Chinese hackers used fake Facebook profiles and spoof websites to target Uyghur activists with spy malware, the social media company announced on Wednesday.
Using various cyber espionage tactics, Facebook said, members of Earth Empusa or Evil Eye sought out Muslim Uyghur activists, journalists and dissidents from China’s Xinjiang region. But the sophisticated operation also stretched to individuals living in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Syria, Australia, Canada and the U.S., according to an investigation by the company.
“This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while obfuscating who’s behind it,” Facebook cybersecurity investigators said in a statement.
The objective of the phishing scam was to lure Uyghur audiences into clicking on false content links — either from a computer or smartphone — to infect the device with malware. In addition to posing as journalists and Uyghur activists, the hackers also developed phony apps and set up imposter websites with nearly identical url’s to real news sites that are popular with Uyghurs.
“On our platform, this cyber espionage campaign manifested primarily in sending links to malicious websites rather than direct sharing of the malware itself,” the company said.
WASHINGTON—The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to 684,000, the fewest since the pandemic erupted a year ago and a sign that the economy is improving.
Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims fell from 781,000 the week before. It is the first time that weekly applications for jobless aid have fallen below 700,000 since mid-March of last year. Before the pandemic tore through the economy, applications had never topped that level.
Still, a total of 18.9 million people are continuing to collect jobless benefits, up from 18.2 million in the previous week. Roughly one-third of those recipients are in extended federal aid programs, which means they’ve been unemployed for at least six months.
Their prolonged joblessness could prove to be a long-term hindrance: Typically, many people who have been unemployed for extended periods struggle to find work even as the economy regains its health.
The economy has been showing signs of emerging from the pandemic crisis with renewed vigor, with spending picking up, manufacturing strengthening and employers adding workers. Hiring increased in February, with 379,000 added jobs—more than double January’s total. The economy expanded at a 4.3 percent annual rate in the final three months of last year, the government estimated Thursday, slightly faster than its previous estimate. That pace is widely expected to accelerate in the coming months, fueled by substantial government rescue aid.
Credit card data from JPMorgan Chase showed that consumer spending jumped last week as the $1,400 checks that are going to most adults under President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion emergency aid package began to be paid out. The Treasury says it has so far distributed 127 million payments worth $325 billion.
Last week, Federal Reserve policymakers substantially boosted their forecast for the economy this year, anticipating growth of 6.5 percent for 2021, up from an estimate of just 4.2 percent three months ago. That would be the fastest rate of expansion in any year since 1984. The Fed also projects that the unemployment rate will reach 4.5 percent by the end of this year, down from the current 6.2 percent.
Last week, some individual states reported sharp drops in applications for aid. In Illinois, they tumbled 80 percent to just under 15,000. In Ohio, they fell by nearly a third to 69,000.
Nationally, though, the number of recipients in an extended federal jobless benefits program jumped by 730,000 to 5.5 million, with nearly all the increase occurring in California.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressed reservations about the Twitter ban of former President Donald Trump, saying he doesn’t like the idea of a “handful of high-tech people” wielding too much power.
Sanders made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, in which Sanders was asked about Twitter banning Trump from its platform.
“Do I feel particularly comfortable that the then-president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about that,” Sanders said.
Trump was kicked off the social media platform after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defending the decision in a series of tweets a week later.
“I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter,” Dorsey wrote.
“I believe this was the right decision for Twitter. We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all,” he added.
Trump said Monday that Twitter and Facebook, which also deplatformed him, did him a “favor.”
President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Pensacola, Fla., on Oct. 23, 2020. (Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
The former president told Newsmax that he was enjoying his break from social media and that he appreciated communicating with the public via emailed press releases.
“I do press releases,” Trump said. “And frankly, they’re more elegant than tweeting, as the expression goes, they’re really much more elegant and the word is getting out.”
Trump declined to confirm rumors he is planning to launch his own social media platform.
“We have a lot of options and something will happen with social media if I want it to happen,” Trump said, adding that he has “tremendous options” regarding launching a viable social media platform given his large following prior to the ban.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told Fox News on Sunday that ”I do think we’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform.”
While no details are available about what a Trump social media platform would look like, the former president’s championing of freedom of expression suggests it would unlikely to be a space that cracks down on controversial content.
Sanders, in his interview with Klein, said that he did not have a solution for how to balance freedom of speech with policing potentially harmful posts.
“I don’t know what the answer is. Do you want hate speech and conspiracy theories traveling all over this country? No,” Sanders said.
“But it is an issue that we have got to be thinking about. Because yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow, it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view,” he said.
