Syrian official who oversaw prison where alleged abuse took place arrested by US officials
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Funding for free and open source software (FOSS) initiatives under the EU's Horizon program has mostly vanished from next year's proposal, claim advocates who are worried for the future of many ongoing projects.
FOSS software, Gibello argued, is key to protecting European interests from the data-guzzling economy that's grown up elsewhere, which is why he's perplexed at the decision not to fund NGI.
"Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly initiated by small-scaled organizations," he added.
In other words, not all NGI funding is for fun stuff like EU-made RISC-V-free laptops - some of it's important for helping the EU implement laws around digital goods and services.
NGI has received tens of millions of euros over the past few years under Cluster 4 of the program, which doles out cash for digital, industry and space projects.
"Our French [Horizon national contact point] was told - as an unofficial answer - that because lots of budget are allocated to AI, there is not much left for Internet infrastructure," Gibello said.
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The head of an elite North Korean military delegation that was deployed to Russia last week has been found dead in Moscow, according to local reports.
Newsweek couldn't independently verify the reports and has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment by email.
Kim and his delegation departed from Pyongyang on July 8, the news agency Yonhap said, on the first public visit by North Korean officials to Russia since Pyongyang and Moscow signed a new strategic partnership agreement in June.
According to SHOT, as a heat wave swept Russia, Kim, 64, went to the Bolshoy Gorodskoy Pond in Moscow for a swim to cool off, and "disappeared."
North Korea and Russia have deepened their ties since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said in June that Article 4 of the new agreement reached between Russia and North Korea during Putin's historic visit requires either party to deploy "all means at its disposal without delay" to provide "military and other assistance" should one nation be attacked.
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BERLIN — Germany, which overcame its initial reluctance to support Ukraine to become the country’s biggest European supplier of military aid, looks poised to change course as the finance minister said the government would slash future assistance by half in order to fulfill other spending priorities.
Speaking after the cabinet approved the draft budget, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Ukraine would have to rely more on funds from "European sources" as well as hoped-for income from frozen Russian assets.
The decision to cut aid to Ukraine, which was first reported by Reuters, resolves a mystery surrounding the German coalition's unexpected agreement over the budget following an all-night bargaining session two weeks ago.
Scholz's government has dragged its feet on helping Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's onslaught, drawing ridicule for an early offer to send helmets weeks before the full-scale invasion.
“The many promises of the chancellor and his defense minister to continue to support Ukraine are turning out to be hollow phrases,” Ingo Gädechens, a lawmaker from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told POLITICO.
At the same time, the coalition has been at odds over how to finance its own military needs in order to fulfill Scholz's promises to rebuild Germany's armed forces and meet NATO's annual spending target of 2 percent of GDP.
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Vance sat down with Aimee Terese — a pundit and podcaster little known to the American public, but prominent in the sloppy trenches of hyper-online digital reactionaries — and removed his filter.
And then, every day, George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately black women to get them to go have abortions in California.
The news that came out of Ohio after Roe was overturned and the state banned the procedure wasn’t George Soros loading up 747s in Columbus to transport women to California for abortions.
No, the national news story out of Ohio was about a 10-year-old girl who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion, after she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend.
Last year, after Ohio voters enshrined the right to abortion access in the state’s constitution through a ballot referendum, Vance was distraught.
“There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children,” he added.
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Russia could face electricity disruptions if the government doesn't get crypto mining under control, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
Crypto is often used by Russians who live abroad to bypass Western sanctions which prevent them from accessing normal banking services.
"I have already given instructions to regulate the mining of digital currencies in Russia, including issues of taxation of this activity and tariff decisions."
New enterprises and residential districts will face electricity shortages if cryptocurrency mining farms take over all the free energy capacity, and investment projects will be put on pause, Putin added, per Ria news agency.
His claim came the same day Russia was forced to introduce electricity cutoffs in several regions due to a glitch at the Rostov nuclear power plant.
Crypto mining is extremely energy-intensive, causing electricity supply challenges even in energy giants like Russia and the United States.
