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Cyberattacks by the UK’s enemies are becoming “relentless” as we enter a “new era” of global conflict, an expert has warned. It comes after Russian hackers allegedly acquired top-secret security information on some of the country’s most sensitive military sites, including the HMNB Clyde nuclear submarine base on the west coast of Scotland and the Porton Down chemical weapon lab. The “potentially very damaging” attack last month by hacking group LockBit, which has known links to Russian nationals, saw thousands of pages of data leaked onto the dark web after private security firm Zaun was targeted, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported. The company, which provides security fencing for sites related to the Ministry of Defence, said it had been the victim of a “sophisticated cyber attack”. Responding to the news, Kevin Curran, professor of cyber security at Ulster University, told the PA news agency that LockBit’s attack was “serious” as we approach a potential “World War Three” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said the raid was “likely” sponsored by the Russian state given the nature of its target and that cyber attacks by Britain’s enemies had become “relentless”. Professor Curran warned that we were unprepared for this new era as third-party companies, which hold data on our military infrastructure were not being properly regulated. He said: “You can’t just expect third-party suppliers to adhere to your rules. “There is always a risk when you have third-party suppliers and you do wonder if they adhere to industry best practice. FULL STORY

Japan’s summer this year has its recorded highest average temperature since records began 125 years ago, the country's weather agency said on Friday. “In the summer of 2023, the average summer temperature in Japan was considerably higher in northern, eastern and western Japan. Average temperatures in Japan are the highest for summer since 1898,” the Japan Meteorological Agency said. Based on measurements at 15 locations around the country from June through August, the average temperature deviation was +1.76C, the agency said. That exceeded the previous record of +1.08C in 2010. Between 16 July and 23 August, the maximum temperature records were broken at 106 of 915 monitoring locations across Japan, it said. High temperatures have continued even into the beginning of autumn, with “extremely hot days” being recorded in the city of Sapporo. FULL STORY

Russian forces attacked Ukrainian port facilities on the Danube River used for food exports on Sunday, a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to discuss reviving a grain export deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At least two people were injured in the strikes, a regional military spokesman said. Port infrastructure was hit, causing a fire that was quickly extinguished. Ukraine’s Air Force said 25 drones were used in overnight attacks on the Odesa region, 22 of which were shot down. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that it was targeting fuel storage facilities in the Ukrainian port of Reni used to supply Ukraine’s military. The Russian statement added that the attack was successful, with “all assigned targets neutralized.” The salvo hit just across the border from NATO member Romania, drawing a swift rebuke from the country. Romania’s Ministry of Defense condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms,” calling it “unjustified and in deep contradiction with the rules of international humanitarian law.” The ministry said that there was no direct threat to Romania territory or its territorial waters. FULL STORY

North Korea said Sunday it had simulated a nuclear missile attack to warn the United States of “nuclear war danger.” The country launched several cruise missiles, some of them equipped with mock nuclear warheads, state media outlet KCNA said, describing the exercise as a simulation of a “tactical nuclear attack.” The exercises were meant to “warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger,” KCNA reported the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea as saying. It said the exercises were conducted at dawn on Saturday and involved “two long-range strategic cruise missiles with mock nuclear warheads.” The staged nuclear attack was in response to joint military exercises conducted by the United States and South Korea, earlier in the week, KCNA added. “The recklessness and dangerous nature of the confrontation hysteria recently betrayed by the US and gangsters of the ‘Republic of Korea’ are unprecedented in history,” KCNA said, in a reference to South Korea. FULL STORY

Water levels at Lake Titicaca – the highest navigable lake in the world and South America’s largest – are dropping precipitously after an unprecedented winter heat wave. The shocking decline is affecting tourism, fishing and agriculture, which locals rely on to make a living. “We don’t know what we will do from now until December because the water will keep getting lower,” said 63-year-old Nazario Charca, who lives on the lake and makes a living ferrying tourists around its waters. Visitors have long been attracted to the blue waters and open skies of South America’s largest lake, which straddles more than 3,200 square miles across the border of Peru and Bolivia. Sometimes described as an “inland sea,” it is home to Aymara, Quechua and Uros indigenous communities and sits at an altitude of around 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) in the central Andes mountain range, making it the highest navigable lake in the world. The extreme altitude also exposes the lake to high levels of solar radiation, which enhances evaporation and constitutes most of its water losses. FULL STORY

