The prospect of Russian interference in the UK’s election flared anew on Saturday after the social media platform Reddit concluded that people from Russia leaked confidential British government documents on Brexit trade talks just days before the general UK vote.
Reddit said in a statement that it has banned 61 accounts suspected of violating policies against vote manipulation.
It said the suspect accounts shared the same pattern of activity as a Russian interference operation dubbed “Secondary Infektion” that was uncovered earlier this year.
Reddit investigated the leak after the documents became public during the campaign for Thursday’s election, which will determine the country’s relationship with the EU.
All 650 seats in the British House of Commons are up for grabs.
Reddit said it believed the documents were leaked as “part of a campaign that has been reported as originating from Russia.”
“We were able to confirm that they did indeed show a pattern of coordination,” it said.
The British government has not challenged the authenticity of the documents.
The UK’s main opposition Labour Party has argued that the documents prove that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party is seeking a deal with the US after Brexit that would drive up the cost of medicines and imperil the state-funded British National Health Service.
The issue has been a central election theme, largely because the country deeply cherishes the health service, which has suffered under years of austerity.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the 451 pages of documents, which covered six rounds of preliminary talks between US and British negotiators, proved that Johnson was planning to put the service “up for sale” in trade talks.
Johnson — who was not prime minister for most of the two-year period when the trade talks took place — has rejected Corbyn’s analysis.
The UK is scheduled to leave the 28-nation EU on Jan. 31.
When asked about Reddit’s actions while on a campaign stop in Wales, Corbyn suggested that the news was an “advanced stage of rather belated conspiracy theories by the prime minister.”
“When we released the documents, at no stage did the prime minister or anybody deny that those documents were real, deny the arguments that we put forward. And if there has been no discussion with the USA about access to our health markets, if all that is wrong, how come after a week they still haven’t said that?” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in