Month: April 2024

Footage from a doorbell camera is released, showing police officers Tasering and detaining a man in Hainault, London.

Investigators say they could not gather enough evidence to charge the suspects accused of blowing up multiple arms warehouses

Police in the Czech Republic have shelved a probe into the destruction of ammunition warehouses ten years ago. Despite all of their leads turning up cold, the investigators maintain that Russian military intelligence blew up the structures.

The explosions happened in October and December 2014 at arms depots in Vrbetice in the south of the country, killing two Czech nationals. Prague said at the time that the warehouses had been storing ammunition due to be sent to Ukraine. The authorities claimed that Russia sent operatives to destroy the consignment in an attempt to disrupt the shipment.

In April 2021, the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats over the incident, a move to which Russia responded in kind.

In a statement on Monday, the head of the National Central Office against Organized Crime of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service (NCOZ), Jiri Mazanek, announced that the case had been closed and that no criminal charges would be filed.

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UK accuses alleged arsonist of working for Russia

“Russian military intelligence had the means to cause explosions,” Mazanek claimed, adding that the NCOZ believes a number of Russian operatives traveled to the Czech Republic at the time of the bombings before immediately returning to Russia. However, he admitted that “some information is missing” about these supposed agents’ movements within the country, and “one can only assume what tasks” they actually carried out and with whose help. 

With Russia refusing to assist the investigation and no further evidence available from the crime scene or from neighboring countries, Mazanek explained that “the police authority cannot obtain additional information that would allow the initiation of criminal prosecution, and for this reason decided to postpone the case.”

Despite the dead end, the police authority “considers it proven” that the explosions were “carried out by members of the Russian military intelligence, the Main Administration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, known by the abbreviation GRU,” Mazanek added.

According to the statement, the 2014 blasts were “part of a long-term diversionary operation by Russian military intelligence” on EU and Ukrainian soil.

Commenting on similar claims by Czech authorities back in April 2021, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described them as a “shameful dead end,” suggesting that Prague had failed to provide any meaningful evidence.

Around the same time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov alleged that the Czech Republic had imitated the US in taking “unpredictable and aggressive actions” against Moscow and said that the claims were “absolutely groundless.”

The move comes after the UK said it would bring forward legislation to block such state-backed takeover deals in media.

A new “council of experts” set up in Russia is leveraging a decade-old law against gay “propaganda” to censure books. The move marks a new stage in the Kremlin’s control of information by targeting a broad array of literature, a cultural domain that has long enjoyed a special latitude in the country.

The prime minister directly contradicted his own foreign minister, who promised to suspend the operation if Hamas released its captives

Israel will send troops into the city of Rafah regardless of whether it reaches a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz had previously promised to cancel the controversial operation in exchange for the captives.

“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” Netanyahu said in a statement from his office. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’ battalions there – with or without a deal, to achieve total victory.”

Situated at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, Rafah is currently home to an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians who have fled the northern reaches of the enclave. Since October, Israel has carried out regular airstrikes in Rafah against what it claims are Hamas targets, and Netanyahu has threatened for months to launch a ground invasion of the city, despite objections from the US and UN.

However, Katz told Israel’s Channel 12 on Saturday that Israel would “suspend the operation” if Hamas agreed to release some of around 130 Israeli hostages still in its captivity in Gaza.

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US tells Hamas to accept ‘extraordinarily generous’ deal

As Katz spoke, Hamas was studying an Israeli ceasefire proposal that would see fighting temporarily paused so that several dozen hostages could be swapped for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is set to arrive in Israel to discuss the deal later on Tuesday, has called its terms “extraordinarily generous,” and called on the militants to “decide quickly” and accept it.

It is unclear how Netanyahu’s comments will affect Hamas’ decision. The militant group has previously rejected Israel’s terms, insisting that any truce must include a path to a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Netanyahu’s hardline coalition partners, however, have demanded that the prime minister go ahead with the Rafah operation. Any compromise, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday, would amount to a “humiliating surrender” for Israel. During a speech on Monday, Smotrich said Israel should seek the “total annihilation” of its enemies, Israeli media reported.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir claimed on Tuesday that Netanyahu had promised him “Israel will enter Rafah, promised that we are not stopping the war, and promised that there won’t be a reckless deal.”

Nitrogen fertilizers are the new natural gas, an EU chemical producer has warned

The European Union is “sleep walking” into becoming dependent on Russian fertilizers, just as it did with natural gas, a leading producer has told the Financial Times.

Nitrogen fertilizers, widely used for plant growth, are made with natural gas, and the bloc is importing more and more of the crop nutrients from the sanctioned country, the outlet said, citing Svein Tore Holsether, CEO of Norwegian chemical producer Yara International.

“Fertiliser is the new gas,” Holsether said. “It is a paradox that the aim is to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia, and then now we are sleepwalking into handing over critical food and fertilising power to Russia,” he added.

