By Cynthia Herbert :: 2:58 AM
An airplane on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) has caught fire while it was being refueled.
The picture, above, was snapped by Instagram user meldaguvenc, and shows a portion of a Southwest Airlines jet and fuel truck engulfed in flames.
It is not clear from the picture, or from accounts at the scene, how far the fire has spread, and if any passengers are on board the plane that is burning.
Southwest Airlines is currently recovering from a day-long computer outage that grounded over 250 flights, most originating from west coast airports, including LAX.
It does not appear that this is an act of terrorism, however this is a developing story, and will be updated as more information is available.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 2:41 AM
Breaking: Southwest jet catches fire at LAX: Read more…
Southwest Airlines planes are taking to the air again, after the company has fixed a computer problem that grounded as many as 250 flights earlier today.
The airline is not yet running at normal capacity, as some computer problems still linger, according to a Southwest spokesperson. Scattered cancelations may still occur throughout the day on Saturday as the company attempts to move planes to airports where they need to be to support waiting passengers.
Computer problems on Friday affected many areas of the airlines’ business, including check-in processing, printing of boarding passes, and programs that prepare weight calculations for aircraft. Aircraft that were in the air during the computer problems were not affected by the outages.
Many of the flights affected originated from airports on the west coast.
By Gilbert Falso :: 5:51 PM
Facebook today admitted that a data breach in its archive tool compromised contact details for 6 million of the social network’s users.
Phone numbers and email addresses that were stored for use in Facebook’s recommendation algorithms were attached to contacts in Facebook accounts. When a user downloaded their Facebook data archive, that contact information was also included in the data download.
Users were able to see contact information for people who, in some cases, they were not friends with, or connected with on Facebook.
In most cases, an individual telephone number or email address was only disclosed once, and only to one downloader. In addition, no financial details or credit card data was leaked in the breach.
“We currently have no evidence that this bug has been exploited maliciously,” a Facebook spokesperson said, “and we have not received complaints from users or seen anomalous behavior on the tool or site to suggest wrongdoing.”
Facebook is currently notifying affected users by email.
By Paul Thomson :: 5:14 PM
The Food Network television channel has announced that it will not renew the contract of TV star chef Paula Deen.
Deen has come under criticism this week for her use of racial slurs in her restaurants and business dealings. She is currently in the middle of a lawsuit brought by a former manager at one of her restaurants who alleges that the chef both racially and sexually harassed her.
The suit, brought by Lisa Jackson, claims that Deen and her brother Bubba Hier committed acts of violence, discrimination and racism while Jackson was employed at Deen’s Lady & Sons and Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House restaurants in Savannah, Georgia.
“The Food Network does not tolerate any form of discrimination and is a strong proponent of diversity and inclusion,” the network said in a prepared statement.
Deen made several video apologies and posted them to YouTube throughout the day today. “I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I’ve done,” she said in one of the video statements. “I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.”
Earlier in the week, Deen’s lawyers admitted that she had used a racially charged epithet in the past, but it was during a “quite different time” in American history.
“She was born 60 years ago when America’s South had schools that were segregated, different bathrooms, different restaurants and Americans rode in different parts of the bus. This is not today.”
One of the Deen apology videos is below. The other one has been removed from YouTube.
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:46 AM
In a controversial move that has cyber security experts concerned, Yahoo is making plans to recycle unused Yahoo Mail accounts that have gone dormant for at least one year.
Yahoo’s senior vice president Jay Rossiter posted on the company’s blog today that any e-mail accounts that have not been logged in to for more than a year will be reset so that any active Yahoo Mail user can take that address.
“If you’re like me,” he wrote, “you want a Yahoo! ID that’s short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com.”
Beginning on July 15th, anyone can register for their preferred Yahoo Mail e-mail address. In mid-August, the company will begin releasing accounts that have been unused. The process will continue on a rolling basis.
Many security experts are shocked that Yahoo would compromise the privacy and data security of older users who may not have logged into Yahoo Mail in some time.
“It is very possible that someone might have set up online banking with an ID in 2004, and then hasn’t checked the email address in a few years,” says Charles Hogan, a security consultant in Madison, Georgia. “What if, a year or so down the road, they change their password, or confirm what they thought was their e-mail address? Sensitive personal information could then be sent to the new owner of that email address.”
Hogan is also concerned that spammers and identity thieves will target Yahoo Mail to scoop up popular first and last name initials and combinations, in hope of eventually receiving some data they can use to hack into financial accounts and other systems.
“What’s to stop a group of hackers from requesting ‘csmith@yahoo.com, charliesmith@yahoo.com,’ and so on,” said Hogan. “Is Yahoo taking safety precautions to ensure only legitimate individuals are requesting old accounts?
Yahoo says that it will implement safety checks in the process of turning over old email addresses, including attempting to unsubscribe the former user from mailing lists and other services.
“We’re committed and confident in our ability to do this in a way that’s safe, secure and protects our users’ data,” the company said in a statement after initial reactions to the plan were not well received.