"Where you can find almost anything with A Click A Pick!"
Go to content
World Monthly Headline News December 2021
In a clip sent on Snapchat, the 19-year-old who was arrested with a crossbow in palace grounds calls himself a “Sith,” and says he will try to kill the queen.
Tom Sykes

The man who broke into Windsor Castle on Christmas Day armed with a crossbow recorded a threatening Snapchat clip, channeling Darth Vader and describing himself as a “Sith.” Jaswant Singh Chail said in the clip that he was planning to assassinate the queen in revenge for a notorious 1919 massacre in India by British soldiers. His father, a software engineer, told reporters from MailOnline Monday: “Something’s gone horribly wrong with our son and we are trying to figure out what. “We’ve not had a chance to speak to him but are trying to get him the help he needs. From our perspective, we are going through a difficult time. We are trying to resolve this issue and it’s not easy.” In the video, Chail says, in a heavily distorted voice: “I’m an Indian Sikh, a Sith. My name was Jaswant Singh Chail, my name is Darth Jones.” more...
The Russian leader became visibly angry and lashed out at the West for “cheating” Moscow before arguing Ukraine really belongs to Vladimir Lenin.
Allison Quinn

Vladimir Putin’s normally predictable annual press conference briefly veered off the rails Thursday when the Russian president appeared to lose his cool after being questioned about Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine. When a reporter for Sky News asked whether Moscow could give security guarantees and promise not to invade its neighbor, Putin exploded: “You are demanding guarantees from us? It’s you who should give us guarantees. Immediately. Right now. And not talk it over for decades.” more...
By Mary Ilyushina

Moscow — President Vladimir Putin used some of his most direct language to date on Tuesday in his escalating standoff with the U.S. and its European allies. The Russian leader warned that if the U.S. and NATO do not halt what Moscow considers aggressive actions along the country's border with Ukraine, Russia would respond in a "retaliatory military" manner. "If the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate, retaliatory military-technical measures [and] react toughly to unfriendly steps," Putin told senior military officials during a meeting in remarks carried by Russian state TV. "I want to emphasize that we have every right to do so." more...
Russian state TV is increasingly hysterical in its forecasts of an upcoming war, warning domestic audiences that the conflict could even become nuclear.
Julia Davis

The rhetoric on Kremlin-funded state television is amping up the sense of urgency around Russian President Vladimir Putin’s NATO “ultimatum.” Olga Skabeeva, the host of state TV show 60 Minutes, said Tuesday: “The level of anxiety has reached its maximum. We’re 20 days away from the expiration of the ultimatum and the stakes are rising, even though it seems they couldn’t be any higher.” One day after Moscow submitted a draft of its Russia-U.S. security treaty, containing demands that NATO roll back its military deployments in Europe and deny membership to Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened that Moscow would raise the stakes if the West didn’t treat its demands seriously. On Monday, he told Interfax that Russia needs answers “urgently, because the situation is very difficult.” more...
Moscow sets out tough terms in draft security documents submitted to the US and its allies.
Aljazeera

Russia has published draft security pacts, demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries and roll back the deployment of troops and weapons in central and eastern Europe. The documents, published on Friday, also call for a ban on sending US and Russian warships and aircraft to areas from where they can attack each other’s territory as well as a halt to NATO military drills near Russia’s borders. more...
The centrist Liberal Democrats won the North Shropshire seat by nearly 6,000 votes, overturning a 23,000 vote Conservative majority from 2019 with a huge swing.
By Reuters

LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party on Friday lost control of a parliamentary seat they have dominated for nearly 200 years, in a shock election result seen as a voter backlash against a British leader beset by crises and scandal. The centrist Liberal Democrats won the North Shropshire seat by nearly 6,000 votes, overturning a 23,000 vote Conservative majority from 2019 with a huge swing. The defeat was described as ‘a kicking’ for the Conservatives. It will ratchet up the pressure on Johnson from his lawmakers, who are in mutinous mood as they fear the party’s reputation and electoral prospects are now suffering under Johnson’s leadership. more...
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and LORNE COOK

