In September 2021 the US, UK and Australia announced a joint project to build eight nuclear submarines for Australia at a cost of AU$368 billion. To conclude the deal, Australia had to scrap an already concluded agreement with France to build 12 conventional submarines for the Royal Australian Navy at a cost of AU$50 billion.

The EU Commission plans to deploy a large team of experts and officials to monitor Elon Musk’s upcoming live interview with the co-chair of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, Politico reported on Thursday.

The event, which is scheduled for Thursday evening, could give the AfD an “unfair advantage” ahead of next month's snap parliamentary elections in Germany, Brussels believes, according to the media outlet.

A total of 150 specialists from the EU Commission’s DG CONNECT tech department and Seville-based European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency will monitor the conversation, Politico reported. According to the publication, the team will focus not on its content but on the algorithms used by X during the live feed.

As several fires spread across Southern California, President-elect Donald Trump blamed policies from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden for causing the outbreak.

"He is the blame for this," Trump wrote about Newsom on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday.

CARTOON FROM 2008....

The Israelis’ “rights” to Palestine are based on the gift of the Promised Land by Yahweh. It is curious that even in this radically secular country that is France, this claim is taken seriously. But we are used to considering the Bible as a sacred reference, and there are probably still many people who believe that it is the oldest text of humanity, even though it is more recent than the Iliad, and that it takes up many myths told in Akkadian texts (such as the story of Uta-Napišti, who became Noah) two millennia earlier!

With less than two weeks remaining before his inauguration, President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his warning that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the captives held by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip are not returned before Trump is sworn in. He added that failure to do so “will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone.”

Here are the propaganda leaflets Israel is currently dropping over Gaza
The messages consist of crude warnings, threats and appeals to turn against Hamas and collaborate with Israel.

A Washington Post cartoonist has quit her role at the paper, saying that her bosses blocked publication of a satirical cartoon that depicted billionaires, including one resembling Post owner Jeff Bezos, kneeling before President-elect Donald Trump.

This summer, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) to expedite the permitting of energy infrastructure cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A similar bill is being considered by the House Committee on Natural Resources. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) reportedly wants to bring the Manchin-Barrasso bill to the floor for a vote during the “lame duck” session before January. A version of “permitting reform” could become law soon.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and advance peace.

Europe might soon feel "intense pressure" to reach some sort of an agreement with Russia regarding its war against Ukraine, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a post on X on Jan. 6. 

His words came only two weeks before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to quickly bring an end to the war but has not provided details on how he plans to do it.

"We could soon face intense pressure to strike a deal with Moscow," Sikorski wrote after delivering a speech for French ambassadors in Paris. 

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Trump and his team of America’s bluntest and briskest can look funny. Their demands are so bracingly direct; their threats so refreshingly frank. It’s almost as if they are mightily enjoying themselves as they rub in the facts of brute American power: We, the US, are the best-armed, richest mobster family in town, and the new Don is greedier than Scarface and crasser than Tony Soprano!

Here’s why Trump’s talk of annexing Canada and Greenland should not be dismissed

The US president-elect’s “shopping cart” of other countries’ properties should worry all American vassals

Russia issues list of demands it says must be met to lower tensions in Europe

This article [FROM THE GUARDIAN] is more than 3 years old

Contentious* security guarantees Moscow is seeking include a ban on Ukraine from entering Nato

THE WORD CONTENTIOUS USED BY THE GUARDIAN IS LOADED WITH DISRESPECT FOR THE PROPOSAL WHICH FOR ALL CONSIDERATIONS IS FAIR TO THE WEST AND TO UKRAINE — IN WHICH THE BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS OF THE DONBASS STAY IN UKRAINE, IN AN AUTONOMOUS POSITION.

THE WEST, OF COURSE REJECTED THIS PROPOSAL UNDER VARIOUS PRETENCES BUT FOR THE SINGLE REASON THAT THE USA HAS VOWED TO DESTROY RUSSIA SINCE 1917…

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue its controversial third-party fact-checking program in the US. In a video address, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the services were “too politically biased” and “have destroyed more trust than they’ve created.”

“What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far,” Zuckerberg said.

Everyone has the odd “if only” thought from time to time. If only you had made a different career choice, if only you had not said the things you have said, or if only you had not done some of the things you have done. All those done and not done moments – those decisions and those things you did which, when you wake up at night, have you squirming with anguish and/or embarrassment.

Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Monday tasked Herbert Kickl, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), with the formation of a new government.

Van der Bellen's offer came after Chancellor Karl Nehammer handed in his resignation on Saturday over the collapse of coalition talks that had excluded the FPÖ.

https://www.dw.com/en/austrias-far-right-freedom-party-asked-to-form-government/a-71228157