Wednesday, January 15, 2020

TAAL VOLCANO UPDATES

    • Batangas Roads Show Damages Caused by Taal Eruption

      Batangas Roads Show Damages Caused by Taal Eruption

      Carmudi via Yahoo News Singapore· 15 hours ago
      Following the series of tremors cause by the eruption of the Taal Volcano, national roads and similar establishments have shown damages. With that, the...

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BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE 
-36C   WIND CHILL FEELS LIKE -43C

 POLAR VORTEX OVER CANADA AND NORTH AMERICA GIF


Extreme Cold Warning

Issued at 20:33 Sunday 12 January 2020
A multi-day episode of very cold wind chills continues.

Wind chill values of minus 40 to 50 will continue through most of the week. Some brief moderation in wind chill may occur during the afternoon hours.

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Extreme cold puts everyone at risk.

Watch for cold related symptoms: shortness of breath, chest pain, muscle pain and weakness, numbness and colour change in fingers and toes.

Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada. To report severe weather, send an email to ABstorm@canada.ca or tweet reports using #ABStorm.



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BABY IT'S COLD OUTSIDE 
The original from Neptune's Daughter
Neptune's Daughter is a 1949 musical romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat and Mel Blanc. It was directed by Edward Buzzell, and features the Academy Award winning song Baby, It's Cold Outside by Frank Loesser.

RICARDO MONTALBAN SINGS!!!! 
OMG IT'S KHAN SINGS

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Microsoft and NSA say a security bug affects millions of Windows 10 computers

Zack Whittaker,TechCrunch•January 14, 2020


A closed circuit security camera (CCTV) operates on a lamppost at the Nokia Oyj mobile handset factory, operated by Microsoft Corp., in Komarom, Hungary, on Monday, July 21, 2014. Microsoft said it will eliminate as many as 18,000 jobs, the largest round of cuts in its history, as Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella integrates Nokia Oyj's handset unit and slims down the software maker. Photographer: Akos Stiller/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Microsoft has released a security patch for a dangerous vulnerability affecting hundreds of millions of computers running Windows 10.

The vulnerability is found in a decades-old Windows cryptographic component, known as CryptoAPI. The component has a range of functions, one of which allows developers to digitally sign their software, proving that the software has not been tampered with. But the bug may allow attackers to spoof legitimate software, potentially making it easier to run malicious software — like ransomware — on a vulnerable computer.

"The user would have no way of knowing the file was malicious, because the digital signature would appear to be from a trusted provider," Microsoft said.

CERT-CC, the the vulnerability disclosure center at Carnegie Mellon University, said in its advisory that the bug can also be used to intercept and modify HTTPS (or TLS) communications.

Microsoft said it found no evidence to show that the bug has been actively exploited by attackers, and classified the bug as "important."

Independent security journalist Brian Krebs first reported details of the bug.

The National Security Agency confirmed in a call with reporters that it found the vulnerability and turned over the details to Microsoft, allowing the company to build and ready a fix.

Only two years ago the spy agency was criticized for finding and using a Windows vulnerability to conduct surveillance instead of alerting Microsoft to the flaw. The agency used the vulnerability to create an exploit, known as EternalBlue, as a way to secretly backdoor vulnerable computers. But the exploit was later leaked and was used to infect thousands of computers with the WannaCry ransomware, causing millions of dollars' worth of damage.

Anne Neuberger, NSA's director of cybersecurity, told TechCrunch that once the vulnerability was discovered, it went through the vulnerabilities equities process, a decision-making process used by the government to determine if it should retain control of the flaw for use in offensive security operations or if it should be disclosed to the vendor. It's not known if the NSA used the bug for offensive operations before it was reported to Microsoft.

"It's encouraging to see such a critical vulnerability turned over to vendors rather than weaponized."

Neuberger confirmed Microsoft's findings that NSA had not seen attackers actively exploiting the bug.

Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and founder of Rendition Infosec, told TechCrunch that it was "encouraging" that the flaw was turned over "rather than weaponized."

"This one is a bug that would likely be easier for governments to use than the common hacker," he said. "This would have been an ideal exploit to couple with man in the middle network access."

Microsoft is said to have released patches for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, which is also affected, to the U.S. government, military and other high-profile companies ahead of Tuesday's release to the wider public, amid fears that the bug would be abused and vulnerable computers could come under active attack.

The software giant kept a tight circle around the details of the vulnerabilities, with few at the company fully aware of their existence, sources told TechCrunch. Only a few outside the company and the NSA — such as the government's cybersecurity advisory unit Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — were briefed.

CISA also issued a directive, compelling federal agencies to patch the vulnerabilities.

Williams said this now-patched flaw is like "a skeleton key for bypassing any number of endpoint security controls," he told TechCrunch.

