Regrettably, 2024 was a good year for scammers. Colorado is on pace to see a bigger financial loss from scams by the end of 2024 than the nearly $190 million stolen in 2023. The mass use of artificial intelligence could be driving the surge, according to the Colorado Attorney General’s office. Long gone are the days of using clear misspellings, unprofessional website design and fishy email domains as reliable identifiers for online scams. With the recent explosion of artificial intelligence into everyday life, scammers have transitioned from using flashy pop-up advertisements to duplicating the voices of family members in fake emergency situations to extract money and information. “Artificial intelligence takes existing scam opportunities and puts them on steroids,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said. The FBI Denver Field Office reported scammers stole $187 million from nearly 11,500 Coloradans in 2023. This was an increase of nearly $9 million over the 2022 dollar amount — an upward trend that shows no signs of slowing down in 2024. In 2023, the top three schemes with the largest dollar amount losses in Colorado were investment fraud ($60 million), business email compromise ($57 million) and tech support ($23 million), according to the FBI’s report. Weiser said his office has seen a record-breaking number of scam complaints since 2019, each year greater than the last. The complaints were reported through StopFraudColorado.gov , an education outreach program in the Attorney General’s Office where Coloradans can report cases of fraud and learn about online risks. In 2019, consumers in Colorado filed 9,819 complaints and inquiries with the Consumer Protection Section in the Attorney General’s office. During 2023, the number of complaints hit 20,390. According to the FBI Denver Field Office, Colorado ranks seventh in the nation for complaints per capita. “There’s no question that the use of AI is a part of what’s driving up those scams,” Weiser said. “I hate to say this because it will be a painful occasion, but I’m bracing myself for that number to go up this year,” he added. The most common types of complaints in 2023 were for unauthorized subscriptions and retail services, professional services, automobile sales and services, and home repair services. The fifth most common complaint alerted Weiser’s office of imposter scams. He gave the example of the “grandparent scam,” which involves targeting victims who have a grandchild traveling abroad. The scammer will contact the grandparent, either by email or phone, to tell them that their grandchild is in jail in a different country and they need money right away in order to be released. The selling point comes when scammers use AI to replicate the voice of the grandchild in a phone call, making it more believable. “One of the scary parts is many people have a hard time understanding the difference between the so-called deepfakes made by AI and what’s real, and the implication of this means that everybody needs to practice constant vigilance,” Weiser said. One of the telltale signs that something is a scam is a false sense of urgency. The pressure from the scammer to “act now before things get worse” can keep people from calling appropriate family members or authorities to make sure the call is real. “Don’t trust those calls. Hang up, and then you can call the right source — the bank, for example — and ask, ‘Is there anything going on with my account, or is this a scam?'” he said. “You will have saved yourself a lot of headache and a lot of money by proceeding carefully as opposed to acting immediately.” Weiser explained that the people most vulnerable to these scams are often younger internet users who are less experienced, and older adults who are perhaps overly trusting. “AI is not a brand-new technology, but the widespread use of ChatGPT has taken the adoption of AI to a new level,” Weiser said. Austin Hastings, assistant vice president and data analyst for Colorado-based Alpine Bank, said customers often see repeats of the same types of scams until people stop falling for them — after which scammers select a new strategy and use it until failure. “If there’s a big batch of people that fall for one scam and then ... people start talking to each other, posting things on social media, (they’re) not going to be able to compromise as many people,” he said. “They’re almost incentivized to ‘stay fresh.'” AI technology has been used by scammers to clone the voices of loved ones or employers (often paired with fake caller IDs), forge copies of trusted websites to steal login credentials, hijack smartphones and other devices with malware, and place fake QR codes over parking meters, restaurants and advertisements. Hastings said they’ve seen an increase in reports of fraud involving AI this year, mostly in the form of phishing rather than video or audio manipulation. Part of what’s behind the increase is the ability of AI to mass-produce email and website templates to look like the real thing. Alpine Bank, which serves over 170,000 customers across the state, suggests that its customers be extra vigilant around holidays as scammers are more active during seasons of high spending. Alpine Bank offers the following guidelines to help consumers avoid falling victim to sophisticated scams: “No. 1 would be, don’t click the link. But if you do, communicate it with the bank,” Hastings said. It’s better to report things right away, as timing can impact what kind of help victims can get from their bank. Alpine Bank has worked with victims of scams to recover funds, restrict accounts and coordinate with law enforcement. Another way to avoid becoming the target of scammers is restricting the sharing of personal data, an option enabled by the Colorado Privacy Act in 2021 . The act gives Coloradans the right to opt out of the sale of their personal data or its use for targeted advertising, as well as requiring entities to safeguard personal data. “It’s a dangerous world out there, and AI is making it more dangerous, so please protect yourself and protect those you love,” Weiser said.best online casino slots game 。

