[IsraelTimes] The Norwegian government says that it will contribute $24 million to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the same day that Israel banned the group from operating on Israeli territory. $24 million won't even last past the first three transfers
“Gaza is in ruins, and UNRWA’s help is more necessary than ever,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide says in a statement. “It is extremely dramatic for Palestine that Israeli laws come into force that in practice can prevent UNRWA from working.”
Yes, it is. So Norway’s money will have to go to support Palestinians sequestered in refugee camps around the Middle East, but not in Israel or the Palestinian territories.
Starting Thursday, UNRWA is banned from operating on Israeli soil and contact between it and Israeli officials is forbidden. Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the ban late Wednesday.
Israeli officials have repeatedly accused UNRWA of being a cover for terror groups and undermining the country’s security. The hostility intensified in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, with accusations that a number of UNRWA employees participated in the assault.
[IsraelTimes] Two Hamas terrorists who participated in the killing and abduction of female surveillance soldiers at the Nahal Oz post on October 7, 2023 were eliminated by troops before the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip took effect, the IDF says.
An airstrike last month killed Haytham Hazem Hijazi Rajab, a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force in the terror group’s Shejaiya Battalion, according to the army.
Rajab had participated in the attack on the Nahal Oz post, and was involved in numerous more attacks on troops in Gaza amid the war, the IDF says.
The military also confirms that it took out Hamas terrorist Muhammad Abu Aseed in a September strike; it cleared a report on his killing earlier Thursday.
Abu Aseed was killed alongside other members of the terror group, the army says.
A member of Hamas’s Shati Battalion, the terrorist was involved in the attack on the Nahal Oz post and was seen abducting surveillance soldier Naama Levy, who was released last week.
The IDF waited until all seven abducted surveillance soldiers returned to Israel before publishing information about the strikes.
[IsraelTimes] A senior Hamas official says the group will continue to govern the Gaza Strip until a Palestinian alternative is found, underscoring its survival after 15 months of devastating war.
Speaking to The Associated Press in Cairo on Thursday, Taher Nounou says the 12-day-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas means that “practically, we can say that the war is over.”
But, he says, the end must be confirmed by reaching an agreement on the truce’s second phase, which would see the return of remaining living hostages and a complete Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.
Nounou says the group is determined to make the second phase of its ceasefire with Israel a success, but holds out the possibility that Israel could break off talks and resume fighting in Gaza.
Negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the ceasefire’s second phase are due to begin by Monday, but the two sides remain far apart.
“We’re determined — along with the Egyptian and Qatari mediators — to make this stage a success,” he says.
Asked if Hamas believes it won the war, Nounou says, “The Palestinian people were not defeated… The enemy did not achieve its goals.”
Israel had sought to eliminate Hamas’s ability to govern or constitute a military threat, and to recover its hostages.
Nounou says Hamas agreed to an Egyptian proposal that it hand over the running of Gaza to a “community support committee” made up of independent technocrats. It also accepts the creation of a national consensus government that would govern both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he says, while claiming that both ideas were rejected by Fatah, which dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
“Until one of the two options is adopted, there will be no vacuum. The current [Hamas-led] administration will bear its responsibility towards our people. And this is what is happening right now,” he said.
Nounou is a member of Hamas’ political bureau and media adviser to the group’s leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya. Both men are based in Doha, Qatar.
[IsraelTimes] Terror group appears to violate US-brokered truce days after IDF struck weapons convoy in southern Lebanon
The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday said it shot down a surveillance drone launched by the Hezbollah terror group toward Israel.
No sirens sounded amid the incident, the military noted in its statement, adding: "The IDF will not allow terror activities by the Hezbollah terror organization in Leb ...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade.... , and will act to remove any threat to Israel or its citizens."
It was the first such incident since a ceasefire deal went into effect in late November, after more than a year of fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group, and a violation by Hezbollah of the agreement, which forbids the terror group from operating south of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Israel. The deal allows Israel to respond to imminent threats.
According to the military, the drone Thursday was intercepted by the Israeli Air Force using a ground-based air defense system before it crossed the border into Israel.
The incident came in the wake of an Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... on a Hezbollah weapons convoy on Tuesday, and reports — unconfirmed by the military — of an Israeli dronezap Wednesday.
[IsraelTimes] Hebrew media reports purport to offer insight into how some hostages were treated in Gaza, apparently based on testimony of recently released female troops, the last of whom were freed earlier today.
According to Channel 12 news, Liri Albag, who was freed on Saturday, tried to scuttle her planned release due to the fact that Agam Berger was not being let go as well. Eventually Albag’s captors “relented” and told her they were taking her to film a propaganda video. Instead, they took her to the Red Cross for release. Berger was freed earlier today.
The channel reports that Albag and Berger also refused their captors’ orders to move into the tunnels, and were instead held above ground, though conditions were still very poor. The two were forced to cook for their captors, but not allowed to eat the food, and were moved to different locales at least 10 times.
The reports, which are also carried by Ynet and elsewhere, indicate that experiences varied, with some having had sporadic access to radio and television, and others completely cut off. While many hostages were held in pairs or groups, others, like Arbel Yehoud, who was released today, were held by themselves. Showers could be a once-per-month affair, and even when allowed to rinse off, hostages were only allowed to use freezing water.
Some hostages reportedly attempted to fast on Yom Kippur and avoid eating bread during Passover.
The hostage that is a source of the information says Gazans they met seemed okay, and sometimes even pleased, with the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, but did regret and mourn the loss of previous Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to the reports. Both Sinwar and Haniyeh were killed by Israel.
[IsraelTimes] Abbas Araghchi’s office says he’ll ‘hail victory of Palestinian people’ over Israel with ‘legendary resistance’ during Gaza war
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was visiting Qatar on Thursday to meet leaders of Tehran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas, a ministry statement said.
The ministry said he would meet senior Hamas officials “to hail the victory of the Palestinian people through 16 months of legendary resistance” in the Gaza Strip.
Araghchi also met Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani as part of talks with “Qatari officials on current developments in the region,” the Iranian foreign ministry said.
[NYPost] The murder of a US Border Patrol agent near the Canadian border appears to be linked to a radical leftist trans turban cult accused of killings across the country.
Around a week before the Jan. 20 attack, federal law enforcement had been surveilling German national Felix "Ophelia" Bauckholt and University of Washington student Teresa "Milo" Consuelo Youngblut.
Staff at a Lyndonville, Vermont motel alerted authorities about seeing the duo with a firearm and black tactical clothing.
When law enforcement visited them, the pair claimed to be looking at property in the area and promptly checked out of the motel on Jan. 14, according to court documents.
Then, on Inauguration Day, Border Patrol agent David Maland stopped their car in Coventry, Vermont.
Youngblut allegedly shot at Maland, who was killed, and border agents returned fire, killing Bauckholt. Youngblut is in jug.
Authorities now say the guns used by Youngblut and Bauckholt are owned by a person of interest in other murders — and connected to a mysterious cult of transgender "geniuses" who follow a trans leader named Jack LaSota, also known by the alias "Ziz."
Bauckholt was a biological male who identified as trans and used feminine pronouns. He was an award-winning youth math genius from Freiburg, Germany, who later graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Around 2021, he was hired as a quantitative trader at Tower Research Capital in New York. It is believed Baukholt was in the US on an H-1B visa. The Department of Justice says he was armed in the car and tried to aim his firearm before being rubbed out.
Youngblut, who is accused of firing the surprise shots that killed Air Force veteran Maland, was injured by returning fire.
Youngblut is a biological female who identifies as trans and lists having neo-pronouns as "xe/xem/xyrs" on social media. Youngblut was a University of Washington student studying computer science.
Youngblut graduated from the prestigious and woke north Seattle private institution Lakeside School, where Bill Gates also attended.
Youngblut’s family had reported her missing to Seattle Police in May 2024. Her family said she was in a controlling relationship and cut off contact, according to the police report. Her social media account on BlueSky shows she followed some Antifa ...the armed wing of the Democratic Party... -aligned far-left accounts.
In November 2024, Youngblut filed a marriage application with a 22-year-old fellow Lakeside alumnus named Maximilian Bentley Snyder.
Last week, Snyder, an "any pronouns" computer science whiz from a wealthy Seattle family, was arrested in Vallejo, Calif., for the murder of an elderly key witness set to testify in an upcoming attempted murder trial against alleged members of the trans hard boy group.
The arrest has revealed previously hidden close associations between Youngblut, Bauckholt and a cult linked now to four killings.
THE ZIZ CULT
Authorities are investigating the connection between murders across the country to the "Zizians" — a cult of highly-educated trans vegan "rationalists."
#4
Somebody should get the rights to this.Movie of the week material for sure. Get in before Netflix. Gratuitous violence, gay sex. It will be on Disney before you know it!
#5
Like that tranny dude who ambushed that older man with his car, drove back over him, got out, and kissed him while stabbing him to death. That isn't random, old man was targeted.
[IsraelTimes] Military investigation into Hamas attack that killed 72 in border city reportedly uncovers how bureaucratic red tape left team with only pistols to fight well-armed terrorist horde
A military probe of the events in the southern city of Sderot, where 72 people were killed during the Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... -led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, found that red tape had tied up the municipal security team’s assault rifles at an out-of-town army base, leaving members with just pistols to fight against dozens of well-armed terrorists, the Ynet news site reported Thursday.
The Israel Defense Forces is in the process of a series of investigations into failures that enabled Hamas to lead thousands of bully boyz on a devastating invasion of southern Israel in which they killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
One of those investigations dealt with Sderot, a border city where Hamas bully boyz riding pickup trucks were able to roam through the streets, slaughtering over 50 civilians, and killing 20 coppers in a major battle at the city’s cop shoppe.
According to the report, the IDF found that on the day of the attack, there were 22 members of the city’s security defense squad present. The squad, armed by the IDF, is operated by the municipality’s security department, and its civilian chief, the community security coordinator, is the go-between with the military.
In 2022, the then-chief left the role and handed back all the squad’s rifles, for which he was responsible, to the IDF’s Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Division headquarters. His replacement, Ronen Gabay, was only installed months later.
The return of the rifles was caught up in bureaucracy as the new security squad chief took over, during which time there was no one who could sign off on the return of the rifles.
In addition, the army conditioned the return of the rifles on all the squad members having an approved method for safely locking them in their homes, and because that was not in place, the rearming never went ahead, the report said.
The situation was unknown to Mayor Alon Davidi, who reportedly was not aware that his city’s security team was left without automatic weapons.
Davidi only found out about the paltry weapons on the day of the attack. Furthermore, the probe found that security team members were not given proper training by the IDF, as required.
As a result, squad members were left with just their pistols to engage the heavily armed and overwhelming numbers of terrorists.
The probe also found that many coppers gathered at the station but did not spread out across the city, apparently due to a lack of information on what was happening around them, and a focus on the station where there was a raging battle with button men.
Among other key incidents in the city on October 7, bully boyz massacred 13 elderly people who were on their way to an outing at a Dead Sea resort. The party had set off on a minibus but it had a flat tire and halted at a bus stop. As the group was waiting, Hamas launched its invasion, which came under cover of a barrage of thousands of rockets fired across Israel.
There was a small public bomb shelter at the bus stop but it was fitted with a smart lock which was supposed to automatically open during a rocket attack. However,
today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... the system apparently did not work, leaving the retirees stuck outside.
Minutes later, Hamas bully boyz riding pickup trucks arrived and rubbed out all 13 people in the group. Gruesome images of the elderly Israelis lying dead outside the shelter were some of the first to be shared on social media on the morning of the massacre.
The IDF said in a statement to Ynet on Thursday, "On October 7 the IDF failed in its mission."
"The IDF is investigating the events of October 7 and what happened before that, including the battles in Sderot. When the probe is completed it will be presented with full transparency to the bereaved families, to the residents, and afterward to the public."
In its own response to Ynet, Sderot municipality noted that the security squad is operated by the IDF "and is subordinate to it."
The IDF, it said, "is required to ensure that all its members have weapons ,which unfortunately did not happen on the morning of October 7."
As for the murders at the public shelter, city hall said it would not comment as the matter was in litigation. Eight families of those 13 elderly bus victims filed a lawsuit for NIS 12 million ($3,345,470) against the municipality and Motorola alleging that there their loved ones were unable to enter the shelter due to the locking system failure, and were therefore vulnerable to the terrorists.
Many of the issues have since been resolved and Sderot now has a robust, well-funded security team, Ynet reported.
However,
today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... amid tensions between Gabay and the new head of the municipal security department, Erez Gaz, the mayor dismissed Gabay and the city is in the process of finding someone to take his place.
The Sderot probe was among a number by the IDF set to be completed in the coming weeks.
At the end of December, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi instructed the military to complete its various probes by the end of January. Defense Minister Israel Katz had told Halevi that he would freeze the promotions of senior officers in the IDF until he was presented with the conclusions on the investigations, issuing a January 31 deadline.
Last week, Halevi and the head of the IDF Southern Command said they would both be resigning from the military over their roles in the failures that led to the Hamas onslaught.
While the government has refused to appoint a state commission of inquiry and has opposed any probes that could include looking at political failures surrounding the devastating surprise attack, its lead-up, and its aftermath, the army has conducted internal investigations to learn what went wrong.
[Rudaw] A drone targeted a car on Monday killing four people and injuring another in Sulaimani province’s Hajiawa district, according to local police.
“A drone bombed a Toyota Land Cruiser in Hajiawa, killing four people,” Daru Qadir, spokesperson for the Raparin police, told Rudaw, adding that the victims have yet to be identified.
Hajiawa is affiliated to the Raparin administration.
One person was slightly injured as he was riding his motorcycle past the site targeted by the drone, according to Mustafa Rasoul, director of the Raparin police.
He added that two of the victims who lost their lives were women, while the other two were men.
The victims were from northeast Syria (Rojava), according to information obtained by Rudaw’s Abubakir Ismail. Locals told Rudaw that they witnessed the moment a white drone struck the car.
It is not clear who carried out the attack but Turkey has previously carried out many airstrikes in the area, targeting alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members.
[Rudaw] A migrant boat carrying Syrian passengers, including Kurds, has gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea after departing from Libya, families and a migrants colonists’ association said on Sunday.
"My brother left Libya for Italia at 01:30 am today. Their boat ran out of gasoline in the Mediterranean sea," Masoud Khalil Hamo, brother of one of the passengers, told Rudaw on Sunday.
"The news is true and we are aware of it," Peshraw Abdullah, a representative of the Returning Refugees Association, told Rudaw
"The passengers on the boat are from Western Kurdistan [northeast Syria or Rojava] and Syria. Unfortunately, they are also using the Aegean route to Greece," he said, noting that similar incidents occur on this route.
Every year, tens of thousands of people from the Middle East seek to escape endless crises of lack of employment, political instability, and corruption by joining thousands of others from scores of countries taking perilous routes to Europe.
Khalil, who is from Sare Kani (Ras al-Ain) in the north of Syria, said that there are around 30 people on the boat and are in a "very bad condition"
He added that his 24-year-old brother, Mustafa, is unmarried and has lost contact with him.
[Rudaw] Several Kurds are learning barbering at a small barbershop in Ranya, Sulaimani, in preparation for their migration to Europe.
Young Kurds are still risking their lives to get to Europa ...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum... through perilous means.
