Zorro
Zorro's JournalChina Is Cutting Off Drone Supplies Critical to Ukraine War Effort
China’s escalating conflict with the US over trade is now extending to the drones that have become a vital part of Ukraine’s defense.
Manufacturers in China recently began limiting sales to the US and Europe of key components used to build unmanned aerial vehicles, according to multiple people with knowledge of the developments, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information.
The moves are a prelude to broader export restrictions on drone parts that western officials expect Beijing to enforce in the new year, the people said. Those rules could take the form of license approvals based on the intended use of the components or softer requirements for Chinese companies to notify the government of their shipment plans, according to one of the people.
Representatives for China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to a request for comment.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-09/china-is-cutting-off-drone-supplies-critical-to-ukraine-war-effort?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy
Lula Is Awake, Conscious After Emergency Brain Surgery
Source: Bloomberg
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is awake and conscious after undergoing an emergency brain surgery that adds to the delicate political moment he faces in Brazil.
Lula will stay in the intensive care unit of a Sao Paulo hospital for 48 hours as a precaution, and should be able to return to Brasilia early next week, Doctor Roberto Kalil told journalists on Tuesday.
The 79-year-old president felt headaches Monday and a brain scan showed an intracranial hemorrhage resulting from an accident he had suffered at home in October, doctors said. He was immediately flown to Sao Paulo for surgery, which went on without complications, according to his medical team.
“He’s now stable, talking normally and eating,” Kalil said at the Sirio-Libanes hospital where Lula is being treated. “He had no brain injury.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-10/brazilian-president-lula-in-intensive-care-after-brain-surgery?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy
Protesters gather outside Florida agency to fight oil drilling near Apalachicola River
Xochitl Bervera’s commute takes about 15 minutes, and she’ll argue it’s the prettiest drive on earth.
Each morning, Bervera boats into the middle of Apalachicola Bay, where she has raised oysters full-time for two years.
The ride, surrounded by the salt marshes and seagrass beds, reminds Bervera of why she loves her job in Northwest Florida — and it underscores what she could soon stand to lose.
A few months ago, Bervera learned of a company that wants to drill an exploratory oil well just up the river from her farm. She worried for the more than 125,000 baby oysters she tends to each day.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2024/12/09/florida-oil-gas-drilling-apalachicola-bay-oysters/
Coming soon -- Apalachicola Bay oysters with that unique petroleum flavor. Ummm Ummm!
Hey, MAGA voters: You've been had. Trump's plans for the economy may ruin you.
President-elect Donald Trump cares deeply about the forgotten men and women of the MAGA movement, the regular folks who believe wealthy elites have made America decidedly NOT GREAT.
So I’m sure those forgotten men and women are thrilled to know Trump has stocked his upcoming administration with enough billionaires and multimillionaires to, as The Guardian put it recently, “form a soccer team.”
That’s right. Axios reported last week that, including Trump himself, the administration-to-be is already staffed with 14 billionaires. The list includes Linda McMahon as Education secretary, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as government efficiency overseers, Howard Lutnick as Commerce secretary and billionaire hedge-fund manager Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary.
I’m sure these down-to-earth billionaires care deeply about the forgotten men and women who put Trump in office. Surely they are in no way “elite,” aside from perhaps owning an island, or maybe occasionally hunting poor people for sport on said island.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/12/09/trump-musk-ramaswamy-gut-healthcare-education/76823151007/
Russia's Military Found a Surprisingly Simple Way to Buy US Chips
Ever since the US and its allies imposed sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, Western officials have been frustrated by Moscow’s continued ability to get its hands on American technologies to help power its war efforts. Russian weapons recovered from battlefields in the region are chock full of gear from firms like Intel Corp. and Analog Devices Inc., much to the frustration of officials in Washington, Brussels and Kyiv. The nagging question: Why are trade controls failing?
A cache of records obtained by Bloomberg reveals new details about this surprisingly resilient supply chain from Silicon Valley to Moscow. They show many of the steps that suppliers to Russia’s military take to acquire components from US chipmaker Texas Instruments Inc., unbeknownst to the Dallas-based company. They also identify Russian distributors handling thousands of shipments bound for the country’s military contractors, including several companies under US sanctions. They help produce drones, glide bombs, precision communication systems and the Iskander missiles that Moscow uses to hammer Ukraine’s cities.
The purchasing process is surprisingly simple. Some Russian distributors have integrated information from Texas Instruments’ online shop, TI store, onto their sales platforms, allowing clients to see semiconductor inventory and pricing before they place requests, according to documents seen by Bloomberg and government officials familiar with the matter. From Moscow or St. Petersburg, they can buy TI components with a few mouse clicks, placing orders carried out and delivered through companies outside Russia.
