Canada Has Reopened Military Channel to Beijing After Eight Years, China’s Defense Ministry Announces

/0 Comments/in , /by

Canada’s military reopened a formal channel to China’s People’s Liberation Army last Friday for the first time in eight years, and Canadians have learned of it only from Beijing.

China’s defence ministry says Canada and China revived their formal Defence Coordination Dialogue on September 4.

Canadians have learned of the meeting not from their own government, but from a terse statement issued by Beijing.

The fifth China-Canada Defence Coordination Dialogue was held in Canada, according to a two-paragraph notice posted at 10:19 p.m. Beijing time on September 5 on the English-language website of the Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China.

The ministry said the two sides discussed international and regional issues and expressed a willingness to strengthen “practical exchanges and cooperation” between their militaries. (Read more from “Canada Has Reopened Military Channel to Beijing After Eight Years, China’s Defense Ministry Announces” HERE)

Ukraine Is Now A Landlocked Country

/0 Comments/in , /by

Repeated attacks by the Russian military are hammering Ukrainian ports so hard that the nation has become effectively landlocked, according to military analysts.

Ukrainian ports such as Odesa have long been the lifeline of the Ukrainian state; however, that time may be drawing to a close as Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports continue to escalate. The Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports include new jet-powered drones, cruise missiles and other ballistic missiles.

“Ukrainian political leadership is always motivated to escalate, despite the fact that they are destined to lose any sort of tit-for-tat, because Russia can almost always hurt Ukraine more than Ukraine can hurt Russia ” Peter Slezkine, senior fellow and director of the Russia Program at the Stimson Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Ukraine needs to show some kind of dynamism, to paint a picture of victory, to generate effective photos and video clips in order to maintain the interest of its external sponsors. So it’s constantly searching for some new way to inflict pain on Russia, knowing that Russia will then inflict more pain in the same area on Ukraine.”

The naval conflict in the Russo-Ukrainian war escalated sharply in July when Ukraine intensified strikes on Russian shipping in the Sea of Azov before expanding the campaign into the Black Sea.

Ukraine dramatically increased drone attacks against Russian shipping around Crimea in July, striking more than 180 vessels and other maritime targets over roughly three weeks as Kyiv opened a new front in the naval conflict, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources in the Ukrainian military. (Read more from “Ukraine Is Now A Landlocked Country” HERE)

Mike Huckabee Condemns Violent Israeli Settlers as ‘Terrorists’ in West Bank Visit

/0 Comments/in , /by

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee again denounced violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, describing their attacks against Palestinians as acts of “terror.”

Huckabee has previously spoken out against settler violence, including after Israeli settlers attacked a home in the West Bank village of Qusra that was owned by an American citizen last month.

“If there are squatters that come in and put up their own flags and take possession of something that does not belong to them, if they burn a car, if they torch a mosque, if they go into someone’s home and vandalize it, paint graffiti on the walls, that’s a criminal act. But it extends beyond a criminal act. It’s an act of terror,” Huckabee said during a visit to the village of Turmus Ayya, where residents have reported frequent settler attacks over the past year. He clarified that his remarks were directed toward the U.S. citizens living among the Palestinians in the region. (Read more from “Mike Huckabee Condemns Violent Israeli Settlers as ‘Terrorists’ in West Bank Visit” HERE)

Two Employees Die Of ‘Airport Malaria,’ Officials Try To Calm Fears

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Mosquitoes carried into Germany from a malaria region have killed two workers at the country’s busiest airport.

Six Frankfurt Airport employees caught malaria on the job, according to German outlet Hessischer Rundfunk. The first of the two victims died in early July. The second death came in August. All four surviving patients have since left the hospital.

The airport operator, Fraport, identified the infections as airport malaria, CNN reported. The label covers the rare cases in which the disease spreads beyond the regions where it circulates, according to CNN, citing the Frankfurt health department. The cause of the first case emerged only after the patient had died.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) confirmed four infections in mid-July, with the patients falling ill between July 4 and July 6, according to its Epidemiological Bulletin. The count reached six by late August. Germany’s national public health agency assumes an infected Anopheles mosquito arrived by aircraft and passed on the infection, according to the bulletin.

