Fake quotes appeared over photos of celebrities such as Scarlett Johansson and Elton John, calling to end aid to Ukraine and describing European collapse.
Russian bots with a Kremlin disinformation network published 120,000 fake anti-Ukraine quotes falsely attributed to celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston and Scarlett Johansson, in one day, the independent Russian media outlet Agentsvo reported June 15.
Quotes appeared over celebrity photos, displaying messages calling to end aid to Ukraine and describing European collapse.
The images were published between June 14-15 by the Kremlin disinformation network Dvoynyk, a representative of the Bot Blocker project told Agentsvo. The fake quotes have since garnered over 500,000 views.
Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight on June 1, launching drones and cruise missiles, while damaging energy infrastructure across various regions across the country.
Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine overnight on June 1, launching drones and cruise missiles, while damaging energy infrastructure across various regions across the country.
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Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko confirmed that energy infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kirovohrad, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts came under attack by Russian forces. Restoration workers are currently on scene and are determining the extent of the damage.
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Ukraine's Air Force announced an air alert throughout the country, including the far-western oblasts, citing the threat of Russian cruise missiles, drones, and Tu-95MS bombers.
A manufactured video fabricated comments by the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller.
The fabricated video, which is drawn from actual footage, shows the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, seeming to suggest that the Russian city of Belgorod, just 25 miles north of Ukraine’s border with Russia, was a legitimate target for such strikes.
The 49-second video clip, which has an authentic feel despite telltale clues of manipulation, illustrates the growing threat of disinformation and especially so-called deepfake videos powered by artificial intelligence.
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Belgorod “has essentially no civilians remaining,” the video purports to show Mr. Miller saying at the State Department in response to a reporter’s question, which was also manufactured. “It’s practically full of military targets at this point, and we are seeing the same thing starting in the regions around there.”
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the Ukrainian president reveals the tactics and traits that help him face the daily frustrations of leading a country at war for more than two years
The interview came at perhaps the toughest moment for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Zelenskiy insisted, however, that it was too early to write off the country, and that he remained positive despite all his frustrations. “I’m not in despair at all … I don’t feel like we are on a sinking ship which is going to the bottom. We are not shouting ‘save us’.”
The president is, however, shouting for more urgency. Russia is on the offensive in the Kharkiv region, an advance that came after months of delay in the US Congress over the passing of a major support package, limiting Ukraine’s battlefield capacities. Then, there was the ban on using western weapons to hit Russian military targets across the border, limiting its ability to defend itself.
In the hours after the interview, the US administration finally shifted on that issue, allowing Ukraine to use certain US weapons on targets in the Russian border areas around Kharkiv. It is a permission that may have been more useful three weeks ago, when Ukrainian intelligence could first see Russian troops gathering across the border in preparation for the assault. This sense of decisions being taken long after Ukraine needed them has been a recurring motif of western policy making over the past two years, and one that has caused much frustration.
The U.S. Ministry of Defense's Intelligence Service reported that Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles to strike Ukraine.
The U.S. Ministry of Defense's Intelligence Service reported that Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles to strike Ukraine.
This conclusion was drawn after comparing missile debris found in Kharkiv on January 2 with images from North Korean state media, noting similarities in specific missile components.
U.N. experts confirmed that the debris originated from a North Korean Hwasong-11 missile, indicating Russia’s violation of the ongoing arms embargo.
Russian missile attacks on the Novobavarsky neighborhood of Kharkiv killed five people and injured 25 others, the State Emergency Service said on May 31.
Russian missile attacks on the Novobavarsky neighborhood of Kharkiv killed at least five people and injured 25 others, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on May 31.
Russian forces attacked a multi-story residential building in the city of Kharkiv, killing one person and injuring 23 others, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. Another person, a security guard at a sewing workshop, was also killed in a strike at a different location within the city, Suspilne reported.
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According to Suspilne, Russian missiles struck three locations within the city - a five-story residential building, a sewing workshop, and a local shop.
Sixteen of the 47 pro-democracy campaigners had denied charges of subversion for organising pre-election primaries in landmark national security case
Fourteen people have been found guilty in Hong Kong’s largest national security trial, the prosecution of the so-called “Hong Kong 47” pro-democracy campaigners.
Sixteen of the cohort had pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit subversion for organising pre-election primaries, and were among those detained in mass dawn raids by national security police in January 2021. Most have been in jail awaiting trial ever since.
Among the guilty are former lawmakers and activists including Helena Wong, veteran campaigner Leung “Long Hair” Kwok-hung, journalist Gwyneth Ho, and dual Hong Kong-Australian national Gordon Ng.
The charges of “conspiracy to subvert state power” were laid against them under the national security law which had been introduced seven months earlier.