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“Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers. In the week since the brazen shooting , health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily. An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.” Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could "inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence," according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Wanted” posters pasted to parking meters and construction site fences in Manhattan included photos of health care executives and the words “Deny, defend, depose” — similar to a phrase scrawled on bullets found near Thompson’s body and echoing those used by insurance industry critics . Thompson's wife, Paulette, told NBC News last week that he told her some people had been threatening him and suggested the threats may have involved issues with insurance coverage. Investigators believe the shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione , may have been motivated by hostility toward health insurers. They are studying his writings about a previous back injury, and his disdain for corporate America and the U.S. health care system. Mangione’s lawyer has cautioned against prejudging the case. Mangione, 26, has remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested Monday . Manhattan prosecutors are working to bring him to New York to face a murder charge. UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, said this week it was working with law enforcement to ensure a safe work environment and to reinforce security guidelines and building access policies, a spokesperson said. The company has taken down photos, names and biographies for its top executives from its websites, a spokesperson said. Other organizations, including CVS, the parent company for insurance giant Aetna, have taken similar actions. Government health insurance provider Centene Corp. has announced that its investor day will be held online, rather than in-person as originally planned. Medica, a Minnesota-based nonprofit health care firm, said last week it was temporarily closing its six offices for security reasons and would have its employees work from home. Heightened security measures likely will make health care companies and their leaders more inaccessible to their policyholders, said former Cigna executive Wendell Potter. “And understandably so, with this act of violence. There’s no assurance that this won’t happen again,” said Potter, who’s now an advocate for health care reform. Private security firms and consultants have been in high demand, fielding calls almost immediately after the shooting from companies across a range of industries, including manufacturing and finance. Companies have long faced security risks and grappled with how far to take precautions for high-profile executives. But these recent threats sparked by Thompson's killing should not be ignored, said Dave Komendat, a former security chief for Boeing who now heads his own risk-management company. “The tone and tenor is different. The social reaction to this tragedy is different. And so I think that people need to take this seriously,” Komendat said. Just over a quarter of the companies in the Fortune 500 reported spending money to protect their CEOs and top executives. Of those, the median payment for personal security doubled over the last three years to just under $100,000. Hours after the shooting, Komendat was on a call with dozens of chief security officers from big corporations, and there have been many similar meetings since, hosted by security groups or law enforcement agencies assessing the threats, he said. “It just takes one person who is motivated by a poster — who may have experienced something in their life through one of these companies that was harmful," Komendat said. Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco, contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NoneThe new higher-ed reality For last eight years, the HEC's budget has been virtually stagnant in absolute terms A few days ago, pharmacy students at Bacha Khan University Charsadda (BKUC) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa protested that, even after years, their programme has not been registered and accredited by the relevant professional and accreditation body, the Pharmacy Council of Pakistan (PCP). The reasons they gave were the university’s inability to hire the faculty members needed and acquire other accreditation prerequisites. For the last eight years, the Higher Education Commission’s (HEC) budget has been virtually stagnant in absolute terms, going from Rs62 billion in 2017-18 to just Rs65 billion in 2024-25. While that could be acceptable in the early part of that period, no sector of society has been able to escape the effects of record inflation over the last few years. From 2022-23 to 2023-24, total HEC grants to institutes/projects went from Rs56.5 billion to Rs55.8 billion. Even when adding in all other government / provincial grants, the total figure went from Rs96.4 billion to Rs99.7 billion. Obviously, this slight increase was insufficient to compensate for the effects of inflation. As a percentage, public grants covered approximately 40 per cent of the expenses of public universities in 2022-23. This year, in 2023-24, that number saw a reduction to 38 per cent. With most universities having no other sources of income, almost all had to resort to raising tuition fees. Over the same two years, total tuition fees collected went from Rs119 billion to Rs134 billion, an increase of 12.6 per cent. It has taken eight successive budgets, but universities should finally be certain about which way the wind is blowing on public support – stagnant in absolute terms, which means less than ever in terms of purchasing power and likely shrinking every year going forward. In the last few years, a new term has entered the public discourse and thinking on local higher-education funding: endowment funds. Endowment funds comprise financial assets of an institution, such as universities, that are invested in generating income to support activities and operations. What differentiates