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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Blake Snell and the Los Angeles Dodgers have finalized a $182 million, five-year contract. The reigning World Series champions announced the deal with the two-time Cy Young Award winner on Saturday. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get updates and player profiles ahead of Friday's high school games, plus a recap Saturday with stories, photos, video Frequency: Seasonal Twice a week
Nikita Hand, who accused the sportsman of raping her in a Dublin hotel in December 2018, won her claim against him for damages in a civil case at the High Court in the Irish capital. The jury delivered its verdict on Friday. The total amount of damages awarded to Hand by the jury was 248,603.60 euros (£206,714.31). Mr McGregor made no comment as he left court but later posted on social media that he intends to appeal. The Irish athlete has featured in multiple video games, including voice-acting a character bearing his likeness in additional downloadable content in the Hitman series. Mr McGregor’s character featured as a target for the player-controlled assassin in the game. In light of the recent court ruling regarding Conor McGregor, IO Interactive has made the decision to cease its collaboration with the athlete, effective immediately. We take this matter very seriously and cannot ignore its implications. Consequently, we will begin removing all... — HITMAN (@Hitman) November 25, 2024 IO Interactive, the Danish developer and publisher of Hitman, said in a statement: “In light of the recent court ruling regarding Conor McGregor, IO Interactive has made the decision to cease its collaboration with the athlete, effective immediately. “We take this matter very seriously and cannot ignore its implications. “Consequently, we will begin removing all content featuring Mr McGregor from our storefronts starting today.” Mr McGregor had faced an accusation that he “brutally raped and battered” Ms Hand at a hotel in south Dublin in December 2018. The Irish sports star previously told the court he had consensual sex with Ms Hand in a penthouse at the Beacon Hotel. Ms Hand was taken in an ambulance to the Rotunda Hospital the following day where she was assessed in the sexual assault treatment unit. A paramedic who examined Ms Hand the day after the assault had told the court she had not seen “someone so bruised” in a long time.Omaha man who shot into home, killing innocent 15-year-old girl sentenced to decades in prisonBEIRUT — Hezbollah fired about 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel on Sunday, wounding seven people in one of the militant group's heaviest barrages in months, in response to deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut while negotiators pressed on with cease-fire efforts to halt the all-out war. An Israeli bomb squad policeman carries the remains of a rocket that was fired from Lebanon on Sunday in Kibbutz Kfar Blum, northern Israel. Some of the rockets reached the Tel Aviv area in the heart of Israel. Meanwhile, an Israeli strike on an army center killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded 18 others in the southwest between Tyre and Naqoura, Lebanon's military said. The Israeli military expressed regret, saying that the strike occurred in an area of combat against Hezbollah and that the military's operations are directed solely against the militants. Israeli strikes have killed over 40 Lebanese troops since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, even as Lebanon's military has largely kept to the sidelines. Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned the latest strike as an assault on U.S.-led cease-fire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war. Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip ignited the war there. Hezbollah has portrayed the attacks as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups. The Israeli police bomb squad inspects the site after a missile fired from Lebanon hit the area Sunday in Petah Tikva, outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes at Hezbollah, and in September the low-level conflict erupted into all-out war as Israel launched airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon and killed Hezbollah's top leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The Israeli military said about 250 projectiles were fired Sunday, with some intercepted. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated seven people, including a 60-year old man in severe condition from rocket fire on northern Israel, a 23-year-old man who was lightly wounded by a blast in the central city of Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, and a 70-year-old woman who suffered smoke inhalation from a car that caught fire there. In Haifa, a rocket hit a residential building that police said was in danger of collapsing. The Palestine Red Crescent reported 13 injuries it said were caused by an interceptor missile that struck several homes in Tulkarem in the West Bank. It was unclear whether injuries and damage were caused by rockets or interceptors. Sirens wailed again in central and northern Israel hours later. Israeli airstrikes without warning on Saturday pounded central Beirut, killing at least 29 people and wounding 67, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. A flock of birds flies above the smoke from Israeli airstrikes Sunday in Dahiyeh, Beirut. Smoke billowed above Beirut again Sunday with new strikes. Israel's military said it targeted command centers for Hezbollah and its intelligence unit in the southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, where the militants have a strong presence. Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by bombardment in northern Israel and in battle following Israel's ground invasion in early October. Around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the country's north. The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for an "immediate ceasefire" in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to the Lebanese c... The European Union’s top diplomat called Sunday for more pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to reach a deal, saying one was "pending with a final agreement from the Israeli government.” U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region last week. Josep Borrell spoke after meeting with Mikati and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who has been mediating with the group. Borrell said the EU is ready to allocate $208 million to assist the Lebanese military. But Borrell later said that he did not “see the Israeli government interested clearly in reaching an agreement for a cease-fire" and that it seemed Israel was seeking new conditions. He pointed to Israel’s refusal to accept France as a member of the international committee that would oversee the cease-fire's implementation. The emerging agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops from southern Lebanon below the Litani River in accordance with the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the monthlong 2006 war. Lebanese troops would patrol with the presence of U.N. peacekeepers. With talks for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in Gaza stalled, freed hostages and families of those held marked a year since the war's only hostage-release deal. “It’s hard to hold on to hope, certainly after so long and as another winter is about to begin," said Yifat Zailer, cousin of Shiri Bibas, who is held along with her husband and two young sons. Around 100 hostages are still in Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead. Most of the rest of the 250 who were abducted in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack were released in last year's cease-fire. Talks for another deal recently had several setbacks, including the firing of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who pushed for a deal, and Qatar’s decision to suspend its mediation. Hamas wants Israel to end the war and withdraw all troops from Gaza. Israel has offered only to pause its offensive. The Palestinian death toll from the war surpassed 44,000 this week, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. On Sunday, six people were killed in strikes in central Gaza, according to AP journalists at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. How often do you buy something online ? A couple of times a month? A couple of times a week? A couple of times a day? Everybody's answer will be different, but collectively, it's done a lot: Online retail accounted for over $1 trillion of purchases in the U.S. in 2022 and a record $277.6 billion in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Retailers ranging from titans like Amazon and Walmart, down to local small-town shops work very hard to land their share of that business. Sadly and inevitably—so do criminals and scammers. At any given moment, they operate millions of bogus sites. So how can you spot those fake online shopping sites? Spokeo provides a guide. In the early days of the internet , it took some genuine skills to set up a website, but those days are gone. A quick search will show that there are lots of apps and services offering websites on a prefabricated "fill in the blanks" basis, and most web hosts provide those tools as part of the service when someone signs up with them. It's even easier on social media . If you were opening a "side hustle" business tomorrow from your home, you could set up your own Facebook page tonight in under an hour, with exactly zero knowledge of websites. Once that page is set up, you just need to throw a few dollars in the direction of Facebook's advertising department, and they'll start advertising your page to users. It's no harder to promote a website, except in that case, you'd give your advertising dollars to Google. This is a simplified overview, but the main point holds: Establishing a presence online has become a very democratized process, open to anyone with minimal skills and even the smallest budget for advertising. That's been a boon for legitimate entrepreneurs, but it also makes life very easy indeed for scammers. There are multiple types of bogus websites . Some are imposters, created to look very much like a legitimate commercial or government site that you're familiar with, such as Amazon or Netflix. Others don't imitate a specific site, but instead attempt to capture the look and feel of those sites in general (whether that be a retail site, a government or bank page, or even something relatively shady like a gambling or porn site). Next, scammers find ways to drive traffic to their site. Often that's through phishing texts or emails, but deceptive ads on social media or search engines like Google and Bing work just as well. Once a browser arrives at the criminals' site (or, in some cases, downloads their app), any number of bad things can happen. One is that they'll download malware onto your devices, which can capture passwords or steal personal information. A more straightforward risk is that the browser will cheerfully enter their personal and banking/credit card information, thinking they're making a legitimate purchase. That's largely why fake online shopping sites are so dangerous, and so useful to scammers and identity thieves. Most bogus sites share some or all of those characteristics, but shopping sites are a very specific type