Ride-Hail Driver Who Said He Saw UGNazi Hackers Dump Tomi Masters' Body Was Challenged In Court
In a Wednesday court appearance, the hackers' attorney questioned a ride-hail driver who says he drove the pair to a river where they dumped her body, and filed a motion to dismiss.
MANDALUYONG, PHILIPPINES – In a court hearing on Wednesday, the attorney for two American hackers on trial for the killing of an American woman in the Philippines made multiple attempts to discredit a key witness in the case. Troy Woody and Mir Islam, former members of the UGNazi hacking crew, have been charged with murder in the death of Tomi Masters, Woody’s then-girlfriend.
The witness, a ride-hail driver, accused Woody and Islam of dumping Masters’ body in Pasig River in December 2018. The driver testified that he picked up Woody and Islam in a condominium building in Mandaluyong, in Metro Manila, last December. He said the pair loaded a box the size of a refrigerator inside his car, and told him it contained flowers. He drove them to a mall in Manila, near where Islam was renting an apartment. Upon reaching their destination, he says Islam asked if he could take them to Pasig River, saying that “they wanted to see it before they leave” and that they would just pay him additionally on top of the fixed rate.
During the cross-examination, Woody and Islam’s attorney, Gil Valera, asked if the driver's motive was to pocket a $22 tip without reporting it to the company he was working for. The judge and prosecutor objected to the relevance of the question. “It is dishonest,” Valera replied. (BuzzFeed News reached out to a representative of the ride-hailing company, who said the tip was acceptable.)
Valera also asked the witness why he took two foreigners to Baseco, Manila, a low-income community near the harbor, in the dead of night. Pasig River stretches for 15 miles and runs through five cities within Metro Manila. The witness responded that it was where the navigation app on his GPS showed him to go.
The defense also filed a motion for the case to be dismissed on the basis of improper venue, as the death certificate states that the place of death is Baseco, Manila, where Masters' body was retrieved. However, the murder case against Woody and Islam was filed in Mandaluyong, the site of the condominium unit where the pair were seen in a CCTV footage loading a box inside the witness's car. Police arrested Woody and Islam in Manila.
"For me, it was dismissible based on paper," Valera told BuzzFeed News after the trial. "They are presuming that the person was killed in Mandaluyong."
Masters died of asphyxiation by suffocation, according to a forensic document acquired by BuzzFeed News. Her death certificate does not state the time of death.
Woody said that Masters and Islam did not get along, so he left to work with Islam on their company, Luxr LLC. Islam and Woody claim that they were together in Islam’s apartment when Masters was killed, working on their computers. "We could not have been there when she died," Islam said during an interview with BuzzFeed News. The pair have offered multiple accounts of how Masters died.
In 2012, Islam was found guilty of obtaining stolen credit cards in a sting operation conducted by the FBI. "I was bored," Islam told BuzzFeed News of the carding operation. "At the time, I did not really care about anything that was criminal — it did not seem criminal to me. Things have changed. I’ve changed. I do not have the same logic anymore."
Woody and Islam were part of UGNazi, a hacking collective that Islam describes as internet activists, claiming he founded UGNazi to combat an internet censorship bill in the US. The group later became infamous for swatting, stealing credit card information, and publishing private data of celebrities and politicians.
Mir Islam violated his parole and left the US using his brother’s passport. In a previous interview, he told BuzzFeed News he picked the Philippines because of Paul Le Roux, a programmer and international drug kingpin who ran his operations in the country for years before being arrested. "He is someone that I respect," Islam said. According to Wired, Islam and Le Roux were imprisoned in the same facility in New York, and Islam refers to Le Roux as his father.
source : buzzfeednews
Air Pollution Turned India's Capital Into a 'Gas Chamber.' It's Part of a Global Trend Killing 7 Million Prematurely Each Year
ir pollution levels in India’s capital have soared to hazardous levels this week, leaving a toxic grey haze hanging over the city and causing poor visibility. The pollution has been so pervasive that national monuments were largely obscured by thick smog. Many who venture outside suffer teary eyes and troubling coughs.
Delhi was already considered one of the world’s most polluted cities, and it’s only gotten worse this month. Air quality deteriorated so significantly that the local government declared a public health emergency, schools were shut down,and flights were cancelled. By one estimate, breathing Delhi’s air for one day has the health impacts of smoking at least 25 cigarettes. Although Delhi typically experiences marked increases in air pollution around November, this year’s pollution prompted Delhi’s Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, to call the city a “gas chamber.”
