Israeli occupation forces killed nine Palestinians and injured at least twenty on Thursday during violent raids in the occupied city of Jenin and its refugee camp.

The raids began on the evening of January 25 and persisted into January 26, in what is being described as "one of the deadliest days" in the West Bank since last year.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), several have been detained throughout the raids and transferred for interrogation by Israel’s security service. As a result of the incursions, intense clashes broke out between Israeli troops and resistance fighters, several of whom sustained bullet wounds.

An elderly woman has also been reported among the dead, according to security officials. Eyewitnesses have referred to the situation as a "massacre."

The Israeli army cut off the power supply to the Jenin camp, while also blocking journalists and ambulance teams from entering. Health officials have said that injuries are continuing to accumulate.

"There is an invasion that is unprecedented in the past period, in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries … The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him," Wissam Baker, head of Jenin’s public hospital, told media.

The installation of wind and solar power projects is slowing down in the United States, with some projects being canceled over persistent cost issues and community animosity.

New utility-scale solar installations are estimated to have fallen by 40 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to a report from research firm Wood Mackenzie. Utility-scale solar deployments in the third quarter of 2022 were 36 percent lower when compared to Q3, 2021, and 9 percent lower compared to Q2, 2022.

“The low installation figures are the result of previous project delays and continued supply chain constraints,” the report said.

During the third quarter, new wind installations are calculated to have crashed by 77.5 percent compared to the same period a year ago based on another report by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Between July and September, U.S. developers only added 501 MW of new wind power capacity, down 22 percent from Q3, 2021.

“No other third quarter saw lower wind capacity additions since at least 2015. The 4,500 MW of new wind capacity added in the first three quarters of 2022 is less than half of that added by the end of 2021’s third quarter, 9,223 MW,” the report states.

NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a plan on Tuesday to test out a nuclear-powered thermal rocket engine which will enable NASA-crewed missions to Mars, according to NASA.

Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft, which will demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine. Nuclear thermal propulsion technology could be used for future NASA crewed missions to Mars.

The program, called Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, could allow for faster transit time, an increased payload capacity, and higher power for instrumentation and communication.

In a nuclear thermal rocket engine, a fission reactor is used to generate extremely high temperatures. The engine transfers the heat produced by the reactor to a liquid propellant, which is expanded and exhausted through a nozzle to propel the spacecraft. Nuclear thermal rockets can be three or more times more efficient than conventional chemical propulsion. -NASA

Timing is everything, and it may determine the fate of Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili was president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, and governor of Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast in 2015 and 2016. He returned to Georgia on October 1, 2021 and promptly started a hunger strike to protest previous convictions and new charges against him, including battery, misappropriation, abuse of power, and embezzlement.

Recently, there has been a groundswell of protest to force the Georgian government, led by the Georgian Dream party, to free Saakashvili so he can seek medical attention in the U.S. or Europe for his deteriorating health. His dire condition may be caused by neglect and heavy metal poisoning, and a council of physicians convened by Georgia’s state ombudsperson Nino Lomjaria declared the prison clinic (Vivamedi Clinic) “fails to meet his medical needs.” His condition is likely worsened by petty harassment by the government, including turning off the electricity to the clinic.

Saakashvili demonstrated bad judgement in the past, by starting a war with Russia in 2008, and returning to Georgia despite earlier convictions and with new charges pending against him, despite an earlier pledge to not return. And he made it easy for the Georgian authorities by entering the country illegally, inside a cargo container. (Saakashvili was stripped of his Georgian citizenship in 2015 after he accepted Ukrainian citizenship.)

Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine.

So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks.

Frank St. John, chief operating officer of Lockheed, told Financial Times that there has been a "lot of conversation about third-party transfer of F-16s," which would involve European nations armed with the F-16 shipping them to Ukraine.

St. John said Lockheed wasn’t involved in the conversations but was preparing for the eventuality. He said the arms maker was "going to be ramping production on F-16s in Greenville [South Carolina] to get to the place where we will be able to backfill pretty capably any countries that choose to do third-party transfers to help with the current conflict."

The Netherlands expressed openness to sending its F-16s to Ukraine last week, with the Dutch foreign minister saying it would look at any requests for the aircraft with an "open mind." Another option could be for former Warsaw pact countries that are now NATO members to send their older Soviet-made MiG fighter jets to Ukraine and replace them with F-16s or other modern Western-made aircraft.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued an alert to taxpayers on Tuesday, reminding them that they must report all digital asset-related income and answer a new digital asset question on their 2022 federal income tax return or face consequences such as delayed refunds or even penalties.

The IRS said in a Jan. 24 release that a key change on 1040 forms this year is that the agency has replaced the term “virtual currency” with “digital assets,” in addition to some other modifications to the wording.

The “Yes” or “No” question, which was expanded and revised this year to update terminology, reads as follows:

“At any time during 2022, did you: (a) receive (as a reward, award or payment for property or services); or (b) sell, exchange, gift or otherwise dispose of a digital asset (or a financial interest in a digital asset)?”

The question appears at the top of tax forms 1040, Individual Income Tax Return; 1040-SR, U.S. Tax Return for Seniors; and 1040-NR, U.S. Nonresident Alien Income Tax Return.

“All taxpayers must answer the question regardless of whether they engaged in any transactions involving digital assets,” the agency cautioned.

It is a legal requirement to accurately report all income, including income from digital assets, on federal income tax returns. Failure to do so could result in non-compliance with tax laws and possible penalties.

The IRS has provided a detailed explanation of what constitutes a digital asset, which includes such things as stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and cryptocurrencies.

One of the strangest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been all of the public health “experts” who openly lied to the American people while expecting to be lauded as heroes in response. Certainly, most have witnessed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s grotesque level of arrogance over the years, with numerous examples of the good doctor admitting to lying in order to get the outcome he desired from the public. For his efforts, he’s got magazine covers and million-dollar awards.

But we shouldn’t forget about Dr. Deborah Birx, the other half of Donald Trump’s initial COVID-19 advisory team. Though she has rarely drawn the same ire as Fauci, there’s little reason to believe she wasn’t just as duplicitous. As RedState reported recently, Birx is busy promoting her new book, and it contains several brazen admissions of dishonesty, including misleading the Trump administration by disobeying orders and altering reports.

The pigheaded stupidity based on unwarranted hubris I can understand, perhaps even sympathizes with. However, here Birx descends into what I think is criminality. Birx dishonestly and illegally changed the guidance and instructions issued by people senior to her, in particular those of President Trump. If she didn’t support what she was being told to do, she had an obligation to challenge those instructions openly and transparently and then do what she was told to do. If she didn’t like those orders, she was obligated to resign. Every person who died alone in a hospital room, every business driven into bankruptcy, and every child who lost a year of education due to Birx’s actions should be a count on a felony indictment.

Webmaster addition:

On January 10 of this year, Biden met with Trudeau and the president of Mexico at the 10th North American “Leaders” Summit. While there, Biden signed the Declaration of North America. Here is what was inside it.

As of yesterday, a food additive made out of powdered crickets began appearing in foods from pizza, to pasta to cereals across the European Union.

Yes, really.

Defatted house crickets are on the menu for Europeans across the continent, without the vast majority of them knowing it is now in their food.

“This comes thanks to a European Commission ruling passed earlier this month,” reports RT.

“As per the decision, which cited the scientific opinion of the European Food Safety Authority, the additive is safe to use in a whole range of products, including but not limited to cereal bars, biscuits, pizza, pasta-based products, and whey powder.”

But don’t worry, because the crickets first have to be checked to make sure they “discard their bowel content” before being frozen.

Lovely stuff.

Critics suggested that once bugs become widely accepted as a food additive, their consumption will become normalized across the board.