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Reposted from Fox61
Police say they have made an arrest for a break-in that occurred early Tuesday morning at the Greater Middletown Military Museum.
Officials said Thursday a person of interest was taken into custody on separate charges, following the investigation of a different home burglary in the same neighborhood Wednesday night.
Police identified that man involved as 22-year-old Isaiah Nemecek, of Middletown.
He was charged with 3rd-degree Burglary, Possession of Burglary Tools, 1st-degree Criminal Mischief and 6th-degree Larceny and is being held on a $100,000 bond.
Video shows Nemecek wearing a mask, swinging an ax to break the handle on the back door of museum.
According to a release, Nemecek already had two failure to appear warrants when he was taken into custody.
Middletown officials initially said the two burglaries were linked, but now say the home incident is still under investigation.
During investigation, officers were able to recover an item from the museum burglary.
Police say when Nemecek was unsuccessful at the back door, they turned attention to the front of the building busting through two sets of glass windows.
"It’s a really remarkable place," said museum volunteer Joan Liska. "We are just so upset that someone would do that to us."
The shattered glass covered the floor of the museum when Liska arrived Tuesday morning. Surveillance footage captures a hooded Nemecek by the back door trying to get in.
"He left a lot of broken glass around. Broke into one of our display cases and took a few items out of it," said museum president Ken McClellan.
McClellan was alerted of the break-in when alarms triggered around 4 a.m. The museum is lined with donated uniforms and items from Middletown Veterans. The artifacts are used to tell their stories to ensure their legacy lives on forever. McClellan says they are thankful that nothing else was damaged.
"A lot of the things we have are frankly irreplaceable," said McClellan. "Some of the things we have might be valuable to collectors but not really to the common person."
Middletown police responded to the property quickly. They sent a K-9 unit out to track the thief’s movements.
"They did not locate the suspect at the time but they were able to gather evidence which was very well needed," said Lt. Heather Desmond.
The track led to the area behind Veterans Memorial Park near Barbara Road. Middletown Police are asking people who live nearby to check their home surveillance cameras for any sign of the suspect.
"This is probably one of the most disrespectful things that someone could do is to break into the museum and disrespect our veterans," said Lt. Desmond.
Volunteers at the museum say the community has stepped up to help them recover through donations. One local business has already offered to repair the glass.
"The volunteers are coming trying to help us get right back up. That’s what military do. They support each other," said Liska.
Middletown police are asking anyone who may have any home surveillance in the area to review their footage between the hours of 10 PM Monday to 7 AM Tuesday.
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Reposed from TechRadar
According to a study by OneLogin about the future of work, more than half of CIOs expect a rise in employees working remotely, while 97% say that soon their workforce will be widely dispersed across geographies and time zones. Businesses are being forced to adapt to the rising demand for a dynamic working environment, which can manifest as anything from workers bringing their own devices to work to employees using corporate machines at home as part of a flexible work schedule. However, this increases the security burden through the need for better identity management.
This rising demand for flexible working environments seems to be spearheaded by the digital native generation. As Millennial and Generation Z workers come of age in the workplace, they will begin dictating corporate norms. Indeed, 93% of CIOs believe that the pace of business evolution will accelerate by 2025, correlating with a maturing workforce.
Studies have shown that digital native workers are significantly less willing to accept substandard technological solutions. According to an annual public survey by flexjobs, 69% of professionals cited flexibility in the workplace as a critical issue when evaluating potential employers. Clearly it is essential that corporations keep up to date with technological trends in order to satisfy their workforce and reduce the ever-increasing skills gap.
The question remains, however, where do organisations draw the line in supporting flexible work practices? With the increase in remote working, companies depend less on secure corporate networks and more on the simple password to protect company assets. As nearly 80% of security breaches involve the abuse and misuse of privileged credentials, one of the biggest threats to corporate security is employee passwords. This is no surprise considering the sheer volume of passwords that personnel have to remember.
The average enterprise uses 2,500 unique applications, making identity management a nightmare for most IT teams. It is not uncommon for a single employee to have anywhere between 20 and 200 passwords to remember when accessing these accounts which results in frequently reusing passwords. Password reuse which could have dire consequences as organisations transition into a hybrid state where their software catalog is split between in-house applications hosted on-premises and cloud-based SaaS applications.
