Masterminds hack IQ society website
BRAINBOXES at Mensa have been outfoxed by crooks who hacked their website.
Private chats between members of the high IQ society have been published on internet forums – and two brainiacs on the board have resigned in protest. The website went offline as the hack was investigated, although it was up and running again yesterday.
One of 700 leaked messages, apparently from a senior member of Mensa, said: “One of the many things we can agree upon between ourselves is that XXXX is a prat.”
Eugene Hopkinson, the former technology officer for Mensa, and his girlfriend Emily Shovlar both resigned when the organisation refused to tell them details of the hack.
Miss Shovlar said: “Even as a director I found myself completely in the dark about this breach. It seems like someone is taunting us. The data leaked so far is fairly innocuous, but Mensa does store IQ scores and bank details.”
A spokeswoman for Mensa, which was founded in 1946 and has 134,000 “genius” members, refused to comment on the leak as it might affect an investigation by the Information Commissioner.
A House-trained duck has become the world’s first official “trick duck” after watching her owner teach pooches.
Echo is just four months old but has already learned 17 skills, which has earned her a “Novice” award from Trick Dogs UK.
She can jump through a hoop, walk up a ramp, push a ball with her bill and play a tiny piano.
Owner Joe Nutkins usually works with canine clients in her training classes.
The 41-year-old, from Clacton-on-sea, Essex, said: “Echo is really fun to work with. I think she thinks she’s a dog, to be honest.”
Joe had intended to integrate Echo with her other ducks, but was forced to keep her inside when an avian flu lockdown hit the UK.
NOTORIOUS drug lord Pablo Escobar may be dead – but he’s left a bizarre legacy of “cocaine hippos” that continue to cause havoc in his former homeland 30 years on.
The Colombian crime boss built up a £24billion fortune in the 1980s and 1990s as his greatly feared Medellín Cartel monopolised the cocaine trade to the US.
He used some of his illicit gains to build an illegal private zoo full of exotic critters, including the potentially deadly African beasts.
But since he was shot dead aged 44 in 1993, the huge hippos have been left to roam the tropical wetlands around his former luxury estate… and have thrived.
Some of the five-tonne animals have attacked people living locally and their multiplying numbers are threatening the region’s environment.
Last week, scientists renewed their calls to cull the animals before their numbers soar out of control.
Escobar, the subject of hit Netflix series Narcos, is one of a host of crime barons to have furnished themselves with dangerous animals and unusual pets over the years.
Dubbed the King of Cocaine, his drug-trafficking career saw him become the seventh richest man in the world, while ruthlessly carrying out kidnappings, murders and bombings.
But Escobar also had a soft spot for animals, illegally importing a host of creatures into Columbia, which he kept at his sprawling 5,500-acre Hacienda Napoles ranch.
The property boasted villas, six swimming pools, a hovercraft, private airport, race track, bullring and entrance gate topped with the plane he’d used to make his first drugs shipment.
Yet Escobar’s ultimate pride and joy was his estate’s personal wildlife park stuffed with kangaroos, giraffes, elephants, antelope, ostriches, rhino, buffalo, camels and lions.
He had 700 workers to look after them and one had trained a flock of white birds to roost in the trees next to his mansion.
When Escobar was killed on a rooftop fleeing police, many of the animals were re-homed in Columbian zoos. However, some were kept on the estate, which has been turned into a public theme park.
But some of Escobar’s hippos escaped into the surrounding countryside.
He originally brought four over from their native Africa in the 1980s, but since his demise the animals, with no natural predators in the South American countryside, have been vigorously breeding in the lush habitat of lakes and waterways around the Magdalena river basin.
With some spotted hundreds of miles away from their original home, they now number up t and boffins say that number could soar to 1,5 2035 without a controversial cull. The hippos, which kill 500 peop Africa each year, left a farmer ser injured last year. And in 2009, one named Pepe was killed by th thorities after attacking hu and killing cattle. There ar worries that they could edg native species. Another infamous drug who created his own m gerie was Mexican Jo “El Chapo” Guzman, wh given a life sentence in the 2019 for his leadership o Sinaloa Cartel.
When he wasn’t runnin multi-billion trafficking racket brutally murdering his rivals, he lik travel around his zoo on a little train, s lions and panthers. It’s said El Chapo also o
The lion would roar a bit – that was enough
a rare white tiger. In fact, the 63-year-old, famed for a string of daring escapes from jail, was once nearly caught by the authorities through his weakness for furry animals.
After one breakout, he bizarrely applied for an official permit to reunite his daughter with her pet monkey called Boots. Tracked by the authorities, he only narrowly managed to escape his hideout before they arrived.
When another Sinaloa chief, Jesus “The King” Zambada, now 45, was finally caught, a whopping 200 animals were confiscated from his ranch, including monkeys, lions, peacocks and ostriches.
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, leader of the Juárez Cartel, also owned a tiger, but for some criminal masterminds the fearsome fauna are not kept purely for pleasure.
Heriberto Lazcano, leader of Mexico’s brutal Los Zetas Cartel, was nicknamed “The Executioner”, partly based on reports that he had his enemies fed to his pet big cats in their pits. He died in a shoot-out in 2012.
Other crime bosses have used exotic animals, such as snakes and tropical fish, to smuggle drugs, filling them with condoms full of cocaine.
In one operation alone, more than 5,000 animals were seized from gangs in Mexico, leaving local zoos overwhelmed.
One zoo boss, Manlio Nucamendi, explained that for the criminals the animals were “a symbol of status and power”.
And the trend for taking the law of the jungle to extremes extends further afield. A Romanian gangster was recently found keeping bears on his estate, while elements of the Italian Mafia are known to own dangerous crocodiles to encourage people to pay up… or be fed to them.
In the 1983 movie Scarface, Al Pacino’s gangster character Tony Montana owns a pet tiger.
The storyline echoed real-life New York mobster “Crazy Joe” Gallo who is said to have kept a lion named Cleo in a basement, which he used to threaten debtors in the 1950s.
Gallo family associate Frank Dimatteo recalled chillingly: “The lion would rattle the chain and roar a little bit… and that was enough.”