Lithuania set to buy almost 200 American JLTVs
Lithuania looks set to buy almost 200 newest Oshkosh Defense-built Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), according to Minister of Defense, Raimundas Karoblis.
Speaking at the meeting of the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense which considered next year’s defense budget, Raimundas Karoblis said that Lithuania plans to buy almost 200 JLTVs for its armed forces as early as November.
“The signing of the contract will take place […] next month,” Karoblis said.
It will be the second-biggest acquisition in the history of the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense, which stands at EUR149 million ($166 million).
On 27 August, the U.S. State Department approved the possible Foreign Military Sale of newest JLTVs to Lithuania for an estimated $170.8 million.
Furthermore, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) reported that the Lithuania government requested 500 JLTVs in the M1278A1 heavy gun carrier configuration, as well as unspecified quantities of M153 Common Remote Weapon Stations (CROWS), MK-93 weapons mounts, and M2 12.7×99 mm heavy machine guns.
The JLTV family of vehicles is designed to restore payload and performance that were traded from light tactical vehicles to add protection in recent conflict. JLTVs give service members more options in a protected mobility solution that is also the first vehicle purpose-built for modern battlefield networks.
The JLTV Family of Vehicles comes in different variants with multiple mission package configurations, all providing protected, sustained, networked mobility that balances payload, performance and protection across the full range of military operations.
The JLTV has an electronic adjustable height suspension that allows the vehicle to ‘squat’ to fit in restricted height spaces on amphibious warfare ships and the ability to be raised to traverse difficult terrain while carrying armor and payload.
The JLTV also has comparable off-road performance, acceleration and speed to the Humvee and is air transportable connecting externally via helicopter or riding internally via cargo plane.
The Oshkosh Defense’s website said the JLTV is the first vehicle purpose-built for battlefield communications networks and provides increased readiness for 21st century warfare.
source : defence-blog
Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming
Nerijus Adomaitis/Reuters
HOUSTON — A surge of oil production is coming, whether the world needs it or not.
The flood of crude will arrive even as concerns about climate change are growing and worldwide oil demand is slowing. And it is not coming from the usual producers, but from Brazil, Canada, Norway and Guyana — countries that are either not known for oil or whose production has been lackluster in recent years.
This looming new supply may be a key reason Saudi Arabia’s giant oil producer, Aramco, pushed ahead on Sunday with plans for what could be the world’s largest initial stock offering ever.
Together, the four countries stand to add nearly a million barrels a day to the market in 2020 and nearly a million more in 2021, on top of the current world crude output of 80 million barrels a day. That boost in production, along with global efforts to lower emissions, will almost certainly push oil prices down.
Lower prices could prove damaging for Aramco and many other oil companies, reducing profits and limiting new exploration and drilling, while also reshaping the politics of the nations that rely on oil income.
The new rise in production is likely to bring economic relief to consumers at the gas pump and to importing nations like China, India and Japan. But cheaper oil may complicate efforts to combat global warming and wean consumers and industries off their dependence on fossil fuels, because lower gasoline prices could, for example, slow the adoption of electric vehicles.
Canada, Norway, Brazil and Guyana are all relatively stable at a time of turbulence for traditional producers like Venezuela and Libya and tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their oil riches should undercut efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia to support prices with cuts in production and give American and other Western policymakers an added cushion in case there are renewed attacks on oil tankers or processing facilities in the Persian Gulf.
Driving New Production
Daniel Yergin, the energy historian who wrote “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Power and Money,” compared the impact of the new production to the advent of the shale oil boom in Texas and North Dakota a decade ago.
“Since all four of these countries are largely insulated from traditional geopolitical turmoil, they will add to global energy security,” Mr. Yergin said. But he also predicted that as with shale, the incremental supply gain, combined with a sluggish world economy, could drive prices lower.
There is already a glut on the world market, even with exports from Venezuela and Iran sharply curtailed by American sanctions. Should their production come back, that glut would only expand.
Years of moderate gasoline prices have already increased the popularity of bigger cars and sports utility vehicles in the United States, and the probability of more oil on the market is bound to weigh on prices at the pump over the next few years.
The oil-supply outlook is a sharp departure from the early 2000s, when prices soared as producers strained to keep up with ballooning demand in China and some analysts warned that the world was running out of oil.
Then came the rise of hydraulic fracturing and drilling through tight shale fields, which converted the United States from a needy importer into a powerful exporter. The increase in American production, along with a choppy global economy, shaved oil prices from well over $100 a barrel before the 2007-9 recession to about $56 on Friday for the American benchmark crude.
