Arrest made after Islamophobic cyberattack on UK railway Wi-Fi networks

Arrest made after Islamophobic cyberattack on UK railway Wi-Fi networks
Islamophobic messages were posted on 19 railway station Wi-Fi networks across the UK. (FILE/AFP)
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Updated 27 September 2024
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Arrest made after Islamophobic cyberattack on UK railway Wi-Fi networks

Arrest made after Islamophobic cyberattack on UK railway Wi-Fi networks
  • Unnamed man detained after post claiming ‘Islamisation of Europe already underway’
  • Stations across London, as well as major hubs in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh affected

LONDON: A man has been arrested in the UK for posting an Islamophobic message on 19 railway station Wi-Fi networks across the country.

Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Central, Liverpool Lime Street, Leeds and Bristol Temple Meads were caught up in the cyberattack on Wednesday, alongside London Bridge, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Clapham Junction, Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo in the capital.

Users at the stations were met with a page after logging in to free station Wi-Fi networks with the words “we love you, Europe,” accompanied by the claim that “the Islamisation of Europe is already underway.”

The message added that “this is just a small taste of what’s coming,” detailing the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing followed by images of the 22 victims.

The message was quickly taken down and a man, who has not been identified, was detained under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and 1998 Malicious Communications Act.

He is understood to be an employee of Global Reach Technology, which provides internet services at many stations in the UK.

A spokesperson for British Transport Police said: “We received reports … of a cyberattack displaying Islamophobic messaging on some Network Rail Wi-Fi services.”

A spokesperson for Network Rail, the group in charge of UK tracks and stations, said no data had been compromised in the incident, adding: “Once our final security checks have been completed we anticipate the service will be restored by the weekend.”

A spokesperson for Telent, the company responsible for providing Wi-Fi at UK stations, said: “We are aware of the cybersecurity incident affecting the public Wi-Fi at Network Rail’s managed stations and are investigating with Network Rail and other stakeholders.”


’I live in hope’: A Channel drama survivor’s search for missing dad

’I live in hope’: A Channel drama survivor’s search for missing dad
Updated 31 sec ago
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’I live in hope’: A Channel drama survivor’s search for missing dad

’I live in hope’: A Channel drama survivor’s search for missing dad
  • The group turned the boat around, but the smugglers on the beach pushed them back out to sea, Osama said

CALAIS, France: Osama Ahmed’s life took a dramatic turn one night in October when the small boat that was to carry him and his father to the English coast sank shortly after setting out from France.
The 20-year-old Syrian was rescued but when he woke up in hospital and asked about his dad nobody knew anything.
Since that moment, Osama has been looking frantically for his father with whom he had hoped to start a new life in Britain.
Beyond the tragically long list of deaths in the Channel of migrants trying to cross, another statistic is also growing fast: Missing people.
“I live in hope of finding him,” Osama told AFP in a house in Calais on the French coast where an association, La Margella, put him up. He rejected any idea that his dad may not have survived. “God willing, I will find him,” he said.

Osama Ahmed, a 20-year-old Syrian man shows a picture of him with his father at the house of the association "LaMargelle Calais" where he lives since his father disappeared when their boat sank on the night of October 23, 2024, in Calais, northern France on November 7, 2024. (AFP)

On the night between October 22 and 23 father and son tried to make it across the water, like 30,000 other migrants this year alone. It was their third attempt.
They were part of a group of around 60 people hiding in the dunes who, at the signal of the people smugglers, rushed to the small boat waiting for them in the water.
But barely one kilometer (1,000 yards) into the journey, water began to seep in.
The group turned the boat around, but the smugglers on the beach pushed them back out to sea, Osama said.
He said they had been promised lifejackets that failed to materialize because, the smugglers claimed, they had been damaged.
The boat’s air chambers became completely deflated soon after departure, and everyone on board tumbled into the sea.
For half an hour Osama and his father managed to cling to each other, but when the boat began to disintegrate amid the panic and darkness they were separated.
Two ferries passed without stopping, and eventually rescue services arrived.
French maritime authorities reported finding three bodies, one woman and two men, after the drama that occurred two kilometers (1.2 miles) off the French coast.
Forty-five people were rescued but survivors reported that there had been more people on board, suggesting that a number had gone missing.

