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A drone strike in the Lebanese capital of Beirut has killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri. The Palestinian militants and local security sources blamed the attack on Israel, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has previously vowed to retaliate against such strikes.

Al-Arouri was among seven people killed in a blast in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh on Tuesday, local media reported. Lebanese security officials told Reuters and other news outlets that an Israeli drone was responsible.

Al-Arouri was a founding commander of Hamas’ military wing, and at the time of his death was the deputy chairman of the group’s political bureau.

In keeping with their policy of silence on extraterritorial assassinations, Israeli military officials refused to comment on the attack, which marked the first time that the Jewish state struck Beirut since the 2006 war with Lebanon.

Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, described al-Arouri’s killing as a “cowardly assassination” by Israel, which “proves once again the abject failure of this enemy to achieve any of its aggressive goals in the Gaza Strip.”

While Israel has been waging war against Hamas for almost three months, it has refrained from any large-scale attacks on Lebanon, instead engaging in tit-for-tat clashes with Hezbollah militants along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Hezbollah, a Shi’ite paramilitary and political group based in Israel, has described itself as “at war” with Israel, although Nasrallah has stated that the group aims to wage a limited campaign aimed at tying up Israeli forces near the border, thereby preventing their deployment to Gaza.

However, Nasrallah pledged in August that “any assassination on Lebanese soil against a Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, or Palestinian will be met with a decisive response” from his fighters. Nasrallah was scheduled to make a televised address on Wednesday, but the address has now been postponed, according to multiple media reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in November that he had instructed Israeli intelligence agents to “act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are.” In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Netanyahu had green-lit a plot to target Hamas officials in Lebanon, Türkiye, and Qatar.

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https://www.rt.com/news/590049-hamas-deputy-killed-beirut/

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Police in France and Germany made hundreds of arrests over New Year’s Eve as mobs torched vehicles and shot fireworks at officers. Nevertheless, authorities in both countries described the night as more “peaceful” than last year.

Authorities in Berlin deployed 4,500 police officers to the streets of the German capital in anticipation of unrest, while 90,000 officers were deployed throughout France, including 6,000 in Paris.

In Berlin, police broke up a group of around 500 people throwing fireworks at each other near Alexanderplatz, before remnants of the group began shooting pyrotechnics back at the officers. Several people were arrested for making Molotov cocktails in Neukolln district to the south, police said.

Video footage showed large groups of men – described as being from immigrant backgrounds – shooting fireworks at buildings and passing traffic.

By Monday morning, police had arrested around 390 people. Fifty-four officers were injured, DW reported, 30 of them by fireworks. Berlin’s fire department described the night as a “normal New Year's Eve,” while State Senator for the Interior Iris Spranger said there were “comparatively few police injuries,” thanks to the large-scale deployment of officers.

Last year, by contrast, mobs of immigrant youths torched vehicles in Neukolln and attacked scores of bystanders, police, and firefighters with fireworks.

Similar scenes played out in Paris and other French cities this year, where nearly 750 vehicles were set on fire, according to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. Police across France arrested 381 people, with 40 officers suffering minor injuries. “Major festivities took place peacefully, particularly in Paris,” Darmanin wrote on social media, adding “it’s calmer than last year.”

Security had been ratcheted up across Europe in the run-up to the Christmas and New Year period, following a spate of Islamist attacks in France and terrorist threats against Christian churches and Jewish sites in Germany. Multiple arrests were made before Christmas in the Austrian capital of Vienna and the German state of Saarland, while three suspects were arrested on Sunday in connection with an alleged plot to attack the historic cathedral in Cologne.

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https://www.rt.com/news/590008-paris-berlin-new-year/

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Only violent savages could stoop so low as to attack civilians on New Year’s night, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, referring to a Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk that left several people dead.

On Monday, minutes after midnight, Ukraine’s military launched a massive rocket strike on the center of Donetsk, firing at least 15 missiles, according to local officials. Denis Pushilin, the head of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said citing preliminary data that the attack killed four people and injured 13 others.

TASS news agency reported, citing emergency services, that the Ukrainian strike killed a war correspondent, with another one wounded, without giving any personal details.

Zakharova condemned the attack, writing on Telegram several hours later that “only terrorist brutes” could unleash a barrage on civilians celebrating the New Year.

According to local media and Russian Telegram channels, some of the projectiles damaged the Donbass Palace hotel in the center of the city. Videos circulating on social media show the damaged facade of the building with shattered windows, and destroyed vehicles parked nearby. Other clips filmed inside the hotel show chaos in rooms and corridors, with tables in the dining hall laden with food in anticipation of New Year’s celebrations.

Other images on social media show several rocket fragments lying on the ground, with one photo depicting a pierced and shattered ceiling in a local kindergarten.

Ukraine has routinely struck civilian targets and infrastructure in Donetsk and other Donbass cities since 2014, when fighting first erupted in the region after a Western-backed coup in Kiev.

The new attack comes on the heels of another Ukrainian barrage on the city of Belgorod, inside the Russian border, which killed 24 people, including four children, and injuring 108 others. Moscow vowed to retaliate, with the Defense Ministry later saying that the Russian military had successfully carried out high-precision missile strikes against Ukrainian military officials who had planned and carried out the attack

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https://www.rt.com/russia/589999-ukraine-terrorist-brutes-donetsk-shelling/

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A massive rocket strike targeting the Russian border city of Belgorod on Saturday was launched on the direct order of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, a Moscow security source has told RT’s Russian-language service. The attack claimed the lives of 24 people and left more than 100 injured.

According to the source, the Ukrainian leader put the head of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Kirill Budanov, in charge of the operation. In October, Russia’s Investigative Committee identified Budanov as one of four suspected masterminds of over 100 “terrorist attacks” targeting Russian civilian infrastructure. In December, a Moscow district court ordered his arrest on terrorism charges.

Budanov has openly advocated Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil, including territory that Kiev recognizes as being under Moscow’s sovereignty. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) identified Budanov as the mastermind of the October 2022 bombing of the Crimean Bridge, which involved a powerful explosive device smuggled into Russia by an unsuspecting truck driver.

