Hard-line Republicans in the House are itching for fights over opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden and extracting deep spending cuts even at the risk of a government shutdown.  

Their eagerness to fight isn’t just with Biden and Democrats, but also with Republicans in their conference worried about the political risks of an impeachment fight and a shutdown.  

Those dynamics pose yet another challenge for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), whose job is to unify his conference.  

“I’m tired of all these Republicans hiding behind, ‘Oh, but they’ll say it’s a shutdown. And they’ll say that you’re defunding law enforcement with [the Department of Homeland Security].’ That is all bullshit,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  

“The truth is we’re using the power that we were given to force change because you don’t pay people not to do their job.” 

Allies of McCarthy are among those putting the pressure on him. 

Mediterranean storm Daniel caused devastating floods in Libya that swept away entire neighborhoods and wrecked homes in multiple coastal towns in the east of the North African nation. As many as 2,000 people were feared dead, one of the country's leaders said Monday.

The destruction appeared greatest in Derna, a city formerly held by Islamic extremists in the chaos that has gripped Libya for more than a decade, leaving it with crumbling and inadequate infrastructure. Libya remains divided between two rival administrations, one in the east and one in the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.

The confirmed death toll from the weekend flooding stood at 61 as of late Monday, according to health authorities. But the tally did not include Derna, which had become inaccessible, and many of the thousands missing were believed carried away by waters.

The Air Force will fall short of its fiscal 2023 pilot training goal by about 120 airmen, missing its annual target of around 1,500 new aviators for the eighth consecutive year, the service confirmed Sept. 8.

A slew of maintenance woes, staffing issues and other unexpected setbacks led the Air Force to pin wings on around 1,350 airmen rather than its aspirational goal of 1,470. The shortfall makes it more difficult for the service to fill a pilot shortage of around 2,000 people that has persisted for years.

“We’re going to try to make sure we are still flying because that’s what we do as an Air Force,” Maj. Gen. Clark Quinn, the two-star general in charge of pilot training told reporters on a recent conference call.

The Air Force set a new target of around 1,500 new aviators a year in fiscal 2020 but has so far failed to meet its own bar. It will aim for that same goal in fiscal 2024, Air Force spokesperson Benjamin Faske said.

A Democrat running for Virginia's House of Delegates has refused to drop out of the race despite being outed as an online porn star. 

Susanna Gibson can be seen in videos obtained by DailyMail.com performing sex acts with her husband online and encouraging watchers to pay them with 'tips' for specific requests. 

The nurse practitioner and 40-year-old mother of two is running for a highly competitive seat in suburban Richmond. 

Gibson on Monday rejected calls for her to drop out of the race, and said the exposure of the videos was 'an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family.'

'It won't intimidate me and it won't silence me,' she added in a statement to The Washington Post.

Gibson went on to call out her rivals for attempting to derail her campaign ahead of the November 7 ballot. 

'My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they're willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there's no line they won't cross to silence women when they speak up,' she said.

Sen. Josh Hawley has a new populist proposal that eschews the laissez-faire Republican economics of old: he wants to install an 18 percent cap on credit card interest rates. 

The Missouri Republican tore into soaring interest rates - which hit an average of 28 percent this week just as credit card debt levels have surpassed $1 trillion in the U.S. 

In comments to RealClearPolitics, Hawley noted the government was 'quick to bail out the banks just this spring,' referring to Silicon Valley Bank of California and Signature Bank of New York, but 'has ignored working people struggling to get ahead.'

He put credit card issuers directly in his crosshairs: 'We know what they're doing.'

A Mossad surveillance team made quite a public spectacle of themselves on 9-11.

The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers prior to the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards. (1)

Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. (2)

"They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness. (3)

[T]hey were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage. (4)

Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. (6)

"It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park." (7)

More Americans than before oppose transgender athletes competing in sports that align with their gender identity and say transitioning genders is “morally wrong,” according to a report from Gallup released Monday.

