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Dark web randsomware provider seized in global takedown

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Dark web randsomware provider seized in global takedown – CBS News


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A ransomware service provider linked to thousands of cyber attacks across the globe has been taken down in a global operation. Russian nationals were charged as part of an international plot to deploy the malicious software called LockBit, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Scott MacFarlane has details

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Two journalists killed in northern Syria

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A journalists’ association says two journalists working for Kurdish media outlets were killed in northern Syria while covering fighting between Turkish-backed fighters and Syrian Kurdish militia.

The Turkey-based Dicle-Firat Journalists Association said Friday that Nazim Dastan and Cihan Bilgin were killed Thursday when their vehicle was reportedly targeted by a Turkish drone on a road near the Tishrin Dam.

Tishrin Dam, located some 56 miles east of Aleppo, has been the scene of clashes between the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, and the Turkey-backed opposition forces.


Former U.S. ambassador to Turkey says Trump is exaggerating the country’s influence on Syria

04:34

There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.

Bianet, a news website dedicated to human rights issues, said Bilgin was a reporter for the Kurdish Hawar News Agency, while Dastan worked as a freelance journalist for the Firat News Agency, which is associated with the militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because its main component is a group aligned to the PKK.

The group has been engaged in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since the 1980s in pursuit of its objective of securing autonomy for Kurds in the country.



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Stuffing stockings with skincare? Here’s what experts say kids should (and shouldn’t) be using.

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Skin care is all the rage for teens and tweens these days. But if you’re hunting for last-minute skincare stocking stuffers, be aware that experts warn some products could cause more harm than good.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness, a dermatologist and president of Society for Pediatric Dermatology told CBS News earlier this year it’s important to look for age-appropriate products for young skin. 

“What’s not good about caring for your skin, washing your face, wanting to establish good healthy skin care habits early? That’s great,” Maguiness said. “But what’s not great is the fact that some of the products that are being marketed to tweens and teens are not necessarily good or appropriate for their skin.”

So if you’re deciding on skincare gifts, here’s what’s safe and what’s best to skip. 

Safe: Cleanser and sun protection 

Using a gentle cleanser once or twice a day to wash your face is a great first step for those around age 11 or 12, Maguiness said.

“Even tweens could wash their face twice a day; as young as 8, that would be just fine,” she said. 

After washing your face in the morning, Maguiness suggests applying a sunscreen with SPF 30 or greater. Then in the evening, swap that out for a gentle moisturizer.

“The only preventative product that you need in an arsenal at any age is sunscreen,” she said. “It is the No. 1 thing you can do to prevent your skin from aging and to prevent, even more importantly, the risk for skin cancer down the line.”

Skip: Harsh ingredients

Some harsh ingredients for young people to avoid include alpha and beta hydroxy acids (AHA and BHA), alcohol, highly fragranced products, and retinols and retinoids, plastic surgeon Dr. Smita Ramanadham, told CBS New York earlier this year. 

“The biggest category to really avoid are those anti-aging products,” she said. “Young skin just does not need it. Young skin has collagen, elastin, it is hydrated, so we don’t need to add these extra ingredients that are really going to irritate and cause inflammation.”

Maguiness said she sees young girls come into her clinic with bags of unnecessary and potentially risky products.

“They’re actually damaging their skin barrier. They’re drying themselves out. They’re getting irritant dermatitis,” she said. “They’re using products that really just aren’t appropriate for the type of skin that they have.”



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How Trump could undo portions of Biden’s climate legacy

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Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election set in motion a race against time by President Biden to safeguard his environmental legacy in his remaining days as president.

But his administration’s stepped-up pace of climate-related announcements will likely mean little once Trump is inaugurated and the Republican-led Congress is seated in January. Mr. Biden’s most recent climate initiatives are all but certain to be short-lived, mostly thanks to an obscure law that tends to come into play every four years.

