Ben Affleck says battling addiction is “a lifelong and difficult struggle.”

The actor posted on Instagram Thursday that he has completed a 40-day stay at a treatment center for alcohol addiction and remains in outpatient care.

The 46-year-old says the support he’s received from family and friends has given him strength to speak about “his illness” with others. He says he is fighting for himself and his family.

Affleck says battling addiction is a full-time commitment and “one is never really in or out of treatment.”

He had previously sought treatment in 2001 and 2017.

Affleck has been separated from actress Jennifer Garner since 2015. They have three children.
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From: MeNeedIt

Monica Lewinsky is teaming up with celebrities for an anti-bullying campaign that targets name-calling.

Appearing Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America, Lewinsky says the #DefyTheName campaign calls on people to change their social media names to include the names they were bullied by. Lewinsky says she’ll now be known as ”Monica Chunky Slut Stalker That Woman Lewinsky.”

Lewinsky says she had a long list of names from childhood on. She says name-calling is the most common form of bullying and it’s important not to let those names define you.

Lewinsky says organizers want to recreate a community of empathy online.

Lewinsky was a White House intern when she had an affair with President Bill Clinton. Clinton initially denied the affair before admitting to it in 1998.
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From: MeNeedIt

Chance the Rapper says he’s donating $1 million to help improve mental health services in Chicago.

The Chicago native made the announcement Thursday during a summit for his nonprofit organization SocialWorks, saying those involved “want to change the way that mental health resources are being accessed.”

Six mental health providers in Cook County will each get $100,000 grants and SocialWorks is starting an initiative called “My State of Mind” to help connect people with treatment. Members of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Chicago Department of Public Health were on hand for the announcement.

Also Thursday, the rapper, whose real name is Chancelor Bennett, announced plans to give money to 20 additional Chicago Public Schools. His nonprofit has given millions to Chicago schools in recent years.
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From: MeNeedIt

People who regularly engage in light to moderate physical activity — like walking four hours a week or swimming two hours weekly — might have less severe strokes than individuals who aren’t as active, a Swedish study suggests.

Researchers examined data on 925 patients who were treated for strokes at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, between 2014 and 2016. Overall, four in five of these patients had mild strokes.

Slightly more than half of the patients were inactive before their strokes. Compared with this inactive group, people who got at least some exercise before their strokes were twice as likely to have mild strokes, researchers reported in Neurology.

“We knew from earlier research that physical activity could reduce stroke incidence,” lead study author Malin Reinholdsson of the University of Gothenburg said by email. “However, whether or not pre-stroke physical activity could also influence stroke severity was not clear.”

Patients in the study were 73 years old on average and most of them had what’s known as an ischemic stroke, the most common kind, which occurs when a clot blocks an artery carrying blood to the brain. About 6 percent of patients had hemorrhagic strokes, a less common type that is caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain.

Surveyed about exercise

To assess pre-stroke activity levels, researchers surveyed participants about the duration and intensity of any exercise they got before they were hospitalized.

Researchers defined “light” activity as walking at a leisurely pace for at least four hours a week, and classified exercise as “moderate” intensity when people did things like swimming, running or walking briskly for two to three hours weekly.

Among 481 people who were inactive, 354, or 74 percent, had mild strokes.

For those who managed light physical activity, 330, or 86 percent, had mild strokes. And among the 59 participants who got moderate intensity exercise, 53, or 90 percent, had mild strokes. 

Age also mattered, with higher odds of a mild stroke for younger people in the study.

The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how the amount or intensity of exercise might influence stroke severity.

Another limitation is that researchers relied on stroke survivors to accurately recall their previous exercise habits, and memory is often compromised after a stroke.

Even so, the results add to evidence suggesting that an active lifestyle can both lower the risk of stroke and reduce the chances that a stroke will be severe, said Nicole Spartano, co-author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.

“Regular exercise helps the brain to maintain healthy arteries that have more complex networks,” Spartano said by email. “So when a blockage [stroke] happens in one area, there may be another route to provide oxygen to the affected area.”

Being physically active can also help prevent risk factors for stroke, like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, Spartano noted.

“This study is exciting because it suggests that you might not have to do a lot of intense exercise to see an effect,” Spartano said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Marion “Suge” Knight was sentenced Thursday to 28 years in prison for mowing down and killing a Compton businessman in a case that completed the former rap music mogul’s downfall from his heyday as one of the biggest and most feared names in the music industry.

Knight will now spend much of the rest of his life, if not all the rest, in a California prison. He showed no emotion in court Thursday as relatives of Terry Carter, the man he killed, described their loved one as a devoted family man and peacemaker.

