U.K. inflation unexpectedly jumped in February, as food and energy bills continued to rise, placing further pressure on households.
The consumer price index (CPI) increased by an annual 10.4%, above the 9.9% consensus forecast among economists in a Refinitiv poll and up from 10.1% in January. On a monthly basis, CPI inflation was 1.1%, exceeding a forecast of 0.6%.
WASHINGTON — The State Department announced Monday that the U.S. will send Ukraine $350 million in weapons and equipment, as fierce battles with Russian forces continue for control of the city of Bakhmut, and troops prepare for an expected spring offensive.
The latest package of aid includes a large amount of various types of ammunition, such as rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and an undisclosed number of fuel tanker trucks and riverine boats.
Here’s an interesting perspective from Gaddis’ biography of George F. Kennan:
“Foreign policy was not, therefore, a contest of good vs. evil. To condemn negotiations as appeasement, Kennan told a Princeton University audience early in October, was to end a Hollywood movie with the villain shot. To entrust diplomacy to lawyers was to relegate power, ‘like sex, to a realm in which we see it only occasionally, and then in a highly sublimated and presentable form.’ Both approaches ignored the fact that most international conflicts were ‘jams that people have gotten themselves into.’ Trying to resolve them through rigid standards risked making things worse. Evil existed, to be sure: the Soviet regime reflected it, as had Nazi Germany. Sometimes you had to fight it, sometimes you had to deal with it. The important question was ‘what sort of compromises we make,’ not how to ‘escape altogether the necessity of making such compromises.'”
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has threatened to urge Mexican-Americans not to vote for Republican candidates if they continue their criticism, rejected U.S. official security warnings that depict much of Mexico as a risky place to visit.
“Mexico is safer than the United States,” he told reporters when questioned about the warnings at a news conference. “There’s no problem with traveling safely around Mexico.”
[…]
At 28 per 100,000 people, Mexico’s murder rate was around four times higher than in the United States in 2020, according to data published by the World Bank. Homicides fell about 7% last year in Mexico, but the current government is on track to register a record total for any six-year administration.
President Bukele declared a “war on gangs” last March, passing emergency measures which have been extended several times.
The emergency powers have been controversial as they limit some constitutional rights, such as allowing the security forces to arrest suspects without a warrant.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
More than 64,000 suspects have been arrested in the anti-crime drive.
Authorities have said criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio-18 number tens of thousands and are responsible for homicides, extortion and drug-trafficking. The aim of the mass arrests is to make the gangs “disappear altogether”, the government says.
Ask yourself… why aren’t relations damaged? Shouldn’t they be? They invaded our space with an intentionally provocative act? Why wouldn’t it damage relations?
“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview a day after his second State of the Union address.
“I made it real clear to Xi Jinping that we’re going to compete fully with China, but we’re not looking for conflict. That’s been the case so far.”
Biden’s response marks the second time this week that he’s sought to downplay the effect of what US officials deemed a “brazen” act by Beijing to send an intelligence gathering balloon across several US states – with signs it loitered over key military installations.
Oh, fer cripes’s sakes. He waits until it has traversed the entire nation collecting whatever data it could before doing anything. This isn’t the 1960s where a surveillance craft had to drop its payload to be retrieved and analyzed. Whatever it collected has already been transmitted. And while I have mad respect for our pilots, it’s not much of a brag to say that they shot it down with “one missile.” It’s a friggin’ balloon. This whole fiasco has been a national embarrassment and the world is laughing at us.
Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to ‘take care of it.’
An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.
Footage showed the jet screaming towards the spy aircraft before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the coast.
[…]
Biden first became aware of the balloon last Sunday, January 28, when it was spotted over Alaska. The US military tracked it over Canadian airspace and as it re-entered US territory on Tuesday.
The following day, Biden was given a detailed report on the aircraft and its course, attended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Excellent. She is a vocal antisemite. It is like having a member of the Klan on that committee – a committee that deals with foreign relations.
House Republicans on Thursday voted to kick Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over her anti-Semitic comments in chaotic scenes in Congress.
Democrats screamed ‘no’ before the GOP completed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid to get the Squad member removed over past comments comparing Israel to Hamas and the Taliban and saying the relationship between the Jewish state and the U.S. is ‘all about the Benjamins’ in 2019.
‘She described 9/11 by saying “some people did something”,’ McCarthy said when explaining why he wanted to boot her from the committee in a press conference after she was kicked off
This is how wussy we have become. We are not willing to shoot down a spy baloon – both to remove it from spying and to make it clear to the Chinese that we will respond to their spying with force – because of the miniscule chance it will land on someone in one of the most sparsley populated states in out nation. We are failing as a nation
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down due to the risk of harming people on the ground, officials said Thursday. The discovery of the balloon puts a further strain on U.S.-China relations at a time of heightened tensions.
A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon and it was flying over sensitive sites to collect information. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Senior U.S. officials are advising Ukraine to hold off on launching a major offensive against Russian forces until the latest supply of U.S. weaponry is in place and training has been provided, a senior Biden administration official said on Friday.
The official, speaking to a small group of reporters on condition of anonymity, said the United States was holding fast to its decision not to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine at this time, amid a controversy with Germany over tanks.
U.S. talks with Ukraine on any counter-offensive have been in the context of ensuring the Ukrainians devote enough time first to training on the latest weaponry provided by the United States, the official said.
The US is set to finalize a huge military aid package for Ukraine totaling approximately $2.5 billion worth of weaponry, including for the first time Stryker combat vehicles, two sources briefed on the next tranche of aid told CNN.
