Few U.S. officials take the Russian prosecutors’ allegations at face value; the prevailing view is that both Whelan and Griner were snatched as hostages for exactly the kind of swap now under consideration, or as bargaining chips for lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia. “The Russian security services watched Griner closely and knew they could compromise her,” a former U.S. intelligence officer told Yahoo News earlier this year. “She’s a Black gay woman who could be portrayed as carrying drugs, and they waited until she departed. This was not legitimate law enforcement but cynical power games by the Kremlin.” John Sipher, the former deputy head of “Russia House” at the CIA, said Whelan would have been unlikely to be recruited by any U.S. intelligence service owing to his compromised history: He was given a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine Corps after being court-martialed on larceny-related offenses in 2008.
Even by the Kremlin’s suspect characterization of Whelan and Griner, the allegations against Bout are far worse.
“In the late 1990s,” Jonathan Winer, a senior official in the State Department during the Clinton administration who tracked Bout’s movements, told Yahoo News, “Bout was the No. 2 target for the United States, after Osama bin Laden.” In fact, the infamous arms dealer, widely known as the “merchant of death,” has even been accused of arming al-Qaida.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union until his capture in a 2008 Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation in Bangkok, Bout supplied a rogue’s gallery of governments and militias with guns, ammunition and aircraft. Nicolas Cage played a thinly veiled version of him in the 2005 film “Lord of War,” although the real-life version’s antics were more cinematically uncanny. Even Bout’s aliases — “Viktor Budd,” “Viktor Butt” and, simply, “Boris” — might have stretched credulity for a Bond villain.
Bout was chummy with a succession of African dictators, including Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, the latter of whom paid him in conflict diamonds and whose child soldiers operated the antique Antonov cargo planes that Bout sold him. Warlord Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie committed crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone with Bout-proffered weapons. Some of these clients would object to Bout’s apparent racism and peremptory behavior: a pushy Russian in the midst of anticolonial (or postcolonial) leaders. But that hardly affected his bottom line or their willingness to enrich it.
The Tajikistan-born weapons merchant could play both sides of any war to his advantage. He equipped the Taliban with an air force before 9/11 and also sent weapons to their mortal enemy, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the commander of the Northern Alliance and onetime Afghan defense minister, with whom he liked to hunt the finely horned Marco Polo sheep of the Pamir Mountains. Both the Taliban and Massoud evidently knew their broker was double-dealing, but they put up with it because they had no choice, as one Bout associate later recounted to his biographers: “No one else would deliver the packages.”
Astonishingly, even after being hunted by the U.S. government for years, Bout’s flagship company Irbis (“snow leopard” in Russian) even secretly acted as a private airlift courier for supplies intended for the U.S. military and contractors in occupied Iraq in 2004.
For all Bout’s blood-boltered infamy, some former national security officials think the Biden administration made the right call. “It’s a trade that has to be made, despite all the pitfalls,” according to Marc Polymeropoulos, who oversaw the CIA’s clandestine operations in Europe and Eurasia. “The pressure from the families on the White House is immense.” Polymeropoulos acknowledged that the trade would amount to “rewarding terrible Russian behavior” — equating an international arms trafficker with Whelan and Griner — but that the cost would be worth it. “Make no mistake, the Americans have no hope of release save for this swap. Also, let’s not forget that the Israelis have for decades swapped Palestinian terrorists for their imprisoned soldiers, and sometimes just their remains.”
Sipher agrees. “First, it’s a hard policy call, and I’m glad that Americans that were wrongly held as hostages will be freed. I understand why an American president makes such a deal. However, we should admit that we played Vladimir Putin’s game. He got what he wanted in his typical bullying manner. He knows he can push the West around and will do it until he is stopped.”
The U.S. sanctioned Bout in 2004 due to his gunrunning to Liberia; a year later, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned four of his associates and 30 of his companies.
According to the 2008 sealed indictment against Bout, filed in the Southern District of New York, he agreed to provide advanced weapons systems to FARC, the Colombian terrorist organization, knowing that they would be used to target Americans and U.S. military personnel.
