Month: January 2023

Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute is among 16 entities slapped with curbs by the Treasury Department.

The firm, also known as Spacety China, has offices in Beijing and Luxembourg.

Wagner supplies Russia thousands of fighters in the Ukraine war.

Spacety China had provided Terra Tech, a Russia-based technology firm, with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite images of locations in Ukraine, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a statement on Thursday.

“These images were gathered in order to enable Wagner combat operations in Ukraine,” it said. The department has also sanctioned Spacety’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary.

Under the sanctions, there can be no transfer, payment, or export of any property or interests in the United States to the targeted entities.

Spacety China has yet to respond to the move.

China, a close ally of Russia, has attempted to position itself as a neutral party with regard to the Ukraine war. It has been criticised by the US and its allies for refusing to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On its website, Spacety China describes itself as a “pioneer” in providing commercial SAR technology and says it wants to “make SAR imagery of every point on earth accessible and affordable” to users all over the world.

SAR is a type of radar technology that can deliver higher resolution images using shorter antennas.

Its chief executive officer Yang Feng sits on China’s Ministry of Science and Technology’s panel of experts as someone who specialises in “national technology”, according to the company’s website.

The site also lists a number of working partners including state-owned enterprises China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, as well as the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In addition to Spacety China, 15 other entities, eight individuals and four aircraft – many of them based in Russia – that allegedly form part of Wagner’s global support network also received US sanctions.

These include Sewa Security Services based in central Africa and Kratol Aviation based in the United Arab Emirates, which allegedly provided aircraft to move personnel and equipment between central Africa, Libya and Mali.

Wagner now commands some 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, according to estimates from the White House. The organisation plays a key role in Russia’s war efforts, and has been heavily involved in attempts to capture Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine.

It is led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“Today’s expanded sanctions on Wagner, as well as new sanctions on their associates and other companies enabling the Russian military complex, will further impede Putin’s ability to arm and equip his war machine,” said US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Police and the military are preparing to mount a joint operation, according to the defence and interior ministries.

Supporters of former President Pedro Castillo took to the streets after he was impeached and arrested for trying to dissolve Congress in December

They want his successor Dina Boluarte to quit and hold fresh elections.

The ministry of the interior tweeted that “blocking communication routes is a crime” and said that 10 people had already died because ambulances could not get through roadblocks.

Earlier in January, Peru’s human rights watchdog reported two deaths as a result of blockades in the northern La Libertad region – a 51-year-old woman and a teenager who “lost her baby”.

The blockades have also resulted in shortages of fuel and food in several regions.

Local media reported that some cities had seen the price of food, such as potatoes and tomatoes, increase three-fold because roadblocks had left delivery lorries stranded.

“The Peruvian national police, with the support of the armed forces, will unblock the national network of highways that have been the subject of a state of emergency,” the ministry’s statement said.

On Wednesday, Ms Boluarte called for a “national truce” – but following her speech, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Lima, demanding her resignation.

Ms Boluarte became president in December following Mr Castillo’s impeachment and removal from office following a botched attempt to dissolve Congress.

More than 50 people have died in the subsequent unrest, which continues across the country.

The government has been accused of using excessive force in its efforts to quell the protests, and Peru’s ombudsman said that, of the 56 people who have died in the unrest, 46 were involved in clashes with the security forces.

The governors of the southern Puno, Cusco and Apurimac regions have also called for the president’s resignation and, earlier this week, opposition politicians submitted a motion to impeach Ms Boluarte.

She has resisted calls to step down and has asked Peruvians to ensure their protests are peaceful.

The country’s valuable tourism industry has taken a hit from the continuing unrest, with the famous tourist site of Machu Picchu closing indefinitely earlier this month.

Hundreds of people were stuck for hours at the foot of the 15th Century Inca citadel before being rescued.

The Economy and Finance Ministry estimated the economic cost to the nation of the protests at 2.15 billion soles ($554m; £447m) so far.

In his speech in central London, Mr Hunt will outline the opportunities in what he called “the growth sectors which will define this century”.

He will also pledge to build on “the freedoms which Brexit provides”.

But it comes in a week the government has faced accusations that it has no long-term plan for growth.

On Monday, the CBI business group warned the UK is lagging behind rivals on green growth.

The next day, insolvency firm Begbies Traynor said the number of firms on the brink of going bust jumped by more than a third at the end of last year.

And on Thursday, car firms warned the UK has not got a strategy to attract manufacturers.

Speaking at Bloomberg’s Headquarters in London, Mr Hunt will set out how the government plans to achieve growth in multiple sectors across the UK.

The speech will focus on key growth industries such as digital technology, green industries, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and creative industries.

