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      Hvaldimir the ‘Spy’ Whale Is Found Dead in Norwegian Waters

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      The beluga whale, who was first spotted in 2019 wearing what looked like a camera harness, was seen floating in Norwegian waters on Saturday.Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.Sebastian Strand, the founder of the nonprofit, Marine Mind, said that he saw the dead whale floating near Risavika in southwestern Norway on Saturday afternoon.Its cause of death was not immediately clear, he said. There were markings around the whale that could have been made by birds or other marine animals.“It’s heartbreaking,” Mr. Strand said. “He’s touched thousands of people’s hearts just here in Norway.”Mr. Strand added that he was working to send Hvaldimir to a facility where the carcass could be preserved long enough to try to determine a cause of death.By some estimates, the whale was close to 14 feet long and about 2,700 pounds.Hvaldimir, whose name is a combination of “hval,” the Norwegian word for whale, and the name Vladimir, was spotted in northern Norway in 2019, at first alarming fishermen.Belugas tend to move in groups and typically inhabit remote Arctic areas. Adding to the intrigue around Hvaldimir, he was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount.Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale.If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one.The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas, prompting concerns from scientists, activists and experts.“He was completely acclimatized to human culture,” Mr. Strand said, adding that it appeared Hvaldimir had “been in captivity for a lot of his life.”Mr. Strand and his team worked to educate curious residents and tourists about the whale, to protect it as much as possible as it remained outside of its usual habitat.Last year, Hvaldimir was seen off the coast of Sweden, a southward journey that took him farther away from food sources and on a path toward more industrial and dangerous harbors.Mr. Strand said that he had been promoting safety measures for Hvaldimir, who had so far enjoyed a calm year, and had seemed to be in good health on Friday based on reports.“I’m not sure what’s happened,” Mr. Strand said. “But we’ll find out.” More

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      In a Region on Edge, Israel and Hezbollah Launch Major Attacks on Each Other

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      The escalating strikes across the Israel-Lebanon border fueled fears of a bigger conflagration, but both sides signaled that they were de-escalating, for now.Amid fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, the two sides on Sunday mounted the biggest round of cross-border strikes since the war in Gaza began, with Israel bombing dozens of sites in a pre-emptive attack, and Hezbollah launching hundreds of rockets and drones.Within hours, both sides appeared to de-escalate, at least temporarily, but signaled that the violence and dangerous tensions could continue. Hezbollah said its operation, vengeance for the Israeli assassination of a senior commander, had “finished for the day,” but left open the possibility of further action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that “what happened today is not the final word.”For weeks, Israelis have waited in trepidation for a major attack promised by Hezbollah in retaliation for the airstrike last month in a suburb of Beirut that killed one of its leaders, Fuad Shukr. Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, has also vowed retribution for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader, on a visit to Tehran, hours after Mr. Shukr was killed, though it appears to have put that plan on hold.After the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah began firing frequently on Israel, prompting widespread Israeli bombardment. Repeated strikes, counter-strikes and threats have forced more than 160,000 people to evacuate on both sides of the border, stoking fears that the conflict would ignite full-scale regional war pitting Israel not only against Hezbollah — a more potent force than Hamas — but also its patron Iran.Before dawn on Sunday, Israel’s military said it used about 100 warplanes to strike more than 40 Hezbollah launch sites in Lebanon, saying it had acted to prevent a major attack. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least three people had been killed and two others hurt, and Israel said a soldier was killed and two others wounded during the Hezbollah barrage.The Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised address in Beirut, on Sunday.Bilal Hussein/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran Is to Blame for Hacking Into Trump’s Campaign, Intelligence Officials Say

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      American intelligence agencies also confirmed that the effort extended to the Biden-Harris campaign, though that bid was unsuccessful.American intelligence agencies said on Monday that Iran was responsible for hacking into former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign and trying to breach the Biden-Harris campaign.The finding, which was widely expected, came days after a longtime Trump adviser, Roger J. Stone, revealed that his Hotmail and Gmail accounts had been compromised. That intrusion evidently allowed Iranian hackers to impersonate him and gain access to the emails of campaign aides.The announcement was the starkest indication to date that foreign intelligence organizations have mobilized to interfere in the 2024 election at a moment of heightened partisan polarization at home and escalating tensions abroad between Iran and Israel, along with its international allies, including the United States.“Iran seeks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions,” intelligence officials wrote in a joint statement from the F.B.I., the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.The Islamic Republic has “demonstrated a longstanding interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means,” the officials added.The joint statement provided no new details about the attacks, nor did it specify how the agencies knew Iran was responsible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Prisoner Swap, Echoes of Putin’s K.G.B. Past