The institute has urged physicians to consider airport malaria when patients present unexplained fever and report no recent travel abroad, according to the bulletin. That advice covers anyone working at or near airports served by intercontinental passenger and cargo flights, according to the RKI. (Read more from “Two Employees Die Of ‘Airport Malaria,’ Officials Try To Calm Fears” HERE)

Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill Two People, Including 4-Year-Old Boy, Medics Say

/0 Comments/in , /by

Two Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on ⁠Sunday ⁠killed at least two people, including a four-year-old ⁠boy, and wounded seven others, Palestinian health officials said, as Israel warned it would intensify strikes after what ​it said were launches of balloons, drones and kites from Gaza toward Israel.

One of the strikes hit a building in Zawayda town in the centre of the ‌enclave and followed a warning by the Israeli ‌army for the owners of the property to leave the area, residents said.

Medics said flying debris and shrapnel that spread for dozens of metres around had ⁠wounded at least ⁠six people, including the four-year-old, Mohammad Abdel-Salam Taha, who was later pronounced dead at hospital.

“There is ​no ceasefire, there is nothing,” said Abu Ahmed, a displaced Palestinian who was sheltering close to the building, which the airstrike reduced to a pile of mangled steel and concrete.

“We want solutions, we want to live in peace,” he said. (Read more from “Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill Two People, Including 4-Year-Old Boy, Medics Say” HERE)

Nepal/Tibet Landslides: Over 1,000 Missing, Entire Villages Buried as Rescuers Fear More Flooding

/0 Comments/in , /by

Rescuers in Nepal and occupied Tibet estimated on Thursday that over 1,000 people remain missing, including nationals from dozens of countries, after heavy rains caused massive landslides and rapidly rising floods to consume entire towns of people.

Authorities warned that rain is expected to persist this week, creating the potential for more devastation in areas already severely affected, whether buried in mud or completely isolated from sources of food and medicine as the landslides tore through major roads and bridges. Tibet’s colonial overlord, the Chinese Communist Party, is reportedly monitoring rapidly rising waters in a lake in the region that could soon overflow and cause even more devastation, potentially harming search and rescue teams working as rapidly as possible to find survivors in the mud.

Dramatic footage surfaced on Wednesday from the region showing people fleeing massive rushes of mud and water. The landslides appeared to consume entire neighborhoods and make bridges and roads instantly disappear. Many of the affected areas were heavily populated by travelers from all over the world participating in Hindu pilgrimages in the region.

In Nepal, authorities placed the death toll at 359 as of Thursday morning local time and estimated that over 1,000 people remained missing. Reports differed on whether the missing ranged between 1,300 and 1,400 people, and most suggested that number would rapidly rise as rescue teams made contact with now-isolated villages and towns. The Chinese Communist Party placed the death toll in Tibet at press time at just three people.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which observes weather and seismic patterns around the world, attributed the landslides to a glacial collapse related to the heavy rainfall, which then pushed icy mud down the steep Himalayan terrain into populated areas. The USGS noted that it had documented what appeared to be a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, but later revised that observation, indicating that the “earthquake” was the result of the vast amounts of moving icy mud, rather than the earthquake causing the landslides. (Read more from “Nepal/Tibet Landslides: Over 1,000 Missing, Entire Villages Buried as Rescuers Fear More Flooding” HERE)

A Powerful Country on the Other Side of the World is Quietly Shaping Trump’s Latest Trade Fight

/0 Comments/in , , /by

President Donald Trump’s latest trade fight with Canada has a faraway force at its center: China.

As Washington presses Ottawa to do more to prevent Chinese steel, aluminum and other goods from reaching the U.S. market through North American supply chains, Canada is pursuing renewed economic ties with Beijing, adding a fresh complication to already tense trade talks.

