- CFPB Orders Repeat Offender Portfolio Recovery Associates to Pay More Than $24 Million for Continued Illegal Debt Collection Practices and Consumer Reporting Violations Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- 2,600 student-loan borrowers to get $11 million in debt relief: CFPB Business Insider
- CFPB orders Portfolio Recovery Associates to pay $24 million American Banker
- Portfolio Recovery Associates Under Fire for Misconduct Bankrate.com
- U.S. watchdog orders Virginia debt collector to pay $24 mln for illegal practices Reuters
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: reporting
Advance Wars’ Delayed Switch Release Might Finally Be Reporting For Duty
One game we’re hoping to see show up on the Switch at some point this year is Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp. The last update for this title was featured in a Nintendo financial report last November – revealing the game’s release date was still “TBA”.
Now, in the latest development, a thread on Famiboards has apparently highlighted changes to the game’s eShop web page – with “new NSUID attached”. As explained in the same post, a new NSUID means “pre-orders will be going live at some point in the future”.
In addition to this development, it seems more online listings have now resurfaced for Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp. This supposedly includes new and updated listings on Amazon Mexico and Canada, Walmart, Best Buy and EB Games (thanks, My Nintendo News).
As you might recall, Advance Wars for Switch suffered multiple delays and was then pushed back (again) last March due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Apart from the recent financial report referencing the title, a Nintendo representative also reconfirmed last September the two-in-one game had only been “delayed”, not axed.
It’s pretty clear the Switch version is ready to go as well – with a Switch fan in April last year gaining early access to the title by accident. Nintendo ended up cancelling the purchase and providing a refund.
Flu season ramps up with 44 states reporting high activity
NEW YORK — The U.S. flu season keeps getting worse.
Health officials said Friday that 7.5 percent of outpatient medical visits last week were due to flu-like illnesses. That’s as high as the peak of the 2017-18 flu season and higher than any season since.
The annual winter flu season usually doesn’t get going until December or January, but this one began early and has been complicated by the simultaneous spread of other viruses.
The measure of traffic in doctor’s offices is based on reports of symptoms like coughs and sore throats, not on lab-confirmed diagnoses. So it may include other respiratory illnesses.
That makes it hard to compare to flu seasons from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Other years also didn’t have this year’s unusually strong wave of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be serious for infants and the elderly.
Meanwhile, 44 states reported high or very high flu activity last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.
That may not bode well for the near future. It’s likely there was more spread of respiratory viruses during Thanksgiving gatherings and at crowded airports, experts say.
The dominant flu strain so far is the kind typically associated with higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths, particularly in people 65 and older.
The CDC estimates there have been at least 78,000 hospitalizations and 4,500 deaths from flu so far this season. The deaths include at least 14 children.
Flu shots are recommended for nearly all Americans who are at least 6 months old or older.
TransUnion, Equifax, Experian may have violated credit reporting rules, Rep. Jim Clyburn says
A key Democrat wants credit reporting agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion investigated for allegedly failing to respond to consumer complaints during the pandemic.
Rep. James Clyburn, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, said the nation’s three largest nationwide consumer reporting agencies have “longstanding problems” with responding to consumers who raise complaints about credit reporting errors.
“These data also raise concerns about whether the [credit rating companies] are fulfilling all of their obligations to consumers and to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA),” the South Carolina Democrat wrote in an Oct. 13 letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra.
Clyburn asked the chief executive officers of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion in May for the companies’ responses to consumer complaints in the early days of the pandemic.
CFPB reported then that 4.1% of complaints were resolved in 2021, compared with nearly 25% of complaints in 2019, before the pandemic.
And the majority of credit report disputes have not resulted in the correction or removal of reported errors from credit reports. The subcommittee found that Equifax didn’t change more than half of the disputed items each year from 2019 through 2021. Experian corrected about 52% of the disputed late payments or other bad data while TransUnion made fixes to between 49% and 53% of credit reports during this time.
The subcommittee partly credited the pause on student loan payments and an increase in pandemic-related identity theft to credit reporting errors.
Under the CARES act, paused loan payments were supposed to be reported as current, though some lenders may have incorrectly categorized them as late. Consumer fraud can also lead to faulty consumer credit reports.
But consumers have been disputing information found in their credit reports on a larger scale than previously known, the subcommittee found. The CFPB estimated the combined number of dispute submissions among Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to be 8 million in 2021. But data obtained by the subcommittee showed Equifax, alone, received nearly 14 million complaints that year.
