Large Numbers Coming to the Border from Ebola-Ridden Countries

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There are 88 nations where the per capita GDP is lower than that of Guatemala, which stands at $4,471 as of 2017. That is likely well over one billion people living in similar or worse conditions than those coming to our border today, primarily from Central America. As such, it’s no surprise that once our government telegraphed the message to the world that our sovereignty no longer matters when someone invades with a child, people are now coming in large numbers from all over the world, including from the most disease-prone countries in Africa.

While Africans have been trickling over our border in recent months, on Friday, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that “the first large group of people from Africa” were apprehended in the Del Rio sector of Texas. In total, 116 individuals were apprehended in this African caravan on Thursday morning, including 35 from Angola, one from Cameroon, and 80 from Congo.

This demonstrates that the global migration, at this pace, will be a bottomless pit, because even if we eventually empty out the northern triangle of Central America, there are unlimited regions in the world where poverty is pervasive and from which people will travel to seek the de facto amnesty being offered.

The per capita GDPs for Angola, Cameroon, and Congo are $4,247, $1,452, and $2,147 respectively – all below that of Guatemala. Would-be African migrants have so far largely lacked the family and friend ties the Central American and Mexican immigrants have after years of illegal immigration from those countries. Once the seeds from these newer countries are planted, there is nothing stopping the illegal immigrant chain migration phenomenon from spreading to other parts of the globe in the coming years.

But when it comes to countries like Congo, there is an entirely new dimension of concern – dangerous contagious diseases. While the problems of mumps, tuberculosis, scabies, and chicken pox from Central America are bad enough, the influx of African migrants takes the concern of contagious diseases to an entirely new level.

Congo is experiencing the worst Ebola outbreak in recent memory, with over 1,300 fatalities since last August. The Ebola virus is extremely deadly, and there are no vaccinations or reliable treatments for it. While CBP noted that the group of Africans was given a medical screening, the challenge with Ebola is that the initial symptoms are often unremarkable, such as such as fever, headache, and weakness, and are therefore difficult to diagnose shortly after the infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In fact, according to the CDC, “When someone gets infected with Ebola, they will not show signs or symptoms of illness right away.”

With family units being released within days, often within hours, how can our government be certain that Americans, not to mention Border Patrol and local health officials, are not being put in danger? This is why the law (8 U.S.C. § 1222(a)) requires the government to detain all migrants “for a sufficient time to enable the immigration officers and medical officers to subject such aliens to observation and an examination sufficient to determine whether or not they belong to inadmissible classes.” This was for all migrants. It was always presumed that we would never take in people from specific countries that were experiencing deadly epidemics.

I asked CBP’s press office whether CBP has a different protocol for dealing with migrants from Congo or other African countries with risk of diseases, such as not releasing the migrants as immediately as Central Americans. A CBP spokesperson replied that “the process is the same, officers and agents review all individuals they come in contact with for signs of illness and notify CDC as needed.”

Again, Ebola and many other illnesses are not apparent through immediate symptoms, and most of these aliens are not held long enough to fulfill the dictates of § 1222(a) given the incubation period required. It’s quite shocking that country of origin would not play a role in either making these aliens inadmissible or prohibiting their release from detention.

(Read my four-part series on the threat of diseases at the border here, here, here, and here.)

CBP did confirm that contrary to some internet rumors, as of today, there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola at the border.

The country of Cameroon is on Congo’s western border, and its migrants should also be a concern to us. According to the CDC, Cameroon is experiencing a measles outbreak, along with the long-standing problems of many other diseases, such as yellow fever, hepatitis, malaria, and typhoid. The same measles outbreak is also in Angola, which borders Congo to the south.

However, even Angola has shut its border to Congo in light of the Ebola outbreak. Yet, the United States has evidently not shut its border to Congo. It is quite shocking the Trump administration has not included Congo on the travel ban list in light of the concern of Ebola and other diseases.

