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In this May 18, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington.(Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

HAMBURG, Germany News reports are coming almost too quickly for reaction. The dispatches are being described as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes fast, furious and all over the place.

The investigation of a U.S. president is dominating global news and is a major subject at this year's World Congress of the International Press Institute, of which I am a member.

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But here's the thing: We cannot continue to swat at news like bothersome flies at a picnic, or gird ourselves, like with hurricanes. So rather than offer thoughts specifically about ...

the Department of Justice ordering a special counsel to investigate whether Donald Trump or any of his associates should be charged with a crime in #Russiagate. the death of former Fox head Roger Ailes.

orthe white Tulsa police officer who will not be charged for killing an unarmed black driver.;

my hope is that we do what University of Missouri journalism professor Marty Steffens advised journalists covering Trump: "When you're in a hurricane, build a strong foundation."

America is in a hurricane, so we need to strengthen our foundation rather than focus on sides, at least for a while. That means we cannot continue doing what we've been doing wrong.

We have spent the past seven years, since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March 2010, taking up sides on either side of a wall.

We have spent the past four years, since George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, growing in number on either side of that wall.

We have spent nearly two years, since Donald Trump became a presidential candidate, adding even more people and vitriol on both sides of that wall.

Unfortunately, that wall that divides us on so many issues, has not pushed the wall one way orthe other. Rather, the wall has grown higher, so neither side can hear the yelling from those on the other side.

And we have been wrong, in each instance, to choose to be adversaries, rather than Americans allied to solve problems;to find ways to do what is best for America. We don't need a third political party. Oh, America will need it later, but not now when our country is at stake. Now, we need to unite on the side that wants America to continue to thrive and continue to be the world's greatest superpower, not a power partner with Russia, fighting wars in nine countries and empowering a rise in overt racial hatred unseen in this country for decades.

We cannot continue to choose the wrong sides in the police versus innocent black men feud. Oh, it is a feud, a blood feud that hasnt affected everyone, but could affect anyone. But it won't end by taking sides or criticizing deaths when they happen. We must unite, all on one side, and fight it together.

We can no longer pretend that Obamacare wasn't about making sure that all Americans have health care. We must unite as one country that doesn't want Americans dying because they cannot get access to a doctor. It is that simple. When you remove partisan politics and rhetoric, that is what is left.

So why dont we start here: Let us look at what the wall is, what it represents. That wall is dividing America, not by ideology, but between right and wrong.

Where President Donald Trump is concerned, lets not make the fight about Trump but about right and wrong. If Trump has done nothing wrong, as he contends, he should have nothing to fear from an investigation. His supporters must convince him of that and stand with him, with everybody on the right side of the wall.

If the GOP doesn't want Obamacare which my friend Daoud Kuttab from Jordan calls Obamacares then every member of Congress should work together on Realcare. It would be a plan that would save people as well as save dollars. Who could be opposed to that?

Where the police are concerned, it is past time to have conversations with the majority of officers who arent thugs and work to keep them safe while they keep us safe. We cannot pretend that there arent people who use their uniforms to harm, but we have to change the dynamic of our interactions and work together to stand, rightversus wrong.

My hope, as I watch my country from 4,000 miles away, is that we remember that we are America versus everybody.

We can have allies and enemies, but neither should come between us Americans. We don't need another wall in America. We have one.

On one side are those fighting for the America we know, one that embraces exceptionalism, diversity and a greatness that already existed two years ago and still exists now.

On the other side, mixed in like weeds among hardworking people who want the same hope and change America asked for in 2008, are the unAmericans who are using the Trump presidency to advance their own causes. Some are using it as an excuse to empower their hatred, as an absurd opportunity to embrace the misguided notion of a white supremacy they once hid under sheets.

Some are people telling folks who have never been to Africa to go back to Africa. Some are people telling Jews the Holocaust didn't happen, and some are calling for a separate America for white people.

Those on that hate side are welcome to leave their hatred behind and come around to the American side of the wall, or they are welcome to just leave and find a place outside America where they can continue to hate American values and greatness. The rest of us will stand together, live together, work together to be the envy of the world. The world is pulling for us because much, not all, but a heck of a lot of the world, wants to be us. They are watching how we handle the wall we have, let alone the wall some want, because they are counting on us, particularly journalists.

"Right now, the world is watching the Trump story, and for a country like Zambia,that depends on knowing what's going on in America, we are telling the press 'Don't stop!'''said Joan Chirwa, editor-in-chief and CEO of the Mast, an independent newspaper in Lusaka, Zambia, that was shut down by the government but continued to operate from a street corner. "We are always looking up to America in terms of press freedom. How is America going to speak in defense of press freedom when they are represented by a government having problems with press freedom?"

There's America. And there's the world. And much of that world wants what we've built.

So we dont need more walls to separate us from us. When were all on one side, we wont need a wall at all.

