(LONDON) — The Wall Street Journal reporter being held in Russia had his pre-trial detention extended for three months during a hearing at a Moscow court on Thursday.
Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent with the paper’s Moscow bureau, was arrested in March and stands accused of “acting on the instructions of the American side” and collecting state secrets about the military.
“The court’s decision in respect of Gershkovich extended the period of detention for three months, and only up to eight months, that is, until November 30, 2023,” the press service of the court said on Thursday.
The FSB filed a request to extend the journalist’s detention for “an unspecified period of time” as he awaits trial, Emma Moody, the Journal’s editor for Standards and Ethics, said in an email to staff on Wednesday, citing Russian media reports.
“We are deeply disappointed he continues to be arbitrarily and wrongfully detained for doing his job as a journalist,” the Wall Street Journal said in an emailed statement following the hearing. “The baseless accusations against him are categorically false, and we continue to push for his immediate release. Journalism is not a crime.”
Gerskovich appeared in court in April and June for hearings to appeal his pre-trial detention, which had been approved through Aug. 30. Under Russian law, prosecutors are required to request his pre-trial detention be continued every few months.
The Biden administration and the Kremlin have both confirmed they are in discussions to find a possible deal to free Gerskovich, likely in a prisoner swap. But the U.S. has said so far there is little progress.
President Joe Biden, who spoke with Gershkovich’s family in April, has said the detention was “totally illegal.”
State department officials said the U.S. determined the journalist had been “wrongfully detained.” The House of Representatives in June unanimously passed a resolution calling for the immediate release of Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, another American being held in Russia.
(MEXICO CITY) — At least 16 people were killed and 36 others were injured in a bus crash in central Mexico on Tuesday, authorities said.
A passenger bus carrying locals and migrants — mostly from Venezuela — collided with a trailer truck on the Cuacnopalan-Oaxaca highway near the border between the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Puebla early Tuesday morning, according to the Puebla state government.
The reason for the crash was unknown.
There were 52 people on board the bus, including 10 from Venezuela. The migrants were traveling to an appointment with the United States Customs and Border Protection to legally enter the country, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Migration.
Among the dead were 15 Mexican citizens and one Venezuelan national. Nine Venezuelans were among the injured, three of whom remain hospitalized in Tehuacan, the National Institute of Migration said.
(RUSSIA) — Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russian private military company the Wagner Group, which played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before briefly launching an insurrection against the Russian military, and President Vladimir Putin by extension, died Wednesday in a plane crash.
Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia’s Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency. Ten people in total were killed in the crash, the agency said.
“An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin,” the department said in a statement.
Wagner Group co-founder Dmitriy Utkin also died in the crash, the agency said.
Prigozhin, a longtime ally of Putin, co-founded Wagner Group in 2014 with Russian military officer Utkin at the onset of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict after Putin invaded Crimea.
The group’s moniker reportedly came from a nickname for Utkin or is a reference to the composer Richard Wagner. Prigozhin was known in the West by the nickname “Putin’s chef,” because of how he and Putin met decades earlier, when Prigozhin was a restauranteur.
Prigozhin long denied having any involvement in the group until late 2022 when he publicly confirmed his role, months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The White House estimated that at one stage around 50,000 fighters from the Wagner Group were fighting in Ukraine, the majority of them convicts recruited from Russian prisons.
In early 2023, the U.S. labeled Wagner a “significant transnational criminal organization” and levied new sanctions against the group, not only because of their action in Ukraine but also because of Wagner links to mass executions, abductions and other human rights abuses in the Central African Republic and Mali, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. Wagner Group also allegedly operated in Syria and in various African countries.
Wagner operated for years as a deniable military force for the Kremlin, in Syria and across Africa. Prigozhin’s influence ballooned during the war in Ukraine, as Putin came to increasingly rely on his forces, particularly in the bloody battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut. Once in the shadows, Prigozhin grew famous for his videos lambasting Russia’s military leadership for the disastrous handling of the war, publicly feuding with Russia’s minister of defense Sergey Shoigu and chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov.
