Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[RIA Novosti] All the French military involved in the operation "Dune" to combat terrorism in Mali left the country. And took all the Spice
"Today, the last military operation ‘Barkhan’, located on the territory of Mali, crossed the border between Mali and Niger," the General Staff of the French Armed Forces said in a communiqué.
The soldiers and officers left the operational headquarters in the city of Gao - it was handed over to the Armed Forces of Mali, the department noted.
In the spring, the Mali government announced that it was terminating defense agreements with France and urged it to withdraw troops involved in Operations Barkhane and Takuba.
In July, Paris announced the official end of Operation Takuba, a joint operation with European allies, to combat terrorism in Mali. In total, the French contingent was in the African country for almost ten years.
[Rudaw] Oil prices slumped more than five percent Monday on the rising prospects of a return of Iranian oil to the market and data showing China's economic recovery stuttering under Covid-19 restrictions.
Stock markets were broadly steady and the dollar traded mixed as investors welcomed signs of cooling US inflation, which nevertheless remains at the highest level in decades.
"The dark clouds of recession appear to be appearing when it comes to the global economy, with the latest China data reinforcing those fears," said market analyst Michael Hewson at CMC Markets UK.
China's central bank slashed key interest rates in a surprise move Monday as a raft of data showed weakness in the world's second-largest economy.
The figures showed China's industrial production and retail sales growth for July came in lower than expected.
Industrial production was up 3.8 percent year-on-year, but down from 3.9 percent in June and well below analysts' forecasts.
"The risk of stagflation in the world economy is rising, and the foundation for domestic economic recovery is not yet solid," China's National Bureau of Statistics warned.
Stagflation refers to long-running high inflation combined with rising unemployment and weak growth.
Beijing's rigid adherence to a zero-Covid strategy has held back economic recovery as snap lockdowns and long quarantines batter business activity and a recovery in consumption.
Hewson added that "problems in the property sector also aren't helping, where many home buyers are halting mortgage payments in protest at delays to the completion of new homes."
- IRAN TALKS - Meanwhile, ...back at the shootout, Butch shot Ike through the elbow. Take that, Ike! he yelled...... Iran ...The nation is noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence... 's foreign minister said Tehran would deliver its "final" proposal later Monday on talks to revive its 2015 nuclear accord with world powers, after Washington had accepted key demands.
A deal would mean that Iran's crude output of 2.5 million barrels per day would no longer be under international sanctions and help relieve supply constraints that have been pushing up prices.
"Iran would flood the market," said analyst Aditya Saraswat at energy research firm Rystad, who added the country could ramp up production by another million barrels per day.
Oil prices, which had already been sharply lower on the Chinese data, pushed even further lower and recording daily drops of more than five percent, before later clawing back some of their losses.
Europe's main equity markets finished with modest gains while Wall Street stocks dipped in morning trading.
Market analyst Fawad Razaqzada at City Index and FOREX.com said talk of a US recession is back after a key manufacturing survey plunged into the negative, a signal of worsening business conditions.
Markets are also keenly awaiting the release Wednesday of the minutes from the Fed's last policy meeting in July for clues to the US central bank's interest rate plans.
Investors are concerned that after successive three-quarter point raises any further increases of a similar magnitude could choke off economic recovery.
The negative reading for the new orders question on the New York Federal Reserve's Empire State Manufacturing Survey -- compared to the positive result from July -- shows that the interest rate hikes may already be having an effect on slowing activity that has fuelled inflation.
Patrick O'Hare, an analyst at Briefing.com, called lower stock prices a reflection "of weakening demand that comes with a weakening economy, and, by extension, a weakening in earnings growth prospects."
#2
My only solace about Biden's attempt to destroy America is that apparently Xi is even more serious in an attempt to destroy China. See this article from today's Wall Street Journal (paywalled, but the headline and the first paragraph really say it all.)
[IsraelTimes] The accused attacker of British author Salman Rushdie was transformed by a trip to Lebanon Hezbollahstan ...a strong argument in favor of European colonialism, even French colonialism... in 2018, when he became more religious and less outgoing, his mother says.
Lebanese-born Silvana Fardos, of Fairview, New Jersey, describes her 24-year-old son Hadi Matar as "a moody introvert," increasingly fixated with Islam after the visit to see his estranged father.
"One time, he argued with me, asking why I encouraged him to get an education instead of focusing on religion," she told Britannia’s Daily Mail newspaper, according to a report on its website.
"He was angry that I did not introduce him to Islam from a young age," she said in an interview published online last night.
