• The D-Day invasion was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a turning point in World War II.
• By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians had been killed or wounded.
• The greatest risks were borne by American troops who arrived in the first wave, seized clifftop artillery, and set up balloons to defend against aerial attacks.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely."

As the sun set on the blood-stained beaches of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's message to the thousands of Allied troops dispatched to carry out the largest amphibious landing in military history rang true.

The invasion, codenamed Operation Neptune and remembered as D-Day, sent roughly 156,000 British, Canadian, and American troops to the Nazi-occupied French coast by air and sea, beginning the multi-month Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe from Hitler's Wehrmacht.

Read more: 3 unsung World War II female spies who helped make D-Day a victory

Four years ago, as millions gathered in Normandy to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, National WWII Museum senior historian Rob Citino emphasized that the impact of the landings came at a tremendous human toll. By the end of the Normandy campaign, hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis soldiers and civilians had died and been wounded, with those involved in the initial landings suffering disproportionately.

"Certain sectors and certain minutes, casualties were 100 percent," Citino said.

Citino described the most perilous jobs American troops performed to help make the D-Day landings a World War II turning point. "It was bad enough but would have been worse," he says.

1. The Pathfinders

The earliest paratroopers of the US Army's 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions jumped into enemy territory in the dark, facing unrelenting attacks with little back-up and a lot of pressure to light the way.

Strategy and scope: Upwards of 13,000 American paratroopers would jump in the early days of Operation Neptune, the Allied invasion of well-guarded Normandy.

Minutes after midnight on June 6, around 300 101st Pathfinders, nicknamed "the Screaming Eagles," went in first. Paratrooping in lean, highly-trained formations, the Pathfinders were not out to engage in combat. They were to quickly set up lights and flares to mark drop zones for paratroopers and landing paths for the gliders preparing to land.

General Eisenhower's advice to the 101st ahead of D-Day? "The trick is to keep moving."

The Pathfinders paved the way for waves of paratroopers to follow, but paid a heavy price.

Threats and losses: The equipment they carried — from parachutes and life jackets to lighting systems they were to set up once on the ground — made their packs so heavy that they had to be helped onto the planes.

Then there was the jump.

Amid the bad weather and limited visibility that night, some were blown wildly off course after leaping from the C-47 Skytrains. Even those who managed textbook landings into the intended locations were at risk.

"It's the loneliness — out there all by yourself with no one riding to your rescue in the next 10 minutes if you get in trouble. You're against all the elements," Citino said.

Impact: While the Pathfinders saw heavy losses, they ultimately enabled more accurate, effective landings and ability for Allied troops to withstand counterattacks.

Read more: Here's what it took 79 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history

2. The Ranger Assault Group scaling Pointe du Hoc

Strategy and scope: Once dawn broke on June 6, 1944, a force of 225 US Army Rangers of the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions began their attempts to seize Pointe du Hoc. Their mission: Scale the 100-foot rock and upon reaching the cliff top, destroy key German gun positions, clearing the way for the mass landings on Omaha and Utah beaches.

The multifaceted naval bombardment sent the highly trained climbers hauling themselves up the cliffs using ropes, hooks, and ladders. Two Allied destroyers would drop bombs onto the Germans in an attempt to limit the enemy's ability to simply shoot the Rangers off the cliffs.

The Rangers climbed the cliffs in sodden clothes while Germans above them shot at them and tried to cut their ropes.

Threats and losses: Beyond the challenging mountain climbing involved in getting into France via the cliffs along the English Channel, the Rangers faced choppy waters and delayed landings, which increased the formidable enemy opposition.

Nazi artillery fire sprayed at the naval bombardment. Landing crafts sank. Those who made it to the rocks were climbing under enemy fire, their uniforms and gear heavy and slippery from from mud and water. Germans started cutting their ropes. Rangers who reached the cliff top encountered more enemy fire, along with terrain that looked different from the aerial photographs they had studied, much of it reduced to rubble in the aftermath of recent aerial bombings. And they discovered that several of the guns they were out to destroy had been repositioned.

Impact: The Rangers located key German guns and disabled them with grenades. They also took out enemy observation posts and set up strategic roadblocks and communication lines on Pointe du Hoc. The 155mm artillery positions they destroyed could have compromised the forthcoming beach landings.

