The Daily Dose Recap is our way of providing to you an overview of everything that was covered during the show. Here you will have easy access to all of the news that was talked about that day.
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Home Purchase Applications Plummet To 28 Year Low As Nobody Can Afford To Buy A Home Anymore
To all Americans hoping to be able to buy a home sometime soon, or at least afford to do so once in their lifetimes, we have bad news.
On Wednesday, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that US mortgage rates rose to the highest level since late 2000 last week, sending a key measure of demand down to the lowest in nearly three decades. The contract rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage increased 15 basis points to 7.31% in the week ended Aug. 18.
Separately, the MBA reported that its index of home-purchase applications fell for a sixth straight week to the lowest level since 1995, which dragged the overall measure of mortgage applications down further.
"Applications for home purchase mortgages dropped to their lowest level since April 1995, as homebuyers withdrew from the market due to the elevated rate environment and the erosion of purchasing power," said Joel Kan, MBA's vice president and deputy chief economist. "Low housing supply is also keeping home prices high in many markets, adding to the affordability hurdles buyers are facing."
The MBA’s overall gauge of mortgage applications, which also includes refinancing, fell to 184.8, near the lowest level since 1996.
The reason for the collapse is simple: with housing affordability at or near the lowest on record, the average monthly mortgage payment - based on a median home price and average 30Y fixed-rate mortgage, assuming a 20% down payment - has exploded to a record $2,322m more than double from pre-covid levels.
And it's about to get even worse: according to Mortgage News Daily, borrowing costs have continued to rise so far this week and on Tuesday the 30-year fixed rate hit almost 7.5%.
Mortgage rates are benchmarked to US Treasuries and yields on those securities have been climbing as traders increasingly see a resilient economy keeping interest rates higher for longer. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is set to speak at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole symposium later this week, and minutes from policymakers’ gathering last month showed most officials still saw significant upside risks to inflation, which could require further rate hikes.
As Bloomberg notes, that’ll keep mortgage rates elevated and, along with still-high home prices, put further strain on a residential housing market that had been showing promise earlier in recent months.
The latest housing data further illustrate the trend — homeowners are reluctant to move and take on a higher mortgage rate, so prospective buyers are seeking out new construction instead. As shown in the chart below, the average effective mortgage rate (on outstanding mortgages) is 3.6%, half of the actual 30Y mortgage, which means tens of millions of homeowners are trapped and unwilling to sell as they would have to refi into a sharply higher rate.
A report later Wednesday is expected to show new-home sales ticked up last month to hover near the highest level in a over a year.
-Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge
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Prosecutors reject Trump’s request for 2026 trial in federal election case
Image Credit: News Target
A request made by lawyers for former President Donald Trump to postpone the trial for his federal election case until 2026 has been roundly rejected by federal prosecutors.
Trump, who is currently considered the front runner for the Republican ticket in the next presidential election, sought to have the trial moved to April 2026, making it fall well after the election in November 2024. He is facing federal charges that he attempted to overturn his election loss in 2020 to Joe Biden, and much of the case is related to the events that took place on January 6, 2021.
The move came after U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith requested a trial start date of January 2, 2024, which is just two weeks before the first 2024 Republican presidential primaries will be held. Jury selection would begin on December 11, and they estimated the trial would take around six weeks.
Not surprisingly, Smith’s team rejected the request from Trump's team to hold the trial in 2026, saying that such a move would “deny the public its right to a speedy trial.”
His team also claimed that the proposal had been based on misleading statistics and Trump's team exaggerated the amount of evidence that needed to be studied to prepare for the case.
For example, attorneys for Trump noted that conspiracy cases normally take around 29.4 months to reach a conclusion. However, Senior Assistant Special Counsel to Jack Smith, Molly Gaston, said that this time frame includes the time between trial and sentencing, which may take several months. Moreover, she said these statistics were based on cases that took place between September 2021 and October 2022, when only 22 such cases went to trial throughout the country as the world grappled with the pandemic.
Another reason cited by Trump’s defense attorneys for needing more time is the slew of files that must be reviewed to prepare for the trial. Earlier this month, they received 11.5 million pages and files from prosecutors, and a further 600,000 pages were delivered this past weekend.
Trump's team wrote: “[O]rdinary order when faced with such overwhelming discovery is to set a reasonable trial schedule, commensurate with the size and scope of discovery and complexity of the legal issues.”
However, Gaston maintains that Trump already had access to around 3 million of these pages and files, and he has access to several hundred thousand more pages as a former president through the National Archives.
In addition, prosecutors claim that it will not take as much time to go through this material as Trump’s lawyers claim because they can use electronic methods to assess them. They said that his lawyers made a “faulty assertion” that they will need to review the evidence on a page-by-page basis.
They said: “But the defendant can, should, and apparently will adopt the benefits of electronic review to reduce the volume of material needed to be searched and manually reviewed.”
The prosecutors wrote: “Here, the Government has organized and produced materials in a manner designed to ease and expedite the defendant’s review and search, which allows for trial to proceed as the Government has proposed."
They added that Trump has already seen or created a lot of the evidence in this case. For example, some are his own tweets that he published during his presidency, while others were initially produced while he was president.
At a hearing scheduled for next Monday, U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan is expected to schedule an official trial date.
-Cassie B., News Target
REPORT: Biden Admin Welds Arizona Border Wall Gates Open
Image Credit: Breitbart News - U.S. Border Patrol/Tuscan Sector
A media report revealed that Biden administration officials welded border wall gates open near Lukeville, Arizona. The open gates allow migrants to freely walk through the border wall and into the Arizona desert.
