🇮🇱❌🇱🇧 — Israel issued evacuation warrent for the whole of Baalbek city, with more than 90k population.

🇮🇱❌🇱🇧🏛 — Mayor of Baalbek:

We fear that the historic Baalbek Castle and its heritage will be targeted.

✍📝Side note: Israel has destroyed over 200 historical and heritage sites in Gaza, including ancient mosques, harbours and one of the oldest Christian monasteries, in what some have described as a “Cultural Genocide”

🚢 🇨🇳🇵🇭 Navy: Chinese Navy taps fishing vessels as ‘force multipliers’ in SCS

The Philippine Navy on Tuesday said China has been tapping normal fishing boats to act as “force multipliers” to show force in the South China Sea (SCS).

🇸🇬📝Collin Koh: "There's a core cadre of full-time maritime militia, but vast remainder of PRC fishing fleet remains liable to be called upon to perform patriotic duties as needed, and even while on fishing expeditions they still serve as eyes and ears for the authorities."

https://tribune.net.ph/2024/10/29/navy-chinese-navy-taps-fishing-vessels-as-force-multipliers-in-scs

🇪🇺 EU wants to create a spy agency that is able to centralise information and coordinate the national spy agencies of its member states

The EU spy agency should be akin to the 5 Eyes agreement between the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-spy-service-cia-ursula-von-der-leyen/

👨‍🚀🇺🇸🗳 American Lunar Astronaut Buzz Aldrin endorses Trump for President and champions Elon Musk's cause for a return to the moon.

https://fxtwitter.com/TheRealBuzz/status/1851628221013622787

#BREAKING

🇻🇪❌🇧🇷 ❗️— Venezuelan Regime recalls its Ambassador from Brazil after Brazilian President Lula vetoed its entry into BRICS!

👤🗯🇺🇸💸📈 — 🇺🇸 The Epoch Times | Trump Wants US to Stay in NATO, but Others Need to Do More: Vance | Although the number of countries projected to spend at least 2 percent on defense has doubled, nearly one-third are still falling short of their commitments | October 28, 2024:

"The United States would stay in NATO if former President Donald Trump is reelected, according to his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), but he added that other members of the military alliance need to pay their fair share.

“Donald Trump wants NATO to be strong. He wants us to remain in NATO,” Vance said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired on Oct. 27. “But he also wants NATO countries to actually carry their share of the defense burden.”

In 2014, in the wake of Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, NATO members all agreed to allocate at least 2 percent of their GDPs to defense within a decade.

In July 2022, as the Russia–Ukraine conflict escalated into a full-scale war, then-NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the 2 percent threshold was “increasingly considered a floor, not a ceiling.”

By the end of 2023, however, only 10 of NATO’s 31 members had met the target. Although that number is projected to rise to 23 out of 32 members in 2024 after Sweden joined the fold, nearly one-third of alliance members are still falling short of their commitments."

🗄 Archive

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🗣💸🌐🌐❌💵 — 🏴 ZeroHedge | BRICS Summit Puts Focus On Dethroning US Dollar As Putin Unveils 'BRICS Banknote' | October 25, 2024:

"(...) Vladimir Putin avidly discussed the potential of a new BRICS currency system during the trade coalition's summit this week in Kazan, Russia. He knows that the dollar's reserve status is America's strength, but also America's greatest weakness.

Putin unveiled a "symbolic" BRICS bank note at the summit, suggesting that the plan to dump the dollar may be much closer to fruition than many economists expect."

#Geoeconomics

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🇷🇺🗺⚡️🇾🇪 — 🇺🇸 The Wall Street Journal | Russia Provided Targeting Data for Houthi Assault on Global Shipping | Moscow’s assistance in attacks that are disrupting trade shows how the Kremlin is seeking to tie up the U.S. in the Middle East | October 24, 2024:

"Russia provided targeting data for Yemen’s Houthi rebels as they attacked Western ships in the Red Sea with missiles and drones earlier this year, helping the Iranian-backed group assault a major artery for global trade and further destabilizing the region."

🗄 Archive

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🇺🇸🗣❗️🇨🇳🧭 — 🇺🇸 The Epoch Times | China Is Conducting ‘Problematic’ Research in Arctic, US Lawmakers Warn | China’s research activities in the Arctic ’may carry significant security implications’ for the United States, U.S. lawmakers said | October 21, 2024:

"The House China panel has called on the State Department and the Pentagon to take stronger action to address “problematic” Chinese research in the Arctic that could be used for both civilian and military applications, saying that these activities may pose significant security risks to the United States and its NATO allies.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlined its concerns in an Oct. 16. letter addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“In recent years, the PRC has increased its effort to seek access to and exert influence in the Arctic, including expanding dual civil-military research efforts in the region,” Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chairman and ranking Democrat member of the panel, respectively, wrote in a letter, using the acronym of communist China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

(...)

