Important Takeaways:
- Havana says fleet does not have nuclear weapons, but arrival comes amid rising tensions between Russia and the United States over Ukraine
- “This visit corresponds to the historical friendly relations between Cuba and the Russian Federation and strictly adheres to the international regulations,” said the ministry in a statement.
- But the unusual deployment of the powerful nuclear submarine Kazan and three other naval vessels so close to the United States comes amid major tensions over the war in Ukraine
- Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested this week that Moscow could take “asymmetrical” steps if Western countries like Germany and the US were to supply Ukraine with weapons that were then used on Russian soil
- During the Cold War, Cuba was an important client state for the Soviet Union. The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war. The incident led to the US imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, which remains in force.
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Important Takeaways:
- Phoenix reached a sweltering 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday — beating the previous daily record for this time of year of 111 degrees set in 2016
- Las Vegas set a new record of 111 degrees for June 6, the National Weather Service confirmed
- In Death Valley, California, thermometers reached 122 degrees, beating the record of 121 set in 1996. The hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States was 134 degrees, at Death Valley in 1913
- Some 86 million people across the continental United States will face heat of 90 degrees or more on Friday, while in the southwestern states at least 14 million can expect 100 degrees or more.
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Important Takeaways:
- As the LGBTQ+ community gears up for Pride celebrations this month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging more people – particularly some gay and bisexual men – to get the Mpox vaccine.
- The US Department of Health and Human Services plans to be at dozens of Pride and community events across the country to remind people that Mpox is still a problem in the United States
- According to recent case reports, 90% of those who got Mpox in the US during this outbreak who reported their sexual orientation were men who identified as gay or bisexual.
- Health organizations will want to emphasize that mpox vaccines provide not only protection but real peace of mind.
- “You don’t have to be worried about being in contact with people if you’ve been vaccinated,” Hujdich said, “So it gives you the freedom to enjoy and be proud during Pride.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Nick Opiyo had just ordered lunch in a Kampala restaurant when armed, uniformed security forces swarmed his table, handcuffed him, covered his head with a sack he says smelled of blood, and bundled him into an unmarked van.
- His laptop, phone, documents and car keys were confiscated and he was interrogated for several days
- Opiyo is one of Uganda’s top human rights lawyers and believes that he and his team at the legal nonprofit Chapter Four were detained because they had been gathering evidence linking state security forces to extrajudicial killings in the run-up to the 2021 general election.
- In the course of his work, Opiyo sometimes encountered people who had been tortured and maimed by forces reporting to 79-year-old President Yoweri Museveni. Many had been detained under similar circumstances, and subject to intense physical and digital surveillance.
- These campaigns were often enabled by Uganda’s pervasive national identification system.
- Uganda has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past decade on biometric tools that document a person’s unique physical characteristics, such as their face, fingerprints and irises, to form the basis of a comprehensive identification system.
- The system has become a powerful mechanism for surveilling politicians, journalists, human rights advocates and ordinary citizens, according to dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained and analyzed by Bloomberg and nonprofit investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports.
- It’s a cautionary tale for any country considering establishing a biometric identity system without rigorous checks and balances and input from civil society.
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Important Takeaways:
- Tens of thousands of migrants from countries including China and Venezuela could be exempt from the Biden administration’s ‘tough’ new border restrictions — because their home countries refuse to accept them back.
- Over 150,000 people from those two nations alone have illegally crossed into the US so far in 2024, and hundreds more arrive daily
- Despite new orders to stop processing asylum claims once migrant encounters hit 2,500 per day for seven consecutive days, instructions from the Department of Homeland Security to border agents provide exceptions.
- ‘Section 240 removal’ means “they’re released,” into the US, a Border Patrol source told The Post — explaining such migrants will be given a court date and allowed to pursue asylum, which typically take years to resolve
- “They [migrants who can’t be deported] are not included in that 2,500 number, the language was ambiguous for a reason.”
- It doesn’t appear that migrant crossings have been affected by Biden’s new executive order and border agents have expressed doubt that it will have any real impact on the continued crisis.
- “That’s like trying to plug the leak on the titanic with chewing gum. It’s way too little too late. He’s trying to act tough on the border but we know he’s been the most open border administration ever”
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden meets with Zelenskyy in Paris, apologizes for delay in U.S. weapons that let Russia make gains
- The meeting in the French capital comes as the United States clashes with Kyiv and the Kremlin over the decision to let Ukraine strike inside Russia using American weapons.
- He also announced a new package of $225 million in weapons, including air defense interceptors, artillery ammunition and other critical capabilities.
- It follows the D-Day 80th anniversary events in Normandy, where Biden drew parallels between that pivotal battle to free Europe from Nazi domination and Ukraine’s current fight against Russia.
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden’s policy shift has triggered a tsunami of illegal immigration
- By December 2020, the U.S. had the most secure border in the history of our nation, and a proven plan to continue improvements. We had an overall decrease in entries and the highest level of situational awareness ever.
- Immediately following his inauguration, Biden fulfilled his campaign promise. He quickly terminated the migrant protection protocols and halted all border security infrastructure improvements.
- The border security gains earned over three decades vanished and Biden surrendered control of our border to transnational criminal organizations – the cartels.
- Over 1,000 illegal entries per day is more than enough to enable the cartels to shape the environment to facilitate the smuggling of narcotics, contraband and any alien willing to pay extra to avoid being fingerprinted
- The bottom line is that the chaos at the border is 100% Biden’s doing. Limiting illegal entries to 2,500 a day is political theater.
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Important Takeaways:
- “We are prepared for a very intense operation in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the border area.
- Almost eight months of exchanges between Israel and the Iran-backed movement, a Hamas ally, have intensified over the past week, with Israel striking deeper into Lebanese territory.
- Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have both called in recent days for urgent action to restore security to northern Israel.
- “They burn us here; all Hezbollah strongholds should also burn and be destroyed. WAR!” Ben Gvir said
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Important Takeaways:
- South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza.
- The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave.
- “There should be no doubt that Spain will remain on the right side of history,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez
- Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Libya and the Palestinians are waiting for the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, to grant approval to their requests to join the case.
- Over 140 countries have recognized a Palestinian state — more than two-thirds of the U.N. — but none of the major Western powers, including the United States, has done so.
- Last year, the International Court of Justice allowed 32 countries, including Spain, to join Ukraine’s case alleging that Russia breached the genocide convention by falsely accusing Ukraine of committing genocide in its eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and using that as a pretext for the invasion.
- Netanyahu is also facing a separate legal challenge from the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant against the Israeli leader and others, including leaders of the Hamas militant group.
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Important Takeaways:
- Covid vaccines may have contributed to a rise in excess deaths observed across the western world since the pandemic, including in Australia, scientists have suggested.
- Vaccines are among a series of factors scientists are investigating as potential causes of excess deaths since the pandemic, including delayed medical treatment due to lockdowns, and the long-lasting damage done to many people by Covid itself.
- They also suggested it was “likely” that containment measures such as lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, school and business closures, travel restrictions, curfews and quarantine had contributed to the rise in excess deaths, notably via delayed or interrupted medical treatments, but conceded this was hard to prove.
- “Unfortunately, vaccines are rarely studied for their ‘non-specific effects’ (such as potentially causing) patients to become more susceptible to other diseases,” Coverse said.
- “Our government agencies and officials claim that the current excess mortality statistics do not implicate the Covid-19 vaccines as an identifiable driver, yet no studies are being undertaken into such non-specific effects. We imagine that they simply do not want to even consider these types of studies as their reputations are very much tied with the implementation of the Covid-19 vaccine
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