Many Republicans and others have accused big tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter of using various techniques to suppress conservative voices and favor left-leaning causes.
The platforms have repeatedly denied any bias, saying they are impartially trying to navigate an intensely polarized landscape of competing voices, some of which get silenced if they violate terms of use guidelines and content policies.
You might have seen South Dakota in the news lately. Legislation proposed by the South Dakota legislature, HB 1217, would require that that K-12 and higher education female sports be “available only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex.” Governor Noem proposed revisions which included limitations of the legislation to K-12 schools. The colleges were out.
Then all hell broke loose. The ADF went on the attack, stating Noem “has downplayed the injustices that girls and women are already facing when they are forced to compete against males.” Noem appeared on Tucker and didn’t help her case, though she didn’t completely melt down. A series of opinion pieces ensued, including one from our friend Margot Cleveland at The Federalist.
Then Noem’s spokesman put out a tone deaf statement. Instead of arguing the merits, he went for a hot take:
“But if any number of conservative pundits are to be believed, that same governor who refused to cave is now caving to the NCAA and Amazon on the issue of fairness in women’s sports. What? Apparently, uninformed cancel culture is fine when the right is eating their own.”
A view from above: What exactly needs fixing in South Dakota?
Let’s take a step back. Forget the legislation for a moment, and consider where South Dakota stands with women’s college sports. According to my research (and please, comment if I’m wrong), South Dakota colleges do not currently allow male-to-female transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports.
Noem, therefore, isn’t asked to fix the current state of college women’s sports in her state. Instead, she is asked to sign legislation that would eliminate an issue that may or may not exist in South Dakota’s future.
What are the real issues?
Male-to-female transgender athletes participating in women’s sports is the manifestation of broader issues, namely the obliteration of a distinction between women and transgender women1 and a furtherance of gender/sex ideologies on a general public who supports the status quo of women’s sports.
In other words, college athletics are just a means to a greater end: societal change. Those means are thwarted, and the ends are avoided, by legislation and by states – and the public – collectively taking a stand and keeping women’s sports for biological women.
How is this countered? With good laws.
There is little doubt that the fight to keep women’s sports for biological women (that is, a woman that was born a woman) will make it to the higher courts – perhaps the Supreme Court. It’s the big leagues. While we agree with the broader aims of HB 1217, the legislation proposed by the South Dakota legislature is so poorly written that it wouldn’t make it out of the minors.
For all the criticisms of Noem, I haven’t heard many people defend HB 1217 as a well-drafted law. And there are reasons for that.
I’ll continue on the theme he developed and explain other legal issues with the legislation.
Section 1 states that female sports are available “only to participants who are female, based on their biological sex.” What of an equal protection claim with the legislation treating male-to-female athletes different than female-to-male athletes? Or how HB 1217 treats male and female sports different? Does this violate the “heightened scrutiny” that the Supreme Court places on “all gender based classifications”?
Section 2 states that a school/sanctioning entity shall obtain a written statement from a student or his parents that the student is not taking and has not taken “any performance enhancing drugs.” Nobody can say with certainty what that term means because the legislation provides zero guidance. Are South Dakota K-12 schools to follow World Anti-Doping Agency guidelines? Which prescription or over-the-counter drugs are on South Dakota’s prohibited list? Are certain levels of stimulants, like caffeine, prohibited? If “performance enhancing drugs” is undefined, how would it survive under South Dakota law, which requires that statutes not be vague?
Section 2 also states that a student may be prohibited from participating in sports where the school/sanctioning entity “has reasonable cause to believe that any information provided in accordance with this section is false or misleading.” But how does a school obtain such “reasonable cause”? Is it a suspicion, something more than a suspicion, or something they believe is more likely than not? Nobody knows because the legislature didn’t define the term or explain in detail exactly how a school can get to the point (evidence, testimony, etc.) of finding reasonable cause. That gives us another vagueness problem. Another question: how does punishment for “reasonable cause to believe” that information is “misleading” square with a student’s privilege to participate in athletics? I’m not sure courts would allow that.
Noem’s Other Proposals
HB 1217 also allowed for a cause of action where a student could sue the school, school district, athletic association or organization, or their employees for violations of the statute. Noem proposed that this section be struck in its entirety.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) General Counsel Kristen Waggoner stated on Twitter that this proposal from Noem “gutted the primary [legal] remedy for high school girls, denying them a right to sue when their rights are violated.”
But is that really the case?
