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Tag: unrest

  • How Iran’s protests transformed into a national uprising | CNN

    How Iran’s protests transformed into a national uprising | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly a month after the start of nationwide protests, parts of Iran now bear the hallmarks of battle zones, with flares lighting up skies, gunfire ringing out and bloody scenes recorded in video footage.

    “I am recording this video about the situation in Sanandaj,” said one demonstrator, his face covered with a black scarf and dark glasses, in a message to CNN from the Kurdish-majority city in western Iran, where some of the most dramatic images have emerged from the protests, despite a near total internet shutdown in the area.

    “Last night, the security forces were firing in the direction of houses. They were using military-grade bullets,” he said. “Until now, I hadn’t heard such bullets. People were really afraid.”

    Video apparently shot from rooftops showed what appeared to be clashes between young protesters and heavily armed security forces. Bullets and flares crossed the night sky and a cloud of dust and smoke covered the city blocks.

    At street level, other videos showed protesters throwing rocks at police, with the officers sometimes traveling in a procession of motorcycles, who appeared to be shooting at the crowd.

    Large numbers of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have been participating in the crackdown in addition to local police, say activists in Sanandaj, who accuse authorities of lashing back indiscriminately. According to Oslo-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw, a 7-year-old boy died in his mother’s arms on Sunday after security forces fired into a crowd of protesters.

    While it is impossible to independently verify a death toll from such clashes, gruesome images circulating online, and eyewitness testimony collected by CNN as well as rights groups, point to the bloodshed. Video showed a driver in the city lying dead with a large gunshot wound in his face – activists said he was honking his horn in solidarity with protesters.

    “In Sanandaj, they shoot the people honking their horns with bullets. And they shoot young and old alike,” said another protester in a video message to CNN. “The injured don’t go to hospitals because if they go there plain-clothes police will arrest them.

    “We are protesting for freedom in Iran. For the prisoners and the condemned, for the people of Iran calling for the regime to go. Everyone wants this regime to go.”

    Despite the government’s repeated claims of having restored calm, the scenes are being replicated throughout the country to varying degrees, with the Kurdish-majority west of the country appearing to bear the brunt of the crackdown.

    With remarkable defiance, Iranian people keep pouring into thoroughfares across the country. The protests were first ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini (also known as Zhina), who died nearly one month ago after being detained by the country’s morality police, but demonstrators have since coalesced around a range of grievances with the regime.

    Increasingly, activists and experts are characterizing the protests as a national uprising and one of the biggest challenges to the Iranian regime since its founding.

    “This is not a protest for reform,” Roham Alvandi, an associate professor of History at the London School of Economics, told CNN. “This is an uprising demanding the end of the Islamic Republic. And that is something completely different to what we’ve seen before.”

    What started as protests against the death of Mahsa Amini has transformed into something much larger.

    In the last month, Iran’s protesters have targeted the economic and political nerve centers of the regime. Videos showed people throwing rocks at police in the center of Tehran. In the capital’s bazaar, security forces were seen running away from demonstrators. Even in the conservative cities of Mashhad and Qom – the heart of the regime’s powerbase – demonstrators crop up frequently.

    Some gas and oil refineries have also turned into sites of protests, which are rapidly spreading in the country’s southwest. The country’s Council of Oil Contractor Workers has said it would potentially call a strike and pause oil production.

    The petroleum industry is the lifeline of Iran’s economy, which has been buckling under the strain of US sanctions unleashed by the Trump administration in 2018 and sustained by the Biden administration. US officials have been in indirect negotiations with Iran for a year and a half in a bid to restore a landmark 2015 nuclear deal – which former President Donald Trump withdrew from four years ago – that would see Iran curb its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief.

    Video suggested that the demonstrations at the refineries began as protests over wages, but then transformed into anti-regime protests, with laborers chanting “death to the dictator” – a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Around the country, protesters have pushing for economic strikes with some success. In Kurdish-majority areas, where the protests are believed to be more organized than elsewhere in the country, social media videos showed lines of shops shuttered. In Tehran’s bazaar, a number of stores have closed in recent days, though many merchants say they did so to protect their shops from the protests and the crackdowns that follow. A general strike, which Iranian activists have called for, has yet to materialize.

    Labor strikes are loaded with historic meaning in Iran. In 1979, oil and gas refineries played a critical role in the popular movement that overthrew the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and paved the way for the Islamic Republic.

    More widespread protest action by workers and merchants, experts say, could mark another escalation in the protests.

    “If there is a nationwide general strike, what can the government do really,” said Alvandi. “That would completely paralyze the state and would show the powerlessness of the state in the face of this movement.”

    Meanwhile, the crackdown continues to intensify in various parts of Iran, most notably in the Kurdish-majority north and northwest, where allegations of the mistreatment of the ethnic minority was already widespread.

    An Iranian police officer on a motocycle raises a baton to disperse protesters last month.

    Hengaw, the Kurdish rights group, believes that the violence against protesters being reported from the region “is just a drop in the ocean,” with only partial information emerging about the crackdown.

    Authorities have sporadically shut down the internet across Iran in an apparent bid to quash the protests, with the Kurdish-majority parts of the country experiencing the longest shutdowns, according to activists and the internet watchdog NetBlocks.

    A “major disruption” to internet access has occurred since 9:30 a.m. in Iran (2 a.m. ET) on Wednesday, according to NetBlocks. Kurdish activists say that authorities have also shut the area’s landline network, arguing that the bloodshed seen in the videos could just be the tip of the iceberg.

    “The Iranian regime and its security apparatus has no limit,” said Ramyar Hassani of Hengaw. “They know no limits.”

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the 6th CICA Summit, October,13, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

    (Getty Images)

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is “making every effort to provide critical products” to countries impacted by recent volatility in prices, while speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan on Thursday.

    “Other regional associations have to deal with many acute problems, including the increased volatility in world prices for energy resources, food, fertilizers, raw materials and other important goods,” Putin said while delivering remarks at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana.

    “This leads to a deterioration in the quality of life in developed and developing countries. Moreover, there is a real threat of famine and widespread social upheaval, especially in the poorest countries.”

    “Russia, for its part, is making every effort to provide critical products to countries in need. We call for the elimination of all artificial, illegitimate barriers to the restoration of the normal functioning of global supply chains in order to address urgent food security challenges,” Putin said.

    The Russian leader did not reference the war in Ukraine in his remarks. However, he again criticized NATO for the “failure of their policies,” referencing their role in Afghanistan.

    “After more than 20 years of the military presence of the United States and NATO [in Afghanistan], the failure of their policies, was unable to independently resolve the problems associated with terrorist threats,” Putin said.

    Putin said that, together with other Asian countries, Russia is looking to form a “system of equal and indivisible security based on the universally recognized principles of international law of the UN Charter.”

    Some context: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February sent the prices of energy and other commodities soaring.

    In the case of wheat, prices later fell back sharply after spiking to an all-time high in March, as investors cheered a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to restart exports of grain from key Ukrainian ports.

    However, natural gas prices increased further as Russia toyed with supply to Europe via key pipelines and heat waves pushed up electricity usage, with the economic impact of the war in Ukraine still being felt around the world.

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  • Barnes seeks to rebut crime attacks headed into final Senate debate with Johnson in Wisconsin | CNN Politics

    Barnes seeks to rebut crime attacks headed into final Senate debate with Johnson in Wisconsin | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Mandela Barnes, the Democrat taking on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin’s Senate race, on Thursday faces what could be his last clear shot at rebutting the avalanche of GOP attacks on crime and police funding that have taken a months-long toll on his campaign.

    Barnes and Johnson are set to meet for their second and final debate Thursday night – hours after the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol holds a hearing that is expected to function as its closing argument ahead of the November midterm elections.

    Barnes is highlighting Johnson’s actions on that day, seeking to cast him as an unreliable and hypocritical messenger on what it means to support police officers. Johnson, who played a role in trying to push “fake electors” for then-President Donald Trump before the start of the congressional certification of the 2020 electoral votes, has repeatedly downplayed the attack on the Capitol, saying it was not an “armed insurrection,” including as recently as earlier this month.

    Johnson and Republican outside spending groups have hammered Barnes, the Wisconsin lieutenant governor, throughout the fall in television advertisements, at events and in their first debate on crime – echoing a theme the GOP has made a core component of its closing message in Senate races across the map. Those attacks have coincided with Johnson rebounding from a summer slump in the polls less than four weeks from Election Day.

    During a campaign event Tuesday in Milwaukee where the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police and the West Allis Professional Police Association endorsed the two-term Republican senator, Johnson said that Barnes has shown “far greater sympathy for the criminal or criminals versus law enforcement or the victims.” He pointed to Barnes’ history of statements in support of decreasing or redirecting police funding.

    “The dispiriting nature of attempting to cut or use the code words of ‘reallocate,’ ‘over bloated budgets,’ – my opponent says that it pains him to see a fully funded police budget. I mean, that type of rhetoric,” Johnson said, “Those types of policies are very dispiriting for police.”

    Barnes, who says he does not support defunding the police, is attempting to shift the debate over crime away from his previous comments by targeting Johnson’s actions around the attack on the Capitol after President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

    Ahead of Thursday’s debate, Barnes plans to hold a virtual news conference with retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who served on the National Security Council and emerged as a star witness against Trump during the his first impeachment. Barnes’ campaign said the event would serve to “hold Ron Johnson accountable for his attempt to send a fake slate of electors to the Vice President.”

    Johnson’s role in trying to put forward the slate of electors who had not been certified by any state legislature was uncovered in June by the House select committee investigating the events around the insurrection. “I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out to Pence’s office,” Johnson told CNN at the time.

    In his first debate with Barnes, Johnson said he did not know what he was being asked to hand Pence.

    “I had no idea when I got a call from the lawyers for the president of the United States to deliver something to the vice president, did I have a staffer who could help out with that – I had no idea what it was,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t even involved. I had no knowledge of an alternate state of electors.”

    His comment was part of perhaps the most memorable clash in their first debate last week. Barnes said that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.”

    “One officer was stabbed with a metal stake. Another crushed between a revolving door. Another hit in the head with a fire extinguisher,” Barnes said. “Let’s talk about the 140 officers that he left behind because of an insurrection that he supported.”

    Johnson said of the insurrection that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned it and condemned it strongly.”

    Barnes consistently led polls of the Senate race over the summer. But that edge has evaporated, more recent polls show – a change that has coincided with Republicans spending millions on TV ads focused on crime.

    A Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin released Wednesday showed movement among likely voters toward Johnson. The Republican led Barnes by 6 percentage points, 52% to 46%, among likely voters, the poll found. That’s a jump in Johnson’s favor from the neck-and-neck race the same poll found, with Johnson at 49% to Barnes’ 48%, in September.

    The poll’s results among likely voters are significantly more favorable to the GOP than are its results among all registered voters, suggesting substantial uncertainty hinging on Democrats’ ability to turn out less motivated supporters. By contrast, in Marquette’s latest results among all registered voters, Barnes and Johnson are tied at 47% in the Senate race.

    Other recent polls of the race have found likely voters deadlocked. In a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Johnson took 50% to Barnes’ 49% among likely voters.

    The Marquette poll found that inflation is a top issue in Wisconsin, with 68% of registered voters saying they are very concerned about it. Smaller majorities are also very concerned about public schools (60%), gun violence (60%), abortion policy (56%), crime (56%) and an “accurate vote count” (52%).

    But it’s crime that Republican strategists say has been central to Johnson’s rebound in the race.

    The attacks have taken place against the backdrop of rising violent crime figures, including a 70% increase in Wisconsin’s homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, according to the state’s Department of Justice. Republicans have also highlighted those convicted of violent crimes who have been paroled by the Wisconsin Parole Commission, an independent agency whose chairperson is appointed by the governor.

    “They don’t have an answer,” Brian Schimming, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin, said of Barnes’ campaign. “With Mandela Barnes, it’s not just one thing. It’s not anecdotal. There are three, four, five issues there that are not playing with an electorate that’s pretty concerned about crime right now, and not just if they’re in Milwaukee.”

    In the month of September, 61% of the nearly $9 million that Johnson and GOP groups spent on TV ads in the Wisconsin Senate race was behind ads focused on crime, according to data from the firm AdImpact.

    That share has dropped to 30% so far in October, but nine of the 14 ads that Republican groups have aired so far have been focused on crime.

    It has forced Democrats to respond. Barnes and Democratic groups have focused 40% of their TV ad spending so far in October on crime, with ads rebutting the GOP groups.

    The Republican attacks have focused on Barnes’ efforts as a state lawmaker to end cash bail, as well as a 2020 interview with PBS Wisconsin – weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in neighboring Minnesota – in which Barnes suggested that funding should be redirected from police budgets to other social services.