They have realized that without skills or knowing the language, they will face significant challenges in European countries.
Darian Dler, a 20-year-old resident of Ranya, recently became a barber at the barbershop in the town center.
He plans to depart soon, joining many others who are leaving for Europe to escape unemployment and financial struggles in the Kurdistan Region.
"You can live with it, but you cannot build a future with it. There are people who learned barbering here, migrated to Europe, stayed there for a couple of years, secured a future, and returned," he told Rudaw.
In the first half of 2024, around 3,000 undocumented Iraqis arrived in the UK, making them the seventh-largest nationality crossing the English Channel by boat. From July 2023 to June 2024, 26 Iraqis were deported from the UK, while 193 returned voluntarily, according to figures published by InfoMigrants.
Abubakir Ali is the Head of the Association of Returned Migrants.
"We receive tens of phone calls from people saying they want to return. But because they have run out of money, they are waiting for one of the international organizations to provide financial assistance for migrants colonists to return to their home countries including the Kurdistan Region. But the amount of money has drastically decreased. That is why they are waiting to return via these organizations as many regret going abroad after realizing that Europe isn’t the paradise they imagined," he said.
[Rudaw] Iraq on Thursday repatriated an additional 360 nationals from the notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava) as part of efforts to return all Iraqis held in the camp, said the Kurdish security forces (Asayish).
Asayish said in a statement that, in coordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish administration in Rojava, it "facilitated the departure of 83 Iraqi families from the camp to al-Jadaa camp in Iraq. These families included 360 individuals."
Most repatriated individuals are temporarily housed in al-Jada camp in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, to be prepared for reintegration into their communities.
"This measure comes as part of ongoing efforts to reduce the burden on al-Hol camp and return displaced persons to their original areas in coordination with Iraqi authorities. The operation was carried out smoothly and safely, with security and logistics teams overseeing the families' arrival at their new destination," it added.
On Wednesday, Ali Abbas, the spokesperson of the Iraqi migration and displaced ministry, told Rudaw that 11,529 people had been repatriated to al-Hol camp, all of which were sent to Jada camp.
Iraqis and Syrians make up the majority of the 40,000 ISIS-linked people held at the camp, which has been branded a breeding ground for terrorism.
The repatriation of ISIS-linked citizens has sparked opposition in Iraq, with tribes unwilling to accept people associated with the group that committed heinous human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... abuses and war crimes from 2014 to 2017, when they controlled vast swathes of the country.
Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria have repeatedly called on the international community to repatriate their nationals from the camps, but their calls have largely gone unanswered as most countries are unwilling to bring back their citizens due to security concerns.
[Rudaw] A camp in Erbil province housing refugees from Kurdish areas of western Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... (Rojhelat) was targeted by a suicide drone but did not cause any material damage or casualties, said the Kurdistan Region’s counterterrorism directorate.
"According to Kurdistan's counter-terrorism information, this evening Thursday January 30, 2025, at 17:40, an explosive-laden drone was directed at the East Kurdistan refugee camp at the foot of Mount Korek on the border of Erbil province. The drone missed its target, crashed and fell down, with no casualties or material damage reported," said the Erbil-based Directorate General of Counter Terrorism (CTD) in a Facebook post.
Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch clutched at his other leg...... Khidr Beg, a senior commander of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), told Rudaw that "about 5 to 6 kilometers from the East Kurdistan refugee camp, a strong explosion was heard, but we don't know yet if it was a drone or not."
He added that they "haven't clarified the incident and cannot accuse any country of carrying out the attack."
The camp is located near Khalidan subdistrict.
A security source from Khalifan told Rudaw on the condition of anonymity that "we haven't received any official information about it yet and have begun investigating the incident."
A security pact was signed between Iran and Iraq in March 2023 which saw Baghdad agree to disarm Kurdish opposition groups and secure the border regions. Iran had threatened to use military action if Baghdad failed to fulfill the agreement. In September same year, Baghdad announced that it had disarmed the exiled Kurdish groups on the border and that offices previously used by the groups had been evacuated.
[IsraelTimes] The US military says it killed a senior operative of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in an airstrike in northwest Syria on Thursday.
The airstrike, part of an ongoing effort to disrupt and degrade terrorist groups in the region, resulted in the death of Muhammad Salah al-Za’bir of the Hurras al-Din group,
… Guardians of Religion split from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Al Nusra) in 2018. Since then, the two groups have competed for influence and territory, with HTS periodically arresting Hurras al-Din members. America has been killing them for a while, a good thing even if it does help the new conquerers of Syria…
[IsraelTime] Overnight, Israeli fighter jets carried out a series of airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in the Beqaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, the military says.
The IDF says the targets, which “posed a threat to the Israeli home front and troops,” included a military facility with an underground weapons manufacturing site and infrastructure at border crossings between Syria and Lebanon which the terror group used to smuggle arms.
The strikes were carried out after Hezbollah launched a surveillance drone at Israel yesterday, which the military says was intercepted.
The IDF says the drone was a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
[IsraelTimes] UG Solutions private contractors working alongside Egyptian security personnel to carry out inspections at checkpoint where Netzarim Corridor intersects with Salah al-Din Street
A small US security firm is hiring nearly 100 US special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... during the Israel-Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... ceasefire, according to a company spokesperson and a recruitment email seen by Rooters, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world’s most violent mostly peaceful conflict zones.
UG Solutions — a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina — is offering a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires, the email said. They will staff the checkpoint at a key intersection in Gaza’s interior, said the spokesperson, who confirmed the authenticity of the email. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the spokesperson said some people had been recruited and were already at the checkpoint, at the intersection of the Netzarim Corridor dividing northern and southern Gaza and Salah al-Din Street, which separates the east and west of the enclave.
The spokesperson did not say how many contractors were already in Gaza.
UG Solutions’ role in the ceasefire deal has been reported, but the email disclosed previously unknown details including the aim of recruiting 96 veterans exclusively with US special operations forces backgrounds, the pay and the types of weapons they will carry.
Rooters reported on January 7 that Emirati officials had suggested the use of private contractors as part of a post-war peacekeeping force in Gaza, and that the idea had caused concern among Western nations. The deployment of armed US contractors in Gaza, where Hamas remains a potent force after 14 months of war sparked by its October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel, is unprecedented and poses the risk that Americans could be drawn into fighting as President Donald Trump ...So far he's been unkillable, and they've tried.... ’s administration seeks to keep the Hamas-Israel conflict from reigniting.
Among the risks facing the Americans are shootouts with Islamist gunnies or Paleostinians angry over Washington’s support for Israel’s Gaza offensive.
"Of course, there is a threat they will face," said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official.
The document said the contractors will be armed with M4 rifles, which are used by the Israeli and US militaries, and Glock pistols. The rules of engagement governing when UG Solutions personnel can open fire have been finalized, the spokesperson said, but he declined to disclose them.
"We have the right to defend ourselves," he said. He declined to discuss how the company won the contract.
EGYPT’S ROLE
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel on Tuesday told news hounds, without naming UG Solutions or the United States, that Israel had demanded that the deal include the use of a private security firm, working with "an Egyptian security company or forces" to help maintain security and humanitarian aid flows in Gaza.
But, she said, it remained to be seen if the arrangement "actually works."
During earlier rounds of failed ceasefire negotiations, Israel had demanded to staff the checkpoint with its own troops.
Witnesses in Gaza have in recent days described Egyptian security personnel at the checkpoint using scanners to look for weapons concealed in vehicles.
An Egyptian source said the Egyptians at the checkpoint were special forces trained in recent months including on counter-terrorism.
A Paleostinian official close to the talks confirmed US contractors would also be at the checkpoint.
However,
man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... the official said the US contractors would be deployed away from residents passing through and they must not deal with the local population.
The UG Solutions email said its primary mission was "internal vehicle checkpoint management and vehicle inspection."
"We’re only focused on vehicles," said the spokesperson.
The Prime Minister’s Office declined to provide any further comment on the security arrangements. The US State Department, Egypt’s foreign office and Hamas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US use of private security firms has in the past led to disaster. In 2007, contractors for the now-defunct Blackwater firm rubbed out 14 civilians in Baghdad’s Al Nisour Square, igniting a diplomatic crisis and outraging Iraqis. Four Blackwater personnel were convicted in a US court and pardoned by Trump in his first term.
Insurgents in Fallujah, ... the City of Mosques, which might have somthing to do with why it's not called Center of Prosperity or a really nice place to raise your kids... Iraq, in 2004 killed four Americans working for Blackwater and hung two of their bodies from a bridge, prompting a massive US military response.
The UG Solutions’ hires will work with US-based Safe Reach Solutions, which does logistics and planning, according to the spokesperson and another source familiar with the contract.
Each hire will be provided with $500,000 in accidental death and dismemberment insurance, and the daily rate for former US special forces medics rises to $1,250, the email said.
A separate source familiar with the deal said Israel and unnamed "Arab countries" that worked on the agreement are funding the consortium. The US government had no direct involvement in the decision to include a security company in the ceasefire deal or in the awarding of the contract, the source said.
’VICTORY NARRATIVE’
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank who grew up in Gaza, downplayed the danger for the Americans because their role in the return of displaced Paleostinian civilians bolsters Hamas’ claim of victory over Israel.
"Even Hamas, for all its horrendous rhetoric and actions, understands that it is this very American presence ... that feeds its victory narrative," he said.
That is one perspective, certainly. Another is that sooner or later Gazans cannot resist the temptation to run amok.
Gaza has been devastated by the past 15 months of war between Israel and the Hamas terror group, which began the conflict with its October 2023 attack on Israel
On January 19, the first 42-day phase of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect, mediated by Egypt, Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... and the US. Since then, tens of thousands of displaced civilians have streamed on foot and in vehicles through the checkpoint north toward Gaza City, much of it churned to rubble.
WHO-G?
Several people in the private security industry told Rooters that they had not heard of UG Solutions.
The only company official listed in Virginia state incorporation records is Jameson Govani, who didn’t respond to phone messages. He is described as a US Special Forces veteran.
A US private security business source briefed on the UG Solutions contract, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered... , said it seemed hazardous to deploy Americans in Gaza and that he feared combat could break out "really fast." It was unclear what would happen if the Americans were attacked or captured, or which nation’s law would govern the contractor’s actions.
The email does not say who would rescue them. The UG spokesperson said the document was outdated and that quick reaction forces would be available. He didn’t provide further details.
"We are well equipped to guard our own safety," he said.
#3
I agree, q. Especially given that Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian Territories, so their definition of infidel includes insufficiently pious and submissive Moslems.
[IsraelTimes] Terror group also confirms deaths of other commanders in war; ICC expected to cancel arrest warrant it issued for Deif in November
Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... front man Abu Obeida confirmed in a video statement Thursday that Muhammad Deif, the once-elusive commander of the terror group’s military wing, had been killed in an Israeli strike over the summer.
The terror group’s announcement came more than six months after Deif’s killing in a July 13 Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... , with Hamas previously denying he had been killed.
Abu Obeida in his video statement also confirmed the deaths during the war of Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing; Ghazi Abu Tama’a, head of combat support; Raad Thabet, the military wing chief of staff; Rafa’a Salameh, commander of the Khan Younis Brigade; Ayman Nofal, commander of the Central Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Brigade; and Ahmed Ghandour, commander of the Northern Gaza Brigade.
Hamas had previously only announced the deaths of Nofal and Ghandour.
Israel targeted Deif and Salameh in an airstrike on a Hamas compound, killing dozens in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. The IDF confirmed Salameh’s death a day later, and Deif’s on August 1.
Until the July strike, Deif had survived seven Israeli attempts on his life over the years, some of which had maimed him.
According to a November report, Hamas was initially unable to confirm Deif’s death, partly due to the state of his badly disfigured remains. At the time, unnamed Hamas sources told the London-based, Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat paper that the group accepted that Deif had been killed, but Thursday’s statement marked the first time the organization officially acknowledged it.
The sources also told the paper at the time that two people had been arrested on suspicion of leading the IDF to Deif, including the slain military chief’s courier, who according to some reports had tipped the army off.
Despite the IDF announcing that it had killed Deif in August, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him on November 21 along with warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The ICC listed the charges against Deif as crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture and sexual violence as well as war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, torture, hostage-taking, outrages upon personal dignity and sexual violence.
As of Thursday evening, the ICC had not yet canceled the warrant. It previously dropped charges against Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continued as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintained a separate PM in the West Bank. Zapped during the 2023-24 war, to eveyone's satisfaction... and Yahya Sinwar after they were killed by Israel.
Netanyahu and Gallant were both charged with war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally targeting a civilian population, and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts during the war in Gaza.
Deif, along with Hamas’s Gaza leader Sinwar, was an architect of Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of forces of Evil broke through the border and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while taking 251 people hostage to Gaza. He had topped Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of a large number of terror attacks, including many bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Born as Muhammad Masri in 1965 in Khan Younis, the terror leader became known as Muhammad Deif after joining Hamas during the First Intifada, or Paleostinian uprising, which began in 1987.
He was arrested by Israel in 1989 and spent about 16 months in detention.
Rising up the Hamas ranks, Deif developed the group’s network of tunnels and its bomb-making expertise. He was held personally responsible by Israel for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide kabooms in the 1990s.
The last known attempt to eliminate Deif before the successful one in July, according to the military, occurred in May 2021, when Israel and Gazook terror groups fought in an 11-day flare-up known as Operation Guardian of the Walls.
Prior to 2021, Israel had tried to kill Deif during the 2014 war in Gaza, but narrowly missed, instead killing his immediate family members.
Other liquidation attempts took place in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2006.
[IsraelTimes] Police say public revelations about vehicle, believed to have been intended to blow up synagogue, compromised ongoing probe into series of antisemitic attacks in Australia
The discovery on Wednesday of a trailer full of explosives likely intended to blow up a synagogue in Sydney, Australia, may have prevented a "mass casualty event," New South Wales police officials said Thursday, while adding that reports on the matter had potentially compromised a police investigation into a string of antisemitic attacks.
Several people "around the periphery" of the planned attack have been arrested since the caravan packed full of explosives was discovered, police said, adding that the owner was already under custody for a separate antisemitic attack. However,
alcohol has never solved anybody's problems. But then, neither has milk... no arrests directly linked to the incident have been made.
According to police, there is increasing evidence that the continued wave of attacks on Australia’s Jewish community is being "orchestrated" from above.
On Wednesday, after reports began appearing in the Australian press, NSW police confirmed that they had found a trailer containing explosives in the Sydney suburb of Dural on January 19. There was "some indication" that the explosives discovered were intended to blow up a synagogue, they said.
On Thursday, Sherlocks clarified that the trailer contained Powergel explosives stolen from a mining site, powerful enough to create a 40-meter blast wave that could trigger a "mass casualty event." Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson reported Thursday that the explosives were intended for Sydney’s Great Synagogue and the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst. Police have not confirmed this.
Jewish community leaders charged that police were not doing enough to solve the case, and insisted that they shouldn’t have been kept in the dark about the incident.
"Until we know who the puppet masters are, and what their motives are, it’s impossible to point the finger with any degree of certainty about who’s responsible," said Peter Wertheim, co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb responded by saying the incident was being investigated quietly, and that further public revelations of details to the media would make it more difficult to solve the case.
