Quote:Politico reported that on Wednesday, the Biden administration was set to blast out emails to some 153,000 loan borrowers, who will see $1.2 billion transferred out of their collective debts under his Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan.

In the letter, the politically vulnerable president takes credit for the “forgiveness” in the first sentence.

“Congratulations—all or a portion of your federal student loans will be forgiven because you qualify for early loan forgiveness under my Administration’s SAVE Plan,” the email, published by Politico, reads.

“From day one of my Administration, I vowed to fix student loan programs so higher education can be a ticket to the middle class—not a barrier to opportunity,” the letter states. Biden adds he hopes “this relief gives you a little more breathing room.”

The document includes the phrase “SHARE WHAT THIS RELIEF MEANS TO YOU,” which links to a studentaid.gov page that is not yet accessible.

“The borrowers receiving relief are the first to benefit from a SAVE plan policy that provides debt forgiveness to borrowers who have been in repayment after as little as 10 years and took out $12,000 or less in student loans,” the White House stated in a press release. Per Politico, Biden will speak Wednesday about the move at an event in Los Angeles.

Quote:The San Francisco State University police department has suspended an investigation into an alleged assault against former NCAA swimmer and women’s sports activist Riley Gaines.

“Gaines said she was physically attacked by activists who forced her to barricade herself inside a classroom for hours after they stormed an event where she was speaking about her experiences competing against controversial trans swimmer Lia Thomas in college,” reported the New York Post.

Gaines also testified of the incident before Congress in April of last year.

Speaking with Fox News, Gaines said she recently learned that the university police department decided to suspend the investigation.

“Can you please let me know if you have completed your investigation?” she wrote in an email. “I wondered if you can share with me any conclusions you have reached regarding your investigation and whether any charges will be filed against the individuals who sought to threaten, intimidate and harm me? Is there a timetable concerning this matter? Is there any additional information you need from me?”

An officer later responded, “After a thorough investigation, the alleged charges in this case are unfounded and have been suspended pending further lead.”

The department added that it sent messages to Gaines in June and July last year that ultimately “went unanswered.” They had also reportedly asked her for additional photos or videos of the incident so that the case “may be further investigated.” Gaines told Fox News that she had already given her story to police and that she did not feel it necessary to speak with them about it again when they reached out over the summer.

What's wrong with that police department!?
They physically witnessed the high level of aggression directed towards Gaines alone and even had to help her escape from the campus!!

Quote:Authorities in the western Philadelphia suburb of West Whiteland Township are reporting clashes with organized gangs of retail thieves made up of illegal border crossers.

Police officials have identified at least three gangs of migrants responsible for the theft of thousands of dollars of merchandise since January, according to WPVI-TV.

“They’re taking advantage of coming to the U.S. and committing these crimes and being able to disappear to some degree,” West Whiteland Township Police Department Detective Scott Pezick told the station.

“Over the last month, we’ve had what we call South American theft groups,” Pezick added.

Officers arrested two Venezuelan migrants on February 1 and charged them with stealing more than $2,000 in merchandise from an Ulta store in Exton, the outlet added.

The suspects — Albert Torrealba Jordan and Keiver Guilarte Camps — had both entered the U.S. illegally, the police said.

In another case, an illegal from Peru was accused of stealing $17,000 from a Khols in Exton. The suspect had been deported but is reportedly already back.

“That was less than a month ago, and he’s back in the United States,” Pezick explained.

The groups are also being implicated in home and car burglaries, police said.

Quote:The document, a “February 2024 Board Memo” prepared for board members of the American Clean Power Association, is striking in how specific and aggressive it is in detailing plans for its members to push Republican lawmakers to oppose any GOP effort to repeal all or parts of Biden’s inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The IRA, which passed during Biden’s second year as president, did not lower inflation but did aggressively expand government spending, including perhaps most controversially on the left’s radical green energy agenda.

The American Clean Power Association, or ACP, is a trade association made up of companies supportive of or benefitting from the left’s green energy push. On its website, the organization describes itself as a “leading voice of more than 800 companies from across the clean power sector that are committed to meeting America’s national security, economic and climate goals with fast-growing, low-cost, and reliable domestic power.”

This 66-page document obtained by Breitbart News is marked on nearly every page as “ACP Confidential Information.” The first dozen or so pages of it include a breakdown of normal business of a trade association, including discussion about the election of board members and officers of the group, as well as the organization’s financials. The financial report section explains that the group pulls in tens of millions of dollars annually in revenue, and spends tens of millions of dollars per year as well—making this group a powerhouse trade association in the green energy space. The document, for instance, says the trade association’s finance team estimated a total of more than $62 million in revenue in 2023, and expenses at $55.8 million. In short, this group is extremely well-funded—and the document brags about ACP having more than $49 million in cash available on hand to begin 2024.

Quote:Democrats on the 51-member New York City Council approved a plan in January 2022 that gave more than 800,000 foreign nationals with green cards, visas, and work permits the opportunity to vote in citywide elections so long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days.

Black New Yorkers, along with naturalized American citizens, the New York State Republican Party, the Republican National Committee (RNC), and Democrat officials like Councilman Robert Holden subsequently sued Mayor Eric Adams (D) and the city’s Board of Elections.

In June 2022, the New York Supreme Court ruled that giving local voting rights to foreign nationals violated the state’s constitution, which explicitly reserves voting for American “citizens.”

On Wednesday, the New York Appellate Division upheld that decision:

Since this is, in part, a declaratory judgment action, we remit the matter to the Supreme Court, Richmond County, for the entry of a judgment, inter alia, declaring that the Local Law is null and void on the grounds that it violates the New York State Constitution and the Municipal Home Rule Law.

Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) President J. Christian Adams, who filed suit against Adams over the law on behalf of black New Yorkers, said the ruling “marks an important step to stop foreign interference in New York City’s elections.”

Quote:Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Trump election interference case, donated to county prosecutor Fani Willis, financial disclosures show.

The judge donated $150 to Willis in June 2020, while working for the Justice Department.

“The donation itself is more or less a token amount and was made prior to his becoming a judge,” legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller. “But failure to disclose to the defendants a political donation to the prosecutor can be seen as a present appearance of a conflict of interest. Judges are required to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Gov. Brian Kemp ®, who refused to launch a criminal probe into Willis, appointed McAfee to the bench and was subsequently sworn in on February 1, 2023.

Previously, McAfee worked for Willis in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office before she won the election in 2020, the New York Times reported in August.

Willis dislodged a longtime former county prosecutor accused of corruption. She assumed office on January 1, 2021. She campaigned in 2020 on not engaging in sexual misconduct, as her predecessor was accused of doing. The irony of Willis’s campaign promise was evident after allegations of her own affair surfaced, along with financial implications.

Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink discussed Russia’s detention of dual citizen Ksenia Karelina and responded to questions on whether Russia feels emboldened to take Americans hostage by stating that Ukraine has done well in its fight against Russia and Russia’s treatment of Americans is “of great concern.”
...
Brink responded, “Saturday is the two-year mark of Russia’s brutal, full-scale invasion. And I have to say, in those two years, Ukraine has taken 50% of the territory that Russia has seized back. It has protected its energy grid from thousands of missiles and drones, and it has also reclaimed the Black Sea from the Russian Navy in order to support global trade. It has done this without a single U.S. soldier.”

Perino then said, “Okay, I want to get to that. But I do want to ask about this American citizen, dual U.S.-Russian citizen, who donated $51, apparently, allegedly, to Ukraine, to support Ukraine and now she is being held. She was shackled, blindfolded in Russia, and what can the State Department do when Russia seems to feel emboldened to take our people?”

Brink responded, “[I]t’s a horrifying story. I don’t know the details. But I can say that, based on the way Putin treats his own people, it is of great concern how Putin treats also American citizens. We all know of the terrible death of Alexei Navalny last week. And Putin is to blame. So, it’s, of course, of great concern.”

Quote:The Moscow City Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal from Evan Gershkovich, the American reporter detained on highly dubious espionage allegations in March 2023. Russia has yet to introduce any evidence against Gershkovich or schedule a date for his trial.

The latest rejection of a string of appeals from Gershkovich’s lawyers mean the hostage reporter is certain to spend over a year in prison before his trial gets underway.

As his employers at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted on Tuesday, Russian prosecutors have “wide latitude to request further extensions of pretrial detention.” When espionage trials are finally held, they are usually conducted in secret, and almost always result in convictions with lengthy prison sentences.

Previous appeals denied by the court included requests for Gershkovich to be granted bail or transferred to house arrest from the harsh Lefortovo prison in Moscow.

“It’s been nearly one year since Evan’s unjust arrest for doing nothing more than his job, and every day he remains in prison is an unconscionable attack on a free press. Evan is a journalist, and any suggestion or portrayal otherwise is fiction. We continue to demand his immediate release,” the WSJ’s editors said on Tuesday.

The Biden administration insisted that the charges against Gershkovich are “baseless” and he has been incarcerated for “simply reporting the news.”

“When the Kremlin uses lives as bargaining chips, real people suffer,” said U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy.

The Kremlin breezily denied that Gershkovich and other Americans, including recently arrested Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina, are being held hostage by the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin.

Quote:The minister, Sébastien Lecornu, didn´t give specific details about the French flights or aircraft involved in the threatened shoot-down. But he said Russia is returning to a “particularly aggressive” posture reminiscent of the former Soviet Union’s behavior during the Cold War.

“A month ago, to give you a very concrete example, a Russian air traffic control system threatened to shoot down French aircraft in the Black Sea when we were in a free international zone where we patrol,” he said on RTL radio.

“The behavior of Russia in 2024 bears no relation to what we saw in 2022 and, obviously, before the aggression in Ukraine,” the minister said. “It is explained by the fact that Russia is in difficulty on the battlefield in Ukraine.”

French air force pilots regularly patrol on the eastern flank of NATO, part of efforts by the 31-nation military alliance to boost its defenses since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago come Saturday.

French flights include long-range patrols by its AWACS surveillance aircraft. Flying high above the Black Sea coast, they use their powerful radar and other surveillance gear to peer across to the Crimean Peninsula that was seized from Ukraine by Russia and annexed in 2014. The surveillance flights can spot missile launches, airborne bombing runs and other military activity in the Ukraine conflict.

Quote:A second Ukrainian basketball player has succumbed to his wounds and died after a knife attack in the city of Oberhausen, allegedly at the hand of a migrant gang.

Two Ukrainians who fled to Germany for safety after the Russian invasion of their homeland and who played in the Basketball Bundesliga under-19s for the Düsseldorf team ART Giants have been killed in a knife attack.

The pair were attacked by a group of what police say were migrant-background youths in Oberhausen, near Dusseldorf in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturday 10th of February. 17-year-old Volodymyr Yermakov died in the hospital of his wounds the same day.

Now his friend and teammate 18-year-old Artem Kozachenko has also succumbed to his wounds sustained in the same attack, dying some ten days later. German newspaper Die Welt reports Kozachenko had been in intensive care but his condition had “recently deteriorated dramatically”.

While Ukrainian media states the pair were stabbed “simply because they are Ukrainians”, the German Welt states police believe there is no evidence of a xenophobic motive against the migrants by a different group of migrants.

The paper notes police have arrested a prime suspect, who they believe is the knifeman, described as a 15-year-old “German Turk”. Also under investigation are alleged accomplices, a 14-year-old “German Greek” and two Syrian migrants aged 14 and 15-years-old.

Quote:The French centre-right Les Républicains declared they will not back European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s quest for a second term in the top job in Brussels.

Ursula von der Leyen’s performance in her first term as Commission chief was “not up to par” and therefore the Les Républicains party will not support her candidacy for a second stint as leader, French MEP and the leader of the party in the EU Parliament, François-Xavier Bellamy declared on Tuesday.

“We will not support her in the election that comes with the Republicans, because we consider that the results are not up to what Europe expects today,” Bellamy said in comments reported by Le Figaro.

The declaration from the centrist French party comes just one day after von der Leyen announced her intentions to seek a second term as Commission president. It represents the first party within her European People’s Party (EPP) parliamentary group to come out against the German politician’s nomination openly.

The principal objection to von der Leyen from the Républicains has been her green agenda push, which has not only included plans to reach ‘Net Zero’ carbon emissions by 2050, but also has seen a swath of new environmental regulations imposed upon European farmers, who have already faced difficulties over inflation, the energy crisis, and the decision by Brussels to allow tariff-free access to its market to Ukrainian agriculture produced with much cheaper labour than within the EU.

Quote:Many Ukrainian men are evading the draft by hiding at home or trying to bribe their way out of the battle.

Along the frigid and muddy front line, commanders say their army is too small and made up of too many exhausted and wounded soldiers. As the war enters its third year, the most urgent and politically sensitive challenge pressing on Ukraine is whether it can muster enough new soldiers to repel an enemy with far more fighters at its disposal.

Russia´s population is more than three times as large as Ukraine´s, and President Vladimir Putin has shown a willingness to force men to the front if not enough volunteer.

The lack of soldiers isn´t Ukraine´s only predicament – it is also desperate for Western military aid, which has been harder to come by as the war drags on. But mobilizing enough soldiers is a problem only Ukraine can solve.

To replenish its ranks, the Ukrainian government is struggling to find a balance between coercion and persuasion.

The parliament is considering legislation that would increase the potential pool of recruits by about 400,000, in part by lowering the enlistment age from 27 to 25. But the proposal is highly unpopular, forcing elected officials to grapple with questions that cut to the heart of nationhood: Can they convince enough citizens to sacrifice their lives? And, if not, are they willing to accept the alternative?

Quote:UK Parliament speaker Lindsay Hoyle has doubled down on his claims extraordinary convention-busting decisions on the Israel-Gaza vote on Wednesday were informed by terrorist threats against Members of the house who didn’t vote in favour of a ceasefire.

Efforts by left-wing politicians from two parties in Britain’s lower house on Wednesday to call for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel” and for Israel to not pursue a ground offensive without the political embarrassment of voting for each other’s motions ended in chaos. The position of the speaker is in peril after he broke with long-established procedure to allow unconventional votes, and stands accused of having done so to benefit the left-wing Labour Party.

Sir Lindsay is in a difficult situation as whatever explanation that can rationally be given for his decisions on Wednesday do not land well. Former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox put his interpretation on this dichotomy, and wrote Thursday:

There are two possible explanations for the Speaker’s decision to abandon long-standing convention. First, he did it to assist his former party leader get out of a bind. Secondly, as he says, he did it in a misguided attempt to protect certain Labour MPs from the intimidation they said would otherwise have followed, if they had voted against the SNP motion.

Either reason is unacceptable. If the former, it is an abuse of his office. If the latter, it is an abject surrender to intolerance and tyranny; it meekly offers up the House of Commons as able to be influenced by external threats.

Conservative MP Danny Kruger said today it was a specific Islamist threat that had been alluded to.

Quote:The violent hard-left Antifa are already well known, but a splinter group in Germany with a laser focus on race has taken to the streets and it is bent on “revolution towards a classless society”, reports a top newspaper.

‘Migrantifa’ — of course a portmanteau neologism of migrant and Antifascist Action — protested in Berlin on Friday night, a demonstration that devolved into scuffles and arrests after police attempted to shut down banned antisemitic chants. Establishment German newspaper Die Welt gives a rundown on the group which has bubbled under the surface for a few years but now gains new prominence.

The report noted the Monday night rally, called on the anniversary of a terror attack against a shisha bar in Germany that killed nine, attracted 3,500 protesters — Migrantifa themselves claimed “over 10,000” attended — and that chants were led and speeches were given. Describing the extremist worldview held by the Migrantifa group as expressed through the words of its speakers, Welt said the group seamlessly blended anger over Gaza with conspiracy theories about German racism against migrants, seeing no political party as representing migrant interests.

“Deadly racism” is present in the full spectrum from the right-populist anti-mass migration Alternative For Germany (AfD) to the enviro-socialist Greens, said one speaker, who told attendees that at best the political system offered a vote “every four years… between misery with a rainbow flag and misery with a conservative family image”. Even the hard left parties now in government had supplied cash to Israel, they lamented.

The Migrantifa hardliners also “despise ‘diversity’ and anti-racism work-through-workshops rhetoric” — the very basis of the contemporary multicultural state in Germany as elsewhere, and prefer “‘resistance’ and revolution towards a ‘classless society'”, the paper said.

Welt is not the only German newspaper to have noted the Migrantifa rally. Die Tageszeitung also reports on the rhetoric, noting the speeches focussing on popular responses in the country to migrant crime. Noting events like the massive New Year’s Eve unrest in Berlin and the outrage at the behaviour of migrant males towards young women and girls at public swimming pools in recent summers, the protest lashed out at the public’s response to what many would call ‘migrant crime’, describing it instead as “unprecedented agitation against migrants”.

The AfD [a "far-right" political party] — clearly an object of hatred for the Migrantifa activists — responded to the emergence of the group, asking rhetorically whether the members might consider leaving Germany, given they have such a low opinion of it

Quote:Polish farmers brought the border with Ukraine to a complete standstill with their tractors on Tuesday as they protested the “uncontrolled” flows of cheap produce from their war-torn neighbour, which they claim has severely undermined their ability to remain in business.

In a significant blow to recently installed globalist Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has vowed to be the most “pro-Ukrainian politician in Europe,” farmers from his country riled Kyiv once again by shutting down the border crossings at Lublin and Podkarpackie with hundreds of tractors, completely blocking off large transport trucks from coming in and out of the country and sparking queues dozens of miles long, Poland’s PAP news agency reported.

Flying the red and white Polish flags, tractors bore signs reading: “Stop the uncontrolled influx of Ukrainian goods” and “Agriculture is dying little by little” .

Speaking to the French news agency AFP, a farmer at the protest, Tomasz Golak said: “I am here so that we abandon the restrictions introduced by the European Union on fallowing, and the Green Deal, and above all so that these Ukrainian foods stop arriving,” adding: “This year, wheat is selling for half the price of last year”.
...
Upon taking office in December, Tusk vowed to lead efforts to launch a “full mobilization of the free world, the Western world, to help Ukraine in this war.”

However, relations remain tense between the two neighbours over the issue of agriculture. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that the tractor blockade of the border by truckers and farmers was indicative of an “erosion of solidarity” towards Ukraine.

Quote:Hundreds of farmers drove their tractors into central Madrid on Wednesday as part of ongoing protests against European Union and local farming policies and to demand measures to alleviate production cost hikes.

The protest, the biggest to take place in the Spanish capital after more than two weeks of daily protests across the country, will include a rally outside the Agriculture Ministry headquarters.

Many of the tractors flew Spanish flags and some farmers carried banners reading, “There is no life without farming,” and “Farmers in Extinction.”

“It is impossible to live from the rural industry, which is what we want, to live from our work. That is all we ask for,” Silvia Ruiz, 46, a livestock farmer from the north-central area of Burgos told The Associated Press.

The Union of Unions organizing group said they were bringing 500 tractors and many more farmers on buses. Many of the tractors may have to stay outside of the city because of government restrictions.

Similar protests have taken place across the bloc in recent weeks. Farmers complain that the 27-nation EU´s policies on the environment and other matters are a financial burden and make their products more expensive than non-EU imports.

Quote:Scores of bright-colored tractors were parked outside Greece’s parliament Tuesday, horns blaring, as thousands of farmers angry at high production costs shifted their protests to Athens.

“Without us, you don´t eat,” one banner said. Some farmers carried mock coffins and funeral garlands as symbols of their plight.

The farmers – whose demands are similar to those at farmer protests elsewhere in Europe – have spent weeks staging sporadic blockades along highways and in rural towns. Farmers in central Greece are also still reeling from major floods last year.

The center-right government has expressed sympathy with the farmers but said budgetary constraints prevent it from meeting all their demands, beyond substantial electricity cost reductions.

Protesters say that’s not enough. They want tax-free fuel, debt forgiveness, measures against foreign competition and speedier compensation for damage from natural disasters. Farmers also criticize the substantial markup in shelf prices compared to what wholesalers pay them for their produce.

Manolis Liakis, a farmer from the southern island of Crete, singled out fuel costs. He said farmers pay more than three times as much for petrol as shipping companies due to tax disparities.

Quote:According to Iran’s PressTV, IRGC commanders attended a ceremony on Tuesday to take possession of the latest Shahed-131 and Ababil-5 drones, upgraded versions of two designs that have helped Iran’s homegrown drone industry become a significant threat.

The Shahed drone is a “suicide” or “kamikaze” design, intended to fly an explosive payload to its target and then explode. Iran admitted in November 2022 it has supplied Russia with a large number of Shahed drones to attack Ukrainian targets. Iran also supplied Shahed models to the Houthi terrorists of Yemen, who have used them to attack commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

PressTV excitedly reported the Shahed-131 featured prominently in an exercise that simulated Iran using “precision strikes” to destroy an Israeli nuclear power plant.

The Ababil-5 drone, rolled out in April 2022, is an attack drone along the lines of the U.S.-made Predator UAV. The Iranian drone can carry up to six missiles or bombs and has an operating range of about 480 kilometers.

Iranian state media claimed in October 2023 that an Ababil-5 was able to shadow a U.S.-guided missile destroyer in the Indian Ocean, seemingly without being detected or interfered with. PressTV said the latest version of the Ababil drone can carry a heavier payload with its stronger wings, and has a smaller radar signature thanks to its retractable landing gear.

Quote:The pro-Hezbollah Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen reported on Thursday that a “suicide drone” of unknown origin successfully hit an American base in eastern Syria. Iranian state outlets amplified the report, but the Pentagon has not confirmed or denied the alleged incident at press time.

Al Mayadeen cited one of its reporters in Aleppo, who claimed the kamikaze drone “reached its goal after a strong explosion was heard in the area surrounding the U.S. base.” The base was allegedly in the Conoco gas field in Deir ez-Zor, close to the border with Iraq.

The attack, if confirmed, could mark a return to the heightened number of similar strikes on Americans in the region since October. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 165 attacks on American troops and assets in the Middle East in the past four months. A report citing anonymous sources by Reuters in late February, however, claimed that Iran had ordered its proxies in Iraq to stop targeting Americans out of fear that such strikes could elicit a devastating response, including potential strikes within Iran.

Iran’s state-run PressTV, which cited Al Mayadeen, emphasized that the “extent of the likely casualties or material damages resulting from the strike is yet to be known” and that no organization, individual, or other entity had claimed responsibility for the alleged attack — nor had any party allegedly involved acknowledged the incident. Mehr News, another Iranian state-linked propaganda outlet, cited a separate source for its report: an Arabic-language update on Sputnik, a Russian state propaganda outlet.

Sputnik reportedly used unnamed “local sources” to claim “massive explosions rocked Green Village, situated in the energy-rich Dayr al-Zawr province near the Iraq border.”

Quote:Former Lebanese President Michel Aoun slammed the country’s Hezbollah terrorist organization for its persistent attacks on Israel, stating that “one party cannot make decisions about a conflict like this all by itself,” and noting that Lebanon has no obligation to defend the Gaza-based Palestinians as it has “no treaty with Gaza.”

Aoun’s remarks were made in a Monday interview with Lebanon’s OTV television station, as reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

According to MEMRI, when asked what Lebanon’s limits are in the conflict with Israel and to what extent the Mediterranean country should enter such a conflict, Aoun highlighted that only a “section of the Lebanese people has made a decision, all by itself, whereas the other Lebanese are not a party to this.”

“The government is silent,” he said. “It does not take a clear stand. This reflects helplessness rather than resolve.”

He also expressed his opposition to “linking” the Lebanese front to that of Gaza’s, noting “We have no treaty with Gaza,” and that Lebanon “is not connected to Gaza by an agreement,” while proposing that “perhaps the Arab League could have done something.”

In response to the suggestion that Hezbollah’s actions are “more of a preemptive move than an act of support for Gaza,” Aoun dismissed it as “just an opinion.”

“There are no indications of this,” he said, adding that “perhaps instead of pushing the danger away from us, getting into this war only aggravates it.”

When asked who ultimately decides on these issues, Aoun declared that currently “the people who are fighting are calling the shots.”

Quote:The U.S. State Department condemned on Wednesday a string of missile and drone attacks on American and British commercial vessels by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen.

The attacks were evidence that President Joe Biden’s “Operation Prosperity Guardian” has done little to protect shipping or deter Houthi attacks.

The State Department condemned the latest round of Houthi assaults on “civilian shipping and innocent mariners” as terrorism and piracy. The statement noted that the Houthis have frequently targeted ships carrying food headed for starving countries, including Yemen itself, so their actions are “adversely affecting those in need of assistance around the world.”

“Contrary to what the Houthis may attempt to claim, their attacks do nothing to help the Palestinians. Their actions are not bringing a single morsel of assistance or food to the Palestinian people,” the statement added.

After castigating the Houthis for making hungry people suffer, including Palestinians and Yemenis, and jeopardizing the fragile peace process in the Yemeni civil war, the State Department stopped short of laying out specific consequences if the pirate attacks do not cease – a remarkable choke, given that the Houthis have successfully defied the United States and United Kingdom to shut down one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

Quote:The Biden administration is unveiling more than 500 new sanctions against Russia and the entities supporting its human rights abuses and war effort in Ukraine.

The tranche of sanctions is the largest unveiled since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, and seeks to hold Moscow to account for the war and the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, President Joe Biden said in a prepared statement.

“Today, I am announcing more than 500 new sanctions against Russia for its ongoing war of conquest on Ukraine and for the death of Aleksey Navalny, who was a courageous anti-corruption activist and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s fiercest opposition leader,” President Biden said.

“We are also imposing new export restrictions on nearly 100 entities for providing backdoor support for Russia’s war machine.”

The Treasury and State Departments will impose the sanctions, with the Department of Commerce also adding more than 90 companies to the Entity List.

They target individuals and businesses operating in 11 countries, as well as three Russian government officials whom the White House has linked to the death of Mr. Navalny in an Arctic prison last week.

The Sanctions also target Russia’s financial and energy sectors, defense industrial base, procurement networks, and sanctions evaders on multiple continents.

A Treasury Department statement.said that the sanctions were designed “to impose additional costs for Russia’s repression, human rights abuses, and aggression against Ukraine.”

Commerce Secretary Janet Yellen added that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had sacrificed the wellbeing of the Russian people in his effort to demilitarize Ukraine.
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“The Kremlin chooses to reorient its economy to build weapons to kill its neighbors at the expense of the economic future of its own people.”
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The sanctions follow closely behind a similar effort led by European officials earlier this week, in which EU member states banned nearly 200 entities and individuals accused of helping Moscow to illegally procure weapons and of kidnapping children in Ukraine.

Russia’s foreign ministry responded by expanding a list of European Union officials and politicians banned from entering Russia.

The sanctions also follow a series of arrests and indictments in the United States, wherein the Justice Department has accused Russian oligarchs, including the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, of sanctions busting and money laundering.

The new sanctions accordingly target several high-profile entities, including the National Payment Card System Joint Stock Company, which is owned by the Central Bank of Russia and plays a key role in facilitating financial transactions there.

Quote:Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is reconsidering the likelihood that the war will end in a negotiated settlement.

Ukrainian leadership claims that it seeks the total recovery of its occupied territories in the east. Russia claims that it seeks the total demilitarization of Ukraine and the creation of a neutral state to buffer Russia from NATO.

Neither side is close to achieving those objectives, however; nor are either likely to become so, according to several experts.

For their part, U.S. officials are optimistic that the war has bled Russia badly enough that a negotiated settlement may yet preserve Ukraine’s democratic government and sovereignty.

The proof, according to Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, is in Russia’s losses.

