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Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday morning local time that it had intercepted the “majority” of the “dozens” of drones and cruise missiles that Iran had launched against Israel, though a few hit targets, including an IDF base.

In a statement, the IDF said:

Dozens of surface-to-surface missile launches from Iran were identified approaching Israeli territory. The IDF Aerial Defense Array successfully intercepted the majority of the launches using the Arrow Aerial Defense System, together with Israel’s strategic allies, before the launches crossed into Israeli territory. A small number of hits were identified, including at an IDF base in southern Israel, where minor damage was caused to infrastructure.

Many dozens of hostile aircraft, as well as dozens of cruise missiles, were identified approaching Israeli territory from Iran and intercepted over the past few hours. Dozens of IAF fighter jets are currently operating to intercept all aerial threats approaching Israeli territory.

The IDF is deployed on all fronts, prepared, and continuing to defend Israeli territory.

In tota, IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that Iran had launched over 200 hostile aircraft.

Israelis were told to stay near the “safe rooms” — rooms with reinforced walls and doors — in their homes overnight. The order from Home Front Command was lifted before dawn Sunday morning, a sign that Israel believes the Iranian attack to be over. Booms continued to be heard over northern Israel.

The country was filled overnight with the sound of air raid sirens, and aircraft scrambling overhead, as well as the sound of explosions, as missile defense systems hit their targets. One injury was reported to a Bedouin Arab child in the Negev desert, hit by shrapnel.

Residents of the interior portions of Israel — including Jerusalem — heard air raid sirens and saw missile defense systems flashing overhead.

Quote:Israel intercepted missiles over one of Islam’s holiest sites, the Dome of the Rock, during the attack launched by the Iranian regime this weekend.

Video captured several missiles being intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome in the sky above the Dome of the Rock, one of the world’s oldest surviving works of Islamic architecture and a sacred shrine to Muslims. Take a look:

As Breitbart News reported, Iran launched a massive drone strike against Northern Israel, most of which was intercepted by Israel’s defense systems. They launched over 200 drones and cruise missiles. The report said:

The attack is supposedly in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on April 1 that eliminated seven senior Iranian military officials, including two generals, in Damascus, Syria. Iran has been using its terrorist proxies to attack Israel for decades, and accelerated those attacks after the Hamas invasion of October 7.

“In anticipation of the attack, Israel’s Home Front Command canceled school for the next two days and ordered demonstrations in favor of the hostages still in Gaza — a Saturday night tradition in much of the country — to disperse. Other large gatherings were also banned,” it added.

Quote:Crowds of pro-regime demonstrators poured into the streets of Tehran, the Iranian capital, overnight Saturday into Sunday as Iran launched more than 200 drones and cruise missiles against Israel.
The Hindustan Times reported:

Iranians have flooded the streets in large numbers to celebrate Iran’s attack on Israel. Numerous videos and posts circulating online depict a large gathering and rally of Iranian citizens at Palestine Square in Tehran, marking the move with jubilation. The attack, launched by Iran and its proxies, involved hundreds of suicide drones, ballistic missiles, and rockets targeting the Jewish state from all sides.
...
On Saturday night, pictures and videos of Iranians celebrating in Teheran went viral. Video clips reportedly showing Palestinians celebrating in the al-Aqsa mosque in response to reports of Iran’s rocket and drone attack also surfaced online. This large-scale attack highlights the huge population gap between the two long-time rivals. Israel has a population of less than 8 million people, while Iran has an estimated population of more than 89 million people, more than 10 times the size of Israel.

Iran has refrained from attacking Israel directly, using proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias. But the celebrations may be short-lived.

Israel has said that it would attack Iran directly in response to an attack that originates on Iranian soil.

Quote:Iran’s mission to the United Nations released a statement about the attack on Israel on Saturday evening, saying that Iran’s retaliation “can be deemed concluded,” unless Israel or the United States escalates further.

“Conducted on the strength of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter pertaining to legitimate defense, Iran’s military action was in response to the Zionist regime’s aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” the Iranian mission said.

“The matter can be deemed concluded. However, should the Israeli regime make another mistake, Iran’s response will be considerably more severe,” the statement continued.

“It is a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime, from which the U.S. MUST STAY AWAY!” the Iranian mission concluded, with capitalization in the original.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, said on Saturday that it attacked Israel with a swarm of drones and missiles in retaliation for “numerous crimes of the Zionist regime including the strike on the consulate section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus and martyrdom of a number of military commanders and advisers in Syria.”

The Iranians were referring to an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 that killed the commander of the IRGC’s foreign operations unit, the Qods Force, in Lebanon and Syria, along with several other high-ranking IRGC officers. Israel has not formally taken responsibility for the Damascus strike.

Article 51 of the U.N. Charter discusses the right of member states to defend themselves against attack, although such action is supposed to be coordinated with the U.N. Security Council.

Quote:World leaders were quick to condemn the “reckless” attacks on Israel by the Islamist regime in Iran, which they said “crossed a new line” in launching dozens of drone and missile strikes against the Jewish state on Saturday.

The international community, including leaders in Britain and the European Union, swiftly condemned the strikes on Israel by the Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which marked a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Tehran and Jerusalem from previous attacks carried out by Iran’s terrorist proxies in the region to direct strikes.

Responding to the Iranian attack on Israel, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the UK condemns “in the strongest terms the Iranian regime’s reckless attack against Israel”.

Sunak warned that the attacks “risk inflaming tensions and destabilising the region” and that “Iran has once again demonstrated that it is intent on sowing chaos in its own backyard.”

“The UK will continue to stand up for Israel’s security and that of all our regional partners, including Jordan and Iraq,” the British leader continued. “Alongside our allies, we are urgently working to stabilise the situation and prevent further escalation. No one wants to see more bloodshed.”

Meanwhile, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said that it has moved “several additional Royal Air Force jets and air refuelling tankers to the region” and said that any RAF jets stationed in the Middle East “will intercept any airborne attacks within range of our existing missions, as required”.

“In response to increased Iranian threats and the growing risk of escalation in the Middle East, the UK Government has been working with partners across the region to encourage de-escalation and prevent further attacks,” the MoD said.

The top diplomats in France, Germany and Italy have also expressed condemnations on behalf of their governments. French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné said that Pairs “condemns” the attack, which he said had “crossed a new level” of destabilisation. “France reaffirms its attachment to the security of Israel and assures it of its solidarity,” he added.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said: “We strongly condemn the ongoing attack, which could plunge an entire region into chaos. Iran and its proxies must stop this immediately. Israel offers our full solidarity at this time.”

Deputy Italian Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, who also serves as the nation’s foreign minister, said that Rome is monitoring the situation “with attention and concern”. Tajani said that he has spoken with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Defence Minister Guido Crosetto and relayed that the government is “ready to manage any type of scenario.”

Leaders in the European Union also expressed outrage over Iran’s strikes on Israel, with the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell saying: “The EU strongly condemns the unacceptable Iranian attack against Israel. This is an unprecedented escalation and a grave threat to regional security.”

European Council President Charles Michel wrote on social media: “Strongly condemn the attack launched by Iran on Israel. Everything must be done to prevent further regional escalation. More bloodshed must be avoided. We will continue to follow the situation closely with our partners.”

Quote:Former President Donald Trump issued a statement in support of Israel after Iran launched long-range drones at Israel on Saturday.

In a statement on Truth Social, Trump emphasized that the attack on Israel “would NEVER have happened” if he were president.

“ISRAEL IS UNDER ATTACK! This should never have been allowed to happen – This would NEVER have happened if I were President!” Trump wrote.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump...3797003144

Trump’s statement comes just before he is set to speak at a rally in Schnecksville, PA.

Iran’s attack on Israel is reportedly in retaliation after Israel launched an airstrike on April 1, which reportedly left seven senior Iranian military officials dead in Damascus, Syria, and destroyed the consular section of the Iranian embassy.

The attack on Israel comes after Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, leaving roughly 1,200 people dead and more than 200 people taken as hostages.

Quote:Iran on Friday launched an attack on Israel a day after President Joe Biden warned Tehran not to.

“Don’t,” Biden had told reporters after he was asked Thursday what his message to Iran was, after it had threatened to attack Israel in response to a suspected recent Israeli strike against seven members of the Iranian military, including two generals in Syria.

“We are devoted to the defense of Israel,” he added. “We will support Israel. We will defend — help defend Israel, and Iran will not succeed.”

Biden was planning on spending the weekend in Rehoboth Beach but returned earlier in the day and was slated to meet with his national security team in the Situation Room.

There were reports that he would address the nation from the Oval Office, but the White House then called a lid at 5:13 p.m. ET, according to the White House press pool.

Critics slammed Biden for weakness on Iran. Cliff Sims, a former senior Trump administration official, posted on X: “Biden reversed all the Trump policies that made Iran weaker and poorer. Now they’re spending all the money Biden gave them attacking Israel, terrorizing the world and threatening to plunge us into WWIII.”

Morgan Ortagus, former Trump State Department press secretary, said in a post: “Reminder: “Biden allowed the UN sanctions on Iran’s drones and ballistic missiles to expire less than six months ago. The very same drones and missiles en route to Israel right now.”

Quote:Saturday on Newsmax2, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani argued the correct response to Iran’s attack on Israel would have been to hit Iran at the earliest stages of the strike as possible.

Giuliani argued that was what former President Ronald Reagan would have done if he were facing similar circumstances.

“I really do think we’re missing an opportunity, a historic opportunity here — if we had a president like my old boss in the White House,” he said. “Every time [when] I was mayor and I had to make a difficult decision, I would say, ‘What would Ronald Reagan do?’ I know what Ronald Reagan would do right now. He would have hit Iran before their first missile got to Israel. And he would have taken out every nuclear facility he could. He would have been trying to look for an opportunity to do that for years.”

“Now, we take out their nuclear facilities, here’s what the traitors who run our government would say — they’ll say, ‘Oh, they’ll just build it back up again.’ That will take them 10 years to do. Also, if you really know what is going on inside Iran, if we were to hit them before they hit us, it would destroy them. They obviously are a frightened enemy. You wouldn’t do an attack like this unless you were timid. The best thing to do with a frightened enemy is knock them out. The best defense is a bold offense. This is our opportunity to end the reign of terror that we should have been looking for.”

Quote:Saturday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s continuing coverage of Iran’s attack on Israel, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said Iran’s direct strike on Israel now raises questions about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The Iowa Republican suggested the strike could have a chilling effect on Israel and its people.

“[T]his is unprecedented for Iran not to utilize those proxies but to strike directly against Israel and to engage with ballistic missiles,” she said. “The thoughts that I have heard coming from other colleagues, people within the space makes you wonder how close are they also to having those nuclear capabilities? They want Israelis to exist in fear, wondering what that next step will be.”

“But again, it is unprecedented what Iran has done, and we have got to assist the Israelis in any way possible to push back against this threat,” Ernst added. “Now, we do see Saudi Arabia stepping up. We see Jordan stepping up. We want to thank those Arab nations that are friends to Israel, engaged through the Abraham Accords and other partnerships. This is part of the DEFEND Act, which is bipartisan. I led that effort in the Senate many years ago. But to tie all of these nations together in an air defense mechanism so that they could protect against Iran. We see the successes when America chooses to lead. And this is what we need at this moment — is American leadership that will step forward and support Israel.”

Quote:Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, General Hossein Salami, on Sunday applauded the drone and missile attack on Israel, lauding it as more successful than expected before warning against any retaliation from the Jewish state or its allies.

Salami’s boast came despite the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saying it had intercepted the “majority” of the “dozens” of drones and cruise missiles sent to attack Israel, though a few hit targets, including an IDF base, as Breitbart News reported.

Overall a swarm of over 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were used in air assault by Tehran.

Israel’s air defense systems were backed by assets from the U.S., U.K., and Jordan that also intercepted Iranian drones and helped neuter the state-on-state attack.

Salami claimed otherwise in his boast of supreme success saying:

Our information on all of the hits is not complete yet but on that part of the hits that we have accurate, documented and field-related reports show that this operation has been carried out with a success that exceeded the expectation.

The Iran-state media outlet IRNA further detailed the IRGC commander warned that Israel will “regret its past actions and take a lesson from Iran’s attacks,” claiming any reaction from Israel to Iran’s recent attacks would be met “with a much stronger response.”

As Breitbart News reported, the attack was supposedly in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on April 1 that eliminated seven senior Iranian military officials, including two generals, in Damascus, Syria.

The only Israeli casualty was an Arab Israeli girl — a Bedouin Muslim hit by shrapnel in the Israeli city of Arad.

Quote:Israel Sunday struck a Hezbollah site in Lebanon’s east near the Syrian border, the Israeli army and a source from the Iran-backed group said, as tensions soared after Iran directly attacked Israel.

The Hezbollah source told AFP that “the Israeli strike targeted an area… near Baalbek and targeted a two-storey building belonging to Hezbollah,” adding there were no casualties.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that “an enemy air strike targeted a building” in the village of Nabi Sheet and “destroyed it”.

An AFP photographer at the site saw the concrete and steel wreckage of the building, levelled in the attack.

The Israeli army said in a statement that in response to launches overnight, “fighter jets struck a significant Hezbollah weapons manufacturing site” in the Nabi Sheet area “deep inside Lebanon”.

Earlier Sunday, Hezbollah said it had twice launched barrages of Katyusha rockets towards the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, saying they were in response to Israeli attacks on “villages and towns” in Lebanon.

It has launched similar barrages in the past, but Sunday’s launches coincided with a major Iranian drone and missile attack against Israel.

The Iranian attack was in response to an April 1 air strike widely blamed on Israel that destroyed an Iranian consulate building in Damascus, killing seven Revolutionary Guards, including two generals.

Hamas ally Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian militant group attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.

The violence, which has largely been contained to the Israeli-Lebanese border area, has killed at least 364 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Quote:The United States is highlighting its role in helping Israel thwart Iran’s aerial attack

US works to prevent an escalation across the Mideast as Biden pushes Israel to show restraintBy ZEKE MILLER and MICHELLE L. PRICEAssociated PressThe Associated PressWASHINGTON

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States on Sunday highlighted its role in helping Israel thwart Iran’s aerial attack as President Joe Biden convened leaders of the Group of Seven countries in an effort to prevent a wider regional escalation and coordinate a global rebuke of Tehran.

The U.S. assisted Israel in shooting down dozens of drones and missiles fired by Iran on Saturday in what was the first time it had launched a direct military assault on Israel. Israeli authorities said 99% of the inbound weapons were shot down without causing any significant damage.

U.S. officials said that despite the high interception rate, Iran’s intent was to “destroy and cause casualties” and that if successful, the strikes would have caused an “uncontrollable” escalation across the Mideast. U.S. officials said Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an effort to contain tensions, that Washington would not participate in any offensive action against Iran, and the president made “very clear” to Netanyahu “that we do have to think carefully and strategically” about risks of escalation.

The push to encourage Israel to show restraint mirrored ongoing American efforts to curtail Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which is now in its seventh month, and to do more to protect civilian lives in the territory.

While the U.S. and its allies were preparing for days for such an attack, the launches were at the “high end” of what was anticipated, according to the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

At one point, at least 100 ballistic missiles from Iran were in the air simultaneously with just minutes of flight time to Israel, the officials said. Biden and senior official monitored the firings and interception attempts in real time in the White House Situation Room. The officials said there was “relief” in the room once they saw that the missile defense efforts had succeeded.

A senior U.S. military official said American aircraft shot down more than 70 drones and cruise missiles, while U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea downed between four and six ballistic missiles, and an American Patriot missile battery in Iraq shot down one more.

Quote:Nestled on the banks of the Rio Grande some six miles south of Eagle Pass, construction is reaching a fever pitch on one of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s latest border projects. Breitbart Texas captured the progress being made on “Forward Operating Base Eagle,” a military base camp designed to provide housing to 1,800 Texas Army National Guard soldiers deployed to the area as part of Operation Lone Star.

The video shows trucks carrying construction materials arriving at the 80-acre parcel of land acquired by the State. The video captures the groundwork on utilities and foundation preparations for the sprawling project that sits on the edge of the Rio Grande just yards from Mexico.

Abbott announced the project to house Texas National Guard soldiers who are responding to President Joe Biden’s border crisis in February. The Texas governor explained the need for the project saying:

Texas is expanding our border security capabilities by building a new Texas Military Department base camp to increase and improve border security operations in this area. This will increase the ability for a larger number of Texas Military Department soldiers in Eagle Pass to operate more effectively and efficiently.

The new operations base promises dramatic improvements to soldiers’ accommodations, including their own individual rooms, a 700-seat dining facility, a recreational center, laundry facilities, and WiFi access. According to the Texas Military Department, the camp will also provide chaplaincy programs and medical and psychological health facilities.

According to state officials, the Texas National Guard soldiers are currently staying at multiple locations across the region in cramped quarters, apart from fellow soldiers, and sometimes traveling long distances to reach their assigned posts. When completed, the facility will be able to accommodate a surge force of 500 additional soldiers, bringing the total capacity to 2,200 troops.

According to Texas Military Department contracting documents, the state will pay Team Housing Solutions Incorporated, a company in New Braunfels, Texas, $131 million in operating costs through September 2024.

The construction comes as the region has experienced a drastic slowing in migrant crossings in recent months. As reported by Breitbart Texas, migrant apprehensions dropped across the southwest border from nearly 250,000 in December to less than 125,000 in January after a series of late-December meetings between the United States and Mexico. The drop in apprehensions in Eagle Pass was more significant, with arrests dropping from 4,000 to 5,000 per day in December to less than 300 per day, according to CBP sources.

Quote:Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that President Joe Biden was “being influenced by the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.”

Kennedy said, “I think my position is pretty clear. I love Israel. I despise Putin. I despise the Communist Party of China and I despise the Ayatollah in Iran. I don’t want America to be the world’s policeman, but I don’t want those guys to be the world’s policeman either. And with with those guys, if you turn the other cheek, you just get it in the neck. More sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem . I expect, I don’t know, but I expect the speaker of the House probably next week to put an Israel bill, Israel support bill on the floor of the House. I think it will be followed by a bill to support Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific and number three, i think he will put a bill to support Ukraine.”

He continued, “The big issue on those bills will bot be Ukraine, the big issue will be Israel because It is clear that President Biden is being influenced by the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party.”

Kennedy added, “Let me say it again, more sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem. My advice to the president today — for what it’s worth — Mr. President, don’t stop it. Support Israel. With respect, go to Amazon and buy a spine online. Peace through weakness never works, not with these hard armed men.”

Quote:Over two dozen barges broke loose from a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania marina Friday night, causing “extensive damage” as they floated down the Ohio River without control.

Both the McKees Rocks Bridge and the West End Bridge have been temporarily shut down after 26 Campbell Transportation Company vessels, mostly loaded with “dry cargo,” began heading downstream, CNN reports.

While 11 barges have been found and pinned against the river’s bank, 14 continued down the river and six have gone over a dam, the city said in a press release.

At 11:25 p.m., Pittsburgh Fire, EMS, and Police were dispatched for reports of barges breaking loose and floating uncontrolled down the Ohio River.

In total, 26 barges broke loose; 23 were loaded and three were empty. Those that were loaded had dry cargo such as coal, and no hazardous materials on board. There have been no reports of people injured, but Peggy’s Marina sustained extensive damage.

Eleven of the barges have been located and pinned against the river bank by Brunot Island and currently being held by a tugboat. Fourteen continued down the river and six have gone over the Emsworth Dam.

Officials added that both local bridges will be reopened “when it is determined that it is safe to do so.”

“[The barges] may or may not come into contact with sub-structure but we are not willing to take the risk,” police said.

The incident comes just two weeks after Baltimore, Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was destroyed in a cargo vessel collision, which tragically killed six construction workers.

Quote:The U.S. and U.K. will begin restricting the trade of new Russian-origin metals – including aluminum, copper and nickel – on global metal exchanges and in derivatives trading.

The announcement is meant to follow up on the Group of Seven nations’ commitment in February “to reduce Russia’s revenues from metals” as its invasion into Ukraine has dragged on for more than two years.

Russia is a key exporter of metals like aluminum, steel and titanium – but British and American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement, said the economic impact from the ban would be negligible for consumers and producers.

The intent is to limit Russia’s revenues from metals, they say, as metals have earned the nation $40 billion in the past two years, according to British officials.

“Our new prohibitions on key metals, in coordination with our partners in the United Kingdom, will continue to target the revenue Russia can earn to continue its brutal war against Ukraine,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a news release.

“By taking this action in a targeted and responsible manner, we will reduce Russia’s earnings while protecting our partners and allies from unwanted spillover effects,” she said.

The officials said new Russian metals will not be allowed to be traded on the exchanges, including the London Metal Exchange and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. However, metals produced before midnight Saturday in London will be permitted.

Quote:Ukraine is facing a potential outright defeat by the Russians this year, the former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command has warned.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine continuing into its third year, the badly outnumbered and outgunned Ukraine is facing a “serious risk” of having to admit defeat to Russia, General Sir Richard Barrons told the BBC. there is “a serious risk” of Ukraine losing the war this year.

The former head of the Joint Forces Command, now known as Strategic Command (StratCom), warned that pessimism may set in among the people of Ukraine and that the public may come to feel that the country “can’t win”.

“And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?” Gen Barrons questioned.

Off the backs of the failures of the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive last year to take back a meaningful amount of its territory occupied by Russia, despite expending vast resources and manpower during the mission, there are growing concerns that Russia used the time merely to regroup for another incursion to take more land.

“At some point this summer,” Gen Barrons said, “we expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines.

“And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting into areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them.”

The former JFC commander said that first, the Russians will need to break out of the Donbas region, solidifying their hold on “annexed” territories but then, they will likely have their “eye” on the “major prize” of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and the former capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Losing such an economically and historically important city would serve as a significant blow to the morale of the war-weary Ukrainian people.

The former top British general said that the Ukrainian frontline in the east of the country is currently being “battered away” by the Russians, whom he said are displaying a “five-to-one advantage in artillery, ammunition, and a surplus of people reinforced by the use of newish weapons.”

Such weapons include so-called “dumb bombs” from the Soviet Era which Moscow has retrofitted with guidance fins and GPS systems. A report from The Guardian this week claimed that upwards of 500 converted UMPC bombs were being launched at Ukrainian targets every week and that they “played a key role in the destruction of [the eastern city of] Avdiivka and the seizure of its ruins by Russia”.

Quote:The top commander of the Ukrainian armed forces has admitted that the situation along the eastern front with Russia has “significantly worsened” amid a renewed push from Moscow’s forces.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi — who took over the top post in February following the ousting of Valerii Zaluzhnyi after calling the war a “stalemate” — wrote on Telegram on Saturday that his forces are struggling to cope with escalating assaults being waged by Russia, which he claimed have intensified amid improving weather conditions and the recent “election” in Russia which cemented Vladimir Putin’s hold on power for at least another six years.

“The situation on the Eastern Front has significantly worsened in recent days. This is primarily due to the significant intensification of the enemy’s offensive actions after the presidential elections in the Russian Federation,” Syrskyi wrote during his visit to the Donetsk region.

The commander-in-chief said that Russian forces, with the use of “dozens of tanks” and other armoured military vehicles, are actively trying to “breakthrough” Ukrainian defences in Bakhmut, Lyman Raion, and Pokrovsk in the Donetsk Oblast, which Moscow announced the annexation of in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine, but still does not fully control.

Syrskyi said the Russian assault has been “facilitated by warm, dry weather, which has made most of the open areas of the terrain accessible to tanks.”

After a largely successful effort to fend off Ukraine’s much-hyped “counteroffensive” last year, there are growing concerns in Kyiv and in Washington that Moscow is planning a major offensive this year to fully capture the entire contested Donetsk region and potentially this historically and strategically significant Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and the former capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Quote:Ukraine is to become a giant testing ground for a revolutionary new laser weapon which, if successful, promises to radically alter the economics of warfare, the British government says.

The “sovereign” British Dragonfire laser was successfully tested at an Army range in Scotland earlier this year. Now, defence procurement rules are being changed to rush it to deployment five years early, and perhaps to the front line in Ukraine even sooner. British Defence Minister Grant Shapps said the rollout of the anti-air laser to the Royal Navy warships was being brought forward five whole years, from 2032 to 2027, but made clear it could be seeing action earlier yet.

Speaking during a visit to the national Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Shapps said: “Let’s say that it didn’t have to be 100 per cent perfect in order for Ukrainians perhaps to get their hands on it”. Even for British deployment on warships, he said it would be better to get to “70 per cent” complete and then field-test it to learn from real-world experience, rather than wait a decade for it to reach “99.9 per cent” completion.

Shapps said in a statement: “[Dragonfire is] the UK’s first laser weapon. Able to shoot down drones and missiles with incredible accuracy, it could revolutionise how we fight wars. And this isn’t an idea decades away, we’re building it right now to fit onto our warships in just three years time.”

The weapon’s revolutionary aspect — beyond obviously being a laser weapon — is how cheap it promises to be. Shooting down missiles and drones over Ukraine today is an extremely expensive business, with Patriot Missiles batteries coming in at a billion dollars apiece and each attempted shootdown launching a $4 million missile into the sky. By contrast, using the Dragonfire laser is claimed to cost just around £10 ($12) in electricity per shot.

This, if it works, would radically rebalance the economics of warfare as seen in Ukraine, where Russia — for instance — is able to blanket Ukraine with cheap, mass-produced explosive drones costing just a few tens of thousands of dollars each, but which would have to be shot down with missiles costing hundreds of thousands or millions. This attritional form of warfare becomes less appealing if Ukraine is able to shoot down drones with a $12 energy burst.

While limited to line-of-sight, the UK government claims the Dragonfire will be good for an accuracy level of hitting a “coin from a kilometre away” with an “intense beam of light”. That beam, it is claimed, can “cut through the target, leading to structural failure or more impactful results if the warhead is targeted”. Demonstrations displayed by DSTL include a melted commercial drone and a hole burnt into a mortar shell.

Quote:Vatican prosecutor  has filed charges against an Italian Catholic journalist, accusing him of “defamation” of Pope Francis as well as divulging confidential documents.

Marco Felipe Perfetti, a conservative Catholic who writes the blog Silere Non Possum (“I cannot be silent”), has called the charges against him an attempt at “intimidation.”

“It is no secret that within the Vatican City State there is no protection of freedom of the press and the activity of Silere non possum has annoyed and continues to annoy those who have always acted to the detriment of this State and for their own personal interests,” the editors of the site wrote this week.

The site of the news outlet alleges that the Vatican initiated criminal proceedings against Marco Felipe Perfetti by communicating the charges to the press rather than to the interested party.

Perfetti has also noted that Silere non possum is managed by an Italian citizen and resident in the Italian Republic, and thus, the jurisdiction over him should fall to his place of residence rather than to the Vatican City State.

The Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that in recent years, Silere non possum has become an important “point of reference for those who want to know secrets and affairs of the Holy See.”

Perfetti himself is a Roman lawyer with “many connections” within Vatican walls, the article stated, yet he has not yet received any official notification of the judicial process against him even though the hearing was to begin this week.

According to the popular U.S.-based Catholic news outlet The Pillar Catholic, in essence, “The man behind a well-known, well-read, and well-informed Church news website” has been charged with “doing journalism.”

Quote:German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in China on Sunday on a visit focused on the increasingly tense economic relationship between the sides and differences over Russia´s invasion of Ukraine.

Scholz’s first destination was the industrial hub of Chongqing, where he and his delegation of ministers and business leaders were to visit a partially German-funded company and other sites in the vast city, which is a production base for China’s auto and other industries.

Scholz is also scheduled to visit the financial hub of Shanghai during his three-day visit, before traveling to the capital, Beijing, to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.

German companies such as BMW and Volkswagen are highly reliant on the Chinese market, but Beijing’s support for Russia creates frictions with the West.

Germany’s economy has benefited from China’s demand for investment and manufactured items from cars to chemicals, but those ties have frayed amid increasing competition from Chinese companies and tightened regulations. Political interference has also been blamed for a sharp drop in foreign investment.

German companies have argued they face unfair market barriers in China and the government has pushed for a policy of “de-risking” to reduce reliance on the Chinese market and suppliers.

