News of the World

[kyonides]

USA

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A General that Refuses to Quit, Shooting, Biden Officials Surveiling MAGA fans, Arizona's Crisis

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Back in Hospital for an ‘Emergent Bladder Issue’

The Pentagon announced Sunday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is back in the hospital, weeks after a lengthy hospitalization following prostate cancer treatment and subsequent complications.

Around 5 p.m. Eastern, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder informed the Pentagon press in a statement that said:

Today, at approximately 2:20 pm, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was transported by his security detail to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be seen for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue. The Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been notified. Additionally, White House and Congressional notifications have occurred.

The statement said that Austin is retaining his duties “at this time,” and indicated that he would be in the hospital for some period of time.

“At this time, the Secretary is retaining the functions and duties of his office. The Deputy Secretary is prepared to assume the functions and duties of the Secretary of Defense, if required. Secretary Austin traveled to the hospital with the unclassified and classified communications systems necessary to perform his duties,” Ryder added.

“We will provide an update on Secretary Austin’s condition as soon as possible,” he said.

The notification, just hours after Austin’s hospitalization, stands in stark contrast to the last two times Austin was hospitalized. In the first instance, in late December, Austin underwent a surgery for prostate cancer and did not inform the president.

 Seriously, the general should quit ASAP.

Lakewood Church Attacker Was Female with a Long Gun

Breitbart News reported that the attacker was stopped by a good guy with a gun, whom Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez initially identified as a Harris County deputy. However, Gonzalez later issued a correction, noting that the shooter was stopped when “other agencies fired,” according to ABC News.

The shooting occurred just prior to 2 p.m.

During the Sunday afternoon press conference, Houston PD chief Troy Finner explained that the attacker who opened fire in Lakewood Church was a 30 to 35-year-old female armed with a long rifle. She was wearing a trench coat and carrying a backpack.

The female had a small child with her. Two off-duty officers — a 38-year-old TABC agent and a 28-year-old Houston PD off-duty officer — opened fire, shooting the female.

A five-year-old child was shot and is in critical condition, and a 57-year-old man was shot and wounded as well.

Finner said that once she was shot, the female “threatened” and claimed to have explosives. The female shooter died from her gunshot wounds.

Finner stressed that he believes the attack was “an isolated incident.”

Biden Officials: ‘MAGA,’ ‘Trump’ Used for Banks to Surveil Private Transactions After January 6 Protests

According to Fox News, the outlet obtained a letter wherein the government admitted that “MAGA,” “Trump,” and “Kamala” were among the terms, the news source said Friday.

The report continued:

The letter, sent Friday from the Treasury Department to Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, notes that “Exchange events” convened by its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, “began shortly after January 6 under the prior Administration,” and “included terms such as ‘antifa,’ ‘MAGA,’ ‘Trump,’ ‘Biden,’ ‘Kamala,’ ‘Schumer,’ and ‘Pelosi.’”
...
The letter, signed by Acting Assistant Secretary Corey Tellez, comes in response to a letter sent by Scott to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding answers from the Department and FinCEN after revelations of the surveillance using “politically charged search terms” to flag customer profiles to federal law enforcement surfaced.

Scott blasted the surveillance action in his letter, saying it “represents a flagrant violation of Americans’ privacy and the improper targeting of U.S. citizens for exercising their constitutional rights without due process.”

In May, a House Judiciary Committee report on FBI whistleblowers showed that Bank of America officials gave the agency a list of people who used their services in the Washington, DC, area, even if they did not have anything to do with what happened on January 6, Breitbart News reported.

ARIZONA BORDER CRISIS: 26K Migrants Apprehended in Two Weeks

Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin posted a weekly recap on X revealing his agents apprehended more than 12,000 migrants. Of those, 144 encounters resulted in charges of federal criminal violations.

The recap included a chart revealing the apprehension of nearly 89,000 migrants in the past seven weeks.

One week earlier, Modlin posted a report showing the apprehension of 13,800 migrants. In those, agents made 189 arrests for federal criminal violations and disrupted 27 human smuggling incidents.

Unlike the Del Rio Sector, where most migrants cross the border to surrender to the first law enforcement official they can find, in the Tucson Sector, migrants often don camouflage and attempt to avoid apprehension.

The Tucson Sector continues to be the busiest of the Border Patrol station with the apprehension of approximately 80,000 migrants in December (2,580 per day), Breitbart Texas reported. The prior record for migrant apprehensions in the Tucson Sector was set in March 2000 when agents encountered 76,245 migrants, according to U.S. Border Patrol Encounter Reports. The December report of approximately 80,000 migrants beats that record by nearly five percent.

EUROPE

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Illegal Brit Goes Missing, Russian Attacks, Smugglers Arrested,

U.K. Man Stows Away on Flight to NYC, Goes Missing After Arrest

A British man who successfully snuck onto a flight from London to New York City without a passport or plane ticket has gone missing, U.K. authorities say.

Craig Sturt, 46, stowed away on a British Airways flight that landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Christmas Eve 2023, the New York Post reported.

Amazingly, Sturt was allegedly able to navigate through security checkpoints and the boarding gate at Heathrow Airport without showing proper documentation.

“Sturt allegedly boarded and found a seat on the fully booked, international flight because some passengers had missed their connection at the airport,” the outlet reported, detailing how the undocumented passenger enjoyed free food and drinks on his free overseas flight.

