Quote:Johnson said, “Since taking office a little bit over seven months ago, my administration has responded to this humanitarian mission with the full force of government. We have roughly 15,000 people living in shelters, temporary shelters here in Chicago, nearly 27 shelters. A total of 4500 children are in our Chicago public schools system, providing health care and also making sure that we are screening individuals as they come through the city of Chicago, providing, again, onsite vaccinations at all of our shelters.”

He continued, “But let me just say this to make this very clear, what I have said repeatedly is that we have to have coordination. Since taking office, we’ve had an uncoordinated approach. And what I’ve worked to do, instead of having chaos, is provide some structure and calm around the situation. And without significant federal support, this is not sustainable.”

Discussing migrants being bused to sanctuary cities, Johnson said, “What I mean by uncoordinated, what Governor Abbott is doing is quite frankly reckless. I had a delegation to actually go to the border and see firsthand the challenges that are bordering states and our bordering cities are experiencing. What I called for repeatedly is a coordinated approach between state and local municipalities so that we can address this crisis.”

Quote:On Wednesday’s “CNN News Central,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston stated that his sanctuary city “is now ground zero for America’s migrant crisis.” And that one thing they need the federal government to do is distribute migrants to different cities around the U.S.

Johnston said, “I think that Denver is now ground zero for America’s migrant crisis. We are, at this moment now, the single largest recipient city of any city in America per capita. We actually have more than two times as many migrants as the next city behind us based on our population. We’ve received more than a hundred buses in the last month alone, as you mentioned, more than 35,000 over the last year. And so, we are working hard to try to help those folks integrate successfully. But we are hitting real challenges. And these are the ones we’ve been pushing the federal government on, which is, we need more resources, we mostly need more work authorization, and we need a coordinated entry plan so that folks that do arrive in the country can be distributed to different cities around the country in the same way we did with asylees from Afghanistan or Ukraine..."

Quote:Former President Donald Trump will remain on the ballot in Michigan after the Michigan Supreme Court rejected an appeal rooted in the Constitution’s “Insurrection Clause,” although on procedural grounds.

Unlike the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Trump can remain on the ballot for the state’s upcoming primary. It upheld the unanimous ruling of Michigan’s Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel held that the argument — that Trump “engaged in insurrection” — was not ripe (meaning that ruling on it would be premature).

However, the Michigan Supreme Court did not delve into whether or not it believed Trump engaged in insurrection as rooted in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, the court rejected the attempt to appeal, lodged by an advocacy group, on procedural grounds, leaving undisturbed the decision from the Michigan Court of Appeals. The lower court determined that the question is irrelevant at this point in time in relation to Trump’s placement on the presidential primary ballot in the Wolverine State.

“At the moment, the only event about to occur is the presidential primary election. But as explained, whether Trump is disqualified is irrelevant to his placement on that particular ballot,” the appeals court determined.

Quote:Hundreds of China-made products will continue avoiding United States tariffs thanks to an extension announced by President Joe Biden’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) this week.

The Section 301 tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of China-made products were first imposed by former President Trump after a decades-long free trade consensus in Washington, DC, that eliminated nearly four million American jobs from the U.S. economy from 2001 to 2018.

On Tuesday, Biden’s USTR Katherine Tai announced that her office will extend tariff exclusions for more than 350 China-made products and 77 COVID-19-related categories.

The tariff exclusions, a boon to China, have continuously been extended by Biden’s USTR since March 2022, as Breitbart News reported at the time.

The China-made products that will escape U.S. tariffs thanks to Biden include breast pumps, solar water heaters, garage door openers, X-ray tables, and thermostats, as well as food products from China such as crab meat, Dungeness crab, and Alaskan sole.

Quote:Japan on Tuesday announced that six synthetic substitutes for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana and other cannabis products, will be banned effective January 6 because gummies containing the chemicals are making users sick.

The compound of greatest interest to the Japanese Health Ministry is hexahydrocannabiphorol (HHCP), a synthesized alternative to THC. HHCP and similar compounds are popular in Japan because THC itself is highly illegal. The penalties for possession are steep, with jail sentences of up to seven years awaiting Japanese citizens caught with even minute amounts of marijuana.
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For a variety of political and bureaucratic reasons, the Japanese government did not simply ban all synthetic alternatives to THC. Instead, it has restricted the compounds one at a time, usually after they were linked to health problems.

In November, a synthetic cannabinoid called HHCH caused five of its users to become so sick they required hospitalization after a man handed out gummies during a festival in Tokyo.
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Police said they previously investigated reports of people becoming ill after consuming gummies laced with HHCH, although the previous cases were not as severe as those reported at the Tokyo park festival.

The government imposed a ban on HHCH, which went into effect at the beginning of December, inflicting massive losses on shops that sold the popular substance. The short window of time between announcing and implementing the ban left some shop owners with little choice but to destroy their entire inventory.

Quote:According to VanDiver and two “Western diplomatic sources” who spoke to Reuters anonymously, Pakistani police and local officials have sometimes ignored letters of protection written by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. Of 230 Afghans known to be holding those letters who were arrested for deportation, only 80 were subsequently released by Pakistani officials.

“The letters matter in some cases and not in others. Not all local officers are abiding by it,” VanDiver said.

The U.S. embassy wrote those letters in October after Pakistan set a November 1 deadline for the roughly 1.73 million Afghans illegally living on Pakistani soil to leave the country. Pakistan said refugees seeking resettlement in other countries could stay until December 31, a deadline later extended to the end of February 2024.

Pakistan said this sudden and massive deportation drive was made necessary by repeated terrorist attacks on Pakistani targets. Afghan nationals were involved in many of these attacks.

Quote:The Prosecutor’s Office of Bolivia presented charges on Tuesday against the right-wing governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, and former President Jeanine Áñez for their alleged participation in a “coup” against former socialist President Evo Morales in 2019.

Omar Mejillones, the prosecutor leading the “coup” case, is requesting a 20-year prison sentence for Camacho, Áñez, and six other men accused of plotting to “depose” Morales.

In reality, Morales was not the target of a coup but chose voluntarily to resign in late 2019 after the Organization of American States (OAS) found evidence of fraud in his unconstitutional fourth electoral victory. Morales fled the country to Mexico along with nearly his entire cabinet, leaving Áñez, then a senator, the top person in the line of succession in the country. She became interim president for a year before fulfilling her constitutional duty to organize elections as soon as possible. Bolivia is currently governed by Morales’s Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) Party.

Camacho, 45, is being accused alongside former Defense Minister Luis Fernando López, former military chief Williams Kaliman, and former police chief Yuri Calderón of being the “authors” of the alleged plot.

Áñez stands accused of being an “accomplice” alongside activist Marco Antonio Pumari, former Armed Forces inspector Jorge Fernández, and military chief Carlos Orellana.

Quote:Mexican authorities stood down any efforts to contain a new migrant caravan that embarked this week from the southern part of Mexico. Authorities are currently escorting the groups and providing crowd control.

Calling themselves the Poverty Exodus (Exodo de la Pobreza), the caravan, which is made up of more than 6,000 migrants, left the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, on Christmas Eve. The caravan is making its way north. In various parts of the journey, the migrants waved a banner with the caravan’s name and carried a white cross. Members of the group made public claims that their goal was to reach the United States for economic reasons.

Some migrants told El Pais newspaper that their goal was to stay in the U.S. for 5-7 years and return home. The migrants demanded that U.S. President Joe Biden help them along their journey.

By Wednesday night, the group reached the town of Mapastepec, Chiapas, about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of the Mexico-Guatemala border. There, they camped for the night and continued their journey on Thursday early morning, high-ranking officials with Mexico’s National Migration Institute revealed to Breitbart Texas.

Quote:Instead of blocking migration, “it is more efficient and more humane to invest in the development of the people,” Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said before the Wednesday meeting.

“The migration issue is going to intensify” in 2024, he added.

“Mexico has the upper hand this time around,” said a tweet from Auden Cabello, a Mexico-based journalist who covered the December 27 meeting between Biden’s deputies and Obrador, often called “AMLO.” Cabello continued:

AMLO knows US elections are around the corner and immigration is a top issue. US is desperate for Mexico’s help to stem the [migrant] flow. AMLO will capitalize by asking for more [aid] funding, and ask the US to invest in root causes (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) instead of walls.

All three countries — Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua — are run by left-wing dictators who are already exporting their people to work in the United States.

Each month, Biden’s progressive deputies already welcome roughly 22,000 workers from the three dictatorships, who then help the dictators by sending remittances home from their low-wage U.S. jobs. The remittances also fund and motivate additional migration into the United States.

Quote:The 30-year-old man held in Germany on suspicion of planning to launch Christmas terror on Germany’s most-visited cathedral is a Tajikistan-heritage Islamist who did recon on the church to prepare the attack, reports state.

An alleged Islamist suspected of being involved with the Islamic State in Afghanistan performed hostile reconnaissance at Cologne Cathedral, one of the largest and most visited churches in the world, security sources cited in German newspapers asserted on Thursday. The 30-year-old man, who is an immigrant to Germany from Tajikistan in Central Asia, is said to be the only individual kept in custody after “several” people were arrested by police over a plot in the run-up to Christmas.

The plot was said to have considered both Cologne Cathedral and St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Austria as potential targets, and the arrested man is reported by Welt as being suspected as having conducted reconnaissance on the Cologne church. A security source speaking to the paper said of these visits: “we know that he was there”. The man had not previously been known to security services as an extremist, but he is now allegedly suspected of being linked to the Islamic State of the Khorasan Province, which is noted as a rival to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Tagesschau reports, noting a court had permitted police to keep the man locked up until January 7th. The outlet reports a police spokesman who said: “We are exhausting all legal options to protect the people, the cathedral and the upcoming New Year’s Eve celebrations.”

