House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) said over the weekend that the terrorist threat to the U.S. is the highest that it’s been in over a decade following Hamas’ attack on Israel last month.

 Rep. Kevin McCathy (R-CA) praised his successor in the role of House speaker, Mike Johnson (R-LA), on Sunday for overseeing the long-awaited release of more January 6 footage to the public.

 CNN’s Jake Tapper made false claims over the weekend about remarks that X owner Elon Musk made on the social media platform last week.

The Knesset is set to discuss a controversial draft law on “executing Palestinian prisoners,” Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Saturday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The Knesset will discuss on Monday preparations for the first reading of the death penalty law for Palestinian prisoners,” he was quoted by the Maariv newspaper on its website.

Ben Gvir pointed out that the Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, party he leads “is the one that submitted the draft law to execute Palestinian prisoners,” adding that the draft “is expected to receive support by all members of the Knesset.”

Israel abolished the death penalty in 1954. Since then, it has applied long-term imprisonment that may be hundreds of years.

On November 19, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas Movement, released videos documenting recent clashes with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the northern Gaza Strip.

One of the videos shows Hamas fighters destroying or damaging several Israeli Merkava main battle tanks and Namer armored personnel carriers from a close distance in Gaza City. The vehicles were targeted with rocket-propelled grenades, except for one tank which was blown up with an explosive device that was planted right on top of its chassis.

Oh BTW..sorry about the "up yours n*****"

If you want to come back in and help us fight another war we have no business being in..we will take you back.

Mayor Eric Adams’ health team is launching a $4 million “vaccine equity” campaign aimed at curbing infections and deaths from the latest coronavirus strains and the flu, predominantly in the city’s poorer communities. 

The Health Department funding will provide grants to 18 not-for-profit groups to expand vaccine coverage in two dozen mostly minority neighborhoods with lower vaccination rates.

“Funding will also be used to raise awareness of long COVID and the impact it can have on individuals’ health and wellbeing,” says the bid proposal put out by the department’s fundraising arm — the Fund for Public Health.

The communities targeted in the Adams administration’s multi-million dollar Building Resiliency and Vaccine Equity outreach campaign include:

• Bronx: Mott Haven, Melrose, Charlotte Gardens, Hunts Point, Allerton, Norwood, Pelham Park and Williamsburg

Deutsche Bank’s anticipated $350 million loss on a New York City office building signals a deepening crisis in the commercial real estate market.

Ever since Friday's release of more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 Capitol Police security video, dozens of clips debunking the Jan. 6 committee's 'violent insurrection' narrative have been floating around X.

Mike Lee raises questions

In response to the exculpatory footage that the Jan. 6 committee never showed the American public, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has raised significant questions about the handling of security footage.

Lee's statements directly challenge the integrity of the now-disbanded committee, particularly addressing the roles of its former Republican members, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. He also accuses the committee - particularly those two, of selectively sharing information.

After Cheney attempted to hit back with her 'best hits' Jan. 6 footage, Lee replied: "Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that—and nothing else."

Webmaster addition: The US Government just suffered a major blow to its credibility. What will they do to distract us, I wonder! Stage a bigger hoax? Start a war?

The severity of the impact depends on individual circumstances and perspectives. In 2008, people faced the challenge of not being able to afford staying in their houses, often due to mortgage-related issues and foreclosures. 

Since 1450 there have been six major world reserve currency periods.

1. Portugal (1450–1530)
2. Spain (1530–1640)
3. Netherlands (1640–1720)
4. France (1720–1815)
5. Great Britain (1815–1920),
6. United States (1921-???)

Javier Milei, the outsider libertarian candidate with radical solutions to Argentina’s economic crisis, has just won Sunday’s presidential runoff against Economy Minister Sergio Massa.

In a surprise outcome, Massa conceded in a speech to supporters in Buenos Aires on Sunday even before the official results were released, saying he called Milei to congratulate him on his victory.

Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56 percent of the vote, with more than 80 percent of votes tallied. It was a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades.

