Quote:Capitol attending physician Dr. Brian Monahan medially cleared Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to return to work after he appeared to freeze again during a public event Wednesday.
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New: Capitol attending physician Dr. Brian Monahan says he talked with McConnell & his neurology team. He says McConnell is “medically clear” to keep his sked
“Occasional lightheadedness is not uncommon in concussion recovery and can also be expected as a result of dehydration.” pic.twitter.com/Ti35frbWXn
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In March, McConnell, 81, was rushed to the hospital upon suffering a concussion after tripping at a reception. He was cleared to return to work in April.
On Wednesday, McConnell froze during a press gaggle in Kentucky, his second scary moment in just over a month after a similar incident occurred at the U.S. Capitol.
Quote:An illegal alien wanted for murder in Mexico is just one among nearly 1.6 million illegal aliens who are known to have successfully crossed the United States-Mexico border since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
This month, 24-year-old illegal alien Juan Pablo Ortiz-Herrera was deported to Mexico and turned over to local authorities for homicide charges. Ortiz-Herrera was only discovered living in the United States when he was arrested for misdemeanors in Nampa, Idaho, in June.
From there, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents issued a detainer for Ortiz-Herrera with Canyon County officials and he was quickly turned over to them for arrest. In July, Ortiz-Herrera was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge.
Ortiz-Herrera is known to have successfully crossed the southern border some time after April of last year, as he had been expelled from the United States four times prior thanks to Title 42 — the border control that has since been ended by the Biden administration.
The illegal alien fugitive is just one of nearly 1.6 million known got-aways who have entered the United States through the border undeterred by Border Patrol, according to the latest figures published by the Center Square.
This is a foreign population the size of Phoenix, Arizona.
Quote:Chicago’s budget skyrocketed by $5.7 billion since 2019 and now totals $16.4 billion in 2023, yet recently elected “progressive” Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) is proposing a long list of higher taxes because he wants even more money from the Windy City’s beleaguered residents.
Even as businesses and citizens alike flee Chicago, the city’s self-styled “progressive” mayor is looking to dole out another $1 billion in “investments,” according to Wirepoints.
Illinois, in general — and Chicago, in particular — have suffered some of the highest outward migration in the country, with Chicago coming in third for losing the most citizens in 2022, according to moving company Pods. Only Los Angeles and San Francisco rank higher in the number of people who have fled their city.
According to the Illinois Policy Institute, 32% of the state’s 104,437-person loss came from Chicago. The Windy City has lost population for nine years running, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Wirepoints also noted that Illinois suffered the nation’s third worst loss of businesses in 2021, as companies closed shop and moved out.
But according to Wirepoints, Johnson is seeking yet another hike with his $16.377 billion budget — a $5.7 billion increase over former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) 2019 budget, which came in at $10.67 billion. Lightfoot’s budget was an increase over former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s (D) $9.23 billion budget in 2015.
Quote:A leader of the Proud Boys militia who called for a “war” to keep Donald Trump as president was sentenced to 17 years in prison Thursday, one of the longest sentences yet over the 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Prosecutors said Joe Biggs was a key figure in a “seditious conspiracy” to forcibly overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, leading Trump supporters in the January 6 military-style assault.
His sentence was one year short of the longest in the hundreds of convictions in the Capitol attack, an 18-year sentence given to Stewart Rhodes, the founder of another far-right militia central to the Capitol siege, the Oath Keepers.
But it was only half of the 33 years urged by prosecutors, as Judge Timothy Kelly said it was not a mass-casualty event and that Biggs had not intended to kill anyone in the uprising.
Nevertheless, Kelly said, “There is a need for deterrence.”
The assault “broke our tradition of the peaceful transfer of power, which is one of the most precious things that we had as Americans,” the judge said.
Before sentencing a tearful Biggs expressed regrets, saying he would have nothing more to do with the Proud Boys and would focus on his wife and daughter’s welfare.
Well, pretty much no police officer died that day, and no military force of any kind had to be deployed back then. So calling it an actual attack is a tremendous overstatement for sure. Right now I can only recall a single civilian getting killed, namely Ashley Babbitt. And her murderer isn't in jail nor has been prosecuted as expected...
Quote:Maui search crews have allegedly found over 450 bodies, according to a local resident who is leading a grassroots relief effort to aid victims of the fire that decimated the town of Lahaina earlier this month.
“I guarantee you right now, from what has been seen, the number is over 450 and it’s gonna get — it’s gonna get closer to 1,000,” Maui resident Dale Hermo-Fernandez, who has close contacts inside local recovery efforts, said in a recent exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
“They’re not giving the number until they toe-tag them and identify them, which is understandable,” he said. “It’s guaranteed in the four hundreds. More than likely you’re going to get to 850 or 900 — with 40 percent being kids,” he said.
He said he did not want to discuss the children too much, out of respect for parents holding out hope.
“What I’m telling you right now is there’s a lot of kids. There’s a lot. There’s so much. And that’s the thing right now. The real disaster hasn’t even happened to the fullest,” Hermo-Fernandez said.
Quote:At present trends Europe is set to import more Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from Russia than ever before this year, an NGO claims, with billions of dollars spent buying energy from Russia despite attitudes towards their Ukraine war, and the sanctions regime.
While European nations placed sanctions on the gas piped directly from Russia to Europe after its invasion of Ukraine last year, that regime did not apply to gas that comes by boat which is cooled and compressed into liquid form, known as Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Those imports have soared despite principled talk about starving Russia of foreign trade, and so far this year Europe has bought over half of all Russian LNG exports.
While China is the largest single national customer for Russian LNG, Belgium and Spain come in second and third, and Europe is by far the largest destination for it overall. Europe’s imports from Russia are up 40 per cent this year compared to the same period in 2021 and is on track to be the biggest year for Russian LNG ever, an NGO called Global Witness claims, citing market analysis by Kpler, the Financial Times reports.
This year, Russian imports of LNG have accounted for 16 per cent of European acquisitions, second only to the United States as a source.
Quote:Social media accounts linked to Russia’s notorious Wagner Group on Thursday circulated a video clip that is reputedly the final recording of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner co-founder allegedly killed in a mysterious plane crash last week.
In the video, Priogzhin discussed “rumors” he would be eliminated for his role in leading a mutiny against the Russian military, but assured his fans that “everything is fine.”
The short video clip shows Prigozhin seated in a rapidly moving armored vehicle, which he said was speeding through Africa. He said he recorded the video for the benefit of people who are “debating if I’m dead or still alive.”
“I’m in Africa. So to those who like to spread rumors about wiping me out, my private life, my income or something like that I can say: everything is fine,” he said.
Prigozhin said he was recording this message on a “weekend” in the “second half of August 2023,” which would most likely mean before the August 23 plane crash en route to Moscow that reportedly killed him along with Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin, several top Wagner commanders, two pilots, and a flight attendant.
Some Wagner fans nevertheless speculated the video means Prigozhin is still alive today. A popular conspiracy theory holds that his “body double” died in the plane crash so that Prigozhin could either disappear into retirement with Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s blessing or secretly plot revenge against those who tried to liquidate him.
Yeah, what a great timing. I guess somebody didn't want those videos to be released to the public. Even so, this would demonstrate that everything was NOT fine at all.
But there are always people claiming that Elvis is alive, that JFK never got killed, etc.
Quote:Bad news for Germany’s left-green coalition government: research finds a clear majority of Germans would rather the state just got on with fixing potholes, and building new roads so they can drive their cars more.
Polling for one of Germany’s major newspapers has found strong feelings among German voters on government policy, showing a strong deviation from the aspirations of the influential coalition partner the Greens Party in the land of the Autobahn.
When asked which route they would prefer the government to take, 62 per cent of Germans said they wanted to see “renewal and further expansion of the motorway and road network”, an obvious rejection of the present zeitgeist for spreading limits on road access through congestion charges and road taxes. A big majority also said they preferred petrol and diesel cars to electric.
Just 33 per cent, in comparison, said repairing the roads that already exist and building new ones “should be avoided in favor of environmental and climate protection” reports Die Welt, citing research performed for them by a pollster. While approval for expanding roads rather than curbing road building for the environment varied by region and age, every demographic category still showed majority support.
Quote:European Union ministers expressed deep concern Thursday at the growing number of military coups across Africa as the bloc draws up sanctions targeting the junta in Niger which overthrew an elected government a month ago.
On Wednesday, the oil-rich nation of Gabon became the eighth Central or West African country to be hit by a military takeover in the last three years. The EU has not been training Gabon’s armed forces — although French troops have — but it has funded and taught troops in Mali and Niger.
The military training has focused mainly on the volatile Sahel region to combat extremism, particularly groups linked to al-Qaida. Many Europeans worry that instability in Africa will drive more people to flee, and the 27-nation bloc is already divided over how to cope with large numbers of migrant arrivals.
Some European countries have strong economic interests in Africa, notably France with its need for Niger’s uranium. The growing influence of Russia through the Wagner mercenary group, and the economic might of China are also forcing the bloc to rethink its policies.
“It´s clear that things haven´t gone well given the proliferation of military coups and the presence of Wagner gangs in the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said,
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said that “we do need to evaluate our approach to Africa in the light of what has transpired.”
Talking to reporters in Toledo, Spain, where EU foreign ministers were meeting, Martin said training and supporting armies in Africa that might later turn on their governments “does present a very significant dilemma.”
Quote:Actor and singer Jaden Smith suddenly canceled a spate of events scheduled in multiple cities in China, the state propaganda outlet Global Times confirmed on Monday, after a mysterious user of a regime-controlled social media application accused Smith of shouting racial slurs at Chinese and other Asians on a train in Japan.
It remains entirely unknown at press time who made the accusation — the Global Times claimed to be unable to find the person — and the accuser presented no proof of his or her claims. An English-language translation of the original post attacking Smith circulating on social media does not make it clear if the person was even accusing Smith, or merely someone in his entourage, of the outrageous behavior.
The saga began on Xiaohongshu, a social media application used in China often compared to Instagram. Xiaohongshu, like all Chinese social media applications in the country, employs strict censorship protocols to silence anything that could be interpreted as anti-communist sentiment or any posts that the Communist Party may disapprove of. Not only did the government not censor the post against Smith, but the Global Times amplified the controversy by reporting on it.
According to the Global Times, the original Xiaohongshu post claimed that the accuser was on a Shinkansen train from Kyoto to Tokyo on August 19 along with Smith and his entourage.
“Someone asked Jaden his opinion on different countries including China. Jaden replied with ‘F*** China.’ Smith repeatedly made derogatory remarks about China,” the post read, according to the Global Times, though these lines do not appear on other, unverified translations of the post circulating online.
