- The certification of Nord Stream 2 has ground to a halt because of Ukraine’s lobbying efforts, the country’s prime minister has alleged, with Kiev having consistently branded the Russian-backed gas pipeline as a threat to its economy and security. “Today, we are successfully blocking the Russian hybrid gas weapon Nord Stream 2 and will continue to do so,” the prime minister remarked. According to Shmygal, the project poses not only a risk to Ukraine, but the whole of Europe.
- Trump claimed in a statement on Saturday that Durham’s most recent filing “provides indisputable evidence” that his campaign and administration “were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely prefabricated connection to Russia.” “This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than Watergate and those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution,” Trump argued, adding that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” Hillary Clinton responded to the scandal in a Twitter post on Wednesday, accusing Trump and Fox News of “desperately spinning up a fake scandal to distract from his real ones.”
- Iran and world powers are on the brink of reaching an agreement on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran’s top negotiator has said, though he added that the ball was now on the side of the deal’s other partners. However, the diplomat warned against celebrating too soon, pointing out that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also spoke about the deal on Thursday, telling his country’s Senate that “it is not a question of weeks, it is a question of days.”
- According to the survey, conducted between January 21 and 23, “Britons are less sure than they were that humanity is here to stay.” Only 23% of the respondents believe our species will never die out.
- China and New Zealand this week completed the ratification of their upgraded free-trade agreement, which will come into force in April. Although the deal was a long time in the works, it expands the number of tariff-free goods New Zealand is able to export into China, securing what is its largest market and a key source of income for its farmers. Jacinda Ardern’s more cautious approach towards Beijing, as opposed to the absolutely relentless hostility to China seen in neighboring Australia, has seen her country mocked as ‘New Xi-land.’
- North Korea appears to have completely removed displays of a key military emblem symbolizing Kim Jong Un’s personal role as “supreme commander” of the country’s armed forces, NK News analysis reveals, finishing a process that began in 2020. The supreme commander’s red flag and emblem were removed from official DPRK calendars in 2022 for the first time since Kim came to power, and a guard post at the inter-Korean border stopped flying the flag over this past winter as well.
- A decision by Germany’s federal disease-control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), to reduce the period of time during which a person is considered “recovered” from Covid-19 to three months, was deemed unlawful by a Berlin court on Thursday. Two unvaccinated people who’d tested positive for the Covid-19 in October had lodged an urgent application with the court against the RKI after the federal body reduced the “immunity status” period from six to three months. The court said that the RKI’s decision to shorten the period to three months exceeded its authority as an organization. The federal government must decide for itself how long the convalescent status is valid, according to the judges, referring to the regulations in the Infection Protection Act. This authority cannot be transferred to the RKI, the court reiterated.
- [ Democracy According To Meta ] Weeks before the first round of France’s presidential election, US tech giant Meta has announced a set of new initiatives for combating “misinformation” on the platforms it owns, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The initiatives are meant to boost “media literacy” in France and teach people “the best practices for dealing with information online,” the company owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. Meta announced Agence France-Presse (AFP) will act as its fact-checking and disinformation watchdog. Adding an AFP reporting option to the popular messenger is “an important step in the fight against false information,” Meta said. The agency is also releasing three educational videos on how to develop the “right reflexes” for responding to “dubious information during the election period.”
- Documents released to RT investigative unit The Detail under Freedom of Information laws have revealed how, in the days following the mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein, US Bureau of Prison officials struggled to get their story straight on his alleged suicide. Simultaneously, they were using the opportunity to wage a PR war, flooding the media with potentially false narratives about his death, many of which persist to this day. The declassified records analyzed by The Detail show that, for reasons unclear, it wasn’t until almost an hour-and-a-half later that BoP officials informed the Department of Justice (DOJ) that Epstein had been taken to hospital after another apparent suicide attempt. An internal email, from 7:52am, notes receipt of the grave news – “no other information was provided” though, and the BoP pledged to “update us as more info becomes available.” Of course, by this time he was long dead.
- Belarus’s longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko has said he will never step down from office if the West does not put an end to efforts to oust him from the country’s top job, claiming that he is prepared to deploy not only nuclear, but “supernuclear” weapons to deter his enemies. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Lukashenko accused the West of “attacking” him and attempting to stage coups in Belarus. On the subject of a possible transfer of power in the country, the leader, who has been in office since 1994, said, “if the collective West will take its sights off Belarus and not try to overturn things there, as happened in 2020, then everything will be lawful and thorough, it will all happen earlier than they want. If they attack us, like in 2020, then I will be an eternal president.”
- A woman was sentenced to six months in jail for impersonating by using a fake travel document to leave the country through Dubai Airport. According to the Dubai Court of First Instance, the 31-year-old woman lost her passport while she was inside the UAE and worked illegally without a permit which led to accumulated fines she couldn’t afford to pay. The woman admitted to losing her passport and working illegally in the UAE. She claimed that an unknown person helped her get the fake passport and she posed as another person to leave the country.
- One of Gulf’s biggest names in fresh chicken and processed meat, Tanmiah Food Company, is giving serious thought to get into plant-based protein foods. “We do believe a market is there for plant-based protein products in the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar in particular,” said Zulfiqur Hamadani, CEO. “There are some initial studies we find particularly interesting as consumers seek healthier options. So, if they find plant-based protein options that taste like chicken or beef, we could try and serve them what they want.”
- Officials in Queensland and NSW would be rebranding shark attacks to change the animal’s image as a ‘man-eating monster’. The NSW Department of Primary Industries had started describing a shark encounter as ‘incidents’ or ‘negative interactions’ in their official reports, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
- The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report states that North Korea’s most infamous hacking group Lazarus has shown “remarkable adaptation to evolving regulations,” allowing it to stay ahead of government regulators as cryptocurrencies develop. The report points to a Sept. 2020 attack on KuCoin that saw North Korean hackers lift nearly $300 million from the crypto exchange’s users. “This major intrusion included a range of sophisticated hacking and laundering techniques, including a professional mixing service and the use of new DeFi platforms in an attempt to obfuscate the activity,” the report states, represent “radical improvements” in Lazarus’ ability to obscure the stolen funds’ origins.
News Burst 18 February 2022
Rose Rambles... 