Hackers drained millions of dollars in digital coins from cryptocurrency ATMs by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability, leaving customers on the hook for losses that can’t be reversed, the kiosk manufacturer has revealed.

The heist targeted ATMs sold by General Bytes, a company with multiple locations throughout the world. These BATMs, short for bitcoin ATMs, can be set up in convenience stores and other businesses to allow people to exchange bitcoin for other currencies and vice versa. Customers connect the BATMs to a crypto application server (CAS) that they can manage or, until now, that General Bytes could manage for them. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the BATMs offer an option that allows customers to upload videos from the terminal to the CAS using a mechanism known as the master server interface.

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Over the weekend, General Bytes revealed that more than $1.5 million worth of bitcoin had been drained from CASes operated by the company and by customers. To pull off the heist, an unknown threat actor exploited a previously unknown vulnerability that allowed it to use this interface to upload and execute a malicious Java application. The actor then drained various hot wallets of about 56 BTC, worth roughly $1.5 million. General Bytes patched the vulnerability 15 hours after learning of it, but due to the way cryptocurrencies work, the losses were unrecoverable.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it has reached an agreement with Ukraine on funding worth $15.6bn (£12.8bn).

The organisation's first loan to a country at war is expected to be approved in the coming weeks.

It would also be one of the largest financing packages Ukraine has received since Russia's invasion.

The IMF recently changed a rule to allow loans to countries facing "exceptionally high uncertainty".

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to have a devastating impact on the economy: activity contracted by 30 percent in 2022, a large share of the capital stock has been destroyed, and poverty levels have climbed," IMF official Gavin Gray said in a statement.

Former President Donald Trump has not been notified whether charges will be filed against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his alleged role in facilitating a 2016 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, sources told The Post. 

Sources also told The Post that it is still possible that Bragg will decide not to indict the 76-year-old former president. 

Trump could be indicted as early as Wednesday, although he is not expected to appear in court until next week, law enforcement sources told The Post on Tuesday.

According to Fox News, the Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence against the former president has another witness slated to testify on Wednesday. 

The collapses of Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank are like icebergs calving off from the Antarctic glacier. The financial analogy to the global warming causing this collapse of supporting shelving is the rising temperature of interest rates, which spiked last Thursday and Friday to close at 4.60 percent for the U.S. Treasury’s two-year bonds. Bank depositors meanwhile were still being paid only 0.2 percent on their deposits. That has led to a steady withdrawal of funds from banks – and a corresponding decline in commercial bank balances with the Federal Reserve.

Most media reports reflect a prayer that the bank runs will be localized, as if there is no context or environmental cause. There is general embarrassment to explain how the breakup of banks that is now gaining momentum is the result of the way that the Obama Administration bailed out the banks in 2008 with fifteen years of Quantitative Easing to re-inflate prices for packaged bank mortgages – and with them, housing prices, along with stock and bond prices.

The Fed’s $9 trillion of QE (not counted as part of the budget deficit) fueled an asset-price inflation that made trillions of dollars for holders of financial assets – the One Percent with a generous spillover effect for the remaining members of the top Ten Percent. The cost of home ownership soared by capitalizing mortgages at falling interest rates into more highly debt-leveraged property. The U.S. economy experienced the largest bond-market boom in history as interest rates fell below 1 percent. The economy polarized between the creditor positive-net-worth class and the rest of the economy – whose analogy to environmental pollution and global warming was debt pollution.

 Anyone who doesn’t see what is happening will soon lose a major part of their assets either through bank failure, currency debasement or the collapse of all bubble assets like stocks, property and bonds by 75-100%.

Many bonds will become worthless.

Wealth preservation in physical gold is now absolutely critical. Obviously it must be stored outside a broken financial system. More later in this article.

The solidity of the banking system is based on confidence. With the fractional banking system, highly leveraged banks only have a fraction of the money available if all depositors ask for their money back. So when confidence evaporates, so do the balance sheets of the banks and depositors realise that the whole system is just a black hole.

And this is exactly what is about to happen. 

During a “hot war,” an armed fight between nations, it’s mostly the soldiers on the frontlines and civilians living in range of the action who are at risk. But during a “cold war,” (which now is mainly used to refer to the war between the Americans and Russians), the conflict does not involve direct fighting but occurs through hurting the other country’s economy or government, threats, spying, or wars by neighboring countries representing the main countries that are against each other. In the case of the American-Russian Cold War, practically half the world was in danger. At one point, America took the threat of nuclear attack so seriously, the government began building “nuclear fallout shelters” — a room built underground to protect people from the effects of a nuclear bomb.

Today, these “doomsday bunkers,” meaning underground structures to be used in the case of a catastrophe, sound like a piece of fiction. But back then, they stood ready for use at any moment.

