Quote:The compromise lets China's Cosco buy a smaller stake than planned in the Hamburg port terminal. The widely criticized initial deal would've given Cosco a major stake in the vital port.

The German Cabinet agreed on a compromise in the dispute over China's Cosco buying a stake in a Hamburg port terminal, as the Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection shared in a press statement on Wednesday, saying the "reason for the partial prohibition is the existence of a threat to public order and safety."

The compromise allows Chinese shipping giant Cosco to take a stake "below 25%" instead of the initially planned 35%. The initial deal was widely criticized as it would have given Cosco a major stake in Germany's largest port.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck was one of the politicians voicing concerns about Germany selling critical infrastructure to China. But supporters of the deal claim that it will allow the port to stay competitive against others as the race for Chinese trade increases.

The decision comes as Germany tries to strike a balance between maintaining ties with its biggest trade partner, China, while avoiding heavy reliance on it.

Quote:President Joe Biden on Wednesday said that it will take time before inflation will ease for most Americans as polls show how price pressures continue to be a pressing issue ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“I’m optimistic,” he said during an event unveiling new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules against banking fees. “It’s going to take some time. I appreciate the frustration of the American people.”

The president again blamed world events for the rise in inflation. Labor Department data shows that the consumer price index, a key inflation metric, stood at 8.2 percent in September, running near the 40-year high.

“One of the things that I think frustrates the American people, is they know that the world is in a bit of disarray. They know that [Russia’s] war has imposed an awful lot of strains on Europe and the rest of the world and the United States,” Biden said. “They want to know what are we doing.”

Republicans have repeatedly hammered Biden and Democrats for pushing multi-trillion spending packages and embracing policies that have reduced or dampened U.S. oil production.
...
To dampen inflation, the Federal Reserve during its past three Federal Open Market Committee meetings opted to raise the federal funds rate by 75 basis points each time. The Fed will again meet in the coming weeks, and analysts predict that another 75-point hike is coming.

Quote:Months after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, voters across five states will be considering ballot measures relating to abortion on Nov. 8.

Some of those measures aim to expand abortion access, while others seek the opposite. But whatever voters decide, one oft-overlooked group is asking that their experiences be considered in the process.
...
“The Abortion Survivors Network is an organization that’s actually led by abortion survivors,” Moe told The Epoch Times. “It empowers and equips abortion survivors to work through their trauma, their questions, and it’s a safe place for them in a society that really thinks their lives should have ended.”
...
Milbourn learned that her biological mother had tried to abort her in the spring of 1978, but as her mother was further along in the gestation process than she had told the clinician, the abortion was unsuccessful.

“They began the procedure and realized that my head was larger than expected,” Milbourn said.

While unable to complete the procedure, the abortionist did manage to tear the embryonic sac. Assuming that Milbourn’s mother had miscarried, he sent her home. Then, months later, Milbourn was born.

At first, learning what she had survived came as a shock to Milbourn, and unsure how to process her feelings, she repressed them until years later when, as a mother herself, she was forced to confront them head-on.

“For a survivor of an abortion, there’s a lot of trauma that comes with it,” she said. “Rejection is the biggest component of that.”

• OpenMLS
  
• curl
  
• OpenBGPd
  
• Bundler/RubyGems
  
• WireGuard
  
• OpenPGP.js/GopenPGP
  
• OpenSSH
  

Quote:Russia announced Saturday that it will immediately suspend its implementation of a U.N.-brokered grain deal.

The Russian Defense Ministry cited an alleged Ukrainian drone attack Saturday against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet ships moored off the coast of occupied Crimea as the reason for the move. Ukraine has denied the attack, saying that the Russians mishandled their own weapons.

The Russian declaration came one day after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain export deal, which was scheduled to expire on Nov. 19. Guterres also urged other countries, mainly in the West, to expedite the removal of obstacles blocking Russian grain and fertilizer exports.
...
U.N. officials were in touch with Russian authorities over the announced suspension.
...
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday accused British specialists of being involved in the alleged attack by drones on Russian ships in Crimea. Britain’s Defense Ministry had no immediate comment on the claim.
...
Russia also requested a meeting Monday of the U.N. Security Council because of the alleged attack on the Black Sea Fleet and the security of the grain corridor, said Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s first deputy representative to the U.N.

