A Romanian court will reconsider the seizure of assets from controversial ‘manosphere’ guru Andrew Tate, who faces charges linked to human trafficking and other sex crimes in the East European country. The assets include cash, luxury cars and other items worth an estimated $4 million.

The Bucharest Court of Appeals accepted Tate’s legal challenge on Monday, overturning a previous ruling which rejected a request to return the assets. In the new decision, officials were ordered to reconsider the seizure of property, which will remain in government custody until a final assessment is complete.

The ruling means that Tate – as well as his brother Tristian, who also faces charges in Romania and owns some of the property seized – can return to court to make fresh arguments to reclaim the assets.

In a social media post, Tate hailed the “smart judge” for agreeing to reconsider the asset seizures, adding that prosecutors would have to prove that he had made his money illegally. “They won’t prove a thing because it never happened,” he added, also claiming the seized property was worth $27 million and included homes, cars, gold and cash.

Police were seen removing the assets from one of Tate’s properties near Bucharest in January 2023, including luxury vehicles and multiple watches reportedly worth millions.

Romanian authorities charged the Tate brothers with rape, human trafficking and forming an organized criminal group last year, and had previously detained the two dual US-UK citizens before releasing them into house arrest. They are no longer in custody, but are barred from leaving the country while the legal case plays out.

A former champion kickboxer, Andrew Tate became a prominent social media figure after he appeared on the British reality show ‘Big Brother’ in 2016. He has maintained a brash and abrasive persona on social media, boasting about his wealth while encouraging his young male followers to pay for courses in which he promised to help them overcome their lack of success with money and women.

Critics have accused Tate of spreading misogyny and having a bad influence on young men. He denies all allegations.

Sweden’s top officials have urged their people to prepare for a possible war, amid the rising tensions with Russia. The ministers made their statement at the multi-day Folk och Forsvar National Conference in Salen.

In his speech on Sunday, Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom hailed his country’s expected membership in the US-led NATO military bloc as “the biggest change in Swedish security policy in more than 200 years.”

Billstrom warned that “Russia will constitute a serious threat to the security of Sweden and Europe for the foreseeable future.” He admitted that Stockholm “must be realistic and assume – and be prepared for – a drawn-out confrontation”

Echoing his sentiment, Defense Minister Pal Jonson declared that “war can also come to us.” He claimed that Ukraine is acting as “Europe’s shield” during its conflict with Russia.

Last year, Sweden ditched its centuries-old policy of non-alignment in favor of joining NATO, citing Russia’s ongoing operation in the neighboring state, which was launched in February 2022. Sweden’s Nordic neighbor Finland has done the same, having joined NATO in April 2023.

Speaking on his country’s future role in NATO at the same annual conference last year, Kristersson affirmed that “having nuclear weapons on our own territory in peacetime is in the cards.”

Moscow has repeatedly stated that NATO’s continuing expansion towards Russia’s western borders, as well as the refusal to rule out Ukraine’s membership in the future, are among the key causes of the ongoing conflict. Russia sees NATO as a threat to its national security.

Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has accused the West of turning Europe into an “arena for confrontation.” The accession of Finland and Sweden will “have a negative impact on the situation in Europe,” he warned.

Moscow has also stated that the deliveries of weapons and money to Kiev makes NATO countries de facto direct participants in the conflict.

At least 21 people were injured in a suspected gas explosion at a Texas hotel, the Fort Worth Fire Department (FWFD) said. One person was initially reported as missing, but has since been located. 

According to officials, they received calls about a “type of explosion” inside the Sandman Signature hotel in downtown Fort Worth shortly after 3:30 pm local time. At least two floors of the building’s facade were blown out onto the street and into a parking lot, local media said.

FWFD spokesman Craig Trojacek told reporters that, although a gas leak has occurred, it is too early to say if it has led to the blast. 

“There is a smell of gas here in downtown. We’re not sure if the smell of gas was caused [by] the explosion or the fire itself, or if that's what caused the explosion,” Trojacek said. 

According to the fire department, 26 rooms were occupied at the time of the blast, and “several people were extracted from the basement that weren't able to get out on their own.”

🚨BREAKING: huge explosion has taken place at a hotel in Fort Worth, Texas.

This story is still developing. pic.twitter.com/4CIYwR2v4c

— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) January 8, 2024

Three of the injured victims were working at Musume, the restaurant inside the hotel. “Luckily, Musume was closed during the time of the explosion, so we had no customers dining and limited employees working,” said Josh Babb, co-founder of Musume, as quoted by CBS Texas.

The 245-room hotel was built in 1920 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to its website. 

Hundreds of neo-fascist activists have performed Nazi salutes during a ceremony in Rome, sparking outrage across the country.

On Sunday evening, people gathered outside the former headquarters of the now-defunct Italian Social Movement (MSI) party to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the death of three teenage activists.

The black-clad attendees extended their right hands and chanted “present” three times. They then shouted “For all fallen comrades!”

Known locally as the Roman salute, the gesture is closely associated with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, who aligned Italy with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Alla fine sono solo ragazzi che vogliono stare insieme e divertisti.#AccaLarentia pic.twitter.com/pooZia2be6

— Barabba (@BarabbaMarlin) January 8, 2024

“The Roman salute is an unacceptable insult and outrage, particularly to the memory of all the victims of Nazi-fascism,” Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish community of Rome, wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“For us – the Jews in Rome – that gesture, because of its symbolic value, is like rubbing salt into our wounds,” Fadlun added. “It is nonsense to believe that it can be an appropriate tribute.”

The ceremony was swiftly condemned by multiple politicians, with Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies Sergio Costa promising to request the Prosecutor’s Office to check whether “any crimes have been committed during the commemoration, including the advocacy of fascism.”

The opposition parties also demanded that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni publicly denounce the incident. Meloni has been dogged by accusations of sympathies for the far-right, given that her party – Brothers of Italy (FdI) – was co-founded by a group that was the successor to the MSI. Meloni has denied any ties to fascism.

Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani said that the displays of the fascist salute must be “condemned by everyone,” and that “according to the law, one cannot make apologies for fascism in our country.”

The rally marked the anniversary of the so-called Acca Larentia killings, when two young members of a neo-fascist militia were ambushed and killed by a left-wing group in 1978. The murder sparked clashes with police, which led to the death of a third neo-fascist activist.

Police in the US capital announced on Monday that someone had falsely reported a shooting at Judge Tanya Chutkan’s home. She is the judge overseeing the federal trial of former US President Donald Trump on charges related to the 2020 election.

The Metropolitan Police Department received a call around 10 pm on Sunday and sent officers to Chutkan’s Washington, DC home, a spokesperson told reporters. They quickly established that the shooting had never happened.

The incident comes less than a week after anonymous bomb threats were made against officials and government buildings in eight US states – Alaska, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota and Mississippi – all of which turned out to be unfounded.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday called the threats “deeply disturbing,” unacceptable and threatening “the fabric of our democracy,” according to AP.

Chutkan was appointed to the bench in 2014 by President Barack Obama. She is overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump on federal charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has denounced the case as a politically motivated attempt to block him from the 2024 ballot.

One such false police report sent officers to the Long Island home of billionaire currency speculator George Soros on New Year’s eve. A week prior, on Christmas, two Republican members of Congress – one in New York, another in Georgia – were “swatted” as well.

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has fumed about what she said was the FBI’s inadequate response to the harassment. 

“The FBI can do so many things, has even abused FISA to spy on hundreds of thousands of Americans, but cannot figure out who wants me killed by a hail of bullets fired by a SWAT team responding to murder-suicide calls supposedly coming from me,” she told reporters at the end of December. “Thankfully, my local police are far too smart, know me well, and know exactly what these swatting calls are.”

United Airlines has discovered inadequately secured door plugs on the Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes that it grounded in the wake of last week’s midair blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight, raising new safety concerns about an aircraft that was previously suspended from flying following two deadly crashes.

“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug -- for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,” United said in a statement. “These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.”

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the grounding of all 737 MAX 9 airliners for safety checks after a door plug blew out in midair during an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday. The crew was forced to turn back and make an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon, where the flight originated, and several of the 171 passengers suffered injuries.

The FAA said all MAX 9s will remain grounded until operators complete enhanced inspections and take any needed corrective actions. “The FAA’s priority is always keeping Americans safe,” the agency added.

A separate agency, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), is investigating the midair blowout. The door plug, which blew out at an altitude around 16,000 feet, was found by a Portland schoolteacher in his backyard.

Alaska Airlines had previously stopped using the plane that suffered the blowout on trips to Hawaii because a warning light indicating a possible pressurization problem had lit up on several previous flights, NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters on Sunday. The aircraft was restricted to shorter flights over land so it could “return very quickly to an airport” if the warning light lit up again, she said. However, she added, the NTSB hasn’t yet confirmed a connection between the previous pressurization warnings and Friday’s blowout.

New safety concerns surfaced last month, when Boeing urged 737 MAX operators to inspect their planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder control system. The warning came after an unidentified airline found a rudder bolt with a missing nut during routine maintenance work.

Pro-Palestinian activists interrupted US President Joe Biden’s campaign speech at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on Monday.

Emanuel AME is a historically black church, where a pastor and eight parishioners were killed in a racially motivated attack in 2015, when Biden was vice president. As one of the main themes of Biden’s 2024 campaign, Democrats have chosen to accuse his main challenger, former US President Donald Trump, of being a racist and a danger to democracy.

As Biden spoke, however, a group of protesters rose up from one of the back pews to heckle him about not caring for Palestinian lives in Gaza. They chanted “Ceasefire now!” as security escorted them away. After about a minute, Democrats attending the campaign event started a chant of “Four more years!” to drown them out.

When the noise subsided, Biden said he had been “quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.”

VIDEO: Protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza interrupt US President Joe Biden's speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States on January 8, 2024. pic.twitter.com/tmMYZ4QhgB

— Kyle Mazza (@KyleMazzaWUNF) January 8, 2024

Israel launched a major air and ground offensive against the Palestinian enclave after the October 7 incursion by Hamas militants, which claimed the lives of around 1,200 Israelis. According to the local Hamas-run authorities, over 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since.

The US has provided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with full diplomatic support, as well as money and weapons, while publicly urging restraint. Israel has rejected calls for a truce with Hamas, vowing to “eradicate” the group. Israeli officials have further argued that a comprehensive ceasefire would only help Hamas recuperate and stage further attacks.

The White House policy has caused significant backlash among Muslim Americans. Pro-Palestinian activists protested on Monday outside the church as well. 

A large group of Pro-Palestine protesters shouted and chanted for a cease-fire in Gaza at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, where President Biden was speaking on Monday.https://t.co/VP0xtpG5ks pic.twitter.com/dYqevzUFow

— NTD News (@NTDNews) January 8, 2024

The Biden administration has boasted of being “the most diverse” ever, including many Arab Americans and Muslims. Some of them have complained of a climate of fear and a “culture of silence” about Palestinian suffering, while several government officials have publicly resigned in protest.

Biden is said to be counting on the African American vote to propel him to victory in November. His struggling 2020 candidacy was boosted by a victory in the South Carolina primary, reportedly delivered by Congressman James Clyburn, an influential House Democrat. In return, Clyburn demanded “a black woman” as Biden’s running mate, which led to Kamala Harris getting the job.

Nearly two-thirds of US voters see the record influx of illegal aliens streaming across the nation’s southern border as not just a crisis, but an “invasion,” a new Rasmussen Reports poll has found.

The survey released on Monday shows that 65% of voters believe their country is being invaded. A majority of respondents in every demographic category – including 73% of Hispanics, 74% of blacks, 63% of women, 55% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans, and 70% of voters under age 40 – agreed with the statement that it’s ‘very accurate’ or ‘somewhat accurate’ to call the flood of illegal migrant crossings an invasion. Just 15% of US adults believe that it’s ‘not at all accurate’.

Even more voters, 72%, believe the situation at the border is a “crisis.” Similarly, 70% of Americans, including 63% of Democrats, see border security as a vital national security interest, the poll shows.

“Let’s be clear: What’s happening at the border is an invasion – at the invitation of Joe Biden,” Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said. Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois lawmaker who was part of a congressional delegation that toured key ports of entry last week, called for lawmakers to cut off funding to the government until the Biden administration secures the border.

Border Patrol officers encountered over 300,000 illegal immigrants crossing into the US in December, an all-time high. Illegal crossings have surged since Biden took office in January 2021 and began dismantling the immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

Trump, who is polling as the leading Republican presidential candidate for November’s election, has vowed to launch the largest deportation operation in American history if voters send him back to the White House.

Senator Marsha Blackburn and other Republican lawmakers have pointed out that while the Biden administration pleads unsuccessfully to get more help from Mexico in slowing the migrant influx, the president has sued the state of Texas for trying to help secure its part of the border. The administration has fought the state in court to remove border barriers and sued Texas last week over a new law enabling local police to arrest migrants for entering the country illegally.

UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed shot down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request that he pay unemployment benefits to Palestinians who’d been barred from entering Israel, Axios reported. Angered by the request, Sheikh Mohammed reportedly told the Israeli leader to ask Ukraine’s lavishly-funded president instead.

Netanyahu approached the Emirati leader “a few weeks ago” and asked him to pay unemployment benefits to more than 100,000 Palestinian residents of the West Bank who had been unable to travel to their jobs in Israel since October, Axios reported on Monday, citing an unnamed Israeli official and another anonymous source.

Sheikh Mohammed was taken aback by the request, the anonymous source said. Arguing that Netanyahu had created the problem himself by banning these workers from traveling between Palestinian and Israeli territory, he refused to pay.

“Ask Zelensky for money,” Mohammed reportedly jibed at Netanyahu. The Ukrainian president “gets a lot of money from many countries so maybe he would be able to help,” Mohammed explained to the Israeli leader, in Axios’ words.

Netanyahu’s decision to approach Abu Dhabi was apparently one of desperation. Shortly after the travel ban was imposed, the Israeli Defense Ministry recommended that a certain number of Palestinian workers be allowed to enter Israel, in order to avert the collapse of the West Bank’s economy and the potential violence that would follow. 

The Israeli economic cabinet, led by hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, rejected the advice. Despite pressure from the defense ministry and the Shin Bet intelligence agency, Netanyahu refused to bring the matter to a vote in his security cabinet after Smotrich – who hails from an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank – and several other far-right ministers threatened to resign and collapse his government, per Axios’ sources.

The West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) rather than Hamas, and as such has been spared the wholesale destruction visited on Gaza by the Israeli military over the last three months.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has stepped down, setting the stage for President Emmanuel Macron to form a new government amid a public uproar over pension reforms and other controversial policies.

Borne, who took office as the second female prime minister in France’s history in May 2022, submitted her resignation to Macron on Monday. She will remain in her position to handle “current affairs” until a new cabinet is formed, according to a government statement.

Macron thanked Borne for her service, saying she had “implemented our project with the courage, commitment and determination of a stateswoman.” However, that project hasn’t gone over well with many ordinary French citizens, who launched massive protests and strikes over the pension reforms, which included an increase in the country’s retirement age to 64 from 62.

Macron’s ruling party also faces public outrage over soaring inflation and failures to curb illegal immigration. Heading into France’s EU parliament elections in June, Macron’s Renaissance party is trailing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party by ten percentage points, according to the latest poll data. Macron won a second term by defeating Le Pen in France’s April 2022 presidential election.

As PM, Borne frequently deployed a controversial constitutional provision called the 49:3 clause in order to force the passage of new laws without parliamentary votes. Mathilde Panot, who heads the France Unbowed party, accused Borne of leaving behind a “badly damaged democracy.” She added, “No matter who the monarch replaces her with, we demand a vote of confidence in parliament.”

Under France’s system of government, the president sets policies and the prime minister oversees the day-to-day management of the government. French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Education Minister Gabriel Attal are reportedly among the top candidates to succeed Borne as prime minister.

Two F-16 fighter jets practiced airstrikes over Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday, in what the US embassy in Sarajevo described as a show of force in support of the country’s central government amid ongoing tensions with Bosnian Serbs.

US Army Special Forces operators and members of the Bosnian military acted as forward air controllers on the ground, guiding the jets as they flew over the Brcko and Tuzla areas in northern Bosnia. The two F-16 were accompanied by a KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane.

The “training event” was also intended to “demonstrate the US commitment to ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of [Bosnia],”  the embassy said, adding that the US “will not stand by while the Dayton Peace Agreement and [Bosnia’s] institutions are challenged.”

The US-brokered deal ended the 1992-95 civil war by partitioning Bosnia between the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska, RS) and the Federation run by the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Croats. Monday’s demonstration came as Republika Srpska authorities celebrated its founding on January 9, 1991 – a holiday the Muslims have sought to ban as divisive.

RS President Milorad Dodik has objected to what he described as repeated violations of the peace agreement and the Bosnian constitution, saying the entity will declare independence if they continue.

Republika Srpska officials mostly shrugged off the US show of force on Monday, proceeding with their January 9 celebrations. 

“As far as I’m concerned, they could have joined our parade and flown their F-16s over Banja Luka alongside our helicopters,” Prime Minister Radovan Viskovic told reporters. “We won’t waste our time on them, let them do their jobs and we’ll do ours.”

In his speech, President Dodik insisted that the Serbs “want peace and stability and do not threaten anyone,” but will not allow anyone to infringe on what is theirs.

“To Serbs in these lands, freedom has never been a philosophical concept but an existential one, driving so many of our actions,” he said. “We don’t want war. We want Republika Srpska to remain our oasis of freedom.”

Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije noted that a ban on celebrating January 9 – the feast of St. Stephen the Martyr – would effectively mean a ban on Orthodox Christianity.

“We don’t impose our way of life on anyone, but we cannot renounce our patron saint in any way, for that would be giving up our faith and ourselves, what is ours by the laws of both man and God,” he said.

Public support for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has fallen to record lows, the tabloid Bild reported on Monday, citing a fresh survey conducted by the INSA polling institute. Almost two-thirds of Germans want him to resign before the next federal election, scheduled for October 2025, the data suggests.

As many as 64% of respondents told INSA that Scholz should vacate his position and hand it over to Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who is a fellow Social Democrat. Less than a quarter of Germans opposed that prospect.

Scholz would also lose an election versus any of his major rivals, the poll showed. Only 23% of Germans would support the current chancellor against Friedrich Merz, the leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merz himself would enjoy the backing of 26% of voters.

Soeder currently serves as governor of Germany’s most populous state and is known for his criticism of Scholz’s policies. In November, he warned that Germany was in a “serious crisis,” particularly slamming the chancellor’s cabinet over its budget and police failures, adding that the “government has gone bankrupt.”

The Bavarian politician also criticized the federal government’s strategy of using only subsidies to combat price hikes resulting from forgoing Russian energy supplies. He also criticized Berlin for, as he said, prioritizing military aid to Ukraine over the nation’s own security.

Scholz has been losing public support for quite some time. In early December, a YouGov poll showed that 74% of Germans believed he was doing a poor job as chancellor, with only 20% seeing his performance in a positive light. As many as 73% said they were unhappy with his entire cabinet.

Some 77% said they placed little or no trust in the way Scholz is governing Germany. Even among SPD supporters, this figure reached 60%. Later in the month, Der Spiegel reported that Scholz’s personal approval had slipped to just 30%, down from 44% in June 2023.

On Monday, Bild described Scholz as “the most unpopular chancellor of all time.”

A senior commander of Hezbollah’s elite special forces unit has been killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, ratcheting up tensions as West Jerusalem’s war with Hamas threatens to expand to a second front.

Hezbollah’s military media office confirmed the death on Monday of Wissam al-Tawil, deputy head of the militant group’s secretive Radwan commando unit. He and another Hezbollah fighter were reportedly killed when a sport-utility vehicle in which they were riding was struck by a missile in the Lebanese town of Majdal Selm, about four miles north of the Israeli border.

Al-Tawil is the highest-level Hezbollah member to have been killed since Israel’s war with Hamas began on October 7. Cross-border violence has escalated in recent days; Hezbollah launched a missile attack on an Israeli intelligence base on Saturday, which came in response to a drone strike last week that killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and six other people in a Beirut suburb.

A video posted on social media purported to show the burned-out vehicle in which al-Tawil was riding. Hezbollah said he had died “on the road to Jerusalem,” a phrase used by the group for fighters killed by Israeli forces. The group also posted pictures of the deceased commander, including photos of him alongside senior Hezbollah leaders and top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in 2020.

US officials have insisted that they are working to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from escalating into a wider conflict. A secret US intelligence assessment found that Israeli forces would find it “difficult to succeed” in a two-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to meet with Israeli leaders this week in Tel Aviv as part of a nine-stop Middle East trip.

West Jerusalem isn’t afraid to go to war with Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas at the same time, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the Wall Street Journal in an article published on Sunday. “They see what is happening in Gaza,” he said. “They know we can copy-paste to Beirut.”

US President Joe Biden won’t fire Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for hiding his hospitalization from both the public and the government, Politico reported on Monday, citing unnamed senior administration officials.

Austin was admitted to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center last Monday due to “complications following a recent elective medical procedure,” the Pentagon revealed to reporters on Friday. Over the weekend, it emerged that Austin was still in the hospital but that no one had informed the White House of his initial absence.

Four anoymous officials spoke to Politico following calls by Republicans for Austin to relinquish his post, insisting that Biden is “famously loyal” and would refuse to accept a resignation even if the former general were to offer it.

“Austin’s going nowhere,” one senior administration official told the outlet.

Biden “respects the fact that Secretary Austin took ownership for the lack of transparency,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday, referring to the Pentagon chief’s statement on Saturday admitting he “could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed.”

The condition that put Austin in the hospital has not yet been disclosed. He remains institutionalized and the Pentagon does not have a specific date for his release, Major General Pat Ryder said on Sunday.

The US government has neither confirmed nor denied an NBC News report claiming that Austin had spent four days in the intensive care unit. According to Ryder, his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was taking care of “routine” business while on vacation in Puerto Rico. 

The Pentagon chief’s absence – which went unnoticed by both the Pentagon press corps and the White House – came as US troops illegally stationed in Iraq and Syria came under repeated attacks by militants, while Yemeni Houthis successfully closed the Red Sea to Israeli-linked shipping, despite the deployment of a US naval task force.