Voters in this nation of 46 million demanded a drastic change from a government that has sent the peso tumbling, inflation skyrocketing and more than 40 percent of the population into poverty. And with Milei, Argentina takes a leap into the unknown — with a leader promising to shatter the entire system, which the locals now correctly realize, is broken.

Beijing’s stepped-up support for the property market might not be enough to spur a turnaround. In a meeting Friday, regulators told banks to meet all “reasonable” funding needs from property developers. The call came after a report showed new home prices in major cities dropped the most in eight years in October.

Bloomberg also reported that Beijing plans to provide at least $137 billion of low-cost financing to the nation’s urban village renovation and affordable housing programs, potentially funded through the Pledged Supplemental Lending. The PSL, a controversial tool sometimes dubbed as China’s version of QE, helped end a housing downturn in 2015. But it’s also been criticized for inflating the property bubble in smaller cities further.

This time, its impact is likely to be more limited. Apart from a smaller size, a key difference now is that the renovation program targets bigger cities, which Nomura estimates only accounts for 20% of the nation’s new home sales.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently called for a halt to the "killing of children and babies" in the besieged Gaza Strip, urging his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to exercise maximum restraint in the ongoing ground operation in the enclave.

"I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint," Trudeau said in his sharpest criticism of Israel since the war on Gaza broke out during a news conference in the western province of British Columbia. "The world is watching on TV, on social media. We're hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, and kids who have lost their parents. The world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop."

But this earned a furious pushback from Netanyahu, insisting that Hamas is responsible for civilian deaths despite Israeli forces continuing to batter the enclave. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Israeli leader tagged/mentioned Trudeau and said: "It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust." He stood firm that the forces of civilization must back Israel in defeating "Hamas's barbarism."

Just a few weeks ago, carts drawn by donkeys and horses were a rare sight in the Gaza Strip.

Sellers of produce and other products would roam the streets, usually teeming with cars, in search of customers.

But as the Israeli military wreaked destruction across Gaza and besieged an already blockaded territory, a suffocating lack of fuel has made it impossible for people to move around the strip in their cars.

People have suddenly found themselves forced to rely on animal-led carts as the main means of transport.

The American journalist Seymour Hersh provides a new insight into the inhumane thinking of those responsible in Israel in a new article that he published on Friday. In it he reports on information he received from US and Israeli insiders, among other things, about the Israeli attack on the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

According to Israeli information, a command center for the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas was located beneath the hospital. During the storming on November 14th, neither the suspected 200 Hamas fighters nor any serious evidence of their presence were found (we reported here and here ).

Hersh said the Israeli military was searching the hospital for a number of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He is astonished by “the continued inability of the Biden administration and the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell the truth.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said that US President Joe Biden’s latest opinion piece for the Washington Post once again highlighted the essence of Washington’s security doctrine, which is to provide for America’s interests at the expense of others.

The US supposedly makes itself safer by pouring money into “its own military industry” and starting “wars on other continents,” Medvedev said Sunday in a post on X (formerly Twitter), calling it “the essence of the American security doctrine.”

“That's why our commitment to Ukraine today is an investment in our own security,” Biden said in his piece published on Saturday. Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, responded to this by saying that the US essentially considers “money” and “blood” together as a “good investment.” “How very American. No comment,” he added.

Key sectors of the Russian economy have adapted to sanctions or completely recovered from them, as the country shows a greater level of resilience than Western governments had expected, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. 

Industries ranging from manufacturing and airlines to banking have found ways to adjust to sanctions "aimed at tanking the economy," boosted by soaring consumer demand and solid government support, the news agency noted.

The banking sector has emerged as one of the "starkest" examples of adapting to restrictions imposed since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Last year, Western penalties cut most Russian banks from the international financial messaging system SWIFT. A number of these lenders are also subject to blocking sanctions, which prevent international financial institutions from cooperating with them.

US President Joe Biden has ordered his administration to draw up a schedule of sanctions against Israelis who attack or harass Palestinians in the West Bank, Politico reported on Saturday, citing a confidential document.