Now they accuse a black guy of being... racist? The same CCP that discriminates anybody that does not belong to the Han majority in China!?
Now on our next topic, we first learned about Sudan's civil war, only to be followed by the crisis in Niger. But that was not enough for this region because there's just another military coup taking place over there.
Quote:Top military officials in Gabon, central Africa, appeared suddenly on national television on Wednesday and announced they had ended the regime of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has ruled the country since 1967.
The soldiers, identifying themselves as “The Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions,” condemned Bongo for holding what they deemed a fraudulent election on August 26 and claimed they were compelled to address Gabon’s “serious institutional, political, economic, and social crisis” by placing Bongo under house arrest and putting the nation “on the road to happiness.”
“Added to this is irresponsible and unpredictable governance, resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion, with the risk of leading the country into chaos,” the soldiers said in their televised statement, according to a translation from the original French published by Nigeria’s Daily Trust. “Today, 30 August 2023, we … on behalf of the people of Gabon and as guarantors of the institutions’ protection — have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.”
“All the institutions of the Republic are dissolved: the government, the Senate, the National Assembly, the Constitutional Court, the Economic, Social and Environmental Council and the Gabonese Elections Centre,” the statement continued. “We call for calm and serenity from the public, the communities of sister countries settled in Gabon, and the Gabonese diaspora. We reaffirm our commitment to respecting Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.”
“People of Gabon, we are finally on the road to happiness,” the soldiers promised.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Joe Biden has spent 40 percent of his time as president on personal trips away from the White House, according to data calculated by the Republican National Committee.
The finding that Biden has spent 382 of his 957 days in the presidency away from the Oval Office was corroborated by the New York Post, using White House reports of Biden’s movements.
“We have millions of illegal immigrants pouring across our borders. Violent crime is surging. Inflation is crushing hard-working Americans. Our enemies around the world are emboldened,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Post. “Meanwhile, Joe Biden is filmed on the beach with his handlers preventing him from speaking to the media to answer basic questions Americans deserve answers to.”
Biden was also spotted sitting underneath an umbrella reading what appeared to be court documents a day before Devon Archer testified against him, implicating that the president had been involved with son Hunter Biden’s foreign business schemes.
Currently, the president is on vacation with wife Jill Biden for Labor Day weekend at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, the Daily Mail reported.
Biden’s days away from the White House beat out previous idler President George H.W. Bush, who spent 36 percent of his time in office away for personal time. Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, had spent 26 percent of his presidency away from the Oval Office.
Quote:During a portion of an interview with CBS News aired on Friday’s broadcast of “CBS Evening News,” Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) stated that the fires in Hawaii were “A tragic natural disaster,” and that “if other decisions were made, it is possible that we wouldn’t have had such loss.” But he doesn’t want to say officials were asleep at the wheel or if Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen should resign...
CBS News National Correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti asked, “Is it time for the Mayor to resign? What are your thoughts?”
Green responded, “My first thoughts are, we should really get to all of the facts, whatever they may be, good or bad. That is a deeply personal discussion for any Mayor and his or her constituents to have.”
Vigliotti then asked, “Were they asleep at the wheel?”
Green said, “I don’t know if I should use those words.”
Quote:On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) reacted to reported plans by the Biden administration to send migrants to Atlantic City International Airport in Egg Harbor Township, NJ by pointing out that the plan is to send migrants to a town of 50,000 people to help alleviate stress on New York City, a city with a population of 8.3 million people that chose to be a sanctuary city and noting the security risks of housing migrants at an airport that has both an FAA Technical Center and the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard.
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He continued, “There’s also a national defense issue here. This is a very, very important issue to understand. We have the FAA Technical Center there, [which is] doing very important work, some of which is very significant for the safety of this country and air flight and we have our F-16s that are there as part of our defense as well, as part of the Air National Guard, the 177th Fighter Wing.”
Van Drew added, “We don’t want to be a sanctuary airport. If they want to be a sanctuary city in New York City. That’s up to them. It’s hurting the city tremendously, too.”
Quote:The United States added 187,000 jobs in August as the unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, the Labor Department reported Friday. President Biden hailed the job growth during his administration during live remarks from the White House Friday.
The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the August additions to non-farm payrolls were lower than the average monthly gain of 271,000 over the past year while the jobless rate hit 3.8%.
President Joe Biden addressed the jobs report in live stream remarks from the White House Friday.
He said with August’s job report, 13.5 million jobs have been added since he took office.
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Biden said all of the jobs lost during the COVID-19 pandemic have been recovered while a million over and above that number have also been created.
Biden said the unemployment rate was 6.3% when took office. For 19 months in a row since Biden has been in office America’s jobless rate has been below 4%.
Biden said for women, the unemployment rate is the lowest in 70 years.
He said union jobs, which he is trying to help increase, make a difference for workers.
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In August healthcare added 71,000 jobs, leisure and hospitality over 40,000, nursing and residential care facilities 17,000 and hospitals added 15,000 jobs. Construction added 22,000 jobs.
On the minus side, transportation and warehousing lost 34,000 jobs in August. Couriers and messengers lost 9,000 jobs.
The Labor Department said due to strike activity motion picture and sound recording jobs dropped by 17,000.
The jump in unemployment came as 514,000 Americans lost their jobs in August, bringing the total of unemployed people to 6.4 million. It could be a sign that the job market is weakening amid high interest rates imposed to fight inflation.
Quote:Host Bret Baier asked [relevant exchange begins around 5:05] “So, on the economic front, Congressman, should the tariffs, the current tariffs on China remain in place, or should they be lifted?”
Krishnamoorthi responded, “I think that they should be in place, certainly, for certain industries where they’re just not playing by the rules of the road so to speak. There is economic aggression left and right. And, I think, in other areas, we have to see. But I think that these tariffs provide a space for our industry to thrive and to compete. And so, in that regard, I think that they are necessary.”
Quote:The head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said Friday that the country has deployed an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that President Vladimir Putin once said will make Russia’s enemies “think twice.”
Agency head Yuri Borisov said Sarmat missiles have been placed on combat duty, according to Russian news agencies.
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The Sarmat is one of several advanced weapons whose development Putin announced in 2018. The silo-based missile, capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads, is intended to replace the R-36 ICBMs that are known by the NATO reporting name of Satan.
The Sarmat reportedly has a short initial launch phase, allowing little time for surveillance systems to track it.
In 2022, about two months after sending troops into Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those who, in the heat of aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country, think twice.”
Quote:German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed a suggestion by a junior coalition partner that the country should keep open the option of using its closed nuclear power plants, declaring that atomic energy is a “dead horse” in Germany.
Germany switched off its last three nuclear reactors in April, completing a process that received wide political support after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in 2011. But some argued for a rethink after energy prices spiked because of the war in Ukraine.
Among those who advocated a reprieve were members of the Free Democrats, a pro-business party that is part of Scholz’s governing coalition.
This week, the Free Democrats’ parliamentary group approved a policy statement saying that it wants “to stop the dismantling of the nuclear power plants that are still fit to use” as part of efforts to be prepared for worst-case scenarios. “That is the only way we will remain capable of acting in every situation,” it said.
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Nuclear energy is over,” he said. “The issue of nuclear energy in Germany is a dead horse. Anyone who wanted to build new nuclear power plants would need 15 years and would have to spend 15-20 billion euros ($16.2-21.6 billion) each.”
The chancellor insisted that “the fact is that with the end of the use of nuclear power, dismantling has also begun,” and any talk of resuming the use of atomic energy would imply building new power stations.
Quote:Several Swedish lawmakers said Friday they would boycott this year’s Nobel Prize award ceremonies in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, after the private foundation that administers the prestigious awards changed its position from a year earlier and invited representatives of the three countries to attend, saying it “promotes opportunities to convey the important messages of the Nobel Prize to everyone.”
Some of the lawmakers cited Russia’s war on Ukraine and the crackdown on human rights in Iran as reasons for their boycott. Belarusian opposition figure Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Friday called on the Swedish Nobel Foundation and the Norwegian Nobel Committee not to invite representatives of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s “illegitimate regime to any events.”
The Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told media outlets Friday that he wouldn’t have made the decision.
The foundation said Saturday it recognized “the strong reactions in Sweden, which completely overshadowed this message” and therefore it had decided not to invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran to the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm.
However, it said that it would follow its usual practice and invite all ambassadors to the ceremony in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.
Quote:The announcement late Thursday sent school administrators scrambling to find ways to accommodate pupils, with some expected to return to the online instruction used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The timing of the decision, just days before the start of classes, raised questions from parents and school officials about why the government didn’t act sooner.
Schools Minister Nick Gibb told the BBC that a beam collapse over the summer sparked an urgent reconsideration of whether buildings constructed with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete were safe for school children.
The Department for Education ordered 104 schools to keep some or all of their buildings closed when the autumn term begins Monday.
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The aerated concrete, known as RAAC, is lighter and less expensive than standard reinforced concrete and was widely used in schools, hospitals and other public buildings from the 1950s to the mid-1990s. But RAAC is also weaker than other materials and has a useful life of about 30 years, which means many of these structures now need to be replaced.
Britain´s government has been aware of the problem since 1994 and started monitoring the condition of public buildings in 2018.
The Department for Education began a survey of school buildings last year to identify those built with RAAC. More than 50 school buildings had previously been closed due to concerns about such concrete.
Given this, many were angered by the timing of Thursday’s announcement.
Quote:During a closed-doors meeting with leaders of opposition parties on Wednesday in Seine-Saint-Denis, the 45-year-old leader reportedly declared: “Not being able to be re-elected is disastrous bullshit,” participants of the meeting told the Le Figaro newspaper.
Macron, a former Rothschild banker, was initially elected to the Élysée Palace in 2017 and re-elected as president last year. Under constitutional reforms passed by his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008, the President of the Republic is currently limited to two consecutive terms in office.
The president was reportedly responding to a suggestion from the leader of the populist National Rally party Jordan Bardella to further amend the constitution to limit the president to a single seven-year term in office.
Responding to his reported comments, former leftist presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon declared that Macron has “cracked”.
French essayist Maxime Tandonnet warned that the comments may indicate that Macron is considering revoking the limit in order to maintain his “authoritarian” grip on power in Paris.
Quote:A former Italian premier, in an interview published on Saturday, contended that a French air force missile accidentally brought down a passenger jet over the Mediterranean Sea in 1980 in a failed bid to assassinate Libya’s then leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Former two-time Premier Giuliano Amato appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron to either refute or confirm his assertion about the cause of the crash on June 27, 1980, which killed all 81 persons aboard the Italian domestic flight.
In an interview with Rome daily La Repubblica, Amato said he is convinced that France hit the plane while targeting a Libyan military jet.
