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| Wrist sensor may be better measure of blood pressure!

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Wrist sensor may be better measure of blood pressure ~ BBC.

A new device could improve how blood pressure is measured, according to NHS researchers.

A team at University College London showed a sensor worn on the wrist could measure the pressure of blood leaving the heart throughout the day.

Normally blood pressure is measured in the arteries in the arm, but the pressure at the heart might be a better predictor of future health problems.

If blood pressure is too high it can lead to heart attacks and stroke.

About a third of people in the UK have hypertension, dangerously high blood pressure, but most are unaware of the condition.

A team at the NHS National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) trialled the sensor, which contains a mini-plunger that moves up and down as blood pulses past with every heartbeat.

A computer programme in the wrist strap used this “pulse wave” to work out the pressure in the heart. This was compared with measures taken from sensors in patients’ hearts.

“It was remarkably accurate,” said Prof Bryan Williams, the director of the NIHR University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre.

Disease predictorGuidelines in the UK recommend that blood pressure is measured at home over the course of 24 hours before drugs for hypertension are prescribed.

Their study, published in the journal Hypertension, showed that the measurements in the arm did not reflect the true changes in blood pressure at night.

Prof Williams said: “What we have shown is that pressures by the heart do not dip as much during sleep as we previously thought.

“We know the pressure when someone is asleep is a strong predictor of heart disease. This [the device] almost certainly gives a better measure than blood pressure in the arm.

“This is not mainstream, but in the future you could see people having their central blood pressure measured instead of in the arm.”

Clinical trials will now test whether using the device leads to better diagnoses.

Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “It’s still early stages for this new measuring device, but advances in technology could lead to better prevention and treatment of high blood pressure in the future.

“The only way to know if your blood pressure is high is to have it measured. The easiest way to do this is by visiting your GP surgery.

“However, blood pressure fluctuates throughout the day depending on what you’re doing, and if it’s found to be high you may need to have it tested several times.”

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All in the wrist: Device monitors fluctuations in blood pressure.

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| Why Some Women Stray and How to Prevent It!

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Why Some Women Stray and How to Prevent It ~ , Spiritual teacher, mentor, counselor, author, soul mate relationship specialist, founder of R.E.A.P. Healing Method,

  • The Huffington Post.

“The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies but between your minds, your hearts and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship” ~ Barbara de Angelis

Ms. de Angelis nailed it. Countless women (and men too) feel a yearning for these very connections in a relationship. These connections between the minds, hearts and souls of two partners are, in essence, the basis of emotional fulfillment. In order to feel emotionally fulfilled, these connections must be in place.

In the years I have counseled my clients, in particular those that were married women, I witnessed large percentages that were emotionally “malnourished.” They truly longed for emotional fulfillment and a deep connection (or re-connection) with their husband. Some of them once had this connection within their relationship and some of them never had this connection at all. Either way, these women eventually found themselves yearning for something more. And many of them found it — unfortunately outside of their marriage.

What actually constitutes emotional fulfillment for women in general? Basically, it is those connections that make a woman feel loved, cherished, secure, safe, happy and contented with their partner. I’ve found that there are five basic connections in particular are required. Although I outline each one separately, the reality is that all of these connections are intertwined and therefore must all be met to attain emotional fulfillment.

Respect. I don’t think men and women have the same definition of what it means to be respected by their mate. This can cause a great deal of disruption within a marriage. For women, feeling respected can involve many layers. For instance, words spoken in any tone that is less than loving or kind can make her feel disrespected and can cut like a knife. How he treats her overall is essential.

Value. This is a big one. Women need to feel like an asset — an invaluable presence to her mate. A woman needs her mate to recognize her worth — which is priceless.

Appreciation. Women, just like men, need to feel genuinely appreciated for who they are and what they bring to the relationship. They don’t need to be appreciated for absolutely everything, just the things they put their personal “stamp” on. It’s usually those things their mate wouldn’t have in their lives if it weren’t for these women. Without appreciation, women feel neglected, worthless and meaningless.

Celebration. This may sound silly to some, but I know many women who deeply desire to be seen and treated as a Goddess by her mate. She needs him to see her as the epitome of love, beauty, sensuality and more. When he genuinely sees her in this manner she feels — and is — celebrated.

Authenticity. This is the heart of real emotional fulfillment and deep connections. A man needs to allow himself to authentically love, keeping his heart open to her. Many times a woman can sense when he isn’t being genuine and is just “going through the motions” to keep her happy. Unfortunately, all attempts made will mean nothing if it isn’t sincere and heartfelt. Without authenticity, she can’t connect with him — after all, he’s not really connected either.