The president has unilateral authority to shut off any or all immigration, even legal immigration, and refuse to process any asylum claims (even legitimate ones) when he determines that the migration is “detrimental” to U.S. interests. If the crime, drugs, poverty, and empowerment of the cartels are not reason enough to do so, one would think the public health concern would be more than sufficient. (For more from the author of “Large Numbers Coming to the Border from Ebola-Ridden Countries” please click HERE)

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Trump Win? Mexican President Ready to Help U.S. Immigration Surge

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White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that President Donald Trump is “deadly serious” about levying a 5% tariff on Mexican goods if the Mexican government doesn’t step up enforcement of illegal immigration on the southern side of the border, and now it appears the Mexican government is serious about complying to avoid a trade war. . .

The Associated Press reports that Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “hinted his country could tighten migration controls to defuse U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican goods,” and that he plans on engaging the White House in talks this week, which he hopes will be fruitful.

Lopez Obrador insisted, in the same news conference, that the Mexican government has ramped up immigration enforcement along Mexico’s southern border and that officials have been working diligently to turn back migrant caravans, limit the number of migrant visas issued, and capture and deport recognized criminals, including MS-13 gang members.

“The main thing is to inform about what we’re already doing on the migration issue, and if it’s necessary to reinforce these measures without violating human rights, we could be prepared to reach that deal,” Lopez Obrador said Sunday.

“We’re doing all we can to reach a deal through dialogue,” he added. “We’re not going to get into a trade war, a war of tariffs and of taxes.” (Read more from “Trump Win? Mexican President Ready to Help Immigration Surge” HERE)

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Hamas ADMITS It Receives Money from Iran’s Terrorist Regime

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In an unusually stark and blunt admission this week, Yahya Sinwar, chieftain of the Sunni sharia supremacist death cult Hamas, which was democratically elected to govern the Gaza Strip following Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the area, openly admitted that the jihadist group takes funding from the terrorist Shiite sharia supremacist regime in Iran. . .

Iran is mainly known for funding Hamas rival Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is a fellow terrorist group also operating in the Gaza Strip. Sunni nations Qatar and Turkey, by contrast, have emerged over the past decade as the chief benefactors of Hamas.

Since its unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Israel has been forced into three full-scale wars with Hamas, which routinely bludgeons Israeli civilians and metropolitan areas with indiscriminately fired terrorist rockets. In a March Daily Wire op-ed, I laid out the case for Israel to utterly destroy Hamas once and for all:

Try as the Israel Defense Forces might to keep on “mowing the grass” when the “infidel”-loathing jihadists of Hamas flare up in impulsive paroxysms of “anti-Zionism” Jew-hatred, the status quo in Gaza is completely unsustainable. No other sovereign country on Earth would deal so passively with such a cancerous threat living on its border — with its biggest civilian centers under constant fear of city-wide sirens signaling the incoming threat of crude Iran-manufactured rockets fired haphazardly from a bordering terroristic death cult. Indeed, no sovereign country on Earth should have to deal with such a threat. If the Sinaloa Cartel or Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion ever decided to shoot terrorist rockets at Texan or Arizonan ranchers, the United States would (rightfully) send in M1 Abrams tanks across the Rio Grande tomorrow. …

(Read more from “Hamas ADMITS It Receives Money from Iran’s Terrorist Regime” HERE)

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Obama Officials Collude with Iran to Thwart U.S. Foreign Policy

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By Jordan Schachtel. The Daily Beast has published a disturbing piece revealing that senior Obama administration officials are actively attempting to undermine the Trump administration’s foreign policy. And worse, they are collaborating with the terrorist regime that rules Iran to do so.

The publication has offered anonymity to the select Obama administration officials, breaking journalistic standards and allowing them to be quoted at length while cloaked in anonymity, about their plans to collude with Iran and thwart the elected president’s agenda.

The leftist writers of the piece do their best to attempt to write off this endeavor as a normal occurrence. But make no mistake, attempting to run a shadow government and colluding with America’s enemies, to the detriment of the American people, is anything but normal. (Read more from “Obama Officials Collude with Iran to Thwart U.S. Foreign Policy” HERE)

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U.S. Cuts Funds for ‘Anti-Propaganda’ Iran Group That Trolled Activists

By The Guardian. The US state department has cut off funding to a group that purported to combat Iranian propaganda, after it was found to be trolling US journalists, human rights activists and academics it deemed to be insufficiently hostile to the government in Tehran.

The Iran Disinformation Project was funded by the state department’s global engagement centre which was created to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. In recent weeks however, the group’s Twitter account @IranDisinfo targeted BBC journalists, thinktank experts and civil society advocates, denouncing them as being “mouthpieces” and supporters of the Iranian government.

