[CNA] HO CHI MINH CITY: A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for multi-billion-dollar fraud begged a court to spare her life on Tuesday (Nov 26), saying she was trying to repay the stolen funds. "I got a side job. I'll pay it back in....4,598 years!"
Property developer Truong My Lan, 68, was convicted earlier this year of embezzling money from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) - which prosecutors said she controlled - and condemned to die for fraud totalling US$27 billion in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.
She is appealing against her sentence at a court in Ho Chi Minh City, with the ruling expected in the coming days.
In her final remarks before the court, Lan said: "My only thought is on how to repay the debt to the SBV (State Bank of Vietnam) and the people. I don't think about the damage to myself and my family.
"I feel pained due to the waste of national resources," Lan said, adding she felt "very embarrassed to be charged with this crime".
"Please reconsider and reduce my sentence," she asked the court.
[Breitbart] Haitian migrants are reportedly self-deporting from Springfield, Ohio, and fleeing to sanctuary jurisdictions such as Chicago, Illinois, and New York City, New York.
Springfield, a city of 50,000 that lies between Columbus and Dayton, garnered national attention months ago when President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance noted that the community had been inundated with thousands of Haitian migrants as a result of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Many of the 10,000 to 20,000 Haitian migrants who arrived in Springfield over the last few years are in the United States on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a quasi-amnesty program. Others were awarded parole after being released into the United States at the southern border.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] NASA staff have slammed the space agency for what they have described as a 'DEI takeover' that is compromising the 'real work' done by scientists.
One former employee said that NASA's focus on diversity, equality and inclusion is 'destroying America's ability to compete with China in space because the Biden-Harris administration will only fund programs that feature it.'
Several disgruntled members, speaking on condition of anonymity, blamed 'middle managers' for the 'bulls*** DEI policies.'
'The DEI thing can create an environment where things are not focused and accountability gets diluted,' another NASA employee, who still works at the agency, said.
'Real scientists don't give a hoot about DEI or other hyper-political c***.
'There are good scientists doing real, good work there. [NASA] has become extremely bureaucratic.'
NASA is spending $22.4 million per year on programs that involve inclusive hiring, employee resource groups and environmental justice research.
DailyMail.com uncovered millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on DEI data analytics and to help the agency 'embark on a venture to incorporate and deeply engrain diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility in the culture and business.'
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 occurred near the coast of the Japanese prefecture of Ishikawa (central Japan). This was reported on November 26 by the press service of the General Meteorological Agency of Japan.
It is noted that the tremors were recorded at 22:47 (15:47 Moscow time). The earthquake center was at a depth of 10 km.
There were no reports of casualties or damage as a result of the tremors. No tsunami threat was issued.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, at 21:16 (15:16 Moscow time) on November 17, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 occurred off the southern coast of Japan, the center of which was located at a depth of 10 km. The epicenter of the tremors was located off the northeastern coast of Oshima Island in the East China Sea.
Two earthquakes measuring 5.9 and 6.8 struck off the coast of Cuba on November 10, the second of which was observed 64 km southeast of the city of Manzanillo, home to 128,000 people. Its center was at a depth of 17 km.
An earthquake measuring 5.0 in magnitude occurred in the Adana province in southern Turkey on October 27 at 20:07 Moscow time. The source of the tremors was located at a depth of 20 km.
[Washington Examiner] Walmart has signaled price hikes should be expected if President-elect Donald Trump makes good on his plan to implement a broad tariff regime.
The retailer’s CFO John David Rainey said the company would likely have to raise its prices, which is against its model and wishes.
"We never want to raise prices," he told CNBC. "Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers." "More expensive cheap Chinese crap you don't need"
Rainey added that it’s too early to determine which products could cost more due to the tariffs.
#4
If gasoline prices go down 30 cents people won't much notice the increment in retail.
USA field production of crude is now about 13M barrels per day. Get it up to 15M bpd (need at least a year for this) and I think this kind of drop in gas prices will follow.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/27/2024 9:46 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Much of the economy hinges on crude oil and gas production. Orange Man and his people are accutely awre of the fact.
