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In the weeks following the nearly back-to-back assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump, the Senate unanimously passed bipartisan legislation that would boost Secret Service protection to major presidential candidates.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced the Protect Our President Act, which will enhance U.S. Secret Service (USSS) protection for presidential nominees to the same level currently provided for a sitting president. However, a nominee is free to decline this. 

It would additionally extend that presidential-level protection to vice presidential nominees, in this case to Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, and Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn.

‘Over the course of just 65 days, two deranged individuals have tried to kill President Donald Trump, and one was able to shoot him in the head,’ Scott wrote during the bill’s introduction.

Additionally, the bill would require regular reporting from the Secret Service to leaders of the House and Senate on the status of candidates’ protection. 

The regular reporting would mandate that the agency provide a report of the nominee’s protection every 15 days during a presidential election year.

Such reports would include threat levels, security measures, costs, amount of personnel assigned and any needs that are unmet. 

The report would also include the threat level for each presidential nominee, the security measures being implemented, associated costs, the number of personnel permanently assigned to each protective detail, and any unmet security needs.

In a press release, Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY, said that the bill will ‘ensure’ that all candidates receive proper protection.

‘Our nation has witnessed two horrifying assassination attempts on President Trump. We were merely inches away from a catastrophic event that would have changed the course of our history,’ he wrote. ‘This cannot happen again. The Protect Our Presidents Act will ensure all presidential nominees receive the same level of protection provided to the president. This will give law enforcement the resources they need to keep President Trump and all of the candidates safe.’

Fox News Julia Johnson, David Spunt and Kelly Phares contributed to this report.

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In an address to the 79th United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed to be the one playing peacemaker in the Middle East and, in a juxtaposition, accused Israel of supporting terrorism.

Pezeshkian called on the U.N. to ‘examine’ modern history and said, ‘Iran has never initiated a war. It has only defended itself heroically against external aggression, causing the aggressors to regret their actions,’ Pezeshkian said, adding that Iran does not ‘occupy’ territory or exploit resources for other countries. 

‘It has repeatedly offered various proposals to its neighbors and international fora aimed at establishing lasting peace and stability,’ he said. ‘We have emphasized the importance of unity in the region and establishing a strong region.’

Iran’s claims of playing peacemaker in the Middle East are in stark contrast to its repeated involvement in proxy wars across the region, in which it has been heavily involved in Syria and Yemen, drawing deeper the lines of division between it and other powerful Sunni nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

But Iran’s deep involvement in the Middle East extends to one other area not generally endeavored by a nation state — terrorism. 

While Pezeshkian claimed from the podium Tuesday that Israel both ‘covertly and overtly’ supports the Islamic State, Tehran is widely known to have not only backed terrorist organizations ardently opposed to Israel like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, but it has also helped build bridges between the Taliban and al Qaeda, providing the terrorist networks with arms, funding and even safe haven.

‘The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others,’ Pezeshkian also claimed. ‘We want peace for all, and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.’

Iran, which has also increasingly aligned itself with top adversarial nations of the West like Russia and North Korea, attempted to claim it has not chosen a side when it comes to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, despite it having provided Moscow with drones and, most recently, short-range ballistic missiles for its war effort.

‘We seek lasting peace and security for the people of Ukraine and Russia. The Islamic Republic of Iran opposes war and emphasizes the urgent need to end military hostilities in Ukraine. We support all peaceful solutions, and believe that dialog is the only way to resolve this crisis,’ the Iranian president said. 

‘We need a new paradigm to address global challenges. Such a paradigm must focus on opportunities, rather than being obsessed with perceived threats,’ he added. 

Pezeshkian called on ‘neighboring and brotherly countries’ to unite with Iran to advance what is best for the Middle East.

But the Iranian president also spoke directly to the U.S. and said Tehran is looking to ‘transcend’ the obstacles of the past and move forward with Washington, despite its withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement under President Trump and the subsequent sanctions and trade restrictions that have, in large part, cut it off from the rest of the world. 

‘My message to all states pursuing a counterproductive strategy towards Iran is to learn from history,’ Pezeshkian said before calling the U.S.’s sanctions a ‘crime against humanity.’

‘We have the opportunity to transcend these limitations and enter into a new era,’ he added.

But Pezeshkian’s comments rang hollow for some and, according to Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran expert and senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, they were riddled with ‘propaganda.’

