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Trump Campaign Hacked!?
Quote:Former President Trump’s campaign said some of its internal communications were recently hacked by foreign sources.
The breach was first reported by Politico after the outlet received emails from an anonymous account with documents from the Trump campaign.
The campaign said the leak came from “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” His campaign pointed to a report released Friday from Microsoft that said Iran is targeting the 2024 election.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill.
Cheung said the report from Microsoft found Iranian hackers “broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’” on the presidential campaign in June 2024.
After Trump’s assassination attempt last month at a Pennsylvania rally, the Biden administration claimed that Iran made threats to kill the former president. Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied the reports, calling them “malicious.”
Cheung noted the timing of the campaign hack and the “Iranian plot to assassinate President Trump around the same time as the Butler, PA tragedy.”
“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said. “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
Politico said it began receiving emails from an AOL email account from someone identified as “Robert” on July 22.
Trump on Ukraine War
Quote:Former President Donald Trump told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday evening that he intends to negotiate peace between Russia and Ukraine as President-elect before he even is sworn in as the next president of the United States.
Trump, in an hourlong interview with Breitbart News at his luxurious seaside resort and club, Mar-a-Lago, here in South Florida, said that he wants to see the war between Russia and Ukraine “settled.”
“I want to see it settled,” Trump said. “I want to get it done.”
Trump said he knows Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and believes he can negotiate peace to end the “death” and “destruction” if elected again on Nov. 5.
“I know both heads of the countries,” Trump said. “I know President Putin very well. I want to see the death stopping. There’s death and there’s destruction. They are destroying the whole fabric of a certain part of the world. I want to get it negotiated, and get it done.”
Trump said his Democrat opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, would keep the war going and keep flowing hundreds of billions of American tax dollars into Ukraine rather than ending it. He said Harris would do nothing, and because of her inaction “millions of people will die” if she were to win the election in November. He also said Harris’s ineptitude could drag the world into a global war.
“I don’t think she has any clue,” Trump said. “She wouldn’t handle it at all. I don’t think she’d do anything. I think it would just go on and millions of people will die. It could evolve into a World War also. She’s got no capability to get it done. I want to get it done. I’ve always had a very good relationship with both men and I think I’m in a very good position. It would have been easier to get done—it would have never started. If I were there, it would have never started.”
Trump also said he hopes he will be able to negotiate the peace deal ending the war in the timeframe between the Nov. 5 election and the Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, should he win.
The Illegal Pakistani That Wanted to Kill Trump Was on Parole
Quote:A Pakistani national, now charged with a murder-for-hire plot against former President Donald Trump, was allowed into the United States on “significant public benefit parole” despite reportedly being on the government’s “watch list.”
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced charges against 46-year-old Asif Raza Merchant of Pakistan for allegedly attempting to carry out a murder-for-hire plot against Trump and other politicians.
In an unsealed complaint against Merchant, federal prosecutors allege that he first flew into George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, on April 13 in the hopes of recruiting U.S.-based assassins to carry out the assassination plot.
According to documents that Just the News obtained, Merchant was interviewed, fingerprinted, and inspected following his arrival at the Houston airport. At the time of his inspection, federal agents noticed that Merchant had taken recent trips to Iran, a hotbed for Islamic terrorism.
Just the News reports that Merchant’s immigration records, available to federal agents at the time he arrived in Houston, “clearly stated in bright red that he was flagged by the Department of Homeland Security database with the identifier ‘WATCH LIST’ and denoted as a ‘Lookout Qualified Person of Interest.'”
Despite this, Merchant was released at the airport and allowed to travel within the U.S. under the terms of his “significant public benefit parole,” which was due to expire on May 11. Merchant was ultimately allowed to stay in the U.S. past his parole expiration date.
Officials told Just the News that Merchant may have been allowed to enter the U.S. on such parole in an attempt by federal agents to get him to cooperate in investigations and turn others, implicated in such schemes, into their custody.
While in the U.S., Merchant was allowed to board domestic commercial flights from Houston to New York City, then from New York City to Boston, Massachusetts, and back to New York City from April through June.
Federal agents arrested Merchant on July 12 as he was allegedly attempting to fly back to his native Pakistan before the murder-for-hire plot was carried out. Merchant, prosecutors allege, was planning to lead the plot from outside the U.S., working directly with assassins he thought he had recruited.
Hunter Biden & the Romanian Connection
Quote:Special counsel David Weiss accused Hunter Biden of working for a Romanian businessman in an arrangement designed to skirt U.S. laws on foreign lobbying and avoid any “political ramifications” for his father.
The allegation — one GOP lawmakers have long fixated on — comes as part of a broader battle by Biden to bar prosecutors in the case over his alleged failure to pay taxes from using evidence detailing his work for Gabriel Popoviciu.
That Biden had worked with Popoviciu has been publicly reported for years, but the details of the arrangement as described in the Justice Department’s filing on Wednesday provided new insight into the alleged arrangement — including an allegation that the deal was structured to avoid the filings required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Biden has not been charged with violating FARA in the broader tax case, much to the chagrin of GOP lawmakers who have argued his work for numerous foreign entities amounted to lobbying.
And prosecutors in the filing do not assert that Biden violated the foreign lobbying law. Rather, they argue the details of the deal show Biden’s “state of mind and intent during the relevant tax years charged in the indictment.”
The filing says Biden and an unnamed business associate arranged for Popoviciu to pay the business partner’s entity, who “would pass approximately 1/3 to the defendant as his compensation.”
All this was done, Weiss said, because “Business Associate 1 and the defendant were concerned that lobbying work might cause political ramifications for the defendant’s father.”
The goal for Popoviciu was “to attempt to influence U.S. government agencies to investigate the Romanian investigation” into him, paying Biden and his associate more than $3 million to do so.
The filing also includes another detail also aligned with Republican complaints about Biden’s work, attacking his deal with Chinese energy company CEFC and Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
“The evidence will show the defendant performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities,” the filing states.
The DOJ filing, though, does not implicate President Biden in any of Hunter Biden’s activities.
But House Republicans, who have opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden over his family’s foreign business dealings, responded to the filing by touting their longtime probes into alleged “influence peddling,” with a focus on Hunter Biden.
The House Judiciary Committee responded with a two-word post on the social platform X: “Told ya.”
A Prisoner Swap Without the American-Russian Ballerina
Quote:Ksenia Karelina, a dual citizen of the United States and Russia arrested in January while visiting relatives in Yekaterinburg, reportedly pleaded guilty to “treason” in a Russian courtroom on Thursday.
Karelina’s “crime” was donating $51 to a U.S.-based humanitarian charity for Ukrainian victims of the Russian invasion.
Karelina, a 32-year-old resident of Los Angeles, moved to the United States in 2012 and became a citizen in 2021. She traveled to Russia to visit her parents and younger sister in Yekaterinburg in January, using a ticket purchased for her as a gift by her boyfriend. She reportedly assured him the trip would be safe and he had no reason to worry.
While she was in Russia, Karelina was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, on charges of “petty hooliganism” for using foul language at an airport. The FSB proceeded to search her smartphone and found a record of her charitable donation to Razom for Ukraine, a humanitarian group based in New York. The exact amount of her donation was $51.80.
Russian prosecutors accused the ballerina of “proactively transferring funds to a Ukrainian organization, which the Ukrainian Armed Forces subsequently used to purchase tactical medicine, equipment, weapons and ammunition.”
The small size of her donation and the humanitarian nature of the charity were deemed irrelevant, and Russia does not recognize dual citizenship, so Karelina was treated as a Russian citizen, charged with treason, and threatened with twenty years in prison.
The Russian government rebuffed efforts from Karelina’s family, American officials, and human rights organizations to secure her freedom. A Russian judge denied her appeal and request to be moved to house arrest in March. The U.S. State Department complained that it was denied consular access to the prisoner.
Karelina wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Chris Van Hardeen, in March describing the harsh conditions of her imprisonment in Siberia. She said she was forced to sleep with the lights on and was only allowed to shower once a week. She reported the guards had a habit of locking her outside in freezing cold weather for hours when she went to the roof of the jail for a breath of fresh air.
“It’s a day-by day thing. One day she wakes up very hopeful and very positive, and then other days there is no hope,” Hardeen said, relaying Karelina’s fears that she would spend the rest of her life in a Russian prison.
Karelina was marched into a closed-door Russian trial on Wednesday, where she pled guilty to the charges against her. The charges carry a sentence of 12 years to life. Russian prosecutors have indicated they seek a 15-year sentence for Karelina. Her lawyers argued such a sentence would be excessive because she has fully cooperated with investigators.
Karelina was not included in the prisoner swap deal last week that freed captive journalist Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and several other hostages in exchange for a group of hardened Russian criminals and a convicted assassin.
Pro-Democracy Activist or Chinese Spy?
Quote:A federal court in New York convicted naturalized U.S. citizen Wang Shujun Tuesday of working as an agent for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS).
Wang was accused of pretending to be a pro-democracy activist so he could spy on people actually opposed to the Communist tyranny in Beijing. He could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.
“The indictment could have been the plot of a John LeCarre or Graham Greene spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant led a double life, pretending for years to be an activist for democracy while he was secretly passing information to the Chinese government,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said after the verdict was handed down.
Wang, 75, was arrested in March 2022 along with four other individuals for “stalking, harassing, and spying on U.S. residents on behalf of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).” Their schemes reportedly ranged from interfering with U.S. elections to plotting to destroy artwork critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping.
The defendants were accused of maintaining sophisticated electronic surveillance on their victims. Even the petty scheme to trash dissident artwork allegedly involved littering the artist’s studio and vehicle with hidden cameras and GPS tracking devices.
Wang was a visiting Chinese scholar who helped establish a pro-democracy group called the “Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation” in his neighborhood of Flushing, Queens.
Hu Yaobang was a reform-minded Chinese Communist Party leader whose death in 1989 ultimately led to the Tiananmen Square protests – and China’s ensuing massacre of the protesters. Zhao Ziyang was a Party leader who opposed the use of deadly force to crush the student protests. Invoking them in the name of the foundation sent a powerful signal to sincere pro-democracy activists.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Wang began working as an agent of the MSS around 2015. The MSS saw a golden opportunity to use Wang as a spy against the genuine activists and dissidents he had cultivated a relationship with.
According to DOJ, Wang did not just spy on the people who showed up for meetings of his ersatz pro-democracy group in Queens. He also made contact with dissidents in Hong Kong, Taiwanese advocates for independence, Tibetan activists, and members of the oppressed Uyghur community in East Turkistan, which China refers to as its Xinjiang province.
Wang allegedly began supplying detailed “diaries” of his conversations with all of these people to his MSS handlers, who in turn gave him instructions to target dissidents and activists they found especially troubling. U.S. prosecutors obtained copies of his emails with his Chinese spymasters, including one where his MSS handler gave him a thumbs-up emoji for ratting out a human-rights activist critical of China.
The charges against Wang included lying to federal law enforcement officers when they asked about his contacts with Chinese officials and MSS agents. Wang was busted after spilling the details of his espionage activities to an undercover law enforcement agent.
“The defendant was a perfect stooge for the PRC, a well-known academic and founder of a pro-democracy organization who was willing to betray those who respected and trusted him,” Peace said of Wang on Tuesday.
EUROPE
Russia & Iran
Quote:Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for a restrained response to Israel's suspected killing of the leader of Hamas, advising against attacks on Israeli civilians, two senior Iranian sources said.
The message, according to the sources, was delivered on Monday by Sergei Shoigu, a senior ally of the Kremlin leader, in meetings with top Iranian officials as the Islamic Republic weighs its response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.
Tehran also pressed Moscow for the delivery of Russian made Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, the two Iranian sources, privy to the meeting in Tehran, the sources told Reuters.
In Moscow, the Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. State-run RIA news agency reported on Tuesday that Shoigu said he discussed Haniyeh's killing on his Tehran visit.
The two sources with knowledge of the matter did not provide further details on the talks with Shoigu, who was defence minister before becoming the secretary of Russia's security council in May.
They said Shoigu's visit was one of several avenues Moscow had used to relay to Iran the need for restraint while at the same time condemning Haniyeh's killing as "a very dangerous assassination", in a bid to prevent a Middle East war.
The Middle East, the sources said, was on the brink of a major war and those behind the assassination were clearly trying to trigger such a conflict.
Russia has cultivated closer ties with Iran since the start of its war with Ukraine and has said it is preparing to sign a wide-ranging cooperation agreement with Tehran.
There was no immediate comment from Iran's Foreign ministry. On Monday it said Tehran did not seek to raise regional tensions but needed to punish Israel to prevent further instability.
DIPLOMACY NO LONGER AN OPTION
In Washington, an official from the Biden administration warned on Monday of the risks of a major regional conflict. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, emphasized that the scale of Iran's and Hezbollah's response would be a key factor in determining the extent of a potential conflict.
Despite efforts by Western and regional states to persuade Iran to retaliate in a measured way, or not at all, Tehran has told foreign officials it will respond "severely" to the killing of Haniyeh in Tehran, where he attended President Masoud Pezeshkian's inauguration, four Iranian sources independently confirmed.
In Lebanon, a prominent Lebanese source close to Hezbollah said "a retaliatory strike is inevitable and diplomacy is no longer a viable option", adding Iran wants the strike to be "severe" but not lead to a regional war. However, he said, this does not rule out the possibility of a war in Lebanon between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
A Middle East-focused senior U.S. official said Washington was doing all it can "to dissuade all parties from going to a place they can’t get back from," stressing that other states in the region and Europe should do more. A Qatari official said Doha was in constant discussion with Iran to lessen tensions.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Monday that Israel must be prepared for anything, including a swift transition to offense.
Russia on Ukrainians Invading its Territory
Yeah right... And who exactly was the first one to invade another state's sovereign territory? 
Quote:Moscow on Saturday mounted a “counter-terror operation” in three border regions adjoining Ukraine to halt Kyiv’s biggest cross-border offensive in the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
Ukrainian units stormed across the border into Russia’s western Kursk region on Tuesday morning in a shock attack and have advanced several kilometres, according to independent analysts.
Russia’s army has rushed in extra troops and equipment, including convoys of tanks, rocket launchers and aviation units — though neither side has given precise details on the extent of the forces they have committed.
At least 3,000 civilians have been evacuated from Russian border areas, where emergency aid and medical supplies have been ferried in, while extra trains to the capital Moscow have been put on for people looking to flee.
“The war has come to us,” one woman who fled the border zone told AFP at a Moscow train station on Friday, declining to give her name.
Russia’s army said Ukraine initially despatched around 1,000 troops, and more than two dozen armoured combat vehicles and tanks — but it has since claimed to have destroyed around five times as many pieces of military hardware.
AFP could not verify those numbers and both sides have repeatedly been accused of inflating the number of enemy losses while downplaying their own setbacks.
Russia’s national anti-terrorism committee said late Friday it was starting “counter-terror operations in the Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk regions … in order to ensure the safety of citizens and suppress the threat of terrorist acts being carried out by the enemy’s sabotage groups.”
Security forces and the military are given sweeping emergency powers during “counter-terror” operations.
Movement is restricted, vehicles can be seized, phone calls can be monitored, areas are declared no-go zones, checkpoints introduced, and security is beefed up at key infrastructure sites.
The anti-terrorism committee said Ukraine had mounted an “unprecedented attempt to destabilise the situation in a number of regions of our country.”
Leave Doped Chinese Athletes Alone but Keep Bugging the Americans at All Costs
Quote:The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) issued a scathing statement condemning America’s top sports substance testing authority on Wednesday, blasting it as “ironic and hypocritical” for demanding more testing after Chinese athletes were found to have ingested banned substances prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics.
WADA was responding to a report in Reuters this week revealing that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the national analogous agency to WADA, had used athletes who tested positive for banned substances as informants, allowing them to continue competing so long as they went “undercover” and helped USADA identify other athletes who were violating doping regulations. It notably mentioned the use of the athletes as informants only in passing, protesting plainly that USADA had allowed the athletes “to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations.”
The tenor of WADA’s condemnation contrasts significantly to the deference the agency has granted the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA), which allowed athletes to compete at the highest levels of sport, including the ongoing Paris Olympic Games, after testing positive for banned drugs. WADA accepted CHINADA’s explanations and has bristled at mounting pressure from the sports world, led in part by sports legends such as American swimmer Michael Phelps, to universalize testing and regulations to prevent athletes who fail drug tests from competing.
According to Reuters, citing WADA, the USADA allowed three athletes – two “low-ranking” and one “higher profile” – to continue competing after failing a substance test if they agreed to help collect information on others similarly flouting anti-doping rules. The USADA confirmed the report. Its leader, Chief Executive Travis Tygart, told Reuters the measure is “an effective way to get at these bigger, systemic problems.”
“Under the world anti-doping code, to which USADA is a signatory, an athlete who ‘substantially’ assists with a doping investigation can apply to have a proportion of any ban suspended after prosecution,” Reuters noted.
The athletes in question have not been publicly named out of fear for their “safety.”
WADA responded to the report with a statement accusing USADA of attacking the “integrity of sporting competition” by attempting to find as many athletes using banned substances as possible.
“This USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect. By operating it, USADA was in clear breach of the rules,” WADA’s statement read. “Contrary to the claims made by USADA, WADA did not sign off on this practice of permitting drug cheats to compete for years on the promise that they would try to obtain incriminating evidence against others.”
WADA admitted that the world anti-doping code allows for clearance of an athlete offering “substantial assistance” in investigations, but claimed, “there is a clear process for that, which does not involve allowing those who have cheated to continue to compete while they may or may not gather incriminating evidence against others and while they could retain a performance-enhancement effect from the substances they took.”
“It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other Anti-Doping Organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years,” the WADA statement continued, “and allowed cheats to carry on competing, on the off chance they might help them catch other possible violators.”
The “other Anti-Doping Organizations” remark appears to be a reference to the ongoing scandal surrounding CHINADA’s clearance of athletes testing positive for banned substances, only made public by a report in the New York Times in April. The left-wing newspaper revealed that at least 23 athletes on the Chinese national swim team tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ), a drug used to treat heart conditions abroad but not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prior to the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Many of them competed, and some were present and competed in Paris.
CHINADA claimed that the athletes consumed the banned drug through contaminated food and thus were not liable to be sanctioned. WADA did not question the conclusion.
ASIA
Chinese Athletes Are Now Untouchable!?
Quote:A female resident of Beijing, identified only by her surname, “He,” was arrested for allegedly making “defamatory claims” about a Chinese Olympic athlete and her coach.
Police in the Daxing district of Beijing said on Tuesday that they made the bust in response to “reports from the public” about “some internet users” making defamatory comments after the women’s singles table tennis final on August 3.
“Our investigation revealed that this person maliciously fabricated information and blatantly defamed others, with an adverse impact on society,” said the Daxing Public Security Bureau.
As is often the case in authoritarian China, the speech police did not specify exactly what the detained suspect said or what might have been objectionable about it.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) did a little sleuthing on Chinese social media on Wednesday and concluded He was probably arrested for spreading rumors that one — or both — of China’s female table tennis champions was sleeping with the coach.
The match on August 3 pitted Chinese table tennis champion Chen Meng against her teammate, Sun Yingsha, also a top-rated player worldwide. Chen ended up winning the match four to two, successfully defending her gold medal with exactly the same score she racked up against Sun when she won the gold at the Tokyo Olympics.
Sun, 23, was actually the higher-ranked player in 2024, giving 30-year-old Chen the pleasure of an underdog victory.
Chinese Cargo Ship Container Exploded
Quote:Apowerful blast rocked China's busiest shipping terminal on Friday when a container exploded on a pier-side cargo ship in the country's eastern Ningbo Zhoushan Port, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Images shared on Chinese social media website Weibo and later carried by state news outlets showed smoke rising from the vessel YM Mobility moments before the explosion near its bow at around 1:40 p.m. local time.
Videos captured a large fireball and plumes of dark smoke rising into the sky. Debris, including suspected container goods, was seen scattered across the nearby pier at Beilun terminal, one of several at the port in China's eastern Zhejiang province.
The Liberia-flagged YM Mobility is owned by Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp., a Taiwanese shipping company.
Zhejiang's maritime safety authority said no casualties were reported among the dock workers and ship crew. Local media reports said the shock wave from the blast was felt over half a mile away, with witnesses saying the blast shattered nearby office windows.
Authorities said the vessel was carrying Class 5 hazardous goods, without giving further details. Chinese regulations on air and sea freight list oxidizing substances and organic peroxides in this category.
State news agencies, citing preliminary findings, said one of the containers on board the ship had caught fire, although the cause was still being investigated.
Yang Ming Marine Transport has not commented publicly on the incident and could not be reached for comment before publication.
Taiwan's Military Budget
Quote:Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te on Thursday announced a proposed defense budget of $19.76 billion in U.S. dollars for the 2025 fiscal year.
The proposal would increase military spending by 6.7 percent over 2024, reaching the highest level ever allocated for defense by the Republic of China (ROC).
“We are determined to enhance our self-defense capabilities and strengthen cooperation with our democratic partners to ensure peace and prosperity,” Lai said on Wednesday.
Lai did not specifically mention China as the main threat to “peace and prosperity,” but it is clearly the adversary Taiwan is most concerned with.
Tensions between China and Taiwan have increased steadily ever since Lai was elected to succeed fellow Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Tsai Ing-wen in January. China condemned both Tsai and Lai as “separatists,” and has sought to diplomatically isolate Taiwan ever since Tsai took office.
Lai’s record defense budget proposal was not really a radical departure from Taipei’s normal spending priorities. The new military budget is still considerably less than the three percent of GDP that is generally considered reasonable by international analysts, and Taiwan still spends more on social welfare, education, science, and economic development.
Taiwan’s military budget has increased every year for the past five years, after hitting a low of two percent of GDP in 2019. If Lai’s budget proposal is approved by the legislature before its scheduled December 1 deadline, Taiwan will rank 21st worldwide in military spending, while China is now Number Two, and the United States remains Number One.
The U.S. government has been urging Taiwan to increase spending as the Chinese threat grows. Taiwan currently gets about 99 percent of its military equipment from the United States, which is committed to defend the island if China invades.
Taiwan extended its term of compulsory military service for men from four months to one full year in January. New recruits were also told to expect more vigorous training, including combat training closer to what U.S. soldiers receive. Some Taiwanese youth responded positively to the changes, saying they were eager to defend their country and wanted their year of mandatory service to be meaningful.
SmartMatic Bribed Pinoy Authorities
Quote:A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida indicted the founder and president of voting machine company Smartmatic, Roger Piñate, on Thursday for his alleged role in a bribery and money laundering scheme related to the 2016 Philippine elections.
In addition to Piñate, the Florida federal grand jury indicted two other “executives of an election voting machine and service provider company” and a former chairman of the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (COMELEC).
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Piñate, a 49-year-old Venezuelan citizen who resides in Boca Raton, Florida, and 62-year-old U.S. citizen Jorge Miguel Vasquez, who resides in Davie, Florida, were allegedly involved in at least $1 million in bribes together with others paid to former COMELEC Chairman Juan Andres Donato Bautista.
The bribes were allegedly paid to obtain and retain business related to the provision of voting machines and election services for the Philippines 2016 elections and “to secure payments on the contracts, including the release of value added tax payments.”
Outsider candidate Rodrigo Duterte, the then-mayor of Davao City, won the 2016 presidential election. That race also saw Philippine boxing great Manny Pacquiao win a seat in the Senate that he would later leverage to make an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2022.
The case is being investigated by Homeland Security Investigations’ El Dorado Task Force Miami in assistance with the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Miami.
“The co-conspirators allegedly funded the bribes through a slush fund that was created by over-invoicing the cost per voting machine for the 2016 Philippine elections,” the Dept. of Justice stated. “To conceal and disguise the nature and purpose of the corrupt payments, the co-conspirators used coded language to refer to the slush fund and caused the creation of fraudulent contracts and sham loan agreements to justify transfers.”
“The co-conspirators then allegedly laundered funds related to the bribery scheme through bank accounts located in Asia, Europe, and the United States, including in the Southern District of Florida,” the press release continued.
According to Smartmatic’s website, Piñate, the company’s president, “played a critical role in planning and executing the world’s largest election using optical scanners (in the Philippines) and in Smartmatic winning the largest election contract in U.S. history (in Los Angeles).”
Smartmatic stated that it joined efforts with COMELEC to deploy 92,509 Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) during the 2016 Philippine general elections.
Dangerous Earthquake in Japan
Quote:Japan was hit by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on Thursday and officials have issued a “megaquake advisory” to residents.
After the earthquake his southwestern Japan, authorities issued a tsunami advisory, Fox Weather reported. However, NHK World Japan later reported that those advisories had been lifted and a megaquake advisory was put in place.
Per the Fox article:
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck off the island of Kyushu in southwestern Japan around 4:42 p.m. local time (3:42 a.m. ET) at a depth of about 15.5 miles.
…
There are no tsunami alerts issued for the West Coast of the U.S., Alaska or Hawaii.
Video footage overlooking a coastal area shows the camera shaking when the earthquake hit, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The clip also shows an numerous areas including an airport being affected by the quake:
...
MIDDLE EAST
IDF on Hamas Leader Sinwar
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is reportedly closing in on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, as he runs out of places to hide and as other senior members of the terrorist organization are eliminated.
The Jerusalem Post reported Friday:
Sinwar is almost alone at the top of Hamas. His close friends in the senior military ranks of the organization, as well as the senior officials, have been eliminated or have disappeared: Mohammad Deif, Rafa’a Salama, Ahmed Ghandour, Raad Saad, and Ayman Nofal.
…
The fact that Sinwar’s entire operational hub has disappeared makes it difficult for him, according to the IDF’s estimates, to move to hiding places, especially above ground.
…
According to the source, Sinwar’s movement area, like that of other senior officials in the organization, is getting smaller and smaller.
Sinwar is now the leader of Hamas after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran last week.
Separately, the IDF announced Friday that it had killed a Hamas commander in Lebanon, Samer Mahmoud al-Haj.
Hamas is based in the Gaza Strip but has a presence in the Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as branches in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere.
The elimination of Hamas leaders may put pressure on the group ahead of a new round of negotiations expected next week on a potential hostage and ceasefire deal that Hamas has thus far resisted.
Sinwar is thought to be using hostages as human shields to surround him and discourage Israeli attack, though if the IDF is close to him, he may be willing to trade their freedom for his life.
He has evaded Israel for 10 months, but Israel is determined to find him, dead or alive.
Terrorists Killed at Gazan School
Quote:The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released the names and photographs of 19 terrorists that were at a school compound that it struck in Gaza Saturday, amid unverified claims by Hamas that 100 people were killed.
IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement:
Since the beginning of this war, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations have been systematically abusing civilian population and infrastructures in Gaza for their terrorist activities against the state of Israel. This includes Hamas’s massive network of underground tunnels, which go under towns, hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN facilities, and are use by terrorists to command attacks, store weapons, and hold Israeli hostages captive. It also include hospitals across the Gaza Strip, which have been repeatedly infiltrated and weaponized by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and where terrorists’ tunnel shafts were found.
Increasingly, in recent months, Hamas has focused on exploiting school buildings, often where civilians are sheltering inside, to use them as military facilities, command and control centers, for storing weapons, and to execute terror attacks.
Over the last few weeks, our intelligence has been closely monitoring an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad facility, where approximately two dozen Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were operating. The names of 19 of the terrorists who were operating in this compound were published by us today. We also have intelligence indications that the terrorist Ashraf Juda Islamic Jihad’s brigade commander of the central camps, was at the compound. This military facility was embedded inside the Al-Taba’een school building in Gaza City. After we received clear intelligence of the threat posed by these terrorists, and in accordance with international humanitarian law, we took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians, including using aerial surveillance prior to the strike, and selecting very precise munitions to avoid civilian casualties. Early this morning, the IDF conducted a precision strike against the terrorists in one specific building of the compound, an area that according to our intelligence, no women and children were present. You can see in a video published by us today, that the compound is still intact, and that there is no significant cratering or damage to the main structure of teh compound.
This pattern of systematic abuse of schools for military activities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad endangers both Gazans and Israeli civilians. It must be condemned by the international community.
Following the strike, the Hamas-run government information office in Gaza published an unverified casualty count which was then shared around the world. These figures do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and they do not match the information held by the IDF.
Yayha Sinwar, the mastermind behind October 7th, the day where Hamas brutally massacred innocent Israelis, and started this war, and the man last week appointed as Hamas’s political leader, stated himself that the higher Palestinian death count helps Hamas in its war cause. Where Israel sees harm to civilians as a tragedy, Hamas sees harm to civilians as a strategy.
The IDF will operate in accordance with international humanitarian law in order to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities, and in order to bring back home all our 115 hostages — men, women, children, and the elderly — who are being held in captive [sic] over 300 days in horrific conditions. We are operating to create the conditions to bring them back home. We call on the international community to everything they can to fulfill this call.
Hamas has a habit of claiming that large numbers of civilians have been killed at hospitals and schools, knowing that the media will parrot those claims, and that Israel will face condemnation from the international community.
Indeed, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris responded by reiterating her call for a ceasefire and hostage deal — one that Israel has agreed to in principle, but which Hamas has rejected for months, hoping to use the hostages to end the war victorious.
Earlier in the war, Hamas falsely claimed that 500 people had been killed by an Israeli airstrike on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. In reality, an errant Islamic Jihad rocket hit the parking lot at the hospital, killing fewer than 50 people.
Houthis on Haniyeh's Death
Quote:The leader of the Ansarullah Yemeni terrorist organization, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, lamented the “big loss” of Hamas “political” chief Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday, vowing revenge after his departure “greatly impacted” the Middle East.
Al-Houthi’s admission that the elimination of Haniyeh from the battlefield had a significant positive impact on the war on jihadists in the Middle East follows a comment from American President Joe Biden that his death was not helpful, as well as his administration’s refusal to directly answer if Hamas losing its most important liaison to top allies — such as the regimes of Iran and Turkey — made the world a better place.
Haniyeh, who lived a luxurious life in Qatar and traveled frequently to secure funding and political support from regional Islamists, died on July 31 in his lodgings in Tehran, Iran. The Hamas leader was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian and had met with both Pezeshkian and the true powerholder in Iran, “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hours before an explosion ripped through his room, turning the presumed assassination into an embarrassment for the Iranian government.
At the time of his death, Haniyeh was a critical actor for Hamas, as he was in charge of brokering relationships with key backers — such as Iran and Turkey — as well as attempting to pressure Israel into an agreement to end its self-defense operations against Hamas in Gaza. Israel declared war on Hamas after October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and engaged in a spree of rape, torture, abduction, infanticide, and other crimes against civilians, killing an estimated 1,200 people. About 100 people are believed to be in Hamas captivity at press time.
Iran immediately blamed the government of Israel, with American backing, for Haniyeh’s death. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility, while the Biden administration claimed it had no foreknowledge of any plots or involvement in the explosion. Iranian leaders have also vowed to retaliate with a devastating attack on Israel but have yet to act at press time.
Iranian officials have also denied reports that a bomb planted in the room killed Haniyeh, insisting that an airstrike killed him. Tehran has not offered any evidence, nor has evidence surfaced independently, of projectiles in the sky before the explosion.
Al-Houthi, who typically addresses the captured nation of Yemen on Thursdays, took time out of his weekly speech to honor Haniyeh’s memory at the helm of one of the world’s most vicious terrorist groups.
AFRICA
Chinese Leadership Schools in Africa
Quote:The Chinese Communist Party is expanding its influence throughout Africa, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, by building Marxist “leadership” schools to train the next generation of dictators and their henchmen.
The newspaper relied on the scholarship of National Defence University’s Africa Centre for Strategic Studies expert Paul Nantulya, who observed that the schools in question are aligned with leftist political parties and dictators that have maintained control of their respective countries for decades, sometimes using brutal repression, and are not open to opposition parties. The flagship institution in the program is the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania, a country that the same left-wing party has governed since its independence, but Kenya recently signed an agreement with China to build a similar school.
According to the Morning Post, the agreement in Kenya was signed between the Chinese Communist Party and President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA). Ruto has strived to make overtures with China, to which Kenya is heavily indebted for joining the predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) despite Ruto being elected in 2022 on a campaign platform aggressively critical of Chinese influence in the Kenyan government.
The UDA sent a delegation to China in May to cement several collaboration proposals, among them reportedly the construction of a “leadership school,” as the Morning Post referred to it. Ruto himself was in Washington that same week, urging President Joe Biden to expand American financial aid and other cooperation initiatives with his government. Biden upgraded defense ties with Kenya to “major non-NATO ally” status during that visit.
The Kenyan government is somewhat of an outlier, by virtue of holding elections widely considered free and fair to elect Ruto president, in the list of countries working with China on initiatives to indoctrinate future Party leaders. The Nyerere school in Tanzania is a cooperative project with China but takes in students affiliated with the ruling leftist regimes of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, and Mozambique, according to scholar Nantulya. He noted that other countries with similar ideological alliances — namely, Burundi, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, and Uganda — are also seeking Chinese investment in ideological training.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
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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