3. The first troops on Omaha Beach

Members of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions and the US Army Rangers stormed the beach codenamed "Omaha" in the earliest assaults. These were the bloodiest moments of D-Day.

Strategy and scope: Beyond enemy fire, the Allies were up against physical barricades installed to prevent landings onto the six-mile stretch of Hitler's "Atlantic Wall."

To break through, infantry divisions, Rangers, and specialist units arrived to carry out a series of coordinated attacks, blowing up and through obstacles in order to secure the five paths from the beach and move inland.

A fraction of the first assault troops ever reached the top of the bluff.

Threats and losses: In pre-invasion briefings, troops were told there would be Allied bombing power preceding them and that the Germans would be largely obliterated and washed ashore, Citino said.

While there were aerial bombings, the impact was not as planned. Some of the B-24s and B-17s flying overhead missed their targets. German troops sprayed guns and mortars with clear views of the soldiers, stevedores, porters, and technical support charging the narrow stretch of beach. Men waded through rough, cold water from Allied landing crafts under withering heavy fire. The dangers continued with mines in the sand.

The scene was similarly gruesome for combat engineers moving in with Bangalore torpedoes to blow up obstacles. Meanwhile, amphibious tank operators tried to shield Allied infantry and medics came ashore to try to administer emergency care while facing counterattacks and navigating around the dead and wounded.  

Impact: A fraction of those who landed reached the top of the bluff. Some company headcounts went to single digits. But the troops who helped secure Omaha and the five paths off the beach in the coming days cleared the way for massive tanks, fuel, food, and reinforcements important to the rest of the campaign.

4. The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion

These combat troops landed on Utah Beach and set up key lines of defense to prevent Luftwaffe raiders from strafing the incoming army of troops and supplies.

Strategy and scope: The Allies knew that as soon as the landings began, German air attacks would present a major threat to the masses of troops arriving in thousands of landing crafts. To defend against air raids, they turned to defensive weaponry units, including the 621 African-American soldiers in the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, to land with 125-pound blimps and work in teams to anchor them to the ground. Each blimp was filled with hydrogen and connected to small bombs that could denote if enemy aircraft made contact with the cables.

Threats and losses: They came ashore on Utah Beach from some 150 landing crafts on the morning of June 6, facing the dangers of fellow infantry and the added threats that came with maneuvering heavy cables and balloon equipment on the beach under fire. They set up barrage balloons, digging trenches to take cover as waves of fellow soldiers landed.

The air cover allowed Allied troops to move inland with less threat of being bombed or strafed by German planes.

Impact: As landing craft after landing craft came ashore on and after D-Day, the 320th's balloons gave Allied troops and equipment some protection, allowing them to move inland with less threat of being blown into the sand by German fighters.

The hydrogen-filled balloons they deployed along the coast created barriers between the Allied troops and the enemy aircraft out to decimate them. Citino said that their actions setting up the defensive balloons under enemy fire were "as heroic as it gets."

• Women played key roles in D-Day, the Allied seaborne invasion of Nazi-held France.
• "Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says journalist Sarah Rose.
• These are three of the British agents who contributed to the Allied victory in Normandy

It has been 80 years since upward of 150,000 Allied troops began storming the beaches of Normandy by air, land, and sea.

As the anniversary of the largest amphibious assault in military history approaches, journalist Sarah Rose illuminated several less widely known combat heroes who fought for the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe in Operation Overlord: Andrée Borrel, Lise de Baissac, and Odette Sansom. They are among the 39 female agents who served in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secret World War II intelligence agency created in 1940 to "set Europe ablaze."

"Women are the hidden figures of D-Day," says Rose, who started researching the history of women in combat and was surprised to learn that their roles dated back to World War II. "People tend to think women were 'just' secretarial couriers and messengers. No, there were female special forces agents on the ground and working to keep the Allies from being blown back into the water. They did what men did. They led men."

In her book, "D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II," Rose chronicles three of these agents' contributions to the Allied victory in Normandy and the liberation of Western Europe.

Andrée Borrel, the first female combat paratrooper, fought for the liberation of France until Nazis executed her a month after D-Day.

Born to a working-class family on the outskirts of Paris after World War I, Borrel left school at 14. She had a job at a Paris bakery counter when World War II broke out.

