Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
There had previously been no news about Asaad Al-Nsasrah's whereabouts or condition. (Supplied: Palestinian Red Crescent Society)
In short:
Israel
has released a Palestinian paramedic detained after IDF solders fired
on a convoy of ambulance and emergency vehicles he was travelling.
He was one of only two survivors of the attack, which Israel described as a result of operational failures.
Israel
has previously blamed "night visibility" for the attack on the convoy,
which led to the deaths of 15 Palestinian emergency workers.
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A
Palestinian paramedic arrested after he and his colleagues were
attacked by Israeli forces in southern Gaza has been released after more
than a month in detention.
There
were grave fears for Asaad Al-Nsasrah's wellbeing after the Palestinian
Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said he was "forcibly abducted" by the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on March 23.
There
had been no news about his whereabouts or condition in the weeks since.
But on Tuesday afternoon, local time, the PRCS revealed he had been
freed.
Asaad Al-Nsasrah is one
of only two survivors of an Israeli military attack on a number of
ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle near Tel al-Sultan.
An Israeli inquiry blames the killing of Palestinian medics on "poor night visibility".
Fifteen people were killed in the attack: eight PRCS paramedics, six members of Gaza's civil defence service and one UN staffer.
It is not yet clear where Al-Nsasrah was held and under what circumstances.
An internal IDF investigation found "poor night visibility" was a factor in troops wrongfully opening fire on the vehicles, despite video evidence clearly showing ambulances travelling with red flashing emergency lights on display.
The
video showed the paramedics and emergency responders rushing to the
scene of an ambulance that had been run off the road and being met with a
barrage of gunfire once they arrived.
The operation to retrieve the remains of 15 Palestinian medics took a week, according to the United Nations. (Supplied: United Nations/OCHA)
The
bodies of the slain emergency workers were buried in a shallow grave
alongside the wreckage of their crushed vehicles, which were uncovered a
week later once the United Nations and PRCS could gain access to the
site.
The IDF has expressed regret about its soldiers targeting civilians, but insisted six Hamas fighters were killed in the attack.
It has only named one, and has provided no evidence about the identities of the others.
The PRCS has rejected the findings of the IDF inquiry, describing it as full of "lies" and contradictory statements.
The organisation has demanded a totally independent international inquiry outside the IDF's chain of command.
The
only other survivor of the attack, paramedic Munther Abed, said he was
dragged from the wreckage of his vehicle by Israeli forces and
blindfolded before being interrogated by the IDF for 15 hours.
Thousands of Australian computers and phones have been infected with password-stealing malware. (ABC News)
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More
than 31,000 passwords belonging to Australian customers of the Big Four
banks are being shared amongst cyber criminals online, often for free,
the ABC can reveal.
Despite the
anti-fraud protections in place at those banks, cybersecurity experts
warn victims could "definitely" lose money as a result.
An
investigation by cyber intelligence researchers has shown credentials
belonging to at least 14,000 Commbank customers, 7,000 ANZ customers,
5,000 NAB and 4,000 Westpac customers are available on the messaging
platform Telegram and the dark web.
It
comes in the wake of recent attacks on Australian superannuation funds,
where hackers stole from pensioners and used leaked passwords to try to
gain access to members' accounts.
The
Australian firm Dvuln, which made the discovery, said the passwords
were stolen directly from users' personal devices, which had been
infected with a type of malware known as an "infostealer".
"This is not a vulnerability in the banks," Dvuln's founder Jamie O'Reilly said.
"These are customer devices that have been infected."
On this website, a criminal is selling access to credentials from Australia, including ANZ accounts.(Supplied)
Infostealer
malware, as the name suggests, is a type of malicious software
tailor-made to infect a device, harvest as much valuable data as
possible and deliver it directly to criminals.
It
overwhelmingly targets computers running on Windows and as well as
passwords, can capture credit card details, cryptocurrency wallets,
local files, and browser data including cookies, user history and
autofill details.
Dvuln started researching the scale of Australia's infostealer problem after superannuation funds were targeted in early April.
"We've
seen a tight correlation between the use of infostealer malware and
using those passwords to conduct these types of attacks," he said.
Experts said exposed passwords created a genuine risk of theft for the account holder.
"Threat
actors can use the bank account to link to some kind of payment system,
to transfer funds, or for money laundering," said Leonid Rozenberg, a
specialist in infostealer malware from cybersecurity company Hudson
Rock.
He also warned that the threat posed by Inforstealers was much broader than just breached banking credentials.
"We
see that the average [infostealer] victim has between 200 [and] 300
account [details] stored inside the browser," Mr Rozenberg said.