A biographer of President Biden said that while it would be a surprise, it “wouldn’t be a total shock” if the president drops out of the 2024 race by the end of the calendar year. NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” asked biographer Franklin Foer, whose book about Biden’s first two years in office will be released this week, how surprised he would be if Biden decided to not pursue a second term in office. “I would say it would, it would be a surprise to me. But it wouldn’t be a total surprise,” Foer said, adding that “it wouldn’t be a total shock.” “When he talks about his life, he uses this word, fate, constantly,” he said. “Joe Biden is a very religious guy, and fate is a word loaded with religious meaning. And he always talks about, ‘He can’t say where fate goes.’ And so I always, when I hear that, to me, it’s the ellipses in the sentence when he’s talking about his own future.” Biden announced his reelection campaign earlier this year and has not signaled that he was considering dropping out of the race. The 80-year-old has faced questions from inside and outside his party about concerns regarding his age as the 2024 election approaches. Foer said his book, titled “The Last Politician,” describes how Biden was “underestimated” and how he used that to his advantage. He also said it delves into Biden’s career in policymaking and what techniques he uses to get things done. “It doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old, and I’m not a gerontologist and I can’t predict how the next couple of years will age Joe Biden,” he said. “I think what my book does is shows that he is somebody who, for whom — he’s buried in details. He’s somebody who is very technocratic, really obsessed with the intricacies of policy. He’s a very activist president in that he micromanages a lot of the dealings in the White House” FULL STORY

Better to ask in Pattaya Forum...MOVED

CLOSED on request of OP

Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a probable assassination last week on board his Embraer private jet, held a similar belief. One of his fighters’ tactics to punish deserters was to tape their heads to a block of concrete and then bludgeon them to death with a sledgehammer. The hammer became their symbol. For years, Prigozhin did the Kremlin’s dirty work and sought to spread Russian influence and sow discord among its enemies around the globe. Putin offered Prigozhin some praise after his death, calling him a “talented businessman” who had made a “significant contribution” to the war against Ukraine. But, Andrew Roth wrote this week, Prigozhin’s legacy inside Russia will come down to whether the former Putin ally will bear the mark of a traitor, a word that Putin used during the Wagner uprising in June and others hinted at last week as the early eulogies poured in. On Tuesday, Pjotr Sauer covered Prigozhin’s ‘closed format’ funeral in St Petersburg, where the secrecy appeared to demonstrate the Kremlin’s unease over Prigozhin’s legacy. Ukrainian drones attack planes and six Russian regions Ukrainian drones have attacked at least six regions deep within Russia, including an airfield where they destroyed military transport planes, in one of the largest-scale attacks on Russia in months, Pjotr Sauer reported. A drone assault on the city of Pskov in north-western Russia damaged four IL-76 military cargo aircraft, Russian authorities said early on Wednesday, engulfing two of the planes in flames. Andriy Yusov, the deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, confirmed the strike on the city on Wednesday, saying all four IL-76 military cargo planes had been destroyed and adding that “several more planes were damaged”. FULL ROUND-UP

Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born businessman who owned the department store Harrods, has died aged 94. His death comes almost 26 years to the day after the car crash in Paris that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. In a statement released by Fulham FC, his family said: “Mrs Mohamed Al Fayed, her children and grandchildren wish to confirm that her beloved husband, their father and their grandfather, Mohamed, has passed away peacefully of old age on Wednesday 30 August 2023. “He enjoyed a long and fulfilled retirement surrounded by his loved ones. The family have asked for their privacy to be respected at this time.” Fayed was born in Alexandria and was the son of a schoolteacher. His break in business came after he met his first wife, Samira Khashoggi, the sister of Saudi millionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, who employed him in his Saudi Arabian import business. The role helped him forge new connections in Egypt and he went on to launch his own shipping business, before becoming an adviser to one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, in 1966. He moved to Britain in the 1970s and in 1979, with his brother Ali, he bought the Paris Ritz Hotel. FULL STORY

Rudy Giuliani on Friday pleaded not guilty to Georgia charges that accuse him of trying, along with former president Donald Trump and others, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state. In filing his not guilty plea with the court, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney also waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing set for 6 September. He joins the former president and at least 10 others in forgoing a trip to Atlanta to appear before a judge in a packed courtroom with a news camera rolling. Trump and Giuliani are among 19 people charged in a sprawling, 41-count indictment that details a wide-ranging conspiracy to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected Democratic nominee Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent. The charges against Giuliani, along with other legal woes, signal a remarkable fall for a man who was celebrated as “America’s mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He now faces 13 charges, including violation of Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, the federal version of which was one of his favorite tools as a prosecutor in the 1980s. Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, has said she wants to try all 19 defendants together. But the legal wrangling has already begun in a slew of court filings since the indictment was filed on 14 August. Several of those charged have filed motions to be tried alone or with a small group of other defendants, while others are trying to move their proceedings to federal court. Some are seeking to be tried quickly under a Georgia court rule that would have their trials start by early November, while others are already asking the court to extend deadlines. Due to “the complexity, breadth, and volume of the 98-page indictment”, Giuliani asked the judge in Friday’s filing to give him at least 30 days after he receives information about witnesses and evidence from prosecutors to file motions. Normally, pretrial motions are to be filed within 10 days after arraignment. FULL STORY