of bogus site with some quirks of their own. One characteristic to count on—whether the website directly impersonates a major retailer like Amazon, a niche retailer like MEC, or just positions itself as an anonymously general retail site—is that it will offer unusually low pricing on high-demand products. That might be a mass-market item like the latest gaming console, a suddenly in-demand item that's unavailable through normal channels (remember trying to get masks and sanitizing wipes during COVID-19?), or something as mundane as disposable diapers or high-capacity computer drives. Whatever the product, the advertised price will be low enough to get attention. The bogus site will have any number of ways to transfer a browser's money to its coffers, depending on the scammers' intentions and skillset. A few of the most common include: These are all aside from the potential to infect devices or steal payment information . Sites focused on identity theft might consider a faux purchase to be just the added gravy. How common is online shopping fraud? Well, the news is pretty bad. The FTC's 2022 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book recorded over 327,000 online shopping complaints, the fourth-highest category for overall complaints and second among fraud categories. You would expect these sites to be more prevalent during the final quarter of the year, corresponding to the holiday gift-giving season—Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas itself—and they are, but that doesn't mean you can relax during the other nine months of the year. The Anti-Phishing Working Group, or APWG, identified nearly a million fake or phishing websites during the first quarter of 2022 alone (not a busy time of year for shopping), for example. To be clear, only 14.6% of those were eCommerce sites, but that still translates to well over 140,000 bogus shopping sites. The true number is almost certainly higher because the APWG only tracks the ones that use a phishing approach. Many opt to simply buy advertising instead (or as well), and those won't be captured in the APWG's statistics. However you slice it, there's a definite risk of encountering these sites when you shop. The good news is that bogus shopping sites aren't hard to spot, once you're aware of the risk. They aren't built for permanence; scammers pull them together quickly and cheaply and then abandon them once they stop producing.That "just good enough" approach leaves plenty of visible signs you can detect. Below, here's what to look for when recognizing fake online shopping sites. Bad images Bogus sites don't have direct access to the real products' manufacturing images, so they resort to copying and pasting from legitimate sites. \That means bogus sites' product images (and often their fake logos, if they impersonate a legitimate site) are fuzzy and low-res. A URL that's slightly "off" Imposter sites obviously can't have the same URL as the legitimate site, so they'll usually have a URL that looks right, but isn't quite. They might have a typo in the name, or incorporate the real company's name into their URL in a non-standard way ("myfakesite.amazon.com.123xyz.com"), or—sneakiest of all—use a letter from a different language's character set , which looks the same to the eye, but not to the computer. Broken links The scammers may have simply copied and pasted user interface elements from a legitimate site, in which case many links on the site may be broken (or simply not clickable). Lots of missing elements A legitimate retail website will have several pages of legalese, often starting with a pop-up about its cookie policy or privacy policy. You should certainly expect to see a detailed document spelling out shipping policies, return and refund policies, and similar details. If those are missing or brief and vapid, it's probably a fake site. Limited options for payment Sites that plan to take your money and run will often show oddly specific payment options, from wire transfers to gift cards to cryptocurrency. The thing those payment methods have in common is that it's very difficult to get money back once it's spent. Sites geared around capturing your personal or payment information, on the other hand, may insist on getting your credit card. Typos, grammar, and linguistic errors Simple, silly language errors are often a red flag. Scammers may not be native English speakers, and it shows up in awkward or sometimes inappropriate phrasing. Errors in actual product listings aren't necessarily a smoking gun—you'll see them frequently on real Amazon pages—because they come from the manufacturers, who are often not English speakers. Language errors on the rest of the site are more of a concern. HTTP vs. HTTPS In the address bar of your browser, a legitimate retail site's URL will start with HTTPS, rather than HTTP, and will show a closed lock symbol. The majority of fake sites now also have an HTTPS URL and will show the lock (so this isn't as helpful as it used to be), but less-sophisticated scammers may miss that detail. You can automatically rule those ones out. And, of course, the biggest red flag of all is an unrealistically low price on the product you're looking for. We all want to get a really good deal, but that impulse will often lead you astray. If a shopping site fails those basic "eyeball" tests, the smart thing to do is just close that browser tab and walk away. If you want to dig deeper, or if you aren't sure, there are a few quick and easy ways to verify a site's legitimacy. Use a URL/website checker Remember those really sneaky fake URLs that use a letter from another alphabet? The best way to check those (and other problematic elements in a URL) is through a URL verifier/website