That law, the Congressional Review Act, allows Congress to kill any regulation issued by a federal agency in the last 60 legislative days with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate and the signature of the president. 

Since Election Day, the Biden administration has announced final rules that include one to dramatically curb methane emissions and another that bans all future coal mining leases on federal lands. Both rules are expected to be rolled back soon after Trump takes office.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide, but it traps heat in the atmosphere at 28 times the rate of carbon dioxide, the Environmental Protection Agency has observed. On the upside, methane doesn’t remain in the atmosphere for as long as CO2, so cutting methane emissions can have a much quicker, more dramatic impact on lowering greenhouse gases. Human sources of methane emissions include oil and gas systems, landfills, wastewater treatment facilities and a host of other industrial processes.

On Nov. 12, the Biden administration announced a final rule that will charge oil and natural gas companies a hefty fee if they exceed methane emission limits. It’s an effort to encourage these companies to improve their processes to reduce methane leaks.

The EPA estimates that implementing the methane emissions rule would be akin to taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year. 

The Biden administration also recently blocked all new coal mining leases on public lands, which would affect new leases in Wyoming and Montana, the source of 40% of the nation’s coal. The Associated Press pointed to government analyses that said ending federal leasing would reduce emissions by the equivalent of 293 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly on par with eliminating emissions from 63 million gas-powered cars.

Existing leases would still allow mining in the region to continue for decades. But coal has been losing ground in recent years, as the U.S. has steadily come to rely more on cheap natural gas and renewable energy sources — and less on coal. 

Republican politicians in Wyoming and Montana denounced the ban, and GOP Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said in a statement that he’s ready to work with Trump to reverse the ban and other regulations. 

In Trump’s view, fears about climate change are overblown or premature. He’s called it a “hoax” in the past. He opposes clean energy and EV subsidies and has said what America needs to do is “drill, baby drill” — that is, increase traditional oil and gas production in order to bring down energy prices for Americans. This shouldn’t come as a surprise — in his first term, upon taking office, he overturned 100 environmental rules enacted by President Obama. 

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised business-friendly policies that he claimed would halve energy costs in a year by approving new drilling and slashing red tape. 

Some experts doubt that’ll happen. 

“There is no universe in which decisions by the federal government can cause that extent of a reaction from markets,” Jonathan Elkind, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University told CBS News. “The oil markets, they are too big, they are too global, and the president of the United States does not have the capability to exert influence that is as strong as that.”

There are still, however, some Biden climate policies that are likely to be out of Trump’s reach. 

Billions in clean energy investment was set aside in the 2022 climate law, the most significant climate change legislation ever signed. But the key to protecting that funding is making sure the money is spent, or allocated, before Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. 

Once the grant money is spent, Trump and Republicans are highly unlikely to be able to claw it back.

“Legally, any obligated fund is safe,” said Christina DeConcini, director of government affairs at World Resources Institute. “If you listen to incoming administration officials, they are saying that they’re going to go after that. I don’t think they’re going to have a legal leg to stand on if it’s been obligated.”

The EPA says it’s learned over the years that the surest way to protect climate policy is to tie a regulation directly to legislation and funding.

In total, about $643.1 billion, or over 93% of funding available, has been obligated, according to a White House official. Billions remain to be spent under the climate law in the next fiscal year, and some Republicans may want to keep the climate spending in their districts and states.

Trying to take the grant funding back would mean “potentially taking away benefits to communities, both in terms of public health protections, but also economic benefits,” EPA senior adviser for implementation Zealan Hoover told CBS News. 

And these grants are also far from the most expensive line-items in the climate law. The Energy Department announced almost $18 million for projects that bolster recycling programs, launch residential energy efficiency rebate programs and expand bike lanes and pedestrian walkways, among other projects. The Agriculture Department put $256 million toward the Rural Energy Program for America to expand use of wind, solar, geothermal and small hydropower energy. 

These kinds of projects and the grants are likely to be safe through Trump’s second term. 

contributed to this report.



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