Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] British chess player Bodhana Sivanandan beat a grandmaster at the age of 10, thus setting a record. This was reported on August 15 by CNN.
"A 10-year-old girl has made history by becoming the youngest chess player ever to defeat a grandmaster," the publication states.
It is specified that the young Shivanandan, playing in the British Chess Championship, beat 60-year-old grandmaster Pete Wells in the final game.
The Indian-British player, who was 10 years, five months and three days old at the time, thus became the youngest player to defeat a grandmaster. She broke the record of American Carissa Yip, who beat US grandmaster Alexander Ivanov in 2019 at the age of 10 years and 11 months.
Sivanandan has now achieved the status of Woman International Master, one level below the Grandmaster title.
At the end of June, Norwegian grandmaster and 16th world chess champion Magnus Carlsen lost to 15-year-old Russian Maxim Ivannikov in the online tournament "Title Tuesday". The third round of the game ended on the 33rd move. Carlsen played with black pieces.
[GEO.TV] Cholera has claimed at least 40 lives in Sudan ...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans... 's Darfur region over the last week as the country weathers its worst outbreak of in years, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday. 100 percent preventable...
At a cholera isolation tent at a Sudanese displacement camp, an AFP journalist saw women and a maiden of tender years receiving intravenous fluids, while exhausted and weak patients sprawled on camp beds.
Citing rising cases of cholera which "exacerbate the worst effects of malnutrition", the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... called on all parties to "urgently" allow in international aid.
Medical charity MSF said the vast western region, which has been a major battleground over more than two years of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, had been hardest hit by the year-old outbreak.
"On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years," MSF said in a statement.
"In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week."
The NGO said 2,470 cholera-related deaths had been reported in the year to August 11, out of 99,700 suspected cases.
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[GEO.TV] More than 250 people — at least 213 of them in Buner alone — have bit the dust, with dozens more injured, as cloudbursts and relentless downpours triggered flash floods and landslides across northern Pakistain, provincial and rescue officials said on Friday.
Over 200 deaths have been reported in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 10 in Gilgit Baltistan (GB) and 19 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir ...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it Azad (Free) Kashmir. The remainder they refer to as "Indian Occupied Kashmir". They have fought four wars with India over it, the score currently 4-0 in New Delhi's favor. After 72 years of this nonsense, India cut the Gordian knot in 2019, removing the area's special status, breaking off Ladakh as a separate state, and allowing people from other areas to settle (or in the case of the Pandits, to resettle) there.... (AJK), with the toll expected to rise as the situation remains volatile.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said that 28 people have been injured nationwide, while 116 houses have been damaged — 34 partially and 14 fully in KP, 14 partially and three fully in GB, and 23 partially and 28 fully in AJK.
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] A large coronal hole has begun to form on the Sun, threatening to provoke strong magnetic storms on Earth. This was reported on August 15 by the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in its Telegram channel.
"A large coronal hole [an area on the Sun where the solar wind flow is weakened] has been growing on the Earth-facing side of the Sun for several days. Over the past 24 hours, its area and size have grown particularly rapidly, increasing by about 50% in 24 hours," the publication states.
The laboratory also specified that the speed of the solar wind in the vicinity of the Earth under the influence of this coronal hole will begin to increase on Monday, August 18, and within a few days may reach an unusually high level, exceeding the usual indicators by 2.5 times.
According to scientists, unstable geomagnetic conditions are expected on Earth throughout the next week.
Earlier, it was reported that the magnetic storm, which lasted on Earth for more than 30 hours, had ended. According to scientists, no strong disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere are expected in the next few days, and after that, the situation will depend on the activity of solar flares, which is currently at a high level.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Seismic activity is regularly recorded on the Alaska Peninsula. This was reported on August 15 by Alexander Gorshkov, chief researcher at the Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
According to Gorshkov, over the past week alone, more than 10 tremors with a magnitude of 2–3.5 have been recorded in Alaska.
“Earthquakes there are concentrated in the southern part of the state, where its capital, the city of Anchorage, is located,” the seismologist noted in a conversation with aif.ru.
