02/07/2025

WEDNESDAY | JULY 2, 2025

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ICC cyberattack contained THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court said on Monday it had identified and contained a targeted “cybersecurity incident”, the second such attack in the space of two years. The ICC said the incident came “late last week”, describing the attack as “new, sophisticated and targeted”. A spokesman for the ICC said he could not be more precise on the timing of the incident. The court is based in The Hague, which last week hosted world leaders including US President Donald Trump for a summit of the 32 members of the Nato military alliance. In 2023, the ICC suffered what it then said was an “unprecedented” cyberattack that it later revealed to have been an attempt at espionage. The court’s statement gave no details about a potential suspect for last week’s attack but the institution is pursuing several high-profile cases. It has an arrest warrant pending for President Vladimir Putin over the deportation of children from war-torn Ukraine to Russia. Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is in ICC detention awaiting possible trial for alleged murders carried out during his“war on drugs”. And the ICC has also issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza. This sparked outrage in Washington, with Trump slapping sanctions on top ICC officials, including four judges and Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. – AFP MOSCOW: A Russian sect leader who claimed he was Jesus Christ reincarnated was sentenced to 12 years in a prison camp on Monday after being convicted of harming his followers’ health and financial affairs. The Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, accused Sergei Torop, 64, and two aides of using psychological pressure to extract money from his followers and of causing serious harm. A court in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk said it had convicted the three men, sentencing Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov to 12 years and Vadim Redkin to 11 years in a maximum-security prison camp. They were also ordered to pay 40 million roubles (RM2,147,280) to compensate their victims for SIBERIA SECT LEADER JAILED 12 YEARS KIRKUK: Two rockets struck the military section of Kirkuk airport in northern Iraq late on Monday, slightly wounding two security personnel. Another rocket damaged a house in the city of Kirkuk. “Two Katyusha rockets fell in the military section of Kirkuk airport,” slightly wounding two security personnel, a senior security official said, adding that one failed to explode. “A third rocket struck a house in the Uruba neighbourhood,” causing damage, the official said. The military section of the airport hosts army units, federal police and former paramilitary forces now integrated into the regular armed forces. – AFP “moral damage”. – Reuters TWO ROCKETS HIT IRAQ AIRPORT

Israel paves the way for Washington ceasefire talks A Palestinian woman walking on debris at Al-Baqa cafeteria which was devastated in an Israeli strike on the Gaza City seafront on Monday. – AFPPIC

Netanyahu, is in Washington this week to meet officials at the White House, Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a press briefing on Monday. Dermer would be exploring possibilities of regional diplomatic deals and ending the Gaza war, according to an Israeli official. Netanyahu is due to travel to Washington next week and meet Trump on July 7, a US official said. The two leaders are expected to discuss Iran, Gaza, Syria and other regional challenges, an Israeli official in Washington said. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said pressure by Trump on Israel would be key to any breakthrough in ceasefire efforts. “We call upon the US slew of raids in connection with historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings. They said they had detained six people, all of whom had Russian passports, but they also said two suspects had died. Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry identified the people as ethnic Azerbaijanis. One of the suspects died of heart failure, Russian investigators said in a statement, and medical tests would reveal the cause of death of another suspect. The bodies of the suspects are expected to arrive in Baku by plane

After a six-week ceasefire at the start of this year, talks on extending the truce have been stalled. Palestinian and Egyptian sources with knowledge of the latest ceasefire efforts said that mediators Qatar and Egypt had stepped up their contacts with the two warring sides, but that no date had been set yet for a new round of truce talks. Hamas says it is willing to release all remaining hostages only as part of a deal that would end the war. Israel says the hostages must go free, and the war can end only when Hamas is disarmed and no longer ruling Gaza. Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis. – Reuters on Monday evening for expert examination. Baku has accused the Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings “on ethnic grounds”, an allegation Moscow has rejected. Earlier on Monday, as the raid on Sputnik Azerbaijan was under way, Russia summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Moscow over what it described as Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention” of Russian journalists. Police in Baku said they were investigating Sputnik Azerbaijan over illegal funding. – Reuters

o Hamas ready for truce deal

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CAIRO: Israeli planes and tanks struck heavily in north and south Gaza yesterday, destroying clusters of homes, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s confidant was in Washington, expected to discuss a possible ceasefire. Thousands of residents again took flight as Israel issued new orders to evacuate, while its tanks pushed into eastern areas in Gaza City in the north and into Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, residents said. Local health authorities said strikes had killed at least 20 people, with clusters of houses reported destroyed in Gaza City’s Shejaia and Zeitoun districts, east of Khan BAKU: Authorities in Azerbaijan arrested two journalists from the local branch of a Russian state news agency on Monday in a move likely to further stoke tensions with Moscow following arrests in Russia of ethnic Azerbaijanis suspected of serious crimes. In a statement, Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry said it had launched an investigation into the outlet, Sputnik Azerbaijan, after raiding its offices earlier on Monday. Russia’s RIA state news agency said two staff members – the head of the editorial board and the chief

Younis and in Rafah. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Ismail, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan suburb of Gaza City, told Reuters that freshly displaced families were setting up tents in the road, after fleeing from areas north and east of the city and finding no other ground available. “We don’t sleep because of the sounds of explosions from tanks and planes. The occupation is destroying homes east of Gaza, in Jabalia and other places around us,” he said via a text message, asking that his surname be withheld for his security. editor – had been detained. Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry published video showing officers leading two men to police vans in handcuffs. Another Russian media outlet, Ruptly, later said one of its editors had been detained after trying to film the police action at the Sputnik offices in Baku. Tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic in the South Caucasus, have risen in recent days after investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, arrested six people following a

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a confidant of Azerbaijan arrests Russian news agency staff administration to atone for its sin towards Gaza by declaring an end to the war,” he said.