News of the World
07-29-2024, 02:26 AM
USA
LATIN AMERICA
Oh really, Singh? What about the next article then?
EUROPE
ASIA
Trump on the American Flag
Quote:Former President Donald Trump said people who decide to burn the American flag should receive a “mandatory” sentence of one year in jail.
During a rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Saturday night, Trump spoke about how the United States did not “need more people who want to burn” the American flag, referring to how anti-Israel protesters have burned American flags at demonstrations.
“We do not need more people who want to burn our flag,” Trump told the crowd.
“I watched yesterday, and the day before, they’re burning our American flag. And, I said, I know they say it’s unconstitutional, well, make it not unconstitutional. You burn our American flag, you should get immediately, mandatory, one year in jail.”
Trump’s comments come days after pro-Palestinian protesters descended upon Washington, DC, to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress.
Pro-Palestinian protesters set American flags ablaze after taking them down from the flag poles at Union Station and replaced them with Palestinian flags.
This is not the first time that protesters have burned the American flag. In May, pro-Palestinian protesters in New York City draped a Palestinian flag around a memorial, while burning the American flag.
In April, American flags were also burned during pro-Palestinian protests in New York City, as one protester waved a burning American flag, while another set a counter-protesters American flag ablaze.
Maryland Governor Thinks Biden Deserved a Better Treatment...
Quote:Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Joe Biden deserved better treatment than public calls for him to leave the presidential race.
Guest host Martha Raddatz said, “You had been a very strong supporter of Joe Biden staying in the race just a few days after that disastrous debate saying, he is not going to take himself out of the race nor should he. Did your concerns grow as the weeks went on?”
Moore said, “I had private conversations with the president. And I’m a big believer that when you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. And I had private conversations where I was telling the president the truth.”
He continued, “I also know that the president deserved better than people who were running around him and going into public and demanding that the President of the United States step down, particularly when you look at the track record of the Biden-Harris administration. I’ve had a phenomenal partner in the Biden-Harris administration to be able to deliver the kind of results that we needed in Maryland. And so I knew that if he said that he was going to continue pushing forward, that I was going to stand with him.”
Raddatz said, “But you said you told him the truth. What was the truth?”
Moore said, “Well, I think the truth was that there were real concerns. There were real concerns that I know that people had felt, but also that people were telling me that they had felt. I also know that, you know, I’m a loyalty person, and I believe that you can have private conversations and tell people the truth. You know be able to tell them what you’re hearing without turning around and trying to publicly embarrass them.”
Kamala the Border Czar is a Failure
Quote:U.S. Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) says Vice President Kamala Harris cannot run from the failed border policies of the Biden-Harris administration. Gonzales’ comments came during an exclusive interview with Breitbart Texas.
Despite the Vice President’s recent attempts to distance herself from the title of Border Czar and a complicit mainstream media willing to help, Gonzales says no amount of media spin can change the devastating impacts of failed border policies across America — especially in the border states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.
“I’ve seen what she has done at the border as Vice President, which is nothing,” the Texas congressman stated. “I don’t want to see what she’ll do as President. It will be even worse.”
Representative Gonzales, whose district includes 800 miles of border(nearly two-thirds of the Texas border) with Mexico, says the idea of arguing whether the Vice President Harris is the Border Czar or not is a waste of time for her campaign.
“Whether you call her a Border Czar or not, it doesn’t matter,” he explained. “She cannot run from the failed border policies that this administration has enacted that have gotten Americans killed.” Gonzales added that Harris once referred to the porous southwest border in El Paso as “the new Ellis Island.”
Thus far, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nearly 1,400,000 migrants have been apprehended at the southwest border by the Border Patrol since October. Gonzales says the total does not include hundreds of thousands of migrants who have avoided apprehension by the Border Patrol this year. Nor does it include hundreds of thousands of migrants allowed to enter through land border ports and airports under this administration’s CBP-One application and humanitarian parole programs that Congress never authorized.
Gonzales says the Biden-Harris administration needs to clearly count the number of migrant entries along the southwest border and not fail to disclose to Americans the total of those that are admitted at the ports of entry through various parole programs.
According to CBP, the Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions during each of the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration have surpassed any other annual total since its inception in 1924.
Gonzales cautioned the importance of reminding Americans about the Vice President’s failure as the point person on border security over the last three years. “We have to remind people about the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration and how a Trump Presidency and Republican-led Congress is going to make America better off,” Representative Gonzales added.
3 Palestinians Arrested in California
Quote:San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents reportedly apprehended three suspected Palestinian terrorists after they illegally crossed the border between ports of entry. The suspected terrorists illegally crossed the Mexican border into California, according to a news report.
Border Patrol agents took three suspected Palestinian terrorists into custody earlier this month after they illegally crossed the border from Mexico into California, the New York Post reported. One of the men reportedly had a “salacious photo” of a masked man holding an AK-47 rifle, the article states.
A source within U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Breitbart Texas they could not confirm the report but said it is “highly likely.” Information on Special Interest Aliens (SIA) is generally not disseminated outside of the sector originating the report to be sent to higher headquarters.
Another source told Breitbart that San Diego Sector agents are apprehending so many SIAs that the report is “highly probable.”
The source believes the SIAs are being routed to crossing points in California after Del Rio Sector agents began performing extra background screenings in coordination with the FBI. The source said he believes California sectors are not currently performing this level of vetting.
“Since this whole mess began,” the source added, these crossings are “highly dangerous and this administration does not care one bit.”
The Post reports the San Diego Sector agents apprehended a Turkish migrant in addition to the three Palestinians. The Turkish migrant is also suspected of having ties to terrorist groups.
