Hezbollah is on the backfoot. The first sign of that was the absence of a public gathering – typically consisting of high-level party officials and supporters – to watch the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah deliver a televised speech on Thursday.

The second sign was that Nasrallah’s address – his first since two waves of attacks detonated thousands of Hezbollah wireless devices earlier this week – was very possibly pre-recorded.

The leader of the powerful militant group has not delivered a speech in person since the start of Lebanon’s last all-out war with Israel in 2006. But he will often make a point of proving that his broadcasts are being carried by a live transmission. In his speech last month, for example, Nasrallah referenced two sonic booms caused by Israeli jets that had broken the sound barrier over Beirut. These happened in the seconds leading up to the start of his address.

Thursday’s speech was billed as a live transmission, but audiences were given reason to doubt around 20 minutes in, when Israel dropped flares over the Lebanese capital and sent windows shaking with a fresh wave of sonic booms. The roar reverberated throughout the city yet the Beirut-based militant leader neither flinched nor referenced the incident during his speech.

Israel’s fighter jets seemed intent to underscore the gains of Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks on Hezbollah’s wireless devices: the group had been driven deeper underground.

“Without a doubt, we have suffered a major blow,” said Nasrallah in his speech on Thursday. “(It is) unprecedented in the history of the resistance in Lebanon at least, unprecedented in the history of Lebanon, and it may be unprecedented in the history of the conflict with the Israeli enemy across the entire region.”

Thousands of small explosions swept through the pockets and homes of Hezbollah members this week, targeting pagers on Tuesday, and then walkie-talkies on Wednesday; in all, the blasts killed at least 37, including some children, and injured nearly 3000. The attack, dystopian in its style and scale, blindsided the group that had opted for analogue technologies after forgoing cell phones to avoid Israeli infiltration.

Nasrallah vowed a “reckoning” but was scant on the details. The attack “will be met with a reckoning and fair punishment in ways that they expect and don’t expect,” he said.

But he continued with an unmistakably subdued tone. “However, because this battle was carried out by invisible faces, you must allow me to change my style,” he said.

“The reckoning will come. Its nature, scope, when and where … that’s something we will definitely keep to ourselves,” he added. “Within the tightest circle, even within ourselves, because we are in the most precise, sensitive and deeply significant part of the battle.”

Nasrallah tried to buoy the sober speech by extolling what he described as strategic gains of nearly a year of confrontations with Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border. He also vowed to continue striking Israeli positions until Israel’s offensive in Gaza ends.

“We’ve been saying this for 11 months; we might be repeating ourselves, but this statement comes after these two major blows, after all these martyrs, wounds, and pain,” said Nasrallah. “I say clearly: no matter the sacrifices, consequences, or future possibilities, the resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza.”

Responding to Israeli threats of creating a security buffer zone in Lebanon’s southern border area, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, “welcoming” Israeli troops into the territory where he said Hezbollah militants would swiftly seize the opportunity to attack them.

Meanwhile in Lebanon, people are continuing to reel from the attacks that overwhelmed hospitals with wounded people, mostly with deep flesh wounds to the eyes and face.

Hezbollah will likely recede further into the shadows and regroup about their methods. During the 2006 war, the militant group’s Al-Manar television was on air for the duration of the 34-day conflict, despite Israel’s heavy-handed bombing campaign.

Live broadcasts have long been hailed by Hezbollah as a symbol of defiance against the long arm of Israeli spyware, and their ability to keep broadcasting against the odds has been a point of pride for the group – lending it a mythical quality among its Lebanese constituents and even some of its detractors.

But this week’s attacks on wireless devices punctured that aura. Hezbollah – which literally translates into Party of God – has been rattled, forced to contend with the new reality that it is more exposed than it has ever believed itself to be.

Moscow — Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman, was arrested and charged with murder Thursday, his lawyers said, after a deadly shootout at the Moscow office of Russia’s largest online retailer.

Two people were killed in a shooting Wednesday just a few blocks away from the Kremlin at the Wildberries office, as a dispute over the company’s future took a violent turn. Seven others were wounded, including police officers.

Vladislav and his wife Tatyana Bakalchuk, who filed for divorce in July, have been embroiled in a bitter public tussle since Wildberries announced plans to merge with outdoor advertising firm Russ Group in June.

