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      Terrorists Are Paying for Check Marks on X, Report Says

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      The report shows that X has accepted payments for subscriptions from entities barred from doing business in the United States, a potential violation of sanctions.X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, is potentially violating U.S. sanctions by accepting payments for subscription accounts from terrorist organizations and other groups barred from doing business in the country, according to a new report.The report, by the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on accountability for large technology companies, shows that X, formerly known as Twitter, has taken payments from accounts that include Hezbollah leaders, Houthi groups, and state-run media outlets in Iran and Russia. The subscriptions, which cost $8 a month, offer users a blue check mark — once limited to verified users like celebrities — and better promotion by X’s algorithm, among other perks.The U.S. Treasury Department maintains a list of entities that have been placed under sanctions, and while X’s official terms of service forbid people and organizations on the list to make payments on the platform, the report found 28 accounts that had the blue check mark.“We were surprised to find that X was providing premium services to a wide range of groups the U.S. has sanctioned for terrorism and other activities that harm its national security,” said Katie Paul, the director of the Tech Transparency Project. “It’s yet another sign that X has lost control of its platform.”X and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Musk has said that he wants X to be a haven for free speech and that he will remove only illegal content.Since Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022, the company has made drastic changes to the way it does business — in some cases spurning advertising in favor of subscription dollars. It has also restored thousands of barred accounts and rolled back rules that once governed the site.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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      U.S. Hits Back at Iran With Sanctions, Criminal Charges and Airstrikes

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      In the hours before the United States carried out strikes against Iran-backed militants on Friday, Washington hit Tehran with more familiar weapons: sanctions and criminal charges.The Biden administration imposed sanctions on officers and officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s premier military force, for threatening the integrity of water utilities and for helping manufacture Iranian drones. And it unsealed charges against nine people for selling oil to finance the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.The timing seemed designed to pressure the Revolutionary Guards and its most elite unit, the Quds Force, at a moment of extraordinary tension in the Middle East. Although the sanctions have been brewing for some time and the charges were filed earlier under seal, the region has been in turmoil for months.The actions are part of a coordinated governmentwide effort to disrupt Iran’s efforts to use illicit oil sales to fund terrorism, and to push back on the country’s increasingly capable offensive cyberoperations. In the 15 years since the United States mounted a major cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the country has trained a generation of hackers and struck back at Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, among others. Two American officials said the United States conducted cyberoperations against Iranian targets on Friday but declined to provide details.The effects of sanctions and indictments are hard to measure. Few Iranian officers or officials keep assets in Western banks or travel to the United States, meaning the sanctions may have little practical effect. While the indictments and sanctions have a psychological element, demonstrating to Iranians and their business associates around the world that Western intelligence agencies are often tracking their movements and their transactions, actual arrests and trials are infrequent.“The reason that we bring these cases is, we know that the money Iran obtains from the illicit sale of oil is used to fund its malign activities around the world,” Matthew G. Olsen, who heads the national security division of the Justice Department, said on Friday. “The threats posed by Iran and the destabilizing effects of its actions have only come into sharper relief since the attacks of Oct. 7,” the day of the Hamas attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people.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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      NJ Man Pleads Guilty to 2022 Hate Crime Spree Targeting Orthodox Jews

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      Over several hours, the man drove a car into four men whose clothes identified them as Orthodox Jews, and stabbed one of them, federal prosecutors said.A New Jersey man pleaded guilty Thursday to federal hate crime charges for a rampage in 2022 in which he used a stolen vehicle and another car to try to kill four Jewish men in and around Lakewood, N.J., home to one of the most populous communities of Orthodox Jews in the United States.The man, Dion Marsh, 29, pleaded guilty to five federal hate crime charges and one charge of carjacking. Last week, Mr. Marsh pleaded guilty in Ocean County Superior Court in New Jersey to a single state charge of terrorism.Mr. Marsh began his spree on the afternoon of April 8, 2022, when he attempted to carjack a vehicle driven by a man who was wearing traditional clothes that made him visibly identifiable as Jewish, according to a statement by the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey. That driver locked his doors and drove away, but not before Mr. Marsh managed to reach his hand inside an open window. The car traveled a block before Mr. Marsh let go, according to the prosecutor’s office.Minutes later, Mr. Marsh pulled a Jewish man from another car and physically assaulted him before driving away in his car, according to a news release from the office of Philip R. Sellinger, the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.For the next seven hours, prosecutors said, Mr. Marsh used the stolen car and another vehicle to terrorize Lakewood and the nearby community of Jackson Township, striking four men who were all wearing clothes that identified them as Orthodox Jews.After ramming one man with the stolen car, Mr. Marsh got out and stabbed him in the chest with a knife, prosecutors said. Other victims had broken bones and internal injuries from the attacks. All the victims survived.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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      Frozen U.S. Funding for UNRWA in Gaza Is Minimal, State Dept. Says

