At least eight people have been confirmed dead following floods caused by days of heavy rainfall in the Zambian capital, Lusaka. Lusaka District Commissioner, Christa Kalulu, who addressed journalists at press conference on Tuesday, said the torrential rains that caused serious flooding in the city also affected thousands of residents whose houses were destroyed by the floods. Kalulu said the heavy rains started in February and caused rivers to burst their banks, flooding tens of thousands of homes and forcing people to live in makeshift shelters." She added that the floods also caused a cholera outbreak in the city with about 14 people currently receiving treatment in hospitals.

A heavy downpour lasting several hours caused flooding in parts of Accra, the capital of Ghana, on 07 March 2023. Ghana Meteorological Agency wanted that, "Southeastern Ghana has been engulfed by a rain-bearing cloud. This is producing rain of varying intensity within the Volta region. Areas within the Greater Accra and Eastern will be affected before drifting to the Central, Western and parts of the Ashanti." Roads were swamped severely disrupting traffic in a city regularly impacted by flooding. State broadcaster, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporations said the floods had dumped large amounts of garbage on streets around Kwame Nkrumah Circle.

At least 3 people died after heavy rain caused flooding and landslides in the Manab Province of Ecuador on 07 March 2023. The worst of the flooding struck in Chone city and areas of Chone canton after several small rivers and streams - tributaries of the Chone River - broke their banks. Flood water, mud and debris swept through parts of Chone city and the parishes of Santa Rita, Canuto, Ricaurte and San Antonio. Dozens of homes were severely damaged or destroyed. Teams from the Fire Department, National Police and the Secretary of Risk Management (SGR) helped families evacuate to safer areas. SGR reported around 2,000 families were affected and one person died. A hospital was also damaged.

Over a million people in France went on strike Tuesday to protest against the government's unpopular pension reforms which would raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years. Some 320 demonstrations have been organized across France and police are expecting between 1.1 and 1.4 million people to take part. The strikes have paralyzed much of France's transport system, with only 20% of high-speed trains running, suspending several international routes, while air traffic controllers also joined the action, leading to cancellations at airports in Paris, Beauvais, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse.

A man was killed on Tuesday after he was attacked by four dogs while reportedly working on a property in Jurupa Valley, according to Riverside County Animal Services. After a 911 call reported screaming at a property on the corner of Bellegrave Avenue and Martin Street, Riverside County Sheriff's deputies responded to the property around 7:30 a.m. and requested assistance from Animal Service officers. The victim, whose identity has not been released, had reportedly worked on the property previously without incident, said Riverside County Animal Services representative John Welsh. "It's a tragedy. Our thoughts are with him and his family," said Welsh.

The imposing headquarters of The New York Times was built of glass, supposedly to highlight the fact that the august newspaper has nothing to hide. But last month, something happened there that the management would have very much preferred to go unnoticed. An electronic billboard lorry parked outside the building bearing the message: 'Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people's right to exist & access medical care.'

Jurgens is one of only two Georgians arrested Sunday. A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism over the violence that broke out in Atlanta on Sunday in relation to protests of a planned training facility for police officers in the city, the SPLC has confirmed. "An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting and identifying as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters," the SPLC said in a statement on Monday. Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the list of 23 suspected domestic terrorists released by the Atlanta Police Department on Monday. Violence broke out in Atlanta on Sunday after protesters of a planned police training facility hurled bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and set cars on fire.

We received 84 reports about a fireball seen over NH, Ontario, Qubec and VT on Tuesday, March 7th 2023 around 03:05 UT. For this event, we received one video.

A Texas state lawmaker filed a bill on Monday that would set a referendum for voters to decide whether the state should explore the possibility of seceding from the United States. If the measure known as the TEXIT Referendum Act passes, a referendum on whether Texas "should reassert its status as an independent nation" would be scheduled for the next general election on Nov. 7, 2023. The bill would also require potential plans to be presented to the state legislature. "The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people," Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) wrote in a statement. "After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard."

Research shows young liberals, especially liberal girls, are more depressed than conservative youth a trend left-wing writer Matthew Yglesias said could be caused, in part, by "poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment." Yglesias, co-founder and former columnist for left-leaning Vox and current columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, wrote an article on his Substack titled "Why are young liberals so depressed?" The piece explores recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing alarming rates of sadness and depression among American teenagers, along with another study exploring the depression levels of American teens broken down by political affiliation. "The CDC survey doesn't ask teens about their political beliefs, but [the study found] not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology," Yglesias wrote. "Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find...

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called a wave of illness that has hit hundreds of schoolgirls all across the country over the past four months "an unforgivable crime" and vowed that it should be "severely punished." The unexplained illnesses have required the hospitalization of many young women and girls and ignited parents' and broader public anger over the failure of authorities to identify the cause amid underlying tension brought on by protests over women's rights and rule of law and a resulting crackdown. "Authorities should seriously pursue the issue of students' poisoning," state media quoted Khamenei as saying on March 6 in his most-forceful public response so far to the situation, according to Reuters.

Getting good sleep can play a role in supporting your heart and overall health -- and maybe even how long you live -- according to new research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology. The study found that young people who have more beneficial sleep habits are incrementally less likely to die early. Moreover, the data suggest that about 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to poor sleep patterns. "We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all cause and cardiovascular mortality," said Frank Qian, MD, an internal medicine resident physician at Beth Israel Deaconess

Alexander Lukashenko used harsh words to describe his Ukrainian counterpart's actions amid the conflict with Russia Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has lashed out at his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky, accusing him of attempting to drag Belarus into Kiev's conflict with Moscow. On Tuesday, Lukashenko told the media that a Russian A-50 surveillance aircraft sustained minor damage in a drone attack on the Machulishchy air base in Belarus last week, adding that the assault had been carried out by a "terrorist" recruit of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). "There can be only one conclusion... President Zelensky is just scum. Just scum, as such operations are never carried out without the consent of the head of state and the commander-in-chief. I am telling you this as a president," the Belarusian leader said.

Ford Global Technologies, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, has filed a patent for new "systems and methods to repossess a vehicle," including potentially locking certain features after missed payments. A patent application published on February 23, describes a system in which a vehicle computer could be used to "disable functionality of a component of the vehicle or may place the vehicle in a lockout condition." The application describes multiple possible implementations of this system, such as disabling "the air conditioning system, a remote key fob, and an automated door lock/unlock system," using the stereo to "emit an incessant and unpleasant sound every time the owner is present in the vehicle," and even using self-driving to technology to cause the vehicle to move to a place where it could be retrieved by the creditor: In some cases, the vehicle can be a semi-autonomous vehicle and the repossession system computer may cooperate with the vehicle computer in the...

