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Greenpeace used malicious and deceptive tactics to disrupt the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and keep it from going forward, an attorney for the company behind the project said Monday.But attorneys for the environmental advocacy group said during their closing arguments that Greenpeace had little involvement with the 201617 protests that are central to the case.A North Dakota jury began deliberating Monday after a weekslong trial over Dallas-based Energy Transfer’s argument that Greenpeace defamed the company and disrupted the project. What is the case about? The energy company and its subsidiary Dakota Access accused Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA, and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc. of defamation, civil conspiracy, trespass, nuisance, and other acts, and is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.Nine jurors and two alternates heard the case after it went to trial in late February. Their verdict will include what damages, if any, to award.Trey Cox, an attorney for the pipeline company, highlighted damages per claim totaling nearly $350 million.The lawsuit is linked to the protests against the oil pipeline and its controversial Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline as a risk to its water supply. The pipeline has been transporting oil since mid-2017. What did the company say? Cox said Greenpeace exploited a small, disorganized, local issue to promote its agenda, calling Greenpeace “master manipulators” and “deceptive to the core.”Greenpeace paid professional protesters, organized or led protester trainings, shared intelligence of the pipeline route with protesters, and sent lockboxes for demonstrators to attach themselves to equipment, Cox said.Among a number of alleged defamatory statements were that the company deliberately desecrated burial grounds during construction, which Cox said was done to harm Energy Transfer’s reputation in the international investment community. The company made 140 slight adjustments to its route to avoid disturbing sacred or cultural sites, he said.Greenpeace’s “lies impacted lenders,” Cox said. Energy Transfer suffered $96 million in lost financing and $7 million in public relations costs, he said.The pipeline was delayed by five months, and the company lost $80 million because it couldn’t turn on the spigot on January 1, 2017, when oil was to start flowing, Cox said.He asked the jury to find the Greenpeace entities liable.“It needs to be done for Morton County. It needs to be done for Morton County’s law enforcement and the next community where Greenpeace exploits an opportunity to push its agenda at any cost,” Cox told the jury, referring to the county where the protests were centered. How did Greenpeace respond? Attorneys for Greenpeace said Energy Transfer didn’t prove its case or meet its legal burden for defamation or damages, that Greenpeace employees had little or no presence or involvement in the protests, and that Greenpeace had nothing to do with the company’s delays in construction or refinancing.A letter signed by leaders of Greenpeace International and Greenpeace USA and sent to banks involved in the project’s construction loan contained the alleged defamatory statement about desecrating burial grounds, which Cox equated to digging up dead bodies.Greenpeace International attorney Courtney DeThomas said the other side hasn’t shown how the one act of signing a letter with 500 other organizations damaged them, and that the letter would have been sent to the banks with or without Greenpeace’s name on it. Thousands of protesters were already at Standing Rock by the time the letter was signed, she said.Greenpeace USA attorney Everett Jack Jr. disputed the company’s claims as including costs from months before and years after the protests, with no witnesses to say that the Greenpeace entities were the cause.Jack also said no law enforcement officers or any of Energy Transfer’s security personnel testified that Greenpeace was the cause of any violence or property destruction, or was a leader, organizer or instigator in the protests. He said law enforcement “did a phenomenal job of watching the protests.”Greenpeace representatives have criticized the lawsuit as an example of corporations abusing the legal system to go after critics and called it a critical test of free speech and protest rights. An Energy Transfer spokesperson said the case is about Greenpeace not following the law, not free speech. Jack Dura, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
In the past week, law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a warning about the ongoing threat of Medusa ransomware. Heres what you need to know about the threat and how you can protect yourself. What is Medusa ransomware? Ransomware is a type of software that is designed to compromise your information, allowing hackers to steal it. Once these bad actors have your data, they then contact you (or the software contacts you on their behalf), and they inform you that unless you pay a ransom, your data will either be deleted, sold to the highest bidder, or released publicly for all to see. Medusa ransomware is a specific type of ransomware that is currently making the rounds. According to a cybersecurity advisory published by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Medusa ransomware is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) that has been going around since at least June 2021. The advisory states that Medusa relies on a double extortion modelthat encrypts the data on a victim’s hard drive so they cant access it, as well as threatens to decrypt the data and sell it to third parties or release it publicly. Users must pay a ransom in order to gain access to their encrypted files again and/or in order to ensure that the files are not disseminated to additional parties. Ransom payments can range anywhere between $100 to $1 million. The CISA says that as of February 2025, Medusa has impacted over 300 victims from a variety of critical infrastructure sectors, which include medical, education, legal, insurance, technology, and manufacturing. How can I protect myself and my company from Medusa? The advisory posted on the CISAs website states that Medusa is primarily spread through phishing campaigns to steal victims’ credentials. The ransomware can also infiltrate a system through unpatched software vulnerabilities. With that in mind, the notice states that there are several steps an individual and organization can take to mitigate threats from Medusa. These include: Using long passwords on accounts. Implementing multifactor authentication (also known as MFA or 2FA) on accounts. Keeping software and operating systems on all devices up to date. Use VPNs to protect your traffic. Have multiple copies of sensitive data backed up on more than just one device. Finally, its always a good idea to practice common sense measures that help reduce your vulnerability to phishing attempts. This includes never clicking on a link that is emailed or texted to you if you dont recognize the sender. Likewise, never open attachments you receive from an unknown sender. And even when a sender appears legitimate, it is always best to contact them via another channel to ensure that they, indeed, were the one who sent you a link or attachment. A common phishing tactic bad actors use is to send emails to victims that appear to be from valid or known email addressesbut when you look closely at them, youll see that a character or two might have been changed. For example, an I in an email address might have been changed to a 1). At first glance, the email looks legitimate, but the change is a giveaway that someone is trying to misrepresent who they actually are. The CISA maintains a webpage with myriad tips detailing how to further protect yourself from ransomware.
