This Week in the World Affairs Brief
PUTIN REFUSES TO COMPROMISE ON TRUMP PEACE DEAL
President Trump put his negotiating team in a very bad position by first accepting almost everything Putin was demanding on Ukraine. Now, after the mostly one-sided, pro-Russian elements of the proposal have been rejected by Ukraine and Europe, the Trump team was forced to travel to Moscow to ask Putin for concessions in order to make a deal. He refused to compromise, and unleashed more aerial attacks on Ukraine to boot. Trump even tried to discourage Zelensky from holding onto the hope of recovering lost territory by leaking that Trump was considering official recognition of occupied Crimea as Russian territory. Putin continues to insist that Ukraine must withdraw from all four regions Russia invaded from 2014 through 2025 including some territory that Moscow still doesn’t fully control - and says that those aims will be achieved by force if necessary. For Ukraine, any territorial concessions, especially the valuable defensive fortress cities that are not yet conquered, remains non-negotiable. Ukraine also rightly maintains that NATO membership is essential to Ukraine's long-term security, because only NATO membership guarantees that the West will come to Ukraine’s aid if and when Putin violates any future peace deal—which European realists feel is a certainty.
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Also:
- Venezuela and the Drug Threat
- The Key Vulnerability of US Air Power
- China Ramping Up Missile Production
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8 to 3 to advise that mothers who test negative for hepatitis B should decide with their doctor "when or if" their newborns receive the vaccine. The guidance for infants born to infected or unknown-status mothers remains unchanged.
The law is seen as a victory for medical freedom advocates in the state.
On Friday, the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology journal announced that it has retracted a review, safety evaluation, and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, after it emerged that Monsanto was heavily involved in its production.
SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler said there is mounting evidence that minority contracts had become “a pass-through vehicle for rampant abuse and fraud,” especially after the Biden administration raised the target for contracts that are “set aside” for minorities from 5% to 15% of all contracting dollars.
‘Today, we are putting pediatric medical professionals on notice: you cannot sideline parents,’ Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.
On Wednesday, Nature retracted the study titled "The economic commitment of climate change" after economists discovered that flawed data from Uzbekistan had heavily skewed the results.
The Transportation Security Administration is preparing to roll out a new method for travelers to confirm their identity if they do not have a REAL ID or a passport. For a $45 fee, domestic air travelers can prove their identity ahead of scheduled travel through the TSA Confirm ID process.
Alert cites reports of armed robberies and criminal gangs forcing travelers to withdraw ATM cash
All he needs is discarded electronics—of which the United States has mountains. And from these scraps, the Rice University chemist and nanotechnologist has pioneered a way to quickly extract rare earth metals.
“We can pull out one metal and then the next,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s really that simple.”
The lawfare attempts to derail the populist National Rally in France may backfire, with a survey this week finding that Le Pen deputy Jordan Bardella would win the next presidential election against any other major opponent.
The FBI also arrested 1,500 child predators, a 5 percent increase over last year, he said in September. Another 300 human traffickers were arrested, a 10 percent increase, he said.
In recent weeks, the FBI and other officials announced that they had located and recovered hundreds of missing children in separate operations.
Boasberg used a memo order Wednesday to outline the fairly complex case history for Cynthia Ballenger and her husband, Christopher Price, both of whom had been tried and convicted on misdemeanor charges in connection with events of Jan. 6, 2021, and ordered to pay hundreds of dollars in assessment fees and restitution.
Boasberg's order effectively clears the way for the government to refund them both in full.
The Trump administration reportedly fired eight immigration judges in New York City on Monday, part of a broader nationwide effort to accelerate the deportation of illegal immigrants successfully.
Yet last week, 7-Eleven fired the 25-year-old after she used her gun to save her own life. Private companies have every right to set rules for employee behavior, but many corporate policies that require workers to remain passive and comply with criminals’ demands rest on a deeply mistaken view of crime data.
In a stunning turn of events, China has effectively blocked a $23 billion deal led by U.S. investment giant BlackRock to acquire a global network of port assets, including two key terminals located at either end of the Panama Canal. What began as a massive infrastructure transaction quickly escalated into a high-stakes geopolitical confrontation—one that reveals how global trade routes are now just as contested as battlefields.
The move carries broader geopolitical significance. As advanced gas turbines have long been dominated by a small group of Western and Japanese suppliers, China’s ability to localize production reduces a key point of technological leverage.
thanks to a new book by investigative journalist Paul Holden that builds on reporting by Matt Taibbi, Paul Thacker and others, we learn that the origin of these campaigns, launched years before the pandemic, was none other than UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer's political machine, which began targeting left-wing outlets speaking critically of Starmer such as The Canary, and then went after conservative outlets in America - just in time for the 2020 US election.
Judge Talwani is back with a new basis for forcing payments to Planned Parenthood despite Congress barring Medicaid funds under the Big Beautiful Bill.
CENTCOM said that it has already “formed a squadron of Low-cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drones” and released photos of drones in its press release.
“LUCAS drones deployed by CENTCOM have an extensive range and are designed to operate autonomously.
Video footage and photos of the suspect showed a figure walking around in a hoodie and a face mask. The bombs were quickly disarmed shortly after they were discovered.
"There is a massive cover-up, because the person who planted those pipe bombs -- they don't want you to know who it was, because it's either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job," Dan Bongino, now the deputy FBI Director, said in November 2024 on his show. "Those bombs were planted there. This was a setup. I have zero doubt."
Speaking before the commission on suburban issues, Megale said 830 arrests for predatory crimes, such as robbery, were made in the first nine months of 2025, with one in five involving minors. He described residents having “a widespread sense of insecurity,” but suggested that overall crime was down and arrests had increased so far this year.
Megale was speaking ahead of Milan’s hosting of the Winter Olympics, which begins in February.
Federal officials acknowledged for the first time that COVID-19 vaccines resulted in deaths among children.
Xu was charged with “defying martial law orders.”
Recalling receiving orders to deploy on the streets of Beijing, Xu told the court that he sought clarification on the scale of the operation and what kind of weapons were involved. He was skeptical when he was told that armored vehicles and heavy machine guns were to be used.
Steve Witkoff sitting across from the Ukrainians in Miami: Unshaven and scruffy. Serious, avoiding eye contact and unsmiling.
Steve Witkoff sitting across from Putin: Grinning with teeth, clean shaven, attentive. He says he had a "beautiful walk" through Moscow....
A fourth Russia-linked tanker was attacked in less than a week, marking a sharp escalation in strikes on commercial vessels tied to Moscow as the war in Eastern Europe nears its fourth year.
China has gained control not only of critical minerals but also of their production. A new technique could solve both of these problems.
While Russia is routinely portrayed as a serious military power, as the war drags on, Russia is becoming more and more reliant on Chinese drone components to survive.
Now, China’s drone component supplier Wang Dinhua has just purchased a 5 percent stake in Russia’s Rustakt, a top drone manufacturer in Russia.
Republicans will hold onto Tennessee's 7th Congressional District despite a push by Democrats to flip the deep-red seat, the Associated Press projected Tuesday, as Republican candidate Matt Van Epps was set to defeat Democrat Aftyn Behn.
‘We’re not just going to rubber-stamp new products that don’t work, that fail in a clinical trial,’ Dr. Marty Makary said.
The Japanese boat is accused of entering the waters of the Diaoyu Islands - which Tokyo calls the Senkaku Islands and has long administered.
But a nearby Japanese Coast Guard ship which had been accompanying the fishing vessel then in turn expelled two Chinese Coast Guard ships as they approached and tried to enforce Beijing's expansive maritime claims over the territory.
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