Eugyppius argues that the many thousands of Matt Hancock's finger-flicking conversational exchanges leaked to the Telegraph do not provide evidence of a conspiracy. His argument has much that is sound in it and I admire its tone. But in the great argumentative battle between cock-up and conspiracy as explanations of pandemic protocols, he comes down on the side of cock-up. The protocols were "driven by autonomous political and institutional forces rather than nebulous globalist conspirators". In short, he claims: Advisers and bureaucrats originally pushed for lockdown. Once lockdown protocols were initiated, the Government and the media terrorised citizens to ensure they would comply. Politicians used public panic as an opportunity for politicking. Everything was really about politics, not science. There was a feedback loop, whereby restrictions were introduced, strictly enforced, generating a fear in citizens which justified further restrictions and enforcement. The politicians...

For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO. Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS's intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal. Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS's intelligence professionals have to say they're conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they're allowed to go directly to incarcerated people circumventing their lawyers raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts. That specific element of the program, which...

borderline personality disorder: BPD is characterized by emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, and cognitive-perceptual impairment. "Strangely enough, people with damage to the dorsolateral and nearby ventromedial areas can have normal intelligence but have no common sense they are unable to make reasonable decisions." (Oakley, Evil Genes, p. 203) Subclinical borderlines seem to have greater executive control, possibly facilitating their success in the social sphere. As with paranoid personality disorder, some researchers do not consider borderline a valid personality-disorder construct. Many of its features are symptoms, not personality traits, making diagnosis inconsistent; some diagnosed with BPD have internalizing (neurotic) traits, others externalizing (antisocial); some respond to treatment, others don't; there are too many comorbidities; and its three main components are probably best understood as separate conditions: a genetic component linked to bipolar, and two others...

In his classic rendition of the African "postcolony," the philosopher and political theorist, Achille Mbembe, observed that thinking about Africa in the present world does not come easy. I observe that thinking and writing about Africa and the world in the present does not only not come easy, but it can also be inconvenient and traumatic. In the light and the weight of ongoing geopolitical struggles for global supremacy that pit the USA and its NATO allies against China, Russia and their allies, covert and overt, Africa as a phenomenon and as political food for thought, is a hot potato and what I can call a "political hard hat area" that may not be for the fainted hearted. Observing, thinking and writing about the position of Africa in the present "world disorder" demands a radical loss of innocence for the political observer and the analyst. It demands what Enrique Dussel calls philosophical atheism where one has to disbelieve in powers that have turned themselves into gods on...

Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right), and Ivan Krastev (centre), a Bulgarian, claim to have discovered from opinion polls they conducted in nine European Union (EU) countries during January that "since Russia's war on Ukraine began, the US and its European allies have regained their unity and sense of purpose...Russia's aggression in Ukraine marks both the consolidation of the West and the emergence of the long-heralded post-Western international order." "The growing hostility of Europeans towards Russia is reflected in their preference not to buy Russian fossil fuels even if it results in energy supply problems. This is the prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries polled, with an average of 55 per cent of these EU citizens supporting it. It is now clear that, contrary to the Kremlin's expectations, the war has consolidated the West, rather than weakened it." "Average" is a telltale admission from Ash, Leonard, and Krastev.

Briton Samuel Halpern came to surprising conclusions about the most famous shipwreck. Oh, the famous Hollywood director James Cameron rushed with the shooting of his famous movie "Titanic". I would have waited a quarter of a century, you see, now, taking into account the change in the international situation, not 11 Oscars, but three times more, I could go out and find my masterpiece. It just needed to be corrected. After all, it turned out that such a plot was brewing there that, against its background, the official would have seemed somewhat boring and unbearable. Hold on tight, now you will learn a terrible secret. The catastrophe that claimed the lives of one and a half thousand people was created by the captain of the ship, Edward John Smith, because in fact he could be called Ivan Vasilyevich Sidorov, since this sailor had Russian roots. The British Samuel Halpern, who calls himself the investigator of the...

At least 17 people have been killed and 140 injured in an explosion inside an office building in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, police and fire service officials have said. The explosion shook the fourth and fifth floors of a five-storey building in Gulistan, a major hub for wholesale goods in the capital, shortly before 5pm local time (11:00 GMT) on Tuesday. Authorities could not immediately provide the reason behind the huge explosion in the bustling commercial area.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly criticized the US and accused it of leading a Western attempt to "contain" his country. Foreign Minister Qin Gang also warned Washington to "hit the brakes" or risk "conflict and confrontation." "Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our nation's development," Xi said in a rare verbal attack on Monday, as quoted by state media. The Chinese leader was meeting with industry and business groups during an annual gathering of an advisory body to the Communist Party. His speech focused on the national economy, with the remark about Washington's policy illustrating what he called "uncertain and unpredictable factors" in the international environment, which also included the Covid-19 pandemic.

Poland's ruling Law & Justice party has come under fire over the death of an opposition MP's 15-year-old son, who killed himself after a report by a state-run radio station led to his identification as the victim of a paedophile. The Polish parliament, the Sejm, stood for a minute's silence on Tuesday during the funeral of Mikolaj Filiks. His mother, Magdalena Filiks, an MP from Poland's main opposition party, Civic Platform, said last week that he had died in February. The teenager took his life weeks after a report on a convicted paedophile by Radio Szczecin, part of the state-run broadcaster Polskie Radio network, revealed details about the victims that allowed Filiks to be easily publicly identified.

More than 1.2 million protesters marched in France on Tuesday as rail workers and refinery staff began rolling strikes and trade unions stepped up their campaign to try to stop Emmanuel Macron's plan to raise the pension age to 64. For the sixth time since the start of the year, trade unions called a nationwide day of strikes and demonstrations. Many protest rallies attracted bigger crowds than previous ones organised since mid-January, including in Marseille, one of France's biggest cities, authorities and local media said. "The idea is to bring France to a standstill," said Fabrice Michaud of the railway workers' branch of the CGT trade union. Rail unions called for rolling, open-ended strikes, which could affect all national trains as well as international routes including the Eurostar. Bin collectors and truck drivers joined the action.