Austin is the first African American secretary of defense. He came to the post from the board of military contractor Raytheon Technologies, which he joined immediately after retiring from active service in 2016. While commanding an army corps in Iraq in 2008, Austin reportedly became friends with Biden’s son Beau, who served on his staff. 

Germany has dropped its opposition to the sale of nearly 50 Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes to Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced on Sunday. Baerbock’s Green party has steadily dismantled its long-standing policy of pacifism since the conflict in Ukraine escalated in February 2022. 

Germany halted all arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2018 in response to Riyadh’s war in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. At the time, Saudi Arabia had taken delivery of 72 Typhoons, but the embargo left the remaining 48 ordered by the Kingdom on indefinite hold.

Speaking in Israel on Sunday, Baerbock said that “the world, especially here in the Middle East, has become a completely different place” since Hamas launched its attack on Israel in October.

Baerbock said that providing Saudi Arabia with the jets would make a “key contribution” to Israel’s security, presumably by deterring Saudi Arabia and Israel’s chief geopolitical rival, Iran.

The Eurofighter project is a joint venture by France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. As such, any one of these partners can veto its sale to foreign customers. The 72 Typhoons already given to Riyadh, plus the 48 in limbo, would all be sold by the UK.

While the Saudi embargo was put in place by former Chancellor Angela Merkel, it was seen as unlikely that Germany’s current coalition government would reverse the policy, given the longstanding aversion to foreign intervention of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ Social Democrats and Baerbock’s Greens.

Prior to the federal elections of 2021, the Green party’s manifesto explicitly stated that it wanted to “end European arms exports to war and crisis zones.” By the end of 2022, Green Party member and economy minister, Robert Habeck, had okayed the sale of spare parts and ammunition to Saudi Arabia, while he and Baerbock clashed with Scholz on several occasions by urging the chancellor to provide heavier weapons to Ukraine.

It is unclear when the Eurofighter sale will take place. A German government spokesperson told Politico on Monday that there is currently no tender procedure in place.

Germany is the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Saudi Arabia is the second-largest arms importer.

EU member states should contribute more to the bloc’s assistance to Ukraine, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner has said. Berlin cannot bear the bulk of the burden alone, he told his Free Democratic Party’s (FDP) annual gathering in Stuttgart.

Germany has emerged as the second-biggest single aid donor to Kiev over the course of its conflict with Russia. According to the Kiel Institute for World Economy (IfW), the nation has provided almost $23 billion in bilateral assistance to Ukraine, if the cost of providing for refugees is included. The US is the only nation that has spent more on aid for Kiev.

Linder told the congress last Saturday that Moscow poses a danger to all of Europe, accusing it of not only seeking to “subjugate Ukraine” but also to “destroy” the Western way of life by challenging “the actual or alleged dominance of the liberal West.” He added that the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a “threat that is faced by Europe as a whole.”

Under such circumstances, “others” in the EU should also “participate in the endeavor,” the minister argued, claiming the fact that Germany does more for the country does not mean “strong European nations... have fewer commitments.” The EU should demonstrate that it is a “community of values that stands together in these times,” Lindner said.

“If more is needed, Germany should not have to do it alone,” Lindner said. Berlin had already allocated $8.76 billion from its 2024 budget to fund the Ukrainian military and support refugees, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised in December that additional support would be forthcoming, “just as we planned, and, above all, for as long as necessary.”

The head of the German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE), Monika Schnitzer, also suggested a tax increase last month to finance additional military aid to Kiev.

Germany, which relied on Russia for 40% of its gas before 2022, was among the hardest hit by the curtailment of Russian energy supplies last year. Deliveries were significantly reduced after the EU imposed sanctions on Moscow in response to the Ukraine conflict, and were entirely halted when the Nord Stream pipelines delivering Russian gas to Germany were rendered unusable following a series of explosions in autumn 2022.

The nation’s continued military support for Ukraine has also started to draw criticism. In November 2023, German MP Dr Johann Wadephul warned that the nation’s own military might end up at a loss if Berlin continued to funnel resources to meet Kiev’s needs. Some key units of the German Armed forces might only last several days in battle since the much-needed equipment replacements destined for the German army often end up in Ukraine instead.

South Korean spies have accused North Korea of providing weapons to Hamas, but claim that supporting evidence is “difficult to provide.” The US has made similar accusations before, which Pyongyang denies.

Seoul's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), released a photograph on Monday of a North Korean F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, purportedly used by Hamas in its war against Israel. The agency also claimed that a picture of an F-7 rocket shared last week by US state news outlet Voice of America was genuine.

The NIS offered no explanation for how the rocket ended up in Gaza. The agency said it had collected “specific evidence regarding the scale and timing of North Korea’s supply of weapons to Hamas and others,” but that it is “currently difficult to provide such evidence due to the need to protect information sources and in consideration of diplomatic ties,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

Pyongyang dismissed these reports as “groundless.” An editorial published by state-run KCNA news agency at the time asserted that the “reptile press” of the US was spreading false rumors in order to “shift the blame for the Middle East crisis caused by [Washington’s] hegemonic policy.”

North Korea has also been accused of supplying Russia with arms used in Ukraine. US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed last week that Russian forces had used North Korean ballistic missiles in a barrage on targets in Ukraine last month. Moscow has denied sourcing any weapons from Pyongyang.

Polish officials have withheld evidence and attempted to stall an international probe into the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, making investigators “suspicious of Warsaw’s role and motives,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. 

The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas lines – which linked Russia with Germany through the Baltic Sea – were destroyed in a series of explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022. A joint inquiry by Germany, Denmark, and Sweden is ongoing, with investigators theorizing that a Ukrainian team rented a yacht in Germany from a Polish company, which they used to transport explosives to the blast sites.

When these alleged leads were chaned in Poland, investigators were stonewalled by government officials and law enforcement agents, the Journal reported, citing sources within the investigation.

Polish authorities failed to turn over testimony from eyewitnesses who allegedly encountered the yacht’s six-person crew in the Polish port of Kolobrzeg until pushed to do so by German police, the sources said. CCTV footage from the port was then withheld, and Poland’s internal security agency, the ABW, “failed to answer queries, obfuscated or gave contradictory information,” the newspaper stated.

The prosecutors reportedly told European investigators that the boat arrived in Kolobrzeg at 4pm September 19, when it actually moored seven hours earlier. Later in the investigation, the ABW told its sister agencies in Europe that the yacht “had links with Russian espionage,” the newspaper reported, adding that investigators considered this “disinformation.”

According to all available information, no Western governments or intelligence agencies suspect that Russia was behind the bombings. Gas sold to Europe via the Nord Stream lines was a lucrative source of revenue for Moscow, and was seen as a powerful instrument of leverage for the Kremlin.

Poland’s efforts to hinder the investigators have made them “increasingly suspicious of Warsaw’s role and motives,” the Wall Street Journal noted. All of the alleged misdirection and obfuscation took place under Poland’s previous government, however, and unnamed “senior European officials” told the newspaper that they are considering contacting Poland’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk, in the hope that he will grant them access to police and security personnel who may have previously been pressured to stay silent.

Bolstering this theory was a tweet by former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who within hours of the explosions shared an image of a giant gas leak at the blast site along with the caption “Thank you, USA.” 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed this explanation, stating last month that the sabotage operation “was done, most likely, by the Americans or someone at their instruction.”

China has announced it has detained a foreign national who was allegedly gathering sensitive data on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). The UK has yet to comment on the allegation.

Beijing’s Ministry of National Security, which oversees both intelligence and counterintelligence, said on Monday that the UK spy agency “used personnel from a third country to conduct espionage against China.”

The ministry identified the alleged culprit as Huang Moumou, who is said to have headed an overseas consulting agency, but did not provide any further personal details. MI6 recruited Huang in 2015 and established an “intelligence cooperation relationship” with him, the ministry claimed.

Since then, the alleged spy has traveled to China several times at the direction of British intelligence to collect state secrets and identify personnel for MI6 to “incite rebellion,” the ministry’s statement read. It added that London also provided Huang with intelligence training in the UK and other places, and with special spy equipment.

While Western countries and China have routinely traded accusations of espionage, several media outlets suggested that this is the first instance in which Beijing has claimed to have caught a British-linked spy.

The ministry previously claimed to have arrested spies acting on behalf of the US. In August, on two separate occasions, it accused a government worker and an employee of a Chinese military industrial group of attempting to hand over sensitive data to the CIA.

This came after the US agency's director, William Burns said in July that Washington had “made progress” in recent years to ensure it has a “strong human intelligence capability” in China. In response, Beijing vowed to “take all necessary measures to safeguard national security.”

According to a 2017 New York Times investigation, the Chinese government busted a CIA spy ring in the early 2010s, jailing or killing dozens of informants working for the US. Beijing neither confirmed nor denied the report, but said it routinely handles activities that endanger national security.

The British MI5 intelligence service warned in October of the “epic scale” of Chinese espionage, saying that more than 20,000 people in the UK had been approached by operatives who sought to acquire various secrets. China has consistently denied that it is engaged in spying against the US and UK.

Hezbollah should look at what has happened to Hamas militants before escalating its conflict with Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cautioned.

Cross-border fighting between the Lebanon-based militant group and Israeli forces has continued since Hezbollah declared itself “at war” with Israel shortly after the conflict in Gaza started last October.

At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said “I suggest that Hezbollah learn what Hamas has already learned in recent months: no terrorist is immune,” he added.

“We are determined to protect our citizens and return the residents of the north safely to their homes. This is a national goal that we all share and we act responsibly to achieve it. If we can, we will do it through diplomatic means, and if not, we will act in other ways.”

On Saturday, Hezbollah declared that it had fired dozens of missiles at the Mount Meron air control base in northern Israel, close to the Lebanese border. The militant group said the attack had been carried out in response to the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, which it has blamed on Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted that the base had been damaged, but did not elaborate on the scale of destruction. In response, the IDF carried out several attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

In his speech on Sunday, Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting, as “the war must not be stopped until we complete all of its goals – the elimination of Hamas, the return of all our hostages, and a promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel.”

He stressed that his message was addressed “to both our enemies and our friends,” as Israel’s closest ally – the US – has already voiced its concerns over the ongoing escalation.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit Tel Aviv this week. On Sunday, he declared that “too many Palestinian civilians are suffering from insufficient access to food, to water, to medicine, to other essential supplies.”

“I will also raise the imperative of doing more to prevent civilian casualties,” he added, while commenting on upcoming talks with Israeli officials. “Far too many innocent Palestinians have already been killed.”

US Republican and Democrat leaders have reached an agreement on government spending for 2024, sidelining negotiations on additional resources for Israel and Ukraine, as well as money for border control.

In October 2023, the White House released a sweeping set of proposals to support Israel and Ukraine in their respective military conflicts, among other things. The total cost of the supplemental funding request was over $100 billion, of which just over $60 billion was slated for Kiev.

House Republicans have blocked iterations of this supplemental budget numerous times, on the grounds that US border security should take precedence over aid to Ukraine.

The deal announcement comes as US lawmakers are set to return from a break, ahead of a two-tiered federal funding deadline.

The agreement follows defense and domestic spending caps set by Congress as part of a bill to suspend the US debt ceiling until 2025. It “clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement with top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday.

The first set of allocated federal finances are set to expire January 19, the second on February 2, without which the US government would be forced to shut down.

Overall, the deal provides for $886 billion in defense funding, and $772 billion in domestic, non-defense spending.

“This represents the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” Johnson claimed.

Biden thanked the lawmakers for cooperating in reaching a consensus in a statement published on Sunday, but added that he expects them to work harder to unlock billions in military aid to Israel and Ukraine.

The administration of US President Joe Biden must clearly outline its end goals in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and how any further funds will be spent, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, as the White House desperately seeks congressional approval to maintain the flow of weapons to Kiev.

The US also needs to secure its own border before it secures anyone else’s, Johnson stated in an interview on Sunday with CBS. This echoes the main focus of House Republicans’ opposition to the combined aid package pushed for by Biden in October 2023, over $60 billion of which was for Kiev. Republicans at the time insisted on locking their support for the package behind funding for stricter border controls with neighboring Mexico.

Blocking the bill last year was a Republican “message to the White House that they were not being clear with the American people,” Johnson explained. 

“What is the endgame in Ukraine? What is our strategy? What is the objective? How will we have proper oversight over these precious taxpayer dollars?” 

The situation with Ukraine aid is nothing short of “dire,” Shalanda Young, the director of the US Office of Management and Budget, told journalists last week. She warned that without congressional support for supplemental funding, the US may have to stop assistance altogether.

Ruslana Korshunova, a Kazakhstan-born Russian top model who jumped to her death from her Manhattan apartment in 2008, visited Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious ‘pedophile island’ when she was just 18, newly unsealed court documents have revealed. 

Korshunova, who featured in ads for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, and Nina Ricci, was flown on the billionaire’s private jet – known as the ‘Lolita Express’ – on June 7, 2006, two years before her apparent suicide, the Daily Mail reports, citing flight logs.

Epstein, who is known for sexually exploiting underage girls on his private island, Little St. James, in the US Virgin Islands, was also listed on the same flight along with five other people. He was charged with multiple counts of unlawful sex with a minor just a month before the trip and was arrested in July 2006 on a single count of soliciting prostitution, a relatively minor charge that some criticized as special treatment.

Korshunova was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan in 1992 and moved to New York City when she was 15, after being discovered by London-based modeling agency Model 1. Her career included numerous high-profile modeling gigs, appearing on the covers of Russian Vogue and French Elle magazines.

She jumped to her death from her ninth-floor apartment in June 2008, days before her 21st birthday. At the time, it was reported that her friends and family said she displayed no signs of wanting to kill herself, describing her as a cheerful girl who “loved life.”

Although Korshunova did not leave a suicide note, the investigation found a long message on her computer describing how she missed her home and family.

She was buried in Russia, with her mother saying she “would want her beloved Moscow to be her last resting place.”

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder has admitted that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was still in the hospital, nearly a week after a secret “elective medical procedure” went awry. Austin, the spokesman insisted, is “recovering well” and continues to fulfill his duties.

The defense secretary was admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center last Monday, but his whereabouts and condition was not revealed it to the public until Friday, when he reportedly fully resumed his responsibilities.

“Since resuming his duties on Friday evening, the Secretary has received operational updates and has provided necessary guidance to his team. He has full access to required secure communications capabilities and continues to monitor DoD’s day-to-day operations worldwide,” Ryder said in a brief update on Sunday night.

It was not only the public that was unaware of Austin’s hospitalization, but also President Joe Biden and his administration, according to multiple officials interviewed by US media. Ryder stressed that Austin spoke to Biden on Saturday, and “has also been in contact” with the deputy secretary of defense, Kathleen Hicks, but did not clarify when exactly the White House was informed that the defense chief was out of commission.

However, the Pentagon’s second-in-command herself was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time, and reportedly was not informed of the gravity of Austin’s condition until Thursday afternoon. Hicks apparently decided not to cut her vacation short after being told that Austin was preparing to resume operational responsibilities.

The Pentagon did not provide any details about Austin’s medical condition, but an NBC News report claimed that he had spent four days in intensive care. “While we do not have a specific date for his release at this time, we will continue to provide updates… as they become available,” Ryder said on Sunday.

Amid public outcry over the secrecy and concerns that a breach in the chain of command could have put national security at risk, Austin issued a statement on Saturday, saying he “could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed.” He insisted, however, that it was his personal medical procedure and took “full responsibility for my decisions about disclosure.”

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won a fifth term in office in a general election boycotted by the main opposition party. Hasina has been in power for two decades, and is the country’s longest-serving premier.

Shortly after polls closed on Sunday, local media reported that Hasina’s Awami League party had won 172 out of 225 parliamentary seats for which there was data. A final tally for all 300 seats will not be available until Monday, but Sunday night’s results show Hasina on track to secure a fifth term in office.

Hasina’s victory was never in doubt. The leading opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotted the election after thousands of its members were arrested in the weeks leading up to the vote. This left any seats not claimed by the Awami League to be divided up among a scatter of minor parties and independent candidates.

BNP officials accused Hasina of rigging her previous election wins, and weaponizing law enforcement against political rivals. The US sanctioned an elite Bangladeshi police unit in 2021, accusing its members of extrajudicial killings.

Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and exporters of garments, and Hasina has been hailed for improving the pay and conditions of the roughly four million people who work in the industry. However, stagnating wages coupled with rising food and fuel costs have battered the country’s economy in recent years, culminating in Hasina’s government accepting a $4.7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund last year.

At least 18 arson attacks took place on Friday and Saturday, with ten polling stations targeted, the Associated Press reported. In the most serious incident, four people including a child were killed when a passenger train bound for the capital, Dhaka, was set on fire. 

Police blamed the attack on the BNP and arrested seven of the party’s members on Sunday. The party denied any role in the incident.

Neither the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s boycott of Sunday’s elections nor the exclusion of the country’s main Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami should affect the legitimacy of incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s likely victory, former Indian High Commissioner in Bangladesh, Veena Sikri, told RT on Sunday.

“Low voter turnout doesn’t necessarily reflect dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party. It will also reflect a great deal of concern with the BNP and other parties who have been known to cause violence and loss of life and loss of property and destruction of infrastructure, and so it’s not that they are very popular either with the people,” Siki said.

Turnout was reported at just 40% after polls closed on Sunday, compared to over 80% when the last election was held in 2018, after the BNP called a two-day nationwide strike and urged voters to stay home to avoid legitimizing the incumbent with their participation. The BNP’s leader, Khaleda Zia, is under house arrest on corruption charges that her supporters say are politically motivated. 

With no major-party challengers participating in the vote, the victory of Hasina and her Awami League are all but assured, even as critics accuse the politician of vote-rigging after she refused to allow a neutral caretaker government to administer the election. Hasina, who has blamed the opposition for a pre-election surge in violence, insisted she did not need to prove her legitimacy to anyone but “the people of Bangladesh.”

A secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington has found that Israeli forces would find it “difficult to succeed” in a two-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have engaged in tit-for-tat exchanges of fire with Hezbollah militants since the start of the war with Hamas in October. Initially limited in scale, Hezbollah's pounding of an Israeli intelligence base with missiles on Saturday in response to Israel assassinating a senior Hamas leader in Beirut several days earlier, has marked a significant escalation.  

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to make a “fundamental change” to the security situation along the Lebanese border, American officials have privately warned him against opening a second front, the Washington Post reported.

“If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza,” citing two anonymous officials and a classified report by the DIA.

Amid this drawdown, Hezbollah has been open about its role in the conflict. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, claimed in November that his forces had tied up around a third of Israel’s troops along the Israel-Lebanon border, preventing them from being deployed to Gaza. He added that Hezbollah’s continued skirmishes with the IDF were causing “a state of anxiety, anticipation, panic, and fear among the enemy's political and military leadership.”

Multiple US officials told the Washington Post that they fear Netanyahu may attack Hezbollah in order to save his political career. The Israeli leader faced widespread protests before the start of the war, and was criticized afterwards for failing to pre-empt Hamas’ October 7 assault, which left around 1,200 Israelis dead.

“A full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry,” the paper stated, citing officials who also warned that the militant group could launch missile attacks on Israeli petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors. 

Washington also fears that such a conflict could draw in Iran – Hezbollah’s principal backer – and eventually the US, the paper’s sources said. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Jordan on Sunday, ahead of visits to Israel, the West Bank, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. “We have an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading,” he said, before meeting Jordanian King Abdullah II and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hit back at the Wall Street Journal in a post on his X platform (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, a day after the paper published a lengthy article detailing company executives’ purported concerns over his use of illegal drugs.

Referring to an infamous 2018 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, during which Musk smoked marijuana on camera, the Tesla tycoon explained: “after that one puff with Rogan, I agreed, at NASA’s request, to do 3 years of random drug testing. Not even trace quantities were found of any drugs or alcohol.”

“@WSJ is not fit to line a parrot cage for bird,” he concluded, adding a “poop” emoji.

In its article, headlined: “Elon Musk Has Used Illegal Drugs, Worrying Leaders at Tesla and SpaceX,” the Journal claimed multiple company executives and board members at both companies were concerned that what they viewed as Musk’s erratic behavior was caused by the use of illegal drugs. These supposedly included not only the cannabis he was seen smoking with Rogan, but also ketamine – for which he has claimed to have a legal prescription – LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, and magic mushrooms.  

Musk’s brother Kimbal and at least one current SpaceX board member reportedly took drugs with Musk, though it was not stated whether they were among those supposedly concerned about the billionaire’s habits. Musk has allegedly used drugs at “private parties around the world,” where attendees were made to sign non-disclosure agreements or turn in their phones.

Following the Rogan incident, SpaceX randomly deployed drug-sniffing dogs on company property and executives “began warning employees to follow company rules at all times, including to not use illegal drugs even outside of the office,” insider sources told the WSJ.

Despite focusing on drugs, the report acknowledged that even those concerned about Musk’s behavior were not sure whether to attribute it to substance use or other issues like his “consistent lack of sleep,” being on the autism spectrum, or (self-diagnosed) bipolar disorder. Few investors complained about his behavior when his companies were performing as well as they were in recent years, it admitted.

Musk fans on X have condemned the “hit piece,” which think-tank director Jeffrey Tucker decried as “the kind of vicious thing you would expect to see in East Germany or the old Soviet Union.”

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has called on EU leaders to establish a common European army. Without a joint military, Tajani argues, the bloc cannot have a credible foreign policy.

“If we want to be bearers of peace in the world, we need a European army,” Tajani told Italy’s La Stampa newspaper on Sunday. 

“This is a fundamental precondition for having an effective European foreign policy,” he continued, adding that in a world of “powerful players” like the US, Russia, and China, European citizens “can only be protected by something that already exists, and it’s called the European Union.”

Some 22 EU states are currently members of NATO, with the US-led pact effectively dictating security policy on the continent since the start of the Cold War. However, several EU leaders have floated the idea of pooling their militaries into a common force independent of US control in recent years. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in 2021 that such a move would “weaken the connection between North America and Europe.” When talk of an independent European army first surfaced two decades earlier, then US Secretary of Defense William Cohen was more blunt, calling the idea “a threat to the very existence of NATO.”