Carter was killed after Knight and one of his longtime rivals, Cle “Bone” Sloan, started fighting outside a Compton burger stand in January 2015. Knight was upset about his portrayal in an N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton, on which Sloan was serving as a consultant. Knight clipped Sloan with his pickup truck, seriously injuring him, before speeding through the parking lot and running over Carter and fleeing.

While Carter’s relatives said they hoped Knight’s lengthy sentence would bring them peace, many had no kind words for the Death Row Records co-founder, whom they criticized for showing a complete lack of remorse.

Carter’s daughter Crystal called Knight a “low-life thug,” “career criminal” and “a disgusting, selfish disgrace to the human species.”

“I ask that you sentence this unrepentant, remorseless, cold, callous menace to society to the maximum of 28 years,” she told a judge.

Pleaded no contest

Before Thursday’s hearing, Knight had already agreed to his lengthy prison term by pleading no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge and avoiding a trial on murder and attempted murder charges that could have resulted in a life sentence if he was convicted. The sentencing ended a nearly four-year court saga that included frequent outbursts by Knight, 53, who also collapsed in court during one appearance and shuffled his defense team 16 times.

Between the restrictions of the three-strikes law and the time Knight has already served, he’ll likely spend roughly 20 years in prison before he’s eligible for parole. 

Knight has been in decline for decades. At his pinnacle in the mid-1990s, he was putting out wildly popular records that are now considered classics from Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.

Shakur was in Knight’s car when he was killed in a drive-by attack in Las Vegas in 1996.

Knight later lost his stake in Death Row Records in bankruptcy proceedings.

Nearly two dozen of Carter’s relatives packed the courtroom Thursday. Carter’s daughter, Nekaya Carter, said she hoped that the end of the courtroom saga could bring her some peace.

“I wanted justice for my dad and now we’ve finally got it, kind of,” she said.

She then addressed Knight directly despite the judge’s instructions not to: “My dad can finally rest in peace while you live out the rest of your life in prison.”

Carter’s sister, Jessica Carter, told Los Angeles Superior Court Ronald Coen, “He was so much more than the person the defendant killed with his truck.” 

‘He helped people’

There have been disputed accounts of why Carter was at the scene, but his family said he often acted as a community mediator and peacemaker.

“This wasn’t no cat who went after nobody,” Carter’s brother-in-law Damu Visha said in court. “He helped people.”

The death was captured on surveillance video, and family members described their anguish at having to see it repeatedly, and chastised the media for showing it so often.

Coen appeared moved by the family’s words and offered his own condolences. 

“If it hasn’t been said by anyone else,” Coen said, “let me tell you that my heart goes out to you.”

Most of the victim’s family members spoke of the need to forgive Knight for their own peace of mind.

“I hope and I pray that we find forgiveness,” Terry Carter’s cousin, Patricia Hawkins, said. “But it won’t be today.”
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From: MeNeedIt

EgyptAir is standing by a writer for its in-flight magazine who penned a bizarre article purportedly based on an interview with American actress Drew Barrymore.

The article, riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors, led with a description of Barrymore as “being unstable in her relationships” and quoted her as saying that motherhood was “the most important role in my life.”

In a tweet sent late Wednesday in response to online criticism, the national carrier thanked author Aida Tekla for “the clarification” in which she claimed the interview was indeed real and took place in New York.

Barrymore has yet to issue an official statement and her representatives could not be reached for comment. Press reports in the U.S. have quoted representatives as denying any such interview took place, with some suggesting the author must have based her article on misinterpretations of a press conference.

Barrymore shot to fame as a child starlet in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film “E.T.” and is now featured in the Netflix horror-comedy series “Santa Clarita Diet.”

The article on the inflight magazine Horus was first noticed by Yemen analyst Adam Baron, who published photos of it on Twitter and called it “surreal.”

The article says Barrymore had failed relationships because her parents divorced.

“It is known that Barrymore had almost 17 relationships, engagements and marriages; psychologists believe that her behavior is only natural since she lacked the male role model in her life after her parents’ divorce,” Tekla wrote.

In another passage, she quoted Barrymore as being pleased with recent weight loss after having a second daughter. Another quote describes Barrymore as celebrating women’s achievements in “the West” because they handle tasks that men cannot.

“Women exert tremendous efforts that men are incapable of exerting due to their numerous commitments and obligations,” the article quoted her as saying.

EgyptAir’s inflight magazine has Arabic and English sections, but translations are often poor and English-language articles are filled with errors.