Mass protests against Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, then erupted which his security forces suppressed, locking up his opponents or forcing them to flee. Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was handed a 15-year jail term on Monday after being convicted in absentia for treason and "conspiracy to seize power", a verdict she said was punishment for her efforts to promote democracy. Tsikhanouskaya, 40, a former English teacher, fled to neighbouring Lithuania in 2020 after running against incumbent leader Alexander Lukashenko in a presidential election, which official results showed Lukashenko won by a landslide.

"If, however, as Pareto suggested... a governing elite is inevitable, then we are certainly under the wrong elites. Whether a circulation of elites can be completed in time to save the world economic system from ruin and the majority from destitution and veritable slavery is a question of no little urgency." Michael Rectenwald Imagine that on an April evening in 1912, the captain of the RMS Titanic had announced a grand ball at which the male passengers were asked to wear their wives' clothing and vice-versa.... That was approximately the condition of Western Civ verging on springtime in 2023: preoccupied with silliness while the iceberg awaits. But who would have thought the sinking of civilization would occur with such fantastic comic ornamentation? Men, in more ways than mere costuming, pretending to be women... incompetence honored, feted, even worshipped... intellect reduced to anti-thinking... anything of value thrown overboard in some weird post-modern potlatch ceremony of...

President Erdogan may be instrumentalizing what happens in the aftermath to craft his P.R. campaign ahead of the next elections. The setting: a cosy Ossetian restaurant owned by two Ossetian ladies close to Istiklal street, a very busy central area of Istanbul. The players: a smatter of Istanbul intelligentsia - academics, media, liberal professionals, lawyers, highly educated, secular, very critical of the AKP ruling party. The questions: during dinner, I asked the table their analysis of the state's response to the deadly earthquakes in Turkey, and how President Erdogan may be instrumentalizing what happens in the aftermath to craft his P.R. campaign ahead of the next elections. After our conversation, it was still not officially confirmed whether the next presidential elections will be held on May or June 2023. So the stage is set for an unedited exercise in direct democracy, with some stunning answers, and way more enlightening than what Turkish media and think tanks may be...

Quamquam animus meminisse horret - Although my mind shudders to remember. So says Aeneas in Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid when he embarks on telling Dido the terrible story of the fall of Troy. And that's exactly how I feel every time I think back to the dark days of 2020 and 2021. Not because of the virus but the dizzying and reckless speed with which this country plunged into authoritarianism. The revelations of Hancockgate are all over the news and on this website. There's no need for me to recount them here. Toby has already pointed out it was the usual political clown show. No doubt there are plenty more revelations to come. One of the common threads filtering through now though is the disgust with which the government presided over the creation of a totalitarian state. Rod Liddle is one, with his 'Unmasking the truth about Covid' telling us: It was the authoritarian mindset which demanded that countervailing opinions should not even be heard and that the people voicing them...

What lies behind concerns in Moldova, and the breakaway region of Transnistria? For the past several weeks, Eastern Europe has been on the verge of a new war. Moldova risks returning to active conflict with the self-proclaimed republic of Transnistria - a separatist region, with a slavic majority, which broke away from Chisinau during the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine has a special interest in the territory, because launching a military action there could be doubly beneficial for Kiev. It would embarrass Moscow, which only has 1,500 peacekeepers stationed and no way to currently reinforce them, and would also allow Kiev potential access to a huge arms dump. The facility at Kolbasna - with a reported 22,000 tons of weaponry - is one of the largest in Europe, and it's located only 2km from the Ukrainian border. During Soviet times, the strategic reserves of the Western Military District were stored here. However, most of the ammunition was brought to the warehouse after the...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the option of attacking an Iranian nuclear facility in "self-defense" must be left on the table, arguing that the chief of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made an "unworthy" statement when he declared that any such strikes are banned. Netanyahu said on Sunday in a cabinet meeting: "Are we forbidden to defend ourselves? Of course, we are allowed, and of course, we are doing this... Nothing will prevent us from protecting our country and preventing oppressors from destroying the Jewish state." Netanyahu's remarks came a day after IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi was asked by a reporter about US and Israeli threats to attack Iran if it doesn't agree to curb its nuclear program. "Any military attack on a nuclear facility is outlawed, is out of the normative structures that we all abide by," Grossi said at a press briefing in Tehran after meeting with Iranian leaders. That principle applies to all...

US planners continue to occupy northeastern Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS... Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited US forces occupying northeastern Syria on Saturday, 4 March, allegedly to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence of ISIS and to review safeguards for US forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militias, Reuters has reported. Some 1,000 American troops continue to support allied Arab and Kurdish militias from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the region. Milley, whose term as chairman of the joint chiefs ends in September, met with the commander of the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS, Army Maj. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, and reviewed security measures from an undisclosed base in Syria's northeast. According to Al-Monitor, Milley's visit to Syria signals the Biden administration's seriousness about keeping troops in the country in support of the SDF. Pentagon's top Middle East policy official, Dana...

Nicole Solas slammed those responsible as 'psychopaths'... Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas slammed an area teachers' union she claimed harassed her and made her the topic of a "secret meeting" after she made a records request regarding the district's curriculum. Solas told Fox News' Rachel Campos Duffy Sunday on Fox & Friends Weekend: "They painted me like a wanted enemy of the state simply because I submitted public records requests. "There were 250 teachers that attended where they were alerted to me being an attack on public education." Solas, who was sued by her daughter's school district last year, said presentation slides condemning her at the secret meeting were leaked to her by a teacher.

Supercomputer simulations on Frontera reveal the origins of ultra-massive black holes, the most massive objects thought to exist in the entire universe. Ultra-massive black holes are the most massive objects in the universe. Their mass can reach millions and billions of solar masses. Supercomputer simulations on Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)'s Frontera supercomputer have helped astrophysicists reveal the origin of ultra-massive black holes formed about 11 billion years ago. "We found that one possible formation channel for ultra-massive black holes is from the extreme merger of massive galaxies that are most likely to happen in the epoch of the 'cosmic noon,'" said Yueying Ni, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

For years, Russia has been calling on Western nations to investigate cases of human rights abuse, illegal killings, and war crimes committed by the Ukrainian authorities that came to power after the 2014 coup. Moscow pointed out that many of them were committed by neo-Nazis against Russians or Russian-speaking people. When Russian President Vladimir Putin was announcing the start of a special operation to protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) on 24 February, he described the goals as "demilitarising and denazifying" Ukraine. His spokesman later elaborated that "denazifying" means that Russia is planning to free Ukraine from neo-Nazis, their supporters, and their ideology. Moscow has repeatedly warned foreign nations about neo-Nazis taking control of Ukraine following the West-backed coup in 2014. However, Western nations chose to ignore the human rights violations committed by the Kiev regime. What were these crimes?