“Ukraine has taken off the battlefield 21 naval ships, 102 Russian aircraft, and 2,700 Russian tanks,” Ms. Nuland said at a Feb. 22 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

“In case Americans are still asking themselves if all of this is worth it for us, let’s remember: without sending a single U.S. soldier into combat, and investing less than one tenth of one year’s defense budget of the United States, we have helped Ukraine destroy 50 percent of Russia’s ground combat power.”

For all the slaughter, however, even senior officials like Ms. Nuland are forced to acknowledge that Ukraine has all but run out of U.S. support, and is stuck in a brutal stalemate that more resembles the horrors of war in the early 20th century than the 21st.

Describing the line of control in eastern Ukraine as a “meat grinder,” Ms. Nuland said that Russia appeared content to simply wait for U.S. support to Ukraine to die out completely.

Quote:The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four foreign nationals with smuggling Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry to the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen last month.

U.S. Navy SEALs operating from USS Lewis B Puller (ESB 3) boarded a small vessel during a nighttime mission in the Arabian Sea on Jan. 11, seizing control of the vessel and suspected Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missile components on board. The elite U.S. special operators also detained 14 individuals on board the dhow, including defendants Muhammad Pahlawan, Mohammad Mazhar, Ghufran Ullah, and Izhar Muhammad.

On Thursday, the DOJ unsealed its Feb. 11 criminal complaint against the four defendants. The DOJ described the four men as foreign nationals, and charging documents indicated U.S. officials found Pakistani identification cards for each of the defendants aboard the seized vessel.

Mr. Pahlawan is charged with transporting an explosive device aboard the vessel, with the knowledge that the weapon would be used by the Houthis to target other maritime traffic in the region. Mr. Pahlawan and the other three defendants are also charged with providing materially false statements for claiming they were unaware of the weapon components they were transporting.

All four defendants face a maximum penalty of five years in prison if convicted of the false statements charges. Mr. Pahlawan faces up to 20 more years in prison if convicted of transporting the explosive device.
...
According to the complaint, the dhow the defendants were sailing departed from Iran’s Chahbahar Bay on or around Jan. 5.

All 14 crewmembers detained during the Jan. 11 boarding action denied knowing that they had weapon components on their vessel. Mr. Pahalawan and other crewmembers they were out on a fishing voyage, though some of the crewmembers later claimed they were drug smugglers.

When interviewed by investigators, Mr. Pahlawan said the Iranian Navy inspected the vessel about an hour before its departure. He also said the vessel’s owner and captain were also present during the inspection, but said the captain did not depart with the vessel and instead gave him a heading. He said the vessel’s owner also provided him with a satellite phone.

FBI investigators inspected the satellite phone and the complaint alleges they were subsequently able to identify the ship’s owner as an individual connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.

Quote:The number of Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally has surged in recent times, with the latest data from the San Diego sector showing a staggering 500 percent surge so far this year compared to the same period a year ago.

As the nation remains gripped by an illegal immigration crisis of historic proportions, there’s been an exceptionally high increase in the number of Chinese nationals—especially military-aged men—who have unlawfully crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some border patrol officials and others have warned this poses a national security risk because, among those simply seeking a better life, there may be those with links to the Chinese military.

Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, recently warned about a sharp rise in the number of military-aged Chinese men crossing the southern border illegally, saying that he believes some of them may be spies working on behalf of China’s communist regime to “infiltrate” the United States.

And now, Jason Owens, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), has revealed that, so far this fiscal year, the San Diego sector has seen over 20,000 apprehensions of Chinese nationals, over five times the number in the comparable period last year.

“In FY24, San Diego Sector has made +140K apprehensions with +20K of them being from China (a more than 500% increase compared to last FYTD),” Mr. Owens wrote in a post on X.

Some analysts say that deteriorating economic conditions in China, as well as human rights abuses and policies such as strict COVID-19 lockdowns, are likely driving the sharp increase in the number of Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally.

Interviews with some of the Chinese border crossers indicate much the same thing, with some blaming an increasingly repressive political climate and dour economic prospects.
However, Mr. Judd and others have suggested that for some—possibly even many—there might be a different motivation.

Quote:Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has asked a state judge to shut down a nonprofit organization that operates a network of shelters in Texas, alleging that the organization appears to be facilitating illegal border crossings and human smuggling.

The Republican attorney general began investigating the Catholic nonprofit Annunciation House earlier this month over potential violations of state law. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) issued a Feb. 7 “request to examine” the nonprofit’s records, including documents detailing what services it provides to immigrants who are in the country legally or illegally.

According to Mr. Paxton, Annunciation House refused to turn over any documents and sued his office soon after, seeking to halt his efforts to obtain their records. On Tuesday, Feb. 20, Mr. Paxton announced he is asserting a counterclaim, seeking to shut down Annunciation House’s operations within the state entirely.

“OAG has complete and unlimited authority to examine business records to ensure that entities operating within the state are doing so lawfully. And the consequence of a flagrant failure to comply with such a request is that OAG may terminate the business’s right to operate in Texas,” Mr. Paxton’s office said in a press statement on Tuesday. “The OAG lawsuit seeks to revoke Annunciation House’s authorization to do business in Texas and asks the court to appoint a receiver to liquidate their assets.”

In his legal filings, Mr. Paxton states his initial request to inspect Annunciation House’s records “was not made in a vacuum.” Rather, he alleges state investigators had been monitoring the “unusually covert way” Annunciation House operates.
“Annunciation House staff also made multiple admissions that they had assisted migrants in the past in the United States who had not surrendered to border patrol, had assisted persons in Mexico in crossing over to the United States in the past, and they intended to continue these activities the future,” Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit further cites a January 2023, article by El Paso Matters, which described a woman and her family avoiding Border Patrol when crossing the Rio Grande, out of fear that agents would send them back to Mexico. They were then taken in by Annunciation House, according to the report. The same article describes how Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia stated his organization has helped individuals, who initially avoided border officials upon entering the United States, to make asylum claims. Mr. Paxton argues that these efforts constitute evidence that Annunciation House is harboring illegal immigrants from detection, in potential violation of Texas state law.

Quote:Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday filed more evidence, in secret and under seal, without the presence or notification of former President Donald Trump’s attorneys, a practice that the former president’s lawyers have said infringe on their client’s right to open proceedings.

In a Feb. 23 notice of filing at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, Mr. Smith’s team indicated that they have filed documents related to an order pursuant to CIPA Section 4 rules, delivering them to a classified information security officer in Fort Pierce, Florida.

President Trump has been charged with retaining national defense information, meaning that his case will be tried under the complex rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), which governs how those documents can be used in court.

A CIPA Section 4 motion asks the judge to redact certain information from the classified documents that are turned over to the defense.

Mr. Smith’s latest filing indicates that the documents were submitted ex parte, in camera, and under seal.
An ex parte filing means one submitted to the court by one party to legal proceedings without the presence or notification of the opposing party. An in camera filing is one made behind closed doors, so in secret and without public access.

President Trump’s attorneys have objected to any exhibit being filed ex parte. They have also said they oppose any exhibits being filed under seal but that they would not lodge a formal objection until they have had a chance to review the contents.

Quote:A report released by the Family Research Council (FRC) indicates an 800 percent increase in violent incidents against churches in the past six years.

The Feb. 20 report (pdf), titled “Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States,” shed light on the aggressive trend of increased attacks against churches, with data indicating that attacks on the places of worship doubled in 2023 over the previous year.

According to the FRC’s 183 pages of findings, at least 915 acts of hostility against U.S. churches were identified between 2018 and 2023.

FRC president and former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Tony Perkins said of the report, "There is a common connection between the growing religious persecution abroad and the rapidly increasing hostility toward churches here at home: our government’s policies.

“The indifference abroad to the fundamental freedom of religion is rivaled only by the increasing antagonism toward the moral absolutes taught by Bible-believing churches here in the U.S., which is fomenting this environment of hostility toward churches.”

These acts encompassed various forms of aggression, including vandalism, arson, gun-related incidents, bomb threats, and more.

By categorizing these incidents, the report showed the diverse nature of the hostility faced by churches, from satanic imagery to anti-Israel sentiments and targeted attacks on nativity scenes.

The year 2023 alone witnessed a significant spike, with at least 436 reported acts of hostility against churches, marking more than double the number recorded in 2022.

The report further detailed that these acts of hostility in 2023 were widespread, occurring in 48 states and the District of Columbia. States with larger populations experienced a higher incidence of these attacks, with California topping the list at 33 incidents, followed closely by Texas with 28. It is worthy of note that Hawaii and Wyoming reported no such incidents during the same period.
...
The data indicated that the increase in animosity noted in their earlier analysis had not only continued but also increased in 2023, which the group asserts requires immediate attention.

The report offered more than 150 pages of details of the attacks, and outlined how congregants and clergy alike have found themselves in the crosshairs of these acts. The document also highlighted the psychological impact on individuals and communities.

The deliberate destruction of religious symbols, such as the beheading of a statue of Mary or the desecration of a historically Black church, is thought to extend beyond physical damage to convey a powerful message: that these churches may not be welcome or respected in their neighborhoods.

Here's the link to the report.

But I gotta say here that having strong moral values is not a reason for others to attack churches or any other place or group in general.

Just don't forget that there are MANY illegals entering the US and the Biden administration has done nothing to prevent them from staying in US soil. In fact, DHS Secretary Mayorkas clearly encourages them to remain in America and get a job, even if they still are illegals. If they feel they're "abused" by their employers or these people are not hiring enough illegals, the DHS tells them that they should denounce them and offers them a path to citizenship!  All of these has been reported already in the last couple of weeks here on NOTW.

Quote:A report found that the region around the San Diego border area with Mexico faces a public health crisis due to contaminated sewage flowing from Mexico into California.

In a report commissioned by Rep. Scott Peters (R-Calif.), San Diego State University researchers described the situation as a “public health crisis,” finding that raw sewage and other materials are flowing north into Southern California from Mexico via the Tijuana River. They noted that places like Imperial Beach and San Ysidro, California, as well as other areas, could face exposure to “untreated sewage.”

Specifically, the researchers said that people who live or work near the area can be exposed to harmful viruses, bacteria, parasites, and toxic chemicals. They highlighted the spread of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria as well as serious and fatal pathogens such as tuberculosis, as well as banned chemicals and heavy metals.

Meanwhile, the researchers made note of the “unusual threats” posed to health by “pollutants from Mexico,” including human and animal diseases.  Contaminated water, they added, is constantly flowing into the Pacific Ocean, especially after heavy rainfall events.

“I don’t go to Imperial Beach anymore ... I used to go all the time, quite frequently,” lead author Paula Stigler Granados, with San Diego State University’s School of Public Health, told The Hill.

Researchers also warned that beachgoers are not the only impacted individuals, but those who live and work near the contaminated areas such as children, seniors, military members, lifeguards, border patrol agents, and others can be exposed to the waste.

They found that “toxic chemicals and microbes in raw untreated sewage, industrial waste, and urban run-off, once thought to remain isolated to just the water, can also be airborne and linger in soils, which may have much larger and farther reaching environmental health impacts,” according to a news release from the school earlier this month. “As part of the paper, researchers reviewed over 60 related studies and reports, examining environmental and public health concerns in the Tijuana River Valley and Estuary.”

Water samples taken from the Tijuana River and outlying areas revealed a number of fatal bacteria and viruses such as hepatitis B, hepatitis B, salmonella, vibrio, listeria, streptococcus, tuberculosis, and HIV, researchers say.

Quote:United Airlines will resume scheduling flights to Israel beginning next month, initially planning to offer a single daily flight and will “adjust the schedule as warranted.”

United’s flights to Israel were suspended in October 2023, following Hamas’s attacks. Service is planned to resume in March, with initial flights between Newark, New Jersey, and Tel Aviv scheduled for March 2 and 4, with a stop in Munich, the Chicago-based airline said.

Daily “nonstop service” to Tel Aviv will resume beginning on March 6.

If plans materialize, United will be the first U.S.-based carrier to resume flights to Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. United said this will be “the first step in restoring vital passenger and cargo service.”

“United conducted a detailed safety analysis in making this decision, including close work with security experts and government officials in the United States and Israel,” the carrier stated. “We also worked closely with the Air Line Pilots Association and the Association of Flight Attendants to develop the protocols to ensure they are safe and well-informed.

“United will continue to monitor the situation in Tel Aviv and adjust the schedule as warranted, including changes to the resumed service from New York/Newark announced today.”


Once demand for the flights recovers, United intends to resume a second daily flight between Newark and Tel Aviv beginning “as soon as May.”

Quote:Canada is adding 10 people and 153 entities to its sanctions list, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine set to pass the second-year mark this weekend.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced the new sanctions against Russia in co-ordination with the United States and the United Kingdom this morning.

Earlier on Feb. 23, the U.S. announced sanctions targeting more than 500 people and entities, and the U.K. added 50 to its own list.
...
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says it has verified that more than 10,500 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, and nearly 20,000 injured in the conflict.

Those Canada is sanctioning include a longtime aide to President Vladimir Putin as well as businessmen involved in industries like rail, construction, and IT.

Canada and its allies are trying to damage Russia’s ability to continue waging war, by sanctioning entities that provide the Russian military with goods and services.

Canada is also expanding the language of its ban on exports of goods to manufacture weapons to specifically bar the export of explosives and detonators, used in the mining and construction industry.

Quote:Ottawa has filed to appeal a Federal Court decision that found its invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests was unjustified.

The government is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn a January decision that found the government’s use of emergency law led to the infringement of constitutional rights.

The federal Liberals invoked emergency powers in response to thousands of protesters who entrenched themselves in downtown Ottawa for weeks and spinoff protests that blockaded border crossings.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and others argued in court that Ottawa ushered in the emergency measures without sound statutory grounds.

Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley’s decision, which the Liberals immediately promised to appeal, differed from the conclusion of the Public Order Emergency Commission.

That inquiry found the government met the very high legal standard for using the law.

In the documents filed Feb. 22, the government outlined arguments including that the Federal Court erred by reviewing the decision to invoke the act “with the benefit of hindsight” and based on information not available to the government in 2022.
The court also made a mistake in substituting its own opinion about the decision the government should have made, it said.

Instead, it said, the court should have looked at whether it was reasonable for the government to “decide that it had reasonable grounds to believe” that a public order emergency existed and needed to be dealt with through special temporary measures.

The court was also wrong to decide the invocation of the Emergencies Act was a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the government argued.

It might be convenient to add an older article that seems to support the liberal government instead of the actual victims of the government's abuse. Even so it suggested there was a need to make several changes in that law or its implementation.

Quote:The Liberal government has missed a deadline to respond to the findings and recommendations of Justice Paul Rouleau, who headed a federal inquiry into the government’s first and only use of the Emergencies Act in 2022.

One year ago, Justice Rouleau issued his final report on the government’s decision to declare a public order emergency during the Freedom Convoy protests, which gridlocked the streets around Parliament and blocked international border crossings.

Justice Rouleau found the government was justified in invoking the act, but made 56 recommendations for the future, including several suggested amendments to the law itself.

He ordered the government to respond to those recommendations within 12 months, to say which of them will be implemented, and provide a timeline.

Justice Rouleau didn’t impose any penalties for missing the deadline, and it wasn’t legally binding.

The public safety minister’s office says it will have more information about the government’s response “soon” and didn’t offer a justification for missing Justice Rouleau’s deadline.

This clearly demonstrates how the Trudeau administration doesn't care about being transparent concerning its policies and doesn't believe in righting the wrongs done in the past.

Quote:A senior Health Canada official removed mention of a “high level of impurity” in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in an assessment done by a colleague for the department’s chief medical adviser, internal records show.

The assessment was meant as a brief on recent findings about the creation of unintended proteins by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Two senior Health Canada (HC) officials, including the one with final authority on vaccine authorization, expressed concerns about the conclusions written by the HC scientist tasked with producing the assessment.

“I am very wary of the 4th bullet on impurities that Dr. [Agnes] Klein had put in,” HC Senior Advisor Poovadan Anoop wrote in a Dec. 14, 2023, email referring to the internal HC assessment written by Dr. Agnes V. Klein, a senior medical advisor with HC.  Mr. Anoop’s email was addressed to his superior, Sophie Sommerer, director general of Health Canada’s Biologic and Radiopharmaceutical Drugs Directorate (BRDD). The unit is responsible for approving vaccines.

The Epoch Times obtained the internal records through the access to information system.

The assessment had noted about 8 percent of the proteins produced by the mRNA shots were unintended or “frameshifted” proteins capable of evoking an immune response. Dr. Klein called it a “high level of impurity.”

“Does this mean with the impurity levels caused by frameshift, the vaccines would not pass muster, notwithstanding the fact that the translated proteins are not harmful,” Mr. Anoop asked in his email. He later told his superior that he “struck out” a paragraph drawn from the original assessment mentioning the “high level of impurity.”

The assessment and exchange began two days earlier, when Chief Medical Advisor Supriya Sharma tasked her staff to produce a “‘quick and dirty’” assessment on a research article by immunologist and public health researcher Dr. Jessica Rose posted on Substack. The chief medical advisor sought a review of the information and the “‘claims’ being made” in Dr. Rose’s analysis.

The lengthy scientific Substack post discussed the initial frameshifting discovery reported in the journal Nature on Dec. 6. Scientists found that the mRNA injections, which give instructions to the cells to create the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ spike protein to generate an immune response, also produce other unintended, or frameshifted proteins that are capable of evoking an immune response.

The researchers estimated that approximately 8 percent of the proteins generated by the mRNA shots are frameshifted.

Dr. Rose wrote in her Substack article that one of her concerns is that those “off-target proteins” are being produced in many people who received the COVID-19 shots and that this “may lead to autoimmunity and/or other problems.” Autoimmunity refers to the human immune system mounting a response against itself which can lead to disease states.

Several days ago, this article came to light.  Not the kind of news Canadians would love to read in a convoluted world.

Quote:Three dozen Victoria International Airport employees, including 27 security screeners, have been fired after a federal investigation cited “multiple instances of incomplete screening” at the terminal.

Along with the 27 security screeners, nine salaried employees were fired last week after the months-long probe into security screening at the airport, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), the union representing the workers.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) said the probe was prompted by a complaint.

“The investigation identified multiple instances of incomplete screening at a non-passenger checkpoint,” CATSA spokesperson Suzanne Perseo said in an emailed statement.

“The findings indicate that the personnel involved did not fulfil their core responsibility to protect the travelling public.”

The investigation was carried out in December and January by Allied Universal, a subcontracted company that provides pre-boarding screening at all public airports in British Columbia, CATSA said.

The IAMAW accused the CATSA in a Feb. 14 press release of interfering with the employee review process, saying the “lack of procedural fairness” has been “appalling.”

The union said Allied Universal’s investigation determined the employees’ actions “deviated” from the proper procedure, but was not cause for termination.

The sub-contractor had planned to “return the affected employees to work with a corrective action plan” that included training until the CATSA ordered the “immediate removal” of the employees, the IAMAW said.

Ms. Perseo refuted the union’s claim, saying although the federal agency told the employer it could no longer be billed for the wages of the 36 workers, it did not order they be fired.

“CATSA commenced its process to review the continued certification of these individuals as screening officers and advised the employer that their services could not be billed to CATSA under the current circumstances,” she said. “At no point did CATSA request that the employer terminate the individuals involved.”

IAMAW District Lodge 140 chairperson Tania Canniff said the union is calling on the Transport Minister to “reverse CATSA’s course of action.”

Quote:Provincial police say they have launched an operation in response to rising violence between independent drug dealers and criminal biker gangs.

About 100 officers from specialized units were deployed on Feb. 23 across the province in connection to what they say is a war over drug-selling territory in the Quebec City area, the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region, the Lower St-Lawrence and the North Shore.

In one violent incident, one man was killed and three others were injured in a hostage taking on Feb. 19 in St-Malachie, Que., south of the provincial capital.

Two people with ties to the Hells Angels were allegedly kidnapped and tortured, and a third person was killed in the community.

Police say three people were arrested on Feb. 23 in connection with that violence.

Lt. Benoit Richard says videos have also circulated of people tied to the drug war allegedly being tortured.

Quote:A Ukrainian–Polish dispute over cheap imports of agricultural products from Ukraine escalates as Polish farmers block border crossings into Poland to protest the unfair competition and EU’s climate change measures, both endangering their livelihood.

Polish farmers have stepped up their protests this week by blocking almost all traffic with Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that Ukrainian grain, which is currently being blocked at the border by Polish farmers protesting EU’s policies, is not “intended for the Polish market.

Mr. Zelenskyy said at a press conference in Lviv, Ukraine, “that Ukrainian grain does not go to the Polish market. ... We are willing and will do everything to resolve this issue,” according to a statement.
Mr. Zelenskyy instructed the Ukrainian government in his speech on Thursday to come to the Ukrainian–Polish border by Feb. 24, according to a statement.

He also asked Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Polish President Andrzej Duda, and European Union officials to come to the border to discuss the farmers’ protests. Mr. Zelenskyy added that he is ready to join the talks as well.

Mr. Tusk said on Thursday the Polish and Ukrainian governments would meet in Warsaw on March 28, expressing his hope that by then, the ongoing technical talks at the ministerial level would lead to a fruitful meeting, but he did not accept Mr. Zelenskyy’s request for urgent talks this week.
...
Reuters reported that television footage showed protesters opening railway carriages to allow grain to pour onto the tracks at the Medyka border crossing in Poland.

Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said the grain was headed to Germany and would not have entered the Polish market.

Quote:Despite the impasse in the House of Representatives over a $60 billion aid plan, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is in Ukraine to reassure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders that Congress will fund another wave of U.S. aid.

Mr. Schumer led a delegation on Feb. 23 in an announced trip that comes as Ukraine is facing a dangerous situation. Mr. Zelenskyy has said that the Ukrainian military is at grave risk of running out of ammunition and weaponry due to the ongoing conflict and the country’s inability to fend off Russia’s advance on the battlefield.

Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Schumer posted to X, formerly Twitter, offering his assurances, saying, “To President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine: You are valiant. The United States stands with you. We will not abandon you. We will fight and fight to get this critical aid to you and to your brave soldiers.”

Congressional representatives from both parties have recently visited Europe to assure their constituents that their country will remain steadfast in its support of Ukraine and other European friends. However, what lies ahead is anything from guaranteed.

Mr. Zelenskyy has said that discussions with international partners are centered on the topic of how to “resume and extend” help.

Sweden, which is on the verge of joining NATO, announced on Tuesday that it will provide Ukraine with military assistance of 7.1 billion kronor, which is equivalent to $681 million.  Included are underwater weapons and 30 boats, some of which are military assault ships that are both quick and strong.

In addition, the contract encompasses the acquisition of artillery ammunition, Leopard tanks, shoulder-borne anti-aircraft defense systems, anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, hand grenades, and medical transport trucks, as well as diving equipment and underwater drones.

On Monday, the government of Canada announced that it will begin sending more than 800 drones to Ukraine beginning as early as this spring. They are a component of the military assistance for Ukraine that was earlier stated to be worth 370 million U.S. dollars (500 million Canadian).

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine announced that the country had received $42.5 billion from its international partners in the previous year, of which $11.6 billion was in the form of non-repayable grant aid.

Quote:Prime Minister Justin Trudeau emerged on Feb. 24 in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, joining other world leaders at the site of one of the war’s first and fiercest battles to mark the second anniversary of the brutal Russian invasion.

Trudeau appeared at Hostomel airport alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in a show of global solidarity.

Behind them, the scorched husks of destroyed aircraft and the blackened walls of the airport just outside the capital served as a stark backdrop, a bitter reminder of the invasion’s earliest days.

“Putin was sure he could easily take strategic targets like this airport. Russian forces tried to make quick work of Hostomel airport—and with it, Kyiv,” Trudeau said in prepared remarks.

“Well, we are standing here today because he was wrong.”
...
“Putin cannot win,” Trudeau said in his speech. “Ukraine will see victory, just like what happened on this ground two years ago.”
...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a rousing speech in Ukrainian, praising the bravery and sacrifice of Ukrainian troops defending their country, and thanked his western allies.

“Throughout all of this war you have been with us, with Ukrainians,” Zelesnkyy told the leaders at Hostomel.
...
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson was also on hand for the anniversary, as well as Defence Minister Bill Blair and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. U.S. President Joe Biden was not expected to attend.

Trudeau is expected to participate in several commemorations throughout the day, including a wreath−laying, before ending the day with a joint news conference.

Quote:A suspected gas leak at the headquarters of Sweden’s security agency Friday forced authorities to evacuate some 500 people from the facility, Swedish broadcaster TV4 said.

Seven people from the headquarters in Solna, just north of Stockholm, were hospitalized, police spokesperson Anders Bryngelsson told the TT news agency. He said there were no reports that anyone was seriously injured.

Emergency services had decided to evacuate the entire building because of a “suspected gas leak,” Bryngelsson said. He did not elaborate.
...
The people admitted to the hospital had breathing problems, authorities said. Some of them were officers who smelled gas when they arrived at the scene, police said.

Images shared from the scene showed first responders and police officers wearing gas masks, and Swedish media reported that a zone measuring 500 meters (547 yards) in diameter was set up protectively.

A helicopter was seen hovering over the area.

Neighbors near the Swedish security agency, known by its acronym SAPO, were asked to close their windows.

Quote:London police confirmed Friday that a body they pulled from the River Thames is that of Abdul Ezedi, a man wanted over a chemical attack that injured his former partner and her two young daughters.

The Metropolitan Police said his body was formally identified on Thursday and that his family has been informed of this development. The force also said that a post-mortem has confirmed his cause of death as drowning.

“As the public would expect, our enquiries continue into this atrocious attack,“ said Commander Jon Savell. ”The 31-year-old woman is still in hospital and remains in a stable condition and no longer sedated. We have still not been able to speak to her but hope to as soon as she is well enough.”
...
Images of Ezedi soon after showed he had significant injuries to the right side of his face, but his whereabouts were unknown. On Feb. 9, the Met said they believed Ezedi had probably “gone into the water” after piecing together closed-circuit television footage of his movements after the attack.

The Met said the crew of a passing boat reported seeing a body in the water near the Tower of London on Monday afternoon and that they believed it was Ezedi.

British media reported that Ezedi is an Afghan refugee who was granted asylum despite being convicted of a sex offense in Britain in 2018. His asylum application was initially rejected, but he later was permitted to remain in the U.K. after claiming that he had converted to Christianity, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

Quote:A pro-Palestine campaigner defended trying to swarm Parliament on Wednesday as it was reported he wanted “so many” people to show up that Parliament needs to be shut down.

Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), which organised the campaign on Wednesday, defended trying to get some 3,000 protesters into Parliament, saying the PSC “absolutely reject any argument that it is unacceptable for peaceful protests to take place outside of MPs’ office.”

The campaign was organised on the day MPs were debating on whether to call for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. On Wednesday evening, slogans, including the controversial chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” were beamed onto the Elizabeth Tower.

Mr. Jamal said the PSC “was not involved in the projection … but were pleased to see it.”

A video published by The Times of London, which the newspaper said was filmed on the day, appears to show Mr. Jamal telling a crowd, “We are planning the biggest lobbying in parliamentary history. We want to see a queue stretching from Parliament all the way through Whitehall. We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of Parliament itself.”

According to the campaign group, 3,000 pro-Palestine protesters turned up to meet their MPs on the day in “one of the largest physical lobbies of Parliament in history.”

The PSC also said that “most were denied entry, ending up queuing for over 4 hours in the rain” because a “special procedure” was imposed, allowing only 50 pro-Palestinian protesters into Parliament at any time, while any other group have been allowed to bring as many as they want into Parliament.”

Could it be because those Palestinians are dangerous? 
Who told them they were allowed to swarm a public institution like the Parliament?
But because they're Palestinians, they won't be accused of J6 type of "insurrection" as white and not really white American patriots "did" that fateful day.

