(The Center Square) – The U.S. Government Accountability Office says leadership is needed to fully define quantum threat mitigation strategy. A new report released by the agency emphasizes the urgent need for comprehensive federal leadership to address the emerging cybersecurity risks posed by quantum computing, warning that without prompt and coordinated action, adversarial nations might exploit quantum technology to undermine national security. "It is important for the Office of the National Cyber Director to act on our recommendation now for several reasons," Marisol Cruz Cain, director with GAO's Information Technology and Cybersecurity team, wrote in an email to The Center Square. "Adversaries could copy data protected by cryptography today and store it with the intention of accessing it later once a cryptographically relevant quantum computer is developed." The director is also the lead author of The Future of Cybersecurity. "The key to successful migrations is to start planning now and not wait until a CRQC is on the horizon," Cain wrote. "A fully comprehensive strategy will provide agencies with more clarity on their responsibilities and the common outcomes they are aiming to achieve. It will also provide the nation a better-defined roadmap for allocating and managing resources and holding participants accountable for achieving results." A cryptographically relevant quantum computer is a quantum computer that can run algorithms to crack or weaken existing cryptography. Quantum computing is a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to solve complex problems at an unprecedented speed, which also poses significant risks in today's cybersecurity. The report says various documents have been developed over the past eight years that have contributed to an emerging U.S. national quantum computing cybersecurity strategy. The Government Accountability Office has identified three goals moving forward. The first goal is to standardize post-quantum cryptography, the second would be to migrate federal systems to that cryptography, and the third would encourage all sectors of the economy to prepare for the threat. The report identifies gaps in federal agency preparedness and a lack of clear leadership to oversee the transition to quantum-safe systems, as "No single federal organization is responsible for the U.S. strategy’s coordination." While agencies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology have taken necessary steps to develop quantum-resistant cryptographic standards, the report found inconsistencies in how federal agencies implement recommendations. The Government Accountability Office says national strategies should ideally contain six characteristics: • Purpose, scope, and methodology. • Problem definition and risk assessment. • Objectives, activities, milestones, and performance measures. • Resources, investments, and risk management. • Organizational roles, responsibilities, and coordination. • Implementation and integration. According to the report, the accountability office was asked to investigate the federal government's strategy for addressing threats posed by quantum computers to the nation's cryptography. The current encryption methods are designed to secure sensitive data, but unfortunately, could potentially become vulnerable to future efforts of quantum-enabled decryption in the future. The report also stresses that the federal government will need to act swiftly to implement quantum-resistant cryptography in order to ensure that those critical systems would remain secure. According to the report, "some experts predict that a quantum computer capable of breaking certain cryptography – referred to as a cryptographically relevant quantum computer – may be developed in the next 10 to 20 years." The agency also identified challenges in workforce development and noted a shortage of professionals with expertise in quantum computing and cybersecurity, suggesting federal agencies invest in training programs and collaborate with private sector leaders to ensure a skilled future workforce that is ready to tackle any quantum-related threats. The report serves as a roadmap for quantum threat mitigation and outlines ways the federal government could appoint a centralized leadership body to oversee the implementation of quantum-safe measures. The report also calls for increased funding for quantum research and development and stronger public-private partnerships to address other vulnerabilities while also emphasizing that proactive leadership is critical to ensuring the United States remains at the forefront of cybersecurity in the quantum era.

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'I prepared myself and it's paid off': Day-Wicks returns home with BombersFormer Tulane quarterback Darian Mensah has already found a new program in Duke, while Mississippi State's Michael Van Buren Jr., Wisconsin's Braedyn Locke and Cal’s Fernando Mendoza are exploring changes of their own in the transfer portal . Mensah, a redshirt freshman with three years of eligibility remaining, told ESPN on Wednesday he has transferred to Duke. He attended the Blue Devils men's basketball game against Incarnate Word on Tuesday night. The Blue Devils (9-3) will face Mississippi in the Gator Bowl, but without 2024 starting quarterback Maalik Murphy and backup Grayson Loftis, who also entered the portal. Mensah, viewed as one of the top players in the portal, threw for 2,723 yards and 22 touchdowns and completed 65.9% of his passes. He led the Green Wave to a 9-4 record and the American Athletic Conference championship game, where they lost 35-14 to Army. Tulane will play Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl on Sunday. Van Buren, Mendoza and Locke announced on social media they had entered the portal. Van Buren started eight games as a true freshmen for the Bulldogs. He threw for 1,886 yards on 55% passing with 16 total touchdowns and seven interceptions for the Bulldogs (2-10, 0-8 Southeastern Conference). He took over as the starter when Blake Shapen suffered a season-ending shoulder injury in a 45-28 loss to Florida on Sept. 21. Shapen has said he plans to return next season. Van Buren, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound passer from St. Frances Academy in Maryland, had two 300-yard performances for the Bulldogs, including 306 yards and three touchdown passes in a 41-31 road loss against Georgia. Story continues below video Mendoza threw for 3,004 yards in 2024 with 16 TDs, six interceptions and a 68.7 completion percentage. “For the sake of my football future this is the decision I have reached,” he posted. Locke passed for 1,936 yards with 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions for Wisconsin this season. He said he will have two years of eligibility remaining at his next school. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