Despite that, China remained Germany’s top trading partner for the eighth straight year in 2023, with 254.1 billion euros ($271 billion) in goods and services exchanged between the sides, slightly more than what Germany traded with the U.S. but a 15.5% contraction from the year before. German exports to China totaled 97.3 billion euros ($104 billion), according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, although figures have varied depending on exchange rate fluctuations and rounding of numbers.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showed Scholz descending from his plane in Chonqing and leaving in a motorcade, but did not carry any comments made to the welcoming delegation.

Prior to his arrival, Scholz posted on social platform X that he had discussed the “massive” Russian air attacks on civilian energy infrastructure with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, and declared that Berlin will “stand unbreakably by Ukraine´s side.”

Quote:British authorities have accused China of attempting to flood the country with fake postage stamps, a form of industrial sabotage and “economic warfare” often associated with the days of the Second World War.

A sudden rise in detected forgeries of postage stamps in the United Kingdom — and complaints from unsuspecting customers being charged £5 to receive a letter posted with a fake — has been traced to Chinese companies offering to print a million stamps a week for just pennies apiece.

In the United Kingdom stamps can be bought through the Post Office or other retailers, and it is claimed the forgeries are being supplied to small shops by wholesalers who then sell them on to customers, honestly or dishonestly. The scandal of fake stamps comes just two years after the Royal Mail introduced QR-code type tracking data on stamps to fight counterfeits, and it may be this new system that has made the otherwise perfectly printed fakes detectable.

A spokesman of the Communication Workers Union accused the Royal Mail of “inertia” and said they were punishing the recipients of fraud stamps rather than trying to stop the stamps from getting into the system in the first place. He said per The Telegraph: “This appears to be a scam on quite an unprecedented scale… Royal Mail has an obligation not to penalise the customer and to stop it at source and get it sorted rather than pass the burden of the blame to the customer.

“There is a sense of inertia about this from Royal Mail. I wonder if they are in denial about the scale of this [scam] and they are hoping it goes away.”

Royal Mail, meanwhile, has blamed the hapless UK Border Force — which has been at the heart of the failure to wrest some control over the nation’s borders — for being responsible for the flood of stamps, arguing it is their job to intercept contraband.

Alan Mendoza of the Henry Jackson Society said that the mass printing of fake stamps would be happening with, at least, the tacit approval of the Chinese Communist Party. As such, he said, the stamps are “an obvious form of economic warfare and should be called out for what it is with economic repercussions for China if it does not rein it in”.

A Chinese government figure dismissed the claims it was involved in any way as “baseless” and “low-level”.

Quote:At least six people were killed and multiple people were sent to hospital with injuries after a stabbing attack at a shopping mall in Sydney, Australia on Saturday.

UPDATE 1330: Police have confirmed that a 38-year-old mother was among the six killed in a mass stabbing in a Sydney shopping mall on Saturday and that her nine-month-old has undergone surgery after suffering stab wounds, Nine News reports. NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb confirmed that four other women and a man were killed during the attack. Webb said that police have yet to “formally” identify the slain suspected stabber, but that they believe he was “known” to law enforcement. No motive for the attack has been made public as of this reporting.

The original story continues as follows…

Police shot a male suspect after going on a rampage with a knife at a shopping mall in Bondi Junction, Sydney at around 4 pm local time. Police have so far not released any suspected motive for the attack, which saw six killed and at least nine sent to hospital.

“From preliminary inquiries, it would appear that this person has acted alone,” Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said per the Sydney Morning Herald. “I am content that there is no continuing threat.”

“There is nothing that we are aware of at the scene that would indicate any motive or any ideology.”

Cooke said that the suspected stabber was confronted by a female police inspector, who shot and killed the man, saying: “He turned, faced her, raised a knife. She discharged a firearm and that person is now deceased.”

Quote:House Republicans’ dissatisfaction with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is rapidly growing as Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA) and Jim Banks (R-IN) are sharing their frustrations about what Banks called “insanity” in Johnson’s foreign aid framework, which includes over three times as much money for Ukraine as it does for Israel while neglecting the U.S. Southern border.

Perry took to X Tuesday to share an image of the framework, showing the bills allocate $48.83 billion to Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, $2.4 billion for “Red Sea Operations,” $2.58 billion for “INDOPACOM,” and $3.3 billion for a “Submarine Industrial Base.”

“Notice anything missing?” wrote Perry. Speaker Johnson “failed to incorporate any border security into any of the FOUR of the bills he’s going to ram down our throats this week.”

“On more than half a dozen occasions in the last six months, he promised the American People this wouldn’t happen,” Perry added.

Sharing Perry’s tweet, Banks called the package “Insanity,” emphasizing the plan would send three times as much money to Ukraine as it does Israel while simultaneously neglecting the U.S. Southern border.

Perry and Banks’ criticism of the four bills comes as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who filed a motion to vacate against Johnson ahead of Easter break, and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) signaled opposition to the multiple-impact reentry vehicles rule (MIRV) that Johnson seeks to merge the bills.

“Israel funding should not be held hostage by Ukraine funding. The American people deserve to know where their senators stand on each funding component,” Biggs wrote in a post on X

Quote:A defiant House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared Tuesday at a press conference he would not resign after being urged to do so by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who is now cosponsoring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) motion to oust him from the speakership.

Johnson addressed reporters hours after Massie told the Republican conference he was sponsoring Greene’s motion to vacate and asked Johnson to resign, so as to avoid a conundrum similar to weeks of chaos that unfolded after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was booted from the position.

One reporter asked Johnson to respond to “Republicans who say this move should cost you your job, and if you don’t resign, they will try to oust you?”

By “move,” the reporter seemed to be referencing the multiple-impact reentry vehicles (MIRV) rule Johnson seeks to use to bundle separate foreign aid bills for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, which multiple Republicans, including Greene and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), object to.

“I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson declared.

“It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country. It does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here: a secure border, sound governance. And it’s not helpful to the unity that we have in the body,” Johnson added.

Quote:Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday seemed to soften his support for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as conservatives have moved to remove him.

During a visit to Harlem, Trump was asked about efforts by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) to remove Johnson from office.

He simply responded, “We’ll see what happens.”

This is a different tune than when Trump spoke highly of the Speaker during a press conference last week at Mar-a-Lago.

“We’re getting along very well with the Speaker, and I get along very well with Marjorie. We have a Speaker, he was voted in, and it was a complicated process,” Trump said.

“I think he’s doing a very good job. He’s doing about as good as you’re going to do, and I’m sure that Marjorie understands that, and she’s a very good friend of mine, and I know she has a lot of respect for the Speaker,” Trump continued.

Trump’s comments follow as Greene spoke to Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, saying that she is prepared to force Johnson out of his position as leader of the House.

The Georgia conservative cited Johnson’s backing of continued Ukraine aid, his spending plans, and reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as some of the many reasons to remove Johnson.

Quote:Roughly 1,300 African migrants gathered outside New York City Hall on Tuesday over what some believed were promises of a green card or work visa if they appeared.

“Only 250 people were allowed inside for the 10 a.m. hearing, while the hundreds of others who flocked downtown were left outside in a park, where footage showed them chanting and cheering,” noted the New York Post.

The migrants were mostly from countries in West Africa and Guinea. Speaking to the NY Post, some say they were lured to city hall by an activist group promising they’d receive work visas or green cards if they appeared.

“They told me that they would help me to get a work permit and a green card if I came here today,” said 44-year-old Amadou Sara Bah, who migrated from Guinea in November.

Bah had applied for a work permit in March but became stressed over the five-month waiting period. He and his friends had been waiting on a bench near city hall for several hours.

“There are many people here and we don’t know how to get the help they told us would be here,” he told the NY Post. “I came here for a green card. I’m looking for help.”

Dial Lochitlio, a 19-year-old from Guinea, said that “elders in the community” told him to come to city hall in search of an asylum.

“They told us to be here at this time on this date and they would give us more information,” he said

Assitan Makadii of the organization African Communities Together said he went to city hall after learning migrants were lured there under false pretenses.

“They received some miscommunications, so we are here to provide clarification,” Makadii said.

Quote:As day two of former President Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial continued, attorneys for the former president had a potential juror dismissed after they found posts calling for Trump to be put in jail.

As New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, Trump’s attorneys, and prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office continued the process of questioning potential jurors about posts made to social media, and their private lives, Trump’s legal team had a juror dismissed over a post about Trump, calling to “lock him up.” Another social media post from the same juror reportedly said, “Get him out.”

The first seven jurors, who will sit on a 12-person bench, were selected.

The Associated Press (AP) writes:

Over two days, dozens of potential jurors have been excused after saying they could not be impartial or because they had other commitments. Trump’s lawyers challenged a handful of people over social media posts, and one person was dismissed over a 2017 post about Trump that said “Lock him up!”

Merchan reportedly acknowledged that the quote about locking Trump up was not good and he did not think he could let the potential juror “remain” in the trial, according to the Daily Mail.

Quote:New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan reportedly allowed a juror who celebrated former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss on social media to remain in the jury pool.

Trump’s unprecedented trial began Monday morning with jury selection, the first day of a process that could span two weeks. The trial could last until June.

During Tuesday’s jury selection, Trump’s defense attorneys tried to prevent a potential juror from staying on the case because she celebrated Trump’s 2020 loss, Fox News reported.

“They wanted to have a peremptory challenge to excuse the juror because they thought that she said she could be impartial, but had social media posts that apparently had her celebrating Trump’s loss in 2020,” Trace Gallagher reported, “and so they challenged her. The judge said, ‘Nope, she can be impartial. She stays.'”

Six jurors were seated Tuesday with six more prospective jurors needed.

Thirty-four of the 96 potential jurors remain from the first pool in the juror selection process for Trump’s criminal trial, courtroom journalists reported Monday.

The remaining potential jurors progressed to the next stage on Tuesday of filling out a questionnaire, which asks what media they consume, where they live, and their political activities.

After the questionnaire, lawyers for both sides will scrutinize the potential candidates. The lawyers will likely investigate the jurors’ social media and ask more personal questions to screen for biases.

Quote:The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s New York criminal case, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, is a Biden donor, Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.

Discussing the case involving Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump with 34 felonies, accusing him of falsifying business records in relation to a “hush money” payment made to Stormy Daniels, Binnall reminded listeners that the entire case “is based on the word of Michael Cohen,” an “admitted perjurer.”
“That’s the kind of the best they have. That’s what they’re building their case around is someone who … has lied to courts and factually, this case is just absolutely baseless,” he said, reminding listeners that Judge Merchan is a Biden donor.

“Let’s remember that Judge Merchan is a Biden donor. Let’s remember that his family has a vested financial interest in this case, or … the fact that the case is ongoing. They’re going to try to drag this case out I think as long as possible in order to affect the presidential election,” Binnall said.

Indeed, Judge Merchan made three donations to Democrats in 2020, opening the door for an ethics investigation.

When asked how a judge can be a donor and how that can even be allowed, Binnall said it is not.

“There are very specific instances when judges are supposed to take themselves off cases,” he explained, noting that this is “most important” when there was either bias by the judge or the appearance of bias against a criminal defendant.

Quote:Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was grilled by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) during a hearing over an alleged flyer that the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project claims asks migrants to vote for President Joe Biden in November.

On Tuesday, officials with the Oversight Project posted an alleged flyer from Resource Center Matamoros which they said was discovered by independent journalists in Mexico working with a website known as Muckraker.

The flyer asks migrants to “… vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The flyer has not been verified by Breitbart News and does not appear on the Resource Center Matamoros website.

Bishop raised the issue with Mayorkas at a budget hearing on Tuesday, questioning DHS’s role in ensuring migrants are not voting in local, state, and federal elections after they are released into the nation’s interior.

“The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project has released this document that is allegedly a flyer distributed by a non-governmental organization in Mexico called the Resource Center Matamoros … which is said to read, in part, if translated, ‘Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open,'” Bishop said during the hearing:

I understand that RCM has denied that this is authentic. There are competing reports about it. Let me ask you this, what actions is the Department of Homeland Security taking to ensure that, especially given the millions of illegal entries including the two million got-aways, noncitizens are being prevented from registering and voting unlawfully? [Emphasis added]

Mayorkas responded, saying “individuals who are not citizens of the United States cannot vote in federal elections” and suggested DHS does “not oversee the election enrollment process. What we do is enforce our borders.”

And when exactly did he start enforcing those borders? :sarcarsm:

Quote:The White House on Monday denied reports Iran gave President Joe Biden advance warning of its massive weekend attack on Israel, and even obtained Biden’s tacit approval for a limited assault on a vital U.S. ally.

“Iran never gave us a message giving us the time or the targets. This whole narrative out there that Iran passed us a message about what they were going to do is ridiculous,” White House spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing on Monday.

Kirby was referring to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian’s claim on Sunday that Iran gave all of its neighboring countries, plus the United States, 72 hours’ notice that it would attack Israel.

Officials from Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq confirmed they were notified in advance by Iran, and Turkey said it passed its warning along to the United States, a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

A Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday that the Biden administration asked Turkey to pass a message back to Iran, implicitly approving Iran’s attack plan provided its actions were kept “within certain limits.”

“In response, Iran said the reaction would be a response to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Damascus and that it would not go beyond this,” the Turkish source said.

Unnamed administration officials immediately pushed back against Amirabdollahian’s statement, although they seem more reluctant to claim Turkey is lying about forwarding its warning to Washington.

“We received a message from the Iranians as this was ongoing, through the Swiss. This was basically suggesting that they were finished after this, but it was still an ongoing attack. So that was (their) message to us,” one Biden administration official claimed on Sunday.

Quote:Nihad Awad, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), reportedly justified Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel over the weekend as a legitimate act of “self-defense” – a talking point provided by the Iranian regime that instantly became ubiquitous among pro-Palestinian activists.

Politico on Tuesday quoted Awad as one of several Muslim activists who said Iran’s massive but ineffectual attack was justified as “responding in self-defense” to a suspected Israeli airstrike on April 1 in Damascus that killed several high-ranking officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

A group tied to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei celebrated one of the slain IRGC officers, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, as a “martyr” who played a “strategic role” in the “planning and execution of Al-Aqsa Flood” – the name given by Palestinian terrorists and their supporters to the inhuman rape and murder spree Hamas perpetrated against Israeli civilians on October 7.

Awad threatened that President Joe Biden would “lose support of American Muslim and Arab communities,” according to Politico, if he did not take stances more opposed to Israel. Awad claimed that Biden also risked the loss of “a growing movement of Jewish Americans and others, including young people” as supporters without a stronger anti-Israel approach.

CAIR has been fairly influential in U.S. politics over the past two decades, even though it was declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.

The group’s public statements have turned increasingly extreme since the Hamas atrocities of October 7, which Awad also excused as an act of “self-defense.”

Quote:Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said Sunday evening that it was time for “regime change” in Iran, due to the threat that the Iranian government posed to the Middle East and the world.

Dershowitz appeared on Breitbart News Sunday on SiriusXM Patriot 125, during a special broadcast from northern Israel, just hours after the Israeli military and its allies had intercepted a massive Iranian missile and drone attack.

“This will just be repeated over and over again, unless there’s regime change in Iran,” Dershowitz said, noting that Iran has exported war with impunity for decades. “And this is the perfect opportunity — legally, morally, politically, and diplomatically, for Israel and the United States to bring about regime change. And it should be done. And it will require, obviously, some degree of military action.”

He noted missed opportunities to depose Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Dershowitz had opposed regime change in Iraq during the Iraq War, and reiterated that stance on Sunday, saying that it had been “none of our business” how Saddam Hussain treated his own people.

But the Iranian regime was different, he said. “The big difference is Iran is exporting terrorism, and attacking the United States.”

He said that regime change in Iran would be applauded by the Iranian people, citing the Iranian crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, who has encouraged protests against the regime.

Regime change in Iran would benefit the entire region — and it would be legally justified, he said, after Iran’s attack on Israel last weekend. If it wanted to, he said, Israel could legally destroy the entire Iranian military in response.

Dershowitz, who has been critical of President Joe Biden’s policies in the Middle East, said he is considering voting Republican in 2024 for the first time in decades, as are many other pro-Israel voters in the Jewish community, many of whom had been reliable Democratic Party voters — until now.

Quote:The U.S. Supreme Court sounded skeptical of the Biden Justice Department during oral arguments Tuesday regarding whether a man involved in events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, can be charged under a law that severely punishes obstructing an official proceeding.

The landmark case could upend around 350 cases in which defendants – around 100 of which have been convicted or pled guilty – were indicted on similar charges under the same provision.

The decision will almost certainly have major implications for the Biden Administration’s prosecution of Donald Trump, resulting in the most serious charges against him being thrown out of court.

The government indicted defendant Joseph Fischer after January 6 under 18 U.S.C. § 1512©(2), a provision enacted after the Enron scandal for one who “corruptly … obstructs, influences and impedes any official proceeding,” indicting him on six other charges as well. Fischer’s attorneys argue the charge in question inappropriately relies on that provision, which was clearly intended to cover concealing or destroying evidence related to white-collar crime.

That statute carries a potential 20 years in federal prison.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued Tuesday that Fischer and others engaged in “a deliberate attempt to stop the joint session of Congress from certifying the results of the election” and “obstructed Congress’ work in that official proceeding.”

Jeffrey Green, an attorney for Fischer, said the charge was inappropriate. “Attempting to stop a vote count or something like that is a very different act than actually changing a document or altering a document,” he said.

But conservative Justices questioned if the government went too far with the charge, expressing concerns over interpretation of the terms “obstruct” and “impede” and that the statute could be used to prosecute those engaging in sit-ins and other demonstrations.

“We need to find out what are the outer reaches of this statute under your interpretation,” Justice Samuel Alito questioned.

Justice Neil Gorsuch questioned, “Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today’s audience qualify, or at the State of the Union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote, qualify for 20 years in federal prison?”

Quote:Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on Monday it was “vital” to “immediately restrain Israel” in response to Iran’s unprecedented missile assault on the Israeli homeland on April 13.

Erdogan’s office published a readout of the conversation on Monday in which the Islamist leader reportedly “stressed that the Islamic world should increase its efforts in unity to stop Israel’s brutal attacks and hold Israel to account for its crimes against humanity.”

The “brutal attacks” referenced are Israel’s ongoing self-defense efforts in Gaza against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, which executed a brutal massacre killing 1,200 people, abducting 250 others, and executing widespread acts of torture, gang rape, infanticide, and desecration of corpses on October 7, 2023.

The readout did not indicate that Erdogan condemned Iran’s attack or called for “restraint” for the world’s most prominent state sponsor of terrorism. Erdogan has repeatedly defended Hamas in the aftermath of October 7.

“President Erdoğan stated that it is of vital importance to immediately restrain Israel and act with common sense in order to prevent the tension from spreading across the region,” the readout noted.

Erdogan’s comments followed a direct attack by the Iranian military on Israel on Saturday featuring the launch of over 300 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles. While unprecedented in scale, the attack was a high-profile failure. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel blocked 99 percent of the threats, including all UAVs and cruise missiles. Only one casualty, an Arab Bedouin girl injured by shrapnel, was documented.

Iranian authorities claimed the attack was a response to an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) terrorist organization. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.

Quote:Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi threatened a “fierce, widespread, and painful” attack on Israel or any other perceived enemy of Iran’s in remarks on Monday, disregarding widespread international calls for “restraint” in the Middle East.

Top Iranian officials echoed Raisi’s belligerence. A top Foreign Ministry official bellowed on Tuesday that Iran would respond “in seconds” to any attack by Israel, while a top Iranian Army general warned of a “stormy and unified” attack on Iran’s neighbor.

The threats are part of an extended victory lap the Iranian terrorist regime has been taking since Saturday, when Tehran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel featuring over 300 missiles and drones. The attack was a spectacular failure. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the country intercepted “99 percent” of the strikes, stopping all of the drones and cruise missiles. Only a small number of ballistic missiles crossed into Israel, the IDF said, causing minimal damage. Israel documented one casualty: an Arab Bedouin girl injured by shrapnel.

Iranian leaders nonetheless called the attack a “success” and made the dubious claim that Tehran had launched “hypersonic missiles” at Israel, hitting “a large intelligence base.” Iran has not provided evidence that its missiles hit any intelligence base or other target and Israel has denied the claim.

Iran struck Israel directly, rather than using its stable of international proxy terrorist organizations, in response to an airstrike against an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1 that eliminated seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and official wing of the Iranian military. The most prominent target of the airstrike was IRGC Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who a regime-affiliated organization claimed this week was involved in the “planning and execution” of the October 7 Hamas siege of Israel. Israel has not formally claimed the Damascus strike at press time.

The United Nations and much of the world has weighed in on the exchanges between Iran and Israel, demanding “restraint” and urging deescalation. Iranian allies such as communist China have called for “calm and restraint” alongside free states.

Iranian leaders appeared to entirely disregard those calls in comments on Monday and Tuesday. Raisi, speaking to Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in a telephone call on Tuesday, urged the Muslim world to unite against Israel’s self-defense operations against Hamas, an Iranian proxy, following the massacre on October 7. He also warned that Iran would not hesitate to attack Israel again.

“The smallest action against Iran’s interests will definitely be met with a fierce, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators,” Raisi said, according to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency.

Quote:Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) praised Iran on Sunday for attacking Israel, describing the massive but largely ineffectual wave of drones and missiles as “brave,” “legal,” and “natural.”

Iran’s state-controlled PressTV on Sunday described the two terrorist organizations as “resistance groups” and insisted the Iranian attack inflicted major damage on Israeli military targets, contrary to all reports from Israel. PressTV used Iran’s preferred nomenclature of “Operation True Promise” for the Saturday night assault.

Hezbollah likewise pretended the attack “precisely achieved its specified military targets despite the participation of the United States, its international allies and regional tools in repelling the sudden attack.”

“Regional tools” might have been a smear at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Jordan, which reportedly helped to repel Iran’s attack.

Israel and its allies were able to intercept almost all of Iran’s drones and missiles on Saturday night. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) hailed this combined response as a “significant strategic achievement.” As of Monday morning, the only known casualty of the assault was a young Bedouin Muslim girl who was severely injured by shrapnel from an intercepted Iranian drone.

“The political and strategic objectives of this significant development will gradually become apparent over time and will lay the groundwork for a new phase regarding the entire Palestinian cause and the historical struggle with this enemy on the path to the inevitable victory for our Arab and Islamic nation and the resisting and oppressed Palestinian people,” Hezbollah insisted.

Hezbollah defended Iran’s attack as “brave,” “wise,” and “natural and legal.”

Quote:Iranian opposition activist Vahid Beheshti on Monday exposed a confidential letter written by a high-ranking officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, that revealed Iran has been secretly supporting anti-Israel rallies around the world.

“The IRGC is very clearly organizing and promoting these actions aimed at destroying our modern society, all the while our politicians continue to appease them, placing our values, stability and public order under great jeopardy,” Beheshti said on Monday:

When I have said from day one that the October 7th brutal massacre by Hamas received its order from Tehran, this is what I mean. When I have said from day one that the IRGC are behind the weekly protests in all major cities around the world under the pretext of supporting the Palestinians, this is exactly what I mean.

To support his allegations, Beheshti published an alleged leaked confidential letter from IRGC Intelligence Security Organization (IRGC-IO) commander Brig. Gen. Mohammad Kazemi.

Kazemi is one of four senior Iranian officials that the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned in April 2023 for wrongfully detaining U.S. nationals in Iran. According to the Treasury Department, Kazemi also oversaw “the regime’s brutal crackdown against protests across the country in response to the killing of Mahsa Amini.”

In the alleged confidential letter, Kazemi discussed working with pro-Palestinian protest movements worldwide to politically isolate Israel. His correspondent was Col. Mohammad Sajedifar, a “cultural and psychological operations” officer of the IRGC.

Kazemi reportedly wrote:

Given the recent developments in the issue of Palestine and the psychological impact of the Al-Aqsa Storm operation on Palestinian communities in European and American countries, it was determined to implement significant support measures for April 15 and other rallies with the aim to achieve political isolation.

“Al-Aqsa Storm” is the name Hamas gave to its barbaric rape and murder spree against Israeli civilians on October 7.

“April 15” refers to a wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Monday that illegally blocked roads, bridges, and airports in the United States and other countries. The organizers described their stunt as an “economic blockade to free Palestine.”

“In each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact,” said the organizers, a group called A15 Action.

Quote:Israel’s public broadcasting corporation, known colloquially as “Kan,” interviewed an unnamed Saudi royal official on Sunday who said Iran “engineered the war in Gaza to destroy the progress in relations” between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“Iran’s behavior is irresponsible. We all know that Iran is a country that sponsors terrorism, and it should have been stopped a long time ago,” the Saudi official said.

Several other sources have made the same allegation, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who said two weeks after the October 7 atrocities that Hamas “moved on Israel” because “the Saudis wanted to recognize Israel.” Others have suggested Hamas also wanted to wreck Israel’s improving relations with other major Muslim countries, such as Indonesia.

Hamas’s bloody gambit seemed to work, at least temporarily, as Saudi Arabia froze relations with Israel on October 13 after Israel’s response to the atrocities commenced. Saudi sources said they would press for Israel to make more concessions to Palestinian statehood when and if normalization talks resumed, another indication that Hamas’s alleged terrorism strategy was successful.

The Saudi official who spoke to Kan on Sunday did not deny reports that Saudi Arabia assisted with intercepting the drones and missiles launched by Iran against Israel on Saturday night.

“Every suspicious object that enters Saudi airspace is intercepted. It is a sovereign matter,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) claimed on Monday that “half a dozen other countries” joined the United States and Israel to mount a highly effective defense against the Iranian attack.

Jordan’s cabinet stated on Sunday that Jordanian forces intercepted several objects that entered its airspace, with some of the interceptions occurring close to the Iraqi-Syrian border. Eyewitnesses reported seeing multiple interceptions within 40 miles of Jordan’s capital, Amman.

According to the WSJ’s sources, Saudi Arabia and its close ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), shared intelligence with the United States and Israel on Thursday about the impending Iranian attack.

Quote:Israel shooting down “99 per cent” of the missiles and drones sent by Iran over the weekend shows what it possible when a nation has the full support of its allies, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said as Kyiv pleads for Israel-like air defence from its Western supporters.

Iran launched a massive barrage of over 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Sunday, very nearly all of which were shot down by Israel’s indigenous air-defence systems, along with support from allies including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Jordan. Ukraine has been quick to point out the similarities in its own position — noting even the Iranian-designed Shahed drones launched at Israel are the same type Russia launches at its cities daily — and call for additional support.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, who has been fully engaged in whistle-stop tours around Western capitals drumming up military support since the war began, was speaking alongside his Norwegian counterpart on Monday morning and compared missile attacks on Ukraine to this new strike on Israel. Even if the Western allies don’t want to open fire on Russian missiles themselves — as the U.S. and UK had on Sunday in support of Israel — Kuleba said Ukraine would gladly do the job for them, if only more missile systems would be handed over.

He said: “… the joint efforts of Israel and its allies, which, by the way, are also our allies, were very successful. We see that when allies act together and remain really coordinated, not a single missile hits the target in Israel. Not one missile! And all we ask of our partners is, even if you cannot act the way you act in Israel, give us what is needed, and we will do the rest ourselves.”

In contrast to Israel’s near totally successful defence against the large wave of attacks on Sunday, Russian missiles and drones in far smaller numbers frequently land hits in Ukraine. Last week one of the nation’s largest power stations was totally destroyed, leading to the possibility of blackouts.

Pushing the point Ukraine still deserves greater support even as attention is grabbed by events in the Middle East, Ukrainian state media asserted Russia’s freequrent assaults on Ukraine using Iranian technology was a learning exercise, teaching Tehran how to assault Israel. It was said: “During the Russian attacks against Ukraine, the Iranians are training how to attack Israel. Russia and Iran cooperate closely, in particular, they use similar samples of Shahed drones… Israel’s experience shows that due to a sufficient number of modern weapons, in particular fighter aircraft, it is possible to effectively repel massive attacks. This is an additional argument why it is necessary to provide Ukraine with additional air defence systems and F-16 aircraft.”

Quote:The Vice-President of Germany’s parliament has faced calls to step down after she said Israel “provoked” Iran’s enormous missile attack on Sunday.