The Russian “assembled a fleet of cargo airplanes capable of transporting weapons and military equipment to various parts of the world, including Africa, South America and the Middle East,” the indictment read. Everything from AK-47s to attack helicopters wound up in the holds of Bout’s cargo planes, of which there were scores, under different national flaggings. He maintained the largest private fleet of post-Soviet cargo aircraft in the world at one point, administering it under a veneer of legitimacy by transporting food, medicine and other licit goods along with lethal contraband.
Bout was found guilty in 2011 on all four counts of the indictment: conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the U.S., conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles, and conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a terrorist organization. He is now in the 10th year of a 25-year sentence.
Peter Hain, the former minister of state for Africa at the British Foreign Office, told the London Sunday Telegraph in 2002 that Bout was “supplying the Taliban and al-Qaida,” an allegation that Bout always denied, portraying himself as an honest businessman toting innocent wares such as textiles and furniture to places like Afghanistan. (It was Hain who coined Bout’s unshakable moniker, the “merchant of death.”)
Bout has for years also loudly denied any connection to the Russian government or its military intelligence service, still known by its Soviet-era acronym, the GRU.
However, in “Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possibile,” a 2007 chronicle of Bout’s malign activities, authors Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun quote one of his associates: “The GRU gave him three airplanes to start the business. The planes, countless numbers of them, were sitting there doing nothing. They decided, let’s make this commercial. They gave Viktor the aircraft and in exchange collected a part of the charter money. It was a setup from the beginning.” An unnamed analyst who worked with British intelligence also told the authors that MI6, the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service, “never had any doubt Bout was GRU material.”
U.N. officials placed Bout’s earlier career as that of an interpreter for Russian peacekeepers in Angola; he had trained at the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, a favored stalking ground for GRU recruitment. Military translators are often GRU officers stationed under diplomatic cover owing to the spy service’s polyglot job requirement. Bout has said he speaks six languages. His bodyguards in his heyday were also reportedly all veterans from GRU Spetsnaz, or special forces.
Russia’s military intelligence agency has come under international scrutiny in the last several years, particularly after U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that a team of now-indicted GRU officers in Moscow were responsible for the hack-and-leak operation against the Democratic Party email servers in 2016, with the express intent of influencing the outcome of that year’s presidential contest.
GRU operatives have been busy outside the digital domain too.
Operatives attached to an elite assassination-and-sabotage cell known as Unit 29155 were sent to Salisbury, England, in 2018 to poison a GRU defector, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter, Yulia, with a Russian-manufactured nerve agent.
Unit 29155 has also lately been linked to a string of earlier mysterious poisonings over the last decade, including that of another arms dealer, the Bulgarian Emilian Gebrev, who succumbed to Skripal-like symptoms in 2015 along with his son and his factory manager near his office in central Sofia. A series of explosions of factories and depots elsewhere in Bulgaria and also the Czech Republic, both of them NATO and EU member states, have been attributed to Unit 29155 operatives, leading to expulsions of Russian intelligence officers from embassies in both countries. Tellingly, these sites are believed to have contained Soviet-era ammunition bound for Ukraine.
Given the unprecedented access Bout had to surplus weapons and ammunition stocks, not to mention the enormous Antonov freighters scattered like metal carcasses across airfields of the fallen Soviet empire, it beggars belief that he was not in some way linked to Russian intelligence.
That would certainly account for why Vladimir Putin’s regime has so desperately sought for his repatriation to Russia and why the U.S. side apparently believes Bout would be a tempting trade amid caustic tensions between the two countries. The Kremlin, said Winer, the former State Department official, “moved heaven and earth” to first prevent Bout’s extradition to the U.S. from Thailand and then to secure his release from prison. The Russian Foreign Ministry has classed him as a political prisoner and, for more than a decade after his capture, serially raised his release with Washington in some kind of exchange. “The big question was whether he was basically state-sponsored or a rogue operator whom the Russian government found useful,” Winer told Yahoo News. “Was he an agent of the GRU when we caught him?”
Given Bout’s conviction in a U.S. court for aiding and abetting FARC, it’s a slightly awkward question for the Biden administration, now facing a mounting chorus to label Russia itself a state sponsor of terrorism. On Thursday, the Senate unanimously adopted a nonbinding resolution urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken to designate Moscow as such.
