As UK PM resists pressure to back airstrikes, US president invokes British leader known for his policy of appeasement
Donald Trump has appeared to compare Keir Starmer to Neville Chamberlain in his latest disparaging remarks about the prime minister, who has refused to back the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
The comments, during an Easter Monday event at the White House, underline Trump’s continued annoyance at Starmer’s scepticism about the aims and legality of the conflict, a view that has not been shifted by the US president’s jibes.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: An elusive hacker who went by the handle "UNKN" and ran the early Russian ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil now has a name and a face. Authorities in Germany say 31-year-old Russian Daniil Maksimovich Shchukin headed both cybercrime gangs and helped carry out at least 130 acts of computer sabotage and extortion against victims across the country between 2019 and 2021. Shchukin was named as UNKN (a.k.a. UNKNOWN) in an advisory published by the German Federal Criminal Police (the "Bundeskriminalamt" or BKA for short). The BKA said Shchukin and another Russian -- 43-year-old Anatoly Sergeevitsch Kravchuk -- extorted nearly $2 million euros across two dozen cyberattacks that caused more than 35 million euros in total economic damage. Germany's BKA said Shchukin acted as the head of one of the largest worldwide operating ransomware groups GandCrab and REvil, which pioneered the practice of double extortion -- charging victims once for a key needed to unlock hacked systems, and a separate payment in exchange for a promise not to publish stolen data. Shchukin's name appeared in a Feb. 2023 filing (PDF) from the U.S. Justice Department seeking the seizure of various cryptocurrency accounts associated with proceeds from the REvil ransomware gang's activities. The government said the digital wallet tied to Shchukin contained more than $317,000 in ill-gotten cryptocurrency. The BKA believes Shchukin resides in Krasnodar, Russia, where he is from. "Based on the investigations so far, it is assumed that the wanted person is abroad, presumably in Russia," the BKA advised. "Travel behavior cannot be ruled out."
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Jonathan Jackson of Illinois calls Cuba ‘most sanctioned part of Earth’ amid US oil blockade causing vast disruptions
Two Democratic US lawmakers on Monday called for a permanent solution to crises confronting Cuba after they visited the island to witness the effects of an American energy blockade.
US House members Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel and foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez as well as members of Cuba’s parliament during a five-day trip ending on Sunday.
“I denounced the criminal damage caused by the blockade, particularly the consequences of the energy siege decreed by the current US government and its threats of even more aggressive actions,” Díaz-Canel wrote on X.
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‘She got ripped away from me,’ army soldier Matthew Blank said after his wife Annie Ramos was detained in Louisiana
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under the command of the Trump administration have reportedly detained the wife of a US army staff sergeant at his military base in Louisiana amid his preparations to deploy.
The arrest of Annie Ramos, 22, took place last Thursday, just days after she married 23-year-old Matthew Blank, a soldier who has served for more than five years and previously deployed to the Middle East and Europe, the New York Times first reported on Sunday.
Continue reading...More Americans have moved into upper-middle-class incomes over the past several decades (source paywalled; alternative source), with new research suggesting that group has grown sharply while the lower and core middle class have shrunk. The Wall Street Journal reports: In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979, according to a report released this year by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. There is no single, standard definition of middle class, or upper middle class, and what counts as a hefty income in one city can feel paltry in another. The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich. The analysis looked just at incomes, not assets such as stocks or real estate. [...] The gains span generations. Many baby boomers, born to parents who grew up in the Great Depression, are living well on their savings, aided by steady Social Security checks and decades of stock-portfolio gains that they can now tap. Millennials, who everyone worried would be permanently set back by the 2008-09 financial crisis, are earning solid incomes, buying homes and surpassing their parents. Many families are surprised to find that they have moved into this new economic tier, and see themselves as comfortable, not rich. They tend to have jobs that are white collar but not flashy -- think accountants, not tech founders. This doesn't mean that all Americans are climbing the ladder. Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership. Those costs weigh on high-earning families too, and for many are the reason they don't feel wealthy. The AEI report divided families into five different groups by income. Three groups were in the middle: lower middle class, core middle class and upper middle class. The authors found that more families now fall into the two highest-earning groups -- upper middle class and rich -- and fewer fall into the three lower-earning categories.
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Two-time All-Star had strained relationship with Sky
Free agency opens with more than 100 players on market
The Chicago Sky have traded star forward Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream, the teams announced Monday.
The trade is the first blockbuster move of the WNBA offseason, which is operating on a condensed timeline after months of negotiations between the league and its players over a new collective bargaining agreement finished last month.
Continue reading...Agyemang went down with a non-contact injury
US striker scored in friendly v Belgium
Patrick Agyemang left Derby County’s match on a stretcher after an apparent non-contact injury. The US international striker rose to settle a ball in the 37th minute and collapsed to ground, with photographs from Pride Park showing the Derby medical staff tending to his left ankle.
On-site accounts freported that the 25-year-old leapt to control the ball with his chest before landing awkwardly and falling to ground. Play was stopped for five minutes before Agyemang was stretchered off. His replacement, Jaydon Banel, scored the opening goal to boost the Rams’ chances of promotion.
House speaker Mike Johnson face pushback from hardline Republicans, who view the Senate funding bill as a concession to Democrats’ demands
Asked by a reporter at the Easter Egg Roll whether tomorrow at 8pm ET was his final deadline for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz (as laid out in his expletive-laden Easter Sunday post), Trump replied: “Yeah.”
The president has flip-flopped on his deadlines several times already, and is now hurtling towards another self-imposed deadline – this time, Tuesday evening – for Tehran to reopen the critical waterway.
It’s a big country. They can’t fight back. They have no capability. I mean, they have some missiles left, they have some drones left, but essentially they have no capability.
Continue reading...Experts warn consumers of unknown risks as one lab says about a third of samples fail basic quality checks
People in the UK are sending thousands of unregulated substances that claim to support weight-loss and wellness to laboratories for testing, as experts say the underground market for injectable peptides has exploded.
The peptide-testing industry has expanded rapidly alongside demand for these substances, with one lab telling the Guardian that a decade ago, they handled a handful of tests a month sent by customers and vendors around the world to check what was in them. Today, they process around 60,000 samples a year, including roughly 2,000 orders from the UK since 2024.
Continue reading...A man in Phoenix had ‘over 100 stings’ and was airlifted out of a mountain trail
A hiker was taken to a hospital in critical condition after bees stung him more than 100 times on an Arizona mountain trail over the Easter weekend – an emergency which required the help of a helicopter crew.
The man reported “over 100 stings” had left him “unable to continue his descent” from the summit of Lookout Mountain Preserve in north Phoenix at about 10am on Saturday, the local fire department said in a statement.
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