Tag: Region Asias

Mila Antonova – a bridge player who multiple media reports this week claim had an affair with Gates starting in 2009 – was captured in a newly unearthed photograph walking alongside Chapman in New York City. The picture, which is believed to have been taken in 2009 or 2010, around the same time as Gates’ alleged trysts with the decades-younger…

The value of frozen Russian private assets under sanctions increased from 18.9 billion euros in December to 24.1 billion euros in late May, the newspaper said. As many as 1,473 individuals and 205 firms from Russia have been sanctioned by the EU, German media added. After the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Western countries have imposed comprehensive sanctions against Russia, including the freezing of nearly half of the country’s foreign currency reserves – amounting to about $300 billion. The European Union alone has frozen assets of Russian entities and individuals worth dozens of billions of dollars under 10 packages of sanctions.

German police have launched a criminal investigation into English rock legend and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters on suspicion of glorifying Nazism during two concerts in Berlin. The musician has insisted the performance was in opposition to fascism. On Friday, in a statement quoted by several media outlets, the Berlin police said that Waters was suspected of inciting hatred, and…

The court ruled that the initial money laundering suspicions were insufficient to warrant the searches at Usmanov’s premises in the first place. The judges also pointed to some “serious deficiencies” in the search warrants requested by Frankfurt’s Public Prosecutor’s Office at the time. Suspicions against Usmanov were based on allegations that were too vague, the court declared. The assumption that…

In March, Der Spiegel claimed a yacht called ‘Andromeda’ had allegedly been used by a team of divers to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines. The publication cited the discovery of traces of explosives in the cabin of the vessel and fake identification documents that were used in the hiring of the boat.  The outlet’s most recent report indicates that metadata…

When then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called for heads to roll after the 2016 census was pulled offline – amid fears IBM’s data servers hosting the survey had been infiltrated – the American enterprise technology giant made an important decision. IBM ran most of the big mainframe systems that had powered core government functions for several decades, earning it billions of…

Hong Kong authorities on Friday condemned a British government call for the removal of a China-imposed national security law that Britain said had been used to persecute, “silence and discredit” pro-democracy opposition figures. Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly wrote in his government’s latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong that he had highlighted at a U.N. hearing in February how Hong…

MOSCOW – Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has started withdrawing its forces from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and transferring its positions there to regular Russian troops, its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published on Thursday. “We are withdrawing the units from Bakhmut. From today at five in the morning, May 25 until June 1, most of the units…

Russia moved ahead on Thursday with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, whose leader said the warheads were already on the move, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such bombs outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. The U.S. State Department denounced the deployment plan, but said Waacshington had no intention of altering its…

European Union officials are considering whether to send Ukraine profits generated from Russian assets frozen within the bloc, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. EU member states and European Commission officials convened on Wednesday to examine how they might move funds held at Euroclear, the world’s largest settlement house, over to Ukraine, as Russian-owned assets there…

A Lebanese judge questioned the country’s embattled central bank governor Wednesday and confiscated his Lebanese and French passports following an arrest warrant from France over corruption charges, judicial officials said. Riad Salameh left immediately after questioning by Judge Imad Kabalan in Beirut, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The questioning lasted about 80 minutes, they…

WASHINGTON – The United States on Wednesday announced the approval of a US$285 million (S$385 million) sale of a National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (“NASAMS”) air defence system and related equipment to Ukraine as Kyiv seeks to boost protection against Russian strikes. “Ukraine has an urgent need to increase its capabilities to defend against Russian missile strikes and aircraft,” the…

Microsoft says a Chinese cyberespionage group it tracks as Volt Typhoon has been targeting critical infrastructure organizations across the United States, including Guam, since at least mid-2021. Their victims span a wide range of critical sectors, including government, maritime, communications, manufacturing, information technology, utilities, transportation, construction, and education. “Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that this Volt Typhoon campaign is pursuing…

(Bloomberg) — US lawmakers are urging Washington to strike back against China for its decision to bar Micron Technology Inc.’s memory chips, threatening to further inflame tensions between the two countries. Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who leads a China-focused congressional committee, wants Changxin Memory Technologies Inc. placed on a blacklist that effectively bars dealings with American firms. That’s…

WASHINGTON — Boeing’s effort to build a new trainer aircraft for the Air Force is plagued by safety problems, schedule and testing delays, and the risk the T-7A Red Hawk could fall even further behind schedule, the Government Accountability Office said in a scathing report. Boeing’s relationship with the Air Force has also been strained by the T-7′s issues, GAO…

The U.S. government announced new sanctions against North Korea related to its army of illicit IT workers that have fraudulently gained employment to finance the regime’s weapons of mass destruction programs. North Korea maintains thousands of “highly skilled” IT workers around the world, primarily in China and Russia, which “generate revenue that contributes to its unlawful weapons of mass destruction…