    “We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” he said then. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”

    He did, however, also stress in that same interview that he did not want police budgets completely done away with, saying, “The more money we invest in opportunity for people, the less money we have to spend on prisons.”

    One Johnson campaign ad shows video of Barnes saying that “reducing prison population is now sexy.” A narrator in the ad highlights Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration’s efforts to reduce the state’s prison population and says: “That’s not sexy. It’s terrifying. And as a mother, I don’t want Mandela Barnes anywhere near the Senate, from defunding our police to releasing predators.”

    Another Johnson spot features the sheriffs of Ozaukee and Waukesha counties, both huge sources of Republican votes in the Milwaukee suburbs.

    “Barnes wants to defund our police,” Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson says in the ad.

    “Mandela Barnes’ policies are a threat to your family,” Ozaukee County Sheriff Jim Johnson says.

    Barnes’ campaign has responded with ads of its own, including one in which Barnes says of GOP ads claiming he supports defunding the police, “That’s a lie.”

    “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police,” a retired Racine Police Department sergeant says in another Barnes spot. “He’s very supportive of law enforcement and I know his objective is to make every community in the state of Wisconsin better.”

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the 6th CICA Summit, October,13, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

    (Getty Images)

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is “making every effort to provide critical products” to countries impacted by recent volatility in prices, while speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan on Thursday.

    “Other regional associations have to deal with many acute problems, including the increased volatility in world prices for energy resources, food, fertilizers, raw materials and other important goods,” Putin said while delivering remarks at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in the Kazakh capital Astana.

    “This leads to a deterioration in the quality of life in developed and developing countries. Moreover, there is a real threat of famine and widespread social upheaval, especially in the poorest countries.”

    “Russia, for its part, is making every effort to provide critical products to countries in need. We call for the elimination of all artificial, illegitimate barriers to the restoration of the normal functioning of global supply chains in order to address urgent food security challenges,” Putin said.

    The Russian leader did not reference the war in Ukraine in his remarks. However, he again criticized NATO for the “failure of their policies,” referencing their role in Afghanistan.

    “After more than 20 years of the military presence of the United States and NATO [in Afghanistan], the failure of their policies, was unable to independently resolve the problems associated with terrorist threats,” Putin said.

    Putin said that, together with other Asian countries, Russia is looking to form a “system of equal and indivisible security based on the universally recognized principles of international law of the UN Charter.”

    Some context: Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February sent the prices of energy and other commodities soaring.

    In the case of wheat, prices later fell back sharply after spiking to an all-time high in March, as investors cheered a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey to restart exports of grain from key Ukrainian ports.

    However, natural gas prices increased further as Russia toyed with supply to Europe via key pipelines and heat waves pushed up electricity usage, with the economic impact of the war in Ukraine still being felt around the world.

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    Ukraine has received additional emergency funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), according to the Ukrainian prime minister.

    “Ukraine received $1.3 billion of additional emergency financing support from the International Monetary Fund. The funds will be used to finance priority needs: Strengthening defense capabilities, paying pensions, social programs and supporting the economy,” said Denys Shmyhal.

    “In total, the IMF has provided our country with $2.7 billion since the beginning of the full-scale war,” he said.

    On October 7, the IMF executive board approved the additional funds “under the food shock window of the Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) to help meet Ukraine’s urgent balance of payments needs.”

    “The scale and intensity of Russia’s war against Ukraine that started more than seven months ago have caused tremendous human suffering and economic pain,” the IMF said in a press release last week.

    “This disbursement under the RFI (equivalent to 50 percent of Ukraine’s quota in the IMF) will help meet urgent balance of payment needs, including due to a large cereal export shortfall, while playing a catalytic role for further financial support from Ukraine’s creditors and donors,” the IMF added.

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  • Saudis aren’t weaponizing oil like Americans claim, top official says | CNN Business

    Saudis aren’t weaponizing oil like Americans claim, top official says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said his country partnered with Russia to slash oil production in order to stabilize markets and denied that there were political motives behind the decision, which has enraged US leaders and sparked calls to rethink ties with Riyadh.

    “We’re trying to make sure we don’t have erratic swings in prices,” al-Jubeir, one of Saudi Arabia’s top diplomats, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Wednesday. “Our track record has been clear – we have always worked assiduously to maintain stability in the oil markets.”

    Last week, OPEC+, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed to slash production by 2 million barrels per day, twice as much as analysts had predicted, in the biggest cut since the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The move came despite an intense pressure campaign from the United States, which had warned Arab allies that such a move would increase prices and help Russian President Vladimir Putin continue to fund his war in Ukraine. Experts also fear that continued high oil prices could make it more difficult for the US to tamp down inflation, which has already skyrocketed this year.

    Al-Jubeir, who is also the country’s climate minister, denied that there were any political motives to the decision and said the production cut was made to avoid major swings in the price of oil, which can affect consumers worldwide, and pointed to the fact that the price of oil has gone down since the reduction was announced last week.

    “Saudi Arabia is not siding with Russia,” he told CNN. “Saudi Arabia is taking the side of trying to ensure the stability of the oil markets.”

    “Saudi Arabia does not politicize oil. We don’t see oil as a weapon. We see oil as our commodity. Our objective is to bring stability to the oil market,” al-Jubeir said.

    US President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that Washington must now “rethink” its relationship with Riyadh following the cut. The decision was a particular affront for Biden because of his efforts over the summer to repair ties with Saudi Arabia, despite the kingdom’s woeful human rights record and the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Bin Salman denied involvement in the murder, which captured international headlines in part due to the lurid details of the killing.

    “I am in the process, when the House and Senate gets back, they’re going to have to – there’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done with Russia,” Biden said.

    Watch the full exclusive interview with President Joe Biden

    On Wednesday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden would examine all aspects of US ties with Saudi Arabia, including arms sales, as administration officials begin quiet discussions with members of Congress and congressional aides about how the US could impose consequences on the kingdom following the oil output cut.

    “There is a range of interests and values that are implicated in our relationship with that country,” Sullivan told reporters. “The President will examine all of that. But one question he’s going to ask is: Is the nature of the relationship serving the interest and values of the United States and what changes would make it better serve the interests and values?”

    Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud said in an interview with Saudi TV earlier Wednesday that OPEC+ needed to be proactive as central banks in the West moved to tackle inflation with higher interest rates, a move that could raise prospects of a global recession, which could in turn reduce demand for oil and drive its price down. Cutting production would ensure a smaller supply of oil, keeping its price higher. While that would protect the Saudi economy by ensuring it receives a steady flow of income from oil sales, it would force consumers across the world to pay more for energy and gas, further fueling inflation.

    Saudi officials have insisted that the production cut is being done to protect the country’s economic interests. Because of its heavy dependence on oil revenues, the Saudi economy has a history of falling victim to boom and bust cycles in the oil market, where high prices bring in a flow of cash followed by downturns.

    In the United States, however, the cut could have massive political ramifications ahead of next month’s midterm elections. After reaching highs over the summer, gas prices in the United States had been steadily decreasing, providing Biden and his top aides a potent talking point in the lead-up to the elections.

    But a combination of factors, including rising demand and maintenance at some US refineries, has caused prices to begin ticking back up. The OPEC+ decision is likely to aggravate those factors.

    The decision set off bipartisan fury in Washington when it was first announced last week. Saudi Arabia is now being accused of filling the Kremlin’s coffers with oil revenues just days after President Putin’s regime began carrying out large-scale missile attacks on civilian targets across Ukraine

    “What Saudi Arabia did to help Putin continue to wage his despicable, vicious war against Ukraine will long be remembered by Americans,” tweeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, on Friday.

    Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut on Wednesday called for immediate action on his bill that would stop US arm sales to Saudi Arabia.

    “The Saudis actions aid and abet a murderous and brutal criminal invasion by Russia,” Blumenthal said.

    When asked about growing calls in Washington to limit ties with Saudi Arabia, al-Jubeir said he hoped that such talk was motivated by domestic politics ahead of the midterms.

    Al-Jubeir said the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia remains “robust.”

    “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US have had a very strong relationship for eight decades … and we look forward to this relationship continuing for the next eight decades,” he added.

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    Destroyed armored vehicles and tanks belonging to Russian forces outside the city of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, on October 5.

    (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

    Moscow is running thin on military weapons and staving off “desperation at many levels inside Russian society,” according to the head of the UK’s largest spy agency.

    “We believe that Russia is running short of munitions, it’s certainly running short of friends,” Jeremy Fleming, director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ program.

    “We’ve seen, because of the declaration for mobilization, that it’s running short of troops. So I think the answer to that is pretty clear. Russia and Russia’s commanders are worried about the state of their military machine,” Fleming said Tuesday.

    When asked if the Kremlin is desperate amid President Vladimir Putin’s faltering military campaign in Ukraine, Fleming added: “We can see that desperation at many levels inside Russian society and inside the Russian military machine.”

    Fleming’s comments came after Russia launched a wave of deadly strikes across Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities Monday, damaging critical infrastructure and killing at least 19 people.

    “Russia, as we’ve seen in the dreadful attacks yesterday, still has a very capable military machine. It can launch weapons, it has deep, deep stocks and expertise. And yet, it is very broadly stretched in Ukraine,” Fleming said.

    The violent strikes follow Putin’s announcement of immediate military escalation in September, in which he threatened the possibility of nuclear retaliation.

    “I think any talk of nuclear weapons is very dangerous and we need to be very careful about how we’re talking about that,” Fleming said when asked about Putin’s nuclear threats.

    GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming delivers a speech at the Watergate House in London, England, on February 14, 2019.

    GCHQ Director Jeremy Fleming delivers a speech at the Watergate House in London, England, on February 14, 2019.

    (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

    “I would hope that we would see indicators if they started to go down that path. But let’s be really clear about that, if they are considering that, that would be a catastrophe in the way that many people have talked about,” he added.

    In a speech later Tuesday, Fleming will also say Russians are increasingly counting the cost of the invasion of Ukraine and are seeing “how badly” Putin “has misjudged the situation.”

    “With little effective internal challenge, his decision-making has proved flawed. It’s a high stakes strategy that is leading to strategic errors in judgement. Their gains are being reversed,” Fleming will say in an address at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) annual security lecture in London.

    The senior spy chief will also say that ordinary Russians are “fleeing the draft.”

    “They know their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted. And they are feeling the extent of the dreadful human cost of his war of choice,” he will say.

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  • 5 things to know for Oct. 11: Ukraine, Rail strike, Trump, School shootings, Speeding | CNN

    5 things to know for Oct. 11: Ukraine, Rail strike, Trump, School shootings, Speeding | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    If you’re planning to take a trip this winter, now’s the time to pounce on the best prices available for airfares. Some travel experts recommend securing holiday flights before Halloween because prices typically increase considerably as Thanksgiving gets closer.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Air raid sirens sounded in multiple regions of Ukraine today after Russia launched new missile attacks. This comes after Russia unleashed a wave of attacks across Ukraine on Monday, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 100 others, according to Ukrainian officials. Critical infrastructure was hit in several regions and in the capital Kyiv, where dozens of fires broke out, Ukraine’s emergency services said. Numerous areas in the region are still without power today following the barrage of Russian strikes that were partly targeted at energy facilities to leave Ukrainians without electricity. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, condemning the strikes and pledging continued US security assistance “including advanced air defense systems.”

    The threat of a freight rail strike is back after a major union of railroad workers rejected a tentative agreement Monday with the nation’s freight carriers. More than half of the 23,000 members in one of the largest rail unions opposed the agreement, meaning the two parties will now enter negotiations in hopes of reaching a deal. Without a new deal, there could be a strike that significantly impacts the nation’s already struggling supply chains. But such a strike would not occur until at least November 19, according to the union. The Biden administration has been desperate to avoid a strike because major railroads carry 30% of the nation’s freight and a strike could cause shortages and higher prices for essentials like food and gasoline. A strike could also force factories without parts to close and leave store shelves empty during the holiday shopping season. 

    Romans: There is a move afoot here for better quality of living

    New emails released by the General Services Administration debunk claims made by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government agency is to blame for packing boxes from the White House that ended up at his Mar-a-Lago residence after his presidency. Former presidents are allowed to take certain government materials and office equipment to set up a permanent office away from the White House. But that does not include the sort of classified documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago – which are at the center of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation. Trump and his allies have said GSA was responsible for classified documents being at his Florida home. The newly released emails, however, make clear that the boxes had already been packed and sat shrink-wrapped in an empty office space.