The Egyptian government has waged a heavy crackdown on dissent and independent media in recent years, and has passed vaguely worded laws that criminalize the spreading of false news.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

After years of delays Tokyo’s 80-year-old Tsukiji fish market is closing Saturday to move to a more modern facility on reclaimed industrial land in Tokyo Bay.

The new, 569 billion yen ($5 billion) facility at Toyosu will open Oct. 11, over the objections of many working in Tsukiji who contend the new site is contaminated, inconvenient and unsafe.

“If the new place were better, I’ll be happy to move,” said Tai Yamaguchi, whose family has run fish wholesaler Hitoku Shoten since 1964.

​Beloved local institution

The 75-year-old leader of a group of 30 women whose families run shops in Tsukiji opposed to the move, Yamaguchi feels it has been mishandled by authorities who failed to fully consult those affected.

“They are hiding so much,” she said.

Tsukiji now has more than 500 wholesalers employing several thousand people. About 40,000 people visit each day. Much of the angst over the move has to do with closing down a beloved local institution.

A labyrinth of quaint sushi stalls and shops selling knives and ice cream encircling the huge wholesale market famous for its predawn haggling over deep-frozen tuna and other harvests from the sea, Tsukiji has been supplying Tokyo’s fancy restaurants and everyday supermarkets since 1935. Its origins date back nearly a century.

Opponents of the move fear tourists will be less likely to visit out-of-the-way Toyosu, which resembles a huge, modern factory and lacks the picturesque quality of Tsukiji.

​Place of unusual diversity

Makoto Nakazawa, 54, who has worked in Tsukiji for more than 30 years, said he dislikes the new space he will be working in and is angry over the closure of a market that has “fed Tokyo for years.”

Tsukiji is special, a place of unusual diversity in conformist Japan where misfits like avant-garde theater actors and convicts are accepted, Nakazawa said.

“People who want us out want to redevelop this place. I can’t imagine any other reason,” he said. “There’s obviously money to be made.”

Some of Tsukiji’s sprawling shops will remain in their old locale surrounding the market site. But the wholesale market itself, which clears an average of 1.6 billion yen, or about $14.5 million, worth of seafood a day, is leaving for good after a decade of controversy.

In the latest setback, Gov. Yuriko Koike postponed the move, which had been scheduled for November 2016, after an inspection found arsenic and other contaminants in the groundwater at Toyosu, a former gas plant.

“Safety has been ensured,” Koike declared at a recent opening ceremony for the new market after extra concrete was poured and better water pumps installed. Even now, cracks stretching for several meters have appeared in the paving in Toyosu’s loading area. City officials say they’re not dangerous and will be fixed.

Koike stressed Toyosu will carry on the “Tsukiji brand.”

Old site becomes parking lot

The long-term future for the Tsukiji site is still undecided.

Spanning more than 230,000 square meters, or the equivalent of about 17 baseball fields, it first will be turned into a parking lot for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Ideas for the long-term include an amusement park, a casino, a shopping mall — all of them and more. Its location in downtown Tokyo within walking distance from the glitzy Ginza shopping district makes for lucrative opportunities.

An informal opinion survey by Yamaguchi’s group found that 80 percent of 261 Tsukiji businesses that responded were unhappy about the move. The survey’s response rate was about 50 percent.

Several hundred market workers joined by labor union members, housewives and others marched on a rainy Saturday afternoon from Tsukiji through Tokyo’s downtown in a final protest.

“What’s wrong with Tsukiji? What’s wrong with Tsukiji? Tsukiji for another hundred years!” they shouted, banging on drums and waving placards.

City hall insisted a more modern and efficient facility was needed. Workers say Tsukiji’s layout, with its myriad of zipping carts, is a work of art that evolved over the years.​

​‘Old Japanese culture’

As the shutdown neared, Gianluca Lonati, 31, a chef, and Kayleigh Gill, 25, a bar manager, visiting together from Sydney, were among many tourists and locals visiting the market one recent afternoon.

They said they were planning to have some fresh Tsukiji fish with their feast of ramen, green tea ice cream and savory “okonomiyaki” pancakes.

“It’s very sad,” Gill said of the plans to close the market. “You really get to see inside old Japanese culture.”

Keahi Pagatpatan, an airline worker from Long Beach, California, strolling recently in Tsukiji with a friend praised the market’s emotional and cultural backdrop.

Toyosu just won’t be the same, he said, “It takes away from the authenticity.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Negotiations to lift an Olympic ban on Kuwait are making progress, but more issues need to be ironed out before the country’s Olympic return, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said Wednesday.

