Author: Garrett Cooper

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Orlando attorney Dan Newlin as the next U.S. ambassador to Colombia. Newlin, known for founding a successful personal injury law firm, brings a unique mix of business and law enforcement experience to the role. Trump highlighted Newlin’s 28-year career with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, where he served as a fugitive detective handling major crimes. Newlin’s efforts led to the arrests of numerous violent offenders involved in robbery, gang violence, and human trafficking. Describing Newlin as a “business visionary,” Trump noted his success in building a prominent law firm. He said Newlin’s background…

The cybersecurity agencies of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand) issued a warning on Tuesday that hackers were increasingly exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities to access their targets’ networks. It marks a significant departure from similar advisories issued in 2022 and 2021, when the agencies warned that malicious cyber actors were exploiting older software vulnerabilities more frequently than recently disclosed ones. In a co-authored advisory, the agencies list the top 15 most routinely exploited vulnerabilities of 2023, with CVE-2023-3519 — an issue affecting Citrix’s networking product NetScalers — being the most widely used. Reports around the time…

Women’s clothes are high on the government’s agenda once again in Tajikistan, where authorities and Islamic leaders are working on new guidelines on what women should wear to work and during their leisure time. The new dress code — the second of its kind in six years — is expected to be made public in the coming days, and a special event is reportedly being planned for the capital, Dushanbe, in August to showcase compliant clothes. Sulaimon Davlatzoda, the head of the state Committee for Religious Affairs and the Regulation of Traditions, told a press briefing in the capital this week that…

“They were plotting to kill a huge number, tens of thousands of people at this concert, I am sure many Americans,” CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen said “Tens of thousands” of fans were the target of a thwarted terrorist attempt at Taylor Swift’s recent Vienna shows, a CIA official told reporters on Wednesday, Aug. 28. CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen shared new details of the thwarted terror plot that canceled all three of the 34-year-old pop star’s planned Eras Tour concerts in Austria earlier this month during the annual Intelligence Summit just outside Washington, D.C., reports The New York Times and NBC News. “They…

Au revoir Paris, Hola LA. In a nutshell, that was the just completed ceremony of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad. It was Tom Cruise leaping off the rim of the Stade de France to take the Olympic flag from LA Mayor Karen Bass and Simone Biles. As the guitar riffs of H.E.R. filled the air, Cruise then exited on a motorbike to deliver the flag to a sunny West Coast. It was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Olympic fixture Snoop Dogg getting into the pre-recorded groove down in Long Beach. It wasn’t telling of the full scope of Los Angeles and no mention was made of Snoop’s…

Sanjiva Weerawarana is a Sri Lankan success story. He founded enterprise software firm WSO2 in 2005, got it close to $100 million in ARR as its CEO, then sold it to private equity firm EQT for $600 million in May. He sometimes drives for Uber, too. Sri Lanka isn’t renowned for its startup ecosystem, but one company has been something of an outlier in the South Asian island nation these past two decades. WSO2, an open source enterprise software provider with customers such as Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, recently agreed to be acquired by private equity giant EQT, at a valuation TechCrunch reported at the time…

Moscow (28/2). Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that non-governmental organizations in Central Asia have stepped up their anti-Russian activities amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. Shoigu said this at the board of the Russian Ministry of Defense on February 27. According to him, there are more than 100 “large pro-Western non-governmental organisations” operating in Central Asia, which have more than 16,000 representative offices and branches. “Against the backdrop of the special military operation, these NGOs have significantly increased their anti-Russian activities in order to reduce military-technical, economic and cultural cooperation between the Central Asian states and Russia.…

TALLAHASSEE — With concerns raised about a proposed annual registration fee on electric vehicles amounting to a “double tax,” House members want a study about impacts of the increased number of electric vehicles on Florida roads. Bills filed in the House and Senate called for imposing a registration fee on electric vehicles to make up for lost gas-tax revenue, which is used for transportation projects. But the House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee on Thursday scaled back the House bill (HB 107) to direct state economists to review the long-term infrastructure effects of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. “It seems like…

US President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged Friday to work together to tackle the fentanyl and migration crises as an Asia-Pacific summit wrapped up in San Francisco. “I couldn’t have a better partner than you,” Biden told Lopez Obrador on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which groups 21 economies from around the region. Biden said that “I know it’s not easy” to deal with migration along the US-Mexican border, a crucial issue for the Democrat as he seeks a second term in the 2024 US presidential election. The Mexican leader vowed…

In the year since the Supreme Court outlawed the national right to an abortion, 18 states have implemented abortion bans that specify that mental health or suicidality do not qualify as a health-related exception for the woman — a deviation that’s occurring despite growing national momentum to treat physical and mental health equally. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among women of reproductive age. Nearly 23 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are attributed to mental health conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “These are the conditions that are killing women and the absolute greatest risk…