Quote:While global public opinion generally held skepticism and condemnation of Moscow over the sudden death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Beijing took the opposite stance, calling the incident “Russian’s internal affair” in what was seemingly a defending move for Moscow.
...
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian prison authorities were investigating Mr. Navalny’s death, but he had not been given any information on the matter.

As a prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Navalny’s unexpected death in his prime of life sent shockwaves throughout the country and around the world, sparking widespread condemnation of Russia.
Additionally, Mr. Navalny’s unexpected death comes shortly before the upcoming March general election—a time when the incumbent president has been seeking a fifth term, adding to projections over his cause of death that it might be logical for Mr. Putin to remove all opposition at this critical time.

In stark contrast to the public outcry, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to comment on Navalny’s death when AFP asked about the issue on Feb. 17, saying it was “Russia’s internal affair.”

Beijing is a staunch ally of Moscow. Despite Western sanctions against Russia for its military incursion into Ukraine, Mr. Putin and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping have engaged in a “no limits” partnership for bilateral cooperation.

Echoing the official attitude, some opinions suspected to be from the net army were published on major Chinese portals such as Baidu and NetEase and circulated on social media platforms, depicting Mr. Putin as a victim of Mr. Navalny’s death as a result of a Western conspiracy.

U.S. President Joe Biden condemned Mr. Putin, saying, “What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality.” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese believes Mr. Putin and the Russian regime would be accountable for Mr. Navalny’s demise.

Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres expressed his condolences at Mr. Navalny’s death and called for a credible investigation. The U.N. Human Rights office said it was “appalled.”

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, wrote, “The EU holds the Russian regime for sole [sic] responsible for this tragic death.” He praised Mr. Navalny for making “the ultimate sacrifice” while fighting for the values of freedom and democracy.

Quote:India and China engaged in a new round of military talks this week. The 21st round of the India-China Military Corps Commander level meeting was held Feb. 19 at an eastern Ladakh border location. While the two sides shared perspectives, the talks didn’t yield anything new, and press releases after the event repeated old rhetoric about continuing military and diplomatic communication.

“The discussions built on the previous rounds, seeking complete disengagement in the remaining areas along the LAC [Line of Actual Control] in Eastern Ladakh as an essential basis for restoration of peace and tranquility in the India–China border areas,” the Indian External Affairs Ministry said in a media release on Wednesday. The release added that the meeting, which took place at the Chinese-held Moldo-Chushul border point, was friendly and cordial, with the two sides committing to peace in the “interim.”
A statement released by China’s Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday, didn’t provide any specific details either. It said the two sides had constructive talks focused on resolving the issues of “each other’s concern” in what it termed the “border areas.”

“Both sides agreed to maintain communication through military and diplomatic channels under the guidance of the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, and reach the mutually acceptable solution at an early date, so as to turn over a new leaf for the border situation,” the Chinese statement said.

“During this period, both sides agreed to maintain peace and tranquility in the China–India border areas.”

The only difference that stood out between the two releases was the way in which each addressed the de facto border. While the Indian side referred to the LAC, indicating that it doesn’t recognize it as the settled border, the Chinese side simply referred to the border.

Although the release by India’s Ministry of External Affairs was diplomatically worded, India’s defense secretary, Giridhar Aramane, used aggressive language on Wednesday during the second Indus-X defense summit, with U.S. Indo-Pacific command chief, Admiral John C. Aquilino.

The two-day summit, which took place Feb. 20-21 in New Delhi, was jointly organized by the U.S.–India Business Council and the Society of Indian Defense Manufacturers. Attendees included U.S. and Indian defense companies, investors, researchers, and government officials.

Mr. Aramane called the communist country—with which India shares over 2,165 miles of border and with whom it hit a trade record last year—a “bully.” He expressed trust and hope for U.S. support.

MIDDLE EAST

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[spoiler=Houthis Seriously Damaged Freighter Rubymar]

Quote:An attack by Yemen’s Houthis on the freighter Rubymar caused significant damage to the ship and an 18-mile (29-km) oil slick, the U.S. military’s Central Command said on Friday.

Yemen’s Houthis targeted the Rubymar in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday, and it is now at risk of sinking, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a statement the following day.

“The ship is anchored but slowly taking on water,” Central Command said in a statement regarding the Belize-flagged UK-owned cargo ship.

The Rubymar was transporting over 41,000 tons of fertilizer when it was attacked, the statement added.

Quote:Israeli plans to expand settlements in the West Bank have drawn rebuke from President Joe Biden’s administration, who have called the plans “counterproductive” to efforts at a peaceful settlement of the long-running conflict in the region.

The West Bank has been the site of ongoing violence between the territory’s Palestinian Arab majority and Israeli settlers increasingly building settlements within the territory. A trio of attackers opened fire on motorists in the Israeli settlement community of Ma'ale Adimum on Thursday, killing one and injuring eight others.

Responding to the Thursday shooting, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed Israel will continue to build settlements in the West Bank.

“The serious attack on Ma'ale Adumim must have a determined security response but also a settlement response,” Mr. Smotrich said in a Thursday X post. “I demand [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] to approve the convening of the Mata and immediately approve plans for thousands of housing units in Ma'ale Adumim and the entire region. Our enemies know that any harm to us will lead to more construction, more development, and further solidify our presence throughout the land.”
Mr. Smotrich, who is himself a West Bank settler, has specifically called for building 2,350 new housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, 694 more in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, and 300 more in the Israeli settlement of Kedar.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced the reported settlement plans during a visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina on Friday.

Mr. Blinken denounced the Thursday shooting in Ma'ale Adimum as “another horrific terrorist attack” and said the U.S. will continue to “fully support Israel’s right to security, to self-defense.” But, the secretary of state said the administration is disappointed in the talk of new Israeli construction in the West Bank settlements.

“It’s been long-standing U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace,” he said. “They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion and, in our judgment, this only weakens, it doesn’t strengthen, Israel’s security.”

Quote:Victorian firefighters are calling on the government to upgrade their fleet after “potentially catastrophic” breakdowns during bushfires in the state’s west.

A 15-year-old pumper tanker was among vehicles deployed to Beaufort on Feb. 22 as part of an emergency strike team intended to battle a bushfire.

But the truck did not make it, instead breaking down on the Western Highway at Ballan, the United Firefighters Union (UFU) said.

A second 15-year-old pumper was then meant to replace that truck but overheated, preventing it from leaving Beaufort Fire Station.

Both the broken down pumpers were of retirement age.

They were immediately replaced by other pumper tankers from Fire Rescue Victoria’s network, a spokesman for the emergency service said.

The bushfire, which began at Bayindeen, accelerated after a wind change late on Feb. 22 and had ripped through more than 11,000 hectares as of Feb. 23.

The UFU’s Victorian branch secretary Peter Marshall described the breakdowns as “potentially catastrophic.”

Quote:Two leading waste firm bosses have been handed prison sentences after admitting to engineering a price-fixing scheme to force up costs for their customers.

One of the companies, Bingo Industries, was on Feb. 23 handed the second-biggest fine for cartel conduct in the Australian competition watchdog’s history with a total penalty of $30 million (US$19.7 million).

Daniel Tartak, Bingo’s former managing director and chief executive, pleaded guilty in 2022 to two cartel offences following an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

He was handed a two-year prison sentence by a Federal Court judge, who said the term should be served in the community under an intensive correction order.

Tartak will also have to pay a fine of $100,000 (US$66,000) and perform 400 hours of community service after admitting criminal cartel conduct over an illegal price-fixing scheme.

Bingo admitted criminal cartel offences for the same plot, resulting in the firm’s multimillion-dollar fine.

Tartak, the son of Bingo founder Tony Tartak, was also disqualified from managing a corporation for five years.

The court heard he made agreements with former Aussie Skip Bin Services chief executive Emmanuel Roussakis about the prices their companies would charge for collection and processing services.

Quote:A leader within Japan’s Yakuza crime syndicate is accused of trafficking nuclear materials, including uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.

Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, was allegedly caught conspiring with a network of associates to traffic nuclear materials from Burma to other countries, according to the agency. Ebisawa allegedly sent photos depicting samples of nuclear materials in Thailand to an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“With the assistance of Thai authorities, the Nuclear Samples were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement authorities,” according to the agency. “A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory examined the Nuclear Samples and determined that both samples contain detectable quantities of uranium, thorium, and plutonium.”

Ebisawa believed the materials were going to be used in the development of a nuclear weapons program in Iran after an undercover agent posed as an Iranian general, according to the allegations contained in the indictment, which was unsealed on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

“It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of the conduct alleged in today’s Indictment. As alleged, Takeshi Ebisawa brazenly trafficked material containing uranium and weapons-grade plutonium from Burma to other countries,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.

Quote:Victims of the Hamas terror attack in Israel on October 7 announced Thursday that they have filed a federal lawsuit against the Associated Press (AP) for allegedly paying members of Hamas who also functioned as “stringer” photographers for the company.

The AP was forced to cut ties with one freelance photographer, Hassan Eslaiah, who was seen holding a grenade near the Gaza border during the attack, and who had earlier posed for a photograph with Gaza-based Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar.

Later, an AP freelancer was reported by the HonestReporting watchdog organization to have broadcast a live video, along with a Reuters freelance photographer, allegedly encouraging Gazans to participate in the October 7 attack while it was still ongoing.
...
Separately, a New York Times photographer who had been accused of accompanying Hamas terrorists on October 7 won a prestigious George Polk Award for his coverage of the war.

As Breitbart News reported last year, the Times denied any wrongdoing.

Quote:Combined U.S. and British forces carried out a fresh wave of strikes Saturday against 18 Huthi targets in Yemen, hitting back after weeks of attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Iran-backed rebels.

Targets were hit across eight locations in Yemen” including weapons storage facilities, attack drones, air defense systems, radars and a helicopter, a joint statement said seen by AFP said.

It was co-signed by Australia, Bahrain, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, who gave unspecified “support” to the new round of strikes, the second this month and fourth since the rebels began their attacks on ships in the region, the AFP report details.

“The Huthis’ now more than 45 attacks on commercial and naval vessels since mid-November constitute a threat to the global economy, as well as regional security and stability, and demand an international response,” the statement said.

Huthi-run Al-Masirah television reported “a series of raids on the capital Sanaa,” while AFP correspondents in the rebel-controlled city in western Yemen said they heard several loud bangs.

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said in a separate statement the air attacks were necessary to keep one of the world’s busiest waterways free for commercial navigation...

Quote:Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) is leading the charge fighting the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) new practice of housing thousands of “potential terrorists” at airports across the country.

The FAA has allowed the housing of unvetted illegal immigrants at airports, including Boston Logan, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and Chicago O’Hare after the overflow of shelters across the nation, fueled by President Joe Biden’s policies, which have ushered in almost 7.3 million migrants since he took office.

The extraordinary move has drawn the ire of congressional Republicans.

“America’s worst terror attack started at an airport – so it is unconscionable that the FAA is allowing unvetted illegal immigrants, and potential terrorists, to be housed in U.S. airports,” Self said. “Democrats’ lawless open border policies have turned American cities, schools, and now airports into processing centers for illegal immigrants. These troubling practices cannot continue.”

On Thursday, Self led 36 of his colleagues in a letter to FAA administrator Michael Whitaker demanding answers regarding its dangerous practice which they point out is a distraction from the FAA’s mission and places the safety of those who travel by air in jeopardy.

That letter demands answers on the authority the FAA is exercising to use transportation hubs for migrant housing, steps the FAA is taking to ensure the safety of the facilities and their operation, and an accounting of where migrants are being housed.

FAA’s new and dangerous practice was highlighted during a February 15 House Transportation and Infrastructure hearing. In the hearing, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) questioned Whitaker about how the FAA could seemingly violate existing regulations requiring approval of the FAA for airports to engage in non-aeronautical uses.

“The determination was that it did not interfere with aeronautical uses,” Whitaker replied.

Yet Whitaker appeared to have spent little time studying – or even familiarizing himself – with the issue before allowing the dangerous policy.
...
Self, in addition to leading the letter, introduced the Airport Immigration Enforcement Act to address the problem.

Unlike most legislation, which can often run for dozens or hundreds of pages, this two-page bill simply would prohibit the FAA administrator from authorizing the housing of illegal immigrants within an airport and prohibit the use of federal funds to house illegal immigrants on airport property.

CBS News Boston footage, which captured “dozens of families” of migrants sleeping on the floor of Boston’s Logan International Airport, helped amplify the issue for Congress.

Those families, which included toddlers and babies, have been arriving at least since August.

Quote:The United States is reportedly hoping that Brazil’s radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva uses his “influence” to convince Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro to commit to a “free and fair” election following his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday.

The “free and fair” presidential election agreement — which the Maduro regime and Venezuelan opposition signed in 2023 and Blinken has repeatedly promoted over the years — has, so far, resulted in a major blunder for the Biden Administration.

Venezuela’s political situation was one of the subjects reportedly discussed in Blinken’s meeting with Lula, held on the sidelines of the G20 meeting of foreign ministers in Brazil, taking place from February 22-23.

“Secretary Blinken underscored our position that Nicolas Maduro must return to implementation of the Barbados electoral roadmap agreement to ensure competitive presidential elections in 2024,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday.

Blinken also allegedly “commended” Lula “for Brazil’s role in de-escalating tensions between Guyana and Venezuela over the Essequibo region.”
...
María Corina Machado, the frontrunner candidate against Maduro in the hypothetical “free and fair” election, is currently banned from running for public office through 2030. In early February, socialist thugs attacked one of her campaign events, injuring several of her supporters and forcing her to flee from the premises.

Machado was elected in late October to run against Maduro after securing roughly 93 percent of the votes in an opposition primary election. Maduro then had the nation’s socialist-controlled courts invalidate the election, claiming that the event was “fraudulent” and part of an alleged coup against the ruling socialist regime.

Despite myriad actions that Maduro and his regime committed following the October sanctions relief deal — and the lack of any indication of an imminent change of course from Maduro — the White House stated it would wait until April to commit to the terms of the agreement before reinstating the oil and gas sanctions that Biden lifted.

Following Thursday’s G20 meeting of foreign ministers, Blinken is scheduled to travel to Argentina to meet with President Javier Milei, where Venezuela will reportedly be discussed.

Quote:Plagiarism allegations against Harvard Extension School DEI administrator Shirley Greene involving more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation have been filed with the Ivy League institution, according to a report by City Journal.
...
Moreover, Harvard University Chief Diversity Officer Sherri Ann Charleston was also accused of plagiarism in a new complaint, which alleges that Charleston claimed credit for her husband’s work.
...
As for the latest allegations against Greene, who is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity, she has worked to advance the concept of so-called “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.”

The full complaint, obtained by City Journal, raises serious questions about Greene’s scholarship and academic integrity.

In one instance, Greene appears to take words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim directly from academic Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, “Chinese American Female Identity,” without including appropriate attribution or quotation.
...
While the duplicated sections of Woo’s work are italicized, proper citation was not included.

Greene also reportedly lifts most of an entire table on “Racial/Ethnic Identity Development Models” without acknowledging the source.

Another example in the complaint compares Greene’s dissertation with a passage from “Developing Leadership Skills for Diversity” by Anthony Antonio.
...
While Greene cited the source, she failed to include quotation marks. Notably, the entire paragraph is copied verbatim, with only the word “ethnic” being added to it.

The complaint reportedly calls out more than three dozen other examples of Greene allegedly taking language from other scholars. The allegations range from small violations to what appears to be the blatant stealing of others’ work.

The article includes actual extracts from both the original articles or dissertations and Greene's "own" works.

Quote:Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week vowed to sign a bill passed by the Florida legislature which would permit the release of documents related to the Florida case of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The Florida Senate passed Senate Bill 234, which allows for the release of testimony and evidence from the grand jury investigation in 2006.

The bill reads in part:

An act relating to disclosure of grand jury testimony; amending s. 905.27, F.S.; revising the list of persons prohibited from disclosing the testimony of a witness examined before, or the evidence received by, a grand jury; creating an exception for a request by the media or an interested person to the prohibited publishing, broadcasting, disclosing, divulging, or communicating of any testimony of a witness examined before the grand jury, or the content, gist, or import thereof; providing criminal penalties; providing construction; making technical changes; reenacting s. 905.17(1) and (2), F.S., relating to who may be present during a session of a grand jury, to incorporate the amendment made to s. 905.27, F.S., in references thereto; 16 providing an effective date.

The House version of the bill passed earlier this month, and DeSantis announced this week that he will, indeed, sign it.

“All files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activity should be made public,” DeSantis said.

“While the federal government continues to stonewall accountability, I’m glad the Legislature has taken action to release the grand jury material from the Florida state case,” he continued.

“I will sign the bill into law,” DeSantis added.

Quote:The revelation of Wade’s previously unreported position as the former personnel decision-maker for the District Attorney’s Office raises ethical and conflict of interest concerns. It also raises questions about whether Wade and Willis have been forthright about the timeline of their affair.

“Wade is a prosecutor on the Trump case and he selected the office employees,” a source told Breitbart News.

Wade led a transition team of ten to twelve people who interviewed and evaluated current employees to remain in Willis’ newly won office just weeks after she won the election in November, said the sources, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution due to their direct knowledge of the environment inside the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.”

Wade, a second source told Breitbart News, was in charge of determining who of the 250 office employees would remain with Willis. Sources described one-on-one interviews behind closed doors with Willis and Wade, who was “too invested to be just a friend” of Willis to hold such a powerful position.

Wade and Willis claim their relationship started in 2022 after Willis launched the probe into former President Donald Trump. But sources say Wade and Willis “obviously” had an ongoing romantic relationship at the time Willis won the election. “There was just something so weird going on,” one source said.

“Willis said everyone in the office was essentially all terminated, and that essentially we had to reapply for our jobs and must submit an application and schedule a time to appear for an interview,” a source said. “We had to reapply and came back in so they could interview everyone — from lawyers to paralegals to assistants to investigators.”

“And in that room, in my interview, there were a lot of people other than Fani Willis. And that was her transition team. I definitely know that Nathan Wade was in that room because he was taking the lead role,” the source stated. “And I was a little confused because I had never seen him before.”

Quote:[PBS NewsHour] Co-host Geoff Bennett asked, “President Biden today announced more than 500 sanctions on Russia. This is the largest tranche since the conflict started. Is this a tacit admission that the previous sanctions haven’t worked, what with Russia’s military-industrial complex up and running and seemingly drawing on limitless supplies and support from its authoritarian allies?”

[Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria] Nuland responded, “Well, let me start with your premise, Geoff, that previous sanctions haven’t worked. Russia has become a pariah state around the world, thrown out of the international banking system, and now, so desperate for weapons that it has to go to countries like Iran and North Korea to get them. But those Russians are wily, and they have, over the last six months, found ways to evade sanctions, but we have also got smarter about how to hurt them, and that’s why this package is so massive. It looks at punishing sanctions evaders. It looks at closing down further Russia’s access to credit and finance. It also punishes for the death of the leading opposition figure, Navalny, at the hands of Putin and his prison guards, and it sanctions those involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children into Russia. So, it is a massive package, and partly, it’s because we’ve got to staunch this evasion and because we have far more targets now, as we understand better how to staunch the Russian industrial complex.”

Bennett then asked, “Why should it, though, take an event like the death of Alexei Navalny to prompt these types of sanctions? Couldn’t some of this have happened two years ago, at least to stop the flow of technology into Russia’s military-industrial complex that goes into building the kinds of missiles that kill Ukrainians?”

Nuland answered, “Geoff, we did sanction technology from around the world as — two years ago, just before and after the invasion. What has happened is that Russia has found ways to evade those sanctions, going to third markets or buying, for example, a billion washing machines, and then taking out the computer chips that we’ve denied them in other ways. So, this is a tightening of those sanctions as Russia adjusts, and we’re confident that they’re going to have a very profound impact. But the other thing that’s happening, and this is quite worrying, is that Russia has been willing to intensify its economic and security relationship with China, in fact, becoming increasingly dependent on China. And that is how it is fueling its war machine. It’s also been willing to put the vast majority of its own economic stimulus into the war effort, so it is starving Russia and Russians of investment in education, in their own future, all in service of Putin’s imperial ambitions. So, what we’re having to do is adjust as well.”

Quote:Polls opened Sunday in Belarus’ tightly controlled parliamentary and local elections that are set to cement the steely rule of the country’s authoritarian leader, despite calls for a boycott from the opposition, which dismissed the balloting as a “senseless farce.”

President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for nearly three decades and on Sunday announced that he will run for the presidency again next year, accuses the West of trying to use the vote to undermine his government and “destabilize” the nation of 9.5 million people.

Most candidates belong to the four officially registered parties: Belaya Rus, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Party of Labor and Justice. Those parties all support Lukashenko’s policies. About a dozen other parties were denied registration last year.

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile in neighboring Lithuania after challenging Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election, urged voters to boycott the elections.

“There are no people on the ballot who would offer real changes because the regime only has allowed puppets convenient for it to take part,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a video statement. “We are calling to boycott this senseless farce, to ignore this election without choice.”

Sunday’s balloting is the first election in Belarus since the contentious 2020 vote that handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office and triggered an unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations.

Quote:The body of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been handed over to his mother, a top aide to Navalny said Saturday on his social media account.

Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, made the announcement on his Telegram account and thanked “everyone” who had called on Russian authorities to return Navalny’s body to his mother.

Earlier Saturday, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, accused President Vladimir Putin of mocking Christianity by trying to force his mother to agree to a secret funeral after his death in an Arctic penal colony.

“Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone who wrote and recorded video messages. You all did what you needed to do. Thank you. Alexei Navalny’s body has been given to his mother,” Zhdanov wrote.

Navalny, 47, Russia’s most well-known opposition politician, unexpectedly died on Feb. 16 in an Arctic penal colony and his family have been fighting for more than a week to have his body returned to them. Prominent Russians released videos calling on authorities to release the body and Western nations have hit Russia with more sanctions as punishment for Navalny’s death as well as for the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.

Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, is still in Salekhard, Navalny’s press secretary Kira Yarmysh said on X, formerly Twitter. Lyudmila Navalnaya has been in the Arctic region for more than a week, demanding that Russian authorities return the body of her son to her.

“The funeral is still pending,” Yarmysh tweeted, questioning whether authorities will allow it to go ahead “as the family wants and as Alexei deserves.”

Quote:President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday claimed that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war with Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of the country two years ago.

In a departure from Kyiv’s tight-lipped stance on revealing casualty figures, President Zelensky for the first time has given a tally of how many soldiers have been killed by the Russians since the 2022 invasion.

Speaking at the “Ukraine. Year 2024” forum in Kyiv on Sunday, the president said per the AP: “31,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000, not whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have been lying about. But nevertheless, each of these losses is a great sacrifice for us.”

Zelensky said that he would not reveal how many of his soldiers have been wounded or have gone missing over the past two years. He also said that his government does not have a full accounting of how many civilians have been killed by the Russians, but suggested it is in the “tens of thousands”.

“We don’t know how many of our civilians they killed. We don’t,” he said, noting that a firm figure on civilian deaths will likely not be determined until the war is over.

According to the latest report from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, there have been at least 30,457 civilian casualties since the conflict broke out into full war in February of 2022. This estimate was comprised of 10,582 killed and 19,875 injured.

Contrary to Zelensky’s claims on Sunday, a report from the New York Times in August found that some 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in action, with a further 100,000 to 120,000 suffering injuries.

Quote:London’s Tower Bridge was shut down on Saturday evening by a group of pro-Palestinian protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza as the conflict in the Middle East takes centre stage in British politics.

Dozens of anti-Israel activists waving Palestinian flags and setting off flares shut down the famed Tower Bridge in London on Saturday, the Daily Mail reported. The activists carried a banner reading “Save Gaza, Ceasefire Now” while others carried placards accusing Israel of “genocide” and “murder” for its attempts to root out Islamist Hamas terrorists in the wake of the barbaric October 7th terror attacks that saw around 1,200 people murdered in Israel and hundreds more taken captive.

A City of London police statement said at the time: “Tower Bridge is currently closed due to protest activity. Officers are in attendance at the scene.” The bridge in Central London was eventually without any arrests.

The protest came in the wake of a controversial vote in the House of Commons this week tabled by the leftist separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The vote on Wednesday evening descended into chaos as House Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle broke with convention to allow for the Labour Party to add amendments to the motion,  effectively saving Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer from embarrassment over the likely defection of many of his own members joining the demand from another party for a ceasefire.

Extraordinarily, Sir Lindsay said that his decision was prompted by concerns that parliamentarians may face violent reprisals from “terrorists” if they were not given an opportunity to express their opinions in separate amendments.

Hundreds of anti-Israel activists gathered outside of the Commons during the vote, while some even projected the genocidal Palestinian battle cry: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” onto Parliament’s Big Ben clock tower.

Quote:British Transport Police have scrapped mandatory fitness tests after they were determined to promote “indirect discrimination” against females and because they were more likely to fail than their male counterparts.

The police force, which patrols railway stations in Britain, has been accused of sacrificing standards in favour of political correctness after it scrapped its annual Job Related Fitness Test (JRFT). Dubbed the ‘bleep test’, officers for the past decade were required to run back and forth on a 15-metre track for three and a half minutes.

However, according to a report from the Mail on Sunday, British Transport Police stopped requiring officers to do the test in 2022 because it was deemed as discriminatory to women officers, with 8 per cent of female officers failing the test as of June 2022 compared to just 1.9 per cent of male officers.

The test was also argued to be unfair to older officers, with 86 per cent of failures coming from officers older than 35 and 32 per cent coming from those over the age of 50.

The policy change means that at least 50 officers were reinstated to active duty after being relegated to office work or other light duties for failing the test. Now, only specialists such as armed police and K-9 handlers, as well as new recruits, will be subjected to a physical fitness test.

Commenting on the sliding standards, a serving officer in the force told the paper: “Members of the public call the police expecting officers capable of doing the job of protecting them.

“It’s embarrassing to see colleagues who can barely do up their stab vest, and knowing they might not even be able to manage a two-minute jog is not just concerning but dangerous.”

Quote:Eiffel Tower that had been closed for five days by a strike will reopen Sunday after the monument’s management announced a deal had been struck with unions.

The stoppage since Monday at one of the world’s best-known tourist sites was the second within two months in protest at what unions say was insufficient investment.

The tower’s operator SETE said it had reached agreement with the unions on Saturday “under which the parties will regularly monitor the company’s business model, investment in works and revenue through a body that will meet every six months”.

With an aim to balance its books by 2025, both sides also agreed to see an investment of some 380 million euros up to 2031 toward works and maintenance of the tower, the statement said.

SETE extended apologies to visitors caught in the strike action, which resulted in the loss of some 100,000 admissions.

The Eiffel Tower booked a shortfall of around 120 million euros ($130 million) during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

SETE has since received a recapitalisation of 60 million euros, which unions say is insufficient given that major maintenance work is needed, including a fresh paint job.

Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday was surrounded by groups of farmers who chastised the neo-liberal leader for his green agenda and for prioritising Ukraine over his own people.

At the 60th Agricultural Show held in the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris on Saturday, agricultural unions and organisations clashed with security and breached the gates in order to air the grievances of farmers to Emmanuel Macron directly. After initially showing hesitancy, the French president acquiesced and held an impromptu debate with several farmers.

“You gave Ukraine colossal sums, but you gave us crumbs,” one farmer said to Macron according to broadcaster BFMTV.

According to the German-based think tank the Kiel Institute, Macron’s government has committed approximately $2 billion in French taxpayer money to Ukraine since 2022. However, the French taxpayer has paid substantially more through the European Union’s funding of the war, which is set to total over $150 billion after Brussels recently approved an additional $54 billion to Kyiv.