    Here’s why Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon’s decisions are under scrutiny

    Prosecutors and defense attorneys will present closing arguments today in the sentencing trial of the Parkland school shooter. This will be the last opportunity for them to make their cases before the jury will help decide whether the gunman will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. The imminent conclusion of the trial comes almost a year after the 24-year-old shooter pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and other charges for the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three school staff members were killed. Separately, in Uvalde, Texas, the school district’s superintendent announced his retirement Monday after new details surfaced about the Robb Elementary School massacre, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.

    Families of victims and survivors testify in Parkland shooter trial

    The National Transportation Safety Board has recommended a new vehicle system that could stop drivers from speeding. The technology essentially recognizes speed limits and either issues visual or audible alerts when a driver is speeding or prevents vehicles from going above those limits. New York City has become the first city in the US to test the speed-limiting technology in 50 of its fleet vehicles. “There’s no reason today, with so much technology and so much awareness, that anybody should die at the hands of an automobile,” said Meera Joshi, New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Operations. After more than 20,000 deaths on US roads this year alone, the NTSB has called on the federal government to start incentivizing car makers to put speed-limiting systems in new cars, according to a report. It will be up to automobile manufacturers whether they introduce the technology.

    Actor William Shatner shares what it’s like traveling to space

    “Everything I had expected to see was wrong,” Shatner wrote in a new biography. Learn about the actor’s life-changing experience aboard a suborbital space tourism flight.

    Football player Sebastian Gutierrez swaps pizza shop for the New England Patriots

    A former pizza shop worker is now earning his dough in the NFL! Read his inspirational story here.

    How dogs changed the course of civilization

    Did you know dogs were the first animal that humans ever domesticated? Here’s how adorable fur babies became a part of our daily lives.

    Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunion delights ‘Back to the Future’ fans

    The pair had an epic reunion at Comic Con 37 years after the release of the sci-fi comedy. (Can you believe it’s been 37 years? Take a second to remember those good old days.)

    Shaquille O’Neal reiterates his desire to buy an NBA team

    The four-time NBA champion shared a cryptic message about his wish to buy an NBA team “back home.” Here are some possibilities where that could be.

    Eileen Ryan, a veteran actress and the mother of actor Sean Penn, has died, Penn’s publicist shared in a statement. She was 94. Ryan appeared in more than 60 television shows and films over her long career, including the acclaimed films “Magnolia” and “I Am Sam.”

    $18 million

    That’s the prize Dustin Johnson won after clinching the inaugural LIV Golf championship, tournament officials announced Monday. The 38-year-old made the switch from the PGA Tour to the Saudi-backed rebel series in June. The controversial LIV Golf series has caused a rift in professional golf, as LIV golfers have been banned from the PGA Tour for participating in the breakaway series.

    “No child should ever be subjected to such racist, mean and dehumanizing comments, especially from a public official.”

    – Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin and his husband, issuing a family statement after his fellow council member, Nury Martinez, made racist remarks about him and his Black child. In leaked audio obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez says Bonin, a White man, appeared with his son on a float in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade and “handled his young Black son as though he were an accessory.” The Times reported that Martinez also said of Bonin’s child, “Parece changuito,” or “He’s like a monkey.” Following the backlash for an array of offensive comments heard in the audio, Martinez resigned as Los Angeles City Council president on Monday.

    Fall temperatures for the Northeast as rain hits Florida

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    Today is National Coming Out Day

    Every year on October 11, National Coming Out Day celebrates the act of “coming out” – when an LGBTQ person decides to publicly share their gender identities or sexual orientation. Watch this 2-minute video to learn how the rainbow flag became a symbol of LGBTQ pride. (Click here to view)

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  • Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

    Russia’s war in Ukraine | CNN

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    In a television appearance Monday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia had struck military and infrastructure targets across Ukraine following the Crimea bridge blast on Saturday.

    Putin threatened further “harsh” responses that correspond “to the level of threat to the Russian Federation, have no doubt about it,” while accusing Kyiv of “terrorism.”

    Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attack on the Kerch bridge, a key link between the Russian mainland and Crimea, which Moscow annexed illegally in 2014.

    Putin listed a catalogue of alleged acts of “terrorism” by what he called the “Kyiv regime” at a Russian Security Council meeting on Monday, accusing “Ukrainian special services” of the “sabotage act on the Crimean bridge.”

    He went through a list of what he called acts of terrorism including “terrorist shelling of the citizen towns in Donbas for over eight years,” and alleged acts of terrorism against Russian energy infrastructure, including electric power facilities, the gas transportation infrastructure and “an attempt to undermine one of the sections of the Turkish Stream gas transportation system.”

    He warned of a harsh response that corresponds to the level of threat toward the Russian Federation in case of further “acts of terrorism.”

    More on the explosion: An explosion early Saturday severely damaged parts of the Crimean bridge, which is a road and rail link between the peninsula and the Russian Federation. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the blast on the enormous 19-kilometer (about 12-mile) bridge, which was was opened by Putin in 2018. Ukrainian reaction to the explosion has been gleeful and triumphant.

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  • Superyacht linked to Russian billionaire mysteriously shows up in Hong Kong | CNN

    Superyacht linked to Russian billionaire mysteriously shows up in Hong Kong | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A megayacht linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch has dropped anchor in Hong Kong, amid efforts by the West to seize the luxury assets of Russian elites in allied ports as the war in Ukraine drags on.

    The Nord, a nearly 142-meter (466-foot) yacht that is said to be one of the world’s largest, was spotted by CNN on Friday in Hong Kong’s waters, just minutes from the central downtown district. The vessel is estimated to be worth at least $500 million and widely believed to belong to Alexey Mordashov, an industrial billionaire, according to a yacht broker who spoke with CNN.

    The yacht, 1.5 times the size of an American football field, arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday from the Russian port of Vladivostok, according to the Chinese city’s Marine Department. The government agency told CNN on Friday that it hadn’t been notified about when the yacht would depart for its next destination.

    As of Friday afternoon, the Nord was seen flying a Russian flag, with the name of its home base, “Vladivostok,” emblazoned on its stern. A few people, apparently crew members dressed in uniform, were spotted on the vessel’s deck.

    Mordashov is one of Russia’s wealthiest billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $18.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s down by $10 billion so far this year, according to the wealth tracker.

    The tycoon is chairman of Severstal, a Russian steel and mining giant that at last count had 54,000 employees across 69 countries.

    The US State Department sanctioned him and Severstal in June, in addition to three of Mordashov’s other companies, his wife and two adult children.

    In a statement at the time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Treasury Department was taking further action to “degrade the networks allowing Russia’s elites, including President [Vladimir] Putin, to anonymously make use of luxury assets around the globe.”

    But the United States isn’t the only country cracking down. Several superyachts tied to Russian businessmen have been seized this year in high-profile cases around the world, including in Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.

    Mordashov has challenged sanctions against him in European courts. In May, he argued that an EU court should annul the decision to add him to a list of those penalized over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to European Union filings.

    “I have absolutely nothing to do with the emergence of the current geopolitical tension and I do not understand why the EU has imposed sanctions on me,” he said this spring, at the beginning of the war, according to TASS, Russia’s state news agency.

    Nord seen anchored in Hong Kong on Friday, Oct. 7, just minutes by boat from the city's central district.

    Hong Kong may provide some refuge. Reached for comment by CNN on Friday, the Hong Kong Marine Department said that it would “not comment on any individual cases of vessel entry.”

    The city requires overseas yacht owners to gain permission from authorities to enter, including showing proof of insurance, according to the Marine Department.

    “We note that certain countries may impose unilateral sanctions against certain places on the basis of their own considerations,” it said.

    But the government “does not implement, nor do we have the legal authority to take action on, unilateral sanctions imposed by other jurisdictions,” the department added, saying only that it would enforce “sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.”

    On Tuesday, Hong Kong leader, Chief Executive John Lee, said the city had “no legal basis” to act on Western-imposed sanctions – referring to the United States– but “will comply with any United Nations resolution on sanctions.”

    Lee himself is among nearly a dozen people sanctioned by the US in 2020 for undermining the city’s autonomy and democratic processes, to which he described as a “a very barbaric act” on Tuesday.

    “Hong Kong respects the rule of law. As an international financial city, Hong Kong’s regulatory system is on par with international standards. We will not do anything that has no legal basis,” Lee said.

    Russia and China — of which Hong Kong is a part — are two of the five members on the Security Council with veto power. Russia has consistently vetoed resolutions on the council in recent months, impeding action on Ukraine.

    Severstal did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mordashov on Friday.

    MarineTraffic, the global maritime analytics provider, shows that the Nord arrived in Hong Kong this week after a seven-day journey through the Sea of Japan and East China Sea.

    It’s hard to know exactly why the crew chose to come to the Asian hub now, said Michael Maximilian Bognier, a yacht broker with Next Wave Yachting in Hong Kong.

    But he noted that the port of Vladivostok could get relatively cold in the winter, making it tougher to maintain such a vessel.

    “Not [an] ideal climate to keep a boat like that,” Bognier told CNN.

    Asked whether the lack of sanctions could be a draw, Bognier acknowledged the current political climate wasn’t helping.

    “This could be a reason why she’s here,” he said, referring to the yacht. “It could be a free ticket.”

    It’s rare to see proof of direct ownership of such lavish vessels. Bognier noted, however, that word usually got around about top industry sales and said it was common knowledge that Mordashov was the owner of the yacht.

    “Running a boat this size is almost [like] running a city or a business,” he added.

    The Nord was built by German shipping giant Lürssen.

    “This is definitely one of the most iconic yachts,” said Bognier. “It’s got a very flat bow, not unlike an aircraft carrier actually. That’s a very distinctive feature about this yacht. So it’s very, very difficult, let’s say, to mistake it for something else.”

    Sky-high carrying costs could make it tough for even the world’s wealthiest to maintain such assets. Bognier estimated that it could range from approximately $45 million to $70 million just to keep the yacht running each year, not factoring in variable costs of fuel or maintenance after any long journeys.

    That would break down to an average bill of $100,000 to $200,000 a day.

    The Nord is seen in Hong Kong on October 7, 2022.

    The Nord yacht boasts two helipads, and would likely have an extensive staff on board, including a full-time chef, fitness instructor, massage therapist, and possibly a helicopter pilot, according to Bognier.

    “When we talk about boats this size, these are standard items,” he said.

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  • Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

    Locks, laws and bullet-resistant shields: Election officials boost security as midterms draw closer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In Douglasville, Georgia – just west of Atlanta – a new buzzer-entry system secures the doors of the Douglas County election office. And elections director Milton Kidd said he now varies the times and the routes he uses to travel to work – all to evade the attention of election conspiracy theorists who have targeted the office.

    In Madison, Wisconsin, where a top election official faced death threats in the aftermath of the 2020 election, officials have redesigned the city clerk’s office, adding cameras, locking doors and covering the windows with white paper, said city attorney Michael Haas. In addition, a new city ordinance establishes a fine of up to $1,000 for disorderly conduct directed at election officials.

    In Colorado, meanwhile, a new state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.

    With Election Day less than a month away – and early voting already happening in some states – the officials charged with administering the midterms are racing to boost security for their staff, polling places and voters, as baseless conspiracy theories about fraud continue to swirl around the 2020 election and the one now underway.

    As CNN recently reported, the concerns about threats and harassment are so great that federal officials are now offering de-escalation training to local and state officials to help avert violence at the polls.

    “We certainly are in territory that we have not navigated in the past,” said Tina Barton, a former election official in Michigan who sits on the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. It’s a bipartisan group of election experts and law enforcement officials, working to prevent threats against voters and election officials.

    “I’m sad about the fact that it took a scenario like this for us to have to look at all of these things and say, ‘How do we keep ourselves safe?’” she added of the threats that started after the 2020 election. “But we’re seeing unprecedented threats and harassment.”

    Barton said election officials are deploying a bevy of tactics to secure the elections – from installing cameras and lighting at drop boxes to adding GPS and other tracking devices to ballot bags to monitor their movement on Election Day.

    Election officials in North Carolina last week issued what they described as their “most comprehensive” guidance to local elections officials for maintaining order at polling places this fall. It reinforces that it’s a crime to interfere with voter or election workers. The North Carolina State Board of Elections has also developed a guide for local law enforcement to help officers identify and respond to voter intimidation.

    In Leon County, Florida, Earley said his staff has received active-shooter training as part of their preparations in recent election cycles. But he said it has taken on “more significance since January 6,” referring to the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

    The extra steps to secure the building and protect the staff, Earley said, have sprung from worries about “people buying into myths and disinformation and feeling it’s their patriotic duty to take action.”

    “In today’s world, that action, unfortunately, oftentimes comes with firearms,” he added.

    In Oregon, meanwhile, the secretary of state’s office is urging local election officials to install signs outside ballot boxes that spell out voters’ rights and warn that voter intimidation violates the law – following social media references to activists targeting the boxes, said Ben Morris, a spokesman for the office.