There's an archive link at the bottom of the post.
A plant still under construction in Mesquite, Texas, will soon turn out 30,000 artillery shells each month, roughly doubling current U.S. output.
In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online.
Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes.
The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155-millimeter howitzers that have become crucial to Kyiv’s war effort.
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To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. Factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., together make about 36,000 shells per month. The new General Dynamics facility in Mesquite, Texas, will make 30,000 each month once it reaches its full capacity.
International lawyers believe conduct of Israeli intelligence service should be investigated by prosecutor in The Hague
Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said.
Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences.
The disclosures about Israel’s nine-year campaign against the court were published on Tuesday as part of a joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. It details how the country’s intelligence agencies were deployed to surveil, hack, put pressure on, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff.
Sol Mamakwa gave first-ever Indigenous-language speech to Ontario provincial legislature, following rule change
Sol Mamakwa, a New Democratic party member from the community of Kingfisher Lake First Nation, rose on Tuesday to give the province’s first-ever Indigenous language speech in Queen’s Park, telling colleagues the moment left him feeling “thankful and proud”.
Before speaking, Mamakwa asked for the unanimous consent of the house to speak at length in Anishininiimowin, also known as Oji-Cree, receiving applause from lawmakers in response.
“I am speaking for those who couldn’t use their language … and for every Indigenous person in Ontario,” he said. “The language was taken from us by the arrival of the settlers, colonization and residential school. This history removed the children from our ways of life.” He said that children had their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their mother tongue.
It comes after witnesses reported seeing Israeli tanks in the centre of the city on Tuesday.
The US does not believe Israel has launched a full-scale invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, White House spokesman John Kirby has said.
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Mr Kirby told journalists that images from Sunday's strike, which killed mostly women, children and elderly people, were "heartbreaking" and "horrific".
"There should be no innocent life lost here as a result of this conflict," he added.
But he acknowledged that Israel was investigating the incident and said he had "no policy changes to speak to" following the recent events in Rafah.
"We think that we should allow them to neutralize military sites where missiles are fired, from where... Ukraine is attacked," Macron said at a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "If we tell them (Ukraine) that you are not allowed to target the place from which missiles are fired,...
Ukraine should be allowed to strike military bases on Russian territory from which Moscow carries out missile attacks against Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said on May 28, Le Monde reported.
"We think that we should allow them to neutralize military sites where missiles are fired, from where... Ukraine is attacked," Macron said at a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "If we tell them that you are not allowed to target the place from which missiles are fired, we are in fact telling them that we are providing you with weapons but you cannot defend yourself."
Army engineers are working to put the pier back together, and Defense Department officials hope it will be operational again in about a week.
The temporary pier that the U.S. military constructed and put in place to provide much-needed humanitarian aid for Gaza has broken apart in rough seas, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The latest calamity to befall the pier endeavor punctuated a particularly grim several days in Gaza, where Israeli forces have ramped up attacks on the city of Rafah just two days after carrying out a deadly strike that killed dozens of people.
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Army engineers are working to put the pier back together and Defense Department officials hope that it “will be fully operational in just a little over a week,” she said.
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, says the funding will improve Kyiv’s air defences just days after Russia killed 18 people in Kharkiv
Spain will provide Ukraine with €1bn in military aid this year after the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met in Madrid to sign an “enormously important”, decade-long defence and security deal.
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The bilateral deal was agreed two days after Russia’s onslaught in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed 18 people, and as EU leaders grow increasingly exasperated with Hungary’s efforts to block aid to Ukraine.
“[This deal] will allow Ukraine to boost its capabilities, including its essential air defence systems to protect its civilians, cities and infrastructure, which are still suffering indiscriminate attacks as seen this weekend in Kharkiv,” Sánchez told a press conference after the signing.
Two classified Ukrainian reports show that some U.S. precision-guided weapons are vulnerable to electronic warfare, an element in Ukraine’s recent battlefield setbacks.
Some American-made, precision-guided weapons supplied to Ukraine have proved ineffective on the battlefield, their accuracy badly diminished by Russian jamming efforts, according to Ukrainian commanders and a Ukrainian military research project.
The projectiles performed well when first introduced to the battlefield, but lost effectiveness as Russian forces adapted their defenses, two confidential Ukrainian reports found. The problem prompted the Ukrainian military to stop using the weapons, two artillery commanders said.
The reports, first revealed by The Washington Post, focus on the American-made Excalibur, a 155-millimeter guided artillery shell, and the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb or GLSDB. One of the reports was shown to The New York Times by people familiar with the research. The second report was described but not shown to a reporter. The individuals asked not to be identified because the reports contain classified military information.
