IRAN
Guard’s death probed
Tehran yesterday said it has launched an investigation into the death of a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and denied reports that he had been assassinated. “A member of the revolutionary guards died in recent days in an accident in his home,” the Islamic Republic News Agency said, citing what it called an informed source. It rejected “allegations” by foreign-based opposition media that Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh, a commander of the guards’ external operations unit, had been killed in recent days in Karaj. The denial comes days after the corps accused Israel of shooting dead Colonel Sayyad Khodai on May 22. Tehran on Monday vowed to avenge the death of Khodai, 50, who was gunned down by assailants on motorcycles outside his home.
UNITED STATES
China fishing ban slammed
The Department of State on Thursday backed the Philippines in criticizing a unilateral seasonal ban on fishing declared by Beijing in the dispute-rife South China Sea. The department pointed to a 2016 ruling by a court in The Hague that rejected Beijing’s claims, as well as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, ratified by China although not by the US. “The PRC’s unilateral fishing moratorium in the South China Sea is inconsistent with the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal ruling and international law,” department spokesman Ned Price wrote on Twitter, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We call upon the PRC to abide by its obligations under international law.” Manila on Tuesday summoned a Chinese diplomat over the announcement of a unilateral fishing ban, as well as alleged harassment of a marine research vessel by a Chinese coast guard ship.
NORTH KOREA
Kim congratulates queen
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday sent a congratulatory message to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as London started celebrations to mark her 70 years on the throne, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. London and Pyongyang established diplomatic relations in 2000 and have maintained their respective embassies. “I send my congratulations to you and your people on the occasion of the national day of your country, the official anniversary of your Majesty’s birthday,” Kim said in the message to the queen, according to the ministry. The British embassy in Pyongyang is closed due to the rigid entry and exit restrictions imposed by the nation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the Korean Central News Agency reported that the queen had sent Kim a congratulatory message on the anniversary of the country’s founding on Sept. 9.
UNITED STATES
Stormy lawyer sent to jail
Michael Avenatti on Thursday was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing book proceeds from Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame as he represented her in courtrooms and cable news programs during her legal battles with then-president Donald Trump. The California lawyer, currently incarcerated, learned his fate in Manhattan federal court, where Judge Jesse Furman said the sentence means Avenatti would spend another two-and-a-half years in prison on top of the two-and-a-half years he is already serving after another fraud conviction. Avenatti choked up several times as he delivered a lengthy statement before the sentence was announced, saying he had “disappointed scores of people and failed in a cataclysmic way.” Avenatti, shackled at the feet, hugged his lawyers and then shuffled out of court.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
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