Aydan Özoğuz, a Turkish-heritage left-wing politician of Germany’s SPD (Social Democrat) party, who now serves as the nation’s Bundestag Vice-President (parliament deputy speaker) faced a barrage of criticism from politicians and Jewish groups after she wrote Israel had provoked the Iranian missile and drone strike. Critics have called for political “consequences” for the comments and its subsequent retraction and non-apology, for her to resign, with some even sardonically noting Özoğuz’s previously publicised familial links to Islamic extremism.

Writing on Sunday as the barrage of projectiles headed towards Israel from Iran, a massive strike which Israel would subsequently report had been “99 per cent” shot down, Özoğuz wrote, “Why did this situation have to be provoked? Bombing of Iran embassy further endangers the Middle East”.

Apparently noticing the outburst was generating controversy online, Özoğuz then deleted the post but stopped short of acknowledging her assertion that Israel brought the strike upon itself was at fault. Instead, she said, her tweet was causing arguments online: “That’s why I deleted my post. The war is bad enough.”

Several political and civil society figures jumped upon the messages, saying they made a mockery of Özoğuz’s senior — and constitutionally impartial — position as vice-president of the nation’s parliament. Professor Stefan Liebig, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, said Özoğuz was using an “old anti-Semitic trope” that Jewish people bring punishment upon themselves through their own actions.

This statement is “unworthy of a representative of a constitutional body” and if Özoğuz had “an ounce of decency” she would resign, the professor said.

Volker Beck, a high-profile former politician who was a top parliamentarian for the left-wing Green Party, a leader of the German lesbian and gay association, and who is now leader of the German–Israeli Society, was biting in his sarcasm when he wrote: “Israel was attacked by Iran tonight. And you said Israel was provoking? Did your brothers hack your account?”.

As widely discussed when Aydan Özoğuz first gained prominence in German politics and became the government’s integration minister, she was born to Turkish ‘guest worker’ migrants who came to Europe in the 1970s — reportedly from a middle-class Turkish family who had lived in an “elite” Istanbul neighbourhood — but rather than drifting into German politics like herself, Özoğuz’s German-born brothers had gravitated to Shia Islamic extremism.

Quote:Police in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) have identified the assailant who stabbed six people to death at a busy Sydney shopping center on Saturday afternoon before he was shot dead.

Australia-born Joel Cauchi, 40, was responsible for the attack at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Bondi Junction, in the city’s eastern suburbs, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

NSW Assistant Police Commissioner Anthony Cooke told reporters at a media conference on Sunday Cauchi suffered from yet unspecified mental health issues and police investigators weren’t treating the attack as terrorism-related.

“We are continuing to work through the profiling of the offender but very clearly to us at this stage it would appear that this is related to the mental health of the individual involved,” Cooke said.

“There is still, to this point… no information we have received, no evidence we have recovered, no intelligence that we have gathered that would suggest that this was driven by any particular motivation – ideology or otherwise,” he added.

The attack at the shopping center, one of the country’s busiest and which was a hub of activity on a particularly warm fall afternoon, began around 3:10 p.m. and police were swiftly called, as Breitbart News reported.

Quote:Police in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) have declared Monday’s stabbing at a Sydney church a religiously motivated “terrorist act” while declining to publicly state the faith of the alleged attacker.

The definition means counter-terrorism investigators – a joint team comprising NSW and federal police as well as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) – now have extraordinary powers under NSW laws to investigate the attack, the BBC reports.

They can also conduct searches to prevent any further suspected attacks.

As Breitbart News reported, a 16-year-old boy was arrested after a bishop, a priest and churchgoers were attacked during mass at the Assyrian Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the west of the city.

At least four people suffered “non-life-threatening” injuries, police say. The attacker was also hurt.

The incident was captured on a church livestream and quickly triggered unrest in the suburb of Wakeley as locals rushed to support those under attack.

ABC News reports the boy was charged with a range of offences, including possessing a knife, in November last year after an incident at a Sydney train station.

The boy was found in possession of a flick knife and charged with being armed with a weapon with intent to commit and indictable offence, stalking and/or intimidation and recklessly destroy or damage property.

He was on bail until his last court appearance in January, where his case was “proven” but dismissed with a good behaviour bond.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel sustained lacerations to his head during the attack.

The 53-year-old underwent surgery and a 39-year-old man also sustained cuts and a shoulder injury while attempting to intervene, NSW Police say.

Quote:The government of Australia lost its showdown with terrorist sympathizers on Sunday, as thousands ignored government orders to join unauthorized pro-Palestinian rallies across the country, including a huge gathering in Sydney that officials specifically urged citizens to avoid.

The government of New South Wales (NSW) had a very awkward week as it struggled to explain why Hamas sympathizers were allowed to stage an ugly rally at the Sydney Opera House last Monday night, replete with cries to “Gas the Jews!”

The only person arrested at this hateful spectacle was a Jewish man who showed up to express support for Israel, even though the “Gas the Jews” rally was held without proper permits and featured illegal use of incendiary devices. The man was told his presence could be a threat to public order, even though the opera house was lit with the colors of Israel in sympathy for the victims of Hamas.

NSW premier Chris Minns eventually apologized to the Jewish community and urged Jews to “feel that they can have full access to this city, that they can enjoy its life, that they can be part of its culture, that they can commemorate together during solemn occasions.”

Minns scoffed at the notion that Hamas sympathizers would “commandeer Sydney’s streets” with future demonstrations, while police officials promised that permission for another “Free Palestine” rally on Sunday would be denied.

The rally went off anyway, with an estimated 2,000 attendees flooding the streets of Sydney to wave Palestinian flags, only a week after Hamas butchered thousands of Israeli civilians and took dozens of hostages, including women and children.

“We saw earlier this week the premier of New South Wales said don’t come to this protest. Well, there are thousands of people here,” demonstration organizer Farhad Ali said.

Quote:UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron arrived in Israel on Wednesday for talks where he is expected to repeat his warning against any  response to the recent missile attack by Iran.

Lord Cameron will meet Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has vowed to retaliate to Iran’s weekend attack.

As Breitbart News reported, the state-on-state strike by more than 300 missiles and drones from Iran caused only modest damage in Israel as most were shot down by its Iron Dome defence system and with help from the U.S., Britain, France and Jordan.

The BBC reports the UK’s most senior diplomatic envoy will push Israel to reign in the scope and scale of its response over fears it could lead to a wider war across the Middle East, repeating a previous message to the Jewish state not to resort to force.

He called on Israel’s government to be “smart as well as tough.”

Speaking to reporters shortly after arriving in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, Lord Cameron said he was there to “show solidarity after that appalling attack by Iran,” adding:

It’s right to have made our views clear about what should happen next, but it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act. We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible. And in a way that, as I said yesterday, is smart as well as tough.

But the real need is to refocus back on Hamas, back on the hostages, back on getting the aid in, back on getting a pause in the conflict in Gaza.

Quote:President Joe Biden appeared to confuse the Israeli port city of Haifa with the Palestinian town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip during an interview on Wednesday in his home town Scranton, Pennsylvania.

In video circulated by the Republican National Committee — but evidently cut from the version of the interview that  eventually aired on TV stations — Biden claimed credit for having pressured Israel not to launch an attack on its own city:

The president was apparently trying to claim credit for pressuring Israel, in response to a question about how he had responded to anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters who have followed him for months.

Biden has tried to pressure Israel not to enter Rafah, a city in Gaza on the Egyptian border that is thought to be the location of the last Hamas battalions, and the remaining Israeli hostages.
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Israel has said it will invade Rafah to destroy the remnants of Hamas, and that it has prepared a plan to evacuate the Palestinian civilians from elsewhere in Gaza who have taken refuge in the city.

The Israeli government reiterated Thursday to Breitbart News that it had set a date for its attack on Rafah, though it did not say when that would happen.

Quote:The pattern of Islamic terrorists hurting fellow Arabs and Muslims continues, with seven residents of the Bedouin Arab town of Arab Al-Aramshe in northern Israel hurt by a Hezbollah drone attack on Wednesday.

The Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist army has fired rockets, drones, and anti-tank missiles sporadically at northern Israel since October, when Hamas — another Iranian-backed terrorist army — attacked Israel on October 7.

The Times of Israel reports:

At least seven people were wounded as an apparent drone fired from Lebanon struck a community center in the northern border village of Arab al-Aramshe on Wednesday, medics and the military said.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said that two of the victims were listed in serious condition. Another person was moderately hurt, and four others were in good condition, MDA said.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted a building used by the Israeli military with guided missiles and explosive-laden drones.

Typically, warning sirens provide residents with 15 to 30 seconds to seek shelter. On this occasion, there were no sirens, according to the Times of Israel.

As in the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend, whose only casualty was a severely injured Bedouin Arab Muslim girl, the victims of Iran and its proxies are not limited to Israeli Jews.

Breitbart News was near Arab Al-Aramshe on Monday, in the nearby Israeli community of Shlomi, several miles to the west, whose residents have largely been evacuated since the start of the war.

Update: Israel’s Army Radio reported that the number of wounded had been raised to 13, and that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had returned fire at Hezbollah positions.

Quote:Palestinians have been flocking to the beach in Gaza this week, as temperatures soared and families took advantage of a lull in fighting in most of the area.

Israel pulled out its ground forces from southern Gaza earlier this month, leaving one brigade in control of an access road that divides the northern and southern Gaza Strip. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers have continued to attack Hamas in targeted operations, but most areas of Gaza are enjoying calm.

At the same time, Israeli authorities — urged by the U.S. — are accelerating the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. There is so much food entering Gaza that the prices of commodities like flour and eggs have collapsed.

Though aid organizations and foreign critics of Israel continue to warn about “famine,” there is evidence of plenty in the Gaza Strip. The IDF unit known as COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) posted photographs of markets in Gaza brimming with fruit, vegetables, and other food items for sale.

As images of Gazans at the beach circulated on social media, many pro-Israel voices pointed to the photos as evidence that there is no “famine” or “genocide” in Gaza.

Quote:A senior official in the government of Qatar told reporters Wednesday that the country is reconsidering acting as a mediator for talks between its neighbor Israel and Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization whose leaders live lavishly in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani reportedly said that Doha is mulling an exit from the talks, meant to find an agreement to free an estimated 133 hostages still in Hamas custody in exchange for Israel stopping its self-defense operations in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza, due to “abuse” from unnamed politicians.

Hamas took an estimated 250 hostages during its unprecedented, savage siege of Israel on October 7, in which Hamas terrorists also killed about 1,200 people and engaging in gruesome acts of infanticide, abuse of corpses, rape, and more. Much of the Middle East rallied around Hamas following the attack, claiming it was just retribution for Israel’s “occupation” of its sovereign territory.

Among the most belligerent parties was state sponsor of terrorism Iran, one of Hamas’s top sources of revenue, which launched an unprecedented, but failed, missile and drone assault against Israel this weekend. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made one of his first phone calls following the attack to the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Prime Minister al-Thani told reporters in Doha that the Qataris felt disrespected in the talks between Hamas and Israel.

“Qatar is in the process of a complete re-evaluation of its role,” the prime minister reportedly said.

“There is exploitation and abuse of the Qatari role,” he continued, according to the Times of Israel, and accused unnamed “politicians” of “trying to conduct election campaigns by slighting the State of Qatar.”

The Saudi outlet al-Arabiya quoted al-Thani as saying that Qatari was disappointed by the “misuse of this mediation for narrow political interests, and this necessitated Qatar to undertake a full evaluation of this role.”

The Qatari government often identifies any criticism of its policies as victimizing and abuse. During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which Qatar hosted despite international condemnation by human rights experts, Emir al-Thani claimed his country was facing an “unprecedented campaign” of criticism in bad faith, built on “fabrications and double standards.” In reality, condemnation of Qatar was based on years of evidence that it had used slave workers to build World Cup facilities, its long history of human rights abuses against suspected gay people, and its complete lack of free speech or other basic civil liberties.

Prime Minister al-Thani had lamented on Wednesday before the announcement that Doha was reconsidering participating in the talks that negotiations between Israel and Hamas were “stalling.”

Quote:Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in a speech to members of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Wednesday that he will host Hamas “political” leader Ismail Haniyeh this weekend in Turkey.

The visit will following a reported meeting between Haniyeh and Erdogan’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, in Qatar on Tuesday.

Erdogan used his speech – which reports indicate was interrupted by cheers of “death to Israel” – to reiterate his false claim that Hamas “is not a terrorist organization” and compare the jihadists to the fighters that established the Republic of Turkey in the early 20th century. Erdogan notably referred to Haniyeh as “the leader of the Palestinian cause” in his remarks, in apparent dismissal of the Palestinian Authority and its elderly leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and of rival jihadist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas, a jihadist terror organization bankrolled by state sponsor of terrorism Iran, controls the territory of Gaza but its elite leaders, such as Haniyeh, live in luxury in Doha, Qatar, receiving safe haven alongside the leaders of similar terrorist organizations from the government there.

Erdogan is one of Hamas’s most vocal supporters on the international stage, complicating Turkey’s close relationship to Israel’s top ally America. Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, meaning America is treaty-bound to defend Turkey from any foreign invasion if it invokes Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and vice versa. Despite being a member of a largely Western alliance, Turkey has enthusiastically supported Hamas in the aftermath of its harrowing October 7 siege of Israel, in which Hamas terrorists butchered entire families in their homes and engaged in torture, gang rape, and other atrocities.
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In his remarks on Wednesday, Erdogan boasted that he would “be the voice of the oppressed Palestinian people … as long as God grants me life.” He accused Israel of engaging in “massacres” during its self-defense operations in Gaza following October 7 while simultaneously defending Hamas, the group responsible for the slaughter that necessitated Israel’s Gaza incursion.

“When no one else would speak, we stood up and said: ‘Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a resistance group,” Erdogan said proudly, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

“I will host the leader of the Palestinian cause at the weekend. We will discuss a number of issues,” Erdogan promised, apparently referring to Haniyeh.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Haniyeh had met with Fidan, the Turkish foreign minister, on Tuesday in anticipation of his visit. The news outlet claimed the two discussed “humanitarian aid to Gaza, ceasefire efforts and talks on hostages.” While a close ally of the Turkish authoritarian government, Haniyeh has not met with Erdogan since October 7, last visiting Ankara in July alongside Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Quote:Saudi Arabia is expecting “around a million guests a year” to visit its oil rig-themed “adventure tourism” park that will feature an underwater restaurant, “immersive theater,” and multiple hotels, the executive in charge of the project told the Emirati newspaper The National on Tuesday.

The project, simply called “The Rig,” will be a series of floating offshore attractions built into both a formerly operative oil rig and newly constructed platforms, developers have promised, featuring a water park, roller coasters, and diving and submarine activities. The idea is “inspired by Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas heritage” and tied to “Vision 2030,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s all-encompassing plan to move Saudi Arabia’s economy away from dependence on oil and gas.

“The Rig” is one of several extravagant tourism projects bin Salman, the de facto leader of the country, has approved since the implementation of Vision 2030 in 2016. Tourism is a critical pillar of the plan to move the economy away from fossil fuels, an ambitious proposal given Saudi Arabia’s longtime reputation of being a haven for fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. The country introduced the availability of tourist visas in 2019, after bin Salman assumed the position of crown prince, and began preparing the country for an influx of tourists with employee training programs to give job opportunities to local workers.

Bin Salman has invested billions in changing the public face of Saudi Arabia into one competing with the neighboring United Arab Emirates, which welcomed a record 17 million tourists to Dubai in 2023 looking for luxurious, high-end experiences.

In addition to The Rig, Saudi Arabia announced the development this year of a theme park based on the Japanese anime series Dragonball Z and the expected opening of the first tourist resort in “Neom,” a brand-new city under construction that the crown prince has said he hopes to see “compete with Miami” to attract large-scale events and tourism.

Quote:Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held calls with the top diplomats of Iran and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday in which he expressed support for Iran’s unprecedented bombing on Israel on Saturday and the Muslim world’s opposition to Israel generally.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian, summarizing the call with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said that Wang accepted Iran’s justification for the launching of over 300 missiles and drones at Israel and described Iran as “good-neighborly and friendly.”

“China noted Iran’s statement that its action was restrained and was an act of self-defense in response to the attack on its embassy,” Lin told reporters during his regular briefing on Wednesday. “China appreciated Iran’s emphasis on not targeting regional and neighboring countries and its reiteration of its continuing commitment to a good-neighborly and friendly policy.”

Iran launched a flurry of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel on Saturday, claiming it was a just retaliation against an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria.

The Damascus strike eliminated seven officers with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, including commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who an IRGC-affiliated group claimed was involved in the planning of the harrowing October 7 massacre of civilians in Israel by Iranian proxy terror organization Hamas. Israel has not taken responsibility for the strike.

Iran’s air assault was a catastrophic failure. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel intercepted all of Iran’s UAVs and cruise missiles, allowing only a small number of ballistic missiles through that caused no significant damage. An estimated 99 percent of Iran’s weapons did not land. Israel documented one casualty, an Arab Bedouin girl hit by shrapnel.

Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, reportedly justified the failed assault and, rather than criticize Iran’s belligerence, “strongly” condemned the Damascus airstrike.

“Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China strongly condemns and opposes the attack on Iran’s embassy in Syria and that the attack is a serious and unacceptable violation of international law,” spokesman Lin Jian said. “China believed that Iran is fully cognizant of the situation and will avoid causing further turbulence while defending its sovereignty and dignity.”

USA

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[spoiler=Hush Money Trial]

Quote:All 12 jurors were seated on Thursday, the third day of former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan.

“We have our jury,” Judge Juan Merchan said when the 12th juror was picked.

The 12 jurors and one alternate included seven men and six women.

The jurors included, according to NBC News:

— A man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He is married, likes to do “anything outdoorsy,” and gets news from The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

— A man who works in investment banking, follows Twitter as well as Truth Social posts from Trump and said, “I don’t have any beliefs that might prevent me from being fair or impartial.”

— A young man who has lived in Chelsea for five years, works as an attorney in corporate law, and likes to hike and run. He gets news from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Google.

— A man who’s a security engineer and likes woodworking and metalworking.

— A young woman who is a Harlem resident and works as a teacher. She lives with her boyfriend, loves writing, theater and traveling. She gets news from Google and TikTok and listens to podcasts on relationships and pop culture.

— A young woman who lives in Chelsea and works as a software engineer. She gets news from The New York Times, Google, Facebook and TikTok.

— A man who lives on the Upper East Side and works as attorney as a civil litigator. He enjoys spending time in the outdoors and gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Washington Post.

— A man who’s retired but worked for a major wealth manager. He said he enjoys skiing, fly fishing and yoga.

— A woman who is a speech therapist, gets news from CNN and likes reality TV podcasts.
— A man who works in commerce, reads The New York Times and listens to podcasts on behavioral psychology.

— A woman who works as a product development manager and watches late-night news and reads Google, business and fashion news.

— A woman who is a physical therapist who likes running and tennis and listening to podcasts on sports and faith.

Quote:Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D) daughter revealed that she was suspended from college for her involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University.

In a post on X, Isra Hirsi explained that she was an organizer with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, which pushes the university to “divest from apartheid and genocide.”

Hirsi added that she had received notice on Thursday that she is one of three students “suspended” from Barnard College “for standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide.”

“I’m an organizer with CU Apartheid Divest @ColumbiaSJP, in my 3 years at @BarnardCollege I have never been reprimanded or received any disciplinary warnings,” Hirsi wrote.

“I just received notice that I am 1 of 3 students suspended for standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide,” she added:

In a separate post, Hirsi wrote, “Those of us in Gaza Solidarity Encampment will not be intimidated. We will stand resolute until our demands are met. Our demands include divestment from companies complicit in genocide, transparency of @Columbia’s investments and FULL amnesty for all students facing repression.”

Hirsi’s suspension reportedly comes in relation to her involvement in an encampment that several students took part in before police officers came in to break it up.

According to video footage on social media, students set up tents on the south lawn of the university carrying signs that read, “Liberated Zone,” “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” “Barnard Students Say: Divest Before Donations,” and “Black lives 4 Palestine.”

Representatives from Barnard College entered the encampment after being informed by Columbia University that students had been asked to “break it up,” and it had not been done.

“We’re trying to see if there’s a way that any of you want to come talk to us,” one of the representatives said. “We’re here to work with you, if you’d like to do that.” The representative warned that if students did not disperse and follow what the university was asking them to do, students would “potentially be subject to sanction at Barnard.”

Quote:Democrat Rep. Katie Porter of California was silent when asked if she supports recent pro-Palestinian protests in which the American flag is burned and protesters chant, “Death to America.”

Porter was questioned by Fox News reporter Hillary Vaughn about a recent protest in New York City where pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, set fire to the American flag, and could be heard calling for, “Death to America.”

“Anti-Israel protesters blocking the Brooklyn Bridge burned the American flag and chanted, ‘Death to America.’ Do you condemn this type of rhetoric?” Vaughn can be heard asking in a video.

While Porter remains silent, a spokesman walking behind Porter answers by explaining she has to get to “her next event.”

“Are you okay with people burning the American flag?” Vaughn asks again.

Again, the spokesman following behind Porter and Vaughn cuts in to say, “If you’d like to follow up with us –” before being interrupted by Vaughn.

“Are you okay with people chanting, ‘Death to America?'” Vaughn asks Porter.

“Sorry, we’ve got to head into the –” the spokesman begins to say.

Vaughn asks Porter, “Congresswoman Porter, are you okay with people chanting, ‘Death to America?'” before adding, “Is it okay? Do you not have a problem with it?”

Democrat Rep. Ayanna Presley (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) were also questioned about the recent protest. While Presley remained silent when asked if she supports “that type of protest,” Ocasio-Cortez said she had not seen “these reports” and needed to “check for them” herself.

Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) came out Thursday in opposition to the current rules on the motion to vacate that threatens to end his speakership, lamenting he does not have the votes to change the rules at this time.

Johnson’s carefully worded statement stopped short of outright calling for a rule change that could save his gavel, but he made clear he opposed the current rules and understands “the importance of that idea” of changing them.

“Since the beginning of the 118th Congress, the House rule allowing a Motion to Vacate from a single member has harmed this office and our House majority,” Johnson posted to his official X account. “Recently, many members have encouraged me to endorse a new rule to raise this threshold. While I understand the importance of that idea, any rule change requires a majority of the full House, which we do not have. We will continue to govern under the existing rules.”

Rep. Thomas Massie pointed out Johnson’s misleading statement, responding to it on social media.

“The Speaker tried to change the rules to eliminate the motion to vacate but he didn’t have the votes today,” Massie posted on X.

Breitbart News asked Johnson’s office if he plans to change the motion to vacate rules once those changes have his support – even if a majority of Republicans oppose them – and if he would commit to not doing so but did not receive a response.

Republicans argued on the House floor Thursday morning about changing the rule. With a large bloc of establishment Republicans clearly supporting restoring the Speaker Nancy Pelosi-era rule that would weaken conservative opposition to Johnson’s agenda, Johnson’s statement clearly asserts not enough Democrats support changing the rules at this time.

Quote:Donald Trump Jr. blasted Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for his reversal on Ukraine funding, saying Republicans unbothered by Johnson’s flip-flop are “not our friends.”

Trump Jr. posted a compilation — accompanied by the bumbling soundtrack of Curb Your Enthusiasm — on X of Johnson saying repeatedly that the border is in chaos, it must be secured, and a border security deal is required before a foreign aid package to Ukraine. Remarkably, after months of trumpeting that message, Johnson reversed course and is advancing a foreign aid package with tens of billions of American taxpayer funds for Ukraine without any funding or policy changes for border security.

“Enough already! If you ever even begin to start believing anything anyone in Republican leadership tells you just watch this,” Trump Jr. said. “Pay close attention to those that don’t seem bothered by this. They’re not our friends.”

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) piled on, saying he is “certainly bothered by” Johnson’s remarkable Ukraine flip-flop.

Vance continued, “Perhaps Mike Johnson should stop going on TV and telling the world that Donald Trump endorses every piece of his ridiculous betrayal.”

Johnson appears ready to ally with Democrats to pull rarely used procedural mechanisms to bypass conservatives and pass his foreign aid package.

Breitbart News asked Johnson spokesman Raj Shah for a comment on Trump Jr.’s tweet but did not receive a response.

Quote:New Orleans police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick wants gun-free zones within the city where even licensed concealed carriers would be barred from carrying for self-defense.

4WWL reported that Kirkpatrick is pushing the zones in response to the constitutional carry bill signed by Gov. Jeff Landry ® on March 5, 2024.

“New Orleans is unique. And this is not a one-size-fits-all bill. And so, what would apply and maybe be perfectly acceptable in a different part of the state of Louisiana, it’s not going to be effective for the entire city of New Orleans,” Kirkpatrick said. “Too much gun violence as it is in the city. We’ve made great strides. This will reverse the strides.”

She explained how wide an area she would like see labeled gun-free:

We’ve looked at it internally, it would be Calliope over to the Marigny and then Rampart down to the river, because it would encompass the main thoroughfares that our tourists would be. The Superdome, down to the warehouse, entertainment area, and the Convention Center. So, it’d be broader than just the French Quarter.

The legislation intended to accomplish the creation of such gun-free zones is House Bill 498, sponsored by state rep. Alonzo Knox (D).

On July 27, 2023, Breitbart News noted that 94 percent of mass public shootings occur in gun-free zones.

In a 2014 study, updated in 2018 then again on July 6, 2019, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showed that 94 percent of mass public shootings between 1950 and the date(s) of the study occurred in gun-free zones.

Quote:Immigrants, mostly from Africa, flooded a meeting in New York City on Tuesday with complaints that the free food and free housing they are being given are not good enough for them despite the tens of billions in tax dollars spent to care for them.

Hundreds of migrants, many of whom are Muslims from Africa, told members of the New York City Council at City Hall that the tax-funded freebies they are receiving are not adequate for them and those with families.

The migrants were invited to speak to the city’s immigration committee on Tuesday, and one woman was heard complaining about the free food and blasted city officials for not giving them more permanent places to live for free.

“At the shelter, my kids cannot eat the food at the shelter,” the woman complained through a translator. “On Ramadan, we could not eat during breaks because the food is not good at all,” the woman exclaimed.

She went on to demand long-term housing.

“They give us two months to stay at the shelter, and then you have to go out with your luggage and your kids and find another place. Very difficult,” she insisted.

The same woman also complained that the city had not allowed her 19-year-old son to attend school for free.

The complaint session occurred inside as more than 1,500 migrants — mostly military-aged, single men — paraded outside City Hall Park.

Many of these migrants have been complaining about the millions of dollars in free food they have been given for some time already.

Late in 2023, it was reported that on one day in November, migrants threw away 5,000 prepared meals without eating them, costing the city at least $770,000 in food waste for that day alone. With metrics like this, the Big Apple is seeing more than one million dollars in food waste for migrants every month.

Quote:The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden reinstated oil and gas sanctions on Venezuela on Thursday, a recognition that lifting the sanctions did nothing to entice the socialist regime to host a free and fair election.

The Biden administration lifted some of the strictest U.S. sanctions on dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime last year as part of a dialogue in which Maduro agreed to host a presidential election sometime in 2024. The deal collapsed rapidly; Maduro scrapped it in October and launched a new wave of violence against anti-socialist dissidents, likely bankrolled by new oil profits.

The Biden sanctions relief lasted for six months and expired on April 18 at 12:01 a.m.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) informed on Wednesday that it had issued a new license granting U.S. companies a 45-day time frame to wind down operations and businesses involving the Venezuelan state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), unless they hold a specific license from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

“After a careful review of the current situation in Venezuela, the United States determined Nicolas Maduro and his representatives have not fully met the commitments made under the electoral roadmap agreement, which was signed by Maduro representatives and the opposition in Barbados in October 2023,”  a Department of State statement explained. “Therefore, General License 44, which authorizes transactions related to oil or gas sector operations in Venezuela, will expire at 12:01 AM on April 18.”

The statement continued:

Despite delivering on some of the commitments made under the Barbados electoral roadmap, we are concerned that Maduro and his representatives prevented the democratic opposition from registering the candidate of their choice, harassed and intimidated political opponents, and unjustly detained numerous political actors and members of civil society.  We again call on Maduro to allow all candidates and parties to participate in the electoral process and release all political prisoners without restrictions or delay.

Last year, representatives of the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan opposition conducted a series of negotiations in Barbados that led to an electoral agreement signed in October.

