It's Been Reported

Gretchen Whitmer Reveals What She Must Think Of Her Constituents (Amer Wire) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer revealed what she must really think of constituents in her state with a logic-defying video announcing a new education policy. The Democrat governor, who had seriously been touted as a possible presidential contender, delivered the eye-popping – and somewhat disturbing – video announcement on Tuesday along with something called Professor Potato. Along with her “spud” jokes, the woman Michigan voters put in charge of their state tried to be trendy and seemed to have failed epically. Teasing her plan to offer two years of “free” community college to high school graduates, Whitmer teamed up with the talking potato to deliver the highlights of the policy she will likely push during her State of the State speech on Wednesday. It is not clear why Whitmer thought high schoolers looking for a college education would take advice from a talking potato. See full story	Family Of 85-Year-Old Woman Killed By Alligator Sues Florida Retirement Village For Negligence (Fox News) — The heartbroken family of an 85-year-old woman who was dragged into a pond and killed by a deadly alligator is suing the retirement village where the horrific incident took place, claiming the owners knew the gator was living in the water and failed to remove it. Gloria Serge was near a retention pond behind her house in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2023, when the 10-foot-long beast crawled out of the water and first tried to attack her dog, according to chilling CCTV footage. The surveillance footage shows the reptile swimming in a direct path toward Serge’s dog before it rises out of the water and scampers up the embankment in pursuit of the animal. The octogenarian was taken to the ground with the alligator biting her feet, and then she was dragged into the water. Bill Serge, the victim’s son, announced the lawsuit against Spanish Lakes Fairways at a news conference with his attorneys on Friday. See full story
Dangerous TA866 Malware Returns With Devious New Phishing Campaign (Techradar) — After a nine month hiatus, the infamous TA866 threat actor is back, a new report from cybersecurity researchers Proofpoint has claimed, having recently observed a large phishing campaign targeting people in North America. As per its report, Proofpoint says TA866 sent “several thousand emails” with subjects such as “Project achievements”, and similar. The emails carried a PDF attachment with names like “Document_[10 digits].prf” and similar. These documents contained a OneDrive URL which, if clicked, launched a multi-step infection chain that ultimately deployed a variant of the WasabiSeed malware. This malware downloads and runs additional payloads, including the Screenshotter custom toolset. Screenshotter, as the name suggests, takes screenshots of the compromised desktop and sends them to the command & control (C2) server. Should the attackers like what they see on the screenshots, they would proceed to deliver additional payloads. The researchers are unsure which malware that would be, but said that in previous campaigns, the attackers dropped AHK Bot and Rhadamanthys Stealer. See full story	Washington State Reaches Settlement With Johnson & Johnson Over Opioid Addiction (AP) — The Washington state attorney general announced a $149.5 million settlement Wednesday with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, more than four years after the state sued the company over its role in the opioid addiction crisis. “They knew what the harm was. They did it anyway,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters Wednesday. The attorney general’s announcement came as opioid overdose deaths more than doubled from 2019 to 2022, with 2,048 deaths recorded in 2022, according to the most recent numbers from the Washington State Department of Health. Under the deal, the state and local governments would have to spend $123.3 million to address the opioid crisis, including on substance abuse treatment, expanded access to overdose-reversal drugs and services that support pregnant women on substances. The rest of the money would go toward litigation costs. The harm is “left now to policymakers to grapple with,” the attorney general said, “or families and individuals who grapple in a very different way with the real tragedy of addiction.” See full story
Religious ‘Nones’ In America: Who They Are And What They Believe (Pew Research) — Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to provide a detailed portrait of religiously unaffiliated adults in the United States. Much of this profile comes from a survey we conducted July 31-Aug. 6, 2023, among 11,201 respondents who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). The survey included interviews with a total of 3,317 religious “nones” – 658 atheists, 678 agnostics and 1,981 respondents who describe their religion as “nothing in particular.” The ATP is an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses, which gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, political party, education, religious affiliation and other categories. For more, refer to the ATP’s methodology and the methodology for the report. See full story	Syphilis Microbe’s Family Has Plagued Humans For Millennia (Nature) — Remains of people who lived on the eastern coast of South America nearly 2,000 years ago have yielded the oldest known evidence for the family of microorganisms that cause syphilis. The discovery, reported today in Nature, casts further doubt on the already shaky idea that Christopher Columbus’s crew exported syphilis to Europe. More importantly, say scientists, the ancient genomes push back the origins of Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis and other ‘treponemal’ diseases, by thousands of years. The most notorious treponemal infection is venereal syphilis, which is generally caused by the subspecies T. pallidum pallidum but can be caused by other ones as well. A second subspecies is most commonly linked to yaws, which cause skin lesions on the hands and feet. And a third causes most cases of an oral infection known as bejel. Left untreated, all three diseases can damage the bones. See full story
GM Cruise Reveals DOJ, SEC Probes As It Releases Internal Report On Pedestrian Crash (TechCrunch) — Cruise, the GM self-driving subsidiary, said Thursday that federal prosecutors and securities regulators have opened investigations into the October 2 incident that left a pedestrian stuck under and then dragged by one of its robotaxis. The probes by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which were revealed as part of an internal report conducted by law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and released Thursday, join numerous other investigations at nearly every level of government, including the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Public Utilities Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The October 2 incident – and the decisions by Cruise leadership in the days following – has put the company’s future at risk, forcing GM to slash costs and take greater control of the troubled company. Cruise lost the permits it needed to operate commercially in the state of California and has since grounded its fleet elsewhere. Its co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned and nearly 24% of its workforce had been laid off in the wake of the event. See full story	Experts Say Beware Of Frozen Alligators – Social Media Videos Of 'gatorcicles' Draw Big Numbers As Experts Say The Reptiles Are Alive And Well (NBC News) — Online videos showing what appear to be dead alligators in frozen ponds in North Carolina and Texas have captured massive audiences. Employees at the gator rescue parks where the videos were recorded say the rarely witnessed behavior is a survival instinct displayed by the cold-blooded reptiles, which are actually alive and well. George Howard, the general manager of The Swamp Park in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, said Wednesday that what viewers are seeing on social media is the reptilian behavior known as brumation. Alligators rely on their environment for temperature regulation, according to the South Carolina Aquarium. During brumation, alligators' metabolic rates slow down, and they become lethargic, with periods of activity, according to the aquarium. The Swamp Park posted pictures of alligators with their snouts sticking out of ice during brumation. See full story
Jay Leno Files For Conservatorship Over Wife Mavis' Estate Following Her Dementia Diagnosis (Fox News) — Jay Leno petitioned a Los Angeles court Friday to be appointed conservator over his wife Mavis' estate, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. In the conservatorship filing, Leno wrote that Mavis "lacks the necessary capacity to execute the estate plan" due to her "major neurocognitive disorders (including dementia)." He described his "loving marriage for more than 43 years" with his wife but noted that he "has always handled the couple's finances," and he wanted to ensure that "Mavis has managed assets sufficient to provide for her care should Jay predecease Mavis." Leno began the conservatorship process in November, according to legal documents. His representatives did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. See full story	Georgia Dormitory Bat Infestation Welcomes Students Back To Campus: ‘It’s Very Alarming’ (Fox News) — Students living at the University of Georgia’s Oglethorpe House have reported seeing bats inside their dormitory since returning to school following the holiday break. "It's very alarming," student Ella Sather told FOX 5. "There was one in the lobby, and it was like on the floor, and then all of a sudden it just got up and started flying at me, so I ran back to my room." "It's been an adventure," she added. The university told FOX 5 that pest control is on top of the infestation. Linda Casper, executive director of university housing, told the station the bats were entering through the roof into a mechanical space with boilers. "We believe they were entering through that space and then getting in the stairwells through that opening," she said. See full story