Important Takeaways:
- U.S. says prepared to use all power to prevent nuclear Iran
- European diplomats consider ‘snap back’ sanctions to prevent nuclear weapon
- Iran accelerates uranium enrichment, denies pursuing nuclear weapons
- Iran’s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia and China is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
- “Time is of the essence,” U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council, which enshrined the deal in a 2015 resolution.
- “We will take every diplomatic step to prevent Iran from requiring a nuclear weapon, including the triggering of snap back if necessary,” Britain’s deputy U.N. Ambassador James Kariuki told the council on Tuesday.
- They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 next year when the 2015 U.N. resolution on the deal expires.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has added hundreds of new missiles and 100 more nuclear warheads as part of a military buildup designed for a future war with the United States, according to a Pentagon report made public Wednesday.
- The latest survey of Chinese military power also for the first time reveals extensive PLA preparations for sophisticated information warfare operations against the United States, including the use of “deep fake” online posts and cyber-enabled psychological warfare. The goal is to target U.S. military leaders’ decision making in a regional conflict and to demoralize troops and sow divisions in U.S. society, Pentagon analysts said.
- The latest report provides new details on extensive PLA advances in weapons systems, doctrine and training. The efforts include practice missile strikes against U.S. aircraft carriers and warships during operations against Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing has vowed to annex as early as 2027.
- “The PLA increasingly views warfare as a confrontation between opposing operational systems, rather than annihilation of opposing mechanized military forces,” the report said. “Following this logic, PLA writings refer to systems destruction warfare as the next way of war, transforming from mechanized warfare to an informatized and intelligentized style.”
- On the information warfare front, the PLA calls its activities “cognitive domain operations” described in the report as “an asymmetric capability to deter U.S. or third-party entry into a future conflict, or as an offensive capability to shape perceptions or polarize a society,” the report said.
- The operations target the U.S. government and military, media organizations, businesses, academic and cultural institutions and policy communities.
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Important Takeaways:
- A 1,547-page spending deal was released Tuesday night will give members of Congress a raise.
- Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, explained in 2023 that the so-called “Member Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) automatically takes effect unless it is blocked.”
- “News flash: a COLA is a pay increase for Members of Congress,” she stated unequivocally.
- Congress often cleverly rebrands politically toxic items like congressional pay raises, as when they began referring to earmarks as “congressionally directed spending.”
- This is not the first time in recent memory Congress has taken advantage of a last-minute lame-duck spending bill to benefit itself.
- In the 2022 lame-duck spending bill, Congress snuck in a provision to allow reimbursement for a number of living expenses, including lodging, food, and travel while on the job in Washington, DC.
- According to the New York Times, individual members could be reimbursed up to about $34,000 in the first year.
- Most members of Congress earn $174,000 annually, although some in leadership positions receive higher salaries. The Speaker of the House receives $223,500, while the Senate president pro tempore receives $193,400.
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Important Takeaways:
- The strange, Zeppelin-like aircraft had been spotted on the Russian side of the frontier near Narva, a Russian-speaking Estonian town on the far edges of Nato territory.
- After some debate, Estonian police chose to ignore the blimp and hoped that would be the end of the matter. But the next day, it came back – this time marked with a “Z”, the symbol of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
- “We are seeing things like this nearly every week,” Egert Belitšev, the director-general of the Estonian police, said during a tour of Narva’s border checkpoint, the day before Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, arrived in the country for a security summit with Baltic and Nordic leaders.
- “It was intentionally made visible to everyone, to say: ‘We are watching you.’”
- “Two years ago we had 18 border incidents and this year we had 96,”
- “We have seen constant attempts to destabilize the situation.”
- In one of the more serious incidents in May, Russian border guards removed 20 buoys from the Narva river in the middle of the night in an apparent attempt to redraw the edges of Russia’s territory.
- “They did it at 3am – this is not something you do if it is a proper or normal thing,” Mr. Belitšev said.
- Moscow is also trying to push irregular migrants across the Estonian border, and across the Baltic Sea into Finland.
- Police say there have even been cases of Russians trying to smuggle drone parts across the Estonia border to support Putin’s war.
- “Russia will remain a threat for a very significant time, we don’t see any changes in the mindset of the Russian regime,” Mr. Tori said.
