Kiev's "foray" into Russia sought to prevent a swift end to the wider conflict, Aleksandr Bortnikov has said

Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk Region was intended to bait Moscow into an asymmetric, hard-line response, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has said.

Speaking at a meeting of top security officials on Friday, Aleksandr Bortnikov said Kiev's cross-border attack in early August "once again demonstrated the criminal nature of [Vladimir] Zelensky's regime."

The FSB director added that the "foray" was "aimed at provoking Russia into a disproportionately harsh response and eliminating the preconditions for resolving the conflict in the foreseeable future." However, the incursion failed to relieve pressure on Ukrainian defenses in Donbass, where Moscow's forces have made steady progress in recent months, he said.

Federal prosecutors requested an indefinite delay Wednesday in scheduling the trial for Ryan Routh, the suspect in the second assassination attempt on former President Trump, citing an enormous amount of evidence gathered since his arrest.

In a filing on Wednesday, prosecutors asked Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon to officially designate Routh's case as "complex."

Prosecutors revealed the scope of the investigation, which spanned multiple states, involved hundreds of interviews and included hundreds of digital media for review.

"The government has worked diligently since September 15 to investigate the incident. Over the past two weeks, the United States has interviewed hundreds of witnesses," the filing said. "It has also executed 13 search warrants in Florida, Hawaii, and North Carolina, and seized hundreds of items of evidence, including multiple electronic devices.

(4 October 2024) The increasingly authoritarian, fundamental rights- and freedom-hostile moloch that the EU headquarters in Brussels has degenerated into has been trying for years - and most recently with increasing severity - to take a tight rein on social media and to censor all content that deviates from the desired narratives as "disinformation", or at least to brand it with "classifications" via warning notices.

A shocking firsthand account from a SpaceX engineer in storm-battered North Carolina reveals that Biden-Harris' Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) blocked shipments of critical goods for relief efforts into the region. There have been numerous reports this week of FEMA actively hindering relief efforts in the western part of the state, including threatening private helicopter pilots with arrests for conducting rescue missions. We also learned that the Biden-Harris administration drained FEMA funds to support illegal aliens, prioritizing non-citizens (future voters) over American citizens.

Around lunchtime, Elon Musk shared a dire message from one of his SpaceX engineers on the ground in the storm-ravaged state. Musk said:

"FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!"

Musk shared a dire warning from one of his engineers on the ground:

"Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We've deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives.

"The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It's very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. but that may not be enough."

In 2020, the U.S. military assassinated Iranian General Qassem Solemani in a terrorist attack with drones in Iraq. The purpose of the operation was simply to eliminate one of the greatest military thinkers in history - the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death.

Much more than a mere military officer, Soleimani was a strategist and negotiator - perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to even call him a "war diplomat". An expert in clandestine operations, intelligence and special forces' tactics, Soleimani was responsible for enabling the network of anti-Zionist organizations known as the "Axis of Resistance".

Overcoming religious, ethnic and ideological differences between the various Islamic and anti-Zionist movements, Soleimani united different factions in a joint strategy against Israel. Obviously, this strategy was centered on Iran and gave the Islamic Republic the leading role in the fight against the Israeli occupation and its regional proxies. However, one of the keys to the success of the Axis is precisely its largely decentralized nature, guaranteeing autonomy of action for its members, without tight Iranian control over all the acts of the coalition.

Julian Assange tells 46-nation gathering in Europe why Washington must not be let trample on others' independence and sovereignty.

As the world teeters on the verge of a massive war in the Middle East that could turn into World War Three, it is hard to even notice other important events.

What seems to overshadow everything else is the hideous spectacle of Israel and the collective West co-perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while also producing multiple attacks and massacres in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, as well as issuing ceaseless threats to do even worse if the victims dare fight back. When Gaza is being exterminated and Beirut is burning, why would people turn to look, for instance, at sleepy Strasbourg?