Kuwait’s national Olympic committee (KOC) has been banned since October 2015 after the government was accused of interference with a new sports law.

As a result, Kuwaiti athletes had to compete under the Olympic flag at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 and they have no access to IOC funds.

With the dispute still to be resolved Kuwait now risks missing out on a second consecutive summer Olympics with the 2020 Tokyo Games less than two years away.

The issue was discussed at the IOC executive board in the Argentine capital Wednesday, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.

“There is progress there but there is still a lot of work to be done,” Adams told reporters. “But we are heading in the right direction.”

The IOC, in what it said was a gesture of goodwill, provisionally lifted a ban on Kuwait two days before the start of the Asian Games in August, allowing the country to participate under its own flag.

Talks in past years, however, failed to yield a result, and Kuwait in 2016 repeatedly sued the IOC unsuccessfully for $1 billion as compensation for the ban.

Kuwait said at the time the ban was unjustifiable and unfair and the IOC had not conducted “an appropriate investigation.” Kuwait had also been suspended in 2010 over a similar dispute but was reinstated before the 2012 London Olympics.

More than 15 of the country’s national sports bodies have been suspended in the past years, including its football federation.
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From: MeNeedIt

North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests have stopped, but its hacking operations to gather intelligence and raise funds for the sanction-strapped government in Pyongyang may be gathering steam.

U.S. security firm FireEye raised the alarm Wednesday over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries. It says the group is still operating and poses “an active global threat.”

It is part of a wider pattern of malicious state-backed cyber activity that has led the Trump administration to identify North Korea — along with Russia, Iran and China — as one of the main online threats facing the United States. Last month, the Justice Department charged a North Korean hacker said to have conspired in devastating cyberattacks, including an $81 million heist of Bangladesh’s central bank and the WannaCry virus that crippled parts of Britain’s National Health Service.

DHS offers warning

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of the use of malware by Hidden Cobra, the U.S. government’s byword for North Korea hackers, in fraudulent ATM cash withdrawals from banks in Asia and Africa. It said that Hidden Cobra was behind the theft of tens of millions of dollars from teller machines in the past two years. In one incident this year, cash had been simultaneously withdrawn from ATMs in 23 different countries, it said.

North Korea, which prohibits access to the world wide web for virtually all of its people, has previously denied involvement in cyberattacks, and attribution for such attacks is rarely made with absolute certainty. It is typically based on technical indicators such as the Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses that identify computers and characteristics of the coding used in malware, which is the software a hacker may use to damage or disable computers.

But other cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press that they also see continued signs that North Korea’s authoritarian government, which has a long track record of criminality to raise cash, is conducting malign activity online. That activity includes targeting of financial institutions and crypto-currency-related organizations, as well as spying on its adversaries, despite the easing of tensions between Pyongyang and Washington.

“The reality is they are starved for cash and are continuing to try and generate revenue, at least until sanctions are diminished,” said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike. “At the same time, they won’t abate in intelligence collection operations, as they continue to negotiate and test the international community’s resolve and test what the boundaries are.”

North Korea attacks continue

CrowdStrike says it has detected continuing North Korean cyber intrusions in the past two months, including the use of a known malware against a potentially broad set of targets in South Korea, and a new variant of malware against users of mobile devices that use a Linux-based operating system.

This activity has been taking place against the backdrop of a dramatic diplomatic shift as Kim Jong Un has opened up to the world. He has held summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and with President Donald Trump, who hopes to persuade Kim to relinquish the nuclear weapons that pose a potential threat to the U.S. homeland. Tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have dropped and fears of war with the U.S. have ebbed. Trump this weekend will dispatch his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, to Pyongyang for the fourth time this year to make progress on denuclearization.

But North Korea has yet to take concrete steps to give up its nuclear arsenal, so there’s been no let-up in sanctions that have been imposed to deprive it of fuel and revenue for its weapons programs, and to block it from bulk cash transfers and accessing to the international banking system.

FireEye says APT38, the name it gives to the hacking group dedicated to bank theft, has emerged and stepped up its operations since February 2014 as the economic vise on North Korea has tightened in response to its nuclear and missile tests. Initial operations targeted financial institutions in Southeast Asia, where North Korea had experience in money laundering, but then expanded into other regions such as Latin America and Africa, and then extended to Europe and North America.

In all, FireEye says APT38 has attempted to steal $1.1 billion, and based on the data it can confirm, has gotten away with hundreds of millions in dollars. It has used malware to insert fraudulent transactions in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT system that is used to transfer money between banks. Its biggest heist to date was $81 million stolen from the central bank of Bangladesh in February 2016. The funds were wired to bank accounts established with fake identities in the Philippines. After the funds were withdrawn they were suspected to have been laundered in casinos.

