ALBUQUERQUE: For teachers at a middle school in New Mexico’s largest city, the first inkling of a widespread tech problem came during an early morning staff call.
On the video, there were shout-outs for a new custodian for his hard work, and the typical announcements from administrators and the union rep. But in the chat, there were hints of a looming crisis. Nobody could open attendance records, and everyone was locked out of class rosters and grades.
Albuquerque administrators later confirmed the outage that blocked access to the district’s student database — which also includes emergency contacts and lists of which adults are authorized to pick up which children — was due to a ransomware attack.
“I didn’t realize how important it was until I couldn’t use it,” said Sarah Hager, a Cleveland Middle School art teacher.
Cyberattacks like the one that canceled classes for two days in Albuquerque’s biggest school district have become a growing threat to US schools, with several high-profile incidents reported since last year. And the coronavirus pandemic has compounded their effects: More money has been demanded, and more schools have had to shut down as they scramble to recover data or even manually wipe all laptops.
“Pretty much any way that you cut it, incidents have both been growing more frequent and more significant,” said Doug Levin, director of the K12 Security Information Exchange, a Virginia-based nonprofit that helps schools defend against cybersecurity risk.
Precize data is hard to come by since most schools are not required to publicly report cyberattacks. But experts say public school systems — which often have limited budgets for cybersecurity expertise — have become an inviting target for ransomware gangs.
The pandemic also has forced schools to turn increasingly toward virtual learning, making them more dependent on technology and more vulnerable to cyber-extortion. School systems that have had instruction disrupted include those in Baltimore County and Miami-Dade County, along with districts in New Jersey, Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Levin’s group has tracked well over 1,200 cybersecurity incidents since 2016 at public school districts across the country. They included 209 ransomware attacks, when hackers lock data up and charge to unlock it; 53 “denial of service” attacks, where attackers sabotage or slow a network by faking server requests; 156 “Zoombombing” incidents, where an unauthorized person intrudes on a video call; and more than 110 phishing attacks, where a deceptive message tricks a user to let a hacker into their network.
Recent attacks also come as schools grapple with multiple other challenges related to the pandemic. Teachers get sick, and there aren’t substitutes to cover them. Where there are strict virus testing protocols, there aren’t always tests or people to give them.
In New York City, an attack this month on third-party software vendor Illuminate Education didn’t result in canceled classes, but teachers across the city couldn’t access grades. Local media reported the outage added to stress for educators already juggling instruction with enforcing COVID-19 protocols and covering for colleagues who were sick or in quarantine.
Albuquerque Superintendent Scott Elder said getting all students and staff online during the pandemic created additional avenues for hackers to access the district’s system. He cited that as a factor in the Jan. 12 ransomware attack that canceled classes for some 75,000 students.
The cancelations — which Elder called “cyber snow days” — gave technicians a five-day window to reset the databases over a holiday weekend.
Elder said there’s no evidence student information was obtained by hackers. He declined to say whether the district paid a ransom but noted there would be a “public process” if it did.
Hager, the art teacher, said the cyberattack increased stress on campus in ways that parents didn’t see.
Fire drills were canceled because fire alarms didn’t work. Intercoms stopped working.
Nurses couldn’t find which kids were where as positive test results came in, Hager said. “So potentially there were students on campus that probably were sick.” It also appears the hack permanently wiped out a few days worth of attendance records and grades.
Edupoint, the vendor for Albuquerque’s student information database, called Synergy, declined to comment.
Many schools choose to keep attacks under wraps or release minimal information to prevent revealing additional weaknesses in their security systems.
“It’s very difficult for the school districts to learn from each other, because they’re really not supposed to talk to each other about it because you might share vulnerabilities,” Elder said.
Last year, the FBI issued a warning about a group called PYSA, or “Protect Your System, Amigo,” saying it was seeing an increase in attacks by the group on schools, colleges and seminaries. Other ransomware gangs include Conti, which last year demanded $40 million from Broward County Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest.
Most are Russian-speaking groups that are based in Eastern Europe and enjoy safe harbor from tolerant governments. Some will post files on the dark web, including highly sensitive information, if they don’t get paid.
While attacks on larger districts garner more headlines, ransomware gangs tended to target smaller school districts in 2021 than in 2020, according to Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the firm Emsisoft. He said that could indicate bigger districts are increasing their spending on cybersecurity while smaller districts, which have less money, remain more vulnerable.