Saturday’s attack on Belgorod was launched by the notorious Kraken Regiment, the source told RT. The unit is composed primarily of veterans of another infamous Ukrainian ultranationalist force, the Azov Regiment, and other neo-Nazi fighters and volunteers.

Based in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, located less than 100 kilometers away from Belgorod, the Kraken Regiment is formally a Special Forces unit under the command of the GUR and is thus answerable to Budanov. The Russian authorities have previously accused Kraken fighters of torturing and killing Russian POWs. Russia’s Defense Ministry also claimed in 2022 that Kraken forces had executed around 100 fellow Ukrainian soldiers who had abandoned their positions at the time.

The attack on Belgorod was led by a notorious ultranationalist Kraken commander identified as Sergey Velichko, according to the RT source. Moscow placed a bounty on Velichko in August 2022. At the time, the Russian Interior Ministry offered a reward for any information about him and another nationalist commander, Kostantin Nemichev.

Both men had previously served with the neo-Nazi Azov Regiment, which was declared a terrorist organization by Russia’s Supreme Court in June 2022. They were also put on the international wanted list, as well as Russia’s ‘ten especially dangerous wanted criminals’ list. The fighters have since joined the Kraken Regiment.

On Sunday, the Russian military conducted a string of high-precision missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military facilities and officials in response to the attack on Belgorod. Decision-making centers and other military targets in Kharkov were targeted, it added. The Russian strikes reportedly managed to eliminate some of the Ukrainian intelligence and military officials involved in the planning of Saturday’s attack on Belgorod, the Defense Ministry said. Some fighters with the Kraken Regiment were also killed, the officials added.

According to the RT source, Velichko was initially presumed to have been killed in the counterstrike, but this has not been confirmed.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/589987-zelensky-order-belgorod-attack-civilians/

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Former President Donald Trump has warned that Democrats will use migrants to win the 2024 election and have been “signing them up to vote” at a “rapid pace.”

Trump made the prediction in a post to Truth Social on Friday evening.

“It’s becoming more and more obvious to me why the ‘Crazed’ Democrats are allowing millions and millions of totally unvetted migrants into our once great Country,” Trump’s post began.

“IT’S SO THEY CAN VOTE, VOTE, VOTE,” the Republican frontrunner for the nomination continued. “They are signing them up at a rapid pace, without even knowing who the hell they are.”

Trump concluded, “It all makes sense now. Republicans better wake up and do something, before it is too late. Are you listening Mitch McConnell?”

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/trump-warns-democrats-will-use-migrants-win-election/

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Kiev employed rockets carrying cluster bomb warheads in its strike against the Russian border city of Belgorod, the Russian Defense Ministry stated on Saturday, labeling the attack a ”crime.” This weapon type has been banned by more than 110 nations under a UN convention dating back to 2008, due to the extreme danger it poses to civilians. Its use in densely populated areas can lead to devastating consequences.

The “Kiev regime” used several multiple rocket launchers to hit the city earlier on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement on Telegram. One was a Ukrainian Olkha system, which is capable of firing 12 guided rockets in one volley, hitting targets at a maximum range of 70 to 130 kilometers, depending on the type of system. The Olkha rockets were equipped with cluster bomb warheads, the ministry claimed.

A Czech-made RM-70 Vampire – an upgraded heavier version of the Soviet BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher – was also used, according to the Russian military.

Russian air defenses intercepted most of the incoming projectiles, but several hit the city, the ministry said. It added that “in case of a direct hit by Olkha missiles equipped with cluster munitions… the consequences would be immeasurably more severe.”

Earlier, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said that the strike claimed the lives of 14 people, including two children, and left 108 people, among them 15 children, injured.

The Russian military accused Kiev of seeking to draw public attention away from its failures on the front line, as well as provoking Moscow into retaliatory strikes of a similar nature. The ministry maintained that Russia only strikes military targets and infrastructure that is directly relevant to these military facilities.

“This crime will not go unpunished,” the military said.

Cluster munitions are highly controversial due to their design. They comprise dozens of small submunitions that can be scattered over a large area by an initial detonation, which can then also explode, causing a large number of smaller secondary blasts. Some, however, typically fail to detonate and remain a hazard for years or even decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in July that the use of cluster bombs should be regarded as a war crime. At the time, Washington had announced that it would supply Kiev with cluster bombs out of its Cold War-era stockpiles, justifying its decision by claiming that Ukraine had pledged not to use them in populated areas.

The US government also claimed that both Russia and Ukraine had been using their own cluster munitions throughout the conflict. Nevertheless, the move sparked widespread criticism even among America’s allies, including Canada, Germany, and the UK.

Putin said at the time that Moscow reserved the right to use its own cluster munitions in response. He added that Russia had previously refrained from using the weapons even when there was a shortage of other types of munitions.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/589943-kiev-attack-cluster-munitions/

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The Ukraine conflict poses a grave threat to NATO security, US President Joe Biden has said, warning that Washington could be drawn in.

In a statement on Friday, Biden condemned Russia’s latest missile barrage on the neighboring country, calling it a “brutal attack” and claiming that Moscow wants to “obliterate Ukraine and subjugate its people.” The Russian Defense Ministry had earlier said its forces conducted 50 “group” strikes and a single “massive” barrage in recent days, successfully hitting military infrastructure and troop positions.

Against this backdrop, the US president said that “the stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine” and affect the security of both NATO and Europe. “When dictators and autocrats are allowed to run roughshod in Europe, the risk rises that the United States gets pulled in directly. And the consequences reverberate around the world,” he added.

Reiterating that the US “cannot let Ukraine down,” he urged Congress to approve his supplemental funding request, which includes more than $60 billion for the embattled country.

Republicans have been reluctant to give the greenlight for several weeks, demanding that Biden do more to bolster security on the southern US border. Meanwhile, the White House has repeatedly warned that without congressional approval, authorized funds for Ukraine will soon run out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that Biden’s claims that Moscow could attack NATO were “complete nonsense.” He suggested that his American counterpart understood that as well, but had to cling to this narrative to justify his “misguided” policies on Russia.

In addition, Russian officials have for decades voiced concerns about the alliance’s creeping expansion, with Putin citing Ukraine’s plans to join NATO as one of the key reasons for the intervention against that country. Moscow has also repeatedly called Western countries “direct participants” in the conflict due to their arms shipments to Kiev.

Anatoly Antonov, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, weighed in on Biden’s latest comments, saying the US reaction to the missile barrage “demonstrates the effectiveness of the special military operation.” He also described the president’s statement as an admission that Washington and its allies are “waging a hybrid war against Russia” in a fruitless campaign to defeat it on the battlefield and cripple its economy.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589924-us-drawn-ukraine-conflict-biden/

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Washington has long been eager to open “a second front” against Russia in the South Caucasus by interfering in regional affairs, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said. His comments came amid an all-time low in ties between Russia and the US, due to Washington’s push to support Kiev in its fight with Russia.

In an interview with RIA Novosti on Saturday, the senior diplomat weighed in on tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan fueled by the decades-long stand-off over Baku’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The self-proclaimed republic was officially dissolved in September after a successful large-scale Azerbaijani military operation in the predominantly Armenian enclave.

Galuzin noted that it was up to the two countries to decide whether to sign a peace treaty to end the conflict that dates back to the early 1990s. However, he signaled that Russia “cannot remain indifferent to what is happening in the South Caucasus,” recalling that Moscow has very close cultural and historical ties with ex-Soviet republics and opposes any foreign meddling there.

Washington makes no secret of the fact that it sees the South Caucasus as a springboard for opening a ‘second front’ against Russia. This is fundamentally at odds with the true interests of the people of the region. 

The diplomat stressed that only the countries of the region could define its future, arguing that no outside party would usher in peace and stability there. “Betting on ‘miraculous’ Western assistance is delusional and dangerous,” Galuzin said, noting that Western interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Serbia’s breakaway region of Kosovo have brought only devastation and misery.

“The pattern is simple: first, they meddle somewhere under the guise of nice slogans, and wreak havoc. And when it all heats up, they flee, leaving scorched earth behind,” he suggested.

Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Baku’s rule in the early 1990s. The following decades were marked by two major wars and intermittent fighting between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. Meanwhile, in recent months relations between Russia and Armenia, which remains an ally of Moscow in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), have soured as the latter pursued closer military ties with the US, including staging joint exercises.

After Baku regained control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Yerevan also accused Russian peacekeepers of failing to protect ethnic Armenians in the enclave.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow’s military could only observe the ceasefire in the region. He also suggested that Armenia had given Azerbaijan a free hand in the area after it recognized Baku’s sovereignty over the enclave.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/589939-us-second-front-caucasus-russia/

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By Stefanie Ladner, The Western Journal

Your car is smarter than you think.

And it is not a violation of privacy for your car to automatically store text and call data from your cell phone, following a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Modern convenience often comes with a price of sacrificed privacy, but in this case, the plaintiffs claimed they were unaware of what they were signing away when they connected their smartphones to their cars.

A class-action lawsuit brought against the car manufacturers Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Volkswagen asserted that under the Washington State Privacy Act, drivers’ privacy had been violated due to the fact that “the vehicle’s system downloads all text messages and call logs from Plaintiffs’ cellphones as soon as they are connected.”

“If text messages or call logs are deleted from a cellphone, the vehicle nevertheless retains the communications on the vehicle’s on-board memory, even after the cellphone is disconnected. Vehicle owners cannot access or delete their personal information once it has been stored,” the court said of the plaintiffs’ complaint.

In its defense, Ford argued that drivers of their vehicles had given “implied consent” for the storage of personal data, adding that it provides for a “factory reset” procedure on its website to wipe the memory board of all stored data.

Ford was also able to prove that it did not have access to, nor could it store, any text or call data from customers’ vehicles.

The privacy concern from the plaintiffs, therefore, came down to the risk of the third-party data retrieval company, Berla.

Berla produces hardware and software, marketed to law enforcement clients, that can extract stored phone data from connected vehicles.

On its own website, Berla claimed that by using its data retrieval products, “having access to a suspect’s connected vehicle is the next best thing behind having the actual phone itself.”

The 9th Circuit found in favor of Ford, and subsequently the other car manufacturers, because the plaintiffs had failed to prove an actual injury for the alleged breach of privacy — which is required under law to receive damages.

While Berla’s products might provide a whole new avenue of evidence collection by law enforcement, police must still go through the due process procedures of receiving a court order to obtain such data.

Despite the lawsuit finding in favor of the car manufacturers, consumer advocates are still very concerned with a wide array of privacy pitfalls with vehicle technology.

A September report by Mozilla News’ *Privacy Not Included team called modern cars the “worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy.”

The team researched 25 car brands and concluded, “Every car brand we looked at collects more personal data than necessary and uses that information for a reason other than to operate your vehicle and manage their relationship with you.

“They can collect super intimate information about you — from your medical information, your genetic information, to your ‘sex life’ (seriously), to how fast you drive, where you drive, and what songs you play in your car — in huge quantities. They then use it to invent more data about you through ‘inferences’ about things like your intelligence, abilities, and interests.”

Even more alarming, they discovered that 84 percent of the car brands they reviewed share or sell that data, according to the report.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/car-stores-text-messages-law-enforcement-can-retrieve/

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By Stefanie Ladner, The Western Journal

The Asian longhorned tick is rapidly gaining a foothold in the United States and “poses a serious threat to livestock” according to the USDA.

Since its discovery and proper identification in 2017, the coverage area of the tick has spread to 19 U.S. states, the USDA reported.

The deadly consequence of their expansion was shared by Ohio State University researchers in the Journal of Medical Entomology: Two cows and one large bull died from exsanguination by the ticks, meaning drained of blood to the point of death.

Each unfortunate cow likely endured tens of thousands of bites.

While only the size of a sesame seed, these tiny ticks have huge population potential, with the ability to form massive colonies in a short amount of time.

While collecting samples in the twenty five acre Ohio pasture, the Ohio State University researchers were able to collect almost 10,000 ticks in just 90 minutes.