Real estate lawyer Jim Burling, Vice President of litigation for Pacific Legal Foundation, recently warned Fox News Digital that any home left unoccupied for an extended period could be a target. In Chicago, two residents recently found out the hard way when squatters moved into their homes after their elderly family members died. Darthula Young and Karen Polk discovered the squatters in September, yet remain tied up in the court process, a process that can take months and puts the burden of proof on the homeowners.

Burling further explained to Fox News Digital that organized criminal groups often scour title records for properties that are vacant due to foreclosure or death, while the Coronavirus pandemic has added to the problem with eviction moratoriums allowing tenants to legally stay in properties without having to pay rent. "If somebody is living in a home and saying, 'hey, I signed a lease, I'm paying rent, I have a right to be here,' whether or not that’s true the police hear that story then they hear a story of somebody who's not living there and saying 'this is my place these people don't belong here,' the police officer can't make that legal determination.”

"The internet today allows people like that to thrive because these mainstream media corporations are so corrupt. They're so obviously indebted to the companies that pay for their advertising."

EU antitrust investigators have raided energy drink maker Red Bull over suspicions it abused its dominance in the wildly popular market, officials said Tuesday.

Red Bull said EU Commission officials "visited our premises" on Monday.

"We will, of course, work with them on all matters that concern them," the company said in a statement, declining to comment further.

The EU's executive arm said earlier its teams carried out unannounced inspections Monday "at the premises of a company active in the energy drinks sector in various member states".

Days after it was rescued in an emergency buyout, Credit Suisse gathered hundreds of clients in an upscale Hong Kong hotel on Tuesday for a glitzy investment conference where they were told to "embrace the new reality".

Executives at the event from the troubled Swiss lender were eager to offer reassurances, even as details of the takeover by Swiss giant UBS remained unclear and global markets were buffeted by fears for the banking industry.

UBS agreed on Sunday to a government-brokered deal to take over Credit Suisse for $3 billion Swiss francs ($3.25 billion), a move authorities say was vital to prevent further economic turmoil.

As crisis stalks the traditional world of stocks and bonds, bitcoin is suddenly looking like a safe haven.

The infamously volatile cryptocurrency seems positively hale and hearty, just as a banking meltdown drives markets into the arms of a recession.

Bitcoin has risen 21% this month, while a choppy S&P 500 has lost 1.4% and gold has gained 8%.

"If you were going to describe an environment where there were successive bank runs because central banks are trying to fight inflation with fast rate increases, that is pretty close to as spot-on a thesis for owning bitcoin as you've ever heard," said St?phane Ouellette, CEO at digital asset investment platform FRNT Financial.

Google on Tuesday invited people in the United States and Britain to test its AI chatbot, known as Bard, as it continues on its gradual path to catch up with Microsoft-backed ChatGPT.

Bard, ChatGPT and other similar artificial intelligence apps churn out essays, poems or computing code on command and have taken the world by storm as the biggest new thing in tech since the advent of the iPhone.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told staff that after testing Bard with 80,000 Google employees, the chatbot would be tested with the public in the United States and Britain as a "first step" before going out to more countries in other languages.

Britain's government borrowed more than expected in February, official data showed on Tuesday, but finance minister Jeremy Hunt may still hope that falling energy costs and inflation will offer leeway later this year for a pre-election tax cut.

The Office for National Statistics said public sector net borrowing, excluding state-owned banks, was 16.7 billion pounds ($20.4 billion) last month, the largest February deficit since monthly records began in 1993.

The reading was above all predictions in a Reuters poll of economists, which had a median forecast for 11.4 billion pounds in borrowing.

Iowa Republicans have recently been accused of pursuing an agenda that includes a costly school choice bill and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community.

In a hit piece published Monday, The Washington Post referred to Iowa as the "Florida of the North without the beaches” due to these policies. Statehouse reporters have derided this remark.

Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, has been profiled in the article as a "culture warrior," with her policies on gun rights, school choice, and abortion access receiving particular attention. The Post argued a connection drawn between the "Don't say gay" protestors in Iowa and Florida.

Ransomware groups are pulling no punches in their attempts to force compromised organizations to pay up. A report released Tuesday by Unit 42, a Palo Alto Networks threat intelligence team, found that attackers are increasingly harassing victims and associated parties to make sure their ransom demands are met.

For its new 2023 Ransomware and Extortion Threat Report, Unit 42 analyzed approximately 1,000 incidents that the team investigated between May 2021 and October 2022. Around 100 cases were analyzed for insight into ransomware and extortion negotiations. Most of the cases were based in the U.S., but the observed cybercriminals conducted attacks against businesses and organizations around the world.

By the end of 2022, harassment was a factor in 20% of the ransomware cases investigated by Unit 42, a significant jump from less than 1% in mid 2021.

A black NYC subway passenger was filmed hurling vile racist abuse at a white couple and their toddler son.  

Disturbing footage shows the terrified couple and their toddler sitting on the moving train as the man, standing opposite them wearing a black hat, headphones and holding a Target bag, is seen screaming at them for no apparent reason on Monday.

