Daily Headlines: April 19, 2016

* U.S.: The 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to Lin-Manuel Miranda in recognition of the popular, critically-acclaimed Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

* Latin America: A new report detailed how the Hacking Team cyber security firm allegedly sold spyware and other tools used by authorities in several Latin American states for surveillance against critics and political opponents.

* Colombia: The Colombian government plans to resume using glyphosate to eradicate coca plants even though the World Health Organization classified it last year as a carcinogen.

* Cuba: Carnival reversed its decision to bar Cuban-Americans from traveling on its upcoming cruises to Cuba though it remains to be seen if they will be accepted back on to the island by immigration officials.

YouTube Source – PBS NewsHour
 
Online Sources – Buzzfeed News, ABC News, The Atlantic, Boing Boing

Daily Headlines: December 11, 2015

* Brazil: The International Monetary Fund’s Director of the Western Hemisphere noted that “political crises and corruption scandals” have prevented Brazil from emerging out of its recent economic slowdown.

* U.S.: New Census data showed that while Latinos are generally earning more income since 2010 but wealth inequality has become worse.

* Latin America: Security researchers at Citizen Lab uncovered a “large-scale hacking campaign” targeting journalists, activists and public figures in Latin America over the past seven years.

* El Salvador: David Morales, El Salvador's human rights ombudsman, claimed that security forces are behind 90% of abuses reported to the authorities.

YouTube Source – EIU Media
 
Online Sources – InSight Crime, Fox News Latino, Latin America Herald Tribune, The Register

Daily Headlines: September 3, 2014

* Guatemala: The ex-military commander convicted of the 1998 murder of human rights activist and Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi could serve additional prison time for supposedly “building an illicit business empire behind bars.”

* Colombia: Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana retired from the Tour of Spain due to injuries suffered from crashes yesterday and this morning.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro announced a government shake-up that includes replacing energy minister Rafael Ramirez with a cousin of the late leader Hugo Chávez.

* Peru: LulzSecPeru, described as a “hacktivist group comprised of two young men,” infiltrated e-mail messages that showed the government’s ties to lobbyists.

Video Source – YouTube user wwwprensalibrecomgt (Trailer to the 2010 film “Gerardi” examined the outspokenness of Juan Jose Gerardi against the brutality of Guatemala’s civil war).

Online Sources – ABC News; Sky Sports; Reuters; Latin Post

Hackers Target World Cup Websites

On the cusp of this year’s World Cup, hackers infiltrated several websites belonging to the Brazilian and sponsors of the premier global soccer tournament. 

The official English-language World Cup website was among those they suffered a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) along with the sites for the Bank of Brazil, Hyundai and Brazil’s intelligence agency (ABIN).

The site for the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso was defaced by someone reportedly belonging to the “Tunisian Hackers Team” and showing a photo of protesters holding a “FIFA Go Home!” banner.
“Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we’re tired of hearing promises that we know they’ll never keep,” read an anti-government message left on that site.”

At least two sites, including that of the Amazonas state electoral board, may have had the names and other personal information of individuals infiltrated and published in public forums.

All of the infiltrations took place between last Sunday and Wednesday.  As of the time of this post, all of the aforementioned websites are online and seemingly running normally.

“We had a busy last few days and there is more still to come,” reportedly said a hacker identified as Che Commodore to the Reuters news agency.

“Companies and institutions that work with a government that denies the basic rights of its people in order to promote a private, exclusive and corrupt sports event will be targeted,” added Che Commodore who allegedly belongs to the Anonymous hacker collective.

The e-mail service of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (BFM) was suspended for several days last month following a data breach.  Three thousand diplomats were advised to change their passwords and were left without access to their work e-mail accounts for several days.  Though BFM officials tried to downplay the incident, Anonymous was able to extract over three hundred documents from the agency's computing network.

Daily Headlines: May 22, 2014

* Brazil: Uruguay striker Luis Suarez could join Matias Fernandez of Chile and (possibly) Radamel Falcao of Colombia on the list of South American soccer stars that will miss the World Cup due to injury.

* Argentina: Joaquín Salvador Lavado, known by the pen name of “Quino” and creator of the Mafalda comic character, was named as this year’s recipient of Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities.

* Cuba: The Cuban government is believed to be behind the hacking of the new website launched yesterday by dissident blogger and activist Yoani Sanchez.

* Venezuela: The diplomatic tug-of-war between the U.S. and Venezuela hasn’t stopped state-run oil firm PDVSA from receiving a “$2 billion credit line” from several companies including Halliburton and Schlumberger.