In one case reviewed by Bloomberg, a major Russian distributor handled more than 4,000 orders for hundreds of thousands of TI products worth about $6 million this year through August. Nearly $4 million of those orders were ultimately for Russian military companies, while the remainder were likely for civilian use, according to the supply records. The items were routed through Hong Kong or other countries before arriving in Russia.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-12-09/russia-s-military-buying-us-chips-from-texas-instruments-despite-sanctions?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTczMzc1Nzk4MywiZXhwIjoxNzM0MzYyNzgzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTTzgzVzRUMEFGQjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.icqj2OnnTEkmB_WNR9MI7lbVS-BT3Mv8pK_Prl3pr4A
Capitalism at its finest. Sanctions? Pfft. There are profits to be made!
Reopening of Notre-Dame Marred by Appearance of Antichrist
PARIS (The Borowitz Report)—The much-anticipated reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral on Saturday was ruined by the appearance of the Antichrist, observers said.
Beelzebub, who had traveled from Palm Beach, was heard loudly complaining that he had come “all the way to Notre Dame and there was no football game.”
He later disrupted the ceremony by loudly hawking a shipment of $60 Bibles he had just received from China.
French president Emmanuel Macron apologized to the world for inviting the Archfiend, but added, “At least he didn’t bring Elon.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/reopening-of-notre-dame-marred-by
Owner of Los Angeles Times Plans 'Bias Meter' Next to Coverage
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, said on Thursday that he planned to introduce a “bias meter” next to the paper’s news and opinion coverage as part of his campaign to overhaul the publication.
Dr. Soon-Shiong, who in October quashed a planned presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris from The Los Angeles Times’s editorial board, said in an interview that aired on Scott Jennings’s podcast “Flyover Country” that he had begun to see his newspaper as “an echo chamber and not a trusted source.”
He previously said he planned to remake the paper’s editorial board and add more conservative voices. He has asked Mr. Jennings, a CNN political commentator and a Republican strategist, to join it.
Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought The Times in 2018, said on the podcast that he had been working with a team to create the so-called bias meter using technology he had been building in his health care businesses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/business/media/la-times-owner-bias-meter.html
"...said in an interview that aired on Scott Jennings’s podcast..." Being interviewed by and then adding Scott Jennings to the LA Times editorial board is a clear indication of where the LA Times is headed; accurate and truthful reporting is not a sign of bias, and op-eds are intentionally biased for a reason -- they are intended to spark discussions about issues of the day. Glad I cancelled my subscription.
RFK Jr. Is a One-Man Plague
AT A NEW YORK RALLY IN OCTOBER, Donald Trump promised the crowd that if elected, he would let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on health, food, and medicines. It delighted the crowd, who imagined they were cheering for better health and better medicine. They’re in for a bitter surprise.
Some, like former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, have correctly responded to the Kennedy selection with alarm (“beyond dangerous”), but others who should know better are offering cautious approval.
“Well, he has a point about fluoride in the water,” a Washington Post columnist conceded. American healthcare has “become too reliant on treating every matter of discomfort with a pill instead of tackling questions about environment, culture, and behavior,” mused a New York Times contributor.
They seem to think we can take what we like from the Kennedy buffet and leave the rest. Not so. If he is confirmed, we won’t get only the 3 percent of Kennedy ideas that are sane, we will be saddled with the 97 percent that are deranged. It isn’t that Kennedy is merely misinformed—though he is. It’s that he’s an active agent of misinformation. That’s a character problem. Hiring him to run health policy for this country is like hiring an arsonist to head the fire department.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/rfk-jr-one-man-plague-vaccines-covid-hhs
Mona Charen, right-wing Republican tool, may be having second thoughts about what her rabid GOP support for decades has led to.
Biden Pardons Every Democrat in Country
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that drew howls of protest from Donald J. Trump, on Friday President Biden pardoned every Democrat in the United States of America.
Biden said that the blanket pardon would extend to such “honorary Democrats” as former congressman Adam Kinzinger and the Cheneys.
“If you’re the enemy within, you’re in,” he said.
Asked about the logistics of pardoning over 70 million people, Biden said, “We got this. Hunter’s really good with computers.”
The president, however, indicated that the pardon would not apply to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, adding, “They’re on their own now.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/biden-pardons-every-democrat-in-country
I had a front-row seat to Pam Bondi's messy stint as attorney general
I still remember the night Pam Bondi called me, desperate for help.
It was a Saturday night in 2010, and Bondi was getting ready to go on national TV to join Geraldo Rivera for a discussion about a string of wrongful convictions in Florida.
Rivera knew that a discredited “expert” had already been exposed for using junk science and bogus testimony to improperly put three Brevard County men behind bars for decades and that the same fraudster was suspected of having done the same in other cases. So the TV host wanted to know whether any Florida official had the courage to reopen all the cases and see if others had been wrongfully convicted.
Bondi claimed she wanted to be that person. She was running for attorney general back then and told Rivera and his Fox News audience that if voters would just elect her, she would be a crusader for justice.
Only Bondi had a problem: She didn’t actually know much about the cases. So she called someone who did. Me.
https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2024/12/06/i-had-front-row-seat-pam-bondis-messy-stint-attorney-general-column/
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