At the heart of the fight is transshipment — routing goods through an intermediary country, sometimes after limited processing, before they reach their final market. U.S. officials fear steel and aluminum made in China or elsewhere could be processed in Canada or Mexico and then enter the United States as regional content.

The U.S. and Canada addressed that risk in a 2019 joint statement resolving an earlier steel-and-aluminum tariff dispute. The countries agreed to prevent steel and aluminum made outside the U.S. or Canada from being transshipped into the other country, and said they could distinguish between steel melted and poured in North America and steel made elsewhere.

U.S. trade hawks now argue Canada should accept tougher safeguards as Washington seeks to limit China’s role in critical manufacturing supply chains. (Read more from “A Powerful Country on the Other Side of the World is Quietly Shaping Trump’s Latest Trade Fight” HERE)

Iran Vows ‘Devastating’ Response as US Threatens Crushing Sanctions Designed to ‘Collapse’ Regime

/0 Comments/in , /by

Iran threatened “devastating” consequences if the US moves ahead with imposing crippling sanctions against the regime — after the Trump administration pledged to hit the Islamic Republic with the toughest financial penalties in history.

“With preparedness across land, sea, air, air defense and cyberspace, Iran’s armed forces will respond to the enemy’s new threats with crushing, punishing and devastating responses,” Major General Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, said on Iranian media.

The US and Iran cobbled together two cease-fire deals, one in April and the other in June, with the goal of restoring the normal flow of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and ending the nearly six-month-old war — but both were short-lived.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC Friday that the US would “collapse the regime,” likening the naval blockade reimposed on Iran in July and the impending “toughest sanctions in history” as a “one-two punch.”

President Trump warned any country providing “any type of lifeline to Iran” would face economic consequences, and Bessent said he would “talk about exactly what we’re going to do” at a press conference on Monday. (Read more from “Iran Vows ‘Devastating’ Response as US Threatens Crushing Sanctions Designed to ‘Collapse’ Regime” HERE)

How US Military Funding Propelled China’s Robot Dogs

/0 Comments/in , /by

China’s Unitree Robotics — among the world’s biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots — based designs for its most successful robot dogs on innovations funded by the U.S. military, according to a former U.S. defense technology official and three top researchers involved in the project.

Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, launched in 2023, helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market — its Shanghai IPO has drawn frenzied demand. Another Unitree robot has been shown on Chinese state television, armed and accompanying People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on an exercise.

These robots draw on breakthroughs in quadruped movement financed by the U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters.

The Army-funded project turned into, “basically, the first Unitree robot that had any kind of scale,” said Gavin Kenneally, a former University of Pennsylvania researcher involved in the program.

Ben Katz, who worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, among a consortium of universities financed by the military programs, said the dimensions of Unitree’s popular Go series were “to the millimeter” almost identical to a groundbreaking robot he helped develop called Mini Cheetah. (Read more from “How US Military Funding Propelled China’s Robot Dogs” HERE)

Trump Doubles Down on Declaring Strait of Hormuz U.S. Territory as Iran Threatens to Break U.S. Blockade

/0 Comments/in , , /by

President Donald Trump doubled down Monday on declaring the Strait of Hormuz U.S. territory, asserting that Washington has “total control” of the strategic waterway as Tehran threatened a military attack to break the U.S. naval blockade and declared a shift toward a more offensive posture.

“I just think it’s a great idea,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked to elaborate on his suggestion last week that the strait could be declared U.S. territory.

Trump repeatedly pointed to the blockade as the basis for American control.

“We control it. We control it with the blockade,” he said. “And I like the idea of declaring it a territory. We could do that. We have total control over the strait.”

Trump said Iran could still prove a “nuisance” by placing mines in the water, but described the blockade as “very effective” and touted the amount of oil now moving through the waterway. (Read more from “Trump Doubles Down on Declaring Strait of Hormuz U.S. Territory as Iran Threatens to Break U.S. Blockade” HERE)