A few days after Christmas, the 1,285-student district of Truth or Consequences, south of Albuquerque, also had its Synergy student information system shut down by a ransomware attack. Officials there compared it to having their house robbed.
“It’s just that feeling of helplessness, of confusion as to why somebody would do something like this because at the end of the day, it’s taking away from our kids. And to me that’s just a disgusting way to try to, to get money,” Superintendent Channell Segura said.
The school didn’t have to cancel classes because the attack happened on break, but the network remains down, including keyless entry locks on school building doors. Teachers are still carrying around the physical keys they had to track down at the start of the year, Segura said.
In October, President Joe Biden signed the K-12 Cybersecurity Act, which calls for the federal cybersecurity agency to make recommendations about how to help school systems better protect themselves.
New Mexico lawmakers have been slow to expand Internet usage in the state, let alone support schools on cybersecurity. Last week, state representatives introduced a bill that would allocate $45 million to the state education department to build a cybersecurity program by 2027.
Ideas on how to prevent future hacks and recover from existing ones usually require more work from teachers.
In the days following the Albuquerque attack, parents argued on Facebook over why schools couldn’t simply switch to pen and paper for things like attendance and grades.
Hager said she even heard the criticism from her mother, a retired school teacher.
“I said, ‘Mom, you can only take attendance on paper if you have printed out your roster to begin with,’” Hager said.
Teachers could also keep duplicate paper copies of all records — but that would double the clerical work that already bogs them down.
In an era where administrators increasingly require teachers to record everything digitally, Hager says, “these systems should work.”
Cyberattacks increasingly hobble pandemic-weary US schools
https://arab.news/nghzb
Cyberattacks increasingly hobble pandemic-weary US schools
- Cyberattacks like the one that canceled classes for two days in Albuquerque’s biggest school district have become a growing threat to US schools
Spaniards packing water pistols blame impact of mass tourism for housing crunch
The friendly faces of neighbors in his apartment building have been replaced by a non-stop flow of hard-partying foreigners, and his teacher’s salary can’t keep pace with the rising rent.
“It is tough for me to imagine what to do next,” he told The Associated Press in the living room of his two-bedroom apartment. “If I leave, will I be contributing to Barcelona losing its essence that comes from its locals? But there comes a time when I’m fed up.”
Escorsa, 33, is just one of many residents who believe tourism has gone too far in the city famed for Antoni Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia basilica and the Las Ramblas promenade, running roughshod over communities and exacerbating a housing crisis.
It’s not just a Spanish problem. Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with overtourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Barcelona, where protesters plan to take to the streets on Sunday.
Similar demonstrations are slated in several other Spanish cities, including on the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza, as well as in the Italian postcard city of Venice, Portugal’s capital Lisbon and other cities across southern Europe — marking the first time a protest against tourism has been coordinated across the region.
’Very likely water pistols will be back’
A poll in June 2022 found just 2 percent of Spaniards thought housing was a national problem. Three years later, almost a third of those surveyed said it is now a leading concern. (Both polls were of 4,000 people, with a margin of error of 1.6 percent)
Spaniards have staged several large protests in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities in recent years to demand lower rents. When thousands marched through the streets of Spain’s capital in April, some held homemade signs saying “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods.”
Last year, Barcelona seemed to reach a tipping point when a rally in favor of “degrowing tourism” ended with some protesters shooting water pistols at unsuspecting tourists. Images of those incidents went around the world, and more such scenes are expected on Sunday.
“It is very likely the water pistols will be back,” said Daniel Pardo, one of the organizers of the Barcelona protest. “In fact, we encourage people to bring their own.”
Spain, with a population of 48 million, hosted a record 94 million international visitors in 2024, compared with 83 million in 2019, making it one of the most-visited countries in the world. It could receive as many as 100 million tourists this year, according to studies cited by Spain’s economy minister.
Blocking tourist rentals
Spain’s municipal and federal authorities are striving to show they hear the public outcry and are taking appropriate action to put the tourism industry on notice, despite the fact it contributes 12 percent of national GDP.
Almost two-thirds of those who took part in a poll conducted last year in Barcelona said tourist apartments led to bothersome behavior. Two months later, the city stunned Airbnb and other services who help rent properties to tourists by announcing the elimination of all 10,000 short-term rental licenses in the city by 2028.