Quote:One of the world’s most-visited sites, the Eiffel Tower is typically open 365 days a year – though it is occasionally affected by strikes – and is expected to play a central role in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Some tourists were visibly dismayed upon seeing a big sign beneath its iron façade announcing the closure in multiple languages, and apologizing for the inconvenience. Others took photos anyway, or rearranged their Paris plans.

Visitors could still access the glass-enclosed esplanade beneath the tower Wednesday but could not enter the 300-meter (984-foot) landmark itself. Stephane Dieu of the CGT union said it was slated to reopen Thursday.

The strike was declared ahead of contract negotiations expected next month with the city of Paris, which owns the 134-year-old monument, said a spokesperson for the company that manages the tower, SETE.

Unions said the tower’s 400 workers are worried about long-term prospects for the monument.

Quote:Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine – the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region.

The AP’s reporting focused on Oleshky, one town in the vast area flooded by the dam. Health workers and others who were in Oleshky told The Associated Press that Russian authorities hid the true number of dead by taking control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders. Still afraid, many Oleshky residents and health workers declined to speak, fearing reprisal. The AP´s investigation is based on the accounts of those who did, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity or on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.
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In the critical first hours after the dam collapse on June 6, occupation authorities downplayed the consequences, leading many Oleshky residents to believe they would not be affected. This later contributed to the high death toll.

Russia said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls. The AP investigation found the number is at least in the hundreds in Oleshky alone, among the most populous in flood affected areas with around 16,000 residents at the time, according to Ukrainian officials.

Health workers said they believe 200-300 people died in the town. Many are still missing, their bodies likely still trapped in homes.

Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is vowing to sue Texas if state officials begin carrying out a new set of laws, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott ®, that allows them to have illegal aliens arrested and deported — independent of federal officials.

Last week, Abbott signed three pieces of legislation into law, including giving state law enforcement the power to arrest illegal aliens for the crime of illegally crossing the United States-Mexico border and local judges the authority to have illegal aliens deported.

The landmark laws are significant because they put Texas on the map as the first state in the nation where residing illegally in the United States is a state crime, not just a federal crime.

In response, Biden’s DOJ is threatening to sue Texas unless Abbott promises by January 3, 2024, not to enforce the new laws, according to a letter from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton reviewed by the Houston Chronicle.

Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has confirmed that the agency is developing a program that will provide border crossers and illegal aliens released into the United States with photo ID cards.

For more than a year, Breitbart News has chronicled how DHS is planning to roll out a pilot program that will give border crossers and illegal aliens photo ID cards, similar to a driver’s license, upon their release into the United States interior from the southern border.

Now, DHS officials are seemingly confirming their plan to issue photo IDs to such border crossers and illegal aliens.

Buried in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) annual report, officials confirmed that they are planning to begin issuing the photo ID cards to border crossers and illegal aliens sometime this fiscal year.

“[The Office of Immigration Program Evaluation] is leading the ICE Secure Docket Card (SDC) project, which offers a uniform, durable card provided to noncitizens upon release, and facilitates reliable access to commonly lost or damaged immigration-related paperwork,” the ICE report details:

The SDC will be integrated with the Unified Immigration Portal that ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] officers and agents use in the field and the ICE Portal to allow noncitizens access to commonly used documents and services. ICE expects the project to ease ICE personnel workload when encountering noncitizens with the card and decrease the burden on noncitizens when interacting with ICE, including the facilitation of remote reporting for certain low-risk populations. ICE anticipates a limited release in two [Enforcement and Removal Operations] field offices in FY 2024.

Quote:Friday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Your World,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, reacted to Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.

DeSantis suggested Florida could remove President Joe Biden from his state’s ballot for his alleged mishandling of border security.

However, the Florida GOP governor said the act by Bellows was not an appropriate interpretation of the 14th Amendment and would ultimately be reversed by the Supreme Court.

Quote:Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents rescued three Mexican migrants who illegally crossed the Canadian border into New York on December 9, according to information received this week from CBP officials. The migrants all suffered injury from exposure to the wintery conditions and were taken to a hospital for treatment.

Swanton Sector Cheif Patrol Agent Robert Garcia posted photos on social media showing agents rescuing a group of migrants who became lost in the woods after crossing into New York from Canada. The agents, along with Churubusco Fire Department crews and other supporting agencies, carried out a search and rescue operation leading to the discovery of the injured migrants.

CBP officials reported on December 28 that Swanton Sector agents assigned to the Champlain Station responded to a 911 call in Churubusco, New York, at about 5 a.m. on December 9. The search crews found three migrants suffering from cold weather injuries in the dense forest area. Rescue crews transported the migrants to the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital for treatment, officials stated.

Breitbart later learned the three migrants were identified as Mexican nationals. After being treated at the hospital, agents released the migrants with a notice to appear before an immigration court at some point in the future. Officials did not disclose the final destination plans for the migrants.

Quote:Poland says a Russian missile participating in this morning’s massive air strike on Ukraine spent three minutes in Polish, and hence NATO, airspace.

A missile entered NATO airspace on Friday morning at around 0700 (0000 EST), the Polish military says. While initially said to have been a missile of unknown origin and a search for a downed aircraft was launched, Poland now says it has confirmed with its own observations and data from allied militaries that the object was, in fact, a Russian missile.

Polsat reports the remarks of General Wiesław Kukuła who said Ukraine had suffered “a difficult night” of a saturation attack by Russian forces against its air defences, attempting to overwhelm them with drones before pressing on with a missile followup. Polish air defences tracked these attacks over Ukraine, he said, and “One of these rockets crossed the Polish border and then left it.”

Combat aircraft were scrambled to protect Polish airspace, he said, and Major General Maciej Klisz further remarked that Poland’s operational command had experienced “a busy nice… a busy night for all elements of Poland’s air defence.”

Poland says the missile crossed into its territory east of Zamosc, near Lublin, and spent three minutes in Polish airspace, crossing 40 kilometres (25 miles), an indicated airspeed of 500 miles per hour. It is possible a missile launched from Belarus around the ancient city of Brest towards Lviv in Ukraine (Lwów) would pass through Poland in the area described, for the distance described as the Polish border continues slightly further east in this area.

Lviv was one of the Ukrainian cities struck this morning, as noted by Ukrainian state media.

Quote:Shelling in the center of the Russian border city of Belgorod killed 14 people, including two children, and injured 108 others Saturday, Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry said.

Russian officials accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack, which took place the day after an 18-hour aerial bombardment across Ukraine killed at least 39 civilians.

Images of Belgorod on social media showed burning cars and plumes of black smoke rising among damaged buildings as air raid sirens sounded. One strike hit close to a public ice rink in the very heart of the city.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it identified the ammunition used in the strike as Czech-made Vampire rockets and Olkha cluster munitions. It provided no additional information, and The Associated Press was unable to verify its claims.

“This crime will not go unpunished,” the ministry said in a statement on social media.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the situation, and that the country’s health minister, Mikhail Murashko, was ordered to join a delegation of medical personnel and rescue workers traveling to Belgorod from Moscow.

Quote:Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba appears to have admonished Western nations, who he accuses of doing too little and too late, in the actions taken in the aftermath of the nearly two-year-long reinvasion of his country by Russia. Speaking of the Western response, Kuleba told the Kyiv Independent that Europe has apparently forgotten how war works and hasn’t made the steps he wants to see in activating a wartime economy to produce weapons.

He told the paper: “Europe doesn’t know how to fight wars. The production of weapons is not the most popular area of business… Unfortunately, our friends spent too much time deliberating on how and when to ramp up their production of weapons and ammunition”.

While European-made weaponry has a superiority of technological sophistication, Kuleba said, it simply can’t be made in sufficient quantities. The minister compared this to Russia, where the armaments industry is state-owned and despite Western sanctions has been rapidly expanded to feed the war machine.

Quote:Amid growing concerns about Ukraine’s ability to continue the fight against the much larger Russian military and failures to recapture any meaningful amount of territory from Moscow’s army, there are growing whispers in the halls of power in the West about the ex-Soviet state’s prospects in battling back its former master.

The latest to publicly express concern was NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who told German broadcaster ARD as translated by POLITICO that the West should “be prepared for bad news,” without elaborating on exactly what he believes may befall the war-torn country next.

The comments from the Norwegian politician came as the Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin had ordered the addition of 170,000 extra troops to the Russian Armed Forces, in a move that would take the total strength of the army to over 1.3 million.

Last month, reports emerged from Washington that U.S. officials have quietly begun pressuring Kyiv to come to the negotiating table with Moscow, expressing concerns over the ability to draft more men into the fight. One unnamed American defence official told NBC News that “manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” noting that further armed shipments would be irrelevant if Ukraine does not “have competent forces to use them.”

Despite such reported concerns, President Biden is continuing his lobbying effort on Congress to supply billions more military aid to Ukraine, with the White House warning that U.S. funding for the proxy war could dry up by the end of the year. Biden is currently seeking $61 billion in additional aid for Ukraine, however, there has been growing opposition among House Republicans to fund the conflict as the American public is growing war-weary.

Quote:A 26-year-old man was arrested on Friday following a police raid of a house in Catford in south London in which a “quantity of chemicals” were discovered. The raid was also attended by the London Fire Brigade, including two fire engines and other rescue units.

The raid was triggered after locals raised concerns to the police about a large amount of potentially explosive chemicals being brought to the house, which the Daily Mail described as being a potential “bomb-making factory”.
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A spokesman for the Met said: “We were called at around 1.20 pm to concerns about chemicals stored at an address in Daneby Rd SE6.

“A quantity of chemicals was recovered. A 26-year-old man was arrested and taken into police custody. CID officers are investigating. This is not being treated as terror-related.”

