🇺🇸🇨🇳Trump invites China's Xi Jinping to inauguration

President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month, multiple sources told CBS News, and inauguration officials are making plans for additional foreign dignitaries to attend the swearing-in ceremony.

Trump invited Xi in early November, shortly after the election, sources said, but it was not clear whether he has accepted the invitation. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately comment.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-invites-china-xi-jinping-inauguration/

🇦🇹 The Austrian Parliament voted to lift Herbert Kickl's immunity and start a criminal investigation

Kickl is the president of the right-wing FPO party which won the latest Austrian Parliamentary elections, becoming the biggest political force in the country with 56 seats in the Parliament.

Prosecutors claim Kickl gave a false testimony for alleged misuse of public funds.

The greens, socialists and center-right conservatives voted to remove Kickl's immunity. Along with Kickl, three other FPO MPs had their immunity lifted for other alleged crimes.

The FPO, like in every European country, was sidelined and the center-right OVP formed a coalition with the socialists (SPO) and liberal-progressives (NEOS), creating a cordon sanitaire against the FPO.

🔗 https://uk.news.yahoo.com/austrian-parliament-lifts-far-leaders-213427897.html

🇪🇺 The European Central Bank cut interest rates by 0.25%

It revised economic growth projections for 2024, 2025 and 2026 and the inflation rate. However it remains moderately optimistic that the EU will overcome the phenomena of "stagflation" and things will start to improve beginning in 2025.

Meanwhile, Europe‘s largest economies:

Germany - decided to get rid of its industry, sick man of Europe

France - 6% fiscal deficit despite highest tax burden in Europe, political paralysis

Italy & Spain - heading into pensions and healthcare benefits crisis due to collapsing demographics

🔗 Michael Arouet

🇨🇦🇺🇸 Canadian official threatens to cut off energy to US if Trump imposes tariffs

After meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other top Canadian officials, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, threatened to cut off energy to parts of the United States if President-elect Donald Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on Canada.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/12/business/video/doug-ford-trump-tariffs-energy-digvid

🇨🇦🇺🇸 "No one is even talking about the fact

that on top of 5,000,000 barrels of oil per day

Canada exports electricity to the USA

This could get REAL UGLY, REAL QUICK"

📎 Tablesalt

🇨🇺🔌 Cuba's Energy Crisis Sparks Unrest

🔺Cuba's energy crisis, characterized by frequent blackouts and fuel shortages, is causing significant economic hardship and social unrest.

🔺The crisis is attributed to aging infrastructure, lack of investment, and the US embargo, which hinders fuel imports and economic development.

🔺While the Cuban government is promoting renewable energy as a long-term solution, immediate challenges persist, and the population continues to face daily struggles.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Cubas-Energy-Crisis-Sparks-Unrest.amp.html

🇷🇺🌐 Russia Tests Cutting Off Access to Global Web, and VPNs Can't Get Around It

Russia has reportedly cut some regions of the country off from the rest of the world's internet for a day, effectively siloing them, according to reports from European and Russian news outlets reshared by the US nonprofit Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Western news outlets.

Russia's communications authority, Roskomnadzor, blocked residents in Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, which have majority-Muslim populations, ISW says. The three regions are in southwest Russia near its borders with Georgia and Azerbaijan. People in those areas couldn't access Google, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp, or other foreign websites or apps—even if they used VPNs, according to a local Russian news site.

Russian digital rights NGO Roskomsvoboda told TechRadar that most VPNs didn't work during the shutdown, but some apparently did. It's unclear which ones or how many actually worked, though. Russia has been increasingly blocking VPNs more broadly, and Apple has helped the country's censorship efforts by taking down VPN apps on its Russian App Store. At least 197 VPNs are currently blocked in Russia, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/russia-tests-cutting-off-access-to-global-web-and-vpns-cant-get-around

🇨🇳🇹🇼 China's largest maritime deployment in decades 'pressure tests' Taiwan

TAIPEI -- China has launched what Taiwan officials say is its largest maritime deployment in recent memory, ratcheting up intimidation against Taipei and neighboring countries weeks before the U.S. presidential transition.

Beijing had dispatched more than 90 naval and coast guard ships to the region "aimed at all the parties in the first island chain," according to a Taiwanese national security memo seen by Nikkei Asia, referring to Taiwan, Japan's Okinawa prefecture and the Philippines. The memo calls it China's largest fleet deployment in regional waters in nearly three decades and estimates it took 70 days to prepare.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Taiwan-tensions/China-s-largest-maritime-deployment-in-decades-pressure-tests-Taiwan

🇷🇺🇸🇾📹 — Video shared over the past days shows a convoy of former Syrian Arab Army soldiers, filmed by Russian soldiers in northeast Syria, during the capitulation of the Baathist Syrian Government

➡️ They threw away their weapons and equipment, abandoned their posts and are wandering towards the Iraqi border.

➡️ On the video, the Russian soldier filming, notoriously angry, is heard saying:

"These are all those faggots who laid down their weapons, and just, just THOUSANDS, thousands, fucking faggots, fucking Syrians, fucking bastards. How much have we driven?

There's much more than a thousand here…
Fucking hell, these fucking faggots, running the fuck away… And we're supposed to suffer here for these faggots…

Just look, fucking hell, goddamn bastards…
They could have been defending their homeland… What assholes…
How many of them are there, maybe five thousand here?

The column doesn’t end, these scumbags…
Fuck, they threw away their weapons… Threw away their balls… They're all bitches. Just look, the convoy doesn’t fucking end… Holy shit, fucking scum..."

🔗 @RWApodcast

#BREAKING

🇮🇱❌🇮🇷☢️❗️ — Israeli Army Radio: The Israel Defense Forces believes that now is an perfect opportunity for an all-out strike against nuclear facilities in Iran!

🇮🇱❌🇮🇷☢️❗️ — Times of Israel's Emanuel Fabian on Twitter/X:

The Israeli Air Force is continuing its readiness and preparations for potential strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, following the weakening of Tehran's proxy groups in the Middle East and the fall of Assad Regime in Syria

The military believes that an isolated Iran may push further with its nuclear program.

Due to the dramatic changes in the Middle East, especially the fall of Assad which allowed the IAF to take out the vast majority of Syria's air defenses, the Israeli military believes there is now an opportunity to strike Iran's nuclear sites.