A team of US and Korean researchers has developed a 3D-printing ink that makes easy-to-recycle structures without the need for any heat or light.
The ink, made from a polymer, solidifies on contact with salt and dissolves back into re-usable ink on contact with fresh water.
The researchers say their ink could be useful for disposable electronics, robotic components, and prototyping.
They’ve published their findings in Nature Communications.
The structure created via 3D-printing with a re-usable polymer ink. Credit: Donghwan Ji
Polymer inks are useful tools for 3D-printing complex, small-scale devices. But they typically need high amounts of energy or extra solvents to print properly.
The researchers’ method uses a polymer called poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), or PNIPAM. This is a non-toxic substance used by the pharmaceutical industry for drug delivery systems.
PNIPAM dissolves in water to make a liquid, but it solidifies when it comes into contact with a salty calcium chloride solution.
Raskin Caught On Tape Explaining Democrats’ SHOCKING Plot To Keep Trump Out Of Office
Congressman Jamie Raskin has (D-MD) been caught on tape detailing a controversial plan to prevent former President Donald Trump from assuming the presidency, even if he is selected by American voters. The video captured Raskin discussing what he sees as a constitutional mechanism to disqualify Trump.
Raskin specifically referenced Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, expressing a chilling determination to use Congress as a barrier against Trump’s reinstatement. “What can be put into the Constitution can slip away from you very quickly. And the greatest example going on right now before our very eyes is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which they’re just disappearing with a magic wand, as if it doesn’t exist, even though it could not be clearer what it’s stating,” Raskin said.
“They want to kick it to Congress. So it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified and then we need bodyguards.”
Raskin went on to criticize the Supreme Court Justices for their alleged reluctance to interpret the 14th Amendment as he believes they should. “For everybody in civil war conditions all because the nine justices, not all of them, but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection, simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great 14th amendment means,” he said.
Warren Buffet appears to have triggered a massive global sell-off of blue-chip stocks after selling off $76 billion in stocks, including half its stake in Apple. The sell-off led to losses that hit the world’ richest billionaires to the tune of $134 billion. The total sell-off amounted to $1.93 trillion.
After the sell-off, it appears the potential initial trigger, Warren Buffet, came back to pick up some stocks at fire sale prices, telling CNBC “When the stocks are crashing, it’s always good news.” For Jeff Bezos it was bad news, as he saw his net worth drop by $16 billion.
Warren Buffet buys ‘aggressively’ when US stocks dip, refrains from short-term bets: What should you do amid volatility?
US stocks crashed in the previous session due to a global selloff fueled by mounting recession fears among investors in the world’s largest economy. On Monday, more than $1.93 trillion was wiped out of the US stock market as the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped over 1,000 points.
The bloodbath on Wall Street led by the global stock market crash left investors worried about their holdings and trading strategy to apply amid the current volatility. Ace investor Warren Buffett recently spoke to CNBC and revealed some of his personal trading strategies amid a market crash. According to the Oracle of Omaha, ‘When the stocks are crashing, it’s always good news’.
World’s ‘biggest investor’ has halved its stake in Apple, and this may be the reason
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reduced its stake in Apple by half, as part of a $76 billion stock sell-off. The move generated $47.2 billion in after-tax profit and left Apple as Berkshire’s largest holding. While the exact reasons remain unclear, Buffett suggested the sale might be due to tax considerations.
The world’s largest investment group Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has reportedly reduced its holding in Apple, selling off roughly half of its stake in the iPhone maker as part of a wider $76bn stock disposal. According to a report in Financial Times, quoting an SEC filing, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has slashed its stake in iPhone maker Apple in half as part of a selling spree in which the billionaire investor sold $76 billion of stocks
Billionaires see net worth drop amid stock market turmoil
Multiple billionaires saw their net worth shrink on Monday while the global markets experienced significant turbulence.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the billionaires with estimated personal fortunes that posted major drops, Forbes reported.
Those companies and the other four tech giants that make up the “Magnificent Seven” experienced notable declines in their stock prices on Monday.
More broadly, U.S. indices dropped on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 down 2.7%, 3.7% and 3.3%, in the afternoon. Markets in other parts of the world like Asia and Europe also saw declines.
Jeff Bezos saw a dramatic $16 billion drop in his net worth on Friday as Amazon’s stock plunged more than 9%, falling below $167 per share. This decline follows Amazon’s second-quarter earnings report, which revealed revenue of $147.9 billion—falling short of the expected $148.5 billion. The stock is on track for its worst performance since April 2022, when it also faced a significant drop after disappointing earnings.
Bezos’ stake in Amazon, comprising 928 million shares, saw its value drop from $170.8 billion at Thursday’s close to approximately $154.9 billion. Despite this setback, Bezos remains the second-richest person globally with a net worth of $186.2 billion. The broader tech sector also suffered losses, with other top billionaires, including Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, and Mark Zuckerberg, each losing over $1 billion.
The market downturn was exacerbated by a Labor Department report showing the U.S. economy added 71,000 fewer jobs than anticipated, raising recession fears. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky had previously highlighted the company’s significant investment in its cloud business and generative AI tools. These investments, while aimed at long-term growth, have contributed to concerns about the return on such hefty expenditures amidst the recent tech rally’s reversal.
Nobel Laureate Muhamad Yunas is to take on the responsibility of leading Bangladesh as it transitions to a new election following the overthrow of the government by a populist uprising. Unlike previous coups, this coup seems to have occurred organically among rank and file Bangladeshis.
Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, is quoted by Al Jazeera as saying “Very few expected the situation to turn the way it had. Bangladesh has had many coups, but this is new – this people power, the sheer power of the demonstrators. Now we’re in uncharted territory. This level of political turmoil will have economic ramifications.”
Bangladesh economy under pressure amid ‘uncharted’ political turmoil
The student protests that have rocked Bangladesh since July 1 and led Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee in the middle of the night in a helicopter to New Delhi have battered the domestic economy, with losses estimated at billions of dollars.
Now, even as Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus prepares to guide an interim government in Dhaka, businesses are struggling with the unprecedented nature of recent events and what comes next.
“Very few expected the situation to turn the way it had,” Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, told Al Jazeera, referring to the dozens killed and injured earlier this week and Hasina’s departure.
“Bangladesh has had many coups, but this is new – this people power, the sheer power of the demonstrators. Now we’re in uncharted territory.”
This level of political turmoil will have economic ramifications, Nadjibulla said.
Bangladesh’s next leader Muhammad Yunus arrives home ahead of swearing-in
Bangladesh’s next leader Muhammad Yunus arrived home Thursday from an overseas trip and will take office later in the day, as he looks to restore calm and rebuild the country following an uprising that ended the 15-year, increasingly autocratic rule of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Yunus landed at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Thursday afternoon and was welcomed by the country’s military chief, Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, who was flanked by navy and air force heads.
Some of the student leaders who led the uprising against Hasina were also present at the airport to welcome him. They had earlier proposed Yunus as interim leader to the country’s figurehead president, who is currently acting as the chief executive under the constitution.
In his first comments after his arrival, he told a news briefing that his priority would be to restore order.
Bangladesh protests: Interim leader Muhammad Yunus takes helm ahead of elections
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took the oath of office as head of Bangladesh’s interim government Thursday after an uprising prompted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and flee to India.
The key tasks for Yunus now are restoring peace in Bangladesh and preparing for new elections following weeks of violence in which student activists led an uprising against what was considered Hasina’s increasingly autocratic 15-year rule.
