news

Who was the person in the last thread that said that China needs to switch to a more *consumer economy fast? Sounds like they listened.

https://www.semafor.com/article/08/05/2024/china-rolls-out-42-billion-stimulus-package-to-boost-domestic-demand

President Nicolas Maduro to the president of Panama: "Govern Panama. Don't try to govern Venezuela." The United States government has offered immunity to Nicolás Maduro, as long as he leaves power, in a government transition.

The US government's efforts have increased significantly to get Maduro to concede the election, which the US says was won by Edmundo Gonzalez by a large margin.

Statement from Cuba’s Foreign Ministry after the US claimed that Cuba changed the electoral results: “It is absolutely false [the claim] that specialists in computer science or other area have traveled to Venezuela from Cuba, with the purpose of modifying the results of the presidential elections in that country.”

Finland has problems with NATO operations:
https://www.plenglish.com/news/2024/08/05/finland-has-problems-with-nato-operations/

The decision-making processes for the Finnish Armed Forces’ participation in the operations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are poorly developed and problematic, Defense Ministry representative Markku Viitasaari affirmed on Monday.

So what's the deal with Bangladesh

UK is recommending that UK airlines cease operations in Lebanese airspace due to military activity. This is in effect until November 4th.

https://xcancel.com/flightradar24/status/1821278351270826157

It feels like Olympic sport choices are pretty Western orientated. Like sailing, basketball, BMX, indoor climbing, etc. The "medal race" seems really gerrymandered.

How does the scale of this Kursk offensive compare to the 2023 Summer Counter-offensive?

According to Russian MoD:

The total losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk direction amounted to 1,350 soldiers, 29 tanks, 23 armored personnel carriers…

This is from around 9 hours ago, so about 5 days after the initial incursion on August 6th.

The counteroffensive began in June 2023 and ran until roughly December 2023.

Russian MoD:

According to claims by the Russian MoD, the Ukrainians had lost over 90,000 wounded and killed personnel, almost 600 tanks and around 1,900 armored vehicles during the counteroffensive.

The rate of battle is roughly the same. In Kursk, 10.4 tanks and APCs are being destroyed per day. In the summer offensive 13.88 tanks and APCs were destroyed per day.

One has lasted 36 times longer of course, so the total scale is much larger

Rybar's take on the UK "slipping into totalitarianism" regarding perceived heavy handedness of the law on the race rioters.

Just LOL. Rybar will just ignore the years of propaganda that told UK citizens that there are migrants arriving on boats that bring all the crime and focus on the one week where the media had to turn it back or else they would be implicated in the proceedings. Nothing to see there I'm sure.

for their part is doing the right thing too late. Where were these arrests when Nigel Farage were making veiled threats at immigrants? The Sun has done more incitement than any FB post ever has.

See, Democrats? It wasn't that hard. All you have to do is not make the stupidest move possible every single turn.

The House of Al-Saud has lost the Mandate of Heaven after heavy floods have occurred in Mecca

https://fxtwitter.com/GlobeEyeNews/status/1820917524311003299

It would be pretty funny if The Winds of Winter release date was announced before the Resistance issues a response.

Is anyone else worried that Israel is going to do biological warfare on Palestinians? It would just be a repeat of the US playbook and they can go "teehee I guess the natives all just died from natural causes there's nothing we could have done". According to Russia the US was studying targeted biological warfare in one or some of their bioweapons labs in Ukraine.

Isn't there someone Kopmala forgot to ask for VP ?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/aug/05/kamala-harris-vp-announcement-running-mate-election-updates

Kamala Harris has spent the last few days interviewing contenders to be her running mate on the Democratic ticket this election and may have whittled her list from six to just two in recent hours, if a report via anonymous sources from Reuters comes true.

The news wire says it’s down to Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz.

Guardian US has not verified this report. At the top of the day there apparently were still six guys in the race, although some outlets appeared to be homing in on Shapiro, Walz and the US Senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly, as the top three.

Harris and her No.2 will debut as the presumptive Democratic ticket at a rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania tomorrow evening. So if it’s not Shapiro that would be hard for him to swallow.

If it’s really down to two, here are our thumbnails on them.

Shapiro, a congressional aide turned state representative and state attorney general, the 51-year-old father of four was elected governor in 2022. Close to two years later, he maintains historically high approval ratings. What are regarded as pros and cons of choosing him? Report here.

Walz has captured the internet’s attention and swayed Democrats’ messaging recently by succinctly summing up how he views Republicans: they’re weird. Before he took up politics, Walz, 60, was born and raised in small-town Nebraska and became a teacher, first in China, then Nebraska, finally Minnesota

Don't expect the Fed to cut rates any time soon. The stock market has been on a fucking tear this year despite some shitty fundamentals from a lot of companies. The S&P 500 is still up over 10% on the year as of right now. The DJIA, NASDAQ Composite, and Russell 2000 are all still up YTD. If this continues and begins to negatively impact employment and productive output, then expect a rate cut. There's going to be a lot of pressure for them to do a cut in September, but unless jobs numbers tank in August, I'm leaning towards the Fed telling the market to tough it out. There's a lot of zombie companies doing business right now that should have gone bankrupt 5-10 years ago, and everybody and their mother is either opening up a restructuring & turnaround practice or expanding their existing one. There's a lot of legal and financial institutional people who are planning as if the corporate debt reckoning is on the horizon.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said that his country faces a battle against the old colonialism. “WhatsApp is spying on us. Delete that app, please.”

Anyone seen any of the accusations of American swimmers in the Olympics doping, citing their strangely purple faces after the race? I've seen one twitter thread, and now this from Wave Media. The swimmers DO look pretty weird, I gotta say... But I know nothing on this, so
(I'm sure nearly all athletes of this caliber DO use PEDs, at least in the off-season, but I don't know enough to dispute this specific allegation).

Indonesia wins first Olympic golds outside badminton. for speed climbing and 73kg weightlifting.

Iran, please, get around to doing your revenge attack. I can't just keep checking the news and/or this thread every five minutes to see if a decade is going to happen this week.

Fire breaks out at Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the plant is operating normally and radiation levels are “normal”.