Russia’s agriculture minister said Moscow stands ready to “fully replace Ukrainian grain and deliver supplies at affordable prices to all interested countries.” In remarks carried by the state Rossiya 24 TV channel, Dmitry Patrushev said Moscow was prepared to “supply up to 500,000 tons of grain to the poorest countries free of charge in the next four months,” with the help of Turkey.

Quote:At least 151 people are dead after an outdoors Halloween event in South Korean capital Seoul turned into a crowd surge on Saturday night, emergency officials said.

Huge crowds at the event surged into a narrow downhill alley in a nightlife area near the Hamilton Hotel, a major party venue in Seoul. The incident trapped and crushed hundreds of people in Seoul’s leisure district of Itaewon.

Emergency workers and pedestrians were seen performing first aid and CPR on people lying in the streets amid ensuing chaos.

Officials say at least 151 have died and about 150 others are injured. The fire service said most victims were teenagers and young adults.

Quote:The United States announced it has released its oldest detainee at Guantánamo Bay detention camp and repatriated him to Pakistan.

Pakistani national Saifullah Paracha, 75, was first detained at the facility in 2003. He was said to have provided substantive financial support to the al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist groups in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and was also alleged to have been in contact with prominent terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. His son was found guilty of laundering $200,000 into America from Pakistan for al-Qaeda.

He has never been charged before a military commission or any other tribunal with a crime against the United States. He was held as a law of war detainee.

The U.S. Department of Defense announced on Saturday that it “completed the requirements for responsible transfer” in consultation with its Pakistani partners.

“The United States appreciates the willingness of Pakistan and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantánamo Bay facility,” it added.

Quote:The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer.

If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information.

Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer when he was killed on a street in Washington in mid-2016. No person has ever been arrested in connection to the murder.

U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, ruled in September that the bureau must hand over information from the computer to Brian Huddleston, a Texas man who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the info.

The FBI’s assertion that the privacy interest Rich’s family members hold outweighed the public interest was rejected by Mazzant, who noted the bureau cited no relevant case law supporting the argument.

But the ruling was erroneous, U.S. lawyers said in a new filing.
...
“Given the Court’s findings that except for the information related to Seth Rich’s laptop withheld pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7© based on privacy interests, the FBI properly withheld or redacted all other information responsive to Huddleston’s requests, the production order seems inconsistent with the rest of the order,” the motion stated.

The FBI, after claiming it never possessed Rich’s laptop or any information from it, acknowledged in 2020 that it had thousands of files from the computer.

Quote:Executives from Facebook and Twitter, including the recently-fired head of trust & safety Vijaya Gadde, held regular meetings with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss censorship on a wide range of topics, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, coronavirus, and “racial justice,” according to leaked documents.

The information came to light via leaks to the Intercept, as well as documents and minutes revealed through Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s lawsuit filed against the Biden Administration that alleges government collusion with Big Tech to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights.
...
There is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use. At the time of writing, the “content request system” at facebook.com/xtakedowns/login is still live. DHS and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
...
In June, the same DHS advisory committee of CISA — which includes Twitter head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde and University of Washington professor Kate Starbird — drafted a report to the CISA director calling for an expansive role for the agency in shaping the “information ecosystem.” The report called on the agency to closely monitor “social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.” They argued that the agency needed to take steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information,” with a focus on information that undermines “key democratic institutions, such as the courts, or by other sectors such as the financial system, or public health measures.”

FBI agent Laura Dehmlow was in communications w Facebook that led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 over the false allegation that it was “disinfo.” This year, she met w/ Twitter/DHS to stress “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.”
...
In the runup to the 2020 election, the consortium created a system whereby state actors including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department could file “tickets” alongside news stories, flagging them so that Big Tech platforms could subsequently suppress or attach warning labels to them.

Quote:The top electoral authority in Brazil announced on Sunday evening that 77-year-old hardline socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, once convicted and sentenced to over two decades in prison for alleged corruption, had won this year’s presidential election against incumbent conservative Jair Bolsonaro.

In his first words as president-elect for a third term, Lula vowed to “reconstruct the very soul of this nation” away from the small government, pro-freedom ideals of the Bolsonaro administration.