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Friday published draft security demands that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet countries and roll back the alliance’s military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe — bold ultimatums that are almost certain to be rejected by the U.S. and its allies. The proposals, which were submitted to the U.S. and its allies earlier this week, also call for a ban on sending U.S. and Russian warships and aircraft to areas from where they can strike each other’s territory, along with a halt to NATO military drills near Russia. The demand for a written guarantee that Ukraine won’t be offered membership already has been rejected by the West, which said Moscow doesn’t have a say in NATO’s enlargement. more...
Joker malware, which surreptitiously signs up users to pricey services, strikes again.
Dan Goodin

An Android app with more than 500,000 downloads from Google Play has been caught hosting malware that surreptitiously sends users’ contacts to an attacker-controlled server and signs up users to pricey subscriptions, a security firm reported. The app, named Color Message, was still available on Google servers at the time this post was being prepared. Google removed it more than three hours after I asked the company for comment. Ostensibly, Color Message enhances text messaging by doing things such as adding emojis and blocking junk texts. But according to researchers at Pradeo Security said on Thursday, Color Message contains a family of malware known as Joker, which has infected millions of Android devices in the past. more...
By Fred Pleitgen, Olga Pavlova, and Arnaud Siad, CNN, with Reuters

BerlinGermany has summoned the Russian ambassador and expelled two Russian diplomats after a court ruled on Wednesday that Moscow had ordered the 2019 murder of a Georgian citizen in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said. The court found Russian citizen Vadim Krasikov guilty of the August 2019 murder of Tornike Khangoshvili, an ethnic Chechen of Georgian nationality, in a central Berlin park, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The court said his crime had been ordered by the Russian government. more...
Karaj was the target of a sabotage attack in June that Iran blames on Israel
By Amir Vahdat and Jon Gambrell

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will allow the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog to reinstall cameras damaged at a site where it has centrifuge parts and manufacturing material, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported Wednesday. The decision will see cameras put back at Karaj, which came under what Iran describes as a sabotage attack in June. Iran had since refused the International Atomic Energy Agency access to replace cameras damaged in the incident. more...
Many lawmakers say some restrictions are draconian, with several questioning introduction of a certificate of vaccination to enter venues.
Aljazeera

Dozens of Conservative legislators have voted against some new coronavirus restrictions, dealing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson another embarrassing blow over measures he said are necessary to curb the spread of the new Omicron variant. After a day of frenzied lobbying, the prime minister failed to thwart a rebellion against measures, including ordering people to work from home, wear masks in public places and use COVID-19 passes to enter some venues. more...
Evelyn Cheng

BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their second dedicated video call of the year Wednesday, amid rising international concerns about tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border. Putin won support from Xi for his push to obtain binding security guarantees for Russia from the West, a Kremlin official said, according to Reuters. Russia wants the United States and NATO to guarantee the military alliance will not expand further eastward or deploy weapons systems in Ukraine and other countries on Russia’s border. more...
Vadim Krasikov sentenced to life in prison for murdering Zelimkhan ‘Tornike’ Khangoshvili, an ethnic Chechen of Georgian nationality.
Aljazeera

Berlin’s regional court has sentenced a Russian man to life in prison for a killing in Germany’s capital two years ago that prosecutors say was ordered by Moscow. The 2019 slaying of Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old ethnic Chechen of Georgian nationality, sparked outrage in Germany and inflamed diplomatic tensions between Berlin and Moscow. The court on Wednesday found 56-year-old Vadim Krasikov guilty of murder. Prosecutors said the killing was an act of retaliation for Khangoshvili’s participation in the second Chechen war and his “enmity towards the Russian state”. more...
Guardian News

As many as 350 people were trapped on the roof of a shopping centre and office complex in Hong Kong after a fire broke out in one of the city’s busiest shopping districts. video...
Researchers claim Chinese government groups are among the perpetrators
Hannah Murphy

Hackers including Chinese state-backed groups have launched more than 1.2 million attacks on companies globally since last Friday, according to researchers, through a previously unnoticed vulnerability in a widely used piece of open-source software called Log4J. Cyber security group Check Point said the attacks relating to the vulnerability had accelerated since Friday, and that at some points its researchers were seeing more than 100 attacks a minute. Perpetrators include “Chinese government attackers”, according to Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer of cyber company Mandiant. The flaw in Log4J allows attackers to easily gain remote control over computers running apps in Java, a popular programming language. more...
Ravie Lakshmanan

