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Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have been testing Starlink since March with the system deployed in about 10 locations and in training, Yomiuri newspaper reports. TOKYO, Japan - Japan’s military is testing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service with an eye to adopting the technology next fiscal year, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday, June 25, citing unnamed government sources. The Ministry of Defense already has access to communication satellites in geostationary orbit, but use of Starlink technology, operated by Musk’s SpaceX, would add a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, the Yomiuri said. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have been testing Starlink since March with the system deployed in about 10 locations and in training, the newspaper said. Musk said in October SpaceX could not afford to indefinitely fund Starlink’s use in Ukraine.

Heavily armed Russian mercenaries who advanced most of the way to Moscow halted their approach, de-escalating a major challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, in a move that their leader said would avoid bloodshed. Reuters could not independently verify how far Prigozhin’s mercenaries had reached. Wagner’s lightning insurrection appeared to develop with little pushback from Russia’s regular armed forces, raising questions about Putin’s hold on power in the nuclear-armed nation even after the abrupt halt to Wagner’s advance. The fighters led by Prigozhin, a former convict, include thousands of ex-prisoners recruited from Russian jails. Tarnavskiy said the area had been under Russian control since separatist forces backed by Moscow seized it in 2014.

While Russia scrambled to defend itself from its own paramilitary forces on Saturday, Ukrainian leaders said their own forces managed to make advancements in Russian-occupied territory. The Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin - a former ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin - marched across Russia on Saturday, coming within hours of Moscow. The BBC reported that Ukraine has made advances since launching its counter-offensive on June 4, including in the days and hours before the Wagner Group’s apparently brief insurrection. While Ukraine continued its efforts to retake territory, Russia was forced to defend itself from itself. Before the Wagner Group fighters turned back, Russian security officials were gearing up to defend Moscow.

The Wagner group is a private military army that’s been fighting alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, but tensions over how the war has been fought have been building for months. Putin has appeared to acknowledge that Russia’s military has lost control of Rostov-on-Don and there are indications Wagner fighters have moved north to Voronezh, about 320 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian officials declined to comment directly on whether Prigozhin was leading an insurrection against Putin. U.S. officials observing the chaos unfolding in Russia Saturday have reached few conclusions about the rupture between Putin and Prigozhin. Prigozhin, 61, is the head of the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary organization that was supporting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine before Prigozhin apparently turned against Russia’s military.

Russia is ramping up its efforts in the Ukraine war by doubling the number of its pens holding trained dolphins near the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, the UK defense intelligence agency said on Friday. The report of additional dolphin pens comes after Russia accused Ukraine of launching drone attacks on its Sevastopol base earlier this month. Dolphins have been used by both the U.S. and Russia’s militaries in past years, particularly during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The U.S. Navy discovered by studying Notty, a female Pacific white-sided dolphin, that dolphins could become an asset on the battlefield. In the years since the Cold War, Russia has been reported to continue mobilizing dolphins and whales, one of which appeared to have escaped its pen in 2019.

Our lost relatives just became more complex, with the discovery of ancient cave engravings in France that appear to be their handiwork. The engravings sit in La Roche-Cotard, a cave about 12 miles west of Tours. The figures-which are comprised of parallel lines made by fingers dragged across the cave wall in a number of patterns-predate Homo sapiens’ arrival in the region, leading a team of researchers to believe they were created by Neanderthals. Neanderthals are our ancestors; it appears that Neanderthals did not go extinct outright, but rather were subsumed into the gene pool of Homo sapiens as our two species interbred. In any case, Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago, leaving behind remains for researchers to find-genetic quirks and perks in modern humans that scientists can now trace back to our lost cousins, and-as evidenced in the new work-very ancient cave engravings.