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      Just $300,000 is on hold after Israeli claims that UNRWA employees joined the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, U.S. officials say.The State Department downplayed the significance on Tuesday of its decision to pause funding for the main U.N. aid agency in Gaza, explaining that it had already provided virtually all the money allocated by Congress for that purpose and that the Biden administration hoped the matter could be resolved quickly.More than 99 percent of American dollars approved by Congress for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been sent to the agency, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said on Tuesday.The State Department paused the money “temporarily” on Friday after accusations by Israel that a dozen UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, with some holding hostages within Gaza. At least 17 other donor nations have also suspended their funding to the agency, according to the group U.N. Watch.Human rights groups and progressive Democrats in Congress have denounced the move, saying that it will deprive innocent Palestinians of desperately needed aid. But Mr. Miller said the State Department had sent all but $300,000 of about $121 million budgeted for UNRWA to the agency, suggesting that the near-term effect of the U.S. action within Gaza will be minor.U.S. officials suggested that the real question is how much more money Congress will be willing to approve for an agency that many Republicans condemn for what they call anti-Israel bias and Hamas sympathies. Underscoring that uncertainty, witnesses at a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday denounced UNRWA and called for its restructuring or replacement.Israel’s government says that at least 12 employees of the agency participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and that UNRWA employs as many as 1,300 Hamas members. Israel estimates that the attack left roughly 1,200 people dead; another 240 people were taken hostage.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?  More

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      Bali Bombing Conspirators Get 5 More Years at Guantánamo Bay

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      A military jury sentenced two Malaysian men to 23 years for helping perpetrators of the bombing that killed 202 people, but a side deal reduced the punishment.A military jury at Guantánamo Bay sentenced two prisoners to 23 years in confinement on Friday for conspiring in the 2002 terrorist bombing that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia. But the men could be freed by 2029 under a secret deal and with sentencing credit.Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, have been held by the United States since the summer of 2003, starting with three years in C.I.A. black site prisons where they were tortured. They pleaded guilty to war crimes charges last week.About a dozen relatives of tourists who were killed in the attacks spent an emotional week at the court and testified to their enduring grief. A jury of five U.S. military officers, assembled to decide a sentence in the 20-to-25-year range, returned 23 years after deliberating for about two hours on Friday.But, unknown to the jurors, a senior Pentagon official reached a secret agreement over the summer with the defendants that they would be sentenced to at most six more years. In exchange for the reduced sentence, they were required to provide testimony that might be used at the trial of an Indonesian prisoner, known as Hambali, who is accused of being a mastermind of the Bali bombing and other plots as a leader of the Qaeda affiliate group Jemaah Islamiyah.Then, separately, the judge, Lt. Col. Wesley A. Braun, cut 311 days off Mr. Bin Amin’s sentence and 379 days off Mr. Bin Lep’s because prosecutors missed court deadlines for turning over evidence to defense lawyers as they prepared their case.But the men could go home earlier. “The pretrial agreement contemplates the possibility of repatriation before the sentence is complete,” said Brian Bouffard, Mr. Bin Lep’s lawyer. When they are returned, he added, it will be to Malaysia’s state-run deradicalization program and a lifetime of monitoring by national security authorities.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?  More

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      In Bali Bombing Trial, Victims Describe Their Pain and Prisoners Apologize