While acknowledging he has no hard proof, Amato also contended that Italy tipped off Gadhafi, and so the Libyan, who was heading back to Tripoli from a meeting in Yugoslavia, didn’t board the Libyan military jet.
What caused the crash is one of modern Italy’s most enduring mysteries. Some say a bomb exploded aboard the Itavia jetliner on a flight from Bologna to Sicily, while others say examination of the wreckage, pulled up from the seafloor years later, indicate it was hit by a missile.
Radar traces indicated a flurry of aircraft activity in that part of the skies when the plane went down.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:The U.S. government is trying to stop a planned expedition to recover items of historical interest from the sunken Titanic, citing a federal law and an international agreement that treat the shipwreck as a hallowed gravesite.
The expedition is being organized by RMS Titanic Inc., the Georgia-based firm that owns the salvage rights to the world’s most famous shipwreck. The company exhibits artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck site at the bottom of the North Atlantic, from silverware to a piece of the Titanic's hull.
The government's challenge comes more than two months after the Titan submersible imploded near the sunken ocean liner, killing five people. But this legal fight has nothing to do with the June tragedy, which involved a different company and an unconventionally designed vessel.
The battle in the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees Titanic salvage matters, hinges instead on federal law and a pact with Great Britain to treat the sunken Titanic as a memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died. The ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912.
The United States argues that entering the Titanic's severed hull—or physically altering or disturbing the wreck—is regulated by federal law and its agreement with Britain. Among the government's concerns is the possible disturbance of artifacts and any human remains that may still exist.
Quote:The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday that it will extend the deployment of up to 400 active-duty American troops at the U.S. southern border with Mexico until at least the end of September.
The Pentagon had pulled 1,100 troops from the border last month but extended the deployment of the remaining 400 soldiers.
"On Aug. 24, 2023, the secretary of defense approved an extension of up to 400 personnel providing support to Customs and Border Protection on the southwest border through Sept. 30, 2023," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Devin Robinson told NBC News on Sept. 1.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved in May the deployment of 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border for 90 days to assist border officials with a possible influx of illegal immigration at the border.
The Pentagon said the troops will "fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support" but will not directly participate in law enforcement activities.
Quote:Growing safety concerns over the city's bussing of illegal immigrants into the outer boroughs have intensified efforts from Staten Island to break away from the Big Apple.
“The values of New York City are not in line with those of Staten Island and they haven’t been for a long time and that divide is only growing larger,” Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella told the Epoch Times. “There is this very real sense that the city won’t listen to our concerns and that we have reached a boiling point.”
“The people feel like we are on a tugboat attached to the Titanic,” Fossella said. “The people can see that the city is sinking, and unless we are okay with sinking too, there is a need to separate.”
Staten Island, long known as the forgotten borough, has often flirted with the idea of breaking off from the rest of the city. It has always been an outlier within the five boroughs, with a majority conservative Republican population that is often at odds with the rest of the city. Despite New York City’s status as a blue stronghold, the borough mostly voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020. However, in recent years, many residents have reached a breaking point over increases in crime and, more recently, the bussing of illegal immigrants into residential neighborhoods, according to Mr. Fossella.
“They dump these individuals into our neighborhoods and to my knowledge none of them have been vetted,” said Mr. Fossella. “One of these migrant shelters is located directly across the street from two elementary schools and they just expect the people to take it. Why would we want to take that risk?
“The concern is legitimate. We are not as safe as we should be and the people are fed up.”
Quote:Two people were charged with looting a home damaged by Hurricane Idalia in Florida's Big Bend region, as residents' concerns grew that burglars could be tempted to hit other hurricane-ravaged homes since law enforcement is stretched thin in the remote, wooded area along the Gulf Coast.
Some residents of Horseshoe Beach, Florida, one of the communities hardest hit after Idalia made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane, urged law enforcement to set up checkpoints where people would have to show identification in order to get into the town.
Marina worker Kerry Ford had high praise for local law enforcement's response to the hurricane but wished more would be done to keep out people who don't belong in Horseshoe Beach.
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A man and a woman from Palmetto, Florida, almost 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of where Idalia made landfall, were arrested Wednesday after an officer from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission heard noises coming from outside a home in Horseshoe Beach.
The officer found the man and woman loading up items from the waterfront home into a rented pickup truck. One of the suspects told deputies that the homeowner had given him permission to remove items from the house on stilts. But the homeowners told deputies when contacted that they had done no such thing, according to a statement from the Dixie County Sheriff's Office.
Each suspect was charged with burglary of an unoccupied dwelling during an emergency, grand theft, and trespassing, with bails set for each at $1 million.
Quote:One person died and 18 others were injured in a wrong-way crash involving a Greyhound passenger bus on a Maryland highway, police said.
The driver of an SUV died early Thursday when the vehicle, which driving on the wrong side of the highway, hit the bus, according to police. The crash injured the bus driver and 17 bus passengers.
The bus was traveling eastbound on Route 32 near Interstate 95 in the Savage area with 38 passengers aboard around 3:30 a.m. when it collided with a Buick Enclave that was traveling westbound in eastbound lanes, Howard County police said in a news release. Savage is 15 miles (24.14 kilometers) southwest of Baltimore.
The man who was driving the Buick died at the scene. The bus driver and injured passengers were taken to area hospitals with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, police said.
Quote:Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, ahead of his three-day trip to Beijing, said that being a part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) did not bring the country the expected economic benefits.
“The Italian Parliament is checking the situation. In this moment, the countries without the Belt and Road Initiative, the European countries, are working better than us. For this, Italy will decide if [to] stay or not [to] stay in the Belt and Road Initiative. In the parliament, many parties are against it,” he said on CNBC Saturday.
He said the deal had "failed to meet Italian expectations."
The BRI was meant to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through a "new Silk Road," via large infrastructure spending. Critics have decried it as a way for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to expand its geopolitical power and economic influence.
“The Italian message is very clear: we want to work with China, we want to be present in China’s market, we are ready for Chinese investment, but as I said, it is important [to have a] level playing field,” said Mr. Tajani, who previously served as President of the European Parliament, as European Commissioner, and is also Italy's Deputy Prime Minister. "We want to continue to work closely with China, but we must also analyze exports: the BRI has not produced the results we were hoping for."
Italy is the only G7 country that is a part of China's BRI, and its withdrawal would mean a major setback for China.
Quote:Moscow will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine’s counteroffensive efforts are successful and recapture “Russian land”, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday.
The war of words once again escalated in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, with Zelensky declaring that it is “absolutely fair” for targets within Russia to be attacked and top-Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev explicitly threatening to resort to a nuclear strike to win the war.
Taking to his personal Telegram channel to mark the Russian military holiday of Navy Day, the former president said: “Our Armed Forces, repelling the counteroffensive of the collective enemy, protect the citizens of Russia and our land. This is obvious to all decent people.
“But beyond that, they prevent world conflict. After all, if we imagine that the offensive of the [Ukrainian Nazis] with the support of NATO was successful and they seized part of our land, then we would have to, by virtue of the rules of the decree of the President of Russia dated 06/02/2020, go for the use of nuclear weapons.”
“There is simply no other way out. Therefore, our enemies must pray to our warriors. They do not allow the global nuclear fire to flare up,” Medvedev concluded.
Quote:Despite claims from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that his feckless Conservative government’s policies have been “working” to stem the tide of illegals pouring over the Channel from France, the crisis seems to be escalating rather than abating.
According to figures published by the Home Office, some 872 migrants reached the UK on Saturday in 15 small boats launched by people smugglers on the coasts of France. This represents the highest total for any single day period of 2023.
The PA news agency noted that Saturday’s crossings surpassed the previous high on August 10th when 756 illegals made the perilous journey across the world’s busiest waterway. Saturday’s record number of migrants did fall short of the all time high set last year on August 22 when 1,295 arrived.
The latest small boat crossings take the total for the year to approximately 20,973, with 1,172 reaching the country over the past week, alone. While this is down from last year, when around 25,000 migrants had reached the UK by this point of the year, it is still significantly higher than in 2021 when around 28,000 landed on British beaches during the entire year.
Quote:They sweep the sea in 400-ship swarms, Chinese fishing boats that—based on time of year and fishery—include trawlers, purse seiners, gill-netters, pole-and-line platforms, squid jiggers, tuna longliners, wood-hulled freighters, and sail-masted junks.
The fleet is shepherded by oil tankers, supply barges, “research” vessels, and hospital ships, shadowed by Chinese navy warships and coast guard cutters, and serviced by massive motherships with 500,000 cubic feet of frozen storage holds.
Rotating motherships ferry harvests to China and return with provisions on a continuous cycle so the fleet can keep fishing until there are no more fish and it must move on to keep fishing until there are no more fish in the new areas across the globe, from Senegal to the South Pacific.
Chinese fishing armadas are becoming common and long-lingering sights in international waters just beyond 200-mile national exclusive economic zones (EEZ) off Africa’s and South America’s coasts and across the vast central and western Pacific, including off—and allegedly in—the sovereign waters of Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI), which are United States territories.
Marauding Chinese fishing boats have destroyed domestic commercial industries and damaged sports-fishing businesses across the Pacific, island leaders told a Congressional panel during meetings and field hearings staged on Guam, Saipan, American Samoa, Palau, and Micronesia between Aug. 23–Aug. 28.
...
Leaders from the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), Republic of Palau, and Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) joined territorial government officials in citing illegal fishing by swarming Chinese boats as part of a “political warfare” pattern of economic coercion, subversion, harassment, and overt threats orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sew discord among local governments, businesses, and civic groups across the Pacific in a persistent effort to drive a wedge between them and the United States.
Quote:The Summit at Camp David has drawn to a close, culminating in a robust show of military alignment among the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. On Aug. 21, Japan unveiled a significant hike in its defense budget for fiscal year 2024, Taiwan revealed a record-setting budget for the upcoming year, and the United States and South Korea commenced expansive joint military drills. These collective moves amplify the strategic posture along the first island chain and serve as tangible manifestations of the commitments made during the summit.
At the closing press conference of the summit on Aug. 18, the leaders of the United States, Japan, and South Korea shared a united vision for enhanced trilateral security cooperation and emphasized the role their countries will play in fostering a more secure and prosperous global order.
Japan’s daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported that the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s fiscal 2024 budget request amounts to an unprecedented 7.738 trillion yen (approximately $52.75 billion), marking a significant escalation from the 6.8219 trillion yen ($46.6 billion) allocated for fiscal 2023.