There are many jokes that center around older adults waking up before the sun, and even more about teenagers’ late-sleeping habits. Turns out there’s truth to them: The time our body naturally goes to sleep and wakes up is not only part of our genetics, but part of the natural aging process, too. As we age, our bodies change both internally and externally, which is a major factor behind the sleep changes that come later in life. “Like most of the things that change with age, there’s not just one reason, and they are all interconnected,” said Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. We asked Lustig and other experts to break down the main reasons why this occurs, and what you can do to push back if you just want those few extra hours of Zzzs. Earlier wake times are part of the natural aging process. Like other aspects of our physical and mental health, the brain becomes less responsive as we age. “The wiring of the brain is likely not sensing...and responding to the inputs as well as it should because it’s an aging brain,” said Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, the director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at the University of Arizona Health Sciences. These inputs include sunset, sunlight, meals, social cues, and physical activity that help mark where we are in a day. “These are all what we call time givers, or they give time to the brain,” he said. In other words, they help the brain sense where it is in the 24-hour circadian cycle. So, for a younger person, dinner time may help the brain understand that bedtime is in a few hours; for someone older, this connection may not happen. The nerves that are supposed to give the brain time cues have undergone the same amount of degeneration as the brain, Parthasarathy said. This inability to sense time cues is part of the reason why older people tend to get tired before their children or grandchildren. And, as a result, wake up fully rested and earlier than the rest of the world. FULL ARTICLE

Efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment are gaining momentum as election officials in key states are preparing for or starting to respond to legal challenges to Trump's candidacy. The argument to disqualify Trump from appearing on primary or general election ballots in 2024 boils down to Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states that an elected official is not eligible to assume public office if that person "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States, or had "given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof," unless they are granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Several advocacy groups have said that Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, fit that criteria -- that he directly engaged in an insurrection. The legal theory has been pursued, unsuccessfully, against a few other elected Republicans; arguing their actions around Jan. 6 and support for overturning the 2020 election results amounted to the disqualifying behavior. Trump has denied any involvement in the attack on the Capitol. "Joe Biden, Democrats, and Never Trumpers are scared to death because they see polls showing President Trump winning in the general election," Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Chung told ABC News in a statement. "The people who are pursuing this absurd conspiracy theory and political attack on President Trump are stretching the law beyond recognition much like the political prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and DC. There is no legal basis for this effort ... " The push to disqualify Trump under this constitutional clause gained more traction when two members of the conservative Federalist Society, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, recently supported the idea in the pages of the Pennsylvania Law Review. Following the Baude and Paulsen article, retired conservative federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe made the same argument in The Atlantic. FULL STORY

Thailand's King has reduced the eight-year prison sentence of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to a year. Mr Thaksin, who returned home last month after 15 years of self-imposed exile, was immediately sent to jail. He was then moved to the luxury wing of a state hospital after complaining of heart problems. Mr Thaksin has always said the outstanding sentences, over charges of corruption and abuse of power, were politically motivated. Deposed by a military coup in 2006, Mr Thaksin, one of Thailand's most influential and polarising personalities, left the country two years later to avoid a prison sentence. His return on 22 August was assumed to be part of a wider political deal. And it was one that was meant to bring his popular Pheu Thai party together with its one-time adversaries in a compromise government. And it did that. Hours after he arrived, a new coalition government, led by Pheu Thai, voted its candidate Srettha Thavisin as the new PM. The coalition includes Mr Thaksin's former military rivals who deposed his party in 2014 in a coup. Who is Thaksin Shinawatra? Thaksin's return seals grand Thai political bargain Mr Thaksin clearly hoped for leniency as a part of that deal, and King Vajiralongkorn has responded quickly to his request for a pardon, reducing his eight-year sentence to just one. Mr Thaksin is likely to stay in hospital. In response to his request for a royal pardon, the royal gazette on Friday noted his age and "illness". It added that Mr Thaksin "has done good for the country and people and is loyal to the monarchy". FULL STORY