Wagner’s insurrection against Russian military leadership began on June 23, 2023, when Prigozhin accused the Russian military of deliberately shelling his forces in Ukraine that day.
“There are 25,000 of us and we are coming to sort things out…Those who want to join us, it’s time to finish with this mess,” Prigozhin said then, appearing to threaten armed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.
The next morning, on June 24, Prigozhin said his forces had taken control of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, seizing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District that oversaw much of the war in Ukraine.
Prigozhin demanded defense minister Shoigu and the head of the general staff Gerasimov be handed over to him, threatening he would march on Moscow, saying, “We are moving forward and will go until the end.”
In a televised address that aired that morning, Putin responded by declaring that actions taken by Prigozhin amounted to a “stab in the back.”
By the early afternoon, a column of Wagner forces reached the Voronezh region, about 300 miles south of Moscow, apparently unopposed by Russian forces along the way. The march halted that evening when Prigozhin suddenly announced his mercenaries would turn back to their base camps, saying he wanted to avoid shedding Russian blood.
But just hours later, with the column less than 100 miles from Moscow, Prigozhin abruptly announced his mercenaries were turning back and ended his mutiny, saying he wanted to avoid shedding Russian blood.
The stunning reversal followed an apparent deal struck with Putin, with the Kremlin announcing that Prigozhin would relocate to Belarus and would not be prosecuted for his actions.
But many observers questioned whether the Kremlin would remain so forgiving.
“His long-term survivability is hard to calculate,” a senior U.S. official told ABC News, after Prigozhin’s stand-down.
Prigozhin himself insisted he had never intended a “coup” against Putin and had merely been seeking “justice” for his Wagner fighters in their dispute with Shoigu and Russia’s military leadership.
In the weeks after the coup, Prigozhin dropped largely out of sight but appeared to have returned to work, baffling observers. While his media empire was reportedly dissolved, he remained in Russia, spotted at a summit in St. Petersburg for African leaders attended by Putin. Some Wagner troops moved to a camp set up in Belarus.
The Kremlin said Wagner would be absorbed into Russia’s ministry of defense but some experts suggested Prigozhin might be permitted to continue operating in Africa, where Wagner has established significant influence in several countries, in particular Mali.
In recent weeks, Prigozhin and Wagner were being linked to the military coup in Niger, where Prigozhin offered the junta Wagner’s support.
Just two days before his death, Prigozhin posted what would be his last video, purportedly showing him in an African country, with armed fighters and promising to “make African even more free.”
Prigozhin was born on June 1, 1961, in Leningrad, Soviet Union, now Saint Petersburg. At one point he served nine years in prison for robbery, according to Meduza, a well-regarded Russian investigative news outlet based out of Latvia.
Prigozhin was freed in 1990 and returned to Saint Petersburg, selling hot dogs around the city before opening New Island, a posh restaurant on the city’s waterfront. The floating restaurant soon became a watering hole for the country’s elite, including the future president, Vladimir Putin.
In 2018, U.S. prosecutors charged Prigozhin for his suspected role in funding the Internet Research Agency, which the U.S. described as a Russian “troll farm” that sought to use digital campaigns to increase political and social tensions in the U.S. Prigozhin himself on social media in 2022 said “we have interfered [in elections], are interfering and will interfere.”
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel contributed to this story.
(RUSSIA) — Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia’s Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency.
Ten people were killed in the crash near the town of Kuzhenkino, including Prigozhin.
“An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin,” the department said in a statement.
Among the 10 dead were three crew members and seven passengers.
The Federal Air Transport Agency said the plane was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement that officials were watching the reports of the plane crash.
“If confirmed, no one should be surprised. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this,” she said.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the plane crash in Russia, according to the White House.
Biden told reporters he didn’t “know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised.”
“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer,” he told reporters in Lake Tahoe, where he is on vacation.
Prigozhin is the head of the private paramilitary organization Wagner Group, which played a key role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before briefly launching an insurrection against the Russian military in June. Forces loyal to Prigozhin marched toward Moscow, before turning back after several days.