Bangladesh’s figurehead President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered the oath to Yunus for his role as chief advisor, which is the equivalent to a prime minister, in presence of foreign diplomats, civil society members, top businessmen and members of the former opposition party at the presidential palace in Dhaka. No representatives of Hasina’s party were present.\
Sixteen other people have been included in the interim Cabinet with members drawn mainly from civil society and including two of the student protest leaders. The Cabinet members were chosen in discussions this week among student leaders, civil society representatives and the military.
Bangladeshi president to dissolve parliament, ex-prime minister freed
Just hours after the Bangladeshi prime minister resigned and fled the country on Monday, the country’s president said he would dissolve parliament and form an interim administration.
The announcement from Mohammed Shahabuddin, in a televised address to the nation, came at the end of a tumultuous day in which former prime minister Sheikh Hasina quit and fled to India.
Weeks of violent student protests led to the toppling of Hasina’s government on Monday, marking the end to her 15-year tenure. Around 300 people have been killed in the demonstrations.
Shahabuddin’s decision came after a meeting on Monday night with opposition political leaders, who decided to release former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who was jailed in a 2018 graft case. The meeting also decided to free all prisoners detained during the anti-discrimination student movement.
Zaynal Abedin, the president’s press officer, told state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha news agency that the meeting, attended by leaders from various opposition political parties, unanimously decided to release Zia.
Bangladesh president dissolves parliament, frees former PM Zia
Bangladesh’s president dissolved parliament on Tuesday, clearing the way for an interim government and new elections, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s office also announced that the leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Begum Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister who had feuded with Hasina for decades, had been freed from house arrest.
Bangladesh prime minister reportedly flees nation as anti-government protesters storm her residence
The prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled to neighboring India on Monday after protesters stormed her official residence after weeks of deadly anti-government demonstrations in the South Asian nation.
Scenes of jubilation erupted on the streets as protesters celebrated the end of her 15 years in power by climbing on tanks and scaling an imposing statue of Hasina’s father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in Dhaka, attacking the head with an ax.
In a national address, Bangladesh’s army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman confirmed Hasina had resigned and said the military would form an interim government.
Addressing protesters, largely young Bangladeshis and students, he said: “Whatever demands you have we will fulfil and bring back peace to the nation, please help us in this, stay away from violence.”
“The military will not fire at anyone, the police will not fire at anyone, I have given orders,” he added.
Statues smashed, ‘mob rule’ after Bangladesh government falls in bloody revolution
Bangladeshi mobs torching TV stations, protesters lounging in beds in the premier’s home and bloody corpses: eyewitness described chaotic scenes after the country’s prime minister was ousted Monday and the military took power.
For some, the end of Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year-rule was something to celebrate, as they waved flags from the rooftop of her home after she fled the country by helicopter.
“I can’t express my feelings in words, I’m so happy,” Mohammad Bashir, 35, one of the millions of Bangladeshis who flooded the streets after the army chief declared he was forming a caretaker government.
“Now my only wish is to take care of all the families of the killed people and students, and to deliver justice.”
Messages flooded social media with people greeting each other on Facebook by saying; “Happy Independence Day.”
Bangladesh Protests Become “People’s Uprising” Against Government
Spiraling clashes between police and anti-government protesters in Bangladesh resulted in at least 90 deaths on Sunday, as initially peaceful student demonstrations morphed into a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience aimed at unseating autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Despite the government once again cutting mobile internet nationwide, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the street over the weekend with calls to march on the Ganabhaban, the prime minister’s official residence in the capital Dhaka, on Monday afternoon. In response, police set up roadblocks at major arteries into the city, but students say thousands have already slipped past the security cordon in order to join the demonstrations. “The time has come for the final protest,” said Asif Mahmud, a protest leader, per AFP.
Hasina has so far been characteristically defiant. Speaking following a meeting with security chiefs, she said demonstrators were “not students but terrorists who are out to destabilize the nation.” Still, such is the scale and breadth of public anger that analysts doubt whether her ruling Awami League party—which was returned for a fourth straight term in January elections boycotted by the opposition and denounced by observers as neither free nor fair—could possibly stay in power.
“Survival of the government is highly unlikely,” says Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi-American political scientist and professor at Illinois State University. “I don’t think that people will go back without seeing a transition.”
“We want to see the Bangladeshi people decide the future of the Bangladeshi government,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at his daily news conference.
Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina resigns, flees country after weeks of deadly protests
Bangladesh’s prime minister resigned and fled the country on Monday, after weeks of protests against a quota system for government jobs descended into violence and grew into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule.
Thousands of demonstrators stormed her official residence and other buildings associated with her party and family.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s departure threatens to create even more instability in the nation on India’s border already dealing with a series of crises, from high unemployment and corruption to climate change. Amid security concerns, the capital’s main airport suspended operations.
U.S. hands over the last military base in Niger to the ruling junta
The U.S. handed over its last military base in Niger – one of two crucial hubs for American counterterrorism operations in the country – to local authorities, the U.S. Department of Defense and Niger’s Ministry of Defense announced in a joint statement on Monday.
The handing over of Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez came after the U.S. troops withdrew earlier this month from Airbase 101, a small drone base in Niger’s capital of Niamey.
U.S. troops have until Sept. 15 to leave the Sahel country following an agreement with Nigerien authorities.
There are about two dozen American soldiers who remain in Niger, largely for administrative duties related to the withdrawal, according to Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon spokeswoman. They are located at the U.S. embassy.
In March, Niger’s ruling junta ended an agreement that allowed U.S. troops to operate in the West African country. A few months later, officials of the two countries announced in a joint statement that U.S. troops would complete their withdrawal by the middle of September.
The Supreme Court rejected Missouri’s lawsuit against New York over the prosecution of former President Donald Trump on Monday.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued the state of New York in July, alleging its prosecution of Trump violated the First Amendment right of Missouri citizens to hear from a 2024 presidential candidate. In a brief order, the Supreme Court declined to allow Missouri to file its complaint and dismissed its motion for preliminary relief.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have allowed Missouri to file its complaint, according to the order.
“No doubt it is true that the Constitution would not have tolerated a future Confederate state gagging and sentencing Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to interfere with his campaign for the Presidency,” Missouri’s lawsuit stated. “Doing so obviously would have interfered with federal interests the same way Maryland’s attempt to tax the Bank of the United States did 40 years earlier.”
“Constitutionally, it is no different with New York’s attempt to use coercive power in the form of a gag order and impending sentence to interfere with Donald Trump’s campaign,” the lawsuit continued.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered the deployment additional warships, naval cruisers and fighter jets to the Middle East ahead of what is expected to be a regional escalation starting with a massive attack against Israel by Iran and its proxies from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.
“Since the horrific Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the Secretary of Defense has reiterated that the United States will protect our personnel and interests in the region, including our ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Friday in a statement on America’s force posture in the Middle East.
“Secretary Austin has ordered adjustments to US military posture designed to improve US force protection, to increase support for the defense of Israel, and to ensure the United States is prepared to respond to various contingencies,” Singh said.
Austin has ordered the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN Carrier Strike Group to replace the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT Carrier Strike Group, currently on deployment in the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility.
In addition, Austin ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European Command (EUCOM) and US Central Command (CENTCOM) regions, and increasing US readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense.
Hezbollah attacks Israeli military headquarters with squadron of drones
The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah says it has targeted an Israeli military headquarters in the northern occupied Palestinian territories with a squadron of suicide drones.
Hezbollah said in a statement on Monday morning that the aerial attack was launched from Lebanon on Israel’s newly established 91st Division in the Elite Barracks, located in the Upper Galilee region.
