Author: 5amResearch

Son of Russian oligarch Pumpyansky wins appeal against EU sanctions

BRUSSELS: Alexander Pumpyansky, the son of Russian tycoon Dmitry Pumpyansky, won an appeal against sanctions the European Union introduced over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the bloc’s court said on Wednesday. In the ruling, the court said the EU council had admitted that from March 9, 2022 – two weeks after the invasion of Ukraine and six months before the first set of sanctions – Pumpyansky was no longer president and member of the board of Sinara nor board member of TMK,…

US seizes Sinbad crypto mixer used by North Korean Lazarus hackers

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned the Sinbad cryptocurrency mixing service for its use as a money-laundering tool by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group. A cryptocurrency mixer is a server that allows people to deposit crypto, which is mixed among many different wallet addresses to help prevent it from being accurately traced. The mixing service takes a commission from the crypto deposited, and after it is “mixed,” it will send it to another wallet address owned by…

Shopify Files Fresh Lawsuit over DMCA Takedown Harassment

At the peak of the online shopping season, Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify filed a new lawsuit to take a stand against DMCA abuse. The company filed a complaint at a Florida federal court, accusing an Orlando resident of filing dozens of false takedown notices, allegedly to advance their own commercial interests. Signed into law a quarter century ago, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) aimed to equip copyright holders with new tools to protect their works online. A key element…

Finland to shut entire border with Russia over migrant concerns

HELSINKI: Finland will close its entire border with Russia to travellers for the next two weeks in a bid to halt the unusually large flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, which the government and its allies say is an orchestrated move by Moscow. Finland last week shut all but one of its border posts to travellers from Russia, keeping open only the northernmost crossing located in the Arctic.But this too would now close, the government said on Tuesday….

Ike carrier strike group enters Persian Gulf

The aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and its carrier strike group transited the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and entered the Persian Gulf, after arriving in the waters of the Middle East earlier this month amid heightened tensions in the region stemming from the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The carrier, which departed Norfolk, Virginia, in October for a scheduled deployment, is the first carrier to steam in those waters since the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group operated there in September…

Healthcare giant Henry Schein hit twice by BlackCat ransomware

  American healthcare company Henry Schein has reported a second cyberattack this month by the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang, who also breached their network in October. Henry Schein is a Fortune 500 healthcare products and services provider with operations and affiliates in 32 countries and a revenue of over $12 billion reported in 2022. It first disclosed on October 15 that it had to take some systems offline to contain another cyberattack that impacted its business one day before. More than a month…

China investors face tens of billions in losses over shadow bank Zhongzhi Enterprise Group

  As China’s embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group faces a criminal probe, lawyers and analysts are assessing the damage to investors. One estimate puts that at about US$56 billion (S$74.9 billion). More than three quarters of investor cash would be lost, with just 100 billion yuan (S$18.7 billion) being recovered from debt of as much as 460 billion yuan, according to one scenario outlined by Mr Ying Yue, a lawyer at Leaqual Law Firm in Shanghai. He expects…

China warns of coming respiratory surge after pneumonia hit kids

China said a surge in mycoplasma-caused pneumonia in children shows signs of ebbing, but warned that other respiratory illnesses are likely to hit the broader population hard during the mainland’s first winter after Covid restrictions. Health authorities in Beijing say flu, adenovirus and respiratory syncytial virus have surpassed mycoplasma as the most frequently detected pathogens among patients at the city’s top pediatric medical centers.Nearby Tianjin and financial hub Shanghai have also seen their mycoplasma positivity rates trending down in recent…

Three Palestinian students attending US colleges shot and injured in Vermont

Three Palestinian students attending US colleges were shot on Saturday night in Burlington, Vermont, and were being treated for injuries on Sunday, according to the students’ former school in the West Bank. Ramallah Friends School said in a Facebook post on Sunday that three of its graduates had been shot near the University of Vermont Campus – Hisham Awartani, who attends Brown University in Rhode Island, Kinnan Abdel Hamid, who attends Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and Tahseen Ahmed, who attends…

4 found dead near North Carolina homeless camp; 3 shot before shooter killed self, police say

AUTRYVILLE: Deputies responding to a call about shots fired in North Carolina on Sunday found four people shot to death in what appeared to be a campsite for homeless people, authorities said. An initial review of the crime scene indicated someone killed three people before killing themselves, Sampson County Sheriff’s Capt. Eric Pope told WRAL-TV. Two men and two women were found dead around a tent at the end of a private road rutted with huge potholes near Autryville, authorities…

China warns South Korea not to politicise economic issues

BEIJING: Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi warned his South Korean counterpart on Sunday not to politicise economic and tech issues as the two prepared to meet Japan’s top diplomat on the sidelines of a trilateral meeting aimed at boosting cooperation. “China and South Korea have become cooperation partners with highly integrated interests and highly interconnected production and supply chains,” Wang told South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout. “Both sides should jointly resist the…

Saudi Arabia urges all nations to halt weapon exports to Israel (BRICS Joint Meeting)

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia‘s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday urged all nations to cease weapon exports to Israel, according to Al Arabiya Post. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Price made this request during an extraordinary BRICS Joint Meeting, which was being held virtually to address the Israel-Hamas conflict. South Africa is hosting the BRICS groups of nations to convene the virtual BRICS Extraordinary Joint Meeting. Saudi Arabia further demanded the start of a serious and comprehensive peace process to establish a…

China closing, eliminating hundreds of mosques

The Chinese government’s efforts to shut down mosques have extended beyond Xinjiang, an area long criticized for the persecution of Muslim minorities. This expansion has reached the Ningxia region and Gansu province, areas with significant Hui Muslim populations. As per a Human Rights Watch report , which utilizes public documents, satellite imagery, and eyewitness accounts, indicates that these closures are part of an official strategy termed “consolidation.” In addition to closing mosques, local authorities have been altering mosque architectures to…

Ex-Colombia president summoned over 1997 paramilitary massacre

BOGOTA: Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe will appear before the attorney general’s office next week over a 1997 paramilitary massacre, authorities said Thursday. While Uribe was governor of the Antioquia department, a group of 150 right-wing paramilitary members killed at least 15 people in the village of El Aro. Last week, paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, at a hearing with Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, said Uribe “always knew about the operation.” The country has for decades been convulsed by fighting…

Welltok data breach exposes data of 8.5 million US patients

Healthcare SaaS provider Welltok is warning that a data breach exposed the personal data of nearly 8.5 million patients in the U.S. after a file transfer program used by the company was hacked in a data theft attack. Welltok works with health service providers across the U.S., maintaining online wellness programs, holding databases with personal patient data, generating predictive analytics, and supporting healthcare needs like medication adherence and pandemic response. Earlier this year, the Clop ransomware gang exploited a zero-day vulnerability in…

Hacktivists breach U.S. nuclear research lab, steal employee data

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) confirms they suffered a cyberattack after ‘SiegedSec’ hacktivists leaked stolen human resources data online. INL is a nuclear research center run by the U.S. Department of Energy that employs 5,700 specialists in atomic energy, integrated energy, and national security. The INL complex extends over an 890-square-mile (2,310 km2) area, encompassing 50 experimental nuclear reactors, including the first ones in history to produce usable amounts of electricity and the first power plant designed for nuclear submarines….