The drama was followed by other, similar incidents, in the Channel and authorities have since found nine bodies floating in the sea or washed up on northern French beaches, none of them the young Syrian’s dad.
Osama, who was treated in hospital for burns caused by saltwater and fuel, has been to every police station, hospital and Red Cross office in the area in search of his father, in vain.
He told officials what clothes his dad wore last, and about the ring in which his name is engraved. Police took a sample of Osama’s DNA.
Every time a body is found along the coast, Osama fears it could be his father. As the excruciating wait lingers, his life plans are on hold.
His family fled from Syria 13 years ago, to settle in Turkiye. Two of Osama’s brothers are already in England, having made the journey also in small boats.
He flashed a big smile as he described his dad, “the world’s nicest man” and his “role model.”
On his phone he has a picture of him, a man in his 50s wearing a white shirt and a jacket, and sporting a grey moustache.
French associations say the authorities should do more to help survivors locate their loved ones after failed crossings.
“People go missing and their families find it very hard to access services that might assist them in their search,” said Jeanne Bonnet, co-founder of La Margelle which tries to help migrants navigate French officialdom.
“We sometimes get the feeling that we’re being given the runaround,” she said.
Osama, she said, was offered no accommodation when he left hospital, injured and traumatized, so he went back to the same camp he had stayed in previously. That’s where La Margella took charge of him.
Braving cold temperatures and fog, close to 1,200 migrants have reached England onboard small boats since the beginning of November, according to British official figures.
Sixty people have been confirmed dead this year — not counting the most recently-discovered bodies and missing people — a record number since such Channel crossings started in 2018.
 

 


Trump in phone call advised Putin not to escalate in Ukraine, says Washington Post

Trump in phone call advised Putin not to escalate in Ukraine, says Washington Post
Updated 39 min 3 sec ago
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Trump in phone call advised Putin not to escalate in Ukraine, says Washington Post

Trump in phone call advised Putin not to escalate in Ukraine, says Washington Post
  • Trump had also spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Trump advised Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe,” the Post reported.
During the election campaign, Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “within a day,” but did not explain how he would do so.
Trump had also spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, according to media reports.
On Friday, the Kremlin said Putin was ready to discuss Ukraine with Trump but that did not mean that he was willing to alter Moscow’s demands.
On June 14, Putin set out his terms for an end to the war: Ukraine would have to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all of its troops from all of the territory of four regions claimed by Russia.
Ukraine rejected that, saying it would be tantamount to capitulation, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has put forward a “victory plan” that includes requests for additional military support from the West.


Bangladesh to seek Interpol alert for Hasina loyalists

Bangladesh to seek Interpol alert for Hasina loyalists
Updated 10 November 2024
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Bangladesh to seek Interpol alert for Hasina loyalists

Bangladesh to seek Interpol alert for Hasina loyalists
  • Dozens of Hasina loyalists accused of involvement in bloody crackdown have been arrested

DHAKA: Bangladesh said Sunday it would request an Interpol “red notice” alert for fugitive leaders of the ousted regime of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was toppled in a revolution in August.

“Those responsible for the indiscriminate killings during the mass uprising in July and August will be brought back from wherever they have taken refuge,” Asif Nazrul, the interim government’s law adviser, told reporters on Sunday.

“We will ensure they are arrested and brought to justice.”

Dozens of Hasina’s allies have been taken into custody since her regime collapsed, accused of involvement in a police crackdown that killed more than 700 people during the unrest that led to her ouster.

France-based Interpol publishes red notices at the request of a member nation, based on an arrest warrant issued in their home country.

Nazrul did not mention any individual by name, but Bangladesh has already issued an arrest warrant for 77-year-old Hasina — last seen arriving in India after fleeing by helicopter as crowds stormed her palace.

