Anonymous Shuts Down Corporate and Government Websites Worldwide

Anonymous launched one of the largest hacking attacks in history today.

Gizmodo reports that – in response to the Feds’ shutting down of the extremely popular file-sharing site MegaUpload – Anonymous has shut down the sites of the main corporate copyright enforcers, including:

Motion Picture Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
Universal Music
EMI
Anonymous has also shut down the main U.S. governmental copyright enforcers, including:

U.S. Copyright Office
Department of Justice
FBI
Plus foreign agencies, including:

French copyright authority HADOPI
Given yesterday’s success in forcing so many congress members to back off of SOPA and PIPA, the timing could not be worse.

As free speech champion Michael Rivero argued after Anonymous took down DOJ’s website today:

In aligning with the pirates and attacking the DOJ, anonymous has handed the US government more justification for draconian controls on the internet.

I would not be quite so upset if this had occurred after Congress passed a draconian web censorship bill such as SOPA. But the fact that this is happening only 24 hours after the web’s successful protest concerns me greatly.

From: http://ping.fm/6IXxC

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• Anonymous takes down Department of Justice and Universal Music (rt.com)
• SOPA/PIPA The Day After The Protest – Feds retaliate shutdown and arrest MEGAUPLOAD, but Anonymous strikes back with a vengeance! (toodamnez.wordpress.com)
• Anonymous Launches Largest Attack Ever Following Megaupload Closure (techfleece.com)
• TYRANNY ALERT: Obama Admin (FBI) Shuts Down Megaupload in Retaliation to Anti-SOPA Blackout; Moments Later Anonymous Hacks DOJ and Record Label Sites (pumabydesign001.com)
• US takes down Megaupload, Anonymous takes down DOJ website (100gf.wordpress.com)
• Occupy Citizens Fight American Corruption (ourword5.wordpress.com)

U.S. shuts down file-sharing website Megaupload.com

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

One of the world’s most popular file-sharing sites was shuttered Thursday, and its founder and several company officials were accused of facilitating millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content.

An indictment accused Megaupload.com of costing copyright holders at least $500-million (U.S.) in lost revenue. The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to make it easier for authorities to go after websites with pirated material, especially those with headquarters and servers overseas.

Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Va., which gave federal authorities jurisdiction, the indictment said.

The Justice Department said in a statement said that Kim Dotcom, 37, and three other employees were arrested Thursday in New Zealand at the request of U.S. officials. Three other defendants are at large.

Before the site was taken down, it posted a statement saying allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were “grotesquely overblown.”

“The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch,” the statement said.

The indictment may have prompted a response from the loose affiliation of hackers known as “Anonymous,” which claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department’s website. The site was inaccessible Thursday afternoon.

From: http://ping.fm/yfNwo

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Pumpkin Patch to its 36 outlets in Britain

CHILDREN’S clothing retailer Pumpkin Patch will abandon Britain, closing its 36 shops there as Europe’s downbeat economic conditions take a heavy toll.

The company announced yesterday that it was appointing administrators in Britain.

Chief executive Neil Cowie said the British operation had not made an acceptable return and “it would continue to make losses for some time to come”.

The company would continue to sell in Britain, and would boost its online presence, but administrators might have to shut the stores if no alternatives could be found, he said.

Pumpkin Patch, based in New Zealand and with a significant Australian business, flagged restructuring costs as high as $24.86 million.

Last year, it decided to shut its US stores, write off unprofitable British outlets, and cut head-office staff. It disappointed investors when it posted a $1.45 million loss in the year to last July.

Mr Cowie said Pumpkin Patch focused on its Australasian stores at Christmas and performed better than a year earlier.

From: http://ping.fm/JpmW8

DNA Sequence Discovered That Causes Lupus

A “genetic accelerator” is responsible for the most severe cases of Lupus (systemic lupus erythemathosus), an autoimmune disease: the accelerator, called enhancer HS1.2, speeds up the activity of some critical genes of the immune system involved in the disease.

A team of Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome found that the enhancer HS1.2 is like the accelerator of the car and boosts the pathological immune response typical of the disease by enhancing the production of the pathological antibodies that attack the patient’s body instead of defending it (autoantibodies).

Professor Gianfranco Ferraccioli, Head of the Rheumatology Unit of Rheumatology and Internal Medicine of the Catholic University led the research in collaboration with Professor Domenico Frezza at Tor Vergata University of Rome and Professor Raffaella Scorza at University of Milan and they published their results in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

The discovery could lead to more targeted and effective therapies against this complex disease, in particular against the most severe cases, Professor Ferraccioli explained.

Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune disease, that is a condition in which the patient’s immune system goes haywire and begins to attack the body rather than defend it. Lupus affects about 60,000 people in Italy, with a major prevalence among females. Lupus affects several different organs and tissues and causes a variety of symptoms, including joint pain, fever, skin rashes, hair loss, Raynaud’s disease, anemia, nephritis.

The therapies currently used are based on cortisone, anti-malarial drugs and immunosuppressants (azathioprine, mycophenolate, cyclophosphamide) and biologic drugs (rituximab, Belimumab).

But in many cases Lupus is more aggressive and so far the origin of this particular severity was quite unclear.