‘Short but certainly not sweet,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘Pezeshkian dangled the prospect of a renewed diplomatic agreement, something which his regime will use as a literal shield against pressure on its expanding nuclear program and accountably against supporting a multi-front war against Israel.’

‘By blaming former President Trump in his speech and by bringing along technocratic staff involved in the JCPOA back in 201[8], Pezeshkian hopes to win support with certain crowds in Washington and Europe and run the clock against SnapBack, which expires in 2025,’ Ben Taleblu added. But despite Pezeshkian’s honeyed comments on renewing diplomatic conversations with the U.S., they are not expected to curry much favor with either side of the political aisle as it continues to ramp up its development of nuclear weapons.

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Former President Trump was briefed Tuesday about ‘real and specific threats’ from Iran to assassinate the Republican presidential candidate, according to his campaign. 

Iran’s aim to assassinate Trump is part of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to ‘destabilize and sow chaos in the United States,’ Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a press release. 

‘Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference,’ Cheung said. 

‘Make no mistake, the terror regime in Iran loves the weakness of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Trump. He will let nothing stop him or get in his way to fight for the American people and to Make America Great Again.’ 

This is a developing story. Check back for updates. 

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

There is so much bias and bluster in cable news that it’s hard to know what to believe.

Depending on the network, the coverage can seem like bouncing between alternate galaxies.  

And overall trust in the media has of course plummeted to new lows.

Most people don’t even trust the fact-checkers, so we don’t have a basic agreement on what’s true or not in this insane presidential race, a common base of information that everyone can then debate.

That’s true even of the podcasters and social media influencers who have made such an impact in the mediasphere.

Fox News draws the most scrutiny, of course, because its audience far eclipses that of its two main cable news rivals. But there is almost no scrutiny of MSNBC as an uber-liberal organization. Maybe that’s because so many New York Times and Washington Post employees are either paid contributors or regular guests, so the leftist environment comes to seem normal.

Once in a blue moon, someone writes the ‘hey, that place is pretty darn liberal’ piece. But another barometer is former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki, who has her own show, and Symone Sanders-Townsend, the former top aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, co-hosting a weekend show. 

To be fair, there are some good journalists at MSNBC. Whatever Steve Kornacki says at the big monitor, I believe him. MS also benefits from news packages by seasoned NBC reporters.

Mediaite’s Colby Hall says it’s common knowledge that ‘MSNBC has figured out a lucrative model designed around programming that appeals to progressive, liberal, and left-of-center viewers, eyeballs that they then sell to multibillion-dollar corporations to advertise pharmaceutical products, cars, and fossil fuels…

‘With a crucial election approaching, MSNBC’s naked advocacy for the Harris-Walz campaign has only become louder and further afoot from what a news network would reasonably do.’

Hall says he’s made the same arguments about Fox, ‘but MSNBC pretty much gets a pass from the same set of group-thinkers eager to farm engagement from one another on social media.’

I’ll have more to say on that in a moment.

‘There is also the relentless pro-Harris fawning pervasive on the network, perhaps best exemplified by Chris Hayes saying that Kamala Harris’s performance in her debate with Trump was the ‘best performance’ in history because Trump ‘couldn’t control her mind.’ There is Donny Deutsch admitting that he ‘kind of fell in love’ with Harris after her campaign kickoff speech.’

Bottom line: ‘Perhaps most damning is the complete lack of reporting on air of stories that are in any way negative about Harris… Let’s not pretend that they are anything close to a news outlet when, in recent weeks, they have looked more like an arm of political propaganda working on behalf of the Democratic Party.’

Now, what most critics overlook, because it doesn’t fit the narrative, is that Fox has a news division, of which I am a part. These hard-working journalists and producers do their best to play it straight. 

Naturally, the most attention is paid to the high-profile conservative hosts on the opinion shows after 5 p.m. But it’s a mistake to represent that as all of Fox News.

Here’s the proof. On big nights – conventions, debates, elections – Fox’s coverage is anchored by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum of the news division, in my view the best in the business. On CNN, the coverage is anchored by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash or Anderson Cooper.

But at MSNBC, it’s an all-liberal pundit lineup: Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnell, maybe Alex Wagner. Ever since Brian Williams, well after the controversy that cost him the NBC anchor job, left MSNBC, there hasn’t been even the fig leaf of a nationally known broadcaster who attempts to play it down the middle.

Every network makes its choices and is conscious of its audience. The result may be, as Hall says, dishing out propaganda for the campaign.

Maggie Haberman, the ace New York Times reporter who is also a CNN analyst, has a sunnier view:

‘I think that the media does a very good job covering Trump,’ she said on NPR. ‘There are always going to be specific stories that could have been better, should have been better, that are written on deadline, and people are not being as precise as they should be.’

But Haberman argues that there is an industry ‘dedicated toward attacking the media, especially as it relates to covering Donald Trump and all coverage of Trump. And I think that Trump is a really difficult figure to cover because he challenges news media process every day, has for years. The systems are just fundamentally – they were not built to deal with somebody who says things that are not true as often as he does or speaks as incoherently as he often does.’ 

She adds that the press is not a monolith and ‘most of the information that the public has about Trump is because of reporting by the media.’

Sure, the right wing goes after the media, widely viewed as liberal – CNN’s nighttime panels are often 6 to 1 against Trump – for criticizing their man or swooning over Kamala. Trump himself is at the forefront of the attacks on the ‘enemy of the people,’ often ripping individual journalists. 

But there’s also a left wing that attacks conservative outlets, and not just Fox, for supposedly being fiercely protective of Trump and harshly critical of Harris. 

Being caught in the crossfire is rather unpleasant, as Maggie knows better than anyone. But taking the heat is part of the job we all signed up for.

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Shares of Trump Media sank Monday to their lowest price since 2021, days after majority owner Donald Trump and other company insiders got the green light to start selling their stakes in the Truth Social operator.

The stock, which appears as DJT on the Nasdaq, closed more than 10% lower in a frenzied trading session, settling at $12.15 per share and notching the company’s sixth straight day of declines.

Trump Media’s share price has fallen nearly 85% since the company surged in its public trading debut in late March.

Monday’s decline left the stock at its lowest level since before October 2021, when it was revealed that the blank-check firm Digital World Acquisition Corp. was planning to merge with then-private Trump Media.

News of that deal sent shares of DWAC soaring more than 350%. The stock declined in the intervening years, before surging again in the early 2024 in anticipation of the completion of the merger with Trump Media.

The company’s market capitalization, which crossed $10 billion in March, has now shrunk below $2.5 billion. Trump owns nearly 57% of the company’s outstanding shares, a stake that is still worth nearly $1.4 billion.

Trump and other company insiders were bound by lockup agreements that barred them from selling their shares in the initial months after Trump Media went public.

Those restrictions expired at the closing bell Thursday.

Trading volume accelerated significantly as the lockup lifted. More than 14 million shares changed hands on Thursday and nearly 22 million were exchanged Friday, far exceeding the 30-day average volume of about 8.3 million shares.

Traders swapped more than 18.3 million shares on Monday.

Asked for comment about the stock’s recent movement, a Trump Media spokesperson shared a statement defending the company’s business.

“Trump Media ended last quarter with $344 million in cash and cash equivalents and zero debt while launching an in-app streaming platform on our custom-built content delivery network,” the statement read. “With further innovations planned soon, TMTG is optimistic about our growth strategy.”

Trump, a main draw for Truth Social users and many of the company’s retail investors, said earlier in September that he will not sell his stake. The stock price briefly shot up after his remarks.

Other early investors have made no such promises. They include DWAC sponsor ARC Global and United Atlantic Ventures, an entity controlled by two former contestants on Trump’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

ARC and UAV owned nearly 11% of outstanding DJT shares, Trump Media said in a regulatory filing in early September. But ARC’s stake may have grown after a Delaware judge ruled on Sept. 16 that Trump Media breached an agreement with the sponsor and owes it more stock.

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Boeing on Monday sweetened its contract offer and said it was its “best and final” proposal for its more than 30,000 machinists as their strike, which has halted most of the aerospace giant’s aircraft production, entered its second week.

The new offer raised pay, reinstated annual bonuses and increased a bonus that would be given upon the contract’s ratification, among other changes, Boeing said on its website.

Boeing’s new offer would raise general wages by 30% over four years, up from a previously proposed 25%. It also doubled the ratification bonus to $6,000, reinstated an annual machinist bonus and raised the company’s 401(k) match.

The labor union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, didn’t immediately comment on the offer. Boeing said the offer is contingent upon ratification by Friday at 11:59 p.m. PT.

