GERMANY
Navalny blames Putin
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny told a German magazine that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind what Berlin has said was poisoning, but added that he was not afraid. “I claim that Putin is behind the crime and I don’t have any other versions of what happened,” Navalny told Der Spiegel.
UNITED STATES
Brubeck music to be released
Nearly eight years after his death, the final solo recording of jazz legend Dave Brubeck is set for release next month. Verve Records last week announced that Lullabies — a collection of intimate standards often played for children — would be available from Nov. 6. “Dave was mainly thinking of it as a sort of documentation, and gift for immediate family and some close family friends,” said Chris Brubeck, his son, who is also a musician.
UNITED STATES
Russian hacker sentenced
Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian man convicted of hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring, and stealing the personal information of more than 100 million users, on Wednesday was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison. Prosecutors said that in 2012, Nikulin, working from Moscow, hacked the computers of the San Francisco Bay Area companies, installed malware, stole login credentials for employees and used them to obtain customer data, such as usernames and passwords, that he offered for sale on a Russian-speaking cybercrime forum.
UNITED STATES
Apolitical stance slammed
Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey has joined criticism of Coinbase Inc’s policy of not debating politics at work, saying it runs counter to the core principles of cryptocurrency. In reaction to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s blog post calling for his firm to be mission-focused and not “advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction.” Dorsey said that the whole purpose of currencies like Bitcoin, which is traded on Coinbase, is social activism.
UNITED STATES
Man charged over shooting
Deonte Lee Murray was charged on Wednesday over the shooting of two Los Angeles police officers in their vehicle at close range after his arrest over a different crime led investigators to the weapon allegedly used in the attack. Murray, who has a lengthy criminal record, was charged with two counts of premeditated attempted murder of a police officer and a firearms offense. If convicted he faces life imprisonment. Murray was arrested on Sept. 15 — three days after the police shooting — as a suspect in an earlier vehicle theft involving another shooting. Murray pleaded not guilty on Wednesday when he appeared before a judge, who set bail at US$6.15 million.
FRANCE
Neanderthal DNA poses risk
People with a snippet of Neanderthal DNA run a higher risk of severe complications from COVID-19, a study published on Wednesday said. People infected with the novel coronavirus who carry the genetic coding are three times more likely to need mechanical ventilation, said the report, which was published in the journal Nature. “It is striking that the genetic heritage from Neanderthals has such tragic consequences during the current pandemic,” wrote coauthor Svante Paabo, director of the department of genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was