A survey by Spain’s public opinion office last year showed more than three-quarters of respondents favored tighter regulations on tourist apartments. Spain’s left-wing government approved regulations making it easier for owners of apartments to block others from renting to tourists in their building, as well as approving measures to allow cities like Barcelona to cap rents. And last month, it ordered Airbnb to remove almost 66,000 holiday rentals from the platform which it said had violated local rules.
Spain’s Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy told AP that the tourism sector “cannot jeopardize the constitutional rights of the Spanish people,” which enshrines their right to housing and well-being.
Carlos Cuerpo, the economy minister, said in a separate AP interview that the government is aware it must tackle the unwanted side effects of mass tourism.
“These record numbers in terms of tourism also pose challenges, and we need to deal with those challenges also for our own population,” Cuerpo said.
‘Brewing for decades’
The short-term rental industry believes it is being treated unfairly.
“I think a lot of our politicians have found an easy scapegoat to blame for the inefficiencies of their policies in terms of housing and tourism over the last 10, 15, 20 years,” Airbnb’s general director for Spain and Portugal, Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago told the AP. “If you look at the over-tourism problem in Spain, it has been brewing for decades, and probably since the 60s.”
He says hotels are still the leading accommodation for tourists. In Barcelona, hotels accounted for 20 million tourists in 2024, compared with 12 million who used homes, according to local data.
Rodríguez de Santiago notes the contradiction of Barcelona’s Mayor Jaume Collboni backing the expansion of the city’s international airport — announced this week — while still planning to wipe out the tourist apartments.
That argument either hasn’t trickled down to the ordinary residents of Barcelona, or isn’t resonating.
Escorsa, the teacher in Barcelona, doesn’t just oppose Airbnb in his home city; he has ceased to use it even when traveling elsewhere, out of principle.
“In the end, you realize that this is taking away housing from people,” he said.
4 years after Haiti’s president was killed, the investigation drags on
- The investigation was repeatedly halted by the resignation of judges who feared for their lives
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Not one suspect imprisoned in Haiti has faced trial after being charged in the killing of President Jovenel Moïse, who was gunned down at his home in the nation’s capital nearly four years ago.
Gang violence, death threats and a crumbling judicial system have stalled an ongoing investigation defined by outbursts and tense exchanges between suspects and judges.
“You failed in your mission. And you are not ashamed to declare yourself innocent,” Judge Claude Jean said in a booming voice as he stood and faced a Haitian policeman responsible for protecting the president, who was shot 12 times in Port-au-Prince on July 7, 2021.
Jean is one of six Haitian judges investigating whether there is enough evidence to warrant a trial for the 20 suspects held in the troubled Caribbean country. Authorities said some of the suspects envisioned a coup, not an assassination, leading to lucrative contracts under a new administration.
The suspects include 17 former soldiers from Colombia and three Haitian officials: an ex-mayor, a former policeman and a former Haiti Ministry of Justice employee who worked on an anti-corruption unit. Missing are several key Haitian suspects who escaped last year after a powerful gang federation raided Haiti’s two biggest prisons, including Dimitri Hérard, ex-head of security at Haiti’s National Palace.
Three other suspects, all Colombians, were killed hours after Moïse was slain, while a key suspect in the case, Haitian Superior Court Judge Windelle Coq Thélot, died in January while still a fugitive.
Courthouse under siege
The investigation was repeatedly halted by the resignation of judges who feared for their lives. Defense attorneys then appealed after the court ruled there was sufficient evidence for trial. Jean and five other judges are now tasked with restarting the inquiry. But determining complicity among 51 suspects is only one of numerous challenges.
Last year, powerful gangs seized control of the downtown Port-au-Prince courthouse where the judges were interrogating suspects. The hearings were suspended until the government rented a home in Pacot, a neighborhood once considered safe enough for the French embassy. But gangs controlling 85 percent of Haiti’s capital recently attacked and forced the government to move again.
The hearings restarted in May, this time in a private home in Pétion-Ville, a community trying to defend itself from gangs seeking full control of Port-au-Prince.
‘Nothing we could do’
As a fan swirled lazily in the background, Judge Phemond Damicy grilled Ronald Guerrier in late May.
One of several police officers tasked with protecting the president, Guerrier insisted he never entered Moïse’s home and couldn’t fight the intruders because he was dazed by a stun grenade.
“The attackers were dressed all in black. They wore balaclavas and blinded us with their flashlights. I couldn’t identify anyone,” Guerrier testified, adding they used a megaphone to claim they were US Drug Enforcement Administration agents. “The attackers operated as if they were entering their own home. It seemed they knew the place perfectly.”
Damicy asked if they shot at drones that Guerrier said were buzzing above the president’s home.
“The attackers covered the entire area with their fire,” Guerrier replied. “There was nothing we could do.”
Damicy grew exasperated. “Under no circumstances should an enemy cross you with impunity to commit his crime,” he said. “In your place, I would fire on the enemy. I would even die, if necessary.”
‘I don’t know’
Inside the investigation’s heavily guarded, stone-and-concrete headquarters in a leafy residential community, raised voices have dominated tense interrogations.
One judge stood and thundered a question about a gun: “On the day of the death of President Jovenel Moïse, were you in possession of a Galil?”
In another outburst in March, a judge repeatedly pressed Joseph Badio, the former Ministry of Justice official who spent two years on the run, about his call to former Prime Minister Ariel Henry after the assassination. At the time, Henry had only been nominated as prime minister by Moïse.
“You can say whatever you want with your mouth,” Badio told the judge, who ordered him to sit as he rose while speaking. “There is no prohibition for me to communicate with anyone I want.”
The tension has carried over into interrogations of the Colombian suspects, who maintain they were hired by a Miami-based security firm to provide security for power and water treatment plants and diplomatic officials, as well as train Haitian police and soldiers.
The Colombians have denied involvement, while their attorney, Nathalie Delisca, said there has been no presumption of innocence during the interrogations.
“The treatment inflicted on the detainees was inhumane,” she said, alleging mistreatment by authorities after their arrest.
The former soldiers said they were beaten, threatened with death, forced to sign documents in a language they don’t understand and barred from communicating with their lawyers and families for long stretches.
“I have been subjected to degrading treatment. I have been subjected to physical and psychological torture,” Jheyner Alberto Carmona Flores said during a recent hearing.
He spoke Spanish in a clear and loud voice, sometimes correcting an interpreter translating his testimony into French.
“I have no involvement because I don’t know when or where the president was assassinated,” Carmona Flores said, claiming he was summoned to provide security at the perimeter of Moïse’s house and did not know the president had been fatally shot.
Working under threat
While the case in Haiti has stalled, the US has charged 11 extradited suspects, with five already pleading guilty to conspiring to kill Moïse.
Five other suspects are awaiting trial, which is now scheduled for March 2026.
They include Anthony “Tony” Intriago, owner of Miami-based CTU Security, and Haitian-Americans James Solages, a key suspect, and Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a pastor, doctor and failed businessman who envisioned himself as Haiti’s new leader.
Moïse’s widow, Martine Moïse, is expected to testify in the US case. She was injured in the attack and accused by a Haitian judge of complicity and criminal association, which her attorneys deny.
Court documents say the plan was to detain Jovenel Moïse and whisk him away, but changed after the suspects failed to find a plane or sufficient weapons. A day before Moïse died, Solages falsely told other suspects it was a CIA operation and the mission was to kill the president, the documents allege.
Bruner Ulysse, a lawyer and history professor in Haiti, lamented how the local investigation has highlighted what he called “profound challenges” in Haiti’s judicial system.
“While international efforts have yielded some results, the quest for justice in Haiti remains elusive,” Ulysse said. “Judges, prosecutors and lawyers operate under constant threat.”
Former French president Sarkozy stripped of Legion of Honour
- The right-wing ex-president ruled France from 2007-2012
- He has been beset by legal problems since leaving office
PARIS: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been stripped of his Legion of Honour – the country’s highest distinction – following a conviction for graft, according to a decree published Sunday.
The right-wing ex-president ruled France from 2007-2012 and has been beset by legal problems since leaving office following a bruising presidential election defeat.
An appeals court last year upheld former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conviction for illegal attempts to secure favors from a judge and ordered him to wear an electronic ankle bracelet instead of serving a one-year jail sentence.
The decision to revoke his award had since been expected, according to the rules of the order, despite current French President Emmanuel Macron saying he was opposed to the move.
Sarkozy becomes the second former head of state to be stripped of the award after Nazi collaborator Philippe Petain, who was convicted in August 1945 for high treason and conspiring with the enemy.
