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The U.S. has allocated a new military assistance package for Ukraine worth $400 million, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced during his to Kyiv on Oct. 21, Ukrinform reported.

Later in the day, the Pentagon said in its press release that the recent package included HIMARS air defense systems, tube-launched, optically tracked, and wire-guided (TOW) missiles, M113 armored personnel carriers, Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems, and ammunition for high-mobility artillery.

Washington also pledged to provide Kyiv with 155 mm and 105 mm artillery ammunition, as well as 60 mm, 81 mm, and 120 mm mortar systems and rounds, among other weapons and training equipment.

The Pentagon chief arrived in Kyiv in a surprise visit to discuss further support for Ukraine as the uncertain U.S. presidential election looms.

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The new £2.26 billion is the UK’s contribution to the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) Loans to Ukraine scheme, in which $50 billion from G7 countries will be delivered to Ukraine for its military, budget and reconstruction needs. The loan will be repaid using the extraordinary profits on immobilised Russian sovereign assets.

South Korean media claimed on Monday that Seoul could send military and intelligence personnel to Ukraine after the North dispatched troops to support Russia in the war.

A report said the government and military of South Korea "are reviewing a plan to send an appropriate number of personnel, including intelligence officers [specialized in North Korea] and experts in enemy tactics," to Ukraine, citing a South Korean intelligence official.

South Korean personnel in Ukraine would interrogate or provide interpretation services if North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces, the report said. They would also provide Kyiv with information about the North's military tactics, doctrine, and operations.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3997245

According to China's National Bureau of Statistics on the 21st, the unemployment rate of young people (16-24 years old) reached 18.8% in August. It's the highest it's been this year. This is attributed to the fact that a large number of students who graduated from school in the first half of this year jumped into the job front.

[...]

Chinese authorities temporarily suspended the release of monthly figures after youth unemployment hit an all-time high of 21.3% in June last year. Since then, new standards have been applied and announced from this year excluding enrolled students from the statistical target. Nevertheless, the youth unemployment rate, which was 14.6% in January this year, is steadily rising.

Last month, the story of 24-year-old Lee became a hot topic on Weibo, a Chinese social network service (SNS). After completing a master's degree in physics at the graduate school, it was known that he got a job as a cleaner at a high school in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

[...]

In fact, many young Chinese people are flocking to gig workers (short-time workers). The number of delivery drivers registered on Meituan, a large delivery platform, jumped from 3.98 million in 2019 to 7.45 million last year. The growth of the delivery market slowed due to the end of the "COVID-19 lockdown" policy, but the number of delivery drivers increased.

[...]

Against this backdrop, the Chinese government has recently decided to strengthen its crackdown on slang and newly coined words on the Internet. Some analysts say that they intend to censor terms that criticize the Chinese Communist Party and the government.

Israel has accused Hezbollah of keeping hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker under a hospital in the southern suburbs of Beirut, though it said it would not strike the complex.

The Sahel hospital in Dahiyeh was evacuated shortly afterwards, and Fadi Alame, its director, told Reuters that the allegations were untrue.

Israel did not provide evidence for its claim that cash was being kept under the hospital. Instead, it published an animated graphic that purported to show a bunker under the hospital and said it had previously been used to hide the former secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel appealed to the Lebanese government to confiscate the money it said the Shia militant organisation had stolen from the Lebanese people.

Shortly after, Israel issued a series of warnings to residents of Dahiyeh that it would begin striking buildings in the area and that they should move at least 500 metres away. Those who remained in the area began to flee.

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European Union candidate Serbia will continue to refuse to impose sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine despite Western pressure, Serbia’s leader said after his telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.

Populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Instagram that he believes the call, what he said was his first in more than two years with the Russian president, will help “further development of relations and trust between Russia and Serbia.”

“We talked as people who have known each other for a long time, as friends, and the ten-minute conversation was marked by a personal note, and we also talked about those who are weak (pro-Western) leaders,” Vucic said.

Vucic quoted Putin as saying “what is good for Serbia is also good for Russia, what is good for the Serbs is also good for the Russians.”

Documents obtained by Ottawa Citizen show officials were concerned about negative media in case of Kristen Adams

Canada’s military decided not to apologize to an employee after she was sexually assaulted while working with Nato allies, over fears that any apology would be reported by an Ottawa newspaper.

For years, the country’s armed forces has publicly acknowledged a culture that bred abuse and assault, and a longstanding failure to root it out. The crisis, which prompted a shake-up at the most senior ranks, has eroded public trust in the institution and weakened morale within the military’s ranks.

Kristen Adams, who was working at a canteen for troops in Latvia, was sexually assaulted by a Nato soldier on 3 December 2022. After filing a formal complaint about the assault, she was warned by the army’s morale and welfare services that she should have better understood the risks of the job.

Schools in Mexico have six months to implement a government-sponsored ban on junk food or face heavy fines, officials said Monday, as authorities confront what they call the worst childhood obesity problem in the world.

The rules, published on Sept. 30, target products that have become staples for two or three generations of Mexican school kids: sugary fruit drinks, chips, artificial pork rinds and soy-encased, salty peanuts with chili.

School administrators who violate the order will face fines equivalent to between $545 and $5,450, which could double for a second offense. That could amount to nearly a year’s wages for some.

A Chinese mercenary has shared details about North Korean soldiers allegedly killed shortly after they joined Russia's war effort in Ukraine.

The information was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the account @whyyoutouzhele on Sunday, in a conversation between a gun-for-hire fighting alongside Russian forces, who goes by the handle "Dian Yuzhang," and a mercenary who has returned to China and goes by the name Li Dafu.

These claims emerged just days after South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirmed that North Korean troops had been training in Russia before being sent to bolster Russia's diminished forces and help contain Ukraine's counteroffensive in Russia's Kursk region.

Israeli forces are blocking humanitarian missions aimed at rescuing people who are trapped under the rubble due to Israeli strikes in north Gaza, the UN has reported. The development comes as Israel wages a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign in the north that has killed hundreds of Palestinians so far.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory said on Sunday that it has been requesting that Israel grant them access to north Gaza for days so that workers can reach the dozens of people buried alive under the rubble. Those trapped are likely to die if Israel continues denying access, the group said.

The blockade is part of Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan,” to empty the entirety of north Gaza of Palestinians, either by death or forced displacement. According to Al Jazeera, medical sources in Gaza say that the Israeli military has killed at least 640 Palestinians in north Gaza over the past 17 days of its mass killing and starvation campaign.

Over the weekend, pictures and videos emerged showing Israeli forces rounding up crowds of Palestinians from Jabalia refugee camp and forcing them to leave, which some have labeled as a “death march.” There is nowhere for displaced people to go; Lazzarini has reported that UN shelters in the region are so overcrowded that people are being forced to take shelter in bathrooms.

The UN Human Rights Office has expressed concern that Israel is aiming to exterminate the Palestinian population of north Gaza.

Two of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s sons have confirmed they are negotiating for a plea deal with the US government, an attorney for the pair confirmed during a federal court status hearing in Chicago on Monday.

The hearing confirmed an August report from the Mexican news organization Milenio that Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López were negotiating a deal for a more lenient sentence and to become cooperating witnesses for the US government.

During Monday’s hearing for Ovidio Guzmán, the federal judge also allowed for him and his brother to be represented by the same attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented El Chapo during his sensational 2019 federal trial.

. . .

Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López, along with their other two brothers still at large in Mexico, were the leaders of “Los Chapitos”, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, one of the biggest organized crime groups in Mexico.

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An Israeli settler leader has told a conference on Israel's frontier with Gaza that Palestinians will "disappear" from the territory and said that thousands of people stand ready to move there "from north to south”.

Addressing a conference on Monday also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Daniella Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries.

“We came here with one clear purpose: the purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip, not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip from north to south,” said Weiss.

Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.

Weiss’s comments were echoed by Ben Gvir, who later told the crowd: “We are the owners of the land”. Ben Gvir also called for Palestinians in Gaza to “voluntarily” transfer to other countries.

Monday’s conference, which was billed by organisers as “a celebration for the preparation of settling Gaza", took place near Reim kibbutz, with the sound of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of northern Gaza audible in the background and with smoke rising over the horizon a few kilometres to the west.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military says it’s hit buildings housing nearly a dozen bank branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial institution with ties to Hezbollah. Many of the banks were located in residential buildings and held the savings for many Lebanese residents.

On Sunday, UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, accused Israel of deliberately demolishing another U.N. observation tower in what UNIFIL described as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

JAMIL MOUAWAD: Actually, the situation in Lebanon is incredibly difficult. We currently live in a limbo. Life has come to a halt, basically, with people concerned about when do they go about their normal life, when students will go back to schools, to universities, people will go back to their jobs, but also to their normal life. So, there is a lot of anxiety going on.

Yesterday, as you mentioned, Israel attacked directly and bombed financial institutions related directly to Hezbollah. Of course, we all know that Israel has identified any institution, civilian or not, directly affiliated with Hezbollah as a threat, and they are bombing it. Of course, this is only a way to demolish buildings in Lebanon and to further terrorize the Lebanese civilians.

In which China tells Cuba that it should stop being so communist if it wants to succeed:

China publicly supports Cuba’s right to choose its own path to economic development “in line with its national conditions”, but privately Chinese officials have long urged the Cuban leadership to shift from its vertically planned economy to something closer to the Chinese model, according to economists and diplomats briefed on the situation.

Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said.

AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack on Iran. One document came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the other from the NSA, the National Security Agency. The documents reference recent Israeli drills involving air-launched ballistic missiles, as well as covert drone activity. On Friday, President Biden was asked if he knew how and when Israel would attack Iran. Biden responded by saying “yes and yes,” unquote.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor, can you comment on these leaked U.S. documents, intelligence documents, describing satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike in Iran? You also have the Foreign Ministry coming out today in Tehran, speaking out and saying it would be illegal to attack nuclear plants in Iran, according to the United Nations. If you can comment on all of this? The intelligence documents, not clear how they were leaked, coming from, among other places, the NSA, the National Security Agency, the intelligence agency in the United States that’s many times larger than the CIA.

HASSAN AHMADIAN: You know, we still don’t know the intricacies of these leaks. But, obviously, if they are intentional or not intentional, the leaking, it makes a different — I mean, the messaging or the message of them being linked will be different. But in any case, I think the Iranians are saying that these leaks show that the Israelis are trying to attack places of strategic importance that are legally — you know, should not to be attacked, but Israel is obviously trying or inching closer to attack them. It’s within the Iranian, you know, international or diplomatic reach, which the foreign minister and the president have been on the past few weeks telling the world that we don’t want escalation, but, obviously, the Israelis are coming to force it upon us, and we will have to retaliate.

The legality of the issue is obvious. I mean, it’s illegal, as per international law, to attack the atomic energy agency structure. It’s very obvious that it’s not legal to attack such places. But, I mean, the Israeli policy in assassinating scientists, killing a guest in an inauguration day in Iran, all the policies that have been pulled off previously were illegal, as well. So, the Iranians know that this is not going to affect the situation, but they are telling the world, “These are the evidence. We are not after this escalation, but you should look at Israel and what it’s doing to provoke Iran and its allies to retaliate.”