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The 26-year-old man charged in last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO appeared in a Pennsylvania courtroom on Tuesday, where he was denied bail and his lawyer said he'd fight extradition to New York City, where the attack happened. Luigi Nicholas Mangione was arrested Monday in last Wednesday's attack on Brian Thompson after they say a worker at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, alerted authorities to a customer who resembled the suspected gunman. When arrested, Mangione had on him a gun that investigators believe was used in the attack and writings expressing anger at corporate America, police said. As Mangione arrived at the courthouse Tuesday, he struggled with officers and shouted something that was partly unintelligible but referred to an “insult to the intelligence of the American people.” Mangione is being held on Pennsylvania charges of possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. Manhattan prosecutors have charged him with five counts, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a forged instrument. Here are some of the latest developments: What's the latest? Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Mangione mostly stared straight ahead during the hearing, occasionally consulting papers, rocking in his chair, or looking back at the gallery. At one point, he began to speak to respond to the court discussion but was quieted by his lawyer. Judge David Consiglio denied bail to Mangione, whose attorney, Thomas Dickey, told the court that his client did not agree to extradition and wants a hearing on the matter. Blair County (Pennsylvania) District Attorney Peter Weeks said that although Mangione's fighting extradition will create “extra hoops” for law enforcement to jump through, it won’t be a substantial barrier to sending him to New York. What evidence has been gathered? In addition to a three-page, handwritten document that suggests he harbored “ill will toward corporate America,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Monday that Mangione also had a ghost gun, a type of weapon that can be assembled at home and is difficult to trace. Officers questioned Mangione, who was acting suspiciously and carrying multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a U.S. passport, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Officers also found a sound suppressor, or silencer, “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” she said. He had clothing and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter and a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, the commissioner said. What do we know about Mangione? Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and that his last known address is in Honolulu. Mangione, who was valedictorian of his Maryland prep school, earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a university spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday. Mangione comes from a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather Nick Mangione, who died in 2008, was a successful real estate developer. One of his best-known projects was Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. Mangione likely was motivated by his anger with what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies and a disdain with corporate greed, said a law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press. He wrote that the U.S. has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and that the profits of major corporations continue to rise while “our life expectancy” does not, according to the bulletin, which was based on a review of the suspect’s hand-written notes and social media postings. The defendant appeared to view the targeted killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO as a symbolic takedown and may have been inspired by “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, whom he called a “political revolutionary,” the document said. The shooting and a quick escape Police said the person who killed Thompson left a hostel on Manhattan's Upper West Side at 5:41 a.m. on Wednesday. Eleven minutes later, he was seen on surveillance video walking back and forth in front of the New York Hilton Midtown, wearing a distinctive backpack. At 6:44 a.m., he shot Thompson at a side entrance to the hotel, fled on foot, then climbed aboard a bicycle and within four minutes had entered Central Park, according to police. Another security camera recorded the gunman leaving the park near the American Museum of Natural History at 6:56 a.m. still on the bicycle but without the backpack, police said. After getting in a taxi, he headed north to a bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, arriving at around 7:30 a.m. From there, the trail of video evidence runs cold. Police have not located video of the suspect exiting the building, leading them to believe he likely took a bus out of town. Police said they are still investigating the path the suspect took to Pennsylvania. “This just happened this morning," Kenny said. "We’ll be working, backtracking his steps from New York to Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Kenny said. Associated Press reporters Lea Skene, Matt O'Brien, Sean Murphy and Cedar Attanasio contributed to this report.