"The fact that this information is now in the public domain has compromised our investigation, and it’s been detrimental to some of the strategies we may have used," Webb said. Webb stressed that the threat had been "mitigated very early on," so there was no pressing need for the incident to be shared publicly.
NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson added that police had found indications of bad actors coordinating the attacks above the level of those perpetrating the attacks.
Regarding the individuals detained in connection with the caravan, he said police had not identified any "specific ideology that would cause them to commit the acts that they’ve committed, and that indicates to us that they are being orchestrated in some manner."
Three separate incidents of anti-Jewish graffiti were also reported in Australia Wednesday night, including antisemitic slurs painted on the wall of Jewish school Mount Sinai College at Maroubra.
Australia has seen a surge in antisemitic actions since the Hamas ..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,... terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which sparked the war in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip.
The number of anti-Jewish incidents in Australia quadrupled in the year after the terror assault in southern Israel, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. These have included several arson attacks on synagogues and community centers in Sydney and Melbourne and the repeated spraying of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti on properties or vehicles in areas with large Jewish populations. Last month also saw a neo-Nazi ...adherents of a philosophy that was seen even at the time as pure evil, which makes them either consciously purely evil, or attention-seeking ratbags. Pick one, or both.... rally by the Melbourne parliament.
In December 2024, New South Wales launched Strike Force Pearl, whose team includes counter-terrorism and special tactics officers, to investigate antisemitic hate crimes in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, following an arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue. Australia’s federal police also launched Operation Avalite to investigate the surge in antisemitic crimes that has followed the Hamas attack in Israel.
Last week, Australian police revealed for the first time that they believe the ongoing scourge of antisemitic attacks in the country may be coordinated by foreign actors.
Three more incidents of antisemitic graffiti were found across Sydney on Thursday morning, leading Australian political leaders to warn of an escalation in hatred.
Slogans were daubed at a Jewish school, as well as at a nearby home and shopping center. It was not clear from reports if the home was Jewish owned.
Among the messages vandals wrote were “You fucking Jews,” “Jews are real terrorists,” “Jew dogs,” “Fuck the Jews,” and “You wanna buy a caravan,” the last an apparent reference to the Wednesday announcement of the discovery of an explosives cache in a trailer earlier this month.
Law enforcement found a list of Jewish targets together with a cache of Powergel — an explosive used in the mining industry — in Sydney’s outer suburb of Dural, state police said Wednesday. The amount uncovered could create a bomb with a blast zone of around 40 meters (130 feet), officers said.
News of the discovery — which police chiefs said was leaked to a newspaper, compromising a clandestine investigation — followed months of antisemitic arson, window-smashing, and graffiti in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s most populous cities, concentrated in the areas where many Jewish people live.
“It is utterly appalling and shameful,” Minns said. A police investigation into months of such crimes has prompted 10 arrests and Minns said he expected more.
RENEWED CLAIMS ABOUT COORDINATION BY FOREIGN INTERESTS
Since the Israel-Hamas war began in 2023 with the Palestinian terror group’s devastating invasion of Israel, targeted arson — including at a child care center — and graffiti attacks have soared in Sydney and Melbourne, home to 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population.
One person has been physically hurt — a worshiper who suffered burns in an arson attack that destroyed a Melbourne synagogue in December.
A joint counterterrorism team involving federal and state law enforcement is investigating the attacks, and this month its leaders said they were investigating whether criminals for hire were being paid by foreign actors to carry out the attacks. Australia Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw did not name what foreign interests the taskforce believed were responsible.
Update from the Times of Israel at 10:30 a.m. ET: Australian Jews hardening community sites, making themselves less obvious targets: police and private security stationed outside Jewish school as children return from summer break; some Jews removing kippas and mezuzahs.
[IsraelTimes] Staff Sgt. Liam Hazi fatally hurt, five other troops wounded in exchange of fire with gunmen in building; police kill wanted Palestinian in Nablus
An Israeli soldier was killed and five were maimed during an exchange of fire with Paleostinian button men in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on Thursday, the military announced.
Staff Sgt. Liam Hazi, 20, of the Kfir Brigade’s Haruv reconnaissance unit, from Rosh Haayin, was killed amid a major Israeli anti-terror operation in the northern West Bank launched last week.
Among the five maimed troops, one was listed at death's door, three were moderately hurt and one was in good condition, the army added.
According to an initial IDF probe, the Haruv troops exchanged fire with at least two button men after entering a building in the Jenin camp.
During the extraction of the maimed troops, an Israeli Air Force attack helicopter launched an Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... in the area.
The two button men apparently managed to flee the scene.
... as though they had never been... Separately on Thursday, police said members of its Yamam anti-terror unit killed a wanted Paleostinian in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The IDF, Israel Police and Shin Bet in a joint statement said that Qasim Aklik, 42, was involved in "planning and advancing terror attacks against Israeli targets."
Aklik, who was armed with a handgun, attempted to flee when the Yamam officers tried to arrest him, police said. The officers then opened fire, killing him.
The Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... said Aklik was a senior commander in the terror group’s Nablus Battalion.
The Paleostinian Authority health ministry said it was informed of Aklik’s death, meaning his body is being held by Israeli authorities.
A night earlier, 10 terror operatives, including five Hamas ..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",... members, were killed in a dronezap in the West Bank town of Tamun, close to Tubas.
The ongoing IDF offensive, dubbed Operation Iron Wall, has primarily focused on the city and refugee camp of Jenin but has also expanded to Tulkarem and the Tubas area.
At least 29 Paleostinian terror operatives have been killed so far in the offensive, the IDF has said.
“The soldiers fired toward the terrorists… and hits were identified,” according to a military statement, who says the suspects were spotted by members of the 636th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit who were on a stakeout.
No one was injured by the Molotov cocktails hurled at Route 60, the statement adds.
The IDF says troops last night eliminated two Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank who earlier in the day killed a soldier and wounded five others.
Yesterday, Staff Sgt. Liam Hazi, 20, of the Kfir Brigade’s Haruv reconnaissance unit, was killed and five troops were wounded during an exchange of fire with two gunmen in a building in the Jenin refugee camp. The pair managed to flee following the incident.
Several hours later, the IDF says Haruv troops and other forces surrounded another building to which the gunmen fled, and following another exchange of fire, killed them.
The IDF says troops have killed some 18 gunmen and detained over 60 wanted Palestinians during an ongoing raid in Jenin and Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.
The offensive, dubbed Operation Iron Wall, was launched last week.
Over the past two days, the IDF says troops neutralized over 100 explosive devices in Jenin and seized numerous other weapons. In Tulkarem, another 30 bombs were neutralized and other weapons were captured, according to the military.
[IsraelTimes] Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has reportedly promised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US will postpone the process of rebuilding northern Gaza until security plans are agreed upon to ensure the security of Israeli communities near the border with the Strip.
Al-Araby Al Jadeed cites an American plan, to be funded by the US and Gulf countries, to prevent a reoccurrence of the Hamas terror group’s brutal October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel that sparked over 15 months of fighting in Gaza.
The report claims that Washington wants to delay reconstruction in northern Gaza to make the area uninhabitable in the long term and to promote US President Donald Trump’s recent proposal that Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Strip to “just clean out” the war-torn area.
Israel began to allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza this week, under a hostage-ceasefire deal with the Iran-backed terror group that came into effect last week.
Reconstruction of northern Gaza is set to begin in the final stage of the three-phase accord.
[IsraelTimes] There is “almost nothing left” of Gaza and rebuilding the war-ravaged enclave could take 10 to 15 years, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff tells Axios as he wraps up a trip to the region.
“People are moving north to get back to their homes and see what happened and turn around and leave…there is no water and no electricity. It is stunning just how much damage occurred there,” Witkoff tells the news website after visiting Gaza.
His assessment comes days after Trump floated the idea that some Arab nations should get involved with and build “housing at a different location where [Gazans] can maybe live in peace for a change,” an idea flatly rejected by the Arab and Muslim world.
Witkoff tells Axios he has not discussed the idea of moving Palestinians from Gaza with Trump.
A UN damage assessment released this month showed that clearing over 50 million tons of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
“There has been this perception we can get to a solid plan for Gaza in five years. But it’s impossible. This is a 10 to 15-year rebuilding plan,” Witkoff says.
“There is nothing left standing. Many unexploded ordnances. It is not safe to walk there. It is very dangerous. I wouldn’t have known this without going there and inspecting,” he adds.
President Trump is a subject matter expert on site clearing and large-scale construction; though his projects for the past four decades have been seriously upscale, his father’s were aimed at a middle class clientele, I understand. And Bibi Netanyahu’s studies in architecture and management at MIT were aimed toward alleviating Israel’s ongoing acute housing shortage, what is nowadays an advanced degree in city planning. Between the two of them, they actually know exactly what needs to be done to make Gaza livable again, and would have great fun getting it done.
[IsraelTimes] Drone strike targeted Muhammad Abu Aseed four months ago; development was kept secret until last of seven female soldier hostages returned to Israel
Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... terrorist Muhammad Abu Aseed, who was filmed kidnapping Israeli surveillance soldier Naama Levy on October 7, 2023, was eliminated in a dronezap some four months ago, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday.
News of Abu Aseed’s targeting was not permitted for publication until the return of all seven surveillance soldiers kidnapped by the terror group during the October 7 onslaught.
Video footage of the abduction showed Aseed dragging a bound and bleeding Levy by her hair from the back of a jeep in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... minutes after she was taken from Israel, waving a gun as he howled in celebration before pulling her back into the vehicle.
The image of Levy being pushed into a jeep was one of the most horrific images from October 7, 2023, when the Paleostinian terror group Hamas led thousands of Death Eaters to invade Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251 to Gaza.
In December 2023, her mother published a heartfelt plea for her daughter’s release, referencing the infamous video.
"You have seen the video of my daughter Naama Levy," Ayelet Levy Shachar wrote on the Free Press website. "Everyone has. You have seen her dragged by her long brown hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, somewhere in Gaza, her gray sweatpants covered in blood.
"You may have perhaps noticed that her ankles are cut, that she’s barefoot and limping. She is seriously injured. She is frightened. And I, her mother, am helpless in these moments of horror."
Levy was released by Hamas last week, along with Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, and Liri Albag. Agam Berger was released Thursday morning as well, as part of a complex, three-phase ceasefire deal that halted 15 months of fighting as Israel responded to the Hamas attack.
Levy, Albag, Ariev, and Gilboa, gathered to watch a live video of Berger being set free.
Berger was slated to be brought to the same hospital where they are being treated, to be reunited after they were separated a week ago.
One of the kidnapped surveillance soldiers, Ori Megidish, was rescued alive in October 2023, and the body of a second one, Noa Marciano, was recovered after she was murdered in captivity in November 2023.
In her first message to the public since her release, Levy said Wednesday "After 477 days, I’m at home at last."
"I am safe and protected, surrounded by family and friends, and feeling better by the day," she wrote on Instagram.
Speaking about her time in captivity, Levy said that for the first 50 days after being kidnapped by Paleostinian Death Eaters on October 7, 2023, she was mostly kept alone.
"After that, I stayed with my friends" — four fellow IDF lookout soldiers kidnapped with her, three of whom were released with her, as well as other female hostages — "who gave me strength and hope," she added. "We gave strength to each other until the release day and also after it."
Whines, scratching, the paper all muddy.
A news hound was always your buddy
Who'd chase down the truth.
Ace reporter, forsooth!
Now the seat of my pants is all bloody.
Originally from Oildale and Bakersfield, California. Retired Sergeant Major from US Army Special Forces and a country music songwriter. The songs on here I have written or have worked on with some great friends and co-writers. All of the songs are professionally done with some of Nashville's best singers and A-session musicians. Married to the lovely Marcia, our home is in Tampa and we have three great kids and nine wonderful grandchildren...lots of Love and blessed from Above...makes for a lot to write about! Friends call me "BJ"...Onward Through the Fog!
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] According to The New York Times, North Korean troops have been withdrawn from the front lines in the Kursk region after heavy losses. Apparently, this is the end of the story of one of the main media projects of 2024, “North Korean Troops in the Ukrainian Conflict.”
Some "officials" in Ukraine and the US allegedly told the NYT that representatives of the DPRK "haven't been seen for several weeks." However, the only source named by name was the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Syrsky, who reported that "in three months the number of North Korean troops has been cut in half."
Well, that's logical. 0:2 = 0. But during the entire "North Korean" hysteria, the speakers who were whipping up this topic never once gave anything reliable that would confirm not only the number and role of the DPRK representatives in the Ukrainian events, but even the very fact of their presence in the combat ranks of the RF Armed Forces.
Much has been said about the difficulties of incorporating the North Korean army into the Russian Armed Forces. First of all, there is the lack of combat coordination, aggravated by the language barrier, differences in military doctrines, etc. Certainly, individual specialists would be needed to service North Korean equipment, but larger-scale use cases would have many disadvantages that would outweigh any possible advantages.
But there are hundreds of confirmed facts about foreign mercenaries in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including many coffins that are mourned throughout the Western world from Japan to Sweden. The situation with representatives of the DPRK is completely different.
The story itself arose with a simple goal: to convince the Western layman that the conflict in Ukraine is the very archetypal confrontation of the Enlightened West with the wild Eastern Horde. The battle of the Garden against the Jungle. An invasion from somewhere in the "Tatar desert" of the biblical "Gog and Magog", in whose path everyone, from the youngest to the oldest, must stand. But it didn't work out.
If the new US administration plans to develop diplomatic activity towards the Global South, then stopping the escalation of the story with “hordes of the DPRK on the borders of Europe” is completely logical. This tool has exhausted itself, and did not really work. At most, Ukraine received a little more weapons.
[NY Post] So much winning
Chuck Todd is taking his podcast and going home.
The former "Meet the Press" moderator circulated a memo to colleagues at NBC News informing them that he would be departing 30 Rock, according to several reports. Todd confirmed his departure.
His last day at NBC News was Friday.
"There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ’pie in the sky’ to ’near reality,’ Todd told NBC News staffers in a memo Friday.
"So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment."
Posted by: Frank G ||
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File under "To spend more time with the family"
[ZeroHedge] A day after STMicroelectronics—one of Europe's largest chipmakers—said that 2024 was one of the worst years for the industry and forecasted first-quarter revenue below the Bloomberg Consensus estimates, the company is reportedly planning to cut thousands of jobs. Wonder what the exec 'departure bonus' is?
Bloomberg cited sources close to the Franco-Italian chipmaker that say about 6% of the workforce could be slashed through early retirements and attrition amid a prolonged downturn in auto and industrial sectors. Hey DOGE!
Here's more from the report:
The job cuts under discussion, which could be announced as soon as next month, are in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 workers and will affect its operations in both Italy and France, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public. The decision isn't final and the scale of the reductions is still under review, the people added.
The Italian government, which together with France holds a 27.5% stake in the company, is seeking to limit the impact of the restructuring on the Italian workforce, the people said.
[Epoch Times] Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy said on Jan. 29 that his department is taking action to remove stringent fossil fuel emission standards instituted by the Biden administration. In December 2023, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration finalized a rule establishing a method to measure and report transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.
The rule was set up to "confront the increasingly urgent climate crisis," according to the executive summary, and was expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This was part of a plan to reach "net-zero emissions by no later than 2050," according to a 2021 White House fact sheet.