Border Patrol officials admitted responsibility for a decision to weld open flood gates in sections of border wall near Lukeville, the New York Post reported. The admission reportedly came after the agency attempted to blame other federal agencies for the action that allows thousands of migrants to freely cross into what is now the nation’s busiest border sector.
The Tucson Sector led the nation in migrant apprehensions in July. The apprehension of nearly 40,000 migrants represents an increase of nearly 136 percent over July 2022. The sector is in second place in year-to-date apprehensions following the arrest of nearly 274,000 migrants — an increase of 59 percent over the same period last year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports.
“We thought the agents were going to say something to us,” an Ecuadorian migrant told the Post. “But we just got in.”
A Cuban migrant added, “It was so easy to get into the United States. Nothing like our trip through Mexico. That part was difficult. I thought there was going to be more security.”
The gates were installed in the border wall construction to allow monsoon-season floodwaters and migratory animals to pass through.
“High water flow combined with excessive sediment and debris buildup can stress or comprise the design integrity of the barrier,” CBP officials told the Post.
However, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd told the New York newspaper that the Mexican cartel human smuggling intelligence apparatus quickly discovers these gaps in the wall and exploits them for profit.
“Because the cartels are constantly surveilling what we do, the moment something gets left open, it gets exploited,” Judd explained. “In this particular case, it exploded almost immediately, which shows you how adept the criminal cartels are at exploiting any weakness at any time that we show them.”
Judd added that the gates “should never open up.”
The New York Post article contains multiple photographs of the welded-open gates and migrants crossing through at will. One photo shows a steel spike in the ground welded to the gate to keep it open.
In June, Tucson Sector agents apprehended an average of 821 migrants daily. In July, that number increased to approximately 1,200 migrants per day. During the first two weeks of August, unofficial Border Patrol numbers obtained by Breitbart Texas show a continued increase to 1,483 migrant apprehensions per day.
-Bob Price, Breitbart News
Sidney Powell Surrenders, Released on $100,000 Bond in Georgia Trump Case
Image Credit: Lawyer Sidney Powell departs a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, on Nov. 19, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Sidney Powell has agreed to a $100,000 bond set Wednesday morning in the Fulton County, Georgia, case where she and 18 other co-defendants are accused of violating the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The case was brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against former President Donald Trump for his efforts to challenge the Georgia general election results.
Ms. Powell served as an attorney on President Trump's 2020 campaign and is accused of six conspiracy counts on top of racketeering. She surrendered on Wednesday at the Fulton County jail.
Co-defendant Misty Hampton, a local election official, had her bond set at $10,000 also on Wednesday.
All bond agreements included restrictions on what the defendants can communicate about the case; only their attorneys may communicate with other co-defendants or witnesses.
Ms. Powell's bond agreement adds a condition that if she doesn't turn herself in by noon on Friday, Aug. 25, "this consent bond order shall be null and void."
Conspiracy Charges
Ms. Powell is accused of two counts of "conspiracy to commit election fraud," one count of "conspiracy to commit computer theft," one count of "conspiracy to commit computer trespass," one count of "conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy," and one count of "conspiracy to defraud the state," citing her entering into a contract with data forensic firm Sullivan Strickler.
Ms. Powell is also accused of 12 acts of racketeering, which included actions like appearing at press conferences to help President Trump challenge election results and using a Coffee County, Georgia, computer with voter data on it.
In a similar case against President Trump brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the former president faces alleged conspiracy charges for contesting the 2020 election results. In the Washington indictment, Ms. Powell is listed, unnamed, as a co-conspirator who advanced arguments involving voting machines affecting election results.
Other Bonds Set in Georgia
Bond agreements have also been set with a number of other defendants.
In total, President Trump had his set the highest at $200,000, John Eastman at $100,000, Kenneth Chesebro at $100,000, Jenna Ellis at $100,000, David Shafer at $75,000, Cathleen Latham at $75,000, Stephen Lee at $75,000, Ray Smith III at $50,000, Robert Cheeley at $50,000, Michael Roman at $50,000, Shawn Still at $10,000, and Scott Hall at $10,000.
Attorneys Mr. Eastman, Mr. Chesebro, Mr. Smith, alternate electors Ms. Latham and Mr. Shafer, and Georgia bail bondsman Mr. Hall have been booked by the local Fulton County jail and released on bond.
President Trump is expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, as he has posted on social media. Supporters of his are expected to arrive ahead of the GOP frontrunner to rally.
"Nobody has ever fought for election integrity like President Donald J. Trump. For doing so, I will proudly be arrested tomorrow afternoon in Georgia. God bless the United States of America!!!" he wrote.
"For the first time in three years, brave American Patriots will be able, in Court, to show how the Presidential Election of 2020 was RIGGED & STOLLEN. For those RINOS, Radical Left Democrats, Communists, Marxists, Fascists , & others who say, 'Don’t Look Back, Look Forward,' they either do not want to reveal the answers because they “got away with murder,” or are FOOLS & COWARDS because we now know the answers to all of the Fraud, Irregularities, & Cheating, & WE CANNOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!"
19 Defendants
The 98-page indictment brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charges 19 defendants with violating the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. In total, they are accused of 161 acts of racketeering, and 41 counts total.
The defendants are President Trump; attorney Rudy Giuliani; attorney Mr. Eastman; former chief of staff Mr. Meadows; attorney Mr. Chesebro; former DOJ official Mr. Clark; attorney Ms. Ellis; attorney Mr. Smith; attorney Mr. Cheeley; attorney Sidney Powell; alternate elector Ms. Latham; alternate elector Mr. Shafer; Illinois pastor Stephen Lee; vice president for the Black Conservative Federation Harrison Floyd; former publicist for Kanye West Trevian Kutti; bail bondsman Mr. Hall; and former elections official Misty Hampton.
