"These drills mainly focus on sea-air combat-readiness patrols ... assaults on maritime and ground targets, and blockades on key areas and sea lanes to test the joint operations capabilities of its troops," PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said in a statement.

“Sinister Moves of Taiwan Separatists Courting Disaster Upon Themselves,”

✉️ The cyberattack involved the use of Cobalt Strike, a program used to access computer systems. “Cobalt Strike was a tool used to develop an intrusion artifact for Paraguayan government computers to extract data related to the bilateral Itaipu negotiations,” an Abin agent told Brazil’s Federal Police.

💸 Itaipu’s energy is equally divided between Brazil and Paraguay. Since Paraguay consumes less, it sells the surplus to Brazil. The rules for this sale are set in Annex C, which was scheduled for review in 2023. In recent years, Paraguay has pressured Brazil for higher tariffs.

⁉️ This past May, Brazilian Minister of Mines and Energy Alexandre Silveira reached an agreement with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña to increase Brazil’s payments, though the final amount was lower than Paraguay’s demands. Around the same time, the Brazilian government also opened discussions on revising Annex C.

✈️ The Abin operation was not conducted from Brazil. Agents made three trips to Chile and Panama to set up virtual servers and launch the attacks. The targets were “authorities directly involved in the negotiations and the pricing per megawatt,” the agent stated. “The Paraguayan Congress, Senate, House of Representatives, and the Presidency were all hacked.”

💬 In a testimony, one agent reported that an Abin executive “personally presented” the operation to the agency’s current director. “Luiz Fernando was thrilled, he really liked it, saying it was the first time he truly felt involved in intelligence work,” the agent told the Federal Police.

⭐ Luiz Fernando Corrêa, a close ally of Lula, is a retired Federal Police officer who led the agency during the leftist’s second term. His appointment to Abin displeased the current Federal Police director, Andrei Rodrigues, who had sought to appoint someone of his own choosing. Behind the scenes, the investigation into Abin’s current leadership is seen as a reflection of this internal power struggle.

“The United States is determined to make sure Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapon.

Trump has expressed willingness to pursue a deal with Iran.

If the Iranian regime does not want to a deal, the President has other options — and those alternatives will be very bad for Iran.”