The proposed budget earmarks 930 billion yen (about $6.35 billion) for ammunition expenses, aimed at augmenting the nation’s sustained combat capabilities. A further 380 billion yen (about $2.6 billion) has been allocated for the initiation of construction for two naval vessels outfitted with the state-of-the-art missile defense system, Aegis Ashore, referred to as “Aegis system equipped vessels (ASEV).”
...
In Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen has ratified an unprecedented defense budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Ms. Tsai said during a briefing on Aug. 21 that Taiwan’s overall defense budget for the coming year will soar to a record 606.8 billion Taiwan dollars (about $19 billion) from the 359.6 billion Taiwan dollars (about $11 billion) allocated in 2016, and is expected to account for 2.5 percent of its GDP.
...
Steady advancements have been observed in the country's defense capabilities, including the imminent delivery of 683 eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles and the first tranche of M1A2T tanks. Taiwan’s Air Force is also set to complete the full upgrade of 141 F-16A/B fighter jets by year-end, along with the introduction of 91 naval vessels and a prototype submarine, expected to be launched this September.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Federal investigators believe spying networks are behind the 100-plus attempted entries by Chinese nationals into sensitive U.S. sites in recent years, a report Sunday set out.
The cases are reportedly many and varied, including people crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico — and scuba divers swimming near a rocket launch site and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Wall Street Journal said quoting officials familiar with the allegations.
Drones to take detailed aerial footage of sensitive military sites have been seen— while the Pentagon confirmed cases of people “speeding through security checkpoints.”
...
For example, individuals and groups often claim to be looking for hotels or a Burger King when challenged.
The Defense Department and FBI are among multiple federal agencies which shared a review last year on how to limit the attempts, which officials told the WSJ are viewed as a form of espionage.
Congress might also consider legislation, Rep. Jason Crow (D- Colo.) told the paper, to toughen up how security is handled at the sensitive sites, with trespassing laws currently being state and local, not federal.
...
The incidents that occurred in rural areas where there is little tourism typically involved Chinese nationals who were pressed into service and required to report back to the Chinese government, the report added.
“The advantage the Chinese have is they are willing to throw people at [intelligence] collection in large numbers,” said Emily Harding, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former deputy staff director at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In many of these cases, officials told the WSJ, those who have been found trespassing on bases have been briefly detained and then escorted out of the country.
No cases appear to have resulted in espionage charges, the paper said.
Quote:A cadet at a Texas border-area police academy received a sentence of more than four years in prison for supplying a cartel in Mexico with .50 caliber ammunition.
Pedro Cruz Almeida, age 22, appeared before U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez last week and received a sentence of 50 months in prison for his role in helping smuggle thousands of rounds of .50 caliber ammunition into Mexico. Almeida had been free on bond after pleading guilty to the charges in late April.
The case began in February when a Hidalgo County Deputy Constable pulled Almeida over during a traffic stop, court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed. When the deputy searched Almeida’s red Hyundai Elantra, he found several boxes of ammunition in the trunk and other parts of the vehicle. In total, the man had 600 rounds of .50 caliber tracer ammunition.
During questioning by federal authorities, Almeida said he was headed to one of the local international bridges where a man was waiting for him. The other man was driving a vehicle with Mexican license plates and was going to drive the ammunition into Reynosa, he stated. During a subsequent search of his house, authorities found 300 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition that had been shipped to Almeida. He also told authorities that he had acquired ammunition for his contacts in Mexico at least 30 other times in the past in exchange for cash, court records revealed.
Quote:According to a report from the New York Post, 29-year-old Daniel Hernandez Martinez of Venezuela first arrived in New York City on June 27 from the United States-Mexico border. The very next day, he allegedly robbed a Costco in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Martinez was subsequently charged with petty larceny and, thanks to New York’s bail reform law, was released from police custody without having to pay bail.
The following week, Martinez allegedly robbed a Duane Reade in Columbus Circle in Manhattan and also allegedly sought to stab a security guard with a large knife while attempting to shoplift at a different Duane Reade location.
Martinez was charged with menacing and released again without bail.
On July 31, Martinez allegedly attacked independent journalist Jeffrey Bradac, 52 years old, who had just wrapped up interviewing him for his social media accounts. Bradac has been covering illegal immigration in the city and said Martinez assaulted him with a bike tire.
While Martinez initially got away before police officers could arrest him, Bradac saw him outside of the Row Hotel, where Mayor Eric Adams (D) has put thousands of migrants, and subsequently called the police who quickly arrested him.
Quote:The meeting in Sochi on Russia´s southern coast comes after weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet.
Erdogan previously said that Putin would travel to Turkey in August.
The Kremlin refused to renew the grain agreement six weeks ago. The deal – brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022 – had allowed nearly 33 million metric tons (36 million tons) of grain and other commodities to leave three Ukrainian ports safely despite Russia’s war.
However, Russia pulled out after claiming that a parallel deal promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honored.
Moscow complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade, even though it has shipped record amounts of wheat since last year.
Since Putin withdrew from the initiative, Erdogan has repeatedly pledged to renew arrangements that helped avoid a food crisis in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Ukraine and Russia are major suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other goods that developing nations rely on.
...
Turkey hasn’t joined Western sanctions against Russia following its invasion, emerging as a main trading partner and logistical hub for Russia´s overseas trade.
NATO member Turkey, however, has also supported Ukraine, sending arms, meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and backing Kyiv’s bid to join NATO.
And before you even think about celebrating the commencement of the grain deal talks...
Quote:Two people were hospitalized following a 3½-hour Russian drone barrage on a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Sunday, officials said.
The attack on the Reni seaport comes a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement that Moscow broke off from in July.
Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones along the Danube River in the early hours of Sunday, 22 of which were shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the attack was aimed at fuel storage facilities used to supply military equipment.
Quote:Oleksii Reznikov, who has led the Ukrainian war effort since the Russian invasion in February of last year, tendered his resignation on Monday, writing on social media: “It was an honour to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the Ukrainian Army for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.”
The former deputy prime minister’s resignation from the war effort comes as Kyiv has come under increasing pressure from Western allies for its slower than hoped for success in its counteroffensive against the now heavily entrenched Russian lines in the South of the country.
Reznikov has personally acknowledged that failures on the front may cause “emotional disappointment” abroad and that expectations may have been “overestimated”.
...
Perhaps more significantly, however, the decision to replace Reznikov comes amid a flurry of corruption scandals, including the Defence Ministry allegedly purchasing food for soldiers at inflated prices as well as claims that the ministry had vastly overpaid suppliers in Turkey for winter military jackets.
Last month, President Zelensky also fired all of the regional heads of military recruitment for allegedly accepting bribes from young men seeking to avoid being sent into battle.
The outgoing defence minister has denied any involvement in corruption, yet the timing may appear to outsiders to indicate the decision to replace him may have been motivated by Kyiv seeking to reassure its Western backers in Brussels, London, and Washington that their money isn’t going to waste and that the government is cracking down on corruption, which has plagued the country since regaining its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Indeed, just hours before Zelensky announced his plans to change defence ministers, Ukraine’s State Security Service detained billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. The oligarch, who was a backer of Zelensky’s 2019 presidential run, owned the television station upon which the Ukrainian president rose to fame as a comedian playing a fictional president. Kolomoisky also served as the governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and previously owned the country’s largest bank before it was nationalised in 2016 after $5.5 billion in assets went missing.
Quote:The Kinzhal missile, an air-launched ballistic missile which has seen limited use in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past year and which they claim is ‘hypersonic’ — this is disputed by Western observers — has been effectively deployed from a new airframe for the first time, they claim. Moscow said in a press statement on Monday that a Sukhoi 34 fighter-bomber had fired the missile in what they euphemistically called the “special military operation”.
Russia was to give “state awards” in recognition of this to the crew involved, Moscow said.
The ability to attack Ukraine with the Kinzhal from the SU-34 is potentially significant, says an analyst cited by Newsweek, because at present they are generally launched from MIG-31s and moving the responsibility onto other airframes frees that aircraft up for other duties. It is claimed the MIG-31 has proven adept at intercepting Ukrainian fighters, and they could do more of this if they weren’t putting time into bombarding Ukrainian cities.
...
The Kinzhal is a young weapons system in the grand scheme of air-launched missiles, having entered service in 2017. By Russia’s own account, it is still technically under evaluation, and is being used in Ukraine on an experimental basis.
Quote:International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi “requests Iran to work with the agency in earnest and in a sustained way towards the fulfilment of the commitments,” the agency said in a confidential report seen by AFP.
Tehran in March vowed to reactivate surveillance devices which were disconnected in June 2022 amid deteriorating relations with the West.
In a separate report, also seen by AFP, the IAEA said Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium was lower than in May but still more than 18 times the limit set in a 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers.
Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile was estimated at 3,795.5 kilogrammes (8,367.7 pounds) as of August 19, down by 949 kilogrammes from May, the agency said.
The limit in the 2015 deal was set at 202.8 kilogrammes.
The stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent is now at 121.6 kilos, up from 114.1 kilos in May.
Iran also has 535.8 kilos of uranium enriched up to 20 percent, up from 470.9 kilos in the last May report.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Former Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio received 22 years in federal prison on Tuesday, a record-high sentence for the January 6, 2021, defendants.
Tarrio’s 22-year sentence surpasses Oath Keepers founder Steward Rhodes and former Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean’s previous record-high 18-year prison sentence.
The 39-year-old was not in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, due to his arrest in the city two days prior for allegedly defacing a Black Lives Matter banner. After his arrest, a judge ordered him to leave the nation’s capital, so Tarrio spent the majority of January 6, 2021, at a Baltimore hotel.
However, prosecutors said Tarrio’s absence from the city on that day “does nothing to detract from the severity of his conduct,” because he “was a general rather than a soldier.”
Federal prosecutors said Tarrio is a “gifted communicator who excels at attracting followers” who “used those talents to inflame and radicalize untold numbers of followers, promoting political violence in general and orchestrating the charged conspiracies in particular.”
“To Tarrio, January 6 was an act of revolution,” prosecutors added.
Tarrio was one of four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy after a trial in May. Judge Timothy Kelly applied a terrorism sentencing enhancement, as he did with some of Tarrio’s co-defendants.
Tarrio’s attorney, Sabino Jauregui, fought back against the terrorism label, arguing that Tarrio is a “misguided patriot.”
Quote:President Joe Biden’s green agenda, which includes moving to electric vehicles (EVs), will kill Michigan’s auto industry and boost China, former President Donald Trump warned on Monday in a post courting United Auto Workers (UAW) members.
“The Great State of Michigan will not have an auto industry anymore if Crooked Joe Biden’s crazed concept of ‘all Electric Cars’ goes into effect,” Trump said in a Monday Labor Day post on Truth Social, warning that such a move would hurt Americans and boost China.