[JustTheNews] In May, The U.S. Government Accountability Office found the cost of the Pentagon's most expensive weapon system was projected to increase by more than 40% despite plans to use the stealth fighter less, in part because of reliability issues.
Pentagon officials declined to comment on Elon Musk's critical assessment of its most expensive project, the F-35 stealth fighter.
Tesla CEO and SpaceX leader Elon Musk called the Pentagon's stealth fighter "obsolete."
"The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people," Musk wrote on X. "This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed."
In May, The U.S. Government Accountability Office found the cost of the Pentagon's most expensive weapon system was projected to increase by more than 40% despite plans to use the stealth fighter less, in part because of reliability issues.
The U.S. Department of Defense's F-35 Lightning II is the most advanced and costly weapon system in the U.S. arsenal. It's a joint, multinational program that includes the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, seven international partners and foreign military sales customers.
The Pentagon has about 630 F-35s. It plans to buy about 1,800 more. And it intends to use them through 2088. DOD estimates the F-35 program will cost over $2 trillion to buy, operate, and sustain over its lifetime.
On Tuesday, a reporter asked Defense Department Press Secretary Air Force Major General Pat Ryder about Musk's comments on the F-35.
"Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35."
The GAO report found the F-35 program fell short of its goals.
"The F-35 fleet is not meeting most of its performance goals, including those for availability and for reliability and maintainability, according to DOD and contractor data," according to the report. "We have consistently found that the F-35 fleet is not meeting its availability goals, which are measured by mission capable rates despite increasing projected costs."
President-elect Donald Trump recently picked Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leaders of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Trump said the new group will allow his administration to "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulation, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies."
Ramaswamy and Musk detailed some of their plans for DOGE last week. Those plans include a focus on military spending after the Pentagon failed another audit.
"The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency's leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent," they wrote in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. Department of Defense's annual audit once again resulted in a disclaimer opinion. That means the federal government's largest agency — with a budget of more than $840 billion — can't fully explain its spending. The disclaimer this year was expected. And it's expected again next year. The Pentagon previously said it will be able to accurately account for its spending by 2027.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
11/27/2024 09:59 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11135 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
In Augustine's Laws it was projected that one day the Pentagon will have such an expensive aircraft that it could only afford one. At which time the Navy and Air Force will use it on alternating date, with the Marine Corps getting it on Leap Day.
#2
"The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people,"
The art of design is knowing what to leave out, not what to put in. As I understand, the problem with the current F-35 is heat - all those fancy avionics are hot. As originally specified, the plane had sufficient cooling. But as with all things designed by committee, feature creep set in. More features, more electronics, more heat. Unfortunately, adding a radiator to a stealth fighter is a greater challenge than squeezing in yet another box of avionics.
For an amusing take on feature creep, watch "The Pentagon Wars" - a comedic version of how the Bradley Fighting Vehicle came to be what it is today versus how it started life as a light cavalry scout vehicle.
#3
During manufacturing of the F-35 skins, the L-M requirements were far in excess of anything my former company ever experienced; some good, some not so much. Having to use a L-M mandated cheesecloth for wiping down w/solvent, costing over 2X the amount of “ACME” cheesecloth is just one example.
#4
I think the plan for the F/A-XX, which would be a 6th generation fighter/bomber will sacrifice speed.
The theory is, IIUC, that if the enemy can't see you, well you don't need to be that fast.
This should, in theory, allow a less expensive product to be developed.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/27/2024 17:42 Comments ||
Top||
#5
My take is that the F-35 project is a trojan horse concealing the development and deployment of a number of other, far more effective, dark-budget killing machines.
[Breitbart] President-elect Donald Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump posted a behind-the-scenes video of Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s recent Starship rocket launch in Texas.
In a video posted to X, the daughter of Donald Trump Jr. posted a video of herself traveling to the rocket launch on a private jet with a friend and at the rocket launch where her grandfather, father, and Musk could be seen in the video.