Little more than a percentage point separated Lula, who served as president previously from 2003 to 2011, from Bolsonaro, as of 10 p.m. ET, representing about 2 million votes in a nation of 214 million people. National newspaper of record O Globo described the results as the closest election since 1989, when Lula narrowly lost to Fernando Collor de Mello, who was impeached and ousted from office over corruption allegations in 1992. Collor later supported the impeachment ouster of Lula’s protege, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, also prompted by corruption allegations – kicking off the series of events that ultimately led to Bolsonaro’s 2018 victory.
...
With 99 percent of votes counted, Lula received 50.9 percent of the vote, or about 60.3 million votes. Bolsonaro received 49.1 percent, or 58.2 million votes. The top election authority the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE), counted 20.58 percent (32.2 million votes) were “abstentions,” meaning the voter did not make it to the polls.

Lula’s high turnout in the northeast – the country’s poorest region and his traditional stronghold, made it possible to defeat Bolsonaro despite the conservative triumphing in the nation’s largest metropolises of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro enjoyed his highest support in the Venezuelan border region of Roraima, now heavily populated with socialist refugees, and in the inland state of Rondonia.

Quote:The Supreme Court turned away a request by Ankara to throw out lawsuits filed by protesters who say they were injured by Turkish agents outside its ambassador’s home in Washington during a 2017 protest against visiting President Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey argued unsuccessfully that allowing the lawsuits to proceed would endanger both Turkish and U.S. officials outside their home countries.

The lawsuits came out of a May 6, 2017, incident in which Turkish security forces clashed with demonstrators who were protesting a visit by Erdogan, an authoritarian who is turning his country away from its traditional secularism.
...
The Biden administration had urged the Supreme Court to refuse to hear Turkey’s request to halt the lawsuits.

Erdogan was in the nation’s capital in 2017 for a visit with then-President Donald Trump. The physical conflict put a strain on relations between Turkey and the United States.

Quote:Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, a pro-nudity activist who was convicted of attempted kidnapping of a child and former romantic partner of Paul Pelosi attack suspect David DePape, described her ex as having similar political stances to her own, “progressive” views.

“Did he ever show any aggression towards politicians, were his political beliefs extreme in your opinion?” Taub was asked by Tara Campbell of ABC 7. “Well when I met him, he was only 20 years old ,and he didn’t have any experience in politics, and he was very much in alignment with my views and I’ve always been very progressive,” Taub replied. “I absolutely admire Nancy Pelosi,” she said, adding that she wished the house speaker’s husband well.

Taub told ABC7 that she met DePape 20 years ago. Together they raised their two sons and a daughter before separating about seven years ago.

DePape and Taub raised children in their Berkely home as the couple actively participated in a series of pro-public nudity demonstrations from 2011-2013.
...
Ryan La Coste, one of Taub and DePape’s neighbors, said that the pair would often disturb neighbors with frequent public nudity around minors and other odd behavior. ‘Before Gypsy got locked up, there were sex dolls drying on the back of their porch that I’m assuming she bought for her sons,’ La Coste said, according to a SubStack article from Michael Shellenberger.

Photos of the home in which a broken-down school bus and a “Black Lives Matter” sign have gone been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media. While Taub told ABC 7 that the couple split seven years ago, a neighbor said that DePape was living in the broken-down school bus as recently as this year.

(10-31-2022, 11:32 PM)kyonides Wrote:

Pelosi Attacker’s Ex Described Him As Having Similar, ‘Progressive’ Views to Her Own

. . .
. . .
 So how the hell did leftist media claim that the alleged attacker was a MAGA supporter?

Quote:According to the National Review, Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) fired a staffer when her connection to the Chinese embassy was brought to the Congressman’s attention. Barbara Hamlett, employed as a scheduler at Beyer’s office since August 2019, allegedly facilitated meetings between other congressional staffers and Chinese embassy staff in Washington D.C.

On Tuesday, the House Sergeant at Arms (SAA) notified Beyer’s office about the investigation into Hamlett, which was triggered by reports from several congressional aids Hamlett apparently had approached.

Beyer’s team conducted their own investigation, which confirmed that Hamlett attempted to schedule off-the-record meetings for Chinese embassy staff with staffers in at least two Republican congressmen’s offices. Hamlett was fired after the investigation.

Beyer’s deputy chief of staff told the National Review that the Congressman “was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” and that the Democratic congressman  “has a hawkish record on China, and was deeply upset upon learning about Hamlett’s activities.”

Quote:The White House on Wednesday deleted a Twitter post after it was fact-checked for making an inaccurate claim about the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that was recently announced.

“Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” the now-deleted White House Twitter post said.

However, the post failed to mention that the COLA adjustment was due to surging, decades-high inflation. COLA adjustments have been automatically done every year for decades due to federal law, and the adjustments are not contingent on any of the Biden administration’s policies.

“The point was incomplete,” a White House official told The Epoch Times via email.
...
CNN’s fact-checker Daniel Dale, in response, accused the White House of making an inaccurate claim.
...
The Twitter addition also made reference to former President Richard Nixon’s signing a law that mandated automatic benefit adjustments tied to the consumer price index, a key metric that measures inflation. For September 2022, the index surged to 8.2 percent year-over-year, according to data released by the Department of Labor.
...
“Next year’s Social Security increase will be one of the largest in decades b/c of Biden’s disastrous policies, which have caused prices to rise, fueled record inflation, & cut it into critical retirement savings,” wrote Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) on Twitter in response to the Twitter post.

Quote:The Federal Reserve raised the benchmark federal funds rate by 75 basis points on Nov. 2 to a target range of 3.75 to 4 percent, in line with market expectations.

The decision came after the Fed’s policy-making arm, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), concluded its two-day meeting on Nov. 2.

It’s the sixth rate increase this year and the fourth consecutive 75-point increase in 2022. Interest rates are now the highest they have been since January 2008.

It was widely expected that the Fed would pull the trigger on a three-quarter-point rate boost. 
...
However, when Powell told reporters that talk of a pause in the central bank’s tightening efforts is “premature,” the leading benchmark indexes erased their gains and tanked.

“It’s very premature to be thinking about pausing,” Powell said, adding that there’s still some room for policy tightening. But he stopped short of saying where the policy rate should be next year.

When asked about more clarification, Powell said, “The question of when to moderate the pace of increases is now much less important than the question of how high to raise rates and how long to keep monetary policy restrictive.”

Quote:Calls by Moscow for a formal inquiry into claims that the United States is running a covert biological weapons program in Ukraine were thwarted at the UN Security Council after the United States, the UK, and France all voted against the proposal.

In the vote, which took place on Nov. 2, only Russia and China voted in favor of the proposal, while the remaining 10 non-permanent council members abstained from casting ballots.

Speaking shortly afterward, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy UN representative, expressed disappointment with the vote’s outcome.
...
The Biological Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1975, prohibits signatories from developing, producing, or using biological and toxin weapons.

“Irrespective of the result of today’s voting, we still have questions for the United States and Ukraine,” Polyansky said.

Moscow, he added, “will continue making efforts to establish all facts connected with the activities of U.S. biological laboratories in Ukraine.”

Washington and Kyiv, for their part, have both dismissed the allegation as a “conspiracy theory.”

Former Attorney General William Barr Wrote:Accountability in the sense of criminal or civil penalties? No.
...
Well, reputation in this country is largely under the control of the mainstream media, which likes to overlook these kinds of sins. But I think the story will be told, and maybe in a more sober age, people will appreciate how destructive and damaging to the country this was.
...
In July [2016], before the election, they pounced on the flimsiest pretext, on the idea that there was collusion between Trump and the Russians, which is something the Clinton campaign was trying to whip up. And they jumped on it. I don’t think there was a predicate for them to do it. And they started this investigation [Crossfire Hurricane] of the campaign.
...
I was hoping that there’d be accountability at the FBI. However, following special counsel John Durham’s losses in two court cases, it’s unlikely.
...
It became very clear that the issue wasn’t whether there was collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign.

The real question was how this false narrative got started and why people doubled down on it after the [2016] election and when they knew that it really was nonsense. And so, I think [Durham] is getting as much to the bottom of it as anyone could and I think, ultimately, will write a report, which is what I asked him to do.

Miguel Almaguer NBC News Wrote:Sources familiar with what unfolded in the Pelosi residence now revealing when officers responded to the 'high priority call,' they were seemingly unaware they've been called to the home of the Speaker of the House. After a 'knock and announce,' the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police. It's unclear if the 82-year-old was already injured or what his mental state was, say sources.

Quote:German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with the head of the Chinese communist regime in Beijing during his Nov. 4 visit that focused on business ties, drawing criticism at home and also from the international community.

Scholtz, who was leading a group of CEOs from German companies on the trip, was the first foreign leader to meet with Xi Jinping since he secured a third term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last month.

