News of the World

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US NEWS

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein Passes Away at 90, Gavin Newsom to Appoint Successor

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has passed away at the age of 90.

Feinstein was nearing the end of her sixth Senate term after previously serving as Mayor of San Francisco.

The California Senator stepped down from her perch atop the powerful Judiciary Committee due to poor health and political pressure after bouts with illness had prevented her from reporting to work, most notably for three months in 2022, and reports of her diminished capacity, including her inability to remember her colleague’s names.

The Senator’s death comes as Congress is barreling towards a shutdown as government funding ends on September 30.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) will appoint her successor. He has said he would appoint an interim Senator in the event of Feinstein’s death.

Republicans Draft Resolution to Expel Jamaal Bowman from Congress

Republicans have drafted a resolution to expel Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) after he allegedly pulled a fire alarm to delay a vote on a bill to avert a government shutdown.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) authored the resolution, which is expected to be formally filed Monday when the House is next in session. Expulsion is the most serious form of disciplinary action available to the House for its own members.

Only five members have been expelled from the House in history.
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Bowman’s alleged actions are being investigated by the House Administration Committee and the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) and elicited widespread condemnation from his Republican colleagues.

Rep. Lisa McClain is drafting a motion to censure Bowman, a serious but less severe step than expulsion. She said Bowman’s alleged action “is a felony, plain and simple. USCP had to waste resources investigating rather than actually keeping the Capitol safe. The House must hold Rep. Bowman accountable.”

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Government Funding Standoff Cuts Off
Ukraine Cash for First Time Since Start of War

The House passed a stopgap spending bill that keeps government spending levels, otherwise known as a continuing resolution (CR). The CR will keep the government open for 45 days.

Although this will not serve as a long-term solution for government funding, the CR will not have any Ukraine aid.

President Joe Biden initially asked for $24 billion for Ukraine, and Senate leaders have tried to pass a similar CR with $6 billion.

The federal government has provided more than $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in its protracted conflict with Russia.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) argued during a private Republican conference meeting on Friday that a clean CR would “dare” Democrats to support a bill that lacked Ukraine aid.

“I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine, we would probably be able to move it through,” the California Republican explained after the conference.

House Republican leadership also managed to pass its stopgap bill without Ukraine aid before the Senate passed its CR with Ukraine aid, putting pressure on the Senate to pass the House version.

Biden Administration Releases Energy Efficient Standards for Gas Furnaces

The Biden administration released finalized energy efficient standards for residential gas furnaces on Friday, September 29, and they come with a high cost for many households.

The Department of Energy (DOE) expects the rules to slash household utility bills from gas furnace use by $1.5 billion annually and reduce pollution.

By 2028, residential gas furnaces will be required to provide an annual fuel utilization efficiency of 95 percent. This means that a furnace must convert 95 percent of its fuel into heat. The current market standard for annual fuel utilization efficiency is 80 percent, and it was last updated in 2007, Fox News Digital reported.
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Furnaces account for approximately 19 percent of residential energy use annually.  With the updated efficiency standards, the Department of Energy predicts 332 million metric tons of carbon emissions will be cut over 30 years. This, they say, means savings in 34 percent of homes in the United States. The Department also expects to see a cut in methane emissions by 4.3 million tons, which they claim is roughly equivalent to emissions from 29 coal plants. 

The more energy efficient furnaces are more expensive than the ones they will replace on the market, and they are costly to install, FoxNews reported.
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Last month, Breitbart News reported that the Biden Administration’s green energy standards for ceiling fans could put 30% of manufacturers out of business. Those ceiling fan rules came after gas stove and water heater regulations.

Man Arrested, Charged with Murder
in 1996 Shooting Death of Rapper Tupac Shakur

A Las Vegas man was indicted and arrested on murder charges in connection with the 1996 shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Duane “Keefe D” Davis was arrested on Friday and charged with murder and use of a deadly weapon, according to Rolling Stone.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo claimed Davis was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of the famed rapper.

The case was reignited after the Las Vegas Police Department (LVPD) conducted a search of Davis’s home in July. The LVPD reported that Davis was under suspicion of being part of the murder plot but did not release specific information.

The warrant reportedly gave the police the right to search Davis’s electronic storage devices and covered thumb drives, computers, phones, CDs and DVDs, external drives and storage devices, iPads and other devices, NBC News reported.

The police were also on the lookout for “notes, writings, ledgers, and other handwritten or typed documents concerning television shows, documentaries, YouTube episodes, book manuscripts, and movies concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur,” according to the warrant.

Davis’s own book may have been one reason the investigation into Shakur’s death was reopened. He has long claimed to have been in a car present during the shooting and in a 2018 episode of Death Row Chronicles, he claimed he knew who shot and killed the famed rapper.