The conflict in Ukraine has apparently tamped down discussion of European autonomy. Macron has since shifted his rhetoric on NATO and now supports the expansion of the US-led alliance. Merkel’s replacement, Olaf Scholz, still speaks of the need for “a more sovereign… European Union,” but has remained silent on the idea of building what Merkel called “a real, true European army.”

Ultimately, the EU approved the creation of a common defense strategy last year, which provided for the creation of a 5,000-strong “rapid deployment” force – falling dramatically short of a common army.

The German military has been reporting “suspicious” drone sightings over their bases, including facilities used to train Ukrainian troops, the Bild tabloid reported on Sunday.

German officials have blamed the incidents on Russia, while failing to obtain any evidence shedding light on the situation, the paper added.

The first sightings were in October 2022, Bild said, adding that General Carsten Breuer, then head of the Bundeswehr Homeland Defense Command, ordered military police to use anti-commercial drone jammers against the intruders. The measure appeared to be ineffective, Bild said, adding that the small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) continued to hover over the German bases while “nothing more happened in terms of the drone defense.”

The UAVs have been seen repeatedly over bases used to train Ukrainian soldiers, according to Bild. “Drones are regularly spotted over the Klietz military training facility, where the Bundeswehr teaches Ukrainians to [use] Leopard 1 [main battle tanks],” Marcus Faber, a German parliamentary Defense Committee member, who was briefed on the issue, told the tabloid.

The Bundeswehr has so far failed to shoot down a single one of the drones or track down its operator, Faber told the paper, citing Nils Hilmer, the Defense Ministry’s state secretary – an official responsible for communicating the ministry’s position to lawmakers.

The German Armed Forces established a special task force to combat the drone threat only around a year after the first reported sightings – on November 15, 2023, Bild said. Two months later, no tangible results have been achieved, as the new unit first needed the necessary permissions from the Interior Ministry.

“It cannot be the case that the Inspector General discovers that there is a massive problem with drones and then nothing happens for a year,” the MP said, adding that Germany “must not allow Russia to spy on military training facilities… as we are tangled up in an authority mess.”

Another Budget and Finance Committee member, Sebastian Schaefer, slammed the military for the absence of a drone defense strategy. “We need it urgently,” he said. Faber also told Bild that the MPs “need the results from the task force in the next few months.”

Neither Russia nor Ukraine have commented on the developments so far.

Pyongyang is ready to respond with force to any “foolish miscalculation” by Seoul, Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has said.

On Friday, Seoul announced that it was evacuating Yeonpyeong Island after North Korea fired 200 artillery shells off the west coast. It said the projectiles landed in a maritime buffer zone established between the neighbors under a 2018 deal, from which Pyongyang later withdrew. 

South Korea reacted to what it called a “crisis-escalating situation” by launching 400 shells of its own into the sea, in the same area. According to Seoul, it was followed by the North firing another 60 shells in the buffer zone on Saturday. 

In her statement on Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, who is a senior figure in North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, denied the latest claim by the South. Pyongyang “didn’t fire even a single shell into the relevant waters” on Saturday, she insisted.

“We conducted a deceptive operation in order to assess the real detecting ability of the ROK (Republic of Korea) military gangsters,” the North Korean leader’s sister claimed.

Kim Yo-jong said that because of its “hysteria” and “arrogance” the South Korean military “had no choice but to swallow the bait we threw” and prove its incompetence. She recalled a saying that “a coward is frightened of his own shadow.” 

The North Korean leader’s sister said she was “very pitiful” for the citizens of South Korea, who entrusted their security to “blind people.” 

She warned Seoul against similar “misjudgement” in the future, arguing that the South is inviting “irretrievable misfortune” with its conduct. 

“Let me make it clear: the safety locks on triggers of our military have been lifted… If there is even a slight provocation, our army will immediately launch a baptism by fire” for South Korea, Kim Yo-jong stated.

As of last week, California’s taxpayer-funded healthcare system now covers sex changes for illegal immigrants, thanks to legislation recently signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. The cost of the program is expected to top $3 billion.

California became the first state in the US to provide health insurance to all adults regardless of immigration status on January 1, when legislation signed by Newsom last summer came into effect. Approximately 700,000 illegal immigrants will now have their healthcare covered by the state’s taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal insurance system, according to a press release from State Senator Maria Elena Durazo in May.

Among the procedures covered by Medi-Cal are hormone therapy and gender transition surgery, according to a report this week by the Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet. 

“Gender affirming care is a covered Medi-Cal benefit when medically necessary,” a 2022 state memo cited by the outlet states. “Requests for gender affirming care should be from specialists experienced in providing culturally competent care to transgender and gender diverse individuals and should use nationally recognized guidelines.”

Newsom’s expansion of the Medi-Cal program will cost California taxpayers an estimated $3.1 billion, according to an Associated Press report from last year. Republican lawmakers criticized the expansion even before it emerged that it would cover transgender surgery, but their criticism turned to ridicule in recent days.

“California is now paying for illegal aliens to get sex changes,” Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “There’s no punchline to this tweet. California is the punchline.”

Newsom has defended the decision to add 700,000 more patients to the program. “In California, we believe everyone deserves access to quality, affordable health care coverage – regardless of income or immigration status,” his office told ABC News. “Through this expansion, we’re making sure families and communities across California are healthier, stronger, and able to get the care they need when they need it.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country will hold the European Council’s rotating presidency later this year, could gain an outsized influence over the body due to the expected departure of Council President Charles Michel, Politico reported on Sunday.

Michel has announced that he will run in this year’s EU parliamentary election, meaning he will vacate his current post if he wins. If EU leaders fail to quickly find a replacement, the president’s duties would essentially be assumed by Orban, the news website said.

Michel signaled his intention in an interview with three Belgian media outlets on Saturday, saying that if elected, he would carry out his duties in the EU Council until he takes his oath as an MEP in mid-July. “The European Council can anticipate this at the end of June or early July and decide on a successor,” he said.

According to EU rules, Hungary will take the Council’s rotating presidency between July and December. The timing could usher in a scenario in which “an unchecked Orban [will be] ruling the Council roost for the six months directly after the 2024 European election,” Politico noted, adding that other EU leaders would “desperately” want to avoid such an outcome.

Hungary also blocked a €50 billion aid package ($55 billion) for Kiev, which was meant to be disbursed between 2024 and 2027, while lashing out at the EU decision to freeze billions of euros in assistance to Budapest.

EU leaders are scheduled to meet on June 17 and June 27-28, shortly after the EU parliamentary election. Politico and other media have suggested that they would use those opportunities to agree on a replacement for Michel if he wins the election, although the process would have to move more quickly than usual. Under normal circumstances, Michel’s mandate expires in November 2024.

The EU Council president has also rejected claims that he is abandoning ship during simultaneous crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, saying he still has at least six months left at his post. He also noted that the second half of the year would be marked by political transition in any case.

US intelligence believes the sacking of several high-ranking Chinese militarily figures before New Year was linked to widespread corruption in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Bloomberg has reported, citing people familiar with the assessments.

The problem is the most pressing within China’s Rocket Force, in which major investments have been made in recent years, the agency said in an article on Saturday. It cited several examples of graft within the PLA, based on American assessments.

Among other things, Bloomberg’s sources mentioned Chinese “missiles filled with water instead of fuel” and waste fields of missile silos in western China, with faulty lids that won’t allow the munitions to launch effectively.

According to the sources, corruption inside the rocket force and the defense industrial base is so rampant that US officials now consider Chinese President Xi Jinping to be “less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case.”

Washington suggests that corruption has led to an erosion of confidence in the overall capabilities of the PLA in Beijing, and also set back some of Xi’s plans to turn the Chinese military into a modern force by 2027, the sources said.

Bloomberg stressed that the US assessments could not be independently verified. The Chinese Defense Ministry or civilian authorities have yet to comment on the report.

In late December, Beijing announced the dismissal of nine military figures, five of whom were linked to the rocket force, from China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC). Shortly before that, three high-ranking officials in charge of missile production in the country lost their jobs.

There have been other high-profile changes within the military in recent months, including the sacking of Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in late October amid reports of his involvement in a corruption scandal.

Chinese officials have repeatedly claimed the US is interfering in the country’s internal affairs by maintaining contacts with Taiwan, a self-governed island, viewed by Beijing as part of its territory. In November, a Chinese government spokesperson warned Taipei that “Taiwan independence means war.” US President Joe Biden vowed last year that Washington would defend the island in case of a conflict with Beijing.

At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.

The report's announcement, titled, “Round-up: 45 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide – a drop despite the tragedy in Gaza,” excludes most of the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in 2023, particularly in the past few months. It claims 16 fewer journalists were killed worldwide in 2023 than in 2022. This doesn't reflect reality.

The report claims that (as of December 1, 2023), only 13 Palestinian journalists were killed while actively reporting, noting separately that 56 journalists were killed in Gaza, “if we include journalists killed in circumstances unproven to be related to their duties.”

Other sources put the overall number of Palestinian journalists killed in the enclave much higher. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on December 1 that 73 journalists and media workers had been killed, citing to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

While The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) December 20, 2023 numbers are lower (at least 61 Palestinian journalists killed since October 7), CPJ at least didn't disregard dozens of slain Palestinian journalists like RSF did.

In fact, in contrast to RSF's cheerful “things are much better for journalists than previous years” tone, CPJ emphasized that in the first 10 weeks of Israel's war on Gaza, “more journalists have been killed than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” It voiced its concern about, “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”

However, in the methodology section near the end of its more detailed report, RSF notes it “logs a journalist’s death in its press freedom barometer when they are killed in the exercise of their duties or in connection with their status as a journalist.”

Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have received death threats from officers in the Israeli army precisely due to their status as journalists. And many of those threatened have subsequently been killed, along with family members, when Israeli airstrikes targeted their homes or places of shelter.

We also have the precedent in prior wars (in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021) of Israel bombing Gazan media buildings (including one I was in in 2009) with varying severity, damaging and finally destroying two major media buildings in 2021. This is clearly intended to stop the flow of reports from Gaza under Israeli bombs, and so is the killing of journalists.

On December 15, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate criticized the RSF report, going as far as accusing RSF of complicity with Israel's war crimes against Palestinian journalists through whitewashing.

This is the same PJS whose statistics the UN's OCHA cites, statistics which PJS says are “accurate and based on professional and legal documentation that follows the highest standards in documenting crimes against journalists.” This documentation includes journalists who Israeli airstrikes targeted in their homes, killed precisely because they are journalists.

In response, RSF claimed it, “did not yet have sufficient evidence or indications,” to state that any more than 14 journalists in the Gaza Strip (as of December 23, the date of its response) “had been killed in the course of their work or because of it.”

At least three journalists were shot dead, at least three killed by an Israeli airstrike on media outlets in central Gaza City, and many more were killed by Israeli airstrikes on “safe” areas – areas south of Wadi Gaza, which Israel had commanded civilians to flee to for their “safety.” In spite of this command, Israeli bombings continued all over the strip, including all the way south to Rafah.

Still many more – in Gaza City, as well as to the north and to the south of it – were killed at home with their families, including one journalist in Khan Younis, killed along with 11 members of his family when an Israeli airstrike targeted his home on November 2. On November 23, a journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 family members.

The Cradle reported that, “The Israeli army sent a letter to legacy news outlets, Reuters and AFP.” The letter said, “The [Israeli Army] is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza. Under these circumstances, we cannot guarantee your employees' safety.”

One Israeli bombing of a journalist's home on November 7 killed him and 42 family members. Like many of his slain colleagues, he was a journalist for Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news. Many of the other murdered journalists worked for: Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV, independent news agencies, local TV and radio programs, and larger outlets like al Jazeera. Others worked with Hamas-affiliated media and radio. Still others were freelancers.

On November 5, PJS reported that at least 20 of the journalists killed (since October 7) “were intentionally targeted by strikes on their homes or during their work covering Israel’s attacks.” This tally is already greater than RSF's reported total of 13 journalists killed at work or because of their work, even though the RSF report covers a period of almost a month more.

Israel threatens journalists, kills family members

Many Gaza journalists report being threatened by the Israeli army. CPJ noted it is “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.”

One such incident followed a threat to Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al-Sharif. CPJ noted he had received multiple phone calls from officers in the Israeli army instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza. Additionally, he received voice notes on WhatsApp disclosing his location. His 90-year-old father was killed on December 11 by an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

On November 13, CPJ noted, “eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles. Qudih survived the attack.”

On October 25, an Israel airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza killed the wife, son, daughter, and grandson of Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh.

The popular young independent journalist, Motaz Azaiza, reported receiving multiple threats from anonymous numbers urging him to cease his coverage, CPJ reported, noting that another Al-Jazeera correspondent, Youmna El-Sayed, said her husband received a threatening phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the IDF and told the family “to leave or die.”

RSF bias: Not only in Palestine

Whereas RSF only reluctantly, as an afterthought, mentioned Palestinian journalists killed in “circumstances unproven to be related to their duties,” in a 2021 report on Syria, it stated, “at least 300 professional and non-professional journalists have been killed while covering artillery bombardments and airstrikes or murdered by the various parties to the conflict,” since 2011, going on to say, “this figure could in reality be even higher.”

Aside from reporting numbers it could not confirm, RSF cited a body in no way impartial or credible. As an investigative article noted, the SNHR is “based in Qatar... funded by foreign governments and staffed by top opposition leaders,” and “has openly clamored for Western military intervention.”

In 2017, Stephen Lendman wrote of RSF's attempt to shut down a panel sponsored by the Swiss Press Club in which British journalist Vanessa Beeley would be participating. “An organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference,” the club's executive director Guy Mettan said at the time. He refused to cancel the event.

RSF's 2023 roundup also didn't include two Russian journalists killed this year, one by a Ukrainian cluster bomb strike and the other by a Ukrainian drone attack (targeting journalists).

Sputnik pursued the matter and reported that RSF, “refused to give any comments to Sputnik” citing “editorial policy.”

Journalist Christelle Neant likewise noted RSF's glaring omission of the Russian journalists. She wrote about the body's funding from various governments, and more notably from regime change agencies: the Open Society foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.

RSF's notorious funders explain why it cherry picks or inflates its reports. The borderless organization has lines it won't cross. It reports a grain of truth but otherwise whitewashes the crimes of Israel and Washington.

Dozens of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes have been grounded across the world, including in the US, Latin America, Türkiye and the EU, after an aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing due to a panel detaching midair.

On Friday, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 traveling from Portland, Oregon, to California, had to turn back shortly after takeoff when a large chunk of the plane’s fuselage broke off, exposing the cabin to the outside environment. None of the 174 passengers or six crew members on board were seriously injured, although several people required medical attention. While the cause of the incident remains unclear, Alaska Airlines has temporarily grounded all 65 of its 737 Max 9 aircraft for safety inspections.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Saturday that it had ordered the temporary grounding of a certain number of 737 Max 9 aircraft either operated by US airlines or within the country, requiring immediate inspections before they can take off. The order affects about 171 airplanes, officials said.

Boeing said that it fully supports the FAA’s decision and “deeply regret[s]” the incident, adding that its technicians are assisting in the investigation.

Turkish Airlines also announced that it would suspend the operation of its five Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft until the technical review process is completed, stressing that “flight safety is our top priority.” Latin American carriers Copa Airlines and Aeromexico followed suit, also grounding 40 aircraft.

The recent incident is the latest in the string of mishaps that have plagued the company and its best-selling 737 Max series in the past few years. It was grounded for 20 months after two crashes in Ethiopia (2019) and Indonesia (2018), which killed 346 people. The company has also struggled with manufacturing defects, and last month it asked airlines to inspect its Max airplanes to look for a loose bolt in the rudder control system.

China has sanctioned five American defense industry companies in response to “gravely wrong actions taken by the US,” the Foreign Ministry has announced. The move is said to be a countermeasure to Washington’s decision to proceed with new arms sales to Taiwan, as well as unilaterally sanctioning Chinese businesses.

This comes after Washington approved a $300 million weapons sale to Taipei last month, ahead of Taiwan’s presidential and parliamentary elections on January 13, in which US-friendly Vice President Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party is the front-runner, according to recent polls.

Earlier in 2023, the administration of US President Joe Biden authorized a direct military transfer of $80 million to Taiwan under a program typically used for sovereign states, Reuters reported.

In a statement released on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry said the US sanctions imposed on Chinese companies and individuals “under various false pretexts” harm “China’s sovereignty and security interests, undermine the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

The American companies affected by the new sanctions are BAE Systems Land and Armament, Alliant Techsystems Operation, AeroVironment, ViaSat, and Data Link Solutions, according to the ministry, which added that the measures include freezing the companies’ assets and prohibiting Chinese organizations and individuals from working with them.

Beijing urged the US to abide by the one-China principle and refrain from supplying arms to Taipei. It added that there will be a “strong and resolute response” if Washington continues with “illegal unilateral sanctions.”

Though Taiwan has long been self-governing, China considers the island part of its territory and reserves the right to seek reunification by force if Taipei formally declares independence. The US has officially recognized China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. However, in 2022, Biden said that Washington would defend Taipei in the event of an “unprecedented attack” by Beijing.

The Pentagon kept US President Joe Biden’s administration in the dark for three days about the hospitalization of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Politico reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The Department of Defense revealed to the public only on Friday night that Austin had been admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center the previous Monday – saying that it was due to “complications following a recent elective medical procedure.” It added that the 70-year-old official was “recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today.”

The Pentagon did not provide any details about his medical condition. However, an NBC News report claimed that Austin had spent four days in intensive care. A source for the network also said that despite the Pentagon’s statement, Austin was still in hospital as of Saturday.

However, according to three US officials interviewed by Politico, it was not only the public that was unaware of Austin’s hospitalization, but also Biden and his administration. National security advisor Jake Sullivan and other senior officials did not know about the secretary’s absence until January 4, three days after the fact, the article said, adding that Sullivan informed Biden shortly after he was notified by the Pentagon.

“This should not have happened this way,” one official told Politico.

However, according to the outlet and NBC, Biden and Austin had a cordial conversation, with the US president wishing the Pentagon chief a speedy recovery.

On Saturday, Austin himself issued a statement admitting that he “could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed.”

The Pentagon’s reported failure to inform the White House of Austin’s hospitalization comes in the midst of a security crisis in the Middle East – in which Houthi rebels in Yemen repeatedly attacked US warships in the Red Sea, deployed since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict.

US military bases in Iraq, as well as its outposts in Syria, have also come under strikes from local resistance groups that Washington believes are linked to Iran. Tehran has said that those groups are acting independently.

Former US President Barack Obama has urged current leader Joe Biden’s advisers to bolster his 2024 reelection efforts amid failing ratings for the sitting president. Obama reportedly believes Biden's chances will be improved by empowering people in the campaign to act without the need to seek approval from the White House, according to the Washington Post.

Obama and Biden discussed the campaign during a private lunch at the White House in recent months, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The former president reportedly became “animated” while talking about the 2024 election and the prospect of a Trump victory.

Obama recalled the success of his 2012 campaign, when top aides took charge of reelection operations on the ground across the country, and criticized Biden’s approach of leaving his advisers in the White House.

According to sources who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity, Obama did not refer to anything specific in the campaign structure, but suggested that it needs to “move aggressively” as Trump has built a solid lead among candidates in his party ahead of the Republican primaries, polls indicate.

The Biden campaign and Obama’s spokespersons did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Post.

Obama warned earlier this year that Donald Trump could be a more formidable challenger than many Democrats realize. He is reportedly not only concerned about Biden’s weak polling numbers, but also the effectiveness of his unorthodox campaign structure.

Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodrigues, is based in the campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, while his top aides – Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon, and Steve Ricchetti – work from the White House. Some Democrats have raised concerns that the campaign may not be able to immediately respond to fast-moving developments.

Biden’s ratings hit a record low at the end of 2023, with just 38% of voters approving of his performance, according to a recent Washington Post poll. Voters, including a majority of Democrats, are particularly concerned about Biden’s age, as well as his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. 

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has claimed there is no justification for Türkiye to prevent the UK, a fellow member of the US-led military bloc, from donating its warships to Ukraine.

The Turkish government said on Tuesday that it will not allow minesweeping vessels which the UK has pledged to Ukraine to pass through the Bosphorus, citing the 1936 Montreux Convention. Ankara, which controls the straits linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, shut down access to foreign warships when the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022.

Stavridis, however, claimed that “there is sufficient discretion” under the Montreux Convention to allow British warships into the Black Sea, and Ankara should have used a loophole to allow the passage of “purely defensive” vessels.

“This is the clear NATO position, agreed by Turkey as part of its role in NATO,” the retired US admiral told Politico. Ankara “should fully lean into its role as a NATO member,” he insisted, instead of “trying too hard to strike a balance” with Moscow and the West.

A former Turkish naval chief, Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that Ankara has never breached the convention, “even during the bloodiest period of WWII.”

“The US hates the Montreux Convention, to which it is not a party. Because they cannot bring warships into the Black Sea as they wish,” Gurdeniz argued.

Gurdeniz blasted Stavridis, calling him “the neocons’ favorite Admiral,” who “played a leading role in the 2011 intervention in Libya.”

Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has described the country’s position on the Ukraine conflict as “balanced.” In addition to hosting peace talks in 2022, Türkiye brokered the now-defunct Black Sea Grain Initiative, while Ankara has refused to sanction Russia, and has strengthened its trade links with Moscow.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani has promised to launch a process to expel international coalition forces from the country, after a US airstrike killed a high-ranking militia commander in Baghdad.

An attack hit the headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of dozens of armed factions, on Thursday. At least two people were killed, including Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, the leader of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN), which Washington has listed as a terrorist group and claims is backed by Iran.

“The Popular Mobilization Forces represent an official presence affiliated with the state, subject to it, and an integral part of our armed forces,” the Iraqi prime minister stated on Friday. “We condemn the attacks targeting our security forces, which go beyond the spirit and letter of the mandate that created the international coalition.”

Pentagon Press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder defended the January 4 strike as a “necessary, proportionate act,” amid a wave of attacks on American military installations in the region. 

The Pentagon insists that its troops are in Baghdad at the invitation of local authorities to help fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The 2,500 troops who remain the country a decade later are free to act in “self-defense,” according to Washington. 