Those low prices have forced OPEC and Russia to lower production in recent years, and this year many financially struggling American oil companies have slashed their exploration and production investments to pay down their debts and protect their dividends
“This could spell disaster for every producer and producing country,” said Raoul LeBlanc, a vice president at IHS Markit, an energy consultancy, especially if the United States and Iran come to some sort of nuclear deal.
Like the shale boom, the coming supply surge is a sudden change in dynamics. Guyana currently produces no oil at all. Norwegian and Brazilian production has long been in decline. And in Canada, concerns about climate change, resistance to new pipelines and high production costs have curtailed investments in oil-sands fields for five consecutive years.
Production of more oil comes at a time when there is growing acknowledgment by governments and energy investors that not all the hydrocarbons in the ground can be tapped if climate change is to be controlled. But exploration decisions, made years ago, have a momentum that can be hard to stop.
“Legacy decisions keep going,” said John Browne, BP’s former chief executive. “Things happen in different directions because decisions are made at different times.”
The added production in Norway comes despite the country’s embrace of the 2016 Paris climate agreement, which committed nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Its sovereign wealth fund has cut investments in some oil companies, and its national oil company, Equinor, has pledged to increase its investments in wind power.
Equinor, which recently changed its name from Statoil to emphasize its partial pivot to renewable energy, nevertheless defends the new field on its company website, asserting, “The Paris Agreement is quite clear that there will still be a need for oil.”
Norway’s rebound from 19 years of decline began a few weeks ago as Equinor began production in its Johan Sverdrup deepwater field. The field will eventually produce 440,000 barrels a day, increasing the country’s output from 1.3 million barrels a day to 1.6 million next year and 1.8 million in 2021.
In Brazil, after years of scandal and delays, new offshore production platforms are coming online. Production has climbed over the last year by 300,000 barrels a day, and the country is expected to add as much as 460,000 more barrels a day by the end of 2021. In the coming days, Brazil is scheduled to hold a major auction in which some of the largest oil companies will bid for drilling rights in offshore areas with as much as 15 billion barrels of reserves.
In Canada, the 1,000-mile Line 3 pipeline that will take oil from the Alberta fields to Wisconsin, is near completion and awaiting final permitting. Energy experts say that could increase Canadian production by a half million barrels a day, or about 10 percent.
And the most striking change will be in Guyana, a tiny South American country where Exxon Mobil has made a string of major discoveries over the last four years. Production will reach 120,000 barrels a day early next year, rising to at least 750,000 barrels by 2025, and more is expected after that.
Guyana potentially has the most complicated future of the four countries. Its ethnically divided politics are sometimes turbulent, and Venezuela claims a large portion of its territory. But with the oil fields miles offshore, drilling is largely protected. In addition, Venezuela is mired in a political and economic crisis and unlikely to challenge a Chinese state company which has an oil investment in Guyana, along with Exxon Mobil and Hess.
Energy experts say the new production from the four nations will more than satisfy all the growth in global demand expected over the next two years, which is well below the growth rates of recent years before economic expansion in China, Europe and Latin America slowed.
At the same time, new pipelines in Texas are expected to increase United States exports to 3.3 million barrels a day next year, from the current 2.8 million.
That adds up to a vast surplus unless there is a resurgence of global economic growth to stimulate demand, or a prolonged conflict in the Middle East or other disruption to supply.
“To support prices, OPEC is going to have to extend and probably deepen their production cuts for a while,” said David L. Goldwyn, a top State Department energy diplomat during the Obama administration. “Getting the prices up to the point where Aramco can launch its I.P.O. is a big Saudi priority.”
The new barrels on the world market will also put pressure on companies producing in the United States, where profit margins for shale production are slim at current price levels and stock prices are falling.
“If I was in the business I would be scared to death,” said Philip K. Verleger, an energy economist who has served in both Democratic and Republican administrations. “The industry is going to face capital starvation.”
American oil executives express concern that drilling will fade in North Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Colorado as oil prices drop to as low as $50 a barrel in the next few years. Small companies are expected to merge, while others go bankrupt.
Scott D. Sheffield, chief executive of the Texas-based producer Pioneer Natural Resources, said he expected the growth of United States oil production to ease from 1.2 million barrels a day this year to 500,000 barrels next year and perhaps 400,000 barrels in 2021. Those increases are modest compared with the average increase of a million barrels a day every year from 2010 to 2018.
SOURCE : nytimes