Read more: 8 famous people who served on D-Day

Once the war began, Borrel left Paris and took a crash course in nursing with the Red Cross.

After a stint treating people wounded by the German Army, she joined a group of French Resistance operatives organizing and operating one of the country's largest underground escape networks, the Pat O'Leary line. She aided at least 65 Allied evaders (mainly British Royal Air Force airmen shot down over enemy territory) on their journeys out of France to Spain through the Pyrenees.

When she herself got ratted out, she escaped to Lisbon, Portugal. She then moved to London, eager to continue fighting for the liberation of France. In the spring of 1942, the SOE recruited her. She was trained not only to jump behind enemy lines, but also to spy on, sabotage, and kill Axis troops occupying her home country.

Borrel parachuted into France in September of 1942, becoming the first female combat agent to do so. She worked as a courier for the SOE network Physician (nicknamed "Prosper"), which raised bands of Resistance members in the north to carry out guerilla attacks against Nazi troops. Moving between Paris and the countryside, she coordinated aerial supply drops and recruited, armed, and trained Resistance members.

She rose to second in command of the network's Paris circuit, which was also funneling enemy intelligence back to the Allies in London. She was in the SOE's first training class for female agents, where she learned skills from hand-to-hand combat to Morse code. When asked, "How might you kill a Nazi using what you have on you?" she is said to have responded: "I would jam a pencil through his brain. And he'd deserve it."

Her commanding officer described her as "the best of us all."

Read more: Here's how the Allies began to reclaim Europe from the Nazis

The Nazis arrested Borrel in 1943 and sent her to a concentration camp.

Nazis, allegedly leveraging intelligence from a double agent, arrested Borrel and fellow Physician leaders in June 1943. After being interrogated and imprisoned around Paris, she was transferred to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in July 1944 with three other female SOE agents and executed a month after D-Day.

Even from prison, she is said to have continued fighting by inserting coded messages about her captors in several letters to her sister. She was 24.

Honors: Croix de Guerre, Medal of the Resistance, the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct

Lise de Baissac parachuted into France twice and became the No. 2 commander of a French Resistance group fighting Nazis during the Battle of Normandy.

Andrée Borrel was the first female SOE agent to parachute into France during World War II, but her jumping partner, 37-year-old Lise de Baissac, was right behind her. The daughter of a wealthy family in British-ruled Mauritius, de Baissac was in France when Hitler's troops moved into Paris in 1940. She fled to the south and then to London. When the SOE started recruiting multilingual women as agents, she joined the fight.

After parachuting into Central France with Borrel, de Baissac set up an Allied safe house for agents in the town of Poitiers in western France, selecting an apartment near Gestapo headquarters — a hiding-in-plain-sight strategy she felt would arouse less suspicion.

She bicycled around occupied territory as a liaison among different underground networks, often riding 60-70 kilometers a day and carrying contraband. On one occasion, a Nazi stopped her and her clandestine radio operator, patting them down. The officer searched them for guns, which they didn't have, so he let them go. She'd later report that a radio crystal fell out of her skirt as she was leaving but that she leaned over, grabbed the crystal off the ground, and pedaled on.

In August of 1943, when her network in Poitiers was blown, the SOE airlifted her back to England by Lysander aircraft. She trained new female SOE recruits in Scotland. In April of 1944, after recovering from a broken leg, she jumped back into occupied France. She made her way to Normandy, joining her brother, fellow SOE agent Claude de Baissac, in leading a network of Resistance fighters in Normandy. They carried out attacks to weaken Nazi communication and transportation circuits, strategically cutting phone lines and blowing up roads, railways, and bridges to hinder the movement of German reinforcements Hitler was ordering to the beaches.

De Baissac raced out of Paris to assist the allies when she learned D-Day was imminent.

On June 5, 1944, de Baissac was in Paris recruiting when she learned D-Day was imminent. She biked for three days, speeding through Nazi formations, sleeping in ditches, and reaching her brother and their Resistance circuit headquarters in Normandy.

As the bloody Normandy campaign raged and the Allies struggled to penetrate the Axis front, the de Baissacs continued leading espionage and sabotage operations. They gathered intelligence on enemy positions and transmitted messages back to England, helping lay the groundwork for Operation Cobra, the Allied breakout in which U.S. Army forces came out of the peninsula and pierced Hitler's front line seven weeks after D-Day.

After the war, she worked for the BBC.

Honors: MBE, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur Croix de Guerre avec Palme

Odette Sansom blew up Nazi train lines and, upon being arrested and tortured, told Gestapo officers: “I have nothing to say.”

Odette Sansom was a 28-year-old homemaker in Somerset, England when she answered the British War Office's call for images of the French coastline, offering photographs she had from her childhood. Born in France as "Odette Brailly" in 1912, she had lost her father in the final months of the World War I. With World War II raging and her English husband already away fighting in the British Army, she didn't take lightly the decision to leave her three young daughters. But with Hitler already occupying her old homeland and threatening her new one, she felt compelled to join the fight.

She was tough, determined, and persistent. When a concussion during parachute training left her unable to jump into France, she docked in Gibraltar on a gunrunner disguised as a sardine fishing boat, only to arrive in France's "free" zone the same week in November 1942 that Hitler's forces began occupying the region. So began several months working as a courier in SOE agent Capt. Peter Churchill's network, Spindle. Churchill relied heavily on her to set up clandestine radio networks, coordinate parachute drops, and arm Resistance fighters in the Rhône Alps in preparation for D-Day.

She and Churchill fell in love and continued working together mobilizing Resistance members in southeast France until April 1943, when the Gestapo arrested them. Knowing that they were at risk of being executed as spies, she convinced their captors that her commanding officer was a relative of UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that she was his wife and only in France at her urging. Peter Churchill was not, in fact, related to Britain's prime minister, but Sansom figured that if she could trick the Germans into thinking they were VIPs, there would be incentive to keep them alive.

Sansom emerged from the largest, most lethal women’s concentration camp in history with evidence used to convict its leaders of war crimes.

While Sansom was imprisoned around France and then at Ravensbrück concentration camp, enduring solitary confinement and somewhere between 10-14 torture sessions – she survived.

By the time Ravensbrück was evacuated in the spring of 1945, Sansom's back was broken, and she had been starved and beaten, with her toenails pulled out and her body burned in attempts to get her to reveal information about her fellow agents. She is said to have revealed nothing.

In the years after the war, Sansom's testimony was later to convict Ravensbrück camp commandant Fritz Suhren, as well as other SS officers, of war crimes. Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 came less than a year after the sweeping invasions that began the Battle of Normandy, now memorialized as "D-Day."

Honors: George Cross, Member of the Order of the British Empire, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur

 

 

 

Editor's Note: This post was initially published on June 5, 2019.

• The invasion of Normandy, France, on D-Day was a massive and complex military operation involving hundreds of thousands of military personnel.
• Allied war planners spent months preparing for the assault, drafting up numerous plans for the spearhead into German-occupied northwestern Europe.
• One commanding general, Britain's Gen. Bernard Montgomery, kept it simple, scribbling out his plans for the largest land, air, and sea operation in military history on a single sheet of paper.

The Allied invasion of the Nazi-occupied French coast of Normandy on D-Day was one of the most complex military operations ever undertaken, but amid the intense preparation and planning for history's largest combined land, air, and sea operation, one commanding general kept it simple, scribbling out his war plans on a single piece of paper.

Nearly 160,000 Allied troops, supported by thousands of ships and aircraft, either parachuted into France or stormed its beaches beginning on June 6, 1944. Allied war planners spent months planning the invasion, the beginning of the Allied spearhead into German-occupied Europe known as Operation Overlord.

Read more: D-Day by the numbers: Here's what it took 75 years ago to pull off the biggest amphibious invasion in history

British Gen. Bernard "Monty" Montgomery served as a ground commander for Anglo-American forces under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

His penciled battle plan for D-Day took up no more than one piece of paper and included a note that said: "The key note of everything to be SIMPLICITY."

Montgomery's plans, which were labeled "Most Secret," were released for the first time in 2016 by the Imperial War Museums for the 72nd anniversary of the invasion.

The museum also released a handwritten draft of the general's speech to Allied troops, which officers read aloud to the invading forces just before the assault began.

"The time has come to deal the enemy a terrific blow in Western Europe," the speech said. "The blow will be struck by the combined sea, land, and air forces of the Allies."