The resistance movement added that a number of the regime’s troops were killed or injured in the drone strike.
The fighters of the Islamic resistance targeted “the positions and settlements of the officers and soldiers, hitting them directly and inflicting of them a number of killed and wounded.”
The resistance movement noted that the air raid was carried out in support of Gaza and in retaliation for the regime’s assassinations of its members during attacks on several Lebanese towns.
Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Hezbollah and the regime’s military have been exchanging fires along Lebanon’s southern border.
Also on Sunday, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets towards the northern side of the occupied Palestinian territories to avenge a deadly Israeli attack that had earlier targeted the southern part of Lebanon.
The movement fired more than 50 rockets towards the Beit Hillel settlement in the Upper Galilee region, triggering a fire there, various Israeli media outlets reported.
BREAKING: Around 50 Rockets Fired From Southern Lebanon Towards Israel
Footage is circulating of the Iron Dome intercepting the reported missiles.
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon announced early Sunday including a new settlement in northern occupied Palestine to its target bank in response to the Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon on Saturday.
In a statement, Hezbollah said that “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks on the steadfast southern villages and the safe homes, particularly the attacks on the villages of Kafr Kila and Deir Siryan that resulted in civilian injuries,” it added the settlement of Beit Hillel to its list of targets for the first time, targeting it with dozens of Katyusha rockets.
Despite claims to the contrary by the opposition, Venezuela’s current President Nicolas Maduro, has been awarded the victory in the election. The declaration of Maduro’s win triggered multiple protests and riots by opposition supporters, who insist the election was rigged. America’s far-left institution, The Carter Institution, claims the election was totally legitimate.
The election is about whether Venezuela will be de facto ruled through an American proxy, the challenger, or a Chinese-Russian proxy, Maduro. In this instance, the Russian-Chinese axis appears to have won, as their courts have certified the election, and the opposition is now facing charges, arrests, and imprisonment.
U.S. dismisses Venezuelan high court’s certification of disputed election results
The United States on Friday joined a chorus of protest dismissing a decision by Venezuela’s supreme court upholding disputed results claiming Nicolas Maduro to be the winner of last month’s presidential election.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday’s ruling by the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice backing Maduro’s win over democratic opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez “lacks all credibility.”
EU: Maduro has not shown ‘necessary public evidence’ to declare victory in Venezuela elections
The European Union’s top diplomat on Saturday said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has still “not provided the necessary public evidence” to prove he was the winner of July’s elections, days after the country’s Supreme Court backed the government’s disputed claims of victory.
The bloc joined a slate of other Latin American countries and the United States in rejecting the Venezuelan high court’s certification. Authorities repeated calls for Maduro to release the election’s official tally sheets, considered the one verifiable vote count in Venezuela as they are almost impossible to replicate.
“Only complete and independently verifiable results will be accepted and recognized,” Josep Borrell, the high representative of the EU, said in a statement.
Borrell’s comments came as the leaders of Brazil and Colombia also demanded the release of the tallies, saying on Saturday the “credibility of the electoral process can only be restored through the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data.”
Brazil and Colombia Reject Nicolás Maduro’s Election Following Supreme Court Ruling
The presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Colombia, Gustavo Petro, have expressed their concern over the lack of transparency in the recent presidential elections in Venezuela and urged the Venezuelan government to release detailed and verifiable election data to restore the credibility of the process.
During two days of phone conversations, the leaders discussed the situation in Venezuela and concluded that political normalization in the country can only be achieved through peaceful dialogue and the recognition of democratic diversity. Both leaders, along with Mexico, offered themselves as mediators in the Venezuelan crisis but have not recognized Nicolás Maduro as the elected president, despite the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ratifying him as the winner without presenting evidence.
Lula da Silva and Petro called on all parties involved to avoid acts of violence and repression. Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador distanced himself from these two countries a few days ago, stating that he would wait for the TSJ’s ruling before taking a stance on the issue. As neighboring countries directly affected by Venezuela’s instability, Brazil and Colombia remain active mediators and reiterate their willingness to facilitate understanding between the conflicting parties.
Venezuela’s Highest Court Upholds Nicolas Maduro’s Reelection, Does Not Publish Full Vote Count
Venezuela’s highest court has ratified the controversial re-election of Nicolás Maduro as president in spite of allegations of widespread voter fraud in July’s poll, however the full vote count has not been published.
The decision by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice comes as United Nations voting experts warned that the court lacked independence and impartiality.
The court said it had reviewed material from the country’s election authority, which said Mr Maduro had won just over half of the vote, and agreed he had been victorious. However the materials reviewed have not been made public.
The US State Department has said: “The National Electoral Council’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence. The CNE still has not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets, despite repeated calls from Venezuelans and the international community to do so.”
Venezuela’s top court certifies Maduro’s disputed election victory
Venezuela’s government-controlled supreme court has ratified Nicolás Maduro’s disputed election victory amid an ongoing political crisis and crackdown on dissent.
Maduro, a revolutionary socialist in power since 2013, was declared the winner of the July 28 presidential election, though the National Electoral Council, also controlled by his allies, has not published a detailed breakdown of the results.
The opposition said its candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González, was the real winner by a margin of two to one, and published thousands of voting tally receipts as evidence. Maduro deferred the dispute to the supreme court, which is controlled by officials from the ruling socialist party.
Protests broke out following the election, including in poor neighbourhoods once considered bastions of government support, though they were swiftly put down by Venezuela’s feared security services, with more than 1,500 people since arrested, according to rights group Foro Penal.
Venezuela opposition candidate due in court over election dispute
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was hit with a fresh summons after failing to appear before prosecutors Monday as part of a probe into his claim that he was the rightful victor of last month’s presidential election.
Gonzalez Urrutia, 74, has been in hiding since after the election amid threats of arrest from President Nicolas Maduro, whose contested victory has plunged the oil-rich Latin American nation into crisis.
Late Sunday, Gonzalez Urrutia said in a video published on social media that he had been summoned “without guarantees” of due process, accusing Attorney General Tarek William Saab of bias.
Venezuela prosecutors summon opposition candidate amid vote dispute
Venezuelan prosecutors have summoned opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia for questioning Monday as part of a criminal investigation following the country’s disputed presidential election claimed by strongman Nicolas Maduro.
“Citizen Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia” is summoned “on August 26 at 10 am for an interview,” prosecutors said Saturday, as part of an investigation into the opposition’s publishing of electoral records which it claims show Maduro was clearly defeated.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who is considered a Maduro ally, had foreshadowed the summoning Friday, saying Gonzalez Urrutia would have to explain his “disobedience” of the authorities.
Venezuela opposition beset by mounting legal challenges after disputed election
Venezuela’s legal system mounted more challenges against the country’s political opposition on Wednesday, as the candidate the alliance says won the July 28 election was ruled in contempt of court and now faces imprisonment.
The head of Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled Edmundo Gonzalez, who says he beat President Nicolas Maduro in the vote, was in contempt of court after refusing to answer a summons to attend what it said was a certification of the results.
Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat, could face up to 30 days in jail for contempt, lawyers said. Numerous Venezuelan opposition leaders have faced arrest and imprisonment or fled into exile in recent years.
Opposition in Venezuela deems Maduro’s reelection ‘null and void’
The Venezuelan opposition stated in an open letter that it would consider any potential Supreme Court ruling certifying the validity of President Nicolas Maduro’s reelection as “null and void.”
