(BOSTON) — A U.S. cybersecurity company says Russian military agents successfully hacked the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the scandal that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Russian agents launched a phishing campaign in early November aimed at stealing the login credentials for employees of Burisma Holdings, the gas company, according to Area 1 Security, a Silicon Valley company that specializes in e-mail security.

Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. vice president and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, previously served on Burisma’s board.

It was not clear from an eight-page report posted online by Area 1 what the hackers were looking for or may have obtained. Company officials did not immediately respond to e-mailed questions. The timing of the operation suggests, however, that the Russian agents could be searching for material that could damage the Bidens.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump in December for abusing the power of his office by en..

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is dropping its designation of China as a currency manipulator in advance of the signing Wednesday of a Phase 1 U.S.-China trade agreement.

The preliminary pact that the two sides are set to sign includes a section that’s intended to prevent China from manipulating its currency to gain trade advantages.

The action announced Monday comes five months after the Trump administration had branded China a currency manipulator — the first time that any country had been so named since 1994 during the Clinton administration.

Even while removing China from its currency black list, the Treasury Department does name China as one of 10 countries it says require placement on a watch list that will mean their currency practices will be closely monitored. In addition to China, the countries on that monitoring list are Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland and Vietnam.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administrat..

In the days of tension that have followed the U.S. airstrike that took out Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani, an old trope about the Middle East has reared its ugly head. On Wednesday on Fox News, former Deputy National Security adviser K.T. MacFarland repeated it when she claimed that in “…the Middle East, they’ve been fighting for 4,000 years. It’s been an ethno-sectarian battle and psychodrama, and they’ve been killing each other for millennia. Their normal state of condition is war.”

This trope is frequently turned to by those who would have the world believe that war in the Middle East is somehow innate and inevitable. But a look at the history of the region reveals that it’s simply not true. People in the Middle East haven’t “been killing each other” at any rate that exceeds average human levels of conflict. Indeed, the region that lays claim to being the “cradle of civilization” had developed quite, well, civilized and complex systems of compromise and coexistence that allowed its di..

(BANGKOK) — A Chinese visitor to Thailand has been confirmed to be infected with a new strain of coronavirus that has been linked to a pneumonia outbreak in central China, health officials said Monday.

The U.N.’s World Health Organization said Thai officials have reported that a traveler from the Chinese city of Wuhan has been hospitalized in Thailand with the virus.

The outbreak of the virus has been traced to Wuhan, where it affected several dozen people who had been to a major meat and seafood market.

Thai Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said it appears to be the first confirmed case of the virus found outside China, the Bangkok Post newspaper and other Thai media reported.

He identified the infected tourist as a 61-year-old woman whose symptoms were detected on arrival at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport last Wednesday. Her coronavirus was confirmed Sunday by a laboratory test, Anutin said.

She has been treated at an isolation ward at a state health facility outside o..

Hong Kong authorities on Sunday prevented the head of Human Rights Watch from entering the city, where he planned to launch the organization’s annual report spotlighting rights abuses across the globe.

Kenneth Roth, a U.S. citizen, said he was denied entry at the Hong Kong International Airport after arriving from New York. In response to his repeated questions, Roth said officials told him he was blocked for “immigration reasons.”

“Sadly this episode is just the latest evidence that the Chinese government is doing everything it can to undermine the enforcement of international human rights standards,” Roth said in a video on Twitter.

I flew to Hong Kong to release @HRW’s new World Report. This year it describes how the Chinese government is undermining the international human rights system. But the authorities just blocked my entrance to Hong Kong, illustrating the worsening problem. https://t.co/GRUaGh8QUb pic.twitter.com/iTHVEXdbwO

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) January 12, 2020

The..

Princes William and Harry issued a strongly-worded statement Monday denying British newspaper reports that their relationship has broken down in the wake of Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s decision to step down as senior members of the Royal Family.

Spokespeople for the princes said the report was “offensive and potentially harmful,” in a rare public denial of press coverage of the Royal Family.

