| The Justice Department takes on Yahoo hackers | | Remember last fall when a colossal Yahoo hacking forced you to finally change your password? Well, federal prosecutors charged four people , including two Russian intelligence officers, in the attack that affected 500 million accounts (as in half a billion people). Tiny problem: All but one of the charged, Karim Beratov, remain at large. This is the first time the U.S. government has issued criminal charges against a Russian official for cyber attacks (adding to already fraught U.S./Russian relations). Allegedly, the two Russian government officials paid hackers to break into Yahoo's systems as part of an intelligence collection operation and a for-profit scheme to "line the pockets" of all involved. Reminder: Yahoo, which is selling its core Internet business to Verizon, has paid a heavy price for the security breaches. | | Get your wallet ready because here's what the Fed rate hike means for you | | The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark short-term interest rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 0.75% to 1% on Wednesday, making many wonder: What does this mean for me ? In short, if you're a borrower, you're going to pay up. Consumers with credit card debt, adjustable-rate mortgages and home equity lines of credit are the most likely to be affected by the rate hike, says Greg McBride, chief analyst at Bankrate.com. He says the interest rate hikes could mean hundreds of extra dollars in fees for those borrowers. And this won't be the last rate increase this year: Central bank officials indicate there will be three hikes in 2017. Yikes. | | Tax returns and Twitter battles make for the most-interesting tax story we've heard in a while | | Did President Trump leak his own tax return? A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show that he obtained two pages of Trump's 2005 tax return via the U.S. mail. The tax return showed that Trump paid $38 million on more than $150 million of reported income in 2005. On Wednesday, Trump questioned whether the journalist really got the return in the mail. Cue the Twitter battle. David Cay Johnston, who told Maddow that it's entirely possible that Donald Trump sent this to me," responded in kind on Twitter: "Gee, Donald, your White House confirmed my story. POTUS fake Tweet. Sad!" | | Is Pandora Premium a game-changer or just late to the party? | | Pandora is hopping on the on-demand music streaming service with its new Pandora Premium service . The on-demand service, which costs $9.99 a month, lets users choose and play any song or album and use new playlist features. Yeah, it sounds a lot like what Spotify and Apple Music already do. Want to try it out anyway? Pandora will send out invitations to current select users on Wednesday; there will be options for all users to upgrade to the new platform in the coming weeks. | |
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