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© REUTERS/ Benoit Tessier/Illustration
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency was developed by "American intelligence agencies," Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of the InfoWatch group of companies and specialist in cyber security systems, said during her presentation at ITMO University in St. Petersburg.
Kaspersky was giving a speech on information wars and digital sovereignty. Photos of her presentation entitled "Modern technologies - the basis for information and cyber-wars," have been published on social media.
© Agence France-Presse/ Pascal Pochard-CasabianceRiot police officers walk by Borgo prison on January 22, 2018 on the French Mediterranean Island of Corsica, as striking prison guards block its access as part of a nationwide movement to call for better safety and wages
Guards seeking improved working conditions and better safety measures set up picket lines or blocked prison entrances. Guards at 16 prisons "put down their keys" - meaning they refused all work - a move which triggers a demand for police and gendarmes to do the guards' job, a Prison Administration official said.
The official, confirming French press reports, said that letters sent to prison directors laid out possible financial or disciplinary sanctions against protesting personnel, including job suspensions of five to 15 days. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and could not be identified by name.
The official said sanctions were not automatic and could be handed out but then "suspended" and would be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Prison guards are forbidden from going on strike, and the possibility of issuing suspended sanctions appeared to be a tactic to soften the blow. It was not immediately known whether any prison directors had decided to levy sanctions against protesting personnel.
© Stephen Yang / Reuters
TUEs, issued to athletes whose illness or health conditions require usage of a particular banned substance, have long been criticized by sports officials and athletes who insist that competitors with medical exemptions have an advantage over their contemporaries.
"The TUE-granting process showed its effectiveness among the runners who are eager to obtain permission to take asthma medications prohibited in sports, in particular, salbutamol which opens airways to and from the lungs. The same practice is widespread among skiers," the Fancy Bears' statement read.
"According to the chief physician of the Norwegian ski team, Petter Olberg, 70 percent of the national team skiers suffer from asthma. It raises doubts and looks like an institutional conspiracy by the Norwegian Olympic Committee and national sports federations," they added.
Risk: North Sulawesi, where this market is located, has some of the highest numbers of human deaths from rabies in Indonesia
Nine in ten dogs slaughtered weekly for their meat across Indonesia are pets that have been stolen from their owners or snatched from the streets, animal rights activists claim.
Each week, thousands of dogs are being bludgeoned in public, blow-torched alive, and butchered to be eaten in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Activists for the Dog Meat-Free Indonesia campaign say there may be as many as 200 'live animal markets' in the province.
Investigations by Animal Friends Manado Indonesia estimate that 90 per cent of the animals have been stolen from their owners' homes or from the streets.
Some 80 per cent of them are imported from other provinces in Indonesia, which is illegal under the country's anti-rabies law forbidding the movement of dogs across provincial borders.
Comment: It's time to put pressure on the countries that allow this horror to continue; strike them from your list of holiday destinations and refuse to purchase their products.
© Netflix / Global Look Press
This week Rodchenkov - who claims the tampering of doping samples of Russian athletes took place under his supervision at the 2014 Sochi Olympics - addressed the court in Geneva, Switzerland, via video link with his face hidden from the appellants.
Lawyer Artyom Patsev, acting in the interests of Russian athletes at CAS, said that Rodchenkov's testimony given at the court hearing on Monday contradicts the information on alleged Russian doping that he provided to the New York Times in May 2016.
Back then, the American outlet published an article based on Rodchenkov's allegations, in which it claimed that an overwhelming majority of Russian athletes were "part of a state-run doping program, meticulously planned for years to ensure dominance at the [2014 Sochi] Games."
© Kurdish Mass Graves Directorate via APThis image released by the the Mass Graves Directorate of the Kurdish Regional Government shows a human skull in a mass grave containing Yazidis killed by Islamic State militants in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in May, 2015. An analysis by The Associated Press has found 72 mass graves left behind by Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria, and many more are expected to be discovered as the group loses territory.
Alghad Press quoted a source at al-Shohadaa (martyrs) institution saying that technical teams have explored more than 70 mass graves in Sinjar, Tal Afar and Al-Baaj, adding that a large number of those belonged to Yazidis killed under Islamic State militants' rule.
Based on the Iraqi constitution, al-Shohadaa is tasked with assisting families of victims of injustice under the regime of late president Saddam Hussein.
According to the source, many of those graves are prone to damage due to weather factors and grubbing animals.
The source said the institution does not, however, possess a database of families who had lost members in a way that enables authorities to identify the affiliation of dead bodies.
"These figures are most authoritative and illustrative. They demonstrate the most important thing - which side is conducting a defensive war, and which - the offensive," Denisov said.
According to him, the OSCE mission constantly notes the absence of Ukrainian military equipment. At the same time, the Ukrainian military prevents access of the monitoring mission to certain sites. OSCE representatives have recorded attempts by the Ukrainian army to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles belonging to the mission. The Ukrainian military responded that there have been no orders to stop the fire.
© Dominiwue Faget / AFP
Angry mobs went on the rampage in several cities across India, protesting against the release of 'Padmavat', a Bollywood film which centers on a relationship between Padmavati, a 14th-century Hindu queen, and Muslim emperor Alauddin Khilji.
Scores of people have been arrested during the riots, local media adds.
Violent protests broke out in Mumbai, where rioters - reportedly led by Hinduist right-wing group Karni Sena - torched cars and motorbikes.
Wild horses are herded into corrals by a helicopter during a Bureau of Land Management round-up outside Milford, Utah, Jan. 7, 2017.
Controversy has broken out over the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) practice of using helicopters to herd horses off public lands and sometimes permanently put them into holding facilities in an effort to control their population.
"Sometimes these horses get stampeded for miles and miles," said Simone Netherlands, an animal rights activist and a spokesperson for the American Wild Horse Campaign.
Now the government is considering culling these animals for the first time in nearly 50 years, putting the lives of thousands of wild horses at stake.
Most of the U.S.'s estimated 75,000 wild horses live on public lands, usually vast expanses that the government controls in the American West.
Comment: See also:
- French jail guards to continue strike until more secure facilities for terrorists provided
- Two guards in French prison attacked by 'radicalized inmate'
- Convicted murderer assaults 7 French prison guards amid protests for more security
The almost univocal decision to support Islamic radicals isn't turning out so well for Western societies. Maybe they should've thought through the consequences before making a deal with the devil.