Farmers in France, and indeed throughout Europe, have been financially impacted by the war in Ukraine in more ways than having their tax dollars sent to Kyiv. Last year, the European Union decided to allow Ukrainian agricultural imports to flow into the bloc without any tariffs. The move has severely hurt the ability of local European farmers to compete, given that the lower regulatory burden and the lower cost of labour in the former Soviet state means that food can be produced at a much cheaper rate.

On Wednesday the EU announced that it would extend duty-free access to its market for Ukraine for at least another year as a measure to help its economy stay afloat amid the war with Russia. Although Brussels said that it would put some safeguards in place to protect domestic agriculture, farmers’ groups said that the move would ultimately see further protests from farmers across the continent as it did not go far enough.

Ukraine was not the only issue raised by the farmers to Macron on Saturday. Multiple farmers spoke of the problems they are facing due to transitioning their operations to organic farming at the urging of the government in Paris and the EU.

Quote:France used a new immigration law to deport a radical Imam in just 12 hours, but the target insisted that he is the victim of a misunderstanding and vowed to return.

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin hailed the nation’s new immigration law passed last year for making it easier for the government to deport undesirable foreigners after it was used on Thursday against a radical preacher. Tunisian-origin Imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi went from detention to being put on a plane in just 12 hours.

Darmanin said: “Instructions were given to issue a ministerial expulsion order against this radical ‘imam’ who made unacceptable remarks and he was the subject of a home visit and an arrest.

“Without the immigration law, this would not have been possible. Firmness is the rule.”

Per the expulsion order seen by the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, Imam Mahjoubi was accused of advocating for a panoply of extremist causes. The state accused him of promoting terrorism, and advocating a “literal, retrograde, intolerant and violent conception of Islam”. The Imam is also alleged to have discriminated against women and fermented tensions with the Jewish community.

Offences against the symbols of the state are a reasonably serious offence in France, as they are in several European nations where post-war work to prevent the resurgence of fascism treats deviance from democratic norms severely. In this category, Imam Mahjoubi is said to have called the French flag “satanic” that has “no value to Allah”. The comments came to light after a video of one of the Imam’s sermons went viral on French social media earlier this week.

Imam Mahjoubi, on the other hand, insists these accusations boil down to a misunderstanding — claiming that he was actually talking about football in his sermon and suffered a “slip of the tongue”, he claims — and that in any case, he has rights that should be respected. The government’s order under the new law is “arbitrary” and he said he was being made an example of by the Interior Minister to promote the new law.

The Imam’s lawyer said the expulsion would be contested in court.

Quote:In Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans, Schweizer reveals how Chinese companies, which are heavily regulated by the Chinese government, are flooding the U.S. with auto sear switches, a small metal device also known as “Glock switches” that can convert handguns into machine guns. They are illegal for most gun-owners in the U.S., but are being shipped in boxes by the “thousands” from China, Schweizer reveals.

As with fentanyl, the Chinese government is sending the auto sear switches to sow chaos and death inside the U.S. as part of a “Disintegration Warfare” strategy, according to Schweizer.

The “Disintegration Warfare” strategy, Schweizer writes, “focuses on—in the Chinese leaders’ words—going after the United States’ ‘soft underbelly’ in terms of politics, economics, and the spirit and psychology of [its] people.” It is based on the ancient Chinese strategist and general Sun Tzu’s teachings on how to win a war without fighting. The strategy is aimed at undermining a rival country’s “national will, values, and cohesion.”

In Blood Money, Schweizer uses leaked U.S. federal law enforcement documents to reveal how China is trying to arm felons and criminal gangs across the U.S. with these auto sear switches.

The devices, which are about the size of a penny, started arriving in the U.S. in large quantities in 2018. They are illegal in the U.S. except for use by law enforcement personnel and a select group of others who must obtain a federal license requiring an extensive criminal background check. Thus, criminals in the U.S. purchase them illegally from China via Chinese websites that are in English and target Americans, Schweizer writes.

Accordingly, between 2019 and 2021, there was a rise of 4,200 percent in incidents involving machine gun fire in 130 American cities, Schweizer reveals. Although some of the illegal auto switches are made on 3D printers in the U.S., “the vast majority on the street” are from China and are of much higher quality that those made on 3D printers, Schweizer writes.

Quote:President Joe Biden is asking Congress to pass a Senate bill to preserve a program at the United States-Mexico border that the illegal alien charged with murdering 22-year-old Laken Riley used to get into the United States.

This week, Biden sent out a series of statements aimed at members of Congress — calling on the House and Senate to approve legislation crafted by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and Chris Murphy (D-CT) that fizzled out following backlash.

“Months ago, I instructed my team to begin working with bipartisan lawmakers to fix our immigration system,” Biden wrote on Twitter. “They did a hell of a job, and together, we put forward some of the most fair reforms ever. Speaker Johnson, it’s time to call a vote and send this bill to my desk.”

“Look, our bipartisan border deal is the strongest our country has ever seen,” another post from Biden reads. “It includes the most fair and humane reforms for legal immigration – and a vast majority of Congress supports it. Let’s get it done.”

The bill, among other things, would preserve Biden’s expansive Catch and Release network at the border, including a parole pipeline where thousands of border crossers and illegal aliens are released into American communities every day after securing so-called “humanitarian parole.”

“[The bill authorizes] a clarification of how humanitarian parole is used at the land borders, but NO changes to the President’s ability to bring in vetted, sponsored migrants through the program known as CNHV (Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela parole),” Murphy wrote of the bill.

Biden’s lobbying for the parole pipeline comes just as Laken Riley, a nursing student at Augusta University, was murdered allegedly by an illegal alien who was released into the United States interior thanks to the parole pipeline put in place by the administration.

Quote:Breitbart News’s Matthew Perdie interviewed Strickland on Thursday at CPAC 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland, about the FBI’s investigation into traditional Catholic churches.

As Breitbart News reported, a leaked memo last year from the FBI’s Richmond office stated that violent extremists’ “interest” in “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology was growing and that it therefore presented an opportunity for the FBI to engage with certain churches in an attempt to goad the churches’ leadership into serving as FBI “tripwires,” who would operate like unofficial informants to the FBI. House Republicans have since discovered that multiple field offices appeared to be involved in crafting the memo and that the FBI allegedly interviewed a priest and a church choir director.

Perdie asked Strickland — a fierce Pope Francis critic who has been “relieved” by the Vatican for “undermining the faith” — why he thinks the FBI decided to investigate Catholic Latin mass goers.

“Well, I really don’t claim to have the answer for why they would do this, but I do see it as a sad symptom of a society that sounds too much more like Nazi Germany or communist Russia than the United States,” Strickland said.

Quote:Then vice president Joe Biden was on speakerphone calls with Biden associates, including one call with a Russian oligarch and one-time mayor of Moscow, former Biden associate Jason Galanis testified in the Joe Biden House impeachment inquiry on Friday.

Galanis’s opening statements, obtained by Breitbart News, confirm Devon Archer’s testimony of Joe Biden participating on speakerphone calls to sell the “Biden brand.”

Galanis, who is serving a 14-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to securities fraud based on bonds, worked with Hunter and Archer from 2012 to 2015 on acquiring Burnham & Co, a division of Drexel Burnham Lambert and “other businesses in insurance and wealth management.” Galanis said he, Hunter, and Archer “owned and acquired with total audited assets of over $17 billion.”

“The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis told investigators. “Because of this access, I agreed to contribute equity ownership to them – Hunter and Devon – for no out-of-pocket cost from them in exchange for their ‘relationship capital.'”

“As part of the evolving and deepening partnership, Hunter Biden served as Vice Chairman of Burnham and brought strategic relationships to the venture, including from Kazakhstan, Russia and China,” he continued. “Burnham was the focal point for integrating a “Biden Family Office” into a large-scale financial company with international influence.”

“Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand together with a globally known political name,” Galanis testified. “Our goal — that is, Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and me — was to make billions, not millions.”

Quote:Marshall said that “no staff or personnel were injured by the explosion.”

“In the early hours of Saturday, February 24, an explosive device was detonated outside of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office building in Montgomery,” Marshall said. “Thankfully, no staff or personnel were injured by the explosion. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency will be leading the investigation, and we are urging anyone with information to contact them immediately.”

The announcement did not say if a motive has been identified or if there are any suspects.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency told Breitbart News that special agents discovered the detonated explosive at approximately 8:19 a.m. on Monday after receiving a tip of a “suspicious package” near the intersection of Washington Avenue and South Bainbridge Street in Montgomery.

Agents were then able to determine that the explosive device had been detonated in the early hours of Saturday morning, according to the agency, which noted that no damage to nearby buildings had been reported.

The agency said no further information is available “as the investigation is ongoing.”

When asked if the incident could be related to Marshall’s stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF), Amanda Priest, spokesperson for Marshall’s office, told CNN that media should “not jump to conclusions about a specific issue.”

One day before the incident, Marshall announced that his office had no intention of using a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision to prosecute families pursuing IVF or IVF providers.

Quote:Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, reportedly received an envelope with a mysterious white powder inside of it that a hazmat team has been investigating at his Florida home.

News of the incident broke on Monday evening after multiple trucks were spotted outside his home in Jupiter, Florida.

The Daily Beast reported:

Multiple fire trucks and men in hazmat suits were spotted outside Donald Trump Jr.’s home in Jupiter, Florida, on Monday evening after he received a letter containing an unidentified white powder inside of it, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Around the same time the Daily Beast released the initial report, Donald Trump Jr. appeared to be active on social media to promote an interview on Rumble.

The former president’s son has been active alongside his father on the campaign trail in his bid to clinch the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential race.

Aside from the white powder, the envelope reportedly contained a death threat, according to the Daily Caller.

“It’s just become a little bit too commonplace that this sort of stuff happens,” Donald Trump Jr. told the Daily Caller. “Clearly, if this happened to a prominent Democrat, it wouldn’t be tolerated and would drive news coverage for weeks. The media would blame all Republicans and force them to answer for it.”

“But since it’s me, radical haters on the left will largely get a free pass, and the media will barely flinch,” he added.

Quote:Former President Donald Trump filed a notice of appeal Monday in the matter of the New York civil judgment finding him liable for fraudulently inflating his net worth on years of financial statements.

The judgement curtailed his ability – and that of the Trump Organization – to do business in New York or apply for loans from financial institutions registered with the state.

Trump has now asked an intermediate-level state appellate court to overturn Justice Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling in a civil fraud lawsuit brought in 2022 by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Reuters reports.

Engoron ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties, but with interest the total has grown to nearly $454 million.

That total will increase by nearly $112,000 per day until he pays, according to James’ office, CBS News notes.

James sought to essentially bankrupt Trump by calling for a $370 million fine and a lifetime disbarment from the real estate industry in New York State.

Trump’s announcement follows through with his trial comments when he declared during closing arguments, “This is a case that should have never been brought, and I think we should be entitled to damages, as Breitbart News reported.

Trump added he was being punished for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.”

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called the ruling “confiscatory, extreme, and abusive.”

Quote:A doxing scandal started by Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led to the additional doxing of two presidential candidates. The president also admitted that he didn’t care if he broke the law by starting the controversy.

In the most recent turn of events, Lopez Obrador criticized YouTube for taking down the video of his morning news conference where the doxing took place. The politician claimed YouTube was censoring him and being authoritarian.

As Breitbart Texas initially reported, the issue began last week when Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador used one of his morning news conferences to criticize and intimidate the New York Times for asking questions about drug cartel money being pumped into his campaigns.
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During his initial criticism, Lopez Obrador revealed the personal cell phone of Natalie Kitroeff from the Times, who sent an email to the president’s press office with multiple questions.

The issue continued with Mexican government news outlets criticizing Kitroeff and her work in the story about AMLO’s campaign.

The initial doxxing sparked international criticism from press freedom organizations since Mexico is considered one of the deadliest countries for journalists.

When questioned by a reporter from Univision about the doxing, Lopez Obrador said it was done on purpose. When told that doxing was against the law in Mexico, the president doubled down and claimed that he was within his right to defend himself against libelous attacks from critical news outlets.

Soon after, one of Lopez Obrador’s sons posted on social media that his phone number had been leaked and he had been receiving threats.

Presidential Candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a Lopez Obrador supporter, also posted over the weekend that she, too, had been doxed and had been receiving threats on her personal cell phone.

Quote:The persistent threat of an invasive fleet of illegal Chinese fishing ships in Latin American waters is depleting fish stocks and impacting the regional economy, according to a report published on Sunday by the Spanish news agency EFE.

The constant presence of illegal Chinese ships and their consequences to the local fauna and economy have generated great concern among regional authorities, who are making efforts to curb the destruction of their respective countries’ natural resources. EFE’s report gathered testimonies from Chilean, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, and Argentine authorities.

The report found that, in Argentina, the Chinese vessels are causing a depredation of local species found in the southwest Atlantic, such as squid and the Patagonian toothfish. The affected area, located some 310 miles east of the San Jorge Gulf, borders the nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and is a treasure trove of biodiversity that is key for the spawning and feeding of seabirds and marine mammals, such as the southern right whale.

The report found that, during 2023’s January-July high fishing season, some 400 vessels fished in that area using trawl nets. Chinese vessel activity in the Argentine area increased from 61,727 hours per 500 square kilometers in 2023 to 384,056 hours in 2024, according to data from the Global Fishing Watch platform.

Since 1986, Argentine authorities have seized 80 foreign-flagged fishing vessels, 12 of them Chinese. In 2016, Argentine Coast Guard authorities chased and sank a Chinese vessel identified as Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010 after it was found illegally fishing in the exclusive EEZ maritime area.

Quote:Hamas had rejected any deal on hostages unless Israel agreed to end the war and pull all of its forces out of the Gaza Strip — a condition that would allow the terror group to claim victory in the war, and was therefore a non-starter for Israel.

Breitbart News reported on Saturday that there had been progress in talks held in Paris, France, through mediators:

Israeli sources reported progress in talks in Paris, France, this weekend over a release of hostages by Hamas in exchange for a temporary pause in fighting, as the Palestinian terrorist groups appeared to back down from demands for an end to the war.

The rough outline of the deal appears to involve a six-week pause in fighting, accompanied by the release of 35-40 hostages, with Israel releasing some 300 or so Palestinian terror convicts, and redeploying some of its forces within Gaza, though not leaving.

Hamas still holds some 134 Israeli hostages, several dozen of whom are thought to be dead. Over 100 hostages — mostly women and children — were released during a week-long truce in November, which Hamas broke, leading to a resumption of fighting.

However, the Times of Israel noted on Monday:

Senior Israeli officials tell Hebrew media that there is mounting pessimism that Hamas will agree to a hostage deal laid out in a framework proposed by mediators.

Both Channel 12 and the Kan public broadcaster quote a senior official as saying that they were told that the framework worked out in Paris by the US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators “doesn’t correspond with Hamas demands.”

Quote:The Palestinian Authority (PA) government performed the empty gesture of resignation on Monday — with the notable exception of President Mahmoud Abbas — in an attempt to appease U.S. pressure for “reform” as a condition for governing postwar Gaza.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh and his government have submitted their resignations, he announced Monday.
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The government, which is dominated by the Fatah political party, held administrative control over Gaza until 2007, after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Israel has rejected the prospect of the PA returning to Gaza after the war, and has dismissed the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the territories.

The US however favors a reformed PA being in control of both the West Bank and Gaza as part of a future independent state.

In effect, the resignations are merely cosmetic, as Abbas is still in charge of the PA.

President Abbas was elected in 2005 and is now in the 20th year of his first four-year term. The PA is regarded as corrupt by Palestinians and is not trusted by Israelis. Notably, the PA has failed to condemn the Hamas terror attack of October 7. Recently, Shtayyeh said the attacks should be forgotten, and said that the Fatah party that runs the PA was ready for “unity” with Hamas.

Quote:Major General Mohammed al-Atifi, speaking at a “graduation” event for Houthi terror operatives, was celebrating the results of a months-long campaign by the terrorists to disrupt global commercial shipping in and around the Red Sea.
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They control most of Yemen, including the capital, Sana’a, while the legitimate government of Yemen languishes in the southern city of Aden.

The Houthi war against Israel has largely consisted of attacks on ships transiting around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait near Yemen. While Houthi leaders claim they are only targeting ships with ties to Israel – and expanded those attacks to American and British ships following strikes on terror targets in Yemen – the documented Houthi attacks in the region have appeared random. The Houthis have not only targeted ships from unrelated nations but also struck against ships carrying Russian cargo, Chinese crews, and heading to Iran, all nations the terrorists maintain friendly ties with.

The attacks have significantly affected shipping costs, particularly in Europe, as ships are forced to avoid the Red Sea altogether and reroute around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. A survey published by the British Chambers of Commerce found that shipping from Asia to Europe has become as much as 300 percent more expensive for some businesses.

“The United States, Britain and Israel must realize that the policies of demarcation and assertion of hegemonic influence on international waters are obsolete and no more favorable,” Atifi, the Houthi “defense chief,” said on Sunday, according to the Iranian state propaganda network PressTV. The outlet claimed that Atifi went on to claim that the Houthis were working to “properly redefine maritime security” – apparently with a definition including the risk of random Houthi bombings against commercial ships existing at all times – and that the Houthis would work to “restore the identity of the two seas,” meaning the Red and Arabian Seas.

Atifi also reaffirmed the Houthis’ promise, which the group has broken repeatedly, not to “target any ships, which are neither affiliated to the Zionist enemy [Israel] nor serving its interests.”

“Marine navigation for vessels through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea is safe,” he concluded.

But that's not all, folks!

Quote:The Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group knocked out four undersea communications cables linking Saudi Arabia and Djibouti, a report by an Israeli news outlet claimed Monday.

The submarine cables were struck out of commission through sabotage in recent months, alleged Israeli news outlet Globes.

Telecom firms linked to the Yemen government have previously said they fear Houthi rebels are planning to sabotage a network of seafloor cables in the Red Sea critical to the functioning of the western internet and the transmission of financial data.

Attacks by the Houthis are widely considered to have damaged the cables believed to belong to the AAE-1, Seacom, Europe India Gateway (EIG), and TGN systems.

The knock-out marks serious disruption in communications between Europe and Asia and a new step in the battle to stop the group’s efforts to dominate across the vital Red Sea shipping lanes.

The AAE-1 cable connects East Asia to Europe via Egypt, connecting China to the West through countries such as Pakistan and Qatar.

The Europe India Gateway cable system connects southern Europe to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, the UAE, and India.

The Seacom cable connects Europe, Africa, and India, and is connected to South Africa.

Meanwhile, the immediate harm will be felt by the Gulf states and India, Globes noted.

The repair of such a large number of underwater cables may take at least eight weeks according to estimates and involve exposure to risk from the Houthi terror organization.

Yeah, but the problem is that many medicines are produced in India nowadays...
But wait!  There's still more to read!

Quote:The U.S. and UK on Saturday launched a fourth round of “self-defense” airstrikes against 18 targets in Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists, destroying missile storage facilities, drones, radars, and one helicopter.

The Houthis still managed to attack a U.S.-flagged tanker in the Red Sea and launch several suicide drones on Monday but the missile shot missed and U.S. forces were able to intercept the drones.

The United States, United Kingdom, and their coalition partners released a joint statement on Monday describing the weekend airstrikes as a “necessary and proportionate” measure to “disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade, naval vessels, and the lives of innocent mariners in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”

The strikes targeted 18 targets in eight locations, including “underground weapons storage facilities, missile storage facilities, one-way attack unmanned aerial systems, air defense systems, radars, and a helicopter.”

The coalition mentioned several specific Houthi attacks it was responding to, including a missile attack that injured a crew member aboard the British-owned MV Islander on February 22, a near-miss missile strike on February 19 against the U.S.-owned MV Sea Champion while it was carrying humanitarian aid to Yemen, a kamikaze drone attack the same day against the U.S.-owned MV Navis Fortuna, and the February 18 missile attack that severely damaged the UK-owned MV Rubymar.

Quote:The model means the price of the restaurant’s menu items would go up and down throughout the day due to demand, the New York Post reported Monday.

Therefore, hungry customers, who are already struggling under the weight of inflation, might be paying more for a meal during the lunch or dinner rush.

Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced the new system on a call with investors, noting the Ohio-based company will invest $20 million on high-tech menu boards that will be able to update prices in real-time without incurring additional overhead costs.

“As we continue to show the benefit of this technology in our company-operated restaurants, franchisee interest in digital menu boards should increase further supporting sales and profit growth across the system,” said Tanner, who rose to the chief role earlier this month.

People who recently spoke with the Today show about the matter were shocked when they heard the news. One man said he did not believe customers would pay more for the same item they could buy for less.

Quote:The State Department described these shipments in a fact sheet accompanying the announcement of sanctions against more than 500 individuals and entities linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Two entities designated for sanctions are a Russian company that runs a terminal at the port of Vostochny and the Russian naval facility at Vladivostok. Both were implicated in receiving the shipments of munitions from North Korea.

Fears that North Korea might help resupply the Russian army arose when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un visited Russia in September. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the cosmodrome in Vostochny, the same port city mentioned in the new U.S. sanctions package.

Kim pledged his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine during the meeting, and Putin promised to help North Korea develop its “satellite technology” — in other words, its long-range missiles. Analysts noted North Korea was sitting on a vast stockpile of old Soviet munitions that could be useful to the Russians in Ukraine, giving Kim something valuable to trade for the technology he desired.

The White House immediately accused North Korea of beginning arms shipments to Russia, including a copious amount of artillery shells. U.S. intelligence furnished photos of containers being loaded onto a Russian-flagged ship in Najin, North Korea, and then transferred to railroad freight upon arriving in Russia. The contents of those containers could not be definitively established with the declassified material released to the public.

By mid-October, the White House estimated 1,000 containers of munitions had made the journey from North Korea to Russia. On Friday, the State Department said that amount had increased tenfold.

Quote:The co-chair of Harvard’s antisemitism task force resigned Monday, reportedly because she did not have confidence that the university would implement any of the committee’s recommendations on ending Jew-hatred at the nation’s top university.

The Harvard Crimson reported:

Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun resigned from the presidential task force on antisemitism, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 appointed Sadun in January to lead the task force as a co-chair last month. Her decision to resign was confirmed in statements from Sadun and Garber on Sunday.
…
Sadun’s decision to resign is just the latest setback for Garber’s antisemitism task force, which has been dogged by controversy since its inception.

The committee’s other co-chair is history professor Derek Penslar, whose appointment drew criticism because of his anti-Israel views. The Wall Street Journal noted: “We don’t know what’s in Mr. Penslar’s heart, though we wonder what’s in his head. It seems obvious that he can’t lead a credible investigation into campus antisemitism if he [falsely] equates Israel with apartheid.”

Rabbi David Wolpe resigned from the committee in December, after then-Harvard president Claudine Gay testified in Congress that the question of whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policy would depend upon the “context.”

Quote:Biden, eating ice cream with the host of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Myers, said that he hoped for a “ceasefire” by next Monday. He did not specify whether he meant a temporary or permanent ceasefire, and both Israel and Hamas said there was no such deal.

Reports, in fact, emerged on Monday that Hamas had rejected the terms of a proposed framework for a deal, throwing cold water on the optimism that had briefly emerged over the weekend for an agreement.

In addition to predicting unlikely success in the negotiations, Biden divulged that Israel had offered to stop the war during the upcoming Islamic holy month of Ramadan — thus pinning an ally to a public position that had intended to be an offer, not a firm commitment in the absence of mutual agreement.

Arab and Muslim armies have often fought and even started wars during Ramadan, notably the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Israeli government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said Tuesday that there was no agreement with Hamas, adding that the terrorist group’s demands — including an end to the war and Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — were “outlandish” and from “another planet.” She quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday: “Hamas started out with just crazy demands. And, you know, it’s- it’s too soon to say if they’re- if they’ve abandoned them, but if they do abandon them and get into what you call the ballpark, they’re not even in the city. They’re in another planet.”
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During the Trump administration, Democrats and the media claimed that President Donald Trump had revealed classified information to Russians during diplomatic meetings — which he denied, though he was legally entitled to declassify anything.

Critics have speculated that Biden wanted to appease Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan ahead of Tuesday’s primary vote, where he is certain to win but faces a possible boycott by Democratic Party primary voters upset about the war in Gaza.

Quote:The New York Times, for instance, published a lengthy article on Feb. 25 celebrating the “resettlement” of 170 migrant families who have been moved from city-paid hotel rooms to suburban Central Islip and other areas where they are being given upwards to $2,500 a month in free rent.

One illegal from Venezuela, who moved from a Manhattan hotel — where she and her children had one room, a microwave, a mini-fridge, and a table and chair — into a spacious, two-bedroom apartment in the near eastern suburb, gushed about the program.
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Many landlords worry that they will be stuck with indigent illegals once the government subsidies end.
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Even as illegals are being handed free rent worth thousands, some New Yorkers are being expected to pay over a thousand dollars a month for an “apartment” that is barely bigger than a bedroom, one without a kitchen, and one that forces tenants to use a communal bathroom several yards down the hall.

While the above tiny room for $1,200 a month may not be the norm, other apartments that are not too much larger are going from $2,000 per month to more than $4,000 for cramped quarters with tiny bathrooms, little more than a breakfast nook for a kitchen, and small, narrow space connecting them.
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The federal government won an 8.7 percent profit of $37.5 billion from the resident population of 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers in the 15 years before 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a recently published report.

However, the same report also revealed that the migrants inflicted a 7.3 percent loss of $21.4 billion on the taxpayers who fund state and local governments.

HHS calculated the costs by comparing the $739 billion in taxes paid by migrants and their families to their $723.4 billion in government aid.

Quote:NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg issued a denial that the alliance was planning to send troops to fight in Ukraine on Tuesday morning, following 24 hours of public discussion among member states on the move, which also triggered a dark threat from Moscow about their response to any such deployment.

The discussion came around an emergency meeting on Ukraine called by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, who appears the most publicly supportive of a NATO deployment directly against Russia. President Macron said yesterday that sending Western soldiers to Ukraine “could not be ruled out” and that “we must do whatever we can to obtain our objective”.

Noting there was no consensus in favour of going to war with Russia at the moment, Macron compared that reluctance to all of the many other ‘red lines’ crossed by NATO in the past two years, which had gone from European nations just giving Ukraine “sleeping bags and helmets” in 2022 to donating battle tanks and cruise missiles in 2023 and preparing to hand over advanced jet fighters in 2024.

“Nothing should be excluded. We will do everything that we can to make sure that Russia does not prevail”, Macron said, while expressing his belief Russia was preparing to take more territory not just in Ukraine, but in other countries too, reports The Times.

Presenting conflicting views on the subject are smaller nations like the Czech Republic, for instance, with their Prime Minister Petr Fiala saying on Monday: “[We are] certainly not preparing to send any soldiers to Ukraine, nobody has to worry about that.”

Sweden, not technically a NATO member yet but joining the alliance in the coming days, perhaps even before the end of the week, also put distance between itself and France’s bellicose views. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Macron’s views were a matter purely for his country, and France electing to get involved in a foreign war doesn’t force other NATO members to follow, given it is a purely defensive alliance.
...
The outpouring of views was triggered by a claim by Robert Fico, president of NATO member state Slovakia and perhaps the alliance head of state most in favour of ending the Ukraine war by negotiation, a position unpopular with other states which see it as unacceptably beneficial to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Fico on Monday spoke of a “restricted” NATO document he had seen which “sends shivers down your spine”.

The paper, he said, implies “that a number of NATO and EU member states are considering sending troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.”

Inevitably, the discussion around NATO troops being deployed to Ukraine has elicited a response from Moscow. Seemingly unable to resist threatening enormous retribution, the Kremlin warned of a civilisation-ending nuclear war in response to Western interest in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday it wasn’t a matter of “probability, but rather the “inevitability” of a massive Russian retaliation against the West if its troops came to Ukraine.