The socialist leader was declared the winner of the July 28 presidential election by the National Electoral Council (CNE). However, the CNE has not released the detailed vote count, claiming that its system was hacked. The opposition denounced the results as fraudulent and claimed victory for its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Nicolás Maduro, who continuously asserted that he is facing an attempted “coup,” has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court—widely regarded by observers as being under the control of the government—to have his victory validated.
“Any potential ruling by the Electoral Chamber (of the Supreme Court) that might validate the electoral fraud being imposed would be null and void,” read the letter published August 21 and circulated on social media by opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Latin American effort to mediate Venezuela standoff loses steam as Maduro consolidates rule
It was a rare diplomatic gamble when the three leaders of Latin America’s largest democracies inserted themselves into the high-stakes standoff between Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his opponents over who won the country’s presidential election.
Dubbed the three amigos — all dyed-in-the-wool leftists who have been friendly with Maduro — the presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico broke from decades of hands-off diplomacy toward Venezuela and their own reluctance to meddle in a neighbor’s sovereign affairs in a region where U.S. military interventions during the Cold War still generate resentment.
But some experts say the peacemaking effort is losing steam before barely getting off the ground.
They cite misgivings by Mexico’s outgoing president, divisions among Latin America’s left and pressure from the U.S. on Maduro to recognize defeat and step aside. The main outcome so far, they say, has been to grant Maduro precious time to consolidate his rule and jail more opponents since the July 28 vote.
“The mediation effort is cautious, focusing on avoiding conflict and a new migration wave rather than defending democracy,” said Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, a Venezuelan born analyst and founder of Aurora Macro Strategies, a geopolitical risk consulting firm based in New York.
CNN spoke to about half a dozen Venezuelans who have fled their country in the past month, some swapping clothes or hiding between bushes on their way to safety. Many migrated illegally, moving at night, and hiding during the day to avoid being stopped at dozens of checkpoints set up by Venezuelan government forces. Others said they were waved past by officers they believed to be sympathetic to the opposition’s cause. Most asked for their interviews to remain anonymous fearing government forces could go after their loved ones if they realized they had left the country.
Venezuelan journalist released after being charged with terrorism, union says
A well-known Venezuelan entertainment journalist arrested in Caracas over the weekend has been released, a media union said on Monday, but she faces terrorism charges as the fallout from the country’s disputed July 28 presidential election widens.
Carmela Longo, who until last week worked at the pro-government Ultimas Noticias newspaper, was arrested on Sunday after her house was raided by police, the National Union of Press Workers of Venezuela (SNTP) said on the X social media site.
Dozens forced to quit Venezuela’s PDVSA over political views, workers say
Over a hundred employees at Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, plus others in the oil ministry and parts of the public sector, have been forced to resign over their political views since last month’s disputed election, workers and unions said.
The government says President Nicolas Maduro won a third term in the July 28 contest, but the opposition says partial vote tallies indicate its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won a resounding victory.
Top PDVSA executives have instructed administrative and operational workers to attend rallies backing Maduro and supervised their social media accounts, according to four company sources and a union leader.
Employees who have not supported Maduro or have disputed the official voting results are being pushed out, they said.
“They call you to human resources, sit you down, and give you a resignation letter you must sign,” a source familiar with the situation said.
Venezuela’s Maduro Dismisses Power Sharing, New Election Proposals
Mexico City, Mexico, August 19, 2024 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro rejected proposals for a power-sharing agreement with the opposition and the possibility of holding new presidential elections, calling instead for respect for the country’s institutions and for the ongoing review by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ).
The suggestions came from neighboring presidents, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, respectively. Together with Mexico, the countries have self-appointed themselves as mediators in the ongoing post-electoral dispute in Venezuela, with US backing.
Maduro outright brushed off the suggestions, viewing them as an affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty, repeating his assertion on Monday.
“Venezuela is not an intervened country, nor do we have guardians. We do not interfere in anyone’s internal affairs,” said the Venezuelan president in a televised broadcast.
On Thursday, Petro suggested in a social media post that Colombia’s experience with the National Front governments, which saw the Liberal and Conservative parties agree to a power-sharing agreement between 1958 and 1974, could provide a model for Venezuela amidst opposition claims of fraud in the July 28 election.
Venezuela opposition candidate asks Maduro to ‘step aside’
Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who has claimed he defeated Nicolas Maduro in last month’s election, said Monday he was ready to negotiate a transition — and asked the incumbent to “step aside.”
“Mr. Nicolas Maduro, respect what all Venezuelans have decided… You and your government should step aside… I am ready for dialogue,” Gonzalez Urrutia, a retired diplomat, said in a video message posted on social media.
“Every day that you hinder the democratic transition, Venezuelans suffer from a country in crisis, and without freedom. Clinging to power only makes the suffering of our people worse. Our time has come.”
Since the contested election, Gonzalez Urrutia and fellow opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running herself, have been in hiding as prosecutors have opened an investigation against both of them.
Gonzalez Urrutia has not been seen publicly in weeks, while Machado appeared at an opposition rally in Caracas on Saturday.
US, Brazil float new Venezuela election despite government, opposition rebuffs
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday seemingly backed a new election in Venezuela, after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also floated the idea, despite rebuffs from Venezuela’s ruling party and its opposition which both claim victory in the July 28 contest.
Biden spoke to reporters in the wake of Lula’s suggestion that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro could call a new contest involving international observers as a potential solution for the political crisis in the country. The U.S. has rejected Madura’s victory claim.
Asked if he supports a new election in Venezuela, Biden said “I do”.
A National Security Council spokesperson later said Biden was “speaking to the absurdity of Maduro and his representatives not coming clean about the July 28 elections,” without fully walking back Biden’s comment.
The spokesperson added it is “abundantly clear” that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won the election.
A U.S. official, speaking on background, said the U.S. position had not changed and the vast majority of countries in the region were asking Maduro to release the results and recognize the outcome of the election.
‘No evidence’ Venezuela vote hacked, Carter Center election monitor says
There is no evidence that Venezuela’s electoral system was the target of a cyberattack during elections last month, the head of the Carter Center’s observation mission told AFP, confirming figures that give the opposition candidate a victory.
On election night, the president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, declared a win for President Nicolas Maduro without providing data from polling stations, stating that the CNE had been the victim of a computer attack.
“We have no evidence of that whatsoever,” Jennie Lincoln, head of the Carter Center delegation that was invited to monitor the Venezuela election, told AFP.
The CNE has not published detailed results from the vote and claims the delay is due to a hack, while Maduro has denounced what he calls a “criminal cyber-fascist coup d’etat.”
“There are companies that monitor and know when there is a denial of service, that there was no denial of service in Venezuela on an election day or election night,” Lincoln said, speaking from Atlanta, Georgia, where the center is located.
In the wake of Edmundo González’s landslide victory over Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential elections and the Maduro regime’s subsequent crackdown, moves by the leaders of Brazil and Colombia to find a way forward diplomatically have been troubling from the start in their deference to Maduro.
Now, by proposing that Venezuela carry out a second election, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Colombian President Gustavo Petro have thoroughly discredited their efforts and have shown why it is essential that the United States reassert its leadership on Venezuela.
In an election that was neither free nor fair, the Venezuelan people voted overwhelmingly for González. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people assisted in carefully planned election observation efforts that allowed the opposition to break through the regime’s secrecy and make public the voting tallies for a large majority of polling stations. Still, the Maduro regime declared victory while cracking down on opposition leaders, unleashing its collective militias on adversaries, and silencing political discussion.