He will also set out a long-term plan to tackle poor productivity.

“It is a plan necessitated, energised and made possible by Brexit which will succeed if it becomes a catalyst for the bold choices we need to take,” he will say.

Looking at the wider picture, Mr Hunt will say that “declinism about Britain” was wrong before and is wrong today, adding that some downbeat forecasts “do not reflect the whole picture”.

He will praise what he calls “British genius and British hard work”, and promise to turn that into prosperity in the long term.

It is the chancellor’s first big economic speech since he took office in October, outside of the Autumn Statement and his speech to reverse most of Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

In his Autumn Statement last November, Mr Hunt revealed tax rises and spending cuts worth billions of pounds aimed at mending the nation’s finances.

Many will see this latest speech as an attempt to respond to criticism that the government has no long-term plan for growth, in the face of the global economic shift.

That idea has been increasingly openly articulated, including by car makers this week.

On Thursday, new figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed the number of new cars made in the UK has sunk to its lowest level for 66 years.

UK car production was further set back by the collapse into administration of Britishvolt last week.

The firm had planned to build a giant factory to make electric car batteries in Cambois, near Blyth in Northumberland, but the project ran out of money.

Car firms warn that the UK is lagging behind other countries, particularly on offering state aid to manufacturers.

The boss of the SMMT, Mike Hawes, conceded that the UK could be in the unenviable position of offering less support to crucial industries than before it left the EU.

Data out on the UK economy in recent weeks has painted a mixed picture.

Price rises in the UK slowed for a second month in a row in December, but the cost of food including milk, cheese and eggs kept inflation at a 40-year high.

Meanwhile, wages have grown at the fastest rate in more than 20 years, but are still failing to keep up with rising prices.

Figures on Tuesday showed Ggovernment borrowing hit a new high in December, driven by the cost of supporting households with their energy bills and rising debt interest costs.

And on Wednesday, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility told the government that it had overestimated the prospects for medium-term growth and that it planned to downgrade its outlook, The Times reported.

The downgrade would leave Mr Hunt with less room to manoeuvre ahead of his Budget this March.

Martin Griffiths told the BBC he had received “encouraging responses” from a wide range of Taliban ministers during talks in Kabul, even if last month’s edict banning Afghan women working for NGOs is not reversed.

With Afghan women playing a crucial role in delivering aid, there is concern the ban is endangering urgent life-saving humanitarian operations in the country.

“It’s worth remembering that, this year, Afghanistan is the biggest humanitarian aid programme in the world ever,” Mr Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told me in Kabul.

The aid arithmetic is staggering. This year, agencies will try to reach 28 million Afghans, more than half the population, including six million who are, Mr Griffiths says, “knocking on famine’s door”.

This year is Afghanistan’s coldest winter in a decade, and it’s been cruel. In the past two weeks, more than 126 Afghans have perished in freezing temperatures, collapsing from hypothermia, or overcome by toxic fumes from gas heaters.

And winter’s icy blast strikes a people already living, perilously, on the edge. Providing aid to Afghanistan is of epic proportions too.

In a mud-and-straw home perched perilously on a steeply-sloped hill blanketed in snow in Parwan province north of Kabul, we met one family whose complaints were as bitter as the cold.

“No aid agencies visit us here,” lamented mother Qamar Gul, as the family huddled around a “sandali” – a traditional charcoal heater Afghans have relied on for centuries to keep warm. “No one came from the last government, no one from the Taliban government.”

This week, as the government’s military helicopters struggled to reach the most isolated communities completely cut off by colossal snowbanks and blinding storms, Mr Griffiths was holding back-to-back meetings in Kabul with senior Taliban government leaders about the new edict banning Afghan women from working with aid organisations.

“If women do not work in humanitarian operations, we do not reach, we do not count, the women and girls we need to listen to,” Mr Griffiths underlines when we meet at the UN’s sprawling compound at the end of his mission. “In all humanitarian operations around the world, women and girls are the most vulnerable.”

An aid official with decades of experience in tough environments, including Afghanistan, he was cautious, but clear, about the results of his high-stakes mission.

“I think they’re listening,” he said of the Taliban ministers he had met, “and they told me they will be issuing new guidelines in due course which I hope will help us reinforce the role of women.”

Mr Griffiths’s visit comes on the heels of last week’s flying visit by the UN’s second-in-command Amina Mohammed, a British-Nigerian Muslim woman whose presence underlined the UN’s growing alarm over a raft of Taliban edicts threatening to “erase women from public life”.

She told us her conversations were “very tough”. Some meetings were so candid, they were almost cut short. But she told us she was encouraged by a willingness to engage.

