BELARUS
News portal shuttered
The Tut.by news portal on Tuesday became the latest media targeted by authorities, with security agents searching the offices and homes of journalists working for the site, its editor-in-chief Marina Zolotova said. The outlet was then taken offline entirely. The Ministry of Information confirmed later in a statement that it had blocked Tut.by at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, saying prosecutors had established that the outlet routinely published “prohibited information.” Tut.by said on its Telegram channel that at least 13 of its employees — including journalists, editors and accountants — had been detained.
GERMANY
Hezbollah groups raided
The government has banned three associations that are accused of donating to the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, the Federal Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. Police conducted early morning raids at several premises in seven German states, a ministry spokesman wrote on Twitter. “Those who support terror will not be safe in Germany ... they will not find a place of refuge in our country,” the spokesman said. The associations are accused of collecting donations for Hezbollah’s “martyr families” in Lebanon under the guise of religious and humanitarian goals in Germany, ultimately promoting attacks on Israel.
IRELAND
Cyberattack hits healthcare
The health system on Tuesday struggled to restore computers and treat patients, four days after it shut down its entire information technology (IT) system in response to a ransomware attack. Health Service Executive Chief Clinical Officer Colm Henry said that the intrusion was having “a profound impact on our ability to deliver care” and that disruptions would undoubtedly “mount in the coming days and weeks.” More than 2,000 patient-facing IT systems were affected, and about 80,000 devices were linked to such systems throughout the health service, Henry told broadcaster RTE.
UNITED STATES
Trump empire investigated
The New York State Office of the Attorney General on Tuesday said that it is conducting a criminal investigation into former president Donald Trump’s business empire, expanding what had previously been a civil probe. “We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the company is no longer purely civil in nature,” Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James, said in a statement. “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan [district attorney],” Levy said.
UNITED STATES
Police shooting ‘justified’
A North Carolina prosecutor on Tuesday said that sheriff’s deputies were justified in fatally shooting Andrew Brown Jr, because the black man struck a deputy with his car and nearly ran him over while ignoring commands to show his hands and get out of the vehicle. District Attorney Andrew Womble told a news conference that Brown used his car as a “deadly weapon,” causing Pasquotank County deputies to believe it was necessary to use deadly force. Womble, who acknowledged Brown was not armed with guns or other weapons, said the deputies would face no criminal charges for the shooting, which sparked weeks of protests.
AUSTRALIA
Years-late ruling appealed
An appeal has been granted against a family law decision that took a judge more than seven years to deliver after it was found that the “gross and deplorable delay” contributed to “substantial errors” — and that the judgement might have been made despite the court file being lost. The parents of two children with special needs are to face another hearing after the family court granted the appeal against the decision of Federal Circuit Court Judge Anne Demack.
RUSSIA
Man planning shooting held
Officials yesterday said that a 20-year-old man planning a mass shooting, including detonating explosives at a technical college in Siberia, was jailed for 10 years. The Investigative Committee’s Buryatia branch said in a statement that the man was found guilty of several charges, including making explosives and preparing a mass attack. “By a court verdict, the young man was sentenced to 10 years in prison with a fine of 15,000 rubles [US$203] in a strict regime prison colony,” it said. Investigators said that in 2019, the man had blown up an empty residential building in the countryside in preparation for the attack and had purchased a pistol, gas masks, black masks and remote controls for detonating improvised explosive devices.
INDIA
Mosque razed despite ruling
The Barabanki District Government in the state of Uttar Pradesh defied an order of the state’s High Court and bulldozed a mosque, called Waqf Masjid Gareeb Nawaz al-Maroof Tehsil Wali, which had stood for at least six decades. On Monday, police and security services moved into the area and cleared it of people, then they brought in bulldozers and demolished the mosque. Debris was then thrown into a river, images and local accounts reported. The state government is governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
CHINA
TV show ‘anti-Semite’: Israel
The Israeli embassy is protesting what it describes as “blatant anti-Semitism” on a program ran by the overseas channel of China Central Television (CCTV) discussing the ongoing violence in Gaza. The embassy wrote on Twitter: “We have hoped that the times of the ‘Jew’s controlling the world’ conspiracy theories were over.” “We are appalled to see blatant anti-Semitism expressed in an official Chinese media outlet,” it added. Speaking in English, CGTN broadcast host Zheng Junfeng (鄭峻峰) on Tuesday said: “Jews dominate finance and Internet sectors... So do they have the powerful lobbies some say? Possible.”
IRAQ
Iranian sets himself ablaze
An Iranian Kurd seeking asylum on Tuesday doused himself in fuel and set himself alight near the UN’s offices in protest against living conditions. Medics in Arbil treating Mohammad Mahmoudi, 27, said that he was in a critical condition. Before setting himself on fire, Mahmoudi was filmed on a video posted on social media saying he had fled Iran because he was a critic of authorities in Tehran. “Are we supposed to live the way I live because of my political activity? Is that life?” he said. “We have been living like homeless dogs for four years.” A day laborer, he submitted an application for refugee status to the UN four years ago, but his request was still reportedly under review, friends said. “If I return to Iran, I will be executed,” Mahmoudi said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
In the East Room of the White House on a particularly frigid Saturday afternoon, US President Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of the most famous names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and science. Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton aroused a standing ovation from the crowd as she received her medal. Clinton was accompanied to the event by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and grandchildren. Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor-director Denzel Washington were also awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor in a White House
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was expected to meet Argentine President Javier Milei yesterday on a regional tour to drum up support ahead of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s swearing-in for a third term. Venezuelan authorities have offered a reward of US$100,000 for information leading to the capture of Gonzalez Urrutia, who insists he beat Maduro at the polls in July last year and is recognized by the US as Venezuela’s “president-elect.” The 75-year-old fled to Spain in September after being threatened with arrest by Maduro’s government, but has pledged to return to his country to be sworn in as
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