Chinese press has released a statement that “Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, has signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war.” The 59 Articles take effect June 15th, 2022. The details of the articles were not released.
Mark Clouse
Putin ‘may vanish for cancer operation’ as Moscow to seek ‘payback’ by declaring ‘all out war’
From www.thesun.co.uk
2022-05-03 02:01:31
Joseph Gamp
Excerpt:
VLADIMIR Putin faces cancer surgery and will hand power to his shadowy spy chief, a Kremlin insider has claimed.
Putin’s health has been a source of speculation amid reports he is battling abdominal cancer and Parkinson’s Disease.
But now it has been reported the Russian leader, 69, could go under the knife with power switched to hardliner Nikolai Patrushev, 70, who is a key architect of the war strategy and the man who convinced Putin that Kyiv was awash with neo-Nazis.
Meanwhile, there are fears that Putin will soon declare a full-scale world war in “payback” after Ukraine continues to stall the advance of Russian troops.
Kremlin-controlled media has been careful not to refer to the invasion as a war – instead reffering to the conflict as a “special operation”.
According to The Telegraph, a source close to military officials said: “The military is outraged that the blitz on Kyiv has failed. People in the army are seeking payback for failures of the past and they want to go…
The once-American ally, the Solomon Islands, is now going in another direction, which is leading them to accept Chinese Police becoming their street patrols, but under Solomon Islands supervision.
Solomon Islands to supervise Chinese police operating there -official
From www.reuters.com
2022-05-02 05:00:00
Excerpt:
China’s police presence under a new security pact will boost the capabilities of the Solomon Islands but they will not use techniques seen in Hong Kong, the Pacific island country’s top diplomat to Australia said in a radio interview on Monday.
Already on guard about the pact because of concerns it gives China’s military a strategic foothold in the Pacific, Western allies are also worried that Chinese police sent there may use the same “ruthless” techniques previously used to quell anti-government protests in Hong Kong. read more
The Solomon Islands is “beefing up their capability” after local police were unable to contain anti-government riots in the Chinatown section of the capital Honiara in November, Solomon Islands High Commissioner to Australia Robert…
The Philippines is making more overtures to China, making many nations, including the United States, very nervous. The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, met with China’s Chairman Xi to discuss security issues in the South China Sea. The meeting was characterized as friendly, with Duterte emphasizing his desire to work more closely with China on South China sea issues.
Duterte, Xi Talk South China Sea in Virtual Summit – The Diplomat
From thediplomat.com
2022-04-11 12:49:50
Excerpt:
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping have agreed to “broaden the space for positive engagements” in dealing with disputes over the South China Sea.
During an hour-long telephone meeting on Friday that Duterte’s office described as “open, warm, and positive,” the two leaders stressed the need to exercise restraint to maintain peace in the vital waterway, where China’s expansive claims run up against the competing (and frankly more legally defensible) claims of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei.
According to a statement from the president’s office, the two leaders also discussed the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war and efforts to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The leaders stressed the need to exert all efforts to maintain peace, security, and stability in the South China Sea by exercising restraint, dissipating tensions, and working on a mutually agreeable framework for functional…
Mask Mandates May Be Coming Back In Some Places—And Sticking Around For Air Travel
From www.forbes.com
2022-04-11 15:56:21
Excerpt:
Travelers might have to hold on to their face masks for a while longer. As the daily number of reported Covid-19 cases is moving upward again in the United States, driven by the highly transmissible omicron BA.2 subvariant, there are signs that mask mandates may stick around on the travel landscape.
The percentage of Americans who say they always wear a mask in public has dropped to just 23%, its lowest level since April 2020, according to tracking data from the University of Washington in Seattle. Notably, vaccinated Americans are more than twice as likely (70%) as unvaccinated Americans (32%) to report wearing a mask in public places regularly, per data from the Pew Research Center.
At the same time, testing has also significantly dropped off, so getting a handle on a true number of daily infections has become more difficult for officials. According to…
Both Russia and Ukraine are major fertilizer exports, with Russia being the world’s top fertilizer expert. As a result of the war between them, both nations are unable to bring their fertilizer to the market. As a result, fertilizer prices are spiking as supply is failing to meet demand. As usual, the nation-states that have the least will be the hardest hit.