Mr Griffiths’s mission – representing the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the UN’s highest-level forum to co-ordinate humanitarian aid – has been to delve into very specific details across a range of vital sectors from agriculture to sanitation and food deliveries.

No one realistically expects the ban, announced last month, to be reversed. But it seems to have many loopholes.

Mr Griffiths highlighted “a consistent pattern of Taliban leaders presenting us with exceptions, exemptions, and authorisations for women to work”. So far, a green light has been given to crucial areas like health and community education where women’s participation is essential.

But it’s also clear the most conservative of Taliban leaders are not for turning.

“Men are already working with us in the rescue efforts and there is no need for women to work with us,” insists the white-bearded cleric who heads the State Ministry for Disaster Management. When we sat down with him in his office, the acting minister Mullah Mohammad Abbas Akhund accused the UN and other aid agencies of speaking “against our religious beliefs”.

“I’m sorry, I don’t agree,” was Mr Griffith’s firm reply, emphasising that the UN and other aid agencies had been working in Afghanistan for decades. “We respect the customs and norms of Afghanistan, as we do in every country that we work.”

The race to deliver urgently-needed relief has been slowed by this painstaking process of dealing with an authority ruled by the most senior, most strict Taliban leaders. Other senior figures question edicts but cannot quash them.

But Mr Griffiths pointed out that humanitarian access was significantly better now since the Taliban swept to power in 2021. Areas previously cut off by threats of Taliban attacks or US-led military operations were now much easier to reach. Last winter, 11th-hour humanitarian interventions in remote regions, including the central highlands of Ghor, pulled families back from the brink of famine.

It’s a point Taliban officials constantly stress. The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi urged Mr Griffiths to share their “achievements and opportunities… instead of complaints and shortcomings”.

But as the worst of winter closes in, the window is closing for an urgent relief effort. Several aid agencies, who rely enormously on their Afghan female staff have already suspended their operations.

“I cannot think of an international priority as high as this one to keep this extraordinarily important massive programme alive,” is how the UN’s top aid official summed up this moment.

The threats were faxed to high schools and universities earlier this week from a Tokyo-registered number.

No explosives have been found in school buildings, according to police, and there have been no reports of attacks on pupils and staff so far.

Bomb threats are rare in Japan, which is known for its low crime rate.

The first wave of messages began on Monday, reaching schools and universities across the country. In one prefecture, Saitama, more than 170 schools received bomb threats, said officials.

Local media reported that one message claimed that over 330 bombs had been set up, while another read: “I planted a major bomb.”

Some reports said the messages demanded ransoms ranging from 300,000 yen (£1,870; $2,320) to 3 million yen.

On Tuesday, messages threatening to kill students and teachers with homemade weapons were sent from the same number to high schools in various prefectures including Osaka, as well as Saitama and Ibaraki near Tokyo.

The threats saw many schools in Japan shutting down as a precaution, though most had re-opened by Thursday.

Fax machines are still commonly used in Japan.

The National Cyber Security Centre has issued a fresh alert about increasing attempts to steal information from specific groups and individuals.

NCSC said the hackers usually target those doing research and work about Iran and Russia.

It described the hacking groups as “ruthless” in pursuing their targets.

The NCSC – which is part of UK cyber and intelligence agency GCHQ and gives cyber-security advice – explained the attacks were not targeting the public, but specific individuals and groups, including politicians, officials, journalists, activists and think tanks.

The hackers will often impersonate real contacts to build trust, and send fake invites to events or Zoom meetings containing malicious code. If clicked on, they can compromise accounts allowing the hacker to gain access to sensitive information.

NCSC director of operations Paul Chichester said: “These campaigns by threat actors based in Russia and Iran continue to ruthlessly pursue their targets in an attempt to steal online credentials and compromise potentially sensitive systems.

“We strongly encourage organisations and individuals to remain vigilant to potential approaches and follow the mitigation advice in the advisory to protect themselves online.”

The number of individuals targeted in the UK is small – in the tens – with a minimal impact, officials say. But organisations have been asked to secure their online accounts, and report suspicious approaches.

Officials are not formally accusing Russia and Iran of involvement in the espionage, although two hacking groups they are warning about are widely believed to be linked to the two states.

A Russian group, known as SEABORGIUM or Cold River, has previously been linked in media reports to the leaking of emails belonging to ex-MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove and the targeting of US nuclear laboratories.

Google has said the group has also targeted US think tanks, a Ukraine-based defence contractor and the military of multiple Eastern European countries.

An Iranian Group – known as TA453 or Charming Kitten – has been linked by independent cyber-security experts to the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and is accused of targeting US politicians as well as critical infrastructure.

The campaigns are separate and not the result of collaboration, but the joint warning is being issued because they rely on similar techniques and targets.