While other Western government leaders have pledged to take a tougher stance against the regime in China, a delegation of 12 German-based business executives accompanied Scholz. Most of these companies, such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Siemens, have been in the Chinese market for a long time.

Scholz told Xi during their meeting that China is an important trading partner for Germany and for Europe as a whole, according to the CCP’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The UK’s Financial Times reported on Oct. 30 that critics believe that “instead of deepening economic ties with authoritarian regimes, Germany and the [European Union] should decouple from them.”

Germany firmly opposes decoupling, the ministry said, showing how the CCP interpreted the visit. Germany stands ready for closer trade and economic cooperation with China and supports more mutual investment between Chinese and German businesses.

In return, Xi specifically approved the vaccines produced by Germany’s BioNTech and Pfizer to be used in China. On the same day, China Aviation Supplies Corp. announced that it has signed a bulk purchase agreement with Airbus for 140 aircraft, with a total value of about $17 billion.

Quote:Wealthy citizens who have donated heavily to political campaigns in the current year include supporters of both the major U.S. political parties, though none of the others comes close to billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who has given more than $128 million to help elect Democrats, according to a new tally released by OpenSecrets, a Washington-based research organization.

The recipients of donations are not limited solely to individual candidates but also include parties, political action committees (PACs), the hybrid PACs known as Carey committees, and tax-exempt 527 organizations.
...
The next three slots on OpenSecrets’s list are occupied by individuals who have spent lavishly to support Republicans. They are Richard Uihlein, chief executive officer of shipping firm Uline, who donated $80.7 million; Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive officer of the Citadel hedge fund, who gave $68.6 million; and Jeffrey S. and Janine Yass, the co-founder of technology firm Susquehanna International Group and his spouse, who gave almost $47.3 million.

Some of the names on the list, such as entrepreneur Timothy Mellon, who occupies the fifth slot, donated to both Democrat and Republican candidates and causes. Of Mellon’s total of about $40 million, the vast majority went to Republicans, with $10,700 going to Democrats.

Quote:Henrique’s family is not an isolated case. Hundreds of families have set up tents around the Pinheirinho fortress, in the city of Curitiba. More are protesting around army headquarters throughout the country. Most there call for aid, or intervention, from the military, many cast doubt on whether the elections were free and fair, and some just say they’re hoping for a last chance not to have Brazil go the way of neighboring socialist governments in Venezuela, Argentina, and beyond.
...
He explained: “We’re here 24 hours, every day, since this movement started on Monday. We have been taking turns, me and my relatives. Some of us have businesses to run, some have day jobs. Some stay in the morning, some in the afternoon. We [right now] are on the night shift. We coordinate among our family. … At least our family… we’re playing our part, like most Brazilians are.”
...
Da Silva has befriended, and eventually supported, a number of Latin American socialist dictators. Among them are Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, whose persecution of Christianity and the press was a talking point of the presidential debates in the run-up to the October elections. Da Silva was elected in an alliance with the Communist Party of Brazil, and the possibility of him leaning into authoritarianism or stifling free enterprise has been a cause for concern.

Quote:The Kremlin declined to comment on a recent Wall Street Journal report that a top U.S. security official has held a number of secret phone conversations with high-ranking Russian officials.
...
A day earlier, the WSJ reported that U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan has held a series of undisclosed talks in recent months with his Russian counterparts. According to the report, the discussions were held with the aim of preventing the war in Ukraine from escalating into a nuclear conflict, amid steadily escalating rhetoric by Moscow and Washington.

The White House also declined to comment on the report; a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council said, “People claim a lot of things.”

Washington’s official stance on the issue is that any talks aimed at ending the conflict should be held directly between Kyiv and Moscow.
...
His comments reflect widespread speculation that U.S. financial and military support for Ukraine might be drastically reduced if Republicans capture a majority in Congress in the elections.
...
Speaking to reporters on Nov. 7, Peskov also declined to comment on a recent report in The Washington Post that claimed U.S. officials were privately urging Kyiv to show a willingness to hold talks with Moscow.

“We don’t know if that’s the case,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

On Nov. 5, the paper reported that Washington was quietly asking the Ukrainian leadership to drop its stated refusal to hold peace talks with Moscow as long as Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in power.

Quote:Xi said that the Party’s military branch must train for any war and be prepared for unforeseen conflicts.