PLA says exercises launched in response to president’s inauguration will test capacity to ‘seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas’
China has begun its second day of military drills targeting Taiwan, in what it says is punishment for “separatist acts” after the inauguration of its new president on Monday.
The exercises, which involve Chinese military units from the air force, rocket force, navy, army, and coast guard, were announced suddenly on Thursday morning, with maps showing five approximate target areas in the sea surrounding Taiwan’s main island. Other areas also targeted Taiwan’s offshore islands, which are close to the Chinese mainland.
China’s defence ministry said the drills on Friday were testing its military’s ability to “seize power” and occupy key areas, in line with Beijing’s ultimate goal of annexing Taiwan. Taiwan’s government and people reject the prospect of Chinese rule, but China’s ruler Xi Jinping has not renounced the use of force to take the island. Western intelligence has claimed Xi has told the People’s Liberation Army to be capable of an invasion by 2027.
Hackers release corporate data stolen from London Drugs
The retail and pharmacy chain reported a cyberattack on April 28
Retailer London Drugs says cybercriminals who stole files from its corporate head office last month have released some of the data after it refused to pay a ransom.
The company says the files may contain employee information, calling it a "deeply distressing" situation.
The statement from the company says it was "unwilling and unable" to pay a ransom to hackers it describes as "a sophisticated group of global cybercriminals."
It says London Drugs is notifying employees whose personal information may be affected and offering them credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.
Israel’s military said on Thursday that it was fighting in neighborhoods near the heart of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, apparently expanding its campaign against Hamas in a week when Israel has faced mounting diplomatic and legal pressure over its war effort.
The fighting came as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the top court of the United Nations, said it would respond on Friday to a South African petition for the court to order an immediate halt to the ground assault in Rafah. The court has no means of enforcing its orders, but a call for Israel to rein in its offensive would be the latest setback to the country on the international stage.
The Pentagon predicted that a stream of humanitarian aid would be arriving in Gaza via the floating pier, but little relief has reached the besieged strip, officials acknowledged this week.
In the week since the U.S. military and allies attached a temporary pier to the Gaza shoreline, Pentagon planners have come face to face with the logistical nightmare that critics had warned would accompany the endeavor.
The Defense Department predicted that a steady stream of humanitarian aid would be arriving in Gaza via the pier by now, but little relief has reached Palestinians in the besieged strip, officials acknowledged this week. Several trucks were looted as they made their way to a warehouse, the U.N. World Food Program said, and the complexity of operating the pier project in a war zone is continuing to slow distribution.
The problems, as expected, are on the back end of the operation. Looting of aid trucks has continued, officials said, and forced the World Food Program to suspend operations for two days. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, suspended food distribution in Rafah on Tuesday, citing lack of security. It added that it had not received any medical supplies for 10 days because of closures and disruptions at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings.
Russia’s two-pronged assault in Kharkiv Oblast that began on May 10 is exploiting Ukraine’s troop shortage, forcing it to make difficult decisions about where to commit reserves. Two weeks into the offensive, one group of Russian forces is already fighting in the streets of the town of Vovchansk
Two weeks into the offensive, one group of Russian forces is already fighting in the streets of the town of Vovchansk about 70 kilometers away from the city of Kharkiv, while the other is trying to push toward the town of Lyptsi, just under two dozen kilometers away from the city.
The Kremlin has options for what it can try to accomplish in the area: depopulating Kharkiv, taking territory, and most importantly, getting Ukraine to commit reserves needed elsewhere.
So far, Russian troops seem at least partially successful with the latter two. Multiple border villages have reportedly been captured and some Ukrainian units have been moved in from outside Kharkiv to reinforce the defense of the region.
It has more to do with them being identified and fleeing the country:
Holocaust memorial had recorded two figures arriving at about 3am with spray paint and stencils, as well as two or three other people who may have been involved. They were reportedly quickly identified from mobile phone information.
All were Bulgarian and left Paris by coach for Brussels later the same morning just after spray-painting the graffiti, France Info reported, confirming an earlier report in the satirical weekly Canard Enchaîné.
And the similarity to a previous incident:
In October, about 60 Stars of David were discovered on walls in Paris and districts on the outskirts. All were in a blue similar to the blue of the Israeli national flag.
A Moldovan couple were arrested in that case and their alleged handler, a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman, was identified, according to Agence France-Presse.
That does make it sound less good, but there's also a compelling pro-Ukrainian argument for using revenue (and other funds) rather than the seized assets for defense. It's widely agreed that Ukraine is owed those assets for reconstruction. Many want to liquidate them as an alternative to directly funding the defense effort, which could harm Ukraine's ability to rebuild after the war. So it's sort of robbing future-Ukraine to pay for the present. It's especially risky because countries tend to lose focus of things like reconstruction and get distracted by the next shiny conflict or crisis.
That obviously depends on Ukraine's allies continuing to fund their defense though.
The party’s ruling body, known as the political council, issued a statement on Tuesday in which it insisted that the government would not be blackmailed but also signalled that a way out of the crisis was possible if there was swift progress on preferential trade terms and visa liberalisation.
'We won't be blackmailed but we can be bribed!'
They changed it to that considerably less bonkers headline. Perhaps because they became of aware of their legal exposure under international laws against poor taste...? 🧐
Can we talk about a story that's fallen through the cracks here? CNN claiming this as an exclusive is madness. Who do these people think they are? And should the ICC issue arrest warrants about it? 😉
BBC just reported that Iranian state media has confirmed their deaths:
President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others are confirmed to have been killed in Sunday's helicopter crash in north-western Iran, state TV says.
The concern isn't about the consequences faced by Russia, but the impact on the rest of the world. Like, if Russia were to collapse, I think most would agree that Egyptians don't deserve to find out what suddenly not having $1.7 billion in wheat would mean, right? I don't think anyone has any idea what that would mean for, say, Tajikistan and other post-Soviet states with economies closely tied to Russia. Collapse would be chaos and it wouldn't stay confined within Russia's borders.
And, again, I don't think that justifies preventing Russia from losing. There are worse concerns for Russia winning. And the idea that Russia neither winning nor losing could be a sustainable final state is probably a fantasy.
I think that's one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?
I don't think that's a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.
Netanyahu doesn't need Gantz's party to remain in power. They'd lose a more moderate voice in the war cabinet. The Unity government would probably lose legitimacy in the eyes of most Israelis. It would be very bad for Netanyahu politically. It would also probably be good for Gantz politically, as recent polling suggests that he might be starting to get some of Netanyahu's stink on him.
It's complicated. They don't have the ability to bring down the government but both Gantz and Gallant are much more popular than Netanyahu. Netanyahu's choice (again) comes down to placating the far-right to keep his government in power in the short-term at the expense of further alienating the Israeli public. If he bows to this pressure, the far-right might topple his government immediately. All paths probably lead to electoral (then legal) doom for Netanyahu at some point.
It was initially incorrectly reported that she was alive and unconscious. This isn't a new correction. She was declared dead in late October after investigators identified a piece of her skull:
A source involved with her identification told CNN Louk’s death was announced after forensic examiners found a bone fragment from her skull.
The bone fragment was from the petrous part of the temporal bone, which is at the base of the skull, normally near the carotid artery, a major blood vessel that provides blood to the brain. A DNA test concluded the fragment belonged to Louk.
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The bone fragment, combined with the circumstances surrounding the October 7 attack and video that appeared to show Louk unconscious on the back of a Hamas truck, led investigators to conclude these were her remains.
On top of knowing who you are, where you are, whether you're single or married, whether or not you have children, where you work, when you work, what your interests are, what your embarrassing interests are, etc. etc. etc.
People are weirdly blase about this but, if you use TikTok regularly, they have such a wealth of information about you that an intelligence agency would find it trivial to compromise you. You're just gambling that you're not worth compromising.
They haven't been training Ukrainian troops in-country since the start of the full-scale invasion. The US in particular pulled all their troops out about 10 days before Russia invaded.
The NYT coverage says:
The change came because the United Nations switched to citing a more conservative source for its numbers — the Gazan Ministry of Health — rather than using Gaza’s Government Media Office, as it had in recent weeks.
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That Gaza media office has consistently provided an overall death toll similar to the one given by the ministry of health, but different and often higher figures for the number of women and children killed.
Ismail Al Thawabateh, the office’s director general, said in an interview that the health ministry listed and categorized an individual as dead only when all of their details had been documented and verified by a next of kin. He did not explain why his office used a breakdown of women and children based on the overall death toll.
Most of the coverage, including this Guardian piece, makes it sound like they switched to a different dataset but this sounds like a switch to a different source. The HM numbers have generally been regarded as accurate -- historically, at least. I don't think that the media office has that same reputation. It seems like the previous numbers were calculated from the HM's total death toll figure, and not from observed data. I'm not really sure what that means for interpreting the numbers.
People say the same thing literally any time there's a negative story about Hamas. That isn't how this story is framed. Israeli policy (blockade) and military are not portrayed as a relative good at all. It also speaks directly against a narrative by some Israelis that Palestinians bear collective responsibility for the actions of Hamas.
The idea that we must help Hamas cover up their crimes is a bad one, however well-intentioned. If they don't want their crimes and misdeeds reported by the world, they should consider not committing any.