By arabnews.com -- DUBAI: Just 48 hours after Adriana Lima debuted her baby bump and showed off her maternity style while sitting front row at the Balmain fashion show in Paris, the Brazilian supermodel jetted off to Lebanon for an advocacy mission in collaboration with the Education Above All Foundation, an international organization founded in 2012 by Qatar’s Sheikha Moza bint Nasser that aims to improve the lives of poor and marginalized children, youth and women. On Sunday, Lima, 40, was photographed at the site of the Beirut port explosion, which tore through the Lebanese capital city on Aug. 4, 2020, killing over 200 people, injuring thousands and leaving 300,000 without a home. The model went to Lebanon for an advocacy mission. Supplied The explosion caused widespread damage, destroying much of the capital and leaving homes, schools and shops decimated. The former Victoria’s Secret model, who is expecting her third child with partner Andre Lemmers, also visited a school damaged by the blast and rehabilitated by UNESCO with the support of the EAAF and met with children and teachers who were victims of the devastating explosion.

Lima, who is celebrating 25 years in the fashion industry, is also a humanitarian who often uses her platform to advocate for disadvantaged groups. She met with children and teachers who were victims of the devastating explosion. Supplied Among the causes she supports is the St. Luke Foundation for Haiti, which provides expectant mothers with medical care and facilitates education in disadvantaged communities. She also gives back to orphaned children in her native Salvador, Brazil, through Caminhos da Luz (or Paths of Light). In 2009, she appeared on “Var mısın? Yok musun?,” the Turkish version of reality television series “Deal or No Deal,” and her prize money was donated to a hospital in Istanbul for children fighting leukemia. The expectant mother of two is among a long list of celebrities who have shown support for the Levant nation following the Aug. 4 blast.

By Sandy Fitzgerald -- newsmax.com -- Visa and Mastercard announced Saturday they will stop all credit card transactions connected with Russian clients and financial institutions in the upcoming days over the deadly invasion of Ukraine following a plea made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to members of the Senate earlier in the day. "We are compelled to act following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the unacceptable events that we have witnessed," Al Kelly, chairman and chief executive officer of Visa Inc., said in a press release posted on Business Wire. "We regret the impact this will have on our valued colleagues, and on the clients, partners, merchants, and cardholders we serve in Russia. This war and the ongoing threat to peace and stability demand we respond in line with our values."

The credit card giant said this means that effective immediately, Visa will be working with clients and partners inside of Russia to stop all Visa transactions, including through merchants and ATMs. Once complete, all transactions that are initiated with Visa cards that were issued in Russia will no longer work outside the country, and cards that were issued by financial institutions outside of Russia will not work within the Russian Federation, the company said. Mastercard, in a separate statement Saturday, said they are also ceasing all operations in Russia over the invasion. "For more than a week, the world has watched the shocking and devastating events resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine," the company said. "Our colleagues, our customers, and our partners have been affected in ways that most of us could not imagine.  Just after the invasion, Mastercard blocked multiple financial institutions from its payment network, while saying it was continuing to work with regulators to abide by compliance obligations.

By Douglas Perry - oregonlive.com -- By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian/OregonLive 00 Mohammed bin Salman continues to insist he did not order the 2018 murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In an interview with The Atlantic, the 36-year-old crown prince of Saudi Arabia, widely known as MBS, said Khashoggi wasn’t important enough to kill. “I never read a Khashoggi article in my life,” he said. He added: “If that’s the way we did things, Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list. If you’re going to go for another operation like that, for another person, it’s got to be professional and it’s got to be one of the top 1,000.”

The Atlantic reporter Graeme Wood writes that, throughout the interview, MBS “gave relaxed, nonpsychopathic answers to questions…” But Wood makes plain that he believes MBS is, indeed, a psychopath. He also suggests that the crown prince is transforming Saudi Arabia in ways that are, in many respects, good for the people of the oil-rich nation, turning it from “one of the world’s weirdest countries into a place that could plausibly be called normal.” The crown prince, needless to say, agrees that his reforms are a boon for his country. “Where is the potential in the world today?” MBS said, directing his comment to U.S. politicians and companies. “It’s in Saudi Arabia. And if you want to miss it, I believe other people in the East are going to be super happy.” When asked about the Biden Administration’s concerns about political repression in Saudi Arabia -- and its public release of the CIA assessment that MBS was directly responsible for Khashoggi’s brutal murder -- the crown prince said President Biden should worry about his own country. “We don’t have the right to lecture you in America,” he said. “The same goes the other way.” -- 

By Kyle Alspach -- venturebeat.com -- Whatever you might think about the risks involved with Ukraine’s IT army — and there are some big ones — available data shows that the initiative is, in fact, making an impact against Russia. The Ukraine IT army is also starting to expand beyond basic attacks, known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), and into cyberattacks that may prove more difficult for targeted Russian sites to defend against. My source on this is security professional Chris Partridge, who has been tracking the status of Russian internet properties targeted by Ukraine’s IT army. On GitHub, Partridge has been posting data every day since Sunday — the day after the initiative was announced — about what percentage of targeted Russian sites were still online. The bottom line for the findings: More than half of the Ukraine IT army’s targeted sites have faced partial or total outages in Russia, based on the samples collected.

In other words, Ukraine’s IT army is so far a success — at least as far as what it’s aiming to do. “IT Army’s stated goal is simply that people should use whatever force they can to disrupt these sites,” Partridge said in a message to VentureBeat. “In that sense, they’ve galvanized a massive number of people to action, and I believe the data shows the galvanized mob can clearly impose cost and chaos on many targets.” Outside of Russia, the percentage of targeted sites that have gone offline is “much higher,” he noted. While the potential impact of doing that is smaller, it’s still no doubt disruptive.

Building an army