Thu: Private Equity Finds a New Group of Kids to Screw -

The Price of Murdering Ukrainians

Motorists in Russia are having to pay more at the pump is rising as drone strikes on oil facilities affect gas prices, it has been reported.

During the war started by Vladimir Putin, numerous drone strikes have targeted infrastructure such as oil facilities in Russia some of which are hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border.

Russian authorities have blamed the attacks on Ukraine, although Kyiv frequently does not claim responsibility for the strikes which hurt Moscow's war effort.

On Tuesday, a fire broke out at a Lukoil refinery in Nizhny Novgorod about 280 miles east of Moscow and an energy facility in the city of Oryol was also hit the same day.

The next day, drones hit refineries in Ryazan and Rostov-on-Don, according to Russian officials. Other oil facilities in the southern city of Volgograd and Tyapse as well as St Petersburg have also been targeted in recent weeks.

Citing an industry source, Russian business news outlet RBC reported that refineries being forced to suspend operations has caused fears in the balance of supply and demand, causing a rise in prices.

"The situation for the market is potentially serious, so buyers are insuring themselves by purchasing goods," the source said.

The price of AI-95 gasoline on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange exceeded 60,000 rubles ($657) per ton, going up on Wednesday by 1.88 percent.

This was the highest rise since September when gas prices had declined after a temporary embargo on fuel exports was ended. During that embargo, AI-95 gas prices hit a high of 76,876 rubles ($840) per ton on September 7.

Aaron Rogers is Not a Sane Human Being

Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback for the New York Jets and the potential vice presidential pick of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., reportedly shared conspiracy theories about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children dead.

CNN reporter Pamela Brown detailed an interaction she had with Rodgers in 2013. Brown recalled introducing herself to Rodgers while she was covering the Kentucky Derby for the news network. After learning she was a reporter, Rodgers began “attacking the news media for covering up important stories,” Brown and coauthor CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote in an article Wednesday. Rodgers then claimed the Sandy Hook attack was an inside job orchestrated by the government.

Brown said she questioned Rodgers and asked him to present evidence the massacre — one of the worst mass shootings in American history — was staged.

“Rodgers began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times,” Brown’s story with Tapper read.

The piece Wednesday also includes another account from an anonymous person with a similar story, who recounted Rodgers telling them, “Sandy Hook never happened … All those children never existed. They were all actors.”

She's Not a Traitor to Me

Olivia Rodrigo demonstrated her dedication to reproductive health during her concert in St. Louis, Missouri, on Tuesday night.

During her show at the Enterprise Center, Rodrigo teamed with the Missouri Abortion Fund to offer fans emergency contraceptive pills, condoms and information about accessing and defending abortion care in the Show Me State.

It was a bold move for the former Disney star, as Missouri has some of the harshest laws in the nation concerning abortion.

The state’s abortion bans offer very limited exemptions for medical emergencies only. Last month, Republicans in the state moved to block proposed exemptions for cases of rape and incest.

She Still Has to Show Her Driver's License to Rent a Car

Congress FInally Gets Something Done.  At Least on the Surface.

In a capital where Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, it was notable when the House overwhelmingly declared on Wednesday that TikTok poses such a grave risk to national security that it must be forced to sell its U.S. operations to a non-Chinese owner.

But that glosses over the deeper TikTok security problem, which the legislation does not fully address. In the four years this battle has gone on, it has become clear that the security threat posed by TikTok has far less to do with who owns it than it does with who writes the code and algorithms that make TikTok tick.

Those algorithms, which guide how TikTok watches its users and feeds them more of what they want, are the magic sauce of an app that 170 million Americans now have on their phones. That’s half the country.

But TikTok doesn’t own those algorithms; they are developed by engineers who work for its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which assembles the code in great secrecy in its software labs, in Beijing, Singapore and Mountain View, Calif. But China has issued regulations that appear designed to require government review before any of ByteDance’s algorithms could be licensed to outsiders. Few expect those licenses to be issued — meaning that selling TikTok to an American owner without the underlying code might be like selling a Ferrari without its famed engine.

Bait and Switch and Die

In early December, Hemil was offered a job as a helper in the Russian army and promised a monthly salary of $1,800, which appeared to be a passport to prosperity for a family dependent on a small textiles shop in Surat, India. That is where Hemil worked too, helping his father until the dream of a future abroad took hold.

Hemil’s parents, along with a dozen relatives, travelled to Mumbai on December 14 to see him off at the airport, where two people – a man and a woman – who claimed to be employees of the recruiting firm that hired Hemil, received them and assured them their son would be safe from any actual fighting.

Hemil’s family said he was first taken to Chennai city in India’s south from where he flew to Dubai and was finally sent to Russia. The entire process, they said, appeared genuine until he reached Russia and was forced to undergo arms training. He was then deployed to the front lines, tasked with digging bunkers and transporting heavy weapons for the Russian soldiers, said his father.

But Hemil is not the only Indian lured by online recruiters offering “army helper” jobs in Russia. The jobs were posted by ‘Baba Vlogs’, a YouTube channel with 300,000 subscribers and purportedly operated by a Dubai-based Faisal Khan.

Indians die fighting for Russia in Ukraine, leaving a trail of helplessness

One Scam Forces People to Run Other Scams

Hundreds of people have been rescued from a scam centre in the Philippines that made them pose as lovers online.

Police said they raided the centre on Thursday and rescued 383 Filipinos, 202 Chinese and 73 other foreign nationals.

The centre, which is about 100km north of Manila, was masquerading as an online gambling firm, they said.

South East Asia has become a hub for scam centres where the scammers themselves are often entrapped and forced into criminal activity.

Young and tech-savvy victims are often lured into running these illegal operations, which range from money laundering and crypto fraud to so-called love scams. The latter are also known as "pig butchering" scams, named after the farming practice of fattening pigs before slaughtering them.

These typically start with the scammer adopting a fake identity to gain their victim's affection and trust - and then using the illusion of a romantic or intimate relationship to manipulate or steal from the victim. This often happens by persuading them to invest in fake schemes or businesses.

Thursday's raid near Manila was sparked by a tip-off from a Vietnamese man who managed to flee the scam centre last month, police said.

The man, who in his 30s, arrived in the Philippines in January this year, after being offered what he was told would be a chef's job, said Winston Casio, spokesman for the presidential commission against organised crime.

But the man soon realised that he, like hundreds of others, had fallen prey to human traffickers running love and cryptocurrency scams.

Those trapped in the Bamban centre were forced to send "sweet nothings" to their victims, many of whom were Chinese, Mr Casio said - they would check in on their recipients with questions about their day and if and what they had eaten for their last meal. They would also send photos of themselves to cultivate the relationship.

Mr Casio said those running the scam centres trapped "good looking men and women to lure [victims]".

Hundreds rescued from love scam centre in the Philippines