“We affirm our principled position in ending the existence of the international coalition after the justifications for its existence have ended,” he said, adding that Baghdad seeks to restore full “national sovereignty over the land, sky, and waters of Iraq.”

American military bases in Iraq, as well as illegal outposts in neighboring Syria, have come under drone and missile strikes on more than 110 occasions since October, amid regional tensions stemming from the Israeli war in Gaza. While the attacks were mostly carried out by unidentified parties, Washington has accused Tehran of pulling the strings behind the scenes and has reserved the right to retaliate as it deems fit.

Soleimani, a revered figure in Iran, was killed in a drone strike authorized by former US President Donald Trump in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. Washington claimed at the time that Soleimani was planning an “imminent” attack on US forces. On the fourth anniversary of his death, two explosions ripped through a memorial in Iran killing nearly 100 people and injuring hundreds more. IS terrorists claimed responsibility for the atrocity in a Telegram post, while the US has insisted that Washington played no role in the bombings.

The names of some 200 individuals connected to accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were publicly released this week, but nobody should expect justice to be served in this sensational case involving members of the global elite.

In the first tranche of documents released on Wednesday involving Epstein and his powerful, globetrotting friends, there were no bombshell revelations –no smoking guns, as it were – and such an anticlimactic trend will most likely continue. After all, we are talking about individuals – businessmen, politicians, celebrities, and even royalty – for whom the justice system has a curious way of never really working, at least in the way the public would like it to.

But first, for those still recovering from their New Year’s revelries, who was Jeffrey Epstein? A native of New York City, Epstein has been described as an “enigma” who traversed the social spectrum from college drop-out to a financial advisor to the rich and famous. The Associated Press described his dazzling success on Wall Street as “shrouded in mystery,” while others believe he was an agent for Mossad or the FBI, tasked with blackmailing his unsuspecting associates as they unwittingly compromised themselves with underage girls.

Whatever the case may be, Epstein, who was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019 of an apparent suicide, had a knack for finagling his way into affluent social circles in New York and Palm Beach. It was at these locations where the billionaire was accused of recruiting and sexually abusing underage girls at his residences in the early 2000s.

Epstein’s white-knight facade began to slip in 2005, as police in Florida opened an investigation over reports that he had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl. After a four-year trial, which saw the charges dramatically watered down, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, which included one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. He was given a relative slap on the wrist with 18 months in prison under lax conditions, and released five months early.  

Despite his newfound reputation as a predatory pedophile, many of Epstein’s friends did not abandon him at this point; in fact, public figures who should have known better, like Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, continued their friendship, traveling aboard the so-called ‘Lolita Express’ to Epstein’s private Caribbean getaway known as Little Saint James, and later as ‘Pedophile Isle.’

In the ultimate Christmas gift, Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska ordered the release of the sealed documents against Epstein and his associates in a previously settled defamation lawsuit that Virginia Giuffre, 40, brought against Epstein’s madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, back in 2015. Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. Giuffre alleged that Epstein sex-trafficked her to Prince Andrew, and in a lawsuit against the royal she claimed the Duke of York had sex with her on three separate occasions. The prince publicly denied the accusations in perhaps the most cringeworthy interview of all time.

As mentioned, much of the information contained in the 900 pages of court files has either been already reported or comes across as no surprise. Nevertheless, the descriptions make an Epstein party resemble a visit to the Barnum & Bailey’s Circus while under the influence of strong drugs. Imagine discovering, for example, the likes of pop-star Michael Jackson, the Duke of York, US politician Al Gore (apparently his fear of climate change did not stop him from flying on Epstein’s private jet), and the magician David Copperfield all in the same room. It’s enough to make one’s head explode. And by way of crude details, we also learn that former US President Bill Clinton 'likes them young', physicist Stephen Hawking allegedly participated in an underage sex party, and Epstein, allegedly, forced minors to engage in sex with the Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who vehemently denies the claims. Incidentally, since we have just entered a momentous election year in the US, it’s crucial to note that while former President Donald Trump’s name does appear in the documents, witnesses maintain he did nothing wrong.

While it’s important to remember that inclusion in the documents does not equate to guilt, it beggars the imagination to explain such wildly diverse individuals and their affiliation with Mr. Epstein. And while the public is invited to examine the salacious details of this degenerate party, there are other things –far more damaging to the perverts-that-be – that we will never know about. This involves the intelligence information that was reportedly vacuumed up by the FBI.

Many social media users have speculated that the information contained on the computers removed from Epstein’s residence were so-called ‘blackmail files’ that the deceased sex offender, together with whatever intelligence agency he may have been working for, used to control high-powered individuals in high places. In other words, a massive intelligence operation.

Around the time of the raid, then Attorney General William Barr vowed that the investigation into Epstein’s alleged misconduct would continue and the perpetrators would face justice.

“Any co-conspirators should not rest easy,” Barr said. “The victims deserve justice and they will get it.”

Today, more than four years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, not a single individual involved with the late socialite and financier has spent a single day in jail, and that will most likely not change. The rich and powerful may occasionally suffer from blackmail, but they rarely suffer at the hands of a justice system, predicated as it is on money and influence.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told an audience at a campaign stop in the US state of Iowa on Friday that they should “get over” a school shooting in the state this week during which a young boy was shot to death.

After offering his sympathies to the victims in Perry, Iowa on Thursday morning, Trump suggested at a campaign event in Sioux Center that Iowans should move on from the incident.

“It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here,” Trump said. “But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”

Trump’s comments came about 36 hours after 11-year-old Ahmir Jolliff was gunned down by a teenage shooter as students gathered in a cafeteria for breakfast on Thursday morning. Six others, including two staff members – one of whom was the school principal – and four teenage students, were also injured.

A 17-year-old student allegedly responsible for the attack died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said. Police also stated that a search of the school revealed an improvised explosive device.

Trump has previously argued that firearms cannot be considered a primary factor in repeated instances of school shootings in the United States. During an April 2023 speech to the National Rifle Association (NRA), he said that violence in schools is “not a gun problem” – instead blaming a host of other elements, including Democrats and a lack of adequate mental health screening.

Several of Trump’s opponents for the GOP presidential nomination, including Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, issued statements condemning school violence in the wake of the shooting. However, Trump’s comments on Friday were his first public statements on the matter.

The GOP candidates’ statements came as the Iowa caucuses, which will begin the 2024 Republican primary voting season, are set to take place on January 15. Trump remains the clear frontrunner to challenge presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in this year’s election, according to polling data.

Former US President Donald Trump has dismissed the multiple criminal cases against him, telling supporters that he’s been prosecuted more harshly than infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone. He made his comments at a rally in Iowa ahead of the first contest of the election year.

“I’ve got more indictments than Al Capone, did you ever hear of Al Capone?” Trump asked supporters in Mason City on Friday. “The great Alphonse Capone…but I’ve got it worse than Al Capone and he’s about as bad as you get,” he continued. 

“This was never in my plan…I was being indicted so fast we didn’t know where in the hell they were coming from. If I flew over a blue state, the next day I’d get served with a subpoena,” he exclaimed, to laughter from the crowd.

With eleven months to go until the 2024 presidential election, Trump is facing more than 90 criminal counts in two federal cases – concerning his alleged instigation of the January 2021 riot on Capitol Hill and his alleged mishandling of classified documents – as well as two state-level cases and a multitude of civil suits.

Trump held two rallies in Iowa on Friday, during which he implored residents of the Hawkeye State to turn up at next week’s Republican caucuses and support his bid for the presidency. The Iowa caucuses are the first contest of the primary season, and recent polling shows him with a commanding 32-point lead over his nearest Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Nevertheless, Trump urged his supporters not to get complacent. “Bad things happen when you sit back,” he said, adding that “you have to get out and vote because it sets the tone. It even sets the tone, frankly, for November.”

Hours before Trump spoke in Iowa, President Joe Biden delivered a speech of his own in Pennsylvania, in which he claimed that American democracy was “nearly lost” when Trump’s supporters rioted at the Capitol three years ago. 

Trump argued that Biden is the real “threat to democracy,” citing the indictments against him and the harsh sentences handed down to non-violent participants in the Capitol riot.

Despite the Biden campaign’s efforts to frame the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy itself rather than on his own record, most recent polls show the incumbent Democrat losing to Trump. 

Italy’s highest court has cleared the late Argentinian football icon Diego Maradona of tax evasion charges, bringing to a close a 30-year legal battle with the country’s revenue authorities.

World Cup winning captain Maradona, who represented Napoli between 1984 and 1991, had been accused of using proxy companies in Liechtenstein to evade tax payments on fees received from the Italian club over his personal image rights.

Legal documents seen by Reuters showed that Rome’s Court of Cassation overturned a 2018 verdict last month, officially clearing Maradona of any financial wrongdoing. Probes into Maradona’s Italian tax affairs began in the early 1990s and led to €37 million ($40.38 million) in charges, as well as the confiscation of some of his personal belongings.

“It is over and I can clearly state without fear of being contradicted that Maradona has never been a tax evader,” his lawyer, Angelo Pisani, told the news agency on Friday.

He also explained that the verdict affords Maradona’s family a “legal right” to seek damages. “I hope that they use it, in memory of their father,” he said.

Maradona, widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers in history, scored more than 300 goals in a glittering club career which saw him represent Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors and Barcelona, in addition to his seven seasons in Italy.

He won 91 caps for the Argentinian national team, scoring 31 times, and captained his country to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico – where he scored his infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal in the quarter-final against England.

He was the first player to break the world record transfer fee twice; in 1982, when he moved to Barcelona from Boca Juniors for £5 million and again two years later, when he joined Napoli for £6.9 million.

Maradona died of cardiac arrest in his sleep at his home in Buenos Aires on November 25, 2020 at the age of 60.

A pair of Norwegian F-16 fighter jets, which Oslo is providing to support a training program for Ukrainian pilots, have arrived in Denmark, the country's Armed Forces have announced on X (formerly Twitter). Earlier this week, Norwegian media reported that the Nordic nation would send two fighter jets and ten instructors to the Danish Skydstrup air base for this purpose.

Norway, a supporter of Kiev, has committed to supplying warplanes to Ukraine in the coming years, alongside Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The exact number of warplanes Oslo plans to transfer to Ukraine remains unclear.

Washington, which had been hesitant to provide Kiev with Western-made fighter jets, signaled its readiness to approve a third-party transfer of the aircraft in August 2023. The US stipulated that this could only happen after the completion of Ukrainian pilots’ training.

“After over 40 years in service, these aircraft will now train Ukrainian military personnel, reinforcing our commitment to Ukraine's defense,” the Norwegian military wrote on X, commenting on the jets’ arrival in Denmark. It is unclear if they meant that the exact two aircraft pieces had been in use for over 40 years or merely referred to the fact that Norway had been using the jets between 1980 and 2022 when they were replaced with F-35.

Norwegian F-16s land in Denmark, marking an important step in our ongoing support for Ukraine. After over 40 years in service, these aircraft will now train Ukrainian military personnel, reinforcing our commitment to Ukraine's defense. 🇳🇴✈️🇺🇦 #StrongerTogether #SupportUkraine pic.twitter.com/3fjttX7Z41

— Norwegian Armed Forces | Forsvaret (@Forsvaret_no) January 5, 2024

The planes destined for Kiev are considered “obsolete,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Bard Bakke, the commander of the training mission in Denmark, who told the Norwegian NRK news outlet earlier this week. He maintained that the aircraft were “relatively modern” and had undergone additional upgrades. However, he admitted that the F-16 jets were “no miracle weapon” capable of changing the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

Since the beginning of the conflict with Moscow, Kiev has urged its Western backers to supply increasingly advanced weapons, treating them as a potential game-changer. Zelensky particularly praised the August F-16 pledge announcement as “historic, powerful, motivational.”

In late December, the Netherlands announced preparations for the “initial” delivery of 18 fighter jets to Ukraine. Zelensky claimed in August 2023 that the Netherlands and Belgium had together pledged to provide 42 jets to his country. The joint statement by the two nations contained no specific figures. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also mentioned that his nation's entire F-16 fleet consisted of 42 planes, and Amsterdam would need to keep some for its own training purposes.

On Saturday, the Danish Berlingske newspaper reported that Copenhagen would delay its F-16 delivery to Kiev for at least “several months,” citing that Ukrainian pilots were “not ready” to fly them.

Israel’s proposed removal and resettlement of Gaza’s Palestinian population is “the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing,” Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf has said. Yousaf is the first UK party leader to condemn the controversial depopulation plan.

Speaking to Sky News on Friday, Yousaf condemned recent comments by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said last week that West Jerusalem should “encourage emigration” from Gaza in order to reduce its Arab population from over two million to between 100,000 and 200,000. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir made a similar call, stating that Israel should push for the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the blockaded Gaza enclave.

“We are seeing not only a humanitarian crisis, but we're now seeing senior members of the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government making statements that are, frankly, the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing,” Yousaf told the British broadcaster. 

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s proposal was rejected by the UK Foreign Office and the US State Department, which called it “inflammatory and irresponsible.” Yousaf, who heads the Scottish National Party, is the only political party leader in the UK to accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” a charge more commonly leveled by Palestinian officials and Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Yousaf, whose wife’s family lives in Gaza, called on the British government to “make it clear that not only should there be an immediate ceasefire…but also they should make it clear to their trusted allies and the government of Israel that they will be held to account for any breaches of international law.”

Yousaf backed South Africa’s recent decision to sue Israel for “genocide” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. While the Israeli government has called Pretoria’s claim “baseless” and accused the South Africans of anti-Semitism, Yousaf said that the court should “investigate any potential breaches of humanitarian law, any potential war crimes that have been committed, and all the way up [to] genocide.”

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not the first prominent Israelis to call for the depopulation of Gaza. A leaked policy document compiled by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence in October recommended that tent cities be set up in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to accommodate most of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents, while others could be settled in Spain, Greece, and Canada.

Israel’s Channel 12 news network claimed last month that Netanyahu had held talks with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who would pressure Arab states to accept the “voluntary resettlement” of Gazans. Blair’s nonprofit released a statement this week calling the report a “lie” and claiming that no such discussion with Netanyahu had taken place.

The international community must use “all its influence” to end the war in Gaza, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said on Friday.

The 90-day-long hostilities have made the Palestinian enclave "uninhabitable,” and the people of Gaza face daily threats to their very existence, he added.

The UN official recalled that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed or injured, while areas they were told to move to for safety “have come under bombardment,” stressing that all this happens “while the world watches.”

“Gaza has shown us the worst of humanity,” Griffiths said, noting that “violence cannot resolve differences.”

“A public health disaster is unfolding,” he added, citing the spread of infectious diseases in the enclave's overcrowded shelters as sewage pipes overflow. “Some 180 Palestinian women are giving birth every day amid this chaos,” and Gaza’s children have nothing but “the terrifying sounds of war,” the official said.

“It is time for the parties to meet all their obligations under international law” to protect civilians and release hostages, he argued, calling on world leaders to use all their influence to “make this happen.”

“This war should never have started. But it’s long past time for it to end,” Griffiths said.

In late November, West Jerusalem and Hamas agreed to a week-long ceasefire, during which 108 Israeli hostages were released in exchange for Israel freeing some Palestinian prisoners.

Last week, Hamas offered Israel a new hostage deal consisting of three phases, Axios reported. According to the outlet, each stage would require a more than a month-long pause in hostilities in exchange for the hostages’ release and an end to the war upon completion of the final phase. The Israeli war cabinet discussed and rejected the plan as “unacceptable,” Axios said.

It came a few days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would continue the military operation against Hamas until the group is destroyed, Gaza is "demilitarized,” and its residents “deradicalized.”

Hezbollah announced on Saturday that it had fired 62 missiles at an Israeli air surveillance base near the Lebanese border. The barrage was an “initial response” to the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut earlier this week, the Lebanese militants declared.

Incoming rocket alerts sounded across northern Israel on Saturday as dozens of missiles struck the base atop Mount Meron, the highest summit in Israeli territory outside the Golan Heights. The base is home to a radar station and surveillance apparatus used to direct Israeli warplanes over Lebanon and parts of Syria, and to intercept communications from both countries.

“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri…the Islamic resistance targeted the Meron air control base with 62 missiles of various types,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The Lebanese paramilitary group described the Meron base as “the sole center for administration, monitoring, and air control in the north of the usurping entity [Israel],” without which Israel has “no viable alternative.”

Video footage shared on social media purportedly showed a number of missiles impacting the base, as well as dense black smoke rising from several points on the mountaintop after the barrage.

📽 Video taken by zionist settlers of the moment the Lebanese resistance #Hezbollah's missiles accurately hit Meron Air Base in occupied #Palestine this morning. pic.twitter.com/axYjTKxODj

— Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) January 6, 2024

pic.twitter.com/pTlttvYuob

— Hussein Issa | حسين عيسى (@husseinissa2) January 6, 2024

Shortly after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last October, Hezbollah declared itself “at war” with the Jewish state. Engaging in tit-for-tat exchanges with the IDF, the Lebanese militants have until recently waged a limited campaign aimed at tying up Israeli forces near the border, thereby preventing their deployment to Gaza. 

Hezbollah described the killing as a “serious assault on Lebanon,” that it would not let “pass without response and punishment.” In a speech the day after the strike, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that a “response is coming,” adding that the “decision has already been made.”

“If the enemy thinks about waging war against Lebanon, then our fighting will be with no ceiling, with no limits, with no rules. And they know what I mean,” Nasrallah said. “We are not afraid of war. We don’t fear it. We are not hesitant.”

Speaking during a visit to Lebanon on Saturday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that “nobody will win” if Israel and Lebanon get dragged into an open conflict. 

The use of swear words has become more widely accepted in modern British society in recent years, due to people finding alternative definitions for language previously considered distasteful, a linguistics expert has said.

The two most commonly used curses in the UK – “f*ck” and “sh*t” – are often used in informal conversations as a point of emphasis or to build social bonds, recent academic research has revealed, rather than solely to cause offense.

“Swearing, as well as all language used, is entirely context-dependent and context-specific,” an English-language lecturer at Birmingham’s Aston University, Dr Robbie Love, says in a Guardian article on Saturday.

“It’s what you do with the word and how the various functions, as far as performed, that informs the perception of how acceptable it is,” he explained.

The academic’s comments follow a BBC Radio segment earlier this week in which presenter Mishal Husain challenged UK Home Secretary James Cleverly over statements he is alleged to have made over UK government policy. In the interview, Husain asked Cleverly if he had, as reported, used words like “batsh*t” to describe the UK’s controversial Rwanda migrant-deportation proposal.

According to Love, Husain was “referring to the word that [Cleverly had allegedly] used and [was] asking whether he said it. In that context, I would argue that it’s more likely to be considered acceptable, than if she suddenly said at the end of the story, ‘Well, that was a load of sh*t, wasn’t it?”

His point was echoed by Yehuda Baruch, a management professor at the University of Southampton, who says swearing is prevalent in all walks of society – even among high level professionals, such as doctors and lawyers where it is often used to bolster team cohesion and relieve stress.

“Unfortunately, it is effective,” Baruch says in the Guardian report. “This is the new language and we have to live with it.”

Dr Love, who has published academic studies into swearing trends in informal conversations, and into the use of the word ‘f*ck’ by British teenagers, added that taboos have eroded around the use of many curse words.

Similarly, words or phrases that would have been socially unacceptable a generation ago are now commonplace, Love said, and are now used to form social bonds, or as a means of emphasis or social intimacy.

The White House desperately needs congressional approval of its major aid package for Ukraine if support for Kiev is to continue, Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told journalists on Friday. Washington has very few other options left to continue the aid flow, she said, warning that time is running out.

The US provided Ukraine with a $250 million arms package in late December, deemed the last one due to a lack of funding. According to Young, the administration of President Joe Biden decided to forgo its drawdown authority, allowing it to take weapons from existing US stockpiles and send them to Kiev. These stocks cannot be refilled without funding that is yet to be approved by Congress.

The Pentagon still has some limited authority to provide the Ukrainian military with weapons, but “that is not going to get big tranches of equipment into Ukraine,” the official added. Earlier this week, Pentagon spokesman Major General Patrick Ryder also said the US Defense Department was running “out of money” for Ukraine.

“Yes, Kiev might have a little time from other donors to make sure they can keep their war footing, keep the civil service, but what happens in the [European Union], in other NATO allies, if the US pulls out their support?” she told journalists at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

The official warned that such a development might also prompt other nations to withdraw their support for Kiev. “What message does that send to the rest of the world? And what will their decisions be if they see the United States not step up to the plate?”

At the same time, another major donor – the EU – also saw its major aid package to Kiev delayed due to internal disagreements. A planned four-year scheme worth some €50 billion ($55 billion) was vetoed by Hungary late last year, with deliberations on it pushed into 2024.

Amid such developments, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour earlier this week that his nation had no “plan B” without the US military aid. He also reiterated Kiev’s demands for combat drones, long-range missiles, and air defense capabilities, among other gear.

The Scottish government has refused to allocate £10 million ($12.7 million) to local authorities to help them meet the costs of providing temporary accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, the Daily Record reported on Friday.

As a result, officials said they may pull staff from the hotels that have been housing Ukrainian refugees at the state's expense, according to the news outlet.

Labour MSP Mark Griffin said the decision not to continue the funding would be a “betrayal” for the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) if it failed to “live up to its lofty rhetoric” of supporting Ukraine, the paper reported.

“We have real concerns that the changes and withdrawal of previously anticipated funding for 23/24 will result in unintended consequences and impact the country’s support program as a whole,” deputy leader of Edinburgh Council Mandy Watt told the Daily Record.

More than 20,000 people from Ukraine have come to the UK through Scotland's “super sponsorship” scheme, social justice secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said in December. Under the program, Ukrainians could choose the Scottish government as a visa sponsor, which allowed them to quickly get permission to come to Scotland and be temporarily housed. Many of them were placed in hotels and on cruise ships.

Ukrainians have been fleeing to the UK in search of refuge since the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated in February 2022. However, a study for the British Red Cross published last month revealed that thousands of Ukrainians could face “homelessness” this winter.

