Monday, August 30, 2021

Six In The Morning Monday 30 August 2021

 

Kabul families say children killed in US drone attack

Ten people from a Kabul neighbourhood killed in US drone attack – Washington claims ISKP fighters were the target.

 The Ahmadi and Nejrabi families had packed all their belongings, waiting for word to be escorted to Kabul airport and eventually moved to the United States, but the message Washington sent instead was a rocket into their homes in a Kabul neighbourhood.

The Sunday afternoon drone attack, which the US claimed was conducted on an Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP, or ISIS-K) target, killed 10 members of the families, ranging from two to 40 years old.

Ida weakens to tropical storm as it moves to Mississippi with destructive winds, heavy flooding


Kendra Nichols
 
Today at 10:49 a.m. EDT

Hurricane forecasters downgraded Ida to a tropical storm Monday morning but are still warning of dangerous storm surges, damaging winds and heavy rainfall in multiple states.

The storm weakened 16 hours after Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane. Ida battered Louisiana into Monday, with reports of downed power lines, levee failures and flooding, collapsed buildings and trapped residents on rooftops.

Forecasters warned that flooding from storm surges will continue through Monday morning in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. As Ida’s center moves into southwestern Mississippi, damaging winds could cause more power outages. Heavy rainfall is possible through Tuesday morning across southeastern Louisiana, coastal Mississippi and southwestern Alabama.


Armed robbers take hostages in deadly bank raids in Brazil city


At least three people dead and trail of explosive booby traps left across Araçatuba in São Paulo state


Reuters in Rio de Janeiro

Armed robbers have taken hostages and left a trail of explosives devices in a deadly raid on three banks in a small Brazilian city.

The attack in Araçatuba, a city of roughly 200,000 people in the interior of São Paulo state, is the latest in a series of increasingly violent bank heists in Brazil. Experts believe a pandemic welfare programme for poorer Brazilians has encouraged robbers to plan bold raids in sleepy regional cities where bank branches are storing more cash.

More than 20 heavily armed men carried out the robberies in Araçatuba, using 10 cars, said Álvaro Camilo, the executive secretary of Sao Paulo’s military police. As the gang made their getaway, they took hostages with them and burned cars, while leaving a trail of explosive booby traps across the city.


The hackers trying to overthrow Belarusian leader Lukashenko


Belarusian hackers have released portions of a huge data trove that reveals the inner workings of the most secret police and government databases to try to get rid of Lukashenko, writes Ryan Gallagher

Opponents of the Belarus government say they have pulled off an audacious hack that has compromised dozens of police and interior ministry databases as part of a broad effort to overthrow President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.

The Belarusian Cyber Partisans, as the hackers call themselves, have released portions of the huge trove they say includes some of the country’s most secret information. It contains lists of alleged police informants, personal information about top government officials and spies, video footage from police drones and detention centres and secret recordings of phone calls from a government wire-tapping system, according to interviews with the hackers and documents reviewed by Bloomberg News.

Among the pilfered documents are personal details about Lukashenko’s inner circle and intelligence officers. In addition, there are mortality statistics indicating that thousands more people in Belarus died from Covid-19 than the government has publicly acknowledged, the documents suggest.


Leaded petrol runs out of gas, century after first warnings: UN

The use of leaded petrol has been eradicated from the globe, a milestone that will prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths and save world economies over $2.4 trillion annually, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said Monday.

Nearly a century after doctors first issued warnings about the toxic effects of leaded petrol, Algeria -- the last country to use the fuel -- exhausted its supplies last month, UNEP said, calling the news a landmark win in the fight for cleaner air.

"The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, which is headquartered in Nairobi.

North Korea appears to have restarted nuclear reactor: U.N. agency



Nuclear-armed North Korea appears to have restarted its plutonium-producing reprocessing reactor in a "deeply troubling" development, the UN atomic agency has said, a possible sign Pyongyang is expanding its banned weapons program.

The development on the 5-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon -- North Korea's main nuclear complex -- comes with nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington at a standstill.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered to dismantle part of the Yongbyon complex at a second summit with then U.S. President Donald Trump but not other sites, in exchange for sanctions relief, and his offer was rejected.





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