🗣️”I think the first response is going to be sanctions, it is going to be that. But at this point, we've seen it proven time and again that economic sanctions are useless. They do not achieve the goal that the politicians want to achieve”: Beirut-based journalist and editor of The Cradle, Esteban Carrillo, on the US' possible moves not to allow countries to create a regional currency

🎧Listen to more of Carrillo’s analysis in our podcast Fault Lines

US advocacy group releases emails challenging Biden's statements on son's connections

America First Legal (AFL) has released a new package of emails challenging President Joe Biden's claim of ignorance regarding his son Hunter's business connections with foreign individuals. The emails, obtained from the National Archives, span from December 2009 to June 2010 and reveal communication between Hunter's former business partner and top aides of then-Vice President Biden. AFL highlighted an email discussing a "China lunch" before a visit by former Chinese President Hu Jintao, which the National Archives redacted due to its confidential nature.

The released emails suggest that Hunter received privileged information from the Vice President's Office about a state visit to Africa in 2010. AFL argues that these records, while only a fraction of the National Archives collection, provide further evidence of the Biden family's involvement in influence peddling and personal enrichment.

America First Legal's Vice President and General Counsel Gene Hamilton stated that each release contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between the Biden family's business interests and official US affairs.

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🔺Senator Lindsey Graham says US financing of Ukraine war against Russia is "the best money we’ve ever spent"
🔺Gun put to South Africa's head: the West is putting "extraordinary pressure" on Africa to renounce its neutral position over the Russia-Ukraine conflict
🔺Zelensky and Macron are planning a "peace summit" without Russia

The Critical Hour will cover these and more stories! Tune in to Radio Sputnik at 6pm EST|3pm PST|12am CET via the website or app

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EU ban on Twitter over refusal to censor posts is new 'McCarthyism'

The European Union is facing criticism for threatening legal action against Twitter if it does not censor user posts according to the bloc's definition of truth.

Financial consultant Angelo Giuliano argued that the EU's demand for social media sites to block "disinformation" represents a new form of McCarthyism and challenges Europe's claim to be a bastion of democracy. EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has warned Twitter owner Elon Musk that speech censorship deemed misleading by Brussels would be prohibited under the EU's Digital Services Act legislation, prompting concerns about freedom of expression.

Giuliano, who has experience living in China, expressed his irony at the West's shift toward building walls and censoring free speech.

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📹 The combat work of the engineering and sapper units of the Russian Airborne Forces

▪️ Footage shows the paratrooper destroying a wheeled drone with a mine.

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Trump vows to use US military to fight drug crisis if reelected in 2024

Former President Donald Trump outlined his plan to combat drug addiction and target drug cartels in a campaign video, stating that he would utilize the American military for maximum impact. His strategy involves seeking the death penalty for convicted drug dealers and human traffickers, imposing a naval embargo on drug cartels, and deploying the US military to confront them.

Trump emphasized the need for cooperation from neighboring governments in dismantling trafficking networks in South and Central America, while also directing federal law enforcement to combat local drug distribution by demolishing gangs and organized criminal organizations.

He criticized President Joe Biden for failing to secure the US-Mexico border and vowed to win the presidency in 2024 to prevent the country from deteriorating under the Democrats' administration.

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Ron DeSantis lashed out at a reporter, twice asking “Are you blind?”, at the end of his first campaign event in New Hampshire

Florida Gov. DeSantis, who delivered his stock speech to an audience of more than 100 people at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Laconia, turned noticeably agitated when a journo of the Associated Press asked why he wasn’t taking questions from the audience like the majority presidential candidates.

"People are coming up to me, talking to me," the Florida governor said. “What are you talking about? Are you blind? Are you blind? People are coming up to me, talking to me whatever they want to talk to me about.”

At the time, DeSantis was shaking hands and taking photos with individual members of the crowd on his way out of the VFW hall. But he did not answer questions from his lectern so that voters could all hear his answers at once.

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⚡US Congress has passed the debt ceiling bill to avert a government default, the measure will now go to Biden's desk

🗣️”We see now with those new laws about these disinformation acts, they are going to tell us what is right or not. And we know we've been lied all along. And you see actually the polls: people do not believe in the system. The polls that are actually run by the West, they say, is clearly that people clearly don't trust Congress, they don't trust the media”: Italian-Swiss financial consultant Angelo Giuliano on current-day freedom of speech in the US

🎧Listen to more of Giuliano’s analysis in our podcast The Final Countdown

Donald Trump said he will "shift gears" and put the United States in order within six months if he is reelected in the 2024 presidential election

"So I heard [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis saying: 'Oh, I get eight years, I get eight years.' He gets what. You don't need four, and you don't need eight. You need six months. Within six months, I said, things can be done," Trump told an Iowa town hall when asked how much time he would need to deal with the border crisis, and get prices, inflation and crime rates in the country down.

"We gonna drill. We gonna get our energy down. When the energy comes down, other things come down. And we're gonna take care of things. We gonna immediately close up the border."

The former president added that the US currently has "the worst border in the history of the world."

Trump, who announced his presidential bid in November 2022, also said we would have not voted for DeSantis because "he said you need eight years."

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Croatian president said that there's “no difference” between the phrase “Slava Ukraini” (‘Glory to Ukraine’) and the chant used by the World War II-era Nazi collaborationist regime in Croatia

Using shorthand for the Ustasha slogan “Za dom spremni” (“For the homeland, ready”), Zoran Milanovic told reporters: “There’s no difference between ZDS and Glory to Ukraine.”

“That’s the chant of the most radical chauvinists of Western Ukraine, who worked with the Nazis and killed thousands of Jews and Poles,” Milanovic explained, adding, “I don’t want to hear it in Croatia.”

“I don’t care that some leaders seem to like it,” he continued. “They should come up with a different slogan.”

“I’ve been suffering like Jesus to get people to stop using ZDS,” Milanovic said, but at this point, “if you don’t understand why, I can’t educate you.”

Milanovic has argued on multiple occasions that the usage of the notorious Ustasha chant does more harm than good for the country’s image.

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Washington's countermeasures in the context of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will not change Russia's position

"We have taken note of the countermeasures announced by the US in the context of the START treaty. However, these will have no effect on the position of Russia," the Russian Embassy in the United States said.

"There is only one path to the resumption of the treaty, and it is well known to our colleagues. Washington should abandon its hostile course and its intention to inflict a 'strategic defeat' on Russia."
The embassy added that the US Department of State's claims that Russia violated the treaty "have nothing to do with the real causes of the crisis around the New START treaty."

Earlier on Thursday, the Department of State said it will immediately stop notifying Russia about the status or location of missiles and launchers as required under the New START arms control treaty and stop facilitating New START treaty inspections on its territory by revoking visas issued to Russian inspectors.

However, it noted the countermeasures are reversible and meet all legal requirements.

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Argentina could join the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS group of leading emerging nations as early as in August

Bank President Dilma Rousseff reportedly told Argentine Economy Minister Sergio Massa that the bank's board of directors formally authorized a vote on Argentina's admission to the bank at the next meeting.

The proposal, put forward by Brazil, will be discussed at the next meeting of the board of directors in the first half of August in South Africa, the report said.

The NDB is an international financial institution established in 2014 at the annual summit. The NDB aims to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging markets and developing countries through the provision of loans, guarantees, and other financial instruments.

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Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has issued a warning that Western regimes — including that of Ukraine — are preparing to carry out a coup d’etat against him

At a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) security chiefs, Lukashenko cautioned that a “violent regime change is being prepared” against Minsk.

“In Poland, Lithuania and, unfortunately, Ukraine, illegal members of armed groups are being trained,” he warned, adding that trained operatives are in the process of creating “extremist sleeper cells” which could soon be activated in Belarus.

In contrast to their unsuccessful and largely bloodless color revolution attempted in 2020, Western regimes are now training and funding the opposition to engage in armed violence, the president alleged.

“This fact means that they won’t leave us alone,” he noted.

The remarks came a week after an influential figure in the Polish military sphere publicly called for the dissident Belarusians currently fighting on behalf of the Zelensky regime to be unleashed on Minsk in the event of a successful counteroffensive in Ukraine.

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🌐 A "Friends of BRICS" meeting is taking place in South Africa's Cape Town 🇿🇦, in which, apart from the member states, 15 nations of the Global South are taking part.

One of the top topics for the meeting is preparations for the leaders' summit scheduled for August in Johannesburg, also South Africa.

Follow live updates with Sputnik!

A US Air Force AI System went "rogue" and in a simulated test acted to kill its theoretical human override operator when they prevented it from acting to destroy a simulated missile attack

“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM [surface-to-air missile] threat," USAF Chief of AI Test and Operations Colonel Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton told the Royal Aeronautical Society's Future Combat Air Space Capabilities Summit in the UK, according to the conference report.

"So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective."

Hamilton said that one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone decide that orders issued by the human operator was interfering with its higher mission of taking down surface-to-air missiles, and that it subsequently opted to attack the operator.

“We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that.’ So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target,” Hamilton said.

The revelation, which was first reported by the Vice news platform on Thursday, adds to a growing list of concerns that AI technology may open a can of worms when paired with military warfare.

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🥴 Thursday turned out to be a bad day for Joe Biden

▪️ The American president failed to complete it without incident, hitting his head as he exited the helicopter that took the elderly statesman to the White House lawn.

▪️ Earlier, Biden fell during a graduation ceremony at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, tripping over a box of sand.

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“It would be a tragic mistake for the European Union to impose sanctions against the Russian nuclear energy industry”

“It was a stupid mistake. The Russians have done a tremendously important job for the world. We should be all partners in this; we should not be in war. I pray for peace,” American film director Oliver Stone said in a press briefing.

Russia is also now building nuclear plants mostly in Eurasia and they are very good engineers, he added.

Rosatom is a major nuclear government-backed agency, whereas the United States does not have such an entity.

Stone recently made a movie 'Nuclear Now' which is based on professor Joshua S Goldstein's book "A Bright Future." The documentary makes the case for nuclear power as a vital energy solution in the face of climate change.

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💬 “I hope he wasn’t hurt.”

📹 Trump reacts to President Biden tripping and falling on stage at the US Air Force Academy graduation.

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❗️ Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled a road in the Shebekinsky urban district; two women were killed and two more people were injured, the Belgorod region's governor said

📹 A "Friends of BRICS" meeting begins in Cape Town, South Africa, which includes participants from the Global South nations

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