“CHINA WILL TAKE IT ALL, 100%. United Auto Workers, VOTE FOR TRUMP,” he said courting members of the labor union.
“Get your leaders to ENDORSE ME, I WILL KEEP ALL OF THESE GREAT JOBS, AND BRING IN MANY MORE. CHOICE IN SCHOOLS, AND CHOICE IN CARS!!!” he exclaimed.
The UAW has gone after Biden over his “green energy” agenda, pointing to the wage-cutting outcomes. Due to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, major automakers get tax credits for EVs made in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Once again, UAW President Shawn Fain said, workers lose as “the ‘Big Three’ automakers, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, are taking billions of dollars in government subsidies to go electric.”
Quote:Police in Austin, Texas, are asking residents to call 311 if they become victimized by robbers as crime plagues the leftist-run city, Fox News reported Monday.
“Did you get robbed on your way back from a bank or ATM? Call 3-1-1 or make an online report,” the Austin Police Department said in an infographic shared Friday:
Even if you are cautious & follow all the safety advice, you may still become the unfortunate victim of a robbery. Do you know what your next steps should be?
Make a police report & provide as much information as possible so we can recover your property quickly and safely.
The number 311 is typically for non-emergency calls, the Fox News article noted, adding the directive was shared as the state’s capital city suffers from rising crime.
To make matters worse, Austin is facing a police officer shortage as current and former officers cite hostility towards law enforcement and conservatives as the reason behind the problem, according to a report from March.
It is important to note the Austin City Council caved to the leftist “defund the police” movement in 2020 and cut the budget by $150 million after the death of George Floyd. In addition, leaders also slashed 150 police officer positions out of the budget.
Quote:The Castro regime has forced the local community to celebrate the procession at an earlier hour instead, when the sun and heat conditions are “overwhelming,” according to the Catholic priest.
The Vatican declared Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre as Patroness of Cuba in 1916. Cuban Catholics mark September 8 as the feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The traditional procession is part of the yearly celebration of Cuba’s patron saint, which includes a solemn Mass followed by a series of processions with the image of the Virgin across several towns in the nation, which the faithful accompany with prayers.
On his Facebook account, Priest Pías said on Friday that the local parish in Esmeralda was scheduled to celebrate an evening Mass and then carry out the procession, as per tradition – but the Castro regime imposed a restriction that the procession cannot take place at night, with “no explanation, no appeal possible.”
“The [Cuban Communist] Party has spoken, the Party has decided, and its decision admits no reply, either it is accepted or there is no procession, even at an hour when the sun and the heat are oppressive,” Pías wrote.
Pías, a staunch critic of the Castro regime’s communist indoctrination of children in schools, lambasted the regime for the lack of respect for religious freedom in Cuba and its continued control of any activity deemed “suspicious.”
Quote:The communist regime’s announcement follows reports published last week indicating at least two Cuban teenagers accused Russian scammers of deceiving them with a fake construction job offer to coerce them into fighting in Ukraine.
In a statement issued by the Cuban Foreign Ministry on Monday, the Castro regime asserted that the alleged human trafficking network operates from Russia and involves “Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba.”
“Attempts of this nature have been neutralized and criminal proceedings have been initiated against persons involved in these activities,” the statement reads.
The Russian government has not commented on the allegations at press time.
Cuba has been a longstanding ally of Russia. Much like the other two authoritarian regimes in the region – Venezuela and Nicaragua – it has openly expressed its support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla claimed last year that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “necessary” in response to the existence of NATO, despite Ukraine not being a member country of the organization.
Did you ever consider the possibility that a former dictator could become a out of the blue? Well, some people already did...
Quote:The cast and crew behind the film El Conde (“The Count”), debuting at the Venice International Film Festival this week, said depicting late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a vampire was “necessary” because the “extreme right” was gaining ground around the world.
Augusto Pinochet was a Chilean general who took power via a coup ousting socialist Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Pinochet’s dictatorship lasted until 1990 when he stepped down following a national vote to return to democracy and a subsequent presidential election. Patricio Aylwin became the first post-dictatorship elected leader of the country with no intervention on Pinochet’s part. The general died in 2006.
“Pinochet had never been portrayed in film or TV before,” Pablo Larrain, the director of El Conde, said during a press conference in Venice ahead of the film’s premiere on Thursday. “The approach we chose led us to combine elements of farce and satire.”
Pinochet appears in the movie as a 250-year-old vampire.
“It’s probably the only way [to depict Pinochet],” Larrain claimed. “If you avoid satire there is a risk of creating empathy, and that’s not acceptable.”
“This is a film that can start a national conversation,” actress Paula Luchsinger, who plays a nun in the movie, said. “There is a resurgence of the extreme right in Chile and this is a necessary film because it reminds us that Pinochet went unpunished.”
“It’s also necessary because the wind of the extreme right isn’t just blowing in Chile,” she added. “It’s blowing around the world.”
They don't even know what they're doing by coming up with such a nonsense.
Quote:Several Russian journalists on Monday published photos of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander known as “General Armageddon” for his aggressive tactics who has not been seen in public since Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his ill-fated mutiny in June.
“General Sergei Surovikin is out. Alive, healthy, at home, with his family, in Moscow. Photo taken today,” Russian media personality Ksenia Sobchak wrote Monday on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram.
Sobchak included a photo of Surovikin dressed in casual civilian clothes and walking through a garden beside a woman who appears to be his wife Anna.
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Venediktov said Surovikin was allowed to speak with his family shortly after the mutiny but has been held incommunicado ever since, possibly while President Vladimir Putin decides his fate.
Venediktov said Surovikin has been interrogated by a commission to weed out Prigozhin sympathizers, which was established by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the primary target of Prigozhin’s anger.
International media outlets could not confirm the authenticity of Sobchak’s photo, or when and where it was taken. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Surovikin’s status at a press conference on Tuesday.
However, unnamed U.S. officials told the New York Times (NYT) on Tuesday they believe Surovikin has been released from the secret detention in which he has been held ever since Prigozhin’s mutiny. These officials said it was unclear whether Surovikin remains under some form of house arrest, or if he is still an officer in the Russian military.
So how long should we wait till Putin gets rid of Surovikin as well?
Quote:A £2 million government grant to a controversial Mosque has been suspended amid outcry over extremist Islamist statements made by its imams including apparently advocating for stoning women to death for adultery and waging jihad against unbelievers.
Social Investment Business, which initially green-lit £2.2 million in taxpayer money to build a youth centre at the Green Lane Masjid and Community Centre in Birmingham, has blocked the delivery of the grant while investigations are held into allegations of radical rhetoric being spouted in the mosque.
Last month, footage emerged from a sermon from Zakaullah Saleem, the mosque’s head Imam, appearing to show the Sheikh telling worshippers that women found guilty of adultery should be buried in the ground up to their waist in order to “protect her modesty” and then stoned to death, the Mail on Sunday reported.
The Imam was also reported to have called on the government to take “legal action” against the former Batley School Grammar School teacher who was forced into hiding with his family amid death threats in response to him showing his class a caricature of the Islamic prophet during a class on blasphemy.
Another Imam at the Green Lane Masjid, Abu Usamah al-Thahabi allegedly compared British ISIS bride Shamima Begum to young white girl victims of largely Pakistani grooming gangs in the north of England. Al-Thahabi was previously featured in a Channel 4 documentary in which he was recorded telling congregants that a “jihad” would soon come against the “kuffar” — a derogatory term for unbelievers.
Quote:Austrian security officials said Tuesday they have broken up a suspected terror cell linked to the Islamic State group that consisted of nine young men and one woman. One suspect was detained.
The investigations and interrogations carried out so far show that the suspects have an attitude that is between “fundamental Islamic” and “terrorist,” Austria´s domestic intelligence service DSN said in a statement. It did not reveal any further details about the suspects, saying it is still conducting further investigations.
The suspects, who are aged between 15 and 23 and live near the city of Linz in northern Austria, allegedly “have been recruiting for the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) and its criminal activities for a long time,” the intelligence service said.
“In addition, they planned to establish a mosque or prayer room under the sign of a decorative Taliban flag through missionary and recruitment activities,” the statement said.
The identities of the suspects were not given in line with Austrian privacy rules, but Austria’s APA news agency reported that the suspects are from Austria, Turkey, Iraq, Russia and Croatia or are stateless.
During house searches at the beginning of July, dozens of cell phones, laptops, PCs, other data carriers and propaganda material were seized.
The public prosecutor´s office in Linz ordered the detention of one of the suspects, an 18-year-old, on the grounds that there was a risk of him fleeing or committing crimes. The other suspects are under investigation.
Quote:Pope Francis said Monday that the Vatican is walking a “friendly path” with China, insisting that “relations are moving forward” on both sides.
“The relationship with China is very respectful, very respectful. I personally have great admiration for the Chinese people,” the pontiff told reporters aboard the papal plane returning to Rome from Mongolia.
The pope was asked why he urged Chinese Catholics to be “good citizens” after Beijing denied permission for Chinese bishops to travel to Mongolia for the papal visit.
“The channels are very open – for the appointment of bishops there is a commission that has been working with the Chinese government and the Vatican for a long time,” the pope stated in reference to a 2018 accord between the Vatican and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the naming of bishops.
Francis went on to underscore the fact that “there are many, or rather there are some, Catholic priests or Catholic intellectuals who are often invited to Chinese universities to offer courses” as evidence of Chinese goodwill toward the Church.
“I think we need to move forward in the religious aspect to understand each other better and so that Chinese citizens do not think that the Church does not accept their culture and values and that the Church is dependent on another, foreign power,” he added.
...
Pope Francis has faced widespread criticism for his policy of appeasement with the CCP, demonstrated by his unwillingness to call out China’s egregious human rights violations toward the Uyghur Muslims and other groups.
Quote:A group of Australian lawmakers said Tuesday they would travel to Washington this month to lobby the United States to abandon its efforts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The delegation includes former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and five other lawmakers from across the political spectrum. Their trip is timed to draw attention to the issue ahead of a planned visit to the White House in late October by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Independent lawmaker and delegation member Monique Ryan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. they represented a large group of lawmakers who feel “really, really strongly about the importance of securing Mr. Assange’s freedom.”
Ryan said Assange was in poor health which made the matter more pressing.
Assange, an Australian citizen, has spent the past four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison fighting extradition to the U.S. He has been charged with espionage for publishing classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks. If found guilty, he could face a sentence of up to 175 years in prison.
The effort by the Australian lawmakers is the latest in a series of international moves raising questions about the extradition. Pope Francis met with Assange’s wife Stella in June, which she said was evidence of his ongoing support for the family’s plight. In May, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free Assange.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:A judge sentenced “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson to 30 years to life in prison Thursday for the rapes of two women two decades ago.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo handed down the sentence to the 47-year-old Masterson after hearing statements from the women about the trauma they experienced and the suffering caused by the disturbing memories in the years since.
