Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial has ended in a mistrial after jurors remained deadlocked on all counts after 52 hours of deliberation. Cosby faced three counts of aggravated indecent assault. Andrea Constand has accused Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her at his home in 2004. Constand is the former director of operations for the women’s basketball team at Temple University where Cosby was a trustee.
Constand is one of about 60 women who have accused Cosby of sexual assaults dating back decades. It’s the only criminal case stemming from dozens of accusations of sexual misconduct — all of which the comedian/actor denies. She says she was “paralyzed” by pills he gave her while he claimed it was just Benadryl and that the encounter was consensual.
Cosby did not take the stand, but his lawyers have maintained the physical contact was mutual and raised questions as to why Constand kept in phone contact with Cosby after the alleged incident. They also questioned why she did not report it for a year. Prosecutors declined to charge Cosby in 2004 but reopened the case after the scandal erupted two and
a half years ago.
The jurors were chosen in the Pittsburgh area and bussed in to Philadelphia for the trial. After six days of testimony, the jury of seven men and five women began deliberations. They were soon deadlocked but continued to deliberate, reviewing reams of testimony. After 52 hours of deliberations, Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill accepted a defense motion for a mistrial.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele immediately announced that he plans to retry the case and ordered that Cosby can remain free on $1 million bail he posted when he was first charged. Steele later told reporters that there “was no pause or hesitation” in deciding to retry the case and that “we had a significant amount of evidence … now we have to prove (the case) beyond a reasonable doubt.” Prosecutors will retry him on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, a charge that carries 10 years in prison.
Outside the courthouse, lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents some of the women who have accused Cosby of sexual misconduct, said that “round two may be just around the corner, and this time, justice may prevail.” She commended her client Kelly Johnson, the only other accuser allowed to testify at the trial, and thanked all the accusers who have spoken out. Several of Cosby’s accusers have been attending the trial.
Read more
The gunman who killed three men at a UPS facility in San Francisco and then killed himself has been identified as 38-year-old Jimmy Lam. The victims were Wayne Chan, 56, and Benson Louie, 50, both of San Francisco; and 46-year-old Michael Lefiti of Hercules, California. Two others were shot but survived the Wednesday morning shooting at the UPS San Francisco Customer Center.
Officers responded to a report of an active shooter about 8:55 a.m. local time at the UPS package sorting and delivery facility. When officers entered the building, they found the suspect armed with an assault pistol. The suspect immediately killed himself and no officers fired their weapons during the incident.
Lam, had worked as a driver for the Potrero Hill facility which employs 350 people. He was wearing his uniform during the shooting spree and opened fire on coworkers during a morning meeting for UPS drivers. Joseph Cilia, with a local Teamsters union that represents UPS workers in San Francisco has stated that Lam filed an internal grievance in March saying he was working excessive overtime. Cilia told the Associated Press that Lam did not seem angry when he filed the grievance.
A police official said it appears that Lam felt disrespected by co-workers, but it’s not clear if that was the motivation for the bloodshed. Lam appears to have targeted the three drivers he fatally shot. Shaun Vu, a senior UPS driver, has said Lam also struggled with personal issues and was depressed a few years ago. Vu said that Lam had shown improvement but seemed troubled a few weeks ago-which was around the time he filed the grievance.
Another UPS driver Leopold Parker, who witnessed the shooting, said that he was standing a few feet behind Benson Louie during the morning meeting when Lam walked up and shot Louie in the head. Lam then glanced at Parker but walked the other way so Parker jumped into the cab of his truck and later ran to the roof of the building.
Parker said drivers at the warehouse generally got along and didn’t mind working there. If they did have a problem with colleagues, they would talk to them or ignore them. He also stressed that drivers spent much of their time alone in their trucks, so they had limited interaction with their colleagues. He recalls that Lam sometimes complained about the workload but he never suspected that he would turn violent.
Other witnesses said that Mike “Big Mike” Lefiti was fleeing from the building as Lam followed him into the street and shot him. Mike McDonald, an area resident was walking home from work when he found Lefiti face down, bleeding profusely from the back. McDonald stayed with him and tried to comfort him until help arrived. McDonald said that in his final moments, Lefiti spoke lovingly about his three children. “He said he loves his family, he loves his children and that he didn’t do anything to this man.”
Read more
Two men died and a third is recovering after being stabbed on an Oregon train while defending two teenage girls from harassment. Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, has been charged with two counts of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, first-degree assault, three counts of unlawful use of a weapon and two counts of intimidation.