The unnamed assailant's abuse became increasingly unhinged despite his victims' attempts to ignore them, and he ended up screaming in their faces while insulting their child.  

'Take em' back to Europe ya'll...gay a** gorilla ... shut up... I don't care about your ugly a** kids and your race...shut up ... f*****g plastic a** body... I don't care about you ... you white monkey,' he spews as he inches closer.

One “conspiracy theory” we didn’t discuss on the show—but which I have covered in my radio broadcasts—is the 1980 October Surprise act of treason that overthrew Jimmy Carter and put Reagan and Bush I in the White House. Specifically, I have interviewed Reagan White House whistleblower Barbara Honegger and historian Gary Sick, authors of the two books, both entitled October Surprise, that broke the story. This is one of those conspiracy theories that has been rated by cognoscenti as “obviously true, at least in its broad outlines” for several decades.

The New York Times used to disagree. America’s newspaper of record has long lumped October Surprise alongside all the other “conspiracy theories” it rails against: JFK, RFK, MLK, 9/11, the Franklin Scandal, Vietnam POWs, CIA drug dealing, election theft, Hunter’s laptop, Epstein didn’t kill himself, the COVID bio-attack, and other obvious truths that the Gray Lady thinks aren’t fit to print.

But yesterday, everything changed: The New York Times ran a story admitting that the gist of October Surprise has turned out to be true.

The pharmaceutical company Moderna, which has already received over $10 billion in taxpayer funds for the development of its COVID-19 vaccine, could receive even more public money at the request of the Biden Administration.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, lawyers with the Department of Justice (DOJ) offered in court filings last month to “relieve” Moderna of any liabilities it may face as the result of a lawsuit claiming that the company has not paid licensing fees for the technology it utilized to develop its vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus.

Moderna’s lawyers have claimed that, since the creation of the vaccine was part of the federal government’s plan known as “Operation Warp Speed,” the government should have to pay for any legal settlement. Lawyers with the Biden DOJ ultimately agreed with this sentiment, saying that any financial burden should “transfer” to the federal government.

Webmaster addition: Meaning, transferred to you!

Amiddle school in Boston, Massachusetts is facing backlash from parents after students were made to participate in a survey about their “gender identity” and sexual activity.

The New York Post reports that the incident took place at Eliot K-8 Innovation School. Last Thursday, school principal Traci Griffith sent an email to all parents stating that she had received “many concerns” about the “Youth Risk Behavior Survey.”

The survey was given to students in the 6th and 7th grades, and featured 54 questions in total. Administered by Boston Public Schools, the questions focused on such topics as “transgenderism,” suicide, bullying, drug use, sexual activity, weight, and exercise.

One of the survey’s top questions reads: “A transgender person is someone who does not feel the same inside as the sex they were born with. Are you transgender?” Another question asked students if they have “ever participated in oral sex,” while another asked if they have “seriously thought” about committing suicide.

The latest report by the House Judiciary Committee declares that there was “no legitimate basis” for the Biden Administration’s efforts to label parents protesting at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and place them under federal investigation.

As reported by Fox News, the Judiciary Committee and its new subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have completed an interim staff report on the matter of the federal government’s handling of parents’ rights groups, who were “voicing concerns about controversial curricula and education-related policies.”

“From the initial set of material produced in response to the subpoenas, it is apparent that the Biden administration misused federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources for political purposes,” the committee’s report declares. The committee has already subpoenaed several key figures in the scandal, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, and several members of the National School Boards Association (NSBA).

“The big question is whether all this government spending has produced any significant bang for the buck.  The answer is no,” said Izumi, senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute and author of Choosing Diversity: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children, and the co-author along with Wenyuan Wu and McKenzie Richards of the new book, The Great Parent Revolt: How Parents and Grassroots Leaders Are Fighting Critical Race Theory in America’s Schools.

“While government spending burgeoned, student achievement plummeted, children’s mental health suffered and schools became more dangerous, which is an outcome that demands a better solution such as giving parents greater educational choice,” Izumi said.

Izumi said the poor performance of California’s public schools is so bad that students are just not showing up for class.

“The Los Angeles Times has reported that California parents are pulling their children out of school ‘because they’ve lost confidence in the education system’s ability to meet their needs.’”

The "winter of discontent" that has been sweeping across Europe has now escalated into a "spring of discontent," with strikes and protests set to spread from France, Greece, and other surrounding countries to Germany. 

According to Reuters, Germany's Verdi union and the railway and transport union EVG are preparing to unleash paralyzing strikes on the country's airports and railways next Monday.

Verdi is negotiating for 2.5 million public sector workers, including ones at airports and other public transport hubs. The union has demanded higher wages due to persistent inflation pressures. EVG is negotiating for 230,000 employees at railway company Deutsche Bahn and bus companies.