China’s Research Stations in NATO Allies

Norway’s Svalbard archipelago is a crucial location for the CCP’s Arctic ambitions, the lawmakers pointed out in the letter.

The first Chinese research station, the Arctic Yellow River Station, was established in Svalbard in 2004. Among the organizations operating at the station is the China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation (CRIRP), a unit of China Electronics Technology Group Corp., which the Pentagon designated as a military-controlled company.

The lawmakers said that some CRIRP projects in Svalbard, as registered at the Norwegian government’s Research in Svalbard portal, could have “significant military uses.”"

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🇺🇸🌊 The ocean hides a 200-year-old treasure: America has found it, and we are going to extract it

The abundance of energy in the ocean makes it a logical choice to develop to extract clean electricity, and the United States has started investing in the technology. There are three kinds of renewable ocean energy: tidal, wave, and ocean thermal energy conversion, and it’s the third type that America is focusing on.

The commercialization of ocean energy is still in the early stages. When it comes to the different forms, wave energy is the most expensive kind, so it remains relatively underdeveloped for now. Under the tidal kind, there’s tidal range energy harvesting, which relies on a strong tidal system, such as in Sihwa in South Korea and La Rance in France). Tidal stream energy farming has only been demonstrated at a pilot project scale up until now.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a distinct process of using the temperature differences, called thermal gradients, between warmer upper ocean water and colder water closer to the ocean floor to create energy, which is then converted into electricity.

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion works best in tropical regions where the surface water heated by solar energy is significantly warmer than at deeper levels. The difference in temperature can be exploited to generate electricity and desalinate seawater. A difference of at least 36°F (or 20°C) is required to power an electricity turbine, which is how renewable electricity is generated and added to the grid.

Warm water from the surface is pumped through an evaporator with a working fluid, which is usually the seawater itself. A turbine is powered by the vaporized fluid, which is then converted back into liquid form in a condenser using cold water from deeper in the ocean. Systems that use seawater can also produce desalinated water.

Wave energy uses the motion of wave swells to create electricity. There are a number of technologies being developed to extract energy in different ways, and several trial projects are underway worldwide.

There’s also tidal energy, which has two kinds:

Tidal range systems harvest the potential energy produced by the difference in height between low and high tides. Dams, also called barrages, are built to maximize the potential of the different ranges.

Tidal stream technology, also called tidal current technology, harvests the kinetic energy of currents in tidal areas such as seashores. Tidal stream devices are set up in arrays that look similar to wind turbines.

🔗 https://www.eldiario24.com/en/ocean-energy-extract-power-electricity/2393/

🇩🇪🇪🇺 POLITICO criticises German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for turning against the EU for his own country's benefit

POLITICO is in shock after Germany took the side of "serial rebels like Hungary and Slovakia" and voted against tariffs on Chinese vehicles. Even if the vote on tariffs ultimately failed, Scholz's decision eventually put Germany on China's friends list of countries where Chinese EV makers can open up new factories in the future as China banned its car companies from ever building new factories in the EU countries who supported the tariffs.

The newspaper also criticises Germany's opposition to a new EU law which requires European companies to audit their supply chains and root out the supplies who may be breaking local, EU or international law as well as Germany's decision to suspend the Schengen Area and bring back border controls.

POLITICO notes that this newfound "German independence" and breakoff from the EU, shows the internal divisions of the EU that threaten to tear apart the union. It comes at a time when Italy defied the EU's Migration Pact by signing a deportation deal with Albania and coerced the European Commission to make the deal official policy of the EU. Poland and Finland coerced the EU to change its asylum rules recently finally forcing Brussels to admit that asylum rights can be denied thanks to the migrants bussed by Russia and Belarus to their borders. Netherlands too wants a full opt-out of the EU Migration Pact and decide its own rules for asylum seekers.

The EU has traveled far since its optimistic, federalist era of old. Each country is now fighting for scraps and pursuing its own agenda, compounding the many challenges facing Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as she begins her second term and is increasingly at odds with national governments.

As the author adds, former ECB director and ex-Italian PM, Mario Draghi, who was tasked by von der Leyen to write a plan that would pull the EU out of its economic downturn, noted in his report that the EU needs more unity and cooperation between its member states but as POLITICO observes, the union and the continent as a whole, is more fractured than ever and there is little unity to be found left.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-europe-olaf-scholz-economy-continent-financial-crisis-exports/

@CIG_telegram