Important Takeaways:
- The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) banned eight local banks from making US dollar transactions on 4 February, in an attempt to avoid sanctions and US financial restrictions.
- A CBI document lists the banned banks as Ahsur International Bank for Investment, Investment Bank of Iraq, Union Bank of Iraq, Kurdistan International Islamic Bank for Investment and Development, Al-Huda Bank, Al-Janoob Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance, Arabia Islamic Bank, and Hammurabi Commercial Bank.
- “We commend the continued steps taken by the Central Bank of Iraq to protect the Iraqi financial system from abuse, which has led to legitimate Iraqi banks achieving international connectivity through correspondent banking relationships,” a US Treasury Department spokesman said on Sunday.
- The measures come after Iraqi officials met with the US Treasury Department’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson last week.
- The Finance Committee in the Iraqi parliament made a statement on 31 January calling for the sale of oil in currencies other than the US dollar, aiming to counter US sanctions on the Iraqi banking system.
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Important Takeaways:
- Layoffs surged 136% in January to second-highest level on record
- US job cuts skyrocket at beginning of 2024
- That is according to a new report published by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month. However, that is down about 20% from the same time one year ago. It marked the second-highest layoff total for the month of January in data going back to 2009.
- “Waves of layoff announcements hit U.S.-based companies in January after a quiet fourth quarter,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The cuts were “driven by broader economic trends and a strategic shift towards increased automation and AI adoption in various sectors, though in most cases, companies point to cost-cutting as the main driver for layoffs.”
- Financial companies bore the brunt of the job losses in January, with the industry shedding 23,238 employees. That is the highest monthly layoff total for the financial sector since September 2018, when it announced 27,343 job cuts.
- The technology sector followed with 15,806 layoffs, the most since May 2023 and a stunning 254% increase from just one month prior.
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Important Takeaways:
- Britain to test fire nuke missile in major show-of-force with sub launching 44ft Trident 2 for first time since 2016
- Officials issued a warning to shipping as nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard sailed into the Atlantic this week.
- It is the first time the UK has test fired a missile since a botched launch in 2016.
- And it follows a drumbeat of warnings that the world is careering to World War Three.
- The Sun understands the £4bn sub is scheduled to test fire an unarmed missile after completing a seven year refit in Plymouth.
- The tests are the final hurdle for HMS Vanguard to re-enter service as part of the UK’s nuclear deterrent fleet.
- The 30-year-old submarine was pictured sailing from Port Canavarel in Florida on Tuesday morning.
- The Navy hailed the doomsday vessel as a 491ft “colossus” that can patrol undetected for months at a time.
- She can carry up to 16 Trident 2 D5 missiles, each armed with multiple British-made warheads that are each more than 20 times more powerful than the weapons dropped in World War Two on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
- The sub is expected to launch a single unarmed missile from 90km off the US east coast.
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Important Takeaways:
- Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
- A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
- The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
- The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
- On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
- Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
- Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
- Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
- Here, let me focus it for you:
- “The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
- Then again, in a later paragraph:
- ” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
- Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
- Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
- The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
- Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
- Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
- Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
- Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
- Where is this leading?
- What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
- Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
- For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
- By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . .
- Wise-up folks.
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Important Takeaways:
- Plans for U.S. strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq, Syria approved after Jordan drone attack
- U.S. officials have confirmed to CBS News that plans have been approved for a series of strikes over a number of days against targets — including Iranian personnel and facilities — inside Iraq and Syria. The strikes will come in response to drone and rocket attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region, including the drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at the Tower 22 base inside Jordan, near the Syrian border.
- Speaking at the Pentagon Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that the U.S. won’t tolerate attacks on American troops.
- “This is a dangerous moment in the Middle East,” Austin said, noting that Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on commercial shipping in the Red Sea were also happening in the region. “We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in the region, but we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people, and we will respond when we choose, where we choose and how we choose.”
- Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes, the U.S. officials told CBS News, as the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather but prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment.
- Iran’s Reaction…any strike on Iranian territory or personnel would escalate tension in the tumultuous region, not make U.S. forces safer.