"Good luck to each one of you," Montgomery concluded his message. "And good hunting on the mainland of Europe."

• The Congressional Progressive Caucus is dropping its support for former Rep. Mondaire Jones.
• It comes after Jones, a former caucus member, endorsed Rep. Jamaal Bowman's primary challenger.
• Jones is running in a closely-watched House race in New York against GOP Rep. Mike Lawler.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus's (CPC) political arm has rescinded its endorsement of former Rep. Mondaire Jones.

Jones, a former member of the progressive caucus who's set to take on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in one of the most closely watched House races this year, is no longer listed as one of the PAC's endorsed candidates on its website.

The move comes after Jones endorsed Rep. Jamaal Bowman's moderate primary challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, earlier this week. A source close to the PAC told Business Insider that the board held a vote on the matter earlier this week amid outrage from progressive lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

"I have no regrets about standing up for what I firmly believe in," Jones told Business Insider in a statement.

Bowman, a member of the progressive "Squad," is facing the fight of his political life, owing to both his strident criticism of Israel and personal scandals, including pulling a fire alarm at the Capitol last year. The pro-Israel group AIPAC has spent millions of dollars attacking Bowman and boosting Latimer ahead of the June 25 primary.

Jones is running in a district directly north of Bowman's that also includes parts of Westchester County, which is home to a large population of Jewish voters.

"I have known and worked with George Latimer for years," said Jones. "I used to represent thousands of people in what is now New York's 16th Congressional District, and have deep relationships there."

As he announced his endorsement of Latimer, Jones specifically cited Bowman's positions on Israel, including his immediate call for a cease-fire after the Hamas attack, and his past characterization of reports of sexual violence during the October 7 Hamas attack as "propaganda."

"I have been horrified by his recent acceptance of the DSA endorsement, his denial of the sexual assault of Israeli women by Hamas on October 7, and his rush to call for a ceasefire before Israel could hardly begin to defend itself against the worst assault on Jews since the Holocaust," said Jones. "Over the past few months, I have had countless conversations with Jewish residents in my district and across the Lower Hudson Valley who feel anxiety, anger, and fear due to Rep. Bowman's words and actions. I will always stand up for my Jewish constituents."

The move was also seen as an attempt by Jones to separate himself from Bowman's more strident brand of progressive politics as he seeks to appeal to swing voters on his own race. It also benefits Latimer, who has faced charges of racism from progressives as he seeks to unseat a Black incumbent in a majority-minority House district.

Jones was a member of the Progressive Caucus when he previously served in Congress from 2021 to 2023 — and his former colleagues are now livid with him.

"I'm just horrified by it. I'm so disappointed," Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chair of the progressive caucus, told Business Insider on Tuesday. "Jamaal Bowman is our top incumbent protection race, and so to have another endorsed candidate attack our top candidate is really terrible."

Jayapal said at the time that the PAC board was "discussing how we want to respond."

Jones said that he "will continue to be a champion for the policies I have long advocated."

"I will continue to talk about these important issues on the campaign trail and invite all of my former colleagues to support my campaign to take back the House and save democracy itself in what is broadly considered one of the 10 best Democratic pick-up opportunities in the nation. Time is running out," Jones added.

Amid New York's tumultuous redistricting in 2022, Jones was drawn into a district with another top Democrat and opted to run for an open House seat based in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn with the CPC's support. He ultimately lost that primary to now-Rep. Dan Goldman.

Jones is now running in one of his party's top pick-up opportunities for 2024 — President Joe Biden won Lawler's district in 2020. The CPC originally endorsed Jones for the seat in August 2023.

It is unclear how the loss of progressive support will affect his chances in November. Lawler has been eager to highlight Jones's past progressive positions, including his past praise for Bowman.

• The European Union just made its first cut to interest rates in five years.
• The European Central Bank lowered its main interest rate from 4% to 3.75%.
• Officials tend to lower interest rates when inflation is under control and they want to lift growth.

The European Union has become the latest global economy to cut its benchmark interest rate.

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Thursday that it would lower its main interest rate from 4% to 3.75%, marking its first reduction since 2019.

Neil Birrell, chief investment officer at Premier Miton Investors, said in a research note to clients:

"In one of the most flagged central bank interest rate decisions for some time, the ECB followed Canada into the rate cutting cycle. However, the path for further cuts is unlikely to be as predictable or smooth."