Quote:Amid heightened security fears across Europe in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza against Islamist forces, Paris will see over 90,000 police officers and gendarmes, as well as some 5,000 soldiers patrolling its streets on New Year’s Eve.

The police will also be deploying helicopters and drones to monitor the crowds, and police have ramped up fireworks seizures by 45 per cent over last year.

Announcing the measure on Friday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said according to Le Figaro that it was necessary to tighten security in the French capital in light of a “very high terrorist threat.”

In addition, the sale and consumption of alcohol will be banned in certain areas of the city during the holiday and New Year’s Eve festivities will shut down at 12:30 am, police prefect Laurent Nuñez said. The police boss went on to say that people will be searched by officers before entering restricted areas and that within the perimeter of the celebrations, shops will be prohibited from selling knives and other objects that could be used as weapons.

Quote:India burns so much coal that it has an entire cabinet-level ministry devoted to coal. The Ministry of Coal informed the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, this week that India will not be transitioning to any alternative form of energy in the “foreseeable future.”

The ministry said more mining and importing of coal will be necessary to meet the energy needs of the growing industrial economy.

The Hindustan Times noted that no one participating in the just-concluded winter session of Parliament acted like India’s promise at the COP28 climate conference to begin eliminating fossil fuels was sincere.
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India was one of 200 countries to sign the joint statement at COP28 but, a few weeks later, the Ministry of Coal explained to the Rajya Sabha that while India is expanding its use of renewables and alternative energy, coal will remain a major source of power for a very long time to come.

Quote:South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered troops near the North Korean border to immediately respond to any attack without concern for bureaucracy, waiting to report incidents until after the threat has been neutralized.

Yoon’s explicit call for soldiers not to hesitate to attack assailants followed months of increasingly belligerent statements and behaviors from the North. Pyongyang has reportedly increased activity at its Yongbyon nuclear complex – capable of producing plutonium – and test-launched the Hwasong-18 solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on December 18.

Following the launch, communist dictator Kim Jong-un claimed the objective of the test was to remind the United States and South Korea that his country was prepared and willing to conduct a nuclear bombing against them. The Hwasong-18 is the latest known model of ICBM developed in North Korea and, given its use of solid fuel, is believed to be capable of a much faster nuclear strike than prior liquid-fuel models.

The president’s statements also follow multiple reports indicating that Yoon’s government is concerned not just about a potential conventional military assault by North Korea, or a nuclear attack, but a guerrilla terrorist onslaught similar to what Israel experienced at the hands of the genocidal jihadist group Hamas on October 7. South Korean officials have warned that North Korea is transparently supportive of Hamas and may consider a copycat attack.

Quote:The article in question appeared on the Tieba social media platform, which is run by online giant Baidu, and was quoted by a news service called Mother and Infant Daily News.

Tieba, a word that means “let’s post articles,” is a huge collection of forums similar to Reddit in concept. Baidu describes it as the largest online community in the world due to its vast number of users.

An account in Tieba called City Data posted data on Wednesday that said 7.88 million babies were born in 2023, which was a stunning 1.68 million less than 2022’s total. Measured against China’s 11 million deaths, this meant the national population declined by a net 3.12 million.

Within a matter of hours, Chinese censors tracked down and deleted the City Data post on Tieba.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) found the quick censorship curious since the Chinese Communist Party might be touchy about discussing its population crisis, but declining birth rates are no great secret, and City Data’s numbers were in line with projections made by prominent demographers. A journal called China Philanthropist made a prediction of fewer than eight million births in May that turned out to be highly accurate.
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Young people are increasingly avoiding marriage, having children and buying a home amid a tanking economy and rampant youth unemployment, part of an emerging social phenomenon known as the “young refuseniks” – people who reject the traditional four-fold path to adulthood: finding a mate, marriage, mortgages and raising a family.

A recent poll on the social media platform Weibo found that while most of the 44,000 respondents said 25-28 is the best age to marry, nearly 60% said they were delaying marriage due to work pressures, education or the need to buy property.

Quote:Local media identified the detained priests as Monsignor Carlos Aviles, vicar general of the Diocese of Managua, and Father Hector Treminio, treasurer for the diocese. Their identities were confirmed in a report by Vatican News, which said they were the fifth and sixth priests to be arrested by the Ortega regime in the past week.

The Nicaraguan government did not respond to foreign media requests for comment on the arrests.

The Ortega regime detained Bishop Alvarez in August 2022 after he criticized the government for shutting down Catholic radio stations and perpetrating human rights abuses against protesters. The regime said the stations were shuttered because Catholic leaders were trying to destabilize the country.

Alvarez was kept under house arrest for six months on charges of “conspiracy,” “spreading false news,” and “damaging the Nicaraguan government and society.”
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Some Catholics have been dismayed by the Vatican’s muted response to the arrest of Alvarez and other clergy, and Ortega’s general persecution of Catholic congregations. Bishops around the world have strongly condemned the Ortega regime.

Quote:The Office of the President of Argentina stated that the 351-page, 664-article long bill – titled “Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines” – will “restore the economic and social order” as perceived through the nation’s constitution. The office stressed its “firm will to undertake, immediately and with suitable instruments, the fight against the adverse factors that threaten the freedom of Argentines; that prevent the proper functioning of the market economy; and are the cause of the impoverishment of the nation.”

Argentine law grants the nation’s deputies, senators, president, and citizens the ability to present bills to Congress for their corresponding review and debate.

The bill, which reportedly contains “two-thirds” of all of Miilei’s reform proposals for Argentina, calls for the declaration of a public emergency in economic, financial, fiscal, social security, security, defense, tariff, energy, sanitary, administrative, and social matters until December 31, 2025, which can be extended by the executive for a maximum term of two years.

The bill complements the Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU) signed by Milei last week that modified or eliminated over 350 socialist policies. The bill formalizes some of the DNU’s contents through codification and includes topics that an executive order cannot cover, such as penal, tax, and electoral issues.

Milei announced that if Congress rejects the DNU he will call for a national plebiscite for its approval.

Quote:In an attempt to reassure a war-weary nation, strongman Vladimir Putin put on a brave face as he addressed his people on New Year’s Eve, promising that Russia will overcome the issues that face it, presumably including the stagnating war in Ukraine and the economic challenges posed by Western sanctions.

“We have proven time and time again that we can solve even the most difficult problems, and we will never back down, because there is no such force that can divide us, makes us forget the memory and faith of our fathers, to stop our development,” Putin said according to state news agency TASS.

“We are one country, one big family. We will ensure the confident development of the Fatherland, the well-being of our citizens, we will become even stronger. We are together. And this is the most reliable guarantee of the future of Russia,” he continued.

The address from Putin came amid increasing warnings about the Ukraine war’s impact on the Russian military, with Britain’s Ministry of Defence claiming on Saturday that the average daily number of Russian casualties rose by nearly 300 during 2023. Should the casualty rate remain consistent over the next year, Russia will have lost over half a million military personnel, according to the UK intel assessment.

Quote:The Ukrainian Air Force said Sunday that it had shot down 21 of 49 drones launched by Russian forces overnight.

Twenty-eight people were wounded in an attack on the eastern city of Kharkiv, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Sunday. A central hotel, apartment buildings, kindergarten, shops and administrative buildings sustained damage, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had hit “decision-making centers and military facilities” in Kharkiv, reporting that its strike on the Kharkiv Palace Hotel had “destroyed representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate and Ukrainian Armed Forces” involved in the “terrorist attack” in Belgorod.

In the Kyiv region that surrounds the capital, a Russian drone attack caused a fire to break out at a critical infrastructure facility, local officials said. They did not identify the facility further.

Shelling in the center of the Russian border city of Belgorod Saturday killed 24 people, including three children. A further 108 people were wounded in the strike, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Sunday, making it one of the deadliest attacks on Russian soil since the start of Moscow´s invasion of Ukraine 22 months ago.

Quote:Taiwan – January 13

Aside from the United States, Taiwan is arguably holding the single most important presidential election in the world this year. Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen is term-limited out of running, so voters must choose among three new options: Lai Ching-te (William Lai), the candidate representing Tsai’s stridently anti-communist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP); Hou Yu-ih of the China-friendly Kuomintang; and Ko Wen-je of the minor Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), a surprise third-party run eating into Kuomintang support.

Lai has consistently been polling ahead of his contenders, though polls as of December 17 show Lai with a much narrower three-point lead against Hou, the candidate consistently landing in second place. Hou’s and Ko’s votes combined could easily defeat Lai – and they know it. The two parties attempted to form a unity ticket in November, but egos prevailed, as neither candidate agreed to take the vice-presidential slot, so they may yet seal each other’s losses.
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El Salvador – February 4

Voters in El Salvador are facing an unprecedented election in 2024. Their president for most of the last five years, Nayib Bukele, is running for reelection – which is explicitly unconstitutional. Yet polls show him enjoying an over 60 percent lead over his closest contender, and the nation’s Supreme Court issued a ruling stating that he can run so long as he resigns shortly before the election. Bukele stepped down on December 1 to fulfill the ruling’s provisions.

Bukele, of the third-party “New Ideas” coalition, is wildly popular due to his law enforcement policies. The president declared war on the country’s extremely violent drug and human trafficking gangs, placing the country in a “state of exception” that greatly expanded the government’s ability to conduct mass arrests, stage mass trials, and otherwise rapidly process suspected criminals. Bukele has openly touted the construction of “megaprisons” to house tens of thousands of men suspected of drug activity. As a result, local reports indicate, gangs have largely disappeared from public life, allowing civilians to engage in normal activities such as using public parks, establishing small businesses, and going to school without the fear of being attacked or extorted by a gang member.
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Tunisia – September/October 2024

Tunisia, the birthplace of the “Arab Spring” and a pivotal crossing point for many African migrants seeking entry into Europe, is expected to hold its first presidential election in 2024 following the abrupt dissolution of the government in 2021 and the adoption of a new constitution a year later.