The actor, who has been in custody since May, sat in court wearing a suit. Masterson watched the women without visible reaction as they spoke.
“When you raped me, you stole from me,” said one woman who Masterson was convicted of raping in 2003. “That’s what rape is, a theft of the spirit.”
“You are pathetic, disturbed and completely violent,” she said. “The world is better off with you in prison.”
The other woman Masterson was found guilty of raping said he “has not shown an ounce of remorse for the pain he caused.” She told the judge, “I knew he belonged behind bars for the safety of all the women he came into contact with. I am so sorry, and I’m so upset. I wish I’d reported him sooner to the police.”
After an initial jury failed to reach verdicts on three counts of rape in December and a mistrial was declared, prosecutors retried Masterson on all three counts earlier this year.
Quote:Reps. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Lou Correa (D-CA), and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) have filed an amendment to the $91.5 billion DHS funding bill that would see the American Dream and Promise Act become law.
The DREAM Act-style amnesty, which has repeatedly failed to pass the House and Senate in prior years, would give green cards and a path to naturalized American citizenship to about 4.4 million illegal aliens in the United States.
The Heritage Foundation Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center Lora Ries told Breitbart News that the amnesty attempt should be expected from Democrats.
“The Left’s tactic: Never let a crisis go to waste, especially an intentional, Biden administration-made border crisis, to seek amnesty for illegal aliens,” Ries said. “The Left needs to stop treading on Americans with border and national insecurity. Just ask New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New Yorkers, and south-side Chicago residents.”
...
Notably, the amnesty is backed by some of the nation’s biggest multinational corporations as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — all of whom regularly advocate for a constant flow of foreign workers into the labor market to help keep wages down.
In 2021, while Durbin was pushing the amnesty, the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Facebook, Verizon, Visa, Marriott International, and Apple, among others, threw their support behind the bill.
So why did they mention Eric Adams on the article above?
Here's why they did it.
Quote:During a townhall on the Upper West Side on Wednesday, a visibly frustrated Adams said the arrival of 110,000 border crossers and illegal aliens since the spring of last year will lead to the destruction of New York City as waves of illegal immigration have continued unabated under President Joe Biden’s watch.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Wrote:Let me tell you something New Yorkers: Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City, destroy New York City. We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month.
One time we were just getting Venezuela, now we’re getting Ecuador, now we’re getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico, now we’re getting Western Africa, now we’re getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they’re going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.
And everyone is saying, ‘It’s New York City’s problem.’ Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut every service in this city is going to be impacted. All of us.
t’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000. I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew, we’re about to lose.
Quote:The first Africa Climate Summit ended Wednesday with a demand for global leaders to initiate a global carbon tax on fossil fuels, aviation and maritime transport, all while reforming financial systems that force African nations to pay more to borrow money.
AP reports the call came in a declaration backed by the leaders of the continent which looked to the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases and its richest countries to fulfill a pledge of delivering $100 billion annually to developing nations in climate finance.
“No country should ever have to choose between development aspirations and climate action,” the declaration says, following other calls made in the past to impose taxes that could be redistributed to poorer nations.
...
The statement went on to call for Africa’s vast mineral wealth to be processed on the continent, noting that “decarbonizing the global economy is also an opportunity to contribute to equality and shared prosperity.”
The call for reparations comes after Kenya’s President William Ruto said a global tax on carbon emissions can help redress Africa’s chronically low Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rates, as Breitbart News reported.
He pointed to “climate change” driven by successful, dynamic economies in Europe, North America and Asia, as a drain on Africa’s economic progress and it’s time to have a global conversation about a carbon tax on the world’s richest nations.
Guys, just in case some of you haven't noticed it yet, such taxes serve no other purpose but charging for breathing and working like you normally do.
Quote:The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions for human rights violations against Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo, a senior commander in Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a brutal paramilitary force led by Dagalo’s brother Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.
The RSF was part of the junta that overthrew Sudan’s transitional government in 2021, but broke away from the Sudanese army in April 2023, launching a vicious battle for power that has killed and displaced thousands of civilians.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) described the RSF as “an entity whose members have engaged in acts of violence and human rights abuses, including the massacre of civilians, ethnic killings, and use of sexual violence.”
“Since the beginning of conflict between the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on April 15, 2023, both sides have failed to implement a ceasefire, and the RSF and allied militias have been credibly accused of extensive human rights abuses in Darfur and elsewhere,” OFAC said.
The Treasury statement accused the RSF of deliberately targeting women, children, and other civilians for “killing, maiming, torture, or rape” as well as abduction and forced displacement from their homes. The RSF has attacked “schools, hospitals, religious sites,” and other “locations where civilians are seeking refuge.”
Quote:The socialist Maduro regime sent a delegation to China seeking investments to reactivate and boost Venezuela’s run-down oil industry, according to a report published by Bloomberg on Tuesday.
The report, which cites two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, states that the pursuit of Chinese funds is part of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s efforts to revive the nation’s crumbling economy ahead of next year’s “free and fair” presidential election. Maduro will seek to be re-elected for a third six-year presidential term after clinging to power through a sham presidential election in 2018.
The Venezuelan delegation, led by Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and Oil Minister Pedro Tellechea, arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday — the first high-level Venezuelan delegation of its kind to visit China in five years.
Rodríguez and Tellechea are reportedly discussing possible joint ventures between Chinese companies and the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company:
Venezuelan Vice President's Tweet Wrote:#EnVideo || En nombre del Presidente @NicolasMaduro, la Vicepresidenta Ejecutiva de la República @delcyrodriguezv, llegó a la ciudad de Shanghái #China para una visita oficial, fortaleciendo así las relaciones entre ambos países.#5Sep pic.twitter.com/rGutJ4KYnw
— Vicepresidencia Vzla (@ViceVenezuela) September 5, 2023
#OnVideo || In the name of President @NicolasMaduro, the Executive Vice President of the Republic @delcyrodriguezv, arrived at Shanghai city, #China for an official visit, thus strengthening the [international] relationship between both nations. #SSep — Office of the Vice Presidency of Venezuela (@ViceVenezuela)
Quote:A group of more than 20 Argentine Catholic priests celebrated a joint “Mass of Atonement” in Buenos Aires on Tuesday, to defend Pope Francis and respond to statements issued by libertarian economist, lawmaker, and presidential front-runner Javier Milei in 2020.
In those remarks, Milei accused the Pope of being an “imbecile who defends social justice,” a “son of a [b*] preaching communism,” and “the representative of the evil one on Earth.” Milei remains outspokenly critical of Pope Francis, although his tone has moderated since he took the lead in the October election.
The “Mass of Atonement” event was organized by the Curas Villeros (“Villager Priests”), a group of Argentine Catholic priests established in the late 1960s who live in Argentina’s slums or shantytowns.
“This Mass is to reject insults and in support of Pope Francis,” priest Jose “Pepe” Di Paola said. Di Paola worked closely with the pope when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Bergoglio prior to becoming Pope Francis in 2013.
Well, now that he mentioned it, the pope has been quite vocal about accepting migrants in the US and several European countries. Curiously, I've never seen a single case of a migrant being accepted as a citizen or even as a resident of the Vatican City.
Quote:When little-known politician Bernardo Arévalo was announced the winner of Guatemala's presidential run-off vote on Aug. 20, it ended more than a decade of conservative leadership. But in the wake of Mr. Arévalo's surprising win, analysts are expressing concern about the progressive president-elect's goal to strengthen ties with China.
This could be especially troublesome for the United States—Guatemala's top trade partner—and the politically embattled Taiwan. Guatemala is one of just 13 nations that diplomatically recognizes Taipei over Beijing. It's also one of Taiwan's two remaining allies in Central America.
On Aug. 21, just one day after Guatemalan officials announced the election results, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, expressed the desire for Guatemala's new head of state to "make the right decision" and establish formal diplomatic ties with China.
“Lately, people from various sectors in Guatemala have expressed in interviews their hope that their country will soon establish diplomatic ties with China, which fully indicates that developing relations with China ... is what serves the fundamental interests of Guatemala,” Mr. Wang said in a statement initially reported by the Chinese state channel CCTV.
Mr. Arévalo swiftly rose to popularity on the campaign trail because of his tough stance on crime and internal corruption, which has plagued Guatemala for decades. But while his rhetoric focused on ending duplicity within the state, he also wasn't subtle in asserting that Guatemala needs to do more business with China.
Quote:The U.S. Consulate in the northern Mexican border town of Matamoros on Monday said its "employees are currently under a shelter in place order" due to gun violence in the city.
In recent years Matamoros, which borders the southern U.S. city of Brownsville in Texas, has been racked by violence linked to drug trafficking.
"We recommend you shelter in place and stay tuned to local news for updates in your area," the U.S. Consulate General said on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Earlier this year two Americans were killed when members of a drug cartel kidnapped four people in Matamoros in a case of apparent mistaken identity, an incident that threw a harsh spotlight on violence in Mexico and sparked angry reactions from some U.S. lawmakers critical of Mexican efforts to fight crime.
And they were not the only ones killed in Mexico. Another American was killed after some Mexicans argued with him concerning a car sale.
Quote:China is preparing to impose yet another in a long series of increasingly draconian “national security” laws, this time criminalizing anything that “undermines” China’s “national spirit” or “harms the feelings” of the country as a whole. Legal scholars quickly pointed out that such a vague and open-ended law would give every official in China’s vast bureaucratic army the power to punish anything that offends their personal sensibilities.
The “national spirit” amendments to security law were revealed to the public as part of what the Chinese government presents as a public commentary or “soliciting opinion” process. China is ruled by a dictatorial Communist regime, so the public’s opinion is not actually of interest to the ruling class, but sometimes there is enough controversy to draw the Politburo’s attention.
This could be one of those times, as an unusually large number of negative comments were swiftly registered with the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp legislature. Many of those criticisms came from legal scholars, as Reuters noted Thursday.
...
Other critics noted the draft law covers clothing that might “hurt the feeling of the Chinese nation,” and made some sarcastic guesses about precisely what clothing might be deemed hurtful.
“Will wearing a suit and tie count? Marxism originated in the West. Would its presence in China also count as hurting national feelings,” asked a Weibo user quoted by the BBC.
The BBC report mentioned an incident from last year in which a Chinese woman wearing a Japanese kimono was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” China’s all-purpose excuse for arresting its citizens.
“To wear a kimono is to hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation, to eat Japanese food is to jeopardize its spirit? When did the feelings and spirit of the time-tested Chinese nation become so fragile?” one Chinese commentator observed.
