Etiket: U.s.

Former U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to 14 Years for Planning to Help ISIS

Pvt. Cole Bridges pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.

A former soldier in the U.S. Army was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to provide ISIS with information to help plan an ambush he thought would result in the deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

The soldier, Pvt. Cole Bridges, 24, of Stow, Ohio, also discussed potential locations for terrorist attacks in New York City with an undercover F.B.I. agent whom he believed to be a supporter of the Islamic State.

Private Bridges enlisted in the military in 2019 and joined an infantry division in Fort Stewart, Ga. Before enlisting, he had already been persuaded by radical ideologies, according to the Justice Department.

“Cole Bridges used his U.S. Army training to pursue a horrifying goal: the brutal murder of his fellow service members in a carefully plotted ambush,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Beginning in at least 2019, Private Bridges began researching jihadist propaganda and posted his support for ISIS on social media. About a year after joining the Army, he began a correspondence with an F.B.I. agent who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with the group in the Middle East.

A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York detailed the soldier’s fervent intent on aiding the Islamic State, describing Private Bridges as “a supporter of ISIS and its mission to establish a global caliphate.”

Bitcoin Bounces 7% Above $63K as Crypto Traders Eye China Stimulus Statement

Solana’s SOL, Avalanche’s AVAX and Render’s RNDR led the crypto rally as almost all but one member of the CoinDesk 20 Index posted gains.

Cryptocurrencies sharply rebounded on Friday from the previous day’s lows with bitcoin (BTC) retaking $63,000 as investors quickly shrugged off worries over slightly hotter inflation readings, turning their attention to a fiscal policy update from China on Saturday.

Bitcoin, the leading crypto asset by market capitalization, shot up 7% from Thursday’s trough below $59,000 after the hotter U.S. CPI inflation report, bucking this week’s trend of giving up gains during the U.S. trading hours. Recently, BTC was up 5.5% over the past 24 hours, outperforming the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index’s (CD20) 4.7% advance.

Tokens from Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX) and Render (RNDR) were the leaders among altcoin majors with 6%-8% gains. The only token of the CD20 index with a negative daily return was Uniswap (UNI), which slightly shed some of its Thursday gains that were spurred by the decentralized exchange’s plan to launch its own layer-2 network.

The crypto rally happened as equities also gained, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 closing the week at record highs. The U.S. dollar index paused below 103 after steeply strengthening over the past week as traders repriced expectations of further Federal Reserve interest rate cuts following solid U.S. jobs reports and hotter inflation readings.

Crypto-related stocks also reflected the positive sentiment. Bitcoin miners including MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT) and Bitdeer (BTDR) soared 5%-10%, while U.S. crypto exchange giant Coinbase (COIN) ended the day up 7%.

MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of BTC with nearly $16 billion of the asset, surged 16% to its highest price since March 2000. The company’s share price premium versus its bitcoin holdings also broadened to the widest since 2021.

China fiscal policy update may move crypto

Macroeconomic factors influencing crypto prices have shifted away from monetary policy to the U.S. election outcome, Coinbase analysts David Duong and David Han said in a Friday report.

The key catalyst for crypto volatility might be the upcoming China fiscal policy update by the finance minister slated for early Saturday UTC. Investors anticipate more financial stimulus for the ailing Chinese economy and financial markets, which could reverberate in the digital asset market, the Coinbase report noted.

“As most markets will be closed during this next briefing, we expect traders could turn to crypto markets as a way to express their (proxy) views on the size and strength of China’s fiscal announcements,” the authors said.

Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, noted that recent U.S. economic data shows a resilient economy and jobs market, allaying past concerns over an imminent recession.

“This sets the stage for risk assets to perform well into year-end, and it may take little to drive crypto prices higher,” Thielen said. “A significant move is likely on the horizon, and diligent traders will be well-positioned to capture it.”