NEWS OF THE DAY
_1 U.N. hacked: An internal confidential document from the United Nations says that dozens of servers were “compromised” at its offices in Geneva and Vienna. Those include the U.N. human rights office, which has often been a lightning rod of criticism from autocratic governments for its callingout of rights abuses. The hack was first detected over the summer, and the extent of the damage remained unclear, especially in terms of personal, secret or compromising information that may have been stolen. The internal document from the U.N. Office of Information and Technology says 42 servers were “compromised” and 25 others were deemed “suspicious.”
_2 Ice rescue: In a nearly sevenhour operation, Russia’s emergency services rescued 536 ice fishermen after they got stranded on a giant ice floe that broke off the island of Sakhalin in eastern Siberia, officials said. Around 60 more people were able to get back onto the shore on their own Tuesday evening. Footage of the incident showed groups of people using smaller pieces of ice as rafts and trying to row to the Russian coast on them as the giant ice floe drifted farther away from land. It’s the third time in a week that emergency services in the Sakhalin region had to rescue ice fishermen stuck on drifting glacial masses.
_3 Putin pardon: Russian President Vladimir Putin has pardoned an Israeli woman jailed in Russia on drug charges, the Kremlin said Wednesday. The Kremlin said a presidential decree pardoning Naama Issachar on “humanitarian principles” was effective immediately. The 26yearold backpacker was arrested in April at a Moscow airport, where she was transferring en route from India to Israel. Russian authorities said more than 9 grams of hashish were found in her luggage. She was convicted and sentenced to 7½ years in prison. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had appealed to Putin to pardon Issachar. On a visit to Israel last week, Putin met with Issachar’s mother and told her, “Everything will be all right.”
_4 Floating barrier: The government in Greece wants to use a floating barrier to help stop migrants from reaching the Greek islands from the nearby coast of Turkey. The Defense Ministry has invited private contractors to bid on supplying a 1.7mile floating fence within three months, according to information available on a government procurement website Wednesday. A resurgence in the number of migrants and refugees arriving by sea to Lesbos and other eastern Greek islands has caused severe overcrowding at refugee camps. The netted barrier would rise 20 inches above water and be designed to hold flashing lights, the submission said. Nearly 60,000 migrants and refugees made the crossing to the islands last year, nearly double the number recorded in 2018, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency. _5 Deadly landslides: Landslides and floods from torrential monsoon rains on Indonesia’s Sumatra island killed at least seven people and displaced thousands, the disaster agency said Wednesday. Large areas of Central Tapanuli district in North Sumatra province were inundated with up to 6 feet of water after rivers burst their banks shortly after midnight. Thousands of people were involved in the rescue effort, but distribution of aid was hampered by power cuts, blocked roads and the large distance between disasterhit areas, local disaster agency official Agus Haryanto said. Seasonal downpours cause frequent landslides and floods and kill dozens each year in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains.