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World in brief: February 18, 2025
Leonard Peltier speaks during an interview at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., April 29, 1999

ITALY: Pro-Russian hackers attacked Italian government websites this morning in what it said was a reaction to a speech by Italian President Sergio Mattarella that compared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Nazis’ “wars of conquest.”

The NoName57 hacker group, which announced the attacks on social media, hit the websites of the defence, interior and transport ministries, as well as law enforcement agencies.

It said it had earlier attacked banks, ports, airports and local transport agencies, but those did not cause major disruptions.

US: Native American activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison today after former president Joe Biden commuted his life sentence to home confinement for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.

Mr Peltier has maintained that he did not murder Jack Coler and Ronald Williams during a confrontation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Native Americans widely believe he was a political prisoner wrongly convicted because he fought for tribal rights as a member of the American Indian Movement.

ISRAEL: A Jewish man in Florida has been arrested and charged with two counts of attempted murder after shooting at a vehicle with a father and son he thought were Palestinians, but turned out to be Israeli tourists.

Mordechai Brafman, 27, shot Yaron and Ari Rabi who were in Miami Beach on vacation in what authorities called an “unprovoked” attack.

In since-deleted posts, Ari Rabi claimed on social media that the pair were shot due to anti-semitism, saying his father was wearing a kippah and ending one post with “death to Arabs.”

MEXICO: President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the government was awaiting a new response from Google to its request that the tech company fully restore the name Gulf of Mexico to its Google Maps service before filing a lawsuit.

Cris Turner, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, said in an initial letter that the company will not change the policy it outlined after US President Donald Trump declared the body of water the Gulf of America.

Mexico has argued that the mapping policy violates its sovereignty because the US only has jurisdiction over around 46 per cent of the Gulf.

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