“We expect thousands of men, women, and children from Ukraine to become homeless here in the UK,” said Olivia Field, head of policy and advocacy at the British Red Cross. She added that it is “difficult” for them to get the help they need to find long-term housing, and they are “often unable to meet upfront rental costs.”

Britain faces a housing deficit that would take “at least half a century to fill,” the Center for Cities think tank estimated last year. It said the UK had a backlog of 4.3 million homes compared to the average European country.

The Irish government will cut welfare rates and reduce the time new arrivals from Ukraine can stay in public housing to 90 days, starting at the end of January, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said.

Senior UK officials are compiling a dossier on former US President Donald Trump in anticipation of his potential victory in the 2024 election, which could cause turmoil on the global stage, inews reported on Friday.

The website claimed, citing unnamed sources, that the Foreign Office is spearheading the campaign to compile an assessment of the 45th US president’s stance on “key issues affecting the UK, such as the Ukraine crisis, the Middle East and international trade.” Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Karen Pierce, is said to be the main figure leading the effort.

According to inews, UK Conservative party officials worry that if Trump beats incumbent Joe Biden, he could “chuck a massive grenade into global geopolitics.” One unnamed official told the outlet that Trump’s reelection “absolutely makes an enormous difference” as the UK has become more dependent on America’s stance on global affairs since Brexit.

The report also suggested that Britain had drawn conclusions from Trump’s win in 2016 and would not underestimate him again. “I suspect they will be saying, ‘We screwed it up last time…’ I think there will be fierce activity, contact-building, and trying to be in the room,” a source said.

Several recent polls have suggested that the former president – widely considered to be the Republican frontrunner for the nomination – is leading Biden. A November New York Times and Siena College survey also found that the incumbent was trailing Trump in five battleground states.

Regarding Trump’s views on foreign policy, he suggested that he would end the Ukraine conflict within hours if elected while criticizing Biden’s handling of the crisis. He is also known for his hawkish stance on Iran, which plays an important role in the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Under Trump, the US and the UK sought to maintain their “special relationship” dating back to WWII, but his tenure was marred by several major scandals between the two countries. In 2019, the ex-president called then-UK ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch a “very stupid guy” after British media published memos where the envoy allegedly doubted that the Trump administration could become “less dysfunctional.”

Alaska Airlines has said it is “temporarily” grounding its fleet of Boeing 737 Max-9 planes after one of them lost a window and a section of the fuselage in mid-air on Friday, forcing an emergency landing in the US state of Oregon.

The airline said the jet, which was carrying 174 passengers and six crewmembers, landed safely after it returned to Portland, 35 minutes into a scheduled flight to California. Flight tracking data indicated that the aircraft had reached an altitude of 16,000ft (4876m) before it began its emergency descent.

“Alaska Airlines flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, experienced an incident this evening soon after departure,” the company said late on Friday. It added that it had taken the step of “temporarily grounding” its fleet of 65 Boeing Max-9 planes until a full investigation is completed.

NEW IMAGE from on board Alaska Airlines 1282 after ***part of the fuselage*** blew out mid-flight. Successful emergency return to Portland after 20 minutes in the air. 10-week-old (!) Boeing 737 Max 9. NTSB investigating. pic.twitter.com/qjX8fQ1br1

— Pete Muntean (@petemuntean) January 6, 2024

The Max-9 is the latest of Boeing’s 737 series of twin-engine, single-aisle planes. The aircraft, which went into service in May 2017, is frequently used in US domestic flights.

Images posted to social media from inside the stricken airliner show a gaping hole in its left side, behind the wing and engine. Others show the seat closest to the affected area, which was apparently unoccupied, having been damaged in the incident.

“My heart goes out to those who were on this flight,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in the statement issued by the airline on Friday night. “I am so sorry for what you experienced.” He added that he was “grateful for the response of our pilots and flight attendants.”

Boeing said it had been made aware of the incident and was “working to gather more information,” and that it had a technical team standing by to support an investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration, meanwhile, confirmed that the aircraft had reported a pressurization problem and that it had launched an investigation.

In order to resume operations, each Max aircraft underwent significant safety modifications. Around 1,300 Boeing 737 Max-9 planes are thought to be currently in operation, according to data from the manufacturer.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has signaled that he intends to pull the US out of NATO if he wins the 2024 election, Politico reported on Friday, citing sources.

According to three people familiar with Ramaswamy’s thinking, he made the remarks privately while speaking to supporters. Publicly, the American entrepreneur of Indian descent has described Washington’s potential withdrawal from the military alliance – in which it plays the leading role – as a “reasonable idea.”

Tricia Mclaughlin, the spokeswoman for Ramaswamy’s campaign, neither confirmed nor denied the reported plans. However, she told Politico that her boss had “serious concerns that most NATO allies fail to meet their military investment commitments.” 

According to Mclaughlin, the presidential candidate “also believes that post Cold War NATO expansionism has unnecessarily increased the risk of major conflict with Russia.”

Numerous media reports suggested that Trump threatened to pull his country out of the US-led military bloc during his first term in 2018 while urging Washington’s allies to ramp up their defense spending. The GOP frontrunner’s current campaign platform is more vague on the matter, stating: “we have to finish the process… of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”

Amid reported concerns in Europe that Trump might try to abandon Washington's NATO commitments, US President Joe Biden last month signed an $886 billion bill funding the Pentagon which, among other things, would require congressional approval for the US president to leave the alliance.

Questions about NATO’s fate have intensified with the alliance locked in a standoff with Russia over the Ukraine conflict, with members providing massive military assistance to Kiev, a campaign repeatedly denounced in Moscow. Russia has for decades viewed the alliance’s expansion toward its borders as an existential threat, with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying that Ukraine’s desire to join the bloc was one of the key triggers of the current conflict.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has ordered its embassies across the globe to pressure their host countries to reject South Africa’s genocide case against it at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Axios has reported, citing an urgent diplomatic cable.

Pretoria addressed the ICJ last week, claiming that Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part” of the Palestinian population. South Africa wants the The Hague-based court to issue an injunction ordering the IDF to suspend its military campaign in the enclave. More than 22,600 people have been killed in Gaza over the past three months, according to the local health ministry.

The cable, which was sent out by the Foreign Ministry on Thursday, stresses that Israel’s “strategic goals” are for the ICJ to reject South Africa’s request for an injunction, refrain from determining that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and acknowledge that the IDF’s actions in the enclave comply with nternational law, Axios said in an article on Saturday.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Israeli diplomats must pressure their counterparts and high-level politicians in host countries to issue “immediate and unequivocal public statement along the following lines: To publicly and clearly state that YOUR COUNTRY rejects the outragest, absurd and baseless allegations made against Israel.”

It’s also important for foreign nations “to publicly acknowledge that Israel is working to increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza, as well as to minimize damage to civilians, while acting in self defense after the horrible October 7 attack by a genocidal terrorist organization [Hamas],” the cable read.

The Foreign Ministry stressed that Israeli diplomats must urgently work on obtaining such statements so that they come out before the ICJ hearings begin on January 11. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will also send letters to dozens of world leaders, relaying a similar message, it added.

The EU is considering alternative ways to keep funding Ukraine, in case member states fail to bypass a veto by Hungary, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said. Budapest earlier blocked a €50 billion ($55 billion) assistance package for Kiev amid the conflict with Russia.

Speaking at a press conference with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Friday, von der Leyen stressed that the EU must “urgently move forward on stabilizing our financial aid” to Ukraine.

Reaching a consensus between all 27 member states is the “first priority… But of course we must prepare for other options. These are operational solutions that we are preparing right now,” she said, without giving details.

Von der Leyen recalled that just before Christmas, the EU adopted an €18 billion ($20 billion) support package for Kiev, to help “Ukraine finance their needs for the beginning of this year” and give Brussels some leeway when negotiating the main funding package. “But of course we have to work as hard and as fast as possible to deliver,” the top official added.

Balazs Orban, an adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has said Budapest could drop its opposition to the effort if Brussels unblocks all of the €30 billion earmarked for Hungary – which were withheld over a perceived crackdown on democracy. The EU has so far unfrozen only one third of the sum, citing Budapest’s progress on judicial reforms.

The Financial Times reported late last month that the EU was working on a mechanism to bypass the Hungarian veto, that would see member states provide guarantees to the EU budget, thereby allowing Brussels to borrow some €20 billion for Kiev.

An EU special summit on funding Ukraine will take place on February 1. Since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, the EU has provided Ukraine with more than $91 billion in various forms of aid. Russia has repeatedly denounced arms shipments to Kiev, while warning that continued support is becoming a serious burden for EU taxpayers.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has urged the United States to end its economic penalties on Venezuela, part of a sweeping proposal to tackle Latin America’s migration crisis.

Speaking during a Friday press conference, Obrador described a multi-step plan to address the surge in immigration across the region, saying he had asked the US government to set aside $20 billion for the initiative and grant visas to some 10 million long-term Hispanic residents working in the United States.

He added that he also requested an end to economic sanctions targeting both Cuba and Venezuela during talks with senior US officials last month, instead calling for a “humane policy” with a “social dimension.”

The president has been highly critical of the penalties in the past, arguing they have only worsened the migration crisis. During a speech in October, he vowed to “keep insisting on addressing the root causes of migration, the origins, go deep, stop politicking, thinking rights are above ideology, that sanctions cannot be maintained – blockades – and that the poorest countries have to be helped.”

Washington has long maintained harsh sanctions on Cuba, instituting a full-scale trade embargo on the island in 1962, in the wake of the socialist overthrow of President Fulgencio Batista. Penalties against Venezuela are more recent, with former US President Donald Trump imposing sanctions on the country’s oil industry in 2017 and gradually stepping up the measures in the following years. President Joe Biden has continued many of the same policies, but relaxed some sanctions on Caracas after negotiations between the country’s ruling party and opposition.

The UK Royal Navy has been forced to post job ads on LinkedIn as it struggles to recruit a new rear admiral to preside over the country’s submarine fleet, a move dubbed “unprecedented” and “shameful” by British military sources. 

The advertisement was spotted by UK media outlets on Friday, after first appearing on the professional networking site late last month. While senior officers typically rise through the ranks, the Times reported that “there is currently no one serving who is suitable” to replace outgoing submarine director Rear Admiral Simon Asquith, or who is willing to do so.

“The Royal Navy is recruiting for a director of submarines, responsible for highly classified stealth, elite operations and trident, our nuclear deterrent,” the Royal Navy recruitment ad said, noting that “Candidates must be a member of the reserves forces or have served with the regular forces.”

In comments to the Times, an unnamed former senior submariner slammed the online recruitment drive as “utterly shameful,” claiming that “the only person who applied was a weapons engineer commodore, who was not properly qualified,” soon after the ad went live.

Another military source described the decision as “unprecedented,” suggesting it highlighted a recruitment crisis in the British armed forces, particularly the Royal Navy.

Earlier this week, the Telegraph noted that the navy was so strapped for personnel that it would be forced to decommission two warships in order to properly man a new class of frigates. The vessels facing the cut are the HMS Argyll and the HMS Westminster – the latter of which recently completed costly renovations.

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has also floated plans to retire a pair of amphibious assault ships due to a lack of manpower, according to the Times, while recent figures published by the Defense Ministry show a nearly 4% decline across the armed forces in 2023.

A Royal Navy spokesperson declined to elaborate on the LinkedIn ad, saying it would be “inappropriate to comment ahead of any appointment being made,” but stressed that the military “is committed to ensuring that the navy has the capabilities it needs to meet current and future operational requirements.”

US President Joe Biden has accused Donald Trump of seeking to take power through “political violence,” likening his presidential predecessor's rhetoric to that used in “Nazi Germany” and deeming him a threat to American democracy itself.

Biden launched a major broadside against Trump during a campaign speech in the US state of Pennsylvania on Friday night, citing the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol as a major part of the last president’s legacy.

“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Biden said, going on to slam Trump as “sick” and a “loser.”

He also drew a comparison between the Republican candidate and the Third Reich. “He calls those who oppose him vermin. He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” the president continued, positing himself as a defender of American institutions.

Trump hit back during his own remarks on Friday night, calling Biden’s speech a “pathetic fearmongering campaign event” while slamming the leader for “an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure.”

“Biden, if you take a look at what he’s doing on the border or inflation, or our military, that horrible day in Afghanistan, you look at what he’s done with energy – all throughout the world, we’re an embarrassment as a country. We’ve become an embarrassment as a country,” Trump added.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung later described Biden as “the real threat to democracy,” accusing him of “weaponizing the government to go after his main political opponent and interfering in the 2024 election.”

As the 2024 race approaches, Biden faces lagging approval ratings, closing out last year at just 39%, the lowest rating for any of the last seven presidents at the end of their first term, according to Gallup. By comparison, Trump ended his single term in office with 45% approval, while former President Barack Obama saw a slightly lower 43%.

Trump, meanwhile, is now engaged in legal battles in Maine and Colorado after both states disqualified him from appearing on their ballots, and is embroiled in four separate criminal cases, which the former leader has slammed as a political “witch hunt” against him.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been hospitalized since the New Year, with his deputy handling “routine business,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder revealed on Friday.

Austin was admitted to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Monday, for what Ryder described as “complications following a recent elective medical procedure.” The 70-year-old retired general is “recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today,” Ryder added.

The Pentagon would not disclose the type of “elective procedure” that Austin had undergone, or what the complications might have been. Ryder told the Military Times that the decision to keep Austin’s hospital stay secret was made “taking privacy into account” and due to the “evolving situation.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks is “prepared to act for and exercise the powers of the secretary, if required” and has in fact “conducted some routine business for the department on his behalf,” Ryder told reporters.

Austin is the first African American to head the Pentagon, having been nominated by President Joe Biden in January 2021. Upon retiring from the military in 2016, Austin joined the board of military contractor Raytheon Technologies. He received a congressional waiver to be able to lead the Pentagon, since he had not been out of active service for seven years, as required by law.

McDonald’s franchises in the Middle East have experienced a “meaningful business impact” in 2023 from boycotts associated with the Gaza conflict, the fast-food giant’s Chief Executive Officer Chris Kempczinski has said.

In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Kempczinski lauded the company’s accomplishment over the past year, but admitted that “several markets in the Middle East and some outside the region are experiencing a meaningful business impact” due to the Gaza war and the “associated misinformation.”

“This is disheartening and ill-founded,” he added. “In every country where we operate, including in Muslim countries, McDonald’s is proudly represented by local owner operators who work tirelessly to serve and support their communities while employing thousands of their fellow citizens.”

The hearts of everyone at McDonald’s are with “the communities and families impacted by the war in the Middle East,” Kempczinski insisted. “We abhor violence of any kind and firmly stand against hate speech, and we will always proudly open our doors to everyone.”

While Kempczinski did not give any estimates of the losses from the boycott, their full extent may be revealed later this month, when McDonald’s is scheduled to issue an earnings report.

This triggered franchises in Oman, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates to respond by donating to Palestinian causes – and activists across the Muslim world to call for boycotts of the brand. Other Western corporations – Starbucks, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nestle and KFC, to name a few – have faced similar backlash. 

GAR, the McDonald’s franchisee in Malaysia, has responded by suing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement last month for “false and defamatory statements” about the chain. The company has asked for damages in the amount of 6 million ringgit ($1.31 million) to compensate for revenue and job losses.

A series of raids by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7 resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,200 Israelis. West Jerusalem responded by declaring war on the group and proceeding to bomb and invade Gaza. Israeli attacks have since caused over 22,000 Palestinian deaths, according to local health authorities. 

The European Union's agriculture sector could face another “oversupply” crisis this year if it allows Ukraine to freely export its goods into the bloc, EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski told Polish RMF 24 Radio on Friday.

Shortly after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated, the bloc suspended tariffs on Ukrainian exports in a bid to financially support Kiev. Cheap grain from Ukraine flowed into the EU, with farmers in neighboring countries unable to compete with the low prices of the imported goods. The crisis prompted Brussels to impose a ban on Ukrainian grain exports in May 2023, which it unilaterally lifted in in September last year.

Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania immediately reinstated the restrictions at a national level, prompting Ukraine to file a, now-suspended, complaint with the World Trade Organization.

The EU Commission is now debating whether its free trade exemption for Ukraine should be extended to 2025. Wojciechowski insisted he would not support such a move unless it included protective clauses and quantitative restrictions on certain goods.

The commissioner warned that imports of sugar and poultry from Ukraine were already growing “in a way that threatens the competitiveness of the EU sector, including Polish poultry and sugar production,” Wojciechowski, himself a Pole, added.

Poultry and sugar producers have been complaining to Brussels about excess supply and the commissioner has argued that Ukrainian exports should therefore be sent elsewhere.

“The European Union’s efforts should be to support Ukrainian exports to third countries,” he said.

He also argued that opening the European market to Ukraine would somehow “help Russia consolidate its military and economic gains” from the ongoing conflict, allegedly by successfully pushing Ukraine away from Asian markets.

Von der Leyen, along with Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, also reportedly want to prevent the bloc from imposing a temporary embargo on Ukrainian goods in the event of a sudden flood of exports.

Brussels’ policy on relaxing trade restrictions with Kiev has already led to squabbles between Ukraine and its EU neighbors. Apart from the grain dispute in September, Kiev also locked horns with Warsaw over freight transport services.

Before February 2022, Ukrainian haulage companies had to obtain permits to enter and operate within the EU. This permit scheme was scrapped shortly after the conflict escalated. In November 2023, Polish truckers started blocking the busiest border crossings with Ukraine – as part of a major protest against the EU’s soft trade policy towards Kiev. Their protest was soon joined by farmers.

In December, Poland demanded EU permits for Ukrainian truckers be reintroduced. At the time the call was backed by Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Croatia, Poland’s IAR news agency reported.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has derided the US effort to make its Red Sea intervention appear more powerful and international by involving countries such as the Seychelles.

In a televised speech on Friday, the Lebanon-based cleric took aim at ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’, the effort Washington announced last month to counter the Yemeni blockade of Israeli-linked shipping.

“To make the coalition seem powerful, they added some country, the Seychelles or Meychelles or whatever, and I had to Google what it even was!” Nasrallah said, according to translations by local media outlets. In Arabic, the names sounded like “Sin-shell” and “Min-shell.”

“Turns out it’s some island at the end of the world, with a population of less than 100,000,” he added.

The smallest country in Africa, the Seychelles consist of 115 islands about 1,500 kilometers (800 nautical miles) off the coast of the continent. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin listed the former British colony as one of the participants in ‘Prosperity Guardian’ last month, alongside Canada, Bahrain, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Italy and Spain have since backed out of the endeavor entirely, while only Denmark has promised to send a frigate. Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Norway pledged officers, but no ships.

The Houthis of Yemen have repeatedly attacked commercial ships they accused of ties to Israel, as a way of showing support for the Palestinians in Gaza. Most Western shipping companies have responded by rerouting their vessels around Africa, at great expense in time and fuel. 

The global shipping giant Maersk had announced on December 24 that it would resume sailing through the Suez Canal due to the presence of the US-led armada. After another of its ships was struck by a Houthi missile on December 31, however, Maersk said it would again divert all vessels around the Cape of Good Hope “for the foreseeable future.”

US President Joe Biden can’t outline his administration’s “endgame” in Ukraine amid Washington’s ongoing support for Kiev, Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has claimed.

Under Biden’s presidency, the US has been the leading provider of military and economic aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s offensive nearly two years ago – committing around $44.2 billion in security assistance to Kiev since February 2022, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued this week.

Ukraine has also received financial and humanitarian assistance aid, bringing the sum total past $75 billion.

But amid signs of flagging support among Republican lawmakers for Washington’s apparent blank-check approach to its Kiev aid packages, DeSantis said at a CNN town hall in Iowa on Thursday that the Biden administration can’t point to a logical conclusion to its financial outlay.

“Biden can’t even tell us what the endgame is,” DeSantis said to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, flanked on the debate stage by GOP rival Nikki Haley. “He will not articulate this,” he said, adding that the “pitfall” of US foreign policy in recent decades has been “getting involved in conflicts where we don’t have a clear conception of what we’re trying to achieve.”

When pressed by Collins as to what his own ‘endgame’ for the conflict in Ukraine might look like, DeSantis said that he would engineer a situation “where Russia is in a box, and you’re not having wars break out in Europe.” 

He added of the conflict: “I think Europe should supply the weapons [to Ukraine].”

As for what would be a more appropriate use for federal funds, DeSantis said that the US southern border should be first secured before committing to overseas issues – a frequent rallying cry of the American political right.
He also said that Washington must demonstrate “adequate hard power” to ensure that China does not “go after Taiwan.”

According to the polling website FiveThirtyEight on Friday, DeSantis is polling in second place among the Republican presidential hopefuls at 12.1% – substantially behind former President Donald Trump, who has a 61.8% polling average. Haley is in third with 11.2%.

Israel is committed to seeking a “fundamental change” to the security situation on its northern border with Lebanon to reduce attacks from the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a US envoy on Thursday.

Tensions with Lebanon have increased since the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) launched their attacks on Gaza, following Hamas’ cross-border assault on October 7. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, which is considered to be a terrorist organization by Israel, has continued to mount a series of attacks on Israeli territory.

In a meeting with US Special Presidential Envoy Amos Hochstein in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Netanyahu said that security measures must be strengthened in Israel’s north so that approximately 100,000 evacuated residents can “return to their homes and live in safety and security.”

“We will not stop until this goal has been achieved, whether diplomatically, which Israel prefers, or in some other way,” the Israeli leader added, according to the Times of Israel. Netanyahu did not give specifics on the nature of the plans.

He also told Hochstein, according to the outlet, that “following the murderous assault of October 7, Israel is more determined, daring, and united than ever.” Hochstein had been dispatched to the region by US President Joe Biden in a bid to reduce tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

In addition to its ground and air bombardment of Gaza, which has killed some 22,000 Palestinians so far, Israel has also deployed troops towards its border with Lebanon as it seeks to prevent the possibility of a Hezbollah incursion similar to that of Hamas’ cross-border attack in October.

Earlier this week, Hamas’ influential deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in a drone attack in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. While Israel, which rarely comments on military operations, has not admitted responsibility for the bombing, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has vowed revenge against its southern neighbor.