Contact Rochelle Riley:rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.

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Americans don't need another wall, we've already got too many - Detroit Free Press

A number of documents and manuals used to train Facebooks moderators have been exposed in an investigative report by The Guardian, revealing the type of content users are and arent allowed to post on the social networking site.

That includes taking some controversial stances. For instance, its allegedly Facebook policy to allow the livestreaming of video of people attempting self-harm, only removing the video once theres no longer an opportunity to help the person unless [the videos] are newsworthy.

Another example is in relation to violent language, which Facebook only deems as against the rules if the specificity of language makes it seem like its no longer simply an expression of emotion but a transition to a plot or design. General statements like lets beat up fat kids (a direct quote) can remain on the site, whereas someones request for a presidential assassination would be removed.

The Guardian report is part of a series the site is calling Facebook Files a combination of articles that discuss the guidelines in depth, and also provide samples of the original moderation documents themselves. The guidelines cover a huge range of specific topics, ranging from the showing of animal cruelty to non-sexual child abuse, and detail how Facebook feels each should be addressed.

Facebook already has around 4,500 content moderators whose sole job it is to wade through reports from users of disturbing or inappropriate content, and the company has said it plans to hire another 3,000 to help deal with the massive workload. While this army of screening staff deal with these reports, they apparently dont touch any of the content when it first gets posted that job is instead relegated to automated systems and checks.

These issues are obviously ethically complex, and for many people it will be irksome to see these topics discussed through the lens of corporate interest, no matter how reasonable the policy surrounding each problem may be.

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Banned on Facebook: how the social network tackles controversial topics - TechRadar

Instagram has been rated the most damaging social media platform for young peoples mental health in a new study out of the U.K.

After Instagram, the next low-scoring platform was Snapchat, followed by Facebook, Twitter and then YouTube, which was ranked the healthiest network for youth mental health and wellbeing.

The research, conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health and the Young Health Movement and published on Friday, surveyed 1,479 people in the U.K. between the ages of 14 and 24 in early 2017.

The participants were asked to rate the impacts of the five social media platforms on different aspects of their wellbeing such as, sleep, depression, self-identity, body image, loneliness, bullying, anxiety and fear of missing out (or FOMO as its often called).

According to the findings, Instagram was given low scores in seven categories for its effect on young peoples body image, sleep, bullying, anxiety, depression, loneliness and FOMO.

The photo-sharing networking site was rated highly for its promotion of self-expression, self-identity and emotional support, however.

The most positively-viewed service, YouTube, scored poorly for its impact on the respondents sleep, but did well in nine other categories including emotional support, depression, loneliness, self-expression and awareness of other peoples health experience.

The papers authors point to past studies that have raised concerns about the detrimental effects of social media on developing minds to justify the importance for this kind of research.

The way young people communicate and share with each other has changed, the study states. With social media being such a new phenomenon, the exact effect it is having on the mental health, emotional wellbeing and physiology of young people is currently unclear.

According to the study, 91 per cent of the surveys participants use the internet for social networking and that social media has been called more addictive than cigarettes.

The researchers also point to increasing rates of anxiety and depression in youth (up by 70 per cent in the past 25 years) and how networking sites have been linked to it.

Call for action:

The two health organizations involved in the study also called for a number measures to protect young users from the potentially harmful effects of social media.

Some of the demands include:

- Pop-up warning messages to alert users of their heavy usage

- Including a watermark to identify photos that have been digitally manipulated

- More education in schools on the effects of social media

- Creation of social media platforms to identify users who may be suffering from mental health problems and directing them to support resources

- More research into the impact of social media on young peoples mental health

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Instagram ranked worst for youth mental health: study - CTV News

The president of Ukraine banned four of the nations most popular websites Monday with a new round of sanctions targeting Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent aggression.

President Petro Poroshenko issued a decree Monday evening broadening anti-Russian sanctions and expanding Kievs blacklist to 468 companies and 1,228 people, including Mail.ru, the Moscow-based firm in control of Ukraines two most popular social networks, VK and Odnoklassniki, as well as Yandex, a Russian-owned search engine, in addition to several major Russian television channels and banks.

The challenges of hybrid war demand adequate responses, Mr. Poroshenko said in a statement Monday. Massive Russian cyber attacks across the world particularly the interference in the French election campaign show it is time to act differently and more decisively.

Russia used cyber warfare trying to influence the results of elections across Europe and in the U.S., Mr. Poroshenko added during a Monday night television address, IB Times reported. We expect that they will try to do the same thing to Ukraine.

The sanctions took effect immediately and quickly earned condemnation and cries of censorship from affected entities and open internet advocates as well as ridicule from Russian President Vladimir Putins administration in Moscow.

We have always steered clear of politics, said VK, which claims about 16 million social network users in Ukraine alone. We believe that in its very essence, the internet has no borders.