it from other pots of money a university has is that they may add to but do not touch the principal amount, only the income generated from it. Put simply, an endowment fund is a university’s nest egg and, to ensure it is not squandered away, is professionally managed. The fact that contributions going towards an endowment fund’s principal cannot be touched and will continue to do good (generate income) into perpetuity makes them more attractive to donors compared to one-off unrestricted-gift contributions that come with no strings attached that universities could spend as they please. Building an endowment fund from scratch is a long game, too long perhaps (up until now) for vice-chancellors (VCs) appointed for short tenures to take an interest in. However, the situation of many public universities is dire, and their management is turning desperate and grasping at straws to consider endowments as an option. With few exceptions, understanding how to set up, fund, and run an endowment fund is still minimal. Endowment funds are developed by running a surplus, courting alumni, and schmoozing with donors. But running a surplus is an alien concept for public universities, taking steps to maintain a relationship with alumni, erstwhile students sometimes treated with disdain, may be seen as desperate, and talking up donors for money is seen as undignified and ‘unscholarly’ (whatever that means) and they may have a point. That is why in many countries where the higher education funding landscape for universities is precarious, the people leading universities are not scholars but people who can do those ‘unscholarly’ but necessary things, know donors, can convince them to write a cheque, and can pull the right levers of power in government, politics, and industry for the betterment of their institution. Instead of doing any of that, many would rather continue business as usual - bow and roll around on the floor in some office of the bureaucracy for a slightly larger handout. As for starting endowment funds, I have heard some express their expectation that this will happen by simply being handed a big pot of money from above (the federal or provincial government), with no effort needed. Universities are the new colleges of domestic political ‘halwa’-barrel spending – every elected representative in the National and provincial assemblies is eager to boast about bringing one (more) to their district. However, establishing a functioning public university takes more than five years of PC-1 funding from the federal government. It demands continuous commitment and budgetary support for the life of the institution. The reality is that after the inaugural ribbons are cut, plaques are unveiled and the cameras leave, no one is willing to expend effort or political capital to secure the support needed to keep it operating. If further evidence of the futility of this approach is required, one only needs to direct their attention to recent reports out of KP that over a dozen universities are being denotified or merged with other universities and presumably declared their sub-campuses. A few of those universities were established as recently as 2021. However, when the Governor’s Inspection Team visited these universities in 2023, it concluded that they were neither financially viable nor providing value by delivering educational programmes. The universities had not been allocated sufficient seed funding and were unable to hire (in some cases) a single permanent faculty member. In some cases, their faculty comprised less than a dozen faculty members employed on a contractual basis, most of whom did not even hold a doctoral degree. The inspection team recommended that these campuses be denotified and merged with another nearby university. Many universities are established on a whim, rather than an unbiased feasibility study. KP will not be the last province where public universities will suffer denotifications and mergers. The funding landscape for public higher education is more-or-less equally dire for universities across the country: Public support is dwindling, the few universities that possess resources that have the potential for monetisation are, according to them, prevented by the rules and regulations that govern them, and virtually none of them have bothered to think about making institutional investments like endowment funds despite many boasting worldly and well-travelled leadership teams. I view the news that the government of Punjab will hand thousands of public schools to private partners and begin to wash its hands of delivering a public service as elementary as school education as a surrender and a harbinger of things to come. I cannot recall any other country where a government announced a surrender of such a scale. It also begs the question: what business does a government incapable of delivering school education have in delivering higher education, which is a much more complex challenge? Public support for education, and higher education in particular, is running out. If universities are relying on donor funding, many donor countries (especially those that our government works with) do not provide higher education as a right. Indeed, in many countries, the cost of obtaining a higher education for the learner is so high that repaying student loans is a lifelong effort, like a home mortgage payment. In such conditions, it becomes difficult to justify supporting subsidised/ free higher education in other countries. In 2023-24, the collective expenses of public universities added up to Rs293 billion. All public grants combined cover about Rs100 billion of that. Tuition fees brought in another Rs134 billion. All other sources of income, which include income from investments such as endowments, contributed a total of Rs37 billion. With public funding stagnant for years, there are only two other sources – investment income and tuition fees. With many universities teetering on the edge of insolvency, it is unlikely for investments large enough to generate sufficient income to materialise. That leaves most one place to go to bridge funding gaps. The writer (she/her) has a PhD in Education.