The indictment alleges that all defendants illegally conspired to keep President Trump in office by knowingly making false statements about election fraud. President Trump himself faces 13 counts and 11 charges.
Americans Divided
According to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, 47 percent of Americans say the charges in Georgia are serious, 16 percent say they are somewhat serious, and a quarter of respondents did not think the charges were serious.
The poll also found that 49 percent thought he should have been charged with a crime in Georgia while 32 percent thought he should not have, and 50 percent thought he should suspend his campaign while 33 percent thought he should continue.
The Associated Press worked with NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on a similar poll and found voters were clearly divided on party lines: 85 percent of Democrats thought President Trump's challenge of the election results in Georgia was illegal, and 57 percent of Republicans thought his actions were not illegal.
Similarly, 80 percent of Democrat respondents said his role in what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was illegal, while 69 percent of Republicans said they were not illegal.
Ahead of the first Republican National Committee debate, which President Trump will skip to do an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson instead, an Iowa poll put him far ahead of the pack: 66 percent said their mind was made up that President Trump was their first choice candidate.
The poll surveyed Republicans who were likely to attend the caucuses in Iowa, and the majority also responded he was the rightful winner in the 2020 election.
-Catherine Yang, Epoch Times
Fulton County Releases Rudy Giuliani, Other Co-Defendants’ Mugshots in Trump Election Case
Image Credit: Breitbart News - Fulton County Sherrif’s Office
Fulton County released the booking photos as the defendants turned themselves in this week. Bail bondsman Scott Hall on Tuesday was the first of 19 defendants to turn himself in this week, followed by Trump attorney John Eastman.
The Sheriff’s office reportedly announced it would release the booking photos around 4:00 p.m. local time each day. Prosecutors gave the defendants until Friday to turn themselves in.
On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office released the booking photos for Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell.
Kenneth Chesebro, Ray Smith, David Shafer, and Cathy Latham also had their mugshots released on Wednesday.
Most defendants have negotiated bond agreements with prosecutors ranging from $10,000 to $200,000, as Forbes reported.
Trump and 18 others were indicted in a 98-page, 41-count indictment handed down by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury last week. Some of Trump’s co-defendants include former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
As Breitbart News reported:
The indictment does not fundamentally concern actions taken in Georgia, but describes words spoken and actions taken by the Trump campaign in a variety of other states in their efforts to cast doubt on the controversial 2020 presidential election.
The indictment charges several defendants with crimes merely for making statements that argued the 2020 election was stolen. It claims that actions such as holding public hearings in Pennsylvania amounted to acts in furtherance of an illegal conspiracy.
Other “acts” that are referred to as furthering the conspiracy include tweets by then-President Trump encouraging people to watch public hearings in which allegations of voting irregularities were being made by Trump’s lawyers and witnesses.
Trump announced he would turn himself in on Thursday, posting on Truth Social, “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED.”
Trump’s bond in the Fulton County case was set for $200,000 on Monday.
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat promised Trump would receive a mugshot, making it the first mugshot out of Trump’s four ongoing criminal cases.
“Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,” Labat said.
-Jordan Dixon-Hamilton, Breitbart News
Ukraine Won't Receive Dutch F-16 Fighters Until End Of 2024
Image Credit: ZeroHedge - F-16 of the Royal Netherlands Air Force at a U.S. training with the Arizona Air National Guard. (nationalguard.mil)
Ukraine will have to wait for the promised Dutch F-16 jet aircraft until the end of next year, as some of the planes are currently still in active duty in the Netherlands, Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet reports.
“The Dutch Air Force will first have to switch to the new F-35, a process that could take until the end of next year,” a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Defense told the NRC Handelsblatt newspaper on Tuesday.
As Remix News reported recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has secured a promise of up to 61 F-16 fighter aircraft from Denmark and the Netherlands during his latest Western European tour for support. The first six aircraft are expected around the new year.
F-16 of the Royal Netherlands Air Force at a U.S. training with the Arizona Air National Guard. (nationalguard.mil)
According to NRC Handelsblatt, the Netherlands does have 42 F-16s, but none are immediately available.
At Volkel Air Base, one of the Netherlands’ main military airfields, the air force continues to use 24 F-16s to monitor Benelux airspace.
“These aircraft can only be delivered to Ukraine when the F-35s take their place,” a defense spokesman told NRC.
The spokesman said the transition to F-35s could happen more quickly if training and other prerequisites go well but confirmed that the process would still take several months.
In addition to the F-16s in service, the Dutch air defense has 18 such aircraft in reserve. Twelve of these were to be sold to the U.S. defense company Draken International, but this was scuppered by a dispute over the maintenance status of the aircraft.
The defense ministry is now examining whether the two-seater aircraft could be used to train Ukrainian pilots in Denmark and Romania.
-Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge
India makes space proposal at BRICS summit
In an address to the annual summit of leaders of BRICS countries on Wednesday, the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, called for the establishment of a new, multinational space-exploration consortium. His proposal came just hours before India’s moon probe achieved a historic landing on the southern lunar pole.
“We are already working on the BRICS satellite constellation. Taking it a step further, we can consider creating a BRICS space-exploration consortium. Under this, we can work for global good in areas like space research [and] weather monitoring,” Modi said.
The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) last year established a joint committee on space-cooperation to enable the five countries’ remote sensing satellite constellation to share data. That initiative was initially promoted by China in 2015.