The survey — conducted from May 1 to May 24 via telephone interviews with roughly 1,000 adults living in the U.S. — found that 69% of people say that transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth, compared with 62% in 2021. It also shows that a slightly higher share of Americans, 55%, consider “changing one’s gender” to be more “morally wrong” than in 2021, when it was 51%.

Gallup’s findings come amid an unprecedented number of anti-LGBTQ bills, 491, introduced by conservative lawmakers in state legislatures across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, with the majority of the legislation affecting trans Americans.

Thanks to an email tip from a concerned parent, we did a deep dive into the books the Kenosha Unified School District is providing their students. What we found in their libraries and heard from their leaders is truly shocking.

So after sifting through their library, we reached out to the school with our findings:

Our email to the district

“This Book Is Gay” teaches students how to have gay sex and how to use a gay sex hookup app to meet up with others. It also includes a guide to sex kinks and fetishes such as peeing on each other and eating poop. It’s available as an Ebook, students just need to login and can check it out digitally.

Previously, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland labeled Russia's Crimea region as a legitimate target for Ukrainian strikes, with the Russian Foreign Ministry stressing that these remarks confirm Washington's deep involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

US Acting Deputy Secretary of State and Russophobic hawk Victoria Nuland appears to have let slip that the Biden administration supports Ukraine’s strikes targeting Russian territory.

In a video clip circulating on social media, Nuland, who just recently visited Ukraine’s capital, can be heard saying that one "axis" of Washington’s strategy in it proxy war with Moscow in Ukraine is to "put some of Russia's most precious assets at risk."

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International Literacy Day, celebrated on September 8 each year, is a global observance dedicated to promoting the significance of literacy as a human right and a powerful driver of sustainable development.

Literacy is a key ingredient of personal development and social progress because it empowers people to access education and information, enabling them to make informed decisions and participate fully in society. It also plays a pivotal role in reducing poverty, improving health outcomes and fostering gender equality. International Literacy Day reminds us that literacy is not just a fundamental human right but a catalyst for positive change, both at the individual and societal level.

As Statista's Felix Richter notes, since the day was first observed in 1967, steady progress has been made in the fight against illiteracy, but the issue remains a hindrance to development around the world, with more than 750 million people aged 15 and older estimated to lack basic reading and writing skills in 2020.

Moreover, progress towards a more literate world has hit a huge roadblock in 2020, when Covid-19-based lockdown policies disrupted education systems around the world.

Most people think everything is fine. The Fed is getting inflation under control and soon they’ll be able to cut interest rates, keeping the economy from falling into a deep recession. In his podcast, Peter Schiff poured cold water on this narrative. He explains why the Fed won’t be able to repeat the magic it pulled off after the financial crisis and COVID.

Oil prices continued to climb last week. Meanwhile, bond yields also continue to push higher.

As Peter pointed out, one of the big reasons CPI came down so quickly was falling energy prices.

People forget oil prices fell almost 50% from their peak, and that fall ended in May of this year. But that big decline in oil prices was a major factor in bringing headline inflation from 9% to 3%. And it’s not just the rate hikes that did it. I mean, they were partially responsible because the rate hikes pushed up the dollar and the dollar going up brings oil prices down.”

Tesla shares are up nearly 6% in the pre-market session after Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas raised his price target on the name to $400, upgraded the company to "overweight" and named Tesla a top pick.

Jonas predicts that Tesla's Dojo supercomputer may add as much as $500 billion to the company’s market value as a result of faster adoption of Robotaxis and the company's network services. Jonas says the technology can open up "new addressable markets" in the same way AWS did for Amazon.

Dojo could put Tesla at “an asymmetric advantage” in a market potentially worth $10 trillion, the note says. 

In its 66 page note out Monday morning, MS wrote: "We believe that Dojo can add up to $500bn to Tesla's enterprise value, expressed through a faster adoption rate in Mobility (robotaxi) and Network Services (SaaS). The change drives our PT increase to $400 vs. $250 previously. We upgrade to Overweight and make Tesla our Top Pick."

