India and South Africa Derail China-Backed Investment Deal at WTO

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In a surprising turn of events at the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Abu Dhabi, India and South Africa have put a roadblock in the passage of a significant investment agreement, potentially impacting investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars, particularly in China.

India and South Africa formally objected to the Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFD), supported by China and introduced by Chile and South Korea. The deal, estimated to cover projects ranging from $200 billion to $800 billion, faced resistance from the two nations, raising questions about the fate of these investments, often earmarked for developing nations in the “Global South.”

Exercising their right to file formal objections, India and South Africa expressed concerns that the IFD would compromise the multilateral essence of the WTO by imposing binding regulations on all member nations.

India suggested that negotiations for the IFD should take place outside the WTO, emphasizing that interested nations could reach an agreement independently. This stance aligns with a specific set of WTO procedures, necessitating unanimous agreement from all members for such agreements.

While not explicitly stated, India’s reservations hint at concerns that the IFD, often dubbed “China’s IFD” by Indian media, might serve as a strategic move by China and its allies in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). There are apprehensions about the potential favoritism towards countries heavily reliant on Chinese investments and those with substantial sovereign wealth funds. Efforts are underway by WTO leaders to persuade India and South Africa to withdraw their objections.

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Four Charged in Connection With Smuggling Iranian-Made Weapons; Operation Resulted in Tragic Deaths of Two Navy SEALs

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Four foreign nationals are facing charges related to the transport of suspected Iranian-made weapons, following a recent interdiction by U.S. naval forces in the Arabian Sea. Tragically, two Navy SEALs lost their lives during the mission.

The incident occurred on January 11 when U.S. Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher J. Chambers was boarding a vessel, and due to high waves, slipped into a gap between the boat and the SEALs’ combatant craft. In an act of bravery, Navy Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Nathan Gage Ingram jumped in to rescue Chambers, resulting in both SEALs losing their lives.

The criminal complaint alleges that the four defendants were transporting suspected Iranian-made missile components, specifically for weapons used by Houthi rebel forces in recent attacks. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco highlighted the severity of the situation, stating that the flow of such weaponry from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen poses a direct threat to the people and interests of the United States and its regional partners.

In a news release, Monaco expressed the gravity of the situation, saying, “Two Navy SEALs tragically lost their lives in the operation that thwarted the defendants charged today from allegedly smuggling Iranian-made weapons that the Houthis could have used to target American forces and threaten freedom of navigation and a vital artery for commerce.”

The main defendant, Muhammad Pahlawan, faces charges of attempting to smuggle advanced missile components, including a warhead, with the knowledge that these would be used by Houthi rebels against commercial and naval vessels in the Red Sea and surrounding waters. Pahlawan is also charged with providing false information to U.S. Coast Guard officers during the boarding of the vessel.

His co-defendants, Mohammad Mazhar, Ghufran Ullah, and Izhar Muhammad, are also facing charges related to providing false information during the incident.

Former Dutch PM, Wife Die Together in Dual Euthanasia Procedure

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Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt and his wife committed legally assisted suicide by simultaneous euthanasia this week, the non-profit organisation founded by the ex-Dutch leader has revealed.

Public broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) reported on Friday that former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt (93), who led the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, and his wife Eugenie van Agt (93) opted on Monday to take their lives in a joint act of euthanasia, which is legally permitted under medical supervision in the Western European nation.

Gerard Jonkman, the director of The Rights Forum non-profit founded by Van Agt in 2009, said that the former prime minister had discussed the option of assisted suicide after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2019, saying that he said it was an “option if life and suffering became unbearable.”

Since then, Van Agt’s health, as well as his wife’s, steadily declined, according to Jonkman, who said: “His health became more and more fragile, and he wanted to focus his attention on his wife, children and grandchildren.” He said that their decision to commit assisted suicide hand in hand came from a feeling that they “couldn’t live without each other”.

The couple, who were married for seven decades, were buried together on Thursday. The Dutch public broadcaster noted that assisted suicide was a curious decision by Van Agt, given that he was a lifelong Roman Catholic — a faith which preaches against suicide — and a former member of the socially conservative Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). (Read more from “Former Dutch PM, Wife Die Together in Dual Euthanasia Procedure” HERE)

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U.S. Strike Takes Out Senior Member of Iran-Backed Kata’Ib Hezbollah in Baghdad

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The United States carried out a drone strike in Baghdad on Wednesday night that killed at least one senior member of Kata’ib Hezbollah, U.S. Central Command confirmed.