On Jan. 29, Duffy approved a proposal to rescind the rule. "The rescission reflects the Administration’s commitment to unleashing American energy and eliminating unlawful regulatory burdens," the DOT said in a Jan. 29 statement.
Duffy also issued a memorandum on Jan. 28 related to "fixing the CAFE program." The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regulate the distance vehicles are required to travel per gallon of fuel. Duffy said that "artificially high" fuel economy standards imposed considerably large costs which rendered "many new vehicle models unaffordable for the average American family and small business owner."
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/31/2025
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...they were created during the Great Society efforts by LBJ about the time the Donk commingled the income streams of taxes and social security into one account. The 'goal' was to address programming for the lower economic strata, as though 'Evening at the Met' had a following in such programming. In the world of the Net, podcasts, cable and other means of info distribution, it has no rational reason for national subsidy other than as a one party propaganda outlet.
[JustTheNews] A local sheriff's office in New York is facing heat from federal agents after an illegal migrant was released from the facility despite having a federal deportation order.
Jesus Romero-Hernandez, 27, on Tuesday pled guilty to third-degree assault charges in Tompkins County. He was released by the local sheriff's office even though he had a federal arrest warrant, according to the Justice Department.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said that Romero-Hernandez was caught by federal agents Thursday and slammed the county sheriff's office for not keeping him in custody.
“The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office in Ithaca, NY, a self-described sanctuary city, appears to have failed to honor a valid federal arrest warrant for a criminal alien with an assault conviction,” Bove said.
County Sheriff Derek Osborne could potentially face prosecution for allowing the release of Romero-Hernandez, according to The New York Times.
Federal officials said that Romero-Hernandez was deported in the past but returned to the U.S. at some point.
"We will use every tool at our disposal to prevent sanctuary city policies from impeding and obstructing lawful federal operations designed to make America safe again and end the national crisis arising from four years of failed immigration policy," Bove said.
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A warning shot.
And a bit of battlespace preparation. We're not deporting innocent families that accidentally walked across the border. We're tossing out bad guys with assault charges who were tossed out once before for doing gawd-knows-what. Make Sheriff & Co declare why they want to keep criminals in the local community.
[JustTheNews] Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Thursday released a series of whistleblower records that allegedly show a former FBI agent who was known for being anti-Donald Trump, played an important role in Jack Smith's 2020 election interference case.
Grassley and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson claimed that internal emails and records show that former FBI agent Timothy Thibault,
…who was admirably placed as Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office to cause the kind of trouble he rejoiced in…
who was fired in 2024 for violating the Hatch Act, sent a subordinate an email that included the language for what ultimately became Smith's false elector case.
The investigation into Trump was formally opened by the FBI on April 13, 2022, and was known inside the agency as "Arctic Frost."
Thibault also allegedly improperly took action to open the investigation into Trump's role in the 2020 election interference case because he was not authorized to open investigations in his role, according to Fox News.
Grassley mentioned the whistleblower disclosures during President Donald Trump's nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel's confirmation hearing on Thursday, where he emphasized the American people's lack of trust in the bureau.
"Mr. Patel, in my time, I’ve never seen our law enforcement and intelligence community institutions so badly infected with political decision-making. They’ve broken faith with We the People," Grassley said in his opening statements.
"Partisan FBI agents and DOJ officials tried – and ultimately succeeded – in launching a full-field criminal investigation and prosecution of the President of the United States," he continued. "Justice Department and FBI leadership acted in concert to further a political scheme to take down Trump ... They have yet to learn their lesson ... As I’ve said before, if a politically-charged investigation is to be opened, it must be done the right way. That didn’t happen here."
[Breitbart] Severe depression —> driving through drive-through without pants —> suicide. It would have happened even had the cashier not posted video on social media, I suspect.
#3
The Canadian response to all this is a bit puzzling. Trump told them to get control of their border and clean up the drug trafficking otherwise, it's tariffs.
Managing your border, controlling the drug trade - this is basic nation state stuff, but Canada acted like any 15 year old when told to clean up their room: "You're not the boss of me! I'll put tariffs on you! So, there!" Big-time diplomacy, eh?
/disclaimer: I'm so old I remember when Canada was a sensible country. The western provinces don't seem to be affected, so perhaps it is the Frenchness, it's driven them mad.
Astonishingly, Trump’s mass firings of top-level commissioners from the NLRB, the Privacy Board, and the EEOC, were thought to be illegal and impossible. But even more historic and astonishing, Trump has fired so many it leaves those agencies without quora. They are dead in the water. These now-paralyzed agencies literally cannot undermine Trump’s agenda, even if they wanted to, for the practical reason that there simply aren’t enough commissioners left to vote on anything. They’re frozen.
Strikingly, none of the “abruptly fired” officials have yet sued the federal government—even though Trump is trampling on all sorts of precedents, customs, and statutes. Ms. Fong merely staged a bizarre mini-protest rather than assert her legal rights. All this legal restraint is especially strange considering that in at least one agency, the NLRB, federal law expressly limits the President’s ability to fire commissioners except in very limited circumstances.
The Times and the fired officials smelled a Trump trap.
“The prospect of getting dragged into court,” an alarmed Times observed, “may be exactly what Mr. Trump’s lawyers are hoping for.” What terrified and dismayed the far-left Times and its progressive allies was the ghastly prospect that “any rulings in the president’s favor would establish precedents that would expand presidential power to control the federal government.”
[Translated from Danish: H/t No-Pasaran]
[24NYT] It is a core narrative in Denmark that the country is one of the United States' closest allies. " We have always stood by the United States ," Danish prime ministers, politicians and commentators claim. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen recently stated that " the United States is Denmark's most important and strongest ally in NATO." All of this is a lie, because the reality is that Denmark has always pursued a deeply unsolidarity policy towards the United States. Even though the United States is the ultimate guarantor of Denmark's security, Denmark repeatedly fails the Americans and actively works against US interests worldwide. Some 20th century history:
...Denmark has failed the US by not establishing a credible defence . Since Denmark's defence is in ruins, the US decided in 2023 to take over the defence of the Danish straits and belts. Denmark's defence agreement with the US is the final proof that the Danish defence is worthless and that the US does not consider Denmark to be its core ally. Not surprisingly, the defence agreement with the US became a sleeping bag for the government. The implementation of the Framework Agreement on Defence has been postponed until a number of partial agreements have been reached, which have not yet been initiated. And Danish politicians are happy that Denmark will once again be exempt from having to carry its share of the NATO burden.
In relation to NATO, Denmark has for decades worked against American interests by pursuing a hawking strategy that is about securing security policy guarantees from the United States while at the same time avoiding having to pull its share of the load in NATO. Denmark has made cheating the United States an art . Here in January 2025, Denmark's real contribution to NATO is approximately 1.7 percent of GDP excluding donations to Ukraine, directly contrary to the agreement of 2 percent of GDP. The SVM government claims that Denmark spends 2.4 percent of its GDP on defense and security, but the Danish attempt to cheat NATO has been condemned and rejected by several NATO countries and the former Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, as the donations to Ukraine contribute neither to Denmark's nor NATO's defense capabilities.
...Both in NATO and in the US, of course, it is clear that Denmark talks a lot about solidarity in its toasts, but does not want to help shoulder the burden. In the US, the Danes are perceived as disloyal parasites who have been and continue to be freewheeling at NATO's expense and are letting the US foot the bill. This view is, of course, prevalent throughout the security establishment in the US, both Democratic and Republican.
In the UN, Denmark works against American interests by voting against America's friend, Israel . Denmark consistently supports anti-Semitic forces in the UN, and in all the Muslim-dominated UN bodies where Israel is condemned, Denmark votes with the rest of the EU countries to condemn Israel. Each year, Denmark typically votes for 15 out of 20 condemnatory resolutions against Israel. In other words, official Denmark supports the forces that want Israel removed from the world map.
Denmark is working against American interests by refusing to support the United States in its confrontation with China . In 2008, Denmark entered into a strategic partnership with China, and the following year it sent the controversial "verbal note" to state that Denmark is against Tibetan independence. Before the corona crisis, Danish politicians, business people and media people portrayed the Chinese dictatorship as an enviable democracy and a reliable superpower that is a champion of globalization, free trade and the environment. Journalist Rasmus Tantholdt went so far as to say on TV2 News that " we have more in common with China than with the United States ". It is also thought-provoking that 46 percent of Danes, according to a Kantor Gallup poll, agree or mostly agree that the United States, which is the only guarantor of Danish security, is a threat to Denmark.
Denmark opposes US interests in relation to Iran . To this day, Denmark boycotts US sanctions against Iran — a cruel regime that oppresses its own people, supports terror and warfare in its neighboring countries, and sends regular death squads to Europe, including Denmark. Most recently, Denmark has joined INSTEX, a European trade initiative aimed at circumventing US sanctions against Iran.
Denmark has outwitted the United States by revealing the top-secret intelligence cooperation between Denmark and the United States, in which the American intelligence service NSA was allowed to tap the cables of telecommunications companies on Danish soil in order to intercept Russian and Chinese telecommunications traffic. Instead of handling the matter in deep confidentiality, the Danish government has chosen to fire the head of FE, Lars Findsen, and exempt four other employees from duty, thereby revealing the intelligence cooperation with the United States.
In Greenland, Denmark is also working against the US's security policy interests. National tunnel vision, navel-gazing and sheer stupidity prevent Danish politicians from understanding that the US and Denmark have a common strategic interest in putting an end to China's and Russia's military buildup in the Arctic, that Denmark does not have the ability to develop Greenland's resources and defend Greenland militarily on its own, and that it is actually the US, and not the Danish defense, that guarantees Greenland's connection to Denmark. During his first presidential term in 2019, Donald Trump, as is well known, expressed a desire to buy Greenland. At the time, this was rejected as absurd by Mette "Nasty" Frederiksen. No wonder Trump has now decided to take off the velvet gloves, put Denmark thoroughly in its place and take over control of Greenland.
...The opinion-forming elite believes that Trump's tough stance towards Denmark regarding Greenland is an expression of the failure of a close ally as well as a lack of respect for Denmark. However, it is Denmark that repeatedly fails the United States and works against its interests. And therefore Denmark deserves no respect from the United States.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
01/31/2025
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[Daily Headline] Lab-grown meat has to be one of the most unsettling and unappealing concepts I’ve ever heard of. It astounds me that the left, who were once all-natural hippies, want to fill their bodies with so much laboratory and big pharma garbage these days. "Sit down and eat this cheeseburger we grew in a Petri dish after you finish your 17th booster shot." For some strange reason, the idea of injecting and eating cells and other toxins excites liberals.
While some of us may laugh this off as another leftist pipe dream, many experts believe that in about 20 years, lab meat will be the only "meat" available to eat.
As usual, many experts cherry picked to support a contentious point are wrong, but do go on…
Granted, 20 years seems like a long time, even for evil globalists, but I agree that if we don’t take this seriously and stop them, they will eliminate meat. And once you hear what’s in this "lab-grown meat," I believe you’ll understand why it’s critical that we fight back against this abomination.
On this subject, there is a very interesting Substack. Igor Chudov, a math wizard and businessman, wrote it, and he explains how this creeptacular lab meat is made from cancer cells.
#2
And what could possibly be behind all of this "Ghoulishness." I believe RFK may have made reference to it in his testimony yesterday. Simply... "Follow the Money."
Little wonder he's under attack by the liberal pols. He's stepping on their income stream.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] One-fifth of insurance claims from Americans relying on Obamacare were rejected last year, denying access to care for millions of people.
An analysis from health policy charity Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) evaluated nearly 400million claims made to insurance companies included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides insurance to 21million lower-income Americans.
The researchers found about 19 percent of claims for in-network services - from a provider who works with that insurance - were denied in 2023, a 15 percent jump from the year before.
The rate was even more staggering for out-of-network coverage, with nearly four in 10 claims being denied.
The team also found Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, which serves 3million residents, denied 35 percent of claims, the most of any insurance company included in the ACA, also called ObamaCare.
UnitedHealth Group, which has come under fire over accusations of halting lifesaving medical care and overcharging patients, came in close second, refusing one in three claims filed in 2023 in for its ACA plans in 20 states.
And Health Care Service Corporation, America's fifth-largest health insurer, denied 29 percent of claims.
While GuideWell Mutual Holding, a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, shot down the fewest claims, it was still responsible for one in eight denials.
The most common reason claims were denied was listed as 'other,' meaning there was no clear explanation. This was the reason listed for one in three denied claims.
'Administrative reason,' excluded services, and enrollees reaching their maximum coverage limit were among the most common reasons for denied claims.
However, the researchers noted details were sparse, so there were no explanations provided.
Treatments being deemed 'not medically necessary' made up one in 20 denied claims. It's unclear what the treatments were for.
Despite the high rates of denials, the analysis found fewer than one in 100 patients appealed their claims.
However, in the rare instances they did, insurance companies upheld their decisions more than half of the time.
It's unclear how much patients had to pay for denied claims.
The findings come as more than 40 percent of Americans report having trouble paying off their medical bills, and about half of insured adults worry about affording their insurance premiums.
On average, ACA plans costed $477 per month in 2024, according to data from Health Markets.
For the new analysis, KFF researchers analyzed 392million claims filed to ACA insurance companies in 2023, the latest data available.
Data was taken from public reports released by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
It did not include claims from private insurers, such as policies provided to people through their employers.
Overall, ACA insurance plans denied 19 percent of total claims in 2023, an increase from 16 percent in 2022.
This was the highest rate since 2015, during which 19 percent of claims were denied. This adds up to 73million claims.
In recent years, the lowest rate was 14 percent in 2018.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama received just over 13million claims in 2023 and denied 4.5million, about 35 percent.
UnitedHealth Group, which serves 20 states that use ACA insurance plans, received 14million claims and denied 4.6million, a rate of 33 percent.
And Health Care Service Corporation, serving four states that use ACA plans - Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma, and Texas - received just over 25million claims and shot down 7.3million, a rate of 29 percent.
Centene Corporation, the largest health insurer managed by Medicaid, saw the most claims at 83million. Of those, 11.4million were denied, adding up to 14 percent.
Florida-based GuideWell Mutual Holding had the lowest denial rate of 6.7million out of 53million - 13 percent.
#1
...One-fifth of insurance claims from Americans
Given RFK's comment yesterday about the increased cost and decreased effectiveness of Medicaid and MediCare, you have to wonder how many rejects were illegals.
[ArsTechnica] AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt. Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.
#1
I can only recommend that anyone planning to rely on AI processing data with factual accuracy have a conversation about a topic where he has intricate knowledge.
So far I've always found AI to be prone to make subtle and also glaring mistakes like hallucinating fictional historical figures.
#3
Like any tool - AI proficiency will be in the hands of the holder.
I hit a level with my certifications that book learning, MS Learn, Tutorial Dojo, etc - just dont get me over the hump to pass the tests. AI has changed that.
If AI has all these bad facts and hallucinations, I'm not sure I would have passed my AZ-104 exam b/c I relied solely on ChatGPT to drill down the higher level concepts I was not getting from the exam review material.
#5
Unfortunately I fear people will 'cite' AI the same way they would, or used to, 'cite' Wikipedia
I did an experiement with the Jebrains AI assistant which 'helps' you write code. I asked it to 'refactor' a good chunk of python. First time was pretty good, Second... ok, by the fifth time the code was just mush. Looked like Joe Biden had written it while drunk... That was just code which it should have been able to handle easily...
