North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, US says

North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, US says
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US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun participate in a press briefing at The Pentagon on Oct. 30, 2024 in Arlington, Virginia. (Getty Images via AFP)
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Updated 31 October 2024
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North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, US says

North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, US says
  • “They’re doing this because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has lost a lot of troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said
  • S.Korean defense chief said the deployment “can result in the escalation of the security threats on the Korean peninsula”

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that North Korean troops wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment are moving toward Ukraine, in what he called a dangerous and destabilizing development.
Austin was speaking at a press conference in Washington with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, as concerns grow about Pyongyang’s deployment of as many as 12,000 troops to Russia.
The US and South Korea say some of the North Korean troops are heading to Russia’s Kursk region on the border with Ukraine, where the Kremlin’s forces have struggled to push back a Ukrainian incursion.
Some North Korean advance units have already arrived in the Kursk region, and Austin said “the likelihood is pretty high” that Russia will use the troops in combat.
North Korea’s move to tighten its relationship with Russia has triggered alarms across the globe, as leaders worry about how it may expand the war in Ukraine and what Russian military aid will be delivered to Pyongyang in exchange.
Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya, speaking at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, said they expect as many as 4,500 North Korean troops to be at the border this week and to begin directly participating in combat operations against Ukrainian forces in November.
Austin said officials are discussing what to do about the deployment, which he said has the potential to broaden or lengthen the conflict in Ukraine. Asked if it could prompt other nations to get more directly involved in the conflict, he acknowledged that it could “encourage others to take action” but provided no details.
“This is something that we’re going to continue to watch, and we’re going to continue to work with our allies and partners to discourage Russia from employing these troops in combat,” Austin said.
Kim said he doesn’t necessarily believe the deployment will trigger war on the Korean Peninsula but could increase security threats.
There is a “high possibility” that Pyongyang would ask for higher technologies in exchange for its troops, such as receiving tactical nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, he said through an interpreter.

Both Kim and Austin called on North Korea to withdraw its troops.
Russia has had to shift some resources to the Kursk border region to respond to Ukraine’s offensive. US leaders have suggested that the use of North Korean forces to augment Russia’s defenses indicates that Moscow’s losses during the more than two-year war have significantly degraded its military strength.
“They’re doing this because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has lost a lot of troops,” Austin said, adding that Moscow has a choice between mobilizing more of its own forces or turning to others for help.
Already, he noted, Russia has sought military weapons from other nations. Those include North Korea and Iran.
The US has estimated there are about 10,000 North Korean troops now in Russia. But others have put the number higher. And Kyslytsya provided an array of more specific numbers and details to the UN Security Council.
The Ukrainian ambassador said up to 12,000 North Koreans were being trained at five bases in eastern Russia, including at least 500 officers and three generals from the General Staff.
In addition to wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian small arms, Kyslytsya said they will be provided with Russian identity documents, “notably to conceal their presence.” He said they are expected to be integrated into units manned by Russia’s ethnic Asian minorities, including Buryats.
North Korea’s UN Ambassador Kim Song defended his country’s growing military cooperation with Russia and said Pyongyang stood ready to respond if Russia’s “sovereignty and security interests” were threatened.
Earlier, a senior South Korean presidential official, who spoke on condition of anonymity during a background briefing, said that more than 3,000 of the North Korean forces are believed to have moved toward combat zones in western Russia.
A Ukrainian official told The Associated Press that North Korean troops are stationed 50 kilometers (30 miles) away from the Ukrainian border with Russia. The official, was not authorized to disclose the information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, did not provide any additional detail.
North Korea also has provided munitions to Russia, and earlier this month, the White House released images it said were of North Korea shipping 1,000 containers of military equipment there by rail.
A key worrisome question is what North Korea will get in return for providing the troops. But officials have yet to say specifically what Pyongyang may have requested or Moscow has offered.
In their meeting at the Pentagon, Kim and Austin agreed to continue large-scale military exercises, increase cooperation on nuclear deterrence and upgrade their abilities to deter and respond to North Korean missile launches by improving early launch warning systems, according to a fact sheet released by the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Austin and Kim are scheduled to meet Thursday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul at the State Department.


Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case

Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case
Updated 26 February 2025
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Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case

Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case
  • Syed has maintained his innocence from the beginning, but many questions remain unanswered even after the “Serial” podcast combed through the evidence, reexamined legal arguments and interviewed witnesses

BALTIMORE: Despite documented problems with the evidence against him and an earlier request from prosecutors to clear his record, Adnan Syed will remain a convicted murderer, according to court papers filed Tuesday night.
The decision from Baltimore prosecutors comes ahead of a scheduled hearing Wednesday morning where a judge will consider whether to reduce Syed’s sentence, but this means the conviction itself is no longer in question.
It is the latest wrinkle in an ongoing legal odyssey that garnered a massive following after being featured in the “Serial” podcast over a decade ago.
Syed’s attorneys recently filed the request for a sentence reduction under Maryland’s Juvenile Restoration Act, a relatively new state law that provides a potential pathway to release for people serving long prison terms for crimes committed when they were minors. That request is supported by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates announced Tuesday that his office is withdrawing a previously filed motion to vacate Syed’s conviction in the 1999 killing of his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, who was found strangled to death and buried in a makeshift grave.
“I did not make this decision lightly, but it is necessary to preserve the credibility of our office and maintain public trust in the justice system,” Bates said in a statement.
The original motion to vacate — which was filed by Bates’ predecessor Marilyn Mosby — won Syed his freedom in 2022. But his conviction was reinstated following a procedural challenge from Lee’s family. The Maryland Supreme Court ordered a redo of the conviction vacatur hearing after finding that the family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend in person.
Since the prosecutor’s office changed hands in the meantime, the decision of whether to withdraw the motion fell to Bates.
Instead of asking a judge to again consider Syed’s guilt or innocence, Bates chose a different path. He supported Syed’s motion for a reduced sentence — without addressing the underlying conviction.
Bates said that since his release in 2022, Syed has demonstrated he is a productive member of society whose continued freedom is “in the interest of justice.” He said the case “is precisely what legislators envisioned when they crafted the Juvenile Restoration Act.”
The legislation was passed amid growing consensus that such defendants are especially open to rehabilitation, partly because brain science shows cognitive development continues well beyond the teenage years. Syed was 17 when Lee was killed.
Now 43, he has been working at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative and caring for aging relatives since his release, according to court filings. His father died in October after a long illness.
Bates was facing a Friday deadline to decide on the motion to vacate.
After reviewing the motion filed by his predecessor, Bates concluded that it contained “false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity of the judicial process,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
Attorneys for the victim’s family had argued that prosecutors should address the integrity of Syed’s conviction before the court considered reducing his sentence. Prosecutors “should not be allowed to duck the issue by hiding behind” his motion for a reduced sentence, attorneys wrote in a recent filing.
Syed has maintained his innocence from the beginning, but many questions remain unanswered even after the “Serial” podcast combed through the evidence, reexamined legal arguments and interviewed witnesses. The series debuted in 2014 and drew millions of listeners who became armchair detectives.
Rife with legal twists and turns, the case has recently pitted criminal justice reform efforts against the rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.
When prosecutors sought to vacate Syed’s conviction in 2022, they cited numerous problems with the case, including alternative suspects and unreliable evidence presented at trial. A judge agreed to vacate the conviction and free Syed. Prosecutors in Mosby’s office later chose not to refile charges after they said DNA testing excluded Syed as a suspect.
Even though the appellate courts reinstated his conviction, they allowed Syed to remain free while the case continued.


Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits

Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits
Updated 26 February 2025
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Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits

Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits
  • The country’s meteorological agency gave a lower magnitude of 6.0 and said there was no potential for a tsunami

JAKARTA: A shallow 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit near the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, forcing residents to flee outside but with no damage or casualties reported.
The tremor hit at 6:55 am local time (2255 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) with the epicenter offshore near North Sulawesi province, according to the USGS.
The country’s meteorological agency gave a lower magnitude of 6.0 and said there was no potential for a tsunami.
Locals in North Sulawesi described the panic when the quake struck.
“I had just woken up when I realized it was an earthquake. It was strong, swaying from side to side,” Gita Waloni, a 25-year-old guest at a hotel in North Minahasa district in the province told AFP.
“Objects inside my rooms rattled. I decided to get out. I was so scared there would be an aftershock while I was inside the lift. All other guests had also fled.”
The vast archipelago nation experiences frequent earthquakes due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
A magnitude-6.2 quake that shook Sulawesi in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless.
In 2018, a magnitude-7.5 quake and subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi killed more than 2,200 people.
And in 2004, a magnitude-9.1 quake struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.
 