Extrapolating the collection data led the researchers to estimate the population in the entire field exceeded 1,000,000 ticks.

According to researchers, no other species of tick in North America can populate like this species can.

The tick’s secret weapon is the ability for females to lay 2,000 eggs at a time — without the necessity of a male.

Part of assessing the risk posed by these exponentially reproducing ticks includes an analysis of disease spread to both livestock and humans.

According to the CDC, the Asian longhorned tick has been found on both animals and people but, thankfully, seems to prefer animal hosts to people.

The CDC also said the invasive tick is unlikely to contribute to the spread of Lyme disease, according to one experimental study.

However, these ticks have the ability to “carry and spread” certain diseases, should they come in contact with them.

The CDC said research is ongoing as scientists try to learn more about the tick’s pervasiveness and potential risk to both livestock and people.

“It’s possible that the Asian longhorned tick found here won’t carry the same types of pathogens [or any pathogens] as it has in other parts world, but we are paying attention to it,” said Mark J. Soloski, PhD, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/invasive-asian-cow-killing-tick-rapidly-crept-across/

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The Iranian navy has upgraded its firepower with the addition of domestically produced missiles that have a range of more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and can be redirected to other targets after being launched.

Navy chief Admiral Shahran Irani unveiled the new weapon on Sunday, calling it a “smart missile that can change targets mid-mission,” state-run media outlet IRNA reported. The so-called “Talaeiyeh” missile also can select a complex flight plan on the way to its target to achieve “surprise at the highest possible level and engage with the enemy,” he added.

The navy took delivery of another newly developed missile, called the “Nasir,” with similar “smart” capabilities and a range of more than 100 kilometers, as well as new reconnaissance helicopters, drones and tugboats. All of the weaponry was designed and produced domestically.

The new missiles arrived amid escalating tensions between Iran and the US over the Israel-Hamas war. On Saturday, US officials accused Iran of being “deeply involved” in attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in the Red Sea – an allegation that Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri denied. The Pentagon claimed on Sunday that Tehran had orchestrated a drone attack on a Japanese-owned chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.

Tehran’s new military hardware was delivered to a naval base in Konarak, a port city on the Gulf of Chabahar in southern Iran. Both of the new missiles can be launched from warships. Irani said the Nasir would be installed on a fixed missile launcher in Konarak port.

Iran boasts one of the world’s most advanced missile programs, and it’s one of the leading developers of attack drones. The country unveiled the Khorramshahr-4, a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers, in May. Defense Minister Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani said the Khorramshahr-4 could carry warheads weighing up to 3,300 pounds and penetrate enemy air defense systems by evading radar detection.

Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi warned on Saturday that the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar and other key waterways could be closed to shipping traffic if the US and Israel continued to commit “crimes” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589620-iran-unveils-new-missiles/

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US federal agents arrested a California man on Friday for allegedly threatening to detonate a “dirty bomb” at an agency field office in Los Angeles. In a series of letters to the agency, the man compared himself to the notorious ‘Unabomber’, Ted Kaczynski.

Mark William Anten, 52, was arrested at his home and charged with making threats by interstate communication, a felony offense that carries a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison, the US Department of Justice announced in a press release.

Beginning in July, Anten “sent numerous threatening communications to the FBI,” the press release claimed. After supposedly telling agents that he was voted most likely in high school to become the next ‘Unabomber’, he allegedly sent them an email in November stating that he was working on a “manifesto.”

The FBI said its agents told Anten to stop contacting them, but he continued. In a series of messages on December 5, Anten allegedly threatened to “unabomb” the FBI field office in Los Angeles, attaching an image depicting the results of a Google internet search for “how to make a dirty bomb.”

“I can go on a mass murder spree. In fact, it would be very explainable by your actions,” he allegedly wrote, signing his email “supermax or death,” an apparent reference to the kind of super-maximum security prison where Kaczynski was locked up from 1998 until his death by suicide earlier this year.

A child prodigy and mathematical genius, Ted Kaczynski became the youngest-ever professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. After leaving his position and withdrawing from society in the early 1970s, Kaczynski committed a string of bombings between 1978 and 1995. Mailing explosives to academics, businessmen, and others he considered leaders of industrial society, the recluse killed three people and maimed 23 more. He was arrested in 1998 and sentenced to life in prison.

Kaczynski’s manifesto, ‘Industrial Society and its Future’, was published by the Washington Post and New York Times in 1995. The document railed against the alienating effects of technology and called for a revolution that would return humanity to a state of harmony with nature. It has since become something of a cult classic, celebrated by radical environmentalists, anarchists, and more recently, the anti-big tech right.

Following Kaczynski’s death, tech billionaire Elon Musk tweeted that the ‘Unabomber’ “might not be wrong” in his assessment that “the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/589618-unabomber-fan-arrested-fbi/

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The attack on the Nord Stream pipelines commissioned by US President Joe Biden was primarily aimed at Germany rather than Russia, prompted by fears that Berlin might not follow Washington’s lead amid the Ukraine conflict, Seymour Hersh claims.

The veteran investigative reporter published a new article on the affair on his Substack blog on Friday.

The sabotage of the pipelines was ordered weeks before the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in February 2022, Hersh wrote, adding that the American operatives assigned to it believed it was meant to deter Moscow. The attack on the pipelines was ready by late May, but the “the plan was called off on short notice by Biden,” the journalist claimed.

Instead, the team was tasked with planting explosives on the pipelines, which could be detonated remotely at a later date, he said. The timing of the attack, which ultimately occurred in late September 2022, appeared to be aimed at Berlin rather than Moscow.

“Biden’s timing seemed aimed at Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz. Some in the CIA believed that the president’s fear was that Scholz, whose constituents were lukewarm in their support for Ukraine, might waffle with winter coming on and conclude that keeping his people warm and his industries prosperous was more important than backing Ukraine against Russia,” Hersh wrote.

The destruction of the pipelines played a major role in Germany’s economic hardships – the country, which once “dominated the world’s markets with its luxury cars and industrial machinery… is now in a process of what some have called rapid deindustrialization,” Hersh said. Apart from this, Germany has experienced a surge in popularity of right-wing parties, including Alternative for Germany (AfD), and its economic woes have contributed to this.

However, Washington’s “most controversial factor in Germany’s recent hard times” – the Nord Stream sabotage – remains largely ignored in the West, according to the journalist.

“In the ten months since I published my first account of the Nord Stream sabotage the German government and media, as in the United States, have either ignored or provided alternate accounts of the how and why the pipelines were destroyed. The idea that a sitting US president would deliberately destroy a vital source of energy and of a close ally has been, as Freud would say, taboo,” Hersh wrote.

The veteran journalist provided his first detailed account on the pipeline attack on February 8, 2023, publishing a lengthy article relying on anonymous sources “with direct knowledge of the operational planning.” The allegations prompted strong denials from Washington, with US National Security spokesman John Kirby dismissing the report as a “completely false story” at the time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in March that he “fully agrees” with Hersh’s findings, suggesting the attack only benefited Washington to reinforce its position as a competing gas supplier to Europe.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589614-bidens-scholz-nord-stream/

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Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden initially hoped to conceal the Chinese balloon incident earlier this year from the public and even the Congress, a new report by NBC News has claimed. Officials feared that the story could spark public outcry and damage relations with China.

In early February, the US shot down what it described as a suspected Chinese ‘spy balloon’ off the coast of South Carolina, claiming that Beijing was using it to “surveil strategic sites” in the country. Later, however, the Pentagon admitted that the vessel had not been collecting intelligence.

China described the balloon as a “civilian airship” that strayed into US airspace due to force majeure circumstances. At the time, while US media emphasized potential Chinese aggression, the incident led to a significant strain in relations between Beijing and Washington.

According to an NBC article published on Friday, the Air Force commander in charge of American airspace, General Glen VanHerck, told Biden’s top military adviser, General Mark Milley, on January 27 that for around ten days, they had been tracking a mysterious object flying over the Asia-Pacific. In a previously unreported phone call, VanHerck said the Pentagon planned to send US military jets to assess the object.

According to NBC, Biden was not briefed on the balloon until January 31. He then asked the military to develop a plan for how to deal with it.

On February 1, as the balloon was flying over the US, NBC News asked the White House for comments, and only then did officials organize a briefing for lawmakers, with the public learning of the incident a day later.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” a former senior US official briefed on the incident told NBC.

The outlet also said that White House officials privately complained that the political reaction over the balloon was disproportionate to the threat it posed to national security, arguing that the subsequent damage the scandal caused to relations with Beijing was a far greater threat than the balloon itself.

The recent publication sparked an outcry from both the public and lawmakers, raising questions over US intelligence capabilities and the way the incident was handled.

“As if it wasn’t enough that the Chinese spy balloon flew over Montana’s nuclear missile fields unabated, now we find out that the admin intended to hide it from Congress & the American people. The Biden administration must be held accountable,” Senator Steve Daines said in an X (formerly Twitter) post on Saturday.

A senior Biden administration official denied the allegation that there was an attempt to keep the balloon a secret.

“To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking” the official said, referring to intelligence gathering on the balloon. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/589602-white-house-hide-china-spy-balloon/

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The disruption of cargo ships in the Red Sea due to attacks by Houthi militants from Yemen is causing global shippers to redirect vessels, potentially leading to increased prices for goods.

Swedish furniture giant IKEA announced this week that it was exploring options to secure the availability of its products that are mainly delivered through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal from Asian factories to Western markets.

“The situation in the Suez Canal will result in delays and may cause availability constraints for certain Ikea products,” Oscar Ljunggren, a spokesperson for Inter IKEA Group, told Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Abercrombie & Fitch is planning to shift from sea freight to air transport whenever possible to mitigate disruptions, as reported in an email to suppliers.

Earlier this week, Danish shipping group Maersk said it had rerouted vessels around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope due to the heightened risk of attacks, reducing the effective capacity of an Asia-Europe trip by 25%. German transport company Hapag-Lloyd followed suit. However, sending vessels around Africa increases a round-trip journey by nearly two and a half weeks, inevitably lowering shipping capacity and raising costs.

The Suez Canal is a vital transport artery that handles about 15% of the world’s shipping activity, including nearly 30% of global container trade. The recent attacks, occurring amid the Israel-Hamas war, have triggered a new trade and shipping emergency, reminiscent of the 2021 incident where one of the largest container ships blocked the canal for six days, resulting in a daily cost of $9.6 billion to global trade.

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https://www.rt.com/business/589448-red-sea-crisis-yemen-inflation/

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US President Joe Biden has said that he “can’t think of one” former president who should be immune from criminal prosecution. His comment came after the Supreme Court declined to hear a case that would have decided whether former President Donald Trump could be tried for instigating the 2021 Capitol Hill riot. 

Asked by a reporter whether “any president at all” should be shielded from criminal charges, Biden replied on Saturday that he “can’t think of one.”

One day earlier, the US Supreme Court rejected a petition by government prosecutor Jack Smith to fast-track a decision on whether Trump could be tried over a speech he gave to his supporters before the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill. Prior to the incident, Trump told his followers to “fight like hell” against Biden’s electoral victory, which Congress was certifying that day.

Smith alleges that Trump’s speech – during which the then-president also encouraged his supporters to demonstrate “peacefully and patriotically” – provoked the riot. Smith charged Trump in August with conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Trump’s lawyers argue that such speeches were part of “his official responsibilities as president,” and that he is therefore immune from legal consequences. Trump himself has dismissed Smith’s case as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the immunity issue will now be decided by a Washington, DC appeals court in January, with the losing side certain to take the case back up to the Supreme Court. This process will almost certainly delay Trump’s trial past its projected March 4 start date, potentially stalling it until after next year’s presidential election.

With the US economy flagging and Biden’s approval ratings stubbornly low, Biden has tried to portray Trump as an existential threat to democracy ahead of the two rivals’ looming electoral rematch. In a memo circulated earlier this week, Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, accused Trump of “election denialism,” adding that “We are treating this election like it will determine the fate of American democracy – because it will.”

Trump’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, shot back that “Crooked Joe Biden is an existential threat to democracy by weaponizing lawfare and disenfranchising voters on a wide scale.”

As well as leading the January 6 case, Smith is also overseeing the prosecution of Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents, while the former president is facing state-level charges in Georgia and New York, as well as numerous civil lawsuits. 

Biden is currently the subject of an impeachment inquiry led by congressional Republicans, with the probe centered around his alleged influence-peddling and involvement in his son’s foreign business dealings.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589611-biden-trump-immune-prosecution/

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Japan has agreed to supply Patriot missiles to the US after ending a ban on military exports imposed under the country’s pacifist constitution in 1947. The move will help shore up Washington’s stockpiles eroded by the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

The arms sale to the US, confirmed on Friday in Tokyo, marks Japan’s first export of lethal weaponry since World War II. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries manufactures Patriot missiles under license from US defense contractors Lockheed Martin and RTX.

Although the Japanese-made interceptor missiles won’t go directly to Kiev, they may enable Washington to send more US-made Patriots to Ukraine.

“In taking the action, we hope to contribute to defend a free and open international order based on the rule of law, and to achieve the peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters after the Japanese Cabinet agreed to overturn the export ban. The Foreign Ministry said the missile deal would further strengthen the Japan-US alliance.

Although Kishida insisted that “there is no change to our principle as a pacifist nation,” US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that “the scope, scale and speed of Japan’s security reforms have been unprecedented.” He said Tokyo is undergoing a “once-in-a-generation defense modernization.”

The export decision came on the same day that the Japanese Cabinet approved a 16% jump in defense spending, to a record high. The fiscal 2024 military budget of 7.95 trillion yen ($55.8 billion) also will require approval from Japan’s parliament.

Kishida announced a five-year military buildup in December 2022 that could make Japan the world’s third-biggest defense spender, behind only the US and China. Such outlays were once thought unthinkable under Japan’s US-authored constitution, under which Tokyo gave up not only its right to wage war, but also to possess the weapons beyond those needed for a minimal level of self-defense.

The overturning of Japan’s export ban could pave the way for F-15 fighter jets and other weaponry produced by Japanese companies under US licenses to be sold to Washington, the UK, and other Western allies.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589592-japan-patriot-missiles-us-ukraine/

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From a Pentagon lobster tank to a transgender monkey study, the US government found a wide range of ways to waste taxpayer dollars in 2023, Senator Rand Paul has revealed in a report highlighting $900 billion of reckless spending.

Paul released his annual ‘Festivus’ report on Friday, saying Washington continued to fund “endless wars” and send money to foreign countries, even as the national debt ballooned this year from $30 trillion to nearly $34 trillion. “We borrow $200 million every hour, we borrow $3 million every minute, and we borrow $60,000 every second,” he said.

The report gave examples such as a $2.7 million grant that was used to study Russian cats that were forced to walk on a treadmill in a St. Petersburg lab after their brain stems were snipped. More than $477,000 was spent on a transgender monkey study in which the male victims were feminized with injections of female hormones. Another study that Paul found wasteful, funded through a $1.7 billion agricultural research program, found that the fur color of dogs did not affect their rectal temperatures after being walked on a hot day.

Part of a $12 million grant program was used to study the sleep habits of monkeys given methamphetamines in the morning, while $3.7 million went to gauge the propensity of monkeys to engage in gambling. In the latter experiment, researchers removed parts of the animals’ skulls and injected tracers to monitor their reactions as the monkeys gambled between low-risk and high-risk options shown on two screens. The government also paid $33.2 million to the contractor that fed and housed the nearly 4,000 monkeys kept on a government-owned island off South Carolina for future use in lab experiments.

Paul gave several examples of abuses in Covid-19 relief initiatives, including an $800 billion program in which small employers were paid to keep workers on their payrolls. Scammers claimed the money for fictitious employees, in some cases verifying their identities with pictures of Barbie doll faces. The government’s verification system failed to detect the fake mugshots.

An estimated $38 million in Covid-19 payments went to people who the government knew to be dead, Paul said. A grant program that was supposed to help the owners of entertainment venues stay in business reportedly paid out more than $200 million to famous music artists and their touring companies. The payments included $8.9 million to rapper Lil Wayne, $10 million to Chris Brown, and $8.6 million to rock band Smashing Pumpkins.

Overseas outlays included $6 million to help boost tourism in Egypt. The Pentagon spent more than $8,000 on a lobster tank, and it wasted a combined $170 million by improperly storing armored vehicle treads, hydraulic transmissions, and turbine engines, Paul said.

The senator noted that the federal government spent $659 billion just to cover interest costs on its debt in its latest fiscal year. “We borrow from China to pay the interest on funds we couldn’t afford to spend in the first place,” he said.

Festivus, which was made famous on the American TV sitcom Seinfeld, is a secular December 23 holiday on which celebrants air their grievances and eat meatloaf.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589590-rand-paul-festivus-waste/

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Russian supplier of Bitcoin mining solutions BitСluster is building a 120-megawatt (MW) data center in Ethiopia, the company has announced on its website.

According to a press release issued on Thursday, the facility will be located in the capital city of Addis Ababa, on the territory of the Kilinto high-voltage substation, and will comprise 30,000 square meters.

The commissioning of the new data center will take place in January 2024, BitСluster said, noting that transformers are currently being connected.

The report highlighted that the engineering and technical conditions of the data center meet the requirements of the most modern mining devices.

“100% of the data center’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources, specifically from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the largest hydropower project in Africa, with a capacity of 5.15 GW,” the press release reads.

The new energy infrastructure of the Kilinto high-voltage substation will reportedly ensure “uninterrupted power supply to the facility with the expected uptime 99%.”

BitCluster pointed out that the scale of the project allows it to be a full-cycle service center, thereby saving time and money on fixing faulty devices in-house, which makes mining more efficient.

“Ethiopia, with its hydropower potential, will undoubtedly become a new place of attraction for global mining,” co-founder of BitCluster Sergey Arestov projected.

