April 1, 2016 – AssociatedNews.info

Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield celebrates the Sooners’ 77-63 win over Texas A&M in the third round of the NCAA tournament. Harry How/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Harry How/Getty Images

Future NBA stars? Check. Upset potential? Check. Academic fraud scandals? Double check. Saturday’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament Final Four games have it all.

No. 2 seeds Villanova and Oklahoma will square off for a spot in the championship game at 6:09 p.m. on TBS. When the teams played earlier this season, the Sooners routed the Wildcats 78-55. Will Villanova get its revenge?

The second semifinal game, airing on the same network right after ‘Nova versus Oklahoma, features No. 10 Syracuse trying to prolong its improbable tournament run by toppling No. 1 UNC. The run-up to this game, however, has been mostly focused on the programs’ off-the-court activities, as both teams are dealing with fallout from major academic fraud scandals.

Even though March has ended, the madness is at its peak. Here’s what you need to know about Saturday’s games.

No. 2 seed Villanova versus No. 2 seed Oklahoma

Ryan Arcidiacono after Villanova defeated Kansas 64-59 to reach the Final Four Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Getty Images

Oklahoma’s senior sharpshooter Buddy Hield is widely regarded as the most complete player left in the tournament, and possibly in all of college basketball. He averaged 25.4 points per game this season and 29.3 points per game in the NCAA tournament so far. He scored 37 points in the Sooners’ win over No. 1 Oregon in the Elite Eight and he leads the NCAA in 3-pointers made, with 127. Hield’s accuracy and evident enjoyment of the game have earned him numerous comparisons to the NBA’s hottest player, Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry. The Washington Post compared the two players, saying, “The last time a college player looked this unstoppable was in 2008 when Stephen Curry helped carry Davidson to the Elite Eight.” Whether or not Hield lives up to this massive hype, it’s easy to imagine him making his mark on the NBA next season.
Hield is Oklahoma’s best shooter, but his teammates aren’t just standing idly by. As a team, Oklahoma makes 42.8 percent of its 3-pointers, the second-best rate in men’s college basketball this season, according to the NCAA.
Oklahoma may have trounced Villanova in December, but Villanova is a different team than it was earlier in the year. Need proof? Look at the Elite Eight game. The Wildcats beat No. 1 overall seed Kansas, holding one of the best programs in the country to a season-low 59 points. Led by senior Ryan Arcidiacono, who’s no slouch from the 3-point line, and junior Josh Hart, ‘Nova’s leading scorer and stalwart defender, the Wildcats will be an even match for Hield and Co.
Villanova is the winningest team in the NCAA over the last three seasons with 95 wins, according to ESPN. It says the senior class, including Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu, have 115 over four seasons.

No. 1 seed UNC versus No. 10 seed Syracuse

Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim was suspended for nine games last year when it was found that the basketball program had violated NCAA academic rules. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Both of these teams have been found to have committed systematic and prolonged academic fraud. It’s difficult to talk about this matchup without delving into what it means to be a student-athlete, the role of amateurism in sports and the nature of the NCAA.
Syracuse, whose NCAA tournament invitation raised eyebrows considering its middling, 13-loss season in which the Orange lost five of their last six games, has turned itself into the Cinderella story of the tournament. Its scrappy underdog status, however, is marred by the fact it’s on probation for academic violations. Last year, Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim was suspended for nine games by the NCAA and the team was stripped of 108 wins after an investigation dating back more than a decade revealed cash payouts to players, forged homework and other instances of wrongdoing. The program also self-imposed a postseason ban last year.
UNC, which has been one of the top teams in the country for most of the season, is facing its own academic fraud violations. Basketball players, as well as other athletes, enrolled in so-called paper classes, which didn’t really exist. The students simply needed to turn in a paper to get credit. And many of the papers, it was found, were written by people other than the student-athletes. Although the violations were brought to light more than a year ago, the program is still “under investigation.”
For more information, analysis and opinions on the programs’ wrongdoing and what it means for the NCAA, check out Pat Forde’s Yahoo Sports column “On Probation vs. Under Investigation: Final Four marred by schools with scandals,” CBS Sports’ “North Carolina Vs. Syracuse In The Final Four Is A Headache For The NCAA,” and The Associated Press’ take, “Final Four matchup as much about scandals as baskets.”