- “Russia’s understanding is that we will become more tired and they can outlast us in this war of aggression. Russia sees itself as being at war with Nato and therefore the ends justify the means.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Natalie Rupnow was identified as the shooter who opened fire inside a study hall inside Abundant Life Christian School, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. Responding officers found Rupnow with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She died on the way to a hospital.
- Police were speaking with Rupnow’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and searching Rupnow’s home, Barnes said. He declined to offer additional details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family.
- “He lost someone as well,” Barnes said of Rupnow’s father. “And so we’re not going to rush the information. We’ll take our time and make sure we do our due diligence.”
- Barnes said officers responded just before 11 a.m. to a second-grade student’s 911 call reporting the shooting.
- The teacher and student that were killed in the shooting have not yet been identified.
- Barnes said that of the six wounded in the shooting, two were students in critical condition. A teacher and three students were also hospitalized with less serious injuries, and two of them were later released.
- The FBI’s Milwaukee bureau says it has deployed agents to the scene to assist in investigating.
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Important Takeaways:
- A Ukrainian official has taken credit for the assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russia’s chemical, biological and radiation defense forces, and his assistant, who were killed in an explosion in Moscow on Tuesday.
- Russia’s Investigative Committee said the explosive device was placed in a scooter near a residential apartment block on Ryazansky Avenue and triggered remotely, according to The Associated Press. The bombing came one day after Ukrainian Security Services charged Kirillov with crimes.
- The bomb had the power of roughly 300 grams of TNT, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
- Kirillov was charged by the SBU on Monday with using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield. Several countries had also placed him under sanctions for his role in the war against Ukraine, The AP reported.
- The SBU said it has recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons during Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which began in Feb. 2022.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. Embassy reportedly suffered severe damage during a 7.4 magnitude earthquake on the Pacific Island of Vanuatu near Australia.
- Video circulating on social media showed “buckled windows and collapsed concrete pillars on a building hosting foreign missions in the capital, including the U.S., British, French and New Zealand embassies.”
- A spokesperson for New Zealand’s foreign ministry said in a statement the country’s “High Commission building, which is co-located with the United States, the French and the United Kingdom, has sustained significant damage.”
- Vanuatu had been a colony of the British and the French until 1980 when it gained independence and became an independent republic.
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Important Takeaways:
- A staggering poll from Emerson College suggests that more young Americans believe that Luigi Mangione’s assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was acceptable than don’t.
- According to the survey of 1,000 registered voters, 41% of 18 t0 29-year-olds believe that the murder of Thompson was either somewhat or completely acceptable, with 24% falling into the former and 17% falling into the latter categories. Thirty-three percent of that same cohort believes that the murder was completely unacceptable, and an additional 7% believes it was somewhat unacceptable.
- Nineteen percent professed to be “neutral” on the question.
- The 18-29 grouping was the only age demographic in which a plurality deemed the assassination acceptable. In every other one, a majority said that it was unacceptable.
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Important Takeaways:
- The rising cost of living, particularly in housing and groceries, is pushing more families in Washington state to seek assistance from food banks.
- According to Robert Ojeda of Food Lifeline, the largest hunger relief organization in the state, food insecurity affects about 25% of Washingtonians, meaning one in four residents is struggling to access enough food.
- Last year, these visits totaled 8 million, resulting in the distribution of 72 million pounds of food through 300 food banks and partner organizations.
- Ojeda noted that the demand is expected to grow, with visits projected to increase from 8 million to 10 million year over year. As more families rely on food banks, Ojeda is calling on the community for support during the season of giving
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands are feared dead after an island in the Indian Ocean was hit by a devastating cyclone which carried 163mph winds and left a trail of destruction likened to the aftermath of a nuclear war.
- Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte, France’s poorest region, over the weekend, and has been considered the most violent that the island has experienced in almost a century.
- Chido’s dizzying winds tore through the archipelago and left buildings heavily damaged, vehicles destroyed, and the main airport and hospital completely wrecked.
- Mayotte Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville told local TV: ‘I think there are some several hundred dead, maybe we’ll get close to a thousand, even thousands… given the violence of this event.’
- However, he said it was currently ‘extremely difficult’ to get an exact number.
- The Interior Ministry echoed these concerns, saying it could not confirm any figures at this stage, as a Mayotte local explained: ‘What we are experiencing is a tragedy, it feels like the day after a nuclear war. I saw an entire neighborhood disappear.’
- French civil security spokesperson Alexandre Jouassard told the France 2 news channel: ‘The next minutes and hours are very important.
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