The new offer is Boeing’s latest attempt to end a costly strike, the unionized work group’s first since 2008, as pressure is mounting on new CEO Kelly Ortberg to reach a deal.

Bank of America analyst Ron Epstein estimated the strike is costing Boeing $50 million a day, and ratings agencies have said the company risks a downgrade the longer the strike lasts.

In the first few days of the strike, Boeing said it started temporarily furloughing nonunion workers including managers, and implemented other cut costs such as a hiring freeze, reduced travel and the elimination of first- and business class-air tickets for employees.

Both Boeing and the union said they were disappointed with negotiations last week.

The strike came as workers voted 94.6% against the previous proposal that the union had endorsed.

Machinists on picket lines in Renton, Washington, told CNBC last week that they rejected the first contract with higher pay because they wanted their wages to keep up with the sharp increase in the cost of living in the Seattle area. Some workers said in interviews that they have prepared for a long strike and have begun taking side jobs like delivering food or working in warehouses.

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Namazi previously spoke with Amanpour by phone in March 2023 from inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, in what was an unprecedented interview. He was the longest-held Iranian-American prisoner, excluded from three separate deals that freed other detained Americans during the Obama and Trump administrations.

‘The smell of freedom’

On 18 September 2023, Namazi stepped off the plane and onto American soil. At the top of the airplane steps, he paused to breathe in the air. It was, he tells Amanpour, a tribute to what his uncle had told Namazi and his brother Babak when they first immigrated to the United States in 1983.

“Can you smell that?” Namazi’s uncle asked his young nephews. “That is the smell of freedom.” Forty years later, Siamak Namazi emerged into the night air after eight years in prison. “I remembered what he said. And I felt it this time. I felt the smell of freedom.”

Now, he says, “the most dominant feeling that I have is gratitude… particularly (towards) President (Joe) Biden, who made a very difficult choice and struck the deal.” But, that said, he explains it has been “very difficult” to adjust to life outside.

After so long behind bars, he even had to set an alarm to remind himself just to leave the apartment. “I remember once I hadn’t left for three days, and I realized why. I just wasn’t used to doing that.”

Today, he is still putting together the pieces of his life. “It’s an eight-year earthquake that hits your life – and it leaves a lot of destruction.

“But I would say I do feel very free in the US – and I tried to live the freest life I could, even when I was in Evin.”

‘They wanted a death sentence’

Namazi was born in Iran and, after moving to America age 12, he had returned to his country of birth many times. In 2015, he went back for a funeral and felt little reason to worry. It was a period he describes as “the peak of Iran-US relations,” with high-level delegations from both countries in Vienna, Austria, to negotiate what would become the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA.

But at the airport, as he tried to leave, he recalls how everything changed. He was approached “by a man in a plain suit who said, ‘Come with me.’” Namazi says he refused and asked for identification. Then, as the man went to get a uniformed official to enforce his demand, Namazi urgently messaged his brother: “Pulling me aside at airport.”

“After that, I was interrogated off site illegally for three months and then I was finally arrested. I was charged formally with cooperating with a hostile state – referring to the United States of America.” It took six years for him to secure his full file and discover exactly what he was accused of.

He says that Iran’s authorities claimed that “for three decades, (Namazi) had been building a network within Iran to infiltrate and topple the Islamic Republic with the cooperation of the hostile US state. Now, I was arrested at 44. So, these guys are pretty much claiming that when I was learning to skateboard with my buddy Dave in White Plains, New York, I was actually subverting the Islamic Republic.”

While today he almost laughs at the absurdity of the “ridiculous” charges he faced, he knows the danger he was in. “They wanted a death sentence for me.”

Namazi was not naïve. He knew that the real reason he was being taken was to function as a bargaining chip for the regime. That, he says, gave him some comfort – but not for long.

“I assumed that because I’m a hostage and I have value, they will not harm me. Unfortunately, that assumption was proven wrong.”

‘Profound effect’

Soon after his arrest, Namazi says, he was “thrown in a solitary cell… the size of a closet.” When facing his interrogators, he says he was told that “unless you cooperate… you are going to be here until your teeth and your hair are the same color. And our methodology of how we’re talking is going to change.”

That, he says, was a clear threat of violence.

In all, Namazi endured around eight months of solitary confinement, along with what he calls “unutterable indignities.” He was blindfolded and beaten, but the worst was the “humiliation,” he says.