Chile Blasts Venezuela Over Rights Abuses and Electoral ‘Fraud’
Chilean President Gabriel Boric accused Nicolas Maduro of trying to steal Venezuela’s election and said his administration is violating human rights, ratcheting up global criticism of last month’s contested vote.
“I have no doubt that Maduro’s regime has tried to commit fraud,” Boric told reporters Wednesday at the presidential palace in Santiago. “If not, then they would have shown the voting records. Why haven’t they done so? If they had clearly won, then they would have shown the records.”
Maduro’s administration is now committing “serious” human rights violations by oppressing protesters, Boric added. Chile’s government neither trusts the independence nor the impartiality of Venezuelan institutions, he said.
“Chile doesn’t recognize Maduro’s self-proclaimed triumph,” Boric said. “We won’t validate results that haven’t been verified by international organizations that are independent from the regime.”
Since taking office in 2022, Boric has spoken out against international human rights violations from Gaza to Ukraine and Nicaragua. He was one of the first heads of state to question the outcome of Venezuela’s election, saying shortly after the initial results were released that the Maduro victory was “hard to believe.”
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico in talks with Venezuelan government and opposition on election crisis
Since Venezuela’s disputed presidential election nine days ago, officials from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have been in constant contact with representatives of both Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo González, seeking a solution to the country’s political crisis.
The three nations, whose current leftist presidents are Maduro allies, are holding conversations with both sides, a senior Mexican official who has been part of the discussions told The Associated Press. The official declined to characterize that as formal mediation.
The three countries are recommending that the government and the opposition follow Venezuelan laws and appear before the appropriate institutions to appeal any part of the process, the official said. That recommendation, however, is a tall ask for the opposition, because Venezuela’s ruling party controls every aspect of government, including the justice system, and uses it to defeat and repress real and perceived opponents
Venezuela’s top prosecutor announces criminal probe against opposition leaders González, Machado
Venezuela’s top prosecutor on Monday announced a criminal investigation against the opposition’s presidential candidate Edmundo González and its leader Maria Corina Machado over their call on the armed forces to abandon their support for President Nicolás Maduro and to stop repressing demonstrators.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab’s statement tied the investigation directly to a written appeal the two members of the opposition sent hours earlier about Maduro and the demonstrators who have come out in force to defend their votes in the July 28 election.
Saab, in a written announcement posted on the social media site X, said the duo “falsely announced a winner of the presidential election other than the one proclaimed by the National Electoral Council, the only body qualified to do so” and they openly incited “police and military officials to disobey the laws.”
Gonzalez’s and Machado’s written appeal shows the alleged commission of various crimes including usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information to cause fear and conspiracy, Saab said.
Opposition leader joins rally calling for Venezuela presidential election results to be overturned
Thousands of people rallied in the streets of Venezuela’s capital Saturday, waving the national flag and singing the national anthem in support of an opposition candidate they believe won the presidential election by a landslide.
Authorities have declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s election but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove he won. Maduro also urged his backers to attend his own “mother of all marches” later Saturday in Caracas.
The government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed poll, and the president and his cadres have threatened to also lock up opposition leader María Corina Machado, and her hand-picked presidential candidate, Edmundo González.
On Saturday, supporters chanted and sang as Machado arrived at the rally in Caracas. Ecstatic, they crushed around her as she climbed onto a raised platform on a truck to address the crowd.
“After six days of brutal repression, they thought they were going to silence us, intimidate or paralyze us,” she told them. “The presence of every one of you here today represents the best of Venezuela.”
Machado, who has been barred by Maduro’s government from running for office for 15 years, had been in hiding since Tuesday, saying her life and freedom are at risk. Masked assailants ransacked the opposition’s headquarters on Friday, taking documents and vandalizing the space.
On Saturday, she held aloft a Venezuelan flag and promised that the government whose policies forced millions of Venezuelans to leave was finally coming to an end.
Millions of Venezuelans went to the polls to vote their widely loathed authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro out of power last Sunday – but Tibisay Betancourt was not one of them.
“I voted for him,” said the 60-year-old masseuse, a loyal supporter of the president’s Chavista movement who lives in a housing estate apartment given to her by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez.
Within hours of casting her vote, Betancourt had cause to rue her choice. As turmoil gripped the streets of Caracas after Maduro’s disputed claim to have won the election, she sent her son, Alfredo Alejandro Rondón, to a nearby shop to buy a bottle of Sprite for his sick father. Minutes later his brother, Yorluis, said he had seen Alfredo being beaten and dragged away by members of the Bolivarian national police.
By Thursday morning, the high school graduate was one of hundreds of prisoners languishing behind bars at a police base on the east side of town, facing possible terrorism charges that could land him in jail for up to 30 years.
The Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro has vowed to “pulverise” the latest challenge to his rule and told troops he is “willing to do anything” to protect his “revolution” amid growing criticism of the crackdown that followed last week’s disputed election.
Maduro says more than 2,000 people have been arrested in the days since the 28 July vote while human rights groups say at least 22 people have been killed.
On Sunday, the EU said it was “seriously concerned” about the growing number of arbitrary detentions in Venezuela and the harassment of the opposition, which has produced evidence suggesting its candidate, Edmundo González, won the election.
“The European Union calls on Venezuelan authorities to put an end to arbitrary detentions, repression and violent rhetoric against members of the opposition and civil society, and to release all political prisoners,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said in a statement.
Brazil announced a diplomatic agreement on Monday that will allow it to represent the interests of Argentina and Peru in Caracas, after Venezuela severed ties with the two nations following its contested presidential vote.
Brazil’s government, like Colombia and Mexico, has called for the release of full voting results following Venezuela’s July 28 election. But Venezuela’s electoral authorities have so far failed to do so while the country’s electoral authority has proclaimed that President Nicolas Maduro won re-election to a third term.
Venezuela ejected diplomats from both Argentina and Peru late last week, after their governments recognised opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the election winner.
Under the deal between Brazil and Venezuela, which takes effect from Monday, Brazil’s embassy in Caracas is given custody over the diplomatic offices belonging to Argentina and Peru in Venezuela, including properties and files, according to a joint statement.
A Brazilian official told Reuters last week that Brazil will play the role of mediator on issues pertaining to Argentina and Peru regarding their citizens in Venezuela.
In addition to Argentina and Peru, diplomats representing Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic have also left Venezuela, after those governments also recognised Gonzalez as the winner.
Argentinian President Javier Milei has emerged as a powerful ally of the Venezuelan anti-government protests as international pressure mounts to award the recent presidential election to the opposition.
Leaders from around the world, including the U.S., have cast doubt on Nicolas Maduro’s claim that he won the election, and protesters have clashed with police in the streets of the embattled South American nation.
“He’s been very, very helpful, and he has been kind of like a rallying voice in South America to allow him, along with the left, the opposition of healing work and kind of pushing other democracies to recognize Edmundo as president,” Daniel Acosta Rivas, an OSINT Analyst, told Fox News Digital.
Rivas said that Milei’s vocal support has “been coming into Venezuela and especially in the diaspora.”
Milei was among the first world leaders to speak out after the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council handed victory to the incumbent with an alleged margin of 51%, compared to 44% support for the opposition. Pre-election polling (which is illegal in the country) indicated that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez received double the votes of Maduro.
How Venezuela’s communist government is using tech surveillance to cling to power
Protests and upheaval have roiled Venezuela following a contested election on July 28. Incumbent leader Nicolas Maduro claims victory by a margin of 51% to 44%, while his opponent leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, says his coalition garnered 66% of the vote. It’s worth noting that Gonzalez was 25 points up in polls through most of July.