In one case they singled out a researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), Tara Sepehri Far, because she had looked into the human rights impact of sanctions on ordinary Iranians. (Read more from “U.S. Cuts Funds for ‘Anti-Propaganda’ Iran Group That Trolled Activists” HERE)

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Trump Slams Mexico With 5% Tariff to Stop Illegal Alien Crisis

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By Mike Murphy. President Donald Trump announced new tariffs against products imported from Mexico late Thursday, saying in a tweet that they would stay in effect until the illegal immigration problem was solved. “On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP,” Trump said. “The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.” In a separate statement, Trump blamed Mexico for not doing enough to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S., saying “Mexico has not treated us fairly.” Trump said the tariffs will rise to 10% on July 1 if the crisis persists, and by another 5% for every successive month up to 25% by Oct. 1, unless “Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.” (Read more for how Trump plans to stop the illegal alien crisis HERE)
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Tariff Goes Into Effect June 10

By Joanna Tan. The U.S. will impose a 5% tariff on all Mexican imports from June 10 — and more duties will be added in the coming months if Mexico does not take action “reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens” crossing into the U.S., the White House said Thursday.

It comes as U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Thursday sent a letter to congressional leaders, kick starting the process of approving updates to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

U.S. President Donald Trump first announced the Mexico tariffs via Twitter. (Read more about Trump stopping the illegal alien crisis HERE)

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Full White House Statement

To address the emergency at the Southern Border, I am invoking the authorities granted to me by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Accordingly, starting on June 10, 2019, the United States will impose a 5 percent Tariff on all goods imported from Mexico. If the illegal migration crisis is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico, to be determined in our sole discretion and judgment, the Tariffs will be removed. If the crisis persists, however, the Tariffs will be raised to 10 percent on July 1, 2019. Similarly, if Mexico still has not taken action to dramatically reduce or eliminate the number of illegal aliens crossing its territory into the United States, Tariffs will be increased to 15 percent on August 1, 2019, to 20 percent on September 1, 2019, and to 25 percent on October 1, 2019. Tariffs will permanently remain at the 25 percent level unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory. Workers who come to our country through the legal admissions process, including those working on farms, ranches, and in other businesses, will be allowed easy passage.

Chinese State Media: Crackdown on Smuggling Is ‘First Step in China-US Rare-Earth War’

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By Breitbart. The trade war is quickly becoming a rare earth war–at least in the rhetoric of Chinese state media.

The often belligerently nationalist Global Times, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, called on China to cut-back on rare-earth licenses and “tighten management’ of foreign-invested companies as first steps to “weapons the minerals.” . . .

From the Global Times:

The crackdown on rare-earth smuggling makes it possible for China to weaponize the minerals in an escalation of the trade war. Now China needs to tighten management of rare-earth enterprises, especially foreign-invested companies, to make smuggling absolutely impossible.

Rare-earth minerals are important strategic resources but China had never thought of using the minerals as leverage to hit the US. The trade war is prompting China to rethink its rare-earth strategy and make quick adjustments. Once merely an economic sector, rare earths have become a counter weapon for China to hit back at the US. There is a lot of work to be done, and cracking down on smuggling is only the first step in weaponizing the sector.

(Read more from “Chinese State Media: Crackdown on Smuggling Is ‘First Step in China-US Rare-Earth War'” HERE)

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‘Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You’: A Phrase from China Signals the Trade War Could Get Even Worse

By CNBC. The biggest Chinese newspaper explicitly warned the U.S. on Wednesday that China would cut off rare earth minerals as a countermeasure in the escalated trade battle, using a history-laden expression the publication has used ahead of full-on wars.

“We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!” the People’s Daily said in a commentary titled “United States, don’t underestimate China’s ability to strike back.” The publication is the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.

The phrase “Don’t say we didn’t warn you” has been used before by the People’s Daily in 1962 before China’s border war with India and ahead of the 1979 China-Vietnam War. (Read more from “‘Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You’: A Phrase from China Signals the Trade War Could Get Even Worse” HERE)

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50 Children Have Been Rescued After Officials Busted a Multinational Paedophile Ring

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By TIME. Nine people were arrested in Thailand, Australia and the U.S. and 50 children were rescued following an Interpol investigation into an international paedophile ring. . .

