The judge investigating the 2020 Beirut port explosion has charged Lebanon’s then-prime minister, Hassan Diab, and two other former ministers with homicide with probable intent, according to a court summons seen by the Reuters news agency.

Other top officials, including the country’s public prosecutor and the head of the domestic intelligence agency, were also charged in connection with the blast, judicial sources said on Tuesday.

Judge Tarek Bitar, who has unexpectedly resumed an inquiry that has been paralysed by high-level political resistance, has scheduled questioning with Prosecutor General Ghassan Oweidat for February.

Pierre Gemayel, brother of a victim, told Al Jazeera that he was surprised but also happy with Bitar’s move.

“It is not normal [that for] more than one year the investigation is blocked; now we have a little hope that something is moving on,” he said.

Bitar’s efforts to interrogate top officials over the explosion, which killed at least 218 people and shattered parts of Beirut, have been hindered by factions including heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Fighting has flared in recent days between Myanmar junta forces and rebels opposed to their rule, officials and locals said Tuesday, with reports that large numbers of civilians have fled the violence.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since Aung San Suu Kyi‘s civilian government was toppled in an army coup almost two years ago.

Long-established ethnic rebel groups, as well as dozens of “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF), have emerged in opposition and clash frequently with the military.

The last few days have seen intense clashes in southeast Karen state, around Kyonedoe, and the border town of Payathonzu.

“There were drone attacks by local PDFs at a military command near Kyonedoe town a few days ago,” a military source told AFP.

Peru's President Dina Boluarte called Tuesday for a "national truce" to end weeks of unrest that has left at least 46 people dead as protesters press for her resignation and fresh elections.

Many Peruvians remain angry at the December 7 ouster of then-president Pedro Castillo, who was arrested after attempting to dissolve congress and rule by decree, and replaced by Boluarte.

Protests broke out almost immediately, largely fueled by anger in poor rural regions in the south where inhabitants -- mainly Indigenous -- felt that Castillo, who has Indigenous roots himself, represented their interests rather than those of the Lima elite.

Demonstrators have kept up weeks of protests and road blocks and are also demanding the dissolution of Congress and the rewriting of the constitution.

Newly released documents from the National Archives detail how President George W. Bush authorized the shootdown of hijacked airplanes at 10:00 a.m. EDT on 9/11 after Bush had learned that two had already crashed into the World Trade Center towers.

But these orders were too late to save the people who died in the Twin Towers or 183 people who died when the western side of the Pentagon was struck by American Airlines Flight 77 at 9:37 a.m. (the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, crashed southeast of Pittsburgh in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. after passengers reportedly took over the plane).

The sixty-four thousand dollar question is why Bush did not order the shootdown of the planes earlier—when it could have saved people’s lives.

Bush had been alerted just minutes after a hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., while he was on a visit to schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida.

After an aide whispered news of the second attack on the Twin Towers, President Bush continued reading a children’s book, The Pet Goat, and then at 9:30 a.m. addressed Americans at a press conference in which he said that “terrorism against our nation will not stand,” before being whisked away and stopped at about seven locations that were reported, including Barksdale Air Force Base.

Webmaster addition: Witnesses on the ground reported seeing Flight 93 being followed by a military jet. The debris from the aircraft was spread over an area of 8 miles, consistent with Flight 93 coming apart high in the air rather than impacting the ground.

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This week the US government reached its 31.4 trillion dollars borrowing limit, better known as the “debt ceiling.” This led to a showdown among House Republicans, President Biden, and congressional Democrats.

House Republicans are demanding that President Biden and Senate Democrats agree to include spending cuts with the debt ceiling increase. However, President Biden and the congressional Democrats are refusing to negotiate with Republicans. Rather, they and their allies in the mainstream media are lambasting Republicans for their “irresponsibility” in seeking to include spending cuts with an increase in the debt ceiling.

America’s national debt is approximately 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), meaning the government owes more than the population produces. Interest payments on the national debt follow in size behind other federal budget big spending areas of Social Security, Medicare, and “defense.” While interest payments are made, the national debt continues to grow each year.

Webmaster addition:

Bulgaria will hold another parliamentary election — its fifth in two years — after the Socialist Party on Tuesday announced that it had failed to form a government and had returned the unfulfilled mandate to the country’s president.