Italian researchers discovered that the cause of the most severe cases is the accelerator HS1.2 enhancer. Enhancers are DNA sequences that accelerate the activation of neighboring genes and enhance their functioning, hence the name.

HS1.2 leads to enhanced activation of the “transcription factor NF-KB” (a transcription factor is a molecule that “reads” the genes to make them work), which in turn dramatically increases the aggressiveness of the inflammatory processes underlying the disease.

Italian researchers have discovered that over 30 per cent of the patients has the enhancer HS1.2 in their Dna and that it causes a more severe form of Lupus.

The researchers reached this finding after demonstrating that the enhancer HS1.2 promotes also other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and identified how the enhancer causes increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases.

“Our results suggest that new drugs that turn off the enhancer HS1.2, or inhibit its effect on NF-KB, can stop the disease without the need for immunosuppressive drugs or other therapies with many side effects,” Ferraccioli said. “Moreover the discovery of the role of this enhancer allows us to better classify patients and formulate a precise prognosis for each one moving toward more personalized care.”

From: http://ping.fm/SEp0F

Bank Of America Pulling Out Of Some US Markets

Banking giant Bank of America is reportedly preparing to pull the plug on some of its less profitable banking centers.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal a source close to the banks operations the company is close to exercising a contingency plan it drew up last year under the insistence of the Federal Reserve.

If the plan goes into effect it’s like a sign that the banks mortgage and other financial sectors have worsened. It could also mean that the bank will close more than the 570 of 5,700 branches already marked for shutdown.

Should we start calling it Bank of Some of America?

According to the bank source officials only want to cut back on the number of branches if absolutely necessary since Bank of America spent huge sums of cash luring customers to those branches.

As the Journal points out it was only a matter of time before Bank of America pulled out of smaller, less profitable cities especially as the company continues to cut more than 40,000 current jobs from the payroll.

From: http://ping.fm/p0Ffu

Oakland layoffs 2,500 city workers

OAKLAND, Calif.—Oakland officials are sending layoff notices to nearly 2,500 employees as the city moves to cut costs to try to make up for the loss of redevelopment money.
The city announced Wednesday that with the state cutting redevelopment funds across California, it won’t have the money to pay the salaries of 1,464 full-time and more than 1,000 part-time or temporary employees.

City spokeswoman Karen Boyd says because the city is required to give a 10-day notice if a job is eliminated by the Jan. 31, not every employee who receives a layoff notice will be out a job.
Police and fire staff are exempt from layoffs due to a clause in their contracts.
The city says the loss of the redevelopment funds creates a potential annual budget gap ranging from $25 to $30 million, although the exact size of the deficit has not yet been fully determined.

From: http://ping.fm/AQ8TM

Eastman Kodak files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Eastman Kodak, the once mighty icon of the photography industry, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday.
Kodak’s (EK, Fortune 500) stock plunged 30% in premarket trading.
The company said it has obtained $950 million in financing from Citibank to maintain operations. The company said the credit facility is still subject to court approval.
Kodak said it has enough liquidity to continue operating during the bankruptcy process.

Kodak acknowledged, in its Chapter 11 filing, that it had more than 100,000 creditors, with debts totaling $6.75 billion.
Kodak company also said that it had assets of $5.1 billion, with properties in Rochester, NY, Windsor, Colo. and Weatherford, Okla.

From: Ping.fm

Gripped by recession fears as jobs decline

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

“This is the first definitive sign that some people have started giving up looking for work, and to be honest the situation in NSW is most likely going to get worse before it gets better,” CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian said.
The Australian economy now finds itself at the crossroads, spooked by a jobs crisis not seen since Paul Keating’s “recession we had to have”.
Australia’s economy shed 100 jobs last year, the first time more jobs were lost than created in any year since 1992, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Falls in employment were also seen in 1982, 1990 and 1991. However those years all followed periods of recession when the Australian economy went backwards.
By comparison, even at the height of the GFC in 2008, 194,000 jobs were created.
In May last year, Treasurer Wayne Swan made headlines when he pledged his budget would create 500,000 new jobs and drive unemployment to 4.5 per cent.

But with 18 months left until the end of the government’s term, analysts have questioned whether it can make good on the promise to reduce the number of unemployed people nationally by at least 100,000.
“It’s going to be a tough ask to get unemployment that low, unless more people start to give up and not look for jobs any more,” one analyst, who declined to be named, said last night.
Acting treasurer Bill Shorten last night admitted global turbulence throughout 2011 had made the government’s job harder and caused job creation to slow.
“While employment growth has slowed in the face of heightened global uncertainty, we’ve seen workers pick up a few extra hours of work each week,” Mr Shorten said.
The opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey last night said the fact that more jobs were lost than created last year made a mockery of Mr Swan’s claim to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs”.
NSW bore the brunt of the slump, with total unemployment jumping by 0.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent.
But while overall unemployment remained steady at a respectable 5.2 per cent for December, analysts suggest the official figure could have been much more dire.
“If the participation rate remained at 65.5 per cent, then the unemployment rate would have risen to 5.6 per cent,” TD Securities head of Asian-Pacific research Annette Beacher said.
However the participation rate – a gauge of the population working or looking for work – in fact sunk to 65.2 per cent, its lowest level in almost two years.

From: http://ping.fm/MgZ58