TOP NEWS

Cyberattacks
USA: China hacked the Treasury Department

China is accused of orchestrating a cyberattack on the US Treasury Department earlier in December, reports the AP.

According to a spokesperson for the department, state-funded Chinese hackers accessed several workstations and a number of non-classified documents.

The attackers used the cybersecurity service Beyond Trust to remotely control the department's computers and access the documents.

The Syrian War  Swedish Reactions
Professor: Save Kurdish autonomy in Syria

The Swedish government should work to prevent Turkey from implementing its plans to weaken and abolish Kurdish autonomy in Syria. This is what Jan Hallenberg, professor emeritus of political science, writes on SvD Debatt.

It would be a tragedy if an autonomy that has given a persecuted ethnic group some freedom and self-determination were to be wiped out, writes Hallenberg. In addition to fighting IS in the US, the Kurds are responsible for the prison camps where thousands of IS members are being held, he adds.

“It would be a disaster for the stability of the region, and for US security interests, if these people somehow got out of the prison camps.”

Plane crash in South Korea
Data shows: It happened in the last minutes before the crash

At 8:57 a.m. on Sunday, the control tower at Muan airport warned of “bird activity” near the runway. The Mayday call came at 8:59 a.m., writes the Wall Street Journal.

According to data analyzed by Flightradar24, the plane then made a 180-degree turn to approach from the opposite direction. At 9:01 a.m., the control tower gave permission for a second landing from the north. At the same time, passengers sent text messages to their family members. One person wrote that a bird had stuck on the plane’s wing.

The plane touched down about halfway down the runway, without the landing gear extended. The flaps on the leading and trailing edges of the wings, which are used to control speed during landing, were retracted.

Lee Geun-young, who runs a restaurant next to the airport, heard loud bangs and then saw the plane crash into a concrete wall.

“The heat on my face was like steam from a sauna heater,” he says.