VIENNA/MOSCOW, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Poland’s foreign minister said on Thursday that Europe was closer to war than any time in the last 30 years as Russia gave a bleak assessment of diplomatic efforts this week to defuse tensions over Ukraine.
Russia said it was hitting a dead end as it tried to persuade the West to bar Ukraine from joining NATO and roll back decades of alliance expansion in Europe.
OTTAWA — Canada will sign onto a complaint against the United States over its interpretation of how free trade should apply to the continental auto industry, another sign of souring ties between the two neighbours.
Trade Minister Mary Ng said on Thursday that Canada would join Mexico in asking for a dispute settlement panel under the terms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade pact.
… Mexico and Canada are also unhappy about proposed U.S. tax breaks for American-based manufacturers of electric vehicles. This, they say, could undermine the highly integrated North American auto industry.
Scandal-scarred CNN has seen its viewership nosedive by a staggering 90 percent both overall and in the critical demographic coveted by advertisers in the first week of the new year as compared to last year.
The once-proud leader in cable news averaged just 548,000 viewers during the week of January 3, a precipitous drop from the nearly 2.7 million viewers for the same week in 2021, according to the most recent ratings.
Those numbers were supercharged by the the left-leaning network’s coverage of the January 6 Capitol Riot, which resulted in CNN having its most-watched day since Ted Turner launched the news outlet in 1980.
MI5 has issued a rare warning to MPs that a Chinese agent has infiltrated Parliament to interfere in UK politics.
An alert from the security service said Christine Ching Kui Lee “established links” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with current and aspiring MPs.
She then gave donations to politicians, with funding coming from foreign nationals in China and Hong Kong.
It comes after a “significant, long-running” investigation by MI5, Whitehall sources told the BBC.
One of the MPs funded by Ms Lee was Labour’s Barry Gardiner, who received over £420,000 from her in five years.
Prince Andrew will likely be asked about ‘private parts’ in sex assault case: lawyers
Prince Andrew will almost certainly be asked about his private parts in his sex-assault lawsuit — and his accuser’s attorneys will likely try to depose Queen Elizabeth II, according to a lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein victims.
The 61-year-old UK royal will be called on to give a deposition under oath after failing Wednesday in his bid to toss the lawsuit filed by longtime accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre — leaving nothing off the table.
The pandemic is now in its 23rd month and a highly contagious new variant is running rampant. Safe and effective vaccines are readily available and unvaccinated citizens are contributing disproportionately to a medical crisis that makes life harder and more dangerous for everyone.
So there are surely some — perhaps many — among the vaccinated who would like to see the unvaccinated suffer significant consequences for their intransigence, up to and including financial penalties. Ideally, such consequences also would minimize the number of people who remain unwilling to get the shot.
Ontario reports 35 new COVID-19 deaths; hospitals caring for record number of patients
Ontario reported 35 new COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, with hospitals reporting a new all-time high for combined acute and ICU admissions in the province.
The Ministry of Health said that there 3,630 people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 on Thursday, up from 2,472 one week ago.
Of those, there were 500 adults in intensive care, up 162 from one week ago.
Individuals who are fully vaccinated represent 78.1% of Ontario’s total population and account for 181 of Ontario's 500 ICU admissions.
There are 9,909 new cases of #COVID19.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) January 13, 2022
Canadian truckers crossing U.S. border now exempt from new COVID-19 rules, feds say
The federal government is backing down from mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for cross-border Canadian truckers just days before the new rule was set to take effect.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Border Services Agency told Global News Wednesday that unvaccinated Canadian truckers crossing from the United States will remain exempt from testing and quarantine requirements after arriving in the country.
On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz reminded people why they’ve appreciated his contributions to the conservative cause. Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director for the FBI’s national security branch, appeared before the Senate to answer questions about the FBI’s role in events on January 6. Cruz grilled her with a series of questions to determine whether the FBI played a part in the events of the day, including questions about Ray Epps, a very visible presence on the day. Sanborn, instead of giving a full-throated denial, refused to answer any questions, leaving the strong impression that the FBI was behind the whole thing.
This is the terrifying moment a drug cartel used drones to drop explosives on unsuspecting inhabitants in the forests of Tepalcatepec, Mexico, in the latest demonstration of unchecked violence in the region.
People were sent running for their lives on Monday as the drones, controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), soared over their shacks before raining down explosives on the forest floor in the state of Michoacan.
The shocking footage shows an aerial view of a dense jungle where a blue tarpaulin is hung up covering a series of what appear to be makeshift shacks or huts.
While the West ponders whether Vladimir Putin will invade eastern Ukraine, Xi Jinping watches. For China, Ukraine is a convenient proxy for Taiwan. How NATO responds to Russian aggression will serve as a barometer for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to calculate how the United States and its network of Asia-Pacific allies might react to unprovoked Chinese aggression against Taiwan. At the operational and tactical levels, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could gain invaluable insight from how the Russian Armed Forces move against Ukrainian territory. As the Biden administration and NATO engage in security talks over Ukraine with their Russian counterparts, the West should consider the message it intends to send to the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai.
The billionaire gave a weirdly content-free statement to Devi Sridhar
Very few private individuals have had a bigger impact on the global fight against the Covid pandemic than Bill Gates. Through the work of his foundation, the tech billionaire is a major player. What he has to say on the issue is worth our attention.
Anew documentary on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot peels back the curtain on the Democrats’ domestic war on terror launched in the aftermath of the new year’s “insurrection.”
Directed by Christopher Burgard, the 90-minute film features actor Nick Searcy, who personally attended the peaceful demonstrations outside the Capitol, traveling the country to meet with individuals prosecuted over their involvement.
Supposed inter-ethnic conflicts in the US could force millions of white Americans to request that Russia resettle them across the vast and snowy expanses of Siberia, one of the country’s most notorious nationalists has claimed.
Taking to his Telegram channel on Tuesday, the leader of the ultra-nationalist LDPR party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, well-known for his populist views and confrontational political style, alleged that America is in dire straits.
Duped by Soviets both inside and outside his administration.
In this third installment of a revisionist look back at the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, the focus is on communist infiltration of FDR’s administration both before and during World War II and its impact on American foreign policy. In particular, this is the tale of the two Harrys: Harry Dexter White and Harry Hopkins. White was by most accounts a conscious agent of the Soviet Union (though never a Communist Party member) who as a key Treasury Department official influenced U.S. policy to favor Soviet objectives and provided classified information to his Soviet handlers. Hopkins was at best a dupe or “useful idiot,” and at worst a pro-Soviet agent of influence, who was President Roosevelt’s closest adviser during the war. The two Harrys, along with numerous other Soviet agents of influence in a plethora of New Deal and wartime agencies, in James Burnham’s words, “assembled in Washington under the careless scepter of Franklin Roosevelt.”
