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Ukraine incursion destroys key Russian bridge

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Ukraine incursion destroys key Russian bridge

Ukraine has destroyed a strategically important bridge over the river Seym, as it continues its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Russian officials have been quoted as saying the operation near the town of Glushkovo has cut off part of the local district.

The bridge was used by the Kremlin to supply its troops and its destruction could hamper their efforts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops were strengthening their positions in Kursk, and called the captured territories an exchange fund, implying they could be swapped for Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow.

Now in its second week, this is Ukraine’s deepest incursion into Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.

Ukraine’s surprise cross-border operation has resulted in more than 120,000 people fleeing to safety.

But amid Ukrainian claims of territorial gains, Kyiv has repeatedly maintained it does not wish to occupy Russia.

“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Friday.

Mykhailo Podolyak said one of the key objectives they wanted out of their incursion into Russia was to get Moscow to negotiate “on our own terms”.

“In the Kursk region, we can clearly see how the military tool is being used objectively to persuade Russia to enter a fair negotiation process,” he wrote on X, adding Kyiv has proven “effective means of coercion”.

The head of the Ukrainian military, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Friday that the offensive had made further progress.

“The troops of the offensive group continue to fight and have advanced in some areas from one to three kilometres towards the enemy,” he told President Zelensky in a video posted on social media.

Syrsky said he hoped to take “many prisoners” from a battle in the village of Mala Loknya, about 13km (8 miles) from the border.

As Ukraine’s advance continues, officials in Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have said they will evacuate five villages starting on Monday.

“From 19 August, we are closing access to five settlements, removing residents and helping them bring out their property,” Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on the Telegram social messaging app, naming small villages near the border.

However, as Ukraine moves further into western Russian territory, Russian forces are equally making gains in Ukraine’s east.

On Friday, Moscow said its troops had captured Serhiivka, the latest in a string of towns claimed by Russian troops in recent weeks.

The latest advances bring the Russians closer to the city of Pokrovsk, a vital logistics hub that sits on a main road for supplies to Ukrainian troops along the eastern front.

Pokrovsk lies north-west of the Russian-held Donetsk region, which has been under Ukrainian fire since Friday morning, leaving several civilians injured.

A message from the head of the city’s military administration, Sergiy Dobryak, on Thursday, urged people to evacuate as Russia was “rapidly approaching the outskirts”.

Map of eastern Ukraine
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FTX executives shave serious time off their sentences

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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

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Accusations of genocide. Charges of corruption. Improbably, Netanyahu had a good year

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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.”

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‘It’s a scary time’: US universities urge international students to return to campus before Trump inauguration

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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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