Tunisia has been turbulent politically since Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, set himself on fire to protest police allegedly demanding bribes in 2010, an event largely considered the trigger for the series of government topplings known as the Arab Spring. The country returned to presidential elections after the overthrow of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, a direct result of Bouazizi’s protest.

Unlike other “Arab Spring” nations, Tunisia appeared to return to democracy with the election of 88-year-old veteran politician Beji Caid Essebsi in 2014. Current President Kais Saied succeeded him in what was largely considered a free and fair election in 2019 following Essebsi’s death.
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Portugal – March 20

Portuguese voters will go to the polls in March to determine the makeup of their national legislature in a snap election triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister António Costa, a socialist caught up in a police corruption probe that abruptly ended his career. The Socialist Party currently has a majority in the parliament but is plagued by corruption allegations beyond Costa: multiple socialist government ministers, Costa’s chief of staff, and the head of Portugal’s environmental agency were among the implicated.

The chaos in the Socialist Party has created a window of opportunity for the right-wing populist party Chega, which advocates for a more robust law-and-order agenda, less government bureaucracy, and the eradication of corruption. Polling in December indicated that the establishment center-right party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), was likely to garner the most votes nationwide, surpassing the socialists. But the same polls showed Chega – a relatively new, populist outsider party – attracting 13 percent of the vote, making it likely the third-largest party in Parliament. Such an outcome would give the party significant leverage to move the PSD further right and limit Socialist Party influence in legislation. It would also give Chega influence in supporting a prime minister if it joins a coalition government.
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Pakistan (again) – February 8

Pakistan’s politics are so dysfunctional that it actually appeared in the 2023 iteration of Breitbart News’ elections-to-watch list but never actually held the elections leaders promised that year. After stalling on calling elections for as long as possible, the country’s Supreme Court ordered the prime minister to hold elections, refreshing the makeup of the Parliament and paving the way for a new prime minister.

The currently ongoing political crisis in Pakistan began with the ouster of widely popular radical Islamist Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022 with a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Khan is arguably Pakistan’s most popular politician and rose to power on a platform condemning establishment predecessor Nawaz Sharif and his inner circle for alleged corruption. Khan also emboldened violent Islamist extremists, who continue to enthusiastically support Khan despite his ouster and subsequent arrests. Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz’s brother, succeeded Khan as interim prime minister, fueling more popular outrage against Pakistan’s political elite.

Khan is currently in prison after multiple attempts to detain him resulted in mob scenes in front of his home, forcing police to retreat. He has been nonetheless galvanizing his base and campaigning from prison by writing speeches and having an AI likeness of himself deliver them. Khan is attempting to appear on the ballot for February’s election representing his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – alongside the leaders of the two other major parties in the country, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) leader Maryam Nawaz Sharif. Nawaz Sharif, Maryam’s father, is also reportedly filing to run for office and openly seeking the prime ministership.

Quote:Darshan-Leitner said North Korea “knowingly and intentionally” passes weapons to Iran for distribution to Hamas, so the regimes in both Pyongyang and Tehran are “liable” for the deaths and injuries inflicted on October 7.

In an interview with VOA’s Korean Service recorded on December 27, Darshan-Leitner said she currently represents ten Americans, “including family members who lost their loved ones, as well as U.S. citizens who were injured or who incurred property damage in the attack.” She expected more American victims to join the lawsuit, possibly including hostages presently held prisoner by Hamas after they are released.

“More than 30 Americans, many of them dual U.S.-Israeli citizens, were killed in the attack that initiated the latest round of violence between Hamas and Israel,” VOA noted.

Darshan-Leitner admitted the plaintiffs would face a challenging “burden” to “prove the case,” but she said her team has enlisted “experts who know a lot about North Korea” and how its weapons “wound up in the hands of Hamas.”

Quote:BP and Equinor said they canceled the project, dubbed the Empire Wind 2, that was to be built off the shores of New York.

A press release stated the two companies had reached an agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), to terminate the Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificate (OREC) for Empire Wind 2.

“This agreement reflects changed economic circumstances on an industry-wide scale… The decision recognizes commercial conditions driven by inflation, interest rates and supply chain disruptions that prevented Empire Wind 2’s existing OREC agreement from being viable,” Equinor said.

Molly Morris, president of Equinor Renewables Americas, said in a statement the company is open to more economically viable projects in the future.
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The Department of the Interior (DOI) and Department of Energy (DOE) both endorsed the project in November, with the DOI praising President Joe Biden and referring to Empire Wind 1 and 2 as a “Bidenomics” success.
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The agency also said the Empire Wind projects support Biden’s green energy goals.

Just six weeks after its approval, Empire Wind 2 failed due to the economics the Biden administration boasted of.

Quote:During a Thursday morning press conference, Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante says his office received a 7:37 a.m. alert on a shooting at Perry High School and an officer arrived on scene within seven minutes.

Update: The Associated Press pointed out the suspected Perry High School shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The AP says this bit of information was conveyed to them by a law enforcement official wishing to remain anonymous.
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Infante said there were “multiple gunshot victims,” adding, “We are still unclear on how many are injured.”

He added, “There is no further danger to the public. The community is safe.”

Infante said the shooting occurred at a time when many teachers and students were not at the school, which was best case scenario.

He said the identity of the shooter has been confirmed but that identity is not being released at this time.

Quote:Israel’s Supreme Court struck down the first, and most moderate, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial reforms on Monday in a close 8-7 decision that risked dividing the country again in the midst of an existential war against Hamas terrorists.

The opposition and far left, including the U.S. State Department-funded Movement for Government Quality, celebrated the ruling and warned Netanyahu not to resist it. Netanyahu and his governing coalition said they would delay reacting until after the war.

Israel’s judiciary is the most powerful in the democratic world, and is virtually unchecked. Netanyahu and his government won an election in 2022 with a large majority, partly on the basis of a promise to reform the judiciary. Most of the proposed reforms were parallel to existing practices in other democracies. The left, relegated to the minority, took to the streets and organized massive protests that observers likened to a “color revolution,” aimed at ousting Netanyahu or at least making him completely ineffective.

The government delayed passage of the reforms to allow time for negotiation with the opposition. When talks failed, Netanyahu tried to pass the reforms piecemeal, starting with the least objectionable proposal, barring judges from striking down legislation or government action on the basis of “reasonableness,” a subjective standard that depends on the judge’s own, personal opinion.
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There were three issues at stake. The first was whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to hear the case at all. Israel does not have a formal constitution and has no real judicial review; the courts simply seized the power to review legislation in the 1990s.

Quote:The head of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened to wage a “no-limits” war against Israel in remarks on Wednesday responding to a drone strike on a senior leader of Hamas.

Hamas is a Sunni terrorist organization that shares a genocidal jihadist ideology – and Iranian state funding – with Hezbollah. While the leaders of the two groups and their supporters occasionally clash publicly, Hezbollah has enthusiastically supported Hamas following its terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, in which Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people, abducted an estimated 250, and engaged in a wide range of atrocities, including infanticide, gang rape, and burning people alive. While Hamas is a Sunni terrorist organization, Hamas is led by Shiite Muslim jihadists.
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Hamas lost one of the founders of its “military” terror wing, the Qassam Brigades, and the second-in-command of its political office, Saleh al-Arouri, on Tuesday to a drone strike targeting a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates as an influential political party in addition to a terrorist organization. The Qassam Brigades are believed to be the Hamas terrorists responsible for the October 7 attack.
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Nasrallah delivered incendiary remarks on Wednesday, vowing revenge on Israel for the strike, his most radical comments since October 7. According to Iranian state outlet Fars News, Nasrallah declared the drone attack on the outskirts of Beirut an attempt to target Lebanon directly, not a strike against Hamas, and claimed Hezbollah would wage a war with “no rules” against Israel if military activity in Lebanon expanded.

Quote:Multiple Iranian state-affiliated news outlets reported the deaths on Wednesday of between 20 and 73 people at a parade honoring late terrorist Qasem Soleimani near his tomb in southern Kerman, the result of what investigations are initially describing as “twin” explosions detonated by remote.

Update: Since the time of publication of this article, Iranian authorities have updated the casualty count to 103 people killed and 141 wounded, including some in critical condition.

The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported on Wednesday that two explosions rocked the event “as people were packed on a road leading to a cemetery where the tomb of General Soleimani is located,” 13 minutes apart. Terrorists often use multiple explosions to target both their initial victims and first responders deploying to save those injured.

“Sources told a Tasnim reporter in Kerman that the perpetrator or perpetrators of the attack have exploded two explosive-laden suitcases with remote controllers,” the outlet asserted, describing the explosions as terrorism.

Prior reports suggested the possibility of an accidental gas cylinder explosion, though local officials later began openly declaring the explosions intentional.
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Footage from the event indicated that the Iranian regime had mobilized thousands of people to crowd into the city and march to the cemetery, an attempt to rehabilitate Soleimani’s image in life as a mass murderer into that of a beloved patriot.
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The Iranian regime ultimately replaced Soleimani with Esmail Qaani, a more low-profile terrorist with a significant role in Iran’s involvement in Syria.

Nope Iranians, it wasn't Israel at all.

Quote:The Islamic State on Thursday used one of its channels on the messaging platform Telegram to claim responsibility for the bombings in Iran that killed almost a hundred people at a ceremony to honor terrorist mastermind Qassem Soleimani.

Iranian officials have been insinuating or outright accusing the United States and Israel of organizing the bomb attacks on Wednesday – the fourth anniversary of Soleimani’s elimination by a U.S. drone strike while he was coordinating terrorist attacks on Iraqi soil.
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Thousands of Iranians were attending an event to mark the anniversary of Soleiman’s “martyrdom” in his hometown of Kerman on Wednesday when two explosions occurred within ten minutes of each other. The bomb triggered a stampede, while the second killed both fleeing civilians and first responders, a fairly common terrorist tactic.
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On Thursday, the Islamic State issued a statement on Telegram saying two of its members “activated their explosive vests” at the ceremony for Soleimani.

