🏈 🇺🇸 🎤 Taylor Swift and Ice Spice confused after being booed by Super Bowl audience.

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🏛 🇺🇸 💵 Trump Suggests Musk Effort at Treasury Found Irregularities

🔶️ “That could be an interesting problem because it could be that a lot of those things don’t count,” he said. “Therefore maybe we have less debt than we thought of.”

🔶️ A federal judge also temporarily blocked Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing some Treasury Department information and ordered the destruction of data they’ve already gathered in response to a lawsuit from a group of states.

🔗 Bloomberg

🏛 🇺🇸 💵 Trump Orders Treasury Secretary to Stop Minting Pennies

🔶️ It cost 3.69 cents to produce and distribute a penny last year, according to the U.S. Mint’s annual report. This means that, accounting for their face value, each penny made a loss of 2.69 cents.

🔶️ Last year, the Mint issued over three billion pennies, according to its annual report, at a loss of about $85.3 million. Pennies, which are often given as change but rarely spent, accounted for more than half of all the coins the Mint produced that year. There were about 250 billion pennies in circulation, or about 700 per person, in the United States, last year.

🪙 In addition, the elimination of the penny will increase the demand for nickels, which are even more expensive to produce and distribute at 13.78 cents per coin, the organization said. (The dime is the smallest coin whose face value is greater than what it costs to produce.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/us/politics/trump-stop-minting-pennies.html

https://archive.ph/233Rc

🇷🇴🚶🏻‍♂️‍➡️⚡️ The Romanian president, Klaus Johannis resigned to avoid the "theatrics" of an impeachment process.

His stepdown will take effect this Wednesday.

The resignation came as a surprise to many, last week, Johannis ruled out quitting his job before the new presidential elections were going to happen. His allies in the government and Parliament, continued to vouch for him saying that Johannis's resignation was not something they wanted to see.

The opposition was relentless in the manner they pursued the impeachment. The motion to suspend the president had been rejected twice in the span of three days by the parliamentary majority using a bunch of legal technicalities. However, today, the parliamentary majority suddenly agreed to discuss the motion, not finding a pretext this time to reject it apparently.

This serves to explain the short notice in which Johannis announced the press conference where at the end he announced his resignation. However, the motion to suspend the president would not have lasted in Parliament as Johannis's government had enough parliamentary support to reject it.. at least in theory. Everyone was aware of the bad image they had because they supported Johannis.

Although the prime-minister said he was "surprised" by Johannis's resignation, this was something they had planned for a while. In his last acts as president, Johannis promulgated the 2025 budget law, a budget which was sped through the Parliament and the opposition was given little time to read and discuss the contents. Johannis also further decorated three judges on the Constitutional Court who had initially secured him a favorable interpretation of the Constitution which allowed him to remain in power longer.

Securing the 2025 budget was an essential priority for the current government and the system who kept Johannis in power as long as it did. Decorating the judges of the CCR was the icing on the cake.

Johannis resigning gives him the honor of being the first Romanian president to leave office through a resignation. No one before him resigned, all presidents ended their constitutionally mandated terms. In Johannis's place, the speaker of the Senate, Ilie Bolojan, will take on his roles.

@Wallachian_Gazette

📈 💰 💵 Gold in US dollar terms is over $2900.

🥇 First time in history.

🔶️ Gold prices jumped more than 1% on Monday to hit a record high, as safe-haven demand surged on fears of a global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariff plans.

🔶️ Trump announced on Sunday plans to impose an additional 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports. He also said he will announce reciprocal tariffs this week, matching rates imposed by other countries and applying them immediately.

🔶️ Elsewhere, the amount of gold stored in the London vaults fell 1.7% month on month to 8,535 metric tons worth $771.6 billion in January due to a rush in shipments to the United States, the London Bullion Market Association said.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/gold-hovers-near-all-time-highs-trumps-tariff-threats-lift-safe-haven-demand-2025-02-10/

https://archive.ph/D05tl

🔗 Gold Telegraph

💰 🇨🇳 A Chinese pilot program to allow insurers to buy gold for the first time will allow billions of dollars of extra investment in the precious metal, adding further impetus to a record-setting rally

🔶️ Ten insurance firms — including PICC Property & Casualty Co. and China Life Insurance Co., two of China’s biggest — will be able to invest as much as 1% of their assets in bullion, in a program that became effective last Friday. That would translate into a potential 200 billion yuan ($27.4 billion) of funds, Minsheng Securities Co. said in a note.

🔶️ Gold has been one of the strongest performing commodities of the new year, as well as in 2024, with the metal hitting successive records. That extended uplift has been powered by the US Federal Reserve cutting rates, and central-bank buying, including purchases from China. Donald Trump’s second term as US president has also added an extra driver, with traders scrambling to adjust to his disruptive moves on trade.

🔶️ The policy tweak makes gold the first commodity that Chinese insurers have been explicitly permitted to invest in. China has restricted insurance funds from taking positions in assets without “stable cash returns,” and limits the amount they can put into bonds and stocks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-10/china-frees-possible-27-billion-from-insurers-to-invest-in-gold

https://archive.ph/1QKyh

🇸🇩 ❌️ 🏴‍☠️ Sudan's Army (SAF) have liberated a significant portion of Khartoum, reclaiming 65% of the capital from RSF militants, who are reportedly fleeing the city.

📝 The population of Khartoum stood at around six million people a year ago, but today is closer to 1 million.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250210-sudan-displaced-people-return-to-al-jazira-khartoum-after-army-regains-control/

—❗️🇮🇱/🇵🇸 BREAKING: The IDF's 'Gaza Division' has had their leaves canceled, all soldier are to report back to duty – ceasefire collapse seems imminent

@Middle_East_Spectator

🇪🇬 🇵🇸 🇮🇱 Egypt to host emergency Arab summit on Palestinian displacement

🔶️ On Sunday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said that it has communicated with several Arab countries in light of the "escalating developments in the Palestinian issue".

🔶️ "Over the past few days, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty made a series of phone calls with several Arab counterparts to mass regional efforts in a bid to thwart the US proposal of displacing the Palestinian people," the ministry said.

🔶️ Middle East Eye learned in early February that Jordan is ready to declare war on Israel in the event that Netanyahu attempts to forcibly expel Palestinians into its territory.

🔶️ One source told MEE that Trump's proposal was an "existential issue" both for Jordan and the Hashemite dynasty, pointing out that the country is the third-poorest in terms of water in the world.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-set-host-emergency-arab-summit-palestinian-displacement

🇺🇸🇱🇧🇮🇱⚡- BREAKING: Netanyahu asks Trump for ANOTHER delay in the military withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which was extended once already and scheduled for February 18.

🇮🇱⚡- Israeli security cabinet meeting scheduled for 11am, (Tel-Aviv time) - Netanyahu's Press Office announces.

📢 🇵🇸 🇮🇱 Hamas has announced that they will be suspending the hostage release deal, stating that they won’t release the hostages that were set to be returned to Israel on February 15. They cited Israeli ceasefire violations as the reason.

🔶️ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consulted with top security officials, and decided to move the security cabinet meeting to earlier on Tuesday, with it now being scheduled to take place at 11:00 a.m. local time.

🔶️ Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, stated that he instructed the IDF to maintain maximum readiness for “any scenario in Gaza” and to “protect communities.”

🔶️ We will not return to the reality of October 7," he added.

🔶️ Additionally, the IDF has cancelled all leave and vacations for active troops within the “Gaza Division,” while all its member personnel are being ordered to return to active duty.

🔗 AMK Mapping

🇺🇸 🇿🇦 🇮🇱 The U.S. is closely monitoring land and farm seizures in South Africa and remains committed to fair and just resolutions.

🔶️ Merely two months after the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, South Africa accused Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice.

🔶️ While championing terrorism and autocratic regimes abroad, South Africa has committed similar human rights violations at home. The recent Expropriation Act enables the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority descendants of settler groups’ agricultural property without compensation.

🔶️ Years ago, the South African government disbanded volunteer forces defending rural farmers, turning a blind eye to the ensuing farm attacks.

🔗 U.S. Embassy South Africa

🇺🇸l🇮🇱 In response to the Israeli Channel 12, the Trump admin issues the following statement

Israel did not ask the US to extend the deadline for Israeli forces to fully withdraw from Lebanon, which is set for Feb. 18, per White House source

🤖 🇺🇸 💵 Anduril Industries is in talks for a new funding round that could raise the valuation of the Palmer Luckey-founded defense technology startup to $28 billion, sources said on Friday.

🔶️ Tech billionaire Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is set to lead the round, which could be as much as $2.5 billion, according to the sources.

📝 Palmer Luckey: "Your mind will detonate when you find out what our investors already know. Stay tuned for next week."

🔗 Reuters