Prigozhin allegedly struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin where he didn’t face prosecution and was relocated to Belarus, according to the Kremlin. The Russian president and Prigozhin allegedly met face to face on June 29, less than a week after the failed coup, the Kremlin said.
On July 3, Prigozhin released a message on social media claiming the rebelling was aimed at “fighting traitors and mobilizing our society.”
“I think we have achieved a lot of it. In the near future, I am sure that you will see our next victories at the front. Thanks guys,” he allegedly said.
Prigozhin’s last known public appearance came in a video dated Aug. 21 from an undisclosed location in Africa.
Prigozhin helped to launch the Wagner Group toward the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the Crimean Peninsula around 2014, according to reports published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
In 2018, U.S. prosecutors charged Prigozhin for his suspected role in funding the Internet Research Agency, which the U.S. described as a Russian “troll farm” that sought to use digital campaigns to increase political and social tensions in the U.S.
The Department of Justice accused the IRA of conspiring to “defraud the United States … for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”
The complaint described tactics like posing as U.S. citizens and creating false online personas.
ABC News’ Will Gretsky, Ben Gittleson, Nathan Luna and Leah Vredenbregt contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK)– India on Wednesday became only the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon, and the first to do so in the lunar south pole region.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the mission, known as Chandrayaan-3, in mid-July, with the spacecraft traveling a forty-day, fuel-efficient course before touching down at 8:34 a.m. ET.
India now joins the U.S., Russia and China as the only countries to successfully land a spacecraft on the lunar surface.
“Chandrayaan-3 Mission: ‘India, I reached my destination and you too!” the ISRO announced upon touchdown. “Chandrayaan-3 has successfully soft-landed on the moon!”
A “soft landing” is one in which the spacecraft touches down intact, with little to no damage.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared in a video stream displayed in the ISRO control room as he watched the landing from South Africa, where he is attending a conference, and expressed his pride in the mission’s success.
“India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone…this success belongs to all off humanity, and it will help moon missions by other countries in the future,” Modi said. “We can all aspire for the moon and beyond.”
Now that the soft landing has occurred, the remaining objectives of the Chandrayaan-3 mission are to demonstrate the rover moving on the moon and “to conduct in-situ scientific experiments.”
The lander and rover will be functional for about two weeks, during which time researchers will study several things, including the temperature of the lunar surface, lunar seismic activity, the chemical composition of rocks and soil, and any variation in the moon’s thin atmosphere.
The lunar south pole in particular is a desirable region for study due to the presence there of frozen water, but it has not been well explored due to its rugged terrain, which includes impact craters.
India previously attempted to reach the moon in 2019, but its Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft failed due to a last-minute software glitch, resulting in the lander crashing onto the moon’s surface.
Chandrayaan-3’s successful landing comes just four days after Russia’s Luna 25 spacecraft, launched on August 11, crashed into the lunar surface as the country attempted to return to the moon for the first time since Luna 24’s successful landing in 1976.
NASA has previously announced that for its Artemis II missions, which will send American astronauts back to the moon, it is also looking to reach the lunar south pole.
In June, when Indian Prime Minister Modi visited the U.S., he and President Joe Biden issued a joint statement hailing the countries’ relationship and their collaboration in several fields, including space.
In the statement, NASA announced it will provide training to Indian astronauts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, “with a goal of mounting a joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024.”
(LONDON) — Two adults and six children were rescued Tuesday after they were left dangling hundreds of feet above the ground in Pakistan when a cable car used to get kids to school broke, sparking a dramatic hourslong rescue operation.
The six children ranged in age from 10 to 15 years old. Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar said he was “relieved” that everyone was “successfully and safely rescued.”
“Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people,” Kakar said in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Our nation’s spirit shines brightest today. Proud of our heroes!”
A helicopter was dispatched to the site of the rescue operation in Battagram, approximately 120 miles north of the country’s capital city of Islamabad. Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority worked with the Pakistan Army to rescue the stranded passengers.
The complex and difficult rescue mission took about 16 hours to complete, a Pakistani military spokesman told ABC News.
