Saturday’s attacks occurred as Russians entered the second day of voting in a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule by another six years after he crushed dissent.
A man and a woman died in the attack and three other people were wounded, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app. It was the latest in exchanges of long-range missile and rocket fire in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Five people were also wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a car in the village of Glotovo, some 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Gladkov said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also said Saturday that it had thwarted attempts by “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups” to enter the country from Ukraine’s Sumy region. That followed an armed incursion claimed by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin on Tuesday in the Belgorod and Kursk regions,
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Moscow’s military and security forces killed 30 fighters while thwarting the latest incursion.
The Russian Volunteer Corps — one of the groups who claimed to have crossed the border on Tuesday, who say they are “fighting for the freedom of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples” — released a video on social media Saturday claiming to have captured 25 Russian soldiers.
Another of the groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion, warned of a “massive strike” on military bases in Belgorod late afternoon Saturday and urged residents to take shelter. Shortly afterward, Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian air defences had shot down 15 rockets over the Belgorod region. Videos appeared on local news sites, appearing to show smoke rising from buildings and falling shrapnel. The authenticity of the videos couldn’t be independently verified.
Cross-border attacks in the area have occurred sporadically since the war began and have been the subject of claims and counterclaims, as well as disinformation and propaganda.
Also on Saturday, a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil refinery belonging to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 450 miles (725 kilometres) from the Ukrainian border, regional Gov. Dmitry Azarov said. He said an attack on another refinery was thwarted. No casualties were reported.
A Ukrainian drone also dropped an explosive close to a polling station in the illegally annexed Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, Russian state news agency Tass said. No injuries or damage were reported.
The attacks come a day after a Russian assault on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed at least 21 people. The ballistic missile attack blasted homes in the southern city Friday, followed by a second missile that targeted first responders who arrived at the scene, officials said.
More than 50 people are still in the hospital following the attacks, Odesa Deputy Mayor Svitlana Bedreha said Saturday, according to Ukrainian state media.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised a “just response” to the attack in a video address Friday evening.
]]>Kazakhstan has opened a trial against a former minister accused of killing his wife in a restaurant – shining the spotlight on violence against women in the central Asian country.
Kuandyk Bishimbayev, a former aide to autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev, is accused of beating Saltanat Nukenova to death in November last year.
Journalists were barred from the courtroom in the capital, Astana, but they were allowed to watch live footage of the case broadcast to a press room.
The 43-year-old faces up to 15 years in prison if he is found guilty of killing his 31-year-old wife.
Azhan Aymaganova, a female prosecutor, told the court how Mr Bishimbayev, a former economy minister, killed Nukenova in a restaurant owned by the couple which was closed on the night of the alleged murder.
She said Bishimbayev had begun “to show aggression” in his relationship with Nukenova and “forbade her to communicate and meet her relatives and friends, controlled all her phone calls and movements”.
She said the couple had been drinking in the restaurant and that “during the argument Nukenova told Bishimbayev that she was tired of the relationship and that she had decided to leave him”.
The prosecutor said he then began punching her in the head before Nukenova, fearing for her life, locked herself in the lavatory. Around dawn, Bishimbayev broke the door down and beat her to death, it is claimed.
Bishimbayev has denied the allegations
In 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for corruption but he was freed a year later after an amnesty.
The case has led to a renewed campaign to combat spousal abuse in Kazakhstan, where the UN estimated that about 400 women a year are killed in femicides.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called on authorities to strengthen legal mechanisms to punish domestic violence after the Bishimbayev case.
Feminist organisations have urged the government to do more.
This seemed to be the Six Nations for Marcus Smith to seize England’s fly-half berth definitively. The original apprentice looked ready to go full-time, and circumstances were obliging rather nicely.
Owen Farrell, who had appeared set to continue as a leader of Steve Borthwick’s set-up, announced at the end of November he was withdrawing from national service. From there, Smith began to build a strong case.
He would later admit that his return to Harlequins, following a World Cup spent training predominantly as a surprise full-back, was tricky. After losses to Saracens and Northampton Saints, a 36-3 thrashing of Sale Sharks felt salient. Smith eclipsed his opposite man, George Ford, with a clever kicking display that was illuminated by sparks of magic. A week later, he inspired an away win over Racing 92 with another fine performance.