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      A Guantánamo military court heard anguishing testimony at the sentencing hearing for two Malaysian prisoners who pleaded guilty after 20 years of detention.Relatives of tourists killed in the 2002 terrorist bombing in Bali, Indonesia, spoke of endless, devastating grief, and two prisoners who conspired in the attack renounced violence in the name of Islam on Thursday for a U.S. military jury assembled at Guantánamo Bay to deliberate their sentence.The prisoners, Mohammed Farik Bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, both Malaysians, pleaded guilty last week to war crimes charges for conspiring with an affiliate of Al Qaeda that carried out the attack. The bombings killed 202 people from 22 nations.“No God of any religion rewards such acts of horror,” said Solomon Lamagni-Miller, 18, of London. He was born after his uncle, Nathaniel Dan Miller, 31, was killed in the bombing and read a statement written by the victim’s mother, his grandmother.Christopher Snodgrass of Glendale, Ariz., said the loss of his daughter, Deborah, 33, in the bombing and other “terrorist activities worldwide” left him despising “over 20 percent of the world population, Muslims. I’m a religious person, and the hate-filled person I have become is certainly not what I wanted.”Echoing the sentiment of several family members, he appealed to the jury to “deal with these murderers in such a manner that they can’t do to others as they’ve done to us.”For hours this week, fathers, mothers, a brother and three sisters of the victims offered anguished descriptions of searches for missing relatives, of life-altering burns and of the vacuum left by the deaths of young people who had gone on vacation in Bali and never came home.Two of Mr. Bin Amin’s elder brothers tearfully asked the jury for leniency. Then both defendants renounced their terrorist pasts, apologized to the families and said they were tortured while in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prison network from 2003 to 2006.The men were captured in Thailand in June 2003. A U.S. military jury is hearing the case to decide a sentence in the 20- to 25-year range, and cannot grant credit for time served. There is, however, a secondary, secret agreement in which the men could return to Malaysia later this year.Mr. Bin Amin’s brothers flew in from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, and sat in the public portion of the spectators’ gallery, where a blue curtain separated relatives of the dead from the United States, Britain and Germany.The oldest brother, Fadil, 62, an architect who was educated in Birmingham, England, sorrowfully told the court that his mother taught all 10 of her children a peaceful form of Islam. “He somehow got sidetracked” and made bad choices, he said.In the gallery sat Matthew Arnold, who traveled to Guantánamo from his home in Birmingham and testified that his brother Timothy, 43, was in Bali for a rugby tournament when he was killed “by this atrocity.”“My family’s lives have been changed completely by the actions of the perpetrators of this crime,” he said. “And I would like the court and Mr. Bin Amin, and Mr. Bin Lep, to be aware of the devastating effects of their actions on so many innocent and decent people.”Mr. Bin Amin, who hung his head at the defense table throughout the hours of testimony, apologized to the victims, his family and “all Muslims. This is not what I was taught as a child,” he said.In his two decades of U.S. detention, he said, “I have changed. I am not an angry young man anymore. I am a reformed man. My faith has evolved.”As part of their plea deal, both men offered secret testimony earlier this week for the future war crimes trial of Encep Nurjaman, a prisoner known as Hambali whom prosecutors portray as a mastermind of terrorist attacks in Indonesia in 2002 and 2003. But both men said in their confessions that they had no firsthand knowledge of Mr. Hambali’s role in the attack.On Thursday, Mr. Bin Amin went further.“I didn’t know anything about the Bali bombing until after it happened,” he said, describing his role in the plot as helping some of the perpetrators after the bombing and assisting in money transfers that could be used for other attacks.He showed drawings he made of himself being tortured, which were recently declassified to show the jury.Col. George C. Kraehe, the case prosecutor, did not object to the artwork that showed Mr. Bin Amin nude, hooded, shackled in painful positions and at one point held spread-eagle on a plastic tarp by masked guards, with one pouring water into his nose and mouth.Christine A. Funk, Mr. Bin Amin’s lawyer, said the artwork display was to help the jury “in weighing appropriate punishment.” Mr. Bin Lep said he did not want the legacy of torture “to define who I am.”Also, he said, “I forgive the people who tortured me.”He admitted to his crimes. “I am guilty of my role in the Bali bombing,” he said.He described himself as “young, immature and stubborn” when he was drawn to Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 to train with Al Qaeda.“All I wish for now is peace,” he said. “I wish that peace for everyone here, but especially the victims and their families.” More

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      Top Hamas Official Is Killed, and Harvard President Resigns