It’s important here to mention that men aren’t solely responsible for fulfilling women’s needs — emotional or otherwise. Women also have a responsibility to meet their mate at the place she yearns to be. In other words, she has to love, cherish, respect, value and appreciate herself first. Otherwise, she would end up being emotionally dependent. As I teach my clients, self love is non-negotiable — period. One must be emotionally self-reliant first in order to have a healthy, loving and enduring relationship.

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| When Truth Becomes an Enemy of the State: Bradley Manning on Trial!

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When Truth Becomes an Enemy of the State: Bradley Manning on Trial ~ Michael Ratner, Truthout.

Yesterday, after three years of confinement, Pfc. Bradley Manning finally went on trial in a military court at Fort Meade, Maryland. But it is less a real trial than it is a trial run, an experiment on how to make an example out of a government whistleblower, intimidate journalists’ sources, and make journalists and publishers targets.

What Manning did for his country was priceless, and for that he will pay a heavy price. Here’s a young soldier who put his future on the line so Americans had a chance to see the human and moral cost of the wars their government is waging. Manning’s information shaped the American public’s understanding of the ongoing wars and the way the press reports on these conflicts. This shift in perception is largely responsible for US troops finally coming home. Manning now faces a life sentence and the most serious charge against him carries a potential death penalty.

Government prosecutors will try to prove Manning had reason to believe his actions would aid the enemy. In his testimony earlier this year, Manning explained his political motivation, arguing that he had hoped to ”spark a domestic debate” over current US wars and saying that he did so to have a “clear conscience.”

In a telling sign of just how fair of a trial Manning will get, the military judge already ruled that almost all questions and evidence the defense can raise about Manning’s intentions for acting are irrelevant to the trial. The judge has also stated that two dozen prosecution witnesses will testify behind closed doors. Many of these will be discussing the WikiLeaks documents available to all everywhere, except in the courtroom, since the government still considers them secret.

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange were threaded through the prosecutor’s opening, with speculative claims that Manning was taking direction from WikiLeaks and Manning looked for what to disclose on the WikiLeaks most wanted list. Manning’s lawyer repeated that he acted on his own and was not taking direction from WikiLeaks. The “wanted” list was actually an open Wiki list contributed to by human rights groups and others. This effort to brand Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as “conspirators” has been the government strategy from the beginning and has had its latest reincarnation when the FBI in an affidavit claimed FOX reporter James Rosen was a co-conspirator or aided and abetted his source. Sadly, that seems to be the dangerous direction the government is taking in its efforts to squelch truth-telling.

The military judge has also determined that court documents and transcripts, even of her own rulings, will continue to be unavailable to reporters and the general public. Manning’s supporters crowd-funded stenographers to make up for the lack of transcripts, but last week the court denied them press passes. Yesterday, one of the stenographers was able to get in after the Bradley Manning Support Network gave up their pass for the day. There is no guarantee any stenographers will be allowed on future dates, and the same goes for most of the 370 media organizations that have requested access, most of whom did not get it.

Center for Constitutional Rights is suing the military judge in Manning’s case in an attempt to make public the documents in the case. We cannot afford to let the government get away with these amateur-hour procedures designed to discourage press coverage of the most important state secrets trial since the Pentagon papers.

Everyone who cares about the future of this country needs to learn about this case and get involved in Manning’s defense: make his case in the court of public opinion, call on newspapers to carefully scrutinize how this trial is being handled and drive a meaningful public debate about the morality of Manning’s actions.

Truth is a condition for government accountability. Bradley Manning is facing the most severe punishment for a journalistic source in this country’s history because truth itself has become an enemy of our state. Exposing the truth about government misconduct does not make one a traitor; turning your back on truth-tellers like Manning does.

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| Inside the never ending simulated Middle East War at the US National Training Centre!

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Inside The Neverending Simulated Middle Eastern War At The U.S. National Training Center ~ , disinformation. 

simulated war

Venue visits the surreal Fort Irwin, arguably the Pentagon’s Universal Studios, where U.S. soldiers spend three weeks role-playing urban warfare in a mock city, complete with gruesome special effects, food markets filled with burqa-clad women, and gamer-style cards which instruct soldiers as to what injuries they must pretend to have:

Fort Irwin is a U.S. army base nearly the size of Rhode Island, located in the Mojave Desert about an hour’s drive northeast of Barstow, California. There you will find the National Training Center, at which all U.S. troops, from all the services, spend a twenty-one day rotation before they deploy overseas.

