And the number of single-family starts was up 20 percent from January 2012.
A 26.1 percent drop in starts, from December to January, on construction of apartment buildings and other multi-family homes dampened the news somewhat.
But looking ahead, there was a 1.9 percent increase in January from December in the number of permits issued for construction of single-family homes. The number of such permits was up 29.2 percent from January 2012.
The increase in permits, says Reuters, reinforces expectations that “the housing market will support economic growth this year.”
People walk past the Apple logo at the Apple Store at Grand Central Terminal in New York. Timothy A. Clary /AFP/Getty Images
Apple said today that the computers of some of its employees were attacked by hackers, who used the same vulnerability to access computers at Facebook.
“‘Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plugin for browsers,’ the company said in a statement to AllThingsD. ‘The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.’
“The company noted that it has been shipping Macs without Java since the release of Mac OS X Lion, and that it also has a software mechanism that disables Java if it goes unused for 35 days. Apple is also releasing an updated software tool to detect and remove Java-related malware.”
Last week, Facebook said their systems had been breached in January. Both companies said that no user data had been compromised.
Reuters points out one of the interesting quirks of this hack: This is the “highest-profile cyber” attack to target Mac computers.
“Hackers have traditionally focused on attacking machines running the Windows operating system, though they have gradually turned their attention to Apple products over the past couple of years as the company gained market share over Microsoft Corp.,” Reuters reports.
Fire fighters and utility workers at the scene of a massive gas explosion and fire Tuesday night in Kansas City, Mo. Orlin Wagner/AP
“It sounded like thunder, but it felt like an earthquake,” Tracey Truitt, a lawyer who was working in a nearby building, tells the Kansas City Star about an explosion Tuesday evening that leveled a restaurant in the city’s Country Club Plaza.
At least 16 people were injured and as of early this morning one person remained missing, the Star says.
Our colleagues at KCUR report that “Missouri Gas Energy released a statement Tuesday night regarding the fire, saying: ‘Early indications are that a contractor doing underground work struck a natural gas line, but the investigation continues.’ ”
According to the Star, the blast happened at JJ’s restaurant shortly after 6 p.m. local time. “The force knocked out windows at least a half-block away and was felt nearly a mile away. Flames soared two-thirds higher than the building into the evening sky. Bricks and broken glass were strewn around.”
KCUR says that a strong gas odor had been reported before the explosion, and that customers had been evacuated from the restaurant. It adds that:
“The initial blast was felt at least 5 blocks away and shattered windows in the block adjacent to the restaurant. The restaurant building is for practical purposes destroyed — the roof caved in.”
Investigators trying to piece together a motive in December’s killings in Newtown, Conn., believe that 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza may have been inspired by a similar 2011 massacre in Norway.
The Hartford Courant and CBS News report that authorities searching through Lanza’s belongings after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary discovered several news articles about Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in July 2011.
CBS, citing unnamed investigators, reports that Lanza saw himself in direct competition with Breivik, who set off a bomb in Oslo and also shot dozens of teens at a youth camp. CBS says Lanza was obsessed with topping Breivik’s body count.
According to The Courant, this is just one theory that investigators are pursuing.
CBS also reported that Lanza, who shot his way into Sandy Hook, gunning down 20 students and six staff members before shooting himself, had targeted the school because it was the “easiest target.” Earlier, he had shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza.
What emerges in this exploration of a still unfolding story is a portrait of a mother, apparently devoted but perhaps misguided, struggling to find her son a place in society, and a boy, exceptionally smart in some areas, profoundly deficient in others, who never found a place in the world.
The paper also confirmed that during a search of Lanza’s belongings, authorities had found “thousands of dollars worth of graphically violent video games.”
And detectives working the scene of the massacre are exploring whether Adam Lanza might have been emulating the shooting range or a video-game scenario as he moved from room to room at Sandy Hook, spewing bullets, law enforcement sources have told The Courant.
In a heist right out of movies such as The Italian Job, eight masked gunman drove on to the tarmac at Brussels’ international airport Monday night, sped to a plane being loaded with diamonds and made off with about $50 million worth of the precious stones, authorities say.
“The raid at Brussels airport happened just before 8 p.m. … The heavily armed men drove through the airport security fence in two vehicles, a Mercedes van and a car, and made straight for a Brink’s delivery van. The staff were loading safes full of diamonds on to a … plane bound for Zurich. The gunmen quickly filled their vehicles with the boxes and fled through the same broken security barrier. No shots were fired. A burned-out van was later found nearby. The raid lasted just three minutes.”
Now, what will the thieves do with their loot? If the past is any guide, they won’t get anywhere near $50 million — provided they aren’t caught. They may already have made arrangements with some less-than-scrupulous dealers who will try to unload the diamonds at a deep discount.
“When $14 million in loose diamonds vanished in Belgium, McCaffrey became part of the pack of investigators chasing the thieves around the world.
“McCaffrey soon zeroed-in on a diamond dealer who had set up shop on W. 47th Street, in the Diamond District, and who was selling stones at 30% of market value.
“He discovered that the Manhattan jeweler had been hired to unload the hot rocks by the son of the Belgian who reported the theft. McCaffrey locked up the son and his fence, recovered the diamonds — and personally flew them back to Belgium and the rightful owner.”
Cyberattack headquarters? The 12-story building in a Shanghai suburb that American investigators say houses an operation responsible for hundreds of cyberattacks on companies around the world. Peter Parks /AFP/Getty Images
“Hundreds of investigations convince us” that the Chinese government is at least aware of, and likely sponsoring, cyber thieves who have stolen massive amounts of information from companies around the world, including American defense contractors, a U.S. security firm reported Tuesday.
Virginia-based Mandiant Corp., which posted its findings online, says that its analysis leads it to conclude that “Advanced Persistent Threat 1,” as it calls the operation, “is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors.”
According to Mandiant, since 2006 it has “observed APT1 compromise 141 companies spanning 20 major industries.”
The firm writes that:
“We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support. In seeking to identify the organization behind this activity, our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources. PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”
For its part, as The Associated Press says, “China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as ‘groundless,’ and the Defense Ministry denied any involvement in hacking attacks.”
On Morning Edition today, NPR’s Frank Lanfitt reported that Mandiant’s Dan McWhorter says most of the companies targeted by the hacking have been American. The cyber thieves’ goal, says McWhorter, is to steal information in order to benefit Chinese firms.”In China, the government is very intimately involved in industry,” McWhorter said. “So I think the PLA is motivated to take these documents for huge economic gain.”
Tracking the hacking to the PLA wasn’t that hard, McWhorter said, because the volume was enormous. “We just followed the data, followed the bread crumbs,” he said. “All the network communication kept going back to Shanghai again and again. … And so then we started doing our research, as far as what kind of organizations could be that large doing this type of activity. And that’s what lead us to discover unit 61398.”
The New York Times, which broke the news about Mandiant’s findings, writes that “a growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower” on the outskirts of Shanghai where PLA Unit 61398 is headquartered.
What is Mandiant? Last May, NPR’s Tom Gjelten looked at the company, which was “founded in 2004 by Kevin Mandia, a former Air Force officer with a background in security consulting. The company distinguished itself early by helping companies learn more about who was attacking them, as opposed to protecting the companies from the malicious software, or malware, the attackers were using.”