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Important Takeaways:
- California gets slammed: More than 22 million risk flooding as Pineapple Express blasts the state with up to 10 inches of rain and 70 mph gusts: Water-covered roads snarl traffic in Los Angeles, San Diego
- All lanes of the 710 Freeway at Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach have been closed, with numerous streets and highways inundated Thursday morning
- The Golden State is expected to receive as much as ten inches of rain and upper-elevation mountain snow, coupled with winds of up to 70 mph
- A Pineapple Express system is hitting the state, with a second wave expected over the weekend
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Important Takeaways:
- Simultaneous Tractor Protests Grip Europe From East to West
- Snow-dusted tractors lined up outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and nighttime protests in Romania marked by vivid national flags have become markers of a farmer protest movement across Europe.
- The biggest demonstrations have been seen in France, where farmers blocked highways around Paris with their tractors
- Farmers blocked more traffic arteries across Belgium, France and Italy on Wednesday, as they sought to disrupt trade at major ports and other economic lifelines. Convoys with hundreds of angry farmers driving heavy-duty tractors advanced toward European Union headquarters, bent on getting their complaints about excessive costs, rules and bureaucracy heard by EU leaders at a summit Thursday in Brussels, Belgium.
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Important Takeaways:
- Elon Musk announced that his company Neuralink implanted a brain chip in a human in a preliminary clinical study. If research studies continue to look promising, devices like these could one day be a “game changer” for people with limited motor function, experts told ABC News.
- Neuralink says its goal is to help people living with debilitating conditions, including paralysis, communicate and control external devices with their thoughts.
- The patient who received the implant is “recovering well,” Musk said in a post on X Tuesday.
- Musk’s company is not alone in developing this type of technology. In recent years, research teams from across the globe have announced early but promising studies of brain-machine interface devices.
- Last year, Swiss researchers said they combined artificial intelligence and brain and spine implants to help a man paralyzed in a motorcycle accident walk again.
- And a woman who had lost her voice to paralysis was able to have a conversation with her husband again, with the help of a mind-controlled avatar, the Swiss researchers said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Campaign opens for performance-based congressional pay and 70% raise
- A campaign has started to raise the salaries of House and Senate members by 70% to $294,000 from the current $174,000 in return for better “performance.”
- Federal analyst Steven Kopits, the president of Princeton Policy Advisors, argued that since most members are lawyers, salaries should at least be equal to what first-year associates in Manhattan receive, plus a 20% bump up.
- “Most legislators are lawyers by trade, and we — or at least I — would hope that the public would prefer the best and the brightest to become members of Congress. First year law associates in New York are the best and brightest of their year, typically from Ivy League universities, and their salaries are tied to the market for premium legal services in the U.S. Therefore, if we believe we would like to recruit top-line legal professionals to serve in Congress, then first year associate salaries are a plausible comparable,” Kopits said in a memo.
- “I would argue that a senator should make considerably more than a first year lawyer, perhaps twice as much, but the political equilibrium seems to fall considerably lower. Even so, a congressman should make at least 20% more than a first year lawyer, about the same ratio as in the 1980s. If we apply that metric, congressional salaries should be set at $294,000 for 2024, a 70% increase over the current pay level,” he said.
- “It’s one thing to bad mouth your opponents when it’s costless. But when your bonus depends on using money wisely, well, people find a way to cooperate. If you’re a burn-it-to-the-ground MAGA Republican, the most revolutionary thing you could do is introduce a performance-based bonus. Democrats might have to go along with it. After all, they want a pay raise, too,” Kopits argued.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘What HAS the world come to?’ McDonald’s customer is left outraged after being charged $7.29 for single Egg McMuffin at Connecticut restaurant
- A McDonald’s customer was left astounded after paying $7.29 for a single Egg McMuffin in a Connecticut drive through.
- Bespoke Investment Group posted a picture of the customer’s receipt with the caption ‘$7.29 for one McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. What has the world come to?? These were 2 for $2 pretty recently.’
- The bill records the purchase of two Egg McMuffins for $14.58 and one Bacon, Egg & Cheese McGriddle without two half-strips of bacon for $7.19.
- The incident is even said to have spooked the Biden administration after critics claimed it was yet another symptom of the soaring inflation that has hurt millions of Americans’ pockets.
- McDonald’s was among the many other fast-food chains that raised their prices in 2021 to account for inflation and increased labor costs.
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