He said the military must devote all its energy toward combat readiness and work to “enhance its capability to fight and win,” according to Chinese state-owned media outlet Xinhua.

The military “must implement the Party’s idea of strengthening the army in the new era,” Xi said, using a term for the CCP’s vision of a new historical age in which China is the world’s leading power.
...
The inspection coincided with a bellicose display at the regime’s fourth annual air show, during which it publicly displayed its most advanced fighter jet for the first time and unveiled a new hypersonic missile apparently designed to target U.S. forces.

Also on display was the regime’s most advanced aircraft, the J-20 stealth fighter. Little is known about the J-20 other than that it appears to be a clone of the American F-35, likely made with stolen design technologies. It remains unclear whether the Chinese military will use the aircraft in an all-purpose role, the same way the United States uses the F-35, or if it will specialize in one particular domain, such as air superiority.

The aircraft entered service in 2017, and while there are still many unknowns about its capabilities and use, U.S. forces have had a close encounter with it.

“We recently had, I wouldn’t call it an engagement, but we got relatively close to the J-20s with our F-35s in the East China Sea and were relatively impressed with the command and control that was associated with the J-20s,” said Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the Pacific Air Forces, during a March 14 interview with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The regime also used the air show to publicly unveil its latest weapon, an export version of the YJ-21 hypersonic missile.

The YJ-21, commonly referred to as the Eagle Strike 21, has a combat range of more than 1,200 miles and can fly at speeds exceeding Mach 12.

Quote:Authorities in Maricopa County, Arizona, say they appear to have found a solution to tabulation issues on Nov. 8 in dozens of polling stations across the county.

Earlier in the day, election officials said that tabulators in about 20 percent of polling sites in the county were malfunctioning. Voters were still able to vote at locations with defective machines, although the ballots would be placed in a secured box, election officials said.

At about 2 p.m. local time, the Maricopa County Elections Command Center said in a statement that officials “identified a solution” to the problem and said “printer settings” were the cause.

“County technicians have changed the printer settings at about 60 Vote Centers,” the statement said. “It appears some of the printers were not producing dark enough timing marks on the ballots,” it added, saying the solution worked at 17 locations so far. Officials said technicians are now working to resolve the issue around the county, which includes Phoenix, Arizona’s most populous city.

Quote:During a Nov. 8 news conference, Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates said that after some voters filled out their ballots, the tabulator wouldn’t accept them. That issue was present in about 20 percent of county polling sites.

Gates told the press conference that voters should place ballots in a drop box, where they “will remain secure in there all day long.”

“At the end of voting after 7 p.m., when everything is completed, these ballots will be taken out securely and delivered by a bipartisan team … down to here at the central tabulation center,” he said.

Quote:Chinese leader Xi Jinping has assured Pakistan’s leader that his government will continue to support Pakistan in stabilizing its financial situation and inject “new impetus” into their strategic partnership.

Xi made the remarks during a meeting with visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Nov. 2. The two leaders issued a joint statement pledging to expand their socio-economic cooperation.
...
Both sides agreed to expedite the construction of the Gwadar seaport in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, as well as the development of Pakistan’s Main Line-1 (ML-1) project and Karachi Circular Railway project.

“China supports its provinces with a strong industry in pairing up with Pakistani partners to advance industrial cooperation, and hopes the Pakistani side will provide a sound business environment,” Xi said.

For his part, Sharif said that Pakistan would stand ready to work with China, saying that “the world cannot operate without China and China’s development cannot be isolated or contained by any force.”

The $60 billion CPEC is part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) launched by Xi in 2013. Other countries, including the United States, have criticized the BRI infrastructure program as a “debt trap” for smaller nations.

Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that China has agreed to roll over $4 billion in sovereign loans, refinance $3.3 billion in commercial bank loans, and increase currency swap by about $1.45 billion following the leaders’ meeting.

Dar said that Pakistan would also receive $4.2 billion from Saudi Arabia, which would include a $3 billion financial package and a $1.2 billion deferred oil facility, ARY News reported.
...
Pakistan has an external debt of over $130 billion, $30 billion of which is owed to China. Pakistan has asked China to roll over its $6.3 billion debt that is due to mature in the next eight months, The Indian Express reported.

The country was hit by unprecedented floods last month, triggered by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains that began in June. More than 30 million people were affected, while crops and bridges were destroyed.