Romanian cybersecurity technology company Bitdefender on Monday revealed that attempts are being made to target Windows machines with a novel ransomware family called Khonsari as well as a remote access Trojan named Orcus by exploiting the recently disclosed critical Log4j vulnerability. The attack leverages the remote code execution flaw to download an additional payload, a .NET binary, from a remote server that encrypts all the files with the extension ".khonsari" and displays a ransom note that urges the victims to make a Bitcoin payment in exchange for recovering access to the files. more...
BBC News

MoscowRussian President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago as the demise of what he called "historical Russia," and said the economic crisis that followed was so bad he was forced to moonlight as a taxi driver. Putin's comments, released by state TV on Sunday, are likely to further fuel speculation about his foreign policy intentions among critics, who accuse him of planning to recreate the Soviet Union and of contemplating an attack on Ukraine, a notion the Kremlin has dismissed as fear-mongering. more...
By Alexander Ratz and Humeyra Pamuk

LIVERPOOL, England, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Russia faces massive consequences and severe costs if President Vladimir Putin attacks Ukraine, the Group of Seven warned in a statement on Sunday. U.S. intelligence assesses that Russia could be planning a multi-front offensive on Ukraine as early as next year, involving up to 175,000 troops. The Kremlin denies it plans to invade and says the West is gripped by Russophobia. Moscow says the expansion of NATO threatens Russia and has contravened assurances given to it as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. more...
Over a Dozen Malicious NPM Packages Caught Hijacking Discord Servers
Ravie Lakshmanan

At least 17 malware-laced packages have been discovered on the NPM package Registry, adding to a recent barrage of malicious software hosted and delivered through open-source software repositories such as PyPi and RubyGems. DevOps firm JFrog said the libraries, now taken down, were designed to grab Discord access tokens and environment variables from users' computers as well as gain full control over a victim's system. "The packages' payloads are varied, ranging from infostealers up to full remote access backdoors," researchers Andrey Polkovnychenko and Shachar Menashe said in a report published Wednesday. "Additionally, the packages have different infection tactics, including typosquatting, dependency confusion and trojan functionality." more...
Story by Reuters

Hong KongA Hong Kong court found three prominent pro-democracy activists guilty on Thursday of unauthorized assembly over a June 4 vigil last year to mark Beijing's 1989 crackdown on protesters in and around Tiananmen Square. Hong Kong has traditionally held the world's largest annual June 4 vigils, as part of wide-ranging freedoms promised when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, but the last two were banned by police, citing coronavirus curbs. more...
By Ivana Kottasová, CNN

(CNN) Olaf Scholz has been sworn in as Germany's new Chancellor on Wednesday, bringing to an end Angela Merkel's four terms at the helm of Europe's largest economy. Scholz, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), won the secret vote in the Parliament as expected, a culmination of months of negotiations following the SPD's narrow victory in September's federal elections. Following the ceremonial protocols, Scholz went to see German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier who officially appointed him as the country's new Chancellor. He was then sworn in at the Parliament. more...
By Swati Gupta, Vedika Sud and Rhea Mogul, CNN

New Delhi (CNN) India's top military official was killed Wednesday when an Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter carrying 14 people crashed in southern India, the IAF confirmed, with only one survivor. Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat died along with his wife, Madhulika Rawat, the IAF said via Twitter. He had been in the post for almost two years. The helicopter, which had a crew of four, crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu state while en route from Sulur to the town of Wellington in Tamil Nadu, the IAF said. more...
BBC News

A video obtained by ITV shows senior No 10 staff joking about holding a Christmas party - days after one was held there during lockdown. The PM's then-press secretary Allegra Stratton is asked by colleagues about reports of a party, as they rehearse a news conference in December last year. In jokey exchanges, she says: "This fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced." Downing Street continues to insist no party took place. But a source previously confirmed to the BBC that a party did take place there on 18 December, with "several dozen" people in attendance. more...
By Maegan Vazquez, CNN