"It
can be a PayPal account … it can be [an] account that is used [to]
transfer money between different countries … it can be, for example,
[an] e-commerce account that already has [a] credit card linked."
This screenshot shows thousands of Australian details have been stolen.(Supplied)
Some
of the 31,000 devices captured in Dvuln's audit were infected as far
back as 2021, but would still provide valuable data to attackers,
according to Mr O'Reilly.
"As a day job, I work to hack some of the biggest companies in the world," he said.
"We
have been able to compromise even some ASX-listed companies, in a
controlled scenario, with four- or five-year-old passwords."
In
light of Australia's growing infostealer problem, there is a notable
lack of theft and fraud that's been publicly linked to it.
However Mr O'Reilly said many instances could be happening under the radar.
"There
may be a large number of fraud attacks happening against individuals
and businesses… but there's been no public attribution because it's very
difficult to trace back to a specific malware infection," he said.
"A lot of this crime, on an individual level, goes unreported."
Infostealers: The 'silent heist' on 3.9 billion passwords
The use of infostealers has exploded in recent years.
Hudson Rock said there were now more than 58,000 infected devices in Australia and more than 31 million infections globally.
The company arrived at the figure by counting all infected devices, rather than just those belonging to banking customers.
Recent
analysis from cybersecurity firm KELA found that globally, at least 3.9
billion passwords had been stolen using the technique.
It's been dubbed "the silent heist" by the Australian Signals Directorate.
"Back in 2018 it was only 135,000 infections and today, we're speaking about 31 million," Mr Rozenberg said.
Some of the data stolen by "infostealer" malware includes usernames and passwords.(Supplied)
That more than 200-fold increase has contributed to a breathtakingly low price tag on stolen passwords.
Mr
O'Reilly monitors about 100 Telegram groups dedicated to trading data
siphoned using infostealers, many of which offer a subscription model.
"You
can pay $US400 and every month, as this gang continues to steal more
passwords and infect more computers… you may get 100,000 to 200,000 new
logs from 100,000 to 200,000 infected computers from all around the
world, not just Australia," he said.
That's $626 in Australian currency at the current exchange rate, which works out to be less than a cent per infected device.
For those willing to pay between US$3,000 and US$10,000, some Telegram groups promise "lifetime access".
In some cases, data is given away for free.
"The
criminals have so many passwords and so much data, that they actually
give away thousands and thousands of credentials just to entice new
criminal customers to come and buy the private information," he said.
For now, more than 90 per cent of infostealer infections are on computers with Windows operating systems, Mr O'Reilly said.
"There is a growing number of mobile devices being infected with malware, but it's nowhere near as much," he said.
That
skew is less to do with any Windows security weakness, and more to do
with the fact that attackers have chosen to target that system, Mr
Rozenberg said.
"Still, today, in 2025, most of the people, they're using Windows devices," said Mr Rozenberg.
"So [attackers] mostly develop infostealers for Windows," he said.
How to protect yourself from infostealer malware
There are steps people can take to protect themselves from infostealers, but a lot of the usual advice isn't enough on its own.
For example, changing your password won't do much if you're still using an infected device.
"It's the equivalent of changing your locks while the burglars are still in your house," Mr O'Reilly said.
The best option, he said, is to change your password from a separate, secure device.
Even
multi-factor authentication (MFA) isn't a total shield, with malware
gangs sometimes selling cookies or access tokens alongside the stolen
passwords.
"If you do have someone's active access token, a lot of the time you can actually bypass their MFA," he said.
It's
still important to rotate passwords and use MFA, Mr O'Reilly said, but
he has two more key pieces of advice: firstly, stay on top of software
and antivirus updates.
"Research does show that up to 50 per cent of devices infected with infostealer malware have antivirus," he said.
"But
what a lot of people don't talk about is the fact that either the
operating system or the antivirus itself isn't kept up to date."
Cyber security expert says the government's cyber strategy must be flexible
Therefore, the first line of defence is to update both.
The second piece of advice: beware the family computer.
Infostealer
infections are spread in lots of ways, such as phishing, dodgy links,
dodgy ads and dodgy downloads; including torrents, pirated software, and
gaming mods (a downloadable modification to an existing game, often
user-made and unofficial).
"One
of the most common ways… [is] Minecraft mods or cracked software, which
is software that you would typically have to pay license fees for," he
said.
It's often a baited hook, set by malware gangs, according to Mr O'Reilly.
"If
you've got banking credentials or highly sensitive information on your
computer, keep that separate from the computer your children are using,"
he said.
Ideally, he said, this research would be a wake-up call.