    The state mails a ballot to every voter, which Oregonians return either by mail or by depositing into drop boxes. About 200 drop boxes are used around the state.

    In neighboring Washington state, officials in the Seattle area found and removed some 11 signs that had been posted by an “election integrity” activist and that warned that drop boxes were “under surveillance” ahead of the August 2 primary. King County officials called the signs an example of voter intimidation.

    (Amber Krabach, the activist who erected the signs, has sued King County and state officials in federal court, arguing that removing the signs violated her First Amendment right to free speech.)

    King County election officials are not aware of any security issues with their 76 ballot drop boxes right now, said Kendall Hodson, the county election office’s chief of staff, but “given what happened in the primary, we are keeping our eyes peeled for any unusual behavior.”

    Back in Douglas County, Georgia – a community of roughly 145,000 people that backed President Joe Biden in 2020 – Kidd said he’s dismayed and discouraged by what he and his staff have endured.

    Activists have trailed workers and photographed their license plates. In the 2020 election, people claiming election fraud dug through the trash at one polling location, found destroyed sample ballots and accused officials of throwing out votes, he said.

    And this year, he’s had several companies refuse to rent the trucks to the county that it needs to transport equipment to precincts.

    “In this climate, any business that’s associated with elections becomes a target,” he said. (Kidd has secured the trucks but said he doesn’t want to name the supplier for fear of further trouble.)

    Kidd, who has worked in the county’s election system for seven years, said he’s lost much of his once-stable workforce of temporary poll workers as a result of all the harassment and stress.

    “We’re able do things at the precinct” to protect workers, he said. “But we’re not able to go home with you. We’re not able to be with you in the grocery store.”

    “The level of depression, the level of anxiety that is now present in election administration is ridiculous,” he added. “And I don’t know, personally myself, how much longer I am going to do this.”

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  • A failed truce renewal in Yemen could further complicate US-Saudi relations | CNN

    A failed truce renewal in Yemen could further complicate US-Saudi relations | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    After a rare six months of relative calm, Yemen’s warring sides last week failed to renew a truce deal, with calls from the United Nations for an extension falling on deaf ears.

    With one side backed by Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia, it remains to be seen whether the US will support its Middle Eastern ally after last week’s whopping oil cut – seen as a snub from the oil-rich kingdom to the Biden administration ahead of the US midterm elections.

    The country’s Iran-backed Houthis and their rival Saudi-led coalition had agreed on a nationwide truce in April, the first since 2016. The two-month truce was renewed twice but came to an end last week over eleventh-hour demands put forward by the Houthis with regards to public sector wages.

    At the last minute, the Houthis imposed “maximalist and impossible demands that the parties simply could not reach, certainly in the time that was available,” said US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking in a statement, adding that diplomatic efforts by the US and the UN continue.

    “The unannounced reasons [for not renewing the truce] are speculated to be that the Iranians asked the Houthis, directly, to help escalate things in the region,” said Maged Almadhaji, director of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

    “Iranians and Houthis are in a difficult political position,” Almadhaji told CNN, adding that Iranians are under immense pressure amid raging protests at home and might be trying to keep Gulf rivals at bay by keeping them occupied with Yemen’s conflict.

    The few months of ceasefire were a breath of fresh air for millions of Yemenis who, in the last seven years of conflict, were driven to “acute need,” the UN said. The peace period saw the monthly rate of people displaced internally dip by 76%, and the number of civilians killed or injured by fighting lowered by 54%, said the UN last week.

    Yemen has been described by the UN as the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.

    Lenderking said that some aspects of the initial truce are still being upheld, such as relatively low violence, continued fuel shipments that can still offload into the Houthi-held Hodeidah port as well as resumed civilian-commercial flights from Sanaa airport. But the risks are very high.

    The Houthis have already warned investors to steer clear of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as they are “fraught with risks” – a message seen as a direct threat that the Iran-backed group is ready to strike once again.

    “With the Houthis, it is always risky not to take their threats seriously,” Peter Salisbury, consultant at International Crisis Group, told CNN.

    Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have previously launched attacks on the oil-rich countries, mainly targeting oil fields and key airports. In March, Houthis claimed responsibility for an attack on an Aramco oil storage facility in Jeddah. And in January, they said they were behind a drone strike on fuel trucks near the airport in Abu Dhabi.

    Saudi Arabia has previously sounded alarms to its powerful US security ally over these attacks, criticizing the Biden administration over what it perceived as waning US security presence in the volatile Middle East.

    Security agitation among Gulf monarchies was exacerbated by US nuclear talks with Iran earlier this year, where the possibility of lifted economic sanctions posed the risk of an emboldened Tehran that, it was feared, would, in turn, further empower and arm its regional proxies – predominantly the Houthis.

    But the Houthis are already arguably emboldened, said Gregory Johnsen, a former member of the United Nations’ Panel of Experts on Yemen.

    “I think Iran would like nothing better than to leave the Houthis in Sanaa on Saudi’s border as check against future Saudi behavior,” Johnsen told CNN.

    Saudi Arabia’s strongest security ally has been the US, and traditionally the two countries’ unwritten agreement has been oil in exchange for security – namely against Iranian hostility.

    But now, as Saudi Arabia defies the US with its latest OPEC oil cut, the two countries’ friendship is under increased strain. And with already existing reluctance in congressional politics to increase military support to Saudi Arabia, it remains unclear whether the US will respond with swift support to its Middle Eastern ally should violence flare, said Salisbury.

    A number of US Democratic politicians have accused Saudi Arabia of siding with Russia, saying the oil cut should be seen as a “hostile act” against the US.

    The threats made by certain US senators against Saudi Arabia after Wednesday’s OPEC oil cut – some of whom have called on US President Joe Biden to “retaliate” – are not credible, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the UAE, adding that the response from the Biden administration “has been more restrained.”

    It is in America’s interest to protect Middle Eastern oil producers, Abdulla told CNN, especially as supply tightens amid the Ukraine war and stalled nuclear talks with Iran.

    “At this moment in history, America needs Saudi Arabia, needs the UAE, just as much as we need them for security purposes,” Abdulla said.

    US policy toward Yemen has in recent years been in disarray, analysts say. The Obama administration first backed the Saudi-led coalition in 2016, but levels of support later changed as evidence emerged of civilian casualties in the Saudi-led air campaign.

    Saudi Arabia enjoyed extensive support for its Yemen policy during the Trump administration. In late 2019, Biden promised to make the kingdom a pariah and, a little over a year later, he slashed US support for Saudi Arabia’s offensive operations in Yemen, “including relevant arms sales.”

    The US continues, however, to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia through the loophole of “defense.”

    The Biden administration last August approved and notified Congress of possible multibillion-dollar weapons sales to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing defense against Houthi attacks as a legitimate cause for concern.

    “Now, the US is frustrated with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, while it has no leverage with the Houthis,” said Johnsen. “The US has been lost at sea for the past year and a half when it comes to a Yemen policy,” he added, labelling it a situation largely “of its own making.”

    While there is pressure within the US to sternly react to Saudi Arabia’s energy policies, it is yet to be seen how the US will respond to the developments in Yemen, where some say Washington would be wise to uphold its security guarantees.

    “I don’t think it is in the best interest of America to reduce their military assistance to Saudi Arabia,” said Abdulla. “If they do, it will backfire on America more than many of these senators would imagine.”

    At least 185 people, including at least 19 children, have been killed in nationwide protests across Iran since September, said Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Iran-focused human rights group based in Norway, on Saturday.

    CNN cannot independently verify death toll claims. Human Rights Watch said that, as of September 30, Iranian state-affiliated media placed the number of deaths at 60.

    Now in their third week, protests have swept across Iranian cities following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested by morality police and taken to a “re-education center” for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

    Here is the latest on this developing story:

    • Iranian police on Sunday dispersed high school girls who gathered to protest in southwestern Tehran. Meanwhile, an eyewitness told CNN that in the southeastern part of the city, girls took to the street shouting “woman, life, freedom” and “death to the dictator.”
    • The death toll from the crackdown on Saturday’s protests in Iran’s Kurdish city of Sanandaj has increased to at least four, according to the Iranian human rights group Hengaw on Sunday.
    • Iran’s state broadcaster IRINN (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network) was allegedly hacked during its nightly news program on Saturday, according to the pro-reform IranWire outlet, which shared a clip of the hacking. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported on the hacking, saying that IRIB/IRINN’s 9 p.m. newscast was hacked for a few moments by anti-revolutionary elements.
    • The internet connectivity monitoring service NetBlocks on Saturday said that Iran had shut off the internet in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in an attempt to curb a growing protest movement amid reports of new killings.

    Violent weekend as four Palestinians killed in West Bank, Israeli soldier killed in Jerusalem shooting

    An Israeli soldier has died following a rare shooting at a military checkpoint in East Jerusalem on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said. The attack comes after a violent two days in the occupied West Bank where Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, Palestinian authorities said.

    • Background: The shooting happened at a checkpoint of the normally quiet area near the Shuafat Refugee Camp in northeast Jerusalem, an area considered occupied territory by most of the international community. Video of the incident shows a man coming up to a group of soldiers and shooting them point blank before running away. Noa Lazar, an 18-year-old female soldier, was killed, and a 30-year-old guard was critically injured. In a statement, Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the attacker a “vile terrorist” and said Israel will “not rest until we bring these heinous murderers to justice.” Prior to the checkpoint attack, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over two days, according to Palestinian authorities. Two were killed in the Jenin Refugee Camp on Saturday when, the IDF said, clashes broke out as they came to arrest an “Islamic Jihad operative” that the IDF claimed was “involved in terrorist activities, planning and carrying out shooting attacks towards IDF soldiers in the area.” Another two, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in separate incidents elsewhere in the territories. The occupied West Bank, especially the areas of Jenin and Nablus, is in an increasingly volatile and dangerous situation, as near-daily clashes take place between the Israeli military and increasingly armed Palestinians.
    • Why it matters: More than 105 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces so far this year, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied territories since 2015, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel says most Palestinians killed were engaging violently with soldiers during military operations, although dozens of unarmed civilians have been killed as well, human rights groups including B’Tselem have said. Some 21 civilians and soldiers have been killed so far this year in attacks targeting Israelis.

    US says a failed rocket attack targeted US and partnered forces in Syria

    One rocket was launched at a base housing US and coalition troops in Syria on Saturday night, according to US Central Command. No US or coalition forces were injured in the attack, and no facilities or equipment were damaged, CENTCOM said in a statement.

    • Background: The rocket was a 107mm rocket, and additional rockets were found at the launch site, CENTCOM said. The attack is under investigation. On September 18, a similar rocket attack using 107mm rockets was launched against Green Village in Syria, a base housing US troops. Three 107mm rockets were launched and a fourth was found at the launch site.
    • Why it matters: The attack comes two days after US forces killed two top ISIS leaders in an airstrike in northern Syria, and three days after a US raid killed an ISIS smuggler. Although there is no attribution for the attack, such rocket launches are frequently used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria.

    UAE president to meet with Putin during visit to Russia on Tuesday

    UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Russia on Tuesday, UAE state-run news agency WAM said.

    • Background: “During his visit, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed will discuss with President Putin the friendly relations between the UAE and Russia along with a number of regional and international issues and developments of common interest,” WAM said.
    • Why it matters: The visit comes less than a week after OPEC+, the international cartel of oil producers, announced a significant cut to output in an effort to raise oil prices. The UAE is a member of the organization led by Saudi Arabia and Russia. CNN has reached out to the UAE government for comment.

    Before clicking enter on your Google search today, take a minute to check out today’s ‘Google Doodle.’ Standing by a library and a lighthouse is prominent Egyptian historian Mostafa El-Abbadi, who would have turned 94 today.

    Hailed as “champion of Alexandria’s Resurrected Library” by the New York Times, he was the key player in resurrecting the Great Library of Alexandria.

    The son of the founder of the College of Letters and Arts at the University of Alexandria, El-Abbadi’s love for academia came at a very young age.

    The intellectual went on to graduate from the University of Cambridge and returned home as a professor of Greco-Roman studies at the University of Alexandria, where his love for the Library of Alexandria grew.

    El-Abbadi sought to restore the glory of the “Great Library” which disappeared between 270 and 250 A.D. – and he succeeded.

    Combined efforts by the Egyptian government, UNESCO, and other organizations led to the opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on October 16, 2002.

    Despite being the main driver of the project, El-Abbadi was not invited to the ceremony after he became a critic of how the scheme was handled by the authorities.

    “It became the project of the presidents, of the people who cut the rope, the people who stood on the front stage, and not of Mostafa El-Abbadi,” said Prof. Mona Haggag, a former student of El-Abbadi and head of the department of Greek and Roman archaeology at the University of Alexandria, according to the New York Times.