For example, let’s say Governor Noem’s proposals are accepted and the law passes. Let’s further assume that after the law is signed, a high school female runner is scheduled to run against a male-to-female runner from another school in the 100 meter dash. Under Noem’s version of HB 1217, the school allowing the male-to-female athlete to run is in violation of the law.
What would stop a female student athlete from filing suit and requesting an injection/temporary restraining order where a violation of HB 1217 affected her?
Retaliation
Additionally, there are concerns that Noem’s version of HB 1217 allows for “retaliation” against students for complaints of HB 1217 violations. This would have to do with Noem’s proposed removal of a section of the law that includes this language:
If a student is subjected to retaliation or other adverse action, as a result of reporting a violation of this Act to an employee or representative of a school, school district, institution of higher education, athletic association or organization, or to a state or federal governmental entity having oversight authority, that student has a private cause of action for injunctive relief, damages, and any other relief available under law, against the school, school district, institution of higher education, or athletic association or organization.
We can all agree that students should be protected from any type of retaliation for their protected speech. Students do not give up their constitutional rights once they walk into school.
This leads us to a question: If the “retaliation” section of HB 1217 is removed, do students still have a remedy if they are subject to retaliation for reporting violations?
The answer is yes.
As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals stated in Constantine v. George Mason University:
[F]or purposes of a First Amendment retaliation claim under § 1983, a plaintiff suffers adverse action if the defendant’s allegedly retaliatory conduct would likely deter “a person of ordinary firmness” from the exercise of First Amendment rights.
Fault and the Path Forward
Finally, this is a cultural fight that will be resolved in the courts. There’s a long list of conservative losses in such fights: abortion, gay marriage, etc. Why pick this fight with such a poorly written law?
What we need is serious legislation that will protect women’s sports and withstand legal challenges. HB 1217 doesn’t do that. Governor Noem’s revisions don’t do it either.
All of this is a long way of saying there are really two parties at fault here. First, look to the South Dakota legislature for bringing such a flawed law to the Governor. And second, Governor Noem should have offered revisions that would have strengthened the law and removed any fatal vagueness or constitutional problems.
But perhaps there’s more to the issue.
As I write this, something hit me. We condemn the NCAA for bullying states into compliance with the NCAA’s broader political beliefs and criticize Noem for bowing to NCAA pressure.
Yet I continue to watch college football and March Madness. I’m a faithful consumer of these NCAA products. Maybe I’m at fault too.
Senator Rand Paul appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Friday night and recounted a run-in he had with a particularly vociferous ‘Karen’ who reported him to the management for using the running machine without a face mask.
“I was on the treadmill the other day and some Karen goes and tells the people ‘He’s on a treadmill; he’s running without a mask’ Paul told the Fox News host.
“Is this the world we’re going to live in, where everybody’s reporting everyone and the Gestapo’s going to come [and] arrest you?” the Senator questioned.
Arguing that the burden of proof regarding masks should be on the government, Paul continued, “One thing about freedom is, freedom doesn’t have to be practical or have a study to say why you should have to have freedom. They need to have a study and a scientific proof to show us why we shouldn’t have freedom. I shouldn’t have to prove that I want to be free and I want to be left alone and I want to breathe the air.”
Watch:
Elsewhere in the interview, Paul commented on his exchange with Anthony Fauci earlier last week when he accused Fauci of engaging in ‘theater’ by wearing two masks.
“There was Dr. Fauci’s opinion, his conjecture that someday there might be a [COVID-19] variant that escapes the control of the vaccine and becomes a pandemic and hospitalizes and kills people — but there’s no evidence that it has happened. He thinks it might happen, so you need to wear the mask until he’s sure that things that might happen are not going to happen,” Paul said.
He added, “There are no news reports and no scientific studies saying that after vaccination that there is some sort of widespread contagion that people vaccinated are spreading the disease.”
The Senator further noted “What Fauci won’t tell you is that he’s telling you a noble lie. He’s lying to you because he doesn’t think we’re smart enough to make decisions. His fear is, if the vaccinated quit wearing the mask, the unvaccinated will say, ‘What the hell, I’m not wearing a mask either.’”
(Christian Headlines) A Washington University computational biologist says credits from courses with creationist subjects should not be counted toward a science degree.
According to Faithwire, Dr. Joshua Swamidass says this “constructive solution” would hold Christian institutions to a higher academic standard than other colleges.
“Credit from courses that include creation science should not be used toward science degrees,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Nor should they be eligible for transfer to secular institutions.”
He added that those courses with creationism are “deviations from national norms” that “need to be prominently disclosed, tracked and reported.”
His suggestion includes noting on official transcripts that the course included creationism.
