Equifax Reports Hack of 143 Million Consumer Records

At a time when the nation’s attention is turned to the hurricane disasters of Irma in Florida and Harvey in the Houston area, Equifax, one of three large credit reporting agencies in the U.S. chose, in true political fashion, to disclose that its customer credit data base has been compromised -- 143 million social security numbers and other personal information records are now in the hands of cyber criminals.

Equifax discovered this breach in July but did not report it until late this week and after certain executives of the company had sold some of their stock.

Company representatives said that the executives had no prior knowledge of the cyber attack.

A class-action lawsuit has already been filed against Equifax, and its stock dropped by 14% in this Friday’s trading.

Camino Island

Captivating Reading

This mystery novel spins a story of romance and local color, effectively weaving them together into a yarn with books, writers, deception, and stolen manuscripts, culminating into a frantic search to find the latter before they quietly disappear into the underground libraries of wealthy private collectors.

Author John Grisham will command your attention as he moves you through this fast-paced drama in a desperate race against time to solve the heist of five original, handwritten works by renowned author, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Allegedly stored in a rare books vault at an undisclosed location within the Firestone Library of Princeton University, Fitzgerald’s original manuscripts, Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned are protected by sophisticated technology in a climate-controlled environment.

Dunkirk – The Cost of War.

Credit: Set Photo, Christopher Nolan Movie, Dunkirk

The first and most obvious cost of war is the violent loss of lives and of its aftereffects upon survivors in the form of PTSD.  The other cost, ironically, is to be unprepared for war.

 

Sounds somewhat oxymoronic, does it not? But paying for the cost of preparedness may be the precondition to avoiding or minimizing the former: This concept was demonstrated during the long years of the Cold War between America and Russia.

Dunkirk:  At the onset of World War Two, the stranding of over 300,000 British and French troops who were driven to the edge of the sea on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, by German forces, abundantly underscores the fallacy of appeasement, a disastrous policy adopted by British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

FALL from GRACE

Dust cover from the hardback book.

Fall from Grace, written by master storyteller Richard North Patterson, a former trial lawyer turned author, is an excellent choice for summer reading.

The plot is set on Martha’s Vineyard, as are those of the other books in this trilogy, Loss of Innocence, and Eden in Winter. Not coincidentally, the Vineyard is also Patterson’s summer home.

As the denouement of this tale progresses, it tears at the heart and soul of the Blaine family, where intrigue, mystery, and complex relationships rule its days.

Benjamin Blaine, alpha personality, principal protagonist, and renowned author drives himself to success and fame, yet becomes dysfunctional within his own family.

Duty and Honor

From the Paperback Version

Jack Ryan Jr appears once again in this novel that partially owes its success to the fame of Tom Clancy, but which was penned by Grant Blackwood following Clancy’s death in 2013.

It was The Hunt for Red October that propelled Clancy to the best-seller lists, especially after Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of that book as being “my kind of yarn.”

In this more current tale, Jack Ryan Jr, son of President Ryan, finds himself being tracked for assassination.  He doesn’t know who is attempting to find and eliminate him; nor does he know why.

And he doesn’t want his famous dad’s help.