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Good morning and welcome back… let’s get right to it.
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⏰🚀 Ready, Set, Go: Today’s newsletter takes 4.31 minutes to read. (With the 360° view: 7.50 minutes.)
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👇📰 Quick Bits
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💻 Hack Attack: Back on Track
Image: Rob Engelaar/ANP/AFP
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🎁 DONUT Headline: The Russia-linked REvil hacking group is back. The group broke into U.S. IT firm Kaseya on Friday (after clearing out JBS for $11M last month), and is holding one million devices hostage for $70M in bitcoin.
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The hacker group REvil - best known for extorting $11M from meat processor JBS earlier this year - has locked more than one million devices connected to software company Kaseya and is demanding $70M for their release.
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Exactly how many systems have been infected is unknown, though the number is likely sizeable. The cybersecurity firm Huntress, which is helping Kaseya's response, said it is aware of more than 1,000 individual businesses that have been affected so far.
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The largest known victim is Swedish grocery chain Coop, which was forced to close most of its roughly 800 stores all day Saturday. Its registers – which are all controlled online by Visma Esscom, a Kaseya customer – were locked up and rendered unusable.
Instead of locking an individual organization, as ransomware groups usually do, REvil locked each victim computer as a standalone target and initially asked for $45,000 to unlock each specific one.
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Late Sunday, REvil changed course and posted on its dark web site offering a universal decryptor key that would unlock all affected machines in exchange for $70M in bitcoin.
More: President Biden on Saturday directed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the attack, saying America "will respond" if Russia is found to be behind the incident – "The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government but we're not sure yet."
From the Left: NBC News
From the Right: WSJ
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🇫🇷 Champagne Showdown 🇷🇺
Image: Alexander Nemenov/AFP
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🎁 DONUT Headline: France - more specifically, the Champagne province - is upset over Russia playing an UNO reverse card on the champagne industry.
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France's champagne industry group on Monday called on its members to halt all shipments to Russia in response to new regulation forcing foreign champagne producers to add a "sparkling wine" reference to the back of their bottle.
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Under the new law, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Friday, producers of Russian "shampanskoye" may continue to use only that term to describe the beverage.
Alexander Stavstev, editor-in-chief of Russian industry news outlet Wine Retail Information Center, estimates the law could involve changing the labels of some 20,000 wine brands.
💬 Relevant Quotes:
"The Champagne Committee deplores the fact that this legislation does not ensure that Russian consumers have clear and transparent information about the origins and characteristics of wine." –France’s Comité Champagne, in a statement.
“The law has been passed, it must be implemented." –Russian press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
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🍩 DONUT Holes
GIF: Twitter
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🛢️ This GIF is not cut from Pirates of the Caribbean, but a gas leak from an underwater pipeline that caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday. The blaze was extinguished hours later.
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🚀 Billionaire Richard Branson plans to travel to the edge of space on a Virgin Galactic test flight as soon as July 11 — which would beat fellow aspiring billionaire astronaut Jeff Bezos by nine days.
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🌭 Joey Chestnut won his 14th Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Sunday, breaking his own world record by eating 76 hot dogs in ten minutes.
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🚨 Eleven people were arrested Saturday morning following an overnight standoff between Massachusetts State Police and several armed men. During the hours-long standoff, Interstate 95 was closed and a shelter-in-place order was issued for the area. (From the Left | From the Right)
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💰 The Boy Scouts of America reached an $850 million settlement with more than 60,000 sexual abuse victims; NBC News reports it's the largest settlement in a child sexual abuse case in U.S. history.
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📸 A French national park is asking influencers not to tag their photos so fewer people will visit.
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🏢 The remainder of the Surfside, FL, condo building that partially collapsed on June 24 was brought down in a controlled explosion Sunday night; the official death toll now stands at 28 with 117 still unaccounted for; elsewhere, two other Miami-area buildings were evacuated over the weekend due to safety concerns.
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🏅 Sports, Sports, and More Sports
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🏒 The Montreal Canadiens beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals last night; Tampa holds a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
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🏀 The NBA Finals will feature the Phoenix Suns vs. the Milwaukee Bucks; Game 1 starts tonight at 9 p.m. ET.