The four migrants with suspected ties to terrorist groups were transferred from Border Patrol custody to ICE and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force for further investigation.
In April, Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark reported that the apprehension SIAs was climbing along the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
“According to a Department of Homeland Security report reviewed by Breitbart Texas, nearly 25,000 migrants from Special Interest Countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have been apprehended entering the United States during the first six months of fiscal year 2024, which began in October,” Clark reported.
Second Man Injured During Butler Rally Leaves Hospital
Quote:The second man who was left injured after a gunman opened fire at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 was discharged from the hospital.
A spokesperson for Highmark Health confirmed to the Hill that James Copenhaver, 74, had been discharged from Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh after being injured during the former president’s rally weeks ago.
Copenhaver was one of two people who were left injured at the Trump rally on July 13 after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire from the roof of a nearby building with a direct line of sight of Trump. Trump was shot by “a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his right ear.
The other man who was left injured, David Dutch, was recently released from Allegheny General Hospital after he had been shot in his chest and liver.
Another man, Corey Comperatore, a former Pennsylvania fire chief was shot and killed during the rally while trying to shield and protect his wife and daughter.
Copenhaver’s family had previously issued a statement thanking “the first responders, medics, and hospital staff” who were taking care of him, and offered prayers for the other victims and Trump, according to KDKA News.
“Jim would like to especially thank the first responders, medics, and hospital staff who have provided him with initial and continuing care,” Copenhaver’s family said in a statement that was released from Allegheny Health Network.
The former president recently revealed that he was “going back to Butler” and would be holding a “big and beautiful rally” to honor Comperatore and the “brave patriots injured” at the rally.
CNN on Guns
Quote:A CNN report drawn from a recent survey of gun owners shows that more Americans are armed for self-defense than ever before.
CNN noted that the survey, published Thursday, centered on 2,477 “American adults who reported owning guns between May and June 2023.”
The report cited data from Injury Prevention journal, which revealed the percentage of gun owners that cited “personal protection” as the reason for getting a gun jumped from 26 percent in 1999 to 79 percent in 2024.
Dr. David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University, suggested the desire to be armed for self-defense is a response to the civil unrest America witnessed during COVID years.
Yamane claimed 2020 had much of the same unrest seen in the 1960s, when gun ownership for self-defense grew exponentially. He noted:
If you think about the year of 2020, it really had some of those characteristics. There was Covid, which rolls immediately into the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which rolls immediately then into an insane presidential election that rolls immediately into the insurrection at the Capitol.
On January 12, Breitbart News pointed to National Shooting Sport Foundation (NSSF) numbers showing the number of firearms in U.S. civilian hands topped 473 million by the end of 2021.
Chinese & Russian Airplanes Got Very Close to Alaska
Quote:The United States and Canada scrambled fighters on Wednesday as Chinese and Russian nuclear-capable bombers flew off the coast of Alaska.
According to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), it was the first time a Chinese H-6 bomber had penetrated Alaska’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
An ADIZ is a buffer region surrounding a nation’s sovereign airspace. Sending military planes into another nation’s ADIZ is not an act of war, but it is considered provocative, especially since fighters will usually be launched to monitor the incoming aircraft and ensure they are not a threat.
China frequently sends warplanes into the ADIZ of Taiwan, for example, forcing the much smaller Taiwanese air force to exhaust itself in response — a tactic known as “gray zone” warfare.
NORAD noted that Russian bombers have entered Alaska’s ADIZ before, most recently in May, but this appears to be the first time Chinese bombers have accompanied them.
NORAD said it “detected, tracked, and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two PRC [People’s Republic of China] H-6 military aircraft” in the Alaskan ADIZ. The U.S. sent F-16 and F-35 fighters to monitor their activities, while Canada launched CF-18 fighters, the Royal Canadian Air Force version of the American F/A-18 Hornet.
“The Russian and PRC aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” NORAD said.
“This Russian and PRC activity in the Alaska ADIZ is not seen as a threat, and NORAD will continue to monitor competitor activity near North America and meet presence with presence,” the statement added.
A source told Air & Space Forces Magazine on Wednesday that the Chinese and Russian bombers were on a joint patrol and launched from the same Russian airbase.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Zhang Xiaogang confirmed the “strategic joint air patrol” in a press conference on Thursday.
“This is the eighth air strategic joint patrol organized by the two militaries since 2019. It further tested and improved coordination between two air forces and deepened strategic mutual trust and substantive cooperation,” said Zhang.
“This operation did not target any third parties and was in line with relevant international law and practice and had nothing to do with the current international or regional situation,” he insisted.
China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state,” a term Beijing created to give itself a greater role in exploiting Arctic resources. It has spoken of incorporating the Arctic into its infrastructure scheme as a “polar Silk Road” or “Silk Road on ice.”
The Pentagon said on Monday — before the Russian-Chinese joint bomber patrol flew into Alaska’s ADIZ — that it was troubled by growing Russian and Chinese cooperation in the Arctic.
LATIN AMERICA
Russia Strengthens Position in Cuba
Quote:Cuba announced on Wednesday that three vessels from Russia’s Baltic Fleet will visit the island nation starting Saturday, marking the second Russian war flotilla to visit the country in recent weeks.
The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (Minfar) made the announcement on social media in the evening hours of Wednesday, informing that the flotilla included the training ship Smólny, the patrol ship Neustrahimiy, and the offshore oil tanker Yelnya. The ships are expected in Havana from July 27-30, 2024.
“As we have pointed out on other occasions, the visits of naval units from other countries is a historical practice of the revolutionary government with nations with which we maintain relations of friendship and collaboration,” Minfar’s statement read.
