While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, March 29
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US President Joe Biden kicks off what the White House is calling a three-week “Investing in America” tour by US officials.
PHOTO: AFP
Biden kicks off campaign touting US economy
President Joe Biden launched a new drive on Tuesday to promote a major theme of his expected re-election campaign, touting what he said was a resurgence of US manufacturing – and warning Republicans could tank the economy.
“I’ve been determined to make things in this country again, to build American manufacturing capacity,” Mr Biden said, at Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Durham, North Carolina, that recently announced a US$5 billion (S$6.6 billion) expansion.
Ramping up US capacity in a global race to produce the tiny, high-tech components at the heart of most modern technology has been a priority for Mr Biden since he took office in 2021.
His trip to the factory kicked off what the White House is calling a three-week “Investing in America” tour where top officials will visit some 20 states to tout newly created manufacturing jobs in the semiconductor industry and in a variety of other sectors boosted by massive government incentives.
Russian forces making no headway in Bakhmut, Avdiivka
Russian forces remain relentless in their attempts to take full control of the bombed-out eastern Ukrainian towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka but were not making progress, Ukrainian military officials said, as a Russian-installed official claimed otherwise.
The two towns along with nearby communities in the industrial Donetsk region continued to receive the brunt of Russia’s attacks, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in its Tuesday evening statement.
“They simply try to exhaust our troops with attack after attack,” Mr Serhiy Cherevatiy, spokesman for the eastern group of Ukrainian troops, said on national television on Tuesday night, reporting 70 shelling incidents in Bakhmut alone.
Video shows police storming building, killing shooter
Video released on Tuesday showed Nashville, Tennessee, police officers storming a private Christian grade school on Monday before confronting and fatally shooting an attacker who killed three nine-year-old students and three adult staff members.
The six minutes of harrowing footage, edited together from the body-worn cameras of two responding officers and released by the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, showed officers clearing several first-floor classrooms before heading upstairs to the second floor as gunfire is heard.
The officers run down a hallway - past what appears to be a victim lying on the ground - and into a lounge area, where the suspect is seen dropping to the floor after being shot.
N. Korean hackers posed as NYT, Voice of America staff
Suspected North Korean hackers are posing as journalists and trying to gather intelligence about international officials’ approach to nuclear security policy and Kim Jong Un’s government, according to new research.
A prolific cyber-espionage group that’s targeted US and South Korean government organisations, academics and think-tanks in recent months, is using fabricated personas in order to collect strategic intelligence on behalf of North Korean leaders, according to findings published on Tuesday by Mandiant, a threat intelligence unit of Google Cloud.
By masquerading as a journalist from Voice of America, a US-owned news network, members of the group known as APT43 are contacting subject-matter experts to inquire about nuclear security policy and weapons proliferation, researchers said.
FTX founder charged in US with bribing China officials
US prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the founder of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of paying a US$40 million (S$53 million) bribe to Chinese officials so they would unfreeze his hedge fund’s accounts.
The new bribery conspiracy charge adds the pressure on the 31-year-old former billionaire, who now faces a 13-count indictment over the November collapse of FTX.
Prosecutors had previously accused Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of dollars in customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, and orchestrating an illegal campaign donation scheme to buy influence in Washington, DC.