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      A sprawling exchange with the West underscored the Russian president’s loyalty to his intelligence services. It also showed his continued interest in making deals.As he sat in a Russian jail for five months, the human rights champion Oleg Orlov sometimes grew wistful: What if he walked free someday as part of a deal between Russia and the West?The chances that President Vladimir V. Putin would make a prisoner swap like that seemed as remote as a “star twinkling far, far, far away on the horizon,” Mr. Orlov, 71, said this week. The dire state of the relationship between Moscow and the West, and their diverging interests, appeared to rule out the kind of detailed negotiation necessary for such a complicated deal.But last week, it happened, in the most far-reaching prisoner swap with Moscow since the Cold War: Mr. Putin and his ally Belarus freed Mr. Orlov and 15 other Russians, Germans and Americans in exchange for a convicted assassin and seven other Russians released by the West. It was a moment when Mr. Orlov saw anew how core Mr. Putin’s past with the K.G.B., the Soviet spy agency, was to the Russian president’s identity — and to the sort of country he’s trying to shape Russia into.The swap happened because “Putin is a K.G.B. man, an F.S.B. man,” Mr. Orlov said in a phone interview four days after two private jets carrying him and other released prisoners landed in Cologne, Germany. Espionage is a subject Mr. Orlov knows well, having spent decades studying the crimes of the Soviet secret police as a co-founder of the Memorial human rights group, which was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.The Russian human rights champion Oleg Orlov, shown in court in Moscow in February, was freed in the exchange last week.Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Putin served as a K.G.B. agent in Dresden, East Germany, in the 1980s and ran the F.S.B., its domestic intelligence successor agency, in the 1990s. To the Russian leader, Mr. Orlov said, showing loyalty to the F.S.B. and other Russian intelligence services by winning their agents’ freedom trumped the political risk of releasing opposition figures whom the Kremlin had branded as traitors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Long Johns, Forensics and a Bound Russian Killer: Inside the Big Prisoner Swap

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      The complex choreography caught some prisoners being freed in their robes and slippers, unaware of their fates, and required forensic experts to make positive identifications. The private jet that took off from southwest Germany on Thursday afternoon was carrying a group that may have never expected to be confined together: police officers, doctors, intelligence agents, a senior aide to Germany’s chancellor — and a convicted Russian assassin.In the back of the plane, the assassin, Vadim Krasikov, sat with his hands and feet bound and wearing a helmet that covered his face; he was not heard uttering a word on the entire flight.At the same time, a Russian government jet was also headed for Ankara, Turkey’s capital, carrying officers from the F.S.B. intelligence agency and 16 prisoners being released by Russia and Belarus. At one point, one of the F.S.B. escorts made what seemed like a bad joke to the two best-known Russian dissidents on board: “Don’t have too much fun out there, because Krasikov could come back for you.”This account of the tense hours surrounding the exchange — the biggest between Moscow and the West since the Cold War — is based on new details revealed by Western government officials involved in the process, and on early testimony from the Russian political prisoners released as part of the deal. The swap freed Mr. Krasikov, the American journalist Evan Gershkovich and 22 others in a complex seven-country deal that required intricate planning and timing. The successful transfer highlighted the ability of some of the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies to cooperate on a distinct operation of shared interest, even as Russia and the West engage in a tense standoff over the war in Ukraine.A photograph released by the Russian state news media showing the convicted killer Vadim Krasikov, center right in hat, at a Moscow airport on Thursday.Mikhail Voskresensky/Sputnik, via ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kremlin Confirms Assassin Vadim Krasikov Is an Agent for Russia’s FSB

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      Vadim Krasikov, who was returned to Russia in the big prisoner swap, received a hero’s welcome from President Putin, along with others who were freed.The convicted assassin who was the linchpin of the biggest prisoner swap in decades is a member of the most powerful security agency in Russia, the Kremlin acknowledged on Friday, and had served in a special unit with some agents who now guard President Vladimir V. Putin.The ties help explain Mr. Putin’s determination to free the assassin, Vadim Krasikov, from the German prison where he was serving time for murder. The effort culminated on Thursday when Mr. Krasikov and seven other former prisoners returned to Moscow after an exchange with Western nations that involved 24 adults and seven countries.This was the first time that Moscow had admitted that Mr. Krasikov had been working for the Russian state in the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., an agency that is a successor to the Soviet K.G.B., in which Mr. Putin served in the early stage of his career. The F.S.B. was also the agency that was at the center of the negotiations with the C.I.A. about the swap, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said.Mr. Putin has not hid his admiration for Mr. Krasikov, who had been jailed in Germany since 2019 for the murder of a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin. In an interview in February, Mr. Putin referred to Mr. Krasikov as “a patriot” who was doing his duty by eliminating an enemy of the Russian state.When the freed prisoners arrived at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow at about 10:30 Thursday night, Mr. Putin hugged Mr. Krasikov, the first of the freed to disembark the plane.In a photo released by Russian state media, President Putin is shown at the airport welcoming Russians released in a big prisoner swap with the West.Pool photo by Mikhail Voskresenskiy/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Korea Reports Leak From a Top Intelligence Agency