The constellation consists of existing BRICS satellites, including China’s Gaofen-6 and ZY-3 02 satellite, Russia’s Canopus five-satellite, India’s ZY 2 and 2A satellites, and the jointly-developed China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite 04. Constellation satellite data is available from ground stations located in Sanya, China, in Cuiaba, Brazil, in Moscow Region, Russia, Shadnagar-Hyderabad, India, and Hartbeeshawk, South Africa.
Last month, Russia proposed creating a dedicated specialized module for BRICS countries at the Russian Orbital Station (ROS), which is expected to be launched in 2027. This could enable BRICS countries to carry out their respective national space programs using the opportunity offered by the station’s near-Earth orbit.
“I would like to propose that our partners in BRICS consider the opportunity to take part in this project and create a full-fledged module through joint efforts, which would enable BRICS countries, as part of the ROS project, to use the opportunity offered by [ROS’] low near-Earth orbit to carry out their respective national space programs,” the director-general of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, said at the time.
At the Johannesburg summit this week, Narendra Modi also proposed cooperation in education, skills development and technology, as well as “skills mapping” to identify the strengths of every BRICS member state. “To make BRICS a future-ready organization, we have to make our societies future-ready. Technology will play an important role in this,” Modi noted. He also suggested making inter-state efforts for the protection of all species of big cats under the International Big Cat Alliance, and for the creation of a repository of traditional medicine, since every BRICS country has its own ecosystem of traditional medicine.
Noting India’s “full support” for the expansion of BRICS, the Indian leader hailed South Africa’s presidency for giving a special importance to the countries of the Global South. He reiterated that New Delhi, too, has given top priority to this topic under its Group of Twenty (G20) presidency. “This is not only the expectation of the present time, but also the need,” Modi said. He emphasized that India has proposed to give permanent membership of G20 to the African Union, and expressed hope that BRICS part.
-RT News
Russia congratulates India on Moon landing after own probe crashed
Image Credit: Insider Paper
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency on Wednesday congratulated India for successfully landing a spacecraft on the Moon’s south pole, days after Moscow’s own mission crashed.
“Roscosmos congratulates Indian colleagues on the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3,” Roscosmos said in a statement. “Exploration of the Moon is important for the whole of humanity, in the future it may become a platform for the deeper mastering of space.”
-Insider Paper
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Brazil’s Bolsonaro hospitalized for ‘routine exams’
Image Credit: Insider Paper - Jair Bolsonaro, former President of Brazil, tweeted a photo of himself from his hospital bed in Orlando
Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalized Wednesday for “routine exams” related to health issues caused by the stabbing attack that nearly claimed his life during his 2018 campaign, his lawyer said.
Bolsonaro, 68, checked into a private hospital in Sao Paulo, Vila Nova Star, where the far-right ex-army captain has previously undergone treatment.
“The objective is to evaluate his clinical condition, mainly his digestive system, intestinal tract, adhesions, abdominal hernia and reflux,” lawyer and Bolsonaro ally Fabio Wajngarten posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The hospital did not immediately reply to a request for further information from AFP.
Bolsonaro (2019-2022) has had numerous health problems since being stabbed in the abdomen at a rally during the campaign that brought him to power.
He underwent four surgeries after the attack, perpetrated by a man later deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
The man dubbed the “Tropical Trump” has since been hospitalized multiple times for various issues stemming from the stabbing, including intestinal blockages and a severe case of the hiccups in 2021.
Bolsonaro, who was succeeded by veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in January, faces numerous investigations for corruption and abuse of office.
In June, electoral authorities barred him from running for office for eight years over his unproven claims of widespread fraud in Brazil‘s election system.
In his latest legal headache, federal police on Tuesday ordered him and his wife, Michelle, to face questioning on August 31 over allegations they tried to illegally keep and sell luxury jewelry and other expensive items received as official gifts from foreign governments during his presidency.
-Insider Paper
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Wagner boss presumed dead in Russia plane crash
Image Credit: Insider Paper
An investigation was underway in Russia on Thursday into a plane crash that left Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin presumed dead — two months after his rebellion against the country’s military leaders — fuelling speculation about a possible assassination.
A day after a private jet on which Prigozhin was registered crashed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia had still not confirmed the warlord’s death.
Moscow said all ten people onboard were likely killed, and opened a criminal case into violations of air traffic rules.
President Vladimir Putin, who in June faced the biggest challenge in his more than two-decade rule as Prigozhin led an armed mutiny, has not spoken publicly on the crash.
During the rebellion on June 23-24, Putin gave an address to Russians in which he called Prigozhin — once his ally — a “traitor”.
But Western leaders reacted, with US President Joe Biden saying “I don’t know for a fact what happened… there’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind”.
France saw “reasonable doubts” about the crash, with a government spokesman agreeing with Biden’s assessment.
Even influential pro-Kremlin figures, such as state television personality and Putin ally Margarita Simonyan, seemed to suggest that it could have been an assassination.
“Among the versions that are being discussed (about the crash) is that it was staged. But personally, I’m leaning towards the more obvious one,” she said on social media.
In June, Prigozhin had sent his fighters marching onto Moscow to unseat Russia’s top generals in a dramatic 48 hours that shook Putin’s authority.
Prigozhin had for months complained about the way Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine was being led, where his fighters were often spearheading battles.
In Ukraine, some people rejoiced at the apparent death of a man whose fighters were known for exceptionally cruel efforts.
“I feel really happy that this person died, if it is true,” government worker Iryna Kuchina told AFP in central Kyiv.
“Let’s hope that it is.”
Russia’s aviation authority published a list of names that were onboard the Embraer Legacy plane late on Wednesday.
It included Prigozhin and his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin — a shadowy figure who managed Wagner’s operations and allegedly served in Russian military intelligence.
Three crew members were among the dead, including the only woman onboard: a stewardess identified as Kristina Raspopova.