reputation service, like the ones from URLVoid and Google . Just copy (don't click!) the link, and paste it into the checker. If the site is sketchy, they'll tell you. Look up the site on a registry Domain names all need to be registered and there are several lookup tools to check this, like ICANN's registration lookup (think of it as Spokeo for websites). If a site claims to be Amazon but was registered just a few weeks ago, that's a really big red flag. Similarly, if the site isn't located where it should be, or if the ownership data is obscured, that's grounds for concern. Turn to Google If you have a bad feeling about a particular site, do a quick Google or Bing (or whatever) search that pairs the site's name with keywords like "scam," "fraud," "bogus" or "ripoff" and see what comes up. If you get a lot of hits, that's definitely grounds for concern. Go Forth and Shop (Safely) If a given site fails any or all of those tests, then keeping your wallet in your pocket is definitely the smart choice. Instead of making the purchase, report the site instead to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC's Report Fraud website. That will get the investigative wheels turning and may help protect someone less wary from falling victim to the scammers. As always, wariness and skepticism are your friends when it comes to avoiding scams. Don't click on links in emails, texts , or social media messages; instead, go to the company's site by typing the URL directly. If you search a company's page on Google, scroll down through the actual search results until you find it instead of clicking on the sponsored results or advertisements at the top. Most of all, remember the golden rule of scam avoidance: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Keeping those principles in mind, and using the tips given here to screen out dubious sites means you'll be able to shop 'til you drop (safely), despite the vast number of scammers out there. And that—as the credit card ads like to say—is priceless. This story was produced by Spokeo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. Respond: Write a letter to the editor | Write a guest opinion Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 21, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abacus Life, Inc. ("Abacus" or the "Company") ABL , a pioneering alternative asset manager specializing in leveraging longevity and actuarial technology to offer uncorrelated investment opportunities, today announced the commencement of an underwritten public offering of 12,500,000 shares of its common stock, including 10,000,000 shares of common stock to be sold by the Company and 2,500,000 to be sold by certain stockholders of the Company (the "Selling Stockholders"). The Company and the Selling Stockholders also expect to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,500,000 shares of common stock from the Company and up to an additional 375,000 shares of common stock from the Selling Stockholders. Abacus intends to use net proceeds of the primary portion of the offering for its operations, including the purchase of life settlement policies, to support its overall business strategy, for working capital purposes, and for general corporate purposes, which may include funding previously announced and future acquisitions and repayment and refinancing of its indebtedness. Abacus will receive no proceeds from the secondary portion of the offering. The offering is subject to general market conditions, and there can be no assurances as to whether or when the offering may be completed, or as to the size or terms of the offering. Piper Sandler & Co., TD Securities (USA) LLC, KKR Capital Markets LLC, B. Riley Securities, Inc. and SG Americas Securities, LLC are acting as joint book-running managers and representatives of the underwriters of the proposed offering. The registration statements on Form S-3 (including the accompanying prospectuses for each registration statement) relating to the proposed offering have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and became effective on November 14, 2024. Copies of the prospectus supplements relating to the offering, when filed, may be obtained on the SEC's website located at https://www.sec.gov . When available, copies of the prospectus supplements related to the offering may also be obtained from: Piper Sandler & Co. by mail at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10020 or by email at prospectus@psc.com; TD Securities (USA) LLC by mail at 1 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017, by telephone at (855) 495-9846 or by email at TD.ECM_Prospectus@tdsecurities.com; KKR Capital Markets LLC by mail at 30 Hudson Yards, 75th Floor, New York, NY 10001, Attention: Prospectus Delivery; B. Riley Securities, Inc. by mail at 1300 17th Street North, Suite 1300, Arlington, VA 22209, by telephone at (703) 312-9580 or by email at prospectuses@brileyfin.com; or SG Americas Securities, LLC by mail at 245 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10167 or by email at us-ny-prospectus@sgcib.com . The final terms of the offering will be disclosed in the final prospectus supplements to be filed with the SEC. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the shares of the Company's common stock or any other securities, nor shall there be any sale of such shares of common stock or any other securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buys, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended. About Abacus Abacus is a pioneering global alternative asset manager and market maker specializing in uncorrelated financial products. The Company leverages its longevity data and actuarial technology to purchase life insurance policies from consumers seeking liquidity. This creates a high-return asset class uncorrelated to market fluctuations for institutional investors. With nearly $3 billion in assets under management, including pending acquisitions, Abacus is the only publicly traded global alternative asset manager focused on lifespan-based financial products. Forward Looking Statements All statements in this press release (and oral statements made regarding the subjects of this press release) other than historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of uncertainties and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements, many of which are outside the control of Abacus. Forward-looking information includes but is not limited to statements regarding the proposed offering, including the expected closing of the proposed offering; Abacus's financial and operational outlook; Abacus's operational and financial strategies, including planned growth initiatives and the benefits thereof, Abacus's ability to successfully effect those strategies, and the expected results therefrom. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words "believe," "project," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "goals," "prospects," "will," "would," "will continue," "will likely result," and similar expressions (including the negative versions of such words or expressions). While Abacus believes that the assumptions concerning future events are reasonable, it cautions that there are inherent difficulties in predicting certain important factors that could impact the future performance or results of its business. The factors that could cause results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: the fact that Abacus's loss reserves are bases on estimates and may be inadequate to cover its actual losses; the failure to properly price Abacus's insurance policies; the geographic concentration of Abacus's business; the cyclical nature of Abacus's industry; the impact of regulation on Abacus's business; the effects of competition on Abacus's business; the failure of Abacus's relationships with independent agencies; the failure to meet Abacus's investment objectives; the inability to raise capital on favorable terms or at all; the effects of acts of terrorism; and the effectiveness of Abacus's control environment, including the identification of control deficiencies. These forward-looking statements are also affected by the risk factors, forward-looking statements and challenges and uncertainties set forth in documents filed by Abacus with the SEC from time to time, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K, as amended, and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and subsequent periodic reports. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Abacus cautions you not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and Abacus assumes no obligation and, except as required by law, does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Abacus does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations. Contacts: Robert Phillips – SVP Investor Relations rob@abacuslife.com (321) 290-1198 David Jackson – IR/Capital Markets Associate djackson@abacuslife.com (321) 299-0716 Abacus Life Public Relations press@abacuslife.com © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.If we now consider Band Aid ‘patronising’, surely then logic is: Shut food banks and charity shops
Idaho Supreme Court rules on Thomas Creech’s last state appeal to avoid death penaltyFormer Army soldier Alexander Vindman, a crucial witness in Donald Trump's initial impeachment, may file a lawsuit against Elon Musk after the tech magnate accused him of treason. Eugene Vindman, Alex's twin brother, raised the prospect of a defamation suit after Musk's social media comments. The newly elected congressman from Virginia, Eugene Vindman, denounced Musk's remarks. “If anybody’s on the cusp of having to pay, it’s maybe Elon Musk,” Eugene Vindman said. He said the charges had no factual foundation and were "false and defamatory." Musk’s Accusations and Vindman’s Response Musk said that Alexander Vindman had committed treason and was "on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs." Alexander Vindman criticized Musk's behavior, prompting the comments on X, previously Twitter. Vindman had charged Musk of supporting Russian goals by using his business connections and powerful platform. Vindman quickly refuted the claims. He addressed his involvement with a charity group supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia and said he did not accept any money from oligarchs. Musk's claims were deemed unfounded and suggestive of conspiracy theories by him. Vindman’s Role in Trump Impeachment During the Trump-Ukraine crisis in 2019, Alexander Vindman, who was born in Ukraine and subsequently immigrated to the United States, became well-known nationwide. In his testimony against Trump during the impeachment process, he claimed wrongdoing in a phone conversation with the president of Ukraine while serving as the Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council. After supporting his brother during the proceedings, Eugene Vindman, a former military member, entered politics and became the Democrat who won Virginia's 7th Congressional District seat. Concerns Over National Security and Russian Influence Vindman has been outspoken about his worries about Musk's purported impact on American politics and national security. He charged that Musk had been exploited by Russian President Vladimir Putin to foment division in the United States. “Elon Musk has access to state secrets,” Alexander Vindman said in a recent interview. “It’s possible that sensitive information is seeping through.” He described Musk as a potential tool in Russia’s efforts to destabilize American democracy. Get Latest News Live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from US News, World and around the world.