Russia and its partners within BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) need to work on a unification of payment systems and a mechanism to regulate trade in national currencies to boost mutual trade and be more independent, geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar told Sputnik.

"We do not need a new BRICS currency, we don’t need a new euro, you don’t need something you can buy coffee with. You need what [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin said, in fact, recently — a mechanism regulating trade in bilateral currencies and multilateral currencies [within BRICS and SCO] and also in parallel a unification of payment systems," Escobar said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Russia's Vladivostok.

One of the ways to start the process is to initiate the unification of Russia's payment system, SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages), China's CIPS (China International Payments System) and the Iranian system, the expert said.

The US dollar’s slow, creeping decline as the currency of choice for global trade and central bank reserve holdings accelerated in 2022, when Washington and its allies attempted, and failed, to sanction Russia into submission amid the crisis in Ukraine. Moscow and its partners reacted by ramping up trade in local currencies.

The ruble’s share in payments for Russian exports has topped 50 percent, and accounts for more than a third of Russia’s overall foreign trade, acting Federal Customs Service chief Ruslan Davydov has revealed.

“In the structure of our trade turnover, the ruble’s share is growing very strongly, of course. For example, in exports, over half of payments are in rubles. In imports, payments are still made mainly using the currencies of unfriendly countries; in general, ruble payments account for more than a third of overall trade turnover,” Davydov told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Washington has only stepped up its trade and sanctions war on Beijing since Joe Biden became US president. But China is increasingly settling payments with its trade partners in its own currency, undercutting the once-mighty dollar.

The Chinese yuan has recovered from its lowest point after intervention by the country's central bank.

The currency fell to a rate of 7.26 to the US dollar last week, but peaked at around 7.35 on Friday before settling at just over 7.32 on Monday. Unnamed currency traders in China said lenders were selling dollars.

Singapore-based foreign exchange strategist Christopher Wong said intervention by the People's Bank of China "underscores policymakers' resolve to keep the yuan depreciation pressure in check."

But "it remains early to tell if this is really a turnaround due to the effects of economic support measures," Wong said.

Corresponding with President Joe Biden's weekend visit to Vietnam, The New York Times published the contents of a leaked Vietnamese government document, produced by the Ministry of Finance, revealing a covert plan for the country to procure Russian weapons in contravention of US-led sanctions on Moscow.

Biden met with the country's leader Nguyen Phu Trong on Sunday, and the two formally agreed to upgrade strategic ties between the US and Vietnam. But the NYT report demonstrates that "even as the United States and Vietnam have nurtured their relationship over recent months, Hanoi is making clandestine plans to buy an arsenal of weapons from Russia."

The revelation of the document strongly suggests that any agreements reached in Hanoi which the Biden White House is now celebrating as successful are likely to be fleeting and without much depth in the near and long-term.

According to details of the document's contents: 

The Ministry of Finance document, which is dated March 2023 and whose contents have been verified by former and current Vietnamese officials, lays out how Vietnam proposes to modernize its military by secretly paying for defense purchases through transfers at a joint Vietnamese and Russian oil venture in Siberia.

Signed by a Vietnamese deputy finance minister, the document notes that Vietnam is negotiating a new arms deal with Russia that would "strengthen strategic trust" at a time when "Russia is being embargoed by Western countries in all aspects."

A new poll of 6,000 Californians finds that cash reparations payouts to blacks are opposed 59%-28%.

Blacks think handing them money is a swell idea by a 76-16 margin in favor, but whites oppose it 65-25, Latinos are against 59-24, and Asians against 59-23.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time to Newsom. I mean, you wouldn’t expect blacks, excuse me, Black people, to be the slightest bit greedy, now would you?

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday pushed back against plans announced by the leaders of India, Saudi Arabia and the EU to create a trade corridor that would link South Asia to Europe and bypass Turkey.

“We say that there is no corridor without Turkey,” Erdogan told journalists accompanying him to a G20 summit in India on Sunday. “Turkey is an important production and trade base. The most convenient line for traffic from east to west has to pass through Turkey.” 

The transport link, dubbed the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC, aims to establish railway lines and shipping that will pass through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, then reach to Greece and Europe. 

A memorandum of understanding on the corridor was signed by the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the US and other G20 partners.

One of the main objectives of the project is to cut shipping times by 40 percent and save money on other costs, and fuel use. 

In a bid to secure vital metals for their respective energy transitions, the United States and Saudi Arabia are engaged in talks that could reshape the global electric vehicle supply chain.

As the extent of the damage caused by the earthquake that struck southwest Morocco became clear on Saturday morning, many Algerians called on their leaders to offer humanitarian aid to their longtime regional rival.

Decades-old tensions between Morocco and Algeria have deteriorated since Algiers broke diplomatic relations with Rabat in August 2021 and closed its airspace to civil and military planes.

On Saturday, however, the Moroccan foreign ministry expressed the “great sadness” and the “deep affliction” with which Algeria was following the consequences of the earthquake, the most powerful to hit Morocco since 1900.

At least 2,497 people have been killed, with thousands more injured and many still missing, according to the latest update by the state news agency.

“In this painful ordeal, Algeria presents its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the brotherly Moroccan people, assuring them of its deep compassion, and wishes a speedy recovery to the injured,” it said.

Sweden has again boosted its planned defence budget for 2024, taking the total planned increase for the year to 27 billion crowns ($2.44 billion) and exceeding the NATO threshold of 2% of GDP, the government said on Monday.

The defence minister announced that Sweden would add 700 million to the defence in its upcoming autumn budget, lifting the overall defence spending to 119 billion crowns in 2024, almost double that of 2020.

The spending is expected to be equivalent to 2.1% of Swedish GDP, he said.

"We are in the most serious security policy situation since the end of the Second World War," Minister of Defence Pal Jonson told a news conference.

Pakistan has accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of constructing “unlawful structures” at a key border crossing, calling it a violation of territorial sovereignty.

The Torkham border crossing in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been closed since Wednesday after a deadly exchange of fire between their forces. Hundreds of trucks carrying essential goods have since been stranded on both sides.

An Egyptian state security prosecutor renewed on Sunday, 10 September, the dentation of several women for 15 days, pending further investigations into the charges of allegedly supporting and fundraising for a terrorist group.

The female detainees, most of their identities have not yet been disclosed, had in recent months formed a group named "Our Group Kitchen," which volunteered to cook decent meals for political prisoners and promoted the initiative on social media, according to a report released by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Arabic language sister company of The New Arab.

The report added that women took turns delivering the meals; each one would distribute the food among inmates on the day of her scheduled visit.

Sky Mali, the only commercial airline flying to Timbuktu in Mali's interior, has cancelled flights there due to insecurity, it said on Monday, deepening the isolation of the northern city which has been under a month-long Islamist blockade.

Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and ancient trading centre on the edge of the Sahara desert, has been suffering from a shortage of food and aid supplies since a local affiliate of al Qaeda cut off access by road and river in mid-August.

Two residents told Reuters that they heard shell fire near the city's airport on Monday morning.

Sky Mali later issued a statement saying it had suspended all flights to and from Timbuktu until further notice, citing a security alert.

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Monday that it has safely completed the first release of treated radioactive water from the plant into the sea and will inspect and clean the facility before starting the second round in a few weeks.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant began discharging the treated and diluted wastewater into the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 24. The water has accumulated since the plant was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011, and the start of its release is a milestone in the plant’s decommissioning.

The discharge, which is expected to continue for decades until the decommissioning is finished, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China has banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response, hurting producers and exporters and prompting the Japanese government to compile an emergency relief fund. Groups in South Korea have also fiercely protested, demanding Japan stop the release.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at summits last week of Southeast Asian countries and the Group of 20 nations, stressed the safety and transparency of the release to win international support and sought the immediate lifting of China’s ban.

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