Video Source – YouTube user David Peradze

Online Sources – BBC News; SI.com; LAHT; ABC News

Daily Headlines: May 19, 2014

* Colombia: In news that could boost the chances of President Juan Manuel Santos winning next Sunday's presidential election, opposition candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga was videotaped meeting with suspected hacker Andrés Sepulveda while the Colombian government reached a partial agreement with the FARC rebels.

* Argentina: Paleontologists in the Patagonia region of Argentina believed they have found the remains of what may have been the biggest dinosaur in history.

* U.S.: Victor Espinoza of Mexico is two-thirds of the way through to becoming the first Latin American jockey to guide a horse to the Triple Crown.

* Brazil: Inmates at a maximum security prison in northeastern Brazil freed 127 people held hostage following a riot over the weekend.

Online Sources - New York Daily News; Reuters; ABC News; GlobalPost; The Epoch Times

Video Source - euronews via YouTube

Crooked Colombian Campaign Contractor Caught

For the second time this year, Colombian authorities uncovered an illicit spying operation that may have included surveillance of government peace talks with the FARC rebels.

Agents representing the Colombian prosecutors office raided an office used by the social media team of Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, the presidential candidate representing the political party loyal to former President Alvaro Uribe.  Andrés Sepulveda was arrested during the raid, and suspected with spying over the peace negotiations held in Cuba and also trying to hack the e-mail account of President Juan Manuel Santos.

"The aim of the people who are connected to that criminal enterprise, was to sabotage and interfere with the peace process in Havana," Eduardo Montealegre said at a press conference yesterday.

In a radio interview this morning, Montealegre added that Sepulveda attempted to infiltrate the e-mail accounts of one of the top negotiators for the FARC, foreign journalists and ex-congresswoman Piedad Córdoba.

Sepulveda also claimed that the campaign activist sold his information for at least $100 million pesos (over $51,000) to unknown parties as part of a “black market of information.”

Zuluaga, who could force a runoff against Santos in the May 25th election, condemned Sepulveda’s actions and claimed that he was “surprised” over the allegations.  Nevertheless, he acknowledged that his campaign did hire the services of the firm Sepulveda belonged to that was run by the hacker’s sister-in-law.

According to the Colombian press, Sepulveda presents him in social media networks as a “senior developer and ethical hacker.”  Among the messages he wrote on his Twitter account in recent weeks includes “the worst thing a strategist can do is to be without principles and sell himself to the highest bidder.  That double morality is shameful.”

Hackers Attack Argentine President’s Twitter Page

Visitors to the Twitter page of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner where received with a surprise earlier this week after it was reportedly attacked by hackers.

The Argentine government was forced to shut down the president’s official Twitter page on Tuesday in response to the apparent infiltration. 

On Monday the background of Kirchner’s account was changed to the logo of Argentine newspaper Clarin and included a photo of Jorge Lanata, a journalist who has accused Kirchner of widespread corruption.  Several tweets were written poking fun at the government ("No me borren los tuits corruptossssssssssssss" and "ineptosssssssssssssssssssssss") as well as teasing Lanata and the TV channel that airs his weekly program (“El living de canal 13, defendiendo al gordo chanta que les vende un buzón son de terror”).  These messages were removed within minutes of their publication and the account was subsequently suspended. 

As of the time of this blog post, Kirchner’s Twitter page continues to be down and with a headline reading “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”

A statement from the Argentine government was made yesterday that denied making any alterations to the president’s Twitter page aside from suspending it.  Officials did not identify who could’ve infiltrated the account but did allege that her website was the target of at least three distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) over the weekend.  (The Telecom Argentina phone company corroborated these claims).

Kirchner hasn’t been the only Latin American leader whose Twitter account has been compromised.  Last April, Peruvian hackers purportedly infiltrated the Twitter page of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.  In February 2012, Interpol arrested twenty-six supposed members of the Anonymous collective and accused them of planning DDoS attacks against Chilean and Colombian government websites.

Daily Headlines: February 20, 2013

* Cuba: Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez praised freedom of expression in Brazil even though she was jeered by a small group of protesters in Recife.

* U.S.: President Obama talked with three Republican senators including Marco Rubio in order to discuss “bipartisan, commonsense immigration reform.”

* Latin America: Has Latin America become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks?

* Peru: Officials returned to their families the bodies of twenty-six people killed two decades ago during combat between the Peruvian army and Shining Path rebels.

Video Source – YouTube via user libertadigitaltv

Online Sources- ABC News, CBS News, Huffington Post, infosurhoy.com

Argentina: Judges in Sex Slave Trial Hit by Hackers

Argentine hackers infiltrated the personal information oof a grop of juges involved in a controversial verdict related to sex slavery.

