Cyber Attacks, War & Terrorism
WORLD
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un inspects military satellite station
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae meet with members of the Non-permanent Satellite Launch Preparatory Committee, as he inspects the country’s first military reconnaissance satellite, in Pyongyang, North Korea May 16, 2023, in this image released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency on May 17, 2023. REUTERS
North Korea will launch its first military reconnaissance satellite in June for monitoring U.S. military activities, state media KCNA reported on Tuesday.
In a statement carried by the KCNA news agency, Ri Pyong Chol, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party, denounced joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea as openly showing their “reckless ambition for aggression.”
U.S. and South Korean forces have carried out various training exercises in recent months, including what they said were the biggest joint live-fire exercises last week, after many drills were scaled back amid COVID-19 restrictions and hopes for diplomatic efforts with North Korea.
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Read MoreA harness-wearing Beluga whale that turned up in Norway in 2019, sparking speculation it was a spy trained by the Russian navy, has appeared off Sweden’s coast, an organisation following him said Monday.
First discovered in Norway’s far northern region of Finnmark, the whale spent more than three years slowly moving down the top half of the Norwegian coastline, before suddenly speeding up in recent months to cover the second half and on to Sweden.
On Sunday, he was observed in Hunnebostrand, off Sweden’s southwestern coast.
“We don’t know why he has sped up so fast right now,” especially since he is moving “very quickly away from his natural environment”, Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with the OneWhale organisation, told AFP.
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Read MoreEvery year, French caretakers spend hours preparing the grave markers at the American cemetery in Normandy — nearly 10,000 of them.
In the United States, citizens spend Memorial Day remembering and honoring the service members who paid the ultimate price for the freedoms and liberties the rest of us enjoy – but for those who never made it home, some of the host nations do what they can to honor the Americans who fell defending them.
In Normandy, for example, they routinely bring sand from D-Day’s most brutal landing site — Omaha Beach — and use it to darken the names and dates inscribed in the otherwise plain white marble crosses that cover the landscape.
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Read MoreIf asked to list examples of global threats that are consequential to Canada’s defence, Canadians will highlight the Russo-Ukrainian war, Sudan’s domestic conflict between state and paramilitary forces, and China’s domestic meddling and continental reconnaissance. This transformational shift in the outlooks of Canadians is vital for understanding how the current moment in history — where the international rules-based order is becoming unsteady and more hostile-looking — impacts Canada’s national defence interests.
However, Canadians remain instinctively unfamiliar with the consequences emerging from the Korean peninsula.
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Read MoreDocuments uncovered by the Media Research Center (MRC) revealed the Biden Administration used a $40 million grant program of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ostensibly earmarked for anti-terrorism purposes, to target conservative organizations and media, including Breitbart News.
The Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) was established by the DHS in 2011 to combat Al Qaeda, but was vastly expanded in its scope by the Biden adminstration.
Its grants now encompass several “media literacy and online critical thinking initiatives,” the most radical of which accuse conservative organizations including Breitbart News, Turning Point USA, and the Heritage Foundation of turning Americans into violent neo-Nazis.
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Read MoreFederal regulators say non-profit groups are “at risk of terrorist financing abuse.” The Department of Finance in a report proposed forcing non-profits to disclose suspicious cash transactions.
“These organizations were identified as being at risk of terrorist financing abuse as they are not monitored for terrorist financing activities or educated about their terrorist financing risks in the same way registered charities are by the Canada Revenue Agency,” said the report Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering And Anti-Terrorist Financing Regime Strategy.
The department identified what it called a “possible coverage gap with respect to non-profit organizations.” No specific allegations of wrongdoing were detailed.
“In order to respond to an ever-evolving operational and threat environment the Government of Canada seeks to identify opportunities for continual improvements to its anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing legislative and regulatory frameworks,” said the report. “This includes strengthening the regime through amendments to the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act and Criminal Code to address gaps.”
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Read MoreWORLD
Canada And Saudi Arabia Normalize Diplomatic Relations After 2018 Split
By Steve Scherer
05/24/23 AT 3:33 PM EDT
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Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference in response to the release of a special report on foreign interference, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference in response to the release of a special report on foreign interference, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada May 23, 2023. REUTERS
Canada and Saudi Arabia have agreed to restore full diplomatic ties and appoint new ambassadors, both countries said on Wednesday, bringing to a close a 2018 dispute that damaged relations and trade.
The decision follows discussions held between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in Bangkok in November last year, according to statements from Canada and Saudi Arabia.
The decision stems from “the desire for both sides to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries on the basis of mutual respect and common interests,” the statements said.
The 2018 row pre-dated the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi later that year, which Canada and all Western countries condemned. It started when Canada’s embassy in Riyadh published a tweet in Arabic urging the immediate release of women’s rights activists held by Saudi Arabia.
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Read MoreThere is no better sign of the impact that the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has had than the fact that the Kremlin wanted the world to know they shouldn’t pay any attention to us.
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Read MoreDUBLIN, May 22 (Reuters) – Meta (META.O) was hit with a record 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) fine by its lead European Union privacy regulator over its handling of user information and given five months to stop transferring users’ data to the United States.
The fine, imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), came after Meta continued to transfer data beyond a 2020 EU court ruling that invalidated an EU-U.S. data transfer pact. It tops the previous record EU privacy fine of 746 million
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Read MoreFor the first time, researchers have managed to use GPT1, a precursor to the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, to translate MRI imagery into text in an effort to understand what someone is thinking.
This recent breakthrough allowed researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to “read” someone’s thoughts as a continuous flow of text, based on what they were listening to, imagining or watching.
It raises significant concerns for privacy, freedom of thought and even the freedom to dream without interference.
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