 

Sprawling and infernally hot in the summer months, the base offers free public tours twice a month of the simulated battlefields in which imaginary conflicts loop, day after day, without end. Picture paid actors shooting entire magazines full of blank rounds out of machine guns behind simulated Middle Eastern buildings in the Mojave desert.

 

Trucks began rolling down the streets, dodging a live goat and letting off round after round as insurgents fired RPGs (mounted on invisible fishing line above our heads) from upstairs windows; blood-covered casualties were loaded into an ambulance; and, in the episode’s climax, a suicide bomber blew himself up directly beneath us, showering our tour group with ashes.

 

Action is coordinated from above by a ring of walkie-talkie connected scenographers, including an extensive internal media presence, who film all of the simulations for later replay in combat analysis. The sense of being on an elaborate, extremely detailed film set is here made explicit.

During the Cold War, combat moved away from urban settings, and Fort Irwin’s desert sandbox became the stage for massive set-piece tank battles against the “Soviet” Blackhorse Cavalry. But, in 1993, following the embarrassment of the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Fort Irwin hosted its first urban warfare exercise.

 

The vision is to expand the range of urban conditions into a “Decisive Action Training Environment,” in which U.S. military will continue to encounter “the world’s worst actors” [sic]—”guerrillas, criminals, and insurgents”—amidst the furniture of city life.

 

One soldier off-handedly remarked that he’d heard the village might be redesigned soon as a Spanish-speaking environment—before hastily and somewhat nervously adding that he didn’t know for sure, and, anyway, it probably wasn’t true.

 

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| Auction if not buying: Does anyone know the rules to Monopoly?

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Does anyone know the rules to Monopoly? ~ , The Telegraph.

It has been a family favourite for more than 75 years, but it has been revealed we may have all been playing Monopoly the wrong way.

One of eight classic Monopoly tokens will go straight to jail without a get out of jail free card after makers of the board game decided to scrap one playing piece and replace it with a modern-day alternative.

The board game was invented by Charles Darrow, whose young niece suggested he use metal charms from charm bracelets as pieces in the game Photo: Rex Features.

The rules have been named as one of the game’s best kept secret as no one reads the instructions.

It is claimed that this is the reason why the popular board game sparks so many arguments and takes so long to complete

One of the little-known rules demands that when a player lands on a space but does not wish to purchase the property it should be offered up for auction to their rivals.

Now the rules have gone viral on Twitter after a games blogger launched a campaign to teach people how to play properly.

The idea of auctioning up a space is to launch a furious bidding war, and the official rules from Hasbro, which makes the game, state: “If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder.

“Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price.”

The rule oversight was picked up from a 2011 blog from the Near Miss gaming website.

Johnny Nexus, the editor of Near Miss, which is running The Campaign For Real Monopoly, said that playing the game according to the rules can actually improve your enjoyment.

“Firstly, it speeds up the game, as it enables the quicker collection of a matched set of streets (and remember that it’s only when players have collected sets, and can start building houses, that the game moves into its final phase),” he wrote.

“Secondly, it makes the game much more interesting by massively increasing the interaction between players.

“Thirdly, it makes the game much more skilful, since it is now less dependent on luck, and more dependent on your ability to trick, bluff and manage the other players.”

He added that the confusion comes as the game is something you learn “through word-of-mouth in childhood, like riding a bike or tying your shoelaces”, the Daily Mail reported.

“Your mother, who never read the rules but was instead taught them by her father, taught you, and one day you will teach your children, again without reading the rules first. She passed on broken rules to you and you’ll pass them on to your kids.”

Another common misconception is that landing on Free Parking entitles the player to a cash reward, the blog points out.

Since 1935, 275million Monopoly games have been sold in 111 countries, spanning 43 languages, meaning more than one billion people have played it. The longest Monopoly tournament in history lasted 70 days.

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| Mum talked down Woolwich terrorists who told her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’

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Mum talked down Woolwich terrorists who told her: ‘We want to start a war in London tonight’ ~ , The Telegraph.

Exclusive: A cub scout leader confronted terrorists just seconds after they had beheaded a soldier asking them to hand over their weapons and warning them:

“It is only you versus many people, you are going to lose.”

A mother-of-two described tonight how she put her own life on the line by trying to persuade the soldier’s murderers to hand over their weapons.

Cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett selflessly engaged the terrorists in conversation and kept her nerve as one of them told her: “We want to start a war in London tonight.”

Mrs Loyau-Kennett, 48, from Cornwall, was one of the first people on the scene after the two Islamic extremists butchered a soldier in Woolwich, south east London.

She was photographed by onlookers confronting one of the attackers who was holding a bloodied knife.

