Reposted from Boston Globe

Richard “Rick” Abath, the guard who opened the door to two thieves who robbed Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of masterpieces worth more than $500 million in 1990, died Friday at his Vermont home, according to his attorney. “He died peacefully at home after a long illness,” Abath’s attorney, George Gormley, said during a telephone interview Tuesday. “Sadly, it’s the death of a good person who demonstrated that by living a good life that belied all of the suspicions about what his involvement was in this incident 34 years ago.” Abath, 57, steadfastly maintained that he played no role in what remains the largest art heist in history and one of Boston’s most notorious unsolved mysteries. Yet, he remained under intense scrutiny over the decades by federal investigators who never ruled out the possibility that the thieves had help from someone with inside knowledge about security at the museum. Abath was a 23-year-old musician working as a night watchman at the Gardner Museum at 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, when he buzzed the door to let the thieves inside after they claimed they were police officers, investigating a disturbance.

The thieves handcuffed and duct taped Abath and the other guard on duty and left them in the basement while they spent 81 minutes pulling and slashing treasured works from their frames. They stole 13 pieces, including three Rembrandts, among them his only seascape, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee;” Vermeer’s “The Concert;” works by Manet, Flinck and Degas; an ancient Chinese vase; and a bronze eagle finial atop a Napoleonic flag.  Nobody has ever been charged with the crime and none of the works have been recovered, despite a $10 million reward for information leading to their safe return and promises of immunity. “For him it was just being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Gormley, adding that Abath believed he had to open the door to the pair claiming to be police officers. “His actions were completely appropriate, and this became a curse that he was forced to live with.” On Tuesday, Donna Hardwick, a spokesperson for the museum, released a statement saying, “We are very sorry to learn of Richard Abath’s passing. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum would like to extend our condolences to all his family and friends. Out of respect for his family we have no further comment at this time.” She said the investigation aimed at recovering the stolen artwork remains active and ongoing. Kristen Setera, a spokesperson for the FBI, declined to comment on Abath’s death, but said in a statement, “As far as our efforts to locate the stolen artwork, it’s a very active investigation and our focus is on recovering the art and returning it to its rightful place” at the museum. Abath told the Globe in 2013 that he had been told directly by a federal investigator several years before, “You know, we’ve never been able to eliminate you as a suspect.” Authorities have said the museum’s security protocol prohibited entry of unauthorized personnel, including police, but Abath said he was unaware of that. When the two men wearing police uniforms ordered Abath to step away from the back of the security desk, he complied — removing himself from the museum’s only emergency alarm that could have alerted police to the robbery. Abath said he followed orders to avoid being arrested, because he had tickets to attend a Grateful Dead concert later that day in Hartford. Motion sensors that recorded the thieves’ steps as they moved through the museum indicated they never entered the first-floor gallery where Manet’s Chez Tortoni was stolen, according to the FBI and the museum’s security director, Anthony Amore. Only Abath’s steps, as he made his rounds before the thieves arrived, were picked up there, they said. The sensors also revealed that Abath briefly opened the side door to the museum on Palace Road shortly before he buzzed the thieves in at the same entrance. “They wanted to know if I had taken the painting and stashed it somewhere,” Abath told Globe correspondent and author Stephen Kurkjian in 2013. “I told them, as I’ve said a hundred times before and since, I had absolutely nothing to do with the robbers or the robbery.” Abath moved to Vermont in 1999.

He graduated from college in 2010, according to previous reports in the Brattleboro Reformer. Abath, who worked as a teacher, and his wife, Diana, lived quietly in Brattleboro, but were frequently approached by investigators and members of the media seeking interviews about the Gardner heist, according to Gormley. He had been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Boston several times, Gormley said. “It was just an irritation that you couldn’t escape,” said Gormley, adding that Abath and his wife were very protective of their privacy and shunned most interviews. “I think he rose above all of this and tried, and I think successfully to live a good and honorable life and did so in a community that accepted him for who he was and what he was formerly dragged into.” Robert Fisher, a former assistant US attorney who oversaw the Gardner investigation from 2010 to 2016, said the heist “definitely had an impact” on Abath’s life and “brought him into the orbit of the FBI and an investigation that lasted for decades and is still ongoing.” As one of only two eyewitnesses inside the Gardner museum at the time of the robbery, Abath was “a valuable resource” for investigators who frequently reached out to him with questions while reviewing the case, Fisher said. He described Abath as “a cooperative guy.” “As you learn new things in any investigation, it’s helpful to reach out to people who were there,” Fisher said. “He was a piece of the puzzle.”