Quote:Friends and allies of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday they could not find a public or private funeral agency in Moscow willing to host a ceremony because the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin warned them not to.

“We have called the majority of private and state funeral agencies, commercial entities, and funeral halls. Some say the premises are booked, some refuse to talk after they hear Navalny’s name,” said Navalny spokeswoman Kyra Yarmysh on Tuesday.

“At one place, they directly said to us that they had been ordered not to collaborate with us. No results a day after we started looking for a site for a farewell ceremony,” she said.
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Navalny’s remains were finally handed over to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, on Saturday after she was kept waiting in the Arctic for more than a week.

Yulia accused Russian officials of “torturing” Navalny’s family and desecrating his memory by holding onto his body for so long. Lyudmila said government agents told her she could only have the body if she promised to transport it secretly and hold a private funeral because Putin does not want the opposition and unhappy Russians to turn Navalny’s ceremony into a massive political rally. The Kremlin dismissed these allegations as “absurd” on Monday.

Russian police have already arrested hundreds of Navalny mourners across the country, plus journalists who were covering their rallies.

On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported social media posts from Russia claiming that the Borisovskoye cemetery in Moscow has begun preparations for Navalny’s burial and has tentatively scheduled the ceremony for Friday. An unverified video clip showed the cemetery’s parking lot cleared of snow and filled with police vehicles.

Other posts on the chat site Telegram have suggested Navalny could be buried in the Khovanskoye or Troyekurovskoye cemeteries, also in Moscow.

Quote:But the ease with which a ‘most wanted’ member of a notorious ultra-left terror gang was able to live in Berlin for decades begs questions about the power of left-wing networks in the city.

Daniela Klette was arrested in Germany on Monday, as well as an unnamed male, in relation to attempted murder and a series of serious robberies between 1999 and 2016. Police had been hunting three suspected Red Army Faction (RAF) members since the 1990s, publishing alerts on some of Europe’s most wanted terror suspects and naming  Ernst-Volker Wilhelm Staub, Burkhard Garweg, and Daniela Klette as Europe’s most wanted in 2020.

The RAF, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang, was active as a hard-left violent terror and crime association in Germany from 1970, and is thought to have been responsible for 34 murders, hundreds injured, and a host of robberies, hijackings, and arson attacks. While the RAF was initially thought to have dissolved in the 1990s, the DNA of the wanted trio turned up at the scene of an attempted raid on an armoured lorry carrying cash in 2015.

Germany’s Die Welt reported Daniela Klette, now 65 years old, had recently used an Italian passport with false name and earned money by giving private mathematics tutoring under an assumed name. Police broadcast an appeal for information on a popular true-crime programme on German television earlier this month and were inundated with tips. According to a spokesman at a press conference on the arrest today, the location of Klette came from a tip-off from the public, but that this was received before the television appeal was broadcast.

She did not resist arrest but a pistol, magazines, and bullets were found in her apartment by police, notes Sky News.
...
The RAF’s first attack was the bombing of a U.S. barracks in Germany in 1972 and led to a breathtaking range of operations, including car bombs against government figures, bombings of police stations, newspaper publishers, and embassies. Military bases were frequent targets, and in 1977 several RAF members were killed in an alleged attempt to capture U.S. nuclear weapons at a German army base in Giessen.

Quote:Rev. Felice Palamara had been celebrating mass in Cessaniti this past Saturday, a small town in the southern region of Calabria, when he noticed a rather peculiar smell emanating from the containers of water and wine — the smell of bleach.

“Palamara suspected something was wrong and immediately suspended the service and called the Italian national police, the Carabinieri. The police later determined Palamara’s cruets of water and wine had been laced with bleach,” per the New York Post.

The ‘Ndrangheta crime organization originated in Palamara’s region, and the priest believes that a mafia hitman tried poison him in retaliation for speaking out against the group.

“I’m sure that this act of intimidation has nothing to do with my parishioners because I have been here for 10 years and I have always had good relations with the people of the parish,” Palamara told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“We don’t allow anyone to do harm to the parish. Nobody can stop a town that deserves redemption and that wants to grow,” he added.

The ‘Ndrangheta is now believed to be the world’s richest organized crime group and has reportedly made “tens of billions of dollars from trafficking cocaine over several decades, and recently has been able to expand its reach across Europe as the Sicilian Mafia lost its influence,” according to the Post.

Quote:Denmark on Monday joined Sweden in closing its investigation into the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines, with authorities saying they concluded there was deliberate sabotage but “not the sufficient grounds” to pursue a criminal case.

Danish authorities said the probe “has been both complex and comprehensive.” Copenhagen police, which carried out the investigation jointly with the Danish security service, said they were not able to provide further comments.

The underwater detonations on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany, occurred in international waters but within Swedish and Danish economic zones. Sweden earlier said that a state actor was the most likely culprit.

Denmark´s investigation was one of three into the explosions.

Sweden ended its probe on Feb. 7 on the grounds that it has no jurisdiction. It said the investigation´s primary purpose was to establish whether Sweden or its citizens somehow were involved. Swedish officials also said they handed over to Germany “material that can be used as evidence in the German investigation.”

Denmark’s decision to close the investigation was expected, Kenneth Øhlenschlæger Buhl of the Royal Danish Defense College told The Associated Press.

“The Swedes said they had a fairly good idea of who was behind it but have no jurisdiction over those they wanted to talk to,” Øhlenschlæger Buhl said. The Danes are saying “the same, just slightly different words.”

“I believe that the Germans cannot reach any other conclusion,” he said. “They may open the lid a little more, but not much.”

The German federal prosecutor´s office said Monday that its investigation continues and that it won’t provide more information.

Quote:Police have reportedly arrested over a thousand demonstrators, some of them beaten brutally enough by the police to need medical attention.

The peaceful protests began on February 14 after China announced plans to build a huge dam across Tibet’s Drichu River, which is part of the Yangtze River network. The Gangtuo Power Plant would be the latest in a string of hydropower projects built across the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region and Sichuan, the neighboring province into which Communist China folded some of the Tibetan territory it annexed in the 1950s.
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As one of the prospectively displaced villagers explained to China watchdog group Bitter Winter last week: “Relocation here does not mean that you are transferred to another nice village ready to welcome you.”

“We are told that we will have apartments but they are not ready,” the villager said. “Meanwhile, we are parked in camps that are kept under strict surveillance to prevent protest and are very similar to reeducation camps – although we have committed no crime.”

Other villagers and Tibetan activists accused China of using its billion-dollar dam projects to accelerate the destruction of Tibetan culture.

“Of course it is about making money, and big money at that, but I am sure there is more. Tibetans compelled to relocate are separated from their history, from homes where their families may have lived for decades or even centuries, from all their visible cultural and religious points of reference,” one of the protesting locals told Bitter Winter.

Quote:CPPCC adviser Xiong Shuilong said it was no longer appropriate to restrict family size because China’s birth rate is declining sharply enough to put its future social and industrial plans in doubt. The state-run Global Times quoted a few of his suggestions:

Xiong proposed to completely abolish the limits on the number of children residents can have and truly return the right to have children to families. At the same time, give unmarried or single parents the equal right to enjoy relevant support policies for childbearing, Xiong stated in his drafted proposal which is scheduled to submit during this year’s two sessions.

The political advisor also put forward suggestions on reducing social costs borne directly by enterprises due to female employees’ childbirth. The proposals include improving cost-sharing mechanisms for maternity leave, significantly reducing the social security costs borne by enterprises for female employees during maternity leave and extended prenatal check-up periods. For enterprises that hire women of childbearing age, certain income tax reductions can be granted, Xiong suggested.

He also appealed to local governments to provide subsidies for families with multiple children, and accelerate the building of public kindergartens and nursing homes, in order to relieve the burden of parents.

The Global Times anticipated demographics and family policy would be hot topics at upcoming national sessions of the CPPCC, the first of which is scheduled to begin “next week.” Individual provinces also have advisory committees, and several have discussed population decline recently.

While Chinese officials and state media tend to treat population decline as an annoyingly stubborn problem the Communist Party will soon address with the perfect mix of policies, foreign analysts believe China is approaching an event horizon of demographic decline from which no industrial nation has ever escaped.

Quote:Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, already jailed on corruption and national security charges, was indicted on Tuesday on charges that he and his wife Bushra Bibi accepted parcels of land as bribes when Khan was in office.

The latest Khan indictment involves a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Al-Qadir University Trust established by Khan and his wife in 2018, the year he became prime minister.

The trust was supposed to provide funding for an Islamic school near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The school was named after an 11th-century Sufi leader and administered by Khan’s third wife Bushra Bibi, also known as Bushra Watto and Bushra Maneka, who cultivated an image as a Sufi mystic and faith healer. Khan frequently promoted the Al-Qadir University trust during public events and praised the efforts of Bibi, who he described as his spiritual guide and mentor.

Prosecutors allege that the university trust, which listed only Khan and Bibi as its trustees, was actually a scam created so they could be given large tracts of valuable land as bribes by billionaire real estate developer Malik Riaz Hussain.

The trust currently owns a hefty 60-acre parcel of land in Punjab valued at almost $25 million, plus another plot close to Khan’s residence in Islamabad. The university itself supposedly remains under construction, accumulating hefty “operational expenses” that do not appear to have been properly documented.

According to the prosecution, the quid pro quo for Hussain’s gift of land involved Khan using money from the Pakistani treasury to pay off $244 million in fines levied against Hussain by the British government. Hussain reached a civil settlement with the U.K. government to conclude a corruption investigation in 2019.

I just wonder how long it would take for the Pakistani government to take "good care" of Khan a la Navalny. Not like Khan could be considered innocent / not guilty of any of those charges, but once again the timing seems to speak volumes in his specific case. I mean, Americans know very well what I'm talking about here.

Quote:Trainee doctors and medical students began walking off the job a week ago in response to President Yoon Suk-yeol announcing a proposal to dramatically increase the number of doctors in the country. Yoon announced Seoul would increase the number of medical students by 2,000 in 2025 and increase quotas with the goal of adding an extra 10,000 medical students by 2035. Currently, South Korea’s medical schools take in 3,000 students a year,

South Korea has long suffered from significant shortages in health workers, particularly doctors, currently employing 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, one of the smallest doctor-per-person proportions in the developed world. The nation’s small population of doctors tends to choose lucrative fields such as plastic surgery, leaving emergency rooms and pediatric offices understaffed. The declining birth rate and rapidly aging population have also led the government to expect surges in the number of patients in fields addressing medical complications more common in the elderly.

“Increasing the medical school admissions quota by 2,000 is the bare minimum necessary measure to ensure the state can fulfill its constitutional mandate,” President Yoon said in remarks on Thursday, emphasizing the country needs “about 10,000 more doctors to secure an adequate number of doctors in areas with shortages of medical professionals to ensure fair access to health services.”

The doctors have walked out complaining that increasing the number of doctors in the country would mean more competition in the industry and potentially a decline in their salary.

As of Tuesday, the Korean Health Ministry documented the absence of 8,939 intern and resident doctors, about 72.7 percent of the nation’s total, from their jobs; 9,909 have resigned. Nearly 70 percent of medical students, representing about 13,000 people, have taken leaves of absence in solidarity, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.

Quote:The prime minister of the legitimate, but powerless, government of Yemen arrived in Moscow on Monday to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and encourage Russia to contain the threat of Houthi terrorism in the country.

The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are a Shiite terrorist organization that staged an attack on the Yemeni government and ousted it from the capital, Sana’a, in 2014. With the backing of Iran, the Houthis have managed to survive a nearly decade-old war against the internationally recognized government and expand their global influence through an ongoing terrorist campaign against international commercial shipping in and around the Red Sea.
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The few operations the Biden administration is undergoing to contain the Houthi threat appear unrelated to “Operation Prosperity Guardian.” U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, specified in the announcement of airstrikes in Yemen this weekend that they were “separate and distinct from the multinational freedom of navigation actions performed under Operation Prosperity Guardian.”

The ineffectiveness of the Biden administration has led the legitimate government of Yemen to seek alternative allies. On Tuesday, Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak, the recently appointed new head of the Yemeni government, met with Lavrov in Moscow to ask Russia for more support. Bin Mubarak chose Russia as his first destination for a formal international engagement, a gesture of respect to the Hamas-friendly regime of strongman Vladimir Putin.

Following the private meeting between Lavrov and Bin Mubarak, the Russian foreign minister condemned America and Britain for airstrikes against the Houthis, the main enemy of the Yemeni government. He did add that Moscow did not “justice shelling of commercial ships,” as the Houthis have been doing, but emphasized Russia’s discontent with attempts by America and Britain to contain the Houthi threat.

“We do not justify shelling of commercial ships, no matter how these shellings are justified. But we also cannot justify,” Lavrov said, “the aggressive actions that, under this pretext, the United States and the United Kingdom are taking against the territory of Yemen, without having any international mandate for this.”

Bin Mubarak, the Yemeni prime minister, focused his comments on lamenting that his government could not alone address the Houthi threat, according to coverage in Russian state propaganda outlet Sputnik.

How much more cynical can Lavrov still get on behalf of the Russian government?

Quote:Saudi Arabia never finalized its membership in the BRICS economic and political coalition, a South African diplomat confirmed to Russian media on Tuesday.

“Saudi Arabia is still going through its own processes,” South African Ambassador to Russia Mzuvukile Geoff Maqetuka said in remarks to the Russian news agency Tass, published on Tuesday. “One, as a nation state. Two, together with the BRICS shepherds. Saudi Arabia is not yet, has not yet endorsed.”

“We will see it as we move towards [the summit in] Kazan. As South Africa, we are ready,” he added. Kazan, Russia, is expected to host the 2024 BRICS summit.

Saudi Arabia is one of six nations that BRICS invited to join its alliance in 2023. Four of the other five — Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — accepted the invites, while the fifth, Argentina, rejected the invitation after the election of President Javier Milei in November. Maqetuka confirmed that the four new members are fully integrated into the coalition and Argentina has fully withdrawn from the process as of February.
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The alliance is tenuous, as several members have bilateral differences that routinely threaten the entire enterprise. India, in particular — a solid American ally that has engaged in military action against China on several occasions since 2020 — presents geopolitical challenges for the alliance as it pursues domestic policies meant to challenge China’s stranglehold on global manufacturing. Brazil became a problematic member during the tenure of conservative President Jair Bolsonaro, who came to office on the promise of containing Chinese influence but ultimately caved to economic pressure.

The relationship between South Africa and Russia experienced tensions since 2023, as the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for strongman Vladimir Putin and, as a member, South Africa would be compelled to arrest him should he visit. Putin did not attend the 2023 BRICS summit in South Africa as a result.

The addition of countries with major economic shortcomings — such as Egypt and Ethiopia — to the bloc could potentially complicate its operations and diminish its economic power. Of the four new members confirmed, only the UAE is entering BRICS with a robust economic portfolio, dramatically increasing the percentage of the global oil trade that BRICS countries command.

Quote:Prominent Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed El-Kurd is facing fierce backlash after complaining it’s unacceptable to commit acts of terrorism, such as hijacking and throwing deadly molotov cocktails, in support of Gaza.

In a viral X post on Monday, the popular Palestinian activist wrote:

You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.

The post appeared to be in the context of the Sunday self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old member of the U.S. Air Force, who who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC, as he yelled “Free Palestine!” and broadcast the act on the streaming site Twitch.

“If you are a soldier sacrificing yourself to protect US interest, you are a rational, noble hero. But if you sacrifice yourself to protest the genocide your country is funding, you are mentally ill,” El-Kurd wrote, seemingly dismissing mental health concerns expressed by others.

Similarly, many on the left have praised the airman’s suicide as an extreme form of protest, claiming he undoubtedly “had moral clarity.”

“Rest in power Aaron Bushnell,” wrote Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein.

Who living in a civilized world would ever justify hijacking planes or throwing molotovs!? 

Quote:Vice President Kamala Harris revealed on Tuesday that the government could pay college students to register voters.

Harris said that students could receive the funds from the work-study federal program that pays a student’s wages while employed at a part-time job.

“We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students,” Harris said. “For example, we have, under the Federal Work-Study program, now allow students to get paid through Federal Work-Study to register people and to be non-partisan poll workers.”

“As we know, this is important for a number of reasons. One, to engage our young leaders in this process and activate them in terms of their ability to strengthen our communities,” she added.

The vice president’s proposal attracted more than a few detractors, believing it would be a use of taxpayer funds for political purposes.

“Biden signed EO14019 ordering federal govt to use taxpayer $ to mobilize (his) voters,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) on X. “@StephenM has FOIAed details, and I’ve sought them in Congress, but Biden is hiding them. Sounds like the election-year plan is underway.”

Quote:Ocasio-Cortez’s defense of Hunter highlights her change in political disposition from a once lefty populist turned establishment protectorate of the Bidens.

“What we just witnessed over the last hour was, I think, a deep sea fishing expedition,” the Democrat congresswoman alleged. “The Republican case has completely fallen apart over the last several weeks.”

Hunter is a material witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, who denied involvement in the Biden business at least nine times.

The House investigation previously found a massive web of wire transfers, 20 shell companies, and associates who helped the Biden business rake in at least $24 million from foreign nationals over the course of approximately five years.
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“They [Republicans] are now trying to scramble to find anything to substantiate their fairytale — is what we should call this,” Ocasio-Cortez alleged.

She continued, “But I think, more disturbingly, what we are seeing is just a complete and inappropriate expedition into the president’s son and for matters in subjects that are completely unrelated to an impeachment investigation.”
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House investigators launched the probe into the Biden family in November 2022. They revealed Joe Biden received money from James Biden and Hunter Biden. They also showed that nine additional Biden family members received payments from the family’s foreign business ventures, including two of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.

Hunter claimed Wednesday his father’s involvement in the Biden business is merely a “MAGA-motivated conspiracy” despite mountains of evidence. He used careful language during an opening statement to claim he did not involve Joe Biden, 81, in his business.

Quote:Biden said, “I’ve taken more executive actions to stop the flow of illegal guns than any other administration in history. And we beat the NRA when I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly 30 years.”

He continued, “We’re going to finish the job. We’re going to ban ‘assault weapons’ and ‘high-capacity’ magazines’ next time around because it has to be done.”

Nursing student Laken Riley was found dead on the University of Georgia campus last Thursday, and Breitbart News reported that the man suspected of killing her is a non-U.S. citizen. People magazine pointed out that Riley “died from blunt force trauma to the head.”

But Biden pushed for gun control, and he told reporters, “My administration is going to choose progress over politics, and communities across the country are safer as a result of that policy. There is no greater responsibility than to ensure the safety of families, children, communities, and our nation.”

Safer he said!? People get  killed, especially in gun free zones, and they're supposed to be safe?
But this gets only worse from here if you read a related article...

Quote:The Wednesday announcement, however, arrived amid a rush of media reports about brutal crimes committed by the unvetted and unidentified migrants that Biden is releasing into the United States.

In Georgia, for example, nurse in training Laken Riley was murdered on February 22, and the suspect is a Venezuelan migrant who was welcomed into the United States by Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

In Virginia, Renzo Mendoza Montes, another illegal alien from Venezuela, was arrested on February 22 for child sexual abuse charges.

In Illinois, four migrant men allegedly attacked and robbed a 48-year-old man on a Chicago train on February 17.

In a western suburb of Philadelphia, police have identified at least three gangs of migrants responsible for the theft of thousands of dollars of merchandise since January, according to WPVI-TV.

Biden did not mention the crime wave by his migrants.

“As president, public safety and crime reduction are a top priority for my administration,” Biden told the White House meeting of police chiefs before listing his massive spending to counter the crime spike that started in 2014, Biden continued:

Our plan is working. We still have much more to do as everyone at this table knows. And that’s why we’re here today. My administration is going to choose progress over politics, and communities across the country are safer as a result [of] policy. There is no greater responsibility to ensure the safety of families, children, communities, and our nation.

Quote:Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis subjected her employees to mandatory race training, forcing the entire office to rate “Black” or “White” skin colors as either “Good” or “Bad,” according to training slides and video exclusively obtained by Breitbart News.

“If you didn’t participate in the quiz, you got fired,” a source exclusively told Breitbart News about Willis’s policy.

Sources who shared the race training with Breitbart News wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution due to their direct knowledge of the “corrupt” and “hostile work environment” inside the District Attorney’s Office.

Sources described the race training as a directive straight from Willis, “[who] injected racism [into the office] from the second she got hired.” Willis won election in 2020 and is up for reelection this November. In 2021, she began probing former President Donald Trump.

Dubbed an “implicit bias test,” a Harvard website generated the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” slides that made some sources feel ashamed of being white employees.

“Willis had some guy be live for roughly eight hours,” a source said. “He was a former member of Obama’s White House.”

The training suggested the United States was founded on the sins of white men and the slaughter of native Americans, one source described. “I thought it was so wrong.”

“Willis pulled it off as diversity [training], but it was more so an attack on the race [relations] thing,” a source explained.

One element of the training described by a source was a slide test where users had to choose to move an image of a “white” person to a block that said “bad” in order to complete the program...

Quote:The U.S. Supreme Court has granted former President Donald Trump’s request to decide if he is immune from prosecution on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The court will consider “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

The Wednesday court order granting certiorari to Trump says oral arguments will begin the week of April 22. The order also instructs the appellate court to keep Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump paused until the Supreme Court reaches a decision on the immunity matter.

That question has already delayed what was an expedited schedule for the prosecution. A federal grand jury in D.C. indicted Trump on four counts on August 1, 2023, and after legal back-and-forth between Smith and Trump’s legal team, the court set a March 4, 2024 trial date.

Before today’s order by the court, District Judge Tanya Chutkan had delayed that trial date, as the case has been on hold since December. Today’s order makes clear that pre-trial work in that prosecution must remain on hold.

Prominent attorney Jonathan Turley said after the announcement that the timeline “is a blow to Smith,” arguing that although the Court did not grant a stay, “It has constructively created such a stay by scheduling the argument. Keep in mind, even if Smith prevails, pre-trial work must wait for the return of the mandate.”

Quote:The storm will begin on Thursday and will likely continue through Sunday with blizzard warnings in effect for the Sierra Nevada. Per the San Francisco Chronicle:

A prolonged storm will begin Thursday and is anticipated to continue through Sunday. In the Sierra Nevada, blizzard warnings are in effect for potentially historic snowfall, with up to 12 feet possible. While the mountains will take the brunt of the impacts, the Bay Area can expect the same weather system to bring periods of heavy rain, gusty winds and accumulating snow above 2,500 feet.

Snowfall forecasts in the Sierra Nevada have remained consistent over the past few days, with the probability of higher-end totals increasing as the storm approaches. Up to 12 feet of snow is possible along the western Sierra crest, including Donner Pass, with up to 4 feet in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Locations along Interstate 80 in Placer County, including the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, could set single-day snowfall records, topping the previous high of 49 inches, set at Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe) in 1958. A blizzard warning is in effect from Thursday morning through Sunday morning.

Fox Weather notes that the record snowfall in California’s mountain regions could be as high as 10 feet, with the worst of it being felt in the Sierra Nevada. People have been advised to avoid mountain travel through the weekend.  The NWS Reno Office even warned that walking outside could be hazardous.

And still, we're supposed to believe in global warming.

Quote:Jewish students at University of California-Berkeley (UC Berkeley) were forced to leave campus after a mob of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters shut down their speaking event featuring Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Ran Bar-Yoshafat.

A speaking event, titled “Israel at War: Combat the Lies,” at Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC Berkeley campus was shut down Monday night after a mob of protesters stormed the area chanting, “Long live the Intifada!” and breaking glass on the doors of the building in which the event was set to be held.

Additional footage posted to social media revealed that some of the anti-Israel protesters had entered the venue before the event could start.

“You guys f*** leave,” a protester clad in a keffiyeh can be heard saying to a student, who replied, “No, this is a private event, you are not welcome here.”

“This is a private event,” the student continued. “You should leave. Stop terrorizing Jewish students. You are the common-day Nazi. You’re a Nazi, leave. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Stop harassing us. Leave.”

Other video footage shows protesters banging on the glass doors outside the building.

The anti-Israel protesters were seen holding signs that read, “Students Against Zionism,” “Stop the Genocide,” and “Long Live the Intifada!”

How exactly is the public supposed to accept this Intifada they're promoting like crazy?

That actually means that they wanna commit genocide against Jews. 

Quote:Officials in pro-Russian separatist Transnistria voted at the Congress of Deputies on Wednesday to ask Moscow for protection from Moldova, from which the country split in 1990 and fought a war of independence with until 1992 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Transnistrians claim Moldova is attempting to use financial pressure to force it to reunite and complains of a sharp deterioration in relations this year, accusing Chișinău of trying to destroy their economy.

Transnistria is internationally seen as being inside the borders of post-Cold War Moldova, and has never been recognised as a nation by any other country — not even Russia. Nevertheless, in practice the 1,600-square mile breakaway has been essentially ‘self-governing’ under a ceasefire with Moldova and in a legal grey zone for over 30 years.

While Moldova itself is predominantly ethnically Moldovan-Romanian, the small Transnistrian region has a sizable Russian ethnic minority. The call for assistance to Moscow to protect a Russian minority from alleged discrimination by a pro-European Union government will naturally trigger comparisons to the early days of the Ukraine war in 2014, when ‘little green men’ appeared in eastern Ukrainian regions, ostensibly to protect Russian minorities from Kyiv.

Indeed, it is possible Transnistrian authorities will take calling another referendum on integration with Russia as the next step, again a progression reminiscent of the events surrounding Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
...
Russian state media was also quick to publish material on the vote, noting “Transnistrian leader” Vadim Krasnoselsky asked for support on the strength that “more 220,000 Russian nationals reside in the unrecognized breakaway republic” and claiming “Russian peacekeeping” has been so successful in the past.

The motion’s wording read, Moscow states: “Transnistria will persistently fight for its identity, the rights and interests of the Transnistrian people and will not give up on protecting them, despite any blackmail or external pressure.”

Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that EU nations have only managed to deliver 30 per cent of their pledged artillery shells, once again underscoring the hapless state of Europe’s military capabilities.

While establishment media, Eurocrats, and Kyiv have all pointed their fingers at the United States and the ongoing dispute over further American funding of Ukraine as a reason for recent battlefield losses to the Russians, President Zelensky revealed that the apparent artillery shortage is in large part due to failures of the EU to meet its commitments.

“Out of the million shells that the European Union promised us, not 50 per cent came, but 30 per cent, unfortunately,” Zelensky told reporters this week according to the EU-funded Euractiv website.

Brussels committed last year to send at least a million shells to Ukraine by March of this year, however, in January, the bloc admitted that it would only be able to meet half that, with around 524,000 shells planned to have been delivered by the end of next month. Yet, so far, only 355,000 ammunition artillery rounds have been sent to Kyiv from EU states. They now claim that they will surpass the million shell mark by the end of the year.

Commenting on the shortfalls, the EU’s top diplomat, Spanish socialist politician Josep Borrell — whose own country has consistently failed to meet NATO spending requirements — urged EU countries to find ways to step up their efforts, saying: “Ukrainian soldiers are determined to fight, but they need ammunition. Urgently and in huge quantities.”

Quote:Traces of a toxic, colorless gas were found at the headquarters of Sweden´s security agency where a suspected gas leak last week forced authorities to evacuate some 500 people from the facility, a local paper reported Wednesday.

The daily Svenska Dagbladet newspaper said authorities had found traces of phosgene. The gas has a strong odor that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble and was used as a weapon in World War I.
...
On Friday, eight people from the headquarters in Solna, just north of Stockholm, were hospitalized, following the evacuation. There were no reports of anyone being seriously injured.