“We have done everything necessary to fulfil the third mandate,” party leader Kornelia Ninova said, adding that despite setting clear national priorities at the talks with the other parties, “there was not enough will to form a working government.”

It was the third and final opportunity to form a Cabinet in this parliament. The European Union’s poorest member is now heading toward elections yet again.

Before the Socialist attempt at forming a coalition, the two strongest groups in Bulgaria’s parliament — the center-right GERB party and the reformist We Continue the Change party — had each tried and failed to find enough support to lead their own governments.

President Rumen Radev will now dissolve parliament, appoint a caretaker government and schedule another election, to be held most likely in April.

As reported earlier by Cristina Laila – According to emails uncovered from the “Laptop from Hell,” Hunter Biden sent his business partner Devon Archer a very detailed email on Ukraine on April 13 12, 2014 – just one week before Joe Biden visited Ukraine to meet with then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

It appears that Hunter Biden was emailing Devon Archer information he received from a briefing his father and Vice President Joe Biden held earlier.  Or the information may have come directly from top-secret documents.

Webmaster addition: Hunter the spy! Kind of has a ring to it!

The newly formed Arizona Senate Elections Committee, chaired by State Senator Wendy Rogers, heard a major presentation on voter irregularities and signature verification failures in Maricopa County’s 2022 Midterm Election. 

We The People AZ Alliance co-founder and chairman Shelby Busch delivered this phenomenal presentation regarding voting machine or ballot printer failures and the potential voter fraud that occurred while “verifying” ballot signatures.

The Gateway Pundit reported live on this true bombshell hearing by the Elections Committee.

As The Gateway Pundit reported in November 2022, Shelby Busch, We The People AZ Alliance, and State Legislators compared and presented voter registration forms with signatures on over 100,000 2020 ballot envelopes and identified a staggering 20% error rate in signature verification.

After determining that OVER 420,000 ballot affidavits “failed signature verification in the 2020 Election,” based on their review of roughly 25% of 1.9 million envelopes, Busch and her team extrapolated this data. They concluded that there were “a total of 290,644 failed signatures in the 2022 Election.” 

Today I spoke with Joe Biden at the White House. I directly asked the President to fulfill a promise he made to my constituents. I’ll be able to share more details soon.

If I’d had time, I might also have given him some recommended reading. Namely, a new Washington Examiner profile headlined: “Calif.’s new GOP Congressman Kevin Kiley is on a mission: Gavin Newsom’s disastrous policies can’t spread to rest of country.” 

In explaining the reason for this mission, I might have directed his attention to Newsom’s home of San Francisco. A new report shows it’s losing residents at a faster pace than any major city in U.S. history. 

Another rapidly declining city, Los Angeles, just provided a fresh demonstration of what’s driving people away: the Thin Blue Line Flag has been banned from the Police Department. As of today, the flag is now proudly on display outside my D.C. office.

As for Newsom, accountability is on the way. Congress is investigating the record-setting $30 billion in EDD fraud he allowed. And yesterday, his attempt to punish doctors for COVID “misinformation” was challenged in court. The judge called the law “nonsense.”

Barack Obama's spokesperson refused on Tuesday to say whether the former president was searching his homes for classified documents, as The New York Times reported that prosecuting Donald Trump for mishandling files could be complicated by Joe Biden's own classified chaos.

With the saga of classified documents growing - Trump dragged his heels for 15 months and is now being investigated by a special counsel; Biden said he had 'no regrets', yet five searches have now yielded documents - on Tuesday it emerged that Mike Pence, the former vice president, had found classified documents at his own Indiana home.

Obama's communications director, Hannah Hankins, was asked on Tuesday by Fox News whether he too was searching his homes.

'We have nothing for you at this time,' she told the channel.

Republicans' relatively small House majority is giving some Democrats hope of raising the debt limit.

That's because with the help of as few as five moderate GOP members, Democrats could use a discharge petition to vote on and pass a bill.

A discharge petition allows an absolute majority of the House to force a floor vote on a bill. That would bypass House leadership and the Rules Committee that usually determines what legislation comes up for a vote and when.

