to past alleged cyberattacks, North Korea had also been accused of counterfeiting $100 bills which were known as “superdollars” or “supernotes” because the fakes were nearly flawless.
Youmi Kim contributed to this report.
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