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Iran Makes Arrest after Khomeini Statue 'Destroyed'

A statue of Khomeini in a roundabout bearing his name in the center of Ardestan, Isfahan Province (FARS news agency)
A statue of Khomeini in a roundabout bearing his name in the center of Ardestan, Isfahan Province (FARS news agency)
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Iran Makes Arrest after Khomeini Statue 'Destroyed'

A statue of Khomeini in a roundabout bearing his name in the center of Ardestan, Isfahan Province (FARS news agency)
A statue of Khomeini in a roundabout bearing his name in the center of Ardestan, Isfahan Province (FARS news agency)

Iranian authorities on Sunday arrested an individual for destroying a statue of Ruhollah Khomeini the previous day, a local official said.

The incident comes as Iran prepares to celebrate in February the 43rd anniversary of the Iranian revolution and Khomenei's triumphant return to Tehran from exile.

"We have received a report stating that the statue of Imam Khomeini in the main square in the town of Ardestan was... destroyed yesterday," local governor Hamidreza Taamoli said, quoted by the official IRNA news agency.

Ardestan is a town in the central province of Isfahan.

"The individual was identified in the shortest possible time and sent to prison," he added, according to AFP, without disclosing the detainee's identity.

"It is not possible right now to speculate on the accused's motives," Taamoli added.

Earlier this month, the judicial authority announced the arrest of a "counter-revolutionary agent" on suspicion of carrying out an arson attack on a memorial to General Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq's capital Baghdad in January 2020.

The statue of him, in the southwestern town of Shahrekord, had been unveiled just hours before the arson attack.

Two years ago, protesters burned an effigy of Khomeini’s ring in the city of Shahryar on the outskirts of Tehran, during the bloody protests in November 2019.

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US Treasury: Chinese Hackers Remotely Accessed Workstations, Documents in 'Major' Cyber Incident

FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
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US Treasury: Chinese Hackers Remotely Accessed Workstations, Documents in 'Major' Cyber Incident

FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A bronze seal for the Department of the Treasury is shown at the US Treasury building in Washington, US, January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

Chinese hackers remotely accessed several US Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents after compromising a third-party software service provider, the agency said Monday.
The department did not provide details on how many workstations had been accessed or what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained, but it said in a letter to lawmakers revealing the breach that “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.” It said the hack was being investigated as a “major cybersecurity incident,” The Associated Press reported.
“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” a department spokesperson said in a separate statement. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”
The revelation comes as US officials are continuing to grapple with the fallout of a massive Chinese cyberespionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. A top White House official said Friday that the number of telecommunications companies confirmed to have been affected by the hack has now risen to nine.
The Treasury Department said it learned of the problem on Dec. 8, when a third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, flagged that hackers had stolen a key “used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support” to workers. That key helped the hackers override the service's security and gain remote access to several employee workstations.
The compromised service has since been taken offline, and there's no evidence that the hackers still have access to department information, Aditi Hardikar, an assistant Treasury secretary, said in the letter Monday to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee.
The department said it was working with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and others to investigate the impact of the hack, and that the hack had been attributed to Chinese state-sponsored culprits. It did not elaborate.