“That I’m not comfortable talking about,” he tells Amanpour. “And I mean unutterable – because it had a profound effect on me. I still haven’t even gotten to talking about it fully in therapy.”

Eventually, Namazi’s mother was permitted to visit. The first visit was before he was beaten, but even then, his appearance had changed so much that she didn’t recognize her own son. “I looked like Saddam (Hussein) when they pulled him out of that hole. I had (a) long beard,” he recalls. “I remember her sobbing and I remember trying to make her laugh by telling her, ‘I look like Saddam.’”

After that visit, he says, the beatings began, and lasted for weeks. “It’s much scarier than I could tell you,” Namazi recalls with emotion – particularly as he knew that the Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi had died in similar circumstances in 2003. “I knew how unsafe I was.”

After weeks of this, his mother was permitted to visit again – and this time, Namazi was prepared. He says his guards warned him to say nothing of his mistreatment and flanked him as he entered the room. “Even before sitting, I say, ‘Hi, mom. These guys have been torturing me. I need you to go public on this.’” Recalling the moment today, Namazi is almost overcome by emotion. “I put her through a lot.”

During his eight years of captivity, Namazi saw other prisoners being released in deals between the US and Iran on three separate occasions – despite, he claims, the US government being fully aware of the torture and abuse he was suffering following correspondence between his parents and the State Department.

Feeling abandoned by his government, Namazi decided he faced a choice: he could either be patient and try to stay sane, trusting that the authorities would eventually negotiate a deal that secured his freedom; or he could fight.

“I think part of my reaction to the unutterable indignities was that I have to gain my own respect back for myself. I had to fight them.”

High-risk interview

“I fought every day, every single day,” Namazi says. “I had a program: I’d get up, it was organized, you know, think about how to be a pain in the ass.”

As the years went by, Namazi tried many things, including smuggling out an opinion piece for The New York Times and going on hunger strike. But, he says, “I basically got no love back.” More was needed. So Namazi suggested to his pro bono lawyer in the US, Jared Genser, that perhaps it was time to do an interview.

In the end, Namazi’s calculus was remarkably simple. If he did the interview, he might be beaten up and thrown back in solitary. “I knew I could live (with) that,” he says. But if he chose not to do the interview, and there was no deal to free him, he’d always wonder if it could’ve got him out.

Speaking to Amanpour today, he says, is a little less high-stakes. “It is such a joy to be talking to you and not worrying about someone dragging me to a solitary cell somewhere because of it,” he tells her.

As Amanpour brought the phone interview to an end, Namazi made one last request: to address Biden directly, appealing to him “to just do what’s necessary to end this nightmare and bring us home.”

Coming home

This “desperate measure” was one way that Namazi felt he could get attention and try to lend some urgency to the ongoing negotiations.

He sees it as a crucial lesson for anyone in a similar situation: “If you are taken as a hostage, you need to make noise.” This creates more “political value” for a US president to make what otherwise might be a “politically costly” deal to release someone, he believes.

In September 2023, Namazi was finally released along with four fellow dual nationals: Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and two other prisoners whose identities were not disclosed by officials at the time.

The unfreezing of Iranian assets under the deal prompted intense criticism from former President Donald Trump and his allies – despite Trump having agreed to two prisoner swap deals with Iran during his time in office. Before it was finalized, 26 Senate Republicans wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to argue that it set an “incredibly dangerous precedent.”

But Namazi says he knew that, without a deal, he wasn’t getting out – a point his interrogators made “extremely clear.”

“We have a duty to get out our people from foreign dungeons when they have done nothing,” he adds, and “unfortunately, we have to make distasteful deals to get out our people.”

More importantly, Namazi feels he is more aware than most of the nature of the Iranian regime.

“I’ll tell you something: no one is as angry, no one is as disgusted at the fact that the Islamic Republic, this horrible regime, profited from blighting my life, than me and the other hostages and our families.

“I spent 2,989 days in their dungeon… They have done things that I’m not able to tell my therapist yet, and I still, I can’t even speak about it… I am upset that they profited from this. But what other choice is there? Are you just going let an American rot?”

No debriefing

Safely back in America, Namazi is full of ideas for changing how the US deals with hostage diplomacy. He likens it to “a game of rugby. We need to stop playing political chess with it. It’s different.”