    By Mohammed Abdelbary

    Models present creations by Italy's iconic fashion house Stefano Ricci at the temple of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut on the west bank of the Nile river, off Egypt's southern city of Luxor, on October 9.

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  • North Korea says missile tests are practice for ‘tactical nuclear strikes’ on South Korea | CNN

    North Korea says missile tests are practice for ‘tactical nuclear strikes’ on South Korea | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    North Korean state media has broken its silence over the country’s recent spate of missile tests, claiming they were part of a series of simulated procedures intended to demonstrate its readiness to fire tactical nuclear warheads at potential targets in South Korea.

    The Kim regime has tested ballistic missiles seven times since September 25, the latest of 25 launch events of ballistic and cruise missiles this year, according to a CNN count, raising tensions to their highest level since 2017.

    Quoting leader Kim Jong Un, who oversaw the drills, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the tests, which coincided with nearby military drills between the United States, South Korea and Japan, showed Pyongyang was ready to respond to regional tensions with by involving its “huge armed forces.”

    KCNA said the series of seven drills of North Korea’s “tactical nuclear operation units” showed that its “nuclear combat forces” are “fully ready to hit and wipe out the set objects at the intended places in the set time.”

    Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said North Korea’s announcements Monday indicated potential progress in its missile program.

    “What I find notable is that these launches are not framed as tests of the missiles themselves, but rather of the units that launch them. That suggests these systems are deployed,” Lewis said on Twitter.

    KCNA said on September 25, North Korea workers took part in exercises within a silo under a reservoir to practice what it described as loading tactical nuclear warheads to check the swift and safe transportation of nuclear weapons.

    Three days later, they simulated the loading of a tactical nuclear warhead on a missile that in the event of war that would be used in “neutralizing airports in South Korea’s operation zones.”

    On October 6, North Korea practiced procedures that could initiate a tactical nuclear strike on “the enemies’ main military command facilities” and, on Sunday, enemy ports, Pyongyang’s state media said.

    Among the key military installations in South Korea is the US Army’s Camp Humphreys, the largest US military installation outside of the United States with a population of more than 36,000 US servicemembers, civilian workers, contractors and family members.

    A North Korean missile launch is seen in a photo released by state media on Monday.

    Experts say that North Korea has likely manufactured some nuclear warheads – “20 to 30 warheads for delivery primarily by medium-range ballistic missiles,” Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in September.

    But its ability to detonate them accurately on the battlefield is unproven.

    A photo from North Korean state media released Monday shows a missile launch.

    Analysts noted that with Monday’s reports, North Korea broke six months of silence on its testing program. Before that, an announcement and images of the tests were usually made available the next day.

    Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Pyongyang had “multiple motivations” for making an announcement Monday.

    Besides providing a “patriotic headline” for domestic consumption on the 77th anniversary of its ruling party, “it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches,” Easley said.

    “The KCNA report may also be harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field,” he said.

    South Korean and US officials have been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for its first nuclear test since 2017, with satellite imagery showing activity at its underground nuclear test site.

    The KCNA report said the recent drills, from September 25 to October 9, were designed to send a “strong military reaction warning to the enemies” and to verify and improve the country’s fighting capabilities.

    Kim Jong Un watches a missile launch in a photo released by North Korean state media on Monday.

    In the report, Kim called South Korea and the United States “the enemies” and said North Korea doesn’t need to hold talks with them.

    Kim further emphasized that Pyongyang will thoroughly monitor enemies’ military movements and “strongly take all military countermeasures” if needed, KCNA stated.

    The United States, South Korea and Japan have all been active with military exercises during the North’s recent wave of drills.

    North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observes a military drill on October 8 in photo from North Korean state media.

    A US Navy aircraft carrier strike group participated in several days of bilateral and trilateral exercises with South Korean and Japanese units that ended Saturday, a statement from the US Navy’s Task Force 70 said.

    “Our commitment to regional security and the defense of our allies and partners is demonstrated by our flexibility and adaptability to move this strike group to where it is needed,” said Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, commander of Task Force 70/Carrier Strike Group 5.

    South Korea’s National Security Council on Sunday “strongly condemned” North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, and it said the South Korean military will further bolster its combined defense posture and deterrence through joint military drills with the US and trilateral security cooperation involving Japan.

    Japan’s Joint Staff said the security environment around Japan was becoming “increasingly severe” and that drills with the US Navy were strengthening the alliance’s capability to respond to threats.

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  • Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

    Opinion: Biden’s eye-opening warning | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    “Can you tell me where we’re headin’?” Bob Dylan asks in his 1978 song “Señor.”

    Is it “Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? Seems like I been down this way before. Is there any truth in that, señor?”

    Yes, we’ve been here before, at least if you take President Joe Biden at his word. At a fundraiser in New York City Thursday, Biden said, “First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.” Referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to go nuclear in his war with Ukraine, the President observed, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

    As historian Julian Zelizer wrote, “Those were unsettling words for a nation to hear from the commander in chief.” Biden referred to “the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when the world seemed to teeter on the brink of nuclear war as the US and the Soviet Union faced off over missiles in Cuba.”

    “Some planned escape routes from major cities while others stocked up on transistor radios, bottled water and radiation kits for their families. Although nobody knew it at the time, the danger was even greater than most thought as the leaders didn’t have full control of the situation. In the end, diplomacy won out, a deal was reached and disaster was averted.”

    Nick Anderson/Tribune Content Agency

    But the prospect of annihilating humanity in a nuclear exchange is so great that such brinksmanship should never be allowed to happen again. Surely Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were right when they agreed in 1985 that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

    US national security officials privately said there was no new intelligence to indicate that Putin is moving to carry out his threat and couldn’t explain why Biden made the extraordinary statement. But its implications were clear, Zelizer argued. “This historic moment in the war between Russia and Ukraine is an important reminder that the US has let nuclear arms control fall from the agenda, and the consequences are dangerous.”

    Putin’s back is against the wall as Ukraine continues to retake territory from the Russians. Peter Bergen wrote that Putin is “facing growing criticism from Russians on both the left and the right, who are taking considerable risks given the draconian penalties they can face for speaking out against his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.”

    “With even his allies expressing concern, and hundreds of thousands of citizens fleeing partial mobilization, an increasingly isolated Putin has once again taken to making rambling speeches offering his distorted view of history.”

    One lesson of history is that military defeat endangers dictatorial leaders. “Putin’s gamble may lead to a third dissolution of the Russian empire, which happened first in 1917 as the First World War wound down, and again in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union,” Bergen noted. “It could unfold once more as Putin’s dream of seizing Ukraine seems to be coming to an inglorious end.”

    It’s striking to recall, as Frida Ghitis did, that “seven months ago, some viewed Putin as something of a genius. That myth has turned to dust. The man who helped suppress uprisings, entered wars and tried to manipulate elections across the planet now looks cornered.”

    In Ukraine, “Russia’s trajectory looks like a trail of war crimes, with hundreds of bombed hospitals, schools, civilian convoys, and mass graves filled with Ukrainians. And still Ukraine is pushing ahead, is doing very well in fact, and very possibly winning this war,” wrote Ghitis.

    06 opinion column 1008

    Lisa Benson/GoComics.com

    Biden took heat this summer for deciding to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and walking away with little commitment from the Saudis to expand oil production. And then last week, the Saudi regime was instrumental in OPEC+’s decision to actually cut oil production in a move that benefits it and other oil-producing states including Russia.

    “So much for cozying up to the Saudis – President Joe Biden’s much-hyped fist bump with Mohammed bin Salman during a trip to the Middle East back in July has turned into something of a slap across the face from the crown prince,” wrote David A. Andelman.

    In the US, gasoline prices have started rising after weeks of declines, adding to the burdens Democrats face in trying to hold onto control of Congress in the midterm elections a month from now.

    07 opinion column 1008

    Clay Jones

    “The OPEC production cutbacks could – indeed, should – backfire for Saudi Arabia and its complicit partners,” wrote Andelman. “There is growing sentiment in Congress to reevaluate America’s wider relationship with Saudi Arabia and especially the vast arms sales to the kingdom.”

    Higher oil prices come on top of Europe’s emerging energy crisis, with Russia sharply reducing its export of natural gas to the continent. As a result, Germany is among the nations that have instituted tough new curbs on energy use, wrote Paul Hockenos.

    “Step into my Berlin office today and you’ll find everybody is wearing sweaters – I wear two, with wool socks and occasionally a scarf. … At home, my little family has sworn off baths (swift showers please), and lights are on only in the rooms we’re occupying. We’ve invested in a wool curtain inside our apartment’s front door to keep out the draft.”

    “My friend Bill … hasn’t turned his heating on yet this year – no one I know has – and wears a sweater at home. He also has a new method of showering: one minute under warm water, turns it off, lathers up, and then rinses off.”

    “Timing is everything,” said Garrett Hedlund in the 2011 song of that name.

    “When the stars line up

    And you catch a break

    People think you’re lucky

    But you know it’s grace…”

    It works in reverse too. Just ask Linda Stewart, a New Mexico educator in her 60s who decided to retire one year into the pandemic lockdown. “Finances would be a little tight for a while, but some outside projects would supplement my income, so I felt confident I would be able to handle it,” she wrote in a new CNN Opinion series, “America’s Future Starts Now,” which explores the key issues in the midterm campaigns.

    But, Stewart added, “by the end of the second year of lockdown, inflation started taking a toll and money was getting uncomfortably tight. Soon I was in the red each month, just trying to keep up. The usual suspects were groceries and gas, which meant cutting back on some of the more expensive food items and cooking meals at home.”

    “I stopped driving for anything other than essentials. And with the continuing drought here in the Southwest, utility bills went through the ceiling. I cut back on watering my garden and turned the furnace down a few degrees in the winter and the air conditioning up a few in the summer. I switched to washing clothes mostly in cold water and only running the dishwasher once a week.”

    The economy is the issue Americans are most concerned about, and there are no quick, easy solutions to the inflation spike. The second part of CNN Opinion’s new series was a roundup of views on how to help people cope with higher costs.

    03 opinion column 1008

    Scott Stantis/Tribune Content Agency

    The Federal Reserve Bank is raising interest rates at a rapid pace to conquer inflation. The “tight labor market – and the rapid wage growth it has spurred – is causing inflation to become more entrenched,” wrote economist Gad Levanon for CNN Business Perspectives. To curb the rise in prices, “the Federal Reserve is likely to drive the economy into a recession in 2023, crushing continued job growth.”

    05 opinion column 1008

    Dana Summers/Tribune Content Agency

    At least 131 people have died due to Hurricane Ian. Why was it so deadly?

    The storm’s course veered south as it approached Florida and rapidly intensified, Cara Cuite and Rebecca Morss noted. “Emergency managers typically need at least 48 hours to successfully evacuate areas of southwest Florida. However, voluntary evacuation orders for Lee County were issued less than 48 hours prior to landfall, and for some areas were made mandatory just 24 hours before the storm came ashore. This was less than the amount of time outlined in Lee County’s own emergency management plan.”

    “While the lack of sufficient time to evacuate was cited by some as a reason why they stayed behind, there are other factors that may also have suppressed evacuations in some of the hardest hit areas.” Few people are aware of their evacuation zone, and some websites carrying that information crashed in the leadup to the storm’s arrival, Cuite and Morss wrote.

    “People need time to decide what to do, pack belongings, find a place to go and arrange how to get there, often in the midst of heavy traffic and other complications and obstacles.” Other factors: “In addition to a false sense of security from prior near-misses among some residents, others who were in the areas of Florida hardest hit by Hurricane Ian may not have had any personal experience with such powerful storms. This is likely true for the millions of people who have moved to Florida over the past few decades…”

    For more:

    Adam H. Sobel: Where the hurricane risk is growing

    Geoff Duncan, a Republican and the current lieutenant governor of Georgia, is unsure about Herschel Walker’s prospects in the upcoming election. The Republican Senate candidate has denied reports alleging he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009.

    “The October surprise,” Duncan wrote, “has upended the political landscape, throwing one of the nation’s closest midterm races into turmoil five weeks before Election Day, but it never had to be this way. Just as there should not be two Democrats representing a center-right state like Georgia in the US Senate, the Republican Party should not have found its chance of regaining a Senate majority hanging on an untested and unproven first-time candidate.”

    “Walker won his Senate primary not because of his political chops or policy proposals. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.”