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.Damage after an explosion in southern Beirut, Lebanon, on Tuesday. The blast killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader. Lebanese and U.S. officials ascribed the attack to Israel.Bilal Hussein/Associated PressOn Today’s Episode:Top Hamas Official Is Killed in Lebanon as Fears Grow of a Wider War, by Ben Hubbard, Ronen Bergman, Aaron Boxerman, Euan Ward and Eric SchmittHow a Proxy Fight Over Campus Politics Brought Down Harvard’s President, by Nicholas ConfessoreMenendez Faces a New Accusation: Aiding the Qatari Government, by Tracey Tully, Benjamin Weiser and Nicholas FandosTrump Appeals Decision Barring Him From Maine Primary Ballot, by Jenna RussellThe Wildly Popular Police Scanner Goes Silent for Many, with Ernesto LondoñoIan Stewart and Jessica Metzger and More

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      Fact-Checking Trump’s Recent Immigration Claims

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      As President Biden grapples with an unwieldy crisis at the southern border, his likely 2024 rival has leveled many criticisms — including some baseless and misleading claims.Former President Donald J. Trump has drawn widespread censure after reprising a line that casts undocumented immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.”The remark underscored Mr. Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration, which has been central to his platform since he made his first bid for president in 2015. If elected again, he has vowed to carry out mass deportations and enact other strict policies.He and his Republican rivals have pointed to the surge of migrants at the southern border to make their political case. Some Democrats, too, have been critical of the Biden administration’s approach toward immigration.But even with legitimate lines of attack, Mr. Trump has at times turned to baseless and misleading claims during rallies in recent months.Here’s a fact check.WHAT WAS SAID“I read an article recently in a paper … about a man who runs a mental institution in South America, and by the way they’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia, all over, but this happened to be in South America. And he was sitting, the picture was — sitting, reading a newspaper, sort of leisurely, and they were asking him, what are you doing? He goes, I was very busy all my life. I was very proud. I worked 24 hours a day. I was so busy all the time. But now I’m in this mental institution — where he’s been for years — and I’m in the mental institution and I worked very hard on my patients but now we don’t have any patients. They’ve all been brought to the United States.”— during a rally in Nevada this monthThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that immigrants crossing the border are coming from “mental institutions” and jails. This particular story would seem to offer specific facts behind that assertion, but there is no evidence that such a report exists.The New York Times could not find any such news account from the start of Mr. Biden’s tenure in January 2021 to March, when Mr. Trump told the same story at a Texas rally.The Trump campaign did not respond when repeatedly asked about the source of this claim. But pressed this year by CNN for factual support for the tale, the campaign provided links that did not corroborate it.Likewise, there is no support for Mr. Trump’s broader claim that countries are “dumping” their prisoners and psychiatric patients in the United States.“We are unaware of any effort by any country or other jurisdiction to empty its mental-health institutions or its jails and prisons to send people with mental-health issues or criminals to the U.S.,” Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan research organization Migration Policy Institute, said in an email.The claim evokes elements of a mass exodus that occurred more than 40 years ago in Cuba, Ms. Mittelstadt noted: the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Some 125,000 people fled to the United States, including inmates from jails and patients from mental health institutions freed by the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.“But there has been no present-day effort by any country, to our knowledge, or any credible reporting by media or others that anything of the like is taking place,” Ms. Mittelstadt said.WHAT WAS SAID“They’ve allowed, I believe, 15 million people into the country from all of these different places like jails, mental institutions, and wait till you see what’s going to happen with all those people.”— during a rally in October in New HampshireThis lacks evidence. Setting aside the baseless suggestion that all undocumented immigrants entering the country are coming from jails and mental institutions, Mr. Trump’s estimate of 15 million is not supported by the data.Customs and Border Protection data shows that U.S. officials recorded nearly eight million encounters at its borders from February 2021, the first full month of Mr. Biden’s presidency, to October 2023.But even then, “encounter does not mean admittance,” Tom Wong, an associate professor of political science and director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, said in an email. “In fact, most encounters lead to expulsions.”For example, C.B.P. data shows that about 2.5 million expulsions occurred under Title 42, a health rule that used the coronavirus as grounds for turning back immigrants illegally crossing the border, from February 2021 until the policy ended in May.Former President Donald J. Trump has at times turned to baseless and misleading claims about immigration in recent months.