Microsoft workers protest sale of AI and cloud services to Israeli military

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addresses attendees at the Microsoft Ignite conference, Nov. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addresses attendees at the Microsoft Ignite conference, Nov. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP)
Updated 26 February 2025
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Microsoft workers protest sale of AI and cloud services to Israeli military

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addresses attendees at the Microsoft Ignite conference, Nov. 19, 2024, in Chicago. (AP)
  • In October, Microsoft fired two workers for helping organize an unauthorized lunchtime vigil for Palestinian refugees at its headquarters

WASHINGTON: Five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with the company’s chief executive for protesting contracts to provide artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military.
The protest on Monday came after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed last week that sophisticated AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was speaking about new products at an employee town hall meeting at the company’s corporate campus in Redmond, Washington. Workers standing about 15 feet to his right then revealed T-shirts that when they stood side-by-side spelled out the question “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?“
Photos and video of the incident, which was live streamed throughout the company, shows Nadella kept speaking and did not acknowledge the protesters. Two men quickly tapped the workers on the shoulders and ushered them out of the room.
“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” Microsoft said in a statement provided to the AP. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Microsoft did not answer Tuesday when asked whether the employees involved in the protest would face disciplinary action. The company also previously declined to comment about the AP’s Feb. 18 story about its contracts with the Israeli military.
In October, Microsoft fired two workers for helping organize an unauthorized lunchtime vigil for Palestinian refugees at its headquarters. Microsoft said at the time that it ended the employment of some people “in accordance with internal policy” but declined to give details.
A group of workers has been raising concerns within the company for months about Microsoft providing services to the Israeli military through its Azure cloud computing platform. Some employees at the company have also spoken out in support of Israel and said those supporting Palestinians have made them feel unsafe.
The AP’s investigation included exclusive details drawn from internal company data and documents, including that the usage of AI models by the Israeli military through Azure increased nearly 200 times after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants.
The AP’s report was shared and discussed among Microsoft employees on social media and within the company’s internal systems. In a community forum designated for employees to raise concerns with senior leadership, an employee shared links to the AP report. More than a dozen others questioned whether the company was violating its stated principles to defend human rights and not to let its AI models be used to harm people, according to screenshots reviewed by the AP.
Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist who was one of the Microsoft workers fired over the October vigil, said the company is prioritizing profits over its own human rights commitments.
“The demands are clear,” said Mohamed, who works with a group of Microsoft workers called No Azure for Apartheid. “Satya Nadella and Microsoft executives need to answer to their workers by dropping contracts with the Israeli military.”
 

 


The White House says it ‘will determine’ which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones

The White House says it ‘will determine’ which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones
Updated 26 February 2025
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The White House says it ‘will determine’ which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones

The White House says it ‘will determine’ which news outlets cover Trump, rotating traditional ones
  • “The White House press team, in this administration, will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” Leavitt said at a daily briefing