Hasina’s 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

Red notices issued by the global police body alert law enforcement agencies worldwide about fugitives.

Nazrul said they would request a red notice “as soon as possible”.

India is a member of Interpol, but the red notice does not mean New Delhi must hand Hasina over.


Chad troops killed in clashes with militants

Chad troops killed in clashes with militants
Updated 10 November 2024
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Chad troops killed in clashes with militants

Chad troops killed in clashes with militants

N’DJAMENA: Numerous Chad troops have been killed in a clash with militants in the Lake Chad region, the latest such incident in the central African nation, officials said on Sunday.

“I present my sincere condolences to the families of the martyrs who fell defending the homeland during this clash and I wish a speedy recovery to the wounded,” President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said in a post on Facebook, without providing any other details.

The clash was the latest since late October, when an attack by Boko Haram militants on a Chadian military base killed at least 40 people. In response, the army launched an operation against the militants.

In a statement, the army chief of staff said on Saturday that there was a clash during the day and after several hours “numerous terrorist elements were neutralized” and that a toll would be published later.

According to military sources, the fighting took place in the afternoon on the Karia island, in the northwest of the Lake Chad region.

Several local media published what they said were lists of the troops killed and wounded.

Elsewhere in Africa, gunmen killed 15 people in an attack on a northwest Nigerian village, officials confirmed, amid reports of a newly arrived militant group operating in the area.

The deputy governor of Kebbi State said the assault on Mera, around 50 kilometers from the Niger border, had been carried out by “unknown gunmen.”

But the latest massacre came after officials warned that an Islamist group known as “Lakurawa,” thought to hail from Mali and Niger, had crossed into Nigeria.

Kebbi’s deputy governor, Umar Tafida, and senior security officials attended funeral prayers for the 15 victims in Mera, his office said in a statement.

Nigeria has been plagued by armed violence since the 2009 emergence of the Boko Haram group in the Lake Chad basin, in the northeast of the country.

Various militant groups have split from or emerged alongside the insurgency, notorious for several mass kidnappings of school girls, despite a military crackdown.

Armed bandits and kidnap gangs have also spread chaos across the region, alongside sometimes bloody conflicts between farming communities and nomadic herdsmen.


Dutch police arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam

Dutch police arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam
Updated 10 November 2024
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Dutch police arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam

Dutch police arrest pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Amsterdam
  • Hundreds of protesters defy prohibition to gather in the Dutch capital

AMSTERDAM: Riot police in Amsterdam began breaking up a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday after a court upheld a ban on demonstrations following clashes this week involving Israeli soccer fans.

Hundreds of demonstrators defied the prohibition to gather in the Dutch capital’s Dam square, chanting demands for an end to violence in Gaza and “Free Palestine.”

But after a local court ratified the city authorities’ ban, police moved in, instructing protesters to leave. Several people were dragged away by police, a journalist saw.

The three-day ban was imposed from Friday after attacks on Israeli soccer supporters following a soccer match on Thursday between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam.

At least five people were injured early on Friday, as Israeli fans were assaulted by what Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema described as “antisemitic hit-and-run squads.”

Prosecutors said late on Saturday that four suspects remained detained on suspicion of violent acts, including two minors, and that 40 people had been fined for public disturbance and 10 for offenses including vandalism. They added that they expected to make more arrests.

A large group of Maccabi supporters was seen in a video posted online by news site Bender arming themselves with sticks, pipes and rocks and twice clashing with opponents when they marched into the city after the match.

Local police chief Olivier Dutilh told the court on Sunday that the ban was still needed as antisemitic incidents were also reported on Saturday night, local TV station AT5 reported.

Dutilh told the court that people had been pushed out of taxis and intimidated by others who asked to see their passports on the streets. 

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has said it only targets militants, whom it accuses of hiding among civilians in homes and shelters. Israeli strikes often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in the border fence and stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.