Cyber attacks an alternative 

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said in a report Wednesday that North Korea’s cyber capabilities provide an alternative means for challenging its adversaries. While Kim’s hereditary regime appears to prioritize currency generation, attacks using the SWIFT system raise concerns that North Korean hackers “may become more proficient at manipulating the data and systems that undergird the global financial system,” it says.

Sandra Joyce, FireEye’s head of global intelligence, said that while APT38 is a criminal operation, it leverages the skills and technology of a state-backed espionage campaign, allowing it to infiltrate multiple banks at once and figure how to extract funds. On average, it dwells in a bank’s computer network for 155 days to learn about its systems before it tries to steal anything. And when it finally pounces, it uses aggressive malware to wreak havoc and cover its tracks.

“We see this as a consistent effort, before, during and after any diplomatic efforts by the United States and the international community,” said Joyce, describing North Korea as being “undeterred” and urging the U.S. government to provide more specific threat information to financial institutions about APT38’s modus operandi. APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat.

Large Chile bank hacked

The Silicon Valley-based company says it is aware of continuing, suspected APT38 operations against other banks. The most recent attack it is publicly attributing to APT38 was against of Chile’s biggest commercial banks, Banco de Chile, in May this year. The bank has said a hacking operation robbed it of $10 million.

FireEye, which is staffed with a roster of former military and law-enforcement cyberexperts, conducted malware analysis for a criminal indictment by the Justice Department last month against Park Jin Hyok, the first time a hacker said to be from North Korea has faced U.S. criminal charges. He’s accused of conspiring in a number of devastating cyberattacks: the Bangladesh heist and other attempts to steal more than $1 billion from financial institutions around the world; the 2014 breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment; and the WannaCry ransomware virus that in 2017 infected computers in 150 countries. 
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From: MeNeedIt

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and the electric car company have agreed to pay a total of $40 million and make a series of concessions to settle a government lawsuit alleging Musk duped investors with misleading statements about a proposed buyout of the company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement Saturday, two days after filing a case seeking to oust Musk as CEO.

The settlement will require Musk to relinquish his role as chairman for at least three years, but he will able to remain as CEO.
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From: MeNeedIt

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland postponed her U.N. speech Saturday as free-trade talks between the U.S. and Canada intensified.

Freeland had been scheduled to deliver Canada’s address to the General Assembly in New York, but Canada exchanged the slot with another country. Freeland may or may not give the speech on Monday.

A senior Canadian government official said they were making progress in the talks but that it wasn’t certain that they would reach a deal soon. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Canada would sign only a good deal.

Canada, the United States’ No. 2 trading partner, was left out when the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. and Canada are under pressure to reach a deal by the end of the day Sunday, when the U.S. must make public the full text of the agreement with Mexico.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to go ahead with a revamped NAFTA, with or without Canada. It is unclear, however, whether Trump has authority from Congress to pursue a revamped NAFTA with only Mexico, and some lawmakers say they won’t go along with a deal that leaves out Canada. 

Dairy tariffs

Among other things, the negotiators are battling over Canada’s high dairy tariffs. Canada also wants to keep a NAFTA dispute-resolution process that the U.S. wants to jettison.

U.S.-Canada talks bogged down earlier this month, and most trade analysts expected the Sept. 30 deadline to come and go without Canada’s reinstatement. They suspected that Canada, which had said it wasn’t bound by U.S. deadlines, was delaying the talks until after provincial elections Monday in Quebec, where support for Canadian dairy tariffs runs high.

But trade attorney Daniel Ujczo of the Dickinson Wright law firm, who follows the NAFTA talks closely, said the United States put pressure on Canada, contending there would “consequences” if it didn’t reach an agreement by the end of the day Sunday. Trump has repeatedly threatened to start taxing Canadian auto imports. Ujczo put the odds of a deal this weekend at 75 percent. 

Relations between the two neighbors have been strained since Trump assailed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Group of Seven meeting in June, calling him “weak” and “dishonest.” Canadian leaders have objected to Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian steel, citing national security.
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From: MeNeedIt

According to the latest report by the Committee to Protect Journalists in Pakistan, fatal violence against journalists has declined, but fear and self-censorship have grown. In this era, five Pakistani American students at Harvard University have created a startup that challenges censorship using the latest block-chain technology. Their mission is “making journalism truly free.” Saqib Ul Islam visited Harvard’s innovation lab to bring us the story of a new company called “Inkrypt.”
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From: MeNeedIt