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe number of encounters also are based on events, not people, and therefore could include the same person more than once.The exact number of people who have entered the country without authorization is hard to pin down because there are also “gotaways” — people who crossed into the country illegally and evaded authorities.But the federal, observational estimates of such people also would not support Mr. Trump’s claim. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, estimated at a recent hearing that there had been more than 600,000 gotaways in fiscal year 2023, which ended in September. That is also the estimate for fiscal year 2022, according to an inspector general report. And there were more than 391,300 in fiscal year 2021, which began in October 2020 under Mr. Trump and ended in September 2021 under Mr. Biden.In terms of migrants with criminal records, officials encountered nearly 45,000 at ports of entry since the start of fiscal year 2021. Between ports of entry in that period, officials encountered another 40,000 noncitizens with criminal records.While Mr. Trump in this instance claimed the country had allowed 15 million migrants to enter, he has at other times predicted that would be the total figure by the end of Mr. Biden’s term. That would be larger than the estimated total population of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States — about 10.5 million in 2021, according to the Pew Research Center.WHAT WAS SAID“In the past three years, Biden has spent over $1 billion to put up illegal aliens in hotels, some of the most luxurious hotels in the country. Meanwhile, we have 33,000 homeless American veterans. Can you believe it?”— during a rally in November in New HampshireThis needs context. Mr. Trump’s figure of homeless veterans refers to a 2022 estimate by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That number includes about 19,500 veterans who were in shelters when the count was conducted. And both the 2022 estimate and a new tally for 2023 — which reported nearly 35,600 homeless veterans — are actually down slightly from when Mr. Trump was in office, continuing an overall downward trend since 2009.As for migrant housing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracted in 2021 with a nonprofit group to house border arrivals at a handful of hotels in Texas and Arizona, as a 2022 homeland security inspector general report details. The contract totaled more than $130 million and ended in 2022. The Trump administration also turned to hotels in 2020 to hold migrant children and families before expelling them.The Biden administration has not directly spent $1 billion to place immigrants in hotels. But cities are indeed facing steep costs for sheltering and caring for border arrivals — including through hotels. The Trump campaign did not indicate where Mr. Trump had obtained the $1 billion figure, but it is possible he was referring to a federal initiative that provides funding to local governments and nongovernment groups to help offset those costs.The program was in fact first authorized through 2019 legislation signed by Mr. Trump. While it allows nonfederal entities to seek grants for housing migrants in hotels and motels, it is not exclusive to that. Congress provided the program $110 million in fiscal year 2021 and $150 million in fiscal year 2022.Lawmakers recently replaced the initiative with a new shelter and services program. For fiscal year 2023, officials earmarked $425 million for the old program and $363.8 million for the new one.All told, the federal government has allocated about $1 billion since fiscal year 2021, which includes the last few months under the Trump administration, toward local efforts to feed and shelter migrants around the country — not only hotel expenses.While FEMA discloses recipients of the funding, it does not say how much each grant is used specifically on hotel costs.WHAT WAS SAID“We cannot forget that the same people that attacked Israel are right now pouring in at levels that nobody can believe into our beautiful U.S.A. through our totally open border.”— during a rally in Iowa in OctoberThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump offered no evidence that people affiliated with Hamas, the militant group that staged a brutal assault on Israel in early October, are “pouring” into the country at record levels. And experts say they are unaware of data that would support that contention.If the former president’s statement was meant to convey that terrorists more generally are “pouring in” at the border, he could be referring to the rising number of encounters at the southern border with people on a terrorism watch list. The list includes known and suspected terrorists as well as people affiliated with them.A total of 169 noncitizens on that list tried to illegally enter the United States at the southern border in fiscal year 2023, which ended in September, up from three in fiscal year 2020, according to C.B.P. statistics.Still, it is unclear what that says about the terrorism threat, said Alex Nowrasteh, vice president for economic and social policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. There is no record of a terrorist attack being committed on American soil by an immigrant who crossed the southern border illegally. (In 2008, three brothers who had come to the United States illegally years earlier as children, from Yugoslavia, were convicted of conspiring to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey.)Apprehended individuals on the list are supposed to remain in government custody as they await removal proceedings, Mr. Nowrasteh said.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. More