Those admitted to the hospital suffered breathing problems, authorities said. Some of them were officers who smelled the gas when they arrived at the scene, police said.

Images showed first responders and police officers wearing gas masks at the security headquarters. Swedish media reported that a zone measuring 500 meters (about 547 yards) in diameter was set up protectively.

Authorities asked people living near the Swedish security agency, known by its acronym SAPO, to keep their windows closed at the time.

After the evacuation, SAPO said Friday that the rescue service “had established that there was no gas either inside the premises or outside the building.”

Quote:The proposed amendment “diminishes the unique importance of the relationship between marriage and family in the eyes of Society and State and is likely to lead to a weakening of the incentive for young people to marry,” the bishops said in a February 25 statement.

The so-called Care amendment “would have the effect of abolishing all reference to motherhood in the Constitution and leave unacknowledged the particular and incalculable societal contribution that mothers in the home have made and continue to make in Ireland,” they note.

“The role of mothers should continue to be cherished in our Constitution,” they add.

Ireland is set to vote in a referendum on March 8 to change the wording of Irish Constitution on Family and Care

Irish citizens will be asked to weigh in on an amendment to Article 41, which currently defines family as “founded on marriage,” to include “other durable relationships.”

“The Family, based on the exclusive, life-long and life-giving public commitment of Marriage, is the foundational cell of society and essential to the common good,” the bishops assert in their statement, reiterating Catholic teaching on the matter.

Quote:Indonesia takes some pride in holding the world’s largest single-day election, but the toll this takes on overworked election staffers is severe.

At least 114 poll workers died and more than 15,000 have required medical treatment since the February 14 elections.

The Indonesian Health Ministry said the poll workers were mostly killed by exhaustion-related diseases such as hypertension, respiratory disease, and heart failure. Roughly 60 percent of the fallen poll workers were between ages 41 and 60.

Channel News Asia (CNA) noted that 2024’s grim death toll was quite a bit lower than 2019, the first time Indonesia held elections for the presidency and legislature on the same day. Almost 900 election workers died during the 2019 contest.

The General Elections Commission implemented several reforms after the deadly 2019 elections, including a maximum age of 55 for poll workers and mandatory health screenings. The health ministry credited these reforms for the 70 percent reduction in deaths from 2019, but said there was clearly room for further improvements.

Indonesia’s poll workers put in agonizing hours, with some reporting shifts of 26 hours and more. They receive few breaks, and they often have to deal with difficult weather conditions. Election officials were seen walking through shin-deep water in flooded parts of Java on February 14, for example.

Quote:South Korea already had the unwelcome distinction of the world’s worst fertility crisis and, on Wednesday, the Population Census Division at Statistics Korea revealed the lowest birth rate on the planet for 2023, a mere 0.72 children per fertile woman. Anything less than 1.3 children per woman is considered “very low fertility,” while a stable population requires at least 2.1.

To use another common metric, the number of South Korean newborns per 2,000 population fell to 4.5, down from an already alarming 4.9 the previous year.

“The number of newborns in 2023 was 230,000, which was 19,200 fewer than the year before, representing a 7.7 percent decrease,” reported Population Census Division chief Lim Young-il.

The latest drop in birth rates came despite enormous spending by the South Korean government to reduce the financial burdens of motherhood and a vigorous public relations campaign to encourage young couples to marry and have children. Turning birth rates around is one of the top stated priorities of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s government.

South Korean politicians and academics have warned the country faces “national extinction” if population decline is not reversed, a warning first issued by Professor David Coleman of the University of Oxford, who predicted in 2006 that South Korea could become the first “population extinction nation.”

The news was not much better in Japan, where the number of babies born last year fell to a record low, and the national population shrank by the largest amount ever recorded.

According to the Japanese health ministry, births fell by 5.1 percent to 758,631, and the overall population declined by 831,872, including foreign residents. The number of new marriages fell to post-World War II lows, while the number of divorces increased substantially.

The figures came as a surprise to the Japanese government, which previously estimated that births would not dip below 760,000 until 2035.

“The period over the next six years or so until 2030s, when the younger population will start declining rapidly, will be the last chance we may be able to reverse the trend. There is no time to waste,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa warned on Tuesday.

Japanese researchers focused on the decline of marriages as a key factor in the population slide, given that like many Asian societies, Japan has a strong cultural aversion to out-of-wedlock births. China has begun experimenting with efforts to lift the social stigma against single-parent families and provide them with more generous subsidies, but Japan seems reluctant to take that step.

In Singapore, the fertility rate dropped below 1.0 for the first time in its history last year, after dropping to 1.12 in 2021 and 1.04 in 2022.

Singaporean officials blamed some of the decline on marriages and pregnancies being delayed by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, although those trends should have long since begun reversing.

Quote:Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky briefly visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, receiving a warm greeting from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and engaging in what Zelensky called a “candid and meaningful conversation.”

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a large set of photos of the crown prince welcoming Zelensky and his delegation to the country on Tuesday, shaking hands and smiling together.
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The Saudi Press Agency offered that the Crown Prince “affirmed the Kingdom’s keeness and support for all international endeavours and efforts aimed at resolving the Ukrainian-Russian crisis” during the meeting.
Zelensky published several posts on social media describing the nature of his visit and thanking his hosts for their hospitality.

“I had a meaningful and candid conversation with His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” he wrote in a message published on Twitter. “We discussed the Peace Formula’s points and the progress that can be made in implementing them. Saudi Arabia’s leadership can assist in finding equitable solutions.”

Ukraine introduced a plan to end the Russian invasion it calls the “Peace Formula” in late 2022 that consists of a full embargo by nearly all world states on business with Russia, the establishment of special court systems to try Russians accused of war crimes in Ukraine, and mapping out “security guarantees” for Ukraine following the end of the hostilities.

Zelensky noted in his statement on his visit to Saudi Arabia that he will again promote the plan in an imminent “Global Peace Summit” in Switzerland. He insisted that Ukraine enjoyed “ongoing active support” from Saudi Arabia on the issue of the “peace summit.”

And guess what's the most ironic of this situation: they're building a wall just like Trump did in America back in his administration!

Quote:Iran’s top diplomat on Afghanistan issues reportedly claimed in an interview on Wednesday his country is studying the best way to construct a border wall to protect itself from terror threats emanating from its eastern neighbor.

Iran has supported the Taliban, the terrorist organization that governs Afghanistan unopposed, geopolitically since its ascent to power in August 2021 – the result of leftist President Joe Biden extending the 20-year Afghan War with seemingly no coherent plan for withdrawal. Iran recognizes the Taliban as an “interim” government, one of the few countries to do so, and has repeatedly condemned the United States for its anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan.

The bilateral relationship with the Taliban has been much more challenging for Tehran. The two countries share a border along the Helmand River. Iran has repeatedly accused the Taliban of using a dam on Afghan territory to block the flow of the river and deprive Iranians of critical water access. The Taliban insists that it has not done so and any water shortages are the result of droughts that affect both countries.

The dispute erupted in violence last year as border guards shot at each other. A senior Taliban commander threatened to “conquer” Iran in May.

The Afghan news site Khaama Press translated the remarks by Special Representative for Afghanistan Kazemi Qomi to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) in which he claimed the border plan was “essential for national sovereignty” in light of mounting issues with the Taliban government across the border.

Quote:Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant called Wednesday for ultra-Orthodox men to be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first time in more than 75 years of the State of Israel’s existence, due to current military needs.

Ultra-Orthodox men who are studying religion have been exempt from military service under an arrangement first made by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first leader. Since then, the religious population has boomed.

Some religious men do serve in the military, often in conjunction with religious study, but their service is voluntary. Some Israelis resent the additional burden the religious exemptions place on other citizens.

Gallant spoke as the IDF prepares for an increasingly likely war with Iranian-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, which has been firing missiles at Israeli communities since Hamas terrorists launched a war on Israel on October 7.

Reservists have been withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, even as the regular army continues to fight there, but it is clear that many may be called back to service within a few months if the IDF mobilizes to deal with the threat in the north.

Quote:Argentine prosecutor Mario Villar asked the nation’s courts on Monday to increase the six-year prison sentence imposed on former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was convicted of corruption in 2022, to 12 years.

Villar is also proposing that the courts reject Fernández de Kirchner’s appeal in the case, commonly referred to as Causa Vialidad (Road Case), which presently prevents her from serving the original sentence.

Argentine courts sentenced Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison in December 2022 for defrauding the Argentine state of upwards of $1 billion through dozens of public road work contracts granted to Argentine businessman and close friend Lázaro Báez during her two presidential terms from 2007 to 2015.

Additionally, the court banned her from holding any public office in Argentina for life. Fernández de Kirchner was also facing illicit association charges as part of the Road Case, but the court ruled to acquit her, only convicting her of the corruption charges.

Fernández de Kirchner has not served her sentence as she was both the nation’s vice president and the head of the Argentine Senate at the time of her conviction, which granted her immunity from the court’s ruling.

Fernández de Kirchner then initiated a lengthy appeal process. The process presently protects her from serving jail time even after losing her immunity status following the start of President Javier Milei’s presidential term in December 2023. The Argentine legal system requires the Criminal Cassation Chamber and then the Supreme Court of Justice to review the appeals before she goes to prison.

Quote:The announcement was made on Tuesday during presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni’s press conference. Adorni added that “everything related to the gender-based perspective” will also be banned throughout the national public administration.

“They are going to proceed, to initiate, the proceedings to ban inclusive language and everything related to gender-based perspective throughout the national public administration,” Adorni said. “Of course, you already know all the details. You are not going to be able to use the letter ‘e’, the ‘@ symbol’, the ‘x’ and avoid the unnecessary use of the feminine in all documents of the public administration.”

Argentina’s official language is Spanish, a romance language that is gendered by nature, where nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives, and even objects have a defined masculine or feminine gender. Masculine words tend to end in -o, while feminine words tend to end in -a. Leftist movements have attempted to replace the o and a with “inclusive” replacements such as -e or -x – for example, saying “Latine” or “Latinx” instead of “Latino” or “Latina” – which render the language incoherent.

In the United States, the most widespread known case of “inclusive” language is “Latinx,” a word that is not just unpronounceable in Spanish’s language rules, but is widely rejected and reviled by Hispanics. The “@” symbol, which is not a letter, has also been used by leftists to replace the letters “o” and “a” as well to denote “gender neutrality,” even if the word itself is rendered not pronounceable in Spanish as a result.

These “inclusive” leftist modifications to the Spanish language are widely frowned upon by organizations such as the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), a Spain-based institution founded in the 18th century that is dedicated to the preservation and correct use of the Spanish language.

Quote:ECOWAS ministers met in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, on Saturday for closed-door emergency talks on the junta crisis. The West African economic bloc imposed tough sanctions against Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali after juntas overthrew their civilian governments between 2020 and 2023.

In response, the three junta governments announced in late January they would quit ECOWAS because they said the bloc had lost the “spirit of pan-Africanism” and had fallen under “the influence of foreign powers.”

The juntas said ECOWAS sanctions against them were “illegitimate, inhumane, and irresponsible.” They said they intended to create their own trilateral confederation called the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

Niger additionally accused the bloc of interfering with its “existential fight against terrorism and insecurity.” Niger’s junta leaders claim they had to seize power because deposed President Mohamed Bazoum was too weak against terrorism.
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ECOWAS emerged from its closed-door session on Saturday to announce it would lift sanctions, unfreeze Niger’s financial assets, lift restrictions on commerce with Niger, and reopen the border immediately. According to ECOWAS President Omar Touray, some “targeted” and “political” sanctions against the Niger junta would remain in place, but he did not specify which ones.

The statement also lifted some sanctions against Guinea, which fell to a coup in 2021 but did not join the other juntas in quitting ECOWAS. The Guinea junta claimed that it dissolved its “interim government” but did not say what it would be replaced with or if elections would be held.

Quote:Law enforcement officials in Georgia have arrested four Chinese nationals in connection with a Marijuana grow operation with an estimated street value of $22.3 million.

The four Chinese nationals—identified as Zhu Sheng Bing, Jinpeng Ma, Chenhui Shu, and Wei Sheng Deng—were arrested and booked last week, following a joint operation involving the Georgia Department of Agriculture and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. Both agencies announced the arrests during a joint press briefing on Tuesday.

The Georgia Department of Agriculture and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office first began investigating an alleged food manufacturing facility located in Pierce County about a month ago, with suspicions of illicit activity taking place at the facility. In particular, Pierce County Sheriff Ramsey Bennett said people working at the facility told an undercover detective from his office that the facility was “growing and processing an edible food product,” which prompted him to contact Georgia Agricultural Commissioner Tyler Harper.

While executing a search warrant last week, Georgia law enforcement officials reportedly seized 11,153 Marijuana plants.

“This was the largest seizure ever in Pierce County and I think a pretty large seizure anywhere in the state,” Mr. Bennett said. “So we’re just pleased to have this part of the criminal element in jail and this much dope off the street.”

The Pierce County Sheriff said the four Chinese nationals remain in jail. Arrest records for Mr. Deng indicate he is wanted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“One does have an ICE detainer,” Mr. Bennett said, referring to a request from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to law enforcement agencies to notify them when they detain an individual who is already wanted for potential immigration violations.

Mr. Bennett said the other three Chinese nationals “appear to be in the country legally.” Mr. Bennett said all four Chinese nationals are currently being held without bail.

Kathy Hochul Moves Forward with Plan to Prioritize Illegal Immigrants for NY State Jobs

Quote:At the end of January, Hochul approved a plan for the state to hire 4,000 illegal aliens for entry-level state jobs. Not only is the state preparing to put illegals at the head of the line, but the plan Hochul approved eliminates several requirements for illegals to be eligible for the jobs.

The rules requiring applicants to take the civil service exam and to have a high school diploma have been eliminated.

The aim is to get illegals into state jobs faster once they get approved work permits.

The Civil Service Commission approved the plan on January 18, according to Spectrum News:

Hochul also claimed that she hears from business owners all across the state pleading with her to approve illegals for jobs.

“Hotel owners and restaurant owners coming to me: ‘Can you send some of the migrants up here? We need them.’ I hear this in every corner of the state,” the governor said.

Naturally, New York City’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams also favors the plan to lower the bar to get illegals into government and private sector jobs quickly.

“I would love to get migrants and asylum seekers to help with the lifeguard shortage. We’ve been successful in getting almost 30,000 people to [file] applications, including work authorization, asylum, TPS — we want more,” he said.

In selling the plan to put illegals ahead of citizens, New York State Senate Labor Committee chair Jessica Ramos, a Democrat, conflated “New Yorkers” with the migrants for whom she was advocating.

Quote:Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin claimed there was no break in the chain of command when he was hospitalized in January for days without telling President Biden, but admitted on Thursday it was actually his aides who made a decision to transfer his authorities to his deputy when he could not be reached and blamed his staff for not telling the president about his hospitalization sooner.

Austin made the admission under questioning from Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), a Marine veteran, who asked him if he had made the decision to transfer his authorities to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks on January 2, after he entered critical care.

“I did not. The decision was whether or not we, they had reached a point threshold where I could not communicate or have access to secure communications, and so that triggers the process –,” Austin began.

“So your condition was severe such that you could not personally action the transfer of authority?” Gallagher pressed.

Austin said it was not his physical condition, but the fact that his staff could “not get to him” and he did not have access to secure communications.

“The issue was number one, they could not get to me, but number two, it was access to secure communications. It had nothing to do with my physical condition at the time,” Austin said.

“And yet the decision was made. So who made the decision?” Gallagher asked.

“Well, as the, as my assistants conferred, they agreed that we had reached that threshold and they should put the process in place and they did and I think it was the right decision,” Austin admitted.

Quote:President Joe Biden’s White House has begun referring to border crossers and illegal aliens as “newcomers” and “people who are in the country” — a terminology distinction that conflicts with federal immigration law.

On Thursday — while promoting a Senate bill to preserve his catch and release network at the United States-Mexico border — Biden’s White House made a passing reference to border crossers and illegal aliens, calling them “newcomers” to the U.S.

The White House fact sheet on the Senate bill reads:

The bill also includes $1.4 billion for cities and states who are providing critical services to newcomers, and would expedite work permits for people who are in the country and qualify. [Emphasis added]

Earlier this month, in a similar press release on the Senate bill, Biden’s White House touted billions that the legislation would provide to cities and states accepting these so-called “newcomers.”

The Biden administration has made it a point to rid the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of all references to “illegal aliens” or “illegal immigrants,” instead demanding officials use “more inclusive” terms like “noncitizens” and “undocumented individual.”

In July 2023, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended these changes:

In the Department of Homeland Security, I issued a memo very early on that we would not use the term ‘illegal alien’ when speaking of these individuals, we use the term ‘noncitizen,’ and that speaks to the importance of respecting the dignity of the individual.

Democrats in Congress have sought to ban the terms “illegal alien” and “alien” from federal law, filing legislation in 2021 that would strip all of their references.

Quote:A judge in Illinois ruled on Wednesday to bar former President Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, citing his alleged actions during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“Cook County Circuit Judge Tracie Porter sided with Illinois voters who argued that the former president should be disqualified from the state’s March 19 primary ballot and its Nov. 5 general election ballot for violating the anti-insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment,” Reuters reported.

The judge, however, delayed her ruling from taking effect due to an expected appeal from the former president. The ruling also comes after the Supreme Court heard arguments on Trump being barred from the ballot in Colorado, which a majority of legal experts believe will rule in the former president’s favor with either a 9-0 or 8-1 vote. As SCOTUSBlog wrote in early February:

The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared ready to hold that Colorado cannot exclude former President Donald Trump from the ballot based on his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. During an oral argument that lasted for more than two hours, justices of all ideological stripes questioned the wisdom of allowing a state to make its own decisions about whether a candidate should appear on the ballot, both because of the effect that such decisions would have on the rest of the country and because of the hurdles that courts would face in reviewing those decisions.

Steven Cheung, spokesperson for the Trump presidential campaign, said that Soros-funded groups spearheaded the effort to kick him off the ballot.

“The Soros-funded Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot. Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions,” Cheung said.

Quote:A federal judge on Thursday blocked a new Texas law that gives police broad powers to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S., dealing a victory to the Biden administration in its feud with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over immigration enforcement.

The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect March 5 and came as President Joe Biden and his likely Republican challenger in November, Donald Trump, were visiting Texas’ southern border to discuss immigration. Texas officials are expected to appeal.

Opponents have called the Texas measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law that opponents rebuked as a “Show Me Your Papers” bill. The U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the Arizona law, but some Texas Republican leaders, who often refer to the migrant influx as an “invasion,” want that ruling to get a second look.

Ezra cited the Constitution’s supremacy clause and U.S. Supreme Court decisions as factors that contributed to his ruling. He said the Texas law would conflict with federal immigration law, and the nation’s foreign relations and treaty obligations.

Allowing Texas to “permanently supersede federal directives” due to a so-called invasion would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority — a notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War,” the judge wrote.

Citing the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona law, Ezra wrote that the Texas law was preempted, and he struck down state officials’ claims that large numbers of illegal border crossings constituted an “invasion.”

The lawsuit is among several legal battles between Texas and Biden’s administration over how far the state can go to try to prevent migrants from crossing the border.

Quote:Democrat operative and Fulton County’s Deputy District Attorney Jeff DiSantis received four payments totaling $131,335 for providing consulting services to Rep. Gabriel Amo (D-RI), a former Biden White House aide who worked with local elected officials, Federal Election Commission records show.

The money flow is significant because sources with direct knowledge of Fulton County’s office told Breitbart News DiSantis is a Biden plant inside a Fulton County office to target former President Donald Trump.

DiSantis’ payments were previously unreported.

DiSantis was working at county DA’s office while operating a consulting firm named “20/20 Insights, LLC.” Sources told Breitbart News deputy district attorneys would likely have to sign an oath that prohibits them from working outside their county employment agreement. DiSantis’s oath, if he signed one, remains undisclosed.

It is also curious that DiSantis contracted with Amo, who worked in the Biden administration as the deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs before running for Congress in 2023. There he worked as the principal liaison to mayors and “local elected officials,” according to his White House bio. Amo also served as an adviser on President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and later served on his transition team.

“That is the connection to the White House,” one source told Breitbart News. “DiSantis did this. He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this.”

DiSantis is a wealthy and successful Democrat operative. He ran Willis’ 2020 campaign and raised $4 million dollars.

Quote:Law enforcement has released video footage of a person of interest in the explosion outside of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office early Saturday morning.

The images and video — released by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) — show a person dressed in dark clothing and a hat with a mask covering his/her face.

ALEA, along with FBI Mobile and the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, are seeking the public’s assistance in identifying the individual.

An explosive device detonated near the intersection of Washington Avenue and South Bainbridge Street, outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery at around 3:42 a.m. on February 24, according to ALEA.

Special agents discovered the detonated explosive at approximately 8:19 a.m. on Monday after receiving a tip of a “suspicious package” and confirmed the device had been detonated on Saturday.

“No injuries or damage to nearby buildings were reported. Nothing further is available as the investigation remains ongoing,” ALEA said in a press release on Wednesday.

Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit information online at: www.fbi.govalabamaagexplosion.

Quote:Leading Christian organizations sent a letter to left-leaning Politico on Wednesday, demanding an apology after one of the outlet’s top reporters painted those who believe their rights come from God as “extremists” and “Christian nationalists.”

Politico investigative reporter Heidi Przybyla said on February 23 on MSNBC’s All In that Christian nationalists, not Christians, believe rights come from God, in what appears to be part of a continued crusade from the left to paint Christian values as a “threat to democracy.”

Przybyla said:

The base of the Republican Party has shifted. Remember when Trump ran in 2016? A lot of the mainland Evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the divorced real estate mogul who cheated on his wife with a porn star and all of that. So what happened was he was surrounded by this more extremist element. We are going to hear words like “Christian nationalism,” like “the new apostolic reformation.” These are groups that you should get very schooled on because they have a lot of power in Trump’s circle, and the one thing that unites all of them, because there’s many different groups orbiting Trump, but the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different — is that they believe that our rights, as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress. They don’t come from the Supreme Court. They come from God.

The problem with that is that they are determining — man, it is men — are determining what God is telling them. And in the past, that so-called natural law is, you know, it’s a pillar of Catholicism, for instance, it’s been used for good in social justice campaigns. Martin Luther King evoked it in talking about civil rights.

But now, you have an extremist element of conservative Christians who say that this applies specifically to issues including abortion, gay marriage, and it’s going much further than that, as you see, for instance, with the ruling in Alabama this week that judges connected to that Dominionist faction in talking about a lot of other issues, including surrogacy, IVF, you know, sex education in schools. There’s a lot in addition.

Quote:The Miami Herald revealed this week that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) traveled to communist Cuba at an unspecified time in February – a visit the Cuban government has yet to discuss and the lawmakers did not publicize.

The Congresswomen reportedly met with Castro regime officials as part of a secret delegation representing the “Congressional Progressive Caucus,” the Herald observed. In addition to the two lawmakers, a representative from the office of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) also reportedly attended.

Following the publication of its report on Tuesday, the caucus issued a statement confirming the visit: “Representatives Jayapal and Omar traveled to Cuba last week, where they met with people from across Cuban civil society and government officials to discuss human rights and the U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship,” a spokesperson told the newspaper.

The details of the trip remain a mystery at press time. Outside of the statement from the Progressive Caucus, the members of Congress involved have not commented on the matter. The Cuban Communist Party has not at press time addressed the reports of their visit, nor has its official state newspaper, Granma. Granma typically publishes effusive propaganda pieces praising any American politicians who lend support to the regime by visiting and treating its criminal leaders with respect, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The Cuban External Relations Ministry (MINREX) last confirmed a visit by American officials on Wednesday, informing that American diplomat Kerri Hannan held meetings in Havana with regime henchmen.

No “civil society” organizations have at press time corroborated the Congressional Progressive Caucus claim that Reps. Jayapal and Omar met with “Cuban civil society” to discuss “human rights.” The concept of a free “civil society” in Cuba is illegal, as the Communist Party severely represses the operation of groups such as the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), believed to be the country’s largest dissident organization. The head of UNPACU, José Daniel Ferrer, was arrested on July 11, 2021, during a wave of anti-communist protests in which an estimated 187,000 participated nationwide. As of Wednesday, the human rights group Amnesty International reported that Ferrer has been missing for three months, as the regime will not allow his family to visit him or tell them his whereabouts.

Quote:Nicaragua’s brutal socialist dictator Daniel Ortega hosted a meeting on Wednesday with Gen. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, and several other high-ranking Russian security officials.

Nicaragua signed several security deals with Russia at the meeting to bolster Ortega’s apparatus of repression, which the United Nations blasted for its human rights abuses in a damning report on Thursday.

Ortega, who is styled as a “commander” in his regime’s propaganda releases, billed the “special” meeting with Patrushev as a conference of a “task force” composed of other repressive Latin American regimes, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.

Ortega said the participating dictatorships looked forward to advice and training from Russia’s police and intelligence services, as well as economic support from Russia.

Nicaragua’s opposition news website Artículo 66 — which is named after the article of the Nicaraguan constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and is relentlessly hounded by Ortega’s goon squads for exercising that right — feared Ortega and his “Sandinista repressive forces” would “refine their repressive methods in Russia” and obtain new resources for keeping their political adversaries under surveillance.

Artículo 66 noted that, according to Ortega’s son and investment adviser Laureano Ortega Murillo, the agreements signed on Wednesday included a “cooperation protocol” between the Nicaraguan police and Russian interior ministry that will last until at least 2026, and provides for cooperation in “retraining and professional improvement of personnel in the field of police activity.”

Another deal described by Murillo committed the Russian Interior Ministry to help its Nicaraguan counterpart develop “legal regulation of the activities of non-profit organizations.

The U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) received a report from its panel of Nicaragua experts on Thursday that accused Ortega, his wife Rosario Murillo, and his top officials of repressive actions that were “tantamount to crimes against humanity.”

Quote:Officials overseeing the Brazilian Amazon registered almost 3,000 fires during February, marking a new record for the South American country, according to data released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

According to the institute, 2,924 fires were documented in February as of the Tuesday, February 26, cutoff date, up from 2,049 registered in January. February’s data marks a new record of rainforest fires registered since it began logging them in 1999.

February 2024’s record represents a staggering 298 percent increase. INPE recorded 734 fires in February 2023. According to local media, the Brazilian Environment Ministry is yet to publicly comment on the report at press time.

The dramatic increase in forest fires occurred outside of the rainforest’s dry season, which is expected to last between July and October, peaking in August. During those months, the forest’s vegetation is more susceptible to burning, and the lower humidity in the air potentially allows for the flames to spread much more easily, making firefighting efforts more difficult.

Experts stressed to local Brazilian media that the forest rarely catches fire on its own and most fires involve criminal human action. In most cases, the fires are used to open up new areas for grazing.

The state of Roraima is the area most affected by February’s record fires. The smoke has been reported to have covered parts of Roraima’s capital city, Boa Vista, and stretched over the RR-206 state highway.

Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva, Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, and Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara are expected to travel to Boa Vista soon to inaugurate a space to coordinate actions in the Yanomami Indigenous Land. The fires have severely affected the Yanomami community.

Quote:Venezuela’s socialist regime signed an agreement Wednesday with several collaborationist groups to work toward setting a date for a “free and fair” presidential election in 2024.

The agreement, according to the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro, “substitutes” for the “Barbados agreement,” signed by the socialist regime in October with Venezuela’s Unitary Platform “opposition” coalition — and negotiated under the observation of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Wednesday’s new sham election agreement — officially called the “National Agreement on General Principles, Timetable and Extension of Electoral Guarantees for the 2024 Presidential Election,” — saw representatives of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), PSUV’s allied and ancillary parties, smaller “opposition” parties, and collaborationist members of trade, industries, and other civil society organizations pledge to participate in a “free and fair” presidential election in 2024. The deal suggested roughly 27 possible dates for the yet-to-be-scheduled electoral event between April 13 and December 8.