The United States has officially recognized Gonzalez as the victor, joining a chorus of international criticism of the election’s lack of transparency.
Reports detail at least 15 protesters killed so far by Venezuelan authorities, including a teenager who stopped to watch the protests on the way back from a party. There have been at least 39 injuries reported, and over 1,000 protesters have been arrested.
The internet has led to significant democratization in many ways simultaneously, as it has allowed the rise of technocracy and autocratic governments to clamp down even farther on popular discontent they dislike.
Prior to the election, Maduro emphasized there would be a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win this time around. He has the wherewithal to make good on his threat, given that he’s in charge of the nation’s army, cops, courts, and most of its lethal paramilitary gangs. Even leftist-led Brazil and Colombia have expressed concerns over the situation and the transparency of Venezuela’s July 28 election, urging Maduro to reveal the vote tallies that prove his claims publicly.
The last time Israel went to war with Hezbollah in 2006, it threatened to “turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years” and drive the militant movement from the border. When the conflict ended a month later, Hezbollah had been battered and bruised, but its fighters remained in place.
The back-to-back assassinations of senior figures in Hezbollah and its ally Hamas in the past week have intensified fears that the two arch foes – which have traded blows with increasing intensity since Hamas’ October 7 attack – are once more sliding towards all-out war.
A panel of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division on Thursday ruled to maintain the gag order in former president Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. While Trump was found guilty on May 3o of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, the court upheld Justice Juan Merchan’s decision to continue the restraining order until after sentencing has occurred.
The appeals court found that “the fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing” and that “threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued to pose a significant and imminent threat.” The court concluded that paragraph (b) of the gag order “shall remain in effect until the imposition of sentence.”
On June 25, Justice Merchan partially allowed a Trump challenge of the gag order’s operation post-trial. That decision terminated the portions of the gag order pursuant to making statements about witnesses and prospective jurors. However, Justice Merchan maintained paragraph (b) of the order, preventing Trump from:
Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.
Was it Hunter with the cocaine in the cabinet room? Ashley with the cocaine in the Oval Office? Or was it a stranger with access to the White House reference library? The mystery of the cocaine found in the White House over the July 4, 2023, holiday was closed for lack of evidence almost as soon as it began. But now there are revelations of a cover-up in the case.
A new report finds that former director Kim Cheatle, forced to resign over the disastrous near-assassination of Donald Trump, wanted the evidence destroyed, the substance not tested, and the case closed quickly. This was despite the high profile nature of the story — the evacuation of the entire White House, including the media, due to fears that the white powder, which a uniformed Secret Service agent discovered, was ricin or anthrax.
Having been on the Biden’s Secret Service detail, Cheatle probably knew what it was.
The story exploded into the media as gowned-up people in hazmat bunny suits combed the White House.
The White House was briefly evacuated Sunday evening while Biden was at Camp David after the Secret Service discovered a suspicious powder in a common area of the West Wing.
On July 2, 2023, the U.S. Secret Service discovered a small amount of cocaine at the White House. The substance was found in a cubby area inside a vestibule used for storing electronic devices at the West Executive Avenue entrance, a location that sees a lot of traffic from staff and visitors. Tests by the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services later confirmed the presence of cocaine.
Despite extensive forensic efforts, including fingerprint and DNA analysis by the FBI, no conclusive evidence was found to identify a suspect. The area where the cocaine was discovered is accessible to hundreds of people, and the lack of surveillance footage capturing the act made it impossible to pinpoint who might have brought the substance into the White House. As a result, the Secret Service closed the investigation due to insufficient evidence to proceed further.
According to three sources in the Secret Service community who spoke to RealClearPolitics, there was a significant rift among top leaders over how to handle the illicit substance. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, along with other senior figures, reportedly pushed to destroy the cocaine. However, the suggestion was met with firm resistance from both the Secret Service Forensics Services Division and the Uniformed Division, who insisted on preserving the evidence.
The Secret Service has denied a report that former Director Kimberly Cheatle and other agency leaders wanted to destroy cocaine found in the White House.
“This is false. The US Secret Service takes its investigative and protective responsibilities very seriously,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. “There are retention policies for criminal investigations and the Secret Service adhered to those requirements during this case.”
A story in RealClearPolitics cited three anonymous sources within the Secret Service who claimed that Cheatle, who recently resigned in the fallout from the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, reassigned an officer who wanted to follow a specific crime scene investigative protocol after the discovery. Guglielmi’s statement did not address that aspect of the report.
Aside from the novelty of illicit drugs being found inside the executive mansion, troubled first son Hunter Biden was staying in the White House in the days before the cocaine was discovered on July 2 and then publicly reported on July 4, sparking questions about the source of the drugs.
The initial discovery triggered a brief evacuation of the White House grounds as the substance was tested to rule out the possibility it was anthrax or another deadly powder. Because the evacuation included members of the press, it became impossible to keep the discovery hidden from the public.
According to traffic monitoring site Similarweb, Elon Musk’s platform, X, has achieved a significant milestone by surpassing Facebook and Instagram in global traffic. In June, X recorded an impressive 13.14 billion visits worldwide, eclipsing Facebook’s 12.44 billion and Instagram’s 5.798 billion. This marks a significant achievement for the platform, showcasing its growing popularity and reach.
Yet another study has revealed the Covid-19 vaccine is causing lethal side effects, with the last coming from Japan that shows the vaccine causes a certain kind of heart damage that leads to sudden lethal heart attacks.
Yet the globalists continue to push on, with the World Health Organization (the WHO) calling on the creation of a worldwide mRNA vaccine program for bird flu while a pro-vax doctor calls on the military and the police to neutralize “anti-vaccine aggression.”
A new study has identified another form of heart damage that is causing sudden deaths to surge among people who have been injected with Covid mRNA shots.
Top Japanese scientists uncovered evidence linking Pfizer’s mRNA shot to severely weakened hearts.
The team of researchers at the Narita-Tomisato Tokushukai Hospital in Japan, led by renowned cardiologist Katsuya Hashimoto, found that Covid shots are causing another form of heart inflammation that had not previously been linked to the injections.
Inflammation of the heart reduces its ability to pump blood around the body.
This weakened state can cause blood clots, cardiac arrest, strokes, and sudden death.
The inflammation is difficult to diagnose due to it often being symptomless, creating a ticking timebomb for sufferers.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing TikTok of sending personal data about American citizens to the Chinese Communist Party. The department filed a formal accusation, accusing the parent company, ByteDance of violating U.S. law.
The filing states, “This resulted in certain sensitive US person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China… Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including US user data… bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.”
The US Department of Justice has alleged that TikTok shipped personal information to China and allowed profiling of the short video app’s users based on their attitudes to some ticklish topics.
The Department’s views emerged in a filing [PDF] from the US government in response to attempts by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to strike down laws that force a sale of the platform’s stateside operations – and closure if that can’t be arranged.
The filing details an internal tool called Lark that TikTok staff use for internal communications. The DoJ alleges “significant amounts of restricted US user data (including but not limited to personally identifiable information)” was shared over Lark.
“This resulted in certain sensitive US person data being contained in Lark channels and, therefore, stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees located in China,” the filing asserts.
It gets worse: the filing claims “Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including US user data.”
The CrowdStrike Update glitch that led to global systems shutting down, including airports and governments, may have cost $5.4 billion in collective losses, with healthcare, banking, and the airline industry being the most impacted. The shutdown occurred on July 19, 2024, after CrowdStrike pushed out an update to millions of computers worldwide.