Quote:London’s Metropolitan Police arrested an Iranian activist again on Wednesday for carrying a sign saying that Hamas are “terrorists”, despite even the British government branding the radical Islamist Palestinian group a terror group.

Niyak Ghorbani, a 38-year-old man from Iran, has come to national attention for holding a sign reading “Hamas Is Terrorist” at pro-Palestinian rallies in London over the past months. For merely holding up a sign factually stating the legal position of the British and American governments, Ghorbani has been arrested multiple times at protests and has even faced assault by anti-Israel activists.

The Iranian activist was arrested again on Wednesday outside Parliament during a pro-Palestinian rally, with footage posted on social media appearing to show officers question him about his sign and threaten him with arrest if he approached the pro-Palestinian activists.

In a statement following the arrest, the Met said: “Officers arrested a man for a suspected public order offence in relation to a sign he was carrying.

“It was quickly established that the man should not have been arrested and the wording on the banner did not constitute an offence. He was de-arrested a short time later.”

Commenting on his latest arrest, Ghorbani said: “I fought for the people of UK, for the people of Israel, for the honorable and brave people of Iran, and to show the truth, and ultimately for my dignity, to prove to you what situation you are in, and if you don’t wake up, you will Iran experience 1979 in UK.

“The people of Iran and Israel will soon destroy the Islamic Republic and Hamas. What will the future hold for the people of UK?”

During a previous arrest in March, the Metropolitan Police claimed that Ghorbani was not arrested for his supposedly controversial sign, but rather for assault following an altercation. The Met said that after reviewing the footage and finding that he was not at fault, Ghorbani was later “de-arrested”.

Quote:Russian strongman Vladimir Putin praised Iran’s unprecedented, 300+ missile and drone assault against Israel on Tuesday in conversation with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, claiming it was the “best way” for Tehran to address its tensions with Israel.

The Iranian government propaganda outlet PressTV claimed that Putin effusively supported the missile attack – which failed almost entirely, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blocked 99 percent of the missiles and drones shot its way – while speaking to Raisi on the phone. Russian media notably omitted any such belligerent comments, instead emphasizing that Putin urged “restraint” on behalf of both parties.

Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel – conducted by its military, not one of its many proxy terrorist organizations – on Saturday that Iranian officials claimed was targeting IDF infrastructure. Iranian leaders described the attack, which they branded “Operation True Promise,” as necessary retaliation against an airstrike on an Iranian consulate facility in Damascus, Syria, that killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Israel is widely believed to have conducted the strike but has not taken official responsibility for the act at press time.

Following the assault, the IDF confirmed that it had fully intercepted all 170 drones Iran launched at Israel and over 30 cruise missiles. The vast majority of the ballistic missiles shot at Israel also never hit targets, and the few that did caused only minimal damage. Authorities documented one casualty: a young Arab Bedouin girl hospitalized after being hit by shrapnel.

Russia is one of Iran’s closest diplomatic allies, the product of years of cooperation supporting the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria and their joint membership in the BRICS coalition, established by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Iran joined BRICS in January.

Quote:Argentina’s defense minister signed a deal Tuesday worth about 2.1 billion kroner ($300 million) to buy 24 of Denmark´s aging F-16 fighter jets.

Denmark is getting new F-35 aircraft, and the sale of the nearly 40-year-old F-16s that “have been thoroughly maintained and technologically updated” means that Argentina will “become part of the global F-16 family,” said the Danish defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen.

Denmark has 30 operative F-16s. An unspecified number of the remaining jets have been promised to Ukraine as part of a donation.

No date for the F-16s to be handed over to Argentina was announced. They are expected to be transferred in the coming years.

Denmark has ordered 27 F-35A fighter jets, and the switch to them is taking place at the end of 2025.

In March, Poulsen visited Argentina and signed a letter of intent to sell some of Denmark´s F-16 jets. Tuesday’s deal was signed at a Danish air force base.

Quote:Mexico’s government continues to suppress information about the raging cartel violence that plagues one of its main border cities. The lack of information is further worsened by a gag order of sorts placed by organized crime on local news outlets in the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas.

Despite appearing to be peaceful on the surface, Matamoros has a long history of being controlled by the Gulf Cartel, which can carry out multiple crimes for its own benefit with complete impunity. Since last weekend, Matamoros has witnessed various shootouts and blockades in different parts of the city. Other than a few obscure social media posts shared by local authorities, no tangible information about the shootouts has been released. Similarly, the highway that connects Matamoros with the central part of the state has seen several kidnappings that have been ignored by government officials and local news alike.
On Wednesday afternoon, cartel gunmen and federal authorities clashed on the city’s southwest side. The short clash led to a series of roadblocks as gunmen tried to slow down authorities during their escape.

That clash comes just days after Mexican National Guardsmen tried to capture a leading cartel figure in an operation that turned into a clash and a series of blockades set up by gunmen. For the blockades, cartel gunmen stole several trucks at gunpoint and parked them across several main avenues as a way to keep police forces from moving about the area. Since then, government officials have only released short social media statements saying the roads are all clear. No information has been released about the nature of the operation or if any arrests took place.

In a similar fashion, on April 13, a group of gunmen believed to be with a faction of Los Zetas raided a restaurant near the town of Abasolo, Tamaulipas, along the highway that connects Matamoros with the central part of the state. During that raid, the gunmen kidnapped two men who have not been heard from again. State officials have remained tightlipped about the case, and local news outlets have largely ignored the issue.

Quote:Security Minister Patricia Bullrich of Argentina warned this week that the Shiite jihadist organization Hezbollah has greatly expanded its presence throughout South America.

Bullrich, in an interview given to the local Todo Noticias news channel on Sunday evening, stated that Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel prompted the Argentine government to raise its threat level and bolster security, especially in the northern tri-country border that Argentina shares with Paraguay and Brazil.

“Argentina has suffered two attacks and is in an area where there is an active presence of two forces that are allied to Iran, which are from Hezbollah that is in the triple border of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina,” Bullrich said in the interview.

“There has also been a presence in Iquique, in the north of Chile, last year in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a few weeks ago in Peru. And last year two people from Hezbollah were arrested in Sao Paulo,” she continued.

Bullrich was referring to reports published in 2011 that stated that U.S. authorities believed Hezbollah had established a presence in the northern Chilean city of Iquique, noting that “substantial information” indicated that Hezbollah was engaging in significant fund-raising in northern Chile. Bullrich also referenced the arrest of Hezbollah-linked individuals in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo in November 2023.

The individuals arrested by Brazilian authorities stand accused of plotting terrorist attacks against Jewish community centers in response to Israel’s declaration of war against the Sunni terrorist organization Hamas following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.

Argentina, home to the largest Jewish community in South America, has been the victim of two terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in its territory, both suspected of being the work of the Iran proxy terror group Hezbollah. In 1992, Hezbollah members carried out a suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and leaving over 240 injured. In 1994, Hezbollah terrorists drove an explosive-filled van into the headquarters of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), killing 85 people and leaving hundreds more injured. The AMIA bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Quote:Salvadoran Economy Minister María Luisa Hayem announced Tuesday evening the official start of El Salvador’s negotiations with communist China, intended to culminate with the signing of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

A Free Trade Agreement with China “as soon as possible” has been a goal of President Nayib Bukele’s since 2022, when China first expressed its willingness to begin negotiations to broker a trade deal with El Salvador after the Central American nation cut ties with the nation of Taiwan in favor of China.

“This is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive negotiations that El Salvador has undertaken in recent years,” Hayem said during a brief press conference.

Hayem stated that El Salvador hopes to broker an FTA with China that covers “issues such as intellectual property, services, investment, digital economy, and other areas that will boost our development.”

“We will work to prevent the existence of tariff barriers that prevent Salvadoran products from accessing the Chinese market,” she added, asserting that El Salvador finds itself in “the best moment” to reinforce its commercial and investment ties with a “strategic partner” such as China.

Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen expressed, on behalf of the communist nation, that he hoped both teams “can work together, understand and address each other’s concerns in order to sign the treaty as soon as possible.” Wang claimed that the prospective trade deal would be  “comprehensive, modern and high-level.”

According to Wang, trade between China and El Salvador amounted to more than $1.8 billion in 2023, with the trade balance favoring China. El Salvador’s top exports to China are coffee and sugar.

“Our two economies most complement each other, the signing of a free trade agreement would help boost economic and trade cooperation, raise the quality and level of trade and investment,” Wang said.

El Salvador, during the administration of former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, established ties with China shortly after cutting ties with Taiwan in 2018, effectively endorsing the Chinese Communist Party’s “One China Principle,” which claims that there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of it.

Quote:Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro attempted to issue a message in English to U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss the upcoming expiration of Biden’s generous oil and gas sanctions relief package to his regime.

The dictator’s latest attempt to speak English prompted the laughter of the audience of his weekly television show Con Maduro Más (“With Maduro Plus”), leading to his video going viral on social media platforms.

Maduro — who, prior to becoming Venezuela’s socialist dictator, was his predecessor Hugo Chávez’s foreign minister — has developed a reputation for poor proficiency of the English language. The dictator has issued several “English”-language messages and threats to former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama during their respective administrations.

“I tell the negotiators to tell President Biden the following message,” Maduro said in Spanish, before attempting English: “I you want I want, I you to want I do want.”

Maduro was apparently attempting to invite Biden to a bilateral dialogue.

After his audience laughed at his English, Maduro decided to translate his message to Spanish in clear “Caraqueño” as a citizen of Venezuela’s capital city of Caracas.

“If you want to, I want to. If you don’t want to, I don’t want to. That’s the end of it,” he clarified, eliciting the applause of his show’s audience.

Biden gifted Maduro and his socialist regime a broad oil and gas sanctions relief package in October. The package rescinded sanctions imposed on Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA oil company in 2019 during the Trump administration, issued in response to the rogue socialist regime’s human rights violations against its own people.

Biden’s sanctions relief package allows the Maduro regime to once again freely sell Venezuelan oil in U.S. and international markets, leading to a surge in Venezuela’s oil exports and the signing of deals with other countries, restoring the authoritarian regime’s main source of revenue. The sanctions relief package, which has a six-month duration, is set to expire on Thursday.

Quote:Democrats are in the minority no longer. In a stunning historical development on Friday, Democrats seized upon a Republican surrender to take control of the agenda of the House floor.

An astonishing 165 Democrats voted for a rule from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to allow a $100 billion foreign aid supplemental package to the floor Saturday. The House will hold four votes on final passage for each of those packages, including a Ukraine funding bill with tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars.

Minority party members rarely vote for a procedural rule to allow the majority party’s agenda to proceed through the House. Doing so in such numbers is wildly unprecedented.

History was first made on Thursday, just before midnight, when, for the first time in recorded history — since the House began keeping records — the House Rules Committee relied on minority party votes to overcome objections from the majority and advance a rule bill to the House floor.

The powerful House Rules Committee, known for generations as “the Speaker’s Committee” for the control the speaker of the House possesses over the committee and its reputation as a rubber stamp for the speaker’s agenda, sets the floor agenda for the House through what are known as rules.

Johnson disregarded history and abandoned his own party despite its majority, however slim. With more Democrats voting to advance the House’s agenda than Republicans, the minority party has effectively taken control over the bills that will come before the House.

Quote:House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) no longer represents the Republican House majority after he betrayed conservative ideals and worked with the Democrats to pass the President Joe Biden-endorsed Ukraine aid agenda, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared Friday.

In an unprecedented move, Johnson worked with House Democrats this week to force Ukraine border defense funds toward a full House vote on Saturday:

Thursday: Johnson made history by relying on Democrats on the House Rules Committee to overcome objections from the majority and advance a rule bill to the House floor.
Friday: Democrats seized the House and helped Johnson clear a key procedural hurdle on the rule bill to set up Saturday’s floor vote. Voting “yes” were 165 Democrats and only 151 Republicans.
“Democrats are now voting en masse to pass the Republican-written rule,” PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins posted on X. “A show of support for Ukraine and Johnson. And incredibly rare. Cannot remember seeing this, like this, before.”

“It’s official: ⁦@SpeakerJohnson is no longer the GOP Speaker of the House, but Speaker for the Uniparty’s $1.5T deficit, warrantless spying on Americans, and a foreign aid bill with more deficit spending than Schumer’s budget buster,” Sen. Rand Paul posted on X, sharing an article by the New York Times.

The Times article underscored Johnson’s decision to essentially allow Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to take control of the Republican-controlled House.

Quote:A spending bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) includes hundreds of millions of dollars in American taxpayer money for border patrol agents in Ukraine as illegal immigration at the United States-Mexico border remains at record levels.

The spending bill, which 151 House Republicans helped 165 House Democrats advance on Friday, would see more than $95 billion sent to foreign countries — including about $61 billion to Ukraine amid its ongoing war with Russia.

Slipped into the funding package’s Ukraine spending is $300 million for “the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine 20 and National Police of Ukraine, including units supporting 21 or under the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

The State Border Guard Service is the Ukrainian equivalent of the U.S. Border Patrol.

At the same time, while illegal immigration stays sky-high at the southern border, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is asking Congress to fund only 34,000 detention beds for migrants arriving at the border — 7,500 fewer beds than those currently funded by lawmakers.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Patrick Lechleitner, though, told Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) this week that he would prefer Congress fund 50,000 detention beds, a figure still below the hundreds of thousands that are necessary but well above DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s request.

Quote:Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced legislation on Friday that targets former President Donald Trump and would take away his Secret Service protection if he is convicted in his trial.

In a post on X, the House Homeland Security Committee Democrats revealed that Thompson, the top member of the committee and the former chairman of the now-defunct January 6 Select Committee, had introduced legislation that would ensure “convicted felons sentenced to prison” would have no Secret Service protection.

In a statement, Thompson said:

Unfortunately, current law doesn’t anticipate how Secret Service protection would impact the felony prison sentence of a protectee-even a former President. It is regrettable that it has come to this, but this previously unthought-of scenario could become our reality. Therefore, it is necessary for us to be prepared and update the law so the American people can be assured that protective status does not translate into special treatment-and that those who are sentenced to prison will indeed serve the time required of them.

The Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act says that protection will “terminate for any person upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year.”

Thompson argues in a fact sheet for the DISGRACED Former Protectees Act, that the bill “would remove the potential for conflicting lines of authority within prisons and allow judges to weigh the sentencing of individuals without having to factor in the logistical concerns of convicts with Secret Service protection.”

Although Trump’s name is not mentioned in the bill’s text, the fact sheet points out that “former President Donald J. Trump’s unprecedented 91 felony charges in Federal and State courts across the country have created a new exigency that Congress must address to ensure Secret Service protection does not interfere with the criminal judicial process and the administration of justice.”

The fact sheet also points out that the bill proposed by Thompson will “apply to former President Trump.”

Amazing to see how they propose laws to affect 1 PERSON as if the job of Congress and Senate were to prevent Trump from even becoming a full-fledged presidential candidate.

Quote:New York City spends too much on police, an illegal immigrant reportedly said during a contentious committee hearing, New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino — who spoke up at the event — told Breitbart News Daily.

“They were just outright demanding on Thursday,” the councilwoman said, detailing the controversial meeting which featured illegal immigrants complaining and making demands on New York City.

“When they really cut me off is when I said you are here illegally. You are here illegally. And they didn’t like that. And that’s when one of the chairwomen cut me off. And she said, ‘Councilmember, do you have a question? Councilmember, do you have a question?’ I said, ‘Yes, I asked it, and I do have more.’ It was about the vetting, which they lied, that she started to spew — one of the people who answered one of my questions on the panel there, but she started to spew cop-hating rhetoric. If we wouldn’t pay our police officers so much,” she said.

“Are you kidding me? Really, you are here illegally. You’re here illegally. And you’re telling us that you don’t like our police. Ok. They took away your mopeds, and your scooters. Seriously? Are they licensed? Are they insured? Ok, or [is this] just something that you’re going scooting around and doing Uber Eats or whatever it is you do illegally? Illegally? Let’s understand this. This is all done illegally. And as soon as you say that word illegal, bam, you get crushed,” she said.

“So you’re telling me an illegal alien from, in this case, from Africa was complaining to the New York City Council that the people of New York pay their police too much money?” host Mike Slater pushed back.

“That is correct. Yes. You waste your money when you could be taking care of us. You waste your money on funding the police and what is it that you have?” she said, recounting the conversation. “She said those little robots? I just quit. Oh my word. I really kept my cool. I was so proud of myself. Because you just could not believe the ridiculousness of this whole thing, but they were dead serious, and what was worse, everybody out there is that your city council, if you live in these five boroughs was sympathetic to this.”

Quote:A Haitian migrant, reportedly released into the United States via President Joe Biden’s parole pipeline, is now accused of double homicide in Orange County, New York.

Kenol Baptiste, a 30-year-old Haitian migrant, was indicted in Orange County on two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder.

On April 1, prosecutors allege that Baptiste stabbed his two roommates — who were also from Haiti — to death using a knife. Baptiste then allegedly sought to hide the knife he used and fled the scene.

A report reveals that Baptiste had been released into the U.S. interior less than a year before, after scheduling an appointment at the border via the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) “CBP One” mobile app.

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw reports:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News Digital that Baptiste had arrived in the United States in July 2023 when he presented himself at the Paso Del Norte port of entry in El Paso, Texas. [Emphasis added]

The spokesperson said he presented himself on July 25 at the port of entry after booking an appointment on the CBP One app. Baptiste was given a notice to appear (NTA) in immigration court, was processed and paroled into the U.S. for pending removal proceedings. ICE has since placed a detainer on him, which requests he be transferred to ICE custody on his eventual release from jail. [Emphasis added]

As Breitbart News recently reported, Biden’s parole pipeline has released more than 950,000 foreign nationals, including Baptiste, into the U.S. interior since January 2023. Nearly 550,000 of those foreign nationals have arrived via the CBP One app.

Quote:A coalition of 20 Haitian civil society groups, visiting Geneva for the U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD), argued on Thursday that France should pay at least $150 billion in reparations to Haiti for slavery and its aftermath.

The Haitian groups arrived at this amount by taking reparations France collected from Haiti after it became the first Caribbean nation to revolt and win its independence in 1804 and adding 200 years of accrued interest.

“It’s $21 billion plus 200 years of interest that France has enjoyed, so we’re talking more like $150 billion, $200 billion or more,” University of British Columbia professor Jemima Pierre explained to Reuters on Thursday.

The Haitian Revolution began in 1791 and lasted until 1804, featuring a series of battles between the local population — which, by that point, included a large number of imported African slaves — and French colonial forces, mixed with scuffles between various groups within Haiti’s fractious society. Spanish colonial forces on the far side of the island of Hispaniola — who would eventually establish the Dominican Republic — and British forces from Jamaica further stirred the pot.

Eager to rally enough manpower to defeat all other parties and retain control of Haiti, the French began offering citizenship to faithful supporters and effectively abolished slavery in 1794, but Haitian militias kept fighting the French until they gave up the struggle for control, in part because France’s Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte needed his troops elsewhere. Haitian independence was declared on January 1, 1804.

France did not formally recognize Haiti’s independence until 1825, and it exacted a steep price for recognition: a payment of about 150 million francs, known as the “indemnity.” The payment was supposed to compensate French colonists for their losses when the slaves revolted and won Haitian independence.

France’s king at the time, Charles X, was considering invading and re-conquering Haiti. He sent an impressive war fleet to collect Haitian leader Jean-Pierre Boyer’s signature on the indemnity contract, and Boyer decided he had little choice but to sign it even though no one, including Charles X, believed Haiti could come up with the indicated sum. One hundred and fifty million francs was ten times Haiti’s annual government budget at the time and ten times what the United States paid for the Louisiana Purchase.

Quote:Far-left Colombian President Gustavo Petro declared Friday, April 19, the first day of a yearly “Civic Day of Peace with Nature” in a bid to reduce water and power consumption in the country’s largest cities.

The decree mandates that Petro’s made-up holiday be celebrated on the third Friday of April every year, starting with Friday, April 19, 2024.

“Tomorrow, we want to decree a civic day in Colombia so that people do not use electricity as much as possible, so that we can save energy that we need in the coming days,” Petro, a former guerrilla member and hardline socialist, said during an event on Thursday — “and especially for people to reduce, as much as possible, the consumption of drinking water in big cities.”

“This April 19 is a civic day in Colombia, with the objective of taking care of water, to be able to do it for millions, and to achieve that at this moment, when rains in Colombia are possible, we do not have to deepen any type of rationing in services,” he continued.

A “civic holiday,” as the decree defines it, requires the shutdown of public government offices, schools, and universities for that day. The decree also invites citizens to “rationalize” the use of water while in their households and reuse water if possible.

The far-left Colombian president urged private companies, schools, and institutions to join the civic holiday in a social media post.

“This April 19 is a day of rebellion, of reading, of conversation with family and friends about the danger of climate change, about who produces it, about what should be done,” Petro’s message read.

“Tomorrow is a day of national rebellion; tomorrow, we combine the forces of life, we drive away the summons of death; tomorrow is the day of life on earth, my day and your day,” the message concluded.

I guess April 19th has now become Colombia's April Fools' Day.

Quote:Argentine Defense Minister Luis Petri delivered a formal request on Thursday to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have Argentina join as a global partner.

If successfully approved by all 32 member states, Argentina would become NATO’s second global partner in South America after Colombia.

Global partner status would allow Argentina to have access to NATO’s cooperation programs, but would not confer it full member status, as Article 10 of NATO’s chart restricts full member status eligibility to European nations only. Global partners do not have to abide by the provisions of Article 5 – which states that an attack on one NATO country must be treated as an attack against all – as such provisions are limited only to full members of the alliance.

Petri presented the request on behalf of the Argentine government during his official visit to Brussels, Belgium, where he met with NATO’s Deputy General Secretary Mircea Geoană. Geoană welcomed Argentina’s bid to join the organization as a partner.

“Argentina plays an important role in Latin America, and I welcome today’s request to explore becoming a NATO partner,” Geoană said. “NATO works with a range of countries around the world to promote peace and stability. Closer political and practical cooperation could benefit us both”:

Petri, after the meeting with Geoană, stated in a social media post, “At the instruction of President Javier Milei, at NATO headquarters, we reaffirmed our commitment to countries that embrace freedom and the values of democracy, in the face of authoritarianism and autocracies worldwide.”

The Argentine defense minister continued by explaining that NATO global partner status would provide Argentina with benefits such as optimal training for its armed forces, access to equipment and information, support in cyber defense, and “cooperation for a high-level strategic dialogue on world events and the priorities of an Argentina integrated to the liberal democracies of the world.”

Upon taking office, libertarian President Javier Milei vowed to realign Argentina’s foreign policy, making the United States and Israel its top allies. Milei’s foreign policy marks a dramatic shift after nearly two decades of socialist governments pushed the South American nation towards China, Iran, and Russia.

Quote:More than 1,000 U.S. troops are effectively being held “hostage” in Niger with medical supplies running low — stuck between the military junta-controlled government’s demands for them to leave and the Biden administration’s refusal to let them go home after the end of their deployments, according to a report prepared by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and obtained exclusively by Breitbart News.

In addition, the report accuses Biden administration officials of trying to cover up the situation to lawmakers, as well as to troops deployed there and their families anxiously awaiting their return.

“Our troops are currently sitting on a powder keg caused by political indecision at the top of the Department of State and Department of Defense. With a military junta in charge — who detests our presence and considers us unserious and predatory — the situation seems to be setting the groundwork for catastrophic diplomatic collapse like we saw during the 2012 Benghazi attack. Additionally, these troops are already running short on necessary, life-saving supplies, such as blood and medications,” the report by Gaetz’s office said.

“They are, in effect, hostages of an indecisive Commander-in-Chief,” the report said.

The report is based on interviews by Gaetz’s office with troops currently stationed in Niger, who reached out to Gaetz’s office after they did not receive assistance from the Departments of Defense and State.

The service members are currently deployed to Airbase 101 (AB101) in the capital of Niger, Niamey, as part of the 768th Expeditionary Airbase Squadron (768 EABS), which is comprised of active duty and reserve forces, Air National Guard airmen, Army Special Forces and contract support. There are about 450 personnel at Air Base 101. Until the takeover by the junta, the base was a major hub for U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) against terrorist groups Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State in West Africa, Boko Haram, and Ansaru. It was also a hub for U.S. military advisers supporting Niger’s forces.

The U.S. troop presence became threatened after the military junta, known as the Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP), or the National Council for the Safeguard of the Fatherland, declared it had taken over the country on July 26, 2023. Just a few months before, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had praised Niger as “a model of resilience, a model of democracy, a model of cooperation.”

The junta declared in March 2024 a cancellation of the military accords with the U.S., after a series of meetings with Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) Commander Marine Gen. Michael Langley, according to the report.

“This deterioration of diplomatic arrangements has led to our service members being caught in the middle of a standoff between an inept Department of State and a U.S.-trained Nigerian coup-force. This breakdown has led to total cessation of diplomatic clearance overflights, preventing the delivery of mail, necessary medical supplies, blood to replenish the blood bank (which requires constant turnover due to expiration windows), equipment and repair supplies; and other routine materiel from the United States,” the report said.

Quote:China’s state-owned oil company CNPC, the China National Petroleum Corporation, has signed a $400 million deal with the military junta that controls Niger, providing a much-needed infusion of cash after the coup damaged relations with Niger’s previous big oil customers, the United States and France.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on Saturday appears to involve China loaning the junta a huge amount of money to improve its oil infrastructure, although the exact details of the agreement have not been made public.

CNPC is already working on a pipeline project in Niger through one of its subsidiaries, PetroChina. The pipeline is designed to link Niger’s Agadem oil field, which also features prominently in Saturday’s deal, with the port city of Cotonou in Benin.

Niger has considerable oil resources, but limited ability to exploit them. It currently has only a single small oil refinery that can process about 20,000 barrels per day, most of which is consumed in Niger or neighboring Nigeria.

Analysts say Niger has reserves of at least 957 million barrels, and if exploration into the largely untapped eastern basis of the country proves fruitful, it could soon offer more than triple that amount.

Niger’s civilian government was overthrown by military strongman Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani in July 2023, replacing the Western-friendly administration of ousted President Mohamed Bazoum with a much more hostile “National Council for the Safeguard of the Fatherland.”

The junta sought to expel Western forces and developed difficult relations with various multinational organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which at one point threatened to invade Niger to restore civilian government. Niger formed a bloc with the juntas in Burkina Faso and Mali to resist external efforts to restore their elected governments.

The Niger junta announced the end of counterterrorism cooperation with the United States in March, putting the security of the vast and unstable Sahel region in serious doubt. Most troops from former colonial power France had been expelled by the end of 2023.

China, of course, does not care about democracy, political freedom, or human rights, so it is happy to do business with the Niger junta. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Wednesday quoted analysts who suspected China worked out a deal with Niger similar to its arrangement with Angola, which took billions of dollars in loans from Chinese banks to finance reconstruction after its long civil war ended in 2000, and has been repaying those loans with oil assets ever since.

These financial arrangements have been criticized as debt traps, as China lets Third World political elites rack up gigantic debts their countries can never repay and slowly takes over valuable assets like ports and oil wells as collateral.

Quote:The former attorney for adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels, Michael Avenatti, claims that former President Donald Trump’s legal team has “contacted” him, and he would be willing to testify.

Avenatti, who was found guilty of taking money from former clients, obstructing the IRS from taking millions of dollars in unpaid payroll taxes, and attempting to extort Nike, told the New York Post (NYP) that Trump’s legal defense had been in touch with him.

Avenatti was sentenced to 14 years in prison in December 2022, on top of serving five years in prison for two prior convictions.

“I’d be more than happy to testify. I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of a year,” Avenatti told the outlet.

While Avenatti did not provide details regarding what he spoke to Trump’s legal team about, he described the trial against Trump as being “politically motivated” out of fears the former president “may be reelected.”

“There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected,” Avenatti told the outlet. “If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious.”

Quote:A man set himself on fire in front of the Manhattan courtroom on Friday as a CNN live broadcast reported on the jury being seating in former President Donald Trump’s trial.

