The US has called for an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the integration of the human rights of LGBTQ and intersex individuals (also known as ‘LGBTI’) into the organization’s efforts to maintain “international peace and security.”

According to a concept note released by the United States Mission to the UN, the US, along with co-sponsors from Albania, Brazil, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Japan, Malta, Switzerland, and the UK, intend to hold the meeting next week on Monday, March 20. The talks will also be joined by the LGBTI Core Group to “consider how to better integrate consideration of the human rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex persons into the UNSC’s work.”

In the note, the US stated that the UNSC has improved its ability to tackle the root causes of conflict and mitigate the effects of war by recognizing how abuses against members of marginalized groups serve to destabilize fragile societies. The US brought up the issue of protecting LGBTQ rights before the council in 2015 amid Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) crimes in Iraq and Syria.

 FSB and Rosgvardiya officers found an improvised explosive device on the territory of the Druzhba oil pumping station in the village of the same name in the Novozybkovsky district of the Bryansk region. This was reported to RBC by a source in the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The telegram channels Readovka, SHOT and Baza also wrote about the discovery of an explosive device at the station.

According to the interlocutor of RBC, on March 16, the Interior Ministry received a call from the regional FSB department. The special service said that at about 14:40 an improvised explosive device was found near the transformer substation on the territory of the station located 60 km from the state border. The FSB clarified that the bomb could have been dropped from a drone.

The subject was examined by the staff of Rosgvardiya. They identified it as an improvised explosive device and defused it. The device, according to the interlocutor of RBC, had a metal body and was filled with powder elements in the form of balls up to 5 mm and plastic.

Ten migrants have fallen victim to actions by EU law enforcement officers on the border with Belarus, Spokesman for the Belarusian State Border Committee Anton Bychkovsky told TASS on Friday.

"This year, 10 [dead] migrants have been discovered, of which four have been found on the border with Latvia," the official said as he described the trend as unprecedented since the migration crisis erupted in 2021.

According to Bychkovsky, since early this year, Belarusian border guards have foiled attempts to push more than 4,500 migrants into the country, mostly from Poland.

Latvian, Lithuanian, as well as Polish law enforcement agencies regularly try to push illegal migrants into Belarus, as well as leave the bodies of refugees on the border. Last year, the Belarusian State Border Committee thwarted over 3,800 attempts, involving a total of 31,000 people, to push migrants from the EU into Belarus.

It was a momentous event, the importance of which is not perceived outside the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Iran reconciled... in China. Three signatures at the bottom of a document reshuffle all the cards in this region.

Since the 19th century, the Arab world was first dominated by the United Kingdom and France on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, then by the United States. These powers brought both freedom and oppression. The United Kingdom excelled in dividing the actors in the region and manipulating them against each other so as to exploit the region’s wealth with minimal military involvement. France was divided between the worst kind of colonizers and the most enlightened decolonizers. The United States has always had an imperial vision of the region, with the exception of a few years at the end of the Second World War when it supported the nationalists.

This period has just ended with the arrival of China. As always, China has watched for a very long time and acted slowly, with unwavering perseverance.

Air dominance is one of the key aspects of modern warfare, particularly for the political West and its numerous vassals and satellite states. At present, the Kiev regime is still not very reliant on such a doctrine as its dwindling stock of Soviet-era aircraft allows for very limited use of jets, particularly as Russian platforms, vastly superior in both numbers and capabilities, dominate the skies. Thus, the Neo-Nazi junta troops are forced to make do with what they have. The former USSR’s massive long-range ground-based air defenses somewhat offset this, as the Kiev regime inherited an enormous quantity of SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, but this too is fading away as Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) hunt down the remaining air defenses.

In order to prevent this, NATO is moving toward fighter jet deliveries to Kiev as the very last step in conventional weapons supplies. The main issue with this has been the training of Ukrainian pilots to be able to fly NATO platforms, as the process normally takes years. Another important segment is that the pilots themselves are not too keen on transitioning to Western aircraft such as the F-16, for instance, which is much lighter and less capable than the Soviet-era Su-27 jets the Kiev regime forces have been flying. However, the chronic lack of spare parts and munitions for these jets is certainly making them less viable, even with the integration of Western weapons such as the AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) and JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs.

The issue could be partially sidestepped in the coming days and weeks as Slovakia and Poland are moving to send their legacy MiG-29 fighter jets. Warsaw seems to be closer to completing this than Bratislava, as its much larger defense sector already has plans to replace the Warsaw Pact-era aircraft with the F-35A and South Korean FA-50. On the other hand, Slovakia hopes to make a barter deal with the US, aiming to get F-16s for the delivery of its MiG-29s to Kiev. It remains to be seen how the Biden administration will respond to these requests. Poland is the likelier candidate for immediate deliveries, in part due to its larger fleet of MiG-29 jets, as well as the fact that most of these are still operational, unlike the Slovakian ones (officially retired in 2022).

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Israeli regime’s murder of Rachel Corrie, an American pro-Palestine activist, in the Gaza Strip, but her parents are still battling for accountability and justice. 

Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was crushed to death by a 60-tonne Israeli armored bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while acting as a human shield to stop a Palestinian home from demolition in the Rafah refugee camp.

Since her death, which happened at the height of the Second Intifada (uprising), the 23-year-old activist has been remembered as an icon for the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s decades-long occupation.

“I think freedom for Palestine could be an incredible source of hope to people struggling all over the world,” she wrote just two weeks before her death.

 For the sake of its own geopolitical interests the US administration supports the unprecedented legal bacchanalia unleashed by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Russian embassy in Washington said in a comments released on Friday.

"We took notice of the statements of representatives of the U.S. administration on the alleged justification of the decision of the International Criminal Court to issue warrants of the arrest for President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova. For the sake of its own geopolitical interests Washington supports the unprecedented legal bacchanalia unleashed by the ICC, knowing full well that Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC," the Russian diplomats stressed.

"Allowing unacceptable remarks about the Russian leader, the U.S. authorities deliberately keep silent about their own atrocities in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya and Vietnam. Moreover, in an attempt to protect its citizens from international prosecution by all available means, the United States even takes odious measures," the added.