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      It’s highly unusual for the nation’s authorities to publicly acknowledge a leak from the command​, which is one of South Korea’s top two spy agencies.South Korea was investigating a leak from its top military intelligence command​ that ​local news media said had caused a large amount of sensitive information, including personal data on the command’s agents abroad, to end up in North Korea, its military said Saturday.The military said in a brief statement that it planned to “deal sternly with” those responsible for the leak. But it declined to confirm the local media reports, pending its investigation of the Korea ​Defense Intelligence Command,​ where the leak took place.The command, a secretive arm of the South Korean military, specializes in gathering intelligence on North Korea, a heavily militarized country that often threatens ​its southern neighbor with nuclear weapons.It’s highly unusual for the South Korean authorities to publicly acknowledge a leak from the command​, which is one of South Korea’s top two spy agencies, along with the National Intelligence Service.The intelligence command runs a network of agents, including those disguised ​as South Korean diplomats or using other undercover identities, in China and other parts of Asia.The agents often spend years recruiting North Koreans overseas as their contacts. The information they collect augments the intelligence that the United States and its allies collect on North Korea through spy satellites or by intercepting electronic communications.If personal data about the agents ended up in North Korea, that could seriously damage South Korea’s ability to gather intelligence on the North.The last time a major breach of security was reported at the command was in 2018, when an active-duty military officer affiliated with the command was found to have sold classified information to foreign agents in China and Japan through a retired ​South Korean intelligence officer. The information he sold reportedly included data on the command’s agents in China or data on North Korean weaponry.North and South Korea run vigorous intelligence and counterintelligence operations against each other. South Korea still occasionally ​arrests people accused of spying for North Korea. In recent years, North Korea has also used an army of hackers to attack computer networks in the United States, South Korea and elsewhere to steal information or cryptocurrency.On Thursday, the United States, Britain and South Korea issued a joint advisory warning that North Korea​’s hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign to steal classified military secrets to support​ its nuclear weapons program​.The U.S. Justice Department said ​on Thursday that a North Korean military intelligence operative had been indicted in​ a conspiracy to hack into American health care providers, NASA, U.S. military bases and international entities, stealing sensitive information and installing ransomware to fund more attacks​. A reward of up to $10 million has been offered for information that could lead to ​the arrest of the alleged North Korean operative, Rim Jong Hyok​. More

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      After CrowdStrike Causes Outage, Are U.S. Networks Safe?

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      With each cascade of digital disaster, new vulnerabilities emerge. The latest chaos wasn’t caused by an adversary, but it provided a road map of American vulnerabilities at a critical moment.In the worst-case scenarios that the Biden administration has quietly simulated over the past year or so, Russian hackers working on behalf of Vladimir V. Putin bring down hospital systems across the United States. In others, China’s military hackers trigger chaos, shutting down water systems and electric grids to distract Americans from an invasion of Taiwan.As it turned out, none of those grim situations caused Friday’s national digital meltdown. It was, by all appearances, purely human error — a few bad keystrokes that demonstrated the fragility of a vast set of interconnected networks in which one mistake can cause a cascade of unintended consequences. Since no one really understands what is connected to what, it is no surprise that such episodes keep happening, each incident just a few degrees different from the last.Among Washington’s cyberwarriors, the first reaction on Friday morning was relief that this wasn’t a nation-state attack. For two years now, the White House, the Pentagon and the nation’s cyberdefenders have been trying to come to terms with “Volt Typhoon,” a particularly elusive form of malware that China has put into American critical infrastructure. It is hard to find, even harder to evict from vital computer networks and designed to sow far greater fear and chaos than the country saw on Friday.Yet as the “blue screen of death” popped up from the operating rooms of Massachusetts General Hospital to the airline management systems that keep planes flying, America got another reminder of the halting progress of “cyber resilience.” It was a particularly bitter discovery then that a flawed update to a trusted tool in that effort — CrowdStrike’s software to find and neutralize cyberattacks — was the cause of the problem, not the savior.Only in recent years has the United States gotten serious about the problem. Government partnerships with private industry were put together to share lessons. The F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Homeland Security Department, issue bulletins outlining vulnerabilities or blowing the whistle on hackers.President Biden even created a Cyber Safety Review Board that looks at major incidents. It is modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board, which reviews airplane and train accidents, among other disasters, and publishes “lessons learned.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More