In normal circumstances, the Atomwaffen's plot in Baltimore should have been headline news American far-right radicals - linked to neo-Nazis from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion - have been charged with conspiring to stage a terrorist attack in Baltimore, Maryland. However, US media reporting on the story does not mention connections between the group and the militants. Additionally, the attempted terrorist act may only be the first signs of the threat that Azov members, and their foreign friends, pose to Western countries.

In June 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center posted an article entitled, "Designating Antifa as domestic terrorist organization is dangerous, threatens civil liberties." The organization that supposedly tracks extremism in America dismissed the idea that Antifa was a threat to anyone. The "anti-fascists" are "broad, community-based" and "represent a large spectrum of the political left." "Individuals loosely affiliated with Antifa are typically involved in skirmishes and property crimes at demonstrations across the country," the article hand waves. "But the threat of lethal violence pales in comparison to that posed by far-right extremists." Will the SPLC change its tune now that 23 members of Antifa were arrested as domestic terrorists for violently attacking a police facility outside Atlanta?

Throughout the course of the pandemic, officials and ministers wrestled with how to ensure the public complied with ever-changing lockdown restrictions. One weapon in their arsenal was fear. "We frighten the pants off everyone," Matt Hancock suggested during one WhatsApp message with his media adviser. The then health secretary was not alone in his desire to scare the public into compliance. The WhatsApp messages seen by The Telegraph show how several members of Mr Hancock's team engaged in a kind of "Project Fear", in which they spoke of how to utilise "fear and guilt" to make people obey lockdown.

Sometimes a single incident efficiently summarizes a larger trend. So it is with New York University's selection of its new president, Linda Mills, a licensed clinical social worker and an NYU social work professor. She researches trauma and bias, as well as race and gender in the legal academy. She is a documentary filmmaker and teaches advocacy filmmaking. She serves as an NYU vice chancellor and as a senior vice provost for Global Programs and University Life. In all these roles, Mills is the very embodiment of the contemporary academy. The most significant part of her identity, however, and the one that ties the rest of her curriculum vitae together, is that she is female, and thus overdetermined as NYU's next president. Mills is part of the Great Feminization of the American university, an epochal change whose consequences have yet to be recognized. Seventy-five percent of Ivy League presidents are now female. Nearly half of the 20 universities ranked highest by Forbes will...

Jordan chairs the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan says his various investigations have proven the need for substantial congressional oversight of the federal government, and he told Fox News Digital he's hopeful House Democrats can find ways to work with the GOP majority. "With all these things that we start to investigate, it seems to me that the central theme is the only thing we get wrong is it's always worse than we thought," Jordan said. During an interview with Fox News Digital, Jordan, R-Ohio, laid out the investigations the House Judiciary Committee and his Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government are conducting in the 118th Congress.

Kiev's troops on the ground are reportedly concerned that the government is clinging to a key Donbass city Despite the Ukrainian leadership's insistence that its armed forces will continue to defend the Donbass city of Artyomovsk, also known as Bakhmut, there are indications of a looming retreat, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). "Bakhmut will fall," a Ukrainian tank operator told AFP in the town of Chasov Yar, about 10 km (six miles) west of Artyomovsk. "We are almost encircled. The units are progressively retreating in small groups."

Conspiracy and coordination were important at the beginning, but national governments and their institutions rapidly assumed the initiative in all areas of pandemic policy. We are witnessing an unprecedented, comprehensive failure of policy, medicine and science. The world will never be the same. Arguing the conspiracy-or-emergence question with respect to pandemic policy is a little like weeding the garden. You are never quite done with it, and every few months you find you have something more to say. In this instance, I must thank friend-of-the-blog Igor Chudov for providing the opportunity. He disagrees with my view that Covid policies owe less to creepy conspiratorial globalists, than they do to the unbounded stupidity of our leaders, boring institutional dynamics, and feedback effects. He's explained why in an extensive post that everyone should read.

Triangles, spheres, boomerangs, and fireballs. For decades, people have reported seeing UFOs of all shapes and sizes in the skies over Southwestern Ontario. Since 1991, Winnipeg-based Ufology Research has recorded 153 UFO sightings in Windsor and Essex County, including five in 2022. There have been 328 sightings since 1989 in the London region, including six last year. Chris Rutkowski, a writer and researcher with Ufology Research, said those sightings likely weren't alien-related. Of course, there's no way to know for sure. "We've always been interested in the possibility of, 'are we alone in the universe?' " said Rutkowski, who has been investigating UFOs since the 1970s. "Are there other creatures like us or intelligent beings? We try to put our own lives in some perspective. There's a little bit of saviour mentality. Maybe the aliens can help figure a way out of the mess that we've made of Earth. If they've travelled all around the galaxy, maybe they're much more intelligent...

A terrestrial planet hovering between Mars and Jupiter would be able to push Earth out of the solar system and wipe out life on this planet, according to a UC Riverside experiment. UCR astrophysicist Stephen Kane explained that his experiment was meant to address two notable gaps in planetary science. The first is the gap in our solar system between the size of terrestrial and giant gas planets. The largest terrestrial planet is Earth, and the smallest gas giant is Neptune, which is four times wider and 17 times more massive than Earth. There is nothing in between. "In other star systems there are many planets with masses in that gap. We call them super-Earths," Kane said. The other gap is in location, relative to the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. "Planetary scientists often wish there was something in between those two planets. It seems like wasted real estate," he said. These gaps could offer important insights into the architecture of our solar system, and into Earth's...

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 jolted 72 km SSW of Kavieng, Papua New Guinea at 13:51:49 GMT on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter, with a depth of 10.0 km, was initially determined to be at 3.2132 degrees south latitude and 150.6471 degrees east longitude.

At least 15 people have been killed, with dozens missing after torrential rains and landslides hit Indonesia's Natuna region on the edge of the South China Sea. Pictures and video from the national disaster mitigation agency (BNPB) showed landslides cascading through forested areas and dumping mud and debris on houses on the remote Serasan island. Bits of metal from torn-off roofs and fallen trees were also visible following the disaster on Monday. The location of the landslide and continued rain were complicating search and rescue efforts, the BNPB said on Twitter. Communications had also been cut off, it said. The Natuna Search and Rescue Agency's head, Abdul Rahman, told the AFP news agency that 15 people had been confirmed dead and 50 were missing.