CFPB also received a “record-breaking” amount of complaints about the credit rating companies from 2020 through 2021 with more than 619,000 in 2021 alone. Consumers disputed nearly 336 million items, including names, addresses or credit accounts, on their credit reports from 2019 through 2021, the subcommittee found.
Yet according to evidence obtained by the subcommittee, the credit raters discard millions of disputes a year without investigation. At least 13.8 million were thrown out between 2019 and 2021, the subcommittee found.
Discarding disputes violates the fair credit laws if any are submitted directly by consumers to authorized representatives. The companies’ defense, says the subcommittee, is that disputes are discarded without investigation when they suspect a credit repair service is the one making the complaint.
But the subcommittee says each agency uses vague criteria to determine which disputes are submitted by an unauthorized third-party. Equifax, for instance, tosses out mail that “tends to use identical language and format [and] come from the same zip code.”
Experian accounts for “envelope characteristics” and “letter characteristics,” including “same/similar ink color,” and “same/similar font,” when choosing which disputes to disregard. TransUnion also uses envelope-based criteria in its discard process.
The subcommittee also found that the credit rating companies referred over half of the disputes to data furnishers for investigation between 2019 and 2021. TransUnion referred the most at 80% to 82%.
Data furnishers have been cited by the CFPB for conducting insufficient investigations. The bureau also cited the credit reporting companies for accepting these findings without an independent investigation.
“The prevalence of credit reporting errors has been particularly concerning at a time when Americans have needed access to credit in order to weather difficult economic circumstances brought on by the pandemic,” Clyburn wrote in the letter to Chopra. “Errors in credit reports can reduce consumers’ credit scores, potentially blocking access to loans, housing, and employment, among other serious consequences.”
The Consumer Data Industry Association, the trade association that represents Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, said that all disputes that consumers share directly with three credit raters are processed according to federal requirements.
“Recent reports have highlighted trends including increased activity by certain credit repair companies, which can inflate complaint numbers and undermine the process of addressing legitimate requests,” a representative for the association told CNBC. “The credit reporting industry will continue to collaborate with the CFPB and policymakers to better serve consumers and continue to deliver innovative solutions to increase economic opportunities for consumers.”
Robert Telles: Las Vegas local official has been arrested for the killing of an investigative journalist who had been reporting on him, sheriff says
“This is a terrible and jarring homicide that has deeply impacted Las Vegas. Every murder is tragic but the killing of a journalist is particularly troublesome,” Lombardo said in a news conference Thursday, offering his condolences to German’s family, friends and colleagues at the Review-Journal.
“We are … outraged that a colleague appears to have been killed for reporting on an elected official. Journalists can’t do the important work our communities require if they are afraid a presentation of facts could lead to violent retribution,” the newspaper’s executive editor, Glenn Cook, said Wednesday in a statement.
Telles has a court appearance scheduled for Thursday afternoon, online Clark County Jail records show. CNN has reached out to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department and to Telles’ office and is working to determine his legal representation.
German was discovered outside his home Saturday morning, though police believe the killing occurred a day prior.
According to LVMPD Homicide and Sex Crimes Bureau Captain Dori Koren, the suspect approached German’s home on Friday and went to the side of the house. German came outside soon after and went to the side of the home, where, Koren said Thursday, investigators believe an altercation occurred and German was stabbed multiple times.
Telles, who lost reelection in June, was identified as a person of interest early in the investigation, as authorities discovered neighborhood surveillance footage capturing a vehicle seen at Telles’ house before and after German’s killing, Koren said. The vehicle, registered to Telles’ wife, was also seen at German’s house at the time of his death.
“We ultimately developed video evidence to show that the vehicle, the GMC Denali parked in front of Telles’ home departed around 9 a.m. in the morning on the day of the murder, and returned around 12 p.m. just after the murder, which matched our timeline,” Koren said.
Surveillance footage released over the weekend showed a suspect wearing a straw hat and orange shirt, and investigators found a matching hat during a search of Telles’ home. The hat had been cut, Koren said, as if in an effort to conceal evidence.
Investigators also discovered blood on a pair of shoes that had been cut, “likely in a manner to try to destroy evidence,” Koren said. In addition, Telles’ DNA matched DNA found at the crime scene, he said.
Once the positive DNA result came in, authorities’ goal was to take Telles into custody as “safely as possible.”