Supposedly this is because Russia is making money from our users and we are at war. But, excuse me, these are sanctions against the citizens themselves, opined Oksana Romaniouk, Reporters Without Borderss Ukrainian representative.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr. Putins spokesperson, called the sanctions short-sighted and warned Russia had not forgotten about the principle of reciprocity. Russias Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, called the sanctions a manifestation of politically motivated censorship, not withstanding its own repressive internet restrictions.

Other targets of Ukraines latest sanctions include Russias leading cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Labs, in addition to several banks and television stations, including Rossiya Segodnya, RBC, VGTRK and TNT, among others.

Moscow annexed Crimea from Kiev in 2014 after Ukraines pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown from office and replaced by Mr. Poroshenko. Pro-Russian separatists purportedly backed by Moscow instigated a civil war in eastern Ukraine later that year, the likes of which has claimed at least 10,000 lives in the last three years.

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Ukraine blocks social networking sites with new sanctions against Russia - Washington Times

By Ms. Smith, Network World | May 21, 2017 8:58 AM PT

Ms. Smith (not her real name) is a freelance writer and programmer with a special and somewhat personal interest in IT privacy and security issues.

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While you wont be forgetting the WannaCry ransomware attack, it is likely you will be hearing a lot more about the alleged NSA-linked EternalBlue exploit and DoublePulsar backdoor, as it seems a wide range of bad guys have them in their toy boxes. At least one person is leveraging seven leaked NSA hacking tools for a new EternalRocks network worm.

Malwarebytes believes WannaCry did not spread by a malicious spam email campaign but by a scanning operation that searched for vulnerable public-facing SMB ports, then used EternalBlue to get on the network and used DoublePulsar to install the ransomware.

EternalBlue was part of the Shadow Brokers April 14 dump of NSA hacking tools. Almost immediately, sophisticated attackers started repackaging the EternalBlue exploit. Security firm Secdo reported that three weeks before the WannaCry attack, at least three different actors were leveraging the NSA EternalBlue exploit to infect, install backdoors and exfiltrate user credentials in networks around the world, including the U.S.

The attack leaves no trace. By spawning threads inside legitimate apps to impersonate those apps, the attack can evade advanced next-gen antivirus solutions. The attacks, according to Secdo, might pose a much bigger risk than WannaCry because many endpoints may still be compromised despite having installed the latest security patch.

The security firm suggested one threat actor was stealing credentials using a Russian-based IP, and another threat actor seemed to be using EternalBlue in opportunistic attacks to create a Chinese botnet.

Secdo added:

Even if companies were able to block WannaCry and patch the SMB Windows exploit, a backdoor may persist and compromised credentials may be used to regain access.

Security firm Proofpoint spotted an attack using EternalBlue and DoublePulsar to install a cryptocurrency mining botnet. This attack, which also began before WannaCry, may be larger in scale and may even have limited the spread of WannaCry because this attack shuts down SMB networking to prevent further infections with other malware via that same vulnerability. Every time Proofpoint exposed a lab box vulnerable to EternalBlue attacks, it was added to the cryptocurrency mining botnet within 20 minutes.

Perhaps the most worrying news about attacks came from researcher Miroslav Stampar. It is the most worrying because the EternalRocksnetwork worm doesnt just use EternalBlue and DoublePulsar like WannaCry did. Oh no, it uses seven different NSA hacking tools: EternalBlue, Eternalchampion, Eternalromance, Eternalsynergy, Doublepulsar, Architouch and SMBtouch.

Stampar learned of EternalRocks after it infected his SMB honeypot. Its original name was MicroBotMassiveNet, but EternalRocks is listed as a product name under Taskhost Properties. It disguises itself as WannaCry as if hoping to fool security researchers, yet it doesnt drop ransomware. Instead, it seems to be gaining a foothold to launch future attacks.

During the first stage, EternalRocks installs TOR as a C&C communications channel. The second stage doesnt begin immediately; instead, the C&C server waits 24 hours before responding with shadowbrokers.zip. Stampar said the delayed downloader for the zipped file, which contains NSA hacking tools leaked by the Shadow Brokers, seems to be a full-scale cyber weapon.

After that is unpacked, the EternalRocks worm begins scanning for open 445 ports on the internet and pushes the first stage of the malware through payloads.

There is no kill switch like there was in WannaCry. Stampar told Bleeping Computer, The worm is racing with administrators to infect machines before they patch. Once infected, he can weaponize any time he wants, no matter the late patch.

The second stage of the infection currently has a detection rate of 45/61 on VirusTotal, but Stampar warned that EternalRocks was going to be huge.

He later added:

Ms. Smith (not her real name) is a freelance writer and programmer with a special and somewhat personal interest in IT privacy and security issues.

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EternalRocks network worm uses 7 NSA hacking tools - Network World