EUROPEAN NEWS

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Zelensky Hosts Major Arms Manufacturers Conference
in Hopes to Boost Domestic Weapons Production

The event marked a new development in support of Ukraine, with the previous focus being on the delivery of weapons, repair of damaged equipment and military training of Ukrainian soldiers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking at the opening of the International Defense Industries Forum, said that around 250 defense companies from more than 30 countries had gathered Friday in Kyiv. Defense ministers and representatives of several countries also attended the event.

“Heroism alone cannot intercept missiles. Ukraine needs capabilities, high quality, high quantity, and quickly. There is no defense without industry,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who spoke by video link during the forum on the day after his visit to Kyiv.

Stoltenberg said that Wendy Gilmour, who is NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investments, was representing the trans-Atlantic alliance at the event.

Stoltenberg acknowledged that many allies have significantly depleted their stocks in order to support Ukraine. “This was the right thing to do, but now we need to ramp up production, both to meet Ukraine´s needs and to ensure our own deterrence in events,” he said.

Zelenskyy disclosed the details of his recent trip to Washington, where he agreed with U.S. President Joe Biden on “the establishment of a new industrial ecosystem that will strengthen both Ukraine and all the partners.” Zelenskyy described it as “one of the key outcomes” of his negotiations with Biden in Washington.

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Ukraine Claims About 500 Wagner Mercenaries Have Returned to Its Battlefields

Ukrainian Army spokesman Capt. Ilya Yevlash said on Wednesday that about five hundred mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group have returned to fight for Russia on the battlefield, a month after Wagner’s founders Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin were reportedly killed in a highly suspicious plane crash near Moscow.

Yevlash said in a Ukrainian broadcast interview that hundreds of Wagner fighters negotiated contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry so they could return to combat.

“These individuals are indeed among the most well-trained in the Russian army, but they will not become a game-changer,” he predicted.

Yevlash’s account was supported by the deputy communications commander for Ukraine’s eastern forces, Serhii Cherevatyi, who told CNN on Wednesday there were several hundred Wagner troops “in our direction, on the eastern front, in different areas.”

Cherevatyi said Russia brought the Wagner mercenaries back to the front lines because they are “short of everyone there now, so any man is good for them.”

“They came back, they swiftly changed their commanders and returned here,” a Ukrainian drone operator said.

A week earlier, Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, leader of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces, said “their badges appear here and there” when asked about Wagner’s comeback.

Putin Taps Former Wagner Commander
to Take Charge of ‘Volunteer Units’ in Ukraine

In remarks released Friday by the Kremlin, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to “deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation” – a term Moscow uses for its war in Ukraine.

Wagner fighters have had no significant battlefield role since the mercenary company captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle and then withdrew to march toward Moscow in a brief insurrection.
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Since Prigozhin’s death, Wagner troops in neighboring Belarus, where they had moved following their mutiny, have reportedly been packing up and dismantling their camps.

Troshev is a retired military officer who played a leading role in Wagner since its creation in 2014 and faced European Union sanctions over his role in Syria as the group’s executive director.

Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was present late Thursday at Putin’s meeting with Troshev, a sign that Wagner mercenaries will likely serve under the Defense Ministry´s command. Speaking in a conference call with reporters Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Troshev now works for the Defense Ministry and referred questions about Wagner’s possible return to Ukraine to the military.
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The meeting appeared to reflect the Kremlin’s plan to redeploy some Wagner mercenaries to the front line in Ukraine following their brief mutiny and the suspicious deaths of Prigozhin and the group’s senior leadership in an Aug. 23 plane crash.
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Belarusian Hajun, an activist group monitoring Russian troops in Belarus, said Friday that Wagner mercenaries continued to dismantle their field camp there and only about 100 of some 300 tents remained.

Greece Plans to Use Illegal Migrants to Build Airport and Subway Station

The government of Greece is planning to put approximately 300,000 illegal migrants to work on public works projects to update the nation’s infrastructure, Anthens’ minister for migration announced on Tuesday.

Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Kairidis said that while the government realises that putting illegals to work could incentivise further flows of migration into the Mediterranean country, the move would serve to benefit the country’s ageing infrastructure amid shortages in the labour force, including in the tourist and agricultural industries.

“We do not want to create new incentives for further illegal flows because that is the danger,” Kairidis said in comments reported by The Telegraph.

“On the other hand, we want to go… from undeclared to declared labour to boost public revenue with employment taxes and contributions and help address dramatic shortages in certain sectors.”

