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It's Tuesday, 31 December.

Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin.

And it would, of course, be the last PDB of 2024, might I add, because, as I think you probably already know, it's New Year's Eve.

I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First, state-backed Chinese hackers have executed another

major breach of sensitive U.S. networks, this time stealing a trove of documents from the U.S.

Treasury Department.

Then we'll look at the latest crackdown by the Taliban on women in Afghanistan,

part of their intensifying campaign to erase women from public life

under their system of what is called gender apartheid.

It seems like just yesterday when the Taliban were promising to protect women's rights.

Of course, anyone who actually believed that the Taliban would protect women's rights

could be accurately classified as a certified moron. But first, our afternoon spotlight.

We'll begin with a significant cyber breach of the U.S. Treasury Department

by a state-sponsored Chinese hacking operation. That's just the latest, in a recent string

of infiltrations linked to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP. The hackers reportedly compromised

...