Important Takeaways:
- Muhammad Shaheen, a senior Hamas official, was killed in a drone strike on a vehicle near Sidon, southern Lebanon, on Monday, an Israeli official confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
- Shaheen was Hamas’s head of operation within Lebanon. In his role, he tried to plan terror operations against Israeli citizens, whether within Israeli territory or during international travels.
- The IDF said that Shaheen also received funding directly from Iran to carry out these terror operations.
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Important Takeaways:
- “Hamas has just released three Hostages from GAZA, including an American Citizen. They seem to be in good shape!” he wrote. “This differs from their statement last week that they would not release any Hostages.”
- The hostages are all dual citizens of Israel and differing nations. Sagui Dekel-Chen is also an American, Iair Horn is also an Argentinian citizen, and Alexandre Troufanov is also a Russian citizen, CNN reported. They were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, NBC News noted.
- Saturday also reportedly saw Israel release 369 Palestinian prisoners, per NBC News.
- The move meets Israel’s demands for three live hostages to be released on Saturday to prevent an end to the ceasefire.
- Trump said Saturday that he supports whatever decision Israel makes regarding his own ultimatum.
- “Israel will now have to decide what they will do about the 12:00 O’CLOCK, TODAY, DEADLINE imposed on the release of ALL HOSTAGES. The United States will back the decision they make!” Trump added.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. Their meeting follows a heart-wrenching Saturday when the Hamas terror group released three more hostages to their families. Monday also marks 500 days since the October 7th, 2023, attacks
- After their meeting, Rubio and Netanyahu agreed that Hamas must be destroyed.
- “Hamas cannot continue as a military or government force,” Rubio stated. “And frankly, as long as it stands as a force that can govern or as a force that can administer, or as a force that can threaten by use of violence, peace becomes impossible. They must be eliminated. It must be eradicated.”
- Netanyahu once again backed President Donald Trump’s plan to help all Gazans leave their war-torn, devastated region while others rebuild it under U.S. control. He believes many Palestinians want to leave but Hamas won’t let them.
- “Everybody says this is the largest open-air prison in the world. Not because of us,” Netanyahu declared. “We tried to get the population to leave – to get them out of harm’s way. And Hamas – with rifles, with gunfire – try to prevent them from leaving.”
- Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff recently visited Gaza and saw why people can’t reasonably live in much of it now.
- “It’s completely devastated,” Witkoff observed. “And that begs the question: should people be allowed in there in those dangerous conditions? Thank God we’ve had no incidents. But, there’s 30,000 unexploded shells throughout Gaza, and the buildings are all down. It’s utter destruction.”
- Netanyahu also indicated this weekend he and the Trump administration see eye-to-eye on the threat from Iran.
- “Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder in countering the threat of Iran,” he claimed. “We agree that the ayatollahs must not have nuclear weapons.”
- “Them getting a bomb is devastating to the region,” Witkoff said. “It’ll force every other country in that region to get a bomb, too. We’ll have a nuclear arms race, and that simply can’t happen.”
- Rubio concurred, saying, “Behind everything that threatens peace and stability for the millions of people who call this region home is Iran. And by Iran, I mean the ayatollahs. By Iran, I mean its regime, a regime who, by the way, its people don’t support. The people of Iran are victims of that regime.”
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins told Breitbart News late last week that President Donald Trump and his administration are keenly focused on lowering the price of eggs in the United States and prepared to take any and all actions needed to do so.
- Food prices have continued to rise—the recent economic numbers released earlier this month showed that the inflation that soared under former President Joe Biden was much worse than anyone in Washington realized—including most particularly the price of eggs. The egg industry has been rocked not just by inflation but also avian flu infecting hens nationwide, leading to shortages so bad that some stores are even implementing limits on how many eggs customers can buy.
- I think it’s real important for your audience to understand these egg prices are at an almost 40-year high and that this has been an upward trajectory for a little while. Now, under the four years of Trump, they came back down in ’17, ’18, ’19, and ’20. At least in recent history, those years we had some of the lowest prices on record.”
- “…and why more wasn’t done to address it three years ago, two years ago, one year ago? I’m still trying to figure out. But we’re on it. We’re on it. And we’re going to do everything we can to address it.”
- Asked for more specifics on what USDA might consider in combatting these issues with the dueling threats of inflation and avian flu, Rollins suggested possible biosecurity measures as well as efforts to repopulate farmers’ flocks.
- “…There is a good chance we begin to cool this down over the coming weeks, more likely the coming months, and we’re already in talks with other food producers across the country, but I think it’s important everyone realize there is not a magic wand to be waved here. But there are some things we can do to begin tackling it not just for the next quarter of this year but for the next 10 years and 50 years to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Temperatures are predicted to dip as low as -42.7C (-45F) with wind chills down to 51 below Celsius (-60F) in northeastern Montana into Tuesday. Chicago alone could face temperatures between -28 and -34C (-20 to -30F) this week as a blizzard strikes the Windy City, according to USA Today.
- Dangerously cold wind chill temperatures as low as 45.6 degrees below zero (-50F) are expected in most of North Dakota, which remains under an ‘extreme cold warning’ along with large swaths of South Dakota and Minnesota. Meteorologist Ryan Maue warned on X that ‘your face will fall off at these temperatures.’
- Forecasters said several states would experience the 10th and coldest polar vortex event this season as weather forces in the Arctic are combining to push the chilly air that usually stays near the North Pole into the US and Europe.
- Winter storms pummeled the eastern US over the weekend, killing at least 10 people, including nine victims in Kentucky who died during flooding from heavy rains.
- Most of the deaths, including a mother and her seven-year-old child, were caused by cars getting stuck in high water.
- Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear that at least 1,000 people stranded by floods had to be rescued. President Donald Trump has approved the state’s request for a disaster declaration, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts.
- In Alabama, the weather service in Birmingham said it had confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down in Hale County.
- Storms there and elsewhere in the state destroyed or damaged a handful of mobile homes, downed trees and toppled power lines, but no injuries were immediately reported.
- A state of emergency was declared for parts of Obion County, Tennessee, after a levee failed on Saturday, flooding the small community of Rives, home to around 300 people in the western part of the state.
- Power outages were reported along much of the eastern seaboard, from New York south to Georgia.
- In West Virginia, 13 southern counties were under a state of emergency for flooding and some areas were cut off to vehicle traffic Sunday.
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Important Takeaways:
- Rubio and other top U.S. officials arrive in Saudi Arabia ahead of discussions with Russian envoys on how to end the war in Ukraine
- The talks would be “devoted primarily to restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” the Kremlin said, but would also involve preparations for negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement, Russian state news agency TASS said.
- “We’re moving along,” President Trump told reporters in Florida on Sunday of the coming talks. “We’re trying to get peace with Russia, Ukraine, and we’re working very hard on it.”
- Rubio, who was in Jerusalem over the weekend, is also expected to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday for discussions on the Middle East. The trip comes as Arab leaders have pushed back against Trump’s plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza, and the prospects for extending the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas remain in the balance.
- The arrangements for the U.S.-Russia meeting were firmed up following a Friday call between Rubio and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, which Moscow said was at the initiative of the Americans. The State Department said the two diplomats had discussed “the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues.”
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were heading to Riyadh for the talks.
- The rapid push to convene U.S.-Russian talks followed a call last week between Trump and Putin.
- Trump said the conversation led him to believe Putin wants a settlement. “We spoke long and hard,” Trump said. “Steve Witkoff was with him for a very extended period, like about three hours. I think [Putin] wants to stop fighting.”
- Zelensky said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Ukraine must be at the table and that it was important that European nations be represented as well.
- The Trump administration’s Ukraine envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said at a security conference in Munich on Saturday that he didn’t foresee a direct role for European nations in the talks but that Ukraine would be at the negotiating table when formal peace talks are held.
- Those comments alarmed European officials, who say that the outcome of the Ukraine war is a paramount concern for security on the continent.
- French President Emmanuel Macron is set to host a meeting of European leaders on Monday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and European security. The meeting will include the leaders of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the secretary-general of NATO, among others.
- In an article for a British daily newspaper Monday, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said for the first time that Britain was ready to put its own troops on the ground in Ukraine should it be necessary to guarantee that country’s security.
- Trump on Sunday said Zelensky would be involved in the talks, though he didn’t say at what stage, and insisted that both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders wanted to end the war.
- “They want to end it fast, both of them, and Zelensky wants to end it too,” he said.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
- Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.
- “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
- “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.
- While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”
- He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
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Important Takeaways:
- America finds Europe’s retreat from shared values as the continent turns away from democracy and towards censorship “shocking”, Vice President JD Vance told leaders in Germany in a hard-hitting speech.
- Europe is increasingly acting like the ‘bad guys’ in the Cold War as it turns towards censorship and fails to uphold democracy, U.S. Vice President JD Vance told a stunned hall at Germany’s major annual Munich that despite obsession among the European elite about subversion by Russia and China, actually the greatest threat to the continent is “the threat from within”.
- In a withering check-list of failures of freedom heard of by Americans coming out of Europe in recent months including an annulled election in Romania, threats of social media crackdowns against “hateful content”, and even Christians arrested for praying in public, Vance said these developments are “shocking to American ears”. He said:
- For years we’ve been told everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials, threatening to cancel others, we have to ask if we are holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves because I fundamentally think we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.
- Now within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not. And thank God they lost the Cold War.
- The old Soviet Union lost the Cold War because they didn’t value the “blessings of liberty”, Vance said, warning you cannot simply “mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, what to believe”. It is not clear Europe has learned those lessons of the Cold War, he said.
- Listing the particularly egregious cases of government overreach, Vance reflected: “In Britain and across Europe free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”
- Vance’s speech was not just observation, however, and he also made an “offer” to the audience of experts, stating there is “a new sheriff in town” in the form of Donald Trump, and that he is strongly in favor of freedom of speech. He said, to an almost silent room with only scant applause from a handful: “Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite and I hope we can work together on that.”
- The speech, at the Munich Security Conference, made scant reference to the Ukraine War at all, one of the main topics of conversation hoped for by the European defense and security leaders attending the event this weekend. Doubtless this came as a shock to some given the preponderance of the conflict in the minds of attendees, but evidently saving Europe from itself is a high priority for the Trump White House.
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Important Takeaways:
- As a result of decades of sanctions and the inability of Iran to acquire many sophisticated platforms such as new aircraft or ships, the country tries to build most of its defense systems at home, with R.-Adm. Habibollah Sayyari saying this week that Tehran produces over 90% of its own defense equipment.
- The overall goal here is for Iran to be able to build many sophisticated systems, such as air defenses and missiles, at home. However, Tehran has trouble building advanced warships as well as tanks and warplanes.
- Iran’s investment in indigenous technology may only go so far. The country now has to decide if it will continue to invest in its nuclear program and weaponization of it. If the country does go down that road, it could lead to a regional crisis.
- However, the regime is hinting it may want a deal with the new US administration of President Donald Trump. If that happens, then Tehran can move money from its defense investments to other sectors.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he will only agree to meet in person with Russian leader Vladimir Putin after a common plan is negotiated with U.S. President Trump.
- Zelenskyy also said he believes Trump is the key to ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and said the U.S president gave him his telephone number before Friday’s opening of the Munich Security Conference.
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