The package is not yet finalized, one of sources said, but it could come before the end of the week.
The new aid – one of the biggest packages to be announced since the war began last February – would also include more armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to one of the people briefed. Combined with the Strykers, it marks a significant escalation in the armored vehicles the US has committed to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, are also on the list, the person said. The US has already committed to sending Ukraine nearly 500 MRAPs.
When asked if the US was preparing to announce another Ukraine security package, State Department spokesman Ned Price told CNN, “Two words: stay tuned.”
Wow. If true, this eliminates a major geopolitical lever that China currently has.
Swedish government-owned mine operator LKAB on Thursday announced the discovery of a major rare earth mineral deposit in the northern city of Kiruna, potentially significantly reducing reliance on China for electric vehicle components.
The deposit, the largest such discovery in Europe, is equivalent to more than 1 million metric tons of rare earth oxides, according to LKAB.
“This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements in our part of the world, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition. We face a supply problem. Without mines, there can be no electric vehicles,” LKAB President and CEO Jan Moström said in a statement.
The discovery could be a game-changer for Europe, which currently has no rare earth mining operations and is entirely dependent on Chinese imports for the metals, which are used in the manufacture of wind turbines and electric cars. As of 2020, 99 percent of rare earth imports to the European Union came from China.
TAPACHULA/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Thousands of migrants have flocked to government offices in southern Mexico seeking asylum since the United States said it would keep restrictions used to quickly expel hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
[…]
Ramirez said many migrants seek asylum to obtain documents they believe are necessary to traverse Mexico so they can then go to the U.S.-Mexico border later. Mexico has sought to contain mass movement of migrants toward the U.S. border by breaking up caravans and setting up checkpoints throughout the country.
Ramirez believed the mass of recent arrivals could be migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti seeking to reach the United States before rules change.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s military build-up have US lawmakers shelling out billions to buy new missiles, aircraft, tanks and helicopters to support allies and prepare for future conflict. Including the most recent tranche of funding passed in December, Congress has enacted about $110 billion in aid to Ukraine, about $40 billion of which will go toward weapons transfers and purchases.
That’s putting stress on the makers of modern weaponry. Consider that some 1,600 Stinger missiles, used by individual soldiers to attack aircraft, were sent to Ukraine from American stockpiles, but the US stopped making them in 2003. Raytheon, its manufacturer, has restarted production, but doesn’t expect to deliver the weapons in large numbers for a year or more.
[…]
The issue isn’t so much that the US isn’t running out of weapons, but that its transfers to Ukraine are stretching its own stockpiles, which it needs to train and be prepared for unexpected conflict. For one example, experts estimate that the US has given more than a third of its stockpile of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which will take years to replenish.
Russia’s not wrong. The warmonger in the White House is making it very clear that this is America’s war against Russia and there is no end in sight.
But Russia’s US ambassador said these “provocative actions” would lead to an escalation with severe consequences.
Anatoly Antonov told Russian state media that Moscow was “trying to appeal to common sense at all levels”, but talk of delivering the Patriot missile system to Kyiv was “deeply disturbing”.
[…]
Moscow has complained that no calls for peace were heard during President Zelensky’s trip to Washington – with spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing this as proof that the US was fighting a proxy war with Russia.
Mr Peskov added that delivering Patriot missiles would not prevent Russia from “achieving its goals during the special military operation”.
“The talks in Washington have shown that neither Ukraine nor the United States is seeking peace. They are simply intent on continuing the fighting,” said Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Migrants’ haste to cross with Title 42 in place may seem contradictory, because the policy makes it easier for the U.S. to expel undocumented migrants. But many anticipated that the lifting of it will make crossing more difficult, at least temporarily, due to increased migrant numbers and military presence at the border.
How about… no. The whole friggin’ world has their hand out for American tax dollars and we’re broke.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico plans to ask U.S. President Joe Biden for as much as $48 billion in financing for solar projects, Foreign Relations Secretary Marcel Ebrard said Tuesday.
Ebrard said the request will be presented to Biden at the upcoming Jan. 9-10 meeting of U.S., Canadian and Mexican leaders in Mexico City.
Mexico hopes to build solar energy parks in the northern border state of Sonora, along with power transmission lines. Mexico hopes to receive some of the funding from the North American Development Bank, or NADBank.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Head of Chechnya [Federal subject of the Russian Federation – ed.], urged Muslims around the world to “unite in joint efforts against NATO”, speaking in Chinese.
Source: Kadyrov on Telegram, Kremlin-aligned news outlet TASS
Quote from Kadyrov: “Over the past 100 years, the United States and Europe have organised dozens of wars, military coups and invasions. Millions of civilians have become their victims. Although now they pose an even more terrible threat, destroying all the moral values that have been formed by the peoples of all countries during the existence of mankind…
Their money and weapons are nothing in the face of our solidarity, will and faith in our Creator!”.
Details: According to him, the North Atlantic Alliance threatens the existence of the whole world, “but Russia, contrary to all the forecasts of the West, has challenged this evil and is confidently moving towards victory”.
Kadyrov called on Muslims to “stand on the same side with their brothers” and “against the common enemy”, because NATO “will soon come to destroy their homeland”.
“If you enter the UK illegally you should not be able to remain here,” Sunak told parliament. “Instead, you will be detained and swiftly returned either to your home country or to a safe country where your asylum claim will be considered.”
Migrants arriving on small boats has become a major political issue for the Conservative government, particularly in working-class areas in the north and central England, where migrants are blamed for making it harder to find work and stretching public services.
