UK banks to stress test readiness for major cyberattack

Only days after the authorities gave UK-based banks a time limit to come up with cyberattack defence plans, details have emerged of a major stress test of current financial systems set for next month.

Dubbed ‘Operation Waking Shark 2′, according to The Daily Telegraph the test day will simulate a “severe” attack on payment providers, banks and markets to sniff out weaknesses in defence strategies, communications, and procedures.

France’s triumphant ‘Joan of Arc’ vows to bring back franc and destroy euro

Marine Le Pen is spoiling for a fight. The leader of France’s Front National vows to smash the existing order of Europe and force the break-up of monetary union, if she wins the next election.

It is no longer an implausible prospect. “We cannot be seduced,” she said, brimming with confidence after her party secured 46pc of the vote in a by-election earthquake a week ago. Her candidate trounced the ruling Socialists in their own bastion of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

“The euro ceases to exist the moment that France leaves, and that is our incredible strength. What are they going to do, send in tanks?” she told the Daily Telegraph at the Front National’s headquarters, an unmarked building tucked away in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Her office is small and workaday, almost austere.

We Own It: Russian Bishop ‘Consecrates’ Arctic Ocean

However bizarre it may be… While the US sits idly and continues to regulate its own energy industry to death, Russia continues its Artic land grab. It’s also slant-drilling into US oil reserves off of Cuba and near the borderlines of Alaska.

Russia has taken a bizarre step to declare its “ownership” of the Arctic Ocean region by having a Russian Orthodox bishop “consecrate” the North Pole on behalf of the church.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a bishop named Iakov of the northern Naryan-Mar (which lies north of the Arctic Circle) placed a “holy memorial capsule” into the icy sea while aboard the Rossiya, a nuclear-powered icebreaker during a polar expedition arranged by Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.

The capsule featured an inscription that read: “With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the consecration of the North Pole marks 1,150 years of Russian Statehood.”

Full article: We Own It: Russian Bishop ‘Consecrates’ Arctic Ocean (International Business Times)