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Reposted from

The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) has released its Annual Incident Review Summary and Year End Infographic for 2023. The Annual Incident Review Summary is based on more than 140 wildland fire incident reports and lessons shared with the LLC in 2023. The report condenses information from these reports into 10 pages, highlighting lessons for safer wildland firefighting operations. The Year End Infographic is a 2-page snapshot of the 2023 fire year. It highlights selected lessons learned and provides summary statistics on reported fatalities, near miss incidents, and injuries in 2023. The purpose of these two documents is to promote learning in the wildland fire service, with the recognition that risk cannot always be eliminated, and learning is vital to thriving in high-risk environments. This information may be used to guide annual refreshers and prepare for the 2024 fire year.

The following are some notable findings from 2023:

• Fatalities. There were 13 wildland firefighter fatalities in 2023.
• Significant increase in UTV-involved incidents. Between 2009 and 2022, only about two incidents involving Utility Terrain Vehicles (UTVs) were reported each year on average. In 2023, there were 13 UTV-involved incidents. In 12 of these incidents, a UTV either rolled over or caught fire.
• Burn injuries. There were 16 separate burn injury incidents reported. The most common scenarios resulting in burn injures continue to be drip torch use and falling into hot ash or active flame exposure.

• Hit by tree. 12 tree strikes occurred under a variety of conditions in seven different states. Two UTVs were struck by trees. In multiple instances, trees fell toward hand crews and engine crews.

• Entrapment. There were 12 separate entrapment events. Over 90% of the reported entrapments occurred during initial attack. Seven of those entrapments involved equipment becoming disabled and impacted by fire.

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Reposted from CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is pleased to announce the release of a new resource titled, Violence Prevention through De-escalation Video, to help critical infrastructure and public gathering location stakeholders identify concerning behaviors and mitigate the risk of an incident of targeted violence. This video provides both security and non-security trained professionals with conflict prevention techniques and recommended practices that may augment more traditional security protocols. This approach can help individuals who have observed activities and behaviors that may be considered suspicious or indicative of potentially violent activity.

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Reposted from ArtNews

Two climate protestors threw soup at a Claude Monet painting at the Musee de Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France, on Saturday afternoon. The target of the environmental activists was Monet’s 1872 work Le Printemps (Spring). While the painting was protected by glass, the museum told Le Monde that it would “still undergo a close inspection and restoration.” The Musee de Beaux-Arts also told Le Monde that it would file a complaint for vandalism, and that the two activists had been arrested. The protestors had written on their T-shirts the words Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response), the same group that threw soup at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris earlier this year.

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Reposted from EMR-ISAC

On Feb. 12, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—on behalf of the collective group of industry and government partners that comprise the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC)—released JCDC’s 2024 Priorities. Similar to the 2023 JCDC Planning Agenda, JCDC’s 2024 Priorities will help focus the collective group on developing high-impact and collaborative solutions to the most pressing cybersecurity challenges.

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Reposted from EMR-ISAC

In November 2022, the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and AT&T announced the launch of a new website with the goal of helping communities prepare for future climate extremes. Since the 2022 launch, the Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR) has established itself as an award-winning, free, national online source for sophisticated climate data down to the neighborhood level. Community leaders, infrastructure managers, civil engineers and public safety officials can use ClimRR to build resilience against the impacts of future climate hazards like extreme heat, heavy rainfall, wildfire, and drought. This climate-related hazard data can be integrated with local demographic and infrastructure data, so that data on future conditions can be incorporated into Hazard Mitigation Plans, land use plans, infrastructure design, and FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT). Last month, a major update to ClimRR was released. FEMA, ANL, and AT&T hosted a webinar on Feb. 1 on how to use ClimRR’s newly enhanced features. This webinar was recorded and is now available on demand via ANL’s YouTube channel. The webinar showed participants how to:

• Generate a local report assessing future climate hazards and community impacts. The new climate projection page allows you to customize a report for your area, combining variables like population demographics with hazard projections.
• Access maps, charts and visualizations. Create easy-to-understand maps, charts and graphs so you can quickly find and communicate important climate risks facing your community.
• Interpret climate hazard data points. Climate data can be overwhelming to explain and understand. Using the portal’s educational features, participants will learn to identify communities most at risk.