Gorshkov recalled that in 1964, Alaska experienced the Great Alaskan Earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2, one of the strongest in recorded history. In addition, from 2016 to 2025, the state experienced four tremors with a magnitude of 7.1 to 7.9, which seismologists consider high.
On July 30, an earthquake measuring 8.7–8.8 occurred in Kamchatka, which was the strongest since 1952. As a result, a tsunami threat was declared in the region, and residents were asked not to approach the coast in dangerous areas. In addition, a high alert regime was introduced in the region, and a state of emergency was declared in the Severo-Kurilsky District of the Sakhalin Region.
[Breitbart] The United States will impose visa restrictions on Brazilian government officials involved in the Mais Medicos (“More Doctors”) program, an initiative linked to the Cuban regime’s longstanding slave doctor scheme, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday.
The restrictions will also extend to officials from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional subsidiary of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) that helped broker the slave doctor deal between Cuba and Brazil.
“The State Department is also taking steps to revoke visas and impose visa restrictions on several Brazilian government officials and former PAHO officials complicit in the Cuban regime’s forced labor export scheme. Mais Médicos was an unconscionable diplomatic scam of foreign ‘medical missions,'” Sec. Rubio wrote on social media.
The announcement comes hours after Breitbart News exclusively reported that the State Department would begin imposing visa restrictions on officials of other countries that have brokered deals to buy Cuban slave doctors from the communist regime.
For years, the Cuban regime has pocketed billions of dollars from its so-called “medical missions,” which consist of sending thousands of slave doctors to countries around the world. The slave doctors receive a small fraction of what each host country pays for their labor, while the Castro regime keeps the rest, funding its repressive apparatus and human rights violations against Cuban citizens.
The slave doctor business is one of the Castro regime’s main funding sources, alongside the military-controlled tourism and remittance industries — both of which the administration of President Donald Trump has recently taken action against.
Throughout the years, numerous former Cuban slave doctors have denounced the harrowing and often inhumane treatments they were subjected to and how they were forced to falsify performance records and destroy medicine to make the program seem more successful than it actually was. Defectors from the program are punished with an eight-year ban from entering their own country under penalty of prison. The ban often forces doctors to miss out on their children’s childhoods.
In the case of Brazil, the use of Cuban slave doctors is tied to Mais Medicos, an initiative originally launched in 2013 during the administration of socialist former President Dilma Rousseff, a protégé of radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Rousseff was impeached and removed from office in 2016 under corruption allegations.
Conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro has been a vocal critic of Mais Medicos, condemning the deal as early as 2013, when he served as a member of the Brazilian Congress. The Castro regime ended the program in 2018 during Bolsonaro’s administration after Bolsonaro demanded that the slave doctors be paid a reasonable salary directly, without the Castro regime acting as an intermediary. Bolsonaro also demanded that the Castro regime grant the slave doctors the freedom to bring their families with them on the “missions.”
In 2019, Bolsonaro replaced Mais Médicos with Médicos pelo Brasil (“Doctors for Brazil”), a program that did not rely on Cuban slave doctors and that allowed slave doctors still in the country to continue working in the country under better conditions.
After he returned to power for a third term, President Lula relaunched Mais Medicos in March 2023 — now rebranded as Mais Médicos para o Brasil (“More Doctors for Brazil”).
Brazilian Health Minister Alexandre Padilha responded to Sec. Rubio’s announcement in a social media post in which he claimed that Mais Médicos will “survive … the unjustifiable attacks of anyone.” Padilha also stood in defense of Pix, a Brazilian payment system currently part of a U.S. probe on Brazil’s unfair trading practices.
“The program saves lives and is approved by those who matter most: the Brazilian population,” Padilha wrote. “We will not bow down to those who persecute vaccines, researchers, science, and now two of the key figures behind Mais Médicos during my first term as Minister of Health, Mozart Sales and Alberto Kleiman.”
“In this current administration, in two years, we have doubled the number of doctors in Mais Médicos. We are very proud of this legacy, which brings medical care to millions of Brazilians who previously had no access to healthcare,” he continued. “We will remain firm in our positions: health and sovereignty are not negotiable. We will always stand with the Brazilian people.”