After back-to-back winter storms overwhelmed many of California's mountain communities with snow, another round of snowfall is headed to the Sierra Nevada region, while the state's hard-hit southern San Bernardino County will get a reprieve as some residents who remain trapped by walls of snow are concerned about their dwindling supplies. The Sierra Nevada mountain range could see 1 to 3 inches of snow through Tuesday, following a weekend that brought as much as 38 inches of snow over a 24-hour period to Soda Springs in Nevada County and 31 inches to Donner Peak in Placer County.

A 31-year-old woman who admitted to having sex with a 13-year-old boy and getting pregnant with his child will serve no jail time, according to reports. "I feel like if she was a man, and he was a little girl, it would definitely be different," the victim's mother said. "They would be seeking more. I feel like because he is not a woman, they are not. They are having compassion for her." The Fountain Police Department in Colorado arrested Andrea Serrano in June 2022 on felony charges of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust and sexual assault on a child.

An Idaho family was lucky to escape an attack by an angry moose while they were out on their snowmobiles in the Palisades, east of Idaho Falls. Jeremiah Bigelow posted the incident on his Instagram account, describing how the moose came between him and his brother, who was ahead of him, on the trail they were riding. The moose initially charged Jeremiah, who had his son and other friends behind him. Jeremiah quickly put his snowmobile in reverse but got stuck as his son's snowmobile did not have a reverse gear. Jeremiah's brother realized that Jeremiah was stuck and tried to draw the moose's attention away from the group, thinking he could quickly speed away. But right as he jumps back on the snowmobile, it dies, and he is forced to dive to his safety, narrowly avoiding the charging moose.

The former president congratulated Tucker Carlson for what he called one of the biggest journalistic "scoops" in US history. Most of those who made their way into the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 are "totally innocent," former US President Donald Trump has insisted after Fox News host Tucker Carlson published new footage of the events. Carlson had earlier been granted access by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to more than 40,000 hours of security video records from the Capitol on the day of the riots. On Monday, the Fox News host shared some of those clips on his program, showing Trump's supporters behaving peacefully inside the US Congress in Washington, DC.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday slammed International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi for saying attacks on nuclear facilities are "outlawed." Israel has a history of launching covert attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities, and Netanyahu has been threatening to take more overt action. US officials have also said President Biden will keep a military option on the table to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon even though the Pentagon and CIA recently acknowledged Tehran is not seeking a bomb. Grossi just returned from a visit to Iran, where he secured a pledge for the IAEA to receive more access to Iranian nuclear facilities. When asked about the US and Israeli threats, Grossi said that "any military attack on a nuclear facility is outlawed, is out of the normative structures that we all abide by."

This past month a poll held by ABC and the Washington Post with a 37 year history asked Americans if they were better or worse off in the two years since Biden entered the White House. If you were to ask Biden this question, you would be regaled with a flurry of great news about a fantastic economic recovery, epic jobs numbers, falling inflation and a dropping deficit. When you ask actual average citizens, you get a much different reply. According to the ABC/Post poll, Americans say they are worse off than they have ever been, with the most negative data in the history of the survey. Over 40% of respondents indicated their financial situation was worse under Biden. Only 16% of people said they were better off. Not only that, but 60% of Democrats polled said they did NOT want Joe Biden as their candidate in 2024, and 62% of all people polled said they would be disappointed or even angry if Biden remained in the White House for a second term. This is astounding. How does one...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he will appoint an "Independent special rapporteur," who he says will have a "wide mandate and will make expert recommendations on combating interference and strengthening our democracy" amid allegations that his government ignored recommendations from CSIS noting concerns about candidates' connections to the Chinese Communist Party. "In the last couple of weeks, Canadians have been reading and hearing a lot" about foreign interference by China in elections, Trudeau said.

The mother of two children who were given COVID-19 vaccines without the mother's consent is suing the doctor who administered the vaccines. An attorney representing NaTonya McNeil last week filed a lawsuit in Superior Court for the District of Columbia against Janine A. Rethy, M.D., M.P.H. According to the complaint, on Sept. 2, 2022, McNeil took her two older children, ages 15 and 17, to the KIDS Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile clinic, operated by Georgetown Hospital, to complete their required annual physical exam for the 2022-2023 school year.

A septuagenarian woman in Telangana died after she was attacked by a troop of more than 20 monkeys. The victim, has been identified as 70-year old Chataraboina Narsavva of Ramareddy village in Kamareddy district. The incident took place while the victim was cleaning utensils at her home on Friday. Local sources said that the victim was all alone at home as her youngest daughter Suguna had gone to attend a wedding function at the time. Despite Narsavva's cries for help, the fear-stricken neighbours made no attempt to go to her rescue. They shut themselves inside their houses until the monkeys fled. The old woman suffered serious injuries on her chest, back and limbs. It was only after Suguna returned home a little while later that the old woman was taken to hospital. Narsavva, however, succumbed to her injuries on Saturday while undergoing treatment at the hospital.

The Committee on the Judiciary has issued a subpoena to former Disinformation Governance Board head Nina Jankowicz, compelling her to appear before the Committee on April 10, 2023. In a letter to Jankowicz, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, said that the Committee is "conducting oversight of the so-called 'Disinformation Governance Board.'" The Committee intends to look into the Board's "creation, its activities, and related matters." Jordan said, "We have repeatedly sought information from you concerning your official actions and duties as a DHS employee and former Executive Director of the Board, including how the Board intended to define disinformation, how it planned to collect information and from what sources, how it anticipated countering disinformation, and how it proposed to protect First Amendment rights." Jordan noted that the Judiciary Committee had requested Jankowicz's "voluntary cooperation" in May 2022, but and again requested documentation in December 2022, January,...

'Tucker Carlson Tonight' was the first to look at over 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from the Capitol Building on Jan 6. Tucker Carlson released never-before-seen footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at Capitol Hill that appear to dispel several narratives pushed by the Democrat-controlled House Select Committee and the legacy media. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted "Tucker Carlson Tonight" an exclusive first look to over 40,000 hours of security camera footage from the Capitol Building that were hidden from the public for over two years. On Monday, Carlson offered the first glimpses of footage involving key figures from that day.

New emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the deceptive nature of Dr. Anthony Fauci. They show he "prompted" or commissioned and had final approval on a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Donald Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.

A 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted the southern Philippines on Tuesday (Mar 7), the US Geological Survey said, but there were no reports of casualties or major damage. The shallow quake struck at about 2pm local time (0600 GMT), a few kilometres from Maragusan municipality in the mountainous gold-mining province of Davao de Oro on Mindanao island. Shallow earthquakes tend to cause more harm than deeper ones, but local authorities said there were no reports of major damage. Cherrylyn Dapiton of the Maragusan disaster office confirmed there had been a landslide near a road, but it had not affected anyone or blocked traffic.

Jurgens is one of only two Georgians arrested Sunday. A lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism over the violence that broke out in Atlanta on Sunday in relation to protests of a planned training facility for police officers in the city, the SPLC has confirmed. "An employee at the SPLC was arrested while acting and identifying as a legal observer on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The employee is an experienced legal observer, and their arrest is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters," the SPLC said in a statement on Monday. Thomas Webb Jurgens was among the list of 23 suspected domestic terrorists released by the Atlanta Police Department on Monday. Violence broke out in Atlanta on Sunday after protesters of a planned police training facility hurled bricks and Molotov cocktails at officers and set cars on fire.

UK grocery inflation continued to climb during February to reach a new record high of 17.1%, according to closely-watched industry data. Kantar Worldpanel reported that the increase over the past 12 months meant that families faced a potential 811 annual rise in the cost of their regular shopping basket. It had been hoped that a decline in the pace of grocery prices during December would mark a turning point in that element of the cost of living crisis. But Kantar later revealed that temporary Christmas discounting had been largely responsible, as the big four chains fight to maintain market share amid the challenge posed by discounters and other cheaper rivals.

Just under one in eight of all households in England were found to be fuel-poor in 2022. Now in 2023 the true impact of the energy crisis over the past 12 months has been revealed with the release of shocking new statistics. Express.co.uk has analysed the harrowing picture of fuel poverty in England. Britons paid more in household energy bills in 2022 than any other year in history, with the ensuing cost-of-living crisis stretching budgets to and beyond breaking point for many. After four consecutive rises since February 2021, the state energy regulator Ofgem had the price cap set at 4,279 by the end of the year - over triple the average annual bill just three years earlier. On Monday, Ofgem announced that from April 1, the price cap would fall by almost 1,000 to 3,280 -but with a 500 increase to the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) scheduled at the same time, the pain of the last year is likely to endure for many throughout 2023.

A Polish deputy agriculture minister has criticised the EU's recent approval of two types of insects for use in food products, saying there was a campaign to overturn the "dietary values of the West". Comment: The West's dietary guidelines are fairly skewed already - favoring detrimental carbohydrates over optimal animal products - but this propaganda push for insects is another level of sinister. In January, the EU approved house crickets and the larvae of lesser mealworms for human consumption in powder and other dried forms as part of a drive to limit the impact animal farming has on the environment. Insects, which are a popular food choice in many parts of the world, are rich in protein and require much less land and water than meat to produce.

Russia is preparing intergovernmental agreements on visa-free travel with 11 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The Bahamas, Malaysia and Mexico, State Secretary - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov told TASS. "We're preparing draft intergovernmental agreements on visa-free travel for [Russian] citizens with a number of countries, such as Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, The Bahamas, Barbados, Haiti, Zambia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago. The agreements are at various stages of development," Ivanov said. "However, it is important to understand that the process of negotiating such international treaties is a 'two-way street' and the pace at which they are signed depends equally on us and on our partners," the senior diplomat added.

The Pentagon sees giant Chinese-made cranes operating at US ports, including several shipping hubs used by the military, as a potential "Trojan horse" that China could use to gather intelligence on materiel being moved in and out of the country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Fresh from the Chinese "spy balloon" debacle, unnamed "national-security and Pentagon officials" have reportedly turned their attention to yet another alleged espionage tool. While the newspaper did not indicate whether there have been any actual cases of a crane being used for spying, it cited former US counterintelligence official Bill Evanina expressing concerns that it could provide remote access to disrupt the flow of goods. "Cranes can be the new Huawei," Evanina said, referring to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, whose products had been banned from the US market over similar spying concerns. "It's the perfect combination of legitimate business that can also masquerade...

Hundreds of thousands of people rallied throughout Israel Saturday in the ninth straight weekend of protests against the government's efforts to radically transform the judiciary, with some 160,000 estimated in Tel Aviv and tens of thousands more in dozens of locales. Organizers claimed that their counts throughout the country indicated some 400,000 protesters in all, though this could not be independently confirmed. As the main Tel Aviv rally ended, limited clashes once again erupted between police and some demonstrators, as the latter broke through barriers to enter the Ayalon Highway action police and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir had vowed to prevent.

A devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on the morning of February 6. A second major earthquake of 7.5 magnitude struck the region 9 hours later, causing further severe damage and destruction of buildings. On February 20, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Hatay, and on February 27, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake centered in Malatya also caused many damaged buildings to collapse and increased the death toll. More than 150 aftershocks were also recorded. 46,000 people in Turkey and 6,0000 in Syria lost their lives, and at least 1.5 million people are now homeless. More than 160,000 buildings have collapsed or been severely damaged. It's hard to know the true number so far, it could be much higher. The immediate damage is estimated at $34 billion - or about 4% of the country's annual economic output. But the indirect costs of the quake could be much higher, and recovery will be neither easy nor quick. Just for the record, a prediction model based...

Matt Hancock rejected advice from England's Chief Medical Officer to replace the 14-day Covid quarantine with five days of testing because it would "imply we've been getting it wrong". Mr Hancock was told by Prof Sir Chris Whitty in November 2020 that it would be "pretty well as good" for contacts of positive Covid cases to test for five days "in lieu" of a fortnight's isolation. WhatsApp messages between the two have also revealed that the 14-day quarantine period was likely to have been "too long all along". By then, nearly a million people in England who had come into contact with an infected person had been told to self-isolate for a full fortnight, even if they had no symptoms. Although ministers reduced the self-isolation period to 10 days in December 2020, it was not until the following August that some groups were made entirely exempt from the requirement. In November 2020, Sir Chris and other government advisers were "in favour" of trialling the alternative system. But Mr...

The first step in bringing peace to Ukraine should be to stop people from being killed and establish a ceasefire as soon as possible, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Sunday, during an interview with Sweden's SVT. The diplomat dismissed the idea of supplying Ukraine with weapons, currently being done by a number of NATO countries, as a viable method to achieve peace. Asked why Hungary refuses to send weapons to Kiev, Szijjarto pointed to the devastating consequences of the war, and how Western arms have only exacerbated the conflict. "Look at the infrastructure, look at the people, look at the number of people leaving the country, look at their former houses, look at the damage, the energy infrastructure. This country is being demolished, destroyed. I don't think that would be of interest to anyone," he said. Szijjarto stated that Hungary, as opposed to other European countries, sees the first priority in the Ukrainian conflict as being to "stop killing people,"...

Moscow and Havana have been implementing financial mechanisms to shield their economic cooperation from US sanctions, Russian Ambassador to Cuba Andrey Guskov revealed last week. "The introduction of independent settlement mechanisms is being successfully carried out, which will help protect cooperation with Cuba from the negative impact of the US trade, economic and financial blockade, as well as establish ties bypassing the financial organizations of unfriendly states," the Russian diplomat said. In January, the chairman of the Russia-Cuba Business Council, Boris Titov, said that in order to mitigate the effect of Western sanctions, the countries are considering new mechanisms for mutual settlements, including in ruble and cryptocurrencies, as well as clearing schemes.

Australian think tank says China well ahead in AI, hypersonics, drones and e-batteries while US clings to chip making and high-speed computing... China is now leading the world in 37 out of 44 key technologies, including hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, drones and electric batteries, according to a recent Australian research report. China ranks first globally in defense- and space-related technologies in terms of high-impact research, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said in the report. ASPI is a defense and strategic policy think tank based in Canberra founded by the Australian government and funded by overseas governments as well as defense and technology companies. China also excels in areas including nanoscale materials and manufacturing, coatings, 5G and 6G technologies, hydrogen and ammonia power, super-capacitors, electric batteries, synthetic biology and photonics sensors, the ASPI report said. It may pose technology monopoly risks to other...

Staffed by British special forces veterans, Pilgrims' Group quietly shaped international coverage of the MH17 disaster as it shepherded journalists to and from the crash site. In November of 2022, a final judgment arrived in the trial of alleged perpetrators of the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Donbas separatist Leonid Kharchenko, were convicted in absentia for the murder of MH17's 283 passengers and 15 crew members. They were ruled to have arranged the transfer of the Buk surface-to-air missile system that reportedly struck the plane. Oleg Pulatov, the only defendant to seek legal representation during the trial, was conversely acquitted on all charges, which prosecutors will not appeal. The Malaysian airliner had been purportedly shot down by a missile on July 17th 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew aboard. Heavily dependent on information supplied by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the...

Kiev's backers, however, ultimately don't believe it will win, the political philosopher said... The West has fostered the creeping "nazification" of Ukraine in order to make its people hostile to Russia, political philosopher and author Aleksandr Dugin has told RT. In an exclusive interview aired on Saturday, he said that Kiev's backers have tried to hide from their own citizens the growing tolerance of nationalists and neo-Nazis in the country. Dugin said: "The West thinks in such a manner: We could not create artificial nationalism in Ukraine and push Ukrainians to fight Russians [any other way]. For a traditional society, liberal values cannot be the goal to defend. So they need something [else]. The most radical [tool] to create and promote this artificial pseudo-consciousness is nationalism ... or Ukrainian Russophobic fascism. And it is being used by the [globalist] liberals. They destroy any kind of nationalism on their [own] territories. But in Ukraine, on the other hand,...

In a television appearance this week, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns assured that America's position in Asia is "stronger" today "than it was five or ten years ago," and that Beijing will simply have to accept that Washington "is staying in this region" and is "the leader in this region in many ways." Chinese media has brushed off the US ambassador's "powerless and ridiculous" claims that the US is still the undisputed leader in Asia and that China will just have to deal with it. The Global Times' wrote an editorial response to Burns' "leadership" comments: "What the US politician said implies two messages. First, he seems to criticize China for not understanding US' presence in the Asia-Pacific. Second, Burns wants Beijing to acknowledge Washington's leadership in the region. Yet, both are far from the truth." The outlet explained that Washington's "strategic miscalculation" has always been to believe that China would like to push the US out of Asia. The reality, GT...

Washington plans to prohibit American investment in the high-tech sectors of rival economies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing sources and reports on the proposed regulation from the US Treasury and Commerce Department. The restrictions will likely target private and venture capital investments in the production of semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and will mostly be aimed against China, sources close to the discussions about the new regulations told the news outlet. The WSJ notes, however, that the reports do not name specific countries that will be affected by the measures nor the economic sectors seen as posing a risk to US national security. However, the outlet notes that the focus will be on sectors that could increase the military capabilities of US rivals. The Treasury report, for instance, said: "The new foreign investment rules will focus on preventing US capital and expertise from being exploited in ways that threaten our...

China's defense spending will rise by 7.2% to $230 billion this year, according to information contained in Beijing's national budget, released on Sunday. Premier Li Keqiang also called upon the country's armed forces to "boost combat preparedness" as they expand their military capabilities amid tensions with Taiwan. The 7.2% increase is the sharpest surge in China's defense spending since 2019. It follows a 6.8% uptick in 2021 and 6.6% in 2020. In 2019, Asia's leading military power oversaw a 7.5% increase in its defense budget to 1.19 trillion yuan - around $172 billion. The latest hike is the eighth consecutive single-digit annual increase in Beijing's military budget.

The plane appeared to have narrowly missed a few suburban homes in a Long Island neighborhood before it crashed and burst into flames. At least one person is dead and two others are seriously injured after a plane crashed in a Long Island neighborhood in the US state of New York on Sunday. A single-engine Piper PA 28 plane crash landed near several homes in North Lindenhurst at around 3 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT). The plane crashed just short of its destination at the Republic Airport in Farmingdale, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. Three people were onboard at the time of the crash. One of those persons has died and two others have been seriously injured. No other people were injured during the crash, Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Shaffer said.

Kari Lake filed new paperwork and 779 pages of evidence in the Arizona Supreme Court today, appealing the lower courts' decisions to dismiss her lawsuit contesting the rigged 2022 Election. Lake also filed a 'Motion To Expedite' her case, arguing that "expeditious action to resolve these issues is needed to safeguard Arizona voters' right to free and equal elections." The Maricopa County Superior Court and Arizona Court of appeals disregarded the evidence, "ignored this Court's precedents for reviewing election contests and ratified Maricopa officials' decision to ignore Arizona's ballot chain-of-custody ("COC") and logic and accuracy testing ("L&A testing") requirements set forth in Arizona's Election Procedures Manual ("EPM"), and A.R.S. 16-621(E), 16-449, 16-452(C)," argues Lake's attorneys in their 'Petition for Review.'

Chinese car brands have embarked on a major expansion in Russia amid the exodus of European, American, and Japanese brands, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. In 2022, Chinese automakers Geely, Chery, and Great Wall Motors took a 17% share of Russia's car market, filling the void left by the world's largest automobile manufacturers, such as Volkswagen, Nissan, Renault, and Toyota, which pulled out of the country last year. Economic sanctions and political pressure made it difficult for many automakers to continue operations in Russia last year. In particular, logistical disruptions arose once imports of cars and spare parts to the country were stopped.

Britain's hospitality sector could lose thousands of jobs amid soaring energy costs, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) has warned, as it called on the government to extend a lifeline for the industry. According to a BBPA report on Wednesday, citing data from Oxford Economics, a further 2,000 pubs are at risk of closure, threatening 25,000 jobs. The research suggested that on-trade beer sales will decline by 9% in 2023-2024, which equates to 1 million fewer barrels of beer sold, or 288 million pints. "The BBPA is calling on the government to use the Spring Budget to show it understands just how much pubs and breweries mean to their communities, and the pressures the sector is facing, and deliver a plan for sustainable growth with fair, modernized tax rates and a focus on skills and training needed to ensure pubs and breweries can thrive," the association stated.

Comment: What is UP with all these train crashes of late?? The death toll from Tuesday's train crash in Greece has increased to 57, a coroner has told the BBC. Eleni Zaggelidou, one of ten coroners working on the investigation, said DNA had been taken from 57 intact bodies. Meanwhile, a government minister said austerity during Greece's economic crisis in the 2000s contributed to a lack of investment in the railways. Rail workers held a one-day strike on Thursday following the disaster, blaming government neglect. The walkout follows protests in Athens, Thessaloniki and the city of Larissa, near the site of the disaster. Rescue workers are still going through burned and buckled carriages there, searching for victims.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn has said in a fresh interview with Swiss weekly Weltwoche that his country's leadership is "strong enough to keep the war away from our country" while also stressing that Washington has become prime the decision-maker over the conflict in Ukraine. He further addressed the proxy war nature of the conflict in saying, "There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal." "Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well," he continued. "They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front." The Hungarian government has long protested this practice and presented its complaints to Kiev.

A platform being rolled out to target scammers has triggered fears of more state control over the web Ukrainian authorities have rolled out an automatic system to "filter out" malicious websites, used for online scamming and phishing schemes. The system was introduced on January 30 and enforced on Thursday, with all Internet providers in the country obliged to use it. The new platform is expected to provide a list of malicious websites for providers to block, every 15 minutes. Its creator, Ukraine's National Center for Operating and Management of Telecommunication Networks, insists it is designed to only target scammers.

After an incredible series of winter storms, California officials reported Friday the state's snowpack is the largest in decades. Snowpack in the California Sierra is 177% of normal for this time of year, officials at the Department of Water Resources said. Statewide, snowpack is averaging 190% compared to normal for the date a significant boost after back-to-back storms. Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is critical because it acts as a natural reservoir and accounts for 30% of California's freshwater supply in an average year. The recent record-breaking, three-week deluge helped replenish some of the state's reservoirs, but Shasta Lake the largest in the state remains below its historical average.

Teaching is now a political act that involves indoctrinating children instead of educating them. A teacher still battling her school board two years after a Facebook post about the culture war in classrooms landed her in hot water says people need to wake up to the woke revolution happening in education. Teaching is now a political act that involves indoctrinating children instead of educating them, said Chanel Pfahl, in an interview with the National Post. "There's a lot of reason to be afraid. We are in a kind of cultural revolution and people really do need to pay attention."

CNN's then-president Jeff Zucker told his staffers not to investigate the "lab leak theory" behind the origins of COVID-19 because he thought it was a "Trump talking point," according to a report. A "well-placed" CNN insider told Fox News Digital on Monday that Zucker gave the order in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. "People are slowly waking up from the fog," the insider told Fox News Digital. "It is kind of crazy that we didn't chase it harder." Mainstream news organizations including CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and others have been pilloried in recent days following a recent government report which concluded that an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory is the most likely explanation for the COVID outbreak.

JayCee Cooper, a transgender athlete, sued federation in 2021. JayCee Cooper, a transgender athlete, won a discrimination case against USA Powerlifting this week after the federation banned her from competing in female events. With Cooper's victory comes a mandate the federation "cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices" because of sexual orientation and gender identity. The organization must revise its policy related to those issues within two weeks, meaning trans athletes will be able to compete in the women's category after previously being banned.

Pakistani authorities say they have served an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Imran Khan at his Lahore residence, ordering him to appear in court on March 7 or face being forced to do so through police actions. Police arrived early on March 5 at the home of the 70-year-old critic of the current government but said they were thwarted in efforts to seize Khan on the spot after finding his residence surrounded by supporters. Islamabad police later said that following a room-by-room search of the site, Khan could not be found and that they were told by leaders of Khan's Tehrik-e Insaf party (PTI) "that Imran Khan is not present at the residence."

The Chinese currency has outperformed the greenback by volume of trading on the Moscow Exchange for the first time on record The Chinese yuan has overtaken the US dollar as the most traded currency on the Russian stock market for the first time ever, business daily Kommersant reported on Monday. According to the outlet's estimates, based on data from the Moscow Exchange (MOEX), the yuan was the most traded currency in February, displacing the US dollar from the top spot. Statistics showed that, over the month, the volume of Chinese currency trading exceeded 1.48 trillion rubles ($19.6 billion), which is one-third higher than in January. The volume of transactions with the dollar also increased in February, but only by 8% to 1.42 trillion rubles ($18.8 billion). As a result, the yuan accounted for almost 40% of the total volume of trading in major currencies, the dollar's share was just over 38%, while the euro stood at 21.2%. To compare, the greenback's trading volume a year ago...

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION FROM THE AIN SHAMS UNIVERSITY HAS UNCOVERED A ROMAN ERA SPHINX DURING EXCAVATIONS AT THE DENDERA TEMPLE COMPLEX, LOCATED IN THE QENA GOVERNORATE OF EGYPT. The Temple of Dendera is a large ceremonial complex covering an area of 9.8 acres. The complex is centred on the Hathor Temple, a sanctuary which has been modified on the same site since the Middle Kingdom until the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan. Recent excavations led by Dr Mamdouh El Damaty, a former antiquities minister and a professor of archaeology at Cairo's Ain Shams University, revealed a Roman structure in an area east of the main complex where a temple dedicated to Horus is located. The structure is built using limestone and mortar, consisting of two levels. The lower level contains a large basin for collecting water from the Byzantine period, where the researchers found a Roman era sphinx statue.