Three soldiers and a militiaman were killed as two blasts hit a military convoy in northern Burkina Faso last week, the army confirmed late on Tuesday.

The incident happened last Friday near the town of Dablo when a joint force of army, police, and gendarmerie personnel was returning from an operation, the military said in a statement.

Five soldiers were also injured in the blasts, which were caused by improvised explosive devices, it added.

Earlier on Friday, security forces had destroyed a terrorist base and neutralized dozens of terrorists in the forests of Toulfe and Tougrebouli, the statement said.

According to the army, multiple weapons, ammunition, and camping gear were seized in the operation.

Burkina Faso has witnessed repeated terror attacks that have claimed hundreds of lives over the past five years and displaced thousands of people, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the West African country.

Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali are at the epicenter of one of the world’s fastest-growing displacement and protection crises in the Sahel region.

Recent attacks have displaced at least 7,000 people in conflict-hit regions of Burkina Faso, the EU said last month in late June./aa

On March 2, 2017, Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda took out his mobile phone and in a Facebook live broadcast spoke about alleged collusion between state and local police and the leader of a drug cartel. Two hours later, he was dead – shot at least six times by two men on a motorcycle.

It was a few weeks later that Forbidden Stories – a global network of journalists engaged in investigations – confirmed that not just Pineda, but also the state prosecutor who investigated the case, Xavier Olea Pelaez, were the targets of Israel’s Pegasus spyware in the weeks and months before his murder.

Pineda’s phone was also never found, as it had disappeared from the crime scene by the time the authorities had arrived.

Two weeks after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018, the digital rights organization Citizen Lab reported that a close friend of Khashoggi, Omar Abdulaziz, had been targeted with Pegasus software developed by NSO Group Technologies -- an Israeli technology firm.

New revelations from Forbidden Stories and its partners have found that Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the mobile phone of Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, just four days after his murder. The phone of Khashoggi’s son, Abdullah, was selected as a target of an NSO client based on the consortium’s analysis of the leaked data.

Overall, the phones of 180 journalists around the world are claimed to have been selected as targets by clients of NSO Group Technologies. Its spyware Pegasus enables the remote surveillance of smartphones.

Forbidden Stories, which conducted investigations along with Amnesty International’s Security Lab, found that the phones of many politicians, civil society activists and even judges were being monitored in many countries, breaching privacy laws.

According to Forbidden Stories, they had access to a leak of more than 50,000 records of phone numbers belonging to journalists, politicians, officials, activists and even judges that NSO clients had selected for surveillance.

Forensic analysis

The forensic analyses of their phones – conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab and peer-reviewed by the Canadian organization Citizen Lab – were able to confirm infection or attempted infection with NSO Group’s spyware in 85% of cases.

“The numbers vividly show the abuse is widespread, placing journalists’ lives, those of their families and associates in danger, undermining freedom of the press and shutting down critical media,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.

NSO Group, in a written response to Forbidden Stories, said the consortium’s reporting was based on “wrong assumptions” and “uncorroborated theories” and reiterated that the company was on a “life-saving mission”.

“The alleged amount of leaked data of more than 50,000 phone numbers cannot be a list of numbers targeted by governments using Pegasus,” it added.

NSO Group maintains that its technology is used exclusively by intelligence agencies to track criminals and terrorists. According to NSO Group’s Transparency and Responsibility report released in June this year, the company has 60 clients in 40 countries around the world.

Pegasus “is not a mass surveillance technology and only collects data from the mobile devices of specific individuals suspected to be involved in serious crime and terror,” NSO Group wrote in the report.

In India, the phone of Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an investigative journalist and author of several books, was hacked in 2018.

Quoting Thakurta, Forbidden Stories said he was targeted when he was working on an investigation into the finances of the famous Ambani business group.

“The purpose of getting into my phone and looking at who are the people I’m speaking to would be to find out who are the individuals who have been providing information to me and my colleagues,” he said.

Thakurta is one of at least 40 Indian journalists selected as targets of an NSO client in India, based on the consortium’s analysis of the leaked data.

The phones of two of the three cofounders of the independent online news outlet The Wire – Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu – were both infected by Pegasus, with Venu’s phone hacked as recently as July.