Tatyana founded Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, in 2004, growing it from an online clothes reseller into a major marketplace for all kinds of goods.

Both parties blamed each other for Wednesday’s shooting.

Vladislav said he had arrived for a pre-arranged meeting and that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots. Tatyana said Vladislav and his colleagues had tried to seize the office and that there was no meeting scheduled.

Vladislav’s lawyers said he had been arrested and charged with murder and the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, something they said was a “blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.

The business dispute is centered around the merger that formed RVB, a new company with Robert Mirzoyan as CEO, which reduced Tatyana’s overall stake to around 65% in RVB from 99% in Wildberries.

Vladislav at the time said his wife was being “manipulated.” Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who stepped in to support Vladislav, called the merger an “asset grab.”

Tatyana has dismissed both of those allegations. The Kremlin said the merger had won President Vladimir Putin’s backing but he would not interfere with its progress.

In a tearful video message posted on Telegram early Thursday, Tatyana said: “Vladislav, what are you doing? How will you look into the eyes of your parents and our children? How could you bring the situation to such absurdity?”

The affair harks back to the 1990s, when deadly corporate turf battles were commonplace in Russia as huge swathes of property were redistributed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Reactions to the proposal have widely been that it will be a non-starter for Hamas, which has not commented on it.

It is unclear whether the proposal addresses the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza after a ceasefire and hostage deal – a key sticking point in stalled negotiations. And the idea that Sinwar would leave Gaza is seen as unlikely by American officials.

A separate Israeli source familiar with the negotiations said the proposal was not being discussed among the Israeli negotiating team as a basis for new negotiations with Hamas, which have been at a standstill for weeks now.

The Hostages Families Forum, which has been scathing about Netanyahu’s approach to hostage negotiations, welcomed the proposal.

“A one-shot deal that includes all 101 hostages is the wish of all Israeli citizens in general and the families of the hostages in particular,” the organization said in a statement. “The Prime Minister must lead with courage, determination and speed the proposal he formulated.

“We must put an end to almost a year of neglect.”

Talks stall

The proposal comes at a time when the prospects for a deal have never been lower. The families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza have expressed dismay at escalating tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying that a widescale war there would only lower the chances of a hostage deal.

Hirsh met early last week with Roger Carstens, the US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, to discuss negotiations to free the hostages held in Gaza.

The notion of facilitating Sinwar’s exile has been discussed at various points in the negotiations as part of the later stages of an eventual ceasefire agreement, although there is no indication that Sinwar would agree to such terms.

“Gaza is Sinwar’s sea and he is a fish. A fish does not come out of the sea willingly.”

Nonetheless, if the agreement included the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, it would come “close to a deal that Hamas is ready for,” Baskin added.

Previously, when the idea was raised of allowing top Hamas leaders like Sinwar to leave Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement, American officials said they thought it was unlikely Sinwar would agree. They cited Israel’s assassinations of Hamas leaders in foreign capitals, and said they believed Sinwar would prefer to die fighting Israel than to leave Gaza.

A Thai woman has been rescued by police after being strangled by a python for more than two hours.

The python then wrapped itself around her until she fell to the ground. She struggled to free herself from the snake’s tightening coils for two hours without success, according to the police.

The woman cried out for help, but no one answered initially. Eventually, one of her neighbors heard her distressed calls and sought assistance from police.

In footage filmed by police, Arom was seen sitting on the floor of a tiny dark room, trapped in the grip of the python, which had wrapped itself around her waist.

It took rescuers about 30 minutes to free her, after which she was sent to the hospital for treatment, according to the police.

The snake escaped afterward, police said, adding: “We couldn’t catch it.”

Thailand is home to 250 snake species, including three varieties of pythons — the reticulated, Burmese and Blood — according to Thai National Parks.

Pythons are not venomous, but they kill by suffocation, coiling themselves around their prey and squeezing tight to constrict blood flow before swallowing their victims whole.

According to Thailand’s National Health Security office, some 12,000 people were treated for venomous snake and animal bites in the country last year. Twenty-six people died from snake bites during that period, official figures show.

