In the hours after an American airstrike killed Qassem Soleimani, the powerful major general of the elite Iranian Quds Force, the world is braced for how Iran might respond. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the country had already settled on a plan.
When Yulia Radochinskaya landed at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from Moscow on Dec. 26, she told US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers she was in town to buy a cellphone and laptop.
Protesters stormed the US Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, following airstrikes carried out by American forces against the pro-Iran militia Kata’ib Hezbollah which killed 25 of its fighters and injured 50. US officials said the strikes came in response to a Kata’ib Hezbollah rocket attack near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk by that killed a US contractor and injured four US soldiers.
An international counterfeiting ring shipped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of counterfeit sneakers to the United States using an elaborate web of fictitious company names, bogus paperwork, phony email addresses, and burner phones. That’s according to a now-unsealed federal complaint, which says the fake Nike and Louis Vuitton footwear would be worth more than $472 million if it were real.
If weather permits, the New York City Police Department will fly drones over tonight’s New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, marking the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used to patrol the skies at the annual event.
Authorities arrested a Chinese national Thursday for taking pictures of a restricted area at a US Navy installation in Key West, Florida. The case mirrors a near-identical incident that occurred last December, in which a Chinese student was caught capturing images of buildings and antenna arrays at the same base.
An organization designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center paid for a Trump administration official to attend its annual legal convention last summer, according to a recently released White House Office travel report. The arrangement was discovered by researcher Meredith Lerner of nonprofit government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
About 3.4 million Russian citizens—roughly 5% of the total population—are now banned from traveling abroad due to unpaid debts, according to Russian news agency TASS, citing a spokesperson for the nation’s Federal Bailiff Service.
A convicted sex offender living in Arizona allegedly threatened to “pull a mass shooting” at the Iowa statehouse in Des Moines because a bill he thought would ease his registration requirements hasn’t moved quickly enough through the approval process.
When Kazakhstani computer programmer Alexandra Elbakyan learned recently that she had been targeted for investigation by the US Department of Justice, she says she wasn’t particularly surprised.
A military contractor sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Chinese ballistic vests, helmets, and riot gear to the US government while falsely claiming they were made in America. That’s according to a newly-unsealed criminal complaint obtained by Quartz.
After the US House and Senate passed a $1.4 trillion spending package this week, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle congratulated themselves, which funds the federal government through September. It adds nearly $2 billion in additional funding for fighting wildfires, sets aside $25 million for gun violence research, and apportions $7.6 billion for the 2020 Census.
The skies above Iran are looking pretty unfriendly right now.
When former CIA director James Woolsey said in 2017 that he was “confident the Russians will be back, and that they will take what they have learned last year to attempt to inflict even more damage in future elections,” he was referring primarily to cyberattacks against electronic voting machines and voter registration databases.
When Wei Li walked across the southern US border into San Ysidro, California in September, he told US border officers—twice—that he had nothing to declare. He was lying.
Guards at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where former US corporate security executive Paul Whelan has been held on espionage charges since last year, rejected a turkey dinner brought to Whelan by American consular officials for Thanksgiving.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is paying nearly double the going rate to carry out “high-risk” deportation flights, largely because so many air charter companies refuse to do business with the agency.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bought a year’s worth of access to North Carolina driver’s license data, which the agency used to identify and locate undocumented immigrants living in the state, for less than $27—about the cost of a large bucket of chicken at KFC.
US president Donald Trump describes Rudy Giuliani as a “great crime fighter,” yet almost three years after multiple shortcomings with Giuliani’s corporate website were first pointed out, the president’s personal lawyer has not brought it up to even the most rudimentary security standards.
Most of the world doesn’t recognize Crimea as part of Russia. But Apple does.
A prominent art dealer has been charged in US federal court on charges related to “trafficking in stolen and looted Cambodian antiquities.”
An intelligence analyst working as a contractor for the Department of Defense (DoD) has been charged with fraud after allegedly overbilling the government by more than $100,000.
The US Navy lacks the parts and materials it needs to keep hundreds of fighter jets operational, which could affect the nation’s ability to fight future wars. That’s the key takeaway from an audit released this week (pdf) by the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG), which is focused on the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet—the Navy’s workhorse attack aircraft since 1995.
US president Donald Trump is almost two weeks into the impeachment hearings that have roiled his administration. But it hasn’t prevented him from making some winter plans to play a little golf.