According to witness accounts and the arrest affidavit, Christian boarded a MAX light rail train on Friday, May 26, at 4:19 p.m. at the Rose Quarter stop. He then went on an anti-Islam tirade directed at two African-American teenagers on board — one who was wearing a traditional Muslim hijab. Christian shouted for the teens to get out of his country and to go home.
After making several threatening comments about “decapitating heads,” several men stepped in to diffuse the situation. Frightened, the two teens moved to the back of the train while other passengers told him he couldn’t treat people that way.
Videos from the train camera and a passenger’s phone showed Christian “making a sudden move” toward one of the victims, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, of Portland. Namkai-Meche responded by standing up as Christian shouted into his face “Do something!” Another passenger, 21-year-old Portland State University student, Micah Fletcher stood up as well and Christian shouted “Do something!” as he shoved Fletcher in the chest.
This is when Christian appears to pull a folded knife from his pocket that he concealed in his hand, the affidavit said. Fletcher shoved Christian so hard the suspect lost his balance. Fletcher told Christian to get off the train and Christian shouted “hit me again”.
Video shows Christian swinging his arm and stabbing Fletcher in the neck. He then stabbed Namkai-Meche twice in the neck. Ricky John Best, 53, of Happy Valley moved forward to intervene and was stabbed in the neck. Namkai-Meche had sat down to try to stop the bleeding from his wound when Christian pushed Best into him and stabbed both men again.
When the train came to a stop Fletcher who was clutching his neck, exited the train as passengers on the platform tried to help him. He was treated for his injuries and released by the hospital. Fletcher said in an interview that his injuries missed being fatal by one millimeter.
Ricky Best fell to the floor and two men rushed over to start CPR but the veteran and father of four, died at the scene. Namkai-Meche lay on the floor as passengers-including one of the teens he defended-reassured him and tried to stop the bleeding. He later died at the hospital.
The train video showed Christian grabbing his belongings and a bag dropped by the Muslim teenager and leaving the train while waving his knife as he got off the train. He threatened several people on the platform with his knife and tossed the teen’s bag onto the freeway as he exited. Several witnesses followed Christian and directed responding police officers to his whereabouts.
After his arrest, Christian admitted to drinking Sangria before and while on the train. He has what appears to be an extremist ideology with an affinity for Nazis and political violence, according to his social media postings.
Read more
To the surprise of other world leaders, President Trump announced that the US will pull out of the Paris global climate pact. Abandoning the pact would isolate the US from international allies that spent years negotiating the 2015 agreement to fight global warming and pollution by reducing carbon emissions in nearly 200 nations.
The decision means the US will join only Nicaragua and Syria as UN-member countries that aren’t aboard. The US emits more carbon into the atmosphere than any country except China. Abandoning the pact was one of Trump’s principal campaign pledges and the decision reverses one of the Obama administration’s signature achievements. Still, America’s allies have expressed alarm about the likely consequences.
“The United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord but begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction in terms that are fair to the United States and its workers. So we’re getting out. We’ll see if we can make a deal. If we can’t, that’s fine,” Trump said to cheers during a ceremony in the Rose Garden.
A White House spokesperson said “The accord was negotiated poorly by the Obama Administration and signed out of desperation. The US is already leading the world in energy production and doesn’t need a bad deal that will harm American workers.”
The Paris climate agreement sets a goal for its signatories to keep warming below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), compared with preindustrial times, by 2100, with a goal of keeping global warming to a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Each country sets its own voluntary goals for emissions cuts, pledging to become stricter as time goes by and there are no binding rules about how the countries should meet those goals.
When the agreement was signed, the US agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to between 26-28% of 2005 levels by 2025. The agreement does not officially go into effect until 2020, but meeting those goals would require all countries to take steps preemptive steps before 2020- like setting standards for vehicle emissions, appliances and power plants.
Critics of the decision to abandon the Paris agreement believe the likelihood of international cooperation on carbon-cutting goals past 2025 is on far shakier ground, and that the US will be forfeiting a seat at the table to shape the climate future.
They also feel it does enormous damage to our international credibility as withdrawal from international negotiations is becoming a pattern. The United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal under Trump’s first executive order. Trump is also hostile to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in which members pledge military cooperation with one another. Many feel it will be harder to negotiate other international issues without trust from other nations.