“During their stay in our country, the Russian sailors will carry out a program of activities that includes courtesy visits to the Chief of the Revolutionary Navy, to the Governor of the capital, as well as touring places of historical and cultural interest,” the statement continued.
Officials from the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden have not publicly commented on the upcoming visit of the Russian war vessels to Cuba at press time.
The upcoming visit of the three Russian Baltic Fleet vessels will occur less than two months after a Russian fleet led by the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and nuclear submarine Kazan visited Cuba for five days in mid-June as part of aerial and naval combat exercises that the Russian Navy conducted in the Caribbean Sea.
Following their visit to Cuba, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Akadémik Pashin oil tanker, which had accompanied the Russian fleet that visited Cuba, traveled to Venezuela for a four-day visit to the South American nation that saw the crews of both ships participate in a military parade organized by the socialist regime that commemorated the 213th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence.
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in June that the military exercises Russia conducted in the Caribbean Sea did not “pose a threat” to the United States.
“We’ve been tracking the Russians’ plans for this. This is not a surprise. We’ve seen them do this — these type of port calls before, and these are, you know, routine naval visits that we’ve seen under different administrations,” Singh said at the time.
Oh really, Singh? What about the next article then?Quote:The regimes of Russia and Cuba held discussions for the construction of an oil refinery in Cuba following Russian lawmakers’ visit to the island, the Russian state news agency Tass reported on Monday.
The prospective Russian refinery, if built, would become Cuba’s fifth, joining the nation’s four other rundown refineries.
A delegation of Russian lawmakers that Duma Speaker Viacheslav Volodin led traveled to Cuba in July. During the visit, the delegation held meetings with the communist regime’s figurehead president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the head of the Cuban parliament, Esteban Lazo Hernández.
Volodin landed in Havana after a brief visit to Nicaragua, where he participated as a special guest in celebrations of the forty-fifth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in which dictator Daniel Ortega made public calls for the “disappearance” of the United States.
“Bidens, they come and go. While Cuba exists and will into the future,” Volodin said in reference to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to drop from the 2024 presidential race.
Duma Deputy Speaker Alexander Babakov, who was part of the Russian delegation, told Tass that the construction of the oil refinery was one of the subjects touched upon during the Russian lawmakers’ whirlwind visit to Havana.
“Cuba has crude oil, it is logical not to import oil products, but to produce them here,” Babakov said. “The largest Russian companies could participate here.”
“In this regard, a possible next step is deeper processing of oil products and including the creation of fertilizers,” he continued.
In recent years, the Castro regime has begun seeking an increased amount of aid from Russia, as Cuba suffers through a severe economic and humanitarian crisis — a direct consequence of more than six decades of communist rule.
Russia, a top financier of the Castro regime during the times of the Soviet Union, resumed its oil shipments to the island nation in late March after a year-long hiatus. The oil shipments seek to help Cuba ease its severe fuel shortages and run its dilapidated power plants, whose failures are causing near-endless power blackouts nationwide. Cubans are reportedly living through some of the most inhumane conditions since the 1959 communist coup.
The increase in Russian oil shipments also seeks to offset the diminishing number of heavily subsidized oil shipments that Cuba receives from the socialist regime in Venezuela, Cuba’s top oil supplier.
Maduro Dares to Criticize Colombia and Brazil
Quote:Leftist Latin American governments with friendly ties to Venezuela’s socialist regime, such as Brazil and Colombia, have decided not to send observers to monitor Sunday’s sham presidential “election” this week, responding to violent statements by dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The Maduro regime will hold a sham presidential election on July 28. Maduro, who clung to power in a similar fraudulent “election” in May 2018, is seeking to secure a six-year term in office.
Sunday’s pseudo-electoral event will see Maduro “run” against several handpicked “opposition” rivals and 74-year-old former diplomat Edmundo González, the only legitimate opposition candidate that regime-controlled authorities allowed on the ballot. Maduro will appear on Sunday’s ballot 13 times.
Last week, Maduro threatened that there will be “bloodbath” and a “fratricidal civil war” in Venezuela if he does not “win” the “election.”
“The destiny of Venezuela, in the 21st century, depends on our victory on July 28. If you do not want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, product of the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success, the greatest victory in the electoral history of our people,” Maduro said.
Maduro’s comments prompted Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — one of the Venezuelan socialist regime’s closest allies in the region — to express that he felt “scared” in response to the remarks. Lula claimed that he had told Maduro that “the only chance for Venezuela to return to normality is to have a widely respected electoral process.”
“I was scared by Maduro’s remarks that Venezuela could face bloodshed if he loses,” Lula said. “Maduro needs to learn that when you win, you stay; when you lose, you leave.”
Maduro, without directly mentioning Lula, responded on Tuesday by suggesting that anyone scared by his comments should “drink chamomile tea.” On Wednesday, Maduro questioned the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system by claiming that, unlike the Venezuelan electoral system, “not a single identity document is verified” by the Brazilian electoral authorities.
“Where else in the world do they do that? In the U.S.? The electoral system is unable to be audited. In Brazil? They don’t even audit a single ballot. In Colombia? They don’t audit a single ballot,” Maduro said.
Brazil’s top electoral authority, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) refuted Maduro’s claims in a statement in which it asserted that it is “false” that Brazil’s electoral ballot boxes are not audited and that, as a result of Maduro’s statements, it would not send a group of electoral observers for Sunday’s sham election.
UN: Nicaragua Tortures Priests
Quote:The United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) revealed in a report published this week that the communist Ortega regime banned nearly 8,000 Catholic processions between 2023 and 2024.