A Cabinet memo was read out to the outlet by a senior US official. It had been sent to top Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, directing their departments “to develop policy options for expeditious action against those responsible for the conduct of violence in the West Bank.” A list of possible restrictions is said to include visa bans.

Webmaster addition: I think this is pure political theater. Biden knows the war is very unpopular, and needs to look like he is doing something to stop the violence.

Demand for US outstanding government debt from overseas buyers has significantly reduced with share of Treasury bonds hold by foreign private investors and central banks dropping to around 30% from some 43% ten years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing data from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

At the same time, supply has become more and more inexhaustible, the outlet notes, citing a net $2 trillion in new debt issued by the US Treasury this year. This amount marked an all-time high, excluding the pandemic-related borrowing spree scored back in 2020.

“US issuance is way up, and foreign demand hasn’t gone up,” Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the journal. “And in some key categories–notably Japan and China–they don’t seem likely to be net buyers, going forward.”

Global companies are reaping record profits through yuan-denominated bonds and are borrowing heavily from Chinese lenders at low interest rates, at a time when the cost of using Western banks is skyrocketing, Reuters reported on Friday.  

According to the news agency, international companies and banks are raising record amounts of cash through Chinese ‘panda’ and ‘dim sum’ bonds denominated in yuan.   

“While the fundamental story is not compelling for Chinese investors looking for growth, the depreciation of the yuan as well as the rate cuts result in a much cheaper cost of borrowing,” said Fiona Lim, senior FX strategist at Maybank.   

A new study shows some of the most common chronic symptoms among people who began experiencing the problems after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

The most common symptoms were exercise intolerance, excessive fatigue, numbness, brain fog, and neuropathy, researchers reported in the paper.

Insomnia, palpitations, myalgia, tinnitus, headache, burning sensations, and dizziness were also experienced by at least half of the participants in the study, which was funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Participants reported a median of 22 symptoms, with a ceiling of 35.

The study focused on people "who report a severe, debilitating chronic condition following COVID-19 vaccination" that "began soon after COVID-19 vaccination and persisted in many people for a year or more," the researchers said.

Playing a role in the sudden rise of transgender children may be "transhausen by proxy," a term coined for narcissistic parents who push so-called "gender transitioning" on their children, some experts say.

Celebrities are increasingly in the limelight with announcements about their children who come out as transgender or nonbinary. Nonbinary individuals identify as neither male nor female.

"Transhausen by proxy" isn't an officially recognized psychological condition. It's a play on an official condition known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP). MSBP is a mental illness that's also sometimes called medical child abuse or factitious disorder imposed on others. It's exhibited mostly by women seeking attention by exaggerating or making up an illness of children or others in their care. 

Webmaster addition:

In a recent interview the Dutch central bank (DNB) shares it has equalized its gold reserves, relative to GDP, to other countries in the eurozone and outside of Europe. This has been a political decision. If there is a financial crisis the gold price will skyrocket, and official gold reserves can be used to underpin a new gold standard, according to DNB. These statements confirm what I have been writing for the past years about central banks having prepared for a new international gold standard.

Wouldn’t a central bank that has one primary objective—maintaining price stability—serve its mandate best by communicating the currency it issues can be relied upon in all circumstances? By saying gold will be the safe haven of choice during a financial collapse, DNB confesses its own currency (the euro) does not weather all storms. Indirectly, DNB encourages people to own gold to be protected from financial shocks, making the transition towards a gold based monetary system more likely.

Florida earned the top spot in the report. Rounding out the top 10, in order of ranking, were Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday demanded rapid changes in the operations of Ukraine's military medical system, as he announced the dismissal of the commander of the medical forces.

Zelenskiy's move was announced as he met Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, and coincided with debate over the conduct of the 20-month-old war against Russia, with questions over how quickly a counteroffensive in the east and south is proceeding.

"In today's meeting with Defence Minister Umerov, priorities were set," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. "There is little time left to wait for results. Quick action is needed for forthcoming changes."