Washington (CNN) The White House says President Joe Biden told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that the United States is prepared to launch strong economic measures should Russia invade Ukraine -- signaling that these new measures would pack a bigger punch than the sanctions issued in 2014 that failed to stop Russia from occupying Crimea. "I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now," national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Tuesday afternoon after Biden's call with Putin. more...
By Swati Gupta, Vedika Sud and Rhea Mogul, CNN

New Delhi (CNN) India's top military official was killed Wednesday when an Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopter carrying 14 people crashed in southern India, the IAF confirmed, with only one survivor. Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Bipin Rawat died along with his wife, Madhulika Rawat, the IAF said via Twitter. He had been in the post for almost two years. The helicopter, which had a crew of four, crashed near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu state while en route from Sulur to the town of Wellington in Tamil Nadu, the IAF said. more...
There are signs that the White House and Kremlin are close to arranging a conversation next week between Biden and Putin.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Joe Biden has pledged to make it “very, very difficult” for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to take military action in Ukraine as U.S. intelligence officials determined that Russian planning is underway for a possible military offensive that could begin as soon as early 2022. The new intelligence finding estimates that the Russians are planning to deploy an estimated 175,000 troops and almost half of them are already deployed along various points near Ukraine's border, according to a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the finding. more...
By Tara John, CNN

(CNN) When South African officials sounded the alarm on the new Omicron variant last Thursday, stocks around the world tumbled and up to 70 countries, including the United States, imposed travel bans and restrictions to southern African countries. The knee-jerk response followed the news that the variant had an unusually high number of mutations, which scientists feared could make it more transmissible and result in immune evasion. Much is still unknown about Omicron, including its origin, severity and its transmissibility. Researchers are also racing to discover if it could displace existing variants and become dominant, as Delta has. Early "indications" show that people who have received the coronavirus vaccine booster are "protected" against the new variant, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said Tuesday. more...
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would seek Western guarantees precluding any further NATO expansion and deployment of its weapons near his country’s borders, a stern demand that comes amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian and Western officials have worried about a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, saying it could signal Moscow’s intention of an attack. Russian diplomats countered those claims by expressing concern about Ukraine’s own military buildup near the area of the separatist conflict in the eastern part of the country. more...
Celina Tebor, John Bacon | USA TODAY

CEOs at two pharmaceutical giants whose double-shot COVID-19 vaccines are dominating the U.S. market are pitching different perspectives on the impact of the omicron variant. Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said current vaccines for COVID-19 will likely be less effective against the new omicron variant. Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday that he has spoken to scientists who told him that omicron is "not going to be good." He said it could be months before enough vaccines can be produced to crush omicron. more...
By Nicole Gaouette, Jennifer Hansler and Alex Marquardt, CNN

(CNN) Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Russia to stand down on its efforts to destabilize Ukraine and said the US and the NATO members were prepared to impose costs for further Russian aggression. "We don't know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade" Ukraine, Blinken said in remarks at the end of a North Atlantic Treaty Alliance meeting in Latvia. "We do know that he's putting in place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide. So despite uncertainty about intention, and timing, we must prepare for all contingencies while working to see to it that Russia reverses course." more...
By Associated Press

TOKYO — Japan has asked international airlines to stop taking new reservations for all flights arriving in Japan until the end of December as the country further tightens its border controls against a new coronavirus variant, the transportation ministry said Wednesday. It said the request is an emergency precaution amid growing concern over the spread of the new omicron variant. Those who have already made reservations are not affected, although flights may be canceled if there are insufficient passengers, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said. Transit passengers are also unaffected, it said. Japan is a major transit hub for flights to and from Asia. more...
PM Jacinda Arden says 65 personnel due to join international mission, from Australia, Fiji and Papa New Guinea, already on the ground.

New Zealand’s government says it will send dozens of peacekeepers to the Solomon Islands after a request for help from the crisis-hit country following a week of deadly riots. The move announced on Wednesday followed similar deployments by Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea aimed at restoring calm after peaceful protests calling for the removal of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare turned violent last week in the capital, Honiara. more...
Back to content