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Unlike many competitors, its default is end-to-end encryption — and on top of that, the app minimizes the amount of information it stores about users.
This makes it a powerful communication tool for those seeking a private and secure means of chatting, whether it’s journalists and their sources, activists and human rights defenders, or just ordinary people who want to evade the rampant data-mining of Big Tech platforms.
On a recent visit to Tampa, where I travel annually to discuss security matters and set things on fire, I spotted a pay phone while leaving Busch Gardens.
If the number isn’t listed on the phone — it wasn’t in this case — there’s a workaround that doesn’t involve a paper trail leading back to your cellphone.
Signal first insists on attempting to send a verification code via an SMS text message, so you have to initially go through that fruitless route.
The next and final step was to set up a PIN and enable a registration lock so that someone else wouldn’t be able to take over the account by going to the same pay phone and registering their own version of Signal with that same number.
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President Joe Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday while he was in Las Vegas for a series of events, the White House said.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden tested positive “following his first event in Las Vegas.”
The White House will provide regular updates on the President’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation.”
Biden, 81, has kept a full schedule in Nevada this week after questions were raised about his health and capabilities after a dismal debate performance in late June.
Biden, who had been expected to speak at the group's event in Las Vegas, was about an hour and a half late before the announcement was made.
Biden said in an interview with BET on Tuesday that he would drop out of the presidential race if he developed a medical condition that prevented him from running.
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The decision, announced by China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday, halts the early nuclear-arms talks in a period of growing tensions between China and the US, with both US presidential candidates calling for increased trade restrictions and efforts to contain Chinese influence in east Asia.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that the US had continued to sell arms to Taiwan despite “strong Chinese opposition and repeated negotiations”.
He added: “Consequently, the Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consultations on arms control and nonproliferation.
In response, the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, accused China of “following Russia’s lead” by holding arms control negotiations hostage to other conflicts in the bilateral relationship.
“We think this approach undermines strategic stability, it increases the risk of arms-race dynamics,” Miller told reporters.
The US and China held arms talks in November for the first time in five years and discussed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and other nuclear security issues, as well as compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and outer space security and regular arms control, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in California and a close ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on Wednesday became the latest and most prominent House member to call on Biden to leave the race.
Even before last month’s presidential debate, in which Biden repeatedly stumbled, Democrats’ internal polls showed his support trailing his 2020 levels by significant margins in key districts, according to people familiar with the data.
In private meetings with larger groups of lawmakers, Biden has disputed the notion he is losing to Trump or that he would hurt other Democrats and has cited polls as a defense, although he has not specified which ones prove his point, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
Biden had a phone conversation last Friday with Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s House races, according to a person familiar with the call.
In recent days, Democratic lawmakers and even top strategists working on Biden’s re-election effort have grown increasingly concerned that the president is not getting a full picture of the state of the race.
The back-and-forth is playing out alongside a related dispute over whether to proceed with a virtual roll call that would formally nominate Biden several weeks before the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22.
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The Victorian government is forging ahead with plans to demolish three public housing towers subject to a class action seeking to stop the redevelopment.
The move was described by a lawyer for residents as an example of them being “treated as an afterthought”, after the supreme court ordered the class action could proceed to a two-day trial this month.
Inner Melbourne Community Legal said it was notified by the Victorian government solicitor’s office that Homes Victoria – the body that oversees social housing in the state – would sign a contract for demolition works to commence “on or after 19 July”.
Louisa Bassini, the managing lawyer at Inner Melbourne Community Legal, said it was disappointing the government was “steamrolling ahead” with plans to raze the buildings despite the ongoing class action.
At the time, the supreme court justice Melinda Richards rejected their lawyers’ argument that government and the housing minister, Harriet Shing, should be defendants.
The court last week ordered the class action could proceed to a two-day trial, to begin on 28 October, after lawyers acting on behalf of the residents reframed their legal argument.
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According to a person on conference calls with lawmakers, the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, also searched for dates of Mr. Trump’s appearances and the Democratic National Convention.
The disclosures, during private briefings to lawmakers in the House and Senate, offered more detail about a gunman with no criminal history.