Russia is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of nitrogen-containing fertilizers. EU imports of urea, a common nitrogen-based crop nutrient, doubled from Russia in the year to June 2023 compared with a year earlier, FT said citing data from Eurostat. 

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Staunch critic of Russia resumes grain purchases

Since the start of this year, Russian imports have declined but still account for about a third of total urea imports into the bloc. According to the European Commission, the EU imported 24% of its total nitrogen fertilizer supply from Russia, with Egypt as the second-largest supplier at 22%.

Nitrogen-based crop nutrients are produced by mixing nitrogen from the air with hydrogen from natural gas at high temperature and pressure. A spike in natural gas prices in 2022 following Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict also drove fertilizer prices up, hitting European farmers financially. Moscow meanwhile saw its export revenue surge 70% in 2022. 

Fertilizer prices have eased since then along with natural gas prices, but Europe’s fertilizer industry is still struggling as Russian imports take a bigger share of the market, Holsether said.

Western countries have not imposed any sanctions on Russia’s food and fertilizer exports since the start of its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. Moscow complained however, that exports are hampered by sanctions as they make it harder for traders to process payments or obtain vessels and insurance.

Jareh Dalke attempted to sell classified files to an undercover FBI operative

A former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for attempting to sell classified documents to a man he thought was a Russian intelligence agent.

Jareh Dalke was handed the sentence by a Colorado judge on Monday, seven months after he pleaded guilty to attempted espionage. In his sentencing remarks, US District Judge Raymond Moore said that Dalke took a job at the NSA with the sole aim of transmitting classified information to Russia, and should count himself lucky that he did not receive a longer stretch behind bars.

“This was blatant. It was brazen and, in my mind, it was deliberate. It was a betrayal, and it was as close to treasonous as you can get,” Moore said.

Dalke worked as a cybersecurity designer at the NSA for less than a month in June 2022. During that time, he printed out excerpts of classified documents and showed them to a man he believed was an agent of the Russian government. Two of these files were marked Top Secret, while the third was at a lower level of classification.

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Pentagon leaker agrees to 16-year prison sentence

According to court documents, Dalke offered to sell the full copies of the files for $85,000, and the man agreed, setting up an exchange at a train station in Denver that September. The man was an undercover FBI agent, and Dalke was arrested at the exchange. 

He was charged with six counts of attempting to transmit classified information to a foreign agent, and accepted a plea bargain last October. As part of the deal, he agreed that he had sold the documents knowing that the “information would be used to injure the United States and to benefit Russia,” the US Justice Department said in a statement on Monday.

Dalke told the court that he was not driven by ideology or financial gain, but by the thrill of espionage. 

According to the Justice Department, the files that Dalke stole contained “highly sensitive information relating to foreign targeting of US systems, and information on US cyber operations, among other topics.”

The ex-president was warned that he could be jailed if he continues to speak out against his prosecutors

Former US President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order imposed by the judge overseeing his ‘hush money’ trial in New York. Trump was threatened with jail time if he continues to breach the order.

At a hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $1,000 for nine separate instances in which he violated the gag order. Merchan explained in his ruling that while a $1,000 fine ultimately matters little to a man of Trump’s wealth, he could not legally issue a larger fine.

However, the judge added that he would consider whether “jail may be a necessary punishment” if Trump continues to break the order in future.

Trump is currently on trial for allegedly misreporting ‘hush-money’ payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Since last month, Merchan has forbidden him from making public statements about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the jurors working on the case, and from uttering anything that could interfere with the work of the court.

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US Secret Service preparing to protect Trump in jail – NYT

Nevertheless, Trump has spoken to the media outside the courthouse every day since the trial began earlier this month. In these appearances and in posts on his Truth Social platform, the former president has denounced the “sham case” against him, often quoting conservative pundits and journalists in an apparent bid to skirt the gag order.

“The Gag Order imposed on me, a political candidate running for the highest office in the land, is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump wrote last week. “The Conflicted Judge’s friends and party members can say whatever they want about me, but I am not allowed to respond.”

Trump’s lawyers have argued that Merchan’s connections to the Democratic Party – his daughter owns a consulting firm that creates fundraising campaigns for Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden – make him unsuitable to judge the case. However, Merchan has refused multiple requests to recuse himself, saying that Trump has “failed to provide” evidence of a conflict of interest.

In addition to the ‘hush money’ trial, Trump is also facing two federal criminal cases concerning his alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as a state-level racketeering case in Georgia concerning his alleged efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.

READ MORE: US voters warming up to Trump – CNN poll

Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in November’s presidential election. Despite the ongoing trial effectively halting his campaign in its tracks, a CNN poll published on Sunday showed him leading Biden by a 49%-43% margin, with six in ten respondents disapproving of Biden’s performance as president.

Judge in hush money trial says Trump violated order nine times and warns future violations could result in jail time.

Two charged with causing criminal damage to famous Sycamore Gap tree and Hadrian’s Wall last September.