Skilled attackers have long tried to pass off their malware as legitimate software, in some cases by obtaining and stealing certificates. Last year, attackers stole a certificate belonging to computer maker Asus to sign a backdoored version of its software update tool. By pushing the tool to the company's own servers, "hundreds of thousands" of Asus customers were compromised as a result.

When certificates are lost or stolen, they can be used to impersonate the app maker, allowing them to sign malicious software and make it look like it came from the original developer.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer at security firm CrowdStrike, said in a tweet that the NSA-discovered bug was a "critical issue."

"Everyone should patch. Do not wait," he said.


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As the Trump administration fills board seats, critics see an alarming attempt to remake government


Alexander Nazaryan
National Correspondent,
Yahoo News•January 15, 2020


President Trump greets actor Jon Voight, a National Medal of Arts recipient, during the award ceremony on Nov. 21. (Photo: Tom Brenner/Reuters)

WASHINGTON — On April 10, 2017, Daniel Jorjani, a top Interior Department political appointee, sent an email to Brian Hooks, president of the conservative Charles Koch Foundation, soliciting individuals to join the board of a charitable arm of the National Park Service.

“Would any of the stakeholders’ families or key network participants be interested in joining the board of the National Park Foundation?” Jorjani wrote. “It is one of our top-tier boards.” He added that the board “has a few openings.”

There are many such boards affiliated with government agencies and government-funded institutions, from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is a federal corporation, to the not-for-profit Kennedy Center for the Arts. Though the boards have different functions, in one way or another they exert influence on some aspect of the federal bureaucracy, whether by providing oversight or — in a case like the National Park Foundation — raising money.

While board appointees have long been selected because of their political affiliation, wealth or stature, the president’s opponents charge he has appointed individuals who are more ideologically motivated than their predecessors. In some cases, he is appointing board members who have opposed the institutions they are supposed to now monitor or guide.

“Someone who is going to thwart the mission of an organization — any organization, be it a government, for-profit or charitable entity — should not be on the governing board, the group tasked with ensuring the fiduciary and strategic success that furthers that mission,” said Doug White, a leading expert on the frequently contentious workings of corporate and philanthropic boards. “That’s like ‘Board Governance 101.’”

For the Trump administration, appointing board members may be an effective and little-noticed means of weakening a federal apparatus it fundamentally distrusts. Not only did Donald Trump come into office with “a disruptor mindset,” said governance expert Scott R. Anderson of the center-left-leaning Brookings Institution, but he has delegated that disruption to “further-out-there wings of the Republican Party,” beyond the bounds of ordinary conservatism.

Attaching boards to government agencies is an effect of the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, Baruch College government professor Jerry Mitchell wrote in a 1997 scholarly article on board governance. “Boards and commissions were viewed as an intelligent way to make the public sector more democratic and competent,” he wrote, because these entities would include neither elected officials nor career public servants.

Daniel Jorjani. (Photo: DOI.gov)

As the federal government grew throughout the 20th century, the number of boards and councils proliferated accordingly. According to a 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office, there are more than 900 advisory boards, which have varying degrees of influence. President Bill Clinton, for example, created an advisory board on race in 1997. The council produced a report, whose recommendations appear to have been largely ignored, and it was subsequently disbanded.

Some boards are permanent, while others are not. The National Space Council, which was created by George H.W. Bush, was disbanded by Bill Clinton, only to return more than two decades later under Trump.

Each board has its own rules: Some require Senate confirmation for nominees, and others do not. The length of service also varies, with some board appointments lasting several years and others over a decade. Some are appointed directly by the president, while some are picked by others in his administration.

So while Trump has often railed against a bureaucratic “deep state” working against his agenda, his board appointments, many of which may outlast his presidency, could serve an internal Republican resistance to a future Democratic administration.

These oversight or advisory bodies, which have varying degrees of power and efficacy, cut across a vast terrain of the federal bureaucracy. Trump’s most notorious nominations in this category were to the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, which is among the most significant in the entire government. Other boards, like the National Organic Standards Board or the White House evangelical council, are only advisory in nature. Still others are attached to tax-exempt organizations like the Kennedy Center and function almost like any other philanthropic board.

In the case of the Federal Reserve board of governors — which performs “monetary policy responsibilities,” alongside the Fed’s regional bank presidents — Trump attempted to fill vacant seats on that board with two of the most controversial nominations. One of those was Herman Cain, the pizza magnate and onetime Republican presidential candidate. Long-standing accusations of sexual misconduct against Cain did not appear to deter Trump. The other nominee floated was Steven Moore, whose thinking on monetary policy was held in low regard, with Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell calling Moore “easily confused.”