Quote:In a 2–1 vote during a special meeting, the Philadelphia city commissioners decided to amend how ballots are processed.

The change focuses on reconciliation, or reviewing absentee ballots and in-person votes to make sure people don’t cast duplicate votes.

Facing pressure from a lawsuit, Commissioners Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, and Seth Bluestein, a Republican, voted to have reconciliation take place for ballots cast in the midterm elections.
...
Commissioner Omar Sabin, a Democrat, voted against reinstating the procedure.

Philadelphia officials recently announced that they decided to stop reconciliation. Poll workers, backed by the Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections group, sued in late October over the decision, arguing that state law requires the process, which identified 40 instances of illegal duplicates in the 2020 primary.

In an order handed down on Nov. 7, Common Pleas Judge Anne Marie Coyle denied a request for a preliminary injunction, or an injunction against rolling back reconciliation, finding that the motion was filed too close to the midterms and that the relief “would cause a greater measure of harm to the electoral process conducted in the upcoming general election … than would denial of their Petition.”
...
The evidence in the case shows officials failed to consider how the public would react to the late announcement that reconciliation was not going to be utilized and that the officials “have unwisely discounted the inherent deterrence of fraudulent voting value that the Poll Book Rendition process has afforded the City of Philadelphia even in its unimproved and imperfect state,” Coyle said.

The decision itself might result in a demand for the return of the grant money, according to the judge.

Quote:“I want to make very clear that when there are conversations that occur later this evening about whether or not Philadelphia has counted all of their ballots, that the reason that some ballots will not be counted, it’s because Republican attorneys targeted Philadelphia—and only Philadelphia—trying to force us to do a procedure that no other county does,” Bluestein said before the vote. “And while we technically won the court case in Common Pleas Court, the opinion that was written was written in a way that we have no other choice but to go forward and reinstate reconciliation.”

(11-09-2022, 02:07 AM)kyonides Wrote:

Philadelphia Imposes Last-Minute Change to How Votes Are Counted

Quote:In a 2–1 vote during a special meeting, the Philadelphia city commissioners decided to amend how ballots are processed.

US Constitution Annotated - Article I.Section 4.Clause 1 - Role of the States in Regulating Federal Elections Wrote:State authority to regulate the times, places, and manner of holding congressional elections has been described by the Court as “embrac[ing] authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections ...; in short, to enact the numerous requirements as to procedure and safeguards which experience shows are necessary in order to enforce the fundamental rights involved.”

Judge Lesa S. Gelb Wrote:Voters in Luzerne County through no fault of their own, were disenfranchised and denied the  fundamental right to vote.  Voting hours in Luzerne County are hereby extended until 10:00 p.m.

Quote:A state lawmaker in Pennsylvania has been re-elected to another term in office on Nov. 8 despite already passing away last month.

State Rep. Tony DeLuca, a Democrat, died at age 85 on Oct. 9 due to lymphoma. The timing of his death was too late for election officials to change the ballots.

DeLuca had served as a representative in the Pennsylvania state legislature for 39 years. He received more than 85 percent of the vote in the 32nd District in Allegheny County. This accounted for nearly 14,000 votes on Election Day, and more than 7,000 votes via mail.

DeLuca had served on the House Insurance Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee.
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DeLuca’s posthumous victory has triggered a special election to take place later.
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DeLuca was preceded by his late wife, Constance, who died from breast cancer in 2021. They had been married for 66 years.

The late state representative is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Quote:Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that he would be open to a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the next nine days as leaders from around the world gather for a range of international summits in Asia, including the B20, G20, APEC, ASEAN-Australia, and East Asia Summit.

Speaking at a press conference in Canberra on Nov. 9, the prime minister said that he had always believed that dialogue between the countries was a good thing.
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However, the Prime Minister said his trip was not on the program and nothing had been finalised.

“It will be an extensive nine days and a very busy nine days,” Albanese said. “We’re still finalising the program.”
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The shadow minister for Countering Foreign Interference, Liberal Senator James Paterson was supportive of a meeting.
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However, he refused to be drawn on whether the prime minister should address the recent allegations Beijing had been looking to recruit ex-defence force personnel to train the People’s Liberation Army.

The comments from the prime minister come as Defence Minister Richard Marles announced a joint task force between the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to counter foreign interference.