The agreement will be presented to the regime-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) on Friday.

“From my point of view, this agreement is the development of the Barbados agreement and substitutes for it. Because he who can do more, can do less,” Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, said. “In other words, the Barbados agreement is a subset of this set of this agreement, which is much broader.”

Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro celebrated the new agreement by downplaying the October 2023 Barbados deal and previous agreements signed with the “opposition” as “sub-agreements” contingent upon the latest alleged deal.

“The Barbados and Mexico agreements are sub-agreements integrated to the Caracas agreement that will guarantee free elections in Venezuela,” Maduro said during an official event. “With great tact and political capacity, we will comply with this agreement as we have complied with all the agreements from the Dominican Republic, Norway, Mexico, and Barbados.”

“This agreement, which I qualify as the broad agreement of Caracas, gathers the best of the dialogues of Mexico and Barbados and gathers the best of all sectors and of the political parties legalized in the CNE,” he added.

Quote:MPs have raised concerns over agricultural land being used for green energy projects, such as solar panel farms, impacting food security.

Speaking in the House of Commons chamber on Tuesday, Greg Smith MP said he was seeing “thousands of acres” of agricultural land being built on or earmarked for solar farms in his constituency.

The Conservative MP for Buckingham said during an oral answers to questions debate, “The prime minister was very clear that vast swathes of agricultural land would not be lost to solar on his watch, yet I am seeing thousands of acres across my constituency being built out or proposed for solar—from Kimble Wick to Dinton, Ford to Beachampton, and more—including the latest 2,100 acre abomination in the Claydons known as Rosefield.”

“Good agricultural land that regularly produces wheat harvests of 10 tonnes per hectare, for example, is often falsely graded as 3b because the readings are taken from the headland, not the field,” he continued.

Mr. Smith asked energy minister Andrew Bowie: “When will my honourable friend ensure that energy policy does not trump food security, and stop the mass proliferation of agricultural land being used for inefficient solar?”

Mr. Bowie replied that while “it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any specific matters in relation to that project,” he wanted to “reassure him that all applications are judged on their individual merits, and I encourage him and all his affected constituents to engage with the planning process at every stage as it continues.”

The energy minister said the project is at the pre-application planning stage and the application is expected to be submitted to the Planning Inspectorate between January and March 2025.

The MP for Buckingham had referenced Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge in August 2022 that the UK must protect its “best agricultural land.”

Writing in The Telegraph on food security and domestic food production, Mr. Sunak had said: “We must also protect our best agricultural land. On my watch, we will not lose swathes of our best farmland to solar farms.”

Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron became the first Western leader to publicly discuss deploying soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russia, triggering a stampede of NATO allies distancing themselves from the idea and threats of nuclear war by the Kremlin, but despite the blowback Macron insists his position is “measured”, and critics have even been accused of being Putin stooges.

Each of President Macron’s words on refusing to rule out the possibility of deploying NATO troops to Ukraine against Russia is weighed, measured, and thought through, the French leader insists as he weathers significant backlash from his comments on Monday. Macron insisted on Thursday that given the seriousness of the matter at hand, he had said what he meant and there was no space for ambiguity.

French broadcaster BFMTV reports on Macron’s doubling-down, that he said today in response to a question posed as he attended the opening of the Paris Olympic village for the forthcoming games: “These are sufficiently serious subjects. Each of the words I say on this matter is weighed, thought out and measured”.

On Monday, President Macron became the first NATO leader to speculate openly about actually sending Western troops to Ukraine to fight. Speaking as he hosted a crisis meeting for European leaders on Ukraine in Paris, the President said sending troops to Ukraine “could not be ruled out” and Western allies must “do whatever we can to obtain our objective”, defeating Russia.

On one hand, Macron acknowledged there was no “consensus” for war with Russia yet, but also noted how quickly attitudes had changed towards donations of equipment to Ukraine had shifted. Compared to the situation in 2024 where fighter jets, tanks, and cruise missiles had been given to Kyiv, Macron noted how Ukraine’s backers were initially only happy to hand over “sleeping bags and helmets”.

Macron’s bellicose rhetoric was quickly met with strong rebuttals from European and NATO leaders. A British defence ministry spokesman decried the plan as a “major escalation” and a spokesman for the Prime Ministers said there were no plans for a “large-scale deployment”. Germany was absolutely clear on the matter, responding to Macron that: “One thing is clear: There will be no ground troops from European states or NATO. That’s true.”

NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg was also clear Macron’s plan did not find favour, saying: “there are no plans for Nato combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”

Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron’s newest attack dog, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, vociferously defended his boss’s “belligerent” war rhetoric, going so far as to brand Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party as Putin’s “troops” for being against sending French troops to fight in Ukraine.

In what may be come to seen as the opening gambit of the French campaign for the European Parliament, two of the leading figures in the race, Marine Le Pen and Gabriel Attal, squared off in the National Assembly on Tuesday. Rather than the usual issues of campaign season, such as migration or the economy, this time it was President Macron’s warning that the soldiers of France may be called upon to fight in Ukraine against the Russians.

The suggestion from Macron that NATO troops would engage directly with the Russians — and potentially sparking a Third World War over relatively insignificant territories in the Donbas region — has not been received well, with Moscow threatening the potential of global annihilation, and allies backing away, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz both rejecting the idea that NATO troops would be sent into Ukraine.

For her part, former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said per Le Figaro: “The first duty of a country is to dispose of the lives of its soldiers only to defend its independence or to preserve its integrity or to commit itself, if, within the framework of an alliance, obligations [that] have been contracted .

“But there on external ground, we would have to intervene militarily with our soldiers? By affirming that sending ground troops was ‘not ruled out’ Emmanuel Macron took a further step towards co-belligerence, posing an existential risk to 70 million French people and more particularly to our armed forces.”

Quote:AP reports he spoke in a state-of-the-nation address ahead of next month’s election he’s all but certain to win, underlining his readiness to hold Russian gains in Ukraine at any cost.

In a thinly veiled reference to French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement earlier this week that the future deployment of Western ground troops to Ukraine is possible, Putin warned it would lead to “tragic” consequences for the countries who decide to do that, repeating earlier threats of igniting global nuclear conflagration.

As Breitbart News reported, Macron said sending Western soldiers to Ukraine “could not be ruled out” and that “we must do whatever we can to obtain our objective.”

“Nothing should be excluded. We will do everything that we can to make sure that Russia does not prevail”, Macron said, while expressing his belief Russia was preparing to take more territory not just in Ukraine, but in other countries too.

Putin noted while accusing Russia of plans to attack NATO allies in Europe, Western allies were “selecting targets for striking our territory and selecting the most efficient as they think striking assets and talking about the possibility of sending a NATO contingent to Ukraine.”

“We remember the fate of those who sent their troop contingents to the territory of our country,” the Russian leader said. “Now the consequences for the potential invaders will be far more tragic.”

“Don’t they understand it?” he continued, alleging that Western leaders are playing with options of deeper involvement in the conflict, as in a simulation. “Those people haven’t been through any tough challenges and they have forgotten what war means.”

Quote:European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen said there is an “urgent” need for EU member states to ramp up military capabilities while apparently pushing towards a collective European Army over the potential threat of a war with Russia.

Speaking before the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France on Wednesday, EU Cheif Ursula von der Leyen said that the bloc needs to begin working on a “European security architecture” in light of the alleged danger posed by Moscow, which she argued represented a threat not only on “the battlefield but across all our society”.

“The threats to our security, our prosperity and our way of life come in many different forms, and we all know them. Some of them are obvious, some of them are hazier on the surface. Be it tackling political interference, reducing our dangerous dependencies – a policy I have called de-risking – or be it eliminating hostile actors from our critical infrastructure. We Europeans must be on guard,” she said.

Therefore the EU boss called on member states to “move fast” in ramping up their military capabilities, urging for a “turbocharging our defence industrial capacity in the next five years.”

“The threat of war may not be imminent, but it is not impossible. The risks of war should not be overblown, but they should be prepared for. And that starts with the urgent need to rebuild, replenish and modernise Member States’ armed forces,” von der Leyen said.

The EU chief, who was largely seen as ‘falling upwards’ from her previous position as Angela Merkel’s Defence Minister to her current role, was previously criticised for leaving the German military in a “catastrophic” condition and therefore precipitated the present-day lack of military readiness in Europe.

And here is a German frigate becoming the laughing stock of Europe.

Quote:German frigate inadvertently attempted to shoot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone on Tuesday night, but the American aircraft was saved by the German’s missiles malfunctioning and falling harmlessly into the sea.

Serious issues are implied for NATO military cooperation and capability after it was revealed one of Germany’s top warships wasn’t informed a U.S. drone was operating in its area, attempted to shoot it down, and failed.

The Frigate Hessen was deployed to the Red Sea earlier this month as part of the European Union’s mission to defend merchant shipping from Houthi attacks — an operation distinct from the U.S.-UK-led coalition to do the same thing, but which Europe declined to join — and enjoyed its first successful engagement on Tuesday, splashing two Houthi drones on Tuesday. But shortly afterwards another unidentified drone flying in the Hessen’s patrol area was detected, and fired upon.

German tabloid newspaper Bild reports the ship had been in contact with allied nations operating in the region and none reported they had drones operating in the area as part of the process of deciding whether to fire at the unidentified aircraft. Later, it transpired the United States was secretly operating a ‘dark’ drone with its transponder turned off above the Hessen, but hadn’t told anyone.

A defence spokesman said of the attempt to take down the crypto-American drone, which was subsequently revealed to be a MQ-9 Reaper, reports Die Welt: “The case was resolved in that it was not a hostile drone, which only became clear afterwards.”

The Hessen launched two air defence missiles, but embarrassingly for Germany, both malfunctioned and fell into the sea. The Raytheon-made SM-2 missiles are the same kind carried aboard U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and are also used by a host of other NATO navies.

Bild emphasises the failure, even if it was a fortuitous one against an ally in this case, underlines the parlous state of the underfunded German military. Indeed, the embarrassment has a third dimension, as it was revealed this week that one of the kinds of ammunition carried by German Frigate Hessen is no longer made and cannot be replaced as it is used, meaning when the stock is exhausted, so is the ship.

News magazine Focus reports German parliamentarians who voted on whether to dispatch their nation’s warship to the Red Sea weren’t even aware of this limitation before it was deployed. The report did not specify which weapon system was particularly impacted by the degraded industrial capacity, but this is not a problem unique to Germany.

Quote:President Joe Biden ignored questions regarding the murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley, allegedly at the hands of an illegal alien released into the United States, while speaking to the media in Brownsville, Texas, near the southern border.

On Thursday, Biden spoke alongside Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at a Border Patrol station in Brownsville, mostly about the record-setting illegal immigration that has occurred on their watch.

When the press conference ended, a reporter asked Biden, “Mr. President, do you bear any responsibility for Laken Riley’s death?” Biden did not turn around to address the question and instead continued shaking hands with officials.
...
In October 2023, [Riley's killer] Ibarra and his brother, also an illegal alien who was released into the United States interior, were given a citation for shoplifting $200 worth of items at a Walmart in Athens. Ibarra failed to appear in court for the shoplifting charge and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest in December 2023.

Quote:Former President Donald J. Trump visited the small Texas border town of Eagle Pass on Thursday, offering his assessment of the current border situation. Trump began by describing the horrible murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia at Athens. The former President blamed the murder of Riley and other crime victims on what he referred to as the “Joe Biden Invasion.”

Trump’s remarks included details concerning his plan to regain control of the border as he lamented the deliberate destruction of the most secure border in history. The destruction occurred on January 21, 2021, with President Joe Biden canceling the former president’s strict and successful border policies. Trump’s statement described his assessment of the border, saying, “Three years ago, we had the most secure border in history, people weren’t coming because they knew they couldn’t get in, we weren’t promising free education, free medical, free everything.”

Trump went on to tout the progress towards securing the border under his administration, saying, “We ended catch and release, we built 571 miles of border wall, much more than I promised I would build.” Trump added, “We purchased another 200 miles (of wall materials), and they sold that — much of it for five cents on the dollar.”

Trump went on to describe the removal policies canceled on President Biden’s watch, including “Remain in Mexico,” Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA’s) to speed asylum adjudication while migrants wait in Central American northern triangle countries, and the Title 42 COVID-19 expulsion mechanism.

A statement from Texas Governor Greg Abbott followed Trump’s brief remarks. The governor touted the success of his border barrier project and the numerous narcotics seizures and migrant arrests through his Operation Lone Star initiatives.

According to Abbott’s office, as of February 22, the state has made more than 40,000 criminal arrests and seized more than 114 million lethal doses of Fentanyl. The operation also netted 9,811 illegal firearms and resulted in the arrest of more than 500,000 migrants along the Texas-Mexico border.

Abbott also described plans to construct an Army National Guard military base near Eagle Pass. The “fort” is designed to house 1,800 soldiers with an additional surge capacity of 500. According to Abbott, the facility will include a dining hall and space for welfare and recreation activities for the soldiers.

Quote:University of Florida has fired all of its employees related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), according to conservative activist and CRT expert Christopher Rufo.

“University of Florida has fired all employees related to DEI. The conservative counter-revolution has begun,” Rufo said in a Friday X/Twitter post.

In his post, Rufo included a screenshot of what appears to be an internal email sent from University of Florida officials to faculty and staff.

The email announced that the university is closing its “Office of the Chief Diversity Officer,” eliminating “DEI positions and administrative appointments,” and halting “DEI-focused contracts with outside vendors” in order to comply with the Florida Board of Governance’s regulation regarding prohibited expenditures.

University of Florida officials added that employees whose positions have been eliminated will receive twelve weeks of pay and can apply for a new job at the school in the meantime.

“HR will work to fast-track the interview process and provide an answer on all applications within the twelve-week window,” the email read.

Moreover, “the Office of the Chief Financial Officer will reallocate the approximately $5 million in funds,” previously used for DEI-related expenses, “into a faculty recruitment fund to be administered by the Office of the Provost,” the email added.

The email concluded by reassuring faculty that “the University of Florida is — and always will be — unwavering in our commitment to universal human dignity.”

“As we educate students by thoughtfully engaging a wide range of ideas and views, we will continue to foster a community of trust and respect for every member of the Gator Nation,” the email asserted.

Quote:American families struggling with high food prices due to inflation should eat cereal for dinner in order to save money, Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick, who has an estimated net worth of $15.7 million, said.

It’s no secret that American families are suffering due to inflation under the Biden administration.

Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick, a multi-millionaire, views the issue as a great opportunity to market his company’s brand, suggesting that cash-strapped families eat “cereal for dinner.”

“The cereal category has always been quite affordable, and it tends to be a great destination when consumers are under pressure,” Pilnick told CNBC in a recent interview.

Pilnick went on to suggest that the fact that consumers are currently under financial pressure is a good marketing opportunity for Kellogg’s.

“Some of the things that we’re doing is, first, messaging,” the Kellogg’s CEO said. “We have to reach the consumer where they are. So we’re advertising about cereal for dinner.”

“If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable,” he added.

So who cares about not eating some salad or chicken?  
If you've got cereal, that's all you need, according to this moron.

Quote:Scholz has been accused of abusing intelligence and being a bad ally by angry NATO politicians after his remarks about the level of involvement he claims there is of the British and French in the deployment of the Storm Shadow / SCALP cruise missiles they have given to Ukraine, and which have been deployed with devastating effect.

Ukraine continues to demand Germany hand over its stock of Taurus bunker-buster cruise missiles to help it fight Russia. Indeed, the powerful and long-range weapon which Berlin has proven resistant to supply has been the subject of debate in Germany dragging on now for several months. Chancellor Olaf Scholz insists providing the weapon, which has the endurance to strike deep into Russian areas would represent an irresponsible escalation of the war and make Germany a party to the conflict in a way its previous donations of weapon systems and ammunition had not.

Answering questions on the subject again this week, Chancellor Scholz developed his reasoning for refusing the weapon by stating it was of such complexity there would necessarily have to be German soldiers present in Ukraine to program and set up the weapon before it could be fired. Scholz said this week: “What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can’t be done in Germany. Everyone who has dealt with this system knows that”.

Indeed, he doubled down on this on Friday: “I will not support any decision that would somehow involve German soldiers in a military operation related to Russia’s terrible war against Ukraine”.

It is a little-discussed fact that many NATO states have soldiers in Ukraine, but these troops are generally present only to protect the embassies of those nations in Kyiv, and to safeguard diplomatic staff. In some cases they have additional roles: the United States has been open about the fact it has a limited presence of soldiers who track what happens to the enormous amounts of high-tech weapons systems the West gives to Ukraine, for the sake of accountability. Indeed, that presence was re-confirmed only this week by John Kirby.

In the case of the United Kingdom, an apparently off-guard remark by a senior military officer in 2022 revealed there may be more going on behind the scenes, the Lieutenant General saying there had been “discreet operations in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk”. The British government later strongly denied having any active troops in Ukraine, however, warning against “taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread disinformation”.
...
Figures from the United Kingdom and within Germany itself have lashed out at Scholz for, it is alleged, throwing his allies under the bus to try and diffuse domestic political tension over his own issues.

Quote:“For Vladimir Putin, victory in Ukraine may run through Texas’ Rio Grande Valley,” says the March 1 AP report, adding:

In recent weeks, Russian state media and online accounts tied to the Kremlin have spread and amplified misleading and incendiary content about U.S. immigration and border security. The campaign seems crafted to stoke outrage and polarization before the 2024 election for the White House, and experts who study Russian disinformation say Americans can expect more to come as Putin looks to weaken support for Ukraine and cut off a vital supply of aid.

The vague claim of foreign influence operations is humdrum because U.S. citizens know that many nations for decades have used media to influence U.S. attitudes.

But the claim is also politically skewed. For example, the article includes many vague terms — “seems,” “misleading,” and “may” — as it suggests that U.S. migration politics are influenced by Russia. But it provides no means to gauge the scale or impact of Russian influence or spending on American immigration politics.

The AP report described Russian reports about a Texas protest and growing demands for a border wall while admitting that “some [Russian] claims were posted by accounts with tiny audiences; others were made by state media sites with millions of followers.”
...
The AP article declared that Russian media reports are inaccurate but provided no links or quotes so that Americans could verify the AP’s reasonable claim:

In social media posts, online videos and stories on websites, these accounts misstate the impact of immigration, highlight stories about crimes committed by immigrants, and warn of dire consequences if the U.S. doesn’t crack down at its border with Mexico. Many are misleading, filled with cherry-picked data or debunked rumors.

The AP did cite Russian coverage about the murder of an American, allegedly by a Venezuelan migrant: “This week the accounts seized on the recent death of a Georgia nursing student and the arrest of a Venezuelan man who had entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.”

Quote:On Tuesday evening there were at least three explosions at homes in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, with the phrase “War” being graffitied on the walls of two of the locations struck by apparent bombings, Der Telegraph reported.

Police have said that they believe the explosions were linked to a conflict over the killing of 26-year rapper-old Danzel Silos, also known by his stage name Bigidagoe, who was shot and killed in the Sloterdijk area of Amsterdam.

Silos was reportedly attending a party with friends on Saturday evening. Upon leaving the event, he was shot by an attacker in the parking lot. Although he was rushed to hospital, the rapper ultimately died of his injuries.

Bigidagoe had a long history of being involved in crime in the Netherlands, with authorities believing that much of his lavish lifestyle had been a result of the cocaine trade. In August of 2020, he was shot in Amsterdam, however, he recovered from the previous shooting.

Last year, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service called for a four-year prison sentence against Silos over involvement in an alleged kidnapping of rival rapper “Kobus L”, however, the case was not ruled on before his death.

In the wake of the killing, three explosions at residential addresses rocked Amsterdam, with suspected bombings going off on Mastbos, Populierenweg, and Kelbergen streets in the late hours of Tuesday evening into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Quote:Having discovered issues in British society at the very last possible moment when, after over a decade in charge, it is probably now too late to do much about it the leader of the UK’s Conservative government has expressed concern about intimidating factions impacting politics. Rishi Sunak’s comments followed now months of regular Gaza protests in London and other cities, with emboldened protesters also launching what the BBC called “intimidatory protest[s] at MPs’ homes”.

The debate about safety and security of Members of Parliament, already serious after two members of Parliament were killed by extremists in the past ten years, has been given new prominence by increased tensions over the Israel-Gaza war. The speaker of the House of Commons claimed last week he was forced to change the usual business of the house to protect its elected members from becoming the victims of terrorist attacks.

For the Prime Minister, this febrile environment — which he has presided over — is a problem. Now seeking a solution, Sunak summoned police bosses and is reported to have told them:

There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule. And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.

We simply cannot allow this pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behaviour which is, as far as anyone can see, intended to shout down free debate and stop elected representatives doing their job.

That is simply undemocratic… I am going to do whatever it requires to protect our democracy and our values that we all hold dear. That is what the public expect. It is fundamental to our democratic system. And also it is vital for maintaining public confidence in the police.

Sunak said he wanted extra police patrols and a guaranteed minimum police response if a Member of Parliament received a threat, saying this was what the public expected in a democracy and in order to have faith in the police. He did not, however, take the time to publicly reflect on what changes in Britain the policies of the Conservative Party since 2010 might have, inadvertently or not, driven changes in society to produce these effects.

Shortly after Sunak’s lamenting remarks about the damage to democracy being done on his watch, allegations of serious intimidation including death threats were made about the conduct of the Rochdale by-election on Thursday. A man was arrested during the campaign, and the Reform UK Party has published a complaint about the conduct of some candidates and campaigners.

Quote:A Scandinavian Airlines medical evacuation plane arrived on Friday in Malaysia’s northern resort island of Langkawi, where the Norwegian king is in hospital and being treated for an infection.

King Harald V, Europe’s oldest monarch at 87, was hospitalized after he fell ill during a vacation, the royal palace in Oslo announced on Tuesday. There were no details of his illness. His son, Crown Prince Haakon, has said his father’s condition was improving and that he needed rest before being brought back.

Norwegian TV2 said that a Scandinavian aircraft with the tail number LN-RPJ took off from Oslo Airport on Thursday, The Boeing 737-700 airline, which has previously been used as a flying ambulance, landed in Langkawi on Friday.

The royal house said Friday in a brief statement that the monarch’s condition was improving but he would remain “in hospital for a few more days for treatment and rest before returning home.”

Quote:India and South Africa on Wednesday blocked the passage of a major investment agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Abu Dhabi, potentially scuttling hundreds of billions of dollars in investments — many of them slated for developing countries of the “Global South,” which India frequently claims to champion.

A trade delegate from a Western nation told Reuters it seemed “ironic that India and South Africa stand in the way of something with such manifest benefits for developing countries.”

The “something” in question is the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFD), introduced at the WTO by Chile and South Korea, with support from China. Depending on how they are implemented, the projects covered by the IFD would be worth between $200 billion and $800 billion.

The WTO has a rule that any of the 164 member nations can block an agreement by filing a formal objection. India and South Africa exercised that option, while 123 of the other members affirmatively supported the IFD.

India filed its objection because it would compromise the “multilateral” nature of the WTO by imposing binding regulations and agreements on all members. Indian officials suggested the nations eager to participate in the IFD could negotiate among themselves and reach an agreement outside the World Trade Organization.

India contends that an agreement such as the IFD must be adopted through a specific set of WTO procedures that would require the unanimous agreement of all members. IFD co-sponsor South Korea seemingly agreed with that point at the Abu Dhabi conference and said WTO leaders are trying to persuade India and South Africa to withdraw their objections.

Quote:Prosecutors charged Argentina’s socialist former President Alberto Fernández on Thursday with embezzlement of funds as part of an investigation into irregularities in insurance contracting allegedly committed during his administration, which ended in December.

Fernández stands accused of having allegedly misappropriated funds by favoring certain brokers to mediate the management of insurance contracts for official dependencies during his government.

In addition to Fernández, the former CEO of the Nación Seguros insurance company Alberto Pagliano and broker Héctor Martínez Sosa – husband of the former president’s private secretary – also stand accused.

Argentine newspaper La Nación reported on Friday that before Fernández took office, the Argentine National Social Security Administration was under a self-insurance program, but in 2021, the former president ordered that all state insurance should be channeled through Nación Seguros, a company that contracted a broker and private companies.

The ongoing graft probe was launched in response to an extensive report published by the Argentine newspaper Clarín on February 24. The report revealed that Nación Seguros subcontracted an intermediate insurance company for Argentina’s ANSES Social Security office that netted a 17-percent benefit in commissions, an amount that is “three times higher than that of the market.”

The total commission earnings, according to Clarín, are estimated at 300 million Argentine pesos per month (roughly $356,000) and 20 billion pesos per year (roughly $23.7 million).

Following the report’s publication, Argentine lawyer Silvina Martínez filed a formal complaint on Wednesday regarding “alleged irregularities in the hiring of a broker and private companies” to mediate in the management of insurance in official agencies during Fernández’s government, leading to the charges.

Quote:The government of El Salvador banned all gender ideology content from the nation’s public school system, education minister José Mauricio Pineda announced this week.

“Confirmed: We have removed every use or trace of gender ideology from public schools,” Pineda said on Wednesday in a social media post, without giving more specifics.

The minister made the confirmation shortly after his office issued a clarification on social media this week stating that gender ideology content, which previous administrations had inserted into curricula, no longer appeared in any “guides, books and other educational materials” in schools. The clarification was issued in response to a local group known as “Salvadoras against gender ideology,” which claimed that gender ideology content was being taught to children in schools.

Following Minister Pineda’s announcement, the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Gráfica reported on Thursday that it had obtained a copy of a memorandum issued by the Salvadoran Education Ministry, in which Pineda stressed that the Ministry established its position against gender ideology in 2022.

In the memorandum, Pineda states:

Care has been taken to ensure that all educational materials and programs, teaching resources, lesson plans, textbooks, administrative documents, websites, learning guides, multimedia objects and other related documentation does not contain or allude to this ideology, completely disassociating it from the work of this ministry.

The minister called on the directors, managers, chiefs, and other staff to “take care of the integral education of our students,” asking them to abide by the provisions against gender ideology content “to avoid punitive measures that may result in the termination of their functions, according to due process.”

Last week, during his participation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), President Nayib Bukele touched upon the subject of gender ideology when Catalina Stubbe, the Hispanic coordinator of the Moms for Liberty organization, asked him about it. Bukele described the practice of teaching gender ideology to kids as an “attempt to destroy future generations.”

Quote:Joe Biden got a $40,000 check in 2017 from China funds that originated from a Biden family deal with a CCP-linked company, CEFC China Energy Co., James Biden admitted to the House impeachment inquiry on February 21, according to a transcript reviewed by Breitbart News.

The acknowledgment raises questions about Joe Biden’s previous claims that his family never made money from China.

James Biden maintained his contention that the $40,000 check was allegedly a repayment to satisfy a prior loan, while his lawyer Paul Fishman added that “money’s fungible,” a statement that underscores the obscurity of the Biden business.

Investigators reminded James that his bank account “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”

Subpoenaed bank records show James Biden’s bank account only had about $50 before the infusion of cash from a web of entities just days beforehand.

“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James Biden.

“CEFC,” the president’s brother admitted.

Hunter Biden maintained a different story during his deposition on Wednesday. Hunter denied his father received any money sourced from the CEFC China deal, despite investigators’ tracing of funds used to pay Joe Biden $40,000 in September 2017.

Quote:1.) Biden could not recall texting a Chinese business partner in 2017 when he said, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” However, Hunter said in his deposition that he was certain Joe was not next to him when sending the text.