Quote:Iran Air, the national airline, announced on Wednesday that it would not be able to make its promised flights to Saudi Arabia because Riyadh had not finalized the permits it needs to enter Saudi airspace.

The much-anticipated flights – expected to reach the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan – were intended to bring Iranian pilgrims to participate in the Umrah, an Islamic pilgrimage to the city of Mecca.
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According to Iran International, a dissident outlet, “approximately six million Iranians have been awaiting the resumption of Umrah” since 2015. The flights expected to begin this week were estimated to have brought 30,000 Iranians to Saudi Arabia for the religious pilgrimage and Iranian officials had anticipated that as many as 400,000 Iranians were to have made Umrah by summer 2024.
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Iran and Saudi Arabia have not allowed direct flights in eight years and halted Umrah flights specifically in 2015, when the Yemen civil war erupted. The delayed flights were expected to begin on Thursday. The agreement to resume flights is one of several deals brokered by communist China between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year. Diplomats from both nations announced in a surprise meeting in Beijing in March 2023 that they had agreed to begin the process of normalizing diplomatic ties after years of strife, exacerbated by Iranian proxy terrorist groups bombing Saudi targets, particularly the Yemeni Houthi jihadist insurgency. The Chinese Communist Party declared itself the world’s premier peacemaker as Riyadh and Tehran agreed to reopen embassies, resume flights, and gingerly resume government-to-government contact.

Quote:Argentina on Wednesday announced the arrest of three foreign nationals, specifically citizens of Syria and Lebanon, who were suspected of planning a “terrorist act” at the Pan-American Maccabi Games.

Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said her office received intelligence from the U.S. and Israel that led to the December 30 arrest of the three suspects, who were staying at a hotel two blocks from the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. Their proximity to the embassy was concerning because it was the target of an infamous terrorist attack in 1992.

An Iraqi national with allegedly falsified Argentine documents was also arrested outside the Israeli embassy in October after a week of bomb threats were phoned into the embassy.

Bullrich said the suspects were “waiting for a package that came via the delivery system from Yemen,” which she described as a “strong wake-up call,” given that much of Yemen is controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea.
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She said the package, which weighed about 35 kilograms (about 77 pounds), had been seized and examined by the authorities.

Bullrich said the detainees’ identities would be kept confidential for the moment because the investigation is under “summary secrecy” orders and because confirming their identities could be difficult. She noted one of the detainees carried “passports of a different nationality” than the one used to gain entry to Argentina.

“If a person has a Syrian passport, a Colombian passport, and a Venezuelan passport and enters with different passports, what is their real identity? What is their nationality?” she wondered.

The Colombian government issued a statement Wednesday, naming one of the detainees as Chassan Naem Chatay, a Colombian citizen by adoption since May 2022. The statement from Colombia said consular assistance would be provided to Chatay but offered no further details about his origins.

Quote:Chaos erupted on an Alaska Airlines plane when a massive piece of the aircraft blew off mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole that sucked out passengers’ belongings and forced an emergency landing.

The Friday flight departed from Portland, Oregon, at 4:52 p.m., headed for Ontario, California. However, it had to head back to Portland International Airport only 35 minutes after takeoff when the flight turned into a nightmare, according to data from Flight Aware.
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Fortunately, the seats closest to the hole were empty, and no one was seriously injured.

Passengers described the terrifying incident, detailing to KPTV how people’s cell phones and belongings were sucked out of the aircraft.
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“Portland approach, Alaska 1282 emergency! Aircraft is now leveling 12,000 in a left turn heading three four zero,” the Alaska Airlines pilot said.

“We are emergency, we are depressurized, we do need to return back to, we have 177 passengers. Fuel is eighteen eight.”

First responders arrived at the tarmac when the plane touched back down and treated minor injuries. One individual was taken for further medical evaluations, the Port of Portland told KPTV.

The Boeing 737 Max 9 was practically brand-new, having just been built and approved to fly in late October, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) registry.
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“Following tonight’s event on Flight 1282, we have decided to take the precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 Boeing 737-9 aircraft,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in a press release. “Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections.”

Quote:The Supreme Court will hear arguments on former President Donald Trump’s appeal of a Colorado Supreme Court decision to strike him from the ballot, a monumental case with implications for similar ballot access challenges in states across the country that could determine the presidential election.

The court will hear oral arguments on February 8, 2024, an expedited schedule that demonstrates the significance of resolving the case quickly.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December in a four-to-three opinion that the Fourteenth Amendment’s “Insurrection Clause” prohibits Trump from appearing on the ballot for the presidency in 2024. The ruling partially reversed a lower court’s ruling that Trump is not an officer of the United States as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment and that the Amendment, therefore, cannot be used to disqualify him from appearing on the Colorado primary ballot.

The Court unilaterally determined that “clear and convincing evidence” proved “that President Trump engaged in insurrection” despite Trump having never been convicted of that or any other crime or even been charged in court with the crime of insurrection. The U.S. Senate acquitted him of charges of engaging in insurrection, and he continues to deny wrongdoing.

Without any court proceedings to support its legal assertion, the Court cited the U.S. House January 6 Select Committee, notwithstanding that Trump was acquitted of the House’s charges in the Senate.

Quote:One of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) former top aides reportedly laid aside quite a bit of money in donor funds from his political action committee (PAC) for himself.

After stepping down from his position as her communications director in 2019, Corbin Trent created the No Excuses PAC, Fox News reported Saturday.

He created the PAC with the mission to kill the Senate filibuster by targeting Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). However, Trent reportedly did not spend much money on its mission.

“Instead, Trent paid himself nearly $140,000 for reported communication and management consulting between February 2021 and September 2023, which is shown in Federal Election Commission filings,” the article said.

His group paid more than $14,000 for radio ad buys regarding the two senators, “meaning his PAC had paid him ten times more for reported consulting services than it spent on its stated goals,” the Fox report stated.

According to the Washington Examiner, Trent also wanted the PAC to urge centrist Senate Democrats to be more progressive, the outlet said Wednesday.

Quote:Black Lives Matter and feminist activists joined forces with pro-Palestinian protesters in a march in London that saw demonstrators clash with police and shut down Westminster Bridge in a “die-in”.

Various leftist groups, including the UK branch of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and the radical feminist group Sisters Uncut, banded together with anti-Israel activists from the London for a Free Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement to form what they dubbed the “Free Palestine Coalition (FPC)” in a protest in central London on Saturday.

According to the Metropolitan Police, the organisers of the protest refused to share their planned route, while only stating according to The Telegraph that they would be “blockading a well-known location in London”.

This landmark appears to have been Westminster Bridge, where activists were filmed lying down on the pavement, blocking off traffic on the major bridge in the centre of the British capital.

The activists seemed to deploy the common leftist tactic of a “die-in” in which activists lay motionless on the ground to stymie efforts from police to clear the road and, in this case, likely symbolise those who have died in the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

In other footage posted on social media, protesters clashed with police while others shouted “shame on you” to the police officers who were attempting to clear the road.

Quote:A group of farmers prevented Germany’s vice chancellor from disembarking a ferry, hours after the government partially climbed down on cost-saving plans that had infuriated the agricultural sector. The protest drew condemnation from both government and opposition figures.

Farmers headed to a jetty in Schluettsiel on the North Sea coast Thursday afternoon ahead of the arrival of the ferry carrying Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck following calls on social media for a protest, police said Friday. Habeck had been on a personal trip to the small island of Hooge.

Between 250 and 300 people gathered to demonstrate. Police said it wasn’t possible to arrange a dialogue between Habeck and organizers in the tense situation, so the ferry departed again. Up to 30 demonstrators tried to board the vessel, but were held back by police using pepper spray.

Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Green party who is also economy and climate minister, was able to reach the mainland during the night.

Chancellor OIaf Scholz’s unpopular government angered farmers in December by announcing plans to cut agricultural subsidies as part of a package to fill a 17-billion-euro ($18.6-billion) hole in the 2024 budget. Farmers staged a protest with tractors in Berlin and called for more demonstrations next week.

On Thursday, the government announced a partial about-turn. It said it would retain an exemption from car tax for farming vehicles and would stagger planned reductions in tax breaks for diesel used in agriculture.

The German Farmers Association quickly said that the change didn’t go far enough. It said it was still demanding that both proposals be reversed and it would stick to its planned protests.

Quote:There were over 127,000 “unauthorised entries” by migrants detected by German law enforcement in 2023, a considerable increase on previous years and the highest since the historic surge of the Europe Migrant Crisis in 2015.

German police have warned the nation should strengthen its border controls for as long as Europe’s external border remains unsecured, flows of migrants will continue across the Schengen open-frontier zone to the wealthy, high-welfare states of northern Europe.

The remarks accompany new Federal migration figures seen by German broadsheet Die Welt which notes there were 127,088 “unauthorised border crossings” in 2023.

The figure is up 38 per cent in just one year from 92,000 in 2022, and is even higher than arrivals in 2016, the second year of the Europe Migrant Crisis. The only year in modern German history with higher levels of illegals, Welt notes was the first year of the crisis when 217,000 “irregular border crossings” took place in 2015.

Chairman of the German Police Union Heiko Teggatz said the figures proved the Euro open borders Schengen system is broken and said Germany had to now play “catch up” on its own border controls. A spokesman for the leftist governing SPD party disagreed, however, and was cited by Welt as having said the surging number of illegals detected on the border merely proved their government’s border plans were working well, as otherwise they’d be undetected illegals.