Swamidass’ opinion piece comes in response to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), which recently debated if they should still consider the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (Tracs) as an accrediting agency.
Meanwhile, David Klinghoffer, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, said he worries making the change would be more harmful.
“Creationist thoughts and those who think them, are indeed penalized in his system,” Klinghoffer writes in Evolution News & Science Today. “Invidious labeling is all about reward and punishment….and this is a very dangerous concept.”
Steve Pettit, the president of Bob Jones University, also said he was wary of making a change.
“Our students, while adhering to biblical viewpoints on the origin and diversity of life, must be fully conversant with, and able to think critically about both models,” he explained. “Dr. Swamidass’s ‘compromise’—excluding credit from courses presenting evidence for multiple models—would marginalize outstanding scientists with biblical viewpoints about origins,” he said.
Russian authorities on Tuesday said they are prepared to block Twitter in a month’s time if the social media giant does not comply with demands to remove upwards of 3,000 posts of banned content, AP reports.
Driving the news: Russia claims Twitter failed to heed previous warnings to remove posts about child suicide and pornography, and information about drugs. Authorities in the country have a fraught relationship with social media platforms, which for years have provided a forum for political dissent.
What they’re saying: “Twitter doesn’t react to our requests appropriately, and if things go on like this, then in a month it will be blocked, on an out-of-court basis,” said Vadim Subbotin, deputy chief of Russia’s telecommunications regulator.
The Russian government last week said it would slow access to Twitter to “protect Russian citizens,” claiming the site failed to remove illegal content.
The big picture: Russian authorities have long looked askance at the role platforms like Twitter in mobilizing protestors. In 2019, Russia moved to assert more control over its domestic internet by severing itself from the global internet.
President Joe Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to head the administration’s efforts to resolve the current border crisis. Biden said of Harris on Tuesday, “I can think of nobody who is better qualified to do this.”
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey vehemently disagrees that Harris is the right person to handle the immigration crisis and went so far as to declare the vice president to be the “worst possible choice” for remedying the massive migrant surge at the U.S. southern border.
During a news conference Wednesday, Ducey weighed in on Harris being assigned to tackle the border crisis.
“She’s about the worst possible choice that one could make,” Ducey told reporters. “In no point in her career has she given any indication that she considers the border a problem or a serious threat.”
“If President Biden’s intent was to show that he’s taking this issue seriously, he’s really done the exact opposite,” the Republican governor stated, adding that President Biden had “completely trivialized the issue by putting someone in charge who flat out just doesn’t care.”
If President Biden's intent was to show he's taking the crisis at our border seriously, he's actually done the complete opposite by selecting V.P. Harris to lead on this issue. He's completely trivialized this issue by putting someone in charge that flat out, just doesn't care. pic.twitter.com/LCvotQomTa
Harris admitted Wednesday that the border situation is a “huge problem.”
“I’m not going to pretend it’s not. It’s a huge problem,” Harris told CBS News. “Are we looking at overcrowding at the border in particular of these kids? Yes.”
Harris received condemnation earlier this week for appearing to laugh off a question about whether she will be visiting the border. “Not today,” Harris joked before laughing. “But I have before, and I’m sure I will again.”
Washington DC at least doesn’t appear to be a totalitarian nightmare state on the surface anymore
Washington DC at least doesn’t appear to be a totalitarian nightmare state on the surface anymore after US Capitol Police took down the outer perimeter razor wire-topped fencing that has been in place for two months.
The public will be allowed to enter the grounds once again.
The outer fencing around the US Capitol has been taken down. There is still an inner fence. So the public still cannot get too close. #Capitol#DCpic.twitter.com/6tXPodfrVV
The announcement was made Wednesday, with a disclaimer that security can be ramped back up at any time, presumably if Democrats declare there is some sort of batshit crazy non-existent QAnon threat.
All of the fencing that surrounded the outer perimeter of the U.S. Capitol Complex has been removed. Affected roads have reopened. The USCP is ready to quickly ramp up security at a moment’s notice, if needed.
The inner fencing remains in place around the Capitol building itself, with USCP claiming that repairs are still taking place and security is being strengthened.
“The inner perimeter fence, around the Capitol Building, is still in place, while the Department works with our congressional stakeholders and law enforcement partners to strengthen our security posture,” the Capitol Police said in a statement.
As we highlighted, there were efforts to make the fence, which looked like something out of Mad Max, permanent.
While the fence may have gone for now, a Democrat ‘task force’ is pushing for a permanent military security force be stationed around Capitol Hill.
As conservatives such as Tucker Carlson have warned, the troops are not going away, they are there to “prop up the regime”.