“We were able to successfully execute that operation yesterday and Telles was taken into custody safely,” Koren said, though he acknowledged Telles was seen on a stretcher after suffering “self-inflicted” wounds. He would not describe the wounds but said they were not life-threatening.
Arrest is both a ‘relief’ and an ‘outrage’ for victim’s newsroom
German has been praised by those who knew him or his work as a consummate reporter who spent decades working in Las Vegas, reporting on everything from organized crime to corrupt government agencies to the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival — the deadliest in modern US history.
He was working on a story about Telles the week he was killed, according to the Review-Journal. Earlier this year, Telles was the subject of articles that detailed his oversight of his office, and German reported Telles created a hostile work environment and carried on an inappropriate relationship with a staffer.
Telles denied the reports, the Review-Journal said. First elected to the office in 2018, Telles lost his bid for reelection in a June Democratic primary.
Prior to German’s death, Telles published several online posts detailing his issues with the journalist’s reporting, including on his campaign’s website and in a letter to German, in which he called the allegations “false” and insisted the reporter was trying “to drag me through the mud.”
Telles also stated that he sought legal counsel in an effort to seek legal action against the newspaper but ultimately came to the conclusion that “suing a newspaper, like the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is near impossible.”
Telles also posted several tweets regarding German and his reporting.
“Looking forward to lying smear piece #4 by @JGermanRJ. #onetrickpony I think he’s mad that I haven’t crawled into a hole and died,” read a June 18 tweet, in part.
A few days later, Telles tweeted, “Typical bully. Can’t take a pound of critism (sic) after slinging 100 pounds of BS. Up to article #4 now. You’d think he’d have better things to do.”
In his own statement Wednesday, Cook, the newspaper editor, said Telles’ arrest was “at once an enormous relief and an outrage or the Review-Journal newsroom.”
“We thank Las Vegas police for their urgency and hard work and for immediately recognizing the terrible significance of Jeff’s killing. Now, hopefully, the Review-Journal, the German family and Jeff’s many friends can begin the process of mourning and honoring a great man and a brave reporter. Godspeed, Jeff.”
Killings of journalists are rare in the United States, and murders of journalists in retaliation for their work even more so, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Eight journalists have been murdered in the US since 1992, when the non-profit began keeping track, including four in a mass shooting in 2018 in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland, it said.
“Las Vegas police have acted quickly in identifying and arresting a suspect in the fatal stabbing of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German,” Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Thursday in a statement. “Authorities should ensure that all those involved in this terrible crime are identified and held to account, and should make clear that those who target journalists will face justice.”
Rebecca Aguilar, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said German’s killing was a “reminder that everyday journalists around the world put their lives on the line to uncover the truth.”
“As the Review-Journal reported, many described Jeff as a fearless reporter, the embodiment of the First Amendment, who stood up for society’s underdogs and had a strong sense of right and wrong,” Aguilar said in a statement. “We should honor Jeff by continuing to be like him, a person of courage, compassion and commitment to the truth.”
Victim’s colleagues were instrumental in investigation
Early on, authorities were focused on making sure German’s death wasn’t linked to a burglary in addition to “looking at any work-related grievances or conflicts” related to his reporting, Koren said.
“We knew that as an investigative reporter he had written several articles and there were different allegations and statements about potential people that would be upset about it,” he said.
The Review-Journal was instrumental in providing information that helped investigators, Lombardo said Thursday, particularly in outlining what “cases” German “was working previously and currently.”
German’s death was “troublesome,” Lombardo said Thursday.
“We expect journalism to be open and transparent and watchdog for government. And when people take it upon themselves to create harm associated with that profession, I think it’s very important that we put all eyes on it and address the case appropriately,” he said, “such as we did in this case, with this expediency associated with it.”
Coworkers of German reviewing Google Maps noted in Telles’ driveway a maroon SUV similar in look to the photo released by authorities, said Arthur Kane, a reporter for the Review-Journal who’d worked with German.
“The police came down and roped off the area, started searching his house,” Kane told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday. The SUV was the one registered to Telles’ wife, Kane said, and the vehicle was taken away by investigators.
In the meantime, the investigation remains ongoing, Lombardo said Thursday, and authorities are still following up on “several leads” to “put to bed other allegations.”
CNN’s Paradise Afshar, Carroll Alvarado, Amir Vera, Jamiel Lynch, Nick Watt, Elizabeth Joseph, Hannah Sarisohn and Satyam Kaswala contributed to this report.
Windows Defender is reporting a false-positive threat ‘Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY’; it’s nothing to be worried about
- Windows Defender is alerting people of a “threat detected” for “Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY”
- The issue is tied to a recent listing in Microsoft’s Defender update file, which is making a wrong detection
- The trigger seems tied to Defender detecting “Electron-based or Chromium-based applications as malware”
- Microsoft is expected to patch/update Microsoft Defender to alleviate the issue
Update #1 (1:50 PM ET): According to the Microsoft support forums, the Defender Team indicated they are investigating this and will hopefully release a patch for this soon.
This morning, a listing in Microsoft Defender’s database (or even Windows Update) is causing havoc on people’s Windows PCs.
People on Reddit are “freaking out” over not just a reported threat from Microsoft Defender but one that keeps popping up and recurring despite the alleged threat being blocked.
The threat is revealed in a pop-up message noting that “Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY” has been detected and is listed as “severe.” However, after taking action to rectify the issue, it does not go away, and the user will keep receiving the same prompt. The reminder may return after 20 seconds, with the cycle repeating endlessly.
We experienced the issue on one PC; see the screenshots below.
The actual threat is only noted as “This generic detection for suspicious behaviors is designed to catch potentially malicious files.”
The good news is that your computer, should you be experiencing this problem, is not infected with any virus or malware. This detection appears to be a false positive, according to a Microsoft Support forum (opens in new tab), where a listing in Microsoft Defender’s database incorrectly reports activity as dangerous.
From DaveM121, an Independent Advisor:
“This does seem to be a false positive, it is a bug currently being reported by hundreds of people at the moment, it seems to be related to all Chromium based web browsers and Electron based apps like Whatsapp, Discord, Spotify…etc.”
“This is an evolving situation with no official word from Microsoft yet, but seems to be caused by Security Intelligence Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus – KB2267602 (Version 1.373.1508.0)”
The common thread among users experiencing this problem is the usage of “Electron-based or Chromium-based applications,” including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and anything that runs Visual Studio Code.
The problem seems to originate from Defender’s Definition/Update Version 1.373.1508.0, meaning Microsoft needs to update that file, and the issue should be resolved.
So far, Microsoft has not publicly commented on the problem as it is a holiday weekend in the United States. There could be an extended delay in getting the update pushed out to millions of likely affected computers.
We’ll update this article accordingly if there are any new solutions or comments from Microsoft.
Top lawmakers renew call for DHS IG to step aside from investigation into missing texts, citing CNN reporting
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson reiterated their call for Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside in a letter on Monday, citing concerns about “your lack of transparency and independence, which appear to be jeopardizing the integrity of a crucial investigation run by your office.”
Maloney and Thompson also are demanding transcribed interviews with key DHS IG staffers. CNN first reported that DHS inspector general investigators dropped efforts to recover missing Secret Service text messages in July 2021, a year before Cuffari raised concerns about Secret Service and DHS transparency to congressional oversight committees.
“The Committees have obtained new evidence that your office may have secretly abandoned efforts to collect text messages from the Secret Service more than a year ago,” the letter said. “These documents also indicate that your office may have taken steps to cover up the extent of missing records, raising further concerns about your ability to independently and effectively perform your duties as Inspector General (IG).”
The committees are requesting a slate of communications and documents by Monday, ranging from correspondence related to any decisions not to collect or recover text messages to communications related to notifying Congress.
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, on Monday reiterated his call for the Justice Department to investigate the missing text messages.
“This is about the destruction of critical evidence, whether it’s material to the January 6 episode or not. The fact that this man, Joseph Cuffari, as inspector general, could not get the information that should have been transferred from administration to the other and didn’t report it properly to Congress or to the agency that he’s working at, we may have jeopardized some very critical evidence when it comes to the historic record on January 6 and he treated it as almost a routine event rather than something that should have been highlighted,” Durbin told CNN’s Don Lemon.
In a statement to CNN, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said it “does not discuss ongoing administrative reviews and does not confirm the existence of, or otherwise comment about criminal investigations.”
Watchdog defends himself
However, in an internal email to employees obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and shared with CNN, Cuffari defended himself and commended them for their work amid an “onslaught of meritless criticism.”
“In the past couple of weeks, DHS OIG has been the subject of a tremendous amount of public speculation,” Cuffari told staff in an email obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and shared with CNN.
“Because of US Attorney General guidelines and quality standards, we cannot always publicly respond to untruths and false information about our work,” he wrote. “I am so proud of the resilience I have witnessed in the face of this onslaught of meritless criticism.”