"Nothing
is 100 per cent unhackable, but there are definitely strategies that
people can use at home to make it much harder for criminals to get their
information in the first place," he said.
This water-dwelling monotreme may have been an ancestor or relative of modern platypuses and echidnas.
(Supplied: Peter Schouten)
In short:
An
analysis of a 100 million-year-old fossil has found that the creature
it belonged to, similar to a monotreme like the echidna and platypus,
was water-dwelling.
The study
supports the theory there was a period where echidna ancestors were
semiaquatic, before they became land-dwellers again.
What's next?
Researchers say learning more about monotreme evolution will help with the conservation of modern echidnas and platypus.
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Egg-laying echidnas and platypuses are among the world's most bizarre mammals.
With a spotty fossil record, it's difficult to tell how these monotremes evolved.
But
evidence is mounting that the ancestor of the ground-dwelling echidna
may have looked more like a platypus — complete with a penchant for
swimming.
The
bone belongs to a 100 million-year-old "stem-monotreme", which may have
been an ancestor or relative of modern platypuses and echidnas.
According to the analysis, the ancient animal appears to have spent a large amount of its life in the water.
The bone was found 30 years ago at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria. (Supplied: Peter Menzel)
Lead
author Suzanne Hand, a palaeontologist at the University of New South
Wales, said the study could help to inform conservation efforts for
modern echidnas and platypuses.
"The
platypus looks as though it's been incredibly resilient, having
basically the same lifestyle probably for 100 million years," Professor
Hand said.
"And then there's the echidna, also capable of adapting to such fundamental change — going from water to land.
"If
we can understand how they've evolved and how they adapted their
lifestyles like that, that could be important in terms of all the
threats they're facing today."
An ancient monotreme bone
The study focuses on a single fossilised bone, found at the Dinosaur Cove fossil site in Victoria in the early 1990s.
The
100 million-year-old fossil was thought to belong to a monotreme
species and outwardly resembled the upper arm bone of an echidna more
than a platypus's.
The extinct species was named Kryoryctes cadburyi in 2005. To date, no other fossils from the species have been found.
Researchers used a variety of scans, including CT scanning, to study the bone's internal structure.
They compared this to scans of other animal bones, to see how the fossil compared to living species.
They
found the bone had thick walls and reduced amounts of marrow, making it
most similar to modern semiaquatic burrowing mammals.
"That
includes things like the platypus, but also things like Eurasian
otters, muskrats and other relatively small mammals," Professor Hand
said.
Midsections of Kryoryctes, platypus, and echidna bones, from left to right. (Supplied: Hand et al.)
Thicker
bone walls allow the bones to act as ballast, which helps semiaquatic
mammals to dive underwater. In contrast, the bones of modern echidnas
have finer bone walls, while fully aquatic mammals like dolphins have
different structures again.
Mammals
first emerged on land, and there are several cases of them evolving to
become aquatic or semiaquatic, such as dolphins, seals, and beavers.
But
Professor Hand said it was very unusual for a mammal to become
semiaquatic, and then return to the land, as the echidna appeared to
have done.
"We don't know when echidnas may have returned to the land."
Building the semiaquatic echidna theory
Palaeontologists
have theorised that echidnas had semiaquatic ancestors before returning
to the land, but Professor Hand said the idea had been "controversial".
"There hasn't really been any fossil evidence to support it or refute it,"
she said.
Matthew
Phillips, an evolutionary biologist at Queensland University of
Technology who wasn't involved in the research, said non-fossil evidence
had been building behind the semiaquatic theory.
This evidence includes studies of platypus and echidna genomes, their anatomy, and their proteins.
"It's
coalescing around an idea that if you looked at what the most recent
common ancestor of platypus and an echidna was, that it was somewhat
more platypus-like," Professor Phillips said.
The
fossil study, according to Professor Phillips, adds to these "multiple
lines of evidence" — although it wasn't absolute proof.
"You
rarely get absolute proof of anything in in science. There are other
potential explanations, but there's enough evidence coming down with
that same conclusion that it's getting fairly difficult to deny."
Tim Flannery, a mammalogist at the Australian Museum, who also wasn't involved in the research, agreed the study made sense.
"It makes a convincing case that it's a semiaquatic, maybe burrowing, organism."
But there were still many gaps in the fossil evidence of monotreme evolution,Professor Flannery said.
As a result, it's hard to tell when echidnas and platypus species finally diverged.
While US President Donald Trump focuses on trade deficits with other nations, the US budget deficit continues to grow. (Reuters: Nathan Howard)
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The
turmoil on global markets has taken a breather ever since US President
Donald Trump backed away from his grand plan to impose tariffs on almost
every other country.
