Police Arrest Three Suspects in Ongoing Counterterror Investigation – England
Amazon and UPS have much in common, including parts of their growth strategy as they consider how best to balance costs and revenue during an e-commerce boom. The two companies reported their Q1 results this week, once again recording extremely high capital investments that weighed on their bottom line. Amazon's CFO Brian Olsavsky told investors much of the 51% year-over-year growth in capital expenditures came from investing in fulfillment centers, with 23 new warehouses being added in the second half of last year, carrying costs over to the first quarter. UPS, meanwhile, reported a $39 million (2.1%) year-over-year decrease in operating profit, drawing concern from investors of rising costs. However, UPS CFO Richard Peretz said the company faced various one-time operating costs, including a $20 million expense from a warehouse fire plus weather effects, and $35 million from five million square feet in new warehouses combined with expanding operations for Saturday delivery. The two companies' financials may reflect lower operating margins than is often desired, but the new investments are very clearly tied to creating a logistics infrastructure capable of getting parcels to consumer where and how they want it. Whether that is delivery to store, office or home, both Amazon and UPS are looking for ways to optimize the service and appear to have come to the same conclusion: more warehouses; faster service; and improved technology are all necessary. For Amazon this means more sortation centers, robotics, and airplanes to handle the speed customers demand.
Mumps Outbreak Not Gone Yet but Rate of New Cases Slowing Down – Manitoba, Canada
Manitoba's mumps outbreak, now entering its eighth month, is still infecting people, but not as severely or for as long as before, according to the province. As of April 28, 345 cases of the viral infection have been confirmed by Manitoba Health since September 1, 2016. An increase of 55 cases in the last three weeks has boosted that number. "Unfortunately it's not gone yet," said Dr. Richard Rusk, a provincial medical officer of health. "We're still going to see increasing numbers for at least another month, if not longer." Rusk said the number of new confirmed cases province-wide is going up at a slower rate, following a bump in new cases about a month ago. He has previously speculated the number of cases could surpass 600 in Manitoba. On Monday, Rusk declined to speculate further on where the numbers will end up.
IBM Sent Off USB Sticks Infected with Malware – Global
A new warning has been issued by IBM and the situation seems to be rather serious. According to the firm, there are a number of infected USB sticks out there with some very dangerous malware. The USB sticks in question were shipped with Storwize flash and they have hybrid storage systems. IBM suggests destroying the USB sticks immediately. Otherwise, your device can be infected with malware making the system vulnerable. Apparently, the infected USB sticks contain a tool used for Storwize systems and it is the tool that was infected with malicious code, as unveiled by the IBM. The infected models include drives that have part number 01AC585 and that were shipped with Storwize V3500, V3700, and V5000 Generation 1 storage systems. When it comes to dealing with the infected device, the vendor recommended that users should first update their antivirus and then try to use the USB drive. It is also recommended to not to use the drive again and to destroy it, in order to cease the infection via the USB sticks. Security company Trend Micro’s antivirus detected the malware as PE.WINDEX.A and claimed that it was served up by one of the North Korean websites. Other vendors have also been able to detect this malware, but they classified it as a Trojan that would attempt downloading other malware if executed. IBM also stated that the malware/Trojan was not executed during the Storwize initialization.