The left-wingers’ comments came with a not-so-subtle attack on the tone of the debate though, saying when debating illegal migrants Germans should remember the country “depends on immigration”. They said: “In all of this, we should always remember that we in Germany depend on immigration to secure our prosperity, so the most important thing for us is that those who can contribute find their way to us through regular channels”.

Quote:Russian officials in the southern border city of Belgorod offered to evacuate worried residents on Friday, an unprecedented announcement that follows waves of fatal Ukrainian attacks.

The Kremlin has tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy on the home front, but the recent strikes on Belgorod have brought the Ukraine conflict closer to home for Russians.

Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov’s assurance that scared civilians can relocate represents the furthest-reaching measure taken by any major Russian city since Moscow ordered the invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.

“I see several appeals on social media where people write: We are scared, help us get to a safe place,” governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video message.

“Of course we will! We have already moved several families,” he added.

His offer came a day after overnight shelling wounded at least two people and knocked out glass from high-rise buildings, prompting widespread concern from residents.

The bout of shelling prompted city officials earlier Friday to urge residents to secure their windows with tape to prevent shattering from blast waves — a measure widespread across Ukraine.

Ukrainian shelling in Belgorod less than a week ago killed 25 people — the worst attack on Russian civilians since the conflict began.

Quote:Russia’s national elections commission on Friday registered the first two candidates who will compete with President Vladimir Putin in the March election that Putin is all but certain to win.

The commission approved putting Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party on the ballot for the March 15-17 vote.

Neither poses a significant challenge to Putin, who has dominated Russian politics since becoming president in 2000. Both candidates’ parties are largely supportive in parliament of legislation backed by Putin’s power-base United Russia party.

Slutsky, as head of the lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, has been a prominent backer of Kremlin foreign policy that is increasingly oppositional to the West. In the last presidential election in 2018, the party’s candidate tallied less than 6% of the vote.

Davankov is a deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, the Duma. His party was established in 2020 and holds 15 seats in the 450-member Duma.

The Communist Party has put forth Nikolai Kharitonov as its candidate, but the elections commission has not formally registered him. Kharitonov was the party’s candidate in 2004, finishing a distant second to Putin.

A Russian politician calling for peace in Ukraine was rejected last month from the presidential ballot.

Quote:The United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Obokata Tomoya, asked the communist regime of Cuba to respond to evidence that it was selling its citizens to nations such as Spain, Italy, Ghana, and Qatar for labor exploitation in a letter published Tuesday by the human rights organization Prisoners Defenders.

Prisoners Defenders is a Europe-based NGO that has focused on documenting human rights abuses in Cuba. It filed a complaint with the United Nations against Cuba in 2019 accusing the Castro regime, and offering copious evidence, of selling health workers, athletes, artists, and laborers as slaves to a long list of countries around the world. Cuba’s medical slavery – in which it forces doctors, often under duress and with minimal information on where they are going – is one of the communist regime’s most lucrative industries, netting as much as $11 billion a year in profit for the impoverished nation’s 65-year-old government.

Cuban health workers trapped in the industry often have the vast majority of their salaries confiscated, lose their right to free movement and travel, cannot meet with their families or develop friendships or romantic relationships with locals, and are forced to work in dangerous locales. Two Cuban doctors forced to work in Kenya who were abducted by the Sunni jihadist terror group al-Shabaab, Landy Rodríguez Hernández and Assel Herrera Correa, remain missing at press time, nearly five years after their disappearance in 2019.

The international legal definition of slavery, as presented in the 1926 Slavery Convention, describes it as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.” The United Nations considers modern slavery as a broad category of violations including “forced labor” and “human trafficking.” The U.N. letter addressed to Cuba refers to potential violations of “forced labor” restrictions.

Quote:Bishop Shao was ordained coadjutor bishop in 2011 with a papal mandate from Pope Benedict XVI but has never been recognized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because of his unwillingness to enlist in the Patriotic Association.

Shao was supposed to assume the leadership of the Catholic diocese of Wenzhou — one of China’s oldest and most vibrant Catholic communities — upon the death of his predecessor, Bishop Vincent Zhu Wei-Fang, in 2016, but he has been prevented by authorities from carrying out his ministry.

Beginning in 2014, the CCP has targeted Wenzhou in its brutal cross-removal program where authorities have removed more than 2,000 crosses from church buildings. The crusade to eradicate the iconic Christian symbol from China’s landscape has included the demolition of crosses and churches as well as beatings and arrests when Christians have attempted to resist.

In place of Bishop Shao, the Chinese government instead unilaterally named Father Ma Xianshi, a member of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, to run the diocese of Wenzhou in the absence of a CCP-approved bishop.

Quote:China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday mocked Taiwanese and U.S. media for being concerned about “harmless weather balloons flying over the island.”

Three such balloons made an unusual transit over the middle of Taiwan Island on Monday and Tuesday, coming close to a Taiwanese airbase. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry merely stated it would “closely monitor” the balloons, and all other objects that enter Taiwanese airspace.

The Global Times accused media outlets in Taiwan and the United States of “sensationalizing” the balloons and “hyping” the threat they could pose. Nowhere in the article did anyone explain why Chinese balloons were suddenly floating over the middle of Taiwan two weeks before a crucial election.

The Chinese Communist Party paper was especially furious at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) because it dared to mention that Taiwan might be thinking back to the Chinese spy balloon debacle over the United States in February 2023.

The WSJ further speculated that even if the balloons over Taiwan were indeed harmless meteorological devices, they could still be part of China’s efforts to intimidate the Taiwanese out of voting for candidates Beijing dislikes in their upcoming election. This is a common tactic of the Chinese tyranny, long known to security analysts as “gray zone warfare,” and the Chinese Communists do not like to see it discussed or resisted.

Quote:North and South Korea exchanged hundreds of rounds of artillery fire on Friday near the Northern Limit Line, the maritime border between the two peninsular powers.

The demonstrations of artillery prowess began with North Korea lobbing over 200 artillery rounds into the sea, in what Pyongyang described as a “natural response” to provocations by the “military gangsters” of South Korea.

The South Korean military carefully monitored the North’s artillery exercise and determined that none of the shells passed over the Northern Limit Line. However, the South Korean military ordered civilians on nearby Yeonpyeong Island to move into shelters as a precaution.
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Yeonpyeong has about 2,000 civilian residents and troops, including an artillery unit. The South Korean Marine Corps quickly arranged its own artillery exercise, firing about 400 shells from Yeonpyeong and another base in the area, Baengnyeong Island.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik and South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff observed the reciprocal live-fire drill. Shin said North Korea’s artillery fire was an “act of provocation that escalates tension and threatens peace on the Korean peninsula.”

“Our military must assume the readiness to completely wipe out the enemy so that they wouldn’t dare another provocation, and to back up the pace through strength,” he said.

Quote:Japanese authorities tallied 94 deaths, 222 people missing, and 846 trapped in unreachable parts of the Noto Peninsula on Friday as a result of the devastating 7.6-magnitude earthquake that occurred on Japan’s west coast on Monday.

The death toll is expected to grow, as rescuers believe many of the missing are trapped under the rubble of communities destroyed by the earthquake, burned in the subsequent fires, covered in mudslides, or swept away by the ensuing tsunami. The lives of many survivors who escaped their homes but are staying in shelters inaccessible to emergency services are still threatened, as the earthquake cracked some of the major roads deeper into the Noto Peninsula into pieces, rendering them useless.

Also complicating rescue efforts is the advanced age of many living in the region. Slightly over half the population of Suzu, one of the cities most severely damaged by the earthquake, was over the age of 65 as of 2020, Japanese media noted. The mayor of Suzu, Masuhiro Izumiya, told reporters on Tuesday that he believed 90 percent of the homes in his city were “completely or nearly completely destroyed.”

The Yomiuri Shimbun, a national Japanese newspaper, reported Friday that some survivors had been forced to trek up the precarious paths created by landslides into parts of the region still connected to the rest of Japan to find food and water. Both food and water supplies jeopardize the safety of hundreds believed to be in otherwise secure locations on the other side of the broken roads.

Quote:The BRICS economic group dealt with some internal oil drama this week, as Iran withheld oil shipments from China to demand higher prices and India cut back on its heavy purchases of Russian oil because Russia was no longer peddling crude at fire-sale discounts.

The original members of BRICS were Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa joined in 2010. Six more members were added at a summit in August 2023, disturbing U.S. policymakers who worried about the growing influence of the China-dominated bloc. One, Argentina, declined the invitation to join, so the current number of BRICS countries stands at ten.

Rising oil prices have created some fissures within BRICS. China’s brisk oil trade with Iran ran into trouble this week as the Iranians withheld shipments of oil to demand higher prices.

China currently gets about ten percent of its oil from Iran, taking advantage of discounted prices due to Western sanctions on Iranian products. In November, Iran agreed to sell China oil at a discount of about $10 per barrel, which was already a step down from the $13 discounts Chinese buyers had been enjoying. In December, the Iranians changed their mind and said they would only offer discounts of $5 to $6 per barrel.

Chinese executives told Reuters they were not happy about Iran changing the terms of the oil deal.

Quote:The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, slammed the Pentagon for its “shocking defiance of the law” after it failed to disclose Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization to the president, the National Security Council, and Congress for several days, and called for a briefing from the administration “immediately.”

“I am glad to hear Secretary Austin is in improved condition and I wish him a speedy recovery. However, the fact remains that the Department of Defense deliberately withheld the Secretary of Defense’s medical condition for days. That is unacceptable. We are learning more every hour about the Department’s shocking defiance of the law,”Wicker said in a statement on Saturday.

“When one of the country’s two National Command Authorities is unable to perform their duties, military families, Members of Congress, and the American public deserve to know the full extent of the circumstances,” he added. “Members must be briefed on a full accounting of the facts immediately.”