About 61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, an issue that impacts both low-wage and high-income families alike, according to new research from LendingClub. Low-wage earners are most likely to live paycheck to paycheck, with almost 8 in 10 consumers earning less than $50,000 a year unable to cover their future bills until their next paycheck arrives. Yet even 4 in 10 high-income Americans, or those earning more than $100,000, say they're in the same position, the research found. Such a situation is viewed as financially risky because it means those households don't have enough savings to tide them over in case of an emergency, indicating that they are unable to cover their upcoming bills until their next payday. The rate of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck is on the rise, up 2 percentage points from a year earlier, the analysis found. Inflation is partly to blame, with consumers still grappling with higher prices — although prices have cooled since hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022. But a minority of paycheck-to-paycheck consumers point to another issue that's impacting their financial stability: nonessential spending on items such as travel, eating out and streaming services, the analysis found. FULL STORY

Former President Donald Trump's trial in Fulton County, Georgia, will be televised and live streamed, a judge said Thursday. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said he will allow a YouTube stream of all related hearings and trials stemming from the investigation into an alleged scheme to overturn the state's 2020 presidential election results. The live stream will be operated by the court. There will also be pool coverage for television, radio and still photography allowed, he said. The former president has pleaded not guilty in the case. He surrendered last week at the Fulton County jail, after he and 18 others were indicted for allegedly participating in a "criminal enterprise" that aimed to overturn his loss in Georgia's 2020 presidential election. Trump is charged with 13 felony counts. A date for his trial has not yet been set. This would be the first time cameras would be allowed to capture full proceedings in one of the four criminal cases brought against Trump this year. Georgia allows cameras in the courtroom as long as they do not disrupt proceedings. A number of photographers were allowed inside the courtroom for a few minutes before the start of the hearing in Trump's arraignment in New York in April, before they had to leave. Cameras are typically not allowed in New York courtrooms but news organizations had asked for an exception. FULL STORY

Whale hunting is set to return in Iceland despite hopes the temporary ban would remain. Iceland‘s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, announced on Thursday that this summer’s temporary ban on whaling would be lifted in a move international marine conservation organisation OceanCare has described as ‘disappointing’, A suspension on whaling was put in place by the Icelandic government in June, set to expire in August 2023, due to animal welfare concerns. It came after monitoring by Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority on the fin whale hunt found that the killing of the animals took too long based on the main objectives of the Animal Welfare Act. An investigation found that around 40% of hunted whales did not die instantly, with an average time to death of 11.5 minutes. Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority found that two whales had to be shot four times. One of the whales took almost an hour to die, while the other took almost two hours. In anticipation of the ban being lifted, two Icelandic whaling vessels left port yesterday to resume whale hunting, OceanCare said. FULL STORY

A handful of defendants have been sentenced to more than a decade of incarceration over their actions during the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. The Justice Department (DOJ) announced earlier this month that approximately 597 federal defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their activity Jan. 6. About 366 individuals have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. Many of those with the longest sentences include members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers — two far-right extremist groups whose members took to the Capitol to attempt to stop the votes of the 2020 election from being counted. Two members of the Proud Boys — Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl — were sentenced Thursday for actions they took on Jan. 6. Two more Proud Boys, Dominic Pezzola and Ethan Nordean, are scheduled to be sentenced Friday while Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio will be sentenced next week. Here are five of the longest Jan. 6 sentencings so far: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May, after being found guilty on conspiracy charges for his role in the Capitol attack. Rhodes currently has the longest sentence of any Jan. 6 defendant. Judge Amit Mehta laid down the sentence at the time, telling the leader that he is “not a political prisoner” and that he is an “ongoing threat and a peril to this country.” Rhodes’s sentence was also notable because he did not actually enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, but instead he directed his team via a walkie-talkie app as they entered the building in a “stack” formation. The sentence was shorter than the DOJ’s ask for 25 years of imprisonment. FULL STORY

Former President Trump told conservative media personality Glenn Beck he would prosecute his political enemies if elected president again. “You said in 2016, you know, ‘Lock her up,'” Beck reminded Trump of his statements about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 during an appearance on his BlazeTV show Tuesday. “And then when you became president, you said, ‘We don’t do that in America. That’s just not the right thing to do.'” “That’s what they’re doing,” Beck continued, asking the former president, “Do you regret not locking her up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?” Trump, who dismissed the various charges he faces in Georgia, New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., said there is “no choice.” “Well, I’ll give you an example… The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us,” Trump said, adding that he “never hit Biden as hard as I could have.” “I always had such great respect for the office of the president and the presidency … And then I heard he was trying to indict me, and it was him that was doing it,” he said. The former president, also the current front-runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, has been indicted four times this year in connection with his personal business dealings, handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. FULL STORY

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