VDH
[AmGreatness] After years of U.S. appeasement, Mexico exploits open borders, drug trade, and remittances—it's time for America to enforce real consequences and reclaim control.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2025
00:00 ||
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#1
Mexico's interests are the interests of their ruling class. It always has been. The only new seasoning is the cartels taking part of that power arrangement.
#2
I still believe the majority of Mexicans are decent people. But their government has been corrupted by the cartels and they are most certainly our enemy. It's about damn time our own government faces reality and acts accordingly.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2025 11:31
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[THEGATEWAYPUNDIT] President Donald Trump ...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down... settled with Meta Platforms for $25 million after the social media giant suspended his accounts following the January 6, 2021, protests at the US Capitol.
$22 million from the settlement will go to President Trump's presidential library. The rest will go to legal fees and to fellow plaintiffs who signed on to the case.
Meta did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.
The Wall Street Journal reported that activity on the case after Mark Zuckerberg ...the Peewee Herman clone who owns Facebook. He's got more money than Croesus and thinks he should be regulated by the government because it does such a nifty job with all the other stuff it regulates.... flew to Mar-a-Lago to dine with President Trump in November after his 2024 election victory.
Apparently, Trump brought up the lawsuit at the end of dinner with Zuckerberg in November. Then in January, Zuckerberg met with President Trump again for a full day of mediation at Mar-a-lago.
Facebook has been censoring conservative voices and the truth from reaching the masses for several years now.
Obviously, this is not the only censorship case Meta is involved in.
Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook eliminated up to 93% of traffic to top Pro-Trump websites following the 2016 election.
The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft testified to Congress on the oppressive Facebook policies back in 2018.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported in May 2022 that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, along with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit (Missouri v. Biden) against the Biden Administration, including Biden himself, Anthony Fauci, the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly a dozen federal agencies and Secretaries.
The suit alleges a massive coordinated effort by the Deep State to work with Big Tech to censor and manipulate Americans — from average citizens to news outlets — on issues including the Hunter Biden Laptop from Hell, 2020 Election Integrity, COVID-19 origin and extent skepticism, COVID-19 vaccine skepticism, among other issues.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2025
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Worth noting, korrespondent.net has compiled its Invasion of Ukraine series into separate months, beginning May 9th, 2023. Linked in the title.
[Korrespondent] 21.55 President Volodymyr Zelensky heard the report of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrsky and thanked the Special Operations Forces for the effective defeat of Russian soldiers and equipment.
20:40 Rescuers have completed the search operation after the Russian airstrike on a multi-story building in Sumy. The death toll has risen to nine, with another 14 people injured.
20.35 Swedish Combat Boat 90 boats, transferred by partners to the Ukrainian Navy, are already carrying out special tasks in the Black Sea aimed at strengthening security measures in the waters of our coast.
18.46 The death toll from a Russian drone strike on a multi-story residential building in Sumy has risen to eight. Local authorities have announced that a Day of Mourning has been declared in Sumy on January 30 and 31.
18:39 Ukrainian military continues to effectively destroy Russian equipment at the front. This time, the 122-mm Grad multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) was hit . The corresponding video was released by the Unmanned Systems Forces Command on Thursday, January 30.
17:45 Russia has begun using Shahed missiles with a warhead increased to 90 kg and metal elements (shrapnel). This was stated by the head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak.
"Russia is now using Shahed drones with an increased warhead of up to 90 kg and metal elements (shrapnel) to increase the number of civilian casualties," he wrote on Telegram.
16.50 The Security Service of Ukraine has identified the faces of four Russian generals who ordered the attack on the Epicenter hypermarket in Kharkiv on May 24, 2024, where 19 civilians were killed and 46 more were injured.
15:20 Fighters from the 14th Ivan Bohun Operational Brigade of the National Guard Chervona Kalyna, using a drone, planted the Ukrainian flag behind Russian military lines in the Donetsk direction.
"Under the cover of night, pilots from the Chervona Kalyna brigade used a drone to secure the Ukrainian flag to a tower that is under enemy control," the message under the video reads.
13.23 On Thursday morning, Russian invaders carried out massive shelling of a number of settlements in the Donetsk region. There are casualties and wounded among civilians, said the head of the local OVA Vadim Filashkin.
13.05 Cyber specialists from the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) carried out a DDOS attack on the digital infrastructure of Russian companies Gazprom and Gazpromneft. Ukrinform reported the details, citing a source in intelligence.
12.58 Russian theater and film actor Nikita Dzhigurda has been included in the list of persons posing a threat to national security. This is stated in the order of the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine. It is noted that Dzhigurda is actively participating in anti-Ukrainian events of the aggressor state aimed at justifying and legitimizing the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
12:36 The Ukrainian-made Zmey unmanned ground logistics system has been approved for use in the Armed Forces . This was reported on the website of the Ministry of Defense on January 30.
11:31 The Novoshakhtinsky Oil Refinery in Russia's Rostov Region has suspended operations after attacks, according to Andrey Kovalenko, head of the National Security and Defense Council's Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD). According to him, last year the refinery processed 3 million tons of oil, although it can process 7.5 million tons.
10.58 In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a lyceum was destroyed as a result of Russian attacks. Other buildings were also damaged, said the head of the Dnipropetrovsk OVA, Serhiy Lysak.
10.43 A former Ukrainian soldier who voluntarily swore allegiance to the Russians after his unit was captured in Simferopol in 2014 has been detained. His parents still live in the Poltava region. This was reported on January 30 by the State Bureau of Investigation.
10.22 President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed condolences to the families and friends of those killed in the Russian attack on the city of Sumy. According to the latest information, four people were killed and nine more received injuries of varying severity.
9.56 Russian troops launched 81 attack drones on Ukrainian territory. Air defense forces shot down 37 Shaheeds in 10 regions of the country, another 39 enemy drone imitators were lost. This was reported by the air force on January 30.
9:35 In the Bryansk region (Russia) on the night of January 30, a distribution station of the Druzhba oil pipeline was attacked . A fire broke out there. This was reported by the TG channels Astra and Mash.
8.56 Over the past 24 hours, 158 combat clashes have been recorded at the front. This was reported on January 30 by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The defense forces have hit ten areas of concentration of personnel and equipment, one air defense system, and two other important objects of the Russian invaders.
8.12 The bodies of two dead people were pulled out from under the rubble of a house in Sumy. This was reported by the State Emergency Service. It is noted that the bodies of a man and a woman were unblocked. According to the Sumy OVA, as of 8:00, as a result of an enemy "shahed" hitting a multi-story residential building in Sumy, four people were killed and 9 received injuries of varying severity.
7.50 Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have destroyed 1,270 Russian occupiers . The total combat losses of Russian troops in manpower from February 24, 2022 to January 30, 2025 reached about 835,940 people. This was announced by the General Staff.
4.54 Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's theory of victory is based on the assumption that the West will abandon Ukraine to its fate. Therefore, regular Western military aid to Kiev will force him to make concessions. This is stated in a report by the American Institute for the Study of War.
0.58 Ukrainian Defense Forces attacked the Nizhny Novgorod Oil Refinery in Kstovo, Russia, on the night of January 29. The refinery is located more than 800 kilometers from the front line in northern Ukraine. The explosions caused a massive fire that lasted until the morning. Russian media are already panicking over this attack and other strikes by Ukraine, Forbes journalist David Axe reports in his article.
Linked article is available only through a VPN.
[EngMilRu] The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the special military operation.
In Kharkov direction, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of one motorised infantry brigade and one air assault brigade of the AFU near Volchansk (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 50 troops, one armoured personnel carrier, three motor vehicles, and one field artillery gun.
Units of the Zapad Group of Forces improved the tactical situation. Losses were inflicted on manpower and hardware of three mechanised brigades of the AFU, two territorial defence brigades, and one national guard brigade near Peschanoye, Zagryzovo, Zagoruykovka, Kutkovka, Putnikovo, and Kurilovka (Kharkov region).
The AFU losses amounted to more than 320 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, 10 motor vehicles, eight field artillery guns, including three NATO-made guns. One ammunition depot was wiped out.
Units of the Yug Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and positions. Losses were inflicted on formations of two mechanised brigades, one airmobile brigade of the AFU, and one territorial defence brigade near Seversk, Dronovka, Verkhnekamenskoye, and Chasov Yar (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 175 troops, two motor vehicles, and one field artillery gun. One ammunition depot was wiped out.
Units of the Tsentr Group of Forces continued to engage in active offensive operations. Losses were inflicted on manpower and hardware of three mechanised brigades, one motorised infantry brigade, one airmobile brigade of the AFU, and one national guard brigade near Dzerzhinsk, Druzhba, Nelepovka, Novopavlovka, Shcherbinovka, and Andreyevka (Donetsk People's Republic).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 550 troops, two armoured fighting vehicles, six motor vehicles, and two field artillery guns.
Units of the Vostok Group of Forces continued advancing into the depth of the enemy's defences. Losses were inflicted on formations of two mechanised brigades of the AFU, one naval infantry brigade, and one territorial defence brigade near Novoselka, Razliv, Volnoye Pole (Donetsk People's Republic), and Novodarovka (Zaporozhye region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 125 troops and three motor vehicles. Five field artillery guns, including one NATO-made gun, were destroyed.
Units of the Dnepr Group of Forces inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of one mechanised brigade of the AFU and one territorial defence brigade near Antonovka, Tokarevka (Kherson region), and Kamenskoye (Zaporozhye region).
The AFU losses amounted to up to 55 troops and two motor vehicles.
Operational-Tactical Aviation, attack unmanned aerial vehicles, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Russian Groups of Forces struck Ukrainian defence industry objects, infrastructure of military airfields, UAV workshops and storages, as well as engaged the enemy's manpower and hardware in 142 areas.
Air defence units shot down two French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs, four U.S.-made HIMARS MLRS projectiles, and 61 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 41,861 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,892 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 1,510 MLRS combat vehicles, 21,058 field artillery guns and mortars, and 30,904 units of support military vehicles have been neutralised.
In the past six months, monthly medical and irrecoverable losses of the AFU manpower have been constantly reaching about 50,000 troops and more (January 2025 – 51,960 troops, December 2024 – 48,470 troops, November 2024 – 60,805 troops, etc.).
The number of recruits of the AFU training centres even considering the more active mobilisation efforts all over Ukraine by enlistment offices has rarely exceeded 30,000 people per month over the past six months. Without proper training, these recruits are sent to the line of contact, which results in decreasing the AFU total strength.
According to the official data, up to 100,000 Ukrainian troops have gone AWOL or fled.
Legislative changes prepared by the Kiev regime under pressure from Western countries to lower the mobilisation age from 25 to 18 are the only way for Zelensky to delay the cascading collapse of the front in Donbass for a few more months.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue the operation to neutralise AFU formations on the territory of Kursk region.
In the course of offensive actions, units of the Sever Group of Forces inflicted losses on formations of one tank brigade, one heavy mechanised brigade, four mechanised brigades, two air assault brigades, one naval infantry brigade, and three territorial defence brigades of the AFU near Gogolevka, Goncharovka, Guyevo, Pervy Knyazhy, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Malaya Loknya, Makhnovka, Nikolayevka, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Rubanshchina, Sverdlikovo, and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye. Two counter-attacks launched by the enemy's units were repelled.
Operational-Tactical and Army aviation, and artillery inflicted losses on manpower and hardware of the enemy near Viktorovka, Guyevo, Zazulevka, Kazachaya Loknya, Kolmakov, Kositsa, Kruglenkoye, Kurilovka, Lebedevka, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Makhnovka, Melovoy, Nikolsky, Novaya Sorochina, Oleshnya, Sverdlikovo, Staraya Sorochina, Sudzha, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye as well as Basovka, Belovody, Vodolagi, Zhuravka, and Obody in Sumy region.
Over the past 24 hours, the AFU losses amounted to more than 240 troops, two infantry fighting vehicles, one armoured personnel carrier, four armoured fighting vehicles, 14 motor vehicles, four artillery guns, nine mortars, two electronic warfare stations, three UAV command posts, and two ammunition depots.
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 56,140 troops, 325 tanks, 241 infantry fighting vehicles, 185 armoured personnel carriers, 1,653 armoured fighting vehicles, 1,707 motor vehicles, 396 artillery guns, 44 MLRS launchers, including 13 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 16 anti-aircraft missile launchers, eight transport-loading vehicles, 105 EW stations, 14 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 32 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, nine armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[NewsFront] 20:27 122mm D-30 howitzer crews of the North group of forces destroyed platoon strongholds with Ukrainian Armed Forces manpower in the special operation zone –Ministry of Defense?? 19:37 Flying along the border forest plantation, FPV operator GV "Sever" discovered enemy self-propelled artillery unit. Having flown around the target from all sides, Severyanin noticed that the anti-drone net in the front part of the self-propelled gun was weakly stretched and promptly inflicted fire damage on the self-propelled gun.
18:57 Fighters of the North group of forces take revengefor the woman and her son who died the day before in the Belgorod region.
In the village of Razumnoye in the Belgorod region, a two-year-old child and his mother were killed as a result of a drone attack on a residential building.
There was another child and his father in the house; they were injured.
18:54 Training conditions are close to combat conditions –Ministry of Defense
Drone operators and counter-UAV teams from the Bars-1 unit of the Dnepr military group conduct joint training at training grounds in the Zaporizhia region.
Drone pilots fly along specified and arbitrary routes. In turn, the military personnel of the counter-UAV groups track the enemy "birds" and fire at them.
This interaction creates training conditions close to combat ones.
18:08 Airborne artillerymen disrupted the enemy’s rotation –Ministry of Defense
The crew of the 152mm 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer of the Airborne Forces artillery unit destroyed Ukrainian militants conducting a rotation in the border area of the Kursk region.
The artillerymen marched to firing positions and with three shots hit the Ukrainian Armed Forces strongholds located in the basements of half-destroyed buildings, thereby disrupting the enemy’s rotation on the line of combat contact.
17:03 Captured Ukrainian serviceman Igor Parfentiev on the lawlessness in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces –Ministry of Defense
Prisoner of war Igor Parfentiev was mobilized by representatives of the TCC and sent to military service in the Zhitomir region. Various people from nearby regions of the country were brought to the training unit. Then Parfentiev was sent to fight in the Donetsk People's Republic, where he saw the atrocities of his commanders, who were engaged in looting and tormenting civilians.
"When we entered the first village of the DPR, we had to resettle the military, and the commanders gave us the order to evict the local residents onto the street and settle the soldiers into the houses. There were mortar men next door to us, and when they left the apartment, they took all the owner's belongings with them. They borrowed money from the seller at the local store for vodka and did not return it," the prisoner of war said.
From Parfentyev’s story it is clear that the Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel acted without control; the officers tried to control them remotely.
"I reported on the radio about the attack and that we needed support, but the commanders answered us: "Hold on, maybe your own people have confused you." We started shouting "Glory to Ukraine", then a barrage of fire fell on us. We began to retreat, despite the command's prohibition to leave our positions. And then our own FPV drones started working on us," added captive Parfentyev.