Stock
markets have recovered almost all the ground they lost in the aftermath
of Liberation Day chaos and even bond markets have scale back the panic,
with yields continuing to edge lower.
Consumers
globally have scaled back spending, corporations are calibrating the
extent to which earnings expectations need to be lowered, American
retailers are bracing for shortages and economists now are tipping much lower global growth and the possibility of a US recession.
That's
because Mr Trump's main target, China, is still facing a broad-based
tariff of 145 per cent, which effectively is a ban on Chinese imports.
Even if the China tariffs are halved, that would massively increase US costs and slow output across the globe.
And, for what?
The
White House is convinced that America is a victim of half a century of
unfair trade policies that have forced the American people to buy
necessities from elsewhere and weakened its global position.
According
to the president: "It's not just China, the European Union, they ripped
us off for many, many years and those days are over," he repeated over
the weekend at a doorstop interview.
So, is America being ripped off? And will tariffs fix the "problem"?
Financial
markets have recovered ground since the initial tariff shock and
turbulence, but America's economic woes are far from settled. (Reuters: Brendan McDermid)
1. What is a trade deficit?
In Donald Trump's world, deficits are always bad and surpluses are always good.
In isolation, it's an easy concept to sell to a deeply divided nation. You can point to a problem and then apportion blame.
But
it ignores the fact that the US economy has powered its way to global
domination during this period. So, it can't be all bad.
Most economists dismiss the idea that a trade deficit, even an ongoing one, is bad.
America's
trade deficit occurs for the simple reason that Americans have a lot of
money to spend and they buy more from offshore than they sell to
foreigners.
No-one is forcing them to buy the stuff. It's not the fault of China, or that of Mexico or Canada for that matter.
Last
year, America exported $US4.8 trillion ($7.5 trillion) worth of goods
and services and imported $US5.9 trillion in goods and services.
That left a $US1 trillion gap, or deficit, which it financed by borrowing.
Mostly,
it is big corporations buying either finished goods to sell to US
citizens or components they need to manufacture goods in the US.
It
isn't foreign governments behind a grand conspiracy to "rip off" Uncle
Sam. It's American companies choosing to buy in goods from offshore.
As
economist Jeffrey Sachs notes: "Suppose that you go on a shopping
binge, spending more than your earnings by running up credit-card debt.
"You will now be running a current account deficit. Are the shops ripping you off, or is your profligacy driving you into debt?"
It's also worth noting that it is not all gimmicks and gadgets coming across the border.
Often, it is high end equipment needed for industry and specialist services.
Put another way, America invests more money than it saves.
2. How do tariffs work?
Tariffs build a wall around your economy.
Those
walls protect local industry from outside competition and allow
industries and firms that ordinarily wouldn't be able to compete to
survive.
The offset, however, is that consumers have to pay more.
Importers pay the tariff and then pass on those higher costs to customers.
Many products US shoppers buy are imported from China and now face steep tariffs. (Reuters: Brendan McDermid)
Many Americans, faced with the prospect of paying far more for imported goods may then switch back to locally-produced goods.
But they would be buying items that they previously decided they couldn't afford.
That
means consumers will have less money to spend on other things and US
economic growth is likely to slow. And the price hikes on imported goods
means inflation will rise.
Another
downside is that businesses become accustomed to the protection and,
with less competition, don't innovate and fall behind the rest of the
world.
There are other issues as well.
As we saw in recent weeks, as soon as the US announced the tariffs, those on the receiving end retaliated.
That makes it harder for US suppliers to sell into foreign markets.
So, while American firms may end up selling more product to Americans, their offshore sales are likely to slump.
Any benefit they may have received from being protected at home will be eliminated by penalties in their export markets.
This Boeing jet landed back in Seattle, Washington after being returned by a Chinese airline last week. (Reuters: David Ryder)
The same goes for foreign firms — offshore sales will fall which means global growth, not just America's, will slow.
While the president bangs on about goods, he rarely mentions services.
America exports a large amount of services to the rest of the world. In this area, it racks up a surplus.
We're talking about things like education, tourism, software and information services.
While
the surplus is not enough to overcome the deficit in tradeable goods,
the recent tariff hits have enraged other countries and seen a marked
drop in foreign students wanting to enter the US and international
backlash from tourists.
As a result, the US trade deficit is likely to deteriorate as a result of the tariffs.
Aussie holidaymakers are avoiding the US, says Flight Centre boss (Alicia Barry)
3. The wrong deficit
America doesn't just run a trade deficit. It also runs a massive internal or budget deficit — and that is far bigger problem.
