Socialist hell: 120,000 desperate Venezuelans cross into Colombia for food, medicine

Some 120,000 desperate Venezuelans poured into Colombia over the weekend to buy food and medicine that are in short supply in socialist Venezeula.

Under the 21st century socialist, or “chavismo”, movement started by Hugo Chavez and continued by his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro, 70 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty amid triple-digit inflation, mortality rates are skyrocketing, public services are collapsing, crime is out of control, and hospitals do not have basic, inexpensive medicines.

It’s Way Too Easy to Hack the Hospital

If you recall this post from 2011, you knew this day was coming.

The culture of “Patch & Pray” will be the downfall so long as America chooses to be reactive over proactive.

 

Firewalls and medical devices are extremely vulnerable, and everyone’s pointing fingers

In the fall of 2013, Billy Rios flew from his home in California to Rochester, Minn., for an assignment at the Mayo Clinic, the largest integrated nonprofit medical group practice in the world. Rios is a “white hat” hacker, which means customers hire him to break into their own computers. His roster of clients has included the Pentagon, major defense contractors, Microsoft, Google, and some others he can’t talk about.

…

But when he showed up, he was surprised to find himself in a conference room full of familiar faces. The Mayo Clinic had assembled an all-star team of about a dozen computer jocks, investigators from some of the biggest cybersecurity firms in the country, as well as the kind of hackers who draw crowds at conferences such as Black Hat and Def Con. The researchers split into teams, and hospital officials presented them with about 40 different medical devices. Do your worst, the researchers were instructed. Hack whatever you can.

Greece wants to start charging people for cash withdrawals to prevent a run on banks

The cash-strapped Greek government has introduced a surcharge at cashpoints to prevent Greek citizens from withdrawing their cash.

…

A senior finance ministry official said: “The surcharge is just one of a grab-bag of measures we are considering if things get tough.”

Withdrawals exceeded €15 billion in the run up to the February elections that catapulted Alexis Tsipras and the far-left Syriza government to power. Greek residents were reported to have stashed wads of money behind bathroom tiles and under floorboards.

Once stable, Iraq will look to China for help rebuilding

“Although Iraq is still a fragmented country, sooner or later, it will need to rebuild infrastructure, including roads, hospitals, schools, ports, railway lines, and so on,” said Samir Sumaida’ie, who served as Iraqi ambassador to the US from 2006 to 2012, in an interview with Xinhua this week in Beijing.

“China will have the opportunity to play a big role when Iraq is able to welcome foreign contributions,” said Sumaida’ie, who is also an “old China hand,” having spent a lot of time in the country since 1991.

Stolen uranium compounds not only dirty bomb ingredients within ISIS’ grasp, say experts

As also mentioned here last week.

Plenty of materials for a potential dirty bomb are likely scattered throughout the area of Iraq controlled by ISIS, and pulling off an attack that spreads even a minor amount of radiation could be a huge PR coup for the terror group, experts told FoxNews.com.

Last week, the Iraqi government in Baghdad warned the UN that ISIS operatives had stolen 88 pounds of uranium compounds from Mosul University. Even though many experts said the research materials were not enough to cause widespread harm, spreading fear is even more important to terrorists than a big body count, one terrorism expert said. And with ISIS in control of a huge swath of northern Iraq and parts of Syria that includes research labs, hospitals and industrial sites, ingredients for radiation-spreading bombs are within its grasp.

“Obtaining radiological material from places like universities or hospitals is relatively easy if you have the firepower, a chaotic situation and jihadists willing to sacrifice their health handling it,” said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for The Clarion Project, a think tank that studies Islamic extremism. “We aren’t talking about producing a nuclear bomb; just combining an explosive with radioactive material.”

US warns of cyberattacks targeting medical devices

The FDA is warning that implanted medical devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators, are often connected to networks that are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could shut down or manipulate the machinery.