Little is known about the rest of the passengers, with Russian media saying most were Wagner mercenaries.
On the site near the village of Kuzhenkino, some 350 kilometres (220 miles) north of Moscow in the Tver region, Russian police patrolled the area, with some masked men carrying rifles.
The plane was flying from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where Wagner’s headquarters are based.
The Flightradar24 tracker website said the plane appeared on their radar until the last 30 seconds, and descended “dramatically” around 15:20 GMT.
Some Wagner-linked Telegram channels had initially suggested that the plane was shot down by Russian air defence, on a day when Kyiv hit Russia with more drone attacks.
The Russian army, which had a fierce rivalry with Prigozhin, had also not commented on the crash.
In Russia’s second-largest city of Saint Petersburg, native to both Putin and Prigozhin, some Wagner supporters came to the private military group’s offices to mourn the fighter chief.
People laid flowers and patches bearing the Wagner skull logo at a makeshift memorial outside the mercenary group’s headquarters, AFP journalists said.
“Guys, we just have no words right now,” said a masked man and alleged members of Wagner at the site.
“Let’s support Yevgeny Viktorovich (Prigozhin) and all our commanders. We need your support now.”
Wagner offices were still operating and even recruiting in Russia after Prigozhin’s rebellion, which saw his men take over a military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and march on Moscow.
In Siberia’s Novosibirsk, a region from where Wagner heavily recruited, people also laid flowers at the company’s headquarters.
Men in military fatigues with the Wagner skull insignia on their shoulders placed flowers near portraits of Prigozhin and Utkin.
Prigozhin’s fate had remained unclear since his mutiny was halted by a highly unusual deal brokered by neighbouring Belarus, which involved Prigozhin and his fighters going into exile in the Moscow-allied country.
The Kremlin had “guaranteed” that Prigozhin would not face criminal charges for the rebellion and be allowed to live in Belarus.
The deal raised eyebrows, with Putin not usually settling for such a compromise.
In Belarus, the fate of the remaining Wagner fighters there also remained unclear. Minsk has for weeks played up the presence of the fighters, saying it had set up a camp for them.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the exiled opposition leader of Belarus, said Prigozhin would not be missed in her country.
“He was a murderer and should be remembered as such,” she said on social media.
-Insider Paper
Pentagon Official Calls for Total Force Focus on Emerging Biothreats
Image Credit: DOD News
Deborah G. Rosenblum, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, said the U.S. faces an unprecedented number of complex biological threats posed by near peer competitors, non-state actors and naturally occurring pandemics that require an integrated, departmentwide focus.
"These threats certainly impact the readiness and resilience of our military forces," Rosenblum said. "Biodefense is no longer something that's the purview of just specialized units who have traditionally been worried about these threats.
"Integrated deterrence requires a combat credible force," she continued. "And to be combat credible, the whole joint force must be capable of fighting through biothreats and being resilient."
Earlier this month, the Pentagon released its inaugural Biodefense Posture Review which lays out key reforms aimed at positioning the department to counter biothreats through 2035.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III directed the comprehensive review in a 2021 memo outlining DOD's biodefense vision and providing direction for the department to ensure the military remains prepared to operate in a biothreat environment.
The reforms outlined in the review call for enhanced early warning and understanding of emerging biothreats, improving preparedness of the total force, speeding response to biothreats to mitigate their impact on DOD missions and improving strategic coordination and collaboration to enhance biodefense.
The reforms will be initiated by the newly created biodefense council, chaired by William A. LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.
The reforms also align with key National Defense Strategy priorities to defend the homeland against the multidomain pacing threat posed by the People's Republic of China, deter strategic attacks against the U.S. and its allies and build a resilient joint force.
"The [Biodefense Posture Review] was built on the foundation laid out in the National Defense Strategy along with the National Biodefense Strategy, but it was also greatly informed by a number of lessons learned from the COVID-19 response," Rosenblum said during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Rosenblum said that in addition to remaining focused on biological threats posed by near-peer competitors and nonstate actors, the U.S. must remain focused on emerging biotechnologies that could be incorporated into adversaries' future biological warfare programs.
"We are at a pivotal point in biodefense," Rosenblum said. "We must maintain our momentum to prepare for any number of complex potential biological threats."
-Joseph Clark, U.S. Department of Defense News
To Combat Crime Surge In American Cities, Many Turn To Private Alternatives
Image Credit: ZeroHedge - File photo of a crime scene. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Authored by M.G. Lysiak via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
As politicians continue to debate the cause of the crime epidemic that has seen the descent of many of the nation’s most populated cities into war zone-like conditions, increasing numbers of businesses and residents have turned to private solutions in effort to reclaim their neighborhoods.
Pastor Corey Brooks, Executive Director of Project H.O.O.D, a Chicago-based non-profit seeking to end violence through individual empowerment, says that after decades of hoping for solutions from public officials, residents of crime-ridden cities are no longer waiting on empty pledges of safer streets to be fulfilled.
“Politicians all make promises that if we vote them into office they know how to make our communities safe, meanwhile, it just keeps getting worse,” Mr. Brooks told the Epoch Times. “This is a crisis. We no longer have the luxury of waiting for the government to come in and save the day. The people are beginning to understand that this is a problem the government can’t solve.”
“If we are going to end this violence on our streets, it’s going to come from the people, not another government program.”
Escalation
For several years, crime in major American cities has remained at crisis levels.
The surge in thefts, harassment, and violent crimes experienced in cities nationwide during much of 2020 and 2021 had been expected by many experts to be a temporary blip as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic and reaction and aftermath to the death of George Floyd. However, more than a year after officials declared an end to the COVID-19 emergency and officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death were convicted and sentenced, lawlessness continues to persist at a high level.
In Washington D.C., homicides are up 15 percent compared to a year ago with the city on pace to surpass 200 for the third year in a row. Carjackings in the city have also seen a spike with police reporting 140 incidents in the month of June, the highest in more than five years.
Earlier this month, Washington D.C. City Council member Trayon White, who represents the Eighth Ward, held a press conference where he told reporters that federal troops would be needed to restore law and order.
“The crime is out of control and getting worse by the day,” Mr. White said at a press conference. “We must declare an emergency regarding the crime and violence in our neighborhoods and act urgently. It may be time to call on the National Guard to protect the children and innocent people that are losing their lives to this senselessness.”
Foreign countries have also taken notice. A July 24 tweet from the Mexican Consulate urged its nationals to "take precautions” while visiting the nation’s capital due to “a significant increase in crime in areas previously considered safe.”
In San Francisco, the problem has spiraled so far out of control that some workers are now being told to stay at home, as opposed to risking the commute to work. An Aug. 2 memo from the Department of Health and Human Services advised federal employees to avoid the office at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, due to drug use and rising crime in the area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Videos posted on social media of nearby streets show coroner’s vans picking up dead bodies, drug needles littering the streets, and piles of human feces scattered across public sidewalks.
In Los Angeles, the sight of “flash mobs” composed largely of youth rampaging through retail stores has become the new norm. On Aug. 13, a Nike store was robbed in broad daylight by a group who walked out with thousands of dollars worth of apparel. On the same day dozens of people stormed the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga Shopping Center, making off with more than $300,000 worth of items, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Last weekend in Chicago at least 40 people were shot, seven fatally, including at least four teenagers, one just 14 years old. Overall, the city has experienced a 50 percent increase in shooting victimizations of school-aged youth 17 years and younger since 2019, according to The University of Chicago Crime Lab.
Citizen Solutions
As crime escalates and police resources dwindle, regulations have limited the options for city residents to protect themselves. For the vast majority of those living in major American cities, the ability for a resident to legally own a firearm ranges from difficult to nearly impossible. Some communities have responded to the rise in crime by pooling resources to hire their own security to patrol their streets. Over the past year, several neighborhoods in Chicago, San Francisco, and Baltimore have brought in private security amid a spike in thefts and carjackings.
In Los Angeles County, protection dogs are in high demand among the more affluent residents, some of whom have been willing to spend as much as $150,000 on a dog, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Blame for the metro crime epidemic has broken down largely on political affiliations, with many on the Democrat-left attributing the spike to economic and racial inequality while many on the Republican-right claiming the problems stem from cuts to funding for police departments and policies of liberal district attorneys who have curtailed cash bail, placing criminals that would formerly be behind bars back out on the streets.
However, according to Mr. Brooks, the real root cause of the lawlessness isn’t the result of bad public policy from either the left or right, but more so from the breakdown in family—specifically, a lack of male role models prevalent in many inner city communities.
“The first epidemic we have to confront is the one of fatherlessness. Eighty percent of the black households in Chicago are single parent households and a lot of these young men are growing up without fathers, without male mentors. It's vitally important that other men step up and provide the role of mentors at a really early age,” said Mr. Brooks.
In creating a network of mentorship for at-risk youth, Mr. Brooks claims to have already seen promising results in his community, noting that in one area where his program has been implemented crime has decreased by nearly 50 percent.
“We are seeing violence at alarming rates. It calls for all people to have all hands on deck if we are going to figure out how to stop it. The solution isn’t found in D.C. It’s found in the community and in the home.”
-Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge
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X To Introduce “Report EU Illegal Content” Button To Comply With EU Censorship Demands
Image Credit: Reclaim The Net
X is planning to introduce a new “Report EU illegal content” button for the EU’s new censorship law to be enforced starting this week.
The new feature was found in X’s code by independent app researcher Nima Owji.
With European Commissioner Thierry Breton tightly grasping the reins, Big Tech is finding itself caught in the sweeping and extensive master plan of the European Union’s latest digital rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA). X has come under scrutiny for whether it is sufficiently prepared to step in line with these censorship demands which begin to take effect, for the largest platforms, from August 25.
Breton recently conducted a “stress test” of X’s systems during his visit at their San Francisco headquarters. The results acknowledge X efforts to meet the DSA norms, but his warning was clear – more work is needed. Despite the meeting witnessed by X owner Elon Musk and newly appointed CEO Linda Yaccarino, Breton emphasized that preparation for new rules must not be slackened.
As we covered in our video report, Breton has repeatedly threatened X over the new regulations, promising retaliation if the social media company refuses to comply.
The DSA will obligate companies to implement more stringent control over not only illegal content but also “hate speech,” “disinformation” and more.
This act, when coupled with upcoming regulations on data and artificial intelligence, cements Brussels’ pioneering role in the growing international urge to suppress online speech.
The DSA is one of the biggest threats posted to free speech from the EU in some time. It carries the risk of impinging on free speech and fostering an environment of tight control and censorship — a fear deeply rooted within the global anti-censorship and free speech community.
Along with X, Breton is carrying the same message of enforcement of DSA to other tech chiefs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
-Christina Maas Reclaim The Net
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New BA.2.86 COVID variant could cause infections in vaccinated individuals: CDC
U.S. CDC said that the BA.2.86 COVID variant, nicknamed Pirola, may be more capable of infecting individuals who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received preventive vaccines, Reuters reported Wednesday.
BA.2.86 COVID variant could cause infections in vaccinated individuals, CDC reports but impact on severity of illnesses unclear
The CDC has mentioned that it’s currently too early to determine if this new variant could lead to more serious illnesses when compared to earlier versions.
This variant’s genetic changes raise concerns about its impact on vaccine protection and past infection immunity, as per the agency. The CDC stated that the recent rise in hospitalizations in the US is probably not caused by the BA.2.86 lineage.
This variant has been identified in the US, Denmark, and Israel. Researchers closely track BA.2.86 lineage with 36 distinct mutations from the prevalent XBB.1.5 variant. Yet, the CDC notes limited virus samples for accurate antibody testing.
The Pirola variant contains 30 spike protein mutations that are distinct from XBB.1.5, according to Dr. Rajendram Rajnarayanan, an expert from Arkansas State University. The variant could potentially have a greater ability to evade immunity or weaken the body’s established defenses, USA Today reported.
Concerns rise over new COVID-19 variant and vaccine compatibility
According to Dailymail, the new variant is causing worry due to its origin from an “earlier branch” of the coronavirus. The report states that this sets it apart from the variants targeted by current vaccines. Despite the increase in COVID-19 cases in the US and a fifth consecutive week of higher hospital admissions, the rates remain comparatively low when compared to past levels.
Over the last month, the percentage of positive COVID-19 tests has doubled in the US, Dailymail reported. And there has been a noticeable increase in Google searches related to COVID-19 symptoms in recent weeks. However, medical professionals working on the frontlines report milder symptoms despite higher case numbers.
-Brendan Taylor, Insider Paper
CNN Calls For Bringing Back Masks: ‘We’re At An Inflection Point’
Soon after Alex Jones broke the story that the Biden regime was gearing up federal agencies to reimpose COVID restrictions this fall, the mainstream media right on cue began resuming its COVID fear-mongering.
The latest example is CNN, who ran a segment Wednesday encouraging viewers to reconsider putting on masks in the wake of an uptick in COVID cases.
“With COVID cases rising, some people are masking up. You have probably seen that in your neighborhood, work, etc. What does it mean for you and what does it mean for people at higher risk of severe illness?” CNN This Morning co-host Poppy Harlow asked.
She then turned to CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and asked, “I keep thinking this, when I see people with masks on ‘am I making a mistake? What should I do?’ What should we do?”
Gupta then turned to a CNN map of the U.S. showing “low risk” infection areas denoted in green and yellow and orange for “high risk” infection areas, noting that “most of the country is considered low risk right now. It’s mostly green.”
“You have a few spots of yellow and a couple spots, maybe, of orange where it’s high risk, but green means there’s low hospital admission rates, which is the criteria that they’re looking for whether or not we should go back to masking,” he said.
In other words, the uptick in COVID cases is virtually inconsequential.
Yet, Gupta insisted some situations still call for wearing masks.
“If you’re one of the lower categories, then depending on what you’re doing exactly, there may be situations where you need to mask as well. So, that is, sort of, where we are. We’re at an inflection point, I think right now,” Gupta claimed.
“I think we’re at this inflection point. Numbers have been going up. The weather is going to get cooler and drier, they’re probably going to go up a little bit more. Obviously, if you have tested positive, if you have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, those are other situations where you should mask,” Gupta added.
The COVID variants emerging in the U.S. are coming from the Omicron variant and pose very little health risk to healthy individuals.
But that won’t stop the media and Hollywood machine from drumming up more COVID hysteria ahead of the 2024 election — just as Alex Jones predicted.
-Jaime White, InfoWars
Gates Foundation, DOD Helping Fund Pandemic ‘Early Warning’ Surveillance System in Africa
Image Credit: The Defender Children’s Health Defense News & Views
Scientists are developing a proprietary “early warning system” — powered by CRISPR gene-editing technology — to “detect and characterize deadly pathogens” in Africa “before they spread across the globe,” STAT News reported.
The surveillance system — dubbed Sentinel — was launched with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others. It uses “participatory” digital health tools developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Sentinel’s lead developers are Pardis Sabeti, M.D., D.Phil., and Christian Happi, Ph.D., who are patenting the technology to commercialize it in the U.S.
Sabeti is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Harvard professor and director of the Broad Institute’s Sabeti Lab. Happi is a professor of molecular biology and genomics at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria, an adjunct professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard and director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), a genomic research institute focused on Africa, which he co-founded with Sabeti in Nigeria.
Sentinel aims to use rapid testing at “points-of-care” — anywhere tests can be administered, including non-clinical settings — across rural Africa to identify and genetically sequence pathogens. Then researchers will use cloud-based technology to share that information across the public health information sphere.
Global public health researchers can then track and predict “threats” and use that information to rapidly develop new diagnostics and vaccines — what the researchers call a “virtuous cycle,” according to a 2021 paper published in Viruses by the developers.
The Sentinel project was officially launched in 2020 with funding from TED’s Audacious Project, backed by Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, Open Philanthropy, the Skoll Foundation and the Gates Foundation.
But DARPA, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Wellcome Trust and others funded the development of the CRISPR technology the project will use to detect pathogenic threats.
In an interview with The Defender, University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said:
“They fully intend to use synthetic biology to research, develop and test biological warfare weapons. That’s DARPA’s motivation for funding this.
“It fits in with Predict and its successor, also funded by USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], which is a front organization for the CIA, to go out into the world and find every exotic disease, fungus, toxin, virus they possibly can and bring them back here and then weaponize them in their BSL3 [biosafety level 3] and BSL4 labs.”
According to Boyle, the Broad Institute is one of the country’s leading DARPA-funded synthetic biology research centers.
Happi and Sabeti officially launched Sentinel in West Africa one month before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. By early February 2020, they were using it to deploy COVID-19 rapid testing and genomic sequencing in hospitals across Sierra Leone, Senegal and Nigeria — before anywhere in the U.S. was doing so, STAT reported.
