Virginia

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Nine activists from Bahrain had their iPhones hacked by advanced spyware made by the Israeli company NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, a cybersecurity watchdog reported on Tuesday.

Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said NSO Group’s Pegasus malware successfully hacked the phones between June 2020 and February 2021. Those reportedly hacked included members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and two political dissidents living in exile. At least one of the activists lived in London when the hacking occurred, Citizen Lab said.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A former Air Force intelligence analyst who once helped find targets for deadly U.S. drone strikes was sentenced to 45 months in prison for leaking top-secret details about the program.

Daniel Hale, 33, told a federal judge he felt compelled to leak information to a journalist out of guilt over his own participation in a program that he believed was indiscriminately killing civilians in Afghanistan far from the battlefield.

MCLEAN, Va. (AP) — President Joe Biden used his first visit with rank-and-file members of the U.S. intelligence community — a part of government that was frequently criticized by his predecessor Donald Trump — to make a promise that he will “never politicize” their work.

Biden waited more than six months to make the short drive across the Potomac River on Tuesday to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, giving analysts and national security leaders — often derided by Trump as the “deep state” — some breathing room.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — President Joe Biden led the kind of campaign rally that was impossible last year because of the pandemic, speaking before nearly 3,000 people in support of a fellow moderate Democrat whose race for Virginia governor could serve as a test of Biden’s own strength and coattails.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Crews in Charlottesville are preparing to remove a Confederate statue that became a rallying point for white supremacists and helped inspire their violent 2017 rally that left a woman dead and dozens injured.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A cyberespionage campaign blamed on China was more sweeping than previously known, with suspected state-backed hackers exploiting a device meant to boost internet security to penetrate the computers of critical U.S. entities.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Foreign keyboard criminals with scant fear of repercussions have paralyzed U.S. schools and hospitals, leaked highly sensitive police files, triggered fuel shortages and, most recently, threatened global food supply chains.

The escalating havoc caused by ransomware gangs raises an obvious question: Why has the United States, believed to have the world’s greatest cyber capabilities, looked so powerless to protect its citizens from these kind of criminals operating with near impunity out of Russia and allied countries?

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — One of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black Army officer during a traffic stop has since been fired, a Virginia town announced late Sunday, hours after the governor called for an independent investigation into the case.

JARRATT, Va. (AP) — Gov. Ralph Northam is set to sign historic legislation that will put an end to the death penalty in Virginia, a state with a long and prolific history of carrying out executions.

Northam scheduled a tour Wednesday of the death chamber at the Greensville Correction Center, then planned to sign the landmark legislation abolishing the death penalty.

The legislation marks a dramatic shift in a state that has executed more people than any other.

19 Mar 2021; MEMO: The candidate for Virginia Governor Lee Carter on Tuesday said he backs Palestinian calls to boycott the Israeli occupation.