Read more
In an effort to broaden the company’s “social interaction” with our clients and FaceBook fans, Daily Trivia Questions are posted on both of our business pages. Here are the weekly standings for this past week, and the winner of the Sunday night Weekly Drawing for an AmEx gift card!
Congratulations – To this past week’s Trivia Contest Winner!! Our latest contest winner for the weekly FaceBook HealthInsurance4Everyone/Health & Life Solutions, LLC Trivia Contest, drawn randomly by computer late Sunday evening, June 4th, 2017 was:
CHRISTINA MONTES
San Antonio, TX
Winner Of A $25.00 AmEx Gift Card
Each day, fans of either of our company FaceBook pages (HealthInsurance4Everyone or Health & Life Solutions LLC) are able to test their skills with our Daily TRIVIA QUESTION. The first 20 winners who post the correct answer to the TRIVIA QUESTION, will then get entered into the weekly drawing held late on Sunday evenings for a $25.00 Am Ex Gift. Card
Weekly Gift Card winners will be posted in our blog at this site. Remember to become a FaceBook “fan” on either of our company pages to enter and post your answers.
Here are the daily contestants from last week’s Trivia Contest that were entered into the Sunday drawing:
5/29/17
Paula Rousseau
Diane Hamric
Amy Conyers
Althea Thomas
Tracy Shafer
Patricia Oehlert Vazquez
Kayla Clemons
Amy Stonger
Alicia Smith
StefJohn McClain-Sampson
Shannon R Garrett
Jessica Miller
Sheila Carvell
Dena Baji
Ashley Stamey Phillips
Anna Nichols
Amanda Kyrie’ Ayala
Trish Musgrave
Tera Wardrip
Michelle Hughes
Kelly Jo Francisco
Megan Hackworth
Luis Vazquez
Jade Good
5/30/17
Patricia Oehlert Vazquez
Mary Mcmenamy
Jennifer Ramlet
Juanita Willaims-Jones
Kelly Jo Francisco
Glenna Zanaglio
Peggy Burdick Buchanan
Krissy Brislin
Deborah Farris
Cheryl Hall
Tonya Velazquez
Lauren Bradley
Nai Merri
Geri Rus
Luis Vazquez
Kimberly Taylor Hall
Darbie Brown
Michelle Webb
Kayla Hernandez
Lauren Bradley
Leslie Wagner Hobson
5/31/17
Kelly Jo Francisco
Deborah Farris
Kimberly Snyder
Jennifer Ramlet
Michelle Hughes
Jacqlyn Gummert
Kizzy Alvarez DeSantis
Darbie Brown
Emilie Edwards
Mary Achio
Heather Marie Stacy
Cassandra Berholtz
Anna Nichols
Melissa Ann Stura-Bassett
LaKishia Wagers
Charlotte Dennis
Myranda Medlin
Brittany Marie Thompson
Mikey Mellor
Tonya Velazquez
Cassandra L. Penley
6/1/17
Jessica Miller
Ashley Stamey Phillips
Cheryl Hall
Jennifer Ramlet
Jacqlyn Gummert
Taschia Miller
Brittany Michelle
Jade Good
Kelly Jo Francisco
Nelle Bailey
Brittany Marie Thompson
Amanda Peters
Tera Wardrip
Misty Shallcross
Jonnalyn Gates
Michelle R. Carlino
Anggie Marie
Tiffany Greene Elliott
Shannon R Garrett
Brandy Williams
Traci Anderson
6/2/17
Daniela Hernandez
Valerie Kuehn
Christy Hawkes
Brittany Michelle
Tera Wardrip
Nitasha Shank
Jennifer Mason
Mary Achio
Peggy Burdick Buchanan
Abby Cox
Deborah Farris
Nai Merri
Jennifer Lang
Emilie Edwards
Andrea Timms
Mya Murphy
Misty Dawn Moores
Sean Stover
Fitch Donna
Joanie Waterman
Bronnie Harrison
Stephanie Caldwell
Joann Tompkins-Winborn
Melissa Ann Stura-Bassett
Sara Biason
Melinda Dreier
6/3/17
Deborah Farris
Juanita Williams-Jones
Jennifer Mapes
Kimberly Snyder
Shannon R Garrett
Priscilla Shimp
Nitasha Shank
Jackie Poole
Joleen Renee
Danii Muniz McGlothin
Lauren Bradley
Christina Montes
Nelle Bailey
Kendra Lynne Ramsey
Sarah Bellestri Shih
Susanne Killion
Laurie Griffith
Belinda Haas
Christine McKinnon
Dawn Raasch
6/4/17
Heather Marie Stacy
Brittany Whitley
Anna Nichols
Kathleen Hickman
Deborah Farris
Tonya Velazquez
Destiny Landsaw Davis
Mary Achio
Alisa Jones
Shannon R Garrett
Kayla Hernandez
Jodi Stevens
Phyllis Hines
Nelle Bailey
Valerie Kuehn
Lotorya Patrick
Eleazar Ruiz
Karyn Koehler
Carol Yemola
Dawn Miller Majors
Be sure to watch both of our FaceBook pages for your chance to win and enter again next week, with questions posted daily on HealthInsurance4Everyone or at Health & Life Solutions, LLC!!
