International
North Korean troops killed fighting Ukraine, says US
North Korean troops have been killed fighting Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region, the US has said.
These would be the first reported casualties since it emerged in October that North Korea had sent around 10,000 troops to reinforce Russia’s war effort.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, has also said at least 30 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in fighting over the weekend.
The BBC has not independently verified the claims.
The North Korean troops, none of whom will have any previous combat experience, are believed to have spent their first weeks in Russia in training and then in support roles.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian had begun to use a “significant number” in its assaults in Kursk, part of which Ukraine has occupied since launching a surprise incursion in August.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the US believed North Korean soldiers had “engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces” and “suffered casualties, both killed and wounded”.
He did not give specific numbers, but said the troops had been in combat since “a little over a week ago”.
He added it appeared the North Koreans were being used in infantry roles and that their involvement was thought so far to be limited to Kursk, implying that they have not been deployed in Ukraine itself.
Russian forces, who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, have been advancing in eastern parts of the country in recent months.
The GUR said the North Korean casualties had occurred on Saturday and Sunday in the Kursk villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha, and Martynovka.
On Monday, President Zelensky posted drone footage on Telegram that showed a number of men taking cover behind trees, saying they were North Korean troops who had just taken part in an assault on a Ukrainian position.
He also posted footage which he said showed Russian troops trying to conceal the presence of North Koreans on the battlefield by using a campfire to burn the faces of those who had been killed.
“Ukraine’s Defense Forces and intelligence are working to determine the full extent of the actual losses suffered by Russian units that include North Koreans,” he said.
He added that there was “not a single reason for North Koreans to die in this war”.
The Kremlin referred questions about North Korean deaths to the Russian Ministry of Defence, which has made no comment.
Following reports of the deaths, the EU and countries including the UK, US, Australia and South Korea called Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict a “dangerous expansion… with serious consequences for European and Indo-Pacific security.”
Earlier this week, the US Treasury department announced sanctions on nine people and seven entities over their financial and military support to North Korea.
International
FTX executives shave serious time off their sentences
Ryan Salame and Caroline Ellison, FTX executives convicted for their roles in the notorious crypto fraud led by their former boss Sam Bankman-Fried, have both shaved time off their lengthy prison sentences.
Salame, a former top executive of FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency trading platform, pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges in September 2023, and was sentenced in May to 7 1/2 years in federal prison. He began his sentence in October. But the Federal Bureau of Prisons currently lists his release date as March 1, 2031, more than a year earlier than his initial release date in April 2032. Business Insider first reported Salame’s new release date.
Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the former CEO of FTX’s hedge fund arm, Alameda Research, was sentenced to 2 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to seven federal counts of fraud and conspiracy and was a key witness against Bankman-Fried. Her current release date is listed as July 20, 2025, three months earlier than her initial release date.
Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, does not have a release date listed on the prisons website.
The Bureau of Prisons didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment. However, in several past statements about early release dates, the bureau has told CNN that it does not comment on the conditions of any individual inmate, but inmates can earn good conduct time that is calculated into their projected release date.
Qualified inmates are currently eligible for up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court. Inmates have other ways of earning time credits while incarcerated, including participation in various prison programs.
FTX was a high-profile crypto startup that allowed people to buy and sell digital assets. It had its name emblazoned on an arena in Miami and on every Major League Baseball umpire’s jersey. The exchange had several celebrity endorsers and was widely believed to be a gold-standard for safety and security.
But FTX collapsed in November 2022 when customers pulled their funds as rumors spread about FTX’s unusually close ties to its founder’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda
International
Accusations of genocide. Charges of corruption. Improbably, Netanyahu had a good year
This time last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the doldrums.
“He started very low,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked closely with Netanyahu. “The lowest point that he had.”
Many Israelis accused him of being asleep at the wheel on October 7, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Some even said he enabled it by funding Hamas.
His political support was dismal – even if the Gaza war let him brush aside calls for an election. Polls suggested support for his Likud Party was down 25% from just three months prior.
On its face, the year that followed was hardly uplifting. It brought tens of thousands of deaths, regional conflict, indictments, and accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. And yet, Netanyahu ends the year having transformed his standing in Israel.
“I am running a marathon,” he told a Tel Aviv courtroom earlier this month, facing charges – which he denies – of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. “I can run it with 20 kilos on my back, and I can run it with 10 kilos on my back.”
International
‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration
Fear and uncertainty are spreading across many US college campuses ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, with some schools advising international students to return early from winter break amid promises of another travel ban like the one that stranded students abroad at the start of Trump’s last term.
In a country where more than 1.1 million international students enrolled in US colleges and universities during the 2023-24 academic year, the former president has pledged more hardline immigration policies upon his return to the White House, including an expansion of his previous travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.”
International students generally have nonimmigrant visas that allow them to study in the US but don’t provide a legal pathway to stay in the country.
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