The email, sent at 2:28 p.m. Monday, arrived shortly before key House Democrats accused Cuffari’s office of manipulating and omitting information about its investigation into missing Secret Service and top DHS officials’ text messages.
The letter shows a DHS deputy inspector general, Thomas Kait, wrote an email to a DHS senior liaison, Jim Crumpacker, on July 27, 2021, advising DHS investigators were no longer seeking text messages. Kait is one of the staffers the committee wants to interview now.
“Jim, please use this email as a reference to our conversation where I said we no longer request phone records and text messages from the USSS [United States Secret Service] relating to the events on January 6th,” the email said, according to the letter.
The letter also confirms CNN reporting that the probe into text messages was reopened in December 2021.
Lawmakers said in Monday’s letter that Kait also removed “key language” from a February memo to DHS underscoring the significance of text messages to the inspector general’s investigation. The original memo mentioned that most DHS components had not provided requested information and noted text message content is a “critical source of information for the DHS OIG review,” but the final version stated the opposite, saying that they had received responses, according to the letter.
“These documents raise troubling new concerns that your office not only failed to notify Congress for more than a year that critical evidence in this investigation was missing, but your senior staff deliberately chose not to pursue that evidence and then appear to have taken steps to cover up these failures,” the letter states.
It goes on to cite missing text messages for the two top Homeland Security officials under former President Donald Trump — acting Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli. Information obtained by the committee revealed that the inspector general’s office was aware in February that those messages couldn’t be accessed but didn’t notify Congress. CNN has reached out to Cuccinelli for comment.
Latest twist in saga
Monday’s letter is yet another twist in the ongoing saga over missing messages around January 6. Memos obtained by CNN indicate that the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly reminded the workforce to comply with the inspector general and relevant Hill committees.
After the Office of Inspector General raised concerns to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about compliance with requests, the secretary issued a September 2021 memo to the workforce saying that employees should cooperate with interviews and provide information.
“The Department is committed to supporting the OIG’s mission. DHS employees are expected to cooperate with OIG audits, inspections, investigations, and other inquiries. Any effort to conceal information or obstruct the OIG in carrying out its critical work is against Department directives and can lead to serious consequences,” the memo says.
Then, in October 2021, DHS General Counsel Jonathan Meyer issued a memo specific to January 6, 2021, and saying the office was cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Capitol Hill insurrection.
“I am therefore directing the Department and its Components to respond to any Select Committee requests it receives expeditiously and thoroughly,” that memo states. “Such cooperation and transparency are vital to the Department’s obligation to safeguard our Nation and its foundational democratic principles.”
James Webb Space Telescope: Just a huge thermal camera | Science | In-depth reporting on science and technology | DW
Scientists are abuzz with anticipation for the first full-color images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest and most powerful infrared space-based telescope, which will be revealed in July.
“[The images] are sure to deliver a long-awaited ‘wow’ for astronomers and the public,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US.
It took more than two decades to develop the James Webb Space Telescope, at a cost of about $10 billion (€9.48 billion), and it’s hoped that these first images will go some way to justify all the work, time and money.
A joint project between NASA, the American space agency, and the European and Canadian space agencies, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021.
It uses infrared to allow scientists to see deep into space. They want to see distant galaxies and stars and understand how they have formed.
They also hope the telescope will allow them to learn more about exoplanets — planets that orbit stars than our own sun — and to look for signs of life.
What is infrared?
As with visible light, the kind we can see with our eyes, infrared is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
Electromagnetic radiation comes in different wavelengths that lie on a spectrum, which starts with radio at one end and includes microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma ray.
Infrared is itself a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum and is divided into near-infrared, mid-infrared and far-infrared.
If you’ve seen movies like “Predator,” the documentary series “Planet Earth” or the performance by Thirty Seconds to Mars at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, you’ll be familiar with infrared light and some of its uses.
All of the above examples used thermal cameras, which capture infrared light.
Thermal cameras are also used at airports to measure peoples’ body temperature, which increases when you get a fever, for example from an infection with SARS-CoV-2.
Some snakes like vipers, pythons and boas have special “pit” organs that can detect infrared radiation — or body heat — from their prey as well.
How do infrared thermal cameras work?
Anything that is above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius / -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit), whether living or inanimate, emits infrared radiation — that includes you and the chair you’re sitting on.