    02 opinion column 1008

    Drew Sheneman/Tribune Content Agency

    For more on politics:

    SE Cupp: Herschel Walker’s ‘October Surprise’ won’t matter

    Tim Kane: What the Biden administration is getting wrong on immigration

    Nicole Hemmer: The Onion is right about the future of democracy

    Dean Obeidallah: The single-minded goal of Trump-loving Republicans

    Organic chemistry is a famously difficult course and a traditional prerequisite for students who want to go on to medical school. Maitland Jones Jr., a master of the field and textbook author, taught the course at NYU – until 82 of the 350 students taking it “signed a petition because, they said, their low scores demonstrated that his class was too hard,” Jill Filipovic noted.

    Then the university fired him.

    An NYU spokesman “told the (New York) Times in defense of their decision to terminate Jones’s contract that the professor had been the target of complaints about ‘dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension and opacity about grading.’ It’s worth noting that according to the Times, students expressed surprise that Jones was fired, which their petition did not call for.”

    Some of the student complaints may have been valid, noted Filipovic, but she added that the case “raises important questions, chief among them how much power students, who universities seem to increasingly think of as consumers (and some of whom think of themselves that way), should have in the hiring, retention and firing of professors…”

    “There are real consequences … to making higher education primarily palatable to those paying tuition bills – particularly when it comes to courses like organic chemistry, which are intended to be difficult. Future medical students do in fact need a rigorous science background in order to be successful doctors someday. Whether or not Jones was an effective teacher for aspiring medical students is up for debate, but in firing him, NYU is effectively dodging questions about the line between academic rigor and student well-being with potentially life-and-death matters at stake.”

    Kim Kardashian 0924

    Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

    The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Kim Kardashian nearly $1.3 million for failing to disclose she was paid to promote a crypto asset, EthereumMax, noted Emily Parker.

    “This case reflects a much larger problem in the crypto industry: Celebrities are using their influence to promote cryptocurrencies, a notoriously complex and risky asset class, which can lead people to invest in coins or projects that they may not understand,” Parker observed.

    “New coins and projects are constantly popping up, sometimes without sufficient warnings about the risks of investing … In such a fast-changing and confusing market, how do you distinguish winners from losers? It’s easy to imagine how a confident tweet by a celebrity could have a significant impact on a new investor.”

    In agreeing to the fine, Kardashian “did a favor for the cryptocurrency industry. Such a high-profile example could cause other celebrities to think twice before shilling a token on social media.”

    04 opinion column 1008

    Bill Bramhall/Tribune Content Agency

    Alejandro Mayorkas: The security risk Congress needs to take seriously

    Danae Wolfe: Stomping alone won’t wipe out the spotted lanternfly

    Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza: Inside the prison where sunlight ceases to exist

    Jeremi Suri and William Inboden: A generation of the world’s best leaders has died

    Sara Stewart: ‘Dahmer’ debate is finally saying the quiet part about true crime out loud

    Elisa Massimino: It’s time to shut down Guantanamo

    Pete Brown: What ‘fancy a pint?’ really means

    AND…

    01 Trevor Noah file

    Rich Fury/Getty Images/FILE`

    Until recently, the late-night television formula ruled, as Bill Carter noted. “On the air after 11 p.m. with a charismatic host, some comedy, a desk, a guest or two, maybe a band and then ‘Good night, everybody!’” Late-night shows seemed to be holding their own despite the rise of cord-cutting and the move to streaming.

    But that’s changing, as Trevor Noah’s decision to give up hosting “The Daily Show” suggested. Carter wrote, “What many people watch now is not television: It’s whatever-vision, entertainment by any means on any device. What’s on late night is now often seen on subscriptions – and not late at night.”

    Noah is leaving on a high note “after a seven-year run, marked by an impressive body of comedy work and growing acclaim,” Carter observed. In succeeding Jon Stewart as the show’s host, Noah “had a different beat in his head from the start. He wanted to refashion the show with a wider comedy vision, one looking more out at the world, instead of purely in at the United States, all informed by Noah’s South African-born global perspective.”

    “It was a wise choice. Following Stewart was always going to be a potentially crippling challenge. Noah took it on and remade the show to his own specifications. One major sign of that was how strikingly diverse the show became.”

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  • Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    A board seat accepted and then rejected. A stunning $44 billion takeover offer with uncertain financing. And a surprise early morning tweet putting the deal on hold, temporarily.

    Even by the standards of Twitter, a company that has known plenty of chaos and dysfunction in its history, the weeks-long effort by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company has proven to be uniquely tumultuous – and there’s no clear end in sight.

    Should the deal go through, it would place the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The acquisition has the potential to upend not just Twitter itself but politics, media and the tech industry. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly stressed that his goal is to bolster what he calls “free speech” on the platform, by which he means all legal speech that complies with local laws in the markets where Twitter operates. He has also said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump.

    But the attempt by Musk, a wildly successful entrepreneur with a history of erratic behavior, to buy Twitter has been viewed with some skepticism from the start. On the day he made his offer, Musk said: “I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to acquire it.” Some have questioned how he would finance the deal, especially as shares of Tesla

    (TSLA)    , which he’s partially using to back his financing of the Twitter deal, and the broader tech sector have declined in the weeks since.

    After Musk recently said he was temporarily pausing the deal so he could assess the amount of spam and fake accounts, it prompted speculation that the billionaire might be looking to renegotiate the deal – or back out of it entirely. His actions in the days that followed only reinforced that thinking.

    Here is a look back at the many twists and turns in one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent memory.

    Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

    Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

    The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

    The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

    Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

    Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

    In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

    Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

    News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

    Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

    As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

    Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal (left) and former CEO Jack Dorsey in an undated photo.

    Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

    The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company – and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

    Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

    “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

    Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

    Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during the official opening of the new Tesla electric car manufacturing plant on March 22, 2022 near Gruenheide, Germany.

    Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

    The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

    Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

    Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

    At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

    Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

    Tesla cars sit in a dealership lot on March 28, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

    Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

    Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

    Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

    “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

    Former President Donald Trump looks at his phone during a roundtable with governors on the reopening of America's small businesses, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, June 18, 2020.

    Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

    Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

    “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

    Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

    Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate

    Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

    “Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

    The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

    Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

    Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

    Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

    In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

    In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, Musk threatens to walk away from his purchase of the platform, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.

    In the letter, an attorney for Musk accuses the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on Twitter spam bots, stating that the lack of information gives him a right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement.”

    Musk moved to terminate the acquisition agreement. A lawyer representing him claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal over its alleged failure to provide all the data Musk says he needs to evaluate the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

    “For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter reads. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement. … Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

    Twitter was not having it.

    “The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

    Twitter sued the Tesla billionaire in Delaware court in an attempt to force him to complete the deal.

    The 62-page lawsuit, sprinkled with memes, tweets and a poop emoji, effectively highlighted the bizarre spectacle of the deal from the start. The company paints Musk as a non-serious potential owner — alleging at one point that he has “disdain” for the company, and at another saying, “Musk’s strategy is … a model of bad faith” — while seeking to compel him to become its owner. (Twitter’s board has an obligation to its shareholders to try to see the deal through if they believe it is in their best interest. The dispute could also end in a settlement.)

    Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk over his move to terminate their $44 billion acquisition agreement will go to trial on Oct. 17 and run for five days, a Delaware judge ruled.

    The decision came after Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, who is overseeing the case, previously ruled in Twitter’s favor that the proceedings could be expedited and take place in October. Twitter initially pushed for an October 10th start.

    Musk’s legal team had asked for the trial to take place in 2023. Twitter’s legal team argued it was necessary to expedite the case in order to limit the “harm” to its business and to ensure the deal can be completed before Oct. 24, the “drop dead” date by which the two sides had previously agreed to close the deal.

    Peiter

    Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before Congress in his first public appearance after his bombshell allegations against the social media company were reported in August by CNN and The Washington Post.

    In a whistleblower disclosure sent to multiple lawmakers and government agencies in July, Zatko accused Twitter of failing to safeguard users’ personal information and of exposing the most sensitive parts of its operation to too many people, including potentially to foreign spies. Zatko — who was Twitter’s head of security from November 2020 until he was fired in January — also alleged company executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have deliberately misled regulators and the company’s own board about its shortcomings.

    Zatko claimed in his testimony that Twitter is extremely vulnerable to being penetrated and exploited by agents of foreign governments, as well as detailed some of the personal information Twitter collects on users and alleged that the company does not know where the majority of its collected data goes.

    Days earlier, a judge allowed Musk’s legal team to add arguments based on the whistleblower disclosure to its case.

    Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to complete the deal as originally signed for $54.20 per share, citing people familiar with the negotiations. News of the letter, revealed in a security filing the next day, sends Twitter stock surging more than 20%, approaching the deal price for the first time in months.

    Such an agreement could bring to an end a contentious, months-long back and forth between Musk and Twitter that has caused massive uncertainty for employees, investors and users of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

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  • Russian draft dodgers pour into Kazakhstan to escape Putin’s war | CNN

    Russian draft dodgers pour into Kazakhstan to escape Putin’s war | CNN

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    Almaty, Kazakhstan
    CNN
     — 

    Vadim says he plunged into depression last month after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military draft to send hundreds of thousands of conscripts to fight in Ukraine.

    “I was silent,” the 28-year-old engineer says, explaining that he simply stopped talking while at work. “I was angry and afraid.”

    When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February, Vadim says he took to the streets of Moscow to protest – but Putin’s September 21 order to draft at least 300,000 men to fight felt like a point of no return.

    “We don’t want this war,” Vadim says. “We can’t change something in our country, though we have tried.”

    He decided he had only one option left. Several days after Putin’s draft order, he bid his grandmother a tearful farewell and left his home in Moscow – potentially forever.

    Vadim and his friend Alexei traveled as fast as they could to Russia’s border with the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, where they waited in line for three days to cross.

    “We ran away from Russia because we want to live,” Alexei says. “We are afraid that we can be sent to Ukraine.”

    Both men asked not to be identified, to protect loved ones left behind in Russia.

    Last week, in Kazakhstan’s commercial capital Almaty, they stood in line with more than 150 other recently-arrived Russians outside a government registration center – part of an exodus of draft dodgers.

    Russian arrivals queuing at a registration center in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

    More than 200,000 Russians have streamed into Kazakhstan following Putin’s conscription announcement, according to the Kazakh government.

    And it isn’t hard to spot the new Russian arrivals at the main railway station in Almaty. Every hour, it seems, young Slavic men emerge from the train wearing backpacks, looking slightly dazed while consulting their phones for directions.

    They arrive from cities across Russia: Yaroslavl, Togliati, St. Petersburg, Kazan. When asked why they have left they all say the same thing: mobilization.

    “It’s not something I want to participate in,” says a 30-year old computer programmer named Sergei. He sat on a bench outside the train station with his wife, Irina. The couple, clutching backpacks and rolled up sleeping pads, said they hoped to travel on to Turkey and hopefully apply for Schengen visas to Europe.

    Sergei, and his wife, Irina, outside the Almaty train station in Kazakhstan.

    Most of the new Russian exiles spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.

    Giorgi, a writer in his late 30s from Ekaterinburg, says he fled to Kazakhstan last week after suffering panic attacks at the thought he could be dragged into the military.

    “How can I take part in a war without a wish to win this war?” he asks.

    He is now trying to find an apartment in Almaty and hopes that his wife and young son can visit him in the winter.

    Faced with the challenge of trying to make a living in a foreign city, Giorgi recognizes that his hardships pale in comparison to Ukrainians, who were forced to flee by the millions after Russia attacked their cities and towns.

    Unlike Ukrainians, who fight bravely for their homeland, Giorgi says Russian draft dodgers like himself can be viewed as both “a refugee and an aggressor” by virtue of their citizenship.

    “I did not support his war, I never did,” Giorgi says. “But somehow I’m still connected with the state because of my passport.”

    Giorgi, a writer in his late 30s from Ekaterinburg in Russia, left his wife and young child to set up a new life in Almaty.

    The new Russian exiles are not technically refugees, in part because the Russian government still isn’t officially at war with Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, Russia is conducting a “special military operation” against its Ukrainian neighbor.

    Russian citizens are currently able to enter Kazakhstan for short periods with their national ID cards – and the Central Asian country’s President has urged his compatriots to welcome the new arrivals.

    “Most of them are forced to leave because of the hopeless situation. We must take care of them and ensure their safety,” said President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in late September.

    An informal grassroots effort has sprung up across Kazakhstan to help temporarily feed and house the Russians.

    “They are running, they are afraid,” says Ekaterina Korotkaya, an Almaty-based journalist who helped coordinate assistance to newly-arrived Russians.

    Almira Orlova, a nutritionist based in Almaty, says she has helped find housing for at least 26 Russians.

    “They would arrive to my apartment, stay for a while, then stay in the apartments of my friends,” she says.

    But she points out that she did not receive the same hospitality when she moved with her Russian husband to Moscow several years ago.

    Then, Russian landlords repeatedly refused to rent her apartments because she was “Asian,” she said.