There were wobbles – Harlequins lost to Toulouse and Bath on consecutive weekends – but it is understood that Borthwick wanted to name both Smiths in his match-day squad for the Six Nations opener in Rome, with Marcus starting and the 21-year-old Fin on the bench. England’s in-house documentary, This Rose, captured the Monday meeting in Girona at which the team was read out. Smith was sitting next to Henry Slade and close to Borthwick.
However, he would injure his calf that day in training. Plans were altered again. Ford, a safe pair of hands to off-set inexperience elsewhere, was parachuted into the starting role he has retained since. But there has been a concerted attempt to keep Marcus Smith involved as much as possible.
On Valentine’s Day, which doubled up as his 25th birthday, Smith was mentioned at the bottom of a Rugby Football Union press update to follow England’s narrow defeat of Wales. He would be heading to Pennyhill Park to continue his rehabilitation; a promising sign.
Although his part in England’s open training session at Twickenham on Februaty 16 was conspicuously light – Smith spent a lot of it stretching with Bob Stewart, the team’s medical lead, in a dead-ball area – he gave a pitch-side interview and met supporters. On a later episode of This Rose, he popped up watching Love Island with Tom Roebuck, Chandler Cunningham-South and Immanuel Feyi-Waboso. During another, Smith and Ben Earl are captured chatting in the Pennyhill Park spa.
Prior to the Calcutta Cup game, while Jamie George spoke so movingly about the death of his mother, Jane, the England captain mentioned Smith.
“My mum was probably the biggest England rugby fan there could ever be,” George told the BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly podcast.
“I take great joy in the fact that she had a lot of happiness following me around the world watching me play rugby. Any opportunity I’d have to get out of camp, I’d go to visit her and the conversations we’d be having were like, ‘How’s Marcus Smith getting on? How’s his calf?’”
The heart-wrenching anecdote carried a noteworthy point; that Smith is a recognisable figure who has become dear to many England supporters. Of course that should not sway selection, as much as he and Danny Care are sure to rouse Twickenham on Saturday if and when they arrive from the bench, especially with the latter winning his 100th cap.
There is also a sense that Smith has served his probation. Interestingly, a call-up for Alex Dombrandt makes it the entire Harlequins 8-9-10 combination among the replacements.
Eddie Jones often compared him to Richie Mo’unga, another darting runner, and preached that he would grow more assured and influential the longer he spent in Test matches. Smith now has 30 caps, a solid foundation reflective of Jones’s investment in him, and has shown signs of rounding out his game.
So far this Premiership campaign, according to Stats Perform, Smith is averaging 333 kicking metres per 80 minutes, up from 266 last season and 259 in 2021-22. That puts him second by that metric among all fly-halves across the league, with only Ford (348) ahead of him. Incidentally, Alex Mitchell tops the Premiership log, with a whopping 496 kicking metres per 80 minutes.
Smith has aimed to peg back opponents and tease defences with his boot, but his running has been more potent than ever. He is averaging 62 metres and 4.7 beaten defenders per 80 minutes with ball in hand this Premiership season, racking up more than 13 carries per game. All of these attacking figures are up on last term. He remains an elusive threat from the back-field and on the gain line.
Fin Smith has an extremely exciting future. His unruffled, accurate display at a wet and windy Thomond Park, as Northampton ousted Munster in January, oozed class. Ford, equally, will feel as though he has plenty to offer. It is discombobulating to remind yourself that the Sale string-puller, a veteran of 94 caps, is just 30 years old.
Another calf issue for Fin has led to Ford and Marcus Smith occupying Borthwick’s squad against Ireland. Ford and Smith were photographed at training on Monday with a menu of calls, presumably denoting set-piece strike moves, scrawled on their hands.
Kevin Sinfield heralded Marcus Smith’s off-field impact earlier this week, citing his “big smile” and a certain “bounce” about his demeanour. Sinfield said that Smith has been “a voice within meetings” while always staying true to himself. This is impossible to quantify, but one wonders whether the perception of a new beginning for England would have been different – specifically more optimistic and patient – with Smith as the front-line fly-half and therefore one of the faces of a new World Cup cycle.
Borthwick has been unfortunate in that regard, which is no sleight on Ford, who rescued the side against Wales in round two with a superb 50:22. Smith can also learn from his senior colleague’s defence. According to Stats Perform, Ford’s tackle completion rate is superior to that of Smith over their respective England careers (87 per cent to 77 per cent). Ford has made 24 tackles and missed two this Six Nations and, while the vast majority have ceded ground, he has also forced three turnovers.
