Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The ransomware attack on JBS, probably by a Russia-based group, has disrupted meat production in North America and Australia
A ransomware attack against the world’s largest meatpacking company that has disrupted meat production in North America and Australia originated from a criminal organization probably based in Russia, the White House was informed on Tuesday.
The attack on Brazil’s JBS caused its Australian operations to shut down on Monday and has stopped livestock slaughter at its plants in several US states.
Stsiapan Latypau carried out unconscious after claiming he was pressured to plead guilty
A Belarusian opposition activist stabbed himself in the throat with a pen during a court hearing after claiming investigators had pressured him to plead guilty or face his family and friends being arrested.
Footage from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty showed Stsiapan Latypau, who has organised protests against the country’s authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, lying inside a defendant’s cage as witnesses screamed in a courtroom in Minsk.
White House says the US, the EU and other allies will target key members of President Lukashenko’s government
The Biden administration has said it is drawing up a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian government which forced the landing of a passenger jet and had a journalist on board arrested.
The White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Friday the United States was also suspending a 2019 agreement between Washington and Minsk that allowed carriers from each country to use the other’s airspace, and taking other actions against the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Microsoft says group targeted more than 15o American and foreign organisations using USAid account
The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and thinktanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Microsoft has said.
The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, the Microsoft vice-president Tom Burt wrote in a blog post late on Thursday.
Analysis: Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega are just the latest to be forced into the widespread tactic
The videos are formulaic: Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, each sit alone in front of a camera in a police station and deliver their “confessions” as though a loaded gun is pointed at their heads.
“I’m also the editor of the Telegram channel Black Book of Belarus that publishes personal information about employees of the interior ministry,” said Sapega, quickly repeating a memorised statement in a video released late on Tuesday that could lead to years in jail.
Analysis: Minsk and Moscow watching carefully to see if EU makes good on threat of targeted economic sanctions
A new wave of sanctions and restrictive measures on Belarus’s aviation industry, severing its direct links with much of Europe, looks set to increase the country’s reliance on Russia, yet Moscow, its remaining ally, appears wary.
Kremlin officials have offered only muted support over an incident that has been described as “air piracy” and an “act of state terrorism” by Alexander Lukashenko, a leader whom Vladimir Putin treats as a junior partner, and often with open disdain.
Raman Pratasevich, seized from diverted Ryanair flight, appeared to have been beaten, says father
The father of the Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich said it was clear his son was acting under duress and had been beaten when he recorded a video “confessing” to organising mass protests against the regime.
Dmitry Pratasevich said Raman was “very nervous” and “spoke in a way that was unusual for him”.
European Union leaders have agreed to impose economic sanctions on Belarus. They have also called on their airlines to avoid the former Soviet republic's airspace, while authorising work to ban Belarusian airlines from European skies and airports. 'Belarus used its control over its airspace in order to perpetrate a state hijacking, therefore the safety and security of flights through Belarus airspace can no longer be trusted,' said the head of the bloc's executive, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
With the Tokyo Olympics just weeks away, the US State Department has issued a “Level 4” warning against traveling to Japan, that’s now struggling through another surge in Covid cases.
A new wrinkle two months before Olympics. US State Department advises travelers not to visit Japan. https://t.co/Hrnfkwzayz
A Tokyo medical organization has joined calls to cancel Japan’s Olympic games this summer, citing a surge in #COVID19 cases in the country.
“Japan will bear the maximum responsibility” for deaths caused by the games, it said.
The Trump Administration, which forced families to separate at the border, also made migrant parents leave without their children according to a new Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report.
The agency watchdog found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) knowingly deported parents who had asked to be allowed to take their children back, the Associated Press reports.
That contradicted assertions by senior DHS officials that parents were choosing to leave their children in the U.S. to stay with family or for other reasons while they were deported in 2017 and 2018 as the administration sought to enforce a hard-line approach to immigration enforcement.
The findings, issued by Trump-appointed Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, provide new insight into a policy that became a significant political crisis for the previous administration and a continuing challenge for the current one, which is working to reunite children who remain separated even now.
EU’s 27 heads of state call for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich
EU leaders triggered new economic sanctions against Belarus and punitive measures against its national airline as a dissident taken from a “hijacked” Ryanair flight was paraded on the country’s television news apparently confessing to crimes against the state.
The seaside town of Anapa hopes foreign travel ban will bring holidaymakers back
It is not yet peak season on Anapa’s Black Sea coast so there is still space to spread out on its sandy beach, the pride of a resort town that may be one of the best chances many Russians get to visit the seaside this year.
