Reuters World News - Israel’s tunnel video, hockey death arrest and how an Indian startup hacked the world

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Israel says it’s found a tunnel and weapons belonging to Hamas at Gaza’s Al Shifa – but Hamas deny using the hospital as a base. Why a UK ice hockey death and arrest for manslaughter have shocked the sport. And how an Indian startup hacked the world.  Listen to our special episode on Hamas' tunnel network. *Please note episode has been corrected so the intro better reflects the content Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Israel says it's found a Hamas tunnel at Gaza's largest hospital. How a small Indian educational startup went on to train a generation of spies and hackers for hire. The shocking death of a hockey player rattles the sport. And retailers look to the holiday season. It's Friday, November 17th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the holiday season. the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Kim Vinal in London. And I'm Jonah Green in New York. Israeli soldiers say they've found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas militants at Gaza's Al-Shefa

Hospital. The army released a video showing a deep hole in the ground, littered with and surrounded by wood, concrete and sand. It appeared the area had been excavated. There was a bulldozer in the background. Rooters could not immediately verify the contents of the video. The army has said its troops also found a vehicle in the hospital containing a large number of weapons. Hamas representative Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that the group do not keep weapons or operate out of al-Sheifa. There is no center or control room for Hamas in this hospital. We avoid all the hospitals all the time. The U.S. has said it's confident in an assessment from its own intelligence agencies on Hamas activities in Al-Shefa hospital, but will neither share

nor elaborate on it. UN aid deliveries to Gaza have been suspended again due to shortages of fuel and a communications shutdown. The United Nations World Food Program said civilians faced the immediate possibility of starvation. For more on the challenge of Hamas's Tunnel Network in Gaza, listen to our special episode. We'll put the link in today's podcast description. TikTok has said it will prohibit content promoting Osama bin Laden's 2002 letter,

justifying attacks against Americans. The 20-year-old letter criticizes US support for Israel, accuses Americans of financing oppression of people, Palestinians and contained anti-Semitic comments. Some users in the West have praised its contents in the context of the Israel-Humas War. President Biden has said he'll keep working to advance a Pacific Trade Pact, even though attempts stumbled this week. Hopes for a new Pacific trade deal were dashed when members could not agree on improving

labor and environmental standards. Former President Donald Trump quit a regional trade trade. Pact in 2017. Retailers are bracing for a spending slowdown this holiday season. Giants like Walmart are pointing to higher interest rates and eroded savings as a reason for recent declines in purchasing. It's a sign that the Federal Reserve rate hikes are having an effect on spending and hopefully persistent inflation. Retailers say credit card revenues have declined, indicating middle-income consumers are having difficulty paying higher interest debts. Now to New Delhi, where a small Indian cyber company few knew about, grew into

a hacking powerhouse. That's according to a Reuters investigation that reveals how the firm called Appin stole secrets from around the globe. Raphael Satter is a cybersecurity reporter who worked on the story. Raphael, tell us about this firm. Appin is a company that began its life as a cybersecurity training company. It was effectively teaching young kids to code in India. And little by little, it evolved, and it sprouted a cybersecurity consultancy, and then that cybersecurity consultancy began doing cyber espionage work. And before long, that company was being involved in corporate espionage work, not just in India, but also in the West. So when wealthy, powerful individuals needed to spy on one another or their enemies,

be it in the case of a commercial battle or maybe even a divorce, they would end up hiring this little company based out of India called Aben. Aben democratized the world of cyber espionage. They kind of created an e-commerce style platform where people could simply just sign in, order hacks, track the progress of their cyber espionage campaigns, and then at the end of the day, download the stolen data of drop servers placed here and there all over the internet. Reuters and other media outlets have previously reported some of the hacks by Appen,

but your reporting paints the clearest picture yet of the extent of their business and how they eluded law enforcement. Appin was involved in hacking thousands of people, and the company is linked by threat intelligence firms, and big internet companies like Google, for example, to attempted hacks against tens of thousands of users. So this was a company that operated at significant scale. In terms of the people that they targeted, it really runs the gamut. From Boris Berezovsky, for example,

the late Russian oligarch, to Christy Rogers, the wife of congressman or then-Congressman Mike Rogers. You would have very wealthy people. you would have people who are involved in divorces. Lawyers for the two brothers who used to run Appen say they never operated or supported and certainly did not create any illegal hack for hire industry in India or anywhere else. They say they dedicated much of their careers to cyber defense and preventing illicit hacking. Read the whole story at worgers.com.

In the UK, a man has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after the death, of American ice hockey star Adam Johnson. A criminal charge for what happens during play in professional sports is a rarity. Philip O'Connor covers sports in Europe. Phil, I've seen the video. Can you describe what happened to Johnson on the ice? Yeah, it's the kind of incident that happens hundreds, if not thousands of times in every hockey match, to be honest. If you look at the video, you'll see Adam Johnson skating from left to right across the screen,

and he's just coming over the blue line into the offensive zone for his team when he gets involved in this situation with a defender. You'll see him come in in a sort of a bump, a sort of a hip check that happens, as I say, so many times in every game of ice hockey. But what happens after then is where disaster strikes. You can see the defender's left skate rise up and it just appears to nick Adam around the throat. Again, it's so often that these things happen in hockey, but just on this particular occasion it caused a wound that was to prove fatal to Adam Johnson.

How rare is it for something like this to happen, especially with such devastating outcome? I mean, to have a death happen on the ice is very, very unusual. I've been going back over deaths in the sport in the last few years. There was one incident where a player in Russia was hit in the head with a puck. This really is every ice hockey player's worst nightmare. Everybody is aware of the fact that the skates are sharpened before most, if not every game. Everybody knows this can happen. And yet it happens so seldom.

How common is it for criminal charges to come from sports play on the field or in the rink in this case? Well, that's what makes this case really stand out is the fact that somebody has been arrested and questioned in conjunction with a possible manslaughter charge. There's a certain amount of risk that you take engaging in any sport. And sports like ice hockey, like horse racing, equestrian combat sports, there is an inherent risk in all of these things that, you know, play. Players will tell you that they accept these things when they go onto the ice. There's also a duty of care. And I think the problem here is working out, okay, what does the defender have to do in this situation? Has that person acted in a reckless manner?

Or is this just part of the game? And I do think that that's the troubling part of it. I've reported on cases where a mixed martial arts fighter was killed effectively in the cage in a fight in Dublin in 2016, Joao Calvalho. And not even that led to criminal charges. So we're into uncharted territory here, really, this particular case in English ice hockey. How could this change things for professional sports, whether ice hockey or any other sport?

It's going to make it difficult, I think, for English hockey teams in particular, to recruit players in the future. So any athlete looking at the English court system and the English police system now, if you're involved in boxing, mixed martial arts, ice hockey, anything that could cause you to put another person at risk, you're going to be looking at that and thinking, do I really want to play in a country where I might even go to jail if the worst was to happen? But I think ultimately we have to think of the player. We have to think of the player's family, of their club, of the community they represented in this tragedy. And I think we have to keep our heads cool here in terms of what we try to do.

And the best thing is always to look at improving safety within the sport itself. That's it for today's episode of Reuters World News. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show. And tune in this weekend for a special edition on Weight Loss Drugs. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.