In March 2020, Happi’s lab confirmed the first COVID-19 case in Nigeria and became the first African lab to sequence a SARS-CoV-2 genome.
“Experts” told STAT that Africa is a “hot spot for emerging infectious diseases” because the existing system of disease surveillance is too centralized and top-down.
Happi and Sabeti aim to change that, they said, by making disease surveillance “bottom-up” — getting “everyday Africans” and community frontline workers working as “sentinels” to surveil their friends and communities for diseases.
They said their project can change how disease surveillance works globally. “Everybody in the world should be a sentinel, a sentinel not only for his own immediate community, for his own country — but a sentinel for the globe,” said Happi.
‘Very wealthy people have figured out how they can get extremely rich from this’
The developers said the Sentinel program is needed because viruses can mutate at any time to become pandemic threats, and this system is designed to find them early.
Sabeti described the work in a video tweeted last year by Bill Gates.
Sentinel is designed to identify pathogens at the most localized level possible and then disperse diagnostic and genomic information as quickly as possible to public health officials and researchers designing treatments, vaccines and new tests.
Clinicians or others are meant to administer “point-of-care” tests that use CRISPR gene-editing technology, which turns gene editors into pathogen detectors through different techniques, some of which are still in development.
Sentinel’s first line of intervention is the SHINE (SHERLOCK and HUDSON Integration to Navigate Epidemics) diagnostic tool, easily administered at almost any location. It tests blood or urine samples and reveals the results on a piece of paper without any high-tech equipment.
Happi told STAT that administering the test is like “doing a PCR on a sheet of paper” and that it is so simple that his grandmother could do it in her village.
But SHINE — an improvement on Sabeti’s earlier Specific High-sensitivity Enzymatic Reporter UnLOCKing, or SHERLOCK test — can test for only one pathogen at a time.
If that test fails to detect anything, Sentinel researchers launch their next-level test, CARMEN (Combinatorial Arrayed Reactions for Multiplexed Evaluation of Nucleic acids), which can screen for up to 16 pathogens at a time and must be implemented at a nearby rural hospital.
Research on the CARMEN technique was funded by DARPA, NIH, and Wellcome and published in Nature in 2020.
If CARMEN fails, the sample is “escalated” to a regional genomics hub, where every virus in the sample, “known or unknown,” is sequenced.
Researchers can use those sequences to quickly make new diagnostic tests for the newly identified pathogens, STAT reported.
The data collected through Sentinel is shared across healthcare clinics and public health officials’ proprietary mobile apps and cloud-based reporting systems developed by Dimagi — a Gates Foundation-funded for-profit tech company that targets low-income communities — and Fathom — a for-profit software developer funded by Sabeti labs.
Sabeti filed patents for the technology and co-founded a biotech startup, Sherlock Biosciences, to commercialize these tests for use in the U.S.
Sherlock also has startup funding from the Gates Foundation, Open Philanthropy and a number of other biotech venture capitalist companies.
With funding from DARPA, Battelle National Biodefense Institute, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the NIH and others, the Broad Institute and Princeton University researchers also used SHINE to create a rapid test for COVID-19.
Sabeti sits on the board and serves as a shareholder of the Danaher corporation, which develops research tools determining the causes of disease and identifies new therapies and tests of drugs and vaccines.
Happi also collaborates with the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute and bioengineering firm Ginkgo Bioworks to deploy Ginko’s automation technologies to his lab to sequence genomes.
But Sabeti told STAT that providing people with access to testing is her true priority. And she is on the board of a nonprofit that will work to send the tests her new company makes to low- and middle-income countries “at cost.”
Sentinel’s real contribution, Sabeti said, is its focus on “empowerment.”
Sabeti and Happi are currently field testing SHINE and CARMEN. In the process, they are training scientists in genomic surveillance and collecting hundreds of thousands of genomes.
STAT didn’t specify whether those are virus genomes or people’s genomes, but Boyle said the testing would make it possible to also collect the genomes of African people, which he said is a form of biopiracy.
Other notable collaborators on the 2021 Viruses paper that helped publicly launch Sentinel include Scripps Research Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, Ph.D., co-author of the now infamous Nature “Proximal Origins” paper used to promote the theory that COVID-19 evolved in nature. Andersen’s private communications later revealed he suspected a segment of the SARS-CoV-2 genome may have been engineered in a lab.
Happi and Andersen have collaborated on several projects and publications.
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-Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
India releases first photo from Moon landing
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on Wednesday released the first photo from its lunar probe, which earlier in the day became the first ever to successfully land in the south polar region of the Moon.
The black-and-white image, stamped with the ISRO watermark, shows “a portion of Chandrayaan-3’s landing site,” one of the legs of the Vikram lander, and the shadow it cast on the lunar surface, according to the Indian space agency.
“Historic day for India’s space sector,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after watching the livestream of the successful landing from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit.
India’s first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, successfully orbited the Moon in 2008. The first attempt at a polar landing came in 2019, with Chandrayaan-2, but the Vikram lander lost contact with mission control just before landing and crashed into the lunar surface. Chandrayaan-3 launched on July 14.
The lander is around 2 meters tall and has a mass of just over 1,700 kg. It carries a lunar rover, dubbed Pragyan, and is intended to study the south polar region. Scientists hope to confirm earlier instrument findings of ice on the Moon, which could be used for air, water and fuel for future space exploration.
Wednesday’s landing made India the fourth country to successfully carry out a soft landing on the lunar surface – after the Soviet Union, the US and China – and the first to do so in the rugged polar region in the south.
-RT News