Years of handing out tax cuts to the extremely rich and vast overspending on defence has seen ongoing US budget deficits.
You need to borrow to finance that, so the national debt has blown out to 122 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Those
deficits continue to grow — during Trump's first term, he added $US8
trillion to the now bulging $US36.2 trillion in national debt, mostly
through tax cuts.
Joe Biden added a similar amount with his Inflation Reduction Act.
America
now spends more on servicing that debt each year than it spends on
defence and the interest bill is the second biggest expense after social
security.
The White House
often incorrectly mentions the national debt as being caused by the
trade deficit which it then uses to justify tariffs.
But if the tariffs cause GDP growth to slide or, worse, turn negative, then that debt situation could suddenly turn toxic.
That's now becoming a real threat as large numbers of economists tip a US recession this year.
What exactly is a recession?
Even
worse, if the tariffs add to inflation and cause higher interest rates,
servicing the debt will cost even more and the American economy could
end up in serious trouble.
America's financial stability has already been called into question by global investors.
While
the Trump administration has taken aim at the US budget, hacking away
at essential government services, it is looking at another massive tax
cut for the wealthy which could further undermine the national finances.
What ails America?
Globalisation was supposed to usher in a new era of wealth for the planet.
Poorer countries would advance into the upper ranks more quickly and developed countries would reap the benefits.
Many of those things came to pass, at least on paper.
The
problem was that the riches weren't doled out fairly. And the US was
among the worst in shuffling the benefits through to the uber rich.
Wealth
inequality blew out during the past half century. America may be rich
on paper but the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened
into a yawning chasm.
Mortality rates have risen, life expectancy has dropped, crime and incarceration levels have soared.
The chaotic and hasty introduction of protectionism won't solve those problems.
Israel says the strike targeted a Hezbollah missile store in Beirut's south. (Reuters: Mohamed Azakir)
In short:
Lebanon's
government has accused Israel of breaching the terms of a ceasefire
after the Israeli Defence Force carried out air strikes on Beirut.
Israeli authorities had earlier urged local residents to leave the area.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lebanon was "directly
responsible" for allowing Hezbollah to continue operating in Beirut's
southern suburbs.
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Israel
has launched air strikes on the Lebanese capital, targeting what it
says were "Hezbollah facilities" in the group's southern Beirut
stronghold of Dahiyeh.
The
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an
"urgent" evacuation warning for a building in the Al-Hadath
neighbourhood on Sunday evening local time.
Locals
were told to move "at least 300 metres away" from the area, and
Lebanese media reported the sounds of gunfire in the area ahead of the
strike.
The building was hit almost an hour later, sending smoke plumes across the city.
It is the first Israeli strike against Hezbollah in over a month.
(Reuters: Mohamed Azakir)
The IDF later said the building stored some of Hezbollah's supply of precision guided missiles.
A
joint statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
Defence Minister Israel Katz said the strikes demonstrated areas of
Beirut would not serve as a "sanctuary city" for Hezbollah.
"Under
the direction of Prime Minister Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Katz,
the IDF strongly attacked an infrastructure where Hezbollah precision
missiles were stored in Beirut, which posed a significant threat to the
State of Israel," the statement said.
"Israel will not allow Hezbollah to grow stronger and pose any threat to it — anywhere in Lebanon."
Projectiles could be seen falling from the sky towards the area Israel had issued a warning over. (Reuters: Mohamed Azakir)
The statement added that the Lebanese government bore "direct responsibility for not preventing these threats".
The United Nations' special coordinator for Lebanon urged both sides to stop undermining the ceasefire.
"Today's
strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut generated panic and fear of
renewed violence among those desperate for a return to normalcy,"
Jeanine Hennis posted on social media platform X.
Israel
has been accused of repeatedly breaching a ceasefire with Hezbollah,
which came into force in November after more than a year of fighting.
In early April, Israel launched a strike on Beirut for the first time since that truce began.
Lebanon's health ministry said four people were killed in that attack, while seven more were injured.
Israel had said it was targeting a Hezbollah commander, who the group later confirmed had been killed in the strike.
Lebanon's president and prime minister condemned Israel's actions, labelling it as a violation of the ceasefire.
The
United States and France are in charge of monitoring the truce, and are
meant to be given advance warning of any Israeli military action.
At the height of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group's leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated.
Israeli
spies embedded explosives in thousands of pagers the group was using
for communications, killing dozens and maiming thousands more, including
civilians.
The deadly attack was planned a decade earlier, according to former Israeli agents in an interview with US broadcaster CBS.