“We are not afraid of war,” Nasrallah said this week in a televised address, adding that “there will be no ceilings, no rules” to Hezbollah’s response.

So far, Hezbollah has avoided major escalations at the border, saying earlier that its actions are aimed at tying up the IDF’s forces to prevent their deployment to Gaza.

The attack that killed al-Arouri was the first in Beirut following months of exchanges of fire. Until then, the skirmishes had mainly been limited to areas around Lebanon’s southern border.

Washington will continue to actively support Israel and seek to realize a “nightmare” scenario for the Iranian leadership, US Senator Lindsey Graham told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Tel Aviv on Thursday. 

The US expressed its strong support for the Jewish State in October 2023 in the wake of a Hamas terrorist attack, which claimed some 1,200 lives and saw more than 240 people taken hostage. The Israeli retaliation campaign, which was also backed by the US, has already killed more than 22,000 people in the Palestinian enclave, according to local health officials.

On Thursday, Graham told Netanyahu that both US lawmakers and the administration of President Joe Biden would “push forward to make Iran’s worst nightmare real,” adding that the US would “do everything we can” to support Israel. He argued that West Jerusalem should strive for reconciliation with Arab nations, calling such an outcome “a nightmare for the ayatollah.” He also described establishing ties between Israel and the Arab world as an “absolutely essential ingredient to a better, more stable Mid-East and a safe and secure Israel and a prosperous Palestinian people.”

“We’re absolutely committed to achieving our war goals,” Netanyahu told Graham, adding that West Jerusalem would “apply maximum power with maximum precision everywhere that's needed.”

Iran has repeatedly blamed Israel for the escalation in the region throughout the ongoing conflict as well as accused it of committing “genocide” in Gaza and setting “fire to the region.” Tehran also accused West Jerusalem’s Western backers, including the US, of employing double standards in their assessment of the situation in the Middle East.

Graham is a retired US Air Force colonel but spent his entire military career in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a lawyer and then a judge. He also has a long history of promoting the use of force abroad.

His words came as Washington was reportedly preparing for the conflict between Israel and Hamas to spill over the borders of Gaza and expand further to the Middle East, according to Politico. The administration of US President Joe Biden was allegedly reviewing scenarios that could see Washington drawn into a major conflict in the region.

A US response could be triggered by Yemeni Houthi fighters, who have been targeting commercial ships off Yemen’s coast in response to the attacks on Gaza by Israel, according to the news media outlet.

Oscar Pistorius, the former Olympic athlete known as ‘Blade Runner’ for his use of carbon-fiber prosthetic legs in competitions, has been released on parole from a South African prison, 11 years after he shot his former girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, dead.

In 2013, the then-27-year-old shot Steenkamp, through a bathroom door in their home on Valentine’s Day in 2013. The double-amputee then claimed that he had mistaken his former partner for a burglar.

He was convicted of murder in 2015 after an appeals court dismissed a prior verdict of culpable homicide and handed him a 13-year sentence in 2017, following a trial and several appeals.

Pistorius is “now at home,” authorities said on Friday, having served more than half of his 13-year sentence.

The killing of Steenkamp came a year after Pistorius made history when he competed against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics.

South Africa’s Department of Corrections confirmed the release of Pistorius, who is now 37, early on Friday morning, suggesting that he’d already left the Atteridgeville prison in Pretoria. The Department of Corrections gave no further details, citing “security” logistics.

Under South African law, serious offenders are eligible for parole after serving at least half of their sentence. He was approved for release in November after losing an initial bid for release last March, when a parole board determined that he had not yet served the minimum detention period.

In a statement issued by her lawyer on Friday, Steenkamp’s mother, June, said: “There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back, and no amount of time served will bring Reeva back.”

The statement added: “We, who remain behind, are the ones serving a life sentence.”

Pistorius, formerly one of South Africa’s most celebrated athletes, will live at the home of his uncle, Arnold Pistorius, in a wealthy suburb of Pretoria, according to local media reports. While incarcerated, he drove a tractor on prison grounds, worked in its library and helped clean other inmates’ cells, according to legal documents.

Pistorius’ lower legs were amputated when he was less than a year old. His subsequent use of carbon-fiber prosthetics in athletic events earned him the nickname ‘Blade Runner.’

An American court this week released over 900 documents relating to the sordid and seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein saga.  

Epstein was the very well-connected billionaire financial adviser – with a fondness for being “massaged” by teenage girls from Miami trailer parks – who committed suicide (so it is said) in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The Western media had, of course, conferred celebrity status on Epstein – in tandem with his lover and partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, long before his controversial and opportune death. Maxwell, no stranger to scandal in her own right, is the daughter of disgraced billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell - who committed suicide in 1991 on the eve of being exposed for having stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds.

Epstein was one of Robert Maxwell’s financial advisers, and when Ghislaine moved to New York after her father’s death, they became romantically involved. She needed and valued his financial advice, and he was impressed with her wide range of social connections within elite circles globally – that extended even to the British royal family.

Ironically, Epstein and Maxwell were brought down by one of the young girls that they exploited sexually – an Australian, Virginia Giuffre, who pursued them both relentlessly through the American legal system. Giuffre also took legal proceedings against the hapless Prince Andrew – a close friend of Epstein and Maxwell with whom she says she was forced to have sex on numerous occasions – that resulted in a multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement and the Prince’s banishment from public life two years ago.

The inherently salacious nature of the long-running Epstein tale and its #MeToo subtext no doubt account for the Western media’s ongoing fascination with Epstein and Maxwell. But there is also another factor at work – a desire to expose and bring down those individual members of the global elites who associated with Epstein and were beneficiaries of his hospitality and largesse.

There is, however, an element of political naivety in this – after all, haven’t Western elites always sexually exploited young girls from the lower orders? More importantly, surely the widespread fraudulent financial activities of these powerful individuals and the corporations they govern are more deserving of exposure?

It should come as no surprise that a clever and ambitious spiv like Epstein (who did not come from a privileged background and was a teacher before becoming a financial adviser to the global elites) should also regularly supply his clients with young working-class women at his private residences.

Media coverage of this week’s document release – and there are more releases to come – has therefore focused on the identity of those prominent individuals who are named in the pleadings, depositions, and exhibits that have now been disclosed.

Famous American lawyer and academic Alan Dershowitz receives numerous mentions in the documents – including one allegation that he had sex with an underage girl while staying with Epstein. Dershowitz, who acted for Epstein and obtained a favourable plea bargain for him in relation to sex charges that he faced in 2008, has strongly denied this allegation. He admits, however, that he often visited Epstein’s residences and that on one occasion had a massage – but denies any impropriety or knowledge of Epstein’s egregious misconduct. Dershowitz’s denials are strengthened by the fact that he sued Giuffre over allegations that she made about him a few years ago, and she settled the action after admitting that she may have mistaken Dershowitz for someone else.

Prince Andrew, again not surprisingly, figures very conspicuously in the released documents – but his very close association with Epstein and Maxwell is old news, as is his liaison with Ms Giuffre and his subsequent denial of it. Michael Jackson is mentioned once in the documents – although it is very unlikely that he committed any sexual impropriety while enjoying Epstein’s hospitality. The documents make absolutely clear that only young women were on offer at Epstein’s residences. Donald Trump is also mentioned in passing – but it is a matter of public record that Trump’s relationship with Epstein ended decades ago.

Of more interest are those members of the global elites with lesser public profiles who are mentioned in the documents.  These individuals include Tom Pritzker, billionaire head of the  Pritzker Organisation and Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels; Glenn Dubin, billionaire investor and co-founder of Highbridge Capital;  Marvin Minsky, AI pioneer and MIT Professor; and Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico, where Epstein had one of his homes.

No doubt, the release of the Epstein documents this week – and the subsequent releases – will be front-page news in the Western media. Details of the sexual crimes allegedly committed by Epstein and his friends will be salaciously pored over by readers excited by such scandals, and the reputations of a few individual participants will be so damaged that they will not be invited to Davos next year.

But the corrupt financial system that created Epstein and allowed him to prosper – he had amassed a fortune of $700 million – will continue to operate completely unchecked and beyond effective scrutiny. And even at the level of exposing those individuals who exploited the young girls that Epstein supplied them with – most will simply escape unscathed.

Portions of many of the documents released this week are redacted, and only Epstein and Maxwell know the names of all the elite individuals who were actually involved in their activities. Epstein is conveniently dead, and Maxwell has remained silent on this issue throughout her trial and incarceration - a wise move, perhaps given Epstein’s fate. Media coverage of the Epstein saga in the West purports to be investigative journalism – but its defects disclose the real scandal, namely that genuine investigative journalism no longer exists in the West.

Never invade Russia, tech billionaire Elon Musk has insisted during a discussion of historic military strategies on his platform, X (formerly Twitter).

In a post on Thursday, Musk argued that 18th and early 19th-century British naval commander Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was “incredible.” He also praised Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, who was among the military leaders who defeated French Emperor Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

“Wellington is usually underrated. Not on Napoleon’s level, but still one of the best generals in history imo,” SpaceX and Tesla CEO wrote.

In response to his comment, one of the users suggested that Napoleon was actually “not so smart” when he launched his failed Russian campaign in 1812.

Musk seemingly agreed with the notion, replying: “Just don’t invade Russia. It’s never a good idea.”

Russian historians attribute the country’s success in what they call the Patriotic War of 1812 to the sophisticated bait-and-switch strategies of Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, the heroism of Russian troops, the patriotism of the civilian population, many of whom joined the partisans, and the harsh winter conditions in the final months of the conflict.

Over the past two years, Musk has been calling for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, warning that due to the West backing Ukraine, the conflict could well spiral into a nuclear war between Russia and the US. The billionaire has been providing the Kiev forces with access to Starlink satellite internet but refused to enable the service in the vicinity of Crimea over concerns that the Ukrainians would use SpaceX’s system to guide drones and missiles toward Russian targets on the peninsula.

A group of German farmers angered by cost-saving plans impacting the country's agricultural sector blocked the EU state’s vice chancellor from disembarking a ferry on Thursday, in a protest that was criticized by both government and opposition figures.

Robert Habeck, who also serves as Germany’s economy and climate minister, was prevented from leaving the vessel after returning to the mainland from the small island of Hooge, where he had been on holiday. Police said farmers blocked a jetty in Schluettsiel on the North Sea coast, forcing Habeck to return to the island, according to Germany’s DPA news agency.

More than 100 people participated in the blockade, police said, with around 30 officers deployed to the scene, some of whom used pepper spray to quell the disturbance.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz was heavily criticized by farmers last month after his unpopular government announced plans to cut back agricultural sector subsidies as part of a broader package intended to plug a €17 billion ($18.6 billion) deficit in Germany’s 2024 budget. Farmers staged a protest in Berlin last month, and have vowed to hold further demonstrations.

A spokesperson for Habeck told DPA that he would have been happy to discuss the subsidies row with the farmers, but that “the security situation did not allow for a dialogue with all farmers,” later adding that an “offer made by Minister Habeck to talk to individuals farmers was unfortunately not accepted.”

However, the German Farmers’ Association said the government’s amendment to the subsidies pullback didn’t go far enough, and that protests planned for next week would still go ahead.

A spokesperson for Scholz’s office, Steffen Hebestreit, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that the blockade of Habeck’s ferry was “shameful and violates the rules” of a functioning society. Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said the protest “discredits the cause of many farmers who demonstrate peacefully.”

Meanwhile, Hendrik Wust of the opposition Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) wrote on social media that “this transgression is absolutely unacceptable” and that the incident “must have consequences.”

Germany’s budgetary changes came after its highest court reversed an earlier decision to siphon €60 billion ($66 billion) in funds originally intended for sectors damaged by the Covid-19 pandemic to other measures, including climate-change mitigation.

Following the blockade, Habeck returned to the mainland on another ferry overnight, reports said.

The White House is worried that the conflict in Gaza could expand to other parts of the Middle East and is drawing up plans for a possible US response if that happens, Politico has reported, citing informed officials.

Internal discussions are underway in the administration of US President Joe Biden about scenarios that could see Washington drawn into a major war in the region, the outlet said in an article on Thursday.

The potential for a wider conflict in the Middle East is growing, said sources including a senior Biden administration official.

The events of the past few days “have convinced some in the administration that the war in Gaza has officially escalated far beyond the strip’s borders,” Politico wrote.

These events included a US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iraqi militia leader Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, the killing of Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri in an Israeli UAV attack in the Lebanese capital Beirut, and twin explosions in Iran that claimed 84 lives and wounded almost 300 people.

The intelligence community is trying to find ways of anticipating and resisting the attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria by local militias. It’s also working to determine whether the Houthis would carry out similar strikes, the report read.

Such contingency planning is routine amid heightened tension in the Middle East, officials said. But this activity has intensified this week on orders from the top echelons of the administration “over fears that the violence in the region will only continue to grow and that Washington will eventually have to intervene,” they explained.

The US government has exhausted its funds for military assistance to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesman Major General Patrick Ryder has said, noting that Washington is simply “out of money” unless lawmakers pass a new aid package.

Speaking to reporters at a Thursday briefing, Ryder explained that while the Pentagon is authorized to spend another $4.2 billion on weapons for Ukraine, the actual funds are not available and must be set aside by Congress.

“We have the authority to spend that [$4.2 billion] from available funds but wouldn't have the ability to replenish the stocks by taking money out – or taking stuff out of our inventory,” the spokesman said, adding “We're out of money.”

Kuleba also noted growing political divisions In the US regarding Ukraine, as a vocal group of Republican critics have blocked the passage of additional aid funds while demanding sweeping immigration reforms. Though the party backed dozens of separate aid packages following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, some GOP members have soured on the American largesse in recent months, creating a widening partisan divide on the issue.

While President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass a massive aid package including some $61 billion for Kiev, Congress has remained deadlocked for weeks amid Republican opposition, though independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema has said lawmakers are “closing in” on a deal. 

The United States has authorized nearly $45 billion in direct military assistance to Ukraine since the conflict with Russia escalated in early 2022, in addition to other indirect military aid and financial and humanitarian assistance. Moscow has repeatedly condemned Western arms shipments to Kiev, arguing they would only prolong the fighting and do little to deter its military aims.

South Korea has ordered civilians on an island near the border with North Korea to evacuate to shelters, after accusing Pyongyang of firing off hundreds of artillery shells as part of a military “provocation.”

The evacuation order was issued twice on Friday afternoon by local authorities, Yonhap News reported, noting that it came amid “apparent signs of a military provocation by North Korea.”

“We announced the evacuation after receiving a call from a military unit saying it was carrying out a maritime strike on Yeongpyeong Island as it has a situation with a North Korean provocation,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying by Yonhap.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said later that North Korea launched around 200 artillery shells off its west coast on Friday morning. The projectiles landed in a maritime buffer zone established under a 2018 deal between the countries, though Pyongyang has since withdrawn from the agreement.

The South Korean military, which is working in “close coordination” with the US, is “tracking and monitoring related activity and will conduct corresponding measures to North Korea's provocations,” he stressed.

Seoul plans to conduct live-fire drills of its own on the northwestern border islands in the Yellow Sea later on Friday, in response to the artillery firing by Pyongyang, unnamed officials told Yonhap News.

The reports came soon after joint US-South Korea live-fire military drills near the border, which the North condemned as “reckless war maneuvers.” Involving a South Korean Army mechanized infantry brigade and the US Stryker Brigade Combat Team, the drills began on December 29 in the border city of Pocheon, some 46km (28.5 miles) northeast of Seoul.

A long-range US B-1B Lancer bomber has crashed outside Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, military officials have said, noting the accident took place as the aircraft wrapped up a training mission.

Air base staff confirmed the incident in a statement on Thursday night, saying the bomber went down at around 6pm local time while attempting to land at the facility.

“At the time of the accident, it was on a training mission. There were four aircrew on board. All four ejected safely,” the statement said, adding that an investigation had been launched.

Unconfirmed images making the rounds on social media were alleged to show a fire outside the military base, though officials offered few details about the aftermath of the crash.

Images from Cameras used by the South Dakota Department of Transportation showing the Fire currently ongoing at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City following the reported Crash of a B-1B “Lancer” Heavy Bomber. https://t.co/3znNebjBg0

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 5, 2024

One of three main strategic bombers in the US arsenal, the B-1B Lancer was once among Washington’s top nuclear-capable warplanes, able to carry the largest load of munitions and reach the fastest speeds. However, the B-1B has since been stripped of its nuclear status, as was agreed under the Cold War-era START Treaty with the Soviet Union, with the planes finally undergoing physical conversions in 2011.

“The exterior attachment points, or the hard points, on the aircraft, were modified to prevent nuclear pylons from ever being attached to the jet,” Master Sgt. Brian Hudson, a B-1 avionics manager at Air Force Global Strike Command, explained in an interview with Military.com.

In late 2023, two Lancers were intercepted while approaching Russian airspace over the Baltic Sea by a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet, according to Moscow’s defense ministry. After they were spotted, the two US planes changed course and headed away from the border without incident.

A senior official at the US Department of Education has resigned in protest at President Joe Biden’s support for Israel, saying the administration has turned a blind eye to “atrocities” against Palestinians since the start of the war in Gaza.

Policy adviser Tariq Habash, a Palestinian-American, left his position on Wednesday, explaining in a resignation letter that he could not continue to “represent an administration that does not value all human life equally.”

“The actions of the Biden-Harris Administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger, most immediately for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza who remain under continuous assault and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. Therefore, I must resign,” Habash wrote. “I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government.”

Despite repeated warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by international rights groups, along with the United Nations, Washington has offered little public criticism of the Israeli campaign, and continued to pledge military support.

Other senior officials have voiced similar concerns, with 11-year State Department veteran Josh Paul – the longtime director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs – also resigning in October over the US’ “blind support” for Israel.

Biden visited Israel on the day Paul tendered his resignation, pledging to ask Congress to allocate additional aid to meet the ally’s military needs. Though he has made good on that promise, lawmakers remain deadlocked over a new aid package, with Republicans in the House demanding sweeping border reforms before approving additional assistance for both Ukraine and Israel.

A much-hyped trove of nearly 1,000 newly-unsealed pages of court documents from a 2015 defamation case filed by a victim of infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein contains “no revelations,” conservative commentator Mike Cernovich claimed on Wednesday in a post on X (formerly Twitter). 

Cernovich, working with Epstein defense attorney and accused sex trafficking participant Alan Dershowitz, sued to have Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit unsealed in 2017 and has previously claimed credit for the predator’s 2019 arrest.

In his post, he claimed the Southern District of New York (SDNY) had arrested Epstein in 2019 the weekend before the documents were first set to be unsealed as a result of his lawsuit, so as to prevent any of Epstein’s powerful friends, soon to be exposed in the documents, from being criminally charged.

“The indictment against Epstein does not charge anyone except Epstein, and there’s nothing to indicate that anyone who flew to Epstein’s private island has faced scrutiny,” Cernovich continued, arguing that “SDNY charged the lowest level offenses possible” so that they would be legally unable to raid that island – or even the pedophile’s New Mexico ranch – for weeks, allowing evidence to vanish. At least one safe, said to be in FBI custody, has never been seen again. 

Meanwhile, Epstein himself died – allegedly by his own hand – shortly after his arrest while still in pretrial detention, the charges against him never having been aired inside a courtroom. 

Acknowledging that “we’ll never know for certain” what was in the vanished safe, Cernovich insisted “we do know that the FBI has Jeffrey Epstein’s blackmail files” and that “very powerful forces have made sure we will never see it.”

Authorities raiding Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2019 found and photographed boxes of hard drives, videos, binders full of burned CDs, and other media, all individually labeled by Epstein. 

However, it was never entered into evidence because the FBI did not initially have a warrant to remove it, according to a special agent who testified at Maxwell's trial. When they returned with a warrant, the evidence was supposedly gone.

Epstein’s properties were well-equipped with surveillance equipment, according to several witnesses, and his victims have claimed he would pump them for blackmail material on the powerful men he trafficked them to for sex.

The level of Washington’s military funding for Ukraine may ultimately decrease, particularly when the country becomes able to “stand on its own two feet,” US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said on Thursday.

Miller made the remarks during a regular press briefing, responding to a question on potential shifts in the US strategy on Ukraine. The spokesman insisted Washington had always sought for Ukraine to become able to defend itself on its own and ultimately be an “independent” nation.

“We’ve always made it clear that we want Ukraine to be an independent country; that means it can stand on its own two feet. But we will continue to support Ukraine, that’s the policy of the United States, as long as it takes,” Miller stated.

However, military funding for Kiev is destined to dry up at some point in the future, he warned. That moment has not arrived yet, Miller said, saying a new funding package for Kiev is needed.

“That does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023. We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine … to help Ukraine to build its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own,” the spokesman explained.

The bill has been met with strong opposition from multiple Republican lawmakers, who want to tie  overseas funding to domestic issues, namely tackling illegal migration and reinforcing the US’ own border.

At the same time, another major donor – the EU – has also experienced difficulties with allocating new funding for Ukraine. A planned four-year scheme worth some €50 billion ($55 billion) ended up vetoed by Hungary late last year, with deliberations on it pushed into 2024.

The remarks from Miller come as the total value of Western aid for Kiev surpassed $200 billion, according to Moscow’s estimates. The Russian Defense Ministry has published statistics detailing the aid supplied to Ukraine by some 54 countries, with the total costs estimated to be over $203 billion already.

A teenage student at Perry High School in Iowa shot six people at the school before turning the gun on himself, police told reporters on Thursday. One victim, a sixth-grader, died at the scene, while four other students and the school's principal, Dan Marburger, were hospitalized.

An “improvised explosive device” was discovered during a subsequent “systematic search” of the school, police said. However, the Iowa fire marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms eventually “rendered the device safe.”

Police declined to share any details about the explosive device beyond describing it as “rudimentary” and reassuring the public there was no further danger.

Police were called to the scene at 7:37am local time ahead of the start of classes on what would have been students’ first day back from winter break. “School didn’t start yet, luckily, luckily so there was very few students and faculty in the building, which I think contributed to a good outcome in that sense,” Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante told the media.

Mortvedt declined to share details on a possible motive for the shooting, explaining that “anything into the background of him is part of the investigation and we’re obviously going to take a deep dive into that.” However, he confirmed that the gunman had “made a number of social media posts in and around the time of the shooting,” potential evidence police were “working to secure.”

