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Sunday, May 26, 2019
Here are some new ways to lose all your money
How cryptocurrency scams workNir Kshetri, University of North Carolina – Greensboro
Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion.
The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains.
From researching blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybercrime, I can see that some cryptocurrency fraudsters rely on tried-and-true Ponzi schemes that use income from new participants to pay out returns to earlier investors.
Others use highly automatized and sophisticated processes, including automated software that interacts with Telegram, an internet-based instant-messaging system popular among people interested in cryptocurrencies. Even when a cryptocurrency plan is legitimate, fraudsters can still manipulate its price in the marketplace.
An even more basic question arises, though: How are unsuspecting investors attracted to cryptocurrency frauds in the first place?
Millions of cryptocurrency investors have been scammed out of massive sums of real money. In 2018, losses from cryptocurrency-related crimes amounted to US$1.7 billion.The criminals use both old-fashioned and new-technology tactics to swindle their marks in schemes based on digital currencies exchanged through online databases called blockchains.
From researching blockchain, cryptocurrency and cybercrime, I can see that some cryptocurrency fraudsters rely on tried-and-true Ponzi schemes that use income from new participants to pay out returns to earlier investors.
Others use highly automatized and sophisticated processes, including automated software that interacts with Telegram, an internet-based instant-messaging system popular among people interested in cryptocurrencies. Even when a cryptocurrency plan is legitimate, fraudsters can still manipulate its price in the marketplace.
An even more basic question arises, though: How are unsuspecting investors attracted to cryptocurrency frauds in the first place?
Generic drug makers sued for price-fixing
The Other Collusion
By Phil Mattera for the Dirt Diggers Digest
The Trump crowd may have escaped
prosecution on charges of colluding with the Russians, but another case
involving collusion is moving full steam ahead. Attorneys general from 43 states and Puerto Rico are pursuing a blockbuster lawsuit against the generic drug industry on charges of conspiring to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain trade for more than 100 different products.
Led by Connecticut Attorney General
William Tong, the coalition claims to have extensive evidence in the
form of emails, text messages, telephone records, and statements from former
company insiders documenting that 20 companies such as Teva, Sandoz and Mylan
engaged in a “broad, coordinated and systematic campaign” to conspire with each
other to generate prices increases that in some instances exceeded 1,000
percent.
The case, which could result in a
multi-billion-dollar settlement, is a reminder that price-fixing, one of the
oldest forms of corporate crime, remains a live issue.
Department Of Education Agenda: Make room for the Holy Ghost
Amid
Budget Cuts, DeVos Supports Christian Bible Classes in Public Schools
By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion
Editor
The Trump administration has proposed a 12% cut in Department of
Education spending under its yearly budget. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
is busily eliminating programs to help public schools and promoting private
education efforts under the motto of choice. Yet somehow, magically, there is support for the growth of teaching Christian Bible classes in public schools.
Once again, we have an out-and-out statement about what is
important in this administration—not school shootings, not affirmative efforts
to improve public education, not help with student debt or even the pursuit of
growing sexual assault on school campuses.
Counseling Today magazine argues, for example, that it has
become necessary to lobby seriously to keep federal money for school mental
health.
The
Trump administration’s federal budget proposal cut $8.5 billion from the
Department of Education, including the Student Support and Academic Enrichment
program. That program supported, among other things, mental health, school
security and safety, community engagement—the kind of programs that would
address the issues we hear after every school shooting.
Saturday, May 25, 2019
America needs a long term care program for seniors
A
state model worth examining
Maybe then we’ll look back and
credit Washington state activists for being on the forefront of tackling
America’s elder care crisis.
On May 13, the state became the first in the nation to adopt a social insurance program for long-term care benefits.
On May 13, the state became the first in the nation to adopt a social insurance program for long-term care benefits.
“This is a huge victory for
organizing and people power, for care and caregiving, and for older adults and
people with disabilities,” said Josephine Kalipeni of Caring Across
Generations, one of more than 20 groups that formed Washingtonians for a Responsible Future to push the path-breaking legislation.
Nationally, our long-term care
financing system is broken. Medicare doesn’t currently cover home care or
nursing facility care, while Medicaid coverage varies widely by state. To
qualify, you have to meet poverty criteria, which requires people to spend down
nearly all of their savings before getting coverage.
So what do people do?