The Wagner group is a private military army that’s been fighting alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, but tensions over how the war has been fought have been building for months. Putin has appeared to acknowledge that Russia’s military has lost control of Rostov-on-Don and there are indications Wagner fighters have moved north to Voronezh, about 320 miles from Moscow. Ukrainian officials declined to comment directly on whether Prigozhin was leading an insurrection against Putin. U.S. officials observing the chaos unfolding in Russia Saturday have reached few conclusions about the rupture between Putin and Prigozhin. Prigozhin, 61, is the head of the Wagner mercenary group, a paramilitary organization that was supporting the Russian government in its war against Ukraine before Prigozhin apparently turned against Russia’s military.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush what he called an armed mutiny after the private army of mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin seized control of a southern city as part of an attempt to oust the military leadership. In Russia’s first armed insurrection since the Chechen wars 20 years ago, heavily armed fighters from Prigozhin’s Wagner militia were in control of the streets of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine. Prigozhin said he had captured the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District there after leading his forces into Russia from Ukraine. A Russian security source told Reuters that Wagner fighters had also taken control of military facilities in the city of Voronezh, further north on the road towards Moscow. Prigozhin, a former convict and long-time ally of Putin, leads a private army that includes thousands of former prisoners recruited from Russian jails.

If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices.

June 24 - Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush what he called an armed mutiny after rebellious mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Saturday he had taken control of a southern city as part of an attempt to oust the military leadership. Prigozhin had demanded that Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, whom he has pledged to oust over what he says is their disastrous leadership of the war against Ukraine, come to see him in Rostov, a city near the Ukrainian border that he said he had seized control of. A Russian security source told Reuters that Wagner fighters had also taken control of military facilities in the city of Voronezh, about 500 km south of Moscow. Footage on channels based in Rostov-on-Don showed armed men in military uniform skirting the regional police headquarters in the city on foot, as well as tanks positioned outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District. Russian local officials said a military convoy was indeed on the main motorway linking the southern part of European Russia with Moscow, and warned residents to avoid it.

June 24, 2023 at 12:08 AM UTCUpdated onJune 24, 2023 at 1:09 AM UTC. Argentina Economy Minister Sergio Massa will run for president as the only candidate of the government’s ruling coalition. The coalition, recently rebranded as Union por la Patria, or unity for the homeland, will run a single candidate in presidential elections to be held later this year, according to a message on Twitter. Massa, a career politician who finished third in the 2015 presidential race, will be joined by former Defense Minister Agustin Rossi as his vice presidential running mate.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Eight Chinese war planes crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line and approached close to the island’s contiguous zone that is 24 nautical miles off its coast on Saturday, June 24, the Taiwanese defense ministry said, in a further rise in tensions. China’s air force over the past three years has routinely flown into the air space around Taiwan. Taiwan defines its contiguous zone as being 24 nautical miles from its coast. Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement that starting from around 8 am on Saturday, it had detected 19 Chinese warplanes, including J-10 and J-16 fighters. Taiwan sent up its own aircraft and dispatched ships in response and activated land-based missile systems, the ministry said, using standard wording for how its forces react to Chinese incursions.

Last year’s colossal eruption of the Hunga undersea volcano near Tonga produced the most intense lightning storm ever recorded on Earth, scientists announced in a new study published this week. Previously, the annual lightning report from Vaisala estimated The Hunga Tonga volcano explosion generated hundreds of thousands of lightning events in just six hours, the most extreme concentration of lightning ever detected. Amazing facts about the eruption and lightning storm The eruption lasted at least 11 hours, several hours longer than previously known. There were a total of 200,000 lightning flashes during the storm. More lightning info: Video shows fiery lightning strike at North Carolina motorsports company.

KYIV, Ukraine - Ukraine wants other countries to heed its warning that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant to cause a radiation disaster, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Members of his government briefed international representatives on Thursday on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The potential for a life-threatening release of radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power station. On Friday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi met with the director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to discuss the conditions at the plant. The base houses fighter jets and bombers, and five years ago it hosted a training exercise with air force personnel from the United States, Ukraine and seven European countries.