16:15 Sakhalin artillerymen of the Vostok group destroyed a command post of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the South Donetsk direction –Ministry of Defense
15:35 Crews of the 152mm Giatsint-B towed guns of the Zapad group of forces strike at the identified camouflaged firing positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, ammunition depots, military equipment, fortified strongholds and concentrations of enemy manpower –Ministry of Defense
15:14 FPV drone crews of the 25th Combined Arms Army of the West Forces Group burned a Ukrainian T-72M1 tank. Objective control footage shows precise hits by attack drones on the tank –Ministry of Defense
14:56 Bogatyrsky direction
After taking Velikaya Novosyolka, units of the Russian Armed Forces in the area of Novy Komar attack in the direction of Novoocheretovaty and further north in the direction of the ravine leading to Razdolnoye.
To the northwest, units of the Russian Armed Forces are attacking in the direction of Bogatyr and Constantinople, outflanking Razliv.
From the south, the Russian Armed Forces managed to push the enemy in the direction of Razliv for about two km, occupying the territory between the Kapitan and Shulicha gullies.
North of the Sukhie Yaly River, units of the Russian Armed Forces have taken up a landing in the southern part of the Sukhaya ravine and are driving out the enemy from the northern side of the ravine, west of the settling ponds.
In Dachny, there is intense fighting in the center, where our forces were able to break through yesterday (in the area of ??the kindergarten-club), and on the northeastern outskirts.
To the south, our units are fighting for a stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
From the area east of Zelenovka, our units are making their way to Ulakly.
In Andreyevka, fighting continues in the central and eastern parts of the village.
14:50 Red Army direction. Central area
The enemy pays special attention to this area. The most motivated enemy units are on the defensive here. The positions here are equipped with engineers as our troops approach.
The area directly covers Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) and Dmitrov (Mirnograd). Enemy units operate here relying on the urban development of the agglomeration, i.e. command posts, command posts, UAV control posts, air defense posts of enemy units, places for equipment shelters, at a minimum, have greater protection than in small settlements.
In addition, the enemy’s main defensive positions in this area are located on commanding heights, which also gives him certain advantages.
Enemy units in this area are constantly being replenished with personnel and reserves.
In the center, the enemy is conducting generally successful defensive battles, relying on advantageous positions in the area of Sukhoi Yar, Lysovka, on the heights and along two railway lines on the flanks.
Despite the active work of our artillery in this area, the “big and small sky”, every advance here is achieved with great effort.
Some of our fpv drones are working, reaching the depths of the enemy's defense, up to Rodinsky. In the area of Lysovka and Sukhoi Yar, the enemy, introducing reserves, periodically shows activity, undertakes counterattacks.
Based on the above, judging by the developing situation, our command has concentrated its main efforts on enveloping the agglomeration on the flanks: in the area of Dmitrovo (Kotlino), where our units are attacking and advancing in the direction of the M30 (E50) highway and Vozdvizhenka, north of which our units are gaining a foothold in the area of the road junction of the highway to Konstantinovka.
The situation in the area itself is relatively static. Fierce battles are underway for Lysovka, where, by introducing reserves, we are pushing the enemy out of the northern part, behind the stronghold north of Zeleny, west of Chunishino and Novoukrainka and in the direction of Sukhoi Yar along the railway lines.
14:47 Two Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers of long-range aviation carried out a planned flight in the airspace over the neutral waters of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan –Ministry of Defense
The flight lasted more than 8 hours. Fighter escort was provided by the crews of Su-35S and Su-30SM aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
All flights of aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces are carried out in strict accordance with international rules for the use of airspace.
13:41 Advance of Russian attack aircraft in Andreyevka –MA
13:34 Russian Armed Forces improved positions north of Yantarny –MAP
13:16 Russian army expanded control in the Dachnoye area –MAP
13:08 Russian Armed Forces advance south of Razliv –MAP
12:40 Correction of LBS in the area of the village of Nadiya –MAP
12:12 Tank crews of the 80th Tank Regiment of the 90th tank Division of the Center group of forces hit the Ukrainian Armed Forces fortifications with direct fire –Ministry of Defense
After the destruction of the main firing points of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, small groups of attack aircraft took the settlement of Novoyelysovetovka in the DPR.
11:00 In Zaporizhia region organized training of mobilized personnel of the 102nd Separate Brigade of the Territorial Defense Forces at a training ground in the vicinity of Rizdvyanka.
Also, from January 20 to February 4, combat training sessions are underway with servicemen from one of the unidentified mechanized brigades at a training ground code-named “Adaptation” near Novonikolaevka.
Another large training ground is located northeast of Zaporozhye in Volnyansk on the basis of the old territory of the logistics troops. The ground is located next to the railway line, which simplifies the delivery of personnel for training.
10:35 FPV drone crew from the Rubicon center destroyed a Ukrainian combat armored vehicle in the Kursk direction —Ministry of Defense
10:35 Advance of the Russian Armed Forces in the settlement of Verkhnekamenskoye —MAP
10:11 Precise strike on Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters by FPV drone on fiber optics. Kursk region —MAP
09:36 Fighters of the Gorlovka 132nd Mootorized Rifle Brigade of the "Center" force group hunt for infantry and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the city of Dzerzhinsk (Toretsk), attack and eliminate them with precise fire.
09:07 Russian troops have come close to the Ulakly/Constantinopol area, where the Kurakhovo garrison of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was retreating. Earlier, this area was closely processed by aviation, and now, it seems, the active phase on the ground is beginning —MAP
08:42 FPV operators GV "North" hit kamikaze drones at two M-113 armored personnel carriers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Khar'kov direction.
08:20 Su-25 crews destroyed camouflaged armored vehicles and personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the border areas of the Kursk region —Ministry of Defense
07:23 During the past night, air defense systems on duty intercepted and destroyed five Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles: three UAVs over the territory of the Belgorod region and two over the territory of the Bryansk region. Ministry of Defense
05:10 A 122mm BM-21 Grad MLRS crew from the Center group of forces destroyed a strong point and a field ammunition depot of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Krasnoarmeysk direction —Ministry of Defense
[NBCnews] DCA tower staffing was 'not normal' during crash, preliminary FAA report finds
A preliminary FAA report on the collision found that air traffic control tower staffing at Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) was "not normal" for the amount of air traffic and for the time of day, a source with knowledge of the situation told NBC News.
The tower typically has a controller that focuses specifically on helicopter traffic. But at the time of the crash last night, the source said, one controller at DCA was overseeing both airplane and helicopter activity.
FAA guidelines do allow for this position to be combined, permitting one controller to control both airplanes and helicopters.
The airport’s air traffic control facilities have been understaffed for years, with only 19 fully certified controllers on deck as of September 2023, according to Congress’ Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan report
In that plan, ATC said it is “committed to maximum hiring for the next few years to recover from substantial under-hiring due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the lapse in funding in 2019.”
The Biden-era report also highlighted the agency’s commitment to DEI policies.
“The FAA is fully committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity while maintaining the highest safety standards as outlined in the agency’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2021-2025,” the report said.
In 2023, the FAA exceeded its hiring target of 1,500 controllers by bringing aboard 1,512 new employees.
The facility should have had 30 on deck, as per the goal set by the FAA and controller’s union. Shortages have caused many controllers to work 10-hour days and six-day weeks.
#1
Conducting a Helo Night Vission Goggle (NVG) approach to National doesn't seem to pass the common sense test. What about BWI, Andrews, AP Hill, or Davis at Belvoir (origin point) ?
Must be a reason. What is it ?
Will this be enough to end military access to National ?
One year ago, Republicans stood before Congress and stated that there was shortage of air, traffic control operators, and that the DEI policies and workshops needed to go. They wanted money to go for hiring people to work in air traffic control that had nothing to do with DEI… pic.twitter.com/U303pK1roy
#12
The "instructor" (pilot has been identified and seems solid); the co-pilot (presumably being instructed) has not been publicly identified. Presumably the instructee was at the controls.
#14
Lots of issues came together that night to create this accident. First, both pilot and copilot of the Blackhawk were low time aviators. The instructor pilot was a 1,000 hour pilot, really low time for an IP. The other pilot was at 500 hours. She was probably only a year out of flight school. Both very junior for fluing in a complex environment.
There is a lot of chatter about the helo being at 400 feet, a hundred feet above their ceiling. There is no word yet on the airliner's altitude, was it above the floor for the approach? Or in the tube like it should be. Allowing two aircraft to get within 100 feet of each other in flight is a no go. The helo was flying outside the corridor, it appears the helo was further away from the airport that the corridor allows. This should have given them better distance in altitude, but we will see.
The controller being sent home early placing the burden on a single controller will most likely become another contributing factor.
Lastly, a few years ago there was a change allowing the sequencing of aircraft in a control zone to be closer, meaning less time between aircraft landing. This causes a more complex environment for controllers and pilots.
All of these seem to be, or could be considered, contributing factors that need to be investigated and I do believe the NTSB will.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/31/2025 13:10
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Top||
#15
Comments from people who should know are popping up all over, e.g.
It’s no secret in Washington — in the halls of Congress and various agencies that call the city home — that D.C.’s airspace is “incredibly congested.”
That’s what former House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Peter DeFazio said..
#16
More from above interview, I added emphasis where appropriate:
Q: There has been a lot of concern in the industry over a spike in near-collisions, but most of that focus has been on collisions on the ground. Has the danger of midair collisions been under-appreciated?
A: This is an incredibly congested airspace. First off, if the military wants to run training missions, they could run them between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., when Washington National has noise reductions in place and traffic is dramatically reduced. I don't see any reason to be running training missions during peak hours. I believe that there is a lot of unnecessary military transport in that corridor.
I read a comment that military considers it necessary to train helicopter crews to function well around DC in case of a crisis threatening "continuity of government". Still there's no justification in sandwiching training missions into the most congested airline space in the USA. Congress is a do-nothing branch of our government, only interested in cashing every paycheck and collecting every benefit they can get their hands on. Even when the lives of Congress critters and their families are on the line, Congress does (and usually doesn't do) whatever it likes. Prove me wrong.
#17
If TPTB actually considered "continuity of government" all that important, they would have started dispersing governmental centers all over CONUS decades ago. They've done squat.
When I'm in D.C., I stay on my [house] boat, and I see all of the many, many, many helicopter flights following that same flight path.
I must be the only person who thinks having the center of government adjacent to a waterway connected to the Atlantic seaboard is a major security risk. I wonder about how close a submerged drone could get to the US Capitol.
#19
IIRC, when they built Dulles airport, it was supposed to sort of replace Reagan. I think the plan was to eventually shut Reagan down. However, the Congress critters hated the idea of having to go all the way to Dulles when they flew home on the weekend, so they insisted that Reagan stay open.
#23
14:38 from X: The FAA has indefinitely shut down all low-altitude helicopter flights near DCA. The FAA was right to take this action, and I expect these restrictions to be in effect until investigations are complete.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Korrespondent] The Ukrainian Armed Forces are causing damage to the Russian army.
Russian troops lost more than 300 soldiers in the Pokrovsky direction in one day, but continue to advance.
There have been 125 combat clashes on the front since the beginning of the day. The Russian invaders attacked 51 times in the Pokrovsky direction, where they lost more than 300 people. This was reported by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Thursday, January 30.
In the Kharkov direction, there was one combat clash in the direction of Liptsy. The enemy also carried out an airstrike on the Kazachya Lopan area. Three times the Russians attacked the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kupyansk direction, near Petrovpavlovka, Zagryzovoye and Novaya Kruglyakovka. The units of the defense forces stopped all enemy attacks.
In the Liman direction, Russian troops attacked Ukrainian defenders in the areas of the settlements of Kopanki, Balka Zhuravka, Yampolevka, Zelenaya Dolina, Terny and Kolodtsy. Our soldiers repelled nine enemy attacks.
In the Seversky direction, the enemy made nine attempts to push our defenders from their positions in the Belogorovka and Verkhnekamenskoye areas, all combat clashes have been completed. In the Kramatorsk direction, soldiers repelled 10 attempts by the occupiers to advance in the Orekhovo-Vasilovka, Novomarkovoye, Stupochki, Chasovy Yar and Predtechino areas.
In the Toretsk direction, the Russians have attempted to advance forward 13 times in the areas of Toretsk, Dilievka, Shcherbinovka and Krymskoye, one clash continues.
In the Pokrovsk direction, the aggressor attacked the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces 51 times in the areas of the settlements of Malinovka, Elizavetovka, Vodyanoye Vtoroy, Novotoretskoye, Luch, Pokrovsk, Lisovka, Novoukrainka, Udachnoye, Yasenovo, Shevchenko and Dachnoye. Seven clashes are still ongoing.
The occupiers' losses in the direction today amounted to 337 people killed and wounded, 10 vehicles, one UAV antenna, one satellite communications system, two electronic warfare systems, one ATGM, a Murom-M surveillance system and three operational-tactical level UAVs were destroyed, in addition, two enemy mortars were significantly damaged.
In the Novopavlovsk direction, the invaders carried out one attack near Constantinople. In the Gulyai-Polye direction, the Russians made four attempts to push our defenders from their positions in the Novopol and Novosyolka areas.
In the Dnieper direction, the Russian invaders tried seven times to displace the Ukrainian Armed Forces units from their positions, but were unsuccessful and, having suffered losses, retreated.
The Ukrainian Defense Forces continue to conduct an operation in the Kursk direction. The soldiers repelled 11 Russian attacks in this direction, in addition, the enemy's aviation carried out 12 airstrikes on its own territory, dropping 16 KAB.
Let us recall that over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed 1,270 Russian occupiers. The total combat losses of the Russian army since the beginning of the half-scale invasion of Ukraine amounted to about 835,940 people.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The chairman of the International Islamic Mission, Shafig Pshikhachev, called on Russian Muslims to resist international Islamic terrorism, the organization’s press service reported on Thursday, January 30.
Always a good idea, resisting terrorism of any sort. Real or taqqiya?
In connection with the rise to power of radical groups in the Middle East, the threat of terrorism is growing, Pshikhachev noted in his address. They are trying to destabilize and intimidate Russian society, he said.
"Terrorists, as before, are trying to involve Muslims in their misanthropic ideology, hiding behind the great spiritual and moral values that our religion, Islam, has. They distort our bright values and use them to set Russian citizens against each other on religious and ethnic grounds," Pshikhachev wrote.
Muslims, like representatives of other traditional religions of Russia, are aware of their responsibility for the stability of the state, the need to defend their values and their homeland, the head of the organization noted. The people of Russia are a single whole, he emphasized.
“I call on Muslims in Russia to show our characteristic prudence and responsibility, to take care of their loved ones and not to succumb to provocations, and to report all cases to the authorized bodies,” added Pshikhachev.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, in December 2024, the FSB reported that members of the radical Islamist group Vilayat Khorasan
…ISIS In Afghanistan/Indian subcontinent…
(a terrorist organization whose activities are banned in the Russian Federation) who were preparing a terrorist attack near a police station had been eliminated in Moscow. The attackers purchased a car and placed gas cylinders in it, after which they began to assemble a homemade explosive device. When detained, they resisted and were neutralized.
Posted by: badanov ||
01/31/2025
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[11143 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
#1
When detained, they resisted and were neutralized.
See, journalistic integrity.
'Killed them where they stood'.
Kindly find a different URL when posting information from Wunderground, s'il vous plait...
...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH
MONDAY EVENING FOR THE TAHOE BASIN ABOVE 7000 FEET...