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said on Wednesday on social media that the Castro regime will “continue to provide services” despite the United States’ visa restrictions against governments who have “legitimate medical cooperation agreements” with Cuba.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late July identifying Brazil as a national security threat to the United States and imposed a 50-percent tariff on Brazilian goods entering the United States.
President Trump cited the “witch hunt” against former President Bolsonaro and the numerous attacks and censorship actions against conservative voices in Brazil — as well as censorship actions against U.S. nationals and U.S.-based platforms — committed by Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) Justice Alexandre de Moraes as reasons for the tariffs.
De Moraes was targeted with human rights sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act. The State Department also revoked the U.S. visas of several Brazilian Justices and goverment officials allied with de Moraes.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] After completing negotiations with US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to visit the grave of Soviet pilots in Alaska and lay flowers there. This was reported to Channel One by the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov on August 15.
The grave contains military pilots and one civilian, a Kremlin spokesman said. A wreath-laying ceremony is planned before the plane leaves the United States.
“We expect that after the completion of the entire work program, before departure, Putin will definitely lay flowers,” Peskov said, answering one of the journalists’ questions.
During World War II, the Alaska-Siberia air route was used to supply aircraft to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program.
Putin has already arrived in Anchorage to take part in the Russian-American summit. Trump's plane landed here a little earlier.
The talks will take place at the Elmendorf-Richardson military base. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said the presidents will discuss ways to achieve a long-term peaceful settlement to the Ukrainian crisis.
In addition to Putin and Ushakov, the Russian delegation included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and the President’s Special Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries Kirill Dmitriev.
“We cannot, and we will not, tell [them] that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.”
[COWBOYSTATEDAILY] The pieces might be falling into place for Wyoming's timber industry to make a strong comeback, politicians and land management officials said.
The volume of timber being cut in Wyoming might outpace the state's few remaining sawmills to meet the demand.
The increase in demand coincides with tariffs being placed on Canadian lumber, which for decades had been a main source of wood in the United States.
Last week, the U.S. Commerce Department announced a significant increase on countervailing duties of Canadian lumber imports, jumping an already high tariff rate to 35%, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Long-term success of expanding the Wyoming timber industry hinges on building back the ''local timber industry,'' instead of trucking logs to mills in other states, Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson.
Wyoming timber products could include ''finger-jointed two-by-four'' boards, as well as wooden posts and poles, and firewood, he said.
Johnson made his remarks on Tuesday before the Wyoming Legislature's Select Federal Natural Resources Committee.
Optimistic Outlook
He and other land management officials gave optimistic reports as they informed the committee about the outlook for logging and lumber milling in Wyoming, due to recent state and federal policy changes.
The so-called ''One Big Beautiful Bill,'' signed into law July 4 by President Donald Trump ...Oh, noze! Not him!... , clears the way for extractive industries in Wyoming, including timber, officials said.
Trump earlier this year also signed Executive Order 14225, ''Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.''
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) credited that for $218,000 in Wyoming timber sales, totaling 3.4 million board feet.
Gov. Mark Gordon recently signed a similar state executive order — which Wyoming lumber industry insiders said gives them hope for the future of the industry here.
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[Zero] Fewer women in the United States are opting for birth control pills than before, according to KFF data.
Where 33 percent of women aged 18 to 49 years old said they used oral contraceptives in 2022, that had ticked down to 29 percent in 2024.
As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, after male condoms, the pill is still the most commonly used form of contraception in the U.S.
Recently, there has been a growing number of influencers on TikTok criticizing different forms of hormonal birth control and promoting tracking fertility cycle apps instead.
This goes against experts’ advice, which states that contraceptives such as the pill and IUDs are safe and effective and that risks have been exaggerated online.
This is a trend that has been seen in other countries too.
#2
The Pill works by fooling a woman's body into thinking she's already pregnant.
This affects mate selection. When she comes off the pill and wants to have children, she has a different point of view and suddenly finds her husband is no longer desirable.
This is well-documented in the Manosphere.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
...a disputed territory lying between India and Pakistain. After partition, the Paks grabbed half of it and call it 
...Oh, noze! Not him!...
