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🎯Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida. As President Putin has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil. NY Times
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🔸Beijing Plans a New Training Facility in Cuba. China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops just 100 miles off Florida’s coast. WSJ
🔸Iran praises Palestinian ‘resistance’ in meetings with Hamas, Islamic Jihad leaders. The groups, both designated terrorist outfits by the European Union, the US, the UK, Canada and others, have been receiving financial support from the Islamic Republic for wreaking havoc in Israel. Iran International
🔸How US-made sniper ammunition ends up in Russian rifles. Information on procurement is hiding in plain sight: Details of deals – importers, suppliers and product descriptions –can be found online by anyone with access to the Russian internet and a grasp of international customs classification codes. Politico
🔸FBI resisted opening probe into Trump’s role in Jan. 6 for more than a year. Hours after he was sworn in as attorney general, Merrick Garland and his deputies gathered in a wood-paneled conference room in the Justice Department for a private briefing on bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Washington Post
🔸Trump All But Confesses to Mishandling Classified Docs on Fox News. In between dismissing the case as “the document hoax” or accusing other presidents of illegally hoarding sensitive documents, Trump offered the bizarre explanation that he couldn’t give up the boxes because they also contained… his clothes. Rolling Stone
🔸Inside China's underground market for high-end Nvidia AI chips. While buying or selling high-end U.S. chips is not illegal in China, U.S. export restrictions have created a de facto underground market with vendors keen not to draw scrutiny from either U.S. or Chinese authorities. Reuters
🔸EU to Focus on Export Controls, Critical Tech in Security Plan. The EU is seeking to strengthen the security tools at its disposal as countries such as China and Russia increasingly use trade and the control of critical supply lines to further political and military goals. Bloomberg
🔸Hackers threaten to leak 80GB of confidential data stolen from Reddit. The hackers are demanding $4.5 million in exchange for deleting the stolen data and for Reddit to withdraw its API pricing changes. TechCrunch
🔸Trading teams at Crypto.com exchange raise conflict questions. Crypto.com, the exchange endorsed by Hollywood actor Matt Damon, deploys internal teams to trade tokens for profit, the latest sign of potential conflicts of interest in the digital assets industry. The Block
🔸A Zero-Day Flaw in Hacked MOVEit Software Was Exposed on Twitter. The researcher didn’t realize he had found a zero-day until about 12 hours after he had made it public. Bloomberg