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https://www.rt.com/africa/589461-russia-crypto-mining-center-ethiopia/

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US President Joe Biden has signed the country’s largest ever military budget into law. The $886.3 billion bill gives American troops a pay raise, but includes only a fraction of the military aid requested by Ukraine.

Biden signed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Friday, after it passed Congress with bipartisan support last week. At $886.3 billion, the bill allocates 3% more money to the Pentagon than last year’s NDAA, which came in at a then-record $858 billion.

Biden said that he signed the bill despite certain “concerns” with its contents. He condemned a section prohibiting the use of US government money to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to prisons in the US or other countries, and criticized provisions that require the White House and Pentagon to hand over “reports and plans” to Congress for oversight.

The bill also reauthorizes Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until April. The act allows US intelligence agencies to conduct warrantless wiretapping of foreign communications, despite the FBI admitting to using it to illegally surveil American citizens more than 280,000 times in 2020 and 2021. Several Democrats and Republicans opposed the reauthorization, with Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, complaining earlier this month that it was inserted into the NDAA “without a vote or debate.”

The NDAA includes $300 million in military aid for Ukraine over the next year, which the Pentagon is to spend on procuring arms and ammunition for Kiev from private contractors. This program, called the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, is one of the mechanisms by which Biden has been bankrolling Ukraine’s military. It has been used to buy $3 billion worth of weapons to date.

However, $300 million falls dramatically short of the $61 billion in direct military aid that Biden has promised to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky under a separate $105 billion spending bill. This bill remains stalled in Congress, with Republicans vowing to block its passage unless Biden includes substantial changes to immigration law and measures beefing up security along the US-Mexico border.

The US spends more than twice as much on its military as it did 20 years ago. Former President Barack Obama is the only US leader in recent history to reduce military spending, bringing the Pentagon’s budget down from $752 billion in 2011 to $633 billion in 2015.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589571-biden-signs-military-budget/

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Uganda is facing significant external pressure due to its anti-LGBT legislation, pastor and activist Martin Ssempa told RT in an exclusive interview on Saturday. He claimed the US in particular was deploying economic measures in an attempt to force the African nation to change its stance.

Ssempa, the founder of Straight Nation, an organization dedicated to protecting and promoting African culture and faith, stated that the West is attempting to impose “immorality, obscenity, and indecency” on his country.

In particular, Uganda is “under tremendous pressure because they [the US] have instructed the World Bank to deny us financial services,” after the African nation passed its Anti-Homosexuality Act earlier this year, Ssempa told RT.

Washington has “instructed the African Growth and Opportunity Act not to do business with Uganda because Uganda has come up with a law to stop the promotion of homosexuality,” he added.

The pastor claimed the US wants to ban the East African country’s coffee, cotton, and copper trade if officials do not reverse their stance on homosexuality.

Such actions are “continuing to create the diminishing of the credibility and the respectability of the American empire, the European empire, because we increasingly are seeing it as decadent, as in need of great moral change,” Ssempa insisted.

Washington announced an expansion of its travel ban on Ugandan officials on December 4. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the government in Kampala to “make concerted efforts to uphold democracy and respect and protect human rights.”

In May, Uganda enacted the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023, a law that allows capital punishment for “aggravated homosexuality” and offenses such as the transmission of HIV through gay sex. Consensual same-sex relationships are also subject to penalties of up to life in prison.

The US State Department imposed visa restrictions in June for those supporting the anti-LGBT legislation, claiming that anyone behind human rights violations in Uganda must be held to account. In addition, Washington has excluded Uganda from its major trade program, the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has repeatedly stated that his country will not surrender its principles and independence due to intimidation.

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https://www.rt.com/africa/589249-us-uganda-lgbtq-law/

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The EU has reportedly sent at least 215 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to the dumpster since they were first purchased at the height of the pandemic, an analysis by Politico has revealed. In an article on Sunday, the outlet estimated that the junked jabs cost the bloc’s taxpayers as much as €4 billion ($4.37 billion).

Following the approval of the first coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, in 2021 the EU hastily entered a contract with the US pharmaceutical giant to purchase 1.1 billion doses - a decision that was applauded at the time but later turned out to have been excessive and untimely. That contract effectively forced EU countries to buy the doses despite the fact that the pandemic was already winding down. As noted by Politico, efforts to donate the excess to developing countries had also failed due to logistical issues and falling demand.

Over the course of the pandemic, the EU ultimately received at least 1.5 billion doses; an estimated 3 jabs per person. However, the member states, according to Politico’s calculations, ended up discarding an average of 0.7 jabs for every member of the population, with Estonia and Germany being the most wasteful, throwing away nearly one dose per inhabitant.  

The outlet admits that its calculations are only estimates because governments have been reluctant to actually report or reveal the scale of the waste. However, Politico insists that its calculations are likely underestimated, if anything.

The EU’s wastefulness and questionable deal with Pfizer have also come with political blowback. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been under fire ever since it emerged that she had privately communicated with the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO Albert Bourla via text messages and phone calls while the deal was still being negotiated.

The Commission has refused to comment on the issue and has claimed that Von der Leyen’s text messages with big pharma on deals worth multiple billions of dollars could not be found. 

Meanwhile, Poland and Hungary, which have refused to accept any more vaccines, are now being sued by Pfizer for non-payment, while in Romania, prosecutors are looking to try the country’s former prime minister and two health ministers for causing over €1 billion in damages to the state through unnecessary vaccine purchases.

Despite the reported wastefulness, the jabs will continue to flow to the EU under the Pfizer contract at least until 2027. The bloc was previously set to receive an additional 450 million doses in 2023 but under a revised deal in May, that total was brought down and spread over the next four years. Brussels, however, has not clarified how many doses are still yet to be received or how many each country will have to buy.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589256-eu-threw-away-vaccines/

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The North Korean Defense Ministry has accused the US and South Korea of preparing for “nuclear war,” warning that any use of force against North Korea would be “met with a preemptive and devastating response.” The ministry’s statement came after Pyongyang’s forces test-fired a ballistic missile.

The missile was launched off North Korea's east coast on Sunday, and fell into the sea 20 minutes after blast-off, according to the Japanese coast guard.