Top journalists targeted

Several other journalists who work for or have contributed to the independent news outlet The Wire– including columnist Prem Shankar Jha, investigative reporter Rohini Singh, diplomatic editor Devirupa Mitra and contributor Swati Chaturvedi – were all selected as targets, according to the records accessed by Forbidden Stories and its partners.

“It was alarming to see so many names of people linked to The Wire, but then there are lots of people not linked to the Wire,” said Varadarajan, whose phone was compromised in 2018.

Addressing parliament on Monday, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said there is "no substance behind this sensational" claim and that "with checks and balances in place, illegal surveillance [is] not possible.”

"A highly sensational story was published by a web portal last night. Many over-the-top allegations [were] made around this story. The press reports appeared a day before [the] monsoon session of parliament. This can't be a coincidence," he said.

He described these revelations as an attempt to malign Indian democracy.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had previously documented 38 cases of spyware – developed by software companies in four countries – used against journalists in nine countries since 2011.

How does Pegasus work?

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), was one of the first security researchers to identify and document cyber-attacks against journalists and human rights defenders in Mexico, Vietnam and elsewhere in the early 2010s.

“Back in 2011, you would receive an email, and the email would go to your computer, and the malware would be designed to install itself on your computer,” she said.

But the installation of Pegasus spyware on smartphones has become subtler. Instead of the target having to click on a link to install the spyware, so-called “zero-click” exploits allow the client to take control of the phone without any engagement on the part of the target.

Once successfully installed on the phone, Pegasus spyware gives NSO clients complete device access and thereby the ability to bypass even encrypted messaging apps like Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. Pegasus can be activated at will until the device is shut off. As soon as it’s powered back on, the phone can be reinfected.

According to Galperin Pegasus operators can remotely record audio and video, extract data from messaging apps, use the GPS for location tracking and recover passwords and authentication keys, among other things.

Spying governments have moved in recent years toward a more “hit and run” strategy to avoid detection, she said, infecting phones, exfiltrating the data and quickly exiting the device.

Over the years, governments the world over have moved to gather intelligence using technology instead of humans. In the past, they developed spyware tools in-house until private spyware companies like NSO Group, FinFisher and Hacking Team stepped in to sell their products to governments, according to Galperin.

In June 2021, French spyware company Amesys was charged with “complicity in acts of torture” for selling its spyware to Libya from 2007-2011. According to plaintiffs, in that case, information gleaned through digital surveillance was used to identify and hunt down opponents of deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who were later tortured in prison.

The revelations stemming from this international collaborative investigation have thrown into question the safeguards put in place to prevent misuse of cyber weapons like Pegasus and, more specifically, NSO Group’s commitment to creating “a better, safer world.”/agencies

More than 60 makeshift tents of Rohingya refugees at a camp in Bangladesh’s southern Cox’s Bazar district were gutted in a fire late Tuesday, according to Rohingya and official sources.

“We primarily came to know that the fire originated from a cooking gas cylinder of a Rohingya tent and spread to the adjacent shelters,” Shah Rezwan Hayat, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner, told Anadolu Agency.

The fire erupted in Block B of camp No. 9 in the Balukhali Rohingya refugee camp.

Hayat confirmed that more than 20 Rohingya tents were damaged by the fire and one Rohingya was slightly injured and admitted to a hospital.

He added that the gutted tents would be replaced within the shortest possible time.

Meanwhile, citing Rohingya at a camp, the local Prothom Alo newspaper reported that 63 Rohingya dwellings were burnt to ashes in the fire.

“At least 4-5 Rohingya were injured while trying to control the blaze,” the report said, adding some children are missing.

A major fire in the world’s largest Rohingya camp killed at least 15 members of the community on March 22 this year. In that incident, more than 10,000 shanties were burnt to the ground along with a camp-based Turkish field hospital.

Another fire killed three Rohingya and damaged seven shops in a market inside the camp on April 2, while four tents including an Islamic seminary (madrassah) were burnt down on April 12.

In mid-January, a deadly fire destroyed over 500 Rohingya shanties. Dozens of other minor fires have also broken out in the congested Rohingya camps in the last couple of years.

More than 1.1 million Rohingya who mostly fled a brutal military crackdown in Rakhine State of their home country Myanmar in August 2017 have been living in the makeshift camps in Bangladesh./aa

Twenty-five people were killed and seven others were missing after severe flooding in China’s central Henan province that was caused by torrential rains, media reports said Wednesday.

