Important Takeaways:
- The northern invasion: New York, New Hampshire and Vermont see highest EVER border crossings as migrants take advantage of lax laws to get into Canada
- New York, Vermont and New Hampshire counties have seen a record number of illegal border crossings in recent months, startling statistics show.
- The new numbers, up more than twofold from 2022, come as an increasing number of migrants elect to travel through Canada rather than Mexico to avoid detection, creating a new spin on the now years-long crisis.
- While most still use legal ports of entry, more than 12,200 were apprehended crossing illegally from the north in 2023 – much more than the 3,578 arrested the year prior.
- Experts have attributed this phenomenon to Canada’s lax laws, like not requiring travelers from Mexico to have a visa to enter the country.
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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:
- U.S. members of Congress introduced a proposed law called the BIOSECURE Act that would ban the use of tax dollars for the utilization of genetics companies from China that collaborate with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
- This is a good bill, but one must ask: How in the world have we allowed such a practice to continue to this day? Why does the executive branch of the U.S. government need a law for such a common-sense rule that it could have made policy long ago?
- We should have had an all-of-government, if not all-of-society, effort since at least the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 to end reliance on China, especially companies linked to its military. We should most especially have limited the release of genetic data to Beijing.
- As noted in the House announcement, but not in most of the bill’s mainstream media coverage, the proposed law is in part meant to stop the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from using U.S. genetic data for malign purposes, including genetic targeting of U.S. citizens with bioweapons.
- “Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) collects genetic data of Americans [and] uses it for research with the Chinese military,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) in the bill’s announcement. Mr. Gallagher chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP. He introduced the House version of the bill, along with his Democratic co-chair.
- “The CCP will undoubtedly use the genetic data collected by BGI to further its malign aggression, potentially even to develop a bioweapon used to target the American people,” Mr. Gallagher noted.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine set to receive new game-changing US-made ‘glide bombs’ with 100-mile range as soon as today in new frontline blow to Putin
- Ukraine is set to receive a first batch of new long-range missiles that will be able to strike deep into Russian-held territory.
- The new 100-mile ‘glide missiles’ could prove to be a game changer in Kyiv’s military capabilities, and in its fight against Vladimir Putin’s invading forces.
- Built by Boeing and Saab, the new precision-guided missiles will also supplement Ukraine’s existing ATACM rockets, which are provided by the US.
- Their arrival follows months of testing by the United States military, but even the US doesn’t have these weapons in its arsenal, sources cited by Politico said.
- Ukraine is set to receive the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs as early as today, according to the US officials familiar with the matter, a relief for officials in Kyiv after the EU said it would provide only half the shells it promised by March.
- A precision-guided weapon of this type could allow Ukraine to again strike high-value targets more consistently and conserve its ever-dwindling supply of shells that it vitally needs to keep Russian advances at bay in the coming months and year.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia ‘will not be afraid to use NUCLEAR weapons in a war with NATO because it believes the US wouldn’t dare respond’
- Russia’s willingness to deploy nuclear weapons in a potential conflict with NATO is growing because the Kremlin believes the US and its allies would not dare to respond, a think tank warned yesterday
- ‘Knowing that the West is casualty- and risk-averse, Russia may seek to use enough non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) to inflict damage preventing its own defeat,’ the report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) read.
- ‘[Russia knows] the US would be unwilling to cross the nuclear threshold in retaliation, and may terminate the conflict early.
- ‘The Russian perception of the lack of credible Western will to use nuclear weapons or to accept casualties in conflict further reinforces Russia’s aggressive NSNW thought and doctrine,’ it concluded.
- The report said the logic of using such a nuclear weapon would be to escalate a conflict in a controlled fashion, ‘either to prevent the US and NATO from engaging, or to coerce them into war termination on Russian terms’.
- NSNWs include all nuclear weapons with a range of up to 3,400 miles, starting with tactical arms designed for use on the battlefield – as opposed to longer-range strategic nuclear weapons that Russia or the US could use to strike each other’s homeland.
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Important Takeaways:
- North Korea Says Tests Underwater Nuclear Drone, Criticizes US-Led Joint Drills
- North Korea has conducted a test of its underwater nuclear weapons system in a protest against this week’s joint military drills by South Korea, the United States and Japan, state media KCNA said on Friday.
