Category: World

Religious and human rights organizations are calling on Joe Biden to use the right to commute death sentences before Trump's presidency. The pressure intensified after Biden pardoned his son Hunter.

A number of human rights and religious organizations are calling on Joe Biden in the last days of his presidency to exercise the right to overturn the death penalty for American convicts. This is reported by The Guardian, according to UNN.

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It is noted that during Sunday prayers in Rome, Pope Francis voiced a request to stop the execution of prisoners. Immediately after that, hundreds of leaders of human rights unions published open letters to the owner of the White House calling for the non-death penalty, to the Trump presidency.

Pressure on Biden only increased after the president exercised the right to pardon his son Hunter, who faced a long prison sentence for illegal gun possession and tax evasion.

Biden has repeatedly publicly opposed the death penalty. But the first cadence of Donald Trump as president was marked by more executions than were carried out in the previous 10 terms of the head of state. In the last year of Trump's stay in the White House alone, 13 death sentences were carried out.

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The Biden administration is discussing the possibility of preemptively pardoning officials who may face prosecution under the Trump presidency. Potential candidates include Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley, Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney.

Jon Finer, Deputy National Security Advisor to the White House, believes that the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria indicates the weakening of Russia and Iran.

Source: European Pravda, citing Finer in an interview with CNN

Details: Finer noted that Moscow and Tehran, the main pillars of the Assad regime, "were completely caught off guard by this [the fall of Assad's regime], but that wasn't just a mistake, and it wasn't just an accident".

"[The Assad regime – ed.] had effectively become a Russian-Iranian joint venture inside Syria, and both of those joint venture partners were no longer able to provide the support that the regime needed in order to survive, and that's a big part of why it's no longer in power," he added.

The White House official added that this is not Iran's first loss in the Middle East in recent months, recalling the Hamas and Hezbollah groups weakened by the war with Israel.

"This is not a moment of strength for Iran, and what the implications are of that I'll let others speculate about, but that is, frankly, the result of work by the United States and our partners over the course of the last year that brought us to that moment," said Finer.

On the other hand, the war in Ukraine has already "shown what kind of a security partner Russia can be to other countries," the advisor added.

Background:

• On 8 December, rebels in Syria announced that they had taken control of the capital, Damascus, signalling the end of more than two decades of Assad's rule. Assad is believed to be in Moscow.
• Jake Sullivan, the White House National Security Adviser, noted that the United States will work to protect the US against the terrorist threat that could come from Syria after the sudden overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in the country.

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Google has introduced a new 4 cm² Willow quantum chip that performs highly complex calculations in 5 minutes. The device can speed up drug development and expand the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Google has announced that it has created a new generation chip. It is able to perform tasks that traditional supercomputers cannot. This was reported by The Guardian, according to UNN.

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The new Willow chip is no bigger than a candy bar. Its area is only 4 square centimeters, but it has a speed that did not exist before. Willow takes just five minutes to complete a task that the world's fastest traditional computer could handle in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

That's 10 septillion years-a number that far exceeds the age of the universe and forces scientists behind the latest breakthrough in quantum computing to resort to a completely non-technical term: "amazing.

It is expected that the presented chip will give an impetus to the creation of new drugs, significantly speeding up the experimental phase of development.

The developers claim that Willow is less error-prone than previous versions, and can expand the potential of the already rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence.

Quantum computing, which uses the discovery that matter can exist in multiple states simultaneously, is predicted to be able to perform much larger calculations than previously possible, and thus accelerate the creation of fusion reactors and increase the impact of artificial intelligence, especially in medical science. For example, it could allow MRI scans to be read at the atomic level, opening up new caches of data about human bodies and diseases for processing by artificial intelligence, Google says.

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Microsoft and Intel have signed a угоду 15 billion agreement under which Intel will produce microchipsdeveloped by Microsoft.

Foreign banks that remain in Russia earned a net profit of RUB 210.9 billion (US$2.3 billion) in the first nine months of the year, marking a 30% increase compared to the same period last year.

Source: a study by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE)

Details: The study notes that, despite a decrease in their share of the Russian banking system's assets to 2.4%, foreign banks accounted for 8% of the system's total profit.

In total, 2,223 international companies continue to operate in Russia, 1,367 are scaling back operations, and 452 have left the Russian market.