"Eurozone inflation is proving more resilient than hoped, as it is in the US and UK, which has to influence the ECB, although they will be keen to keep providing stimulus to the economy, it needs it. As has been the case all the way through the cycle, they have a tight rope to walk," he said.

Economies worldwide have raised interest rates significantly over the last two years after inflation surged following the COVID-19 pandemic.

For example, US inflation surged to a 40-year high of over 9% in the summer of 2022. The US central bank responded by hiking interest rates from nearly zero in early 2022 to over 5% currently, and has yet to make its first cut.

This story is developing.

• A Ukrainian drone found an easy way to get around a Russian tank's "turtle" defenses, a video shows.
• Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said those inside forgot to close the tank's hatch.
• Russia has outfitted some of its tanks with elaborate defenses, with mixed results.

A dramatic video shared by Ukraine's defense ministry on Wednesday showed an aerial drone finding a simple way around a Russian tank's formidable "turtle" defenses.

The footage, captured by Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, shows the drone racing toward a Russian tank before sneaking through an open hatch at the front of the armored vehicle, before blowing up.

"Occupiers made a 'turtle' tank but forgot to close a hatch… Ukraine's drone pilots don't forgive such mistakes," Ukraine's Ministry of Defence said in the accompanying text.

Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, which shared a longer version of the video on Wednesday, said the attack took place near the city of Bakhmut.

It described the tank as sentencing itself to death when it drove onto a dam previously mined by its soldiers. Pilots of the brigades's Black Raven unit then took out the paralyzed tank, it said.

It didn't specify when the attack took place.

Russia has resorted to outfitting some of its tanks with crude metal structures to try to combat deadly threats on the battlefield, including exploding drones.

One "turtle" tank was spotted fitted out with a tent-like metal structure, while another one was seen with pallets on it.

Improvised armor can be as simple as a chain-link cage wrapped around the outside of a vehicle, often referred to as "cope cages." Military observers question their effectiveness.

These makeshift and often unwieldy efforts are intended to provide a last-ditch defense against inbound projectiles such as artillery, anti-tank missiles, or small drones.

Ukraine has previously released videos showing drones taking out Russian "turtle" tanks on the battlefield.

But in a post on X in April, Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that modifications show Russians are adjusting to the battlefield, where Ukraine has a lot of first-person-view drones but not enough anti-tank missiles, mines, and artillery.

"So sacrificing observation and the ability to rotate the turret on one tank per platoon that can jam many FPVs frequencies at once makes sense," he said.

• Russian soldier Dmitry Lobovikov killed seven soldiers with a grenade while drunk.
• He was found guilty of murder at a Russian court on Wednesday. 
• Lobovikov said it was an accident caused by "stupidity and alcohol."

A Russian soldier was sentenced to 23 years in prison after killing seven of his soldiers with a grenade, Russian state news agency TASS reported.

Dmitry Lobovikov, a former junior sergeant in the Russian military, threw a grenade into one of the rooms in the Belgorod barracks where his fellow soldiers were sleeping in January 2023, according to the outlet, cited by The Moscow Times and Novaya Gazeta Europe.

It killed seven people and injured 16 others.

Lobovikov was found guilty of murder by a jury at the 2nd Western District Military Court on Wednesday.

Court spokesperson Irina Zhirnova told TASS that Lobovikov was sentenced to 23 years in a high-security prison colony, fined 70,000 rubles, or around $788, and stripped of his military rank after being found guilty of murder.

There are varying reports on the cause of the incident. Lobovikov said that he was intoxicated and that it was an accident that could be attributed to "stupidity and alcohol," TASS reported.

Additionally, Lobovikov's lawyers said in court that he had lost consciousness after consuming alcohol with sedatives, causing the grenade to slip out of his hands, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported.

However, a Kommersant report, cited by Newsweek, said the incident occurred after Lobovikov took the pin out of a grenade and became frustrated with one soldier who didn't know how to put it back in.

Before the incident, Lobovikov had attempted to reprimand the same troops for poor behavior, according to a post by RBC cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe.

He was found guilty of attempted murder and murder of multiple accounts, in addition to deliberate destruction of property by explosion, TASS reported.

Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that the jury noted he was "deserving of leniency."