Ingrid Loyau-Kennett

Mrs Loyau-Kennett was a passenger on a number 53 bus which was travelling past the scene, and jumped off to check the soldier’s pulse.

“Being a cub leader I have my first aid so when I saw this guy on the floor I thought it was an accident then I saw the guy was dead and I could not feel any pulse.

“And then when I went up there was this black guy with a revolver and a kitchen knife, he had what looked like butcher’s tools and he had a little axe, to cut the bones, and two large knives and he said ‘move off the body’.

“So I thought ‘OK, I don’t know what is going on here’ and he was covered with blood. I thought I had better start talking to him before he starts attacking somebody else. I thought these people usually have a message so I said ‘what do you want?’

“I asked him if he did it and he said yes and I said why? And he said because he has killed Muslim people in Muslim countries, he said he was a British soldier and I said really and he said ‘I killed him because he killed Muslims and I am fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan they have nothing to do there.”

Moments earlier, the killers had hacked at the soldier “like a piece of meat”, and when Mrs Loyau-Kennett arrived on the scene they were roaming John Wilson Street waiting for police to arrive so they could stage a final confrontation with them.

She said: “I started to talk to him and I started to notice more weapons and the guy behind him with more weapons as well. By then, people had started to gather around. So I thought OK, I should keep him talking to me before he noticed everything around him.

“He was not high, he was not on drugs, he was not an alcoholic or drunk, he was just distressed, upset. He was in full control of his decisions and ready to everything he wanted to do.

I said ‘right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose, what would you like to do?’ and he said I would like to stay and fight.”

The suspect in the black hat then went to speak to someone else and Mrs Loyau-Kennett tried to engage with the other man in the light coat.

She said: “The other one was much shier and I went to him and I said ‘well, what about you? Would you like to give me what you have in your hands?’ I did not want to say weapons but I thought it was better having them aimed on one person like me rather than everybody there, children were starting to leave school as well.

Mrs Loyau-Kennett was not the only woman to show extraordinary courage. Others shielded the soldier’s body as the killers stood over them.

MPs praised the “extraordinary bravery” of the women and raised concerns about why it took armed police 20 minutes to arrive at the scene while people’s lives were at risk.

According to a security source the delay in the armed police response is “particularly surprising” because there is a heavily armed police presence at Woolwich Crown Court, which is just two and a half miles away.

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, said: “We are all grateful for the local people who responded so quickly.

“I do want to pay tribute to them [members of the public] – I think what

they have done is extraordinarily brave and courageous.

“It shows the spirit of London that people are just not prepared to allow an attack of this kind. I pay tribute to what they have done.”

Patrick Mercer MP, a former army officer and former shadow counter terrorism minister, paid tribute to the people who shielded the body of the soldier.

He said: “This is courage of the highest order, it sounds as if these members of the public are not soldiers, not policemen, not people whose duties demand this, they are extremely courageous people and that courage deserves to be recognised at the highest level.”

Robert Buckland, a Conservative member of the justice select committee, said: “It it is the case [that police took 20 minutes to arrive] it is very worrying. If there was any unwarranted delay then that that needs to be investigated.”

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| Exclusive: Is Woolwich killing blowback? [1:15]

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| Exclusive: Is Woolwich killing blowback? [1:15] ~ Doc Truth.

Footage has emerged showing a man wielding a bloodied meat cleaver and making political statements after a serving soldier wearing a Help for Heroes t-shirt was brutally killed near Woolwich barracks earlier today..

This ITV film shows a black man, dressed in a grey hooded jacket, saying: “We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

He added: “I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government – they don’t care about you.”

A few moments later both he and his accomplice were fatally shot by the Metropolitan Police‘s Armed Response Unit.

Home Secretary Theresa May has summoned a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee COBRA.

Emerging eye-witness accounts point towards this being a terrorist incident possibly inspired by a Jihadist ideology.

If so, this would be the first death-causing instance of someone other than the perpetrator since the 7/7 London suicide bombings in 2005.

Mrs May said she had been briefed by the director general of Security Service MI5, Andrew Parker, and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe on the “sickening and barbaric” attack.

“It has been confirmed to me that a man has been brutally murdered,” she said. “Two other men were shot by armed police and they are currently receiving treatment for their injuries.”

Speaking in Paris, Prime Minister David Cameron said there were “strong indications that this is a terrorist incident”.

The Muslim Council of Britain spoke out this evening, in the strongest possible terms, calling it a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and condemned it unreservedly, adding:

“Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim is a serving member of the Armed Forces.  Muslims have long served in this country’s Armed Forces, proudly and with honour. This attack on a member of the Armed Forces is dishonourable, and no cause justifies this murder.”