Quote:“We have seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country,” Easterly said in a statement on Wednesday.

She also said that election officials in the days after the election are carrying out a “rigorous” process to finalize and certify the results, which include actions such as tabulating votes, reviewing procedures, and testing and auditing equipment.

45th US President Donald J. Trump Wrote:“Same thing is happening with Voter Fraud as happened in 2020???,” the former president asked on Truth Social on Tuesday, while voting was still underway and polls had yet to close.

In another post, he wrote: “Maricopa County in Arizona looks like a complete Voter Integrity DISASTER. Likewise Detroit (of course!), Pennsylvania, and other places. Not being covered by the Fake News Media!”

Trump also asked people in Arizona to make sure they cast their vote. “People of Arizona: Don’t get out of line until you cast your vote. They are trying to steal the election with bad Machines and DELAY. Don’t let it happen!”

Trump said of Detroit: “The Absentee Ballot situation in Detroit is REALLY BAD. People are showing up to Vote only to be told, ‘Sorry, you have already voted.’ This is happening in large numbers, elsewhere as well. Protest, Protest, Protest!”

Quote:An analysis of statewide teacher workforce data showed that more teachers were leaving their jobs while fewer teachers are becoming licensed for the first time, the Nov. 7 report states (pdf). In 2021–22, the number of teachers leaving the profession was 12 percent higher than the pre-pandemic yearly average, while the number of newly licensed teachers was lower by 15 percent.

There were 800 vacant teaching posts across the state before the COVID-19 pandemic, a figure that increased substantially to 2,800 posts in October 2021, the report said, representing 3 percent of all teaching positions. As of August 2022, there were 3,300 vacant teaching posts in 111 school divisions.
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Divisions were also concerned about the falling quality of applications during the pandemic, with 98 percent citing an “inadequate applicant pool for open positions” as one of their toughest challenges to meeting staffing needs.

Rather than fully licensed teachers, school divisions were relying more on provisionally licensed teachers. The number of provisionally licensed teachers rose by 24 percent during 2021–22 when compared to the pre-pandemic average.

Among school divisions, 52 percent reported not being optimistic about employing a suitable classroom teacher workforce for the 2022-23 school year. To complicate matters, 15 percent of teachers in the state admitted that they are “likely to leave” or “definitely leaving” their jobs by the end of this period.
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During a press event on Oct. 24, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin admitted that the state’s students were the “hardest hit” in terms of learning loss.

Quote:The area has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with detention numbers averaging 163 percent of prison capacity as of 2020.

However, the leaders of five nations within striking distance of the U.S. border are taking a new approach to the problem.

Lawmakers in Mexico, Ecuador, and Nicaragua are offering early release to thousands of criminals with “minor offenses” or who are awaiting trial.

In Cuba and Venezuela, lawbreakers and regime offenders are not only being released, many are exiled.
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Illegal immigrant arrests at the U.S. southern frontier surpassed 2 million for the 2022 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. This shattered the previous year’s tally of 1.7 million arrests.
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Excess lawbreakers on the loose in the United States have generated upticks in both minor and violent crimes, according to Tsukerman. She says the same formula will produce comparable results in countries throughout the Americas, but with a key difference.

“The likely consequence will be an increased flow in the number of criminals to the [U.S.] borders,” she said, adding, “Including successful border crossings.”
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In Mexico, the bottlenecked legal system was enough to free 2,685 residents in September. The order came into force after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s 2021 order, which granted amnesty to those waiting for their trials or whose legal rights had been violated.

Within that pool of criminals, 2,032 prisoners weren’t categorized in designations such as women, elderly, afflicted with chronic disease, foreigners, or indigenous. They were solely identified as having “met the legal requirements for early release.”
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In February, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso announced the pardon of 5,000 prisoners to ease the dangerous overcrowding in the country’s penitentiaries. Tensions between rival gangs in packed jail cells exploded in 2021, culminating in riots that claimed the lives of 350 detainees.
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Nicaragua’s government followed suit in April 2022. Vice President Rosario Murillo ordered the release of 1,000 petty criminals from the country’s jails.

Murillo said the offenders would be sent home to “serve their sentences under the family cohabitation regime.”

The Central American nation has a history of releasing criminals early to serve the remainder of their sentences under house arrest. Between 2014 and 2021, the Sandinista regime granted early release to 33,690 prisoners.