The text of the resolution not only cites Russian military atrocities against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine but also names the Wagner Group, a U.S. sanctioned Russian mercenary outfit. Financed by the U.S.- and EU-sanctioned oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin — a catering magnate and architect of the St. Petersburg “troll farm” implicated by Mueller in the 2016 U.S. election interference scheme — the Wagner Group has committed “serious human rights abuses in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mozambique,” according to the European Union. The allegations include torture and extrajudicial killings. The Senate also accuses the group of having tried to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of Russia’s invasion in February.
The Treasury Department sanctioned the Wagner Group as a “Russian Ministry of Defense proxy force.” The mercenaries maintain a camp in the Russian region of Krasnodar, right next door to a well-guarded training facility for GRU Spetsnaz, of which Wagner’s leader, Dmitry Utkin, was once a brigade commander. According to Polymeropoulos, the former CIA officer, “there was never any doubt that Wagner functions as an arm of the GRU.”
Might the same be said of the man now sitting in a medium-security penitentiary in Marion, Ill., awaiting his plane back to Moscow?
“They will try to lock me up for life,” the then-45-year-old Bout told the New Yorker before his sentencing. “But I’ll get back to Russia. I don’t know when. But I’m still young. Your empire will collapse and I’ll get out of here.”View article source
https://news.yahoo.com/who-is-viktor-bout-infamous-arms-dealer-swapped-brittney-griner-153308286.html “She’s on her way home after months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held in intolerable circumstances.” So President Joe Biden announced today from the R…
ZACHARY ROGERS | The National Desk
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to Samara Region Governor Dmitry Azarov during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
WASHINGTON (TND) — Russian President Vladimir Putin fell down the stairs and soiled himself at his official residence, a report claims.
According to the anti-Kremlin Telegram channel “General SVR,” Putin’s mishap took place on Wednesday evening.
The report sources the claims to informants within Putin’s security team. “General SVR” also claims to be operated by a former Russian spy.
Truly dramatic events for Putin took place in the evening at his residence,” the report says, once translated from Russian. “Going down the stairs, Putin stumbled and fell to the fifth point, after which he fell on his side and slid down a couple of steps. The incident took place in front of the president’s bodyguards, who quickly reacted and rushed to Putin’s aid.”
Putin suffers from oncology of the gastrointestinal tract, as a result of which he already experiences serious problems with digestion, and as a result of the fall, as it turned out, the main blow fell on the coccyx, which probably caused sharp pain, provoking involuntary defecation,” the report adds.
Putin’s alleged fall comes as concerns over his overall health have increased. The Russian leader is battling cancer and Parkinson’s disease, according to leaked emails obtained by The Sun.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The U.S. and various other countries have sent aid to Ukraine to help it fight off invading Russians, and many members of NATO have pushed for Ukraine to obtain NATO membership.
Nations have also heavily sanctioned Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and the “General SVR” report claims that the Russian economy is suffering due to those sanctions.
Before his alleged fall on Wednesday, Putin was reportedly updated on the state of the Russian economy and the state of the Ukraine invasion. “General SVR” claims the Russian leader was “upset” by some of the news he received.
In the afternoon, Putin was upset by the news from the front,” the report claims. “Promises by the leadership of the military bloc to capture several settlements before the start of winter, including Bakhmut (called Artemovsk in reports to Putin) in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, were not realized. Moreover, yesterday the leadership of the military bloc was not ready to guarantee the president a significant advance on any sector of the front before the New Year.”
Sources also told “General SVR” that doctors examined the Russian president and determined he had bruised his coccyx, but outside of some slight pain when he sits, Putin is fine. Putin reportedly took some painkillers after the fall.
An investigation into how the Russian president managed to fall down the stairs has reportedly been launched.
“General SVR” claims that Putin wears “special shoes” and has anti-slip surfaces in his home, and that the stairs the Russian president allegedly fell on are usually “safe” for him.
As it turns out, all precautions are in vain when nerves go to hell,” the report says in its conclusion.
Caitlin McFall
The U.S. military on Saturday responded to recent missile launches from North Korea by flying two supersonic bombers alongside South Korean and Japanese warplanes.
North Korea on Friday drew international ire after it test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable (ICBM) of carrying multiple nuclear warheads and with a range that could reach anywhere on the U.S.’s mainland.