Remember that if you try your hand at answering the Trivia Question several days each week, your odds of winning the Sunday weekly drawing are much better. You may also find that if you “Like” both of the business pages, you will receive faster notifications of the other players as they post their answers to compete with you!
—————————————————————-
At Health Insurance 4 Everyone, we not only want to improve our customer service but also interact with our customers on a social media level that wasn’t available before. Interested in connecting with us? Look us up on….
Twitter: Healthinsurane4 (Follow Us On Twitter To Receive Faster Notifications When Daily Trivia Questions Posted, & To Be Immediately Notified When Weekly AmEX & HI4Eshop Gift Card Winners Are Announced!!)
Click-On for LinkedIn To Follow Our Posts: LinkedIn 
Like us on facebook: HealthInsurance4Everyone or Health & Life Solutions, LLC
Over 54,000 Combined Fans/Followers To Our Social Media Sites, & We’re Growing Daily!
Follow Mark Shuster, Founder/Owner at Health & Life Solutions, LLC for daily health tips!
Mark Shuster FaceBook Link
Follow our word press blog and read about everything from health insurance and reform news to healthy living and current events!
Company Blogs
Find out more about LegalShield, our corporate partner which gives you the power to talk to an attorney about any legal issue, and offering high-quality Identity Theft plans.
LegalShield
Read more
In 2016, there were 287 insurers who offered insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and in 2017 that number dropped to 218. There were 34 states that saw the number of insurers decline, 15 states have the same amount of insurers from 2016 to 2017 and only one state added an insurer in 2017.
Five states, ALABAMA, ALASKA, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and WYOMING, have only one insurer operating on the exchanges, leaving consumers with little choice. 
In one-third of counties in the United States, about one in five enrollees, or 21 percent, have access to only one insurer operating on the exchanges. This is a significant increase from the 2 percent of enrollees in 7 percent of counties that had access to only one insurer last year.
“In 2017, insurance company losses led to a number of high profile exits from the market,” the study explains. “In 2017, 58% of enrollees (living in about 30% of counties) had a choice of three or more insurers, compared to 85% of enrollees (living in about 63% of counties) in 2016.”
As larger commercial insurers such as Aetna and United Healthcare have dropped out of Obamacare, many areas will only have regional insurers to choose from, said Ed Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy at the Heritage Foundation.
“The reality is that the individual market even pre-Obamacare was a very small part of their business,” said Haislmaier. “So those companies have basically dropped out and what that leaves are a couple of companies with broader footprints but not more than about 10 or 12 states.”
“What you’re down to is basically in most cases your dominant Blue Cross plan and then depending on the size and location you may have regional players and by regional it could mean either across two or more states or just within a state,” he said. 
Haislmaier and the Heritage Foundation, who originally created the methodology for this type of study earlier this year, said that the ‘Affordable’ Care Act has left consumers with less competition and choice than ever before.
“One of the stated aims of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act was to increase competition among health insurance companies,” said Haislmaier.
“That goal has not been realized, and by several different measures the ACA’s exchanges offer less competition and choice in 2017 than ever before. Now in the fourth year of operation, the exchanges continue to be far less competitive than the individual health insurance market was before the ACA’s implementation.”
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that Congress needs to repeal and reform Obamacare without delay. 
“The Obamacare death spiral is continuing,” she said. “As rates rise, healthy people drop out and the share of sick people rise, causing further increases in rates. Since these rates are capped then the insurance business becomes less profitable and companies leave the business.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At Health Insurance 4 Everyone, we not only want to improve our customer service but also interact with our customers on a social media level that was not available before. Interested in connecting with us? Look us up on…. 