He argues that the West can do far more to deter this sort of hostage-taking, from cracking down on international money-laundering that funds the lavish lifestyles of autocrats and their cronies, to restricting the visas they receive when visiting the United Nations in New York.

And it’s not just an American problem: Evin Prison is “a dystopian United Nations of hostages,” Namazi says, with many countries’ citizens behind bars.

“We can upend this business model very quickly. We have to make it unprofitable,” he says.

Namazi believes he could offer more but says he was not debriefed by the US government on his many interactions with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He also feels there was a notable lack of support structure once he arrived in the US.

In reflecting on the year since his release, Namazi’s focus returns to Biden.

Emotion in his voice, Namazi tells Amanpour that, eventually, he’d like to meet the man who freed him.

“I would really love to shake President Biden’s hand one day. I really would.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

An Iranian Grammy Award winner said on Monday he was pardoned from a three-year sentence for a song that became an anthem to the 2022 protests that rocked the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Shervin Hajipour, who received the first-ever Grammy for best song for social change in 2023, uploaded a video story on Instagram, looking overcome with emotion and saying: “A new order had been issued regarding amnesty, and it included my case which has been completely dismissed,” adding that he learned about the case dismissal on Sunday.

His song, “Baraye,” or “For” in English, begins with: “For dancing in the streets,” “for the fear we feel when we kiss.”

The lyrics list reasons posted online by young Iranians explaining why they had protested against Iran’s ruling theocracy, after Amini died for not wearing her mandated headscarf to the liking of security forces.

The protests quickly escalated into calls to overthrow Iran’s clerical rulers. A subsequent security crackdown killed more than 500 people, with more than 22,000 detained.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pardoned and commuted the sentences of 2,887 prisoners. It is unclear whether Hajipour’s case was part of the amnesty order.

Two months ago, Hajipour announced that he was ordered to head to prison to serve the sentence of three years and eight months that a court handed him in March.

He had already served some prison time but was out on bail in 2023 pending the court’s decision.

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An American woman who went missing while on a hike on Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, has died and her body has been recovered, authorities said on Monday.

The woman has been identified as a 20-year-old student from North Carolina named Brook Cheuvront.

Cheuvront was reported missing on Saturday after a tracking app she was using stopped updating and friends could not reach her, said SANParks spokesman JP Louw.

The management of SANParks, which manages Table Mountain and other national parks, said the cause of death was still unclear and an inquest into her death has been opened.

An initial search was conducted by rangers, wilderness search and rescue members, and trail runners until late Saturday evening when it was no longer practical to continue, said Louw.

An aircraft joined the search the next day and helped to locate the body.

South African authorities have urged people to avoid hiking on their own, suggesting it be done in groups of at least four people.

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Tokyo, Japan (AP) Japan said its warplanes used flares to warn a Russian reconnaissance aircraft to leave northern Japanese airspace on Monday.

Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters that the Russian Il-38 plane breached Japan’s airspace above Rebun Island, just off the coast of the country’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, for up to a minute in three instances, during its five-hour flight in the area.

It came a day after a joint fleet of Chinese and Russian warships sailed around Japanese northern coasts. Kihara said the airspace violation could be related to a joint military exercise that Russia and China announced earlier this month.

Japan scrambled an undisclosed number of F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, which used flares for the first time after the Russian aircraft apparently ignored their warnings, Kihara said.

“The airspace violation was extremely regrettable,” Kihara said. He said Japan “strongly protested” to Russia through diplomatic channels and demanded preventive measures.

“We will carry out our warning and surveillance operations as we pay close attention to their military activities,” he said.

Kihara said the use of flares was a legitimate response to airspace violation and “we plan to use it without hesitation.”

Japanese defense officials are highly concerned about growing military cooperation between the China and Russia, and China’s increasingly assertive activity around Japanese waters and airspace. It led Tokyo to significantly reinforce defenses of southwestern Japan, including remote islands that are considered key to Japan’s defense strategy in the region.

Earlier in September, Russian military aircraft flew around southern Japanese airspace. A Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft briefly violated Japan’s southern airspace in late August.

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, accompanied by two destroyers, sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni and nearby Iriomote, entering close to Japan’s waters.

According to Japan’s military, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024, about 70% of the time against Chinese military aircraft, though that did not include airspace violations.

Japan and Russia are in a teritorial dispute over a group of Russian-held islands, which the former Soviet Union seized from Japan at the end of World War II. The feud has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their war hostilities.

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