The hackers, who claimed to have been allied with the Argentine arm of the Anonymous collective, released a statement on Wednesday with personal data belonging to magistrates Alberto Piedrabuena, Emilio Herrera Molina and Eduardo Romero Lascano.

Among the information released by the hackers were the judges’ addresses, cell phone numbers and bank account statuses.

“One by one they will fall.  We are Anonymous and we never forget.  We want a country free of corruption,” said the statement from the hackers.

On Tuesday, the court in the city of Tucumán absolved thirteen defendants accused of kidnapping and forcing into prostitution Maria de los Angeles “Marita” Veron. 

Over 130 witnesses were called to trial including a dozen women rescued from brothels by Marita’s mother, Susana Trimarco.  But the judges claimed there was no evidence linking the defendants to Marita, who has been missing for over a decade.

The court’s decision has not sat well with the Argentine public including several hundred people who participated in peaceful protests in several major cities.   In Buenos Aires demonstrators clashed with police and caused damages to the Casa de Tucumán.

The Argentine government joined the chorus of critiques against the court’s decision.  President Cristina Fernandez personally called Trimarco to express her ire with the verdict and called for a “democratization” of the judicial system.

Trimarco, who started a foundation in 2007 to combat human trafficking, was calm when the verdict was read.  Outside of the courtroom, however, she did not mince words:

Ecuador: Police Free Presidential Password Infiltrator

Police in Ecuador freed a blogger who was able to infiltrate into “secure data” belonging to President Rafael Correa.

“I’m free.  Many thanks to everyone,” Paul Moreno mentioned via his Twitter account on Monday after he was released from approximately three days of police custody.  He subsequently tweeted a photo of him accompanied by his parents outside of the jail where he was held.

Moreno “did not commit any 'hacking' activity or intrusion into global information” of the DatoSeguro national dignity database said a statement from Ecuador’s Public Information Registry.

The forty-two-year-old professor gained access to Correa’s personal information by creating a fake account under the president’s name in the DatoSeguro database.  He reportedly used online searches in order to obtain two key pieces of information: Correa’s date of birth and a national identification number.  Moreno got passed the third safeguard, a set of two numbers from an identity card, in order to read Correa’s private data such as bank account numbers and criminal infractions.

According to Wired.com’s Gadget Lab blog, Delgado posted on his website screenshots from the DatoSeguro site proving his claims and wrote how shockingly easy it was to gain access to Correa’s confidential information:

Daily Headlines: March 28, 2012

* Latin America: Latin America’s elderly population is expected to increase over the next few decades and overcome the number of children in the region by 2040 according to the U.N.

* Venezuela: A new poll showed that President Hugo Chavez has a double-digit lead over Henrique Capriles though a sizeable number of respondents remain undecided.

* U.S.: A study by the human rights group Amnesty International USA found that Latino residents in the border area near Mexico “are disproportionately affected by a range of immigration-control measures, resulting in a pattern of human rights violations.”

* Dominican Republic: Police arrested six suspected members of a local Anonymous group accused of infiltrating the websites of the government and private companies.

Image Source – Flickr via Inti (CC BY 2.0)

Online Sources- LAHT, euronews, Reuters, Dominican Today

Daily Headlines: February 29, 2012

* South America: Twenty-five alleged hackers linked to Anonymous were arrested by Interpol in several countries including Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

* Venezuela: Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said that his country would controversially continue to sell oil to Syria.

* U.S.: An alliance of three Latino civic groups have united with the goal of registering 200,000 new voters ahead of the November elections.

* Panama: Could a Panamanian bobsled team qualify for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia?

Image Source – Flickr via irrezolut (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Online Sources- Bloomberg, NY1, Jakarta Globe, Christian Science Monitor

Daily Headlines: January 24, 2012

* Haiti: Four months after Uruguayan peacekeepers where accused of raping a Haitian man, investigations have been launched into two new cases of alleged “sexual exploitation of children” by U.N. staff.

* U.S.: Media giant News Corp. and Colombian broadcaster RCN will reportedly cooperate in order to create a new Spanish-language broadcast network to rival Univision and Telemundo.

* Brazil: The computer hacker group Anonymous attacked websites of Brazil's federal district as part of its protest against the closure of the Megaupload website.

* Mexico: Police killed in a gunfight Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabia, a “high-ranking aide” to waned Sinaloa drug gang leader Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Image Source – Flickr via Embajada de EEUU en Paraguay (CC BY 2.0)

Online Sources- BBC News, Reuters, Times of India, NPR

Today’s Video: Hacker or victim?