And yet, on October 1, that's where a quietly historic event took place, namely the first major public appearance of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, publisher, and outstanding investigative journalist, after his release in June from some 14 years of vicious American-British persecution and incarceration, some of which, according to UN special rapporteur Nils Melzer and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, amounts to torture.

Though he is now free, Assange has not, it is important to note, received justice and most likely never will: A victim of outrageous abuses of state power, the crimes against him have not even been acknowledged by their perpetrators. Instead, to escape further persecution he was forced through a plea deal to pretend to recognize his own non-existent guilt. As he put it in Strasbourg - clearly with ironic reference to the title of a famous Soviet dissident's memoir - he "chose freedom over unrealizable justice."

The American and British leaders are fully backing Israel to escalate its criminal aggression in the Middle East. In so doing, Washington and London are being exposed for the arch-criminal regimes that they are.

An all-out war against Iran is on the brink. The consequences will be abysmal, yet the U.S. and British rulers are shameless, reckless - and ultimately stupid - in their complicity.

In a few days, on October 7, the Israeli regime will have conducted 12 months of non-stop genocidal destruction of Gaza. There is no sign of that monstrous war of extermination coming to an end. The Israeli regime is completely out of control, acting with impunity and shocking violation of all laws and moral norms.

More than 41,000 Palestinian people have been killed. Some estimates put the real death toll at over 100,000 and even as high as 200,000. This slaughter of women and children is supposed to be justified by the incursion of Palestinian militants on October 7 last year in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed - many of them by their own security forces using reckless firepower. The Hamas incursion was in response to years of inhumane, genocidal siege on the Gaza Strip by Israel.

The actions of the Israeli regime are wholly indefensible. Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have gotten away with mass murder because of the diplomatic and - more importantly - military support from the United States, Britain and other Western states.

The genocide in Gaza and the other Palestinian enclave of the West Bank has been infernally compounded by Israel's expansion of aggression in the region. The past two weeks have seen Israeli forces indiscriminately bombing Beirut and other Lebanese civilian areas, causing 2,000 deaths and over one million people displaced from their homes. The orgy of violence is engulfing the entire region. The Israeli regime is also bombing Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Iran in assassination missions.

Israel's murderous conduct has been going on for decades - indeed for 76 years since its inception as an illegal colonial state in 1948, established by British and American machinations at the then newly formed United Nations.

The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, has significantly heightened the risk of a large-scale military conflict in the Middle East - one that could be disastrous for the region and even for the world at large.

The tensions, which have already reached a critical level, may now erupt into a full-blown war which will affect not only Lebanon and Israel but possibly other regional powers like Iran and Turkey. With Hezbollah - Iran's primary military and political asset in the region - now practically decapitated, a pressing question arises: How will Tehran respond? Or will it respond at all?

Nasrallah's death could trigger a series of retaliatory strikes and large-scale military operations, which would further destabilize the situation in the region and pose a threat to global energy markets and international security. Considering the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and one of Hezbollah's founders, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut, it's clear that Israel isn't about to stop.

However, it's important to note that the death of Hezbollah's leader was not really unexpected.

A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices.

One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.

It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures.

No wonder U.S. infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card.

America is falling apart.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz has banned Antonio Guterres from entering the country for his failure to condemn Iran.

Israel has declared UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres persona non grata after he called for a ceasefire following Iran's attack on the Jewish state and condemned the widening of the conflict in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, Tehran launched several salvos of missiles in what the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) called a response to the recent Israeli killings of the heads of Hamas and Hezbollah, and of an Iranian general who was in Lebanon.

In a statement on X on Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced that Guterres is no longer allowed to enter the country, and accused the UN chief of failing to denounce Iran's "abhorrent attack."

"Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran's heinous attack on Israel, as almost every country in the world has done, does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil. Guterres also has yet to denounce the massacre and sexual atrocities committed by Hamas murderers on October 7" and has not made any effort to declare the Palestinian militant group a terrorist organization.

"Guterres will be remembered as a stain on the history of the UN for giving backing to terrorists, rapists and murderers from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and now Iran."