The attack on Arom is the second such incident in the country to attract global attention in recent weeks. Last month, a man had his testiclebitten by a python while sitting in the bathroom.

He managed to survive the encounter byhitting the snake with a cleaning brush before calling a security guard to help remove it, according to local media.

The high-end London department store, Harrods, said Thursday that it is “utterly appalled” by allegations of abuse – including rape – perpetrated by its former owner, the late billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed.

More than 20 female ex-Harrods employees have accused Al Fayed, who died last year at age 94, of sexually assaulting them, according to an in-depth BBC investigation. One said she was assaulted when she was 15 and Al Fayed was 79. Harrods acknowledged that Al Fayed was “intent on abusing his power wherever he operated.”

The alleged assaults are said to have taken place at a wide range of locations, including Al Fayed’s luxury apartment in London, the Ritz hotel in Paris, which Al Fayed owned, and a Parisian villa that Al Fayed rented called Villa Windsor, known for being the main residence of the Duke of Windsor, a former British king, and his wife, for decades.

Al Fayed’s son, Dodi Fayed, died in 1997 along with Princess Diana in a high-speed car crash in Paris.

Former Harrods employees told the BBC that Al Fayed’s treatment of women was known throughout the department store, with one former department manager saying that it “wasn’t even a secret.”

“I knew and I think, if I knew, everybody knew. Anyone who says they didn’t they’re lying,” the former department manager Tony Leeming said.

In 2008, Al Fayed denied allegations of sexual assault on a girl under the age of 16. Police said the alleged assault took place at a business address in central London.

Harrods apologized to victims in a statement, adding that “the Harrods of today is a very different organization to the one owned and controlled by Al Fayed between 1985 and 2010.”

“We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed,” the company said. “These were the actions of an individual who was intent on abusing his power wherever he operated and we condemn them in the strongest terms. We also acknowledge that during this time as a business we failed our employees who were his victims and for this we sincerely apologize.”

Harrods said that last year “new information came to light” about historic allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed. Since then, it said, “it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved. This process is still available for any current or former Harrods employees.”

Ukraine’s electricity supply risks “severe disruptions” this winter, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, urging Kyiv’s allies to help address the country’s energy security.

Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with missiles and drones since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but its bombardments have intensified recently, leaving the country in a precarious position as colder weather approaches.

“Ukraine’s energy system has made it through the past two winters thanks to the resilience, courage and ingenuity of its people and strong solidarity from its international partners,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement Thursday.

“But this winter will be, by far, its sternest test yet.”

Last month, Russia launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war, firing more than 200 missiles and drones mainly at energy infrastructure. The onslaught caused power outages in several Ukrainian cities, affecting millions of households. Ukraine has also attacked Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Even before that attack by Moscow, more than two-thirds of Ukraine’s pre-war power generation capacity was offline because it had been destroyed, damaged or occupied by Russian forces, the IEA said in a report.

That has made rolling blackouts, which can also affect water supply, a feature of daily life in Ukraine.

“The situation could become even more dire as the days get shorter and colder,” the agency cautioned. “A yawning gap between available electricity supply and peak demand risks emerging — bringing the threat of even more severe disruptions to hospitals, schools and other key institutions in the depths of winter.”

The IEA estimates that Ukraine’s electricity supply shortfall could reach as much as 6 gigawatts this winter, or almost a third of expected peak demand and equivalent to the peak annual demand of Denmark, for example.

In its report, the agency outlines 10 measures that Ukraine and its allies should implement to tackle risks to the country’s energy supply. These include bolstering the physical and cyber security of critical energy infrastructure, expediting delivery of equipment and spare parts for repairs, investing in energy efficiency and increasing the capacity to import electricity and natural gas from the European Union.

But, according to the report, effective air defense is “by far the most important” measure to safeguard the minimum level of energy services in Ukraine through the coming months.

Help from frozen Russian assets

To help Ukraine through the upcoming winter, the EU will disburse €160 million ($179 million) — including €60 million ($67 million) in humanitarian aid for shelters and heaters, and €100 million ($112 million) for repair works and renewable energy, with the larger amount flowing from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets.

