Three North Koreans have been charged by US authorities over a scheme to steal and extort more than $1.3bn (£940m) from banks and businesses around the world.
They are also accused of deploying malicious cryptocurrency programs.
A Canadian-American citizen was also charged with money laundering.
The men are also accused of being part of the Wannacry cyber-attack of 2017, which crippled UK health service computer systems on a national scale.
On February 11, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to put on hold its review of the Trump-era ban on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app.
This request came a day after the administration asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a similar hold on the case considering the Trump ban on the Chinese mobile video-sharing platform TikTok.
Lower U.S. courts had previously enjoined the enforcement of the Trump bans. WeChat users and TikTok had sued to block enforcement. Trump banned the apps because they were, he correctly contended, collecting “vast swaths” of data and censoring Americans.
Though many believed they would wait a little longer, it was only a matter of time before President Joe Biden and his Democrat-controlled Congress turned their focus to “gun control.”
It makes sense that they would start now, as many pundits and experts believe that Republicans have a strong chance of taking back the House next year, which would effectively kill the progressive, anti-gun caucus from passing ridiculous legislation that typically only hurts law-abiding gun owners.
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense found thousands of its computer servers sending military network data to China — the result of code hidden in chips that handled the machines’ startup process.
In 2014, Intel Corp. discovered that an elite Chinese hacking group breached its network through a single server that downloaded malware from a supplier’s update site.
And in 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned multiple companies that Chinese operatives had concealed an extra chip loaded with backdoor code in one manufacturer’s servers.
Thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children are attempting to flee to the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic, propelled by devastating natural disasters, chronic violence, and severe economic hardship at home.
US Customs and Border Protection encountered 5,871 kids at the south-west border without a parent or legal guardian last month, the largest influx yet since the start of the public health crisis in early 2020.
That sudden spike is still relatively modest compared to huge figures from fiscal year 2019, when Border Patrol apprehended more than 76,000 unaccompanied children, a trend that reached its zenith that spring.
Sky News host Paul Murray says Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not want to be called as a witness in the impeachment trial because there is a “substantial amount of evidence” that she was pre-warned about the January 6 riots.
“She did not want to be called as a witness because there is a substantial amount of evidence that she – as the presiding officer – was pre-warned of something might be happening on January 6,” Mr Murray said.
”There is plenty of evidence to suggest that she was not doubling down on security that day, and the former boss of the Capitol Police would have testified to that very point”.
Border Patrol agents are being overwhelmed with a surge of migrants in parts of Texas and have had to restart “catch-and-release” policies, turning people loose into the U.S. as the first signs of a migrant surge emerge under President Biden.
Agents, officials and analysts say a combination of relaxed Biden border policies, coronavirus restrictions on holding people and deteriorating levels of cooperation from Mexico have left parts of the border in Texas unable to handle the surge.
On Friday, Abraham Lincoln’s 221st birthday, a dwindling group of Never Trump Republicans were left to survey the ruins of their once-promising organization, named for the 16th president and seemingly done in by a tide of sex, money, and betrayal scandals that would have made Honest Abe cringe.
The Lincoln Project, which just a month ago was awash in cash and planning an ambitious transformation into a media powerhouse, absorbed its latest gut punch Thursday night in a drama that played out on Twitter. The group’s account tweeted screenshots of private messages from a journalist in an apparent, and shocking, bid to intimidate other reporters and discredit a flurry of damaging stories.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rejecting calls for a more combative response to U.S. protectionism, hoping a conciliatory approach will mend relations damaged during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Trade Minister Mary Ng said in an interview this week she is focusing her efforts with the new Biden administration on mutual U.S.-Canada interests despite early policy hiccups that risk further fracturing ties between the two nations, whose commercial relationship is worth US$725-billion a year.
Mexican police officers were arrested last week and charged in the killing of more than a dozen Guatemalan migrants on the way to the United States.
Their bodies were shot and burned near the U.S. border in a violence-riddled corridor frequently used by smugglers.
Such tragedies are not uncommon. Mexican police particularly at the state and local level have often been accused of exploiting and killing migrants. Criminal organizations routinely prey on vulnerable people who are often smuggled through violent and cartel-controlled areas.
The left often paints amnesty as a humanitarian act, but clearly, the facts paint a darker reality. Promises of mass legalization and weakened enforcement lead to these tragedies.
But pushing amnesty and permitting catch-and-release in the middle of a pandemic will lead to far greater human misery with the spread of COVID-19.
When the French think you’ve gone too far with your wokeism, you might want to back up a bit. According to the New York Times, French politicians, high profile intellectuals, and journalists warn that ideas from the U.S. about race, gender, and post-colonialism are an existential threat to their country.
h/t Marvin
The post that generated the most controversy was a screenshot of another person’s post that she then posted onto her own Instagram account. The post compared the current politically divisive culture in the U.S. to Nazi Germany. The screenshot stated:
Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
China’s Communist Party uses the Great Firewall to block information from its citizens. Blocking speech based on politics has been a hallmark of every totalitarian government.
Appearing on Fox & Friends on Monday, a Virginia sheriff blasted the Biden administration for its policy on illegal immigration, saying that President Biden has “effectively and functionally dismantled ICE, basically telling the agents to stand down.”
Taking huge personal risks, 38 Iran-based dissidents have asked the Biden administration to retain “maximum pressure” on Iran. In a letter dated February 1, they urge President Joe Biden to maintain “maximum political, diplomatic, and financial pressure on the regime” and to support the Iranians’ “determination in seeking a secular democratic government through a non-violent, free, and fair referendum”.
“Following the JCPOA agreement, when Iran received substantial financial benefits, the Islamic Republic lost a major opportunity to implement meaningful welfare reforms for its people…” the Iranian dissidents write in their letter.
