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Showing posts from March, 2024

The UK government has formally accused China of being behind what it called "malicious" cyber campaigns against MPs and the Electoral Commission.

  Two people and a company have been sanctioned over cyber-attacks. Deputy PM Oliver Dowden said they were behind attempts to access details of MPs critical of Beijing, as well as the  data of potentially 40 million voters. wan  The Chinese embassy in the UK says these are "completely unfounded" claims amounting to "malicious slander The two Chinese nationals sanctioned by the UK are Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin and the company is Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Ltd, said by the British government to work for the China state-affiliated cyber espionage group Advanced Persistent Threat Group 31 (APT31).   The UK sanctions will freeze assets, barring UK citizens and businesses from handling their funds or resources. A travel ban will also prevent them from entering or remaining in the UK. The UK will not tolerate malicious cyber activity," Mr Dowden said. "It is an absolute priority for the UK government to protect our democratic system and values.

Zelensky hits back after Russia links Ukraine to Moscow attack

  The next thing they expected was more drones and more missiles. The accusations began almost immediately. They were just hints at first, until President Vladimir Putin openly claimed that the men who attacked Moscow had tried to flee to Ukraine, helped by contacts there. When Mr Putin made his comments on Saturday in an address to the Russian nation, Islamic State group (IS) extremists had already announced they had carried out the killings. The US had confirmed that it passed on intelligence of a threat earlier this month. Now IS have released a hideously graphic video of their massacre, filmed on bodycams and including shouts of "God is Greatest" from the attackers. In his evening statement on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was visibly angry that his country was being blamed. He described the Russian president and others in Moscow as "scum" for linking the attack there to Kyiv. Earlier on Saturday, the military intelligence directorate in Kyiv

Who wouldn't want a house on the beach? For some on Israel's far-right, desirable beachfront now includes the sands of Gaza.

 Just ask Daniella Weiss, 78, the grandmother of Israel's settler movement, who says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza immediately.   "I have friends in Tel Aviv," she says, "so they say, 'Don't forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,' because it's a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand". Mrs Weiss heads a radical settler organisation called Nachala, or homeland. For decades, she has been kickstarting Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.   Some in the settler movement have cherished the dream - or pipedream - of returning to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral pullout, 21 settlements were dismantled and about 9,000 settlers were evacuated by the army. (Reporting from Gaza at the time, I saw many who were literally dragged out.) There are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these ar