The Washington Post reported that sources said House Democrats this week, via a series of formal and informal meetings, are starting to strategize on the possible use of a discharge petition.

Two left-wing nonprofits have combined to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-backed government contracts since President Biden took office, with a vast majority of the money going towards efforts to keep illegal immigrants in the United States, records reviewed by Fox News Digital shows. 

The Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based group that views immigration enforcement agencies as a "threat" to civil liberties, has been the primary breadwinner in the past two years, collecting around $350 million from government contracts for immigration services. The Acacia Center for Justice, a newer nonprofit linked to the Vera Institute and another left-wing immigration group, has also pocketed tens of millions of dollars in recent federal contracts. 

The progressive groups have landed the contracts amid the escalating border crisis, which recently saw a quarter of a million migrant encounters at the southern border in December, a new high for the Biden-era as the crisis enters its third year.

Webmaster addition: That's your money Biden is spending!

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has formally removed Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from their powerful Intelligence Committee roles.

In a letter to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, McCarthy dealt the final blow to Schiff and Swalwell’s hope of keeping their coveted committee assignments.

McCarthy has long vowed to remove the two congressmen from the Intel Committee due to concerns about their integrity.

Jeffries had written to McCarthy in a final ditch attempt to try and persuade the speaker to reconsider the move.

McCarthy stuck by his guns, however.

“Dear Leader Jeffries, Thank you for your letter dated January 21, 2023, regarding Representatives Schiff and Swalwell,” McCarthy wrote.

President Joe Biden’s personal attorneys reportedly misled the Department of Justice (DOJ) in November about classified documents being stored at his Wilmington residence.

Shortly after documents at the Penn Biden Center were unearthed on November 2, the White House and DOJ reportedly agreed to hide the scandal from the American people. It’s unclear why Biden’s personal attorneys were initially searching for his illegally stashed documents. The White House has failed to provide the initial reason or cause for the search.

After the initial discovery on November 2, Biden’s personal attorneys told the DOJ that the only location where troves of classified were stored was at the Penn Biden Center, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Weeks later, Biden’s personal attorneys unearthed additional troves at his garage on December 20. Still, the scandal remained hidden from the public, despite later claims of total transparency.

On January 9, the scandal was leaked to CBS News. White House officials are reportedly suspicious about how Biden’s classified document scandal was leaked to the press after only a select group of White House and DOJ officials knew about the violation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre isn’t having the best month, and making matters worse for the White House is the growing discontent within the media ranks that until now, wasn’t necessarily much of a worry.

President Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal is creating enough chum in the water and journalists smell the blood. They’re asking increasingly tougher questions that Jean-Pierre doesn’t seem interested in answering, whatsoever. As a result, a side story is developing involving the growing rift between the White House and the media.

Jean-Pierre has dodged nearly every question related to the classified documents scandal since it became an issue, parroting the same reply to reporters that they should refer to the Justice Department for further information. On Tuesday, a foreign reporter, obviously frustrated with the situation, called out her ability to perform the job of White House press secretary.

Arizona’s first Democratic governor in over a decade spent no time proving she was every bit a Democrat by putting the state’s executions on hold — sparing more than 100 murderers on the state’s death row, including a man who kidnapped and brutally killed his girlfriend’s ex-husband.

Shortly after news broke that classified documents were found inside former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home, President Trump took to Truth Social to defend Pence.

Joe Biden on Tuesday hosted Democrat Congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room.

Columnist Bill Robinson wrote an op-ed telling the story of how an executive order signed by Donald Trump saved his life.

U.S. service members who got fired for refusing to comply with the Pentagon’s tyrannical COVID vaccine mandate are now being forced to pay back their signing bonuses.

As you may recall Paul Pelosi was injured and taken to the hospital on the early morning of October 28, 2022.  Pelosi was not alone.  A man named David DePape was also sent to the hospital.  The story that surrounded the event that led to them being sent to the hospital was suspect and it changed over time.

According to the first police conference, DePape was charged with burglary but the police never mentioned how he entered the house.

In a second police conference, the police confirmed that DePape forced entry into the rear door at the rear of the home.

The day after the incident TGP reported that nothing added up.