“Despite clear denials, a false story ran in a U.K. newspaper today speculating about the relationship between the Duke of Sussex and the Duke of Cambridge,” the statement said, referring to the Princes by their official titles. “For brothers who care so deeply about the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful.”

The statement did not specify the newspaper, but it is thought to be the Times of London, which ran a story Monday claiming that Harry and Meghan had been driven away from the Royal Family by the “bullying..

Siemens said it intends to honor a controversial contract to supply signaling systems to an Australian coal mine, defying the demands of activists who said they will continue protests in Germany on Monday.

The company will establish a sustainability committee that will have the power to stop or escalate projects, but the company will ultimately continue with the Adani contract, Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser said in a statement on Sunday.

“I do realize, most of you would have hoped for more,” Kaeser said in the statement. “While I do have a lot of empathy for environmental matters, I do need to balance different interests of different stakeholders.”

Fridays for Future activists, including Greta Thunberg, put pressure on Siemens to renounce the contract and not work with Adani Power Ltd. on the planned Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.

“Siemens’ announcement that it will continue working on Adani’s coal mine while bushfires rage in Australia is nothing short of shameful,” envi..

(WASHINGTON) — The United States is preparing to remove more than a dozen Saudi military students from a training program and return them to their home country after an investigation into a deadly shooting by a Saudi aviation student at a Florida navy base last month, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The 21-year-old Saudi Air Force officer, 2nd Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, opened fire at the base in Pensacola, killing three U.S. sailors and injuring eight other people. The Justice Department has been investigating the incident as an act of terrorism.

Officials have said Alshamrani hosted a party before the shooting, where he and others watched videos of mass shootings. The gunman had also apparently taken to Twitter before the shooting to criticize U.S. support of Israel and accuse America of being anti-Muslim, another U.S. official told the AP last month.

Alshamrani, who was killed by a sheriff’s deputy during the rampage at a classroom building, was undergoing flight trainin..

(TAGAYTAY, Philippines) — Red-hot lava gushed out of a Philippine volcano Monday after a sudden eruption of ash and steam that forced villagers to flee and shut down Manila’s international airport, offices and schools.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage from Taal volcano’s eruption south of the capital that began Sunday. But clouds of ash blew more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) north, reaching the bustling capital, Manila, and forcing the shutdown of the country’s main airport with more than 240 international and domestic flights cancelled so far.

An alternative airport north of Manila at Clark freeport remained open but authorities would shut it down too if ashfall threatens flights, the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines said.

The government’s disaster-response agency reported about 8,000 villagers have moved to at least 38 evacuation centers in the hard-hit province of Batangas and nearby Cavite province, but officials expect the number to swe..

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — Iranian police and security forces fired both live ammunition and tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the Islamic Republic’s initial denial that it shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, online videos purported to show Monday.

There was no immediate report in Iranian state-run media on the incident near Azadi, or Freedom, Square in Tehran on Sunday night after a call went up for protests there. However, international rights groups already have called on Iran to allow people to protest peacefully as allowed by the country’s constitution.

“After successive national traumas in a short time period, people should be allowed to safely grieve and demand accountability,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran. “Iranians shouldn’t have to risk their lives to exercise their constitutional right to peaceful assembly.”

Videos sent to the center and later verified by The Associated Press show a cro..

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — Iran’s only female Olympic medalist said she defected from the Islamic Republic in a blistering online letter that describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.”

Taekwondo athlete Kimia Alizadeh posted the letter on Instagram as Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency said she had fled to the Netherlands. She criticized wearing the mandatory hijab headscarf and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment.

“Whatever they said, I wore,” Alizadeh wrote in the letter posted Saturday. “Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.”

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با سلام آغاز کنم، با خداحافظی یا تسلیت؟ سلام مردم مظلوم ایران، خداحافظ مردم نجیب ایران، تسلیت به شما مردم همیشه داغدار ایران. شما مرا چقدر می‌شناسید؟ فقط آنطور که در مسابقات، در تلویزیون، یا در حضور مقامات دیده‌اید. اجازه دهید حالا آزادانه، هویت سانسور شده‌ام را معرفی کنم. می‌گویند کیمیا پس از این چیزی نخواهد شد. خودم از این هم فراتر می‌روم و می‌گویم قبل از این هم چیزی نبود..