Search and rescue teams have found the bodies of 25 victims in flood-affected areas of Henan’s capital, Zhengzhou, while an estimated 200,000 people have been displaced, according to the South China Morning Post.

More than 1.2 million people were affected by the flood and over 164,000 people have been placed in safe areas.

In a statement, the Zhengzhou government said the situation is still far from being under control and the emergency level has been raised to its highest point.

Torrential rains have battered Henan province since the weekend, causing rivers to burst their banks and flooding streets in several cities in the region.

According to the Zhengzhou Meteorology Bureau, 617 millimeters (over 24 inches) of rain has been recorded in the region, the highest in 60 years.

China’s economy has incurred damages worth an estimated $11.3 million due to the heavy rains and floods, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency./aa

A 22-year-old former nursing student will spend the rest of his life in prison for a shooting spree at a Southern California synagogue in 2019 as part of a plea agreement announced Tuesday.

John Earnest walked into the Chabad at Poway Synagogue near San Diego in April 2019 on the last day of Passover services. He admitted to using a semi-automatic rifle to kill a 60-year-old woman, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, and wound three others, including an 8-year-old girl, along with the Rabbi, who lost a finger after being shot in both hands.

"Earnest admitted that he committed those crimes because of his bias and hatred of Jews, and he admitted that he personally discharged a firearm causing death and great bodily injury," the San Diego District Attorney's Office said in a statement.

He also pled guilty to setting fire to the Dar-ul-Arqam Mosque in Escondido "for the purpose of terrorizing Muslim worshipers," the office said.

Prosecutors also reportedly cited a letter that they say was written by Earnest in which he said he was inspired by a mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand the following year.

Tuesday's plea agreement allows Earnest to avoid the death penalty, but it ensures that he will never be released on parole. In addition to his life sentence, Earnest agreed to serving 121 years-to-life and 16 years in a state prison.

He will be sentenced on Sept. 30.

"While we reserved the option of trying this as a death penalty case, life in prison without the possibility of parole for the defendant is an appropriate resolution to this violent hate crime and we hope it brings a measure of justice and closure to the victims, their families, friends and the wider community," the district attorney's office said.

"After consulting with the Kaye family and the many victims impacted by the shooting, the decision to accept a plea of life in prison was made in the interest of justice and with the knowledge that a parallel prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and possible plea in that case would prevent the state’s case from moving forward," it added.

Earnest still faces over a hundred federal hate crimes charges, including 54 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death or bodily injury -- one count for each of the people inside the synagogue at the time./aa

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Kenya accused authorities of rolling out a cash transfer mechanism for vulnerable people that was riddled with irregularities.

In a report, the HRW warns that authorities failed to design a social security program that would guarantee everyone, not just a few, an adequate standard of living during the pandemic.

Rosemary Mungai, an 80-year-old owner of a soap business, said she had only received 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($9.25) from the government before the cash transfers stopped.

Esther Arumba, a laundry worker who also benefited from the mechanism aimed at helping the elderly, orphans, and other vulnerable members of society from the effects of COVID-19, complained that she had not received funds that had been announced by Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta.

After the onset of the pandemic, Kenyatta announced the cash transfer program for the most socio-economically vulnerable in the country, including people with disabilities, pointing out that his administration was already paying out 250 million shillings ($2.3 million) to the most vulnerable households each week.

In the 66-page report, titled 'We Are All Vulnerable Here': Kenya’s Pandemic Cash Transfer Program Riddled with Irregularities, the HRW said it found that only a small fraction of vulnerable families in the capital Nairobi benefited from the program, which it said was characterized by a lack of transparency, as well as cronyism, nepotism, and outright favoritism.

Otsieno Namwaya, the HRW's East Africa director, told a press conference in Nairobi attended by rights activists and representatives from the Ministry of Finance and Government that the report was based on interviews with 136 people, including government officials and residents, and documents irregularities that characterized the program in informal settlements in Nairobi.

"It is disappointing that an otherwise noble initiative can be this heavily undermined by negligence and inadequate oversight by the authorities."