The Punjab and Haryana governments on Friday declared a seven-day state mourning till January 1 as a mark of respect to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Official spokespersons of both state governments said that as per the letter of the Union home ministry, during this mourning period, no official celebrations would be held in the offices of the Punjab government and the national flag would be flown at half-mast. India lost a visionary statesman: Punjab guv Punjab governor and UT administrator Gulab Chand Kataria expressed deep sorrow and grief over the passing of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. ‘With profound grief and deepest reverence, I mourn the passing of Dr Manmohan Singh, who served as the 13th Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014 - a period that marked a transformative era in our nation’s journey. Dr Singh was not merely a political figure, but a visionary statesman who reshaped India’s economic and social landscape through his remarkable leadership and intellectual brilliance”, the governor said. CM Saini, Hooda express grief Haryana chief minister Nayab Saini said the former PM’s contribution to the development of the country will always be unforgettable. In a condolence message, Saini said, “The country has lost not only a visionary statesman but also a dedicated servant of the nation and a great economist.” Expressing grief, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said, “Manmohan Singh was a great economist and pioneer of economic reforms who took the country forward on the path of progress. His death has caused an irreparable loss for the nation.”None

Despite focusing their sharpest political jokes on President-elect Donald Trump for years, especially in the lead-up to Election Day 2024, prominent network comedy shows did not derail Trump’s victory. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and others, along with the usual anti-Trump suspects at NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” were unsuccessful in using their platforms to sway voters away from boosting Trump to a decisive victory in November. Some even raised millions of dollars for Trump’s Democratic opponents, and it didn’t amount to much. The importance of their anti-Trump media barrage was so frustrating for these comedians after Election Day that some resorted to curses and even shedding tears on air. According to a recent study from the media watchdog group Media Research Center, nearly all the political jokes told on each of the five major TV late-night shows at the height of the presidential campaign were anti-Trump. These shows included Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” The study, published late October, found that out of the 1,463 jokes about both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on these five shows from September 3 through October 25, 1,428 of the jokes were targeted at Donald Trump. As MRC analyst Alex Christy noted in his report, “That’s a whopping 40:1 ratio or almost 98 percent to 2 percent.” Even some of the rare anti-Democratic jokes appeared to be softened by hosts. Back when President Biden was still the party’s nominee, NBC’s Meyers tempered a joke about Biden’s age with a disclaimer about Trump’s criminality. “As we made clear on this show repeatedly, there’s no equivalency between a competent 81-year-old who occasionally shows signs of age and a demented 77-year-old criminal who says dead people rigged the election and thinks electric boat batteries will lead to shark attacks,” he said in June. When asked why this anti-Trump offensive didn’t sway the election for Harris, executive editor of MRC Newsbusters, Tim Graham, told Fox News Digital that these hosts were just preaching to the anti-Trump choir and not changing minds. “The so-called comedians on the late-night shows were never going to harm Trump because their audiences are fully stocked with Trump-hating Democrats who want their fix of Trump hatred,” Graham said, adding, “Colbert and Kimmel and the rest sound more like Democrat Senators more than people hired to make you laugh.” The executive editor provided an example of Kimmel bringing out his wife, Molly McNearney, during the Sept. 25 episode of his show to advise Trump to “shut up and go away.” “Go to Mar-a-Lago, spend all day, every day, cheating at golf and masturbating to Newsmax, and let a competent woman take over. That’s my advice. That’s my advice. Thanks for listening,” she said. Throughout the campaign, the longtime sketch show “Saturday Night Live” continued their routine digs at the GOP candidate. In one sketch that took heat from the Trump campaign, the show made light of the assassination attempts against Trump, featuring its Trump impressionist insisting that people love his rallies except when people shoot at them. The line was played for laughs, however, the Trump campaign account called it “disgusting.” The sketch series also got into hot water for having Harris participate in a sketch less than a week ahead of the election. People slammed the vice president and the NBC series for organizing the appearance and not having Trump on as well. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr accused the last-minute Harris invite of being a “clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” adding, “The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.” The Trump campaign told Fox News Digital in November that no one from “SNL” reached out to them for a Trump appearance ahead of the election. In addition to the onslaught of jokes against Trump and his base, multiple late-night hosts actively campaigned and raised funds for the Democratic presidential campaign. Kimmel threw a Biden campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles last June that raised over $30 million for President Biden. Actors George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and former President Obama were among the attendees. That happened less than three months after CBS’ Stephen Colbert participated in a lavish record-setting fundraiser that brought in $26 million for the Biden campaign. Kimmel also helped compose a DNC fundraising email in September that provided links for recipients to send money to the Harris-Walz campaign. In it, he composed a message, that read, “Sorry to break your cold little heart, Donald, but I endorse Kamala Harris for president. I’ve had the privilege of interviewing our Vice President several times. She is a kind, brilliant, and delightful person who cares very much about our country.” Despite all these efforts on behalf of mainstream comedians to stop Trump, the candidate won a decisive victory over Harris on Nov. 5, prompting her late-night supporters to meltdown in response. “Well, f—. It happened again.” Colbert said during his show following Trump’s victory. “After a bizarre and vicious campaign fueled by a desperate need not to go to jail, Donald Trump has won the 2024 election.” Fallon appeared crestfallen at the election results, slamming Trump with a sarcastic dig during his show. “Yep, Trump returning to the White House is a huge, historic comeback for someone who literally never went away,” he said. Kimmel told his audience the Wednesday after Election Day, “It was a terrible night last night.” While going through a long list of how many different things Trump’s victory is “terrible” for, the ABC host became emotional and started crying. 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