Anchor Laura Coates said, “We have a man who has literally set fire to himself. A man has emblazoned himself outside of the courthouse just now. Our cameras are turning right now. A man has now lit himself on fire. Outside of the courthouse in Manhattan, where we’re waiting history to be made. A full jury panel is gone. We are watching a man who was fully emblazoned in the front of the courthouse today. We’re watching multiple fires breaking out around his body and person. We have seen an arm that has been visible that has been engulfed in total flames. There is chaos, and it’s happening. People are wondering right now if people are in danger. I’m looking across the courtyard.  There is a man racing with aid.”

She added, “We have members of security details. NYPD is rushing to the scene. They are trying to come now. Officers are on the scene. A fire extinguisher is right now present being put on this man to try to put out…People are climbing over barricades to try to separate the public, to put out the flame on this man. He has lit himself on fire in front of the courthouse right now. We are watching as the flames…We can smell the air. I can smell the burning of some sort of flesh. I can smell the burning of some sort of agent being used as well as an accelerant to put that fire…I smell an actual fire extinguisher having been displayed.” Coates then continued to report what she was seeing onsite.

Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Democrats painted a surreal scene on the House floor Saturday as the House passed a $61 billion bill to further Ukraine’s war effort.

As the inevitable outcome neared, Democrats produced dozens of miniature Ukraine flags, waiving them and cheering “Ukraine!” jubilantly.

Johnson approached the chair as the vote closed to the loudest applause of the day – and perhaps this entire Congress – from Democrats.

“It is in violation of decorum to wave flags on the floor,” Johnson admonished Democrats, who cared little.

Today’s vote was a fait accompli, but for months it seemed impossible. Johnson had repeatedly promised never to consider foreign aid without first securing America’s own border.

Iran’s missile attacks against Israel last week gave Johnson his opening to move on the border. Bipartisan urgency to rush to Israel’s aid provided a legislative vehicle to which he could attach a border security bill. Democrats would have had a tough election year choice.

It was the ultimate leverage, either to advance border security or Ukraine – or both, if Johnson tried.

The flags that Democrats chose to wave drove home Johnson’s choice.

Quote:Former President Donald Trump expressed appreciation in a signed note to the Washington, DC, Young Republicans (DCYR) for exposing a never Trumper in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) office who opposed the club’s endorsement of Trump.

Trump’s note was in response to emails exclusively obtained by Breitbart News that outed Johnson’s Director of House Operations Hannah Fraher for expressing unfounded concerns about the club’s endorsement of Trump.

“Thank you for your great support,” Trump wrote to the DCYR on an email obtained by Breitbart News. “Very much appreciated! Will not forget.”

“We are very grateful for President Trump’s backup and his kind words of support,” the DCYR Executive Board told Breitbart News. “It is not easy to expose the DC Swamp, but we will do it every time. We completely stand by our endorsement of President Trump and don’t care how many RINOs are upset by that.

“We look forward to continuing our great relationship with him and his administration when he returns to power after the 2024 election,” they added.

DCYR endorsed Trump for president in May 2023, during the middle of the GOP presidential primary season when establishment Washington, DC, insiders still believed Gov. Ron DeSantis ® was a serious contender for the presidency.

Quote:FBI authorities served subpoenas at Illinois’ Dolton Village Hall on Friday afternoon as Mayor Tiffany Henyard (D) fields corruption accusations, per Fox 32.

Henyard was recently named “America’s worst mayor” because of her questionable spending habits and abuse of office, Breitbart News reported Monday.

The outlet noted she is also accused of covering up an alleged sexual assault by one of her colleagues against another employee:
In a recent statement, the FBI confirmed it was conducting “court-authorized law enforcement activity” in the area on Friday, but the Department of Justice policy dictates the agency cannot comment on the nature of the investigation:

The Fox 32 article continued:

Four agents from the FBI paid a visit to Dolton around 2:30 p.m. They served two federal subpoenas. The first one was for employment records, personnel files, and disciplinary reports for 25 Dolton employees, including three police officers and Keith Freeman. Freeman, who is the village administrator, was charged with bankruptcy fraud on Monday.

The second subpoena was served specifically for Freeman, asking for records of all companies associated with him and possible ties to the village.

In Febuary, Henyard became heated during a meeting with local officials as they questioned her about issues that have brought heavy criticism, according to Breitbart News.

She said, “Y’all should be ashamed of y’all selves. Y’all black. Y’all are black. And y’all sitting up here beating and attacking on a black woman that’s in power. You should be ashamed of y’all selves.”

Quote:White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to confirm President Joe Biden’s suggestion that his uncle was “shot down” and eaten by cannibals off the coast of New Guinea.

Ambrose J. Finnegan died on May 14, 1944, according to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Finnegan was a passenger on an Army Air Forces plane that he ditched “for unknown reasons” in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Guinea, the agency reported.

While traveling to a campaign stop on Wednesday, Biden told a story about his uncle, whose Air Force plane was “shot down” during a “reconnaissance flight over New Guinea” during World War II.

“[He] got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body,” Biden said. “But the government went back when I was down there, and they checked and found parts of the plane and the like.”

Jean-Pierre refused to support Biden’s suggestion that his uncle’s plane was “shot down” and ignored any reference to cannibals. She appeared to align her belief with the Associated Press (AP). Biden “misstated key details about his uncle’s death,” the AP reported Wednesday.

“You saw the president; he was incredibly proud of his uncle’s service in uniform,” Jean-Pierre told reporters, who had been aboard Air Force One. “You saw him at the war memorial. It was incredibly emotional and important to him.”

“You saw him respond to all of you when asked about the moment yesterday and his uncle, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”

Quote:Model Kristen Gaffney says she is leaving California for Tennessee after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass asked the wealthy to pay for housing for the homeless in the city.

As Breitbart News reported, Bass asked wealthy residents of L.A. to pitch in to buy permanent housing for the homeless as part of a new plan, LA4LA.

Breitbart News noted:

In early 2023, Bass set a goal of moving 17,000 homeless people off the streets of the city in her first year in office. And, in fact, 21,000 people have been moved into temporary shelters — often into hotel and motel rooms.

But despite some initial successes, the homeless population continued to grow, rising 9% in the city and 10% in the county as of last year’s homeless count. And homeless encampments have returned — often to the very places from which they were removed.

There have already been many efforts to tax L.A. residents to pay for homeless housing and services, including a sales tax hike and a new tax on sales of homes worth more than $5 million.

Gaffney told Fox News that she had had enough:

“I quite frankly feel a little bit taken advantage of when I, too, have had to struggle and to create my own opportunities through hard work and education,” Kristen Louelle Gaffney, Sports Illustrated model and resident of San Diego told Fox News Digital over the phone. “Why should somebody have a piece of my hard work?”
...
“I came from nothing,” she said. “I think the most my parents did financially for me was pay for a tank of gas and maybe some groceries here and there in college.”
...
“You’ve taken enough from us, and you’re only showing me that it’s getting worse,” Gaffney said of homelessness. She credits her frustration to both President Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom and their policies.

The UK Daily Mail noted that Gaffney is married to former NFL running back Tyler Gaffney.

Don't ever dare to think Newsom does live in La4La land.

Quote:The Biden administration has announced restrictions on oil and gas leasing on more than 13 million acres of an Alaskan petroleum reserve to conserve land valuable to the “Alaska Native people” and “important fish and wildlife,” as Republican lawmakers protest the “illegal” move.

The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by Biden appointee Secretary Deb Haaland, celebrated the restrictions on Friday, saying, “These steps follow President Biden’s actions to protect millions of acres of lands and waters in the Arctic.”

“Following significant engagement with the public, Alaska Native Tribes, and Alaska Native Corporations, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized the Management and Protection of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) rule that will ensure maximum protection for significant resource values on the more than 13 million acres of Special Areas in the western Arctic, while supporting subsistence uses and needs for Alaska Native communities,” the federal agency stated.

The new rules won’t impact current leases on the NPR-A, which is owned by the federal government. Projects that have already been authorized, including the controversial Willow Project, will still be able to occur.

Haaland said the restrictions underscore the Biden administration’s “commitment to ensure that places too special to develop remain intact for the communities and species that rely on them.”

Quote:Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended a record-setting number of migrants who illegally crossed the Canadian border between ports of entry in March. The number of migrants arrested in the first six months of this year nearly doubled the same period last year.

Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia posted a report on social media revealing his agents apprehended a record-setting 1,109 migrants in March. Garcia said the migrants crossed the Canadian Border into Eastern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire from 40 different countries, including India, Bangladesh, and Mexico.

According to the CBP Nationwide Encounters Report, Swanton Sector agents apprehended 5,170 migrants during the first six months of FY24, which began on October 1, 2023. This compares to 2,688 during the same period in the then-record-setting FY23.

Of the 1,109 migrants apprehended in March, 408 came from India, 323 came from Bangladesh, and 170 came from Mexico. The six-month total for Mexico is 1,848 and for India is 1,603. The six-month total for Bangladesh is not available in the official CBP report.

The apprehension of migrants crossing from Canada into the Swanton Sector continues in April. Garcia posted a photo showing the apprehension of eight Mexican nationals near Rouses Point, New York, this week.

Quote:Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “personally” grateful to “Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track” after Johnson shepherded a $61 billion Ukraine aid package through the House Saturday.

The image of scores of Democrats waving Ukraine flags and cheering on the House floor as the bill passed will forever sting the conservatives from whose ranks Johnson rose, only to serve them with the ultimate betrayal.

“I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” a gleeful Zelensky posted on X after the vote.

He continued, “The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger.”

That assessment is debatable. Certainly, the Mike Johnson of only a few months ago would have strongly disputed it. But the long and intense pressure campaign from the strong-willed Zelensky – who apparently charmed the diminutive Louisiana Congressman during their meeting – and the White House proved successful.

Quote:A joint intelligence operation between Poland and Ukraine has led to the arrest of a Polish citizen allegedly conducting hostile reconnaissance against an airport used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for international flights.

Polish National Prosecutor’s Office prosecutor Anna Adamiak said while the investigation into Polish citizen ‘Paweł K.’ was ongoing, it was believed he was in contact with Russian intelligence and individuals involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and had been tasked with intelligence gathering at the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. The airport in Rzeszów, eastern Poland, is across the border from the now-Ukrainian city of Lviv (Lwow) and is frequently used by Zelensky for international flights instead of airports inside his own country, given the obvious risk.

Prosecutor Adamiak said: “The findings of the investigation show that the suspect’s tasks included collecting information that would be helpful in planning a possible assassination attempt on the life of the President of Ukraine by the Russian services… he detainee was charged with reporting readiness to act for foreign intelligence against the Republic of Poland, qualified under Art. 130 § 3 of the Penal Code. The act is punishable by up to 8 years in prison.”

Polish broadcaster Polsat reports Paweł K. had contacted Russian military intelligence and was to “help Russian special services plan a possible attack on the life of the head of a foreign state – President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky”.

Exactly what form this attack could have taken was not publicly speculated upon but the airport, in a NATO country, is protected by U.S.-made Patriot air defence missiles, The Times of London reports. Per the paper, the airport is also frequently used for visits to Ukraine by foreign politicians and for deliveries of aid. In the case of political visitors, the onwards journey into Ukraine is typically by rail, on one of a series of special Ukrainian Railways VIP trains.

Russia goaded Ukraine in response to the news of the report, stating the arrest was not actually evidence of a Russian plot to kill Zelensky at a European airport, but that it was actually a cover-story in preparation for a Western attempt to dispose of the Ukrainian President.

OK, we all knew Putin hates Zelensky. Yet, t I never thought I'd see the day when Putin's minions would believe that the Western World would get rid of Zelensky for any reason. So do they really think the US or Europe would ever do Russia such a tremendous favor?
And I gotta admit I'm not one of Zelensky's supporters at all for I strongly believe he's a moron.

Quote:Ukraine´s air force claimed Friday it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but Moscow officials said the plane crashed in a sparsely populated area due to a malfunction after a combat mission.

Neither claim could be independently verified. Previous Ukrainian claims of shooting down Russian warplanes during their more than two-year war have met with silence or denials from Moscow.

Meanwhile, Russian missiles struck cities in the central Dnipro region of Ukraine, killing eight people, including an 8-year-old girl, and injuring 25, local officials said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated Kyiv officials´ almost daily appeals for more Western air defense systems, again drawing a parallel with how Israel blunted a recent Iranian attack.

Missile and drone attacks can be thwarted, he wrote on social platform X: “This has been demonstrated in the skies over the Middle East, and it should also work in Europe.”

Russia´s air force is vastly more powerful than Ukraine´s, but sophisticated missile systems provided by Kyiv´s Western partners are a major threat to Russian aviation as the Kremlin´s forces slowly push forward along the around 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in what has become a grinding war of attrition. Ukrainian officials say they expect a major Russian offensive in the summer.

Ukraine said the air force and military intelligence cooperated to bring down the Tu-22M3 bomber with anti-aircraft missiles. Russia commonly uses the bomber to fire Kh-22 cruise missiles at Ukrainian targets from inside its own airspace. The plane can also carry nuclear warheads.

The Russian defense ministry said the warplane crashed “in a deserted area” in the southern region of Stavropol, hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Three crew members were rescued after ejecting from the aircraft, and the search for a fourth is taking place, according to the ministry. But Stavropol Gov. Vladimir Vladimirov said one of the rescued pilots died.

On Christmas Eve, Ukraine claimed to have shot down two Russian fighter jets. In January, the Ukrainian air force said it shot down a Russian early warning and control plane and a key command center aircraft that relays information to troops on the ground, in what appeared to be a significant blow for the Kremlin´s forces. The next month, Ukraine said it knocked out another early warning and control plane.

Quote:A 79-year-old woman makes the sign of the cross and, gripping her cane, leaves her home in a quaint village in northeast Ukraine.

Torn screens, shattered glass and scorched trees litter the yard of Olha Faichuk’s apartment building in Lukiantsi, north of the city of Kharkiv. Abandoned on a nearby bench is a shrapnel-pierced cellphone that belonged to one of two people killed when a Russian bomb struck, leaving a blackened crater in its wake.

“God, forgive me for leaving my home, bless me on my way,” Faichuk said, taking one last look around before slowly shuffling to an evacuation vehicle.

Unlike embattled front-line villages further east, attacks on the border village near the Russian region of Belgorod, were rare until a wave of air strikes began in late March.

Russia seemingly exploited air defense shortages in Kharkiv, Ukraine´s second-largest city, to pummel the region’s energy infrastructure and terrorize its 1.3 million residents. Nearly 200,000 city dwellers remain without power, while 50% of the region’s population still suffers from outages, officials say.

Quote:Russian troops are ramping up pressure on exhausted Ukrainian forces to prepare to seize more land this spring and summer as muddy fields dry out and allow tanks, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment to roll to key positions across the countryside.

With the war in Ukraine now in its third year and a vital U.S. aid package for Kyiv slowed down in Congress, Russia has increasingly used satellite-guided gliding bombs – which allow planes to drop them from a safe distance – to pummel Ukrainian forces beset by a shortage of troops and ammunition.

Despite Moscow’s advantage in firepower and personnel, a massive ground offensive would be risky and – Russian military bloggers other experts say – unnecessary if Russia can stick to smaller attacks across the front line to further drain the Ukraine military.

“It´s potentially a slippery slope where you get like a death by a thousand cuts or essentially death by a thousand localized offensives,” Michael Kofman, a military expert with the Carnegie Endowment, said in a recent podcast to describe the Russian tactic. If the Russians stick to their multiple pushes across the front, he said, “eventually they may find more and more open terrain.”
...
“If the defensive lines had been built in advance, the Ukrainians wouldn´t have retreated in such a way,” Ukrainian military expert Oleh Zhdanov said. “We should have been digging trenches through the fall and it would have stemmed Russian advances. Now everything is exposed, making it very dangerous.”

In a recent podcast, Kofman also said that Kyiv is “quite behind on effectively entrenching across the front” and “Ukraine does not have good secondary lines.”

After capturing the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka, Russian troops are zeroing in on the hill town of Chasiv Yar, which would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities in the Kyiv-controlled part of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022, and the Kremlin sees fully controlling that region as a priority.

Quote:Ukraine launched a barrage of drones across Russia overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said Saturday, in attacks that appeared to target the country’s energy infrastructure.

Fifty drones were shot down by air defences over eight Russian regions, including 26 over the country’s western Belgorod region close to the Ukrainian border. Two people – a woman with a broken leg and the man caring for her – died during the overnight barrage, after explosions sparked a blaze that set their home alight, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on social media. A pregnant woman and her unborn child were also killed in shelling later Saturday, he said.

Drones were also reportedly destroyed over the Bryansk, Kursk, Tula, Smolensk, Ryazan, Kaluga regions across Russia’s west and south, as well as in the Moscow region.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had shot down a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet. It provided no details and the claims could not be independently verified.

Ukrainian officials normally decline to comment about attacks on Russian soil. However, many of the drone strikes appeared to be directed toward Russia’s energy infrastructure.

The head of the Kaluga region, Vladislav Shapsha, said Saturday that a drone strike had sparked a blaze at an electrical substation, while Bryansk Gov. Alexander Bogomaz and Smolensk Gov. Vasily Anokhin also reported fires at fuel and energy complexes.

In recent months, Russian refineries and oil terminals have become priority targets of Ukrainian drone attacks, part of stepped-up assaults on Russian territory.

Ukrainian drone developers have been extending the weapons’ range for months, as Kyiv attempts to compensate for its battlefield disadvantage in weapons and troops. The unmanned aerial vehicles are also an affordable option while Ukraine waits for more U.S. military aid.

Quote:From drones to trench warfare, Ukraine is the theater where the latest military trends from around the world are played out, so it stands to reason Kyiv has allegedly launched military balloons, a throwback to the Chinese spy balloons that caused such conniptions in the United States in 2023.

Cheap, and extremely long range: large balloons could be a valuable vector for Kyiv’s ongoing attempts to strike Russia’s economy to undermine its invasion of Ukraine. Now Russia says it is shooting down quantities of Ukrainian balloons over its territory, classifying both military “terrorism” balloons allegedly carrying explosives, and what may be observation platforms or decoys described as “Ukrainian weather balloons”.

Statements from Kremlin-controlled Russian state media asserts the country’s armed forces shot down at least eight “Ukrainian balloons” in three days this week. Those incidents include “weather balloon” wreckage in the Lipetsk region approximately 230 miles north east of Ukraine’s Kharkiv and a “Ukrainian small-size balloon” shot down in the Kursk region, which is south of Moscow and borders Ukraine.

Russia decried what it called “a terrorist attack using a small-size balloon”.

While described officially a ‘weather balloons’, the Associated Press cites Russian domestic media as claiming these two balloons actually carried “mortar mines”, similar munitions to those carried by Ukrainian FPV drones in frontline strikes. The service notes: “Ukrainian balloons are equipped with a GPS module and carry explosives. They reportedly are harder to detect and could carry a bigger payload than more common small drones.”

If correct, the balloons seem to take the role of a modernised incendiary balloon as deployed by Imperial Japan against the United States in the Second World War.

The following day on the 17th, a further weather balloon was “neutralised” by the Russian armed forces in the Kaluga region south west of Moscow, it was said. Again underlining the lighter-than-air craft may have been packing more than just meteorological equipment, the Kremlin relayed that nearby houses had to be evacuated from the crash-site.

Then on the 18th, alleged balloon incursions stepped up again, with five shot down during a larger barrage of Ukrainian missiles and drones launched against the Russian mainland. Per the Russian state’s claims, two balloons were shot down over Belgorod and three in Voronezh along the border with Ukraine.

I guess Ukraine will no longer rely on them now that they will get a large aid package from the US thanks to Speaker Johnson...

Quote:Bulgarian customs officials say they have seized 403 kilograms (about 887 pounds) of heroin found in a truck with Turkish registration en route from Iran to Western Europe.

The heroin in 618 packages hidden inside the officially declared 156 sleeping mattresses transported in the truck. Officials valued the drug haul at 8.5 million euros (nearly $9 million).

The truck was confiscated at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint on the Turkish border, Haskovo regional prosecutor Ivan Stoyanov said on Saturday. The drugs were thought to have originated in Iran and destined for distribution in some of the 27 nations of the European Union, he said

The Turkish truck driver was detained and could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted on drug trafficking charges.

Bulgaria, which lies on a drug route from the Middle East to Western Europe, has taken massive steps in recent years to prevent drug trafficking.

Quote:A populist political activist has reported being assaulted in Paris on Friday, in the latest example of right-wing political figures facing violence in Europe.

The president of the youth movement of Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête! (Reconquest) anti-mass migration party, Stanislas Rigault, 24, said that he filed a police report after he was attacked by a group of six or seven people while waiting for a taxi in the 14th arrondissement of the French capital on Friday evening.

According to a police source cited by Le Figaro, the Génération Zemmour was descended upon by the apparent group of leftists after they recognised him as a right-wing activist and began shouting “fascist” and “Nazi” at the young man.

Speaking to the newspaper of record, Rigault said: “They started to push me, to tell us that we had nothing to do there.”

A female member of the group began to push him, he said, adding: “I push her away and at that moment, she spits on me.”

At the time of this reporting, the perpetrators have yet to be identified by police.

It is not the first time the populist party has faced political violence, with Reconquête! leader and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour was injured in 2021 during a campaign rally which saw 39 Atifa radicals arrested, some of whom were armed with Molotov cocktails and “bottles of acid”.

Quote:Two German-Russian dual citizens accused of membership of a pro-Kremlin terrorist organisation, of scouting military bases, and planning bombings have been arrested by Federal police.

The German Federal Prosecutor released details of the allegations against two individuals arrested on Wednesday who stand accused of espionage and planned sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence agencies.

Dieter S. is said to have been active in passing images of military installations to contacts in Russia and of planning an attack since October 2023, while Alexander J. is believed to have become involved more recently, in March 2024. Both men are reportedly Russian-German dual nationals.

German broadcaster BR24 cites the comments of Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel who said Dieter S. was working to “undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression”, particularly in planning to “commit explosives and arson attacks, especially on military infrastructure and industrial sites in Germany”.

This particularly took the form of hostile reconnaissance against the U.S. 7th Army’s Garrison Bavaria at the Grafenwöhr training area. Crucially, it is at this base where the U.S. trains Ukrainian soldiers, and Ukrainian tank crews to operate the M1 Abrams main battle tank.

According to the prosecutor, reports Die Welt, Dieter S. intended to “undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression” by attacking the base. In all, he is accused of  “conspiring to cause an explosive explosion and arson, acting as an agent for sabotage purposes… membership in a foreign terrorist organization and preparing a serious act of violence that endangers the state”, the publisher states.

Discussing the arrests, German Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the left-wing SPD party said: “Our security authorities prevented possible explosive attacks that were intended to target and undermine our military assistance to Ukraine… We will continue to provide massive support to Ukraine and will not allow ourselves to be intimidated”.

Far from a clumsy attempt at sabotage, it is alleged Dieter S. is an experienced soldier with combat experience. There is a “strong suspicion”, it is stated, that he previously fought with a military unit of the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ — an eastern Ukrainian region which has been occupied by Russia to varying degrees for a decade.

The arrests are only the latest of their kind of alleged Russian spies and saboteurs in European states of recent months, which have come alongside several other cases where Russian ‘diplomats’ have been ordered to return to Moscow after being accused of abusing their diplomatic position to spy.

Quote:With the Paris Olympic Games 100 days away, police carried out a large-scale eviction at France’s biggest squat in the south of the country’s capital. Authorities, including dozens of gendarmes, cleared out the makeshift camp at an abandoned bus company headquarters in Vitry-sur-Seine on Wednesday.

The camp had become home to about 450 migrants, with images of the eviction spreading rapidly across social media.

Aid workers are concerned that the broader effort by Paris authorities to clear out migrants and other people sleeping rough in the city before the summer Olympics is troubling, as those evicted are not provided longer-term housing assistance.

“The squat was the biggest in France. It doubled in size in one year because of the Olympics. Last year, authorities cleared out migrants from nearby the Olympic Village, and many displaced people came here,” said Paul Alauzy of the humanitarian organization Médecins du Monde, who has been closely following the steady pace of evictions over two years.

The conditions inside the warehouse were cramped, Alauzy said.

Quote:The head of the European Union’s executive branch said Friday that Finland’s decision to close its border crossings with Russia over a surge in migrants was a security matter for the whole 27-member bloc to consider.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the remarks during a trip to the frontier, visiting a part of the border located in southeastern Finland.
“We all know how (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his allies instrumentalize migrants to test our defenses and to try to destabilize us,” von der Leyen said. “Now Putin is focusing on Finland, and this is no doubt in response to your firm support of Ukraine and your accession to NATO.”

On April 4, Finland decided to extend the closure of its border crossing points with Russia “until further notice” because of what the government says is a high risk of organized migration being orchestrated by Moscow. Finland’s government has closed eight of its nine checkpoints with Russia. The only one that remains open is dedicated to rail travel only, and cargo trains mainly run through it.

Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (832-mile) land border with Russia, running mostly through thick forests in the south, and to the rugged landscape in the Arctic north.

“This is not just about the security of Finland, but it is about the security of the European Union. We are in this together,” von der Leyen said after visiting the border in Lappeenranta with Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. “We should be more Finnish when it comes to security.”

Von der Leyen and Orpo flew in a Finnish helicopter over the landscape of forests and towns on the border.

In a statement issued after the visit, Orpo said that “the spring´s warmer weather increases the risk of Russia helping people illegally try to get to Finland via the land border … outside the border crossing points.”

Most of the migrants hail from the Middle East and Africa. The vast majority of them have sought asylum in Finland, a member of the EU and NATO with a population of 5.6 million.

Quote:The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed media reports from Azerbaijan that Russia will withdraw all of its “peacekeepers” from the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Russians did nothing while Azerbaijan used force to seize control of the area last year and ruthlessly conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Armenian Christians who lived there.

“Yes, that’s really true,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference on Wednesday morning when asked about an Azerbaijani news report of the pullout.

The Moscow Times noted that Azeri-language social media posted videos of a Russian military convoy moving out of the region. The report on Azerbaijan’s Musavat news website was not long on details, but it included a photo of Russian armored personnel carriers rumbling down a mountain road on their way out of the contested region.

Another Azeri report said the Russian withdrawal began with troops pulling out of the medieval Armenian monastery of Dadivank, which they had been more-or-less protecting with sandbags and a few armored personnel carriers. The ancient monastery is now “guarded” by Azerbaijan’s security forces.

The Russian Defense Ministry posted its own footage of the withdrawal, prompting Armenian media to point out that Russian peacekeepers were supposedly committed to remaining in Nagorno-Karabakh for another year and a half.

“The early withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, temporarily stationed in the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in accordance with the trilateral Statement signed on November 10, 2020, has been decided by the leaders of both countries,” a foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday.

“The process has already begun, with the ministries of defense of Azerbaijan and Russia implementing appropriate measures for the execution of that decision,” the adviser added.

Quote:A delegation from Ukraine arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, hoping to secure assistance from Taiwanese firms to rebuild in the aftermath of the Russian invasion.

The delegation was led by Mykola Tkachenko, CEO of ProZorro, the Ukrainian government’s procurement system. ProZorro was established after the ouster of Ukraine’s fabulously corrupt pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych in 2014 with the goal of creating a more transparent and open system for government purchases that would be less prone to corruption. “Prozorro” means “transparency” in Ukrainian, and the system also established an oversight board called “Dozorro,” or “watchdog.”

Tkachenko brought leaders from Ukrainian industry to highlight the opportunities that will (hopefully) be available in Ukraine after the war is over. He hoped in turn that Ukrainians would gain a better understanding of Taiwan’s advanced technology industry and how it could be harnessed to rebuild devastated Ukrainian sectors like energy and health care.

The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) hosted a forum on Tuesday during which about two hundred Taiwanese business representatives watched presentations from Ukrainian energy and health care groups. Ukrainian power company executives were especially interested in using Taiwanese technology to advance their Soviet-era power grid.

TAITRA said the Ukrainian delegation would meet with more Taiwanese tech executives before returning home on Friday. TAITRA chairman James Huang said he would also arrange meetings with Taiwanese construction executives for his Ukrainian guests.

Ukraine’s infrastructure has been ravaged by the Russian invasion, leaving its population vulnerable to extreme cold. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said in November that half of Ukraine’s power infrastructure has been either damaged or completely wiped out by the Russians, leaving civilians at the mercy of “respiratory infections such as Covid-19, pneumonia, influenza, and the serious risk of diphtheria and measles in the under-vaccinated population.”