After Donald Trump’s win, Black women are rethinking their role as America’s reliable political organizers
BEIRUT — Hezbollah fired about 250 rockets and other projectiles into Israel on Sunday, wounding seven people in one of the militant group's heaviest barrages in months, in response to deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut while negotiators pressed on with cease-fire efforts to halt the all-out war. An Israeli bomb squad policeman carries the remains of a rocket that was fired from Lebanon on Sunday in Kibbutz Kfar Blum, northern Israel. Some of the rockets reached the Tel Aviv area in the heart of Israel. Meanwhile, an Israeli strike on an army center killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded 18 others in the southwest between Tyre and Naqoura, Lebanon's military said. The Israeli military expressed regret, saying that the strike occurred in an area of combat against Hezbollah and that the military's operations are directed solely against the militants. Israeli strikes have killed over 40 Lebanese troops since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, even as Lebanon's military has largely kept to the sidelines. Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned the latest strike as an assault on U.S.-led cease-fire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war. Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip ignited the war there. Hezbollah has portrayed the attacks as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups. The Israeli police bomb squad inspects the site after a missile fired from Lebanon hit the area Sunday in Petah Tikva, outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes at Hezbollah, and in September the low-level conflict erupted into all-out war as Israel launched airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon and killed Hezbollah's top leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The Israeli military said about 250 projectiles were fired Sunday, with some intercepted. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated seven people, including a 60-year old man in severe condition from rocket fire on northern Israel, a 23-year-old man who was lightly wounded by a blast in the central city of Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, and a 70-year-old woman who suffered smoke inhalation from a car that caught fire there. In Haifa, a rocket hit a residential building that police said was in danger of collapsing. The Palestine Red Crescent reported 13 injuries it said were caused by an interceptor missile that struck several homes in Tulkarem in the West Bank. It was unclear whether injuries and damage were caused by rockets or interceptors. Sirens wailed again in central and northern Israel hours later. Israeli airstrikes without warning on Saturday pounded central Beirut, killing at least 29 people and wounding 67, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. A flock of birds flies above the smoke from Israeli airstrikes Sunday in Dahiyeh, Beirut. Smoke billowed above Beirut again Sunday with new strikes. Israel's military said it targeted command centers for Hezbollah and its intelligence unit in the southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, where the militants have a strong presence. Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by bombardment in northern Israel and in battle following Israel's ground invasion in early October. Around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the country's north. The EU's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for an "immediate ceasefire" in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to the Lebanese c... The European Union’s top diplomat called Sunday for more pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to reach a deal, saying one was "pending with a final agreement from the Israeli government.” U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region last week. Josep Borrell spoke after meeting with Mikati and Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who has been mediating with the group. Borrell said the EU is ready to allocate $208 million to assist the Lebanese military. But Borrell later said that he did not “see the Israeli government interested clearly in reaching an agreement for a cease-fire" and that it seemed Israel was seeking new conditions. He pointed to Israel’s refusal to accept France as a member of the international committee that would oversee the cease-fire's implementation. The emerging agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops from southern Lebanon below the Litani River in accordance with the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the monthlong 2006 war. Lebanese troops would patrol with the presence of U.N. peacekeepers. With talks for a cease-fire and hostage release deal in Gaza stalled, freed hostages and families of those held marked a year since the war's only hostage-release deal. “It’s hard to hold on to hope, certainly after so long and as another winter is about to begin," said Yifat Zailer, cousin of Shiri Bibas, who is held along with her husband and two young sons. Around 100 hostages are still in Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead. Most of the rest of the 250 who were abducted in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack were released in last year's cease-fire. Talks for another deal recently had several setbacks, including the firing of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who pushed