(BAGHDAD) — Four members of Iraq’s military were wounded Sunday in a rocket attack targeting an air base just north of Baghdad where American trainers are present, Iraqi security officials said.

The attack by at least six rockets came just days after Iran fired ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq that house U.S. forces, causing no casualties.

Recent heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran were sparked last month when a rocket attack killed an American contractor at a base in Iraq. The U.S. has blamed that attack and others on Iran-backed militias.

Sunday’s attack wounded an Iraqi air force officer and three enlisted men, Iraqi security officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The rockets struck Balad air base, which hosts American trainers, advisers and a company that provides maintenance services for F-16 aircraft. Some rockets fell on a restaurant inside the airbase, the officials sai..

(BERLIN) — Two World War II bombs were successfully defused in the western German city of Dortmund on Sunday, hours after thousands of people were evacuated from the surrounding area, officials said.

The bombs were 250-kilogram (330-pound) American and British bombs. Authorities initially thought they had detected four bombs, but later clarified that only two were found.

Authorities had evacuated two hospitals and opened schools for residents who had to leave their homes. City officials had asked about 14,000 people to leave the areas where the bombs were buried.

The city’s train station had also been shut down and trains were rerouted. Before experts defused the two bombs, helicopters patrolled overhead to ensure everyone had evacuated.

Almost 75 years after the end of the war, unexploded bombs are frequently found in Germany. Disposing of them sometimes entails large-scale evacuations as a precaution.

(MILAN) — The Italian National Fashion Chamber is promoting a diversity agenda among Milan’s major fashion houses, a year after several top Italian brands faced criticism for designs and remarks seen as culturally and racially insensitive.

Its manifesto backed by major Italian fashion brands aims to increase racial and gender diversity in key roles in Milan’s fashion houses, which fashion chamber president Carlo Capasa acknowledged was lagging in a recent interview with The Associated Press ahead of Milan Fashion Week.

‘’We have been speaking for many years against discrimination based on gender, religion, skin color and physical ability. But we must acknowledge that this has not been truly implemented,’’ Capasa said. ‘’We looked at our industry and we saw there is disparity. We saw that a disparity of gender persists, that there are conditions not favorable to women in the workplace and in some cases there is discrimination.’’

While Capasa resisted framing the manifesto as a direct..

(WARSAW, Poland) — Judges from across Europe, many of them dressed in their judicial robes, marched silently in Warsaw on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Polish peers who are protesting a bill that would allow the government to fire judges who issue rulings officials don’t like.

The judges visiting the Polish capital descended the steps of the Supreme Court to applause and chants of “Thank you!” from a large crowd. Their show of support came amid a four-year struggle to protect judicial independence under Poland’s populist government.

The European judges, joined by many Polish judges, lawyers and other citizens, marched from the high court to the parliament, some carrying Polish and European Union flags. City hall estimated that 15,000 people took part.

An organizer of the event read out a list of the countries represented, including Germany, Denmark, Italy and Croatia. Applause was strongest at the mention of Hungary and Turkey, where judicial independence has been curtailed ..

(DUBAI, United Arab Emirates) — Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the Mideast’s longest-ruling monarch who seized power in a 1970 palace coup and pulled his Arabian sultanate into modernity while carefully balancing diplomatic ties between adversaries Iran and the U.S., has died. He was 79.

The British-educated, reclusive sultan reformed a nation that was home to only three schools and harsh laws banning electricity, radios, eyeglasses and even umbrellas when he took the throne.

Under his reign, Oman became known as a welcoming tourist destination and a key Mideast interlocutor, helping the U.S. free captives in Iran and Yemen and even hosting visits by Israeli officials while pushing back on their occupation of land Palestinians want for a future state.

“We do not have any conflicts and we do not put fuel on the fire when our opinion does not agree with someone,” Sultan Qaboos told a Kuwaiti newspaper in a rare interview in 2008.

Oman’s state-run news agency announced his death early..