Among foreign banks, Raiffeisenbank made the largest profit of RUB 107.3 billion (approximately US$1.2 billion), accounting for 4.08% of the total profit of the Russian banking system in the first nine months of this year.

Significant revenues were also reported by ICBC Bank (RUB 25.5 billion, or US$283 million), OTP Bank (RUB 22.5 billion, or US$250 million), Bank of China (RUB 9.9 billion, or US$110 million) and Credit Europe Bank (RUB 12 billion, or US$133 million).

Over the past nine months, at least three major foreign banks – UniCredit, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase – have either suspended operations or begun exiting the Russian market. This has reduced the assets of foreign banks still operating in Russia, yet their net profits continue to rise, with foreign banks remaining more profitable than local financial institutions.

Background: The Russian government will block any attempts by Raiffeisen Bank International AG and UniCredit SpA to sell their local units to any buyer that may be subject to sanctions.

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The United States and Britain have imposed sanctions against the illegal trade in Russian gold, which finances the war of the Russian Federation. The assets of those involved were frozen and a global smuggling network through Zimbabwe was exposed.

On Monday, December 9, the United States and the United Kingdom imposed new sanctions against the illegal trade in Russian gold, which finances the Russian army in the war against Ukraine. This is reported by Reuters, writes UNN.

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The UK Government has frozen the assets of four people involved in the illegal trade in Russian gold, and another who bought more than 3 300 million worth of Russian gold, providing income to the Russian government.

Illegal gold is an attack on the legitimate trade of a valuable commodity that incites corruption, undermines the rule of law, and perpetuates human rights violations. Russia is using the illegal gold trade to launder money and evade sanctions, thus supporting Putin's military efforts.,

– said in a statement of the British Foreign Office.

The United States has imposed sanctions on dozens of companies and individuals it says were involved in a global gold smuggling and money laundering network based in Zimbabwe.

The sanctions included Kamlesha Pattney, who, according to the US Treasury, befriended Robert Mugabe when he was president of Zimbabwe, and participated in a scheme to receive cash through the sale of the country's natural resources in foreign jurisdictions and overstate reporting on the amount of cash returned back, for which they received compensation.

Switzerland expands sanctions against Russia: Includes ban on diamondsAug 21 2024, 06:24 PM • 56485 views

The US Treasury Department said that the paid network covers several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Kyrgyzstan.It is noted that the UK also added Pattney to its sanctions list.

The country banned the import of new Russian gold in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, the Russian Federation has found other markets to sell its gold.

Last week, Britain, working alongside the United States, said it had severed the global money laundering network used by wealthy Russians to avoid sanctions.

Sanctions force russia's largest diamond producer to cut production and lay off people – CPJNov 22 2024, 09:29 AM • 16227 views

German Finance Minister Jörg Kukies has reaffirmed Berlin's continued support for Kyiv in 2025, even though the country has not yet adopted a permanent budget.

Source: Kukies before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels on Monday, 9 December, as reported by European Pravda, citing German television news channel n-tv

Details: Kukies stated that Germany's contribution of bilateral support to Ukraine for 2025 is "secured and also guaranteed" in a preliminary budget agreement.

He emphasised that Germany's contribution is "secured in full".

According to the draft budget for 2025, German aid to Ukraine has been reduced to €4 billion from around €8 billion in 2024.

However, disputes between the ruling parties and, ultimately, the collapse of the federal coalition and the calling of early elections to the Bundestag put this on hold.

Meanwhile, media reports indicate that Germany will be able to provide most of the €4 billion promised to Ukraine, even if the 2025 budget is not approved on time.

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Russian distributors use the Texas Instruments API to order chips through third countries. During the year, orders were made for 6 6 million, of which 4 4 million was for military companies.

Suppliers of the Russian military-industrial complex have found a way to circumvent the sanctions and order chips from the American company Texas Instruments even after the introduction of sanctions. This is reported by Bloomberg, writes UNN.

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The publication notes that some Russian distributors have integrated information from the Texas Instruments (TI) online store called TI store into their trading platforms.

Their Russian customers see information about semiconductor stocks and product prices, and then place orders that are executed and delivered through companies outside of Russia.

