WASHINGTON: The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Friday against three Iranian operatives suspected of hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and disseminating stolen information to media organizations.
The three accused hackers were employed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and their operation also targeted a broad swath of targets, including government officials, members of the media and non-governmental organizations, the Justice Department said.
The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. Multiple major news organizations that said they were leaked confidential information from inside the Trump campaign, including Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post, declined to publish it.
US intelligence officials subsequently linked Iran to a hack of the Trump campaign and to an attempted breach of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign. They said the hack-and-dump operation was meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and potentially influence the outcome of elections that Iran perceives to be “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests.”
Last week, officials also revealed that the Iranians in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails containing excerpts of the hacked information to people associated with the Biden campaign. None of the recipients replied. The Harris campaign said the emails resembled spam or a phishing attempt and condemned the outreach to the Iranians as “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
The indictment comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran as Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel escalate attacks against each other, raising concerns about the prospect of an all-out war, and as US officials say they continue to track physical threats by Iran against a number of officials including Trump.
Iranian operatives charged in the US with hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign
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Iranian operatives charged in the US with hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign
- US intelligence officials subsequently linked Iran to a hack of the Trump campaign and to an attempted breach of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign
- The indictment comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran
China ‘not afraid to fight’ trade war with US – foreign ministry
- Foreign ministry spokesman: US should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit
“If the US really wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
Britain’s audit watchdog probes EY over Post Office scandal
- Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software
LONDON: Britain’s Financial Reporting Council has opened an investigation into EY over its audit of Post Office Limited, it said on Wednesday, amid the lingering fallout from one of the country’s worst miscarriages of justice.
The FRC said in a statement it will focus on the audit firm’s role in approving the Post Office’s financial statements from 2015 to 2018, particularly the Horizon IT system which was at the heart of the scandal.
“We have been notified of the FRC’s intention to open an investigation into the EY audits of Post Office Limited for the financial years ending March 2015 – March 2018,” a spokesperson for EY said. “We take our public interest responsibilities extremely seriously and will be fully cooperating with the FRC during their investigation,” the spokesperson said.
Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.
Some were jailed, lost their marriages or otherwise saw their lives destroyed while others died before their names could be cleared.
Spurred into action last year by public outcry following a television series that dramatized the scandal, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sought to quash the wrongful convictions while a police investigation and public inquiry have also been carried out.
Belgian teens arrested with 5,000 smuggled ants as Kenya warns of changing trafficking trends
NAIROBI: Two Belgian teenagers were charged Tuesday with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser known species.
Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal.
In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen also were charged with illegal trafficking in the same courtroom, following their arrest while in possession of 400 ants.
The Kenya Wildlife Service said the four men were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.
The illegal export of the ants “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economic benefits,” KWS said in a statement.
Kenya has in the past fought against the trafficking of body parts of larger species of wild animals such as elephants, rhinos and pangolins among others. But the cases against the four men represent “a shift in trafficking trends — from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species,” KWS said.
The two Belgians were arrested in Kenya’s Nakuru county, which is home to various national parks. The 5,000 ants were found in a guest house where they were staying, and were packed in 2,244 test tubes that had been filled with cotton wool to enable the ants to survive for months.
The other two men were arrested in Nairobi where they were found to have 400 ants in their apartments.
Kenyan authorities valued the ants at 1 million shillings ($7,700). The prices for ants can vary greatly according to the species and the market.
Philip Muruthi, a vice president for conservation at the Africa Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi, said ants play the role of enriching soils, enabling germination and providing food for species such as birds.
“The thing is, when you see a healthy forest, like Ngong forest, you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he said.
Muruthi warned of the risk of trafficking species and exporting diseases to the agricultural industry of the destination countries.
“Even if there is trade, it should be regulated and nobody should be taking our resources just like that,” he said.
Daesh claims Pakistan bomb blast killing three policemen
Islamabad: The Daesh group has claimed a bomb explosion targeting police in Pakistan’s turbulent southwest that killed three policemen and wounded more than a dozen.
A bomb planted on a parked motorcycle on Tuesday targeted a passing bus carrying 40 policemen in Mastung city of impoverished Balochistan province, where security forces have been battling sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence for decades.
In a statement late Tuesday, the jihadist group’s regional branch, Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K), which often carries out attacks on security forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, claimed its “soldiers” targeted the “apostate” police.
Pakistan has witnessed a sharp rise in violence in its regions bordering Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, with Islamabad accusing its western neighbor of allowing its soil to be used for attacks against Pakistan — a claim the Taliban denies.
In Balochistan, separatist violence has intensified including an attack last month by ethnic Baloch militants on a train carrying 450 passengers, which sparked a two-day siege and left dozens dead.
IS-K is also active.
The group has claimed responsibility for attacks on religious minorities, targeted killings of religious scholars, and assaults on security officials.
In July 2023, the group claimed a suicide bombing at a political party gathering that killed more than 54 people, including 23 children.
More than 200 people, mostly security officials, have been killed in attacks since the start of the year by armed groups fighting the government in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, according to an AFP tally.
UK Supreme Court to rule on landmark legal challenge over legal definition of a woman
- Britain’s highest court scheduled to rule whether a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws
LONDON: The UK Supreme Court is poised to rule Wednesday in a legal challenge focusing on the definition of a woman in a long-running dispute between a women’s rights group and the Scottish government.
Five judges at Britain’s highest court are scheduled to rule whether a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws.
While the case centers on Scottish law, the group bringing the challenge, For Women Scotland (FWS), has said its outcomes could have UK-wide consequences for sex-based rights as well as everyday single-sex services such as toilets and hospital wards.
What’s the case about?
The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating that there should be a 50 percent female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. That law included transgender women in its definition of women.
The women’s rights group successfully challenged that law, arguing that its redefinition of “woman” went beyond parliament’s powers.
Scottish officials then issued guidance stating that the definition of “woman” included a transgender woman with a gender recognition certificate.
FWS sought to overturn that.
“Not tying the definition of sex to its ordinary meaning means that public boards could conceivably comprise of 50 percent men, and 50 percent men with certificates, yet still lawfully meet the targets for female representation,” the group’s director Trina Budge said.
The challenge was rejected by a court in 2022, but the group was granted permission last year to take its case to the Supreme Court.
What are the arguments?
Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer for FWS, told the Supreme Court judges – three men and two women – that under the Equality Act “sex” should refer to biological sex and as understood “in ordinary, everyday language.”
“Our position is your sex, whether you are a man or a woman or a girl or a boy is determined from conception in utero, even before one’s birth, by one’s body,” he said on Tuesday. “It is an expression of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biological state.”
The women’s rights group counts among its supporters author J.K. Rowling, who reportedly donated tens of thousands of pounds to back its work. The “Harry Potter” writer has been vocal in arguing that the rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.
Opponents, including Amnesty International, said excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections conflicts with human rights.
Amnesty submitted a brief in court saying it was concerned about the deterioration of the rights for trans people in the UK and abroad.
“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim,” the human rights group said.
