Section: theSun (Malaysia)
Russian police smash illegal US$30 million cheesemaking ring
MOSCOW: Russian police said Tuesday they had detained an “international criminal gang” that produced contraband cheese worth some US$30 million (RM122.21 million) using banned Western ingredients. Russian officials are currently waging war against produce from the West prohibited under a year-old embargo introduced in retaliation for...
Seven civilians killed in fierce Ukrainian clashes
KIEV: Seven civilians have been killed in intense shelling by Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels in the separatist east of the war-scarred state, officials from both sides said Monday. “Two civilians — a man and a woman — were killed in overnight shelling in Sartana village,” about 2km northeast of the government-held port of...
US to increase military drone flights
WASHINGTON: The US military will drastically increase drone flights over the next four years, in a bid to boost intelligence and strike capabilities across a growing number of conflict zones, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of daily flights from 61 at present to as many as 90 by 2019, a...
US busts hacking/insider trading ring
NEW YORK: An international team of computer hackers and stock traders was charged with pocketing more than US$100 million (RM397 million) in illicit profits based on stolen market-moving financial information, US officials announced Tuesday. The Department of Justice charged nine people in a criminal conspiracy with making more than US$30 million...
Mali hotel attack claimed by fighters linked to Belmokhtar
BAMAKO: A deadly hostage drama at a Mali hotel in which 13 people died — including five UN workers — was claimed Tuesday by fighters linked to the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadi leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar. A radical associated with militant Malian Islamic leader Amadou Koufa said he gave his “blessing” for the attack on the Byblos...
Pentagon guidelines on war coverage by journalists draw fire
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is drawing fire for new legal guidelines that liken war correspondents to spies and says that in some instances they can be treated as “unprivileged belligerents.” The guidelines received little notice when they were published in June in the Defense Department’s new Law of War Manual, a compendium of...
Ukraine reports heavy tank battle with pro-Russians
KIEV: Ukraine on Monday reported repelling a rare tank assault by pro-Russian rebels that threatened to usher in a dangerous escalation to the 16-month war. President Petro Poroshenko said about “200 insurgents used tanks to storm” Novolaspa — a village half-way between the separatists’ de facto capital Donetsk and the Kiev-held...
Attackers torch four OSCE vehicles in Donetsk
DONETSK, Ukraine: OSCE observers based in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine said Sunday that four of their vehicles were torched outside their hotel in an apparent arson attack. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s special monitoring mission to Ukraine wrote in a Tweet: “4 OSCE armoured...
Ukraine slaps broadcast ban on 13 Russian artists
KIEV: Ukraine on Saturday named 13 pro-Russian actors and singers whose work would be banned from TV, radio and cinema, including France’s Gerard Depardieu. The blacklist issued by the ministry of culture described the 13 as “a threat to national security” for supporting President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and...
At least 12 killed as Mali hotel siege finally ends
BAMAKO: At least 12 people including four foreign UN contractors died in a hostage siege at a hotel in central Mali that ended early Saturday when government troops stormed the building. “There are 12 dead in all,” an army officer told AFP after the operation at the Hotel Byblos in Sevare, listing the fatalities as five...
