🇶🇦❌🇪🇺 Qatar vows to stop EU gas sales if fined under due diligence law

Qatar will stop shipping gas to the EU if member states strictly enforce a new law cracking down on forced labour and environmental damage, Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.

The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, approved this year, requires larger companies operating in the European Union to check whether their supply chains use forced labour or cause environmental damage and to take action if they do. Penalties include fines of up to 5% of global turnover.

"If the case is that I lose 5% of my generated revenue by going to Europe, I will not go to Europe. I’m not bluffing, Kaabi told the newspaper, adding that "5% of generated revenue of QatarEnergy means 5% of generated revenue of the Qatar state. This is the people's money,  so I cannot lose that kind of money - and nobody would accept losing that kind of money."

Kaabi, the chief executive of state-owned QatarEnergy, has said the EU should thoroughly review the due diligence law. He has also said that his Gulf country has no concerns about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's promise to lift a cap on liquefied natural gas exports.

Qatar, among the world's top LNG exporters, is seeking to play a larger role in Asia and Europe as competition from top supplier the United Sates increases. It plans to expand its liquefaction capacity to 142 million tons per year by 2027 from 77 million.

🔗 https://archive.ph/tkAmQ

Nissan and Honda discuss merger plans to create world’s no. 3 automaker

Japan's two giant will need to combine forces to stave off the EV competition from China

📎 Prof. Michael Tanchum

🇷🇺 Russia's naval deployment in the Mediterranean on the morning of Dec-21 as reported by OSINT.

Task force remains near Tartus, covering the Russian withdrawal as five vessels could be heading to Tartus for a seaborn evacuation.

https://russianfleetanalysis.blogspot.com/2024/12/russian-forces-in-mediterranean-wk512024.html

🇵🇰💣❗️🇺🇸 — 🇺🇸 The Wall Street Journal | White House Says Pakistan Is Developing Long-Range Missile Capable of Hitting the U.S. | U.S. revealed intelligence after Islamabad rebuffed confidential discussions about its missile program | December 23, 2024:

"WASHINGTON—Weeks before it leaves office, the Biden administration said that Pakistan is developing a long-range ballistic missile that could eventually provide nuclear-armed Islamabad with a weapon capable of striking the U.S.

The administration disclosed the intelligence about Pakistan’s secret missile activities and imposed sanctions against a state-owned entity involved in the work after repeated efforts to press its concerns in confidential channels fell short, U.S. officials said.

“The list of countries that possess both nuclear weapons and the missile capability to directly reach the U.S. homeland is very small, and they tend to be adversarial,” deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Thursday. “So candidly, it is hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States.”

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🇷🇺🛢🤝🇸🇦 — 🌟 Reuters | Saudi Arabia was top buyer of Russian fuel oil and VGO in November, LSEG data shows | December 23, 2024:

"MOSCOW, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia was the top destination for Russian sea-borne fuel oil and vacuum gasoil (VGO) exports in November, according to traders and LSEG data.

Total fuel oil and VGO exports from Russian ports last month rose by 6% from October to about 4.26 million metric tons, according to Reuters calculations based on LSEG data.

Since the European Union's full embargo on Russian oil products went into effect in February 2023, Asian countries became the main destination for Russia's fuel oil and VGO supplies."

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🇨🇳📉❌🗺📈 — 🏴 ZeroHedge | China's GDP Growth Is Now Lagging The Rest Of Asia | December 24, 2024:

"China’s economy is facing a series of significant challenges, including a property crisis and high youth unemployment.

After decades of rapid growth, the country is now expected to experience less economic growth than other Asian nations.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, illustrates the projected growth of per-capita GDP for selected Asian nations between 2023 and 2026, based on data compiled by HSBC as of November 2024."