Identity assurance and data integrity are crucial to adhering to internal security policies, external compliance regulations, and preventing headline-producing and career-altering security breaches. However, when business applications containing sensitive corporate data are accessed from unsecured and unmoderated devices, it provides a range of opportunities for hackers to access data.
The modern workplace has witnessed the rise of trends such as bring your own device (BYOD) which means that increasingly, employees are using their own phones, laptops, and tablets rather than company issued devices. The line between the personal and professional is further blurred with employees adding consumer SaaS applications, such as Evernote for organizing tasks, on corporate devices.
Understandably, third-party applications installed on personal devices and connected to a corporate network open a can of worms when discussing the topic of identity access management. For example, if a personal device with the login credentials to corporate sites is stolen, it would be catastrophic, not just to the victim but also to business operations.
While flexible working conditions can increase efficiency and employee morale, they also present several risks. Think, for example, of the caricatured worker fervently typing at a Starbucks, or the commuter replying to emails on the train. Both employees pose a potential threat to corporate identity management departments because public Wi-Fi networks are simple to sabotage, and sensitive information is easily lost when employees lack the appropriate security training.
This risk is accentuated when users rely on personal devices that lack corporate cybersecurity measures. If we want to continue the trajectory of flexible working, it is essential to ensure that every worker is logging on to company networks safely and securely using a mobile device management solution.
When considering methods of extra security procedures there are two forms of identity and access management (IAM) that enterprises can implement to secure themselves and those include: Single Sign-on (SSO) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Implementing these critical procedures provides an extra layer of security that prohibits access to critical applications without additional authentication checks.
With SSO, the user’s access to an application or website relies on a trusted third-party to verify that individuals are who they say they are. This method not only makes sign-in easier but also keeps it more secure. Moreover, MFA can employ biometric security procedures that require extra credentials such as voice recognition, facial scanners or fingerprint checks. This not only provides an additional layer of defence, but also verifies what user is logged in and making changes to critical applications, which simplifies compliance to regulations like GDPR.
As the reliance on cloud services and cloud-based applications increases and the acceptance of remote working evolves, attackers will begin looking for new vectors to exploit. In order to combat the needless loss of sensitive data, organisations must implement endpoint security strategies that both enable an increasing number of people to work remotely, while also ensuring they are doing so securely.
With younger generations entering the workforce every year, expectations of flexible work practices will continue to increase. The more apathetic organisations are towards evolving work cultures and the associated security concerns, the more likely it is that attackers are going to breach the limited safeguards put in place and compromise sensitive company information.
Aside from implementing SSO and MFA, it is essential that organisations remain several steps ahead of would-be cybercriminals by employing sufficient safeguards. Companies must ensure they instill good cybersecurity awareness into all their employees, particularly those working remotely. Only by prioritizing security safeguarding and removing archaic and easily breached methods of authentication can security best practice be upheld for all workers, regardless of where in the world they are.
Reposted from KOMO News
Two bonsai trees worth thousands of dollars that were stolen from the Pacific Bonsai Museum on Sunday were both mysteriously returned Tuesday night, according to a museum press release.
Two suspects were seen on the museum's security footage when the trees were stolen Sunday morning, but when police arrived, no suspects were found.
At about 11 p.m. Tuesday, security guards reportedly discovered the two trees sitting on the road leading to the museum.
The trees were especially valuable because of their historical significance. One, a Japanese black pine, was grown from a seed in a tin can by Jizaburo Furuzawa while he was imprisoned in an internment camp World War II.
“The Silverberry suffered some damage. It has some broken branches, probably due to improper transportation and handling, but both bonsai trees and their pots appear to be intact, which means they can return to being on public display," museum curator Aarin Packard said in the release.
The Silverberry bonsai will be placed back on public display Wednesday, while the Japanese black pine bonsai will return as the centerpiece for the museum's upcoming exhibit "World War Bonsai: Remembrance & Resilience," which opens May 8.
“We are deeply grateful for the tremendous outpouring of support from the community and from the media who raised awareness of the bonsai’s disappearance,” said Pacific Bonsai Museum executive director Kathy McCabe in the release.
It is unclear at this time who returned the trees or why they were taken.