“It is only right that Russia pays for the destruction it caused,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters Thursday. She also noted that the EU had contributed at least €2 billion ($2.2 billion) toward Ukraine’s energy system since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

Work currently underway to repair Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and connect its electricity grid to the rest of Europe will cover more than 25% of the country’s energy needs this winter, according to the president of the EU’s executive arm.

In one example of such efforts, a thermal power plant in Lithuania is being dismantled and shipped to Ukraine where it will be reassembled. The EU has also dispatched solar panels to 21 hospitals in the country, eight of which will be “fully equipped” by the winter, she said.

The suspected attacks against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah are the latest in a series of covert operations that Israel’s government refuses to acknowledge but which are alleged to have been carried out by Israeli operatives.

Munich massacre response

Israel’s alleged history of planting explosives in telecommunication devices goes back as far as 1972, as part of its revenge for the killing of 11 Israelis, including athletes, at the Munich Olympics, which was carried out by the Palestinian militant group Black September.

In response, Israel launched “Operation Wrath of God” and spent years tracking down those involved in the Munich Massacre.

Mahmoud Hamshari, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative in Paris, was among those targeted. Unidentified operatives reported to be linked to Israeli intelligence broke into his home and planted a bomb in his phone, before another person – posing as an Italian journalist – arranged a telephone interview with Hamshari. When he picked up the call and identified himself, the bomb was activated remotely.

The ‘engineer’

Tuesday’s attacks reminded many of the 1996 killing of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’ chief bombmaker known as “the engineer,” responsible for killing dozens of Israelis.

Ayyash was killed in Gaza after his cell phone, which had been packed with 50 grams (1.76 ounces) of explosives, blew up near his head. After his killing, dozens of Israelis were killed in four retaliatory suicide bombings.

Iranian nuclear scientists

Since 2010, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in foreign-linked assassinations, as Israel tries to prevent its greatest adversary from developing nuclear weapons. In August 2015, at the height of the assassinations, then-Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon cryptically told the German magazine Der Spiegel that he could not be held responsible “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists.”

Experts believe Israel and the United States were responsible for deploying the complex computer virus called Stuxnet that destroyed centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.

Iranian officials have said they believe the cyberattack, which targeted centrifuges including those at the Natanz and Bushehr nuclear plants, originated in Israel and the United States, but neither country has commented on the malware’s origin. Notably, Stuxnet was one of the first times a cyberattack had a manifestation outside cyberspace, causing the centrifuges to spin out of control unnoticed. The pager attack is seemingly another instance of a cyberattack causing a physical consequence, unlike stealing money from a bank account or taking down a website.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was Iran’s chief nuclear scientist, was assassinated east of Tehran in 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun operating out of a nearby Nissan. Iranian officials said the weapon had used artificial intelligence and facial recognition to detect Fakhrizadeh and open fire, before the car, reportedly packed with explosives, self-destructed.

Top Iranian officials blamed Israel for the assassination. Israel did not comment.

Human intelligence

While many of these assassinations have a sci-fi aspect, experts stressed that each operation requires high levels of human intelligence that raised questions about the security protocols of Israel’s adversaries. After Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, intelligence analysts stressed that a country or actor would still have had to smuggle in specialist equipment to stage the operation.

After this week’s events, some speculated that the explosions could have been caused by an Israeli cybersecurity breach that caused the lithium batteries in the pagers to overheat and detonate.

Kennedy said it was more likely that Israel had human operatives in Hezbollah who were able to intercept the supply chain and tamper with the devices. “The pagers would have been implanted with explosives and likely only to detonate when a certain message was received,” he said.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel had hidden explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah, and that a switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, according to unnamed American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The Iranian government and Hamas say Israel carried out the assassination. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Lebanon is reeling after facing deadly back-to-back attacks targeting Hezbollah members – with pagers simultaneously exploding across the country on Tuesday, then walkie-talkies detonating in a similar fashion on Wednesday.

Panic, fear and grief have now gripped the country, with questions swirling about how the attacks could have been carried out, where the devices came from, and whether this latest development could plunge the Middle East into a wider regional conflict.

At least 22 people, including children, have died so far from the two attacks, which Lebanese officials have blamed on Israel. Thousands more are injured – many maimed and in critical condition after communications devices exploded in their pockets or in their face.

