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ICYMI:
Israel swears in a new government
In a special session of the Israeli Knesset on Sunday night, the coalition government formed by Yamina Party leader Naftali Bennet and Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid passed with the support of 60 MKs. Fifty-nine MKs opposed the new government while MK Saeed Alhamori of the Ra’am Party (United Arab List) abstained.
Naftali Bennet will now serve as prime minister until 2023 when he will rotate with Yair Lapid who is currently serving as the alternate prime minister and defense minister. Under the new government, Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party will serve as the finance minister, Ayelet Shaked of Yamina will serve as the minister of the interior, and Nitzan Horowitz of the Meretz Party will serve as the minister of health.
After the vote, Bennet and Netanyahu shook hands, but when Bennet took the podium to address the Knesset, multiple MKs shouted and heckled. Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party shouted “shame” while waving posters with the pictures of victims of terrorism. He was removed from the chamber.
“The loud tone of the screams is the same as the failure to govern during your term in office,” Bennet said the Likud MKs. “This is not a day of mourning. There is not disengagement here. There is no harm being caused to anyone. There is a change of government in a democracy. That’s it. And I assure you it is a government that will work for the sake of all the people.
“We will do all we can so that no one should have to feel afraid. We are here in the name of good and to work. And I say to those who intend to celebrate tonight, don’t dance on the pain of others. We are not enemies; we are one people.”
The vote marked the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s record fifteen years in the Balfour House. However, Netanyahu vowed to remain head of the Likud Party and run for prime minister again in the next election.
“We will continue to work together,” Netanyahu told the Likud when he was given a chance to speak. “I will lead you in a daily struggle against this dangerous left-wing government to topple it, and with God’s help, it will happen much faster than you think.”
Netanyahu then proceeded to call Bennet “fake-right.” He also said that he is worried after hearing Bennet talk tough on Iran because “Bennet always does the opposite of what he says.”
Netanyahu leads behind a legacy that saw Israel go from a “marginal state” into a leading world power. His accomplishments include the Abraham Accords, overseeing the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem, the construction of new roads and railways, and the improvement of the quality of life in the country.
“All of this didn’t happen by accident,” Netanyahu said, referring to his successes as prime minister. “It happened because we ran a smart and focused security policy that made our enemies pay a price.”
Multiple world leaders have congratulated the new government.
US President Joe Biden released a statement that read in part, “I look forward to working with Prime Minister Bennett to strengthen all aspects of the close and enduring relationship between our two nations. Israel has no better friend than the United States. The United States remains unwavering in its support for Israel’s security. My administration is fully committed to working with the new Israeli government to advance security, stability, and peace for Israelis, Palestinians, and people throughout the broader region.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel shared a message on Twitter that said, “Germany and Israel are connected by a unique friendship that we want to strengthen further. With this in mind, I look forward to working closely with you.”
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz congratulated the new government also on Twitter, writing, “Austria is committed to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and will continue to stand by Israel’s side.”
Dominic Raab, the United Kingdom’s foreign minister, said he looked forward to continued UK-Israel “cooperation on security, trade and climate change, and working together to secure peace in the region.”
Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesman for Hamas, said, “Regardless of the shape of the government in Israel, it will not alter the way we look at the Zionist entity. It is an occupation and a colonial entity, which we should resist by force to get our rights back.”
Biden says the US is “back at the table” as the G7 summit comes to a close
On Sunday, President Biden told the Group of Seven nations—the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, and Italy—that the US was “back at the table.”
“I conveyed to each of my G7 counterparts the US is going to do our part,” Biden told the media after the summit had concluded. America is back to the table. The lack of participation in the past and full engagement was noticed significantly, not only by the leaders of those countries but by the people in the G7 countries.”
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, preferred bilateral diplomacy over multilateral organizations.
During the three-day summit held in Cornwall, England, the G7 leaders vowed to crack down on the use of forced labor, fight ransomware, and call out China and Russia for human rights violations. They also vowed to donate one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to the rest of the world.
The G7 also backed a 15% global minimum tax on corporations to create “a fairer tax system for the 21st century and reversing a 40-year race to the bottom.”
The 25-page communique released at the end of the summit said that the G7 nations would “continue to work together including through our own available domestic means and multilateral institutions to…promote our values, including by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.”
President Biden met with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson before the summit, and will now head to Brussels to meet with NATO and EU leaders. He will end his first overseas trip as president in Geneva, Switzerland where he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
Over 800 criminals arrested in one of the largest international sting operations in history
In 2018, the FBI took down a Canadian encryption company that manufactured both hardware and software for criminals to be able to communicate without fear of being monitored. After the company was taken offline criminals were at a loss, they had no secure way to communicate. Until the FBI stepped in.
Operation Trojan Shield was the name given to the worldwide sting operation that oversaw the creation of AMON, a secure encrypted messaging app. The app went live in October 2019 and was downloaded onto special phones that did not call out or browse the internet. The app quickly spread throughout the criminal underworld via word of mouth and was soon being used by over 10,000 people in over 100 countries. And the whole time, the FBI and other western intelligence organizations around the world were reading and recording every message.
On Monday, ANOM was taken down and over 800 criminals simultaneously arrested by law enforcement agencies all around the world. The police also seized 250 guns, 55 luxury cars, and more than $148 million in cash and cryptocurrencies.
While active, the FBI and its’ partners collected over 27 million messages from over 13,000 devices in 45 languages. The flow of intelligence “enabled us to prevent murders. It led to the seizure of drugs that led to the seizure of weapons. And it helped prevent a number of crimes,” Calvin Shivers, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigative division, told a news conference in The Hague, Netherlands.
Australian Federal Police Commander Jennifer Hearst called it “a watershed moment in global law enforcement history.”
Nick Merrill, a cybersecurity researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said the investigation offers “a pretty good recipe" for law enforcement agencies to compromise an existing service or build one and wait “for the right time to strike.”
“Either way, these centralized services provide a central point of weakness,” Merrill said.
Other stories from around the world:
🇮🇷 Iranian warships enter the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. Pentagon “concerned.” (Politico)
🇺🇦 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “surprised” and “disappointed” with Biden’s move to lift sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. (Axios)
🇺🇸 The FBI recovered $2.3 million of the ransom paid to the Colonial Pipeline hackers. (The Wall Street Journal)
🇰🇵 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears to have lost a noticeable amount of weight, prompting questions about his health. (The Washington Post)
🇧🇫 Militants slaughter 132 people in raid on a village in Burkina Faso. (Al Jazeera)
Quote of the week:
Today is the third day [in prison], the day when I was supposed to defend my master's thesis in the morning, and in the evening go with Roman to a restaurant, drink champagne, eat pasta, enjoy summer, kiss, and love. However, everything turned out a little differently…It's very bitter to think about it, but it seems that I'll miss a lot of things in life…Please don't blame Roman for the way things have turned out. Things will be hard for him, but I hope that he will cope.
~ Sofia Sapega, the girlfriend of detained journalist Roman Protasevich, in a letter from prison to her parents.
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