News of the World

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Hurriquake: 5.5 Magnitude Earthquake
in Los Angeles During Historic Tropical Storm

A 5.5 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles on Sunday afternoon while Southern California experiences a historic tropical storm from Hurricane Hillary.

Reports indicate that the epicenter occurred two miles north of Ojai near Santa Barbara. No indication of any severe damage as of yet.
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People immediately hit social media to express their disbelief over experiencing an earthquake at the same time California deals with a once-in-a-lifetime tropical storm that has sparked a state of emergency.
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Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom already declared a state of emergency this weekend over Hurricane Hillary.

“Today, Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency for much of Southern California to support Hurricane Hilary response and recovery efforts as the state continues mobilizing and coordinating resources ahead of the storm’s forecasted impacts starting today,” the press release said.

NYT: DOJ Planned to Let Hunter Biden
Off the Hook Until Whistleblowers Emerged

The New York Times exposed the inside dealings of Hunter Biden’s attorneys with senior officials at DOJ, who had constrained U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss even as Garland was testifying to Congress that Weiss had full authority to act in the case.

The Times reported that not only did the whistleblowers stop the cover-up, but that Hunter Biden’s lawyers now want them to be prosecuted for speaking out against his special treatment — a violation of President Biden’s promise to protect whistleblowers:

Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute. While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
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As the testimony from the I.R.S. agents took hold, Mr. Biden’s legal team felt the ground shift beneath them. The U.S. attorney’s office suddenly went quiet.
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Key figures that emerge from the Times narrative are Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, who has been accused of interfering on Hunter Biden’s behalf; and Christopher J. Clark, a well-connected lawyer for Hunter Biden.

The whistleblowers, IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary A. Shapley Jr. and IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, told the House of Representatives that prosecutors would not let them pursue Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, and had sometimes tipped off the president’s son about impending searches or interviews.

Zelensky Claims Netherlands to Send Entire Fleet
of F-16 Fighter Jets After Meeting with Dutch PM

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy has claimed that the Netherlands will send all 42 of its F-16 fighter jets after he met with outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday.

In his second visit to the Netherlands since the Russian invasion last year, Mr Zelensky toured a military airbase in Eindhoven on Sunday morning, where globalist lame-duck Prime Minister Mark Rutte showed off his fleet of F-16 fighter jets, which have been cleared by the Biden administration to be sent into battle in Ukraine, with Washington having final say over where they are deployed given that they are made in the United States.
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“Prime Minister Mark Rutte and I reached an agreement on the number of F-16s to be transferred to Ukraine once our pilots and engineers have completed their training. 42 jets. And this is just the beginning. Thank you, Netherlands!”

However, despite Zelensky’s proclamation, the Dutch Ministry of Defence has so far refused to confirm exactly how many F-16s it would be sending to Kyiv, with 42 representing the country’s entire stock of the American-made jets.

The Dutch government has also refrained from giving a specific timeline as to when the warplanes will be delivered...

Judge Dismisses Hunter Biden Tax Charges in Scrapped Plea Deal Formality

Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss requested the dismissal last week in order to bring new charges in California or Washington, D.C., where Biden has lived, after a previous plea deal collapsed and remained unsalvageable.

“After the hearing, the parties continued negotiating but reached an impasse,” Weiss wrote in court filings last week, according to the Hill. “A trial is therefore in order.”

The Washington Post reported that efforts to negotiate a new plea deal have “foundered” over Hunter Biden’s insistence on immunity against any new charges and the federal government’s insistence that any immunity offered would only apply to additional tax charges between 2014 and 2019.
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For many months, IRS and FBI investigators have been frustrated with Weiss’s handling of the case, believing it should have been investigated and prosecuted more aggressively, people familiar with those discussions said.

That broader probe includes examining whether Hunter Biden violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. The act requires that lobbyists and others who work on behalf of foreign entities or governments register with the U.S. government.
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According to the outlet, prosecutors wanted to take the immunity provision out of the diversion agreement, but Biden’s team called that a deal-breaker.

On last Thursday, China felt like it had something to complain about...

‘Asian NATO’
China Seethes over United States-South Korea-Japan Summit

Chinese officials on Thursday seethed over the trilateral United States-South Korea-Japan summit scheduled to be held at Camp David, Maryland, on Friday, denouncing the United States for scheming to create an “Asian NATO” and warning South Korea it could pay a steep price for angering China.

The Camp David summit is expected to include a security dialogue between President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. This will feature discussions about China’s territorial aggression, China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, and North Korea’s ballistic missile threat. Proposed responses are reported to include improved intelligence sharing and more joint military exercises.

Although the United States, South Korea, and Japan have discussed their mutual security concerns at various international conferences, Friday’s meeting will be the first formal trilateral summit between them and the first international meeting to be held at Camp David since 2015.
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“China has noticed some exclusionary groupings being assembled for the so-called ‘regional security’ only to intensify antagonism and undermine the strategic security of other countries. China firmly opposes such practices,” fumed the Chinese embassy in Washington.

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday denounced the Camp David summit as a “mini-NATO” that will be “destructive to regional security.”
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The Global Times eventually settled on quoting North Korean officials who railed that the Americans were pushing Asia to “the verge of a nuclear war outbreak” by helping South Korea shore up its defenses against Pyongyang’s incessant threats.

China’s Economic Disaster
Property Giant Evergrande Files For Bankruptcy in U.S.

Titanic Chinese property developer Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States on Thursday, the culmination of two years of distress as China’s troubled property market slides further into crisis.

Evergrande was once China’s largest property developer and its rise was a symbol of how important the indebted real estate sector had become to China’s economy. Some estimates say the sector accounts for 30 percent of China’s gross domestic product.

Real estate investment and home ownership became an important focus for precautionary savings in China, a place to stash excess income in a country seen by its own populace as having few safe outlets for investment. Owning real estate also plays an important role in China’s cultural as a status symbol, making the collapse of Evergrande even more important.

Evergrande filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in Manhattan. Chapter 15 makes bankruptcy protection under U.S. law available to foreign companies. Much of Evergrande’s corporate debt was held by U.S. and European institutional investors.

Evergrande has been under intense pressure since 2021, when it first defaulted on its bonds.