for a deal, and Qatar’s decision to suspend its mediation. Hamas wants Israel to end the war and withdraw all troops from Gaza. Israel has offered only to pause its offensive. The Palestinian death toll from the war surpassed 44,000 this week, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. On Sunday, six people were killed in strikes in central Gaza, according to AP journalists at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. How often do you buy something online ? A couple of times a month? A couple of times a week? A couple of times a day? Everybody's answer will be different, but collectively, it's done a lot: Online retail accounted for over $1 trillion of purchases in the U.S. in 2022 and a record $277.6 billion in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Retailers ranging from titans like Amazon and Walmart, down to local small-town shops work very hard to land their share of that business. Sadly and inevitably—so do criminals and scammers. At any given moment, they operate millions of bogus sites. So how can you spot those fake online shopping sites? Spokeo provides a guide. In the early days of the internet , it took some genuine skills to set up a website, but those days are gone. A quick search will show that there are lots of apps and services offering websites on a prefabricated "fill in the blanks" basis, and most web hosts provide those tools as part of the service when someone signs up with them. It's even easier on social media . If you were opening a "side hustle" business tomorrow from your home, you could set up your own Facebook page tonight in under an hour, with exactly zero knowledge of websites. Once that page is set up, you just need to throw a few dollars in the direction of Facebook's advertising department, and they'll start advertising your page to users. It's no harder to promote a website, except in that case, you'd give your advertising dollars to Google. This is a simplified overview, but the main point holds: Establishing a presence online has become a very democratized process, open to anyone with minimal skills and even the smallest budget for advertising. That's been a boon for legitimate entrepreneurs, but it also makes life very easy indeed for scammers. There are multiple types of bogus websites . Some are imposters, created to look very much like a legitimate commercial or government site that you're familiar with, such as Amazon or Netflix. Others don't imitate a specific site, but instead attempt to capture the look and feel of those sites in general (whether that be a retail site, a government or bank page, or even something relatively shady like a gambling or porn site). Next, scammers find ways to drive traffic to their site. Often that's through phishing texts or emails, but deceptive ads on social media or search engines like Google and Bing work just as well. Once a browser arrives at the criminals' site (or, in some cases, downloads their app), any number of bad things can happen. One is that they'll download malware onto your devices, which can capture passwords or steal personal information. A more straightforward risk is that the browser will cheerfully enter their personal and banking/credit card information, thinking they're making a legitimate purchase. That's largely why fake online shopping sites are so dangerous, and so useful to scammers and identity thieves. Most bogus sites share some or all of those characteristics, but shopping sites are a very specific type of bogus site with some quirks of their own. One characteristic to count on—whether the website directly impersonates a major retailer like Amazon, a niche retailer like MEC, or just positions itself as an anonymously general retail site—is that it will offer unusually low pricing on high-demand products. That might be a mass-market item like the latest gaming console, a suddenly in-demand item that's unavailable through normal channels (remember trying to get masks and sanitizing wipes during COVID-19?), or something as mundane as disposable diapers or high-capacity computer drives. Whatever the product, the advertised price will be low enough to get attention. The bogus site will have any number of ways to transfer a browser's money to its coffers, depending on the scammers' intentions and skillset. A few of the most common include: These are all aside from the potential to infect devices or steal payment information . Sites focused on identity theft might consider a faux purchase to be just the added gravy. How common is online shopping fraud? Well, the news is pretty bad. The FTC's 2022 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book recorded over 327,000 online shopping complaints, the fourth-highest category for overall complaints and second among fraud categories. You would expect these sites to be more prevalent during the final quarter of the year, corresponding to the holiday gift-giving season—Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas itself—and they are, but that doesn't mean you can relax during the other nine months of the year. The Anti-Phishing Working Group, or APWG, identified nearly a million fake or phishing websites during the first quarter of 2022 alone (not a busy time of year for shopping), for example. To be clear, only 14.6% of those were eCommerce sites, but that still translates to well over 140,000 bogus shopping sites. The true number is almost certainly higher because the APWG only tracks the ones that use a phishing approach. Many opt to simply buy advertising instead (or as well), and those won't be captured in the APWG's statistics. However you slice it, there's a definite risk of encountering these sites when you shop. The good news is that bogus shopping sites aren't