Sarkozy, whose electronic tag was removed this month, is using his last remaining legal avenue, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, to defend himself against the conviction.
He is currently on trial in a separate case on charges of accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
The court is to give a verdict in September with prosecutors asking for a seven-year prison term for Sarkozy, who denies the charges.
Despite his legal problems, Sarkozy remains an influential figure on the right and is known to regularly meet with Macron.
Cambodia seeks ICJ help over Thai border dispute: PM
- Thailand has tightened border controls with Cambodia in recent days
- While Cambodia ordered troops on Friday to stay on “full alert”
PHNOM PENH: Cambodia has asked the International Court of Justice to help resolve a Thai border dispute that turned into a bloody military clash last month, Prime Minister Hun Manet said Sunday.
One Cambodian soldier was killed on May 28 as troops exchanged fire in a disputed area known as the Emerald Triangle, where the borders of Cambodia, Thailand and Laos meet.
The Thai and Cambodian armies both said they had acted in self-defense, but agreed to reposition their soldiers to avoid confrontations.
Thailand has tightened border controls with Cambodia in recent days, while Cambodia ordered troops on Friday to stay on “full alert” and banned Thai dramas from TV and cinemas.
Hun Manet said in a Facebook post on Sunday that “Cambodia submitted an official letter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to seek a resolution on the border dispute” in four areas — the site of last month’s clash and three ancient temples.
“Cambodia chooses international law and peace,” the Cambodian leader said.
“Cambodia only needs justice, fairness and clarity in border demarcation and delimitation with our neighboring countries, so that our future generations will not continue to have issues with each other.”
Hun Manet said Friday his government was waiting to hear from Thailand whether it would join Cambodia in its bid to refer the dispute to the ICJ.
The row dates back to the drawing of the countries’ 800-kilometer (500-mile) frontier in the early 20th century during the French occupation of Indochina.
Cambodia has previously sought help from the ICJ in a territorial dispute over a border temple.
The court ruled the area belonged to Cambodia, but Thailand said it did not accept the court’s jurisdiction.
Violence sparked by the dispute has led to 28 deaths in the region since 2008.
Officials from the two countries met in Phnom Penh on Saturday over the border spat and Thailand’s foreign ministry said the meeting had “made progress in building mutual understanding.”
More meetings are due on Sunday.
Trump pocketed over $57 million from crypto coin sales
- Trump and his sons helped launch the cryptocurrency investment and lending platform ahead of last year’s election, raising conflict of interest concerns especially after he went on to win
NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump pocketed more than $57 million from token sales by the crypto venture he and his sons helped launch last year, according to federal financial disclosure forms released by the White House.
The more than 230-page document issued by the Office of Government Ethics, dated Friday, lists the US president’s holdings including stocks, dividends, real estate and investment portfolios.
It showed that Trump, who during his first presidential election campaign in 2016 broke with the long tradition of candidates publishing their income tax returns, raked in $57.4 million from the sale of World Liberty Financial tokens.
Trump and his sons helped launch the cryptocurrency investment and lending platform ahead of last year’s election, raising conflict of interest concerns especially after he went on to win.
He lent his name to this new company and launched a “Trump” memecoin in January, just hours before his inauguration.
World Liberty Financial had issued 100 billion tokens, of which some 22.5 billion were allocated to the Trump-affiliated company DT Marks Defi.
Once hostile to the crypto industry, Trump has since returning to power enthusiastically embraced the sector, taking significant steps to clear regulatory hurdles and making large-scale investments.
Trump has, among other moves, appointed crypto advocate Paul Atkins to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
He has also established a federal “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” aimed at auditing the government’s bitcoin holdings, which were mainly accumulated by law enforcement from judicial seizures.
Cryptocurrencies now have “a champion and an ally” in the White House, Vice President JD Vance said last month during a bitcoin conference in Las Vegas.
The document also provides an overview of the royalties that Trump has received through the sale of branded products and licensing agreements around the world.
For instance, he earned $2.8 million from watches and $2.5 million from perfumes and sneakers.
His Mar-a-Lago club in Florida also generated over $50 million in income for the president.
Trump’s golf courses around the world also helped pad his coffers, allowing him to pocket $29.1 million from the one in West Palm Beach, and $110.4 from the one in Miami.
The president also received a monthly retirement payment of $6,484 from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