"Senior government officials, including President Kenyatta should demonstrate their commitment to providing crucial support for the vulnerable households, by publicly denouncing the mismanagement of the cash transfer program and ensuring credible investigations."

The HRW has called on government departments implementing the cash transfer program to publish all information on the criteria for allocation and distribution of social protection funds aimed at mitigating the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including details of amounts disbursed across Nairobi and other counties.

It has also called on the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to promptly and thoroughly investigate allegations of irregularities or misappropriation of funds meant for the cash transfer program and submit the files to prosecutors./aa

The U.S. is in the final stages of talks to temporarily house a number of Afghan nationals who aided the U.S. war effort and their families at U.S. military bases in Qatar and Kuwait while they await approval of their visas, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.

The first round of roughly 2,500 applicants will be flown to Fort Lee, an Army base in Virginia, starting this month, State Department spokesperson Ned Price announced on Tuesday. The base will serve as a temporary holding station for Afghan nationals who have completed the security vetting and are in the final stages of their visa application process, officials said.

Additional applicants could be relocated to U.S. military bases in Qatar and Kuwait if the host nations agree, said two U.S. officials and a congressional source. Neither country has approved the U.S. request to host the Afghan nationals, but an agreement is “close,” one of the officials said.

The Qatar and Kuwait arrangements are “basically done deals,” said the congressional source, adding that the armed services committees have been informed of the plan.

The Biden administration is also looking at U.S. bases elsewhere in the Middle East, Europe and the Asia-Pacific to house additional applicants at different stages in the process, one of the officials said.

Joe Biden is withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in favor of a new diplomatic strategy, but recent military gains by the Taliban are complicating peace negotiations.

“We’re still engaged in diplomacy with a number of countries,” a State Department official said.

The Biden administration has come under intense bipartisan pressure in recent weeks to fast-track about 18,000 pending applications for the Special Immigrant Visa program as the U.S. combat presence in Afghanistan winds down.

Afghans who aided the U.S. military during the nearly 20-year conflict served as translators and interpreters. They’re increasingly being targeted for retribution by the Taliban as the militant group makes rapid gains in Afghanistan amid the U.S. withdrawal. The intelligence community has assessed that the country could fall to the Taliban in as little as six to 18 months, one of the U.S. officials said.

Reporters said last week that the Biden administration was also in talks with the government of Uzbekistan to temporarily house a portion of the applicants. Officials had also discussed the matter with Tajikistan’s government, but that country was a “no-go,”.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby confirmed on Monday that the first round of applicants and their families will be housed at Fort Lee for a few days, where they will be able “to safely complete the final steps” of the process, including final medical and administrative checks. Once the process is complete, they will be resettled in the U.S.

The group heading to Fort Lee includes 700 applicants under the Special Immigrant Visa program, which has enjoyed bipartisan support since 2009; the remaining 1,800 Afghans are their family members./ Politico

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that the Delta variant of the coronavirus accounts for 83% of new cases, up significantly from two weeks ago as deaths spike.

As of July 3, the variant, considered more easily transmissible and virulent than the original coronavirus, accounted for 50% of new cases.

"This is a dramatic increase," said CDC head Rochelle Walensky in an update to Congress. "In some parts of the country, the percentage is even higher, particularly in areas of low vaccination rates."

She said the average daily death count has climbed to about 239 per day, an increase of nearly 48% from the previous week.

"Each death is tragic, and even more heartbreaking when we know the majority of these deaths could be prevented with a simple, safe, available vaccine. "

Hospitalizations are on the rise in 37 states, and Walensky said it was the goal of the Biden administration to reach populations where resistance to the vaccines is highest, in communities of color and rural communities.

Testifying alongside Walensky, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease specialist and top health advisor to President Joe Biden, got into a heated exchange with Republican Senator Rand Paul.

Paul claims the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded so-called "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan lab that is suspected of playing a role in the coronavirus outbreak.

Gain-of-function research could theoretically be used to make the virus more transmissible.

Fauci had previously testified to Congress that the NIH never funded that kind of research but Paul accused Fauci of lying.

"Senator Paul," Fauci shot back, "I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement."

The two talked over each other, with an exasperated Fauci saying, "Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about ... I resent the lie you are now propagating. If anyone is lying here, it is you."/aa