Quote:Indonesia’s Mount Ruang volcano erupted at least five times on Wednesday, prompting a high-level alert for more eruptions and a tsunami warning.

Over 11,000 people living near the volcano were ordered to leave as the government struggled to create a four-mile-radius safe zone around the mountain.

Ruang itself is an islet about three miles across at its widest point, separated from the much larger and more heavily populated Tagulandang Island by a narrow strait. The volcano has erupted several times over the past two centuries, most recently in 2002.

Beginning on Tuesday night, the volcano was rocked by a series of increasingly powerful explosions, causing lava to pour out of its crater as the mountain was wreathed in clouds and lighting bolts. As of Wednesday morning, over 400 volcanic earthquakes had been detected around the island.

Indonesian rescue workers scrambled to evacuate the area, aided by local fishermen who offered their boats for transportation. The Indonesian Navy dispatched a warship that was able to evacuate 195 people.

Eruptions continued on Thursday and Friday, pelting houses on Tagulandang with volcanic rock and making some roads difficult to use.

Most of Tagulandang’s 2,000 residents were told to leave their homes, an advisory issued after some of them had already begun to flee in panic.

Tagulandang also has a small prison, whose handful of inmates and staff were evacuated to nearby Sulawesi island. Much of Tagulandang’s population could ultimately be evacuated to Sulawesi, which is about six hours away by boat.

Quote:On Thursday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Now,” White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi denied that the Biden administration is attempting to shut down the coal industry or slow any industry down, and stated that the issue is “about how do we speed up to a stronger economy, a more durable economy, and one that, frankly, puts less pollution into the sky?”

Host Connell McShane asked, “[C]oal executives, for the most part, are coming out and saying this — we can’t meet this. So, the real goal here is to kind of shut our industry down. Is that what’s happening?”

Zaidi answered, “No, the real goal here is to make sure that we take pollution out of the skies so folks can breathe easier, so that we can tackle the climate crisis. And we can do it at the same time as growing our economy and delivering cheap and affordable and reliable energy to more and more Americans.”

McShane then asked, “It will mean a shift right, in a lot of people’s jobs and a lot of industries and coal would be one of them. Is that fair? Is that a fair way to put it, that there’s going to be a real shift in the economy over the next number of years?”

Zaidi responded, “What we’ve been seeing over the last several decades and accelerating is a shift to cleaner energy. Today, almost 70 million homes worth of clean electricity is generated on our grid from sources like nuclear power, hydropower, geothermal, solar, wind, batteries. And as you look at the projections for this year, for 2024, not some year far in the future, 96% of the new power that will be built this year will be clean. So, I think that’s where the economy is today. That’s where the global economy has been racing. And finally, thanks to President Biden’s leadership, we are positioned to lead in that global economy.”

Later, McShane asked, “I know you guys don’t talk about this a lot, but there’s been kind of record oil production, for example, under the Biden administration, there’s been a lot of domestic oil production. It’s not advertised necessarily, but it’s there. I’m just wondering if you go in this direction, climate emergency, things like that, if it’s a net negative for the economy at a time like this?”

And that's exactly how you make a rich country become poor.

Quote:California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) admitted Thursday that the state still faces the risk of blackouts in heat waves despite investing in battery capacity to store electricity for use in times of peak demand.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that California continued to rapidly add the battery storage that is crucial to the transition to cleaner energy, but admitted it was still not enough to avoid blackouts during heat waves.
...
Asked by reporters if California now had enough battery storage so that residents no longer had to worry about blackouts during times of high power use, Newsom laughed.

“We have a lot of work to do still in moving this transition, with the kind of stability that’s required,” the governor said. “So no, this is not today announcing that blackouts are part of our past.”

California is pushing to meet ambitious “green energy” and “zero emissions” targets, including a transition to an all-electric car and truck fleet, despite the fact that the state lacks power generating capacity to meet growing demand.

During blackouts in 2020, Newsom said that the state needed to “sober up” about the fact that renewable energy sources like solar and wind energy were not sufficient for the state’s needs — but then pressed ahead anyway.

The state has been shuttering fossil fuel plants and only has one nuclear power plant left. In the last drought, low water levels in dams meant shortages of hydroelectric power as well. Batteries, it is hoped, will help with the shortfall.

Quote:U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) had his luggage stolen in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, leaving him without a suit as he addressed an audience that evening.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

Hello to the city, goodbye to your luggage. That was Senatorial candidate Adam Schiff’s rude introduction to San Francisco’s vexing reputation for car burglaries Thursday when thieves swiped the bags from his car while it sat in a downtown parking garage.

The heist meant the Democratic congressman got stuck at a fancy dinner party in his shirt sleeves and a hiking vest while everyone else sat in suits. Not quite the look the man from Burbank was aiming for as he rose to thank powerhouse attorney Joe Cotchett for his support in his bid to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate.

“I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco,’ ” Cotchett’s press agent Lee Houskeeper, who was at the dinner, remarked dryly.

Democrats are struggling to face the consequences of their own policies, as “criminal justice reform” has turned San Francisco and other California cities into havens for petty crime and smash-and-grab thefts.

At the state level, Democrats are trying to pass laws to toughen penalties for property crime — but without touching Proposition 47 of 2014, which reduced penalties for theft and other crimes.

Opponents of Proposition 47 announced last week that they have enough signatures to qualify reforms to the measure for the November 2024 ballot.

Quote:The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday about whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as Special Counsel Jack Smith has accused him of doing.

A majority of the Supreme Court justices appeared to agree with Trump’s attorneys’ arguments that a president does enjoy some level of immunity that continues past the term of office. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito was one of them, citing the “old saw about indicting a ham sandwich” while questioning the government’s Michael Dreeben.

“[T]his case will have effects that go far beyond this particular prosecution. So moving on to the second level of protection that the D.C. Circuit cited, federal grand injuries will shield former presidents from unwarranted indictments. How much protection is that?” Alito asked.

Dreeben replied by arguing that “some fears about groundless prosecutions aren’t supported by evidence” and that “they’re not going to get out of the starting gate.’

“I mean, there — there’s the old saw about indicting a ham sandwich,” Alito quipped. “I mean, you had a lot of experience in the Justice Department. You come across a lot of cases where the U.S. attorney or another federal prosecutor really wanted to indict a case and the grand jury refused to do so?”

“There are such cases,” Dreeben replied.

“Are there?” Alito pressed, before adding, “Every once in a while there’s an eclipse, too.”

The “indict a ham sandwich” phrase reportedly originated in January of 1985 with former Chief Judge of New York State Sol Wachtler in an interview with the New York Daily News. Wachtler told the publication that district attorneys have so much influence on grand juries that “by and large” they could get them to “indict a ham sandwich.”

“A month later, the New York Times noted that Wachtler believed grand juries ‘operate more often as the prosecutor’s pawn than the citizen’s shield.’ That belief—that prosecutors can get grand juries to do whatever they want them to do, will sound familiar” to some, Slate reported.

Quote:Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Thursday questioned if the criminal prosecution of an incumbent — who narrowly lost an election — could lead to the destabilization of the country as a whole as opposed to the incumbent knowing he could leave office peacefully.

Alito made the remark on Thursday, as the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It appears, during the arguments, that a majority of Supreme Court justices agreed with former President Donald Trump’s attorneys’ arguments.

“If a president has the authority to pardon himself before leaving office and the D.C. Circuit is right that there is no immunity from prosecution, won’t the predictable result be that presidents on the last couple of days of office are going to pardon themselves from anything that they might have been conceivably charged with committing?” Alito asked the government’s Michael Dreeben.

Dreeben said he doubted that, asserting that it “presupposes a regime that we have never had except for President Nixon and as alleged in the indictment here.”

“Presidents who are conscious of having engaged in wrongdoing and seeking to shield themselves, I think the political consequences of a president who asserted a right of self-pardon that has never been recognized, that seems to contradict a bedrock principle of our law that no person shall be the judge in their own case. Those are adequate deterrents, I think, so that this kind of dystopian regime is not going to evolve,” he continued, prompting Alito to pose the following question regarding the consequences of not allowing the departing president to exit office peacefully.

“Let me end — end with just a question about what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want,” Alito said.

“I’m sure you would agree with me that a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully if that candidate is — is the incumbent,” he continued, prompting an “of course” from Dreeben.

“All right. Now, if a — an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Alito posed, adding, “And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”

Quote:Attorney General Merrick Garland defied a final warning Thursday to comply with a subpoena for the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

If Garland did not comply with the subpoena, he would face contempt of Congress proceedings, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) and Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote Garland on April 17.

Biden’s Justice Department replied Thursday to Comer and Jordan by refusing to hand over the audio, citing a lack of “legitimate congressional need” for it.

“If the Committees’ goal is to receive information from the Department in furtherance of your investigations, that goal has been more than met,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte replied Thursday. “Our cooperation has been extraordinary.”

“Despite our many requests,” he added, “the Committees have not articulated a legitimate congressional need to obtain audio recordings from Mr. Hur’s investigation, let alone one that outweighs the Department’s strong interest in protecting the confidentiality of law enforcement files.”

“Lacking a justification for complaint—never mind contempt—in the actual record, the Committees’ threats deepen our concern that you are seeking to create a false narrative of obstruction that weakens, rather than strengthens, the American people’s confidence in our government and the rule of law,” Uriarte continued.

“The Department will not shirk from our duty to protect the public’s interest in the integrity of law enforcement work. We hope you find this information helpful. Please do not hesitate to contact this office if we may provide additional assistance regarding this or any other matter,” he claimed.

When Breitbart News requested comment from the Oversight Committee about future steps regarding Garland and potential contempt proceedings, a spokesperson replied, “We will respond to the Department of Justice.”

During the president’s interview with Hur, Biden, 81, experienced mental lapses and “poor memory” at least seven times, according to a transcript obtained by Breitbart News.

Quote:Wednesday on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) railed against so-called pro-Palestinian protesters at U.S. universities, who, in some cases, have threatened Jewish Americans while calling for the destruction of Israel.

The Missouri Republican labeled the anti-Israel protesters “bougie jihadists.”

“Senator, let’s talk about the guard that you’re calling for, which I believe would be the right call, but I don’t see Biden wanting to alienate his radical base,” I think that’s why he’s not going to do it.

“Well, sure. I mean, this is all about the fact that he has a pro-Hamas base, Sean,” host Sean Hannity said. “But listen, Eisenhower did the right thing back in ’57 when he sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. Why not do it for Jewish Americans?”

“I mean, it shouldn’t be that in this country in this day and age that, if you are a Jewish American, you fear for your life because all of these bougie jihadists at these universities whose brains are addled by TikTok are out there calling for your death calling for the destruction of the state of Israel,” Hawley replied. “I mean, what is going on on these campuses? Send in the National Guard and wake these kids up. They ought to know they can’t do this. They ought to know they don’t have any right to occupy these campuses. They don’t have any right to threaten their fellow students. They ought to snap them out of it, and the National Guard would help do it.”

Quote:On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) stated that Columbia University and other schools that “are engaging in this kind of nonsense” similar to what’s happening at Columbia do not deserve to get taxpayer dollars.

Johnson said that what’s happening at Columbia “is not the expression of free speech, it’s not the free exchange of ideas in the public square. This is threatening and intimidating Jewish students because of who they are, because of what they believe. We met with a big group of Jewish students before we went to the campus, and they’re hiding in fear. They don’t go to class, they’re afraid they’re going to be assaulted. It’s not fair to them. Some of them had to bring federal lawsuits, civil rights violations that are being committed there, and taxpayer dollars should not be going to institutions that are engaging in this kind of nonsense. If you’re an administrator on a university campus, your number one job, the first and most obvious, is the safety and security of your students. If you can’t guarantee that, we need to find somebody who can.”

Quote:Anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas protesters — such as those seen at Columbia and Yale — will be expelled if they try to pull the same stunts at Florida universities, Gov. Ron DeSantis ® made clear on Thursday.

“You think about what happened when you have these Hamas demonstrators out. They’re taking over bridges, and they’re taking over roads,” he said, noting that these individuals do not have the right to do that.

“How do you know if someone — someone may need to get to a hospital. Someone may need to pick up a child somewhere, and you’re just going to commandeer the road,” he said, highlighting the viral instance that saw protesters trying to pull that same stunt in Miami, Florida. In a matter of minutes, police officers responded, dragging the protesters out of the roads:

“We’re not going to tolerate that. You look at these universities. When we have students who are doing things that — I mean, some of the stuff with the Hamas, I think, is absurd that someone would go out and demonstrate on that,” DeSantis said, adding, “But you know, when you’re chasing Jewish students around, when you’re not letting a Jewish professor enter a building, when you’re targeting people like that, that’s not free speech.”

DeSantis said such actions are clearly harassment that violates appropriate conduct. Yet, students doing this at places such as Columbia and Yale “rule the roost” and “do whatever they want.”

“And these administrators and the presidents of these universities are weak. They’re scared, and they don’t do anything,” he said, making it clear such behavior will not fly in the Sunshine State.

“You do that in Florida at our universities, we’re showing you the door. You’re going to be expelled when you’re doing that stuff, and you know what, the minute people start to face consequences, you are not going to see this nonsense going on,” the governor added.

Quote:Ukrainians on Friday marked the 38th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster with memorials and warnings that the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine could cause similar damage to active power plants.

The nuclear disaster began in the early hours of April 26, 1986, when the Chernobyl power plant began to melt down. Rather than cool down the facility, the Soviet operators increased the power to the reactors, causing a devastating explosion that destroyed the neighboring town of Pripyat and covered large swathes of Europe with toxic plumes.

The area surrounding Chernobyl remains an “exclusion zone,” where the government does not allow individuals to live save for a dwindling community of residents who were already mostly senior citizens when the disaster occurred and chose not to vacate the area.

At the time, Soviet communist officials claimed the disaster killed only 30 people. Tallying deaths apparently attributable to radiation-caused diseases in Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, however, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) has estimated that the true death toll is closer to 4,000. Other scientific attempts to assess the true damage caused by Chernobyl have suggested as many as 70,000 people have died as a result of radiation poison, radiation-caused cancers, and other illnesses directly related to Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster remains one of the most sensational examples of communist malfeasance and incompetence in modern history.

Quote:A top Russian military official arrested on suspicion of accepting a bribe was sent to pre-trial detention Wednesday after appearing before a court in central Moscow, court officials said in a statement.

Timur Ivanov, 48, one of Russia´s 12 deputy defense ministers, was arrested Tuesday evening, Russia´s Investigative Committee said in a statement. They gave no further information, apart from specifying that Ivanov is suspected of taking an especially large bribe – a criminal offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

According to a statement from the court, investigators told Moscow´s Basmany court Wednesday that Ivanov had conspired with third parties to receive a bribe in the form of unspecified property services “during contracting and subcontracting work for the needs of the Ministry of Defense.”

An acquaintance of Ivanov’s, identified as Sergei Borodin, was also arrested and ordered into pre-trial detention on the same charges, court officials said in a separate statement. Both men are to remain in custody until at least June 23.

According to the defense ministry´s website, Ivanov was appointed to the post in 2016 by a presidential decree. He oversaw property management, housing and medical support for the military, construction and reconstruction of facilities.

Russia´s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that both President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu were informed about Ivanov´s arrest, which comes as Moscow´s war in Ukraine continues into its third year.

Before his arrest on Tuesday evening, Ivanov was seen attending a meeting with Shoigu and other top military brass.

Russian media reported that he was in charge, among other things, of some of the construction in Mariupol – a port city in Ukraine´s partially occupied Donestk region which was heavily bombarded and occupied by Russian forces early on in the war in 2022.

Take into account that Ivanov has no real military career before he ever became one of the 10 deputy defense ministers in Russia.

Quote:The United Kingdom has said it will campaign for NATO baseline defence spending for all members to increase from two per cent to two-and-a-half, although it barely hits the lower level itself.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced on a miliary visit to NATO ally Poland on Tuesday that the government intended to increase its spending on defence from a little over two per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to two-and-a-half by 2030. Just a day later, the UK government said it would also be chiding other NATO members to do the same.

It is estimated by the alliance that two-thirds of members will hit 2 per cent of GDP on defence, a remarkable leap forward given just three countries managed that ten years ago in 2014. Whether many nations could be cajoled to spend even more, short of the alliance actually being attacked, is unclear.

UK defence minister Grant Shapps told broadcaster Sky News on Wednesday that: “We’re now saying we think that should be 2.5%. We think in a more dangerous world that would make sense. I will be arguing that, and I know that the prime minister feels strongly about it, when we go to the NATO 75th anniversary summit which is in Washington DC.”

The calls clearly echo longstanding calls by former U.S. President, and now again Presidential candidate Donald Trump for NATO members to pay more, and to pay a fair share of collective defence. While a perspective that these calls for NATO members to do more had harmed the alliance persist in some quarters, the alliance itself has made clear Trump’s tough talk has strengthened it.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Sunak outlined his vision for a grown British military budget while visiting a Polish military base. He said it would be wrong to be complacent “In a world that is the most dangerous it has been since the end of the Cold War”, and said the adversaries of NATO are aligning. “We must do more to defend our country, our interests, and our values”, he said.

Sunak said the increase in spending would be the “biggest… for a generation”, a “landmark moment, and a “generational investment”. While the increase from nearly 2.3 per cent as it was in 2023 to 2.5 per cent by 2030 is meaningful, the Prime Minister’s rhetoric perhaps oversells the increase: even at 2.5, British military spending as a proportion of the total economy would be low by historic levels, and was there as recently as 2009.

In recent years the UK has been able to claim it hits the 2 per cent floor only because NATO rules allow military pension spending to be counted towards the total.

Nevertheless, if British defence spending is poor, it is worse in most of Europe’s NATO members. Generally, the continent is carried by a handful of large economies with relatively big militaries — the UK, France, Germany, Poland — while the NATO alliance overall is underwritten by the United States’ enormous spending at 3.5 per cent of the largest economy on earth.

 Seriously, UK? Do you really depend on the military pension spending to hit the mark?

Quote:A group campaigning for an armaments embargo against Israel protested a speech given by Nancy Pelosi at the historic Oxford Union debating chamber on Thursday night.

Police removed two protesters interrupting a speech by former U.S. speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Oxford Union on Thursday. Two students stepped in front of the rostrum and unfurled a Palestinian flag. Per a video of the protest action published by campaign group ‘Youth Demand’, which is against Israel and climate change, Pelosi continued to deliver her speech while the flag-holding man stood in silence, surrounded by security.

Police officers later removed the pair from the building but, according to a report in the incident by The Telegraph, no arrests were made. The paper states Pelosi was at the university to give the Benazir Bhutto memorial lecture, a former Oxford University student and Oxford Union president who went on to be the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. Bhutto was assassinated, it is thought by a radical Islamist, in 2007.

After that speech, Pelosi was due to participate in an Oxford Union debate on the motion “This house believes populism is a threat to democracy”.

Youth Demand, by their own reckoning, say they want both of the United Kingdom’s main political parties to commit to a “two-way arms embargo on Israel” and say they want to stop all new oil and gas drilling in the country. Of the decision to protest Pelosi, they further said: “Warmongers like Nancy Pelosi are not welcome on University campuses. When children are being murdered, and hospitals are being bombed, we will not sit down and be quiet whilst these people are given platforms. We must stand up and take action, because we aren’t fucking around anymore.”

A larger protest took place on Thursday evening outside the venue itself as well, with the Cherwell student newspaper claiming “over a hundred” protesters. The paper states those present “condemned the Oxford Union and Oxford University who they described as “complicit” in the war on the Gaza strip”, as well as the U.S. for giving money to Israel, and Pelosi herself.

Pelosi is in the United Kingdom as part of a tour including a four-day visit to Ireland. While there she boasted that she had interfered in Britain’s Brexit process, saying she’d “had to make it clear to the Brits” that the country could “forget about” a trade deal with the U.S. unless it toed the line on American policy on a united Ireland.

Quote:France has been accused of aiding the people smuggling gangs operating along its coast after failing to stop an overcrowded dinghy setting sail for Britain and the French Navy escorting the small boat to UK waters even after five people fell off the vessel and drowned on Tuesday.

On the first day after the UK finally passed legislation to send illegal boat migrants to processing centres in Rwanda, 402 foreigners successfully crossed the Channel from France. However, five migrants, including a seven-year-old girl, a woman, and three men died as the engine of the overcrowded dinghy cut out, sparking panic.

While 48 migrants from the boat were returned to France, the French Navy decided to continue escorting the 58 remaining migrants in the dinghy to UK waters, despite the drownings.

“They managed to restart the engine and decided to continue their sea route towards Great Britain under the surveillance of the French Navy,” the local Pas-de-Calais prefect Jacques Billant said per The Telegraph.

Brexit boss Nigel Farage, who first exposed the French Navy escorting migrants to the UK territorial waters in 2020, said on Tuesday evening: “What really strikes me is; five people overboard drown, the French Navy come, take other people off, and still escort that boat, effectively, the French Navy are working for the traffickers.”

“At what point politically, do we say to the French, you have got to stop acting as agents of the traffickers?” he questioned.

So are the French Navy vessels crewed by  pirates or corsairs now?

Quote:A Chinese container ship remains the prime suspect in causing damage last year to a Baltic Sea gas pipeline between NATO members Finland and Estonia, Finnish investigators said Thursday.

It has been over six months since substantial, human-made damage that caused a major drop in pressure was first detected in the Balticconnector pipeline in Finnish economic waters on Oct. 8. Finland and Estonia’s gas system operators were forced to shut it down, disconnecting a crucial link between the Nordic and Baltic gas markets for several months.

The pipeline, which runs across the Gulf of Finland between the Finnish town of Inkoo and the Estonian port of Paldiski, was reopened this week after multimillion-euro repair work.

The National Bureau of Investigation, a branch of the Finnish police, said Thursday that it still believes that an anchor of the Hong Kong-flagged cargo vessel Newnew Polar Bear ship, which was on its way to St. Petersburg, Russia, was dislodged and caused the damage detected in Balticconnector.

“Investigation has progressed, and there has been cooperation with the Chinese authorities probing the case,” Detective Superintendent Risto Lohi, NBI´s head of the investigation, told The Associated Press.

“The main line of investigation has remained unchanged – the cargo ship Newnew Polar Bear and its anchor are considered to be related to the pipeline damage,” Lohi said.

Finnish investigators haven’t said whether they believe the damage allegedly caused by the Chinese vessel was done intentionally or whether it was caused by incompetent seafaring, as suggested by some experts.

Finnish maritime authorities said at the time of the incident they failed to establish radio contact with Newnew Polar Bear’s captain despite several attempts.

Last year, NBI said an initial probe by investigators and experts found a trail about 1.5 to 4 meters on seabed was seen to lead to the point of damage in the gas pipeline. That trail is believed to have been caused by the heavy 6-ton anchor of Newnew Polar Bear, which was later retrieved from the seabed by the Finnish Navy.

Quote:Two men, including one who was reported to be a parliamentary researcher, were charged with spying for China, British prosecutors said Monday.

Police said Christopher Berry, 32, and Christopher Cash, 29, were charged with “providing prejudicial information to a foreign state, China.” They will appear at Westminster Magistrates´ Court on Friday.

Police allege the two men collected, recorded or communicated information “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state” and violated the Official Secrets Act between late 2021 and February 2023.

“This has been an extremely complex investigation into what are very serious allegations,” said Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police counterterrorism command.

Authorities did not release details about the two men. But Berry is reportedly an academic based in Oxfordshire, and The Sunday Times reported last year that Cash was a parliamentary researcher who held a pass that allows full access to the Parliament buildings, issued to lawmakers, staff and journalists after security vetting.

The report said Cash worked with senior lawmakers from the governing Conservatives, including Alicia Kearns, who now heads the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee, and her predecessor in that role, Tom Tugendhat, who is now security minister.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said last year that he raised the issue with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, saying he raised “very strong concerns” about interference in British democracy.

At the time, Cash issued a statement through his lawyers maintaining his innocence. The Chinese Embassy issued a statement calling the allegations fabricated.

Also on Monday, three people were arrested in Germany on suspicion of spying for China and arranging to transfer information on technology with potential military uses.

British intelligence authorities have ratcheted up their warnings about Beijing’s covert activities in recent years.

Quote:A former researcher working in the U.K. Parliament and another man charged with spying for China were granted bail Friday after an initial court appearance in London.

Christopher Cash, 29, and Christopher Berry, 32, were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act by providing information or documents that could be “useful to an enemy” – China – and “prejudicial to the safety or interests” of the U.K. between late 2021 and February 2023.

Cash, a parliamentary researcher who worked with senior lawmakers from the governing Conservatives, was ordered not to enter Parliament or contact members of the House of Commons.

Cash´s colleagues included Alicia Kearns, who now heads the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee, and her predecessor in that role, Tom Tugendhat, who is now security minister.

Berry is reportedly an academic based in Oxfordshire.

The two didn’t enter pleas during a short hearing in Westminster Magistrates´ Court.

The defendants were also ordered not to to travel outside the U.K. or contact each other. They were ordered to appear May 10 at the Central Criminal Court known as the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing.

The Chinese Embassy has called the allegations “completely fabricated” and “malicious slander,” and urged the U.K. to “stop anti-China political manipulation.”

Quote:A British man accused of plotting to torch a London business connected to Ukraine has been charged with conducting hostile activity to benefit Russia, prosecutors said Friday.

Dylan Earl, 20, is connected to Russia´s Wagner mercenary group, which the U.K. government has declared a banned terrorist organization, prosecutors said.

Earl is accused of fraudulent activity, research and reconnaissance of targets, and attempting to recruit others to assist a foreign intelligence service carrying out activities in the U.K.

“Included in the alleged activity was involvement in the planning of an arson attack on a Ukrainian-linked commercial property in March,” said Nick Price, head of the Crown Prosecution Service Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division.

He allegedly planned and paid others to burn down two industrial properties in east London on March 20.

He is the first person to be charged under the National Security Act 2023.

Four other men face charges connected to the case.

Jake Reeves, 22, was charged with agreeing to accept a material benefit from a foreign intelligence service and aggravated arson.

Dmitrijus Paulauska, 22, was charged with having information about terrorist acts.

Paul English, 60, and Nii Mensah, 21, face aggravated arson charges.

Quote:Three people suspected of spying for China and arranging to transfer information on technology with potential military uses were arrested in Germany on Monday.

Prosecutors said the three German citizens are accused of having acted for Chinese intelligence since some point before June 2022. They are also suspected of violating German export laws by exporting a special laser without permission.

One of the suspects, identified only as Thomas R. in line with German privacy laws, was allegedly an agent for an employee of China’s Ministry of State Security and procured information in Germany on “militarily usable innovative technologies” for that person, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

To do that, prosecutors said, he used Herwig F. and Ina. F, a couple who own a company in Duesseldorf that was used to contact and work with German researchers.

The couple allegedly set up a research transfer agreement with an unidentified German university, the first step in which was to draw up a study for a Chinese partner on the technology of machine parts that could be used for powerful ship engines, including those in battleships. Thomas R.’s handler at the MSS was behind the Chinese partner and the project was financed by the Chinese state, prosecutors said.

At the time of the arrests, the suspects were in negotiations on further research projects that could be useful for expanding China’s naval combat strength, they added.

The suspects also procured with MSS funding a special laser and exported it to China without permission, although it was classified as a “dual-use” instrument under European Union rules, prosecutors said.

The homes and offices of the suspects, who were arrested in Duesseldorf and in Bad Homburg, near Frankfurt, were searched.

The suspects were arrested a week after a three-day visit to China by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, his second since he took office in late 2021.

German officials wouldn’t be drawn on whether the government was aware of the case at the time but said the trip hadn’t played any role in the timing of the arrests.

In a strategy for relations with China released last year, the German government pointed to a “systemic rivalry” with the Asian power and a need to reduce risks of economic dependency, but highlighted its desire to work with Beijing on challenges such as climate change and maintain strong trade ties.

The document stated that “we take decisive action to counter all analog and digital espionage and sabotage activities by Chinese intelligence services and state-controlled groups, whether these activities be in or directed against Germany.”