2.) Biden could not recall sending a message to Tony Bobulinski, James Gilliar, and Rob Walker. Hunter stated in the message that “my chairman gave an emphatic no” regarding Tony Bobulinski’s suggested board structure to the CEFC China Energy Co. deal. However, Hunter did recall that the “chairman” he referenced was CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming.

3.) Biden claims the “chairman” in the message was not Joe Biden. Hunter could not explain why Rob Walker, his friend and business partner of over two decades, told the inquiry the “chairman” that Hunter referenced was Joe Biden.

4.) Biden claimed that he never fully read an email from James Gilliar regarding the equity structure of a joint venture with CEFC in which it was suggested that Hunter Biden hold 10 percent equity for “the big guy.” Nevertheless, Hunter did respond to that email without opposing or questioning the ten percent stake for “the big guy.”

5.) Hunter could not confirm or deny that Joe Biden was “the big guy.” Hunter did, however, deny Joe Biden was slotted for a ten percent cut of the deal. “The agreement, the executed agreement, the executed agreement to create a company that was never operated, that’s what happened. That’s the evidence you have. You have the evidence of the executed agreement between Hudson West Three, me, and Mr. Ye. You have that. Nothing to do with my dad, zero,” Hunter said.

Quote:Chao, who served as CEO of the New York-based dry bulk shipping company Foremost Group, was “found dead in her sinking vehicle in a pond on a ranch in Johnson City, near Austin, on Feb. 11,” according to the New York Post. Police have since been investigating her death as a possible crime. The ranch whereupon her car crashed is owned by a corporation connected to Chao’s husband, Jim Breyer. Per Fox Business:

A Blanco County Sheriff’s Office statement to the Austin American-Statesman Thursday said emergency medical services personnel attempted to save her, but that Chao “succumbed from being under the water.”

Several media reports say a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton from BCSO details the crash “was not a typical accident.”

Chao was chair and CEO of Foremost Group, a company founded by her parents in 1964 in New York. She worked her way up to leading the company in 2018, previously serving as vice president, concentrating on ship operations and ship management, and later promoted to senior vice president with additional responsibilities, according to Foremost Group’s website.

Quote:Politicians and law enforcement figures in Houston are dealing with the massive blowback after an audit revealed that for at least eight years, authorities had “suspended” and not investigated more than 260,000 criminal cases. Officials say a lack of manpower led to the suspension of about 10 percent of the crimes reported. The revelations led to various groups calling for the firing of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.

The issue first began earlier this month when information from an internal audit revealed that thousands of sexual assault cases had been suspended from investigations and simply filed as not enough manpower.

Last week, Finner held a news conference where he announced the result of an audit that revealed that since 2016, there had been 4,017 sexual assault cases that his department had failed to investigate. In the aftermath of that initial revelation, Finner claimed to have assigned 32 investigators to the sexual crimes division as they work to reopen those cases.

Breitbart Texas’ Bob Price joined the Fox 26 Houston What’s Your Point with Greg Groogan talk show on Sunday to discuss the issue of the more than 4,000 sexual assault investigations that were found to be suspended in the audit:

“This is indicative of a nationwide effort to defund police, which has led to people not wanting to be police officers anymore,” Price said. “The numbers are way down nationwide for officers, whether it’s in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, and here in Houston. It’s just obscene, the lack of available resources for cases like this that are extremely important to the survivors of these attacks.”

The scandal over the suspended investigations worsened this week when Finner announced that since 2016, his department had suspended more than 264,000 cases, or 10 percent of all the crimes committed in Houston during that time frame. The statement revealed that of the total, about 100,000 of those crimes were property crimes.

Quote:Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Mike Collins (R-GA) seek answers from the Biden Administration over its abuse of parole authority after a paroled alien allegedly murdered 22-year-old Laken Riley.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday, Roy and Collins request answers on the administration’s parole authority “which has been used to release over one million aliens into the United States” since Biden’s inauguration, writing that its policy “raises serious concerns regarding the rule of law, our national sovereignty, and the safety and wellbeing of the American people.”

The suspect in Riley’s murder, Jose Antonio Ibarra, is a Venezuelan national who entered the United States after crossing the southern border in September 2022. DHS paroled and released him into the United States as part of its broader “catch and release” program. Ibarra was arrested only months later in New York City for endangering a 5-year-old child, but due to that city’s sanctuary policies, Ibarra was released from jail rather than being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Roy and Collins argue that parole authority may only be used on a case-by-case basis, and that the blanket abuse by the Biden Administration – as part of its broader open borders agenda – is a direct contributor to the crime wave flooding the United States that resulted in Riley’s murder.

“Laken Riley had her life tragically cut short by an illegal migrant who was paroled into this country instead of being detained like the law requires,” Roy said.

Quote:The apartment complex plan — derisively labeled the “Taj Mahal” for illegals — took a lot of heat from residents of Brunswick during a February 20 city council meeting. The locals were upset over the fact that the same apartments that cost citizens between $1,800 and $2,300 a month were going to be handed out to illegals for free.

“You have all these houses being built. That’s discrimination, in my eyes,” Maine resident George Bernier said, according to the Daily Mail. “Am I too white? Is that what it is? Do I work too much? What’s the discrimination factor?”

“How can we give housing to anyone other than our Brunswick residents first?” he indignantly asked.

Fellow resident Lisa Trombley added that the state is neglecting the needs of taxpaying citizens and acting in favor of illegals.

“You need to take a look at the needs of our current residents,” Trombley said. “If we don’t have a plan to take care of the residents, we shouldn’t be inviting them to come. No matter where they are coming from, we can’t afford to do it.”

Many of the brand-new buildings were completed in 2023, and the first began taking residents in December.

The project was initially funded by a six-million-dollar program, which the state housing authority, MaineHousing, initiated.

Migrants have already filled some of the housing units:

The plan even came to the attention of Donald Trump Jr., who blasted it while campaigning for his father.

Quote:During an interview with 1010 WINS on Friday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) discussed changing the city’s sanctuary city laws and stated that “the goal is not to deport someone who breaks the law. You just take an apple off an apple stand. That’s breaking the law, no one is calling for them to be deported.”

Adams said, “I want to be clear that the goal is not to deport someone who breaks the law. You just take an apple off an apple stand. That’s breaking the law, no one is calling for them to be deported. I am talking about violent, repeated offenders. Our job is to apprehend them, the prosecutor’s job is to prosecute. And I believe the federal government’s job is to deport them after they serve their time here, because if you don’t have them serve their time, they go back out and do the crimes again. It doesn’t matter if you’re a migrant or asylum seeker or you’re long term New Yorkers, you should not victimize, violently, New Yorkers in this city. And I stand by that, and we’re going to look at what authority we have to do anything to look at those dangerous individuals who are really harming also migrants and asylum seekers. The overwhelming number of migrants and asylum seekers that are here are trying to take that next step on the journey in America, but there’s a small number that are violent, and I don’t believe they should have the right to stay in our city after they serve their time.”

Adams added that his team is looking at what power he has to get “violent people off the streets.”

Quote:The law will go into effect on July 1.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious death, that was what, nearly five years ago, obviously did nothing to put to rest the many, many questions about many misdeeds and a special plea deal that took place before your time as governor in Florida,” FNC host Sean Hannity said. “We could be a bit closer to some answers because you’re supporting legislation and you signed legislation that will allow for the release of the currently secret grand jury testimony from his original case in the state. Boy, from all the detail tells that I have read about this, wow, that had to be the plea deal of all plea deals.”

“Unbelievable what happened,” DeSantis replied. “And you know, this was involved in federal jurisdiction at the time and the feds worked to engineer this plea deal with the prosecutor in Palm Beach County, and this happened, you know, 15, 20 years ago. When I became governor we launched a criminal investigation and exactly what happened. How did he get this sweetheart deal? But what we ran into was grand jury secrecy laws. And that is true in Florida. If you testify in front of a grand jury, it’s secret, it’s got to be kept secret, and so, and then people tried to petition to get it released under some of the exceptions, and all those court cases failed.”

“So the Florida legislature passed legislation now which authorizes the release of all those grand jury files,” he continued. “And so, I signed it into law this week. That law will become effective on July 1. Finally, the public is going to be able to get answers, but we had a few of the they’re now women, they’re in their 30s, but they were teenagers. A lot of them I think were at the time and this has been something that stayed with them for decades and they never got any justice.”

Quote:Kellogg’s is facing a boycott after its CEO suggested that cash-strapped families suffering under inflation should eat “cereal for dinner.”

Outraged consumers are planning to boycott Kellogg’s from April 1 to June 30 to send the company a message during the second quarter of its fiscal year, as well as pressure Kellogg’s to lower its prices, according to a report by MarketWatch.

The calls for a boycott come after Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick said that families worried about inflation should eat “cereal for dinner,” and even suggested that such woes are a good marketing opportunity for Kellogg’s, telling CNBC that cereal “tends to be a great destination when consumers are under pressure.”

“Some of the things that we’re doing is, first, messaging,” the Kellogg’s CEO said. “We have to reach the consumer where they are. So we’re advertising about cereal for dinner.”
...
Kellogg’s, however, is one of the companies that has raised prices in the past two years, helping fuel higher-than-normal inflation, consumer advocates pointed out.

“Kellogg’s CEO found an angle to exploit an industry-driven food-insecurity crisis to bulk up his company’s profits, but everyday families should not have to make these kinds of choices in the first place,” Liz Zelnick, director of the economic security and corporate power program at Accountable.US, a left-leaning consumer advocacy group, told MarketWatch.

A Kellogg’s spokesperson also confirmed to MarketWatch that the company’s last major price increase was March 2023.

Additionally, the breakfast company has been advertising the concept of cereal for dinner since the summer off 2022, when inflation reached a 40-year high.

Quote:Three people were killed when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa overnight, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said Saturday.

A further eight people sustained injuries, authorities said.

Ukraine´s Armed Forces reported that the Odesa region was attacked by eight drones, of which seven were shot down by air defenses.

Across the country more widely, air defenses shot down 14 of 17 drones launched against Ukraine, according to the country’s Armed Forces.

Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov reported Saturday morning that over 20 settlements in the eastern Ukrainian province had sustained Russian artillery and mortar attacks, while high-rise buildings in the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, were damaged by a drone attack.

He said that there were no casualties, but that three people suffered an “acute stress reaction.”

Quote:A drone crashed into an apartment building in St. Petersburg Saturday morning, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Six people received medical help after the explosion rocked the building, the agency said, citing the press service of the city’s health care committee.

The Mash news site said that the apartment building was hit by a Ukrainian drone. The Associated Press could not verify this claim.

The site published videos appearing to show the moment the apartment building was struck, showing a strong flash of light engulfing one side of the building and fragments of debris flying into the air. Another video showed car alarms going off.

Quote:Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned that Islamist and “far-right” extremism “are trying to tear us apart” in an impromptu speech from Downing Street on Friday evening in the wake of leftist populist George Galloway winning the by-election in Rochdale.

Speaking from the steps of Number 10, Sunak said that there has been a “shocking increase” in extremist activity on the streets of Britain following the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel and warned that “democracy itself is a target”.

“I fear that our great achievement in building the world’s most successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy is being deliberately undermined. There are forces here at home trying to tear us apart,” the prime minister said.

Since October 7th, major cities in the UK like London have seen persistent pro-Palestinian protests featuring radical rhetoric, including the justification of the terror attacks and genocidal calls against Israel. There has also been increased security for members of parliament over concerns of Islamist attacks, and the speaker of the House of Commons claimed last week that he was forced into breaking protocol because he wanted to protect parliamentarians from violent reprisals.

Yet, despite the apparent one-sidedness of the extremist threat, Sunak made sure to inlcude both the “far-right’ and Islamist groups in his speech, saying: “Islamist extremists and the far right feed off and embolden each other. They are equally desperate to pretend that their violence is somehow justified when actually these groups are two sides of the same extremist coin.

“Neither group accept that change in our country can only come through the peaceful democratic process. Both loathe the pluralist, modern country we are. Both want to set Briton against Briton to weaponise the evils of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred for their own ends.”

Quote:Mourners gathered for the funeral of opposition leader Alexei Navalny faced a heavy police presence in Moscow on Friday.

Navalny’s supporters chanted “We are not afraid!” as strongman Vladimir Putin’s security forces encircled them, while his widow Yulia Navalnaya posted a farewell on social media in which she promised to carry on his work.

“I don’t know if I can handle it or not, but I will try,” Yulia said in her public farewell to Alexei, who died under murky circumstances in an Arctic prison camp at the age of 47 on February 16.

Prison officials listed the cause of his demise as “sudden death syndrome,” but Navalny’s friends and supporters believe he was murdered on Putin’s orders, possibly with the same nerve agent Russian operatives used against him in 2020.

Yulia Navalnaya told her fallen husband she would “try to make you up there happy for me and proud of me.” She described her marriage as “26 years of absolute happiness,” even over the past three years, as Alexei languished in a series of prisons on dubious embezzlement and extremism charges.

The Kremlin warned Russians against attending “spontaneous memorials” for Navalny, but thousands turned out to remember him anyway. Squads of heavily armed police deployed to the cemetery where Navalny was laid to rest, as well as public facilities and train stations. The area was surrounded by barricades, metal detectors, and security cameras. Reporters covering the event said mobile phone services were disrupted in the area.

A line half a mile long formed outside the Mother of God Quench My Sorrows church in Moscow on Friday for Navalny’s funeral, after which he was interred in the Borisovskoye cemetery. The church is located in a district where Navalny once lived.

Quote:A group of cartel gunmen used land mines and weaponized drones in a series of ambush-style attacks where they killed at least four Mexican Army soldiers and injured several others. The gunmen managed to escape.

The attacks took place on Thursday afternoon in the rural areas of Michoacán near the town of Tepalcatepec, a region known for its heavy cartel presence by gunmen from both Cartel Jalisco New Generation and their rivals with Carteles Unidos, a group of smaller organizations including self-defense groups, Los Viagras, La Familia and others that banded together.

A convoy of Mexican soldiers was traveling along a dirt road when cartel gunmen set off a series of land mines. The cartels also began using drones to drop explosives on the soldiers. Gunmen hiding in the brush started firing at the soldiers.

The troops tried to fight off the attack and called for reinforcements. The gunmen managed to escape. Gunmen then used other land mines and drones to attack additional forces in subsequent attacks.

Mexican authorities are acknowledging that four soldiers died and nine others sustained serious injuries. Unofficial information points to several other fatalities.

Quote:The sinking of the Rubymar comes as shipping through the crucial waterway for cargo and energy shipments moving from Asia and the Middle East to Europe has been affected by the Houthi attacks.

Already, many ships have turned away from the route. The sinking could see further detours and higher insurance rates put on vessels plying the waterway – potentially driving up global inflation and affecting aid shipments to the region.

The Belize-flagged Rubymar had been drifting northward after being struck by a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile on Feb. 18 in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial waterway linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Yemen’s internationally recognized government, as well as a regional military official, confirmed the ship sank. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as no authorization was given to speak to journalists about the incident.

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, which watches over Mideast waterways, separately acknowledged the Rubymar’s sinking Saturday afternoon.

The Rubymar’s Beirut-based manager could not be immediately reached for comment.

Yemen’s exiled government, which has been backed by a Saudi-led coalition since 2015, said the Rubymar sank late Friday as stormy weather took hold over the Red Sea. The vessel had been abandoned for 12 days after the attack, though plans had been made to try and tow the ship to a safe port.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who had falsely claimed the ship sank almost instantly after the attack, did not immediately acknowledge the ship’s sinking.

Quote:The leader of the Yemeni terrorist organization Ansarallah, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, ominously promised “surprises” in a speech on Thursday for American and allied forces attempting to contain his group’s campaign to disrupt global commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The Houthis, as Ansarallah is commonly known, declared war on Israel in October as a gesture of solidarity with the Sunni jihadist organization Hamas in the aftermath of Hamas’s mass murder spree in Israel that month, killing an estimated 1,200 and destroying entire residential communities. In November, the Houthis announced they would begin striking commercial ships transiting through the nearby Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, vowing only to persecute ships facilitating business with Israel.

They expanded their targets to include American and British ships following the announcement that the two militaries would engage in airstrikes in Yemen to degrade the Houthis’ ability to disrupt shipping. In reality, however, the Houthis have bombed a growing number of ships with no clear relationship to Israel, Britain, or America, resulting in skyrocketing shipping rates and several major shipping companies avoiding the region altogether.

Houthi, the leader of the Shiite Houthi terror gang, claimed in his address to Yemen on Thursday that his group had “launched 384 missiles and drones at the ships that were moving towards the occupying regime [Israel],” attacking 54 ships.

He boasted that the attacks would continue and airstrikes by U.S. and U.K. forces had done nothing to prevent them, according to a translation of his remarks by the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV.

Quote:Both the head of Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued desperate pleas this week urging Iranians to vote in Friday’s sham election, in which hand-picked regime loyalists with vie for seats in the country’s parliament and “Assembly of Experts.”

The latter is of particular importance for the ongoing survival of the regime as it has the power to designate the next “supreme leader” and Khamenei, at 84, could potentially vacate the position at any time.

Iran’s elections are neither free nor fair, as a regime-controlled “Guardian Council” vets and approves all candidates, ensuring that no legitimate dissident voices appear on the ballot. As a result, Iranians tend to have minimal enthusiasm for their elections. This year could potentially mark a record low for Iranian election turnout, however, as this election is the first since the regime’s killing of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman accused of wearing her government-mandated hijab inappropriately and beaten to death in 2022. Amini’s death triggered widespread protests throughout Iran, which the regime responded to with a wave of police brutality.

Khamenei appealed to his captive electorate in an event on Wednesday in which he claimed that voting in the sham elections was necessary for “national security.”

“Strong and fervent elections constitute one of the pillars of running the country properly,” Khamenei declared, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV. “If we can show the world that the nation is present in the country’s critical and decisive scenes, we have saved and moved the country forward.”

“National power supports national security. If the enemy feels that you are not capable, [and] the Iranian nation has no power, they will threaten your security in every way,” the dictator continued. “National security is all that matters. If there is no security, there remains nothing [else]. The enemy is opposed to our national power. Therefore, they oppose everything that is a manifestation of national power, including elections.”

Khamenei claimed that elections should not be about “factions and groups” but rather, “national interests.”

Quote:The meeting of World Trade Organization (WTO) ministers in Abu Dhabi ran into a fifth day on Friday as most major issues remained deadlocked.

Some delegates feared the meeting could end without accomplishing anything noteworthy, although the first breakthrough was announced on Friday afternoon: a tentative agreement to extend the moratorium on e-commerce tariffs.

“I think we’re leaving here empty-handed,” one pessimistic delegate told Reuters on Friday, as many ministers from the WTO’s 164 member nations began returning home.

The WTO issued a memorandum warning members that “time is running out” to reach meaningful agreements. Reuters spotted delegates rushing about, gulping coffee, and banging away on their smartphones. One of them “mimed pulling the pin out of a hand grenade.”

The far-left New York Times (NYT) applauded the WTO for trying something different by treating the ministerial meeting as a genuine conference where delegates “started by listening to one another’s interests and goals” instead of just showing up with lists of demands and waiting for the haggling and horse-trading to commence.

The NYT quoted upbeat attendees who thought plenty of progress was made on regulatory reform, even as the headlines from Abu Dhabi spoke of political deadlock and few significant agreements signed.

Quote:President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States would start to deliver relief supplies from the air into Gaza, a day after the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians at an aid convoy.

“We need to do more, and the United States will do more,” Biden told reporters at the White House at the start of a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

“In the coming days we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing air drops of additional food and supplies,” Biden said in the Oval Office.

The United States would also look at a possible “marine corridor” to deliver large amounts of aid into Gaza, where residents face dire shortages of food, water and medicine, Biden said.

The US president added that he would “insist” that ally Israel, which has pounded the Palestinian territory since the October 7 Hamas attacks, let in more aid trucks.

“No excuses, because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere near enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line,” Biden added.

During his remarks Biden twice said Ukraine, but the White House confirmed he meant Gaza.

Biden said Thursday’s aid convoy deaths happened because Gazans were “caught in a terrible war, unable to feed their families — and you saw the response when they tried to get aid.”

Biden added that “hopefully we’ll know shortly” on the progress of negotiations towards a six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The United States has backed Israel since the October 7 attacks and supplied it with weapons, but it has also urged its ally to reduce Palestinian civilian deaths, saying they are much too high.

Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stated that if you simply drop food aid into Gaza, it will be stolen by Hamas.

Kristof stated, “So, one reason for the tragedy yesterday was that Israel apparently did not want to have food aid delivered through UNRWA, the U.N. organization that it has made a lot of allegations against and that may well have had twelve people participate in the October 7 attacks. It has also been reluctant to work with traditional aid agencies. And so, it apparently had contractors protected by Israeli tanks try to go in. And look, the people who know how to deliver aid are those aid agencies, including UNRWA. They have that — those people on the ground, that network. And what you need to make airdrops work…is also that group — those people on the ground who collect pallets when they’re dropped, who protect it from just some random gunman seizing it. If you just drop food aid, who’s going to get it? It’s going to be Hamas, not the most vulnerable people.”

Kristof also argued that President Joe Biden should put more pressure on Israel on aid and criticized him for pausing funding for UNRWA.

Quote:Palestinian Islamic Jihad is calling for Ramadan to be a “month of terror” and seeks to escalate attacks in the West Bank and Gaza. In a recent speech, Abu Hamza, the spokesman for PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades, said he wants Arab countries in the region and pro-Iranian groups to continue to “unify” various arenas and fronts against Israel.

This is the latest indication that terrorist groups plan to seek an escalation in hostilities over the next month. Hamza’s remarks were published by Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel, which is pro-Iranian and frequently highlights Hamas and Hezbollah attacks.
...
The terrorist group’s comments are also linked to those made by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who has called for an escalation of hostilities during Ramadan.

Ramadan is set to begin on March 10, when the new moon heralds the arrival of the new month on the lunar calendar.

Arab and Muslim states have fought many wars on Ramadan, notably the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Egyptian soldiers broke their fasts and crossed the Suez Canal.

But the Biden administration is treating Ramadan with great care, describing it as a traditional time of peace and hoping to fashion a hostage release deal before it begins.

Last week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby had this exchange with reporters at the White House:

Q Thank you so much, John. I’ll start with Israel then move on to Ukraine. You just said it’s not about trying to beat the clock to Ramadan, in terms of a ceasefire. But how concerned is the administration about the possibility of escalation during Ramadan, during this holy month, and how, you know, it’s going to be seen for U.S.-backed troops to be attacking Muslim —

MR. KIRBY: We’re mindful of the sensity — sensitivities, of course, around the month of Ramadan and the import- — the spiritual importance of that to — to the — to the Muslim world. Of course, we understand that.

What — what we don’t want us — we — we want to see this temporary ceasefire in place as soon as possible. And, again, if we can get the agreement for several weeks, it would take you through Ramadan anyway.

The clock that we’re worried about is the — the hostages. We can only assume that they are being held in abhorrent conditions and that their health is at risk, their lives are at risk. We want to get them ba- — out as soon as possible.

Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz said that Ramadan would be the deadline for a hostage deal, and warned that Israel will invade the southern Gaza town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border, if Hamas does not agree to a deal.

Quote:In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Kemp described the IDF’s military operations in Gaza thus far as having been “remarkable.”

“I think the success of their campaign so far will be studied by military professionals for a long time to come,” he said. “They’ve achieved, I think, much more than they expected [and] with far fewer casualties than they feared on their own side.”

Gaza Challenges

The former commander, who led British forces in Afghanistan in 2003 and later joined the committee supervising the country’s intelligence services, listed three reasons why the ground offensive has taken nearly four months, which he deemed a relatively long time.

“One is that the need to deal with a tunnel system, which is unparalleled in the history of warfare, has meant that it’s slowed their operations down significantly, and it’s been probably the single major function of the ground-war,” he said. “But they’ve already had well trained units prepared and equipped to deal with fighting the tunnels. And from what I understand, they’ve been very successful at it.”

“I’ve been into one of the tunnels underneath Gaza myself and I can testify to the complexities involved in that and the professionalism of the IDF in dealing with it,” he added.

The second reason he offered is because of the caution maintained in relation to civilian casualties.

“They obviously are intent on minimizing civilian casualties in Gaza, which is very difficult when you’re fighting an enemy that wants you to maximize their own civilian casualties as part of their strategy,” he said. “So that’s been a contributor.”

The third reason he suggested is their conduct, which aims to minimize its own casualties. 

“So it’s gone relatively slowly, but I think very impressively, in the circumstances,” he said, noting that IDF soldiers are “fighting on one of the most treacherous and complex battlefields any army has ever fought on.”

What makes it “incredibly difficult to fight” is Gaza’s mainly urban terrain, “which is notoriously difficult for any combat;” Hamas’ extremely long time “to prepare the ground, to lay ambushes, to put minefields in place, [and] to position booby traps, sniper positions in both rural and urban areas;”  the aforementioned tunnel complex; and the civilian population.

An additional challenge is the “intense spotlight” on Gaza, on the war “with media organizations, human rights groups, international bodies, like the UN and the EU, all desperate to accuse or convict Israel of war crimes.”

“[All] that adds to the complications of the whole operation,” he stated.

Quote:Six alleged members of the Islamic State group were killed in a shootout in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region, in what the country’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC) described Sunday as a “counterterrorism operation.”

According to a statement by the NAC, late on Saturday the six men barricaded themselves in a third-floor apartment in Karabulak, a town of about 30,000 in Russia’s semi-autonomous Republic of Ingushetia. A shootout with security services followed, as surrounding streets were blocked off and residents of the apartment block evacuated to a nearby school, according to Russia’s Interfax agency.

Heavy gunfire and blasts appearing to come from inside an apartment block could be heard in videos posted by Karabulak residents on social media.

The NAC did not immediately name the alleged militants, but said three of them were on Russia’s wanted list and all six had been involved in violent acts, including an attack on a traffic police unit last March that killed three officers.

The local branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the country’s main security agency, announced at 7:30 p.m. local time on Saturday that emergency measures were being brought in the vicinity of the building due to an ongoing “counterterrorism” operation. The restrictions were lifted shortly after midday on Sunday.

The NAC claimed that security services found automatic weapons, ammunition, hand grenades and homemade explosives inside the apartment where the men were hiding out.

The agency said that no local residents were hurt, while Baza – a Russian Telegram channel set up by journalists critical of the Kremlin – reported that a man walking by was killed in the shootout. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.

Quote:A 50-year-old man of Orthodox Jewish faith was left with life-threatening injuries after being stabbed multiple times in Switzerland’s largest city at the Brandschenkestrasse/Selnaustrasse junction in Zurich District 2.

According to the German-language Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a 15-year-old suspect was arrested at the scene of the attack. Police are currently investigating the potential motive for the attack, including the possibility that it was inspired by antisemitism.

The name and background of the suspected knifeman have yet to be revealed to the public.

The police said in a statement per NTV: “The ongoing investigations by the Zurich cantonal police and the responsible youth prosecutor’s office are going in all directions and explicitly include the possibility of an antisemitic crime.”

However, according to local news outlet 20 Minutes, witnesses to the attack said that the teen shouted out “death to all Jews” and the Jihadist war cry “Allahu Akbar” shortly before stabbing the man. Police have so far not confirmed these reports.

According to his acquaintances, the 50-year-old victim is currently in critical but stable condition in the hospital.

Local councillor, Jehuda Spielman, who personally knows the victim, said that he believed that the attack was inspired by antisemitism, saying: “It’s a shock, but unfortunately the act doesn’t come as a complete surprise given the atmosphere after October 7th.”