Operation Blackwrist began after Interpol spotted images showing 11 boys under the age of 13 on a website where users utilized encrypted software to hide their identities, according to the BBC.

According to an Interpol statement, weekly images of children being abused were being uploaded to the site, but it was difficult to track down the perpetrators as the children’s faces were generally hidden. (Read more from “50 Children Have Been Rescued After Officials Busted a Multinational Paedophile Ring” HERE)

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Fifty Children Saved as International Paedophile Ring Busted

By BBC News. The arrests were made in Thailand, Australia and the US and more are expected, Interpol said.

The investigation began in 2017 and focused on a hidden “dark web” site with 63,000 users worldwide.

Police believe 100 more children have suffered abuse and are working to identify them.

Operation Blackwrist was launched by Interpol after it detected images showing 11 boys aged under 13 being abused on a site where people can use encrypted software to maintain secrecy. . .

The first arrests came last year, when the site’s main administrator, Montri Salangam, was detained in Thailand, and another administrator, Ruecha Tokputza, was caught in Australia. (Read more from “Fifty Children Saved as International Paedophile Ring Busted” HERE)

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Pompeo: $8B Arms Sales to Middle East Allies ‘Appropriate and Necessary’

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Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Friday in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News that a newly-announced $8 billion in arms sales to Middle East allies would help protect their and America’s interests against increased Iranian threats in the region.

“It is significant that we are not only demonstrating our will to continue to help them support and defend their countries and deter these threats, but the challenge from the Islamic Republic of Iran that we face,” Pompeo said in a phone interview.

“We’ve seen the heightened tensions over the last handful of weeks, so our expectation is that the risks will continue to stay at a heightened level, so it is appropriate and necessary to get these arms sales moving forward,” he said.

The State Department on Friday notified Congress of 22 pending arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia worth $8 billion total. The equipment includes aircraft support maintenance; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); munitions; and other equipment.

Pompeo said that the first sales will begin to be delivered within the next few weeks, but others could take some months. “It’s about prioritization, delivery schedule, availability,” he said. (Read more from “Pompeo: $8B Arms Sales to Middle East Allies ‘Appropriate and Necessary'” HERE)

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Iran Has Reportedly Quadrupled Its Production of Enriched Uranium

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Iranian nuclear officials are claiming that the country is quadrupling its production of enriched uranium.

The state-run IRNA news agency in Iran is claiming that Iran is increasing its uranium production and that the International Atomic Energy Agency had been alerted to this development. The Independent cited Iranian officials who insisted that the uranium would only be enriched to 3.67 percent purity. In order to be used in an atomic bomb, uranium purity needs to be at 90 percent.

At this increased rate of production, it won’t be long before Iran has a larger stockpile of enriched uranium than is permitted under the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration. While the United States pulled out of this deal in 2018, other signatories have tried to keep it going.

James Clapper, former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, dismissed the announcement, telling the BBC that he did not think it was “necessary to go into panic mode yet.”

This announcement from Iran comes just two days after President Donald Trump tweeted, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Trump’s comments “genocidal taunts.”

National security adviser John Bolton also announced that the U.S. was sending a carrier strike group to the region “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Bolton said that this was “[i]n response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran. (For more from the author of “Iran Has Reportedly Quadrupled Its Production of Enriched Uranium” please click HERE)

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Influencing Elections? Ha — Russians Are Coming Right to Our Border

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Our political system has been paralyzed over the past year with the incessant news cycle on Russian influence in our elections. Anything and everything related to Mueller’s Russia probe has forced our border crisis to take a back seat to the implied threat of “the Russians are coming.” Well, according to border experts who’ve spoken with CR, Russians are showing up on our southern border. Will the broader media and the politicians now take an interest in the border?

Jaeson Jones, a retired captain from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, warns that the cartels in charge of the plazas at the border are now helping to smuggle Russians into south Texas. “In the last few weeks in south Texas, Border Patrol agents have apprehended several Russians being smuggled between the ports of entry by the Gulf Cartel,” said Jones in an exclusive interview with CR.