Quote:President Joe Biden’s Navy secretary wants to import skilled blue-collar migrants to build the U.S. Navy ships that protect Americans and their job opportunities.

“What we’ve got to do is open up the spigot a bit, basically, on legal immigration to allow blue-collar workers to come here … so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told a meeting in Arlington Va.

Del Toro’s call for migrant shipbuilders comes amid a shipbuilding crisis where many U.S. warships are being delivered far behind schedule, sometimes with deep flaws, Forbes reported in 2021 that the United States:

builds less than 10 vessels for oceangoing commerce in a typical year. China builds over a thousand such ships each year. The entire U.S.-registered fleet of oceangoing commercial ships numbers fewer than 200 vessels, out of a global total of 44,000.

However, the administration’s support for mass migration reduces the pressure on state governments and companies to train the next generation of Americans for skilled jobs.

The government’s inflow of cheap migrants also provides CEOs and investors with an easy excuse to avoid the difficult task of raising per-person productivity. Boosting productivity usually requires executives to manage a painful mix of training, automation, reorganization, risk, and innovation.

The Navy is now spending more than $15 billion to upgrade productivity at the shipyards, the U.S. Naval Institute reported in February:

Unfortunately, GAO noted in the 2022 report, “While the condition of the shipyards’ facilities generally improved, they are still among the lowest scored depot facilities across DoD. All shipyards have an average facility condition that is in the ‘Poor’ category.”

Del Toro did say the Navy would “devote an enormous amount of resources into re-training [American] individuals so they can actually work in our shipyards and be employed by the types of trades that are open to shipyard workers, for example.”

That could be good news for Americans and their children. Amid Biden’s mass migration of roughly 10 million people, several million American men have fallen out of the economy, including because of addictions, and many millions more are sidelined in low-wage jobs that shrivel hopes for homeownership, marriage, and families.

But migration is a top priority for Biden’s administration. “President Biden continues to do everything possible in his authority to create more legal pathways [for migrants] to citizenship,” Fabiola Rodriguez, deputy Hispanic media director for the Biden campaign, told TheHill.com on April 25.

Many business groups are also eager to import more migrants for low-wage jobs that would otherwise go to Americans at higher wages. For example, business groups have persuaded many state legislatures to allow illegal migrants to get licenses for skilled jobs, such as plumbers, therapists, electricians, and ironworkers.

U.S. politicians and national security activists have repeatedly called for migrants to fill recruiting shortfalls...

Quote:U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.

While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny’s death – which came soon before the Russian president’s reelection – or directly ordered it, according to the official.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.

At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”

I wonder if that could be true only because his lackeys already knew what they were expected to do with Navalny.

Quote:Hunter Biden was not the only family member who leveraged ties to President Joe Biden to win business deals with business partners linked to foreign governments, a Politico report details.

According to the outlet, Jim Biden, President Joe Biden’s brother, was in business with Qatari officials to fund his health care ventures in what would be “some of the closest known links between a Biden relative and a foreign government.”

Furthermore, according to public records and emails obtained by Politico, Jim Biden invoked his ties to his older brother and sought workarounds to restrictions on international money movements during these fundraising efforts.

Politico cited recent testimony by fund manager Michael Lewitt, a former business partner of Jim Biden’s, in a Kentucky bankruptcy court. Lewitt reportedly said in sworn testimony that two companies that facilitated Jim Biden’s efforts were part-owned by “members of the Qatari government.”

One company partnered directly with Jim Biden in multi-year fundraising efforts, and the second company provided financial backing for a series of loans that a hospital chain paid Jim Biden to arrange, according to documents and testimony submitted by Lewitt during the federal bankruptcy proceedings.

Jim Biden’s efforts to raise money from Qatari sources for ventures in the U.S. began “in the months” after his older brother left the vice presidency, the report said. Transactions related to the fundraising efforts are also “at the heart” of a recently-settled fraud case brought by the Securities Exchange Commission and are “being scrutinized as part of a federal criminal investigation in South Florida,” the report said.

Jim Biden had suggested to congressional investigations in February that his fundraising efforts “stalled for lack of viable projects to back,” but previously unreported testimony by Lewitt “indicates that Jim Biden forged closer ties to Qatar’s government than previously understood.” Lewitt is expected to testify to House impeachment inquiry investigators, Politico reported.

Joe Biden’s relationship with Qatar began around June 2017, when the country’s neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with the country over its alleged support for terrorism, the report said. Qatar then began “showering well-connected Westerners with gifts and financial benefits, sometimes in the form of investment funding,” the report said.

Quote:The Chicago Police Department has made more than 1,000 arrests of Venezuelan migrants in the first three months of 2024, crime data that the Chicago Tribune published reveals.

The Tribune solely reviewed crime data of the sanctuary city’s Venezuelan population, as 40,000 have arrived since August 2022. The Chicago Police Department does not track arrests of migrants, but it does track the country of origin for those arrested, though that data is not recorded in about 14 percent of cases.

Of cases where that data was recorded, the Chicago Police Department made more than 1,000 arrests of Venezuelan migrants from January through March of 2024.

Put another way, while newly arrived Venezuelan migrants make up just 1.5 percent of Chicago’s 2.6 million residents, they have accounted for 11.11 percent of all arrests in the first three months of 2024, when officers recorded the arrestees’ country of origin.

Chicago City Councilman Raymond Lopez (D), who has advocated ending the city’s sanctuary policy and stopping the flow of illegal immigration, told the Tribune that “quality-of-life laws” are not being enforced, and crime is breaking out around migrant shelters as a result.

“Politically, we have an environment that is making excuses for those low-level offenses as something that should be forgiven or ignored without realizing that it has a very real snowball effect in our neighborhoods,” Lopez said.
More broadly, in the 19 months since migrants started arriving in Chicago, 21 arrests were made of Venezuelan migrants for violent felonies — including the arrest of 28-year-old Elvis Hernandez-Pernalete, who was charged in March for allegedly sexually assaulting and robbing a woman he followed off a subway.

Hours before, Hernandez-Pernalete allegedly followed another woman and assaulted her in an attempt to rob her but fled when a passerby noticed what was happening.

Quote:CLAIM: President Joe Biden, 81, recently claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he “got arrested” during the civil rights movement.

VERDICT: Likely false

There is no evidence authorities arrested Biden while defending civil rights, CNN reported:

There is no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as The Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 — and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Biden made the comment while speaking with Howard Stern. The president recounted what his mother purportedly claimed while urging him to take Barack Obama’s offer to become vice president. Biden’s mom, he said, urged him to accept the post.

Biden told Stern:

She said, “Joey, let me — remember” — true story, she said — “Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood … suburbia — and I told you — and there was a black family moving in and there was — people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there and you went down, remember that? And you got arrested standing on the porch with a black family? And they brought you back, the police?” And I said, “Yeah, Mom, I remember that.”

Biden’s statement came during an interview in which he delivered outlandish statements and perhaps some lies, according to Director of Communications for the State Freedom Caucus Network Greg Price:

He claimed he saved six people from drowning as a lifeguard.
He claimed he received “salacious pictures” from women in the 1970s that he handed to Secret Service.
He claimed he was a “runner-up in state scoring” in football.
He also told Stern that he would debate former President Donald Trump. Biden until then had been noncommittal about debating Trump. Trump has said he would be happy to confront Biden on his record, pledging in March to debate him anytime, anywhere.

Quote:Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slammed Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the presidents of Columbia Univeristy.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to a post on X which referred to remarks made by Adams during a press conference earlier, in which he said the protest at Columbia University had been “co-opted by professional outside agitators.”

“If any kid is hurt tonight, responsibility will fall on the mayor and univ presidents,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Other leaders and schools have found a safe, de-escalatory path. This is the opposite of leadership and endangers public safety.”

Ocasio-Cortez added that it was a “nightmare in the making.”

“I urge the Mayor to reverse course,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

Officers from the NYPD dressed in riot gear staged a raid of the campus and began removing anti-Israel protesters from Hamilton Hall, which protesters seized control of in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Anti-Israel protesters were seen on video footage smashing the glass doors of Hamilton Hall, an academic building on campus, carrying barricades into the building, and hanging pro-Palestinian banners from the windows.

Hours after the building was occupied, the university announced that it was restricting access to its campus for the remainder of the spring semester and that students occupying the building would “face expulsion.”

As you can see, those "demonstrators" didn't care about the consequences of their misbehavior. The  police had to kick them out.

Quote:The University of Florida campus is “not a daycare,” the University of Florida said in a statement following the arrest of protesters on Monday.

Protesters the University of Florida rallied together, deeming themselves the anti-Israel “University of Florida Divest Coalition.”

They released a list of demands, which included disclosure of the university’s investment portfolio over the last ten years, student oversight of future investments, the termination of partnerships who are “directly implicated in human rights violations including the Gaza genocide,” divestment “from funding & partnering with weapons manufacturers that are implicated in human rights violations in the Gaza genocide,” and much more, including a revamp of speaker policy.

That includes not allowing speakers “affiliated with the Israeli military or spreading misinformation about the history of Palestine.” They also demand UF President Ben Sasse to “public denounce violence & discrimination against pro-Palestinian students and call for a ceasefire in Gaza.” There was no mention of calling for a public denouncement of the violence and hatred shown toward Jewish students at various campuses across the country.

On Monday, some protesters were arrested, and the university stuck to its guns.

“This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences,” UF President Ben Sasse said in a statement, explaining that they have told protesters — some of which he said are “outside agitators” — for “many days” that they could exercise their right to free speech and assemble.

“And we also told them that clearly prohibited activities would result in a trespassing order from UPD (barring them from all university properties for three years) and an interim suspension from the university,” he explained.

“For days UPD patiently and consistently reiterated the rules. Today, individuals who refused to comply were arrested after UPD gave multiple warnings and multiple opportunities to comply,” he added.

Quote:Law enforcement officials began clearing an anti-Israel encampment on Wednesday that had been established at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Officers from the University of Wisconsin Police Department (UWPD), along with other law enforcement agencies began clearing the anti-Israel encampment after giving the protesters a warning and several chances to leave “peacefully,” according to a statement from UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin.

Mnookin wrote:

As you may be aware, this morning around 7 a.m., the University of Wisconsin Police Department (UWPD), in concert with partner law enforcement agencies and with my authorization, cleared the unlawful tent encampment on Library Mall. Over the last few days, we have repeatedly asked the protesters to bring their demonstration into conformity with the law that prohibits camping on UW grounds. They declined to do so.

This morning, those present at the encampment were given several warnings during which time they were offered the opportunity to peacefully leave the encampment with their belongings and avoid being either cited or arrested. These warnings followed prior communications, including two messages from campus leaders, that clearly delineated the expectation of consequences if the encampment was not removed.

We appreciate that many protesters chose the option of avoiding legal consequences in exchange for removing tents and other camping supplies from campus grounds. A set of individuals, including some faculty and staff, obstructed law enforcement efforts to remove the tents and were cited.

The encampment at UW-Madison was established on campus grounds on Monday.

Quote:Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) earned the endorsement of House Democrat Leadership Tuesday. He will need to cash in on that endorsement only days later.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced to a packed press conference outside the Capitol Wednesday that they would force a vote on Greene’s motion to vacate “next week.”

With the Capitol dome behind them, Greene and Massie accused Johnson of “three betrayals” on government funding, allowing surveillance of American citizens, and funding Ukraine without first securing the border.

The move has long been expected, but Wednesday’s escalation makes clear Johnson’s perilous path toward maintaining his gavel — if not in the short term, certainly beyond November.

“This motion is wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country,” read a short Johnson statement issued after the announcement and a day after Johnson accused Greene of not being a serious lawmaker.

Greene explained her initial hopes when filing and why she waited more than six weeks to force a vote on her motion. “I was being conscious and caring about my conference in our majority. It was a warning to stop serving the Democrats and support our Republican conference and support our agenda. And he didn’t do it.”

After Greene filed her motion, Johnson proceeded to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) after casting the deciding vote to kill the warrant requirement and then folded on Ukraine funding.

“Now we have Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats coming out, embracing Mike Johnson with a warm hug and a big wet sloppy kiss,” Greene said, arguing Democrats endorsed Johnson “because Mike Johnson is giving them everything they want. Everything. Every single thing.”

Quote:New York County Judge Juan Merchan has ruled that former President Donald Trump violated a gag order during his trial, holding him in criminal contempt and threatening him with jail time for any further infractions.

Merchan also ordered Trump to remove the “seven offending posts” from Truth Social.
“Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” the judge wrote in the order:

ORDERED, that Defendant pay a $1,000 fine for each of the nine violations of this Court’s lawful order by the close of business on Friday, May 3, 2024; and it is further ORDERED that Defendant remove the seven offending posts from Defendant’s Truth Social account and the two offending posts from his campaign website by 2:15pm Tuesday, April 30, 2024.

Merchan had the authority to send Trump to jail for up to 30 days for allegedly violating his gag order. Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg backed down from asking the judge to jail Trump for allegedly violating the order, according to court reporters.

Trump appeared to call Bragg’s bluff. Trump said in April that it would be a “GREAT HONOR” to become a “modern-day Nelson Mandela” in the “clink” for speaking the truth about Merchan.

The gag order prevents Trump from making public comments about witnesses participating in the trial, counsel other than Bragg, “members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or … the family members of any counsel or staff member, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with … counsel’s or staff’s work” on the case. It also encompasses prospective jurors.

“The gag order has to come off,” Trump previously told reporters outside the Manhattan courthouse. “People are allowed to speak about me, and I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is.”

Quote:The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, was removed from question period at the Parliament’s House of Commons on Tuesday after condemning radical leftist Justin Trudeau, branding his policies “wacko” and refusing to withdraw the insult.

Trudeau responded to Poilievre’s condemnation by referring to him as “spineless” and accusing him of fraternizing with “white nationalist” groups, comments for which Speaker Greg Fergus neither demanded a retraction nor expelled Trudeau from the session.

The heated exchange occurred during a debate around Liberal Party support for policies to decriminalize the use of some drugs – and specifically the provincial government of British Columbia choosing to enact a program that decriminalized the use of opioids, methamphetamine, cocaine, and several other hard drugs, including in public places.

The policy, announced in May 2022, came in vigor in January, prompting widespread outrage and disgust from the general population of British Columbia, which is clamoring for the government to walk the policy back. The original plan implemented in 2022 called for the decriminalization to last three years.

British Columbia Premier David Eby announced last week that he was withdrawing part of the policy, allowing police to once again stop people from doing hard drugs in public.

“While we are caring and compassionate for those struggling with addiction, we do not accept street disorder that makes communities feel unsafe,” Eby asserted.

Quote:Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists blockaded the entrance to a UK government department building in central London on Wednesday to protest against Britain providing military support to Israel in its conflict with Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

An estimated 600 activists gathered outside of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) at the Old Admiralty Office in the centre of London, preventing civil servants from entering the building and clashing with police, GB News reports.

Activists were seen waving banners demanding a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists and calling for the UK to stop selling weapons to the Jewish state.

The protest was organised by the Workers for a Free Palestine as its action for May Day, an ancient European holiday which was co-opted by socialists following an 1889 meeting of the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris. The leftist group also organised demonstrations in Lancashire, Scotland, and Wales on Wednesday.

“If arms company bosses and Britain’s political elite won’t impose an arms embargo, we, the workers, will continue enforcing it from below,” Workers for a Free Palestine said on social media.

Footage on social media showed police clashing with some activists, prompting at least three arrests. A Met spokesman said according to leftist Novaramedia: “We are policing a protest in Admiralty Place and Horse Guards Parade. Officers have made three arrests after protesters blocked access to a building. Protesters must stay within the law.”

It comes amid a spreading movement of student activists blockading universities, starting with Ivy League Colombia and Harvard in the United States last week, and the movement being picked up by young radicals in France.

Quote:A British police officer is facing terror charges for showing support for Hamas on WhatsApp, a police watchdog said Wednesday.

West Yorkshire constable Mohammed Adil shared images supporting Hamas, which is banned and designated a terror group in the U.K., the Independent Office for Police Conduct said.

Adil faces two counts of publishing an image in support of a proscribed organization in violation of the Terrorism Act.

He allegedly shared the images on WhatsApp in October and November.

Adil has been suspended by the West Yorkshire force. He is scheduled to appear Thursday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Quote:Far-left pro-Palestinian student activists blockaded the entrances of the Sorbonne University in Paris on Monday following similar attempts last week to shut down the elite Sciences Po research university.

Following the example of activists in the United States at top universities such as Colombia in New York City and Harvard University, pro-Palestinian leftists set up a makeshift blockade of the entrance to the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, preventing other students from attending class and forcing the cancellation of exams.

Around 150 activists gathered and erected tents outside of the entrance with a large Palestinian flag placed in the centre while signs read: “Israel assassin, Sorbonne complicit” and “Don’t look at us, join us,” Le Figaro reports.

National Rally candidate for the European Parliament, Matthieu Valet commented: “These far-left activists want to make France a lawless zone. Bravo to the police officers who evacuated these activists from the disorder by force.”

“We are here following the appeal of students from Harvard and Columbia,” Lorélia Fréjo, a student activist of the Le Poing Levé (the raised fist) told the AFP. “After the actions at Sciences Po, we are here to ensure that it continues.”

Last week, dozens of radical students blockaded the Sciences Po research university in Paris, demanding a debate on the conflict in Gaza and the lifting of the suspension of other activists.

The blockade, enacted by around 200 activists, ended on Friday as the leadership of the university bowed to their demands, in what has been described as an act of “capitulation” as an American-style town hall on Palestine was agreed to and no sanctions were levied against the student activists.

Quote:Inspired by student leftists in the United States, pro-Palestinian activists have spread their blockades of French universities nationally after taking on the Sorbonne and the Sciences Po in Paris over the past week.

Pro-Palestinian activists occupied several provincial Institutes of Political Studies (IEP) — more commonly known as Sciences Po — throughout France on Tuesday, with students blockading entrances to the research universities in Lyon, Menton, Rennes, and Strasbourg.

It follows similar actions in the United States on the campuses of major universities such as Colombia in New York City and Harvard. It also followed the occupation of Paris’ Sciences Po last week and the blockade of the prestigious Sorbonne University on Monday, which forced school administrators to cancel exams and classes.

According to Le Figaro, the activists waved flags condemning Sciences Po research universities in France of being complicit in the supposed “genocide” in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s military operation to root out Hamas from the area after the October 7th terror attacks waged on the Jewish state by the Islamist Palestinian group.

At the Sciences Po in Rennes, students stacked chairs outside the gates of the university while waving Palestinian flags and a banner reading “Sciences Po Rennes supports Palestine.”

A young woman at the demonstration said on social media that the student group “voted to block the IEP in support of the Palestinian people and in support of all the mobilized students, in the United States, at Sciences Po Paris etc.”

Quote:A large group of Amazon delivery vans were totally destroyed during a night of “traditional” left-wing protests in Berlin, which is believed to possibly have been an act of arson, despite the conflagration police said was “mostly trouble-free”.

While May First is now known worldwide for left-wing protests, in Germany things tend to get started the night before on Walpurgisnacht, an old religious festival for the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary Saint Walpurga since becoming synonymous with leftist violence. Berlin Police deployed 3,100 officers overnight in Berlin and despite some clashes and incidents of thrown eggs and stones, Die Welt notes the force said the five protests city-wide were “mostly trouble-free”.

Yet the night was not totally uneventful, and in Berlin, a group of 16 Amazon delivery vans were torched, and totally destroyed. Newspaper Bild reports the initial police investigation indicates it was an act of arson, and that “Witnesses claim to have seen several masked perpetrators at the Amazon vans.”

Such fire attacks against an obvious symbol of the high-tech Western capitalist society would not be in any way unusual for the European hard left. As long reported, beyond attacks on Amazon itself, internet and telephone cables, railway signalling equipment, and power supply infrastructure are frequently targeted by the hard left.

Protests naturally carried on into May Day, which — as previously noted — is another ancient European holiday which has been co-opted by Leftists for their own purposes, in this case, “following an 1889 meeting of the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris”. The day of left-wing protest and violence has been going so long it too is now said to be a German “tradition“.

In addition to the five protests registered overnight, a further 20 are taking place on Wednesday, leading to a deployment of over 5,000 police officers in the German capital, and including other emergency services there are 6,200 deployed in all, 2,400 from other cities.

Quote:President Emmanuel Macron has been accused of undermining French sovereignty and military deterrence after the head of state “opened the debate” about creating a common European defence armed with nuclear weapons.

In an interview published on Saturday evening with the Ebra group of regional French newspapers, Mr Macron said per Le Figaro: “I am in favour of opening this debate which must include anti-missile defence, the firing of long-range weapons, nuclear weapons for those who have them or who have American nuclear weapons on their soil.”

“Let’s put everything on the table and look at what truly protects us in a credible way,” he continued, but maintained that France would keep “its specificity but is ready to contribute more to the defence of European soil”.

“Being credible also means having long-range missiles that would deter the Russians. And there is nuclear weapons: French doctrine is that we can use them when our vital interests are threatened. I have already said that there is a European dimension to these vital interests,” the president said.

Macron’s comments drew condemnation from both sides of the political aisle in France, with François-Xavier Bellamy, the leader of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) in the upcoming European Parliament elections, declaring: “A French head of state should not say that.”

“This is exceptionally serious because this touches on the very nerve of French sovereignty,” Bellamy added.

Conservative populist National Rally MEP Thierry Mariani responded: “Macron is becoming a national danger… After nuclear weapons, there will follow France’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which will also be sold off to the European Union.”

The suggestion was also criticised by the left, with the La France Insoumise (LFI) parliamentary group proclaiming that Macron “has just dealt a new blow to the credibility of French nuclear deterrence”.

Quote:One person has died and four people were injured in East London after a man is alleged to have driven a van into a residential building before drawing a sword and attacking people, including police officers.

UPDATE 1430 — 14 Year Old Boy Has Died

Bad news from East London, where one of the five people reported injured in this morning’s sword attack has died. London Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell said at the scene:

It is with great sadness that I confirm one of those injured, a 14-year-old boy, has died. He was taken to hospital after being stabbed and sadly died shortly afterwards.

The child’s family are being supported by specially trained officers. Everyone across the Met is keeping them in our thoughts at this unimaginably difficult time.

Two members of the public and two police officers were injured. Chief Superintendent Bell said the injured officers sustained “significant” but not life-threatening stab wounds while the members of the public remain in hospital.

One important detail: the Guardian newspaper has spoken to an eye witness who said the suspected killer performed some kind of victory ritual after stabbing a “young victim” who may have been the boy who has now died. The paper quoted the witness — who wished not to be named — as saying the alleged swordsman as raising his arms in celebration, as if to say ” yay, yay I’ve done it, sort of proud”.

The original story continues below:

Five people were taken to hospital, including two police officers, in the early hours of Tuesday morning after a swordsman went on an apparently rampage near Hainault station in East London. While the government had appealed to the public not to speculate and not to share footage on social media, copious video and stills showing a light-skinned male holding a long, curved blade — described in some reports as being a “samurai sword” type — squaring off with police.

Police say they arrested a 36 year old man, and that four people were stabbed. They say there is no indication the incident is terrorism related.

Quote:The first “illegal migrants” to be deported under the UK government’s Rwanda Scheme have been detained by officials this week in advance of their flights, but thousands have already slipped through the net or gone missing.

The Home Office announced Wednesday the first “illegal migrants” were taken into custody “following a series of nationwide operations this week” by “operational teams”. The government said more such detentions prior to deportation are due to take place “in the coming weeks”.

The action comes after the UK Conservative Party-led government finally passed its Rwanda plan-enabling legislation last week. The move to disincentivise illegal and irregular migrant arrivals by people smuggler boats across the English Channel has been talked about for years but has been repeatedly held up by legal delays. The latest legislation steps around these roadblocks by essentially declaring Rwanda a safe country by government fiat, and “disapplies” some human rights legislation.

The government says the first actual deportation flights will take place in two to three months time.

Speaking in response to the first pre-relocation detentions, Home Secretary James Cleverly called the Rwanda plan to pay that government to host migrants on Britain’s behalf “pioneering”, and said: “Our dedicated enforcement teams are working at pace to swiftly detain those who have no right to be here so we can get flights off the ground.”

“This is a complex piece of work, but we remain absolutely committed to operationalising the policy, to stop the boats and break the business model of people smuggling gangs.”

Quote:In a spectacular act of political self-immolation, far-left censorship czar Humza Yousaf announced his resignation as Scottish First Minister on Monday morning before facing the prospect of being forcibly removed by a vote of no-confidence.

UPDATE 1730: Political jockeying is already underway as the Scottish National Party (SNP) seeks a new leader to replace Humza Yousaf, who said following his resignation that he would stay on as caretaker until a replacement is decided. Early indications point towards former Deputy First Minister John Swinney, a longtime veteran of the party who has served in the devolved Scottish parliament since 2004.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who was previously rumoured to be a potential candidate, ruled himself out on Monday and backed Swinney, saying: “There’s only one person with the experience to do the job and unite the party – I would encourage John Swinney to stand,” arguing that Swinney has the experience necessary to mend the fences with the Green Party and put back together the pieces of the shattered coalition government Yousaf left behind.

Flynn also rejected calls for a snap election, despite the SNP previously arguing that there should have been an election in the UK following the departure of both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as prime ministers because the public did not get to decide their next leader.

Another prominent name floating around Edinburg as a potential next SNP leader is former finance secretary Kate Forbes, who lost out to Yousaf in the leadership contest last year to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister. Forbes faces an uphill battle, however, given that her traditional Catholic views on issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage, are largely out of step with the leftist party as a whole.

The original story continues as follows…

Infamously censorious, race-baiting Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf has announced he is stepping down, a victim of his own political machinations after he summarily dismissed his coalition partners in an apparent bid to avoid them doing the same to him, first.

Humza Yousaf said he is resigning as the leader of the Scottish government, the 25-year-old devolved assembly in North Britain which rules on certain domestic policy within the United Kingdom, bringing to a near-close 13 months of hard-left law-making. Yousaf was installed just over a year ago after his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, left office in another cloud of scandal, which is still set to bedevil the party, with Sturgeon’s husband being charged with allegedly embezzling party funds earlier this month.

Quote:Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has refused to step down amid allegations of corruption against his wife and is in turn vowing to launch a government crackdown against the right-wing online media over supposed fake news.

In a roller coaster of events, Prime Minister Sánchez announced on Monday that he would not resign after announcing last week that he was taking five days off to contemplate his political future. This followed the opening of a corruption case against his wife Begoña Gómez, who is facing claims of using her role as the unofficial but de-facto First Lady of Spain to allegedly dole out lucrative government contracts to firms she has been linked to financially.

The centre-right El Confidencial newspaper alleged that the Africa Centre of the Institute of Business, where Gómez worked, received a “sponsorship agreement” from the travel firm Globalia.

At the same time, Globalia was in talks with the Sánchez government to secure a €475 million ($506m/£407m) bailout for its airline Air Europa during the Chinese coronavirus crisis. According to the paper, at least 15,000 was given to Gómez’s Africa Centre for first-class plane tickets for the first lady and her team.

In response to the reports, the trade unionist anti-corruption pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) lodged a formal complaint against Gómenz, prompting a judicial investigation into her alleged corruption. Questions have been raised, however, about the veracity of the claims, with Manos Limpias admitting that at least one of the articles cited in its complaint appeared to be false.

While neither Sánchez nor his wife have directly denied the allegations, the prime minister returned from his period of contemplation coming out swinging, vowing to crack down on what he branded as the “mud machine” right-wing online media.

He promised a programme of “democratic regeneration”, targeting the spread of alleged fake news and vowing transparency laws surrounding donations to news websites. Sánchez also said that he would seek to pass legislation granting the government new powers to remove judges.

Quote:Dozens of Ukrainians attempting to escape being forced into the military to fight Russia have died, the national border guard reveals.

Tens of thousands of military age males successfully fled abroad, as many again were caught trying to flee, after Russia re-invaded Ukraine in 2022, but now the numbers of people escaping the draft who were killed in the attempt has been revealed. Speaking this week Andrii Demchenko, who wears the uniform of a Colonel and is cited as an “aide to the chief of the State Border Service of Ukraine” spoke out against human traffickers who take cash in return for helping sneak out refugees from Ukraine’s martial law to Europe.