Twitter: Healthinsurane4
Click-On for LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Like us on facebook: HealthInsurance4Everyone
Follow Mark Shuster, Founder/Owner at Health & Life Solutions, LLC for daily health tips! HealthInsurance4Everyone or Health & Life Solutions, LLC
Mark Shuster FaceBook Link
Follow our word press blogs and read about everything from health insurance and reform news to healthy living and current events!
Company Blogs
Find out more about LegalShield, our corporate partner which gives you the power to talk to an attorney about any legal issue, and offering high-quality Identity Theft protection plans.
LegalShield
Read more
The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to reinstate President Trump’s second attempt at a travel ban on all refugees and citizens of six majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States. The Justice Department has vowed to challenge the appeals court ruling and take it to the Supreme Court.
The court ruled 10-3 to uphold a ruling from a district court judge in Maryland that blocked a portion of the order that temporarily banned travel to the United States by nationals of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In the majority decision, Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote that Trump’s executive order uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
Judge Gregory listed televised interviews and numerous statements made at political rallies that, in the court’s view, indicated the true intentions of the order. He cited a rally statement in which Trump called the second order a “watered down version” of the first order as well as a televised interview with Rudy Giuliani who said that Trump had asked him to devise an immigration ban within the bounds of legality.
The judge wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude the order’s “primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs”. The government argued that Trump’s comments on the campaign trail should not be taken into account since they occurred before he took office on Jan 20. The appeals court rejected that view, saying they provide a window into the motivations for Trump’s action in government.
The appeals court questioned a government argument that the president has wide authority to halt the entry of people to the United States. They were reviewing a March ruling by Maryland-based federal judge Theodore Chuang that blocked part of Trump’s March 6 executive order barring people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening. A similar ruling against Trump’s policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place. The Hawaii judge’s ruling also blocked a section of the travel ban that also suspended refugee admissions for four months. The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals is still reviewing that decision.
The Trump administration has argued that the temporary travel ban is a national security measure aimed at preventing Islamist militant attacks. “That’s why it’s not a Muslim ban”. The countries were not chosen because they are predominantly Muslim but because they present terrorism risks, the administration has said.
After the 4th Circuit Court ruling, Attorney-general Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the government would seek a review of the case at the Supreme Court. White House spokesperson Michael Short said “These clearly are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” adding that the White House was confident the order would ultimately be upheld by the judiciary.
Read more
Twenty-two people were killed and 116 injured after a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device at an Ariana Grande concert held in the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The explosion occurred as people were exiting the arena after the show ended. Concert-goers and parents waiting to pick up their children were in the arena’s foyer when the bomb went off. The dead included ten people under the age of 20, the youngest an eight-year-old girl. Days later, 75 people remained hospitalized, 23 of them, including five children, in critical condition.
The sold out show was part of Ariana Grande’s 2017 Dangerous Woman Tour where up to 21,000 attended. As news of the explosion quickly spread, residents and taxi companies in Manchester offered free transport or accommodation to those left stranded at the concert. Nearby hotel became a shelter for children separated from parents in the aftermath of the explosion. Many local temples, businesses and homeowners offered immediate shelter to victims as they waited for news of missing loved ones.
The day after the attack, Prime Minister Theresa May raised the terror threat level from severe to critical. A critical threat level means that it is believed another attack is imminent. It also means members of the British military will be deployed throughout the country to supplement its police forces. Nearly 4,000 soldiers were deployed nationwide in the wake of the bombing. ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing which is the 13th deadly terrorist attack in Western Europe since the beginning of 2015.
The bomber was identified as 22 year old Salman Ramadan Abedi, a British Muslim who was born in Manchester to Libyan-born refugees. Abedi was allegedly reported to authorities about his extremism, by as many as five people, including community leaders, neighbors and possibly family members.
Authorities had investigated him but did not consider him high risk at the time. Authorities have revealed that Abedi had returned to the UK from Turkey four days prior to the attack. French interior minister Gérard Collomb said that Abedi may have been to Syria, and had “proven” links with ISIS. Manchester police believe Abedi used student loans to finance the plot, including travel overseas to learn bomb-making.
Police have conducted several raids and detained a total of eight people in connection to the attack and said they were investigating a “network” as the probe intensified. Authorities have confirmed that Abedi’s father and younger brother have been arrested in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. The brother was suspected of planning an attack in Libya and was said to be in regular touch with Salman. Investigators believe his brother was aware of the plan to bomb the Manchester Arena, but not the date. According to a Libyan official, the brothers spoke on the phone about 15 minutes before the attack was carried out in Manchester.
Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi was born in Libya but fled under fear of arrest by the brutal regime of Moammar Gadhafi in 1993. He won asylum in Britain, where his sons were born. Abedi later returned to Libya and works as an administrator for the government, which has been in disarray since Gadhafi was toppled in 2011.
Read more
A federal judge in Mississippi has sentenced a Gulfport man to 49 years in prison for murdering a transgender teenager, in the first-ever hate crime prosecution involving a transgender victim. Joshua Vallum, 29, plead guilty in the 2015 killing of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson and was sentenced to life in prison in July 2016 by an Alabama judge. The Department of Justice later decided to pursue hat crime charges. He was sentenced under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Vallum, a long time Latin Kings gang member, was arrested just days after the murder when his own father reported the crime to police. He initially told investigators that he blacked out and killed Williamson when he discovered she was transgendered. Several witnesses stepped forward saying that Vallum knew she was transgendered and the two had been in an 8 month relationship.
He later admitted that his motive for the killing was fear of being killed once fellow gang members found out. Jeanie Miller, Williamson’s roommate testified that Vallum once told her and Williamson that his gang would kill both Vallum and Williamson if Williamson’s transgender status was discovered. His brother Jacob saw him on the night of the murder covered in blood and testified that Vallum told him: ‘Well, it was my life or his.’
Prosecutors say Vallum killed Mercedes Williamson after the end of their relationship, because a friend learned that she was transgender, a fact Mr. Vallum kept hidden from friends and family while they dated. On May 30th, Vallum lured Williamson into his car in Alabama and drove her 50 miles to his family home near Lucedale, Mississippi. He then shocked her with a stun gun and stabbed her in the body and head with a pocketknife. When Williamson tried to run into the woods, Vallum chased her down and beat her to death with a hammer.
Vallum confessed to his father Bobby Vallum on June 1st that he had murdered and buried Williamson on the rural property. Bobby Vallum took the information to police, leading to Josh Vallum being charged with murder. Williamson was one of at least 21 transgender people murdered in the U.S. in 2015.
Read more
The recent cyber-attack has reignited the debate over whether or not governments should disclose vulnerabilities they have discovered or bought on the black market. Privacy experts are also calling the recent global ransomware attack that hit 150 countries a prime example of why requiring tech companies to create backdoors into computer programs is a bad idea. The danger of those digital keys being stolen has the potential to wreak havoc.
The global computer hack that used a cyber-weapon developed by the National Security Agency (NSA), disrupted hospitals, universities, government offices, gas stations, ATM machines and more than 300,000 computers worldwide. Less than 10 U.S. organizations reported attacks to the Department of Homeland Security. The attack caused the most damage in Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and India.
It’s the first time a cyber-weapon developed by the NSA has been stolen and released by hackers. The NSA has neither confirmed nor denied that they developed the cyber-weapon. Elements of the malicious software used in the attacks were part of a treasure trove of cyber-attack tools leaked by hacking group the Shadow Brokers in April. One of the tools contained in the leak, codenamed EternalBlue, proved to be “the most significant factor” in the spread of the ransom ware used in the attack.
The ransom ware was transmitted by email and then encrypted thousands of computers, locking people out of their data and then threatened to destroy it unless a ransom was paid. The cyberattack locked medical workers out of the computer systems at dozens of British and Indonesian hospitals, disrupted train schedules in Germany and froze government computers from Russia’s Interior Ministry to police stations in India.
The cyber-weapon used exploits weaknesses in Microsoft software. The U.S. government have known for years about this weakness in the software but only told Microsoft about the vulnerability recently. Microsoft had fixed the problem a month prior to the EternalBlue leak on April 14th but many high-profile targets had not updated their systems to stay secure.
The cyber-attack eased but the group who released the global WannaCry “ransomware” attack warned it would release more malicious code. ShadowBrokers said they would release more recent code to enable hackers to break into the world’s most widely used computers, software and phones. A blog post written by the group promised to release tools every month to anyone willing to pay for access to some of the tech world’s biggest commercial secrets. It also threatened to dump data from banks using the SWIFT international money transfer network and from Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean nuclear and missile programs. “More details in June,” it promised.
Cyber security researchers around the world have said they have found evidence that could link North Korea with the WannaCry cyber attack but that it is too early to confirm a definitive connection.
Read more