The silencing of traditional Catholic ceremonies occurred as part of dictator Daniel Ortega’s brutal campaign of repression against Christianity in the country.
The report also warned that the Ortega regime engaged in both physical and mental torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of imprisoned Catholic priests and other religious figures during their unjust imprisonment in local prisons, including forced nudity and deliberately reducing the amount of food provided.
GHREN, established in 2022, was tasked by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (HRC) with investigating the Ortega regime’s gross human rights violations since the events of April 2018, when thousands of Nicaraguans flocked to the streets calling for an end to communism in their country. The group must also make recommendations based on its findings “with a view to improving the situation of human rights” and providing “guidance on access to justice and accountability.”
GHREN’s report, presented on Monday, covers the widespread systematic violations of human rights and abuses of international law committed by the Ortega regime against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church between April 2018 and May 31, 2024.
The majority of Nicaraguans are Catholic. Close to half — 44.9 percent — identify as Roman Catholic, and 38.2 percent identify as evangelical Christian. Another 2.4 percent identify as practitioners of other religions.
Ortega, who identifies as Catholic, has waged a brutal persecution campaign against the Nicaraguan Catholic Church since April 2018 as punishment for the local Catholic Church’s support of the pro-democracy dissidents. In recent years he has expanded persecution to other groups of Christians, particularly Evangelicals.
GHREN detailed that, since 2018, the government “has been implementing a discriminatory plan in order to eliminate all critical voices and any threat to state control” and stressed that some of the violations constitute “the crimes against humanity of imprisonment, torture, deportation and persecution on political grounds.”
The persecution against Catholicism — which dramatically intensified between 2022 and 2023 — has resulted in pro-Sandinista thugs carrying out violent assaults against Catholic churches, the forced imprisonment and banishment of Catholic priests, and the banishment of nuns and other members of the Church, as well as the prohibition of the celebration of numerous Catholic processions and traditional Catholic festivities, some of which are unique to Nicaragua.
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The report confirmed the prohibition of at least 7,976 Catholic processions in Nicaragua between 2023 and 2024. GHREN pointed out that the number of banned processions “could be higher,” as activities planned to be carried out in rural parishes or communities were not included in the tally.
The U.N. body estimated that the widespread ban of religious practices common to the largest group of faith in the country may have affected the religious freedom and other related rights of more than three million people, noting that not only those who profess Catholicism attend the processions. The Group of Experts pointed out that it had not recorded similar aggressions against non-Christian religious denominations.
GHREN concluded that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that, in some cases, treatment of political prisoners “reached the threshold of torture due to its combination, prolonged nature, the presence of other stressors or vulnerabilities and the severe psychological and physical damage it inflicted on the victims.”
Ecuador Against Illegal Chinese Ships
Quote:Ecuador’s Navy announced the start of a campaign to protect the Galápagos Islands from the predatory practices of Chinese illegal fishing vessels that have, for years, endangered their maritime biodiversity.
The announcement comes shortly after the conclusion of Galapex III, a series of multinational naval training exercises designed to fight illegal fishing that the Ecuadorian Navy hosted from June 23 to July 9. The navies of the United States, Canada, South Korea, Italy, Spain, and neighboring nations — such as Colombia and Peru — participated.
“The problem is that the number of foreign fishing vessels reaches a point where they begin to plunder ecosystems,” frigate captain Guillermo Miranda told Reuters. “When they fish, they affect really migratory species, which in many cases are part of the Galápagos marine ecosystem. It’s a pretty serious problem, not just for Ecuador.”
Every year, a fleet of roughly 400 Chinese illegal fishing vessels sail through the waters of the Pacific and South Atlantic Oceans, pillaging local fish stocks through mass depredation, causing significant damage to local ecosystems, and polluting the seas by dumping manmade waste.
The predatory practices of the Chinese fishing vessels also cause economic damage to the local fishing trade of Latin American nations — such as Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina. The overexploitation of fishing grounds by the Chinese vessels prevents fish species and mammals — such as whales — from approaching the coasts of Chile and Argentina, disrupting local food chains.
The illegal Chinese fishing vessels carry out their predatory practices on the waters near the Galápagos Islands, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage site that is home to some of the highest levels of endemism on the planet and that houses species not found anywhere else in the world.
EUROPE
Ukraine on the Ongoing War
Quote:Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told top Chinese Communist Party diplomats in Beijing on Wednesday that his country is “willing and ready for dialogue and negotiations with Russia,” a stark change from repeated refusals by the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider direct talks.
Russia has been engaging in colonialist adventurism in Ukraine for a decade, first “annexing” Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 under President Barack Obama and backing pro-Russian “separatist” groups in the Donbas region. In February 2022, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a “special operation” to oust Zelensky, consisting of a full-scale military invasion of the country that persists today. Zelensky has for two years refused talks with Putin on the grounds that no talks should take place until Russian soldiers are no longer present in his country.
His last direct contact with Putin occurred in December 2019 – talks chaperoned by French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel that a frustrated Zelensky dismissed as useless, demanding “serious” countries help mediate instead of France and Germany.
Kuleba was in Beijing for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other senior Communist Party leaders on both the ongoing invasion and trade ties between Kyiv and Beijing. China is Ukraine’s largest trade partner despite being arguably Russia’s closest geopolitical ally.
“Today in China, I held detailed and thorough negotiations with my Chinese counterpart Wang Yi about the path to peace,” Kuleba wrote in a statement on social media posted after his talks with Wang. “I emphasized that Ukraine needs a just and lasting peace, not just an illusion of peace, and I appreciate that this position was reciprocated.”
Kuleba said he and Wang “agreed that all forces must work together to find common ground on the path to restoring true peace in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter.”
Quote:Ukraine on Sunday said it struck an oil depot in southern Russia that supplies the Kremlin’s troops as Russian strikes in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Moscow claimed further gains, left five civilians dead and 15 others wounded.
Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Kyiv’s security services were responsible for a drone strike in Russia’s southern Kursk region that morning on an oil depot used to meet the needs of the Russian military, and contains 11 tanks with a total volume of 7,000 cubic meters (about 247,202 cubic feet), adding the attack prompted “powerful explosions and a fire… probably involving containers with oil products.”
“The defense forces continue to take all measures to undermine the military and economic potential of the Russian occupiers and force the Russian Federation to stop its armed aggression against Ukraine,” the statement said.
Earlier Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said seven Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over Russian territory, while a regional official said a drone strike set fire to the oil depot in the Kursk province. Firefighters were battling the blaze on Sunday morning after three fuel tanks went up in flames, according to acting regional Gov. Alexey Smirnov. Smirnov said nobody was hurt.
The Kursk region lies on the border with Ukraine’s Sumy province where Ukraine has in recent months repeatedly targeted various sites, including oil depots and other military infrastructure, inside Russian territory, with drones and other weapons. Ukrainian officials have been pressuring Western allies to be able to use their modern and more sophisticated weapons to strike more valuable targets inside Russian territory.
Also on Sunday, Russian troops continued to eke out gains in Ukraine’s war-torn eastern Donetsk province as they pushed westward toward the towns of Pokrovsk and Kurakhove. Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday said that its forces had taken control of two neighboring villages some 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Pokrovsk, Prohres and Yevhenivka. The day before, Moscow claimed the nearby village of Lozuvatske, one of nearly a dozen it says it has captured in the province this month.
Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, sending millions of people fleeing to neighboring countries. Taking control of all of Donetsk, part of the country’s industrial heartland that now bears the scars of years of fighting, is one of the Kremlin’s main war goals.
Five civilians died and 15 more suffered wounds following Russian strikes in the Donetsk region on Saturday and overnight, local Gov. Vadym Filashkin reported on Telegram Sunday. Shortly later, other Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling wounded more civilians, including children, in the east and south.
At least eight people suffered wounds after Moscow’s forces on Sunday struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported that same day. Lysak said a toddler and a 10-year-old girl were among the victims, six of whom had to be hospitalized.
Russian shelling on Sunday also wounded eight further civilians, including a 10-year-old and two teenagers, in a village in Ukraine’s southern Kherson province, local official Roman Mrochko reported.
Orbán Loves the Yuan
Quote:The government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán confirmed this week that it had taken out a billion-euro ($1,086,525,000) loan owed to Chinese banks that Budapest must repay in three years.
The loan process was reportedly completed in April, a month before China’s genocidal communist dictator Xi Jinping visited Hungary to sign more than a dozen bilateral deals with Orbán. After Hungary assumed the presidency of the European Union Council Orbán and Xi met again in July as part of Orbán’s “peace mission” to find an end to active hostilities in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The massive loan, reportedly the largest in modern Hungarian history, owed to one of the most predatory lenders on the world stage, has caused some discomfort among observers aware of how China has exploited credit lines offered to impoverished nations such as Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Venezuela. China deploys many of its loans through a program known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure plan in which China offers loans to be used to pay Chinese companies to build cost-prohibitive infrastructure products in poor countries. Many nations fail to keep up with payments, losing the money and control of the projects in question.
Hungary is one of the most enthusiastic BRI partners in Europe.
The loans taken out in April appear to be independent of the BRI, though they do appear to be intended for infrastructure spending. According to Politico, which reported on the loans on Thursday based on a separate report in the Hungarian outlet Portfolio, they are owed to the China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Hungarian branch of the Bank of China. They are under a “variable” interest rate.
“The loan agreement allows for the financing of investments in infrastructure and the energy sector, among others,” the government agency tasked with managing the loan said, according to Politico. “The transaction keeps the public debt-to-GDP ratio within the ceiling at 28.9 percent.”
Politico described Orbán’s economy as “in desperate need of cash” as a result of record-high public debts, in part the result of Orbán’s ambitious social program spending.
Orbán has recalibrated both the domestic and foreign policies of Hungary around the belief that communist China is “one of the pillars of our new multipolar world” and a trustworthy business and diplomacy partner. He has actively abstained from criticizing Chinese human rights abuses such as the rampant persecution of Chinese Christians and the ongoing Uyghur genocide, instead focusing on increasing trade and academic ties with China.
Orbán made Beijing one of his first stops upon assuming the EU presidency, meeting with Xi in early July to discuss what China could do to help end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China was Orbán’s first stop on a “peace mission” after Ukraine and Russia themselves.
“Hungary is willing to take the rotating EU presidency as an opportunity to actively promote the sound development of EU-China relations,” Orbán reportedly told Xi during his stop in Beijing, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, which paraphrased his remarks. “He added that Hungary highly appreciates and values China’s role and influence and is willing to maintain close strategic communication and coordination with China.”
“China is the only world power that has been clearly committed to peace from the beginning,” Orbán told reporters at the time. China is one of Russia’s closest geopolitical partners and has not condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a BRI country, since it began in February 2022.
Olympics Overlords: Let Chinese Athletes Get Doped
Quote:The International Olympic Committee (IOC) made the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and relevant Utah officials effectively stop questioning the legitimacy of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) probes into Chinese athletes, National Public Radio (NPR) reported on Wednesday.
The IOC announced on Wednesday that Salt Lake City, Utah, would host the 2034 Winter Olympics, its second time hosting since the 2002 Winter Games, on the cusp of the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. The announcement followed months of controversy in the swimming world after the left-wing New York Times revealed in April that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance, trimetazidine (TMZ), seven months before competing in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics – but the IOC did nothing to stop them from participating.
“Several of the athletes who tested positive — including nearly half of the swimming team that China sent to the Tokyo Games — went on to win medals, including three golds,” the Times recalled. Of the swimmers involved, 11 are expected to return to competition in Paris.
China’s national anti-doping officials claimed that the swimmers tested positive for TMZ because they inadvertently ate food that contained the substance and that they had not consumed enough of the substance to merit any consequences. WADA accepted this explanation and has repeatedly applauded itself for doing nothing in the face of negative substance tests. The scandal has particularly incensed American competitors and the U.S. government, which has held Congressional hearings on the matter and reportedly opened a criminal investigation into the use of banned medications.
NPR reported on Wednesday that the IOC, which has vocally defended WADA’s handling of the matter and has a long history of defending the Chinese Communist Party’s nefarious behavior, allegedly pressured American officials to drop complaints about Chinese doping if they want to host the 2034 Winter Olympics. Specifically, the IOC “demanded that officials in Utah — along with U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) — sign a contract affirming ‘respect’ for the authority of WADA in exchange for Wednesday’s agreement to hold the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.”
“If the U.S. doesn’t comply by accepting WADA’s authority, Salt Lake City’s status as a host city could be revoked,” NPR noted.
CBS News reported the threat as a “clause” in the contract to host that insisted Utah officials had to work with “federal officials,” presumably the Justice Department, “to alleviate your concerns” about the Chinese doping allegations. The language in the contract allows the IOC to abruptly take away Salt Lake City’s hosting duties if it feels that WADA is “undermined.”
“The president of the IOC is upset with the FBI’s investigation into the World Anti-Doping Agency’s decision to accept China’s reason behind nearly two dozen positive drug tests,” CBS added.
The IOC and WADA moved rapidly to crush any incoming criticism of the agreement on Wednesday, addressing the Chinese doping scandal directly.
WADA President Witold Bańka recalled in his remarks that WADA appointed an “independent prosecutor” who concluded “that WADA did not show any bias, undue interference or other impropriety in its assessment of the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency’s decision” and was “indisputably reasonable” in doing nothing to address the negative tests.
China declared victory on Wednesday through its state media mouthpiece, the Global Times, which condemned the “continued defamation” by concerned Americans regarding the positive substance tests.
“The investigation agencies in the US have a notorious history of double standards and imbalance, which is even more evident in cases involving China,” Chinese “expert” professor Li Haidong was quoted as saying. “This so-called investigation reflects its attempt to unjustly obstruct China in all areas where its influence is growing.”
Cuban Arrested in Ukraine Talks About Communism
Quote:...
Thousands of young Cubans have been sent as mercenaries to fight alongside the Russian occupation forces in Ukraine. Many of them have been duped into fighting in this terrible conflict that has no relevance to the everyday plight of Cubans in the island.
Frank Dario Jarrosay Manfuga, 35, is one of those young Cubans. A math teacher and musician by profession, he was captured on the front lines by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in March. He is now a prisoner of war held thousands of miles away from his native Guantánamo.
I recently managed to have access to him for an interview in a prison somewhere in Ukraine. I gained access in both my capacity as the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance and working with the Diario Las Americas. I sought to speak with him to better understand the terrible situation faced by thousands of young Cubans caught in the middle of another foreign war as a result of the historic subordination of the Castro regime to Moscow’s dictates.
Jarrosay told me that he prefers to spend 50 years in a Ukrainian prison than return to Cuba, where he suffered from stifling poverty and lack of individual freedoms.
“I came here out of need,” he said.
Overwhelmed by what he calls “the system,” the set of political and economic measures that the dictatorship uses to suffocate Cubans, Jarrosay got enthused by the idea of going to Russia to work. The offer had been widely disseminated among the young people of Guantánamo.
His travel from Guantánamo all the way in eastern Cuba to Moscow was expedited by unseen hands. No one from the communist regime in Cuba, which meddles in every single aspect of individual life, did anything to prevent his recruitment and journey. Five other young Cubans accompanied him in the trip.
Once in Moscow he discovered that the contract was for war, not work. Fed and feasted, he was excited for the job at first.
“These are the guys!” he thought. “But life changes once you sign the contract.”
Everything changed once he arrived at the Russian military training center within Ukrainian territory. There, he says, he witnessed the horrors of war immediately.
On February 14, 2024, the Russian base he was in was hit by a Ukrainian bombardment. Four young Cubans and 14 Russians died in front of his eyes, he told me. He doesn’t know much about them and thinks that it will be very hard for the families back in Cuba when they find out. He says many Cubans have already died and thinks that the Russians have left the bodies behind in Ukrainian hands. He saw a steady stream of dead and maimed Russian soldiers returning from the front lines.
He described the dehumanization, in the Russian army, of Cubans being forced to the front lines under direct physical threat of death by Russian officers.
Another American Journalist Sentenced in Russia
Quote:On Friday, the same day Russia sentenced American reporter Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal to 16 years in prison on fanciful charges of “espionage,” it sentenced Russian-American reporter Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to 6.5 years for “spreading false information about the Russian military.”
Like Gershkovich, Kurmasheva was rushed through a secret trial on charges rejected by both her employer and the U.S. government as entirely false. Kurmasheva’s trial in Tatarstan lasted only two days. As with Gershkovich, she was ordered to serve her time in a penal colony.
Kurmasheva, 47, works as an editor for the Tatar-Bashkir language version of RFE/RL. She was based in Prague but was visiting the Tatarstan regional capital of Kazan in June 2023 to handle a family emergency when she was arrested for spreading “false information” about the Russian army — a crime established under President Vladimir Putin’s harsh censorship laws after he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Kurmasheva was getting ready to board her flight back to Prague when she was taken into custody. She was slapped with a fine and additional charges for failing to register as a “foreign agent.” Russia considers all RFE/RL employees to be foreign agents because the network receives funding from the U.S. government.
The disinformation charges were apparently added after Russian investigators reviewed Kurmasheva’s 2022 book, Saying No to War, which included interviews with Russians opposed to the Ukraine war.
RFE/RL denounced the charges against Kurmasheva as “baseless” and “outrageous,” called her trial a “sham,” and demanded her immediate release. Unmoved by this response, a Russian court extended her lengthy pretrial detention even further in April and then sentenced her to prison on Friday.
Stephen Capus, the president and CEO of RFE/RL, denounced her trial and conviction on Monday as a “mockery of justice.”
“The only just outcome is for Alsu to be immediately released from prison by her Russian captors,” Capus said. “It’s beyond time for this American citizen, our dear colleague, to be reunited with her loving family.”
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday described Kurmasheva as “a dedicated journalist who is being targeted by Russian authorities for her uncompromising commitment to speaking the truth and her principled reporting.”
“Journalism is not a crime, as you have heard us say on a number of occasions, and we continue to make very clear that she should be released,” Miller said.
RFE/RL noted that, unlike Gershkovich, the Biden administration has not officially designated Kurmasheva as “wrongfully detained,” a designation that would raise the profile of her case and get her treated as a foreign hostage by the State Department.
President Joe Biden ignored a letter from the U.S. National Press Club in May that argued Kurmasheva “meets all the criteria” and should have been designated as “wrongfully detained” immediately.
“We have listened to the State Department twist itself into a pretzel explaining how there are other factors to be considered besides the criteria, but we have yet to hear a clear reason why State cannot declare her wrongfully detained,” the U.S. National Press Club told Biden.
ASIA
PM Meloni in China
Quote:Italy and China signed a three-year action plan on Sunday to implement past agreements and experiment with new forms of cooperation, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on an official visit to the Chinese capital.
Meloni is trying to reset relations with China as fears of a trade war with the European Union are interwoven with continued interest in attracting Chinese investment in auto manufacturing and other sectors.
“We certainly have a lot of work to do and I am convinced that this work can be useful in such a complex phase on a global level, and also important at a multilateral level,” she said in remarks at the start of a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Her five-day visit comes several months after Italy dropped out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a signature policy of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to build power and transportation infrastructure around the world to stimulate global trade while also deepening China’s ties with other nations.
Still, Italy remains keen to pursue an otherwise strong economic relationship with China. Stellantis, a major automaker that includes Italy’s Fiat, announced in May that it had formed a joint venture with Leapmotor, a Chinese electric car startup, to begin selling EVs in Europe.
Li, addressing Italian and Chinese business leaders after the meeting with Meloni, said that China’s push to upgrade its economy will increase demand for high-quality products, expanding opportunities for cooperation between companies from their two countries.
He pledged to open Chinese markets further, ensure that foreign companies get the same treatment as Chinese ones and create a transparent and predictable business environment, responding to frequently heard complaints from businesses operating in the world’s second-largest economy.
“At the same time, we hope the Italian side will work with China to provide a more fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies doing business in Italy,” he said.
Meloni told the business leaders that the two sides had signed an industrial collaboration memorandum that includes electric vehicles and renewable energy, which she described as “sectors where China has already been operating on the technological frontier for some time … and is sharing the new frontiers of knowledge with partners.”
China & Philippines Reach Agreement
Quote:China and the Philippines announced on Sunday they have reached a “provisional arrangement” to allow resupply missions to reach the BRP Sierra Madre, the beached ship that functions as a Filipino outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea.
China has been intercepting, and in recent cases attacking, supply ships in a bid to force the Philippines out of its own territorial waters.
Tensions hit the boiling point in mid-June when Chinese coast guard vessels rammed and boarded Philippine navy boats, an action denounced by Filipino officials as a “barbaric” act of “piracy.” A Filipino sailor lost his thumb in the conflict.
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) offered no details of the arrangement with China on Sunday, but they said it was the result of “frank and constructive discussions” between the two powers.
“Both sides continue to recognize the need to de-escalate the situation in the South China Sea and manage differences through dialogue and consultation and agree that the agreement will not prejudice each other’s positions in the South China Sea,” DFA said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, said the arrangement was merely “temporary,” and Beijing still “demands that the Philippine side tow away the ship,” restoring the Second Thomas Shoal to its pristine status as “unmanned and without facilities.”
“If the Philippines needs to provide supplies to the ship’s occupants before the Philippines tows away the beached warship, the Chinese side is willing to allow the Philippine side to carry out the transportation and replenishment on humanitarian grounds,” a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry sniffed.
The rusting hulk of the BRP Sierra Madre has been parked on the shoal since 1999, serving as a base for a tiny detachment of Filipino troops. China incessantly complains about the presence of the ship and tells Manila to remove it, occasionally threatening to send in Chinese warships to drag it away.
The Philippine government was evidently content enough with China’s promises to refuse U.S. assistance in supplying the Second Thomas Shoal outpost. A statement from the Philippine military promised to “exhaust all means before seeking foreign intervention.”
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Monday the agreement with China does not mean his country is relinquishing its territorial claims in the South China Sea, but he said it was important to “de-escalate the situation” and “manage differences in a peaceful manner.” He urged China to “do the same.”