Is a film production company acting responsibly against an alleged hacker or unfairly harassing and bullying an innocent movie fan? That is the question that has yet to be resolved in the case of Daiana Santia, a 24-year-old Argentinian fan of the "Twilight" movie series.

On Monday, Summit Entertainment filed a lawsuit that accused Santia of illegally downloading and distributing via social networks several images from the yet-to-be released installment of the "Twilight" series. Santia subsequently called a news conference on Thursday (as you can see in the video below) where she denied allegations that she hacked into Summit's servers. "I couldn't do it again even if I wanted to. You enter by navigating, entering by different links. I only saw it, I didn't distribute it like they say," said Santia.

The attorney for the 24-year-old economics student also alleged that Summit tried to confiscate her computer "in a bad manner."

Summit issued a press release hours after Santia spoke to reporters from her hometown of Posadas. The company denied "bullying" her and instead insisted that "it is about stolen material that is private and sensitive which was obtained by illegally accessing private/secure servers as well as personal email accounts."

Several actors from the highly-profitable "Twilight" films have spoken out on the issue and unsuprisingly haven't bit the hand that's fed them:

(Robert) Pattinson and the other Twilight stars have expressed their annoyance at the leak, with R-Patz telling MTV: 'I want the Twilight troops to mobilise, all the good fans, and find out who these little sh**s are and just hack into their computers and destroy them. ... I'm being genuinely serious.'

It remains to be seen if Summit releases other names in their lawsuit. In short, a dramatic situation could get very ugly very soon.

Online Sources - Metro.co.uk, Entertainment Weekly, CTV News, CinemaBlend.com
Video Source - diariopais24 via YouTube

Weekend World Watch: Japan’s Cinderella story

* Japan: In one of the biggest upsets in women’s soccer history a plucky and determined Japanese squad beat the U.S. to capture the Women’s World Cup.

* Britain: The media phone hacking scandal has claimed the scalps of Scotland Yard police chief Sir Paul Stephenson and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

* Egypt: Ex-president Hosni Mubarak is believed to be in stable medical condition and not in a coma as was originally rumored.

* U.S.: The Chinese government is upset that U.S. President Barack Obama held private talks at the White House with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Image – Mike Hewitt/Fifa via Getty Images via The Guardian (“Japan players celebrate winning the women's World Cup after beating USA on penalties in the final.”)
Online Sources- USA TODAY, The Guardian, BBC News, The Independent

World Watch: Growing pains?

* Africa: The Republic of South Sudan, which will mark its independence on Saturday, reportedly faces plenty of challenges including internal strife and an uneasy relationship with its soon-to-be northern neighbor.

* U.S.: A federal appeals court ruled that the military’s "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay soldiers should be lifted immediately.

* New Zealand: The country’s civil defense supposedly cancelled a tsunami warning that was triggered by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake roughly 500 miles away of the North Island.

* Britain: According to police, editors and other execs at the News of the World tabloid masterminded the illegally hacking of cell phones of several figures including a 13-year-old murder victim.

Image – Peter Martell/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian
Online Sources- CSMointor.com, MSNBC, CNN, stuff.co.nz

Daily Headlines: June 23, 2011

* Central America: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged that her country would send $300 million in aid to combat violence in Central America.

* Venezuela: The deaths of at least nineteen inmates in riots over the past several days should call attention to the need for prison reform in Venezuela according to Amnesty International.

* South America: Peruvian president-elect Ollanta Humala claimed that he “dreams” of the reunification of his country with neighboring Bolivia.

* Brazil: The “Brazilian arm” of hacker group LulzSec took down several websites yesterday including several government sites.

Image – AP via BBC News (”Hillary Clinton urged businesses in (Central America) to pull their weight in the fight against drug-related violence.”)
Online Sources- Amnesty International, PC World, Mercopress, CNN

Daily Headlines: April 28, 2009

* Venezuela: Maracaibo mayor and key opposition figure Manuel Rosales was granted political asylum in Peru days after he left Venezuela.

* Latin America: “A senior IMF official” said last week that Latin America should be able to rebound well from the global economic crisis once it ends.

* Brazil: Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega called on developed countries to “clean up their financial system(s)” in order to overcome the weakened worldwide economy.

* Puerto Rico: Over the weekend, hackers disrupted a number of local web sites for mega-companies like Google, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola.

Image- daylife.com (“Picture taken on March 25, 2009 of Venezuela's top opposition leader Manuel Rosales during a press conference organized by opposition governors and mayors to claim their pacific resistance against President Hugo Chavez, in Caracas.”)
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, BBC News, Reuters, CNET News