Russia Ukraine: Biden warns Russia against Ukraine 'red lines'
Joe Biden has warned that he will not accept "red lines" set by Moscow as fears mount that Russia is planning an imminent invasion of Ukraine.
The US president said he will make it "very, very difficult" for Russia to invade its neighbour.
Meanwhile, US media has reported that intelligence officials fear an invasion could begin in early 2022.
It comes as Ukraine says Russia has boosted its military at the border and amassed some 94,000 troops there.
A video call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr Biden to ease tensions is expected this week. The US President told reporters he is expecting to have a long discussion with the Russian leader, and warned that he will not "accept anybody's red lines".
"What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he's going to do," Mr Biden said as he left for the presidential retreat at Camp David.
While Mr Biden did not set out what precise actions the US plans to take, American and Ukrainian officials warned again this week that severe economic sanctions are on the table against Russia.
On Thursday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the US had threatened fresh sanctions after his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Moar: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59528864
Bolsonaro: Brazilian Supreme Court opens investigation into vaccine comments
Brazil's Supreme Court has opened an inquiry into comments made by President Jair Bolsonaro wrongly claiming that Covid-19 vaccines may increase the chance of contracting Aids.
The comments, made during a social media livestream in October saw him temporarily banned from Facebook and YouTube under their fake news policies.
Mr Bolsonaro has frequently cast doubt over the effectiveness of vaccines.
He is already facing a separate inquiry into his handling of the pandemic.
During the livestream on 24 October, Mr Bolsonaro claimed that reports "suggest that people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 are developing Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) much faster than expected". The assertion has been strongly rejected by scientists and medical experts.
The embattled president, who has refused to get vaccinated himself, has defended the comments and claimed that he was simply quoting from an article in a magazine.
On Friday, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Mr Bolsonaro had "used the modus operandi of mass dissemination schemes in social networks" which called for further investigation.
Brazil's leader defiant as Covid inquiry launched
Why could Brazil's president face criminal charges?
Mr de Moraes instructed Brazil's top prosecutor, Augusto Aras, to try to establish whether the president's comments are linked to a group of his supporters who are currently being investigated for the large-scale production of fake news.
The group, known in local media as the Office of Hate, has spread misinformation throughout the pandemic and has called for a military coup that would give Mr Bolsonaro, a former army captain, unlimited powers to rule the country.
Investigations into the group have already seen the arrest of a number of the president's allies, including Roberto Jefferson, the head of the right-wing Brazilian Labour Party.
Mr Bolsonaro has come under heavy pressure in recent months and faced a number of political crises that have dented his popularity.
In October, Brazilian senators voted to recommend charging him over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A special Senate investigative panel backed a report calling for charges to be filed against the president, including crimes against humanity.
Mr Bolsonaro has maintained he is "guilty of absolutely nothing".
Brazil's death toll from Covid-19 is the second highest in the world, behind the United States. More than 615,000 people have died, and 22.1 million have been infected with the virus, although there are fears the true numbers are far higher.
In March, as deaths spiked, the president told Brazilians to "stop whining" and downplayed the threat of the virus, as the health system was crippled by the crisis.
Moar: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-59528857
Biohackers Encoded Malware in a Strand of DNA
Researchers planted a working hacker exploit in a physical strand of DNA.
When biologists synthesize DNA, they take pains not to create or spread a dangerous stretch of genetic code that could be used to create a toxin or, worse, an infectious disease. But one group of biohackers has demonstrated how DNA can carry a less expected threat—one designed to infect not humans nor animals but computers.
In new research they plan to present at the USENIX Security conference on Thursday, a group of researchers from the University of Washington has shown for the first time that it’s possible to encode malicious software into physical strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer. While that attack is far from practical for any real spy or criminal, it's one the researchers argue could become more likely over time, as DNA sequencing becomes more commonplace, powerful, and performed by third-party services on sensitive computer systems. And, perhaps more to the point for the cybersecurity community, it also represents an impressive, sci-fi feat of sheer hacker ingenuity.
“We know that if an adversary has control over the data a computer is processing, it can potentially take over that computer,” says Tadayoshi Kohno, the University of Washington computer science professor who led the project, comparing the technique to traditional hacker attacks that package malicious code in web pages or an email attachment. “That means when you’re looking at the security of computational biology systems, you’re not only thinking about the network connectivity and the USB drive and the user at the keyboard but also the information stored in the DNA they’re sequencing. It’s about considering a different class of threat.”
A Sci-Fi Hack
For now, that threat remains more of a plot point in a Michael Crichton novel than one that should concern computational biologists. But as genetic sequencing is increasingly handled by centralized services—often run by university labs that own the expensive gene sequencing equipment—that DNA-borne malware trick becomes ever so slightly more realistic. Especially given that the DNA samples come from outside sources, which may be difficult to properly vet.
If hackers did pull off the trick, the researchers say they could potentially gain access to valuable intellectual property, or possibly taint genetic analysis like criminal DNA testing. Companies could even potentially place malicious code in the DNA of genetically modified products, as a way to protect trade secrets, the researchers suggest. "There are a lot of interesting—or threatening may be a better word—applications of this coming in the future," says Peter Ney, a researcher on the project.
Moar: https://www.wired.com/story/malware-dna-hack
FASTQ Format Specification
Introduction
FASTQ format stores sequences and Phred qualities in a single file. It is concise and compact. FASTQ is first widely used in the Sanger Institute and therefore we usually take the Sanger specification and the standard FASTQ format, or simply FASTQ format. Although Solexa/Illumina read file looks pretty much like FASTQ, they are different in that the qualities are scaled differently. In the quality string, if you can see a character with its ASCII code higher than 90, probably your file is in the Solexa/Illumina format.
http://maq.sourceforge.net/fastq.shtml
4842
Oct 09, 2020 3:51:34 PM EDT
Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6 ID: 5cc8a9 No. 11001092
C19SurvRate.jpg
TOTAL U.S. DEATHS [ALL CAUSES]:
2017 Total Deaths US: 2,813,503 (234,000/month)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db328.htm
2018 Total Deaths US: 2,839,205 (237,000/month)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm
2019 Total Deaths US: 2,855,000 (238,000/month)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/provisional-tables.htm
2020 Total Deaths US (jan - week 9/26): 2,130,000 (236,000/month)
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6
2,130,000 + (236,000/month x 3) [Oct, Nov, Dec] = 2,838,000 [assumption based on monthly avg]
2020: 2,838,000 [3-month assumption insert]
2019: 2,855,000
2018: 2,839,000
2017: 2,814,000
Why did select [D] govs push C19 infected patients into nursing homes?
% of total C19 deaths attributed to nursing home(s)?
Who is most susceptible?
Same [D] govs who pushed C19 infected patients into nursing homes attempting to keep State(s) closed?
Why?
Q
You are witnessing something [firsthand] that many cannot possibly comprehend or accept as reality [Sci-Fi or precision M_planning?]