South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Iran executes exiled journalist who helped inspire 2017 protests
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates— Iran on Saturday executed an exiled journalist over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, a little more than a year after authorities tricked him into traveling to Iraq where he was abducted.
Ruhollah Zam, 47, was one of several opposition figures seized by Iranian intelligence operatives abroad in recent months as Tehran struggles under the weight of U.S. sanctions.
The execution drew immediate international condemnation.
“This is barbarous and unacceptable act,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement, which also condemned the execution as a“grave blow” to freedom of expression and media freedom in Iran.
Z am’ s website Am ad News and a channel he created on the popular messaging app Telegram had spread the timings of the 2017 protests and embarrassing information about officials that directly challenged Iran’s Shiite theocracy.
Those demonstrations, which began at the end of December 2017 and continued into 2018, represented the biggest challenge to Iran’s rulers since the 2009 Green Movement protests and set the stage for similar mass unrest in November of last year.
The initial spark for the 2017 protests was a sudden jump in food prices. Many believe that hard-line opponents of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani instigated the first demonstrations in the conservative city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, trying to direct public anger at the president. But as protests spread from town to town, the backlash turned against the entire ruling class.
The 2017 protests reportedly saw some 5,000 people detained and 25 killed.
Z am himself had fled Iran after the 2009 protests, heading first to Malaysia and then to France. While Iranian authorities have never described how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard detained him, Amnesty said he was seized on a trip to neighboring Iraq— where the Guard has wielded deep influence since the 2003 U.S .- led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
A Russian nuclear submarine on Saturday successfully test-fired four intercontinental ballistic missiles ina show of readiness of Moscow’s nuclear forces amid tension with the U.S.
The Defense Ministry said that the Vladimir Monomakh submarine of the Pacific Fleet launched four Bulava missiles in quick succession from an underwater position in the Sea of Okhotsk. Their dummy warheads hit their designated targets on the Chiz a shooting range in the Arkhangelsk region in northwestern Russia over 3,400 miles away, the ministrys aid in a statement.
The Vladimir Mono makh is one of the new Borei-class nuclear submarines that carry 16 Bu lava missiles each and are intended to serve as the core of the naval component of the nation’s nuclear forces for decades to come.
Missiles from Russia: Virgin Galactic test flight:
A Virgin Galactic test flight Saturday ended premature ly as the spacecraft’s rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico.
The spacecraft’s engine is supposed to ignite moments after it is released from a special carrier jet, sending the craft in a near-vertical climb towards the edge of space.
“The ignition sequence
for the rocket motor did not complete. Vehicle and crew are in great shape,” Virgin Galactic said in a brief statement on Twitter. “We have several motors ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and be back to flight soon.”
France eases restrictions:
At the end of an often brutally lonely year for elderly care home residents in France, the government is giving them more freedom for the December holidays, allowing them out to spend time with their families and receive visits even if they are positive for COVID-19.
The relaxed rules were announced Saturday and will apply from Tuesday to Jan. 3. The deputy health minister in charge of elderly affairs tweeted that injecting the spirit of Christmas into care homes is “essential” to maintain family ties and fight loneliness.
Roughly one- third of
France’s 57,600 virus deaths have occurred in care homes. Residents have been subjected to strict confinement measures, including being limited to their rooms, to curb infections.
A new six-page document from the Health Ministry that laid out the relaxed visitation rules for the Christmas-New Year period said they applied even to homes that have infected residents.
Israel- Bhutan relations: Israel and Bhutan announced Saturday the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The agreement will“open the path to greater cooperation and further strengthen relations” between Israel and the South Asian kingdom, according to a joint statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the deal, writ
ing on Twitter that it is an “additional fruit of the peace agreements.” He added that Israel was in contact with more countries to normalize relations.
The agreement with Bhutan looks separate from U.S. efforts that have led to the normalization of ties between Israel and four Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, in recent months.
The foreign ministers of Israel and Bhutan held secret talks that resulted in the agreement.
Zodiac Killer code cracked:
It took 51 years to crack, but one of the taunting messages written in code and attributed to the Zodiac Killer has been solved, according to the FBI.
The mysterious 340-character cipher, which was mailed to The San Francisco Chronicle in November 1969, does not reveal the killer’s identity. But it
does build on his image as an attention-seeking killer who reveled in terrorizing the Bay Area in the late 1960s.
“I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me” and “I amnot afraid of the gas chamber” are two of the dark boasts in the message, according to David Oranchak, a software developer in Virginia who said he had decrypted the cipher with the help of Sam Blake, an applied mathematician in Australia, and Jarl Van Ey cke, a warehouse operator and computer programmerin Belgium.
The FBI, which employs a team of code-crackers in its Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, said it had verified O ranchak’s claim of having broken the code, known as the 340 cipher. The agency said the cipher was one of four attributed to the killer, and was first submitted to an FBI lab on Nov. 13, 1969.