Felix Jones will no doubt urge Marcus Smith, who has become more tenacious and committed in defence over recent years, to use his acceleration to pressurise attackers, as Manie Libbok does for South Africa. When Smith is reintroduced to the Test arena, everything will be under the microscope. That said, he is just the sort of presence capable of energising England as well.
The Biden administration’s study of the leak is ongoing, but private experts told CNN it offers some of the clearest public evidence yet of how they believe China’s powerful security agencies outsource hacking operations to tech firms to target victims around the world.
The documents, posted anonymously online last weekend for anyone to access, include screenshots of chat logs, as well as records of employees and Chinese government clients of the tech firm I-Soon. The company’s hacking victims range from Tibetan exile-run political groups, hospitals in Taiwan and India to Hong Kong’s universities following the city’s mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, according to the leaked data. More than a dozen, mostly Asian, foreign governments are listed as targets.
I-Soon’s clients include China’s police, intelligence service and military, according to a spreadsheet listing 183 contracts signed between 2016 and 2022 by I-Soon’s subsidiary in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
“This is some of the best visibility we’ve had into Chinese hacking operations outside of a government SCIF,” said Adam Kozy, who used to track Chinese hackers for the FBI, using an acronym for classified facilities.
“I’m not aware of the specifics you mentioned. In principle, I want to emphasize that China firmly opposes the unwarranted denigration and smearing against China,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, said in an emailed statement when asked for comment.
“The so-called claim that ‘the Chinese authorities surveil dissidents overseas’ is completely fabricated,” Liu’s statement continued. “China is a major victim of cyber attacks. We keep a firm stance against all forms of cyber attacks and resort to lawful methods in tackling them. China does not encourage, support or condone attacks launched by hackers.”
Wu Haibo, the CEO of privately owned and Shanghai-based I-Soon, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The leak comes amid unprecedented tensions in US-China relations in cyberspace and appears to fly in the face of Beijing’s repeated denials that it sponsors cyberattacks.
FBI Director Christopher Wray and other top US officials warned Congress last month that another set of Chinese hackers unrelated to I-Soon have infiltrated critical US infrastructure and could use that access to disrupt any US military response to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Beijing has strongly denied the allegations and in turn accuses the US of conducting its own cyberattacks.
“The Chinese government is really trying to change this narrative that China hacks other countries,” Dakota Cary, a consultant at security firm SentinelOne who focuses on China, told CNN. “So I think [the leaks will] really upset them.”
GitHub, the popular software developer platform where the leaked data appeared, took the documents down late Thursday, saying the data was a “violation of GitHub’s terms of service.”
I-Soon allegedly focused on cyber-espionage, including against governments across Asia, according to a CNN review of the data and interviews with private experts.
Telecom companies also featured heavily in the list. Hundreds of gigabytes of call logs and user data were hacked from operators in countries including South Korea, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.
In a leaked marketing presentation, I-Soon touted its participation in an unspecified hacking project for China’s Ministry of Public Security in 2018. The project “achieved significant results” and received “recognition and praise” from Chinese officials, according to a presentation slide.
The leak also shows how its business of scooping up intelligence for Chinese security services is thriving years after some Wu associates were indicted by the US Justice Department and added to the FBI’s “Cyber Most Wanted List” for a worldwide hacking spree that targeted more than 100 companies around the world.
In September 2020, according to the leaked chat logs, Wu shared a news article describing the additions to the FBI’s “Cyber Most Wanted List.” Four of those people were in the same WeChat group with Wu, according to the leaks. The executive responded suggesting they celebrate being “verified by the FBI.”
Chinese court documents show that I-Soon later developed business relations with the FBI-wanted hacking group.
In sharp contrast to the private boasting from I-Soon, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to hide its alleged affiliation with hacking operations carried out on behalf of Beijing, according to private cybersecurity executives who have tracked the activity for years.
After the Obama administration secured an agreement in 2015 from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Beijing would not “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property,” the Chinese government has increasingly tapped contractors like I-Soon to give an element of plausible deniability to its hacking operations, Adam Meyers, a senior vice president at US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told CNN.
The reorganization of the Chinese military in recent years, and the need to cover the tracks of its hackers, Meyers said, has prompted the Chinese government to “lean more heavily on these companies for direct involvement in offensive operations.”
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