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The suspect in the high-profile killing of a health insurance CEO that has gripped the United States graduated from an Ivy League university, reportedly hails from a wealthy family, and wrote social media posts brimming with cerebral musings. Luigi Mangione, 26, was thrust into the spotlight Monday after police revealed he is their person of interest in the brutal murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a father of two, last week in broad daylight in Manhattan in a case that laid bare deep frustration and anger with America's privatized medical system. News of his capture in Pennsylvania -- following a tip from a McDonald's worker --triggered an explosion of online activity, with Mangione quickly amassing new followers on social media as citizen sleuths and US media tried to understand who he is. While some lauded him as a hero and lamented his arrest, others analyzed his intellectual takes in search of ideological clues. A photo on one of his social media accounts includes an X-ray of an apparently injured spine. No explicit political affiliation has emerged. Meanwhile, memes and jokes proliferated, many riffing on his first name and comparing him to the "Mario Bros." character Luigi, sometimes depicted in AI-altered images wielding a gun or holding a Big Mac. "Godspeed. Please know that we all hear you," wrote one user on Facebook. "I want to donate to your defense fund," added another. According to Mangione's LinkedIn profile, he is employed as a data engineer at TrueCar, a California-based online auto marketplace. A company spokesperson told AFP Mangione "has not been an employee of our company since 2023." Although he had been living in Hawaii ahead of the killing, he originally hails from Towson, Maryland, near Baltimore. He comes from a prominent and wealthy Italian-American family, according to the Baltimore Banner. The family owns local businesses, including the Hayfields Country Club, its website says. A standout student, Mangione graduated at the top of his high school class in 2016. In an interview with his local paper at the time, he praised his teachers for fostering a passion for learning beyond grades and encouraging intellectual curiosity. A former student who knew Mangione at the Gilman School told AFP the suspect struck him as "a normal guy, nice kid." "There was nothing about him that was off, at least from my perception," this person said, asking that their name not be used. "Seemed to just be smiling, and kind of seemed like he was a smart kid. Ended up being valedictorian, which confirmed that," the former student said. Mangione went on to attend the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, where he completed both a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science by 2020, according to a university spokesperson. While at Penn, Mangione co-led a group of 60 undergraduates who collaborated on video game projects, as noted in a now-deleted university webpage, archived on the Wayback Machine. On Instagram, where his following has skyrocketed from hundreds to tens of thousands, Mangione shared snapshots of his travels in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. He also posted shirtless photos flaunting a six-pack and appeared in celebratory posts with fellow members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. However, it is on X (formerly Twitter) that users have scoured Mangione's posts for potential motives. His header photo -- an X-ray of a spine with bolts -- remains cryptic, with no public explanation. Finding a coherent political ideology has also proved elusive, though he had written a review of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto on the online site goodreads, calling it "prescient." Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, carried out a string of bombings in the United States from 1978 to 1995, a campaign he said was aimed at halting the advance of modern society and technology. Mangione called Kaczynski "rightfully imprisoned," while also saying "'violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators." According to CNN, handwritten documents recovered when Mangione was arrested included the phrase "these parasites had it coming." Mangione has also linked approvingly to posts criticizing secularism as a harmful consequence of Christianity's decline. In April, he wrote, "Horror vacui (nature abhors a vacuum)." The following month, he posted an essay he wrote in high school titled "How Christianity Prospered by Appealing to the Lower Classes of Ancient Rome." In another post from April, he speculated that Japan's low birthrate stems from societal disconnection, adding that "fleshlights" and other vaginal-replica sex toys should be banned. ia/nro/dw

Ross Barkley’s 85th-minute goal gave them victory in Germany after goals from John McGinn and Jhon Duran early in each half were cancelled out by Lois Openda and Christoph Baumgartner. That sent them up to third in the new league phase of the competition ahead of Wednesday’s games and with matches against Monaco and Celtic to come, Villa have an excellent chance of finishing in the top eight. That would mean they would avoid a play-off round to make it through to the last 16 and Emery says that is the target. “Today was key. Juventus at home, we were thinking more to win but in the end we accepted the draw because it was important for a point to be more or less in the top 24,” he told Amazon Prime. “Today was a match we were thinking at the beginning was key to be a contender to be in the top eight with the last two matches to be played. “It is going to be difficult and we have to get some more points but we now have the possibility to achieve this option. “We are going to enjoy and try to get top eight but we have to be happy because we are in the top 24 and maybe even the top 16. “We weren’t contenders in the beginning to get there but now we have to accept it.” Leipzig, who are flying high near the top of the Bundesliga, are out after losing all six matches. They did pose a threat to Villa, who inflicted some of their own problems on themselves, notably a rare gaffe from goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez for Openda’s equaliser. But Emery was happy with his side’s performance. “I try to enjoy and always we want to improve and sometimes it is hard but today the team were performing well, playing seriously and I was enjoying it,” he added. “We tried to overcome the mistakes we made and we did. More or less we were playing consistently. One mistake and they score but then we played very well. “Champions League is very difficult and we have to expect that every team playing at home are feeling strong. We played with consistency and domination.”