#Geoeconomics

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source

🇺🇸💸🤝🇺🇦 — ⚪️ RIA Novosti:

"Kyiv received the first $1 billion from the United States through income from frozen Russian assets, says Ukrainian Prime Minister Shmygal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly called the freezing of assets in Europe theft. Lavrov stated that Moscow would respond to the confiscation of frozen Russian assets by the West. According to him, Moscow also has the opportunity not to return the funds that Western countries kept in Russia.‌‌"

🔗 Source:

🇷🇺🇦🇿❗️ — Plane which crashed in Kazakhstan was hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile, according Azerbaijani government sources to Euronews

🇷🇺✈️🚫 — Rosaviatsia, Russian Federation’s Federal Air Transport Authority, announces the temporary closure of all Moscow airports!

🕎🗣🇺🇸📺🇮🇱❌🇮🇷 — 🇺🇸 CBS News | Israel's spy agency, Mossad, spent years orchestrating Hezbollah walkie-talkie, pager plots | December 22, 2024:

"After nearly a year of war between Israel and the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, Lebanon was sent reeling in September when thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members exploded.

Two recently retired senior Mossad agents, who were among those spearheading the years-long operation, detailed the inside story of how they built the devices and got them into Hezbollah hands, shifting the course of Israel's escalating war with the Iran-backed group. The walkie-talkie and pager plots had a profound ripple effect: weakening Iran by leaving its proxy empire in ruins, with Hezbollah crushed in Lebanon and the Assad regime toppled in Syria.

(...)

"We create a pretend world. We are a global production company: We write the screenplay, we're the directors, we're the producers, we're the main actors," Michael said. "And the world is our stage."

🗄 Archive

🔗 Source:

🇺🇸🇺🇸⚓☠️⚰️ Valentina Gómez, a Colombian candidate for Congress in Texas, proposes public executions for illegal immigrants who pose a threat to American citizens as rapists or murderers.

It's that simple: public executions for any illegal that rapes or kills an American.

They do not deserve deportation. They deserve to be ended.

In the videos Gómez showed up with a gun and shot at a life-seized doll.

https://x.com/ValentinaForUSA/status/1871288974071001265

@FelipeChannel

🇺🇦👤❗️📉 — 🇩🇪 BILD:

"Ukraine Running Out of Soldiers, Zelensky Faces Tough Choice

The Russian army continues to seize Ukrainian territory in the east of the country. At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are struggling with a shortage of not only weapons, but also personnel. According to the Guardian, the command is already sending soldiers from air defense units to the front as infantry. The Ukrainian army has found itself in a very difficult situation:

▫️War fatigue has made desertion commonplace. According to the AP news agency, about 100,000 soldiers have been accused of desertion since the war began

▫️According to an estimate of the number of losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces obtained by the Wall Street Journal from a source in Ukraine itself, about 80 thousand Ukrainian soldiers have died since the beginning of the war, and about 400 thousand have left the ranks due to injuries

▫️There are not enough trained soldiers to replace the losses. A Ukrainian officer from the 114th Territorial Defence Brigade told the Guardian that the new recruits were unfit for service, poorly trained and poorly equipped:

Of the 90 newly arrived recruits, "only 24 were ready to take up their positions, the rest were old, sick or alcoholics."

This puts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in front of a very difficult decision. According to some reports, Washington has asked him to lower the mobilization age from 25 to 18. This would be very painful for Ukraine: the generation of 18-25 year olds is already small, since the birth rate fell sharply after the collapse of the USSR.

Zelensky has previously said that he does not want to lower the mobilization age. But does he have a choice? He has already been forced to lower the bar from 27 to 25 years, recalls BILD political observer Judith Goers.

On the other hand, the problem is not only in the mobilization age. Due to the indecisiveness of the West, Ukraine had to compensate for the lack of equipment with human sacrifices. And here are the consequences:

"18-year-olds are still children. Maybe they could lower the minimum age to 23, but even now there are enough people in Kyiv who could fight. They just don't want to do it," a soldier from the 114th Brigade told the Guardian."

🔗 Source: