News of the World

[kyonides]

Biden aides find another batch of classified documents at different location

A second haul of classified documents belonging to President Biden have been located, a new report revealed Wednesday — two days after the White House admitted secret papers were kept at an office the commander-in-chief used after leaving the Obama administration.

NBC News reported the new documents were found at a separate location from the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, where an initial tranche of 10 sensitive files — some of them marked “top secret” — were retrieved on Nov. 2, 2022.
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The first batch of 10 documents included intelligence memos and other materials concerning Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, CNN reported Tuesday. The papers were dated between 2013 and 2016 and mixed in with Biden family documents, including details on the funeral arrangements for the president’s late son, Beau.

Biden made his first public comments about the matter Tuesday during a news conference in Mexico City, saying he was “surprised” to learn that records from the Obama White House had been found at his office in the Penn Biden Center — which he used for almost two full years after leaving the vice presidency.
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Chicago US Attorney John Lausch, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, reportedly has submitted a preliminary report on the documents to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is not clear whether Lausch only reviewed the documents recovered from the Penn Biden Center or whether he had access to any other documents that may have been found.
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While Democrats and Biden allies have tried to absolve the 80-year-old president of wrongdoing by claiming that the documents were immediately turned over to the National Archives upon their discovery, that does not explain why the papers were allowed to leave the White House and be kept out of federal custody for almost six full years.
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“If you believe a special counsel’s necessary to assure the public about the handling of classified documents by Donald Trump, you should apply a special counsel to the mishandling of classified documents by President Biden when he was vice president,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News.
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“Did the @FBI raid the Biden Center?” asked the House Judiciary Committee, a reference to the Aug. 8 sweep that removed dozens of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago.

The mystery of the location of that new batch of classified documents have been revealed! 

Classified Documents Found in Biden’s Home: President’s Lawyer

After the discovery of materials with classified markings at the Penn Biden Center in Washington—Biden worked out of the center from 2017 to 2019—lawyers for the president searched Biden’s residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Richard Sauber, one of the lawyers, said in a statement released by the White House.

Those two homes in Delaware are “the other locations where files from his Vice Presidential office might have been shipped in the course of the 2017 transition,” or the transition of Biden from vice president to a private citizen, according to Sauber.

During the search, the lawyers discovered documents with classified markings in a storage space inside the garage at the Wilmington residence. Additionally, a document marked classified was found in an adjacent room.

No classified materials were found at the Rehoboth Beach home, according to Sauber.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was immediately notified and the lawyers arranged for the department to take possession of the documents, Sauber said.

 And Biden had criticized Trump for keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago while he still kept his own batch at Wilmington.

New York City Nurses End Strike as Deals Struck With Hospitals

Thousands of striking New York City nurses have reached tentative deals with hospitals and will return to work after a three-day walkout over demands to increase nurse-to-patient ratios they said had led to overstretched staff and undercut patient safety.

Negotiations ran into the late hours of the night Wednesday before tentative deals were struck with Mount Sinai Health System and Montefiore Health System, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) said in a statement.
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The nurses association said both hospitals agreed to “enforceable safe staffing ratios” and, as a consequence, “there will always be enough nurses at the bedside to provide safe patient care, not just on paper.”

Widespread staffing shortages led to overburdened employees and burnout, negatively impacting the quality and safety of patient care, the nurses argued.
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The striking nurses will be back on the job Thursday morning, with both hospitals agreeing to immediate return-to-work agreements.
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Montefiore Medical Center said it had sought to find a quick resolution to the issues raised by the striking nurses.
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Montefiore said all surgeries and procedures and outpatient appointments for Jan. 12 and after would proceed according to schedule.

The new staffing ratios take effect immediately at Mount Sinai, where nurses said they had won “wall-to-wall safe staffing ratios for all inpatient units.”

At Montefiore, nurses won new staffing ratios in the Emergency Department and enforcement of safe staffing levels in all units by way of financial penalties for non-compliance.

Terms of the new agreement with Montefiore, as cited by Fox News, include a 19.1 percent wage increase, an increase in over 170 nursing positions, and adding more registered nurses and nurse practitioners in the emergency departments.

Mount Sinai said in a thread it had offered nurses a 19.1 percent pay hike, a new paid holiday, better health care benefits, and higher nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

Russian Forces Claim Victory in Soledar, Set Sights on Bakhmut

Russian forces are reportedly advancing on the flashpoint town of Bakhmut having claimed victory in the nearby town of Soledar—assertions denied by officials in Kyiv.

“We have made clear progress,” Igor Kimakovsky, a spokesman for the Moscow-backed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), claimed on Jan. 12.
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He went on to claim that Russian forces had also made gains in the vicinity of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Avdiivka.
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Russian forces deployed in the area include DPR militiamen and the Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization directed by the Kremlin.

On Jan. 11, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, declared that Russian forces were now in possession of Soledar.
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Officials in Kyiv, meanwhile, have dismissed Russian claims of victory in Soledar as “propaganda,” saying the town’s fate remains undecided.
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Known for its expansive salt mines, Soledar sits roughly five miles northeast of Bakhmut, a transport hub that Kyiv relies on to resupply its forces on the eastern front.

Military analysts say the fall of Bakhmut (Artyomovsk in Russian), where fighting has raged for the past several months, would severely disrupt Ukrainian supply lines.

It would also pave the way for a Russian advance on the towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, key Ukrainian strongholds to the northwest.
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On Jan. 11, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced sweeping changes to the command structure of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, now in its 11th month.

According to a ministry statement, General Valery Gerasimov has been appointed supreme commander of operations, replacing General Sergey Surovikin.

Under the new command structure, Surovikin—who assumed the top post last October—will return to his previous role as commander of Russian aerospace forces.

Navy Secretary Warns Arming Both US and Ukraine May Become ‘Challenging’ in Next 6 Months

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro warned on Jan. 11 that arming both Ukraine and the United States may become challenging in the coming months amid a shortage of weapons.
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While the secretary noted that the Navy is not “quite there yet,” he added that if the conflict goes on for another six months or a year, “it certainly continues to stress the supply chain in ways that are challenging.”

The majority of U.S. weapons given to Ukraine are land and not naval weapons.

Del Toro told reporters that Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks has been working “very closely with [the defense] industry, to motivate them to find out what their challenges or obstacles are to be able to increase their own production rates.”
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Del Toro’s remarks came shortly after Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, also addressed the conference and accused defense companies of using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for delaying weapons deliveries.
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The funding—the biggest U.S. assistance package to date for Kyiv—includes $225 million in foreign military financing and directs the Department of Defense to draw down from its stockpiles $2.85 billion in military equipment.

It also includes $682 million in foreign military financing to allies in Europe to help incentivize and backfill donations of military equipment they’ve made to Ukraine.

 So now the US has to pay the Europeans to make donations to Ukraine!? Does that make any sense?