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E-Commerce
Kim Atchison was hunkered down in her grandmother’s storm shelter with her 5-year-old grandson Saturday night in their tiny Alabama hometown of Plantersville when her husband and son raced in.“Get down; get all the way down to the bottom of the cellar,” they told her, saying they could see a twister coming.Atchison said she remembers first the “dead silence” and then hearing the wind that felt like a funnel and things outside hitting against each other.“All was quiet after that because it was that fast,” she said. “Like a snap of a finger and it was gone.”Atchison and her family were among the fortunate ones to avoid being killed in the three-day outbreak of severe weather across eight states that kicked up a devastating combination of wildfires, dust storms, and tornadoesclaiming at least 42 lives since Friday.Two people were killed by a twister in Plantersville. One of the lives lost was that of 82-year-old Annie Free, who “just looked out for everyone,” Atchison’s husband said. The tornado struck Free’s home, leaving only the front patio behind.Darren Atchison spent Monday delivering granola bars and sports drinks to the pummeled neighborhood, driving his all-terrain vehicle around downed trees.More than a half-dozen houses were destroyed while others were left in rough shape, some with walls peeled clean off. The tornado flipped a trailer onto its roof and toppled trees in every direction.When Heidi Howland emerged from her home after hiding in her bedroom underneath a mattress with her husband, kids and grandkids as the twister approached, she found fallen trees and broken car windows.Many of her neighbors whose houses were damaged came to her front porch to take refuge from the rain after the storm passed Saturday night. One was Free’s daughter, who Howland said cried late into the night because the first responders couldn’t find her mother.Free’s body wasn’t found until the morning.Also killed was Dunk Pickering, a fixture in the community who often hosted live music events and helped neighbors during tough times. Neighbor John Green found Pickering’s body in the wreckage of a building just across the street from Green’s home.“Whether he knew you or not, he would help anyone,” Green said. “I’ve known him for 20 years. He’s been like that ever since the day I first met him.”Green and other neighbors spent at least five hours Saturday night pulling people from the rubble and carrying them to paramedics who were unable to reach the area because roads were blocked by debris. Wildfires in Oklahoma Wind-driven wildfires across the state destroyed more than 400 homes over the weekend and will continue to be a threat in the coming days because of high winds.Dozens of fires were still burning across the state on Monday, said Keith Merckx at Oklahoma Forestry Services, and much of the state including the Oklahoma City area remained under fire warnings.While conditions over the weekend allowed crews to get a handle on most wildfires across Texas and Oklahoma, forecasters at the National Weather Service said extremely critical fire weather conditions were expected Tuesday over an area spanning from southeastern New Mexico through the Texas Panhandle and into western Oklahoma.“These fires, once they get started, become really hard to stop. They move more quickly than our resources can keep up with,” Merckx said.Four deaths so far were blamed on the fires or high winds, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. More than 70 homes were destroyed by wildfire outbreaks Friday in and around Stillwater, home to Oklahoma State University. Tornadoes and high winds across the South In Mississippi, six people died and more than 200 were displaced by a string of tornadoes across three counties, the governor said.Within about an hour of each other on Saturday, two big tornadoes tore through Walthall County, Mississippi, according to the National Weather Service. The strongest one packed winds of 170 mph (274 kph) when it swept a well-built home from its foundation, leaving a pile of debris behind, the agency said in an updated report late Monday.Three people died in the county, including 7-year-old Carter Young, who was in a mobile home, Walthall County Coroner Chris Blackwell said. The other two people killedGabrielle Pierre, 34, and Jeffery Irvin, 42were in a mobile home next door to the one where Young was found, Blackwell said.Scattered twisters and storm damage led to the deaths of at least 13 people in Missouri, including a 30-year-old man who along with his dog was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning after he was using a generator indoors during the storm, authorities said. In Arkansas, officials confirmed three deaths.As the storm headed east, two boys ages 11 and 13 were killed when a tree fell on their home in western North Carolina early Sunday, firefighters in Transylvania County said. Firefighters found them amid the uprooted three-foot-wide tree after relatives said they had been trapped in their bedroom, officials said.A tornado touched down at about 3 a.m. Monday in a neighborhood in Perquimans County, North Carolina, destroying three mobile homes and damaging several others, according to the National Weather Service. Eight people were injured in the community, with no reported deaths, the weather service said. The community is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Norfolk, Virginia. Dust storms in Kansas and Texas High winds spurred dust storms that led to almost a dozen deaths in car crashes Friday.Eight people died in a Kansas highway pileup involving at least 50 vehicles, according to the state highway patrol. Authorities said three people also were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Sara Cline in Tylertown, Mississippi, Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Nadia Lathan in Austin, Texas; Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeff Roberson in Wayne County, Missouri, contributed. Safiyah Riddle and John Seewer, Associated Press
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