* WHAT...For the Winter Weather Advisory for the Tahoe Basin above
7000 feet, wet snow. Snow accumulations of 6 to 12 inches with up
to 20 inches above 8,000 feet. Winds gusting as high as 90 mph.
For the Winter Storm Watch for the Tahoe Basin above 7000 feet,
heavy wet snow. Snow accumulations of 1 to 2 feet. Winds gusting
as high as 90 mph.
------------------ The above is just the first phase. Stormy weather will likely last until 7 February. Right now it looks like several warm periods will be entrained into the storm system and this will allow the Donner, Echo and other passes to open quickly after each heavy snow period. However, this could change. In any event, areas above 9000' may get 10' of snow.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/31/2025
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[11144 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The Weather Guessers 2 weeks ago were saying the Southeast (Miss, AL, GA) should be planning for another Snow/ICE Storm around Feb 8th.
Everybody enjoying this Global Warming? Because, according to their Global Warming Countdown Clock we only have 5 years left.
BUT WAIT. Climate Cooling is also predicted to happen in 2030 (5 years from now, just like the Global Warming clock).
So which side of the Earth well be HOT as Hell, or Cold as a Well Diggers ass?
Also, don't forget we only have 89 seconds to live according to the Doomsday Clock. Which has also been wrong for 70+ years.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] In Russia, for the first time, a procedure for coloring a batch of wheat for grain export to countries where the relevant requirements are imposed was carried out. This was reported by Rosselkhoznadzor.
On January 28, in the port of Vysotsky in the Leningrad Region, specialists from the St. Petersburg branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution "Grain Quality Assessment Center" for the first time dyed wheat for shipment to Morocco. The total weight of the batch was 28 thousand tons.
As the department explained, grain coloring is a new service of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Grain Quality Assessment Center”.
It is noted that each country sets its own requirements for the quality and appearance of products. For example, Morocco and Saudi Arabia have special requirements for the coloring of grain. Most often, coloring is used to identify grain intended for animal feed.
When dyeing, special dyes are used that strictly comply with safety and quality standards.
To meet Morocco's requirements for identifying feed wheat, the dye E-142 (green) was used. This is a natural product that guarantees the complete safety of the product.
As reported by Regnum news agency, Russia will continue to provide humanitarian aid to the Central African Republic (CAR), including wheat supplies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on January 16.
Kazakhstan will not extend the previously introduced restrictions on the import of wheat from Russia and has resumed imports from January 1, 2025. This was reported by the Eldala.kz portal.
Putin said in September that the country's projected grain harvest in 2024 was 132 million tons, up from 148 million tons the year before. Domestic consumption is expected to be up to 90 million tons.
According to the head of the Ministry of Agriculture Oksana Lut, the country will be able to export up to 60 million tons of grain this year.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Texas Senator Ted Cruz is calling for President Donald Trump to release all files related to the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs trial.
'I have long called for the administration to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and also the P. Diddy files,' Cruz said to The Bulwark.
Combs was charged in September by federal officials with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
The alleged activity aligned with his elaborate sex parties known as ‘Freak Offs.’
The federal government accused Combs of using his ‘multi-faceted business empire’ to facilitate women and other individuals for his events and incidents of ‘repeated physical abuse’ according to the indictments.
Americans have called for the release of the 'Diddy files,' as many expect them to include a long list of celebrities who they believe are guilty of sexual crimes.
Trump's choice for FBI director Kash Patel said in November that the president would likely release details of the case in order to restore trust in American law enforcement.
'He's going to come in there and maybe give them the Epstein list, maybe give them the Diddy list, and they are terrified,' Patel said during an interview on the Benny Johnson Show.
It will happen right after the Epstein files are found. Which, at last check, were under _ _ _ control and next to the Ark of the Covenant in a DC storage facility.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Vasiliev
[REGNUM] The world has yet to fully assess the global consequences of the change of power in the United States. But it is already obvious that American foreign policy will undergo serious changes.
Such a strategically important direction as Africa is no exception. However, no one expected that changes would begin so quickly and the continent would find itself on the threshold of a new major war.
PROFITS OF WESTERN CORPORATIONS
The M23 (March 23 Movement) rebel group, which has seized control of much of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent years, says it has recaptured the key city of Goma, capital of North Kivu province, which is home to large reserves of rare earth metals, from government forces.
In addition to gold, copper, cobalt and diamonds, the Congo has large reserves of coltan, a valuable mineral used to make smartphones, tablets and other devices. Its production is the cause of serious armed conflicts, so it is no coincidence that coltan is called the "bloodiest" mineral. There is little of it on Earth, and the largest electronics manufacturers need more and more raw materials every year.
The bulk of coltan is smuggled out of Congo through neighboring Rwanda. The largest processing plants are located on its territory. And it is the Rwandan armed forces and special services that the Congolese side accuses of supporting separatists and direct participation in the armed conflict.
Last year, Rwanda signed an agreement with Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto to explore and develop lithium in the country, an official announcement was made on January 29, 2024. Rio Tinto Group is an Australian-British concern, the third-largest transnational mining and metallurgical company in the world and, incidentally, the main competitor of the Russian company RUSAL.
The investment agreement envisages the creation of a joint venture with the Rwandan company Aterian to develop lithium and related products (cesium, tantalum, etc.). Rio Tinto plans to invest $7.5 million, which will allow it to become the owner of 75% of the lithium production, located in the southwest of the country (on the border with the DR Congo) on a site of 2,750 hectares. The investment decision on Rwanda shows Rio Tinto's global strategy to take a significant share of the market for the metal needed for batteries.
Experts have long known that Rwanda's rare earth metals processing facilities, located in the west and south of the country, operate on raw materials mined in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. And now, under various pretexts, Kigali is carrying out aggression against its neighboring state, destabilizing the situation in the entire region, provoking a humanitarian crisis, and all this for the sake of profits for Western corporations such as Rio Tinto.
With Donald Trump in power in the White House, Rwanda has decided to build on its success. Which will likely result in another major bloodbath in Africa.
CHANGE IN US POLICY TOWARDS AFRICA
For the national interests of the United States, the geopolitical and geo-economic importance of Africa has increased significantly in recent years.
And President Trump, who has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to question conventional wisdom, including his own past judgments, is likely to pay significant attention to the African Continent, despite his previous statements about wanting to focus on domestic issues and his cool attitude toward Africa during his first term in 2017–21.
It is important to clarify that this does not refer to the place that Africa will occupy among the foreign policy priorities of the new administration, and, accordingly, not to the volumes of funds allocated. There will be a change in approach and a reorientation of attention to African countries other than those on which the Biden administration was counting.
For example, the well-known US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is often considered responsible for implementing the US “soft power” and “supporting democracy,” is likely to face significant budget cuts. The agency is plagued by accusations of meddling in the affairs of other countries.
Many humanitarian programs will be cut, not only in the area of human rights protection, but also in practical areas - in agriculture, health care, etc. And this will hit individual African countries and vulnerable groups hard.
Without a doubt, entire layers of African societies, made up of activists and humanitarian workers who use the corresponding budgets, will be left not only without work, but literally without food.
THE LOGIC OF CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA
On the other hand, the largest infrastructure project implemented by the United States in Africa, the Lobito transport corridor, will be supported and continued. Construction of the railway within the corridor is planned to begin in 2026. 830 kilometers of track should connect Lucano in Angola with Chingola in Zambia. The project envisages extending the railway to the enterprises of the Zambian copper belt. The work is estimated at 2.3 billion dollars.
Some experts call the "Lobito Corridor" the "Trump Corridor" because the idea appeared back in 2020 during the first presidential term of the "strongest American leader", and the project equally includes both commercial interests and geopolitical logic. That is, American policy will become less ideological, more practical and at the same time subordinate to this logic.
We are talking about confrontation with China and the definition of Beijing as the geopolitical "enemy number one", which became a certain consensus of the American elite during Trump's first term in office. And if we reason in the logic of opposition to the Celestial Empire, then Africa could become the key space for confrontation between the two powers.
As strange as it may sound, the key link in China's strategy is not Taiwan, not the bordering Central Asia or the countries of Southeast Asia, but Africa. Simply because of the presence of a huge number of minerals, including those critically important for modern sectors of the economy, in the extraction of some of which China already has a monopoly.
Also, due to objective factors - economic and population growth - in a number of African countries, China has seriously increased its imports in recent years. Africa is also a promising market, which is forgotten by the same Western mining companies. If you look at China's most famous initiative, "One Belt, One Road", it turns out that it was African countries that received the most funding.
In the energy sector alone, China has financed more than 36 projects (mostly hydroelectric and solar power plants) in at least 19 African countries. In addition, between 2021 and 2023, Beijing signed 66 project contracts with African governments, 57 of which were in sub-Saharan Africa, and only two contracts were signed outside the Belt and Road Initiative.
As a result, Africa will remain a primary focus of American foreign policy, along with the Middle East, where Israel has strong interests, and Southeast Asia, where US attention is focused on Taiwan, but not only.
SANCTIONS AND ISRAEL'S INTERESTS
The Republicans' toolkit for combating China's growing influence includes not only positive cases (like the "Lobito corridor"), but also negative ones. We are talking about sanctions that will be widely applied to African elites who allowed themselves to choose the "wrong partner."
Apart from China, where everything is pretty clear, many forget that the Republicans are almost completely in solidarity with Israel's foreign policy. The latest events in the Middle East are indicative in this regard. But this also applies to the African direction.
Under Trump, South Africa and a number of other African countries that allowed themselves to be too harsh in their criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latest crisis in the Gaza Strip will find themselves in the crosshairs of American sanctions and other forms of pressure from Washington. At the same time, the United States will pay special attention to countries that have come under significant Israeli influence in recent years: Morocco, Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda.
It is worth remembering that it was the Republicans who initially began to effectively use such an instrument as sanctions in international politics – this is a fact.
Just Security, an information resource at New York University School of Law and considered a source close to the White House administration, predicts that the Trump administration will widely use sanctions against Africa. The author of the article, Brad Brooks-Rubin, a senior adviser at the US State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, reports that the Trump administration, unlike Biden, will be able to use this system of pressure more successfully:
“This could open up new opportunities to advance broader policy, national security and even economic goals, such as competition with China, supply chain security for critical minerals and other natural resources, and even immigration.”
As successful cases, the author cites the Trump administration's sanctions measures from 2017 to 2020 against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which prevented Joseph Kabila from retaining power ) and against South Sudan (which helped end the civil war).
Overall, however, the idea that the Trump administration will be able to more effectively deal with the consequences of the huge array of sanctions that the Democrats have created against Russia and China is highly questionable.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR RUSSIA
The strategy of confronting China and defending Israel's interests can also be supplemented by the Republicans' dislike of traditional Western partners. To the point that in a number of areas, the Trump administration may prefer Russia to France as a partner in Africa (we are talking, of course, about the Sahel).
For example, Republicans cannot stand French President Emmanuel Macron. Phenomenally, but it is a fact: France’s recent defeats in Africa, including the forced and humiliating withdrawal of French troops from Chad, have caused Republicans to feel a sense of restrained satisfaction.
On the other hand, sanctions restrictions on a number of African countries (the "stick method") from the White House will once again push these countries towards Russia. It should not be forgotten that Russia and African countries have similar experience in resisting Western sanctions. Some African countries have been under sanctions pressure for a very long time: Sudan since 1993, Zimbabwe since 2003. And this is another circumstance that brings us closer together.
Such experience also provides an opportunity to implement a system of counter-sanction measures. Starting with interaction and coordination of a common position at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and international platforms and ending with the implementation of specific economic steps. The first action could be to study the mechanisms for implementing Western sanctions and the practices of their application against African countries, as well as a comparison with the current Russian experience.
Africa is literally the storehouse of the collective West. Without access to African resources, all scientific and technical progress of the Western world loses its base, and the Chinese end up as winners. And in this sense, the position of African countries, which have largely refused to follow the Western propaganda, is very indicative.
Recall that 26 African countries did not support the resolution calling for an end to Russia's military operations in Ukraine. Eritrea voted against the resolution and expressed clear support for Moscow, 16 other African countries abstained, and nine countries did not take part in the vote.
Russia has no need to show solidarity with the interests of China or the United States on the African continent. Its goal is different: to consolidate and expand its own influence in the conditions of confrontation between these two powers, in particular to fully settle accounts with its long-standing opponent, France.
Returning to the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it can be noted that at the grassroots level in Congolese society there are numerous calls for the need to invite Russia and Russian instructors to ensure security in the eastern provinces of the country. These calls are indicative from the point of view of the possible growth of not only the relations between our countries, but also the popularity of Russia on the Black Continent as a whole.
We can equally act as independent arbitrators and as defenders of all those unfairly offended and disadvantaged on the continent.
#1
Without a doubt, entire layers of African societies, made up of activists and humanitarian workers who use the corresponding budgets, will be left not only without work, but literally without food.
#3
Very possibly the oldest "civilization" on the planet. Some reports indicate 80,000 years, possibly twice that. If they've not got it right by now, I'm reluctant to make further investment.
Text by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[ColonelCassad] Kalashnikov to Present for the First Time the Latest AK-12 Shortened and AK-12 Compact Assault Rifles at IDEX 2025.
Kalashnikov Concern will exhibit for the first time the latest 5.45mm AK-12 shortened (AK-12K) and 5.45mm AK-12 compact (AK-12SK) assault rifles at the IDEX 2025 International Exhibition of Arms and Defense Technologies, which will be held from 17 to 21 February in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).
The AK-12K and AK-12SK are chambered for 5.45x39 mm and are designed to destroy enemy manpower. They have improved technical, ergonomic and operational characteristics that meet the requirements of modern combat.
When firing from them, in particular, 5.45 mm cartridges with a regular 7N6 bullet, 5.45 mm cartridges with a 7N10 high-penetration bullet, as well as 5.45 mm cartridges with 7T3 and 7T3M tracer bullets are used. The capacity of the AK-12K and AK-12SK magazines is 30 rounds. The machine guns are equipped with a low-noise shooting device (LSD) weighing no more than 0.8 kg.
Tactical and technical characteristics of the Kalashnikov assault rifle AK-12K
∙ Caliber, mm - 5.45
∙ Weight without magazine, belt and accessories, kg, no more than - 3.4
∙ Length of the assault rifle without PMS, mm, no more than:
- in the combat position - 810
- in the stowed position - 570
∙ Barrel length, mm - 290±20
Tactical and technical characteristics of the Kalashnikov assault rifle AK-12SK
∙ Caliber, mm - 5.45
∙ Weight without magazine, belt and accessories, kg, no more than - 3.2
∙ Length of the assault rifle without PMS, mm, no more than:
- in the combat position - 750
- in the stowed position - 500
∙ Barrel length, mm - 228±20
SVO encourages Kalashnikov to speed up the renewal of its model range.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of darpaandcia
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics.
[ColonelCassad] A group of Australian researchers conducted a large-scale study of human-robot interaction as part of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge program (a competition organized by DARPA aimed at developing autonomous robots to perform tasks in underground conditions). The results of this experiment provide insight into the future of human-machine interaction.
During 16 real missions, lasting a total of 10 hours, scientists compared the efficiency of robots controlled by operators and fully autonomous systems. The task was complex - searching for various objects in difficult terrain, from simple items to conditional "victims".