The update was never intended to be pushed, but a bug in the system allowed an update in testing mode to be let loose into the whole system. The update essentially led to the blue screen of death for users. If you didn’t use CrowdStrike, an Internet Security provider, you were safe from the worldwide blue screens of death of 2024.
Insurers have begun calculating the financial damage caused by last week’s devastating CrowdStrike software glitch that crashed computers, canceled flights and disrupted hospitals all around the globe — and the picture isn’t pretty.
What’s been described as the largest IT outage in history will cost Fortune 500 companies alone more than $5 billion in direct losses, according to one insurer’s analysis of the incident published Wednesday.
The new figures put into stark relief how a single automated software update brought much of the global economy to a sudden halt — revealing the world’s overwhelming dependence on a key cybersecurity company — and what it will take to recover…
The global outage stemmed from the latest version of CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software, which was meant to make the computer systems of its clients more secure against hacking by updating the threats it defends against. A faulty code in the update, however, resulted in one of the most widespread tech outages in recent years for many companies, including banks and airports, that use Microsoft’s Windows operating system and cloud computing services.
The Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony included a live re-enacting of Jesus’ Last Supper with Jesus being replaced by a woman and the disciples being replaced by drag queens and even a small child in yellow at the front. The backlash was severe, so they apologized immediately and sought to scrub it from existence.
The backlash continued, so efforts were made to try to walk back what they intended, with claims it was a Dionysian bacchanal, not the Last Supper, but social media accounts from members of the tableau betray that narrative. The symbol of the Olympic Games, itself a symbol of unity, opening with such an overtly divisive anti-Christian display isn’t lost to those of who pay attention to other worldwide trends. Woe to be in the hands of an angry God.
I’m Catholic, but the Olympics opening ceremony should tick off any Christian.
Of course these people ridicule us because they knew we wouldn’t cut off their heads.
I’d tell the French, “Now do Mohammed,” but they already did. Muslims shot up Charlie Hebdo over its cartoon of Mohammed.
The ceremony mocked Christians with a drag Last Supper, which takes place on Holy Thursday during Holy Week.
Holy Thursday is one of the most important days in the Catholic calendar.
Catholics do not have Mass again until the Easter Vigil. On Good Friday, we have a liturgy.
Opening of the Olympic in Paris features parody of Last Supper, starring transsexuals, homosexual men and… a little kid#Paris2024pic.twitter.com/2j2XSf9ict
— ancient north eurasian solidarity (@UEurasier) July 26, 2024
Organizers for the Paris Olympics issued an apology to people who were left offended by an LGBTQ parody of the Last Supper during the opening ceremony.
Thomas Jolly, the artistic director for the Olympics opening ceremony, explained that he had “wanted to send a message of love” and inclusion, and did not have intentions “to be subversive.”
“My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,” Jolly told the Associated Press. “Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.”
In response to the parody of the Last Supper, the French Catholic Church’s Bishops’ Conference of France released a statement that the ceremony had “included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed.”
“This ceremony unfortunately included scenes in which Christianity was mocked and ridiculed, which we deeply regret,” the organization said in its statement.
… Stevenson’s lengthy thread featured numerous examples of Butch seeming to endorse the “Olympic Jesus” interpretation.
For instance, Butch shared an image from another Instagram account that showed the Olympics scene at the top of the page and da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at the bottom.
The words “Oh Yes! Oh Yes! The New Gay Testament!” accompanied the image.
Butch also shared this post that I have seen from multiple accounts, describing the image as the “gay New Testament.”
In short, the official explanation does not square with a key performer’s interpretation.
“The posts from Butch suggest – in contrast to the Olympics’ statement – that is was the Last Supper,” Stevenson wrote.
In other words, the center person in the portrayal was posting that she was depicted as the “Olympic Jesus” in the Last Supper even as the organization was trying to backtrack.
The posts from Butch suggest – in contrast to the Olympics’ statement – that is was the Last Supper.
… Stevenson’s lengthy thread featured numerous examples of Butch seeming to endorse the “Olympic Jesus” interpretation.
For instance, Butch shared an image from another Instagram account that showed the Olympics scene at the top of the page and da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” at the bottom.
The words “Oh Yes! Oh Yes! The New Gay Testament!” accompanied the image.
Butch also shared this post that I have seen from multiple accounts, describing the image as the “gay New Testament.”
In short, the official explanation does not square with a key performer’s interpretation.
“The posts from Butch suggest – in contrast to the Olympics’ statement – that is was the Last Supper,” Stevenson wrote.
In other words, the center person in the portrayal was posting that she was depicted as the “Olympic Jesus” in the Last Supper even as the organization was trying to backtrack.
The posts from Butch suggest – in contrast to the Olympics’ statement – that is was the Last Supper.
I’m Catholic, but the Olympics opening ceremony should tick off any Christian.
Of course these people ridicule us because they knew we wouldn’t cut off their heads.
I’d tell the French, “Now do Mohammed,” but they already did. Muslims shot up Charlie Hebdo over its cartoon of Mohammed.
The ceremony mocked Christians with a drag Last Supper, which takes place on Holy Thursday during Holy Week.
Holy Thursday is one of the most important days in the Catholic calendar.
Catholics do not have Mass again until the Easter Vigil. On Good Friday, we have a liturgy.
Opening of the Olympic in Paris features parody of Last Supper, starring transsexuals, homosexual men and… a little kid#Paris2024pic.twitter.com/2j2XSf9ict
— ancient north eurasian solidarity (@UEurasier) July 26, 2024
The Boy Scouts of America have officially announced to the world that the word “boy” has no place in their literature any more. All of their instruction manuals, promotion materials, etc., have all replaced the word by with “youth.” Even when describing the past, the organization says things like “Scouting programs have instilled in youth the values found in the Scout Oath.”
The Boy Scouts of America has a Chief Diversity Officer & Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. The organization requires all Eagle Scouts to earn a badge in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It admitted girls to its program for 11- to 17-year-old boys in 2019 and changed the name of that program from the Boy Scouts to Scouts BSA. The word “boy” has been routed from the organization’s promotional materials and replaced with “youth,” as in: “For more than 100 years, Scouting programs have instilled in youth the values found in the Scout Oath.”
Does it matter, then, that the Boy Scouts of America has now extirpated the last use of “boy” found in its entire portfolio—the “boy” in “Boy Scouts of America,” the name of the parent organization? It does. That the Boy Scouts cannot tolerate even an atavistic use of “boy” reveals how powerful the impulse is to efface males from our culture. The transformation of the Boy Scouts of America into Scouting America is an object lesson in the incapacity of traditional institutions to withstand progressive takeover.
A school district in Southern California, Newport-Mesa Unified School District, has informed parents that even after concerns were sent to its office about its new policy, the matter was out of the parents’ hands; If you want to go on overnight trips, you have to be willing to room with transgendered students, a rule that concerns parents of daughters the most.
Sarah Coley, the district administrative director. Exclaimed in her reasoning, which she presumed to be the legal and gospel truth, “Parents and students do not get to pick, and saying I don’t want to stay with ‘Susie’ because ‘Susie isn’t a real girl,’ is no different than saying, ‘I don’t want to stay with Sara because Sara is [white/older/non-religious, etc.]’”
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Students in a Southern California school district could be forced to choose between rooming with a transgender-identifying student or missing out on an overnight school field trip.
If parents complain about their child rooming with a transgender-identifying student of the opposite biological sex, staff in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District listen to the parents’ concerns, then say that the child’s rooming assignment isn’t the parents’ choice, according to emails from 2021 and 2022 obtained by the Center for American Liberty and shared with The Daily Signal.