It is noted that sites were mainly used for orders getchips.ru and altchips.ru, blocked in the US and Europe, but available in Russia. The local selection of TE Products coincides with the information that the company's customers receive from its branded online store.

In the Netherlands, a Russian engineer is accused of stealing the most important technological secretsDec 9 2024, 07:58 AM • 14222 views

As the interlocutors of the publication suggest, this means that Russian distributors have gained access to the proprietary application programming interface, or API – technical coordinates that allow software to communicate and exchange data with each other.

For example, one major Russian distributor processed more than 4,000 orders for hundreds of thousands of TI products worth about.6 million from August 2023 to August 2024.

Of these, orders for almost 4 4 million were intended for Russian military companies. Before entering Russia, goods passed through Hong Kong or other countries.

Among the thousands of orders that Bloomberg found in internal Russian documents, 287 orders were marked as "canceled", indicating that some customers either changed their minds or the distributor was unable to fulfill these orders.

The publication also notes that the Russian distributor applied a 40% mark-up to TI prices, which, according to Bloomberg's interlocutors, was done in order to cover the entire delivery and payment process.

Chinese semiconductor manufacturers will face new export restrictions from the United StatesDec 2 2024, 08:23 AM • 14906 views

Pro-Russian hackers are suspected to be behind a cyberattack on the websites of several Danish municipalities on Monday, 9 December.

Source: Mark Fiedel, director of Denmark's Centre for Cyber Security (CFCS), in a comment to Danish news outlet Ritzau, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Several Danish municipalities have reported being targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The incident disrupted the websites of Århus, Vejle, Esbjerg, Dragør, Frederiksberg, and other municipalities.

Fidel stressed that when it comes to DDoS attacks that regularly target Denmark, "it's usually pro-Russian cyberactivists".

The CFCS director stated that the centre had successfully warned several Danish targets about the attacks that occurred on Monday morning.

"It's not always clear who they are targeting. Activists are looking for attention to their cause. That's why they often choose symbolic targets, for example, someone who seems to have a clear connection to Denmark's support for Ukraine," Fiedel added.

Background:

• Earlier on Monday, Romanian energy company Electrica, the country's largest, reported that it had suffered a cyber attack.
• The UK government warned that Russia was ready to launch a "wave of cyberattacks" against the country and could "cut off power to millions of people".

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Protesters brought and burned a coffin with the image of pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili outside the Georgian parliament building. This happened against the background of protests against the results of the parliamentary elections.

In Georgia, a coffin containing an image of the Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili was burned near the parliament building, reports UNN with reference to "News Georgia".

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According to media reports, the protesters brought a coffin inside which was an image of Bidzina Ivanishvili to the Georgian parliament building. The coffin was soon burned.

Earlier, Georgian Dream flags and an effigy of Ivanishvili were burned several times at the actions.

Georgia faces suspension of visa-free travel with the EU. The European Commission explained whyDec 7 2024, 10:25 AM • 19940 views

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Georgian president Salome Zurabishvili declared the parliamentary elections Invalid on October 26 due to massive violations. after the official results of the elections, according to which the ruling Georgian Dream party won an absolute majority of seats in Parliament, protests began.

Georgian president Salomi Zurabishvili remains in opposition to the Georgian Dream government until the end of his presidential term, supporting pro-European protests.

"The Georgian Dream is introducing an amendment to the parliament that will deprive Georgian president Salomi Zurabishvili of the right to state protection, which should have been granted within a year after the end of his term of office, reports UNN with reference to Novosti Georgia.

According to media reports, this will be done as follows: the amendment cancels protection for former top officials in case of violation of the Constitution.

And the Georgian Dream has a corresponding decision of the Constitutional Court last year. Then Mriya challenged Zurabishvili's foreign visits without government confirmation and tried to impeach him, secured the decision of the Constitutional Court, but there were not enough votes during the voting.

President Solomi Zurabishvili is in opposition to the Georgian Dream government until the end of her presidential term, supporting pro-European protests. This week, on December 14, the ruling party plans to elect a new president with the help of the Electoral College. Zurabishvili says that the new parliament and government are illegitimate, and she does not resign until new elections.

Britain suspends aid to Georgia over crackdown on protestsDec 9 2024, 01:56 PM • 14707 views