Taking place around 9:30 p.m. local time, CENTCOM said the “unilateral strike” was a “response to the attacks on U.S. service members” of which there have been more than 160 since mid-October. The strike killed “a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region,” CENTCOM reported.

(Read more from “U.S. Strike Takes Out Senior Member of Iran-Backed Kata’Ib Hezbollah in Baghdad” HERE)

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Iran-Backed Groups Attacked U.S. Bases Three Times Since Major Counterstrikes, Killing U.S. Allies

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Iran-backed militant groups have attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria three times since the U.S. launched massive retaliatory strikes on Friday, killing six partner troops at one of the bases, according to reports.

The U.S. struck 85 targets connected to Iran-backed militants in Iraq and Syria and the Iranian military command that oversees Tehran’s proxy operations on Friday in response to a Jan. 28 suicide drone attack that caused the first U.S. fatalities since the escalation of attacks. U.S.-backed forces confirmed an attack on Sunday at the Al-Omar oilfield in Syria on Sunday killed six Kurdish fighters, Reuters reported.

An explosive-laden drone crashed into the training academy on the U.S. base, resulting “in the martyrdom of six of our Commando fighters,” Farhad Shami, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a social media post, Reuters reported.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq — an umbrella organization considered responsible for the deadly attack on U.S. troops — on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iranian proxies have attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan 169 times since Oct. 17, a Department of Defense (DOD) official said Monday, Politico reported. One attack took place at Mission Support Site Euphrates in Syria on Feb. 3, with no damage or injuries reported. (Read more from “Iran-Backed Groups Attacked U.S. Bases Three Times Since Major Counterstrikes, Killing U.S. Allies” HERE)

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Terror Groups Evacuate Their Positions After Biden Admin Tips Them off to Their Plans

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The Iranian-backed terrorists responsible for murdering three U.S. soldiers, and injuring dozens more, in an attack over the weekend have started to evacuate their bases after President Joe Biden’s administration leaked to the media this week that they are gearing up to respond by carrying out a sustained bombing campaign.

The news comes after NBC News reported on Wednesday that the U.S. retaliatory strikes would be a “campaign” that lasts “weeks,” according to U.S. officials.

The officials went as far as to say that the U.S. would target “Iranian targets outside Iran, and the campaign will involve both strikes and cyber operations,” the report added.

CBS News reported late on Wednesday that the the terror groups that make up Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, have “evacuated their bases in Iraq and Syria, fearing U.S. retaliatory strikes after Sunday’s attack.” (Read more from “Terror Groups Evacuate Their Positions After Biden Admin Tips Them off to Their Plans” HERE)

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Canada Delays Killing Mentally Ill People Amid Widespread Public Disgust

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The Canadian government on Monday announced an indefinite delay in its plans to expand Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to patients with mental illness, but no physical ailments.

Canada’s long march to assisted suicide seems to have finally stalled with the proposal to provide physician assistance for mentally ill people to kill themselves. Canadian doctors have gone from discussing euthanasia as a last resort to aggressively recommending it, even to patients who desire treatment rather than death. Critics fear that if MAID is extended to the mentally ill, Canada’s overburdened socialist healthcare system will be sorely tempted to use euthanasia to clean up long waiting lists for psychiatric care.

Assisted suicide is spreading faster in Canada than in any other nation in the world, than any other nation in history. MAID deaths quadrupled over the past five years and now account for four percent of all deaths in the country. If current trends hold, Canada might have more assisted suicides by the end of this year than countries like the Netherlands, which legalized the practice decades before Canada did.

The Toronto Star mused on Saturday that since “one in five Canadians are impacted by mental health challenges,” expanding MAID to cover mental illness could lead to a dizzying surge in the already huge number of assisted suicides.

Dr. Cheryl Rowe, a Toronto psychiatrist who supports expanding MAID, ominously described it as a “failure of medicine” that “there are so many doctors that believe that they have to keep their patients alive at all costs.” (Read more from “Canada Delays Killing Mentally Ill People Amid Widespread Public Disgust” HERE)

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Ukrainian Scandal Confirmed: Alleged Embezzlement of $40 Million Meant for Ammunition by Officials, Reveals Intelligence Agency

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Ukrainian officials stole nearly $40 million meant for procurement of ammunition in an embezzlement scheme discovered in December 2023, Ukrainian counterintelligence authorities said Thursday.