Austin was admitted to the hospital on January 1, following complications after an “elective medical procedure,” but reportedly did not tell National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan until Thursday, January 4. Sullivan then reportedly told President Joe Biden.

The Pentagon then released a statement to the press on Friday evening, January 5, disclosing that Austin was admitted to the hospital. The initial statement did not say what the elective procedure was, what the complications were, or acknowledge that Austin was still in the hospital as of that day.

Quote:A report by the Department of Homeland Security says the agency has released 2.3 million migrants into the United States up to September 2023.

However, the report hides the entry or stay of at least three million additional illegal migrants via various other routes during President Joe Biden’s three years.

Overall, the multiple routes delivered an increase of at least five million illegal migrants — or roughly one migrant for every two American infants born during Biden’s presidency.

The report was leaked and then posted late Saturday by the Washington Post, whose editors picked a stark headline, “U.S. released more than 2.3 million migrants at border since 2021, data show.”

That headline — although understated — is an extraordinarily dramatic description of the huge migrant numbers admitted by Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

It is also shocking because the true numbers have been successfully hidden by the established media from ordinary Americans for many years.

The report says the 2023 inflow includes 370,191 people allowed in via the “parole” loophole, 909,450 people allowed while officials begin multi-year deportation proceedings, and 118,100 child migrants who are sheltered by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Quote:Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit Thursday against the United States government regarding the shooting death of January 6 protester Ashli Babbitt.

The nonprofit said the wrongful death lawsuit was on behalf of the U.S. Air Force veteran’s family who grieved her loss after she was shot and killed that day in 2021 inside the U.S. Capitol building by former Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
...
The Judicial Watch announcement noted that Byrd was never charged, punished, or disciplined for the killing, noting the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are seeking $30,000,000.

Once Byrd was identified in August 2021 as Babbitt’s shooter, an attorney for the victim’s family suggested Byrd’s name had been hidden by officials, according to Breitbart News.

Terry Roberts said, “The U.S. Congress wants to protect this man. He’s got friends in high places and they want to protect him. And they’ve done a pretty good job of it. … I don’t think it’s a proud moment for the U.S. Capitol Police or the U.S. Congress.”

The outlet noted that Babbitt was unarmed when the shooting occurred on January 6 and she was the only person killed by gunfire during the incident.

Quote:Hunter Biden’s lawyer and so-called “sugar brother,” Kevin Morris, has a film crew following the first son around for a documentary glamorizing his scandal-scarred client, including his press conference in December upon defying a subpoenaed congressional testimony.

Cameras and spotlights for the film were reportedly on Hunter during the “press conference”, amid Morris’ ongoing initiative to produce a documentary about Hunter, as Breitbart News previously reported.
Media members previously spotted the film crew trailing Hunter at several key public appearances at Soho’s Georges Berges gallery, where he tried to sell art to “anonymous” buyers.
...
With a documentary, Biden, and to some extent Morris, could possibly get the last word.
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Hunter Biden’s legal challenges consist of two indictments on numerous charges, but do not include any indictments related to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA):

Nine charges: Tax indictment in California
Three charges: Gun indictment in Delaware
Hunter also faces a congressional probe related to the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Quote:Police in Toronto, Canada, were filmed Saturday bringing coffee to anti-Israel protesters who blocked a road in a predominantly Jewish residential neighborhood.

The protest took place on the Avenue Road Bridge of Highway 401, closing a major access point to Armour Heights. Police shut down the junction.

The supportive attitude of police shocked critics who noted that the demonstrators appeared to be trying to intimidate Canadian Jews on the Jewish Sabbath.

It was also sharp contrast to the behavior of police during truckers’ protests two years ago, when protesters were arrested and their supporters’ bank accounts were often frozen.
...
On Saturday, for example, a group of protesters in Seattle, Washington, shut down Interstate 5 — a major coastal highway — in the center of the city.

There, too, police decided against taking action.

Quote:The announcement is part of the “Phoenix Plan,” a broader list of security-related measures that [President] Noboa, a 36-year-old outsider who took office in November, is seeking to enact to curb Ecuador’s rampant crime, gang violence, and drug trafficking.

In an interview given to Radio Sucre, Noboa explained that the two “Bukele-style” prisons will be ready within ten to 11 months and construction work is slated to begin on January 11.

“They are going to be the same, because it is the same company, under the same design, that made the maximum security prisons in Mexico and that made them in El Salvador,” Noboa said. “So, for all the Bukele lovers,’ it is the same prison. If they want to go, walk around, get to know it, stay one night — go commit a crime.”

Noboa explained that one of the prisons will be located in the eastern Pastaza province and the other in southeastern Santa Elena, as these two “are the areas of least influence of the narco-terrorist groups.”
...
Ecuador has experienced a steady increase in violent crime for years, culminating in a crime wave that turned the country into the tenth most violent in the region in 2022. Authorities registered 4,603 violent deaths that year and over 3,500 during the first half of 2023. The crime in Ecuador has also claimed the lives of several politicians last year and resulted in death threats from local gangs against several others.

Quote:The decree, published on January 2, proposed the most significant changes to the armed forces’ leadership since 2003. Milei proposed in the decree the designation of new leadership positions across all branches of the Argentine Armed Forces and appointed Brigadier-General Xavier Julián Isaac to be head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Commanders tied to the previous socialist government of Alberto Fernández were reportedly removed from the Army’s leadership structure, and the ascent of Milei’s preferred leaders prompted others to vacate their posts. In the Army, the designation of Brigadier-General Alberto Presti as the new top official triggered the automatic retirement of 22 senior generals.

The number of retired generals increased to 23, including the resignation of Juan Martín Paleo, who served as chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Fernández’s presidency (2019-2023). The total retiring represents two-thirds of Argentina’s current pool of 55 generals.

Milei’s restructuring is the second largest of its kind in the nation’s history, surpassed only by the one carried out by late President Raúl Alfonsín at the time of Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983. The new restructuring is larger than the one carried out by late socialist President Néstor Kirchner in 2003, which prompted the retirement of 19 generals.

Argentine political scientist Fabián Calle told the Spanish newspaper El País that the major restructuring of the leadership of Argentina’s Armed Forces “has no ideological or political significance,” unlike the one signed off by Kirchner in 2003.

Quote:On Monday, multiple media outlets ran reports of Trump having been named in the latest Epstein documents, but failed to note in the lede of their articles that the accuser had actually retracted those allegations in 2019.

Court documents made available on Monday included Epstein victim Sarah Ransome’s 2016 emails to the New York Post suggesting that she had Epstein-related sex tapes involving half a dozen prominent people, including Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Sir Richard Branson.

Ransome, however, could not provide the tapes when asked, and no such footage has ever been uncovered.

Then in 2019, Ransome retracted her claims, according to the New Yorker, which reported that Ransome admitted to having “invented the tapes to draw attention to Epstein’s behavior, and to make him believe that she had ‘evidence that would come out if he harmed me.'”

Quote:The National Park Service proposes to rehabilitate Welcome Park to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors. Welcome Park was designed by the internationally acclaimed design firm Venturi & Scott Brown Associates. The park is located on the site of William Penn’s home, the Slate Roof House, and is named for the ship, Welcome, which transported Penn to Philadelphia. The design and construction of Welcome Park was funded by the Independence Historical Trust and was completed in 1982.

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. In a separate and future effort, new exhibit panels will be installed on the south site wall to replace the Penn timeline.

Quote:A massive mob of anti-Israel protesters took over three New York City bridges and Manhattan’s Holland Tunnel, leading to more than 300 arrests Monday morning.

The swarm of “Shut it Down for Palestine” demonstrators rallied through City Hall Park before descending upon the tunnel, as well as the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Manhattan Bridges.

Footage obtained by BreakThrough News shows members of the group standing, sitting, and holding banners across the roadways.

“You’re disrupting traffic, idiots!” one driver yelled as he was blocked in by the protesters at an intersection at the Williamsburg Bridge.

“You can’t do that! It’s against the law,” he shouted, as another man recording the incident yelled, “Hit ’em all! Run ’em over!”

The driver then got out of his vehicle, shoved three of the protesters, and warned them to stay away from his car as he screamed, “I have a daughter in Brooklyn! … I have to get home!”

Eventually, the group of demonstrators backed off.

Quote:Farmers groups launched their planned week-long action to protest against the leftist coalition government’s plans to increase taxes on diesel fuel and eliminate the car tax exemption for farmers in addition to making deep cuts on the subsidies for the farming sector.

The proposed tax increases and funding cuts came as the government attempted to fill a 17-billion-euro ($18.6-billion) hole in the budget for 2024. Although the government was willing to seek to raise more money off the backs of German farmers, it was not willing to make any cuts in aid to Ukraine, which is set to double to eight billion euros this year.

Ahead of the planned week of protests from farmers, the government said that it would be willing to walk back some of the farming subsidy cuts and re-organise the tax increases over the next three years. However, the German Farmers’ Association (DBV) said that such moves would be insufficient to stave off the economic disaster facing many farmers throughout the country.

The nationwide protest on Monday has seen tractors shut down entrances to motorways, bridges, and tunnels in various states across Germany. According to broadcaster NTV, the farmers have closed access points to entire cities in the state of Brandenburg, including the urban area of Brandenburg an der Havel and Cottbus.

In Berlin, police reported that at least 566 tractors, as well as cars, trucks and vans, descended upon the city centre, blocking the Street of June 17th between the Victory Column and the Brandenburg Gate, where a candlelight vigil will be held later in the evening.

Production was also halted at a Volkswagen factory in Emden on Monday, with tractors blocking off access roads around the plant, preventing employees from getting to work.

Quote:More than half of Germans of all ages – with one key cohort excepted – want to restore compulsory military service, a survey released Thursday reveals, as war on the European continent between Russia and Ukraine drags on into another year.