Thus the "cultural appropriation" issue that is perpetuated by the hard left has been demonstrated here to be nothing but a Marxist concept. And you can be punished for it in China.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has launched a nationwide workforce initiative that seeks to funnel millions of border crossers and illegal aliens into United States jobs — even as the labor force participation rate for Americans continues to decline.
On Wednesday, Biden’s DHS announced “a first-of-its-kind national campaign” to make millions of border crossers and illegal aliens, who have been released into the U.S. interior, aware that they are eligible for work permits to take American jobs.
...
Hundreds of thousands of email and text notifications have been sent by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole, with additional notifications in Ukrainian and Russian planned in the coming days.
These notifications are the start of a government-wide effort to integrate newly arrived noncitizens into the American workforce … USCIS will also begin distributing flyers to local NGOs, stakeholders, and migrants to explain the [Employment Authorization Document] process and provide them with a QR code for instant access to the application.
Specifically, DHS officials said they are mostly connecting with border crossers and illegal aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Ukraine who have been released into the U.S. interior to “remind them of their eligibility to apply for a work permit.”
Regardless of obtaining work permits, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Director of Research Steven Camarota told the Washington Times that millions of illegal aliens are holding American jobs.
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) has estimated that Biden, in his first two years in office, has welcomed nearly four million border crossers and illegal aliens into American communities.
So they could have allowed Russians, pretending to be average Ukrainians, enter US soil just like that!?
Quote:President Joe Biden’s Interior Department said it would cancel the oil and gas leases issued in the latter days of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Biden has said he would move to protect roughly 19.6 million acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for polar bears and caribou.
“As the climate crisis warms the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, we have a responsibility to protect this treasured region for all ages,” Biden said in a written statement.
Trump issued the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) seven leases right before Biden’s inauguration. The move is part of a larger strategy by which Biden has moved to cancel oil and gas exploration on public lands.
AIDEA said it would challenge the move.
“This latest action by the Department of the Interior shows arbitrary disregard for Federal law, based on campaign trail rhetoric. Campaign promises are not enough to justify this agency action,” AIDEA said in a statement.
Republicans slammed Biden’s move to develop oil and gas in Alaska.
“There is palpable anger and frustration among Alaskans about the Biden administration’s unrelenting assault on our economy and our ability to lawfully access our lands,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said in a statement.
Quote:A review of bureaucrats at the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) shows deep ties to the nation’s powerful open borders lobby and “Abolish ICE” movement, which seeks to end arrests and deportations of illegal aliens.
Most notably, CRCL Chief Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia was engrained in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology as the associate dean for DEI at Penn State Law in University Park and a director at the pro-amnesty National Immigration Forum.
Before joining CRCL, Wadhia suggested that perhaps even the most violent illegal alien felons, such as those convicted of murder, rape, and child abuse, should not be eligible for deportation solely because of their crimes.
Wadhia said in 2020:
I don’t know that any element of criminality should suffice to being a priority for enforcement, or even any felony for that matter, and I think that part of that has to do with how I view the role of prosecutorial discretion and the importance of looking at the whole person and equities.
Wadhia also previously advocated against using the term “illegal immigrant,” which is now written policy at the DHS thanks to orders from Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that require staff to use the term “noncitizens” instead.
Say what!?
Now they should let serial killers and terrorists remain in the US and keep killing innocent people just because they should protect the criminals' rights at all costs!?
Quote:An anti-police Democrat party official in Minnesota wants tougher crime laws after being violently attacked during a carjacking in Minneapolis.
Shivanthi Sathanandan holds the position of second vice chairwoman for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), the New York Post reported Thursday.
She explained in a social media post on Wednesday what transpired during the incident:
Second Vice Chairwoman Shivanthi Sathanandan Wrote:Yesterday my children and I were violently car jacked in the driveway of our home in Minneapolis. Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me.
The men knew what they were doing, she continued, and there was no doubt in her mind they had done the same thing to other victims.
...
Sathanandan then thanked police officers and others for coming to help.
Law enforcement confirmed the carjacking that happened in the Folwell area but have yet to arrest any suspects in the case.
According to the Post, Sathanandan said in a social media post three years ago that she and fellow activists were “going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department” because it had failed citizens.
Quote:A mother is suing the fitness company Peloton, claiming its exercise bike killed her son during a workout inside his Brooklyn home.
Johanna Furtado filed her lawsuit in New York and the document alleges her son Ryan was “killed instantly” as a result of the incident that happened in January 2022, the Daily Mail reported Thursday.
The woman says the bike fell on top of the man while he was lifting himself off the floor during an exercise routine.
Images show the man who was about to turn 33 in the days after he died, and the Mail report noted officers with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) found him with the bike laying across his face.
...
In May, Peloton issued a recall for over two million exercise bikes across the nation due to safety concerns, Breitbart News reported at the time.
“The recall applies to approximately 2.2 million units of the Peloton Bikes Model PL01 sold in the U.S. from January 2018 until earlier this month,” the outlet continued:
The safety concern revolves around the potential risk of the seat post assembly breaking during use, which could result in falls and injuries. Peloton has reported 35 incidents of seat post breakage and detachment, leading to 13 reported injuries, including fractured wrists, lacerations, and bruises caused by falling off the bike.
Quote:Mayor Eric Adams (D-NYC) and the New York City Council announced a massive new project to house 1,000 border crossers inside an empty five-story office building on Long Island.
The building on Austell Place, close to a train yard near Queens, has been designated a “humanitarian response and relief center” and is the city’s 16th large-scale migrant housing center, according to Crain’s New York.
The interiors of the top four floors of the five-story building will be rebuilt for housing, while the bottom floor will be designated as a community gathering spot, sources say.
...
The city has taken over dozens of buildings, many of which were empty, others which were once for-profit hotels until the city contracted to take them over. Along with the 16 major housing facilities, the city has about 206 smaller facilities to deal with the flood of illegals.
But the shelters have cost the city untold millions of dollars in construction costs, too.
As Crain’s noted, many of these buildings needed heating, cooling, and water system upgrades or amendments to safety issues to accommodate the large numbers of illegals staying inside. In one case, an entire boiler room had to be rebuilt to provide an emergency egress up to building codes, new stormwater drains, and a new exterior entrance before the illegals were allowed to take up residence.
New York videographer Leeroy Johnson recently spoke to a group of illegals from Africa who entered the U.S. through the southern border, and they told Johnson that they were promised “a better life” and jobs if they came to America. They also said they wanted to send money to their home countries.
Quote:Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is blasting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) for allegedly retaliating against a Congressional witness.
In a letter to ATF director Steven Dettelbach, dated September 7, 2023, and shared exclusively with Breitbart News, Gaetz wrote:
It has come to my attention that yesterday, September 6, 2023, ATF agents once again aggressively targeted and harassed one of my constituent federal firearms licensees (FFL), Chris Smith of Gulf Coast Gun, this time apparently in violation of federal law. Chris has held an FFL in Florida for years with no issues, and yet the ATF has aggressively audited him without merit and accused him of various clerical errors in an attempt to have his FFL revoked. It is for this reason that Chris testified as a whistleblower before members of Congress.
Gaetz noted that the ATF’s visit to Smith’s business came after Smith provided testimony at Gaetz’s “Field Hearing on the Weaponization of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
He pointed out that Smith has only had his manufacturer’s license six months and has yet to use it for business; therefore the ATF agents were forced to leave Smith’s business empty-handed. He also indicated that the ATF had already audited Smith’s retail license within the last year “and it follows that given the ATF is forbidden from auditing the same business twice in one year, the only excuse the ATF had to further harass Chris, was to audit a new, unused manufacturer’s license.”
Quote:The Russian missile that struck Wednesday in eastern Ukraine turned an outdoor market into a fiery, blackened ruin where weeping civilians looked for loved ones among the mangled, burned bodies scattered across the ground.
The blast in the town of Kostiantynivka killed 17 people and wounded at least 32 in one of Russia’s deadliest strikes on civilians in months, Ukrainian officials said.
“There was no military target here. This is a peaceful neighborhood in the city center,” Stefan Slovak, who lives in Kostiantynivka, said in a trembling voice.
Behind him were the remnants of the market, where charred bodies could be seen in the street, their clothes still burning, near cars engulfed in flames. Behind a market stall holding fresh parsley, rescuers found a women in civilian clothes with her head covered in blood.
Quote:Initial asylum claims in Germany are soaring, both month-on-month over the summer but also compared to the same period last year, with the nation experiencing a considerable 77.2 per cent rise in arrivals.
There have been almost 205,000 initial applications from would-be asylum seekers in Germany this year between January and August, the latest periods for which the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) has published figures.
The total of 204,461 to date in this period in 2023 is a 77.2 per cent increase over the 115,402 recorded in January to August 2022, reports Die Welt. A University of Vienna academic has told Germany’s Tagespiegel that while it is hard to accurately predict migration numbers — especially as any number of foreign wars or revolutions could begin in the next five months, adding extra pressure on global northward migration — she believes it is conceivable there would be 300,000 applications this year.
Asylum applications continue to rise as the year goes on. There were 27,738 applications in August alone, which itself is up 17 per cent in two months over June.
Typically, the largest sources for these asylum applications profess to come from Syria and Afghanistan, but Turkey — a safe, wealthy, NATO-member state — is also in the top three for those seeking protection in Germany.
Quote:The European Union should be bolder about the onboarding process for new member states to head off attempts by the Russian state to undermine pro-European sentiment in those nations, Brussels diplomats have said, a report claims.
Talking about European accession for potential member states but then not acting on it presents Russia with a motive and opportunity to sow division in those states intended to pull them towards Moscow’s orbit, two European diplomats have said in remarks reported by Politico. France’s Europe minister Laurence Boone said disinformation and interference was a real issue in what are called candidate countries, which she believes Russian President Vladimir Putin deliberately encourages to “weaken the European Union”.
This is something the Union should “fight against”, she said, remarking “the most important thing is to send a steady message on these countries’ place in the EU”. By giving candidate nations a clearer position, the Union could use the expansion process to support neighbours rather than invite Putin to undermine them, she said.
There are nine nations which are either candidates or applicants for European Union membership of varying degrees of advancement in the process. All have former history as Soviet-aligned nations in the 20th century, some as outright Soviet Socialist Republics like Ukraine and others as new nations born out of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Even faraway Georgia, a Caucasus region nation on the far side of the Black Sea and whose capital is closer to Kabul than Berlin is an on-again-off-again prospective EU member state, has been under intensified Russian threat of late. Russia already militarily occupies two Georgian regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia which it claims are ‘breakaway’ regions it has spoken of absorbing into the greater Russian state, as it has already professed to do in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Quote:The Pakistani military said Wednesday that its border forces repelled an attack from a “large group of terrorists” from Afghanistan. The invaders attacked two Pakistani outposts in the Kalash valley using the “latest weapons,” which is how Pakistani officials often refer to the American equipment abandoned in Afghanistan during President Joe Biden’s disastrous 2021 withdrawal.
