NEWS OF THE DAY
1 Cyber attack: Israel’s national cyberchief officially acknowledged Thursday that the country had thwarted a major cyberattack last month against its water systems, an assault widely attributed to archenemy Iran, calling it a “synchronized and organized attack” directed at disrupting key national infrastructure. Yigal Unna did not mention Iran directly, nor did he comment on the alleged Israeli retaliation two weeks later said to have shut down a key Iranian port, but he said recent developments have ushered in a new era of covert warfare, ominously warning that “cyberwinter is coming.”
2 Secrecy rules: Lebanon’s parliament approved a law Thursday to remove decadesold banking secrecy rules to better fight rampant corruption that has pushed the country to the edge of economic collapse. The move opens the way for investigations into bank accounts of current and former officials such as Cabinet ministers, legislators and civil servants, staterun National News Agency reported. The restoration of stolen public money in the corruptionplagued nation has been a key demand of protesters who have been demonstrating since midOctober against Lebanon’s ruling elite, which they blame for widespread corruption and mismanagement.
3 Farright complaint: A Berlin court on Thursday dismissed a legal bid by the farright Alternative for Germany party to have mention of two of its branches removed from a government report on extremism. The capital’s administrative court said the German Interior Ministry can include the party’s youth branch and a grouping known as “The Wing” in a 2019 intelligence report on organizations being monitored for possible extremist activity. The court ruled there was sufficient evidence to show that AfD’s youth branch and The Wing, which was recently disbanded, seek to create an ethnically homogeneous population in Germany that would exclude people deemed to be “foreigners.” The court said both also have made blanket accusations against Muslims.
4 Digital only: Australia’s largest newspaper publisher, News Corp., announced Thursday that most of its suburban and regional mastheads across the country will become digitalonly next month due to the pandemic and digital platforms sharing their content. In Sydney, Executive Chairman Michael Miller described the shift that will take effect on June 29 as significant but did not say how many jobs would be lost. The changes affect 112 News Corp. publications, with 36 mastheads, or newspaper titles, to disappear. Their news would be published in regional sections of other mastheads, he said. Another 76 will survive online without printed editions. Paul Murphy, chief executive of Australia’s journalists union — Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance — said 150 editorial jobs will be lost.
5 Genocide trial: A Rwandan court on Thursday sentenced to life in prison one of the most wanted men in the country’s 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutus who tried to protect them were killed. Ladislas Ntaganzwa, who had a bounty of up to $5 million on his head, had faced charges of genocide, extermination as a crime against humanity and rape as a crime against humanity. He denied the charges. Ntaganzwa, a former mayor of Nyakizu in Rwanda’s south, was arrested by agents of Interpol in Congo in 2015 and transferred the following year to Rwanda to face trial. He is accused of substantially participating in the planning, preparation and execution of the massacre of over 20,000 Tutsis at Cyahinda parish.