Among the other famous figures the gunman searched for: Mr. Wray himself, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and a member of the British royal family, according to two officials with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter publicly.
Officials singled out some of the searches on one of his cellphones — the device he left in his residence — saying that he had looked up “major depressive disorder,” according to the person on the calls.
Some senators left their call angry with the Secret Service after learning that the gunman was identified as suspicious more than an hour before the shooting.
No one has taken responsibility,” Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement, adding, “The head of the Secret Service needs to go.”
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Cisco on Wednesday disclosed a maximum-security vulnerability that allows remote threat actors with no authentication to change the password of any user, including those of administrators with accounts, on Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem devices.
In a bulletin, Cisco warns that the product contains a vulnerability that allows hackers to change any account's password.
“This vulnerability is due to improper implementation of the password-change process,” the Cisco bulletin stated.
“An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted HTTP requests to an affected device.
A successful exploit could allow an attacker to access the web UI or API with the privileges of the compromised user.”
One possibility is that the web user interface and application programming interface the attacker gains administrative control over make it possible to pivot to other Cisco devices connected to the same network and, from there, steal data, encrypt files, or perform similar actions.
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Donald Trump's Chances of Winning Election Are Declining
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Donald Trump's chances of winning the November 2024 presidential election are declining, according to a new aggregation of polls.
It comes after a Presidential Voting Intention poll of 3,601 swing state voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, found that Trump's margins over President Joe Biden have narrowed since June in two key swing states: Florida and North Carolina.
In a post on their website, FiveThirtyEight said their latest predictions can be explained by the flurry of swing-state polls that show Biden is encroaching upon Trump's lead.
In the week before the shooting, national polls had Trump as the favorite to win the White House, leading narrowly in the six key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
An ABC News/Ipsos/Washington Post poll released Thursday found Biden and Trump are tied among registered voters.
Biden's fitness for office has been called into question since his shaky debate performance against Trump in June in which he muddled his words and appeared to lose his train of thought.
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The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has rejected calls for an immediate independent inquiry into the security failures that allowed the deadliest attack in his country’s history.
The meeting marks the highest-level acknowledgment of the Israeli military’s failure to listen to the lookout unit in Nahal Oz, where dozens of soldiers were killed and others taken hostage on the 7 October, part of a unprecedented attack by Hamas and other militants on towns and kibbutzim around the Gaza Strip.
Last week, a leading member of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency known only by the initial “Aleph” resigned, reportedly saying in his farewell speech he was leaving amid deep disappointment that his department had failed to avert the attack.
The Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence chief, Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, resigned in April, making him the highest-ranking official to step down over the attack.
Despite protests calling on him to resign, as well as demands from a wide spectrum of Israeli society that he apologise for the security failures of 7 October, Netanyahu has strenuously resisted.
“The prime minister has been very forthright about the failures that led to 7 October,” said David Mencer, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, when asked why the PM had declined to apologise.
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During the three days the premiers met for the annual Council of the Federation conference in Halifax, they described tensions in their relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government.
As the meetings wrapped up Wednesday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford took aim at the federal government's billion-dollar national school food program, which promises to deliver meals to an additional 400,000 children per year.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, the chair of this year's conference, said Ottawa's approach to the federation "risks pitting provinces and territories, really Canadians, against one another."
They floated several areas where they want to see the federal government play a bigger role, including infrastructure spending, Arctic security and immigration supports.
After years of criticism from allies — most notably the United States — the Liberal government announced last week that it hopes to meet NATO's military investment commitment of two per cent of alliance members' gross domestic product by 2032.
Kinew urged Trudeau to reach that target in four years to alleviate concerns south of the border ahead of a presidential election that could return former president Donald Trump to the White House.
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The Department of National Defence is actively considering whether to retire some older ships, planes and other items of equipment that have become difficult and costly to maintain — including the aircraft belonging to the iconic Snowbird demonstration squadron.
The navy has made a case publicly for replacing its four Victoria-class submarines and the Liberal government announced during the recent NATO Summit in Washington that it would proceed with the program.
He added he believes the staffing crisis within the military is making the situation worse by leaving the CAF with fewer technicians to keep older aircraft and ships running.
A study by the defence department's director of major service delivery procurement warned at the time that the aircraft's life expectancy would run to 2010 but could be extended for another decade if absolutely necessary.
A DND report from the fall of 2014 cleared the fleet as "technically airworthy" but noted "significant concerns, including some caused by financial restraints."
I just want to get them a better plane," said Blair, adding that he's asked the commander of the air force about the feasibility of using "existing fighter jets" to maintain an aerial demonstration team, as other allies do.
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All three of them – and all within the first six months of an administration – suggest an unprecedented (that word comes up a lot with Trump) level of political jeopardy not just for the President but for the Republican Party he ostensibly leads.
Congressional Republicans, to this point, have been willing to ride the Trump roller coaster because they have convinced themselves that despite all of the surprising climbs and gut-wrenching drops, they ultimately can get what they want from him.
And, it is undeniably true, that had Hillary Clinton been elected president, she would have appointed someone far less conservative than Antonin Scalia or Gorsuch to the nation’s highest court.
It is also true that the easiest way for Trump to leave a positive conservative legacy behind him is to hope that another justice retires, with Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg most rumored to head for the exits.
Tax reform, which was rolled out to much ballyhoo by the Trump administration, remains nothing more than a broad outline of proposals – none of which have begun to make their way through the legislative process.
Despite a notable crackdown on illegal immigration, Trump’s long-promised border wall looks more and more like a pipe dream as it’s hard to see wavering Republicans in Congress cowed by a President with the approval of just over 1 in 3 Americans.
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Donald Trump's chances of winning the November 2024 presidential election are declining, according to a new aggregation of polls.
It comes after a Presidential Voting Intention poll of 3,601 swing state voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, found that Trump's margins over President Joe Biden have narrowed since June in two key swing states: Florida and North Carolina.
In a post on their website, FiveThirtyEight said their latest predictions can be explained by the flurry of swing-state polls that show Biden is encroaching upon Trump's lead.
In the week before the shooting, national polls had Trump as the favorite to win the White House, leading narrowly in the six key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
An ABC News/Ipsos/Washington Post poll released Thursday found Biden and Trump are tied among registered voters.
Biden's fitness for office has been called into question since his shaky debate performance against Trump in June in which he muddled his words and appeared to lose his train of thought.
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President Biden said in an interview released on Wednesday that he would re-evaluate whether to stay in the presidential race if a doctor told him directly that he had a medical condition that made that necessary.
But his disastrous performance at a debate with former President Donald J. Trump last month, which prompted a wave of calls by Democratic allies to step aside, raised questions about his health and acuity.
In an interview with Ed Gordon of BET News, Mr. Biden was asked if there was anything that would make him re-evaluate staying in the race.
Mr. Biden also said for the first time that he had expected to “move on” from the presidency and “pass it on to somebody else” but decided to run again because he believed his “wisdom” and experience would help heal the country’s worsening divisions.
But the president’s political advisers have said that the bridge was an eight-year span, and that his re-election to a second term would simply be a longer transition to the new generation than some had expected.
The president said something similar during a news conference in Washington this month, when a reporter asked what changed from the time he promised to be a bridge candidate.
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U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents took Samir Ousman al-Sheikh into custody last week at Los Angeles International Airport, said agency spokesperson Greg Hoegner.
The 72-year-old has been charged with immigration fraud, specifically that he denied on his U.S. visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint filed on July 9 and reviewed by The Associated Press.
His attorney, Peter Hardin, called it a “simple misunderstanding of immigration forms” that has been politicized and said al-Sheikh “finds himself being made a pawn caught up in a larger international struggle.”
He began his career working police command posts before transferring to Syria’s domestic intelligence agency, which focused on countering political dissent, the complaint says.
He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon, which shares a border with Syria, according to the complaint.
Other players in the war, now in its 14th year, have also been accused of abuse of detainees, including insurgent groups and the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which guard suspected and convicted Islamic State members imprisoned in northeastern Syria.
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