Pakistan reported a total of 16 casualties during the “intense exchange of fire,” including four Pakistani soldiers and 12 terrorists.
The Pakistani military claimed it detected the “terrorists’s movement and concentration” on the other side of the border before the attack, and duly reported these movements to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
The Taliban apparently did little to thwart the attack, because Pakistan’s statement concluded by reminding the regime in Kabul of its obligation to “deny the use of Afghan soil by terrorists for perpetuating acts of terrorism against Pakistan.”
Responsibility for the attack was quickly claimed by Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the so-called “Pakistani Taliban,” a militant group with doctrinal similarities to the Afghan Taliban. TTP was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 2010.
Quote:North Korea claimed to launch its first nuclear attack submarine on Wednesday in a ceremony attended by a very excited Kim Jong-un, but the South Korean military quickly pointed out that the submarine does not appear operational or capable of carrying a heavy payload of nuclear missiles.
...
Dictator Kim Jong-un gushed over the sub at its lavish launch ceremony, which came three days before the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Communist dictatorship. The corpulent dictator looked like the world’s most sinister child unwrapping an unexpected gift on Christmas morning:
...
The sub was ostentatiously christened Hero Kim Kun-ok, the name of a famous North Korean naval officer from the Korean War. It appears to be a slight variation on a Russian Romeo-class diesel submarine design, with ten visible missile launch tubes.
The Romeo series was generally considered a failure for the Soviet Union, with a host of serious design and performance issues. The Soviets handed a number of Romeo subs over to China, which, in turn, passed about two dozen of them along to North Korea. Elderly Romeo subs are believed to be operated by the North Korean military to this day.
“These submarines will be equipped with a vast array of nuclear delivery vehicles of varying power and will be poised to launch preemptive and retaliatory strikes at any time underwater,” Kim boasted.
“The nuclear attack submarine, which has been a symbol of aggression against our nation for the past few decades, now symbolizes our threatening power that strikes fear into our unscrupulous enemies,” he said.
Kim said that “achieving rapid development of our naval forces,” including arming them with nuclear weapons, was important due to “the enemies’ recent aggressive moves and military acts.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
The Appeals Court Affirms the Ruling that linked Big Tech Censorship over Covid-19
The Biden administration likely infringed upon the First Amendment when it leaned on social media companies to remove false or misleading COVID-19 content, a federal court of appeals ruled Friday — narrowing a bombshell district court order from this past Summer that barred several officials and agencies from communicating with the platforms.
The White House, surgeon general, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI "likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content" and in doing so, "likely violated the First Amendment," the New Orleans-based Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals determined.
The order is on pause for 10 days pending a Supreme Court appeal.
A coalition of 1,609 scientists from around the world have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The thrust of the declaration challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom.
The declaration urges that "Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific." The foundation that put it together, CLINTEL, is an independent group that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy and was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.
Quote:Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.
Of the 1,609 scientists who have signed the declaration, two signatories are Nobel Prize laureates. The most recent to sign is Nobel Prize winner Dr. John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Dr. John F. Clauser Wrote:Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists.
The underlying report that engendered the declaration lays out a series of statements challenging many of the common climate claims.
For example, one of the most common claims – and repeated without question by many – is that the earth will soon pass "tipping points that will lead to catastrophic environmental damage, including dangerous sea level rise, entire species going extinct, and even greater suffering in many nations, especially the poorest."
In 2009, former vice president Al Gore famously predicted that "the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013." He later backtracked, according to Reuters, who said Gore was merely quoting other scientific reports.
Celebrity activist Greta Thunberg tweeted in 2018 – five years after Gore's doomsday prediction – that "climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years." The Highland County Press reported that she deleted the tweet.
I posted John Kerry saying the same thing in 2009, and Leonard Nimoy claiming it was a coming global Ice Age in 79... these video in their own words within the Whats On Your Mind thread.
The CLINTEL declaration comes at a time when recent claims abound that natural disasters such as the wildfires in Maui and Canada, the heatwaves across the globe and other events are driven by climate change.
And I need to remind some here that Hawaiian Electric spend no money on upkeep and safety prior to the Maui fire, and are under numerous lawsuits over it being solely responsible for the wildfire.
As President Biden and countless world leaders push heavily for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 the scientists assert that this is not only "unrealistic," but harmful to world economies.
:thinking: If you check the What's On Your Mind link I posted... you will see they have been saying this for FIFTY years, just changing the narrative.
Moroccan authorities declared three days of official mourning Saturday when a rare, powerful earthquake ripped through the Atlas Mountains and the historic city of Marrakech, leaving more 2,000 dead, some 2,100 injured and first responders struggling to reach survivors.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI also ordered the country’s armed forces to mobilize air and land rescue teams and construct a field hospital after the 6.8 magnitude quake, according to a statement from the country’s military.
So far, 2,012 people have died, mostly in Marrakech and five provinces near the epicenter of the quake, with 2,059 people injured, according to reports.
Videos of the devastation show scared citizens running for safety and pushing each other out of the way as dust and debris crumble around them and homes fall apart and buildings lay on their sides.
State television also showed hundreds of people camped out in the streets of Marrakech Friday night, too afraid to return to homes that they feared would collapse after the quake.
Tremors from the quake were felt as far away as Algeria and Spain’s Andalusia region, across the Strait of Gibraltar which separates the country from Morocco.
Speaking at the G20 summit in New Delhi, leaders from around the world pledged their support to the north African country.
Algeria, which broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, announced Saturday it was standing by to provide humanitarian aid and opened its airspace to quake aid flights.
Russia needs soldiers, and it hasn’t been picky about where it gets them. That’s the backdrop for an extraordinary announcement this week from Cuba’s foreign ministry that Cubans, some from the island and others living in Russia, have been coerced into fighting in Ukraine.
Cuban authorities say they are working to neutralize and dismantle “a human trafficking network that operates from Russia to incorporate Cuban citizens living there, and even some from Cuba, into … war operations in Ukraine.”
Given Russia’s troop shortages, Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to announce a larger-scale draft at home, efforts to enlist citizens of neighboring countries, and Russia’s willingness to recruit Russian prison inmates to fight for their own freedom, this story isn’t that surprising.
But it is startling that Cuba, a longtime Russian ally, is loudly broadcasting its complaints to the world.
Yes, Cuba is far more financially dependent on China these days than on Russia. But it’s still remarkable to hear Cuban officials say publicly that, "Cuba is not part of the war in Ukraine. It is acting and will act vigorously against whoever, from the national territory, participates in any form of human trafficking for the purposes of recruitment of mercenarism..."
No comment yet from Moscow.
Up is down, left is right and sideways is straight ahead. - Cord "Circle of Iron", 1978 (written by Bruce Lee and James Coburn... really...)
Quote:President Joe Biden held a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday evening where he appeared confused and rambling, and eventually told the audience he was going to bed.
Biden, 80, made an awkward joke where he called the 1987 anti-Vietnam War movie Good Morning, Vietnam, a “song.”
“One of my staff members said, remember the famous song ‘Good Morning Vietnam’? Well, good evening, Vietnam,” he said to no laughter.
US President Joe R. Biden Wrote:Good evening, everyone. It is evening, isn't it? This around the world in five days is interesting. Well, one of my staff members said, 'Remember the famous song, Good Morning, Vietnam?' Well, good evening, Vietnam.
Biden then read remarks from a teleprompter, before saying he would take questions from reporters who were on a list that was given to him.
“They gave me five people here,” Biden said. He first called on a Reuters reporter, and corrected her pronunciation of “sincerity.”
He also used the derogatory term, “the Third World,” before correcting himself to say, “the Global South,” which refers to developing countries.
Biden also went from talking about global warming to a John Wayne movie.
“Did you ever think you’d be sitting at a G-20 conference where everyone was preoccupied with the notion of global warming? Not a joke, did you ever think that?” he said.
It's not like he has to know that Good Morning, Vietnam is an old movie, but calling it a song!?
To make things worse, he just went too far by adding that derogatory term he used in Hanoi.
He's making the US government look like a bunch of buffoons! Yet, people like Harris and the Homeland Security and Transport guys might give you that first and very lasting impression anyway.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the World
police officer died that day, and no military force of any kind had to be deployed back then. So calling it an actual attack is a tremendous overstatement for sure. Right now I can only 
recall a single civilian getting killed, namely Ashley Babbitt. And her murderer isn't in jail nor has been prosecuted as expected...
I guess somebody didn't want those videos to be released to the public. Even so, this would demonstrate that everything was NOT fine at all. 
Now they accuse a black guy of being... racist? The same 
CCP that discriminates anybody that does not belong to the Han majority in China!?![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
![[Image: SP1-Writer.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Writer.png)
![[Image: SP1-Poet.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Poet.png)
![[Image: SP1-PixelArtist.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-PixelArtist.png)
![[Image: SP1-Reporter.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/GmxWbHyL/SP1-Reporter.png)
![[Image: QrnbKlx.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/QrnbKlx.jpg)
![[Image: sGz1ErF.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sGz1ErF.png)
![[Image: liM4ikn.png]](https://i.imgur.com/liM4ikn.png)
![[Image: fdzKgZA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/fdzKgZA.png)
![[Image: sj0H81z.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sj0H81z.png)
![[Image: QL7oRau.png]](https://i.imgur.com/QL7oRau.png)
![[Image: uSqjY09.png]](https://i.imgur.com/uSqjY09.png)
![[Image: GAA3qE9.png]](https://i.imgur.com/GAA3qE9.png)
![[Image: 2Hmnx1G.png]](https://i.imgur.com/2Hmnx1G.png)
![[Image: BwtNdKw.png%5B]](https://i.imgur.com/BwtNdKw.png%5B)
Did you ever consider the possibility that a former dictator could become a 
out of the blue? 
Well, some people already did...
They don't even know what they're doing by coming up with such a nonsense.
Well, now that he mentioned it, the pope has been quite vocal about accepting migrants in the US and several European countries. Curiously, I've never seen a single case of a migrant being accepted as a citizen or even as a resident of the Vatican City. 
serial killers and terrorists remain in the US and keep killing innocent people just because they should protect the criminals' rights at all costs!? 
And I need to remind some here that Hawaiian Electric spend no money on upkeep and safety prior to the Maui fire, and are under numerous lawsuits over it being solely responsible for the wildfire.
