Tag: All Regions

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region has said that Ukraine fired cluster munitions at a village near the Ukrainian border on Friday, but that there were no casualties or damage. The governor made the statement on Saturday during a daily briefing on his Telegram channel, without providing visual evidence. There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian authorities. “In Belgorod district, 21 artillery shells and three cluster munitions from a multiple-launch rocket system were fired at the village of Zhuravlevka,” Governor…

BAGHDAD — Hundreds of protesters attempted to storm Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and the seat of Iraq’s government, early Saturday following reports an ultranationalist group burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Copenhagen. Security forces pushed back protesters, who blocked the Jumhuriya bridge leading to the Green Zone, preventing them from reaching the Danish Embassy. The protest came two days after people angered by the planned burning of the…

The USS Canberra is the latest military collaboration between the two countries as they join forces to combat China’s influence in the Pacific. The United States has commissioned a warship in Sydney, Australia, the first time a US Navy vessel joined active service at a foreign port, as the two close allies step up their military ties in response to China’s expanding regional reach. The Independence-class littoral combat ship – named USS Canberra – was commissioned on Saturday at a…

U.S. prosecutors have accused FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of witness tampering and asked a federal judge to issue an order that would bar the former billionaire and other parties from making public statements likely to interfere with a fair trial. The prosecutors wrote to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday referencing a New York Times article titled “Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case.” The article reported excerpts from Ellison’s personal Google documents…

Former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges of withholding and concealing classified and top-secret documents will begin in Florida on May 20, 2024. That schedule puts the trial at the tail end of the Republican presidential primary process. Trump is currently the front-runner for the GOP nomination and already may have become the nominee by that time. In an order issued in Ft. Pierce, Fla., U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon says the evidence in the case is “extremely voluminous…

Fincantieri and Leonardo have signed a 190-million euro ($211.5 million) contract to maintain the Italian Navy’s Cavour aircraft carrier and the Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio Horizon-class destroyers. Work under the agreement will be conducted until 2028 by the Leonardo and Fincantieri joint venture Orizzonte Sistemi Navali (OSN). The companies will sustain the operational condition of each ship to maintain Italian naval capabilities. Italian Navy’s Horizon-class destroyer ITS Andrea Doria. Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Dean M. Cates/US Navy…

In just the last five years, the “right to repair” movement has shifted from nerdy niche to the mainstream, thanks in part to significant support from the Biden FTC and efforts in states like Minnesota and New York to pass new right to repair laws, making it easier and less expensive for consumers and independent repair shops to gain affordable access to manuals, tools, and replacement parts. Surveys continue to indicate the majority of consumers support such efforts. But a significant…

The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Amazon has agreed to pay a $25 million fine to settle alleged children’s privacy laws violations related to the company’s Alexa voice assistant service. Amazon has offered Alexa voice-activated products and services targeted at children under 13 years old since May 2018. In May 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against Amazon, accusing the company of violating children’s privacy laws,…

The president of Stanford University has stepped down in the wake of an independent investigation that found “substandard practices” in research papers he was involved in. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the leader of the prestigious California university, issued a statement on Wednesday saying he would leave his post, effective August 31. Media reports in the United States had raised questions about “falsified data” in research linked to Tessier-Lavigne, a prominent neuroscientist from Ontario, Canada. But on Monday, a scientific panel commissioned by…

For the first time since the 1980s, the United States has deployed a nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) to South Korea, as the allies launched talks to coordinate their responses in the event of a nuclear war with North Korea. White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell confirmed the rare visit on Tuesday, which had been expected after it was announced in a joint declaration during a summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC in…

Three years ago, the Tennessee state Senate voted of 20-to-9 to keep July 13 a Day of Special Observance marking the birthday of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a millionaire slave trader, Confederate general, mass murderer of more than 200 Black Union POWs, and the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The legislature did remove a bust of Forrest from the Capitol and Gov. Bill Lee stopped issuing a proclamation on Forrest’s birthday. But Tennessee continued to observe July 13…

Backstory: Epstein continued socializing with A-listers despite conviction – media, New reports on Jeffrey Epstein demonstrate deep-going corruption of US ruling elite The U.S. Virgin Islands government is seeking at least $190 million in penalties from JPMorgan Chase in connection to its banking relationship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In a new legal filing on Friday, the USVI’s Attorney General said the territory also wants the financial giant to separately pay damages to victims of Epstein, who killed himself in…

Recent developments raise the prospect that British intelligence agents could finally face justice for their little-known role in the CIA’s global torture program. Britain’s foreign and domestic intelligence apparatus is facing scrutiny by a tribunal tasked with intelligence oversight. On May 26, London’s infamously opaque Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) unanimously issued a landmark ruling which means the complaints of two Saudis brutally tortured at CIA black sites and jailed for years in Guantanamo Bay can finally be heard, at least…

The “missing” witness long touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption was accused Monday of being an unregistered foreign agent for China and international arms trafficker while violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges. Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Gal Luft had already skipped out on his bail while in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the U.S. for a separate case in March—though…

SINGAPORE – DBS Bank has agreed to sell a 77.8 per cent stake in electronic payment services provider AXS to Tower Capital Asia, a private equity firm based in Singapore. The bank will retain a minority stake of 9.9 per cent in AXS, it said on Tuesday. It did not disclose the stake’s sale price. The deal is slated to close by August, and is not expected to have a material impact on DBS’ earnings or net tangible assets for…

NEW YORK – Standard Chartered is ramping up its bullish Bitcoin prediction, targeting as much as US$120,000 (S$161,000) by the end of 2024 – almost quadruple the current price – as increasingly cash-rich miners reduce their sales of the token. “Increased miner profitability per BTC mined means they can sell less while maintaining cash inflows, reducing net BTC supply and pushing BTC prices higher,” Geoff Kendrick at Standard Chartered wrote on Monday. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process in which…