    “When I told them that I’m Kazakh, they said ‘I’m sorry I really cannot.’ And we weren’t able to find an apartment for two months,” Orlova says.

    “Citizens of Central Asia who went to Russia for labor migration purposes face some serious discrimination in Russia,” says Kadyr Toktogulov, former ambassador of Kyrgyzstan to the United States and Canada.

    The former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan has also seen a large “reverse migration” of Russians fleeing the draft.

    “I don’t think that Russians coming to Central Asia that are fleeing the draft will be having the same kind of problems or facing the kind of discrimination that citizens of Central Asian republics have been facing for years in Russia,” says Toktogulov.

    Toktogulov’s says his own family recently rented out an apartment in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek to a newly-arrived Russian man.

    Real estate experts say the flood of Russian exiles have already sent rents skyrocketing in Almaty, the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and other cities in the region.

    The impact is also being felt in commercial real estate, as many Russians seek to work remotely.

    “It’s not only individuals coming, the big [Russian] companies and corporate business, they are moving their companies to Kazakhstan,” says Madina Abilpanova, a managing partner at DM Associates, a real estate firm based in Almaty.

    Madina Abilpanova, managing partner at DM Associates in Almaty.

    She says Russian companies have approached her, looking to relocate hundreds of their employees in an effort to protect them from military conscription.

    “They are ready to move immediately, to pay whatever we want, but we don’t have spaces,” Abilpanova says.

    She speaks to CNN at City Hub, a co-working space in central Almaty, where the desks are filled with young Russians laboring silently on their laptops.

    Recent Russian arrivals work at a co-working space in Almaty.

    Abilpanova says all of these clients had arrived in Kazakhstan within the past two weeks. As she spoke, another young Russian man carrying a giant backpack walked in the door. The business owners had to turn him away because there was no room.

    “It’s something like a tsunami for us,” Abilpanova says. “Every day they come in like this.”

    Vadim, the engineer from Moscow who recently arrived in Kazakhstan, says his company is sponsoring him and 15 other employees to transfer to the firm’s Almaty office.

    “My boss is against the [Russian] government,” Vadim says.

    Unlike many other Russians who suddenly fled into exile, Vadim can count on earning a salary for the time being.

    But he does not know when – or if – he will ever see his grandmother in Moscow.

    “I very much hope to see her again,” Vadim says, his eyes welling up with tears.

    “But I don’t know how much time she has left. I hope that I can return one day at least to bury her.”

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  • Mandela Barnes has signaled support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE — despite ad claiming otherwise | CNN Politics

    Mandela Barnes has signaled support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE — despite ad claiming otherwise | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Wisconsin Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes has previously signaled his support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE, according to a review by CNN’s KFile, despite claiming otherwise in a recent ad in which he speaks directly to the camera to defend his record on those issues.

    “Look, we knew the other side would make up lies about me to scare you. Now they’re claiming I want to defund the police and abolish ICE. That’s a lie,” says Barnes to the camera in a recent 30-second television ad called “Truth.”

    But a CNN KFile review of Barnes’ social media activity and public comments he made in interview appearances reveal a different and more nuanced picture in which Barnes often signaled his support for such positions.

    In multiple posts from 2018 uncovered by CNN, Barnes liked tweets that criticized the immigration agency and called to abolish them. He told a group that supported abolishing the institution in 2019 that the “wrong ICE” was melting and attended one of their “Abolish ICE” local rallies.

    This week, Barnes pushed back on attacks on his record on criminal justice and crime, saying he wouldn’t be “lectured on crime” by Republicans, citing the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol in which more than 100 police officers reported injuries.

    Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, fielded another attack Friday night from incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, with whom he is locked in a tight race. The outcome could determine control of the US Senate next year.

    “He has a record of wanting to defund the police,” Johnson said of Barnes during a debate. “And I know he doesn’t necessarily say that word, but he has a long history of being supported by people that are leading the effort to defund, who uses code words like (Missouri Democratic Rep.) Cori Bush said, talking about reallocate over bloated police budgets.”

    Barnes shot back that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.” Johnson in turn said that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned (the Capitol riot) and condemned it strongly.”

    Though Barnes has never outright embraced the “defund the police” slogan, he has on numerous occasions said he supports redirecting or decreasing police funding – even before the slogan gained popularity in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police.

    In one 2020 interview reviewed by CNN, Barnes told a local Wisconsin public radio show that funding should go to social workers and a “crisis intervener or a violence interrupter,” instead of police.

    Maddy McDaniel, spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said he does not support defunding the police or abolishing ICE.

    “As independent fact-checkers have verified, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes does not support abolishing ICE or defunding the police.”

    In previously unreported activity on social media reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Barnes repeatedly liked tweets about abolishing ICE.

    He liked one September 2018 tweet that used the “#AbolishICE” hashtag and compared the agency to “modern day slave catchers.” His Twitter account also liked other tweets calling for abolishing ICE twice in July 2018 and twice in June.

    “Imagine a world without ICE,” read one of the tweets liked by Barnes.

    Barnes also once solicited an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt on Twitter in 2018 writing, “I need that,” when offered the Democratic Socialists of America-branded shirt. A photo of Barnes holding a similar shirt later circulated on social media. Barnes told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which first reported on the shirt, he was not part of the abolish ICE movement saying “no one slogan can capture all the work we have to do.”

    While speaking to the Wisconsin-based immigration group Voces de la Frontera Action in 2019, Barnes alluded to calls to get rid of the immigration enforcement agency.

    “We’re bringing science back. We’re bringing science back for the next generation. We’re bringing science back because the wrong ICE is melting,” Barnes said.

    In June of 2018 at a different event from the group, Barnes attended what was labeled a protest to “top the Indefinite Imprisonment of Families & Abolish ICE,” according to photos on his Facebook page.

    “Great turnout at Voces de la Frontera’s event to #protest President Trump’s #immigration policies at the Milwaukee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office! However, there is more to do to ensure that immigrants’ rights – human rights – are protected. Let your voices be heard!” Barnes wrote on Facebook about the event, which featured the executive director of the organization calling for the abolishment of the agency.

    While he has never outright embraced the “defund the police” slogan, Barnes has long called for reforming or changing policing, especially in communities of color and reducing their budgets.

    Speaking in 2015 on a panel entitled “Civil Rights in the Age of Extremism,” Barnes called police officers who don’t live in communities in which they police an “occupying force.” He also advocated reducing police budgets even before the “defund the police” slogan became popular on the far-left in the summer of 2020.

    Which policies the “defund the police” slogan stands for are actively debated, with some arguing it means abolishing police departments all together, while others have embraced shifting police funding to other social services in the community. Barnes reiterated support for the latter in a 2012 survey for the organization Vote Smart where he indicated he supported slightly decreasing budgets for law enforcement and corrections.

    In early June 2020, Barnes said “defunding” police wasn’t as “aggressive” as it was portrayed, citing budget cuts to other social services.

    “Defunding isn’t necessarily as aggressive as a lot of folks paint it,” Barnes said. “You know, school budgets get cut almost every year.”

    When asked directly if he supported defunding the police, Barnes told Wisconsin public radio in late June 2020 that he thought funding for police was a “mismatch” compared to other services in the city.

    “You can look at the City of Milwaukee, for example, where 45% of the departmental allocations that goes to police while libraries are like two or three percent, neighborhood services, two or three percent,” Barnes said. “I think that you can look at that a, a priorities mismatch.”

    Barnes, comparing police budgets to money spent on prisons and the military, said the money could be better spent on social workers or violence interrupters.

    “We’re working to reduce our prison population, we’re very intentional about making that happen and it takes that intentionality,” he said. “It’s easy to look at the police department and say, ‘Well, yeah, we are spending a lot of money. How do we get smarter about this?’”

    “It becomes the conversation about needs,” he continued. “This isn’t about attacking the police. If anything, it’s about making their jobs easier by implementing programs … where we have services where they wouldn’t have to respond to things that aren’t crime, where they don’t have to respond to, you know, instances that would be better suited for a social worker or some sort of crisis intervener or a violence interrupter that would help, you know, uh, promote peace and communities in the first place.”

    “I think that’s where our funding should go,” Barnes reiterated. “What’s going on right now isn’t necessarily working, you know, police brutality is one thing – but in general, uh, the idea of promoting safer communities, I don’t, I don’t think that we’re doing a good job at that.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments Friday.

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  • North Korea fires two ballistic missiles, South Korea and Japan say | CNN

    North Korea fires two ballistic missiles, South Korea and Japan say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from the Munchon area of Kangwon Province to the waters off the peninsula’s eastern coast, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters on Sunday.

    The missiles were launched between 1:47 a.m. and 1:53 a.m. local time Sunday, according to Japan’s State Minister of Defense Toshiro Ino.

    Both missiles fell outside Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, Ino added.

    The first missile is estimated to have flown about 350 kilometers, or 217 miles, at a maximum altitude of approximately 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, according to Ino. The second traveled about the same distance.

    Ino noted there were no reports of damages to vessels at sea, but the defense ministry is still analyzing the details and investigating what kind of missiles were launched, including the possibility they were submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

    South Korea’s military has strengthened its surveillance and vigilance and maintaining a full readiness posture while closely cooperating with the US, the country’s joint chiefs of staff said.

    This is the 25th missile launch this year, according to CNN’s count, which includes both ballistic and cruise missiles. The last launch occurred Thursday when North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles, the latest in a spate of launches in the past two weeks.

    Japan’s Coast Guard instructed vessels to pay attention to information and to not approach any objects which have fallen in the sea. It also asked vessels to report any relevant information.

    On Tuesday, North Korea fired another missile, without warning, which flew over and past Japan, causing Japan to warn its citizens to take shelter.

    The missile Tuesday traveled over northern Japan early in the morning, and is believed to have landed in the Pacific Ocean. The last time North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan was in 2017.

    US Indo-Pacific Command said Saturday the latest launches do “not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies.”

    “We are aware of the two ballistic missile launches and are consulting closely with our allies and partners,” the command said in a statement. “The missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs. The US commitments to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remain ironclad.”

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned if North Korea continues “down this road” of provocation following its ballistic missile launch Tuesday, “it will only increase the condemnation, increase the isolation and increase the steps that are taken in response to their actions.”

    The US imposed new sanctions Friday, following North Korean recent ballistic missile tests, the US Treasury and State Department said.

    North Korea usually fires its missiles into waters off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, making Tuesday’s flight over Japan considerably more provocative.

    The aggressive acceleration in weapons testing has sparked alarm in the region, with the US, South Korea and Japan responding with missile launches and joint military exercises. The US has also redeployed an aircraft carrier into waters near the peninsula, a move South Korean authorities called “very unusual.”

    Japan issued a strong protest against North Korea through its embassy in Beijing, Ino said.

    On Thursday, US, South Korean and Japanese warships performed a missile defense exercise in the Sea of Japan, the US-Indo Pacific Command said in a statement.

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  • US to host top officials from 30 countries in effort to escalate crackdown on Russian defense supply chains | CNN Politics

    US to host top officials from 30 countries in effort to escalate crackdown on Russian defense supply chains | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Top officials from 30 countries are scheduled to meet next week with senior US sanctions and intelligence officials as the Biden administration continues to escalate its efforts to strangle Russia’s military industrial complex.

    The meeting will serve as a critical opportunity for senior officials from across the Western sanctions coalition to detail where the effort has effectively blocked or shattered critical supply networks, as well as share intelligence and information about ongoing Russian evasion efforts, the official said.

    “We’re getting together the countries that are really taking action,” Deputy Treasury Wally Adeyemo told CNN in an interview on the first event of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. “We’re bringing all 30 countries together to talk about how our attack on Russia’s supply chain is going.”

    The meeting comes at an inflection point in the eight-month conflict as Ukraine continues to notch major battlefield gains and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to escalate his country’s military efforts despite the defeats. US officials and their allies have focused intensively on finding and cracking critical supply chains for a Russian military already facing morale and materiel shortages.

    It’s been an effort driven by US market and intelligence information, as well as significant coordination with officials from the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency who bring significant experience with the shape and critical elements of military supply chains.

    But the meeting also comes at a moment Russia is desperately engaged in an intensive effort to find work-arounds to the Western coalition’s crackdown in order to maintain the effort, even as it has turned to countries like Iran and North Korea for potential supplies and equipment.

    If the Russian central bank’s emergency actions to keep the broader Russian economy afloat amid an avalanche of sanctions marked one key element of the Russian response, the constant search for new shell companies, entities and go-betweens to evade sanctions has been critical to the other. Both have maintained a semblance of productivity despite the scale of the Western efforts, but both face growing pressures – and atrophying stockpiles and supplies – each month that passes.