The revelation comes courtesy of a representative survey by the opinion research institute Insa and published by Welt. It shows 52 percent of respondents are in favor of armed service while 32 percent are against it.

Germany scrapped compulsory military service back in 2011 although a growing call for rearmament right across Europe is now forcing it to think again.

The polling sets out as the age of the respondent increases, agreement increases from just 30 percent among the youngest to 65 and 62 percent among the oldest respondents.

A relative majority of 18 to 29 year olds – the age group affected by compulsory military service – say no to the question, 49 percent, while among older people the positive view predominates at 43 to 65 percent.

The Welt story outlines shortly before Christmas, Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) suggested conscription based on the “Swedish model.”

Quote:The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating “suspicions of unconstitutional sabotage” after holes were discovered drilled into a new gas delivery pipe installed to overcome the country’s dependence on imported Russian hydrocarbons.

Germany believes a number of one-centimetre (approximately half, or 13/32ths of an inch) holes have been “drilled” into a new gas delivery pipeline delivering the energy source to Germany’s national grid, an act of what is believed to be sabotage discovered in November but made public now. The exact cause of the damage or motivation behind an attempt to sabotage Germany’s energy imports is not known, but the Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitungsverlag reports Dutch-German energy company Gasunie has now confirmed the damage took place, and that they believe it was caused by “third-party intervention”.

The 35-mile pipe is intended to deliver gas brought to Germany aboard LNG carriers, which is cooled to a liquid state for safe transit at sea and re-gassified once it reaches the shore of the customer nation and then piped ashore. In this case, a floating LNG terminal receives and regasified the LNG at Brunsbüttel on the river Elbe and sends it ashore, and it was this pipe carrying the gas towards the national grid which was allegedly drilled several times.

The investigation has been taken over by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, underlining the seriousness with which the potential case of “unconstitutional sabotage” is being treated. The terminal was handed over to Deutsche Energy Terminal GmbH (DET) at the start of this year.

It is possible the sabotage could be related to the Ukraine-Russia war that necessitated the construction of the new LNG terminals in the first place, and The Times also notes they have been the subject of “heavy” protests by green activists too.

Quote:Eleven people were killed Saturday in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk province, according to regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin. Five children were among the dead and eight further people were wounded in the attack on the Pokrovsk district, he said.

Ukraine’s military claimed Saturday it successfully attacked the Saki military airbase in the west of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula.

“Saki airfield! All targets were hit!” Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk wrote on Telegram. He also published a photo appearing to show the airfield, though it was not immediately possible to verify the image.

Russian officials did not comment on the alleged attack, but Russia’s Defense Ministry said in the early hours of Saturday that it had successfully downed four Ukrainian missiles over the peninsula overnight. Later on Saturday, the ministry reported that its air defense forces had shot down six anti-ship missiles over the Black Sea.

Traffic was temporarily suspended for a third straight day on a bridge connecting the peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally in 2014, with Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. The span is a crucial supply link for Russia’s war effort.

In Russia, local officials in Belgorod – some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine – said that an “air target” was shot down on approach to the city. Ukrainian attacks on Dec. 30 in Belgorod killed 25 people, officials there said, with rocket and drone attacks continuing throughout this week.

Quote:Ukraine came under strong Russian missile attacks early Monday that struck near the front lines of fighting in the east as well as in central and western parts of the country, killing one person and injuring at least 30.

The heaviest casualty toll was in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where a woman died in a missile attack outside the city of Kryvyi Rih and 24 were injured in a strike on the town of Novomoskovsk. In Kryvyi Rih itself, more than 20 houses and a shopping center were damaged in a missile attack, said regional governor Serhii Lysak.

At least four missiles hit Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, injuring one person, said mayor Ihor Terekhov. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov also said two people were injured and two more were trapped under rubble after a strike on the village of Zmiiv.

In Zaporizhzhia, a major city along the Dnipro River, two people were injured in a missile strike on a residential district, said regional governor Yurii Malashko.

Over the past 24 hours, Russian troops conducted 131 artillery attacks on the Kherson region, killing two people and injuring five, according to governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

Kherson city and the surrounding region have been consistently targeted since Russian forces withdrew from the city to the eastern side of the Dnipro in the autumn of 2022.

At least six explosions shook the central Khmelnytskyi region on Monday morning, but there were no immediate details on casualties or damage.

The Ukrainian military said Monday that Russian forces made unsuccessful efforts to advance during the past day in several areas, including around Lyman in the Kharkiv region and in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Quote:Today (Monday), the IDF eliminated Hassan Hakashah in Beit Jinn in Syria. He was a central figure responsible for rockets fired by Hamas from Syrian territory toward Israel in recent weeks. Since the beginning of the war, Hakashah directed Hamas terrorist cells which fired rockets from Syria toward Israeli territory.

We will not allow terrorism from Syrian territory and hold Syria responsible for all activity emanating from its territory. The IDF will continue to act against any threat posed to the State of Israel.
...
We will continue to operate against Hamas leaders, and today we also targeted a series of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, including military sites belonging to the organization. We responded with fire to areas from which launches were identified toward Israeli territory. As we have stated since the beginning of the war, we will not tolerate a threat near the northern border. We said it, and we mean it.
...
Israel has been targeted by rockets from Hamas in Gaza; Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon; Hamas in Syria; and the Houthis in Yemen. All of these groups are funded and armed by the Iranian regime, which sits in Tehran, nearly 1,000 miles away.

Quote:The leadership of Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority (PA) government in the West Bank, suggested creating a fusion government with the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (IJ) to take control of Gaza, a report on Sunday claimed.

The “unity” government would reportedly take shape after Israel’s military operation against Hamas – a response to the terrorist atrocities of October 7 – was completed. Israel is not quite certain what Gaza will look like after the war is over, but its leaders have made clear they do not envision Hamas playing any role in its governance.

Jibril Rajoub, secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, reportedly said in December that a “great turning point” has been reached and the “time has come” for Fatah to reach a “compromise” with Hamas.
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Hamas certainly seems to see PA members as “potential martyrs,” having martyred a few themselves. After Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005, Hamas won a landslide election victory over the ostensibly more moderate and secular Fatah, an event that caused PA President Mahmoud Abbas to permanently lose his taste for holding elections. Hamas then violently expelled Fatah from Gaza in a vicious battle that concluded in 2007.

Quote:Israel and the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon drew closer to war Monday as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to arrive in Israel on Monday evening.

Over the weekend, Hezbollah had launched a rocket attack on an Israeli base on Mount Meron, in northern Israel — a serious escalation of its attacks. In return, Israel attacked a Hezbollah command post in southern Lebanon, killing a major commander, reportedly Wissam al-Tawil (or “Jawad”) of the “elite” Radwan force.

Israel has warned Hezbollah for weeks not to open a second front in the war, as it battled Hamas terrorists in Gaza. As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has dismantled more and more of Hamas’s military capabilities, Hezbollah has faced more pressure to act.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his government’s warnings to Hezbollah, the Times of Israel reported:

In the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, Prime Minister Netanyahu tells IDF reservists that Israel prefers to restore security in the area without going to war with Hezbollah, but that it is ready to do so.

“Hezbollah got us wrong in a major way in 2006, and is getting us seriously wrong even now,” he tells soldiers from the 769th Regional Brigade.

Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday that an Al Jazeera journalist and another reporter who were killed in an airstrike in Gaza on Sunday were riding in a vehicle with a Hamas terrorist who was a drone operator.

Al Jazeera’s role in covering the war has been under scrutiny, as it airs anti-Israel propaganda — and cuts off Palestinians who complain (much to the surprise of Al Jazeera reporters) about Hamas.

In Washington, DC, the Al Jazeera White House correspondent routinely challenges Biden administration policy on Israel.

On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that three journalists had been killed in an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
...
The IDF responds to reports of the deaths of two Palestinian journalists in an Israeli airstrike the Gaza Strip earlier today, saying the pair, working for Al Jazeera, were in a vehicle with a terror operative who was operating a drone.

In response to a query on the matter, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit tells The Times of Israel that a military aircraft “identified and struck a terrorist who operated an aircraft in a way that put IDF forces at risk.”

Short Open Editorial

People, this is something you should pay attention to from now on. Never stay close to a terrorist, no matter if you claim to be a doctor, a nurse or a journalist. That makes you a become a valid military target. In this particular case, they were following a drone operator.  What the heck were they thinking!?

If the journalists had been located a mile away from the terrorist and they had been hit by any missile or bullet, that would have been called a war crime. But that was not the case here, they were right at the terrorist's side.

The same principle is valid for hospitals that had been used as terror bases for terrorists. They even hid the hostages as previous reports have already denounced. Once they are used by terrorists or armies in any illegal way, they are committing war crimes and the places can be labeled as valid targets by any army.

Quote:The Islamic State (ISIS), a Sunni jihadist organization that opposes Shiite terror hubs such as Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack. While the Islamic State has a history of taking credit for attacks it had no part in organizing, Iranian authorities have also said they believe ISIS to be the responsible party.

Mehdi Bakhshi, Kerman’s city prosecutor, confirmed on Iranian television on Saturday that suicide bombers executed the terrorist attack and claimed that Iranian law enforcement authorities had identified and apprehended 32 people involved in the planning of the attack.

“Thirty-two people have been arrested in [connection with] Kerman [terrorist] crime case and are going through preliminary interrogations,” Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency quoted Bakhshi as saying, adding that the investigations into those individuals led to the discovery of another 16 bombs in Kerman province prepared for future attacks. Bakhshi insisted that the 32 arrested were all the individuals connected to the Soleimani funeral bombing.

The Iranian government has not made public at press time the identity of the suicide bombers directly responsible for the attack. Bakhshi did confirm this weekend, however, that one of the bombers was a Tajik national.