Lobovikov's sentencing comes amid low morale and high criminal rates among the Russian army. The country's military personnel were convicted of 116 murders in 2023, according to data published by Russia's Judicial Department of the Supreme Court.

Conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and desensitization to violence could be leading factors exacerbated by alcohol and drug use, according to a statement by the UK defense ministry cited in a previous Business Insider report.

• Nvidia's Jensen Huang has zoomed up Bloomberg's rich list to rank 13th with a $107 billion fortune.
• Only Michael Dell, Mukesh Ambani, and Warren Buffett stand between the CEO and a spot in the top 10.
• Nvidia's AI-fueled stock gains have boosted Huang's wealth about eightfold in less than 18 months.

Jensen Huang has added about $93 billion to his net worth in under 18 months, leaving him just three spots away from breaking into the ranks of the world's 10 wealthiest people.

The Nvidia cofounder and CEO's 3.5% stake in his company was worth less than $14 billion at the start of last year. With a fortune of that size now he'd barely crack the top 150 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Since then, Nvidia stock has skyrocketed from below $150 to north of $1,200 — an increase of more than 700%. The chipmaker's market capitalization just passed $3 trillion for the first time, leapfrogging Apple to become the world's second-largest public company after Microsoft ($3.15 trillion).

Huang now ranks 13th on Bloomberg's rich list with a $107 billion fortune. Only Michael Dell ($109 billion), Mukesh Ambani ($109 billion), and Warren Buffett ($135 billion) stand between him and a top 10 spot.

Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, remains top of the list with a $212 billion fortune — $8 billion more than Jeff Bezos.

Nvidia and Huang have seen such sensational gains because of the artificial intelligence craze. Companies like Microsoft, Tesla, and Meta are buying Nvidia's graphics processors by the truckload as they rush to build everything from AI-powered chatbots and recommendation systems to self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

The demand boom fueled a huge rise in Nvidia's revenue to $26 billion, and pushed net income to $14.9 billion in the three months to April 28.

By comparison, Meta's revenue was $36.5 billion and net income $12.4 billion in the first quarter of this year.

Investors have piled into Nvidia stock because they're convinced AI is transforming the world, and the chipmaker will play a critical role in powering the revolution.

As a byproduct of that belief, Huang's wealth has grown by roughly eightfold in under 18 months.

• Virgin Media is suing an Irish fishing trawler for $870,000 over damage to an undersea cable.
• The telecoms giant claims that the trawler damaged a fiber optic cable while fishing for scallops.
• The trawler's owners say there's no proof they did anything wrong.

UK telecoms giant Virgin Media is suing a fishing trawler for more than $870,000, according to Irish media, accusing those on board of damaging one of its undersea fiber optic cables.

Virgin Media, the primary cable supplier in the UK, is suing the owners and all those claiming an interest in The Lida Suzanna, an 82-foot-long, Irish-registered fishing vessel, according to documents filed in Ireland's High Court.

The case relates to an incident that took place more than nine years ago.

According to the Irish Independent, Virgin Media claims that the trawler damaged a subsea fiber optic cable while fishing for scallops on January 26, 2015.

Scallop fishing involves towing dredges along a seabed to catch scallops, which can inadvertently damage underwater cables, which are often thousands of miles long and usually laid on the ocean floor.

According to WIRED, breaks in undersea cables are nearly always caused by fishing trawlers or dragging anchors.

The International Cable Protection Committee estimates that repairing a submarine cable can cost up to $3 million.

The 2015 incident required Virgin Media to charter a repair ship and deploy a remotely operated vehicle to fix the break, WIRED reported at the time. This caused days of repair work and slowed internet service, it said.

At a hearing on Tuesday, according to the Irish Times, Virgin Media's lawyers argued that the defendants should have been aware of the cable's location, as it was marked on industry-recognized charts and Ireland's Marine Atlas.

But the defendants argue that there is no proof that The Lida Suzanna was to blame, according to the Irish Independent.

They also argued that Virgin Media would have been responsible for the damage even if the vessel had physically caused it, because it failed to take measures to bury or protect the cable, the newspaper said.

Legal representatives for Virgin Media and the trawler's owners did not respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

This lawsuit follows a similar case in which Virgin Media went after another Irish fishing vessel. High Court documents show that it sued The M V Willie Joe in 2018, settling the case in 2022.