An unnamed directorate head in Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) allegedly was at the head of the scheme that illegally transferred almost UAH 1.5 billion (USD 39 million) meant to purchase artillery shells for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to foreign accounts of an MoD-affiliated intermediary company, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) said in a statement.

“This amount was 30% higher than the value of an alternative contract concluded by the newly created Defense Procurement Agency,” the statement read in part.

The stolen funds were state funds, the SSU noted in the statement. The SSU together with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the MoD reportedly uncovered the scheme, recovered the funds, and returned them to the state budget. . .

The fraudulent transaction — meant for 100,000 mortar shells that were never supplied — occurred during the former Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov’s tenure, the Washington Post reported. Those allegedly involved in the scheme include Oleksandr Liev, who was the head of the Department of Military-Technical Policy, Development of Weapons and Military Equipment of the Ministry of Defense; the current head of this department, Toomas Nakhkur; and the head of the arms supplier Lviv Arsenal, Yuriy Zbitnev, according to the report, citing an unnamed security service official. (Read more from “Ukrainian Scandal Confirmed: Alleged Embezzlement of $40 Million Meant for Ammunition by Officials, Reveals Intelligence Agency” HERE)

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China’s Highly Controlled Internet Is Filled With Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Following Hamas Slaughter

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Aaron Keyak, the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, suggested that anti-Semitism has spread throughout China since Hamas’ surprise attack against the Jewish state on October 7, according to Fox News Digital. The comments were made last week when Keyak spoke at the U.S. Bar Association.

Keyak said that “[t]here’s been an increase in the People’s Republic of China’s state media and online discourse of antisemitic tropes that Jews control the United States through deep U.S.-Israel ties, as well as control over banks, the media, and that they have influence over government leaders.”

“Conjecture that Jews control the U.S. government and U.S. wealth is an antisemitic falsehood intended to degrade trust in the United States, our democratic institutions and, ultimately, democracy around the globe.”

The Hudson Institute published a report in November 2023 that laid out China’s propensity for anti-Semitic rhetoric. The report mentioned that China’s ideological roots are, in many ways, rooted in Marxist political thought. And Karl Marx’s “first serious publications was his 1844 pamphlet ‘On the Jewish Question,’ in which he argued that Jews constituted ‘a problem’ for Europe, the solution to which was for Europe to rid itself of what he termed the Jews’ real religion — the worship of money.” . . .

Most of the hatred that has been expressed about Jews has been online, with Chinese “netizens” openly ridiculing the parents of Noa Argamani, who is a half-Chinese, Israeli-born captive who was kidnapped by Hamas. Though Argamani’s mother has asked Beijing for help in rescuing her daughter, she has been mocked online and the victim of a string of profanities. (Read more from “China’s Highly Controlled Internet Is Filled With Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Following Hamas Slaughter” HERE)

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Farmer Revolution: Blockade of Paris Announced as Farmers Reject Government’s ‘Concessions’ (VIDEO)

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Calls for revolution are in the air of France once again as farmers have vowed to continue their tractor protests against the globalist green agenda with a planned blockade of Paris after rejecting “concessions” from the government.

After a week of shutting down motorways across the country, forcing politicians of all stripes to come to meet them on their turf, the farmer uprising is set to descend upon the French capital as they were unimpressed by the compromises proposed by newly-installed Prime Minister Gabriel Attall.

With their demands not being met, farmers have decided to ramp up the pressure on the metropolitan liberal elites who vote for green agenda policies without feeling the consequences and allowing the rural population to suffer.

What is being dubbed as the “siege of Paris”, farmers are planning on shutting down at least seven critical entry points to the city and have hinted at enacting a blockade of the Rungis Market, the second largest wholesale food market in the world which serves as the main hub for food deliveries into Paris.

“The idea is that there are no trucks that can serve the capital, to ensure that no product enters Paris, to make Parisians understand that they need farmers to live. I say to our friends in the capital region: it’s going to be a long week,” the head of the Young Farmers Union Maxime Buizard said per Le Figaro.

(Read more from “Farmer Revolution: Blockade of Paris Announced as Farmers Reject Government’s ‘Concessions’ (VIDEO)” HERE)

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