News of the World

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Blasts, gunfire reported near Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk

The emergency services of Novorossiysk have confirmed reports of blasts and security services have been informed.

Russian social media users reported hearing explosions and gunfire near the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk on Friday morning, which could indicate the first Ukrainian attack on one of Russia's main commercial ports.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium which loads oil onto tankers in Novorossiysk said the port has temporarily barred all ship movement. It said its facilities had not been damaged and oil loadings continued onto tankers which were already moored

Videos posted on a local online community and circulated by Russian online news outlet Astra showed the movement of ships just off the coast with the sound of gunfire coming from the direction of the sea.

The emergency services of Novorossiysk have confirmed reports of blasts and security services have been informed, Russia's RIA news agency reported. The port is one of the biggest in the Black Sea.

Israeli vessel breaks through Moscow’s Black Sea grain blockade

An Israeli merchant ship that embarked from the Port of Ashdod Monday became the first vessel to openly defy Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea since they pulled out of a deal with Ukraine allowing the country to export grain from its ports in mid-July, Ukrainian news outlet Militarnyi reported on Monday.

Israeli vessel Ams1 seemingly ignored Russian threats and entered the Ukrainian branch of the Danube Monday afternoon, according to Ukrainian reports. It crossed the Black Sea on a direct route from Ashdod Port while the American aircraft P8 Poseidon provided aerial security, the reports added.

Ams1 was followed by four more vessels that have either anchored or will anchor in the Danube shortly.

Russia stepped away from the agreement in mid-July, arguing that demands to improve its own food and fertilizer exports had not been met and that not enough Ukrainian grain had reached the poorest countries under the Black Sea deal.
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Since Russia quit the deal and began attacking Ukrainian food-exporting ports on the Black Sea and Danube River, global wheat and corn futures have risen sharply.

NYC Health Official: Illegal Immigration Bringing Tuberculosis, Polio to New York

In a citywide letter to physicians and healthcare administrators last week, Vasan said that the more than 50,000 illegal immigrants that have come to New York City since last year caused a spike in contagious diseases like tuberculosis and polio.

“Many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB,” he wrote, as reported by the New York Post.

Tuberculosis can be cured with antibiotics and generally takes six to nine months to fully recover. According to the Post, the city’s TB rate is now more than double the national rate with 6.1 cases per 100,000.
“Close to nine out of 10 (88%) of these TB cases are people born outside the United States,” it noted. “Every neighborhood in the city has had at least one case.”

“Commissioner Vasan’s letter called on New York to pull out all the stops providing migrants health care, food and legal services,” the Post continued. “Immigrants who lawfully apply for a visa must undergo health screenings and show they are vaccinated, and refugees are screened for TB before entering the United States.”

As Breitbart News reported, President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently admitted thousands of unaccompanied migrant children “with inactive tuberculosis into American communities in the last year.”

Joe Biden Evacuates Niger Embassy — Third of His Tenure — After Pentagon Says No Threat

The State Department confirmed on Tuesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken to Bazoum over the phone, the third time since the “Council” had broadcast its coup d’etat on national television a week ago on Thursday. Bazoum is believed to be under house arrest in the presidential residence, allowed to make calls to foreign dignitaries but no longer wielding power. The coup last week is the third such attempt against Bazoum since he was elected in 2021.

The announcement that Washington would begin withdrawing staffers from its embassy in Niger comes two days after the Pentagon claimed that no “imminent threat against any U.S. personnel or American citizens” existed in the country. The head of the coup “Council,” former leader of the presidential guard Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, has not overtly attacked the United States or expressed any desire to sever diplomatic ties, though he has encouraged outside actors not to intervene on Bazoum’s behalf.

Supporters of the coup have taken the streets by the thousands in the past week to condemn the greater West but have mostly directed their ire at the nation’s former colonizer, France, and expressed support for greater diplomacy with Russia.

A flood of pro-Russian coup supporters took the streets of Niamey again on Thursday, but at press time, no reports suggest any attacks on Americans.
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Niamey is the third American embassy to be evacuated since leftist President Joe Biden took office in 2021, following the dramatic evacuation of the embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021 and the evacuation of the Khartoum, Sudan, embassy in April.

Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Charges Relating to January 6 Probe

Trump was arraigned at Elijah Barret Prettyman Federal Courthouse around 4:00 p.m. on the following charges: Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy Against Rights, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of an Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding.

A grand jury returned a federal indictment on Tuesday in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to stay in power,” the document alleges. “So for more than two months following Election Day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election that he actually won.”

It contends Trump “knew” the claims were false.

Trump blasted Smith and President Joe Biden on Wednesday night and contended he would not receive a fair trial in Washington, DC.

China: Donald Trump Indictments Show Americans Are Comfortable ‘Electing a Criminal’

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday gleefully pounced on the indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling it further evidence that American democracy has become a “political farce” in which the U.S. electorate stands a good chance of “electing a criminal as president.”

Communist parties that would never have the courage to hold a multi-party election should probably refrain from commenting on democracy, but the Global Times plowed ahead, reveling in the misfortune of the former president who waged a trade war against Beijing:

[Chinese Academy of Social Sciences fellow Lu Xiang] pointed out one apparent impact of being involved in multiple lawsuits is that it has drained his campaign money. Trump’s political action committee, Save America, has spent more than $40 million on legal fees since the start of 2023, CNN said citing a source familiar with the matter whose name was not given.

The expert believes when the legal process does not influence much, Democrats can hardly use the impeachment process to thwart Trump. The 2021 riot in Congress led to Trump’s second impeachment in the House of Representatives – making him the first US president ever to be impeached twice – and ended up nowhere.

The unfolding of the 2024 presidential election is dramatic enough but the political farce is far from conclusion. Since 2016, US democracy has entered an accelerated track of decadence and Americans have no alternative but to choose between the worse and the worst, Lü said.

Poland Says it Fears Provocations by Russia and Belarus on NATO’s Eastern Flank

Polish and Lithuanian leaders held an urgent meeting Thursday in a strategically sensitive area where their NATO nations border Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, warning that they are bracing for provocations from Moscow and Minsk in the area.

The meeting came two days after two Belarusian helicopters flew briefly at low altitude into Polish air space, in what was viewed as a provocative move. Both nations on NATO’s eastern flank have increased their border security following the arrival of thousands of Russia-linked Wagner group mercenaries just across their borders in Belarus after an aborted mutiny in Russia in June.
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The Belarusian Foreign Ministry denied that its country’s helicopters entered Poland. Local Polish residents posted photos on social media of helicopters with Belarusian insignia flying above.
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They met in Suwalki, a town in the Suwalki Gap, a sparsely populated stretch of land running 96 kilometers (60 miles) along the Polish-Lithuanian border. Also known as the Suwalki Corridor, the stretch of territory links the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia with the rest of the NATO alliance. It separates Belarus, an ally of Russia, from Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized exclave of Russia located on the Baltic Sea which is separated from the Russian mainland.

Military analysts in the West have long viewed the Suwalki Gap as a potential flashpoint area in case of a standoff between Russia and NATO. They worry that if Russia were to ever seize the Suwalki Gap, it would leave Lithuania and the other two Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia, cut off from Poland and other NATO allies.

Nauseda said he believes the Suwalki Gap remains a vulnerable place, even though Sweden – located across the Baltic Sea – is on track to join NATO.
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The NATO countries on the eastern flank have felt under pressure for a couple of years.

Large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and Africa began arriving two years ago at the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. European leaders have accused Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Russia, of opening the migration route in an act of “hybrid warfare” aimed at creating instability in the West.