    The Treasury Department will host the October 14 event, which will be co-led by Adeyemo, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves and Deputy Director of National Intelligence Morgan Muir.

    Muir’s presence is particularly notable. Adeyemo and Graves serve as point people in the administration’s sanctions effort and head up teams engaged daily with coalition members about sanctions efforts. But Muir, representing the intelligence community at the meeting, signals the goal of providing allies with critical information to tighten their own sanctions efforts.

    A goal of the meeting is “to provide information to them that many of them have never received before,” a senior Treasury official said. It’s something that underscores the range of participants in the meeting – and the coalition generally.

    While G7 countries have served as the critical players in crafting and implementing the sharpest edge of the economic sanctions and export controls, dozens of other nations have played a significant role in shutting off financial and technological avenues for Putin.

    “It’s important to remember that countries from Asia and around the world have taken actions to constrain the Russian military industrial complex,” Adeyemo said.

    US officials, relying on the intelligence community’s efforts and extensive assistance from the financial sector, have made tracking those efforts central to their economic war strategy, underscoring the

    The meeting will be in person on the margins of the annual fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank, and will include representatives at the deputy finance minister level from Baltic nations, Poland, Japan, Cyprus, the European Commission and New Zealand.

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  • Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

    Iran’s ‘women’s revolution’ could be a Berlin Wall moment | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The Islamic regime in Iran has ruled for decades with fear and intimidation.

    Outrage at the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old who died after being detained by Iran’s morality policy, allegedly for improperly wearing her hijab, ignited nationwide protests across the country that have gone on for weeks.

    That Iranians are risking their lives and freedom to stand up to their government has sparked hope among many that change is coming. Read CNN’s latest report.

    I talked on the phone to Masih Alinejad, an Iranian in exile in the US who works as a journalist and activist.

    Key points:

    • She uses social media – 8 million followers on Instagram alone – to amplify and aid the protests inside Iran.
    • US authorities charged four Iranian nationals with trying to kidnap her last year.
    • To Alinejad, that women in Iran are removing their headscarves as an act of protest is equal to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
    • She sees solidarity with dissidents from other oil-rich autocracies like Russia and Venezuela, and has a stern message for feminists in the West.

    Our conversation, edited for clarity and length, is below. I’ve also added some context and links in parentheses where appropriate.

    WHAT MATTERS: This newsletter is not usually focused on Iran. Can you first just explain what’s happening?

    ALINEJAD: Mahsa Amini was only 22 years old. … She came from Saqqez to Tehran for a vacation. Then she got arrested by the so-called morality police – because I call them the hijab police.

    And for your audience, if they don’t know what morality police means, they’re a bunch of police walking in the streets, telling people whether their way of wearing hijab is proper or not.

    Mahsa was arrested for wearing inappropriate hijab. So she was not unveiled.

    (Here is a CNN report in which the Iranian police deny the allegation she was beaten.)

    ALINEJAD: That created huge anger among Iranians. And that is why women across Iran first started to cut their hair. Then they took to the street and they started to burn their headscarves. And now, with men, shoulder to shoulder, across Iran they’re not only saying no to compulsory hijab, they are actually chanting against the dictator and they are saying we want an end to the Islamic Republic.

    This is a revolution.

    To me, this is a women’s revolution against a gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: The Iranian government has tried to crack down on this. We see video that gets out of Iran of these protests. How have things changed in the weeks since Mahsa’s death?

    ALINEJAD: From the beginning, the level of crackdown was so brutal. They opened fire, they really opened fire on teenagers, school leaders, university students, they opened fire on unarmed people.

    Now some reports say more than 130 people have been killed. But it’s strongly believed the number is much more than this. Only in Zahedan on only one day, they opened fire on those who were praying. Who were praying. They killed more than 80 people in Zahedan.

    (CNN has not verified all of these claims. Related CNN report: Iranian security forces beat, shot and detained students of elite Tehran university, witnesses say.

    Amnesty International has reported on the killing of 66 in Zahedan along with other deaths recorded in other places.

    Regarding death tolls: CNN cannot independently verify the death toll –  a precise figure is impossible for anyone outside the Iranian government to confirm – and different estimates have been given by opposition groups, international rights organizations and local journalists.)

    ALINEJAD: The Iranian regime cut off the internet in some cities to prevent the rest of the world from getting to know about the crackdown, to get to learn about the number of people killed.

    But again. That didn’t stop people. Actually, it changed the tone of the protesters. They became more angry. They were holding the names and photos of those who got killed and the major slogan was this: ‘We are ready to die, but we won’t live under humiliation.’

    One of the young women whose name was Hadis Najafi, she was only 20 years old. She made a video of herself walking in the street and saying I’m joining the protests. In the future, if I see that Iran has changed, that change came, then I was proudly part of this demonstration. She got killed. There are many of them.

    (CNN has reported that Najafi’s family said she was shot six times and never made it home from a protest. She was 23. There are reports of multiple young women killed. Here’s a CNN video report on Nika Shahkarami, whose family found her body at a morgue after not being able to find her for 10 days following an Instagram story of her burning her headscarf.)

    Students filmed themselves burning their headscarves, but they got killed. But murdering and killing didn’t stop the protests. Instead they became more angry. Now schoolgirls came out, university professors came out, teachers came out and ask for a strike.

    (Here’s a CNN report that explains the special significance of strikes in Iran.)

    WHAT MATTERS: The flashpoint is one woman’s death that set off all of these protests. But it’s a movement that’s been building for months –

    ALINEJAD: Don’t say for months. I don’t accept that. It has been building for years. Years of women pushing back the boundaries the anti-woman laws, especially compulsory hijab laws.

    For years and years, these women that you see in the streets, they have been fighting back compulsory hijabs alone. Like lonely soldiers. I myself have published videos of women being beaten by morality police under the hashtag #mycameraismyweapon. I really want you to go and check this hashtag. Brave women filming themselves while being harassed by morality police and looking to the morality police and saying that you cannot tell me what to wear.

    Slavery used to be legal. I’m not going to respect bad law in Iran.

    This is being built up by women within the society practicing their civil disobedience in bravely saying no to forced hijab and the gender apartheid regime for years and years. That’s my opinion. Mahsa’s name became a symbol of resistance for women to take to the streets in large numbers. That’s the new thing.

    WHAT MATTERS: How will this be transformed into permanent change? How will it evolve from here?

    ALINEJAD: Look, this is not going to happen overnight. This is the beginning of an end. It takes time. It reminds me of the revolution 40 years ago. People were taking to the streets for like one month and were going back home and then coming back again. The national strike helped a lot. For me and millions of people, this is just the beginning to an end.

    The compulsory hijab is not just a small piece of cloth for Iranians. It’s like the Berlin Wall. I keep saying that. If women can successfully tear this wall down, the Islamic Republic won’t exist.

    Maybe in the West, people ignore me and they never take this seriously. But the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, he knows what I’m talking about. That’s why, just two days ago, he referred to my statement comparing the hijab to the Berlin Wall, saying that ‘she is an American agent and we have taken action against her.’

    (Alinejad shared this video of Khamenei on Twitter, in which he refers to US political elements making the comparison to the Berlin Wall.)

    ALINEJAD: But it’s not me. It’s millions of people who believe that compulsory hijab is like the main pillar of the religious dictatorship. It’s like the main pillar of the Islamic Republic.

    That’s why I believe that now people are being fearless and clear that we want to break this weakest pillar of the Islamic Republic… I strongly believe that the biggest threat to the Islamic Republic are the women who are leading the revolution, who are facing guns and bullets and saying that we want an end for this gender apartheid regime.

    WHAT MATTERS: In Iran, and we’ve seen this in Russia as well, social media is helping spread the word and is essential to organizing protests. Here in the US, it is often viewed as a threat to our democracy because that’s where misinformation is spread. I wonder if you had any thoughts on that dichotomy.

    ALINEJAD: Let me be very clear with you. Right now, the tech companies are actually helping the Islamic Republic. First of all, Iranians are banned from using social media – Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are filtered. The leaders like Khamenei and other officials who ban 80 million people from using social media, they all have verified accounts. They have multiple accounts on social media. Basically, the Iranian regime cut off the Internet for its own people, but they’re being more than welcomed on social media to spread fake information, misinformation, disinformation.

    (Accounts that appear to be associated with Khamenei are on Twitter and Instagram and have large followings. They are not verified by Instagram or Twitter. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Meta said this in an email: “Iranians use apps like Instagram to stay close to their loved ones, find information and shed light on important events – and we hope the Iranian authorities restore their access soon. In the meantime, our teams are following the situation closely, and are focused on only removing content that breaks our rules, while addressing any enforcement mistakes as quickly as possible.”)

    WHAT MATTERS: The US government has tried to increase Iranian’s access to the internet. Is that working?

    ALINEJAD: Oh, of course, this is phenomenal. But we need more. We need more.

    The thing is, at the same time, the US government, we’re pleased that they’re providing internet access for Iranians. This is good. We appreciate that.

    But at the same time, the US government is focused on getting a deal from this regime, the same regime.

    They condemn the brutality, they condemn the Iranian government for killings, but at the same time, they try to give money, billions of dollars, to the same murderers. And I don’t understand this contradiction.

    (The US government could give Iran’s government ​access to billions of dollars of frozen Iranian funds if it re-joins an agreement whereby Iran can sell oil in exchange for abandoning nuclear weapons capability. Recent talks, however, have not gone well. Read more.)

    ALINEJAD: Many people in the streets are now risking their lives and want an end for the same regime. They aren’t asking for US government to go there and save them at all. They’re brave enough to do it themselves. But they’re really clearly asking the US government not to save the Iranian regime. …

    People believe that the money goes to the benefit of the people. It doesn’t go to the people. The money goes to Syria, Lebanon, to Hamas, Hezbollah, to terrorist organizations.

    For millions of Iranians now, this is the moment they want the US government to ask its allies, the European countries, to recall their ambassadors and to cut their ties with the murders until the day that they are sure that the Iranian regime is stopped killing its own people.

    (CNN isn’t able to confirm that all the money goes to terrorist organizations or that none of it goes to Iranian people. Iran does fund terror groups outside its borders, according to the US government, and its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard is a terror group, according to the US government.)

    WHAT MATTERS: I want to talk about another dichotomy you’ve pointed out. You wrote in The Washington Post that feminists all over the world need to pay attention and take to the streets.

    ALINEJAD: You cannot call yourself a feminist in the West, in America, and not take action on one of the most important feminist revolutions, in Iran.

    By saying that, I don’t mean that I want the feminists to just appear on TV and cut their hair to show their solidarity.

    I want, especially the female politicians, to cut their ties … and instead take to the streets to show their solidarity with the women of Iran. When the Women’s March happened here in America, like every single feminist around the world showed solidarity. I was part of the Women’s March in New York. The main slogan was ‘my body my choice.’

    But at the same time I’m witnessing that when it comes to Iran and Afghanistan, it seems that my body my choice is not as important as it is in the West.

    (Here Alinejad said women representing Western governments who meet with Iranian and Afghan officials should refrain from wearing headscarves.)

    WHAT MATTERS: You took part this week in an Oslo Freedom Forum event in New York with other dissidents from Russia and Venezuela. Those are two places that are repressive, and they’re also funded largely by oil. The US wants more oil on the market. I just wondered if you had any larger comments to make on this question?

    ALINEJAD: This is what’s missing here. The dictators are more united than our freedom fighters.

    Let me give you an example. Just two months ago, (Vladimir) Putin went to Iran. (Nicolás) Maduro from Venezuela went to Iran … from China to Russia to Venezuela to Nicaragua, everywhere. The leaders from autocracies and dictatorships are united. They’re helping each other. They’re supporting each other to oppress protests taking place in each country. But we the freedom fighters, we the opposition to these dictators must be united as well, because when we fight against autocracy or dictatorship on our own, we’re not going to be successful.

    (Alinejad said she has talked to dissidents from Russia and Venezuela about calling a World Liberty Congress for opposition and activist leaders.)

    ALINEJAD: If we don’t get united to end dictatorship, then the dictators will get united to end democracy. We’re not fighting just for ourselves. I’m not fighting just for Iran. Garry Kasparov is not fighting for just Russia. Leopoldo Lopez is not fighting just for Venezuela. We are fighting for democracy. We’re trying to protect the rest of the world from these dictators.

    (Our conversation continued from here and Alinejad argued the “United Nations is useless.” It’s true the United Nations prioritizes inclusion of most countries over action. And it is awkward at best that Iran sits on the UN’s Commission on Women’s Rights and Russia sits on the Security Council.)

    ALINEJAD: We need to have our own alternative United Nations, where all the good people get united, not the bad guys. Now the bad guys are winning because they’re helping each other. So this is the time that all the good people who care for freedom and democracy get united and have their own society.

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