Reposted from Security Management
Coaching is a crucial function of managing. Every effective leader must be able to do it well. Such is the philosophy of Cherissa Newton, coauthor of the book Coaching for Results and a leadership expert at the Center for Management and Organizational Effectiveness (CMOE). It’s also the view held by many seasoned security managers like David Barton, the chief information security officer at Stellar Cyber, who previously served as director of security for AT&T and corporate security group manager for Sprint over his long management career.
“Hopefully as a leader, you realize sooner rather than later that being a good coach to your team is part of being a good manager,” Barton says. “You can’t have one without the other.”
What differentiates coaching from managing? As Newton defines the concepts in a recent CMOE analysis, managing often involves day-to-day tasks like conducting meetings, assigning tasks, making departmentwide decisions, and dealing with staff conflicts.
Coaching, on the other hand, is defined by Newton as “a two-way communication process between different members of the organization aimed at influencing and developing the employees’ skills, motivation, attitude, judgment, ability to perform, and willingness to contribute to an organization’s goals.”
Both are crucial to effective leadership. According to Newton, the benefits of adding coaching to your management style can include enhanced performance, improved productivity, higher employee engagement and retention rates, and a stronger culture of trust in the workplace.
The coaching definition’s opening phrase, “a two-way communication process,” is one of the most crucial aspects of coaching, according to veteran managers like John Torres, head of the security and technology consulting practice at Guidepost. Torres has more than 27 years of experience in federal investigative and security management for agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As an acting director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2008 to 2009, he oversaw 20,000 employees and a $5 billion budget.
Torres says that working on many different teams early in his career gave him an opportunity to observe “good bosses and bad bosses.” Bad managers, he says, usually acted as the self-styled “smartest guys in the room.”
“They were like, ‘This is how it’s done,’ and there was no room for questions, even when you often knew there were other ways to do it,” Torres explains.
In contrast, good managers always maintained two-way communication—even when they knew that they were the smartest person in the room, he says. Those managers did not let their high knowledge level preclude them from being open to other opinions. “They had the ability to communicate and to listen,” Torres says.
And two-way communication helps enfranchise an employee, which can significantly boost engagement and retention, Barton says.
“Team members want to feel that they have a say in the direction of the team and how that relates to the overall direction of the company,” Barton says. “Lacking a two-way approach, communications feel dictatorial, and not team-orientated. Team members want to know they make a difference.”
And team members also want to know what is expected of them, says Chris Stowell, one of the coaching experts at the CMOE. “They want an opportunity to do their best work every day,” he says. Coaching facilitates this; it allows for productive two-way discussions about expectations, results, and suggestions on how to enhance performance. “We may not always like what we hear, but ultimately, we want to do better, be better,” he adds.
Good coaching effectively addresses a truism that holds at every workplace, experts say: each employee is a unique individual.
That means that learning styles, productivity levels, workload tolerance, and preferred means of recognition differ from staffer to staffer. Sometimes the differences are slight; sometimes they are staggering. But one-size-fits-all management is not the most effective way to help employees fulfill their individual potential or maximize their contributions to the organization.
“Each person learns differently and thrives under different management styles. It’s our job as a coach/mentor to understand these differences, embrace them, and then lead appropriately,” Barton explains.
In one of his previous security positions, Barton suspected that a team member was in the wrong role. After a few weeks of observation and directed questions, Barton made a realization.
“This person was not driven by technology—something essential for an engineer—but rather by people. So I spent a few days with this person discussing my perspective—only for them to agree (after I assured them their job was secure),” Barton says. “I then reached out to some of my peer leaders who led customer- facing teams and helped my team member move to the other department. They thrived and became a great contributor to our company.”
Individual coaching proved useful for Torres when he was in federal law enforcement, managing a certain type of young idealistic federal agent who did not like to say “no” to any assignment. Soon that agent was “working around the clock.”
Torres was able to coach the agent about the importance of not taking on a workload that would greatly increase the risk of burnout. “You can coach about work–life balance, to help ensure that they can stay focused and not go down a rabbit hole,” he explains.
Learning about the individual employee is especially important when it comes to another crucial aspect of coaching: recognition. “Recognizing a staffer’s accomplishments plays a significant role in coaching,” Barton says.
“For accomplishments you see daily or weekly, acknowledge them! Part of your role as a manager is to see growth, even small steps, from someone on your team,” he continues. “It is pretty easy to throw out a ‘well done’ via email, Slack, or text.”
