Hezbollah fighters fired dozens of rockets into Israel from Lebanese territory earlier this week, which came after the Israeli military struck targets in south Lebanon on late Wednesday. The IDF claimed the strikes were in retaliation for the rockets fired towards the Jewish state earlier in the day.

IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami says that Hezbollah's latest rocket attack against Israel was a "message" to the Jewish state's Prime Minister Naftali Bennet "that the equation of response has not changed", Israeli media reported on Saturday.

"We're witnessing, on one hand, the expansion of the strength of the axis of resistance, and on the other hand, the enemy of the resistance getting weaker and approaching the decline and demise of its strength, although it is trying, through virtual space and psychological warfare, to show the opposite in order to hide the widespread panic in its camp," Salami said during his meeting with Sheikh Naim Qassem, Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah in Lebanon, on Sunday, according to the Al-Alam news channel.

Drugmakers Pfizer Inc, BioNTech and Moderna Inc are expected to reap billions of dollars from COVID-19 booster shots in a market that could rival the $6 billion in annual sales for flu vaccines for years to come, analysts and healthcare investors say.

For several months, the companies have said they expect that fully inoculated people will need an extra dose of their vaccines to maintain protection over time and to fend off new coronavirus variants.

Now a growing list of governments, including Chile, Germany and Israel, have decided to offer booster doses to older citizens or people with weak immune systems in the face of the fast-spreading Delta variant.

The veteran leftwing film-maker Ken Loach has said he has been expelled from the Labour party.

Loach, whose films are regarded as landmarks of social realism, claimed the move by the party was because he would "not disown those already expelled", and he hit out at an alleged "witch-hunt".

It follows reports last month that the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, was preparing to support a purge of factions vocally supportive of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Is the war in Afghanistan finally over? The US' longest war appears to be reaching its conclusion with the withdrawal of American forces, and the Taliban's rapid advance into Afghanistan's cities.

Although it seems to have occurred 'overnight', this development has actually been in play since the Trump administration. Since the week before Western lockdowns began, funnily enough...

In this NewsReal, Joe and Niall explain why the bizarre (mis)adventure of 'get Osama Bin Laden hiding out in Afghanistan' merely delayed inevitable Eurasian integration, and set the stage for a 'Corona World Order'.


NewsReal on Facebook
Joe Quinn on Facebook
Niall Bradley on Twitter

Running Time: 01:41:26

Download: MP3 — 69.7 MB

Former President Donald Trump slammed Democrat President Joe Biden in a statement on Saturday as the situation in Afghanistan continues to rapidly deteriorate, saying that Biden did not follow the plan put in place by the Trump administration and that the entire situation was a "disgrace."

Trump's statement comes as Biden tried to deflect responsibility for his own actions by blaming Trump for the situation in a statement on Saturday. Experts quickly pushed back on Biden's attempts to deflect blame, calling it "pathetic" and saying that "he owns all of this."

In a statement, Trump said:

"Joe Biden gets it wrong every time on foreign policy, and many other issues. Everyone knew he couldn't handle the pressure. Even Obama's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, said as much. He ran out of Afghanistan instead of following the plan our Administration left for him — a plan that protected our people and our property, and ensured the Taliban would never dream of taking our Embassy or providing a base for new attacks against America. The withdrawal would be guided by facts on the ground.

"After I took out ISIS, I established a credible deterrent. That deterrent is now gone. The Taliban no longer has fear or respect for America, or America's power. What a disgrace it will be when the Taliban raises their flag over America's Embassy in Kabul. This is complete failure through weakness, incompetence, and total strategic incoherence."

A federal judge has ruled that the Biden administration must resume the Trump-era remain in Mexico policy that was ended this year.

The Department of Homeland Security "failed to consider several critical factors" before it got rid of the policy, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Donald Trump, said on Friday, Bloomberg reported.

It's another setback for President Joe Biden following a January ruling by a different judge in Texas that temporarily blocked the new administration's plan to pause deportations of undocumented immigrants for 100 days.