There was no doubt that the Pelosis’ home had a security system.  This system likely includes motion detectors as well.  Most homes do in this day and age.  Any movement near the house or broken glass would immediately be registered at the surveillance company.  They in turn would notify the police of the encounter.  Also, there are likely police cars circling the neighborhood where the Pelosis live.

The police reported that Paul Pelosi made the call to the police.  Paul Pelosi never shared that the home was broken into.  He also referred to the so-called intruder by his first name – David.

There are also questions about this event being a burglary.  DePape reportedly forced entry into a rear door.  But a video showed that there was glass on the outside of the home on the stairs behind the house.  If the window was broken from the outside, wouldn’t the glass be on the floor on the inside of the house?

 Russian combat aircraft, missile troops and artillery struck over 60 Ukrainian artillery units at firing positions in the past day during the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Monday.

"In the past 24 hours, operational-tactical aircraft, missile troops and artillery of the Russian group of forces struck 63 artillery units at firing positions, manpower and military equipment in 97 areas," the spokesman said.

Russian artillery struck amassed manpower of two Ukrainian army brigades in the Kupyansk area, eliminating over 40 militants in the past day, Konashenkov reported.

"In the Kupyansk area, artillery of the Western Military District inflicted damage on amassed manpower of the Ukrainian army’s 14th and 92nd mechanized brigades in areas near the settlements of Dvurechnaya and Berestovoye in the Kharkov Region and Novosyolovskoye in the Lugansk People’s Republic," the spokesman said.

The Ukrainian military has reinforced its battlegroup in the Donetsk area with US and British mercenaries, a spokesman for people’s militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) told TASS on Monday.

"According to our information, the battlegroup in the Donetsk area already included a foreign contingent and has now been replenished by American and British mercenaries," the spokesman said.

Some data suggest that there are several foreign groups in the Ukrainian battlegroup in that area distributed among different sectors of the front line, he added.

The DPR people’s militia spokesman told TASS earlier on Monday that Ukrainian servicemen and Polish mercenaries operating in the Gorlovka area had begun ever more frequently to engage in verbal squabbles that could be heard during their radio communications. German mercenaries are also positioned in that area, according to the latest data, he said.

Jeff Zients, the incoming White House chief of staff, met multiple times in 2016 with President Biden's son Hunter Biden who is facing criminal and congressional probes into his past business dealings.

According to emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and verified by Fox News Digital, Zients met with Hunter Biden twice in February 2016 and on another occasion in May 2016, just months before President Biden, the vice president at the time, was set to leave the White House. President Biden also attended the first two meetings which both took place at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice presidential residence is located.

During the first meeting — which took place on Feb. 12, 2016 — Zients, Hunter Biden, then-Vice President Biden met with David Rubenstein, a billionaire and founder of hundred-billion-dollar asset management firm The Carlye Group. Rubenstein is also the member of a series of other organizations including the World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

A jaw-dropping article published by The Wall Street Journal in December 2020 has resurfaced.  In it, American physicians admitted to ventilating patients who did not need it as a step in their protocol.  It was done not as a treatment that was likely to benefit the patient, but rather as a fruitless and callous way of attempting to stop the spread of covid-19.

Doctors are treating a new flood of critically ill coronavirus patients with treatments from before the pandemic, to keep more patients alive and send them home sooner.

Before the pandemic, between about 30% to more than 40% of ventilator patients died, according to research … As the pandemic grew, hospitals in the US reported death rates in some cases of about 50% for ventilated covid-19 patients.

Hospitals Retreat from Early Covid Treatment and Return to Basics, The Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2020

Add to the fact that up to 50 per cent of covid-19 “cases” were just “PCR positive” false positives, wrote James Lyons-Weiler. “Euthanising humans is illegal. Especially for the benefit of other patients.”

Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in a hypothetical general election rematch and is the clear-cut front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, according to a poll.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said on Tuesday he will introduce legislation to ban TikTok nationwide, charging that it violates the privacy of Americans.

Yuma, Arizona, is on the brink of collapse, say city officials, citing President Biden's border policies that have resulted in a massive influx of illegal immigration in the area, as reported by Fox News.

Reporter April Ryan tried to argue on Monday that "urban areas" are disproportionately impacted by the gas price crisis and even suggested that race played a role.