Among the projects that could see illegals be put to work on will include the construction of a subway metro system in the city of Thessaloniki, which has faced over a decade of delays following the 2009 financial crisis that crippled the nation’s finances.

In addition, migrants will be put to work on the building of a new airport outside the Cretian city of Heraklion, which also faced delays following the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

AUSTRALIAN NEWS

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Australia Army Scraps Entire Fleet of European Made
Combat Helicopters After Fatal Crash

The Australian army will never again fly its fleet of MRH-90 Taipan helicopters following a crash in July that killed four soldiers, the defense minister said Friday.

Australia´s fleet of more than 40 European-designed Taipans has been grounded since July 28 when one crashed into the Pacific Ocean during a nighttime training operation in the Whitsunday Islands off the northeast Australian coast.

Defense Minister Richard Marles told Nine Network television that permanently ending Taipan flying operations was the “only decision that makes sense.”

“We´re making this decision today. In many ways it was inevitable, but it´s an important step to take so that we can get our Black Hawks in the air as quickly as possible,” Marles said, referring to the U.S.-built helicopters that will replace Australia´s Airbus-manufactured fleet.

The government announced plans in January to replace the Taipans with 40 UH-60M Black Hawks. The Taipans´ retirement date of December 2024 would have been 13 years earlier than Australia had initially planned.

The government made the decision now to stop flying the Taipans because one of the four investigations into the crash will take another 12 months, Marles said. After the cause of the crash is explained and any faults in the Taipan fleet are rectified, that would have left only a few weeks for them to fly before they were retired, he said.

Since the January announcement, the Taipan fleet was grounded in March after a helicopter ditched off the southeast Australian coast during a nighttime counterterrorism training exercise. All 10 passengers and crew members were rescued.

ASIAN NEWS

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China Calls Canada ‘Laughingstock of the World’
over Justin Trudeau’s Nazi Celebration

The Chinese propaganda outlet Global Times joined the global chorus of disgust and mockery of the Canadian parliament on Wednesday, calling the government of radical leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the “laughingstock of the world” for offering a standing ovation to a 98-year-old former Nazi soldier.

“Since the end of World War II, no country’s parliament or politicians have ever honored Nazi war veterans in an official event, as, obviously, it is an act violating the most fundamental value of human society in today’s world,” the Chinese government mouthpiece observed. “But Canada did.”

“The mentality of Westerners is so deeply trapped in the Cold War, and they have lost in the hysteria on the path to completely defeat their opponents,” the publication thundered.

The Global Times accused Canadian politicians of habitually “seek[ing] attention” on the international stage and accusing Trudeau of having “little sense of historical and moral justice.” It also mocked Trudeau personally for responding to the condemnation of the event by warning observers to beware of unspecified “Russian disinformation” instead of taking responsibility for applauding a Nazi.

The incident occurred on Friday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Canadian Parliament. Ottawa has vocally supported Zelensky’s military efforts against the full-scale Russian invasion of his country that began in February 2022.
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Canadian Parliament Speaker Anthony Rota complicated this narrative during Zelensky’s visit to the legislative chamber, however, by inviting Ukrainian-Canadian Yaroslav Hunka to the event as a guest of honor.

“He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” Rota said, prompting a standing ovation from Trudeau, Zelensky, and all others in the chamber for the 98-year-old.

Hunka served in the 4th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a Nazi division recruited from.

LATIN AMERICAN NEWS

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Politician Talks About Buying Border State Congressmen in Mexico

A private law firm released a controversial video showing a top politician in northern Mexico openly talking about using government funds to buy the allegiance of state congressmen. The video is part of a private investigation by the law firm representing a former governor from Tamaulipas. The governor claims to be the target of political persecution and that the current government turned the state over to criminal organizations.

This week, representatives from the Coello,  Trejo, and Associates law firm released a video showing Ricardo Gamundi, a top political operator and former politician from Tamaulipas, having dinner with an unknown woman and one of his associates as they talk about his political work.  Gamundi has been investigated for his role as a close advisor to former Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez Flores. The former governor is currently wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice on money laundering charges.
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In the video, Gamundi claimed that one of the current problems faced by current Tamaulipas Governor Americo Villarreal is the state congress had been put in place by former Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca. While making a hand gesture, Gamundi said that the way to solve that was by using government funds to pay them off, claiming that that is how things are done.

Gamundi also claimed that his client Americo was ill-suited for his role as governor, not knowing how to run things, but had gotten the position because of his closeness to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the political environment.

 And still, Mexican media dared to accuse the Costa Rican president of being corrupt, influenced or even controlled by the Mexican cartels.  Why don't they focus on their own issues instead of publishing stuff without producing any convincing evidence of the committal of any crime at all?