Stowell adds that coaching, which regularly recognizes accomplishments, does wonders for staff retention. “That’s very critical to ensuring that you can keep successful employees,” he says. But here again, the individual needs of staffers matter. “Everyone is different,” Stowell says. “Different people have different levels of recognition requirements, so to speak.”
Thus, some employees prefer one-on-one acknowledgment of accomplishments, while some like more public recognition. In terms of rewards, some prefer material assets like gift certificates, raises, or bonuses, while others like work–life balance enhancements like extra time off or vacation time.
“Team members are motivated by different things, such as money, public recognition, or promotions,” Barton says. “The manager also needs to think about reactions from the team and from other peer managers. Bigger organizations have processes for promotions, so it’s best to work with HR to ensure your promoted employee’s experience is done right.”
In addition, a particularly potent form of recognition in coaching is one that cites the details of the accomplishment—details that might have been missed by others but which are noticed by the appreciative manager.
“Noticing the details is a powerful tool. I develop a sense of how my team wants feedback, and I also show them I notice the details,” Barton says. “This is important if you want people to think they can learn from you.”
Coaching that recognizes details and serves as a learning tool for employees builds trust within the organization.
How can managers increase their chances that they will build trust through their coaching? First off, it should be proactive rather than reactive coaching, Stowell says. To be more proactive, a manager can make coaching part of a daily routine and be ready to take advantage of small issues and developments as coaching opportunities aimed at elevating performance. This is especially effective in ensuring that coaching does not devolve into a reactive series of corrective conversations when things go wrong, he says.
Of course, there are times when coaching needs to be corrective, but there are ways a manager can do this without discouraging the employee.
“First, I think it is key to make sure you do it in private—shaming people does not build loyalty with your performers. That only builds fear and mistrust, and potentially your own team will start to throw others under the bus,” Barton says. “It can spiral.”
But learning this lesson can be difficult for new security managers, who may sometimes be feeling the pressure of a high-stress situation when trying to correct a staffer’s mistake, Torres says. “Often, that’s not something they teach you early on in your career,” he explains. “And in a heated moment, you can say the wrong thing.”
Given this, it often helps to adopt a measured mind-set so that heated moments can be avoided. It behooves a manager to dispassionately diagnose the root cause of the mistake, Torres explains. Was the mistake purely an issue of employee judgment? Or are there underlying policies and operating procedures that are creating vulnerabilities? Or is it a case of an overworked employee who is making more mistakes due to fatigue? “You take the attitude of, ‘How can we help you do this better?’” Torres says.
Overall, this type of mindful coaching, which focuses not on the mistake but on stronger future results, shows that the manager cares about the staffer, and that also helps build trust. “Everyone wants coaching to some extent, because coaching is an investment. People want to know you care enough to invest in their success and coach them through their failures,” Barton explains.
In his work as a coaching consultant for CMOE, Stowell has noticed a few recent trends among leaders who are considered successful coaches, and he shared practices that other leaders who aspire to improve as coaches could benefit from.
One is “coaching on the fly,” which is more likely to take place in a workplace that is also a fast-moving production environment, or one that is that is highly matrixed. In some of these types of organizations, managers are increasingly prepared to do “quick hits” of brief developmental conversations that have value for both participants. And although they are short, these brief coaching episodes can still take preparation on the manager’s part, Stowell says.
In Barton’s view, many fast-moving security workplaces could benefit from some coaching on the fly. “Coaching is a just-in-time response, as well as a thoughtful planned activity. A good leader has to be prepared for both approaches and take into account the situation, the team member, and the coaching needed,” Barton says.
Another trend is coaching across teams, Stowell says. In many organizations, cross-functional teams are becoming more popular as a means of breaking down silos and soliciting a wide range of ideas and viewpoints. This gives team members and team leaders the opportunity to coach other members and leaders, even if the managers have no formal leadership authority over the coworkers they are coaching.
However, in cases where there is no formal leadership authority, it can help if the coach is “a little bit provisional” in approaching the conversation, Stowell explains. So instead of saying something like “you did this wrong, please fix it,” the team member may offer “an observation around security such as ‘from my perspective, here’s what I am seeing, and here’s what the potential risk is.’ You’re bringing them into the conversation,” Stowell says.