Iowa requires gun buyers to obtain a permit or submit to a background check. A customer must be 21 or older to buy a handgun and 18 or older to purchase a shotgun, meaning the teenage shooter’s weapons may not have been obtained legally.

Predicting the future is the most thankless task when it comes to international politics. All of the genre, in fact, because it involves the interaction of living human beings. That means it is subject to chance, elementary error, and the influence of emotion. If this were not so, history would indeed go straight on “like the sidewalk of the Nevsky Prospect,” the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg.

But not only is history unpredictable, it doesn’t repeat itself, which makes it utterly pointless to try to predict specific turns of events. The only thing we can talk about with relative certainty is the development of the major trends we can already see today.

In the coming year 2024, Russia will definitely be the largest continental country in the world, with the opportunity to develop ties in several geographical directions at once: To trade with its neighbors, to build new transport and logistics systems, and to thwart its opponents’ attempts to isolate it.

The United States will remain the largest “political island,” whose security and development, in principle, depend very little on what happens in its immediate surroundings. 

China will remain a country with a huge population and economy in need of external markets and resources.

The European Union will continue to “sit on the windowsill” in the far west of Eurasia, always critically dependent on resources from outside. But it is no longer in a position to extract them on its own.

Let's start with the unpleasant – the things that will make us all tremble a little in our daily lives. Over the past year, the whole world has been confronted with the confrontation between globalization and autarky. The former, even in the form most free from the diktats of the West, implies reliance on economic expediency and broad participation in international production chains, investment, and trade. For several decades, this was rightly seen as the easiest and most effective way to achieve the goal of internal development and make life more comfortable for citizens.

Autarky, in turn, implies self-reliance in solving those tasks that are important for maintaining internal stability. However, since we do not know how to clearly define the limits of what is necessary, autarky always runs the risk of becoming absolute. Russia, as we know, is constantly confronted with this problem, up to the recent situation of egg shortages caused, among other things, by the outflow of migrant workers and disruptions in international supplies.

Since the spring of 2022, the United States, as the most self-isolating major country, began to systematically destroy the globalization it had created after World War II. The economic war against Russia, the pressure on China, and other measures are making everyone think about the need to reduce their dependence on the global economy. The Western Europeans sincerely don’t want to do this, but they lack the political will to do anything to oppose the Americans.

It is, therefore, safe to say that in 2024, we will be increasingly confronted with the consequences of the destruction of the existing system of links in the global economy. But at the same time, we will not be ready to be completely independent from it. Moreover, Russia will remain a market economy, which means that its companies will still have to take the price factor into account.

As globalization splits into national or regional zones, the prices of many goods will rise, and productivity will fall – simply because the world's countries will have to forgo cheaper but politically risky solutions. How many years it will take to find a balance is hard to say now. But there will certainly be no let-up this year.

The consolidation of the West will continue to create problems for international security and the world economy. This is simply because the united West will be – for a long time to come – unable to accept the new reality, to stop fighting the natural course of history, and to start adapting to it. As can be seen from recent statements by politicians in Washington and its allies, the US has no other solution to its problems than to regain at least some of its former power and control. Even if key people realize that this is impossible, they will never admit it, so they will meddle and create confusion in different parts of the planet.

This will be countered by the global majority: The aggregate of the world’s states, comprising about three-quarters of the UN’s membership, which are increasingly focused on their own interests. This term was coined in 2022 to refer to countries that have not initiated or supported the West's economic war against Moscow at the state level – even if their companies and banks are forced to comply with US and EU bans on pain of retaliation. They are constantly looking for and finding ways to continue trading and generally doing business with Russia. In 2023, this phenomenon was already fully obvious.

The most striking examples come from India, (NATO member) Turkey, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, all Asian countries (except Japan and South Korea), and all CIS members.

The most important event in international politics in 2023 was related to this phenomenon. It is, of course, the bolstering of the BRICS group and the decision to expand it by five new states. They are all different in size, economic weight, and importance in world politics: Successful and wealthy Saudi Arabia joins dysfunctional Ethiopia. Independent Iran has a sea border with the United Arab Emirates, where a US air base remains. But the main thing is that all these states are actively trying to revise the unjust international order that emerged after the end of the Cold War. For Russia, strengthening BRICS after its enlargement will be the most important foreign policy task in 2024. 

So far, as we can see, the main trends in international life in 2023 look as if they will continue to create difficulties but will not pose significant risks to Russia’s position and its ability to achieve its goals. Taking advantage of these and coping with the risks is a matter of national foreign policy, implemented on the basis of internal consolidation and confidence in its legitimacy.

This article was first published by ‘Vzglyad’ newspaper, translated and edited by the RT ream 

US federal labor regulators have accused the American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX of illegally firing employees who had circulated an open letter that was critical of the leadership of the company’s founder and chief executive, Elon Musk.

In allegations filed on Wednesday by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), SpaceX is alleged to have terminated the employment of eight workers – and questioned dozens more – after a letter expressing opposition to Musk’s “disparaging” and “sexually charged” rhetoric on social media was distributed within the company.

The open letter further called out SpaceX for its failure to address “sexism, harassment and discrimination” in the workplace, the NLRB complaint said, in addition to Musk’s “harmful Twitter behavior.”

“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us,” workers added in the co-signed letter.

Among the various allegations compiled by the labor board are that SpaceX’s chief operation officer, Gwynne Shotwell, took measures to illegally restrict the circulation of the letter among the company’s 13,000 employees. The complaint also claims that SpaceX “told other employees that the eight had been discharged for participating in the open letter.”

“At SpaceX, the rockets may be reusable, but the people who build them are treated as expendable,” Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the former employees, said, according to the New York Times. “I am hopeful these charges will hold SpaceX and its leadership accountable for their long history of mistreating workers and stifling discourse.”

According to a CBS report, if SpaceX opts not to settle the case, an administrative law judge will likely hear it on March 5. The NLRB has the authority to order companies to rehire workers whose employment was unfairly terminated. Additionally, if found liable, SpaceX could also be made to facilitate back pay for fired staff members.

Musk’s management style was brought into sharp focus during the over one year following his acquisition of Twitter, which he has since rebranded as X. He laid off about half of the social media giant’s workforce soon after the October 2022 takeover, including several internal critics according to a report by the New York Times.

Recent reports have stated that the value of X has fallen by as much as 71% since Musk’s $44 billion takeover.

The leader of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczynski has called on Poles to join a planned mass protest next week, urging them to take action to protect “democracy” and “freedom of speech” in the country. The conservative PiS was ousted from power last month, having lost a recent general election to a coalition of pro-EU parties.

Kaczynski made the call on Wednesday during a press conference in Warsaw, announcing a demonstration called ‘The Protest of Free Poles’ to be held outside the country’s parliament next Tuesday.

“On 11 January, a demonstration will be held in Warsaw in defense of freedom of speech, freedom of the media and simply in defense of democracy, because we have a real problem with democracy today,” Kaczynski declared.

The country’s new government, led by veteran pro-EU politician Donald Tusk, aims to “fulfill the expectations of the EU” and reduce the country into a territory governed from the “outside,” Kaczynski warned. The PiS leader also condemned a shake-up of state media carried out by the new government last month.

Rather ironically, the party leader got into a spat with reporters during his press conference after one of them asked whether PiS was being hypocritical with its concerns about media freedom, having itself turned it into a “propaganda mouthpiece.” Kaczynski shot back, accusing the reporter of being “paid to defend what is happening in Poland” and wrapped up the press conference prematurely.

Speaking separately on Wednesday, Tusk stood by his sweeping media reforms, stating that the government would “not take a single step back” in this regard. The prime minister doubled down on the accusations against the PiS, insisting the party was only concerned about media outlets because of its cozy ties with them to reap political benefits. The PM also brushed off concerns that the media takeover might not be a legally-sound move, blaming the PiS for heavily damaging the country’s legislation.

“When we try to solve these things, you all wonder whether it is really perfectly legal,” Tusk stated. “But we all also know that the law they established is unconstitutional…We will make decisions knowing that not everyone will like them.”

Seeing Donald Trump become the US president again would not be a disaster for Kiev, which would find a way to work with him, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has said.

Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, is running for the White House again against the incumbent President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who has unconditionally supported Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Many in Ukraine fear that Trump would stop US funding to Kiev if elected, Kuleba was told at an event in Kiev on Wednesday.

“I think, in principle, there is no need to worry,” the foreign minister replied. “Trump is a person you can work with; you just need to be able to work with him.”

Kuleba reminded the audience that it was Trump who sold the first US weapons to Ukraine – Javelin anti-tank missiles, specifically – donated American boats to Kiev’s navy, and opposed the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline by sanctioning a ship that participated in it.

Kuleba also claimed that Mike Pompeo, who led the CIA and the State Department under Trump, told him there was “a strong anti-Russian, anti-Putin consensus in the Republican Party’s DNA” and, therefore, there was nothing to worry about.

Kuleba followed that up by noting that there have been legal challenges to keep Trump off the ballot in several states and said he was aware of discussions in the US among both Democrats and Republicans that the election might not be between Biden and Trump at all, though he did not elaborate.

Vivek Ramaswamy, one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, said on Wednesday that the US political establishment might be lining up behind Nikki Haley – another Republican primary candidate – as an alternative to both Trump and Biden. 

According to the most recent Russian estimates, Ukraine has received over $203 billion in military and financial aid from the US and its allies since the conflict escalated in February 2022. In a CNN interview that aired on Wednesday, Kuleba said Kiev doesn’t have a “plan B” but is confident in the success of “plan A,” meaning indefinite support from the West.

Nearly 1,000 pages of court documents from a 2015 defamation case against now-deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were unsealed on Wednesday, revealing new details about his operation, including the extent of the US government’s apparent awareness of his salacious activities. 

Harvard law professor and vocal advocate for the abolition of age-of-consent laws Alan Dershowitz was shown to be deeply involved in negotiating the notorious 2007 non-prosecution agreement that shielded Epstein from the consequences of abusing dozens if not hundreds of underage girls. Epstein dodged federal sex-trafficking charges in exchange for pleading guilty to a low-level state offense and serving just 13 months in part-time custody. 

Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Florida mansion “pretty often” and received massages while he was there, according to sworn testimony from Epstein employee Juan Alessi. Given that nearly every witness interviewed explained that “massage” meant “sex,” attorney Bradley Edwards argued in a 2014 filing that Dershowitz’s involvement in drafting the non-prosecution agreement “provided protection for himself against criminal prosecution in Florida for sexually abusing [Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre]” in violation of the Crime Victims Rights Act, because the agreement “provided immunity from federal prosecution in the Southern District of Florida not only to Epstein, but also to ‘any potential co-conspirators of Epstein’.” 

Epstein “masseuse” Johanna Sjoberg claimed during a deposition that when magician David Copperfield had performed for Epstein and his guests at the predator’s home, he had specifically “questioned [her] if [she] was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”

While former US President Bill Clinton’s friendship with Epstein – which included dozens of trips on his private jet, the Lolita Express – has long been public knowledge, Sjoberg’s deposition noted that Epstein had personally told her the ex-president “likes them young, referring to girls.”

Sjoberg also said she met Britain's Prince Andrew when the royal visited Epstein’s Manhattan home, in which Maxwell brought out a “Prince Andrew puppet,” said to be from “a production from a show on BBC,” and posed it on Giuffre’s lap with its hand on her breast while the ‘real’ prince sat on – and similarly groped – Sjoberg. The photo was not included in the document dump, however, and Sjoberg claimed she never saw it after it was taken.

Billionaire financier Glenn Dubin and his former private chef Rinaldo Rizzo, former Victoria’s Secret CEO Les Wexner, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and hotel magnate Tom Pritzker are among the hundreds of men named in the unsealed documents as having been involved in Epstein’s sprawling sex trafficking-blackmail operation.

Since October 7, 2023, an estimated 22,000 Palestinians have lost their lives amid Israel's shelling of Gaza. Most were civilians. As the conflict nears the end of its third month, the humanitarian situation in the enclave is deteriorating. The vast majority of residents lack food, water and basic medications.

Last October 7, mobs of Palestinian militants stormed Israel's southern communities, massacring an estimated 1,200 and leaving over 5,000 wounded. In response, Israel opened a war on Gaza aimed at crushing Hamas, the Islamic group responsible for the deadly attack. But in the process of doing so, more than 21,000 lives have been taken. According to estimates, only 8,000 of these were militants. 

Samira Hamad, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman from Gaza City, says she would like to forget the last year.

"Even before the war, my family, like most of Palestinians, were living in poverty and deprivation," says Hamad. "But back then, we at least had some sort of security. My husband was working inside Israel, there was food on the table and there was a hope that things would change for the better. The events of October 7 turned all our lives upside down."

For 41 days, Hamad, her husband and their four children, lived under heavy Israeli bombardment focused primarily on Gaza City. Hamad says she had lost three of her brothers and their families amid the Israeli shelling. When the bombing intensified, the family decided to relocate to Khan Yunis, in the center of Gaza. There, they found refuge with relatives but ten days later, death knocked on their door.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which had been striking military targets belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, dropped a bomb on a six-story building in the center of Khan Yunis, killing her husband and dozens of other civilians. After Hamad buried him, she had no other choice but to move south, to the city of Rafah, where she currently resides in tents, together with her four children. 

But conditions there are terrible, she says. "When my husband was alive, he was providing us with all our necessities. Now we rely on the donations of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) and other agencies but their aid is far from being enough.

Very often my kids fall asleep without eating and I am afraid they would just die from starvation."

Food is not the only commodity Hamad and most of Gaza's 2.2 million population are lacking. Basic hygiene products and medications are also out of reach; medical services are almost non-existent, primarily because many of Gaza's hospitals have either stopped functioning or are about to shut down.

"My kids are often sick due to the poor weather conditions. To get any medical assistance, I need to walk for two hours to reach one of the nearby hospitals, as I simply don't have money for transportation, even if it is a donkey cart."

According to him, hundreds of thousands of people are trying to find refuge in Gaza shelters, hospitals and schools. Many are staying with their relatives or sleep in their cars or out in the open air, since their homes and neighborhoods have been turned into rubble. 

"The vast majority of the Gazan population is now displaced in parts of the Middle area and Rafah governates. These large-scale displacements add immense pressure on the already fragile service systems – water, sanitation and electricity.

No bakeries have been working, due to the lack of fuel, water, and wheat flour, as well as extensive damage caused by hostilities. Most water plants in Gaza have ceased operating. Water can no longer be pumped or desalinated, leaving families with no access to clean drinking water," he explained.

Since the beginning of the hostilities on October 7, the ICRC, with over 100 staff comprising medical, surgical and weapons contamination experts, has helped to support hospitals and deliver life-saving medication. The staff have also distributed essential household items and conducted multiple surgeries. But, Mhanna admits, the international agency's operations have been rather limited. 

This, Mhanna says, is why the assistance the ICRC is able to provide can hardly be called "meaningful."

"It's beyond any humanitarian organization's capacity to respond to the situation in Gaza. In the absence of sufficient aid, absence of security guarantees to move safely and freely and non-stop hostilities, no one can satisfy those who lost their homes, livelihood, family members and future prospects," the communications officer acknowledged.

These words, however, do not comfort Hamad, who vents anger not only at the lack of assistance from the international bodies but also at Israel, Hamas, Palestinian factions and the world community. 

"Israel kills us without mercy, the US –which supports it– doesn't care about us, the innocent people. Palestinian factions are keeping silence, Arab presidents and the world community ignore our suffering.

We are left here to die, while the world is watching," she lamented. 

According to official UN data, more than 1.7 out of 2.2 million Gazans, have been displaced by the conflict. Over one in four households in the coastal enclave face extreme hunger. 26% have completely exhausted their food supplies. The vast majority suffers from the lack of clean drinking water.

Hamad says she doesn't have any hope for a better future, as the bloody conflict that has claimed up to 22,000 Palestinian lives is about to enter its fourth month. And Mhanna is certain that if the situation continues to deteriorate, Gazans' living conditions will become even more unbearable.

"We exist in Israel and the Occupied Territories since 1967. But we have never witnessed this level of human suffering and deteriorating humanitarian situation before, and if it continues to get worse, we will see more loss of civilian lives, including women and children. More families will be separated and the living conditions for millions of people will worsen".

A mass-emailed bomb threat received by officials in several US states on Wednesday prompted the evacuation of some statehouse buildings and disrupted government operations. No explosives were found, local authorities have said.

The incidents follow a spate of “swatting” incidents — false reports of gunfire at the homes of public figures. Last week, pranksters targeted a number of US officials with the calls, as well as billionaire currency speculator George Soros.

In the threatening email sent on Wednesday morning, the author said they had “placed multiple explosives inside of your State Capitol.” These bombs were “well hidden inside” and would “go off in a few hours,” the email said, according to multiple reports. The same message was received by government offices in at least 23 states, according to CNN.

Among those who received the threats were officials from Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and others. Several states evacuated their government buildings after receiving the warning. There were no reports of suspicious items found during the searches.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear posted about the evacuation of the state capitol on X (formerly Twitter), saying “we are aware of similar threats made to other offices across the country.”

Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, wrote on X that there would be “chaos agents sowing discord for 2024” and urged citizens not to let them “increase tensions.”

Hours later, Sterling reported that his own family had become victims of “swatting,” saying that 911 received a call that “a drug deal gone bad,” resulting in a shooting at his home.

The FBI later issued a statement on Wednesday, calling the email threats “a hoax” that was being taken “very seriously” because of the danger they posed to innocent people, multiple news outlets reported. The bureau added that so far there was “no information to indicate a specific and credible threat,” but said it would continue to investigate the cases.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejected US criticism of proposals to resettle Palestinians in territories outside of Gaza, saying in a message posted on social media that Israel is “not another star on the American flag.”

Ben-Gvir, along with Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have in recent days advocated plans for the post-war “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the blockaded Gaza enclave.

Israeli officials have conducted secret talks with representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other African nations, over the possible resettlement of Palestinians once the war with Hamas has concluded, the Times of Israel said on Wednesday.

Smotrich said around 70% of Israel’s population support such proposals for “voluntary” migration. He told Israeli public broadcaster KAN this week that “2 million people [in Gaza] wake up every morning with a desire to destroy the State of Israel and slaughter, rape, and murder Jews.”

Ben-Gvir added separately that Israel wants “to encourage willful emigration, and we need to find countries willing to take [Palestinians] in.”

“Really appreciate the United States of America,” he wrote on Tuesday, “but we are not another star on the American flag.”

“The United States is our best friend, but first of all we will do what is best for the State of Israel: the migration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow the residents of the enclave to return home and live in security and protect the IDF soldiers.”

In its comments on Tuesday objecting to the statements from Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington had been “told repeatedly and consistently” by Israel’s government, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that “such statements do not reflect” formal Israeli policy.

“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and no terror groups able to threaten Israel,” the State Department added.

In December, US President Joe Biden namechecked Ben-Gvir and his allies in a speech in which he said some members of Israel’s coalition appeared to want “retribution” against all Palestinians in response to Hamas’ October 7 cross-border attack.

Troops from South Korea and the United States have held week-long combat exercises involving heavy weaponry and live-firing drills close to the North Korean border, Seoul has confirmed.

The drills, South Korea said on Thursday, were conducted to boost the allies’ military readiness in the face of expanded threats from North Korea. Pyongyang, meanwhile, has described the latest military collaboration between Washington and Seoul as “reckless war maneuvers.”

The exercises, which involved a South Korean Army mechanized infantry brigade and the US Stryker Brigade Combat Team, began on December 29 in the border city of Pocheon, some 46km (28.5 miles) northeast of Seoul. The operations concluded on Thursday, Seoul’s army said.

Some 110 weapons systems from South Korea and the US were involved in the exercises, which simulated precision-guided strikes on hypothetical targets, Yonhap news agency said on Thursday. It also included heavy-armor operations, including integrated tank-air defense firing.

North Korea also successfully launched a spy satellite last year, which directly led to the suspension of a military agreement signed with South Korea in 2018 designed to reduce military tensions between the neighbors, who remain technically at war.

Washington has responded to the North’s weapons tests by deploying military assets to the region, including a nuclear-powered submarine which docked in the South Korean port city of Busan last month. The US has also positioned aircraft carriers and large bombers in the region.

Concluding a year-end meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party last Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pledged to grow the North’s nuclear capabilities in order to “pacify the South.”

Kim added that the joint exercises held by South Korea and the US were “reckless war maneuvers” that posed a significant threat to regional security.

“With the instinct of confrontation deep in their bones, the puppets again marked the new year by making the aggressive choice that stokes war,” North Korea’s KCNA news agency said earlier this week. “2024 is the year of the highest risk of conflict.”

South Korea also confirmed on Wednesday that it had held live-firing drills and anti-submarine exercises in waters off its east, west and south.

Ukrainian troops are facing serious ammunition shortages, newspaper El Pais has reported. The Spanish daily also pointed out that Russia has been ramping up its own arms production of late, apparently outperforming Kiev’s Western backers.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour published on Wednesday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba confirmed that Kiev’s military was “rapidly burning through” Western arms and ammunition supplied earlier in the conflict. The country’s top diplomat urged the West to “expedite the decisions that are pending” on further deliveries.

In its article on Thursday, El Pais quoted Aleksandr, a sergeant from the ‘47’ mechanized brigade fighting in the city of Avdeevka, north of Donetsk, as complaining that Kiev’s troops are on an ammunition diet, with arsenals depleted.

The source told Spanish reporters that he and his comrades were having to fight with what they “have available, not always with what is the most suitable to attain the goal.”

Appearing on Russian TV last Friday, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of Russia’s delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, claimed that Kiev’s stocks of weapons, as well as those of NATO and the US, were already “empty.” The diplomat added that he did not expect any “spikes” in arms deliveries by Ukraine’s Western backers in the foreseeable future.

“You see what’s happening on the battlefield – the Ukrainians are already responding to ten or 20 of our shells with just a few,” Gavrilov summarized.

Earlier in December, the Washington Post reported that Kiev was experiencing an acute dearth of ammunition.