hard to spot, once you're aware of the risk. They aren't built for permanence; scammers pull them together quickly and cheaply and then abandon them once they stop producing.That "just good enough" approach leaves plenty of visible signs you can detect. Below, here's what to look for when recognizing fake online shopping sites. Bad images Bogus sites don't have direct access to the real products' manufacturing images, so they resort to copying and pasting from legitimate sites. \That means bogus sites' product images (and often their fake logos, if they impersonate a legitimate site) are fuzzy and low-res. A URL that's slightly "off" Imposter sites obviously can't have the same URL as the legitimate site, so they'll usually have a URL that looks right, but isn't quite. They might have a typo in the name, or incorporate the real company's name into their URL in a non-standard way ("myfakesite.amazon.com.123xyz.com"), or—sneakiest of all—use a letter from a different language's character set , which looks the same to the eye, but not to the computer. Broken links The scammers may have simply copied and pasted user interface elements from a legitimate site, in which case many links on the site may be broken (or simply not clickable). Lots of missing elements A legitimate retail website will have several pages of legalese, often starting with a pop-up about its cookie policy or privacy policy. You should certainly expect to see a detailed document spelling out shipping policies, return and refund policies, and similar details. If those are missing or brief and vapid, it's probably a fake site. Limited options for payment Sites that plan to take your money and run will often show oddly specific payment options, from wire transfers to gift cards to cryptocurrency. The thing those payment methods have in common is that it's very difficult to get money back once it's spent. Sites geared around capturing your personal or payment information, on the other hand, may insist on getting your credit card. Typos, grammar, and linguistic errors Simple, silly language errors are often a red flag. Scammers may not be native English speakers, and it shows up in awkward or sometimes inappropriate phrasing. Errors in actual product listings aren't necessarily a smoking gun—you'll see them frequently on real Amazon pages—because they come from the manufacturers, who are often not English speakers. Language errors on the rest of the site are more of a concern. HTTP vs. HTTPS In the address bar of your browser, a legitimate retail site's URL will start with HTTPS, rather than HTTP, and will show a closed lock symbol. The majority of fake sites now also have an HTTPS URL and will show the lock (so this isn't as helpful as it used to be), but less-sophisticated scammers may miss that detail. You can automatically rule those ones out. And, of course, the biggest red flag of all is an unrealistically low price on the product you're looking for. We all want to get a really good deal, but that impulse will often lead you astray. If a shopping site fails those basic "eyeball" tests, the smart thing to do is just close that browser tab and walk away. If you want to dig deeper, or if you aren't sure, there are a few quick and easy ways to verify a site's legitimacy. Use a URL/website checker Remember those really sneaky fake URLs that use a letter from another alphabet? The best way to check those (and other problematic elements in a URL) is through a URL verifier/website reputation service, like the ones from URLVoid and Google . Just copy (don't click!) the link, and paste it into the checker. If the site is sketchy, they'll tell you. Look up the site on a registry Domain names all need to be registered and there are several lookup tools to check this, like ICANN's registration lookup (think of it as Spokeo for websites). If a site claims to be Amazon but was registered just a few weeks ago, that's a really big red flag. Similarly, if the site isn't located where it should be, or if the ownership data is obscured, that's grounds for concern. Turn to Google If you have a bad feeling about a particular site, do a quick Google or Bing (or whatever) search that pairs the site's name with keywords like "scam," "fraud," "bogus" or "ripoff" and see what comes up. If you get a lot of hits, that's definitely grounds for concern. Go Forth and Shop (Safely) If a given site fails any or all of those tests, then keeping your wallet in your pocket is definitely the smart choice. Instead of making the purchase, report the site instead to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC's Report Fraud website. That will get the investigative wheels turning and may help protect someone less wary from falling victim to the scammers. As always, wariness and skepticism are your friends when it comes to avoiding scams. Don't click on links in emails, texts , or social media messages; instead, go to the company's site by typing the URL directly. If you search a company's page on Google, scroll down through the actual search results until you find it instead of clicking on the sponsored results or advertisements at the top. Most of all, remember the golden rule of scam avoidance: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Keeping those principles in mind, and using the tips given here to screen out dubious sites means you'll be able to shop 'til you drop (safely), despite the vast number of scammers out there. And that—as the credit card ads like to say—is priceless. This story was produced by Spokeo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!Syrian terrorists aid Israeli aimsRepublican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal
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