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Reposted from Tim Richardson

The talk of the Super Bowl has been the sideline antics of Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce. After Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco fumbled the ball, Travis Kelce purposely bumped into Coach Andy Reid and yelled “Coach, I sure would enjoy some more playing time!” or something like that before being pulled away by a teammate. Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy was caught on camera just before the outbreak with a warning for his offensive players: “Emotions [are high] right now, just stick together. We got each other,” Nagy said. “That’s who we are. We talked last night about being us and being champions. These are the moments where it doesn’t get too big. Stick together.” The outburst has been categorized as “passion” and “part of the game” by some, while others have vilified it as highly inappropriate and telling of Kelce’s true nature. He was asked about the incident right after the Super Bowl. “Oh you guys saw that? Man, it was…I’m going to keep that between us unless my mic’d-up tells the world, but I was just telling him how much I love him.” It sure appeared Kelce bullied his way to get what he wanted. While doing so, he showed other athletes that yelling at and threatening your coach is acceptable. While Coach Reid later said, “I love it that the guy loves to play “, that doesn’t diminish the fact that Kelce communicated with his coach inappropriately. Reid deescalated the situation by doing the right thing in the moment… nothing. The situation could have been avoided had Kelce simply taken a short pause to gather his thoughts before confronting his coach. That is, understandably, a very difficult to do when emotions are high. That is why having a level-headed leader is so important. They help keep their teams in control. They pause to think and act clearly, and they do so even during heated conversations. 

Early in my career, I led a project with a highly volatile co-worker. While we shared a common work goal, we had different ideas on achieving it. We both had very strong convictions which eventually resulted in a heated argument at work. Because neither of us remained calm, our dispute devolved into an agitated confrontation which strained the rest of our working relationship. In our work and personal lives, we are going to interact with others who have strong convictions and sometimes even strong emotions. If we aren’t careful, we can be dragged into an intense confrontation. Take a lesson from Andy Reid. Always take the high road by keeping in control. You’ll avoid having to clean up a bigger mess later.

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Reposted from CISA

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is launching a new, online Cybersecurity Emotions Video Campaign. Recognizing the challenges faced by the average technology user in adopting online safety practices, this series takes a unique and relatable approach to everyday cybersecurity best practices in four short videos. By translating cybersecurity practices into lively and humorous narratives, CISA aims to build a stronger connection with our audience by fostering awareness and understanding in a way that is both entertaining and educational.

This series centers around four basic cyber hygiene steps everyone can take to be more cybersecure:

1.        Update Your Password

2.      Enable Multifactor Authentication

3.      Think Before Your Click

4.      Update Your Software

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Reposted from The New York Times

The British Museum recovered more than 350 ancient artifacts that were looted from its storerooms and is putting some on show.

For six months, a team at the British Museum has been working with police to recover hundreds of engraved gems and other items of jewelry that museum officials say a former curator stole from its store rooms. The team has also been planning an exhibition. “Rediscovering Gems,” occupying a room by the British Museum’s grand entrance through June 2, includes dozens of the tiny artifacts known as cameos and intaglios — 10 of which are recovered items. Art dealers who bought the stolen items — some of which date back to ancient Rome — have so far returned 357 treasures to the museum, said Aurélia Masson-Berghoff, a curator who is leading the recovery team. Although over 1,000 items are still missing, and could take years to locate, Masson-Berghoff said her team was hopeful that those could be recovered, too. The new exhibition was part of the museum’s efforts to be transparent about the thefts and its efforts to retrieve the items, she added. During a recent tour of the show, Claudia Wagner, the museum’s senior research associate for gems, said that the jewels had long been underappreciated. The tiny artifacts — often less than a half-inch tall — are hard to discern in natural light, making them easy to ignore, she added. In the exhibition hall, small torches are provided so that visitors can see them properly. Some of the museum’s previous Greek and Roman curators had preferred to focus on bigger and more renowned artifacts like statues and vases, Wagner said, which could explain why many of the cameos and intaglios were uncatalogued before the thefts. On the tour of the show, Wagner and Masson-Berghoff discussed the origins of these precious gems, their uses in ancient times and how they once entranced Europe’s art connoisseurs.

These are edited extracts of that conversation. WAGNER The first engraved gems were what’s called intaglios — where the design is carved into the gem or glass. They were used as seals, so people would push them into wet clay — the equivalent of writing your signature. They were invented in Mesopotamia, but it’s the ancient Greeks who make them into their own art form, and because the Greeks were so interested in mythology, you immediately have all the gods represented. If you look very, very closely at this tiny little figure, he has an ivy wreath in his hair. That’s because this is Bacchus, the god of wine.

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