The only option for students who are uncomfortable staying in a room with transgender students is to opt out of the trip, Sarah Coley, the school district’s administrative director, said in an email to school district employees regarding a sixth-grade science trip.
“You would say to the students/parents, ‘If you have questions about the assignment, please feel free to discuss with me,’” Coley wrote in the email. “Then, if a parent says ‘hey, I don’t want my student with [who],’ you could provide an ear to listen and consider whether the student is a good fit, but the eventual response would be, ‘If you / your student is not comfortable with the rooming assignments and process of staying with other students in a room, then they can elect not to participate in this optional trip.’”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told an audience in Belem, Brazil that the world needs a $78 Trillion global operation to try to fight man-made climate change. The goal of this endeavor is to achieve worldwide carbon net-zero, a goal that is sure not to have any negative unintended, and certainly not INTENDED consequences. They hope to achieve this fundamental transformation of the planet and humanity by 2050.
She claimed, “Neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is bad economic policy. At home, we are implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in our nation’s history. It is driving hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in the clean energy technologies and industries that will propel us toward our climate goals and fuel our economic growth.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during a speech in Belem, Brazil, on Saturday that the price tag for a global transition to a low-carbon economy amounts to $78 trillion in financing through 2050.
Yellen said that in order to achieve the goal of net-zero global carbon emissions, there would need to be $3 trillion globally in annual financing for the cause, which she said is a top priority for the Biden administration, according to the speech. In order to contribute to this, Yellen vowed to finance green initiatives in developing countries through multilateral development banks and develop “clean energy technologies.” (RELATED: Treasury Department To Create New Climate Czar Role, Expand Climate Change Efforts)
“The transition will require no less than $3 trillion in new capital from many sources each year between now and 2050,” Yellen said during the speech. “This can be leveraged to support pathways to sustainable and inclusive growth, including for countries that have historically received less investment.”
Mississippi’s 2024 election could theoretically experience a minimum of a 5-day delay in being determined if a ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. is upheld. That ruling holds that a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be received up to 5 days after the election to be counted is perfectly constitutional.
The judge exclaimed “So if one federal statute implicitly allows post-election receipt of overseas ballots mailed by election day, that statute is presumed not to offend against the election-day statutes, from which one may infer that the similar Mississippi statute on post-election receipt is likewise inoffensive.”
A federal judge ruled on July 28 that a Mississippi law allowing ballots received up to five days after an election to be counted is lawful.
U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. referenced the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which regulates ballots from citizens living abroad.
A Rasmussen poll reveals nine percent of 2020 polled voters identified as being non-citizens. This group was culled from a call-list for “likely voters.” 2,466 people answered the poll, all of which became eligible when they were asked if they intended to vote in 2024.
A new poll finds that nine percent of “likely voters” who said they voted in 2020 are ineligible to vote because they are non-citizens.
The recent Rasmussen poll of 2,466 people who said they would likely vote in 2024 and who admitted voting in 2020 showed a shocking statistic.
Rasmussen asked these voters is they are citizens and 131 out of 2,466 said “no.” And 91 said they were not sure if they were citizens. Hint: if you “aren’t sure,” you’re NOT a citizen.
BREAKING: Shocking new poll reveals 91% of people who said they were “non-citizens” voted in the 2020 Presidential election..pic.twitter.com/wML8tmfrIe
Turkey and Israel traded sharp barbs on Sunday, with President Tayyip Erdogan seeming to threaten military action against Israel as tensions heated up between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Israel in turn warned that Erdogan’s fate could become akin to that of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was executed by hanging.
“Erdogan is following in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein by threatening to attack Israel. He should remember what happened there and how it ended,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote in a post on X, in which he linked a photograph of Erdogan and Hussein.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Monday compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in a post on X. “Just as genocidal Hitler ended, so will genocidal Netanyahu,” the post stated.
“Just as the genocidal Nazis were held accountable, those who tried to destroy the Palestinians will also be held accountable,” it added. “Humanity will stand with the Palestinians.”
On Saturday, July 27, a rocket allegedly coming from the Iran-back Islamist terror cell Hezbollah struck a Druze village in the Golan Heights, killing 12 children. The attack has led to Netanyahu threatening war in Lebanon even as the operation in Gaza hits a major moment as Israel’s central Gaza campaign pushes on.
Israel has already responded with strikes deep inside Lebanon targeting Hezbollah strongholds. As Israel faces a rising threat to its northern border, it submitted an updated proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal, coincidently on the same day as the attack that killed 12 children.
Israel vowed on Sunday to “hit the enemy hard” after rocket fire from Lebanon killed 12 young people in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and fanned fears that the war in Gaza will spread.
Iran warned Israel that any new military “adventures” in Lebanon could lead to “unforeseen consequences”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned Saturday’s rocket fire and called on all parties to “exercise maximum restraint”.
Israel’s army called it “the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians” since the October 7 attack that began the current fighting in Gaza and triggered regular exchanges of fire across the Lebanese border.
Israel blamed Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement for firing a Falaq-1 Iranian rocket but the Iran-backed group — which has regularly targeted Israeli military positions — said it had “no connection” to the incident.
It said, however, that it had fired one such rocket on Saturday towards an Israeli military target in the Golan.
The rocket fire in Majdal Shams, whose population are Arabic-speaking Druze, prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to return early from the United States.
Israel delivered to the U.S. on Saturday its updated proposal for the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, according to an Israeli senior official and two other sources with knowledge of the issue.
Why it matters: The negotiations over the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal are at a critical juncture.
President Biden, who sees freeing the hostages and ending the war in Gaza as key to his legacy, told the families of U.S. hostages on Thursday that he will continue pushing for a deal in the time he has left in office.
Driving the news: The proposal was delivered ahead of a meeting on Sunday in Rome between Mossad director David Barnea, CIA director Bill Burns, the Prime Minister of Qatar Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani and the head of Egyptian intelligence Abbas Kamel to discuss the hostage deal.
ISRAEL’S foreign minister has warned of an “all-out war” with Hezbollah after blaming the militant group for a rocket attack in Golan Heights.
The missile hit a village in the Israel-occupied region on Saturday evening, killing 12 young people including children.
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) quickly pointed fingers at Iran-backed Hezbollah, who operate out of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a staunch supporter of terror-group Hamas, has launched renewed attacks against Israel since war broke out in the Gaza Strip in October last year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned a crunch meeting of his security cabinet following the attack and vowed revenge on the group.
Local law enforcement alerted the U.S. Secret Service about a suspicious person before the shooting at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, according to the chief of the Pennsylvania State Police.
During questioning at the House Homeland Security hearing on Tuesday, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris disclosed new details about the security lapse that led to the assassination attempt on former President Trump. The incident resulted in one death and two injuries.
Col. Christopher Paris stated that the Butler County Emergency Services Unit had a text thread discussing the suspected gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and had reported him as a suspicious person before the incident.
“At some point when he utilized the range-finder, the suspicion was heightened,” Col. Paris said of Crooks. He said that State Police got a call and a text from the emergency services unit about the suspected gunman’s activity and told the Secret Service.
State Police officials had “verbally turned right around and gave it to the Secret Service” at a local command post for security, Col. Paris said, adding, “My understanding was that he was milling about and he stood out to them because he never made his way to a point of ingress to the venue.”
The police chief also testified that two local law enforcement officers stationed in the building complex left to search for the suspect before the shooting. He added that he didn’t know if the officers would have seen Crooks climbing onto the roof of a nearby building had they stayed by the window.