Even if we can’t see the object with our eyes, it will emit heat radiation. We can detect that radiation with infrared and then convert that data into an image, using different colors to illustrate the intensity of the infrared radiation. And that creates a contour with detailed outlines of the object.
The James Webb Space Telescope will deliver the sharpest images of deep space to date
That’s similar to how infrared telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope create images from space.
Why use infrared on the James Webb Space Telescope?
Astronomers need infrared to be able to see the earliest stars and galaxies.
Infrared allows us to see through dust clouds that would otherwise block our view.
Dust clouds are where stars and planets are born, and being able to see through them will help us better understand how those stars and planets form.
The James Webb Space Telescope has a massive mirror to capture light from distant stars and planets.
The mirror is six times larger than the one used on its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to see objects that are 10 to 100 times fainter than what Hubble could see, and take much sharper and detailed images in infrared than any previous telescope of its kind.
A new era in infrared
Infrared was discovered in 1800 by German-born British astronomer William Herschel, one of the main astronomers behind the discovery of Uranus.
Herschel used a prism and a thermometer to measure how different colors of light influenced temperature and noticed the biggest increase in temperature was in a region that became known as infrared.
The James Webb Space Telescope launched in December from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana
There have been many more discoveries and technological improvements since then, including the first detection of infrared radiation from the moon on 1856.
In 1878 came the invention of the bolometer, an infrared measuring device, that was used in an updated form on the Herschel Space Observatory until 2013.
Infrared detectors continue to improve in sensitivity and accuracy, allowing scientists to detect infrared light from planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
The James Webb Space Telescope will now add to this rich history by looking further back in time than ever before, and with unprecedented detail.
If we’re lucky, it will reveal what the universe looked like just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany
UN denounces ‘homophobic and racist’ reporting on monkeypox spread | Monkeypox
The United Nations’ Aids agency has called some reporting on the monkeypox virus racist and homophobic, warning of exacerbating stigma and undermining the response to the growing outbreak.
UNAIDS said “a significant proportion” of recent monkeypox cases have been identified among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
But transmission was most likely via close physical contact with a monkeypox sufferer and could affect anyone, it added, saying some portrayals of Africans and LGBTI people “reinforce homophobic and racist stereotypes and exacerbate stigma”.
As of 21 May, the World Health Organisation received reports of 92 laboratory-confirmed monkeypox cases and 28 suspected cases from 12 countries where the disease is not endemic, including several European nations, the US, Australia and Canada.
“Stigma and blame undermine trust and capacity to respond effectively during outbreaks like this one,” said the UNAIDS deputy executive director, Matthew Kavanagh.
“Experience shows that stigmatising rhetoric can quickly disable evidence-based response by stoking cycles of fear, driving people away from health services, impeding efforts to identify cases and encouraging ineffective, punitive measures.”
Argentina’s health ministry said on Sunday it had detected a suspected case of monkeypox in Buenos Aires, amid growing global alarm over rising cases in Europe and elsewhere of the viral infection more common to west and central Africa.
Monkeypox symptoms include fever, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion and a chickenpox-like rash on the hands and face.
No treatment exists, but the symptoms usually clear up after two to four weeks. The disease is considered endemic in 11 African nations.
76ers fined $50,000 by NBA after Joel Embiid’s return for violating injury reporting rules
The Philadelphia 76ers have been fined $50,000 for violating the NBA’s injury reporting rules, the league announced Saturday. The fine was issued in regards to the return of Joel Embiid, whose status the NBA claims Philadelphia failed to disclose in an accurate and timely manner leading up to the game. Philadelphia won that game, 99-79 and came within one game of tying their second-round series with the Heat thanks in large part to Embiid’s return.
Embiid missed the first two games of the series while recovering from a concussion and a fractured orbital bone. Embiid was initially listed as “out” for most of the buildup to Game 3, eventually being upgraded to doubtful. He warmed up before the game and the team ultimately decided that he could play. Embiid scored 18 points in the win.
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The Phoenix Suns were recently fined for a similar violation. Their star guard, Devin Booker, suffered a hamstring strain in the first round and missed several games. Like Embiid, he was initially listed as out before returning for Game 6 of their series against the New Orleans Pelicans. The Suns won that game and advanced to the second round.
With multiple fines for such violations coming in short succession, it appears as though league rules are not acting as much of a deterrent. Thus far in these playoffs, teams have been willing to pay a bit of cash in the name of allowing their players to recover and return on schedules that suit them without having to worry about injury report designations.
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