The study showed a significant advantage of human-machine teams. They demonstrated significantly better results - they detected 94% of objects versus 84% for autonomous robots, covered 12.71% more distance and covered 10.56% more unique territory. It is important to note that this difference was especially noticeable in complex and non-standard situations. But was it sufficient?
In routine conditions, autonomous robots worked comparably effectively. At the same time, it was found that operators under stress and high cognitive load could make mistakes that led to robot failures.
It is significant that even in the presence of an operator, robots operated in the "directed autonomy" mode about 70% of the time. This indicates a high level of development of autonomous systems, where a person acts more as a strategic leader than a direct executor.
From a military point of view, these results are of great importance. It is obvious that DARPA is developing dual-use systems under the guise of rescue technologies. The ability of robots to act autonomously in complex conditions, find objects and coordinate actions are critical qualities for modern military operations.
Thus, the study demonstrates that the optimal solution at this stage is precisely the symbiosis of man and machine, where each participant can maximize their strengths. At the same time, the development of autonomous systems continues, and the issue of control over them is becoming increasingly relevant.
First, leather bags must teach machines to kill other leather bags. In symbiosis. And then...
[UT Paywalled, sorry] The Mexican government has not formally agreed to it, and the U.S. has offered little clarity on details
When the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" policy was enacted the first time around in 2019, Tijuana became a place of waiting.
Migrant shelters were at capacity as asylum seekers from around the world settled in for the duration of their immigration court cases unfolding in the U.S., stretching for months or more than a year. Their housing was so tenuous that the U.S. immigration court had difficulty notifying migrants of upcoming hearings. Finding an attorney to represent them from across the border was tough.
And robbers and kidnappers found the waiting migrants to be easy targets.
In an executive order signed on his first day in office, President Donald Trump reinstated the program, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP. However, the Mexican government has not formally agreed to it, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have offered little clarity on how the policy would work a second time around.
The Mexican government previously went along with receiving non-Mexican asylum seekers under former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration
When the program was first implemented, it was criticized by human rights groups for putting asylum seekers in danger and leaving many without proper legal representation. At one point, the San Diego immigration court system was overwhelmed by the number of additional cases.
Former President Joe Biden, who once called the policy "inhumane," tried to wind down the policy, but the plan was challenged in court. In December 2021, the Biden administration had to reinstate the program amid litigation brought by Texas and Missouri. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the policy could end.
It is estimated that under the policy nearly 70,000 people were sent back to Mexico between 2019 and 2021 to await their cases, according to a report from the nonpartisan organization American Immigration Council. The San Ysidro-Tijuana port of entry was the first along the border to implement it.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that there are ongoing conversations with the U.S. on a number of immigration matters.
When asked Tuesday by the press about Mexico agreeing to receive U.S. planes with deportees from other countries, Sheinbaum said that "more than agreements, there is coordination" with the U.S., which she said has been the case for a long time. Under previous agreements, Mexico has accepted people from certain countries.
’EXPECTING THE WORST’
Those who aid migrants at the border recall the challenges that arose the first time the Remain in Mexico policy was in place and are bracing for its return.
"It created a very difficult and complex situation for people who had to find shelter and a place to continue waiting," said Adriana Jasso, program coordinator with the American Friends Service Committee in San Diego. "(This second time) there are still aspects that are not clear."
The number of migrant encounters at the U.S. border is at its lowest level in years, due to the Biden administration’s executive action to restrict asylum, as well as Mexico’s crackdown on immigration.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ilya Knorring
[REGNUM] On January 27, the Russian Defense Ministry officially confirmed that fighters from the Vostok military group had liberated the village of Velyka Novosyolka, 75 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, near the borders of the DPR with the Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk regions. That same day, reports emerged of fighting on the outskirts of a nearby village with the unexpected (at first glance) name of Constantinople.
The military significance of the capture of the seemingly "small" village of Velyka Novosyolka is obvious. Earlier, the Regnum news agency recalled : this "inhabitant" in 2023-24 was an important hub of the enemy's defense on the line from Ugledar to Gulyaipole, in the summer of 2023, including from Novosyolka, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to launch a "counteroffensive" to the Sea of Azov. The current impressive offensive of our troops in this part of the southern Donbas is part of the "breakdown" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense at the junction of two Russian regions, the DPR and Zaporozhye. But the liberation of Velyka Novosyolka and its environs also has a historical dimension.
ROMANS AND URUMS
If you look at the dates of the founding of the villages of Konstantinopol, Nizhnie Yaly, Komar and Velikaya Novosyolka (which until 1946 had a different name - Bolshaya Yanisol), you can notice a coincidence: all these villages and settlements appeared in 1779. And the original population was also similar - these were Greeks who moved with the gracious consent of Catherine the Great from the Crimean Khanate, where Russian troops had entered shortly before.
During the "times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea" on the Tauride Peninsula lived two groups of Greeks, who traced themselves back to the settlers of Byzantine times. Both peoples to this day call themselves almost the same: "Rumei" and "Urums". This means the same thing - Romans or, more precisely, Romai (this is what the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire - Byzantium - called themselves).
In Russian usage, the Rumei were called Greco-Hellenes, since they retained a dialect derived from medieval, Byzantine Greek. The second group, the Urums, were called Greco-Tatars. They had long since switched to the Crimean Tatar dialect. For example, the names of the villages of Maloyanisol and Bolshaya Yanisol come from the Urum (and Tatar) "yeni sala" - new village.
The hypothesis that the Urums are baptized Tatars can be rejected unequivocally: the baptism of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate was impossible and punishable by death. The Greeks who accepted Islam dissolved into the Tatar population, leaving traces only in the gene pool of their descendants.
"Where is our homeland? In Greece? In Asia Minor? No! Our homeland is the mountains of Crimea... There are our holy temples and mountain monasteries, cave cities and impregnable fortresses," writes Urum local historian, professor of Donetsk University Stefan Kaloyorov.
CORRUPTION AND BUREAUCRACY
Catherine's decree on the resettlement of Crimean Christians (Greeks, Armenians and Vlachs) to the empty lands of Novorossiya seemed to bring only good: the empire took the Orthodox peoples under its protection and saved them from persecution by the "Mohammedans". Crimea had already been conquered in 1778-79, but had not yet become ours. The Khan still sat on the throne in Bakhchisarai.
But, on the other hand, the annexation of Crimea to the empire was a matter of time. Catherine's nobles and military leaders asked a reasonable question: was it necessary to organize the resettlement of Christians at all? General Alexander Prozorovsky, whose troops were stationed in Crimea, wrote to the Governor-General of Azov and Novorossiysk, Prince Grigory Potemkin : "When Crimea is taken into subjection... they (the Greeks and other Christians - editor's note) will be the first inhabitants here, so it seems there is no need to remove them from here."
But the empress made a decision. And so - about half of the Taurian Urums and Rumei, 18 thousand out of about 40 thousand who lived in Crimea, took one hundred thousand heads of cattle, left their native mountains and moved to the steppes of Northern Taurida. The resettlement was supervised by the most serene Prince Potemkin, Alexander Suvorov (then lieutenant general) and the Greek metropolitan of Kafa - Theodosius Ignatius.
"Anabasis" - "a march into the interior of the country" turned out to be difficult. Khan's customs officers were stationed at Perekop. The Tatars took 5 thousand rubles from the emigrants for passage - an astronomical sum. It is known that Khan Shahin-Girey "in respect for the withdrawal of Christians" (that is, for his consent) received 50 thousand rubles from the Russian resident in Bakhchisarai Andrei Konstantinov.
After the Crimean corruption, a new test awaited the settlers within the Russian Empire: domestic bureaucracy. The Greeks were sent to register in the Alexander Fortress (future Alexandrovsk, now Zaporozhye), after which they were supposed to determine the places of settlement - but the red tape continued until the spring of 1779.
During the winter of 1778–1779, the settlers “lived in difficult conditions, without any special provision for their needs, in conditions of rampant diseases… in dugouts or in open-air tents,” writes historian Kaloyorov. A letter from Metropolitan Ignatius to the Russian resident Konstantinov has been preserved:
"I suffered great anxiety on the way, and especially the poor Christians... Not having a place to live... some, having caught a cold, died of the cold. My spiritual son! What you spoke about and gave hope for, there is nothing yet."
The difficult circumstances of the resettlement give modern Ukrainian publicists and even historians a reason to declare this event a "deportation" and almost genocide. For example, the publication UArgument wrote:
"The tragedy of the Greek settlers remained a tragedy in the memory of the descendants of those settlers. But some opportunists from politics turn it into a farce, trying to present one of the actions of the expansionist policy of tsarist Russia as such a concern." But Kiev propagandists, as usual, show only part of the picture, distorting it.
FACTORIES AND GARDENS
One of the three people responsible for the resettlement, Alexander Suvorov, sounded the alarm and managed to squeeze 130 thousand rubles out of the imperial treasury, which were necessary for the settlement. On May 21 (June 3), 1779, Catherine signed a decree in Russian and Greek, which defined the status and privileges of the settlers. The settlers were granted a 10-year exemption from all taxes. The decree also stated:
“You are allowed to build merchant seagoing vessels from your own capital, to establish necessary and useful factories, plants and orchards, from the cultivation of which you can sell all kinds of grape wines… in barrels.”
The Urums and Rumei settled in the area of Mariupol, the "Greek capital" of the Russian Azov region. No less than two dozen settlements appeared here. Familiar names were transferred from Crimea: thus, Urzuf and Yalta (one of whose quarters is called Massandra), Stary Krym and Mangush - the "namesake" of an ancient village near Bakhchisarai - appeared in the Azov region. The village of Anadol reminds us of our ancestors from Anatolia - Asia Minor.
The settlers developed the former Wild Steppe north of the sea, along the banks of the Sukhie Yaly, Mokrye Yaly and Kalmius rivers. Thus were founded Bolshaya Yanisol - Velikaya Novosyolka, Constantinople, the settlements of Novaya Karakuba (today's Krasnaya Polyana) and Beshevo (now called Starobeshevo), as well as the village of Bugas, near which the city of Volnovakha arose.
Viticulture, “granted” to the Greeks by decree of Catherine, actually began to develop only at the beginning of our 21st century, but even in the century before last, agriculture and cattle breeding flourished, and orchards flourished.
SCYLLA, CHARYBDIS AND COMRADE YEZHOV
The Urums and Rumei, along with their neighbors, the Great Russians, Little Russians, Bulgarians, Moldovans, and other peoples who made up the motley population of Novorossiya, survived revolutions, repressions, and the Great Patriotic War. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were Urum schools and a department at the pedagogical institute, but after the implementation of Directive No. 50 215 signed by the head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov, which ordered the “liquidation of large espionage, sabotage, and nationalist counterrevolutionary organizations of the Greeks,” they ceased to exist due to the arrests of teaching staff.
However, the Azov Greeks managed to pass between Scylla and Charybdis - although in 1944 the Greek population was deported from Crimea, this new disaster did not affect the Donetsk region.
On the contrary, in the post-war decades the people even multiplied. The approximate number of representatives of the Greek-Azov subethnos is 250 thousand people. This is the third largest people of Donbass and the Azov region (the bulk of it is concentrated in the DPR) along with Russians and those who were counted as Ukrainians in the censuses.
Local Greeks are the largest compactly living community in the Hellenic diaspora in the post-Soviet space. True, in the 2001 census, many indicated themselves as Ukrainians - if the census takers filled out the questionnaires, or Russians, if the respondents filled them out themselves.
The Ukrainian ethno-nationalist project clearly did not imply cultural diversity. In 2014, the Greeks, like other residents of the former Donetsk region, mostly chose the DPR and a return to Russia - but the militia here, as in Mariupol, alas, did not have time to gain a foothold.
TYRANNY OF KLEPTOCRATS
Then, in the spring of 2014, Velyka Novosyolka found itself under double oppression: firstly, the SBU was operating in the frontline zone (in 2017, the security forces reported the arrest of the organizers of the "separatist" rallies three years ago). And secondly, the "eastern yoke" was established in the person of the Salama family, which local residents, according to them, fear more than the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the SBU.
As residents of Velyka Novosyolka say, the Salama family (the surname is of Arabic origin, although the Salamas themselves consider themselves Ukrainians) lived in the neighboring village of Krasnaya Polyana and owned a hardware store there. The most media-famous representative of the family, Petro Salama, got involved with the Right Sector* during the ATO and joined the Donbass* volunteer battalion, which, along with Azov*, gained notoriety for kidnapping and torturing prisoners, which was even recorded by the OSCE mission.
In December 2017, Donbass militant Petro Salama, also known by the call sign Vodila, was one of the defendants in the case of the murder of a couple of businessmen in Velyka Novosyolka, Vladimir and Larisa Degtyarenko and their son Valeriy. Ukrainian media reports constantly emphasized that the Degtyarenkos are close relatives of "Viktor Yanukovych's godfather." Larisa Degtyarenko's father, Valeriy Shira, is indeed the godfather of the former president of Ukraine. He is also the former head of the Velikonovoselkovsky District Council and the unofficial owner of the district.
By the way, we will add that Shira also has a criminal trail - suspicion of ordering the murder of a rich farmer and former deputy Ivan Kharaman. In general, the regime that reigned on the lands of the Azov Greeks could well be called by the ancient word "kleptocracy" - the rule of thieves.
Returning to the probable killer Petro Salama, we note that he, having spent about two years with his accomplices in the Mariupol pretrial detention center, was transferred to house arrest in April 2020. Then a "blackout" appears in his biography, and it appears again in the winter of 2022 - then the Salama brothers organize a territorial defense battalion in Krasnaya Polyana.
In May 2022, the village was liberated by units of the Russian Armed Forces, and local residents reportedly looted a household goods store belonging to the Salam family, taking the pillows, blankets, and cleaning products sold there to homes. Salam's brothers, who had chosen the Ukrainian side back in 2014, fled to Velyka Novosyolka, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces had established themselves, and took charge of the local territorial defense.
In Krasnaya Polyana, as local residents say, a sister, Natalya, remained, who reported in detail to the brothers across the front line about the looting of property. Enraged, the brothers ordered a strike from Novosyolka on Krasnaya Polyana with Grad launchers - but, ironically, the strike primarily damaged their own family home.
Needless to say, after this they became even more fierce, residents of Krasnaya Polyana note.
So the liberation of Bolshaya Yanisol - Velyka Novosyolka became liberation from the yoke of criminal authorities associated with the bandit national battalions. But the rampage of "brothers" controlled by no one is, of course, not the only trouble brought by the Kiev tyranny.
The forced evacuation carried out by the Kyiv authorities has hit the entire local population hard, and not only the Urumians. Now the Azov Greeks and their neighbors will once again face "anabasis" - this time returning home to Velikaya Novosyolka, Constantinople and other villages of "Russian Greece". There is one consolation: this road should be easier than that of their ancestors - the first settlers.
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.
...home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade....
...the armed wing of the Democratic Party...
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
... 
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
See you on the drop zone BJ. 
The rule was set up to "confront the increasingly urgent climate crisis," according to the executive summary, and was expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This was part of a plan to reach "net-zero emissions by no later than 2050," according to a 2021 White House fact sheet.
...the Peewee Herman clone who owns Facebook. He's got more money than Croesus and thinks he should be regulated by the government because it does such a nifty job with all the other stuff it regulates....