Both of those appointments would have required Senate confirmation, and Trump scuttled the plan after it became clear that congressional Republicans had little will to fight on behalf of either Cain or Moore.

At the National Park Foundation, political appointee Daniel Jorjani’s efforts also came to naught. Koch Foundation president Brian Hooks responded politely but unenthusiastically to the outreach by Jorjani. “I’ll have a look and let you know if there’s an opportunity to learn more,” he wrote to Jorjani, who several years before had himself worked for the Koch Foundation. Before that, Jorjani had been an Interior Department official in the George W. Bush administration, where he described his duties as “limiting damage from climate change alarmists,” according to the résumé he submitted to Congress.

Neither Hooks nor Jorjani responded to emails, and neither was made available for comment by his respective organization. An official with the Koch philanthropic network Stand Together told Yahoo News that there were no further communications between Jorjani and the Koch Foundation on the issue of National Park Foundation board appointments.

That hardly soothes critics. Jayson O’Neill of the Western Values Project, which uncovered the Jorjani-Hooks emails through a Freedom of Information Act request, told Yahoo News the emails were proof that “the Trump administration is dead set on politicizing a board that should be solely focused on supporting America’s national parks.”

Even without Koch influence, the board of the National Park Foundation was already becoming more controversial under Trump, as were many other boards across the executive branch.

Perhaps the most contentious appointment to the National Park Foundation board has been that of Susan LaPierre, the spouse of National Rifle Association executive director Wayne LaPierre.

National Rifle Association executive director Wayne LaPierre and his wife, Susan, in 2012. (Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Larry King Cardiac Foundation)

A former Interior official familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition that his identity remain confidential, said that Ryan Zinke, who was the interior secretary until being forced to resign over charges of unethical behavior, bypassed the ordinary advisory process by which board members are selected in picking LaPierre. The former official said that as far as he was aware, that appointment was an anomaly and the board does not yet appear to be compromised, as a whole, by Trump’s appointments.

He did worry, however, that if Trump were to win a second term, the National Park Foundation board could potentially succumb wholesale to politics.

In other areas, some of Trump’s appointments have been in line with those of previous presidents. For example, he was generally praised for reconstituting the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and while some noted that the council was heavy on private industry, those executives were both credentialed and accomplished.

Such praise, however, has been rare.

In May 2018 the president named Stephen Feinberg, a reliable Republican donor who had contributed to Trump’s 2016 campaign, to lead the president's Intelligence Advisory Board, which has been in place since 1956. Feinberg had been considered for another intelligence post, but even some Republicans took note of his lack of qualifications. “As far as I can tell, this individual does not have national security experience,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said of Feinberg, “nor does he appear to have experience in intelligence.”

White, the board governance expert, was even tougher in his assessment. “These are terrible appointments,” he said, speaking of Feinberg specifically.

Appointment to the intelligence board does not require Senate confirmation, meaning that Feinberg’s critics could do little to stop it.

Stephen Feinberg in 2008. (Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)

Trump isn’t the first president to award donors with board membership, and James Pfiffner, a scholar of the presidency at George Mason University, explained that “board seats are often used to reward political allies, regardless of qualifications.”

President Barack Obama also faced charges of politicizing the intelligence board. A few months after Chuck Hagel, the respected Republican senator from Nebraska who had served in Vietnam, left the board to take charge of the Pentagon in early 2013, 10 of the panel’s members were dismissed without any warning or explanation. Among them was former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, who had been one of the authors of the much-lauded report on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I didn’t want to stay anyway,” Hamilton recalls, adding that there were “plenty of reasons to kick me off.”

Still, those reasons were never given to Hamilton. The intelligence board eventually added new members, among them a Chicago investor to Obama’s political campaign and the chairman of UPS.

Without discussing any specific names, Hamilton says that heading the intelligence panel is not “the business for an amateur” lacking significant experience. “I don’t want any president to play around with the intelligence community,” he adds.

Even if Obama and other presidents engaged in politics when making board appointments, critics charge that Trump has nominated people who are actively opposed to the missions of the agencies and organizations they are supposed to be supporting.

For example, to the board of Amtrak, Trump appointed Todd Rokita, a former Republican congressman from Indiana. Critics quickly noted that Rokita had voted several times to strip Amtrak of its federal funding. When he was first nominated, progressive detractors branded him “unfit for public office.” Despite that, Rokita appears to be inching toward confirmation by the Senate.

Even if some board memberships are purely symbolic, they can be significant, especially when it comes to any organization under the aegis of the White House.

Obama had chosen an environmental policy expert from California to head the Council on Environmental Quality. She was eventually succeeded by an expert on public lands.