Stay tuned for the women’s Final Four preview!

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Health April 1, 2016

Malware Attacks On Hospitals Put Patients At Risk

Hackers crippled computer systems at several MedStar hospitals, including the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. Molly Riley/AP hide caption

toggle caption Molly Riley/AP

The first sign seems innocuous enough if you don’t know what you’re looking at: Files in the computer appear as decrypt.html, or decrypt.txt instead of their usual names.

Then, you click. A box pops up that gives you an ultimatum: Want the file? You’ll have to pay up, and probably in bitcoin.

That is what happened at U.S. hospitals in the past month in California, Kentucky, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The malware attacks have left the 14 hospitals — 10 of which are part of the MedStar hospital group — unable to access patient data and, in some cases, having to turn patients away.

Hospitals are not alone in their vulnerability; last month, a cafe in Maryland was hit with a ransomware attack. In another instance, Mac computers were targeted. Last year, police in Massachusetts paid hackers to return access to their data. Companies and individuals in the U.S. lost more than $24 million to ransomware in 2015, according to the FBI.

And in February at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, administrators paid the asking price of 40 bitcoin, about $16,664 at the time, to regain access to their data. At MedStar, the hospital is being asked to pay 45 bitcoin.

Several MedStar employees saw a message on their computer screens: “You just have 10 days to send us the Bitcoin. After 10 days we will remove your private key and it’s impossible to recover your files.”

“The big difference with health care is that the consequences are greater,” Kevin Fu, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who studies computer security issues in hospitals, told the MIT Technology Review. “You can lose your email and that’s annoying, but patient records are needed in order to treat patients.”

Though bitcoin is not in itself a driver of cybercrime, it allows the hackers to have instant access to the money without its having to go through a bank or credit card. Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, a nonprofit dedicated to digital currency advocacy, explains that often the ransomware will include easy-to-follow instructions on how to quickly access and trade bitcoin.

Hospitals hit by the attack felt the pressure of being without patient information. At a MedStar hospital, a patient was given an antibiotic that, a nurse told the Washington Post, “should have been stopped eight hours earlier.” At the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center last month, patients were diverted to other hospitals. In both situations, the hospitals returned to paper records.

On its website Thursday, MedStar posted: “MedStar Health’s priority continues to be providing high quality, safe patient care, as we work to fully restore all of our major IT systems. Our doors remain open, with a few exceptions. With the dedication and commitment of our clinicians and associates, we are thankful that we have been able to perform more than 1,000 surgeries since Monday morning’s malicious malware attack.”

Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, emphasizes that hospitals should take steps to protect patient data: “Hospital leaders are using the lessons learned in previous attacks and are applying best cybersecurity practices shared by the AHA in an effort to anticipate and respond to existing and emerging threats,” he says.

The FBI is investigating several of these recent attacks. An FBI official tells NPR:

“Companies can prevent and mitigate malware infection by utilizing appropriate backup and malware detection and prevention systems, and training employees to be skeptical of emails, attachments, and websites they don’t recognize. The FBI does not condone payment of ransom, as payment of extortion monies may encourage continued criminal activity, lead to other victimizations, or be used to facilitate serious crimes.”

Hospitals can take a variety of steps to safeguard against these kinds of attacks, like using HTTPS encryption, two-factor authentication and implementing file backups on a separate server. “For hospitals right now, backups of customer data on unconnected machines or machines in other networks is essential,” Van Valkenburgh says.

He adds that patients should have more control over who has access to their personal records, and when. But until then? “We really are at the mercy of these centralized institutions,” he says.

Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Business April 1, 2016