“In the face of challenges to our territorial sovereignty, we will assert our rights and interests in the same fair and pacific way that we have always done,” Marcos said in his State of the Nation address.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Monday pointed out the disparity between statements from Beijing and Manila on the provisional arrangement, which seems to be a very tenuous promise to avoid another violent clash like the one in June.
China Supports Forming Joint Hamas-Fatah Government in Gaza
Quote:The terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) met with the relatively “moderate” Palestinian faction of Fatah in Beijing on Tuesday and issued a statement pledging “national unity.” Hamas pledged “national unity” three times in a single sentence.
“Today we sign an agreement for national unity and we say that the path to completing this journey is national unity. We are committed to national unity and we call for it,” Hamas politburo member Mousa Abu Marzook said after emerging from a meeting with other Palestinian factional leaders, chaired by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Wang said envoys from Hamas, Fatah, PIJ, and a dozen other Palestinian factions agreed at the meeting to create an “interim national reconciliation government around the governance of post-war Gaza.”
“Reconciliation is an internal matter for the Palestinian factions, but at the same time, it cannot be achieved without the support of the international community,” Wang intoned.
Reconciliation with the people Hamas and PIJ raped, murdered, and kidnapped on October 7 does not seem to have been on the agenda at the Beijing meeting. Hamas trumpeted an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that called for Israel’s military operation in Gaza to end “as rapidly as possible,” while seeming blissfully unconcerned that the ICJ would ever hold Hamas leaders responsible for their crimes against humanity.
Hamas and PIJ’s Chinese hosts cared little for their misdeeds of their guests, instead collecting the desired prize of a “Beijing declaration” that copiously thanked China for its “sincere efforts to support Palestinian rights, ending division, and unifying Palestinian positions.”
“The dialogue in Beijing also demonstrated a positive and constructive spirit, agreeing to achieve comprehensive national unity under the framework of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” China’s state-run Global Times said on Tuesday.
The Chinese foreign minister strove to put a bland “three-step” bureaucratic spin on the same maximalist demands that Palestinian terrorist organizations have been making since Israel began responding to the October 7 attack:
The first step is to achieve a comprehensive, lasting, and sustainable cease-fire in Gaza as soon as possible, ensuring smooth access to humanitarian aid and relief.
The second step is to jointly promote post-war governance in Gaza, adhering to the principle of “Palestinians governing Palestinians.”
The third step is to push for Palestine to become a full member of the United Nations and begin implementing the “two-state solution.” These three steps are interlinked and indispensable.
North Korea Claims Trump is an Enemy
Quote:North Korea’s latest anti-American propaganda video includes a brief image of former President Donald Trump as a predatory “U.S. imperialist” enemy, a touch that confused some subjects of the communist regime, as Trump had been depicted in a more positive light in previous videos.
The video, incorporated into the mandatory weekly political harangues that North Korea’s captive citizens must endure, shows Trump as one of the “U.S. imperialists and other hierarchical enemies are trying to recreate the bloodshed of the past on this land.”
The bloodshed that the video’s narrator refers to would be the Korean War of 1950-53.
“The only thing that has changed is that the various methods of how they kill and the weapons of murder they used that day are now covered in a sweet and fragrant outer shell, including movies, printed propaganda, superstitions, and drugs,” the propaganda video narrator raves as a photo of Trump shaking hands with dictator Kim Jong-un appears in the background.
The indoctrination lecture incorporating this video was titled “Guide To the Anti-DPRK Plot.” Paranoid political screeds are par for the course in North Korea, but some of the people forced to watch this particular presentation were surprised that Trump was depicted as one of the plotters, the implication being that his historic meeting with Kim was just a fake-out intended to obscure nonstop American skullduggery.
One North Korean told Radio Free Asia (RFA) he was “shocked” to see Trump portrayed as a villain after years of the regime touting Trump’s 2019 diplomatic outreach as a positive development.
“These days, the party’s regular lectures are held by watching recorded videos. This week’s lecture was conducted as a recorded lecture with the message that dreaming about American imperialism leads to self-destruction and death,” the North Korean resident said.
“The point of this lecture from the beginning to the end was to never to be caught up in the enemy’s persistent anti-DPRK conspiracy strategy,” he elaborated. “The authorities requested that we raise awareness of impure recordings, anti-socialism publications, drugs, religion, and superstitions that the enemy are spreading to destroy our republic from within.”
RFA’s source said his neighbors were equally baffled that the regime would suddenly denounce Trump as “headlining an anti-DPRK strategy” after years of saying it was “a great thing that Kim Jong-un and the U.S. president met and joined hands.””
"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.
![[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)
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My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
My Original Stories (available in English and Spanish)
List of Compiled Binary Executables I have published...
HiddenChest & Roole
Give me a free copy of your completed game if you include at least 3 of my scripts!
Just some scripts I've already published on the board...
KyoGemBoost XP VX & ACE, RandomEnkounters XP, KSkillShop XP, Kolloseum States XP, KEvents XP, KScenario XP & Gosu, KyoPrizeShop XP Mangostan, Kuests XP, KyoDiscounts XP VX, ACE & MV, KChest XP VX & ACE 2016, KTelePort XP, KSkillMax XP & VX & ACE, Gem Roulette XP VX & VX Ace, KRespawnPoint XP, VX & VX Ace, GiveAway XP VX & ACE, Klearance XP VX & ACE, KUnits XP VX, ACE & Gosu 2017, KLevel XP, KRumors XP & ACE, KMonsterPals XP VX & ACE, KStatsRefill XP VX & ACE, KLotto XP VX & ACE, KItemDesc XP & VX, KPocket XP & VX, OpenChest XP VX & ACE