U.S.-led sanctions against Russia have left the Russians unable to realistically bring their fertilizer to market, while the war has halted Ukraine’s fertilizer production, along with most other agricultural production, which has world consequences of their own. As these effects hit the nations of the world least equipped to make up for these losses, expect to see more riots, protests, political upheavals as the less powerful in these nations find themselves increasingly unable to feed themselves.
Soaring Fertilizer Prices Threaten Widespread Hunger, Higher Inflation
From www.businessinsider.com
2022-04-10 12:40:51
Excerpt:
In an era of abundant economic worries, the chaos in the world’s fertilizer market is one of the most concerning.
The war in Ukraine has boosted already high fertilizer prices. Russia serves as the world’s top fertilizer exporter, selling some $7.6 billion worth of fertilizer in 2020, according to data from the French research organization CEPII. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine slammed both countries’ abilities to trade, and in early March the Russian government called on fertilizer producers to suspend exports entirely.
The new supply pressures have lifted prices at a stunning clip. The Green Markets North America fertilizer-price index — which tracks the costs of urea, potash, and diammonium phosphate — has soared by 42% since the invasion began in late February.
French President Macron managed to beat all comers in the recent Presidential election, but failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote, hitting just 28 percent in voter support, with his next-closest rival, Marine Le Pen finishing at 23 percent.
The two will now face off in a winner-take-all runoff election. It seems the Mumbai police are joining a growing list of police departments worldwide willing to become de facto guinea pigs for how to successfully utilize face recognition software to assure that dissenters don’t achieve too much success inspiring more dissent by tracking them in videos of protests and using the software to identify who the protestors are in the hope of arresting them.
The Gamdevi police are lauding the success of their Cyber Cell program to find the dissenters and gather them up. Protesters have been gathering outside a party chief’s residence, They have been filmed, identified, and had their digital lives scrubbed to determine who their affiliates are. Nation-states like China, Russia, and, to a lesser extent, India, have much less Rule of Law standards impeding the state from aggressively targeting non-direct offenders of laws for levels of surveillance and control far beyond (theoretically) the power states such as the United States of America possess.
From www.hindustantimes.com
2022-04-10 15:38:26
Excerpt:
Mumbai: Gamdevi police, which has been probing the rioting incident outside Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar’s residence Silver Oak, is now taking the help of cyber police to scrutinise call data records and social media chats of protesters to find out whether they were instigated by any political party or an organisation.
Police have also scanned the footage of CCTVs close to Silver Oak to find out if a recce has been conducted of Pawar’s residence before the protest. Advocate Gunaratan Sadavarte, who has been remanded in two days’ police custody, is being interrogated by police, said a senior IPS officer.
Meanwhile, senior police inspector RJ Rajbhar was suspended on Sunday following the MSRTC workers’ protest at Silver Oak. Rajbhar was the senior inspector of Gamdevi police station — which has the jurisdiction of the place where this incident took place on Friday. Soon after the protest, he was transferred to Local Arms unit.
Semiconductor supply in limbo as war halts Ukrainian neon production – National
From globalnews.ca
2022-03-11 17:01:01
Excerpt:
Ukraine‘s two leading suppliers of neon, which produce about half the world’s supply of the key ingredient for making chips, have halted their operations as Moscow has sharpened its attack on the country, threatening to raise prices and aggravate the semiconductor shortage.
Some 45 to 54 per cent of the world’s semiconductor-grade neon, critical for the lasers used to make chips, comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin, according to Reuters calculations based on figures from the companies and market research firm Techcet.
Global neon consumption for chip production reached about 540 metric tons last year, Techcet estimates.
Amnesty International Goes Anti-Semite, Says Israel ‘Shouldn’t Exist as a Jewish State’
From freebeacon.com
2022-03-11 18:10:16
Philip Caldwell
Excerpt:
The director of Amnesty International USA on Wednesday said Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state” in the wake of his organization’s release of a controversial report on Israel that drew backlash from U.S. officials.
American Jews want a “safe Jewish space,” Executive Director Paul O’Brien said, rather than an explicitly Jewish state. O’Brien, who is not Jewish, called on the Jewish community to “collectively change the conversation” and bring about a secular state by adhering to “core Jewish values, which are to be principled and fair and just.”
“Amnesty takes no political views on any question, including the right of the State of Israel to survive,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien made the remarks, which were reported by Jewish Insider, at an event hosted by the Woman’s National Democratic Club. The director of the human-rights group defended a report released last month by his parent organization that accused Israel of carrying out an apartheid against Palestinians and called for…