Although Jones is retired from his counter-cartel work for Texas law enforcement, he is in regular contact with border officials and cartel informants and continues to train local, federal, and state law enforcement on the latest trends, tradecraft, and capabilities of the cartels. Jones is hearing that the smugglers are strategically using the masses of Central Americans showing up in the Rio Grande Valley, often up to 2,000 per day, to carefully bring over Russians in small, unassuming numbers.

“The Gulf Cartel is currently staging small groups of two and three Russians throughout the Reynosa plaza to be smuggled into the country illegally,” said Jones, who used to manage the daily operations of the Texas Rangers’ Border Security Operations Center (BSOC). “This type of smuggling activity is utilized to move what the cartel deems high-value people. We see this activity often when smuggling special interest aliens (SIAs). Those are people who come from a country with a terrorism nexus. This is due to their ability to pay more money to be crossed illegally.”

Current government officials working on border issues have confirmed a similar trend of aliens coming from countries of terrorism concern or threats of espionage. Last week, I interviewed Jack Staton, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) El Paso division. He observed that there is nothing unique about Central Americans using the loopholes and lapse in coverage at the border. He noted that because we’re not able to detain these people, they’re incentivized to come from all over the world, including Russia.

“Along with the continued flow, you’re going to have every nationality do it. It’s not just going to be Central Americans. We’ve seen non-Central American family units also coming up. We’ve seen families from Turkey and from Brazil. In our area here, we’ve seen Turkish nationals coming in, we’ve seen individuals from Angola, the Congo, we’ve seen individuals from Russia. … We’ve seen a lot of Brazilians coming in; many of the Brazilians are coming in as families, as are Turkish families. We’ve also seen a major influx of Cubans coming into our area here.”

Russia has a robust presence in Latin America. Border agents are tied down at the border, and the secondary checkpoints in the El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico, are completely unmanned. This means that any suspicious immigration activity, such as people coming from non-traditional migrant countries up the main highways, will go unchecked.

Staton noted that the secondary checkpoints were actually set up more for immigration enforcement than for drugs. “They’re not narcotics checkpoints. That’s a secondary function of them, in the sense that people have to stop for an immigration inspection. And then, all of a sudden, agents might find narcotics.”

In a recent interview with Staton’s counterpart at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in El Paso, Kyle Williamson, he also expressed concern that countries of security concern are exploiting the vulnerabilities. When I asked Williamson whether he thinks there is a looming threat from terrorists coming into the country with the knowledge that our agents are tied down at the border and that the secondary checkpoints remain unmanned, he responded emphatically, “Yes, it’s definitely a threat.”

“Let’s just put it this way, the cartels are an international organization. It’s a real threat, it’s a prevalent threat, and they do have their associations with groups like Hezbollah, with Afghans, and with radical terrorist organizations,” warned Williamson, who also served in the DEA’s offices in the Middle East overseeing narco-terrorism enforcement. “What that does is effectively move those borders right up to the United States. Those cartels link the borders. Just like they use their resources, their technology, their criminal enterprise to conduct criminal activities, they can use those resources to assist terrorists as well.”

Williamson sees no reason why national security should be any less affected by open borders than vulnerability to drug trafficking. “When you look at a terrorist organization, obviously they capitalize on chaos. When your borders are in chaos, the same way the drug traffickers exploit that to move the drugs through while border agents are moved away from the field, the terrorists have the same knowledge how to exploit the situation.” So what are Russians being moved in for?

Sheriff David Black of Otero County, which has two checkpoints now unmanned thanks to the surge in migration, was concerned that the highways coming up from El Paso into his county may serve as a conduit for national security threats. “If someone wants to get in to do harm to this country, there is nothing stopping them whatsoever,” said the sheriff. “They don’t even have to risk the hardship of coming over the rugged Mesa area with a load and a gallon of water when they can come straight up our highway without anyone stopping them.”

It’s no wonder the Supreme Court has said, “The right to [exclude aliens] stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation (Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 1950). The vulnerability of a broken asylum system has a cascading effect on numerous diplomatic and security issues not just with Mexico but with many adversaries in the world. If the president’s power over immigration isn’t enough to justify shutting down asylum processing at the border, perhaps the ubiquitous fear of “Russian interference” will spawn the political actors to act. (For more from the author of “Influencing Elections? Ha — Russians Are Coming Right to Our Border” please click HERE)

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