- The test of the “Haeil-5-23” system, a name North Korea has given to its nuclear-capable underwater attack drones, was carried out by the defense ministry’s think tank in the waters off its east coast, the report said, without specifying a date.
- The ministry’s unnamed spokesman accused the United States, South Korea and Japan of “getting frantic” with military exercises, warning of “catastrophic consequences.”
- Later on Friday, South Korea’s defense ministry issued a warning against the North’s recent series of weapons tests, calling for an immediate halt.
- “Our military is thoroughly prepared for North Korea’s provocations under a solid joint defense posture with the United States,” it said in a statement, vowing “overwhelming” responses if North Korea stages a direct provocation.
- Dubbed “Haeil”, which means tsunami, the new drone system was first reportedly tested in March 2023, and state media said it was intended to make sneak attacks in enemy waters and destroy naval strike groups and major operational ports by creating a large radioactive wave through an underwater explosion.
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Important Takeaways:
- A blast of arctic cold air is plunging into the U.S.
- Lows in the 20s, perhaps teens, will occur along the northern Gulf Coast, from East Texas to North Florida.
- Teens, perhaps a few single digit-lows, are expected in the Deep South.
- Below-zero low temperatures could occur as far south as parts of the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and northern Arkansas.
- Lows in the minus 20s are possible as far south as Iowa and Nebraska.
- Some lows in Montana will reach minus 40 degrees.
- This generally colder pattern could hang on until the last full week of January or longer.
- A reporting station near Chester, Montana, plunged to minus 54 degrees Saturday morning. Watson Lake, British Columbia, Canada, plunged to minus 57 degrees.
- Dickinson, North Dakota, registered a minus 66-degree wind chill early Saturday morning. Even more brutal, Lupin, in Canada’s Northwest Territories measured a minus 77-degree wind chill Saturday morning, with a 40-mph wind accompanying temperatures in the minus 30s.
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Important Takeaways:
- China’s “Unrestricted Warfare” Against the US
- The Chinese Communist Party, led by China’s President Xi Jinping, has, over the years, by espionage, intellectual property theft, hacking, spying and militarizing artificial islands, initiated a bitter conflict between China and the US.
- China appears determined to “neutralize” states that might challenge its claim to the South and East China Seas. If successful, China’s naval assets will dominate a large portion of the world’s commercial sea lanes, if the US is unable — or unwilling — to knit together a serious formal military alliance of democratic states in the Indo-Pacific.
- Rather than fight a war, China apparently is hoping to envelop the US in Latin America by establishing Chinese-controlled ports and numerous bilateral Belt and Road Initiative projects in Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil and Argentina.
- Is the US ready?
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Important Takeaways:
- 83 percent in new poll concerned about political violence
- The new poll from Navigator — a Democratic research firm — found 83 percent of participants were concerned about the threat of political violence in the U.S. today. About 42 percent of this group said they are “very concerned,” while 41 percent said they are “somewhat concerned.”
- They also indicated they are worried about rising political violence in the future, with 85 percent expressing some degree of concern.
- About 86 percent of Democratic respondents say they are concerned over political violence today, compared to 80 percent of Republicans. Ninety-three percent of Democrats said they’re concerned about future political violence, while 79 percent of Republicans said the same.
- Republicans are also perceived as more prone to use political violence to push their agenda, with 47 percent of participants agreeing with the sentiment. Broken down by party, 80 percent of Democrats said Republicans are more prone to political violence, while 68 percent of Republicans said Democrats are more prone to it.
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Important Takeaways:
- US drug shortages are forcing ‘impossible choices’ for Americans, experts tell Senate committee
- “The absence of a generic and cheap drug like fludarabine literally can be the difference between life and death,” Westin told members of the US Senate Committee on Finance at a hearing Tuesday.
- Marsha Blackburn noted that the medical center at Vanderbilt in Nashville has had to dedicate more than 100 staff members to managing and mitigating disruptions caused by shortages.
- “This is something that is becoming all too common with our providers,” the Tennessee Republican said Tuesday.
- The majority of the nearly 200 ongoing shortages – 84% – don’t involve new or novel drugs but rather generics that have been on the market for decades, said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. Generics make up 9 of every 10 prescriptions filled in the US, so shortages have a big impact on the country’s health.
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