WASHINGTON: The White House said Tuesday that its officials “will determine” which news outlets can regularly cover President Donald Trump up close — a sharp break from a century of tradition in which a pool of independently chosen news organizations go where the chief executive does and hold him accountable on behalf of regular Americans.
The move, coupled with the government’s arguments this week in a federal lawsuit over access filed by The Associated Press, represented an unprecedented seizing of control over coverage of the American presidency by any administration. Free speech advocates expressed alarm.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the changes would rotate traditional outlets from the group and include some streaming services. Leavitt cast the change as a modernization of the press pool, saying the move would be more inclusive and restore “access back to the American people” who elected Trump. But media experts said the move raised troubling First Amendment issues because the president is choosing who covers him.
“The White House press team, in this administration, will determine who gets to enjoy the very privileged and limited access in spaces such as Air Force One and the Oval Office,” Leavitt said at a daily briefing. She added at another point: “A select group of D.C.-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly of press access at the White House.”
Leavitt said the White House will “double down” on its decision to bar the AP from many presidential events, a departure from the time-tested and sometimes contentious practice for more than a century of a pool of journalists from every platform sharing the presidents’ words and activities with news outlets and congressional offices that can’t attend the close-quarter events. Traditionally, the members of the pool decide who goes in small spaces such as the Oval Office and Air Force One.
“It’s beyond time that the White House press operation reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025, not 1925,” Leavitt said.
At an event later in the Oval Office, the president linked the AP court case with the decision to take control of credentialing for the pool. “We’re going to be now calling those shots,” Trump said.
There are First Amendment implications
The change, said one expert on presidents and the press, “is a dangerous move for democracy.”
”It means the president can pick and choose who covers the executive branch, ignoring the fact that it is the American people who through their taxes pay for the running of the White House, the president’s travels and the press secretary’s salary,” Jon Marshall, a media history professor at Northwestern University and author of “Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis,” said in a text.
Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, said the organization consistently expands its membership and pool rotations to facilitate the inclusion of new and emerging outlets.
“This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president,” Daniels said in a statement. “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press called it “a drastic change in how the public obtains information about its government.”
“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” Bruce D. Brown, the group’s president, said in a statement.
It comes in the context of a federal lawsuit
Leavitt spoke a day after a federal judge refused to immediately order the White House to restore the AP’s access to many presidential events. The news outlet, citing the First Amendment, sued Leavitt and two other White House officials for barring the AP from some presidential events over its refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” as Trump ordered. AP has said its style would retain the “Gulf of Mexico” name but also would note Trump’s decision.
“As you know, we won that lawsuit,” Trump said incorrectly. In fact, US District Judge Trevor N. McFadden said the AP had not demonstrated it had suffered irreparable harm — but urged the Trump administration to reconsider its two-week-old ban, saying that case law in the circuit “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House.”
McFadden’s decision was only for the moment, however. He told attorneys for the Trump administration and the AP that the issue required more exploration before ruling. Another hearing was scheduled for late March.
The AP Stylebook is used by international audiences as well as those within the United States. The AP has said that its guidance was offered to promote clarity.
Another Trump executive order to change the name of the United States’ largest mountain back to Mount McKinley from Denali is being recognized by the AP Stylebook. Trump has the authority to do so because the mountain is completely within the country he oversees, AP has said.

 


Somali govt claims 70 Al-Shabab killed in military operation

Somali govt claims 70 Al-Shabab killed in military operation
Updated 26 February 2025
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Somali govt claims 70 Al-Shabab killed in military operation

Somali govt claims 70 Al-Shabab killed in military operation
  • The operation took place on Tuesday at several sites in Hirshabelle state, in south central Somalia, it added

MOGADISHU: More than 70 members of the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab were killed during an army operation with local forces in Somalia, the information ministry said on Tuesday.
Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab has been fighting the federal government for more than 15 years, to try to establish Islamic law in the impoverished country.
“Over 70 extremist militants were eliminated through the coordinated efforts of the National Army and local forces,” the ministry said in a statement.
“In addition to the significant militant losses, a large cache of weapons was seized, and several combat vehicles utilized by the extremists were destroyed.”
The operation took place on Tuesday at several sites in Hirshabelle state, in south central Somalia, it added.
AFP could not independently verify the death toll but several witnesses confirmed the fighting.
“The armed men of Al-Shabab were beaten,” one resident contacted by telephone said, adding that “dozens” of their bodies were visible in the combat zones.
Several sources said the armed operation came in response to Al-Shabab attacks in the area in the last few days.
Al-Shabab has carried out numerous bomb and other attacks in the capital Mogadishu and several other regions of the volatile Horn of Africa country.
Although they were driven out of the capital by African Union forces in 2011, the group is still present in rural areas.
Somalia’s president has promised “total” war against Al-Shabab. The army has joined forces with local militias in a military campaign backed by an AU force and US airstrikes.