It shouldn’t be forgotten that this sickening atrocity in London is exactly what the UK government is funding the same kind of people to do in Syria – remember the heart-eating Syrian rebel commander last week?

‘Blowback’ – as originally coined by the CIA – simply means unintended negative consequences to a country of its own foreign policy disasters.

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| 100 Reasons to Reinvestigate 911! [14:29]

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| 100 Reasons to Reinvestigate 911! [14:29] ~ Doc Truth, YouTube. 

* 400+ Professors Question the 9/11 Commission Report:

Many well known and respected professors have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report. Several even allege government complicity in the terrible acts of 9/11. This page of the website is a collection of their statements. The website does not represent any organization and it should be made clear that none of these individuals are affiliated with this website.

Listed below are statements by more than 400 professors that contradict or are critical of the 9/11 Commission Report. Their collective voices give credibility to the claim that the 9/11 Commission Report is tragically flawed.

These individuals cannot be simply dismissed as irresponsible believers in some 9/11 conspiracy theory. Their sincere concern, backed by their dedication to researching and teaching the truth about a wide variety of subjects, demonstrates that criticism of the Commission Report is not inherently irresponsible or illogical, and that, in fact, it can be just the opposite.

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| “The American Dream” – Best 3 minutes of George Carlin’s career! [3:15]

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| “The American Dream” Best 3 minutes of George Carlin’s career! [3:15] ~ Doc Truth, YouTube.

“There’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the REAL owners, now. The REAL owners, the BIG WEALTHY business interests that control things and make all the important decisions — forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON’T. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN YOU. They own EVERYTHING.

They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they’ve got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They gotcha by the BALLS. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want — they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They DON’T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting FUCKED by system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.

And now they’re comin’ for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. They want your fuckin’ retirement money. They want it BACK. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it ALL from you sooner or later — ‘cuz they OWN this fuckin’ place. It’s a big CLUB. And YOU AIN’T IN IT. You and I are NOT IN the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-workin people — white collar, blue collar — doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on.

Good honest hard-workin people CONTINUE — these are people of modest means — continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don’t GIVE a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. T HEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU — AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. You know? And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care … that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream … ‘coz you have to be asleep to believe it.”

George Carlin’s Final Words To The World …
George Carlin on “The American Dream!”

URL: http://youtu.be/E1OgEG_FSIg

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| Gang stole $45m from cash machines across globe in hours, say prosecutors!

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Gang stole $45m from cash machines across globe in hours, say prosecutors ~ Associated Press in New York, guardian.co.uk.

‘Virtual criminal flash mob’ used bogus swipe cards loaded with data from hacked bank databases to commit thousands of thefts.

cash machine theft

Seven people are being held in connection with a case US prosecutors describe as a ‘massive 21st-century bank heist’. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/AP

A gang of criminals stole $45m (£29m) in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, US prosecutors have said.

Seven people were being held on Thursday in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from machines using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved quickly, working in cells to loot financial institutions around the world.

US attorney Loretta Lynch called it “a massive 21st-century bank heist”.

One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photographs of themselves with giant wads of notes as they made their way up and down Manhattan.

Here’s how it worked:

Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on prepaid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data on to any plastic card with a magnetic stripe – old hotel key card or expired credit card worked fine as long as they carried the account data and correct access codes.

A network of operatives then fanned out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders.

It appears no individuals lost money. The thieves plundered funds held by the banks that back up prepaid credit cards, not individual or business accounts, Lynch said.

She called it a “virtual criminal flash mob”, and a security analyst said it was the biggest cash machine fraud case she had heard of.

There were two separate attacks, one in December that reaped $5m (£3.2m) worldwide and another in February that brought in about $40m in 10 hours in about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.

The plundered machines were in Japan, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Colombia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Canada and several other countries. Law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen countries were involved in the investigation.

The accused ringleader in the US cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly killed in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said.

An indictment accused him and the other seven New York suspects of withdrawing $2.8m in cash from hacked accounts in less than a day.

Such cash machine fraud schemes are not uncommon.

Some of the fault lies with the ubiquitous magnetic strips on the back of the cards. Much of the world has abandoned them in favour of chip and pin cards. But because US banks and merchants have stuck to cards with magnetic strips, they are still accepted around the world.

Lynch would not say who masterminded the attacks globally, who the hackers are or where they were located, citing an ongoing investigation.

Lajud-Pena was found dead with a suitcase full of about $100,000 in cash. Dominican officials said they arrested a man in the killing who said it was a botched robbery.

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