In the end, experts like Stowell say that everyone in an organization should be both coachable and a potential coach, whether they are a new employee or a manager, a line worker or a senior executive, young or old, experienced or new.
“I should be able coach my leader and say, ‘From my perspective, here’s some feedback and insight,’” Stowell says.
Torres has seen the importance of this throughout his career. Back in the day, when federal agencies were using computer banks, Torres remembers some older agents who badly needed technological coaching from younger employees. “They were deathly afraid of going near the computer. They were happy to be working on an old typewriter,” he says.
Now, in the era of high-definition cameras and social media saturation, Torres takes advantage of the younger expertise in his senior role at Guidepost. “I continue to be coached by the younger generation,” he says.
The future may hold even more challenges, such as coaching in virtual environments as organizations employ more remote teams and video conferences, Stowell says. In such situations, he recommends coaches do regular checks for understanding, such as asking staffers to briefly summarize information that was just conveyed, and be especially mindful of their tone of voice. “There are more opportunities for misinterpretations,” he says.
Reposted from ZDNet
Hackers intercepted talks between an art dealer and a Dutch museum to scam the museum out of millions, and while they walked away with their ill-begotten proceeds, the victims are now fighting over who is responsible.
As reported by Bloomberg, London-based veteran art dealer Simon Dickinson and Rijksmuseum Twenthe were in the midst of negotiations over the acquisition of a valuable painting by John Constable, a 1700 - 1800's landscape painter from England.
In particular, it has been reported that the 1855 painting, "A View of Hampstead Heath: Childs Hill, Harrow in the Distance," caught the eye of the museum's director after they visited a European art fair in 2018.
Conversations took place over email for months, and at some point during the talks, cybercriminals sent spoofed messages to the museum and persuaded Rijksmuseum Twenthe to transfer £2.4 million ($3.1 million) into a bank account from Hong Kong.
As a result, the art dealer was never paid for the painting. It is not known who is responsible for the theft.
In the aftermath of the scam, both Simon Dickinson and Rijksmuseum Twenthe are claiming the other side is responsible.
A lawsuit has been launched at a London High Court. The museum, based in Enschede, the Netherlands, claims that the art dealer's negotiators were roped into some of the spoof emails, and yet did not spot the scam.
The museum's lawyer has argued that this silence should be considered "implied representation," according to the publication.
In response, Simon Dickinson says that the dealer did not detect the presence of the eavesdropper and the museum should have double-checked the bank details before transferring any cash.
Each side is also accusing the other of being the source of the theft by allowing their systems to be compromised in the first place.
Rijksmuseum Twenthe is seeking damages. On Thursday, the court threw out initial claims that the dealer was negligent -- but said that amended claims for damages may be considered.
In the meantime, the museum is holding on to the painting, Bloomberg says, despite Simon Dickinson being unpaid -- and is also preventing the dealer from selling the artwork on to any other collector. According to Artnet, the judge must now decide on who owns the painting.
Neither Rijksmuseum Twenthe or Dickinson have commented on the case.
Reposted from Pinnacol Assurance
Each year, the influenza virus infects millions of people across the country, including over 3,800 who were hospitalized in Colorado last year. The flu attacks the respiratory system and is highly contagious. When just one person in a workplace contracts the virus, everyone is put at risk.
February is peak flu season, and this year may be a rough one in Colorado.
Through mid-January, the state has already recorded 909 hospitalizations, pacing ahead of 2019. Reports of patients with flu-like symptoms at Colorado outpatient clinics are pacing above seasonal baselines, with Denver experiencing a spike in emergency room visits.
How can you protect your employees from the flu this year? Use these tips from Pinnacol experts to keep everyone as healthy as possible during flu season.
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Reposted from NBC News
Federal health officials confirmed Tuesday that a case of the new coronavirus has been diagnosed in Washington state, just north of Seattle. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they will begin screening passengers for the virus at two additional airports: the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
The outbreak has spread from the central Chinese city of Wuhan to cities including Beijing and Shanghai, the CDC said Tuesday. Cases have also been reported outside China, including in South Korea, Thailand and Japan. At least six people have died.
The patient in Washington state, a resident of Snohomish County, is a male in his 30s. The CDC said the man arrived in the U.S. around Jan. 15 after visiting Wuhan. He had not, however, visited the seafood market where this virus is said to have originated.
