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Two hacker groups associated with North Korea, the Lazarus Group and APT38, were responsible for the theft last June of $100 million from U.S. crypto firm Harmony's Horizon bridge, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday.

On Jan. 13, the groups used a privacy protocol called Railgun to launder over $60 million worth of ethereum stolen during the theft in June, the FBI said in a statement.

A portion of the stolen ethereum was subsequently sent to several virtual asset providers and converted to bitcoin, the FBI said.

The FBI said North Korea's theft and laundering of virtual currency is used to support its ballistic missile and Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.

In June last year, California-based Harmony said that a heist had hit its Horizon bridge, which was the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether for transferring crypto between different blockchains.

Reuters in June reported that North Korean hackers were most likely behind the attack on Harmony, citing three digital investigative firms.

Harmony develops blockchains for decentralized finance - peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services without traditional gatekeepers such as banks - and non-fungible tokens. (Reuters)

The White House on Tuesday nominated a special envoy for human rights in North Korea, moving to fill a post that has been empty since 2017 amid debate over how rights issues fit with efforts to counter Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.

President Joe Biden nominated Julie Turner, a long-time diplomat and current director of the Office of East Asia and the Pacific in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the Department of State, the White House said in a statement.

She speaks Korean and has previously worked on North Korean human rights as a special assistant in the envoy's office, the statement said.

The special envoy position - and a similar one in South Korea - had become controversial as preceding administrations tried to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. Some activists said human rights had been shunted aside in favour of national security priorities.

Biden vowed repeatedly after taking office in 2021 that human rights would be at the centre of his foreign policy, but the position had remained vacant.

South Korea's ambassador on North Korean human rights expressed disappointment last year that Biden's administration had yet to appoint an envoy for the issue at the time.

North Korea has repeatedly rejected accusations of human rights abuses and blames sanctions for a dire humanitarian situation. It accuses Washington and Seoul of using the issue as a political tool to smear Pyongyang's reputation.

A landmark 2014 U.N. report on North Korean human rights concluded that North Korean security chiefs - and possibly leader Kim Jong Un himself - should face justice for overseeing a state-controlled system of Nazi-style atrocities.

Since then, North Korea's coronavirus curbs have aggravated human rights violations, United Nations investigators have said, citing extra restrictions on access to information, tighter border security and heightened digital surveillance. (Reuters)

The United Nations' aid chief visited Kabul on Monday and raised concerns over women's education and work with the Taliban administration's acting minister of foreign affairs, an Afghan ministry statement said.

The Taliban-run administration last month ordered NGOs not to allow most female employees to work, prompting many aid agencies to partially suspend operations in the midst of a humanitarian crisis unfolding during a bitterly cold winter.

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths raised the issue of women's education and work and how this affected the U.N.'s operations, according to a ministry of foreign affairs statement.

Speaking generally about Griffiths's visit to Afghanistan, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Griffiths would engage the Taliban administration "with the same message that we've been delivering since the beginning on the need to to rollback the policies that were put in place" on women.

He said Griffiths would "underscore the message that humanitarian aid cannot be delivered without women."

Griffiths's travel follows a visit to Afghanistan last week by U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who expressed alarm to Taliban officials in Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar over the administration's orders restricting women from work and education.

Acting Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs Amir Khan Muttaqi said he asked Griffiths to share with the international community the Taliban administration's "achievements and opportunities" like a general amnesty for former opponents, "instead of complaints and shortcomings."

The foreign ministry statement said Griffiths had acknowledged security had improved in the country, which had seen decades of fighting before the Taliban took over as foreign troops withdrew in 2021.

No foreign government has formally recognised the Taliban administration since it seized power, with some diplomats saying it must change course on women's rights. Many countries have expressed major concerns over most girls and women over the age of 12 being stopped from attending school or university.

Enforcement of sanctions and a cut in development aid have contributed to the country falling into an economic crisis which has left more than half the population dependent on humanitarian aid, aimed at meeting urgent needs. (reuters)

Pakistan's energy minister on Tuesday blamed the worst power outage in months on a lack of investment in the network, saying the aid-dependant nation had "learned lessons" from the breakdown that left millions of people without electricity.

Like much of the national infrastructure, the power network desperately needs an upgrade, but funding has been patchy as Pakistan lurched from one International Monetary Fund bailout to the next. The outage, which began on Monday morning, was the second major breakdown since October.

"We learned lessons from yesterday that we need to invest in the distribution system," Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir told reporters as he announced that power had been fully restored to the nation of nearly 220 million people.

"There hasn't been any investment in improving these systems from the previous government," he added.

The International Monetary Fund has bailed out Pakistan five times in the last two decades. Its latest bailout tranche, however, is stuck due to differences with the government over a programme review that should have been completed in November.

Pakistan has enough installed power capacity to meet demand, but the sector is so heavily in debt that it cannot afford to invest in infrastructure and power lines. Analysts say transmission and distribution are the weakest links.

China has invested in its power sector as part of a $60 billion infrastructure scheme that feeds into its "Belt and Road" initiative, but details of this investment are unclear.

Dastgir said the cause of the outage was not yet known, but the ministry was conducting a safety audit of the entire network. "The government plans to add more power distribution lines within the next 36 months," he added.

Millions of Pakistanis suffer partial blackouts almost daily, including scheduled "load shedding" power outs aimed at conserving electricity.

Many take these disruptions in their stride, investing in generators and solar panels to generate their own power, but the frail infrastructure also takes its toll. "Without electricity, we can't do anything," said Sara Khan, the principal of a school for girls in Jacobabad, a southern city which regularly goes up to 18 hours a day without power. "The people are facing too many difficulties because of the power cuts." (reuters)