Once in the U.S., Sturt’s luck ran out at a customs checkpoint.

After failing to show documents to JFK Airport officials, the British man was arrested and “promptly escorted back onto a returning flight to Heathrow.”

Upon his Christmas Day return, Sturt was taken to a hospital, though the reason is unclear. 

U.K. police charged the unauthorized traveler with Obtaining Services by Deception, Being Unlawfully Airside, and Boarding an Aircraft without permission, the Sun reported.

Somehow, Sturt has managed to further evade authorities and has recently been reported missing, according to the outlet...

Russia Launches Dozens of Drone Strikes in Five Hour Barrage on Ukraine

Russian forces launched 45 drones over Ukraine Sunday in a five-and-a-half-hour barrage, officials said, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued the reshuffle of his war cabinet as the war enters its third year.

In a statement, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down 40 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones over nine different regions, including on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Kyiv.

The five-and-a-half-hour attack targeted agricultural facilities and coastal infrastructure, officials for Ukraine’s southern defense forces wrote on Telegram. They said that a strike in the Mykolaiv region had injured one person, sparking a fire and damaging nearby residential buildings.

Another person was injured in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region when a blaze broke out due to falling debris from a destroyed drone, said the head of the region´s military administration, Serhiy Lysak.

The strikes come as Zelenskyy continues his shakeup of military commanders in a bid to maintain momentum against attacking Russian forces.

Greek Authorities Arrest Four Suspected People Smugglers as Dozens of Boat Migrants Intercepted

Greek authorities found 84 migrants arriving by sea and arrested four individuals, accusing them of being the traffickers that transported them, the coast guard said Sunday. Both incidents occurred early Saturday, it said.

In the first incident, the coast guard was alerted to a boat drifting, due to mechanical failure, at sea, 46 nautical miles (85 kilometers) south of the island of Crete.

A Greek Navy frigate found the boat and rescued a total of 72 individuals, 58 of them men and 14 minors, transporting them to Crete.

After questioning the new arrivals, the coast guard arrested two of them, aged 30 and 18, for being the traffickers that piloted the boat.

In 2023, 41,561 people arrived in Greece by sea, up from 12,758 in 2022, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Arrivals peaked at 10,839 in September.

The boat had sailed from the Libyan port of Tobruk. The rescued migrants told Greek authorities that they had each paid between $2,000 and $4,000 for their passage to Greece.

The two arrested individuals face charges of forming a gang, facilitating the unlawful entry of individuals into the country and exposing them to danger.

In the second case, also early Saturday, the coast guard was informed that people had landed on a beach on the island of Rhodes.

The coast guard sent a patrol boat to the waters near the landing site, while the Greek police also dispatched a foot patrol.

The patrol boat intercepted a speedboat with two men who were headed to the Turkish coast. The two foreigners, who were not carrying travel documents, declared they were aged 34 and 24 years old, respectively.

ASIA

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A Fatal Flight

German Man Dies After Spitting Up ‘Litres of Blood’ on Flight From Bangkok

A Lufthansa Airbus flight from Bangkok to Munich took a tragic turn on Thursday as a German man died mid-flight after exhibiting signs of illness before takeoff. Speaking to the German-Swiss newspaper Blick, fellow travellers, a nursing specialist from the University Hospital in Zurich and her husband, Karin and Martin Missfelder, said the 63-year-old man had “cold sweats and was breathing too much, too quickly” before takeoff.

After being inspected by a doctor on the plane as well as the captain, it was determined that he was fit enough to travel after his Filipina wife explained that they had to run to catch the flight and were out of breath.

“They then gave him a little chamomile tea, but he already spit blood into the bag that his wife held out to him,” said Martin Missfelder.

As they took to the air, the man’s condition dramatically declined and blood began to pout out of his mouth and nose. Missfelder said that the man lost “litres of blood” and that the walls were covered in blood, saying: “It was absolute horror, everyone was screaming.”

Flight attendants attempted to aid the man, said nursing specialist Karin Missfelder, who described their attempts at resuscitation as “unfortunately a bit amateurish” that lasted about half an hour, adding: “It was dead quiet on board.”

Their attempts ultimately failed and the man died. He was carried into the galley area of the plane by attendants and the captain announced to the passengers that the man was dead and that they were flying back to Bangkok to unload his body.

MIDDLE EAST

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Are You American or Israeli? If so, the IRGC Hates You

Iran Cheers 45th Anniversary of Islamic Revolution with Promises of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’

General Mohammad Salami, commander of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,  was amongst those leading the calls for the destruction of the U.S. and Israel which the regime has blamed along with “Britain and many European countries as well as their stooges […] complicit in the Zionist regime’s criminal acts against the Palestinian people.”

AP reports thousands of Iranians marched through major streets and squares decorated with flags, balloons, and banners with revolutionary and religious slogans.

In Tehran, crowds waved Iranian flags, chanted slogans, and carried placards with the traditional “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” written on them.

Some burned U.S. and Israeli flags, a common practice in pro-government rallies, the report notes.

During the public celebrations, a paratrooper jumped from a plane while displaying a Palestinian flag.

Many high-ranking Iranian officials attended the celebrations in Tehran, including hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi addressed the crowds in Azadi Square and called on the United Nations — in a speech broadcast by state TV — to expel “the Zionist regime,” as the crowds chanted: “Death to Israel.”