Wander through the streets beyond the waterfront and you’ll find a sprawl of knick-knack shops, amusement and water parks, shashlik stands and carnival games that make up what is, this year, Russia’s resort of last resort.
The sham election this week is designed to give the president a veneer of legitimacy at home and abroad
The last time Syria held presidential elections, in 2014, there was no question over whether President Bashar al-Assad would win – but with opposition forces in control of the country’s cities, as well as the suburbs of Damascus, his future was still far from certain.
Seven years later, after the regime’s Russian and Iranian allies intervened and turned the tide of the war, most of Syria is now back under Assad’s grip. On Wednesday, his citizens will return to the polling booths for a sham democratic display designed to give the president a veneer of legitimacy both at home and abroad.
Government says US missions can no longer hire local staff following law Putin signed last month
The Russian government has officially deemed the United States and the Czech Republic “unfriendly” states, and announced that US diplomatic missions could no longer employ local staff while Czech missions could employ a maximum of 19.
Moscow first announced the ban on the US hiring local staff last month as part of its retaliation for a slew of new US sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2020 US presidential election and for involvement in the SolarWind hack of US federal agencies.
Crafted from footage locked for years in an archive, Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral focuses on the motivations of the mourners who lived under the brutal regime
“At 21.50, due to cardiovascular and respiratory failure, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died,” intones an announcer. A woman takes off her hat, on the verge of tears. A handsome youth in a military uniform stares stoically at his feet. One middle-aged man glances self-consciously at the camera, as if to check it is still watching him, before looking down again. Again and again, our focus is drawn to faces in the crowds all across the Soviet Union. Not all are reverent. Some people shuffle, chat, chew, smoke, even half-smile.
The broadcasters’ praise for Stalin becomes ever more ludicrous: “We knew he was the best on our planet … It’s impossible to take your eyes off this infinitely dear face. Your eyes are full of tears, you hold your breath, you are overwhelmed with sorrow shared by millions, hundreds of millions of people.”
Annalena Baerbock faces social media onslaught after voicing opposition to Nord Stream 2 project
Fears are growing in Berlin of a Russian-led cyber campaign against the leader of Germany’s Green party after she pledged to block a gas pipeline project between Russia and Europe.
Annalena Baerbock, who is running to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in September’s election, has been targeted in recent days by an increasingly vicious campaign across social media.
Seven students have been killed and 16 injured in a school shooting in the city of Kazan in Russia’s Tatarstan republic, its president said. State media previously reported that 11 had people died, citing local emergency officials.
Footage from the scene showed emergency services assisting students out of the building's upper floors.
President of Tatarstan republic describes incident as ‘great tragedy for the whole country’
A gunman attacked a school in the Russian city of Kazan on Tuesday morning, killing seven students and a teacher, officials have said.
Rustam Minnikhanov, the president of the Tatarstan republic where Kazan is the capital, said four male and three female eighth-grade students died in “a great tragedy for the whole country”. Minnikhanov’s press service later said a teacher was also killed. Eighth-grade children in Russia are 13 and 14 years old.
Alexander Murakhovsky speaks to press three days after going missing while on holiday in a Siberian forest
The former chief physician of the hospital where the Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny was first treated for novichok poisoning has been found alive days after disappearing into a Siberian forest.
Alexander Murakhovsky emerged from a forest in the Omsk region on Monday three days after vanishing while on holiday, abandoning an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) miles from a hunting lodge where he was staying with friends.
Honorary position challenged by Labour after Queen’s cousin allegedly told reporters he could be hired for £10,000 a day to contact Putin’s team
Claims that the Queen’s cousin was willing to use his royal status to sell privileged access to Vladimir Putin’s regime have raised questions over whether he should keep his honorary position in the British army, according to Labour.
Prince Michael of Kent allegedly told undercover reporters posing as investors from South Korea that he could be hired for £10,000 a day to make “confidential” representations to the Russian president’s team.
Najla El-Mangoush subjected to personal abuse after demanding withdrawal of Turkish troops and mercenaries
Libya’s first female foreign minister has come under pressure to resign and been subjected to personal abuse seven weeks into the job, after she called for Turkish troops and mercenaries to leave her country.
Najla El-Mangoush, a lawyer and human rights activist, was appointed foreign minister by the country’s interim prime minister, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, after he faced a backlash for backtracking on promises that 30% of ministerial posts would go to women.