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🏥 Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Matiss Kivlenieks died from chest trauma due to a “fireworks malfunction” at a July 4 party in Novi, MI.
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👟 U.S. track star Sha’Carri Richardson received a 30-day suspension after testing positive for marijuana. The presumptive gold-medal winner will miss the women’s 100M event at the Tokyo Olympics.
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🗣👂 Dose of Discussion
⚖️ What's Up With Britney?
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🎁 DONUT Headline: Jamie Spears is now Britney's sole conservator after an outside company resigned as co-conservator due to Britney's testimony last month. Last week, a judge denied a request to remove him from the role. What's next?
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A judge last Wednesday denied a request from Britney Spears to remove her father, James “Jamie” Spears, as the conservator of her estate.
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The same judge on Friday granted wealth management group Bessemer Trust's request to be removed from its new role as co-conservator of Spears' estate due to "changed circumstances" when Britney "claimed irreparable harm to her interests" in court last month.
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Translation: Jamie Spears is now the sole conservator.
📸 The Big Picture... Jamie Spears was appointed his daughter's conservator in 2008 after Britney was hospitalized following a purported mental breakdown.
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After Britney was released, a Los Angeles court made the conservatorship permanent, giving her father and another co-conservator power over her finances and medical decisions. (What is a conservatorship?)
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Spears spoke publicly for the first time about her 13-year conservatorship at a hearing last month, calling the arrangement “abusive” and saying she felt "enslaved" by her father's demands. (Full transcript.)
🗣️ Initial Public Offering... The June 23 testimony prompted an outpouring of support from celebrities, including her sister Jamie Lynn Spears and fellow pop star Christina Aguilera.
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Scrutiny of her case has increased since the February release of "Framing Britney Spears," a documentary about her conservatorship which helped fuel the #FreeBritney movement.
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On Saturday, The New Yorker published a long-form article by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino titled: "Britney Spears’s Conservatorship Nightmare."
On the Horizon: The next court hearing is set for July 14. It was scheduled after Jamie Spears asked for a formal hearing on Britney's allegations of abuse and mistreatment.
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🛸🌄📲 Calling from the Future…
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🩺 Setting The Pace…
Image: Northwestern University/George Washington University
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🎁 DONUT Headline: Medical researchers developed a temporary pacemaker that harmlessly dissolves in a patient’s body when no longer needed.
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Researchers at Northwestern and George Washington universities have developed a temporary, fully implantable pacemaker that dissolves into bodily fluids over the course of five to seven weeks.
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The device sticks onto the surface of a patient’s heart and receives energy wirelessly by means of the same technology used in RFID tags and smartphones for electronic payments.
The invention could replace existing temporary pacemakers, which are traditionally used by patients following open heart surgery or heart attack, or by those awaiting a permanent pacemaker.
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Existing temporary pacemakers must be sewn into the heart muscle of patients during surgery and pose risks including infection, damaged tissue, and blood clots.
Keep reading.
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🤗 Daily Dose of Positive
👩🏼🏫💒From the Classroom to the Altar
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Image: NBC News
It’s always a major decision for a bride and groom to decide which one of their friends will stand next to them on their big day.
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After one Wisconsin couple had finished selecting their wedding party, its members were an average age of 10 years old. Yes, you read that right – 10 years old.
Mason McDowell and Alexandra Stamps both recently finished their first year of teaching in the Wichita Public School District.
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When they got engaged this spring, the couple knew they wanted to do something special for their classes to show the students just how much they meant to them this year. (I think you know where this is heading…)
Keep reading.
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💡 Dose of Knowledge
⚖️🎓 Law In Order
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How long does full-time law school typically take to complete?
A) Two years
B) Three years
C) Four years
D) Five years
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(keep scrolling for the answer) |
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🍩 Share The DONUT
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Simply:
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Ambassador Rewards and Progress → |
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💡 Dose of Knowledge Answer
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B) Three years
While everyone’s personal experience may vary, traditional, full-time J.D. programs generally last three years, with some accelerated programs available that can be completed in two. Part-time J.D. programs typically take at least four years to complete.
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🍩 Daily Sprinkle
“A different world can never be built with indifferent people.”
–Anonymous
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