The U.S. and its regional allies condemned the move and accused Pyongyang of attempting to destabilize the region as it looks to bolster its nuclear program and gain geopolitical prowess though its military advancements.
In this photo provided by South Korean Defense Ministry, two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers, top center, South Korean Air Force F-35 fighter jets and US Air Force F-16 fighter jets, bottom left, fly over South Korea Peninsula during a joint air drill in South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022. (South Korean Defense Ministry via AP)
NORTH KOREA TEST LAUNCHES BALLISTIC MISSILE CAPABLE OF STRIKING ANYWHERE IN US
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly watched the launch of the ICMB on Friday with his wife and “beloved daughter” in what some saw as a sign of his growing confidence in Pyongyang’s abilities to take on top militaries, like the U.S.’s armed forces.
The U.S. deployed B-1B supersonic bombers in joint drills over South Korea earlier this month for the first time in five years after North Korea had ramped up its missile testing and overt aggression in the region.
This photo distributed by the North Korean government shows what it says is a test-fire of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea on March 24, 2022. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)
NORTH KOREA FIRED BALLISTIC MISSILE THAT LANDED NEAR SOUTH KOREA: SEOUL
The B-1B – which reportedly irks Kim over its ability to deliver a massive payload of conventional guided and unguided weapons – has been dubbed the “backbone” of the U.S.’s bomber force according to a statement by the U.S. Air Force.
“It can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons against any adversary, anywhere in the world, at any time,” the statement said. Adding that its “low-radar cross-section” allows the bomber to form “an integrated, robust defense system that supports penetration of hostile airspace.”
In this photo provided by South Korean Defense Ministry, a U.S. Air Force B-1B bomber, sixth from top left, South Korean Air Force F-35 fighter jets and US Air Force F-16 fighter jets, left, fly over South Korea Peninsula during a joint air drill in South Korea, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022. (South Korean Defense Ministry via AP)
At Japan’s request, the U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Monday regarding North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch.
Though the council’s ability to do anything to punish Pyongyang seems unlikely given China and Russia’s blockade earlier this year on attempts to further sanction North Korea for violating UN charter by expanding its nuclear and ballistic capabilities.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
Rebekah Castor
HARRISBURG, PA – We’re just days away from the midterm elections and the big question will be which party gets control of Congress. However, that answer might not come on election night because of how close some races are in key swing states, like Pennsylvania.
The Senate race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and the state’s democrat Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is one of the tightest races in the nation.
The latest polling comes from Monmouth University and shows Oz is gaining more support from independents, going from a combined 29% to 41% in Monmouth’s polling since September. The poll, which is the first to be conducted entirely after the debate between the two candidates, finds Fetterman has 48% of the vote and Oz has 44%.
Because of how close this race is, it’s likely every single vote will need to be counted for the winner to be clear. The state is already warning voters we probably won’t know the full results on Tuesday night, but that doesn’t mean there is any wrongdoing behind the scenes.
SENATE MAJORITY COULD TAKE WEEKS AFTER ELECTION DAY TO DETERMINE
Our Fox News Power Rankings put Pennsylvania as a toss-up between Oz and Fetterman. (Fox News)
The Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman says the delay is related to state rules that don’t allow mail-in ballots to be pre-processed until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
“When there are delays in counting, it doesn’t mean anything nefarious is happening,” Chapman said in a recent media briefing. “It’s just what the law is in Pennsylvania.”
The majority of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties should have results tabulated on election night, but the closer the race is between Oz and Fetterman, the more eligible votes received after Election Day, such as overseas military ballots, will need to be counted.
“We don’t leave here until all the votes are completely tabulated on Election Day,” said President Commissioner Julie Wheeler, who oversees the Board of Elections in York County, Pa. “Not every county is able to do that. If the race is too close to call, you’ll need all 67 counties unofficial results in.”
There are also provisional ballots that could come into play. These are ballots that are flagged on Election Day so county election officials can determine the eligibility of that vote.
For example, voters that report to the wrong precinct, don’t report a change of address to their election office, or don’t have an ID will be required to cast a provisional ballot.
The midterms also come at a time when national polls show some voters are losing trust in America’s election system.
The 2022 midterm elections comes at a time when national polls show some voters are losing trust in America’s election system. (NY Times / Siena College)
In an October New York Times and Siena College poll of registered voters, when asked how much do you trust the results of the 2022 midterm elections will be accurate, 18% said ‘not too much’ and 10% said ‘not at all.’
In the same poll, 29% of voters said they believed Donald Trump was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.
ALABAMA SENATE HOPEFUL KATIE BRITT: STRONG ELECTION PROCEDURES WILL IMPROVE TRUST IN ELECTIONS
This mistrust has led more voters to submit ‘Right to Know’ requests with their county election offices. Pennsylvania and other states, like Ohio, saw a swarm of these election-related public record requests earlier this year.
“We were getting them so fast we couldn’t even keep up with them,” said Sean Drasher, the Director of Elections in Lebanon County, Pa. “The right to know process is a fantastic process, but what we didn’t foresee is that it can be abused. You had a group or an individual that would file dozens or more of right to know requests back to back to back.”
Drasher believes his office was inundated with these requests as part of a coordinated effort from voters who disagree or question the validity of the 2020 election.
“Many of our requests were from people pulling from an online source, and they were being told what to ask for,” Drasher said. “We noticed a lot of our requests were copy and paste boilerplates.”
Meanwhile, undated mail-in ballots have been at the center of a legal battle in Pennsylvania between Democrats and Republicans. After the RNC filed a lawsuit, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that these ballots should not be counted in the upcoming election.
An elections office employee scans mail-in ballots in Lebanon, PA. (Fox News)
PENNSYLVANIA COURT SAYS UNDATED BALLOTS WON’T BE COUNTED AS RNC CLAIMS ‘MASSIVE’ LEGAL VICTORY
“Where it looks like we are now is that we’ll have those ballots that are undated, and we are easily able to segregate them out and we can have the results with those included or we can submit the results without, and we’ll follow the court’s guidance from there,” Drasher said.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court says election officers should set aside and preserve those votes. They could be counted if federal litigation reverses this decision after the election, requiring the votes to be counted.
Historically, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. Therefore, this Supreme Court decision could impact thousands of votes for Democrats across the Commonwealth.
The Pennsylvania Department of State says voters who are concerned they made a mistake on their mail-in ballot, should check with their county elections office or call the state’s voter hotline at 1-877-VOTES-PA.
DR. OZ ON PENNSYLVANIA’S TIGHT SENATE RACE WITH ONE WEEK TO ELECTION NIGHT
The Department of State has also issued guidance that all counties do a post-election recount of 2% of the votes cast, or 2,000 ballots.
In York County, the Board of Elections will do a hand recount and a second count by a tabulator that is a different machine than used on Election Day. The recount will be for the governor and Senate races only. Election officers will ensure the vote tallied by hand match the results tabulated by the machine.
“This is an example of York County being transparent with our voters and assuring the will of the voters is what is cast,” Wheeler said. “We did a hand count in the primary of this year and the numbers of the recount matched what we got from the machine.”
Rebekah Castor joined Fox News in 2021 as a multimedia reporter based in New Orleans.
Ryan Morgan
A Chinese drone airdrops a robotic dog armed with a machine-gun. (Screenshot)
Recent footage of a Chinese drone dropping off a dog-like robot with a machine gun strapped to its back has gone viral, providing a glimpse at the future of unmanned warfare.
Video clips, which were originally published by Chinese media earlier this month, showed large unmanned aircraft system with eight propellers hovering in to drop off a robot dog. The robot has its legs tucked in as it’s dropped off, but begins to unfold its legs and stand upright and walk.
As the robot dog begins to move, it is evident that it has some type of light-machine gun mounted on its back. The weapon appears to be a QBB-95 or QBB-97, which are both drum-magazine fed weapons used by Chinese forces.
Another video appears to show the same drone-based robot dog delivery from a different view.
The Drive reported the footage appeared earlier this month on an account on the Chinese social media app Weibo named “Kestrel Defense Blood Wing.” The Weibo-verified account appears to be affiliated with the Chinese armsmaker known as Kestrel Defense.
Another video went viral this summer showing a Chinese robot dog actually aiming and firing at targets on a range. In the video, the robot had to move its entire body and take several seconds to fine tune to aim the gun and it would reel back under the recoil of sustained automatic fire.
The U.S. military has also been developing dog robots. The U.S. robotmanufacturer Ghost Robotics has also showcased a dog robot equipped with a 6.5 mm rifle pod.
The Russian engineering firm Intellect Machine has also showcased a robot dog armed with an RPG-26 anti-tank launcher. The robot, which is a modified version of a Chinese design, is being developed for Russian forces.
Several dog robots are already available on the consumer market and can be modified to carry and fire again relatively easily.
Last year an internet prank group called MSCHF (pronounced “mischief”) modified a Boston Dynamics robot called spot, arming it with a paintball gun and allowed fans to control the robot and fire the gun through an application on their phones. Boston Dynamics condemned the mischievous use of their technology.
Liz Truss meets supporters at a Conservative Party leadership election hustings in Birmingham, England, on Aug. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira, File)
Anders Hagstrom
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss ended England’s ban on fracking Thursday, opening the door to domestic shale gas production amid a European energy crisis.
The return of fracking is just one piece of a larger energy and economy plan Truss is pursuing in her first weeks since gaining office. Her administration also announced a national freeze on household energy prices, a plan that will cost the government tens of billions.
Under Truss’ plan, household energy costs will be limited to $2,900 per year after ballooning to $4,100 in 2022.
The U.K. and other European countries have faced a worsening energy crisis due to heavy dependence on oil and gas imports from Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin limited exports to Europe after NATO countries imposed severe economic sanctions on the county for its invasion of Ukraine.
PIERS MORGAN WARNS NEW UK PRIME MINISTER LIZ TRUSS: ‘WE WILL BE VERY UNFORGIVING IF YOU FAIL US’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has severely limited energy exports to Europe. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
LIZ TRUSS BECOMES UK PRIME MINISTER, BORIS JOHNSON SUBMITS RESIGNATION TO QUEEN ELIZABETH
The U.K. originally banned fracking in 2019 but could restart domestic production as early as March 2023.
The energy crisis has pushed the U.K. and several of its European neighbors to reconsider their shutdown of nuclear power. Germany made loopholes in its plan to shut down its last plants last week, allowing for two to be re-opened if necessary.
Belgium, meanwhile, was planning to close two reactors by 2025 but will now keep them open through 2036. France is looking to build an additional 14 reactors over the next several decades.
The U.K., Czech Republic, Poland and others are also planning for entirely new reactors.
Nuclear energy is the cleanest and most efficient energy source currently available, though disasters at some plants have caused some to fear the method. The most problematic part of nuclear energy production is the safe disposal of spent fuel rods, which remain highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
Brian Flood
In August 2021, U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban were back in power. One group answered the call of duty and volunteered to save our allies. Their effort to rescue one interpreter turned into an evacuation saving thousands.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
ABC, CBS and NBC have largely moved on from the Taliban taking Afghanistan back following the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops last August, as coverage on evening newscasts dropped to a measly seven seconds in July, according to a new study.
Last week, NBC’s “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS Mornings” failed to recognize that it was exactly one year since the Aug. 26, 2021, terror attack outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in Afghanistan left 11 Marines, one Army soldier and a Navy corpsman dead. But skipping the somber one-year mark of the suicide bomb that killed 13 Americans isn’t the only thing that indicates broadcast networks are moving past Afghanistan coverage.
The conservative watchdog Media Research Center analyzed evening newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS and found a staggering decline in coverage in a study headlined, “CHAOS: One Year of the Networks Hiding Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster.”
ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News” and CBS’ “Evening News” spent 409 minutes and 12 seconds on Afghanistan in August 2021 and the number evaporated to a mere seven seconds in July 2022, according to Media Research Center findings. (AP Photo/Ahmad Halabisaz)
BIDEN REMEMBERS 13 AMERICANS KILLED IN KABUL AIRPORT ATTACK: ‘THEY WERE HEROES’
ABC’s “World News Tonight,” “NBC Nightly News” and CBS’ “Evening News” spent 409 minutes and 12 seconds on Afghanistan in August 2021 and the number evaporated to a mere seven seconds in July 2022, according to the MRC findings.
“It’s not as though life under the Taliban suddenly became peaceful and quiet once the President removed U.S. troops. For instance, January 2022 saw a mere six minutes and 31 seconds of evening newscast coverage. But the reality on the ground was chaos, suffering and death. When journalists bothered to cover Afghanistan, they actually seemed to notice the severity of the disaster,” MRC research director Scott Whitlock wrote.
Whitlock noted the networks quickly moved on from the ongoing story, as it was only covered for 16 total minutes in October of last year.
“It’s also important to note that when there was Afghanistan coverage, the words ‘Joe Biden’ were often missing from the stories,” he added.
ABC, NBC and CBS rarely tie President Biden to chaos in Afghanistan, according to the Media Research Center. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The MRC reported that NBC anchor Lester Holt even referred to it as a “crisis in Afghanistan” in January 2022, but the network only spent about six minutes on the story that entire month and has softened President Biden’s role when the story is mentioned.
“The first two months of summer 2022 saw almost a complete collapse of coverage. In June, just three minutes and 31 seconds. July was even worse: A shocking low of just seven seconds and all of that came from ‘World News Tonight.’ In an otherwise unrelated story on veterans, one service member noted, ‘Everyone I knew in the veteran community had a mental breakdown when Afghanistan fell,’” Whitlock wrote. “That was it for the month. No utterances of the name Joe Biden and no stories on Afghanistan.”
Even as interest in the story “picked up” in August 2022 because of one-year anniversary retrospectives, networks “continued to downplay Joe Biden’s role in overseeing the debacle,” according to the MRC.
THESE ARE THE US SERVICE MEMBERS KILLED IN THE KABUL AIRPORT ATTACK
“When it comes to the media, history is often a guide. With autumn and the 2022 midterms coming, journalists will likely go back to ignoring the perilous situation in Afghanistan. After all, Joe Biden is a Democrat and he must be protected. Even if that means ignoring chaos, suffering and death in a dangerous Afghanistan,” Whitlock wrote.
Brian Flood is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to brian.flood@fox.com and on Twitter: @briansflood.
United States Coast Guard crew members work on a Cutter at the Coast Guard Sector Miami base on January 26, 2022 in Miami, Florida. ( (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images))
Andrew Miller
A United States Coast Guard cutter conducting patrols on an international mission in the Pacific Ocean was denied entry to a port in the Solomon Islands raising concerns about China’s growing influence in the area.
The cutter Oliver Henry was taking part in Operation Island Chief monitoring fishing activities in the Pacific, which ended Friday, when it sought to make a scheduled stop at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, to refuel and re-provision, the Coast Guard office in Honolulu said.
There was no response from the Solomon Islands’ government for diplomatic clearance for the vessel to stop there, however, so the Oliver Henry diverted to Papua New Guinea, the Coast Guard said.
Additionally, it was reported that a British vessel was also denied entry but the British Royal Navy has not commented directly on those reports.
COMMUNIST CHINA SURVIVOR ISSUES WARNING TO AMERICANS: SOCIALISM IS ONLY THE FIRST STAGE
During Operation Island Chief, the U.S., Australia, Britain and New Zealand provided support through aerial and surface surveillance for Pacific island nations participating in the operation, including the Solomon Islands.
China has been assertively trying to expand its presence and influence in the Pacific, and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare alarmed some neighbors, the U.S. and others after he signed a new security pact with China.
US RESPONDS IN KIND FOR CHINA-BOUND FLIGHTS AFTER BEIJING SUSPENDS 26 FLIGHTS TO AMERICA
The pact has raised fears of a Chinese naval base being established within 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) of Australia’s northeast coast. A Chinese military presence in the Solomon Islands would put it not only on the doorstep of Australia and New Zealand but also in close proximity to Guam, the U.S. territory that hosts major military bases.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“China is gaining ground in its efforts to gain dominance in the Pacific,” Former United States Department of Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary James Hutton tweeted in response to the news.
“China is now running the Solomon Islands,” Gordon G. Chang, author ofThe Coming Collapse of China, posted on Twitter.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare in Beijing, Oct. 9, 2019. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
Peter Aitken
Former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz discusses security concerns over a potential nuclear disaster in the war on Ukraine, and he weighs in on China’s continued aggression near Taiwan.
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Russian media has accused the United States of orchestrating the “attack” that killed the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s close ally.
“Daria Dugina’s death will likely rally the Russians who suspect Ukraine’s hand behind the attack,” Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and former DIA intelligence officer, told Fox News Digital.
Dugina, journalist and daughter of Alexander Dugin, died Saturday evening in an explosion while driving her car along the Mozhayskoye Highway in the Moscow region after leaving a music festival. Authorities have said an explosive device planted under the car went off, and officials moved quickly to declare it a “terrorist attack” and point blame at Ukrainians and Americans alike.
Ukrainian politician Denis Pushilin, leader of the separatists Donetsk People’s Republic, blamed the explosion on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin.”
But some have gone even further, such as political analyst Yegor Kholmogorov, who told the Russian outlet Pravda that the attack was “no doubt” prepared by U.S. and British intelligence services and carried out by “Ukrainian saboteurs.” He claimed that Kyiv itself could not have planned such “daring” sabotage.
Journalist and political expert Daria Dugina, daughter of Russian politologist Alexander Dugin, is pictured in the Tsargrad TV studio in Moscow, Russia, in this undated handout image. (Tsargrad.tv/Handout via Reuters)
Dugin, one of Putin’s closest allies and nicknamed “Putin’s Brain,” was also at the music festival and supposedly had intended to be with his daughter after leaving the event but changed his mind at the last minute.
BIDEN DISCUSSES IRAN, UKRAINIAN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WITH UK, FRENCH AND GERMAN LEADERS
Some experts speaking to Russian media have described Dugin as holding a central role in Putin’s inner circle — one that allowed him to push an ideology upon which Putin based his entire invasion.
Russian politologist Alexander Dugin addresses the rally “Battle for Donbas” in Moscow on October 18, 2014. (Moscow News Agency/Handout via Reuters)
“Her father, Alexander Dugin, is the mastermind of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Koffler explained, calling him a “symbol of the Russian World” for pushing his view of Eurasianism, which is vital to Putin’s entire basis for waging his war in Ukraine.
RUSSIAN OFFICIALS AGREE TO OPEN ZAPORIZHZHIA NUCLEAR PLANT TO UN INSPECTORS: REPORT
“One cannot understand Putin’s thinking and why he is waging war on Ukraine without knowing about Dugin and Eurasianism. Putin’s doctrine and strategy are developed around this ideology, at the heart of which is the idea of the Russian exceptionalism,” she continued. “Similar to the idea of American exceptionalism, the sense of uniqueness runs very deeply in the Russian psyche. It is because of this ideology, Eurasianism, that Putin will not stop his war on Ukraine.”
Investigators work at the site of a suspected car bomb attack that killed Daria Dugina, daughter of ultranationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, in the Moscow region on Aug. 21, 2022, in this still image taken from video. (Investigative Committee of Russia/Handout via Reuters)
Vladimir Gutenev, a member of the Duma, told Russian outlet RG that Alexander Dugin’s ideas are widespread in Russia, calling Dugina’s death “a strike on the ideological front” and saying that Russia must provide a “quick” response.
Andrey Klishas, head of the Federation Council Committee on State Construction, echoed the sentiment, saying that anyone involved in the “attack” should “be destroyed.”
“The fact that a blow was struck against Alexander Dugin suggests that our enemies are most afraid of the spiritual component of our struggle,” he told RG. “This struggle is the most important thing.”
Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.
15 mins ago
Former President Donald Trump announced his plan to sue CNN Wednesday for “repeated defamatory statements.”
“I have notified CNN of my intent to file a lawsuit over their repeated defamatory statements against me,” Trump said in a statement. “I will also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election. I will never stop fighting for the truth and for the future of our Country!”
This is a developing story…
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TRUMP: ‘We Should Not Allow Men to Play in Women’s Sports, That’s Crazy’Tue, Jul 26, 2022
TRUMP: ‘Execute a Drug Dealer and You’ll Save 500 Lives’Tue, Jul 26, 2022
https://www.thefirsttv.com/breaking-now-donald-trump-sues-cnn-for-defamatory-statements/
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