CRU hosts a conversation on Thursday
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The past is prologue
Your internet data is rotting
Paul Royster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Many MySpace users were dismayed to discover earlier this year that the social media platform lost 50 million files uploaded between 2003 and 2015.
The failure of MySpace to care for and preserve its users’ content should serve as a reminder that relying on free third-party services can be risky.
MySpace has probably preserved the users’ data; it just lost their content. The data was valuable to MySpace; the users’ content less so.
Paul Royster, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Many MySpace users were dismayed to discover earlier this year that the social media platform lost 50 million files uploaded between 2003 and 2015. The failure of MySpace to care for and preserve its users’ content should serve as a reminder that relying on free third-party services can be risky.
MySpace has probably preserved the users’ data; it just lost their content. The data was valuable to MySpace; the users’ content less so.
One shot for life
New
approach by Stanford researchers could lead to a lifetime flu vaccine
BY
AMY ADAMS
If the virus that causes
flu were an ice cream cone, then the yearly vaccine teaches the immune system
to recognize just the scoop – chocolate one year, strawberry the next. As the
virus changes each year, so too must the vaccine.
A new approach that
teaches the body to recognize the cone portion of the virus – which stays the
same year-to-year – could shake up that yearly vaccination ritual and protect
people against pandemic flu like the one that killed 40 to 50 million people in
1918.
The team working on this new approach, led by Stanford biochemist Peter Kim, has shown early signs that their technique works in lab animals. They warn that they still need to make their vaccine more specific and show it works in much larger studies before testing it in people.
The team working on this new approach, led by Stanford biochemist Peter Kim, has shown early signs that their technique works in lab animals. They warn that they still need to make their vaccine more specific and show it works in much larger studies before testing it in people.
Up next – Trial in Monsanto’s hometown set for August after $2 billion Roundup cancer verdict
"The
things that have gone on here, I want St. Louis juries to hear thisstuff."
After
three stunning courtroom losses in California, the legal battle over the safety
of Monsanto's top-selling Roundup herbicide is headed for the company's
hometown, where corporate officials can be forced to appear on the witness
stand, and legal precedence shows a history of anti-corporate judgments.
Sharlean
Gordon, a cancer-stricken woman in her 50s, is the next plaintiff currently set
for trial. Gordon v. Monsanto starts
Aug. 19 in St. Louis County Circuit Court, located just a few miles from the
St. Louis, Missouri-area campus that was the company's longtime world
headquarters until Bayer bought Monsanto last June.
The case was filed in July 2017 on behalf of more than 75 plaintiffs and Gordon is the first of that group to go to trial.
The case was filed in July 2017 on behalf of more than 75 plaintiffs and Gordon is the first of that group to go to trial.
According
to the complaint, Gordon purchased and used Roundup for at least 15 continuous
years through approximately 2017 and was diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin
lymphoma in 2006. Gordon has gone through two stem cell transplants and spent a
year in a nursing home at one point in her treatment.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Not the way to mark Memorial Day
Pardoning war criminals is a bad way to honor Memorial Day
How are you spending
Memorial Day? Ordinary people may attend parades, host cookouts, or take the
long weekend to visit loved ones.
Donald Trump, on the
other hand, may pardon a few war criminals.
The president
recently requested the files of several accused
and convicted U.S. war criminals, a possible step toward expedited pardons for
individuals who’ve done unspeakable things.
There’s SEAL chief
Edward Gallagher, who senselessly shot to death a teenage girl and an elderly man
in Iraq. Gallagher also brutally stabbed a wounded 15-year-old to death — and
then posed for photos with the body, which he texted to friends.
Trump also requested
the files of Nicholas Slatten, a Blackwater contractor convicted of shooting
dozens of Iraqi civilians in the notorious 2007 Nisour Square massacre, and of
Mathew Golsteyn, who confessed to murdering an unarmed Afghan captive U.S.
soldiers had released.
Myths about gossip busted
Study explores nuances
of who gossips, and what they gossip about
University of
California - Riverside
A new UC Riverside
study asserts that women don't engage in "tear-down" gossip any more
than men, and lower income people don't gossip more than their more well-to-do
counterparts. It also holds younger people are more likely to gossip negatively than their older counterparts.
It's the first-ever study to dig deep into who gossips the most, what topics they gossip about, and how often people gossip -- 52 minutes a day on average.
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