Health officials said the man did not have any symptoms when he arrived, but had read about the viral outbreak online. When he started to develop symptoms, he reached out to his health care provider.
He's currently in good condition but remains hospitalized "out of an abundance of caution," health officials said.
"We are grateful the patient is doing well," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said Tuesday during a call with reporters.
In a later interview with NBC News, Messonnier said "the risk to American public is low," but added that more information is emerging day by day.
Still, "we should expect to see additional cases in the US and certainly around the world," she said.
The case in the U.S. comes amid rising concern that the illness could be transmitted through so-called super-spreaders — highly infectious patients with the ability to sicken dozens at once.
Nearly all of the 300-plus cases have been reported in China, including at least 14 health care workers who have fallen ill with the respiratory virus, a coronavirus known as 2019-nCoV.
It's unclear whether those workers were all infected in the same place, but if so, "it just smacks of a super-spreader event," said Michael Osterholm, an international infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
That's when one patient inexplicably produces much higher levels of a virus in his or her lungs, giving the patient the ability to infect dozens of people at a time. Osterholm said super-spreader cases occurred during two well-known coronavirus outbreaks: the SARS and the MERS epidemics. The 2003 SARS outbreak reached more than two dozen countries, sickening 8,098 people. Nearly 800 died.
"For those of us who dealt with SARS and MERS, it's like déjà vu all over again," Osterholm told NBC News. "When you see super-spreaders, you know you've got a problem."
There is no indication the patient in Washington state is a "super-spreader."
China's National Health Commission confirmed 298 cases as of Tuesday evening. The majority have been reported in or near the city of Wuhan, and linked to a food market with live animals. Since the strain was first detected in December, the number of cases and their geographic spread has increased rapidly.
Severe cases have generally been limited to older adults with underlying health conditions. But increasingly, Osterholm said, younger, otherwise healthy adults are falling ill.
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that can cause a range of symptoms including a runny nose, cough, sore throat and fever. Some are mild, while others are more likely to lead to pneumonia. They're usually spread through direct contact with an infected person.
The coronavirus gets its name from the crown-like spikes on its surface, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Corona is Latin for crown.) Including the newly identified form of the virus, there are a total of seven coronaviruses that can infect humans, the CDC says.
There is no specific treatment for the new virus, and no vaccine to prevent it. The National Institutes of Health confirmed Tuesday they are in the "very preliminary stages" of research to develop a vaccine for the new virus, but declined to provide details.
The outbreak is coinciding with massive travel in and out of China in advance of the Lunar New Year on Jan. 25, and prompted the CDC last week to start screening passengers arriving from Wuhan at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles' LAX. On Tuesday, the CDC announced that it would be screening passengers at two additional airports: Alanta's Hartsfield–Jackson and Chicago's O'Hare. All passengers whose flights originate in Wuhan will be rerouted to one of these five airports.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization will meet to discuss whether to declare the outbreak a global health emergency. Such a move would help guide countries on how they should respond, usually by offering financial and/or political support. It could also recommend against practices that could be detrimental to affected regions, such as travel and trade restrictions.
"One thing that we've seen in outbreaks in the past is countries try to put up travel bans or propose restrictive travel in an attempt to stop the spread of an outbreak," said Alexandra Phelan, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law who works on policy issues related to infectious diseases.
North Korea, for example, has reportedly closed its border to foreign tourists until the current coronavirus outbreak is under control.
But, Phelan explained, such policies are ineffective because people still cross borders. "When you put travel bans in place, people don't go through the normal processes. You lose the opportunity to give people medical information, conduct appropriate screening or provide medical treatment," Phelan said.
Reposted from ArtNet News
Senior officials at the Pentagon have rowed back on the possibility of carrying out US President Trump’s threat to bomb cultural sites in Iran. The US defense secretary acknowledged that carrying out the commander-in-chief’s threats, which have sparked worldwide condemnation, would contravene “the laws of armed conflict.”
Trump provoked international outrage from museum directors, academics, and artists after he tweeted on Saturday that the US would strike Iranian cultural sites “very fast and very hard” should the country kill any Americans or attack American assets in retaliation for the US-ordered killing of an Iranian general on Friday.