Since Russia’s renewed invasion in 2022, it became illegal for any man of military age to leave Ukraine except with express permission of the government.

Col. Demchenko revealed there were a remarkable 450 “criminal groups specializing in illegal transportation of people across the border” that had been discovered during the period of martial law, and in most cases of “illegal border crossings” the individuals were being assisted by smugglers.

Around 30 Ukrainians trying to escape the country undetected have been found dead since the war began, Demchenko said. Given an explanation for those deaths, he cited the difficulty of swimming across mountain rivers to escape Ukraine, and even of fleeing citizens having “encounters with wild animals in the mountains, which can be seriously life-threatening.”

In earlier reports, it was stated some Ukrainians had frozen to death while trying to cross the Carpathian mountains to escape military service.

Quote:Five people were killed and dozens injured in a missile strike on Ukraine’s third city, Odesa, with an ornate seafront building locally known as the ‘Harry Potter Castle’ burnt out.

Ukraine’s military stated an Iskander-M ballistic missile “with a cluster warhead” fell on Odesa, the south-eastern coastal city which is now one of Ukraine’s main ports after Russia occupied Crimea in 2014. According to state media five people were killed in the strike, and 32 were injured, including a young child and a pregnant woman.

Among the buildings damaged was a campus of the Odessa Law Academy, a private school run by a prominent former Ukrainian member of parliament, Serhii Kivalov. Kivalov’s former party is now banned in Ukraine. He is said to have been among the injured overnight in the missile strike.

The seafront building of the Law Academy, unroofed and burnt out in the strike, was hit during the attack. Built in a French Renaissance Revival chateau style, the building was reportedly known to locals as the ‘Harry Potter Castle’, a common nickname given to any relatively ornate building in a world where J.K. Rowling’s eponymous best-sellers are a key cultural touchstone.

One student of the Academy who witnessed the destruction of the building said it was hit by a missile falling from the sky after it was shot down. They said: “In front of my eyes, a missile was shot down, this was just in front of me. My doors were blown open and the glass was shaking.”

Quote:Two Ukrainian citizens stabbed to death in Germany on Saturday were wounded soldiers recuperating away from the front lines, Kyiv says.

A Russian citizen was arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday after two men were stabbed to death at a shopping centre in southern Germany, close to a U.S. Army base. The victims, both Ukrainian citizens, are now revealed to have been convalescing Ukrainian soldiers.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said per state media that: “the deceased citizens were soldiers undergoing medical rehabilitation in Germany”.

It further alleged that: “The killer took advantage of the fact that the Ukrainian veterans were wounded and could not properly fight back the knife-wielding attacker.”

Ukraine thanked German authorities for the prompt arrest of the 57-year-old Russian citizen suspect. Reuters states the investigation into the attack has now been handed to prosecutors in Munich, who are considering a “political motivation” for the crime. Investigators apparently believe the two men were already known to the suspect.

The prosecutor said: “The motive for the crime is currently unclear, although a political motivation cannot be ruled out and is being investigated in all directions”.

The attack took place in the village of Murnau in Bavaria, only a short distance from the United States Army Garrison Bavaria’s Garmisch base. Large numbers of Ukrainian troops, including tank crews, have been trained on the U.S. Army’s estates in Germany, including at USAG Bavaria.

One of those locations, the USAG Bavaria garrison at the Grafenwoehr Training Area was the focus of a spy scare this month, with two Russian-German dual citizens arrested, accused of hostile reconnaissance and attack planning against the location.

The German Federal Prosecutor claimed the activity was intended to “undermine the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression” and included a potential “explosives and arson attacks, especially on military infrastructure and industrial sites in Germany”.

Quote:A group of militants attacked a police checkpoint in Russia’s North Caucasus region, killing two officers, officials said Monday.

Four other officers were wounded and all five attackers were killed in the shootout in the Karachay-Cherkessia region late Sunday, according to the regional branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry.

The Investigative Committee, the country’s top state criminal investigation agency, said the same gunmen had raided another police checkpoint in the region a week before, killing two police and injuring another. It didn’t describe the attackers’ affiliation or motive.

While Chechnya has stabilized under the rule of Moscow-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov after two separatist wars, violence linked to Islamist groups has occasionally erupted in other parts of Russia’s volatile North Caucasus.

The Karachay-Cherkessia region in particular has experienced a series of raids on police by extremists.

In December, Russia’s Federal Security Service, the nation’s top domestic security and counter-terrorism agency, reported the arrest of 14 suspected members of a radical Islamist group in Karachay-Cherkessia. It followed earlier arrests of other suspected members of the same group in the region.

Quote:Reps. Andy Ogles (R-TN), Tom Tiffany (R-WI), and Scott Perry (R-PA), as well as dozens of Senate Republicans, are moving to prevent President Joe Biden from resettling Palestinians in American communities.

In a letter to House Appropriators, Ogles, Tiffany, and Perry ask that a provision be included in the Fiscal Year 2025 spending bill that prohibits expenditures “of any funds to issue a visa or grant parole to any alien holding a passport issued by the Palestinian Authority.”

The House Republicans write:

Whatever fanciful leftist notion to the contrary, the United States of America cannot be expected to absorb the rest of the world’s problems. It would make much more sense for states in the region to take in those in need. If the administration is indeed working in concert with our allies in the region to pave the way for peace, that should come with the expectation that those allies are working in good faith to “do their part.”

Their letter comes as the Biden administration reportedly considers using the federal government’s refugee resettlement program to bring Palestinians to the United States. Last November, House and Senate Democrats circulated a similar plan.

“Mindlessly allowing hundreds of thousands of unvetted Palestinian aliens into our nation is an unacceptable threat to national security,” Ogles told Breitbart News. “The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs continue to support Hamas’ butchery on October 7 and hate our American way of life.”

Tiffany told Breitbart News, “It isn’t America’s responsibility, or in America’s best interest, to let Joe Biden continue treating our country as a dumping ground for the rest of the world’s problems,” and suggested Palestinians be resettled “in other countries in the region, not here.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) is among 35 Senate Republicans asking Biden to provide specifics about his Palestinian refugee resettlement program, including the number the administration is looking to import.

The Senators write to Biden:

Your administration’s reported plan to accept Gazan refugees poses a national security risk to the United States. With more than a third of Gazans supporting the Hamas militants, we are not confident that your administration can adequately vet this high-risk population for terrorist ties and sympathies before admitting them into the United States.

Quote:On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stated that the encampment on Columbia was “completely peaceful” and “Some of the images that we saw from UCLA and other places made it look like a bunch of disorder. But the majority of these protests are peaceful. When you send in hundreds of military-dressed law enforcement officers into a college, that brings the disorder and that brings the chaos.”

Bowman said, “We want the protests to be peaceful. We do not want violent protests. I visited the Columbia encampment last week, and they were completely peaceful. There was a space for mental health supports, there was a library, there was food, there was coffee, there was water, and they were crystal clear on their demands. They are protesting the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

He added, “Some of the images that we saw from UCLA and other places made it look like a bunch of disorder. But the majority of these protests are peaceful. When you send in hundreds of military-dressed law enforcement officers into a college, that brings the disorder and that brings the chaos. And we just heard reports that a gun was fired [at] Columbia by a member of law enforcement. That’s the only gun that’s been fired at any protest. And so, we need educators and professors to do their jobs and create spaces for critical dialogue, critical discussion. And we can’t lose sight [of] what they’re protesting, U.S. dollars going to a country that is bombing and killing and starving children. That is what’s unacceptable.”

Bowman concluded, “We need more protests that are peaceful to hold us accountable towards what we should be working on in Congress.”

Later on, don't ever dare to complain about feeling totally insecure and fearful while attending colleges.

Quote:An executive order signed by President Joe Biden has focused on registering convicts to vote and exclusively involved left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs), an investigation from the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project revealed.

In March 2021, Biden signed an executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” which he billed as a “nonpartisan” government-wide effort to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”

Two months after the order was signed, the Biden administration held a “Listening Session” with several NGOs — all of which identified with the Democrat party or left-wing policy initiatives, according to an analysis from the Oversight Project.

The NGOs involved in the Listening Session were: [click on link above]

Likewise, the Oversight Project obtained unredacted notes from the Listening Session which revealed a heavy focus on registering convicts to vote.

In one particular note, an official with the Sentencing Project mentioned the importance of having the Bureau of Prisons notify “newly eligible voters of their right to vote.” That official also suggested that “felony disenfranchisement is voter suppression.”

Another official with the Campaign Legal Center said they want to see the Bureau of Prisons implement a voter registration system that informs convicts of their right to vote after they are released from prison.

Quote:An anti-Israel encampment was established at Fordham University in New York City on Wednesday, hours after similar ones at other universities were raided.

Tents were seen set up inside a building on the university’s campus as part of a “Gaza solidarity encampment.”

Officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD), dressed in riot gear, began a raid on anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University and the City University of New York (CUNY) late Tuesday evening.

The raids came after anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University had seized control of Hamilton Hall in the early hours of Tuesday morning and smashed the glass doors of the building, carried barriers inside, and hung pro-Palestinian banners from the windows.
Video footage posted to X showed protesters gathered outside of Fordham University at the Lincoln Center campus in support of the encampment set up inside.

The crowd could be heard chanting, “Disclose. Divest. We will not stop. We will not rest. Disclose. Divest.”

Quote:Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Southern California (USC) took steel barricades destined for the university’s main graduation ceremony and used them for their encampment.

In a video posted to X, steel barricades were seen surrounding the anti-Israel encampment.

When asked by a reporter, what her response was to Jewish students at USC who say they do not feel safe, University of Southern California President Carol Folt expressed that she feels “awful.”

“You know, I feel really awful for every student feeling like that and I’m trying to do everything I can to come to a peaceful resolution,” Folt answered.

“They just stole steel gates from campus and they’re making a barricade and you’re just letting this happen?” the reporter asked.

This comes days after USC announced it was canceling its main graduation ceremony due to security threats.

USC had reportedly moved in on an initial encampment that had been set up on campus, using sponge batons and zip ties to make arrests.

The university also previously canceled the speech of Asna Tabassum, the valedictorian, after it was revealed she supported the annihilation of Israel.

Encampments and protests have popped up across the nation on college and university campuses such as George Washington University, Rutgers University, the University of California Los Angeles, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Columbia University, among others.

Honestly, I didn't catch him on video saying anything relatively close to what the next title claims.

Quote:President Joe Biden said Thursday that protests at college campuses across the country have not caused him to reconsider his policies in the Middle East.

After a press conference addressing the widespread anti-Israel protests at college campuses over Israel’s war with Hamas and its effect in Gaza, a reporter asked Biden if the “protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region.”

“No,” Biden responded before walking away from the podium.

“Mr. President, do you think the National Guard should intervene?” a reporter followed up.

“No,” the president said as he exited the room.

Notably, the first protests, which sprouted at Columbia University, began before Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package that allocates $26 billion in aid for Israel, including billions in military aid, on April 24.

In his remarks addressing the anti-Israel protests, Biden condemned both “antisemitism” and “Islamophobia.”

“There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s anti-semitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab-Americans or Palestinian-Americans. It’s simply wrong,” he said.

He also chided violent protests on campuses.

“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations: none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said. “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.”

Quote:Japan is “xenophobic,” as well as Russia and China, President Joe Biden, 81, declared Wednesday in an unprecedented statement.

Japan is a longtime U.S. ally and a counterweight to China’s growing aggression in the Asia-Pacific. Biden recently worked to build trust with Japan. In April, he hosted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for a summit and state dinner.

While delivering live remarks at a campaign fundraiser in Washington to mark the beginning of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Biden said the United States’s economy was strong due in part “because we welcome immigrants.”

Biden then contrasted America to U.S. ally Japan and adversarial China, and Russia. “Think about it,” Biden said referencing why their economies allegedly struggle.

“Why is China stalling so bad economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia?” he questioned.

“Because they’re xenophobic,” he said. “They don’t want immigrants.”
Biden’s gaffe underscores his radical policy on immigration. The Biden administrates operates an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. “This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade, and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and urban economies, such as New York,” Breitbart News’s Neil Munro wrote:

Quote:Experts, including one of the world’s top researchers on the Uyghur genocide and a senior official in the Department of Labor, told Congress this week that legitimate audits to inspect for slave conditions and other forced labor in China, especially in the occupied Uyghur region, are “impossible.”

The experts spoke before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), a bicameral entity that largely focuses on the Communist Party’s human rights abuses against its people and other malign practices, during a hearing on Tuesday. The hearing, titled “Factories and Fraud in the PRC,” addressed if it is possible for American companies, and those in the greater free world, to conduct reasonable due diligence to keep their supply chains devoid of human rights abuses if operating in China.

The panelists concluded that social audits by third parties were highly unreliable, as the Communist Party has subverted all of society to make it impossible for workers to speak freely on the conditions in their factories and industrial parks. Furthermore, evidence is mounting that China is redirecting slavery-tainted products to third countries such as India and Vietnam to compromise supply chain tracking and ensure the products get sold in American and European markets.

The hearing focused largely on forced labor, the practice of making it impossible for a person to escape work environments. In many of these cases, individuals are forced into traditional slavery – with no legal rights as a person and no meaningful salary – though the panelists at the hearing stated that Chinese companies often offer meager wages to their workers, even when it is impossible for them to leave their jobs. The United Nations classifies forced labor as a form of “modern slavery.”

Quote:A former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems who was among the first whistleblowers to allege Spirit leadership had ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX died Tuesday.

Joshua Dean lost his life after a struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection, the Seattle Times reports.

He was aged 45 and reportedly in good health before his sudden demise after a two week fight for life in hospital.

The Times report details Dean’s role in the allegations against Boeing:

Dean had given a deposition in a Spirit shareholder lawsuit and also filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration alleging “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line” at Spirit.

Spirit fired Dean in April 2023, and he had filed a complaint with the Department of Labor alleging his termination was in retaliation for raising concerns related to aviation safety.

Dean told U.S. outlet NPR in February he believed he had been fired to send a message to others thinking of speaking out.

“If you are too loud, we will silence you,” he was quoted as saying.

Dean was represented by a law firm in South Carolina that also represented Boeing whistleblower John “Mitch” Barnett, the Times report sets out.

The 62-year-old was found dead in an apparent suicide in March.

The first death could be deemed a bad decision based on personal issues the witness might have. Probably. Yet, the second one can't just be a mere coincidence. No way.  

Quote:Peloton, the once-thriving fitness company, has hit another rough patch as it struggles to regain its footing in the post-pandemic era. CEO Barry McCarthy is now stepping down after the company’s share price dropped about 92 percent during his tenure.

The Verge reports that Peloton recently announced a fresh round of layoffs affecting approximately 400 employees, which amounts to 15 percent of its remaining global workforce. This marks the fifth time Peloton has had to resort to workforce reductions since its peak in 2021, highlighting the company’s tough journey to realign its operations with the shifting market dynamics.

With Peloton stock down approximately 92 percent from its high in 2020, the latest downsizing comes as a bitter pill to swallow, as it directly contradicts the assurances made by outgoing CEO Barry McCarthy during Peloton’s Q1 2023 earnings call, where he stated that the company was done with layoffs and that the “ship was turning.” McCarthy, a former executive at Spotify and Netflix, took the helm from founder John Foley just over two years ago, with the aim of steering Peloton through its turbulent times. He is now leaving the company after presiding over the company’s massive loss of share value.

The layoffs are part of a broader 12-month restructuring program aimed at reducing annual expenses by more than $200 million, a crucial step as the company seeks to refinance its debt. Karen Boone and Chris Bruzzo, both board members, have been appointed as interim co-CEOs until a permanent replacement for McCarthy is found.

Quote:A letter posted to an infamous left-extremist website claims responsibility for a mass-arson attack against Amazon delivery trucks this week, and promises an “exciting week of action against Tesla” for “the social revolution”.

16 Amazon vans were burnt in Berlin on Tuesday night, while around the city multiple left-wing protests progressed as part of the May 1st ‘May Day’ worldwide leftist day of action in remembrance of an 1889 meeting of the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris. As reported police suspected arson and “masked” individuals were witnessed nearby at the time, but now a prominent extreme-left website — often used in the past to call for extremist action or to claim responsibility for attacks — acknowledges the burning of the delivery vehicles was their doing.

It claimed: “we used 6 fire devices to slow down at least 16 Amazon vans… Our gasoline-containing barbecue is intended to incite the fight against the oppression of people and nature and to fuel the inevitable confrontation between the exploited and those in power.”

The “militarism” statement named what it says are businesses too large and harmful to reform, which instead need to be destroyed as “Amazon, Tesla, Apple, Facebook [and] Google”. There are “endless arguments and ways to attack companies like Amazon and Tesla”, it said, while apparently promising further action.

“That’s why we’re looking forward to an exciting week of action against Tesla. Hello Jeff! Is your ego as big as the Amazon Tower? Do you see the clouds of smoke from up there? Elon, your GIGANTIC ego won’t be able to protect your handcarts!”, the anonymous post declared. B.Z. states Berlin police have confirmed they are aware of the leftist confession note.

Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reports nine cases of arsons against cars in Berlin today, and while the particular makes of those vehicles burnt isn’t cited, it nevertheless notes “targeted arson attacks on Teslas are increasing in the capital”.

The threat to attack Teslas appears to be a considerably more destructive — especially given the characteristics of battery electric vehicles — version of a tactic used by UK green eco-extremists against owners of large trucks. Hundreds of SUVs have been vandalised, especially seeing their tyres let down or slashed, by activists who says they are too polluting to be permitted.

Quote:With just two weeks to go before this year’s Cannes Film Festival in France, festival workers are reportedly planning to protest and strike in a move that threatens to upstage celebrity red carpet events and the premieres of several highly anticipated movies.

As many as 200 French film festival workers — including Cannes workers and those from other festivals across France — are planning protests at this year’s Cannes festival, according to a Deadline report. Because the French have labor unions for every conceivable profession, no matter how niche, these protests are being organized by a union that represents film festival workers — Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma.

Protestors plan to hold demonstrations on the Croisette — the main stretch through the city — throughout the 12-day Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off May 14, unnamed sources told Deadline. They will also make their presence known at sidebar events, including the opening ceremonies of the Directors’ Fortnight and La Semaine de la Critique.

Workers are reportedly upset with their compensation, arguing that they aren’t paid a living wage, especially in light of the large amounts of overtime they have to work. They are also unhappy that they don’t qualify for France’s unemployment insurance program for entertainment workers and technicians.

Quote:French President Emmanuel Macron restated a previous commitment of making troops available for Ukraine, using an interview published Thursday to detail the issue would “legitimately” arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such a request.

The Economist magazine said Macron gave the interview after delivering a keynote speech last week where he declared that Europe is “mortal” and could “die” partly due to the threat posed by Russian aggression after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” said Macron when asked if he stood by comments earlier this year not excluding the sending of Western troops that sent shockwaves around Europe.

Some analysts speculate Russia could be on the verge of launching a major new offensive in Ukraine, AFP reports.

Macron said “if Russia decided to go further, we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question” of sending troops, describing his refusal to rule out such a move as a “strategic wake-up call for my counterparts.”

He described Russia as “a power of regional destabilisation” and “a threat to Europeans’ security” while stating, “I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine.

Quote:Open borders advocates on the streets and within the government itself have stepped up efforts to derail plans to finally remove some illegal migrants from the United Kingdom in the wake of the passage of legislation supposedly clearing the way for aliens to be sent to Rwanda.

On Thursday morning, leftist activists clad in coronavirus-style masks surrounded a bus to prevent migrants from being removed to the Bibby Stockholm oil rig worker accommodation barge floating off the coast of Dorset, which in addition to Rwanda is being used in lieu of putting migrants up at taxpayer expense in British hotels while their asylum claims are being processed.

Although the migrants being taken to the Bibby Stockholm were not reportedly set to be removed to Rwanda, dozens of pro-mass migration protesters descended on the migrant transport bus, throwing electric bicycles under the front and back wheels before someone slashed the tyres of the coach.

The crowd was heard chanting: “No borders, no nations… stop deportations!” and “No detention, no flights… refugees have human rights”.

An anonymous member of the leftist mob told The Telegraph: “I don’t know how the tyres happened, maybe the tyres are comrades and let themselves down.”

Quote:European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is facing a leftist revolt after she suggested partnering with the conservatives such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a bid to bolster her chances of clinging onto her leadership position after the EU Parliament elections.

Amid the rising tide of populist sentiment and anger over the failures of the neo-liberal agenda imposed by Brussels, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen is on the hunt for new allies as she seeks a second 5-year term as the president of the European Commission.

In a leadership debate hosted by POLITICO on Monday evening in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the German politician opened the door to joining forces with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which are expected to see their ranks swell in the Strasbourg-based EU Parliament after the bloc-wide elections in June.

While opening the door to a partnership between her centrist European People’s Party (EPP) and the ECR, the Commission chief said that it would depend “very much on how the composition of the Parliament is, and who is in what group.”

Yet the mere suggestion of such a partnership of the group which is headlined by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and the conservative Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, has riled the anger of the leftist coalition partners from the Socialists and Democrats group and the Greens, upon whom von der Leyen relied upon to push forward a radical green agenda in Europe since 2019.

The socialist candidate for Commission chief, Nicolas Schmit said after the debate: “We will not be able to vote for a program which has been negotiated with the ECR.”

“Either you can deal with the extreme right because you need them, or you say clearly there is no deal possible because they do not respect the fundamental rights our Commission has fought for,” he added.

The candidate for the Greens, meanwhile, Dutch MEP Bas Eickhout said: “What I heard was that she’s not excluding [working with the ECR] … We Greens exclude them and I think this election will then be about this choice.”

“Within ECR you have the same people that want to weaken Europe, that want to water down our green policies,” he added.

Euronews warns the move could “totally backfire”.

Quote:Turkish police detained dozens of protesters in Istanbul on Wednesday for ignoring a ban on Communist “May Day” demonstrations and began tearing down barricades in the city’s Taksim Square.

Istanbul has generally restricted demonstrations in Taksim Square since May 2013, when a wave of unrest spread across the country for various reasons. The protest groups came together at Gezi Park in Taksim Square, one of the busiest venues in Istanbul.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had then been in power for about a decade and remains in office to this day, sent in a huge force of riot police to clear out the “Gezi Park Movement” of 2013, resulting in a furious battle between police and protesters.

Human rights groups denounced the Gezi Park crackdown as a cynical move by Erdogan to silence his opposition. Erdogan’s critics said the crackdown was an important milestone in Erdogan’s shift to Islamist authoritarianism and predicted it would be his downfall.

Erdogan’s government has been wary of mass gatherings in Taksim Square ever since, particularly on occasions like May Day, when the demonstrations tend to have a whiff of insurrection about them. The governor of Istanbul announced a ban on May Day demonstrations in the square last week, and it was seconded a few days later by the Interior Ministry. Istanbul did permit May Day demonstrations elsewhere in the city.

Amnesty International (AI) on Tuesday denounced the ban on “May Day celebrations” as “based on entirely spurious security and public order grounds,” and claimed it was a violation of recent decisions by Turkey’s Constitutional Court upholding the right of peaceful assembly:

Taksim Square is a place of huge symbolic significance and has long been a place where people gather in protest and in celebration. For more than a decade, the Turkish authorities have unlawfully restricted people’s right to assembly and criminalized peaceful protests that take place in the square. It is therefore vital that this year, May Day celebrations are allowed to proceed.

Quote:The government of Turkey announced on Wednesday that it is seeking to become a party to a case accusing Israel of “genocide” against the terrorist organization Hamas at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The ICJ case, brought to the court by the radical leftist government of South Africa, claims that Israel’s self-defense operations in the Hamas stronghold of Gaza are actually targeting civilians and intending to exterminate the local population. South Africa has struggled to make its case coherent, on one occasion misquoting the Bible in a failed attempt to claim Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had declared genocidal intent.

South Africa welcomed representatives of Hamas — a terrorist organization that explicitly calls for the genocide of Israelis and Jews generally — in December for friendly meetings with government leaders.

Turkey has similarly welcomed Hamas leaders, most recently warmly welcoming Ismail Haniyeh, the “political” leader of the group, to Istanbul in April. Islamist Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an enthusiastic Hamas supporter who has repeatedly claimed in public that the group is “not a terrorist organization” and compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

“After the decision to join (the case) is made by our esteemed President, we will submit our official application following legal work,” Cuneyt Yuksel, the chairman of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Justice Committee, announced on Wednesday, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency. “As we have done until today, we will continue our efforts with determination to ensure the condemnation of Israel, which has been condemned by the conscience of humanity, and also in the eyes of the law.”
...
Anadolu noted that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan confirmed the plan to join South Africa at the Hague.

Basically, what Turkey wants is to make everybody think Israel can't defend itself from attackers like Hamas, Hezbollah & Iran.

Quote:Shiraz University, a public institution in Iran, announced it would offer scholarships and jobs to American college students and professors facing disciplinary action for participating in violent pro-terrorist actions at home, the state-run Iranian propaganda site PressTV reported on Wednesday.

American campuses are facing a wave of violent activity most demonstrably characterized by “liberated zones” in which students and outsiders erect tent communities in the heart of campuses, disrupting activities at the universities and threatening students not participating.

The protests are meant to show solidarity with the Gaza Strip, the embattled Mideast region currently governed by the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas.

Hamas triggered a regional crisis by invading Israel from Gaza on October 7, engaging in widespread crimes against humanity in residential communities. Hamas terrorists paraglided into Israel and rampaged through neighborhoods in the early morning hours of the day, killing entire families in their homes, gang-raping any women they found, mutilating and killing children as young as infants, and desecrating the corpses of the deal.

The terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 people and abducted another 250, of which about 130 are believed to remain in terrorist captivity today.

Quote:The Taliban junta is putting some effort into reviving tourism in Afghanistan, which seemed like an unlikely vacation getaway even before a band of hardcore Islamist fanatics took control of the country in 2021.

The Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday marveled that Afghanistan does have a functional tourism industry, even though its current rulers are “pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls.”

The AP reported:

The economy is struggling, infrastructure is poor, and poverty is rife. And yet, foreigners are visiting the country, encouraged by the sharp drop in violence, increased flight connections with hubs like Dubai, and the bragging rights that come with vacationing in an unusual destination.

The outlet noted that a certain “buzz” has developed around Afghanistan as a venue for extreme tourism.

Although the tourist population remains small, it is increasing dramatically with every passing year — from 691 in 2021 to some 7,000 in 2023. Unsurprisingly, many of these tourists come from China, which has developed extensive business interests with the Taliban regime.

“They’ve told me they don’t want to go to Pakistan because it’s dangerous and they get attacked. The Japanese have said this to me also. This is good for us,” Mohammad Saeed, head of the Taliban’s tourism directorate, said of his Chinese customers.

Saeed said the Taliban wants to increase tourism to present a more positive image of its rule to the outside world.

Quote:U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel on Wednesday as the world awaited an answer from Hamas on whether it would accept an Israeli offer on a hostage deal that grants almost all of the terrorist group’s demands.

Blinken called the deal “very generous” earlier this week, reflecting the view of other western nations. In the deal, according to reports, Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for thousands of convicted Palestinian terrorists. Israel would agree to withdraw from the sole corridor of Gaza that it currently holds, allowing Gazans who had evacuated from the north to return to the area. Further hostages could be traded for a long-term ceasefire.

The Israeli offer came after months of pressure on Israel from the Biden administration and other western nations.

Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sworn that Israel will continue its mission of destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, doing so would be virtually impossible under the terms on the table.

A Hamas delegation departed Cairo, Egypt, earlier this week for Doha, Qatar, to discuss the proposal with the group’s leadership. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners threatened to quit the government over the deal.

The ball is effectively in Hamas’s court. It could decide to reject the deal, hoping that growing international pressure on Israel to stop the war would prevent Israel from continuing to fight anyway. Or it could accept the deal, and force Israel to accept a disadvantageous end to the war that most Israelis would regard as a defeat — but possibly open the way for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, frustrating Hamas’s broader goal of destroying Israel entirely.

Blinken, meanwhile, stressed the need for a ceasefire and for more humanitarian aid to Gaza — drawing criticism from Israelis who noted that he no longer spoke about defeating Hamas or stopping terrorism more generally.