The Special Services Group, also known as the Commandos, sling team rescued the eight people from a height of 600 feet, the spokesman said, adding that the passengers had been moved to a safe place.
Following their rescue, several of the children said they were scared in the moment, and are grateful to have been rescued.
“We were very scared. First, the car was shaking; then helicopters came and we gained some confidence and were saved by the grace of Allah,” one of the children told ABC News, as translated by a reporter.
“We were shaken but later it was fine,” another child said.
The broken-down cable car is reportedly used daily to take students to school in the remote region of Pakistan.
Kakar — who has only been in office for eight days — issued a statement earlier on social media about the chairlift.
“The chairlift accident in Battagram, KP is really alarming. I have directed the NDMA, PDMA and district authorities to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift,” he said. “I have also directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such private chairlifts and ensure that they are safe to operate and use.”
ABC News’ Ellie Kauffman and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Two adults and six children were rescued Tuesday after they were left dangling hundreds of feet above the ground in Pakistan when a cable car used to get kids to school broke, sparking a dramatic hourslong rescue operation.
The six children ranged in age from 10 to 15 years old. Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar tweeted about the rescue, saying, “Relieved to know that Alhamdolillah all the kids have been successfully and safely rescued. Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people.”
A helicopter was dispatched to the site of the rescue operation in Battagram, approximately 120 miles north of the country’s capital city of Islamabad. Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority worked with the Pakistan Army to rescue the stranded passengers.
The complex and difficult rescue mission took about 16 hours to complete, a Pakistani military spokesman told ABC News.
The Special Services Group, also known as the Commandos, sling team rescued the eight people from a height of 600 feet, the spokesman said, adding that the passengers have been moved to a safe place.
The broken down cable car is reportedly used daily to take students to school in the remote region of Pakistan.
Kakar — who has only been in office for eight days — issued a statement earlier on social media about the chairlift.
“The chairlift accident in Battagram, KP is really alarming. I have directed the NDMA, PDMA and district authorities to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift,” he said. “I have also directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such private chairlifts and ensure that they are safe to operate and use.”
The chairlift accident in Battagram, KP is really alarming. I have directed the NDMA, PDMA and district authorities to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift.
I have also directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such…
(NEW YORK) — The historic wildfire season currently plaguing Canada is expected to persist, perhaps becoming even worse in the coming weeks – a potentially devastating forecast made more likely due to human-caused climate change, according to new research.
Drought and hot conditions contributed to an unprecedented start to the fire season in Canada and has kept the fires burning all over the country since late April says Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. By June, the smoke emitted from the wildfires reached the highest amount ever recorded in the country.
The hot and dry conditions are expected to persist in the coming weeks, with forecasts in many regions calling for an above-average fire risk for the rest of August and through September, presenting the opportunity for the wildfires to continue at the current pace or even worsen, Dahl told ABC News.
As of Tuesday, more than 37.8 million total acres have been burned, an area nearly as large as the state of Georgia, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). There are more than 1,000 active wildfires burning in Canada, with more than 650 of them deemed “out of control,” according to the agency.
“We’re not anticipating this to ease up any time soon,” Dahl said, describing the amount of inland area burned by wildfires this year as “off the charts.”
The total acres burned so far this year in Canada is more than the total amount of land burned by wildfires in the U.S. since 2019, according to ABC News calculations, based on data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The acreage burned in Canada this year so far doubles the previous record there for an entire season
The fire season would not have gotten this bad were it not for anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, according to a new study released Tuesday by World Weather Attribution, an international group of academics and officials that evaluate the influence of climate change on extreme weather events.
ABC News, Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, Inc.
For example, the weather conditions that led to the wildfires in Quebec earlier this summer were twice as likely to occur because of human-induced warming than without it, the researchers found. Additionally, those conditions were about 20% to 50% more intense due to climate change, according to the study, which analyzed data from Canada’s Fire Weather Index. High-temperature records broken in Canada in May and June, combined with low humidity and rapid snow melt, further contributed to the risky conditions.