But in a news briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, January 6, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper appeared to contradict the president, telling reporters: “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.” He had been asked whether striking Iran’s cultural sites would constitute a war crime.
Another White House official told the New York Times that of the 52 sites in Iran that Trump tweeted were potential targets, none qualified as cultural sites.
The news that officials are distancing the US government from Trump’s threats will be met with a measure of relief from heritage professionals. In the wake of his provocative tweets and a statement to reporters, leading members of the international museum community condemned the president’s words. Responses included an unusually outspoken comment aimed at the White House from director Max Hollein and CEO Daniel Weiss of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as a post on Instagram by its former director, Thomas Campbell. The director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Matthew Teitelbaum, also expressed his outrage, tweeting: “The preservation of antiquities and cultural sites should not be endangered by any US administration.”
Since Monday, more organizations have condemned intentional acts of destruction of culture, including the World Monuments Fund, which described Trump’s threats as “absolutely unacceptable,” and called on “people and governments everywhere to stand up for the protection of our shared heritage.”
The Association of Art Museum Directors, which represents the heads of 225 art museums in the US, Canada, and Mexico, also issued a statement urging the protection of Iran’s cultural heritage. The AAMD noted that “the United States has a long and important history of safeguarding art and artifacts during conflict, such as with the Monuments Men during World War II.”
James Cuno, the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, weighed in as well: “It is tragic,” he wrote, “that today there would be any contemplation or rhetorical threat of further destruction of cultural heritage, particularly when what precious little remains in the world is already suffering from wanton destruction, looting, neglect, reckless overdevelopment, and climate change.”
Iran has 22 cultural sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Here are five of the irreplaceable treasures that have—in all likelihood—been spared thanks to the backlash against Trump’s threat, and some cooler heads in the Pentagon.
The royal city founded by Darius I was the political and religious center of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BC. Now a spectacular ruin, it is Iran’s most important ancient heritage site. Every summer between 1967 and 1977, Persepolis and the nearby city of Shiraz served as the setting of a groundbreaking international cultural festival bringing together leading artists from the West, Asia, and Africa.
The Masjed-e Jāme’ in Isfahan is the oldest Friday mosque in Iran, which inspired the design of mosques across the region. Begun in the 8th century, its magnificent architecture is the result of 12 centuries of construction, incorporating the different styles of the Abbasid, Buyid, Seljuq, Ilkhanid, Muzzafarid, Timurid and Safavid eras.
A crossroads on the Silk Road linking the East with the West, Tabriz’s vast bazaar has been famous since the 13th century. Rebuilt under a brick-vaulted roof in the 18th century, its magnificence reflects the market’s importance on the ancient trade route.
The walled palace is in the heart of historic Tehran. Built by the ruling Qajar family in the late 18th century, Golestan Palace was further embellished in the 19th century in a style that combines traditional Persian designs with European influences.
Reposted from The Washington Times
A former librarian and a bookseller have pleaded guilty in the theft of rare books from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in a years-long scheme.
Sixty-three-year-old Gregory Priore, former manager of the rare books room, pleaded guilty Monday to theft and receiving stolen property. Fifty-six-year-old John Schulman, the owner of Caliban Book Shop, pleaded guilty to theft by deception, receiving stolen property and forgery.
Allegheny County prosecutors said some charges were withdrawn in exchange for the pleas, but the deal contains no agreement on sentencing, which is scheduled for April 17 for both defendants.
Authorities alleged earlier that Priore stole prints, maps and rare books and handed them off to Schulman to resell them. Prosecutors said several hundred rare items worth more than $8 million were taken in a scheme investigators believed dated back to the 1990s.
Authorities said last year that one of the items stolen, a Geneva Bible published in 1615, was returned to the library after it was traced to the American Pilgrim Museum in Leiden, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) from Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that defense attorneys for Priore declined to comment following Monday’s hearing. Schulman’s attorney, Albert Veverka, noted that his client wasn’t acknowledging any role in a conspiracy but said in a statement that he accepted responsibility “for his association with books under circumstances whereby he should have known that the books had probably been stolen.”
“Mr. Schulman has dedicated much of his life to contributing to the bookselling trade and regrets that today’s guilty pleas negatively reflected upon the antiquarian book industry, his family and clients,” the statement said.
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