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
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.
The retail giant’s complaint requests a complete refund of duties it has already paid if the Supreme Court decides that the tariffs are unlawful.
Pokrovsk has long been seen as military gateway for control over the whole east, and if there were any doubts about Russia's military dominance along the frontlines - the overrunning of Pokrovsk has laid these doubts to rest. Russian media is in a celebratory mood...
Things are beginning to move faster, as it looks like Trump plans some kind of significant military action against Caracas, at a moment such a huge Caribbean deployment, including the USS Ford Carrier group, is racking up high bills per day at the expense of the US taxpayer. According to a summary of the latest via Reuters:
Trump rejected Maduro's requests for amnesty, sanction removal, sources say
Maduro's safe passage offer expired, prompting US airspace closure, sources say
Maduro proposed Delcy Rodriguez lead interim government before new elections, sources say
Maduro's administration seeks another call with Trump, sources say
Cole said cocaine prices have surged 30% to 45% per kilogram because the strikes are disrupting the command-and-control networks that move drugs from South and Central America into the U.S. These trafficking pipelines have mainly fueled the nation's deadly drug epidemic, which now claims roughly 100,000 American lives each year.
The Navy originally planned for 20 ships in the Constellation frigate program.
“This is a profound revelation,” Prasad wrote. “For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children.” Prasad said the conclusion about children dying from Covid-19 vaccines was reached after he and other FDA staffers undertook a multi-month, "detailed analysis of deaths voluntarily reported to the [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] system (VAERS)."
In a tense street encounter captured in Minneapolis’s Somali-dominated Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, filmmaker Nick Shirley attempted to interview residents about life as Muslims in America—only to face demands to delete footage, refusals to speak English, and claims that women can’t appear on camera, highlighting the cultural chasm.
The NY Times has thrown Minnesota governor Tim Walz under the bus over a massive and sprawling fraud scandal that federal prosecutors say siphoned over $1 billion from the state's social safety net programs - more than the entire state spends annually to run its Department of Corrections.
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