They live in some of America’s most exclusive enclaves, alongside stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jay Leno, and Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, but the residents of Bel Air, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, and much of Beverly Hills are in the grip of a crime wave. Over the last year, masked crews—and one solo bandit known as the Bel Air Burglar—have made off with tens of millions in loot, leaving the L.A.P.D. stymied and victims swapping theories about how the thieves know exactly when and where to strike.
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The nightmare began in August with Blaster, a new kind of virus, which infected computers through their Internet connections, without e-mails or attachments, replicated on its own, and may have played a role in the recent blackout in the U.S. Northeast. A week later, things got worse: the sixth version of SoBig,a virus more sophisticated and cunning each time it appeared, was programming innocentcomputers to an unknown sinister end. In Finland, Michael Shnayerson learns how a ponytailed virus hunter, Mikko Hypponen, raced to defuse the threat—and how lethal these cyber-plagues can be.
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Signed by the artist, certified by his estate—it's got to be an original Andy Warhol, right? Not unless the Warhol authentication board says so. But dealers and collectors are crying foul over the four-member board's perplexing verdicts, which have turned high-priced art into wall decoration
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Department of the Interior employees are horrified by how Secretary Gale Norton and her powerful deputy, J. Steven Griles, have allowed industry to exploit America’s wilderness. Probing stealthy bureaucratic maneuvers and Griles’s ties to coal, oil, and gas, the author finds a massive, irreversible landgrab.
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