Friday's decision came in a lawsuit filed by the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri, which claimed the suspension of the program was worsening conditions at the border and allowing criminals to slip into the country.

Biden suspended the so-called Remain in Mexico program the day after he office on Jan. 20., on the grounds that it pushed migrants into squalid and dangerous housing south of the border.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning of a heightened threat environment leading up to the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

A Friday bulletin from DHS said that while domestic extremism still poses a high threat in the U.S., the anniversary of the attacks could also serve as a motivator for foreign terror groups. The department wrote in the bulletin:

"The 20th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well [as] religious holidays we assess could serve as a catalyst for acts of targeted violence. Leading up to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula recently released its first English-language copy of Inspire magazine in over four years, which demonstrates that foreign terrorist organizations continue efforts to inspire U.S.-based individuals susceptible to violent extremist influences."

The bulletin noted several areas that could spur violence from domestic extremists, with racially motivated and anti-government extremists possibly spurred to action by the pandemic.

"These extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks. The reopening of institutions, including schools, as well as several dates of religious significance over the next few months, could also provide increased targets of opportunity for violence though there are currently no credible or imminent threats identified to these locations."

The DHS warning also noted disinformation campaigns underway by several U.S. adversaries.

"Russian, Chinese and Iranian government-linked media outlets have repeatedly amplified conspiracy theories concerning the origins of COVID-19 and effectiveness of vaccines; in some cases, amplifying calls for violence targeting persons of Asian descent."

DeSantis has said parents should decide whether their children wear masks in school and banned school mask mandates in an executive order.

The Biden administration this week offered federal financial support to Florida school districts defying Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban on mask mandates as the coronavirus surges in the state, according to reports.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote in a letter to DeSantis and state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran on Friday that defiant districts that lose state funding would have federal funds available to them, according to Politico.

Cardona wrote in the letter, adding he was "deeply concerned" by DeSantis' July 30 anti-mask mandate executive order:

"Florida's recent actions to block school districts from voluntarily adopting science-based strategies for preventing the spread of COVID-19 that are aligned with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts students and staff at risk."

Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will resign on Monday and pave the way for the country's protracted political crisis to be resolved, a minister has said. Redzuan Yusof, a minister in the Prime Minister's Department, told the Malaysiakini news portal:

"We just finished the meeting. Tomorrow, there will be a special cabinet meeting. After that, he will head to Istana Negara [National Palace] to submit his resignation."

Muhyiddin, 74, announced the decision to lawmakers during a meeting in his Perikatan Nasional alliance's headquarters on Sunday, Redzuan said. The minister, a member of Muhyiddin's Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, made similar comments to The Malaysian Insight. He did not immediately respond to This Week in Asia's queries. Other Muhyiddin allies who attended Sunday's meeting declined to confirm or deny Redzuan's comments when contacted.

The political stand-off came to a head on Friday when anti-Muhyiddin lawmakers rejected his last-ditch proposal for a raft of concessions and polls by July 2022 in exchange for support in a September 7 vote of no confidence.

American military helicopters have been filmed evacuating US embassy staff in Kabul, with multiple aircraft shuttling to and from the compound. The footage invoked striking similarities with the 1975 retreat from Vietnam's Saigon.

At least two CH-47 Chinook tandem rotor heavy transport helicopter has been spotted at the compound, making the footage seem eerily similar to that shot in South Vietnam in April 1975, amid the hasty evacuation of US diplomatic staff as the capital city of Saigon fell. Back then, helicopters of that type were landing on the embassy's roof to pick up diplomats as North Vietnamese troops were closing in onto the capital.


Both US President Joe Biden and now Antony Blinken have rejected any similarities between the hasty pullouts. On Sunday, Blinken was directly asked whether the Kabul withdrawal would become Biden's "Saigon moment." Speaking to ABC, he responded by saying it was "manifestly not Saigon."