While Israel has refused to publicly comment, it warned on Wednesday that a “new era” of war was beginning, appearing to tacitly acknowledge its role.

Here’s what we know so far.

What happened, when and where?

The first attack came on Tuesday afternoon when pagers exploded at the same time across several parts of Lebanon – including the capital Beirut, and in several towns in the central Beqaa valley, strongholds for the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Videos showed the bloody aftermath on streets and public spaces. In one CCTV video, a man was picking out fruit in a supermarket when an explosion detonated – leaving him groaning in pain on the ground, clutching his lower abdomen as panic breaks out around him.

Lebanese hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, with limited staff attending to hundreds of bandaged and bleeding patients – some of whom had to lie on the floor as more of the injured arrived.

The second attack took place on Wednesday, with walkie-talkies detonating in the suburbs of Beirut and in the south of the country.

One witness who cannot be named for security reasons described seeing a man’s hands blown off by an exploding walkie-talkie while attending a Hezbollah funeral. Fires broke out in dozens of homes, stores, and vehicles, with videos showing smoke billowing on chaotic streets.

Why would Israel target Lebanon now?

Hezbollah and Israel have been at conflict for decades – but the two have ramped up their cross-border attacks on each other since last October when the war in Gaza began, following Palestinian militant group Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel.

Hezbollah is part of a larger Iran-led axis across the Middle East spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza and Iraq that has engaged in a simmering conflict with Israel and its allies over the past 10 months.

The axis has said they will continue striking Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza goes on, rebranding themselves as a “supportive front” for Palestinians in the strip, as described by a senior Hezbollah leader.

Israel may have chosen this timing for the attacks because it believed Hezbollah had discovered the pagers’ capability – making it a “use it or lose it” moment, said an Israeli source familiar with national security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also have wanted to shore up domestic support. Officials and residents from the northern region have become increasingly vocal about the need to return to their homes after being evacuated due to attacks, piling pressure on the government to act against the threat of Hezbollah’s rockets from southern Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Israel made it a new war objective to return Israel’s northern residents to their homes near the border – which has long been understood to be a political necessity.

How did it happen?

There are still many questions on how Israel might have carried out its attacks this week – and where the devices that detonated came from.

Hezbollah is highly secretive, and its leader has previously urged families to dump their cell phones to avoid infiltration from Israeli and US spyware. That’s why so many Hezbollah members and their families rely instead on low-tech wireless communication devices like pagers.

Damaged pagers in Lebanon bore the name of a Taiwanese manufacturer – but the company said the devices were instead made and sold by a Hungarian company in Budapest.

Hungarian authorities denied this, however, saying the Budapest firm was a “trading intermediary” with no manufacturing sites in the country.

Making things even stranger, the address for the company’s office is in a residential area – where other people in the building said they hardly saw people coming to work, and that the Budapest company had never physically been to the building.

Meanwhile, Lebanon said the walkie-talkies that exploded were a discontinued model made by Japanese firm ICOM.

The devices were not supplied by a recognized agent, were not officially licensed and had not been vetted by the security services, Lebanese authorities said. ICOM said the model was discontinued a decade ago, and it could not determine whether the ones used in Lebanon were counterfeit or shipped from its company.

How have Hezbollah, Israel and the world responded?

Hezbollah has vowed retribution, warning on Tuesday that Israel will “definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected.”

The Lebanese government also condemned the attack as “criminal Israeli aggression” and a violation of their national sovereignty.

It’s less clear what capacity Hezbollah might have to launch a counterattack if many of its members are wounded and key communication methods are no longer reliable.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appeared to reference the attacks on Wednesday during a visit to an air force base – praising the “excellent achievements” of the military and intelligence agency.

“We are at the beginning of a new era in this war and we need to adapt ourselves,” Gallant said.

It appears US officials were largely in the dark until reports emerged of the explosions, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Israeli officials notified the US that it was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, the sources said.

The UN rights chief condemned the attacks, calling them a violation of international humanitarian law and urging an “independent, thorough and transparent investigation.” International NGO Human Rights Watch echoed his remarks, saying the inquiry should be “prompt” and “urgently conducted.”