Trump went in a markedly different direction, nominating Kathleen Hartnett White, a political operative from Texas who has expressed strong, harshly worded doubt about whether human activity causes global warming. Even for a Republican-controlled Senate, White proved too much at a time of growing concern about the climate; her nomination was eventually dropped.

Citing the cases of Amtrak and the Council on Environmental Quality, Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs at Public Citizen, a left-leaning government watchdog group, accused Trump of using the boards to advance a harmful agenda. “If personnel is policy, the staffing choices made by the administration are indicative of a lack of concern for the health and well-being of the nation,” she said.

Congress also recognizes the power of board seats. Under Obama, a Republican-controlled Senate refused to confirm the president’s appointees and kept three seats open on the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal energy infrastructure corporation that works in the upper South.

Trump eventually filled one of those with William B. Kilbride, a coal executive whose nomination was ardently opposed by Democrats. That, however, didn’t stop the Tennessee Valley Authority from voting to close two coal plants earlier this year.

Appointments to boards dealing with arts and culture can also be a useful means of sending signals to political supporters, especially in a political environment in which symbolic victories are as sought after as serious policy accomplishments.

Fox News contributors Mike Huckabee and his daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an interview on "The Story With Martha MacCallum" on Sept. 17. (Photo: Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)

In that vein, Trump announced new members to the board of the Kennedy Center earlier this year. Among these were Jon Voight, one of the few vociferous conservatives in Hollywood, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, father of former White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Fox News mainstay (Huckabee has actually pleaded with Trump to not cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts).

Trump also established the White House evangelical advisory board, which consists mostly of right-leaning religious and political figures, including former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Jerry Falwell Jr., the Liberty University leader who has been implicated in a number of personal and financial scandals. The evangelical board is being sued for conducting its work in secret.

One of the members of that board is Paula White, a Pentecostal televangelist who preaches the prosperity gospel and has been hounded by controversy. The board proved a perfect springboard for White. In November, Trump announced that she would formally join his administration to head its office of faith.


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Spanish chemical plant explosion kills man 3km away


Media captionWatch footage of the moment of the blast captured by CCTV
A large metal plate launched by an explosion at a chemical plant in Spain's autonomous Catalonia region killed a man 3km (two miles) away.
The man, named only as Sergio, was in his apartment when the one tonne object struck, causing part of the building to collapse, officials have confirmed.
A senior member of staff at the factory was also killed in the explosion, which seriously injured two others.
Tuesday's blast occurred at about 18:40 local time (17:40 GMT) in La Canonja.
Authorities said it was probably caused by a chemical accident, but that no toxic substances were released.
People were, however, initially urged to stay indoors when the explosion at the site just south of Tarragona set off a huge fire.
Residents of the Plaça García Lorca housing estate in nearby Torreforta, where Sergio was killed, described seeing "a ball of fire" stream across the sky at the time of the incident.
Firefighters later confirmed that this was a metal plate from the factory site, which they said weighed about a tonne.
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Local resident Antonia Mora told Spanish newspaper El Pais "it was like a bomb".
Witnesses described seeing a large object hit the building, causing damage to the exterior.
Dozens of firefighters worked through the night and into Wednesday to tackle the blaze at the Industrias Químicas del Óxido de Etileno plant.
A reporter for Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, Jesús Navarro, tweeted an image showing a mangled structure at the factory site.
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Water was sprayed over tanks containing chemicals to keep them cool.
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The factory produces chemicals such as ethylene oxide - which can be used to make antifreeze, pesticides and to sterilise hospital equipment - and propylene oxide, which is used to make plastics. Both are extremely flammable.
Firefighters spray water after a large fire broke out at the chemical factory in Tarragona, Spain, 15 January 2020Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionLarge tanks containing chemicals at the plant were sprayed with water to keep them cool
A piece of machinery projected by an explosion at a petrochemical factory lies in a field surrounding the area of the blast in Tarragona, Spain, 15 January 2020Image copyrightEPA
Image captionAnother piece of machinery projected by the explosion was found in a field nearby
Rescue teams with search dogs found the body of the second victim, a senior staff member at the factory, in the early hours of Wednesday. The search had been called off overnight due to poor visibility and dangerous conditions.
At least two people are reported to have suffered serious burns, Catalonia's civil protection service said.
An explosion is seen through a car window, in Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain, 14 January 2020Image copyrightREUTERS
Image captionImages of the fire in Tarragona were posted on social media
Late on Tuesday Catalan leader Quim Torra told reporters: "Now we can send a message of calm and confidence to people. There is no toxicity and therefore people can carry on with their lives as normal."
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez later offered support to Catalan authorities in dealing with the accident.
Roads and public transport systems in the area that were closed as a precaution were reopened on Wednesday.

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