While the US has already shelled out nearly $45 billion in direct military assistance to Ukraine since the conflict broke out in February 2022, President Joe Biden’s latest $61-billion defense aid package has been left hanging in limbo for weeks, amid political bickering in Congress between the Democrats and Republicans. The latter insist they will unblock the new tranche for Kiev only if the Democrats agree to tighten border security on the US’ southern frontier.

In the EU, Hungary recently vetoed the bloc’s planned four-year, €50 billion ($55 billion) aid package for Kiev.

The Republican Party’s presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a decision by judges in Colorado to ban him from the primary ballot in the western state.

In mid-December, Colorado’s Supreme Court declared Trump ineligible to run for re-election and removed him from the ballot for the local presidential primary on March 5 after a lower court in the state found him guilty of inciting insurrection on January 6, 2021.

The Supreme Court judges based their decision on the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which says “officers” involved in insurrection shouldn’t be able to seek federal or state office. The amendment was introduced in 1868 and targeted those who fought for the Confederacy during the US Civil War.

In their filing on Wednesday, Trump’s legal team argued that “in our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct.”

If the ban is allowed to stand, it “will mark the first time in the history of the US that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major-party presidential candidate,” the filing read.

“The Constitution’s text and structure make clear that the president is not an ‘officer of the United States,’” they said. The reading by the Colorado Supreme Court, which equates the head of state with low ranking military officers, “defies common sense,” the filing read.

Trump’s legal team claims that the Colorado judges “erred” in their definition of their client’s role in the Capitol riots three years ago. “It was not ‘insurrection’ and President Trump in no way ‘engaged’ in ‘insurrection,’” they said.

The filing also argues that the “question of eligibility” for the presidency should be determined by Congress, not courts in individual states.

According to media reports, the US Supreme Court, which is under mounting pressure to settle the issue of whether Trump can be barred from holding public office, is likely to take up the case. However, it’s unclear how long it would take the judges to come up with a ruling.

Israel’s withdrawal of troops from Gaza indicates that it is “listening” to Washington, which has long urged West Jerusalem to shift to low-intensity military operations, Politico reported Wednesday.

It comes after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced last weekend that it would withdraw five brigades from combat in Gaza, comprising thousands of soldiers.

The IDF’s decision to reduce its troop presence in the Palestinian enclave is seen as “a signal that Israel is beginning to finally shift away from large-scale bombing and more toward targeted, surgical strikes on senior Hamas leaders,” as Washington has repeatedly urged, amid a rising civilian death toll among Gazans, Politico reported, citing unnamed US officials.

“What we’re seeing is the beginning of a transition,” one official said, while another added that Washington was “pleased to see the shift” but wished it had happened much sooner, according to the outlet.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the killing of Arouri “a new Israeli crime aimed at inevitably dragging Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation.”

In response, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mark Regev, said that “whoever did this strike was very surgical and went for a Hamas target because Israel is at war,” without confirming or denying the IDF’s involvement.

In mid-December, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recalled that Washington has repeatedly urged Israel to shift its high-tempo military operation in Gaza to a “lower-intensity, surgical, focused, targeted campaign.” He added that once this phase is activated, there will be no sanctuary for Hamas leaders, as Israel has the right to go after those who planned and executed the October 7 attacks.

Germany still has no plans to provide long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit has insisited. His clarification came in the wake of deadly tit-for-tat rocket and drone attacks between Kiev's and Moscow's forces. Berlin has for months refused to supply the weaponry, citing a risk of uncontrollable escalation.

Since the UK and France agreed to ship a similar type of rocket to Ukraine in May and July of 2023, President Vladimir Zelensky’s administration has increasingly been pressuring Germany to follow suit.

Russia has consistently denounced the delivery of ever-more powerful Western weaponry to Kiev. Moscow insists that such shipments only serve to unnecessarily prolong the bloodshed, without changing the outcome of the conflict.

The German-made Taurus missile carries a 500-kilogram warhead and has a range of about 500 kilometers (300 miles).

Speaking on Wednesday, Hebestreit confirmed that Germany would continue to back Ukraine, and “deliver everything that is possible and responsible.” When asked by reporters whether this could include Taurus missiles, the government spokesperson merely said there was “no new position” on the issue, and that deliberations were still underway.

In his New Year interview to the Economist published on Monday, President Zelensky said that cutting off Crimea from mainland Russia would be one of Kiev’s top priorities in 2024. The official renewed calls for Germany to provide Taurus missiles, arguing that the weapon could help Ukraine achieve its goal.

Speaking at a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Kiev back in September, her Ukrainian counterpart, Dmitry Kuleba appeared to ridicule Berlin’s refusal to arm his country with the long-range rockets.

He turned to the German minister and told her it was “just a matter of time” before her country would acquiesce.

Commenting on Kuleba’s remarks at the time, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius denounced them as “out of line.”

While some politicians within Germany have also criticized Chancellor Scholz over his refusal to deliver Taurus missiles to Ukraine, there are political forces in the country, including the right-wing Alternative for Germany and the Left party, that have consistently opposed the shipment of any arms to Kiev.

It’s “not clear” what Ukraine is doing with US-made Abrams M1 main battle tanks that had been provided to Kiev by Washington amid the conflict with Russia, Forbes has reported.

The US promised to supply Ukraine with 31 M1 tanks in January 2022 as the country prepared for its summer counteroffensive, which eventually started in early June. However, Kiev only received the American armor in October when it became clear that its attempts to advance failed to deliver the desired results.

Throughout the summer, the Ukrainians mainly relied on German-made Leopard 2 tanks and US-supplied Bradley fighting vehicles, several of which have been destroyed or captured by the Russian military. British Challenger 2 tanks have been used on a limited scale, with London officially confirming the loss of one such vehicle.

“It’s been two months since ex-American M-1s tanks arrived in Ukraine. And two months since we’ve seen any evidence of the tanks,” Forbes wrote in an article on Wednesday.

Forbes suggested that Abrams tanks haven’t been seen in combat yet because the Ukrainians are busy “up-armoring them to resist attacks by Russia’s explosive-laden first-person-view drones.” Both sides have been equipping their armor with cages, slats, and reactive armor to protect it from the UAVs, which, according to the outlet, “now rival mines as the biggest threats to tanks on both sides.”

“It’s all but inevitable that Ukraine will lose some of its four-person, 68-ton M-1s,” Forbes acknowledged. It added that the US armor might be “some of the best-protected tanks in the world, but they’re not invulnerable to attack,” with their top and sides being the weak points.

Ukraine has no alternative to US aid in its conflict with Russia and must rely on Washington’s support, Kiev’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has admitted. He also called for additional weapons despite American lawmakers remaining deadlocked over a new arms package.

Speaking in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour published on Wednesday, Kuleba claimed that Western states have “sufficient resources” to meet Ukraine’s urgent requests for aid, saying efforts must be “stepped up and expedited.”

“All the West has to do is start believing in itself – in its capacity to prevail,” he said. “And of course, time matters. We cannot sit and wait [for] endless discussions on this matter. So we call on everyone to expedite the decisions that are pending, because the West has shown that it is capable of defending democracy.”

“We don't have a plan B. We are confident in plan A. Ukraine will always fight with the resources given to it. And...what is given to Ukraine is not charity. It's an investment in the protection of NATO and in the protection of the prosperity of the American people,” he said, citing recent remarks by NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.

Kuleba went on to note the ongoing debate in the US Congress over the next round of military aid, observing the dispute is “centered on the domestic issues of borders in the United States.” While the White House has asked lawmakers to pass a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, some Republicans have vowed to block the measure unless Democrats agree to various border policy reforms. The legislation has been stalled for weeks, though independent US Senator Kyrsten Sinema said lawmakers are “closing in” on a deal, which could authorize billions in military aid for both Ukraine and Israel.

Earlier this week, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that Washington had provided the “last security assistance package that we have funds to support” just ahead of the new year, adding that any additional aid would have to be approved by Congress. 

“Absent supplemental funding, there's no other magical pot to dip into to try to get support for Ukraine,” Kirby added.

Kuleba did not deny that Ukraine is “rapidly burning through” Western arms and ammunition supplied earlier in the conflict, agreeing that Kiev is now seeking new air defense capabilities, combat drones of all types and long-range missiles, in addition to stepped-up sanctions on Russian officials and organizations.

The US State Department has insisted that Washington played no role in the terrorist bombings that killed nearly 100 people in Iran on Wednesday or in the drone strike that took out a Hamas leader in Lebanon on Tuesday.

Asked about the two Iran blasts, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters, “No. 1, the United States was not involved in any way, and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous. And No. 2, we have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion.”

Speaking at a press briefing in Washington, Miller also denied any US involvement or prior knowledge of the attack that killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and six other people in a Beirut suburb. Although he expressed sympathies to the victims of the Iran bombings, he claimed Al-Arouri was a “brutal terrorist” who was “was centrally responsible” for the October 7 attacks that triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby made a similar statement on Wednesday, telling reporters, “I would just tell you that al-Arouri was a noted designated global terrorist, and if he is in fact dead, nobody should be shedding a tear over his loss.” He added that US officials have no indication that Israel was involved in the drone strike.

Miller and Kirby both said US President Joe Biden’s administration has been working since the Israel-Hamas war began to prevent the conflict from spreading to other fronts. The State Department spokesman said that while Washington remains “incredibly concerned” about the potential for such an escalation, those worries aren’t any greater in the wake of the attacks in Lebanon and Iran.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to bring the perpetrators behind Wednesday’s attack to justice. “The enemies of the nation should know that such actions can never disrupt the solid determination of the Iranian nation,” he said.

The names of nearly 200 people cited in a 2015 civil suit brought by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre have been released by a US court, having been under seal since the case was settled in 2017.

Hundreds of court filings containing the names were unsealed on the order of US District Judge Loretta Preska last month, with a court spokesperson saying they would be made public on a rolling basis beginning on January 1. Files released on Wednesday include the names of billionaire Glenn Dubin and his former private chef Rinaldo Rizzo, former Victoria's Secret CEO Lex Wexner, magician David Copperfield, and many others.

High-profile public figures, such as ex-US President Bill Clinton and the UK’s Prince Andrew, who had already been publicly named in connection to the case, were also included.

Though flight records show that Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private jet on several occasions and at least one witness cited in the court filings claimed that he liked “young” girls, a spokesman for the former president said in 2019 that Clinton had not spoken to Epstein in more than a decade and was unaware of any criminal activity in the time he knew him. 

Court records released on Wednesday also allege that Prince Andrew had groped a woman at Epstein’s home in Manhattan in 2001. A separate case brought by Giuffre against the British royal alleged that she was made to have sex with Prince Andrew several times while underage, though the case was settled out of court last year. While he has acknowledged a friendship with Epstein, Prince Andrew continues to deny all wrongdoing.

The full list of names includes known associates of Epstein, as well as witnesses, victims and others incidentally related to the defamation case. The names of underage victims who did not testify will remain under seal, according to Judge Preska, who has also allowed individuals to appeal the release of certain documents.

Final Epstein Documents by LaRepublica Digital

In one instance, the attorney for a person identified only as ‘J. Doe 107’ requested their client’s name be kept under wraps, noting that she lives in a “culturally conservative country” and is “in fear of her name being released” given the nature of the case. The judge is now considering the request.

In the 2015 case, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell and Epstein directed her to have sex with men starting when she was just 17, and that Epstein himself had also sexually abused her. 

Epstein was charged for several sex trafficking offenses in 2019, but was found dead in his New York jail cell before the case could be tried. The death was ruled a suicide, with the Justice Department later finding that negligence by prison staff had allowed Epstein to take his own life in custody.

For years now, the US has been strongarming the Netherlands into accepting technology restrictions on the export of advanced lithography machines to China. These machines, produced by the Dutch firm ASML, use lasers to help create circuits for microchips.

Although ASML is a world-leading specialist company, its foundational patents are derived from the US, which allows Washington to coerce it into following unilateral export controls as the Americans see fit.

American restrictions have come in several waves, building on the sweeping export controls introduced in 2022. One such update concerning a specific kind of lithography machine came into effect on Monday, January 1, 2024. ASML attempted to rush through the sale of several such machines to China before the deadline but canceled it at the last moment – reportedly due to pressure from the US.

The news caused ASML’s US shares to drop. The fundamental goal of US foreign policy here is to try and crush China’s semiconductor industry and hobble its high tech ambitions, which has become one of the critical strategies to try and curb China’s military and economic rise as a whole.

In doing so, the US has blacklisted Chinese technology firms and has increasingly tried to stave off the exports of semiconductor equipment to China, describing it as a “small yard, high fence” approach. Despite this, there is overwhelming evidence at this stage that such sanctions are not working, not least because China is pursuing a coordinated state and industry effort to forcibly advance itself in semiconductor technology which has seen Huawei, the original US target of sanctions, effectively piece together its very own semiconductor supply chain.

However, moves targeted at companies such as ASML show that the US continues to represent an obvious threat and challenge to European economic competitiveness and prosperity. Why? Because EU firms are being forced, by command of a third party, to sever ties with their most lucrative market, in order to meet American goals. The US likes to claim that it supports free and fair trade in a market governed by the rule of law, but what kind of “rule of law” is there in a system where a firm you operate has secured a large number of sales in anticipation of a restriction deadline imposed by a third party outside of your legal system and then has to cancel those sales anyway because the same third party doesn’t want to wait for the deadline?

China is the world’s largest semiconductor market, whose high-tech development fuels a greater demand for microchips than anywhere else in the world. The US believes it can hamstring China’s long-term prospects by blocking this ascension as the country moves away from low-end manufacturing. Washington’s plan to stop China’s development and induce stagnation is based on faulty logic that China is incapable of innovating or moving forward without Western technology, which goes against all evidence to the contrary.

Instead, in the long-term, this approach will effectively cut off Western firms from the critical and lucrative Chinese market, as the US aims to create a new global supply chain in technology which it dominates, and therefore make the EU dependent upon it. This reminds us that the EU is the biggest loser of America’s war on China as it seeks to break a lucrative trading relationship but also, more critically, undermine European competitiveness, as it has done by depriving it of Russian energy over the war in Ukraine, and therefore absorb the market space for itself. To follow American wishes on China is to sacrifice sovereignty, geopolitical autonomy, and prosperity to serve the goals of the United States. It is a lose-lose situation. What happens to ASML when the time comes that China is capable of creating its own high-end chips and lithography equipment? And no longer has need of it for its domestic market, and offers the same solutions to other countries? You need to be in China to compete in the game, you don’t win by refusing to participate when the other side is still kicking the ball.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has rejected genocide allegations against Israel made by multiple nations, including a NATO ally. Washington has insisted that it sees no indication West Jerusalem’s forces are committing atrocities as they pound Gaza in a campaign to destroy Hamas.

South Africa’s government filed a genocide case against Israel last week in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and NATO member Türkiye announced its official support for the charge on Wednesday. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denounced the allegations at a press briefing later on Wednesday, saying there was no indication that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were committing genocide against the Palestinians.

“Genocide is of course a heinous atrocity, one of the most heinous atrocities that any individual can commit,” Miller said. “Those are allegations that should not be made lightly, and as it pertains to the United States, we are not seeing any acts that constitute genocide.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was more pointed in his response, saying the allegations against Israel were “meritless.” He added that the ICJ case filed by South Africa was “counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has likened Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave to Nazi Germany’s Holocaust against the Jewish people. He also has blasted Western nations for supporting Israel’s tactics, and he suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was just as genocidal as Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

Türkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, argued on Wednesday that by giving “unconditional support” to Israel, Western nations had lost all credibility to talk about “principles, virtue and morality.” He added, “I see that all of this is paving the way for a huge geostrategic rupture.”

Calls for mass displacement of the Palestinians are contrary to official Israeli government policy and the US view, Miller told reporters on Wednesday. “They are in direct contradiction of his own government’s policy, and we believe those statements should stop,” he said of Gvir’s rhetoric.

However, Miller added that it was appropriate for the IDF to ask Gazans to “temporarily” evacuate their homes when Israeli forces carry out “legitimate military operations” in their neighborhoods.

The formation of a new international order is inevitably accompanied by a conflict between the powers seeking to preserve their status and rivals whose development determines the creation of new rules and customs of interaction on the world stage. The military and political conflict between Russia and the West, as well as the gradually accelerating confrontation between China and the US, determine the central position of Greater Eurasia and Asia in international politics. This is, first and foremost, because this vast region is a space where stability and development are important for Moscow and Beijing, while crises and conflicts are highly desirable for the United States and its European satellites. The year 2023 has shown that Greater Eurasia and Asia have so far been resistant to the negative external influences that are having the most dramatic consequences in Europe and Middle East.

The fact that there are no opposing military and political alliances in Asia and Eurasia, and that the so-called geopolitical fault lines exist only in the imagination of particularly impressionable readers of American newspapers, is due to the peculiarities of this space’s political culture, but also to the general trends of international life at the present time.

Firstly, although this macro-region has its own experience of resolving interstate contradictions, conflict as the best way to achieve goals is not a central part of its foreign policy culture. In other words, where Western nations like to take up arms and see the solution to complex situations in confrontation, Asia and Eurasia prefer to resolve disputes peacefully.

Secondly, the emerging associations of states in Asia and Eurasia are not aimed at achieving aggressive goals against third countries. They are primarily aimed at achieving their members’ development goals and maintaining their internal stability. Therefore, there are no alliances in Asia and Eurasia that are created to ensure the privileged position of their members vis-à-vis the rest of the macro-region.

It is true that they have limited sovereignty and are dependent on the US for their basic security. But even in the case of Japan, achieving its development goals and acquiring the necessary resources is not absolutely dependent on an aggressive policy towards its neighbors. This is unlike the European Union, whose leading powers were interested in cornering Russia and gaining monopoly access to its resources. Finally, the comparative resilience of Asia and Eurasia to the challenges of destabilizing interstate relations is due to the fact that all the countries of the macro-region belong to the global majority, i.e. they share common strategic goals, even if the specific tasks required to achieve them may differ.

In other words, if we divide the international community into two groups of countries – those that parasite on the rest and those that rely on their own resources (natural or demographic) – we will not see representatives of the first group in Asia and Eurasia. This makes their interests common, even if their methods of achieving their goals may be different.

At the same time, as the major events of regional life in 2023 have shown, Asia and Eurasia are not free of certain internal contradictions, the resolution of which is an important task for interstate cooperation. Among these contradictions, the relatively difficult relations between the world’s two demographic giants – India and China – are at the top of the list. Despite the fact that New Delhi and Beijing are highly capable of not taking their conflict to the stage of systemic confrontation, the existence of a border problem plays a significant role in regional cooperation in general.

The Asian part of the macro-region is negatively affected by the growing confrontation between China and the US. Under these circumstances, some Asian states may indeed be concerned that Beijing sees them as the territorial base of its main global adversary or as a source of its own capabilities. This is already leading to complex internal processes in such successful associations as ASEAN, as well as creating interest in some countries to intensify cooperation with the US, as the Philippines is doing, for example. At the same time, we see that Asian countries are tending to raise the bar of their demands in their dialogue with Washington, which is experiencing a new bout of “pact-o-mania”. But they do not want to become satellites of the US or its new “unsinkable aircraft carriers.” The only exception is the island of Taiwan, where nationalist sentiments are a pillar for maintaining the American presence and blackmailing mainland China.

It is necessary to mention the continuing threat of destabilization of such an important part of Eurasia as Central Asia, which consists of the five former Soviet republics and neighboring Afghanistan. There are serious reasons to believe that this area will be used by Russia’s and China’s adversaries to create additional security problems for them. So far, with the exception of Kazakhstan, all the Central Asian countries have demonstrated the ability of their national authorities to deal confidently with the problems that have arisen in the course of their political and economic development. In the case of Kazakhstan, the events of January 2022 showed how fragile its statehood is and how easily it can be threatened by structural problems of an economic and political nature. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, demonstrate either a confident statehood or a consistent move towards being less vulnerable to external challenges and threats.

It is telling that ASEAN, which was created within the framework of the liberal world order and historically aimed to reproduce its basic algorithms for the development of international institutions in local conditions, is currently experiencing the greatest political difficulties.

To sum up the events of 2023, Asia and Eurasia remain a space of cooperation, not competition, and the leading regional powers are able to reach terms that would be relatively fair to their smaller partners. At the same time, all the acute problems facing the macro-region involve an extra-regional player as one of the actors. Localizing the negative consequences of this will be the main task of international cooperation in Asia and Eurasia in the coming years.

This article was first published by Valdai Discussion Club, translated and edited by the RT team.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has responded to the political fallout over a record influx of illegal immigrants by trying to shift blame for the border crisis to Republican lawmakers.

As House Speaker Mike Johnson led a delegation of Republicans visiting the US-Mexico border on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement accusing the opposition party of blocking Biden’s efforts to resolve the crisis. Biden spokesman Andrew Bates condemned Republicans for refusing to pass the president’s emergency-funding request and accused them of having an “anti-border-security record,” including an effort to cut funding for Border Patrol officers.

“House Republicans are once more compromising America’s national security and economic growth with shutdown threats,” Bates said in response to a report that lawmakers vowed to block funding for the whole government if Biden didn’t close the border. He added, “Today’s statements are just House Republicans’ latest admission that as President Biden and both parties in the Senate seek common ground to address the needs of the American people, their conference is instead choosing extreme politics that would subject American families to needless pain.”

However, Biden bundled his request for $6.4 billion in border security funding into a $106 billion emergency spending package that also includes military aid to Ukraine and Israel. Most House Republicans oppose continuing to send weapons to Kiev, arguing that Biden’s policies lack a strategy for ending the fighting. Lawmakers have also argued that the president’s plan doesn’t go far enough to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the US.

Biden’s administration released nearly 1.4 million illegal aliens into the US in the last fiscal year, in many cases letting them stay in the country while awaiting court hearings for dubious asylum claims, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

A Monmouth University poll released last month showed that Biden’s approval rating dropped to a record low of 34%. Just 26% of US adults approve of his immigration policies, a troubling statistic as he seeks reelection in 2024.

House Republicans plan to launch impeachment proceedings next week against Biden’s Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, citing his alleged failure to enforce immigration laws. “The border crisis is a direct result of President Biden’s policies,” Johnson said on Wednesday as he began his border trip.