“It only comes back to land if everything is, like, super green,” Musk can be heard explaining to Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) after the rocket launched. “And then we had some concerns about the tower, so it was commanded to land out in sea.”
“Amazing. Can they use that again?” Trump asked. “Can they get it from the sea?”
“It’s going to be … probably blow up,” Musk answered. “It’s probably going to blow up is my guess. But, that’s fine. We actually have better versions that are in production in those factories over there.”
When asked how long it would take “to produce another” rocket, Musk responded that they “already have the next one” and added that it was “better” than the one that had just been launched.
“So, what makes it better?” Cruz asked.
“The specific next one we have has a lot of small improvements,” Musk answered. “There’s a big version increase that’ll be flying next year. That’s got the version three of our engines — that’ll look very different. It will be longer and have a lot more thrust and have the new generation engines.”
Musk’s Starship, which is reported to be 400 feet tall and “designed to land astronauts on the moon and ferry crews to Mars,” took off around 4:00 p.m. last Tuesday, according to Reuters.
According to the outlet, the “first stage booster” part of the rocket, called Super Heavy, went on to detach from the rocket’s second stage, “Starship.”
The first stage booster was reported to have “unexpectedly splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico” instead of falling into the “large mechanical arms” on the tower from where it launched, according to the outlet.
“If it doesn’t blow up, we do have ships to try to bring it back,” Musk added. “And then we can inspect it to learn more.”
Musk added that this rocket was “about just learning.”
[Ynet] Researchers from the Israeli cybersecurity company Knostic have unveiled a groundbreaking method to exploit large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, by leveraging what they describe as an "impulsiveness" characteristic in AI.
Dubbed flowbreaking, this attack bypasses safety mechanisms to coax the AI into revealing restricted information or providing harmful guidance — responses it was programmed to withhold.
Israeli researchers discover method to hack AI, force it to reveal sensitive information
Researchers at cybersecurity firm Knostic have developed a method to bypass safeguards in large language models like ChatGPT, extracting sensitive information such as salaries, private communications and trade secrets
Researchers from the Israeli cybersecurity company Knostic have unveiled a groundbreaking method to exploit large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, by leveraging what they describe as an "impulsiveness" characteristic in AI.
Dubbed flowbreaking, this attack bypasses safety mechanisms to coax the AI into revealing restricted information or providing harmful guidance — responses it was programmed to withhold.
The findings, published Tuesday, detail how the attack manipulates AI systems into prematurely generating and displaying responses before their safety protocols can intervene. These responses —ranging from sensitive data such as a boss's salary to harmful instructions — are then momentarily visible on the user’s screen before being deleted by the AI’s safety systems. However, tech-savvy users who record their interactions can still access the fleetingly exposed information.
HOW THE ATTACK WORKS
Unlike older methods such as jailbreaking, which relied on linguistic tricks to bypass safeguards, flowbreaking targets internal components of LLMs, exploiting gaps in the interaction between those components.
Knostic researchers identified two primary vulnerabilities enabled by this method:
Second Thoughts: AI models sometimes stream answers to users before safety mechanisms fully evaluate the content. In this scenario, a response is displayed and quickly erased, but not before the user sees it.
Stop and Roll: By halting the AI mid-response, users can force the system to display partially generated answers that have bypassed safety checks.
"LLMs operate in real-time, which inherently limits their ability to ensure airtight security," said Gadi Evron, CEO and co-founder of Knostic. "This is why layered, context-aware security is critical, especially in enterprise environments."
IMPLICATIONS FOR AI SECURITY
Knostic’s findings have far-reaching implications for the safe deployment of AI systems in industries such as finance, health care, and technology. The company warns that, without stringent safeguards, even well-intentioned AI implementations like Microsoft Copilot and Glean could inadvertently expose sensitive data or create other vulnerabilities.
Evron emphasized the importance of "need-to-know" identity-based safeguards and robust interaction monitoring. "AI safety isn’t just about blocking bad actors. It’s about ensuring these systems align with the organization’s operational context," he said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