Matar was arrested at the scene of the attack on Rushdie, 75, at a literary event in upstate New York on Friday.
He pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." the following day to charges of attempted murder and assault with a weapon, and is being held without bail.
Prosecutors have described a planned, premeditated assault on Rushdie, who was stabbed approximately 10 times.
Police have provided no information about the suspect’s background or his possible motive.
Fardos said she was "shell-shocked" to receive a call from one of her twin 14-year-old daughters telling her that the FBI ...Formerly one of the world's premier criminal investigation organizations, something for a nation to be proud of. Now it's a political arm of the Deep State oligarchy that is willing to trump up charges, suppress evidence, or take out insurance policies come election time... was at the family’s home and her son was allegedly responsible.
"I just cannot believe he was capable of doing something like this. He was very quiet. Everyone loved him," she said.
Her son "changed a lot" after his trip to Lebanon, she said. Matar’s father moved backed to Lebanon after the two divorced.
"I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job, but instead he locked himself in the basement," she said.
"I couldn’t tell you much about his life after that because he has isolated me since 2018," and also said little to the rest of his family for months.
Matar’s family hails from the southern Lebanese village, where support is strong for the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group. The mayor told Rooters that Matar stayed in a building in Yaroun while visiting Lebanon.
[IsraelTimes] Shortly before he was stabbed at an event in New York on Friday, author Salman Rushdie had agreed to serve as a traveling envoy advocating for fellow writers in peril, according to the co-founder of group that offers refuge to exiled scribes.
"I asked Salman would he be willing to travel to promote the idea of cities of asylum and grow them in the US," Ralph Henry Reese of the Pittsburgh-based City of Asylum tells the Guardian. "He signed up."
Henry Reese was moderating the event, and was also injured in the attack.
He says Rushdie was in very good spirits prior to going onstage in and that the two were looking forward to further talking about exile for writers in danger. "We go out minutes later on stage," Reese says. "He wanted to talk about welcoming writers in exile into communities and how positive that is for everyone."
Then came the attack, in which Rushdie was stabbed multiple times and left seriously injured. "It was a tragic irony in so many ways," Reese says. "The horror of it, all the layering of the realities."
"Here was Rushdie who had lived this already, who was speaking so courageously for many years, who was about to talk about his experiences and the value of protecting writers, and now we have this extraordinary materialization happening right on stage. It was so resonant of why we need to defend precisely those values," he adds.
#1
Such a load of shii-ii-ii-ite!
'I expected him to come back motivated'
And he did, you accursed Midianite.
Find out how much brood she has,
and don't let 'em outta sight!
[IsraelTimes] Terror group’s capabilities called into question after its fire kills Gazans, fails to deal blow to Israel; Hamas said furious with PIJ for refusing help in improving rockets
Several Gazook eyewitnesses have confirmed Israeli charges that rockets fired by the terror group Islamic Paleostinian Jihad were responsible for fatalities and damage inside Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , after they fell short and landed back in the coastal enclave during three days of conflict earlier this month.
Continued on Page 49
[AlAhram] A Syrian Cabinet minister said Monday that Syrian refugees in neighbouring Lebanon can start returning home, where he said they will get all the help they need from authorities.
Tiny Lebanon is home to 1 million Syrian refugees who fled war in their country after the conflict began in March 2011. The large number of refugees in the small Mediterranean nation makes it one of the highest per capita host countries of refugees in the world.
Minister of Local Administration Hussein Makhlouf made his comments during a meeting in Syria's capital Damascus with Issam Charafeddine, Lebanon's caretaker minister of the displaced.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and rights groups oppose involuntary repatriation to Syria and say the practice risks endangering the returning refugees.
``The doors are open for the return of Syrian refugees,'' Makhlouf said, adding that the state is ready to assist returnees and give them all they need.
Makhlouf said that includes shelters for those whose homes were destroyed during the conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the pre-war population of 23 million.
More than 5 million Syrians are refugees, most of them in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
Few Syrian refugees have returned home since President Bashar Assad's forces got much of the country under their control over the past few years with the help of allies Russia and Iran.
The calls for the return of Syrian refugees to their country have increased in Lebanon since the tiny nation's economic meltdown began. The downturn has left three-quarters of Lebanese living in poverty. For Syrians, living conditions have become worse since the financial crisis began in October 2019.
Charafeddine told The Associated Press last month that Lebanon hopes to start repatriating 15,000 Syrian refugees every month in the near future.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
08/16/2022 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[16 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...The nation is noted for 
...a strong argument in favor of European colonialism, even French colonialism...
Hezbollah