You’re reading The Interpreter newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Original analysis on the week’s biggest global stories, from columnist Amanda Taub. At the core of the global asylum system lies one simple idea: Every country is obligated to offer protection to any foreign citizen within its borders who meets the legal definition of a refugee, even if they arrived without permission. There is no central authority, no quota system of how many refugees a particular country must take. Just one basic individual right to not be deported into persecution, and one basic governmental obligation to refrain from doing so.

The increasingly public feud between Russian military leaders and the head of a Russian paramilitary group escalated dramatically on Friday, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary Wagner Group, accused Russian armed forces of attacking his soldiers and vowed retaliation. Prigozhin, whose Wagner forces helped take the city of Bakhmut, has been increasingly vocal in his attacks against the Russian military’s leaders, posting more and more scathing criticism of the top brass over the war effort and accusing generals of denying Wagner the ammunition and support needed to fight effectively. Prigozhin has claimed to be the founder of the Wagner Group, but the reality is likely much more complicated. In one video Prigozhin posted in May, he stands in a field, apparently surrounded by corpses of dead Wagner fighters. Even before Prigozhin escalated his rivalry with the Russian military this week, experts I’ve spoken to really doubted Prigozhin was actually a Putin rival and could build his own power center in the Russian state.

As a long-running standoff between Prigozhin and the military top brass appeared to come to a head, Russia’s FSB security service opened a criminal case against him, TASS news agency said, and it called on fighters from his Wagner private military company to ignore his orders and arrest him. ‘OBEY PRESIDENT,’ GENERAL SAYS The deputy commander of Russia’s Ukraine campaign, General Sergei Surovikin, told Wagner fighters to obey Putin, accept Moscow’s commanders and return to their bases. The standoff, many of the details of which remained unclear, looked like the biggest domestic crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin has faced since he sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February last year. UKRAINE SAYS MAJOR THRUST AHEAD On the ground in Ukraine, at least three people were killed in Russian attacks on Friday, including two who died after a trolleybus company came under fire in the city of Kherson, regional officials said. Although the advances Ukraine has reported this month are its first substantial gains on the battlefield for seven months, Ukrainian forces have yet to push to the main defensive lines that Russia has had months to prepare.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made an impromptu speech during the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, on June 23, in Paris. The Brazilian president referenced African countries several times in his speech, and strongly criticized the rich nations. Lula again mentioned the IMF loan to Argentina during the term of President Mauricio Macri. The president maintains that the decisions taken during the COPs, the international conferences on climate change, will never have the power of law in each country if they need to be discussed and ratified internally, by the respective parliaments, because there will always be resistance that will take away the strength of what was decided at the international level. The president pointed out what he considers good initiatives in the sense of renewing the institutions and the global financial logic: the creation of the BRICS bank, chaired by former president Dilma Rousseff, and the possibilities of creating the Bank of the South and also of discussing new possibilities for trade currency.

KYIV, Ukraine - Ukraine wants other countries to heed its warning that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant to cause a radiation disaster, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Members of his government briefed international representatives on Thursday on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The potential for a life-threatening release of radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power station. On Friday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi met with the director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to discuss the conditions at the plant. The base houses fighter jets and bombers, and five years ago it hosted a training exercise with air force personnel from the United States, Ukraine and seven European countries.

OceanGate Expeditions listed a job posting for a submersible pilot on its web site while a frantic search and rescue mission was underway for five missing tourists in the doomed Titan bound for the Titanic wreckage site. Social media was abuzz on Friday after screenshots of the ad, which was posted before the Coast Guard announced on Thursday that all five people aboard the Titan had perished, were widely circulated. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was among the five people who died in the Titan submersible. The passengers included 61-year-old OceanGate boss, Rush, as well as Titanic specialist Paul-Henri Nargeolet, UK billionaire explorer Hamish Harding and Pakistani billionaire and mogul Shanzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman. Filed under missing titanic sub , social media , TikTok , twitter , 6/23/23.