A 10-year-old boy attending a Japanese school in southern China has died after being stabbed on his way to class on Wednesday, according to Tokyo’s foreign minister, in the second knife attack near a Japanese school in the country in recent months.

The boy was attacked by a man about 200 meters (650 feet) from the gates of the Japanese school in Shenzhen, a tech-hub metropolis home to many Japanese businesses, according to China’s foreign ministry.

A 44-year-old suspect was apprehended at the scene and taken into custody, police in the city said in a statement.

Japanese and Chinese authorities did not specify the nationality of the victim. But Japanese nationality is required for enrollment at the Shenzhen Japanese School, according to its website.

“The fact that such a despicable act was committed against a child on his way to school is truly regrettable,” Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters Thursday.

“We take this incident extremely seriously, and we have once again requested that the Chinese side ensure the safety of Japanese nationals.”

The attack took place on a sensitive date, the anniversary of the “918” incident in 1931, when Japanese soldiers blew up a Japanese-owned railway in northeast China in a pretext to capture the region.

The emotionally charged day is commemorated in China as the start of Japan’s invasion, with state media and officials urging the public to never forget the national humiliation.

Chinese authorities did not mention the motive for Wednesday’s attack. But nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Japanese sentiment are on the rise in the country, often fanned by state media.

In June, a Chinese man wounded a Japanese woman and her child in a stabbing attack in front of a school bus in Suzhou, eastern China. A Chinese bus attendant who tried to intervene later died of her injuries.

Following that attack, Japan’s foreign ministry told Japanese schools to review their safety measures, Kamikawa said.

Ahead of the 918 anniversary, “we had just made a request to the Chinese foreign ministry to take thorough measures to ensure the safety of Japanese schools, so we are extremely disappointed that this incident occurred in this situation,” she added.

At a regular news conference Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the case was being investigated.

“China will continue to take effective measures to protect the safety of all foreigners in China,” he added.

Public attacks against foreigners had been rare in China, but a series of high-profile stabbings have raised concerns in recent months.

Two weeks before the Japanese mother and child were attacked in Suzhou, four American college instructors were stabbed by a Chinese man at a public park in Jilin in the northeast, after he bumped into one of them, according to Chinese police.

China’s foreign ministry has described both attacks as isolated incidents and did not release further information on the motives.

Australian police said Wednesday they have infiltrated Ghost, an encrypted global communications app developed for criminals, leading to dozens of arrests.

The app’s alleged administrator, Jay Je Yoon Jung, 32, appeared in a Sydney court Wednesday on charges including supporting a criminal organization and benefitting from proceeds of crime.

Jung did not enter pleas or apply to be released on bail. He will remain behind bars until his case returns to court in November.

Australian police arrested 38 suspects in raids across four states in recent days while law enforcement agencies were also making arrests in Canada, Sweden, Ireland and Italy, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Ian McCartney said.

“We allege hundreds of criminals including Italian organized crime, motorcycle gang members, Middle Eastern organized crime and Korean organized crime have used Ghost in Australia and overseas to import illicit drugs and order killings,” McCartney told reporters.

Australian police had prevented 50 people from being killed, kidnapped or seriously hurt by monitoring threats among 125,000 messages and 120 video calls since March, Assistant Commissioner Kirsty Schofield said.

Police allege that Jung developed the app specifically for criminal use in 2017.

Australia joined a Europol-led global taskforce targeting Ghost in 2022.

Col. Florian Manet, who heads France’s Home Affairs Ministry National Cyber Command Technical Department, said in a statement issued by Australian police that his officers provided technical resources to the taskforce over several years that helped decrypt the communications.

McCartney said the French had “provided a foot in the door” for Australian police to decrypt Ghost communications.

Australian police technicians were able to modify software updates regularly pushed out by the administrator, McCartney said.

“In effect, we infected the devices, enabling us to access the content on Australian devices,” McCartney said, adding that the alleged administrator lived in his parents’ Sydney home and had no police record.

Jung was arrested at his home on Tuesday.

Police say Jung used a network of resellers to offer specialized handsets to criminals around the world.

The modified smartphones sold for 2,350 Australian dollars ($1,590) which included a six-month subscription to Ghost and tech support.