Shortly after the launch, the defense ministry released a statement accusing the “US and South Korean military thugs” of ramping up preparations for “nuclear war,” citing a meeting of the US-South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group in Washington on Friday, after which the White House said that the US would use “the full range of US capabilities, including nuclear,” to defend South Korea from an attack by the north.

The ministry’s statement also condemned the arrival of the USS Missouri, a nuclear-powered submarine, in South Korea on Sunday, and described military drills held in August by American and South Korean forces as “a blatant declaration of nuclear confrontation.”

“We will never stand idly by and watch the provocative actions of the United States,” the ministry stated, adding that North Korean forces are prepared to “thoroughly neutralize the attempt by the United States and its followers to provoke nuclear war.”

“Any attempt by hostile powers to use force against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea will be met with a preemptive and devastating response,” the statement concluded.

After a brief detente during the latter part of former US President Donald Trump’s term in office, North Korea ramped up its missile testing program following Joe Biden’s inauguration, and has conducted more than 100 launches since the beginning of 2022. The US, meanwhile, has increased the scale and frequency of its military exercises with South Korea, while the White House has warned Pyongyang twice this year that a nuclear first strike by the north "is unacceptable and will result in the end of the (Kim Jong) Un regime.”

North Korea successfully put a spy satellite into orbit in November, and claimed a week later that it had captured “detailed” images of American military installations, aircraft carriers, and the White House. South Korean spies claim that the north is preparing to carry out its first nuclear test since 2017 some time next year.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589224-north-korea-nuclear-response/

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US intelligence agents have been searching for almost three years for a binder containing information on the so-called ‘Russiagate’ investigation, CNN reported on Friday. Former President Donald Trump wanted the folder declassified and made public, but his own officials reportedly obstructed this process, before the documents “vanished,” the network said.

The binder was compiled by House Republicans in 2018, and elements that have been made available since have shown that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign – which morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘Russiagate’ probe – was predicated on the false premise that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

While around a fifth of the binder’s contents have been published in unredacted form, a small section contained “raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents,” CNN claimed, citing anonymous sources. The US intelligence agencies never revealed what was actually in this section, and according to CNN, the CIA would only allow the Republicans to view the source files in a safe in the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Nevertheless, the “intelligence community” claimed that these files proved that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016” aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of election and boosting Trump’s campaign.

In the days before he left the White House, Trump ordered the binder’s contents declassified. According to CNN, this sent a wave of panic through the US intelligence agencies. CIA Director Gina Haspel, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone all rushed to Capitol Hill “to speak to congressional intelligence leaders about their deep concerns of Trump possibly releasing the material,” CNN reported.

It is unclear how the release of this material would have impacted the agencies, although the fact that Trump wanted it released to Republican lawmakers and conservative journalists suggests that it would, like the rest of the binder’s contents, have bolstered his argument that the Russiagate investigation was a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

One copy of the binder made it to the White House shortly before Trump left office, CNN’s sources said. The president reportedly ordered final redactions to be made and instructed his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to start sending copies to reporters. A copy was delivered to conservative journalist John Solomon, CNN claimed, only for a Secret Service agent to be dispatched the following day to take it back to the White House.

The binder was not among the files found during the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last year, and CNN claimed that Meadows most likely has it in his possession, which Meadows’ lawyer denies. The US government is actively seeking to retrieve the binder, CNN reported, although it is unclear why the network’s sources chose to speak to the press about the search now, more than two years after it began.

CNN journalists Jeremy Herb, Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Evan Perez, and Zachary Cohen all contributed to the report. All have been known to publish information leaked to the network by spies during Trump’s term in office, with Bertrand a key player in boosting false allegations against the president during the Russiagate panic.

Trump’s former director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, described CNN’s latest scoop as a “partisan attack” on Trump from within the intelligence community, while Republican pollster Rich Barris called it “a continuation of the Russia hoax.” It’s “incredible how they just keep on keeping on with the same tactics,” he added.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589175-cnn-trump-russia-documents/

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The Netherlands should not send more war aid to Kiev if it leaves the Dutch military unable to defend the country, Geert Wilders, who leads the conservative Party for Freedom (PVV), said in parliament on Wednesday.

The comment came as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was in the US pleading for more military funding, while a €50 billion aid package was stalled in the EU.

“We believe we shouldn’t give military support to Ukraine while we are unable to defend our own country,” the Dutch lawmaker said in a parliamentary debate.

In a shock victory, Wilders’ PVV party won a plurality in the country’s parliament in November, gaining 37 seats out of 150.

Two of Wilders’ potential coalition partners, the center-right New Social Contract (NSC) and the Farmer-Citizen Movement, have also expressed reservations about funding Ukraine’s warchest and its potential accession to the EU, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The Netherlands has been one of Kiev’s key sponsors in its ongoing conflict with Russia. In November, Amsterdam sent five F-16 fighter jets to the European F-16 Training Centre in Romania, where Ukrainian pilots are being trained to fly the American-made warplane.

Overall, the Netherlands said it plans to commit 12-18 jets to train Kiev’s pilots as part of its military aid.

On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban used his right of veto to block a €50 billion European Commission package for Ukraine. The Hungarian leader said he won't support the package until Budapest gets the funds that are being withheld from Hungary, in a radio interview on Friday. Slovakia’s new government has also rejected a plan to send more military aid to Kiev.

Washington, Kiev’s biggest war sponsor, is pushing Ukraine to adopt a more defensive military strategy for a “tighter budget,” according to a report by the New York Times. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged that Kiev’s counteroffensive had not achieved the “desired results.”

US Senate Republicans blocked a further $60 billion in funding to Kiev last week, demanding stricter US border controls in exchange. Speaking in the White House on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden admitted that without this supplemental funding, the US is “coming to an end” of its ability to help Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in a national Q&A session on Thursday, remarked that Russian troops “to say it humbly, are improving their positions” along the entire front line. Earlier in December, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated Kiev’s losses at more than 125,000 troops since the start of Ukraine’s push in June.

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https://www.rt.com/news/589129-geert-wilders-netherlands-ukraine-aid/

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