• UAE's state-owned oil company brokered deals to boost fossil fuels at home and overseas in 2023.
• The deals included supplying gas to China and expanding into  Egypt and Azerbaijan.
• UAE led the 2023 global climate summit that called for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Last year, while the United Arab Emirates oversaw a historic agreement to fight the climate crisis, it was brokering deals for oil and gas that could bring the country tens of billions of dollars and boost fossil-fuel production globally.

An analysis by the climate watchdog Global Witness found that the UAE's state-owned oil company, known as ADNOC, closed more than a dozen deals to expand its oil and gas footprint at home and overseas.

Among the transactions were ADNOC's first contract to supply gas to China; a joint venture with the oil giant BP in Egypt; and a stake in Azerbaijan's gas field in the Caspian Sea. ADNOC also bought a Dutch fertilizer company and acquired a stake in an Austrian plastics maker, both of which rely on fossil fuels for their products.

In November, during the UN climate summit in Dubai, the BBC and the Center for Climate Reporting reported that UAE planning documents showed that oil, gas, petrochemical, and renewable-energy projects were among the talking points for meetings with countries in the lead-up to the climate summit, COP28. The summit was led by ADNOC's chief executive, Sultan Al Jaber.

Global Witness found that ADNOC either pursued or closed fossil-fuel deals with firms in 11 of the 16 countries targeted in the UAE planning documents. These included deals to sell liquefied natural gas to Chinese-owned firms and to expand oil and gas businesses in Egypt and Azerbaijan — two countries that open up the UAE's access to Europe as it seeks non-Russian gas. Global Witness estimated that the overall value of the deals it analyzed was nearly $100 billion, though some haven't been finalized.

"Make no mistake, COP28 was hijacked by the interests of the fossil fuel industry, who weren't content simply to block or stall genuine climate policy but used the opportunity to pursue more climate-wrecking oil and gas deals," Patrick Galey, a senior investigator at Global Witness, said in a statement.

ADNOC did not return a request for comment from Business Insider, but Global Witness presented its findings to the oil giant. A spokesperson told Global Witness that the allegation that ADNOC used COP28 to pursue business deals was "completely baseless and false."

The spokesperson argued that COP28 "delivered the biggest climate breakthroughs" since the Paris Agreement in 2015, when world leaders agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

A historic deal in Dubai

A panel of hundreds of climate scientists convened by the UN has said that temperature threshold is likely to be crossed within the next decade, pushing the planet toward a catastrophe, unless countries rapidly stop burning fossil fuels. They've said emissions from existing oil, gas, and coal infrastructure are on track to exceed the Paris Agreement goal.

So far, the planet has warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius, and deadly heat waves, wildfires, flooding, and drought-caused famine are on the rise.

At COP28 in Dubai, countries for the first time called for a transition away from fossil fuels this decade and for the tripling of renewable energy by 2030. In a side agreement brokered by the UAE, oil and gas companies accounting for 40% of global production promised to nearly eliminate their methane emissions by 2030.

But the Dubai deal left the door open to more fossil-fuel production by promoting technology such as carbon capture, which is still in the early stages of development. The deal also said "transitional fuels" could play a role in reducing emissions — a nod to gas, which is less polluting than coal but a major emitter of methane.

Climate scientists have found that while the UAE is investing in renewable energy, carbon capture, and other low-carbon technologies, that activity is dwarfed by the country's fossil-fuel expansion. The UAE, the seventh-largest oil producer, is investing $150 billion to boost its own oil and gas production through 2027. Global Witness' investigation also sheds light on how the country is securing new markets overseas.

Galey said he was concerned that another petrostate, Azerbaijan, which is hosting this year's UN climate summit, could follow the UAE's lead. COP29 is set to be led by Azerbaijan's ecology minister, Mukhtar Babayev, who spent nearly two decades in senior positions at the country's state-owned energy company until leaving in 2018.

Azerbaijan is an emerging economy that relies on oil and gas for nearly half of its GDP and more than 92% of its export revenue.

COP29 organizers didn't return a request for comment from BI. They told Global Witness that they "reject in the strongest terms the suggestion that Azerbaijan has a hidden agenda" in hosting the climate summit.