Although the conditions that led to the extreme wildfire season were unprecedented, they are no longer “extremely unusual,” World Weather Attribution said in a statement.
In today’s climate, similar weather conditions can be expected to occur once every 25 years, meaning that they have about a 4% chance of occurring each year, the analysis found.
Also contributing to the current wildfires is that Canada did not experience a typical spring season this year, David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada, told ABC News last week. Instead, many regions went straight from winter to summer, with overall temperatures warmer than average. Also, 50% to 60% of the country was abnormally dry during the spring months, including many agricultural regions in addition to forests. The dry spring conditions followed what was an abnormally dry winter for much of Canada as well.
It has been “too hot and too dry for too long,” in the country, Phillips said.
“It’s almost impossible for nature alone to do these things,” Phillips declared. “This wildfire season has been ramped up. These fires are bigger and badder.”
Should the planet continue to warm, the risk of even greater wildfires will further increase, the World Weather Attribution study found.
The unique characteristics of fire weather in different regions of the world makes wildfires more complicated to study, Clair Barnes, a research associate at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, said in a statement. But it is becoming more evident that dry and warm conditions are conducive to wildfires becoming more common, and more intense, around the world due to climate change, Barnes said.
The CIFFC National Preparedness Level in Canada has been at its highest level – 5 out of 5, for “extreme” – since May 11. What is making this season so devastating and difficult to manage is that the fires are erupting across the country all at once, Phillips said.
There may be some relief in sight, however, fire risks should decrease in October when temperatures are cooler, preventing additional fires from sparking and the further spread of existing ones, Dahl said.
(LONDON) — Two adults and six children who rescued Tuesday after they were left dangling 900 feet above the ground in Pakistan when a cable car used to get kids to school broke, sparking a dramatic hourslong rescue operation.
The six children ranged in age from 10 to 15 years old. Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar tweeted about the rescue, saying, “Relieved to know that Alhamdolillah all the kids have been successfully and safely rescued. Great team work by the military, rescue departments, district administration as well as the local people.”
A helicopter was dispatched to the site of the rescue operation in Battagram, approximately 120 miles north of the country’s capital city of Islamabad. Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority worked with the Pakistan Army to rescue the stranded passengers.
The broken down cable car is reportedly used daily to take students to school in the remote region of Pakistan.
Kakar — who has only been in office for eight days — issued a statement earlier on social media about the chairlift.
“The chairlift accident in Battagram, KP is really alarming. I have directed the NDMA, PDMA and district authorities to urgently ensure safe rescue and evacuation of the 8 people stuck in the chairlift,” he said. “I have also directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such private chairlifts and ensure that they are safe to operate and use.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Secretary of Commerce is set to visit China at the end of August, according to the Commerce Department, making Gina Raimondo the second high-ranking member of the Biden administration to visit China this year.
Secretary Raimondo will visit Shanghai and Beijing from August 27-30, according to the Department of Commerce, and will meet with business and senior political leaders as tensions between the two countries are rising.
“While in the PRC, Secretary Raimondo looks forward to constructive discussions on issues relating to the U.S.- China commercial relationship, challenges faced by U.S. businesses, and areas for potential cooperation,” the Commerce Department said in a statement.
Raimondo’s upcoming visit comes on the heels of China increasingly going on the offensive in cyberspace, according to an assessment by the office of the director of national intelligence — including hacking Raimondo’s emails in May, sources told ABC News.
“China probably currently represents the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. Government and private-sector networks. China’s cyber pursuits and its industry’s export of related technologies increase the threats of aggressive cyber operations against the U.S. homeland,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment says. “China almost certainly is capable of launching cyber attacks that could disrupt critical infrastructure services within the United States, including against oil and gas pipelines, and rail systems.”
Shortly after the e-mail hack, Raimondo met with her Chinese counterpart in Washington.
The two, according to the Commerce Department had a “candid and substantive” discussion “on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, including the overall environment in both countries for trade and investment and areas for potential cooperation.”
The Secretary of Commerce is the third high-level Biden administration official to visit China this year. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in June and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen followed Blinken.
