🇺🇸 Biden after learning of the release of Alex Saab: "It seems that Maduro is making progress in his commitment to free elections"

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, considered this Wednesday that Nicolás Maduro "continues forward" with his commitment to hold democratic elections in the country.

Asked by journalists in Milwaukee about a possible prisoner exchange that would be taking place on Wednesday and about which he did not want to provide information, Biden made this comment about the Venezuelan president.

«It seems that Maduro, so far, is maintaining his commitment to free elections, although he has not yet done so. We have a long way to go, but so far it is good," said the president.

BREAKING: 🇭🇰 Hong Kong's Securities Commission says its "prepared to accept" Bitcoin ETF applications

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1738156002195730625

🌍 Geo-economic competition is in full swing as Eastern Mediterranean countries seek to embed themselves in major connectivity projects.

🔽 Continued

https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-dossiers/strategic-dossier-preview-turbulence-in-the-eastern-mediterranean/

📎 IISS News

🗳 🇹🇼 🇨🇳 Polls suggest that a little more than half of respondents are willing to defend Taiwan if China attacks, meaning that “some 40% of Taiwanese people are likely to choose capitulation or rapprochement.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-19/how-ready-is-taiwan-for-a-potential-war-with-china

https://archive.ph/sS0sp

🇨🇳 🇪🇺 "The rise of yuan usage in global trade has been remarkably rapid. Its tripled in usage since the war in Ukraine broke out."

📎 Philip Pilkington

🇨🇳 ❌️ 🇺🇸 China bans export of rare earths processing tech over national security

🔶️ China, the world's top processor of rare earths, on Thursday banned the export of technology to extract and separate the strategic metals, in a further step towards protecting its dominance in several strategic metals.

🔶️ China has significantly tightened rules guiding exports of several metals this year, in an escalating battle with the West over control of critical minerals.

🔶️ The move to protect its rare earth technology comes as Europe and the United States scramble to wean themselves off rare earths from China, which accounts for 90% of global refined output.

🔶️ Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets for use in electric vehicles, wind turbines and electronics.

🔶️ China has mastered the solvent extraction process to refine the strategic minerals, which Western rare earth companies have struggled to deploy due to technical complexities and pollution concerns.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-bans-export-rare-earths-processing-technologies-2023-12-21/

https://archive.ph/0JRje

🇷🇺🇺🇦 How will the Ukraine war end? Victory against Russia looks unlikely

As the second anniversary of the war approaches, Kyiv is finding it far more difficult to impose its sovereignty on the battlefield, with hopes of imminent victory fading and the focus shifting to ensuring that no further land is lost.

Ukrainian generals said this week that Russia was on the offensive in the east of the country and that troops were being forced to downsize some military operations because of artillery shortages. “We can’t respond to everything the Russians are throwing at us. It’s as painful as hell,” said Yurash.

The scale of Ukraine’s casualties is classified but there is no longer any attempt to disguise that losses are huge. “I don’t even give the new guys call signs any more. Most of them don’t last long,” said a Ukrainian soldier in the Kharkiv region, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

📎 The Telegraph

Venezuela agrees with Trinidad and Tobago to start exporting gas with the help of Shell

https://acortar.link/D4UTVk

Physical attacks against crypto asset owners, which tend to be correlated with exchange rates, were predictably lower in 2023.

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1738271395874775338

— 🇺🇸/🇫🇷/🇪🇸/🇮🇹 CONFIRMED: France, Spain and Italy have withdrawn from Operation Prosperity Guardian, refusing to put their warships under U.S. command

@Middle_East_Spectator

— 🇺🇸 So, 'Operation Prosperity Guardian' now consists of the following nations:

United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Bahrain and Seychelles.

@Middle_East_Spectator